Introduction to "A Thousand Years Later"

A Thousand Years Later
on the Other Side of the World:
Recontextualizing Zen Koans

INTRODUCTION

1.

Buddhism came first from India to China. There it incorporated Daoist and Confucian influences and morphed into the Chan Buddhism of the Tang Dynasty (618-917), and then into the Chan of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), before morphing further into Japanese Zen, Korean Son, and Vietnamese Thien.

Song Chan derived from Tang Chan, yet Song Chan included sensibilities, approaches, and techniques that were its own. In order to articulate the old meanings of the tradition they inherited and evolve new meanings for their new world, Chan leaders of the Song Dynasty recontextualized stories of Tang masters. By framing its teaching in stories of old masters of the Tang period, Song Chan presented its innovations as centuries older than they were. Some of these stories were, apart from characters named for historical Tang masters, wholly fabricated; others were selectively chosen and clipped. These retellings expressed, and helped create, the Song sense of Chan.

In the 12th- and 13th-centuries, Japanese Buddhists – most famously Dogen (1200-1253) – traveled to China to study and practice with masters of Song Chan. They brought the tradition back to Japan, where its name became Zen and its understandings further evolved.

Now there is an emerging Western Zen, connected to and derived from Asian traditions, yet including sensibilities, approaches, and techniques that are its own. In order to articulate the old meanings of the tradition we inherit and participate in evolving new meanings for our New World, I am recontextualizing those stories of Tang figures as if they happened in Western history.

2.

I am a US American. This means I have been molded into what I am by a culture produced by European, especially British, history and its encounter with North America. Among the products of that encounter were new religious forms, including, in New England around the turn of the 19th century, Universalism and Unitarianism. I’m a Unitarian Universalist since my birth around the time the two denominations consolidated. I became, at age 45, a minister in that tradition.

I’m also a Zen practitioner – an associate teacher in the Open Mind Zen organization. This means I have also been molded by a product of Asian history and culture. This book is my attempt, through historical fantasy, to come to terms with the amalgam of West and East that, as Zen spreads in American and Europe, a growing number of Westerners are.

The basic situation is this: we are all inescapably products of a history of domination. This domination has often been resisted, and when the resistance has succeeded, its leaders have become new oppressors. Meanwhile, in the background traditions of liberation have developed.

There is a history of domination. The history of kings, generals, wars, armies, conquests – what often simply goes by the name “history” – is about the power of certain men, and occasionally women, who garnered enough loyalty from others to coerce further others to give their loyalty, or at least obedience. Structures of loyalty and coercion form, and the most powerful such structure in a given geography is that region’s de facto government. The history of domination is the story of which governments extend their power over what areas of the earth’s surface at what times. “There is a history of domination,” is the sociocultural version of the First Noble Truth of Buddhism: dukkha. Living involves inherent sources of unsatisfactoriness and unease, including birth, aging, sickness, and death, separation from what we like, recurring encounter with what we dislike. Notice that these are ineradicable. No amount or level of enlightenment can bring an end to aging, sickness, death, losing things we like, or gaining things we don't like.

There is a history of resistance to domination. For as long as there has been domination, people have been defending and rebelling against it. Freedom from domination, however, often amounts to freedom to dominate. Leaders of resistance are usually, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to become oppressors themselves. The Magna Carta of 1215, for example, was not about the freedoms of peasants, but about barons resenting that the king’s domination interfered with their own. Thus, the history of resistance folds back into the history of domination. “There is a history of resistance to domination,” is the sociocultural version of the Second Noble Truth of Buddhism: dukkha samudaya. Samudaya means "arising." While this is often interpreted as referring to the origin or cause of dukkha, I follow David Brazier (The Feeling Buddha, 2002) and Stephen Batchelor (After Buddhism, 2017) in casting this noble truth as pointing not to the cause of dukkha, but to the effect of dukkha. Dukkha samudaya -- the arising from dukkha -- is reactivity. Confronted with aging, sickness, death, losing things we like, or gaining things we don't like, we react with a thirst or craving (tanha) to not be subject to these conditions. Dukkha triggers reactivity, and our reaction is the ground of our suffering. Dukkha is ineradicable, but we can train ourselves to be less reactive, and to suffer less. Individually, we find that resistance to dukkha often brings more suffering. Politically, we find that resistance to domination often brings further domination.

There are traditions of liberation. The track from rebel to tyrant is laid by reactivity – greed, anger, hatred, delusion. This reactivity has functional utility. Greed emerges from zeal, sometimes necessary, for securing goods against appropriation by actual or potential dominators. Anger is energy for rising up against oppression. Hatred keeps that energy directed at the actual or potential dominators to be resisted. Delusion is a narrow focus on threats or benefits to one’s safety and security – which is just the focus to have when, as in the midst of fighting a rebellion, threats are everywhere.

Reactive emotions arise to protect us, but when we don’t need that protection, they are counterproductive. Reactivity itself can be the dominator. The world’s religious, spiritual, and therapeutic traditions offer ways, some more effective than others, to address reactivity – called sin in the Abrahamic faiths -- and liberate ourselves from its tyranny.

"There are traditions of liberation" is the sociocultural version of the Third Noble Truth of Buddhism: dukkha nirodha. This is the cessation, not of dukkha, which is ineradicable, but of the suffering that comes from the reactivity that arises from dukkha. This third truth asserts that there is a path of liberation, and the fourth truth identifies that way of liberation as the "eightfold path": right understanding, right attitude, right action, right speech, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Socially and politically, the path of liberation is from domination (and the sort of reactivity which merely replaces one dominator with another) is democracy and equality of concern and respect.

As a US American, I have been formed by a history of domination and of resistance to domination. As a Unitarian Universalist, I have been particularly formed by the traditions of dissent and critique that are a part of that history: these include reactive resistance along with intimations of liberation. As a Zen practitioner for 24 years, I’ve also been shaped by that tradition of liberation. The history of dominance is told in stories of America’s European invaders and their descendants. One tradition of liberation may be expressed in stories of Tang Dynasty Chan masters: the semi-fictional characters of Song Dynasty stories.

These two narrative lines -- US History and Tang Dynasty Chan – originated on opposite sides of the planet and a millennium apart. The chapters that follow are a fantasy of what it might look like to overlay 209 brief episodes from the earlier and Eastern history over the later and Western history. The 209 episodes are koans from the three 12th- and 13th-century collections that have been central to my Zen training: the Wumenguan, (The Gateless Gate) of Wumen Huikai (1183-1260), the Biyan Lu (Blue Cliff Record) of Xuedou Chongxian (980-1052) and Yuanwu Keqin (1063-1135), and the Congrong Lu (Book of Serenity) of Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157) and Wansong Xingxiu (1166-1246). The Gateless Gate has 48 koans, the Blue Cliff Record has 100, and the Book of Serenity has 100, which adds up to 248. However, some of these are duplications, which, removed, leaves 209 distinct episodes. Superimposing my adopted tradition of liberation upon my native history of domination results in a narrative illustration of what it can mean to be a Zen American today – and a way of making accessible the original koans, which may otherwise seem impenetrably perplexing.

Each chapter begins with an epigraph of a koan from the Gateless Gate, Blue Cliff Record, or Book of Serenity. Next comes a section of actual European or American history. There is a history of domination and of resistance to domination. Then is a section of pure fiction set within that historical context. The fiction episode parallels the koan of the chapter’s epigraph. There are traditions of liberation.

In order to parallel the chronological spacing of the events in these koans, we shall be in the 6th century for the first seven chapters. Then, for chapter 8, we jump to the 12th century. Chapters 10-11 are in the 15th century, chapters 12-13 in the 16th century, chapters 14-18 in the 17th century, chapters 19-28 in the 18th century. More than half the book, chapters 29-136, are set in 19th century America. Then chapters 137-194 in the 20th century, and the remaining chapters are set in the 21st century.

The Song Dynasty stories about Tang Dynasty characters are already partly fictional. Moreover, in a deeper sense, history itself, and any self-identity I might have, is fictional: a creative meaning-making from indeterminate evidence selectively drawn from inherently incomplete availability. For this reason, all meaning is provisional. More seriously, meaning itself is delusional, a layer of separation from the fact itself of present reality. “Not knowing is most intimate,” as Luohan “Dizang” said to Fayan. Still, intimacy is not the only thing to be done with a life, holy and beautiful as the moments of intimacy are. We must also act, one way or another, and for that we require meaning, knowing it is provisional, even delusional — even as our practice returns us to the intimacy beyond meaning."

3.

“Europe sucks,” declared one of my students, a young woman of color, in class one day as we were looking at some background for modern philosophy. She had in mind, I gathered, the attitudes and atrocities collectively called colonialism. I didn’t disagree. On the other hand, I wanted to caution against implying that somehow there was something in the geography, climate, or soil between the Mediterranean and Norwegian Seas that shifted the genetics of the inhabitants to make them inherently more inclined to murder, usurpation, and perfidy in the interest of greed. I don’t remember what I said in class that day, but I’m pretty sure it did nothing to amend that student’s opinion.

Anyone in Europe or North America today is thinking and understanding with a “European brain.” Even the newly arrived are, of necessity, finding their way in a modern western society, which requires adjusting to the institutions, practices, and habits shaped by and emerging from ways of thinking developed in the last two millennia in Europe. To be sure, our European brains and western social institutions have also incorporated influences from Africa, Asia, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Still, for those of us living in the west, whatever our skin color or national origin, our habits of thought substantially originated in Europe. However harsh our criticism of US and European Union laws, structures, and mores, the criticisms themselves are continuations of strands of European thought. If we are to know ourselves, we must know this story.

From Europe’s beginnings – emerging out of the collapse of the Roman Empire – the chief project of the rulers of the diverse peoples of the region has been slaughter and pillage. In this regard, Europe was not unique. The China of, say, 500-1500 CE, displayed about the same mania for forming armies (tens of thousands, sometimes exceeding 100,000) for the purpose of spilling the blood of other armies.

Baron and troubadour Bertran de Born (1140-1215) from Limousin, France rhapsodized his delight in violence and gore:

My heart is filled with gladness when I see
Strong castles besieged, stockades broken and overwhelmed,
Many vassals struck down,
Horses of the dead and wounded roving at random.
And when battle is joined, let all men of good lineage
Think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms,
For it is better to die than be vanquished and live….
I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout
“On! On!” from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds,
And groans of “Help me! Help me!”
And when I see both great and small
Fall in ditches and on the grass
And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts!
Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities,
But never give up war!

Relish for the “glory” of battle -- zeal for harming others, independent of any prospect of benefit or cost to oneself -- has existed among the warlords of other continents, too. European colonialism has been distinctive in its global reach, its racial justifications, and its economic systems of extraction that persist into the present -- but anywhere in the rest of the world where development of grain agriculture allowed population concentrations to support large armies, the pursuit of domination produced ongoing slaughter. Yet there has also been a counter-attitude that yearned for peace and a life of shared good will with others. Amid all the violence, European or Asian, seemingly incongruously, there have been artists, poets, philosophers, and devoted religious and spiritual seekers.

The emergence of European colonialism is intertwined with the role of Christianity. The institutions of this common religion seem to have done little to stop European peoples from slaughtering each other, and they fueled interest in Crusades to also slaughter Muslims. Starting around 1500, the Church’s authority also helped in rationalizing the horrors of colonization. These two big C’s – Crusades and Colonization – made “being European,” for all its ambiguities and diversity, a meaningful shared identity.

Yet Christian teachings and practices also fostered resilient traditions of critique of both these C’s. Some Christian voices of the time denounced the Crusades as un-Christ-like. Against the practices of colonization, Catholic theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), for instance, wrote De Indis ("Of the Indians") in which he argued for the intrinsic dignity of humans and drew on Aquinas’ development of law of peoples to conclude that Indians are rightful owners of their property, and chiefs have valid jurisdiction over their tribes.

This is the backdrop against which current projects to develop understanding and love – and peace and justice – play out.

4.

A Note on Reading This Book. Each chapter can stand alone, though themes develop across chapters. You might read straight through, or dip in anywhere. The koans themselves may seem obscure or nonsensical. Let the historical sections ground you, let the fictional sections unfold, and trust that meaning will arise in its own time. Until it does: not knowing is most intimate.