“You can visit that world; you can’t live there.” — Leonard Cohen, interviewed in 1997 about his time in a Zen monastery; CBC television (7 min. 6 sec. Well worth it. You’ll see.)
… in 1994, following a tour to promote his latest album The Future, he [Cohen] sought sanctuary in the Mount Baldy Zen Buddhist monastery in the rattlesnake-infested San Gabriel mountains behind Los Angeles.
Cohen had been a regular visitor at the monastery for more than a decade, sometimes spending three months at a time there. But this time it looked as though the world had lost him for good. He shaved his head, donned black robes and devoted himself to the study of Zen Buddhism.
“I wasn’t looking for a religion,” he says. “I already had a perfectly good one [his Jewish faith]. And I certainly wasn’t looking for a new series of rituals. But I had a great sense of disorder in my life, of chaos and depression, of distress. And I had no idea where this came from. The prevailing psychoanalytic explanations of the time didn’t seem to address the things I felt. Then I bumped into someone who seemed to be at ease with himself and at ease with others …”
That someone was Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the monastery’s founder.
Source: The Independent (a British newspaper), 15 June 2008
Somewhere on the Web I was exposed to Brad Warner, an American-born Zen master who has written three books. That’s his newest book in the photo. It’s the first one I’ve read. The title: Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. (Yeah, what a title.)
I have to say, I like it. And I like Warner too. He’s irreverent, he’s punkish, but he’s not rude. Moreover, even though I’m not in any position to judge, I’d say his Dharma is strong. (A Malaysian woman said that to me once about the Sri Lankan monks at her Buddhist temple: “Their Dharma is strong.” I felt like that communicated something very specific to me. And I think it’s true of Warner.)
Retreats can be a great way to learn real patience. … A sesshin can also teach you fearlessness. There is no greater fear than your fear of facing yourself. You might think that the things that scare you most come from outside you. But they never do. When you can face down your fear of yourself, nothing anyone else does can ever scare you again (p. 146).
Warner’s blog is Hardcore Zen. I’m a couple years older than he is, and even though punk was the music of my twenties, my first years out on my own in the world, I was never hardcore, never played in a band, never had a mohawk. I did not expect to like Warner’s books. But I’ve been burning through this one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll read the earlier two, later.
There are more Buddhists in the United States than there are Muslims.
That’s according to a survey of 35,000 adult Americans, conducted in the summer of 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. This is a well-respected research group, non-partisan, and their surveys are conducted according to strict social-science collection protocols.
Of the people surveyed, 78.4 percent said they are Christian; 1.7 percent Jewish, 0.7 percent Buddhist, 0.6 percent Muslim, 0.4 percent Hindu, 16.1 percent “unaffiliated,” and 0.8 percent don’t know or refused to answer. I don’t mean to make a big deal over the number of Muslims, but just to point out that while our Muslim neighbors have been more in the public eye in recent years, and Buddhists seem so few here, our numbers are in fact quite similar.
Buddhism in the U.S. is primarily made up of native-born adherents, whites and converts. Only one-in-three American Buddhists describe their race as Asian, while nearly three-in-four Buddhists say they are converts to Buddhism.
In his Inauguration speech, our new President said: “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.” I thought that was wonderful. It’s the first time Muslims have ever been mentioned in an Inauguration speech, and I’m really happy they were mentioned as “us” and not “them.”
I also don’t mind at all that Obama referred to Hindus (0.4 percent) and not Buddhists (0.7 percent). No need to quibble. No need to be greedy.
