OK. My sister and her kids are due here any minute. So this will very likely be my last post for a while.So far, so good on the first 20 hrs. or so of having the comments section back. I was intrigued by one of the first ones to appear. An anonymous commenter said:
Brad, good to see you Back.
Still seems like you carry a lot of grudges and revenge about a lot of stuff for someone who is supposed to have been practicing Zen.
I guess you don't seem like someone to respect or look up to. Isn't that kind of the least you would want in any kind of Buddhist teacher?
It's an interesting question. I'm not sure if I "carry a lot of grudges and revenge." I honestly don't think I have any at all. If I seem to it's probably because I'm still poor at communicating what I really think and feel.
But that's not the point I'm interested in. It's the idea that I don't seem like someone to respect or look up to, and of this being what one would want from a Buddhist teacher.
I don't think so.
I mean, I suppose I do respect Tim and Nishijima Roshi. But I can't say I ever looked up to them. At least not in the usual sense. I didn't consider them as role models. Not exactly.
I could see that they had found a way to negotiate this life for themselves that was uniquely their own. They had a rare sort of balance that was often demonstrated in ways that surprised me. I remember seeing Nishijima Roshi get boiling mad at someone who lived in his dojo, and yet he did it in a completely balanced way.
But remember I knew these men personally. I sat with them. I ate lunch with them. I watched bad TV shows with them (well, at least with Tim). They were not known to me as a series of sentences typed on a computer screen or videos on YouTube.
You don't get me in my role as a Buddhist teacher here on this blog or in my books. You get me writing about that role. And that's a whole different thing.
Be that as it may, this question seems to relate to the old saw: "How can I recognize a real teacher?" I've been trying to find a way to answer this one forever. I'm not even trying to claim I am the embodiment of a "real teacher." I can't recognize myself as that. I have no idea if I am or not. I never will. Because it's impossible for anyone to make that judgment about themselves.
But I can say with absolute certainty that my teachers were the real deal. And I seem to have recognized that. But how? It was a feeling more than any line of intellectual reasoning that could be explained. I'll keep working on this and maybe I'll be able to say one of these days.
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I had a funny dream last night. In it, it seemed that my unconscious mind was trying to explain to my conscious mind how it saw Zen practice. Weird, huh? Anyway, the one thing I recall my unconscious mind saying was, "Sometimes the brain just has to dry out a little." Meaning, I guess, that thoughts were like a contamination in the brain and that doing zazen allowed them to sort of "dry up" and cease to be a problem.
Gotta go now!
