ERRATA

Q.E.D.

2008-06-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

If comments received on the previous post are representative of who is reading my blog, I would like to give up. In so doing, I shall state my conclusion, as follows:

When a person who has unreliable sensory appreciation (centred on vestibular dysfunction) goes directly for an end in view, this grasping or "endgaining" attitude brings into play that person's habitual manner of misusing himself, so that unintended and undesirable consequences are bound to result as a side-effect of the person's end-gaining, and the person in question will invariably find, sooner or later, that he has fallen out of the groove (if he ever was in it in the first place).

Quad Erat Demonstrandum

Endgaining, Bad Karma, Non-Compassion, & Ox-Thumping

2008-06-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

One afternoon/evening in late 1983 or early 1984, on the way back from a visit to Gudo Nishijima's house in the Tokyo suburb of Shin-tokorozawa, a vow formed in my mind. When I got back home to my flat in central Tokyo, I wrote the vow down, setting it, as it were, in stone. In fact I did not write the vow in stone. I scrawled it in pencil on a piece of card cut out from a cereal packet. But the vow was no cheaper for that. It was that I would devote myself totally to helping Gudo accomplish an authentic translation of Shobogenzo into English, come what may. It was another 15 years until the task was accomplished to Gudo's satisfaction -- although not to my satisfaction. As far as I was concerned, my dream that the Zen Patriarch and I would cross the finishing line together, in a blaze of glory, was never realized. Instead, Gudo seemed to make a last-minute dash for the line by himself.

In working towards the realization of my vow, I relentlessly exhibited what Alexander called the endgaining principle -- I am going to do this, even if it kills me, and woe betide anybody who gets in my way.

Despite the fact that I used to translate Virgil from Latin into English for fun when I was 15 years old, it took me too long to work out any kind of reasonable means-whereby for accomplishing anything approaching a literal translation of Shobogenzo from Japanese to English.

Still, the Nishijima-Cross translation, albeit not in a way that brought me personal happiness, but rather in a way that left me completely exasperated, was finally accomplished in 1999, and now it is out there in the world.

The next item on my, shall I say, "agenda," has been to clarify what I see as the teaching of Shobogenzo that Japanese Zen Masters, in their stupidity, in their feudalistic Japanese ways, in their tendency to revere form above content, shadow over substance, have almost completely lost.

I am talking about mental sitting, as opposed to physical sitting. Thumping the ox, as opposed to thumping the cart.

Again, in working towards the accomplishment of this goal, my tendency is to end-gain.

A few nights ago I woke in the early hours from a very disturbing dream -- a kind of vision of extreme suffering, a vision of hell. It reminded me of the stories Master Dogen quoted about Karma in the Three Times. I think the meaning of those kind of visions is to remind us not, albeit in pursuing aims that we believe to be worthy, to pursue our aims in an end-gaining way. In an end-gaining way means in a way that produces all kinds of harmful karmic side effects.

So I am sorry that my attempts to drop off my end-gaining tendency, which seems to jump off people's computer screens and cause them to complain about my lack of compassion, continue to be so weedy and pathetic.

Giving up end-gaining requires us to give up our desire to gain the end in view. Not just intellectually, but really give it up, completely. Forget all about gaining the end. This is what Marjory taught me. That is the key to allowing undoing to happen. What confounds the endgainer in all his efforts is his desire to feel right in the gaining of his end. And the only way out of that prison of habit is to give up the desire to gain the end. So completely give up the desire to gain the end. And then go right ahead and gain it!

So now in my sadly non-compassionate way, I am going to charge ahead and try to clarify something for you:

One of the most important teachings in Shobogenzo, and one that I think has almost completely got lost, is that of mental sitting.

Mental sitting is not mental pyscho-analysis, not mental psycho-therapy, not any of the mental psycho-babble that deluded people today think is so valuable and, in their great humility and compassion, wish to impose on others. Mental sitting is sitting, not on the basis of feeling, but on the basis of thinking -- thinking into the no thinking zone.

Mental sitting, as opposed to physical sitting.

Thumping the ox, as opposed to thumping the cart.

When first I read about mental sitting in Shobogenzo, and about thinking in Fukan-zazen-gi, I sensed there was meaning in what Master Dogen was writing that I did not understand and that Gudo was not able to explain to my satisfaction. So that posed a problem. In endeavoring to solve that problem, I exhibited a strong end-gaining tendency. Having solved the problem to my own satisfaction and then wanting to clarify the problem for others, again I have repeatedlyl fallen foul of the end-gaining tendency.

If I follow what Marjory taught me, the only way for me to be liberated from my end-gaining tendency is to completely give up my compassionate desire to gain the end of clarifying for you the teaching that we should practise mental sitting, as opposed to physical sitting. That we should thump the ox, as opposed to thumping the cart.

It is only when we really and truly inhibit the desire to gain our end that we become free to gain it. This is what Marjory taught me.

Now then, you who for some reason is drawn to my blog. What are you here for? What end do you wish to gain?

Taking It Personally -- ERRATA

2008-06-02T00:57:00.001-07:00

Gudo's thesis is that the essence of his true Buddhism is to do something -- to keep the spine straight vertically in order to balance the autonomic nervous system.

I have been endeavoring to clarify the anti-thesis that the liberation Gautama Buddha experienced under the bodhi tree was an undoing, and you cannot do an undoing. You cannot do an undoing. But you can point yourself in that direction, by thinking -- by thinking into that no thinking zone.

Philosophically speaking, Gudo has presented his thesis against which I have posited my anti-thesis. Simply that.

But the antagonism between Gudo and me has got many more dimensions to it than the philosophical.

That I chose to dwell on them when I originally wrote this post was not only a waste of valuable time: it was also symptomatic of a very wrong tendency within me.

That I followed this wrong tendency was not in accordance with the teaching of Gautama Buddha (viz. Not to Do Harmful Things) or the teaching of Master Dogen (viz. The Ten Directions, viz. Deep Belief in Cause and Effect; The Beggar in the Fourth Dhyana; Karma in the Three Times et cetera).

It was my mistake. I apologize for the error.

.... Will First Cross Over You, True Buddhists

2008-05-29T00:19:00.001-07:00

What is a true Buddhist? A true Buddhist might be one of those many thousands or millions of people in the world today who is searching for (or in some cases think they have found) the true meaning of Buddhism.

What then, really, is Buddhism? Buddhism is a concept which is most truly understood by non-buddha.

In total enjoyment of Sitting, non-buddha is not tainted by any kind of -ism. Non-buddha is especially not tainted by Buddhism.

Non-buddha eats and drinks the tea and toast of non-buddha, and shits the shit of non-buddha, but non-buddha does not look for any meaning in Buddhism -- because non-buddha knows that Buddhism is an utterly meaningless and bankrupt concept.

In the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo you will find many uses of the words Buddhist and Buddhism. But you won't find any in my new translations -- unless one is carelessly included by mistake.

There is no word or compound in the whole of Shobogenzo that deserves to be mistranslated as Buddhist or Buddhism.

When BUTSU appears before a noun, as in BUTSU-E, there is no need to talk of the Buddhist robe. The kesa is the Buddha-robe, the robe of Gautama Buddha and all the buddhas.

BUKKYO, similarly, is the teaching of the Buddha, the teaching of all the buddhas, not a view, not an opinion, not anybody's Buddhism.

BUPPO, again, is the Buddha-Dharma, the Buddha's Truth of Sitting, the Method of Sitting of Gautama Buddha and all the buddhas. By calling it true Buddhism, real Buddhism, or any other kind of -ism, we slander it.

Twenty years ago when I translated BUPPO as "real Buddhism," I thought I was doing a favour to Gautama Buddha and all the Zen Patriarchs of India, China, and Japan. In fact I was just, in my youthful arrogance, trying to identify myself with the strongly-held opinions, and four-phased philosophical dogma, of Gudo Nishijima, who succeeded in convincing me, having succeeded in convincing himself, that he was the true world champion of real Buddhism.

But now I see that a person who considers himself to be a true Buddhist is just suffering from a delusion. The idea that Buddha and -ism might be compatible with each other, is completely misplaced. Any sentence prefaced by the words "We, true Buddhists...." can never be anything but a pack of lies, a heap of shit, pure falsehood.

So if any flock or herd of true Buddhists is reading this, I would like to vow to you, in all sincerity, as follows:

I, Mr Wrong, hereby vow that I will cross over you, True Buddhists, to the far shore of non-buddha, before I cross over myself.

I, Mr. Wrong,...

2008-05-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

I, Mr Wrong, wish to be clear in my intention to clarify wrong views of what Zen Master Dogen meant by full lotus sitting.

The negation of idealism, is not it.

The negation of materialism, is not it.

Philosophies of action, are not it.

Keeping the spine straight vertically as a means to bring the autonomic nervous system back to balance, is not it.

Soto Zen practice of shikan-taza, is not it.

What Master Dogen meant by full lotus sitting might be not anybody's view but just full lotus sitting itself -- physical sitting, mindful sitting, and just sitting.

A teacher who writes on his blog, "We, true Buddhists...." have such and such an understanding in regard to mindfulness, whereas they who have that understanding of mindfulness are non-Buddhists: such a teacher is not my teacher. I totally renounce the viewpoint of such a teacher. My sitting practise is utterly different from, nay, opposed to, his sitting practice.

Gudo's thesis is the thesis of "We, true Buddhists, have such and such an understanding of True Buddhism."

Without my going wrong in my endeavor to subscribe authentically to the thesis of True Zen Patriarch Gudo, there would be no chance of me, as Mr Wrong, being clear in regard to the proper anti-thesis to Gudo's thesis.

So I bow to Gudo, and thank him for putting his head above the parapet. I thank him for his heroic and courageous putting forward of his static true Buddhist thesis. And I say to Gudo: Go to hell, you old bastard, who fell so hopelessly in love with his own view, thinking it to be true Buddhism.

This is my attempt at a less fixed, less rigid, more dynamic anti-thesis.

But nobody comes from a more fixed, more rigid, more frozen-in-fear-ful place than me, with all the compensatory mechanisms I have constructed over the course of a lifetime to try to appear all right on the surface in spite of deep vestibular dysfunction within.

The insincere cloth-eared Paddy whom I slag off, the one who would like to bask in the warm glow of having asked the True Zen Patriarch a good question, is nobody but Mr Wrong himself.

FM Alexander said, "To know when we are wrong is all that we shall ever know in this world."

What FM said is true, at least for me it seems to work. For me, as one individual in my own chunk of spacetime, FM's approach seems to have opened up a kind of mission in life: to clarify, as Mr Wrong, what this wrongness is -- at least until such time as some more dynamic individual is able to see through my anti-thesis, truly expose me as the insincere fraud I am, and send me to join Gudo in that dustbin in hell that is reserved for the ashes of Zen teachers whose view turned out to be false.

Harry's Question On Mindfulness

2008-05-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Mike,

In the West, from various Buddhist sources, we hear a lot about "mindfulness". It is widely considered a Buddhist practice to strive to attend to our daily tasks with an unbroken attention, which may be similar to the 'one-pointedness' developed in certain types of meditation.

What is your view on this type of practice?

Thank-you & Regards,

Harry.

I have been busting a gut to answer this question on my blogs for how many years already? Have you listened to a single word, you useless, conceited, cloth-eared paddy?

Venerable Hanrei? Do me a favour!

Dropping off all viewpoints
Was the sitting-zen he sat
Teaching conscious means-whereby:
I bow to him King Guat.

In other words, Harry, you can stuff your stupid question, asking for my view on mindfulness meditation, where the sun does not shine.

My intention is to point you, deaf and blind though you seem to be, in the direction of SITTING.

Master Dogen asked us to understand that there is MENTAL SITTING, as opposed to PHYSICAL SITTING. And there is PHYSICAL SITTING, as opposed to MENTAL SITTING.

Beyond physical and mental sitting, there is SITTING itself, which is totally and utterly opposed to the Soto Zen practice of "shikan-taza."

I have been busting a gut to clarify for you already this central pivot of Master Dogen's teaching. But you seem less interested in the truth that I have been telling, than in showing how clever you are with your presumptuous comments here and arse-licking tangential questions there.

Performing Buddha

2008-05-26T01:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I briefly fell asleep on the sofa while watching a documentary about Russia, and so my late-night sitting-zen was fresher than usual. It occurred to me that I would like to translate GYOBUTSU not as "acting buddha" but as "grooving buddha" or "buddha in the groove." The original Chinese character GYO looks like railway lines; it has connotations, to me at least, of carrying on, easily, going with the flow, in a groove. And instead of "dignified behaviour" I thought I would like to translate YUIGI as "integrity."

I would like to get away from the manufactured dignity of professional Zen actors and performers. You know what I mean -- so-called Dharma-heirs who are lay men and yet call each other "Venerable So and So," and like to sign off with "Gassho" or protestations of their desire for universal peace and compassion. "Get away" is probably not strong enough. I would like to kick that kind of dignity in the bollocks.

But the danger with this line of thought is that it can all too easily turn into performing as non-buddha. But that is not it, either.

Is it that, in the middle way between the thesis of performing as buddha and the anti-thesis of acting as non-buddha, there is a synthesis -- a middle way of buddha grooving in the flow? No, that is not it, either.

In the background to the above musings was a conversation I had over the weekend with a Zen practitioner who is also a pianist, a musical performer. He asked me in a follow-up email if I thought there was more virtue in the lotus posture than in performing. My reply was this:

There is no virtue in the full lotus posture. Manifesting the full lotus posture is always the doing of a little performance -- a la Yoga, a la virtuoso concert pianist, a la virtuoso Alexander maestro.

The jewel in the lotus is sitting itself.

What I mean by sitting is just the right thing doing itself, and nothing but the right thing doing itself -- sitting that is in no way tainted by my fearful old self desiring to win the approval of others, by doing its little performance.

It is, as Nelly Ben-Or truly says, usually hidden from me.

With these thoughts still circulating in my body-mind, some time in the early hours of this morning I phoned Gudo Nishijima at his office in Ichigaya, as I usually would to clarify any point in Shobogenzo that I wanted to clarify. Invariably I would hear him singing out in his usual formulaic way, "Hello? Oh, please come!" But this time what I heard was a long pause, in which I realized Gudo was choking in his effort to fight back tears. Eventually he told me "Better .... carry on ... by ... yourself." There was another long pause in which I was aware of the possibility of saying some healy-feely words. But I didn't go down that path. I simply said, "OK" and put the phone down.

So all this is the background to what translated itself for me this morning -- under the title of "The Integrity of Buddha In the Groove."

"Dignity" or "Dignified Behaviour" would be closer to the literal meaning of YUIGI. But I like integrity. So integrity it is.

Quick Realization of a Buddha's Body

2008-05-22T08:16:00.000-07:00

In Shobogenzo Hotsu-Bodai-Shin, Kick-Starting the Bodhi-Mind, Master Dogen quotes four lines from the Lotus Sutra:

Constant spontaneous production of this thought:
"How to make living beings
Able to enter the supreme truth/Way/awakening,
And quickly realize a buddha's body."

What is a buddha's body like?

What is the body like of Sitting buddha?

What is the body like of buddha Sitting?

Is the neck stiff?
Is the chin being pulled backward and downward into the neck?
Is the spine held rigidly upright, necessitating abdominal breathing?
Are the shoulders and hips tight, as if pulling the limbs into the body?

OR:

Is the neck free?
Is the head being released up out of the body, like a ping pong ball on a fountain?
Is the back releasing upwards and outwards, in a lengthening and widening direction, so that the ribs move out and in easily and the breathing does itsef without any bother?
Are the limbs being released out of the body?

A few weeks ago I wrote on this blog a verse praising my own bodhi-mind. Afterwards I wondered if it was appropriate or not to praise one's own bodhi-mind. Probably it was another mistake.

Probably it arose out of an immature emotional reaction to being denigrated, to being accused of trying to identify so-called "Buddhism," and so-called "AT theory."

That immature emotional reaction, and this immature emotional reaction that I am expressing now, are probably not the bodhi-mind working.

But my journey from translating the Lotus Sutra in Japan, to Alexander work here in England, broadly speaking, has just been the working of the bodhi-mind. How else would I have arrived at the above questions?

Non-Establishment of the Bodhi-Mind

2008-05-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

The Nishijima-Cross translation says, "Even if their form is humble, those who establish this mind are already the guiding teachers of all living beings."

But "establish" is completely the wrong word. It has connotations of stability, fixity. Nishijima selected that word, "establish," and Cross failed to boot the word into touch, into Row Z, where it belongs.

Brad Warner has written that the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo is the best that there will ever be. On what basis does Brad make a comment like that, other than knowing that it might be music to the ears of Gudo Nishijima? That bit of Bradley Warner bullshit might be symptomatic of the same lack of clarity, the same rigidity of body and mind, that led Nishijima to select the word "establish" and that led Cross not to boot the word "establish" into Row Z.

"The Establishment of the Bodhi-Mind" might be the worst translation of HOTSU-BODAISHIN that there will ever be.

The original word, OKOSU in Japanese, would better have been translated as "rouse" -- a word that seems to be favoured by translators of ancient Pali texts, like the one recently quoted in Peter Clothier's blog.

But I would like to go further still in the direction of non-Buddhist dynamism and directness.

I would like to suggest the image of a grubby old biker who kick-starts a machine so that, grimy though the old biker may be, and old and rusty though the bike may be, by kick-starting the bike into action, the grubby old biker may lead a pack of millions to their true destination ....

"Crude in appearance though he may be, because he kick-starts this mind into action, he is the guiding teacher of all living beings."

When the old biker climbs back on his bike and kick-starts his old machine, what is established?

Nothing is established. Sweet FA is established. But something, for a while, is kick-started into action.

Reaching Up, Not Clouding Over the Sun & Moon

2008-05-17T02:25:00.000-07:00

FM Alexander wrote an enigmatic footnote in his second book, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, and then referred back to again it is his fourth and last book. He wrote: "I wish it to be understood that throughout this book I use the term conscious guidance and control to indicate, primarily, A PLANE TO BE REACHED rather than a method of reaching it."

Again, Alfred Tomatis said that (1) the ear is primarily the organ of balance (and therefore the ultimate arbiter of the middle way, which is an obvious fact but one generally not recognized by Soto Zen professionals, Buddhist theologians, Vipassana pyschologists and the like); and that (2) the ear is also a passive receptor of sound; but that (3) it is also possible for us to REACH THE LEVEL OF LISTENING.

The central principle in the work of both Alexander and Tomatis, as I understand it, is that the right thing does itself. The right thing does itself, as long as we can stop ourselves from doing the wrong thing -- namely, straining on the basis of deeply-held misconceptions, straining to have good posture, straining to listen, straining to hit the right note, concentrating. But this stopping of the wrong, when you go into it, is not so easy. There's the rub.

Still, this cause for optimism remains: A person well trained in the use of the whole self, or well trained in the use of the voice, or well trained in the use of the listening ear (the three ultimately amounting, once the use-voice-ear connection is openly and clearly understood, to the same thing), can reach the level of the right thing doing itself -- which might be called Listening, or Singing, or Chanting. There again, it might be called Sitting.

At the level of the right thing doing itself, the sense is one of effortlessness, ease, spontaneity, play.

What is this samadhi of effortless play?

To summarize what I wrote a few days ago, effort to be polite, or effort to be natural, or effort to regulate oneself, is not it. And so, my instinctive response to a two-faced Zen charlatan like James Cohen who tries to impose his standards of politeness on others, would tend to be an extremely rude one.

But that kind of effort is not it either.

There is bodily effort, based on feeling, to practise full lotus sitting.

There is mental effort, based on thinking, to practise full lotus sitting.

But even those kinds of effort are not it, either.

The most important point in Shobogenzo is simply affirmation of the fact that there is, going on up beyond physical and mental effort, full lotus Sitting.

The importance of clarifying that message is such that, much as I would like to devote this blog to slagging off James Cohen and the like, using abundant fruity language,.... I had better not.

Playing Keep-Up With the Sun & Moon

2008-05-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

A monk asks Zen Master Chimon Koso, "What is the matter of buddha going on up?" The Master says, "The head of the staff is playing keep-up with the sun and moon."

This translation, which just popped into my head willy-nilly this morning, judged by the standard I have striven to uphold for most of my adult life , is totally unacceptable. "Playing keep-up with the sun and moon" in no way respects the literal meaning of the original Chinese character. It is just something I have come up with this morning, off the top of my head.

The original meanings of the verb in question, given in the Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary, include "contend for" and "make love to." ("The knob of the staff is fucking with the sun and moon"? Maybe a step too far.)

The Nishijima-Cross trying-to-be-as-literal/authentic-as-possible translation goes with "hoist up." But I like the idea that the old master thought that the head of his staff was playing keep-up with the sun and moon. So I am going with that.

How dare I take liberties like that with the translation of Zen Master Dogen's masterwork, Shobogenzo?

Only by not really giving a shit.

If you really, really give a shit, then get a source text, get a dictionary, and do your own authentic Buddhist translation. The translation I am doing now is a non-Buddhist translation, work that I am doing for the hell of it, and for the fun of it -- based not on trying to make the autonomic nervous system balanced by trying to keep the spine straight vertically, but based instead on the AT theory that trying to be right is not a path that goes on up to anywhere.

Kicking Shobogenzo Up the Arse and Making It Come Alive

2008-05-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Friday, was an Alexander training school day and my younger son's 15th birthday, so I didn't do any translation work. This morning when I read what I had written on Thursday afternoon, I realized there was something wrong with it. It was somehow too convoluted -- somehow falling back into the old tendency of trying to be right, trying too hard to be literal. When I read it out loud, it didn't flow easily. So, while reading it out loud, I edited it with a view to making it more enjoyable for me to read out loud. I changed it so that I would have more of a chance, when reading it out loud, to make it sound as if I really meant it -- to make it sound as if I wasn't reading some old text out loud, but was rather, with eye, ear, and two resonating voices, just letting the actual truth be heard.

I realize that this is going to be one of the guiding principles of this new translation -- to be prepared to sacrifice the conscientiously literal in favour of the English wording that may help the listening/speaking/going-on-up process come alive.

Whether I succeeded or failed this morning, I will leave you to judge:

Ungo Doyo visits Tozan, who asks him: "What's your name, governor?" Ungo says, "Doyo." Tozan asks further, "Go on up and say again!" Ungo says, "If I were to reach up and say, it would not be named Doyo." Tozan says, "When I was in Ungan's order, our exchange was no different."

These words of master and disciple must be examined closely. Doyo says: "If I were to reach up and say, it would not be named Doyo." This means that Doyo is going on up. We should learn in practice that in Doyo just as he has come, there is something, not named Doyo, that is going on up. Doyo, having realized the truth that going on up is beyond being named Doyo, really is Doyo. But never say that there might be Doyo in his going on up. On hearing Tozan's words "Gon on up and say again!", if he were then to blurt out his enlightenment by exclaiming, "Reaching up, I would still be named Doyo!" just that would be his expression of going on up. Why do I say so? Because Doyo instantly springs into his brain in order to contain his body. And while thus concealing his body, he makes a show of himself.

In recent years I have realized that I have spent my life compensating in various ways for deep underlying dysfunction in my ear, and in all the innermost parts of the brain connected to the ear.

This kind of dysfunction is the primary root cause, in many cases, of difficulty not only with balance and listening but also with reading and spelling - in many cases, but not in mine. A peculiar thing is that, dysfunctional ears notwithstanding, I was precocious at reading and spelling as a young child.

Later on today, the mother a seven year old girl who is having problems with spelling is going to bring her daughter to meet me, to see if I can help her with her reading and spelling. This little girl, her mum tells me, is physically well co-ordinated, loves dancing, and is at home on the sports field, but reading does not come naturally to her. It has generally been more difficult for me to understand what is going on in the brain and body of a girl like this, because I, as a boy, never had any problems at all with reading and spelling.

So this morning the question I am thinking about is: why not -- why didn't I have problems reading and spelling, notwithstanding congenital ear dysfunction? I think the simple answer is that, from a very early age, my mother got me into reading aloud from picture books.

If you wish to understand why this activity is such a good one for co-ordinating the eyes, ear, voice, breathing, mind, et cetera, I strongly recommend Paul Madaule's book When Listening Comes Alive. I bought this book about seven or eight years ago, after meeting Paul through the good auspices of Peter Blythe of INPP Chester. I thought the book was so brilliant that I immediately lent it to a client who really needed to understand what the book said... but then I never got the book back. Having bought a copy already, I was reluctant to buy another one. That was a big mistake. I did finally get round to buying another copy a couple of years ago, but it is only in the past few weeks that I have got round to reading it closely. And, without putting too fine a point on it, the book is brilliant. Everybody who has ears and eyes and a voice should read it -- preferably out loud.

One of the recommendations Paul Madaule makes is that parents should talk to their children in the parent's own native tongue. The truth of this recommendation strikes me greatly. A Japanese person with a Japanese ear, when they read Shobogenzo aloud in English, will never do it justice. An English person with an English ear, when they read Shobogenzo aloud in Japanese, will never do it justice. If you have a French ear, you should look forward to the day when you can read Shobogenzo aloud in French. If you have a Spanish ear, you should look forward to the day when you can read Shobogenzo aloud in Spanish. If you have a Greek ear, you should look forward to the day when you can read Shobogenzo aloud in Greek. If you have a Martian ear, you should look forward to the day when you can read Shobogenzo aloud in Martian.

I have been secretly looking forward, for more than 25 years, to the day when I might be able to read Shobogenzo aloud in my own mother tongue, which is English. Some day soon, inshallah, I may do that. I may make an audio recording of these new chapters I have begun translating. I think I might enjoy that.

The years I spent in Tokyo, in many ways, were not good for my ears, not good for my voice, and not good for my soul. The occasional 3-day or 4-day breaks I had in Tokei-in temple in Shizuoka, in contrast, which were filled with the sounds of nature and filled with the sounds of slow chanting, were very good for my ears and very good for my soul.

Gudo Nishijima had a superb ear for Shobogenzo in Japanese and a superb voice for reading it aloud in Japanese. It was a great pity that, being so full of himself, it never occurred to the little control freak to entrust the English reading to his so-called "four Ejos" -- Jeff Bailey, Michael Luetchford, Larry Zacchi and me.

Unable to perceive the difference between glass and grass, or courteous and cautious, Gudo could not clearly make that distinction in his own speaking. In the same way, unable to perceive the difference between a control-freak's uptightness and spontaneous uprightness, Gudo could not clearly make that distinction in his own teaching. Gudo could not clarify the distinction between trying to uphold a right state, and spontaneously going on up.

But clarification of that distinction, with eyes, ears, voice, breath, skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, might be nothing but the lifeblood itself.

Not The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond

2008-05-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning not feeling happy about "ascending beyond" as a translation of KOJO. I tried "reaching up" instead. I wanted to reflect this sense that there is in what Masters Tozan and Dogen are describing, as in the work of FM Alexnder and Alfred Tomatis, a condition of being, of sitting or of listening, which is spontaneous, automatic, effortless -- a plane to be reached.

So I went through the chapter changing "ascending beyond" to "reaching up"... and then I went through changing everything back again.

But then this afternoon, fortified by a midday nap (following the inspirational example of Master Koboku Hojo), I realized without doubt that "ascending beyond" didn't fit in Tozan's pithy exchange with Ungo Doyo. I asked for something more colloquial, and what came out was "going on up."

Yes: The Matter of Buddha Going On Up.

That is the translation that hits the target. It fits.

Some will say that it is a translation "based on AT theory." But to tell the truth, it is a translation arising out of 25 years of me straining ineffectually just to hear the voice of the Buddha.

Falling Into the Celestial Translator's Trap

2008-05-08T05:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after seeming to sail effortlessly through the translation of a large paragraph of The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond, I celebrated by adding a stupid comment which I later deleted, but shall own up to in this blog, where confession of my own stupidity more properly belongs.

FM Alexander wrote that what he meant by "conscious control" was primarily a plane to be reached. In the same way that unenlightened practitioners of Soto Zen are prone to think that Master Dogen's teaching is all about the process of sitting, as opposed to the goal of enlightenment, people tend to think that Alexander work is all about attending to the means, and not being interested in the end. But that is not the whole truth. FM was also interested in the end, which he called "conscious control," as primarily a plane to be reached.

Adam Nott, a very experienced Alexander teacher trained by Marjory Barlow, and a sly man in the tradition of G. Gurdjieff, once told me that he saw the Alexander process of inhibiting and directing as like a ladder leading up onto the plane of conscious control, and that we generally have a sense of when we are operating on that plane. But unfortunately, Adam continued, when we fall down off that plane we tend not to have any sensory register of having fallen down. We are prone to believe that we are still up there, happily ascending beyond, when in fact we are not.

As a piece of concrete evidence of what Adam was talking about -- having fallen off already without realizing it -- I shall copy and paste here my own stupid comment of yesterday:

People say that the Treasury of the Eye of True Sitting is baffling and impenetrable. Let me tell you something. To me, this morning, the meaning is just too obvious for words, and the translation of one large paragraph does itself in a matter of minutes without any bother at all. Probably that is because, thanks to the help of FM Alexander, Alfred Tomatis, and one or two of their descendants, I seem to have actually gouged out for myself the Eye of True Sitting.

FM Alexander said: "The right thing does itself."

Alfred Tomatis said: "The ear is the organ of balance, and also a passive receptor of sound. But you can also reach the level of listening."

Listening. Speaking. Sitting. Too simple. Very rare.

Yes, indeed. Too simple for the likes of me!

The Elgin Marbles

2008-05-07T04:42:00.001-07:00

One thing I am not proud of is not having kicked up more of a fuss, hitherto, about the Elgin Marbles. It is the kind of issue that it is easy to leave to others. But if all fair-minded people take that stance, then the day is won by people of extreme views and sophisticated arguments.

A few years ago my local MP phoned me and asked if there was any pressing issue I would like to discuss. I said: "Yes, we should give the Elgin Marbles back to Greece." He said that was a first for him, to have a constituent raise that issue.

I haven't got a lot of complicated arguments to present about the Elgin Marbles. Leave complicated arguments to the brainy types at the British Museum, and to defenders of the British Empire/Establishment. Britain stole the Elgin Marbles from Greece. Britain should be in a hurry to give them back.

If there is any British tendency to be proud of, it might be fair play. So, if there are British people reading this blog who might be open enough (to the point of gullibility?) to be interested in the views and opinions of a person like me, one view I would definitely like to express is that we should give the Elgin Marbles back to Greece!

Treasury of the Eye of True Sitting -- new blog

2008-05-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Without further ado, I have set up a new blog on which to publish new translations of Shobogenzo, which I am starting to translate as "The Treasury of the Eye of True Sitting." That is not a literal translation. It a translation that reflects the understanding of nobody but me. Or, if I state my belief straight out, it reflects the understanding of just Master Dogen and me -- non-buddha alone, together with non-buddha.

The first chapter I have posted is, naturally, The Samadhi That is King of Samadhis.

The second chapter that I could not wait to post up is The Buddha-Ancestors. I could not wait to post this chapter up, because I could not wait to get away from the sickening stench of Patriarchal Buddhism, of which, over the past 25 years, I have had more than a gutfull. "Buddhist" and "Patriarch" are two words, I vow, that will never taint any of my translation work from now on.

Message from Nishijima Roshi

2008-05-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Michael,

I hope this finds you well.

Recently, it has come to Nishijima Roshi's attention that you are making statements such as the following on your blog and elsewhere:

While waiting/not waiting for Gudo to make up his mind whether or not I am doing this work in his name, I am going to proceed at random to translate Chapter 28 of Master Dogen's True Dharma-Eye Treasury, titled "The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond."

Nishijima Roshi, who is cc'd on this mail, would like me to make it clear to you that he does not wish to be associated with your new translation in any manner. He wishes you to remove his name in all ways from any connection with the project, and he requests you to make it clear that you are not doing any part of this work in his name. Finally, it is not in any way to be treated as an approved revision or later edition of the "Nishijima-Cross" translations of Master Dogen's Shobogenzo. Yes, like it or not, I am writing as his lawyer.

That being said, nobody as any ill will toward you, we hope that your project of translation of Shobogenzo, and all other work you are involved with, go well. However, Nishijima Roshi does not want to be associated with this translation or your ideas on Alexander Technique.

Thank you for understanding. If you wish, you may publish this email (if in its entirety) on your blog.

Gassho, Jundo James Cohen

My reply:

Dear Jundo, Sensei,

Thank you for letting me know the decision.

Whether or not I have the real understanding, the ability, the strength of will, or the emotional detachment/disloyalty to "erase the efforts" of Sensei, I do not know. But it may be my inevitable duty to endeavor do what Sensei feared I might do.

If, in that case, I succeed, it will never be the erasing of Sensei's efforts. It will be the fruition of his efforts -- whether he is able to recognize it or not.

If, on the other hand, I fail, the Nishijima-Cross translation will remain as the standard, which will also be the fruition of Sensei's efforts.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Cross

A Non-Fairy Story: Parable of the Non-Cyclist

2008-05-05T02:46:00.000-07:00

This morning I received the following question on sitting-zen, and I have attempted to answer it in the form of a parable, a kind of non-fairy story. I hope it makes some sense!

A question on sitting-zen!
What is happening during sitting after we think "ears and shoulders apart, nose and navel apart"? Do we observe the result? Do we abandon ourselves to the effect of mental sitting until the effect of the thinking exhausts itself? You told me that this time is fushiryo, beyond thinking! Does it mean the period after thinking of the vital directions in sitting-zen? Is it like riding a bicycle where after a few strokes in the pedals the bike goes by itself until at some point we have to give a few more strokes to in order to keep going? I hope the question makes some sense!

The Parable of the Non-Cyclist

A skinny, skeptical youth, hungover from the previous night's boozing, found himself in a library in a northern English town, searching in vain for meaning, inside a cycling book, when all of a sudden the woman of his dreams, a beautiful young princess ... SNEEZED!!! .... momentously, and the library building shook. His whole being woken up by the princess's sneeze, the skinny non-fairy understood that the real and true meaning he sought was not to be found in the library. And so the dream hero of our story, the non-fairy, travelled east, in search of the true Tao of Cycling.

After negotiating a few dragons and moats, he eventually meets a certified Patriarch of the Tao of Cycling, and his cycling journey begins in earnest. The certified Cycling Patriarch introduces the non-fairy to an ancient text titled "The Eye-Treasury of True Cycling," which in many places is very difficult to fathom. The difficulty of understanding this text, however, is balanced by the simplicity of the practice that the Cycling Patriarch recommends, which is to practise every day, for as long and hard as possible, four sessions every day, just pedalling an exercise bike. From time to time, the Cycling Patriarch leads our hero to a large gym, where dozens of cycling devotees enjoy riding their exercise bikes together.

Our innocent non-fairy throws himself into pedalling practice with great enthusiasm, and realizes that what the Pedalling Patriarch says is true: this kind of exercise is very good for a human being's health. Pedalling like this on an exercise bike brings the practitioner into the middle way, a state which is neither too lazy nor too emotionally heated -- a state in which the autonomic nervous system is balanced. The young dream-hero decides to try to forget about the beautiful sneezing princess and devote himself instead to helping the Cycling Patriarch in his great mission, which is to spread the gospel of pedalling throughout the world. In particular, the Pedalling Patriarch recognizes the dire need that exists in 'white man's civilization,' in 'western intellectual civilization,' for practical, pedalling-based wisdom -- for wisdom that arises out of the balanced state of the autonomic system, which can be maintained through daily pedalling practice.

Guided, encouraged, and supported by the Pedalling Patriarch, our non-fairy attempts a scrupulously literal translation into his own language of "The Eye-Treasury of True Cycling." The ancient text, however, begins to raise some doubts in the non-fairy's mind. It not only advocates the physical practice of pedalling but also seems to be pointing the cyclist in the direction of some kind of mental practice -- something called "steering."

Then our hero comes across a book written by a western expert on balance and movement, which seems to be describing the same kind of phenomena described in the ancient text -- stuff about moving in a certain direction, stuff about the possibility of not remaining fixed in the same place, and specifically cycling-related stuff which mentions not only pedalling but also lays great emphasis on this thing called steering.

Greatly excited, our innocent hero shows the book to the Cycling Patriarch, who laughs loudly, for a while, and says:

"I am afraid that you have fallen back into your old western habit of reliance on intellectual thinking. I hope you will come back to the practice of True Cycling, which is not to steer, but just to pedal."

Then the laughter turns into a kind of anger, and finally the Pedalling Patriarch pronounces:

"True Cycling is just to pedal! Just to pedal is True Cycling! What you are advocating, cycling on the basis of western intellectual thoughts about steering, is just non-cycling. You are a non-cyclist!"

This then, is the tale of the metamorphosis suffered by a callow non-fairy, who dreamed of being a great cycling hero. Instead of turning into what he dreamed of, he turned into a complete and utter non-cyclist.

Chapter 15 of the True Dharma-Eye Treasury: The Buddha-Ancestors

2008-05-04T03:09:00.001-07:00

Introduction: Shit on the Right Dharma of the Patriarchs

MUJO-JINSHIN-MIMYO-HO
The Subtle Truth of Sitting! Supreme, and Very Deep!

HYAKU-SEN-MAN-KO-NAN-SOGU
But hard to meet, even in a billion ages.

GA-KON-KENMON-TOKU-JUJI
I now, being witness to it, might make it my own.

GAN-GE-NYORAI-SHINJITSU-GI.
Let us pray to understand what the Buddha truly and really meant.

Among the so-called Dharma-heirs of Gudo Nishijima is a liar/lawyer called James Cohen. When I call him a liar, I mean that he is a man who has a tendency not to tell the truth, but to twist the truth and, going beyond that, to tell lies. This is what I have observed to be the case, when James Cohen has written lies about things I know to have been otherwise.

How can this be? How is it possible for a man like James Cohen to exist as a Zen Patriarch who has received the Dharma from a Zen Patriarch in a lineage going up through Dogen, Nagarjuna, and Gautama, up to the Seven Buddhas?

If you look up James Cohen on the internet, you will find a picture of him sitting next to Gudo, both wearing formal robes, the latter wearing a big authority-conferring hat. Cohen uses the picture to convey the impression of himself as a legitimate, lawful, rightful Dharma-heir of the Zen Patriarch Gudo Nishijima.

A more recent Dharma-heir is Michel Proulx in France, who tells me that he teaches his students "to sit concentrating on their posture." Cohen writes emails to Proulx calling him "Venerable Michel." What is venerable about Michel? Michel has received the Dharma from Gudo, but Michel has not glimpsed the supreme, deep and subtle truth of Master Dogen's sitting, even in a dream. What is venerable about him? Yet Cohen calls him "Venerable Michel." It is all just the hugest crock of horseshit.

In 1989 a film crew from BBC Midlands visited me in Tokyo and filmed me as part of a half-hour documentary, titled "Turning Japanese," on midlanders living in Japan. The film showed me sitting, working on Shobogenzo, and visiting Gudo's old Zazen dojo. When the documentary was broadcast around the end of 1989, I was on a visit back to my parents house in Birmingham. So Jeremy Pearson, who was living near Warwick at the time, was able to phone up the BBC, get my phone number, and visit me at my parents' house. I remember picking up the phone and hearing Jeremy's voice, full of nervous anticipation and sincerity.

When Jeremy came to Japan shortly thereafter, I took him to meet Gudo at Gudo's office and recommended to him that the best way for him to get to know Gudo's teaching intimately was to serve Gudo in some concrete job, for example, taking dictations. So Jeremy started his service of Gudo like that, straight away, with notepad and pen in hand.

Several years later, after I had returned to England to train as an Alexander teacher, Jeremy visited me at the house in Aylesbury where I now am, and what a difference had come over him. His attitude towards me had changed to one of smiling condescension. He had become a Dharma-heir of Gudo, a Zen Patriarch, whereas I, at that time, had not taken that step.

As the Dharma-heir of Gudo, when Gudo decided to go ahead and violate our fifty : fifty agreement, Jeremy failed to do what I was relying on him to do -- to protect me from Michael Luetchford's intervention, which I was expecting. Jeremy didn't let me know about it. He didn't tell me the truth. So my question to Jeremy and others is this: If becoming a legitimate Zen Patriarch causes you not to tell the truth to your friend and mentor, then what is the fucking point of becoming a legitimate Zen Patriarch?

By transmitting the Dharma to the likes of Michael Luetchford, Jeremy Pearson, and latterly me, Gudo has made it more difficult for us to tell the truth about goings on in Dogen Sangha. Michael Luetchford carried on for years, biting his lip and pulling in his chin, suppressing himself, until Gudo nominated the Ven. Bradley Warner as his successor, at which time Michael Luetchford could not prevent himself from, briefly, blowing the whistle.

Since then Michael Luetchford has, apparently, gone back to biting his lip. He knows that his criticisms of the master from whom he received the Dharma would only undermine his own credibility as a legitimate Zen Patriarch.

But I come back to this question: If being a legitimate Zen Patriarch causes you not to tell the truth to your friend and mentor, as in Jeremy's case, what is the fucking point? If being a lawful Zen Patriarch causes you to tell lies, as in Cohen's case, what is the fucking point? If the prospect of being nominated as a Zen Patriarch's rightful successor causes you to twist the truth, putting your own spin on something you know nothing about, as in Brad's case, what is the fucking point?

My own answer is this: I will leave to Brad the preaching of the Right Dharma of the Zen Patriarchs. My consolation is to be found in Master Dogen's teaching that Bodhidharma's lifeblood is nothing but full lotus sitting, and to be found in common or garden telling of the truth.

To all people who, like my old friend Jeremy, are in awe of the Right Dharma of the Zen Patriarchs, let me tell you just this truth: You think that there is something called the Right Dharma that has been transmitted from Zen Patriarch to Zen Patriarch, but there is no such thing at all. So shit on the Right Dharma of the Zen Patriarchs. The lifeblood of the ancestors is nothing but full lotus sitting.

The Buddha-Ancestors

Our buddha-ancestors become real when we remember and honour our buddha-ancestors -- an act which is not only of the past, present, and future but which may ascend even beyond buddha ascending beyond. Truly, when we rummage through those who have kept up, and let be, their buddha-ancestor faces and eyes, we bow down before them and we bump into each other. By making the virtues of our buddha-ancestors real and using them, we have already been inhabiting them; we have already been saluting them, and experiencing them.

Opening paragraph rummaged again on the morning of Sunday 4th April 2008. Translation provoked by Gudo Nishijima.

Copyright Mike Cross, 2008.

Chapter 28 of the True Dharma-Eye Treasury: The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond

2008-05-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

Introduction

While waiting/not waiting for Gudo to make up his mind whether or not I am doing this work in his name, I am going to proceed at random to translate Chapter 28 of Master Dogen's True Dharma-Eye Treasury, titled "The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond." I am moving on to this chapter because, notwithstanding the baseless opinion of Venerable Brad Warner, the Nishijima-Cross translation of this chapter published in 1996 is a load of crap. At that time I was clueless as to the real meaning of such teachings as non-buddha, and not listening. Maybe I am still clueless, except that one thing I now know for certain is that my attitude then -- trying hard, in sitting and in translating, to be right -- was just wrong. Whatever the not listening, not speaking, and not sitting of non-buddha is, it is not a level reached by one who is trying hard to realize a state. The 1996 title of this chapter was "The Matter of the Ascendant State of Buddha" -- the state in question, in Gudo's mind, being -- you guessed it -- balance of the fucking autonomic fucking nervous fucking system. But this chapter is not about a state; it is more about orientation/movement in a cerain direction, that direction being.... UP! I think it is about upright sitting, speaking, and listening that does itself, effortlessly, spontaneously, naturally -- not what the Venerable Zen Masters of the present generally understand as sitting, speaking, and listening. If we want to understand the real, true, original meaning of this chapter, the secret to understanding it might lie in the discoveries of FM Alexander and Alfred Tomatis -- not in the fixed and static notions of Zen tossers who call each other "Venerable" and recommend themselves and others to concentrate on their own posture.

If you don't like me straying from the literal, I can understand that objection, and would suggest that you bugger off back to the 1996 version, and read that. In the spirit of experimentation, I would like to go for a less scrupulous, less careful, more direct, more dynamic, more real translation of this chapter, a more non-Buddhist translation.

So, here goes:

The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond

The high ancestor Tozan is the close and direct heir of Ungan, going up through thirty-eight ancestors from the Buddha. He is the thirty-eighth ancestor in ascending beyond himself. One day he preaches: "When we physically get the matter of buddha ascending beyond, then we can speak a bit." A monk asks: "What is it to speak?" Tozan says: "In speaking, governor, you are not listening." The monk says: "Are you listening, Master, or not?" Tozan says: "Waiting for myself not to speak, just then I am listening."

Translated by Who?

2008-05-03T01:38:00.001-07:00

My process of reading Shobogenzo in the original Japanese was initiated, guided, nurtured, and financially supported by Gudo Nishijima. When he proposed that our arrangement should be, in his words, "fifty : fifty," I agreed with his proposal.

But in the Nishijima-Cross translation published from 1994-98, the person who translated Shobogenzo from Japanese into English was me. The process took place inside my brain. The only person who can know this as a fact is me, and I know it as a fact, absolutely.

This fact seems to have been impossible for Gudo to understand. His experience was that a translation into English took place inside his brain, and he was always unable or unwilling to see that what was taking place in my brain was a different translation.

Did it matter that I was unable to cause Gudo to see the truth? Yes, it did. Because out of his state of denial, terribly wrong actions on his part have followed.

The Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo, as a real process of reading words in one language and converting them into another, took place in my brain. I am sorry, but that is the truth. Nishijima didn't do it with the assistance of Cross. Cross did it with the assistance of Nishijima.

When I clicked on the link to Amazon.com on Dogen Sangha Blog, I was led to the following review of the Nishijima-Cross translation, by Brad Warner:

This English translation of Shobogenzo is the best there ever was or will be. Not only does Gudo Nishijima know his stuff when translating ancient Japanese to English (with invaluable assistance from student Chodo Cross who makes the prose clear and easy to read without sacrificing a bit of the original), he has been living the message of Shobogenzo for more than six decades.

I think that Brad Warner is a very political animal, a kind of spin doctor, a PR man. Judging from this review, there may be a tendency in him to twist the truth out of political motives. Not knowing the truth, he has written here, as if he knows, just what Gudo would like to read.

I, on the contrary, have a tendency to write precisely what Gudo does not want to read, and to tell him precisely what he does not want to hear, which is the truth.

In attempting to clarify what Master Dogen wrote about mental sitting as opposed to physical sitting, and physical sitting as opposed to mental sitting, Gudo fell back on his theory of the autonomic nervous system, and thereby missed the target. In taking people by the chin and pulling the chin inches back into the neck, he led me and others woefully astray in our sitting practice. In making changes to Shobogenzo Book 3 without my agreement, he broke the fundamental rule of our fifty-fifty partnership. Brad says that Gudo has been living the central message of Shobogenzo for sixty years. I say that he has been, out of the best of intentions, perverting it -- turning the truth into its opposite.

How am I able to say these things? Because my lifeblood is nothing but the lifeblood of the founding ancestor, and the lifeblood of the founding ancestor is nothing but my lifeblood. Because, notwithstanding my degree in Accounting & Financial Management from Sheffield University, 25 years of full lotus sitting have left me, as I approach the age of 50, more or less jobless, out of work, unemployed, with no professional position or career to speak of, with no status to lose. Not even earning a breadwinner's wage, I rely on my wife's income as swimming teacher. In many ways I have become more and more useless, a disheartened waster. And yet, Master Dogen is telling me unequivocally that my lifeblood is the lifeblood of Bodhidharma, and Bodhidharma's lifeblood is mine. If that really is so, the virtue of full lotus sitting really is totally beyond my capacity to fathom it.

Gudo has responded to the respective efforts of Brad and me by nominating the Venerable Bradley as his successor and slandering me, Mr. Mike Cross, as a non-Buddhist. For a long time, I remained in denial about what was going on, seeing it as possibly some kind of test of my loyalty.

But no, fuck that. Wishing to be a loyal servant of a true Buddhist Patriarch is just the seed of trying to be right.

The truth that Gudo does not want to be heard, especially by himself, is that the process of translating Shobogenzo from Japanese into English, which was initiated by him, was done by me.

In that regard, there is no difference between the translation that we published from 1994-1998, and the one I am about to post on this blog now. They both took place, for better or for worse, inside my brain.

Still, to go back to my opening statement, my process of reading Shobogenzo in the original Japanese was initiated, guided, nurtured, and financially supported by Gudo Nishijima. That is not me trying to be loyal. That is just the glaring, undeniable truth. So if Gudo wishes me to keep his name before mine, and let me call what I am about to post up the Nishijima-Cross translation (revised 2008 version), then all he has to do is let me know, on his blog or on this blog.

If that is what he wants, he needs to clarify his wish in public, so that there is no legal ambiguity about it. He needs to make a public retraction of what he and his legal adviser James Cohen told me three years ago, that I was not authorized to publish any translation in Gudo's name, and that I should rather publish my own translation "based on AT theory" just in my own name.

And Gudo needs to make this clarification right now, right this fucking minute. Otherwise, as far as I am concerned, he can fuck off and I will follow the example he (along with Michael Luetchford) has already set, and "go ahead by myself."

This is not a threat. It is more akin to the state of a cat that is poised to finish off a mouse. I am letting Gudo know what I am now totally ready to do -- unless he acts, NOW.

Zanmai-o-zanmai -- Last Paragraph

2008-05-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

The founding ancestor, the Venerable Bodhidharma, after arriving from the west, went to the Shaolin temple on the Shaoshi peak of Mount Song and, facing the wall in lotus-sitting-zen, passed nine years. From that time through to the present China has bulged with brains and eyes. The lifeblood of the founding ancestor is nothing but full lotus sitting. Before the founding ancestor came from the west, living beings in eastern lands had never known full lotus sitting. Since the founding ancestor came from the west they have known it. So, through one life and ten thousand lives, from bottom to top and top to bottom, not leaving the forest, day and night, just to practise lotus sitting and be otherwise jobless -- this is the samadhi that is king of samadhis.

Translated late at night on 2nd May 2008 by one full-lotus-sitting man, an individual, through whose veins has coursed the lifeblood of the founding ancestor. As for Zen Buddhist patriarchies, from old ones like the Soto Sect to new ones like Dogen Sangha...

The lifeblood of the founding ancestor is nothing but full lotus sitting.

Cure for Hard-Heartedness?

2008-05-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

A homeopath I see observes in me a tendency towards hard-heartedness. I generally think that my heart was broken by events, but another way of looking at it is that I caused those events through hard-heartedness. Hummm.

Now, what was that that Master Nagarjuna said about righting hearts and minds? What is the practise through which the heart tends to mend?

Does anybody know a good teacher versed in the art of allowing the body to be upright?

FM Alexander and Alfred Tomatis might have been two such teachers, but they are no longer with us.

I have been taught by their proteges -- the likes of Marjory Barlow and Paul Madaule. I have been pointed in the direction of true sitting, speaking, and listening, using the head-neck-back relation, using the voice, using the ear. And yet still I have this pain, this apparent blockage, around my heart/stomach.

Let's hope the homeopathic remedy does the trick. If not, may I blame the homeopath, along with Barlow, Madaule, Alexander and Tomatis? May I blame Gudo, along with Dogen, Nagarjuna and Gautama?

Even if I don't blame all the others, it is very difficult for me not to blame Gudo, who so crudely pulled my chin back into my neck all those years ago, compounding the tendency I already had towards stubborn rigidity.

Final Paragrah -- Wait For It!

2008-04-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

The final paragraph of Shobogenzo chapter 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai, has only three and a half lines of text. So this bit of a translation effort is nearly at its end. If I finish today or tomorrow, before Thursday 1st May, I might then publish to the internet "The Samadhi That is King of Samadhis, Nishijima-Cross translation, revised by Mike Cross, April 2008," and thus I might arrive at a kind of resolution to a conflict that has been troubling me deeply. Maybe this nagging pain in my guts will then clear up. That possibility exists in my brain, at least.

But wait.

I have learnt from experience, particularly in the context of Alexander work, that nearly at the end is a place where things are very liable to go wrong.

As we approach what we conceive to be the end of something, our attention is liable to stray from the path to the perceived destination, from the work of polishing a tile to the idea of making a mirror, from attending to the means to grasping for the end, from the action of bending the knees to the seeking of a chair with the bum. I am afraid that this tendency is just part of the human condition, and neither certified Zen Masters nor qualified teachers of the FM Alexander Technique are immune from it.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum, Ad Nauseam

Marjory Barlow taught me a way of working on the self in which there is no expectation of finally eliminating this "end-gaining" tendency. The point was rather to see all our wrong tendencies as our raw material, our best friend. Thus, instead of trying to be right, we dare to be wrong. Instead of trying to be right, we investigate how, in combination with unreliable feeling, the end-gaining tendency causes us to go wrong. We practise opposing the end-gaining tendency, by learning how to stop and think, and thus we begin to glimpse the possibility of conscious action, as opposed to instinctive reaction.

The word ZA, sitting, appears many times throughout the present chapter, and we tend to think we know what Master Dogen, Master Nagarjuna, and Gautama Buddha, meant when they spoke of "sitting."

In maybe a similar way, the so-called Einstein of the Ear, Alfred Tomatis, spoke often of "listening." We think that we know what it is to listen, but Tomatis said that in his experience an act of listening was something very rare: "The ear is an apparatus which we use for balance. It is also the passive receptor of sound. But you may reach the level of listening. Listening is really wanting to take information and listen to it. It is very rare. I am convinced that there are exceptions, and that is why all the monks are people who know how to listen."

Similarly, again, FM Alexander pointed to conscious action as a plane to be reached. People who conceive of Alexander work as a kind of bodywork, to do with posture, generally fail to understand why Alexander described his work as the most mental thing there is. Alexander saw that we cannot reach the plane of conscious action just by reacting instinctively, relying on unconscious means.

Before I came to Alexander work, I was more confident that I understood what Master Dogen meant by the practice of just sitting, SHIKAN-TAZA. The truth may be that when I felt I knew what SHIKAN-TAZA was, all I was experiencing, without even knowing it, was my own unconscious reaction to the stimulus "Just sit!" The truth may be that at that time, notwithstanding my hope that I might have penetrated more or less to the centre of just sitting, I had not even scratched the surface of the egg.

So, let me not fall into the trap of failing to pay due attention to the translation of the remaining three and a half lines. As Marjory often used to say to me, "It always pays to wait!"

MUJO-JINSHIN-MIMYO-HO
Full lotus sitting is the supreme, deep, and subtle Dharma:

HYAKU-SEN-MAN-KO-NAN-SOGU
Hard to meet in millions of aeons.

GA-KON-KENMON-TOKU-JUJI
I now have been reading about it, and might be able to make it my own.

GAN-GE-NYORAI-SHINJITSU-GI
Instead of rushing to the end of the translation, let me stay with the wish to understand what Master Dogen really means.

The final sentence of the final paragraph contains four Chinese characters read as HA-BI-SHU-TO, literally "grasping the tail and getting the head," i.e. from beginning to end, through and through, out and out. It is part of Master Dogen's parting exhortation that we should devote ourselves to full lotus sitting fully -- not half-heartedly, but all the way.

After reciting the verse to open the sutras this morning, I read aloud the final paragraph in Japanese, before a great assembly of none -- until my wife came in with a cup of tea and made me feel foolish, sitting there preaching loudly to myself.

Then I started to think again about the meaning of HA-BI-SHU-TO. In the more than ten years since I last worked on the translation of this chapter, through Alexander work, through working towards what Ray Evans called "understanding of the human condition," I have come to see the task of helping others primarily as a problem of developmental re-education. This field of work is sometimes bottom-up -- for example, beginning with very slow movements to retrain the vestibular system. And it is sometimes top-down -- for example, starting from the playing of games, or from efforts to make people aware of basic misconceptions which are unconsciously influencing their behaviour.

If I translated HA-BI-SHU-TO as "through and through, bottom-up and top-down" would that be a literal translation that is true to what Master Dogen really meant? Or would that be me cluttering up the text through a bias of my own that is not originally there? Would I then stand guilty as accused of making a translation, "based on AT theory"?

Again, in asking these questions am I trying to be right, and therefore getting in the way of something spontaneous that might otherwise happen?

Probably I should wait another ten years, at least. Probably I should wait another ten years at least, not writing anything more off the top of a demon's head, but rather using my human inner ear for its deepest and highest purpose -- just listening, just sitting.

Probably I should. But very probably I won't.

Penultimate Paragraph

2008-04-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

Evidently, full lotus sitting is the samadhi that is king of samadhis, and is experience and entry. All samadhis are the followers of this king of samadhis. Full lotus sitting is righting the body, is righting the mind, is righting the body-mind, is righting the buddha-ancestors, is righting practice and experience, is righting the head, and is righting the lifeblood. Fully to cross these here human legs of skin, flesh, bones and marrow is fully to cross the legs of the samadhi that is king among samadhis. The World-Honored One constantly upholds, and leaves be, full lotus sitting. He conveys to his disciples the true transmission of full lotus sitting, and he teaches full lotus sitting to human beings and gods. The mind-seal authentically transmitted by the Seven Buddhas is just this. Sakyamuni Buddha under the bodhi tree is sitting in lotus, and thus he passes one by one through fifty minor kalpas, through sixty kalpas, through countless kalpas. Sitting in full lotus for three weeks, or sitting for hours, is the turning of the wheel of the wonderful Dharma, and is the lifelong teaching of the Buddha. It lacks nothing. It is just a yellow scroll on a red stick. The meeting of Buddha with Buddha is this moment. This is exact moment when living beings become Buddha.

"The body itself rights sitting": Explanation

2008-04-27T00:46:00.001-07:00

For the record, I would like to say something about a class of reflexes sometimes called righting reflexes, and sometimes called anti-gravity reflexes.

For 13 years under Gudo in Japan I had heard him preach endlessly about the autonomic nervous system.

Thus, Gudo taught me, in connection with the first two paragraphs of this chapter, Zanmai-o-zanmai, that physical sitting means sitting in which the parasympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, and mental sitting means sitting in which the sympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy.

In my bones, I knew that Gudo's interpretation was missing the target. At the same time, I also knew that the intention behind Gudo's interpretation was true: he wanted to clarify as clearly as he could, for people educated in science, what the original teaching of Gautama Buddha was.

When I started to become aware of the discoveries and the work of FM Alexander in 1994, I began to realize that there were practical aspects of the body-mind problem that Alexander had grasped but which Gudo had never grasped. So I returned to England at the end of 1994 with the intention of investigating Alexander's discoveries as deeply as I could.

Gradually, through the writings of Alexander himself, who referred to the work of Charles Sherrington and Rudolf Magnus, and also through the writings of Frank Pierce Jones, and the personal communication of my Alexander head of training Ray Evans, I began to understand that Alexander's principle of "the right thing does itself" had to do with the postural righting reflexes, sometimes called "anti-gravity" reflexes.

When I wrote to Gudo from England, in around 1996, about the anti-gravity reflexes, he wrote back expressing great interest. He wrote that he thought this might be a key to understanding the true meaning of Zazen. Because of this correspondence, I felt justified in including one or two references to the anti-gravity reflexes in the footnotes of Shobogenzo Book 3, which was being prepared for publication at that time by me in England, and by the Luetchfords, together with Jeremy Pearson, in Tokyo.

When the Luetchfords found references to the anti-gravity reflexes in the footnotes, however, not knowing about the correspondence between me and Gudo on the subject of the anti-gravity reflexes, they were, as Luetchford later told me, "shocked." And as a consequence of this shock, in combination with various other causes and conditions, they acted as they did, and Gudo reacted as he did.

My sense is that, as a consequence of that reaction, Gudo is now suffering in hell, and I am suffering with him. The Shobogenzo translation has been the most important thing in his life. He, a congenital bookworm, wanted to be the one who accomplished a translation that would be read "for a thousand years." I, for my part, wanted to help him realize that dream.

Tragically, however, what we human beings should wait with joined hands to receive, sometimes we cannot stop ourselves from grabbing as if we already owned it. That deep tendency, psychologically, is related with attachment. Physiologically it may be related with aberrant primitive fear and grasping reflexes.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum

Recently on the news I heard the American billionaire Tom Hicks say this: "Fifty-fifty is a difficult business proposition because you can't do anything without your partner's agreement."

It seems this is a principle in business, in which case Gudo knows it well, in which case he knows that he did wrong in 1997, and he knows that he redoubled the wrongness more recently when he went ahead with the POD version of Shobogenzo without my agreement. James Cohen can spout legal bullshit for all he likes. In Gudo's heart, he knows that he has done wrong. Why did he go into hospital? The doctor's diagnosis might be anaemia, but in Gudo's heart he knows that he has done wrong.

Last year, before nominating Brad as his successor, Gudo wrote me an email saying he didn't want to continue communication with me any more. So after Gudo named Brad as his successor, I endeavored just to let my relationship with Gudo be, and not bother him further.

But then at the beginning of this year Gudo bothered me with emails which, at first, I ignored. He wanted to send me a cheque for $1800 for half of the royalties from the POD publication.

My question, however, is this: How can he make a gift to me of what does not belong to him?

My translation work I have given to Gudo freely, from the beginning. If he wants the present "Broken Mirror Reflects Again" version, he can have it. We can call this version that is being translated now the revised Nishijima-Cross translation, if Gudo agrees to that. In that case, I cannot translate a single word without his agreement, and he cannot translate a single word without my agreement.

So, Gudo, if that is the way you want it, let your wish be known. But, in that case, stick to the fucking rules. Otherwise it might be difficult for you and I to avoid a kind of fight to the death.

4th Paragraph -- a broken mirror reflects again

2008-04-26T23:46:00.000-07:00

Sakyamuni Buddha tells a large gathering:

"This is why we practise full lotus sitting."

Then the Thus-Come, the World-Honored One, taught his disciples that they should, like this, sit.

Among those who stray from the way some seek enlightenment by constantly remaining on tiptoes, some seek enlightenment by constantly standing up, and some seek enlightenment by constantly carrying their legs on their shoulders. Mad and stubborn mind like this is sunk in the sea of falsity, and the physical form is not quiet.

Therefore the Buddha taught his disciples full lotus sitting -- sitting that rights hearts and minds. How so? Because, when we allow the body to be upright, the heart tends to mend.

When the body itself rights sitting, then the heart is not faint and, with open heart and true mind, we tether our attention to what exists before us.

If the mind races or becomes distracted, if the body leans or becomes agitated, [sitting] inhibits this and brings us back. When we want to experience samadhi and want to enter samadhi, and yet all kinds of thought-chasing and and all kinds of dissipation is going on, [sitting] totally puts a stop to all this.

Training and learning like this, we experience and enter the samadhi that is king of samadhis.

"The body itself rights sitting" may better reflect the core principle of FM Alexander, based on his observation in action of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that the right thing does itself. At the same time, it may be as close as I can get to the literal translation of the original four characters.

4th Paragraph -- translation "based on AT theory."

2008-04-26T03:24:00.000-07:00

Sakyamuni Buddha told a large gathering:

"This is why we practise full lotus sitting."

Then the Thus-Come, the World-Honored One, taught his disciples that they should, like this, sit.

Among those who stray from the way some seek enlightenment by constantly remaining on tiptoes, some seek enlightenment by constantly standing up, and some seek enlightenment by constantly carrying their legs on their shoulders. Mad and stubborn mind like this is sunk in the sea of falsity, and the physical form is not quiet.

Therefore the Buddha taught his disciples full lotus sitting -- sitting that rights hearts and minds. How so? Because, when we allow the body to be upright, the heart tends to mend.

The body, being upright, sits: then the heart is not faint and, with open heart and true mind, we tether our thoughts to what exists before us.

If the mind races or becomes distracted, if the body leans or becomes agitated, [sitting] inhibits this and brings us back. When we want to experience samadhi and want to enter samadhi, and yet all kinds of thought-chasing and and all kinds of dissipation is going on, [sitting] totally puts a stop to all this.

Training and learning like this, we experience and enter the samadhi that is king of samadhis.

This translation, from a source text contained in volume 9 of Gudo Nishijima's Gendaigo-yaku-shobogenzo, was written on my computer screen and published to the internet on the morning of 26th April 2008. It was never my intention to translate Shobogenzo by myself, and this morning's translation from Nagarjuna has indeed not been done by me.

Interlude -- Redoubling a Demon's Desire

2008-04-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

The next paragraph is one pure chunk of Chinese characters representing the original teaching of the Buddha. There is one line of seven characters whose translation, in particular, I deeply desire not to fuck up.

The reason I use the word "fuck up," is that I wish to make it clear that this demon's deep desire is not an intellectual desire; it is more akin to a hunger, a drive: it comes from a deeper part of the brain, from a deeper place in the heart, from a deeper place in the gut, from a deeper place in the solitary bollock of a non-castrated water buffalo who spent most of his 20s in excrutiating sexual frustration, in order to become able to translate Shobogenzo.

The first four of the seven characters are KEK-KA-FU-ZA, full lotus sitting; the fifth character is JIKI, which means to restore order to, to set straight, to mend, to right, to make upright; the sixth character is SHIN, heart/mind; the seventh character is, again, ZA, to sit.

That line expresses full lotus sitting, through which sitting itself orders the mind. It might be the one pivotal sentence on which the whole of Shobogenzo turns.

I deeply desire to translate the fourth paragraph in such a way as to blow the Nishijima-Cross translation out of the water, and send an old bastard to his grave a broken man.

MUJO-JINSHIN-MIMYO-HO
The supreme, deep, and subtle sitting practise of the Buddha

HYAKU-SEN-MAN-KO-NAN-SOGU
In millions of aeons is hard to meet.

GA-KON-KENMON-TOKU-JUJI
I now am reading about it, and I might be able to make it my own.

GAN-GE-NYORAI-SHINJITSU-GI
I desire to understand what [the fuck] the Buddha really meant.

3rd Paragraph -- translation "based on AT theory."

2008-04-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

Sakyamuni Buddha told a great gathering:

"In full lotus sitting, the body-mind experience of samadhi, there is dignity that many respect. Like the sun lighting up the world, it clears away sleepy, lazy and sad states of mind. The body is light and tireless. Consciousness is also light and quick. Sit at ease, like dragons coiling! The king of demons is frightened on seeing even a picture of lotus sitting -- let alone a person experiencing enlightenment, sitting at ease without leaning or moving."

Thus, to observe just a depiction of lotus sitting makes the king of demons surprised, worried and afraid. Still more, when lotus sitting is really practised, its benefits are impossible to fathom. In short, everday sitting is happiness and good beyond measure.

Translated on the basis of the teaching of FM Alexander -- starting with the principle that sitting at ease is a very rare flower that can only blossom in the absence of fear of being wrong/trying to be right; and avoiding any mention of the word "posture" -- on the morning of 24th April 2008.

Interlude -- A Demon's Wish

2008-04-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

In the next paragraph of Shobogenzo chapter 72, The Samadhi That Is King of Samadhis, Master Dogen quotes a sutra in which the Buddha talks of "sitting at ease, not leaning or moving."

I would really like to know what the Buddha had in mind when he spoke the words that were translated into Chinese as the two characters ANZA.

I don't mean know only intellectually. No fucking way did I only want to know intellectually. Really wanting to know, totally, I came back from Japan to England in 1994 to investigate as deeply as I could the discoveries that FM Alexander made about how to find ease in sitting.

Politically, in view of Gudo's pre-existing prejudices, that made me vulnerable to the intervention of the Luetchfords, who duly intervened and poisoned the Nishijima-Cross translation partnerhship.

So what? So, I had better redouble, as a matter of life and death, my desire to understand what the Buddha really meant when he spoke the words translated into Chinese as ANZA.

AN means ease, comfort, stability. The pictograph is of a woman under a roof. ZA means sitting.

Really wanting to know what the Buddha meant, sometimes I recite aloud the following traditional gatha called KAI-KYO-GE, or Verse for Opening a Sutra.

The gatha doesn't neessarily have to be recited by angels accompanied by the sound of celestial bells.

Sometimes, because of really wishing to understand, a demon can be heard singing this verse as it goes into combat.

MUJO-JINSHIN-MIMYO-HO
The supreme, deep, and subtle method

HYAKU-SEN-MAN-KO-NAN-SOGU
In a million aeons is hard to meet.

GA-KON-KENMON-TOKU-JUJI
Now that I have found out about it, and have a chance of making it my own,

GAN-GE-NYORAI-SHINJITSU-GI
I want to know what [the hell] the Buddha really meant.

2nd Paragraph -- just for the hell of it

2008-04-22T02:04:00.000-07:00

My late Master, the Olden Buddha, said: "Zen practice is body and mind dropping off, and just sitting has got it from the beginning. It is not necessary to burn incense, to perform prostrations, to contemplate the Buddha, to practise confession, or to read sutras."

Clearly, the one who has gouged out the Eye of the Buddha-Ancestor and sat inside the Eye of the Buddha-Ancestor, for the past four or five hundred years, is my late Master alone. Few in China have matched shoulders with him.

Rarely has it been clarified that sitting is the Buddha-Dharma and that the Buddha-Dharma is sitting. Even if some understand with their bodies that sitting is the Buddha-Dharma, no-one has known sitting as sitting. How then can there be any who let the Buddha-Dharma be the Buddha-Dharma?

So then, there is mental sitting as opposed to physical sitting. There is physical sitting as opposed to mental sitting. And there is sitting as body and mind dropping off, as opposed to sitting as body and mind dropping off.

Actually to have got what sounds like this is the practice and the understanding of the buddha-ancestors, in mutual accord.

Allow this awareness, this thinking, this reflection.

Investigate this mind, this intention, this consciousness.

Translated off the top of a demon's head on the morning of 22nd April.

The Samadhi That Is King of Samadhis

2008-04-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

Instantly surpassing the whole world and being, in the house of the Buddha-Ancestor, a great noble being, is full lotus sitting.

Treading on the heads of strayers and demons and being, in the inner sanctum of the Buddha-Ancestor, a real human being, is full lotus sitting.

What surpasses the supremacy of the Buddha-Ancestor's supremacy is only this One Dharma.

For this reason buddha-ancestors practise this, having no other duty at all.

Know exactly: the world of sitting, and other worlds, are far removed. Clarifying this truth, buddha-ancestors intuit and affirm awakening of the mind, training, bodhi, and nirvana.

Just in the moment of sitting, investigate whether the world is vertical and whether it is horizontal.

Just in the moment of sitting, what is that sitting?

Is it a somersault? Is it a state of vigorous activity? Is it thinking? Is it not thinking? Is it doing? Is it free of doing?

Is sitting practised inside sitting? Is sitting practised inside body-mind? Is it that, through shedding such vistas as the inside of sitting and the inside of body-mind, sitting is practised?

There should be investigation of thousands and tens of thousands of points like these.

Bodily practise full lotus sitting.

Mentally practise full lotus sitting.

Practise, as body and mind dropping off, full lotus sitting.

-- Translated off the top of a demon's head, on the morning of Sunday 20th April, 2008.

What Turns Its Opposite Into Freedom?

2008-04-11T23:50:00.001-07:00

The answer is HI-SHIRYO, non-thinking.

Bodily full lotus sitting, dumbly squashing a black sitting-cushion, is non-thinking.

Mental full lotus sitting, thinking ears and shoulders apart, thinking nose and navel apart, making a mental decision not to do, is non-thinking.

Body and mind dropping off, losing the self just in sitting itself, is non-thinking.

Birdsong bouncing around spacetime is non-thinking.

For 750 years between Master Dogen's writing of Shobobenzo chapter 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai, and the existence in the world of my problem-solving ability, nobody has clearly understood the above.

I have tried to clarify the above to my teacher Gudo Nishijima, but weighed down by his wrong view about the autonomic nervous system, he has not been able to understand. Rather, he has responded to my efforts by violating the Dharma without reason, and causing himself and others to slander me, willy-nilly.

How can I say such a thing? asks Plato. I can say such a thing, Plato, by not worrying about being right or being wrong, by not bothering about being humble or being arrogant, loyal or disloyal. I can say such a thing because it is true.

Moreover, saying it seems to have caused my stomach pains to disappear -- after I posted the previous post, and gave up trying to deny the bald fact that my teacher seriously violated the Dharma, my stomach stopped hurting.

For nearly four weeks now I have been in France devoting the time to full lotus sitting. So far, I am sorry, but in the way of a conclusion this is the best I can do.

KEKKAFUZA: Full Lotus Sitting

2008-04-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, I suggested as a translation:
"To tread over the heads of those who are off the way, demons ... is to practise full lotus sitting."

But how about:
"Treading on heads of off-wayers, demons... is full lotus sitting."?

That would be a saving of 19-11 = 8 words.

The new improved translation I came up with less than a week ago, on further consideration, might have been just another mistake. Today's effort is bound to be another mistake. But there is a direction inherent in these efforts/mistakes -- to seek out the translation which is more literal, more direct, and more dynamic.

Three years ago, Gudo Nishijima sent me an email, cc-d to his legal adviser James Cohen, in which he recommended me to follow the example of Michael Luetchford and publish my own independent translation of Shobogenzo -- "based on AT theory."

That proposal was totally unjust and totally unreasonable. The existing Nishijima-Cross translation is already my own translation, just as much as it is his translation.

The Nishijima-Cross translation was something valuable, a valuable process that was poisoned in 1997. Have I finished grieving yet for the loss of that process? Yesterday I thought maybe I had. But as I sit at this laptop again this morning, a nagging aching in my stomach indicates otherwise.

Is whatever it is that causes my stomach to throb only the suppressed anger of Mr Wrong?

The Nishijima-Cross translation was not so much a thing as a 3-way dynamic, involving the source text itself, Gudo's effort to interpret/translate it, and my effort to understand/translate it.

I never saw it as my job to interpret, on the basis of what Gudo calls "AT theory," or on any other basis. Interpretation was Gudo's area. My job was, as far as possible, to purge the source text of interpretation. Interpretation, as I saw it, was for the footnotes. My task was to let Master Dogen himself speak for himself.

Sometimes I failed in this task because of Gudo's lack of understanding -- for example his lack of understanding of the literal meaning of MIMI TO KATA TO TAISESHIMEN, causing opposition between ears and shoulders.

Sometimes I failed because of our mutual inability to hit the target, not for want of trying -- as in the case of BUTSUKOJO NO JI, the matter of buddha ascending beyond [buddha].

But mostly I failed because the process of translation involves thousands and thousands of decisions on how to translate individual words, and how to structure individual sentences, and many of the decisions I took, inevitably, were wrong. Gudo left ZAZEN, "sitting-zen," untranslated as Zazen. So did I. That was my mistake. Gudo translated BUSSO as "Buddhist patriarchs" or "the Buddhist Patriarch" I should have changed it into buddha-ancestors or the Buddha-Ancestor, but I didn't. And so on.

The mistakes I have made in the Shobogenzo translation process have been too numerous to list. But in my heart I know full well that my effort, to serve Master Dogen, has been true from beginning to end. Gudo's proposal that I should make another translation "on the basis of AT theory" slanders me, and I dare say slanders not only me.

What to do now, or not to do, with regard to the Shobogenzo translation?

(1) Leave the Nishijima-Cross translation as it is.
(2) Revise the Nishijima-Cross translation, to make it more literal, more dynamic, more direct, and publish that, as the Nishijima-Cross translation.
(3) Publish the Mike Cross translation.

The point of the emails I received from Gudo and Cohen three years ago was to make it clear that I was not authorized to take the second option. I was not authorized to revise the Nishijima-Cross translation "on the basis of AT theory."

So what then is to prevent me from taking option (3)?

The answer to that is I do not wish, never in a thousand years, to follow the treacherous example of Bodhirucci Sanzo.

I have been in France for three weeks now, mainly sitting. After three weeks of bodily sitting and mental sitting -- with not much in the way of body and mind dropping off -- there were a couple of hours yesterday evening in which I did seem to become a target that was hit. Last night, in replying to an email from an Alexander colleague, I wrote:

The weather has been a bit miserable, but today we were able to sit outside, listening to the birds singing all over the place, spine seeming to lengthen like an antenna. It seems to me a long time since I had an experience like that -- maybe something akin to what has been called in the Tomatis work "an auditory opening." (Either that or another instance of self-delusion courtesy of faulty sensory appreciation.)

I slept very well last night -- again, for the first time in a long time. And while sitting this morning I noticed that I wasn't suffering stomach pain. I thought to myself that maybe this finally signalled the end of my bereavement process? Maybe my full lotus sitting has trodden on the head of the demon, finally, once and for all?

But no, when I engage in that kind of wishful thinking, it is just the demon who is treading on my head.

People like Jeremy Pearson who have often exhorted me to "move on" do not understand that in 1997, when the Luetchfords intervened, when Gudo over-reacted on the basis of false suspicions, and when Jeremy himself failed to do the job I had entrusted to him, what was broken then was not only my heart. Something was violated then other than only me.

In chapter 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai, Master Dogen writes the shocking statement that sitting is the Buddha-Dharma and the Buddha-Dharma is sitting. If I didn't doubt Master Dogen's teaching, I might not doubt that my own effort for these past 25 years or so has just been the Buddha-Dharma itself, which has been violated.

GEDO-MATO: Those Who Are Off the Way, Demons

2008-04-06T10:31:00.001-07:00

GE means outside of, off. DO means bodhi, the buddha's enlightenment, the buddha's truth; again, DO means the way. MA means demon. TO means group.

In the opening paragraph of Shobogenzo chap. 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai, as per the Nishijima-Cross translation of 1997, Master Dogen writes that "To tread over the heads of non-Buddhists and demons... is to sit in the full lotus posture."

"Non-Buddhists" was Gudo Nishijima's translation of GEDO. To leave GEDO translated as "non-Buddhists" was my mistake.

A better translation might be "To tread over the heads of those who are off the way, demons ... is to practise full lotus sitting."

Since I left Japan and went to England to train as an Alexander teacher, Gudo Nishijima, who somewhere deep inside maybe fears his own wrongness to have tried to reduce the teaching of Gautama Buddha to a theory of the autonomic nervous system, has projected his own inner demon onto me, and treated me as if I were a demon who is off the way. Gudo has portrayed me as a non-Buddhist who is out to identify Buddhism and what he calls "AT theory."

In the truth, it may be that a demon that is off the way, a demon that would like to reduce the Samadhi of Gautama Buddha to a theory of balance of the autonomic nervous system, resides within that old bookworm, Gudo himself. I would like to recommend Gudo to light a stick of the best quality incense for his demon, and invite him to share a nice cup of tea.

Still, I accept the designation of a non-Buddhist, because I revere the teaching of non-buddha, HI-BUTSU, which is a key phrase, a turning word, in Shobogenzo. The phrase appears in chap. 28, Butsu-kojo-no-ji, The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond. A buddha who ascends beyond buddha is a non-buddha. A non-buddha is a true buddha who, due to individual peculiarities and particular circumstances, does not meet with conventional expectations of what buddha is.

Understanding of HI-BUTSU, non-buddha, may be very relevant to understanding of HI-SHIRYO, non-thinking, and vice versa. HI-BUTSU means buddha itself, but not what people generally think of as buddha.

It is said the Nelson Mandela, during his years of physical captivity in prison, reasoned that as long as he hated his oppressors they controlled him. So he somehow learned not to hate those oppressors, in order to enjoy a greater degree of freedom within. That might be a rare example of the mental aspect of HI-SHIRYO -- learning how not to think in old ways, but rather to think in a new way, so as to free oneself from emotional slavery.

I notice on the statistics of my webpage at www.the-middle-way.org that I get a disproportionate number of hits from South Africa. Whoever is quietly listening to me out there, I salute you.

Generation after generation of oppressor, as Robert Mugabe is just now demonstrating so well, subordinates the truth to power. To break that cycle, as one or two exceptional and inspirational individuals have demonstrated through history, requires a degree of fortitude and wisdom that seems beyond the rest of us. The battle is fought, I would like to remind myself, primarily within the self.

The Pearl & The Lotus

2008-04-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

Plato asked me:

Bodily lotus sitting
Mental lotus sitting
Dropping off body and mind lotus sitting
Can they happen in any of the six realms?
Is that what Master Dogen means when he says do not worry about being in the six realms as the bright pearl is there?

My response:

What Master Dogen means is that the value is there throughout the whole developmental process -- the bright pearl is there throughout the whole lotus.

According to what Gudo taught me, physical full lotus sitting is permissible, mental full lotus sitting is permissible, but body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting is valuable.

Gudo tried to impress upon me, forcibly, what he felt to be the truth of his interpretation that sitting when the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant is permissible; sitting when the sympathetic nervous system is dominant is permissible; but sitting when the autonomic nervous system is balanced is valuable.

In the original Japanese, however, Master Dogen used the same word subeshi , "should practise," in each of the three sentences:

Practise bodily full lotus sitting.
Practise mental full lotus sitting.
Practise body-and-mind-dropping-off full lotus sitting.

What Master Dogen means is do not worry about where your lotus sitting is at. The mucky root is valuable. The sun-kissed petals are valuable. The whole bloody thing is value itself. So don't worry. Just sit.

OM

2008-04-01T00:33:00.002-07:00

When stubborn trying to be right
Leads straight back to hell,
Just sit, with neck and shoulders tight,
Till hell's allright as well.

MA

2008-04-01T00:33:00.001-07:00

With no control of body bits,
Still yearning for maternal tits,
In a floating world where nothing fits,
It's a lonely hungry ghost who sits.

NI

2008-04-01T00:32:00.002-07:00

Where worms and beetles creep around
And wrens and robins send out sound
A dumb Zen beast may here be found
On a zafu on the ground.

PAD

2008-04-01T00:32:00.001-07:00

Demons like to kick and punch;
They do not think, they do.
This zafu I would like to crunch,
For I'm a demon too.

ME

2008-04-01T00:31:00.002-07:00

When I sit is something sitting
Quicker still than I?
Just to sit is not just sitting.
White moon breaks blue sky.

HUM

2008-04-01T00:31:00.001-07:00

Here I am, still sitting proud
Om mani padme hum.
Sadly, though, celestial cloud,
Is no place for a bum.

SHINJIN-DATSURAKU NO KEKKAFUZA: Body-and-Mind-Dropping-Off Full Lotus Sitting

2008-03-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

Whereas both physical full lotus sitting and mental full lotus sitting involve a sense of subjective effort -- an effort to do, and an effort not to do -- body-and-mind-dropping-off full lotus sitting corresponds to what Alexander described as the right thing doing itself. The right thing doing itself describes something that seems to be happening naturally, effortlessly, spontaneously.

Flowing water or burning wood are examples of things doing themselves spontaneously -- in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But, in the same way that a pump may need to be primed before water starts spontaneously flowing, and in the same way that persistence may be required to get a fire going, considerable effort may be required on the part of both Alexander teacher and Alexander student before the student starts to get the experience of the right thing doing itself.

Again, in the same way that a pump may need to be primed before water starts spontaneously flowing, and in the same way that persistence may be required to get a fire going, considerable physical and mental effort may be required on the part of both Zen master and disciple before the disciple starts to get the real experience of full lotus sitting as body and mind dropping off.

Sometimes people who have scant or no experience of Alexander work think that they know what it is all about just from reading about it. Similarly, people who have never met a true Zen master think that they know, on the basis of their reading, without having made the requisite physical and mental effort, what a Zen master means by body and mind dropping off.

So Master Dogen wrote: "There is mental sitting, which is not the same as physical sitting. There is physical sitting, which is not the same as mental sitting. And there is body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting, which is not the same as body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting."

In the former body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting, the sitter forgets himself in the spontaneous flow of sitting.

In the latter body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting, the sitter, having read some words in a book or words on a blog, or having heard some teaching from the mouth of a fame-seeking Zen charlatan, has the idea of losing himself in the spontaneous flow of sitting, or has the idea of all things being one, or has the idea of becoming a self-realized Zen Master, or has some other such romantic idea. (Yes, you who know who you are, I am thinking particularly of you.)

If we understand the above distinction, our instinctive human tendency is to wish not to be in the latter group, that is, the group of pretentious Zen duffers. Our instinctive tendency is to aspire to be in the former group, the group of the truly authentic ones.

In that case, we have already fallen into the trap of trying to be right. Whereas if we were wiser, remembering Master Dogen's teaching that buddhas are enlightened about delusion, we might dare to tiptoe into the territory of the pretentious Zen duffer, and see how the land lies there.

When a human control freak neglects, for a long time, to care about being wrong, how then is full lotus sitting?

Om mani padme hum.

Doesn't Master Dogen make a point of telling us?, in his instructions for sitting-zen: ZEN-AKU OMAWAZU, ZE-HI KANSURU KOTO NAKARE. "Do not think good-bad. Do not care true-false/right-wrong."

Failing to hear these words always seems to be where my trouble starts -- as Marjory Barlow clearly saw, and clearly demonstrated to me. It is very difficult for me to stop worrying about whether I am The True One, or not. Part of the power of Gudo's hold over me was that he led me to believe, in my younger days, that he felt that I would indeed become The True One -- "the most excellent Buddhist master in the world."

This conclusion brings me back full circle to the sentiments I expressed on the opening post of this blog...

The quest for authenticity
And turning of the light
Turns into, all too easily,
Trying to be right,
Which, sure as 2 plus 1 makes 3,
Makes neck and shoulders tight.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum.

In introducing my best friend to the public, incidentally, I was not hoping to attract helpful advice or sympathy from amateur psycho-therapists, fellow Zen masters in their own mind, and the like. My intention has rather been to use this particular blog to help me work out, for the benefit of self and others, the practical implications of what the Alexander midwife Marjory Barlow, in delivering me, repeatedly took pains to remind me.... "Listen, love: being wrong is the best friend you have got in this work."

Om mani padme hum.

SHIN NO KEKKAFUZA: Mental Full Lotus Sitting

2008-03-30T09:59:00.001-07:00

What "mental sitting" is I do not know. But Marjory Barlow, Nelly Ben-Or and one or two other teachers of the FM Alexander Technique have given me some clues as to what it is not.

It is not a muscular effort of doing; it is not anchored in feeling; it is not postural self-arrangement or self-organization; it is not reliance on habit; it is not any kind of bodywork; it is not mindless mechanical repetition; and it is not thinking as I have hitherto understood thinking.

Although the kind of mental work that Alexander practised is not thinking as thinking is generally understood, FM Alexander called it "thinking."

To what extent might this kind of thinking be relevant to a buddha's practice of upright sitting? Is it possible to interpret HISHIRYO, or "anti-thinking," not only as physical action that is opposed to thinking, but also, from the dialectically opposite viewpoint, as mental thinking that is opposed to the habitual doing (stemming from faulty feeling, misconceptions, et cetera) that ordinarily governs the body ?

Is it possible to understand HISHIRYO like this, both as an affirmation of action that negates thinking and at the same time as an affirmation of thinking that negates doing?

According to what I was taught by Gudo Nishijima, No! Never! According to Gudo, HISHIRYO must never be interpreted as anything other than a negation of thinking. HISHIRYO means not thinking but action, not thinking but just doing. That was Gudo's strongly-held view.

Master Dogen's instructions for sitting-zen, however, include the sentence that "It is vital to bring about an opposition between the ears and the shoulders, and an opposition between the nose and the navel." (MIMI TO KATA TO TAISHI, HANA TO HESO TO TAISESHIMEN KOTO O YOSU).

How is it possible to bring about such an opposition? Is it possible, by direct muscular intervention, by doing something, to bring about a movement ears and shoulders away from each other? No, it is not. What muscular effort can do is pull the shoulders and ears towards each other. For direct muscular intervention to succeed in pulling ears and shoulders apart, there would need to be muscular attachments joining ears to the ceiling and joining shoulders to the walls on either side. Bringing about an opposition between ears and shoulders requires not direct muscular effort but rather muscular release, not doing but rather undoing.

My Alexander head of training, Ray Evans, used to say that we know more about the mechanisms of muscular effort (i.e. "doing") whereas the mechanisms of release (or "undoing") are less well understood.

Marjory Barlow used to emphasize, "You cannot do an undoing." When I started working with Marjory, she caused me to understand that, despite 15 years of sitting-zen practice under Gudo Nishijima, and two years of Alexander teacher training, I was still wrongly of the view that I might be able to do an undoing. So Marjory often reminded me, "You cannot do an undoing."

A further 11 years of Alexander work since my first lesson with Marjory have still not equipped me with a definitive view of what "mental sitting" is, but I have been caused to be able to see, on a good day, what it is not.

It is not muscular effort. It is not what I know. It is not my misguided effort to arrange myself symmetrically. Above all, it is not doing. On the contrary, it is diametrically opposed to doing, just as doing is diametrically opposed to thinking.

Have I thus just expressed a view on what "mental sitting" is? If so, I did so, not for the first time, in error. Whenever I decide upon a view on what "mental sitting" is, which I frequently do, it always turns out to be... not that.

I do not know what Master Dogen meant by "mental sitting." What I do know is that the prejudice I used to hold against what I perceived as sissy mental practice, was just the stupid prejudice of an unenlightened person.

The question I have addressed above is not how to become buddha, and not how to cultivate the empty field. The question here is not even how to take the backward step of turning light and shining. The question is just how to practise mental sitting. That is the question Master Dogen posed 750 years ago.

Understanding that the work of FM Alexander poses the same question, I came back to England to train as an Alexander teacher. And so, as my day job in England, I teach people who are sitting to think up from their sitting bones. But that does not mean that I know what thinking up is, any more than a plumber knows what water is.

Inevitably, I have my views and opinions about what FM Alexander meant by "thinking," and about what Master Dogen meant by "mental full lotus sitting," but those views and opinions always turn out to be mistaken.

Still, since I came to France with the intention of making mistakes, let me conclude this post by deliberately making a big one:

To practise mental full lotus sitting means, for example, to think the ears and shoulders apart, and to think the head out from the pelvis. Not to do it; just to think it.

SHIN NO KEKKAFUZA: Bodily Full Lotus Sitting

2008-03-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

This and the next two posts are not intended as a contribution to the body-mind problem in philosophy. I am reporting back on a 25-year endeavour, filled from beginning to end with trouble and strife, to respond in everyday life to Master Dogen's exhortation to practise -- bodily, mentally, and as body and mind dropping off -- full lotus sitting.

In Shobogenzo chapter 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai, The Samadhi That Is King of Samadhis, Master Dogen writes: SHIN no KEKKAFUZA su beshi.

In the Nishijima-Cross translation of 1997, the sentence is translated "Sit in the full lotus posture with the body."

I first read Gudo Nishijima's own translation of the chapter Zanmai-o-zanmai in 1982 or 1983, and the chapter made a terrific impact on me.

In 1986 I read the original Japanese text of the chapter for the first time. That was a very exciting and rewarding moment.

SHIN no KEKKAFUZA su beshi has five Chinese characters, read as SHIN (body), KEK (full), KA-FU (cross-legged) and ZA (sitting). No and subeshi are written in Japanese kana. The word no is a joining particle, and subeshi means "should do."

SHIN no KEKKAFUZA su beshi.
"We should practise physical full cross-legged sitting."

Notice that there is originally no word corresponding to the English word "posture." Originally the imperative is not to sit in a posture; the imperative is more dynamic: the imperative is to practise sitting; in short, to sit.

So that might be the first mistake I made in translation. I introduced the problematic concept of "posture" when in Master Dogen's original text there is no such concept at all.

The understanding around posture that I had before was based on what I now regard as an erroneous view: namely, that there is such a thing, in sitting-zen, as "right posture."

In the post previous to this, I mentioned Raymond Dart and the so-called "Dart double spirals." When a person's sitting lacks symmetry, undue tightness in one or both of these myofascial spirals is generally implicated (as also an immature asymmetrical tonic neck reflex is often implicated) in the asymmetry. A structural integration practitioner named Thomas Myers, building on the work of Raymond Dart, wrote as follows in his book Anatomy Trains:

It is very important to note here that there is no virtue involved in having a symmetrical, balanced structure. Everyone has a story, and without doubt the most interesting and accomplished people I have had the pleasure and challenge to work with have had strongly asymmetrical structures. In contrast, some people with naturally balanced structures face few internal contradictions, and as a result can be bland and less involved. Assisting someone with a strongly challenged structure out of their pattern toward a more balanced pattern does not make them less interesting, though perhaps it will allow them to be more peaceful or less neurotic or to carry less pain. Just, at this juncture, let us be clear that we are not assigning any ultimate moral advantage to being straight and balanced. Each person's story, with so many factors involved, has to unfold and resolve, unfold and resolve, again and again over the arc of a life. It is our privilege as structural therapists to be present for, and midwives to, the birth of additional meaning within the individual's story.

Homage to midwives everywhere, who know the value that lies in developmental processes...
Om. She of the Jewel in the Lotus! Hum.
Om mani padme hum.

I quote and praise the above paragraph not because the bodyworker Thomas Myers is espousing a view that I believe to be true, but rather because the human being Thomas Myers seems to be expressing, on the basis of his experience of trying to help others, the dropping off an old view. The old view is a view about right, symmetrical posture as some static thing that it might be valuable for a human being to achieve -- as if time might then stand still, as if the 2nd law might then cease to operate. To hold that old, static, posture-affirming view has also been my mistake.

Another big mistake I make is to assume that I know what Master Dogen meant by SHIN no ZA, bodily sitting.

I used to feel confident, as a rugby player, and as a martial artist, as somebody who was accustomed to laying his body on the line, that I understood well what Master Dogen meant when he wrote of sitting as a physical act, sitting with the body. But the understanding that I held before of Master Dogen's words SHIN no ZA, "bodily sitting," I now no longer hold with the confidence that I used to have.

I tend to assume that my body, like the bodies of others, is something bulky, heavy, massive, and that in order to get this body up off the sofa or up off the floor, an effort of doing is necessary. Weighed down by the conception of a heavy body, the physical act of sitting upright becomes something akin to weightlifting -- the making of a physical effort to defy gravity.

From 1994 onwards Alexander work began to challenge my view of what kind, and how much, effort is required to keep a body upright. Alexander work began to challenge my old view, and then, in a similar way to what Master Dogen does to views in Shobogenzo, Alexander work proceeded to batter my old view into submission.

In order to investigate more deeply what Master Dogen meant by "bodily sitting," it might be necessary to investigate more deeply what Master Dogen meant by the dialectically opposite conception of "mental sitting." It is because it has been demonstrated to me, in the context of Alexander work, that I don't know how to sit mentally, that I begin also to doubt my habitual conception of what it is to sit bodily.

In these days of holistic hairdressing, the oneness of body and mind is a generally accepted concept -- just the kind of concept, in other words, that Master Dogen himself always took pains to batter into submission.

Because body and mind are one, there is no difference between physical sitting and mental sitting. There is only sitting itself which, viewed from one side is physical and viewed from the opposite side is mental. "Body" and "mind" are two faces of one coin.

Such is the unconsidered viewpoint, equally, of the holistic hairdressers and the so-called Zen masters of the present day.

Master Dogen did not subscribe to this viewpoint. He wrote that there is mental sitting that is not the same as physical sitting, and there is physical sitting that is not the same as mental sitting.

To clarify this teaching exactly -- not for body-mind philosophers but just for fellow devotees of sitting-zen --
might be the main purpose of my life.

The interpretation that I heard from Gudo of Master Dogen's teaching of physical sitting vs mental sitting, was this: "physical" means when the parasympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, i.e, when we are body-conscious (e.g. during a post-lunch dip in arousal), and "mental" means when the sympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, i.e. when we are mind-conscious (e.g. when our will has been aroused by excited discussion). Thus, the difference between physical sitting and mental sitting, like every other problem in Buddhist philosophy, can be reduced back to the state of the autonomic nervous system.

This was Gudo's view.

What can I say?

All I have to offer is understanding, albeit partial, of my own wrongness. In my everday life, despite my physical effort to sit upright in lotus four times per day, I wobble from extreme parasympathetic lethargy to extreme sympathetic anger. I roam constantly through the six samsaric realms. My vestibular system is more dysfunctional than most. Views that I have held about this, that, and the other, have all too often turned out to be mistaken. The trendy view on the oneness of body and mind, which for many years I also unthinkingly subscribed to, has turned out to be just another one of those mistaken views.

Master Dogen wrote: SHIN no KEKKAFUZA su beshi; "Practise bodily full lotus sitting."

In assuming that I knew in the past what Master Dogen meant, I was wrong. If I assume now that I know what Master Dogen meant, again, I am very liable to be wrong.

In Denial On Denial

2008-03-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

The three sentences that, as regular followers of my blogging will know, I regard as central to the whole of Master Dogen's teaching in Shobogenzo are:

SHIN NO KEKKAFUZA SUBESHI.
SHIN NO KEKKAFUZA SUBESHI.
SHINJIN DATSURAKU NO KEKKAFUZA SUBESHI.
Bodily practise full lotus sitting.
Mentally practise full lotus sitting.
As body and mind dropping off, practice full lotus sitting.

I am getting around to writing three posts in which I shall endeavor to pinpoint how I have misunderstood what Master Dogen meant in writing these three sentences.

Meanwhile, perhaps by way of a catharsis that may help to clear my mind in preparation for this task, I would like to write something about denial, inspired by an observation I heard yesterday on Radio 4's In Our Time. The theme was the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, and one of the contributors drew a comparison between (a) the response to Henry's attack, of the Roman catholic church in England, and (b) the response to the Nazi holocaust, of Jews in Europe.

That response, as I understand it from my own experience, has to do with fear paralysis/shock/denial.

When Yoko Luetchford visited Gudo Nishijima at his office in 1997, she made an issue of certain footnote entries in Shobogenzo Book 3. In one footnote, for example, in connection with the sentence "We should sit like coiled dragons," I had included a reference to the discoveries of Professor Raymond Dart, an anatomist who identified two swathes of muscle and fascia forming a double spiral around the torso. In another footnote, I had made a reference to the anti-gravity reflexes.

Those entries could have simply been deleted, without causing me any offence, because I had given the publisher (Windbell) permission to edit the footnotes freely without consulting me -- but this permission most certainly did not extend to the translation text itself, as everybody involved well knew. If Gudo had felt that "the continuing upwardness of buddha" was a duff translation, as with hindsight I agree it was, all he had to do was ask me to change it back. But, no, a decision was taken that I would not be consulted. Why?

The purpose of Mrs Luetchford's visit was to persuade Gudo that I had an agenda to, in his words, "identify Buddhism with AT theory." And Gudo's response to this was, again in his own words, "strong refusal."

What that "strong refusal" meant in practice was something akin to the attitude of Henry VIII or Adolf Hitler to their own perceived enemies within. From 1997 onwards Gudo began to see me as a threat, a danger, a potential enemy of his "real Buddhism."

My response to that situation was, pure and simple, denial. I failed to respond appropriately to what was happening because what was happening was beyond my capacity to take it in. So I took refuge, sometimes totally sometimes only partially, in denial. Taking refuge in denial, I went to Japan in 1998 and received Gudo's Dharma.

After the ceremony, Gudo asked me to promise that I wouldn't adulterate the Dharma with other teachings. He never stopped suspecting, even then, that my agenda was to adulterate the Buddha-Dharma with "AT theory."

Three years ago when Gudo told me his concern that James Cohen was out take control of our Shobogenzo copyright, I asked Gudo simply to entrust his half of the copyright to me, and thereby to show his trust in me. I saw it as an opportunity for Gudo to redeem himself. Gudo's first response was that of course he trusted me. How could I, after all these years, doubt it? I replied that when a man asks a woman to marry him, what he wants to hear is not reassuring words like "I love you" or "I trust you." What he wants to hear is simply "Yes" followed by "I do." In that spirit I was asking for entrustment of the copyright, as an action. So then Gudo agreed that, yes, he would give me the copyright. But then like a bride having second thoughts, he emailed me a day or two later to say that, no, in fact he could not do that. This really deeply challenged my ability to remain in denial. But somehow I was able to cling to the illusion that Gudo might be testing me.

Then came our blog wars. When Gudo called me a "non-Buddhist," I looked for irony in his words. When Gudo announced that I was excluded from Dogen Sangha, when I was barred from posting on his blog, I took those things again as a kind of test. Even when Gudo announced that Brad Warner was his successor, I still somehow retained a trace of hope that Gudo would somehow redeem himself.

But then the final clincher came, unexpectedly, not from another inimical act but rather from an attempted act of kindness on Gudo's part. Earlier this year he sent me a cheque for $1800, as my half of the royalties for the POD version of Shobogenzo that he and some of his Dharma-heirs (Cohen, Rocca et al) had gone ahead with without my agreement. He expressed his wish that I would share his happiness that the Shobogenzo project, which had cost Gudo so much of his own money over the years, had finally turned a profit. Looking at the cheque, and reading the letter, then I could see, undeniably, that Gudo, in expecting that I might be happy to receive the cheque, had totally and utterly failed to read my mind.

If my master perceives some wrong agenda in me, how can I be sure that I am not, unconsciously, harbouring some such agenda? I cannot be sure. But if my master perceives that my mind is such that I might be happy to receive a cheque for 1800 tainted dollars, then it is beyond even my capacity to deny that the old man, somewhere along the way, totally lost the plot.

Before sending me the cheque Gudo emailed me to let me know that he wanted to send it. My reply concluded with the wish that Gudo might use the cheque to line his coffin and go to hell. Nevertheless, while I was in France in February, the cheque duly arrived in the post. When I got back to England, I put the cheque and letter back in their envelope, wrote on it "PLS RETURN TO SENDER," trudged heavily to the postbox at the end of my road, and sent the letter back.

The truth is that what was poisoned in 1997 was not only the Nishijima-Cross translation partnership but also the mutual trust between father and son. When Gudo reacted to Mrs Luetchford's visit with his "strong refusal," it was not only that a son lost his father but also that a father lost his son.

That is why today, while listening to Desert Islands Discs and eating my breakfast, I found myself cupping my face in my hands and sobbing -- allowing Moro (II) to try to do is job of kick-starting into action a system that has long been stuck in fear paralysis/denial.

That is why, on Saturday morning when I was pointing a wall and Danny Boy came on the radio, my eyes became so blurred that I was in danger of falling off the ladder.

ANRAKU NO HOMON: A Dharma-Gate of Ease

2008-03-25T03:23:00.001-07:00

Master Dogen described sitting-zen as not zen to be learned but rather ANRAKU NO HOMON.

In the Nishijima-Cross translation of 1994, this phrase is translated as "the peaceful and joyful gate of Dharma."

The purpose of this post is not to say that the former translation was necessarily wrong. AN means peace, ease, comfort. RAKU means joy, comfort, ease. HO means Dharma. MON means gate. So, as a literal translation, there is nothing seriously wrong with "the peaceful and joyful gate of Dharma."

But if true sitting-zen is a peaceful and joyful Dharma-gate, what then is this practice of mine, which is often not peaceful and joyful, but filled with immature reaction to noise, and other kinds of suffering and complaining?

A few weeks ago a person who had never met me face to face asked me on the phone, with an open mind, simply out of a desire to know, "Are you at peace with yourself?" It was a very good question.

For the past week I have been alone in France, following a routine including four sittings a day adding up to five hours (60+40) + (40+40) + (40+40) + 40. In between I do chores, and write stuff like this, and prepare and eat food, and take naps, and walk up and down admiring the trees. But the main task I set myself, selfish or obsessive-compulsive though it may sound, is to get in those four sessions of sitting-zen adding up to five hours.

So is all this sitting adorned with plentiful peace and joy?

Sometimes it is. But in general, no it is not -- not overtly, anyway, and especially not in weather as cold as it has been for the past few days.

The Buddha preached the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This law not only explains phenomena like frigid hands and chapped lips; it also explains the loss by which human life is invariably accompanied, bringing in its wake grief and suffering. Is there a mustard seed anywhere that testifies to the contrary? No, there is not.

When we suffer loss, we grieve. The bereavement does not have to be the death of a beloved person or the loss of a treasured object -- it can be the loss of another's trust or the loss of our own dream.

On what basis, then, other than the dictionary, am I, a being who frequently sits suffering in hell, to translate into English ANRAKU NO HOMON?

Only on the basis that the six samsaric realms are just the one bright pearl.

On this basis, I think that ANRAKU might be better translated as "ease" -- on the basis that, when we are sitting in hell, bereft of the peace and joy that can exist in the realms of human beings and gods, when we affirm our seat in hell and do not bother trying to make ourselves peaceful and joyful, just in that not bothering there is ease to be had.

A fellow devotee of sitting-zen asked me yesterday to express a view on compassion -- does compassion precede body and mind dropping off, or vice versa?

My response is this: Master Dogen nowhere writes that our job to have a view on compassion. He writes that our job is to devote ourselves to bodily sitting in lotus, mentally sitting in lotus, and body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting in lotus.

When we are able truly to entrust ourselves to this process of growth through sitting, even if this entrustment takes us in recurring cycles to hell and back, even if our practice becomes temporarily devoid of peace and joy, even then there is ease to be had, just in the act of entrustment itself.

HISHIRYO: Non-Thinking (2)

2008-03-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

Fixing in the view that HISHIRYO means "[Action which] is different from thinking," is one hell of a mistake. I know, because I made that mistake, well and truly, and therein believed myself to be firmly on the side of the righteous.

By fixing in the view that HISHIRYO means action itself which is different from thinking, it seems to me now, I turned one face of the truth of HISHIRYO into its dialectical opposite. I turned the pursuit of individual freedom into rigid adherence to a view espoused by a teacher.

If the fixed view is right that HISHRYO means action which is different from thinking, then every irrational act of group violence committed by human beings, every war atrocity, should be praised as HISHIRYO.

If the fixed view is right that HISHRYO means action which is different from thinking, then every animalistic act of group rape and every intellect-transcending baton-charge, should be praised as HISHIRYO: "Come on, man, just do it!" "1,2,3 -- Go!"

FM Alexander was a champion of individual freedom and a despiser of mindless group behaviour -- the latter being exemplified for him by Germany's actions in two world wars. As a man who despised mindless group behaviour based on the herd instinct, FM used to say, "This work is an exercise in finding out what thinking is."

He also used to say to his teacher-trainees, "None of you knows that thinking is."

After I returned to England to train as an Alexander teacher, but before I actually started training, I attended, in the summer of 1995, a lecture given by Marjory Barlow on the subject of Thinking. Marjory, in that lecture and in subsequent one-to-one lessons that she gave me, took pains to impress on me that Alexander work was not, as people commonly misunderstand it to be, a kind of bodywork. It is rather, "the most mental thing there is."

As I began to understand this, from 1995 onward, I initiated a long and vigorous philosophical exchange with Gudo (via email) on the subject of HISHIRYO. I challenged his teaching that HISHIRYO means "[Action which] is different from thinking." In return, he accused me of showing the intellectual attitude which is typical of the caucasian intellectual (as opposed to the practical yellow man). In this accusation I sensed a remnant of the propaganda booklet that was given to all officers of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II, identifying the enemy as HAKUJIN NO BUNKA, "white man's civilization" -- intellectual civilization.

In retrospect, with the benefit of ten years or so experience struggling to deepen my understanding of what Alexander meant by thinking, I would say that Gudo and I were both wrong; we were both wrongly fixed in our respective views. We were both stuck in a mode of being favoured by the control freak -- "I know; you don't."

When I went to Japan for a few weeks in the summer of 1998, after finishing Alexander teacher training, Gudo told me over breakfast in the Zazen Dojo that he thought I might understand his teaching "in tens of years." In response, in anger, I picked up a piece of crockery and threw it onto the ground, shattering it to smitherines, and said: "There. That is action!"

Afterwards I telephoned him at his office to apologize for my angry behaviour. My rage, I see with hindsight, was just another example of the mirror principle. Gudo, with his "I know; you don't know" attitude, was holding up a mirror to a fellow control-freak. Anyway, when I apologized for my angry behaviour, Gudo said that he affirmed what I had done. "You acted, for the first time in your life," he told me.

Frankly, that interpretation of the event was a load of bollocks. What happened was that, in my frustration at not being able to win an argument with a fellow fixed-viewed know-it-all, I flew into a rage and broke a pot.

Though I had heard Alexander's words that "None of you knows what thinking is," I somehow wasn't open enough, I somehow lacked the humility, to really take on board that those words might apply to me. So I argued with Gudo on the basis that I knew what HISHIRYO was, whereas he didn't. But that was not even half true.

Back in the 1980s, having resigned myself to a life of struggle in Tokyo, I used to read in Shobogenzo of Taiso Eka cutting off his arm in the snow, or Zen masters living in the mountains with only two or three disciples because the conditions were so harsh that not many could endure it. And I used to think to myself: "those lucky bastards."

During one complaining session before Gudo, in his office in Ichigaya, he stopped my grumbling by saying, "Your suffering has meaning for all people in the world."

Mmmmm. Recently Shobogenzo Book 1 has been re-printed by Numata, and a very nice job they seem to have done with it too. I had nothing to do with this re-printing. I left negotiations entirely to Gudo. I suppose it must be him that I have to thank for my biography being abbreviated to three lines, ending with the statement that I returned to England in 1994.

This would be in accordance with the view expressed by Gudo that after returning to England I strayed back into intellectualism and became a non-Buddhist out to identify Master Dogen's teaching with "AT theory." According to that view, my suffering had meaning for all people in the world, insofar as I continued to do Gudo's donkey work for him in Japan, whereas the suffering I have endured through doubting and opposing my master's teaching of HISHIRYO might not have any meaning for all people in the world.

I still seem to be suffering, and I must confess that I miss the reassurance of being told that my suffering has meaning for all people in the world. I can tell it to myself, mentally, but somehow it doesn't seem to resonate so convincingly like that.

Speaking of herd instinct vs HISHIRYO, there are those within the Tibetan exile community, it seems, who argue that violent group action would be an effective means of achieving their political aim of a free Tibet. I think that the Dalai Lama's response to this might be a response that arises out of the practice of HISHIRYO.

The Buddha's teaching of HISHIRYO might not originally be for the purpose of achieving political aims. It might rather be for the purpose of pursuing individual freedom -- and not freedom in the abstract, but freedom of the neck, to let ears and shoulders oppose each other, and let the nose and navel oppose each other.

What then, in the end, is HISHIRYO?

Is it action which is different from thinking, as per the Nishijima-Cross translation?

No, it is not that. That is a view into which I stray as if I were a blind donkey.

Is it thinking, but not what people generally think of as thinking, as discussed by Alexander?

No, it is not that. That is a view into which I stray as if I were a god.

To practice HISHIRYO as action which is different from thinking -- sticking in the view that HISHIRYO means action as opposed to thinking -- is a mistake. It is a mistake like sitting in full lotus with the body.

To practice HISHIRYO as thinking which is opposed to instinctive/habitual/feeling-based doing -- sticking in the view that HISHIRYO means thinking but not what people generally think of as thinking -- is also a mistake. It is a mistake like sitting in full lotus with the mind.

As a result of making mistakes like this, a father loses a son and a son loses a father. Whether Gudo Nishijima comes out of hospital again or not won't make much difference to my grieving process, which began, with fear paralysis/shock/denial, back in 1997.

Finally I shall finish this post by endeavoring to answer some questions somebody asked me offline:

What does Master Dogen mean by "body and mind dropping off"?

For example, he means wholeheartedly pursuing the Buddha's truth of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi through the practice of sitting-zen, not worrying about how many times we fall into hell along the way, not being afraid of making mistakes, not trying to hide the fact that I, like everybody else with an imperfect vestibular system, can't stop being a control freak; Master Dogen means, in short, because of the supreme value of the Buddha's truth, forgetting the small self.

When it happens to us do we know it? Does it come to us? Do we go towards it?

I think that when something along those lines happens to me during sitting-zen, sometimes I experience an enjoyable deep breath that seems to go right down into the sitting-cushion. Or sometimes, outside of sitting-zen itself, I am struck by the perfection of some natural phenomenon, like a birdsong or sunlight on the trees or the yellow moon in the night sky. Or the white moon in the blue sky.

At such times, we are not self-conscious of "body and mind dropping off," because there is no such thing.

Yes, those experiences come to us -- we become as if a target that is hit.

Yes, we tend to go towards those experiences. We sit or stand there with daft, intense expressions on our faces, expecting and trying to recapture them -- which is just the essence of deluded control-freakery.

Passers-by -- people walking through the forest, for example -- when they notice us practising are liable to think that we are somewhat odd.

SUNAWACHI SHOSHIN TANZA

2008-03-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

SUNAWACHI means just, at once, immediately. SHO means rectify, straighten out. SHIN means the body, the person, the actual self. TANZA means sit up, sit erect.

So the instruction which is at the centre of Master Dogen's instructions for sitting-zen, SUNAWACHI SHOSHIN TANZA, means "Just sit up straight."

Failing to translate these words according to Master Dogen's true intention has been, for more than half of my 48 years, the greatest and most fundamental wrongness in my life -- all other mistakes have been twigs and leaves. If being wrong is the best friend I have got, these were the words that introduced me to my best friend: SUNAWACHI SHOSHIN TANZA, "Just sit up straight."

Some stupid people in the world of education refuse to see dyslexia (from the Greek dys- difficulty + lexia, reading) as a vestibular problem. They sometimes describe it as a "cognitive deficit." But dyslexic children -- at least the dyslexic children we have helped over the years at the Middle Way Re-education Centre -- invariably have underlying dysfunction deep in their vestibular system.

Some children with deep vestibular dysfunction, paradoxically, are hyperlexic. This phenomenon probably has something to do with the capacity of higher parts of the brain to compensate for underlying weaknesses. So some children we see, while they struggle with basic balance and coordination, for example, use vocabulary you would expect from much older children.

Compensation produces paradoxical results. Einstein, for example, may have been a bit dyslexic. Or maybe he was a lot dyslexic. Again, the most powerful punch I have ever witnessed belonged to a teacher from Okinawa who was encouraged to take up karate-do because he was so weak and sickly as a child.

Nobody ever accused me of having a cognitive deficit when I was growing up -- at the age of five or six, my reading was more advanced than other children in my own year and also in the year above. I was often accused of having no common sense, though, and of tending to take things too far. At one parents' evening, when I was eight, a certain Miss Whittle told my parents: "Michael is very bright, but his behaviour is disgusting." Tell it like it is, Miss W.

Later on my precociousness was dimmed, partly as a result of skipping a year between primary and secondary school, and possibly also as a result of taking at an early age to the bottle -- from the age of 13 I started making home-brew beer and drinking it in large quantities with my mate from over the road. No longer ahead of the game at reading, I certainly got ahead of the game at drinking.

But back in primary school, where the foundations for over-confidence in my own intellectual ability were laid, I was generally top of the class. Miss Higgins, whose class I attended aged nine, used to give us a problem to solve every morning. The first one to solve it would be noted and at the end of the week a little present -- a boiled sweet or something -- would be given to the champion for that week. Miss Higgins, who I liked a lot better than the younger, mini-skirted Miss Whittle, made a rule that I was only allowed to win every other week.

From this and similar experiences, I picked up confidence in my ability to work out, to think out, solutions to practical problems -- providing that (1) the parameters to the particular problem had been clearly set for me, that (2) I had been given all the information needed to solve the problem, and that (3) I was motivated to solve it.

For a few years at least, those three conditions were all met in my work under Gudo to translate Shobogenzo into English -- before, that is, certain jealous individuals, as if from a Shakespearian tragedy, intervened to poison the process and knock out condition (3).

Sorry if I seem to dwell on this poisoning metaphor, but for me it represents something of a realization.

From the autumn of 1987 to the spring of 1988 I lived non-stop in the Ida Zazen Dojo in Moto-yawata, for the first six months since its establishment. By that time my problem-solving brain had already deduced from the information presented in Shobogenzo that Master Dogen's teaching all boiled down to sitting-zen, and the essential instruction for sitting-zen was just to sit up straight. That deduction still seems to me to be true -- nothing has falsified it yet. Where I have gone so badly wrong, where my lack of common sense has come into play, is in my efforts to translate the words "sit up straight" into action.

In those first six months of the Zazen Dojo, for example, I tried -- with great intensity, great seriousness, great rigidity -- to sit up as straight and for as long as possible, for five, six, seven, eight, nine or ten hours a day. The more difficult life at the Dojo seemed to get, the more intense, serious, and rigid I got in my effort to sit up straight. My health began to deteriorate, as did my relations with the other members of the Dojo, who I had presumed to lead in practice. After one incident, during which I shouted loudly at another member of the Dojo, Gudo summoned us both to his office, and asked me to apologize, which I did. After that he offered to transmit the Dharma to me. As far as I know, it was the first time he offered to transmit the Dharma to anybody. I suppose he could see the extent to which I was struggling, and wanted to help me. From my side, I didn't have the confidence to accept. It was not like nowadays when everybody and his dog seems to be receiving the Dharma. To receive the Dharma, at that time, seemed to me to be such a big deal that I couldn't conceive of myself being up to the task of receiving it. In particular, I was worried about whether or not I could remain celibate. Gudo himself had given up sexual relations with his wife before receiving the Dharma, so I assumed it was a prerequisite.

While I was struggling at the Dojo, Gudo recommended me not to leave. He told me that he had built the Dojo for me, and reminded me of Master Dogen's teaching of FURI-SORIN, not leaving the monastery. But in the end it was obvious to all that I had to go. The majority of other members of the Dojo wanted me to go, and eventually I went. For a couple of weeks my old friend and mentor David Essoyan put me up with his young family in his flat in Tokyo, then I went to Thailand and spent a couple of weeks at Wat Pah Nanachat, and a few weeks coming and going at a big Wat in Bangkok whose name eludes me now. Then I went back to England for a couple of weeks. Then the wheel of samsara turned decisively, and I moved from the realm of hungry ghost into the asura realm. I determined to go back to Japan and throw myself in earnest into the Shobogenzo translation.

When I got back to Tokyo, Gudo gave me a letter he had written and taken in vain to the Thai embassy in Tokyo. Worried that the life of a Thai monk would suit me, he expressed in the letter his hope that we would work together in earnest on the Shobogenzo translation, and asked me for five years. The letter didn't make any difference, as I had already made up my mind what I was going to do.

From that time, the early summer of 1988 through till around the time in 1997 when Yoko Luetchford visited Gudo at his office and reported my alleged plot to use the Shobogenzo translation to identify Buddhism and AT, Gudo paid me a monthly 'scholarship' of 50,000 yen. That money meant a lot to me, not only financially but also emotionally. When the scholarship suddenly stopped in 1997, while I was doing my Alexander teacher training in England while still working on the revision of Shobogenzo Book 4, I couldn't understand why. Around the same time I received a strange letter from Gudo expressing his hope that I would "come back to Buddhism." Since I knew perfectly well in my own mind that nothing had changed in my devotion to sitting-zen, four times a day, as usual, I didn't really worry about this strange letter.

Then in the summer of 1997, Jeremy Pearson, on a trip back to England from Japan, visited me in Aylesbury. We got talking about the meaning of BUTSU KOJO NO JI, the matter of buddha ascending beyond, and I told Jeremy how Alexander work had caused me to look for a more dynamic translation of the phrase -- i.e. "the continuing upwardness of buddha." Then Jeremy casually dropped the bomb. "Oh, I changed that."

When I phoned Michael Luetchford to enquire what the hell had happened, Luetchford told me, "I am the publisher. I can do what I want." The scheming Sanzo, it seemed to me then, had waited his moment, and turned me over.

After that I stopped work on Shobogenzo. My wife shed buckets of tears. Why shouldn't she? Anybody who knew the sacrifices I asked her to make so that I could work on the Shobogenzo translation would not be surprised that she shed tears. I, however, didn't shed a tear. My perception was that war had been declared, and it was a war I had the means to win, by sitting in the full lotus posture, and translating into action the essential instruction for that sitting: SUNAWACHI SHOSHIN TANZA -- Just sit up straight.

And therein lay the problem. I had the right idea, I have the right idea, but in my attempts to translate the idea into action, what happens? I am tripped up by trying to be right, which ties me to reliance on a dysfunctional vestibular system. What feels straight to me, what feels right to me, is wrong. So, by trying to be right, I make myself even more wrong.

In trying to live up to Gudo's expectations for me, of being champion of Dogen Sangha, his rightful successor, the most excellent Buddhist master in the world, I have become an outcast from Dogen Sangha, a Zen bastard, Mr Wrong, a voice in the wilderness.

In so becoming, what have I learned? In so having become, what have I got to offer?

In a comments to a previous post, I mentioned my love of human (as opposed to celestial) beings. My brother pointed out that while I may love human beings in theory, in practice I am generally happiest when there are none around. Back on my own again in France, I realize what my brother said is true. I prefer to express my love for human beings from afar. When among human beings, I generally find them to be a pain in the arse. That being so, thank God for Google, thank God for this vehicle which allows my voice in the wilderness to be heard. Thank God for this chance for me to let others know what, without any shadow of a doubt, I have learned:

The most important teaching of Master Dogen is sitting-zen, and the most important teaching within his teaching of sitting-zen is just to sit up straight. This much I have clearly understood, for more than 25 years. The other thing I have clearly understood, only in recent years, is that trying to sit up straight, relying on a dodgy vestibular system, is the very thing that causes me to go wrong.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum.

JI-JUYO-ZANMAI: Samadhi of Accepting & Using the Self

2008-03-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

We have all received a self. We received a self from our parents. We are receiving ourself from our breakfast. But how many of us truly accept our self?

To begin to see the extent to which I, in my vestibular dysfunction and associated perfectionistic control freakery, fail to truly accept myself: this might, in the end, be the best I can do in the way of self-acceptance. If complete self-acceptance is no vestibular dysfunction and total elimination of vestibular-based perfectionistic control freakery, I may as well give up sitting-zen practice here and now and take up something less demanding -- maybe mountain climbing or professional boxing, for example. Or perhaps pursue the career of a concert pianist.

We all have continued since before being born to use ourself. But generally we use ourselves unconsciously, unthinkingly, unattentively. We end-gain.

To limit JI-JU to autonomic receiving of the self, as opposed to conscious acceptance of the self, might be a mistake -- like sitting in lotus with the body. To limit JI-JU to conscious acceptance of the self, as opposed to autonomic receiving of the self, might also be a mistake -- like sitting in lotus with the mind. To limit JI-YO to reflex use of the self, as opposed to conscious use of the self, might be a mistake -- like sitting in lotus with the body. To limit JI-YO to conscious use of the self, as opposed to automatic, unconscious, reflex use of the self, might also be a mistake -- like sitting in lotus with the mind.

Egged on by the Luetchfords, Gudo perceived that I wanted to identify Master Dogen's teaching with that of FM Alexaner. And so Gudo poisoned our relationship forever and broke my heart. But no, that was Gudo's mistake. It was never my intention to identify A with B, only to clarify A more deeply.

I wanted to understand Master Dogen's teaching with the help of FM Alexander, and that is what I did. For 700 years nobody understood Master Dogen's instruction to sit in lotus with body, with mind, and as body and mind dropping off. But, with the help of two dead men, Master Dogen and FM Alexander, and the living pratice of sitting-zen, in the end, I could not fail to understand it. I arrived at that understanding eventually. But it cost me a lot of grief, which I haven't managed to process yet. The truth may be that I have been suppressing my grief, for a long time.

The translation of JI-JUYO-ZANMAI that appears in the opening paragraph of the Nishijima-Cross Shobogenzo translation, "the samadhi of receving and using the self," was a mistake. Furthermore, the title of this post, "Samadhi of Accepting and Using the Self," might also be a mistake.

I have received myself, but I do not always accept all of myself. I use myself ceaselessly, but often unthinkingly, badly, unharmoniously -- creating unwholesome karma within and without. Those two kinds of mistake are probably the most fundamental mistakes that I make every day.

Now I am going to France for three or four weeks, mainly in order to make those two kinds of mistake. If the stillness catches me, if the sound of the forest stream washes away all cares and body and mind drop off, so be it. But I don't expect that. What I do definitely expect, from repeated experience, is that after three or four days of karmic detox, I will awake wearily in the early hours, plagued by regrets for past mistakes large and small, and will sit alone in a cold pre-dawn, sitting in lotus with the body, like a being in hell, or a hungry ghost, or a dumb animal -- waiting for the first bird to tweet. I am looking forward to it.

Not only will I enjoy it; by sitting wholeheartedly in lotus, I will also be able to defeat miscellaneous pests. Even as a being in hell or a dumb animal, by sitting in the full lotus posture I will defeat the likes of Yoko and Michael Luetchford, James Cohen, and miscellaneous other celestial demons, at a stroke. Irrespective of me, the virtue of sitting in the full lotus posture is like that.

TAISESHIMEN: causing opposition

2008-03-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

The original two Chinese characters read in Japanese as TAISESHIMEN are reproduced and explained in the exposition of Fukan-zazengi Shinpitsu-bon on my webpage.

The first character, REI, means to order, to cause, to bring about. In Japanese it is read as the causitive form of SURU -- SESHIMURU.

The second character, TAI [SURU], means to oppose.

Master Dogen's instruction, in both the former and later versions of Fukan-zazengi, is to cause an opposition between ears and shoulders, and between nose and navel.

In 1994, when the Nishijima-Cross version of Fukan-zazengi was published in Shobogenzo Book 1 -- before I had been introduced to the discoveries of FM Alexander concering habitual human misconceptions about proper posture -- I could not understand the true meaning of Master Dogen's words.

So the translation we chose in 1994 was this: "The ears must be aligned with the shoulders, and the nose aligned with the navel."

This translation may not actually be so bad. TAI SURU can also be understood as having to do with alignment.

In general, the reason my Errata list is not much longer than it is, is that I always tried to make the Nishijima-Cross translation as literal as possible. So even in parts that I didn't understand then, or don't understand now, there may still be hope of Master Dogen's original meaning gettting through the dirty filter of my ignorance.

But what I can say without doubt or hesitation is that the understanding of Master Dogen's words that I had in 1994 has been totally falsified by being introduced to the discoveries of FM Alexander. My understanding of what I should do and what I should not do, what I should think and what I should not think, to bring about the opposition Master Dogen described, was totally wrong.

Years ago I was privileged to attend a series of Alexander workshops with an experienced Alexander teacher, and very open person, who had recently lost her husband. As soon as the master-teacher who was leading the workshop would put hands on her, Maureen would burst into tears, and then go and curl up with a blanket.

Looking back now, as a specialist in all kinds of inner ear problem, I see that the tearful outburst was supported by Moro I, the opening out phase of the baby panic reflex, and the blanket-cuddling was supported by Moro II, the closing/grasping phase of the baby panic reflex.

But I am not using Maureen's example as an example of vestibular dysfunction. On the contrary, what left a deep impression on me about Maureen's behaviour was the simplicity and purity of her reaction. Her reaction, in its lack of sophistication, was beautiful and full of truth. What Maureen demonstrated was NOT trying to be right, NOT trying to control her grief, NOT trying to line herself up symmetrically. What Maureen demonstrated to me, rather, was what it is to allow something spontaneous to happen.

I used to understand that Master Dogen's instruction was about control, about symmetry, about me bringing myself into alignment like a soldier on the parade ground. But Alexander work has caused me to realize, little by little, how very wrong that understanding was.

BUSSO: The Buddha-Ancestors

2008-03-17T01:13:00.000-07:00

BUTSU means buddha. SO means grandparent, ancestor.

To leave BUSSO translated as "Buddhist Patriarchs" was my mistake.

ZAZEN: Sitting-Zen

2008-03-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

ZA means to sit. ZEN means dhyana, Zen, meditation. ZAZEN means sitting-dhyana, sitting-zen, sitting-meditation.

To leave ZAZEN untranslated, in English phrases such as "sit in Zazen" or "practise Zazen," was my mistake.

When, in translating Shobogenzo into English, I had the opportunity to demistify the Buddha's teaching, I failed to hit the target. It was my mistake.

ZAZEN means sitting-dhyana, sitting-zen.

BUTSU-KOJO-[no]-JI: The Matter of Buddha Ascending Beyond

2008-03-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

BUTSU means buddha. KO means to turn towards, to go towards, to direct oneself towards. JO means up, upward, above. The parenthetical [no] is a grammatical particle, meaning "of," which is not in the original four Chinese characters but which is added when reading out those four characters in Japanese. JI means thing, fact, matter.

BUTSU-KOJO-[no]-JI means the matter of buddha ascending beyond.

To translate it as "the matter of the ascendant state of buddha," thereby turning the action of going up into something static, was my mistake.

It was a mistake I made before Shobogenzo Book 2 was published in 1996. But then, as I carried on with Alexander teacher training (from 1995 - 1998) I realized "ascendant state of buddha" was a mistake and I tried to correct the mistake. So in preparing Shobogenzo Book 3 for publication in 1997, I used the phrase "the continuing upwardness of buddha" -- a phrase which reflected how my understanding of how to sit was beginning to change as a result of Alexander work.

That was an even more serious mistake, because it gave Michael Luetchford just the opportunity he needed to poison the translation partnership between Gudo Nishijima and me, and that is just what Michael Luetchford proceeded to do.

Having poisoned the translation partnership between Gudo and me, Michael Luetchford then offered his own services to Gudo as co-translator of Master Nagarjuna's Mula-madhyamika-karika (MMK). But that partnership came to grief, and so Michael Luetchford went ahead and published his own translation of MMK.

For more than ten years I hoped that somehow Gudo might somehow wave a magic wand and redeem the situation of the poisoned relationship between him and me. That also was my stupid mistake -- a kind of denial arising out of shock/fear paralysis. Like a man in a hole who never stopped digging, the strategy I pursued was to try to convince Gudo that there was never any contradiction between Master Dogen's "cause the ears and shoulders, and nose and navel, to oppose each other" and Alexander's "let the neck be free to let the head go forward and up to let the back lengthen and widen." These efforts only served to strengthen the suspicion that Leutchford exploited so skillfully back in 1997. My efforts fell on totally closed ears.

The truth is that the translation partnership, and indeed the whole relationship, between Gudo and me was irrevocably poisoned in 1997 just at the moment when Gudo agreed to the proposals that (1) my mistaken translation "the continuing upwardness of buddha" should be returned to the earlier mistaken translation "the ascendant state of buddha" and that (2) this change should be made without consulting me. Gudo thereby broke our fundamental rule of the mutual veto, and, like a true prima donna, I proceeded to throw a big hissy fit about it -- at least internally.

I could not understand why Gudo had not just told me directly to make the change. In the final analysis, as he well knew, although I could argue against him bitterly, I never ever dreamt of trying to override his final decision on any matter pertaining to the original text. The whole point of the project, from my point of view, was to devote myself to it as an act of serving the Dharma, in possession of which Gudo was. If Gudo wanted me to change anything in the translation, all he had to do was tell me.

But no, this was not a practical decision on Gudo's part. It was a kind of act of anger, of violently putting me back in my place, of wielding the big stick. Gudo was outraged at the suggestion that I had the intention to adulterate his translation with "AT theory."

Here is how Gudo recalls what happened in his own words:

At that time one day Yoko Luetchford visited me at my office in Ichigaya suddenly, and she reported me that you are planning to change the content of our translation into a description similar to AT theory totally.

And as you know I do not have any idea to identify Master Dogen's thoughts with AT theory, and so I have strongly refuse such a kind of change at all. Then she came back from my office soon.

The translation partnership between Gudo and me was poisoned as a result of a series of mistakes, involving not only Gudo and me but also Jeremy Pearson, who I had mistakenly believed was on my side, and would therefore step in to let me know about any of Michael Luetchford's attempted interventions. I made a mistake about Jeremy. Jeremy in fact wanted to be on the right side of the Dharma, even if that meant letting me down.

Whether Michael Luethford's intervention was simply a mistake arising out of a fluid situation, as Jeremy has argued, or something more serious as I have suspected, has been a tricky problem. Gudo has never expressed to me a firm conclusion about it. His approach has been "cautious." I have wobbled in extremis, sometimes being friendly towards Michael Luetchford and thinking that we might be moving towards reconciliation, and then going completely the other way seeing him as a modern-day Bodhirucci Sanzo.

But recently, since Gudo nominated Brad Warner as his successor (thereby helping me to spring free from denial), and especially after browsing through the Michael Eido Luetchford translation of MMK, the penny has dropped in me. That translation is a kind of act of theft. For Luetchford to publish that MMK translation in his own name is an immoral act -- just as it would have been an act of theft for me to leave Gudo after a few years and publish our Shobogenzo translation in my own name. In Luetchford's MMK translation, his commentary on the meaning of sunyata is totally and utterly devoid of real meaning. Real sunyata is preached in the state of having no fish to fry, and Luetchford has never realized that state, even in a dream.

BUTSU-KOJO-[no]-JI means the matter of buddha ascending beyond.

Sadly, by the time I found the translation that hit the target, the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo, though it survives in words, had been irrevocably poisoned as a process. I have no means, I have been robbed of the means, to make any changes to the Nishijima-Cross translation itself. Rater, the koan that Gudo has presented me with is (1) to recommend me, in a private email, cc-d to his legal adviser James Cohen, to follow Luetchford's example and independently publish my own translation, "based on AT theory," (as if the Nishijima-Cross translation were not already my own translation); and (2) to express his fear (on his blog) that I will indeed publish my own translation, and thereby "erase his efforts." A nice double-bind. The whole thing is a big fucking mess -- and it is not one that I have been able to rise above.

Still, BUTSU-KOJO-[no]-JI means the matter of buddha ascending beyond.

HI-SHIRYO: Non-Thinking

2008-03-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

Shobogenzo chapter 28, Butsu-kojo-no-ji, incidentally, contains the teaching of HI-BUTSU, non-buddha. HI means "non-" as in HI-SHIRYO, "non-thinking."

Alexander work opened me to the possibility that, in the same way that non-buddha expresses true buddha, but not what people ordinarily expect buddha to be, non-thinking is an expression of thinking itself -- but not what we ordinarily understand thinking to be.

At a railway station in Tokyo in 1998 I tried to explain to Michael Luetchford what little I had understood, from three years Alexander training, about what Alexander meant when he described his work as "an exercise in finding out what thinking is."

Seeing Michael Luetchford seeming to shake his head in despair, I thought I had made him see his mistake, in which case, I thought I might like to embrace him. But no. "The situation is even more serious than I thought," the wanker pronounced pompously, as if he could see something that I couldn't. The source of Leutchford's pomposity at that time was only this: he had got his puny intellect securely round Gudo Nishijima's explanation of the gulf that exists between thinking and action.

This idea Leutchford understands. But Luetcford has never seen the Buddha's teaching even in a dream. All he has done is stolen some ideas from an old man in order to work for his own fame as a Zen Master.

The old man's idea is very simple. The intellect of any dumb arse from Michael Luetchford to James Cohen can grasp it at once, and parrot it out. HI-SHIRYO simply means action -- action which is different from thinking.

So, in the days before I began to be plagued by doubt about what else HI-SHIRYO might mean, in the days of translating the version of Fukan-zazengi in Shobogenzo Book 1, for example, I also confidently translated HISHIRYO as "It is different from thinking."

But, no, sorry -- that was my mistake.

HI-SHIRYO does not mean what you all think it means. Those of you who think you know what HI-SHIRYO means, and presume to teach others what it means -- from Gudo Nishijima, to Michael Luetchford,to Brad Warner, to Phillipe Coupey and all the rest of you AZI lot, as well as miscellaneous Japs in Japan, and pseudo-Japs in America --not one of you truly knows what HI-SHIRYO means.

HI-SHIRYO is non-thinking.

Whatever you think it is, it is not that.

This morning I saw an interview on TV with Seamus Heaney, a poet. He spoke eloquently of why he never signed up to be part of a political movement -- because movements require people to march together, shoulder to shoulder, with solidarity, to the beat of the same drum. Whereas the poetry, he said, springs from an individulal's inner struggle. He seemed to me to be speaking his own truth very eloquently.

If Brad Warner does his best for the rest of his life to transmit Gudo's understanding of what HI-SHIRYO means, and within Dogen Sangha International a consensus forms around Brad's view, HI-SHIRYO will not be that.

Whatever consensus forms around any individual's view of what HI-SHIRYO is, HI-SHIRYO will always be not that.

HI-SHIRYO is not what you think it is, and not what I think it is.

Any kind of group-think is most certainly not it.

HI-SHIRYO is non-thinking.

Who Turned Freedom Into Its Opposite?

2008-03-09T11:48:00.001-07:00

When I set up this blog, I used as the strapline the question: Who Turned Freedom Into Its Opposite?

The answer, of course, is yours truly, my own stupid self. I was aided and abetted in my folly, though, through my devotion to a Buddhist Patriarch, Gudo Nishijima.

From the beginning, he urged me not to be idealistic, not to try to become Buddha. At the same time, he exhorted me to do my very best to keep my spine straight vertically. And he told me his expectation that, if only I could transcend family life, I would become the most excellent Buddhist master in the world. Thus, whatever his teaching was in theory, in practice the center of his teaching, as I with my faulty sensory appreciation received it, was just effort to become Buddha by keeping the spine straight vertically and 'transcending' (for which read suppressing) sexual desire.

The reason I embraced the teaching of FM Alexander so enthusiastically when I encountered it is that it began to show me my own folly; it began to enlighten me to the error of my ways. It began to demonstrate to me the general futility of trying to be right, and the particular futility of a vestibular basket-case such as myself trying to be right.

Hence this blog -- an effort to clarify, primarily for my own stupid self, how I still tend to go off in completely the wrong direction; how, having embarked many years ago on a quest for freedom, I still tend to turn freedom into its opposite, by trying to be right.

In the context of the present discussion of the six samsaric realms, trying to be right corresponds to effort to clamber out of the lower realms into the human realm, where buddhas realize enlightenment. To make that kind of effort is just to turn freedom into its opposite.

Effort in the opposite direction, learning the backward step of turning light and shining, is distilled in the words of the American Alexander teacher Marjorie Barstow who, working with a person who was sitting in a not very upright posture, is reported to have advised: "See if you can find a bit of ease in your slump."

Om mani padme hum.

Teaching Samsara

2008-03-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here I am in bloomin' heck
To feel what grief is, with my neck.
Loss of head is felt still better
In the woozy realm of yearning preta.

Where sheep and donkeys roam around,
Apes stand, by instinct, on the ground,
Till fierce half-men drive pests away
And yell "Just sit! Do as I say!"
But balance in the human sphere
Depends upon the inner ear.
I hold this view and think I'm clever...
The wheel revolves, sure as ever,
Till back I am in bloomin' heck,
Short of sleep and stiff of neck.

Mind experts talk of moving on.
But this way is my only one.
Not having planned a second way,
I mainly sit, four times a day.

Deep in blue/white hell, I sit;
If hell it is, then so be it.
Not knowing where I am, I sit,
Like a bleating lamb, I sit,
Like a demon's punch, I sit;
Anticipating lunch, I sit...

And taste samsara:

This is it.

Knowing this so well, I sit...

Down in ruddy hell....

Vestibular Mirror Principle

2008-03-07T23:39:00.000-08:00

It's training larynx, ears and eyes
That makes a monkey always wise.
For all the evil that I see
Has its roots deep in me.

Pratitya Samutpada

2008-03-06T02:04:00.000-08:00

My life has been a battlefield,
The bodhi-mind my strength and shield.

My brain has been a battleground;
Disturbed by noise, I’ve sought out sound.

My life has been a battlefield,
The bodhi-mind my strength and shield.

In wrongly going, round and round,
I’ve served the truth the Buddha found:

The truth of rising from the ground.

My life has been a battlefield,
The bodhi-mind my strength and shield.

In endless circles, round and round,
I’m shown what Alexander found:

The truth of rising from the ground.

My life has been a battlefield,
The bodhi-mind my strength and shield.

While the wheel keeps turning, round and round,
I tell what Nagarjuna found:

The truth of rising from the ground.

Fear Paralysis Response

2008-03-05T00:11:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend is still 24
And trusts me like she did before!
I've been dreaming for a while
But now I'm swimming, in the Nile!

Gudo is still 64
And trusts me like he did before!
Luetchford never had his way!
So let's translate the MMK!

Now is now, and not before
According to the 2nd law.
Not knowing this, the buddhas smile:
They know the solace in denial.

Freud and Jung could still go far
If they got to know their FPR.

Six Samsaric Realms: Preamble

2008-02-29T00:00:00.002-08:00

Master Dogen wrote, in Shobogenzo chapter 4, Ikka no Myoju, The One Bright Pearl:

"Do not worry about falling or not falling into the six states of cause and effect. They are the original state of being right from head to tail, which is never unclear, and the bright pearl is its features and the bright pearl is its eyes."

"The six states of cause and effect" is originally ROKUDO NO INGA. INGA means cause and effect. ROKU means six. DO means ways, states, worlds, realms. ROKUDO NO INGA expresses the experience that, our karma being as it is, in our everyday life we seem to transmigrate endlessly through a cyclical succession of states -- traditionally enumerated as hell, followed by the realms of hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, human beings and gods.

When I was discussing my understanding of this teaching recently with an old friend in sitting-zen, he made a remark along the lines of: "Mike, you are not saying anything new. People long ago made the connection between the six realms and psychological states."

Now, maybe I am wrong on this. Maybe I protest too much. Maybe James Cohen, in his wisdom and compassion, is correct in his internet diagnosis of me (never having met me face to face)and his resulting proposal that I should be reconsidered for re-admission into Dogen Sangha only after completing a course of psychological counselling under a qualified professional. Maybe I am wrong, but I do not see the transmigration through the six samsaric realms, which I have been experiencing now for more than 25 years from the vantage point of sitting in lotus four times a day, as primarily a psychological problem. Neither do I sit this transmigration as primarily a problem of imbalance of the autonomic nervous system -- although comparing the insight of psychologists such as Cohen and the like, with Gudo's insight into the primacy in sitting-zen of the physical body, might be like comparing the light of a firefly and the brightness of a full mooon.

What I am proposing is that the six samsaric realms are primarily neither psychological nor autonomic states, but primarily vestibular states. I am talking on the basis of what Master Nagarjuna called pratitya-samutpada, grounded arising -- rising from real grounds. Rising from the ground, in the case of every real human being from Sakyamuni on down and back up again, has invariably been primarily a vestibular problem.

(1) Raw Fear

2008-02-29T00:00:00.001-08:00

It has come to this -- confessing in public what it is like being in hell.

Truly being in hell is sitting in full lotus at dawn in Japan, spine held rigidly up, chin forcefully pulling back and down into the neck, your whole system caught in the frozen double-handed grip of the fear paralysis response vs the baby panic reflex, while back in England the woman you love is retiring for the night to the bed of another bloke. And nobody is to blame but your stupid self.

All my clumsy efforts to promote the Buddha's teaching, from doing donkey work for Gudo in Japan to more recent groping in England for the meaning of "vestibular re-education," have been grounded in the fearful fire of hell.

In the final analysis, as Master Dogen truly says, in hell or not is nothing to worry about. Truly being is the thing. And as an easy and joyful gate to truly being there is, according to Master Dogen, no greater Dharma-gate than sitting in full lotus -- even if it is only bodily, with a posture that is rigidly fixed on the horns of a hellish dilemma.

Left to its own devices, fear paralysis would quench the fires of hell, and bring all to a totally peaceful conclusion -- parinirvana. But as long as the deathly pallor of fear paralysis is opposed by the red flush of its dialectic opposite, the most primitive of all vestibular reflexes, the baby panic reflex, the fires of hell continue to burn.

Ah, the fires of hell!

I remember one morning at the end of 1985, sitting opposite Gudo in his office, in a very agitated state. It was shortly after a short holiday in England. "The fire is burning again," observed Gudo, stating the obvious.

Ah, the fires of hell!

It is a principle that, in the heat of a moment, I am always liable to forget, but even the fires of hell are subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

(2) Gravitational Insecurity & General Disorientation

2008-02-28T23:59:00.000-08:00

The state of the hungry ghost, as I continue to experience it, when I wake up every morning, and at the beginning of every sitting before I get round to slowly bowing and swaying, is akin to being seasick. There is a perfectionistic yearning to feel secure on solid ground and thence to know: where is the vertical? where is the horizon? where is up and where is down? where am I and where am I going? what do I really want? The hungry ghost yearns to know the answer to questions like these, but he does not know and cannot know, at least not as definitely as he would like. He feels insecure primarily with respect to where he is within the gravitational field, and hence insecure with respect to everything.

Being a hungry ghost in search of solid ground, I sailed from Tokyo to the Pacific island of Okinawa in April 1982, and landed at the karate-dojo of Sensei Morio Higaonna, Chief Instructor of the International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Federation. Higaonna Sensei was a devotee of traditional karate-do, based on traditional forms called kata. One kata was emphasized as particularly important, and that was sanchin kata. Higaonna Sensei described this practice as kihon no naka no kihon -- basic to that which is basic.

To practice sanchin kata under the watchful eye and incredibly powerful and communicative hands of Higaonna Sensei, which is what I am doing in the above photo, was one of the most grounding and awakening experiences my vestibular/proprioceptive system has ever had.

After one such training session, I got a lift on the back of the motorbike of a fellow trainee to the English language bookshop in Okinawa, where I spotted this:

The title appealed strongly to the hungry ghost in me: it hinted at a promise of certainty, security, as to what the fundamental rules of Zen were.

Then, when I opened the book and saw two photos of Master Kodo Sawaki sitting bolt upright in the full lotus posture, head shaved, clothed immaculately in a traditional kasaya, I did not need to read a single word. I proceeded directly to the till.

Back at the hotel where I was staying, I started to try following the instructions that the book set out, and showed the book to my friend and mentor in karate-do, David Essoyan, and even took a photo of him reading it (note the evidence of recent work on punching board on David's first two knuckles!).

David's eyes in the photo are the eyes of a man who has befriended, has taken under his wing, and is looking directly at, a hungry ghost. I was a hungry ghost then, just beginning its sitting-zen life, and I am a hungry ghost now with 26 years of sitting-zen behind me. The main difference between my state then and my state now is that I am much more clear than I was about what the fundamental basis of the state of the hungry ghost is.

A pioneer in the field of occupational therapy named A.Jean Ayres, in her book Sensory Integration and the Child, coined the phrase "gravitational insecurity." When I met Peter Blythe of INPP Chester in 1998, Peter clarified for me the connection between this state of gravitational insecurity, familiar to hungry ghosts everywhere, and aberrance of the baby balance reflex or, to give it its scientific name, the tonic labyrinthine reflex (TLR).

When, during my training at INPP Chester, I tested my father for immaturity of the TLR, by moving his head backward and forward, he coped quite well with his eyes open. But when I asked him to close his eyes and tilted his head backwards, he simply fell over, as if he had drunk 12 pints of beer. Aberrance of this vestibular reflex, the TLR, it seems, is a genetic trait of the Cross family.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

(3) Of Reptiles, Cats, Donkeys, Sheep & Monkeys

2008-02-28T23:58:00.000-08:00

Shown below are some illustrations of another vestibular reflex stimulated by extension of the neck. In the pure form of this reflex, called the Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR), when the neck is extended forelimbs (or arms) extend while hindlimbs (or hips & knees) flex.

In human development, the STNR enables the baby, at around 6 months old, to get itself up off its tummy for the first time, and point its own spine upward. In evolutionary terms, after our ancestors slithered out of the primeval swamp and practiced crawling on the belly for a few millions years, it must have been the STNR, or some precursor thereof, that enabled us, for the first time, to get up on to all fours.

In an increasing number of sittings as I have got older, my sitting-zen does not seem to get this far up the developmental/evolutionary food chain, in which case I try to find a bit of ease in my pre-STNR, sub-simean slumped condition -- as opposed to the alternative of trying to show a more human form by stiffening my neck into extension.

(4) Half Way to Being Human

2008-02-28T23:57:00.002-08:00

The asura is a good old friend of mine, an energetic but contrary old bugger.

He stands in opposition to everybody and everything. Many know him as one who defies gods, but he is much more than a fighter of devas. He opposes beings in hell as well, and not always in a malevolent way; rather, by the example of his own vigorous action, he points and shouts the way out.

Reptiles and amphibians, all beings that crawl around on their bellies, propelled by cross-pattern movements of their limbs: these are both encouraged along and held back by the asura. Sheep and donkeys, creatures that walk and run on all fours: these also are originally directed forward in their development by the asura; but then the asura stands in the way of their futher progress. No further development, no fuller integration of limb movements, is possible until the asura is well and truly defeated. The asura lays the foundation for, and then -- until conquered -- gets in the way of, cross-pattern movements of the limbs, in any of the six realms.

To beings in hell, hungry ghosts, and animals, the asura points the way up to the human realm, yelling "Get a move on!" To James Cohen and the like, to the celestial devas of this world, he points the way back down, yelling: "Reality is not primarily psychological, you pretentious air heads! Pratitya-samutpada means GROUNDED arising."

The asura exhibits, very strongly and manifestly, what the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex is and what the ATNR does -- splitting everything in half, one-sidedly. When the head turns and the eyes look to the left, messages are sent, and energy is made available, for the left arm and leg (the jaw limbs) to extend, and the right arm and leg to flex.

I cannot claim the credit for identifying the connection between the asura and the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex. The credit for that goes to Tadashi Fukuda.

In a 1965 paper for the Psychological Review, the Alexander teacher Frank Pierce Jones cited Fukuda's paper in a sub-section titled Head-Neck Reflexes in Man:

"In human beings, the influence of the head-neck reflexes is masked by patterns of voluntary activity. The mechanisms are clearly present, however. They have been frequently demonstrated in infants (Gesell, 1954; Peiper 1963), young children (Landau, 1923; Schaltenbrand, 1925), patients with neurological diseases (Simons, 1923: Walshe, 1923), and in normal adults (Hellebrandt, Schade, & Cairns, 1962; Tokizane, 1951; Wells, 1944). A large number of drawings and photographs to illustrate the patterns of head-neck reflexes as they manifest themselves in dancing, sport, and everyday activity were brought together by Fukuda (1957)."

(Frank Pierce Jones, "Method for Changing Stereotyped Response Patterns by the Inhibition of Certain Postural Sets"; Psychological Review Vol. 72, pp. 196-214)

I do not have a copy of Fukuda's 1957 paper, but I have an old photocopy of a later paper by Fukuda which contains the following observations:

"It is rather surprising to find that artists of ancient times perceived the presence of the tonic neck reflex by their extremely sharp observation of their subjects and expressed it in their creations. A. Guttich (1924) carefully inspected many old Greek pieces of sculpture and discovered that the role of the tonic neck reflex underlied the composition of those statues. With the use of the concrete examples he pointed out that the lower extremity, corresponding to the jaw limbs, showed extension in various standing statues expressing static postures and that the other arm, corresponding to the skull limb, tended to be flexed. As for dynamic postures, he took the discus-thrower of Myron as an example and pointed out that the arm holding the discus, which corresponds to the jaw limb, was stretched maximally."

"In seeking similar examples in works of Japanese artists of by gone eras, the author was able to find many in which the tonic neck reflex is typically expressed.
Fig. 36 shows a Buddhist Statue: in the upper extremities the extension of the jaw limb and flexion of the skull limb may be observed clearly and, accordingly, a strong sensation of tension coupled with energy may be felt. Fig. 37 shows the God of thunder drawn by the very famous old-time Japanese painter, Sotatsu Tawaraya. Here, a perfect expression of the tonic neck reflex may be seen: i.e. extension of the two jaw limbs and flection of the two skull limbs. It is worthy of note that in this picture, not only is the head turned to the left but also the eyes are deviated to the left."

("Studies in Dynamic Posture from the Viewpoint of Postural Reflexes"; T. Fukuda,1961)

(5) Being a Human Being, with Faulty Sensory Appreciation

2008-02-28T23:57:00.001-08:00

For a normal, healthy human being to assume an upright posture, as every parade-ground instructor and Soto Zen master knows, is simply a matter of making the requisite amount of physical and mental effort.... ATTE...N... SHUN!

Truly, the path to hell is paved with such intentions.

What makes a human truly human? Some would say it is language, in which case the vital thing might be the areas of the brain and body devoted to speech and language. Some have said that the ability to use the hands to make tools was vital to the evolution of our species.

But sitting upright in the lotus posture, with ease and in stillness, does not involve either speech or manufacturing production. No, for this particular sphere of activity the vital thing might be human upright balance, for which evolution has equipped us with eyes, ears, and the sense organs of proprioception (muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs, and joint receptors), input from all of which is integrated, for better or for worse, by our vestibular system.

A vestibular reflex discussed earlier, the symmetrical tonic neck reflex (STNR), is exhibited not only by human beings from the age of about 6 months, but also by animals like cats, dogs and monkeys. The thing that makes human beings different from monkeys, from a postural point of view, is the ability of at least some of us to inhibit the STNR.

Going into a position of standing like a monkey, with the neck extended while hips and knees remain flexed, can help a person's vestibular system get re-acquainted with the STNR. Only when the vestibular system has been thoroughly acquainted with the STNR: only then can a person manifest inhibition of the STNR, by standing and walking truly upright -- neck, hips, and knees all effortlessly extended, without strain.

At this point in the discussion, I must pause, again, and ask if anybody fancies joining me for a banana? Or how about a peanut?

Inhibition of the STNR, in the natural course of an infant's development, is accomplished basically by movements, the messages for which are hard-wired deep in the infant's brain. Rocking back and forward on hands and knees, for example, facilitates inhibition of the STNR. Or, for another example, performing prostrations facilitates inhibition of the STNR.

These movements performed on hands and knees, whether performed instinctively or consciously, via hard-wiring or enlightened intention, facilitate physiological inhibition of the vestibular reflex.

Ray Evans was a human being with deep insight into the importance of the vestibular system, and the associated problem that FM Alexander identified as "faulty sensory appreciation."

It is because of faulty sensory appreciation that good intentions pave the way to hell.

On the basis of his deep insight, Ray introduced me to the field of work that he sometimes used to call "vestibular re-education." Alexander himself originally called it "Man's Supreme Inheritance." Alexander's first book was titled: Man's Supreme Inheritance -- Conscious Guidance and Control in Relation to Human Evolution in Civilization.

Alexander, you see, from the very beginning, consciously introduced consciousness into the picture. He knew that his work, though it addressed the vestibular-based problem of faulty sensory appreciation, was "the most mental thing there is."

The vestibular system, at brainstem level, is not only at the centre of processing balance-related sensory input from eyes, ears, skin, muscle spindles, et cetera; it is also integrates information coming from other sensory-processing centres, such as the cerebellum.

Detailed discussion of brain anatomy is a minefield I do not wish to enter. But this much I do know, from karate training onward: the cerebellum can be consciously re-trained.

The point I am driving at is this: the vestibular system is susceptible to re-education not only via movement and non-movement but also, within the context of movement and non-movement, via clarity of intention. Human upright balance is not a purely instinctive thing but is also a function of intelligence. The backward step to a condition of greater ease and stillness in upright sitting, CAN BE LEARNED.

Clearly understanding the need for re-education of the vestibular system, through learning how to think, Ray Evans often used to say, "Human beings have not yet learned to think in this way."

By "thinking," Ray meant something other than doing based on feeling, and something other than intellectual thinking.

Alexander work involves what is called in Alexander shorthand "thinking up." Thinking up involves a kind of evolutionary leap from reliance on purely reflex mechanisms of upright balance, which are liable to be faulty. Thinking up doesn't mean thinking about something; it means thinking itself, which is not what people think of as thinking. So maybe this new kind of thinking should not be called "thinking" at all. Maybe it should be called instead "non-thinking."

"Non-thinking." Hmmm. Where have I come across that phrase before?

What "non-thinking" is, I honestly don't know. As the years go by, I hope that I gain, bit by bit, more clarity in regard to what it isn't. That is to say, I hope I understand more clearly that non-thinking is neither doing based on feeling, nor intellectual thinking. Whatever I think "non-thinking" is, it is always not that.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum.

(6) Homage to Odysseus, Adonis, Sigmund, Carl, and other Celestial Stars

2008-02-28T23:56:00.000-08:00

Here I pay homage not only to the mythical heroes in whose tracks I have deludedly aspired to follow; I pay homage not only to the likes of Odysseus, Adonis, and Narcissus, but also to real stars, past and present, of modern pscyhology, whose wisdom has gone far beyond earthly concerns like vestibular dysfunction. Homage to Sigmund. Homage to Carl Gustav. Homage to Jundo Jim.

Opening Pandora's Box

2008-02-27T21:48:00.000-08:00

In 1998-99, after completing a 3-year Alexander teacher training course, I followed in the footsteps of my Alexander Head of Training, Ray Evans, and trained at INPP Chester (www.inpp.org) as a... what? A developmental practitioner. A specialist in developmental re-education. A reflex inhibition therapist. A vestibular re-educator. A teacher of developmental movement. A specialist in the diagnosis and remediation of aberrant primitive reflexes. A neuro-developmental therapist. There is no adequate label. Peter Blythe, who founded INPP more than 30 years ago, once commented that INPP's field of work was in the middle way between medicine and education.

My intention in going to train at Chester was not to get a professional qualification and to work in the field; I just wanted to deepen my understanding of this secret knowledge Ray seemed to have about the vestibular system and these deep and mysterious things called primitive reflexes. The training, however, involved taking some people through reflex inhibition programmes as case studies, and one thing has continued, in a small way, to lead to another. Thus, over the past ten years directing "The Middle Way Re-education Centre," I have been increasingly unable not to see the truth of Ray's contention that "It all comes back to the vestibular."

I wrote an article endeavoring to highlight the importance of the vestibular system and the vestibular reflexes, posted last May to my Middle Way blog:

http://the-middle-way.blogspot.com/2007/05/fourfold-criterion-before-knowing-and.html

Nobody has seemed to realize how important that article might be in clarifying the true meaning of the Buddha's teaching for the modern scientific age, just as I was very slow to recognize the very profound relevance to my own situation of what Ray was alluding to.

To be honest, mind you, Ray was never very good at talking about the primitive reflexes. Ray was a wide seeker and connector, and he tended to go off at tangents. My real inspiration to do the training at INPP came from a talk that an INPP-trained developmental practitioner and former schoolteacher, Jane Field, gave to a small group of Alexander teachers. Jane was very good at talking simply and clearly about the primitive reflexes. I also remember Jane arriving late for the talk, hot and very flushed -- demonstrating to us what an aberrant Moro, or baby panic reflex, really meant in practice.

Peter Blythe was even clearer than Jane. I learned more about the reflexes in my first week up in Chester from Peter than I had learned in the previous three years under Ray. Peter Blythe's father, Henry Blythe, had been a stage hypnotist, and Peter in his early years had been a chorister. There was something hypnotic in Peter's use of his voice; he could hold your attention rapt while he lay bare what he called "the building blocks of human living."

In training us as developmental therapists, Peter said our job was to be like car mechanics, fixing the nuts and bolts of the human mechanism. He recommended that, when working with adults, we should point them in the direction of psychological counselling to help them deal with the process of change. I never bought into that recommendation. I have never been drawn to talking therapies. The challenge, to me, has always been to find teachers who could really teach me something. So far I haven't come across any psycho-therapist who seemed to fit the bill. I have met several Alexander teachers, in contrast, who definitely fit the bill.

Peter used to say that it was a devil of a job to test Alexander teachers for residual primitive reflexes, because their compensatory mechanisms tended to be so well honed. But I am sure Peter could sense, as Ray seemed to be able to sense during my Alexander teacher training, the deep underlying weaknesses in my vestibular system. Peter told the class, somewhat disoncertingly, that if I came to him as a prospective client/patient, he would discourage me from undertaking a reflex inhibition programme for fear of "opening Pandora's box."

This came up in the course of some Alexander work yesterday. An Alexander teacher who I was working with, in my bare feet, commented how turned out my little toes are. She said that when people hold in their fear, the little toes also tend to be held in, but my toes show the opposite tendency. That seemed to make a kind of sense.

In Alexander work we talk a lot about "allowing." But Alexander teachers, in our deep human fear of being wrong, are very easily liable to turn allowing into just a tiny bit of its opposite, i.e. controlling, manipulating, organizing, arranging.

In the background, I seem to hear the voice still resonating -- compassionate, feisty, vibrant, alive -- of the late great Marjory Barlow, FM Alexander's niece. "Listen, love. There is no such animal as being right. There really isn't. Being wrong is the best friend we have got in this work. Being prepared to be wrong is the golden key."

To she of the jewel in the lotus, a true bodhisattva of compassion:

Om mani padme hum.

Anatomy of a Human Mistake

2008-02-27T00:58:00.000-08:00

A human mistake, in general, has a sensory component and a motor component.

On the sensory side, the problem is that we fail to read correctly the situation in which we are in. To express this problem FM Alexander coined the phrase "faulty sensory appreciation." He thought that the way to improve our sensory appreciation was to learn to use ourselves better, which is primarily a matter of re-training the vestibular system.

On the motor side, the problem is one of making decisions about what to do and what not to do, and executing those decisions as intended. Again, Alexander opined that, in the interests of better decision making and more reasonable actions, our primary task was to learn to use ourselves better, which, again, is primarily a matter of what Ray Evans called "vestibular re-education."

When I left Japan to return to England in December 1994, having enthusiastically devoured Alexander's writings, I was full of hope that Alexander training would enable me to eliminate the kind of stupid mistakes, major and minor, that had littered my everyday life until then.

But those hopes were all totally false.

Quad Erat Demonstrandum.

Human Beings -- Make Mistakes

2008-02-26T02:50:00.000-08:00

That's Rule Number One:

Human beings make mistakes.

Being in Hell - Hypersensitivity

2008-02-24T01:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as part of my work trying to help children with immature vestibular reflexes, I was testing the listening thresholds at different frequencies of an eight year old girl, a very delicate and sensitive little creature. The earphones of my audiometer are a bit heavy and tight, so we kept pausing for a rest. But by the end of the test the little girl was weeping in her mum’s arms -- “Oh mummy, it hurts.”

Strange as it may sound coming from a karate black-belt who used to enjoy playing rugby as a back-row forward, I am a bit like that. No, to tell the truth, I am a lot like that.

For a couple of years around 1993-94, while living on the outskirts of Tokyo in Saitama Prefecture, I used to go to work in the city for a couple of days a week, staying at my friend’s flat in central Tokyo. I once commented to this friend that for those two days a week, I was living on fear. To go into Tokyo for me at that time was to enter hell. The stimuli I was exposing myself to were not particularly noxious ones -- trains crowded with orderly, self-restrained people, flourescent lights, humming computers, work to be done in an office staffed by thoroughly balanced and reasonable colleagues -- but I was hypersensitive to everything.

After getting back home on a Wednesday night, I would come back towards balance by, in between sitting-zen sessions, devoting myself to what I called my “donkey work” -- which mainly consisted of plodding through the Shobogenzo translation. I clearly remember around this time a conversation with Jeremy Pearson, who by then was living in Tokyo. “You are so sensitive, Mike!” Jeremy had commented, perceptively.

Actually that is how I am -- very, very sensitive. Too sensitive. The stuff that appears not to be so sensitive falls into the category, familiar to all good developmental therapists, of “compensatory mechanisms.”

Sensitivity, in the right proportions, may be a virtue. But too much of it is the essence of suffering, as is well known by all who retain an immature baby panic (or ‘Moro’) reflex, including many children and adults on the autistic spectrum and other beings in hell.

Lying Down Gatha for a Hungry Ghost

2008-02-23T02:06:00.000-08:00

Before all else my wish is

To let the neck be free.

For any worse than this is

I do not wish to be.

Two Big Mistakes

2008-02-15T03:46:00.001-08:00

What I have come to regard as my biggest mistake I alluded to in the last post but one on this blog: In my early 20s I threw myself recklessly into the service of Gudo Nishijima, feeling thereby to be putting myself literally in a safe pair of hands. In taking that reckless step, I failed to take into due account any possibility that Gudo, a certified Buddhist Patriarch, might have any fundamental shortcomings as a human being. And I failed to give due consideration to my own future happiness.

Gudo Nishijima always seemed to me to be a man of impeccably good intentions -- intentions of the kind, I am afraid, which pave the way to hell.

Gudo's aim has always been to "lead all people in the world" to salvation, by "promoting true Buddhism" aka "realism." In regard to the philosophy of realism, in my estimation, the brilliance of Gudo's mind is unsurpassed. So Gudo's intentions seemed to be good, and his philosophical understanding seemed to be brilliant. What his teaching turned out to lack -- and what, for me, Alexander's teaching explicitly aims to supply -- is clarity in regard to the proper means.

This Wednesday night my wife telephoned me from England (I am in France now) and told me that a cheque from Japan had arrived, together with a letter in which Gudo expresses his hope that I should share his happiness that the Shobogenzo translation has become profitable at last. I think that is like a baby offering an adult his teddy bear. It makes Gudo happy that his Shobogenzo project has finally turned a profit, and I think he sincerely wishes to share that happiness with me. Gudo's wish for me to be happy, I am sure, is real. His intention is good. It is not that Gudo has been greedy for profit. The profit is a sign for him that the project which has been a major part of his lifework, has finally become successful. That makes him very happy, and he wants to share the happiness with me.

What Gudo cannot see is that he is just manifesting to me again the view, which has informed all his actions relating to the translation of Shobogenzo into English, that the Shobogenzo project is his own personal project. When Gudo broke off our translation partnership in 1997, thereby breaking my heart, he did not break my heart deliberately. I think he did so uknowingly, accidentally, because he had not been able to get beyond his old view that the translation of Shobogenzo into English was his own personal job. He cannot drop off that view, because he does not want to drop off that view. Ironically, for a preacher of realism, he cannot spring free from this denial.

The original colour of heartbreak, I think, is white or pale blue. Heartbreak begins with shock, a mechanism closely related to the fear paralysis response, and with shock goes -- quod erat demonstrandum, ad nauseam, by yours truly-- the psychological mechanism of denial. Heartbreak is a kind of bereavement, not necessarily due to the death of a beloved person, but due to the loss of some cherished ideal or deeply held assumption. In Gudo's case, when I tried to explain to him in the 1980s the changed situation of our translation partnership by using the metaphor of building a house, telling him that I was not rebuilding a house that he had built, but rather building a new house from the ground up, he simply could not accept that. It was impossible for him to let go of the view that he was the main translator, and I was "rewriting my words in your beautiful English." Gudo was the translator and I was the rewriter. That was not up for further discussion. Anything other than that would constitute "a violation of my personal job."

Did it matter? I thought maybe not. But in fact it did matter, because out of the denial, out of the wrong view, came wrong action.

Thus, this latest letter, together with Gudo's recent emails along the same lines, proceeding though they might out of the best of intentions, because they are still based on the old wrong view, have only opened up in me all the old wounds. In spite of my vow in 1983 to accomplish an authentic translation, under the Buddhist Patriarch Gudo Nishijima, of Shobogenzo into English, and not to count the personal cost, I was cut off before getting to the end of my revision of Book 4 just by the suspicious mind of the Patriarch himself. The Shobogenzo translation has thus become for me a source of tremendous unhappiness -- a heart broken not once but bloody twice -- and that unhappiness cannot be allayed by any amount of money.

Three years ago, while I was here in France hoping to enjoy a week or two of simple living, I received an email from Gudo expressing his concern that James Cohen was out to take control of our joint copyright of Shobogenzo. In response, I simply begged Gudo to entrust the copyright to me. In so begging, I was not thinking about making the translation profitable. I was not thinking in a businesslike way, and still less in a legalistic way. What I was really doing was seeking a sign of genuine trust from father to broken-hearted son; I was hoping for a gesture of reconciliation.

Gudo initially agreed to my request, but then he changed his mind, and went the other way. He seemed to continue to feel a duty to protect the translation from adulteration from what he calls "Alexander Technique theory." So, instead of entrusting the copyright to me, after consultation with Cohen and others, he unilaterally drew up a contract for the POD publication of Shobogenzo and sent me the contract to sign as a fait accompli. Before the contract even arrived at my address, however, Gudo fell down and damaged his spine. Within a matter of weeks, his Zazen Dojo in Ichikawa was demolished. It was, as I see it, an awesome example of cause and effect working in the very short term.

Now Gudo sincerely hopes that I will share his happiness that the POD publication has turned a profit.

That Master Kodo Sawaki refused to accept young Gudo as a disciple, I think, says something not only about shortcomings on one side, but also about prajna on the other.

What kind of bloody fool was I to leave behind in England a woman I loved and who loved me, in order to return to Japan for years of lonely masturbation, and donkey-like service of Gudo Nishijima? The answer to that question is that I was a selfish an arrogant fool, and a jealous/unforgiving/intolerant fool to boot, who got exactly the teacher he deserved, along with other totally warranted karmic retribution. Cause and effect rules, OK.

A second big mistake related to the Shobogenzo translation, I think, was to entrust its publication to Michael J. Luetchford.

I did it, as far as I am aware at time of writing (ten to five in the morning!) for three reasons.

First, I failed to listen to my own intuition about MJL. The Lotus Sutra says: "This Sutra, even while the Tathagata is alive, [arouses] much hate and envy; how much more after his extinction!" [LS 2.152] Enough said on that.

Second were MJL's good points. These included getting me a job at a professional translation company where he had worked for many years, sewing for me a kesa and teaching me (with his wife Yoko) how to sew a kesa for myself, and generally showing dogged perseverance in his own service of the Dharma generally and Gudo Nishijima in particular. When MJL visited us in 1992 or 1993 at our house in Bushi, on the outskirts of Tokyo, and begged me in all sincerity to entrust the Shobogenzo publication to him, I didn't have the heart to refuse. I was what the Japanese call "amai" -- soft, but not in a good way: a sucker.

Third, by allowing MJL/Windbell to take charge of the publication, I could get my dirty paws on money from the Japan Foundation, and at the time in question, 1992/93, having just brought two sons into the world, I was even more preoccupied than usual with the issue of money.

GA SHAKU SHOZO SHO AKU GO
All the bad/wrong/harmful deeds I have done in the past

KAI YU MUSHI DON JIN CHI
All have stemmed, since times without beginning, from greed, anger, delusion.

JU SHIN KU I SHI SHOSHO
I have committed them through body, mouth, and mind.

ISSAI GA KON KAI SANGE.
I now totally confess them all.

Aberrant Reflexes and the Six Samsaric Realms

2008-02-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

A written vow I made to myself in 1983 to accomplish the translation of Shobogenzo into English without counting the personal cost -- in combination with some very bad decisions I took along the way -- brought me in its wake, amid a variety of lesser disappointments, two significant episodes of heartbreak. The first was in 1984, the second in 1997. If history repeats itself in a 13-year cycle, 2010 will not be a year for me to relish.

In one respect, I am fortunate to have had my heart twice broken, because this has given me redoubled opportunities to investigate in recurring cycles what the six states of cause and effect, the six samsaric realms, really are. Traditionally they are described as the states of (1) beings in hell (naraka in Sanskrit); (2) hungry ghosts (Skt: preta); (3) angry demons (Skt: asura); (4) animals (Skt: tiryagyoni); (5) humans (Skt: manusya); (6) gods (Skt: deva).

I have continued to experience these six states, cycle after cycle after cycle, in the ten years since I trained at INPP Chester as a developmental practitioner i.e. one who helps people (mainly children) towards better integration of aberrant primitive reflexes. As a result of my own samsaric cycling, although I can be very slow on the uptake when it comes to practical matters, even I have been unable, in the end, not to see a parallel between progression through the six samsaric states and developmental progression through the primitive reflexes.

For a baby to experience the white or blue of fear paralysis is one thing. For a baby to experience the red flush of a full-blown Moro reflex panic, is another thing. But for an adult to be caught in the grip of these two mutually opposing fear responses, as they fight it out with each other for dominance, is hell itself (1).

An aberrant tonic labyrinthine reflex (TLR) manifests itself in the disoriented state of the hungry ghost (2), who knows that he badly wants something but, without a properly functioning vestibular system, is unable to discern clearly what it is or to direct himself towards it.

The asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR) , as sometimes manifested in temple statues of guardian deities, is a pattern I know well from a past life as a winner of karate tournaments: The face is turned towards an arm that is outstretched in a long punch, while the opposite fist is brandished triumphantly behind the back of the head, arm flexed, bicep bulging. The mouth is open and emanating from the bowels is a loud yell -- Aaaagh! It is the pose of the asura (3), an angry, god-defying demon. The ATNR is an asymmetrical pattern that opposes the symmetrical pattern of the Moro/TLR. It arises out of fear/imbalance, and at the same time it is a manifestation of strong intention, bordering on anger, that breaks a person out of the frozen grip of fear and into vigorous action.

Inhibition of the symmetrical tonic neck reflex (STNR) is, in postural terms, the difference between monkeys and the like (4) and human beings (5). Infants and monkeys who haven't fully inhibited this reflex still shuffle around on their bottoms, or go on all fours, or walk not quite upright with hips and knees still partially flexed, their knuckles dangling ape-like towards the ground. Only those who have fully inhibited this reflex are able to stand fully upright.

Integration of primitive and postural reflexes brings with it greater possibilities of conscious control, of consciousness of freedom. But this kind of consciousness all-too-easily becomes disconnected from the underlying energetic/reflex substrate in which it is truly grounded, in which case consciousness of human freedom all too easily turns into the ungrounded, precarious, airy-fairy state of a celestial being (6)... and so the cycle continues.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Master Dogen wrote, in Shobogenzo chapter 4, Ikka no Myoju, The One Bright Pearl:

"Do not worry about falling or not falling into the six states of cause and effect. They are the original state of being right from head to tail, which is never unclear, and the bright pearl is its features and the bright pearl is its eyes."

If it is not too pretentious of me to try to echo Master Dogen's words with some words of my own:

From my own ab-errant broken-hearted path through life, which has led me into sitting-zen, into Alexander work, and into investigation of the vestibular reflexes, I am learning that it is not necessarily at the end of the developmental process that true value lies. Rather, it may be just in the developmental process itself that true value lies.

It may be, in short, that the pearl is in the lotus.

OM. MANI PADME. HUM.

My Biggest Mistake

2008-02-10T03:30:00.000-08:00

Living in reality and preaching denial is one thing.

Living in denial and preaching reality is another.

Nobody knowingly stole my translation work from me and falsely claimed it as their own.

But a person living in denial tends not to know, and tends not to want to know, what they are actually doing.

My biggest mistake in life was, in my early 20s, to gamble all my eggs in the basket of a preacher of reality who was living in denial.

2008-01-31T02:33:00.001-08:00

My wife has lots of cause to know

How mature I am.

Yesterday she watched me throw

My toys out of the pram.

Non-Buddhist Arithmetic

2008-01-21T00:45:00.000-08:00

The quest for authenticity

And turning of the light

Turns into, all too easily,

Trying to be right,

Which, sure as two plus one is three,

Makes neck and shoulders tight.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum