ZEN MESTEREK ZEN MASTERS
« Zen főoldal
« vissza a Terebess Online nyitólapjára
Shozan Jack Haubner
pen name
https://tricycle.org/author/shozanjackhaubner/
https://www.lionsroar.com/author/shozan-jack-haubner/
https://shozanjhaubner.medium.com/
https://www.patreon.com/ShozanJackHaubner
Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk
by Shozan Jack Haubner
Shambhala, 2013American Buddhist monk Haubner (a pseudonym) asks his readers to “[p]lease be embarrassed for me” in provocative essays exploring his experiences of Zen. The author’s search to “grow into a true human being” is described with startling metaphors, acute insights, and humor (his seduction by the “lush, seething dharma” of American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s writing is priceless). Haubner writes of defecating in his robes rather than leave his post at a meditation session; musing on the abortion “koan” due to a pregnancy scare; tormenting his oddball kitchen assistant. Tender portraits emerge as Haubner brings hard-won Zen insights to the legacy of a sometimes violent, “radical conservative” father, and finds a beloved mentor in a hard-living former Zen monk. The collection is uneven: funny, self-deprecating essays about the hard realities of life as a Zen monk jostle against sometimes self-indulgent dissections of his nastier traits. Overall, Haubner’s unorthodox take on the spiritual search, marked by moments of grace, and his strength as an essayist will win over a specific audience willing to accept his dare. Some women readers may find it to be offensive lad lit.
Single white monk: tales of death, failure, and bad sex (although not necessarily in that order)
by Shozan Jack Haubner
Shambhala, 2017Haubner (Zen Confidential), a Zen monk and 2012 Pushcart Prize winner, describes the ordinary humanness of life as a Zen monk in this witty memoir. The first half consists of reflections on his “personal mythology,” like the first time he felt “the call of the void” (the nothingness at the heart of many Buddhist teachings) and the time he jumped the monastery wall to visit a brothel to satisfy his urges. Along the way he offers beautiful reworkings of Buddhist noble truths. “Brokenness doesn’t need fixing,” he writes, but rather “needs company” by “pressing our wounds together.” Haubner is forthcoming with his failings and insecurities, particularly in the second half, which is concerned largely with the inside details of a sex scandal surrounding his former teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Rather than making excuses for Roshi’s abuse of power, Haubner asks “[H]ow can good people manifest bad things?” Enlightenment does not guarantee someone’s goodness, he concludes. Haubner’s book is a sometimes confused journey, but it is also an honest and heartfelt questioning of what it means to be a flawed human caught in powerful currents of karma.
Shozan Jack Haubner is an ordained Rinzai Zen priest and was a student of Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. He has written to memoirs (Zen Confidential, Single White Monk) about his experiences studying with Sasaki.
Sasaki's Dharma Lineage
[…]
白隱慧鶴 Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769)
峨山慈棹 Gasan Jitō (1727-1797)
隱山惟琰 Inzan Ien (1751-1814)
太元孜元 Taigen Shigen (1768-1837)
大拙承演 Daisetsu Jō'en (1797–1855)
独園承珠 Dokuon Jōshu (1819-1895) [荻野 Ogino]
盤龍禪礎 Banryū Zenso (1849-1935) [松原 Matsubara]
承天宗杲 Jōten Sōkō (1871-1958) [三浦 Miura]
杏山承周 Kyōzan Jōshū (1907-2014) [佐々木 Sasaki]
All Your Koan Questions Answered Here!!
by Shozan Jack Haubner
Well, not really… (re: title).
But a lot of you have flung koan-related queries my way. It’s something people wonder about. Or are suspicious about. (I’m looking at you, Soto people!!)
Koan practice is just that. A practice. Like chanting or sitting or tenzoing. I’m pretty sure the historical Buddha figure never went into Sanzen sweating balls over a koan, because koans as we Zennies practice them today weren’t invented yet. But that Buddha guy did pretty okay in the enlightenment game.
So koan practice is not something to get your boxer briefs in a knot about. The worst mistake on the planet, which many of us Rinzai folks make, is to try and become a Koan King. It never works. You just get attached to the teacher and you become a nerdy fanboy of old obscure koan texts without really, as they say, “penetrating the Great Matter.”
I heard a Neil Young song recently. He was talking about love. I liked his message. It’s paradoxical, like all good messages. The more you care about something, the more it means to you? The more you need to just let go of it. I’ve struggled with this my whole life. If you really really care, you can’t hang on. In love, so too in koan practice.
Sayeth Neil:
Love is a rose but you better not pick it/
It only grows when it’s on the vine/
A handful of thorns and you’ll know you’ve missed it/
You lose your love when you say the word mine/
Mine….mine….MINE!
Recently a Zen practitioner emailed me his version of the Koan Blues. I’ll give you his question and then my answer.
“Hi Jack. I have a question for you about koan practice. I’ve been working with my current teacher on koans for more than ten years now, after experiencing something of an opening with my first koan. Far from clarifying the matter though, I find the practice more frustrating than anything and reinforces my feeling like a failure. I think my teacher almost gives me an answer sometimes out of a sense of pity. I’ve seriously considered stopping koan practice and just continuing with shkantaza, but my teacher encourages me to continue. Do you think koan practice is worth it? I could never give up zazen practice; the difference it’s made in my life is undeniable, but feeling like I’m banging my head against the wall is just giving me a headache. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.”
“Phew. Great question. My brother, I know that feeling of being frustrated in koan practice. I don’t have any answers. But if you have a teacher with whom you can connect, then why not keep going to koan practice but without the expectation that you can pass?
Koan practice is kind of (if you ask me) a pretext to interact one-on-one with the teacher, to get a lesson-in-motion and have the teacher manifest the dharma with you. The koan system comes out of strict (militaristic?) Japanese ‘dojo’ culture and isn’t always a great fit for Western personalities. My mentor used to tell me that you get the hang of it, that there’s a certain special ‘language’ (non verbal of course) for answering koans.
Meanwhile I was always trying to blast forth from a place beyond any such ‘language.’ This resulted in a lot of, ahem, performative koan practice. Shouting, jumping up and down, making an ass of myself. Honestly, I’ve never been a star koan practitioner.
It’s a sticky whickett. It does you no good to attach to koan practice or your teacher’s approval. But there he is, failing you every time, and you can’t help but think that your practice is stuck. But that’s all koans are, a practice, an exercise. They’re not the final word on anything.
Ultimately I think of koan practice as an extension of my zazen practice. When I give my answer it’s with the same intention and energy and self-forgetting that I practice on the cushion while following my breath. Don’t think, just do. Without any expectation. The expectation and hope and attachment to passing is what kills you. Every time. It turns you into a koan slave!!
Can you fail at zazen? Not really. Your practice belongs to you, it’s all you, good and bad. Can you fail at being you? Similarily, can you really fail a koan? If so, how? Answer this for yourself, not for your teacher.
By the way, he probably IS giving you the answer. They DO that in Japan a lot, I had a teacher there who literally gave me the answer to the koan, over and over. My job was to manifest it back at him exactly as he had manifested it before me. I kept thinking I had to ‘make it my own.’ But nope. Just mirror me, he was saying without saying. It was humbling. And perfect.”
