Zen in the time of Trump, or, The Unreality Show

Hakuin

After the 2016 election, a debate broke out in the Bay Area Zen world.  The instigator was Juryu Mark, a prominent Soto Zen priest and, amongst many other things, head teacher of the Buddhadharma Sangha of San Quentin State Prison.  He was not in a mood of fatalistic acceptance, and wrote a piece entitled All Are Welcome At San Francisco Zen Center! (…to join us in resisting Trump).  Responding to a measured message of openness and acceptance from SFZC, he wrote:

As someone more free than the Abbots to say what’s on my mind, I’d like to offer an alternative, another approach to unity.  It might sound something like this:  San Francisco Zen Center unequivocally rejects the hateful worldview of President-Elect Donald Trump, and vows together to actively oppose its implementation.  All are welcome to join us in this.

It needed to be said.  A local Zen teacher once told me there are three kinds of Buddhism:  Mahayana, Theravada, and California.  The latter has done much good, and I am deeply sympathetic to the teaching, but I find there is also sometimes a sense of complacency.  At its best, Zen calls us on our bullshit, and I thought Juryu Mark's piece made a pretty good start.  But it prompted some deeper insights, I think.

Here is Juryu Mark's co-blogger, Hondo Dave Rutschman-Byler:

When I was a kid, in Uruguay and Argentina under the dictatorships, I learned some things. I don’t mean learned in an abstract or intellectual way—I was too young for that—but in a visceral, embodied way. Something about violence and terror, something about silence. Hard to put into words. 

Partly because of this, I think, I’ve never believed that it couldn’t happen here. Of course it could happen here. It can happen anywhere. It does happen anywhere. 

(We can describe the “it” a lot of different ways: fascism, authoritarianism, bigotry. I don’t really care what we call it.)

So last year, when Donald Trump began his campaign for President, I recognized something. My body recognized something. Little twinges, little movements. I could smell it. My body knew...

The bodhisattva vow, our radical beautiful bodhisattva vow, is vast, and I appreciate deeply the way that our vow can never leave out Donald Trump or his supporters, can never fall into easy or self-congratulatory assurances that we know what’s right or can see the whole picture.

But a bodhisattva responds to the cries of the world. Has to respond. 

So that’s a tension. That’s the koan that Jiryu laid out, and called for us not to wiggle out of.

In a later post ("Reading Hakuin in the Age of Trump"), Hondo Dave praised Hakuin as "the Zen master of desperation and anxiety and dread," and he's not wrong.  Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1768) was a leading figure in Japanese Buddhism, and lived in a society where the political leadership made Donald Trump look like Laura Bush.  A new book of his teaching record came out this year, Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn, a title that does seem to fit with the zeitgeist.

Hakuin took notice of political affairs, and had very little patience for those who imagine they can change the world just sitting on a cushion:

Just doing zazen won't bring any merit.  If they’re really Zen priests, no different from Shakamuni or Bodhidharma, they’ll be able to bundle up ‘Who is the true master?’ ‘Hear the sound of one hand,’ and heaven and hell together and wipe their butts with them. This is a place where the devil, his heretical minions, and the cow-headed and horse-headed lictors and demons of hell must never show their faces. Because of that . . . [undecipherable]” (annotation).

A shame about the text but Hondo Dave can finish that sentence:
"I have to act, or our talk about bodhisattva practice is just a game. And I don’t think it’s a game."

• Juryu Mark - "All Are Welcome At San Francisco Zen Center! (…to join us in resisting Trump)" (link)
• Hondo Dave - "Our Practice Now" (link)
• Juryu Mark - "Jiryu Hates People!  Don’t Be Like Jiryu!" (link)
• Hondo Dave - "Reading Hakuin in the Age of Trump" (link)
• Hakuin - Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn (link)