This is a delightful comedy about two middle-aged brothers whose lives are falling apart. They decide to go together to a Sōtō monastery in Japan to find healing. There they open to each other and switch roles. This is a warm, funny and tender movie, with a wry Zen theme.

This documentary follows the lives of the Carthusian monks. These monks live the strictest rule of any of the Catholic religious orders, for the priests live as hermits in separate little houses with gardens, served by brothers who do the farm work and minimally contact the outside world. Otherwise they live and work each inside their cells surrounding a cloistered courtyard, except for the daily round of worship, including 2 to 3 hours of Gregorian chant starting at midnight. Once a week they eat together, and once a month they go out for a walk in the countryside, two by two. They receive no visitors and their monastery is enclosed. And so they have continued since their foundation in 1080.

This movie is mesmerizing. The soundtrack is only the natural country sounds, and the footsteps and chanting of the monks. This singing silence includes the brother that calls the wild cats he feeds, and an interview with an aged blind monk who is radiant with love. Different sections are separated by long closeups of the individual monks who gaze back with burning eyes.

This is another remarkable documentary, oddly like "Into Great Stillness," this time about Korean nuns at Baek Hung Temple in South Korea. This temple is known for its strict Zen practice. The movie takes place during the winter intensive period from November 29, 2001 to February 26, 2002, including a 1-week sleepless period that we know as the Rohatsu sesshin. There is a short break for a lovely New Year's celebration in which some neighboring monks visit, and they feast and play some traditional games together. Later on, there is another break while the nuns go on pilgrimage to another temple.

There are subtitles but they are minimal and not intrusive. There is also not a sound track, except for natural sounds, and we can share the nuns' concentration and silence.

The Gateless Barrier translated by Robert Aitken, Rōshi

Reviewed by Ace Davis

From Dharma Currents, Early Summer: June 2006

I had read Aitken’s The Gateless Barrier several times with great pleasure but also the conviction that I was missing a lot. Finally, I had the notion of different strategy that might break up some of my intimidation and help me claim a piece of our heritage with greater depth.

The idea was to read four different translations of the Mumonkan in tandem, i.e. reading each case in all four versions in turn. Please be clear – koan study does not seem to be my path. I’ve sat with "Who hears?" for eleven years and have only been able to offer two semi-acceptable answers.

My general experience with koans is to not so gently reinforce the view of myself as dull and klutzy -– having a lot in common with my daughter-in-law's description of her experience of the first year of marriage as "groping in a dark closet." So who am I to tackle writing about this? It’s down to Jack’s urging (as so much is). The four translations in the order I read them are:

Katsuki Sekida: Two Zen Classics (Boston, Shambhala Publications 2005)

Zenkei Shibayama: The Gateless Barrier (Boston, Shambhala Publications 1974)

Koun Yamada: The Gateless Gate (Boston, Wisdom Publications 2004)

Robert Aitken: The Gateless Barrier (New York, North Point Press 1995)

Sekida is the most straightforward of the bunch as he gives the backstory. If his was the only available version, I think I would be even more at sea. But he provides help - for instance, here is his explication of "nen:"

"The word nen, which has no equivlent in English, means either a unit of thought or a steadily willed activity of mind. Zen theory sees the activity of consciousness as a contiuous interplay between a sequence of nen. Thus, the first nen always acts intuitively and performs a direct, pure cognition of the object. The second nen immediately follows the first and makes the first its object of reflection. By this means, one becomes conscious of one’s own thoughts. The successively appearing secondary nen integrate and synthesize preceding nen into a continuous stream of thought. It is these nen which are the basis of self-consciousness and ego-activity. The integrating, synthesizing action of consciousness is the third nen. Reasoning, introspection and so forth come from the third nen. But this third nen, clouded by its ego centered activity, often argues falsely and draws mistaken conclusions… Zazen practice, when it leads to absolute samadhi, cuts off delusive thoughts. The activity of the second and third nen ceases, and gradually, through constant practice, the first nen is freed to perform its inherently pure and direct cognition. Each nen is accompanied by internal pressure, which remains behind and affects the ensuing thoughts. So causation here represents the effect of each nen-thought on the next. It is not so much the actions of killing, stealing, wronging others, and so on that give rise to evil karma as it is the delusions of the nen-thought, which thinks of killing stealing, or wronging others." (pp 32-33)

Shibayama and Yamada are both much more generous with backstory -- the rich relational matrix of who studied with who along with delicious details of their Zen careers. Yamada is the most discursive of the four. Aitken is, far and away, my favorite -- the richest, most tender and evocative. There are wild discrepancies in translation addressing the same thing while revealing a sense of the different authors: e.g. take the second two lines to the verse of Case 48 Kan-feng’s One Road:

Sekida: "Though each move is ahead of the next,
There is still a transcendent secret."

Shibiyama: "Even if at each step you may be ahead
of him, Know there is still another way up."

Yamada: "Though you may take the initiative point by point
You must know there is still the all surpassing hole"

Aitken: "Though your every move is ahead of the last,
Remember the vast all-encompassing crater."

Or consider these descriptors of Joshu from Case 31:

Sekida: "He displayed no trace of being a great commander"

Shibiyama: "Yet he does not look like a grown-up."

Yamada: "He hasn’t the air of a magnanimous man."

Aitken: "He didn’t have the aspect of a great person."

Reading the cases with this method made the basic structure of the cases a little easier to see. They are basically somewhere out there between the theory of logical types and double-bind theory. Repeat after me "the map is not the territory, the map is not the territory…" but in these cases, the territory is not even the territory. Each case is liberally sprinkled with trip wires that release the trap by the realization that it is not a trap.

But identifying the structure doesn’t bring you any closer than identifying a butterfly as a blue hairstreak brings you to the butterfly. Or as Yamada put it: "IT can never be communicated to you." No matter what happens, it is quite impossible to give IT to you. IT is entirely one with you from the very beginning, so how can IT be communicated to you any more completely? Water cannot become any wetter! The sword cannot cut itself off! (p 136)

So what makes a good answer to koan? First, one must keep in mind Shibiyama’s comment that "The question is in the answer; the answer is in the question." (p 37) What seems to bring the most approval are answers that are forthright, without hesitation, and neither literal nor theoretical.

Piety must be avoided as well as any appropriation of another’s answer. Holding up one finger in imitation of one's teacher is to risk amputation. But humor, correctly offered, can pass - Aitken asks us to: "Remember the old story of the demon who sat beside the road and demanded the magic passwords? If people could say nothing, or if they said the wrong words, they lost their heads. Nobody could kill the demon, but the most modest farmer, pushing his cart to the market, could make him laugh and clap his hands." (p 99)

And what happens in these stories when one (choose your term) has an opening/ experiences kenshō/ becomes enlightened? By all accounts it is a radical experience -- as Sekida renders Joshu’s description of his first kenshō, it is to become "ruined and homeless." (p 29).

So everything is changed but, if one is fortunate, also not much -- back to one’s cushion for the next 40 years is a good outcome. There are many cautions about not clinging to the experience or worse yet trying to replicate it like the monk who had a vision of the Virgin and spent the rest of his career trying over and over again to paint his vision on the wall of his cell. (Aitken, p 162)

Shibiyama warns: "One peep into essential nature is a great release and a great encouragement but if you take it as a be-all and end-all, you’ll drop straight back into hell." (p 15)

And Aitken further cautions: "…kenshō is just the initial inspiration. Some people suppose it will somehow do their work for them. This is like expecting the honeymoon to sustain the marriage. Nonsense. The honeymoon does not guarantee you a happy marriage any more than admission to graduate school guarantees you tenure somewhere. Move on from your milestones." (p 130)

All in all, though I certainly don’t feel any more competent about koans, I am most glad I undertook this project. It has "confirmed and strengthened me" in ways I can’t really articulate and has given me many moments of comfort and joy. As I worked through the cases I became most reluctant to be finished and started limiting myself to one case a day. Now I think I am ready to read them all again. No doubt, other delicious points with pop out. And I will try to take Aitken’s encouraging words to heart:

"People sometimes ask me, 'How long will it take?' My answer is, 'No time at all.... But I have been doing zazen for ten years -- why isn't anything happening?' Exactly: nothing is happening, though your realization of that fact may be evolving." (p 68)

Zen and the Sutras by Albert Low (Tuttle, 2000)

Reviewed by Chris Nielsen

From Dharma Currents, Winter: March 2007

For Zen practitioners looking for the not-so-obvious connections between Zen and the earlier Indian Mahayana tradition, this is a valuable book. (I’m sorry I’m reviewing it seven years late -- at least it’s still in print.) Albert Low is the teacher and director of the Montreal Zen Center, and a successor of Philip Kapleau. He’s also one of the few writers to explore this territory -- and maybe the only western Zen teacher to do so at this point.

Zen has always held itself aloof from the sutras, claiming a direct transmission of the dharma through generations of teachers back to the Buddha himself. This is widely accepted these days to be a sectarian myth, but that leaves us with the question of where our practice really came from and what its sources of authority are.

Zen’s often-expressed contempt for "words and letters" functions as a smoke screen discouraging these questions, and the immediacy of zazen and personal teacher-student relations can make them seem irrelevant and academic.

But as Low points out, the content of Zen teaching, including the koans, proceeds directly from the Mahayana sutras. Without going deeply into the metaphysics and arguments of various schools of Indian Mahayana, he takes up five important sutras identified with those schools, all of them widely available in English translation, and shows them clearly to be the sources of what we think of as unique Zen expression.

These are the Heart Sutra, the Diamond, the Vimalakirti, the Lankava-tara, and the Surangama. All except the Vimalakirti are in Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible, and the Vimalakirti has been published separately.

The first three have more currency among us than the last two. The Heart, obviously, we chant in every sutra service. The Diamond is frequently referred to in Chinese Zen literature, and is famous for having inspired Huineng, the Sixth Ancestor. The Vimalakirti has been given good press by Robert Aitken, among others, and more than any other sutra it reads like a long Zen story.

All three are part of the Prajnaparamita tradition, associated with the Madhyamaka (Middle Way or "Emptiness") school of Mahayana. They all focus, in different ways, on the idea of emptiness and its meaning. However often we chant the Heart sutra, we seldom hear or read discussion of it, and "No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind" can go into our ears and out of our mouths without a thought of what they mean.

Low connects this to the koan "Mu" and writes, "Why does it say this when it is obvious that we do have eyes, ears, nose, and so on? In other words, both the sutra and the koan push us to investigate what we usually take for granted. What does it mean to say 'I' 'have' eyes, ears, and nose? What does it mean to say that a dog has, or does not have, the Buddha nature?"

The Diamond, similarly, empties out concepts of self, Buddhahood, and the meanings of words. In his chapter on the Vimalakirti, Low gives an almost blow-by-blow account of the bodhisattvas' and arhats' encounter with the "sick" layman, culminating with his famous silence as the ultimate expression of nonduality.

I'm glad Low included the Lankavatara and the Surangama in this book. They really need interpretation! They're both very long, very repetitive, and abstruse. But they’re both identified with Zen in the Chinese tradition, via the Indian Yogacara or Mind-only school, and like the previous sutras have a lot to show about the roots of Zen.

Bodhidharma is said to have introduced the Lankavatara to China along with Zen, and passages from the Surangama are featured in koan collections. Low tells you all you really need to know about tathagata-garbha, alaya-vijnana and other obscure Sanskrit terms you can use to impress people at parties, and relates them to later Zen teaching on mind and nonduality.

What Low offers here is a short, highly intelligible course in how to read the sutras and actually get something out of them. The only caveat I have is that his reading is definitely a Zen one, and that of an amateur rather than an academic. Tibetan-oriented readings tend to be much more technical and philosophical, and less mystical (for want of a better word). Professional scholars would quibble with some of his interpretations.

He didn’t do his own translations, and he admits to having changed their wording to try to make them more accessible. The cover art is dorky, of the worst new-age spiritual self-help kind. But I think he does draw out a lot of the sutras' vitality, and (even if retrospectively) shows how they led to what we know as Zen today.

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