Beginner's Mind, Ordinary Mind - Review Essay - five books on Zen Buddhism

James Ishmael Ford, In This Very Moment: A Simple Guide to Zen. Boston: Skinner House Books, 2002. l28pp. $14.00 (paper).

Robert E. Kennedy Roshi, Zen Gifts to Christians. New York: Continuum, 2001. 144pp. $19.95 (cloth).

Soko Morinaga Roshi, Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity Translated by Belenda Attaway Yamakawa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002. 144pp. $19.95 (cloth).

Barry Magid and Charlotte Joko Beck, Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychotherapy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002. 208pp. $22.95 (cloth).

Tom Chetwynd, Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven: Reflections on the Tradition of Meditation in Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001. 224pp. $16.95 (paper).

Zen is a form of Buddhism that defines itself as being outside of the tradition of sacred texts, known as sutras--a mind-to-mind transmission that begins with the Buddha and continues in the face-to-face encounter of teacher and student. The classic story of this form of spiritual learning goes like this:

Long ago with the World-Honored One [Buddha] was at Mount Grdhrakuta to give a talk, he held up a flower before the assemblage. At this all remained silent. The Venerable Kasho alone broke into a Smile. The World-honored One said, "I have the all-pervading True Dharma, incomparable Nirvana, exquisite teaching of formless form. It does not rely on letters and is transmitted outside scriptures. I now Hand it to Maha Kasho." (Zenkei Shibayama, The Gateless Barrier, 58)

But in Zen, as in Christianity, there seems to be no end to the number of books that might be written about it. The inexpressible is irresistible. These five books are only a fraction of the Zen titles published in recent months. They reflect three popular subjects: books about Zen and Christianity, about Zen and Something Else (in this case Psychotherapy), and Introductory Zen.

James Ford's In This Very Moment was first published in 1996 as an introduction to Zen for Unitarian-Universalists. It is being reissued in Fall 2002 as a simple guide for anyone. The book has two great virtues in both versions. First, it reveals the author to be a compassionate, appealing man. Since Zen is often imagined to be an austere, even cold practice, the human or, more accurately, spiritual dimensions of Zen practice as Ford embodies them, offer us an appealing form of spiritual practice. This quality is even more pronounced in the revision, which begins with the story of an encounter between Ford and a man brought to tears in a face-to-face encounter during an extended Zen retreat called sesshin ("to touch the heart/mind"). As Ford practices it, Zen is a way into the emotional body. Zen shows us the ordinary mind through the practice of seated meditation. It reveals the "clinging consciousness" behind which we hide from ourselves. When we give up clinging, Ford explains, we discover compassion. We g ive up ourselves.

Second, Ford provides an unusually helpful introduction to koans and their use in Zen. Most of us have heard of the koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" It is almost a joke. But koan practice is actually the practice of life itself. The questions are impossible, but as Ford's teacher John Tarrant Roshi writes, "they support us not in belief but in discovery." By forcing us to face the seemingly impossible, we learn in Zen practice to come to terms with the imponderables of our own lives--death, for example. The death koan goes like this: when you are dead, how are you free? As Ford writes, "Encountering a dying person is like encountering a Zen master. It is all out on the table. All our secrets are plain for anyone who cares to notice." That kind of transparency is the goal of Zen practice, and Ford's book is an intimate introduction to what in the end is the spiritual practice of intimacy: intimacy with one's self.

Novice to Master is also an introduction to Zen that takes us back to Japan, the source of much of Zen as we know it in the West. Soko Morinaga was a Rinzai Zen master (a form of Zen that emphasizes koan practice) and one-time abbot of Daitokuji Monastery. His appealing book describes his journey from a brief, fearful stint in the army near the end of World War II to his corning to terms with himself as a realized human being.

Self-deprecating in tone, and often very funny, Morinaga's book offers a Zen that is almost off-hand. The first part of the book is about the "breaking of the ego" that is essential to Zen training. The second. takes us into the monastery, where the author begins to understand his life as "a succession of realizations of my own misunderstandings." He puts it this way:

The novice lives the life of a young monk, a stage in which they must pass through many gates of self-denial. I do not mean denial of the original self. I mean, rather, facing head-on and acknowledging, no matter how bitter, the unripeness and the artificialities of the self in existing circumstances: denial of the self in its present state and recognition of the dignity of the original self. (73)