spider wrote: > I am reading Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice, by > Taizan > Maezumi Roshi. If anyone is interested in reading that book, and/or > commenting on it, I would like to cover one or two chapters per > week.
OK, sounds interesting. I got my copy off the shelf and reread the first chapter, "Appreciate your life". It's in the section of the book the editor calls "The essence of Zen", and it does indeed seem to be that--a nice summary of the essentials. But what strikes me is how incomprehensible it would seem to someone whose first contact with Zen was reading that chapter. It sort of hints and nudges at things without tying them up with their assumed background. (I suppose this might be one of the reasons why many people think Zen is just clever gibberish and non sequiturs. This sort of starting things in the middle seems to be a fairly common form of discourse among Zen teachers and practitioners.) The advice "Just be! Just do!" (page 6) seems to me a fairly dangerous thing to say to anyone who isn't already grounded in the precepts or some set of ethics. (Sort of brings us back to why it's good to have a teacher/sangha, no?) None of this is meant to criticize Maezumi Roshi, only to say that he must have known his audience very well to be able to speak to them as he did. Not really to the point, but when Maezumi writes "We can say that our practice is to close the gap between what we *think* our life is and our actual life as the subtle mind of nirvana. Or more to the point, how can we realize that there is really no gap to begin with?" (page 4) I think back to a scene in "The Wizzard of Oz", the first film I ever saw. The three comic characters, the tin man, the scarecrow and the lion all get something they've badly needed from the Wizard--a heart (in the form of a heart-shaped clock) for the tin man, a brain (diploma) for the scarecrow, courage (in a can) for the lion, if I remember correctly. Of course we realize they've actually had these missing things all along but didn't know it. And it was just a lost little man (the wizard) who hid behind a screen of smoke and fire who "gave" them what they already had. People tell me L. Frank Baum, who wrote the book, was a socialist and thought he was writing a socialist tale. But it seems a lot like a Buddhist allegory to me. James ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/WwRTUD/SOnJAA/i1hLAA/S27xlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Current Book Discussion: Appreciate Your Life by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. New or used at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570622280/ref=ase_actionheroesc-20/002-4507763-9442460?v=glance&s=books> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZenForum/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
