I think it'd be cool to be a Zen master. However, to do that I would have had to actually practice Zen under the guidance of a Zen master, rather than admire Zen from the outside and practice it in my own idiosyncratic fashion.
Henry Shukman, who wrote the book Original Love that I'm reading now, and fashioned The Way app on my iPhone that I've using every morning in a cyberspace form of Zen meditation, is indeed a Zen master.
I just checked out the Sanbo Zen International web site and Shukman is listed there along with other masters of Sanbo Zen.
Shukman has an appealing way of explaining what meditation is all about. I like these passages from his book.
Becoming a meditator, opening up to a path of meditation, could be viewed as slowing down the car, parking it, getting out of it, and walking -- going through life at a pace where we can experience the sensory details of the trip.
...The problem is that in our pursuit of goals, we tend to get distracted from the richness of our actual life. It's not wrong to have goals and aspirations. It's healthy, and inspires and motivates us. But what if we could let them simply be the valley track we've chosen to walk down?
We're going in a certain direction. Fine. But as we go, we're going to experience each step of the journey -- each moment, this very moment -- so that the goal is our chosen direction, not something we're obsessing about reaching as quickly as possible, to the exclusion of all current experiences here and now.
Otherwise, what will happen once we reach the goal? We'll very likely set another goal, and speed off toward that one as fast as we can. And so on.
By slowing down, by deciding that each moment is worth experiencing for itself, we can broaden our life. It's not that life has no direction. It's that paying attention to what happens along the way makes life richer and fuller.
Even though we're moving in a chosen direction, it actually matters more to us how it is here and now than how it might be down the road. And some even say there is a curious law of nature, by which we'll fulfill our goals sooner and more amply if we savor the journey toward them.
This very moment, right now, as it is -- somehow we start to recognize it as already complete. Already the world is fulfilled. That's not to say there aren't problems and immense challenges -- as well as cruelty and suffering, and injustice and oppression.
We must call out these issues and devote serious, sustained effort to their resolution. At the same time, we can appreciate the wealth given to us in any moment, by the moment itself. And we trust that the positive orientation that appreciation arouses will help us to better play our part in making this world a kinder place.
Shukman says that in early Buddhism the first of four foundations of mindfulness is "mindfulness of body."
This may seem obvious, but in some spiritual, religious, and mystical traditions the body is viewed as the jailhouse of the soul. Our goal supposedly is to break the bonds that tie soul to body so we can rise beyond the crude physicality of this lowest domain of creation and ascend to "heaven."
Such is completely at odds with Buddhism in general, and Zen in particular. Pleasingly, Shukman explains why mindfulness of body is so important from a modern neuroscience perspective.
In a nutshell, our large hominin brains are well equipped for rehearsing future scenarios and for rehashing past events. Some speculate that our thick prefrontal cortex evolved to run simulations -- to model the outcomes of possible courses of action. Apparently, it was also to rerun past events, presumably to learn from them.
When we're involved with outward tasks that occupy our attention, we tend to feel okay. We're engaging what some researchers call the task positive network. When we're having downtime, or "idle time," the default mode network is activated, whereupon we spend more time lost in thoughts of the past and of imagined futures than we do experiencing the moment at hand.
This leads to unhappiness. Why? Because we tend to regret the past and fear the future. Our brains evolved to have a strong negativity bias, meaning they act more powerfully and persistently to perceived threats than to perceived rewards. After all, if we neglect a genuine threat just once, than we might die.
So our brains not only "fire" at threats but also "wire" the threat response more strongly, in order to prompt that response again more readily if necessary. So we have work to do just to get to a more balanced state vis-a-vis the world.
...To tell ourselves not to dwell on the past or future seldom works. The mental habit is too strong, reinforced by a million years of evolution. If we offer our attention an alternative area of focus, then this shift makes it easier to break the spell of rumination.
Hence anytime we shift our attention to our body experience, we are necessarily focusing on the here and now. The body lives in the present tense. It doesn't have the capacity to "live" anywhere else. Only the mind can do that.
https://henryshukman.com/events/2024-original-love-1-year-program
Henry charges $500 for 20 Zoom meetings on "original love."
Does $500 sound like a lot of dough? Henry the Zen Master used to charge $1400.
https://www.reddit.com/r/zenbuddhism/comments/skshsw/original_love_by_henry_shukman_reviews/
How much did RSSB charge you in your 35 years with them?
Posted by: sant64 | January 18, 2025 at 07:49 AM
sant64, when I used to travel long distances by car or airplane to see the RSSB guru of that time, I spent hugely more money for this than the $89.99 I just paid Zen Master Shukman for a year's worth of meditation instruction. I believe in the free market. If someone wants to pay directly for religious or spiritual teachings, they have that right. If someone wants to pay indirectly through contributions to a "collection box" (which was present at every RSSB meeting I attended), they have that right.
Posted by: Brian Hines | January 18, 2025 at 09:59 AM
I was once telling a Roman Catholic friend how, as a former Catholic, when I prayed, I felt like it was compared to buying a Lottery Ticket, expecting to win the Lottery!
Which is why Sant Mat appealed to me, and if I was initiated, I might hear the Conch and Bell, and see lights, sun, moon, whirling Diamond, and the Star Gate, on the Way to Spiritual Realms.
So, This is the podcast summary taken away from my conversation.
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/18e27aab-f4a7-421b-a7f9-45f00a635257/audio
Posted by: Jim Sutherland | January 18, 2025 at 11:07 AM
My thoughts on commercializing these things:
Absolutely, there's something pure, noble about disseminating this "teaching" gratis. Both in and of itself; and also in terms of making them more widely accessible.
That said, people need to eat. Bills need to be paid. Also, commerce per se, while a trifle crass, is not wrong, per se.
Why I "made a face" at Osho Robbins's (plans of) monetization of his shtick, is because what he is teaching is plain wrong, and because it has CLEARLY and UNASSAILABLY been shown to be completely wrong in our discussion. To then continue to flog it, despite all of it having been CLEARLY shown to be fallacious and wrong, bespeaks fanatical religious indoctrination pure and simple, and to try to personally benefit off of it is ...well, in a word, charlatanry. Regardless of whether the project fetches loose change, or more substantial amounts: it is the attempt that is ...not quite done.
(But to repeat: In a world where cross-eyed semiliterates parade their Mickey Mouse "degrees", and dare to " preach" their out-and-out oafish nonsense: in such an imperfect world, well, okay, why not. But it's still kind of unsavory, all of it --- even if Osho Robbins's relatively innocuous shtick does not stand out in a backdrop that's full of much more egregious instances of nonsense being "preached" shamelessly.)
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So then: Should this guy want to sell his teachings for a hundred a pop, or a thousand or ten thousand even; and if there's people able and willing to come up with it: well then, that's just supply and demand. The free market, like Brian puts it. Capitalism at work, is all.
As long there's no bullshyttery being peddled, then there's nothing ethically or morally wrong per se about it. Just the free market at work, is all.
(For what my thoughts on the ethics and morality of it are worth!)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 18, 2025 at 05:52 PM
...And, it occurs to me: that criticism is a strawman. Like, textbook strawman. Like, if you're teaching a child, A for Apple, B for Balloon, illustrations I mean to say: well then, that's as clear an illustration of a strawman as any.
Why GSD comes in for criticism here is: first, the (alleged) criminality of what he's done. Leaving that aside as thus far unproven: second, there's how he pauperized his nephews by giving them dodgy advice, and reduced them to actual jail time, while himself making of with literally millions for himself and his sons. And thirdly, and most importantly, because he's actually teaching moderation and otherworldliness, while himself lifting himself and his family from twopenny-salesman-next-door mundaneness financially, to this personal opulence for himself and his family, all via dodgy means (dodgy ethically and morally, even if the criminality of it is not so far proven). And against the general backdrop of the fact that it's all BS anyway (but I'll water that last down, because as far as I know GSD hasn't been directly and clearly and unassailably shown that it's all BS, as far as I know: so that, while I'm fairly sure he's deliberately running a con, but we don't *know* that, for all we know he may be actually deluded.
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Yeah, as with most things coming from that usually dodgy source: that implied criticism of double standards is a strawman.
(And I fully expect that this strawman, despite having been clearly shown as such, will not be retracted. Apparently that kind of intellectual integrity is beyond even the understanding of that dodgy source. Which makes this implied criticism of double standards from Brian itself an amusing meta-example of double standards.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 18, 2025 at 06:59 PM
Henry Shukman: - “Hence anytime we shift our attention to our body experience, we are necessarily focusing on the here and now. The body lives in the present tense. It doesn't have the capacity to "live" anywhere else. Only the mind can do that.”
This statement of Shukman’s is not only true of Zen; it reflects much of the non-dual traditions—and (iv) it is very true. The body and the senses live in the present moment. This is inescapable. Only the mind (that is, thought, memory—all of our cognitive processes) must, for reasons of survival, live in the thought-generated past or future.
Thought has produced numerous vehicles in the form of beliefs (politics, religions, etc.), theories, views, and opinions to protect its continuity, rendering the self-construct almost unassailable. The self or ego can be a huge source of conflict in that we not only fight and struggle to protect ourselves physically but also fight to protect our mind-made theories and beliefs.
The huge conflicts we humans face come down to thought. Not the thought that we need to understand the world, to plan, and to make decisions, but the manner of thinking where we identify with the contents of thought that pose as being me, with all the conflicts arising from the perceived need to maintain and protect an illusory sense of ‘me’.
Thought has separated us from ourselves. We have divided ourselves into the physical, mental, and spiritual, and trying to reconcile these fractions inevitably causes anguish, insecurity along with the feeling of separatedness.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 19, 2025 at 02:54 AM
"sant64, when I used to travel long distances by car or airplane to see the RSSB guru of that time, I spent hugely more money for this than the $89.99 I just paid Zen Master Shukman for a year's worth of meditation instruction. I believe in the free market. If someone wants to pay directly for religious or spiritual teachings, they have that right. If someone wants to pay indirectly through contributions to a "collection box" (which was present at every RSSB meeting I attended), they have that right."
I've been to RSSB satsangs since the 1970s. I never heard a single word about making a donation, never saw a word about the necessity of making donations to RSSB in any RSSB book or newsletter, and never saw a collection box at any satsang. I'll take your word that such collection boxes exist, but this is the first time I ever heard they do exist.
I'm not a member of RSSB, but the local satsang here recently had to move because they were being charged $250 for each Sunday they met. I only found out about this because a satsangis mentioned it to me. But not once did the secretary of the meeting even make mention of this financial difficulty during satsang.
I guess the argument could be made that since satsang is a pillar of the RSSB faith, RSSB is making people spend money on transportation to satsang. Perhaps a valid criticism on its face, except that not a penny of that gas money ends up going to the RSSB org.
Another potentially valid argument is that RSSB is tacitly required donations through its emphasis on guruseva, which can be money seva. But here again, donated funds are going to the projects of the RSSBf org, and not to the personal coffers of the guru. No one has yet provided hard evidence to the contrary.
Contrast RSSB's policy on donations with that of Zen Master Henry, who treats Zen as a commodity, asks high prices for Zenny Zoom meetings, and lives off of the fees he charges to his flock. I did, and it tells me all I need to know about this guy.
Posted by: sant64 | January 19, 2025 at 09:33 AM
I prefer the lazy mans way to enlightenment. It's based on Neville Goddard techniques to achieve any goal you want.
As you go to sleep imagine you are a cosmic traveler. Feeling is the secret so imagine a friend congratulating you on your achievement. Then sleep and continue this every night until your goal arrives. BTW you don't get to decide what date it happens.
I've used this to imagine throwing world leaders endangering world peace out of office. Xi ,Putin, Neyanyahu and Kim are on the list. Even though I started this 2 years ago ,Xi is the only one on the verge,to leave so far. It doesn't matter those leaders are gone off the world stage the moment I imagined it.
Human imagination is God/Christ and created everything in this world from your shoes to the car you drive.
Neville Goddard
Posted by: Jimmy | January 19, 2025 at 08:51 PM