Beware of Lounge Chair Zazen

A Kamakura Zendo

I currently live in Thailand which is a Buddhist monarchy. The king and royal family enjoy the highest rank. Protocol, to my eyes, seems strictly observed despite rumors that the royals are not insistent. An American friend who works at a school in the north was hosting the older sister of King Vajiralongkorn, Princess Ubol Ratana. Only a limited number of people were allowed into the area where she was being entertained, and despite writing and rehearsing the students for a skit in her honor, my friend was not invited. 

Rank is exclusionary. It can be palpable and irritating. My friend asked me about the koan “The True Person of No Rank.” My mind went on automatic, and I remembered many times the case had come up during sesshin. Of course, we’d worked with it. Tarrant Roshi had written about it. It appears in both “The Book of Serenity” and “The Record of Linji.”  I wanted to make sure that I used an accurate translation, leaving nothing out and including no additions that might distort what Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen in Japanese) taught. I looked up the Case 38, Shôyôroku, with commentary by Yamada Kōun Zenshin Roshi, published by Sanbo Zen International. 

Book of Serenity, Case 38

“Rinzai’s True Person of No Rank.” 

Instruction: 

Taking a robber for your own child, taking a servant for the master: 

Could a broken ladle of wood ever be your ancestor’s skull? 

The saddle bone for a donkey could never be your father’s jawbone. 

When bestowing land with a new branch temple, how would you discern the master? 

The Case:

Rinzai instructed his assembly and said, “There is one true person of no rank, always coming out and going in through the gates of your face.1 Beginners who have not yet witnessed that, look! Look!” 

Then a monk came out and asked, “What is the one true person of no rank?” Rinzai descended from the rostrum and grabbed him. The monk hesitated. Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true person of no rank – what a shit-stick you are!” 

1 I.e., sense organs such as eyes, nose, ears, tongue, etc. 

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In the big picture, I am no different than any other human. If King Charles or King Vajiralongkorn and I sat on cushions in my imaginary zendo, we would all receive the same data coming out and going in from our sense organs. We’d remain equal without rank even after their royal coaches whisked them home. I expected Yamada would point to the one true person with perhaps a few hints about the shit stick. 

How wrong I was. Yamada’s commentary was a long, detailed description of a “kensho zendo;” he focused on a strict level of attention or concentration he felt was required for experiencing this sudden enlightenment; I heard echoes of the contentious talk about the possibility of kensho (which is Japanese for “seeing into one's nature”) between the Soto and Rinzai Zen schools. I was shocked. 

It was also dull. I was not particularly interested in students adjusting the blinds in Zendo. For Yamada, it indicated that they were allowing their minds to stray from the single-pointed attention required to experience “kensho.” There was a long and involved story about a fellow named Kasan Roshi who threatened to throw some monks out of his temple for performing a commendable act of compassion while doing "takuhatsu" (托鉢), or alms-begging. 

How on earth did I jump from sitting on an equal footing with King Vajiralongkorn to listening to Yamada’s fussing over whether the zendo’s blinds were rolled down during seated meditation, or Kasan expelling monks who’d proven themselves unsuitable because they allowed themselves to be distracted? 

Kensho!

Then, the random nature of my laptop’s search tossed up a frothy piece by Brad Warner. He takes issue with Melvin McLeod, the editor of “Best Buddhist Writing of 2004,” in which Brad was included. McLeod thought that Brad was describing a kensho experience. Brad chides himself for not being clear enough: “I have never had a kensho experience. I hope I never do. I've never come across anyone who claimed to have had one of those who could convince me it was anything worth experiencing.”

Yamada’s position was very different from Brad's or Dogen's, the Japanese founder of the Soto sect that Brad follows. Yamada quotes Hakuin Ekaku, the Japanese reformer of the Rinzai sect: "Anyone who would call himself a member of the Zen family must first achieve kensho—realization of the Buddha's way. If a person who has not achieved kensho says he is a follower of Zen, he is an outrageous fraud—a swindler pure and simple." 

After reading Brad very carefully, even if briefly, because he says pretty much the same thing over and over, I wondered if Dogen ever talked about a kensho experience in a way either Dogen or Brad, and Yamada or Haquin might be able to speak to one another about meditation experiences rather than shouting at one another to make a point.

I stumbled across something that Dogen said before he left China. Keizan Jokin Zenji, his dharma heir, writes that he did have an experience, an opening, that confirmed what he had learned from Rujing with whom he completed his training. (See “The True Dharma Eye,” Tanahashi (2011), p. 144). The quote suggested that Dogen did have something akin to a kensho experience despite all the howling to the contrary. Like the fool who thinks that he’ll remember everything necessary or startling, I did not make a note of either the quote or the source so I can’t include a useful footnote. 

To be fair to Dogen and Brad, emphasizing kensho might be dangerous or misleading. The Rinzai Teachers’ Bureau has supplied no map. Loose talk might create some overblown expectations. Brad says his teacher, Gudo Wafu Nishijima, sometimes talked about "solving philosophical problems" when experiences in Zazen were out of the ordinary. He claims that all states of mind that arise in Zazen are equal level thought formations, solved with simple Zen application if you’re lucky. “He calls it this because that's all it is.” It’s not required. We’re not too far from shouting at one another. 

In spring 1978, Michel Foucault met and practiced with Omori Sogen Roshi. One of the most important Zen masters of the last century met a brilliant philosopher whose work explored the way discourse shapes our reality. Their work together lasted less than three weeks, and Foucault died only five years later. Had his life not been tragically cut short, what contribution might Foucault have added to our understanding of Zazen? We’d be fools if we didn’t recognize that the way we speak about meditation, the shape of our discourse, colors our experience.

I practice in the dharma stream of Yamada Kōun and his teacher, Yasutani Haku'un Ryoko. Although I enjoy and find value in Brad’s non-doctrinal style, I intend to bolster Yamada’s case for practicing in a Kensho Zendo. I’m going to speak from my own experience, and rather than take a side, I’ll just focus on what is important to me, the conversations I’ve had about these experiences with my teachers. Please don’t take my descriptions as normative in any way. What matters is your own experience.

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Body, Mind and Breath

My body has a mind of its own.

I had the good luck to learn to sit Zazen in a Soto Zendo. I had practiced seated meditation before, but these experiences were limited to the weave and sway Siddha yoga halls or the more relaxed Vipassana practice, which has been adapted for Westerners.. 

When I first sat Zazen for a long day at Hartford Street, my body hurt by noon. By 5 PM, I could barely stand. When I sat my first three-day sesshin, I limped home. People gave varying lengths of time for the pain to disappear, though this was usually coupled with a light-hearted statement that enlightenment was a sore back and stiff knees. I was encouraged to persist. Somehow I did.

That period coincided with Issan’s final years. His body could not muster the same kind of determination as in his early training, but he still sat totally erect. I noticed when he slumped and seemed to drift off, but it was not often. Of course, just noticing that was an indication that I was being less than attentive to my state of mind.

After 80 years, my bones have shortened; the intervertebral discs' thickness and resilience show signs of wear and tear. I have to sit in a chair, usually with a small curved brace near the base of my spine, but my body automatically assumes a comfortably erect posture, the vertebrae neatly stacked on top of one another, holding my head erect with my jaw relaxed. If I discover anything carelessly out of place, a few simple self-commands plus some relaxation allow me to focus much longer than I could 35 years ago. I hesitate to describe another sensation that occurs almost automatically, other than to say I tap into an energy that has a mind of its own and, if I allow it, takes over. Of course, the tendency to fall asleep or lose concentration has not magically vanished. 

Lesson One: An alert body is the primary tool for an alert mind.

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Issan used to say, “Don’t invite your thoughts to tea.”

I can’t stop my mind, but cessation of mental activity is not the end of practice. Actually, cessation is inevitable. It’s called death and will come soon enough. In the meantime, if you can’t stop thoughts from showing up, and you can’t ignore them even though it might run counter to normal, polite or accepted behavior, you can at least observe them and watch the habitual way that your mind responds. 

When asked what to do about pesky thoughts, Suzuki Roshi advised giving your cow a more extensive pasture. He was Japanese, so social distance from domestic animals was understood differently, even in post-Hippie California. In rural Japan, the cows might be living in the dining room. 

I grew up in rural Connecticut. Painted in crude letters on the side of the cow barn at Parker’s Dairy was the slogan: “Parker’s Cows are Parker’s own. Come and see them in their home.” As kids, we visited and quickly figured out that the sign was pure advertising and that we weren’t always welcome in the cow barn, particularly during feeding or milking. So we figured out how to leave the North Street gate ajar and then laugh when Parker and all the cowherds ran up and down Huntington Turnpike, rounding up 20 cows who had stepped beyond the barbed wire. That’s not what Suzuki Roshi had in mind when he counseled increasing the size of their pasture. 

Issan’s advice was couched in coffee house etiquette; cows didn’t roam the Castro. But the kernel remains the same: do not engage thoughts that seem to intrude, especially at quiet moments. Simple observation changes the phenomenon. 

Lesson Two: It is possible to quiet your mind. 

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Count to zero

Over the years, I’ve tried a wide variety of recommended breath-counting exercises: from one to ten, repeat or go forwards and backwards; the inhalation and exhalation counting as one breath or counting as two; 1 to 10, 9 to 2; 3 to 8, and so forth; the seemingly impossible regulation—in through the right nostril and out through the left (or was it vice versa?). I have spent hours focusing on the diaphragm, calling it the dantian ("elixir field" or "sea of qi"), to increase my lung capacity. I was told by a Master of Qigong that getting the asshole involved by conscious contraction helped boost the energy at the base of spine, so I spent months—you guessed it. I asked many teachers and got lots of conflicting advice, akin to the conflicting conversations they were intended to conquer. 

Aitken Roshi talked about “the impossibility of counting to ten.” He said that he has found the breath counting practice useful both when he began and later when his practice matured. It’s simple and cuts through. There is a point where even barely intelligible numbers following the breath also fade out, and all that remains is the breath. I am not claiming that this is an ideal state of meditation, but it seems to be an opening into that place where both body and mind could drop away. I call it counting to zero, but if you experience it, you can name it anything you like. 

Lesson Three: The breath is connected to everything. Pay attention.

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Sit like a rock; it is the pearl beyond price. But don’t charge money for the experience. 

I’ve been having conversations with people from the relatively new discipline of “personal coaching.” They usually group bits and pieces of meditation practice into a workshop format they call Mindfulness. They contend that these disciplines calm the haphazard functioning of the mind, but, given the elemental neurological composition of the brain, every technique I’ve talked about, the yogic position on the body, the calming of wayward thoughts and disturbing emotions, the training of attention by following the breath, are just that. They each have a specific goal: to become more productive, make more money, sleep better, or even experience more satisfying sex. Add these to the list of possible outcomes, and attach a price list.

Though these outcomes are possible, I fear life coaches sell meditation short if they stop there. These coach practitioners can be a bloodless, analytical lot. There is a reason why never charging for teaching has endured for more than two millennia. 

Practice can open a path to the center of everything. The Koan collection is packed with story after story about practice becoming stale and comforting but not open to much new. Repeated exercises become rote. Meditation halls are filled with advice about keeping it fresh. In some cases, with some teachers, sitting like a rock can even become a fetish, and, at least in my experience, even a spiritual fetish is not something we should aspire to achieve.

In one of his short online talks, Richard Baker Roshi says that an essential but often overlooked quality of zazen is akin to affection or love. For meditation to settle in and become part of our lives, we treat it like a lover, a constantly changing relationship that we can’t give up on or put down. It's not an easy path. We will surely have fights and rocky periods, but the rewards are immeasurable.

I have fallen in and out of love, and I have years of therapy to help me sort the wheat from the chaff. And I keep coming back to Zazen. 

Lesson Four: Allow yourself to fall in love with Zazen.

The funeral of Ösel Tendzin. Deliver us from cults.

Originally published Saturday, July 24, 2021

In 1990, Ösel died in San Francisco, where he’d come for treatment of advanced HIV disease. I was living at Hartford Street Zen Center and working as the Director of Maitri AIDS Hospice; I felt it was important that Maitri, a Buddhist program set up to help ease the pain of the AIDS epidemic, should be present for the funeral of an important Buddhist teacher who’d died from the disease. I didn’t realize how deeply I would wade into the murky waters of denial.

Shambhala would conduct the funeral ritual at their center on 16th and Mission. We phoned, asked if we could attend, and were given a time; we put on our rakusus and climbed to the second floor above a Jack in the Box in a pretty marginal neighborhood.

I can’t adequately describe my shock.

It may have been the first Tibetan ritual that I’d attended, but after we’d entered the hall and made our prostrations, there was Ösel’s corpse trussed up in an awkward meditation posture, full regalia barely masking the ropes and poles required to hold it upright. I’d sat with many men who died of AIDS, so it was not that the body itself showed the ravages of the disease. There was no attempt to hide them. It was not that the ritual seemed foreign or exotic. It was, but it was a Tibetan ritual, and I wasn’t expecting a low-church Episcopalian service.

What overwhelmed me was the veneration of a man who had knowingly infected others with AIDS. Shambhala tried to mitigate the damage with a mystical smokescreen. It was rumored that some had spread the lie that the guru’s Vajra powers, bestowed by the lineage, would prevent reinfection or that it was even an opening for the great enlightenment. There was at least one teenage boy involved, a young man whose life would now be cut short. Everyone present, and there were several hundred, knew that their Regent had knowingly infected people with HIV and that their deaths would soon be upon them. It was all supposed to be OK in the great scheme of things. The drums beat, the chanting began. Steve Allen got up and motioned for us to leave. On the way down the stairs, he said, “All that was missing was the bones in their noses.”

We returned to Hartford Street. I was shaken but managed to get up the next morning and care for Bernie, J.D., and the five other men in our care.

I have never picked up “Cutting through Spiritual Materialism” again, brilliant as it is. Nor have I recommended it to anyone, and I never will. I feel that it would be condoning the damage to the precious dharma caused by the actions of these men.

Some people have tried to defend Ösel. One wrote to me and said, “Hindsight is easy.” I lived through that period. I took care of more than 100 men who died of AIDS. My own teacher died. It was a terrible time. Of course, there were mistakes. Of course, it was difficult. Of course, it takes time to sort things out. It took me years.

Steven Butterfield* writes about his interactions with Ösel, wondering why, in an airport lounge, he can’t muster the courage to ask him a question about his HIV disease. He chose to remain silent and go on pretending that their world of limousines, crazy wisdom practice, and unprotected sex could just go on and on. By remaining silent, Butterfield chose to participate in the deception. He was caught in the delusion of adulation. In retrospect, can Butterfield question his belief in guru transmission? He says he can, but I get the distinct feeling that far too many threads still tie him to the myth. But actually, the moment when it might have made a difference has passed, and Butterfield to some degree, shares Mr. Rich’s transgression.

There can be no passing the buck here. We have to name it: arrogance and grave harm. Hindsight may be easy, but murder is still murder. Sexual abuse is still abuse. People say, oh, it was the 80s, things were different. I strongly disagree. We knew that HIV was sexually transmitted in 1983 when the Pasteur Institute in France isolated the virus. Ösel knew that he was positive for the virus and still had unprotected sex with at least one minor. Sorry. Call it what it was.

Searching Google for a picture of Mr. Thomas Rich, I found vajraregent.org. When I entered “AIDS” into the site’s search engine, nothing. But I did find these verses. People are still in deep denial.

This is offered with love, appreciation, and gratitude to Vidyadhara, the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and his Vajra Regent and dharma heir Ösel Tendzin, for the benefit of their present and future disciples, and all beings.

Through hearing, seeing, and contemplating these teachings of the Vidyadhara through his Vajra Regent,

May we realize the essence of transmission from teacher to student.

May we hold precious this seed planting of Vajrayana dharma and Shambhala vision in the West.

Through their gestures and words, may we wake up on the spot.

May we not become confused by spiritual materialism in any form.

Now, practicing moment by moment until the end of this life and beyond, may we free all beings.

And I will add my own petition to this list:

May we work diligently to repair any damage to the transmission of the precious Dharma caused by our heedless actions.

And deliver us from cults.

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*Steven Butterfield’s article When the Teacher Fails was published in the May 1989 edition of Shambhala Sun. Ösel Tendzin was still alive, but this was just at the time when the extent of his reckless sexual conduct as a person with HIV/AIDS was coming to light. Butterfield’s article does not address the controversy ripping the fledgling Western Buddhist world apart. 

Is the Catholic Church a sinking ship?

With an estimated 1.406 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2023, Vatican City is the Pope’s home and the vital center of his spiritual activities and governance. 

Let’s look at the Vatican's books as far as public records allow. 2021 is the last year with figures available. Revenues were €770 million; expenditures were €803 million, which left a deficit of €33 million. By 2023, the deficit had exploded to over €83 million—270% growth. Vatican City employees (again, an ancient figure—4,822 people in 2016) are screaming for a COL adjustment and threats of unionization. Meanwhile, court cases of embezzlement added to the continuing sad tale of clergy sex abuse have reduced revenues.

In short, it's a hot mess, to use a technical term. 135 octogenarians are vying for the honor of inheriting this disaster in the making. What could go wrong? The promise of a smoke signal will tell us who gets the impossible job.

Perhaps the real debate is whether “the old-time Latin religion” has better branding than a more egalitarian version. Maybe they’ll find an ecclesiastical Elon to root out waste and corruption. Perhaps the New Pope will sell it and turn Vatican City into a spiritual Disneyland—an updated version of the Avignon Captivity, and outsource the actual administrative governance to Manila.

U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, third from left, attends the Mass on the fifth day of the “novendiali,” nine days of mourning for Pope Francis, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican April 30, 2025. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

PS. Those clown suits are pretty ridiculous. Even a bit frociaggine!

It’s a cult damn it. Nothing more.

“Love your kids more than evolution requires.” --David Brooks

I was just listening to a podcast by Andrew Gold, interviewing Jon Atack (A Piece of Blue Sky), about Charlie Manson and Scientology. Alack describes a cult in its simplest form as a group that reveres a particular leader or doctrine. Bow down and surrender. Isn’t that the first thing you heard after you’d knocked on the door? 

A general rule is that cult leaders are not necessarily brilliant, or enlightened, or even educated. As a matter of fact, very often they are none of the above, but they know how to weave a spell, to hypnotize, to create a myth, and make promises that sell themselves. The best and the worst were con men (or women) with an uncanny ability to mirror our insecurities and then reflect back a crafted solution that paid them, usually more than its real value.

In the late 1960s, particularly in California, a new group of high-flying self-help gurus emerged, promising a level of personal awareness that would free us — if we worked with them. We were told that we’d been programmed by a familiar network of parents, schools, pastors, priests and rabbis, tribal culture, liberal (or conservative) political prejudices, the sexual taboos that hounded us along with innumerable generations before us. The gurus pointed to obvious evidence, and we jumped at a ready solution. We’d all suffered through the deadening post-war social homogenization. We’d all experienced the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, driving under our desks since the first grade (I remember these drills today when the threat of armed maniacs in schools is very real and certainly statistically more deadly). The Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love erupted and, I think, clearly demonstrated a deep hunger for relief.

The new age gurus promised that we could be deprogrammed from this hypnotic state. This was an attractive offer. It was universally agreed among my affluent college-educated peers that we were all caught in the thrall of automatic action and reaction. We also felt that our level of discomfort was somehow unfair. It was just hard to name the culprit. We were told that the buck stopped with us, but we had to pinpoint who we were “being” when push came to shove. A friend paid a sizable chunk of money to spend a long, sleepless weekend sitting on the floor of a yoga studio, asking and answering the repeated question “Who are you?” 

We were told that any possible freedom or newly discovered enlightenment would require work. We rolled up our sleeves and opened our wallets, or at least contrived alternative ways to pay for services. There were groups and rivalries. Bob Hoffman badmouthed Werner Erhard. Mainline Gurdjieff groups paid no attention to Claudio Naranjo’s Enneagram. Gurdjieff teachers questioned the credentials of people who set themselves up as doing “The Work.” Oscar Ichazo sued Helen Palmer, and Scientology had a very long list of defectors in the docket, including Werner Erhard’s est. 

The infighting became cannibalistic. Here’s an example--Scientology sued the Cult Awareness Network, which bankrupted them with the massive legal fees required to defend themselves. Scientology, through an agent, then purchased the shell of CAN for the fire-sale price of $25,000 and made it an arm of the Church of Scientology, which became the resource for distraught parents whose children had become Moonies, an Osho Sannyasin--or recruits for Scientology’s Sea Org. And the Scientologists in charge took their jobs very seriously. I was on the phone with them when a concerned family member raised concerns about the “human-development” seminar company I worked for. They knew the precise questions to ask to uncover a cult.

This kind of feeding frenzy spread like wildfire in dry grass. Not only were our leaders fighting amongst themselves, with lawsuits and unbecoming slander and innuendo, but we took on each other with a righteous, determined vengeance to do the hard work of Ego Reduction. If we were not aware of our patterns of programmed behaviors, rackets, bank, negative behaviors, without lapsing into passive-aggressive behavior ourselves, how could we root them out? Like good soldiers in the war against the dark side, we ganged up on each other, all with some expression of gratitude or at least lack of complaint. In retrospect, our behavior was more like gang bangers than seekers after truth or truth warriors. It also served a dual purpose. It deflected attention from the leaders who were more like tribal Neanderthals with automatic weapons than compassionate, enlightened beings acting for the deepest good of all humankind. 

I knew one of these gurus for almost 30 years. It was an on-again,off-again acquaintance. Bob Hoffman was a very difficult man, most likely suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. I cannot say that he was dumber than a stump. I don’t know his IQ, though I do know that he dropped out of school in about the 6th or 7th grade and never received a GED. For the almost 30 years I knew him, he never finished a book though he did try several times. He opened E.M. Forster’s “Maurice” when he heard that it was his gay novel, but he never finished it. He told me that the storyline was too bleak. He also tried Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man," but lost interest when he realized Isherwood was not Danielle Steel. He asked me to fill him in on the end of the story. He was disappointed. He loved a happy ending. 

Hoffman channeled the Quadrinity Process from his spirit guide, his psychotherapist, Siegfried Fisher. Because it came from “the other side” Hoffman claimed the highest level of validity. He would stand in front of a group and ramble. I never saw him go into anything like a trance. Most times, the sessions were recorded and Hoffman had them transcribed, edited, and cleaned up by a small group of people who had had, admittedly, some rather remarkable personal experiences following this otherworldly methodology. Because Hoffman tried to hide that he had actually been Fisher’s patient, the whole tale became twisted with lies and information that was “somewhat less than factual,” and it became ripe ground for manipulation.

When I read some well-thought-out passage online attributed to Hoffman, I know that it was obviously written by a ghost. Hoffman liked it short, dirty, and crude. His teaching style was in-your-face aggressive. On a scale of professional to barbarian, he was unapologetically barbarian. He “broke you down to build you up,” and you had to be grateful for his gifts of wisdom. You did things his way, or you’d be shut out. Some of the people who succeeded him will boast they never stooped to or countenanced his crude confrontation, that they told him so to his face, brave souls. They stretch the truth. Every one of them would have to admit to strained working relationships. At some point, everyone close to him just blocked his ranting, and as long as he got paid, he learned to live with it. 

But the adjustments, the edits, the lies are necessary. Hoffman is still the guru face of the Process that bears his name. It is a cult. Is there something more? Is there anything that can be saved from this river of teaching? I will also tackle the question of whether the Western adaptation of Buddhism loses something by closely identifying with the Self-Help Industry. Stay tuned.