¡@ The Practice of Perfection:The Paramitas from a Zen Buddhist Perspective, by Aitken, Robert
Reviewed by Larry Smith
Parabola
Vol.23 No.4
Nov 1998
pp.120-125
COPYRIGHT @ 1998 Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition
¡@
Traditionally, new monks and nuns walked naked to the town dump,
pulled out scraps of cloth, bleached them, dyed them with natural
dyes, and then sewed them together to make robes. The robe became
home. (The Practice of Perfection)
THIS IS NOT A BOOK about perfection so much as it is about practice,
about clothing yourself and being at home. Robert Aitken Roshi
weaves together the declarations of the Ten Paramitas with careful
explanations, quotes, applications, questions and answers--all in a
dialogue of learning rather than a lecture or a sermon from on high.
Aitken, author of Taking the Path of Zen and Mind of Clover (both
North Point), and co-founder with his wife Anne of the Diamond
Sangha Center in Hawaii, has always been a humble and practical
teacher, and the cloth he sews here is hardy and strong.
His tone is conversational and direct, his style mindful,
reflective, often poetic, as in the chapter on Paramita
Eight--Aspiration --where he explains the interplay of "vows" and
"experience":
Your vows direct you to the deepest experience of the real
world--the world of inter-being. So do bells, clappers, birdsong,
and even the helicopter rattling overhead. So do mountains and
clouds and poinciana trees. So does the whiff of incense or the
touch of your clothing to your skin when the wind blows. These
experiences can reveal inter-being directly, or they can remind you
of your vows--and your vows in turn can help you to be open to
experience.
Typically Aitken follows this with a variety of quotes and koans
from Zen masters Dogen, Chao-chou, and Shakyamuni, and poets Basho,
Hakuin, Ikkyu, and even Walt Whitman and Gary Snyder. His goal is to
connect with the long history of practicing the Zen way by
personalizing the teachings and tying them to social action. In many
ways this book is the record of his own fifty years of Western
practice.
The Practice of Perfection moves at an easy pace, in twenty-page
chapters suitable for daily lessons. Each is focused on one of the
Ten Paramitas: Giving (Dana), Morality (Shila), Forbearance
(Kshanti), Zeal (Virya), Settled, Focused Meditation (Zazen),
Compassion (Upaya), Aspiration (Pranidhana), Spiritual Strength
(Bala), and Knowledge (Jnana). As he explains, "Each step is
perfection itself, but each gives notice of a different aspect of
perfection." One must not get consumed with attaining perfection, he
warns, but practice well as a part of the perfection that unites us.
He advises those practicing lay Zen or seeking to become ordained
monks and nuns to find a good teacher. Otherwise, "You are left
thinking zazen is itself enlightenment, not realizing that you
aren't doing zazen. There are depths beyond depths. With a true
teacher you can follow the exacting path that leads on and on."
Aitken feels that eventually we come to accept our life and all in
it (including memories, desires, and failures) as part of a long
practice--everything is teaching.
In "Aspiration" he clarifies the central movement of practice: "We
motivate ourselves with our vows to move from the singular to the
plural, to abandon indulgence in the sole self and divert energy to
the community. Zazen is the ground for this transformation; daily
life is its garden. We practice it together." Aware that we often
miss these essential and simple truths when stated, Aitken
illustrates them, ties them to his practice, and then allows half of
each chapter for dialogue through the "Questions and Responses"
section. The book itself works into a pattern, a rhythm of practice,
revealing the interdependence of all of the "Paramitas," the net of
meaning. Ultimately Aitken proves himself a wise teacher, one who
listens well and values silence. Standing near, he allows his
readers to make their own robes.
In Aitken's new Original Dwelling Place: Zen Buddhist Essays we have
a diverse collection of twenty-four selected prefaces, biographical
introductions, talks, and essays on Zen Buddhist figures and topics:
a lifetime of reflection and teaching. It never leaves the core
task, however--"to take up Buddhism as a religion of infinite
compassion"--especially when it is discussing "The Experience of
Emptiness: Use and Misuse":
Some students understand this empty nature conceptually, and risk
getting stuck in an undifferentiated place where correct and
incorrect are the same, where male and female are the same--where
all configurations disappear into a kind of pudding. The great
teachers of the past addressed this risk directly:
The venerable Yen-yang asked Chao-chou, "When one has brought not a
single thing, what then?"
Chao-chou said, "Put it down."
When you cling to nothing as something, then you yourself are not
truly empty, and the emptiness you cherish is no more than an idea.
With this notion of emptiness, you can be persuaded that the
homeless are an illusion, the rain forests are not being destroyed,
there are no traditional peoples who are dying out, there is no one
freezing or starving or dying from shrapnel in the former
Yugoslavia. When you run over a child with your car, there is no
child, after all. Put down that "not a single thing" or your
successors will use it to enhance and support brutality and
imperialism.
The book begins appropriately with a section of "Ancestors,"
portraits of those persons who helped bring Zen to the West.
Foremost here are the persons who most influenced Aitken's own
practice, beginning with Zen monk Nyogen Senzaki, founder of the San
Francisco Zen Center in 1928. In 1947 Aitken began working with this
humble maverick who taught chiefly through his actions and example.
Next came the reluctant Soen Roshi whom he met in Japan in the 1940s
while working on a study of haiku. He compares Soen Roshi with the
Native American Black Elk for his emphasis on vision and pageant.
Though Soen Roshi refused to take on Aitken as a disciple, he did
counsel him in the Way: "When you sweep the garden, you are sweeping
your mind." This Zen master did not want to accept a mission in
America, and so sent Eido Shimano in his stead, a mistake he refused
to admit even when Shimano became embroiled in troubles on both
coasts for his sexual harassment. Aitken then turns to his old ally
R. H. Blyth, citing his book Zen in English Literature and Oriental
Classics as his "first book," "in the way Walden was the `first
book' for some of my friends." Aitken came upon the book while in a
Japanese civilian internment camp during World War II. It was there
in 1944 that he also came upon the book's author, for Blyth himself
was interned at the camp in Kobe, where Aitken was later
transferred. Also a reluctant teacher, Blyth was uncomfortable with
young Aitken's adulation, but comfortable with his friendship. The
two men became friends and co-teachers. One must imagine their
wonderful conversations over haiku and Zen. Of Blyth's personal
limitations--his assertion of Zen prowess beyond his scope as well
as his poor treatment of women--Aitken confides, "I accept these
flaws as I accept the flaws in my own father .... His words rise in
my mind as I speak to my own students, and his face still appears in
my dreams."
The final two portraits are of admired scholars and translators of
Zen writing: D. T. Suzuki and Dwight Goddard. Aitken's brief study
with Suzuki revealed to him how open and engaged the man was with a
firm commitment to world peace. Aitken does a nice job of sketching
in the details of Goddard's life, showing him as an early, almost
forgotten Zen scholar, whose collection of Buddhist writings in his
A Buddhist Bible proved essential in bringing the Way to the West.
He cites, for example, its impact on Jack Kerouac as one of his
"first books," one Kerouac drew from in his poetry, Zen writing, and
novel The Dharma Bums. Finally Aitken links himself to Goddard "as a
fellow eccentric and fellow late bloomer... devoted to religious
understanding." This seems the intent of the whole "Ancestors"
section: to pay tribute and highlight a personal lineage.
The remaining four sections of Original Dwelling Place cover "The
Classical Discourse," "Practice," "Ethics and Revolution," and
"Taking Pleasure in the Dharma." Though not a tightly organized
book, and containing some overlap, it embraces an open directness
that is rewarding. Aitken addresses the deepest levels of Zen
realization as well as problems such as sexual abuse within Buddhist
communities. His work is always carefully researched, deeply
assimilated, and readily applied. In "Classical Discourses" he
presents a vital portrait of Kanzeon, the Goddess of Mercy, and
views the essential teaching of the Brahma Viharas as this: "A step
beyond kindliness, compassion is the personal experience and
practice of interbeing. We live our short lives not merely in the
interdependence but as a single great organism of many dynamic
elements. What happens to you happens to me; what happens to me
happens to you--at the same moment with the same intensity."
In the "Practice" section he acknowledges Dogen Zenji as his chief
mentor, describing a method of moving "freely from the acceptance of
a particular mode as complete in itself to an acknowledgment of its
complementarity with others, to a presentation of its unity with all
things--and back again"--Aitken's own method practiced here. And
though Dogen Zenji often "wrote at the outermost edge of human
communication," Aitken serves well as a Western translator of the
heart of Buddhism.
His final sections on "Ethics and Revolution" and "Taking Pleasure
in the Dharma" contribute to the whole dialogue on engaged Buddhism,
yet maintain the necessity of keeping the practice light. His most
frequent quote is from the Quaker pacifist A. J. Muste ("There is no
way to peace; peace is the way"), which Aitken enlarges to: "There
is no way to a just society; our just societies are the way." To
accomplish this, he realizes, one must awaken to our seeds of
change: "In the world of play, a druggist's apprentice becomes a
knight, a child becomes a father, a dog becomes a baby, and the
insurance agent, throwing off his worries about declining sales,
transforms himself into a prince and seduces his tired wife and the
mother of his brood, who in turn becomes a ravishing, masked beauty
at the mummer's ball."
Now in his late seventies, Robert Aitken confirms in his practice
and his words that Buddhism is a transforming practice.
Larry Smith is a professor of humanities at Fire-lands College in
Huron, Ohio. He is also a poet and novelist, and is completing a
biography of American author and artist Kenneth Patchen.