Napa Valley Center for Spiritual Living, Napa, California,
USA
January 14, 2022
"I appreciate your commitment to communicating with me on the basis of
what you have to share and contribute, rather than 'in order to'
something. For me there is nothing presumptuous in your saying 'our
relationship'. I take our relationship as a gift from you. What you
say is very
high class Zen.
Good for you."
...
somewhere over Siberia en route to Tokyo, in an e-mail
conversation with
Laurence Platt
This essay,
Dirty Zen,
is the twenty second in an open group on
Zen:
OK, let's
face
it: beautiful is easy ... or (if you prefer) "beauty" ie
"the beautiful" is easy. And whatever can be said for
"beauty" ie if it can be said for "the beautiful" ... then the same
could also be said for "elegance" / "the elegant" ... and the same
could also said for "taste" / "the tasteful" ... and the same could
also be said for "appropriateness" / "the appropriate". Beauty begets
Zen. Elegance begets Zen. Taste begets Zen. Appropriateness begets Zen.
Zen goeswith (as
Alan Watts
may have said) beauty, elegance, taste, and appropriateness.
It's easy to get Zen when it's one, some, any, or all of the above. But
it's particularly easy to get Zen in beauty. It's easy to
get Zen in a sunset. It's easy to get Zen in an austere, spartan,
impeccably neat Zen
monastery
ie especially in an austere, spartan, impeccably neat Zen
monastery
(look: isn't austere / spartan / impeccable its own domain of
high-class-Zen-beautiful?
indeed, isn't it beautiful's own
home?).
And in beautiful, isn't it easy to get Zen? It's easy to get Zen under
a windless, moonscaped sky. It's easy to get Zen in an orange and
purple tinged flaming dawn. It's easy to get Zen on a white powder-sand
beach
of a crystal clear blue lagoon.
In the beautiful, it's easy to get Zen. Like that (maybe
because of it too) you can get Zen in an immaculately
curated
art gallery.
That's easy. You can get Zen in the sound of windchimes at the gate by
bonsai trees in a gentle breeze. You can even get Zen poignantly in the
toiletries immaculately laid out on
David Bowie's
granite bathroom countertop. You can get Zen especially in the brocade
and filigree of a
Zen master's
shirt. It's all beautiful. It's easy getting Zen in and from the
beautiful.
It's the quality of beauty that calls forth Zen. Almost no intervention
or discrimination is required on our part to get the beautiful Zen. We
see it, we get it
(thinking
is an optional extra - indeed, truth is it isn't required at all). Zen
is ... well, it's just ... Zen as it ripples out from the
astounded "A-Ha!" in the stillness of the temple-Zen, in
the midst of the Kyoto museum-Zen, in the
peace
of the pagoda-Zen. And when Zen is beautiful, it's easy.
Beautiful is easy. And the beautiful is Zen. It's very Zen. Anyone can
get Zen when it's beautiful. You can. I can. And you do. And I
do. We're thrown that way. We're thrown to the beautiful,
peaceful,
calm Zen. We get it.
Now watch: there's a pernicious
trap
in all of that, which is this: what of when it's not
beautiful? Some things are beautiful. Some aren't. So if Zen is only
Zen when it's beautiful, then isn't it really
not Zen
after all? What about when it's ugly? What about when it's gross ie
when it's icky and yucky? What about when it's
dirty? Well? What about dirty Zen? Look at
your world. Scrutinize your world. Distinguish the dirty
in it. Distinguish the dirty Zen. Until you can do that, you won't
capture my interest. Beautiful isn't enough. What about dirty? Speak to
me of the ugly, the gross, the icky, the yucky, the dirty Zen.
Engage me. Thrill me with your acumen.
A
Zen master
gets Zen in the ugly and the gross and the icky and the yucky and the
dirty, not just in the beautiful. A
Zen master
gets the Zen, the perfection of it all, in all of it.
Look: if you have Zen as only in the beautiful, that's naïve. It's
clearly being unclear-on-the-concept. That's not really Zen at
all (how could it be?). You have to include dirty Zen. You have to
embrace it. You have to
surrender
to it. Look: consider getting your entire life from dirty
Zen ... which is to say consider getting your Zen from
dirty Zen, from your relationship with it, from waking up from your
naïve blindness to it, from giving up your arbitrary
resistance
to and exclusion of it.
