Is zen hard to swallow?

From Brad Warner's blog this morning:

In the past week I have received three different variations on the same question. There must be something in the air. The latest goes like this: "I guess my first questions are 'does Zen Buddhism have any crazy and hard to digest stories and ideas behind it? how much does it differ to other forms of Buddhism? And if these stories/concepts/mantras exist in the Zen world, do you take them with a pinch of salt?'."

The answer about crazy and hard to digest stories is yes and no. But mostly no. In Zen there is no importance attached to matters of belief. What you believe is largely irrelevant. Belief is just more stuff that your mind does. It might have some relevance, but only in terms of how your beliefs affect your behavior. There is no God or Buddha or anyone else who gives a shit one way or the other what you do or do not believe.

That being said, there are as many weird hard to swallow stories associated with Zen as with any other religion. The Lotus Sutra, Dogen's favorite sutra, has passages in which Buddha does all kinds of crazy miraculous things like shooting beams out of his forehead and suchlike. The koans have stories about people transforming themselves into animals or chopping off other people's fingers just to prove a point. If you took that stuff literally it would be pretty much like any other religion.

The great thing about Zen, though, is that there is never any pressure to believe any of this stuff. You can take it any way you want to. Very few Zen people take most of it literally. Gudo Nishijima used to be adamant that it was all metaphorical, especially the references to reincarnation.

A good example of this is the way we deal with the Heart Sutra , which is considered by many to be the single most important sutra in Zen, the one that defines Zen as a distinct form of Buddhism. It ends with a whole big long section that says how wonderful this one mantra is and how everyone should proclaim it. I do not know, nor have I even heard rumors about, a single Zen Buddhist who chants that mantra.

Okay, this is interesting to me for many reasons and I like it, mostly. But, what is WEIRD is this last paragraph.
HUH?
San Francisco Zen Center and all it's affiliate centers and sanghas chant the heart sutra and the mantra ALL THE TIME. It's in their little sheets they pass out for all their services. I swear. And, I know that Warner has stayed at and sat at and gone to services at SFZC many times. So, I don't get it, how could he be SO wrong about something?

http://www.sfzc.org/sp_download/liturgy/08_Heart_of_Great_Perfect_Wisdom_Sutra.pdf

"Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi

Svaha."

In Zen there is no importance attached to matters of belief. What you believe is largely irrelevant. Belief is just more stuff that your mind does. It might have some relevance, but only in terms of how your beliefs affect your behavior. There is no God or Buddha or anyone else who gives a shit one way or the other what you do or do not believe.



I like this.

This is the kind of insight that gives me a giddy feeling of freedom.

A good example of this is the way we deal with the Heart Sutra ,
which is considered by many to be the single most important sutra in
Zen, the one that defines Zen as a distinct form of Buddhism. It ends
with a whole big long section that says how wonderful this one mantra is
and how everyone should proclaim it. I do not know, nor have I even
heard rumors about, a single Zen Buddhist who chants that mantra.
Okay, this is interesting to me for many reasons and I like it, mostly. But, what is WEIRD is this last paragraph.
HUH?

I'm with you, Mike-- mostly I'm in agreement with BW. But sometimes he makes the most godawful ignorant declarations, reflecting a cultural blindness not only to the HOME cultures of Zen, in Asia-- but even beyond the confines of his particular little chunk of it in present-time USA.

In the Rinzai sangha I attended for a couple of years, the Heart Sutra was frequently chanted/sung. The music sensei-- who was a real American bodhisattva, imo-- passed away suddenly in his sleep, just after having completed-- and taught to the sangha-- a new cajun setting for the Heart Sutra. It was gorgeous; and his exit seemed impeccably timed, even though he was neither old nor ill.

Saw that this AM, too -- and exactly my same reaction, except without having been to a Zen service/practice I was left to mutter myself "really, I thought that was the chant they do?"

Brad does make ample use of his artistic license.

In our Zen sangha, we chant the Heart Sutra at every service. We include both the passage about how wonderful and perfect the prajna paramita mantra is, and a version of the mantra itself. In most Zen groups, the mantra is traditionally chanted in Buddhist Sanskrit [a linguistically simplified version of Vedic Sanskrit] "Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi svaha" [and BTW "gate" is pronounced "gat-ay"].

We use a VERY liberal English rendering/translation of the mantra itself, as provided by Matsuoka-roshi, who brought our lineage from Japan. Matsuoka was adamant about adapting Zen to America. So he worked with one of his American students on a version of the Heart Sutra that is unique. Here is Matsuoka's version of the mantra:

"Gone, gone, gone to the other shore, attained the other shore, to beyond the other shore, having never left."

That is FAR from a literal translation. But it indicates something important about what Bodhi really is.

Mike "Gozen"