Joe Strummer did an interview after the Clash broke up, and he described Punk music and fans and bands as almost Stalinist. Everyone had to fit into a mold, like the same things, listen to the same bands, reject all music that existed prior to the advent of Punk, and if you didn’t, or worse yet, if you strayed, you’d be ostracized and branded as revisionist. The punks didn’t actually use the word “revisionist,” but Stalinists did, so we’ll go with it for context. The same intent—you’ve betrayed the glorious revolution that turned everything on its head. You’ve reverted to an-anarchy, retreating to the comfortable old ways, afraid to take the dangerous uncharted path.
It’s interesting that some people and groups in the quest for “different,” just construct a new “same.” It’s the Ramones taken to the extreme. Twenty years of leather jackets, ripped jeans, that musical style, and even the same haircuts that at first were unconventional and even threatening turned into a uniform. Change was stifled and even treated as a threat itself. Bands that did change over time were rejected by their old followers, terming them “sellouts.” And Leon Trotsky had to be killed for his advocacy of “perpetual revolution,” and Stalinists branded him with their own version of sellout, “Revisionist.”
For a lot of people, Zen is the punk rock of Buddhism. Sort of dangerous, dark, edgy, and unconventional. As punk stripped music down to a reductio ad absurdum level, Zen says to see your true nature. That’s it. See your true nature, you’re done. I’d say enlightened, but in Zen that word is looked on with a certain suspicion and countered with statements like “samsara is nirvana.” Words and scriptures? Don’t need ‘em to see your true nature. Everything you’d like to be able to count on is as useless as a Tsar or an orchestra conductor. To bring that home, Linji said:
“If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet the patriarchs, kill the patriarchs; if you meet Arhats, kill Arhats; If you meet your parents, kill your parents; if you meet your relatives, kill your relatives. Then for the first time you will see the truth.”
That’s about as close to a Soviet pogrom as you can get! Zen practice can be tough. Or easy, depending on who you ask. Zen is asking for Mozart and getting Stravinsky; wanting The Beach Boys and getting Pere Ubu: expecting Huangbo and Thich Nhat Hanh shows up; Nat King Cole instead of Coltrane. Think there’s something to stand on, finding the carpet you thought was there not only has been the pulled out, but it was on top of the abyss. That can be uncomfortable. No one said Zen was supposed to be comfortable. Or uncomfortable for that matter. Clinging rigidly on Bodhidharma’s “beyond words and scriptures” is the same as hanging onto words and scriptures, regardless of the security either can provide.
Zen practitioners might not all be so iconoclastic as Linji. It’s easy to be pious and go to Rohatsu seissins or answer kongans and slap the floor. It’s easy to chant the Bodhisattva Vows and then really not do anything about saving all beings, cut through delusions, embrace all opportunities, or be a Buddha. It’s easy to say that my practice is authentic, especially compared to yours. It’s easy to sit on a cushion and think that’s enlightenment itself, that you have Buddha nature, and in fact are Buddha, but secretly doubt all of that. It’s easy to stay in your own tradition, your own sangha, your own meditation space, and venture no further into the world and practice with outstretched arms. And it’s really easy to think that schools and sanghas outside of your own lineage and practitioners outside your own little circle as inferior, not able to say they’re in the True Lineage of the Buddha.
The Buddha said that clinging to rites and rituals is a hindrance to awakening. He didn’t say the the rites and rituals are the problem, clinging to them is. You can sit, chant the Heart Sutra, and bow to your heart’s content and not attach to it. But once these are done because “that’s how we’ve always done it,” and for that reason IT MUST NEVER CHANGE! is the best reason to change.
I’m not saying that rituals must be eliminated. Chanting together as a group can be an amazing experience. We can make different practices stay alive by getting people to pay attention. Changing a service by moving where the Bodhisattva Vows are chanted may seem simple and even arbitrary. Try it sometime and see how many sangha members will start chanting because that’s where it’s always been chanted. My teacher was notorious for changing “Sentient beings are numberless; we vow to save them all” into “help them all.” It had the effect of making us pay attention to the words we were saying instead of a mindless regurgitation of what’s always been there. We would always chant it at the beginning of a service.
My Sangha now starts with the Pali Refuge Vows and ends with the Bodhisattva Vows. And it’s even a slight variation of the Pali chant with the middle three lines in English. Instead of a solemn Bodhi Day observation, we had a poetry slam. We were celebrating the Awakening, not mourning it.
What may not be easy is to stop clapping before everyone else does for the Dear Leader. The Practice is perpetual revolution, because as reality is changing changing changing, we need to pay attention and not be afraid to suffer the recriminations of the Stalinist autocrats we may have in our midst. It’s not easy to tilt at windmills, but tilt we must, or the practice turns into just so many dead words and rituals, and no sentient beings are “saved.”