In Search Of The Yankee Buddha, Part 2

A blog post wherein I further pontificate on the unknowable. It's a hobby.

I have to admit that I don't really have many "original thoughts." I get my data from "out there." I can trace my interest in Buddhism to a book I read when I was about 13 years old. That ol' Granddaddy of Beat, Jack Kerouac, seduced another innocent, white, middle class Protestant youth with his beautiful prose. Yes, he did. Canuck bastard.

I read Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" and immediately felt a kinship with the attitude being expressed in its pages. The thoughts and deeds of the characters were wild, excited and somehow holy in their craziness. I understood, but I didn't know what. So, I was spurred to learn more about this "Buddhism" thing.

I started with the accessible stuff, Hesse's "Siddhartha," Alan Watts and Christmas Humphrey's books on Zen. Can you imagine the look on the old librarians face when this pimply, scroungy 13-year old kid came to the counter and asked her where she kept the books by Dogen? I think she crossed herself and purposely gave me the wrong decimals, but I found 'em. I did my best to read them and understand them, too. A lot of it was intuitive, but it took years for parts to sink in. They're still sinking.

But, it was from Kerouac's prose that I learned the most. I think because Ol' Jack was nothing if not wholly and completely American (despite his French-Canadian ancestry.) I'm an American, too. A great deal of the writings on Buddhism available in the U.S. back then were translations of esoteric teachings of Japanese (and Korean, Chines, Tibetan) writers and were swathed in Oriental concepts and thought patterns. Kerouac sang straight to my American heart.

Later on in life I sat down with the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki (founder of the San Francisco Zen Center) who was a true pioneer in American Zen teachings. He wrote that his students in the States needed to find their own "American Buddha." He was right. Once I stripped the "foreign" trappings from my studies, things began to make sense to me. Or at least became a more comfortable place to be.

What Kerouac, Suzuki and Dogen were all saying to me was that Zen was something to be experienced and felt. Not just talked about. This is still the greatest challenge for me in my daily practice. I'm a thinker. I want to read about it and study it. It's hard for me to just "let go." That's why sitting (the Soto Zen style of meditation, just sitting) is so important to me. Because, for at least a few minutes on my bench I'm not analyzing or debating, I'm just "sitting." And that's all there is to Zen.

At least as far as I can tell.

Well, thanks for listening. I'll be back later to post some (hopefully) funny stuff and we'll get back to what this blog is really all about. Well, what its kinda about. You know, we probably won't get much of anything accomplished here. But, check back anyway.