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Cosmopolitan Zen: A Small Lesson to be Gleaned from Turning Toward the Other

Cosmopolitan Zen: A Small Lesson to be Gleaned from Turning Toward the Other

Last updated on: July 27, 2022 at 7:21 am by James Ford

Cosmopolitan Zen: A Small Lesson to be Gleaned from Turning Toward the Other 2022-07-27T07:21:53-07:00 James Ford

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In a shove and push situation an honest assessment of how I understand the world is as a kind of Mahayana Buddhist. (Details linked here for your ease, should you be interested)

I am so grateful for having found this perspective.

And I have seen how my spiritual tradition comes with, well, more than some baggage.

As I’ve observed and reflected on the nature of religions for an age. And what I’ve learned is that religions writ large are always, whatever else is true, they are always also about cultural reinforcement. When I’m in a bad mood I say crowd control. It makes some sense, as a part of a larger culture that part we name religion is about who is in and who is out.

Here’s the deal. It’s also true of Zen Buddhism. My religion. You dig around in any religion that’s been around for a while and it turns out a big part of its time is devoted to that crowd control thing, obedience to the king or the republic or whatever stands as the center of the culture. It has vestiges that continue to this moment.

Our little experiment in the West has a Zen that is not beholden the main culture. So it’s not about reinforcing the Republic. Yet. But it does become a theoretical structure for how we engage the larger world and it provides boundaries. The people who are attracted to Zen in the West tend to be more highly educated than the norm in our culture, often have a bit of a larger cultural encounter, and for the most part end up at the more progressive end of the culture.

And Zen Buddhism has turned out to reinforce that world view. I believe that world view is a true view. But it is a view, and ultimately Zen is about something deeper.

Something to notice.

And, the truth is religion is a part of a culture, and our cultures are how we live in the world, we humans. With that there are dangers and there are there are possibilities. Dangers. Possibilities.

Recently I had occasion to attend a service at a fundamentalist Christian church. The sermon started off with some serious chest thumping my God is way better than your God, with a good bit of straw man arguments in support of same. Then an unexpected and somewhat extended swipe at pentecostals. And then into the nub of getting into a (absolutely dualistic) relationship with the divine.

Finally when there, I felt flashes of something beyond rote defense of “us” against a whole world of “thems.”

It seemed to me that beyond a religious assertion that I felt more than unfortunate, was an honest attempt at touching something deep and true. The preacher is youngish, and very much caught up in being right And being right about some very hard to defend things. I know from other anecdotes about him, he’s deep down the tube for young earth creationism, as an example.

But, he also has allowed a vulnerability that has touched him. With that all of a sudden there was something of the good in religions.

It has to do with what it seemed to me he did touch. Within that hot mess of a sermon he witnessed to what it might be. To some degree he has been touched by a sense of intimacy.

Where it will take him on his life’s journey, I don’t know. He has thrown up some serious barriers to really deeply getting it. Like with all of us. But, also, I trust the power of that intimate touch.

My take away here is this. I believe to be human is to have access to the deep currents of the real. When people attempt to describe the real, the real that we humans can encounter and which can make us into something both ancient and new, it seems the people who use the word nondual are the one’s coming closest to what that ultimately unnamable is. If I were forced to put a name to that most profound encounter which transforms us it would be intimacy.

I think a lot about that.

A friend just alluded to the view that Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco were more “International cities” than “American.” I would read “San Francisco” as “San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area.” Now, I’m rolling the idea around. Cities are almost always more, well, cosmopolitan. And of those, some cross a line into something bigger yet.

These days in this world we are experiencing a trending inward, and harboring suspicions and worse of others of various sorts. These feel especially dangerous times. I feel some noticing of that broader view captured in the idea of cities and a cosmopolitan view, important. Maybe critical.

With that I find my attention turning toward our religions. Religions are important both for the good they can do and the ill. Religions are critical because they define how a culture sees the world and people within the world. I think of that fundamentalist pastor and the fact that at the heart of his message was a confession of intimacy. And with that perhaps a slight softening of the heart, and something to recall as we turn to the hard struggles for the heart of this country. And our own hearts, of course.

I see my own encounter with Zen and how it both reinforces my assumptions. But also through its practices and perhaps even more important as pointing, Zen can and does open me to something genuinely important. The invite here is to turn toward the other. To let the other present. To turn toward that least likely of teachers. And let it teach. It doesn’t mean letting anyone off any hooks, but it does call us to notice we’re hanging from some hooks ourselves.

I think of international or world cities. They’re big. They’re messy. They have a lot wrong with them. But, right into the DNA of any city is a great mix up, of people, of cultures, of food. Some people are crushed by these differences. That needs to be noticed. And, for most, there is an opening, a window and for some a doorway into something greater. A gateway into intimacy of a kind.

True for cultures. It can be true for religions.

For example.

When we first arrived in Long Beach, early one evening as Jan and I were driving along the coast on Ocean Boulevard, as we came to the intersection at Redondo, we noticed a large Mary shrine. It was all quite wonderful. I also noticed the ethnic mix of people there, a healthy combination of folk whose ancestors came from, it sure looked, every continent.

And at the time what was most confusing was that it seemed attached to a Buddhist monastery. It left me wondering what was what. Why did it seem Buddhists were taking care of a Catholic shrine? I did a little research. Turns out the building originally served a Carmelite convent. When the nuns decided to relocate to a less public area the property was purchased by the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, a very traditional Chinese Buddhist monastery.

Apparently the nuns requested that the shrine be kept intact. And from the official notice at the monastery’s website, they immediately agreed, stating they saw Mary as the Western version of Guanyin. In Buddhism Guanyin is the manifestation or archetype of compassion. And interestingly many of her images looks surprisingly similar to those of Mary.

As good as their word, the monastery has kept the shrine in beautiful condition. And, today Christians and Buddhists both pay homage at the shrine.

Something you’re most likely to only find in a big city.

Cosmopolitan. Not a bad word. And perhaps this is a call for a Cosmopolitan Zen.

It’s all open ended. Maybe a bit messy. Perhaps very messy. It doesn’t work for everyone. But when people turn to the mystery, to the mess, something can happen.

We find it in the zendo, if we go there. We can capture it from another angle in a fundamentalist sermon, if we go there. We have to bring our best selves to the project. There are always traps along the way. Mostly created by wounds in our hearts. But, if we’re careful, if we’re willing to pay attention when the deep presents itself.

And then, in this hurting world, perhaps we’ll even find ways to be of use.

Who knows?

But what we will know is the deep heart touching those other deep hearts, in a mystery so profound that the angels dance in witness.

Something rather deeper than hope…

The intimate.

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