The Yin and Yang of Zen

The Shamanic Bones of Zen: Revealing the Ancestral Spirit and Mystical Heart of a Sacred Tradition by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel.  Shambhala Publications.  188 pp.  $18.95.  ****

Nothing Is Hidden: The Psychology of Zen Koans by Barry Magid.  Wisdom Publications.  232 pp.  $17.95.  ****

I can’t imagine two Buddhist books more different than these.  The Shamanic Bones of Zen connects Zen practice, especially its rituals, to ancient Shamanic practices that led to altered states.  It is an extremely personal book that reflects the experience of its author, Zenju Earhlyn Manuel.  Nothing Is Hidden is about the way Zen connects to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the way these disciplines complement and inform each other.  It examines koans in light of the way they illuminate various aspects of the psyche.  Barry Magid himself is a Zen teacher and psychoanalyst, also a man grounded in modern Western philosophy and literature.  He’s as likely to quote Heidegger and Witgenstein as one of the ancient teachers.

The temptation is to say that the truth lies somewhere in between these two viewpoints, but that misses the point.  Both are true to practice in their own way.  The Shamanic Bones of Zen points to the ancient roots of this practice, the way in which even the Buddha, in the fifth century BC, said that what he was teaching was ancient.  At the same time, Buddhism connects with any number of modern disciplines and practices, as if modern thinkers have happened on these truths for the first time.  And these modern disciplines complement Buddhism.  Just as Buddhism encountered another culture when it arrived in China and mixed with Daoism and Confucianism, it is enriched by the insights of other disciplines, like psychotherapy, as it makes its way to the West.

I had thought, when I saw advanced publicity for The Shamanic Bones of Zen, that it must be a scholarly work which established a connection I’d always suspected.  For years, as I’ve settled every morning in the sitting posture, I’ve felt I was doing an ancient practice which connected me to early humans.  I feel that even more at our zendo, especially on long retreats, where we sit in the early morning or late evening, surrounded by others doing the same thing, and stare at the wall in the dim light of the room.  I feel connected to all the people through the centuries who have engaged in this practice.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel actually is a scholar, in addition to being a Zen teacher.  She is perhaps best known for her writing on race, especially The Way of Tenderness, which was enormously popular some years ago.  She has a complicated spiritual path; she grew up in the Church of Christ, where she was “an avid reader of the Bible and enjoyed the true mystic teachings on Christ’s path,” but left that rather conservative church because it didn’t allow women to be preachers and she could see teaching in her future.  She entered Buddhism through Soka Gakkai, the Nichiren group which has a huge following worldwide.  That branch of Buddhism concentrates especially on chanting, believes that chanting the name of the Lotus Sutra is itself a mystical practice, and she did that discipline for years.  Eventually she moved over to Zen, and trained in the tradition of the San Francisco Zen Center, receiving Dharma transmission from Zenkei Blanche Hartman.  In that group she found the role of teacher that she was meant for all along.

She is especially drawn to the ritual practices of Soto Zen, in which she feels the connection with her ancestors and with the earth itself.  Zazen itself, of course, is a kind of ritual—we are re-enacting the enlightenment experience of the Buddha—but Soto Zen is also full of others, including a lot of bowing and chanting.  New practitioners typically resist those (I certainly did) and come around only after a number of years, but Manuel, perhaps because of her background in Soka Gakkai, took to them right away.

People often speak of qualifications for writing.  Manuel has a solid pedigree; it doesn’t get much better than the San Francisco Zen Center and Blanche Hartman.  But she writes this book from a different kind of authority, that of her experience of life, her connection with the earth, and her deep intuition.  She talks about how people accept her when she talks about race, but have questioned her qualifications on other subjects; a magazine ran her article on zazen past a group of “experts” before they would publish it.[1]  But she wrote this book from an authority that no one can question.  People can agree or not, but it’s not a matter of doctrine.

I’ve done plenty of resisting ritual in my life, partly because I wanted to get back to the “real” practice (zazen), partly because I felt awkward and inexperienced.  This book made me take another look at that, as did a recent talk at our Zen Center about the rituals of Dharma transmission, and a recent experience of the Bodhisattva Ceremony, which has always moved me.  Ritual is not an adjunct to Soto Zen practice.  It’s at the heart of it.

I was similarly moved by Barry Magid’s book.  My experience of psychotherapy came before I encountered Zen or any other kind of Buddhism.  I had finished years of intense therapy with a man named Victor Zinn and was heading to Cambridge to be with my future wife while she was in Divinity School.  I asked Victor what he thought I should do in Cambridge, other than write, and he said, I think you should study a Martial Art.  Master a Martial Art.  I didn’t do that (it was a very Victor piece of advice; he was extremely physical).  But I did begin studying Buddhism and eventually Soto Zen, a body-oriented practice.

Magid has a complicated relationship with koans.  He practiced initially with Eido Roshi in New York, then in the tradition of Maezumi Roshi, two famous Zen teachers who were masters of koan practice but not renowned for mastering their personal behavior.  Magid’s eventual teacher, Joko Beck, after having practiced with koans for years, said that “koans simply failed to address emotion in any meaningful and significant way.”  Her brand of Zen is psychologically oriented, but encourages us to face our own personal experience, especially our moment by moment physical experience.  I was drawn to Beck’s teaching from the moment I encountered it.  Magid’s teaching is a more intellectual and psychoanalytically informed version of that.

I don’t know whether he actually trained with Koans, but like many Soto teachers, he sees the koan stories as opportunities for study, illustrating various aspects of human experience.  He has a fascinating take on all of that, and shows how these ancient stories inform our practice.  But he has a large view of things, and is as likely to quote Western philosophy and the therapist he studied with most, Heinz Kohut, as any Zen teacher.

I was especially struck by the ending of his book.  Here is how he opens his final chapter:

“We end where we began, looking in the mirror, saying this is me.  Looking out the window at the wide world, saying this is me.  At the beginning of a traditional psychoanalysis, the patient is told to simply say whatever comes to mind.  When, after years of evasion, shame, self-editing, denial, self-criticism, and self-aggrandizement, the patient can finally follow this simple rule, the analysis is over.”  Psychoanalysis sounds very much like Zen practice.  But is the patient through?

Actually, no.  The point of zazen, as Dogen pointed out (in a rather mysterious phrase) is to “drop off body and mind,” but as Magid says, “Dropping off body and mind must be reacted in Zen endlessly, and as Kodo Sawaki said, the dropping off of body and mind is inseparable from the activity of zazen.  Our psychological insights can deliver us from being frozen in an inner world of self-hate, but our characters will quickly congeal if the insight is not exercised every day thereafter.  No amount of insight (on the couch or on the cushion) into the origins of our overeating, drinking, compulsive or avoidant behaviors will make the habits of a lifetime simply dissolve.”

That has been my experience.  The insights are vital, but they don’t fundamentally change us.  The only thing that does (and there’s nothing final about it) is persistent daily practice.  Zen practice continues until death (and possibly beyond).  Zen allows for that, but psychoanalysis does not.  People expect analysis to cure you at some point, and think that if you continue for too long there’s some kind of co-dependency going on.  Magid doesn’t agree.  He thinks it should continue endlessly.

It gets pricey, though.  My sister did analysis on three occasions, with three separate people.  The last one helped her through her death, at age 70.  But I know she had trouble financing it.

I hope she found what she was looking for.

[1] I assume she means this article, which I had read previously.  https://www.lionsroar.com/what-if-our-delusions-arent-a-barrier-to-enlightenment/