Zen Sickness
Too much Zen? Too many koans: "Joshu's Mu!," "No Mind, No Buddha," "Tozan's Three Pounds of Flax," "Nansen Kills a Cat," "Unmon's Shit-Stick!?" Too much sitting, facing the wall? What about herding the ox, calligraphy, ensos with broken symmetry, rock gardens, water falls, bamboo, chado, haiku, satori, nirvana, slaps from the master, shouts from the high seat, bad Zen, good Zen, no Zen?
Or minimal expressionist art, beats, bebops, shades, goatees, hip scenes, espressos, birth of the cool? And what about dharma bums, folk singers, disembodied poets, Woody, Pete, Bob, Jack, Gary, Allen, Philip? Or Alan, Steve, Ingmar, Moe, Larry, Curly?
A disease (not a disease) afflicts serious Zen students and meditators. Very rarely understood, Zen sickness is none of the affectations above, which are slap-shot koans of Zen mind-turning, some helpful, some not. The bare bones of Zen must be unearthed at the turning point of Buddhist development in the Mahayana, or Open Way. Articulated by the Indian patriarch, Nagarjuna, the Bodhisattva must take hold of the Great Problem and achieve absolute enlightenment in the crisis of of Zen sickness.
And what is the Great Problem? It is none other than emptiness itself, that is, no essence, no selfness, no thingness. Zen, or Zen Buddhism, is a non-theistic religion because of emptiness. A Buddhist eventually confronts the emptiness of the phenomenal world, including the self. It may stimulate Zen sickness in a sensitive soul in the meditative life.
Zen sickness is an important experience even with health downfalls. It is a fortunate disease because it indicates the practitioner is encountering the void of emptiness despite being set upon by the storehouse impressions of karmic lifetimes. Resolution is near, but the medicine is not easy to swallow. The student experiences a false emptiness, like a distortion of the truth, with an inability to sleep at night. Ghosts visit the mind, perceptual disorders dominate, exhaustion undermines and strange dreams of ominous events portend.
Hamlet had a serious case. Beloved in literature as a tragic hero, we, the audience, knew well that emptiness existed, even if we never gave expression to it in our minds or words. So Shakespeare did! When things went bump in the night, Hamlet prayed, brooded and winded his way through a castle cursed with his father's own blood. His tunic as black as his funereal mood, the Dane was given to melancholy. Ophelia, his enchanted love, committed suicide. Yorick's skull was exposed in its grave smiling.
Introverted, not given to action, Hamlet was preoccupied with tragedy and the cruelty of the world. He suffered a feigned madness amidst treachery, revenge, incest and moral corruption. He was not a survivor. He just could not complete his training with confidence born of the empty mind.
Without forethought as to the subject, I took on the problem in my third song cycle, "The Land Bridge of Bering Strait." My Hamlet ended up being Sasquatch, a very enlightened creature who lived in the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest, darting behind redwood trees and giant boulders, only visible at night when his fur glowed. He asked important questions and referred often to life and death as matters worthy of contemplation. Near his demise at the song's end, he achieved the realization of emptiness, or "nothing left to know." Like Orpheus, the Sasquatch was reconstituted in an enlightenement body after his dismemberment and death in a dark grotto inside of a snowstorm outside a cave("skull/antler/bone"). He was escorted to the "pure land" kingdom of "Shangri-La," or Shambhala, by his true companions and spiritual friends.
Tibetan Buddhists say Zen illness will pass in time of its own accord, like a virus with little fever and a touch of malaise. The Buddhists of Japan (Zen) or China (Chan) acknowledged its existence and suggested esoteric treatment methodology for moving the chi into the center of the lower body, such as "the duck egg treatment."
Of course, the treatment sounded absurd, like Zen itself! It was always interesting Buddhism was passed over and not considered to be a real world religion, because it was empty! It did not exist! Katsu! The world happily left the Buddhists in peace to pursue creative arts and sciences, like Apple Computer or my cowboy/Indian self, the Big Hand. Reductio in absurdum ad infinito, the "duck egg" might have made Nagarjuna lightly smile.
