the zen rant that really got me going.

020708: Today’s Zen Rant; (hows that for oxymoronism)
I got invited to a discussion group on the book - "A New Earth; awakening your lifes purpose" by Eckart Tolle (As Seen on Oprah).
{{{ You are invited to join a free discussion study group centered around the new book by New York Times Bestseller, Eckart Tolle, author of "The Power of Now". Seen on Oprah, February 6, 2008 with Goddess of Self-help Louise Hay.}}}
The guy who invited me is deep into networking with the crystal and “alternative” crowd to further his career as a financial counselor. Slick eh, exploit gullible people with enough money to have lots of time to pursue esoteric phenomena. It sounds downright Elizabethan to me. So I look at this authors site - http://www.eckharttolle.com/ and it appears he has made a career of repackaging Zen, (without mentioning budda or zen), as if he can show you the way to happiness through “awakening” Good god, lol, this guy is a younger version of Dr Wayne Dryer, (who took Zen and added some sort of scientology positive thinking meditation). Do they believe that they discovered this themselves or do they rationalize that the re-packaging is necessary to avoid the wrath of the fundies, (or maybe something like the babelization of the “Truth”)? Think of the authors and those hangers-on who revolve around them and the whole “self-help” – self psychology industry who deal with what in Zen is fundamentally the practice of seeing into ones own nature, achieved by simply sitting.
Self making the self out of the self, self doing itself by itself - Sawaki Roshi
Skip this if you’re tired of zen ….
In “Opening the hand of Thought” Kosho Uchiyama writes:
When we let go of our conceptions, there is no other possible reality than what is right now. This undeniable reality is the reality of life fundamentally connected to everything in the universe. Right now is all-important. Dwelling here and now, in this reality, letting go of all the accidental1 things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by opening the hand of thought.
Kosho says accidental to mean the random – could have been anything – stuff, such as I’ve been reading zen but I could have been studying the civil war or reading all the political stuff on the primaries or listening to talk radio, etc. All these will suggest random thoughts and they may lead to other random thoughts.
Chon Tri in “Zazen Practice A guideline for Beginners” (Very good intro, available free here - http://www.zenguide.com/practice/zazen.cfm Says; “ Dhyana”(Zen) is a practice for settling the mind, which is usually wandering around at all times and leads us into confusion state.”
In "The Cocoon of Pain" from Nothing Special: Living Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck writes: We have many ways to cope with life, many ways to worship comfort and pleasantness. All are based on the same thing: the fear of encountering any kind of unpleasantness.
· If we must have absolute order and control, it's because we're trying to avoid any unpleasantness. If we can have things our way, and get angry if they're not, then we think we can survive and shut out our anxiety about death.
· If we can please everyone, then we imagine no unpleasantness will enter our life.
· We hope that if we can be the star of the show, shining and wonderful and efficient, we can have such an admiring audience that we won't have to feel anything.
· If we can withdraw from the world and just entertain ourselves with our own dreams and fantasies and emotional upheavals, we think we can escape unpleasantness.
· If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened.
· If we can submit to an authority, have it tell us what to do, then we can give someone else the responsibility for our lives and we don't have to carry it anymore. We don't have to feel the anxiety of making a decision.
· If we pursue life madly, going after any pleasant sensation, any excitement, any entertainment, perhaps we won't have to feel any pain.
· If we can tell others what to do, keep them well under control, under our foot, maybe they can't hurt us.
· If we can "bliss out," if we can be a mindless "buddha" just relaxing in the sun, we don't have to assume any responsibility for the world's unpleasantness. We can just be happy.
As Joko Beck reminds us, in these many ways we worship "the god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness." We get lost in our "feverish efforts" and lose touch with life - the life that presents itself to us every moment. In the end these coping strategies can't work, because they are not based on reality, they are based on a perception of life that we create. When this happens -- when our attempts to control life fail us -- we are finally ready, she writes, "to begin serious practice."
“You are your only master
Who else?
Subdue yourself,
And discover your master”
From the Dhammapada:

Said of the Bodhidharma, (founder of Zen) -
The fire of emptiness blazes out his beard