We spent a couple hours at the Zen Master’s museum today. In high school, Akiko studied Suzuki, as well as one of his disciples, Nishida. Akiko did not become conscious of Suzuki’s implications and teachings until later in life. I would have loved to study with Suzuki, and engage in dialogue, had I been born 25-30 years before. I would have cherished having been hit by his “zen stick” whenever I wandered too far away from ” the truth of the moment”..
It is said, to finally understand, one must strive for, and then achieve satori, lest one remain attached to one’s self and its limiting intellectual understanding. One must see beyond the contradictions of naming and reasoning. One must see through the fog of all dogmas, and the “truth” from the past, to perceive the ever-present reality unfolding in each unique moment. Then, one no longer is dependent on a deity, living or dead, for salvation. All power and truth comes from the cleared channel within. The individual lives, while being “bathed” continuously in transcendence, and by this immersion one is transformed.
Alan Watts was the first Zen adherent that I listened to late at night on a rock and roll radio station, in the early 1970’s. He was immensely influenced by DT Suzuki. I was “high” when I listened to him and rarely understood him, which, apparently, was quite a common experience in those times by many other neophytes. My mind was still messed up from toxic masculinity and Christianity, and too much drugs and alcohol. I stopped caring for spiritual realization when the concerns of family and career intervened, as well as a powerful long term drug dependency..
While at the museum, reading room, and contemplative area, I perused some of his famous essays, the one on Satori was particularly captivating. Miraculously, I not only now understand his writings, I also have tasted the spiritual water from the same fountain. Unlike Suzuki, however. I will die in obscurity and anonymity, as it should be. I will also die liberated from toxic forms of masculinity and Christianity, and drug addiction, but freed from my fate, to reach for my destiny..
Realization IS freedom. We all can live a life unbounded by other’s wayward understandings. We can live a life of freedom that few will ever conceive of or consider, and even fewer will experience. We can be freed from all of our pseudo-sacred “knowns”, Open heart and clear mind leads to transcendent life experience. Many are called to this eternal awareness, yet only a few will answer.
In the words of a master electrician I “studied under” as an apprentice, who demeaned, persecuted and prodded me continuously:
“Don’t be so fucking good, just learn how to blend in.”
Ken Garver, if you are still alive, you might have been on to something, even though you were quite the toxic, ignorant man.
Sorry, I just could not help myself!
Back to just blending inward with Spirit..
