Never Look Down

It's either the Rainbow Body, or somebody overdid it on the mushrooms.

As I shut down or minimize my social media accounts (principally Twitter) & withdraw into a more & more splendid obscurity under the starry sky Abyss of the great Pacific Northwest, I have a few notes I'd like to share with you on my experiences & my teaching methods.

Following tradition, I will start out with a raw Q & A. These are all true questions that various provocative individuals have asked me at one time or another, by the way. [Most recently they were angrily demanded of me on Twitter by the abbot of a Rinzai temple with active sites in Kyoto & California. It was  downright eerie to learn that this ignorant, pugilistic, shaven-headed rice-bag, supposedly a repository of the majestic Zen tradition, denies the possibility of Kensho. But what does our Old Rinzai Master Hakuin say about it? Let's see: "You must bring an end to all your thought-attachments by breaking through into kensho. Unless you have kensho, you can never expect to achieve a state of non-doing."!]

My answers are also the same rote, rather boring answers I always give out to these insanely stupid questions:

Q: Why do you call yourself a "Roshi"? Who authorized you to teach?

A: I don't call myself anything at all [except sometimes "A Beggar with a Bamboo Flute"], least of all a "Roshi." Don't be misled by the title of this blog. The "Roshi" is your own originally enlightened Mind, & nothing & nobody else.

Nobody authorized me to teach. Nobody authorized Shakyamuni to teach, either! Face the bitter truth. We're all alone in life & doing the best we can.

But if I can spread around a few techniques that help people in life or death situations (the only type of situations that actually exist, please wake up to the truth of it now!), I am content to be called anything you like.

Q: How do I know you're really Enlightened?

A: Fuck off. Next question.

Q: Does a real Zen Roshi use pungent language like "fuck off"?

A: Ask that stupid question of Yunmen or Joshu or Lin-Chi. And fuck off royally once again. And fuck your mother & your sister & your first cousin & her little white dog too while you're at it.

***

OK, that didn't go so well. But what do you expect in this screwed up world? Laugh a little. As Charlie Chaplin once sang,

Swing, little girl, swing high to the sky,
And don’t ever look at the ground.

If you’re searching for rainbows

Look up to the sky—

You’ll never find rainbows

If you’re looking down.

Life may be dreary,

But never the same,

Some day it’s sun-shine—

Some day it’s rain.

So swing little girl

Swing high to the sky

And don’t ever look at the ground.

If you’re searching for rainbows

Look up to the sky,

But never—no never look down.