One of the best things about living in Portland is day trips to Powell’s City of Books. For the uninitiated, calling Powell’s a pretty-big-book-store is like calling “Confession of Buddhist Atheist” a pretty good book; in other words, an utterly fail-tastic understatement. This biblio-behemoth spans an entire city block. It’s a veritable literary labyrinth, and practically impossible for a neophyte to navigate without a map and compass. But here’s a tip: If you walk in the front entrance, past the registers, down the hall, up a flight of stairs, and then take a hard left followed by a soft right, you might bump into me. This is the Buddhism aisle.
It seems fitting that this was where I learned an important lesson about Zen. It may be less than fitting, however, that the lesson didn’t come from one of the thousands of tomes of collected Buddhist knowledge throughout the centuries. Nah. My teacher in this instance was just some horned-rim-glassed hipster trying to impress his date.
The two of them casually pretended to look at books while I casually pretended not to be interested in their flirting.
“What do you think about Buddhism?” the girl asked. I nearly snapped my own neck jerking my head to hear the boy’s response. Portland is full of pretentious hipsters who have expert opinions on everything. This kid was about to spew some sophomoric bullshit to save face, rather than admit that he didn’t know the first thing about dharma, karma, anatman, and all the other fancy Sanskrit words I’ve memorized. I couldn’t wait to pounce on him, me a fierce Zen tiger, as he hung dangling from a proverbial vine. I purred. I growled. I listened.
The kid flashed a goofy smile. “I don’t really care for it,” he said.
Hm. Yes. If you can’t say you did it first, deny that it has any value. Go on, tell us more.
“One time I read this book on Zen. Well, I started to read it,” he said. Ah-ha! So he began his studies but just couldn’t wrap his tiny brain around such deep concepts. I patted myself on the back with my mighty tiger claws. He continued.
“One of the first sentences in the book said something like `If you want to learn about Zen then don’t read books about it.’”
Yes, yes… That checks out. I’ve read that. Now go ahead and spout your nonsense interpretation of this complex idea.
Chuck says “Fifty shades of what? Put down that sparkly vampire shit and read these AnattaPunk approved books if you want to live.”
• Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. Stephen Batchelor.
• Buddha For Beginners. Steven T. Asma.
• Sit Down and Shut Up. Brad Warner.
• Dharma Punx. Noah Levine.
• Rebel Buddha. Dzogchen Ponlop.
“The first chapter said if you want to learn about Zen don’t read about it. So I didn’t. I took the book back to the library the next day.”
My indignation burst through the roof. How dare this young dumb idiot deny the majesty of Buddhist ideas and just smugly return a book without even reading it? You think you know better than 2,000 years of evolving Buddhist wisdom, kid? Good luck with that. Why don’t you and your girl pants go pay $17 for a venti goat-milk-caramel-macchiato with nutritional yeast sprinkles and soy curls, and get the fuck out of my aisle.
The couple giggled and went on their way, leaving me behind to fume. I couldn’t even enjoy reading at this point. I went outside and stomped down the sidewalk. And then suddenly I realized…
…I wasn’t a tiger. I was a quivering mouse making a tiger shadow puppet and fooling no one.
Anger. Indignation. Pride. These are the things you learn to avoid on day one of Buddhist kindergarten. Fail. Epic fail.
I packed my mousey tiger tail between my legs and crept back home. I thought back on this guy at the bookstore over the next few days. His sentiment echoed back and forth in my skull until I was ready to bash it against the wall. “If you want to learn about Zen, don’t read about Zen. So I didn’t.” Why had this triggered so many harsh feelings in me? Why was I still torturing myself over it? Why am I currently writing about it?
If he was factually wrong in his interpretation or expressed lack of value in Buddhist teachings then it wouldn’t make sense for me to be offended. If I had overheard a child telling another child that two plus two equals five I wouldn’t have reacted with so much venom. I would have laughed it off. I wouldn’t have been upset and I certainly wouldn’t have praised myself for knowing that two plus two is really four.
Fast forward a bit, and here’s me realizing that the dude wasn’t wrong at all. In fact, his statement, his instant returning of the book, was, in that moment, the Zennest shit I could have heard, and a lesson I badly needed. I mentally promoted him from hipster to zenster, the new honorific title I made up.
“If you want to learn about Zen, don’t read about Zen.”
I know I’d read that sentiment before, and more than once at that. I’d always taken it to mean that Zen was supposed to be something ineffable, something that transcended our languages’ ability to pin down its essence no matter how much we talk about it. I thought it was a cute paradoxical hook for Buddhist writers.
No, stupid. That’s what I get for thinking too hard. One of my first Eastern philosophy professors once told me about the time that he had been laughed out of a Zen monastery after telling the boss that he was a philosopher. Now I get it.
“If you want to learn about Zen, don’t read about Zen.” If you want to learn about baseball, don’t read about it. If you want to learn about the view from Mount Hood, don’t read about it. If you want to learn about writing a poem or riding a horse or tasting a pickle don’t fucking read about it. Don’t think about it, don’t tell your Aunt Sally about it, don’t deliberate plans for it. Go do it. The simplicity was a kick in the teeth. The kick delivered via being punked by some hipster made it a Chuck Norris roundhouse.
So I read too much and practice too little. That, I confess, makes me a terrible Buddhist. But I’m working on it. Now put down the blog, Poindexter, and go do something.
AnattaPunk hipster pins, coming soon to a store near you! Which store? It’s pretty obscure. You probably haven’t heard of it.
AnattaPunk 