On Zen Phoneys

In a comment to my last post, Mike Cross raises the issue of Zen phoneys (especially those who don’t know they’re phoneys) using Japanese words like “sesshin” to portray a false sense of legitimacy – that’s my reading of his point.

Mike also suggests that there is another type who know they’re phoneys and generously includes me in that noble camp. I notice that the moment that I take the bait, pretentiously believing in any reflection of the self, I’m a phoney who doesn’t know that I’m a phoney.

Or in “crooked-belly-button” language (see a couple posts down for more on this), my center is off-kilter but I believe it (or rather “me”) to be aligned with the North Star. Wishing upon a star or swirling in thinking trying to right the crooked belly button is just misplaced effort.

Our belly buttons are crooked.

We are corruptible and that’s the place to begin (again and again) precept practice.

I hear that an American Zen teacher once told a student, “I’m sure that you will never do anything unethical.”

Phoney! Phoney!

Just like the Wild Fox koan, when the past Baizhang asserts himself as someone who is free from karma, he’s a phoney who is blind to phoniness and is reborn for 500 lives as a shapeshifting fox.

This begs the question about the true self. Dropping layer after layer of conditioning, we find that the tree is hollow. The self is more like an onion (or the Buddha said a plantain tree but there ain’t no plantain trees in Minnesota) than like an avacodo with a seed at the core. Each self is the false self.

Or in the words of the original teaching Buddha, “I have passed in ignorance through a cycle of many rebirths, seeking the builder of the house. Continuous rebirth is a painful thing. But now, housebuilder, I have found you out. You will not build me a house again. All your rafters are broken, your ridge-pole shattered. My mind is free from active thought, and has made an end of craving.” Click here for Mark Epstein’s clear commentary on this passage.

From this (fleeting) perspective, the very nature of the ego is phoney.

Every ego is just a shadow in a golden field of play.