thinking about war and peace and the interior life as well as certain dances at a rest stop in upstate new york

Here I am, sitting in a Starbucks, part of a rest area on Interstate 90, about a hundred miles East of Rochester, New York.

Early this morning I started driving to Chapin Mill in Batavia, which is outside of Rochester, to attend this year’s gathering of the American Zen Teachers Association.

Only twenty-seven are attending this year, not one of the larger meetings.

I look forward to seeing some old friends and meeting some I hope will become friends.

I’m already a bit fried, but enjoying the rest after a bunch of hours of driving, a cool water and a strawberry & blueberry yogurt parfait. Too late to lose weight, as I had once hoped ahead of the gathering; but they already know me and almost all my many failings, so, I can live with it…

Today, as most know, is the two hundred, twenty-first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille.

Driving up to a conference of Zen teachers I find myself thinking about that assault and other metaphors of violence. Sufis, for instance, cite a hadith or saying attributed to Muhammad, who after his wars declared now that the lesser jihad is over, we must turn to the greater – that is the holy war of the heart.

Buddhists are not overly fond of violent metaphors. And no doubt referring to war and the interior life in the same sentence has some serious problems.

But, as I think about the way of the precepts I understand it can have a certain, if limited utility.

In our school we approach the precepts, the “moral codes” of Zen Buddhism three different ways, the absolute, the literal and the compassionate. Each is important.

The literal is where we find just rules. Don’t do this!

Frankly, sometimes we need that. Sometimes we need the container. And the clarity of specific instruction.

But the world is much messier, reality is much more complex.

For instance in Zen, everything is presented as also being completely empty, having no independent substance.

Here we find the absolute.

The one that gets people in trouble from time to time is the absolute. Here the idea of any moral code burns away before the reality of absolute connection, no distinction. Not killing and killing collapse as if they strayed too near a black hole.

A rather famous example is the Japanese master who advised his samurai students that there is no self, no sword and no killing, so strike the enemy without regard to anything but the action, which itself, of course is also empty…

That’s the absolute.

And it is truest, true. Just as true as the literal. And sometimes we must know that place. It is as important as our birth and death to know that place.

And to which the American Zen master Robert Aitken asked, “And what about the blood? And what about the widow? And what about the orphans?”

Here we find the compassionate, where the absolute and the literal often meet, and where we mostly find we live our mature spiritual lives in the compassionate dance of now empty, now specific, now both, now neither.

All those going to this conference have followed the great way and have had to taste for ourselves, to drink for ourselves and know what is warm and what is cool. Each of us have had to learn to lead and to follow.

And getting to this place can be quite the enterprise. Encountering the literal is easy enough. Knowing the absolute can be a major project.

Here many of the stories of Zen are filled with hard and occasionally violent encounter on the way to that knowing, or better said, not knowing.

Here one might well think of storming the Bastille, the prison that holds our hearts.

And a worthy project.

Especially if we also remember that somewhere along the line it calls for balance, for bringing it all together…

It really is a dance.

Now leading.

Now following.

Now driving to Rochester…

Pick your dance. It changes from time to time from heart to heart…