Nanzen-ji, on the outskirts of Kyoto, is one of the most historically important Zen Buddhist temples in Japan. It’s a beautiful place. One of its sub-temples, Saisho-in, was up until last year run by a slightly eccentric monk who carved Noh masks; it has a lovely active atmosphere that is a nice contrast with the historical weight of the rest of the place. If you’re ever in Kyoto I highly recommend a visit.
Its history starts in 1264 when Emperor Kameyama built a retirement villa. But he soon encountered a problem with his new home: the place seemed to be haunted.
Kameyama asked several priests to exorcise the ghosts, and they came and did all sorts of elaborate and involved and powerful rituals to break the ghosts’ power. But they all failed.
Finally he invited Fumon, a priest of the relatively new Zen sect of Buddhism, to take a crack at it. Rather than raising a fuss to dispel the haunting, Fumon and his disciples sat in silent meditation. The ghosts disappeared.
Kameyama was so impressed that he turned the villa into a Zen temple and became a student. The favor of an Emperor – even a retired one – greatly increased the prestige and power of Zen, and had a significant impact on Japanese history.
I mention this today because of a specter haunting the American political process: Donald Trump. Recently we’ve seen well-meaning efforts by mainstream pundits and politicians to break Trump’s power; John Oliver dedicating his entire show last night to a Trump take-down is a representative example.
Or there’s former CIA director Michael Hayden talking about how the U.S. military would refuse to follow Trump’s orders if he tried to carry out some of his campaign rhetoric. Given that it was the U.S. armed forces carried out the genocide against the Native Americans, illegally put Japanese Americans in concentration camps, carried out the illegal invasion of Iraq, illegally conducted waterboarding and other forms of torture on detainees, carried out illegal drone strikes including the murder of an American citizen, and that continues to illegally hold detainees at Gitmo, I think it’s a fantasy to expect widespread refusal of illegal orders to start with a Trump presidency; but it’s still a pretty strong criticism of Trump.
Yet if anything, Trump’s poll numbers have taken a strong upturn the past week or two, with Trump hitting 49% support among the GOP in a new CNN/ORC poll, more than 30% ahead of Marco Rubio.
Perhaps if we want to exorcise Donald Trump and all that he stands for from the American political system, we need to cultivate something more along the line’s of Fumon’s silent contemplation rather than loud and flashy attempts to cast a spell of Dispel Evil over American politics. (Something well outside the power of any mortal.)
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