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<\/a><\/div>\nI\u2019m back from a sweet vacation, mostly lounging in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan. This was an especially timely trip because I start a new job on Monday (working with teenagers on the edge as usual). <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I am a great lover of Lake Superior and deeply enjoyed the Maha Lake from this new perspective. The Keweenaw is largely and wonderfully uninhabited so we had miles of beautiful sand beaches with few other humanoids in sight.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n And Bodhi enjoyed it repeatedly from one of his favorite perspectives:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n For vacation reading, I brought (Kindled for the first time and loved it) The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and we Survived <\/i>by Clive Finlayson (compelling deconstruction of most of what I\u2019d read about pre-history with some disturbing implications for the present \u2013 like how this is all likely to crash as if we didn\u2019t know that already), and\u00a0<\/span><\/span> Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II <\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span>(it really is a great! story).\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I was chewing on a blog post about these when I dug into my third treat, Baisao, the Old Tea Seller: Life and Zen Poetry in 18th Century Kyoto <\/i>by Norman Waddell. This read was so powerful for me that it trumped anything I might say about the first two books \u2026 for now.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So The Old Tea Seller <\/i>(at long last) is the subject of this post.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t heard of Baisao and only discovered Waddell\u2019s book thanks to Amazon\u2019s profiling of me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s Baisao\u2019s story in brief (Waddell offers a lengthy and generously footnoted biography): kid becomes monk at ten, has a really good teacher in the Okaku school of Zen, trains extensively in Soto and Rinzai as well, serves as monastery superintendent for fourteen years and when his teacher is about to die, declines the abbot spot, recommends his younger dharma<\/a> brother, goes wandering and eventually becomes a lowly tea seller in Kyoto for about the last 30 years of his long life, impacts many by living Zen in an unconventional life style.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Baisao also wrote poetry, a bunch of which is preserved.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I count myself among those who have been deeply impacted by the taste of this character\u2019s Zen \u2013 gentle, self-deprecating, flowing, and wonderfully clear. Altogether, the record of Baisao is an inspirational sutra with depth and quality comparable to Dogen and Hakuin.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n He seems to have had an affinity for the Blue Cliff Record<\/i> so if you\u2019re into that, especially if you\u2019ve had the opportunity to work through it, I think you\u2019ll find Baisao\u2019s subtle references on various cases quite stunning. I did.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a sampling of his poems:\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Three Verses on Tea-Selling Life <\/i>(what follows is the third in this series)<\/span><\/span> Composed in a Dream the 30th Day of 10th Month the 3rd Year of Kampo<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Pain and poverty<\/span><\/span> Three Verses of Self-Praise <\/i>(here\u2019s just the first part of the first one)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Ahh! this stone-blind jackass<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/span>
Seventy years of Zen<\/span><\/span>
got me nowhere at all<\/span><\/span>
my black robe became a shaggy crank,<\/span><\/span>
now I have no business with sacred or profane<\/span><\/span>
just simmer tea for folks\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
and hold starvation back.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
poverty and pain<\/span><\/span>
life stripped to the bone<\/span><\/span>
absolute nothingness\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
only one thing left<\/span><\/span>
a bright cold moon<\/span><\/span>
in the midnight window<\/span><\/span>
illumining a Zen mind<\/span><\/span>
on its homeward way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
with his strange kink in the brain<\/span><\/span>
he turned monk early in life<\/span><\/span>
served his master, practiced,<\/span><\/span>
wandered to a hundred places\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
seeking the Essential Crossing.<\/span><\/span>
Deafened by shouts<\/span><\/span>
beaten with sticks<\/span><\/span>
he had a hard time of it<\/span><\/span>
weathering all that snow and frost<\/span><\/span>
still couldn\u2019t even save himself;\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
big-headed, brazen-faced\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
made a great fool of himself.<\/span><\/span>
Growing old he found his place\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
became an old tea seller<\/span><\/span>
begged pennies for his rice.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n