{"id":828,"date":"2012-01-21T12:11:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T18:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=828"},"modified":"2012-01-22T16:09:30","modified_gmt":"2012-01-22T22:09:30","slug":"what-is-zen-mastery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html","title":{"rendered":"What is Zen Mastery?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>This question has been up again for me lately because of a couple opposing currents that I\u2019ve noticed in the culture and my work world, namely careful process monitoring vs. the results only work environment.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s a quick bit about these and their relevance for Zen training.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long felt that the \u201cZen Master\u201d title gets flung around way too wantonly in the West, btw, so let me confess that prejudice at the outset.<\/p>\n

Malcolm Gladwell wrestles with the issue of mastery in his usual entertaining manner in Outliers: The Story of Success<\/em><\/a>. His basic point being, it seems to me, that in order to achieve mastery, or at least success, we need to put in our time hacking away and then be lucky with how all the forces beyond our puny efforts are rolling out.<\/p>\n

The Beatles and Bill Gates, for example, did their hours of practice (the hairy four guys in strip clubs in Berlin) and were really fortunate to have a bunch of societal circumstances ripening just when they were.<\/p>\n

Malcolm and others note that what lots of folks who have achieved extraordinary accomplishments have in common is that they practiced a lot. Like at least 10,000 hours.<\/p>\n

Applied to Zen, 10,000 hours would mean about 600 days in sesshin \u2013 if you don\u2019t count sleep. Without sesshin, it would take longer, of course. If you sit for an hour a day, it would take about 27.39 years to log 10,000 hours. If you sit 15 minutes a day, that\u2019d be 109.6 years. Individual cases would get rather complicated weighing both factors. I did the rough math for the first 13 years of my practice while Katagiri Roshi was alive and thanks to the power of rounding up and hind-sight estimating, came up with a rather large number that I won\u2019t share. I\u2019m just too humble.<\/p>\n

Like for other things, I think that the 10,000 hours rule is probably a necessary but insufficient condition for mastery in Zen.<\/p>\n

Granted, there are problems with the math like how to count hours of \u201cpractice,\u201d for example, so I\u2019ve included 18 hours a day in sesshin and the full period of zazen, not subtracting those days that we\u2019re zoned out ninety-some percent of the time! Then too there\u2019s how to count monastic training. And there\u2019s a lot more to a Zen life than the time you log in sesshin or in daily formal practice. But for me the exercise puts mastery in some perspective.<\/p>\n

One of the Zen teacher organizations asks the question to applicants about how many days of intensive retreat they\u2019ve done and friend who\u2019s a member of the membership committee thinks that the unspoken minimum is about 300 \u2013 a rather long way from the 10,000 hours, no matter how deep the samadhi.<\/p>\n

Btw, another friend and member of the membership committee denies that there is any such unspoken number. Hmmm.<\/p>\n

The counter-current has a recent expression in ROWE \u2013 results only work environment. See Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution<\/em><\/a> by Ressler and Thompson for more. They work for Best Buy and write about how they\u2019ve implemented this approach there. The basic deal is that it doesn\u2019t matter how many hours you log, whether you show up for work or not, whether you log 10,000 hours, etc., it only matters if you achieve your goals.<\/p>\n

They write about one guy who is a roadie for a rock band, traveling around the world, doing his techy thing for Best Buy at the same time. He apparently is really happy and a very dedicated worker.<\/p>\n

Btw, I\u2019ve sent an application to Lucinda Williams to see if she\u2019ll accept me as a roadie and then I\u2019ll be talking to my boss. Wish me luck.<\/p>\n

Anyway \u2026 the rub with the results-only approach to Zen practice is the difficulty in identifying the results or at least agreeing on them, as recent posts and comments here indicate. For Soto Zen the process is the result. For koan Zen, there\u2019s passing through the many koans. But both of these also seem like necessary but insufficient conditions.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s manifesting a tender broken hearted love in daily life, carrying the many beings across, etc., which are hard to measure but you might know them when you see them. This seems to be the orientation of traditional Soto Zen in leaving it up to the community to call someone \u201cRoshi\u201d (old teacher), when the community senses that the person is ready rather than the person him\/herself or their teacher laying it on them.<\/p>\n

So no conclusion so far.<\/p>\n

Katagiri Roshi always denied being a \u201cZen Master\u201d and didn\u2019t like people to call him that. He said that being a Zen master was like being a master driver of the car. The moment when you say, \u201cI am master of driving the car,\u201d you are not paying attention to your driving and might cause an accident.<\/p>\n

That seems like a good thing to keep in mind.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This question has been up again for me lately because of a couple opposing currents that I\u2019ve noticed in the culture and my work world, namely careful process monitoring vs. the results only work environment. So here\u2019s a quick bit about these and their relevance for Zen training. I\u2019ve long felt that the \u201cZen Master\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is Zen Mastery?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This question has been up again for me lately because of a couple opposing currents that I've noticed in the culture and my work world, namely careful\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Zen Mastery?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This question has been up again for me lately because of a couple opposing currents that I've noticed in the culture and my work world, namely careful\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Wild Fox Zen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dosho.port\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-21T18:11:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-01-22T22:09:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/88\/2012\/01\/101_0107.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"297\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"423\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dosho Port\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dosho Port\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html\",\"name\":\"What is Zen Mastery?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-21T18:11:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-01-22T22:09:30+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/#\/schema\/person\/45224391b7690e99673782337bd0eabd\"},\"description\":\"This question has been up again for me lately because of a couple opposing currents that I've noticed in the culture and my work world, namely careful\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/01\/what-is-zen-mastery.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"What is Zen Mastery?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/\",\"name\":\"Wild Fox Zen\",\"description\":\"Living the Dream\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/#\/schema\/person\/45224391b7690e99673782337bd0eabd\",\"name\":\"Dosho Port\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7b9712e98924dea6c08d55890403352f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7b9712e98924dea6c08d55890403352f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Dosho Port\"},\"description\":\"Dosho Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teachers with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach, with the Vine of Obstacles Zen. 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