Dharma Byte
QUOTING MATSUOKA-ROSHI
By Taiun Michael Elliston-roshi

Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) and in our affiliate centers of the Silent Thunder Order (STO) are engaged in an effort to establish a dharma-oriented, collaborative community (S. sangha) in the context of our contemporary American culture. Nobody said it would be easy.

As part of this collaboration, in consulting with members of the online communications committee for the STO, I respond to suggestions for topics or content for my monthly Dharma Byte (DB). Hopefully, my comments will address some of the concerns that are top-of-mind for our readers.

As one of our key online members reminded us, there will be three newsletters between now and the 40th Anniversary of ASZC and our annual Precepts Retreat. She suggests three DBs on Matsuoka-roshi; STO; and the ASZC. A series building up to the conference/retreat/celebration in July; speaking to the past, future, and present of our lineage and legacy.

In line with this suggestion, the following will address the first concern, recalling some pertinent and peculiar teachings of Matsuoka-roshi, which may not be recorded elsewhere, but are part of my anecdotal recollection of this Old Buddha’s message. My commentary hopefully fills in some of the unknowns in his meaning. There is a lot more to say in each case, but I will keep it brief.

“Zen is always contemporary”
Sensei always railed at the attitude that Zen was some arcane, irrelevant idea in history, perhaps worthy of study, but not to be considered a vital and essential part of our contemporary reality and practice. His life was an example of the central and crucial practice of Zen, and zazen, for our time and place.

Recently, if I am honest, I have been paying far too much attention to politics. It is almost impossible not to look at a train wreck, especially if it keeps happening on a daily basis.

We watch, with fevered anticipation and some hope of change, the unfolding melodrama, one that promises to lead us to Valhalla, the shining, gold-plated city on the hill. Or, like so many lemmings, to the wrong end of the cliff. Every tweet and twitter of the big yellow bird, followed by endless analysis and commentary, promises to be the one that will do the trick, the straw that will finally break the camel’s back. But no. Here comes another.

The latest soap opera, the Roadrunner Repeal and Repeat of Obamacare (meep-meep), took a mere seven years to reach a climax, resulting in the déjà vu denouement du jour. In spite of coming off like a swan dive into a vat of jello, it did not disappoint. There was enough schadenfreude and blame game to go around, entertaining a gratefully addicted audience for weeks, after the slow reveal of there being no there there. It beggars the imagination to find an analogy apt enough to embrace the theater of the absurd that is now our daily newsfeed fare.

One recalls the caucus race from Alice in Wonderland, which turns out to be not what it appears—a way of drying out after the flood, rather than a contest that anyone can actually win. Or the Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain, artificially amplifying his puny voice to a booming volume. Political life no longer imitates art, but is itself an artless form of performance, in which it has become impossible to commit a gaffe, defined as “an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder: an unforgivable social gaffe.”