don’t hesitate get laid that’s wisdom sitting around chanting what crap
*Stephen Berg. Ikkyu: Crow With No Mouth: 15th Century Zen Master.
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Ikkyū speaks from experience, seeing other monks chant chant chant - words words words - talk talk talk Zen. He knew Zen is not that, evan as that is not what Taoism or Sufism or Christianity ... is.
If you have bursitis or arthritis, you really hurt. You look for pain relief. My dad used to enact corporeal punishment on us kids with a leather belt. For years, he almost never did due to bursitis, and my dad fully believed in such discipline, and he considered it the Bible thing to do. The pain was too much. So, bursitis saved us boys some butt pain. These Zen chanters seem to Ikkyū, were - are - immune to the pain of their chant hugging.
Real practice is the medicine. Ikkyū knows of those who do the Zen program, but Zen is more than doing a Zen program. It is much more than ringing the bell and bowing and chanting and meditating... in some way. You can go to church weekly and never get into Christian, even if you get into Christianity. There may be more buddhas being buddhas outside Buddhism than buddhas being buddhas inside. Who knows?
You can put a man in a vehicle garage, but that does not make the man a car or truck, not even a bicycle. A corpse may look alive, but if no breath, no. Dress that corpse up, a corpse. Real practice breathes. Real practice can zoom down the road and "Honk! Honk!" Jesus says in the Gospel, "Not everyone who says to me 'Teacher, Teacher (or, Master, Master)' will enter the Reign of the Skies."
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The Zen teacher speaks with lewd language: getting laid. He liked getting laid, to use his language. Yet, he seems to be speaking about more, too. Sex is a metaphor for oneness, union, the intimacy (lit., withinness, insideness) of knowing.
So, real practice is intimate practice. You get inside the Way, and the Way gets inside you. There is penetration and being penetrated: the Way of expiration and inspiration. In the Christian Bible, Genesis, the man, Adam, has sex with the woman, Eve, and a baby is born. In the Gospels, God impregnates Mary, the young maiden - "maiden," a term for young girls and assumed to be virgin. Getting laid - wisdom, says the teacher.
Eve would not have had the first child or any other had Adam ignored her while eating plums or apples or staring at stars. Chanting her name or adoring her face or reciting a Mary Creed could not get him inside. No Jesus, either, if Mary had not welcomed Power-of-the-Most-High to make love with her. She said to the angel who told her of this impregnation, "Let it be done to me." Ikkyū knew, integral to the intimate Way is something being done to you, you allowing it - like Mary.
You could say. Well, all this is metaphor, so big deal! Well, I agree, except it is a big deal - a bigger than big deal. Metaphor, still true. Ikkyū knows that, even though he enjoys sex with women, too. Maybe too much, but we are not here to analyze Ikkyū.
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The teacher calls the Zen chanting poop. I wrote a poem once about the one who will not shut up talking to the lover, while she lies on the bed waiting and longing for his body to entangle with her body. She finally says, something like, "Shut up! Come here and make sweet love with me!" "Here" is that intimacy - no distance anywhere. Can you mop the floor or drive down the road or walk or laugh or cry here - Here?
So, real spiritual practice is no distance between you and the practice. Words belong, yes. So do many other practices. But these acts easily become a protective barrier. Words, for example, become a substitute, like reading books on meditation rather than meditating, or going to Bible study and not opening your heart, though opening your head.
Ikkyū says, "Don't hesitate. Go on!" We might feel some fear when welcoming this intimacy. Still, Ikkyū urges us, "Go on. Now!" He says this out of compassion. He knows the difference between sitting on the side of the bed talking sweet talk - which is all empty ritual, words, and belief - and making love with love.
How intimate? Where? - Ikkyū says
I’m in it everywhere what a miracle trees lakes clouds even dust
