Joko Beck and Robert Anton Wilson

 So at the Zen Group yesterday they read one of the passages from Charlotte Joko Beck's work and I felt it viscerally.  It hurt.  It was suffocating.  But I'm sure that wasn't her intent.  And perhaps if she was relating Zen practice conversationally to me it might have had a different effect than the words that seemed to be nothing but rigid commands.  In the book, she related her zen practice to her childhood piano lessons, not really understanding the scales but necessary in the long run.  But it was more a formulaic series of commands that one "must" do to achieve "enlightenment" or whatever.  And it hurt.  It was interesting that my therapist friend L. felt the same way.  The rest of the room was still in the follower mode to Joko's lead.  In the conversation that followed, I related my experience and how it might be easier to make friends with something than to control it.  Especially when you are trying to control your mind through rigid zen practice.  Of course, most of them were then going to the Capital protests later in the day.   The best way to fight control is a different type of control, right?  lol

Then later in the day I was reading Robert Anton Wilson.  It was a delight.  So much more fun than Joko.  And especially his elucidation about general semantics and how he tries to avoid the word "is" in his writing.  Zen is this or that.  You should do this or that because that is what zen "is". 

I think what he was pointing to was  almost like explaining something in the negative.  Or to have a relationship with it instead of defining it.  For example, in quantum physics, matter "is" not a wave or a particle.  Sometimes it acts like a wave, and sometimes a particle. It exists as part of a relationship, not a concrete "this" or "that"  Then there was the synchronistic discussion in Wilson of the Zen koan where the Zen master is asked what is the most valuable thing (he could have asked was is the most valuable zen practice) and the master replied, "The head of a dead cat."  Again, there "is" not the most or the best this or that. Its a relationship, and open ended answer, an invitation to the journey to connect with the mystery of the cat head.  

Of course, the real mystery, and the real thing that is inviting me into "friendship" is all the pain I have been feeling in my legs and calves, and why I am sensitive to Joko's words to begin with.  I have an inner dictator I am rebelling against, I fear:-).