From my book
21st Century Zen
What is a Master, really?
I’m an older man, a Starseed Light Worker; a Way Shower, a dreamer; a traveler; a storyteller, a modern-day Shaman wrapped in a Zen bun. Another old fucker. Many years ago I was told by a most powerful Shaman medicine woman, my teacher, that “You are a born Shaman. Go out there and be who you are” I’m still working to accept who I am.
Maybe it took moving to Mexico, to a place where nobody can find me, to proclaim, “I’m the Highway Shaman! Whatever the fuck that means.” A Course in Miracles teaches me that everything only has the meaning I give it. I like the idea of being a someone another someone would accidentally meet on the road or highway. Though there are no accidents. A someone that the other someone would never suspect me to be. The Who I am.
As far as Zen goes . . . I decided you can’t be a Shaman without being a Zenman. Since no Zen priest would anoint me as either one, why not anoint myself as both? “The Highway Shazenman Sounds good to me. It’s up to me to supply the meaning.
A friend asked, “Why put a label on yourself? What Zen Master would call himself a Zen Master? What Shaman would call himself a Master? Let go of the title and just be.” She’s right. I could do that, but what fun would that be?
As I see it, the official Zen world as we know it has it all backwards . . . I was saying to this gal . . . and that the typical Zen Master nonsense is just that. She was defending the sacred Zen Buddhist customs and objected to my blasphemy of proclaiming myself a Zen Master. Do you have a temple? No. A Zen Center? No. Do you have published teachings? No. Do you teach people how to sit and meditate? No. Do you offer riddles to solve? No. Do you have any students? No! Not one!
“Do I have any attachments to having or not having any of that shit? No.
All those “Masters” out there, in their temples or Zen Centers, who have any of what I just mentioned, altars and gongs, teachings and students, have attachments. Zen is all about having No attachments. I have no attachments. I have Nothing! Who is the fucking Zen Master here? I only have what I make up in this moment. That I am a Zen Master.”
I wanted to say “I’m a Zen Master, so go fuck yourself if you can’t take a joke” but your mind would think, “No Zen Master would ever say that.” Are you sure?
Please don’t confuse me with anything you think you know about Zen. Who says any of those proclaimed Zen Masters really know what Zen really is? Only Osho did. I think they’re programmed to believe that their utterly boring teachings mean something. Why would a sheltered life, a good memory of scripture and chants, and years of repetition make someone a Zen Master? A lifetime filling your head with a “Mind Full” of information is not Zen. Zen is “Mind Less.”
Being mindless, I’m not a Buddhist, because there’s not one word of that scripture filling my head. Not one memorized chant. Nothing. I’m not any sort of qualified religious guy, since Zen is not a religion. It’s a way of Being.
Or maybe Zen is the only religion. The religion of I don’t give a flying fuck about having my mind programed and being a mimicking monkey of dogma. The religion of total freedom.
My Zen is organic. I’m a Master of surviving life-enhancing fuck-ups, a veteran of important mistakes. Maybe I’m more like the ancient Chinese Taoist. The Tao knew that Life cannot be understood as a concept, or experienced while sequestered away in a monastery, or in front of a “better than thou” master. Tao is everything between the gutter and heaven. Being happy with what is.
I contend that by living life through the actual conscious awareness of moment to moment everyday “being,” a person will organically become Authentic; will eventually realize that all attachment to 3D thoughts and things is mere illusion. Zen is something to do in the months and years while waiting for humanity to catch up. It is preparation for the 5th dimension of Love.
My Zen is about diving head first into actual living experiences; embracing whatever cards I’ve been dealt. Removing the dirt covering the diamond. Letting go of the illusion.
I wrote this Zen book to remind myself, and you, that we are already there, already the multidimensional human, the Masters of Our Reality, and we need only remember that.
I’m just telling my stories, which could easily be your stories, if you were to proclaim your worthiness to tell them. I encourage that . . .