One Year in the Stream

Preston Thomas
(Originally Published on Substack on 5 July, 2026)

On June 22, 2025, I was ordained as a bodhisattva or lay practitioner in the Soto Zen tradition. I received ordination from Richard Collins, the abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple (NOZT) and Stone Nest Dojo in Sewanee, Tennessee. Shortly thereafter, I published a reflection on what the ceremony meant to me.

Richard is a teacher in a lineage that comes down from “Homeless” Kodo Sawaki and Taisen Deshimaru, who passed the practice of zazen (meditation) on to various Westerners in Paris, France. One of them was a gruff, American businessman by the name of Robert Livingston. At Deshimaru’s request, Livingston brought the practice to America and opened NOZT in the 1980s. The rest is history (or, at least, a little piece of the history of American Zen).

In my first short stint with NOZT during my teen years, I met Robert. With his bald head and booming, gravelly voice—which sometimes had a hint of a pseudo-Japanese accent—he was a force to be reckoned with, even in his old age.

Last year, I knew I wanted to take the formal step of ordination with Richard, Robert’s successor, after I met him. I had been meditating on my own for years—and had practiced on and off with groups—so it was finally time to commit. When Richard accepted the request, he gave me a list of homework assignments, including readings and memorizing chants. He ended his email by saying, “Welcome to the stream.”

I thought, “Hmm, ‘stream’—that’s a cool image.” But I didn’t really know what it meant—and I do not fully understand it now. In Zen practice as in jiu jitsu, creativity, and life overall, if you think you understand something, you are probably inviting some kind of trouble.

I did not pretend to understand what I was getting myself into when I adopted the bodhisattva vows. Countless books have been written on the subject, such as Shohaku Okumura’s Living by Vow, which I am reading currently. This is how Okumura translates the four vows:

Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end to them.
The dharmas are boundless; I vow to master them.
The Buddha’s Way is unsurpassable; I vow to attain it.

One could go on forever about what these lines mean. As of last year, all I knew was that I had no other choice but to give myself wholeheartedly to meditation practice. I had tried to make worldly success my chief aim, and I had even tried to make spiritual or meditative practice subordinate to that aim. I had tried out various flavors of Zen, and I really appreciated the unorthodox, punk rock flavor that I found at Angel City Zen Center in Los Angeles—shoutout to my friends at ACZC.

While practicing at Angel City and elsewhere, I viewed meditation as something that could help me survive the grind of daily life—in particular, the filmmaking hustle in Los Angeles. I viewed meditation as a type of mental health crutch, but I was not ready to commit to it—to give myself over to it completely. In past posts, I have detailed how I reached that point—on a personal and psychological level—so I will not rehash that narrative here.

How has ordination—committing to the vows—impacted my life over the past year? That is a big question, but the main thing, I’d say, is a sense of direction. I remember that, the evening before my ceremony, my teacher Richard and I had a one-on-one chat where he pointed to his rakusu—the small, bib-like garment that one receives upon becoming ordained—and said, “This gave my life a sense of direction. Before that, it didn’t have any.”

That seemed odd to me. After all, Richard came to meditation and Zen in his late forties; he already had a family and a successful career in academia. But I guess that is the point. You can go through life seemingly doing the right things—career, family, stability—and still long for something deeper. More meaningful. Or you can lead a free-spirited, untethered lifestyle—as I have done to some extent—and also long for something deeper and more meaningful. Sooner or later, life has a way of teaching you that freedom does not mean doing what you want or pretending that you are your own master—as I pretended for a while.

Here is a quote from Richard’s book, No Fear Zen, that explains this tension:

People who think they are their own masters—like those who make up their own religion—are usually mastered by their job, their family, their friends, their ambition, their addictions, their regrets, their desires, or their illusion that they are their own master. They always have that lack, that desire, the very lack and desire that dissipate during zazen [meditation] and through Zen practice. Devoting yourself to your master, you never need to bow to anyone or anything ever again.

Okumura, a Zen teacher in Indiana who also comes from the Kodo Sawaki lineage, says that living by vow—living in accordance with the Buddha’s teachings—starts with recognizing that we are deluded. From there, we can turn toward the practice of meditation within a sangha (community) in order to “practice with other people, that is to walk together with all living beings.” As I discussed last week, my sangha is not just the people that I meditate with. It encompasses everyone in my life; in a broader sense, it encompasses everyone on the planet. We all walk together.

When Richard pointed to his rakusu and said, “This gave my life a sense of direction,” he happened to be wearing my rakusu—the one that I was going to receive during the ceremony the following morning. He said he was wearing mine, rather than his own, because he had forgotten his upstairs. However, it felt fitting that he was wearing a new disciple’s rakusu when he made that statement.

As someone who teaches martial arts and has just barely begun to teach meditation at NOZT, I know that one’s students provide one with a sense of direction. One has to continually grow and deepen one’s own practice in order to have students in the first place—whether in martial arts, meditation, or any discipline. The students follow the teacher, but the teacher also follows the students.

In my understanding, this cycle is created and sustained by the teacher’s vows, which have no beginning and no end. Living in accordance with vows is what it means to live in the stream. I do not know exactly where this stream will take me, but I have faith in it—I have faith in the Way.

Wherever the stream takes me, I am here for it. It has been a heck of a ride so far.

Preston Thomas receives bodhisattva ordination from Abbot Richard Collins on June 22, 2025.

Fiction or Nonfiction?

Teisho, 19 July 2026, Stone Nest Dojo 

Richard Collins, Abbot

I have been working on my memoir about Robert, as you know. I started out with documents that I could find in the archives here in Sewanee and in my memory. Now that I have a first draft, though, I've been going through my journals to fact-check my memory, and to supplement and clarify what I’ve remembered.

I started at the beginning of those journals with my earliest reflections on Zen practice, around 2000. But it was too embarrassing and depressing to revisit my former consciousness, raw. I was pretty messed up in those early years of practice, even more than I recall. Not unlike why many of us first come to Zen. But I couldn’t bear to read about that time, not yet.

So instead of starting at the beginning I skipped about ten years ahead to just before and after my monastic ordination, around 2009-2011. I was applying for jobs as dean and interviewed for the job in California just days after receiving the kesa. My luggage was lost in transit, and I had to interview in street clothes, which was fine: I got the job. The first year was interesting, juggling roles as a dean and a monk. A lot of the reflection in the journal was worrying about what that meant, that split identity, those two identities. I was totally overthinking it all. But that's how we make sense of things, isn’t it, how we often try to deal with change, how we navigate the world — through our thinking brain, even though that doesn’t always do the job.

Sometime in 2011, I noticed that my anxieties started to level out, and the two identities began to integrate. I stopped being in my head so much and just did what had to be done. I was reading Dogen and wrote down this quote: “...there is no buddhadharma outside of everyday life.” That made sense. It helped me with this dean-versus-monk identity. I wasn't really two different people in one body trying to integrate opposing identities, after all.

I found some notes for an intro to Zen at the new Bakersfield sangha about what I wanted to get across. I listed three things to convey: an appreciation for impermanence or mujo, for emptiness or ku, and for imperfection or dukkha. This last one was a surprise. We usually think of dukkha as suffering, or dissatisfaction. But imperfection makes sense. We suffer because life seems to us unsatisfactory. But what makes it unsatisfactory is that we think it’s imperfect, it doesn’t live up to our idea of the way it should be. 

It was interesting to hear my old self giving my present self some fresh — or rather, refreshed — insight. It was like a message in a bottle from a former self of mine.

This idea of imperfection especially strikes me now because the subtitle of my memoir about Robert is: “Portrait of an Imperfect Zen Master.” (Aren’t they all?)

Soon after that, I also made a note of something Deshimaru said about the three stages of becoming a Zen master. First, there is a period of training, everything you learn by practicing with your teacher, reading texts on your own, sitting in zazen, and so on, up until shiho. We sometimes tend to think of shiho as the endpoint, the culmination of our apprenticeship, graduation. I have heard it said that this is when the hard work begins. Training is nothing compared to practice after shiho when you realize you haven’t really learned anything yet. The third stage is the one I found really interesting. Deshimaru says that you don’t become an independent teacher, a master, until your own master dies. He makes a joke of this, saying that doesn’t mean you should wish for him to die!

I saw how my own career as a Zen teacher fit those stages. I started practice and took bodhisattva ordination in 2001. From then until 2016, I took monastic ordination, went through the shuso ceremony to become an assistant teacher, which culminated in my book No Fear Zen in 2015 and shiho in 2016. The second stage, the hard work, began when I moved into the Temple and took care of Robert for the next five years until 2021 when he died.

Then began the really hard work of being a truly independent teacher, when things, as they say, got real. No more deferring the responsibilities by relying on the teacher or the teachings. As the great 12th-century Chinese Chan Master, a laywomen, Miaodao said: “You suddenly find that you are a teacher; at that time you have to throw away the teachings and teach.”

One more entry from my journal. My daughter Izzy, who was nine at the time, was attending a very conservative Lutheran school where she was bombarded with hellfire and the Bible. I tried to counteract the propaganda with discussions on the way to and from school. They were telling her all kinds of things that she knew weren’t right because she had a scientific mind even then.

So I said you need to take the Bible just like any other book. And she, without skipping a beat, asked: “fiction or nonfiction?”

The perfect answer. Here she became my teacher, not for the first or last time. She was the master and I the disciple.

This brings me back to my journals. Fiction or nonfiction? I am using them to check facts, but they are actually a mixture of fiction and nonfiction. They never tell me the way things really were. Only my fantasies, my anxieties, lots of anxieties! Fictional and nonfictional. All that stuff was all up in my head. Little successes blown out of proportion, little failures blown out of proportion. Ambitions, regrets, mind stuff, all that mental activity we get caught up in by overthinking instead of thinking not-thinking.

Fiction or nonfiction? Both. Because what is a book? A book is just an exploration of our sense of reality. Like any other book, my journals are an expression of my sense of reality at the time.

I know some of you are thinking of bodhisattva or monastic ordination, so I wanted to let you know what was on my mind because when we consider ordination, sometimes we think too much. Even the night before the ceremony, I remember hoping I wouldn’t make a mistake, wondering what my dharma name was going to be! All these egotistical thoughts. Even doubting whether ordination was right for me. Was I making a mistake?

This mental sparring with yourself doesn’t stop after ordination. Part of my embarrassment was reading how even after I became a monk I obsessed about the very things people say when they leave the practice or get cold feet about ordination. I didn’t like the taste of genmai, I didn’t see the point in all the rituals, why are we chanting in Japanese? All of which shocks me now because I thought I was always pretty down with all that.

But then, the year after monastic ordination, all that doubt, all that wavering, mental slicing and dicing, seemed to get sorted out. After ten years of practice it started not just to make sense up here in the brain but to make sense down here in the hara, and here in the heart-mind, the shin, which is our center and the center of our practice. This heart-mind-felt certainty is sometimes called faith. (I don’t like that word, too much religious baggage, just like with “master-disciple” — even so, when I say teacher, you can assume I also mean master; when I say student, you can assume I mean disciple.) Rather than faith, trust may be a better word. Or confidence in giving yourself over, abandoning yourself to destiny. If you don’t feel destined for the practice, it probably isn’t right for you. But one thing is certain: overthinking undermines confidence, trust, faith.

We should definitely quiz our parents, criticize our teachers, question the Bible, interrogate ourselves, and so forth. That’s what our thinking brains are for. But there are aspects of our existence that can’t be thought through with reason or logic, deduction or induction.

Sitting is not the time or place for questioning with the brain. In zazen we just are. That is an important distinction, but it’s very difficult to get there. Even in zazen when we are “just sitting,” just being can be difficult because we are thinking about the pain in our knees, the temperature in the dojo, what we’re having for lunch, all kinds of idiotic trivia. How’s my posture? Am I thinking too much, too little? Am I fantasizing? Am I romanticizing? All the stuff that goes through and then out of your constantly thinking brain.

But then there are those moments of clarity. There are moments of gratitude. There is just being there, as though you are just sitting there, which is the truth of the matter. I’m just sitting here, how wonderful! And that’s enough. And everything is cool. For a minute, before you go back to worrying again. But it is important to remember those moments of insight when everything was cool just as it is. At those moments there is no imperfection, no suffering, no dukkha.

Life is going to present itself as imperfect to us most of the time. These moments of perfection may feel like satori (or epiphanies, or some other inadequate word, so let’s not call them that). Those moments are not special, they are just us getting back to our natural state. Not fiction, not nonfiction. Just the book we are writing with our life.

Zen Is Realism

Richard Collins, Abbot
Stone Nest
5 July 2026

If I was pressed to say there is one single goal in Zen practice, it is the goal of no goal. Going through life with the goal of no goal, we are able to see things as they really are: and that is the single goal. Zen is realism.

That is why it is important not to romanticize Zen. Or rather, I should say, we often come to Zen with romantic notions of exploring exotic and esoteric appearances of Zen. After about a year, though, we begin to realize that there is nothing exotic or esoteric about Zen at all. There is, as they say, nothing special here.

The harder they come, the harder they fall. The more romantic our notions about Zen when we arrive, the more disillusioned we may become. That is significant, because a disillusioned romantic does not become a realist, not at first. They become a cynic. And it takes a lot of rehabilitation to grow out of cynicism and into realism.

People often leave Zen practice after about a year, or a minute. There are many reasons, of course. But it is often the case that the honeymoon is over after a year, like in marriage, and then the real work begins.

Those who drop the practice give all kinds of excuses, some of them quite valid: the practice is too foreign, we chant in Japanese; the practice is phallocentric, there are not enough women in the sangha; we don’t emphasize social engagement enough; we don’t emphasize enlightenment enough; we emphasize samu, work practice, too much; the robes and rituals make them uncomfortable, too reminiscent of whatever religion they came from; and so on.

But the real reason is that our brand of Zen did not live up to their hype, their expectations, their romanticized expectations that there would be some fireworks in the form of satori, some revelation in the dark night of zazen that would not dissipate in the light of every day. Kodo Sawaki was fond of saying that satori was like a thief breaking into an empty house. There is nothing to steal. But it is a wonderful place for us thieves to do zazen.

Living the goal of no goal does not mean you don’t accomplish anything. In fact, you accomplish more, and what you accomplish is more satisfying and more important because your effort comes more naturally, spontaneously, automatically and your attainments are not to be judged by others, or by your own attainments, but by their contribution to the four bodhisattva goals: saving all beings, dropping all illusions, opening all reality gates, and practicing like a buddha. At least that has been true for me, and that is all I can attest to. You will find your path, your own accomplishments.

Like a Fish, Like a Fool

Richard Collins, Abbot
Stone Nest Dojo
28 June 2026

Today I want to talk about the han. This is the neglected stepchild of the instruments. It is the first one we learn how to play, even though very few of us play it very well. It is not given the attention that it deserves.

The han is what calls us to enter the dojo. But it is not just a bell like the school bells that told it was time to get to class, or to get out of class. If that’s all it means to you, try to give it a little more respect.

Some temples have inscriptions on the han, in English or kanji, that spell out what its sound means. Ours never has. Its meaning has always been implied in the sound of wood mallet on wood plank.

For a long time I have thought about adding an inscription to the han here at Stone Nest. But I have never really felt that it was time or that I had come up with the right message.

I knew that it should not be in English, as some temples have it. We don’t chant the Hannya Shingyo in English, so why should the han speak English?

I knew that the inscription on the han at, for example, Tassajara was not right for us. Theirs reads something like this: “Wake Up, Life is transient, Swiftly Passing, Be Aware, The great matter, Don't waste time.”

I have almost finished the first draft of my book on Robert’s life, and I was going to call the preface, which calls us to enter the book, “The Great Matter.” But I didn’t really like that; it sounded too pompous, too pious. Not at all a fitting way to introduce the story of Robert’s life.

It’s a good teaching, this “Wake up, don’t waste time.” But, like the head monk’s verse in the Platform Sutra of Hui-neng, it doesn’t go far enough. At least it doesn’t express what the han calls us to do in our dojo.

This morning I was revising that preface, and I remembered a much more fitting inscription for the han for us, our practice, and for Robert’s life. So this morning, I decided not to waste any more time. (My calligraphy isn’t that great anyway, but I am getting older and my hands are beginning to shake.) 

I got to the dojo early and inscribed two kanji on our han: GYO 魚 for FISH and GU 愚 for FOOL. These two symbols come from the last line of another traditional inscription — 如魚如愚 (nyo gyo nyo gu) — that goes like this:

Completely freed from yes and no;
great emptiness charged within;
no questions, no answers;
like a fish, like a fool.

This is perfect for our han, for our lineage, and for the writing of Robert’s life. Now the opening chapter has a new title: “Like a Fish, Like a Fool.” And the closing lines of the opening chapter of Robert’s life story read:

This is how we approach the Great Matter. It is in this spirit — without choosing, without judgment, without goals — that I begin to tell the story of the life and death of my imperfect Zen master.

Cleaning Out One's Room

Preston Thomas
(Originally Published on Substack on 31 May, 2026)

"The more you have, the more you have to lose." –Bruce Lee

I want to revisit an idea that I touched on briefly in the past: the value of subtraction in one’s life—that is, the deeper gain that comes from loss. When I say “loss,” I mean the intentional loss of junk or baggage, whether it is in one’s room or in one’s mind.

I am writing from the perspective of someone who has exhibited mild hoarding tendencies. My family, like many families, has hoarded and passed down photos, trinkets, and miscellaneous junk—all in the vain hope of trying to achieve some sort of emotional security or continuity. The desire to achieve this security or continuity is understandable, but it is like trying to hold onto water.

Here is a quote by Shunryu Suzuki that I have cited before:

You should have a general house cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. You may want many things, so one by one you can bring them back. But if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them…

Before you put something in your room, it is necessary for you to take out something. If you do not, your room will become crowded with old, useless junk.

This teaching seems to jive with what I have heard directly from my Zen teacher, Richard Collins, who describes Zen meditation as a “practice of loss.” He recently gave a two-part talk on the “tyranny of things” (the notion that our things can own us more than we own them, especially when we are attached to and identify with them). He said that this teaching applies to both material and immaterial things.

In the latter category, Zen is a prime example. One can build an identity as a “Zen practitioner”—just like one can build an identity around jiu jitsu, martial arts, film, creativity, and all sorts of other immaterial things. Over the years, I crafted an identity as a filmmaker, and in more recent years I integrated jiu jitsu into that public identity.

In terms of material things, I have already acquired quite a few after being in my new home for a few weeks. For instance, I have gone down a rabbit hole of Japanese-style artwork—including lots of cats. I even went out and bought a TV on the same day that my teacher had spoken about the “tyranny of things.” The irony!

I have made an effort to “clean house”—physically and mentally—a few times in recent years. I had to sift through and discard plenty of old stuff when I made a cross-country move in 2024. At the same time, I had to take an accounting of and clear out plenty of mental junk as well, and that process is ongoing.

When I try to clean out my mind, I often find more stuff to fill it up with. About a year ago, I was consuming podcasts, audiobooks, and articles focused on productivity and self-improvement. Think Andrew Huberman, James Clear, and Ryan Holiday. This sort of content can be beneficial—I have echoed or directly quoted it in Zen Jitsu.

However, I realized at a certain point that I was over-consuming this type of material—I was leaning too heavily on a search for external answers until I finally realized that I needed to search inwardly.

Around this time, I got back into formal Zen practice and met my teacher Richard, who spoke about the “practice of loss.” That phrase resonated with me instantly; it spoke to my desire to take stock of and let go of my accumulated physical and mental junk. In my search for external answers, I had often just added to the mental junk pile.

On the other hand, the writings of Charlotte Joko Beck and Pema Chödrön had helped me realize just how much I needed to “let go” and release some of that junk—a process that begins with patience and compassion toward oneself.

As I have written about in past articles, I have slowly come to realize that letting go means more than just throwing stuff out. You can’t just make it all disappear. In fact, when it comes to the baggage of the mind, you have to observe and work with all of it. This does not mean to ruminate or chase after one’s thoughts; it does mean to dispassionately observe the coming and going of thoughts as one would observe passing clouds on a cloudy day.

When you can sit still and observe yourself in a non-grasping, nonjudgmental way, then you can slowly begin to observe the mental clouds with detachment and perhaps even curiosity. I have made the mistake of wanting to transform my mind into a perfectly clear, unblemished sky—free from anxieties, doubts, or uncertainties. However, that is not how the human mind works—it is never a clear blue sky for too long. Freedom lies in being able to gracefully shift with the mind’s weather.

Circling back to the Suzuki quote, after a period of trying to “clean house” physically and mentally, I have realized that it is okay to bring some things back in. I can bring back some of the podcasts, for instance, as long as they bring me joy and meaning. I can admire the Zen cat paintings that I bought online. I can even have fun watching stuff on my new TV, after a year of not watching any TV at all. (Lately, I am enjoying the neo-noir camp of Tokyo Vice on HBO Max.)

In the past, I have sometimes gotten so deep into a passion—whether it was filmmaking, jiu jitsu, or meditation—that I lived a quasi-monk lifestyle and sequestered myself. Now, however, is the time to go out into the world and enjoy it; as we say in my Zen lineage, the whole world is the field of our practice. After all, we are lay people—not monastics or mountain dwellers.

In New Orleans, and especially in the neighborhood that I live in, the world is at my doorstep. Within a short distance from my home, one can find the rumble of St. Charles Avenue (with its centuries-old streetcar), the hubbub of Magazine Street, the debauchery of the French Quarter, or the lovely greenery of Audubon Park.

Cleaning out my room—physically and mentally—has been and continues to be a valuable, necessary exercise. That being said, I am ready to bring back or even add a few things. If the whole world is the field of our practice, I am ready to play the field, have fun, and take life seriously without taking myself too seriously.

As my Zen teacher Richard recently put it to me: “enjoy and lighten the Way.”

Note: This post was originally published on Zen Jitsu, Preston’s Substack. You can read more posts and subscribe here.

The Tyranny of Intangible Things

Richard Collins, Abbot

(Kusen: Tuesday, 24 May 2026, New Orleans Zen Temple)

On Sunday, I talked about the tyranny of things, how things possess us far more than we possess things. But there’s also the tyranny of intangible things.

In No Fear Zen, I wrote about the error of talking about “my” practice, “my” zazen. As though we somehow own the practice. When we speak in this way, though, we don’t own the practice, the practice owns us.

Ego, as you know, in Latin simply means self (“I” or “me”). It is my sense of identity. It is a useful term of reference, a pointer, to something that is intangible. Like the “selfless soul” of the Kabbalah beneath the layers of our tangible self, or masks, our personae.

But when the ego gets reified, when it turns into a thing, brittle and defined, it becomes a burden and a hindrance. A circumscribed thing, a trapped thing, a caged thing. No longer free. Zazen lets us see the insubstantiality of this brittle mask we have created, the ego.

Our identity. Think about your ID, your identity card. This is a thing created by the state. It defines you and is created so as to limit you. Your drivers license, which says what you can and can’t do, whether you can buy liquor, for instance. Or your passport, which tells you where you can go, who can arrest you.

But the true self has no height or weight, no eye color, no hair color. No home address. It cannot be pictured. It resides at no address on any street or in any state or in any country. This is the self of zazen, the self of true freedom.

Yet when we come to zazen, our ego is still shameless. It is attached to doing things right. We worry about whether we play the instruments correctly, or lead the ceremony incorrectly. Egotism comes in many forms. Modesty is just as egotistical as arrogance or pride. We are still worried about how we will appear to others or to ourselves. When we practice selflessly, we don’t worry about such things. We just show up, ready to do what needs to be done.

On Sunday, I also talked about how we misinterpret discomfort as pain. We talk about “my” pain. This is no different than being owned by our possessions. We get owned by our interpretation of our perception. This is not freedom.

So whenever we are using those terms my, me, mine — my work, my love, my trauma — we need to try to deconstruct that a little bit. All of these are illusions that we need to dismantle. Or if that sounds too intentional, we need to allow them to fall into disuse. Beautiful illusions sometimes, ones that we like to cling to. But also painful illusions sometimes, ones that we want to escape. This is where our suffering comes from. The more we can let go of our own importance, concentrate on the well-being of others, the more we reduce not only the suffering of those around us, but also our own suffering.

And in this way our real purpose gets clarified. It’s not easy. But you wouldn’t be here if you were looking for something easy. It doesn't happen quickly. You probably remember the dedication from Daichi Zenji in the ordination ceremony. About how a horse doesn't show its strength on a short ride, but on the long journey. Similarly, people around us show their worth not in a few moments of time, but over the long haul. Just remember that everything passes. This is all momentary. It's up to you to decide what's important. What is it? What needs to be done — and what doesn't? Your answer will determine your freedom and your suffering. Hopefully you will decide in favor of something that is not just for your own indulgence.

The Tyranny of Things

Richard Collins, Abbot

(Kusen: Sunday, 26 March 2026, New Orleans Zen Temple)

Since March I have been steadily writing my book about Robert’s life and legacy. It is largely now sketched out. Several chapters, though, have been hard to write, especially the late chapters, which deal with the dismantling of Camp Street and Robert’s death.

While writing about these difficult subjects, the phrase “the tyranny of things” occurred to me. Things have great power over us, or rather we allow things to have great power over us. When referring to the temple on Camp Street, it is not just the building but also its contents. And not just those things that are the repositories of our personal memory, but also the archives, letters, documents, receipts, and so on, things that tell the story of an era, a life.

The phrase “the tyranny of things” is not original with me. It is a universal phenomenon and has been articulated in many ways over the centuries, at least as long as people had stories to tell, memories to draw from, and things to possess that related to those memories, both pleasant and unpleasant.

A couple of essays with that title appeared as early as 1893 and 1917.[1] But of course, monks of all sorts, Daoist and Zen and Christian, have examined the idea long before that. Monks are home-leavers, mistrustful of possessions, things that tie them down to this world and its heavy burden of responsibilities.

For those of us who can’t cast off these responsibilities so easily, we continue to be entangled in the world of things. Trapped, like Monkey from the great Chinese folk novel, The Journey to the West. Sun Wukong, whose name means Monkey Awakened to Emptiness, isentombed in the side of a mountain before he is released to accompany the Buddhist monk Xuanzang on his trip to the Buddhaland to retrieve the Tripitaka, the three baskets of Mahayana teachings, including the Heart Sutra, with its essential message of emptiness.[2]

I am reminded of the opening of Henry Miller’s novel Tropic of Cancer. The narrator declares: “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.” It is not just monks who feel the freedom of nothing left to lose.

When we come to zazen, we experience the nonattachment of not being enslaved by things. The rest of the time our possessions own us far more than we own them.

Robert began to detach from things long before he was detached from life itself. Until he discovered Zen, or Zen discovered him, when he was living on hedonistic Capri, he was awash in the world of samsara, living the high life in Europe. Thus the first half of his life was all about experiencing things, if not acquiring them; the second half was all about casting them off. But life itself, this mortal coil, is the last of those things to be cast off, and not easily. As he used to tell us, don’t worry about nirvana, you will reach it soon enough. Nirvana: the ultimate nonattachment.

The book I am writing, which I am calling a “biographical memoir,” is Robert’s biography but also my memoir of my time with him. It is called Great Abandonment. Robert’s life was a series of abandonments: being abandoned by others like his parents, and abandoning people and places, wives and children, places and things. My life has been similar in that way. So was the Buddha’s. So are all our lives, whether we know it or not.

And yet complete abandonment is impossible because we are all beset by the tyranny of things.

This week I am in the process of dealing with a situation that is similar to the closing years of Robert’s life. A relative is in memory care and I have been helping to dispose of their things, the physical objects of memory, the souvenirs, the detritus of a life lived for over eighty years.

This is a process that all of us and our things will undergo in some way or another. Whether we die suddenly, when others will have to dispose of our things. Or whether there is a slower and more painful process of detachment.

Zazen allows us to face this reality, even as we remain entangled in it.

On the drive here from Tennessee my wife read to me a book called Altered Traits,[3] an overview of the science of the effects of meditation. This morning she cited an experiment in which longtime Zen practitioners were proven to have a significantly increased endurance to pain.

Anyone who has sat in sesshin with the karma of their knees and back knows this. Anyone who sat with Robert and heard his kyosaku-like “Don’t move!” might think that he did not want to be disturbed by your fidgeting; but really he was saying, “Endure!” Learn how to endure the discomfort and learn from the endurance that the pain is just your reaction and interpretation of that discomfort.

But the scientists determined something of greater interest. This increased ability to endure pain was not just a result of the “altered state” during zazen, but it became an “altered trait” thanks to long-term practice.

This is what short-term practitioners do not appreciate. It takes time for the lessons of our bodies and minds to set in. Those who look for short-term results are also those who continue to experience discomfort as pain, responsibilities as impositions, and reality as a personal affront.

When we come to zazen, we climb into our coffins, where pain is just a thing of the living. When we leave zazen we climb out of our coffin, and we realize that living is the field of our practice. We return to our discomfort, our responsibilities, and our reality but with a new equanimity, where our awakening to emptiness allows us to see that poverty, the absence of things and the absence of hope, become the field of our freedom.

___

[1] These two essays, by Elizabeth Morris and by Edward Sanford Martin, can be accessed online in Quotidiana: https://essays.quotidiana.org/.

[2] There are many translations, mostly abridged versions, of this classic, including those by Arthur Waley and Anthony C. Yu, but the best and most complete version is that by W. J. F, Jenner published by Foreign Language Press in Beijing.

[3] Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson. Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your MInd, Brain, and Body (New York: Avery, 2018).

STINK OF ZEN, POISON DRAGONS: Making Wang Wei’s Poem My Own

Richard Collins, Abbot

In the summer 2026 issue Tricycle published my poem “In the Posture of the Water Dragon” after a poem by Wang Wei from my collection Stone Nest (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025).

Every translator makes a poet their own, of course, more or less unconsciously. But I do not know Chinese and do not presume to be a translator. Mine is an “after” poem that echoes the original and engages in conversation with the poet across the distances of time, space, culture, and personal awareness.  

All of the poems of Stone Nest are to some extent “in conversation with” the ancient Chinese poets. Another poem begins: “Here on the mountain we may not be closer to God / but we’re closer to the ancient Chinese poets / who chose to be closer to nature and themselves.”

Some of these poems began as loose translations or “versions” of the original poems, usually following literal translations that lack articles, tenses, plurals, and even person or point of view. Many of my “versions” did not make it into the book, being closer to being translations than responses. All of the poems in the book are in the spirit of the Chinese poets.

When I used to teach world literature I would have students compare several translations along with a literal translation to “triangulate” the many possibilities a translator has to work with in English.

Here is a translation of Wang Wei’s poem by Burton Watson, one of the more prolific translators of Chinese poetry. (The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, translated and edited by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia UP, 1984, p. 202-03.)

VISITING THE TEMPLE OF ACCUMULATED FRAGRANCE

I didn’t know where the temple was,
pushing mile on mile among cloudy peaks;
old trees, peopleless paths,
deep mountains, somewhere a bell.
Brook voices choke over craggy boulders,
sun rays turn cold in the green pines.
At dusk in the bend of a deserted pond,
a monk in meditation, taming poison dragons. 

This seems very straightforward, but certain choices have been to pin down what was in the original Chinese ambiguous. 

Even the title makes a choice that is not clear in the original. Sometimes called “Stopping at Incense Storing Temple” it is not clear whether the narrator actually finds the Temple or is simply looking for it. Do they actually “visit” or “stop” at the temple or do they “pass by” it and sense its presence by its strong fragrance? 

One literal translation of the poem (http://www.chinese-poems.com/incense.html) looks like this: 

STOPPING AT INCENSE STORING TEMPLE

not know incense store temple
few li enter cloud peaks
ancient trees no person path
deep hills what place bell
spring sound choke sheer rock
sun colour cold green pines
dusk empty pool bend
peace meditation control fierce dragon 

Even a so-called literal translation, however, can show great variation.

Wai-Lim Yip’s literal version is more precise in recognizing the ambiguity of connotation in certain words and phrases. (See Wai-Lim Yip, Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1997, p. 189.) Where the smell of incense has been “accumulated” or “stored” or “piled up” or “heaped” in other versions, in Yip’s version it “teems.” (“Stored” makes it sound as though the temple warehouses its stock of incense there, instead of the sensory accuracy of smelling a place that has been infused with the odor of incense burned over the course of many years.) The sound of the “pond” or “pool” in other versions becomes a “fountain” or “spring” in Yip’s. Where the pool “chokes” in other versions, in Yip’s it also “sobs” or “swallows.” Where others see a “craggy” or “sheer” rock, Yip’s becomes “perilous.” And what others call “peace meditation” that “tames” or “controls” a “poison” or “fierce” dragon becomes for Yip the more literal “pacifying Ch’an or Zen” that “exorcises” a “poisonous” dragon (that he upgrades to a “virulent dragon” in his final version).

The result is what seems to me to be the clearest “translation” of Wang Wei’s poem:

PASSING THE TEMPLE OF TEEMING FRAGRANCE

Where is the Temple of Teeming Fragrance?
Miles and miles into cloud-peaks.
Ancient trees; no man’s path.
Deep in the mountains: where, this bell?
Fountain sobs, swallowing perilous rocks.
Sun’s color chills green pines.
Dusk. At an empty pool’s bend,
Meditation exorcises heart’s virulent dragon. 

I wish he had retained “Ch’an” or “Zen” for 禅 in place of a mere generic “meditation.” And “exorcising” the “virulent” dragon seems to be exalting the dragon into the status of a demon and its poison into an infectious disease in a somewhat melodramatic final flourish. But otherwise Yip’s choices seem justified and well-informed, and his mostly five-word lines echo nicely the five-character lines of the original, while not trying to smooth out the staccato images into colloquial English.

My own version, in conversation with Wang Wei’s poem, changes the meaning while inflecting it with my own experience while living on the 22 acres of the Zen hermitage called Stone Nest in Sewanee, Tennessee.

IN THE POSTURE OF THE WATER DRAGON

After Wang Wei 

To avoid the stink of incense at the temple,
I wander a few miles along a foggy trail.
No one anywhere on the ancient path between the trees.
A bell rings deep in a dark ravine,
a spring gurgles down a steep rock gulley.
Bright chestnuts chill the prism of slanting light.
At dusk I sit by the calm deserted pool
in the posture of the water dragon. 

In all these versions we see a similar core experience of the juxtaposition of an absent but fragrant temple (searched for, missed, or left behind) and a present fountain, spring, or source (where the struggle for enlightenment or awareness is conducted in the solitude of nature).

Still, I think you can see Wang Wei’s point and, in contrast, mine. Two things stand out at the beginning and end. First, in the opening line, the attitude toward the fragrance of the “incense accumulating temple” in the other versions is different from the temple’s “stink” in mine. Then, in the closing line, the toxic dragon that meditation is supposed to exorcise becomes simply the water dragon, or myself, that Zen reveals in the reflection of the pool.

In Watson’s version there is an unidentified “monk in meditation, taming poison dragons.” In my version, I take “the posture of the water dragon.” The posture I am taking is not that of some spiritual dragon-slayer but my own (born in 1952, I am a Water Dragon in the Chinese zodiac). In Zen practice, as opposed to generic meditation, poison dragons stand for the bonno (illusions or delusions that come from the three poisons of anger, greed, and ignorance). Watson’s monk tames the poison dragons within to become human again, alluding to the myth. (Watson’s footnote explains: “The poison dragons are passions and illusions that impede enlightenment. They also recall the tale of a poison dragon that lived in a lake and killed passing merchants until it was subdued by a certain Prince P’an-t’o through the use of spells. The dragon changed into a man and apologized for its evil ways.”) By taking the posture of the water dragon, however, I am simply becoming myself, dropping off body and mind to become my true self, the one Kodo Sawaki says is the one we have not thought of.

The point is, to return to the beginning of the poem, in order to become our true self we must leave the “stink” of the incense-accumulating Zen temple behind. Not literally perhaps, and not forever, because we can always return to the ritual and the forms; but to really become ourselves we have to leave all temples and all religions behind, return to the natural state, our own nature which is empty, and like the fountain, the source, far from the stink of Zen.

That path is long and foggy, but it is an ancient path, and when we reach the source, we can drop the poses and become ourselves in our own posture. The ritual and forms of the temple are fine, but zazen is the key. Zazen does not need a formal ritual space but only a space at the source of one’s own nature. A temple is like a gym or training ground for the warrior within; it is not where the battle takes place, which is within oneself.

In my own experience, I left the New Orleans Zen Temple twice. First, I left for five years (2005-2010) to do battle on my own. I did not leave the practice of zazen, of course, but set up dojos where I found myself (in Alexandria LA and Bakersfield CA) when I was asked to. When I returned, my teacher didn’t punish me for leaving, he asked me to take monastic ordination and to take over the temple for him.

The second time I left the temple of accumulated fragrance behind was when the building on Camp Street was sold and the Temple dismantled. This time I left it behind the way a cicada leaves its exoskeleton. (In “The Dead Master,” published in Still Point Arts Quarterly, I compare the Temple to Robert’s exoskeleton, and him in old age to the Greek figure Tithonus, who asked the gods for eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth, and therefore was doomed to wither away and chatter for eternity in the form of a cicada.) The true temple, however, like the cicada, is not to be found in buildings or empty exoskeletons but in the living body that takes on new incarnations.

THE DEAD MASTER

Like a mokugyo
or an abandoned
temple 

the empty body
of the cicada
remains 

its song
an endless
echo. 

The new battles with poison dragons continue to occur at Stone Nest. Not with the forms or fragrances, not with external pressures and temptations, but with myself.

Courtesy of Still Point Arts Quarterly.