On Being a Zen Jerk

How training in Zen Buddhism isn't all about compassion, calm, and just being chill

📸 credit: Michelle Mishina

Most of the time, I'm writing about how Zen can make us better people.

By that, I mean that the mechanics and philosophies of Zen training usually make people clearer, stronger, more sensitive, more compassionate, more selfless, and maybe even more strategic. But I recently had occasion to reflect on how Zen can also make us jerks. And the ways in which, at various times, Zen training has definitely made me one.

A quick aside: I've been doing a lot of public speaking lately. The full list—with links to the audio and video of podcast interviews and webinars—is here on my website if you'd like to take a look.

The impetus for my reflection on how Zen training has made me a jerk came from one of these recent talks. A few weeks ago, I spoke to the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care's Foundations, a program for end of life caregivers and other folks interested in Zen to learn some of its fundamentals. The particular approach of this program is to go through what are called the 'precepts' of Zen Buddhism. 

Precepts is a weird word and one that's not often used in the English language. Some interpret it to mean rules, guidelines, or vows and they cover not only the realm of spiritual realization but also things like ethics. There are 16 in total addressed in the Foundation program and in this particular talk, I was asked to speak on the Sixth and Seventh Grave Precepts, which are:

• Not Discussing the Faults of Others; and

• Not Praising Yourself While Abusing Others

I find these to be pretty straightforward, as long as you approach them practically and without getting caught up in any absolutes. In short, we should be discriminating and skillful in how we talk about others' shortcomings. Knowing that there will be moments when it is appropriate and perhaps important—for ourselves or for others—to describe someone's bad habits and behaviors, we should not commit to *never* discussing the faults of others. But, we should probably also do so while resisting the temptation to slip into gossip and trash talking. 

And none of us are perfect, of course, so it would be hypocritical of us and maybe even immoral to play up our own achievements and good qualities while ignoring the ways in which we are also causing harm and suffering. Pretty simple. Pretty easy stuff for a bunch of people who are looking to Zen for insights on how to live better, lead better, love better, and die better, as is the case for the NYZCCC given their focus on end of life care.

But it would be a mistake to think that Zen only works in the positive. There are definitely ways that Zen training can be misused and misinterpreted, and today I'm going to discuss three of these.

3 Ways To Be a Zen Jerk

1) Stinking of Zen

People talk about fragrance a lot in Zen, usually in a good way. There's the brushwood gate that gives off its wonderful, earthy perfume without conscious intent. The cut branches naturally release a scent in the same way that the sakura tree blooms and then releases its flowers all at once in a beautiful snowy blanket of petals. 

The brushwood gate and the sakura do these things because to do so is in their constitutions and they can't help it. In contrast, when something is put on or contrived, it is experienced instead as excessive and cloying. It starts to stink.

When something is put on or contrived, it is experienced instead as excessive and cloying. It starts to stink.

I stink of Zen when I try to make a lively conversation too conceptual, inserting Zen ideas or stories in an effort to teach someone something or assert myself as somehow better than. Another way to stink of Zen is to use Zen words and phrases like a coded language, separating a crowd into those who know and those who don't know. 

I also stink of Zen when I show my attachment to form, a word that sums up the etiquette and physical actions of Zen training. This shows up as a finickiness around things like how to bow properly, and being too hard on beginners in the Chado (Way of Tea) class when they forget to hold the tea scoop or hand a guest a bowl of tea properly.

Another way to stink of Zen is to judge or critique others' spiritual training, whether that judgment is personally motivated or comes from being overly attached to forms, like the clothes people wear or traditional monastic practices like head shaving and koan curricula.

I even stink a little of Zen when I talk too much about how hard Zen training is and how physically painful it can be. 

Don't stink of Zen.

2) Spiritual Bypass

The second way that Zen training can make you a jerk is through what's become popularly known as "spiritual bypass". The most basic way to understand spiritual bypass is that it's using your spirituality, spiritual states, or spiritual practice as excuses for not addressing harm and suffering experienced in the material or real world.

Imagine taking the Sixth Grave Precept literally and using it as an excuse to not talk about a real example of someone's sexist behavior, or the experience of institutional racism. That would quite obviously be spiritual bypassing! So would avoiding difficult topics of equity and inclusion or something hurtful you did because it doesn't feel good—it "harshes your mellow" or "ruins your Zen".

Beware “spiritual bypass”—using your spirituality, spiritual states, or spiritual practice as excuses for not addressing harm and suffering experienced in the material or real world.

Sometimes, in my more defensive and emotional moments, I spiritual bypass by convincing myself that being a serious Buddhist means I can't be a jerk or that it gives me a free pass to be a jerk. I have ignored the people telling me I acted in an inappropriate or hurtful way. In my mind, my regular meditation habit somehow canceled out my bad behavior or bolstered my sense of righteousness. 

Sometimes, rather than forcing myself to confront the harm I caused and repair the relationship in front of me, I have turned heel and strode to my meditation cushion to resolve things in my own mind, alone. In the past, the solo, individual nature of my meditation and my Buddhism probably made it harder to be in a relationship with me, even while meditation also boosted my self awareness, empathy, and self control.

3) Just being mean

I once asked one of the students of the founder of our temple what it was like to be scolded by him. Tanouye Roshi was famously cutting in his scoldings and I had read stories of how intimidating the peerless Zen and martial arts master could be. 

"Oh, he could cut," the old man told me. "But you never doubted that he cared about you."

There is an innate discipline and intensity to Zen training, and this can be amplified in certain environments where harsh scoldings and even physical assaults are de rigueur, as they have been through more than a thousand years of Zen history. The key to keeping it from veering into simply abusive behavior, one has to suppose, is that the person doing it has trained deeply enough so that even the deepest scolding still cuts clean.

However, it is very possible, if not probable, that the people responsible for overseeing training in a Zen Dojo day to day have not yet reached such a level. Sometimes, this is by design, with students set at odds against each other so that they may learn and grow through their conflicts. Especially in a Zen Dojo like the one I live in that’s geared towards turning out strong and sensitive leaders, such conflict can be seen as grist for the mill.

Perhaps, then, I can be forgiven for, at various times in my Zen training, just being plain old mean. 

I have a negativity bias like any other human being. This means that what stuck out to me in my first years of Zen training were the scoldings. The moments of grace and kindness were there and plentiful; they just didn't leave as strong of an impression. So, when it came time to be the senpai, or senior student, to those who arrived at the Dojo after me, I pressed upon them in the ways that I felt pressed upon myself. 

Perhaps I can be forgiven for, at various times in my Zen training, just being plain old mean. 

In doing so, however, I may have been way more of a jerk than anyone actually was to me and certainly more so than was helpful or appropriate. Not only was I mean, I've even been told I sometimes made people feel targeted, which makes sense because that's how I remember feeling. And the more presence and spiritual strength I gained, the more intense those encounters felt for those in my crosshairs.

And, at the same time, I was also doling out scoldings because I cared. Someone once told me that almost every conflict is actually a call for connection. Whether it was because I wanted to help someone advance in their training using what I knew or felt had worked for me, or because I was acting out my own frustration and hurt feelings in our relationship, it was never my intent to be mean or push people away. But yet, I did.

In Conclusion

If you've come to Zen looking for a way to make yourself a better person, then what you've found is not a cure-all for all of your bad habits and delusional thinking, but rather, a beautiful set of tools. How you use those tools is up to you.

This equally applies to the more universal way of looking at all of the precepts, which is to embody the true meaning of Zen: transcending all dualism—life and death, self and other. Who is there to disparage and fault, or to praise, if there is no you? If there is no me? 

If you've come to Zen looking for a way to make yourself a better person, then what you've found is not a cure-all for all of your bad habits and delusional thinking, but rather, a beautiful set of tools. How you use those tools is up to you.

But even this radical realization can be used in the wrong way, as exemplified in the Chinese trope of the enlightened assassin who, realizing the emptiness of all form, carries out his deadly duties with that much more efficacy and no guilt.

As Bodhidharma, the patriarch of Zen in China, said in regards to the precepts, self-nature is subtle and mysterious. As straightforward as it all seems on the surface, there's only more nuance and interdependent complexity as you dig. This is true of all religions, which may have started out as pure, enlightened truths, but were interpreted and implemented over millennia by imperfect human beings. How many wars and atrocities have been justified by the tenets of faith? 

This much is simple: don't use Zen or the fact that you're working on yourself through Zen as excuses or cudgels to fault others and to elevate yourself. Because Zen, in short, will not make you a better person. Only you will.