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Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers
The revolutionary figures in this book are those innovative, nonconformist Zen masters who often disguised their spiritual prowess by portraying themselves as lowly drifters, beggars, and Zen "madmen." They are individuals whose unorthodox behavior has defined the radical Buddhist movement known simply as Zen. This book contains stories of Zen "boat-rockers" and rebels that range from early 18th-century China all the way to the bustling streets of modern day America, with a stop in the middle to visit a courageous Zen master who made the ultimate sacrifice while resisting the brutal actions of the Japanese government in World War II. These remarkable masters remind us that the pursuit of spiritual awakening is not an insular process but rather a direct rebellion with the very foundations of suffering in the world.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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October 1, 2020
My grandfather was a monk (before he married my grandmother, obviously), and he once told me: “We had to take three vows: chastity, poverty and obedience. Chastity isn’t great, but I managed. Poverty, I didn’t mind at all. Obedience, well, that was a big problem.” He got quite a few lectures about being stubborn and insubordinate (jeez, I wonder where I got those charming personality traits myself…) and ultimately left the Church because he was sick of people who put politics above faith in a supposedly religious institution. I thought about him a lot as I read those stories of Zen masters who had rejected the traditional structures of their religion and practiced, taught and lived in their own unique – and equally valid way. I think he would have liked them.
When you read about the history of Zen, you almost always hear stories about Boddhidharma, Dogen, Joshu. They were very important in the history of Zen, of course, but there were a lot more we don’t see mentioned in books, and “Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers” does for the Zen weirdos what “Zen Women” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) did for, well, Zen women. It won’t come as a surprise that I have a special affection for the weirdos: when I bought this book, I had no idea that Brad Warner had blurbed it, but it makes sense: he is kind of a radical himself, after all! Mostly, I wanted to know that it was possible to be an unconventional Zen nerd, and that the traditional path isn’t the only one that worked.
The life of each “Crazy Cloud” selected by Besserman and Steger is put into detailed socio-historical context, so the readers can understand how and why their rejection of rules and conventions was significant. Whether it was pointing out the corruption of the temple, teaching women (gasp!) and laymen, questioning the validity of Dharma transmission (when it could basically be bought), denouncing the elitism of the institution, these guys went against the grain, ruffled some feathers but nevertheless practiced authentic Zen, had followers, Dharma heirs and obviously left their mark on the history of their religion.
Bessman and Steger make it very clear that such wild Zen practitioners are not to be emulated lightly: these weirdos had a deep and thorough understanding of the traditions they subverted and did not make their moves out of caprice: they saw inconsistencies, contradictions and intellectual laziness creep and take root into the practice that they loved and knew that this wasn’t right, it wasn’t what the Buddha had told his followers to do. The epilogue brings the Crazy Cloud's legacy into a modern context in a most interesting way.
I loved reading about those unapologetic men who gave Dharma talks in a language that could be understood by anyone (not just by highly educated aristocracy), who welcomed women, rice-farmers and foreigners into their circle of followers, who refused to be “certified” by a process they didn’t trust. The historical details provided in each chapter also paints a fascinating picture of medieval Japan, a time and place not often mentioned in Western history book. There’s often a certain orientalism with Western Buddhist students (and I’ve definitely gotten caught in that myself a few times), who have a very highly glamorized image of the day and age of the Zen masters of old: it’s refreshing to be reminded that there was so much social and political unrest, civil wars, assassination attempts and coups…
If you are interested in the history of Zen Buddhism, I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a copy of this book!
When you read about the history of Zen, you almost always hear stories about Boddhidharma, Dogen, Joshu. They were very important in the history of Zen, of course, but there were a lot more we don’t see mentioned in books, and “Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers” does for the Zen weirdos what “Zen Women” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) did for, well, Zen women. It won’t come as a surprise that I have a special affection for the weirdos: when I bought this book, I had no idea that Brad Warner had blurbed it, but it makes sense: he is kind of a radical himself, after all! Mostly, I wanted to know that it was possible to be an unconventional Zen nerd, and that the traditional path isn’t the only one that worked.
The life of each “Crazy Cloud” selected by Besserman and Steger is put into detailed socio-historical context, so the readers can understand how and why their rejection of rules and conventions was significant. Whether it was pointing out the corruption of the temple, teaching women (gasp!) and laymen, questioning the validity of Dharma transmission (when it could basically be bought), denouncing the elitism of the institution, these guys went against the grain, ruffled some feathers but nevertheless practiced authentic Zen, had followers, Dharma heirs and obviously left their mark on the history of their religion.
Bessman and Steger make it very clear that such wild Zen practitioners are not to be emulated lightly: these weirdos had a deep and thorough understanding of the traditions they subverted and did not make their moves out of caprice: they saw inconsistencies, contradictions and intellectual laziness creep and take root into the practice that they loved and knew that this wasn’t right, it wasn’t what the Buddha had told his followers to do. The epilogue brings the Crazy Cloud's legacy into a modern context in a most interesting way.
I loved reading about those unapologetic men who gave Dharma talks in a language that could be understood by anyone (not just by highly educated aristocracy), who welcomed women, rice-farmers and foreigners into their circle of followers, who refused to be “certified” by a process they didn’t trust. The historical details provided in each chapter also paints a fascinating picture of medieval Japan, a time and place not often mentioned in Western history book. There’s often a certain orientalism with Western Buddhist students (and I’ve definitely gotten caught in that myself a few times), who have a very highly glamorized image of the day and age of the Zen masters of old: it’s refreshing to be reminded that there was so much social and political unrest, civil wars, assassination attempts and coups…
If you are interested in the history of Zen Buddhism, I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a copy of this book!
August 1, 2013
This is a pretty fascinating book for anyone interested in some of the personalities that have dotted the history of Zen in Japan and America. The authors did a solid job of illustrating the wider picture of Japanese history and culture that surrounded each of the 8 Zen iconoclasts portrayed as they grew up and became teachers, even though this is still significantly less interesting than their individual stories (at least for me). My only critique is that there are so many more Zen radicals they could have profiled. The authors focused mostly on the Rinzai sect, so there were a number of people from the Soto sect that I would have liked to read about who are equally important and crazy. Omissions include Bodhidharma (the original Zen madman, though this is a forgivable omission since most of his life story is unknown and now just mythology), Hui Neng, Dogen, Keizan, Joshu, Kodo Sawaki, Shunryu Suzuki and Issan Dorsey. So this book easily could have been twice as long. But, I'd still recommend it if you're interested in Zen or just like entertaining stories (for instance, like how Hakuin was enlightened after being beaten over the head with a cane by a stranger).
May 23, 2024
A HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF VARIOUS ZEN ‘RADICALS’
The Introduction to this 1991 book explains, “This book… focuses on those religious Zen geniuses whose training, commitment, and realization experience led them to a free life, unconstrained by religious etiquette, rules, or hierarchy. Exploring the lives of these great nonconformists can perhaps help to clarify this grey area in Zen, overturning misconceptions about its antic and ascetic extremes and returning to a middle way. Crazy Cloud, the pen name assumed by Ikkyu---Zen poet, painter, calligrapher, and wandering teacher---is a pun on the Japanese word ‘unsui,’ the Buddhist monk whose detachment from worldly life has him drifting like a cloud over water. The Crazy Clouds of this book are those innovative Zen reformers, rebels, and radicals, the wandering seekers and sages often disguised as beggars, nomadic preachers, tree dwellers, and sometimes even madmen, whose singular Zen Way has profoundly influenced traditional practices of meditation, daily life, spiritual, social and political attitudes in Zen Buddhism even to the present.” (Pg. 3-4)
They continue, “The Crazy Clouds invite us to walk with them on the razor’s edge of essential freedom and moral responsibility. We must be careful about aping their eccentricity, or taking license for ‘creative anarchy,’ Without the experience of their hard-won realization and training, which in every case included a religious institution and a teacher, the mere imitator embarks on a dangerous and potentially immoral enterprise. At the most intimate level, Crazy Cloud Zen illustrate that meditation is a living experience, neither limited to monasteries and temples nor bounded by time or national borders. It effaces the dour and taciturn image that many people have taken for Zen, emphasizing instead the joy in discovering that ‘emptiness is form’ and ‘form is emptiness,’ and it embodies a vision great enough to embrace the Whole.” (Pg. 6)
They explain, “We begin in eighth-century China with the Layman P’ang, whose refusal to become a monk despite his celebrated confirmation by the two greatest Zen masters of the age makes him an appropriate model for our own times, when fifty percent of Zen practitioners are women. Shattering the monastic code of Indian Buddhism made it difficult for women to practice, P’ang never gave up family life, and took his daughter as his traveling companion and foremost disciple.” (Pg. 6)
They say of Bassui (14th century): “Bassui’s gentle Crazy Cloud approach, his anarchistic bias, did not adapt itself to a formalized Zen lineage. He was to the very core a hermit monk, a reluctant reformer whose own distaste for the ceremonial trappings associated with Zen led him to follow a single-minded, individualistic path to realization. Quite spontaneously, he came upon a universal question common to all children, ‘Who am I?’ and forged it into a koan that continues to liberate those who would follow it through anywhere and anytime.” (Pg. 54)
They recount, “By the fifteenth century, the struggle between the imperially sponsored Daitoku-ji and the shogunate’s chief temple, Nanzen-ji, had encompassed Myoshin-ji as well. The spirituality in the monasteries, whether emperor-dominated or shogun-sponsored, was decayed. The priests… spent less time training novices in meditation than in shaving their eyebrows, powdering their faces, dressing them in women’s clothing, and pushing them into homosexual acts. Brewing and drinking sake became the norm, writing elegant Chinese poetry to order, teaching effect calligraphy to effect shoguns, and attending lavish banquets took up the time of the Muromachi Zen masters.” (Pg. 63-64)
In the early 15th century, “Ikkyu departed from Rinzai’s ‘masculine’ Zen style, including women as his students, dharma companions, and social and intellectual equals. His rejection of life in the Zen temples was prompted as much by his hatred for their homosexual abuses as for their religious hypocrisy…. Ikkyu’s ‘feminist’ views alone were enough to label him mad. It was in the brothels and geisha houses that he developed his Red Thread Zen… extended to deep and subtle levels of realization in ‘this very body’ as the ‘Lotus of the true law,’ linking human beings to birth and death by the red thread of passion… Ikkyu’s Red Thread form of Zen practice was the most radical non-dualist interpretation of the sexual act proposed by any Zen mast before or since.” (Pg. 72)
The 18th century figure Hakuin “had… harsh words for practitioners of the Pure Land School of Buddhism who believed in a paradise distinct from this world, and a mythical intermediary called Anida Buddha, without whose help no salvation was possible… He deplored Zen masters who tried to incorporate Pure land elements into the technique of sitting meditation…” (Pg. 127)
In the 20th century, “Nyogen Senzaki held the highest hopes for the development of Zen practice in America. Having read the major American philosophers and educators, he had acquainted himself thoroughly with American culture. Finding American secularism especially compatible with his anticlericalism, Nyogen admired American ‘free thinkers’ like Thomas Paine… He felt that Zen and American pragmatism had much in common.” (Pg. 154-155)
They summarize, “For many people, Zen still represents a bastion of male supremacy… Zen practitioners for more than five centuries have been drilled in throwing away such ‘negative’ feminine qualities as emotional openness, self-regard, and sentiment…. No matter how you look at it, Zen has been an unremittingly male practice, since it was conceived and handed down almost exclusively by men for almost twenty-five hundred years… Most Japanese Zen masters who came West in the late nineteen fifties and early sixties perpetuated this male model of spiritual soldier who would… win the war for enlightenment. But what they encountered was a sangha whose members were fifty percent female, and they were not prepared. In Japan, even as late as 1984, women made up only 7.2 percent of the clergy, and monasteries, temples, and lay centers are still exclusively geared toward male practitioners… Japanese women… never protested or tried to change conditions that would be intolerable to Western women. In the early nineteen eighties, after a series of sex scandals in various American Zen centers threatened the stability of Zen institutions in the West, both male and female” Zen students actively experimented with new forms of practice.” (Pg. 180-181)
They conclude, “The Crazy Clouds---artists, poets, actors, individuals all---were pushed out of view, their teachings laundered by traditionalist whose secular connections to the world of power and politics overtook the Crazy Cloud vision of Zen… Crazy Cloud Zen is neither hedonistic nor eccentric It is the natural development of one whose insight into the ineffable emerges as the most spiritual form of self-expression … it invests every moment of our lives with radiance.” (Pg. 184)
This book will be of keen interest to those seeking “non-traditional” views of Zen.
The Introduction to this 1991 book explains, “This book… focuses on those religious Zen geniuses whose training, commitment, and realization experience led them to a free life, unconstrained by religious etiquette, rules, or hierarchy. Exploring the lives of these great nonconformists can perhaps help to clarify this grey area in Zen, overturning misconceptions about its antic and ascetic extremes and returning to a middle way. Crazy Cloud, the pen name assumed by Ikkyu---Zen poet, painter, calligrapher, and wandering teacher---is a pun on the Japanese word ‘unsui,’ the Buddhist monk whose detachment from worldly life has him drifting like a cloud over water. The Crazy Clouds of this book are those innovative Zen reformers, rebels, and radicals, the wandering seekers and sages often disguised as beggars, nomadic preachers, tree dwellers, and sometimes even madmen, whose singular Zen Way has profoundly influenced traditional practices of meditation, daily life, spiritual, social and political attitudes in Zen Buddhism even to the present.” (Pg. 3-4)
They continue, “The Crazy Clouds invite us to walk with them on the razor’s edge of essential freedom and moral responsibility. We must be careful about aping their eccentricity, or taking license for ‘creative anarchy,’ Without the experience of their hard-won realization and training, which in every case included a religious institution and a teacher, the mere imitator embarks on a dangerous and potentially immoral enterprise. At the most intimate level, Crazy Cloud Zen illustrate that meditation is a living experience, neither limited to monasteries and temples nor bounded by time or national borders. It effaces the dour and taciturn image that many people have taken for Zen, emphasizing instead the joy in discovering that ‘emptiness is form’ and ‘form is emptiness,’ and it embodies a vision great enough to embrace the Whole.” (Pg. 6)
They explain, “We begin in eighth-century China with the Layman P’ang, whose refusal to become a monk despite his celebrated confirmation by the two greatest Zen masters of the age makes him an appropriate model for our own times, when fifty percent of Zen practitioners are women. Shattering the monastic code of Indian Buddhism made it difficult for women to practice, P’ang never gave up family life, and took his daughter as his traveling companion and foremost disciple.” (Pg. 6)
They say of Bassui (14th century): “Bassui’s gentle Crazy Cloud approach, his anarchistic bias, did not adapt itself to a formalized Zen lineage. He was to the very core a hermit monk, a reluctant reformer whose own distaste for the ceremonial trappings associated with Zen led him to follow a single-minded, individualistic path to realization. Quite spontaneously, he came upon a universal question common to all children, ‘Who am I?’ and forged it into a koan that continues to liberate those who would follow it through anywhere and anytime.” (Pg. 54)
They recount, “By the fifteenth century, the struggle between the imperially sponsored Daitoku-ji and the shogunate’s chief temple, Nanzen-ji, had encompassed Myoshin-ji as well. The spirituality in the monasteries, whether emperor-dominated or shogun-sponsored, was decayed. The priests… spent less time training novices in meditation than in shaving their eyebrows, powdering their faces, dressing them in women’s clothing, and pushing them into homosexual acts. Brewing and drinking sake became the norm, writing elegant Chinese poetry to order, teaching effect calligraphy to effect shoguns, and attending lavish banquets took up the time of the Muromachi Zen masters.” (Pg. 63-64)
In the early 15th century, “Ikkyu departed from Rinzai’s ‘masculine’ Zen style, including women as his students, dharma companions, and social and intellectual equals. His rejection of life in the Zen temples was prompted as much by his hatred for their homosexual abuses as for their religious hypocrisy…. Ikkyu’s ‘feminist’ views alone were enough to label him mad. It was in the brothels and geisha houses that he developed his Red Thread Zen… extended to deep and subtle levels of realization in ‘this very body’ as the ‘Lotus of the true law,’ linking human beings to birth and death by the red thread of passion… Ikkyu’s Red Thread form of Zen practice was the most radical non-dualist interpretation of the sexual act proposed by any Zen mast before or since.” (Pg. 72)
The 18th century figure Hakuin “had… harsh words for practitioners of the Pure Land School of Buddhism who believed in a paradise distinct from this world, and a mythical intermediary called Anida Buddha, without whose help no salvation was possible… He deplored Zen masters who tried to incorporate Pure land elements into the technique of sitting meditation…” (Pg. 127)
In the 20th century, “Nyogen Senzaki held the highest hopes for the development of Zen practice in America. Having read the major American philosophers and educators, he had acquainted himself thoroughly with American culture. Finding American secularism especially compatible with his anticlericalism, Nyogen admired American ‘free thinkers’ like Thomas Paine… He felt that Zen and American pragmatism had much in common.” (Pg. 154-155)
They summarize, “For many people, Zen still represents a bastion of male supremacy… Zen practitioners for more than five centuries have been drilled in throwing away such ‘negative’ feminine qualities as emotional openness, self-regard, and sentiment…. No matter how you look at it, Zen has been an unremittingly male practice, since it was conceived and handed down almost exclusively by men for almost twenty-five hundred years… Most Japanese Zen masters who came West in the late nineteen fifties and early sixties perpetuated this male model of spiritual soldier who would… win the war for enlightenment. But what they encountered was a sangha whose members were fifty percent female, and they were not prepared. In Japan, even as late as 1984, women made up only 7.2 percent of the clergy, and monasteries, temples, and lay centers are still exclusively geared toward male practitioners… Japanese women… never protested or tried to change conditions that would be intolerable to Western women. In the early nineteen eighties, after a series of sex scandals in various American Zen centers threatened the stability of Zen institutions in the West, both male and female” Zen students actively experimented with new forms of practice.” (Pg. 180-181)
They conclude, “The Crazy Clouds---artists, poets, actors, individuals all---were pushed out of view, their teachings laundered by traditionalist whose secular connections to the world of power and politics overtook the Crazy Cloud vision of Zen… Crazy Cloud Zen is neither hedonistic nor eccentric It is the natural development of one whose insight into the ineffable emerges as the most spiritual form of self-expression … it invests every moment of our lives with radiance.” (Pg. 184)
This book will be of keen interest to those seeking “non-traditional” views of Zen.
August 20, 2015
Ms Besserman and Mr Steger did a phenomenal job. Tying together 'crazy clouds' through a strand of Eastern history; Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers takes a dive into the dichotomy of an independent life, free of religious dogma. In a collection of anecdotal stories, the authors frame individual Zen masters within the context of their unique time periods; from ancient China to Imperialist Japan, all the way to 1980s America. Clearly developing unique flavors of 'Zen', these masters taught as differently as the colors of a rainbow--some only meditated on koans, some played with children, some starved themselves, and others would preach in the streets without making any sense. Regardless of method however, they amassed followings and changed the landscape of Zen for the preceding generation and created lasting ripples throughout Zen communities.
Perhaps the ultimate takeaway--from a personal perspective--is the idea of spiritual courage. In the face of Zen faiths intertwined with varying versions of autocratic regimes, these Crazy Clouds refused to compromise their own beliefs and enlightenment--often times even up until their death.
As a side note, their stories unlocked a new, personal perspective on the life of another teacher that I am well acquainted--Jesus Christ. It's neat to revisit familiar territory with a new perspective; Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers does just that.
Perhaps the ultimate takeaway--from a personal perspective--is the idea of spiritual courage. In the face of Zen faiths intertwined with varying versions of autocratic regimes, these Crazy Clouds refused to compromise their own beliefs and enlightenment--often times even up until their death.
As a side note, their stories unlocked a new, personal perspective on the life of another teacher that I am well acquainted--Jesus Christ. It's neat to revisit familiar territory with a new perspective; Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers does just that.
February 21, 2021
Key take-aways :-
Learning methods of different Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers. For example :-
Bankei's Zen - A process of deconditioning impulses and concepts that are accumulated from birth and frozen in memory. The only way out of these transmigrations is to return to the unborn in experiential moment. Relatable to the concept of Mushin, i.e. No Mind.
Rinzai's Zen - His doctrine of fourfold relationship which, in essence, calls for returning to the universalist state, with no subjectivity and only objectivity, i.e. no ego.
Learning methods of different Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers. For example :-
Bankei's Zen - A process of deconditioning impulses and concepts that are accumulated from birth and frozen in memory. The only way out of these transmigrations is to return to the unborn in experiential moment. Relatable to the concept of Mushin, i.e. No Mind.
Rinzai's Zen - His doctrine of fourfold relationship which, in essence, calls for returning to the universalist state, with no subjectivity and only objectivity, i.e. no ego.
April 23, 2022
- Placed each teacher in the historical context they lived in.
- I like that they looked at teachers from different time periods and countries.
- Too focused on Rinzai Zen in my opinion.
- Biography of each teacher provided.
- Some comparison between the teachers.
- Clear links back to the themes of anarchism/anti-establishment.
- Description of their teaching style; I like that they selected teachers that all teach the same thing (when eating, just eat, when sleeping, just sleep, etc) but they all have their own very unique ways of doing it.
- Definitely recommend.
- I like that they looked at teachers from different time periods and countries.
- Too focused on Rinzai Zen in my opinion.
- Biography of each teacher provided.
- Some comparison between the teachers.
- Clear links back to the themes of anarchism/anti-establishment.
- Description of their teaching style; I like that they selected teachers that all teach the same thing (when eating, just eat, when sleeping, just sleep, etc) but they all have their own very unique ways of doing it.
- Definitely recommend.
July 8, 2017
Disregard rules, acquire epic adventures. The renegade madman is way cooler than stuffy preachers who talk about minimizing suffering.
August 18, 2020
This is one book I go back to often, reading a few pages again and again.
April 4, 2010
Interesting more for its perspective on Chinese and Japanese history than for its insight into the Rinzai school. It does have a good basic re-telling of many of the more interesting stories surrounding the Zen eccentrics.
January 4, 2013
Informative. Liked the historical perspective. I recommend some background reading before tackling "Crazy Clouds." "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts would provide a good background/survey.
January 26, 2013
A strong ideological perspective (that of feminism) makes it quite annoying to read about this otherwise a very fascinating subject.
January 16, 2014
Obzory rozšiřující kniha která si po dočtení okamžitě říká o druhé kolo s poznámkami.
February 19, 2020
Kniha plná zvuku tlesknutí jednou rukou
November 17, 2015
Es perfecto: entretenido, anecdótico, liviano y lleno de esos momentos en que bajas el kindle y te quedas mirando el muro para tragar lo que acabas de leer.
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February 24, 2018Crazy Cloud is the pen name assumed by Ikkyu who was a Zen poet, calligrapher and wandering teacher. The name itself is a pun on the Japanese word denoting the Buddhist monk whose detachment from wordly life has him drifting like a cloud over water. The "Crazy Clouds" of this book are those innovative, nonconformist Zen masters, the wandering seekers and sages often disguised as beggars, nomadic preachers and "madmen", whose singular Zen way has profoundly traditional practices of meditation, daily life and spiritual, social and political attitude in Zen Buddhism. Spanning a period from 8th-century China to 20th-century America, the book portrays the lives and teachings of Zen masters like the fierce Rinzai, the easy-going layman P'ang, the renegade Ikkyu, and the lay monk Nyogen Senzaki all of whose interpretations of even the most radical forms of practice proved too enigmatic and avant garde for their contemporaries, but which remain invaluable guidelines for practitioners in today's Western Zen world of feminists, anarchists, ecologists and spiritual activists.
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