When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen

by Norman Fischer

From beloved Zen teacher Norman Fischer, a collection of essays spanning a life of inquiry into Zen practice, relationship, cultural encounter, and spiritual creativity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Buddhism, Philosophy, Spirituality, Zen, Religion, Meditation

336 pages, Paperback

Published May 18, 2021

About the author

Zoketsu Norman Fischer (born 1946) is an American poet, writer, and Soto Zen priest, teaching and practicing in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. He is a Dharma heir of Sojun Mel Weitsman, from whom he received Dharma transmission in 1988.

Reviews

[David Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven’t read all his books, but for my money this is Norman Fischer’s best, reflections on a wide range of topics from a man who has spent fifty years living and teaching the Dharma. Fischer began as a poet—and has published widely—attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he grew up on the Jewish faith, which he never really rejected and eventually returned to. But early on he was searching for something more and began sitting zazen with Mel Weitsman in Berkeley (he tells a wonderful anecdote about how, the first time he went to the center, he took Weitsman for the gardener and asked where the roshi was; Weitsman said that there was no roshi but they sat zazen every morning. That moment was actually formative in Fischer’s understanding). He’s continued that practice ever since.

He moved on eventually to monastic practice and spent years at Tassajara, ordaining as a priest along with his wife Kathie. He held various important positions in the umbrella organization of the San Francisco Zen Center. But his real dedication has always been to writing and sitting, so at some point he drifted away from monastic life and created the Everyday Zen Foundation, which isn’t located in a physical space but is a confederation of people who live a Zen life out in the world, sitting together and gathering periodically for retreats, but not living monastically. In contrast to his teacher Mel Weitsman—who founded the Berkeley Zen Center and stayed there until his death this year, at age 91—Fischer has taught as much by writing as he has by giving lectures at a center.

This isn’t a dharma book, one that will teach you how to practice zazen and lead a Zen life (though Fischer has written such a book, What Is Zen? along with his longtime collaborator Susan Moon). It is mostly a collection of magazine pieces that Fischer has written on a variety of subjects, because people commissioned them or he felt a need to take up a subject. I’ve spent a fair amount of time searching for his essays on line, so I’m glad to have the pieces easily accessible under a single cover. But it doesn’t read like a random collection of pieces, more like reflections through the years of a person who has approached spiritual practice in an open-hearted way.

I can’t praise this book enough for its intelligence, its breadth, and its willingness to face the issues of religious life.

Take, for instance, the title essay, which I read on a whim late on the evening when I first got the book. I tend to think of Buddhism as a solitary endeavor, Bodhidharma sitting in a cave for nine years staring at a wall, but Fischer’s essay pulled me up short by saying that, actually, Zen is about relationship. The anecdote from which he gets his title concerns a young man named Longtan who left his job making rice cakes to follow the priest Tianhuang, who said if Longtan would be his attendant he would teach him the “essential dharma gate.” After a year, however, Longtan complained that the teaching hadn’t begun. Tianhuang insisted he’d been teaching all along. “When you greet me I bow. When I sit you stand beside me. When you bring tea I receive it from you.” We don’t learn just from what people say, but by the way they carry themselves in the world.
Fischer elaborates on that theme in his second essay, with the famous anecdote of Huangbo storming into the meditation hall and saying, “Don’t you know that in all of China, there are no teachers of Zen?” When someone suggests that many people have formed centers, including Huangbo, he replies, “I don’t say there is no Zen, only that there are no teachers.”

It’s the same thing Mel Weitsman told Fischer that first morning: there’s no roshi, but we sit together every morning.

I seem to remember that when Fischer first published this essay, or maybe made the casual remark somewhere that Zen is not taught, there was an uproar on the Internet, a bunch of self-important Zen teachers erupting as if the man had insulted them (not noticing, apparently, that he himself been Abbott of the San Francisco Zen Center). But what he is saying is that no one can teach Zen (just as no one can teaching writing, another activity people have probably asked Fischer to do), but that we can learn it, we can all learn it, by practicing together and being around more experienced people. Mel Weitsman learned by being around Suzuki Roshi, as Fischer and my teacher, Josho Pat Phelan, learned from being around Weitsman. But we don’t learn just from our teachers; we learn from everyone.

That’s what left me sitting there staring at the book on the night I read that first essay, its last sentence: “To be alive with others—nothing could be more basic, yet there is no greater spiritual practice.”

Fischer divides his essays into four sections, best explained by their subtitles: Notes on the Joy and Catastrophe of Relationship; Notes on Thinking, Writing, and Emptiness; Notes on Cultural Encounter; and Notes on Social Engagement. There are gems in all four sections, some of which are titles we might have skipped over, like “Why Do We Bow” (“The so-called meaning of it is extra. It’s not a conceptual act.”). Despite his work as a priest, Fischer has spent a huge amount of his time writing (I actually don’t know where he’s found the time to do all he’s done). He also, along with his great friend Alan Lew, rediscovered the Judaism of his youth. Lew actually became a rabbi, and the two of them founded a center for Jewish meditation, called Makor Or. One of the most moving essays concerns Lew’s sudden death, which came as a great shock to Fischer and all who knew him. I also loved the piece about Shunryu Suzuki’s wife, Fischer’s essay about the Psalms (preface to his book of new versions of Psalms), and his answers to questions about God from Susan Moon (part of the God issue of Inquiring Mind, a brilliant idea on her part).

I’m tempted to say that the fourth section is the weakest, but probably what I mean is that it’s the most difficult, or that it makes me the most uncomfortable. Fischer deals here with a wide array of social justice issues that any teacher faces nowadays, but that are dizzying for anyone our age. I must say that when I saw that the final essay was “The Problem of Evil,” I thought he had stretched too far—I can’t remember the number of distinguished thinkers who have taken that topic on—but that’s the most memorable piece I’ve read on that subject, and the most sensible, without ignoring any of the difficulties. There is an absolute sense in which there are no dualities, including good and evil, and in a way all Buddhists are striving all their lives to achieve that state. But even if you do that, even if you see that, from the absolute perspective, no one has a right to judge good and evil, we have to live in the world, and living in the world involves such judgments. It’s the ultimate Zen paradox.

Fischer credits Cynthia Schrager with the initial selection and groupings, and she did a marvelous job, and writes a helpful forward. I often think that collections of a writer’s miscellaneous essays are an indulgence, but these don’t read that way at all; this reads like a new book and the summing up of a life’s work. I expect to read this book again, and to dip into it as long as I’m studying Zen.

www.davidguy.org

[Yvette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Ruth Ozeki recommended this book on The Ezra Klein Show podcast. Having only a vague idea of what Zen was, Norman Fischer not only filled me in, but left me contemplating life's most vexing questions in new and useful ways.

[Teri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am long overdue in reviewing this book. While I have not finished it yet, I feel I have sufficient information to give a review. This is a book that is comprised of the authors writings over the years. Therefore, it can be picked up and read for brief periods of time without losing the thread of continuity. Sometimes I find it very personal to his experience and not relatable. There’s too much interweaving of the circumstances regarding the philosophy he’s trying to impart. Just when I get ready to say I’m not going to finish the book, I find some thing of value . I guess that’s why it’s taking me so long to finish the book. It is not a mesmerizing book but has useful components. Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

[Heather Sinclair · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays covering a range of topics, from global warming to religion, through a Buddhist/Zen lens. Fischer gets personal, and each essay gets into how he applies Zen principles/ideas to really challenging issues facing modern humans. It's a practical guide to how Zen can fit into life and how it applies to life, as well as a bit of a recounting of the author's experience as a Zen monk.

I liked how the topics were approached kindly and with a wide open mind, something that I think I can improve upon in my own life. I found though, that the essays were a bit stiff at times and veered toward high-level philosophical stuff that I had a hard time wrapping my head around.

Recommended for people who have read other works on Zen and are already familiar with the basic principles, I think for beginners this would be a bit of a tough read.

[Nadine in California · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of 30 years worth of Fischer's writings on his lived experience of Zen Buddhism, originally published in various journals, book intros, etc. Credit to the editor, Cynthia Schrager, for collating the essays into four useful groupings: relationship (not merely 'relationships'); the activities of thinking and writing; cultural encounters between East and West; and social activism. I'm not finished reading it - I dip in and out based on where my mind and my meditation practice is at the moment. I'm not a Buddhist, I don't understand the different traditions, I don't know what 'lineage' means, but I do sit every day and look for inspiration to continue doing so when life tries to pull me away.

[Molly Kavanaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not familiar with author and Zen teacher Norman Fischer but this collection of his essays from early 1900s to 2020 gave me a good insight of Buddhism and Norman.

Here's one takeaway from "Suffering Opens the Real Path" (2011):

"Accepting suffering as part of our lives doesn't mean we give up hope or stop wanting some things to be different. For example, if someone you love is diagnosed with cancer, of course you will hope for and search for a cure. You can accept the fact of the diagnosis at the same time that you do everything possible to ameliorate it There is no contradiction between acceptance and hope. In fact, acceptance and hope are connected. Acceptance is not resignation. Acceptance is a lively engagement with conditions as they are."

[Sadie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is mostly about the ways Buddhist practices and concepts can help in ordinary life and, while I’m not a Buddhist nor do I plan to become one, I really enjoyed learning more about it. I plan to take some of these methods with me in life.

The middle section goes heavily into the abstract and fundamentals which, although interesting, left me feeling lost. But overall the author does a good job of translating these concepts into more digestible words even with the limitation of language.

I didn’t agree with all views but a view is just a view that I can see beyond and it’s not a universal truth—just as the author said.

[Barbara Rhine · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a practicing Buddhist, I found this book satisfying. A series of essays, written over many years on various topics, each was compelling in one way or another. This is not an instruction manual, and while deeply influenced by Zen of course (since the author is an established Zen abbott and teacher), the subjects even wander beyond Zen, into various political and religious outlooks. I read an essay a day as I wandered through the volume, and that was the right pace for me. Complex prose, and readable, which is not easy to do. If you like Zen or any other Buddhist outlooks, and even if you like Christianity or Judaism more, I would recommend this book.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. Each essay stands alone, making the book easy to read in short increments without losing cohesion. There are some powerful principles highlighted here, and the book provides an impressively coherent look at Zen for less informed readers like me. However, some interesting takes about the role of religion in solving global challenges are keeping me from a five star rating. Definitely still worth the read!

[Scottie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of thought-provoking writings that looks at different issues and life in general through a Zen Buddhist lens. I'll be mulling over this reading for a long while and I know much of it will never leave me.

[Linus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read by one of the great living Zen teachers of our times, shining light on different aspects of life, practice and everything in between. Recommended to any serious Zen practitioner out there!

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are made more than they present by an interesting book group. There is so much in this book, and from such a contemporary and unique voice. Grateful for the time reading this with the book group members.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of interesting topics in Buddhism addressed in an accessible manner. Very good!

[Lauren L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kindle!

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most books about Zen avoid the everyday or get stuck there. This one is there and not there in the best way.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intro to zen with some essays better than others

[Shauna Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and enlightening. A true to heart memoir that covers the up and downs of a path filled with compassion and kindness. Very helpful to those exploring the dharma.

[Adelbert]

Among the more "immediately relatable" Buddhism books I've read - the author does a good job tying Buddhist philosophies to modern stories and examples, as well as tying it to Western philosophies and authors like Emerson. Some chapters definitely gave me a renewed perspective, particularly the chapter on friendship.