Zen and the Art of Anything

My Story and This Book

my story

The year was 1990, and I was presenting a paper on Zen at a Buddhism conference

in southern Taiwan. In the course of the paper,

I made a passing reference to Bodhidharma,

the traditional bringer of Zen to China from India.

After the presentation, a resident Buddhist monk approached me, and,

with a whimsical smile, pointed to me, and said,

"You are Bodhidharma!"

I was rather pleasantly mystified by that, but could elicit no further elaboration.

The monk simply left, and I was left to ponder the classic Zen koan, or riddle:

"Why has Bodhidharma come from the West "

And why, then, had I come from the West to talk to a largely Buddhist audience,

about Zen

In what way was I, late in time, following Bodhidharma's model

And why, as a Westerner, several years later, should I attempt a book

about Zen

I am in many ways an unlikely candidate for such a project.

First, I'm an academic, and academics don't write much about Zen.

They may study about it, and teach a small segment or even a rare course about it,

but they don't write about it.

Practitioners do.

Professors write about lots of things religious,

but not much on Zen.

The ones who write about Zen are persons, East and West,

who have spent years in Zen centers and monasteries,

who have received extensive training with Zen masters,

and have been initiated.

I understand that, and am intimidated.

Second, it isn't just the profession, it's personal.

I'm a still more unlikely candidate by way of origins.

So I'm still more intimidated.

But this isn't an expert's book on esoteric Zen.

That might intimidate you, too.

Zen here is "nothing special,"

for "nothing special" people like you and me.

I have to pick up the story a little more than a century ago,

to detail my own journey toward wanting to write about Zen.

On September 1893, over 100,000 people lined up

to cross the border into a section of Oklahoma known as the Cherokee Strip.

Other segments of the Indian Territory were opened a few years earlier and later,

but this was the largest and the most dramatic such entry.