fdknight's Full Review: Lawrence Shainberg - Ambivalent Zen: One Man's Adv...
The problem with books about religion is that they are either written by believers or they aren't. Maybe it's an indication of my own ambivalence that I find either point of view incomplete. A true believer often gives an idealized picture of religious practice, ignoring elements that don't fit into the story as it is supposed to happen. Since religion is living within a particular mindset, those who do not believe are bound to give an incomplete account of it.
For me, Lawrence Shainberg is an ideal chronicler of a spiritual journey. He was originally attracted to Zen as teenager because he believed that its condemnation of self-consciousness would help his basketball. Instead, it just made him more self-conscious and made him play worse. Shainberg's lifelong Zen practice has moved consistently from penetrating insight to disillusionment and back. He's never sure if the failure in his himself or in the path he is following, but his vacillations make the narrative unusually clear-headed and inspiring.
Like Father, Like Son
The author wisely starts the book by focusing on his father. The wealthy owner of a chain of stores, the senior Shainberg was a melancholy man who moved from one literary guru to another, never finding much relief from his basic unhappiness. He comes across as unendingly self-obsessed and irritable, a man whose pursuit of self-knowledge has only added to his self-disgust. At times I wished that that author showed more sympathy to his father: the portrait is vivid but two-dimensional.
This is understandable since the son lived out an awkward legacy. His father gave his him a passion for spiritual seeking, but no confidence that anything would ever be found in the search. He also gave him the financial resources to devote his life to writing and to religious practice. Again and again, Shainberg started working with a teacher, only to became disillusioned and walk away.
Since his wealth enabled him to meet and work with some of the most important figures in American Zen, this book is a valuable personal history that adds a unique perspective on a number of teachers. Alan Watts is the first luminary he discusses. Watts popularized a version of Zen which would greatly influence the youth culture of the 1960s. It's entertaining, if not surprising, to learn that Watts spent his dinner meeting with the Shainbergs' flirting with a young woman at another table.
The father abandoned Zen in favor of the teachings of Krishnamurti, a man raised to be a major spiritual leader but later rejected all organized religion, and psychoanalysis with Harold Kelman, a renegade psychiatrist who incorporated some elements of Easter religion into his practice. Shainberg's treatment of Kelman is one of the weaknesses of the book: he is introduced as a major figure, but we never given a very complete picture of his methods, despite the fact that the author was in analysis with him for many years.
Just Sitting
After his disappointing experience with Watts' Zen, the author was not impressed when an acquaintance introduced to zazen, the sitting meditation which is the center of traditional Zen practice. Still, he begin experimenting with it and eventually becomes obsessed. Your interest in this book will have a lot to do with your interest in zazen. If you cannot imagine reading pages and pages of analysis and description of what it is like to sit cross-legged on a cushion, you won't enjoy this.
Shainberg has just about every experience you can have on a cushion without ever experiencing the stroke of kensho, or enlightenment. He has miserable pain in his legs and in convinced for a time that he is doing permanent damage. He leaves sesshin, the intense Zen meditative retreat, feeling first the strength of independence and later the weakness of cowardice. He goes on personal retreats that breed insight, arrogance, and disillusionment.
If you are interested in how a meditative practice can progress over a period of decades, I think you'll be fascinated with this aspect of the book. He doesn't idealize or dismiss what happened to him: he just describes it.
Teachers
On one level it seems that Shainberg's movement from one teacher to another shows a weak commitment. On another, it shows basic intelligence and morality. I was fascinated by his accounts of encounters with such luminaries as Soen Roshi and Bernard Glassman. Glassman is an especially contradictory figure in American Zen, a man who led Zen Center New York in several directions at once. Either the most genuinely American Zen master or a misguided charlatan (or both), his constant schemes for acquisitions and ambitious work service are discussed here by a man who started training as a monk under him. It's engrossing reading.
However, Shainberg is at his best when writing about Kyodo Roshi, the unlikely Japanese master with whom he did the most training. He is small, giggly man who collects watches and knows so little English that one of his favorite foods is called "penis butter," he also emerges as having the most thorough understanding of Zen Shainberg encountered in his quest. Shainberg's use of detail is so telling that we feel we know him. It helps that the author is willing to talk about how the teacher irritates and inspires him.
I think anyone who is interested in the reality of Zen practice in America will enjoy this book. Those who are seeking definitive points of view or a fantasy of what religious practice is like should look elsewhere.
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