After spending four challenging years compiling The Compass of Zen, in 1997 when the book was finally delivered to the head temple in Providence, Rhode Island (where I was then in temporary residence as trainee-Abbot), I boarded the next plane to Korea to present the thick new Shambhala Publications text (his first) personally to the Teacher who had instructed this labor of love to happen out of scraps and dim records of his teachings stored shambolically in unkempt archives from Rhode Island and Boston to Kentucky, LA, Warsaw and Seoul. This was my second experience seeing every detail of one of his books meticulously to the end. It was total absorption — never just a “project”.

And now it was time to hand over formally the fruits of this over-long effort (which, again, he expressed no little impatience over, thinking I was ignoring it when I was actually being as careful and slow and complete as possible). I had imagined this scene, not a few times, in a vacant moment leaning over the text, yearning for its completion.

Having been admitted to his room at Hwa Gye Sah, wearing the full regalia of formal robes, and offering three full prostrations in silence – – my hands literally trembling at the long-imagined meeting that would occur when the task had finally (with some sharp, energetic urging from him) been accomplished — I offered forward three copies of the freshly printed text, wrapped in silk, my head lowered below my hands as I offered the text over his little desk to him, seated, cross legged on his cushion before a traditional folded screen.

Grumbling a little bit as he unwrapped the silk, I’d long fantasized this moment might produce a pat on the head, perhaps an approving compliment. After flipping through the pages briefly, he extended one copy with his hand in the direction of his wastebasket, dangling all 400+ pages like a smelly, dead fish over the opening of the trash.

“Throw this away!“, he said. “Many people will read these words, become attached to these words, and lose their true way. Better that this book never appeared in the world.“

A gut punch to the ego was received, but he was punching at something far, far more significant than my own expectant arrogance: the crass inability of words ever to deliver truly – – or even clearly point to – – the matter of our True Self, and draw peoples’ attention rather to distracting conceptualizations, and the rationalizations about the very matter of Dharma itself, and the carrying it out in a dedicated effort at waking up.

The same is true of this blog. What started as an attempt to present some “pointings“ to the Great Question through reference to significant matters of our time and our predicament, and to the practice that most optimally serves it – – silent Zen meditation – – this Blog has now become to me a special distraction, both for myself, and quite likely for many who read it. What doctor would offer cups of poison or even refreshing Coca Cola to people who are coming to him for some words that they might cure themself?

I have long considered this blogging effort a “necessary evil“ sprung from pure intentions to manifest forward another manner of presenting the urgent matter of our need, as a species, to “soon wake up”, from the viewpoint of this one practitioner’s own fevered — yet very human with his spiritual brokenness in full view — commitment to that awakening. But for long now it has sometimes seemed also to have morphed — too often — into just another wretched bucket of my vanity and ignorance, a font of cleverness and empty showy expression not fitting the great seriousness of the work of real and true practice in silent Zen.

For now — for Now — let’s now take this Blog’s sincere “pointing” into true Silence instead — not this pointing to climate catastrophe and AI gloom. geopolitical savagery and encircling war war WAR — better than anymore sharing memes pointing to the condition experienced in deepest meditation, where the only real practice is born. And when I get a chance to refocus its content and presentation, it would only host matters less full of private opinion, and more dedicated, dispassionate attention solely to materialize waking up, and much less commentary on other things. Right now, I just don’t have the time to go through all of it to separate the wheat from the chaff.

While I’ve never tried to fool people with any pretensions of “personal” holiness, I actually do treasure quite dearly the infinite silence of an ever more meditative life. And as I ask of the Zen practitioners of ZCR to apply the power of Silence to enriching their experience of life in the world, stepping away from this noisesome Blog project for a while is an overdue indulgence which might yet represent a consistency in my own public messaging about Silence. as much as it is represented to myself. One cannot be messaging so noisily about Silence, and tossing out shiny-object posts and videos, more distraction, more reason to keep your nose in this phone, and mine.

Enough.

Going back to Huxley, what I once thought this Blog might someway be — intended as an accessible platform of a meditation monk moving through the same madness like you, to give direction to holding the question and optimizing being Silence, regularly on your own and in regular multi-day retreats.

But the tech of feeding this space fills too much of this aging monk’s dwindling brain-meat bandwidth. Several hacks can be shared with people on this Blog you are reading with just a few touches on a silicon screen in the kitchen of Mun Su Am Hermitage while enjoying a coffee. What an easy way to project out messages of teaching, you would think. Yet Huxley’s dictum has the last word: “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

Returning to Silence during the Winter Kyol Che, until at least February 12, 2025, which is Hae Jae Day 2025.

“Silence is better than holiness,“, Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say.

While I’ve never tried to fool people with any pretensions of “personal” holiness, I actually do treasure quite dearly the infinite silence of an ever more meditative life. And as I ask of my students to apply the power of silence to enriching their experience of life in the world, stepping away from this noisesome project for a while is an overdue indulgence which might yet represent a consistency in my own public teaching as much as it is represented to myself.