how many books have been written about my 'trip to zen'? | The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen...

A humorous, grouchy, true story | The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery | Janwillem van de Wetering

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	• The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery Janwillem van de Wetering St. Martin's Griffin, 1999 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

is a cloud a member of the sky?

"The empty mirror," he said. "If you could really understand that, there would be nothing left here for you to look for."

A Dutch student spends a year in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Kyoto in the late 1950's. He shows up at this monastery not really knowing why he wants to be there; he just vaguely knows he wants to do Zen.

The storytelling is lean and direct; no tangents or wordiness with this narrative. This makes for some very engaging and quick reading.

Van de Wetering is one of those rare people who can produce a compelling first book with such seeming effortlessness; his style engages you from the first paragraph and doesn't let go until the last sentence.

This is a spiritual odyssey without the spirit; the seeker seeking for what he knows not. In his pursuit of this unknown, "Jan-san" is brutally honest about his limitations and cultural alienation; his inept struggling with his koan penetration seems to be the core problem he has.

Yet, his humor underpins much of this struggle: with himself, his fellow monks, and his sense of "What the hell am I doing this for?"

Quite the entertaining read - highly recommend.

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

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how many books have been written about my 'trip to zen'?

too many - this is one of the first and is the BEST. period.

A humorous, grouchy, true story

In the summer of 1958 Janwillem van de Wetering showed up at the door of a Zen monastery in Kyoto Japan, knowing pretty much no one, not speaking the language, and without a really good idea what he was doing there. This book describes, with a certain amount of humor and what seems to be quite a bit of honesty, the months that followed (interlaced with Zen stories that he heard during those months, including some that I hadn't heard anywhere else before; I like Zen stories).

There aren't many dates in the book (or I wasn't paying enough of that kind of attention to notice them), but I think he stayed at the monastery for more than six months and less than two years. His descriptions of the time are interesting, funny, warm, vivid, and all sorts of good words like that (and also rather dark, mordant and/or grouchy in tone, often frustrated, impatient, dissatisfied). He did not find the answers to life's problems, his knees hurt alot, he misunderstood the head monk and Zen master frequently, and he (like the other residents of the monastery) cheated and broke the rules with impressive frequency.

The writing is spare and specific; this is the story of what one particular set of months in one particular monastery were like. Any broad conclusions about The Meaning Of Zen Training or anything else are left pretty much entirely to the reader.

The author left feeling that the whole thing had perhaps been a failure; but the master said "now you are a little awake; so awake that you will never fall asleep again". Which altogether is more satisfying, I think, than perky converts describing how happy and fulfilled their new meme complex has made them.

One tiny annoyance that struck me as out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the book: on a crowded train ride during a brief trip away from the monastery to renew his Dutch passport, he concentrates so hard on the feeling of a woman who is pressed up against him that he convinces himself that he is mentally influencing her to rub herself against him, trembling. She got off at the next station (can hardly blame her!), and he concludes that the idea that "someone who has trained his will can influence others, without saying anything, without doing anything observable, had now been proved", but that that's not really the point of Zen and he probably shouldn't do it anymore. He doesn't seem to consider the possibility that he's just proven that he can fool himself, which seems to me much more likely, and something that should have occurred to anyone actually paying attention.

But that's just a nit (I like nits), and perhaps adds as much to the book as it takes away from it. I very much enjoyed reading it (and it didn't take long; it's 146 pages, with little or no bogging down). He has at least two other books about his experiences in other vaguely Zen-related places; I intend to someday maybe read those also.

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How to fall off a Zen log

You can't fault Jan-san for his honesty.It may even help some people who over-stretch themselves with warped fantasies about the perfect Zendo. Nevertheless, it isn't a helpful account. The experiences which seem to endear many readers to this book are common place, the hops over the wall, night life etc. - obtained without reference to Zen. Given the lethargic atmosphere inside the temple, it is hardly surprising than Jan-san sought stimulation - outside it. Jan-san honestly reports a luck-lustre attitude. If you want apathy - well, life is short.
This 'mirror' - is empty, empty of all the benefits one might find, practicing Zen in earnest.

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Read for class

I had to read this for class. Not great literature, one may even say that it is bad. It is more of a diary about Zen buddism. I would bet that there are better books out there about Zen that are better.

A small and admiral memoir that records the experiences of a young Dutch student who spent a year and a half as a novice monk in a Japanese Zen Buddhist monastery.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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