ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
ZEN BUDDHISM
Volume 10
ZEN IN THE ART OF HELPING
ZEN IN THE ART OF HELPING
DAVID BRANDON
First published in 1976 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
This edition first published in 2016
by Routledge
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1976 David Brandon
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-138-18505-0 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-315-61954-5 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-65905-6 (Volume 10) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-66657-3 (Volume 10) (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-61969-9 (Volume 10) (ebk)
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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
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DAVID BRANDON
Zen
in the
Art of
Helping
A Merloyd Lawrence Book
Delta/Seymour Lawrence
A MERLOYD LAWRENCE BOOK
A Delta/Seymour Lawrence Edition
Published by
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, New York 10017
Originally published in Great Britain by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London.
Copyright 1976 by David Brandon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
Delta TM 755118, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
ISBN: 0-440-59897-4
Printed in the United States of America
First U.S.A. editionApril 1978
VB
Contents
A writer is something of a thief. He steals quotations and ideas from many sources. This work has borrowed or stolen from too many people to provide a satisfactory acknowledgment. I would like to thank my students at the Hatfield, North London and Preston Polytechnics for their patience and often honest bewilderment.
My gratitude goes especially to Gillian Ballance, Shirley and Alex Mendoza, John Pitts, Kay Carmichael, to my wife, Althea. What little merit lies in this book belongs entirely to the patience and generosity of my Zen teacher, Dr Irmgard Schloegl of the Buddhist Society.
I acknowledge the faith and encouragement of Peter Hopkins of the publishers as well as permission to use passages from my original essay Zen Social Work from the editor of Social Work Today.
Zen
in the
Art of
Helping
A wise friend advised against being clever in writing this book. He wanted me to avoid being too intellectual. He was afraid that I might drown the readers in a torrent of quotations from obscure Japanese and Chinese sources; that I might develop the whole Zen theme as a trendy contribution to the coffee table.
I have to travel light; to throw away my squirrel-like desire to gather nuts from authors who have written wisely and profoundly. The task is to dig deeply into my own nature and express segments of direct experience without inflating the ego or becoming intensely subjective. I want to write more from intuition than from cognitive reflection.
This means throwing away the desire to impress or to express ideas simply because they may provoke or sound good. Truth lies as frequently in the clich and the banal as in the witty remark. I shall try to be honest and stay close to my direct experience. I shall repeatedly throw carefully contrived nets over the gossamer and elusive notions of Zen, Taoism and Nowness and hear the loud laughter of the Zen Masters as they cry out Live rather than define. Zen Masters had a profound disrespect for everything especially the written word. They were and are the Houdinis of conceptualization and philosophical speculation. That was their nature not mine.
I have no intention of being bullied by the term Zen. I wish to use it to describe a whole effervescent flavour in living. I want to use it more widely than simply describing a particular school of Buddhism. About four or five years ago, it occurred to me that Zen had much nutrition to give to my other love social work. The periods of meditation helped to quieten my mind and enabled a clearer perception of clients. It seemed that I could travel closer to my own essence as well as theirs.
The nature of Zen does not lie in scholarship, philosophy, in the Buddhist doctrine, and not even in zazen [sitting meditation], in other words Zen. It lies in one thing alone, namely seeing into the Buddha nature that is in each person.
This is close to what Quakers talk about when they refer to the inner light in every man. The contribution of that idea deepened as the years went by. The helping process is essentially about exploring that light inside yourself and being a source, at best unintended, of others finding their own.
At first, Zen had been a tool to satisfy the cravings to become a better person. I was more relaxed, more serene. But very soon I was led to question the ultimate source of this craving to be better. Why was it so important to improve psychologically, to be different, to change? Why did I have to deny the darker side of my being, to be so dissatisfied with my present condition? What drives me on so relentlessly?
Shakespeares King Lear was an early guide. It posed very basic questions about the nature of man. What is man when divested of pomp and circumstance, pride, social role and prestige, clothes, lands and even sanity? Does an individual have anything special or unique, anything which makes his separation from others explicable?
Working with the suffering of the elderly and the isolated, first as a nurse and latterly as a social worker, the history of individuals seemed remarkably similar to each other and to mine. The differences seemed mainly cosmetic. At depth men and women went through broadly similar processes the having of children, suffering and joy, facing sickness, bereavement and death.
Early in my social work career I became preoccupied with the problem of homelessness. These men and women had very little. They had been through the Lear process and divested themselves or been divested of almost everything families, social relations, adequate clothing and money, proper food and shelter. I spent years talking to people who lived in derelict houses, under rail bridges and in parks. Little stuck to them. They were and are concerned with the immediate, the present moment and the coming minutes the next meal, the next handout, the next bed.
