09/09/2025
On the old NOZT website, there was an essay in the “teachings” section that had an archive of Deshimaru’s kusen. The one that made the strongest impression was the “Year Zero.” Or at least it made an impression to me. It was as much an explication of Zen as much as it was a commission. It advanced in a strange way the sending away of disciples to the rest of Europe as much as (generations later) a call to establish practice wherever one stands.
I don’t know what the implications were for the “year zero” kusen meant, but I know the impression it had on me. Whatever it meant for the Europeans and what it meant for Robert, who established Zen in New Orleans, it set me on fire. After a year of Monju-Do Zen Fellowship closing, the pain of taking up the commission and seeing how there is an arc in what it is, was, and could be has brought me back to the Noble Truths. Suffering abounds. Year zero is present. Sitting brings actuality to the present genocides, state violence, hunger, loss, needs, wants, desire, and deficit of the weakness of our sight and fragility of our bodies.
It t is hard to do zen. If you haven’t lost everything, EVERYTHING, zen the way I was taught will be peripheral and just a novelty. . The progenitors of zen lost a civilization. I’m ready to let go of it too. Let’s grab on to something radical and honest in
