Shozan Jack Haubner

Shozan Jack Haubner

Shozan Jack Haubner is the pen name of a Zen monk whose essays have appeared in The Sun, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and the New York Times, as well as in the Best Buddhist Writing series. The winner of a 2012 Pushcart Prize, he is also the author of Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk.

Shozan Jack Haubner

Shozan Jack Haubner is the pen name of a Zen monk whose essays have appeared in The Sun, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and the New York Times, as well as in the Best Buddhist Writing series. The winner of a 2012 Pushcart Prize, he is also the author of Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk.

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GUIDES

Book Club Discussion | Single White Monk

Single White Monk by Shozan Jack Haubner is a prescient book—not only for its teachings, which are deeply rooted in real-life stories and the humble wisdom that comes from making mistakes and learning to face them, but for its lack of pretension around issues involving sexual abuse and all the opinions, hurt, and life-changing consequences that can, and do, go on because of a scandal. As this is something that is highly relevant in our current socio-political climate, this book has a lot to offer.

If you’re reading along, please comment at the bottom of this guide and let us know how you connected to Single White Monk.

Questions for Discussion

  • Two main themes of the book: the coexisting of opposite forces—how good and bad can and do exist together in one world—and death as an integral part of life we can’t and shouldn’t ignore.
  • What is the meaning of truth? Can there be an objective truth? In the intro, he calls the book “personal mythology.” How does that filter your perception of the events in the book?
  • Is the author a likable character in his own book?
  • How do you understand the idea of True Love?
  • Which of the stories stood out to you or connected to you? Why?
  • The author mixes humor and absurdity with the serious. How did his writing style work for you?
  • The sexual harassment and abuse aspect is very socially relevant right now. Everyone seemed to have a different view of Roshi and his actions, some wanting to condemn him completely, some just wanting an apology, some saying that the apology made them feel invalidated.
    • Haubner thinks that Roshi’s actions were completely wrong, but he loves and respects his teacher. He takes in every part of Roshi as a person, a human, showing he may not be perfect and we might not like or agree with every part of him, but he can still be influential and worth listening to. Do you identify with the author’s view on this? Or have a different reading?

Notable Quotes

“Why is there something rather than nothing? Nothingness makes so much more sense.” (2)

The concept of True Love: “a new self is being conceived, arising, and passing away every instant.” (2)

“Zen practice however, teaches you to completely be yourself—if you don’t who will? Someone’s got to hold down your corner of the universe, and no one else is qualified.” (14)

“Underneath all carnal desire is a wish to know the world, to claim it not for yourself, but as yourself. Sometimes, a bad mistake, consciously made, can teach you this better than a good rule unconsciously followed.” (64–65)

“There’s a natural balance, a dance, between embracing and releasing: turning your surroundings into yourself, like the tree that absorbs carbon dioxide, and turning yourself into your surroundings, like the same tree releasing oxygen. This is what Buddhists call the Middle Way.” (69)

“We are never more than a breath away from the home we share with the entire universe.” (70)

“When there is no death (and there is nowhere where there is no death, except maybe vampire novels), there are no risks, and life is utterly meaningless.” (74)

“But if something can be taken from you, was it ever truly yours to begin with? It occurred to me that the harder we search for something permanent in this world, the more ephemeral and disposable are the things we find, and the more we find ourselves simply searching for the sake of searching, moving for the sake of moving. We are a culture running away from death.” (103)

“He taught me that you cannot be something other than yourself, no matter how enlightened you pretend to be, and so you must manifest yourself fully, each and every moment; you must bring all your subterranean selves, all your thoughts and feelings, no matter how grim and unbearable, to the surface, and to completion—dissolving them through your connection to the world around you so that a new pure self, and a new world along with it, can arise the next instant.” (111)

“If no one talks about something that everyone knows is happening, then each and every person must bear the whole burden of the collective secret him- or herself. What began as a problem becomes nightmare that turns, without outside intervention, into a demon.” (143)

“The inhale and the exhale are opposites working in harmony to complete each other—like man and woman, birth and death, darkness and light. Together they make up the breath of life.” (196)

Afterword

“You don’t need to be great. You need to be complete. You can be complete whether you are working a shitty job at Walmart or you are a world-famous writer. Just walk the path of True Love. When you grapple with life’s deepest problems openly and honestly, the ego melts. It dies. There is no such thing as a fixed state of happiness. We face challenges, and in order to pass through them we must die a little, or a lot, and be reborn.” (206)

“Old age, sickness, and death. Our lot, as individuals and a species. If everyone will one day be no one, then we are only temporarily separated right now. Our true home is no home, together. The Zen master Rinzai said, ‘Before brightness is manifest, darkness is bright.’ Everything contains its opposite. Nothing exists apart from anything else.” (208)

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Single White Monk

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Judging Books by Their Covers: A Defense

by Kate, Production Coordinator/Designer

stack of zen books

I have a confession to make: I judge books by their covers. And I’m not even sorry about it.

I’m baffled by how many amazing books there are in the world that I’ll never have time to read. And there are more being released all the time! It can be so overwhelming to have to choose which books I’m going to make time for and which books I’m just going to have to pass over. There are loads of factors that go into making that decision, from the title, the content, my interests, my mood on any given day, recommendations from my friends, etc. But I’m a sucker for a beautiful or interesting cover, and every now and then, I give myself permission to ignore all of those important factors and instead choose solely for superficial reasons. Occasionally I pick up a book I wouldn’t otherwise read simply because I love the cover. And every now and then, this strategy leads to amazing finds and I become so grateful to have read it. So I’d like to present to you some of my favorite Shambhala books that I only read because I loved the covers—but I ended up loving the content, too.

Coming Home to Tibet

A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Belonging

Sure the colors are stunning. Sure the typography is delightful. But let’s be real here: I was 100% sold on this book because of the yak alone.

Coming Home to Tibet is Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s memoir about coming home to a place she’s never actually lived. She was raised in exile by her single Tibetan mother who tragically died before being able to return to her homeland. It’s an incredible examination of the complexities of identity, which Dhompa expresses beautifully: “I have lived my life defined as a refugee in Nepal and India, a resident alien and immigrant in the United States. At last, I am a Tibetan in Tibet, a Khampa in Kham—albeit as a tourist in my occupied and tethered country” (94). But some of the most moving parts of the book are when Dhompa describes her relationship with her now-deceased mother: “When she died, I told myself I was fortunate to have had her love for twenty-three years. I believe still what I felt then: her love will see me through my lifetime, perhaps even a few lifetimes” (177). Her prose betrays her poetic background, resulting in lovely passages throughout the book, such as this one: “When there are just two of you, you appropriate images from each other and inhabit one tongue until the stories that compose your two worlds become interchangeable. It was so for my mother and me” (2). This is an honest and complex look at the tensions between past and present, tradition and modernity, faith and doubt, East and West, belonging and otherness.

The cover is an impossible representation of Tibet—I have a feeling vibrant blue flowers aren’t often found in abundance right next to snow-covered plains and frozen mountains. In this way, it couldn’t be a more perfect analogue for the author’s early experience of Tibet—a pieced together fantasy of a remote homeland based on her mother’s idealized memories rather than firsthand experience.

But my main point: how cute is that yak?!?

Coming Home to Tibet

$29.95 - Paperback

By: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Zen Confidential

Confessions of a Wayward Monk

The charm of this cover is undeniable. You can’t not smile at the jovial, rotund jade buddha against the serene blue background. The image and the type perfectly capture Shozan Jack Haubner’s playful approach to sharing the down-and-dirty details of his path to becoming an American Zen monk.

In his own words, this book “is the deeply felt journey of a young man who crawled out of the anus of his own self-absorption, suffering, and despair . . . and lived to tell poop jokes about it” (9). His aim is to cut through any preconceptions you might have about Zen and monastic life to give you an idea of what his actual experience was, without taking himself too seriously. The result is a beautifully crafted and engaging memoir that is equally funny and sincere.

If you enjoy Haubner’s work, keep an eye out for his forthcoming Single White Monk: Tales of Death, Failure, and Bad Sex (Although Not Necessarily in That Order). I’ve been able to take a sneak peak, and it seems like it delves into deeper and more difficult issues but fear not: Shozan still finds space to discuss piss buckets—and that’s just Chapter 1!

Zen Confidential

$21.95 - Paperback

By: Shozan Jack Haubner

Dhammapada

A New Translation of the Buddhist Classic with Annotations

This text likely needs no introduction, as it is a widely read (and widely translated) Buddhist classic. But the only reason I was particularly drawn to Gil Fronsdal’s translation is the painting featured on the cover, The Naropa Buddha by Joan Anderson and Robert Spellman. Their interpretation of the familiar face feels simultaneously fresh and classic. The image is cropped to show just the face of the Buddha rather than the full figure, contributing to an intimate feeling, especially in the context of this relatively small book. Yet that intimacy is juxtaposed by the presence of the actual piece, measuring 16’ x 16’, which I can only imagine must be an incredibly powerful thing to behold. I couldn’t be more enamored with the color palette, the use of light, and the almost mosaic-like grid as well.

Much like the image, the text is a contemporary rendering of an ancient classic for a modern audience. In the preface, Fronsdal explains his commitment to preserving the accuracy of the original Pali while avoiding the “clumsiness/inelegance” that many literal translations suffer from: “I have tried to be as literal as possible while keeping the text both readable and enjoyable” (xii). He goes on to discuss what he gets out of reading and studying the text, giving some insight into what the reader might be able to take away from it as well: “After nearly thirty years of practice, I remain inspired by the teachings of the Buddha, and I hope to understand better what the Buddha taught by going back to the original text and rendering it into modern English” (xiii). If you’re interested in getting a feel for what the text holds, verse 5 is my favorite: “Hatred never ends through hatred. / By non-hate alone does it end. / This is an ancient truth” (2).

If you appreciate this art, be sure to check out our forthcoming Shambhala Pocket Library series featuring illustrations by Robert Spellman. The style is quite different from the style of this painting, showing the incredible range of this artist. I’m particularly fond of his portrait of His Holiness on The Pocket Dalai Lama, out 8/1/17!

The Dhammapada

$12.95 - Paperback

By: Gil Fronsdal

Siddhartha

Kaji Aso’s artwork on the Sherab Chodzin Kohn translation of Herman Hesse’s 1922 classic novel is one of the most exquisite depictions of the Buddha I’ve ever come across. I love it so much that I’ve had a copy of the cover hanging by my desk for most of the 5 years I’ve worked at Shambhala, and it still brings me joy every time I find my eyes resting on it. Layers of bright colored pencil strokes seem like they might have started out as aimless scribbles but coalesce into a harmonious combination of texture, vibrancy, and light that I find deeply impactful.

My fascination with the image eventually pushed this book to the top of my to-read pile. The novel follows a man on his spiritual journey that spans many years and many vastly different approaches. After much trial and error, one of the insights he eventually lands on is “Wisdom is not expressible” (110). This may sound a bit hypocritical coming from someone who believes very deeply in the basic mission of the spiritual publisher I work for, transforming important teachings into a form that is accessible to a broader audience. But I have found this sentiment to be absolutely true in my own life so far. Words cannot adequately describe the spiritual journey, although Hesse’s attempt is beautiful and important. Similarly, I cannot fully express how much the cover art moves me, nor can the art itself convey the enlightened nature of its subject. Human nature will always drive us to try, and the attempts will inevitably prove futile. But we are so lucky to witness the works of art that are produced in the process.

Siddhartha

$12.95 - Paperback

By: Hermann Hesse & Sherab Chodzin Kohn

These are just a few of the books I’ve decided to read for no other reason than their fantastic facades, and I’m so glad that I did. The opposite is also true of course—I’ve read more than a few books with terrible covers that exceeded my expectations by a long shot. So while I would never advocate for dismissing books just because the cover doesn’t resonate with you, I think it can be a wonderful adventure to indulge in reading a book just because the cover does resonate. You never know what wonders you might find inside.

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Mad Monk: An Excerpt from Zen Confidential

ZenConf_authorphoto1A lot of pissed-off people wind up at our monastery. This place has a tractor beam like the Death Star's in Star Wars that pulls in anyone within a thousand-mile radius with a four-letter word on the tip of his or her tongue. Her marriage tanked; he's got an itch in his brain he just can't scratch; she's forty-five and smells of cabbage and lives in a small studio apartment and nobody ever calls her back. . . . They all wind up here, sold on the promise that Buddhism can alleviate suffering.

"Zen practice is good for angry people. The form is tight. It squeezes that deep red heart pulp, pushing up emotions from way down inside you."

I said "they " all wind up here, but I guess I mean we. I had one of those moments recently where, upon the much-anticipated departure of an enemy that, as a Buddhist, I could never quite admit was an enemy, I found myself peering around the zendo and thinking, "Wow, there are no assholes living here anymore. "

Whereupon came a sinking feeling, "Wait a minute, there's always at least one. So if I'm looking around the zendo and I can't find him . . . guess who the asshole is! "

Zen practice is good for angry people. The form is tight. It squeezes that deep red heart pulp, pushing up emotions from way down inside you. A lot of "stuff " comes up when you do this practice. Zen gets your juices flowing. And with these juices come seeds-the seeds of your behavior, your character, your anger, all flushed out into the open for you to see.

In Zen we learn that human consciousness is an eminently natural operation. You plant a seed, it grows. Similarly, when something happens to you on the outside, in "the world, " the seeds of this experience take root within you, becoming sensations, thoughts, memories-your inner life. Conversely, when something arises within you, some inner experience, a notion, emotion, or dream, then the seeds of this inner event are disseminated on the outside, in the world, through your words and actions. Buddhists call this codependent origination: all things arise together in a mutually interconnected and interpenetrating  web of being. "To see the world in a grain of sand, " William Blake wrote. Or as that great metaphysician Tom "Jerry Maguire " Cruise put it: "You complete me. "

ZenConf_authorphoto3Sounds romantic. But what if the seeds at the root of your behavior are the seeds of hate and anger?

"We got into a fight about something and I smacked him. It came out of nowhere and was meant to be light. Only it clearly did not come out of  nowhere, and it was not light."

A year ago, freshly escaped from the monastery for a day, I was slaloming through bustling foot traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard with my mentor, whom I love and adore. We got into a fight about something and I smacked him. It came out of nowhere and was meant to be light. Only it clearly did not come out of  nowhere, and it was not light. I can still hear the thwack of my open palm against his belly: the hollow thud of a red rubber ball hitting pavement. There was a long stretch of silence, wherein I should have begged for his forgiveness. But I couldn't catch up to the moment. I couldn't admit to the violence that had just erupted from within me. I couldn't tell whether I meant it, whether it was real, where it came from, or how it got there.

I have violence in me, unfortunately. The seeds were planted long ago by my father, the poor man. How about all the times he didn't whack me? The time he sighed and let it go when I stole one of his antique firearms and ran around the house with it or sat on a sibling and released a cloud of flatulence? No, I remember only the five moments when his anger broke through.

All it takes is one seed. I've apologized, and even sent my mentor a cute homemade card with two stick figures sitting zazen side by side. But my blow planted a hate seed in my mentor, and something irreconcilable has grown between us. I can't seem to reclaim the friendship. I feel as if I'm losing him.

"This is one of the great misconceptions about spiritual work: that if applied correctly, it will make us 'better people' (whatever that means)."

ZenConf_authorphoto2Zen practice can be a tricky thing because, done right, sooner or later all the issues and energies you've been repressing your whole life will ooze, trickle, and burst to the surface through your tight little smile. And I'm afraid that the practice itself doesn't necessarily equip you to deal skillfully with these issues and energies. This is one of the great misconceptions about spiritual work: that if applied correctly, it will make us "better people " (whatever that means). Zen is not a psychiatric or therapeutic discipline; it's  a spiritual one. It's supposed to get energy moving on a deep, fundamental, life-changing level. Its purpose is to orient you toward the truth, toward reality, whatever this takes. It's not supposed to boss you around with behavioral or self-help dictates or to shoehorn you into the slipper of well-adjusted citizenhood.

In other words, spiritual work isn't always just "instructive "-it's also transformative, and this kind of transformation can get messy. The Sanskrit term for this is clusterfuck.

Excerpted from  Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk  by Shozan Jack Haubner

Zen Confidential

$21.95 - Paperback

By: Shozan Jack Haubner

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