Pair embraces gentle take on Zen

The founders of a new Honolulu Grassroots Zen group set to open in Aina Haina next month are offering a laid-back, democratic way of practicing Buddhist meditation without using a big stick.

Manfred B. Steger and Perle Besserman are modeling their group on the Princeton Area Zen Group they founded in New Jersey 21 years ago, which got rid of macho, patriarchal traditions and other trappings of a Japa­nese monastery, Besserman said in a recent interview.

"We became much less like Zen masters and more like teachers, more like guides, being friendly with our students," she said. They also got rid of the shouting and use of sticks to prod meditation students into attention, and eliminated the prostrating bows and other traditions they deemed negative, she added.

Besserman, a prolific award-winning author of books on spirituality, is married to Steger, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii and a part-time teacher at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. They’ve co-authored four books, including "Grassroots Zen" and "Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers."

Their new group will start Sept. 4 and meet Tuesday evenings from 6 to 7:30 p.m., with an introduction for beginners at 5:30 p.m., at the Chan Khong Zen Monastery, 1105 Hind Iuka Drive. A suggested donation is $5 for each night, $2 for students. Call 537-4347 for information.

Though both received their fundamental training at very strict, traditional Rinzai Zen monasteries in Japan and Vienna, the couple based its Princeton group on what was originally a Chinese Tang Dynasty model of ordinary laypeople meditating in small gatherings — a growing trend across the U.S. around 1991, she said. (They were influenced by the late Robert Aitken Roshi at the Diamond Sangha in Hono­lulu, under whom they trained from 1986 to 1991. He offered a gentler combination of the Rinzai and Soto styles of Zen meditation.)

They kept the heart of the Rinzai tradition, which included zazen (sitting meditation), the use of koan (questions or statements) to deepen insight, individual consultations with students, and longer retreats.

"We created a more demo­cratic style, no putting the teacher up on a pedestal, no walking around in black robes" and no elaborate ceremonies for the anointing of teachers who were chosen based on lineage, Besserman said. Teachers at the Princeton group, which is still active, are chosen by vote and not paid or supported by the sangha (group), she added.

"We (the teachers) are no different from the people we are teaching. It’s very important that the respect and dignity of the individual are never forgotten. We remember that everyone is Buddha. We don’t humiliate people into enlightenment," Besserman said.

Zen has been adaptable to whatever country it entered. It was picked up in 16th-century Japan by the shogunates and samurai, who turned it into military training, and that’s how the Rinzai style developed — "it’s very male, very aggressive and very exclusionary, particularly to women. It’s known for beating people with sticks, and shouting," akin to boot camp, she said.

Hitting with the stick is supposed to keep a student from falling asleep, to straighten posture or to stimulate pressure points in the back, and is still used in some traditional Zen groups, even in the Western world.

"Some people like it a lot, the shouting or goading them into enlightenment," Besserman said.

But instead of using the stick, Besserman and Steger have their teachers give students a pressure-point massage with their hands upon request, she added.

Meditation starts with focusing on natural breathing, and a teacher determines when a student has advanced enough to receive a koan, she said. (A koan is an ancient Chinese paradoxical question or statement; a famous example: What is the sound of one hand clapping?)

"Koans are not riddles; you’re not trying to intellectually work it through or understand it" like a logic or philosophic problem, Besserman said. "The question is a springboard to an insight. You give the mind and the breath something to float on."

The point of a koan is to engage the section of the mind that is not discursive; it is the part of the mind at peace, and "it’s only activated by breathing," she said, adding, "You have to open all your senses."

"Insight is not a one-time thing. You keep sharpening that insight, so you have to continue practicing. Zazen is a life commitment every day. They say Buddha himself is still practicing."