Customer Reviews

Samadhi: Self Development in Zen, Swordsmanship, and Psychotherapy (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) (Suny Series, Transpersonal & Humanistic Psychology)

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I've had this small book for quite some time and it has always been fun to re-read. The book was published by State University Press in N.Y. as part of the SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology. We learn more about the author from a blurb on the SUNY Press website: "Mike Sayama graduated from Yale University summa cum laude and received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. He has been training in Zen and the martial arts for more than ten years under Tanouye Tenshin Roshi. Currently, he is a member of the board of directors and the educational staff of the Institute for Zen Studies in Hawaii."
OK, fair enough. We might need such a smart and well-educated guide, for the subject of transpersonal psychology in general seems to be dangerous territory for exploration...I mean, science has a hard enough time with *personal* psychology, much less transpersonal... and this book bravely tries to navigate through the minefields without blowing everybody up (sorry for the metaphor, I just made that up). We need to applaud a willingness to take on this adventure with the remarkable confidence Mr. Sayama shows in the book. However, I agree with reviewer "Crazy Fox" here that the book is very disjointed and the Zen anecdotes can't be taken seriously as historical facts. With that in mind, let's take a look:

The first part of the book gives selective excerpts of sayings attributed to famous figures, such as Shakyamuni Buddha, Bodhidharma, Hui-Neng, Lin Chi, Hakuin, etc., jumping to modern-day figures associated with the Chozen-ji school located in Oahu, Hawaii (i.e., Sogen Omori and Tanouye Tenshin). Evidently, the intent by the author is to show some kind of "lineage" from the founder of Buddhism straight through to the current-day Tenryu-ji line of Rinzai Zen. There is no need to wade into issues of the historical accuracy of such a "direct lineage", the creation of Zen (Chan) "lineages" in olden times in China is a product of vast retro revisioning and image-making, as modern scholars have often pointed out.

And not just the creation of Chan lineages...in fact, the entire history of Buddhism is full of image-building on famous figures. Take, for instance, the old tale of Shakyamuni ("Sage of the Shakyas"...) sitting under the Bodhi tree and becoming enlightened when he saw the Morning Star. Supposedly he proclaimed something to the effect of, "How wonderful! How wonderful! All mountains, rivers, and the great earth possess the identical wisdom and virtue of the Tathagata". Now this is a charming story, dutifully repeated countless times in Zen sermons, but it has zero historical value. Putting words into the mouths of old venerable figures is, frankly, a common habit of later Chinese writers, so much so that much in Chinese history can be relegated to "wild history".
Another example of Shakyamuni's re-imaging is the old traditional view that the Avatamsaka Sutra supposedly describes his initial enlightenment experience. One can easily find this assumed- without any critical comment- throughout the vast Buddhist devotional literature. This can hardly be true, however, since the concepts reflect a more historically mature period of Mahayana development. So we see here how Buddhist history is very much a myth-making process.

And the stories of famous Zen figures that author Sayama gives are typical Zen anecdotes that are charming to read, but shouldn't necessarily be taken as verbatim words out of the mouths of these old Chan legendary figures. As modern scholarship shows, the famous "recorded sayings" genre is more a product of the later Song Period than actual more-or-less verbatim recollections of the T'ang Period. But verbatim is probably how Sayama wants you to take them...anecdotes were selected from each figure in the "lineage", all presumably chirping, in unison, the same theme of the "seamless", non-dual nature of reality. In essence, hence, this is a book located within the purely devotional, popular side of Buddhist lore.

In this context, then, let us look at the main title of the book: "Samadhi". This old Indian term is re-visioned by Sayama, who interprets it thus (again from a summary on the SUNY Press blurb): "The key to self-development, says Mike Sayama, is the experience of Samadhi, a state of relaxed concentration in which the individual neither freezes out of fear nor clings due to desire. Simply stated, samadhi is the free flow of vital energy within the body and between the body and the universe".

We'll forgive Sayama for sounding just a little new-agey here, as similar terminology is often spouted by new-agers seeking "mind/body unity" and so on...but Chozen-ji students in Hawaii presumably really do seek the aim of realizing a unity of body and mind through various practices, such as traditional Rinzai zazen and various "Ways", such as kyudo (ritualized Japanese archery), aikido, calligraphy, taijiquan, body-work, etc.. Also heavily emphasized, from descriptions, is the traditional Japanese culture of "kiai" (...think cultivation of physical/spiritual "energy" in a broad sense).

The book goes on to present seemingly similar lessons from transpersonal psychology, which might be a stretch of the imagination, maybe of Sayama's imagination. The author talks about some of the rather startling techniques of famous psychiatrist Milton Erickson, for instance, but it is not clear how Erickson's techniques relate directly to the theme Sayama is trying to develop, which is the non-dual nature of reality (as presumably seen through Zen eyes)...last time I checked, Erickson had no Zen training and really comes from a totally different environment. Truth is, when one really starts asking why Sayama links together these seemingly disparate philosophies as good examples of his own, one is at a loss to see the connections. The only similarity I could see between Erickson and, say, some of the old Chan masters is perhaps they were "unorthodox". Milton had "unorthodox" techniques; Lin Chi's behavior was perhaps "unorthodox" with his shouts and slapping. I'm not too sure, however, how appropriate somebody's "unorthodox" behavior is for an illustration of the "non-dual nature of Reality", it could be they were just eccentric. But that's the beauty of transpersonal psychology- one is evidently free to throw in whatever one is interested in, all into one big smorgasbord of mish-mash. It's like eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet, just go down the line and pick out whatever you like and hey, it all eventually goes down into the same stomach...

Sayama also includes descriptions of body-work techniques, such as Rolfing, Feldenkrais, etc., and indeed body-work techniques (such as trigger-point therapy) seem to be part of the curriculum at the Chozen-ji school in Hawaii. Well and good, but it is not readily apparent how various techniques of massage and bodily tension-release techniques relate directly to acquiring a "seamless" non-dual perception of reality. Unless we postulate, as we should here, that mind and body are "one", so evidently releasing bodily tension helps promote spiritual insight too. That is the premise here, anyway. Unfortunately, if taken literally, this would infer that anyone who regularly underwent some kind of massage or body-work would be a spiritual giant, so obviously there are a few holes in this theory...

Lastly, let's talk a bit about the Chozen-ji school in Oahu. Founded by Japanese swordsman, calligrapher, and Zen teacher Omori Sogen, it's premise could perhaps be summarized as "zazen plus the Ways". This, of course, is an old ideal from Japanese samurai culture, which the Chozen-ji school attempts to put into practice today. Such is Omori's legacy. However, this charming ideal needs to be tempered a bit by some dark history regarding the founder (Omori), as readers of Brian Victoria's works (i.e., "Zen War Stories") knows. Omori, for all of his Zen wisdom, alas, was a zealot right-winger in Japan holding aggressive ultra-nationalistic political views, with all of the negative connotation that involves. So, readers, don't venerate these figures beyond reasonable skepticism.

As for Sayama's book, it's fun to read, but not a well-crafted book. I wish the author was as "seamless" in his selection of appropriate examples as he is promoting a "seamless" view of reality :-). Three stars, for fun reading.

I tried to like this book, I really did. The author's attempt to integrate Zen Buddhist meditation techniques with the insights of psychology (especially that of Jung and Maslow) seems to be very sincere and should have been interesting...it may even work as therapy, I can't say. But the first half of the book, focusing on the Zen half of his program, is utterly ahistorical; by the late 1980's we should know better than to discuss Bodhidharma and the legends about him as if he and they were literally and historically factual. The author also tries to fit way too much info into this half (of a short book at that), so that the overall effect sometimes is a string of great soundbites by the great Zen Masters (more or less plausible historically). It would have been better to focus more, I'd say. The way the author draws out a lineage here from the Buddha to Bodhidharma, Hui-neng, Lin-chi, Hakuin, Omori Sogen, Tanouye Tenshin, and Mike Sayama (himself) is a standard rhetorical tactic on the part of Zen but still seems embarrassingly self-legitimizing here.

The second half of the book tries to cover the psychotherapy angle. There are some truly interesting anecdotes here about psychotherapists like Milton Erickson and Nick Cummings, but after all is said and done it doesn't integrate well with the first half of the book (contrary to the author's plan). Yes, "Mushin" ("no-mind") seems similar to "the Unconscious" based on the surface meaning of the words, but only the most fast & loose treatment would equate them in such a facile manner.

The martial arts and Zen aspect of the book is downright creepy. Granted this book was written in the innocent (naive) days before Brian Victoria's "Zen at War", still alarms should be going off when a Buddhist monk tells a guy "Then the sword meant to strike you will instead become the sword which will strike the enemy" (p.70). So much for that good old Buddhist Compasssion. The story of the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi at the conclusion is supposed to inspire us with the ideal towards which Sayama is pointing us, but subtract the mist of romanticism generated by temporal distance and you get a grisly tale of wanton violence for its own sake. This is not a helpful model of self-development no matter how jazzed up with Zen jargon and psychobabble.