Claiming Authority

A friend sent me an article on Dogen that will soon be appearing in some prestigious academic journal. It was fifty pages long and led deep into the thickets of commentaries on commentaries—ancient and fierce arguments over Dogen’s true meanings and intentions. Reading of the polemic point and counterpoints I was reminded that the literary and artistic treasures handed down to us have a long provenance and our current view is influenced by arguments we will never know.

Alan Cole, in his irreverent and closely argued book FATHERING YOUR FATHER, claims that history is the donkey we dress with bells and whistles to pull the cart of the present in the desired direction. The commentaries on Dogen through the centuries since his death certainly bear this out. Each one interprets Dogen to support their own position which is sometimes directly contradicting a previous interpretation. Everybody uses the text to justify and bolster their position, all the while claiming the authenticity of their position through pointing to the text.

Cole elaborates the surprising degree to which the history of one-to-one transmission of Chan (Zen) was consciously created to bolster the fortunes and fame of those looking back. It was Chan teachers in Song dynasty who were vying with each other for imperial patronage and support among the intellectual literati that ‘fathered’ or created their own lineage—arranging historical stories in such a way to place themselves and the pinnacle.

I suppose we all must claim and thereby create our fathers. The identity of our biological fathers is usually pretty well set, but the process of telling and retelling the story of who they are and were is one of ongoing creation. Any individual is a universe of thoughts, feelings and actions. Understanding our fathers (and mothers) is part of coming to terms with the gifts and the curses we have to live with. Cole’s gift to this enterprise is the demand that we accept responsibility for the role that imagination and invention invariably play in the stories we tell about what came before us.

Then there are the fathers and mothers we claim. The heroes, teachers, and mentors we find along our journey that teach and guide us. Some we meet and learn from in person while some touch us through their words or creations from centuries ago. Whenever I read Thoreau and Emerson, I sense how the roots of my words, thoughts and perspectives draw nourishment from the soil of wonder and direct experience which they cultivated. I am a product of their words and thoughts, but I only understand their words through the lens of my own experience. When I quote Emerson (or Dogen), I am selecting only a small portion of his writing—that small portion that supports and authenticates whatever point I am making. I claim him as my source in order to bolster my authority.

Cole’s cynicism about our uses of history and tradition points to important truths, but misses the creative and necessary possibility of something more. While we can only understand something new based on our experiences of the past, we also have the capacity to receive new perspectives and make new connections. Hearing a Dharma talk or reading a book or sitting in meditation, we can hear words and phrases that turn our mind—that point us to something we have never noticed before.

Perhaps the take-away from all this is to cultivate a conscious openness to what we encounter. Rather than just looking for points of agreement and disagreement, can we watch for what is new and unexpected? Can we appreciate resonance and dissonance at the same time we maintain a heart that is open to what has not yet been known?