Book Review: Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Zen Master Seung Sahn

Just to drop some names, Amanda Palmer recommended this book on Tim Ferriss’ podcast, and I've always been curious about Zen, so I bought it.  Dropping Ashes on the Buddha seems to be a very random collection of Seung Sahn’s talks and letters with very little background or context.


Seung Sahn’s backstory as written in the author bio reads like a collision of the 1960s and the American Dream. One of the youngest Korean Zen monks to achieve enlightenment, Sahn moved to the US and worked odd jobs for a number of  while he learned English and built up a following in Providence, RI.  He went on to found Zen Centers across the US.

The book's title refers to a question that Master Seung Sahn asks several students: “Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha statue, blows smoke in its face, and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do?” The answer winds up being something like: "All things in the universe are one, and that one is himself. So everything is permitted. Ashes are Buddha; Buddha is ashes. The cigarette flicks. The ashes drop." And then Master Seung Sahn whacks the student on the head.

In fact, much of the Master's curriculum seems to consist of stereotypical Zen haikus punctuated by an even more stereotypical bonk on the head with a stick when the disciple doesn't get it. He comes across like Yoda with a really bad attitude, but you can also tell that he cares, as much as a Zen Master can, about his students, and their spiritual journeys.

Call me a materialist, or a spiritual ingenue, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand Zen, no matter how many times Master Seung clobbers me with a stick, and maybe that's the whole point of the book. I gain some small comfort from the fact that I am not alone, as a lot of people in the book, who are living at one of the Zen Centers, meditating 6 hours a day and sweeping the floors seem to get it either, because Master Seung Sahn  whollops every single one of them with his stick.

However, upon reflection, I did find that this book inspired me in some ways. The core belief of  Zen seems to be to not differentiate between one thing and any other thing.  Initially, this feels a lot like the old punk ethos of not giving a fu**, but there is more to it than that. Not giving a fu** is being less alive, and Zen is about being hyper-alive - about seeing all the details, observing them, and realizing that they all are part of life and that our reaction, classification, mentation about them don't change them.  Everything is as it is, and our attempts to change it are futile.  I can see how being Zen would make you more aware, more conscious, of everything. But I'm not sure Master Seung Sahn's teaching method would get me to that enlightened state. And make no mistake, he definitely comes from a place of spiritual authority.  It cuts through the book.

There is a also a hidden story in this book. In the background, you can see Seung Sahn’s Zen “cult” (for lack of a convenient,  less charged  term) grow from a single center in Providence to having centers across the US.  About midway through the book, you start to encounter people who, instead of being local to Providence, have traveled significant distances to gain an audience with the Master. Yet throughout it all, Master Seung Sahn seems to remain the same, almost cartoonish Zen Master he begins the book as.

Even though I don't fully get it, I think Dropping Ashes on the Buddha would be a great, informal introduction to Zen if you're curious about it.

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