Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: Green Dragon Zen +^

[Disbasing Zen Stories]

Toxic Zen Story #6: Green Dragon Zen: The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, SMiLE, and Dennis and Carl Wilson.

Mike Love's brothers lost them a fortune. They came back together, and Brian went over the edge, psychotic and weighing over 300 pounds. Tragically, Dennis Wilson, a powerful swimmer, died in a swimming accident in 1983. They splintered again. Brian became subjugated by a pop psychiatrist and mentor who took over his life. Everybody sued everybody. Just as they were getting back together for another real studio album, Carl Wilson suddenly died of cancer in 1998.


____ Background for Toxic Zen Stories ____________________

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.zen/msg/b4ad0ce368728934?hl=en

____ Introduction ________________________________________

Dogen (1200-1253): The founder of the Japanese Soto school of Zen.
Dogen would quote the Lotus Sutra, but did not consider it any differently from other sutras of the Buddha, this in spite of the Buddha's own admonition to consider it higher than the previous (Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings and before) and following sutras (Nirvana Sutra and later). Hence, only provisional truth and partial enlightenment could be had from it by him. The kind of enlightenment that leads to compassionless domination of others ... as mere, empty extensions of one's own Solipsistic body.

Dogen was popular with the government, because his teachings removed the compassion from Samurai and Daimyo, rendering them fierce and merciless warriors, who would shun no tactic to win, no matter how vile.

____ Toxic Zen Story ______________________________

The Rolling Stone biography of the Beach Boys had most of the major facts:
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bio.asp?oid=252
[this has been pulled from the web]

In brief, They started off strong, were contending with the Beatles for Number One status around the world (they were number one in the UK, when the Beatles were number one in the US). They matched album for album until Pet Sounds fell short of Sgt. Pepper.

Brian got hooked in with Alan Watts, Gary Snyder and Shunryu Suzuki-roshi of the San Francisco Zen Temple, around January 1967 when the first "Human Be-In" was held in California. This was the moment of infection that would rule what was to come, and not just for Brian.

Brian simultaneously got into Zen and LSD, which are really not, in the slightest way, separate or different in their psychotic effect ...

When the group got together to make the SMiLE album and flopped, and then squandered their headlining spot at the Monterey Pop Festival in Summer 1967, that was it: they had produced a fizzle after a long climb, and would be a no-show for the hippie and antiwar movement and the rest of rock in the 60's.

They came back in the mid 70's hugely, as the oldies movement picked up with Sha Na Na and crew. Their album Endless Summer was endlessly golden. They had great success as a touring band.

But there was that immense void in the center of their career, where their greatest work would have been. There was a sharp discontinuity right at the moment of their flowering. (Instead, a Zen flower of nothingness.)

Mike Love's brothers lost them a fortune. They came back together, and Brian went over the edge, psychotic and weighing over 300 pounds. Tragically, Dennis Wilson, a powerful swimmer, died in a swimming accident in 1983. They splintered again. Brian became subjugated by a pop psychiatrist and mentor who took over his life. Everybody sued everybody. Just as they were getting back together for another real studio album, Carl Wilson suddenly died of cancer in 1998.

Zen and Pet Sounds:
http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/page07.htm

SMiLE is a koan:
http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/page02.htm
___________________________________________________

On a personal note ... I grew up listening to the Beach Boys songs, to their incredible harmonies. I was in love with the "Little Deuce Coupe" and with "Surfer Girl". Then the Beatles came along and the world went in a different direction, away from the beach, towards other things.

I still have their songs running around in my brain. It's hard to get them out, but I will in time. They are no longer a treasure to me, but merely the echo of an incredible failure.

____ Epilog _______________________________________

The Buddha's highest teachings were the purpose of the Buddha's advent on this earth.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to drain people's compassion with discussions of the emptiness and meaninglessness of life which is just a void.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people to live in such a narrow and momentary way, that there would be no context for self-examination and conscience.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to possess people's minds with such illogic as to befuddle their ability to choose correctly between what is good and what is evil.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people how to commit atrocities and genocide, in the exploration of their "infinite possibilities", or "new states of being".

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people how to maim and kill with their hands efficiently, quietly, loudly, with increased terror inflicted, or to maximize their subjugation to control the public sentiments for political ends.

These are all profoundly evil distortions of the Buddha's true teachings, which introduce infinities in the variables holding good and evil, removing all shades of gray in the propositional calculus of value.

Simply stated, the Buddha made his advent on this earth with the purpose of teaching the compassionate way of the bodhisattva, which is at the heart of the true entity of all phenomena, which is the eternal Buddha at one with the eternal Law. Which is how to navigate the sea of sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. He originally set out on his path, because of his observation of the sufferings of common people and wanting to understand the source of those sufferings (enlightened wisdom) and how to transform those sufferings into unshakable happiness (enlightened action).

When you embrace the void, in that moment you create an emptiness in your future. Each time you embrace the void again, that emptiness grows. But it doesn't have to be ...
___________________________________________________

Nichiren Daishonin writes (Encouragement to a Sick Person, WND p. 78):

. "During the Former and Middle Days of the Law, the
. five impurities began to appear, and in the Latter
. Day, they are rampant. They give rise to the great
. waves of a gale, which not only beat against the
. shore, but strike each other. The impurity of
. thought has been such that, as the Former and
. Middle Days of the Law gradually passed, people
. transmitted insignificant erroneous teachings
. while destroying the unfathomable correct
. teaching. It therefore appears that more people
. have fallen into the evil paths because of errors
. with respect to Buddhism than because of secular
. misdeeds."

Because Bodhidharma discarded the Buddha's highest teaching (the Lotus Sutra), and due to his lazy nature turned to shortcuts to enlightenment, he came to the distorted view that life is acausal and empty, that the true entity is the void.

This erroneous view really comes from a misunderstanding of the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings, where the True Entity is described by negation (the only way it can be): "... neither square, nor round, neither short, nor long, ..."

The description of the True Entity is logically voidal, but the True Entity itself is not. Bodhidharma was simply confused, due to the slander of negligence (laziness), and false confidence. The truth of life is that at the heart of the True Entity is the compassion of a bodhisattva for others.

Non-substantiality does not mean empty. Life has value. Humans are respectworthy. There is a purpose to everything. And every cause has an effect, so we are responsible for our thoughts, words and deeds. Zen is acausal. Zen is the greatest poison, which compares to the even greater medicine of the Lotus Sutra.

Suffice it to say: the purpose of Zen in the world is to corrupt and undermine everything that is not based upon the truth and the true teaching. All religions, disciplines, institutions and organizations which are undermined by Zen will eventually fall after glaring revelation of their worst defects, sooner rather than later.

If there is some good in your family, locality, society and culture, or country that you would like to retain, then cease the Zen, and begin to apply the medicine of the Lotus Sutra to heal the Zen wound in your life.

"Zen is the work of devilish minds." - Nichiren

-Chas.

. a prescription for the poisoned ones:
.
. The only antidote for the toxic effects of Zen in your life ...
.
. be that from Zen meditation, or the variant forms: physical
. Zen in the martial arts, Qigong, Acupuncture, Falun Gong,
. Copenhagen Convention of Quantum Mechanics, EST,
. Landmark Education, Nazism, Bushido, the Jesuits,
. Al Qaeda, or merely from having the distorted view that life
. is acausal, and that the true entity of all phenomena
. is the void ...
.
. with the effects of the loss of loved ones, detachment,
. isolation or various forms of emptiness in your life ...
.
. is the Lotus Sutra: chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
. at least 3 times, twice a day, for the rest of your life,
. in at least a whisper ...
.
. and if you can, chant abundantly in a resonant voice !!!
.
. The full 28 Chapters of the Lotus Sutra,
. Nichiren Daishonin's Gosho volumes I and II,
. the Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings
. (Gosho Zenshu, including the Ongi Kuden) and the
. SGI Dictionary of Buddhism are located at:
.
http://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/
.
. To find an SGI Community Center:
.
http://www.sgi-usa.org/sgilocations/
__________________________________

LS Chap. 16 .....

All harbor thoughts of yearning
and in their minds thirst to gaze at me.
When living beings have become truly faithful,
honest and upright, gentle in intent,
single-mindedly desiring to see the Buddha
not hesitating even if it costs them their lives,
then I and the assembly of monks
appear together on Holy Eagle Peak.
At that time I tell the living beings
that I am always here, never entering extinction,
but that because of the power of an expedient means
at times I appear to be extinct, at other times not,
and that if there are living beings in other lands
who are reverent and sincere in their wish to believe,
then among them too
I will preach the unsurpassed Law.