I am indebted to Ken Ireland who inspired this conversation.
There are many books about Zen which provide witty and erudite
discourses on Zen. This essay is not a discourse on Zen. What is worth
more to me than what I have learned from books about Zen is that I can
authentically claim to be not well read with regard to Zen. Whatever I
say about Zen I do not say as a Zen intellectual. Not only do I not
consider myself to be a Zen fundamentalist either, but I also eschew
conversations about Zen in which the experience of Zen (which arguably
has some value) is destroyed by battling intelligences and the
righteousness of debate (which, even in terms of Zen itself, has very
little value).
Rather, what I say about Zen, I say from my own experience of Zen and
not from my concepts of it. And what I say about Werner, I say from my
own experience of Werner and not from my concepts of him. Those are my
credentials.
So what this is is a conversation, standing in the experience of Zen,
sharing how Zen created the foundation and a space to allow Werner's
magnum opus
of transformation to come forth.
The originations of Werner's work are as quantumly distinct from
anything that had ever come before it as the first fish that walked up
onto the land for the first time was as quantumly distinct from the
fishes that merely
swam
before him. It misses the point entirely to say that the fish that
walked up onto the land for the first time drew his experience from his
past or even from the collective pasts of the other fishes. What
happened when that first fish walked up onto the land for the first
time was something that had never happened before. Nothing even
remotely like it had ever happened before. In fact, nothing even
remotely like it was even possible before. The first fish that walked
up onto the land for the first time invented an entirely new
possibility.
Of all the disciplines Werner engaged in before he created his magnum
opus of transformation, Zen was the one in which he practiced allowing
things to be the way they are and the way they aren't. So much of what
we do in life is to try to manage situations, to try to understand the
conditions in which we live, and to try to explain the world. Zen, in
contrast, is a way of being with things just as they are and just as
they aren't, experiencing things rather than trying to manage them or
trying to understand them or trying to explain them. That doesn't imply
that things should not be managed or not be understood or not be
explained. Rather, it highlights how little of life we are willing to
experience directly, unfiltered.
To experience life directly, unfiltered, you first have to get that you
are a machine, thrown to managing, understanding, and explaining things
rather than just experiencing them. And what that calls for is carving
out a distinction for yourself of who you really are as the owner of
your mind rather than as it's victim. Once that distinction is carved
out and who you really are breaks through, it is enough simply to be.
Anything else acquired from then on in life is on top of fulfillment
rather than a means to it.
In engaging in Zen, Werner started to see his own experience as already
whole and complete. So rather than looking for sources from which he
could study ways to become whole and complete, Zen provided the context
in which he saw he could experience being whole and complete directly
because in that context he saw that he already is whole
and complete. In Zen, things are the way they are and they aren't the
way they aren't. That, by any stretch of the imagination, is
the definition of wholeness, completion, fullness, and
perfection.
Werner asked his boss if it would be OK for him to introduce Zen to his
sales staff during their weekly planning meetings. His boss said it
would be OK - as long as he didn't get any on the walls.
Zen is not a religion. Zen could be described as living with
what's so.
To do that requires a certain willingness to cause your own experience
so that life is lived out of who you really are rather than out of your
reactions, concepts, thoughts, and opinions. In that regard, Werner
points out that there are people from all walks of life and from all
religions who practice Zen. There are Zen Jews, there are also Zen
Christians, there are also Zen Muslims, and there are also Zen Hindus,
just as there are also Zen Buddhists.
After living with Zen in his personal life and in his business life,
and after having gained a reputation as someone who could deliver a
witty and erudite discourse on Zen, Werner had an experience one day in
1971 after getting into his Ford Mustang and driving to work heading
south on US Highway 101 from his home in Corte Madera, California, over
the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco.
As Professor William Warren Bartley III (Werner's biographer) put it,
"somewhere between Corte Madera and the Golden Gate Bridge, the man in
the car on the freeway was transformed". Werner later specified the
location more exactly as on the Golden Gate Bridge itself.
Werner had had an
extraordinary experience
in which he did not suddenly find out some new thing. Rather, he had
had the experience that in spite of all the things he already knew, he
realized that he actually knew nothing. And in that experience, he came
to know all the things he already knew in a whole new way. In other
words, he had not become aware of something new to know. Rather, he had
become aware of the
epistemology
of knowledge itself: not what he knew, but rather how he held
everything he knew.
In the vernacular of Zen, was that satori ie enlightenment? Both those
terms, says Werner, have eastern connotations which he does not
require. He enunciates his experience as transformation and does not
use the terms satori or enlightenment at all.
From then on, the source from which Werner creates the technology of
transformation would be quantumly distinct from anything that had come
before it. The fish is walking up onto the land for the first time, and
along with that fish walking up onto the land for the first time comes
the possibility of eagles and elephants. What Werner does instead of
repackaging all the things he already knew is to look into the space of
his own experience, notices what is there - now, and in the future -
then reports on what he sees. His own experience of who he is for
himSelf and what possibilities he can invent for the future become the
raw material. Undifferentiated from his experience of
what's so,
and facilitated and promoted by a foundation of Zen, Werner's
transformation expresses itSelf. What we will see tomorrow and tomorrow
and tomorrow in Werner's work will be subsequent iterations of that way
of being, with each iteration standing on the shoulders of the previous
one, blazing the trail for the one to come.
Zen is enough for completion. By itself, it creates space for calm and
acceptance of
what's so.
There's an additional element to completion which Werner distinguishes
verbally and (more so) by demonstrating it. "Self expression" (capital
"S") as a descriptor for it is in the ballpark. Speaking with tightened
language, I call it "intentioned Self expression grounded in Zen"
which, by the way, also requires I know when to laugh at my own most
grandiose thoughts and when to laugh at my own most cherished beliefs.
In Zen, self-deprecation is the great leveler. As Werner says:
"Experience is simply evidence that _ am here.".
From that comes transformation. From standing in transformation looking
from the future comes possibility. From living like that as a context
for life comes enrollment.