The Monkey in the Bodhi Tree: Crazy-Wisdom & the Way of the Wise-Fool
By Jason Brett Serle (www.o-books.com)
Journey beyond the familiar to unleash the radical transformative power at the heart of the world’s great wisdom traditions
For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the question of sanity; its presence, its absence, and perhaps more importantly, its perfection. Just who are the sanest individuals and who are the craziest, and how are we to know the difference? At the same time my sensibilities have always been shocked by the apparent madness that constitutes “normal” society and the inconsistency that we so often display between our words and our deeds, which in itself is a kind of mild madness, tolerated by others only to the extent that we tolerate theirs. Krishnamurti once famously said, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” And so, in such a mad world, is it really wise to judge our sanity against its standards, and the very customs and conventions that are themselves quite insane? And if this is the case, perhaps we should not be too surprised to find that those who have taken their sanity most seriously are often the ones that society has labelled as “mad”. The Desert Father, Anthony the Great knew only too well some 1800 years ago when he said: “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us’.” Perhaps that time has come.
For several decades now I have sought out those exemplars of sanity that have left their mark upon history. I have studied and learned from them. I have attempted to follow their ways and practice what they preached. Whether due to a quirk in my own character or simply the quirks in theirs, I have always been particularly fascinated by the wise-fools and mad sages amongst them – the mavericks and misfits who gave their all to attain real sanity. Not the sanity of conventional success, measured by a university degree, a steady well-paid job, a paid mortgage and a nice car, but the supreme sanity that liberates one entirely from ignorance and suffering – the sanity to end both sanity and insanity, as well as all questions and doubts.
In studying these iconoclastic characters, one soon begins to see that the logic and reason modern man holds in such high esteem as the summum bonum of the developed mind is really just another rung in the ladder of cognitive potential and there lie others above it. Indeed, just as the toddler lives in a pre-logical, pre-rational world, the wise-fools and crazy-wisdom masters of all times and traditions have penetrated through to post-logical and trans-rational cognitive realms, leaving all those standing beneath them scratching their heads and thinking them to be mad.
When Diogenes roamed the streets of Athens in broad daylight with a lit lantern looking for an “honest man”, was it merely madness, or was he intentionally highlighting the moral decay of the times in which he lived in an illustrative and memorable way? When Ramakrishna scandalised his fellow Brahmins by ecstatically anointing and worshipping his own wife as the Divine Mother rather than the K?li statue in the temple, was it a brief lapse of his mental capacities, or was he making a point about the ubiquitousness of the feminine divine principle? Had Zen master Gutei merely cut his attendant’s finger off as punishment for imitating him, with no other consequence other than the pain and trauma, then we would surely consider it to be a criminal act. But in doing so, the attendant achieved the Ultimate Realisation; one for which he would have happily sacrificed far more than just a finger. Did Gutei know this was to be the outcome? Or did he just get lucky? How could he have known?
The Monkey in the Bodhi Tree takes a deep dive into these themes and attempts to bring some clarity to a universal phenomenon that has become known as “crazy-wisdom”. Although a fairly modern neologism, crazy-wisdom is as ancient as mankind. It rears its crazy head in all the world’s wisdom traditions from the enigmatic Mahasiddhas of ancient India to the eccentric Taoist poet-monks of China, from the uncompromising insights of the Buddhist Tantrikas to the unconventional wisdom of Su? heretics and the utter surrender to God displayed by the Fools for Christ. Wherever there has been logic and reason, there have been those that transcended logic and reason. Wherever there has been conventional behaviour, there have been those that have gone beyond its restraints and restrictions, and in doing so, have defined new standards and modes of being. They are the counter-cultural icons that over time have defined novel aspects of culture itself.
But just as the transcendent statements of true crazy-wisdom adepts have sometimes been mistaken for the ramblings of an unhinged mind, often the babblings of madmen have been elevated to the status of wisdom by those unable to discern the irrational from the trans-rational — the crazy from the crazy-wise. For this reason the world of crazy-wisdom, divine madness, holy fools and rascal gurus can be something of a minefield for neophytes and spiritual novices, strewn as it is with frauds and charlatans. Too often what passes for crazy-wisdom is nothing more than narcissism dressed up as spiritual altruism, perversion justified as liberated equanimity or unacknowledged pathology relabelled as a manifestation of the transpersonal.
As a fool striving to elevate his wisdom to the level of his craziness, The Monkey in the Bodhi Tree is my attempt to help set the record straight. Rather than waste precious ink and paper on denouncing the fakers and phonies, I have instead attempted to shine the light of awareness on the authentic ways of the wise-fool and the ageless archetype of the genuine crazy-wisdom master — the monkey in the Bodhi tree. In order to do this, I have approached the subject from two broad perspectives: the theoretical and the practical. Divided into two parts, Part I deals with the theory and tries to answer such questions as: What is crazy-wisdom? Where did it come from? How is it embodied and expressed? Who are its greatest luminaries and expositors? And why should anyone care anyway? Part II deals with the practice and aims to demonstrate crazy-wisdom in action. To this end, I have collected 151 teaching tales from around the world to illustrate the methods of the great masters and adepts; stories that not only give practical insight but also, like Zen koans, can be used as contemplative tools to illuminate and provoke epiphany.
Crazy-wisdom then is not madness in the sense of irrational behaviour, impulsivity or transgression for its own sake. Instead, it is a profound kind of wisdom that emerges from stepping beyond the conventional boundaries of rational thought and social etiquette. It is the domain of those who have transcended the separate self sense and who dare to reject the norms of society that sustain this delusion of selfhood. It is about living with fearless clarity, with a willingness to see the world as it is and embrace its apparent contradictions whilst remaining grounded in a deeper truth that transcends all of this. It is about understanding that sanity, in its highest form, may not be what we think it is at all. Instead, it may be the ability to see through the madness of the world and to find peace in the very midst of it.
So, while knowledge knows that a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom knows not to put it in a fruit salad, crazy-wisdom knows how to add the tomato anyway and in so doing enhance both the flavour and nutritional value of the whole dish.
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Unleash the radical, transformative power at the heart of the world’s great wisdom traditions.
Of the many paths up the mountain, that of crazy-wisdom, although one of the lesser travelled, presents a dramatic and formidable climb to those that are so inclined. Now for the ?rst time, the true spiritual landscape of the wise-fool has been laid bare and its features and principal landmarks revealed.
Written in two parts, loosely based on the theory and practice of crazy-wisdom, The Monkey in the Bodhi Tree is the ?rst comprehensive look at this universal phenomenon, from its origins and development to the lives of its greatest adepts and luminaries.
In addition to the theoretical foundations laid down in Part I, Part II deals with its practice and aims to demonstrate crazy-wisdom in action. To this end, 151 teaching tales from around the world have been meticulously gathered and retold to illustrate the methods of the great masters and adepts – stories that not only give practical insight but also, like Zen koans, can be used as contemplative tools to illuminate and provoke epiphany.
From the enigmatic Mahasiddhas of ancient India to the eccentric Taoist poet-monks of China, from the uncompromising insights of the Buddhist Tantrikas to the unconventional wisdom of Su? heretics and the utter surrender to God displayed by the Fools for Christ, this book will take you to a place where the boundaries of logic and reason dissolve and enlightenment awaits those daring enough to venture forth.
The Monkey in the Bodhi Tree: Crazy-Wisdom & the Way of the Wise-Fool by Jason Brett Serle is available from www.o-books.com or from wherever books are sold.
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