Chicago Zen Center Quarterly

Ordination of Yusan Graham and Elie Jishin Nijm

2010-05-31T23:52:00.008-05:00

On February 28 Jim Graham and Elie Nijm were ordained priests in the Three Jewels Order taking at the same time the shukke tokudo ordination of the Soto school. Their respective Dharma names, Yusan and Jishin, hearken to their origins in Houston, TX and Jish, Israel. Yusan is a classic Zen name (Ching Yusan gave us the “Before practicing Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters…” reflection); Jishin means “compassionate heart/mind” in Chinese. Yusan will use his new Dharma name as standard address. Elie will use Jishin as a middle name and will still be addressed as Elie.

The ordination was a milestone for the center, and the presence of so many members attested both to the character of the men being ordained and to the health and vitality of the sangha. The potluck went on for over three hours, although it’s hard to tell if that was because of the sparkling conversation or the need to make so many trips back to the amazing spread of food on the buffet table. If nothing else, this sangha knows how to put on a feast!

The center thanks Yusan and Elie Jishin for their commitment to the Dharma, and it thanks their wives, Debbie and Dina, for their unfailing and selfless support.

Kevin Geiman

Elie Jishin & Yusan

The New Dharma Names are Discussed

Receiving the Kesa

Dina & Elie Jishin, Debbie & Yusan

A Field Trip

2010-05-31T23:43:00.002-05:00

Elementary school students in 1960s Houston were rarely treated to field trips. Maybe it was different in other places with a richer array of cultural offerings, but I could look forward, year after year, to precisely two escapes from the stultifying routine of Garden Oaks Elementary. There would be one trip to Jones Hall for a dose of classical music, courtesy of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and one to the Museum of Natural Science. The predictability did nothing to diminish the giddy joy of getting an officially sanctioned day away from school (no hope of snow days in Houston).

It was on one of these trips to the Museum of Natural Science that I lost a tooth. I had begun wiggling it free before heading to school that morning, and continued worrying it through the long bus ride to the museum. All that diligence finally paid off when, right in the middle of the planetarium show, tooth and gum parted company. In that pitch-black room, with the celestial pageant deployed in surreal vividness above me, I revisited this more mundane -- but even more vivid -- wonder of having a part of one’s body break free of its moorings to make its own way in the world. I was less attentive to the rest of the show than to the ferrous tang of blood in my mouth and the not-quite-self, not-quite-other object between my fingers.

We swarmed out of the planetarium and into the museum proper with its sparse and disjointed collection of technological artifacts, scrounged from the area’s oil and space industries. I had seen all of this stuff so many times that most of it had lost any power of fascination that it might have once had… except for one thing: standing prominently in the middle of the display hall was one of the actual space capsules from the Mercury program.

Before the 3-man Apollo capsules, before the 2-man Gemini capsules, NASA had hurled a solitary pilot out into the void, wedged into this funnel-shaped sarcophagus. I don’t know if kids today could relate to the fascination that this monument to sheer gutsiness aroused in a boy of that era. The very idea of sending humans into orbit was still unfathomably strange and wondrous. Every launch from what was then known as Cape Canaveral prompted every classroom in the country to scrap the curriculum du jour and wheel out the TV. It felt like we were witnessing something sacred, a transcendence of our limitations. And here, with not even so much as a partition rope between us, was a relic of these sacred rites.

The capsule looked improbably small and inglorious. Its exterior was clad in dull gray sheet metal striated with vent slots. Inside, visible through a small window, sat a mannequin of an astronaut enclosed on all sides by toggle switches, dials and gauges. So seamless was the connection between man and machine that the impression was less of a man in a container than of a man wearing a magical flying carapace. I was transported by the idea that this very thing had been into the void and back. The flames of re-entry had once scoured this slotted skin under my palm.

As I leaned in closer, my hands on the capsule’s flanks, to look through the window, I heard a faint plink! Only then did I remember the tooth that I had been holding all of this time. I dropped to the floor to look for it, but it wasn’t there. It had fallen through one of the slots in the capsule’s shell. What was this thing now?

Yusan Graham

Doing Jail Time

2010-01-19T11:54:00.001-06:00

If any of you ever ask me, "where were you on Thursday night?" I would say, in a half joking voice, "in jail." But it's no joke and the jail is the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center, where children younger than 17 are held after arrest for possible felonies and misdemeanors. I go in once a week for two hours as a volunteer for what is a listening ministry. This is where the orderly Mary Jeanne comes up against the chaos of juvenile life, mostly from the most impoverished and dangerous places and situations in Chicago. These children learn they are in jail because they have made choices. And I am there because I also made a choice.

I had been teaching a course at DePaul University that we call a community-based service learning course, for which students need to do 25 hours of service with a community organization. After several years sending students out for service, I began to sense a slight oddity in my teaching this course--I did not myself do any direct service in community organizations. So I began thinking (note the word 'thinking') about what kinds of service opportunity I might like--tutoring immigrants for the citizenship test or others for literacy, since both situations would fit my hope to open up opportunity for others. Fate did me a turn, however, and I ended up walking into jail one day to work with kids of an age I had wished to avoid my entire life. I met Fr. Dave Kelly from the Precious Blood Center for Reconciliation at a presentation inviting volunteers to work with incarcerated youth, mostly from the south side. I did not refuse the invitation. At first I could work only with the boys, but after a few years I also began talking as well with the girls.

This is an odd ministry in many ways: I usually have no idea if I have any effect on the kids. As many volunteers experience, they might see a kid for a couple weeks and feel a connection developing and then the kid disappears back to their lives. We see how much is not in our control--or not in anyone's control--even though it should be. But these are lessons we can learn in any situation new to us, especially in those places and with people unfamiliar to us. These times and places bring us to the edge of our practice, remind us of the need for our practice, send us screaming back to our practice. And this is not because we want just to bury ourselves again in the quiet peacefulness we might find there, but because our practice needs to be there at those edges of life, edges of growth, edges that help erode our small ego's desire to hold on, to be in control.

So my challenge to you is this: find a service opportunity. Just anything will do at first-as long as it will take you even one small, seemingly insignificant step out of your routine, your usual round of activities. In your decision to do Zen practice, you have already taken a step out of the routine our society expects. So now take your practice to the streets, as it were. No one is too busy to find a service opportunity, for example, perhaps only one two-hour period here and another in say 3 months. Some will be ready to check something out and commit to one time a week for so many weeks. And guess what I found in the 12/26 Sun-Times: web sites for volunteer opportunities. So you have no excuse! The Sun-Times has the full list, but just try these: Chicago Cares, Volunteer Match, Idealist, Chicago Volunteer, Nonprofit job board, Youth Outreach Services. If you live outside Chicago, google for voluteering in your community. So get out there, give yourself to the moment, and be grateful if it feels good; in any case your practice will never be the same again.

Mary Jeanne Larrabee

Right Livelihood and paying people what’s right

2010-01-19T11:50:00.000-06:00

When I was a boy and asked my coal miner father one time too many for money, he got me a job as a "myrtle plugger." I sat all day in a field of ground cover with a special tool and "plugged" one plant at a time from the ground into a "flat" -- a large wooden box. Each plant took up a four-square-inch space. I saw immediately that I could fit between 50 and 60 plants into the box. Upon filling a flat I was to take it to the Yard Boss who was to "count" it and give me a fresh one to fill. I was to be paid five cents per flat. This was child labor, and it was in the early 1960s in Pennsylvania.

When I took up my first flat, the Yard Boss reached into the box and used his hand to squeeze my plants together to one side. They now filled 40 percent of the flat. He smiled, winked, grunted, and handed it back to me.

This was wage theft, and although I was only 10 years old, I knew it. I quit that "job" at the end of my first week. My father simply said, "Now you know what a union is for."

I was too young to understand what my father meant, but I was developed enough to see that the yard boss did not see me as human in some important way. He regarded me as the "other" -- as a tool like any other tool, to be used as needed for as long I held up to his purpose.

Many years later I heard a talk given during my priest training in which Yasutani Roshi, a well-known Japanese Zen Master, said these words: "The fundamental problem for all humanity is that you believe that you are there and I am here." This sums up how Buddhism casts a critical eye on the behavior of people -- especially in commercial enterprises.

As long as we regard each other not as humans but as the "other," we will suffer profound abuses in the workplace. Employers will steal their workers' wages, either overtly or covertly. And all the while they will deny both to themselves and others that this is the case. After all, they are only employees. I -- or we -- happen to be management, and as such are responsible for the survival and the thriving of the organization. Except that the workers are the organization and a theft against them is one against the group -- and me too.

I'm sure that the Yard Boss was being stolen from in some way by his betters back in that myrtle field. He could not have invented the workplace abuse of a child all on his own. I'll bet it went all the way to the top. After all, what happens at the top flows directly to the bottom in organizations. If "the other" is how we see individuals, we will guarantee they will see us this way also.

So from a Buddhist perspective it is not quite enough to say that we each are our brother's keeper. We need to feel instead that we actually are our brother. And from this, fair treatment flows naturally. There is then what we Buddhists call Right Livelihood -- mutually productive work, with everyone being treated fairly, everyone being treated Right.

Sevan Sensei

Originally published on The Rag Blog.

The Theory, Practice, and Experimentation of Zen

2010-01-19T11:40:00.000-06:00

Imagine this scenario. A student enters the dokusan room, bows, and sits. The teacher challenges him to explain mu. The student knows intellectually that the teacher is just trying to point him in the right direction, but he can't hear the instruction. It's as if the teacher has something to say but the student can't hear it because he's not even in the room to receive the message. He's in another room, someplace that won't really help...the correct room has a door with a lock only the student can open, but the one thing the teacher can't do is give him the key to open the door. The student has the key already -- he's figured that much out -- and he knows where the door is, and even where the lock is, but he just can't get the key turning in the lock. He's done some experimentation, he understands the theory, but he's having trouble putting it into practice.

These three concepts, experimentation, theory, and practice, form one of the "triangle relationships" that software engineers love to play with. The most famous triangle relationship is between budget, quality, and time, and implies that you can have any two of these at the expense of the third (...you can have your project built on time and within budget but it's not going to be built very well...or, you can have a high quality product but it's either going to be expensive or time-consuming to build). Another famous triangle is between speed, size, and complexity. The experiment/theory/practice triangle is all about problem-solving. It implies that for any sufficiently complicated problem, you can skimp on one of these but you'll end up having to spend more time and energy doing the other two in order to become proficient at solving the problem at hand. For example, you can skip learning the methods and techniques for a particular domain (its "practice") but you're going to end up spending a lot of time experimenting and researching its theory - in effect, inventing the practice as you go along. This effect plagues the software world, partly because it is such a new field that its practices are still being invented, but mainly because developers never get enough time to learn and internalize new practices before they have to use them to build something. This also happens sometimes in upper-level college courses, where time for practicing methods is sacrificed in order to crunch more theory into less class time...the result is that students end up doing copious amounts of self-directed experimentation just to get the homework done.

At one point I was pretty certain that the "practice" of Zen is...well, what we do in the zendo: sitting and meditating. Theory, of course, comes from the sutras and the teishos we attend, as well as discussions in the dokusan room. But what about experimentation? It comes from what we do in the outside world, right? We experiment when we observe the paramitas in the wild or try to follow them ourselves, when we strive to notice important connections in daily life, when we try meditating on the train or while we do daily tasks... right?

Well...no, not quite....

Vimalakirti, in the wonderful sutra that bears his name, demonstrates to us that the model I outlined a paragraph ago is upside down: practice -- real, true, honest practice -- is done in the real world, not in the zendo. Our practice is our implementation of the paramitas in day to day life, out in the wider world. It's our engagement with that world that leads us to important realizations...if we don't engage with the world, we can't have meaningful connections in the first place, so our insights won't turn into realizations. And yes, our practice is also "our practice": the act of managing our mind through meditative techniques. But it's only when it's done "in the wild" that these actions become practice -- when we do them in the Zen Center, we're really just experimenting with the practices. Yes: the work we do in the zendo is experimentation.

The Zen Center is our laboratory. It is a safe place to put theory into practice and test the results. Our robes have more in common with lab coats than they do with the fine raiment that a priest would traditionally wear. We study theory and we practice in the Zen Center too, but experiment is (or should be) our primary focus at the Zen Center. Without it we are dooming ourselves to hours upon hours of studying sutras and practicing without the benefit of safety nets -- like a sailor who decides to become a trapeze artist by reading a bunch of books and taking directly to the high wire. Sure, both professions use ropes, but our sailor is foolish if he thinks he can draw solely on past experience to tell him how to use the trapeze ropes properly. And also, by confusing the role of the zendo and the role of worldly experience, we end up deferring real practice, waiting for what our minds are doing in the zendo to "stabilize" or "mature" (hint: it never will -- experimentation is like that...it's ever-changing, always shifting, never finished). The zendo isn't where we "practice" our practice, its where we experiment with how practice works...the real world is the proper place to put those lessons to work.

The ramification of this viewpoint is that it encourages us to try new things when we're sitting. If you find yourself "stuck" on a koan, or unable to follow your typical pattern for calming the mind, or you can't seem to find the energy to keep going, remind yourself that this brown robe you're wearing is a lab coat and this mat you're sitting on is a lab bench, and thus it's just fine to branch out and try something new. Remind yourself that trying new things is why you're there in the first place.

By the same token, this viewpoint also encourages us to not forget the theory. Teisho really isn't optional, nor are the sutras: we need to digest the theoretical information surrounding Zen, too. Just like the imbalances that occur in software engineering when one of the three sides of a triangle is ignored, our practice can suffer if we don't pay enough attention to the theory of Zen. It should be obvious by now that solely concentrating on the theory is just as imbalanced as ignoring it altogether: we need all three (experimentation in the zendo, practice in real life, and theory from the teachings) in order to have a solid Zen practice.

Gregg Cooke

Note from the Editor

2010-01-19T11:31:00.003-06:00

Hello! I want to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Hugh, and I am the new editor of the Quarterly. You may not know me, because I live in Canada, so I am not around the Center as much as I would like.

I also want to reflect briefly on the function of the Quarterly. In some respects, it seems a bit at odds with the kinds of things that we normally do at the Zen Center. Most of our practice at the Center is involved in cultivating non-discursive mind. The articles in the Quarterly, on the other hand, are productions of discursive mind; they are more like talking than like sitting quietly.

Also, when talking happens at the Center, it is often done by people who are specially authorized: Sensei, in particular, but at various times also monitors, cooks, housekeepers, and so forth. Again, the Quarterly is a bit different, since it is an opportunity for any member of the Sangha to have a say.

Hopefully, these ways in which the Quarterly is different from what we usually do, give it some potential to be useful in its own way. I mean, in particular, that writing for the Quarterly needn't sound like a teisho or like a koan demonstration. Writing in the Quarterly should probably seem pretty ordinary -- much like a conversation with other Sangha members after an evening sitting.

Above, I mentioned the distinction between discursive and non-discursive mind. Of course, that kind of distinction is not really solid. Fundamentally, our mind is neither discursive nor non-discursive. It would be impossible to throw away language and speech, even if we decided that that would be a good idea. That being the case, it seems that it could be valuable to provide an opportunity for people to share aspects of their thoughts related to practice.

That, then, is the perspective I have on what the Quarterly is here for, but I'm also open to other approaches. In the end, the Quarterly is a manifestation of Sangha, "its wisdom, example, and never-failing help". Please consider how we can encourage the Quarterly to develop in a beneficial way. If you have suggestions (an article you would like to write, an article you would like someone else to write, some other kind of thing which you would like to see in the Quarterly, a change of format which you think would help), please get in touch. My email address is hugh@math.unb.ca

Hugh Thomas

The Layman Sinks His Boat: Thoughts on (Considering) Burning Bridges

2009-07-06T21:33:00.002-05:00

by Kevin Geiman

According to the story, Layman Pang one day took all his possessions, loaded them onto a boat, rowed out to the middle of the nearby lake, and sank the lot of them. He didn’t give them away, and he didn’t see to it that they went to some good use. He just destroyed them.

In Case 28 of the Mumonkan, Tokusan, the renowned scholar of the Diamond Sutra, came to a realization under Ryutan. He then proceeded to make a bonfire of his notes and commentaries, burning them all in front of the main hall. He didn’t hold on to them to check them against his insight or to use as materials for future reflection or teaching. He just destroyed them.

Burning in flame and sinking in water are perhaps the most common ways of signifying complete detachment. Fire and water are primordial, basic, fundamental. To commit anything to them is to lose any hope of getting it back in the future. To pass by way of them is to emerge renewed, ready to begin, free of cumber. We are given to understand that the Layman and Tokusan did, indeed, continue to go deeply in the Way, and the tradition holds them out to us with hopes that we might deepen our resolve to do so as well.

These cases raise the age-old question whether we should understand such renunciation figuratively or literally. Certainly we would not be hearing of the Layman or the Sutra Scholar if they hadn’t done such drastic things. Their actions stood enough out of the norm that they stuck fast and hard in the collective consciousness of the tradition. Let’s face it: we don’t hear tell of those who held back, who kept some reserve, who made as if they would be willing to surrender at some future time, but just not yet.

So let’s assume a matter-of-fact renunciation for the moment. What’s the harm? Quickly the objections rise: “Such things might be useful in the future.” “Those things should have been given to the poor.” “Such egos! Why the drama?” It’s this last one we should be most worried about, of course, but it might be a misguided objection here, one that mistakes effect for cause. Let’s look at the Layman again. If he were submerging the goods in order to diminish the self, then there would be a problem. If he thought that doing this would produce some realization, then he would be mistaken. If he thought he was making the difference in the world, he would have been wrong. And we wouldn’t still be hearing of him.

A different reading would suggest that the Layman’s work was already accomplished when he loaded the dinghy and headed away from the dock. John Woolman, the renowned colonial Quaker abolitionist and himself a man of some insight, put it this way: “Rather than renouncing power, wealth, and honor in a noble sacrifice, we simply discover that they no longer hold such interest for us." Perhaps it’s like what we experienced as children and adolescents, now allowed to continue into adulthood. How many of us held on to our teddy bears once we found other more age-appropriate amusements? We didn’t white knuckle our way through cleaning out the toybox; we probably wondered why we hadn’t gotten rid of the stuff sooner. We didn’t leave childhood behind in a great significant act of ego. Childhood had already left us.

Still, the Layman’s story makes the whole thing sound instantaneous. This may not square so neatly with our own experience, for there are times in life when, to return to Woolman, the interest one thing holds for us is waxing while the interest another holds is waning, not as a process of natural growth but as a matter of choice and commitment. These are the times when we begin to know deep in our bones just how different things are going to look from here on out, the times when we need to be opening ourselves completely and honestly to that difference. At these times we are rightly cautioned to not be too hasty. It’s not a matter of still holding back as much as giving ourselves over as deeply and fully in as patient and as thorough a way as possible – a matter of letting go with eyes wide open. Marrying is like this, so we have engagements. Ordaining is like this, so we have novitiate periods.

Our lineage has no Dharma equivalent of a Vegas drive-thru wedding chapel, and for good reason. Asking to ordain is not the same thing as entering on the novice path, nor is entering the novitiate the same thing as ordination.

I had no clue at the beginning of last January’s sesshin that I would be asking to be ordained by the end. (“Just where did that come from?” I still sometimes wonder….) I also had no clue how many nights’ sleep I would lose once I did ask. Little did I know what points of resistance would subsequently emerge, what aspects of ego would show up, what it was about the whole thing I was scared of. Every now and then it becomes clearer to me what further things will have to be left behind. Then I have to pause, consider, discern. Remember, the Layman didn’t wake up one day and just walk away from his home and possessions, either. That would have been too reactive. Rather, he took it all out, bit by bit, looked at it all, saw the things for what they were, and then – only then – paddled them out and away. We only hear of the day on the lake. Who knows how long he took in his mind to get the stuff out of the house? And if he had found that he really couldn’t part with the heirloom credenza, then that would have been good, too, for it would have been honest.

In our life in the sangha we really don’t compare notes with others, so it’s quite easy to make overinflated assumptions about others’ practice, depths of insight, levels of commitment and the rest. Perhaps we see someone getting ordained in the same way – that they are somehow special, have something we don’t, etc. I know I did. When I witnessed Sthaman and then Vinati being ordained, it was like watching the Layman in the boat. It seemed stark and definitive, a moment of real crossing, an act I was incapable of doing. And it was.

But looking at ordination as an isolated incident or as an expected outcome of a natural process misses something, and I now realize how profound and welcome this quiet, patient novice time is. It’s not so much a metamorphosis stage as a trying stage (in the old-fashioned sense in which we speak of trying a case to see what sticks and what doesn’t). Announce your intention to the sangha and see how it sits with them. Wear a black rakusu in a public, non-ZC context for the first time and see how that goes. Clean out everything but the blue, black, gray and collarless from the closest and come up with something to go to work in. Look ahead on the calendar one, five, ten years out and take stock of what won’t be happening that you might have had your eye on. Let the full weight of the tradition you’re looking to bear start to rest on your shoulders and see how it feels to stand.

Perhaps even all this smacks a little too much of calculation and deliberation, for there is throughout this time a growing “right as rain” sense as well. The Verse to Case 7 of the Mumonkan comes to mind:

Because it is so very clear,
It takes long to come to realization.
If you know at once that candlelight is fire
You know the meal has long been cooked.

The Layman’s possessions were already at the bottom of the lake before he packed up the first thing. By the time the novice accepts the new name, so it seems, the ordination will have already taken hold, the letting go will have been accomplished, the destruction of another form of life will be over and done with. At least that’s what I’m guessing. At this stage of the process, though, I sometimes eye my goods still on the boat at the dock and wonder…

Why the Economy Has Fallen Apart (and other matters)

2009-07-01T11:18:00.001-05:00

by Sevan Sensei

Editor's Note: Sensei wrote this article in January; apologies for the delay. You'll have to picture snow as you read, but this shouldn't be too difficult in Chicago, even in July. -JL

I arrive at the designated room early to get my marching orders. I’ve been contacted to speak at an interfaith gathering here on the campus of a local major university. I enter a huge room which has been assembled into a lectern-versus-chairs-in-rows situation, all looking very formal. Except that behind the lectern, where there are maple panels hiding many closets for chairs and props, the panels have largely been left open so that the audience sees the speaker against a background of equipment – an area that looks as though it had just been sifted through for loose change and pop cans.

A student (we will call him Ira) approaches me, thanks me for coming, says he is the organizer, and then walks away. Eight students stand around a table, or rather shift back and forth from one leg to the other around a table. I settle into a discarded couch nearby, close my eyes, and listen to the instructions they are being given by Ira.

“You have to be willing to interrupt the speaker to say that they’re out of time, but you have to be nice. Be indirect.”

“How? Like what?”

“We would all like to hear how you feel about that, how you feel Israel should do things. We know you have super ideas, and we appreciate how much you’ve thought all this through, and we want to respect your space here, as well as your right to articulate your feelings. The thing is . . . well, we have to be sure to give everyone a chance to talk here, to express their feelings and ideas as well, and we only have so much time, so I need you to pass the talking item on to the next person . . . .”

“Ok, so what happens if they wander off topic? Like, you know, um, they, um, start off talking about their feelings about Lebanon and then wander over to how they feel about the violence in Gaza, um, something like that?”

“It’s the same kind of thing, you have to . . . . “

I close my eyes and start to fall into a pre-lecture sleep. I notice that my feet are cold from the walk here through the snow. I’ve walked a long way here from the transportation line in the dark and snow. On the way I was almost struck by a woman on a bike. She was using the sidewalk instead of the street. We have a lot of snow here in Chicago this year, and it is dangerous to walk or ride anywhere, since the already crowded streets are even narrower, the alleys are totally unplowed, and the sidewalks vary from two-lanes to goat paths. The woman never called out, rang no bell. There was suddenly a moving blackness obscuring the lights of the city ahead, like an imagined black hole sucking up the urban landscape. Bike riders here apparently have a strict dress code. Except for a few who put strobes on their bikes so that they look like mini emergency vehicles passing by, most bikers seem to prefer black outfits and no lights. They ply the streets like so many insurance liability ninjas. This makes driving (especially around universities) a kind of ESP experience. You come to know by simply using The Force that a ninja bike will appear from the left, though it is not visible through the grime of the windshield, the flutter of the wipers, the glare of the city.
I used to try hollering at the ninja bikes. I used to yell at them that they were going to get killed, cause an accident. After years of this I suddenly realized that I never once got a response. Nobody ever even threw me the finger. I toyed with the idea that perhaps they were all deaf. This was a comforting if temporary theory. Then I went through a phase of a couple of years of being a good Buddhist, working on my anger at the ninja bikes. While this was useful and fulfilling, it never helped explain why they never responded to voice or horn.

Through my remembering of ninja bikes past I hear a voice. It is Ira. He is standing in front of me as I am sunk into the discarded couch. He is almost standing on my feet, he is so close. As he begins to talk to me I search my peripheral awareness to uncover what is so odd and uncomfortable about the position we are in here, with him towering above me, too close, and me looking way up at him, partly blinded by the ceiling lights that halo his head. I recall, while he is carefully explaining how students need to amplify their power by staying in contact with other students in other campuses and how he is just the man to pull them all together, that my Zen teacher always taught me that we should speak to other people at their level – that it was rude and bad form to literally “talk down” to someone. Or was it my mother who said this, or my Jr. High science teacher?

Deciding now that it may be important to listen to what Ira is saying, I focus all my attention on him. He is smiling at me and handing me papers now which seem to explain all the interfaith communications, connections, networks, aware nesses, bulletin boards, conferences, groups, events, teas, dinners, drives, and other forms and masses of the interfaith goliath that apparently thrives right here in Chicago under my very feet. And he launches anew into how students need more power and must communicate more, and how he is just the man to arrange it.

But I’ve wandered off again with my attention. I notice that in the corner of the room (with perhaps fifteen students present now, all wandering around, some with iPods in place) – in the corner there is a piano, and one of the students is playing the piano. He is playing a Jewish song of some kind. The tones and rhythms make clear that it is a Jewish song. Another student starts to clap along. Another starts to sing-chant along. While I’m wondering whether we may yet witness some break dancing, or maybe a wedding here, I catch myself and decide anew to focus my attention on Ira, who is explaining how it is critical that students stay in touch with each other. Apparently this is a huge problem I have not been aware of. They are in reasonably good contact with each other on their own campuses, he passionately assures me, but they need to text and e-mail each other much more between campuses. While he is driving home this point I notice that his group here is stepping up to the plate by texting even as we speak. Ira may well be succeeding in his mission.

Past Ira I spy a wall clock and realize that we are set to begin in ten minutes. So I interrupt him to ask a question. I shade my eyes from the glare of the lights, focus on his smiling face, and through the talking and music ask, “Ira, can someone tell me what I am supposed to speak about, for how long, where I might stand, where to sit, if I can get some water?”

“Sure! Awesome! No problem! I’ll go ask Hanna.”
“But aren’t you in charge here?”
“Hanna picks out the topics?”
“I talked to her on the phone this morning, and she didn’t know the topic.”
“She probably picked it by now.”

As he wanders off to find Hanna before I can re-ask him about getting a drink of water I notice two things: We have eight minutes to start now, and there are students arriving and signing sheets and getting nametags. No one gave me a nametag. I decide that in the hierarchy of unknowns here the lack of my nametag ranks low, so I ignore that problem – no, issue. I also notice that I am decades older that anyone in the room. There are to be six speakers here tonight. A jolt of fear passes through me. Can it be that I am the only one who has actually arrived?

While this kind of fear seems silly to me upon reflection, it is not unfounded. Years ago I attended a local interfaith event at a university on the last day of that school’s existence. The university was going bankrupt. Couldn’t get enough students to stay open. Closed its doors and put the property up for sale. Still today you can drive by and see the chain link fence there wrapped around the entire university, encircling Old Main and everything else. Looks rather like a prison, or maybe a prison camp. A sign says For Sale, but apparently nobody wants to buy a university, since it has stayed like that for years. When people give directions out there in that area they still refer to it as the University, even though it is only a ghost of itself now. They will say, “Turn left there on Washington Road, go past Grant and Lincoln (All streets in Chicago seem to be named after presidents.), and follow the road around the Ghost University. You’ll come out right where you want to go.”

So I showed up that day, years ago, there for the interfaith forum at Ghost University, and it was the last day the school was open. It was also the last day my first Zen teacher and dear Dharma guide Roshi Kapleau was alive. I found the room in Old Main, attended the reception, sat on the Panel, met a Hindu teacher and an Imam and various ministers. But almost no students came. Perhaps it was asking too much of them to show up for such an event when they had just been told two weeks ago that the school would be closing immediately. Perhaps if they had more power, perhaps if they had been better connected, perhaps if they had had Ira there working hard so the students could communicate more, then the school could have been saved. But none of these things happened and the school closed, and we religious leaders bore down on the few students who came and gave them what for about interfaith issues. I swore that day, right after I was able by cell phone to whisper words of goodbye to my old teacher, that I was through with the interfaith world on university campuses. So the fear that perhaps all other ministers, imams, rabbis and gurus had taken the same vow swam through me this night. I could see no other speakers.

Hanna stood staring down at me in exactly the same way Ira had done: “Ira says you have questions.”
“What’s my topic?”
“Oh, Peace and Non-violence.”
“How long do I have with this?”
“Four minutes. But you can go over a little if you need to.”
“I have four minutes to speak about peace and non-violence. Great. Any suggestions?”
“Just tell everyone why we shouldn’t kill people.”
“I see.”
Then, before she escapes I ask, “Where can I get some water?”
“Oh, um, a, I don’t know. I have a bottle.”

But wait, this last part is said, of course in an interrogative, rising-tone manner, completely as though she is asking me a question, so I’m not sure if she’s asking or telling me about her bottle. It’s hard to communicate this low-level confusion, but I find myself often now noticing how almost all of these students don’t seem to say anything, but rather appear to be asking everything with a clearly rising and sometimes even shrill tone. One will be “saying” to another, “So I asked him like what was covered in class?? And he like said nothing new?? And I said like how y’know like boring she is??” I feel the urge to lend a hand here after each interrogative, especially because each seems to end with a pause. “I woke up this morning with a headache??” (rising tone and then a pause)

I find I just want to jump right in there at the end and assure her with, “Yes, go on. Yes, about the waking up with a headache. Please, go ahead. I’m all ears.” But I have come to realize that I am alone in this low grade insecurity about the true state of mind of the speaker. Apparently these statements are not questions at all. The other day I was walking behind two students who were talking, entirely in interrogatives like this, and while suppressing my urge to run up and emotionally rescue them, I came to realize that they were not only confident in their remarks about a third student who clearly must be sleeping with every man and woman on campus and the surrounding area, but they were being forceful and sure in their pronouncements. “I think she’s such a bitch??” (rising tone and then a pause) This is then agreed to with, “I can’t stand her??”

“No, please, I wouldn’t want to take your bottled water.” (even tone, no pause) “Is there a fountain nearby?” (rising tone and then a pause)
“I don’t know. I’ll send Sid over. He needs to talk to you.”
With that, Hanna melts into the crowd which is forming there at the sign-in nametag area. I spy a man in his thirties wearing a suit and feel relieved. I will not face these folks alone. The piano music has stopped now, and Sid arrives. Like the others, he practically stands on my toes, but he offers a firm handshake and a smile. I’m encouraged.

“Hey. I’m Sid. How do you spell your name? What is your title? What organization do you represent?”
“Hanna has all that.”
“I will be introducing you.”
“I see.”

I stand now, move further away from Sid, and ask, “Where do I sit?”
“In the front.”
“Are there special chairs? Do we face the audience while each of us addresses them? Is there a ceremonial component here? Are prayers being offered? Where can I find a drinking fountain?” (rising tones and then pauses throughout)

But he has walked away, so I wander off to find water. Most students seem to have water bottles, so the uninformed would think that there must not be a place to drink water for miles, but of course this is not the case. As I lumber down the hall I recall Yasutani Roshi’s now famous analogy for teaching the truth of the Dharma – selling water by the river. While he is my Dharma Grandfather, I more often consider my family grandfather in these situations. Old Dominic Russo would raise those eyebrows and utter something simple on seeing all these people pay for water when it’s free everywhere. He would stare in disbelief and shake his old coal miner’s head. “What-a the hell! Stupido! Such a Cut-a-butch! (his version of cabbage – meaning cabbage head) All dis-a money you pay out, and-a for what? So you pay some-a Big-a Wheel bastard for the water? You get-um for free, no? Just-a look!”

I walk perhaps twenty feet to a water fountain. The water is cold and wonderful and I linger there. Briefly I wonder about fountains. Will these disappear because of the bottles? After all, TV used to be free. All one needed was a set. And consider phone booths. I was at Chicago’s huge train station recently without my cell phone. It felt like going back forty years, back to when one had to find a working public phone where there were few and they were far between. I’ve been assured that there’s no money in public phones anymore. Everyone has a cell phone. So I wonder what may happen to this fountain when everyone pays for bottled water. I bend down to enjoy one more cold drink. I have to bend down pretty low, even though I’m short. The fountain has been strategically placed so that children could drink from it. As I walk away I wonder how old you have to be to get your first water bottle. Perhaps one might say it is directly after breast feeding.

I arrive again at the lecture area and sit at the front, facing the open closets. All the action is behind me now, and so again I close my eyes and try to conceive of a way in which I might speak of peace and non-violence from a Buddhist perspective in four minutes. But I’m interrupted by a young woman who sits next to me. We say hello. She is clearly Muslim, perhaps 19. I ask her what this is all about. She tells me that this is a dialogue.
I sit up and offer, “Interfaith dialogue?”

“No, just dialogue.”
“But dialogue about what?”
“Our feelings.”
“Our feelings about anything particular?”
“I think about Gaza.”
“Oh, Israel’s invasion?”
“Yeah, the violence in Gaza.”
“I see.”

I close my eyes again. Peace and non-violence in four minutes. Maybe I can talk about anger and how to see it as . . . .

“Hello everybody!” A young man has acquired the podium. “Is this too loud?”
It is. He adjusts the mike and introduces two other men. They are co-presidents of an organization I never heard of. I mentally toy with the concept of co-president. There is a five-minute presentation of all the dialogue events coming up over the next six months, all of which are presented as “super” or “awesome.” I turn in my seat and try to figure out who the other speakers could possibly be. I’m assuming now that the Rabbi is one, though he is seated in the middle of the thirty or so people who have come. I alone am in the front, except for the woman next to me. I begin to search the faces of those who have shown for dialoging. They are young, in many cases child-like. Everyone is white, and I see no trace of Hispanics or Asians. Chicago is over 60% African-American, and there are over one million Hispanics in the area, and many Asians. So clearly I am in a room of Muslims and Jews. I guess the Hispanics and Africans and Chinese don’t feel like dialoguing about Hamas or Gaza or Israel. Maybe they were not invited. But I was invited, and I’m an Italian-American Buddhist. As I’m asking myself what they could possibly want with me the first speaker begins.

He is Jewish, looks as if he is twelve, uses “um” for every other word, inflects every sentence as an interrogative, and takes ten minutes of his allotted four to basically say that we shouldn’t kill one another – that God doesn’t like this. People erupt into applause. The MC submits during the applause that the talk was awesome. Then the next speaker – another young student – announces that he has been asked to speak on Muslim finances and he launches into a dizzyingly detailed account of how a Muslim bank helps a person with a mortgage, and assures us repeatedly that this makes the bank a partner in the house purchase in a manor quite different from the way Western banks approach things. I get so lost in the numbers and percentages that I forget that he talks for what must be twenty minutes. While convincing myself that he has made a serious math error in his explanation I hear my name from the podium and I’m up.

Never preparing for spoken remarks, classes, teishos, etc. is one of my many great flaws. Long ago when I was a classroom teacher I had a great awakening one day that it never improved things to prepare, and so I just stopped doing it. Just dive deeply and selflessly into the moment – you will always know just what to say. And so here is the moment, and I have nothing whatever to say. As I look over the little group I am struck dumb by how many are playing with electronic devices. And so I begin with, “Once there was a Zen master named Hakuin . . . .”

As I speak I see people text messaging. Ira is in a non-stop conversation with someone in the back, loud enough for me to pick out words. Everyone seems to have a water bottle and they all are apparently very thirsty. Everyone seems snug and comfortable. But then I ask if anyone can name for me any war in history which was fought directly in the name of Buddhism. All ticks are stilled, all eyes return to me. A few people shift in their seats. I say I will wait, they can take their time. Silence. I wrap up my remarks and assure them that a good handle on one’s anger will help control violence. The moderator moves on to the next speaker through the applause. The next speaker turns out to be the young woman next to me who was tasked with the question “Love Thy Neighbor.” As she speaks I notice that I never got an “awesome” from the MC. Maybe I should not have brought up the war remark. I look back to see if anyone is staring at me or pulling out a knife, but they are blankly watching the speaker, texting, drinking water. I notice that the Rabbi is texting on a Blackberry.

Soon we find ourselves broken out into small groups, each arranged in a circle for dialogue. A toy football is passed around and we are instructed to speak only when we hold it. For the first go-round we are to tell everyone only what our emotional reaction has been to the violence in Gaza. We are to make no political statements. The first student speaks so quietly that I cannot understand what he is saying. He is Muslim. Then me. Then a Jew, then a Muslim, and so on. I pick out statements I hear which do not seem to match the assignment and I remember the instructions given to the moderators before the event. The moderator for our group is a very young woman who giggles after everything she says. She never interrupts any speaker. She never redirects. When someone offers that Israel is the most awesome place in the world, she says nothing. When someone lists specific statistics counting the number of civilians killed, soldiers killed, etc. she says nothing. When the oldest (except me) of our circle carefully couches his statement that Israel has the right to impose itself on the people in Gaza because the Jews have been looking for a homeland much longer than the Arabs have in personal emotional terms, she says nothing.

I excuse myself and leave the building, stopping at the water fountain for a cold drink before walking to the train. But before I can make good my escape I am again confronted by Ira, who assures me again that he is empowering students to communicate with each other, to dialogue. I want to ask him what exactly will be the impact of this dialoguing, seeing as people seem inattentive and thirsty. I want to ask him where the change in behavior will come from in these interactions. I want to suggest to him that when dialogue process itself is governed by the more powerful or popular side of any issue or stance there must be exceedingly more care taken to be tender and fair to all concerned. I want to take him by the ear and force him to come to the Religions in Dialogue course I and others offer at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I want to run back up front and close the closets, step to the mike and holler, “It is not about ME or I! It is about US!” (even tone, no pause, emphasis on US)

But I look at his smiling face and I realize that he can’t hear me, not any more than the people on the ninja bikes or the students who failed to show for the interfaith dialogue at Ghost University. So I wish him luck and walk away. As I walk down the hall I see more students, each packing an iPod, each listening to something I am not privy to, each listening to something different. On the train many are texting. But they seem to be well hydrated.

What to Do With Our Assets in These Troubled Times

2009-07-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

by Sevan Sensei

Interest is up and the stock market’s down,
And you only get mugged if you go downtown.

But I live back in the woods, you see,
My woman and my kids and my dogs and me.

I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a four-wheel drive.
A country boy can survive . . .
Country folks can survive.

-- Hank Williams Jr.

In these troubled economic times we regularly wonder if we will survive. We worry about our self, wonder about our home, job, family, status. We are concerned with our place in society. Are we slipping? Are we adequate?

We wonder spiritually too. Where we have always been somewhat self concerned – how many koans have I done, will I ever get anywhere in this practice – we now play these ego tapes even more, largely because we are beginning to consider everything in life as more of a struggle, and everything can be lost. We are growing more insecure about everything outside the zendo and off the mat, and so our more-or-less native insecurities about our spiritual “progress” start to grow too.

This breeds more self concern and even deeper insecurities. In economic terms, our stock starts to fall. Stock in the spiritual corporation we call “I,ME,MINE” starts a slow and steady decline. We seem to be failing and losing value pretty much everywhere these days. While our company used to borrow funds – take heart and encouragement, that is – from our teachers and the masters, from the tradition, and from the mat, we increasing feel as though we can’t raise much spiritual cash now. Our sitting suffers. And so we slough off more assets and personnel (effort), make fewer investments (sit less, sit with less vigor), make poor purchases (like books filled with gimmicks about practice instead of books by real masters, or workshops promising Great Mind in an afternoon), and we stop auditing ourselves as closely. We start subscribing to the “outside consultants” (magical thinking drifting in from the hustlers of the New Age).

While our bond rating suffers and we can’t even get credit, we complain to the teacher in dokusan that we are spiritually powerless, that outside market forces have somehow brought our I,ME,MINE company to near ruin. There we are, crying out in the interview room about how we are losing our spiritual market share. It is as an embattled CEO of an old and broken down ego firm that we ask, “What can I do?” Poor teachers may offer a “Now now, there” kind of government bailout while they hold our hand. Better teachers may offer tougher-to-swallow, bitter tasting business advice – sell out while there’s still time! Merge with a far better firm!

The teacher advises us (assuming for a moment that we are working on MU) to go with the smart money – sell all stock to MU Inc.

Interfaith Dialogue

2009-01-17T09:10:00.002-06:00

-Vinati DeVane

I feel like part of practice is continually unlearning our inclination to label, categorize, or contain our zazen. It is easy to give our practice a “name” – verbally, experientially, or emotionally, even – to feel “I am doing this kind of zazen now; I was doing a different kind of zazen yesterday.” I suppose this is a natural way we understand our practice, but it can also launch us into the world of “things,” ideas, fabrications, separation. All this verbalizing instead of just sitting…

Yet, before we are seated on that proverbial airplane and the hypothetical passenger seated next to us observes we are reading a book on Zen and asks, “So, what is Zen about?” we need to cultivate some measure of understanding our practice in order to respond. Smacking the armrest or yelling “Mu!” isn’t going to cut it.

This is the challenge I faced recently in auditing Sensei’s team-taught class, “Religions in Dialogue,” at the Lutheran Seminary this past fall. I was not directly asked the question, “What is Zen?” so much, but the experience was more about steeping in an array of these sorts of questions: “What does Buddhism say about sin?” or “Is there no god in Buddhism?” or “What is karma?” Further, the diverse class was asking reciprocal sorts of questions about the other religions represented, Christianity and Islam.

At the heart of our weekly discussion, our mission was to learn about and practice respectful engagement in interreligious dialogue. Short of summarizing the experience, I just want to mention a few issues I unearthed.

First, I think it is important to be tender with our uncertainty. There is a temptation for any dialoguer to offer concrete definitions of faith or belief as a religious “position” instead of recognizing one is still “in progress.” Perhaps we feel we shouldn’t engage in dialogue unless we are somehow “finished.” But staking out a personal position is the fastest way to become defensive and paint oneself into the “us v. them” corner. Yet, there are times when boundaries have to be recognized in establishing difference. Figuring out in dialogue what is called for and when is a delicate dance, and one doesn’t always know when one has stepped on one’s partner’s toes. The best I can offer is to dance with open uncertainty, not only toward the vast and wide teachings of Zen, but toward Islam, Christianity, Judaism. I’m in trouble if I can wrap up my understanding of Islam, put it on the shelf, and stamp “finished” on it. And I’m equally in trouble if I can package my understanding of Zen, complete with label.

Second, I feel in this dialogue all parties have to become “we” to actually hear what is being said – the “we” of a dancing couple, the “we” we experience side by side in the zendo. If we fix our discriminating mind against what we hear of other religions – by parsing its details, for instance – we haven’t really listened. On one of our class outings it was a great lesson to cover my hair for iftar dinner at the American College of Islam – an experience that needed to be felt more than understood. In the absence of the opportunity to join in the practice of a given religion, we have to feel our dialogue partner’s words as if we are saying them. Otherwise I don’t think we’re really listening.

Also, our view of interreligious dialogue is predicated on our view of our own religion. The kinds of questions we ask, the way we listen, what we hope to understand about ourselves and our neighbors, all these things are flying around the room in a dialogue situation. What we bring to the table is based on our own feeling. If we are insecure in our practice, we will too easily absorb, adopt, or agree with whatever our neighbor says – or there will be an indistinct but palpable resistance to true engagement. The fellow on the airplane really wants to know! And it won’t help if we shrug our shoulders. Our willingness to engage must come from our experience of truth, from whatever path we are apt to seek it, from whatever step we are taking on that path. I feel we owe it to ourselves and our partners not to fall back on our labels.

One’s teachers come at different times and places, and in this vein, I offer deep bows to my classmates at LSTC.

Four Haiku

2009-01-17T09:00:00.001-06:00

-Jon Laux

in this incensepot
endless blind passions burn up
releasing fragrance

tell me, Shitou, why
when "the dark makes all things one",
still i stub my toes

without thought of gain
the radiator spreads warmth
in shivering limbs

last year's dancing leaves
now, only stains on the stone
do we have more time?

Dancing on the Wires

2009-01-17T08:15:00.001-06:00

-Jody Wilson

On Tuesday, November 4, at the stroke of 7:00 pm., I stepped out into a promising Evanston evening and called loudly, “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now closed,” and burst into tears.

The emotional release was deeper than my exhaustion from the long day just passed and my anxiety about dealing with the complexities of closing the polls that was ahead. I had been caught up in anxiety and anticipation of this election for months. Not just for the conclusion of that endless campaign, but for the only possible outcome, the outcome I was sure the country needed and I passionately wanted. And now — at least in Evanston township, ward 8, precinct 4 — it was finally beyond the reach of all spinning, tweaking, winking, fluffing, framing and maverick-y top of the ticket Valentino suits; beyond million dollar info-mercials, auto-dialing and laugh-out-loud bumper stickers — “Republicans for Voldemort,” surprising yard signs — “Rednecks for Obama – even we've had enough! And even beyond U-Tube — “Hockey Mama for Obama” sung to the tune of “Don't Cry for Me Argentina,” accompanied on the piano by a guy wearing a moose hat.

Jacta alea est. The die was cast, you betcha.

In September, my practice started to become sporadic and uneven. My 20 – 30 minutes on the mat each morning was gradually reduced and finally surrendered completely to an obsessive checking of e-mail, RSS feeds, The New York Times and The Washington Post. And when I finally and infrequently did get my butt down on the zafu, I squirmed and plotted and obsessed. As Election Day approached, I wasn't sitting at all. The future of the world hinges on this election. This is different. This is really important. I was completely gone.

At first I tried to justify this situation as “engaged Buddhism.” But the truth is that just because I am a Buddhist and an activist doesn't make me an “engaged Buddhist.” Truly engaged Buddhists follow the Eight-Fold path into the world and bring their practice wholly into the fray. I wasn't doing any of that. I was simply “engaging” at a very low level in the political process. There was very little Buddhism about it.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, no one I knew was or even aspired to “be peace.” We were militantly against the war in Viet Nam, violently opposed to the draft and aggressively against everyone who didn't agree with us. “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today” is not Right Speech. Chant it like a mantra and pretty soon you've got hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of angry kids. Chant it — or something like it — long enough and you've got Kent State. And now, thirty and more years later, I was at it again. Churning the same kind of disdain, righteously convinced of my own rightness and obsessing endlessly over an outcome I had little hope of effecting.

It was especially disappointing because a few months before, I had an experience that led me to hope I had come a bit farther. One evening, just before the April primary, I was filling up my car when the man who was at the neighboring pump came over and, gesturing at my “Gore and Obama” bumper sticker said in the friendliest possible way, “That's an interesting combination.” I agreed. “Better than Hillary,” he says. Again, I agree, adding, “I think she's great, but she's too much of a hawk for me.” Smiling at each other, we both return to our pumps. “What do you think is going to happen?” he semi-shouts to me across our respective cars. And I know that he's talking about the results of the upcoming primary. “I don't know,” I semi-shout back. Then I walk over to him and confide, “Essentially, the outcome doesn't matter to me. Whoever the Democrats nominate will get my vote. I'll never vote for a Republican as long as I live.” He smiles as he says, “And I won't ever vote for a Democrat.”

“Really,” I say, “why is that?” I notice that I'm more curious than defensive.

“I work hard for my money,” he says. “I grew up in Europe and we didn't have much. I work hard for myself and my family and the Democrats always want to take my money and give it to others.”

I say, “I also work hard for myself and my family. And for you.”

He blinks. We smile.

“Almost 85% of Americans think Bush is on the wrong track,” I say.

“I think he's one of the greatest presidents we've ever had,” he replies. “He and Richard Nixon.”

Before I could even think about what I was doing, I reached out my hand and introduced myself. “We could talk for a long time and never agree,” I said, smiling. Smiling back he says, “That's right, but we're friends, aren't we?”

“Yes,” I confirm as we shake hands, “we are.”

I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back on my drive home.

So where did all of that freshly realized equanimity and heart felt good humor disappear to?

No mystery. It disappeared when I stopped sitting regularly.

“Upholding the precepts,
repentance and giving,
the countless good deeds
and the way of right living all come from zazen.”

Duh.

I become angry with myself for not knowing this. But I do know it. Of course I do. And then my ego is captivated or my imagination enchanted by a situation, a personality, an idea, whatever. And the temporary novelty fools me into believing that this is different, this is really important. That this — whatever this is — is more worthy of my attention than, well, than my attention. And I'm completely gone. Again.

I'm so glad we call what we do practice — and not mastery.

Autumn Notes

2008-10-02T23:03:00.007-05:00

Fall has arrived, the leaves are turning, and the air again has a crisp chill. Meanwhile, the economy struggles and Americans must decide who will lead them during the next four years. What better time to sit? At the Zen Center we will be celebrating the Fall as we always do, with several sesshins and zazenkai, Jukai and New Year's ceremonies.

Upaya in the Marketplace

A gentle reminder that the last day to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election is October 7th. If you have moved since the last election, will turn 18 on or before November 4th, have changed your name, or have never registered to vote before, now is the time to act. If you need more information on eligibility or voting in general, please see this document, published by the state Board of Elections.

Sit well,
J&J

Gratitude

2008-10-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

When you give an anonymous gift, you remove the self from the gift. Sure, it makes you feel good to give. But your thoughts can turn to others by way of imagination. You are now free to think more about the recipient and what s/he might be thinking. The recipient may try, at first, to figure out who it was that gave them the gift. But that is just a fantastical past-time, even if the recipient is ‘sure’ that s/he knows who it was. Really, in the end, can one really know? It may be narrowed down, possibly. But what happens when a person is given something anonymously? S/he is forced to think about the altruism of all the possible candidates. What a way to spend an afternoon thinking about friends, acquaintances, and loved ones!

-Mike McKane

Sesshin Instructions

2008-10-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

The dream we sleep in
is slated for demolition.
Sound travels slowly in this old house.
Feet travel faster. Hurry, hurry.
We must sound the alarm.
We must save the flashlights, the fire extinguishers,
the wax apple off the altar with a bite taken out.
We must save everything.
It will take just a minute,
one minute after another.
After innumerable eons,
I will meet you on the back deck.
We will count each others' heads.
When that day comes,
may we have no more than one each.

-Hugh Thomas

Sabbasava Sutta, Illustrated

2008-10-02T08:01:00.002-05:00

In September the Center had its first discussion group session on a selection of Pali suttas. The Sabbasava Sutta begins:

The Blessed One said, "Monks, the ending of the fermentations is for one who knows & sees, I tell you, not for one who does not know & does not see. For one who knows what & sees what? Appropriate attention & inappropriate attention. When a monk attends inappropriately, unarisen fermentations arise, and arisen fermentations increase. When a monk attends appropriately, unarisen fermentations do not arise, and arisen fermentations are abandoned...
-Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, available here

This inspired the following comment, which in turn inspired a cartoon:

"[Inappropriate attention] is like trying to get milk from a cow by pulling on its horns."

Copyright 2008 Franklin Habit
the-pantopticon.blogspot.com

Visit from Sujatha Bhikkhu

2008-10-02T08:00:00.001-05:00

In September the Sangha had an opportunity for a bit of Dharma exchange with the Venerable Bhante Sujatha Thera. On Thursday September 11, Sujatha Bhikkhu visited the Zen Center for an evening of instruction on loving-kindness (metta) and wisdom meditation.

Born in Sri Lanka and a Buddhist monk since the age of 11, Sujatha currently serves as abbot of Blue Lotus Temple in Woodstock, IL and leads sitting groups throughout the United States. While respecting the Theravada tradition, he seeks to make the Dharma accessible and relevant in the fast-paced culture we live in.

On September 13 Sevan Sensei paid a visit in kind to Sujatha's Sangha in Woodstock. A deep bow to all who took part in this exchange!

Vinati DeVane's Ordination

2008-04-19T13:09:00.008-05:00

Over 40 Sangha members, friends, and family came together Sunday, Feb. 3, to affirm the transformation of Caroline DeVane, long a resident of the CZC, into Vinati DeVane. (Vinati means humility, service, bowing in Pali and Sanskrit; it is pronounced vin-NA-tee.) The ceremony was moving, and the potluck wonderful. The party raged on for hours. Thank yous go out to all who pitched in, most especially Kathy, Gerrie, Jim, Elie, and Deena. Nine bows to all.

Precept #8

2008-04-19T12:51:00.003-05:00

“I resolve not to withhold spiritual or material aid, but to give them freely where needed.”
by Jon Laux

One of the great challenges of Zen is to integrate practice with daily life. Even if we do daily zazen and attend sesshin, most of our opportunities for practice will be “off the mat”. And daily life certainly slings its share of opportunities. That we call it “zen practice” is a gentle reminder that this work is never finished, never perfect; in each instant we do the best we can, that’s all.

Not long ago, I responded to a situation in a way that immediately disappointed me. On a Sunday afternoon last fall, I was driving home after several hours spent studying for an upcoming exam. The sun was going down and I was tired. As I headed east on Wacker toward the Lake Shore Drive entrance, traffic was backed up. An SUV had stalled in the left lane, and cars were merging to drive around it. A woman – presumably the SUV owner – was trying to talk to the drivers as they passed. Several drivers exchanged some words with her then drove on.

Finally, it was my turn. The woman asked for help: she was out of gas, and she and her nephew were trying to get back to Elgin. I believed her. I could have pulled over in front of her – I almost did. But I didn’t. Maybe I was nervous because of the line of cars stuck behind me, impatient and honking. Maybe I was anxious to get home and enjoy a warm meal. But mainly, the reason I didn’t pull over is that I just wasn’t there.

Most Chicagoans are well acquainted with the Panhandler Ritual: someone shakes a cup or asks for money, and you respond with whatever combination of fear, mistrust, calculation, judgment and compassion that you muster at that moment. Most of us have performed this ritual enough that it becomes an abstraction, like the half-hearted rolling stops that we make at stop signs. It’s easy to build up a callous so as to avoid looking directly at the situation before us. We’ve all heard numerous reasons not to give money to panhandlers, and most of them are no doubt justified in some circumstances. But these reasons can so easily accrete into rules that help demarcate the boundaries of self. Can we still abandon the rules when we see a need? Can we avoid switching into autopilot?

I drove on. Almost instantly I was filled with remorse. She just needed some money. Not five minutes earlier, I had paid $13 just for parking my car! Even though I drove on, thus solving “my problem”, that woman was still stuck there. Her problem had not been solved. And sitting in that SUV with an empty tank was a boy who was learning firsthand how Americans respond to the problems of their neighbors. I feel low.

As Sensei said during the last Jukai, we need to keep taking the precepts because we keep breaking the precepts. There is value in this. When I was 16 and wanted a driver’s license, I had to digest (and regurgitate) the DMV’s rules of the road. I’ve forgotten most of those rules. (Should you stop your car when a schoolbus is unloading on the other side of the street? Does the answer change if the street is divided?) Jukai gives us a periodic reminder of rules to live by. But it goes deeper. There are the rules of the road, and then there is driving safely. The precepts too can be seen as rules, but as another Sangha member wrote, the precepts actually describe mindful living. And they provide a feedback amplifier that can show us our mind at a given instant – usually when we’re out of step in some way.

When I was in high school, a popular yearbook quotation went as follows: “The trouble with life is that you get the test before the lesson.” The quotation really tells us more about the mindstate fostered by our schools than it does about life. If I had to do that day over again, I would have acted differently. But of course, that day is gone. We handle each moment in life with the karma that has brought us up to that exact moment. In hindsight you can earmark moments in your life that have been “pivotal”, what your motivations were, why you did what you did and why you are where you are now. But you cannot identify when the next pivotal moment will come or what it will look like. Hence the need for continued practice.

One faces similar challenges in the business world. I work in the insurance industry, where the annual performance of companies oscillates between pretty good and spectacularly awful. Insurance is predicated on the idea that similar-looking risks will behave similarly, and thus if you insure enough of them the group as a whole will behave somewhat predictably. This is true most of the time, but then there are the catastrophic events that nobody can foresee, the ones that can completely wipe out a company – think of 9/11, Katrina or asbestos lawsuits. The companies that lost money a few years ago will all tell you, “We’re a much better company than we were a few years ago.” But the only response I can find is this: wait until the next Big Thing happens. Then we’ll see. Until then, just keep working.

So... this article was supposed to be about spiritual and material aid. I wish I could say that after my experience last fall I began volunteering at a homeless shelter, or that I started a relief fund for people who run out of gas, or that I’m now in the habit of randomly dropping $20 bills on major roadways in case someone needs them. None of these things has happened. And yet, things are different. The experience was a flash point for me to examine the mind in daily life: how busy the days are, what’s important, what needs to be done but can wait five minutes, what to let slide. Having seen myself fail, I identify less with success.

Zen training is an ongoing process, and in many cases our efforts will be horrible blunders, ill-conceived in theory (if we have the time to theorize) and botched in execution. But if we pay attention along the way, each blunder can be a lesson, and the next effort might be a little less botched, a little more compassionate.

Precept #1

2008-04-19T12:50:00.003-05:00

by Laurel Ross

I RESOLVE NOT TO KILL, BUT TO CHERISH ALL LIFE is the first cardinal precept. I sometimes think that in directing us to “cherish all life” this precept encompasses all of the other precepts and the rest are details of how to accomplish this. I like to imagine a world where all people follow this guidance. No war, no homicide or suicide, no slaughterhouses or gallows—massive changes resulting in less pain and suffering for trillions of sentient beings.

Following this precept means adopting a vegetarian diet and most of us understand this to mean that animals will not be killed, a worthy outcome. The benefits to the world are far greater than that however and worth thinking about.

Hardly a day goes by that literate Americans do not hear about impending environmental catastrophe, usually accompanied by a plea to make personal choices that will help.

The global supply of clean fresh water is shrinking and the poor suffer most. Women and children all over the world spend a large percentage of their time seeking clean water. We are asked to be responsible--stop watering a useless lawn; shower with a friend; turn off the tap while brushing our teeth.
Climate change is upon us. Some recommendations are to turn down the thermostat, change to efficient light bulbs and install a green roof.
Fossil fuel supplies are dwindling. We try to take public transportation, dump that gas-fueled lawn mower, snow blower and leaf blower, ride a bike, or drive a hybrid. Recycle and reuse of course.
Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate. We can send a check to the World Wildlife Fund.

These are serious issues and these good ideas for conservation and many more are promoted by well-meaning people (like me). What is not being promoted much in the mainstream media though is one simple change in behavior that would result in enormous environmental benefit: STOP EATING MEAT.

Consider the issues raised above.

Water: Sometimes described as “the new oil,” potable drinking water is increasingly scarce because of depleted aquifers, droughts, and pollution. In the face of this more than half of the US water supply goes to livestock production. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, and 2,500 gallons for a pound of beef. Water used in livestock production is not for direct consumption, but for the corn, roughage, and other crops that are grown as feed. There is also considerable water pollution from nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and “manure lagoons.”

Fossil fuels: Raising animals for food in the horrific factory conditions now common in the US accounts for more than one-third of all the fossil fuels used in our country. The creation of a single hamburger patty (potentially containing the flesh of up to 100 different cows) uses enough fossil fuel to drive an average American car 20 miles and enough water for 17 warm showers.

According to one source (see below—John Robbins) if people in the United States chose to give up eating meat, our oil reserves would be extended from current estimates of 10-30 years to up to 260 years. This is because vast amounts of petroleum products are used to produce feed, which comes from corn and soybeans that are raised using huge machines and immense amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The feed has to be transported to the animals. The animals have to be transported to the “processing” plants. The flesh has to be transported to the markets, etc.

How many real solutions to the oil shortage have been proposed? Not many that I know of. A mass switch to a vegetarian diet might buy us some time to find viable alternatives.

Extinction crisis and climate change: Livestock production has resulted in the destruction of millions of square miles of habitat all over the globe. In Latin America massive areas of rain forest and other tropical habitats have been cleared to raise soy beans and corn for cattle feed and to directly graze animals. The carbon released into the atmosphere by this landscape-scale deforestation is a major contributor to the serious situation that is at last becoming understood by the general public in our country. We are living on a warming planet that in the foreseeable future may no longer be able to sustain life as we know it. Deforestation also means the loss of habitat for millions of plant and animal species that can live nowhere else—hence the rapidly rising rate of extinctions. Not insignificant, although rarely talked about, is the loss of livelihood for millions of indigenous people who have subsisted in those forests for thousands of years, resulting in the rapid growth of urban poverty.

Eating meat is a choice, and one which currently contributes substantially to the overall excessive consumption patterns in our culture. We can make better choices and a good place to start is by following the first precept.

I have consulted three books for this short essay. Michael Pollan’s recent best seller, Omnivore’s Dilemma, Barbara Kingsolver’s personal and charming memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and John Robbins’ provocative and occasionally hyperbolic Diet for America. I am happy to lend them to anyone interested in learning more.

Precept #4

2008-04-19T12:45:00.002-05:00

“I resolve not to lie but to speak the truth.”
by Jody Wilson

Seemingly straightforward, the Fourth Precept goes deeper than just a George-and-the-cherry-tree goody-goody resolve not to tell lies, although it certainly encompasses that kind of simple honesty.

This precept, like all of our practice, brings us relentlessly back to that pesky question — what IS truth? Since that is a question I’m not qualified to answer, maybe it’s best to start with what is not truth. I’ve made a handy list:

Story: “. . .and they all lived happily ever after.”
Literature: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
Poetry: “I hear America singing . . .”
Myth: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Social grease: “What an interesting dress!”
Exaggeration: “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times!”
Excuses: “The dog ate it.”
Ego protection: “The check is in the mail.”
Blatant: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” *
Dangerously delusional: “And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.” **

Then there are the filters through which we see and experience our lives and the world around us. We’re so used to these distortions and take them so much for granted that we don’t even notice that they’re there. It’s the way we think about things, the unconscious way in which we interpret the events of lives, even our expectations of outcomes. In scientific terms, it’s called “the observer effect.” More mundanely, we see what we expect to see.

So how do we come to see things as they are, including ourselves, our exaggerations, our fictions, our opinions, our delusions, our ego protections and preferences, regardless of consequences?

I have no idea. Except to sit. Except to keep on with the hard questions. Except to be willing to have a cherished “truth” exposed as an ordinary opinion. And, to be willing to not speak at all.

That is, frankly, the hardest for me. I’ve got a million ideas, not to mention opinions, thoughts and – above all – feelings about all sorts of people, places and things. A friend once said that if I didn’t feel something — anything — I’d cut off my arm and beat myself with it until I did. I feel too strongly about too many things. And although it may make for interesting conversation, it’s a real burden in the search for truth. And can lead to unintended consequences.

In 1995, I traveled to Tibet. Feeling strongly about the Chinese occupation of that country and having personal connections with both local Tibetan refugees and staff at the International Campaign for Tibet, I brought along a slew of Tibetan language pamphlets, from a “Free Tibet” point-of-view, of course. I was warned not to actively distribute the pamphlets, but to leave them behind in hotel rooms and rest stops where the locals could pick them up. About six weeks after I returned, I read that a couple of French tourists had been arrested for doing exactly the same thing I had done. I realized that I had risked the safety of everyone with whom I was traveling. Plus, I didn’t always follow the advice I was given and had actually visited family members of a Tibetan friend living in Chicago, where I included these pamphlets with the family letters and photos I had been asked to deliver. With the clear resolve “Not to lie but to speak the truth” and with all “good” intentions, I had thoughtlessly jeopardized the lives of many. I still shudder at the possible consequences.

And I still muck around in the muddy ground between truth and propaganda, between facts and my opinions, between my ideas about what’s happening and what is actually happening.

I cannot tell a lie — some days I long for a cherry tree and a little hatchet!

* Cheney: 8/26/2002
** Bush: 5/29/2003

Precept Essays: Introduction

2008-01-21T17:00:00.000-06:00

Twice a year, our Sangha gathers to take Jukai and recommit to the Buddhist precepts. For reference, the precepts as we take them at the Center are as follows:

1. I resolve not to kill but to cherish all life.
2. I resolve not to take what is not given, but to respect the things of others.
3. I resolve not to misuse sexuality, but to be caring and responsible.
4. I resolve not to lie but to speak the truth.
5. I resolve not to cause others to take substances that impair the mind, nor to do so myself, but to keep the mind clear.
6. I resolve not to speak of the faults of others, but to be understanding and sympathetic.
7. I resolve not to praise myself and disparage others, but to overcome my own shortcomings.
8. I resolve not to withhold spiritual or material aid, but to given them freely where needed.
9. I resolve not to indulge in anger, but to practice forbearance.
10. I resolve not to revile the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha), but to cherish and uphold them.

Before the last Jukai, I invited Sangha members to write something reflecting on a particular precept that was important to them. Some initial responses appear below.

To examine the precepts carefully is to rediscover our own efforts, and inevitably, our own shortcomings. While these efforts can be very personal, these writings are offered as a lens through which to see our efforts in their universality-- though the names and forms differ, much of what follows should sound quite familiar.

-JRL

Precepts #6 and #7

2008-01-21T16:00:00.000-06:00

I resolve not to speak of the faults of others but to be understanding and sympathetic.

I resolve not to praise myself and disparage others, but to overcome my own shortcomings.
by Caroline Devane

These precepts seem self-explanatory and clear, right? For the first few years of my coming to the Zen Center I see now that, in a way, I dismissed the precepts because they seemed so obvious: “Oh yeah, of course you don’t lie, cheat, steal, kill, etc.! No problem!” What I didn’t see or understand was their continual applicability, that they weren’t commandments from above that only applied to rarified situations, but they describe mindful living. Their subtlety is great and unless our awareness is gauged to that level of subtlety, easy to dismiss as obvious. Apparent truths are easy to overlook.

Recently, someone unconnected with the Zen Center asked me a few questions about Buddhist practice. He was amazingly curious about practice, but was avowedly committed to a different tradition. He asked me if the practice of zazen changes your behavior in any way, to which I replied that it can. I tried to explain that, given enough time and effort, our sensitivity to the world deepens and brings with it a deeper morality. If engaged in regular zazen, we start to notice our imperfections. My questioner looked confused, so I tried to elaborate on what it means to develop sensitivity to one’s missteps by saying, “Haven’t you ever said something to someone and then walked away and felt like a jerk?” I was then going to say that for some, practicing zazen helps one to catch oneself sooner – that one’s awareness of one’s unskillful actions, and further, the motivations behind such actions, becomes clearer if one works at it. I remember one of our former members describing a new-found sensitivity to ants after a sesshin. He was walking to the train stop and, looking at the ground as he walked, fumbled so as to not step on an ant that was directly underfoot. In terms of these precepts, though, what a different feeling it is to encounter someone who used to really push your buttons and catch yourself before you retort with something unkind. Or even nominally unkind. It’s the need to defend oneself in the face of oftentimes imagined opposition that has gotten me in trouble. If Zen can teach us to open up and let it go, and that opening this way is morality itself, then in those situations where we walk away feeling like jerks, we can still find the courage to hold ourselves accountable.

But all of the above went unsaid in the dialogue with this fellow. To my question if he’d ever said something he regretted, he replied, “No. I am very careful about what I say, and I never hurt anyone’s feelings.”

Really? Perhaps this person actually is perfect and has never said anything out of place! But for the purpose of this article, let’s assume for a moment that this person is simply unaware of himself. We often are not aware of the impact we have on people, especially when it means we would have to admit to ourselves that we did something wrong. Or maybe the pain of realizing that we screw up is too great, and we get trapped in believing that, most of the time, we don’t screw up. I believe this was the attitude behind my initial understanding of these precepts. Simply because I believed that the precepts described the right way to live somehow made me feel like I was living the right way. What a conclusion! And a convenient way of avoiding pain.

The precepts are obvious, self-explanatory, and clear. Yet it seems there are two ways to see them as obvious, self-explanatory, and clear: with self or without self. One way is the way of my questioner (and a way I am familiar with): “Of course I don’t kill, steal, abuse, lie, act stingy, angry, ignorant, greedy, or mean! I am an upstanding person who does his best to be nice, generous, gentle, open, nurturing, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate, and clean!” Speaking from experience, in this position there is a lot of effort to retrace the lines around “who I am.” The other way (echoing the precept itself) is to approach the precepts with the willingness to overcome our shortcomings. It’s a willingness to let the ego take a blow, and not ignore the truth of the situation at hand, no matter how humbling or painful it may be. This alternate way places the evolving truth of the moment above our self-interest. Even if we’ve come to a place of admitting to ourselves that we have work to do, it’s only half the battle. The need to be brutally honest with ourselves about our unskillful actions and speech will never go away.

And in the end, since these precepts do not come to us from “on high,” but are really descriptions of how a skillful person lives, what do we do when faced with the brand of denial we may be encountering in my questioner? If my questioner can’t be brutally honest with himself about his past transgressions, it likely doesn’t fall to me to tell him. If I said something in response, would it really help? Perhaps it would be better to spend time looking at all the occasions in which I was so unskillful – the times I walked away feeling like a jerk.

Precept #5

2008-01-21T15:00:00.000-06:00

On Intoxicants
by Seanna Tully

When Sensei first asked me to do the meal chants, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, “How does he know? I’m chanting to myself, I’m the hungry ghost.”

You see, when the precepts ask us to abstain from intoxicants, my primary choice of intoxicant is food. It can be overeating a meal and under-eating the next few, consuming lots of sugary food, partaking in restrictive diets, obsessing about the next meal or a particular food, and any other way the compulsive mind twists itself around into that dance between prohibitions and loss of inhibitions.

The fact is my choice of intoxicant is far from extraordinary. It’s a truly an American way of life. Our food is overloaded with highly refined carbohydrates like high fructose corn syrup, and additives like caffeine that cause the blood sugar levels to first rise unnaturally high and drop terribly low, leading to more carbohydrate cravings. So on and on the cycle goes. And that’s just the biochemical part.

Coming out of the holiday season, it seems that as an American citizen, I was born to consume. Commercials on television endlessly grab the mind’s attention to “Eat this,” or “Buy the next greatest and latest gadget.” By the end of this holiday week, the garbage is piled high on the curbside with emptied boxes, torn gift-wrap, and other skeletons from our holiday feast of consumption.

This “hungry ghost” cycle lives on in me as arms grab and eyes want without my conscious intervention in a given moment. It lives in 1,000 unconscious moments eating in front of the Internet or the television set. (Have you ever noticed how easy it is to consume entire bags of stuff while just sitting there, or how commercials lead to cravings for something else?) It lives on at parties when I’m eating because I’m uncomfortable, or in any particular moment when an emotion seems too difficult to bear. It lives on in that particular anxious moment and a need for escape until life, itself, takes on the tenor of this behavior of escape.

Escape from what, exactly? And who runs? There is an opportunity in that unbearable moment to see that we are much more than our old habits. Sometimes, I don’t feel so motivated to take those opportunities. But, ultimately, in order to change compulsive behavior, I’ve found it useful to become a student of my addictive process. Motivation comes from understanding, historically, the damage caused by continuing on the path I’ve been on, taking responsibility for what I’ve done, facing those that I’ve hurt, and resolving not to make the same mistakes. By numbing myself with food, I have failed to appreciate the gift of this precious life/moment and missed seeing when I’ve hurt the dear hearts of those around me.

Hence, Kapleau viewed the fifth precept on intoxicants as a gateway to breaking the others. The precept (1) and Buddhist literature, however, speak more directly against the use of alcohol and drugs. Ordinary observation of an intoxicated person clearly demonstrates that the loosening of inhibitions due to alcohol, marijuana or other inebriant can and often does result in poor judgment, promiscuous and rude behavior (2). It’s less obvious with compulsive behaviors like those related to food, or even trashy novels, romantic infatuations/encounters, the video games, and endless other compulsive distractions (3). Yet, the long-term effects of not learning to bear difficulties without a crutch or distraction are ultimately the same. The act of continually justifying and perpetuating one’s addictive behavior can cripple one’s ability to gain emotional maturity and wisdom from the bumps and bruises that come with life. It’s the “Big Baby” syndrome as coined by the folks at AA. Those innately human and childlike voices in us that say: “That’s not fair!” “Life should be going according to my plan” and “Why me?” Emotional maturity arises when we learn to take ourselves by the hand as gently and firmly as we need and let go in the midst of all life’s turmoil. Once attention is given, the voices usually quiet down and what actually remains and what needs to be attended to is a bit clearer.

Sometimes I’ve found that willing myself out of a compulsive behavior is a bit like trying to pull out a root from the ground that just won’t come. And, setting myself up with “emotional maturity” as bait (or any other bait) is utterly inadequate. Gaining, losing, forward, backward: is one better than the other? Changing for the sake of gaining an abstract notion of emotional maturity is ultimately about getting caught up in conditions. Craving… just craving…no craving…just no craving. But, while change is natural, we do have the will to steer ourselves in a direction that is healthier for us, and perhaps, for the world. That is, if we are not too preoccupied or intoxicated to notice.

On the practical end, what does this act of “steering” look like for me? One handy tool I learned from Sevan Sensei is to insert time between a desire and the gratification of a desire. With food, I generally need to have a plan which makes it easier to be more intentional and attentive about what, when and how I am eating and when I am not eating. So that I’ll take something I’m craving and put it into a future meal or snack I’ve planned. That way, I am less likely to be mindlessly shoving something into my mouth and then later regretting it. This waiting period also is effective in taking the pressure out of going “cold turkey” on other compulsive behaviors (4). For example, I’ve found it useful to have dates with myself to watch a movie or a TV show, rather than indulging an undercurrent of escapism by flipping on the TV, pouting, and tuning out.

Second, there are no foods or compulsive behaviors that are inherently evil (heinous acts of violence too complex to discuss here). Fundamentally, there is no “disease,” no “self” and no “God” to save this ‘self’ from a ‘diseased’ compulsive behavior. However, through experience and biochemical realities, there are certain foods that are more likely to illicit a compulsive response than others for me. I found that talking to a nutritionist helped to flesh out the details of how to better work with the biochemistry of craving in my body. Meditative practice, of course, is invaluable for working with addiction. While meditating for the sole reason of ending one’s addiction is a ultimately a dead end (5), practice does help to provide deeper insight into life’s problems and cultivates innumerable practical skills for dealing with the addictive process, from equanimity and letting go to angry determination and fiery will.

In practice, I can’t expect myself to maintain perfect adherence to my own guidelines, and ultimately the Buddhist precepts too, or I become terribly guilty and defeated. During a Teisho, Sevan Sensei once said of the precepts: “First, we have to forgive others for breaking them, and also to forgive ourselves for breaking them.” To borrow again from AA, “progress, not perfection” is a laudable goal here, one I usually try to keep in mind.

And now, as the offering plate passes my way, I tear off a piece of this writing as offering, circle it three times around…. “May it fill the ten directions and satisfy hunger in realms of darkness…”
“Oh hungry ghost, oh tortured spirit, abandon greed and rouse the desire for enlightenment!” [clappers]

1. CZC’s version reads: “I resolve not to cause others to take substances that impair the mind, nor to do so myself, but to keep the mind clear.”
2. Kapleau flushes out the complexities of alcohol and enlightenment in Five Pillars, see footnote 16, pg. 344.
3. As discussed in the Fall 2007 CZC discussion group on intoxicants: Recreational drugs, addictive prescription meds, stimulants, cigarettes, alcohol; Gambling; Romance and/or Sex, Pornography; TV, Internet, video games; Reading (esp Romance novels, Thrillers); Food, Fasting/Restricting, Speeding, Shopping and Runner’s high.
4. I’m not speaking on drug/alcohol addiction in this instance that may, most likely, require professional help.
5. A book I’ve found to be helpful on this topic is: Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. 2002. Shambhala.

Real Spiritual Teaching or Not?

2007-11-03T17:06:00.000-05:00

Some Suggestions on What to Look Out For
Sensei Sevan Ross, Chicago Zen Center

There is confusion on all fronts.

An individual faces a bewildering scene when looking for or working with spiritual teachers. In Asia there is a narrower array of options than in the West. There we find Traditions which are quite old, and a temple structure and lineage apparatus which lay down some clear guidelines for the shape, duration, and boundaries of spiritual training. From the Zen temples of Japan to the mountain enclaves of Tibetan Vajrayana, from the Thai Forest Monks to even the loose structure of Hinduism, there is long and entrenched tradition to look to when considering spiritual guidance. While these deeply enculturated structures do not in any way guarantee high quality or uniform behavior on the part of practitioners or teachers, and while to a Westerner these structures can even be seen as a lack of choices, this more traditional environment does usually at least provide a stricter set of guidelines to both teachers and students for defining exactly what a spiritual teacher is. While I am most concerned with the Zen teaching scene here in America since that is where I hang my hat, the following reflections may also be applied to not only other Buddhist traditions but to any spiritual work where there is a mentor.

In the USA we find an environment with a rich loam in which to grow both legitimate and illegitimate spiritual teachers and traditions. While we host here in this multicultural landscape all manner of traditions, we add to these traditions a highly (and some would say overly) psychological framework. On top of this we may add an aggressive commercial bias. Throw in all the New Age inventions and blendings, water it down with a hankering to change and reshape virtually everything until it is exactly what we would prefer (read, make it easy and shallow), and you no longer have a spiritual garden which is being cared for by well-trained and dedicated master teachers. Not at all. Instead you find a garden which may grow both useful and desirable spiritual food (even if these plants are naturally of somewhat uneven quality), but along with this crop grows a tangled patch of weeds. These weeds may look like spiritual traditions, but they may be dangerous to the real food plants, and are often downright poisonous to would-be practitioners.

While a careful examination of this whole scene may have great value, and while there have been attempts to make some sense out of either all or part of it, our purpose here is merely to offer some insights aimed directly at the questions which arise when one is looking for a teacher, or is looking to augment one’s practice with the teaching of someone other than one’s root teacher. Our interest lies in the personalities and psychologies of teachers. To use a more familiar commercial lens: Who are the producers and what is offered? And while we are surveying this garden, let us consider the likely impact of the crops grown.

Traditional spiritual training as I understand it (from my clearly Zen Buddhist bias) has as its aim the shaping and refining of thoughtful, active, caring, social, deeply grounded people who (at least from the Zen perspective) come to approach the world from a mind steeped in insight. This particular insight surpasses simple intellectual realization. It arises from the “gut” where it has been awakened through years of hard, unremitting practice. This practice happens in the context of a community of fellow practitioners as well as in the society as a whole. The impact of this training is nothing less than a reorganization of one’s approach to life and to others, as well as to one’s self. In my tradition we help the student pry the mind loose from its barnacle-like hold on its routine – its ego-centered habits and pain-producing attitudes.

The teacher’s place in this training model should be one of coach and example. While in the strictest sense the teacher has nothing whatever to give the student, what the teacher can offer the student is a living example of how one might address the world after a great deal of development and insight in one’s spiritual life. Along with this example of the fruits of long practice should come a firm but kind guiding hand which both challenges the student in his or her journey, and protects the student from influences which may sidetrack or even cause harm. It is well understood that these influences may well include aspects of the teacher’s own personality, will, or desires. Teachers are here to guide students along, not sidetrack them into another agenda. A real teacher must not twist the teaching in such a way that the teacher, the lineage, or even the tradition itself is seen in a better light. We are in service here of the highest truths, not in service of the teacher and the teacher’s image or desires.

All the above is said to set the stage for a number of crucial questions which every student should ask when considering a teacher or teaching. As one of my students put it once, “Buddhism treats you like an adult.” This should be true of any religious tradition. The practitioner is an adult in that the practitioner should never simply check her or his brain at the door of the temple or meeting. Finding the right relationship is all rather like dating (perhaps a little too much so). Even somewhat further into the relationship, after some time and experience working with a teacher, one should keep one’s eyes open for flaws that are possibly serious. If one feels one has found such a flaw, one must reconsider the relationship of teacher and student.

In referring to these training and relationship issues commentators often reminded us of three things which should be red flags: Seeking name and fame, sexual involvement with students, acquisition of riches. These three are classic warning signs for students of teachers to avoid. Central to our use and understanding of these is the fact that they all share some clear characteristics. All spring out of and are evidence of an inflated ego on the part of the teacher. All are related to power. In each abuse we see the workings of a special type of domination paradigm where the teacher acquires more power and stature and the student is in some way further subjugated.

So what follows here are the classic warning signs. But first a warning: There is always the problem of exactly where the lines are on these. For example, if the teacher buys a very nice car as opposed to a merely functional one, some observers will write off such a purchase as necessary to either attract certain donors or to help the teacher with his bad back whenever he travels. Others may feel that any car at all is unnecessary. And there may be opinions everywhere in between. We could spend our whole discussion trying to pin down where these lines are, but since we have a long way to go, let me instead suggest some simple questions to ask in these classic areas. I am herein appealing to the deep compass which I feel is available to most people. I’ve discovered through the years that we as a society often do not engage these deep moral instincts enough, either because they were underplayed or not taught at all when we were children, or because of some misguided over-application of our current sense of political correctness. I feel strongly that we need to revive and engage our common sense.

So simply put:
1. How much money is too much for a teacher? If you find yourself or others reaching for justifications to explain the opulence, look out. If you find yourself justifying the fact that your spiritual guide just bought a new decked-out Harley, congratulations – you are now in the same neighborhood as the families of alcoholics who stretch to justify the drinking. It’s a dangerous neighborhood.

2. Sexual contact with students: There should not be any. If there is, then what should occur is disclosure, counseling, mea culpas, guidelines, community healing. We need to be careful here, however. I feel that because of the recent abuse issues growing out of the Catholic Church and other high-profile organizations, we are nuclear in all our responses to these situations. I heard of a state government which recently enacted a law which provides mandatory prison terms for anyone who has sexual contact with clients when they are providing counseling. I submit that this will neither prevent this contact, nor will it reform the perpetrator. This kind of thinking is draconian and shows once again our lack of simple common sense. Of course there are situations when this sort of punishment is needed. But one cannot legislate the human heart, and people will not only cross care-giver and client boundaries, but they may actually fall in love, and moreover, some of these relationships may well last a lifetime. A complex range of interactions can and will occur between spiritual teachers and students.

Because of the power disparity which is tipped in favor of the teacher and the clear vulnerability of the student we must do everything in our power to prevent this – that is without beheading people. More important for our purposes here, however, is the notion of Pattern. Did the teacher cross sexual boundaries because he or she fell in love – or is this just lust and abuse? If this behavior occurs again and again, we know the answer. If a community of women, say, is polled confidentially, and they strongly agree that the teacher is safe, and they have a good bird’s eye view of the teacher’s habits and history, then we can be somewhat assured (though never entirely) that we do not have a sexual abuser on our hands. Bottom line: Ask the women of the community (if considering a heterosexual man teacher). If they all smile beatifically and admire him, but they can’t tell you about any of his flaws, they may not be reliable. But if they have seen him at close range over a long time, can tell you that he is not perfect in various areas, and still tell you that they see him as sexually safe, he may well be safe. And this may be true even if he has once had some slip in this department. We have to look at the whole record. What’s the pattern? What’s the history?

3. Is the teacher self promoting? Self-promotion is easy to see, even if the teacher is not famous. Does the teacher speak of her or his attributes often? Are they trying actively to “promote” themselves? A gauge I can offer here is quite simple: How much time do they spend working on building their practice and community compared to the time spent out on the lecture circuit promoting themselves? More on all this below.

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Beyond this set of useful guidelines there is the world of pattern, instinct, and simple observation. My father shocked me once while we were sitting on his back porch in Pittsburgh when he confidently predicted that a red-tailed hawk that had been lurking around the birdfeeder would soon “pick off two of those sparrows.” Not more that five minutes later that bird swooped down on the hapless flock, talloned one sparrow, twisted around the tree the feeder was mounted on and surprised another who had fled in that direction. Two birds under wing, the hawk silently glided further down the hill. Of course I asked Dad how he knew. He replied, “I watch ‘em.”

Careful observation will give us certain patterns which, while not infallible, can provide us with amazingly accurate predictors. Then we can engage and even improve our instinct and avoid trouble. So we are indeed here in the business of making judgments. When we cross the street and we see that a car is careening toward us with a drunken teenager behind the wheel and we jump far back onto the curb we are also making judgments. This is not sinful, no matter what the politically correct crowd may say. This is a survival instinct, and to ignore it is to do so at great peril both to ourselves and to others. If my father came to his bird observations with what some might see as an “open mind,” he would be blind to the damage about to be done. I appeal to the reader here directly: You have witnessed human abuses, abuses by commercial marketing thinking, abuses by predators – use what you have seen; look for the patterns; watch for the signs. Perhaps this can help:

Let us set up a sliding scale, and we will do this using an old playground toy as our metaphor – a kid’s teeter-totter. On one end we have the traditional institutions charged with delivering a certain spiritual message and/or providing for a certain, well defined kind of spiritual training experience. In Western Zen we call these Zen Centers, Zen Temples and such. These are classically monastic or semi-monastic in nature, but in this new environment of Western commercial society they may also be entirely lay institutions. The point is that they advertise little, uphold the traditional training in pretty much the form they found it, and stick to their spiritual knitting. As we move toward the other side of our teeter-totter we typically start adding stuff. Some of this stuff comes in the form of adaptations of Western religions and psychology. Many of the add-ons are not only innocent but are helpful – Sunday schools for kids, coming-of-age ceremonies, famine relief days, church socials, layers of oblate or deacon-like lay ordination, interfaith programs. In Zen Centers we may adapt things for the local Sangha by changing Sesshin retreat schedules somewhat, tweaking the sitting rounds to be longer or shorter, adding to the schedule holidays and celebrations and possibly even rites that are outside the tradition but are very helpful for our community. But we are still sitting on the teeter-totter with our feet on the ground. We are still focused on training, the tradition, the insights of the tradition, and the community. The influence of the commercial market society as a whole is there, of course, but it is in check.

But let’s see what happens as we move our attention (and intention) up that board to the fulcrum – to the point of confusion. Near the fulcrum there is danger. But to understand the danger we must look to the other side of the continuum – the marketplace. Far out on the end of our teeter-totter we have an environment of, well – to put it bluntly – sales and business success. This is the theme that now runs through pretty much all American life, from our measurement of sales at the box office and the bookstore (how to gauge artistic quality) to our income comparatives and (can you believe) our credit scores. In all areas of life here now we measure quality by quantity. I suspect that we do not even really know the difference between them most of the time. Growth is king in every field, and when it comes to the world of the spiritual mentor things are apparently no different. At an American Zen Teachers Association meeting a few years ago I was involved in a workshop in some management aspects of operating a Zen Center. We had about twelve Zen teachers in our group there and we were simply discussing the things we do or have considered doing to attract students. (The significance of the very existence of such a discussion should not be lost on us.) At one point I commented that we should all remember that a conscious decision to limit the growth or the size of our own temple is not only okay but may be desirable. To my surprise this passing comment brought sighs of genuine relief from a number of the participants. They went on to say that they have always felt a quiet inner pressure to grow the place and that lack of growth (let alone shrinkage!) marked some sort of failure of theirs as a teacher. One teacher put it beautifully when he offered, “Let’s face it, all Zen teachers count the shoes.”

There are, to be sure, good reasons to wish the temple to grow and prosper. We want our tradition to remain healthy for future generations. We want it to serve its members and community. We want it to be a guiding light for as many people as possible. But just under these noble concerns may well lurk others: Am I a good teacher (like the movies, measured in attendance numbers – confusing quality with quantity)? Is what I am doing popular (read, do I make people feel good about themselves)? This reveals the insecurity of our age, an era in which people will broadcast drunkenness, sex acts, and silliness through the internet just so they can garner more viewers to their apparently all-consuming video attempts to shore up the self. (Do spiritual teachers need personal Blogs? Would Zen Master Hakuin have even considered this?) And naturally there are all manner of other compromises spiritual teachers can and do make to promote themselves, their temples, their teachings, their lineages – their product.

So on one end of the balance we have the traditions themselves, and on the other end the marketplace. But now back to that dangerous fulcrum. The unique danger of the tipping point is that we often don’t see it. I propose that to teach our traditions, teachers should never allow their feet to leave the ground – pardon the image, but we should be happiest with teachers who remain grounded in their respective traditions. Our seesaw has a unique danger built in at the fulcrum because as we get further from the traditional end with our attention, we become enamored with our success (at improving whatever score we are keeping) and find ourselves more open to changes and ideas just a little further down the board we are sitting on. If we attract more (people, admiration, attention to the temple, money, whatever) here, why not go a little farther toward the commercial model? Certainly it can’t hurt to push a little more. The problem is that somewhere out there the balance suddenly changes and we find our spiritual community morphing into a commercial enterprise.

Why is this important for our discussion here about finding a teacher? It is crucial to know the difference between real training and the simple consumption of a commercial product. Real training always centers itself around the benefit and welfare of the student, while the commercial enterprise here does not, and may well focus on benefits for the spiritual director. The traditional neighborhood is safe and loving while the other neighborhood takes your money, your time, your mind, and your body. In this neighborhood what you reap from the enterprise is of little value as spiritual nutrition, but it tastes great going down. The spiritual-commercial neighborhood is a dangerous one indeed, and it is filled with scams and crooks, rapists and con men. It looks safe to the untrained eye because it is made to look safe. And on the commercial side of our seesaw the most dangerous area is right near the fulcrum, since what is offered from this place may well look like traditional training. It is well for the observer to remember that crooks and con artists can appear anywhere along the continuum, but the possibility of danger grows exponentially as one feels ones feet lifting off the ground of traditional training and one becomes grounded instead in a marketing world.

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There are certain requirements for having a spiritual community and the most important among them is that you have to have a community. If you have a monastery you have a community. If you have many lay practitioners in close proximity to one another you have a community. If you have only a schedule of retreats where many of the practitioners of a given tradition convene and sit together, you may still have a community, but things are more tentative. If you only have a retreat schedule there is not much of the day-to-day interaction among practitioners that defines community. It only happens during, right before, and right after the retreat, and even at these times there no real continuity. Continuity is important because it sets up and demands repeated encounters among the individuals in the group. We get to see and hear the idiopathic maladies that plague individual personalities. Bluntly put, in day-to-day interactions among practitioners everyone’s shit gets revealed. This may take some time, but it absolutely will happen. If we only see each other around retreats, there is far less opportunity for this level of revelation.

Pushing this still further toward the marketplace end of our seesaw, what happens to our sense of community when we attend only workshops or presentations or “teachings” given once or twice per year at some forum open to the public? The teacher gets off the plane, is nurtured by the group, fed, praised. Everyone smiles. He always appears happy and content. He always has wise things to say. And he is so generous to give us a few minutes out of his busy schedule. And in the end he gets back on a plane and is gone, and our “community” of practitioners falls apart instantly.

Where is the interaction and important feedback in this? How can we see the flaws of the teacher if all we get is this polished presentation? How can he or she know us at all? (Does he or she even want to?) How can he or she council us about our practice? E-mail? How do we get to know each other as individuals and as practitioners? (Do we want to?) How can we support each other through the difficulties of practice? (Do we want to?)

If our idea of a spiritual community is wrapped around attending “events” which cost money (especially a lot of money), we need to see these for what they really are – they are commercial affairs at which we are “entertained” and may purchase trinkets and more propaganda which is designed merely to get you to attend more such events. We are consumers here, nothing more. We are supporting a jet-setting, marketing-driven institution which is not a community of practitioners in any form, is not designed to develop and support such a community, and which is almost certainly wrapped tightly around one charismatic personality, and this for the benefit of that personage’s ego, power, riches, and freedom to continue this celebrity lifestyle.

In this marketing/commercial/consumer modality there is neither the accountability of the teacher which is demanded by emersion in a real practice community, nor is there any way for the “student” to see the teacher’s warts. Beware the “expert from afar.” We may chuckle at the image of the devotees, by the hundreds, chanting and throwing money while they dance and look to the heavens, all the while waiting for the rented helicopter of the guru which finally hovers above them for a few minutes, dropping millions of special flower petals to them while the guru smiles down and makes a few bows. We may chuckle, but I just described a real scene which happened recently not fifty miles from this spot. And if people can buy into that, they can certainly be wooed by a teacher who will stand in front of them for a few hours and spout platitudes in all the right language, then retire to his hotel room and all the temptations of the road while his accounting people and handlers pave his way. Should we not instead be able to see the living teaching of the living teacher? Should we not be able to check the words with the deeds and either be given a good example of the living truth or be shown that the teacher also has work to do?

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At the Lutheran School of Theology here in Chicago a course is offered every year called “Religions in Dialogue.” Three instructors, all steeped in their traditions, engage the students in deep and spirited discussion concerning three major world religions. These traditions are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. We ask the students who sign up for the course a question the first class meeting: Why these three traditions? Why not Judaism, Hinduism, or other traditions?

These traditions have something in common historically – all three have consistently shown the ability to move from culture to culture, the ability to transplant themselves and grow to a magnitude that often allows them to come to dominate the spiritual life and landscape of their new home. Each goes about this in a different way, each having its own unique ability to adapt to its new home and attract adherents from native traditions, no matter the cultural template of the new adherents. In the course at the seminary we spend considerable time examining exactly how each tradition grows in its new cultural landscape. Buddhism does this by being extremely flexible in its forms and traditions and also by taking a very soft approach. Buddhism is not confrontational. Buddhism is dynamic by nature with its forms, traditions, and even its primary literature constantly being added to. It embraces change naturally.

When we consider the West, especially the United States, we consider a culture hell-bent on change, often simply for the sake of change itself. We could even submit that change, adaptation, augmentation, and the blending of all cultural traditions (most especially religious ones) pretty much define our American approach to traditions. We can never embrace traditions as we find them. Soon after an American adopts a new religion, it seems, she or he is looking for ways to change it, to make it more user friendly, to make it more modern, to make it . . . different.

We here in America have a questionable habit of altering overnight traditions which have taken centuries to develop. This habit is a pernicious weed in our spiritual practice garden. If we alter the tradition enough, in fact, we no longer even have a tradition at all, but have what the post World War II Japanese called (and embraced to the point of the absurd) a “New Religion.” Here in the West we capture all this sort of activity in the rather global term “New Age.” We speak with a straight face about “classic” New Age religions. We have such a weak sense of what a tradition really is and what it requires from us that many in our culture could not tease out “traditions” which count their history in years from those which measure theirs in centuries.

In a culture for whose members geography is a dreamlike state, for whom history often confuses the Civil War and the first World War, it is asking a lot to expect that people could sort out even major world religions, let alone understand the dizzying array of various amalgams out there. Words like “Master,” “Roshi,” “Guru” are tossed right into the same salad as “porno” and “operating system” and “ISP.” (I have heard Guru used with all three of these.) If someone simply calls herself a Master or a Teacher or a Sensei, then surely she must be. And if many people, no matter how badly informed on the subject, call her so, well then no one can question such a title.

For example, Frederick Lenz, AKA Zen Master Rama (“Zen” and “Rama” being an oxymoron – but no matter), sold himself as a great teacher with no real training I could ever find, all by using the marketing presentation described above to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were otherwise sensible and who paid lots of money for his “teaching.” He sexually abused his students (read customers), took their money (sold spiritual trinkets to the natives), and lived high (just read the testimonials on the internet). How could this happen? Simple. We are not educated when it comes to false teachers, and we are not educated when it comes to the traditions which they so freely abuse, dissect, steal from, and Frankenstein together in order to give themselves a platform to speak from.

I have a simple guideline to offer here: If a many-centuries old tradition works, why does it need to be radically “adapted” or “augmented?” Has it not already shown that it already IS adaptable? We may laugh at the turtle because it is prehistoric in design, but it has come all this way without our “help.” I’m not proposing that we do not look for sensible adaptations to our traditions. This is necessary and natural. But why must we insist that our limited experience can enable us to turn a centuries-old vehicle for the truth inside out and in doing this come up with something better? This is akin to handing an eleven-year-old the keys to the White House and inviting her to run the country. While our frustration with our leadership may at times run deep, we would never do such a thing. Would we?

I am personally troubled by Buddhism’s need to cling so tightly to a concept like Rebirth while at the same time teaching Emptiness. But I am allowing this skepticism to endure decades of testing on my part and I’m not about to toss Rebirth out as some totally fictitious notion just because I may see it as such if you catch me on the right day. But in our quasi-scientific mode these days, with all our real and pop psychology, with all our rampant political correctness and all our sureness of our historical hindsight and perfect grasp on all human problems, we pass final judgment in minutes on the contained and applied wisdom of the ages.

The irony of ironies here is that it may be our very apprehension about not wrapping ourselves in a more traditional set of spiritual values that drives us to try to adapt these traditions to our hectic lives. We know we should be doing something deeper. Yet we do not have the spiritual grounding to judge what is best to do. So we do what we always do when we feel inadequate here in America – we shop. And if the product LOOKS like it may be legit Buddhadharma, we buy. Never mind that it has been mangled into something which can be presented as a “product.” We do not have the context to grasp that it is not supposed to be a product at all, but a practice. And more, it is a practice with a teacher within a practice community.

So we must beware of psycho-babble filled tradition look-alikes, since these are almost certainly Frankensteined just for our consumption, at a price. They are just too friendly to be transforming. There is an old saw: “Effective medicine tastes bitter.” Herein we have the next warning: If the teacher comes down to our level too much, look out. He may not really want to aid in your transformation into a spiritual adult. He may only desire our adoration as a spiritual child. Not only do the commercial gurus offer alternatives to the traditional approach, they offer teachings which have been rather “modernized” (read dumbed down) by them (of course), for your easy consumption (oh how nice). I am a Zen teacher. Zen is HARD to grasp. It is certainly NOT simply sitting and staring at a wall. The doings and sayings of the Zen Masters are rough stuff, hard to understand, hard to absorb. I’m in roughly the same boat I was in when I was a high school English teacher many years ago here: I can interpret Shakespeare so that the students do not have to stretch too far to work with the vocabulary and syntax, or I can be a hardass and force them into Shakespeare’s language. If I do the former they will have it easier. If I do the later they will struggle. I can go down to their level, but I prefer to force them up to mine. If you think this cruel, ask yourself this question: Who were my best teachers in school, that is to say the ones I actually grew with and learned the most from? Those who push us help us the most.

But this runs opposite to our wishes as a student. We want the easier road, at least until we mature and discover that the easy road is always a fraud. If we are to be spiritual students, we will struggle. Period. “Enlightenment before noon with our workshops,” is a product advertisement designed to cater to the instant gratification, spiritual chocoholic in all of us. Beware. Practice is not only about an “experience” which has been carefully orchestrated by re-wrapping a tradition in contemporary psycho-speak. Practice must have legs. It must work in us over a long period of time, and almost always this time occurs both BEFORE AND AFTER the occurrence of anything that can be called an enlightenment (read any kind of meaningful breakthrough). There is no easy road which will have lasting effects for us, and there is no simple formula for realizing the truth. If you feel that you are being addressed in a language and in a style which seems almost commercial and which claim to take the heart of any major spiritual tradition and turn it over to you without much effort on your part, then that little voice of caution squeaking inside you should be attended to. It is the very same little voice which warned you away from the huckster car salesman, the real estate woman, the friendly man who wanted to date you and who magically adored your kids, and the man in your childhood nightmares who leaned out of the car offering candy and a ride. Listen to that inner voice.

If someone is selling an experience, we can be sure that the situation we find ourselves in is being orchestrated so that we feel we have that experience. If it seems too obvious, too slick, too quick, too impossibly easy, guess what – it is.

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One of the many tools in the toolkit of the commercial teacher is the “specialness” of any given student. Teachers with a hidden agenda often tell certain students (read rich, beautiful, sexually available) that these students are “special.” Amazingly this is often the very word used – “special.” This is often the beginning of a come-on of a sexual nature, of course. After all, this line shows up, and with some success, in other areas – work, associations – where it is simply a baited hook. So it also is used in a spiritual context to cast a line with only slightly different bait. Here we have a great power disparity between guru types and student types, and so this pick-up line is particularly toxic because it is used to hit below the belt (pun intended) and get right into the emotional mushiness of the student.

We need to be aware of this sort of fisherman, and although many of us are, it is nevertheless astounding just how many people ( mostly women who are baited by men teachers) fall for this “you are special” line. But here I would like to introduce another brand of specialness which is used not only by sexual predators who disguise themselves as teachers, but by the entire commercial guru set. This is the specialness of anyone who can “really hear my message.” The auditorium filled with nodding heads. The agreeing masses. “Mega Dittos, Rush!!”

I was once, many years ago, working as a teacher in a small business finishing school in Upstate New York. I was underpaid, overworked, and I felt sorry for myself. The office building next to the school housed a regional office of IBM. One of the IBMers happened to be in our school one day and we were introduced. He was a middle-aged, middle management type who was articulate, even smooth. He pulled me aside and said that he was involved in a side business and that there may be an opportunity for me. Three days later I found myself being driven to a meeting seventy-five miles away. We ended up in a large Ramada Inn party room with 200 strangers. This is where I would learn the scoop about how to make money on my own. We sat in the middle of the auditorium-like setup. On the dais paraded one speaker after another, all booming inspiration. Charts were used, and testimonials too. The only evidence of any sort of corporate unity was the pervasive presence of a triangle-shaped logo.

But after even half an hour of this there was no mention of products or services. Also, it became clear to me that the onlookers consisted of two distinct types. There were the believers, understanders, ones who could identify with the message with nods, grunts of knowing, and smiles. The other group (far fewer of us) was the novices, the uninitiated, the anxious, the ones left out who wanted in. At forty-five minutes into this initiation-cum-stage show I noticed something. People around me who were clearly soldiers of the system kept doing two bothersome things. They would turn (just as the man who brought me would turn) to their uninitiated charges and smile during key moments in the testimonials, or during moments which were “don’t-you-get-it” moments in the presentation. They would smile, but housed within that smile was a look of stern “checking.” They seemed to be checking to see if the ideology, the point of view, the system (read brainwashing) was taking root there in the psyche of the new recruit. This discovery was chilling. I realized in a flash that we were to be “hooked” in this initial stage into staying and participating in the small groups to come. In these (I discovered later from a friend who stayed the whole evening) there was not just push but also shove, and this done on a personal level, all directed at making the recruit a believer.

The other annoying habit of the soldiers was the breath spray. It was the 1970’s, and these little canisters of breath spray were popular. I noticed that everyone around me was using these – that is the soldiers were. Finally I also noticed that they all used the same brand, and when we were reaching the one hour mark in our indoctrination I caught a glimpse of the brand – Amway. I leaned over to the IBMer and asked if this was really an Amway meeting. He did not respond. I asked again, and he would not look at me. I then, in the rude carelessness of young adulthood, stood up and called out, “You new people! This is an Amway recruiting meeting!” Pandemonium broke out, arguments, smiles, breath spray galore. I made good my escape and called my wife, who rescued me with the smirk of Alice of The Honeymooners. My friend escaped later and assured me that the meeting survived my meltdown (and later his) and new recruits were gleaned from the initiates.

If you stay up late enough and watch enough cable TV, you will find these hucksters in operation, selling everything from cooking ware to spiritual wellness, from nutritional supplements to speed reading. There are always nodding heads in the audience. There are always people who really get it. We are shown camera shots of these people all throughout the presentation. We may even sit back and shake our heads and marvel at how anyone could be taken in by such hype. Well hear this warning: This stuff is much more effective in person. And the smaller and more intimate the group, the more effective it can become. False teachers offer charming false teachings and they do this in a very charming way. Charm is the word. They mesmerize us into entering a self-referential and make-believe world which will contain all the right buzz-concepts. Enlightenment. (Some of the best Zen teachers I know never mention that word. Wonder why.) Peace & Justice. Inner strength (or peace). Focus and success (Why these, I wonder). And, of course, they use the framework of either the spiritual world or the corporate world, since they know that we will speak one of these two languages when addressing our own inner landscape.

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We need to be wary when the setting is a familiar institutional one (read dumbing down, coming too much into our arena to reach us) – lecture circuits, conferences, motel party rooms, revival tents set up in your own neighborhood. These settings are far from community and the watchful eyes of peers. We need to be wary when there is a perfume of insiders and outsiders, of charm, of several hours of a very casual but carefully controlled environment, where outside information has carefully been controlled, most especially when this happens in a “safe” place we are familiar with (where we have lowered our guard). Watch out when the teachings are represented as deep and yet they are familiar both in language of presentation and in concept. If the group is quietly special, or you yourself are made to feel special, run.

If this teaching is a Frankenstein of at least two seemingly disparate traditions, consider hard the efficacy of this. In a sense we are facing in such teachings the founding of a new religious tradition and this tradition in usually being presented by the founder. And often this founder is charismatic. The excitement of this sort of moment can adversely influence our decision-making and reasoning process. We need to reflect on the simple statistics before us. How many of these new approaches or new-age inventions or blendings get presented each year? How many survive to become even minor contributions to our human approach to spirituality? Is the man before us really in the league of a Christ or a Mohammad or a Buddha, even ignoring any thoughts of divinity, even as an original spiritual thinker?

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And what of the typical trajectory of such teachings? What historically happens to these Masters who have commercially presented their new approaches? Let me try to present a pattern here. We are all free to find our own examples. Basically, while the initial teachings of many false teachers will contain the underpinnings of the tradition these teachers were trained in (often not for very long), the teachings (product) tend over a few or even several years toward two features: The product slowly morphs further and further away from the teachings of the root tradition in content, form, and manner of presentation, and the product also tends to spawn additional products.

Both of these trends are corporate in nature – this is to say that these are product and service trends very familiar to anyone involved in selling and developing new products and services. We start out with simple toothpaste. We might even market the toothpaste as an alternative to more mega-corp products out there by advertising that our toothpaste does not have evil artificial ingredients in it and is not tested by torturing rabbits like our competitors’ products. We do well. We gain market share. Some time later (a few years at most) we discover that our sales growth has stopped, or even reversed, that our competition has responded with a more “natural” toothpaste of their own, etc., etc. We need a shot in the arm. So we morph the product and offer basted turkey flavor toothpaste. Sales rise since all consumers are addicted to New and Different. We also develop natural dental floss, make from recycled underwear (don’t worry, we wash it!), and this morphs us laterally into new but parallel markets. Sales go up, but only until the competition responds and the consumer gets bored again, at which time we will develop even further.

Silly as this example may seem, if we take a careful look at the mainline Christian churches in our neighborhood, we will quickly discover that for years they have been at least dabbling in these very marketing waters too. Modern dance and music at Sunday Service, children’s groups that go way further than Sunday School, no Latin, easy-read Bibles, field trips, all manner of social activities and charities and discussion groups. And if we go back to our seesaw and watch the trends carefully, we may also discover that there are all manner of break-away churches which may disagree with some religious or practice tenant of the mainline organization, but may also simply find themselves on the commercial side of the seesaw.

And once there the marketing morphing starts in earnest. We have here in Chicagoland a number of these huge mega-churches. They are literally the size of huge high schools or small colleges. Auditoriums seat 5,000 and attendance runs past this capacity. Inside one I visited recently I found a large restaurant, a Borders-size bookstore, several meeting areas, many offices, huge grounds, exercise room, etc. There were programs available (all for hefty fees) on all manner of human situations. Charities galore. Small groups to join. Something for everyone. But nowhere in that mammoth building – nope, nowhere – did I see so much as one cross. Not on the outside, not in the literature, not in the rooms. The pulpit (I actually hesitate even designating it as such.) that stands in front of thousands of in-the-semi-round easy chair seats has no cross on it, nor above it, nor behind it. I was thunderstruck. This was a deeply reminiscent moment for me. The real product, the real import, the real purpose lay hidden from those thousands at the Sunday gathering. I went chill, because I remembered this – an Amway meeting at a Ramada Inn nearly thirty years ago.

So the trajectory of these operations is pretty consistent. There is an original message which may be delivered from within one of the familiar religious traditions. Then, with the passage of enough time, the message widens and morphs. Within a few generations of its Godzilla-like life cycle the lopped off arms which look more promising from a marketing standpoint grow new bodies, and soon the whole spiritual product bears almost no resemblance to the original tradition which spawned it. Now it is offered in today’s version of Ramada Inn party rooms and has a slick format. It and its chief champion are no longer accountable to the tradition’s forms nor to the authority figures in the tradition. It has become product-like in that its teachings are to be consumed (after having been “purchased”) along with various add-ons and sister products. Newer products will come out soon. It is homeless both in temple venue and in any real sense of community to which it may be accountable. It is adaptable, but only in a marketing sense – it has learned how to bring consumer attention to itself. The “teacher” has, eventually, lost by degrees all respect when it comes to his or her peers (that is the ones who count, those in the original tradition). There may be exceptions to this latter feature – he or she may have the grudging admiration of those peers who themselves either privately or publicly covet such fame and fortune and power. I’m embarrassed to say that even among the leadership of many spiritual traditions these days there is a dearth of good judgment when it comes to crossing the fulcrum of our seesaw.

The “teacher” is often a marketing genius who knows how to develop and sell his product, at least for a while. He or she is almost always personally magnetic and charismatic. These people could sell ice cream to Eskimos. Actually, this is exactly what they are doing, since these great inner truths are really always there simply for the taking – or maybe the uncovering. If the customer feels eventually that crossing over to the other side of the seesaw is healthy, he or she may seek out real teachers. These real teachers have real communities and accountability within them. They have peer review of some kind. They have a tradition to adhere to, and not necessarily rigidly adhere to. They do not ask for so much money for themselves. They live humbly and otherwise seem to generally embody the spirit of their teachings. They may not be perfect, true, but there is no real question as to where their heart lies. It lies with helping the student, the practitioner, to benefit from the same system which they themselves found so helpful. And if the customer can finally embark on the long and difficult journey of deep spiritual work, these real teachers will sacrifice anything to help.

Summer Notes

2007-08-15T21:20:00.000-05:00

Ceremonies Galore!

Thus far, 2007 has been eventful for those who like Zen ceremonies. First off, on February 25 the Sangha gathered for Caroline Devane's novice ceremony. Caroline is now undergoing a novitiate period that will last for roughly one year, following which she will undergo full ordination in the Three Jewels Order. Congratulations and gasshos to Caroline for making this commitment to the Dharma.

Then, on May 18 Sevan Sensei received Dharma Transmission from James Ford Roshi in a public ceremony at the Center. Ford Roshi is a sanctioned teacher in the Robert Aitken lineage and the Jiyu Kennett (Soto) lineage; Sensei has now received Dharma Transmission in these lineages along with the Kapleau/Rochester Zen Center lineage as transmitted through Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede. More than 40 people attended the ceremony.

Finally, Elie Nijm has decided to become a lay-ordained practitioner in the Three Jewels Order. The ceremony to begin Elie's training for ordination took place during the July sesshin.

Why I Might Own an iPod (Yet)

The CZC has joined the list of Zen Centers (including Rochester) that are making teishos available by podcast. This means that you can automatically receive teishos as they are posted online - no need to check manually to see if anything new has been added. To subscribe, visit our site feed or simply search for us on Apple's iTunes in the podcast directory (should be available in the next few days).

We hope this feature will provide additional convenience for members and allow us to reach a wider audience. If this entire description sounds horribly confusing, don't worry - the same teishos will still be available for download on the Center's website as they've always been.

Three Moments

2007-08-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

by Laurel Ross

Three flickers of light

1- Confusion
2- (Out of) My Mind
3- True self

In Zen practice we actively explore our own minds and along the way make surprising discoveries—some delightful, some upsetting, some forgettable, some life-changing. What can we do with these discoveries though? Can they lead to making changes? Or might they lead to acceptance of what is?

Lately it seems the universe is presenting itself in ways that beg for my attention. Something is up. Small experiences offer a potential conduit to wisdom. I offer three such small experiences here.

1- Confusion
Recently I agreed to help someone close to me deal with the household of her terminally ill father who is now living with his sister. She had warned me that the situation was extreme, but I wasn’t prepared for floor to ceiling debris, unorganized STUFF. Many objects in the confused mass were of some “value”—kitchen utensils, random hardware, art supplies, etc. But all of it was heaped in enormous sagging mountains on the floor and furniture, together with what can only be called garbage—junk mail, newspapers, wrappings from pizza deliveries, dead batteries, etc. making it all appear to be trash. I am struggling to convey the scale and bizarreness of it all.

The man who had been living in this hellish place had created little tunnel-like pathways in order to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom. The kitchen and all other rooms were impenetrable and hadn’t been used for a long time.

Our assignment was to retrieve objects and papers of value in the chaos—family photographs, documents, etc.—because the daughter had hired people to remove and dispose of the rubble so the house could be sold. As we sifted through the disorder we started to see what was there. Many, many unopened packages—bags containing purchases that had been discarded without ever being opened or even looked at again. Much of it was books, and the most common category of books was self-help books—all the familiar themes: better sex, more money, and how to gain control of one’s life through meditation.

After retrieving some morsels with meaning that were packed and moved to a storage unit (a surreal story of its own), we used snow shovels to fill huge bags that were dragged to the dumpster.

When I retreated to my own home afterwards my own stuff looked different. I have my own messes and objects and books and stuff. When I die someone will have to look through it all and pluck the very few things of value. Not only that, while this stuff is here it is in my way, using space and time to deal with it.

Let me get my snow shovel now while I can.

2-(Out of) My Mind

In May I contracted a very nasty case of poison ivy—far worse than my usual spring dose. Several days after the rash erupted I woke up with eyes swollen shut and big, itchy, blotches everywhere. My doctor explained that my body’s antigens were in high gear and I could expect to have three weeks of increasing symptoms UNLESS I wanted to try steroids. When she offered this treatment I felt desperate and barely asked about side effects as I listened to the three week course of medication.

My time on steroids provided a new window into my mind—or someone’s mind. “Who is this crazy and decidedly unpleasant person?” was the operative question during the short weird time. I was tense, jumpy, short-tempered. Not the warm, generous and kind person I see as me. For a Zen student this presents a hell of a question: If a tiny dose of a chemical can change “me” so significantly, how real is that person I am fond of thinking I am?

3- True self

Working in my garden early this morning I noticed that my cat Dottie was focused on something across the yard. Before my eyes she was suddenly transformed from a quiet, silky, even lethargic and elderly pet into a virtual bullet that flew across the 10 yards of the garden and returned with a shrieking baby rabbit in her mouth. Her brother, Jack, joined her as she dropped, then recaught this mouthful, and to my horror I watched them race into the back door of our apartment with their treasure squealing pathetically.

“Now what?” I followed them tentatively, hoping I would not see anything too gory and was further horrified to hear chasing around and crashing of breakables as I entered the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of Jack in a posture quite different from his usual casual self as he watched a corner in the pantry. As he sat and demonstrated alertness so effectively the thought that crossed my mind was that I was looking at his true self, just as Dottie had shown me her true self in that moment of blasting across the yard.

This story does not have a happy ending for the rabbit. I considered intervening and trying to “save” the poor thing, but decided I was an outsider in this event, so I went back to working in the garden and hoped that the poor bunny wouldn’t suffer too much.

After some time had passed I ventured back into the house and found the body under the dining room table with a big gash in its gut and its liver exposed. Eyes were open, but life was gone. True self of bunnyness? Any ecologist will tell you that bunnies are born to be eaten. Another lesson in an afternoon designed to reveal. I bowed, covered it with towel and planned to bury it.

Now Dottie walked into the room and without hesitation pulled off the towel and sat down next to the body looking relaxed, but clear in her intentions. As she began licking it, I retreated to the garden. When I came back into the house for a glass of water, Jack was tearing meat from one of the haunches having pulled off and discarded the fur.

An hour later both cats were back in the yard—was it over? Using a piece of cardboard and a trowel I picked up the now really gory corpse from under the table and stashed it behind the raspberry bushes thinking and hoping that we were near the end of the excitement.

But not yet. Moments later it reappeared in the center of the yard with both cats sprawled next to it looking for all the world like lions in the Serengeti. “Mew,” said Jack.

I bowed to the three of them and finally surrendered control. It was a wild and natural day.

Signs

2007-08-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

Among the myriad billboards and corporate signposts that flank I-294 south of the O'Hare toll, south-bound commuters can learn daily from the simple teaching of this sign. In shape it resembles the han, and so it calls us to practice. Like a visual koan, it invites us to question the very fabric of reality. (Is it advertising an electronics company? Where has the "ith" gone to? Where was the "ith" before the sign was born?) Like numerous masters throughout the Buddhist canon, it teaches us with gentle pragmatism. ("Hey-don't stare at me! Watch where you're driving!") And the sign's dilapidated condition - hinting at the many years it has stood watch over millions of passing cars - subtly reminds us that all things must fade.

Photo by Jon Laux. Mike McKane was standing very close by.

Master of Poetic Elegance

2007-04-01T12:43:00.000-05:00

Welcoming Mara: Reflections on the Value of ‘Ego Storms’

2007-04-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

by Cynthia Stone

The essence of the Zen experience for me is the suffering of the emotional pain which I call ‘ego storms’ and emerging lighter, with less emotional baggage, at least for the time being. Just living provides endless possibilities for experiencing anger in all its variations, and the storms associated with jealousy, grief, feelings of failure, hopelessness and despair. Being caught up in one or the other of these emotions propels one into a hell state in which one is trapped and consumed by the emotion. However, sesshins provide a unique opportunity to both have strong emotions provoked by the work and the structure to have to sit with the emotion for hours or days until it dissolves.

Anger happens to be the fuel for the ego storms that I am most susceptible to. Initially I thought my anger at something the teacher or monitor or other Zen student did was justified. I had ready reasons for why my anger was a natural response to some kind of slight or offense. But even then, there was nothing I could do about it except maybe complain to the teacher when I next had a chance which might not come for hours and hours. Meanwhile, I could nurse the grudge or listen to the frequent injunction to let it go, to not replay the script and focus on the work.

It was rather like having to postpone the desire to move the leg that has fallen asleep or scratch an itch or endure hunger pangs until the appropriate bell is struck. This discipline which seems to have to do only with physical needs now seems quite relevant to the practice of dispelling disturbing emotional states. It not only creates the capacity to wait and endure the unpleasant physical state but it also happens to create the capacity to endure painful emotional states and in the process begin to see them for what they are.

It helps to experience the same or similar emotion over and over again. One begins to recognize it and remember how it all dissolved in a previous sesshin when external circumstances changed or when one did indeed let go of the situation and concentrated just on the work. These shifts have been powerful experiences for me and it has gradually dawned on me that realizing the ego storm will pass is a part of the work.

The process of living through an ego storm to its passing requires the letting go of images of self as competent, achieving, unflappable and strong. Instead one appreciates these images are transient illusions entirely contingent on circumstances.

While everyone has their own triggers, I cannot imagine anyone calmly experiencing the flunking of a koan repeatedly and being rung out of the dokusan room in less than two minutes over and over again while it seems that everyone else is having very long dokusans. Have this happen four or more times in a row and one’s passions of anger, greed and jealously arise along with serious consideration quitting all this nonsense as a total waste of time. And one can develop illusions about the teacher. What IS he doing in there with so and so? Why is he treating ME so harshly? Maybe he doesn’t like me or thinks I am a hopeless student.

The teacher often addresses these states, indicating he knows all about ‘ego storms’ and how distracting they can be from practice. However, I think ‘ego storms’ are a necessary and useful part of practice. They expose the primitive ego, clinging for life to the wish for success, for the achievement of a goal and the avoidance of the shame and humiliation of defeat which sometimes feels very public. Since one has to let go of images of competence and achievement, there is not much left but sheer perseverance in the face of confusion, helplessness and despair. The ego which is storming has to be abandoned. There is nothing left but sheer perseverance which has its own strength based in blind faith that eventually there will be a break through. And when this happens it does not feel like an ego achievement but more like an opening to the obvious.

A Tibetan Buddhist abbess recently gave a talk on this subject of strong emotions and shared the teaching of recognizing the emotion and stopping the story line that accompanies the emotion. If one can do that and just feel the emotion, great energy is released in a clear and open inner space. Finally she said that the ability to do this rests on the attitude of kindness toward oneself. This practice, she said, is called “Welcoming Mara”, reminding us that Mara represents the negative energies and thoughts that tempted Buddha. Like Buddha, we are besieged by Mara and wish to banish her. Mara seems like a distraction from the ‘real’ work, but the concept of ‘welcoming Mara’ echoes my realization that ‘ego storms’ can be both the most painful and the most valuable part of practice.

All puppets without number I vow to liberate

2007-04-01T00:09:00.000-05:00

Between December performances of "The Nutcracker and the King of Mice", Mike McKane found time to instruct some of the marionettes in zazen. The puppets spent many nights facing the wall.

Winter Notes

2007-01-15T23:00:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year and Happy Sesshin Season. The Buddhist Women’s Conference is quickly approaching, and is now open for registration. Information can be found in flyers at the ZC or by visiting DharmaWomen.org.

In this issue, we begin to explore some approaches to inter-faith dialogue, particularly with the Muslim community. This is an important topic and we hope it will appear again in subsequent issues. Your comments, criticisms, and of course your articles are welcome. Among the articles we’ve also included some pictures from the recent New Year’s Ceremonies (thanks Kasia), along with a picture of snow, in case you've forgotten what it looks like.

Sit well,
J&J

There's that Gateless Gate Again

2007-01-15T22:00:00.000-06:00

A Report from a Buddhist/Muslim Dialog by Jim Graham

I admit that I have some reservations about the kind of inter-faith networking that has become so fashionable of late. These are not reservations of principle. Arguably the need for understanding across religious borders has never been more important or urgent. And yes, of course the Great Way sees right through the illusion of labels. People who can shelve their doctrines and work whole-heartedly together for the benefit of others are bodhisattvas regardless of their religious pedigree. Much good work is being done by the inter-faith community. This is all true.

My uneasiness arises from the pan-spiritual flavor that suffuses many such undertakings. In the well-intentioned effort to foster understanding and cooperation, the commonalities of the religious traditions are celebrated, while the inevitable prickly points of variance are politely sidestepped, or even dismissed as inconsequential. What has emerged from innumerable repetitions of this exercise is a tepid form of “spirituality” which, while inoffensive in pretty much any company, also lacks the abrasive grit that forces transformation.

When I was invited to attend a Buddhist/Muslim dialog to be held at a mosque in the basement of an Episcopal church in Batavia, my flags went up. When I learned that the theme was to be “The Rains Retreats and Ramadan”, the flags started waving. Here, to all appearances, an attempt had been made to find a topic that everyone could nicely agree on: the benefit of retreat and renunciation in spiritual practice. What, I wondered, could possibly come of this?

These misgivings began to dissipate when our little Buddhist contingent stepped, shoeless, into the makeshift mosque. At just a few minutes before the scheduled start time, the sparsely decorated hall was occupied only by a middle-aged gentleman with a warm smile who introduced himself as Hamid Ahmed, the president of the mosque. Mazher, his wife, then appeared in the door laden with food and an equal measure of warmth. “Ah well,” she said, looking around the nearly empty room, “if nobody shows up we can just sit around and eat and talk”. My heart leapt at the prospect.

As it turned out, more people did drift in sporadically over the next hour or so, but by then an atmosphere of intimacy had taken root which, while undermining the formality of our gathering, opened the door to a deeper level of communication that had nothing to do with Ramadan or the Rains Retreats. The Muslims took such pleasure in talking about their faith, and seemed so genuinely pleased that we non-Muslims were interested enough to come to the mosque and ask questions, that the subject of Buddhism rarely came up. Had we come with the intention of expounding on the Dharma, we would have been sorely disappointed.

It became clear that many of our hosts were speaking under the assumption that we Buddhists have our own notion of God, but that we perhaps just imagine Him differently. As some described how, in the rapture of prayer, “there is only me and God”, I felt how sharply different the Buddhist experience is. And here is where I encountered the inter-faith conundrum: for me to have said “in my experience there is no such Other with whom to have the kind of dialog you’re describing, nor, for that matter, a ‘me’ to hold up my end of the conversation”, would have threatened the bonhomie that we were all enjoying. But in feeling that I couldn’t say it, wasn’t I basically denying that this discussion was, in any real sense, inter-faith? Wouldn’t a true inter-faith moment require such complete trust on all sides that statements like that could just tumble out, without disastrous consequences? And, of course, it would require that the Buddhists of the group not smugly discount this “unenlightened” talk of God.

As I put my shoes back on, mindful not to park my copy of the Qur’an (a gift from Hamid) anywhere inappropriate, I would have been hard-pressed to point to any new insights I had acquired into Islam. I’m certain that our interlocutors felt no more informed about Buddhism. But I found that somehow, in the midst of the simple acts of humanity that had transpired that afternoon- eating, smiling, giving, receiving- I had come to actually love several people whom I hadn’t even met a few hours before, like the retiree from the paint factory who, in a spontaneous gesture of generosity and intimacy, dog-eared a page of my Qur’an at a passage he especially loves. We had indeed found commonality, but not of ideas or practices.

In bed that night, before turning out the light, I opened the Qur’an to the dog-eared page, curious to see what had so enchanted this beautiful man. From the florid prose of the page, of a tone familiar to anyone who has read the Old Testament, what jumped out at me was the unrelenting imagery of duality- two gardens, each with two fountains, each with two pairs of every fruit, two other gardens, each with two springs- and this verse, which made me pause: “He has made the two seas to flow freely (so that) they meet together: Between them is a barrier which they cannot pass.”

Reading Sam Harris’s End of Faith

2007-01-15T21:00:00.000-06:00

by Jonathan Laux

First, let me say right away that this is not a “Buddhist” book, though its themes will be of interest to many Buddhists. Second, this is a controversial book, and although the author’s arguments are compelling, reasonable people may well disagree with his conclusions. This is the book’s challenge, and perhaps its value.

Sam Harris has written an astonishingly caustic book, entitled End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, published in 2004. From the title alone, one would guess that Harris has no love for religion, but this book is not an attack on theism per se (philosophers have been having this argument for millennia). Rather, it is an attack on the ethics that result from religious belief: what people will do (or refrain from doing) in the name of God. He discusses numerous examples, ranging from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, from suicide bombing to Americans’ discomfort around homosexuality, prostitution and marijuana use.

The elephant-in-the-room issue that Harris presents is this: unlike race and gender (for example), a person’s religion is a choice, so we should be able to evaluate that choice – its rationale, its consequences. Yet religion is one area where we’re likely to give a free pass to all but the wildest ideas. As Harris says, “On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse. Criticizing a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not.” (p. 13)

Harris claims it is imperative that we change this. Specifically, he argues that in a world with weapons capable of mass destruction, certain beliefs about the world are now too dangerous to tolerate. Within this category of “intolerable beliefs”, Harris includes the doctrines that are central to Judaism, Islam, Christianity and essentially any other religious doctrine that claims divine authority. For evidence, Harris points to numerous passages in the Bible and the Qur’an that implore devotees to punish or kill nonbelievers, and he points to the cultural climate in countries where the tenets of dogma have been faithfully observed, such as Afghanistan under the Taliban.

But wait, we say, my next-door neighbors are Christian and they’re kind, loving people. How can you say they believe I deserve death? It’s true that in the West, especially in America, we’re surrounded by religious moderates who look and act very much alike, regardless of faith. But this is where Harris drops the other shoe: tolerance is a virtue that comes not from the sacred world, but from the secular one. He observes, “it is only because the church has been politically hobbled in the West that anyone can afford to think this way. In places where scholars can still be stoned to death for doubting the veracity of the Koran, [the] notion of a ‘loving concordat’ between faith and reason would be perfectly delusional.” (16)

The problem with religious moderates, Harris argues, is that they don’t read their own sacred books very well. In the interest of living in the modern world, moderates may argue for a loose interpretation of unpleasant or difficult passages – if they’re aware of them at all. Most Christians I know would be unaware of the passage from Deuteronomy cited by Harris, in which God instructs that people who worship foreign gods must be stoned to death. For these and similar reasons, moderates are ill-equipped to “tame” their extremist brethren, because in matters of doctrine the extremists usually outperform them. This has consequences in America, but even more so in the parts of the world where religious extremism is far more prevalent.

The Christian Right certainly takes a beating in End of Faith, and Harris is duly critical of the “my god can beat up your god” rhetoric that has reappeared in American politics since 9/11. But he is more subtle and persuasive in his critique of American liberalism. When we speak of tolerance, we often lapse into pleasant but hollow platitudes: how we all share the same human experience regardless of faith, how God = Allah = Tao = Brahman = ... = Mu, etc. On a deep, fundamental level this must of course be true, yet we can easily allow ourselves to believe that all people superficially think like we think, want what we want, and act how we would act.

Harris’s book is a shot in the arm for this kind of cheap generalization. As with practice on the mat, the mind would love to squirm its way into a cozy little image of the world. But Harris keeps dragging us back to confront the evidence. Terrorism is borne out of poverty? No, actually terrorists tend to be middle-class and educated. The major religions do not condone violence? Actually, they do – and here’s where. He is particularly critical of the “leftist unreason” personified by Noam Chomsky and others who believe American foreign policy initiatives are the moral equivalent of terrorism and neglect such considerations as intent that would differentiate the two.

The final chapter of End of Faith discusses consciousness and the realm of spiritual experiences. Although he considers doctrine to be dangerous, Harris readily acknowledges the good things that people attribute to religion: healthy communities, morality, the erosion of self. He believes, though, that these things can be had without the baggage of unreason. As his discussion unfolds, one finds oneself thinking, “Hey, this sounds a lot like Buddhism!” And indeed, that’s where he goes. Buddhism receives little if any criticism throughout the book, and at the end it is meditation that serves as Harris’s blue print for a “rational” exploration of ultimate truth. Harris has drawn fire from other atheist writers for this section; it’s to his credit that he recognizes that while the authors of the world’s sacred texts didn’t know what happens after death, scientists do not know either.

A number of criticisms could be made of End of Faith; I’ll provide three. The first and perhaps greatest difficulty with EoF is Harris’s writing style, which is as scathing as it is logical and articulate. In the first chapter alone, he describes religious doctrine as a “scrap heap of mythology” and “mountains of life-destroying gibberish”, among other things. Although he writes eloquently and even compassionately toward the book’s conclusion, he may quickly lose his credibility with many readers.

Secondly, many of the conclusions Harris draws run counter to our liberal instincts. This does not necessarily make him wrong, and it does make him an important voice of dissent, but it will certainly give us pause. Among other things, Harris criticizes pacifism (“flagrantly immoral”) and argues in favor of judicial torture to extract information from potential terrorists. As always, his arguments here are eminently rational, yet I’m left feeling uncomfortable. If we cannot in good faith claim any kind of moral high ground, it would seem that we compromise the very things we supposedly stand for. Interestingly, Harris admits that he’s uncomfortable with his conclusion, too. But his rebuttal would be this: “Here we come upon a terrible facet of ethically asymmetric warfare: when your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become another weapon in his hand.” (p. 202)

Finally, one might object to the academic timbre of End of Faith. In putting together this book, Harris has clearly drawn on a variety of quality sources, but nearly all of them are books. It appears that nowhere in the course of writing did he sit down with a Muslim or Christian cleric for a frank discussion. Lacking this, his assessment has the feel of someone looking in from outside. At one point, Harris argues that there can be no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim, because the teachings of Islam make it impossible. As someone who has known numerous moderate Muslims, I find this surprising. In general, Harris pays close attention to what a religion’s books say, but little attention to how the religion is actually practiced. In fact, the “end of faith” is itself a very tidy, book-worthy solution to the problems Harris discusses, but is it practical? Is it even desirable?

These and similar questions have haunted me since finishing the book. Still, the nature of these objections provides more reason to read the book twice than not to read it at all. End of Faith is a challenging, wide-ranging and insightful examination of an issue that is as relevant today as it has ever been. If you can stomach Sam Harris’s taste for virulence, this is a very worthwhile book.

Indolence and Sloth at the Hermitage Retreat

2007-01-15T18:00:00.000-06:00

by Jody Wilson

At first, it sounded like fun: 40 or so hours of essentially self-directed, quality time spent under my second favorite roof. A sleepover at the Zen Center! Just be in the Zendo at 7:00 to go down to breakfast, at 10:30 to go down to teisho, at 5:30 for dinner and at 7:00 for formal sitting and dokusan. Samu after breakfast. Shower as you will between meals. Otherwise, lunch was at 12:30 and please do kinhin in the Buddha Hall only since the floor in the Zendo squeaks. Is that all? Oh, and no kinhin on the front porch either. Is that IT?? Yep, that’s it. Oh, one more thing: you’re sleeping in the library. Alone. I wondered if I had time to run out and buy a lottery ticket.

At the start of the first evening sitting, Sensei explained that this type of “hermitage” retreat might be especially helpful to those who were at a place in their practice where “You know that the energy is draining from the present situation but you aren’t sure where it’s going.” Anyway, I think that’s what he said. I was already planning how I would spend “my” time. Would I sit all night? Could I sit all night? If I sat all night, what would I be like in the morning? How much would my knees hurt? My back was bothering me a little already. Did I have enough Ibuprofen? Should I be taking it at a sesshin? Oops, I mean, a retreat. Hey, if it’s a retreat and not a sesshin, is it okay if I after I wash my hair I condition it? Are the mirrors covered? If not, what about make-up? Moisturizer, at least.

I recall Sensei mentioning something about the possibilities of a “hinge” experience and I had a very vivid mental picture of a swinging door. If I’d been paying attention I’d have known that it was just about to hit me in the butt. But after dokusan I was totally absorbed in one single burning question: will there be yaza fruit?

There’s a lot to be said for the structure, rigor and discipline of sesshin. First, there’s a printed schedule. You are expected to follow the schedule or have a darn good reason why not. There’s no wiggle room for that pesky “self” to creep in and talk you into a nap or stretch. The schedule becomes the container for all of the angst, aching knees, indigestion and doubts, just as it is the container for all the blazing joy, wonder, discovery and insight. No matter what we’re feeling or thinking, we adhere to the schedule, show up where and when we are supposed to, ready to do the job at hand. It’s hard, but essentially we want to sit and we will compose ourselves in order to sit well. Now blazing joy, now aching knees, now samu, now a shower. No time, per se, just one moment following the other in stately measure. Predictable, directed, energized and focused. Nice.

In contrast, as the realization dawned that I was expected to be the author of my own schedule as well as my own monitor, I remembered a story about the U.S. Army’s plan to use cats well-known for their exceptional night vision in military operations in Vietnam. Here are excerpts from the final report: “A squad, upon being ordered to move out, was led off in all directions by the cats; on many occasions the animals led their troops racing through thick brush in pursuit of field mice and birds. Troops had to force the cats to follow the direction of the patrol; the practice often led to the animals stalking and attacking the dangling pack straps of the soldiers marching directly in front of them. If the weather was inclement or even threatening inclemency, the cats were never anywhere to be found.” [1] Chuckling to myself as I was leaving the Zendo, Sensei took my elbow and whispered a reminder concerning the proper directions to face during the bows and prostrations. I thanked him. I think. There was no yaza fruit.

I took a zafu and a couple of support cushions with me to the library, intending to sit there. Earlier, I had taken a bench out of the cupboard in the Kannon room, intending to sit there. But it was still early and I thought a little rest might help me to sit longer and “better.” Looking wistfully at the books, I decided I’d stretch out for a few minutes. I woke up at about 6:15 , just in time to get myself together for breakfast.

I was furious. How could I have wasted an entire night? I was aware that a certain complacency had seeped into my practice - I called it “fat, dumb and happy mind” - but this was ridiculous. I determined to make up for it tonight. Tonight? What about today? What about NOW? Breakfast went by in a blur and I left the table hungry.

Chopping vegetables for salad soothed me. I finished ahead of time and went back to my room, tidied up and did some yoga. At the end of samu, I went outside for kinhin. I had no watch and found myself becoming increasingly anxious about the time. I went back inside and snuck a look at the clock in the kitchen. Just 15 minutes had passed. I decided to sit in my room. After a few minutes of settling, I decided I wanted to try the bench. I soon realized that the bench was not for me. But maybe it was this bench? Were some bigger than others? Smaller? Unbelievably, I decided to try them all. Happily, as I entered the Kannon Room, reason prevailed and I returned to my room, where I laid down “for a second” and woke up startled, just in time to get to the Buddha Hall for teisho. Afterwards, Sthaman took me aside and whispered that Sensei had asked him to tell me to stop moving during teisho. Stop moving during teisho??? That wasn’t me, it was the person sitting next to me. Honestly. Several people were sitting on the mats behind Sensei. Why did he think it was me? Do I normally move during teisho? The rest of the day went by in a blur of self-righteous self-talk and self-conscious body language. The only whole hearted effort I was able to make was 108 kinhin laps in the Buddha Hall without losing track of the count or bumping into anyone. I was totally blown and miserable, hijacked by my thoughts and lost in them.

Opportunities to sit in the fullness of this experience, to nod to the thoughts and keep my seat continued to present themselves and I continued to refuse them. I spent the rest of the “retreat” retreating further and further from the experience, slept deeply and often and spent the final teisho sitting like a statue in a chair at the back of the Buddha Hall, trying not to breathe. It was all so silly.

As Sensei warned, it was a hinge experience for me, demonstrating once and for all where the distractions originate, how lame it is to blame circumstances or others when our thoughts are wildly scattered, how hard it is to pull it all back in and BE.

[1] “The Indispensable Cat,” Jean-Claude Suares

Ego Storm on a Buddhist Mountain

2007-01-15T01:00:00.000-06:00

by Cynthia Stone

As many of you know, I love to hike in the mountains. Particularly, I have this perverse desire to hike up mountains with the goal of reaching the very top. Somehow this goal has always been very important to me even though the trek to the top is itself literally and figuratively breathtaking.

It would be hard to admit that reaching the goal surpasses pleasures of the path: the fresh mountain air, the burbling streams of crashing waterfalls, the beauty of the forest, and the abundance of flowers blooming in July and August on the open slopes. Even the steep rocky paths are enjoyable, especially in retrospect as one feels a sense of pride in meeting these formidable challenges.

But my favorite part of a mountain hike is emerging out onto the tundra where practically nothing grows but tiny plants and lichens on the rocks. The amazing openness and emptiness of mountain peaks above the tree line does something to my neurotransmitters, and I enter a state of bliss that transcends the enjoyment of the pleasures of the earlier stages of the hike.

Then there is the summit itself with seemingly unending views in all directions with no sign of civilization as far as one can see. Sometimes one is above the clouds with even the snow below. Maybe it is because the air is thinner, but I never want to leave. I want to evaporate into the vastness of it all.

With this as background, you might be able to understand (though not approve) my reaction when on our recent hiking trip in Japan, I was unable to reach the summit of a sacred Buddhist mountain as I needed to accommodate my hiking companion. Or at least I decided that it wasn’t worth a major marital rift to abandon him and go the last hour to the summit myself. And he was not about to move another foot higher.

We spent the night in a mountain refuge near the top. I desperately wanted to climb to the summit in the morning which dawned sunny and clear. But that was not to be. On the way down, I was miserable. While I felt I’d probably made the right choice, I was not at all content. I longed to hike to the top, I craved the experience and my desire yielded to rage that I was not able to do so. I tried to appreciate the views and flowers on the way down, but my feelings churned inside me.

Then, all of a sudden, I remembered this was a Buddhist mountain! And I was caught in greed and anger, which are without a doubt the poisons of a personal hell. Where, I wondered, was my practice when I needed it? It seemed to get lost in the effort to attain a goal to which I seem to be addicted. The irony of the situation hit me. The more I remembered that every step I took had first been taken by a Buddhist priest in the 8th century, the more I lessened my grip on my desire and the fires of anger diminished. By the time we reached the trailhead many hours later, I was once again able to be where I was with some degree of equanimity, even though it was far from the top.

Autumn Notes

2006-10-01T19:22:00.000-05:00

International Day of Peace

The International Day of Peace, September 21, was commemorated with a special ceremony in the Buddha Hall. Sensei selected three letters from soldiers and sailors in World War II and Vietnam to be read as part of the ceremony. One of them was from Corporal Harry Towne to his mother. Corporal Towne was wounded four days after the American flag was raised on Iwo Jima’s Mount Surabachi. He was one of 28,000 US casualties of the battle, March 19, 1945. He wrote to re-assure this mother that he would soon "be in almost as good shape as before now that they have these new artificial limbs. Yes, Mother, I have lost my right leg, but it isn’t worrying me a bit. I shall receive a pension for the rest of my life and with the new artificial limb, you can hardly tell anything is wrong."

After the letters were read Sthaman led the Sangha in the following prayer:

I will keep in mind
the horrors of war.

I will not be fooled
by talk of glory.

I will see the victims.
I will see the suffering.
I will see the way.
I will see myself walk the way.

May all creatures find peace.

The International Day of Peace was created by United Nations resolution in 1981. Our Center is one of 1900 organizations in 190 countries that has signed the "Peace Pledge" agreeing to help raise awareness of this day and its goals. Our ceremony on September 21 was one of the 2500 events that day that took place across 179 countries in honor of this pledge. More information can be found here.

The letters were selected from a collection entitled "Letters of the Century", edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. Copies are available in the ZC library.

More Pierogies, Please

Cynthia Stone recently proposed the idea of a Sangha recipe book, and has volunteered to assemble it. Recipes can be given or e-mailed to Cynthia or to Kasia at the Center.

Summer Reading, Some Are Not

There's a very cool secret button that lives at the bottom of our blog. It's called a Site Meter. If you'd clicked on it September 25, you'd have seen something pretty amazing. The July issue of the blog has had 491 visits since it was posted, averaging six visits a day and a total of about 1,076 page views. (The Bulletin Board has also been doing well, and thanks are in order to Jeff Berger for first locating this tool and incorporating it into the BB.)

We're impressed. We think this means that we are gradually being weaned off of paper and onto the web, allowing us to — for instance — "publish" Kasia's luscious photos of our garden in full and glorious color as well as share those photos with the Sangha. It allows us to expand our reach and enrich our content graphically in ways only the most costly full color magazines can even dream of. There is a PDF version available for printing text (no graphics) of this issue, for those who still crave paper or have difficulty reading things on a screen, but for the most part, we think the blog has increased readership and interest. And that beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick any day. We are, as always, interested in hearing your opinions, comments or gripes.

Sit well,
J&J

Bodhisattva on the Dashboard… or What I really learned about Zen practice in Viet Nam

2006-10-01T16:44:00.000-05:00

by Barth Wright

Kristin and I study monkeys, and Viet Nam is host to some of the most endangered of the bunch. Many of them eat primarily leaves and are truly extraordinary looking. If you google “douc langur” you’ll see what I mean. Given our distance from the CZC I thought that along with being scientifically valuable, a trip to Viet Nam – ideally a Buddhist country – would help me gain greater focus and insight, and I think this may turn out to be the case, but not in the way I expected.

For some initial background, upon returning from our first trip to Viet Nam I sat down to write an article for the CZC newsletter. Wanting to make it as uplifting as possible, I began to put together a tale concerning the little Kwan Yin figures that one often sees in cabs in and around Hanoi. I wanted to share with the Sangha the way in which the bodhisattvic ideal permeates the country, even though on the surface it appears to be just as delusional as any other place. After revisiting this draft, and after two more trips to Hanoi and outlying provinces, I think I have a clearer view of what was really gained from visiting and developing friendships in Viet Nam.

What I’ve come to realize is the fact that these little figures act much like the Jesus on the dashboard of cars in the United States. They are good luck charms. Much like rubbing the belly of a Hotai, these figures are thought to provide protection and prosperity. While they may do this to some degree, they became emblematic of what Buddhism is in Buddhist countries and what it has the potential to be in the West. Buddhism to many of the young scientists that we know is “what your parents do”. To many of these young people the temples are stagnant. They are places where the older generation goes to ask forgiveness and gain entry to paradise when they pass on.

I must add that I did not meet any monks and only went to one temple in an outlying province. I saw monks at the few vegetarian restaurants and though compelled to ask them about their practice, my greater desire to hide my beliefs from my young colleagues kept me from interacting with them. I am sure there are monks and masters in Viet Nam with great insight, but I’m sure there are others that have fallen into the same trap that many Theravadan monks in Thailand and Sri Lanka have fallen into. They are carried along by a deeply engrained cultural tradition and, finding themselves supported by the local populous, “hang out” with no real desire for enlightenment.

So what is it about these trips that has helped my practice? First, I see the opportunity that Zen has in the West. There is no cultural precedent that we must follow, save some of the helpful cultural forms that we bring from Japan, China, and Korea, and from both the Soto and Rinzai sects. In fact, as Harada Roshi, Yasutani Roshi and Kapleau Roshi realized, these forms can be mixed to the greater benefit of the practitioner, particularly in the West where no prior forms existed. I have also come to realize that, at least for me, hiding my practice is an enormous detriment. Admittedly, there are times when a person should not wear their religion on their sleeve, but there are also times when rather than running from our beliefs we must reveal them. It is easier to hide one’s practice as a lay practitioner. The ordained carry certain symbols of their practice everywhere, and I envy this in many ways. I have also learned how amazingly helpful it is to be around like-minded people. True Zen practitioners, even true Buddhist practitioners, are few and far between, not only in the West, but everywhere throughout the world. To be able to talk openly about the way we view the world with other people that view the world the same way cannot be underestimated. I remember Sevan Sensei speaking of a time when Kapleau Roshi broke into tears reflecting on the opportunity to be around like-minded people.

So will I take these lessons to heart? I sure hope so. I’m still working and when I sit, I sit with all of you at the CZC. This one still gets me on the mat…

“This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land,
And this very body, the body of Buddha”

With nine prostrations to all of you,
Barth

The Clause

2006-10-01T15:59:00.000-05:00

This entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness,
this wedge of want my mind calls self,
this self which doubts so much and which keeps reaching,
keeps referring, keeps aspiring, longing, towards some state
from which ambiguity would be banished, uncertainty expunged;

this implement my mind and self imagine they might make together,
which would have everything accessible to it,
all our doings and undoings all at once before it,
so it would have at last the right to bless, or blame,
for without everything before you, all at once, how bless, how blame?

this capacity imagination, self and mind conceive might be the "soul,"
which would be able to regard such matters as creation and
destruction,
origin and extinction, of species, peoples, even families, even mine,
of equal consequence, and might finally solve the quandary
of this thing of being, and this other thing of not;

these layers, these divisions, these meanings or the lack thereof,
these fissures and abysses beside which I stumble, over which I reel:
is the place, the space, they constitute,
which I never satisfactorily experience but from which the fear
I might be torn away appalls me, me, or what might most be me?

Even mine, I say, as if I might ever believe such a thing;
bless and blame, I say, as though I could ever not.
This ramshackle, this unwieldy, this jerry-built assemblage,
this unfelt always felt disarray: is this the sum of me,
is this where I'm meant to end, exactly where I started out?

-by C.K. Williams from The Singing.
© Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Permission to reprint has been requested.

Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain

2006-10-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

by Jody Wilson

Consciousness is a slippery slope, especially when you’re wired into a heart monitor, wearing an oxygen mask, dealing with a drain inserted in your pleural cavity and arguing with your husband about using the on demand intravenous morphine drip.

“I’m fine,” I insist inanely, hoping to be heard through the oxygen mask. Translation: “I am terrified that if I use the morphine and go to sleep, I will die. I will die in a drugged stupor, unconscious, without realization. I will die a bad death, without courage or hope. Please don’t let me die that way.”

“You’ve got to get some rest,” Bob replies with the same steely eyed reasonability he’s been facing me down with for hours. Translation: “You will not die today. Let go with trust. There’s no need to struggle now. You need to sleep so you can live. Please live.”

My sons aren’t constrained to treat me as an equal or take me seriously and if they can hear the subtext, they choose to ignore it. They jam my headphones on my head, crank up “Abbey Road” and take turns hitting the morphine button every 15 minutes. It’s fun to turn Mom on.

It’s less than 24 hours after undergoing a partial left lung lobectomy. The inferior lobe contained a malignant tumor the size of a tangerine. A couple of dodgy looking lymph nodes in the media steinum were also excised and the surgeon was “pretty sure” he got them all. The diagnosis is non-small cell lung cancer, 3-A on the scale of cancer nightmares. The worst is four. The five year survival rate is 15% — eight out of ten people will die of the disease within five years. But, if I am one of the statistical two that survive, the odds of my dying of any type of cancer come back in line with the general population or 200 in 100,000. On July 8, 2000, I am counting down day one with, I hope, about 1,815 to go.

I will say right now that I am culpable. I smoked my first cigarette when I was 15 and my last two months before I was diagnosed. I quit nine times, once for 18 months. And I knew I was a first-class risk; in 1980 I had a super fast growing malignant tumor removed from under my left arm. I am responsible for my own actions, not the tobacco companies, and I suffer the consequences. Karma is, inexorably, karma. All of our actions cause suffering, some more than others. Why do people repeatedly act against their own self-interests? How can you/I/he/she/they drink/smoke/drug/eat/sleep/shop/fill in the blank to excess when all the evidence — especially the evidence of our direct experience — informs us that our behavior is harming ourselves and others? All my ancient twisted karma, stemming from greed, anger and ignorance, arising from body, speech and mind, I now fully repent. No one escapes.

I was not practicing Zen when I was diagnosed. I was, however, an experienced practitioner of the Zen of Reading All the Books about Zen and, I modestly admit, a pretty adept spiritual materialist. I began this practice at 12, just a year after Dharma Bums was published. At 24 I read Be Here Now, and later that decade The Three Pillars of Zen and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. At 30 I discovered Alan Watts. At 40, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.

By 2000, I had visited Milarepa’s cave in Tibet, acquired a leaf from the cutting of “the” Bodhi tree at Wat Pho in Bangkok, and had spent the night at Lumbini. I’d attended a workshop at the Toronto Zen Centre, and had returned to that Centre to sit at other times. But the vibes weren’t welcoming and the energy at the Toronto Zen Centre in 1992 was unsettling. I didn’t stay. I had taken teachings from the Dalai Lama; hugged strangers at Unity churches; chanted at the Vedantist Society; “OM-ed” with a number of celebrity lamas and mamas; danced ecstatically at New Moon rituals, attended New Age “healings” and had otherwise been stumbling down the road to Inner Peace for some time. At 53, spiritual seeking had become my life and although I thought I was working hard to find a “place to worship” as I described it, I’ve come to understand that the “seeking” was the main obstacle to finding. But there’s nothing like the diagnosis of a potentially terminal illness to focus the mind. I didn’t know it, but the seeking was pretty much over and the hard work had not yet begun.

On the third morning after surgery, the sun rose in my east facing hospital room. A nurse was with me, silently and patiently untangling the web of cords, tubes and wires from all the various drips, monitors and drains that ensnared me. As the light in the room deepened, every idea I had about religion, every fierce wish for total faith in a personal God, every cherished idea concerning the nature of things and all of my closely reasoned analysis of existence and being, dissolved. An Ojibwe saying quoted by Joko Beck — “Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky” — rose like the sun in my newly minted mind. I spoke these words out loud. The nurse turned to me and smiled. “I thought you were asleep,” he said gently. “Not anymore.” He held my hand while I wept. His presence was witness, his silence a balm. The experience was completely full completely empty. I was discharged the next day, 48 hours before anyone had expected, borne by a great wind across an empty sky.

It’s well documented that people with cancer or other serious illnesses who cultivate and maintain a positive attitude live longer and have a better quality of life than those who don’t. This point-of-view is pervasive at every level of the experience. All hospital personnel from the head of surgery to the parking lot attendant encourage it. Support groups provide step-by-step instructions on how to achieve it. Family members and friends insist on it.

Emotions and thoughts are chemical. Negative thoughts weaken us. Positive thoughts and feelings strengthen and heal us. The goal is to “stop every negative thought and action in your environment whether you think it, say it, or are in the field of someone else who says or does something and replace it with a positive thought,” according to one source. “Positive affirmations can shrink tumors,” claims another. “You are the commander of YOUR body! Take charge and command your cells to be healthy. You do not have to accept and enable what's happening to them. You may command the cells in your body that are here to serve your Soul!”

Hallelujah! I could think my way out of this! I longed to believe that I was essentially in control and had ultimate power over the events that were coming downstream, including the very real possibility of a horrible death from a wasting disease. It would be a dream come true to force this nightmare into something I could manage and control. I wanted to wring it dry of every hint of uncertainty, ambivalence and ambiguity. Who doesn’t yearn for a future that is solid all the way through. Like baloney, no matter where you cut, it is the same, a completely consistent and predictable physical, emotional and mental package. No surprises.

But the Great Matter had whupped me upside the head good and proper. I now knew, without a doubt, that I was not enthroned, solitary and omnipotent, at the center of the universe. We may be the “captains of our fates and the masters of our souls” only under the most limited conditions — pink or blue, whole or skim, Coke or Pepsi. The notion that we have the power to command our cells to heal as if they were a pack of bad dogs is the seductive danger of New Age spirituality. It tempts us with a fantasy of unparalleled personal power, encourages us to use that power for our own self-interest, and ultimately affirms our unalienable right to get our own way. It’s true, isn’t it? What we call “positive” thinking is always in accord with our ego preferences — an abundance of wealth, health and happiness — while “negative” thinking always describes our aversions — financial insecurity, ill health and (the ultimate aversion) — death. That we can know what is ultimately good and ultimately bad and drive our lives towards the good and away from the bad is essentially ego inflation, a fantasy of God-like power. Besides, who really knows what’s good, what’s bad?

In ancient China, there was a poor farmer whose only valuable possession was a horse. One day, the horse ran away. A neighbor rushed over to commiserate. “That’s terrible! What a tragedy, a real misfortune.” The farmer answered, “Who knows what’s good, what’s bad?” The next day, the horse returned, leading a herd of wild horses into his corral. The neighbor hurried over to compliment the farmer on this unexpected windfall and his stunning good luck. “You’re a rich man now! What a great thing for you and your family!” The farmer answered, “Who knows what’s good, what’s bad?” The next day, the farmer’s only son, attempting to tame one of the wild horses, was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbor ran to comfort the farmer. “A disaster, certainly. Who will help you bring in the crops? Terrible!” The farmer answered, “Who knows what’s good, what’s bad?” The next day, the army marched through the village, conscripting all able bodied youths, but the farmer’s son was not taken because he had a broken leg. So the neighbor . . . well, you know the rest.

People with serious illnesses can become prisoners of positivism, captives of the either/or good/bad positive/negative mind state. I knew I didn’t want either/or. I hadn’t for some time. Now I was finding both/and to be unsatisfactory . What I was discovering was that the imperative is not to be positive, the imperative is to be present.

I was optimistic about the outcome, including — not in spite of — the very real possibility that I would die from this disease within five years. And while it is preferable and pleasant for us and the people around us for to be positive in these circumstances, in the end both Pollyanna and Scrooge are crippled equally.

My optimism was coming from a different place, a knowing that, regardless of my own particular and personal outcome, everything was, is now and will essentially be okay. A few years later under different circumstances, Sensei told me that Roshi Kapleau often said: “Don’t worry. You can’t fall out of the universe.” That is a near perfect expression of the knowing that I experienced. The optimism that sprung from this energy is what enabled me to be present for this experience, not from “positive” thinking.

When I took my first Jukai, I wrote this poem:

Bad thought. Good thought.
Just thought. No thought.
Ah!

But that was later. In the six months between diagnosis and the post surgery, post chemotherapy, post radiation benchmark CT scan, my job, as everyone kept reminding me, was to “beat this thing.”

The language of cancer (or any serious illness) is the language of war. We attack cancer and conquer it. We are urged to be strong in the fight against cancer. We are told that early detection is the best defense. There are cancer battle plans, aggressive strategies to kill cancer and an entire library of books with variations on the title, Fight Cancer and Win. An individual’s experience with the disease is often described as a “last stand” or “a desperate struggle.” Certain foods and supplements are described as “cancer-fighting” and nutrition, exercise and alternative therapies are “weapons.” There are victims and survivors. Survivors are courageous and brave. Some, like Lance Armstrong, are heroes. Some, like Dana Reeves, are martyrs.

The military vocabulary drove me nuts. I am a dove politically, non-violent socially and non-aggressive by design and desire. But I’m not a pacifist. Even now, as a practicing Buddhist, I will fight to defend others. Under certain circumstances — like this one — I will also fight to defend myself. But how do you fight your own cells? What was there to fight? Maybe the cancer cells that survived the surgeon’s knife (another weapon) were forming a fifth column in my body. Was I harboring the enemy? Or was I the enemy? Who fights? Who lives? Who dies? Now I see these questions as the seeds of koan practice. Then I was angry, disturbed and completely flummoxed (which, now that I think about it, was also my initial response to formal koan practice!)

My resistance ran so deep, that I did something completely out of character. I dropped the struggle and shut up. I nodded and smiled. I learned to tune out the clichés and listen to my own heart and mind. When I did, I understood one simple fact. The ground is falling away under our feet — ALL of our feet, ALL of the ground, ALL of the time. This was the only thing I was sure of as I embarked on a 28 day cycle of radiation therapy and one course (two cycles, administered through six infusions) of a chemotherapy blend of Taxol and carboplatin or TaxolCarbo.

Taxol is, basically, a natural botanical, an extract from the bark of the Pacific yew tree (Taxus brevifolia). The problem with using natural Taxol as an anti-cancer treatment is that it is unconscionable environmentally and off the charts in terms of cost: it takes between three and ten 100-year-old trees to treat just one patient. But luckily the needles and twigs of the European yew tree (Taxus Baccata) were found to contain a close relative to Taxol. As the trees quickly replenish the needles, harvesting large quantities has little effect on the population of yew trees. A semi-synthetic version of Taxol, Paclitaxel, was introduced in 1995. Still wildly expensive, of course, but sustainable and relatively practical.

An infusion of a semi-synthetic botanical, like a rare medicinal tea, perhaps, or a complex herbal cocktail, that doesn’t sound so bad, right? In fact, I was feeling pretty good about it, despite the short list of side effects — hair loss, loss of appetite, nausea, painful bones and muscles, numbness and tingling of limbs were the manageable minimum to expect. More serious things like internal bleeding, respiratory and/or gastrointestinal problems, mouth sores, fever and bone marrow depression were distinct possibilities.

The most fearsome item on this list of horrors is hair loss. Trust me. No woman who has ever faced chemotherapy will tell you otherwise. Remember the classic Jack Benny routine? Benny is held up at gunpoint. The robber says, “Your money or your life.” Long and delicious pause. The robber repeats his demand. Benny says, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

“Your hair or your life,” says the oncologist, metaphorically. And one hesitates! The idea that I would lose my hair — which, frankly, I never liked anyway, it being always thin and limp and full of cowlicks — opened a floodgate. My tantrum was worthy of any two year old. There was nothing to say. I was inconsolable, my feelings of despair beyond words of comfort or reason. The next day, my husband shaved his head.

This singular act of compassion and loving kindness was and is the most marvelous thing anyone has ever done for me in this life, helping me immeasurably through what was to come. I began to catch a glimpse of what it might mean to simply hold up a flower, to simply see it, to simply smile. To be, fully and entirely, beyond words.

There are essential differences between pain and suffering. Pain is unavoidable — suffering is optional. Pain is what happens. Suffering is the story we tell ourselves about what’s happening. Or has happened. Or might happen. Pain is physical. Suffering is mental. In the chemotherapy room of the Strauss Oncology Center at Weiss Hospital the already thin wall separating physical pain from mental suffering is permeable to the point of transparency. And a mighty cheerful place it was, too.

Forbearance is an old virtue that has a bad rap. Often linked with patience, forbearance is a level or two deeper. Patience is something one exercises while in line at the supermarket or in traffic. Forbearance is more like a willingness to absorb pain with as much good humor, courtesy and self-lessness as one can muster. In fact, one of its dictionary definitions is “long-suffering.” The practice of forbearance is what made the experience of willingly poisoning oneself at regular intervals bearable. Even enjoyable. Without exception, every single person I encountered was cheerful, helpful, hopeful, open hearted and brave. It was a privilege to be there. I learned how to basically sit for hours in the presence of others on the same journey, uncomfortably pinioned to an intravenous drip, experiencing the benefits of stillness one moment and the resistance to it the next, breathing through it all, trying not to watch the clock and struggling to be with what is. I often flash on this experience in the few moments after a formal round of sitting in the zendo when we all rise for kinhin.

While chemotherapy had a group energy, radiation was a solitary experience. Perhaps because of that and because it meant a daily trip to the hospital, the worst of the two. It was here that I think I first faced the First Noble Truth. “Suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, is a condition of existence.” Not just my existence. It is neutral. If we take it personally, we’re doomed.

In January, 2001, I became a Buddhist. It happened during a regular appointment with the oncologist following the “benchmark” CT scan:
“There is a mass on your left lung. It’s probably scar tissue, completely consistent with your experience.”
“What?!”
“There is a mass on your left lung. We’re pretty sure it’s scar tissue.”
“Pretty sure?! What does that mean?”
“Scar tissue looks like a mass on these scans.”
“My tumor looked like a mass on the scan.”
“Right.”
“RIGHT???!!!!”
“Right.”
“How do we know it’s not a tumor?”
“We compare scans. If the mass is larger next time, it’s probably a tumor. If it’s the same it’s probably scar tissue.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding. The mass could be either a tumor or scar tissue. We’re pretty sure it’s probably scar tissue.”
“When will we be certain?”
“Never.”

Picnic Pictures

2006-10-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

The Sangha had its annual picnic in September, hosted this year by Cynthia. Here are some pictures from the event, contributed by Kasia. The bocce set was nowhere to be found this year, but we're hoping it resurfaces for 2007.

Garden Diary

2006-07-01T20:03:00.000-05:00

Kasia Karbowiak has been taking pictures of the Zen Center garden throughout the Spring. Here are some highlights:

April

May

June

"One particle of dust is raised, and the great earth lies therein; one flower blooms and the universe rises with it." Yüan-Wu

El Que No Se Aventura No Cruza La Mar

2006-07-01T02:00:00.000-05:00

by Sean Poust

I came into learning my second language, Spanish, in much the same manner as I came into Zen practice: out of the blue I simply decided that I wanted to do it. I came into both with a rather fantastic number of preconceptions and ideas about the best way to learn, the amount of time it should take to get from point A to point B, the manner in which I would get there, and most importantly—or perhaps worst of all—the notion that I was good at this.

After three semesters of college-level Spanish, I arrived where I am now: Chillán, Chile. This is the city where the Chilean equivalent of George Washington was born, Bernardo O’Higgins and it lies in the heart of Chilean wine and agricultural territory. Along with this territory comes a culture of folclor (traditional folklore music) with singing and the national dance, the Cueca. There are also shopping malls and huge stores that are almost exactly the same as those in the US, save the fact that they speak Spanish instead of English. However, within walking distance from the mall—albeit a generous walking distance—one can find people who get around walking or on horseback and raise a good deal of what they eat. It is very interesting to see the interactions between the new, modern global economy and the older agricultural one and the delicate and changing equilibrium that exists between the two. Here, I live with a normal Chilean family, with a mom and two children: a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. I attend classes at the Universidad del Bio-Bio and spend my time trying to integrate myself into Chilean life as much as I can.

In this environment my real Spanish lessons began. Quickly finding out that my three semesters of language, my ideas about how to learn and how good I thought I was did very little to help me at the beginning, I panicked. I spent a hefty amount of time looking for Spanish immersion schools in Santiago (the capital here and where about a third of the country lives and a majority of the institutions of Chile). I looked for things on the Internet about the best strategies to learn another language and how one should organize oneself in order to learn the language in the fastest manner possible. Besides this, I would profusely apologize for the errors that I would make in speaking with my family and my friends at school and I would often be quite nervous when trying to talk to people. Studying grammar treatises was another of my frequented activities.

I soon found out that none of this really helped me all that much. I cannot recall ever reading a grammar treatise as a child and yet, my grammar at 5 years of age in English was better than my grammar in Spanish now, despite the rather large amount of time that I have spent studying grammar. This is not to say that studying grammar is not a worthy activity, quite the contrary, the grammar is the superstructure that one needs in order to speak, but it is not a language. The postures, bell and traditions of Zen are needed to practice Zen, but they do not constitute Zen practice. As an example, let us suppose that someone knows all the grammar rules and all the words in another language, would that person know how to speak and interact with people?

Personally, I feel that the answer to that question is no. If that were the case, that person would be a word processor, capable of finding everything that is wrong with a written or spoken language, but incapable of really producing it. Language learning, like Zen practice, is an intensely human process; the process changes us, changes the very structure of our brains, there are no shortcuts. Implicitly, a shortcut cannot exist, as that would mean that one could change without the tortuous process of struggle. Having a shortcut would be similar to being able to train for a bike race by watching videos; one has to get out on the bike to improve. To practice Zen one has to sacrifice and work; likewise, to learn language, one has to get out there, speak and try to communicate. There may be techniques and tools, but there are no ways around the work, as much as we might look for them. Personally, I like to hide in superstructures like grammar, but to really get somewhere, one has to internalize and forget about those constructions and just talk, just communicate... just the practice. Sound familiar?

In the process of acquiring a new language later in life, one realizes that the other tongue is not just another version of the mother tongue, but rather a whole new system of conveying ideas; one could even say the foreign tongue is a new way of thinking. I have realized that what is commonly spoken and discussed in Spanish is very different from what is said in English and that the entire structure of the language is different, more precise in some ways, less in others. Many things simply do not have good translations. For me, I have discovered that Spanish is a completely new way of rendering myself, a totally new way of displaying myself and my thoughts to the world. I see a certain parallel with this and Zen practice; Zen is a wholly new way of rendering ourselves—or perhaps un-rendering ourselves—to the world. We seem to have honestly no idea how to step forward at some times, other than to just work at it in an inglorious, extended and continuing manner.

When I had recently arrived and was feeling somewhat discouraged at how far I still had to go, my Spanish tutor told me, “You never stop learning a language.” At the time, I didn’t really appreciate that statement, as I still thought of the progression in another language more like a light switch, one day, you just wake up and everything’s done. During the beginning of my Zen practice, I similarly thought that one day, I would come home from Sesshin and have everything figured out, sort of like toast in a toaster. However, that interpretation misses the point. There is a saying in Spanish, “El que no se aventura no cruza la mar: Que no se arriesga no pasa la mar.” Literally translated, “He who doesn’t dare doesn’t cross the sea: he who doesn’t risk himself does not pass the sea.” In language and in Zen, the determining factor is how much of yourself do you throw into it: all of yourself or enough to still feel comfortable? Forget about the progress and descend into the practice. Are you going to leave some of yourself on one shore so that you’re okay if you sink? Or do you go out there with the intention of sinking, sinking into the exploration so that it doesn’t matter any more? Nothing ventured, nothing gained; everything ventured, ¿quién sabe?

Copyright 2006 Zoe Kaufman

Why I Don't Own an iPod (Yet)

2006-07-01T01:52:00.000-05:00

by Jonathan Laux

Spend any time in a coffee shop, on the train, or basically anywhere there are people, and you don’t have to look too hard – chances are, there’s someone with those little white “earbud” headphones stuffed in their ears, the universal sign that this person is Plugged Into An iPod.

I’ve grown increasingly irritated of late by just how ubiquitous these little devices have become. It’s certainly not the device per se; I’ve admired Apple’s products for a long time and am writing this article on an Apple laptop. Nor is the iPod the first device of its kind: Last year the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the 25th anniversary of the Sony Walkman, the device that “started it all” and changed music from a communal experience to a personal one. But these days, the iPod stands alone in how it has been marketed, how quickly it has become an “indispensable” item for many people, and just how omnipresent it is.

To avoid coming off as a crank, let me acknowledge before going any further that I have thought several times about buying an iPod, and almost certainly will eventually own one. Not long ago, a friend was amazed that I didn’t have one already: “How can you not? They’re so cool!” Indeed. This topic is murky, and worthy of discussing in the context of Zen practice, precisely because we are all working to find a middle way between the “Zen Ideal” as we conjure it and, well, “coolness”. In many ways I understand the appeal of being plugged in; I’ve thought that way and wanted that stimulus. But I’ve also found that I don’t need it, that indeed the mind is clearer without it.

Much of my complaint with the iPod stems from how it renders music a commodity. I’ve always enjoyed the flow of a good album. But the iPod doesn’t advertise albums; it advertises “15000 songs in your pocket”. We’ve shortened our attention spans such that the whole album is now too long. Only the songs matter, which we can arrange into playlists of our own choosing and listen to again and again and again until we get bored, then listen to the rest of our 14999 songs. What do we get from listening to a song for the 10th time? The 100th? How does that help us? Perhaps we enjoy the musicianship: it has a good trumpet solo, maybe, or a lovely string section. Or perhaps it’s more like a nervous habit: something we do thoughtlessly like so many other machinations of the mind.

I remember when this seemed appealing. I discovered Led Zeppelin in high school, and remember a solid week that I had “Stairway to Heaven” in my head. Sometimes in college, I’d bring headphones on the way to class. It was cool; it made life feel like a music video. Now I catch myself--- it made life feel like a music video. Wow, that sounds far less appealing in the light of day! While I was plugged in, perhaps I failed to notice the sunlight that day, a friend trying to call my name, or the driver that slammed his breaks to avoid hitting me as I cut in front of him.

This kind of issue has helped me appreciate the “holistic” perspective in which Buddhism challenges us to engage life. Listening to an iPod cannot be seen as “moral” or “immoral”, but like all actions it has ramifications that reverberate in ways we may not see. In our moments of idleness, where does the mind go? Can we be content with the situations we’re in, or do we feel the endless need for stimulation and entertainment?

Eventually it may make sense to buy one, I tell myself. When I used to drive to work, I would often listen to music in my car; now that I commute via the train, playing music on an iPod isn’t so different... right? Moreover, after resisting the idea for some time I have become a cell phone user, which on the List of Modern Annoyances is at least as bad as the iPod, and probably much worse.

Ultimately, of course, the issue is not “have” versus “have not”, but “how much?” iPods and cell phones have made it possible to be distracted from the Here and Now, anytime, anywhere.

Instead, I just ride the train, listen to the recorded voice tick off the L stops: “This... is Howard. Doors open on the left... at Howard.” A man sits down next to me. I get out a stick of gum, offer him one too. He declines, but thanks me. A while later we reach his stop. Before leaving, he wishes me a good day. It isn’t much, but it’s some small release from the frantic self-absorption of urban living.

For now, I’ll leave the headphones at home.

Spring Notes

2006-04-01T06:00:00.000-06:00

The Quarterly as a blog is one year old now and we’re still tinkering with the look and feel of it. Some people have reported trying unsuccessfully to print articles, so we’ve addressed this in two ways. First, articles now run the width of your browser window – this should be easier on your printer. If you want only a specific article, we recommend you first click on its title, which will bring you to a page displaying only that article. Second, we’re also posting a “printable” version of this issue in PDF format – a link appears above. This is an experiment, and we may not do this for future issues. To help wean die-hards from their paper versions, the PDF Quarterly contains no pictures – we had to draw the line somewhere. The Quarterly will continue to evolve; if there are things you like or dislike, please let us know.

Sit well,
J&J

The Withered Tree Blossoms

2006-04-01T05:00:00.000-06:00

by Jody Wilson

Nothing expresses the constancy of change more beautifully than the changing of the seasons. Snow on green grass turns to ice even as it melts. The early crocus shivers in the near frigid morning light. Near frigid, but not quite. Not quite winter, not quite spring.

Yesterday we ate our lunch in front of open windows, the warm breeze ruffling the cats' fur as they napped happily in the weak sunshine. Today there is the smell of damp wool and old wood fires and the dogs have put their tails between their chilly legs once again. When will it be sunny? When will it be warm? When will it be truly Spring? When will I die? How will I live? All sorts of irrelevant questions come up, demand our attention and dissolve into the moment. It's Spring, after all. A new beginning. Or is it? We think of Spring as a rebirth. But for Winter, it is an ending - a death. Neither good nor bad. Spring inevitably follows Winter. That's all. No more, no less.

"Summer at its height -
And snow on the rocks!
The death of winter - and the
Withered tree blossoms."
-Zen Saying

March Zen

2006-04-01T04:00:00.000-06:00

Tell me,
when the last icy star
cartwheels its way
to watery rest
deep in the March grass,
does the blade bow
under the weight
or out of respect?

Even the common brick
or plank of wood,
in time, cries out
in its own voice

But the man,
startled in his private chair,
remains asleep, thinks instead
that something’s afoot
in the upper rooms
of his empty house

-Dennis King

First Annual Buddhist Women’s Conference

2006-04-01T03:00:00.000-06:00

Six months of planning and creative problem solving paid off handsomely on March 11 at the first annual Buddhist Women’s Conference “Women Living the Dharma.”

Over 300 people attended the full day event, which was jointly sponsored by the Buddhist Council of the Midwest and the Philosophy Department, Religious Studies Department, University Ministry, Women's Center and Women's and Gender Studies Program of DePaul University. The day began with a well-received keynote address “The Dharma of Gender” by Dr. Rita Gross, author of Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism. There were 26 morning and afternoon breakout sessions; an art exhibit and a plenary panel moderated by Kathy Ross that included Rev. Kyoki Roberts, Head Priest of the Zen Center of Pittsburgh, Abbess Khenmo Drolma of the Vajra Dakini Nunnery and Ven. Sudhamma Bhikkhuni of the Carolina Buddhist Vihara.

A heartwarming highlight of the Conference was the presentation of the first Women and Engaged Buddhism Award to the Dhamma Moli Project founded by Venerables Molini Rai and Dhamma Vijaya of Nepal. The Dhamma Moli Project provides a place of refuge and education for young Nepalese girls at risk of falling victim to human traffickers who sell them into brothels and circuses in India. The cash award of $1500 represents a portion of the conference registration fees.

Our sangha was very well represented. Kathy Ross, Gerrie Griffin, Cindy Sigal, Mary Jeanne Larrabee (whose efforts opened up the wonderful DePaul conference facilities to us), Caroline DeVane and Jody Wilson (whose husband Bob also designed and maintained the website) were members of the organizing committee. Zoe Kaufman’s wonderful paintings flanked the stage and were the highlight of the art exhibit. Ella Prejzner, Kasia Karbowiak, Mike McKane, Christina Johnson, Jeff Hickey, Alina Fridberg, Julie Rose, Seanna Tully and all CZC members who arrived early to help set up and stayed late to help break it all down made major contributions to the success of the conference.

L to R: moderator Kathy Ross, Khenmo Drolma, Ven. Sudhamma Bhikkhuni, Rev. Kyoki Roberts

Gina Caruso of the Shambhala Center took some additional pictures that can be viewed here.

. . .

The Wider Sangha: Personal Impressions of the Buddhist Women’s Conference by Caroline DeVane

It’s Sunday evening. All guests who came for the Buddhist Women’s Conference have left. The temple is once again quiet and empty. Due to a number of happy circumstances, I've been encountering more non-CZC members and being enriched by the way they talk about their Buddhist practice.

The inter-Buddhist dialogue of the Women’s Conference allowed me to hear a lot of stories about practice from “outside the nuclear family” so to speak. More accurately, these people “outside the family” really aren’t outside! I think it’s easy in situations like the Women’s Conference to fall into the “us” and “them” trap, even if on a very subtle level. We are women, they are men, or vice versa. We are Zen Buddhists, they are Tibetan Buddhists. Thankfully, I think the conference message and speakers took care to look at these oppositions with a critical eye. Rita Gross’ keynote speech was wonderful for the way she redefined feminism as working towards freedom from gender roles for women AND men.

I think the Women’s Conference was a success because it harmoniously brought people together for a sharing session – to swap stories and knowledge, to recognize that we travel the same path, no matter what gender or heritage. What a treasure it is to know the commitment to practice you hold so deeply is shared. What a treasure to experience that your way of approaching truth and understanding is not wholly unique to your circumstances. This commitment to practice comes from the heart we all share, no matter what practice.

. . .

Response to the Women's Conference by Jonathan Laux

When a group of people gather together for a common purpose, chances are the group will take on a certain identity resulting from that purpose. I immediately think of student activists, political parties and angry mobs. The tone of the Conference steered us away from this propensity, because it placed great emphasis on asking questions and fostering discussion. Overall the day carried a high degree of trust; communication channels were open – thankfully, because only in this kind of atmosphere would it feel natural to share feelings and rituals together. As I quickly discovered, it felt weird to gassho in public, but it seemed appropriate when done out of genuine respect for the Dharma we share. But there were also times it seemed like an imposed formality, and then the room felt eerily like a church. I suspect that the future success of this project will depend on how well it sustains the level of sincere inquiry that was displayed by many who were present. You can institutionalize anything, but in doing so, how will you change the thing itself?

Regarding Dr. Gross's comment that men should work to develop the nurturing qualities traditionally considered feminine: I'm all for it, although by itself this seems neither a complete nor an easy solution to the problem of gender equality, within Buddhism or otherwise. The mind loves to create opposition. It's relatively easy to get people (women) to stand up and fight. It's much trickier to get people (men) to sit down and nurture – or give up the job, stay home and raise children, for that matter. Of course, this isn't the only sense in which Dr. Gross meant to nurture. But there’s a lot of work left to be done, and for younger people today, how we do this work will impact our future families, careers and lives.

One obvious place to start: keep sitting. We've all heard the statement that Zen practice softens our edges. The Center is the only place that I have seen men hug, except possibly at funerals. If for no other reason - and there are plenty of other reasons - this is a good reason to keep doing work on the mat.

waking up

2006-04-01T02:00:00.000-06:00

waking up and the blue of the wide glass windows,
the space where the answer is unknown and
there is fear there and the fear is nothing.
and when i wake up i am nothing and
the window is wide and very very blue.
i think the window is everything
and also my scarf is pink and there is one thread
and it is waving, gracile and not graceful
and i think the thread is actually light
but it is too bent for that.

and i push the hard red arm away beneath me
and my feet and the floor put weight on each other.
i think my body moves through space but
i don't know where my body ends and space begins
and so i am not sure about that either
but a girl’s face is oval at me,
a computer monitor is turquoise.

-Christina Johnson

Another Facet of the Diamond

2006-01-22T13:41:00.000-06:00

by Jody Wilson

I love football. I still love football; it’s one of the few constants in these last years of intense personal change and a deep reordering of priorities. Sometimes I judge my love for the game. It’s too violent, I tell myself; it’s not a spiritual game; people who are football fans are not spiritual people. How I be a ‘real’ Buddhist and a ‘real’ Bears’ fan?? I’m sometimes ashamed of my enthusiasm for the game, because I think it doesn’t reflect well on me or my practice. It doesn’t “fit” with being a Buddhist. Happily, however, my practice shows me that the messy self-judgment and the egotistical concern about what others may think about me shows more about where I’m stuck than my pure love for the game does!

Football is a game of opportunity, commitment and purpose, a game of emotion and momentum. When it’s played at the level of “skillful means” it is a dance of bodies through space and time; it’s not being afraid to throw deep; it’s about being totally aware on a field of the most violent, in-your-face distractions.

During a good game, well played, you can actually see the momentum change. . . the moment, the shift of energy, that occurs when one player, or several players become charged up with it. Often, the score hasn’t changed, the weather hasn’t changed, the players on the field haven’t changed - it, the Ineffable It, doesn’t really change either, although that’s the way it looks. Players suddenly open to it, get it and most times, literally speaking, run with it. I love to see that.

Ken “The Snake” Stabler, legendary quarterback of the Oakland Raiders, was once asked the meaning of Jack London’s famous credo:

“I would rather be ashes than dust.
I would rather my spark should burn out in a
brilliant blaze
than be simply stifled.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
with every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.”

The Hall of Famer thought for a while and then quietly replied, “Throw deep.”

We can all bow to that.

Alive or Dead?

2006-01-22T12:46:00.000-06:00

by Will Cowing

Went to the funeral of Bill Wendt today. He was a couple of months short of 93. Died of throat cancer. He was a feisty old guy who was an excellent tennis player. He had a world ranking as a senior. At the funeral home, all his awards, certificates etc. were on display. His coffin was very expensive with bronze engravings of the last supper and other scenes of the suffering of Jesus. The sermon included the usual Christian assurances about eternal life and belief in Jesus Christ. The pastor was a very fat jovial man who was much more likable than many others I had known.

But after a while, even though I had been a Christian a good part of my early years and was familiar with the litany, I began to get a little uneasy. The Christian message just rubbed me the wrong way. The pastor talked about Bill being in heaven and how he wouldn't enjoy being on a cloud with a harp but would want to be in a more festive party. He went on about Jesus having a huge TV screen on which the events of your life would be replayed. Apparently only the good things would be shown, I gathered.

Karma, Karma, Karma, I wanted to shout out but kept my peace. I had known Bill for some 2 1/2 years only but had a good idea of where he was coming from. He played tennis to win, he had been a good father, and could be generous but he also had faults. A man of his times, from the south side of Chicago who made a decent life for himself and his family running a sporting goods store.

It was a dark day with a few drops falling as I sat in my car waiting for the procession to begin. I played a tape of Sensei from a recent sesshin as I drove in the procession to the grave site. Sensei’s teisho about habit traps in sesshin, relating this to the life of an extremely eccentric Englishman made a great deal of sense to me, the difference between the Englishman’s life and mine or anyone else's was only minor unless one breaks out of ego-driven habit bonds and begins to see and experience the beauty of... (well, you finish it.) We drove into the cemetary and I was struck by the dark somber beauty of the place.

We were given roses to put on the casket after a short service with the usual Christian reassurances (for the believers) of eternal life. Two soldiers in uniform saluted the casket and rolled up the flag for his daughter as taps was played on a tape recorder. This moved me to tears. There was only one minority person among the mourners, a short Asian woman who was an excellent tennis player. Bill had grown up in a much different time from today. I had driven with him in his old Lexus with the music of the forties blaring. Empty, empty, where was he now? I bowed to his casket quickly and left for my car as the service ended.

I watched from my car as the workers started to lower the casket into its final resting place. Bill wasn’t in it but the body that had housed him was beautifully laid out, a tribute to the embalmers' art. Dirt would cover the casket and the body would slowly decay over the years. He would be forgotten in time and his grave unvisited and none would know how expensive his casket was or how beautifully he had been laid out. I have little doubt that the situation with my body will be any different. Cremation started to seem to be a better option, I mused, but then the cars started to move and I drove out of the cemetary. Bill wasn't there anyway...

Ordination Ceremony

2005-09-30T18:49:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, the Chicago Zen Center bore witness as one of its long-time members was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest. The man we once knew as Marek Prejzner renounced worldly life and took the 16 Precepts from Sevan Sensei. To begin his life as a priest, he was given the name Sthaman (pronounced sta' - mun). This is a Sanskrit word that shares roots with the English word "stamina." Sevan Sensei spoke about the difficulties one can expect on this path, but also about the sense of true fulfillment it can engender. Our Center is deeply enriched by Sthaman's commitment.

45 members, family members and guests attended the ceremony.

Sensei offers incense

3 Prostrations

Sthaman receives priest's robe

Changing

Spreading Zagu

Receiving rakusu

"Wondrous is the robe of liberation..."

All bow

Sensei & Sthaman

Book Review

2005-09-13T21:21:00.000-05:00

Gautama Buddha by Iqbal Singh, Oxford University Press

book review by Sevan Sensei

Singh wrote this book in the early 1990’s; at least the introduction says 1993. There have been countless biographies of the Buddha, and not a few have been pretty good. I have other favorites, the latest by Karen Armstrong, simply called Buddha. But I really love Singh’s book. It is readable, knowledgeable, treats the myths with respect while calling them myths, and possibly because Singh himself is an Indian and a scholar, this book dares to go where I have wanted to go for many years. Here’s what I mean: Just about every biography of the Buddha either resides well within the myth, or centers on breaking entirely with the myth. But even within both these camps few authors have dared to really speculate about the social and political realities that the Buddha must have faced.

Oh sure, they’ll make some general statements about caste, conditions, war, the state of the proto-Hindu society, but they will rarely attempt a full fabric wrapping of the life, times, sights, and smells of the age which the Buddha had to deal with directly. Let’s look at an example. When elaborating on how the Buddha’s father, Suddhodana, could not have been a king since they resided in a republic which was of the older and threatened social order (threatened by kingdoms!), Singh writes:

The decay of the old social order based on the twin principles of tribal autonomy and the inviolable sanctity of the family group had set in long before Gautama’s days. Irresistible economic pressure and a whole complex of psycho-political forces which those had brought into play, had rendered the tribal-cum-patriarchal republics in India more or less obsolete; their simple economy and social organization belonged to the past rather than to the future. The early tribal institutions and self-governing townships were in advanced stages of disintegration; already, when Gautama was born, several kingdoms had sprung up, and were steadily acquiring power through every conceivable means at their disposal, the methods of expansion ranging from actual wars of conquest to the nobler diplomacy of multiple matrimonial alliances. . . . Buddhist texts reveal that there still survived a number of independent or semi-independent aristocratic republics akin to the city-states flourishing in Greece roughly about the same time. Kapilavastu was one of them.

Finally, context. We have been wanting a biography that is willing to give us enough background to relate, to connect, the world of our founder to that world which produced us. Singh does this all through the book. But more, he is willing to speculate as to the mind state that is behind the actions of the major players of the Buddha’s story. By setting up enough historical backdrop to give us a feel of the fabric, he can speculate as to what makes the people move, and he is believable in most of his speculation. It brings the story of that time from black and white to Technicolor.

In other areas, Singh is unafraid to tackle the harder questions of the doctrine of Buddha’s teaching itself. Here is what he says about Karma and the transmigration of souls.

In view of Gautama’s categorical denial of the permanent nature of the soul, it is difficult to understand how anybody could justifiably credit him with belief in transmigration. . . .
Belief in transmigration without a corresponding belief in an immortal soul is an illusion which is at once illogical and inconsistent. . . . In all other respects Gautama’s world-view is so transparently sound and reasonable, that it is hard to believe, in this particular case, he should suddenly have abandoned his rational outlook, thus annihilating the whole purpose of his philosophy. On the other hand, it seems much more credible, and is indeed highly probable, that the references to the doctrine of transmigration which are to be found in the Buddhist Canon – and they are legion – have been introduced by the compilers.

And then off he goes to look at specific instances. His arguments are logical, sensible, and simple. I found myself all through the book having many of my own suspicions affirmed. This is more that a biography – it is a fearless examination of the whole tradition which is clothed as a biography. It is a fascinating and believable read. I couldn’t put it down.

Follow the River

2005-09-13T19:44:00.000-05:00

by Sheila Collins

The story behind this insight is that I was participating in one of my first sesshins at the Doshinji monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY (under John Daido Loori) during the 1980’s. I was very young, very disillusioned with what I saw as the ceaseless round of impermanent and vain activity. I so wanted to know the meaning of life, so I threw myself into sitting practice whole-heartedly. Yet no insight would emerge! I knew it must; I was desperate. I spent my time between the intense sitting sessions crying or feeling cheated and angry. Why could I not see? Finally, during a rest period, I put a book of Buddhist sutras under my pillow and told myself that “the truth will surely sink into my head while I’m sleeping and when I wake up, I’ll know it!” So I began to fall asleep, chuckling a bit over the silly pronouncement. But when I suddenly awoke, the first thing I saw was the door of my room and it immediately triggered something. It was a door transformed into an opening in my mind that was shockingly instantaneous and complete. Truth was there, more solid than the door. It was just pure knowing (which I will try to relate something of here). The silly effort of mine had worked, I guess. Even though it is a relatively small insight, nonetheless it greatly boosted my faith and encouraged further practice. Now I know that enlightenment is possible (someday I will truly achieve it!). It is not a dream. It is just our own deep realization of what is. As such, I believe that true experiences of enlightenment, insight (or whatever we wish to call it), have the power to transform every individual on countless levels.

In a flash
There is an understanding
Or is it an understanding?
It is more like a window – or a door
Suddenly thrown open

In front of your eyes
Filling all of space
Is simply one knowledge
It is the light of reality

Eternity pours through the universe
Splitting it
Tearing it apart
An enormous chasm stands revealed
Flowing within, a great river

Or twin rivers yet one
Perfect Love and Intelligence
Nothing else.
The very substance of all things
The beginning and the end
Wide and deep
Broad and vast

Love the origin?
Intelligence the expression?
No they really run together….
They cannot be considered separate
Standing as Truth, peerless
Without anything to obstruct

So what is everything else?
All of the “things”;
Human machinations,
Good and bad,
What is mentally created,
What we should do or shouldn’t
That which we suffer for?

Only smoke
Smoke rising in circles
From endless time
Obscuring the truth
But never diminishing it

Of no real substance
It’s all the conditioning
Everything anybody’s ever told us
Everything we’ve ever come to know
One step acting on another
Twisting and transforming
So-called individual personality

But we are far beyond that!
In true nature the self is whole
Never once blighted or injured
Storming through eternity
In power and peace
Or like the eye of a whirlpool
Deep and quiet, yet dynamic

Once a window is opened
It might shut again swiftly
But the taste, the memory lingers
Desire to attain
Such bliss of reality
Such clear sight provoking
The right way of living
Is intensified

To follow the twin rivers
And arrive at their source;
See into nature
And manifest it.
What life’s purpose could be greater?
Therefore, this is a vow.

Memorial Day Zen

2005-05-30T22:25:00.000-05:00

Doubt Essays: Introduction

2005-05-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

When I confessed to Sensei recently that I was having real doubts about Zen practice he laughed heartily and suggested writing about it. I followed his advice, but also felt the urge to talk things through with others in the Sangha. The idea emerged of presenting several views on this same topic together as a piece in the newsletter. The essays that follow were written separately by three of us who attended the same Intro Workshop in early 2000. We have talked briefly to each other about this idea and previewed each other’s words, but there was no collaboration beyond that and each is a very personal essay. Sensei says that it is not uncommon for people to leave Zen practice at a time of crisis and then feel embarrassed about returning. Some people never return, he says. It might be easier for us all to work through our doubts if we accept them as part of the journey. These essays are offered in that spirit. LMR

(I) Doubts and a Crisis

2005-05-15T20:47:00.000-05:00

by Laurel Ross

It has been just about five years since I threw in my lot with the Chicago Zen Center. The Center and Zen practice became an important part of my life almost instantly after I walked through the front door. Over the years I have been filled with gratitude for the great good fortune that brought me here. The sincerity, generosity and effort of the Sangha are both humbling and inspiring. This is hard work, but it pays off, sometimes in ways that can’t be imagined in advance. And yet grave doubts have permeated it all, manifesting themselves in various churning scripts.

“I am a light weight and will never be able to work hard enough to do this. Some people have what it takes. Clearly, I do not.”

“Zen practice takes so much time. I am busy. How can I justify all of this time spent?”

And so on…endless mind pudding. These thoughts have been there sometimes at the very same time as I am supposedly putting forth great effort in the practice. Sometimes they seem to be part of the practice. Other times background chatter. Ignore the noise--it’s only noise. Become the noise. Mu.

Recently, upon returning exhausted and drained from a very difficult work trip, I suddenly pretty much decided to quit Zen practice. There was no specific last straw that inspired this decision, but it was not a fleeting impulse--it seemed final and frankly, a great relief. No more of that! My mind raced, thinking of the possibilities: I would have time for things like movies again. It wasn’t clear what to do to make it official so I just stayed away, stewing and rehearsing goodbyes. Three weeks passed without going to the Center or sitting at home. This was a very negative time. Scripts roiled in my head.

“Zen practice is self-indulgent and narcissistic. Is it more valuable to the world and to myself to sit and stare at a wall when there is so much desperate need in the world to work towards peace and justice? My time and money are better spent on some practical, measurable good work—like a food pantry or a hospice.”

“My friends think I have gone off the deep end and maybe they are right. This system may have some value in Japan but here it is foreign and pretentious. People who do it are either faking it or they are deceiving themselves. So what the heck am I doing here? I am a sensible and serious person.”

These difficult few weeks held moments of longing for the smell and sound of the Zendo (was I addicted?) and moments of reveling in my perceived freedom. I confided my decision to a trusted old friend who asked, sensibly, “Why quit? Why not just slow down a bit and see how it goes?” Blam! That good advice deflated the manic energy that had built up around the idea of quitting that had almost taken on a life of its own. Now I was confused. I felt less negative, but apparently was still looking for an escape route.

“I am just not getting this. I am trying my best, but having a dry spell. A break will help me to reenergize. I’ll be back some time when it feels right again.”

“Zen practice/koan practice is a very good way of life for some people, but after giving it a good try it is fair to say that this is not really the best fit for me. Besides I can achieve the same thing through making a deeper commitment to my music, or my writing or my work, or my garden. I have already gotten all that I can get out of this actually, and now it is time to turn my attention to something that suits me better.”

More confusion and vacillation followed. My carpool buddy called to arrange a ride to a morning sitting. At the moment she asked I wanted to go, so I agreed. I reasoned that I would just go to the Center to see how it felt to be there. I promised myself that I didn’t have to go to Dokusan. It’s optional isn’t it? Nervewracking self-torment.

Anticlimax. I sat. I went to Dokusan. It was fine. Nothing major happened, bad or good, but the urge to quit lifted like a change in the weather.

Shortly after this crisis I attended a couple of days of a long sesshin and threw myself into the practice as sincerely I knew how. The old feeling of being in exactly the right place was there again.

So I am back. I never actually left except in my own mind’s experiment. But it was a real crisis and the reservations too are real—like crossing my fingers behind my back when making a promise. The doubts seem flimsy now compared to the reality of the experience of Zazen and for the moment they seem powerless. Who knows if I have it all figured out, but some of it is fear of commitment. All those scripts in my head are the mind plotting escape routes—barriers to commitment. Giving up on the scripts is making the commitment. Now I am in it for the rest of my life and I will just have to do it. Questioning is good.

(II) Doubt as Precursor to Insight

2005-05-15T20:39:00.000-05:00

by Steve Cole

When I discovered the Zen path in 1999, I thought I’d finally arrived. I was living in Helsinki at the time and was utterly depressed by the winter darkness and by my sputtering academic career. When I walked into the Helsinki Zen Center, I immediately felt at home.

Unfortunately, I left Helsinki shortly thereafter to take up a joint research appointment at the University of Ghent and the University of Chicago, while my wife stayed behind in Helsinki, where she taught Egyptology at the university. I didn’t know about the Chicago Zen Center then, and therefore, because I needed a place to stay while in Chicago, I arranged with Samu Sunim to stay at his Zen Buddhist Temple near the intersection of Cornelia and Lincoln. I lived there for several months but eventually decided that Korean Zen wasn’t my cup of tea and moved out. A little while afterwards, I heard about the Chicago Zen Center in Evanston. I learned that it was affiliated with the Rochester Zen Center, just as the Helsinki center was, and so I contacted Sensei. He invited me to attend an introductory workshop the next week, in May 2000, which I did, along with Laurel Ross and Jonathan Laux, and I was ecstatic at my new discovery.

Over the next four years I remained content in my assumption that I had found the way. Then, quite suddenly, I plunged into a long period of doubting and questioning about my path, which began shortly after the six-day sesshin in March 2004. During that sesshin, I had an experience in which my heart began to beat rapidly and irregularly during one of the afternoon rounds, causing me to flee the zendo under the assumption that I was having a heart attack. Then, after I had returned home, I picked up a book by Jack Kornfield, called A Path with Heart, which I had purchased a few days before sesshin began. I began to thumb through it, and one of the first passages that my eyes fell upon concerned a physician who had had a very similar experience during a retreat. Kornfield told him that he had known many students who had experienced these symptoms, and that they were manifested when the heart chakra began to open. For some reason, this made sense to me, and reading this passage so soon after my own experience seemed more than a coincidence. I also remembered that Sensei had expressed remarks on more than one occasion that were dismissive of the notion of chakras and chi and the like, and therefore I began to question both him and the Zen path. The seed of doubt had been planted, and it took root.

Over the next eight months I explored alternatives to Zen and questioned everything. I explored Hinduism first. I registered for retreats with two different teachers. I didn’t go. Then I explored Vipassana Buddhism. I registered for retreats with two more teachers. I didn’t go. Finally, I explored another Zen teacher. I registered for a retreat with him. I didn’t go. I was totally confused. All this time I continued to sit though, going deeper and deeper inside, looking for an answer.

Finally, when I had become totally confused, totally uncertain, with absolutely nowhere to turn, I simply gave up trying to know which path to take. I told myself, “I JUST DON’T KNOW.” Almost immediately it occurred to me that I should just trust the memory of how I had felt in 1999 when I entered the little zendo in Helsinki for the first time and my eyes fell on the peaceful countenances of Roshi Kapleau and Bodhin Sensei in the photo that hung on the wall just inside the door there. It was faith in this experience that eventually led me back to the Chicago Zen Center. When I showed up for Rohatsu sesshin in December 2004, I had not been inside the Center since the previous June, when I had helped to paint the Buddha Hall.

In my first dokusan with Sensei during this Rohatsu sesshin (my first dokusan in eight months), I explained why I had been absent for so long and how I had been wondering if Zen was the correct path for me because it gave only cursory attention to the heart, and I regarded this as a flaw. What he said that day turned me around completely. He told me that love and compassion began with one’s self. He said “Have love and compassion for your self.” In the next dokusan, he added, “Relax and enjoy yourself in this sesshin.” Those two remarks had a remarkable effect on me. They seemed to lift a great load from my back. I carried a smile the rest of that day, and into the next. Everything seemed radiant and beautiful. My sitting was steady, and without the usual knee pain.

Then, on the second day of Rohatsu, we were chanting “Kanzeon.” The lovely burnt-orange and gold altar cloth behind the new Vairocana Buddha was irradiant. On the altar was an arrangement of lovely flowers – mums, as I recall. My eyes were fixed on these flowers as we chanted “This moment arises from mind” and I finally realized the meaning of the chant. All at once, I felt great peace of mind. Everything was perfect as it was. No effort was required to change anything. Gone were worry and fear. All was a single field of awareness, with no inside or outside, and no separation. All these Zen clichés were actually true. A few hours later I was in the dokusan line sitting before the bell. My heart pounded and my ears rang in nervous anticipation, as they usually do while waiting for the impending summons. Suddenly, I was calm. I realized that I had glimpsed something extraordinary that day. I realized that there was no right or wrong answer to mu. When Sensei rang his bell, I struck mine twice, and walked resolutely into the dokusan room.

I am so grateful now that I didn’t give up my practice during those dark days and weeks. As I look back now on my experience, I see that my great doubt was actually a precursor to insight. In my case, the darkest hour truly was just before the dawn.

(III) losing a voice, finding a voice

2005-05-15T20:24:00.000-05:00

by Jonathan Laux

How do you say something with your own voice?

For a brief time in college - just before I began to practice Zen - I was a contributing writer for a monthly campus journal of conservative leanings. I wrote something about a rock album that had just been released and an article decrying what I saw as the basic flaws of Plato's Republic. I still regret writing this latter article. My magnum opus, to follow these 2 preliminary efforts, was to be a piece on Taoism. I had recently found a certain resonance with the Tao Te Ching and had begun practicing Tai Chi, so I felt it important to distill the sophomoric wisdom from these experiences for others who would naturally be eager to hear it.

Then things began to get thorny. After struggling through several drafts of the article, I realized that (a) I lacked any of the experience that would qualify me to write a thoughtful, provocative article on a topic as vast as Taoism, and that (b) even if I could write that article, the exercise would be futile. What would the finished article have accomplished? To whom would I have proven my point? Not even to myself, for I had little sense concerning the truth of my assertions.

I began to see clearly a discomfort that I had long noticed peripherally - the poison of opinions. None of us who were writing had anything to say that hadn't already been said more eloquently and to a larger audience. Perhaps there had been a time when I had taken comfort in this repetition, defined myself by it... but no more. When we become fixed in our beliefs and worldview, we die to the moment. Yet I was no longer fixed; I was fundamentally uncertain. I had beliefs and assumptions, but the closer I looked at them the more I saw what a disordered jumble they were.

When I wrote papers as a student, everything was simply an exercise: you would do the best work you could, you submitted it, you got a grade, then it went away. Neither you nor anyone else ever read it again. You weren't responsible for what you'd produced. This article was different. At that stage of life I was noticing "the world" for the first time - what we initially see as being "out there" - and was taking a stab at discussing something that mattered. To do that, I had to know something, be able to defend it. And I didn't know anything. Everything that had brought me to that point was simply conditioning; there was no internal order, no integrity to the collection of preferences, instincts and memories that was "me." I bailed on the article, on the journal. I resolved not to speak until I found something worth saying, something I knew was true because I had seen it for myself.

I have struggled with this question throughout the last 5 years: Who am I, really? What matters? What needs to be done, what should be done? How does one live a life?

The major goal of my youth was to excel in school. Since school came easily for me, I grew up without ever really struggling with anything. It seemed like if you thought hard enough about any problem that crossed you, you could eventually solve it. I was like a boxer who is undefeated but has never been knocked down, and thus has not learned how to stand up again and fight through exhaustion and the prospect of failure.

Since I first encountered Zen, the boxer has hit the floor many many times. Sesshin has a ferocious ability to knock the wind out of you; time and again, the aspiration that I thought I brought to practice has evaporated, leaving me lost and stupefied. I’ve spent a lot of time banging my head (mostly metaphorically) against the wall trying to figure out how to practice, or rather, how my old habits and thought patterns could bail me out. Just question? It can’t be that simple. There must be something I’m missing. But I’m pretty convinced now that there’s no magic technique that can save me. This has been disheartening, but has also helped me reach a point of resolution: There’s nowhere else I can go, no escape from this question. I can only keep working.

Sensei has often said that we have to just allow things to happen without resisting them. I find this advice helpful; often I try to grasp at life, control it, chase after easy answers. Even while preparing this article, I’ve written countless things that sounded good but upon later reflection seemed too easy and too polished to be true. For a long time I suffered from the (mis)conception that Zen would somehow make “my” life better. In school, life was largely a matter of convenience. I only had a limited ability and willingness to commit to people, make plans, mature, grow. The world is broader now. How much am I willing to change?

Slowly, I’ve begun to engage life – and question it – on a deeper, more fundamental level. More is at stake. It’s not only for myself that I do this work. Gradually, the habits and behavior that formerly occupied me have lost appeal. They are still being played, but at a softer volume. I am fascinated by the first several hours after a sesshin, when the intense hours of concentrated effort encounter everyday life again. The habits don't rush in quite as quickly. You start over. Birds chirp. You make tea, sip it slowly, savor the fragrance. You check your e-mail. It's like learning to walk again.

And yet… I mourn these habits as they fade. Much that I once valued now seems to have only marginal significance. I used to love reading books – I still do – but somehow they feel less enriching and more like entertainment. I enjoy music, but my guitar has languished in its case for most of this year. I have devoted much of my life to martial arts, only now to reach a kind of plateau: I can quit, recommit myself, or settle for an uncomfortable half-heartedness, neither committed nor neglected.

Life has changed. The sociologist Max Weber wrote that the world became “disenchanted” when our sense of the holy and mysterious was replaced by rational, scientific explanations of phenomena. Similarly, Zen seems to have disenchanted much that I once valued by stripping it of its apparent importance. I sense that I could spend my time in more constructive and compassionate ways, but those ways remain hidden from me. What now? Who am I, really? What matters? What needs to be done, what should be done? How does one live a life?

There’s no easy solution. I’m reminded of a passage from Nietzsche that evokes this sense of personal insignificance:

We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us---indeed, we have gone further and destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it offered more freedom---and there is no longer any “land.” (The Gay Science 124)

There’s a clear sense of “I” in the little ship and the poor bird; they are bound by their smallness and apparent isolation, still seeing the world as an “other.” While it’s natural to feel this way sometimes, I realize that it’s only more delusion that causes me to see my old life as better or more interesting than life now. All these habits and hobbies are at best secondary concerns. But as Nietzsche forces us to ask, when we leave the familiar and safe havens behind us, how do we navigate? What star can illuminate the Way?

Perhaps only the Way can show the Way. “Be lamps unto yourselves,” the Buddha taught. I miss the structure of my old life, but if I grasp for such a structure in Zen then practice will become selfish and blind. Instead, I need to trust my gut, risk something and be willing to stumble. To take refuge in uncertainty may be the most honest way to live. In contrast with the above passage from Nietzsche, the following passage from Dogen shows a very different relationship between self and world:

Fish swim the water and however much they swim, there is no end to the water. Birds fly the skies, and however much they fly, there is no end to the skies. Yet fish never once leave the water, birds never forsake the sky… If a bird leaves the sky, it will soon die. If a fish leaves the water, it at once perishes. We should grasp that water means life for the fish, and the sky means life for the bird. It must be that the bird means life for the sky, and the fish means life for the water; that life is the bird, life is the fish. (from Genjokoan)

Fish and water, bird and sky depend on one another, find life in one another, become one another. They are at home in their boundlessness. Similarly, when we practice the Dharma we are life for the Dharma, and the Dharma is life for us. At the times when I am unsure what to do, I must remember that all activities are simply different voices for practice. Enchanted or disenchanted, I can only keep digging.

Recently, I’ve discovered that I have unresolved business with my “free of opinions” collegiate self. Many times in practice I’ve told myself, “I know I’m not supposed to know anything.” But do I? There’s another word that we use for not knowing: ignorance. While it was helpful at one time to acknowledge what I did not know, I easily became complacent in a dichotomy between knowing and not-knowing: effectively, I wanted to give Emptiness a reality and hide there, neglecting the world of Form. But as we chant in the Sutra: Form is Emptiness, is no other than Emptiness, and Emptiness is no other than Form. If I am to practice Zen I must not hide from life but engage it directly. Only then will the practice find its voice.

Spring Notes

2005-03-25T11:02:00.000-06:00

Spring brings the return of grounds caretaking days as noted on the calendar. These are a great chance to spend an hour or two after Sunday sitting to help rake, plant, weed or do anything else that needs doing in the Center’s gardens. You don’t need to be an expert—just bring some work clothes. Ask Laurel Ross if you have any questions.

In May, the Center will hold the annual sangha meeting and election. As is true every year, two Trustee positions expire: Laurel Ross has served for two consecutive terms and is not eligible for election to the Board for a year; Fran Spellman is eligible for reelection. Information will be emailed soon on how members can download a ballot. (Ballots will also be available at the Center.) Please take the time to vote.

Vesak and Jukai are also in May. Rakusus are available to anyone who has been a member for at least a year and has gone through a formal student ceremony with Sensei. The rakusu ceremony happens at Jukai and they must be sewn, so please inquire soon if interested. For Vesak, we will have fun and games and a great potluck as always.

The Cedar Rapids Zen Center and the Milwaukee Zen Center are collaborating to offer a joint sesshin for sanghas around the Midwest at Hokyoji in southern Minnesota from August 20-27, 2005. Teachers will include Sevan Sensei, Genymo Smith of Prairie Zen Center, Rosen Yoshida of Missouri Zen Center, Dokai Georgeson of Hoyoji, Tonen O’Connor of Milwaukee Zen Center and Zuiko Redding of Cedar Rapids Zen Center. Each will give dharma talks and do daily practice with sesshin participants. Further details will be available late in the spring. CZC members should feel free to apply—please speak to Sensei first.

Coming to the Path

As we go along now, starting with this summer, there will occasionally be talks given in place of teisho called "Coming to the Path" talks. These talks will be given in the Buddha Hall after the usual Sunday sitting and chanting. Each talk will be given by individual Sangha members asked by Sensei to do so, with the talk being centered on how the speaker came to practice Zen, along with the problems and insights encountered along the way. These talks have been given for years at the Rochester Zen Center and have proved to be inspirational to both the Sangha and the speaker alike. The talks will close with a short Q & A period.

20,000 Ways Not To Play The Han

2005-03-25T10:58:00.000-06:00

by Zoe Kaufman

All of the names have been changed to protect those who wish to remain anonymous.

One day, just before an evening sitting, Sensei marches up to me and says, “From now on you are the Han Player. Simon will show you how.” Sensei turns around and marches away “But, Sensei,” I call out to his retreating figure, “I don’t want to play the Han.” It’s true I want to know HOW to play the Han, but I do not want to actually PLAY the Han. Not for a real sitting. I’m shy. And I hate performing. Besides, sitting is already hard enough. But it’s too late. Sensei is gone.

“Well,” I console myself, “how hard can it be? It’s just a hammer and a block of wood.” After all, I’m not altogether unmusical. At times in my life I have mastered Bach partitas, Chopin preludes and Beethoven sonatas. I have learned to cantillate ancient Hebrew according to Rabbinic trope. I guess I can hit a piece of wood with a stick.

After the sitting Simon explains the Han ‘riff’: One loud strike, two soft. Then, one loud, one soft; one loud, one soft. Repeat several times. End with two soft, one loud. “Piece of cake,” I say, immediately forgetting everything Simon has just told me. Was it loud soft soft or loud loud soft? “No,” says Simon, who patiently explains the riff again. “Play as loud as you can. Make the soft an echo. Then pause.” How long is the pause? “Count all the states between Mexico and New England,” says Simon.

Count all the states? I don’t even know the states next to MY state. “Does it have to be states?” I ask.

I try it again. Simon is kind enough not to overtly humiliate me, but my louds are not loud and my softs are not soft. Perplexed, I look at the mallet. “Hold the mallet loosely,” says Simon. “Hold it farther down the handle.”

I try again. Now the louds are soft and the softs are inaudible. “Practice!” says Simon.

At home, my husband is bewildered by the sounds of hammering coming from the kitchen chopping board. But practice is useless. A chopping board and a hammer are not after all the same as a Han. There is something about a Han.

One day I arrive at the Center and am astounded to learn that I am playing the Han for TONIGHT’S SITTING. “Me?” I ask Simon in true bewilderment. I say I’m not ready. Simon is sympathetic but there’s no way out. I run through the other chores of the Han player: I check the house. I make sure no one is arriving late and that the front door is locked. I turn off the phones. I arrive in the Zendo, stand at the Han and wait for the signal from the monitor.

“Loud soft soft” I remind myself. I strike the Han. That was too soft. I strike again. Too loud. I strike again. Not enough pause. “Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois. And Kentucky,” I add. No, that’s too far south. I decide to forget about counting states.

I am now officially the Han player every time I come to an evening sitting, which is at least once, sometimes twice a week. Months go by. I have played the Han perhaps 50 times, and every time I have found a different way to play it wrong. The complexity of the thing is baffling. The variations in its sound are endless and there is no discernible way to control it.

I am assigned to play the Han for a six day sesshin. In sesshin the Han is played several times a day, so by the third morning the mallet feels more friendly in my hand. I strike the Han. That’s IT. At last, mastery!

But during kinhin, Winston, the monitor, draws me aside and whispers, “You are playing the Han TOO LOUD.” I am shocked. Did Winston not hear my confident, round, and resonant Han strokes in the morning sitting? I am bewildered. I resolve to play the Han more softly.

I finish sesshin, and resume my normal duties playing the Han for evening sittings. Each time I play the Han I renew my resolve. My softs will be exquisite and almost inaudible. My pauses will luxuriate, my rhythm will be smooth and even. And my louds will not be loud! But the Han is my foe. It stares at me with its smooth, simple surface as I continue to find new, incorrect ways to play it. One night Simon takes me aside. “Zoe,” he says, “You are playing the Han too softly.” What?!!? “Hit it hard!”he says. “Louds should be loud. Softs should be soft.”

Loud louds, I say. Soft softs.

I go back to playing loudly but now my softs are wildly unpredictable. Some are soft, it’s true, but some are medium and some are loud. I am horrified at my incapacity. A year has gone by and I can’t hit a piece of wood with a hammer correctly three times in a row. I would like to walk away from it, but I’ve been in Zen long enough to know there’s no way out. This Playing Of The Han is my existential predicament. I am the Han Player. I have to play the Han.

More months go by and I am again standing at the Han. “This time I’m gonna do it right!” I resolve. I strike the Han. Once, twice, three times. Loud, soft soft. “Wow, that’s it!” My louds are loud and my softs are soft. I am exultant.

After the sitting, Winston, who is in attendance, takes me aside. “Zoe, you are playing the Han too loud,” he says. “Play it SOFTLY.” “GRRRR,” I say to myself.

Now fear grips me every time I face the Han. There are a limitless number of ways to play this thing wrong, I realize, as I confront it again. It is the first day of another long sesshin. I play the first loud. Too soft. I play the two softs. Too loud. And uneven. And too fast.

The next time I am at the Han I jump when the mallet is suddenly snatched from my hand. I whirl around and see Sensei standing with the mallet in his hand and a gleam in his eye. I take my seat and listen carefully.

Loud soft soft, says the Han. Loud soft. Loud soft. Soft soft loud. “Oh,” I say. Because no one plays the Han louder than Sensei. Wham. Echo. Gorgeous. Very, very loud. Very loud. I resolve to ignore Winston and play like Sensei at the very next opportunity.

Soon enough I am at the Han again. "Play like Sensei," I say to myself. I hit the Han. LOUD, soft soft. Zen IN ACTION. Wham. Echo. Gorgeous!!

After the sitting Sensei takes me aside. “Zoe,” he says. “You are playing the Han too loud.” Now my head is spinning and I am speechless. I am about to argue with him, but instead I remain silent. I recognize this spinning feeling, this utter bewilderment, and I know simply that I do not know and that I will never understand.

I continue to play the Han. More weeks go by, and months. I wonder why in the world Sensei chose ME to be the Han player. I play the Han both too loud and too soft. My playing is both sluggish and too fast; my repetitions both too many and not enough, my pauses both too short and too long. I hold the mallet too tight and too loose, too high up on the handle and too low. When I finish playing I walk to my seat both too slowly and too fast, and too loudly. (And, I forget to turn the phone off as well as on.) I decide I have flunked out at this very, very complex thing, this piece of wood and a stick. I am sure I am the worst Han player since the Patriarch crossed the China sea.

Every once in a while Winston takes me aside and tells me to play softer. Simon tells me to play louder. We now have a new Chant Leader, who tells me to lengthen my pauses. He then demonstrates by playing very short pauses.

And so time passes.

One day when I arrive at the Zendo, Sensei says to me, “I’ll play the Han today.” He takes the mallet and plays the Han. On this day, I hear. This is how Sensei plays the Han: First he plays the Han. Then he stops. Then he sits down.

It’s true there are an infinite number of wrong ways to play the Han. But now that I have heard, I know: there IS one right way to play the Han. This is how you do it:

First play the Han. Then when you are done, stop. Then, sit down.

How complicated can it be?

The Tension is Normal

2005-03-25T10:11:00.000-06:00

by Sevan Sensei

Doubt: (O.E.D.) Uncertainty as to the truth or the reality of something, or as to the wisdom of a course of action; occasion or room for uncertainty; be undecided in opinion or belief.

I had studied all the right chess openings. I was confident. I had the twelve common openings down and I could follow almost all of these through the first ten moves or so. This had taken all summer. My marriage was questionable, my job a mess, but I could play chess now. At least through the opening. After that? What, me worry? I would think of something!

The tournament begins. My opponent hits his clock, thus starting mine, and the pressure’s on. I open with pawn to king 4, a classic; he does the same, also classic. I move up my next pawn with confidence, within range of his. OH NO!! It can’t be!! I’ve moved up the wrong pawn!! He will simply take it and proceed to wipe the board! Move after move I will shrink into a defeated and cornered insurgency, my king finally waving the white flag; and then over coffee, as we review the game ( a tradition here at the USCF club), he will explain in a fatherly way how that move was my blunder, as if I didn’t know. My heart sinks. All that memorization gone to waste. A summer burned looking at a chess set, and now for what -- so that I could be laughed off the board after three moves?

But he didn’t take the pawn. He didn’t make any other move either. He sat there. He sat there and stared at that move for a very long time. I watched his clock (we each having 30 min. on our respective clocks to complete all our moves -- one can easily lose by running out of time). Five minutes went by. Ten. I had a long conversation with him without saying a word (no talking allowed once the clocks start). “You idiot --Take the pawn!! This was just a mistake. I moved the wrong piece. A chess Freudian slip. I said to myself not to move that pawn out and then I went right ahead and did it! I’m the idiot!! . . .” At fifteen minutes, I realized that he was stumped. He thought I had a plan which I did not have. Maybe I would win on time (his clock running down). Wow!

And then he took the pawn, and he used no more than three more minutes of his allotted time for the rest of the moves he needed to crush me. Over coffee near the vending machines, as I started to set up the chess board so we could do the normal post mortem, he stopped me, saying we didn’t need to do that. He leaned into me across the snack table and said only one thing about the game, one piece of advice from a 50 year old chess veteran to a young man just starting out. And that one thing changed my life. He said this: “The secret is using your doubt to shape your actions. Learn to live with the tension. The tension is normal, and release of tension is only momentary.”

This is great chess advice. It really is. Chess is all about living with, and even seeking to increase, the tension on the board. And so it is with many things, things far more important than chess. Take, for example, our work on the mat. The tension we refer to here is simply the most visible form of our natural doubt. We shouldn’t differentiate between “small doubt” and “Great Doubt” so quickly. While it is true that one is wrapped around the conduct and preservation of the Self as we have come to accept that entity, still and all, Great Doubt has as its root the psychological and fundamental doubts about this Self too. Who among us has not gotten into the world of Zen practice partly motivated by our doubts about our day-to-day selves, and how we have come to conduct ourselves in the world? Many, if not most, of us come to Zen with only the most vague grip on Great Doubt -- the large questions loom indeed, but they are occluded by the lesser ones.

We start out with something like, “Will I win this chess game?” (Read, get married, get a promotion, get over my anxieties, etc.) But after following the breath a while, (Read, SLOW DOWN!!) and after hanging around the better chess players, (Read, interacting with senior students of Zen, including the Teacher) we allow that the win/lose level doubt may have a deeper sister doubt, and this may be something like, “What am I, win or lose?”

After enough sesshin and sittings pass, after enough slowing and clearing and interacting with real practitioners, after we quiet, our unshaped fundamental doubt arises. At this level, words will not do, and even “Great Doubt” falls short. Instead of losing at chess, or at home, or on the job, we discover the chasm of the loss of ALL. And this fundamental questioning allows for absolutely zero assumptions. Here we enter the land of no labels, no definitions, no assumptions. Everything is unsafe.

And our instinct is to run away. We twist and turn to re-establish Self. We will take any Self we can find, and this may be the cause of those truly deep and abiding makyo found later in sesshin. Many of can attest to the “bouncing” action of going deep into the practice, only to hit a wall of doubt that is so impregnable that we are repelled back to our sets of assumptions. And this process may happen so many times that it becomes all but habit, and acquires a vague familiarity about it. Again and again we hit our wall of doubt, and again and again we flee back to the “known.”

But what of my chess opponent’s advice? Can we simply accept the tension of doubt as part of the spiritual quest? The landscape of spiritual inquiry is indeed simply made out of doubt, so we should expect to truck in tension all the way down. Fear, worry, anxiety -- all symptoms of doubt both great and small -- litter the inner landscape of the quest like so many rocks and boulders. So why not train ourselves to accept these conditions? Why not council ourselves to be ready for the tension, to accept it, and to even use it?

“Use your doubt to shape your actions” does not mean allowing doubt to rule one as a king does a subject. It means that we need to pick up those very rocks and boulders of the anxiety field and throw them at the wall of doubt before us. How does one actually do such a thing? Concentrate. Question. Examine. Get curious. Doubt and tension can quickly be converted, as it were, into inquiry itself. They are made of the same stuff, but only look different. Once one is truly engaged in deep inquiry, one discovers that the lack of definition and solidness of assumption becomes the very vehicle of practice, and that it is not to be feared or escaped, but sought.

“The secret is using your doubt to shape your actions. Learn to live with the tension. The tension is normal, and release of tension is only momentary.” Indeed.

Certainty With Questions

2005-01-15T22:37:00.000-06:00

by Cindy Sigal

"For art truly is hidden in nature:
he who can tear it out, has it."
-Albrecht Durer

Is it the same with you,
a question of strength or determination?
Have I made a mistake waiting,
as if you’d appear in the doorway.
Should I stand before you
like a sculptor in front of stone, listening.
Should I run into the night,
trees branching leafless above me, assuming
you’re some place else--
Should I continue to wait,
to pray for patience and a small boat
to row me back and forth, back
and forth across the November lake.
How will it happen--
What will you do to me?
Where does the hidden
reside? I know
I should stop
asking and simply dig.
Pushing bits of broken
branches, dirt and pebbles
away, until
I find you
to unearth from
where you lay most
hidden, as you tear
question after
question from me.

Coming Back Home

2005-01-15T20:59:00.000-06:00

by Sheila Collins

Today I was stepping out of my car in the late September light and the words came to me, “This day is a great golden bell that is ringing.” I savored the sentence and I smiled. What a long long road is practice, how many mountains we have to scale and plateaus (as Sensei would say) traverse!

In my case the trail has been long indeed. I am returning to Zen practice after more than ten years of actively shunning it. I swore I would have nothing to do with Zen anymore—no more reading about Zen, looking up Zen temples, hearing new Zen masters say new and terribly profound (or silly) Zen things, finding Zen in breakfast cereals, bodywork ads, home decorating magazines. There would be no more Zen!

I had a bad experience with Zen. Well, the experience didn’t start out badly. When I was five years old I found a Buddha statue at a friend’s house and held it in my hand staring at it for a long time. I knew I knew it from somewhere! Then when I was sixteen I found a book in the high school library about Shakyamuni’s enlightenment. I was overjoyed and swore right then and there that I would become enlightened too. The next book I read was Philip Kapleau’s “Three Pillars of Zen,” I think I knew the stories of the sesshin participants by heart; I reread them probably thirty times. I made a promise to myself that someday I would travel to Rochester and learn how to “sit right.” So when I was twenty or so I got on an Amtrak train traveling from Milwaukee to Rochester. Once there, I met Philip Kapleau and was immediately impressed by him. He was such a spry figure up there in the front of the room! He made Zen meditation look so easy. I managed to sit properly in half-lotus myself and to count my breath. This was different from the kinds of meditations I had practiced at home on my own previously, which were primarily to encourage so-called “out of the body” experiences or were intense visualization techniques. I was encouraged and felt intuitively that I was on the right track.

The visit to Rochester would change my life. I began a long-distance relationship with another participant in the Rochester workshop, eventually coming to live with him in New York, which started a round of visiting numerous temples and monasteries, meeting masters and teachers of various sects, lineages. I became immersed in Zen and in the healthy-living, spirituality-oriented culture of the 1980s “New Age.”

After a few years, I came to live at a small temple in New York City where I had close contact with a noted Zen master and scholar. I was young and naïve—rather rebellious too. I was quite in awe of the teacher, but was also somewhat confused and disturbed by what I perceived as silly adherence to old rituals, by arrogance and coldness on the part of the male monks and their condescension toward women. When I look back now I think I was trying to make my Christian (Catholic) upbringing, with it’s emphasis on life and love, and my very American ideas about equality and democracy fit the Asian Buddhist pattern. I became frustrated when I felt I couldn’t make that work.

Then I did some stupid things and got myself kicked out. It was a traumatic event for me—even though I had helped to bring it about. I felt that I had been betrayed by someone for whom I had had great respect. Furthermore, I could not see how fine Buddhist words and riddles could have much meaning for ordinary Americans experiencing the “real world” with all it’s challenges, mundane or otherwise. I guess I made a decision then in my heart that I would give up on Zen as an institution—forever.

So for ten years my books gathered dust. I went back to the university to finish a degree, had a family, pursued a career. I bought a sitting cushion and used it occasionally, but with no real ambition. I assiduously avoided listening to anyone calling themselves a Buddhist teacher and was critical of the more famous Buddhist voices, thinking to myself that they could surely know nothing of the things that ordinary people—and in particular ordinary women—face. “Yes,” I thought, “it’s easy for great monks to carry on about a philosophy of happiness or peace or nothingness or whatever, when they are subsidized heavily by their admirers and don’t have to worry about getting a job, supporting and raising their children, keeping their health insurance. And why should people in robes with bald heads get so much respect when there is real wisdom and compassion manifesting in single moms, in artists, in factory workers, in the homeless, in everyday people with everyday problems—but few listen to them?”

I was so traumatized and disgusted that it would take a major personal crisis to bring me back to Buddhism. Last year, after experiencing some health problems, I found out that I might be facing debilitation and possibly even untimely death. It frightened me right down to the core, just blew my complacency to bits. I had often thought about dying, but never like this. Nor had I considered the idea of physical wasting before; I had always been so healthy and strong. It shook me badly. I became very anxious and depressed, spending much of each day in bed. To comfort myself, to try to reach toward some sort of light, I dug out my ragged copy of “Three Pillars of Zen.” There was Philip Kapleau’s autograph on the front page that was falling out. There was the inspiring story of Yaeko Iwasaka who had achieved great enlightenment from a sickbed. I remembered my old vow. I remembered Rochester. I began to search for some way I could get back to my roots. I found the Chicago Zen Center on the internet and called Sevan Ross Sensei. What a revelation! He wasn’t cold, he wasn’t arrogant, he wasn’t academic, he wasn’t condescending. He listened to me and offered advice and he welcomed me to the Center. I felt I had connected with a real person. It was just so good. I thought, “Maybe this is Real Zen.”

Sensei invited me to a Tuesday night introductory sitting. I had to drive a couple hours to get to Evanston from Waukesha, WI and I was anxious about it, but I felt that I should go. “Maybe I do need to relearn sitting,” I thought. It went well and I liked everyone that I met. So then I decided to try to come for Sunday sittings and teisho/dokusan. That was even better. I signed up to become a member, then eventually I also signed up for a four-day sesshin. By early summer I was revitalized. I had made new friends and my practice began to bear some fruit.

I was seeing again how important a rock-solid faith in Buddhist practice is, and how important it is to practice regularly. I realized that I had held many prejudices that caused me to perceive some of my old teachers, sangha and Buddhist philosophy in a distorted way. By “coming back” to the Chicago Zen Center and meeting Sensei I felt warmed and welcomed by a spiritual embrace that has caused some of those old conceptions to be turned around. And by focusing on a koan or just sitting with firm resolve, in regular practice, my mind has “lightened up.” Those prejudices and distorted views that I had carried around for so long have been becoming gradually weaker and are interfering less with daily life. The good effects I can test and feel in my many interactions with my family, friends and fellow workers. There is more harmony and less fighting. There is more understanding and less vexation.

So I have come back to truly valuing Buddhist practice, teachers and the sangha. In fact, I feel really grateful, right down to the bottom of my heart. Perhaps it is my being away for so long that makes the return ever more precious.

Lessons in Cause & Effect

2005-01-01T09:33:00.000-06:00

We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by H. G. Moore and J. L. Galloway

book review by Jeff Berger

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young describes a brutal battle that took place in Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley in November 1965 and some of the personal and political consequences that flowed from it. Its contents are shocking and have a deep resonance for me.

Moore was the commanding officer of 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, the unit that was air-mobiled into Landing Zone Xray in Ia Drang against a North Vietnamese force that turned out to be many times larger. Galloway was a journalist who was there on the ground. The battle lasted several days and resulted in very high numbers of killed and wounded, both US and Vietnamese. It is clear that the “We” of the title refers to those on both sides of the slaughter.

The battle scenes are based upon many hours of interviews with the survivors and in many cases use their words directly. These are scenes from a hellish animal realm that most of us do not experience in such purity. This is difficult stuff to read, so it is fortunate that the book also investigates some of the consequences of the battle.

One section is devoted to the political consequences. So many were killed on both sides of the battle that the leaders of each side were forced to claim it as a victory. No other assessment could be morally justified. The leaders drew conclusions that would determine the shape and magnitude of the war for years to come.

Another section contains interviews with family members of some of those killed at Ia Drang. We hear from wives and children whose lives were changed utterly as a result of these deaths.

You could say that the book gives a textbook illustration of the Buddhist law of cause and effect.

But as I say, the book resonated with me.

I got out of the army in June 1965, having enlisted three years earlier. At the time I enlisted, I was twenty years old and gung-ho. The idea of winning hearts and minds had won mine, and I wanted to become a Green Beret. One way to do that was to go through jump school and Ranger training, so I enlisted for the airborne infantry as a first step. After basic training in Kentucky, I went to advanced infantry training (AIT) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. There, I was sidetracked into NCO School, the graduates of which would be the squad and platoon leaders for the AIT cycle starting two weeks later.

Then one night, a drunk driver changed my life.

That August night was hot and mosquito filled. There was no moon. Seven of us got into the back of a deuce and a half truck, and headed out into the night to be dropped off somewhere in the piney forest for a field problem. The canvas top on the truck was not up, so we were cooled slightly by the truck’s motion down the road. The fact that the top was gone turned out to be an even bigger gift to me later.

Some miles out, the deuce and a half swerved violently to the right. Bang! and the truck careened onto the shoulder. Then the right side of the truck, the side opposite me, dropped away. I stood as the truck rolled and, with some others, flew into the black night. As I hit the ground, I could hear the truck behind me grinding, upside down into the gravel ditch.

I got up knowing I didn’t want to go back to the upside-down truck to see what was happening there. I had a pretty good idea. But I figured I could still make myself somewhat useful by attempting to prevent other drivers from piling into our wreck. So I got a flashlight from one of the other guys (his shoulder was broken when he was thrown clear) and went back up the road a few yards to flag down approaching cars.

A sergeant with too much to drink had been driving back to the base on the wrong side of the road. Our driver had swerved trying to avoid the collision, but had lost control after the impact.

It all came down to where one was sitting in the back of the deuce and a half. The guys on the left went onto the air, the guys on the right went under
the truck. I got a few scrapes. Others had broken limbs, shoulders and backs. And Private Richard Tricky had his skull crushed.

At the hospital where we were taken to be checked out, one of our training sergeants told us that we now knew what it felt like to be hit by an artillery round. “Kinda takes the fight out of ya, don’t it?” He was right. I requested out of jump school a week later.

From that point on, I was just counting days. Eventually after AIT, I was assigned to the 25th Infantry, stationed in Hawaii. There in 1963, I met and married Lynn. There, I also made my first, brief contact with Zen Buddhism at the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu.

Lynn’s dad, Ralph, was a Sergeant Major with the division. He saw major action in WW II and Korea before being sent to Vietnam. Her younger brother Al went into the Army and to Nam soon after high school. Marty, one of her two younger sisters, later married Steve, another Nam-era GI. I was welcomed into the Olson family even though I was obviously not cut out for military life.

So, when I read We Were Soldiers, I see people I knew: draftees, enlistees, career soldiers, their families. I see a life I partly knew and things I myself touched. And I realize that I could have passed into that caldron.

If the guy on the wrong side of the road in Louisiana had been where he belonged, I would not have gotten that quick glimpse of where I was headed and would not have changed direction myself. If he had not had so much to drink, I would probably not have been stationed in Hawaii where I met Lynn. If that sergeant had stayed at the bar five minutes longer, Richard Tricky might still be alive. If that sergeant had stayed on base that night, I might not have done zazen with the Diamond Sangha a year and a half later.

More lessons in the Buddhist law of cause and effect.

Grace & Courage

2005-01-01T09:28:00.000-06:00

by Jody Wilson

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the slightest tentative movement of the bathroom door opening out. Then a quick closing, like a breath interrupted. Then, a half second later, a quicker more determined move as if she were exhaling herself into the space. I instinctively glanced at her, as one does when another person enters room, and instantly averted my eyes. She must have weighed 400 pounds, perhaps more. I didn’t want to stare. Or perhaps I looked away as I do when I drive past highway accidents. When she saw me, she furtively busied herself with the contents of her bag, turned back into the bathroom, closing the door softly behind her. A clear retreat. The serene atmosphere of this lovely day spa suddenly crackled with shame. She had exposed herself to my judging eyes. I was exposed as a judge. The complete internal experience of profoundly obese women and those who shame them was as naked as we were. We hated ourselves and each other.

Had I judged her? All I'd done was glance up and look away. But she had "known." She'd known because that's what she expects, that's what she does herself. The project and the introject at work. When we shame and judge ourselves, we expect and seek to be shamed and judged by others. And, yes, I admit, my first thoughts were judgmental, followed instantly by prideful assessment of my own slim and supple body. People who think and write about the way we think our thoughts say we think from the platform of the opposites, think in contrasts. But why does contrasting my thin body to her fat body so readily translate into I'm good and she's bad?

This is all hindsight. A moment later, the door opened again. She stepped out, shoulders set, head high and walked with grace and courage to the steam room. No more fumbling, nothing furtive, a royal progress.

I'd like to say that our eyes met and that she saw the new admiration and respect in mine. But they didn't. I didn't even exist for her.

Sorting the Dal

2004-10-01T20:46:00.000-05:00

by Jody Wilson

"Sort and wash two-thirds cups of split mung dal," directed the writer of Lord Krishna's Cuisine, referring me to page 21. There I found a description of the "time honoured ritual" of sorting and washing dal (dried peas and beans). I probably wouldn't have done it if the author hadn't described it as an "archaic time intensive dual phase process." But who can resist participating in a ritual, particularly in preparation for a time honoured dish like Sada Moong Dal, which deserves whatever attention one can bring to it. So I pull out my cookie sheet (as directed), pour out the dry dal and begin to ritualistically "pick out the unwanted matter."

A preliminary exam proves disappointing. My dal is untainted by "unwanted matter." So much for ritual. No, wait. . .what's that? A stem! Yes, definitely a stem. And another. I begin to sort more quickly and, in my haste, inadvertently lose the stems in the dal. I read the directions for the time honoured ritual again. "Working on a small amount. . ." Okay. Oh, a little tiny stone. No, just a piece of dal husk. Or is it? Where did it go? Start again. Moving my fingers through the dal lightly now. No hurry. I discover the most effective way to remove a bit of diminutive debris is to keep my finger on it and ever so slowly push it into the furthermost corner of the cookie sheet. Really slowing down now, really looking. God, these tiny beans are beautiful! What a sweet soft green they are, like spring. I start to see individual lentils. This one is ever so slightly larger. The skin on this one is perfect. This one is a squidge smaller. That one is very green, almost black. This one is still a bit yellow. How lovely they all are!

Entranced, I put the sorted dal in a sieve, and submerge it in a bowl of water. I rub the dal gently, as if I'm washing my hands with it. I notice that wet lentils smell like a child's garden. The moist dal clings to my hands like lacy agate gloves. I rinse again and again, pouring out the water until it finally runs clear.

I love simple mung dal soup.

In the Realm of the Gods

2004-10-01T12:38:00.000-05:00

by Zoe Kaufman

All of us “spiritual seekers” are looking for ultimate truth while living right here in the material world. Through the practice we are finding the way. Here is what it’s like for me.

I live in a part of suburban Chicago referred to by Sensei as “the Realm of the Gods” because abundance is everywhere. People here possess everything that can be possessed. Sensei would add, “Except for peace of mind!” because in the Realm of the Gods attachment and anxiety are always intrinsic to abundance. That’s why, lovely as it is here, this is not an Enlightened Realm.

It’s very easy to understand this realm if you come to my neighborhood. Through no fault of my own, I live in a very affluent suburb. The cars are more luxurious and the houses here are bigger than in other places. On the whole, the people who live here are more beautiful, too. They all seem to have perfect bodies and can afford to wear very flattering, fashionable clothes, even in the most ordinary situations. Even the workout clothes they wear here are adorable!

Where I live women wear makeup and regular visits to the plastic surgeon are considered “routine maintenance” and are no more exotic or indulgent than a decent haircut, or massage would be somewhere else. It really is the norm here to deal with almost every sign of aging as just another unpleasant blemish, something easily, even imperatively reversible. Consequently, generally speaking, people here look quite young no matter how old they are. I predict that with technical advances and falling prices, what is currently considered “normal” here will soon be the norm everywhere.

Make no mistake, this really is a very pleasant place to live. Nevertheless, I ask myself, “What am I doing here?” because, like most spiritual seekers I’ve never felt completely at home where I live.

When I joined the Zen Center, I said, “Ahh. Yes. Now, finally, I am home.”

I practiced diligently, came to regular sittings and attended my first sesshin. As my practice deepened, my intuitive mistrust of the material world deepened into a conviction that things really are not what they seem to be. And more, that this swirl of what things seem to be, while dangerously enticing, is evanescent, and in the end is a meaningless dead end.

Imagine my horror, then, when spring rolled around at the end of that first year and I found myself wanting new clothes! How could it be? I hate shopping, I never watch television and I do not receive fashion magazines. I’m a practicing Zen Buddhist! I’m hell-bent on enlightenment! How could I want new clothes?

I was so disgusted with myself that I talked to Sensei. He, of course, answered me with wonderful compassion. “Look,” he said, “you’re a female. Females like clothes. How about following the middle way?”

But as the years passed and the seasons cycled, I noticed again and again, with terrible disappointment, the wish to look good and to wear makeup and fashionable clothes, the desire to stay thin and to stay young. All this attention to the body! What a betrayal it is! When will I ever be free? And I wonder if the practice is working...

I live in two worlds. I’m a Zen practitioner. The real world is at the Zen Center, but I sleep and work and socialize in the Realm of the Gods. I go back and forth, back and forth. It’s so exhausting!

But wait a minute. Where are these two worlds anyway? If I ran away to a monastery (Oh enchanting thought!), where would the two worlds be then? Do all spiritual seekers struggle with versions of the two worlds? After all, all of us at the Zen Center have family members who are not Zen Buddhists. We all work and eat and play outside the Center. We all buy clothes and look in mirrors. We all exercise. We wear lipstick. We diet. We all have wished for the single-minded clarity we think abides inside the monastery, but we all remain right here in the midst of the teeming conflict, living out our Bodhisattvic vows.

“It’s all so complicated!” I think. “It’s so much work!” Besides, this kind of thinking is arousing my suspicions. This kind of thinking is awfully reminiscent of Western Religion wherein God divides reality into two halves and then declares one half unholy. Who could think straight let alone navigate in such a universe?

Are there really two worlds? Are we really divided into spirit and body or spirit versus body? If we acknowledge one do we really diminish the other? Does it make sense that they coexist somehow as two separate, fighting halves of a harmonious whole?

Or is the world really one and only one, as the teachers say? Is body the same as spirit? Is emptiness the very same as form?

When I ask myself “What am I doing here?” I want to answer, “I am taking my teacher’s advice. I’m finding the middle way. I’m trying to do what is appropriate in all circumstances. I’m learning to do that which sustains life where it is lived, neither worshipping nor discarding the things of the world.”

Why then should I be more (or less) at home in one place than another? Am I not supposed to be equally at ease in all places, free to act for the sake of all beings?

It dawns on me that I cannot go “someplace else” to resolve this conflict not because it is unresolvable but because there is no “someplace else.” And if the conflict is undone only from where I am, right now—well, then, the possibilities are endless.

I think: “I live where I live because that’s where I live.” It’s a lovely mystery that I gratefully accept. I’m female because I’m female. We females have cared about our makeup and our clothes from time immemorial, whether living in Alaska or in Maoist China or in the Realm of the Gods.

I wonder: Maybe all of this struggle and all of this anguish is just another distraction.

My teacher always says to come back to the practice. When has the practice ever taught us to deny the body or to punish the body (or the mind)? Instead, aren’t we practicing in order to see through the body by harnessing the mind?

“Girl,” I say to myself, “you think too much! Just put on your lipstick and sit. Just sit.”

Un-Learning

2004-06-01T12:44:00.000-05:00

by Sean Poust

College is, without a doubt, the most distracting place that I have ever lived. Dormitory life is not conducive to focus on homework, let alone to Zen practice. A plethora of 18-23 year olds, all free for the first time, creates a number of interesting activities and distractions. This is not limited to little distractions like videogames, TV, Instant Messenger and sleep, but also big ones like drugs, alcohol and sex.

Maintaining a Zen practice in this has certainly not been easy. However, difficult things are often the most rewarding. As I have heard many times from various Zen adepts, unless we practice in an environment where there are distractions, we will never learn to throw these distractions out, and as such, we will never grow. Further, without a community to support Zen practice, like the Chicago Zen Center, getting lost and unmotivated is far easier.

I have found community in some odd places however. I have attended the Prairie Zen Center a few times here, but have not found it to be a particular place of spirituality. What I did find there though is my flute teacher: I met her at the first sitting I went to and started to take lessons soon after. Fitting in my flute amongst all the other demands on my time has certainly been difficult, but also very rewarding.

My flute studies began when I was in 6th grade, playing in my school’s band and taking private lessons at the same time. I took lessons on and off until the 9th grade when I finally quit. For some reason, as I came to college, I felt moved to begin to practice again. First, I started to teach myself and eventually I became interested in finding a teacher.

Having a teacher made me realize how remarkably badly I played the flute. I believed that my previous experience with the flute would make me a better flautist. This ended up giving me was an inflated ego and a host of bad habits. Instead of breathing in a regulated, calm fashion, I would take gasps of air and plow along. This makes my playing “music” not only unpleasant for me, but also for the person listening as they hear this very loud and jarring intake of air. Further, instead of counting out rhythms as they should be done and making sure that I had it right, I would just play my rhythm, which often disagreed with what was actually on the paper.

Through the course of my playing, I realized I was making playing the flute a cerebral activity, when in actuality, it needed to come from the heart and the body. I needed to approach the practice of the flute without my ideas of how good I was or what level I should be at. I just needed to work at it, deliberately, realistically and of course, practice often.

I have found that this greatly parallels my practice of Zen in college. I came in with all these ideas of how good I was, where I should be in my practice, and what I should be doing. However, there is no denying that I am in college now and my life must change to reflect this. There are now a number of demands on my time that didn’t exist before and the whole environment surrounding me has changed. Fitting in practice and focusing will be more difficult. Using the “lessons” about Zen that I “learned” in high school (which were hindering me anyway) will not serve me. Like with my flute, I need to approach practice without the cerebral and simply work at it.

We are all stuck in something; to be human is to be stuck. I have been stuck in this intellectual evaluation of how to approach the flute and Zen. I simply needed to approach these things without the ideas of how to approach them; I needed to just work at them. Learning is part of the gift of having an intellect, but ultimately these lessons are limited—true mind comes from the ability to see when these habits have become destructive and then to overcome them.

I was talking to my dad during my Winter Break about college. I told him that I was having trouble balancing all the demands on my time: homework, extra-curriculars, friends and sleep. He responded, “Don’t worry, the one thing that you can be sure of is that you’ll never get it right.” This could be seen as depressing, but I see it differently. In a spiritual life and with the flute there is always change and adaptation, learning new lessons and getting rid of old ones. We must constantly work to address our lives from where we need to be, not from were we want or think we should be.

Searching for Home in All the Right Places

2003-10-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

by Elie Nijm

This past December, my family and I decided to make a visit to our parents and family “back home” to the old country. We anguished over the decision for more than one reason. Not only were we taking a risk with our physical lives given the immense political and military tension inside and outside Israel, but also “going back home” was always a tumultuous emotional experience that sparked off a lot of memories and threw us back into the eye of the cyclone of our definition of who we truly were. It may sound strange to those uninitiated into the mysteries of Middle East politics that questioning the true identity, and thus the legitimate residence of those known as Christian Arabs, has always been a point of contention and confusion to those directly involved. And so, in order to give you perspective on my experiences during this last trip, I ask you to indulge me as I share some of my history. Hopefully the process will help both you and me gain a greater understanding of who we are and help us inch our way to more deeply actualize our True Nature.

Human beings define themselves by their past and present: their family and family name, their clan, culture, place, history and time. Having been born and raised in a Christian Arab family in Israel, the question of my true identity was always a puzzle to me. As a child, my identity was quite “flexible,” often determined by the ever-shifting emotional and socio-political currents of the Middle East without much emotional distress to me. This flexibility served me well until I came of age and began to experience confusion, shame and pain. These feelings came from being seen by the Jewish community as only an Arab and by the Moslem community as only a Christian. To those swept by Arab nationalism of the early sixties, I was a Palestinian, to Jews in Israel who were looking for allies, I was an Israeli Christian. And to a small but vocal group, I was really a Phoenician! To my parents, I was Lebanese, since we are Christian Maronites whose historical roots go back in time to the mountains of Lebanon. This confusion not only entitled me to discrimination and abuse from all camps, but also to inner pain from not being able to define myself in any concrete fashion. The Jew and the Moslem knew what they were and were willing to die for it. I never was convinced of being truly anything nor was I willing to make the necessary sacrifices that came from being somebody—like going to war or dying for a piece of land. For a long time in my youth, I envied both parties. The feeling of being a hypocrite, always driven by the need to protect myself from outside insult and inner confusion, was a source of immense inner pain.

In my teenage years, my need to develop a sense of identity forced itself on me with tremendous pressure. The question of my true identity – and consequently my true place under the sun — could no longer be evaded. For the major part of my youth, home, identity, family, and culture were all hopelessly intertwined in a mesh of confusing emotions.

In high school, I remember feeling a glimmer of hope that my existential perplexity might finally be resolved. My catechism nun declared one day that we all have a soul down deep inside of us, the seat of our “real nature.” Voila! There was no need to worry anymore about who I was on the surface. This “surface” was ever-shifting anyway, and why stay there when I could have the real thing? Here was an idea that transcended all national, religious, and clannish boundaries—I wished all parties involved in the Middle East conflict as well as my family would discover this truth! Perhaps what each one of us was and where we came from didn’t matter after all.

I tried to share this with my family only to be quickly dismissed. My mother reminded me we were already Christians. “This “new idea” is nothing new,” she said. “It is a given fact that we all have a soul. What are you talking about?”

“But what about the deeper implications of the idea?” I persisted.

“Foolish thinking!” she retorted.

It didn’t take long for my sense of relief to evaporate—the idea of a soul crumbled like a deck of cards. There were too many unresolved questions about this mysterious soul residing inside of me. If it was more real than me, how come I didn’t know about it before? Why did I need somebody else to tell me about the real me? There were many “friendly altercations” between the nun and me.

“Are you telling me that my feelings, my thoughts, my actions, are all supposed to serve another part of me that I cannot see, smell, touch or even experience?” I asked with frustration that reached a boiling point.

“Yes,” she snapped angrily. “And you should not think too much about this but accept it by faith.”

“Sister,” I replied with a sense of ridicule she did not appreciate, “that is the quickest way to make me schizophrenic!”

To make a long story short, this nun, in utter frustration, declared one day to the class that Elie Nijm was doomed to hell for his heretical ideas. This same nun had declared days earlier that boys and girls who even fantasize about sex are doomed to go to hell. To be honest, I really was not too worried!

But I was still intrigued by this question of what made me fundamentally different from others. We moved to a new house in the early ’60s and had a Romanian Jewish family for neighbors. Friends gave us the customary warnings—about US being Arabs and THEM being Jews. But the forced proximity between our two families made us closer than we could have anticipated. We began to like them and they began to like us. My mother and our Romanian Jewish mother became so intimate that they cried on each other’s shoulders, discussing children, food, and husbands, in that order. But my mother continued to remind me that down deep, somewhere in the dark recesses of our souls, we were different.

I was not so much alarmed by these warnings as I was driven deeper to discover this mysterious thing that made us so different. As far as I could tell, this Jewish mother was not so different than my own mother, and the glances I secretly shared with her daughter who was my age were not so fundamentally different from her glances towards me. Our neighbors were as attached to their domicile as we were to ours. We laughed at the same jokes and equally feared the drums of war and destruction. In the ’67 war, we even ran together to the shelter, helping each other and holding hands. At that moment, I clearly recall how I felt not just terror and fear of annihilation, but also joy that came when all boundaries disappeared into thin air. The Jewish mother held me as if I were her own, and at that very moment she truly was my mother.

The war of ’67 between the Jews and the Arabs transformed my yearning to know my true self into an obsession. How could human beings slaughter each other and cause so much misery over “home,” over a piece of land? Over some real but mysterious “ethnic self”? That essential part of our nature that makes us so different must be, by necessity – looking at the evidence of the privation and endless suffering of war – real! Human beings couldn’t be that stupid or foolish. If they were willing to die for something, it had to be true, didn’t it?

And so, one day when the money in my pocket reached the arbitrary cut off point of $600, I decided the time was ripe to move to America. After all, America was the place where discoveries happened. I couldn’t anticipate the real price I would pay for this journey. At the time it was a well known fact that anybody could go to America and build a “new home” there. Besides, I thought my quest to discover the true nature of myself could only be achieved in a place where a modicum of freedom and tolerance existed. The culture and religions of the Middle East were too saddled with the weight of the past to allow room for such discoveries. To my dismay, my feelings towards the home I ran away from became more intense rather than less. In the long ensuing years it took to adjust to American culture, I was torn apart by my attachments to my two homes. When I went “back home” for a visit, my emotions always pulled me to my home in America. And when I was in America, my thoughts too often drifted to the home, neighborhood, friends, and family members of my childhood years. For a long time I felt doomed to be forever torn between two worlds, never finding a true resting place. My sense of identity paralleled my feelings about my true home and remained forever-shifting, like a boat at the mercy of the winds. One moment I was strictly “Arab,” another moment I was a “Christian Arab,” while at other moments I was only an “Israeli.” I adapted myself to the perceived identity of the questioner and sought to reduce embarrassment, shame, or rejection for not being what the questioner thought I should be. In those early long years, I was still caught up in the fantasy of a true home yet to be realized and the emotional tax I paid became more burdensome.

This new place where I was seeking to build a new foundation seemed even more complex than the one I just left behind. It was not part of the deal to exchange shame for guilt, a leisurely walk to the market for a traffic jam, the certainty of tradition for the ever-changing social currents and fads as well as the astronomical amount of information that keeps compounding by the minute, social conformity for loneliness and isolation, and a more simple way of life for a lifestyle that is infinitely more complex.

Slowly, but surely, over many moons, a more subtle and faint process took shape in the deeper recesses of my heart. I saw that beneath the surface appearance of diversity, human beings everywhere yearned for a more genuine place under the sun. It was a consolation to realize that even those who defined themselves in more concrete and traditional terms were really seeking something more authentic. Like many of my contemporaries in the ’70s and ’80s, I hopped from one new age ‘movement’ to another, only to be disappointed when I subjected the proclaimed ideals to the microscope of self-honesty and reason. Living in a culture that constantly redefined and emphasized the idea of self helped me shift and focus my quest more to the question of who I truly was – truly, in the deepest sense of the word. This question gripped me by the jugular vein and would not let go. Thanks to Zen, the rug was totally pulled out from under my feet. For a long time, I knew for certain who I was not, but I could not honestly respond who I was, even if my life depended on it.

My motivation for “going home” this December was twofold. On the one hand, I wanted to do my duty to my ailing mother and perhaps bid her farewell, conveying my gratitude for her long life of sacrifices. On the other hand, I was keenly aware of the need to bid farewell to my history, to a part of my past that no longer felt connected to my present. It was a severing that was inevitable, though painful. Since moving to the U.S., each trip home had cut one more strand in the umbilical cord. With each amputation of a part of a self that had been hemorrhaging for a long time, feelings of relief and grief followed.

I conveyed my farewell and thanks to my mother, but how could I say good-bye to my past? I found there really was no need to make any special effort. Sitting back and quietly observing the ingrained mental habits, the fear that paralyzed, the pettiness that poisoned, the sand castles built on the shores of illusion, and the self-inflicted hell that is vociferously created by the very people who so doggedly try to escape it, all were enough to make me gladly give up my “association” and identity to all of the parties involved. More than ever, I felt the need to remove the shackles of this particular history and to shield not only myself, but my son as well, from this tragic heritage. Shadows from my past paraded themselves in front of me and time dissolved the boundaries. My mother, my sister, my niece and nephews and their spouses, my friends and everyone I met was drowning in this quagmire. Indeed, time stood still—the Ghost of Christmas Past thrived in this part of the world where Future Ghosts were created daily. The misery of the children of men finds its greatest heritage in the “holy land,” where the currents of ignorance, greed, and blind passions cast a dark cloud over the lives of many generations. In the Holy Land, as everywhere else, the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. Both are intertwined, and at the family, as well as the national, level the individual is caught up in a predicament from which there is no escape as long as the world is divided into parts and each self continues to be defined as a distinct and separate entity. To kill or be killed for a piece of land, the same piece of land from which both parties emerged and which will bury both of them, to grab what belongs to others in order to increase the fleeting sense of the security of a deluded self, to blow one’s self up and destroy the lives of innocent human beings, or to engage in heated passionate debates that do nothing other than add psychological pollution to a land already saturated with it—all continue to tear at the fabric of life. And human life is frivolously wasted.

As I listened to my mother and sister for the umpteenth time about their physical and psychological ailments, and to my nephews about how shitty life is in Israel for the Arabs, and to both Jews and Arabs engaged in totally fruitless political debates that inflame passions and trample on reason, I was plunged back into the eye of the cyclone. In the midst of this madness, I could not nor did I have the desire to separate myself from it all. The pain in the Middle East became mine. Like a ray of light passing through a prism and showing its colors, only to disappear into the endless void, this suffering – everybody’s suffering – went through me and showed its full spectrum. There was nothing to say, nothing to do, other than what must be done. Like time itself, I could dispassionately watch and just make sure I did not contribute to the human tragedy. To quote from a not-so-flattering historical personality, “I came, I saw, I cried.” There was no longer a need to identify or disidentify, just simple uncomplicated being.

I am often asked my opinion about what is going on “back home.” The questioner ascribes to me a level of expertise about the incomprehensible politics of my country of origin that fortunately I have never earned. I reckon the questioner is also searching for meaning in the irrational human behavior of violence and injustice. Deeper still, both the questioner and I, and perhaps all sentient beings, are searching ultimately to grasp and actualize the meaning of our lives.

Luckily I no longer feel the need to be saddled with expert opinions about the Middle East, or for that matter about many other subjects. As for my “home,” these days I feel a great deal of affinity with turtles. I carry my home on my own back wherever I go. Eating, sleeping, walking, visiting, exploring, working—home is always “here.” The sun shines the same in the place of my birth as it does across seven continents. The trees and wind speak the same language I heard in my childhood as they do today in the place of my sunset years. The earth continues to patiently carry me with the same tenderness and gentleness wherever I go as she did when I was first born. I cannot help but recall the words of Dogen: “I came to realize clearly that Mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.” And by the same token, wherever my home is, there is my family, too. Many times during my recent trip, I wished I could be a big mother hen sheltering her little chicks under her wings, protecting them from themselves. However, I did not find too many people who felt they needed sheltering, not the least from themselves. Feelings of compassion often felt like an orphan child walking down a one way street with a dead end, even though in a deeper sense I knew the street was not really one way and the dead end part was but a mirage.

I find solace in a Chinese story I heard many years ago. In this story, in a drought-stricken village in China, the inhabitants called upon a sage with a reputation for being able to bring about rain. When the sage arrived, he asked to be left alone in a hut. Three days later, much needed rain came.

“How did you do that?” he was asked.

“I did nothing,” he replied. “I just sat and made myself in tune with the Tao.”

Perhaps this is all I can do right now—in spite of not having a reputation for bringing about rain. Yet I hope that rain may come soon to the Middle East, to my family, and to sentient beings in the ten directions.

(The following poem was used by Elie during a sesshin encouragement talk.)

I appeared I know
not how, but
here I am!
I saw a road
ahead of me, and so
I walked.

And I will continue
to walk, freely or
against my will.

How did I come,
How did I perceive
my road, I don’t know

Am I new or am I
old in this existence

Am I free to roam
or am I a prisoner
in chains

Am I the master
of my destiny
or is my life
determined for me

I deeply wish I
could know, but
I don’t know.

And my road is
no ordinary road.

is it long or short?

Am I rising or
am I tumbling into
the abyss

Am I the one
walking on the road
or is the road
moving under my
feet?

Or perhaps both of us are
standing still and fate is
moving? I don’t know.

-Elia Abu Madi

A Question of Peace

2003-03-31T20:29:00.000-06:00

by Jeff Berger

For some time I have been concerned about the course of action the political leaders of our country seem to have chosen in response to the horrific events of September 11, 2001. I am concerned that this course is only leading us down a path of reprisal and increasing death and suffering. I have been looking for ways to promote a better choice.

Over the weekend of October 26th, 2002, I went to Washington DC to participate in a demonstration against war with Iraq. It seemed to me that the demonstration offered a way of slowing the march towards war, a war that would inevitably cause the deaths of large numbers of innocent people.

Tens of thousands of people came to the demonstration (the organizers claimed 200,000). On my return, I wrote to some old college friends about the event
and the following correspondence ensued.

I wrote:

For many, this event marked their first participation in a protest demonstration. The event was energizing and that gives me hope for better things to come. I think many will throw themselves into organizing for the next one.

I've been sitting in front of my computer all day and my wits are quite gone, so I may not be able to get down in this email what I want to say, but here goes ...

While waiting to board the buses, I got into a conversation with two women participants that I had not met before. One of the women remarked on the necessity, if the movement is to be successful, for its core to be religiously based. She said that meditation made it possible for her to respond to anger directed at her in ways that didn't magnify the problem. Or at least, that it made it possible to choose to respond in a way that didn't put her own anger in the driver's seat. I agree, although twenty years ago I would have thought her daft.

I don't know who all makes up the leadership of the coalition that pulled together this demonstration, but at least some are anti-imperialists of the Leninist flavor. The bus to DC had video screens and enroute we watched a speech by one of the leaders who began by saying "Comrades, friends, ...". He went on to give an analysis of the current situation with which I probably would have agreed whole-heartedly in times past. Now it seems to leave out something vital and to point in the wrong direction.

The difficulty is that this view casts the problem as one of good versus evil. We (especially "we comrades") are the good guys fighting tirelessly against the evil, greedy ruling class. This view of the problem creates a black and white world that is basically just a mirror image of the one held by George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al.

What's missing is the recognition that the problem also exists within each of us. We all of us have learned to believe we are separate isolated "selves". We move through the world like some token on a Monopoly board. We strive to fulfill this always needy self by grasping at possessions, scoring triumphs over others, gratifying our emotions, etc. But, who are we really? Am I different from George W? Am I different from these words I am reading on the computer screen? Who is it that hears the humming of the computer and the other sounds in this room right now?

I think we need to pay attention to this mystery or we will fall into error when we attempt to prevent the horrors of war in Iraq and end up bringing those horrors to life in perhaps a different form.

A friend responded:

Some interesting points J—I both agree and disagree. My sense is that any socialism that is not reflected in the individual's personal behavior, posture, quality of being, and interactions with his/her environment is likely to be nearly as exploitive and damaging as out-of-control capitalism; it would perhaps result in a more equitable distribution of wealth, but not 'empower' (I actually hate that word) people any more, nor produce a better relationship with the biosphere. Doctrinaire Leninists are simply out of touch with how history has changed —history hasn't invalidated socialism, but it has made some serious revisions necessary. As well, I think the driver in capitalism is greed; in socialism it may be there on a case by case and group by group basis, but it isn't the ideological engine for the system. And that makes a difference.

The problem with getting too caught up in establishing peace and tranquility in the inner being of each individual is that that kind of thing can lead to New-Age narcissism: it seems to me that excessive focus on self of any sort is just another manifestation of privilege in an excessively fortunate society. I'm skeptical, therefore, about that assertion, even though I would admit that having good personal relationships with spouses, friends, and work-place are pretty important to doing decent political work. My guess is that providing people with a solid platform of stability and security solves many of the psychological and relational problems that ravage populations in wealthy countries (where wealth is polarized).

Inupiat Zen

2003-01-14T19:41:00.000-06:00

Jeff Berger is a long-time member of the Center. What follows is an unedited e-mail I got from him recently, after one of his trips to the far north in Alaska.
-Sensei

According to an Inupiat dictionary, alliviniq means "ice under other ice that could at any moment come out from under due to current or boat wake." The Inupiat people have lived along the North Slope of Alaska for thousands of years and have good reasons for knowing about alliviniq. For the past week and a half, I've been on the North Slope in Barrow Alaska, interviewing many residents for a museum exhibit I am to build.

It's early August. The sun is always shining and temperatures range from the 30s to the 60s depend-ing on wind direction, ocean currents, and whether the melting summer pack ice is on shore or miles out into the Arctic Ocean. Soon the sun will set for the first time in eighty days, beginning the return to the dark, cold winter. But even after the sun begins setting each day, the tundra and ice will continue to warm and thaw for several weeks.

The fall whaling season will resume in September. Then people from Barrow and the other whaling villages along the coast will paddle umiaks, skin boats, across the waters in pursuit of Bowhead whales. In the spring, Bowheads migrate from the northern Pacific to summer feeding grounds in the Arctic Ocean east of Point Barrow. In the fall, they return to the northern Pacific.

Inupiat people hunt and harpoon whales from umiaks in much the way they have done for millennia, even though they use aluminum boats, outboard motors, snow machines, TVs, CD players, microwaves, tanning salons, etc. for other tasks. If the primary methods of whaling have changed only a little, the Bowheads themselves have also changed slowly. Inupiat whalers can identify individual whales they have unsuccessfully pursued in previous seasons by markings on the head and body.

Last year, a whale was caught that had a metal harpoon head lodged in its body from a previous hunt. On the old harpoon head were scratched some initials. One of the crew that had struck the whale looked at the initials and realized they were those of one of his grandfathers who had died many years before.

Bowhead whales live a long time and the Inupiat have hunted them for a long time. A whale brought ashore two years ago had a stone harpoon head imbedded in it.

When a whale is caught, the meat, blubber and body parts are shared out by the captain of the whaleboat in a distribution ceremony. The crew of the successful boat gets certain portions of the whale, crews that assists in the capture receives other parts, the community as a whole receives shares as well. What portions go to whom is determined by tradition.

During an interview, I asked a whaling captain what his responsibilities were. Without hesitation he said the first responsibility is to feed the community. The second is to ensure the safety of his crew.

Whaling is dangerous. It demands full attention. I know the "definition" of alliviniq, but what good is that?

The umiak rocks, the wind blows and the waves surges.
Now! Look! See!
Alliviniq!!

Mother, Daughter

2002-09-13T20:18:00.000-05:00

by Kristina and Kaya Lukawska

Mother

I was thirty when I gave birth to my first child. My son died after three hours of fighting for life. I felt completely devastated; I lost meaning in my life. But I was also flooded with an ocean of questions. What’s the purpose of birth and death? Why do people suffer? What’s the meaning of suffering? Why do some people seem to be happy while others are not? And many others. An imperative for spiritual practice became keen.

Two years later I had my daughter, Kaya. The great happiness and excitement accompanying her birth did not eclipse my need to search for the path. When Kaya was one year old I found the Zen Center. The first time I walked into the zendo, I felt like I found my lost home and family. There was no doubt that it was my place and my path. I started to practice ardently and I tried to do anything to be a “good Buddhist.” “Great is the matter of birth and death...Don’t waste a moment” -the words rang in my head, and I took them very literally. I stopped using any make-up, cut my hair very short, and started to take showers (in Poland we used to take baths instead of showering). When I heard that our desires cause attachment and thus suffering, I started to get rid of books and different objects from my house. My clothes started to look monochromatic - “dharma clothing.” A plain look: no jewelry, no belts or other decorations, no perfumes, no deodorant. I eliminated TV and worthless books. There was a long list of “don’ts.” It was like I was pretending that I had already achieved selfless purity. I also wanted to be a “perfect Buddhist mother.” I became obsessed with a healthy, vegetarian diet that was only homemade. I made flour by myself and I was angry with my father when he tried to feed my daughter meat. I only believed in natural medicine. When my daughter got fevers we wrapped her in a wet, cold sheet. There were many fears behind those acts, from the fear of not being accepted by the teacher or other Buddhists, to the fear of not being able to achieve enlightenment.

From the very beginning my husband and I took our daughter to many Buddhist ceremonies, so amongst her “Mother Goose” poems was “Kanzeon.” Hearing her sing “Kanzeon” in the doctors’ waiting room I laughed and I felt happy. When she was between two and four years old, she got up every morning, put on her clothes, and played silently until we finished zazen. Almost all our friends were Buddhist, so for my daughter being a Buddhist - whatever that was supposed to mean - was as natural as it is for most Polish kids to be Catholic. When my daughter was four I came to the States. After a few months my husband and Kaya joined me, and a week later our son, Max, was born. During our first years as immigrants our family had gone through a continually serious and painful crisis. I stopped practicing.

Those years were difficult for all of us. Only very slowly was I getting back to the practice of Zen. It was then that my family became my practice. Never before had it been so clear that it was thanks to my family that I could verify my practice, face my ego, shortcomings, and blindness. Again the Buddha’s teaching sounded in my head, but this time it was “I resolve not to indulge in anger” - anger that I often found uncontrollable. I wanted to let go of this self-defeating bad temper, but it was difficult. Determination to stop my anger was enhanced through teachings from my kids. Once while driving with my son, I became incredibly angry with him. After a few minutes I said, “Max, let’s kiss each other and forget what happened, okay?” He smiled and gave me a kiss.
We drove in silence for the next several minutes, then Max said, “Mom, but I still remember that.” I became saddened, it reminded me of my mother who had a really bad temper. She yelled a lot and threw objects at me. Sometimes I was really scared. I didn’t want my children to ever be afraid of me.

One of my greatest lessons came when I was with my daughter at the lake. I was getting out of the car while my daughter started to run towards the lake. She ran into a man on roller blades and wiped out. I panicked, ran towards her, and began screaming and yelling that she had not looked around. As she was getting up quietly, she looked into my eyes and said, “Instead of hugging me you are screaming at me when I am hurt,” then she got up and walked away. I felt very bad. I knew that I couldn’t just run after her and apologize. It was too serious. I had to change something first. I profoundly and visibly realized that I was the one who caused this suffering and I was the only one who could stop it. I promised myself that I would never act that way again.

“Endless blind passions I vow to uproot” was echoing in my head. I was learning to stand back from my rage and to change my attitude through gratitude and forgiveness. With persistent practice I have started to cleanse my heart of hatred, anger, and passion. Three years ago, the day after I returned from a seven-day sesshin, my son made me extraordinarily upset. I was growing furious and feeling the hot burning throughout my body, when suddenly I was completely peaceful. I responded calmly and adequately.

“All beings I vow to liberate” chimes in my head. I have asked myself, “How do I encourage my children toward spiritual adulthood?” “ How can I include them in my practice?” They have participated in Jukai and many other ceremonies at the Zen Center. A few times we had the purification ceremony at home. Each time, the kids were involved and they enjoyed it very much. They’ve learned how to bow, do prostration, light incense, and clean the altar. Their friends at school go to churches and temples; they have barmitzvas and first communions. In some way it meets their need to belong, concurrently allowing their search for meaning.

When my friend died a few years ago, we were all moved by her sudden death. My son asked me to help him prepare a small altar in his room. He put a small eagle he had gotten from this friend on it and lit incense. We did the Memorial Prayer for her and he joined us. It was a very moving experience, one of the most beautiful ways to share our grief.

Every day of practicing with kids can be a challenge and a lesson. The phone was ringing; “Just answer and tell them I already left,” my daughter pleaded. I was reluctant - I don’t like to lie. Sensing my reluctance, she ran to the front door and stepped out, closing it behind her. She came back in when I hung up the phone. What mystification! I’m pretending to believe that she has really left as she plays out a role to help me lie, cleanse my conscience, and liberate the guilt that follows. There is no guilt, but a lie remains a lie. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, and there is beauty in it.

Daughter

As a two year old I chanted “Kanzeon” in a doctors office and since the shocked and confused looks did not phase me, I continued. When I was younger this would have been easier to write; being the child of a Buddhist meant I was different. Try explaining to a group of children that your mother can get rid of bad spirits by running through the house with a series of bells. Christmas meant nothing more than presents, and my third grade wisdom rationalized the pestering by my classmates as ignorance. Growing up I learned to accept and embrace the peace that my mother found from staring at the blank white wall in front of her. I thought maybe she saw things there that I didn’t. However, it is difficult to write about it today when it is every day that I must learn that it is not the blank wall she is staring into, and furthermore that I’m not really aware of what it is, nor whether she is really staring at all.

In conflicts I look first for rationale and later for revenge. My fear turns to anger and hatred instead of to sympathy and kindness. Our attempts, as people and as a nation, to fight back after the bombings of the Twin Towers faced us with much hatred, animosity, and fear, as we hid behind our American flag. I looked to my parents for explana-tion, and had to find that like most others, they had none. My mother cried for the suffering that the bombings had caused and the consequences that would follow for years to come. I justified many of the discriminations that society developed, and it angered me that she felt we should refrain from anger and break the chain of hatred.

Being a teenager my frustration is catalyzed by her peace and calm. My anger is outraged by her serenity. Imagine feeling the greatest emotional trauma and having someone tell you that emotions are not real. I’m at a time of emotional development, a series of self-inflicted psychological traumas: every headache is a brain tumor, every disappointment the end of the world, and someone is to blame for every problem.

My discipline is developing, though; I haven’t broken an alarm clock in well over three months, and I think I may actually finish writing this piece. I’m amazed every morning to wake up and find my mother has been meditating for an hour as I have been fighting the dreaded first beep of the alarm. Her forgiveness and constitution are incredible, and I grow and derive strength from her practice more often than I’d like to admit.

As Time Goes By orHow I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Koan Practice

2002-09-12T20:38:00.000-05:00

by Laurel M. Ross

A year has passed since I attended an Intro Workshop in May 2000. For a period of about two years before that I irregularly attended the Chicago Zen Temple where I had taken a five week Introduction to Zen Meditation class in 1997. My world has shifted somewhat in the past year, but when I tried to put words around those changes I found it difficult to remember states of mind as they evolved over time. I write daily in a journal which I almost never read. It proved helpful to delve into those pages for this article however. It is fascinating to look at one’s own mind at work. (Journal entries are in italics.)

Self-assessment:

May 12, 1998
I am focusing better. The chaff is falling away. The noise is abating. I want to concentrate and focus…Zen does take time and focus and commitment. My current commitment is to sit every morning…I could do more reading…I would like to take another class or sign up for a retreat experience. I expect this would help move me toward what would feel like more of a commitment. I do like going slowly though—no reason to feel rushed or pushed. Funny now to read this and to see my mind reassuring me that I am making great progress and also that I have all the time in the world.

June 4, 1998
This morning as I lay in bed trying to get myself up I thought to myself “This is my life.” It was a moment of clarity. I was looking at my self, my home, my habits, my lifestyle—it all looked okay. I think some part of me wanted more than okay, but I seem to be letting myself off the hook. A year later I first encountered Sensei.

May 31, 1999
…the afternoon lecture series speaker today [at the Chicago Zen Temple (CZT) event] was Sevan Ross who is the teacher at the Zen Center in Evanston. I liked what he had to say—at least I seemed to understand it and agree with it. He made it very clear that the most important thing is to find a teacher. I, of course, do not have a teacher at this point. Somehow all of this made me very happy and I felt as if I should go to his temple and see how it feels…He said that community is not the result of communication but is the result of communion. He was referring to sesshins I think…What is my Buddha nature I ask myself? What is my best? My essence. I cannot answer easily... I believe I was sincere, but it was pretty darned easy to distract me from action. For the next several months I wrote endlessly (with no awareness of it actually) the same thing over and over again. An example:

June 2, 1999
I want to study psychology more. But then how will my Zen study be helpful—it is supposed to cut through all of the psychology and be a deeper solution. I will have to pursue this but I need a teacher…I want to attend a service in Evanston soon to experience that place…I need to get a schedule. Tuesday nights are not good for me… I was struggling with whether or not I would take the precepts which were offered at the CZT that summer. I was afraid I couldn’t really follow through on them and I didn’t want to fail.

June 7, 1999
…it doesn’t seem right to take the precepts formally until I know more about what I am doing here. I don’t know why really…I found the Reader ad with the phone number. I don’t know when I will call or visit. I think the intro night is Tuesday which means I would have to miss Spanish class. For the next several months I found references to Tuesday nights, the Reader, and my Spanish class over and over again. It is almost humorous, but also terrifying to see how I was resisting my impulse and finding so many (lame) excuses. I was only sitting off and on that year. My kitchen was being redone and the chaos helped me find excuses.

May 3, 2000
I finally went to the Zen Center in Evanston. It was a strong experience. The introduction was very informal and seemed designed to be light hearted and non-threatening. After the sitting part Sevan Ross gave a short talk—he seemed to want to impress on everyone the seriousness of this endeavor. He said it was karma that brought each of us there that night and that seemed to be a very serious thought. He said it doesn’t work without a community and a teacher. I can look at my calendar and choose a next visit. I need to choose a time…I want to see what the possibilities are and then decide little by little… I read this and I ask myself: “little by little?!?” What were you waiting for? Your hundredth birthday? It took an entire year to get from the first talk to the intro night!

May 5, 2000
The path that beckons is the Zen path. I was struck by Sevan Ross’ attitude that when we take that path we are making a big commitment of time and energy. It is only work and work takes time and energy…I feel ready to tackle that work. A lot of talk, but meanwhile I haven’t made it back after the intro night yet.

May 8, 2000
I am getting more and more interested in the possibility of making a big commitment to meditation. I am looking in my book for the next opportunity to spend a Sunday morning at the Evanston Zen Center [sic] …There is still the fear element to overcome but I do want to push myself
to do that if I can.

May 14, 2000
…today was to have been my first time at the Zen Center. I tried to call last night but did not get through. I guess I am still a little conflicted about going there or maybe it’s just fear that I have to overcome. Did not get through?

May 16, 2000
I went to the Monday night sitting at the Zen Center in Evanston. It was very stimulating… I was very nervous [in dokusan] and self-conscious but liked it enough that I feel as if I would like to give it a try. I would have to go a couple of times a week I think to really make a serious try at it—and sign up for a sesshin—maybe a two day one for starters. Four days seems too hard but I can see how it feels. He did say the sangha is a group I would feel comfortable with… Being a member is not the same as being a student. Being a student is a serious commitment that comes later. So that was my experience. I think I will try to go back Thursday and then maybe Friday for the service. I think it’s the taking of the precepts this weekend. Somehow after one dokusan I went from not being sure whether I would show up to figuring out what it was to be a student, discussing whether or not a four day sesshin was doable, and planning to take the precepts! Mysterious.

May 19, 2000
Yesterday was a good day. The most interesting part of which was the evening at the Zen Center. I am still scared about the practice but the more I crack the surface image the easier it will be
to do the practice.

May 20, 2000
Temple Night and Vesak…I stayed in one place for most of the evening in the main zendo trying to keep my back straight and concentrate on my breath but there was a lot of stimulation so it was hard to concentrate…Anyway somehow I did end up taking the precepts because everyone else did—it wasn’t scary. It was impressive. It felt less like a renunciation than a positive embracing of good things than I had expected. We also did a thing that I liked where we more or less apologized for doing bad things—that was powerful and I liked it. It was good to say the words out loud.

May 21, 2000
I bought a new mat and cushion last night. It seemed like a good way to celebrate a new level of commitment. Yes, well, shopping is the American way to celebrate everything I guess.

June 5, 2000
I went to the Sunday Zen service. [Sensei] said that Zen Buddhists are strong in the meditation parts of the eightfold path but not as strong on the morality parts, which is interesting because I feel as if I have been thinking about and am drawn to the morality part. I like to think about generosity and patience more than meditation. So it is good to have joined a place where meditation—sitting—is seen as the most important thing. Another way of saying this is that I had liked the lofty ideals of Zen but had avoided the hard practice.

June 6, 2000
I guess I will buy a robe. Another inch forward. Reading all of this now it is almost painful to see how each little and big step toward commitment to a practice had to be wrung out of and bargained for with myself. What is all that resistance about? I tell myself that in the year since writing these journal entries I have tried as sincerely as I can to push myself. To become a student, to make a contribution to the Sangha, and to attend as many sesshins as I can fit into my busy life. But wait—why am I always so busy anyway? Is that busy life really just another set of convenient excuses for not doing what I claim I sincerely want to do? I tell myself I am not avoiding sitting by watching television—I am doing something worthwhile. Maybe. But I am starting to think: maybe not.

The idea of tackling a koan has always seemed like the ultimate terror. Like most people in our culture, I like to succeed and I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of not knowing the right answer RIGHT AWAY. I didn’t want to do it. I really, really didn’t want to do it.

OK, I will try. I guess this is the way it will be. Fear, resistance, work, progress. And then all over again.

Natural Lessons

2001-07-04T20:25:00.000-05:00

by Stuart Goldman

I was asked to write an article about my job and how it might relate to right livelihood. Like so many things, it became something other than what I intended and morphed into an article on right effort instead.

Up until mid-March I worked as a restoration ecology technician for The Nature Conservancy in Illinois. For the most part this job involved the clearing of native and non-native woody brush and trees from ecosystems that did not historically have these types of vegetation present. Formerly these areas were prairies and other types of ecosystems that had only sparsely spaced trees and understory shrubs. This work required using chainsaws. It is two incidents involving chainsaws that brought home to me how ordinary situations can offer lessons for practice both in and out of the zendo.

Prior experience with chainsaws had encouraged me to use and maintain them in certain ways. This resulted in my not paying attention to the fact that while experience is a great teacher, it can blind a person into thinking that a little bit of experience means that this one way is the only way to do something.

As an example, several times over the summer, I had not securely tightened down the plastic caps to the gas and oil reservoirs on the chainsaws. While the saws were being used the caps would loosen and eventually come off, thus spilling gas and oil onto the very areas I was working to restore. Not only was this not helpful to the soil and plants, it was also wasting a lot of fuel. As a direct response to this I began tightening down the caps as hard as I could with a screwdriver. In attempting to solve one problem though, I created another. These plastic caps have a small slot on top for the screwdriver to engage. Repeatedly over-tightening and loosening the caps resulted in the screwdriver scraping away the sides of the slots, making them wider over time. Eventually, one slot became so wide the tool no longer fit, making it impossible to remove the cap and refill the saw. This meant losing work time, taking the saw into a dealer for repair, and paying for a new cap. I learned a simple and valuable lesson with this incident. Take the middle way, even when using a chainsaw. Too much can be as counterproductive as too little. Not too loose—but not too tight.

The second incident had potential for disastrous consequences. I was working alone in the field with a chainsaw, which violated unwritten safety rules. Unfortunately, admonitions like that often go in one ear and out the other. But I had not planned to cut down any trees. I was simply going to cut up a mature cottonwood that had already been cut down. It was a tripping hazard blocking a path that I was frequently using. This was a good-sized tree, almost two feet in diameter where I would be doing the majority of the cutting. Cutting up downed trees is not as easy as it sounds. The saw can get bound up in the trunk halfway through, slipping while cutting could result in amputating a foot, or the trunk could roll onto you after it is cut.
I took my jacket off before I began cutting, and put it where I knew I would be able to find it, on the end of the tree that I was cutting up, closest to the stump. I started cutting using a technique that usually guarantees that the saw will not get bound. I made all of my cuts, and the saw did not get stuck—but a large part of the trunk rolled. Not onto me but onto my jacket. I was utterly incredulous. How did I do something so unthinking? I vigorously tugged on my jacket but it would not budge. In addition to wanting my jacket back, I had the added concern that my boss and my boss’ boss would be arriving at the site soon. Not only would it be apparent that I was running the chainsaw with no one else on site, it would also be extremely embarrassing given the problem I had created.

I realized I would have to power up the saw again which I did not want to do, since it had already used considerable gas and wear on the chain to cut up this tree. But I did not see that I had a choice. So I started cutting again taking care not to bind up the saw. Not careful enough, though. The cut I was making closed up on the bar of the saw. Of course, this was the one day that I only had one saw with me. I was frantic. I now had two things trapped by this acquisitive tree and I was desperate to get them out.

The only thing I could do to partially open the cut on the tree wide enough to free the saw was to push or pull this log that weighed many more times than me. I was working with all my effort to move the trunk getting more and more frantic and exhausted. It hit me during this struggle that this is how I should be approaching my practice. I was completely focused on the task at hand, doing anything I could to free what seemed hopelessly stuck.

I pushed on the log from both sides in the slippery, muddy ground. It would not move, even with a nearby stump as a block for leverage. Utterly exhausted, I sank to the ground next to my jacket. Without thinking about it or expecting anything, I tugged gently on it, and it slipped easily from beneath the tree. The jacket was never stuck at all. For whatever reason, violently pulling on it did not work. All it needed was a different approach.

The saw, however, really was stuck. A different approach would also be needed to free it. I moved to the other side of the trunk and began pushing from that side. At last there was some movement, but not enough to pull the saw out. Then it occurred to me that from that side I should be pulling the log towards me to open up the cut, not pushing it away. I pulled and pulled and could not believe that the log was actually moving. With one hand still pulling, I reached over and pulled the saw towards me. It moved, but still not enough. Then the revelation...I should be pushing the saw away from me. And out the saw came.

Later, I thought about what had happened. I thought of the many assumptions I had made. The distractions I had let get in the way of my work. The work in the field, the work on the mat. Only after becoming exhausted and frustrated with what I thought was the only way of working was I able to open to working in a different way.

I wonder how long it will be until it is time to learn something from a chainsaw again. I can hardly wait.