The Arc Of Sitting

As is often the case after sesshin, I am prevaricating about what to say, and as part of that humming and hawing, I looked back at last year's stuff (and helpfully found this picture, which I had wanted to link to as the same okesa came out again, only this time nobody had a camera on hand).
The dates for Rohatsu were different to last year's so that on the first day we had the fortieth annual Suzuki Roshi Memorial, and on the last day Buddha's Enlightenment. We also had a shosan to wrap things up, and I asked Paul whether going from Suzuki Roshi to Buddha was going forwards or backwards. Actually, I had a much better question - or rather a more alive one - but I bottled it. The tanto and the ino traditionally ask the first two questions at the ceremony, so Rosalie and I went to the zabutons put out on either side of the central row of tatamis in the Buddha Hall to do our prostrations, and we carefully laid out our zagus and did the bows in unison, which felt nice. I thought back to some ten minutes previously, when Paul and I, in our kimonos, had been simultaneously pissing in adjacent cubicles before the ceremony started, and wondered if one activity was really any less of a full expression of the Buddha way than the other...
A shosan is always intimate, as we often get to see what is close to people's hearts as they express themselves; what I noticed this time was we got to hear for the first time the voices of people who had come for the sesshin. I had been impressed with the strength of sitting that many of our visitors had demonstrated, and made a point of talking to most of them at dinner afterwards to tell them so. In return, I got some compliments about my handling of the many things, and people all noticed my firmness, or as Dougald from Belfast most astutely labeled it, perhaps with a more practised ear for English tonalities, my tetchiness, which went along with a more caring side...

The Memorial on the first morning was a great way to start - albeit one that had caused part of my pre-sesshin stress. People got to make statements to Suzuki Roshi, Blanche starting by recalling that morning forty years ago. We had two young priests from Japan in attendance as well, and I thought they might be nervous having to say something in English in front of everybody, so I whispered to Jinen, who was next to me, that he should make his statement in Japanese - since Suzuki Roshi would understand that just as well - and it sounded great. As we also heard from Lucy, who comes from China, and Shindo spoke of reading about him in India, we had a nice manifestation of the phrase we often use - transmitting the lamp through four countries.

Once we got past that opening morning, I did get to settle a bit, and mostly enjoyed the sitting. Unlike some other recent sesshins, I was not inspired to sit more at night, but on the last night of sesshin, even though I had been feeling tired during the evening, I felt a little ashamed not to be even attempting to emulate the bone-smashing feats of our ancestors, feeling more like a jobsworth ino ("look mate, once we're done with the refuges, I'm off the clock. I've done my time on the cushion, organised all the ceremonies. You want me to concentrate as well - for the same money? You're having a laugh..."). Once we came upstairs from the refuges, Lucy whacked me on the shoulders with a long-handled zafu brush, and I felt motivated enough to go down for a little while...

We also threw in a Full Moon Ceremony on the morning of day six for good measure, and as part of my cunning plans to keep stress levels to a minimum, I had decided to be kokyo myself, which I haven't got to do since I have been ino, with Anna as the doan - we did one quick run through in the week before sesshin, just to check we had our timings down, and I was happy to forget about it until it came around. It was one of the highlights of the week though, as I felt pretty focused through the whole thing, and came away thinking I had done it as well as I ever had.

As usual, I was conflicted about taking photos during sesshin, but couldn't resist on a few occasions. Things tend to look so beautiful during sesshin. Well, some things, some of the time.

Chocolate-covered strawberries on day six - yes it is December, but it is California as well

Not too long after the first picture was taken

At the risk of turning into one of those food blogs - tangerines for the offering tray for Buddha's Enlightenment ceremony

Flotsam and Jetsam

It is invariably true that there are many more things that float around in the mind of sesshin than end up washed on the shore when it is all over, which is why I often don't feel like writing much after sesshin is finished. Among the myriad things that came my way from elsewhere: notes about drains, earplugs, serving crews, protocol, the one-day sitting, illnesses, absences. Internally, I had some spacious time on day two, but otherwise there were a lot of details to take care of for today's one-day sitting, and for a while yesterday I got kind of grumpy when I felt other people weren't doing certain things in a way that I found helpful or supportive.
I was going to articulate some of that in the shosan that we concluded with this afternoon, but Paul jumped in with a question for me almost before I had opened my mouth - he knew what had been going on, and wanted to stop me leaning on it. But by then it was feeling old anyway. And I got my own back at the end of the ceremony when he was thanking people, and expressed his appreciation for how I had been trying to make order out of everything. "Trying?" I cut in, a little archly.

As I have discovered at other times in the community, a reputation, once gained, is hard to shed. On the first morning of sesshin, I saw a package with my name on it outside the front office. Inside, an envelope had a quote from the sesshin admonitions: "Between meals, try to eat exclusively what is offered by the kitchen". On the card was written "Today the kitchen is offering chocolate", continued inside with "The Tenzo invites you to enjoy one chocolate for each day of your sesshin.  Additional chocolates are provided for the days when two chocolates are necessary in order to be...one who is wise, who seeks the good and has obtained peace". There was with this a very fine, even artisanal, selection of chocolates. I haven't figured out who this gift came from: the writing is different from other cards I have received recently - I don't think it was the tenzo either - though the references to both the admonitions and the Loving Kindness Meditation, which we have just looked at in Young Urban Zen, would seem to narrow the field down somewhat.
I can report that I managed not to succumb to that particular temptation, and that two more chocolate offerings appeared today as well, only one of which I have eaten. There was chocolate cake for the final dinner to boot, of which I have saved an extra portion for after my bike ride tomorrow. This is what remains at the end of sesshin.

Breathing Out

I've lost count of how many sesshins I have sat now; the last number I had in my head was somewhere in the thirties, and while I could probably still go back and count them up over the years, I don't know if I will. I do remember thinking that I had probably sat in sesshin for at least six months, which makes it seem a lot. Anyway, my reaction to this one was mostly on the lines of 'oh, it's only three days', whereas for most of the participants, who are relatively or completely new to the experience, it would be more like 'oh my god, I have to sit for three whole days'; my expectation was that it was mainly going to be tough on the logistical level, as outlined before. I wasn't thinking it would be long enough really to push my body too hard or crack my heart open, especially these days, and I was mostly right about that.
The first day got off to a good start when I found a bar of self-described 'supreme dark' chocolate at my desk at five in the morning. There was no note with it, so I wondered if it was someone who remembered my comment after the last sesshin - which upset one person here after they read about me breaking the shingi - or if it was another kind gift of support.
The second day was bedlam as I expected, what with squeezing another thirty people into the zendo for the one-day sitting part of things, and also having the public coming in and wanting to have a place to sit, on top of all the variables that inevitably occur. During the afternoon, though, I got to slow down nicely, and this continued today as we returned to being a much smaller group. Indeed, there was a certain amount of attrition over the three days, and even among the residents who sat yesterday, not all of them lasted the whole day. Blanche on the other hand, having said at the outset that we shouldn't count on her being there much, pretty much sat through the entire schedule, and anchored the zendo with her presence.
We ended with a shosan, in a very intimate group, where Jordan  got to be at his big-hearted best on the dharma seat, and we got to share some words of the intimacy that has been woven these past few days.

So, I was going to write that we had the Zen Beginner here with us, and since I made a point of telling him 'no blogging' just before I read the admonitions on Thursday, I thought it would be very remiss of me to be breaking that one myself. And, as I click on his page to get the link, I find not only did he go and break it himself, but he was the person who left the chocolate. Did I eat the chocolate? You'll have to ask me...
Changing the subject rapidly, and just to continue the pictoral theme from before:

The moon on Thursday

The moon on Friday

Blossoms and Snow

One reason I was drawn to what you might call Buddhist philosophy for want of a better word, was that it cut through the absolute, while I always found Western thinking and writing to be circling frustratingly, and frustratedly, around it. But of course I find ample examples where the two approaches align around making sense of the human condition. Reading in the New Yorker about George Eliot (reminding me that I read 'Middlemarch' while crossing Europe in trains at the age of eighteen - having got through 'Pride and Prejudice' before I reached Paris, in the days before the Eurostar, I was glad to have something with a little more heft), the following two sections struck me: the writer of the article outlines "a notion that is at the center of much of Eliot's work: that individuals must make their best efforts toward a worthy end, but it is the effort toward a goal, rather than the achievement of it, that makes us who we are". And this: "In response to the enthusiastic reception of the first volume of 'Middlemarch', Eliot wrote, 'Hardly anything could have happened to me which I could regard as a greater blessing than this growth of my spiritual existence when my bodily existence is decaying. The merely egoistic satisfactions of fame are easily nullified by toothache, and that has been my chief consciousness for the last week'".

Our full week is done now. We had our Full Moon Ceremony on Friday morning, and a one-day sitting yesterday, neither of which I feel I have anything interesting to say about. Yesterday we finished with a shosan where Michael, Great Dragon, made quick work of people's stuck thinking, turning over concepts with a phrase, and in one case, a great shout.

In the realm of changes, California winter weather rarely disappoints. I have overused these past ten years the line 'rough winds do shake the darling buds of February' in writing to my family. A fortnight ago, we were basking in eighty degree weather; last weekend I was taking pictures of the crowds in the sun at Crissy Fields, and wishing I had taken my camera for the sunlit blossoms at Green Gulch. Today the happy crowds were up on Mt Tam, where the soaking of the last week left snow on the ground on the upper slopes. When I went out on my bike this morning, glad that the skies had cleared, I soon realised that I just had to go and pay it a visit. Luckily the higher roads were closed to cars, so there were just hikers and cyclists out testing their grip, along with the deer and coyotes - I thought of going to the summit, but ice on the road by the amphitheatre made that seem like a bad idea. It was wonderfully liberating to be out there with the quiet of the snow, with the familiar feeling of flatness once you descend to where the ground is bare. This snow will be even more fleeting than the blossoms.

The snow on Mount Tam reflecting the rising sun, as seen from the roof

Shosan

Shosan should not be confused with chosan. Nor should shosan be confused with Shosan - the ceremony is not the teacher; though perhaps if Shosan is doing shosan, they are one. In any case, tonight with Shosan we did a less formal shosan, which was a very sweet way to end a day of sitting. There were not so many bows involved, and again asking a question was optional, but this time, the questioners did get up to meet face to face with the teacher, in a dimly lit Buddha Hall. The wonderful thing about these ceremonies is feeling the moment being met, the person being met, the mood - which can go from high-spirited to deeply tender in a moment - being met, and all being held, lovingly. After we were done, we did prostrations and the refuges resonated around the room, which was very beautiful. Then we put everything away, thanked each other, and said goodnight. At least I did, I think other people are heading out to do something with their energy...
I was happy with the day; there was the usual quota of situations, people being sick, people going missing, having almost no time after meals to sit down, but I did get to focus on some zazen this afternoon, and that felt good. Everybody had a seat, everybody got fed, and as usual, nothing really bad happened. Not on the outside at least.