Full Moon

There was a big moon shining into my room this morning when I got up.We had put the  Full Moon Ceremony back a day so that we could have our Way-seeking Mind talk yesterday - as the practice period is only six weeks long, we wanted to give as many people as possible a chance to tell their story.
I had rehearsed the ceremony several times with Renee the kokyo and Jay the doan, as it was a debut for both of them; I was confident they would do well, and they did. As usual I worried about the details, but by the time we got to the Bodhisattva vows, I was feeling very concentrated. In my position in the Buddha Hall, I do my prostrations right in front of the Tara statue, and I enjoyed having her beatific gaze upon me during this ceremony. And then when we were reciting the precepts, the sun rose above the house across the street and was shining directly onto me; I could see I was surrounded by clouds of incense, and it was a very moving moment as we did our final bows. I went up to the kaisando afterwards to do the breakfast food offering for Suzuki Roshi as well, which I don't often get a chance to do, so it was a powerful morning for me, and I could feel the positive energy of the sangha at breakfast.
My concentration has not been so great this past week or more; the times that it has been better are when I have been doshi for noon or evening service, or the couple of times I have stood in as doan, and I just get to concentrate on hitting the bells, which I love to do. As doshi, there is always a great opportunity to be present, as you are standing right in the middle of all the chanting and energy of the room. We have started chanting Dogen's Self-receiving and -employing Samadhi for noon service, and this is a very inspiring text. It is very dense, which makes it hard to take in while you are chanting, but I find if I just allow it to permeate, and don't think about it too much, it can send a shiver down my spine. It affirms for me why this practice is my life.

The Nature of a Mistake

I was recounting the story of Jamie and Hekizan at dinner yesterday, and I used the phrase 'the ino cracking the whip'. A new resident sitting on the other side of me heard that, and said she got worried hearing that phrase. We got into a discussion about mistakes. How do I deal with them? For new people, I don't mind if they make mistakes, because it's part of the learning process, but for people who know what they're doing, or say they know what they're doing, I might respond differently. This is one reason why, during the service review each morning, I always ask the person what they noticed themselves about their performance, before I say anything, as people are often completely aware of the mistakes they have made.The new resident wanted to know if experienced people made mistakes too. Well of course it happens. Is it because they don't know what they're doing? Sometimes, but people also just forget things.

This morning the doshi had forgotten her zagu (the bowing cloth) when she came to service, and had to borrow the jiko's zagu. When I was first a priest, I also had to give my zagu to a doshi who had forgotten his. This morning's doshi confessed to me at breakfast that she had been so rattled by  forgetting her zagu that she made a couple of other mistakes later in the morning...

I also heard yesterday from a friend of mine a story of going to another zen centre where someone came round to correct her hand position during zazen, in a way that she had found quite aggresive and unnecessary. I hope that I never make anyone feel that bad in the zendo here.
I know that my first instinct is to be hard on people who get things wrong, and one of the strongest parts of my practice as tenzo was not letting that instinct dictate my attitude in an interaction with someone. The energy or motivation for telling someone off can be easily put aside when you allow yourself to hear the other person first, and consider their point of view, not just your own idea of right and wrong.
So this morning, just before breakfast, I passed a resident who had slept through the morning schedule. What did I say to them? 'Good morning'. I walked away and thought I could have added 'there are savoury muffins for breakfast'.

Dana Paramita

One of the announcements I am expected to make after the Saturday talk is a request for donations. This is always a tricky one. I try not to be too repetitive, but I tend to use phrases that I have heard former inos use.  One ino used to ask other people to make this request, a different person each week as I remember, which is a good way to keep it fresh. If the speaker has made a reference to generosity, or dana paramita, the perfection of giving, then that can be a good springboard. Linda Ruth talked recently about how the pleasure centre of the brain is activated in similar ways by three activities, giving, eating and sex, and I was tempted to follow that by saying, well, we can take care of the first two for you with our donation box and lunch, but the sex you will have to take care of for yourself - but I wasn't in a bold mood that day so I didn't.
In my re-reading of the Platform Sutra, I was struck by a line of Hui-neng's in response to questions from Governor Wei. The governor was asking about the famous exchange between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu, in particular the idea of accruing merit by doing good deeds. In his verse at the end of the chapter, Hui-neng declares 'Attaining the way does not come from donating money'. I have been tempted to quote this, but I think it would be a little off-putting, and I am reminded of the famous speech given by Katagiri Roshi to a room full of donors, which he began by reminding them 'you're all going to die'.
As we are currently focusing on the Bodhisattva path,the words of the Diamond Sutra also hold good in this regard: 'Moreover, Subhuti, a Bodhisattva who gives a gift should not be supported by a thing, nor should he be supported anywhere...For, Subhuti, the Bodhisattva, the great being should give gifts in such a way that she is not supported by the notion of a sign. And why? Because the heap of merit of that Bodhi-being, who unsupported gives a gift, is not easy to measure'. In other words, we should give without expectation of result or reward. This is the perfection of giving. Now I just need to find a way to distill all of that into about thirty seconds of talking.

Busy Doing Nothing

Jamie Howell gave the dharma talk this morning, and in the course of reminiscing about his time at Zen Center over the years, told of how he would come in to be chiden or jiko in the morning, and because he was driving up from his house, he was often just a couple of minutes late despite his best intentions; he told how the ino at the time, Hekizan Tom Girardot, would invariably be waiting at the top of the stairs, tapping his foot.
I could definitely sympathise with this. Today was one of those days which was full of so many things that it was impossible to hold on to any one emotion that came up. To begin with, I woke up hearing crows, which was much more fun than an alarm clock, and it was already getting light at five forty. I was listening out for the wake-up bell at six, but I wasn't hearing anything. The usual Saturday fukudo (who rings the wake-up bell among other things) is at Tassajara this week, and his replacement had told me, 'oh I've done it before, but if you have the notes for the wake-up bell that would help', so I had given her the notes, and when I went downstairs at five past six, when the bell should be finished, she was just checking her notes before she set off, so I rather impatiently told her to hurry up. One of the things I can get very uptight about is punctuality, so if it says the bell should begin at six, I want it to begin at six. So I got to look at that, and a couple of other things that didn't go completely right, and seeing how I respond to those things, and what I was going to say to the stand-in fukudo. Then as I sat, the sun came into the zendo, and the light was beautifully soft, and in the Buddha Hall for service afterwards I watched the dust floating around in the shafts of sunlight, followed by trails of incense smoke, and at first I got impatient that the mokugyo was not as fast as I like it to be, and then with the stand-in kokyo leading the way, we went through the list of daioshos (the male lineage of ancestors) at exactly the right speed, which was very energising. Then I felt like I had to rush to be ready for oryoki, and get everyone seated in a way that made the servers' job easier, and then watching the new servers as they nervously made their way round, seeing a few mistakes but being happy that things went mostly very smoothly. After breakfast I went out to meet the Saturday Sangha people who were already gathered in the sunny courtyard, checked in with the soku who was worried about some of the things that hadn't gone completely perfectly during breakfast, then had just enough time to drink some coffee and go to the bathroom before putting on my robes again for the next sitting, seeing all the people who only come on Saturday mornings, but who are now familiar faces to me, and then getting the recording equipment and my announcements ready for the talk, and listening to Jamie telling great stories of his years of practice, and reminding us to smile. I made my announcements, which I find easier than when I started being ino, but which I always finish thinking, I could have done that better, or, oh I forgot to mention this. Another cup of coffee and then nenju. I had asked Bernd to be kokyo, and he chose the shorter eko as he finds it more joyful than the other one, and he did it, and the 'hosan' afterwards, very joyfully. Finally lunch with the Saturday Sangha. Last week I had been asked for a glossary, so I brought along the only one I could find, called 'terms used at Zen Center', and people found it very helpful, even though we thought of probably another dozen words that weren't on the list, and it proved to be a springboard for a very wide-ranging conversation about practice life and what it meant to me to be a priest (that could be a whole other entry).
Seven and a half hours of ordinary practice. Then it was time to clean my bike before tomorrow's ride.

The Wheel of the Dharma Turns and Turns

I used to say, somewhat flippantly, that I had had more zen moments on a bicycle than on a zafu, but I don't know that I would try to claim that these days. Nevertheless, my practice energy has been a little diffuse this week, and a lot of this has to do with bicycle-related activities. On Tuesday I spent a couple of hours down at Ocean Beach at the start of the Tour of California; I waited by the sign-in stand, and had many of the world's best cyclists passing by a couple of feet away, so I happily took photos. The mood at events like this is always relaxed and upbeat. Simultaneously in Europe, the Giro d'Italia has been entertainingly unpredictable this year, and I have been watching streaming video of some of the stage finishes after breakfast instead of studying. Then today, just to prove that all conditioned phenomena are unreliable, there were potentially explosive allegations made by Floyd Landis about riders and doping practices.
If there is anyone reading this who is not regularly reading Trevor's blog, I wanted to highlight this excellent recent entry. There isn't much I could add to this; I had a similar conversation recently with someone, and I said that moving wasn't a problem, but I had to really insist before the other person believed me.
The problem with deciding to write something here after dinner is that I can easily spend afternoon zazen polishing prose in my head, which I would call moving without moving. I have many ways of doing this. I might seem still from the outside, but there is a lot going on. I used to think that sitting zazen was a matter of parking my body on the cushion while I got to work on some mental afflictions - or more frequently, got carried away enjoying them - but eventually I figured out that the two things are related. A few years ago I started noticing how I would get a little tighter across the top of the chest whenever I started thinking, and I have had many occasions over recent years to feel how emotionally charged times lead to tension and pain, which for me manifests in the base of the spine and the hips. Right now my body is more or less settled, so I can work on some of the more subtle habit patterns, like noticing when my right shoulder moves forward and upward. I can also do this when I am riding my bike; if my ride is not too physically demanding, I can pay attention to lifting my chest and relaxing my shoulders as I pedal, and notice which muscles I am using as I climb a hill. Now that the sun has reappeared after the unseasonably late rain, I can look forward to some joyful moments out on the roads this weekend. And perhaps some joyful moments on the cushion before then.

Nenju

Each week at the end of the Saturday lecture during practice period, I try to entice people to come to nenju, and yet I find it a little difficult to describe. It marks the end of the practice week, for sure, and it is all about gratitude, as I have heard from a number of people. Last Saturday as I was casting around for words, Tova offered 'connection' as well, which was nice.
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, my experience of this ceremony at Tassajara is much stronger than my experience of it here. At Tassajara, nenju comes at the end of the afternoon on three-and-eight days. For those unfamiliar with the traditional monastic schedule (confession - this is a word I pronounce like an American), Tassajara works largely on a four-and-one schedule, that is four days on, one day 'off' - it is usually called a personal day, rather than a day off, as you still have to get up in the morning and follow a limited schedule - and traditionally the personal days fall on the days of the month ending in four and nine, thus they are often called four-and-nine days. With me so far? So nenju comes near the end of the day before to mark the closing of the practice 'week'.
If you ask Tassajara monks about nenju, they will usually mention the waiting. There is a lot of standing on the engawa - the walkway around the zendo - while the Abbot does a procession to various altars, and then there are a few other steps before everyone goes inside for a jundo. It is usually cold outside at that time of the afternoon at Tassajara, sometimes very cold, which tends to colour people's perceptions of the ceremony.
At City Center there is less endurance involved; the Abbot just goes to the Buddha Hall to bow before coming to the dining room, where everyone is lined up in a large horseshoe formation.
 One of the highlights of nenju for me is getting to be the the kokyo, as the eko is one of the most fun things you get to do. There are actually two that are used at Tassajara, but here we just use the longer one, which goes thus:

Carefully listen everyone.

24 hundred 96 years ago the Great Tathagata entered nirvana.

When this day is gone, your life also decreases.

Like a fish in a puddle, what pleasure is there here?

We are to practice constantly, as if to save our head from fire.

Mindful of transiency, pursue the path with diligence and care.

Throughout Hosshinji the Dharma safely resides,

        bringing all peace.

Everyone in ten directions knows an increase in joy

and growth in wisdom.

Thankfully we recite the names of Buddha.


So last Saturday, I offered myself the opportunity to be kokyo, as this was the first nenju of the new practice period, and I wanted to set the tone as best I could. I was doing it from memory as I like to do, and I thought I was doing pretty well until I realised that I had said Zenshinji instead of Hosshinji, somewhat automatically, as I have done this more times there than here, even though I had been telling myself 'Hosshinji' as I went along towards that line. And then, even after what I wrote last time, just dwelling on that mistake for a moment meant that I didn't continue from 'safely resides' into 'bringing all peace', where the pitch is dropped, but paused, forgetting what I was supposed to do for the briefest moment. It is possible that many of the people there did not notice, and I did not beat myself up about it.
So we recited the names of Buddha, and did our jundo, where everyone goes around the group, bowing to and being bowed to by everyone, and then, after a whispered exchange with the Abbot (which is a secret of course), I announced 'Ho-san', which translates as 'no more dokusan', in other words, the weekend starts here. Paul offered us some encouraging words to keep in mind during the weekend so that we are not too tempted to think of it as 'time off'. Because after all, how can you take time off from practice?

Ino Anxiety Dream

This was a very full Saturday, and I might write about nenju or having lunch with the Saturday Sangha in due course (especially since I ended up telling them about the blog, as I was recycling some of the stories I have posted recently), but I had the most interesting dream just before waking up this morning: at the beginning I was down at Tassajara, talking with Mako on a nice sunny afternoon, but then there was a scene with two rooms full of people, whom Linda Ruth was organising as some kind of strategic group, and as I looked at what one table of people had been writing, someone said to me, 'oh yeah, we're going to do the Mountain Seat ceremony tonight'. My reaction was 'but nobody told me'...
We all have our own version of the anxiety dream - at the BBC, and for a while afterwards, I used to dream about being in charge of a transmission that was about to go live, and nobody else had showed up, or the tapes were missing. When I woke up and thought about this one, though, I noticed that I hadn't felt particularly anxious about the news, it was more feeling a little outraged that I hadn't been informed.
As it happened, I was scheduled to have dokusan with Paul this morning, so I kicked off with this little story before going over some of the other stuff that has been happening for me since we had last met. And of course, the dream did not come out of the blue; after the decision around restructuring the Abbacy, we have recently been discussing an installation ceremony for Steve here at City Center, as recently happened at Green Gulch, which is a ritual way to offer him a new seat in the zendo - and not a full-on Mountain Seat Ceremony which is when someone becomes Abbot, and as far as I can tell is the most complex and formal thing an ino could ever have to organise. A few people had been asking me about that yesterday, as that had been one of the original dates mentioned for the ceremony to take place, although it is currently planned for a couple of weeks from now. I certainly haven't felt out of the loop as far as that one goes, and Paul assured me he would keep me on board...

Sound

One of the things I remember about that first Saturday, ten years ago, was sitting on one of the pews in the Buddha Hall, the sun heating the back of my head, listening to Linda Ruth lecture, and not being able to concentrate on the words. This was less due to jet-lag or not understanding what she was talking about, than the fact that the ino at the time, although being hard of hearing, controlled the sound system, and there was a distinct edge of feedback happening as Linda Ruth talked, which was painful for me. Not in the physical sense, but more in the professional sense: coming to the States, I left behind a job as a sound engineer (we were called studio managers, which we loved to abbreviate of course) at the BBC World Service.
This had been a job I had loved doing for eight years, and I soon realised that it had been a good 'zen' job. Mostly I was working in live radio, the broadcasts usually in a language other than English, with people from almost every country of the world, so concentration, mindfulness, acceptance and a certain unflappability were good attributes to develop. I often repeat to doans these days a lesson I learned through years of experience: if you make a mistake, just make one mistake. It is easy to get something wrong, and then to dwell on that, and find you are getting other things wrong as well. Mistakes certainly happened, all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, and the chilling feeling that you are responsible for a few seconds of silence rather than whatever audio was supposed to be happening, and there are literally millions of people listening, is very sobering. But, once it has happened, as Eric Dolphy used to say about his jazz performances, 'it's gone in the air'. You can't take your work home with you after a live transmission.
Anyway, I ventured to offer my services to the ino after a week or two, and ended up running the sound system here - my notes from the time are still on the cabinet - as well as the one at Tassajara when I was there, and now I am back doing it here again as ino, as well as editing, tweaking and uploading all the dharma talks; in those days, we did everything onto cassettes....
Greg was just in a couple of days ago with the first crop of this summer's talks at Tassajara, which had one or two technical problems to play with. The Abbot is also interested in getting new equipment in for classes and workshops, so Keith and I will probably be installing some new mics next week. I understand that the dharma talks page is one of the most popular on our website, and unlike live radio, these offerings are here to stay and enjoy repeatedly; but even if no-one was listening to them, I would still enjoy polishing the sound, just to keep my hand in - and my ear.