What Is Left Behind

It seems a long time ago now that Dana, then the Secretary, asked me if I would take on the blog as part of my responsibilities as ino. She is gone now, back to the market-place; there is a new Abbess, a new tanto, and everyone else on the senior staff that I started with has rotated to a different job in this period of time. That is the way of things at Zen Center.

This morning I put on my robes and went down to the zendo for the first time this week. Even though the schedule was optional for residents this morning, we had a good turn-out for the Full Moon Ceremony in the Buddha Hall after zazen. I had asked Martha several times before to be kokyo, and it had never worked out, so I was glad that she made her debut this time, for the blue moon; her voice sang out across the room strongly and vividly.
I sat one last time in the ino's seat for the 9:25 period - I was going to say, enjoying sitting with all the Saturday regulars, but actually there were a number of new faces today; perhaps some of these are going to be the new regulars. 
Rosalie had told me she was going to get up at the end of lecture to say something about it being my last day, and she did - apparently it went out on the Livestream as well if you want to hear what she said. I have noticed before that she always has a good knack of finding the right things to say about people, pinpointing particular qualities that stand out and bringing them to light. My karma is such that I found it more embarrassing to be standing there on the receiving end of these glowing words than just to be there making anouncements, but I felt warmly held and appreciated by everyone in the room; there was also applause, which is most unusual in those surroundings.
As happens most Saturdays, a nice group from YUZ got to hang out in the courtyard afterwards, partly organising what we are going to do on Monday, and, since I was getting into a vacation frame of mind and had the intention of not planning anything for today, I lingered with everybody after lunch much longer than is my wont, and had a sweet time with people.

There is a ceremony in one of the folders on the computer for the ino transition, which we have sometimes used; mostly it is a jundo and an invitation for the new ino to take the seat. The timing being what it is, I don't think we are going to do it this time. I will however make a transition right here after I have posted this: I will transfer the administrative control for the blog away from my log-in, and leave it in Valorie's hands.

I would like to say that I have deeply valued being offered this space to express and share the dharma and my practice with everybody, and I have been constantly encouraged and touched by all the positive feedback I have received over the last two and a half years, be it from my closest dharma friends here in the building or those of you with whom I am only acquainted through the blog. It has been a particular and wonderful sangha to have been a part of.

At times, and not just now at the end of my tenure, I have looked around and thought that the most tangible result of my time as ino will be that I got the bowing mat in the Buddha Hall replaced. It took more than a year to actually make it happen, but then I think it had been in need of doing for at least ten years. There are a few other material things that I can look around and think, I was at least partially the cause of this coming into being. For the non-tangible effects...

The truth is that I have been trying to compose this post for a couple of weeks - which would explain why it reads a little disjointed - and I know that it is impossible to be able to find fitting words to say at this moment. However, having read in Living by Vow an extract from Shobogenzo Gyoji, I think it is only appropriate to close with some words from Dogen:
"The essential point is that, in the entire earth and throughout heaven in the ten directions, all beings receive the merit of our continuous practice. Although neither others nor ourselves know it, that is the way it is."

Harmonies

When Alan and Danny first proposed the Revelation Zen evening as part of the Soundwave Festival, there was a concern that we didn't simply replicate the Bold Italic evening, although from our side of things, that was always going to be our reference point. It was another occasion to open the doors of City Center to people who don't usually come - and I heard several people saying that they lived in the neighbourhood but had never made it through the front door - and to open up our activities in a less formal and forbidding way and in completely different contexts. I was only peripherally involved in terms of organising; this meant I wasn't particularly stressed about Saturday rolling around, but I was busy all afternoon helping carry, fetch and find - tables, extension cords, the usual little things. It was almost a surprise when at 5:30 a steady line of people started flowing through the front door. Even more surprising was how quiet everyone was - at least until the music started.
We had a full Buddha Hall by the time we had got through the introductions, and David led some zazen, which segued into Marielle's performance. She started with the big bell, worked the recordings of the bell in, and then moved onto violin, with harmonies building from the deep bass resonance of the bell. I had tipped Keith off, and he was sitting right next to the bell to get the feel of it, his hands cupped around a blown-up latex glove, which I guess was standing in for a balloon as a vibration detector (just visible in the photo below).
Gretchen led as many people as we could fit into the courtyard in walking meditation, accompanying which Sean ran a whole bank of tapes, creating a wash of sound; we wrapped up with a chanting of the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, during which I could mostly hear Blanche, who was luckily keeping count for me as I played the mokugyo, and as we got to the end of the chant, En came in with some increasingly processed crash cymbal leading into some pretty intense layering of fequencies and harmonies.
I deeply enjoyed all the music, and appreciated how our focus on meditative activities added an extra dimension and attention. I was also musing on the role trance music has played in spiritual activities for many centuries: it occurred to me that while there can often be noise within silence, as our minds start to chatter to fill the disquieting void, within sound, especially unstructured sound which give the brain nothing to cut up and count, there can be a real silence and spaciousness.
After which, there is always the cleaning up. Luckily, since it was past our bedtime, there was a great crew of volunteers, with special mention to Jorge, the Soundwave engineer who was on top of everything all day, and the half-dozen or so YUZ members who descended on anything that needed to be put away, mob-handed and full of energy.

Tova led a couple of tours of the building

Lien offered zazen instruction

Marielle played her violin along with the big bell

Sean acquires a peace bell halo

Sean and kinhin taken from my room

En, with special effect caused by having my hand in front of the lens before taking the picture

Privilege

I have said before that this blog is intentionally parochial, but I might go out on a limb here. It is a safe thing for me to do really, given the context and my 'location within the matrix of domination', as a good dharma friend just expressed it.
There have been a number of trainings in diversity and multi-cultural awareness in the years I have been at Zen Center. One exercise I remember particularly well had all the participants lined up on one side of the room. Each time a category was announced, members of the dominant, privileged group stepped forward, members of the less privileged group stepped back. I ended up a long way forward: white, male, middle class, heterosexual, English as a first language. The only backward step I needed to take was as a first-generation immigrant, though, with the cushioning of the above categories, this barely qualifies me as oppressed.
Growing up in blithely privileged circumstances, I nonetheless found myself increasingly uncomfortable at school and college with the sense of entitlement many of my peers seem to have been imbued with; I resisted being identified with the class I was born into, and tried to find my own way, starting to learn about different forms of power and oppression -  which is part of the reason I found moving to America appealing, as I was able to side-step the constricting categories of the old country.
That said, I always felt lucky to have lived and worked in London where I did; the World Service is pretty much the most culturally diverse work-place you could find. For ten years, I worked, ate, drank and partied with colleagues who came from forty or more countries - the only place I have ever been that topped that was the United Nations canteen in New York. The area I lived in was also racially mixed, lower-middle class in those days, now rather gentrified by all accounts. When I moved to San Francisco, I was quite shocked at what I perceived to be the cultural and racial divides that surrounded me - not to mention dismayed at the conversations about capital punishment, gun laws and abortion rights. I felt I had stepped back a couple of generations.
Zen Center, along with other sanghas in America, has been historically very white; there has been, and continues to be, an effort to be more welcoming, more inclusive, more diverse. We are not there yet. I take a glimmer of hope from the fact that the members of Young Urban Zen come a little closer to representing the general demographics of the city, but there is still a lot of work for everybody to do.
So why I am writing about this? A couple of my sangha friends, who work more deeply on these issues, forwarded me this piece, written after the anniversary events. I had responses to different points the author brings up, which I recognised were largely driven by defensiveness. I sat with that for a while, and then articulated them to those friends. One of them then sent me a link to this, which, along with Mushim's talk last week, has helped triangulate the conversation in a way that turned my defensiveness more towards gratitude that people are able to bring forward their stories. I was glad to be reminded that I need to listen. It is a question of mindfulness, remembering not to fall into complacency, and, here just as in other areas of life and practice, to be able to hold deeply the simultaneous understanding of difference and sameness within the whole working of reality.

A Big Do With A Procession

Ahead of the weekend, a few people had asked me what a zen party was like. The answer is, of course, I don't know. But we threw a pretty good one on Saturday night.
I was feeling a little tired after the morning and running some errands in the afternoon, so I didn't rush over to Greens, but by the time I got there, about 6:30 or so, the place was already full, and if you have ever been to Greens, you would know that it takes a couple of hundred people to fill the place. I knew a lot of the people there; the old timers were out in force, with some faces that were unfamiliar to me, but there was also a large contingent from Young Urban Zen as well, some of whom were volunteering at the evening, counterbalancing those who have got us this far with those who are going to take Zen Center through the next fifty years.
It was a very social time, filled with chatting, eating, drinking and dancing, with not just a DJ but a live drum troupe as well, who got a lot of people moving.
The other thing about a zen party is that it won't go on until the small hours; I ducked out at around 9:30 when my energy was starting to flag, and I heard that there was a steady exodus after that.

Robert addresses the room

The room listens to Robert

On the dancefloor

I spent most of Sunday out and about, and when I got back did not feel like doing more than the regular tidy-up, which meant that yesterday morning, instead of sitting zazen, I went up to my office right after the jundo to finish collating all the information and start gathering the things I needed.
There was a lot to do before nine o'clock, when we were supposed to start getting in the shuttle cars to Sokoji - I managed to get the altars set up, but the sound gear was proving elusive - some of it had been at Greens, and some of it had been at Green Gulch - so that part of it was making me stressed; I wasn't going to be running the sound, but I wanted at least to know that everything was in place and ready to go.
Arriving at Sokoji there was still plenty of time; everyone gathered early, and there were not so many things to take care of. I enjoyed a quiet moment downstairs putting on my bessu; otherwise it felt like I was on my feet for about eight hours straight.
None of the ceremonies were complicated or unusual, but the whole set-up was unique. I found myself on the raised area around the altar at Sokoji with Sojun Mel the doshi; four abbots and the four Zen Center officers as the ryoban; the jisha, doan and fukudo. Luckily I could hide behind a pillar while the statements were going on, but as kokyo, I had to step forward for the ekos; Steve had written them in a way that made them very easy to articulate, and my voice felt okay - I got a compliment from Baker Roshi as we made our way out at the end of that ceremony.
I was supposed to be helping marshal the procession into place, but it was always going to be a fairly fluid affair. We filled the sidewalk for a whole block, and once we got going, people were mingling with who they wanted to for much of the time. We intrigued and bemused some of our Western Addition neighbours as we made our way down the hill with a police car and motorbike holding the cross street traffic for us. It was a lovely sunny day, and I think people were enjoying being part of such an unusual spectacle.
The idea was to process straight into the Buddha Hall for the next part of the ceremony, but some of the senior members needed a break after the procession, so we had a few minutes' pause - we were always going to be running behind schedule anyway, and there didn't seem to be any need to hurry.
Again, I was right in the thick of things in my usual ino place in the Buddha Hall. The statements here were perhaps the key moment of the whole day, with Baker Roshi apologising for the pain and suffering he had caused, and Reb responding directly to him - seeing them bow together at that moment was most moving.
The final part was the dedication of the new peace bell, which I hadn't seen until the morning when it was placed on its plinth in the courtyard. I had decided that we wouldn't try to use microphones for this part, but I think parts of the crowd were straining to hear those statements.
We ended up with some final short speeches in the dining room, with a huge spread of Greens food waiting patiently for us to finish. I had arranged to meet a friend in the afternoon, so I took a little break, but then had to clean up all the ceremonial things afterwards, before afternoon zazen and Young Urban Zen in the evening. I was pretty wiped out after all of that, and while zazen was optional for residents this morning, I felt I should get up to make sure the zendo was open, so I am still feeling pretty wiped out. But this has been, I think, my final big hurrah as ino, and I am very glad to have been so involved in it.
I quite often feel that my descriptions of these big events are rather banal, but hopefully the photos will bring it to life a little more. If not, you could always try sitting through the three hours of video footage to see what actually happened.

Nadia hard at work after breakfast

Kogan rings the densho at Sokoji

The crowd at Sokoji - brown robes and dancers

Trying to get everyone in place for a group photo at Sokoji

Marcia and Johan

Lisa Eric and Robert under the parasols

Tim the jisha, Sojun, Blanche and Baker Roshi

You can never have too many parasols. Thilda blew the conch as part of the procession

Gretchen, Steve, Fu and Ed

Crossing Fell Street

Crossing Fell Street. Linda played the drum

Maggie and Lynn from YUZ carried one of the banners

Christina and Sojun

Dennis, David Chadwick, Baker Roshi, Mike Dixon and Steve in the dining room after the speeches

Dennis with Peter Coyote

Linda Ruth with Fran - who was the third tenzo at Tassajara

Rebecca Solnit

Yvonne Rand

P tries the new peace bell

Lunch en plein air

Pancakes For Breakfast

Ahead of the big fiftieth anniversary weekend, we had scheduled a daisoji, an hour of temple cleaning. We were all to wear work clothes to the zendo; I had posted a sign at the top of the stairs to remind people, and last night I moved my robes from their usual place in the closet as I know how little conscious thinking I am capable of before five in the morning.
I was tracking people as they came into the zendo, wondering if we would get a good turn-out or if people would take this as an excuse to stay in bed. When it came to the work, though, I even saw a few people who hadn't made it to zazen, diligently cleaning away. I busied myself in the kaisando, cleaning the top of the picture rails, the screens on the window, the altar and especially the black lacquer floor.
Todd had made pancakes for breakfast, which was a lovely thing to have after such an active time. As we sat down, it was quite evident that the energy was very different from a usual morning - there was a real buzz in the room, a sense of shared accomplishment. Christina thought that we should try doing this once a month, just to have this feeling in the temple regularly.
I have commented before about having multiple abbots about the place, and this morning, the table I sat at became a rather exalted four-abbot table, with Richard Baker, Blanche, Steve and Christina all together - not to mention the tanto, director and ino. We heard the old admonition that if the abbot did not take part in soji, the jisha had to leave the monastery, as well as a lovely story from the seventies about Jerry Brown, newly elected as governor, trying to enter Tassajara during practice period. The monk at the gate wanted to turn him away, but Baker Roshi remembered that in Chinese monasteries, the gates were always open to local government officials and major donors to come and inspect. I think something similar will be happening here over the next few days as well.

The kaisando floor a couple of years ago after the lacquer was refinished

Into Great Silence

The first time I went back to London after I moved to San Francisco, I was staying with my best friend and his girlfriend, and hearing about their stressful, over-filled lives, and how that impacted their time together. With all the zeal of a new convert, I suggested to them, unlikely as they were to develop a meditation practice, that they try just sharing an evening in silence: cooking together, which they loved to do, eating, cleaning up, reading, just hanging out, without conversation, and no TV or radio as a constant backdrop, which was the norm there. They both looked at me like I was crazy.
One of the most rewarding aspects of the last three weeks, for me, was this extended shared silence. Many people here at City Center have commented on it, how widely it was upheld and how refreshing and relaxing it was to be immersed like that for that length of time. Green Gulch during sesshin was the same, with of course the added backdrop of the mostly silent grounds. Yesterday I was noticing how jarring it felt to be walking around City Center and hearing loud conversations everywhere.
There is a couple who have recently been showing up regularly to afternoon zazen, and I was happy to see them when they appeared. I know nothing about them; I have a story in my head that they might be Russian, just from appearances, but they used to come pretty often when I was first ino, and then I didn't see them for a long time. I have never talked to them, so I don't know why they stopped coming, but I was just glad that they were sitting again and that we have the opportunity to spend time in silence together. I have similar stories and feelings about other people who come in the afternoons, or on Saturdays, with whom I have also never exchanged more than smiles. As I have said before, when you live at Tassajara, and most of your time is spent together in silence, social bonds are formed in different ways, as energy and intention become your cues to other people.
Simon, Tim and I were having one of our regular chats about Young Urban Zen over lunch yesterday, and Tim said he wanted to try having the group end and leave in silence some time. The energy shifts during the meetings are always fun to observe - the crescendo of chat as people arrive (we had more than fifty again last night), the rapid settling into quiet as we sit together, and then the hum of conversations as we discuss the text we are studying. At the end, a more intimate but also louder arena of socialising - I had some lovely conversations myself last night during the 'after party'. The three of us could definitely also see the value in having a short sit at the end of the meeting to bring everyone back to that shared silent intimacy that we create during the period of zazen, and having everybody carry that out into the night by themselves.
I had to do more talking myself than usual yesterday, as I sat down with Valorie and started the transition process. The first stop was the computer, and we worked through the ino's storehouse of folders, the electronic version of which I am happy to say is more organised than the actual cupboards in the office. But it was also clear, in response to several questions, that there is also a lot of stuff that just resides in my head, which we will have to find ways to unearth and pass on.

Micro-climates

San Francisco is of course famous for the singularity of its weather. There are long stretches in the summer when it can be grey all day. This week we have been starting grey and getting brighter, with the fog closing in during the evening; today the sun was out from the off. It has been warm to sit in the courtyard at lunch time, but we all know that the fog could be encroaching even to the top of the block on Page Street. Sometimes you can head west and it will start at the entrance to Golden Gate Park; other times you can be almost to the beach and suddenly there it is. Today was one of those days, though I wasn't heading to the beach, just a midweek spin on the bike to clear my head and test my legs. From Twin Peaks I could see the fog rolling over the bridge and hovering over the ocean.
I have had some strong periods of zazen this week, even though some of them have just been spent looking at emotional pain. I have also got to feel how it is when that subsides and internal energies start flowing again. The difficulties I was having stemmed from some incomplete, and what seemed to me to be unskillful, communication, and they were by and large resolved by being able to follow up and have a more open and complete conversation. I had other helpful resources as well - a dokusan with Abbot Steve, as we set the ground for practising together at Tassajara; friends to listen and sympathise; and not for the first time, Young Urban Zen: I went to the meeting feeling at a low ebb, not really wanting to show up, but having shown up, and been met by the group, and by the two people in my small discussion group, and even by the people who came for zazen instruction, I was very aware of how grounded this left me feeling, more at ease than I had been for a couple of days, though that wasn't yet the end of the story.

A 'file photo', from about a month ago, to illustrate how the fog can creep in to the city

Nourishment

Continuing the thread of the last post, the one way that you can easily communicate with people at Tassajara is a good, old-fashioned, hand-written letter. Two days a week in the winter, Keith comes in from Jamesburg with produce and mail, and it is always nice to receive something.
Yesterday I was lucky enough to get two such pieces of mail here in the city, both blog-related, and this post is partly to say thank you to Peggy in Oahu, and to my pen-pal in Scotland who sent me a huge box of delicious-looking locally-made chocolates, including some that are Marmite-flavoured, and whom I have no other way of thanking except publicly (for the record, I am pro-Marmite, but still on the fence about Marmite chocolate until I try some, intriguing concept that it is). This is the same the person who sent me the card of a Tunnock's tea-cake, which prompted much musing back in January, not to mention a subsequent delivery of actual tea-cakes.
I would also like to thank yesterday's anonymous commenter for this link to an article about Britain's Buddhist police officers, which contained within it a link to another story about the growing numbers of Buddhists in Britain's jails, both of which are subjects I would definitely want to explore further if I move back to England in due course.
Naturally, I was perked up by all these offerings, and, tired as I was for much of the day, I was also enlivened, as so often, by last night's Young Urban Zen meeting, where Mike, one of our original cast, offered his way-seeking mind talk with a series of anecdotes, including his thoughts about mindful eating, which, I realised, would make a great subject for us to go into - I heard that there was a small group meeting at the Green Gulch retreat about this topic as well.
As sometimes happens, a number of us took off to the Orbit Room afterwards to say goodbye - hopefully temporarily - to Collin, who has been a mainstay of the group for the past few months, and one of the people there took the opportunity to remind me that I had promised to give her my way-seeking mind talk if she bought me a beer. Even though I had already bought my own beer, I still found myself, not for the first time at the Orbit Room, holding forth to a tableful of people about some of the events that brought me to where I am today.
All of which makes me think of the very fluid and inter-related nature of teaching and learning. A friend was recently taking me to task for being somewhat recalcitrant at accepting gratitude for the teaching I offered, and it is true that being on the receiving end of such praise feels awkward to me. Partly this has to do with my own, family-generated karma around praise and blame; partly it is because I am not officially a teacher at Zen Center - being shuso is the first step to making that happen - even though, as Paul acknowledged recently, I kind of slipped under the wire with YUZ. Partly it is also to do with my sense that on many levels you cannot teach anyone anything; just the other day I was discussing this with a resident who had come to me for advice, and to whom I ended up lending the book of Hakuin letters, as I had just been reading him forcefully making the same point. That said, perhaps the exchange I had with the resident was useful for her, just as people find what I write here to be of some benefit, and perhaps 'teaching' can happen over a beer in a bar (as that friend pointed out), or sitting down to dinner with someone, as I did a couple of times last week, to hear what is going on for them. And, as Mike very nicely brought into his talk last night, all of us have something to offer and all of us feel we are lacking something (we broke into pairs to say what came up for us around those two notions). As I have said before, I have learned a lot from elders in this community just by watching them move through the day, just as much as I have from sitting in dharma talks. It is almost incidental learning, but not quite. It is always there if you are motivated to pay attention to it.
And with that, some sky pictures from the past few days.

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Saturday

Saturday

Revealing Ourselves

Yesterday morning was understandably quiet in the zendo, as the residents who sat all weekend were not obliged to come to the morning schedule. Young Urban Zen, by way of a contrast, was packed to the gunwhales again last night, with I think fifty people in attendance.
We have been mixing it up a bit recently. Particularly, Simon, Tim and myself have been wanting to get more women's voices to the fore - when we were planning the group early last year, most of the organising group were women, but once we got underway, none of them ended up in regular attendance for different reasons. Last week Maggie facilitated our one-year restrospective, during which Stephanie had made a call for a different format; I invited her on the spot to lead the group this week, and she presented a series of exercises designed for us all to open up about ourselves. Towards the end of the evening, I could feel how warm and bubbly the energy was, and even with a larger than usual number of first-timers, everyone at the end, when we were asked in turn to express our appreciation, said that they felt included, and there was much gratitude for this safe and welcoming space that we offer. It was noticeable afterwards that many people were not in a hurry to leave; I was also happy to see that the people who had been at Green Gulch over the weekend were all greeting each other warmly, as I remember from last time.
I managed to take time off between morning zazen and afternoon zazen, and when I got back to business I heard that Katherine Thanas, a student of Suzuki Roshi's, and the long-time teacher at Santa Cruz Zen Center, was very ill. With Blanche's help we got a well-being service together for her. I asked Blanche if she wanted to be doshi - I was filling in for Lucy - but she said she wanted to be kokyo, and led us in chanting the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo. We all wish Katherine well.

Presence And Absence

At the Young Urban Zen meeting on Monday, we took the opportunity to reflect as a goup on the past year. It was a big gathering, as it usually is these days, and not everyone had the chance to speak, but there were many expressions of gratitude, and people noted how heart-warming the meeting felt. One of the questions we posed was about how everyone would like to see the group in the future, and I was delighted that people hoped that there could be YUZ groups in other cities, so that we end up with the kind of network of affiliated sanghas that Zen Center has. Part of the idea of that question, for me at least, had been for us to explore what wasn't working and what we could do differently, and since the tone on Monday night was mostly all positive, this other side didn't really come out. Talking afterwards with the one person who had also encouraged us to look at this side, so that we don't get stuck in thinking that everything is just fine the way it is, it occurred to me that perhaps we weren't asking the right people: those who were there last night - the brand new people aside, of course -  are the ones who have helped shape the group into what it is, and who keep coming because it is working for them. If we really wanted the answer to what didn't work, we should ask the hundred or more people on our email list who tried the group and then stopped coming, to see what they had to say about this.
While I was away in England, Blanche left on a trip to the East Coast, to see her grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter, and also to go and visit Joan in Marblehead, and I have been noticing how much I miss her around the building during the day. When I first lived here, and she was the Abbess, her presence and leadership were so palpable that I remember being a little disoriented at how different the building felt when she went to Tassajara to lead a practice period a few months later.
It is not just the Abbess though, however key her role is; we all make the community what it is by our presence and energy, just as the traffic and the birds contribute to our morning sitting.

One Year Older

In a conversation the other day, I referred to Zen Center as a tribe. I have the sense that since human beings lived for a long time as tribal animals, something of that still abides in our mental make-up, and we feel comfortable when we are in situations which enable us to feel part of a somewhat stable grouping of people with similarly invested interests.
Or we could just say that people crave community. This is something I have heard many times over the years here, and nowhere more so than in Young Urban Zen, which is celebrating its first birthday - well officially it was yesterday, but I didn't get to shape these thoughts in time.
From the start this group has exceeded our expectations, and it continues to do so, as I am sure you will know if you read this regularly (or else just click on the Young Urban Zen label, below right). Being involved in setting it up and getting it underway will rank as one of my proudest achievements at Zen Center, and it continues to be an inspiring and energising activity each week (Monday was not untypical, in that despite having felt horribly tired during the day, come the end of the meeting, I felt completely alive).
There are probably many reasons why the group has worked as well as it has. San Francisco is a magnet city, drawing in a lot of young people from elsewhere, who then sometimes struggle to find social activities that don't primarily involve work or drinking. Some people are interested in practice but have found Zen Center a little too formal or forbidding at first; others have practised in other places and are looking for a group in this city. Some have come because their friends recommend it; others are brought to us by Google. We are focused on practice, and start each meeting by sitting zazen, but we have branched out into so many other ways of being together: retreats at Green Gulch (another one coming next weekend); work period at Tassajara; games nights; book clubs and study groups; a women's group; birthday parties and a dessert party; hiking trips; outings to ball games, yoga classes and ecstatic dance ...
Most of all, I think people enjoy having the opportunity to thrive when they get to be a part of a mindful community where the intention is for non-judgmental and beneficial interactions. Of course not everybody takes to it: we have about two hundred people on our email list, which includes most of the people who have passed through at one time or other in the last year; our largest meeting has been around fifty-strong, but then we would have a hard time fitting more into our space. I hope everyone who has been to one or more meetings has found it a worthwhile thing to have done, and that their lives have been touched by it. Perhaps some regulars who read this might want to add a comment about what the group means to them - which we may get to discuss next Monday as well. I want to acknowledge and thank Tim, Simon and Peter for their leadership of the group as well.
Perhaps here I can haul in that old expression 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' - just recently Kosho came to talk to me about the group, and now Austin Zen Center is launching their own version (and I like the format of that page - maybe we can borrow that from them...), which is very gratifying to hear, and I hope their experience is as rich as ours.
I have posted a few pictures of group activities in the past, but this is the only picture I know of that shows a Monday night in the Conference Center, taken recently by a visiting Japanese monk just before the start of the meeting. It may be blurry, but it captures something of the energy of the room.

Bonding

Among the emails I read yesterday - not as many as I had feared, thanks to Daigan's efforts while I was away - was a request for an article about my practice experience and how I'd like to see Zen Center continue to share the dharma in the future. Transitional times such as this, picking up my responsibilities again after a break, are always good moments to pay attention to our attitudes and reactions, so it seemed that this was a perfect time for such reflection, and as you all know, I don't need much of an excuse to pontificate for several hundred words.
Since I had many opportunities to relax while I was away, and I was also bathed in the comfort of feeling at home, surrounded by family, friends of long standing, and familiar locales - to say nothing of my deep resonance with the old buildings, the landscapes, and the flora and fauna that were all so resplendent at this peak of spring - I can honestly say that there wasn't much I was actively looking forward to about being back at Zen Center. So it was interesting to notice how I responded yesterday to being in the schedule again, and being surrounded by the people who live here and those who come to share the practice.
It is true to say that no matter how much I enjoyed myself in Europe - as indeed I had enjoyed the life I had in London before I moved here - eventually I start to feel that there is a deeper element missing.
Often these days we read about new discoveries in neuro-science revealing the benefits of meditation, and while I was in England, I came across articles about oxytocin and its role in trust and openness in groups. I hear people talking, or as just this week, read emails from members of Young Urban Zen, expressing their gratitude for how this practice benefits them in their life and helps them in hard times, and it seems that it doesn't especially matter how we evaluate and enumerate the positive effects, or what chemical processes are making them happen, the point is that we can notice our own experience with this, and appreciate how it informs our life, and the life of those around us.

Woken Up

On Tuesday I had noticed that I was feeling pretty tetchy as the day wore on, and it continued into the morning yesterday. I paid attention to what was causing it, and came up with a few factors: apart from a couple of situations in my life that have some uncertainty in them now, which perhaps contributed a little to my unease, it mainly seemed to be due to the Wake Up event. Not the event itself, even though I knew I was going to be onstage representing Zen Center, and having to speak in front of a crowd of people. This made me a little nervous, but generally I had the sense that that part of it would go fine. It was more that people were asking me a lot of questions about details around the event, and not only did I not know the answers, as it was going to be something entirely new for us, but I realised I hadn't had given myself the time or the space to think about those kinds of questions, which made me feel incompetent, something I do not like to be perceived as. When Rosalie stepped in to say she would take care of some of those details, I immediately felt a lot better.
I also had an important meeting with Christina at the end of yesterday afternoon, which went well; I put my robes on and went straight to the zendo, just as Roger and Farnoosh had guided the ten or so visiting monks, nuns and lay followers to seats in the zendo. I felt happy to have a chance to sit with them all, and since the theme was meditation in the city in the 21st century, I was listening to the usual sounds of the zendo with an ear to that topic.
In the end, I think the event was everything we all hoped it would be: the group sang songs as we settled down in the dining room, setting a lovely tone for the evening. Members of the audience were singing along, so it was clear that other people practising in that tradition had come along. I was delighted to see at least a dozen familiar faces from Young Urban Zen, and felt very supported by their presence; the dining room was full once the panel started.
I ended up being asked to speak first on the panel, and felt that I, and Tim when he spoke, held up our end perfectly well. The two young monastics who shared on behalf of the Wake Up group, Brother Phap Chieu (aka Brother Shiny), and Sister Bội Nghiêm (True Pearl) offered very refreshing perspectives on mindfulness practices. The feeling I got from being up on the stage for that part, and the question and answer session that followed was of real heart opening, and we all agreed that it was wonderful to be sharing the dharma with each other on an occasion like this. I remember the same feeling when I spent a few weeks at Great Vow, that the opportunity to practise with sincere practitioners who do things slightly differently is a wonderful tonic that also allows you to look at your own practice anew. They offered another song at the end which served to wrap things up beautifully, and Christina suggested we end with the Pali Refuges, which, as we often note, is the closest thing we have to a song in our regular practice. I came away feeling completely grateful and uplifted, transported from where I had been a day before, and that is still in me, I am glad to say. Reactions from people today have been universally positive for the whole event, so of course we say, 'we really should do this more often'.
Being on the panel, it was not so easy to take photographs, but here are a few from before and after.

I went up on the roof before the event, and the beautiful sky helped ground me and prepare me for what I was going to say

The two communites mingled after the event

Lucy and Sister Bội Nghiêm

Lucy translated the inscription on the big bell in the Buddha Hall as we showed them around afterwards

Intimacy

People sometimes ask me who my best friends are, and the people who come to mind are Derrick and Heather, both of whom live in London, and whom consequently I have not seen very often in the last twelve years. We all started working at the BBC around the same time, and managed to have all kinds of adventures in various countries - the fact that both of them were working in the States at one time, Derrick in Miami, and Heather in Washington, D.C., was a major factor in me being in San Francisco... but that's another story. I don't think I have given either of them a link to this blog, and Derrick in particular is notoriously bad at being in touch, but I still love him dearly and trust that he still loves me, and if I ever find out where he moved to recently, I expect I shall be staying with him on my next visit to England.
When people ask me who my best friends at Zen Center are, I sometimes think I don't have any. There are a number of people I get on well with, especially the bunch I was hanging out with the other weekend, but often, as I have said before, the nature of friendship at Zen Center seems to be very different. I don't have a group of people I regularly do things like going out for dinner or going to the cinema, though I know there are plenty of people who do these things together. What I do have is a large circle of people I feel more or less intimate with, with whom I know I could have a conversation on just about any topic, should we land in the small kitchen together, or over a meal in the dining room; to whom I know I can turn if I am feeling in need of support and to whom I extend that support when they need it.  And I feel especially connected to those people whom I shared time with at Tassajara during practice periods; when my dharma brothers and sisters and dharma peers come to visit, I am always happy to see them, but that might be the only thing expressed between us. Our connection has mostly been forged on a non-verbal level, and often manifests in that way.
Around my friends in London, because they are quite removed from the life I live now, I tend to revert to the kind of person I was when I was around them before - though hopefully without losing my mindfulness. I think this perpetuation of dynamics is inevitable to a certain extent, in the way that we always become children again when we are around our parents, no matter how old we get and how the relationship has transformed over the years. They don't especially want to hear about Dogen, and I am not as interested in telling them, as I am in enjoying the things we still have in common, which of course in England often involves alcohol.
So this is by way of a response to Mike's comment, "I am wondering what words you may have to say about friendship, particularly long-term friendships that are being tested by time, distance, and unspoken expectations. I have been probing my mind concerning this topic and it appears as a single cloud in the sky durning zazen". Happily, my long-distance friendships, though they are obviously very different to how they were when we all lived in the same city, do not seem to have suffered much; we can have a steady stream of emails or not much contact at all, and just pick up where we left off. I wonder if the key to this is 'unspoken expectations'. I would trust that a good friend of mine would feel free to voice any expectation or concern, would be ready to hear such as I might have, and that, while wanting the best for them, we have enough flexibility to allow them to be who they are and who they want to be with us.

The World-Wide Web

I hadn't intended the last post to be on the merits of tea cakes, Tunnocks or otherwise, as it became with the comments received; it was supposed to be more a sketch of how online friendships with people you have never met can be as warming as those with your closest circle. The theme continues, as I got an email today from a follower of the blog in London who is heading over for the practice period here, and offered to try and find a packet of Tunnocks at Heathrow for me...
I have also been enjoying other kinds of community and friendship over this long weekend. On Saturday night I was over in the East Bay, part of a wonderful group of current and former Zen Center people with a strong trans-Atlantic bias, which makes me a little louder than I often am, especially when you add beautiful weather, pizza and beer into the mix. Walking around the Berkeley Marina as the sun set behind the Golden Gate Bridge was a great reminder of why living here is really not so bad.
The next morning, which was much chillier than it has been of late, I joined the ride to Spirit Rock which was raising money to support Eugene Cash, who is still recovering from his crash at the Buddhist Bike Pilgrimage. There were about thirty-five of us, among them familiar faces from the Pilgrimage and some new people as well, and I think we raised close to $7000 from our various communities - many people at Zen Center were generous in their contributions.  Later in the day there was an informal gathering in the lounge to mark Stephen's imminent departure - I won't detail the merits of the food and drink on offer, but Blanche looked in at the noisy group and made a comment about a big sugar rush; I pointed out that people hadn't actually started on the refreshments yet.
Yesterday, as we took an extra day off in honour of Martin Luther King, I spent the day in North Beach, the part of town I stayed in when I first visited San Francisco in 1999, which obviously holds some fond memories for me, catching up with a friend who has been away for a while, before coming back to attend another huge Young Urban Zen gathering. I feel much nourished.

Easy pickings for a photographer

Back at Fort Mason on a walk yesterday

A Painting Of A Tea Cake

My first job in San Francisco was with a dot-com start-up, back in the summer of 2000, where my audio skills came in handy. In my quieter moments I would spend a bit of time on Napster, almost exclusively - and this was my justification - downloading music that I had on CDs and tapes left behind in England. I grew to appreciate the way it allowed you to browse through other people's collections of music, and would often, if I found something a little esoteric, message the person, and occasionally formed some online friendships. The example that sticks in my mind was when someone started downloading some tracks  that I had by the Fire Engines. Now, they were a very obscure Glasgow band from the classic days of Postcard Records in 1980-1, so I assumed I was dealing with someone of my generation from the UK. It turned out instead to be a young woman in Buenas Aires, and that was fun, because one of my regular Napster correspondents was a student in North or South Carolina with a taste for Scott Walker who had mentioned an imminent trip to Buenas Aires. I got the two of them in touch with each other, but never heard in the end if they indeed met up or what came of it.
On Friday, not having a spectacularly happy day, I got a card in the post, from someone in the UK who I have never met, but who follows the blog. I hope I won't embarrass the sender by quoting the opening lines: "I am, by nature, anonymous, a leaf on a tree indistinguishable from, and hidden amongst, billions of other leaves. But sometimes a chance remark from half-way round the world reminds me of my connectedness to the whole tree". The card was a lovely screen-print of a Tunnock's Tea Cake, a delicacy I have not enjoyed for some time. My sombre mood evaporated.
As an old Buddha said, "There is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake".

Immeasurably Deep And Wide

Yesterday afternoon, another free ride on the swings and roundabouts of outrageous fortune: taking my bike out in the warm sun for a short ride in the Presidio; nearly getting knocked off by someone who turned into a driveway without first looking or signalling; getting angry at a person who was texting behind the wheel at a stop sign; leaving my bike at the shop for some maintenance and discovering it was going to cost at least three times as much as I expected; taking care of some work errands on the way home, then walking back the length of Page Street reciting sutras; a nicely concentrated period of zazen; being kokyo for the one-year anniversary memorial service for Darlene, where several people spoke sweetly of her and to her; having a lovely catch-up conversation at dinner with Paul's student Ann, whom I have practised with at Tassajara over the years, just over from Arizona, talking about doing Full Moon Ceremonies at her temple/home, with a procession from the front door, through the car-port to the patio; another conversation before leaving the dining room, an intimate and personal meeting with someone from YUZ; going to check in on Anna's soku training and finding it wonderfully well-attended; going up to my room to learn that something I had been greatly looking forward to was not going to happen after all and feeling gutted; getting to read a blog from someone who has just moved away, and learning more about their life, connecting back to thoughts of happiness.

Rituals

"How then, O Lord, should a son or daughter of good family who have set out in the Bodhisattva-vehicle, stand, how progress, how control their thoughts?"
Lucy came back from China yesterday, and with Paul still on his way back from Brazil (I am leaving for the airport to drop Joan off and pick him up right after this), we got to indulge in one of my favourite little rituals this morning: Lucy, when she is not following Paul out, leaves the zendo before I do, but being a shade taller than her, and having more of a tendency to move quickly, I catch her up in the hallway before we go up the stairs. We have, whenever this has happened over the past few years, developed a little silent game of me seeing how closely I can follow her without passing, and she, not wanting to be hurried, trying either to block my way or have me go past.
Today this was followed by another sweet moment: on Fridays, when we chant the Diamond Sutra, the form for the doshi is for them to read two pages before they go and offer incense again. Since the service often finishes early, I have started suggesting to Tova, as long as we weren't running late, that she could read three pages. So now, when I go up to check on the doshi and jiko before signalling for the second roll-down, Tova looks inquiringly to see what I will say. Today we were good for three pages, so I whispered this, and we smiled and bowed together.

I Feel A Sesshin Coming On

Rohatsu begins tomorrow night, and as we all know, this is perhaps the most important event on the Buddhist calendar, commemorating as it does Buddha's whole-hearted sitting that brought him to enlightenment. It's always busy here at City Center. People ask me how many people are sitting, and I can honestly say I have no idea, though I am guessing around seventy. I could say that I haven't done any preparation for it at all, though that would not be entirely true - I have gone and bought bowls, spoons and chopsticks for new oryoki sets; ordered monju from Benkyodo for the offering at the annual Suzuki Roshi memorial ceremony, which will be on Sunday morning - it is now forty years since he died, which does not make him any less present here; rehearsed the drummers for Buddha's Enlightenment ceremony on the 10th, and asked the garden to make sure we have dried flowers and herbs to toss around the Buddha Hall as we circumambulate.
What I have not yet done is tackle any part of what are going to be very thorny logistics. I have been getting a stream of notes, emails and calls over the last month, from people who want to sit, but who can't sit the full seven days. It would be nice - or rather, convenient for me - just to say, it's all or nothing, but life in the city is not like that. People have appointments they need to keep, events to attend, work to take care of, but they still would like to sit as much as they can, and I have been saying, sure, we can accommodate that. So I would guess more than half the people coming are not going to be there for the whole thing, and I have to make sure I have seats for everyone, as well as viable serving and cleaning crews for each meal and so on.
I could have started trying to wrap my head around this earlier in the week, but I was feeling pretty under the weather. It is a given in a community like this - and even more so at Tassajara at the beginning of a practice period - that if a bug comes around, it goes around. Many people have been out of the schedule in the last couple of weeks, and it continues to spread. Generally I don't get sick very much; I am grateful for a good genetic constitution and a robust immune system. So this week, when I felt off colour from Monday through to Wednesday, was as bad as it has been for me in several years. Happily, getting outside on Wednesday on a wonderfully sunny day started to put me on the road to recovery - it is warm enough to be sitting typing this in a T-shirt right now, which is a reason to love California.
When I worked at the BBC, I had a simple criterion for whether I was too sick to go to work: if I couldn't face the five-mile bike ride to Bush House, I was too sick. I know for many people there is a lot of pressure to keep showing up even when they are not well, and it happens here too, even though we encourage people to take care of themselves. I feel a certain expectation that I should be in the zendo if possible, and while I felt rather out of it, especially on Tuesday, I was able to sit. On the other hand, I had no problem with resting during the day rather than attending to all the things in my inbox and on my desk, including sesshin planning. My brain felt too foggy to deal with all the details, and I knew that there would be a lot of changes before today anyway.
I hadn't planned to write about this, but after Mike's comment yesterday, I felt like I wanted to say something about practising with being sick. I remember at Tassajara, when I was on the  kitchen crew, I found myself really struggling with tiredness, from the combination of the tough schedule and the physical activity. I talked with Reb about it, and he asked what I was doing during break times. When it's time to rest, he recommended, you should rest. I have tried to abide by this guideline ever since; the ino's schedule can be pretty strenuous, and if I rest when I can, it makes it easier to have the energy to get through the remainder of it. This is one thing I always notice when I am feeling ill - I appreciate, from the lack of it, how much energy it takes to get through a normal day. I also find something comforting in feeling the effort my body is making to fight off the virus: I enjoy a good sweat, especially when it ends up breaking the fever. So can we appreciate being sick? Can we say, when it's time to be sick, just be sick? Perhaps, if we can take it as a message from our bodies to slow down and take care of ourselves, pause from our usual activities - if we are able to do so - and also be thankful for people's offers of medicine and help: I received a thermos full of delicious fresh ginger tea with lemon and honey, which Blanche brews up for people who are suffering, and which, along with the good wishes, was a great tonic.

Every Day Is A Good Day

It happened that yesterday was my birthday. I would have wished for better weather had I known it was going to be so dreary and wet all day, and there was a distinct torpor in the morning schedule that may have been attributable to the change in the weather after such a sunny weekend, but apart from that it was a fine day.
Most likely, if people here know it is your birthday, you will have 'Happy Birthday' sung to you at work meeting, and this was the case yesterday (we also sang for Anna whose birthday was the day before). I had several visits from the chocolate fairy with offerings left on my desk, in the office, outside my room, and even under my cushion in the zendo when I went to sit in the afternoon - and I guess I am okay with being type-cast as a chocolate lover -  as well as flowers, cards, phone calls, emails and messages from friends and family, and a good number of hugs.
I did try to get some work done in the morning, and then it was my turn, with Bernd, to do lunch dishes. Many people commented along the lines of 'they made you do dishes on your birthday?', but I was fine with it - apart from giving me occasion to interact with everyone who was having lunch, it didn't feel like much of a chore.
And anyway I had an appointment to go to Kabuki baths afterwards, courtesy of a recent benefactor, which made for a nice indulgent stretch of the afternoon. I enjoyed noticing how different my gait was on the way back compared to the way there, and tried to carry that feeling through the rest of the day.
To wrap things up, being Monday, we had our Young Urban Zen meeting - for which I am now even further past the age range of course. I had thought that the wet weather might keep a few people away, but on the contrary, we had the biggest meeting yet, with thirty people showing up. About half the group came along to the Orbit Room afterwards, as some of us had for Hannah's birthday a few weeks ago, to expand our practice together beyond the cushion. It turned into a slightly later night than I had anticipated, mainly because we were having fun. I am happy to report that all the residents in attendance made it safely to the zendo this morning, as did one or two others, who were perhaps wanting to show their determination. I confess that I was not feeling at my freshest, and that during second period my concentration was more than haphazard; a fine demonstration of how intimately cause and effect are linked.