Harmonies Of Buddha Fields

One of the first doanryo jobs I had was as a cleaning chiden, the person who takes care of the altars so they are pristine for the morning schedule, and one of the first things I learned in that job was that altars are supposed to be symmetrical. Each altar should have a clear centre line, which typically comes down through the nose of the Buddha, Manjushri or other statue, through the incensor and kobako, and is continued through the altar furniture, on which, in most cases here,  there is detailing that makes the centre line very clear. Other elements on the altar, particularly the candle and flowers, are arranged to reflect this central symmetry, creating a harmonious whole.
Close readers of the blog will have noticed that I can be a stickler for things being in the right place, and this is more to do with my character than the job of ino; when I was tenzo I spent a lot of time tidying up trays, cutlery, and other things, keen to leave the impression that the kitchen was being taken care of. At the end of the dishwashing counter, where people would frequently leave miscellaneous items that had been through the sanitiser, I placed a sign that said,"Everything has its place, and it is not here" - not that it had much effect, though.
As a doshi, in which role you are always at the energetic centre of a room, I notice how I feel if parts of the altar are not correctly lined up, and during the service I usually endeavour to put them back in alignment. Recently I had noticed that the zendo altar did not feel right, and when I took the time to measure it, I found that the whole thing had moved a couple of inches, and was not properly centered in the space between the dividers; when I put it back, I felt much better again.
Somewhere I read, and I thought it was in a book by Eido Shimano, but I have not been able to find it again, a wonderful passage, where the teacher talks of the practice of monks taking off their shoes outside the zendo or any other place. The encouragement was to be mindful of even such commonplace actions, and the passage ended by saying, when your shoes are neatly lined up, the entire universe is functioning correctly.
As part of my musings on this, I was thinking of various translations of dukkha that we sometimes hear, beyond the basic 'suffering', and this quote from Wikipedia abundantly catches what I was wanting to articulate:

Sargeant (2009: p. 303) explains the historical roots of duḥkha and its antonym sukha:

It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning "sky," "ether," or "space," was originally the word for "hole," particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, "having a good axle hole," while duhkha meant "having a poor axle hole," leading to discomfort.^[27]

According to grammatical tradition, dukkha is derived from dus-kha "uneasy", but according to Monier-Williams more likely a Prakritized form of dus-stha "unsteady, disquieted".^[28] The Sanskrit prefix 'su' is used as an emphasis suggesting wholesome, high, evolved, desirable, strong and such.

Rocking The Bells

The big bell in the Buddha Hall is quite a temperamental beast. Its counterpart at Tassajara can be a little tricky to get used to, but then is pretty docile - if you strike it well, you will most often get a deep resonant sound - I used to love sitting at the doan seat there and feeling the vibrations coming up from the floor after a successful strike, and hearing how the sound collected and filled. The one in the city has a wide band near the top which, if the bell is struck wrong, will give you some pretty harsh harmonics (or are they overtones - I'm sorry not to be more musically accurate).  With both bells, people over the years have tried to pinpoint the sweet spot on the rim which gives you the best chance of a good sound. We had a spot that we were using here for some time, but the bells get moved around a lot - recently for both the jukai and Sejiki. A different spot had been tried in the last few months after one such move, and was adjudged to sound okay.
This morning the doan was sick, so I happily took on bell-ringing duties. In the Buddha Hall I noticed that the bell was lined up in a different place again - there are kanji engraved around most of the top of the bowl, so it is somewhat easy to spot this. I was amazed not just to get a decent sound, without too much clanginess, but also to have a real build-up of bass frequencies the times I got to hit the bell consecutively, something I have never really heard or felt with this bell before. This made me very happy.
Maybe it's just going to be one of those days: I came out of the Buddha Hall and saw Robert, the president, newly returned from a retreat in Nepal, sweeping the courtyard with his sleeves rolled up. That made me happy too. We had a joyful koan class, where the cinnamon rolls we were going to have for breakfast afterwards were a sub-theme of the discussions, and where we sang Happy Birthday to Tova, who is celebrating today, and Shindo, who just had her birthday.
As we sat together in the dining room after the class, eating the said rolls with much pleasure, we were talking about the ceremony we are going to do at lunchtime for the new maples that have been planted in front of the building. I expect I will write more about this after the fact. How auspicious, as Linda Ruth used to say at Tassajara.

None of the pictures I have of the big bell give you a decent sense of its size, so here is something more impressionistic

Spreading The Word

For those of you who don't follow stuff on the Zen Center website so closely, I wanted to pass on that the dharma talk this Wednesday will be ASL-signed. This is down to some hard work by Keith, and it is hoped that this is the first of many. I suggested that it would be a great thing to have on video for the Livestream channel, but the decision was that we wanted to see how it goes over live this time round. So if you, or anyone you know, would benefit from this, and are able to be here tomorrow night, come on over. Or if you would definitely want to see this offered on our video stream, do let me know.

A few of us came out of zazen this afternoon noting that this would be the last week of daylight sitting. For sure we have had to turn the lights on the last couple of weeks as it is getting darker by dinnertime, and yesterday I was musing that perhaps we should start Sejiki later, as it doesn't seem as evocative to begin while the sky is still blue, even if it was pretty dark by the time we had finished. Certainly this week winter seems far away (apologies to anyone reading on the East Coast, for whom it has been somewhat more tangible), as the balmy weather continues, with stately sunrises during morning service. I just went over to the sewing room to put some long-promised stitches in a new zagu for Linda Ruth, which Tova is just finishing off, and there were warm breezes blowing about the courtyard.
We had a special guest kokyo this evening as well; the regular Tuesday person was away, and as Ren had come in early before sewing class, I offered her the chance to do it. Her voice filled the zendo seemingly effortlessly, and she led us in a strong rendition of the Heart Sutra. She was the head doan (and Tova the ino) at Tassajara back in 2004 when I was on the doanryo, and as she commented afterwards, it's like riding a bike - you never forget. As it happens, Keith was the doshi, as he is every Tuesday; we have worked out a way for him to be cued for all the bows by the doan, so it is probable that many attending the service would have no idea that he hadn't heard any of it.

Back In The Groove

 I offered this photo to Kate to put on the YUZ Facebook page, and when she was a little confused as to what it was, I suggested we could add a title like 'turn it up' (and I like the fact it even goes up to twelve).
It would be nice if we could control our attention levels like that (bringing to mind one of Charlie P's legendary Tassajara skits where he was the inventor of a machine that could do just that), but these things tend to come and go. On Monday and Tuesday of this week I had noticed that my chanting in morning service was pretty lacklustre - I was not getting as far on each breath as I am used to, and there wasn't much oomph there. Similarly I had noticed during noon services thus far in the practice period that I hadn't really connected with the words of the Self-receiving and -employing Samadhi - was I just giving too much of my attention to the new doanryo as they made their best efforts to get things right? Then, yesterday, when I was doshi for the first time in a while, I really felt right there at the center of the energy of the service, and everything came alive - which was nice. It may have had something to do with the sunshine.

I am aware that I pitch this blog with a certain lack of explanation of the basics, a function of who I am and where I am with my practice, so I am happy to send you off to investigate some other blogs in the near environs where people articulate their own dharma positions, which, depending on yours, may be more helpful - first of all Renee who has started one with her own special blend of Tibetan Buddhism, music and dance; also Lynn, one of our YUZ regulars, bringing forward a lot of pertinant questions; not forgetting the compassionate teacher, wrestling with her thoughts, nor the zen beginner, who has good advice for the beginner, as well as reviews. Indra's net in full effect.

Training

There's a pretty steep learning curve when you move into the building. Apart from the practical things of any new place you live like where all the bathrooms are, where does the recycling go, where is the milk kept, there is the whole spiritual side as well, with its wealth of forms: what time do I have to get to the zendo in the morning, how does kinhin work, how do I get in and out of the Buddha Hall without standing out too much, finding the chants in the chant book and so forth. And then you are expected to take on different jobs on top of that: kitchen prep jobs, dish shifts, house jobs - taking care of different aspects of the practical running of the temple - desk duty, night-watch, bathroom jobs and doan jobs. Obviously my realm is the latter, and we have been working hard to get all the new people stitched into the doanryo. Yesterday I showed a group of people how to be cleaning chidens, the people who take care of each altar so that it looks immaculate at the beginning of each day, and we have also been doing noon service trainings, where new people get the opportunity to try out as doan, kokyo, shoten or jiko. Last night we had an energetic and laughter-filled run through the forms of service, even if we didn't have time for everyone who came to try each position they wanted to.
I have noticed over the last eighteen months that I have often had a fair amount of resistance at the idea of doing trainings, and I think it has to do with feeling the responsibility that I have to transmit all the forms correctly so that everything is done right afterwards, even though I know that hardly ever happens, and that the whole thing is really a process of noticing how things go, pointing out the mistakes that happen and trying to correct them gently, as we do in the morning service review. Of course not everyone has an in-built aptitude for all these jobs, and not everyone is receptive to feedback, so dealing with those issues is one thing I have to keep learning.

After the rain this morning

An Opportunity To Give

This was a line from 'Old Plum Mountain', about the Berkeley Zen Center, which was shown last night in the dining room. It was a joy to watch, for a number of reasons: tantalisingly brief colour footage of Suzuki Roshi, most of which was shot at Tassajara; glimpses of familiar faces from the sangha, and familiar activities; a real affirmation of the joy and value of devoting oneself to practice and of building a solid community.
Naturally it acts as a mirror, and I wonder how I am doing with my vows right now. It has been a rich week in many ways. I noticed that I did almost the full selection of zendo jobs in afternoon zazen this week: kokyo, fukudo, doan and doshi, and it was only in the last that I felt dissatisfied - my chanting and energy didn't flow in the way I usually expect them to. I have been watching the unfolding of the tensions in my mind between worldly desires and monastic desires, the personal and the beyond-personal, and feeling how that also plays out in my body. I have been trying to settle more firmly on my cushion to deal with the physical imbalances that have been troubling me these last few weeks. I have caught up with long-procrastinated tasks - going to sewing class on Thursday night to make repairs to my okesa that I have been needing to do for months, and putting my oryoki set back together after a few weeks of gathering dust, which felt good. I have taken care of most of the things that needed taking care of. I also have been out several times for ice cream and coffee with friends, not to mention the ball-game, and enjoyed the sociability. There is more to come this weekend with the residents' retreat, though I will book-end this with hours on the bike alone with my thoughts riding to and from Point Reyes.
On balance, it feels like I am holding back more than I am giving, and in that is the rub of unease that we call dukkha.

The moon rising over the city last night

New Roles

Unlike the morning, afternoon zazen yesterday was rather sparsely attended; I counted twelve of us at service, half of whom were on the doanryo...the kokyo had called ahead to say they weren't going to be able to be there, so I was expecting to do that, but then there was no doshi either. I whispered to Dennis inviting him to be kokyo as we got up from sitting. I was thinking that it would his debut, and if so, it was at least a low-pressure occasion, but he acquitted himself admirably. We also had Roger and Robert on the doanryo, which brought to mind this Thursday a few months ago.

Hymn To The Perfection Of Wisdom

I hadn't wanted to ask anyone to take over the Friday morning kokyo spot, which David had been doing for a long time - at least not yet. It seemed the easiest thing was to do it myself; I always enjoy being kokyo, and I know how hard it is to do the solo for the Hymn to the Perfection of Wisdom, having got my breathing all wrong one of the times I had done it in the past.
I wasn't expecting to be so moved by doing it. I noticed how much softer my voice sounded than usual; it wasn't that I was trying to channel David's way of chanting, but also, thinking of him as I chanted, I couldn't help but hear his voice, and that was more powerful than anything else.
After the closing bows, the doan slightly mis-hit a bell, and she and I looked at each other and pulled little faces, which changed the mood. And then, when I had gone back up to my office during soji, someone came to say they wanted to take on the kokyo position as an offering; I had had someone else in mind to take it over, who I knew would do a lovely job, but I had also been thinking that I should give a kokyo position to the person who was offering anyway, so it seems to fit very well.
Before service I had dokusan. After I had settled on the cushion, Paul asked, "What is Buddha mind?" I replied, "Thinking about sesshin".

Guest Post

Death Valley may offer many opportunities for zazen and contemplating impermanence, but while I was looking at some other blogs in my motel room in the Eastern Sierras yesterday, I thought I should offer my ino replacements the chance to say something. I emailed them, and this is what I got back...

From Tanya: "Filling holes in the doanryo, training new people, searching for the misplaced shoten plaque and the han clock (found together, BTW!)...It's been busier than I've imagined, AND I've enjoyed how this opportunity (to step up) has pulled me back in, deepened my commitment to attend daily work meetings and noon service. Creatively I've been challenged to invent unique announcements for noon service doanryo sign-ups (Come on, people, it's an opportunity!) And to not take anyone's hesitation to sign-up [or any other response someone may give to something I'm doing] too personally.

"I think we're all enjoying ourselves. The four of us have met the expected minimal dramas with a sense of team work, i.e. the battery dying on the speaker's mic during lecture on Saturday led to a tag team effort to find and deliver and then install the new battery.... It really does take a team!" 


From Joan: Ha - yes! Shundo, now that you're a giants devote` (how DO I get that accent up there going the right way?) a quote I read Tanya from this morning's paper:
The Giants' shortstop: "You want to win championships, but you want to have team chemistry. I liked winning the World Series; at the same time, I like the fun we have. We have great team chemistry, a great group of guys. It's a good feeling when you see familiar faces you play with."

From Renee: I think that says it all. :) (The quote).

So there you have it.
Since there are so many beautiful things to see in this part of the world, a couple of photos from my last stop in Lone Pine. I rode my bike up the road in the second picture, and crashed it on the way down - on a straight section of road as well...

Mount Whitney from Lone Pine

Mount Whitney Portal Road - all uphill

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

The great Blogger outage prevented me from posting this yesterday, and as I write, the previous entry is still missing, perhaps taking refuge in a cloud computer somewhere. It brings home the impermanent nature of online things, and how little control we have over them.
Yesterday was a good day for several reasons. To begin with I managed to make it to my first ever baseball game, thanks to a concerted effort by Tim, Joan, Daigan and Wendy to make it happen. We also met Roger down there, he being a season ticket holder, for extra Zen Center flavour. I followed happenings on the field well enough, and even managed to add to my meagre knowledge of the rules.The Giants won, just, so everyone was happy.
I had been concerned that with a 12:45 kick-off (no, that's not what you call it, is it?), it was possible that I might not get back in time for evening zazen, which caused a little anxiety, as we started the day without a doshi, doan or doorwatch. On Wednesday there had been a gap in the doanryo as well, which is problematic during practice period with most people attending the tea, but luckily, the doanryo members who were there all had additional strings to their bows: the doan became the fukudo; the jiko became the doan - having been trained for that on Monday -  and the even more recently trained kokyo doubled up as jiko. Yesterday we managed with volunteers, and since it was a game with not so much hitting going on, we were all done at the park by 3:30, enough time for a leisurely bike ride home and no rush to get into robes.
Those of you with exceptionally tenacious memories might also recall that May 12th is the anniversary of my arrival in this country - which made the ballgame doubly apt - and I was gratified to hear a very strong (/ˈnaɪ.ðər/) being chanted from across the zendo to match mine last night.

Counting To Nine

I bought myself another copy of 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind',  and I was looking for the explanation of why we do nine prostrations at the beginning of morning service instead of three, which I have heard here many times over the years: Suzuki Roshi thought American students were more stubborn than Japanese and needed more help in letting go of the ego.
In the book we read, "After zazen we bow to the floor nine times. By bowing, we are giving up ourselves. To give up ourselves means to give up our dualistic ideas. So there is no difference between zazen practice and bowing. Usually to bow means to pay our respects to something which is more worthy of respect than ourselves. But when you bow to Buddha you should have no idea of Buddha, you just become one with Buddha, you are already Buddha yourself". These last two sentences are ones I should probably memorise, as I often find myself answering a question around this from new students or visiting high school kids - if there is no god in Buddhism, why are you bowing, who are you bowing to?

Recently a couple of doans have expressed doubts in our service review as to whether they had got the number of bells right for the nine prostrations. Linda Ruth offered us a practice at Tassajara of reciting the full refuges as we did the nine prostrations, so I decided to pick up the practice for myself. Apart from being a good thing to bring to mind every morning, it also lets me know if the doan has successfully managed  to count to nine.

I take refuge in Buddha.
I take refuge in Dharma.
I take refuge in Sangha.

I take refuge in Buddha, as the perfect teacher.
I take refuge in Dharma, as the perfect teaching.
I take refuge in Sangha, as the perfect life.

Now I have completely taken refuge in Buddha.
Now I have completely taken refuge in Dharma.
Now I have completely taken refuge in Sangha. 

I have had a succession of ideas over the years about what taking refuge means. Currently I see it, as I have heard other people express it, as more of an active process than is usually associated with the word 'refuge' - it is not sheltering, and it is more than just allowing these things to be part of your life. It is more like the phrases Dogen uses in the Fukanzazengi and the Genjo Koan: 'taking the backward step' and 'to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion; that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening':  taking refuge means that Buddha, dharma and sangha can come forth and experience themselves.

In The Kaisando

One of the tenets of zen training, especially in the Japanese tradition, is that, while you are expected to keep your eyes down at all times, you are also expected to observe what is going on, and to be able to step into any role at a moment's notice.
My first doan job, as I have probably mentioned in the past, was as afternoon jiko. Indeed, because of when I arrived at City Center (and that will be eleven years ago next week), I was supposed to do the job before I had ever been to evening zazen. Luckily I had a trusty native guide to show me what to do so that I didn't make a complete fool of myself. A little while later, having got used to the basics of the job, the ino at the time showed me how to take care of giving and receiving the offering cups for the Suzuki Roshi Memorial, just in case I needed to do it that evening. It never hurts to know how to do this, was her way of thinking, though in the end I was not called upon on that occasion.
Today I thought it might be prudent to give Dennis the same instruction before we went down to zazen, and sure enough, when the time came for the ceremony, there was not a more senior doshi or another jiko to be seen, so, as we did last month, I had Gretchen take the first position in the offering; I was the doshi and Dennis the jiko. We had a relatively untested doan and kokyo combo as well; nevertheless it all went very nicely. I had another chance to be eyeball to eyeball with the statue, which I did enjoy.

Finding My Voice

Henry Higgins has a line in the opening scene of 'My Fair Lady' - the film version that is, it doesn't appear in the original play - where he declaims: "An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him / The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him". This was a sentiment I felt acutely sensitive to when I was younger; aware that I sounded posher than many, and not wanting to be burdened with the concomitant associations. In the States, of course, I just have an English accent, sorry a 'British' accent, one that in my case many Californians are unable to distinguish from an Australian one - something that may well be due to my attempt to flatten out the accent I grew up with.
I was reflecting on my 'performance' during my way-seeking mind talk, particularly how muted I sounded when I listened back to a portion of the recording. It is not that I have much of a fear of public speaking these days: a year of making the announcements after lectures on Saturday has been very beneficial in this regard, though as I noted earlier, I have the usual distaste for hearing my own voice as others hear it, which led me to keep the sound system turned down quite low on Thursday.
About a year after I arrived at Zen Center, I was asked to be the morning kokyo. I had been enjoying the role of fukudo for some time, as I got to hit the drum and make lots of noise, but the idea of leading the chanting was a little intimidating, and brought up my old stories about my voice; this was exacerbated one morning just after I had started, when Teah, who was the tanto at the time, came across to me as she was leaving the Buddha Hall after service to give me a piece of feedback. The content of the feedback was nothing controversial - indeed I have since given many other kokyos the same instruction - but it played into my insecurities about how I sounded and reminded me of how much I had closed my voice down.
I worked my way around this by realising that what I was chanting was not me, it was the dharma - I was not responsible for it, nor did it reflect on me in any way - and this allowed me just to be the vessel for some vocal energy. So I enjoy having the opportunity to be kokyo these days, even if I am not necessarily convinced that my voice sounds good. The same also holds good for the announcements -  I am just channeling information, so as long as I can remember most of the things I am supposed to say, and can manage to form complete sentences, I am happy enough. The way-seeking mind talk, on the other hand, was all my own work, and telling a personal story - okay, we can argue that the story is still not me, but I am definitely more involved in it, and this caused the reticence, which I really hadn't expected to manifest. Still clinging to the self...

Gratitude

I confess that during my early years at Zen Center, hearing my colleagues gush, as they would from time to time, (puts on exaggerated American accent, elongating the 'so') "Oh, I'm just so grateful for this practice", always set my teeth on edge, triggering my inbred English cynicism about Americans and their brash insincerity. Even if that was not a quality I typically found in people around Zen Center.
My first attempt at a cure for this was towards the end of my first practice period at Tassajara, one evening when zazen seemed to be particularly endless. I thought about the person sitting next to me, whom I had been sitting next to for hours every day over the previous three months, which was enough to go through many tides of irritation and je-m'en-foutisme, and think, "well, he's not so bad really; I do appreciate the way he ....". I don't remember what it was exactly I appreciated, but anyway I turned my attention to the person on the other side of him, and thought about something I appreciated this person for, and so on until I had gone round the whole zendo in my mind and thought of at least one reason to be grateful for each person who was there.
Fast forward the best part of ten years, and I find that I can always think of reasons to be grateful for this practice, though I haven't quite mastered the art of saying so in that American accent. All of which is a roundabout way of coming to express my ongoing gratitude to the people who keep the zendo running every day, especially those people who don't live in the building and are doing so entirely of their own volition.
The other Thursday I came down to afternoon zazen and saw Roger, Dennis and Robert sitting on the bench by the door having a natter, and I realised, these three guys are the cornerstones of the afternoon doanryo. Each of them take on several jobs a week, and, as chronicled over the past year, most recently here, are also imbued with the practice spirit that has them saying yes to requests for more help. I thought of trying to get a picture of the three of them together, and it has taken a few weeks to make it happen, but yesterday, with our new lighter afternoons, I dragged them all outside for some shots. So, thank you gentlemen, I am so grateful for your practice; we couldn't do it without you.

The Second Roll-down Of The Han

I still try to get to the zendo early, though I am not quite as punctual as I was last year, and I don't often get to bow with Lien as she comes back upstairs. Time was, I would generally be the first person in the zendo, which was a feeling I enjoyed; now there are usually a couple of people already sitting when I arrive. The first few minutes are quiet and dark - the doan is instructed to turn on the lights and light the altar before the han starts at five ten. Sometimes they don't make it in time, and I get up with a little sigh and do it myself. Otherwise I just sit at my seat by the door as people come into the zendo. At first it is just a trickle, but after the first roll-down, at five seventeen, the flow becomes more steady.
In my early days, I used to take the first roll-down as my cue to go to the zendo. The pattern for the han is fifteen minutes long, divided into three rounds of seven, five and three minutes repectively, so the first roll-down is about half way through. When I did my practice period on the doanryo at Tassajara, we were instructed to be in the zendo by the first roll-down even when we didn't have a job that day. The next practice period, when I was the head doan, seeing that Linda, the ino, was always in the zendo before the han started, I decided to support her by doing the same, and since then I have always liked to be early. It was harder when I was tenzo and had to wait to check in with the breakfast cook - and I would get very impatient if they didn't arrive by five past five as requested.
While the han is going on, the morning doshi is doing the round of various altars in the building, starting with the kaisando, and including the kitchen and the hallway altar, before they go to the Buddha Hall. The difference between City Center and Tassajara is that at Tassajara the first and second roll-downs were timed by the doan, who would signal the person hitting the han, and then there would be a longer period before the third roll-down while the doshi completed their round. All the students would be expected to be inside and seated by the second roll-down, after which the shuso enters the zendo to do their jundo, inspecting to make sure everything is in order. In other words, you always knew how much time you had before the second roll-down to get to your seat at the last minute, if you were that way inclined - and it is invariably the same people who come early and the same people who come late every day...
Here in the city this is a more high-risk strategy, in that the signal for the second roll-down is given by the chiden who hits the big bell in the Buddha Hall as the doshi does their prostrations, so the time between the first roll-down and the second is entirely dependent on the speed that the doshi moves around the building. People get used to how long the Abbot takes when he is here, but during this practice period, a number of different people are being doshi during the week - Michael, Vicki, Jordan - and this morning Blanche was doing it, and obviously caught more than a few people out - instead of the increasing surge of people coming into the zendo before the second roll-down, there was a big influx after the shuso and Blanche had finished their jundos and the three bells were rung to begin the period of zazen. I might need to do some finger-wagging at some of the habitually late people, especially as I invoked the Gyoji Kihan at the residents' meeting last Saturday. 

(If you are new to this,  and all these Japanese words made you glaze over, you might want to refer to the glossary)

The Ino's Desire

This title came from one of the search keywords that popped up in the stats - actually what was written was 'inos desire', so who knows if they ended up in the right place (as for 'сежики', another search term, maybe someone who understands cyrillic can tell me if they might have found what they were after - Google Translate came up with something about a snowplough... okay, it was actually 'snowplow', being American and all).
Maybe they do mean me; but what desires could I possibly have, apart from that everyone shows up and does their job? We had a lot of juggling around this morning's doanryo - the kokyo has been sick and didn't have a voice, so yesterday I suggested that she take over the vacant doan slot for today, but then she was not well enough to be up this morning. I had someone else lined up as kokyo, but they were asked to be nightwatch last night, so they were out, and the soku was also sick, so we had to do some internal promotions in the serving crew to get that to work.
Nevertheless, it was a pretty smooth morning. Even if the residents are a little thin on the ground still, with sickness and vacations, in the zendo at 9:25, and especially at the talk, we had more people than usual, which I attribute to the power of resolution; we typically get a little boost in January, and I hope I can help encourage our new visitors to keep showing up and to get more involved. Maybe we can call that another desire of mine...

Coming And Going

This is a typical time of transition at City Center - a number of residents are away visiting family, though the building does not feel so quiet as we have a handful of people up from Tassajara for their interim between Practice Periods. It is always nice to see how people are doing, to catch a little of the glow that always emanates from those who have just spent three quiet months in the mountains, and as always it brings out the little voice that says - you should go down again and do some intense practice. Actually I did receive a card from friends at Tassajara a couple of weeks ago who had heard that I might be coming down to take over as ino there - Zen Center is a great place for the circulation of the unsubstantiated...
Well the last few weeks have felt intense enough up here; there was already a certain level of activity with the practice period here, and then since Thanksgiving it has been really non-stop, with Rohatsu, Buddha's Enlightenment, the Coming of Age program, Jerome's death, plus all the other ceremonies and meetings, live-streaming and getting talks online, and of course just keeping the zendo running.
The doanryo has been somewhat improvised this week - last night we were missing the doshi, jiko, doan and kokyo, but luckily we had some of the 'old faithful' non-resident doans to fill the gaps. This morning I think only the shoten and the light-up chiden were in their regular slots, everyone else was substituting for someone who was away or sick - and everyone did a fine job too. This evening, no doshi, jiko, fukudo or doorwatch. We managed with a combination of subs - one resident who was unfortunate enough to be leaving her room on the Holy Hallway just as I was thinking I needed to address our doan shortage; a Tassajara priest who was in the small kitchen and could tell I was after something before I even put on what I call my 'ino's voice', which is when I address someone by name with a particular questioning tone so they know I am about to ask them to do something; finally one of the 'old faithfuls' again, who was one of the first people through the door as I was standing there, and who offered before I could even ask.
In the end we had four priests at evening service - a guest visit from my esteemed predecessor, also up from Tassajara, plus our visiting Japanese priest - which is more than we have had at some morning services recently. Another fine job.

Rain Stops Play

Yesterday I felt happy and liberated as I rode over to Stinson Beach and along Highway One, at the very edge of America, as I like to think of it, and through Muir Woods, with warm sun and blue skies. Today was a day when I was glad that I work in the building so I don't have to venture out into the rain, which started this morning and is due to go on until Christmas.
It seemed that not many other people felt like venturing out either. This afternoon there were eleven of us sitting, which is as sparse as I can remember, and five of us were doing doan jobs. Sitting in the zendo at Tassajara, you hear the rain beating on the corrugated metal roof. Here, you hear the interplay between car tyre and road as the measure of wetness. We had the windows shut, and the lights down low, and the heating was on; it was quite snug.
Actually it was 'one of those days'. I had calls during the late afternoon from the scheduled doshi and kokyo, both of whom were detained at work and wouldn't make it. When I went to check on the zendo at five twenty, there was no doorwatch and no fukudo, and I know the Friday doan is sometimes late...Luckily the afternoon head doan was there to be at the door, and the fukudo arrived in the nick of time for her debut on the han. When I came in as doshi, the doan was also there. During zazen I realised that I should play to our strengths - I had the fukudo become the kokyo for service, and I was going to have the jiko double up as fukudo, but the head doan, who doesn't like to be kokyo but was gamely stepping up to do it, gladly moved over to be fukudo, and even with such small numbers, we had a rousing service.

A Change In The Weather

I will confess to having been pretty tired since the last entry. This morning I couldn't make it through a whole fascicle of Dogen after breakfast, though it was 'Buddha Nature', one of the more impenetrable ones - I was having flashbacks of trying to keep my eyes open during study hall at Tassajara...
Despite going to bed a little later than usual last night, I was still awake before four, which has been an ongoing legacy of sesshin. It seemed to be one of those days when things were out of kilter - I ended up running the wake-up bell, as I hadn't cottoned on to the fact that the fukudo had made other arrangements this morning. I had also forgotten to replace the door-watch for today, who left after sesshin, so I was waiting for replacements to arrive, and very few people were actually showing up in the zendo - only one of the other fukudos made it. I had already arranged to cover for the doan so she could have dokusan during second period, and the head doan was one of a number of people who signed out as having had a bad night's sleep...
I blame the weather; a couple of days of rain moved on this morning, as the photos show and the temperature went up at least fifteen degrees.

Wake-up Bell

I should have known something was wrong when I didn't see this morning's fukudo in the bathroom when I got up, as I usually do. When I didn't hear the bell, I went downstairs, already in my full robes, and rang it - wouldn't you know that it was warm again this morning...
I had already found a note left in the middle of the night by the light-up chiden saying she couldn't sleep and didn't think she would be around this morning. I had figured that I could pass that job onto my new head doan, Tanya (who was also the fukaten when I was tenzo, so we have a good working relationship), and she was on her way as soon as I could get the instructions printed out - which the computer was reluctant to do, and which occasioned some swearing on my part, as I am not good at dealing with too many things not going smoothly that early in the morning...
It also turned out that our shoten was missing, so the fukudo, who appeared, apologetic, right after the wake-up bell, after an alarm failure, ended up having to do double duty for the first period of zazen, before I drafted in a replacement. All this before six o'clock.