Which Way To Turn?

When people start to practise, they inevitably put a certain amount of energy on getting the forms right; more or less, depending on their character. It is easy to get obsessed about forms, or neurotic about them, or casual or even repulsed by them. Eventually people usually settle down into a more or less mindful relationship with them.
I think I have remarked before that I was very big on getting forms right, both when I started, and when I lived at Tassajara; I think it had less to do with wanting to be praised, or not wanting to be corrected or to stand out, as I have heard others mention, but more to demonstrate that I could absorb the information and remember it. I am sure I have also written here that I had expected to spend time as ino reinforcing the correct way, which has not turned out to be the case. I have simply not wanted to play 'bad cop' all the time, calling people out and wagging fingers at them, and since there are always going to be people who haven't mastered every intricacy, I have been much more laissez-faire than I would have thought possible.
This doesn't mean that I have lost interest in them. Yesterday, when Baker Roshi was doshi for morning service, I was paying attention to what he did, and was interested to note how he turned away from the altar.
Now, if you are not a form geek, feel free to skim rapidly over the next few paragraphs. If you like minutiae, here goes: there are two ways a priest can turn away from the altar after offering incense - clockwise and anti-clockwise. I saw both done before I was ordained, and found the anti-clockwise one more elegant; part of the reasoning behind that way is that you are keeping your right shoulder to the Buddha as you turn, which is something we read about in the sutras  - I don't know the exact rationale, but it was definitely a mark of respect, and to digress slightly, it may be tied in with the reason that okesas are worn over the left shoulder only: baring the right shoulder means that you are ready to help, literally you are able to lend a hand, since your right hand is not encumbered (though as an oppressed left-handed person I would beg to differ on that one).
In any case, at City Center the priests turn clockwise, and Greg asked me to do the same after he had seen me doing the other way at evening service a few times. Clockwise is the Eiheiji style, and as Blanche often remarks in such discussions, Suzuki Roshi was an Eiheiji monk. Counter-clockwise is the Sojiji style (I will not digress as to the relative importance of the two head temples of Soto Zen in Japan, but I am sure you can look it up if you are interested), and Reb introduced this form, along with one or two other Sojiji forms, some time ago for reasons I have not heard; this means that his priests at Green Gulch have adopted the form as well. I was able to let go of my preference in this case, and follow the family style.
Thus it was interesting to see Baker Roshi do a 'Sojiji turn' in the middle of service, and I wondered if I hadn't paid enough attention to his earlier turns, but then after that he did 'Eiheiji turns'. At the service review, I remarked on this with Konin, and she pointed out some of the other forms he had done, very subtle ones which in one case I hadn't even noticed, that were consistent with the Japanese forms she had been trained in.
Funnily enough, Konin and I had recently been having a little debate about another priest form: I picked up from Paul the habit of pulling up not just my okesa, but also my koromo before I sit down on a cushion; since I recently wore a hole in the kimono I received at my tokudo, I was talking with her about getting a replacement from Japan. She did not think much of this form, saying she had been trained differently. And then I saw that Baker Roshi also pulled up his koromo so that he sat on his kimono only. Since we all happened to be in the lobby after dinner on Tuesday, I asked Baker Roshi if he had picked up this form from Suzuki Roshi. Oh yes, he replied, everybody in Japan does that - Konin begged to differ.
All of which goes to show that forms are no more fixed than anything else in this impermanent world, and as I wrote the other day, the feeling behind them is as important as anything else. That said, it is cheaper to buy a new kimono than a new koromo, so I am sticking to that form.

I realise this may be a little arcane for many of you; don't worry, we will probably be back with Dogen tomorrow.

Time Being

Today's offering from the second half of Uji:
''The time-being of all beings throughout the world in water and on land is just the actualization of your complete effort right now. All beings of all kinds in the visible and invisible realms are the time-being actualized by your complete effort, flowing due to your complete effort. Closely examine this flowing; without your complete effort right now, nothing would be actualized, nothing would flow. Do not think flowing is like wind and rain moving from east to west. The entire world is not unchangeable, is not immovable. It flows."

Time Being

We are underway with the retreat, easing our way into an unfamiliar schedule. People have been asking me lots of questions about what is happening, and I don't always have the answer. Great time for everyone to practise with don't-know mind.
For noon service, we are chanting half of Uji per day (throwing in the Loving Kindness Meditation a couple of times during the week as well). This is an ambitious thing to do, given its length and legendary impenetrability, but today I found that parts of it leapt out in an unexpectedly clear way. Following on from the extract the other day, I might lift a few more sentences out, as and when. Here is a little something for you to chew on today:

"Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. The reason you do not clearly understand the time-being is that you think of time only as passing. In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being."

Universal Recommendation

Eight years ago, Zen Center unveiled a new chant book. As I understand it, this was the culmination of a process that had gone on for many years to find consensus translations for all the chants that we regularly use. I heard that it was a long and difficult process, and having been at meetings where there have been protracted and sometimes contentious discussions about minor changes in form, I can only imagine how this must have been.
For those of us using the books regularly, there were three notable changes: the list of women ancestors had been bulked up (if you follow the link it will automatically download the pdf from the chant book), which was universally approved, although I did hear a female practitioner mourning the loss from the list of Ambapali; and there were different translations of the Fukanzazengi and the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi (ditto). The latter had even undergone a name change, having previously been the Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi. Among my peers, there were mixed feeling about these changes: the 'new' versions turned out to be older versions which had fallen out of favour, and were now re-asserting their place in the canon; so while the more senior people were happy to have them back, I agreed with others who said that the current versions might be more accurate translations of the originals, but the discarded ones had more poetry and were easier to chant. With the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, I found I could overcome my resistance, and take the consensus version on board, albeit with a bit of regret at some of the language lost. The Fukanzazengi was a different matter though; it may be because I had managed to learn the previous version, which was the longest thing I had memorised at that stage. But there were also a number of infelicitous phrases in the consensus version that made me wince . Here is one example:

Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you still are short of the vital path of emancipation.

Suppose one gains pride of understanding and inflates one's own enlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, attaining the Way and clarifying the Mind, raising an aspiration to escalade the very sky. One is making the initial, partial excursions about the frontiers but is still somewhat deficient in the vital Way of total emancipation.

The imagery is rich in both renditions, but if you don't find much difference in reading them, try chanting them out loud. The first selection, taken from here, is the one I remain more attached to. However, since we are chanting the consensus version for noon service this practice period, perhaps I will finally reconcile myself to the reality of this particular situation.

More Attitude

Feedback came from several quarters at the end of last week to the effect that I seemed relaxed and spacious, which, under the circumstances, was kind of them to think. As I noted to one of them, though, the effect was mostly due to an external shift - as opposed to the internal kind I was recently musing about, and as we learn all too well as we practise, external circumstances are inherently unreliable and unworthy of confidence, which is what happened in this case, with a concomitant slump in my outlook after the weekend. I have also been waking up unnecessarily early for the past several days, which seemed to make it harder to find joy in the midst of the subsequent tiredness.
Pretty much the only thing I enjoyed on Monday was Young Urban Zen, again glad to be able to cast aside pre-occupation and be present with the thirty-five or so people who filled the room with some uplifting energy. Yesterday, I was delighted to be able to find an online version of Chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra, which Vicki wants to chant on Wednesdays for noon service; she indulged me in my preference for this version of the verse, being the one I have memorised, over the official Soto Shu translation. I am really looking forward to chanting this out loud.
This morning we had the pleasure of doing morning service in a partly renovated Buddha Hall, as half of the new tatamis were delivered yesterday. They are a strikingly different colour, though eventually they will dry out to the same golden hue, and have a lingering smell of grass, like good green tea. It was probably the most fragrant service we have done for many years. In addition they are firmer underfoot, and it felt nice as well to be the first person to bow on the mat where I was standing. Having celebrated Dogen's birthday yesterday - another joy was to be chanting the Genjo Koan as part of that - we did the well-being service this morning, and as we were chanting the Lovingkindness Meditation, I was thinking of the friends who have been telling me of their own predicaments, most of whom I have not had the space and time to respond to in the last few days, and opening up to them. Settling, settling.

Not hard to see the difference between the new and the old

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.

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

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.

Think Different

I started getting enquiries yesterday about whether we were going to mark Steve Jobs' death, and I did what I usually do when I can't think what the appropriate response should be, which is move the question up to Paul and Rosalie. Paul was in favour of doing a memorial service, on account of Jobs having been a student of Kobun Chino, who had long associations with Zen Center, so we are going to do one this evening - just the same service as we do when we are asked to mark the passing of a sangha member or someone close to a sangha member. This morning there have been a flurry of emails circulating among various staff members as we field the media interest in this; people seem keen to explore the 'zen of Steve Jobs' angle. We are trying not to make this more of an occasion than it needs to be, but of course anyone reading this who can make it is welcome to attend as part of the usual evening schedule.

Written on a MacBook Pro

Words And Phrases

Amongst our visitors from Tassajara this week is the tanto, and my predecessor as ino, Greg. Not content to swan around on vacation, he gave the talk last night, based around Dogen's fascicle on 'All-inclusive Study', 'Henzan', and the story of the exchange between Huineng and Nanyue. This is a great one to chew on, as Nanyue did himself for eight years. In the new translation of the Shobogenzo, Nanyue says, after he has come to his realisation, 'Speaking about it won't hit the mark'.
This morning in service we chanted the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi for the first time in a couple of months, our Thursdays having been given over to the memorial services for David. When we got to the line, 'Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech', I actually stopped chanting and tried to think how that line and Nanyue's line meet each other. Give me eight years and I will perhaps come up with an answer.
Over breakfast we were discussing this. Renee liked that Greg highlighted the line from the Full Moon Ceremony, 'To expound the dharma with this body is foremost', which as regular readers will know, I am partial to myself, and which, as I don't think I have mentioned, Lou had on the back of his rakusu. "How else are you going to do it?" I chipped in, "To expound the dharma with this iPad?" Gretchen said she had some friends who might advocate for Second Life at this juncture, and we started riffing about the qualities of virtual zazen, since I understand there is a zendo in Second Life - it is undoubtedly less painful, and perhaps less of a time commitment. Nonetheless, I think we mostly tend to think around here that it's better to focus on this first life. "I feel a blog post coming on", I said. "Is that like feeling the flu coming on?" Gretchen wondered. "It's more like feeling a poem coming on, or a painting", replied Greg. Thanks Greg. I promise to put your talks online soon.

Presence and Absence

As I have said on perhaps too many occasions, a lot of the ino job is sitting behind a desk, a fair chunk of it is sitting on a cushion, and let's not forget sitting in meetings, but there is also a surprising amount that consists of catching people for necessary communications, which often happens at meal times. This evening was spectacularly productive in that regard - between the end of evening service and getting back to my room just now, I had probably half-a-dozen conversations which took care of many outstanding matters, and I feel most positive as a result.
This afternoon's fukudo had warned me that they might be late, and I was able to use our standard back-up plan, which is to send the doan out to hit the han. I was happy to play the mokugyo for service, as it really helps to keep my hand in at that kind of thing, and to see how fast we can push the chant - much faster than I suspected was the answer tonight. It also helped that new tanto Rosalie, who has been coming regularly to afternoon zazen since she took over, was on hand to be doshi as the scheduled doshi also did not materialise.
Over dinner Dennis was asking about Young Urban Zen, and I realised I haven't written about it for a few weeks. I would say that it continues to go from strength to strength - and perhaps some of the regulars there who are also regulars here might add their opinions. We tried a new thing last week, since it was Labor Day, having an evening in Koshland Park across the street from here, playing whiffle-ball and kick-ball, which were both new entertainments to me, before repairing to a local cafe for refreshments and chatter. We had enough of the regulars to make it a fun evening, and of course it is always enjoyable seeing people you are getting to know in fresh contexts.
Last night I invited Michaela to come and join us. During the recent sesshin I had had the thought that it would be fun to have an 'Awesome People' series for YUZ, and Michaela was one of the first people I thought of. I got to know her at Tassajara a few years ago, and she was also involved in the Coming of Age program last year. More to the point she is the youngest priest at Zen Center, and I thought it would be valuable to have someone in the same age range as our YUZ people talking about how they came to practice and what it means in their life. From my perspective, Michaela completely fulfilled the brief, talking about impermanence and her love of New Orleans, and just by being completely herself; she also brought along a section of the Parinirvana Sutra to talk about, serendipitously enough, as we had been previously looking at the Four Noble Truths, Buddha's first teaching, and now we were getting his final words. As usual, the lively conversation continued after the meeting had bowed out, and that is also one of the fun parts for me - we covered Camus and string theory in a remarkably short space of time.
There have been a few light-hearted suggestions as to other groups we could set up: Mid-life Crisis Zen is a popular one right now, and Genine has proposed Old Rural Zen as the counterpoint, though wags would have it that Green Gulch already serves that function.

Filling In

Since other people were taking care of the details required for the running of the AZTA conference, I have been feeling myself relaxing this week, and I noticed that in part by how I responded to being asked to do any extra things I wasn't expecting to do. Mainly I got to catch up on the backlogs of talks - I put seventeen up at the end of the week, which was a day and a half's work - and taking care of what the French call le train-train quotidien, one of my favourite phrases.
I ended up being doshi three evenings in a row, as well as for the 9:25 sitting on Saturday. I was also kokyo on Saturday morning, which I was glad to do. The visiting teachers certainly lent volume to our morning services. As kokyo you are something of a conductor for the energy of the chanting, and it felt great to be leading such a strong group, helped along by Ken setting nice fast tempos on the mokugyo. The names of the Buddhas and male ancestors ended up much slower than I can usually tolerate, but what I felt this time was not a lack of energy, but rather a careful and respectful reading of the names. Of course I could just be imagining that and perhaps I was just swayed by the sight of six brown robes in the front row across from me, all of different hues.

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.

Familiar Faces

This week Zen Center is hosting a number of distinguished guests: on Monday, we had several members of the SZBA board staying, and yesterday we had members of the AZTA arriving. If the acronyms are a little mysterious, the former is the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, which means that they are all in Dogen's lineage, while the latter is the American Zen Teachers Association, which casts its net a little wider. Either way, they are all lovely people, I have met a few of them before - especially when we had the SZBA conference here a couple of years ago - and it is wonderful to have so many senior teachers in the building.
The zendo was nicely full this morning, though luckily we did not start to overflow, as I had been concerned might happen, and the Buddha Hall likewise. I should add for readers who are new practitioners that teachers coming from other centers can be just as mystified about the particular forms we have here at Zen Center as you might be, so there has been some gentle guidance about where to stand, how to exit and so forth.
This morning was also the 28th day memorial for David, and Abbot Steve was the doshi. The chanting was very strong with so many extra voices, and again, the fact that we were chanting the Dai Hi Shin Dharani in the morning brought the occasion home to me, feelings which the beautiful eko augmented.
I was just looking through some old City Center pictures for shots of the SZBA, and came across this one of David working in the kitchen - he was on the crew when I was tenzo, so we spent many hours working side my side.

I have also been meaning to write about how much I have enjoyed having Teah back in the zendo on a regular basis - she sat the sesshin the other week -  and how moved I was to see her being doshi again as she has been recently. I think this may be due to the fact that she was tanto when I first arrived at City Center, so perhaps it triggers memories of those early days, as does seeing Blanche in the zendo, which she is more and more again. It makes it seem like things are the way they should be - though of course they always are.
This is probably my favourite picture of Teah, taken after Liping's shuso ceremony last year.

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".

Buddhas and Ancestors

One of the things I miss about not being at Tassajara is that here in the city we do not chant the names of the Buddhas and Ancestors every day - we do half of the male list and the women ancestors on Mondays, and the full male lineage on Saturdays.
When I first went to Tassajara, I enjoyed the process of memorising the two lists of names, not least because I felt a clear distinction between those who had been there for some time and who knew the names by heart, and those who did not, and I wanted to be seen as one of the former. These days there is less ego involved in the process, and I mostly find joy in the sonorities and rhythms of the chanting. A number of times as ino I have encouraged people to keep the tempo up while we chant, as otherwise it seems like a dirge to me, and we are, after all, ackowledging our debt to all these people who devoted their lives to practice, as a result of which the dharma is available to us today. As the dedication afterwards spells out: "We dedicate our practice to all the great teachers from whom we have received immeasurable benefit", and it ends "May our life reveal their compassion; let us honour their true being", phrases which always just seem to slip by, but which are huge requests to make, if we stop and think about it.

Vajrachedika Prajna Paramita Sutra

I love reciting the Diamond Sutra on Friday mornings, and often find myself moved by what I am reading. In recent weeks that hadn't been happening, but it was there again today:
"What do you think, Subhuti, is the extent of space in the East easy to measure? Subhuti replied: No indeed, O Lord. The Lord asked: In like manner, is it easy to measure the extent of space in the South, West, North, downwards, upwards, in the intermediate directions, in all the ten directions all around? Subhuti replied: No indeed, O Lord. The Lord said: Even so the heap of merit of that Bodhi-being who unsupported gives a gift is not easy to measure. That is why, Subhuti, those who have set out in the Bodhisattva-vehicle, should give gifts without being supported by the notion of a sign".

Back On Seat

I had been looking forward to that part of the vacation where you pick up your regular responsibilities and routine afterwards, and see how it feels. Unfortunately when I got back into town yesterday, I received some unwanted and upsetting news, which completely took the wind out of my sails. So now I am looking at how to pick up my responsibilities when I feel like I have no motivation or energy and am trying to function on about three hours' sleep. Everyone else, meanwhile, naturally wants to welcome me back and ask how the trip went, and I am not feeling particularly able to meet them.
It was comforting to be back in the zendo this morning; sitting felt good, even if my mind was far from settled, and I felt very emotional doing the first prostrations of service. And I was pleasantly surprised that there were only forty-four emails in my inbox and four messages on the phone; that felt pretty manageable.
At times like these it is helpful to see how other people are doing, and I enjoyed Gretchen's latest blog entry as I deal with my own mental itchiness.

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.

Underway

Since I didn't have much free time over the weekend, I am feeling pretty sluggish today. Yesterday was a day of high emotions, with a lot of love being expressed, especially by the parents of the young people completing the Coming of Age program, and that giddy end of term feeling that inevitably leads to a sense of loss and emptiness.
The zendo was nice and full for first morning of the practice period, as it should be, and the sun was pouring in beautifully during the second period.. I was thinking I would spend the morning pottering around and tidying up the paperwork and other things from the sitting, but Jordan added a little more urgency into proceedings by suggesting a new chant for noon service half way through the morning. I was happy to oblige, especially as I hadn't finalised all the sheets for what I thought we were doing, and also because it is a chant I am not familiar with, so it is something else to discover:

Torei Enji’s Bodhisattva Vow

When I, a student of Dharma,
Look at the real form of the universe,
All is the never-failing manifestation
Of the mysterious truth of the Tathagata.
In any event, in any moment, and in any place,
None can be other than the marvelous revelation
Of its glorious light.
This realization made our patriarchs and virtuous Zen masters
Extend tender care, with the heart of worshipping,
Even to such beings as beasts and birds.
This realization teaches us that our daily food and drink,
Clothes and protections of life, are the warm flesh and blood,
The merciful incarnation of Buddha.
Who can be ungrateful or not respectful
Even to senseless things, not to speak of man?
Even though he may be a fool,
Be warm and compassionate toward him.
If by an chance he should turn against us,
And become a sworn enemy, and abuse and persecute us, we should
Bow down with humble words, in reverent belief
That he is the merciful avatar of Buddha
Who uses devices to emancipate us from sinful karma
That has been produced and accumulated upon ourselves
By our own egoistic delusion and attachment
Through the countless cycles of Kalpa.
Then on each moment's flash of our thought
There will grow a lotus flower,
And on each lotus flower will be revealed a Buddha.
These Buddhas will glorify Sukhavati,
The Pure Land, every moment and everywhere.
May we extend This mind over the whole Universe
So that we and all beings together
May attain maturity in Buddha's wisdom.