Sitting Together

After sesshin was over, and I had cleaned up and eaten dinner, I went for a brief walk outside. The fog had set in, muting everything, and I was happy to slip down the streets, taking in everything, noticing again how, whatever the stresses and strains of the sitting - and in this position they are always many and varied - invariably there is a residue of settled sharp awareness. I think this is noticeable to others as well; this morning, instead of having a talk, we had all gone out for an equally leisurely walk in the warm sunshine. I walked at the back of the thirty-strong group, some of us in robes with our flowing sleeves, watched how passers-by reacted to us, and held up for myself to examine as well this unusually public identity of 'zen priest'. As we filed by a furniture store, a young man talking to a couple of others bowed to us. He turned to me and asked if we were Buddhists. Yes, I replied simply. I love you guys he smiled, and I smiled back.
We ended the sitting this afternoon with a chosan (not to be confused with a shosan - check the labels for the various iterations of each). It was a fitting way to bring the small group together for a finale, and the feeling was sweet and relaxed. Overall my reaction to this three-day sesshin was not so different to the reaction I had last year: it's only three days, it's gone before you know it, but I enjoyed hearing how much it meant for others.
The brevity does not mean it is easy to prepare for - since we drop a one-day sitting in the middle of it, basically I had to set up two complete job lists and seating charts, and of course, there were twice as many variables to come and trip me up. I started earlier than I would ordinarily for a sesshin, and felt I was ahead of the curve right through to Thursday night, even with all the expected unexpecteds: people not on my list, people going sick, people who didn't think they were going to be able to make it and did, and vice versa, people sitting two days, or part of all three days, or some other combination.
I also had distractions in terms of conversations I hadn't anticipated about my next steps here at Zen Center. As I have been telling people recently, and as my experience has been, until I am actually sitting on an actual seat or behind a particular desk, there is no point saying anything about it, and another aspect of this weekend illustrates this: until Thursday, I was not completely sure I was going to be sitting the sesshin at all. Three months or so ago, I decided to schedule a Young Urban Zen retreat at Green Gulch for this weekend. I remember having the sense when I did it that I was tempting fate, but it seemed to be the most suitable time, and since there had already been some talk about me transitioning out of the ino position, I told myself that either I would not be ino in June, or that somebody would be able to replace me. It turned out that neither of those guesses were accurate, and while I might have had more expansive fun with YUZ at Green Gulch these past few days, and would have almost certainly made more of the good weather, while being more suitably attired for it, it was abundantly clear that I had, as I sometimes say, cooked myself a breakfast that I couldn't eat *. The situation being entirely of my making, I had no problem settling down to do what I was supposed to be doing rather than what I might wish to be doing. And that, for all that I look forward to a bike ride tomorrow, just as I used to look forward to running after sesshins at Tassajara, is what sesshin is all about.

Warm, but also windy yesterday

 * A friend of mine at school, intending to study philosophy, went for an interview at Oxford. Afterwards he told me the question was put to him, "Can God cook himself a breakfast he cannot eat?" I always liked this question, though I wouldn't dream of trying to answer it; it is the kind of thing that has kept me well away from western philosophy. Quite often the phrase came to mind while I was building walls at Tassajara when, having laid out a satisfyingly beautiful combination of rocks, I would realise that it was impossible to put anything on top of them to continue the construction.

Sesshin Begins Now

Just have to find the right set of admonitions...

Diverse Notes From Sesshin

When I was at Tassajara, I tried to avoid reading the menus that were posted; I liked the meals to be a surprise - either a pleasant one, or if it was something I didn't like, I wouldn't get to work up a head of steam about it ahead of time. Sometimes, sitting in the zendo wondering what was going to be in the next pot, I would hear the distinctive shoveling sound of nuts being served, and in time learnt to tell the difference between the sound of pistachios resonating in a bowl and the sound of cashews.
This morning, for the last zendo meal of sesshin, the four sesshin leaders and their attendants formed the serving crew. There was something about the way Blanche let the almonds come off her spoon into my third bowl that you could only appreciate if you have served a lot of oryoki. It was done very carefully to make the least amount of noise possible.

Before I went into sesshin, a friend said that it was great that I would have a chance to go deep inside for a week. I had to let her know that although I might get a few quiet moments while sitting, as ino there would always be something that I had to ensure was being done, a note for me to respond to, someone to replace in a job because they were sick, a ceremony to organise, or some of the other work that I am somehow expected to keep on top of.
But I had some quiet moments on day five, when I had stopped feeling quite so tired. I also had moments of feeling wide open, between moments of feeling nothing but tension. The last two days were more busy, setting things in place not just for the shuso ceremony, but also a rakusu receiving ceremony last night and a memorial for this morning.
For some reason I had the idea that it would be most intimate for Konin to receive her shuso rakusu in the zendo, and Shosan liked the idea as well, so we arranged for that to happen, and it had the feeling I hoped it would, that we had just turned around from our sitting to participate together in this ceremony.
This afternoon was a little more grand an occasion, but I found I had a lot of energy this morning, and while there were some changes to the previously worked-out plans, everything happened in good time to be met and responded to, and I enjoyed taking care of the details.

Overall I thought the schedule was lovely, about the same amount of sitting as the Genzo-e, which made for minimal pain as far as I was concerned. When I first saw the schedule, I saw all the optional zazen periods, and the diligent student in me thought I would have to be at all of them, before I realised that they were the time when I would take care of most of my work, so that I could be at all the regular periods, which I pretty much managed.
There was a different feeling to it, and not just waking up without the feeling of my body having been through the wringer as often happens in sesshin; with work spread around the day, there was a different energy in the building to the usual focused work period in the afternoon; most importantly, of course, there was a quietness and concentration in the zendo.

At one moment, having gone from tightness to spaciousness somehow, I thought: in spite of ourselves, something is revealed. For my question to the shuso, I asked her what she thought that something was, and I'm embarrassed to say that I can't remember a word of her answer, but I know we met at that moment, and that was enough. As she fielded questions from the room, Konin seemed to both be floating on the platform and fully grounded on it, but was of course, just being herself, and expressing her deep practice.

Now I know she is not a big fan of having her photo taken, so I will keep these to a minimum, but I thought these two were presentable enough.

Shosan reads her statement to Konin at the culmination of the ceremony

Shosan Konin and Blanche posed under the wisteria

Into Great Silence

This sesshin is going to be a little different from usual, in that we are following a modified schedule that Victoria and Darlene tried over ten years ago - and that was one of my earliest sesshins here in the building. We looked at the participant list the other day, and saw names of current and former residents, those who had joined us just for that week, those passing through and several, including Darlene and Marvin, who have since died.
I am feeling the strain of working a full six-day week, and then going straight into seven days of sitting, with an extra edge due to the unfamiliarity of what we are going to do - but I have the sense that once we settle in after the first day or two, it is going to feel very nice, at least until I have to immerse myself in preparations for the shuso ceremony.
An idea also occured to me around the blog, combining something I had already been considering, with the upcoming week of silence. Watch this space.

Things are blossoming in the courtyard right now

It was sunny yesterday, but rainy this morning. Good sitting weather

Honoured Followers Of Zen

Another thing I have been meaning to mention about this past sesshin was the diversity of the participants: we had people flying in especially for the week from Northern Ireland, Germany and Slovenia, and, off the top of my head, also had the following nationalities represented: Australia, India, China, Japan, Mongolia, Iran (we have three Persian residents right now), Mexico, Colombia, England, Hungary, Switzerland, and France, with a Canadian running the kitchen. There were a few Americans too.

A little bleak and wintry - by Bay Area standards - at the moment

The Sound Of Silence

Since today's was going to be the last koan class of the year, with both Paul and Lucy going away this week, we had breakfast at Paul's house afterwards. Talk turned to sesshin, and the different approaches of different traditions; Paul is interested in the way Gil Fronsdal sets up his Vipassana retreats, he and a few people from here having attended one a month or so ago. Simon and I had both heard from someone who just did a retreat with Adyashanti: more than three hundred people, who were instructed not to write a note unless they needed to go to the hospital. Apparently, only one note materialised in the entire week.
I had been meaning to say something about my continued surprise at how many notes landed on my cushion, on my desk, at my door or simply in my hand, almost every time we got up from sitting. It was, I suppose, better than the alternative of having a conversation about each topic. I had also intended to set up this photograph, so this morning I got around to it:

The Arc Of Sitting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not too long after the first picture was taken

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

Head On Fire

As expected, there were a lot of things to wrap my head around for sesshin, and before I tackled it all this afternoon, it felt like an amorphous mass to to try and get into shape. I noticed the familiar symptoms of stress - a tightening feeling in my head, and of course in my shoulders - and found myself making mistakes: last night as doshi, I picked up my zagu after the first three prostrations, before realising where I was - my concentration was much sharper after that. For nenju today, as kokyo, even though I felt fully present, I managed to leave out the line "We are to practise constantly as if to save our heads from fire". Maybe because my head was already on fire.
Nonetheless, after lunch and a good dose of coffee, I sat down and pretty much sorted all the lists out in two hours, before turning to the myriad other details - wrapping new oryokis, distributing doan instructions, making sure all the chant sheets are in the right place... right now, sitting down for a moment after dinner, there are just a few loose ends to straighten out, though I will have to bathe and shave my head after the Refuges tonight.

Here is the list of attendance variables that I had to work with - as you can see, I was exaggerating slightly before; this is just over twenty people out of the sixty...

Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues

Away Monday

Friday Saturday

Kitchen Sunday, Fri am

Missing Mon Tue pm, Thurs am, Fri pm

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

Monday, Wednesday Thursday pm

Mornings only

Mornings, Friday Saturday

Not  Tues am or Friday all day; kitchen pm

Not evenings

Not Saturday

Not Tues am or Friday pm

Sunday Tuesday Saturday

Sunday, Saturday, weekday mornings

Tues - Sat pm kitchen

Tuesday evening - Saturday

Two days of work somewhere

Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat

Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat

Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat

With all that, I haven't had the head space to prepare myself for the fact that I am mostly going to be sitting a lot for the next seven days. Maybe once we get past the first day, it will start to sink in, and I will get a little chance to settle before I need to start preparing for Buddha's Enlightenment.
Back in a week...

The maple tree in the courtyard probably peaked yesterday

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.

Flotsam and Jetsam

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

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

Sesshin Begins Now

A typically full day of preparing everything for the five-day sesshin. The admonitions are read, I think I have done everything that needs to have been done today - except put the talks up, sorry. I shall be glad to settle into silence. If I get the chance.

Breathing Out

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

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

The moon on Thursday

The moon on Friday

Waiting For The Moon

Thwarted by the weather last month, I was more determined this time round to have the Full Moon Ceremony on the roof. There was a bit of grumbling and resistance from various people, and it was agreed that we would only do it if there was no fog or wind. Happily, the weather has been fine this week, which has been rare this year, and while it was pretty gusty when I started setting things up yesterday around five o'clock, after dinner conditions were perfect.
Of course being outside changes the dynamic of the ceremony greatly - it is very hard on the kokyo as voices just dissipate into the air, and the bells don't resonate as they do in the Buddha Hall, but there were many compensating elements, and I found myself taking in details as the ceremony unfolded: the last rays of the sun on the tall buildings around us; a slight chilling as the sun finally disappeared; the sounds of traffic and crows; the wide blue sky transected by the white of a gliding seagull or the red underbelly of a plane banking out of Oakland.
I had a weather eye out to the south east, where I was waiting for the moon to rise over Potrero Hill, but there was no moon until five minutes after the ceremony had ended, when suddenly a jagged-edged orange curve rose above the faint hills over in the east bay. A group of a dozen of us had stayed behind to watch, and everyone drew breath to exclaim at the sharp ascension and the vividness of the colour.

Full Moon Ceremony altar

Paul at the altar

The moon on Monday

The moon on Tuesday

The moon on Wednesday

I remember sitting in the hot plunge at Tassajara once, and eagerly waiting for the moon to appear from behind Flag Rock until I told myself that the moment was perfect just as it was, and the idea of waiting was just taking away from it. Similarly, the ceremony was wonderful just as it was - and there was a lot of positive energy last night and this morning to bear that out - the non-appearance of the moon did not change that.

Today I have to shift gears and get ready for our three-day sesshin, which begins tonight. There are a lot of logistics involved as we insert a one-day sitting into the middle of it, so I have three separate schedules and two seating charts and job lists to draw up today. Even though a part of me would like to spend all day soaking up the welcome sunshine.

What I Did On My Day Off

For at least forty five weeks in the year, I am in the zendo six mornings a week, and out on my bike the other, so when interim rolls round I am usually ready for a break, especially coming after a sesshin, and a month when days off were pretty hard to come by.
But first there was another visit to Green Gulch for the Coming of Age group yesterday. It was a fine morning, and I had plenty of post-sesshin energy, and joy at being out and about again, and I was also feeling quite mellow around the boys, who were their usual boisterous selves, though once again I appreciated the conversation we had around the precepts towards the end.
There was also the matter of the monthly Suzuki Roshi memorials, which I knew would be sparsely attended. It turned out that I was doshi for both last night's and this morning's ceremonies, which I hadn't expected, and which I don't really feel senior enough to do, but faute de mieux...
I enjoyed doing them, especially as I had noticed being a little sad not to have the opportunities to be doshi during sesshin, and did my best to honour the formality of the occasions. One thing I did notice was that the statue we have in the kaisando, which is not universally loved - I have heard it said more than once that none of the commemorative artwork we have around the building really captures his spirit, mostly being too solemn and not catching the twinkling eye - is much more effective when you are standing in front of it for a few minutes: there is a way the eyes focus on you that I hadn't expected.
That done, and the weather being fine, I was itching to go out and ride, and I had all the fun I could possibly ask for, warm weather, no wind, quiet roads, wildflowers, birds, seals, as well as much evidence of rain damage on the roads. It felt like spring, and I can still feel the sun on my face. It was nice to have an unstructured afternoon, and to attend to some of the accumulated piles of things in my room.
I'll throw in a couple of photos to prove that I am still waking up pretty early, and that I am enjoying rediscovering the manual controls on my camera:

What I Did During My Sesshin

I shocked a couple of new residents at the post Shuso Ceremony dinner by telling them I had had a good sesshin - I didn't run out of chocolate. You ate chocolate? The ino broke the shingi? Well that's the way it is.
I don't really approve of taking photographs during sesshin, though I do that quite often as well. For all that sesshin mind tends to being to the fore the kind of attentiveness to detail that a photographer is always aiming for, it also seems like discursive mind in action - oh, that would make a good picture, must capture that, when I would prefer to be saying, oh, that's beautiful, and then let it go. That said, I did take some photos during sesshin, of the view out of my window as the days went by. Any resemblance to my states of mind may or may not be co-incidental.

Day one - morning

Day one - evening

Day two - evening

Day three - evening

Day four - morning

Day five - morning

Day six - morning

Day six - end of day

Day seven - morning

Day seven - evening

As you can see, and as locals will attest, it got pretty nice and sunny in the middle, and warmed up somewhat. I would have happily taken last week's wet weather this week, and had this heat next week when I will get some time off, but it doesn't always work like that, does it?

Then there is this self-portrait I took on the only morning I went back to my room during soji:

Disclaimer: this is not really me and it was not really like this.

The ceremony with Lien was as a Shuso Ceremony should be, fully open-hearted. I hadn't taken my camera into the Buddha Hall as I wanted to be properly ceremonial, but then after we got underway, Blanche leaned over to me and said, someone has to take the picture of the shuso receiving the staff, or she can't be officially registered (with the Sotoshu, who keep records of this kind of thing). So I nipped out to get my camera, which I had nearby for the post-ceremony pictures. On first glance through, though, this is the one I like the most - Lien getting a hug from Vicki right after the ceremony:

I expect I will write more about sesshin soon, but I am feeling ready for bed, and I have to be at Green Gulch early in the morning.

Sesshin Begins Now

....

Preparations

This morning's program was remarkably mellow. With neither oryoki nor a residents' meeting, I had over half an hour free after breakfast, and managed to catch the end of a Belgian bike race online. We did not have nenju either, as there is no weekend for us this week, so we couldn't truthfully call hosan.
We woke up to torrential rain again - I have lost count of how many storms have come through in the past ten days, but it has been predominantly wet. Happily it has cleared up right now, so after doing the newcomers' table again - with the usual fascinating array of stories of what brought people here today - I popped out for a quick hour on the bike, getting in a few laps of Twin Peaks and some fresh air before hunkering down for the week. I had time to run some laundry, so I have clean sheets and jubons for the week, which feels important, and I have bathed and shaved my head, so at least I start clean-shaven: I follow the old shingi of not shaving during sesshin, so my face will be pretty fuzzy by next Saturday; hopefully my mind will be going in the other direction, from tangled to smooth, though with the shuso ceremony to organise, that may not happen.
I have a couple of hours of organising to do still, finishing off the seating chart and distributing all the information, but at least I feel somewhat well-rested and ready for the task in hand. Which is just as well, as it is heading my way regardless.

A Big Do With Drums

Someone asked me after sesshin if there was now a lull for me, and I replied 'as if...' This morning, though, I can relax a little, as the next ceremony is not until Friday evening, so until then I just have meetings and zazen, oh, and the backlog of more than twenty dharma talks to put online - apologies if you have been feeling starved of podcasts recently, there has been a lot else keeping me busy.
Rohatsu sesshin is the time for Buddhists to commemorate Shakyamuni's great effort and achievement in sitting for seven days and eventually waking up. Today is the traditional date for Buddha's Enlightenment, and this morning's ceremony is usually done as the culmination of the Rohatsu sitting. I was glad that it wasn't this year, because although both ceremonies have a number of elements in common, today's involved more preparation than the one we did instead on the last morning of sesshin, the Annual Suzuki Roshi Memorial.
I seem to remember reading in 'Crooked Cucumber' that it was fitting that Suzuki Roshi died during Rohatsu, as he knew that all his students would be in the zendo sitting wholeheartedly. Certainly our seven days of sitting informed the statements of appreciation and gratitude that some of us got to make during the ceremony on Saturday morning. After all, without Shakyamuni, and without Suzuki Roshi, none of us would be practising here at Zen Center.
Today's ceremony had a very energetic feel, once we got into the circumambulation of the Buddha Hall, chanting the Maka Hannya Haramitta Shin Gyo to the accompaniment of two drummers. I have been one of the drummers on a number of occasions over the years, and the pattern, which has a number of variations, is deeply embedded in me. This year's drummers were both new, and not having got round to starting the training before sesshin, we only had two days of rehearsal to get it together. They did a great job, and at the moments where the drums faltered, the energy of the chanting was easily strong enough to carry us through. I even managed to enjoy myself as I was doing my laps of the Buddha Hall, which I hadn't been expecting to...
Another detail that had been causing me a little stress, as I hadn't been planning far enough ahead before sesshin, was using confetti rather than flower petals, to be strewn all over the Buddha Hall as we did our circumambulations. I certainly have received a lot of comments about this. The ino's notes mentioned that 500 heads of carnations was perfect, but 600 would be better...I could easily justify using paper instead, as usually happens at Tassajara, on environmental grounds, thinking of reducing, re-using and recycling (rather than having flowers which would have probably come hundreds if not thousands of miles from where they were grown, all the confetti was cut out of magazine pages from the student lounge, and it got swept up during soji right after the ceremony - as an addendum, our flower buyer told me that carnations would be being shipped from Colombia, which happens to be where she is from, although her durability is somewhat greater).
This morning is one of the times when it is usual for the ino to be the kokyo, so I got to do this dedication; this one always reminds me of Greg, as he had his own inimitably wholehearted way of doing this, which I did not try to emulate....

On this winter morning many centuries ago,
after long and patient struggle to find the truth,
a human being looked up and saw the morning star for the first time
and was set completely free, laying down his heavy burden once and for all,
realizing unsurpassable peace, heart opened wide as the sky.
And from his mouth came forth a great lion's roar:
I was, am, and will be fully awakened simultaneously with the entire universe.
Thus mountains, rivers, the great earth, and all living beings
are residing in the eye of Shakyamuni Buddha,
and Buddha's eye has become each of our bodies here and now,
dropped off, compassionate, and joyous beyond measure.

Today with deep gratitude
we celebrate this inconceivable liberation
Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha!
Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha!
Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha!

Sesshin

I feel like I haven't said very much about the experience of sesshin. As was discussed with Paul during dokusan, the ino doesn't necessarily get to stay internally focused, as there is so much else happening. As it turned out, I had a fairly relaxed and spacious first few days; after that I felt quite tired, and then towards the end it was mainly very busy, and once again I felt sad that I didn't get to stay in the zendo more as I was organising the various ceremonies.
As for the silence...I accumulated large numbers of notes from many people about many things, and also had a lot of interactions. After one meal, I remained on the first floor as I needed to check in with someone, and ended up having six conversations in five minutes. I tried to minimise it from my end by deciding not to offer feedback to people about things that happened unless it really felt necessary. From the other end, there were people who didn't know what they needed to do, people who were upset with themselves as they didn't believe they were doing well enough, people who were upset with other people over various exchanges and the ramifications of them, people who were upset with me as they didn't have the information they needed, and people who just wanted to talk. There was sickness, old age and death.
One participant who was new to Zen Center complimented me afterwards on the way I handled all the people that were coming to the zendo; I replied that the people who came weren't the problem, it was the people who didn't come that caused the problems, as I had to figure who could cover their jobs and how to keep things running smoothly.

I am going to be cheeky and tack on a note about the stats - I was happy to see that the counter now stands at fifty flags, and I had to laugh when I saw that the newest flag was from Guernsey, which I didn't think would even qualify, though at least I know how to find it on the map. We are also up to thirty seven states, having picked up both Alaska and Hawaii, and I am now starting to wonder which are the missing ones - I don't think I have seen New Hampshire, but otherwise most of the gaps seem to be from the South.

This Week, I Have Been Mostly Eating...

...Oryoki.

I know that only a handful of people reading this are going to know this reference, and not all of them are going to find it funny, but still, it came to mind.
I reread my last entry and it sounded a little dour, but then I confess that I never approach sesshin with a feeling of impending glee. And now? Well, I had ten thousands thoughts, of course, a few of which were followed by "Well I could put that on the blog", but the nature of sesshin is such that when it actually comes to it, all that stuff has passed on. Now I feel pretty glazed over, I have to admit, though there are some things I will probably write about in a day or two. We managed to tuck four ceremonies into the last thirty six hours, three of which were new to me, and that was quite a handful.
For Roger's benefit, I will post this picture - after reading the admonitions last Saturday, we went to the zendo, and as I got downstairs I realised I had left some cushions by the doshi door before dinner, when I had got involved in conversations, so I put the stuff I was carrying down by the densho, moved the cushions, and as I retrieved the stuff, rose swiftly to hit the top of my head on the open lip of the bell, which rang quietly. I noticed I had a little blood trickling down my head as I was sitting, though it didn't hurt as much as my toe did from kicking the printer earlier (and that didn't solve the problem either), so I took a picture as I couldn't see what the damage was....

This is not how you hit the densho