After putting aside the Shobogenzo, I decided to pick up The Undying Lamp of Zen, which Robert kindly gave me some months ago, and I am enjoying the robust and salty Rinzai language of Torei. I could have done with having this section to hand last night in the Young Urban Zen 'after-party', where the group I fondly think of as the Berkeley Intellectuals hung around to throw around and chew on some concepts and ideas until after my bedtime:
"Right now, what is this? What is it that sees? What is it that hears? What is it that moves? What is it that sits? At all times, in all places, focus your mind and see how it is. Without conceiving of being or non-being, without thinking of affirmation or negation, without discriminating, without rationalizing, just observe in this way. When the time comes it will appear of itself, without need of your intellectual discrimination. As soon as you conceive discrimination, you obscure original essential nature - then even if you labored forever, you couldn't get it.
If thoughts are flying around, consider this story: 'Does a dog have buddha-nature? No.' Bring it to mind directly, and don't interpret it logically. Don't interpret it as flavorless, don't interpret it as nothing. If you conceive any logical understanding, you'll never complete the work. But don't develop an illogical mind either. Logic and no logic are after all random ideas. Just bring it up and look at it. It has nothing to do with interpretation; it is the real way of practice of the Buddhas. Continue moment to moment, whether speaking or silent, active or quiet, walking, sitting, and lying down - do not forget it! Or if you do occasionally forget, don't lose power".
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Further Reflections
The comments section has been the most interesting part of the blog this week. I have been chewing on Daigan's comment, and the ones that followed, and trying to come up with a response beyond what I wrote in the original post. Of course Lou was right, he usually was. I had my own experience of this living here in 2005. I would much rather have been still living at Tassajara, but I had been sent back to the city to sort out important aspects of my life, which I had no inclination to do, and which didn't really get resolved for another two or three years. I was fukaten, the number two person in the kitchen, and devoted all my energies to doing that job as well as I could without taking my own displeasure out on the crew, and to sitting every day. I had a lot of opinions about the standard of practice at City Center compared with Tassajara, and the only two things that worked for me around that were trying to stay focused on my own practice, and looking to those people around me whose practice did inspire me - Lou being one of those, naturally. At that time I was wanting to become a priest, and heard more than once a version of the line Chris mentioned, "If you want to become a priest, act like a priest".
The comments on Thursday's post were humbling; Stephen's words and stories illustrate exactly why we love the Coadys, and I was deeply moved by the anonymous comment. To respond to that I can only quote the words from the last part of the Full Moon Ceremony, which we did again this morning; I have mentioned the first part before, but the rest of the paragraph illuminates the point: "To expound the dharma with this body is foremost. The virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable, we just accept it with respect and gratitude".
The comments on Thursday's post were humbling; Stephen's words and stories illustrate exactly why we love the Coadys, and I was deeply moved by the anonymous comment. To respond to that I can only quote the words from the last part of the Full Moon Ceremony, which we did again this morning; I have mentioned the first part before, but the rest of the paragraph illuminates the point: "To expound the dharma with this body is foremost. The virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable, we just accept it with respect and gratitude".
Friday, August 12, 2011
Seeing Things
It felt somewhat ironic to come back to my room after the opening for the show of photos and immediately see that there was a quality of light outside which made it worth grabbing my camera and heading for the roof. I included in the show an album of shots of different skyscapes taken from the roof, which Robert poetically referred to as my 'book of clouds', but I hadn't been up there with my camera for a while. There were the end-of-sunset clouds facing off against the fog to the south west, and the moon rising serenely in the south east.
I was happy with how the opening went, considering my limited tolerance for both small talk and being the centre of attention. I sold one picture in the first ten minutes, so I couldn't have asked for a better start; people seemed to enjoy the content and presentation, and there was a very respectable turn-out. I included a picture with the title "You should know where this is" which got everybody talking - I should have added a subtitle "if you are a resident". Most people were stumped, though a few were able to place it.
I was happy with how the opening went, considering my limited tolerance for both small talk and being the centre of attention. I sold one picture in the first ten minutes, so I couldn't have asked for a better start; people seemed to enjoy the content and presentation, and there was a very respectable turn-out. I included a picture with the title "You should know where this is" which got everybody talking - I should have added a subtitle "if you are a resident". Most people were stumped, though a few were able to place it.
 |
| To the south west |
 |
| To the south east |
 |
| "You should know where this is" |
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Marking Time
There had been some discussion about what format the 21st day memorial ceremony for David was going to take. After the first iteration, last week we did a short service in the zendo as it was the fourth, and we also had the Suzuki Roshi memorial to do. In the end Paul wanted us to continue having the ceremony in the morning, so we had the first half of the regular Thursday service, and then chanted the Dai Hi Shin Dharani, followed by the special dedication.
Even though attendance in the zendo has been quite low this week, the Dai Hi Shin Dharani sounded very strong, suitably grave. Perhaps I am just used to doing it in the afternoons now, when there are even fewer people, most of whom are not so familiar with it.
Because I was in sesshin, I did not get to attend the cremation ceremony last week, and I am noticing in myself that a sense of finality is missing around David: I am aware of his absence in different ways and in various circumstances, but then this week I am also aware of the absence of all the participants in the intensive, who had formed such an integral part of the community in the preceding weeks. I suppose this is why so many cultures have a tradition of sitting with the body, so that you can get used to the idea that the person really is gone. Even doing the ceremony we did on the afternoon before sesshin, Paul purifying his room with wisdom water while a group of us circumambulated it chanting the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, moving as it was, did not quite bring it home to me.
Even though attendance in the zendo has been quite low this week, the Dai Hi Shin Dharani sounded very strong, suitably grave. Perhaps I am just used to doing it in the afternoons now, when there are even fewer people, most of whom are not so familiar with it.
Because I was in sesshin, I did not get to attend the cremation ceremony last week, and I am noticing in myself that a sense of finality is missing around David: I am aware of his absence in different ways and in various circumstances, but then this week I am also aware of the absence of all the participants in the intensive, who had formed such an integral part of the community in the preceding weeks. I suppose this is why so many cultures have a tradition of sitting with the body, so that you can get used to the idea that the person really is gone. Even doing the ceremony we did on the afternoon before sesshin, Paul purifying his room with wisdom water while a group of us circumambulated it chanting the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, moving as it was, did not quite bring it home to me.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Reflections
At last night's Young Urban Zen meeting, after a little gentle prodding, and perhaps in the interest of gaining a few more readers, Shannon acquiesced to my outing her blog, which I had happened across after she left a comment on one of these posts. As with the Zen Beginner, I find it enormously helpful to have other people's perspectives not only on what I do, since I play a bit part in some of the entries, but on what I take for granted, as they figure out their steps on the path to being Buddhists.
At more than one Way-seeking Mind talk, I have heard people from more traditional religious backgrounds describe the relative difficulty of outing themselves to their parents as gay and outing themselves to their parents as Buddhists. For me the question "Am I a buddhist?" was less contentious than "Am I a monk?" - I think the only person who ever asked me if I considered myself a Buddhist was my sister-in-law who is more inclined to ask questions than anyone in my more immediate family.
I don't think I have told the story here about how I spent my tangaryo at Tassajara composing haiku in my head about the very limited number of things that were happening and the many reactions I was having to them. I thought of this again after sesshin as one participant recited for us a haiku she had come up with. One of the better tangaryo haiku was around the observation I had had during oryoki - the servers would approach the tan, and in the curving reflection of their silver pot, I could see a line of people in robes, who sure looked like monks. And so I started thinking that maybe I was a monk - or at least going through the process of becoming one. Obviously the haiku version is shorter than that.
One important part of this equation though, was that I was living in a monastery. It followed that I was a monk. Here in the city, I don't describe myself as a monk, and I find it a little dissonant to read of the residents as monks, or to read about this temple as a monastery as I just did elsewhere. I could just be leaning on semantics, but I think it has a lot to do with what City Center is about. We are here to offer the teaching to everybody, in a formal setting; we are not so internally focused as we would be at Tassajara in the winter, although it may seem that way to the visitor. Having just emerged from the Tassajara-style schedule of the intensive to our more usual spacious and work-oriented days, I am certainly noticing the difference.
At more than one Way-seeking Mind talk, I have heard people from more traditional religious backgrounds describe the relative difficulty of outing themselves to their parents as gay and outing themselves to their parents as Buddhists. For me the question "Am I a buddhist?" was less contentious than "Am I a monk?" - I think the only person who ever asked me if I considered myself a Buddhist was my sister-in-law who is more inclined to ask questions than anyone in my more immediate family.
I don't think I have told the story here about how I spent my tangaryo at Tassajara composing haiku in my head about the very limited number of things that were happening and the many reactions I was having to them. I thought of this again after sesshin as one participant recited for us a haiku she had come up with. One of the better tangaryo haiku was around the observation I had had during oryoki - the servers would approach the tan, and in the curving reflection of their silver pot, I could see a line of people in robes, who sure looked like monks. And so I started thinking that maybe I was a monk - or at least going through the process of becoming one. Obviously the haiku version is shorter than that.
One important part of this equation though, was that I was living in a monastery. It followed that I was a monk. Here in the city, I don't describe myself as a monk, and I find it a little dissonant to read of the residents as monks, or to read about this temple as a monastery as I just did elsewhere. I could just be leaning on semantics, but I think it has a lot to do with what City Center is about. We are here to offer the teaching to everybody, in a formal setting; we are not so internally focused as we would be at Tassajara in the winter, although it may seem that way to the visitor. Having just emerged from the Tassajara-style schedule of the intensive to our more usual spacious and work-oriented days, I am certainly noticing the difference.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Blowing My Own Trumpet
Apart from going to the zendo, and Young Urban Zen this evening, I think I can take the rest of the day off. I am certainly looking forward to this, and it gives me a chance to work on some other stuff: in the kind of self-promotion that I like to claim I am loath to undertake, I will mention that there is an opening this Friday at 6:30, for my art show, which I have not managed to hang yet, but which is supposed to be in the City Center Art Lounge this month. Please feel invited to come if you want to hear me blather on about the pictures.
Recently I have been wondering what I will do when I no longer have this blog as an outlet, and decided to start a photo Tumblr, so if you find that you enjoy the photos here more than the dharma stuff, and I suspect there are a few of you, or if you are unable to visit the art show in person, which I imagine would be the case for most readers, you can check out some pictures here. I haven't actually put most of the pictures in the show up there yet, but they will appear in time. So far it has mostly been a case of me trawling through my archive of digital pictures from the past five years and pulling out images that speak to me, or that I am fond of for some reason, in a fairly random fashion.
This is the photo that I used for the art show postcard:
Recently I have been wondering what I will do when I no longer have this blog as an outlet, and decided to start a photo Tumblr, so if you find that you enjoy the photos here more than the dharma stuff, and I suspect there are a few of you, or if you are unable to visit the art show in person, which I imagine would be the case for most readers, you can check out some pictures here. I haven't actually put most of the pictures in the show up there yet, but they will appear in time. So far it has mostly been a case of me trawling through my archive of digital pictures from the past five years and pulling out images that speak to me, or that I am fond of for some reason, in a fairly random fashion.
This is the photo that I used for the art show postcard:
Saturday, August 6, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, August 1, 2011
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.
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