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.

Attitude

I feel like I should apologise for the somewhat tepid quality of the writing recently. I know it takes a certain kind of spaciousness to get the big words and long sentences flowing, or for me to come up with the occasional semblance of a joke, and that has been in short supply recently, apart from the sojourn at Tassajara. I know the proximate causes for this, and how they are intimately linked with deeper causes and conditions, and I am still mostly stuck there.
This week has been an object lesson in how attitude colours perception so much: on Monday morning, even coming after a decent night's sleep, I was feeling crabby from the outset - maybe not helped by a couple of people on the doanryo being sick, even though it wasn't hard to find replacements. I carried on in the same vein throughout the day, helping someone move furniture with such bad grace that I felt embarrassed to be thanked for it. It was only a bumper new year turn-out at Young Urban Zen, with a guest appearance from Sarah Weintraub whom I had invited to talk about her life and practice, that loosened me up some.
On Tuesday, even though I still had the same amount of stuff to take care of, I felt lighter with it, and thus things felt easier most of the day. At the same time, there are a number of conversations I need to have that I anticipate being difficult, and I don't want to go around being 'bad cop' all the time - I feel my heart harden rather than soften, and my spine stiffen. I am remembering the discussion in Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness, where someone, and I imagine it was the ino of the time, asks about practising strictly, and Suzuki Roshi replies, "Sometimes it may be unfortunate to see something. If you see it, you have to say something, so it may help you to practice without looking around... So it's best not to see anything!"

Anyway, if you are feeling in need of some divertissement, you could try matching this interesting collection of search words from yesterday with the post they took people to (without using Google, of course):

rakusu back
we had to shave my brother's head
altar in room
kechimyaku
barn owl pedals
big bell
hardcore zen
sierras from i 395

For a bonus point, this one appeared this morning: 'mount tam naked woman'. I think only one of those two has appeared on this blog....

Study Hall

Last week study hall was impacted by, variously, watching English football, going to the big Zen Center meeting, the Young Urban Zen offshoot study group, and going to meet a tanned and relaxed looking Abbot at the airport. Hopefully I can knuckle down a bit this week. I have picked up Eloquent Silence, a collection of koan commentaries and other writings by Nyogen Senzaki.
I have expressed before my interest in this earlier wave of zen teachers, in the early to middle part of the last century, how they mostly toiled in obscurity, and tailored their message to the audience of the time - Senzaki uses a lot of Christian references - without diluting the strength of their teachings. Here is a quote of his from the introduction:
"Monks have no monopoly on Zen. Zen belongs to the world. Laymen and laywomen attendants should study Zen - even children in kindergarten should be trained in the Zen way. The shrubs and grasses around this humble house also study Zen. They show the color of Zen through their own natural green... Zen monks are like street cleaners. They do their work so that others can go their different ways".

The Ground For The Arising Of The Mind Of Awakening

The culmination of this week's activities was a jukai for four of Jana's students. We did things a little differently for this one, as we accommodated for Mira's wheelchair. The jundo of altars was all done on the ground floor, with the big Suzuki Roshi painting next to the stairs standing in for the kaisando, and two tatamis were removed in the Buddha Hall so she could drive straight in, as she has in the zendo. Everyone was in chairs, and the preceptor's table was on the other side of the altar from its usual position, but I think the only real consequence was that I was shooting against the light during the ceremony. There was a nice crowd from the greater sangha, with quite a few faces I recognised from Hartford Street.
It was Jana's first time as the lead preceptor, and she was closely involved in all the details, and came and had a silent lunch with the ordinands as well. Since Blanche was the other preceptor, I mostly let them organise the rehearsal while I got on with the things that I would usually leave to the head chiden, who is away at the moment.
 Jana had also given a great talk in the morning - a suitably rousing one for our new year crowd, which was certainly bigger than most Saturdays with a big overflow into the dining room. It may be the first time that broad Scots has been used as a way to get us to circumvent the thinking mind...

Albert

Ben

Mira

Paul

Shindo's feet

Jana, Blanche and the new bodhisattvas

The whole group

Rituals

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

Getting Together

My schedule has felt quite full this week, but since the events on it have included two meals out with Zen Center people, catching up with the latest English football in my down-time, and getting some bodywork from a friend before afternoon zazen today, I can scarcely feel hard done by. Yesterday was a long day, though, with the second annual Zen Center get-together at Fort Mason. I was going to call this post 57 varieties, as that was the number of people I counted in the circle during the first part of the day; as was pointed out, we are all, in our own unique ways of expressing the dharma, Zen Center, and it was acknowledged that the fact the organisation exists at all, fifty years after incorporation, is a bit of a miracle.
As I said last year, a lot of the power of the day is simply in the coming together: we get to hang out with old friends and hug lots of people, as well as hearing about each other's experiences, as we explore the themes that are pertinent to us as an organisation. I did start to sag before the end, though I was lifted again when I got outside to see a most spectacular sunset over the Presidio; I had, alas, just entrusted my camera and other belongings to someone else to take back to City Center while I rode my bike unencumbered, so it was just to be appreciated in the moment.
I had wanted to bring up at some stage during the day the fact that last year's meeting had been the place where the idea for Young Urban Zen had first been mooted: Anne-Marie actually beat me to it, but I did get a chance to outline the success and progress of the group for those at Green Gulch and Tassajara who haven't heard so much about it. It was timely then, that this week we have launched from the main group a couple of study groups for those who want to go a little deeper. Peter is shepherding a group on Tuesday evenings, and Tim and I got to hang out with a few of the YUZ core this morning after breakfast. It was a great opportunity, as the group often is, to expand a little on some of the things I have learned over the years, and hopefully, we are setting the stage for the strong continuation of Zen Center for the next couple of generations.

For those who don't know Fort Mason, it comes with impressive views

Looking the other way to the city and the other bridge

It was a beautiful day - these clouds contributed to the later sunset

Looking across to Angel Island

Back on Seat

The alarm clock was a bit of a shock this morning, even though I have been waking up early some mornings recently. I was perhaps even more shocked to come down the stairs with Abbot Steve, and find six people already in the zendo - usually there is just Joan and maybe one other person. So at least some people were raring to go in the new year. We had an evening out with people from Young Urban Zen last night, which may have contributed to my sluggish feeling.
Most of the morning was spent tidying up my office, which was full of detritus from the the New Year celebrations, and then trying to get up and running and make sure lots of little things get taken care of. We have the Suzuki Roshi memorials, then a second Zen Center meeting tomorrow, and a jukai on Saturday, the Full Moon Ceremony on Monday, as well as a very fluid doanryo right now. Fingers crossed it all happens...

I haven't said much about stats for a while, but the search words are always illuminating: "highway 190" was one from today, presumably that person saw some of my holiday pictures; "dharma transition" is a new ceremonial activity we should check in the Gyoji Kihan for - though we did have a dharma transmission here over Christmas; "tassajara monastery restaurant" and "my first dokusan" both made me chuckle, and "how did israelites go to the bathroom 'robes off'" somewhat boggles the mind - I doubt that person found the answer here..
I was also interested to note the international numbers today - the four I's (only Iceland missing I think). Hello to you wherever you are.

United States 105
Australia 2
Russia 2
Canada 1
United Kingdom 1
Ireland 1
Israel 1
India 1
Italy 1

Ring In The New

There seems to be a consensus in the building that we did a good job bringing in the New Year here, and also that it will be a good year. It was certainly a beautiful day in San Francisco, and when I went out for a brief ride around the city, there were a lot of people out and about enjoying the weather.
It is always hard to start an event at a time when most of us are usually thinking about bed; even after resting for a part of the afternoon, I had a headache for most of the evening, but I knew - and it transpired this way - that once we got into the activities, I would find the energy to keep going. There was a huge crowd at the work meeting, and over the course of the evening I burned through the whole range of emotions from 'Who are all these people, and why do we not see most of them at any other time of year?' to 'It is so wonderful that they want to be here with us, and are working so hard to help us get the temple clean'.
I didn't get to clean anything, but was running around making sure everything was prepared for the later parts of the schedule and for the morning, and with a lot of help from Daigan and Konin, it was. I made sure I was in the zendo promptly after the serving of noodles, and was soon faced with a crowd eager to come and sit. So much so, in fact, that many of the residents were caught out, and, arriving after the first roll-down, found the only spaces left were in the gaitan. Before the second roll-down I had to send Daigan to fetch the extra zabutons and zafus from the library to put in the hallway by the dorm, which meant we must have had a hundred people sitting zazen. Almost all of them wanted to take a turn on the bell as well; it is just as well we ring it 108 times. I stayed in the zendo and listened to the individuality of each strike, as well as the slightly inebriated and increasingly desperate conversations that people were having out on the street as midnight approached (one guy, presumably on the phone, after having listed any number of local bars:"Duuude, you are totally letting us down here...").
For the first time I can remember, we didn't have the countdown from our neighbors in Lily Alley; the densho ended, and for a minute or so there was a kind of stillness before the fireworks all got ignited and the whooping and hollering started. I was moved just to sit there and take that in, before the sitting was ended and we went up for the bonfire.
Happily this year, there was less to burn, and it went pretty crisply; I may have got to bed around one, but didn't sleep so much between the sirens, the loud revellers passing by at four, and the sun streaming in at seven thirty. This did mean I had time to clear up the remnants of the fire, try to make the ceremonial mochi offering look a little less haphazard, and set up the altar on the roof before I rang the wake-up bell. I think it was a year ago that I observed that I enjoy doing this provided I am not in my robes and we are not running behind on our usual timings. It seemed that everyone was up already, but I liked the ceremonial aspect of it.
Rosalie had decided to go to town for the procession, so we included a few extra altars, heading from the Buddha Hall outside and around the corner to the zendo, where I again got to say some encouraging words, the office, the bookstore, the hallway altar, the kitchen, the dining room, the kaisando, the second floor bathroom and the roof, so by the time we had done all our bows, made our statements, filled our glasses and offered a series of toasts, it was already ten o'clock, and I was ready for breakfast and coffee and to get out for a ride.

The fire, from the kaisando window. Note the persimmons drying in the background

The altar on the roof in the early sun