I'm just going to the zendo...

I've been appreciating Zenkei Blanche Hartman's presence and leadership in this practice period more and more, as I mentioned previously. She has been going to nearly every period of evening zazen, and it is so encouraging! The residential Sangha at City Center are not necessarily expected to go to evening zazen- it is considered an optional thing- so it is sometimes hard to get people to go when they feel like they "don't have to" (whatever that means). I saw Blanche in the hallway up here in the evening before zazen in her robes, and I asked her, "Oh, are you the Doshi?" (officiating priest). And she just gazed at me quite compassionately for a half a second, and then said, "I'm just going to the zendo..." Ha! What a teaching. Here is a picture of Zenkei Roshi with one of her disciples, Lien Shutt. Lien is our regular Tuesday evening Doshi here, and a dear friend.

Jukai at Green Gulch Farm

I like any excuse to go to Green Dragon Temple in West Marin, it is such a beautiful place to be. We are so blessed in the Bay Area to be able to leave a heavily built up urban area, and in such a short space of time be in farmland and wilderness. After writing the last blog entry last Sunday a few of us headed over to Green Gulch Farm for a beautiful Jukai, a Bodhisattva Initiation ceremony. The preceptor was Senior Dharma Teacher Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts, and the ordinees were Patricia Sullivan, Jeff Kennedy, Devin Patel, Sarah Weintraub and Leilani Monfort. The ceremony was very lovely, and it had that quality of Men Mitsu No Kafu, loosely translated "Paying careful attention to the details of our Ancestral Way", that Linda Ruth brings to everything she does. I do love that Green Dragon Temple zendo, I always feel so welcomed there. I had a great view of the proceedings from the tan in the back. As the solemn tones of the O-Bonsho carressed my eardrums, I took the opportunity to reflect how grateful I am for this practice. Sorry to relate I got there late for the picture-taking, and too bad too, because the Autumn light was intense. Here are Rev. Steve Weintraub (Sarah's pop!), Patricia Sullivan (who appears to be memorizing her new name), Rev. Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts (Sarah's mom!), and her Jisha Rev. Tova Green, Linda Ruth's close disciple and the first person that Linda Ruth ordained as a priest, walking away from the photo opp to join all the well-wishers at the reception. It was particularly special that Tova was Linda Ruth's Jisha in the ceremony, as Jeff is a student of Tova's!


And here are Leilani and Sarah sporting Buddha's Robe in the aforementioned intense light! ("Intense Light" could maybe be a Dharma name?)


And here just for the heck of it is a picture of Sara Tashker talking to Arlene Lueck.


Best wishes to all the newly minted Bodhisattvas!!!

What? Me Blog?

I feel like the Universe is trying to tell me to get with it with this here blog. For one thing, directly as a result of writing this blog and sharing how much I enjoy officiating weddings, I will be doing two more before the year is out! I call that encouragement to keep blogging. Also, the Universe in the form of ZC Corporate Secretary and Website Manager, Dana Velden, emailed me; "We're going to be redoing the Community Page so that our blog roll is the first thing you see and is accessible to everyone. So I just want to encourage you to keep blogging!" I call that encouragement. Too bad she sent me that e-mail about two months ago! Ulp.

*****

So I'm a Content Provider. I get it. I decided I just needed to shift my point of view a little and start considering this as part of my Ino responsibilities. Of which there are many. So here I am on a sunny Sunday afternoon just hunting and pecking away. It isn't as though I'm lacking for anything to blog about, far from it! The problem is that all that stuff is keeping me from having the leisure to blog about any of it!
Here in City Center we're in the midst of an amazing Practice Period being led by Zenkei Blanche Hartman and Shokan Jordan Thorn, with the able assistance of Shuso (Head Student) Joan Amaral, who has brought a special pizzazz to our practice life here these days. I certainly might have blogged about the death of beloved student Gi Yu Myo Shin (Loyal Friend, Luminous Heart) Michael Steingraber, and subsequent three ceremonies, the witnessed cremation, funeral, and ashes interment ceremony. I talked about it in this Dharma Talk here. The funeral was officiated by Zenkei Blanche Hartman, and that made it so special for me. She put a lot of thought into it, and it was a real joy to work with her on crafting the ceremony.
I find myself having more and more appreciation for Zenkei Roshi as this Practice Period goes on. I am very priveleged to have an office across the hallway from hers, so I see a lot of her. In fact she just now cruised by, idly wondering what I was doing in here on a Sunday afternoon, and I told her I was writing about her. Yesterday we had a one-day sitting here that was particularly joyful for me. Rev. Steve Weintraub gave the talk in the morning, which he is calling "The Luncheonette Business" wherein he shared some of his recollections of Suzuki Roshi, and it was mighty sweet. But the culmination of the day was a Shosan ceremony, a Dharma Inquiry event with Zenkei Roshi wherein every one in the sitting asked her a question publicly, one by one, and she responded to them all with grace and aplomb, certainly, but above all with great warmth and love. And people responded to her in kind, opening up and showing their true hearts with their questions, including some very painful places in some cases. Big sigh. It was so beautiful.

*****

Another thing that made yesterday very joyful for me was to see our cherished Dharma Sister and Saturday Sangha member Michelle King walking into the building under her own speed! Wow! Michelle was in a horrendous automobile accident (she was walking, the car that hit her was not) last July 31st, and has been working hard on rehab ever since, and it has paid off big time! Here is a picture of Michelle practicing on our bells in the Buddha Hall taken on October 3.


(Insert pun here, related to Beatles song of your choice, hem-hem..)

Continuous Practice

Greetings from the Mothership! I just got back from sitting the 5 day June sesshin at Berkeley Zen Center, I believe my 7th consecutive. I always try to sit that one; it is the one that concludes the practice period at Berkeley, and so we always finish with a Shuso ceremony, in this case featuring our Shuso Rev. Dr. Ryushin Andrea Thach. She was awesome, of course. Berkeley Zen Center is my home temple, so I have warm feelings about the place, always. And of course my teacher is Sojun Mel Weitsman, Roshi, the Abbot there. For the last three days of the sesshin I was Sojun's jisha, so I was in a total bliss realm.

*****

When I resumed my duties as Ino today, a few people remarked that I had just finished a three day sesshin on June 14th, before starting a five day, using my vacation time, on the 17th! To me that felt like a very natural and appropriate thing to do. For starters I was coordinating the three day here, while I was merely a willing participant at Berkeley. Don't get me wrong - it takes everybody's unified effort to make a sesshin happen, but I was noticing how hard the BZC sesshin director, Tamar Enoch, was working, and feeling a lot of empathy for her! And then, let me just come right out and say it: I'm a religious zealot! Okay I acknowledge that the word "zealot" has a lot of negative connotation for a lot of people, particularly when combined with the word "religious"! But I merely mean that I, like a lot of my friends in the Dharma, have a lot of zeal for practice! Zeal, meaning Diligent Enthusiasm. Those two words go great together, I think. Diligent. Enthusiasm. That's what Zen practice is asking of us.

*****

The best thing for this monk was returning to the City Center zendo this morning after finishing the sesshin the day before. I recall having this conversation with Sojun years ago, where he emphasized that taking a break from practice (whatever that means) right after finishing a sesshin is a silly thing to do. The thing to do is continue! Take advantage of the momentum you've gained in sesshin and deepen your practice! During one of Sojun's Dharma Talks, he shared these words from Kodo Sawaki Roshi with us: "Being glared at by zazen, being scolded by zazen, being obstructed by zazen, being pulled around by zazen -- weeping our whole life away; this has got to be the happiest way of life." I could not agree more.

No Crocodiles in our Zendo - Guaranteed!

I ran into Tim O'Connor today and he asked me if any posts were forthcoming and I felt kind of bad because, well, what's the use of having a blog that doesn't get posted to? Linda and I taught our first class that we're co-leading last night: Not one, Not Two: Relationships as a Field of Liberation, and we felt like it went extremely well. Off to a great start and to our amazement 22 people showed up. Tomorrow I'm giving the Wednesday night Dharma Talk here at City Center, so it isn't like I'm twiddling my thumbs not bothering to blog. Our Practice Period led by our Tanto, Rev. Jordan Thorn, is off to a great start! Participation in the schedule is marked by high energy and enthusiasm, and people are making new spiritual companions left and right!

*****

I just wanted to take this opportunity to clear something up: there are NO crocodiles in the City Center zendo, nor have there ever been! Our zendo has been 100% crocodile free since 1969!

I'm just saying.

"That's the point."

This evening at zazen time Jim Shalkham was on door watch duty when a young couple who had never been here before came in the Laguna St. door in search of a meditation experience. One of them told Jim she would prefer to have a guided meditation if we offered that, and Jim informed her that we do not. She said she didn't think she could practice just sitting, that her mind was too busy, and Jim said, "That's the point. That's why we sit."

Leave Home

Mission accomplished! There they are, from left to right: The Reverends Trevor Maloney, Steven Davidowitz and Shundo David Haye. This lovely photograph was taken by our official photographer for the event, Catherine McPhee. Thanks Catherine! Thanks everybody who helped with the ceremony and reception! Thank you ordaining teachers! Thank you sewing teachers! Thank you lineage of Buddhas and Ancestors! What a lovely day it was last Saturday. What a lovely ceremony.

Here's a shot of our Abbot Ryushin Zendo Paul Haller shaving the head of his disciple Shundo. The woman holding the shaving gear so carefully is Lucy Xiao, Paul's attendant. Our sources tell us that Lucy is sewing an okesa now, and she'll probably be the next to ordain. Also spotted in the assembly were Steph Wenderski, Thiemo Blank and Bryan Clark from Green Gulch Farm, who will soon be ordaining with Tenshin Zenki Reb Anderson. It makes me so happy, and fills me with so much school spirit, to think about how San Francisco Zen Center is doing our part to help address the world-wide shortage of Zen Buddhist priests. Not that I think everybody should ordain! Far from it. I'm also very proud of Zen Center for never forgetting to support the path of the lay practitioner, and I'm mighty fond of our lay teachers like Leslie James, Ed Sattizahn and Laura Burges. But I guess because I'm a priest myself I just love this ceremony and this career path.

The Rev. Dr. Linda Galijan has often told me that clergy usually rank highest in career satisfaction surveys by category. Just check out this excerpt from a University of Chicago website that I found after about 30 seconds:

Across all occupations, on average, 47 percent of people said they were very satisfied with their jobs and 33 percent said they were very happy. The top three jobs for satisfaction were clergy (87 percent reporting being very satisfied), firefighters (80 percent) and physical therapists (78 percent). Other top jobs, in which more than 60 percent of the respondents said they were very satisfied were education administrators, painters and sculpters, teachers, authors, psychologists, special education teachers, operating engineers, office supervisors and security and financial services salespersons.

Rev. Cynthia Lindner, Director of Ministry Studies at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, isn’t surprised by the finding. “Persons engaged in ministry have great opportunity to live and work out of their deepest convictions, oftentimes in the midst of communities of faith who share their concern for meaning, compassion and justice,” she said. “This congruence of belief, values, and actions in one’s daily work can be immensely satisfying.”

We beat firefighters! Whoo-hoo!!!