The Ino's Blog

Stepping Up

2012-02-12T21:56:00.000-08:00

I was wondering how I could describe the Mountain Seat to people back in England, and what came to mind was: well it's a little less fuss than a coronation.
Having woken up this morning at the usual time, I went downstairs to find the tenzo already making breakfast and the shika going to sit zazen. I managed to get the last instructions typed up before the umpan rang, then when it got light, went out to stretch my legs with a quick hour on my bike, taking in the sunrise over the Bay, the moon high over Coit Tower, cherry blossoms in the Marina and fog enveloping Mount Sutro. And then to work.
Since we had done so much preparation yesterday, the transformation to today's set-up took less time than anticipated, and the things I thought I was going to be running round trying to take care of at the last minute were being done well before lunch. There was a lovely atmosphere in the building; everyone was working positively with little stress - even the kitchen seemed relaxed when I passed through. With the chairs we had rented, we had more seats than we had planned for, which was a good state to be in - I think we ended up with space for 170 people in the Buddha Hall.
And then the dignitaries and guests started pouring in, and it was time to get dressed up. I felt like I had my finger on the ignition switch, as I went up to the Angesho tea in the Conference Center to ask the Shinmei, Christina, if she was ready for the densho to begin, and then we started getting everyone into their seats. Up and down the street a few more times, to check on readiness, and then it was really happening.
I had already been excited, when I looked over the ceremony for the first time, maybe three months ago, that I was going to lead the Shinmei in a jundo around the zendo. Hoitsu added to that in the rehearsal by indicating that the Shinmei should bow with the ino afterwards, which wasn't as previously scripted. It was the first of several lovely moments I got to share with Christina, not just prostrating in unison, but also the huge warm smile on her face when our zagus were folded up and we bowed again to each other.
In the Buddha Hall I had an unparalleled view of proceedings, but I enjoyed the backstage moments more: after the Jiden ceremony, where the documents are signed and stamped behind closed doors, and everyone else stretches their legs, I was invited into the dokusan room so that the new Abbess could check over the rest of the script; again, she was smiling and saying she was having fun. The jishas were also borrowing the script as they tried to remember their movements for the second part. And when all were happy, I signalled the shoten to get us underway again.
Now there were several times in all the complicated choreography where things did not go as scripted. On one occasion, one of the Japanese dignitaries was muttering instructions to the Ryoban quite loudly, though it didn't make any difference, and one key step got skipped over, though when we alerted Christina, she very simply said, oh, I should be there not here, and we went back to where we should have been. As everyone said afterwards, these are the things that make the ceremony real and human - indeed one of the sweetest moments was during the Robe Chant, which the Abbess was supposed to do unaccompanied, but hearing everyone join in for the second and third time was very moving. What was most abundant through it all was the sense of mutual support and great love.

Christina talks to Hoitsu at the Angesho tea

Flower girl and photographer waiting for the off

Processing down the street

Couldn't get all the procession in one picture

At the gate

Shujo Jisha holds the staff

Ryoban mudras

Robe Chant

Statement of support from Daigaku

I think there was some Swiss-German humour happening here

Mondo

Abbess and Honshi Reb

Abbess and Hoitsu

Marsha got the last word

Stepping Down

2012-02-11T21:53:00.000-08:00

There were times during today's ceremony when I could sense that Paul was actually moved. Not that he would admit it of course; on Wednesday, before the Full Moon Ceremony, I tried him out with, "So this is your last hurrah, then?", and he replied with some gently amused scorn along the lines of "Get on with you". And he responded to a parade of fulsome statements of appreciation from his teachers, peers, colleagues, students and his daughter with some classic trans-Atlantic self-deprecation. But I think he was really touched.
It felt like a smooth day. We had a wonderful opportunity to hear Hoitsu Roshi speak, funny and clear even through a translator, and so very solid as well. I could tell the work leader was getting impatient that we went way past the alloted time, but nobody, least of all me, is going to ask Hoitsu to wrap it up so we can get on with work.
When we did, it was a bit of a whirl for a few hours. I was glad that I had given myself the task of picking up the monju from Benkyodo - apart from my trip to Rainbow, it is the first time I have left the building in a week. And it was lovely out there. But then there was a ceremony to do, and I had to spend some time looking over the script to get this one in my head, since the Stepping Up has taken so much attention. I didn't get to join the okesa receiving ceremony with most of his students in the dokusan room before we got underway, but that was okay.
Instead I got to stand in the entrance to the zendo hearing the inkins get closer on the procession while the densho also sounded, then bow to Paul, lead him into the zendo to offer incense and bow, then take him on a final jundo as Abbot, and lead him up to the Buddha Hall. Now that was something. And it flowed from there, hearing him express his gratitude before he stepped off the mountain, then a five-person food offering and the Heart Sutra, taking my time over the dedication, and sitting back listening to the praises being sung - while taking some pictures of course.
There was a great dinner afterwards, the dining room full of chat and colour, but I didn't stay so long, for all that there were lovely people from all over the world to say hello to. Saving a bit of energy for the rest of the weekend.

This was completely filled later

Altar with tangerines and monju

Paul on the Mountain

Mel addresses Paul


Paul and Audrey

Paul in the chair


Bowing out

Unexpected Rain

2012-02-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

A big day with many wonderful moments. A beautiful cloudy sunrise that turned into light rain by the time we started work. Two synchronicities that made me happy: first when Susan as kokyo turned towards me during the Diamond Sutra as she had noticed that we were chanting the exact same passage in unintended unison; then, as I knuckled down to a morning of work, finishing up a program for the Stepping Down Ceremony just as Steve emailed me to ask about it. Having orchids, loaned by someone setting up a nursery, all over the building in delicate bright colours. The doshi for noon service signing for a package from the UPS man right before bowing with the jiko and starting the ceremony. Catching a glimpse of Hoitsu sitting at the table by the door of the dokusan room and writing kanji on brush paintings with such practised ease. Getting to witness his lesson in how to flick the whisk from side to side before prostrating, as we rehearsed the zendo part of the Stepping Up. Three hours of rehearsals, and still a moment to breathe before going to zazen. The first appearance in the city of Shogen and Jamie's new baby, Rio, in the middle of a dinner already full of joyful meetings and reunions. Getting to shave my head in a long bath when I had finished work in the evening, knowing that most of the things I had to do were under control.

Approaching The Mountain

2012-02-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

I realise that I run the risk of boring the many of you who might not be so engrossed in the intricacies of setting up for the Mountain Seat Ceremony, but it is the big story round these parts this week. And yesterday was a good day. The rehearsals happened in more or less the right time frame with almost all of the right people present and paying attention; in fact I had more than half an hour to spare before evening zazen this time. Even better, having figured out an elegant solution to an audio problem that I hadn't realised we needed to deal with, which had been causing me headaches on Wednesday, and finding that it actually worked, I went off to sit feeling pretty relaxed. As a result of that, I had a flash of inspiration as to how to write out the script for all the instruments relatively painlessly, so I was motivated to go and do that after dinner when I had fewer distractions in the ino's office - though there were still a number of visitors - and then, having despaired for a couple of weeks at the state of the office, and being embarrassed that our arriving dignitaries might see it in that state, I gave it a serious clean as well, which felt good. I was thinking of cutting and pasting the finished script here, but I thought people's eyes would really start to glaze over. Happily, this kind of thing is meat and drink to me.
During the Ryoban rehearsal in the afternoon, I was reminded that while I have been quite immersed in the details of the ceremony, fourteen of Zen Center's finest were either coming to this completely fresh, or doing it for the first time in five years. There are a lot of sequences and movements, and I can't imagine people will retain all the information. We will put all the elements together this afternoon, and see how it looks, and then it might be 'all systems go' for the weekend.
The building is certainly filling up, with Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, his wife, Chitose, his jisha and translator, and a younger monk arriving yesterday, an interesting counterpoint to Christina's four sisters from Switzerland who have been here for a couple of days. We are doing our best to make them all feel welcome, even as we negotiate our way around some of the transformations in the building, not least the mountain seat itself which has been installed in the Buddha Hall, and causes a few adjustments in our service manoeuvres. It's a good time for flexible mind.

The Ryoban wait on the stairs during the rehearsal

Brief Notes

2012-02-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

Someone reminded us at work meeting the other day that, although there is an enormous amount of work to do for the Mountain Seat, we should not forget to regard it as an amazing occasion where we all got to pull together to make it happen. Right now I am trying to hold both sides...
It feels like this week mostly involves meetings and rehearsals. On Monday, having failed to get to it last week, I sequestered myself in my room and reviewed all the 2007 footage again, rewriting parts of the script as I did so; having done so I felt much more on top of things. We had another huge Young Urban Zen meeting in the evening, where we introduced a passage from Dogen's Tenzokyokun, which seemed to go down pretty well, and I came away feeling enlivened as so often happens.
Tuesday started with Bodhidharma's birthday ceremony, then I worked on the myriad other things in the morning; after lunch was two hours of Practice Committee, straight into an hour and three quarters of script review with Abbot Steve, from which it was straight to the zendo, and then after dinner I made adjustments to the script, then it was pretty much bath and bed.
Yesterday, two hours of staff meeting, then two hours of rehearsal with the jishas after lunch. I made a sortie to Rainbow so that I don't run out of toothpaste or chocolate before Monday, onto zazen, where my head was full of details, then the Full Moon Ceremony after dinner. I had missed the rehearsal for this, but trusted Konin and Djinn to know what they were doing. I confess that I tuned out in parts of the ceremony and was going over things I needed to remember for the next few days...
Today, after the Young Urban Zen study group, which has been an uplifting addition to my calendar these last few weeks, there is a rehearsal in the morning for Paul's Stepping Down Ceremony, which I have been rather neglecting so far, and for the Ryoban in the afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon will be a full-on dress rehearsal, or flow rehearsal as we call it, as it is about getting the movements in your body. Then the usual Saturday morning program, an afternoon of setting up, the Stepping Down, dinner, and then Sunday will be more setting up and then Stepping Up.
It might sound like a lot, but I am grateful to know how many details other people are taking care of as well - things occur to me and someone else has already done it, or not forgotten that they are going to do it. We are all pulling together to make it happen.

I was glad to come upstairs after dinner in time to catch this

Study Hall - Extensive Record

2012-02-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

Dharma Hall Discourse 217: "I can remember, Yunmen asked Caoshan, 'Why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy?' Caoshan said, 'Just because it is greatly intimate, we do not know it is there'.
Suppose this were Eihei and someone asked me, 'Why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy?' I would just hit his face with my whisk and ask him, 'Is this knowing or not knowing?' If he tried to answer, I would hit him again with the whisk".

Hazy sunshine this morning after the rain has moved on

Bodhidharma's Wake-Up Sermon

2012-02-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

We only get to chant this once a year, at Bodhidharma's birthday ceremony, but it is a stirring piece of work.
Since I don't have much time to compose anything today, here is the last paragraph:

Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist. The mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist is called the Middle Way.

Universal Recommendation

2012-02-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

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

Supposeone gains pride of understanding and inflates one's ownenlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs throughall things, attaining the Way and clarifying the Mind,raising an aspiration to escalade the very sky. One ismaking the initial, partial excursions about thefrontiers but is still somewhat deficient in the vitalWay of total emancipation.

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

Full Steam Ahead

2012-02-03T08:40:00.000-08:00

As far as I remember, today is my third ino birthday, and I have every reason to assert that it will be my last, for all that I don't know when my term will actually be over, or what I will be doing next. I have tried not to get too busy this week, and I took the afternoon off yesterday between lunch and zazen for some serious relaxation, as I know that the seven days starting next Monday are likely to be full-on crazy, and even with a day off on the Monday after, things will not really slow down that much.
I had the deluded idea this week that I would be able to put other things aside and just devote my attention to the Mountain Seat, but that really hasn't happened yet. The practice period is mostly launched now - people are in their doan jobs, we have done several rounds of noon service training - but there have been other things taking time these past few days: organising new protocols to send out to various groups of people in an attempt to cut back on our incense use for those with sensitivities; sending out invitations to tangaryo, which will be the week after the Mountain Seat; working out with the other resident leaders what response to have to the embarrassment of riches we are currently experiencing with Young Urban Zen, where bumper attendance levels are now making the conference center a bit of a squeeze; not to mention the usual rounds of meetings and floods of emails; and we have to fit in a few ceremonies before next weekend as well: Suzuki Roshi memorials tonight and tomorrow, the Bodhidharma ceremony on Tuesday morning, the Full Moon ceremony on Wednesday night, for both of which rehearsals need to be scheduled before we embark on the many Mountain Seat rehearsals; I have also been thinking ahead to Parinirvana, scheduled for the 15th...
So I haven't got completely on top of details for the big day itself - let alone the Stepping Down, which would be big enough in itself - though I did manage a rewrite of the main script after folding details from the 2007 script into the 2003 script I had been basing my ideas on. Now, having reviewed some of that with Steve, and made changes, I need to check this version against the hours of footage, which I will probably do over the weekend so as to have some uninterrupted time. Then we should have a working document with which to conduct rehearsals, after which is confidently predicted that Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi will come and suggest that we do things slightly differently. But then if I have learnt anything as ino, it is that the ceremony will happen, just not exactly as planned.
And then there are moments like going out to hit the umpan to mark breakfast time just as the sun was peeping over the roofs of houses lower down Page St, when it is easy to exhale and say, just another beautiful day.

It is blossom time here - these quince are in an arrangement on the stairs

These are in the courtyard

Meeting People

2012-02-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, as a new practice period student going to afternoon zazen, I remember being struck by how Blanche, who was the abbess in those days, would go round to the end of the gaitan after service, and wait to bow to everyone who came out of the zendo. It was something we read of Suzuki Roshi doing in the early days of Sokoji; it had a profound effect on many of those who came to sit with him then, who felt completely seen and met. I felt the same way at seeing Blanche's kind warm eyes and smile waiting for me to take my place and bow in front of her - such freely offered, abundant love is rarely met.
With the start of the practice period, she has been sitting again most every evening, and heading out to the gaitan to meet people, and these days I am often the first one out to bow with her, which is very sweet.
I was already thinking about writing a few lines about this, when I received this as part of an email conversation yesterday (hoping the person will forgive me for reproducing their words unattributed):
"It has been an overwhelming time at the office lately, which tends to leave me physically drained, emotionally volatile, and generally less available for my non-work life. When I realized Blanche was waiting for me at the end of the gaitan, I about burst into tears from the kindness and patience".
There is nothing more to our practice than this.

Study Hall

2012-02-01T08:28:00.000-08:00

More words on words: "I think if any of us had seen him [Buddha], or heard him talk, it would not have been anything like a lecture as we know it. It was just a simple conversation. It was not the talking that was important but the whole situation he created; it was not because he had achieved such spiritual power and thereby dominated the whole scene, but because he was simply being true - just as any of us could be. Therefore the teaching had been taught before he opened his mouth. That is why we find in the sutras that gods and asuras and all kinds of people from different parts of India attended his talks and saw him and met him, and all could understand him. They did not have to ask him questions, but they automatically received the answers. This is a wonderful example of communication" - Meditation in Action, Chogyam Trungpa.

Intimacy

2012-01-30T08:49:00.000-08:00

People sometimes ask me who my best friends are, and the people who come to mind are Derrick and Heather, both of whom live in London, and whom consequently I have not seen very often in the last twelve years. We all started working at the BBC around the same time, and managed to have all kinds of adventures in various countries - the fact that both of them were working in the States at one time, Derrick in Miami, and Heather in Washington, D.C., was a major factor in me being in San Francisco... but that's another story. I don't think I have given either of them a link to this blog, and Derrick in particular is notoriously bad at being in touch, but I still love him dearly and trust that he still loves me, and if I ever find out where he moved to recently, I expect I shall be staying with him on my next visit to England.
When people ask me who my best friends at Zen Center are, I sometimes think I don't have any. There are a number of people I get on well with, especially the bunch I was hanging out with the other weekend, but often, as I have said before, the nature of friendship at Zen Center seems to be very different. I don't have a group of people I regularly do things like going out for dinner or going to the cinema, though I know there are plenty of people who do these things together. What I do have is a large circle of people I feel more or less intimate with, with whom I know I could have a conversation on just about any topic, should we land in the small kitchen together, or over a meal in the dining room; to whom I know I can turn if I am feeling in need of support and to whom I extend that support when they need it. And I feel especially connected to those people whom I shared time with at Tassajara during practice periods; when my dharma brothers and sisters and dharma peers come to visit, I am always happy to see them, but that might be the only thing expressed between us. Our connection has mostly been forged on a non-verbal level, and often manifests in that way.
Around my friends in London, because they are quite removed from the life I live now, I tend to revert to the kind of person I was when I was around them before - though hopefully without losing my mindfulness. I think this perpetuation of dynamics is inevitable to a certain extent, in the way that we always become children again when we are around our parents, no matter how old we get and how the relationship has transformed over the years. They don't especially want to hear about Dogen, and I am not as interested in telling them, as I am in enjoying the things we still have in common, which of course in England often involves alcohol.
So this is by way of a response to Mike's comment, "I am wondering what words you may have to say about friendship, particularly long-term friendships that are being tested by time, distance, and unspoken expectations. I have been probing my mind concerning this topic and it appears as a single cloud in the sky durning zazen". Happily, my long-distance friendships, though they are obviously very different to how they were when we all lived in the same city, do not seem to have suffered much; we can have a steady stream of emails or not much contact at all, and just pick up where we left off. I wonder if the key to this is 'unspoken expectations'. I would trust that a good friend of mine would feel free to voice any expectation or concern, would be ready to hear such as I might have, and that, while wanting the best for them, we have enough flexibility to allow them to be who they are and who they want to be with us.

Enter The Shuso, Enter The Dragon

2012-01-27T08:43:00.000-08:00

So now I am starting on my third round of annual events, beginning with the shuso entering ceremony this morning. There was a full zendo for this, and all the senior people came back down from dokusan and practice discussion during the short service beforehand, so we had a real brown robe log-jam at the doshi door. There were also a few more bows in the ceremony as Konin paid her respects to the two abbots, as well as Blanche and Vicki as the practice period leaders. The exhange between her and Vicki was less scripted than usual, and thus very alive and quite funny.
As with Liping and Lien, Konin is someone I have practised with over the years, though I am not sure I have been at Tassajara when she has been there, since she spent some time in Japan. She brought back with her the kind of lightness of presence that is noticeable in others who have trained there, especially with Sekkei Harada Roshi it seems. I think of her as a true monk, even though she spent many years in the marketplace raising her daughter, and am glad to have her here embodying the practice.
At breakfast the discussion was divided between reflections on the ceremony and looking ahead to tonight's dinner: Lucy and friends have been busy in the kitchen these past few days preparing a Chinese New Year feast. I know we are already into the lunar new year, but this will be our main marker for it here.
In Chinese astrological terms, I was born a dragon, and as arbitrary as it is to slice life in this way, each subsequent year of the dragon has been notable for me: first as the sunniest and most enjoyable summer of my childhood, next as my first full year working in London after leaving college, and then as the year I moved to San Francisco to get married and to take up this practice. I have spoken of my hopes for 2012, and while it has not got off to an entirely auspicious start, I still have big ideas about the next few months...

Fog still burning off after breakfast

More Attitude

2012-01-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

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

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

Study Hall

2012-01-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

"The magic of words has killed many people, and spoiled many sorts of business. Zen students, therefore, never depend on words, and warn each other to escape from the danger of this magic. Silence is their safeguard.
According to Madame Guyon, there are three kinds of silence. She said:

Silence from words is good, because inordinate speaking tends to evil. Silence or rest from desires or passions is still better, because it prompts quickness of spirit. But the best of all is silence from unnecessary and wandering thoughts, because that is essential to internal recollection and because it lays a foundation for a proper regulation and silence in other aspects.

Zen not only admires silence but lives in it. When one lives in silence, one does not recognize silence. Thomas Carlyle admired silence and said:

Looking around on the noisy insanity of the world - words with little meaning, actions with little worth - one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence, higher than all stars; deeper than the Kingdom of Death! It alone is great; all else is small.

A beautiful expression! But he spoke too much, and broke the silence. I rather prefer Cicero, who said that there is not only an art, but an eloquence in silence. He must have experienced the true silence, otherwise he would not have used such a word" - commentary on case thirty-six, from Nyogen Senzaki's Eloquent Silence.

The Seventh Pot

2012-01-21T21:24:00.000-08:00

Having been ino for this long, I have become a bit blasé about one-day sittings, and don't prepare much for them before the Friday. This week I did go out and procure all the necessaries for oryoki sets, and spent time on Thursday scrubbing all the sticky labels off the bowls, spoons and chopsticks, which is perhaps my least favourite ino activity. But it was only on Friday that I had a sense of exactly how big the sitting was going to be. January is always the most popular month, as I have referenced before, and, once we had collated all the lists, we were looking at hosting a hundred people. Well, 104 once we added in the teachers.
I know there have been sittings that big before, but certainly not in my time as ino. We filled every seat in the zendo, and the floor, and I had a lot of residents sitting in the gaitan. Nadia made sure we had extra seats in the hall as we did for New Year, which were certainly occupied for the 9:25 sitting. So Friday was another fifteen hour day making sure everything was done on the logistical front, and happily I think the initial sticker shock was the worst part of it.
There were some interludes to the preparations - among our new residents, Alison duly arrived from London bearing a packet of Tunnock's as well as some English newspapers, which I hope to have time to read one of these days. I can report that the tea cakes are quite as I remembered. I was very happy to be able to give a couple to Jana, ahead of Burns' night, and she was thrilled to see some of her native foodstuffs again. I was also able to return at least some of the kindness of two of my regular chocolate donors.
On the more sombre side of things, we also commemorated the one-year anniversary of Lou's death: we ended evening zazen early, and came up to the Buddha Hall. It was full with old friends and residents, and people here for the practice period and the sitting. A number of us spoke to Lou first, remembering his great practice and not forgetting his crotchedy side, then we chanted the Dai Hi Shin Dharani, before offering incense at the end.

Today was much more relaxed than I had been imagining it might be. There was a bit of shoe-horning going on, especially in the Buddha Hall for service, and for meals. The residents who ended up in the gaitan didn't seem to mind being asked to forgo oryoki today, and amazingly we got through breakfast only five minutes behind schedule thanks to some classy serving, and the introduction of an unprecedented seventh pot for serving. Most importantly, the tenzo had prepared enough food for everyone. I counted seventy-five people eating lunch, all the upper and lower tans, and ten people on the floor as well. At dinner Blanche said she hasn't seen so many in the zendo since 1971, though I think she might have been exaggerating a mite. As always, once we got into the afternoon session, I didn't really have anything to take care of, so I could settle into some sitting - the middle forty minute period seemed remarkably short; I must have been having a good time.

And finally, the weather report. Those of you close to here will know that it has not rained since Thanksgiving, which is great for bike rides and being outdoors generally, but not so good for other, interconnected parts of our lives. Yesterday morning as we were sitting, the rain fell heavily, and I felt the kind of relief that you used to be able to feel palpably in the zendo at Tassajara when the first rain of the winter could be heard sweeping along the valley before landing noisily on the zendo roof. Certainly I was glad yesterday that I didn't have to go anywhere at all; by the end of the evening it was quite squally. Today started wet as well, then mostly cleared up with that blustery freshness. I am prepared to get wet on my ride tomorrow.

The thing itself, attempting to recreate the angle shown on the card I received

P.S. I see from the stats that someone has been looking for 'shundo zen'. Perhaps if they find any, they can let me know.

Study Hall

2012-01-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Thursday morning Young Urban Zen study group that I am attending has decided to look at the six paramitas, and yesterday we were reading from Meditation in Action by Chogyam Trungpa. We had one less copy of the book than there were people in the room, so I was mostly just listening as we read aloud, and I had a strong physical reaction to this paragraph:
"Out of his simplicity and awareness the bodhisattva develops selfless warmth. He doesn't even think in terms of his own psychological benefit; he doesn't think, 'I would like to see him not suffering'.'I' does not come into it at all. He speaks and thinks and acts spontanteously, not thinking even in terms of helping, or fulfilling any particular purpose. He does not act on 'religious' or 'charitable' grounds at all. He just acts according to the true, present moment, through which he develops a kind of warmth. And there is a great warmth in this awareness and also great creativity. His actions are not limited by anything, and all sorts of creative impulses just arise in him and are somehow exactly right for that particular moment. Things just happen and he simply sails through them, so there is a continual, tremendous creativity in him. This is the real act of karuna - a Sanskrit word which means 'noble heart' or 'compassionate heart'. So in this case compassion does not refer to kindness alone, but to fundamental compassion, selfless compassion. He is not really aware of himself, so compassion has greater scope to expand and develop, because here there is no radiator but only radiation. And when only this radiation exists, without a radiator, it could go on and on and on, and the energy would never be used up. It is always transormed and as it expands further and further it changes always into something else, into a new creative activity, so it goes continuously on and on. This creative transformation is not merely a theoretical or philosophical concept, but actually takes place in a practical sense, sometimes in a very simple way".
We noted, as we discussed it, the caveat that Trungpa's life offers some examples of this that we might not choose to follow ourselves, and that creativity is not the same as complete license.

Unplugged

2012-01-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

It may be obvious that I am not participating in the great internet blackout today, but we had a little moment of our own at Zen Center this morning: right before work meeting started, I noticed first that I couldn't start up the ino's computer, and then that the lights were all out. I haven't heard yet what happened - and the power was back on within the hour - but when work meeting was over, I noticed how relaxed I felt not to be logging in and starting to deal with emails. Instead I went down to the basement, navigating by the emergency lights, distributed some new zafus and zabutons, and tidied up the candles in the chiden area, the kind of thing I usually feel I don't have time to get to. It felt great, especially for a Wednesday when I am usually trying to get a handful of things done before staff meeting begins. Perhaps I should start every work day like that...

The emergency lighting illuminated the drum very dramatically

Study Hall

2012-01-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

From Eloquent Silence, part of Nyogen Senzaki's commentary on case thirty-two of the Gateless Gate:
"Buddhists in Ceylon think a shaved head is the most important thing in qualifying as a monk. I admire their obedience to the old Buddhist custom. I suppose all the monks in Ceylon look like Ananda, as far as heads are concerned. A monk who wears white hair like Senzaki would not be allowed to enter any monastery in the lands of Theravada Buddhism. I have no attachment to my hair. I would shave off my hair, should I go on a pilgrimage to the southern lands. However, I would ask the monk who guards the gate there to show me the way to the monastery without using words and without the wordless. If he did, I would consider him a disciple of the Buddha even though he is living 2,500 years after Buddha's time. If he did not, I would tell him he is an outsider, even though he sits inside the gate".

The World-Wide Web

2012-01-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

I hadn't intended the last post to be on the merits of tea cakes, Tunnocks or otherwise, as it became with the comments received; it was supposed to be more a sketch of how online friendships with people you have never met can be as warming as those with your closest circle. The theme continues, as I got an email today from a follower of the blog in London who is heading over for the practice period here, and offered to try and find a packet of Tunnocks at Heathrow for me...
I have also been enjoying other kinds of community and friendship over this long weekend. On Saturday night I was over in the East Bay, part of a wonderful group of current and former Zen Center people with a strong trans-Atlantic bias, which makes me a little louder than I often am, especially when you add beautiful weather, pizza and beer into the mix. Walking around the Berkeley Marina as the sun set behind the Golden Gate Bridge was a great reminder of why living here is really not so bad.
The next morning, which was much chillier than it has been of late, I joined the ride to Spirit Rock which was raising money to support Eugene Cash, who is still recovering from his crash at the Buddhist Bike Pilgrimage. There were about thirty-five of us, among them familiar faces from the Pilgrimage and some new people as well, and I think we raised close to $7000 from our various communities - many people at Zen Center were generous in their contributions. Later in the day there was an informal gathering in the lounge to mark Stephen's imminent departure - I won't detail the merits of the food and drink on offer, but Blanche looked in at the noisy group and made a comment about a big sugar rush; I pointed out that people hadn't actually started on the refreshments yet.
Yesterday, as we took an extra day off in honour of Martin Luther King, I spent the day in North Beach, the part of town I stayed in when I first visited San Francisco in 1999, which obviously holds some fond memories for me, catching up with a friend who has been away for a while, before coming back to attend another huge Young Urban Zen gathering. I feel much nourished.

Easy pickings for a photographer

Back at Fort Mason on a walk yesterday

A Painting Of A Tea Cake

2012-01-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

My first job in San Francisco was with a dot-com start-up, back in the summer of 2000, where my audio skills came in handy. In my quieter moments I would spend a bit of time on Napster, almost exclusively - and this was my justification - downloading music that I had on CDs and tapes left behind in England. I grew to appreciate the way it allowed you to browse through other people's collections of music, and would often, if I found something a little esoteric, message the person, and occasionally formed some online friendships. The example that sticks in my mind was when someone started downloading some tracks that I had by the Fire Engines. Now, they were a very obscure Glasgow band from the classic days of Postcard Records in 1980-1, so I assumed I was dealing with someone of my generation from the UK. It turned out instead to be a young woman in Buenas Aires, and that was fun, because one of my regular Napster correspondents was a student in North or South Carolina with a taste for Scott Walker who had mentioned an imminent trip to Buenas Aires. I got the two of them in touch with each other, but never heard in the end if they indeed met up or what came of it.
On Friday, not having a spectacularly happy day, I got a card in the post. It turned out to be my reader from Guernsey, who, it turns out, was only there temporarily (I had noticed the island disappearing from the stats, and wondered if I had somehow scared them off). She also turns out to be an old friend of Sandy in Scotland, who as I recall, only found this blog while searching for something stat-related, and whose blog I continue to enjoy. I hope I won't embarrass her by quoting the opening lines: "I am, by nature, anonymous, a leaf on a tree indistinguishable from, and hidden amongst, billions of other leaves. But sometimes a chance remark from half-way round the world reminds me of my connectedness to the whole tree". The card was a lovely screen-print of a Tunnock's Tea Cake, a delicacy I have not enjoyed for some time. My sombre mood evaporated.
As an old Buddha said, "There is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake".

Study Hall

2012-01-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

From Eloquent Silence, part of Nyogen Senzaki's commentary on case seven of the Gateless Gate: "Now, if Joshu said 'yes' at that moment, the monk would get a conception of Buddha that would be nothing but an inchoate shadow. If the monk were to outlive Joshu and survive to this day, he might study the up-to-date sciences of physiology and psychology. He might thus search for the Buddha within himself, but all in vain, after all. Christians think that the word 'no' is the hardest one to say when facing temptations. Buddhists consider 'yes' the most dangerous word, for it prevents realization".

Immeasurably Deep And Wide

2012-01-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-09T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

"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

2012-01-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

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 - in amongst the big countries, and the four I's (only Iceland missing I think), I currently have a very devoted readership in the Channel Islands, so hello to you in the Bailiwick, whoever you are.

United States 105
Guernsey 5
Australia 2
Russia 2
Canada 1
United Kingdom 1
Ireland 1
Israel 1
India 1
Italy 1

Ring In The New

2012-01-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

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

Taking Stock

2011-12-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season to be reflective, something I am rarely immune from anyway, though the change of year gives us more currency for our thoughts. While I have no complaints about my practice life, and I appreciate how the role that I have has kept me working hard, and helped me stay focused, and while I have really enjoyed getting to be a part of Young Urban Zen this year as a new and fulfilling challenge, other parts of my life have felt barren and unsatisfied in the last couple of years, and I allow this to stop me from feeling completely settled or at peace where I am. I am hoping that 2012 will be different - and I know that an internal shift would be beneficial in this regard, but I haven't been able to find a way to bring this about. Being at Tassajara helps me to see that slowing down and having the ability to appreciate each thing that presents itself is key, so perhaps I just need to work on having this same outlook in the city.
I wish you all a year that is peaceful and harmonious, stable and free from calamity, and may we practise joyfully together with all beings.

Clearer skies this morning

In-between Days

2011-12-30T12:32:00.000-08:00

As I have observed before - and if I am going to continue into a third year of being ino, I am either going to have to be more inventive in what I write about, or trust that people either haven't read or don't remember the older posts - interim is always a spacious time, as I have three extra hours during the day. Admittedly, the last couple of days, I have spent the first of these hours asleep, but I also get to drink coffee and read the papers before breakfast, and yesterday I realised that I did not have to rush to get to Rainbow and back in time for afternoon zazen, but could bike at leisure, and then bathe until the umpan rang for dinner.
There is also the slightly somnolent feel of the building in this week between Christmas and New Year - even with our visitors from Tassajara here - though I have to be careful not to be too lulled by this, as there are many details to take care of for the events tomorrow evening and on the morning of the first, especially since it takes place over the weekend, and we are doing some things differently to the usual. Hopefully I can stay awake past midnight tomorrow - that kind of a thing is quite a stretch for me these days.

Yesterday morning's beautiful skies before breakfast

Less colourful today, but equally misty

In The Mountains Again

2011-12-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

It was Christmas day at the bath-house, and I realised that being at Tassajara is a little like being in sesshin: there is little to distract you, so you pay attention to those things that are around you; since these are mostly natural objects, they reward your attention. I felt deeply rested just from being there and strongly connected to the land I know so well.
The break was certainly everything I wished for - peaceful, quiet, being surrounded by lovely people, with some faces from the past including Amy, Luke, Jessamyn and Sarah. The weather was bright and clear, mornings well below freezing that turned into sunny days, the endless blue sky turning into the dense starry darkness you just don't get in the city. I slept plenty - even until seven thirty once, which only ever happens at Christmas these days - read more than I usually have time for, did some non-strenuous hiking, washed some dishes, cleaned at the bath-house, cooked breakfast, listened to and told stories, watched hawks floating overhead, played with rocks, and did not hurry anywhere.
Of course I took photographs, although I was a little hampered by only taking one memory card down; I had to restrain myself for the last couple of days. Here is a selection, and I will probably post more here later on.

The echo han


Bright sunshine on the sandstone of the Church Creek trail

A picture I have failed to capture well in years gone by

On the women's side of the bath-house

Densho and striker

Never got this view to work before

A little way up the road

On the Church Creek trail

Above the first lookout on the road, looking towards Flag Rock

The walkway from the zendo to the kitchen

New moon over the Three Treasures

A Christmas Tale

2011-12-24T08:37:00.000-08:00

All being well, I will be ensconced at Tassajara by the end of the afternoon. Christmas at Tassajara is a time to cherish, not least because the likelihood of hearing a carol piped over a speaker is zero; it is also just very special to be down there at a time when there are not so many people about and almost nothing is happening apart from some communal cooking and enough work to keep the place functioning.

I have been thinking back to my first Christmas at Tassajara, eight years ago, during my first stint of living there. The trigger for this reminiscence was this, which lives on my altar with other things that also contain much resonance for me:

The card was sent, as you can see, by Amy, who had lived at Tassajara before I arrived, and whom I knew slightly before the adventures of that Christmas.
As I remember it, once the practice period ended, there was the usual mass exodus, leaving probably less than a dozen people in the monastery, and the numbers kept diminishing - eight, four, and I think for most of one day there were just three of us, before we went up to five or six for Christmas itself.
It rained incessantly. This was not a bad thing in itself, as we had warm rooms to retreat to, but I wasn't content to be completely idle. I had decided to try to rebuild a stone wall which I had always thought very shoddily put together, but which it would have been hard to convince anyone to let me work on during normal working hours. This is generally a bad thing to attempt - it would have been easier to pull the whole thing down and start afresh; trying to partially reconstruct it meant I was always working within certain limitations, and I was never happy with the outcome, for all the soggy hours I put into it. At one stage while I was outside, there was apparently an earthquake. I had no idea until someone who had been indoors told me, but Madra, the dog at the time (who has just recently died), certainly knew all about it. A day or two before Christmas, I was down by the creek, throwing stones up the slope of the bank to use in the back-fill when one of them, not larger than my hand, rolled down again. I tried to catch it, but the speed of it knocked my hand down onto another rock, leaving a sharp pain in my ring finger. I could flex it a little, so I was fairly sure it wasn't broken, and the thought that the nearest hospital was more than two hours away over the treacherous road meant I did not get it seen to; to this day the knuckle is swollen, and I have limited flexibility in that finger.
I was also, having been on the shop crew, in charge of supervising the water system and the electricity, which in those days meant getting up early to go and turn on the generator. One morning I was just about to get up when I saw flashlights on the path outside. Knowing how few of us there were, I went to investigate, and it turned out to be some young people from Carmel Valley trying to sneak in to use the baths, as sometimes happened. They were completely bedraggled, and looked totally crestfallen, probably unable to believe their luck to have got so far, and then been turned away just yards from the bathhouse, but I could have told them, if I had been feeling more sympathetic and less territorial, that they would have had a better chance of getting in undetected by monks if they had come at midnight rather than six in the morning.
Happily, the generator behaved itself throughout, but when I went to do the water readings, it appeared that this small number of people had managed to get through three thousand gallons of water. I assumed I must have made a mistake in my calculations, and didn't think more about it, but the next day, the figure repeated itself, so I realised there must be a problem. This was on Christmas Eve; when Amy arrived, just as it was getting dark, I roped her in to doing a complete tour of the cabins to see if there was a toilet running or a tap left on. We came up empty-handed.
If it had been dry, it would have been easy to see if the water main had cracked somewhere, but everywhere the ground was completely water-logged from so much rain. I had a sudden idea though - a few days before, a couple of residents had backed one of the vehicles up to the door of the courtyard cabins to load up their stuff. I knew, from having had to crawl underneath those cabins during the summer to fix another plumbing problem, exactly where the water main ran, and pacing around the area, I thought I could feel a spongier patch of ground. I stuck a stick in to mark the spot where I thought we would find the break. Amy and I spent much of Christmas morning in the pouring rain digging down to the pipe - I was only about a foot off in my guess - and then she, being an all-round superstar, did the plumbing part (though I had bodged enough pipes by then that I could have probably fixed it if she hadn't been around).
The day ended wonderfully, and more festively: Amy had a Brazilian girlfriend at the time, who not only cooked a delicious dinner for the handful of us, but also played guitar and sang afterwards (a winning combination that Chinh also pulled off a while ago here in the city, with a Vietnamese dinner and some beautiful folk singing). As I remember, Amy also took a turn at the guitar to play some of her punky songs, one of which had the unforgettable refrain "May all beings be happy - except you!"
When she sent the card for the New Year, I wasn't familiar with the phrase on it, but it deeply resonated with me, and I loved the drawing of the monks. That year, 2004, turned out to be momentous for me in many ways, and I had to look long and hard at my devotion to what I loved; in the fall, after several upheavals, I was back at Tassajara, and studying the Lotus Sutra with Linda Ruth. Having found the first few chapters pretty heavy going, I somehow really clicked with chapter sixteen (in the translation we were using), 'The Revelation of the Eternal Life of the Tathagatha', where the phrase comes from, and having been encouraged by Linda Ruth to memorise and recite parts of the sutra, as Buddha himself recommends in the narrative, I chose that chapter, which has been with me ever since - I still recite it to myself as I walk around the city, which gives it, and the walk, and everyone I pass by, a richer flavour.

So that was the Christmas of 2003 for me. I wish you all a peaceful weekend. I suspect I will have stories and photos when I return.

Study Hall

2011-12-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

A final offering from Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness: "I don't know why I am at Tassajara: it is not for you, or for myself, or even for Buddha or Buddhism. I am just here. But when I think I have to leave Tassajara in two or three weeks, I don't feel so good. I don't know why. I don't think it is just because you are my students. I don't have any particular person whom I love so much. I don't know why I have to be here. It is not because I am attached to Tassajara. I'm not expecting anything in the future in terms of a big monastery or Buddhism. But I don't want to live up in the air. I want to be right here. I want to stand on my feet.
The only way to stand on my feet when I am at Tassajara is to sit. That is the reason I am here. To stand on my feet and to sit on my black cushion are the most important things for me. I don't trust anything but my feet and my black cushion. They are my friends always. My feet are always my friend. When I am in bed, my bed is my friend; there's no Buddha, no Buddhism, no zazen. If you ask me, 'What is zazen?' my answer will be 'to sit on my black cushion' or 'to walk with my feet'. To stay at this moment in this place is my zazen. There is no other zazen. When I am really standing on my feet I am not lost. For me that is nirvana. There is no need to travel, to cross mountains or rivers. I am right here in the dharma world. so I have no difficulty crossing mountains or rivers. That is how we don't waste time. Moment after moment we should live right here, without sacrificing this moment for the future".

A beautiful winter morning - these were taken just before breakfast

Standing Still In The Dark

2011-12-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

Solstice and equinox ceremonies seem to draw a more heterogenous crowd - maybe people's wish to mark the change of the season overcomes their resistance to our kind of ritual, or maybe they are hoping for something completely pagan. Either way, we had a nice candle-lit gathering in the courtyard yesterday evening, with a few first timers, as well as the more familiar faces; I was happy to see a handful of Young Urban Zen people also in attendance.
We had a bit of a doshi shortage to contend with for the ceremony - Paul is on vacation, Rosalie in seclusion with dharma transmission-related activities, Blanche was off at the airport meeting grand-daughter and great grand-daughter, Jana attending the memorial for the homeless who have died on the streets this year at City Hall, Vicki teaching yoga. Happily Tova was very willing to step in and lead us.
Dinner afterwards also had a celebratory feel; Hanukkah candles were lit, but it was notably the day that monks came up from Tassajara, so there was as always much energy from seeing old friends again after their three months of intense practice. Actually, I was impressed with how many of the folks from Tassajara sat in the afternoon, came to lecture in the evening or followed the morning schedule. This is more than I ever did when I was on vacation after practice period.


Tova and part of the assembly

Very much liking the low light capabilities of the X10

Study Hall - Extensive Record

2011-12-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

Winter Solstice Dharma Hall Discourse (1245):
"... Xuefeng asked a monk, 'Where are you going?'
The monk said, 'I'm going to do community work'.
Xuefeng said, 'Go'.
Yunmen said, 'Xuefeng understands people according to their words'.
Hongzhi said [about this dialogue], 'Don't move. If you move I'll give you thirty blows. Why is this so? For a luminous jewel without flaw, if you carve a pattern its virtue is lost'.

Although these three venerable ones spoke this way, I, old man Daibutsu, do not agree. Great assembly, listen carefully and consider this well. For a luminous jewel without flaw, if polished its virtue increases.
Today's first [arising of] yang [and the daylight's increase] is an auspicious occasion; a noble person reaches maturity. Althought this is an auspicious occasion for laypeople, it is truly a delight and support for buddha ancestors. Yesterday the short length [of day] departed, yin reached its fullness, and the sound of the cold wind ceased. This morning the growing length [of day] arrived, and yang arises with a boisterous clamor. Now path-robed monks feel happy and sustained, and the buddha ancestors dance with joy. How could directly transcending the realm of Awesome Sound King of Emptiness have anything to do with the seasons of spring, autumn, winter, or summer?"

New moon visible from my room before zazen


After breakfast

Seasonal Affective Disorder

2011-12-20T08:32:00.000-08:00

There has been a marked drop-off in attendance in the zendo since sesshin finished. Partly this is due to natural shrinkage, as some those who brought so much life to the building this past practice period have left; in other cases, residents seem to think it is okay to dial back their efforts. I have made a couple of announcements reminding people that interim, with its optional schedule, is not until next week, but I can't say that this had any effect at all. I don't think it is sickness now either - everyone has had it and is pretty much over it, except for a few lingering coughs. This week the Abbot is also away, and even at Tassajara during practice period some people seemed to think it was more acceptable to sleep in if the Abbot wasn't around to notice your absence. This is only a temporary phenomenon, though, and will be more than offset by the January effect, when we get more people coming from the outside, having resolved to become more diligent with their spiritual practices, just as gyms get more custom, perhaps from the same people looking for improvements across the board.
Happily, we haven't noticed a similar decline in attendance for Young Urban Zen. I realise I haven't written much about it recently, but since October we have been getting twenty-five to thirty people consistently each week. Naturally there is some turnover - someone will come to try it out once, or come for a month and then not be so motivated to come - but at the same time a strong core group is being created, who have an increasing stake in YUZ and how it continues to develop. Plans are in place for an overnight retreat at Green Gulch in February; at a recent brainstorming session after a meeting, there was great interest in forming study groups to go deeper than we can in the Monday evening format; and we have been finding other ways to be together outside the usual meetings.
Last Friday a half-dozen or so of us went to check out the Dharma Punx local Urban Dharma group , led by Vinny and Gene on this occasion, just to see how other people are doing this. I got to sit guided meditation in a chair, something I have not done in a long time, and I enjoyed some of the dialogue that followed, which ended with a ribald Eddie Murphy joke that I was going to have Maggie or Simon repeat for us last night, though in the end the moment for it never came...
On Sunday, and last night after the meeting, some of us were also toasting Kelly's departure for Austin. She has been one of our most regular members, and since starting to come to YUZ, has also done one-day sittings and been a guest student in the building for a week - Matt is currently following in those footsteps right now as well. I mentioned in the last post how I might head off to Tassajara in September if there isn't anything compelling to keep me here, and YUZ has been one of the things that would most tempt me, as it has been a richly rewarding experience to be able to help with the group; at the same time I have no wish to be inextricably identified with it, and am happy to know that it would continue just fine if I never showed up again. Sometimes, though, as we are noticing with the enthusiasm for study which has not quite resolved itself into a time, place and subject, we need to encourage people to feel empowered to take control and make a decision. Probably it will all sort itself out after the holidays.

Ascending The Mountain

2011-12-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

One thing that I had been thinking about the Mountain Seat Ceremony is that it was probably going to be my last big hurrah as ino, but it seems that the new plan is for me to stay on until September. After that, depending on whether there is something compelling to keep me in the city or not, I might be heading back to Tassajara.
Either way, the ceremony is going to take up a big chunk of thinking between now and February - not least because apart from the New Year extravaganza, there isn't a lot on right now, which feels very nice compared to recent times.
Naturally, as a diligent ino, not having been in attendance at one of these before (I was at Tassajara in 2003 and 2007, the last two times it has been performed), I have been consulting the files and also checking out the Gyoji Kihan. My conclusions from having done this are that we cleave pretty close to the Japanese forms on this occasion, which is perhaps not so surprising: since Suzuki Roshi handed over to Richard Baker in 1971, we haven't done the ceremony so many times, and Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi has, I think, always been on hand to guide us on the forms.
As ino I will get to have a lot of fun in the ceremony, not least leading the new Abbess on a jundo around the zendo and then doing prostrations to her. One part I will not be attending is the Inspection of the Seal, which will take place in the dokusan room. Here, I imagine the version we do will differ somewhat from the Japanese. This is from the Gyoji Kihan:

"Next, three people (senior people like the president for sure)... advance before table, burn incense, withdraw, and do 'spreading cloth twice, paying respects thrice' (a formal way to do prostrations)... At first when they have spread sitting cloths and are about to make prostration... new abbot expresses his/her opinion that they need not engage in such politeness. Thus, they immediately fold up their sitting cloths and speak the following words:

We merely wish to thave the honor of paying our respects to the abbot's dharma seat. We are distraught at having our praises rebuffed.

Next, they again spread sitting cloths and go to make prostrations... and new abbot again indicates that they do not need to go to the trouble. Thus, they immediately fold up their sitting cloths and, when finished, speak the following words:

With deferential consideration, we respectfully inquire of the Most Reverend Newly Appointed Abbot's well-being, and pray that he/she has every good fortune".

None of the versions I have of our Mountain Seat detail what is actually going to be said during this exchange, but these very Japanese phrases put me in mind of the words in the Shuso Entering Ceremony, which the Gyoji Kihan renders thus:

"Head seat (shuso) spreads cloth twice in paying respects thrice to the abbot. Upon first spread of sitting cloth, intones following words:

I am a newly ordained monk who has just entered the monastery. I am uncultivated in all the procedures. It must be by mistake that I have received your reverence's commission. An ordinary person with no responsibilities like me is intimidated in the extreme.

Next, makes second spread of cloth and says:

The weather these days is very warm. With deferential consideration for you, reverend abbot, I respectfuly inquire whether everything is going well.

Head seat makes three abbreviated prostrations; abbot also makes one prostration in reply".

Here is how we have rendered it a little more western in our version:

"Shuso says, in gassho:

I have received Buddha’s Precepts and have entered this temple, and I am deeply grateful for your teaching. But I am not yet ready to be shuso.

Shuso tries to turn away three times but is stopped by gesture from teacher each time.
At conclusion of turning away, shuso, hands in shashu, faces teacher and says:

These are beautiful days. May your good health continue. Please let me help you to continue the practice in this temple.

Teacher says:

Yes, please help me. This monastic shares our seat and our responsibility. Please give her your support".

Study Hall

2011-12-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

"Student: Roshi, what about focus? You said that the clouds don't know they're the children of the mountain and vice versa, but when we humans open and arrange our eating bowls, we focus on that without listening to the stream. It is a different activity.
Suzuki Roshi: It is the same activity.
Student: For me it is different.
Suzuki Roshi: That is why you get the stick. [Laughing].When you really focus, there is light and darkness together, but when you are thinking there are two sides. Now you are asking a question. When you are asking a question you are thinking, so it is hard for me to answer your question. I may have to be very angry with you. That is the only way. If you get hit you will probably stop thinking about it" - Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness.

Honoured Followers Of Zen

2011-12-14T08:48:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

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:

Study Hall

2011-12-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

"Student: You said that for an enlightened person it's very true, and for a non-enlightened person it's just talk.
Suzuki Roshi: What's missing? Practice is missing. Only when you practice zazen hard is it true. At the same time, even though you practice hard, your practice will not always be complete. There may be a big gap between the truth and your understanding or actual experience. Your intellectual understanding may be high, but your practice may be low. To have an intellectual understanding is easy, but practicing with emotions is difficult because we easily stick to something emotionally. So we say, 'It is easy to understand nothingness', and 'It is easy to destroy an intellectual understanding'. But to deal with emotional difficulty is as hard as splitting a lotus in two. Long strings will follow and you cannot get rid of them. The strings remain. With intellectual difficulty, it is as easy as breaking a stone in two. Nothing is left" - Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness, discussion after the sixth talk.

The Arc Of Sitting

2011-12-11T18:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

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

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

2011-12-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

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.

Study Hall

2011-12-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

"If you can appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything. It is not just a flower. It is the absolute, it is Buddha himself. We see it in that way. But at the same time, that which exists is just a flower, and there is no-one to see it and nothing to be seen. That is the feeling we should have in our practice and in our everyday activity. Then, whatever work you do, you will have a continuous feeling of pure gratitude" - Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness, Suzuki Roshi.

Saying Goodbye

2011-11-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

We had a leaving ceremony for Renee today, who is heading up the coast this weekend, first to be with her family, and then to study with Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche in Seattle. It was a moving ceremony for me; laughter and tears not far apart. Jordan, her teacher, spoke of her qualities, and asked her a question, and then, turning the usual form on its head, asked her if she wanted to ask Paul something, which she did. Paul got his question in afterwards though, as well as some beautiful words of appreciation.
The fluid nature of the residential sangha here is something I have written about before; there is a constant process of intimacy and parting, continually placing our wish for connection against the reality of impermanence. I have been happy and proud to have Renee as a friend, especially through the hard times of this year; I remember when she used to come as a volunteer dishwasher in the kitchen when I was tenzo, as well as helping Diana in the bookstore that she ended up running. As Jordan said, we would be sadder, except that we know she is doing the right thing for her life right now.
We also know that people never completely disappear from our lives, especially in the Mahasangha, and of course, these days, you can always keep in touch with people on their blogs...

Renee in her element, dancing at the Pride Parade this summer

The more contemplative side, on her favourite rock in the courtyard

Study Hall

2011-11-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

More from Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness: "So you may ask, 'What is the real teaching of Buddha?' If you don't understand it you will keep asking, 'What is it? What is it? What does it mean?' You are just seeking for something you can understand. We don't exist in that way. Dogen Zenji says, 'There is no bird who flies knowing the limit of the sky. There is no fish who swims knowing the end of the ocean'. We exist in the limitless universe. Sentient beings are numberless, and our desires are limitless, but we still have to continue making our effort just as a fish swims and a bird flies. So Dogen Zenji says, 'A bird flies like a bird; a fish swims like a fish'. That is the bodhisattva's way, and that is how we observe our practice".

Old Notes

2011-11-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

While reading Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness, I have come across the bookmark I left in the book the first time I read it, during my first practice period at Tassajara in 2002. It is a little index card, and written in Sharpie on one side is : "Lantern #7 - Place on the outer perimeter to the right". I have no trouble remembering what this means.
During the first sesshin of the practice period, we were due a Full Moon Ceremony, and the ino that year, Melissa, wanted to do the ceremony at the memorial site. Along with Greg, Eric and Bob, I was deputed to carry the big bell from the zendo to the site, up the steep and narrow path. There was a yoke in the shop for just this purpose - obviously it was not the first time the bell had been moved, though I don't know if it had been taken up there before. I remember the trip being a little tricky as it was hard to walk two abreast up the path, but since I was several inches shorter than the other three guys, I didn't feel like I was taking much of the weight of the apparatus.
We must have done this right after lunch, and been given the work period off, as I found myself with a stretch of free time, and for some reason I decided to head up Hawk Mountain for the first time, up to the telephone tower. It was not a very sesshin-like thing to do, but was spectacular - I only wished I had taken my camera with me.
The ceremony itself was that evening, so the note referred to the lantern I was going to carry during the procession up from the work circle to the memorial site. I remember this stately lantern-lit procession to be very beautiful. As to the ceremony itself, I recall wanting the moon to come shining over the Flag Rock ridge, which it didn't during the ceremony; afterwards I walked the last few yards up to the ridge of the Hogsback to see it shining brightly onto the Three Treasures - sound familiar?
What occurred to me this morning, as I looked at the note again, was how I would have made an effort to get the lantern in the right place when we arrived, but how Melissa, as ino, for all her organisation and effort, may have had some feeling about her vision for the ceremony not quite coming to pass - perhaps this is always the dukkha of the ino. It was, obviously, still most memorable in its manifestation.

In 2007, we did the Annual Suzuki Roshi memorial at the memorial site - but we didn't bring the big bell

Looking down the path that leads up to the site

The even steeper trail leading up Hawk Mountain - this is also from 2007

Speaking In Public

2011-11-27T18:57:00.001-08:00

My talk on photography with the Gay Buddhist Sangha at Hartford Street went reasonably well; I was certainly made to feel most welcome, and people expressed their appreciation afterwards during the tea and cookies as they leafed through the albums I had brought along.
The only experience I have of talking in public for that long has been giving way-seeking mind talks, so I started with some biography just to get me grounded, as well as to introduce myself more fully - though I had been impressed that Albert remembered every detail from my biographical blurb when he introduced me at the outset. I felt like I set off strongly, then floated a bit vaguely in the middle before wrapping it up well enough with some quotes that worked at the theme from different angles, and luckily that was at about the time I was supposed to end. I have a feeling the audio may be posted online eventually, and I may get curious enough to listen back to it one of these days. To save you the trouble of that, here were the three closing quotes:

There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape. - Henri Cartier-Bresson

In some photographs the essence of light and space dominate; in others, the substance of rock and wood, and the luminous insistence of growing things... It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to spectators. - Ansel Adams

Dongshan asked Yunyen, "Who can hear the teachings of the insentient?"
Yunyen said, "It can be heard by the insentient."
Dongshan asked, "Do you hear it, Master?"
Yunyen said, "If I heard it, then you would not hear my teaching."
Dongshan answered, "That being the case, then I do not hear your teaching."
Yunyen replied, "You don't even hear my teaching, how could you hear the teachings of the insentient?" Dongshan was enlightened on hearing this and responded in verse:
    Wondrous! Marvelous!
    The teachings of the insentient are inconceivable.
    If you listen with the ears, you won't understand. 
   When you hear with the eyes, then you will know.

It was a beautiful morning this morning - perhaps not quite this bright before the sun came up, but I'm still getting the hang of settings on the camera

A little later

In A Holiday Mood

2011-11-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

I will dust off my usual disclaimer about not being culturally attached to American holidays, but I also really appreciate the mood here the past twenty-four hours. There have been a number of people sick in the last couple of weeks, and people are tired, so the zendo has been far from full, but yesterday was one of those days where everyone was working harmoniously together to prepare for a celebration. Senior staff had volunteered to put together the Thanksgiving Eve dinner - we wanted it yesterday so that people could have two complete days off, which I am most grateful for - but in the kitchen there was a lot of activity from all quarters. My role was to make mashed potatoes, which I do have a cultural attachment to, and I managed to do that between setting up for the Thanksgiving service and the service itself.
We had just about the right number of people for both service and dinner - a full house without being overcrowded - and the food turned out delicious all round. We followed this up with a skit night, to which a lot of people contributed entertainment, including multi-media happenings and Genine's Half-Moon Ceremony, as well as the usual inspired silliness, poetry, music, singing and dancing. I took the opportunity to try out my new camera, though playing with the settings meant some of the pictures didn't turn out so well.
I can't say that I slept in much this morning, but it was nice to get up and just drink coffee and read the papers, and then help Myoki, who was making gingerbread muffins for everyone for breakfast. Ordinarily I would look on having two days off as a chance to get in two bike rides, but since it is throughly damp out there, and I am still wanting to let my wrist heal (riding on Sunday in even wetter conditions was not a great deal of fun), I am going to have a completely unscheduled day, something that happens very rarely, and seems very long and spacious.

Genine was one of the MCs for skit night

P, who observed "It's a potato", watching Renee demonstrating her iSpud

Tova said that skit night would not be complete without some Bach

Roger and Richard in 'R&R's 24-hour jiko service'

The finale: Richard's 'mosh pit', dancing to 'Billie Jean'

Study Hall

2011-11-23T08:22:00.000-08:00

Continuing with Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness; the second talk has a section that I know well, as there is a beautiful calligraphy version of it on the third floor here. This excerpt starts near the end of that version, which is about ki as potentiality:
"Ki sometimes means the 'interrelationship between someone who helps and someone who is helped'. This is also called jihi. Ji here means to encourage someone. Hi means to give happiness. Jihi is usually translated 'love'. Love has two sides. One is to give joy, yoraku, and the other is to lessen suffering, bakku. To lessen someone's suffering we suffer with them, we share their suffering. That is love.
So if someone is very good, we can share the joy of practice with them by giving them a good cushion, a good zendo, or something like that. But a zendo doesn't mean anything to someone who is suffering too much; whatever you give may not be accepted. Someone may say, 'I don't need it. I'm suffering too much. I don't know why. Right now to get out of suffering is the most important thing for me. You can't help me, nothing can help me'. When you hear this, you should be like Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva - you should become like the one who is suffering, and you should suffer as that person suffers. Because of your innate love, your instinctive love, you share the suffering. That is love in its true sense".

A New Eye

2011-11-22T08:49:00.000-08:00

After a little over three and a half years, and some twenty five thousand pictures (doing the maths, it comes to about twenty pictures per day), I have replaced my well-loved Canon G9, in favour of a spanking new Fuji X10. This is my third digital camera - the first was also a Fuji, an E900, bought at the end of 2005, which never really recovered from being dropped in the creek at Tassajara. It remains to be seen if my photos get any better; I haven't taken one so far that is worth putting up here. And it certainly won't help me write the talk I am due to give this Sunday at Hartford Street...

Study Hall

2011-11-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

I was moved this morning to pick up Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness, and enjoy once again how Suzuki Roshi can say that most profound things without even seeming to. I found a good passage for Young Urban Zen tonight, and also, a page or two later, this:
"When you feel you are somebody, you have to practice zazen harder. As you know, it is difficult to sit without thinking or feeling. When you don't think or feel, you usually fall asleep. But without sleeping and without thinking, just to be yourself is our practice. When you can do that, you will be able to speak without thinking too much, and without having any special purpose. When you speak or act, it will be just to express yourself. That is complete self-respect. To practice zazen is to attain this kind of self-respect. You must be strict with yourself and escpecially with your tendencies. We each have our own unique personal tendencies. But if you try to get rid of them, or if you try not to think, or not to hear the stream during zazen, it is not possible. Let your ears hear without trying to hear. Let the mind think without trying to think and without trying to stop it. That is practice.
More and more, you will have this rhythm as the power of practice. If you practice hard you will be like a child. While we were talking about self-respect, a bird was singing outside. Peep-peep-peep. That's self-respect. Peep-peep-peep. It doesn't mean anything. Maybe he was just singing. Maybe without trying to think he was just singing, peep-peep-peep. When we heard it we couldn't stop smiling. We cannot say that it is just a bird. It controls the whole mountain, the whole world. That is self-respect".

Notes From A One-Day Sitting

2011-11-19T21:28:00.000-08:00

As breakfast dragged on, I began to wonder if I was going to get to leave the zendo before I had to come back. It was a close-run thing in the end: although the zendo was not quite as full as on the last couple of one-days, there wasn't enough cereal in the pots, so the servers had to keep making round trips to fill in the gaps, and I was watching the time just slip away and noticing how stressed I got. At lunch, by way of a contrast, since there is always something of a break no matter how long the meal goes, I was completely relaxed.
Other things that I noticed today: the Self-Receiving and -Employing Samadhi certainly sounds better with a few periods of zazen inside you. I haven't felt fully connected with it during our noon services this practice period, but today felt different.
While my wrist still got a little sore holding the mudra over time, my legs were doing just fine on the whole - perhaps they were glad not to be the centre of attention. During the afternoon, my brain became less of a solid obstacle, and the information in my spine was more readily accessible.
It was wonderful to have a full zendo chanting the Dai Hi Shin Dharani before dinner, and the Refuges at the end of the evening. Also wonderful to put a call out for people to help with evening dishes, and to go into the kitchen to see half a dozen people working away to get things done. Together, the sitting happens. Then we go our separate ways in the rainy evening.

Study Hall - Extensive Record

2011-11-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

"The true Dharma eye treasury transcends brightness and darkness. Patch-robed monks' nostrils disregard both enlightenment and delusion. So it is said, 'A broken mirror does not illuminate or reflect. A fallen flower does not jump back onto the branch'. Why is this so? Great assembly, do you want to understand this clearly?
After a pause, Dogen said: Buddha's children abide in this land, and this is Buddha's fulfillment. Always remaining among them, [Buddha] does walking meditation, sits and lies down".

Offering Incense

2011-11-17T08:40:00.000-08:00

Study Hall - Extensive Record

2011-11-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

In addition to the photo assignment I mentioned yesterday, I did a similar job a couple of weeks ago for another friend for their website, and got paid handsomely for my time. Having long wished to add it to my collection, I went to the bookstore on Saturday and picked up Dogen's Extensive Record. This is something I intend to dip in and out of rather than read front to back, but here is a selection:
"Seeing Buddha, we make prostrations to Buddha; riding an ox, we search for the ox. Why is it like this? This is the reality of our practice. Where wisdom does not reach, totally avoid speaking. If you speak, horns grow on your head.
Dogen held up his whisk and said: Horns have even now grown on our heads, and we have been speaking. Already there are horns. Is this an ox or a horse; Gautama or Bodhidharma? Wind whistles through the branches; rain breaks up the clumps of earth. Toads croak and earthworms cry out. Simply see that peach blossoms open by the mountain huts. A thousand gates and ten thousand doors face the valley streams in spring.
Dogen put down his whisk and descended from the seat".

Moon rising last night


A misty autumnal morning

On The Mend

2011-11-15T08:42:00.001-08:00

That I didn't go to Young Urban Zen last night points to the difference between physical pain and emotional pain. There have been a couple of occasions these past five months - not least the very first meeting - where my mood on the day did not seem conducive to being in the group, but I found on each occasion that allowing myself to be with the people who were there not only eased my mental afflictions, but sometimes completely transformed them.
Yesterday did not feel like that. I tried working in the morning, but soon realised that typing emails and rifling through old Mountain Seat folders for useful information was not helping my wrist at all. Happily, I had previously arranged for a friend to come by after lunch: I took pictures of her for her website, and in exchange had an awesome shiatsu massage. After which I wasn't much good for anything. I sat afternoon zazen, but was deeply tired, and felt that my body just needed to rest. While I had fun playing with being right-handed - though trying to serve myself mushrooms at dinner using tongs reminded me of one of those fairground grabbers in my chances of success - I decided that I didn't have enough energy to bring to the meeting, and took myself upstairs for an early night.
I got a solid eight hours of sleep, which is a rare enough tonic itself around these parts, and felt markedly better this morning. The swelling is down, movement and grip are better and my body feels more settled. What I did find hard was keeping my mudra in zazen, but then I noticed how having my arms in any other position really completely changed my experience of sitting. As it happens, the passage I had chosen for YUZ last night was from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and it started "The most important things in our practice are our physical posture and our way of breathing".

Maladroit

2011-11-14T08:28:00.001-08:00

We are always telling people how practice is a question of dealing with the situation you find yourself in, and I find myself in an interesting situation right now. Yesterday, close to the end of a nice long ride to the Bovine with Clay, we reached the near end of Golden Gate Park, and were waiting to cross Kezar for the final charge down Oak Street. I reached out to a barrier to balance myself, sat back, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my backside: the bolt holding my saddle to the seat-post had sheared off. Several people stopped to help and check as to my well-being; luckily the fleshy parts had taken much of the impact, but I had also put my left hand down instinctively, and I could feel that my wrist was going to be hurting.
We gathered up all the bits and rode the last mile or so home, me unable to sit down, but it wasn't far enough to make that uncomfortable. I put an ice pack on my wrist right away, and also, over the course of the day, rested, compressed and elevated. I had most of the usual movement in my hand, but I didn't have any grip strength. The one thing I did that was less advisable was take my other bike and ride down to the Mission in the evening, as a friend of mine was hosting an event I did not want to miss, but it was quite painful trying to hold onto the bars.
I suspected I might not sleep so well, and so it turned out, waking many times to try to find again a neutral position for my wrist where it was not so sore. This morning, the person who was supposed to be stepping in as fukudo had obviously forgotten, but I found I couldn't get dressed fast enough to get downstairs in time to run the wake-up bell myself, and was worried as to whether I would be able to hit the han or carry the bell - since I normally do all these things left-handed. Luckily I came across Jay, who is one of the people here most likely to say yes to whatever request is made of him, so he was able to take care of it.
Sitting zazen was not difficult, and I managed to put on my okesa and spread my zagu, just more slowly and clumsily than I am used to. Gassho was not so easy, as I didn't want to press my palms together hard or bend the wrist back. At breakfast I was offered arnica and other remedies, and everyone expressed their concern. I am finding typing easy enough, but we will see what else I am able to do in this cack-handed state today.

Sitting Out

2011-11-11T08:30:00.001-08:00

Last night I stuffed a zafu and zabuton into my bag and rode down Market Street to join the sitting being offered by Green Gulch residents. There was an interesting debate last week on the Facebook wall about whether Zen Center was endorsing the Occupy movement by promoting this event, and I don't think I have anything intelligent to add to the views already expressed. This was my first time down in that part of town since the Occupy movement started; there was a certain visual incongruity of seeing the encampment along the Embarcadero - and also outside the Federal Bank where we were sitting - but then I also found the illuminated snow flake decorations along Market Street pretty incongruous.
I thought I was late, but when I arrived, I found only Laura and Jamie - the Green Gulch contingent were down listening to the general assembly, so by the time Johan, Qayyum, Maria, Rihanna and the others came along with the candles and cardboard to sit on, I was already settling into some sitting. There were some people agitated at what was supposed to be a gas leak a block away, which turned out not to be anything to worry about. I watched people walking by, city dwellers, camp dwellers, many of whom went to and fro several times. There were security guards on the other side of the barriers, and I guess they would probably be fired if they were seen to be sitting down; they paced up and down, chatted and joked with each other to pass the time, and only came over after a woman who was reading the sign tripped over the leg of a barrier and fell flat on her face. There was the noise of the building's air conditioning, the rumble of streetcars and of skateboards; a saxophone across the street played 'Lara's Theme' from Dr Zhivago and other doleful tunes. I reflected how just a day before I had been sitting out on the roof at sunrise, and here I was sitting on the pavement, looking up at people just as beggars do. Only we were not begging for anything, just being there, sitting together for all beings, as the sign says. Afterwards, we gathered into a circle and chanted the Loving Kindness Meditation, and I remembered chanting it before the Pride procession started, just a few blocks away. When Qayyum intoned a long, hand-written eko, I wondered if it sounded like a manifesto to the people walking past.

The Currency Of Ideas

2011-11-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

I recently took an unprecedented step: although one of the perks of living in community is almost guaranteed access to other people's New Yorkers, when I was sent an unsolicited offer of a subscription at what seemed like a paltry price for something that is my main source of mental nourishment, I though it was only decent to fork out for my own copies (which I can then make available to others).
In the first issue I received, I was taken with an article on the Iliad. For all my fancy education, I have not read it (nor the Odyssey, come to that, though I did make it through Ulysses over the course of one summer a few years ago), and I am not so animated by the topic of different schools of thought on authorship and translation that was the point of the article - though of course there are interesting parallels, as with anything that old, with the authenticity of Buddhist sutras and whether or not it matters.
The one thing that most captured my imagination was this: "the verbs and pronouns used in the scene are of a special type called the 'dual' which can be employed only for pairs of things (eyes, legs, oxen, etc)". What an amazing linguistic concept - one which, me being me, brought to mind Dogen, and his notion of 'only a Buddha and a Buddha': "Buddha dharma cannot be known by a person. For this reason, since olden times no ordinary person has realised Buddha dharma. No practitioner of the lesser vehicles has mastered Buddha dharma. Because it is realised by Buddhas alone, it is said only a Buddha and a Buddha can completely master it" (Yuibutsu Yobutsu). We were saying something not so dissimilar in Young Urban Zen this week - while you have to do the work yourself to develop your wisdom and compassion, it doesn't amount to anything until you are meeting another person face-to-face.

Gratuitous moon shot from before afternoon zazen

My Fifteen Seconds

2011-11-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

I didn't manage to get much work done today: we had a film crew coming to shoot various things, so I was on hand to let them in at 5:30, right after the jundo. I had not quite anticipated that there would be five people and a couple of dozen big cases - when I worked in radio, our field recordings were always done with such a nimble set-up that I forget that adding pictures to the process makes life so much more complicated.
It wasn't exactly arduous though: my first job was to sit zazen on a platform on the roof as part of a time lapse sequence involving the solar panels (the project is about religious communities and alternative energy, and is being made by the people who made The Cove). I managed to sit still for a while, and had the bonus of getting to see a beautiful sunrise from outside for once. I also got filmed hitting the big bell in the Buddha Hall, being doshi for noon service, and playing the han and densho downstairs. None of these things is hard for me to do, but it is interesting how knowing I was being filmed brought an extra immediacy and presence to each activity, even with the inevitable numerous takes that were involved for each shot set-up.
Additionally I was asked to say a few words on camera about how our practice and alternative energy intersect. This was a little harder to do convincingly, but I have learnt from my years in radio that if you talk to someone for fifteen minutes, you are probably only going to use fifteen seconds of that; I trust that the producers can find at least that much usable material.
Of course I was getting a certain amount of teasing about being in the spotlight, and of course I noticed how my ego was responding to being the centre of attention. In truth, my left arm is probably going to get more exposure than the rest of me.

Setting up the shot on the roof

Shooting on the roof at sunrise - photo courtesy of Adrienne

Lighting the han

Oh, and we have a Full Moon Ceremony tonight

Out Front

2011-11-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

I did not expect Paul to have the eko for the tree ceremony ready ahead of time - indeed when I went down to check out front half an hour beforehand, he was busy planting the wisteria - but I had also been fairly relaxed about the preparations, getting stuck into some chidening, which somehow felt more worthwhile than sitting answering emails. The densho was already ringing when he passed me the hand-written words, and I duly passed them on to Tova, as I was going to be wielding the strange but wonderful inkugyo (somehow I thought Greg would have mentioned this back in the day, as it was one of his favourite things, but since he didn't, and since searching Google actually gets you nowhere - try it for yourself - I will just say that it looks like a two-headed inkin, only one half of it is a mini-mokugyo. Just like it sounds really, and just what you need for an occasion like this).
We had a nice little crowd on the pavement (that's the sidewalk for you folks), and the obligatory passing sirens, street-cleaning trucks, curious passers-by, and the less common election day convoys hooting horns at everybody, but we stood firm, chanted the Enmei Jukku and read tree-related poems. We did not, as we had been joking this morning, ordain the trees, but Paul sprinkled them with wisdom water, and we all wished them well in their new home.


The new look in front of the building

The altar for the tree ceremony

Technically not such a good picture, but I like the feeling of it

Tova reads a poem

Rocking The Bells

2011-11-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

The big bell in the Buddha Hall is quite a temperamental beast. Its counterpart at Tassajara can be a little tricky to get used to, but then is pretty docile - if you strike it well, you will most often get a deep resonant sound - I used to love sitting at the doan seat there and feeling the vibrations coming up from the floor after a successful strike, and hearing how the sound collected and filled. The one in the city has a wide band near the top which, if the bell is struck wrong, will give you some pretty harsh harmonics (or are they overtones - I'm sorry not to be more musically accurate). With both bells, people over the years have tried to pinpoint the sweet spot on the rim which gives you the best chance of a good sound. We had a spot that we were using here for some time, but the bells get moved around a lot - recently for both the jukai and Sejiki. A different spot had been tried in the last few months after one such move, and was adjudged to sound okay.
This morning the doan was sick, so I happily took on bell-ringing duties. In the Buddha Hall I noticed that the bell was lined up in a different place again - there are kanji engraved around most of the top of the bowl, so it is somewhat easy to spot this. I was amazed not just to get a decent sound, without too much clanginess, but also to have a real build-up of bass frequencies the times I got to hit the bell consecutively, something I have never really heard or felt with this bell before. This made me very happy.
Maybe it's just going to be one of those days: I came out of the Buddha Hall and saw Robert, the president, newly returned from a retreat in Nepal, sweeping the courtyard with his sleeves rolled up. That made me happy too. We had a joyful koan class, where the cinnamon rolls we were going to have for breakfast afterwards were a sub-theme of the discussions, and where we sang Happy Birthday to Tova, who is celebrating today, and Shindo, who just had her birthday.
As we sat together in the dining room after the class, eating the said rolls with much pleasure, we were talking about the ceremony we are going to do at lunchtime for the new maples that have been planted in front of the building. I expect I will write more about this after the fact. How auspicious, as Linda Ruth used to say at Tassajara.

None of the pictures I have of the big bell give you a decent sense of its size, so here is something more impressionistic

Dark Matter

2011-11-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

The rain did come on Thursday to usher us into the end of Daylight Savings Time (what we somewhat optimistically call British Summer Time back home). On Friday morning it was almost competely dark until breakfast, and Saturday evening brought the full sodden storminess of winter. In a moment of idleness recently, I read again what I wrote at this time last year - and indeed on Friday I sat in the zendo with my hands wrapped in my sleeves, listening to the click and clank of the heating pipes. Happily the rain moved on; this morning the zendo was growing lighter during second period, and the sun shone into the dining room for breakfast. By the time I came down for zazen this afternoon however, I had already closed up the kaisando and turned on the hallway lights; the zendo was gloomy and I encouraged the doan to turn up the lights, as the gentle morning penumbra doesn't seem appropriate for the afternoon, though the gathering dark outside always makes for more intimate sitting.
It occurred to me that we do ceremonies to mark the solstices and equinoxes, but the days that the clocks go forward or back are much more notable in their impact on our lives, especially ones as closely time-tabled as those we live here.

The sky on Friday morning

Sunday morning

Save The Date

2011-11-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

So now we officially have our next abbess, Christina Lehnherr, waiting in the wings, and we have a definite date for Paul's Stepping Down (February 11th), and the Mountain Seat Ceremony (February 12th). By Zen Center standards, we are apparently running a little behind schedule, but I am glad at least that things are not happening as they did in the dream I had last year. We have our first planning meeting about it this afternoon, and from what I can tell, although I will be intimately involved, there will be a number of senior people taking care of a lot of the details.
I am very happy that Christina will be leading us. She was tanto when I lived at City Center in 2005, and it was impossible not to be moved by how she was able to ground everything in deep abiding love. That didn't stop her from really kicking my arse a couple of times, but these things are easier to deal with when you also feel held with that kind of care. If you have never heard her give a talk, I encourage you to browse through the archives for one of her lectures, and if you are unsure what she looks like - as she hasn't been around Zen Center quite so much these past few years - here is a picture from the April jukai - she is on the left of the back row:

Study Hall

2011-11-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

"Every person has the potential to achieve enlightenment. You already have a certain level of intelligence, insight, and compassion that you can develop further, all the way to realization. Trusting that is extremely important. If you lack confidence in yourself, then the experience won't come. If you sit down with the attitude of 'Well, I'm sitting, but I know I'm not going to get anywhere today', then you'll probably be right. The best approach is to sit without any expectations, without any hope or fear about the result. Sit with an attitude of openness that admits the possibility instead of shutting the door" - Rebel Buddha, Dzogchen Ponlop. There are a few people in particular who come to mind when I read this, and I hope some of them may see it for themselves.

The Doshi Walk

2011-11-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking that I need to re-learn how to walk. And to stand for that matter. I was just reading an article from the New York Times about 'barefoot running', already convinced as I am that, should I return to Tassajara, where I would take up running again for want of anywhere to play on a road bike, I would go with some kind of 'barefoot' shoes, and effectively learn how to run again from scratch. My guess is that this would not be so hard at Tassajara where the gradients are such that I often ran on the balls of my feet anyway.
I was about to say that I did manage to run in the 'conventional style' for the best part of thirty years without injury, but in my final practice period at Tassajara I did hurt myself - a twisted pelvis that locked my left leg up during my final sesshin, the effects of which still come and go in differently manifesting aches and pains.
At the newcomers' table last Saturday, I was trying to convince people at the table that zazen was in fact a body practice, and I was glad to hear Paul affirm this in his talk last night. Most of my zazen time at the moment is spent paying attention to different muscles in my back and shoulders as I try to stay aligned. Some days there is releasing, other days there is tension - Monday was bad for this, though whether this was caused by the stressful day or vice versa I could not say.
When I am doshi, I have noticed that I have a particular way of walking. This is partly dictated by the robes; I have renounced climbing stairs two at a time as a matter of course mainly because if I do so I am likely to trip over my kimono or my sleeves. When I do go upstairs in my robes, I am generally more upright, whereas I would usually lean forward. When I leave the zendo as doshi, my carriage is perhaps more grounded than it might me at other times; I am aware that I am playing a role, or rather, embodying a role. So I try to bring this to bear walking down the hallways at other times of day, or walking down the street. I hope I can extend the practice of balance and uprightness to standing and walking as well as sitting - I think I have mastered the lying down part well enough.

It's supposed to rain today, but it doesn't seem so feasible right now...

Study Hall

2011-11-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

"Usually, when we want something, instead of looking at the desire itself - the pure energy of longing or craving - and connecting to that experience of mind, we fall into ordinary patterns of thought. We miss the original moment, the opennesss, energy and brilliance that precedes the start-up of our habitual patterns. That happens over and over, whether our desire is on a grand scale, or we simply long for an ice-cold Coke. Thanks to all our thoughts of good and bad, before we even reach for the Coke, we have denied ourselves the pleasure of drinking it. It has too much sugar and too many calories; caffeine is bad; this soda wasn't bottled locally, and so on. Our head says, 'Don't drink it', but our taste buds are going 'Mmm'. The point is to see our neurosis in all its fullness, in its rawest and most fundamental state, just as it's arising - when we're looking at that can of cold Coke and our whole being is drawn to it. Our passion for that Coke lights up our mind, and there's a moment of wakefulness, pure pleasure, and satisfaction before the onslaught of thought begins. We can fall back asleep in that moment to get away from the intensity and brilliance, or we can back away and pick up some organic carrot juice. Or we can join that moment with enlightened pride, the wisdom of emptiness. Whether we drink the Coke or not is somewhat beside the point; it's a question of how we work with our mind when the desire strikes" - Rebel Buddha, Dzogchen Ponlop.
I am not aware of Dogen using Coke as a teaching tool anywhere in the Shobogenzo, but I suspect if it had been around in his day, he might have made a similar point to the Rinpoche.

Spreading The Word

2011-11-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't follow stuff on the Zen Center website so closely, I wanted to pass on that the dharma talk this Wednesday will be ASL-signed. This is down to some hard work by Keith, and it is hoped that this is the first of many. I suggested that it would be a great thing to have on video for the Livestream channel, but the decision was that we wanted to see how it goes over live this time round. So if you, or anyone you know, would benefit from this, and are able to be here tomorrow night, come on over. Or if you would definitely want to see this offered on our video stream, do let me know.

A few of us came out of zazen this afternoon noting that this would be the last week of daylight sitting. For sure we have had to turn the lights on the last couple of weeks as it is getting darker by dinnertime, and yesterday I was musing that perhaps we should start Sejiki later, as it doesn't seem as evocative to begin while the sky is still blue, even if it was pretty dark by the time we had finished. Certainly this week winter seems far away (apologies to anyone reading on the East Coast, for whom it has been somewhat more tangible), as the balmy weather continues, with stately sunrises during morning service. I just went over to the sewing room to put some long-promised stitches in a new zagu for Linda Ruth, which Tova is just finishing off, and there were warm breezes blowing about the courtyard.
We had a special guest kokyo this evening as well; the regular Tuesday person was away, and as Ren had come in early before sewing class, I offered her the chance to do it. Her voice filled the zendo seemingly effortlessly, and she led us in a strong rendition of the Heart Sutra. She was the head doan (and Tova the ino) at Tassajara back in 2004 when I was on the doanryo, and as she commented afterwards, it's like riding a bike - you never forget. As it happens, Keith was the doshi, as he is every Tuesday; we have worked out a way for him to be cued for all the bows by the doan, so it is probable that many attending the service would have no idea that he hadn't heard any of it.

Hungry Ghosts

2011-11-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

I don't mind confessing that I wasn't in the most festive of moods for much of yesterday. Even with an almost entirely relaxing weekend consisting of bikes, books and beaches, I was still feeling the effects of the long day on Friday. I remember well setting up for Sejiki last year, so I knew I just had to keep plugging away through the day and it would all get done, which it did, but I was kind of cranky until late in the afternoon, especially as almost everyone seemed to want to know what costume I was going to wear.
It was only when I stood in front of the assembly - at least those who were there on time, there was a continual stream of people arriving as the ceremony went on - to explain what was going to happen, that I made an effort to hit the switch and be 'on'. And I had a good time - the rehearsal of the Kan Ro Mon in the morning paid off, as it sounded harmonious and strong, and all the other elements fell into place nicely. I felt relaxed and present for the last part of the dedication, which I hadn't really looked at before, and that wrapped it up nicely.
Even better, I had a dedicated bunch of people offering to set the Buddha Hall back to its normal state, so that went smoothly. After a big noisy dinner, the small gaggle of YUZ people who had come for the ceremony went out for refreshments, which was a positive end to a long day. Of course now I have to clean up the ino's office, which had not had a chance to recover from Friday night, and is now deluged with paper, ceremonial objects and noisemakers.

Offering food for the hungry ghosts

Sejiki incensor with rice instead of ash

The sejiki altar

Great Robe Of Liberation

2011-10-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

The evening ceremonies we have done on the last year and a half - I'm thinking of last year's jukai, and the Lay Entrustment ceremonies - have all had a distinctively intimate feeling, and the jukai on Friday night was no exception. There was a nice turnout of Saturday Sangha people and of residents to support Dennis and Oceania. With Michael at the helm along with Jordan, I knew the formality would tend to fluidity rather than rigidity, and this also came to pass.
The drawback is that it is harder to get decent photographs - I am generally loath to use a flash, although one of the flash pictures came out okay; notably it was the one that wasn't posed. Luckily there was enough light in the Art Lounge afterwards to catch some of the socialising:

Blanche admires Dennis' new rakusu

Jim, Karissa, Robert, Susana and Dennis in the Art Lounge

Dennis

Dennis and OC

Again with the feet

Probably my favourite picture of the evening

Study Hall

2011-10-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

Diligence has always been a resonant word in my practice vocabulary; I even have hanging on my wall a calligraphy by Daigaku of 'shojin', which I believe is the usual translation of diligence in lists like the six paramitas. Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche refers to these as 'transcendent practices', and this is part of what he says about diligence in Rebel Buddha:
"Ordinarily, we equate diligence with a lot of effort. On the one hand, there's a sense of physical or mental sweat. On the other, there's a sense of being a good, industrious boy or girl - we're working hard toward a goal and not letting up. But being diligent on our spiritual path does not mean that we're meditating for hours, vacuuming the shrine room, and serving meals at a homeless shelter all in one day. Transcendent diligence means that we take whatever opportunities we have to practice, and we do those practices with a sense of appreciation and delight. In this sense, diligence is energy, the power that makes everything happen. It's like the wind, a driving force that keeps us moving along the path. Where does this energy come from? It comes from the enjoyment and satisfaction we experience as we get further into our path.
The primary obstacle to diligence is, of course, laziness - the absence of energy. One problem with laziness is that it takes up so much time. Think how much time taking it easy or spacing out requires. The problem with activities like going to the beach or hanging out is not that they're negative; it's our attachment to them. I'm sure more people go to the 'beach' that's a state of mind than to all the resorts in Mexico".
Well, speaking for myself, I am getting plenty of opportunities for practice, with the jukai this evening and Sejiki on Monday, and since, as I mentioned in a recent comment, tomorrow is my first free Saturday afternoon of the month, and with the weather being as it is, I am quite attached to the idea of going to the beach. The actual beach, and the state of mind.

Shojin, or diligence, by Daigaku


The sky during soji - I was aiming for some crows, but they are barely visible

Eternal Peace

2011-10-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

I realised that I have been missing Dogen. There was something about the accrued luminosity of Saturday, which carried over into Sunday - okay, it helped that it was a pearl of a day - that reminded me how being opened up while reading him can bring about a subtle dislocation which leaves you blinking anew. The silence of the one-day was hugely beneficial, along with a morning of riding alone with just occasional greetings to fellow riders, and I got to feel again how much can come from such an experience of spaciousness.
Well, that is how it was a couple of days ago. My energy started to dissipate with a gnarly Practice Committee meeting yesterday afternoon, and also two interactions this morning that left me feeling that I had not been heard or met, which took the wind out of my sails somewhat.
Nevertheless, I opened the Shobogenzo again, and this seemed the most appropriate paragraph: "When we reflect quietly, it appears that our body-and-mind has practiced together with all buddhas of the past, present and future, and has aroused the aspiration for enlightenment together with them. When we reflect on the past and future of our body-and-mind, we cannot find the boundary of self or others. With what delusion do we believe that our body-and-mind is apart from all buddhas of the past, present and future? Such delusion is groundless. How, then, can delusion hinder the arousing of the aspiration for enlightenment and practice of the way by all buddhas of the past, present and future? Thus, understand that the way is not a matter of your knowing or not knowing" - 'Only a Buddha and a Buddha'.

Coming Attractions

2011-10-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

Sejiki has been a popular search word this past week, and I notice that I have been avoiding writing about it. Of course there is an account from last year, which the searchers will have found, but I resisted plugging it after the lecture on Saturday as I wasn't sure how to encapsulate it. On one hand, it is a commemoration of the dead, as we read out a list of names of people we know who have died in the last year - and in this vein, I invite anyone reading to submit the names of anyone they knew who has died and who they would like included in this list (mail to: ccino, care of sfzc.org). That part is always solemn and moving. It is mixed with the Kan Ro Mon, or Gate of Sweet Dew, which is full of esoteric invocations and mantras, with the doshi also performing mudras and blessings to invite and assuage the roaming hungry ghosts; we literally turn the Buddha Hall back to front to make them feel welcome, and the chanting can be spine-chilling if it is done well. And on top of that people, are decked out in Halloween fineries, which personally I am not so bothered about (well, one year I might shock everyone by putting on a costume, but it won't be this year - and I said exactly the same thing last year), and we make a lot of noise with musical instruments, not something that happens every day around these parts.
Doesn't make for a snappy announcement to the assembly, really. Come for 6pm on Monday if you can, and on Monday for morning service if you want to have a crack at the Kan Ro Mon ahead of time - you can download it from here also.

Postscript - the work leader hung the trunkful of costumes out to air this morning, and encouraged me to take pictures, so here they are:

Linkage

2011-10-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

From Christopher Musgrave, whom I remember seeing moving around with his camera on the night, via Jennifer of the Bold Italic, and David Z, our programming boss, here is some video * of the event here a few weeks ago. I was delighted to get to see it, and noticed that I had different reactions to each piece. For the Date Palms song, the delight of hearing the familiar, as this was a tune they sound-checked with in the afternoon, and then played on the night, so it had stuck in my head nicely. For the Barn Owl piece, it was as if I was hearing it for the first time, as I had been more absorbed in the overall effect and less in the structure of the music, such as it is.
The video is very nicely put together as well, my only regrets being that he kept the shots pretty tight, so you don't get to see the surroundings or the crowd, which would have been nice, and of course that there is no way that the sound can match up to the reality of being there. Don't get me started on the inadequacies of mp3 data compression (or data reduction as we used to call it, seeing as it strips away 90% of all the information, albeit very cleverly), it's just that Jeremy's bass playing for Date Palms was powerfully loud on the night, not to mention, since I have already, with Keith backing me up, the unbelievable physicality of Barn Owl's sound. Enjoy them though, if you didn't get to be there when it happened.

* I would have liked to try and embed these, but Blogger only seems to let you do this for YouTube stuff, which strikes me as being a bit of a closed shop... so instead, a few more photos from the day itself:

Date Palms sound-check in the courtyard

Barn Owl's Evan and his pedals at the sound-check

The crowd at Barn Owl's performance - Blanche is still there, but she didn't say for the whole set...

Study Hall

2011-10-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

"Imagine if we went up to someone and said, 'I'd really like to help you, but first you need to clean up your act a little bit. And it would be great too, if you'd be a little nicer to me. Then, yes, I think I could be a big help to you'. We may not actually say this out loud or even be fully conscious of it, but that kind of precondition is sometimes there. That's where our confusion lies in terms of extending our heart of compassion. We want to help people, but at the same time, we have our own requirements they need to meet first. It's like applying for a grant from a charitable foundation. There are pages of prerequisites, conditions and obligations to meet and promises to keep before you get the foundation's support. That's not really the vision of compassion we're talking about. Compassion here begins with a sense of acceptance. It's more of a handshake approach than a prenuptial agreement. We meet and make a connection, and then we work out the details as we go along" - Rebel Buddha, Dzogchen Ponlop.

The sun illluminates Mission Bay and the freeway through the fog this morning

On The Cushion

2011-10-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful day out there today, but apart from half an hour on the roof after lunch, I was just gazing at it longingly out of the window, and hoping that tomorrow will be equally warm. We had a big one-day sitting, which meant a long day of preparation yesterday, and a long day of sitting today. In the end, the preparations were as smooth as they could be, even with all the vagaries of our new booking system, and I was about an hour ahead of my usual schedule getting all the pieces of paper together; even the printers behaved.
As usual, I did not get to settle into the sitting until this afternoon. We had had some debate about changing the timing of Saturday mornings, and the Abbot finally conceded that we could try the shorter service today that we usually do on Monday. As it happened, with seventy-odd people to get in and out of the Buddha Hall and give soji assignments to - and most importantly, to feed in the zendo - by the time we got out of breakfast, it wasn't even worth me trying to take my robes off and get to the bathroom. I went up to my room, gulped some coffee, and went straight back to the zendo to make sure everyone could find a place for 9:25 zazen, and then took a break once the period had started, which always makes me feel just a little guilty.
During the first period in the afternoon I was verging on catatonic, as I have been during most afternoon sittings this week - probably due to not getting to bed early enough. Once I got through that though, I enjoyed the feeling of some habitual stuff getting blunted, and other ways of being getting sharpened, allowing my spine to unfurl and my shoulders release, feeling my ribs come into balance and moving my neck just ever so to give a more spacious feeling. Then at the last moment I had to step in as kokyo for evening service, and found that my voice was drier and more wobbly than I would have liked.
We had dinner in the zendo, which is rare enough that I was having to think back to Tassajara to remember some of the forms; many other people were probably experiencing it for the first time. Luckily, some attrition in the numbers through the day meant that we weren't as tightly packed as we had been for the other two meals.
Sitting in the evening is also an uncommon treat here, even if the first period after dinner always seems to go on a little too long, and wrapping up the day with the Refuges in Pali is always lovely, again evoking memories of Tassajara where every day ends that way.
At the end I even got some thank-you notes and verbal thank-yous; enough to send me off to bed happy.

Study Hall

2011-10-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

"Once we have an experience of selflessness, our confidence grows...We can see now that the trip is transforming the traveler. Our path, at this point, becomes less about traveling to a destination we call 'liberation' and becomes more a way of life. We no longer focus solely on how to get out of our own personal suffering. It may come as a surprise to us, but by studying our mind, we discover our heart; by freeing our mind we open our heart; and our vision of freedom naturally expands to include others. Instead of seeking to protect ourselves from confusion and chasos, we begin to appreciate that confusion as being full of opportunities to train our mind further. The possibilities are actually infinite. For that reason, we feel a sense of delight at being in the world and working with others; it never becomes tiring. Our budding experience of selflessness opens a door to a new sense of appreciation for the full range of human experience" - Rebel Buddha, Dzogchen Ponlop.

If I had been moving faster just now, I could have got a picture of a perfect V of Canadian
geese flying low over the building. Instead, some slower moving crows from the other day.

Feedback

2011-10-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

Like all good Californians, we at Zen Center periodically undertake trainings for different skills; over the years I have done sessions on diversity, multi-culturalism, conflict resolution, being an ally, difficult conversations and so on, and I have learned much about myself and my fellow sangha members through doing so. Recently the senior staff at City Center has invited Zen Center alumnus Marc Lesser for some trainings, and on Monday we looked at team building.
We assessed ourselves as a mostly cohesive and functional team, but there is always room for improvement, and a chunk of the afternoon was given over to each of us offering suggestions, one on one, to the other members of the group, as to how they could be more effective in the team. As Marc anticipated, most of the answers each of us collected revolved around similar themes, and the main theme I received was to express myself emotionally more.
This and the other suggestions were all interesting and to the point, and evoked a certain recognition in me. I think of how Blanche often said during practice period at Tassajara, "Everyone can see how you are, you might as well see it for yourself". This expressiveness is something I have been chewing over in different ways recently. Part of my effort to meet people where they are is to put aside anything that I might be feeling as best I can at that moment, so as to have fewer obstacles in the way. Regardless of how I might feel about the person, or the emotional state I might be bringing into the encounter, I want to be present for them. The more I work at this, and at sitting with emotions, the less power they tend to have. I tend to think though, that even if I do not articulate to others how I am feeling, I am usually fairly transparent in showing my joys and pains. And it was especially interesting to leave the training and be confronted with a situation that brought forward some negative emotions, which I have been having a hard time shaking since then.
Simon, my fellow countryman, retorted, when I told him of the group's suggestions, "Didn't you just tell them that you are English?"

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There

2011-10-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

I'll put my social action hat on this morning, and plug the meditation event this afternoon that Zen Center is co-sponsoring. Being the ino, I feel bound to do my sitting in the usual spot this afternoon, but there will be a contingent going from City Center, so if you are in easy walk/bike/transit distance of us or Union Square, please come along to join forces with us.

Entering

2011-10-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

I left the tangaryo students pretty much to their own devices over the two days of sitting. They are supposed to be responsible for their punctuality and their effort; when I noticed on Saturday morning that some of them took longer to return to the zendo after oryoki, when people were already coming for 9:25 zazen, I encouraged them to support each other's practice by not lingering on their breaks.
I took the other meals with them, as we all ate together silently in the bustling dining room, and served them tea - with Renee's help on Friday. After dinner I went and sat with them for the last hour, before I walked them through how this morning's entering ceremony would go, noticing how they were at the end of a long day of sitting.
We get to do a lot of leaving ceremonies, but it has been more than a year since the last entering one here, and of course there is a different feeling to it, even if the form is basically identical. Paul noted that they are not really new - as they would be at Tassajara - but encouraged them to see this as a moment to reconnect with why they wanted to be here, to help motivate their practice. Of course we shouldn't need a ceremony to remind us of these things, but it always helps.

Study Hall

2011-10-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

I have been enjoying Rebel Buddha by Dzogchen Ponlop, which Renee lent me; she is going to be moving up the coast to Seattle to study with him at the end of the year. Here are two sections from early in the book: "When Siddartha left the palace to search for enlightenment, he didn't leave because he had such strong faith in a particular religion, had met a charismatic guru, or had received a calling from God. He didn't leave because he was exchanging one belief system for another, like a Christian who becomes a Hindu, or a Republican who becomes a Democrat. His journey began simply with his desire to know the truth about life's meaning and purpose. He was searching for something without knowing what he was seeking...
The closest thing to a notion of a god in Buddhism is probably the state of enlightenment. But even enlightenment is regarded as a human accomplishment: the development of consciousness to its highest state. The Buddha taught that every human being has the capacity to achieve that level of realization. That's the difference in the approaches of nontheistic and theistic traditions. If I said' 'I want to become God', it would sound crazy or even blasphemous to a theist. It would be considered a very ambitious, very ego-centered thought. But in the Buddhist tradition, we're encouraged to become like Buddha - awakened ones".

One Hundred Grasses

2011-10-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

I am torn between my usual desire not to repeat myself more than strictly necessary, and the desire to acknowledge that things happen more than once and that we live in a world of cyles - lunar, seasonal, annual and so on - which living a ceremonial life often makes very explicit.
So I don't really have anything new to say about last night's Full Moon Ceremony. It was well attended, more than sixty people in the Buddha Hall at a guess, and very warm - I was sweating before we even started on the prostrations. We had a pair of pros as kokyo and doan in Tim and Anna, who did us proud, and a brand new doshi in Rosalie, who seemed to have it all down from what I could see. I was mainly looking at White Tara as usual.

I took this picture yesterday morning, and it reminded me of this one, though of course there is a difference in where the moon is setting. After dinner, I went upstairs to be greeted by this:

Nothing new, but still beautiful to behold fresh.

Back In The Groove

2011-10-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

I offered this photo to Kate to put on the YUZ Facebook page, and when she was a little confused as to what it was, I suggested we could add a title like 'turn it up' (and I like the fact it even goes up to twelve).
It would be nice if we could control our attention levels like that (bringing to mind one of Charlie P's legendary Tassajara skits where he was the inventor of a machine that could do just that), but these things tend to come and go. On Monday and Tuesday of this week I had noticed that my chanting in morning service was pretty lacklustre - I was not getting as far on each breath as I am used to, and there wasn't much oomph there. Similarly I had noticed during noon services thus far in the practice period that I hadn't really connected with the words of the Self-receiving and -employing Samadhi - was I just giving too much of my attention to the new doanryo as they made their best efforts to get things right? Then, yesterday, when I was doshi for the first time in a while, I really felt right there at the center of the energy of the service, and everything came alive - which was nice. It may have had something to do with the sunshine.

I am aware that I pitch this blog with a certain lack of explanation of the basics, a function of who I am and where I am with my practice, so I am happy to send you off to investigate some other blogs in the near environs where people articulate their own dharma positions, which, depending on yours, may be more helpful - first of all Renee who has started one with her own special blend of Tibetan Buddhism, music and dance; also Lynn, one of our YUZ regulars, bringing forward a lot of pertinant questions; not forgetting the compassionate teacher, wrestling with her thoughts, nor the zen beginner, who has good advice for the beginner, as well as reviews. Indra's net in full effect.

Every Day Is A Good Day

2011-10-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

It happened that yesterday was my birthday. I would have wished for better weather had I known it was going to be so dreary and wet all day, and there was a distinct torpor in the morning schedule that may have been attributable to the change in the weather after such a sunny weekend, but apart from that it was a fine day.
Most likely, if people here know it is your birthday, you will have 'Happy Birthday' sung to you at work meeting, and this was the case yesterday (we also sang for Anna whose birthday was the day before). I had several visits from the chocolate fairy with offerings left on my desk, in the office, outside my room, and even under my cushion in the zendo when I went to sit in the afternoon - and I guess I am okay with being type-cast as a chocolate lover - as well as flowers, cards, phone calls, emails and messages from friends and family, and a good number of hugs.
I did try to get some work done in the morning, and then it was my turn, with Bernd, to do lunch dishes. Many people commented along the lines of 'they made you do dishes on your birthday?', but I was fine with it - apart from giving me occasion to interact with everyone who was having lunch, it didn't feel like much of a chore.
And anyway I had an appointment to go to Kabuki baths afterwards, courtesy of a recent benefactor, which made for a nice indulgent stretch of the afternoon. I enjoyed noticing how different my gait was on the way back compared to the way there, and tried to carry that feeling through the rest of the day.
To wrap things up, being Monday, we had our Young Urban Zen meeting - for which I am now even further past the age range of course. I had thought that the wet weather might keep a few people away, but on the contrary, we had the biggest meeting yet, with thirty people showing up. About half the group came along to the Orbit Room afterwards, as some of us had for Hannah's birthday a few weeks ago, to expand our practice together beyond the cushion. It turned into a slightly later night than I had anticipated, mainly because we were having fun. I am happy to report that all the residents in attendance made it safely to the zendo this morning, as did one or two others, who were perhaps wanting to show their determination. I confess that I was not feeling at my freshest, and that during second period my concentration was more than haphazard; a fine demonstration of how intimately cause and effect are linked.

Entertainment

2011-10-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about living at Zen Center is that often the entertainment happens at home, be it a movie, a reading, an ice cream social, or as on Saturday, a whole big happening. I was sitting in the dining room during the Bold Italic event, listening to Barn Owl, in almost exactly the same spot as I had sat on Friday night listening to Zenju reading from and discussing her new book, but while that offering was a very typical Zen Center offering, quiet and intimate, Barn Owl were possibly the loudest thing ever to happen in this building. I loved them, something about the pure intensity of the sound that reminded me of going to see the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor, after which I would feel like I had been standing under a waterfall for a couple of hours - a little battered but completely invigorated. I had heard them during their sound check in the afternoon, as we set everything up for the evening, and on the basis of that, recommended to Keith, our resident who is now deaf, that he come and sit in to feel them playing (you can read his impressions here).
There was much more happening during the evening as well: two other sets of music, well chosen to match the space, from Danny Paul Grody and Date Palms, who were in the chilly courtyard; an art installation managed by David Wilson, tea tasting, chocolate, the listening booth with Bernd, and meditation with Lien followed by a showing of movies featuring Suzuki Roshi. I really enjoyed the feeling of the evening, people free to roam the ground floor to find something to give their attention to, and having the space mixed between our usual activities and these new creations and new visitors was really energising.

Artists at work

The installation


Danny Paul Grody

Foot traffic

Barn Owl

Trying to represent the Barn Owl sound pictorially

Date Palms in the coutyard

Gregg from Date Palms and his array of instruments

Danny Paul Grody and the moon

Think Different

2011-10-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

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

Written on a MacBook Pro

Living The Precepts

2011-10-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

During last weekend's jukai, a line that stood out for me was right at the beginning, in the invocation: "In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way". As someone asked me to write about what it meant to receive the precepts, I thought this might be a good place to start.
Any teacher will give you instruction in their understanding of how to approach the precepts, and there are usually classes here at Zen Center as well - Tova is teaching one this practice period. Of the books on the subject, the two most widely recommended here are Being Upright by Reb Anderson, and The Mind of Clover by Robert Aitken.
I was a bit of a late developer when it came to the precepts. I lived here at City Center for two years, with Paul as my teacher, and took classes studying them, but did not feel ready to ask to sew my rakusu. It was only when I went to Tassajara and met Gaelyn that I felt the urge to take that step; she said yes, but I still ended up waiting two years before I did the ceremony, mainly as she had not had dharma transmission when I asked, so she was not able to perform the ceremony herself.
When I did finally have my jukai, in the spring of 2004, coming at the end of four practice periods at Tassajara, I found that I was seriously thinking about becoming a priest, and I remember speaking about this with Gaelyn on the day of the ceremony. As it happened, with causes and conditions and dealing with things happening in my life rather unskillfully, that took another five years to come to fruition, and by then I had returned to being Paul's student.
In that sense, my notions of what it means to take the precepts and receive a lay ordination are a little coloured by my desire to be priest ordained, so that my blue rakusu seemed like a marker on the way somewhere else, though of course the precepts you receive at lay ordination and priest ordination are exactly the same.
I think when practice starts to make sense to us in a certain way, when it starts to integrate into our lives, and we want to articulate this in a committed way, it follows that we make the precepts a foundation of that, and our receiving the precepts a recognition of that. As I have heard many teachers say over the years, the undertaking is an intention to make this effort, and not just a rod to beat ourselves up with if we start to think we are not doing well enough; the precepts are guides more than rules. We are just saying that we care enough about how we live to explicitly make this our path. As a priest I am just taking this further by making practice the central element of my life, by vowing to uphold forms and ceremonies, as one version of one of the Pure Precepts has it, and by endeavouring to help others find their way.

Rain and blue sky after breakfast this morning

Coming Attractions

2011-10-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

If you pay close attention to the Zen Center calendar, you may have noticed an upcoming event in conjunction with The Bold Italic, which you can now read all about here - it is sold out though, so if you haven't already got tickets, sorry. I have been curious about how this event will unfold since Michael B. proposed it many months ago, and have been happy to be a part of planning it. There is a continual debate here, as there needs to be, as to how we keep Zen Center vital and interesting to the wider community without losing sight of the fundamental reasons why we do this (which is why I was keen to help Young Urban Zen happen), and while I tend to scepticism around the whole notion of 'Zen and ...' that sometimes seems to happen here and at Tassajara as a way to entice people, the angle proposed here definitely got me enthused. Imagining as we have that this event will reach a very different crowd than usual, I look forward to seeing how such an influx of people will affect the building, and vice versa.

Training

2011-10-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

There's a pretty steep learning curve when you move into the building. Apart from the practical things of any new place you live like where all the bathrooms are, where does the recycling go, where is the milk kept, there is the whole spiritual side as well, with its wealth of forms: what time do I have to get to the zendo in the morning, how does kinhin work, how do I get in and out of the Buddha Hall without standing out too much, finding the chants in the chant book and so forth. And then you are expected to take on different jobs on top of that: kitchen prep jobs, dish shifts, house jobs - taking care of different aspects of the practical running of the temple - desk duty, night-watch, bathroom jobs and doan jobs. Obviously my realm is the latter, and we have been working hard to get all the new people stitched into the doanryo. Yesterday I showed a group of people how to be cleaning chidens, the people who take care of each altar so that it looks immaculate at the beginning of each day, and we have also been doing noon service trainings, where new people get the opportunity to try out as doan, kokyo, shoten or jiko. Last night we had an energetic and laughter-filled run through the forms of service, even if we didn't have time for everyone who came to try each position they wanted to.
I have noticed over the last eighteen months that I have often had a fair amount of resistance at the idea of doing trainings, and I think it has to do with feeling the responsibility that I have to transmit all the forms correctly so that everything is done right afterwards, even though I know that hardly ever happens, and that the whole thing is really a process of noticing how things go, pointing out the mistakes that happen and trying to correct them gently, as we do in the morning service review. Of course not everyone has an in-built aptitude for all these jobs, and not everyone is receptive to feedback, so dealing with those issues is one thing I have to keep learning.

After the rain this morning

Study Hall

2011-10-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

A last excerpt from Returning to Silence for the time being: "The moment between before and after is called Truth or Buddha's world. We don't know what this is but we are there. Our life is completely embraced by this. We are present from moment to moment right there. That is what we call buddha, Buddha's world or Buddha-nature. That Truth is not something objective; it is the original nature of the self. Original nature of the self is not something different from the Truth. They are one.
The source of energy that helps the growth of our original nature is not in the conscious conceptual world. We are just going, so there is no room to say it is anywhere. It is continuous dynamic working and it is there we must stand up. Life is the full manifestation of total dynamic working. There is no room to conceptualize. It is just working. If we want to taste this, it is practice. We have to be right there, be present right there. We have to be in harmony with our original nature. If we are there, very naturally seeds of our energy grow, the source of our energy, our life, grows. But it is not an idea of 'right there'; it is more than that; it is nothing but dynamic energy, energy in motion. It is going on eternally, regardless of whether the world is born or not."

Three New Bodhisattvas

2011-10-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

I had been angling to write about Saturday being one of those non-stop-twelve-hour days, but in the end it didn't quite feel like that. Having missed out on the one-day sitting last weekend, I did feel a bit rusty about doing a morning with oryoki, and there was a certain feeling of one thing after another - zazen, service, breakfast, doshi for zazen, lecture, setting up the Buddha Hall, kokyo for nenju, a silent lunch with the ordainees, rehearsal, jukai ceremony, photographs, reception - but I also had time, after Paul had run us through the rehearsal very efficiently, to take a bath so I could shave my head before the ceremony.
Michael in his talk had spoken of how ceremonies never go the way you think they are going to, and this jukai was a fine example of that, as our newly minted bodhisattvas needed to be nudged on the forms a few times, but it was also a very sweet and emotional occasion. As usual, the photographs say more:

Preceptors Paul and Cynthia and Lucy the jisha

Virginia receives her kechimyaku

Caren shows off the back of her rakusu

Cynthia and Cynthia

Virginia Paul and Caren

You're never too old to be a Bodhisattva

Envelopes, chant cards, serene name cards and kechimyakus

Study Hall

2011-09-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

"It is important to give quality to the effort, instead of expecting the result of the effort. All you have to do is just make your best effort, being free from a label or judgment that you are capable or not or that you are good or not. Forget it and just make an enormous effort.
If while making this effort you are also competing with somebody else or with an idea of how to become a buddha, it's very difficult to give quality to your effort. We always think that we are deluded, ordinary people who will never become a buddha. Such an idea is also competition. If we practice like that it's very hard; our zazen becomes 'hell' zazen. If someone else attains enlightenment, that is their story, not yours. If someone stumbles, help them; don't think about being first. Don't compete and don't expect results. This is the best way to be free from selfishness. This is called the practice of egolessness. This is our practice" - Returning to Silence, Dainin Katagiri.

Common Ground

2011-09-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

I got word that there were some feelings being expressed in the Young Urban Zen Facebook Group, and since I am not on Facebook, I cannot reply within that space, and as it is not an open-view group I can't link you all to it either. Here is one comment from one of our regulars, whose permission I have to re-post:

"Common ground is really important. The more I think about this, the more I realize that my beef is not with reading passages, but with the difficulty of finding common ground when everyone has really different experiences, beliefs, influences, etc. Actually, what bugs me is not those differences, but the fact that we never talk about them! I have no idea what our common ground really is. YUZ has been going for almost 4 months now and we haven't really opened up to each other in terms of our beliefs, values, feelings, etc. There are just occasional glimpses. I can tell people want to express themselves more, and I want to see more of that, but there's such a heavy emphasis on ideas that we don't get very personal. Most of what I know about anyone in the group is how they react to text. So yeah, I guess I do have a beef with the passages, because they turn our focus away from each other and into our heads. When it comes down to it, we can always read at home, but it's very rare to find a group like ours, and I feel like there are more direct ways to learn from each other".

My answer would be that zazen was always intended to be our common ground, that it is rare enough to be able to sit with people, that the act of doing that, regularly, albeit with a somewhat shifting cast, will inevitably show each of us to each other. At the very least it should foster a field of openness which will inform whatever conversation we have afterwards. It is probably true that in a varying group, some people will not want to be fully open, though the small group discussions hopefully make that easier. In my contributions to the meetings and the small groups, I often find myself suggesting that people find an answer in their hearts more than their heads, and that they use the texts as a way to clarify feelings more than to express ideas. We could certainly learn from each other by doing other things - it was true when a bunch of us played games in the park, and the times some of us have been out for a drink after meetings, and it could also be true if we did an hour of kitchen practice together, or spent an evening cleaning the conference center instead of talking. Nevertheless, what I value most in the group, as I have expressed here on several occasions, is that it gives me a forum to meet people open-hearted and whole-heartedly, and my wish that everyone in the group is able to cultivate that quality in themselves through the imperfect processes of our meeting together.

The Chocolate Index

2011-09-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

'Tangaryo' has been a popular search word on the blog this week, no doubt because the new students at Tassajara are sitting right now, having a hot one I imagine, and probably 'quiet as lambs', as Gaelyn described one set of students to me. We have our own tangaryo in a couple of weeks, but ours is for people who have already spent some time at the temple. So our new practice period students get to be lively influences on the energy levels of the community right now.
The building certainly feels like it's buzzing this week; of course there are other factors at play, like the Indian Summer weather which settled over the city (and is currently disappearing in a fast-moving fog layer as I write) and the classes and other practice period offerings that draw crowds in. Personally I am in good fettle as well, helped along by the heat and sunshine. I notice that I feel more settled in my spine as I sit, and that I have more energy to tackle the things that need to be taken care of. All these things interweave.
Now, the only two addictions or vices that I readily admit to are coffee and chocolate, and I usually say by way of justification that they are fairly minor in the scheme of things. I know my consumption of both can vary depending upon my mood, and I can definitely report that I don't seem to require as much chocolate to sustain me as I did a while ago. It's not that I eat so much less necessarily, but there is less craving involved.

Morning sun on the third floor

Study Hall

2011-09-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

"Whatever you do, wherever you may be, you are doing it in the Buddha's world. Buddha's world means the universe. The universe is nothing but the total manifestation of the truth by which all sentient beings are supported, upheld, naturally, if we open our hearts. If we don't open our hearts, it's a little bit difficult. Difficult means it takes a long time" - Returning to Silence, Dainin Katagiri.

Jinen's rakusu on the roof this morning during soji

Pilgrimage

2011-09-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

I think it is safe to say that without my love of bicycles, I would never have come to live in San Francisco (and if you haven't heard that story yet, you will probably have to ask me in person, especially if you want the version that starts with a skiing trip I didn't go on in 1984), so to have a whole weekend where riding a bike is the primary focus of attention and Buddhism is the backdrop, is my idea of an all-round good time.
Having just scrolled back through the archives, I don't seem to have referenced the Buddhist Bike Pilgrimage, (update - well I did, but I couldn't remember for a while where I had, and the search function failed to find the word pilgrimage for some reason) but that was how I spent my weekend. Last year it was deemed that my place was in the ino's seat for the one-day sitting that begins the Fall Practice Period, but this year more lenient forces were at work, and I am grateful that Joan took over as ino for the day. I still had to put everything for the sitting together on Friday, with a few potential wrinkles with our new online registration system causing a little concern, and a late request that we have some assigned seating for the practice period also adding to my weekend workload.
I didn't have time to think about packing for the pilgrimage until eight-thirty on Friday night, and I was due to be out of the door at four-forty the next morning, so it wasn't until we actually got to Spirit Rock just as the new moon was peeping through the clouds that I started to be present for what was about to happen.
Eugene Cash gave a nice introductory talk about approaching the event with 'don't know' mind, which was rendered most poignant by the fact that he had a bad crash about twenty miles into the ride and had to be taken to hospital with some broken bones. I had been riding along talking with him just a little while before that, but we got separated on a climb, and then he crashed on the tricky descent.
Obviously, with the news spreading quickly by the time we got to the next rest stop, it cast a pall on the day, and the whole event, but there were many joys as well. It is a very social event, and having done it two years ago, I recognised a number of people, and met a few more, and got to hang out with some good friends, either riding together, or sitting in the pool on Saturday afternoon, and at meals.
On Sunday we started with perhaps unprecedented damp weather, but since the temperature is often nudging a hundred degrees out on the roads, it wasn't so bad, and the sun was out before too long. We got to experience some different styles of Buddism along the way, though I confess I felt like taking the weekend off meditation and ceremony, and didn't attend all the dharma offerings.
Today, though I am still feeling a bit tired myself, City Center is buzzing with the energy of a dozen new residents and the extra events associated with the practice period. I expect the Young Urban Zen meeting tonight will give me a much-needed shot of vitality.