The dharma of adapting Buddhism

Yesterday at the Berkeley Zen Center, Sojun Mel Weitsman reflected on how when Suzuki Roshi asked him to start the center, one of his tasks was to build a library.  They had little money, so the community donated many non-Buddhist books which Sojun then traded in at local bookstores for Buddhist ones. He collected virtually all the Buddhist texts published in English, ending up with one bookshelf.

Hearing his story reminded us of exactly how new this tradition is to the West.  In Sojun’s lifetime, he has seen a flowering of temples and teachers in the United States.  Popular Buddhist magazines exist where there used to be none at all; multiple rooms can now be filled with well-researched, deeply insightful books; major universities host popular and respected PhD's in Buddhist studies.  

He spoke of how this flowering of the dharma in a new land has often felt like a “grand experiment" requiring many adaptations.  When I asked him what adaptations he felt were most important, he quickly answered that American Buddhism was responsible for two major alterations that Buddhist leaders around the world are seeking to emulate.  The first is the striving for total equality of men and women within Buddhist practice.  In the United States, this has been a journey requiring sangha members to examine their own roles in patriarchal culture and to contribute to changing that culture.  Sojun stressed that we have the benefit of being used to and expecting continuous change, whereas in Japan change happens much more slowly.  Even though Japanese priests are working on it, reshaping culture is far more difficult.  The second adaptation was the introduction of zazen as a lay practice.  Sojun described how he has been working with Japanese priests for two decades in helping to bring these modifications to Japan.  Japanese priests, he said, are deeply impressed by the ability of American temples to bring meditation to the public.

Sojun’s talk was deeply affirming for me.  I have felt the need to leave certain traditions and teachings behind, the simple examples being reincarnation and laws of karma based in it.  While many western Buddhists do believe in these, it's important to note that throughout Asia, cosmology has been a major part of Buddhism.  Both cosmology and the vast bulk of ritual activity has been left behind by American Buddhists.  Despite the fact that many Buddhists around the world would hardly recognize American Buddhism as a form of Buddhism, these dramatic changes are nonetheless extensions of the dharma. 

Part of my practice is also taking teachings in new directions, such as my recent reflections on the paramitas.  In these contemplations I've been developing my own thoughts, inspired in part by tradition and in part by the reflections of recent Western ancestors like Reb Anderson and scholars like Dale Wright, who themselves take traditional teachings in new directions. The reflections on the paramitas from across Asia are immensely beneficial, but there is also much that is not said about such important topics as generosity, patience, and wisdom: as American Buddhists, we are taking these in new directions, and extending the dharma by doing so. 
  

I have been experiencing a growing desire to spread the dharma.  I don't know what this means for me because I have no intention of becoming a priest.  Although I increasingly feel drawn to the idea of spending a long period in meditation, study, and reflection in order to embody and understand the dharma, I cannot imagine the priestly route of stepping away from my activity in the world.  I have, however, reached a place where it feels important to communicate the dharma to many people from all walks of life, to contribute to helping people make sense of the dharma in this new soil.  It is not just me and my sangha that thrives on the dharma, the world needs it.  It has to be communicated very clearly and thoughtfully in order for the roots to continue to spread and to deepen.  This communication and taking root requires extending traditional teachings in new directions.  New directions don't mean straying from essential teachings and practices, but fully meeting the moment and recognizing what works here and now.  If we meet the moment fully here, in San Francisco and in the United States, we will apply the dharma in an appropriate and specific way which will entail altering tradition.  Sanghas around the world will very likely learn something from us. 

Thankfulness as generosity

Another post on the many manifestations of danaparamita, the perfection of generosity.  

My mother has been suffering from major health problems recently.  After a month in a nursing home, I am extremely thankful that she is healthy enough to be home once more, thankful that she can be in a warm and cozy space, thankful that she can once again sit in her chair and look out over the narrow strip of water that separates Alameda and Oakland.  

I want to write about a moment of thankfulness that she shared with me while she was still in the nursing home.  We were sitting calmly together, and in a very sweet moment after reading a story, she expressed with great sincerity how lucky she felt and how thankful she was.  She acknowledged that things could easily have been much worse.  She was thankful for what she did have of her health.  And she was so, so thankful for all the love she had in her life. 

Her expression of thankfulness was a great gift to me because it opened a space for my own.  My inability to find work as a history teacher despite years of hard work and complete devotion to the teaching path had driven me into an incapacitating depression.  As she expressed thankfulness, deep in my own body I could feel how right she was.  Her expression allowed me to fully feel how much I had to be thankful for despite feeling so unacknowledged and unsuccessful.  Thankfulness didn't get rid of that suffering.  But it did put it in a larger perspective, in which it wasn't such a big deal.  In depression we have trouble seeing outside of our suffering, and by focusing on it, allow suffering to overcome us.  In thankfulness, we focus on what is beautiful in life.  Suffering is real, but it is only part of the story.  Thankfulness shows us the other part. 

Giving thanks is seeing things clearly.  It is being present with reality.  It is loving.  It is a skill we can cultivate, a spiritual technique, a practice we can use to offer ourselves a more expansive view.  Thankfulness is spiritual because it allows us to enter into a deeper, more subtle and more perceptive relationship to this world.  If we practice the spiritual technique of thankfulness with sincerity we will see more clearly and love more deeply.  Giving thanks may start as a mental activity, but the mental activity serves to allow the body to become thankful.  We can feel and express thankfulness in the way we sip tea or touch another human being.  I imagine that bodhisattvas are beings whose bodies express love and thankfulness in each moment, and whose expressions of love and thankfulness open doors for others to be loving and thankful as well. 

Thankfulness is a form of danaparamita because when we are thankful, we are being generous to all beings.  People who give sincere thanks together develop love together and become dharma sisters and brothers. 

Allowing others to fully approach to us

Buddhists have traditionally divided danaparamita, or the perfection of generosity, into two parts: the giving of physical objects that benefit other beings, and the giving of the dharma.  However, giving physical gifts should always involve giving the dharma because the spirit in which we give should embody the dharma, should embody selflessness, compassion, and wisdom.  The way in which physical gifts are given can be the true gift.

Generosity is often thought of as giving physically or of actively reaching out.  But there is also the great gift of receiving, of being available, of being approachable.  What does it mean to perfect approachability?  It does not mean spiritual charisma or energy that entices people to approach.  Approachability means cultivating a certain physical and psychological presence so that when people watch our body language, look into our eyes, or hear our tone of voice, they will understand that they are deeply accepted and safe with us.  This is not about the mind.  Our body communicates to their body that they are completely accepted.  Without reaching out at all, on the surface offering nothing, we can in fact offer everything.  In this way we can allow people to fully approach us.
 

Approachability is perfected when our body, speech, and mind reveal our true warmth and compassion for all beings, just as they are.  It is perfected when everything about ourselves shows to others that we do not wish they were different in any way.  In zazen we fully face and accept ourselves.  We learn to witness and care for what is true in ourselves.  This is training for witnessing and caring for what is true in the world rather than expending energy wishing that things were otherwise.  The body that wishes that things were otherwise, that does not totally accept other beings, will not be a fully approachable body and thus will not fully manifest danaparamita.  Perfecting approachability includes witnessing and caring for people who are cold and distant towards us.  Their distance need not be ours; their wish that things were otherwise need not be our wish.  We can offer warmth and remain approachable in all circumstances.  We can at least reflect on this matter and work towards this goal.

When we practice witnessing and caring for what is true in ourselves and the world, we become at home in ourselves and in our interconnectedness with the world.  As our new ino Kyosho Valerie Beer wrote today, "the purpose of meditation is to come home...  Dogen called zazen 'the full investigation of the homeward course.'"  We are home right here, we do not need anything to be different; in finding home we have transcended the acquisitive mind. Not needing the world to change for us allows others to be at home with us.  Thus zazen provides shelter for all beings.    

Acquisitive energy is alive in each precept

During my morning reflections on the precepts, I read part of Reb's chapter on not-lying.  He mentions that, for many people, the precepts regarding intoxication, sexuality, and lying are connected.  Intoxication makes lying and bending the truth much easier – some of us may even become intoxicated to enable ourselves to be more willing to bend the truth.  If intoxication is a problem for us, its something we would be very tempted to lie about, including to ourselves; and of course, intoxication can lead to a lack of mindfulness regarding sexuality.  Sexual desire can facilitate lying for many reasons; one is because the desire to impress can lead many of us to bend the truth about ourselves.  

I found myself thinking of how the desire to impress, which can all too easily involve a lack of honesty, is often the desire to acquire, and realized that these precepts were also intimately connected with not-stealing. 

The precept of not-stealing has not meant much to me before, because I was thinking of it simply in terms of stealing physical objects.  However, considering not-stealing as the acquisitive mind and body, the mind and body that wants more than it already has, the mind and body that wants to own or control something, the mind and body that is not fulfilled by what it has in the present, has made this precept fruitful.  Considering not-stealing in this light has allowed me to consider how this precept facilitates perfecting other precepts: reading about not-lying, I was also reading about not-stealing.  

The being that lies - the being that refrains from total forthrightness, the being that speaks in half-truths or promotes obscurity rather than clarity - is often a being that feels the urge to acquire something; the being that is not mindful about sexuality is often a being who feels the impulse to acquire the attention of another being in a variety of ways and may even want to own or determine the way the energy of another being manifests.    

One of the great gifts we can give the world - one of the manifestations of danaparamita or the perfection of generosity - is a highly developed non-acquisitive nature.  When we develop this nature, others can feel free around us and truly cared for by us: we are not trying to get anything from anybody but are caring for all beings, including ourselves, exactly as we are.

When reflecting on many of the precepts – even those involving maintaining rituals and taking refuge – I realize it is fruitful to ask myself: do I have any acquisitive energy around this precept?  In some form, I do have acquisitive energy around every single precept, and part of the work of gradually perfecting the precepts will be working with the many manifestations of acquisitive energy. 

Remembering Georg Feuerstein

In the past month three friends have had loved ones pass before their time.  Sitting with them in their grieving I have felt sturdy and present, like an Atlas with the world feeling completely light on my shoulders.  I was simply there to support; it was not my partner, my sibling, my friend who had passed on so young.  It was not my grief, so the burden was light.   But leaving them, I have felt fragile, felt the total weight of the world.  But leaving them, perhaps by their grief I was reminded of my own friends who have passed.  And other events in my life force me to recognize the fragility of the body on the one hand, and the complete lack of control I have over events in my own life on the other. 

Today I hear that Neil Armstrong passed.  Neil was actually somewhat mythic to me; I was born in DC, had family working in NASA, and as a history buff was aware of the political construction of his mythology as part of cold war strategy: America had taken "one giant step for mankind," not the USSR.  As Suzuki Roshi himself implied in his contemporaneous lectures recorded in "Not Always So," the actual importance of that step was wildly dubious.  Not only the spiritually minded understood this; a military mind as keen as Eisenhower's understood the space-race as pure politics.  Myths always shatter when we investigate them; but rather than losing meaning history allows mythology to become more rich and complex, deeply involved in social constructions and political strategies.  In my psyche, Armstrong held a rich and symbolic place in American history.  

Today I also heard of the passing of the great yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein, whose work had a great impact on me.  The fact that the news came from a friend who knew and loved Georg heightened the affect.  These deaths, unlike watching my own loved ones grieve, simply reminded me: death is here.  It is here all the time.  People are dying, all the time.  Perhaps not the people we know, but if we think of all people, they are constantly drifting in and out of existence.  I recalled the first time visiting San Francisco after being in the Arizona desert for a long time.  I looked out over the city and thought to myself: "Wow: in that space I am looking at, someone is dying right now.  Someone is being born right now.  People are experiencing terrible suffering right now.  And others are experiencing the heights of bliss, in this very moment."  

As I rode my bike across the Fruitvale bridge from Alameda to Oakland, stopping to look at the channel, I suddenly felt at peace with death, as I have so often in the past.  This is part of being here, for this brief time.  Georg pursued the dharma and contributed to many lives while he was here.  Beyond that: he was a significant part of reshaping Western culture and may we continue his legacy in our own way by infusing our lives with the dharma and communicating the dharma as clearly and insightfully as possible.  His life was beautiful.  Life is transience and his transience was beautiful and so is our transience.  As I looked over the waters, instead of mourning his death, I felt increased inspiration to pursue and spread the dharma as he had.  Dark feelings were replaced by deep feelings of gratitude.    

What did Georg Feuerstein do?  I don't know much about his life.  But when I was young and in the desert and obsessed with Mircea Eliade (thanks, in fact, to James Bae who informed me of Georg's passing), Georg took me to a deeper level of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras than Eliade had done.  I don't refer to Patanjali much these days, and when I do, I use Edwin Bryant's commentary, but that doesn't matter: Bryant needed Feuerstein and maybe Feurestein needed Eliade.  There is a yogic-scholarly lineage.  And while it is brutally easy to criticize Eliade as a fascist these days - a real criticism which at the same time reveals an ineptitude at contemplating history - the fact remains that all three of these scholars practiced yoga with sincerity and communicated it to us with the utmost lucidity.  

Feuerstein was an incredible scholar and practitioner.  The practitioner side of him, the side of him that cared so much about spreading the yogic dharma in order to support all beings, allowed his scholarly side to be put to service and to communicate clear and concise histories to the broad yoga public.  Feurestein's "The Yoga Tradition" remains the best introduction to yoga for this public, and his "Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra" is the best way for general practitioners to familiarize themselves with the language of yoga.  His work lives on and will deeply inform the next generation of serious yoga practitioners.   

“May we not spend our days and nights in vain.”  I miss this chant; I miss those brief times in my life when I have chanted this daily with the sangha.  Recognizing the transience of life, with a community, is powerful, is a powerful way to sidestep delusion and be totally real with other people.  Together, may we not spend our days and nights in vain.  We do not know how long we will be here and that is okay.  In this moment we can cultivate the mind of enlightenment together and love each other. 

The meaning of not stealing

The thief

Left it behind

The moon at the window

Ryokan

In explaining the precept not to steal, Reb Anderson tells the story of an 18^th century monk and poet named Ryokan who lived in a small hut in the hills, possessing nothing: “One full moon night, a thief came to visit.  Ryokan was not at home, so the thief entered, but he found nothing to steal.  Ryokan returned and caught the thief and said, ‘I’m sorry that you came all this way and didn’t get anything.  Here, have my clothes.’  The thief was surprised, but he took the gift and stumbled off into the moonlit night.  After he had left, Ryokan, standing naked in the moonlight, cried out, ‘Poor fellow, he didn’t get much!  I wish I could give him this full moon, too.”    

Reb Anderson read this story before he was a Zen student.  Ryokan showed him a type of mind that he wanted to emulate, a mind that had perfected the attitude of not-stealing – that had perfected selflessness and generosity.  Ryokan had also perfected something else essential to not-stealing: the ability to be fulfilled by whatever he happens to have in the moment.  Ryokan does not need more, he does not need something else, be it different objects or different emotions or different events in his life.  

How does zazen cultivate not-stealing?  There is the mind that wants things, that seeks fulfillment by trying to get what it does not have.  Actually, there is the body that desires what it does not have, a body filled with energy driving it to seek fulfillment in delusory ways, in ways that will not actually lead to fulfillment, in ways that at best lead to transient satisfaction.  The mind may well understand that it will not be fulfilled so easily, but the energies in the body persist and overcome the mind.  This work with the body is at the core of Buddhism: learning to transcend our actions and thoughts that only lead to transient satisfaction means working with the body, and the way we do that is through meditation, by steadfastly facing, recognizing, and being compassionate with all the energies in the body.  So in zazen it may look like all we are doing is staring at a wall but really we are practicing deep honesty and love. 

Zazen perfects the precepts because zazen works on a body level; it forces us to sit with the energies in the body, gives those energies a chance to be seen and to settle down.  Zazen is a practice in finding fulfillment in this very moment; so zazen is actually the precept of not-stealing, of not trying to gain something, of not trying to seek fulfillment elsewhere.  But it goes both ways; the precepts also facilitate zazen, the active practices, visualizations, and contemplations of selflessness and generosity and fulfillment alter and calm the organism and facilitate the deepening of zazen.

Returning: Care is the Source of My Practice

I have, after contemplating it for months, returned to sewing my rakusu.  Sewing is an act of devotion and commitment and faith.  While sewing we chant, internally, the refuges in Japanese.  The refuges in Japanese translate something like this:  I plunge headfirst, with absolutely no hesitation, into the Buddha, dharma, and sangha.  I feel ready for my practice to embody this faith; for my body, speech, and mind to embody this faith.  Even in moments when I do not actually feel ready, after a great deal of thought and feeling I desire this and believe in this. So the blog is actually partly about learning to embody and to express this faith and the rest of the dharma as I slowly come to understand it.  As a form of speech I hope it in some way manifests my sincere attempt to explore the precept of speaking in a beneficial way, speaking in a way that in itself manifests the precepts to whatever degree I am able. 

And so it feels like the right time for me to restart the blog.  I would like to devote this new beginning to caring deeply, to recognizing that the desire to care is the source of my practice, and to recognizing that the practice makes the deepest forms of care possible.  

I have recently been making a practice of reflecting on the six perfections, or paramitas.  The one that comes to mind this evening is danaparamita, the perfection of generosity.  This is because, right now I am experiencing great difficulty in terms of being generous to myself, which is the major prerequisite of loving and caring for other beings.  I hope I can find a way to explore why it is that it is so much easier to be generous to others than it is to myself, and to give myself all the nourishment and comfort that would allow me to fully be so much more deeply generous to others.  Every moment is an opportunity for self-generosity: so in this moment, as I prepare to go to sleep, I can be generous and nourishing to myself.  In this moment I can allow my body to fully feel my breath.  In this moment I can light candles, I can sit, I can let go of tensions.  Even as I dream, I can dream of warmth, of the clarity of love, of realization. 

My old teacher Baba Hari Dass used to say that as sadhana or daily spiritual practice begins to reform our organism, our organism naturally begins to practice sadhana even in sleep.  This is my experience too; if we shape ourselves through the constant focus on love and on cultivating the mind of enlightenment, then even in dreams we may pursue that greatest act of generosity possibility – the gift to all being, even to plants and rocks, of becoming enlightened to whatever capacity we can muster. 

So with that thought I’m off to bed; and moving forward, hope to keep this blog rolling and devoted to, above and beyond anything else, exploring how practice – including the paramitas, the precepts, Dogen, ritual, etc – facilitates deep care and love.  Because at the heart of it, that’s all that matters to me, and I’m only deepening my practice because I believe more than ever before that this practice is a solid and profound way to love very, very deeply. 

Sometimes to go deeper, we step back

Zen?  What is that?  I can’t say I ever heard of it.  This is how I feel right now, and it is as refreshing as cool mountain air.  This thing, Zen, perhaps I think about it too much, rely on it too much, even identify with it too much.  To not have it in my thoughts and routines is freeing.  I have cancelled my docusan appointments, have not been going to sewing class, to Young Urban Zen.  I even cancelled my training session today at Green Gulch to give garden tours to kids.  Obviously, I have not been writing much, but only recently am I happy about that.

There is only one thing in my life right now, and it is called a thesis.  It’s going to be done in a few weeks.  And it all makes me think that...

Sometimes in life, going deeper means stepping back.  We have all had to do it in our relationships, with our partners, our families, our friends.  Sometimes we need to do it with our professions, with activities we love, with our biggest goals in life... and with our spiritual paths.  Sometimes we need to step back for a long time, sometimes for a short time.  When this thesis is done, I’m stepping back: even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could fruitfully think any more about how history teachers can help students understand prejudice.  This is just the beginning of my work, but before I go deeper, I need some fresh air.  Until my mind stops obsessing over the data gathered, assessed, and synthesized from seventy articles on the subject and a hundred of my own ideas, I am a blind man.  

It was hard to give myself over to the thesis.  For a couple months, my body had been telling me, “Hey Lynn, don’t think about anything else right now.  Let go of Zen.  Let go of other things.  Just sink into the thesis, eat good food, go for runs each day... that’s it”.  I feel really calm having finally accepted my bodies advice.  

Sometimes stepping back means you can let go of anxiety.  Sometimes it means you can attain a better focus or place your focus elsewhere.  It can be a means to gain perspective, to see something more clearly, to understand why something is valuable to you or how it can better fit into your life.  For all these reasons stepping back from Zen for a month feels right.  And then, stepping back from my intellectual work will feel right.  Stepping back from both is right, because I want to go deeper - much deeper - into both.     

Nurturing energy, nurturing life

Just over two weeks ago, I found myself reflecting on on the paramita of virya, or the perfection of energy, and on the first grave precept: I vow not to kill or be thoughtless of life, but to develop energies within myself that nurture life to the greatest extent possible. I was in the midst of feeling my energy acutely and honestly in its relation to the nurturance of self and others.  I was becoming increasingly aware of how certain stories I had about my life, and especially my work, affected my actions, thoughts, and feelings.  Even more importantly, I was noticing how some stories allowed myself to maintain practices and habits that made it difficult for myself to have clear awareness and insight into my own energy and the energy of others - and thus to speak of those energies in a healing way, to explore them, to care for them.

Right now, my practice can essentially be summarized as a reflection on what it means to "nurture life to the greatest extent possible".  In a nutshell, what does it mean to care?  To care means to care for energy, to give energy that nurtures life.  From this point moving forward, the embodied answer to that question has everything to do with creating practices for myself that facilitate rather than dull my awareness of the energy of self and others.  I experience a dull awareness of energy as a decreased closeness to life - a decreased closeness to plants, animals, food, soil, myself, those I love and all beings.  Of course, a decreased closeness to life means an experience of life that reflects that - which is not only about thoughts, feelings, and actions that reflect less closeness, but the very way we experience our senses, the very way we see other beings, the way we feel the ground beneath our feet and the air we breath. 

Practices that bring me closer to life, to feeling and caring for life, are basic: for example, I purchased some new plants and am finding great calm joy in caring for them.  Along with reconnecting with my care for plants, I am paying more attention to food and to eating, from the whole history of the soil and labor from which food comes, to the smells in the kitchen and the feelings I have the day after I eat a meal.  The most miraculous way to care for life, and to manifest myself as a deeply caring individual, is to care for children, which is a mode of caring that has always felt out of reach to me.  But whereas before, I had passively accepted that caring for children could not be a part of my life, I have been seriously considering ways in which I could do this. 

Not drinking coffee or caffeine has been a story unto itself, and a major practice these last two weeks.  I have come into a full awareness of how caffeine dramatically clouds my clear awareness and insight into my own energy and the energy of others.  This last month of thesis writing is no time for total caffeine abstinence, but a simple four days with no caffeine, although quite challenging, also led to a significant energy shift in which I was far more keenly aware of energy.  To put it anther way, I felt much closer to life, more sensitive to and caring for life.  Discipline, held lightly, has much to do with care and closeness: after no caffeine for four days, I kindly let myself drink coffee for two, (yes, I got FAR more work done these two days!), and then I went off for another two days, and then kindly let myself have some more.  This has let myself feel what I am like with and without caffeine, and has also led to truly enjoying and getting pleasure out of coffee when I do drink it. 

...When I sit zazen on my own, I sometimes start to pray, or to make vows.  I bring my hands in front of my heart.  I position my body in whatever way seems to facilitate the prayer, which sometimes means I kneel or lean my head forward so that my forehead touches my hands.  I am so very much in awe of how this human body seems to be made for prayer, for contemplation, for meditation - so in awe of how the positions we put our bodies in naturally facilitate these activities.  Recently I have been saying:  I vow to nurture life.  I vow to honor and nurture the energies within myself.  I vow to feel and love, perceive clearly and care for the life energy of all beings. 

Visualizations naturally arise within me and accompany the vows: I imagine someone I love, and the various energies I see at play in them.  I imagine my own energy, and how it interacts with theirs.  I visualize what that would look like in its most caring form - in its deepest, most healing, most beautiful form.  I imagine doing this with children.  With plants and soil.  With the sky above me, and the ground beneath me. 

Meeting Wendy Johnson

When Young Urban Zen spent a weekend at Green Gulch last month, I spoke with Sukey about volunteering to show elementary and middle school students around the garden twice a month.  I spent yesterday morning training with a handful of others on the basic routine - everything from showing kids the zendo to helping them build their own compost piles (with a little chemistry thrown in for the adults).   

I also had the incredible pleasure of meeting Wendy Johnson, who began the Green Gulch farm in the1970's and ran it for thirty years.  Her book, Gardening at the Dragons Gate, made her a hero of mine when I read portions of it at Green Gulch two years ago.  She writes of the ancient and recent history of the land and geology on which she farmed, of the chemistry involved, and of humankind's relationship to plants with great and grounded spiritual insight.  Wendy makes interconnectedness and interdependence utterly visceral, which for me, is the condition for understanding their place in the realm of love.

I feel that I could not have met Wendy, and began to engage in this project, at a better time.  I have been thinking a great deal, for the past two weeks in particular, about nurturing life, and about nurturing my own energy so that I can nurture the energy of other beings.  This is a bigger story that has to do with cleansing and reassessing my energy and my relationship to Buddhism - but if I tried to write about that now, I'd be up until the wee hours. 

Just one quick story before I get some much needed sleep:  Wendy was telling us that some of the students would be recent immigrants, and that many of them would be excited about farming - she told stories of students who had been raised as farmers racing ahead and excitedly filling boxes with vegetables, only to become embarrassed when they realized no other students had done so.  "By the time these students have been here for a couple of years, they'll have completely forsaken their history, and even scorn farming.  Talk about how important farming is for all cultures, how much we depend on them, how heroic it is!"

It made me think of many of my old students.  I had one Latino boy that never spoke to the other Latino's in an English Language Learner US history class I once taught.  It took me three weeks to realize that he only spoke a little Spanish - he spoke an indigenous language, and had been raised in the mountains far away from Spanish speakers.  When I discovered he had ridden horses all his life, I built the theme of horses into the US history class, which always got his attention and sometimes prompted him to speak up.  I had another Latino student who had been a taxi driver since he was twelve, and had hitchhiked and ridden on top of trains, by himself, all the way from Colombia to the border.  He was an illegal immigrant - a phrase I can't help but despise because it dehumanizes many people whom I care for.  I asked him if he had told anybody else, and he said that the school knew, but that he hadn't told many people his story.

So many students with so many stories - one of my Yemenis students was from a scholarly family and had lived in the capital of Sinaa.  Two other Yemenis had lived lives that would have put them directly at odds with him back home - they had grown up as nomadic traders, leaving before sunrise each morning to ride across long stretches of desert with their fathers, AK 47's slung over their shoulders.  They told me stories about how desert people have an understanding for one another, no matter what the culture is.  If a ship came into port, they always could tell if the guy unloading was a desert man or not.  I had a few African American students who would engage in "gun play" - they would pretend to be using guns, holding their hand up in the air and shouting "bapbapbap!"   When my Yemenis students from the desert saw this, their faces would grow stone cold.  I talked with them about it over tea at lunch and they blew up: "They know nothing!  Nothing!  They have everything they need to make a good life!  Why do they destroy themselves?"  The racial feelings at this school, composed almost entirely of poor students of color, were incredibly complex.  Whether from the city or nomadic, wealthy (back home at least) or poor, the Yemenis took on a tough, urban style.  However, their singing and dancing, a major part of their life and spirit, is highly emotional and even sensual, sometimes putting them at odds with the hard edges they tried to portray.

In the classroom, I watch students embrace parts of their culture, and leave much of it behind.  However, what is left behind is replaced by re-imagining and re-creating culture.  It's a natural process of acclimating, but it takes a great deal of their mental and emotional energy.  All students - white local students certainly not excluded! - are acclimating and exploring the shifting energy of adolescence.  They all live in a complex world, and need spaces of quiet, spaces that are about feeling themselves, spaces that are beautiful and settling - spaces like Green Gulch, even for just an afternoon.  They are all spiritual beings, deep down, and benefit from becoming closer to the processes of life, and understanding how to care for those processes.    

For the past couple of months my energy has been scattered, and the time has come for me to honestly sit and feel that scattered energy, feel where it comes from, and feel what heals it.  And as I begin to sit and cleanse, I increasingly understand that nurturing life, be it the life of plants or of students, may well be the most healing action I can take for myself.  Working with kids on the farm feels like one of many actions I can take that allow me to more fully understand, connect with, and honor life in its many forms.  It is so very healing to help children learn to nurture life, to honor it, to be in awe of this wonderful existence.  Even though I will only be with each group of students for a few hours, it is very meaningful, and representative of the direction I want my life to take. 

Journaling: My first memory of Paul

The past month has been a busy one.  While that is true, the busyness of this month has also been a major story I've been telling myself.  It is more the story than the busyness that has led to me feeling more stressed than I have in been in a while, and that has led to my practice slipping and the awareness of my mind and heart been somewhat cloudy.  So this is what I have to practice with right now: life, right? 

In the midst of this especially busy week, I felt a real need to do some journaling - I've been thinking and writing constantly, but none of that has been about myself and how I'm doing - a recipe for feeling out of sorts.  I opened up some of the old journals on my computer and found my notes from the first lecture I heard Paul give.  I think they're from August 2010, and thought they would be fun to share.

First talk I ever heard Paul, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, give: he speaks of sila, ‘the deliberate engagement with the internal,’ and of cultivating the supportive structures for Samadhi. 

-          “The disposition of zazen is non-doing”.  (Shikantaza, the practice of ‘justness,’ is non-doing.) 

-          “Stop, pause, and breath: then you notice what you are actually feeling”.  (A good way for me to think about it.  I often think, ‘breath, and create that space of calm from which awareness can arise.’) 

-          Stopping and breathing is an action that that takes no effort.  It may take effort to convince oneself to stop and breath, but actually stopping and breathing is effortless. 

-          “Attending to the moment as its own event” and not just a method to achieve something higher.  Stop and breath simply in order to stop and breath. 

-          “When we settle our perceptions become more subtle”.

-          Bringing your awareness back to the self thousands of times enhances the neural pathways that enable you to do that.

-          “Let the request for awareness be granted”.  “On the inhale, let the natural request of the body be granted”.

                      - “When you let go of language, you let go of conceptualization.  The practice of silence is                     the practice of letting go of conceptualization”.

And, from that same journal entry, a funny little note to myself:

  

           "Story about the sound of Buddha's heartbeat".  

         

Cross-post: yoga, tantrism, colonialism

Think some of you might enjoy the post I left on my other blog - debunking a NYT article riddled with serious (and common) misconceptions of yoga and tantrism. 

I feel conflicted sometimes - but it passes

Strange zen dream last night... there were initiation rights about getting into YUZ... one had to prove oneself to be accepted into the group.  The dream was shadowy, all the colors were dark, the atmosphere was bleak and somber.

I fluctuate with YUZ - at times I am very excited about building the sangha; at other times I feel like my relationship to zen has been more geared towards socializing and less towards zazen, the precepts, or deepening the sangha.  At my most cynical (yesterday) I feel like its not even a sangha - just people using the group and the readings and discussions as an opportunity to hang out rather than to deepen their practice and learn to support one another (including myself).  I feel blessed that a single period of zazen wipes out such cynicism.  I know its much harder for many people...

We usually break up into groups and discuss a reading, which is what we did last night.  There have been other discussions where I haven't spoken - but those times, I was just consciously observing.  Last night was the first time where I really felt I had nothing to say.  It was more than that - I felt like I wasn't a part of it.  I even felt alienated, on a different page.  It has absolutely nothing to do with the group - purely a dynamic within myself. 

I spoke up one time during the large conversation: someone had mentioned that the mind is never completely still. In response, someone mentioned that reciting Buddhist spells can lead to complete stillness of mind.  There was a silence in which I felt compelled to speak up in the spirit of solidarity: "I appreciate you saying that - some of the calmest moments in my life have been while reciting a mantra for hours".

But part of me really wanted to burst that bubble of silence and address whatever lay behind it:  "I find that really interesting.  There is something about recitation that stops the mind.  Event though you are speaking words, the mind has stopped, is far more still than we ordinarily experience while in zazen.  Reciting a mantra, there is not a need to concentrate, to attempt to do anything - the mind is simply still.  Which makes me want to ask, what is the benefit of, or what is profound about the still mind... as opposed to the mind that is involved in noticing?  (I recently re-read an essay I wrote about yoga years ago - I consciously refrained from describing Patanjali's descriptions of various stages of samadhi because I couldn't understand them, and I still can't comment on various stages of stillness of mind today.  His definition of yoga as the cessation of the minds activity has always stuck with me).  

"Regarding spells, in so much of the Buddhist world, spells are very real.  People will write the Heart Sutra on their bodies to ward off ill-will, or recite a mantra to gain the favor of a deity.  And in the West, we might judge that - we might judge any belief in magic, or any belief in a deity or bodhisattva.  The impulse to judge may be so strong that we fail to recognize what a profound spiritual practice it is.  The impulse to reject something like magic may be so strong that we don't even attempt to make sense of it.

"For us, bodhisattvas can only exist as allegories or archetypes.  Perhaps we can accept that Buddhists hold these beliefs in other countries, but we feel awkward when a Buddhist who believes in magic or spells comes to the United States and talks about it (but for some reason westerners who reject magic or deities find reincarnation appealing... but for some reason most westerners find a soul going to heaven more sensible than a soul being reincarnated.  I think the reasons behind this are primarily sociological).  Maybe we'll even be deluded into thinking we're being historical and say that the Buddha de-emphasized or even rejected deities and magic, despite knowing full well that his teachings weren't actually written down until Buddhism became a state-sponsored religion a couple hundred years later.  But why do we make such arguments or experience such discomfort?  Where does that judgment come from?  Why do we assume that we know what magic is, or what spells are?  Where do we get our conceptions of those?  From fantasy novels and movies? From Richard Dawkins-style anti-religious polemics that have been handed down to us from the time of Voltaire?  Such polemics are as deeply ingrained in our culture as Protestantism and we should reject their inheritance".  

I feel like all of that would have been out of place to say, but that's what I was actually thinking.  My concern was simple: perhaps this is a man from Southeast Asia, and spells are an ordinary part of Buddhist life.  And then he comes to the Zen Center and gets judged for it, despite the fact that profoundly wise people from all cultures have believed in magic (Socrates (through Plato) and Issac Newton included...)  Now, I have no idea what the real situation is, but I always err on the side of supporting what someone has said unless its clearly harmful, and then I try to say something that helps the speaker recognize the harmfulness of their speech without feeling attacked.

As far as the precepts concerning speech go, speaking "truthfully" is rarely the issue: how do we speak in such a way that supports all beings?  Last night, I had a great deal of trouble in figuring out how to do so.

Practice Together, Way Seeking Minds...

Last night at Young Urban Zen Lydia gave a wonderful way-seeking mind talk - as always, I felt humbled by hearing about how the twists and turns, the ups and downs of life lead us all to this place.  Every person has a different set of circumstances that have brought them here, and hearing about those circumstances always leaves me with a certain emotion - a grounded sense of how large this is.   This is about Buddhism, but also not about Buddhism: just supporting all beings.  Each way-seeking mind talk is a small window into humanity.

After the talk, I had a few short conversations: one woman was telling me that she had just moved to San Francisco, and had never meditated before.  She told me that if she had not been in the room with us, she would have decided after five minutes that this whole sitting still thing just wasn't worth much.  She stayed - and gave meditation a try - only because she was part of a group. She expressed how astounded she was by being around so many people, being so quiet, for such a long time.  It was difficult and surreal for her but she opened up to it, and when Lydia began talking about her own path and process after zazen was over, it began to make sense to her. 

We're all in this together: if it wasn't for each other, we might never have been able to start a practice, or to maintain it, or to make sense of it.  What might seem utterly odd - or at least foreign - on television or in a magazine or book, or when tried all alone or thought of in the abstract, becomes something we can feel close to if done in a supportive community.  On Sunday at Green Gulch, Fu talked about how we need to be around others in order to go deep into ourselves.  By sitting zazen together, we are able to really be alone - we often need to be together to be alone.  Alone together, we can look at and feel the truth of ourselves in zazen.  Alone-alone, this work is difficult.

this body requires taking time

Taking a break from my thesis writing, I keep writing.  I miss writing about what I care about the most... and the feeling of missing viscerally manifests in my body.  I feel increasingly called to deepen my reflections and to compose them.  I feel increasingly called to learn how to write - to write about love, about practice; to write stories.  I have felt disconnected recently - not quite myself - and today I realized that part of that was because I have not been giving as much time to reflection and  practice.  I have been ignoring much of what I feel compelled to do.  I have been repressing the desire to go deeper, deeper into practice and into writing.  Part of what this means is that a great deal of mental and spiritual energy has been accumulated, rather than been processed.  All that unprocessed energy leads to my entire body shutting down - I become tired, I can't think well, I can't perceive as clearly, I can't love as well.  And I become easily frustrated and unable to work. 

This body needs to reflect, to write, to practice.  I need to give this body the time to do that - the time to be itself, to follow its true energy. I have a lot of work to do.  And I have a lot of love to give.  So it can feel like I don't have time to pay attention to what my body calls for.  But I need to take the time in order to do the work and to give the love. 

And so I'm taking time that I feel I do not have in order to do what I feel I must - I took the time to visit Jana in the garden today, which I have felt deeply pulled to do but have not been doing.  I took the time, the luxurious time to smoke a post-garden-meditation cigarette with her, which I am still laughing about: she rolled the strongest smoke I've ever had in my life!  I am taking the time to sit docusan with her tomorrow, taking the time to rejoin a reading group I value on Thursday.  Taking the time to write this and other posts tonight.  While this very post has taken time away from my thesis, this post as also allowed me to process and release energy, to feel more free and creative, and I can already tell that I can return refreshed to the thesis writing because of it.  

Watching the colors of the setting sun
On white plum-blossoms 
falling to the ground.
I recall this poem by Muso Soseki:

If they ask me, 
   "What are you doing
       In your old age"? 
I smile and tell them
    "I'm letting my white hair
         Fall free".

The YUZ Retreat

This weekend, twenty or so of us from Young Urban Zen spent the weekend at Green Gulch.  Arriving by bike with a few other people, I felt right at home, as I have in the past.  As others went off on hikes, I decided to settle in with some coffee in the library, where I have spent so many evenings as a guest student (or surreptitiously farm-crashing).  As in the past, simply being there allowed me to more fully feel myself - and to more fully feel myself means to feel myself as practitioner, to open up to myself as a practitioner.

Over the weekend, I felt overjoyed watching everyone connecting with everyone else - more than at any other time in YUZ's short history, I felt that long-lasting, meaningful relationships were being built.  For as long as I can remember, I've desired spiritual community - long before I began considering myself as a spiritual person.  I desired it long before I had the knowledge to label it.  I don't recall desiring spiritual community as a child, but I was certainly desiring it, in some vague way, as I entered adolescence.  As a teacher I'm increasingly realizing how spiritual children and teenagers are - but I won't go off on that tangent now, aside from to say that they want to learn how to support others, want to learn about themselves, want to pursue deeply meaningful activities.  This is what the sangha helps us do.  Throughout my adult life, I've been fascinated by how difficult it can be to satisfy the basic human desire of sangha.  It can be exceptionally difficult to find and manifest a community that feels truly supportive of our entire being, a community that we can sincerely agree with and desire to give our energy to.   

So, just a short post to say I feel blessed to be a part of Young Urban Zen and the entire Zen community.  I heard many people expressing more or less the same thing over the course of the weekend, and expressing how wonderful it was for us all to be deepening our connections and our paths.  Shundo took some beautiful pictures, some of which can be seen here - I know there are many more out there, and a few people suggested that we gather all of those up in one place and create a little YUZ book.  I'll add one post-Green Gulch photo - a few of us checked out Cello Bazaar (hosted by Hannah) afterwards and had a truly lovely time - hope more YUZers and Zen folk join in for that next month. 

Ryan, Vanessa, Maggie, and Hannah, with some lovely musicians in the backdrop - Tova was also there earlier in the night.

 Oh, one last thing - you who "forgot" the brownies are well loved, with or without them.  (But what a delight to find an Oreo in mine!  I'm not sure why that brought me such childlike joy, but it did :)

can I check my e-mail please?

While waiting for docusan this morning, Jim (Jordan's attendant) told me that it would be another half hour because Jordan was seeing another student first.  I bowed to him and then thought, "great, I can check my e-mail." 

Seriously.

Then I thought, "wow! I really did just think that".  I smiled to myself, but that impulse to check e-mail during a free moment has obviously become a bit too habitual.  Yikes....

The wind...

There are many pieces of writing I have written but not posted on the blog.  I often write something and feel, "no, that is not quite it," or, " no, that is not it at all".  This is one of those posts.  I wrote it a few weeks ago.  It touches on some subjects I care deeply about and hope to learn to adequately express at some future date.

Last night, the city was filled with the terrific sounds of wind and rain.  And this morning the clouds were breaking, the sun shining on a clear, crisp, wet land.  I ran up through Little Saigon until I peaked up over the hill and could see the bay.  From the start of the run I could feel strands of sore muscles from my run through Chinatown yesterday - a run which always leads me to fantasize about learning Mandarin and cooking with the various vegetables and herbs on display, exploring the restaurants and bars and teashops, and weaving myself into a population I have no interaction with.

There are times when I unequivocally experience the body as a miracle, a mystical vehicle, an alchemical apparatus.  I shy away from saying such things because I know how easily misinterpreted, strange, or intellectually pretentious and vacuous they may sound.  All I mean is that, like the precepts, which we can always go deeper into and become enlightened by, we can continuously go deeper into understanding the body and become enlightened by our understanding of the body.  Understanding the body can transform us and harmonize us with the rest of the world.

As I started the run I could feel the area at the bottom lower left of my right knee that often starts to hurt - still sore from yesterday.  There have been times when I've had to walk a few miles home because of that pain.  I slowly jogged in place, letting my entire body soften, getting into the mentality or somatic space of simply being with the body.  The pain didn't go away, but I softened into it, embraced it.  As I ran with this pain and my tired muscles, felt them, noticed them, nurtured them, the entire body softened, and I felt this pain in my knee was like a blooming flower.  I'm not sure how to describe what that means - the best I can do in this moment is to say that the pain did not go away, but transformed into something beautiful, transformed from being something I was slightly upset by into something that was helping me awaken to myself.  

Running, like zazen, gives me the freedom to soften, to hold lightly, to be with.  It gives me the freedom to notice many things without holding to any of them - to simply notice phenomena and be with what I notice.  There is no wanting.  This soft place of noticing, being with, and not wanting is a place I experience as filled with love: loving not only other beings, but all that is noticed.  Like zazen it can be mystical: through running I can feel an incredible harmony with the universe.  Running as harmony and togetherness: yesterday as I ran, I looked up into the sky to feel and love the rain on my face: I was together with the rain.  I worked with it.  I was together with the ground: I felt everything about the quality of the ground and my feet on it.  I should not say everything, but rather, I noticed much that was between us.  Together with the ground, I hardly had to look at it - I gazed at the sky for a long time, feeling my body moving and working with the world around it. 

Running is like zazen because, for me, they are activities that open up a space to work with all being.

And just for the sake of being tangential, here is one: it is these experiences of working with being, and feeling together with being, that allow to me to feel a kinship with and love for so many radically alien religious experiences and perspectives: being with the wind on my face, I feel like I know the winds, feel like I could know many winds - the cool dry ones, the cool wet ones; the ones that enliven and give energy, the ones that drain us.  I feel like I know them in such a way that, if I got to know them just a bit better, that I would want to name them, personify them - understand who they are, where they come from, how they feel, how they interact with the rest of the world

Perhaps gods are ways of getting to know all the forces around us, of honoring all those forces that we are together with.  Perhaps the gods don't exist, but is that the point?  The winds do, and so do our experiences of them - and our relationships with them.  By which I mean, we do not simply experience wind, we have the opportunity to cultivate the way we experience and know wind.  What does it look like to really get to know the varieties of wind, the energies of sun and moon, etc?  Rather than the tired old explanation of "gods as the way people explained the world before science," (which for the most part is just an assumption people make, but is not actually founded in history), how about this: the human fabrication of gods as technique for cultivating relationships to the various elements of being... and technique not being equated with "truth".  I often feel that other cultures, through placing less of a premium on "truth", perhaps, just perhaps, were able to deepen their relationships with being... (I recall - years ago and I can't remember in what texts - encountering a few stories where anthropologists, out in "the bush" somewhere, asked: "Do you guys really believe in this stuff?"  And the "natives" laughed hysterically - "this guy thinks we actually believe the gods of the wind really do have long white beards...!")    

That tangent could turn into a short book, but anyway...  I was at the intersection of Larkin and McAllister waiting for a light, and the wind was so strong that it pushed me back as I ran in place.  I jumped higher into the air and let it push me back.  I thought of my old friend Tico-Tico, who I played Capoeira with a decade ago.  Tico-Tico said that our mestre named him after a little bird who hopped around, but would float for a second with each hop.   Tico-Tico knew how to float, and I thought of him because I felt like I was floating, or almost floating: almost floating with a great capacity to float.  The light turned and I started running into the wind.  I imagined that the wind opened up a space for me to run into, and upon imagining this I felt that the wind embraced me.   

Fantasy, and fantasy turning into a real experience, has always been a part of running for me.  And so running is one of the great antidotes for myself having become so serious and academic over the past half a decade.  While running imaginations and memories and feelings spread out endlessly.  I remembered with crystal clarity a 400 meter race I ran in the ninth grade against a dozen other schools leading up to the central California championships.  Coming around the first bend into the straightaway, the wind tore into all of us.  It pushed all the others immediately back.  I remember feeling completely in tune with that force and how I suddenly moved faster and finished 20 or 30 meters ahead of everyone else.  And then I began reading Greek stories about gods who prefer certain heroes, and I felt I understood that.  It a great spiritual matter to pray, with the body, and allow oneself to completely embrace the wind. Not only this, but to be embraced by the wind, even to imagine that the wind is with you and supporting you.  We may be well aware that the wind had no consciousness and is not in fact supporting us.  But it is a great spiritual matter to let the wind be a god. In my own way I believe in all the gods that have ever and could ever possibly exist.

Supported by Elders

Deeply engaged in writing a massive lit review for my thesis, I haven't been wanting to spend the extra time at the computer to blog.  And yet, I have been having many thoughts, and I miss posting them here.

On Monday, I sat docusan (a zen student/teacher practice discussion) with Jordan in the morning, and went to Young Urban Zen for the first time in a few weeks in the evening.  Sitting with Jordan, I expressed to him that I had originally sought him out a couple months back because I realized that taking the precepts had become very real for me.  I have absolutely no doubt that I want to live my life according to the precepts.  They and other Buddhist teachings are invaluable tools for living the deepest and most grounded and beautiful life I can live. I expressed to him that although my practice has diminished, my sincere feelings about the precepts have grown.

His response came very close to moving me to tears.  He told me that in my life, I am practicing all the time.  The practice is not just zazen, it does not just occur in the temple.  He told me that he saw very clearly that practice had gotten under my skin.  "I know that you see the world through the lens of practice.  And so go to the sewing room on Tuesday evening.  Tell them you have my permission to start sewing the rakusu."  His faith in me, and the fact that he asked me to do this during a time when I have not been sitting zazen or visiting the temple, brought tears to my eyes.  I felt incredibly supported.  

I have often felt in this life that the natural relationship of elders supporting adults in their life processes and spiritual paths has been broken.  It seems like an almost biological rupture.  I have no idea what the academics would say, but I profoundly feel that the type of animals that human beings are involves a mammalian care for the young but also an elderly care for adults, and of adults for elders.  I feel that we are hard-wired to care for certain people in certain ways through the course of our lives.  This society seems to interrupt our natural biological tendencies.  This is a major and radically under-thought but deeply felt tangent: I have often felt torn away from my animal being, in many ways, throughout my entire life, right down to my earliest memories.

While cleaning out my parents house a few weeks ago, I found a fifty page paper I wrote on yoga when I was 24 and was reminded that I practiced yoga for a long time because it helped me understand and embrace my animal being.  I even understood Patanjali as speaking to humans on an animal level, as providing a practice for helping human beings feel what they actually were.  Spirituality at that time in my life was all about finding ways to feel out the body/mind.  To overcome the duality of body and mind, built into our language and ways of thought, I began to use the word "organism".  Spirituality was about understanding the human organism, the human animal.   I think I had some wisdom as a 24 year old.   I am reminded by my 24 year old self that zazen is very much about understanding the human organism.

Moving away from that tangent: it has been extremely rare in my life to feel supported by the wisdom of my elders, even though this feels like something that human beings are naturally constructed to do.  One thing that is remarkable about the Zen Center is that we can support and be supported by our elders.  Jordan knew exactly what to give this young man in order to move him along.  That evening, he sat next to me at dinner, and gave me a big hug when he left.  He pulled Blache aside and told her that I would be showing up to begin sewing my rakusu soon.  Blanche and I talked for twenty minutes.  She gave me a very warm hug before I went to Young Urban Zen.      

Enjoying presence to self-judgment

Tired, peaceful zazen this morning at the temple.  Went up to docusan (student/teacher meeting) to find my teacher was absent.  Instead of rejoining zazen and staying for service, I decided that my early morning hours would best be spent at work.  (I skipped Young Urban Zen last night for the same reason.)  I'm teaching a full week on Buddhism in ancient India for some sixth graders next week, which still needs a lot of work, and some thesis work that was due a long time ago is still unfinished and needs to be done yesterday.

Leaving the temple and walking down the street in the cold morning dark, I found myself with curious and familiar feelings: that of feeling slightly guilty for leaving the zendo and not finishing zazen, even when this is clearly the best decision!  I let myself be present with that feeling, and even while it remained, it felt good simply to be with the feeling of guilt rather than push it away as a silly feeling to have.  It felt good and strong to be doing exactly what I was doing.

The moon seemed especially clear.

Got off the bart in San Leandro as the sunlight was brimming over the hills, which almost seemed translucent green in the new light.  Now, coming up on three coffee shop hours creating the lesson my thesis will be based on, and about to introduce myself to the class I'll e working with next week for the Buddhism unit.  A good morning, and a reminder that I can write this blog even if I only have a few minutes to work with.

Karmic seeds of words and explanations

Riding down Market street:
The gray-blue fog of the morning
Has once again eaten the ferry building. 

New Years Eve: Just after midnight, the fire was burning in the Zen Center courtyard, and as I looked into the flames and watched practitioner after practitioner cast some part of their karma into the blaze, I was moved to witness some some deep karmic seeds within myself.  I have never made resolutions, but suddenly it made sense: it was time to cast certain karmic seeds into the fire. 

We chant about becoming fully aware of our ancient, twisted karma - twisted in the sense of complexly knotted and inextricably tangled.  Infinite seeds have sprouted within us and have become densely interconnected from time immemorial.  Having no belief in reincarnation, I cannot say this literally, but the depth and complexity of human being, especially as witnessed through a life informed by zazen, is a manifestation of time immemorial within a single life.  This flesh, composed of densely interconnected, twisting vines of karma, may as well be truly immemorial. 

Much of the tangled quality of my being arises from my use of words and certain manifestations of my intellect.  The most poignant example I thought of in that moment of watching the fire was my tendency to associate understanding with explanation.  While I know this is not true - especially as a teacher! - there are numerous karmic elements  that continue to inform this association.  Despite the fact that I know that my ability to explain, say,  karma, is a far cry from gaining intimacy with it and helping others understand it, I harbor a deeply ingrained tendency to pursue explanations before or even in place of pursuing the intimacy of understanding.  While a good explanation is a truly valuable thing, it is easy for me to overemphasize it.  As for the tangled quality, I recognize that I have deeply ingrained habits informed by my societies conceptions of thinking and knowing and even of what counts as "right speech".  I also recognize that the association of explaining with understanding effects everything else in my being, dampening everything from the quality of my intellect to my ability teach well and even to love deeply. 

When I seek to explain something to myself or another, or to understand something via reading someone else's explanation, I often create a distance: between myself and the subject of understanding, between elements of my self, between myself and the one being explained to, between the one being explained to and the subject of explanation.  I also create a distance between myself and zen.  In seeking to understand, especially through explanations and definitions, I have at times alienated myself from the path: such has certainly been the case in recent times.  In trying to explain zen to myself - learning the precepts, the poisons, etc - I have sometimes lost touch with the zen my body knows and loves and trusts.  By approaching zen through explanation, I have at times lost the will to practice.  Reading contemporary Buddhist authors who also emphasize explanation has at times exacerbated this: I was drawn to zen through poetry, koans, ink paintings, and wild stories which spoke deeply to my body.  I would like to turn back to these resources that, even through words, embody the spirit that is beyond words and letters.   

Which is to say that I do want to continue to learn how to approach zen, and the rest of life,  intellectually: intellect beyond words and letters, even explanations beyond words and letters.  Learning to use words for the sake of bringing clarity and insight is part of my path.  I will continue to refine my ability to explain, by allowing zazen and poetry and silence to more deeply inform my words.  I will try to be mindful of when words are idle and unnecessary, of when explanations facilitate understandings and when they inhibit them.

Thank you for being with me on this path.