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.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Written just after another beautiful sunset
Written just after another beautiful sunset.
Gary Snyder. "The flowers of flowering plants co-evolved with insects and are beautiful and sweet scented for them, not for human beings. The flowering cherries of Japan - Prunus serrulata and relatives - produce negligible fruit and are closer to a wild type, the mountain sakura, that blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds. There are a trembling, expectant several days of openness - waiting for the seed to move around - and then they blow off and away. Saigyo says, as if he himself were a bee drawn to the flower, that the masses of blossoms on the slopes of the Yoshino mountains draw him to the depths of the hills for knowledge:
Gary Snyder. "The flowers of flowering plants co-evolved with insects and are beautiful and sweet scented for them, not for human beings. The flowering cherries of Japan - Prunus serrulata and relatives - produce negligible fruit and are closer to a wild type, the mountain sakura, that blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds. There are a trembling, expectant several days of openness - waiting for the seed to move around - and then they blow off and away. Saigyo says, as if he himself were a bee drawn to the flower, that the masses of blossoms on the slopes of the Yoshino mountains draw him to the depths of the hills for knowledge:
Yoshino mountains -
The one who will get to know
You inside out is I,
For I've gotten used to going
Into your depths for blossoms.
The blossoms then are also a way into
the inner depths, as well as the more commonly taken symbol of
evanescence and youthful beauty."
From chakras to the flower sermon, flowers have represented the transmission of wisdom. We speak of people and even of being as flowering and blossoming... a beautiful process of opening, and often of opening to a higher light, or to a light that is simply there but has not been recognized. Flowers open to the sun, to the moon, to insects. We as flowers open to love in its manifold varieties: we blossom when we receive and give love - to a lover, to a friend, to being. The bodhisattva, I think, gives and receives especially to and from being, and hopefully the friend and the lover help one another to blossom as bodhisattvas. We give flowers to those we love, and hopefully our love is also a transmission of wisdom. The symbol of love/wisdom us humans have chosen, these flowers that us humans give to those we are attracted to, has its own history of evolving over countless spans of time to attract insects: another form of omnipresent sexuality, and also of the infinite interconnectedness witnessed by Mahākāśyapa, who, perhaps, smiled like Snyder at the thought of an insect buzzing towards the Buddhas flower.
The wild mountain sakura "blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds." In San Francisco we are far away from this particular vision but always close to infinite varieties of beauty. We can spend some time in a text, but sometimes it is best to gain wisdom directly from looking into the blossoming that is constantly occurring in the world all around us, in the sunrises and sunsets, in the eyes not only of those we are closest to but of all beings.
Saigyo speaks to the mountain as if to a lover: The one who will get to know you inside out is I, for I've gotten used to going into your depths for blossoms. In my own life, I know that to be the lover I hope to be, I must see all being with such intimacy. At the same time, it is through the graces and processes of having of a lover that many of us learn to go into the depths of being, where we see blossoms everywhere and constantly.
From chakras to the flower sermon, flowers have represented the transmission of wisdom. We speak of people and even of being as flowering and blossoming... a beautiful process of opening, and often of opening to a higher light, or to a light that is simply there but has not been recognized. Flowers open to the sun, to the moon, to insects. We as flowers open to love in its manifold varieties: we blossom when we receive and give love - to a lover, to a friend, to being. The bodhisattva, I think, gives and receives especially to and from being, and hopefully the friend and the lover help one another to blossom as bodhisattvas. We give flowers to those we love, and hopefully our love is also a transmission of wisdom. The symbol of love/wisdom us humans have chosen, these flowers that us humans give to those we are attracted to, has its own history of evolving over countless spans of time to attract insects: another form of omnipresent sexuality, and also of the infinite interconnectedness witnessed by Mahākāśyapa, who, perhaps, smiled like Snyder at the thought of an insect buzzing towards the Buddhas flower.
The wild mountain sakura "blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds." In San Francisco we are far away from this particular vision but always close to infinite varieties of beauty. We can spend some time in a text, but sometimes it is best to gain wisdom directly from looking into the blossoming that is constantly occurring in the world all around us, in the sunrises and sunsets, in the eyes not only of those we are closest to but of all beings.
Saigyo speaks to the mountain as if to a lover: The one who will get to know you inside out is I, for I've gotten used to going into your depths for blossoms. In my own life, I know that to be the lover I hope to be, I must see all being with such intimacy. At the same time, it is through the graces and processes of having of a lover that many of us learn to go into the depths of being, where we see blossoms everywhere and constantly.
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