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.