tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38423290365186597082024-02-24T00:29:08.515-08:00 Slipping Glimpser Zen wanderings and wonderingsFlorencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-56341341030695550622019-11-20T20:18:00.001-08:002019-11-20T20:18:06.849-08:00The origins of "Slipping Glimpser"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<img alt="De Kooning Slipping Glimpser" height="280" src="https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/de-kooning-slipping-glimpser.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: "Work Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: white;">Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives</span></span></div>
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For those who might wonder about the title of this blog, Slipping Glimpser, this is the full quote from the artist Willem de Kooning:<br />
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<i>You know, the real world, this so-called world, is just something you put up with like everybody else. I’m in my element when I’m a little bit out of this world: then I’m in the real world – I’m on the beam. Because when I’m falling, I’m doing alright. When I’m slipping, I say, ‘Hey, this is interesting.’ It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me… As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping most of the time. I’m like a slipping glimpser.</i><br />
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And if you'd like to read more about him: <a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/willem-de-kooning-slipping-glimpser">https://allthatsinteresting.com/willem-de-kooning-slipping-glimpser</a>.<br />
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<i>Because when I'm falling, I'm doing alright. When I'm slipping, I say, "Hey, this is interesting."</i>Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-54061428804600181812016-11-23T22:57:00.000-08:002016-11-24T00:39:56.601-08:00Why I Won't Be Celebrating Thanksgiving This Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I feel like a a wet blanket (or maybe, given the weather here, like a wet Northwest winter day) saying what I'm about to say, as all over America people brine their turkeys, greet their out-of-town guests, stock up on beverages and prepare for the great American celebration of food, family, friends, and abundance. </div>
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I can't do it this year. I just can't. </div>
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Instead I will spend this Thanksgiving fasting from sunup to sundown. I will spend the day in prayer, remorse, and grief for the 500-year ongoing genocide on this continent, most vividly represented by what is happening just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation as I write this. </div>
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I will also spend the day in gratitude for the immense courage and resilience of the original peoples of this land, some of them camped out right now in the North Dakota winter, protecting the earth for all of us, surrounded by the full paramilitary might of the police. I will be praying for their safety and their victory, this unprecedented gathering on the plains of North Dakota of over 300 tribal nations.</div>
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This week the Morton County police, in their ever-escalating violence against unarmed native people in prayer, turned water cannons in below-freezing weather on hundreds of people, soaking their clothes until hypothermia set in, firing rubber bullets at heads and limbs. Nearly 200 people were injured in one night. </div>
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December 29th will mark the 126th anniversary of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre" target="_blank">massacre at Wounded Knee</a>, South Dakota, where US soldiers killed close to 300 Sioux men, women, and children under their control, leaving many to die in the snow (and 20 soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor for their part). Some of those who died were Hunkpapa Lakota from the Standing Rock area. </div>
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These are the words of the famous Lakota holy man <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Elk" target="_blank">Black Elk</a>, who witnessed the massacre: <i>"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream ... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered."</i></div>
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The great Standing Rock leader and holy man <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull" target="_blank">Sitting Bull</a> had been murdered by native police at Fort Yates on the Standing Rock reservation two weeks before the massacre, on December 14th, 1890, only 25 miles from where people are gathered on a bitterly cold night right now.</div>
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Can we honestly believe that there these events are not connected, are not speaking to one another? The events of seven generations ago, police killing one of the greatest Indian leaders in North America, soldiers surrounding people who were actually complying with their orders and killing them in cold blood? And now descendants of Sitting Bull standing unarmed and nonviolent in front of North Dakota police officers in full riot gear, guns pointed at holy men once again? Traditional women on their knees praying while being tear gassed and shot?</div>
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This must stop. We must find a different way forward, one that does not end with original peoples dying in the snow, does not end with another victory for American "progress" and the hoop of Indian nations broken again. One that does not end with death and more loss, for all of us. If Standing Rock is lost, something in us as a nation dies, the moral heart of our nation. So my fasting is for our nation as well.</div>
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When I went to Standing Rock earlier this fall, I went partly because I sensed that something important was happening there, a new way of being, the rising up of native peoples out of the ashes of nearly successful genocide, joined by thousands from around the world in a new wave of solidarity and hope. And that's the way it felt there, the most life affirming, spiritual, powerful event perhaps of my lifetime. But we are doing it again. It looks like we are playing out the old story again, of cowboys and Indians, of the soldiers with their guns and the people of the land in the snow. The story that played out in thousands of ways all across this place we now call home, that we celebrate each Thanksgiving.</div>
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If I'm wrong, and history changes its tune, I will be happy to join the festivities next year, the tables groaning with goodness. </div>
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Until then, I take heart and inspiration from this video by a young woman of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages, <a href="http://writingforpeace.org/young-advisers-panel/lyla-june-johnston/" target="_blank">Lyla June</a>, who reminds us, "We are fighting to replace our fear with love....The only weapons that are useful in <i>this</i> battle are the weapons of truth, faith, and compassion."</div>
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I want to close with my prayer. </div>
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We call out to the four directions</div>
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and to the power of life that flows through all things</div>
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to protect the lives of those at Standing Rock</div>
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to soften the hearts of the police so that violence is renounced</div>
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to awaken in our government officials the force of conscience</div>
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and to answer the prayers of people everywhere</div>
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and particularly the prayers of the traditional protectors of the Missouri River,</div>
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the Hunkpapa Lakota of Standing Rock,</div>
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that the black snake pipeline dies forever</div>
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on the plains of North Dakota</div>
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never to be revived.</div>
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-49678705332158434642016-09-18T21:58:00.000-07:002016-09-21T18:11:45.390-07:00At Standing Rock <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We have been camping for two days at the Standing Rock encampments along the bottomlands along the Cannonball River south of Bismarck, North Dakota. <br />
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As I write this, sitting in the shade of one of our tents in a huge grassy meadow, I hear horses neighing, hoofbeats, children’s voices in the distance, laughter, the soft rumble of truck engines, and the muffled sound of drums and the PA system at the main gathering place, a quarter of a mile away.<br />
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I can see tents and tipis, willow shelters, blue tarps, and horse trailers, and along a hill nearby, the line of more than three hundred tribal flags, a “native United Nations”. Through cottonwood trees, there is a hint of blue: the Missouri River. Six kids bareback on painted horses are walking by, one lying backward on his horse. There are perhaps five or six thousand people here – the numbers fluctuate from day to day, but that’s been the average each weekend, and today is Saturday – but in the midst of the bustle, it seems peaceful.<br />
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Yesterday on the way here we stopped first at the Bismarck Mandan UU congregation and met with the president, Steven Crane, the minister, Karen Van Fossan, and a few others. This small liberal congregation has found itself on the front line of an immense and unprecedented movement.<br />
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After visiting the congregation, we drove south in the rain through the soft green prairie hills of North Dakota. The road that leads directly to the encampments and Standing Rock was closed to all but local traffic by the National Guard, but it was easy enough to drive around the detour. There are several camps here: the first camp to form, called the Camp of the Sacred Stones, Rosebud Camp on one side of the Cannonball River, and the largest, Oceti Sakowin, where we are. on the other side of the Cannonball, a tributary to the Missouri.<br />
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The folks at the UU congregation had suggested that we go to the largest camp,, since it is the largest and most active. The first sight of the camp, where the road crests the hill, was breathtaking: tipis and tents spread across the low land, kids galloping their horses, and that magnificent corridor of flags.<br />
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As we drove down into the camp, the people at the entrance smudged our vehicle with sage. We found a spot out in the meadow, and within a few minutes two people galloped up on horseback: Deedee (one of the medics) and Frank, here to greet us and give us the lay of the land. In the next hour, we were greeted repeatedly and made to feel welcome.<br />
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Day and night there are speakers at the main area, near the kitchen, the donations tent, the cooler (a refrigerated trailer) the medic tent, and “command central” – the tent where all the logistics happen.<br />
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In the center of a big swept open area is a fire that seems to be always burning, over on one side another fire with huge pots of coffee always brewing, and under a tarp nearby, a large drum ringed by chairs.<br />
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Over the last two days we have heard many powerful words and prayers. This is a place of prayer above all else. Every time a new tribal delegation comes in, they introduce themselves and speak to the gathering, often beginning in their native language.<br />
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Today the Hopi arrived after a 30 hour trip (and the Hopi carry such weight and spiritual power that it feels like those last words should all be in caps –TODAY THE HOPI ARRIVED). twenty five Hopi in full regalia, and they spoke of their own struggles to protect their water – the arsenic in the river that is making their kids sick, the wastewater used for making snow for skiing on their sacred peaks, the tram being planned into the Grand Canyon, their creation place, and why they felt compelled to travel here in support of the Standing Rock Sioux.<br />
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Here are a few of the words I have heard in the last day.<br />
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From a Lakota woman: “I come from Wounded Knee. Someone threatened to kill me for what it is that I say, and I said, ‘Go ahead, my people have already been killed at Wounded Knee. Put me in jail; I’m already gay. There’s nothing you can do to me. But I am peaceful – there is no justice in killing someone else.”<br />
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From an elderly Lakota man, “I’m nobody, just a man. But there were over 200 pipe carriers [carriers of the traditional sacred pipes, handed down for generations] here the day of the court decision. One mind, one heart, one prayer. This is a prayer that is going all over the world. What you are praying for is spreading energy all over, for all races, all people.”<br />
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From the brother of Arvol Looking Horse, the carrier of the White Buffalo Calf Woman pipe, “We as native people see Mother Earth, and she is suffering. If the prophecies go through, the earth is done.”<br />
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From the traditional Standing Rock man who began the first camp with a group of young people, speaking at the place where the pipeline crosses the road and where burial sites were disturbed: “For 97 days we prayed, just a little group of us, while the pipeline got closer, and then people started to come. The water was calling, our prayers were calling, and you heard. ”<br />
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And from a very elderly woman, in tears. "I cry for my people. I hope that my people can survive this. I pray that my people will survive."<br />
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There are native people from all over the US and Canada, many of them with few resources, traveling here however they can. We met a woman from Iowa who had sold nine puppies from her two dogs to have the money to get here. She showed us pictures of her puppies, and then, in the next photo, a picture of the “poisoned river, full of runoff” near her house. Once here, it is entirely a gift based world. No money changes hands.<br />
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But there is also a feeling of something international here: the man from Venezuela who wants someone to come down to his country and tell indigenous people there what is happening here; the ceremony for three native men who died helping the Kurds, young Palestinians pledging their support to Standing Rock.<br />
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There are non-Indian activists too, like us, but we are in the minority. Nonetheless, we are welcomed. At one ceremony, where the whole camp was thanking the Hopi, one of us felt that perhaps as non-Indians we shouldn’t participate. A native man nearby said, “No, it’s not like that here. We are in this together. All races are in this together.” One of us was told, "I do not hold you accountable for the actions of your ancestors."<br />
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One of the things I want to stress is the tremendous spiritual depth and commitment to nonviolence here. The elders are teaching peace all the time, and a huge sign that could be read from the air reads, “We are peaceful.”<br />
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That doesn’t mean there aren’t warriors here – there are, men and women, riding their horses at a gallop when needed somewhere - but they are peaceful protectors, under the watchful eye of powerful spiritual elders.<br />
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Well, it’s getting dark, and the drumming is starting up again. More later…<br />
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"Until we are all one peoples, we shall never win."<br />
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-54122249123877407872016-09-15T22:56:00.000-07:002016-09-24T19:18:45.386-07:00Headed to Standing Rock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Earlier this summer I began hearing about something happening near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. A few people from Standing Rock on horseback were trying to stop the construction of an oil pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline, that would cross the Missouri River just upstream of their community. Many were arrested. The next I heard, they had been joined by people from the other six Lakota Sioux tribes, then by the Cheyenne, and then tribal people from across the country started getting in their cars and trucks and driving to the camp on the banks of the Missouri River, the longest river in North America.<br />
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Now, in September, there are flags of 300 indigenous nations flying at the Camp of the Sacred Stones, and there are several hundred to several thousand people (depending on the moment), of all races, at three different camps, all gathered in support of nonviolent resistance to the “black snake.”<br />
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From the Pacific Northwest the Lummi Totem Pole Journey and the Canoe families came to the camp. The people there say they are not “protestors,” they are water protectors, and they are doing this for all of us. Many faith and environmental communities have joined their voices in support, including Rev. Peter Morales, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, who called on Unitarian Universalists to support the Standing Rock Sioux.<br />
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As I watched videos and talked to people who had been to Standing Rock over the past weeks, I could feel my heart turning toward North Dakota, almost as if a part of me was already traveling there, longing to bear witness to something extraordinary, something never before seen at this scale on this continent or perhaps anywhere, the rising up of so many tribal nations to protect water and land - although all over the world indigenous people have been engaged in this struggle for many years. And the protectors have been clear that they need the support of everyone – that without many witnesses, they could be silenced, just as they have been intimidated and silenced before, for these last 150 years.<br />
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Ten days ago I gave a sermon about water, as part of the annual water ceremony that happens in many UU congregations, and I spoke about Standing Rock and showed a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_sznbPUM0I" target="_blank">video</a> of 13 year old Tokata Iron Eyes, talking about why she was there as a water protector. I said then that I felt I needed to be in North Dakota, and afterward people came up to me and said, “I want to be there too. Let me know if you go.”<br />
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But how could I go? I just began a new ministerial position at Quimper UU in Port Townsend, Washington, and it seemed crazy to just pick up and go to North Dakota. I have sermons to write, committee meetings to attend. But I kept thinking of the UUs in 1965 who heard the call from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Selma, and how many of them, certainly many of the ministers, had responsibilities that could have kept them home: sermons to give, committees to attend. And yet, and yet…they got in their cars, got on airplanes, got on trains to travel to Selma to support those who were struggling nonviolently for basic civil rights, against enormous odds and overwhelming police presence, threats, and brutality.<br />
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How is this different? In North Dakota there are people who have also been oppressed for generations, rising up courageously, facing their own fear for the sake of their culture and community and for the rest of us, and calling for people of conscience to join them. And native people from the Northwest and around the country have answered that call. How can I not?<br />
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Then one night last week I watched this beautiful music video, <a href="http://upliftconnect.com/all-nations-rise-lyla-june/" target="_blank">All Nations Rise</a>, and I watched it again and again, and with each repetition I felt more that I needed to go. But how? When? I realized that I had a few days this week that I had planned to take as time away. I could take the train and rent a car in Minot, ND. I looked at schedules and wondered if I had the audacity to do this. I participated in a prayer vigil for Standing Rock and blessed others who were going. I knew I could go on my own, but that didn’t feel quite right. What to do?<br />
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On Monday the 12th, I started putting the word out that I was “seriously thinking” of going to Standing Rock, first to the people who had come up to me after my sermon, then to the UU ministers’ listserves and Facebook pages, then to the Native Peoples Connections Action Group, and lo and behold, there were people who wanted to come, with virtually no notice: first Carl Allen from Quimper UU, then Rev. Dennis Reynolds from Whidbey Island, then Share DeWees and Ethan Walat from Quimper UU, then, on the morning of our departure, yesterday the 14th of September, Paula Schmidt. With some trepidation, on Tuesday I talked with my senior minister, Rev. Bruce Bode, about my crazy, last minute idea, and he said, “Go. It is part of your call and it will benefit this congregation too.” I was touched by his support.<br />
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So there are six of us traveling together by train. As I write these words, the train is traveling across the prairie in Eastern Montana, and this small collection of committed souls, most of whom did not know each other before yesterday afternoon, are becoming a traveling community. It has the feeling of a pilgrimage, and it seems that each person in their own way feels that this journey is significant spiritually and personally as well as politically.<br />
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Carl Allen is in his early 70s, a UU for more than 30 years, and a retired engineer from the Washington ferry system. He is a father to four and a grandfather to eight. Two years ago he and a childhood friend spent seven weeks on the Missouri River, traveling more than 2,000 miles by pontoon boat from Fort Benton, Montana to St. Louis. They traveled past the place where the oil pipeline would cross, if the water protectors are not successful. They saw the flares from hundreds of gas wells, and the nightmare of oil and gas boom towns, side by side with “sacred places” along the river.<br />
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Carl was the first person to come up to me after my water sermon and say he was ready to go to Standing Rock. “Give me a half hour’s notice and I’ll be ready,” he said. For him, traveling to Standing Rock is about “this beautiful river,” giving back to those who are protecting it, and showing his grandchildren what it means to live by one’s conscience and to act for future generations.<br />
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Dennis Reynolds is the minister of the UU Congregation of Whidbey Island, and like me, a former intern minister at Quimper UU. Dennis saw my “call” to the Pacific Northwest ministers and emailed me right away. “I need to dream on it,” he wrote. “I’ll let you know in the morning.” Happily, his dreams led him to say yes. When asked why he chose to drop everything to go to Standing Rock, he said, “As ministers and UUs, we are called to walk our talk. I can’t stand in the pulpit and ask the congregation to live their principles and values if I’m not willing to do that myself.”<br />
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Share DeWees is a UU and Buddhist “in process.” She found UU later in life, in her 50’s, after being raised Episcopalian and spending much of her adulthood as an evangelical Christian She and her husband recently moved to Port Townsend. She, too, began thinking about going to Standing Rock after following the stories out of North Dakota. When she heard I was going, it took her “about 30 seconds” to decide to join. She is journeying to North Dakota because, she says, “If we don’t start standing up, where does it end?” and also from a sense that “something deeply spiritual is happening there..something profound that could be a real game-changer.”<br />
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Ethan Walat heard of the trip less than 24 hours before we left, and immediately said he would like to go to Standing Rock with us. Ethan, in his twenties, is the son of Jean Walat and Gail Bernhard, both members of Quimper UU. He has been in Port Townsend since he was eleven, and was part of Quimper OWL and youth groups. Why is he going to Standing Rock? “Someone’s got to do this. I’m tired of talking about all these things but not doing anything, sitting on the sidelines. I want to be an ally. People like me, young white males who benefit from the power structure, need to stand with marginalized people.” Ethan feels that the real energy is not in the mainstream, but rather in the alternative forms of consciousness and culture that can be seen arising everywhere. “I see what’s happening at Standing Rock as the tip of the spear as far as the revolution goes.”<br />
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Paula Schmidt joined us on the day we left. Although she is not a member of Quimper UU or a church-goer, she has been waiting for an opportunity to go to Standing Rock for “weeks and weeks.” When she heard, on the morning of the day we were leaving, that there was a group going from Quimper UU, she called the QUUF office and got my number, even though she didn’t think we would let her join us. She was delighted to found out, hours before we were driving to the ferry, that she was indeed welcome.<br />
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Paula recently moved to the Northwest from Montrose, Pennsylvania, from the heart of the area that has been devastated by fracking. In Pennsylvania, she said, people tried to stop the fracking, but it was highly contentious – “most people were for it because they thought it would benefit them financially – and then so many ended up with pollution, damaged water sources, and destroyed farms.” But at Standing Rock, “the number of people involved is amazing. We couldn’t stop it in Pennsylvania, but I think it could be stopped this time.”<br />
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Soon we will be arriving in Minot, North Dakota, and after a night there we will be driving south to the Camp of the Sacred Stones. We are in contact with Karen VanFossan, the minister at the Bismarck Mandan UU congregation, since they have been bringing in supplies and will know more on the ground. A UU from the Edmonds, Washington, congregation, Carlo Voli, was arrested Tuesday after chaining himself to construction equipment to stop construction, and we hope to be of support to him in some way. <br />
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More to come. I'll leave you with this image of a North Dakota plains sunset.<br />
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-68511885415541137712016-03-21T23:00:00.001-07:002016-03-21T23:41:31.737-07:00Respect for Everything<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWa6YAfaKEGPusUFwsIjvWDJsBQ0ukZ1flOAjW_Ho47dD5TD9ZlsSra-py-xkrDnmxG5cAQAmPSEAewH37kA3pRpv2vlRBVsz9xYRmh8tp_erQGtn1qeHgkOHGGbGX7vhkwR2Qnm9RUA8/s1600/IMG_4943.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWa6YAfaKEGPusUFwsIjvWDJsBQ0ukZ1flOAjW_Ho47dD5TD9ZlsSra-py-xkrDnmxG5cAQAmPSEAewH37kA3pRpv2vlRBVsz9xYRmh8tp_erQGtn1qeHgkOHGGbGX7vhkwR2Qnm9RUA8/s640/IMG_4943.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tsubaki means "camellia." </td></tr>
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<i>"Temples and shrines are places of festival where rituals and prayers for individuals, families and ancestors are conducted to dispel misfortune and to open the path for divine blessings. They are places where you can trace your life to its origin."</i></div>
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Yamamoto Yukiyasu, 97th Chief Priest of Tsubaki Grand Shrine, <i>Introduction to Shinto: The Way of the Kami </i><br />
<i><br /></i>Shinto is notoriously slippery to talk about or write about or even think about (suitable, I suppose, for a blog titled "Slipping Glimpser"!) But I am going to try, anyway, with a healthy does of knowing that I don't know what I'm talking about.<br />
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Last night I had a rather formal dinner with the Chief Priest, Yamamoto-san and his wife Yukiko-san, along with my guide Ochiai-san as translator (although the Chief Priest speaks some English) and we talked about - or tried to talk about - Shinto. Yamamoto-san said something really wonderful, something like, "In Shinto everything is sacred: the trees, the mountains, the rocks, our ancestors. We bow to everything."<br />
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Ochia-san said to me today, "Everything has spirit, even rocks." When I explained about Western dualism, as best I could in simple English, that actually in traditional Western thought almost nothing has spirit, everything is there to be used by humanity, things are inanimate, nature is a sort of machine, even the body is a sort of machine, and the divine is far away in another realm, he looked horrified and incredulous. He couldn't imagine it.<br />
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Maybe I should just stop writing there, and we can all contemplate that for a bit, and what it would mean for this world to respect everything, to see spirit and the divine immanent in everything. But of course, being me, I'm going to keep going.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRwH5ti1RvMQRQJoVFiVNXf_O3mw84yToAg9uEmWpWY9qf2Eb6YNvpMnutIoAEboFa-GGCdLDNKc6aqzC2zOnVJ08xt_oePriwT3tr3Vg-e0GP4u16JELzVirm01vuAko5HinC0gjiI2c/s1600/IMAG1121_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRwH5ti1RvMQRQJoVFiVNXf_O3mw84yToAg9uEmWpWY9qf2Eb6YNvpMnutIoAEboFa-GGCdLDNKc6aqzC2zOnVJ08xt_oePriwT3tr3Vg-e0GP4u16JELzVirm01vuAko5HinC0gjiI2c/s400/IMAG1121_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Mitsu-tomoe</i> on the doors to the "treasure house" at Tsubaki</td></tr>
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The tripartite symbol in the photo above is everywhere here at Tsubaki Grand Shrine: on ceremonial doors, on the ends of roof posts, on curtains and amulets. It is a primary symbol of Shinto, and is called the <i>mitsu-tomoe, </i>or <i>mitsudomoe. </i>Like all great symbols, my sense is that it has many layers of meaning. <i>Tomoe</i> means "turning", so I like to imagine this symbol in motion, rather than static, a turning wheel, where each of the three parts is in relationship with the others. One source writes, "The circle represents perpetual motion, the constant cycles of life, death, and renewal that govern all aspects of the universe, including divine forces." (From <i>Shinto: A Celebration of Life</i>). The three shapes are often said to represent heaven, earth, and human, in continuous relationship with one another. The space between is what is mysterious and hidden.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpsa1h8Nt1QrcEfeY36I0dHwTZNgHCd0yDgin0WLTALj6ms2Y2kK0s5GS5WRI6E8j4nJ9yTFNMWfB2IH6Q490bqWRzD09qQGHwJ0iGMQ0Y5lkw4PPDxZ2C_SZugppfxFuTAJYjniXR_0/s1600/IMAG1214.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpsa1h8Nt1QrcEfeY36I0dHwTZNgHCd0yDgin0WLTALj6ms2Y2kK0s5GS5WRI6E8j4nJ9yTFNMWfB2IH6Q490bqWRzD09qQGHwJ0iGMQ0Y5lkw4PPDxZ2C_SZugppfxFuTAJYjniXR_0/s400/IMAG1214.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Curtains with <i>mitsu-tomoe</i> symbol in front of the doors of the <i>Haiden</i>, the main public worship hall at Tsubaki</td></tr>
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Shinto, unlike Buddhism or Christianity, is not a religion of the book, of text, of theology, of "teachings." It strains our Western, Judeo-Christian understanding of what religion is. In fact, before the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the 6th century, there was no such thing as "Shinto" - there was just what people did in relation to the forces of nature and divinity, without needing a name that would differentiate what they did from some other "religion." Buddhism's arrival from China made it necessary to describe what was not-Buddhism, what had been here before. The word "Shinto" is actually based on Chinese characters (also an import) that meant "way of the kami".<br />
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I loved this description of how it might have been in that early time, in a book called <i>A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine</i>, by John Nelson:<br />
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<i>The early people felt that themselves, the land they lived upon, the mountains, rivers, trees, valleys, mist, and animals that surrounded them were all born of the Kami and thus intimately related. There was simply no such thing as an inanimate universe.</i></div>
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Reading that quote takes me back to what Yamamoto-san said over dinner, what Ochiai-san said to me today, and the <i>mitsu-tomoe</i>, the "turning circle," where human and heavenly and earthly realms are all realms of Kami, all interconnected and interdependent and animate. And I think of how the original places of the Kami were not in buildings at all, but outdoor places of power in groves and on mountaintops.<br />
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I read somewhere else that it may be that the original ceremonies for Kami took place in the meeting of the cultivated and the wild, where the Kami of the mountains and streams, so necessary for the health of the rice fields and the villages, were summoned and thanked and prayed to. I notice that many of the large Shinto shrines I've visited, including this one, are in forests right at that intersecting place, above the fields but nestled in the lower valleys and ridges of a sacred mountain.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jo1jDI1v6Rrc970_vO0zU186zSoTw5lWmxI-ChaUzoyaEKYqa-a_VUJrAnbZKeLyoX0-dK5VUvHB483zKhK6DmPjPsyCoM6v2xGpWew3PZLNneY2e9X1KtwRw5g_9a1yGXHWR-zTYMw/s1600/IMAG1196.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jo1jDI1v6Rrc970_vO0zU186zSoTw5lWmxI-ChaUzoyaEKYqa-a_VUJrAnbZKeLyoX0-dK5VUvHB483zKhK6DmPjPsyCoM6v2xGpWew3PZLNneY2e9X1KtwRw5g_9a1yGXHWR-zTYMw/s400/IMAG1196.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">From high on Mount Nyudo above Tsubaki Grand Shrine. The shrine is at the base of the mountain, hidden by the farthest ridge, between the fields and the mountain.</span></td></tr>
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Because of this intersection, the forests surrounding (or representing) nearly all Shinto shrines are often the only greenery in urban settings, as if a little bit of the wild is essential for the functioning of the whole, just as wild mountains and their rivers are necessary for bringing water to the fields.<br />
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I was surprised to learn that even now "Shinto" is not a term widely used in Japan (though people here were even more surprised to learn that we in America haven't heard of Shinto!). Not many people would say, "My religion is Shinto." In fact, Ochiai-san, one of the priests here at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, told me that even though many Japanese people say that they are "not religious," still, over 90 million people (out of 127 million people who live in Japan) visit one of the 80,000 Shinto shrines in Japan every year (over a million each year to this shrine alone, and at New Year's about 90,000 people visit here). There are hundreds of people walking the grounds here every week. For a non-religious country, people sure seem to appreciate <i>something</i> (just FYI, a "shrine" is a place of Shinto practice, and a "temple" is a place of Buddhist practice).<br />
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But it seems to me that the <i>mitsu-tomoe</i> represents a lot of what "the way of the Kami" is about. The cycles of birth and death, the interdependence of human and nature, the recognition of ceaseless change within a deeper harmony. It is said there are 8 million Kami in Japan, which means that there is truly nothing without an element of the sacred here, inside a shrine forest or on the busiest city street. But perhaps going to a shrine and walking under its ancient trees helps people remember, even if they don't quite know what they are remembering. People bow without quite knowing why, and something in us respects what is being bowed to.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Braided rope and paper marking the entrance to a sacred place.</td></tr>
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The Kami don't "live" in their shrines, as we might imagine, whether the shrine is a tiny miniature house, an enormous building, a tree, or a stone. The shrine is a place where human and Kami can meet, where a human being can bow, ask the Kami for help, and the Kami become present in our human calling to them. A particular Kami, like Sarutahiko-no-okami, the main Kami here, can be enshrined in hundreds of different places (although this place is his primary place of enshrinement).<br />
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And there are almost never statues of Kami at a shrine - they are hidden, secret, and mysterious, beyond personalizing. But as Ochiai-san told me the other day, with great intensity, "The Kami are REAL." I think he was telling me that to a Shinto priest the Kami are not metaphors, myths, human constructs, or some old tradition. They are true powers, and we can be in relationship with them.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The perpetually closed doors of a small Kami shrine</td></tr>
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I think a person could spend years at a Shinto shrine and not be able to quite say what is happening there (in fact, maybe the longer you stay, the harder it would be say), but there is something beautiful and mysterious here, in the people and the place, some depth that draws people in under the trees.<br />
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This morning, early light, no one around, I watched an older, impeccably dressed man walk in from the road, walk slowly up the avenue of huge old trees, walk first to the main shrine of Sarutahiko-no-okami, then to the shrine of the dancing Kami Ame-no-Uzume-mikoto, the beautiful one, bow twice, clap twice, ring the wooden bell in front of her shrine, bow again, and then make his way back down through the trees.<br />
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"The Kami are <i>real.</i>"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The waterfall of the beautiful dancing Kami, Ame-no-uzume-mikoto</td></tr>
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-15892061229038967802016-03-17T20:55:00.000-07:002016-03-17T20:59:17.161-07:00Busy, Busy<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yumiko Fujii doing calligraphy on <a href="http://www.greenshinto.com/wp/2011/07/30/ofuda/" target="_blank">Ofuda</a> (household tablets) for shrine visitors</td></tr>
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After thirty years of hanging around retreat centers, Zen centers, monasteries, churches, and other places of the religious life, and now here at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, I have noticed a great paradox. When a person comes as a guest to these places (as I was a guest at the Snowmass Monastery in December, and wrote about in <a href="http://zenshin-edz.blogspot.jp/2015/12/snow-idyll.html" target="_blank">Snow Idyll</a>), they are refuges and places of renewal. I see people walking the well-swept grounds of Tsubaki, strolling from here to there under the great trees and bowing in front of the exquisite shrines, and I can almost feel the tension melting from their shoulders, the weight that they carry day after day being released in the beauty and quiet. Anyone who has spent time at a retreat center has felt the same thing. I remember watching fellow retreatants at Spirit Rock watching a bird, or even a gopher (generally not admired) their faces alight with appreciation. </div>
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But if you live and/or work at such a place of retreat and renewal...well, that's a different story altogether!! Who keeps everything together? Who cleans your room before you arrive, cooks the food lovingly, does the ceremony, makes the <i>ofuda</i>, dusts the altar, handles the reservations? And are they in a state of relaxed bliss? (I can imagine my friends who have lived at San Francisco Zen Center smiling knowingly as they read this.) Being here has convinced me that this may be a universal phenomenon: to create a place of renewal and ease, you need a bunch of very busy people, working very hard. To have a place of traditional beauty, you need a bunch of people with laptops and copy machines, hidden somewhere out of sight.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The office of Tsubaki Grand Shrine, on a quiet day. No visitor would see this.</td></tr>
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Tsubaki Grand Shrine employs about seventy people: twenty Shinto priests of various ranks (male and female: mostly male), <i><a href="http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=1148" target="_blank">miko</a></i> (shrine maidens), security, people who take care of the guest house where I'm staying, a calligrapher, even a person who makes sure brides don't trip in their traditional shoes walking the uneven paths. And they are working at a dead run for most of the day. Even during the week there are almost continuous ceremonies going on in the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiden_(Shinto)" target="_blank">haiden</a>, </i>the main hall. Just like Zen Center, the priests officiate in a rotation. Closed circuit television broadcasts the ceremonies into the office. Miko who aren't doing a ceremony stand behind booths of amulets for sale, protective charms for health and safety. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A few of the many amulets for sale at Tsubaki</td></tr>
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Ever since I arrived here, I have been so reminded of first being a guest and then living and working at <a href="http://sfzc.org/green-gulch" target="_blank">Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center</a>, which has about fifty people who are non-guests. As a guest, I strolled the exquisite gardens and walked to the beach, my spirit filled with happiness and a sense of peace. As a resident, later, I was one of the people making beds, dusting the guest house, and dealing with what felt like endless waves of guests: "It's Friday, and there are three groups coming in for the weekend...and we need a complete turnover in the guest house, and has anyone set up the meeting room..?" </div>
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It's the same here. Today is Friday, and it's still pretty quiet, except for the college <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABd%C5%8D" target="_blank">kyudo</a></i> (archery) group that has been here week, shouting in the distance, and the visitors in twos and threes, but if this weekend is anything like the last one, there will be wedding parties showing up soon, and the office will be filled with frantic looking priests taking ceremonial robes on and off and answering the phones, only to open the sliding door and walk out into the public areas as calm as can be, waving another family in to the purification hall and treating them as if they, and only they, matter, as if the rest of the world, and all those phones, have disappeared utterly. </div>
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This weekend is also the weekend of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higan" target="_blank"><i>O-Higan</i></a>, the Japanese equinox ceremony and festival for those who have died, and since there is a Buddhist temple on the grounds here, there will be a ceremony here, with many people coming. Along with the regular work, then, there is the special work of the special days that punctuate the calendar. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sacred <i>sakaki</i> branches in the hallway, with <i>shide</i> (folded paper) waiting to be taken out and used in ceremonies</td></tr>
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Is one face of a religious institution more "true" than the other? Is the "busy, busy' and financial realities of running an organization more real than the experience of peace that a visitor has here? Or vice versa? I might have thought so, once. In the years I longed to live in the Zen monasteries I visited, I thought living there was like visiting, and it was only when I lived there that I understood the difference. This can come as quite the shock and disillusionment. </div>
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But now I think that the life of service that is expressed by those who serve in places like this, most perfectly expressed by that morning sweeping here, before anything else-- that life of service, busy as it is, is the counterpoint to the experience of the so beautifully taken-care-of visitor, . They are two sides of the coin, each needing the other. Without guests, no service. In fact, without guests, no Shinto shrine, no Zen Center, no monastery. And without service, no guests. </div>
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In Chado, the Way of Tea (which I know very little about), and in Zen, there is the idea of guest and host. These ways of being are complementary and sacred. Sometimes we are the guest, sometimes the host. The host serves, the guest receives. But fundamentally they aren't two separate ways of being - they are interconnected and interdependent, "empty" of own-being -- there can't be one without the other. Before we eat a formal meal in Zen, we say: "May we realize the emptiness of the three wheels: giver, receiver, and gift." </div>
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Of course, it's the same as a Unitarian Universalist minister. It's a very full life, but most people who come on Sunday can't<i> imagine</i> what a minister is doing all week. Contemplating the universe, studying quietly, walking around town? But no, most ministers I know are literally on the run from one meeting to another, visiting someone in the hospital, and putting out fires of various sorts, and ministers work an insane number of hours - sixty, seventy hours a week is not uncommon. A friend of mine gave a sermon to her church about "a day in the life of a minister," and people came up to her afterward, shocked and amazed. They had had no idea.</div>
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This degree of work and busyness looked more than a little unhealthy to me, as I was considering going into the ministry, but so far I seem to have found a way to moderate it, at least in my own ministry. My favorite line about ministry is from my favorite book about ministry, Eugene Peterson's, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Contemplative-Pastor-Returning-Spiritual-Direction/dp/0802801145/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" target="_blank">The Contemplative Pastor</a></i> (I'm paraphrasing here): "To put the modifier "busy" in front of the word "pastor" is like putting "embezzling" in front of "banker" or "adulterous" in front of "spouse!" Strong words, indeed. But I think part of what he is talking about is not how just <i>how many hours</i> a minister works, but <i>how</i> that minister works. As busy as the staff is here, I feel a deep well of calm and kindness in them as well, which I'm sure visitors here feel too. I think that is what Eugene Peterson may have meant. How do you connect with and replenish that well, so that no matter how many fires you are dealing with, each person you meet feels like they are truly at the center of your presence and attention, and not only "feels like" but actually is at the center of your attention? </div>
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For me, part of the way to replenish the well is to take joy in the service, whatever that service is. The calligrapher here put it well this morning, "I am so grateful for the chance to be here, making these <i><a href="http://www.greenshinto.com/wp/2011/07/30/ofuda/" target="_blank">Ofuda </a></i>for people, putting my prayers into each one as I brush the characters." I feel joy, sweeping the paths for the visitors. I feel joy back home writing a sermon, providing a few moments on Sunday morning for people to connect with a larger understanding, to learn and to sing and sometimes to cry. That is how my own experience of spirituality has changed, over the years. As much as I appreciate times of retreat and inwardness, I also love being on this side now, the side with the broom, the side making the place where others can find a moment of peace in the midst of the difficulties of a human life.</div>
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-63671260511223651212016-03-14T22:40:00.000-07:002016-03-14T22:57:54.379-07:00Of Trees and Sweeping<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Day 5 at Tsubaki Grand Shrine (to read about why I'm here, read <a href="http://zenshin-edz.blogspot.jp/2016/03/entering-another-world.html" target="_blank">Entering Another World</a>, my last post). Over the last few days I have been gradually transformed from my usual black-clothed Western self into "staff" at Tsubaki - first a white cotton jacket with the kanji (Chinese characters) for Tsubaki Grand Shrine over my Western clothes, then, yesterday, multi-layered full Shinto robes, all in white, that took a sweet young woman priest, Sakaka-san, about twenty minutes to put on me (today I was on my own, and no one has laughed, so I must have been successful).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The triumphant moment after getting me dressed, Sakaka-san in blue</td></tr>
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I have never in my life worn all white, even at my own wedding, so it's an interesting transformation and experience. It helps that I've worn Zen robes for years (all black, of course). The only really horrible part of the costume were the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C5%8Dri" target="_blank"><i>zori</i></a> - the traditional Japanese sandals with a thong between the toes - for whatever reason, they are instruments of torture for me. I tried walking around in them yesterday, trying not to grimace in pain with each step, and today I just wore my own shoes - black, of course - over the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabi" target="_blank"><i>tabi</i> </a>socks and tabi sock protectors! <i>Gaijin</i> (foreigner) prerogative. I win points for knowing how to use chopsticks and how to sit in seiza (kneeling on one's feet and legs) and actually get up after service rather than falling down because my feet are asleep, so I figure not wearing <i>zori</i> is just fine.<br />
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I also have white gloves for cleaning. As a Zen student, I am familiar with the importance of cleaning as a spiritual practice, and my theory, after five days here, is that the Zen obsession with cleaning was something that came from Shinto, an example of religious syncretism.<br />
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Ochiai-san told me, the first day, that cleaning is integral to Shinto. Every morning we clean, before the morning service. As a sort of honorary junior priest, I join the priests in sweeping outside. Imagine several acres of shrines and gardens, linked by gravel paths and stone steps, set inside an old growth forest of ancient cedar and cypress, with a multi-layered canopy, and imagine how much falls to the ground overnight - branches, leaves, pieces of bark. By the time the first visitors arrive, nearly every square inch of gravel and stone has been swept clean. I will never walk around a temple or shrine again, blithely strolling on perfectly raked gravel, without considering that someone swept that gravel, that morning.<br />
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But I love sweeping. If they let me, I think I'd do it all day. Last night was very windy, and so there was extra detritus everywhere. I was delighted, because I knew it couldn't all be swept up before service, and I begged to go back out and sweep more. There is a great simplicity and satisfaction in sweeping, after all the complexity of my usual life. The brooms are twig brooms that effortlessly remove the light leaves, leaving the tiny pea-gravel gravel behind. I think of all the people who will visit today, and who will walk up the swept stone steps to bow at the shrines, or the subtle happiness they might feel in being in a place that feels so taken-care-of. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Walkway leading to the shrine for Ame no Uzume no mikoto, where many weddings take place<br />
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The high point of my sweeping this morning was beneath a camellia tree that overhung a small outdoor shrine. The camellias are still in bloom, and they are truly trees here - twenty, thirty feet high, or higher, forming a secondary canopy beneath the taller trees. The red flowers littered the ground, and I swept them up into a great beautiful flowery mound. Tsubaki means "camellia" - well named!<br />
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I've been doing a lot of reading about Shinto, and an important concept is purification - bringing back to harmony what has gotten dis-harmonious. Cleaning is a form of purification of the environment, bringing harmony and beauty to what is around us, just as I felt that my sweeping was a gift to everyone who will walk the paths of Tsubaki today. Anyone who has tried the "tidying" in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering/dp/1607747308" target="_blank">The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up</a> by Marie Kondo has probably felt this, at least for the moment that your closet was organized before entropy took over again!<br />
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I have been really struck by the way both Tsubaki and Ise (and the great Inari Shrine I visited in Kyoto on my last visit) are inside forests of ancient trees. Ochiai-san told me that the original shrines were not inside buildings at all: they were groves or stones or mountains.<br />
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The holiest place here is a patch of ground beneath the trees with three small stones, a place you could easily walk by as a tourist and think nothing of. This is the place where the grandson of Amaterasu, the "goddess" of the sun, came to earth, met by Sarutahiko-no-okami, the guardian kami who is enshrined here. In fact, behind that little patch of earth is a huge mound, in an otherwise flat area, and even though Shinto shrines generally don't have graves, this is the grave of Sarutahiko-no-okami.<br />
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Approaching the entrance to Tsubaki Grand Shrine, it is easy to be distracted by the shrine building where the "car blessings" take place. Only in the last day did I notice that there is an enormous tree in front of the building, with a <i><a href="http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=317" target="_blank">shimenawa</a></i> (braided rope) around it that signifies the presence of kami, and a tiny shrine at its base, and then I read that the tree is highly significant for Tsubaki. When I looked closely at it, I realized it is a huge old fir, perhaps <i>Abies firma</i> (momi fir), a kind of tree I haven't seen elsewhere here, where there is mostly Japanese cedar (<i>Cryptomeria japonica</i>) and cypress (<i>Chamaecyparis</i>).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The shinbuku tree at the entrance to Tsubaki</td></tr>
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This tree is a <i><a href="http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=289" target="_blank">shinboku</a></i>, a sacred tree invested with kami. The little shrine at its base is there to honor the kami of the tree. And I had walked by it for four days! We are so trained to think that the sacred is inside a sacred building, not in a tree, no matter how massive. But when I really looked at the tree, awe is the word for what I felt, the definition of kami - "what evokes awe."<br />
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When I was in Japan before, we visited a small village with two of these <i>shinboku</i> trees- two Japanese cedar trees that were nearly 2,000 years old, each with their heavy <i>shimenawa</i>. flanking the path to a shrine building. If I could guess, I would guess now that what came first were the sacred trees, and only later a shrine was built that honored the kami of those trees. <br />
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Of course, almost all the trees I have mentioned are on the IUCN Red List, because Japan is a small country, and there are not many great forests left. In fact, the rebuilding of Ise and other ways that traditional culture uses the traditional woods of Japan, are an issue for the survival of the native trees. As I read in <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2014/02/15/environment/culture-and-nature-vie-over-ancient-hinoki/#.VueTvfkrIed" target="_blank">this Japan Times article</a> about the preservation of <i>hinoki</i> cypress forests, the wood used at Ise: "We have to balance the protection of our environmental heritage with the protection of our cultural heritage."<br />
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Where is that balance? Perhaps one day there will be <i>shimenawa</i> around entire forests, protecting them from our human appetites.And yet, yesterday I sat drinking green tea in the beautiful traditional tea-house on the grounds of Tsubaki, built of all traditional materials, gazing at the<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokonoma" target="_blank"> tokonoma</a></i>, the alcove with a seasonal scroll and flower arrangement, my spirit felt held within the simple materials of the house -- wood and clay and paper. Later I watched the white-clad artisans who are renovating a part of the tea-house, keeping alive the endangered art form of Japanese carpentry. There is something sacred in this too, and careful. I can't pit tradition against the environment - I want tea-houses to continue, and the knowledge of how to build them. I want the 2,000 year history of Ise Shrine to continue, with all it sustains.<br />
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Perhaps if we treated trees and wood with the same care that the priests sweep the gravel paths of Tsubaki each morning - well, we would live in a very different world.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tokonoma at the Tsubaki tea house</td></tr>
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-81104485742448573102016-03-12T19:26:00.000-08:002016-03-13T00:45:08.898-08:00Entering Another World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Japan! Three days ago I crossed the international dateline for the third time in my life, flying back to Japan three years after my first trip here. Last time I was part of a group of Canadian Zen students, the token American; this time I am traveling alone as this year's recipient of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine Scholarship, an award from the Unitarian Universalist Association and Tsubaki Grand Shrine, given to one UU seminarian each year: a chance to be a guest of one of the oldest and most important Shinto shrines in Japan. Shinto is the indigenous religion and way of life of Japan, predating Buddhism in Japan by many centuries.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">early morning at Tsubaki</td></tr>
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Two days ago I was met at the airport by Ochiai-san, an English-speaking Shinto priest at Tsubaki (which means "camellia" - and a few of the camellias are still blooming here) Grand Shrine (or <i>jinja </i>in Japanese). I will be here at Tsubaki, staying at the guesthouse of the shrine, until the 23rd of March. From the 23rd to the 30th I will be visiting Kyoto and Kamakura, also on my own. </div>
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Tsubaki Grand Shrine is an extraordinary place, and their generosity to me is also extraordinary, truly welcoming me into all aspects of life inside the shrine. I am aware that very few people, Japanese or foreign, have such an opportunity, and I will try to share it with you, as best I can, as I write here over the next two weeks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stone lantern and ancient tree, Tsubaki </td></tr>
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Tsubaki celebrated its 2,000th anniversary a few years ago - yes, that is the correct number of zeroes! - and more than a million people visit this shrine, nestled at the foot of steep, forested mountains, each year. They come to honor the <i>kami</i>, to pray, to ask for blessings, to get married. Four couples were married just today, a sort of river of bridal parties, gorgeous kimonos and western suits intermingled. A small army of shrine employees take care of everyone: nearly thirty priests and <i>miko </i>(shrine maidens), and cooks and guesthouse workers, presided over by Guji-san, the 97th chief priest of the shrine, and his wife, also a priest and the daughter of the 96th chief priest. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wedding party, led by a <i>miko</i>, walking to the shrine from the guest house</td></tr>
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The <i>kami </i>are central to Shinto, sometimes mistranslated as "gods" in English. I think I should just quote from the <i>Historical Dictionary of Shinto</i>, since understanding kami stretches the bounds of the English language. I am quite sure we do not have an equivalent understanding. Here is some of what the dictionary says: "...a unique force or power in nature, animals, or people that engendered attitudes of reverence, fear, or gratitude in those who perceived it...anything that filled a human being with wonder and awe." Japan is sometimes called "the land of the kami". </div>
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Kami can be forces of nature (fire, water, wind), old trees, mountains, divine beings (Ameterasu omi-kami, the kami of the sun and the principal kami of Japan), and even great human beings, after their death. Until the end of World War II, the emperor of Japan was considered a kami. Kami are enshrined in particular places. Tsubaki, for instance, is important because it is the main place where Sarutahiko-no-okami, the guardian of the Japanese land and safe travel, and his wife Ame no Uzume no mikoto, the kami of dance, are both enshrined. It is also believed to the place where the grandchild of Ameterasu descended to the earth, welcomed by Sarutahiko-no-okami, and so it is deeply resonant for Japanese people as a place of origin.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sarutahiko-no-okami and his wife Ame no Uzume</td></tr>
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Kami often have an animal messenger, and for Sarutahiko-no-okami, the messenger is the frog, so there are whimsical frog statues all over Tsubaki.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stone frogs </td></tr>
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Kami can help human beings, and so people come to places like Tsubaki for blessings and to ask for help from the kami. The kami can also bless weddings and children, so there are many weddings here. There is also a deeper sense that the human being can come into greater harmony with the kami and with life itself through purification practices. Here at Tsubaki, the practice of purification by water, <i>misogi</i>, is central, a ceremony where people stand beneath a sacred waterfall. People come from all over Japan to participate. People also come to have their new cars blessed and purified, which makes sense to me! I watched the ceremony yesterday - on the weekends about a hundred cars a day are brought to the shrine for blessing.<span id="goog_1823828158"></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tsubaki priest blessing a very small car</td></tr>
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You might wonder why in the world there is a connection between Unitarian Universalists in the US and a very traditional Shinto shrine in Japan, and why Tsubaki would support and host a UU seminarian each year. </div>
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I'm still learning about all the reasons, but there is a spirit of interfaith commitment here that goes back decades. Tsubaki is the only Shinto shrine in Japan with foreign branch shrines (one in Granite Falls, Washington, that I visited last summer) and Tsubaki priests have a long history with the International Association for Religious Freedom and with a beloved Japanese Unitarian minister who died at the age of 106 several decades ago, Shin Ichiro Imaoka - most UUs in the US are not aware that there is a long history of Unitarianism in Japan. </div>
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Tsubaki also had a connection with Ueshiba Sensei, the founder of the peaceful martial art of <i>aikido</i>, which is now practiced around the world, and with the practices of a form of esoteric Buddhism/Shinto called <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shugend%C5%8D" target="_blank">Shugendo</a></i>. In fact, the former head priest rebuilt a Buddhist temple on the Tsubaki shrine grounds in honor of the founder of Shugendo, En no Gyoja, very unusual for a Shinto shrine. Buddhism and Shinto have always been intertwined to some degree, since Buddhism arrived in Japan in the 5th century, but during the Meiji period and the advent of "State Shinto" in the late 19th and early 20th century, there was an effort by the government to clearly separate them. But I see, being here, how much overlap there really is, even in some of the forms of Zen that I know so well. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBsusZDh6j4FbkJ6kY8qJqM6F7btHhGlb7KbzNKNxUc8NJpRfKCQ_CT5-8DTLaIb2Bqydp__BPbh4jBP0EIMNRaB9lOpj0tI2FHOxyqE8UC7zUm3vH052fl1OTu8UJ-h8LcEEn1l9-LK0/s1600/IMAG1093.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBsusZDh6j4FbkJ6kY8qJqM6F7btHhGlb7KbzNKNxUc8NJpRfKCQ_CT5-8DTLaIb2Bqydp__BPbh4jBP0EIMNRaB9lOpj0tI2FHOxyqE8UC7zUm3vH052fl1OTu8UJ-h8LcEEn1l9-LK0/s400/IMAG1093.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buddhist temple on the grounds of Tsubaki Grand Shrine</td></tr>
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<div>
For my part, as a Zen Buddhist practitioner and biologist, when I was considering applying for the scholarship, the chance to learn about the other major spiritual tradition in Japan, one that influenced Zen in many ways, and that also has a deep relationship with the natural world - well, it was irresistible.</div>
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My very first day in the country started at 8 am with Ochia-san ushering me in to meet with Guji-san, the head priest of Tsubaki, attending the morning service with the shrine staff, then Ochiai-san taking me to Ise Shrine, about an hour away, the most important, holiest Shinto shrine in Japan, where Amaterasu omikami is enshrined, the kami of the sun, the principal kami of Japan, and the female ancestor of the Japanese imperial family, Ise is enormous, its lands encompassing an area about the size of Paris, much of it wilderness. Shrine forests are one of the few places in Japan where ecologists can see what the original forests may have been like.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ise trees</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWMaqzN9vQOV6olS8if8M_xHnxv_t4j_rjC98Vq_VAtWUciNa9ZX-1FevlEhMRE4mj8qPdJ_MAPBhcqeDYi0xyquoNPV58dz8qF5TgUB82RJ2mYNC_TLzJUXHBeqlrFjBpV3X-zbcwBE0/s1600/IMG_4883.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWMaqzN9vQOV6olS8if8M_xHnxv_t4j_rjC98Vq_VAtWUciNa9ZX-1FevlEhMRE4mj8qPdJ_MAPBhcqeDYi0xyquoNPV58dz8qF5TgUB82RJ2mYNC_TLzJUXHBeqlrFjBpV3X-zbcwBE0/s400/IMG_4883.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pine garden, Ise</td></tr>
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<div>
The buildings of Ise, all 125 shrines, are rebuilt and recreated every twenty years, exactly as they were before, along with all the ritual treasures - swords and fans and drums - everything. This rebuilding has been going on for centuries, and it keeps alive many traditional arts and artisans. </div>
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You might expect that the most important Shinto shrine in Japan, where the emperor comes to preside over ceremonies, would be grand and gilt-covered, but instead the buildings feel timeless and simple, with massive thatched roofs and smooth polished beams of light-colored wood, surrounded by courtyards of white and black gravel stones. I really felt the affinity with Pacific NW native architecture there, and I feel this a lot, in Shinto. I think it would be extraordinary to bring native elders here. If you would like to see some photos of the buildings at Ise, <a href="http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4300.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sacred <i>sakaki </i>branch at Ise</td></tr>
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But the best part of Ise for me was visiting the area of traditional shops on the way to the main shrine, crossing the Ise River on a beautiful bridge and then sitting on a veranda overlooking the river eating a kind of sweet made only in Ise, red bean paste - though it looked purple - on the outside and mochi (rice) on the inside, the tea water heated in enormous kettles over a wood fired oven. </div>
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I haven't been in many places in Japan where all the buildings are traditional, tile roofs (many of them bright blue here - I have a bit of a tile roof fetish, so the roofs made me very happy) and the streets just wide enough to walk, filled with cheerful-seeming Japanese Ise visitors, like being somewhere on a festival day - no sign of foreign tourists, except me. It was magical.<br />
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I had a feeling that the little place where we stopped for sweets and tea (they served nothing else) had been serving customers for hundreds of years, pilgrims and visitors to the shrine. I often find that there is a moment when I "arrive" in a place, and I arrived in Japan on that veranda overlooking the river, eating Ise sweets and drinking Hojicha tea with a Shinto priest! </div>
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So here I am, in a country that unexpectedly captured my heart last time I was here, with its grace. Nonetheless, it does feel like another world, and right now I am swimming in near-total cultural immersion. I haven't spoken to another native English speaker since I left San Francisco, and despite my best intentions to study Japanese this winter....well, I didn't. And oh, I am regretting it! </div>
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I am surrounded by kind and friendly people, but I can't communicate with most of them, other than a few basic greetings and smiles and bows. I am in a fascinating religious environment but am often only guessing at what is going on. I know this is the experience of many Americans traveling abroad, monolingual as we tend to be, but it's hard on me. I want to connect, and to communicate, but I am so limited. </div>
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Finding one's feet in another culture always feels like a spiritual exercise to me - a practice of surrender, letting go, being willing to be foolish and lost - hard practices for someone with pride and a sense of competence when in her own culture. So I am immersed not only in a deeply traditional part of Japan, but in my own struggle to be here. So much to learn! More later. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florence at Ise</td></tr>
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-71113388854696138372015-12-31T23:43:00.002-08:002015-12-31T23:47:39.509-08:00Snow Idyll<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
From Thomas Merton: <i>“<span style="color: yellow;">There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” </span></i></blockquote>
Years ago my friend Ruth Ozeki told me about a famous Japanese
book from the 14<sup>th</sup> century, <i>Essays in Idleness </i>(or <i>The Harvest of Leisure</i>), written by a Japanese Buddhist monk. I suppose she thought I would appreciate the book because of my own forays
into the country of idleness, or, as I said for a few years, “gainful
unemployment.” Now I am gainfully and happily employed in the work of ministry,
which is a 24/7 sort of job (maybe I’m making up for my years of idleness!),
but I find that times of idleness are even more important, not less, in this
life I have now.<br />
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And so I found myself here in a stone hermitage at <a href="http://www.stbenedictsretreat.com/" target="_blank">St.Benedict’s monastery</a>, otherwise known as Snowmass Monastery, for five solo days
in the heart of winter, starting Christmas Eve, because, luckily for me, my
current Colorado congregation celebrates Winter Solstice rather than Christmas,
and so my winter holiday obligations were officially over. This Trappist
monastery on nearly 4,000 acres of land, up above Snowmass in the Colorado
Rockies, home of Father Thomas Keating, maintains a few small hermitages, offered
freely, in the Benedictine spirit of hospitality.</div>
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I’ve been in seminary and trying to learn the art of
ministry for years now, so this kind of open time has just not been possible
for a long time. As I drove the snowy roads on Christmas Eve from my house in
the valley up into the wild open mountains, I wondered, “Will I remember how to
just <i>be</i>? Will I be frantically trying to study something, just out of
habit? Will I feel guilty that I am not answering emails?”</div>
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I <i>did </i>remember how to be idle! I suppose it’s not surprising,
given how much of my life I’ve spent in silent retreat. I turned into the
mile-long road to the monastery, sitting at 8,000 feet in a snowy bowl
surrounded by high ridges, and felt the deep familiarity of entering sacred
space; drove up the hill to the hermitages and felt something in my heart ease. </div>
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I parked and walked up the snowy path to my little octagonal hut, rabbits (more on rabbits later) scattering this way and that under the trees, and I felt home in the silence. And so for five days I drifted, dreamed, sat in zazen, slept, watched sky, watched snow fall, read poetry, wondered, wandered, opened, breathed.</div>
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I found a phrase from a dream about process theology, dreamt
more than a year ago, in my journal – the journal I have barely written in this
past year - “Everything brimming over with divinity.” That’s what it was like. On Christmas Day is began to snow, and it snowed and snowed, all
day, all night, the light crystalline snow of western Colorado, like feathers
and sugar combined, glittering in the light, everything covered up with snow,
mountains hidden, and I remembered Norman Fischer’s story of being a young Zen
student and wandering in the snow reciting the Heart Sutra, around and around
in a sort of joyful delirium. A rabbit came and peered in at me, its paws on
the glass door, then hopped away into
the storm. </div>
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In the afternoon of Christmas Day I put on my big warm
winter boots and my warm down jacket and headed out in the snow, my car already
buried. It seemed like I was the only one here. I found the path down to the
main retreat house, through the Gambel oak, and kicked my way down through the
deep powdery snow. Half way there I could just make out the outlines of a
bench, completely covered. I unburied an edge of it and sat down, warm, the
only sound the delicate sound of snowflakes landing on me – my hat, my
eyelashes, my jacket, my boots. I was so still for so long that a rabbit (I
told you would be hearing more about rabbits) came right up alongside me,
looked at me, and hopped way. </div>
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The next day was clear, a blindingly blue sky and snow sort
of day. I shoveled out my path and around the car (greeting the rabbits, of
course), helped a monk dig out his plow, which had nearly been swallowed up by
snow, and then sat and read and thought and drank tea. </div>
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I thought my heart might burst with
happiness and gratitude. And that night I walked the mile or so down the road
through the open fields to the main monastery for vespers, the air so cold it
was nearly frightening, despite my layers and the thermos of tea in my pack. </div>
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In
the dark the monks sang songs to the Holy Family and to Mary, and afterwards I
walked back, only now the full moon had risen over the hills, and miles of
snowy mountains were illuminated with its brilliance.</div>
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And so it went. Ordinary moments -- making meals and eating,
brushing teeth, shoveling snow. Sleepy moments. Waking to moonlight. Moments of
tears, of gratitude, of laughter. Taking off the armor, re-acquainting myself
with my life and my practice, remembering why I am doing the work I am doing,
and what matters. </div>
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It is such a privilege, to be able to take time out from work
and ordinary life for this plunge into beauty and solitude. If I had fewer
resources, if I had a family to care for, if the great generosity of the donors
to this place had not manifested in a way that makes being there
affordable.....so many causes and conditions had to come together to make this
possible. I never take for granted how much silence and depth have been part of
my life, and what a blessing they have been. </div>
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<i>May all who need idleness find a way to it</i>. </div>
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-16461790065915500442014-02-23T17:40:00.000-08:002015-12-31T23:45:05.655-08:00Japanese Pilgrimage: "No matter where you go, you can’t lose yourself."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rinso-in from the garden</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4mfnhN850m8MA9tlUp6lwLlP-k0E-bgqeCCCqIjqRS8qkn3WGdIxdJ8r2Aa-TuqQuoc_ZEd-gpdQIbxRXFrMKGtJolc2M_LF3jfiy0gxu3kY7eQH0C13qyUDpCCJ5YHbdzXwveRjGYQ/s1600/Road+up+to+Rinso-in.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4mfnhN850m8MA9tlUp6lwLlP-k0E-bgqeCCCqIjqRS8qkn3WGdIxdJ8r2Aa-TuqQuoc_ZEd-gpdQIbxRXFrMKGtJolc2M_LF3jfiy0gxu3kY7eQH0C13qyUDpCCJ5YHbdzXwveRjGYQ/s1600/Road+up+to+Rinso-in.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Road approaching Rinso-in</td></tr>
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Our little group of Mountain Rain pilgrims (seventeen Canadians and me) spent five days at Rinso-in, a 500-year-old family temple in Shizuoka province. Rinso-in, though not a place where tourists generally visit, is very important to those of us who practice Zen within the lineage started by Shunyru Suzuki Roshi, who founded San Francisco Zen Center in the 1960's.<br />
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In Japan, temples are passed down from father to son, generally. Suzuki Roshi inherited Rinso-in from another Zen priest, and when he left for America, he left the temple in the care of his son, Hoitsu-san. Now, many, many years later, Hoitsu Suzuki (respectfully called Hojo-sama - "revered abbot"), now in his seventies, his wife Oka-san, his son Shungo-san (also a priest), his daughter-in-law, and his two grandchildren all live at Rinso-in.<br />
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For me, our days at Rinso-in were the heart of the pilgrimage, and I mean "heart" in every sense of the word. There was a tremendous sense of heart there, expressed by the whole family. In Zen sometimes we talk about a "family flavor" or "family way" of a particular lineage, and it's always felt to me like the family way of Suzuki Roshi's lineage, at its best, is generous, kind, and humble. Now I found myself in a place where Suzuki Roshi's own family, his actual biological descendants, live and work, and the feeling of that kindness was everywhere there.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Suzuki Roshi's family</td></tr>
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I was also amazed by how beautiful and, in a way, how grand, Rinso-in is. All these years, when people said that Suzuki Roshi came from a small rural temple, I had imagined a run-down little place. Instead, everywhere I looked there was a graceful, dignified beauty, from the lines of the tile roofs to the exquisite pond and gardens. Rinso-in is tucked up at the head of a narrow valley, surrounded by steep slopes, and I could see why Suzuki Roshi fell in love with Tassajara when he first saw it. It must have reminded him of home.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buddha Hall </td></tr>
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Every morning we sat in the old <i>zendo</i>, 300 years old and built to be a training place for monks. The rest of the days we cooked, worked around the temple, went for walks in the surrounding mountains, and spent time with the family. One evening Hojo-sama gave a dharma talk and question and answer for us. I took notes, as Kate McCandless and Michael Newton translated.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixuLOtEWNvQE9UFWcV6BTr_PTr5jTugYIkDJzO2a3NsLWS2nIn3f85jmpsn4Z6XLVbuSOvuMwQlwInj26KRlAOnSwToohUOi_0tkC90Zq2hSOtTmG34fC35Ll91qD4AnBoYA4UxCFht-o/s1600/Rinso-in+zendo_Kwee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixuLOtEWNvQE9UFWcV6BTr_PTr5jTugYIkDJzO2a3NsLWS2nIn3f85jmpsn4Z6XLVbuSOvuMwQlwInj26KRlAOnSwToohUOi_0tkC90Zq2hSOtTmG34fC35Ll91qD4AnBoYA4UxCFht-o/s1600/Rinso-in+zendo_Kwee.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old zendo and abbots chair, Photo by Kwee Downie</td></tr>
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The talk filled me with delight and happiness. Afterward I had such a sense of pride - although pride is a funny word to use - in this particular way of Buddhism that somehow I'd been lucky enough to fall into, nearly a quarter century ago. I can't imagine another path that would be more perfect. Of course, every path is perfect, in its own way, but this one, this "family way" is deeply and thoroughly perfect for me. And of course, it has shaped me over these many years, and so perhaps I am thoroughly perfect for it too. I remember my mother used to tell me I was such a good traveler, and I would say, "That's because you've trained me!" Maybe it's like that.<br />
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Here is Hoitsu Suzuki's lovely talk, given May 19, 2013. What you can't see is his humor, sweetness, and tremendous gift for mimicry. You'll just have to imagine his impersonation of the big frogs.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hoitsu Suzuki looking at tiny frogs in the garden. Photo By Kwee Downie</td></tr>
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<i>The reason human
beings have so much suffering is because we’re so smart. Sometimes we think
good things, but often our thoughts confuse us. We have a lot of desires: “I
want this, I want that, I want to go here, I want to go there, I want to be
this, I want to be that.” Shakyamuni sat down and quieted his whole being, his
whole heart. When we do zazen, our heart and our whole life becomes quiet and
still. If we continue the way we are we just keep running and running. Buddha
asks us to stop and take a look at our lives, how they truly are.</i><br />
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<i>Having desires
is not a bad thing in itself; it’s how we relate to those desires. Zazen allows
us to harmonize our lives with what is. It’s not a bad thing that we want
things; that’s just what’s given to us. We can’t throw it away – it’s part of
who we are. Or maybe we can get rid of them – desires – perhaps! [laughing]</i></div>
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<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>It’s the body
that does zazen. Sometimes we think, “Oh, I’m not doing zazen,” but it’s the
mind that’s not doing zazen. Don’t worry about it. The body is doing zazen.
Even when you think of something else, that is also doing zazen. If your body
is doing zazen, that’s enough. Even if your mind is thinking things, there is
also the “you” who is watching the thoughts. No matter where you go, you can’t
lose yourself.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kate McCandless and Oka-san's <i>ikebana</i></td></tr>
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<i>There was an old
teacher, two generations before Tendo Nyojo, Dogen’s teacher in China. Huanxi
Zenji. He wrote the poem called “Zazen-shin”, “the acupuncture needle of
zazen”. Zazen is the point of the needle. He said, “Your mind is like a pool of
water. You can see the bottom and you can see a fish slowly swimming. It is
like an endless sky where a bird slowly flies. And that is zazen.”</i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Koi in a pond at a nunnery in Ohara</td></tr>
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<i>Dogen changed
the poem a little bit: “The mind is like a clear pool, and is the fish;
a fish swims like a fish. The sky is limitless and a bird flies in the sky. A
bird flies like a bird.”</i></div>
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<i>Dogen Zenji
says, “ If you are doing zazen, you are doing zazen, no matter what you think,
just as a fish swims like a fish. You’re doing it like you.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Just as Huanxi
and Dogen said, “ The world before our eyes is vast and clear.” Around us
everything is as vast and wide as the whole universe. It’s right here.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Sometimes when I
breathe in, it’s not so much that I’m taking air into my body, but the air is
passing through me. And bird song passing through me, light passing through me.
Sometimes. We have many different experiences during zazen. Just because
someone has written down or said in the past that you should feel a certain
thing, don’t believe it. Really the only thing to do is sit quietly and settle
your posture and breath. When you stabilize your posture, you make your mudra
round, your arms round, your face and your breath round – but this is just
something I feel, not something you have to do.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoxiL7K5T5JAB7X1BFsUcHvemOAH54lM5ZRCLugslnkxdxd1Cza7ykYgV1bC-Sllgd1KOqLBfjjXod0bste6GqSrwSpggXN05P6Mdb4upUY-GRFnRMratwvP-lJUSc7WV7FNIhJMDrGo/s1600/Arhat+9.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoxiL7K5T5JAB7X1BFsUcHvemOAH54lM5ZRCLugslnkxdxd1Cza7ykYgV1bC-Sllgd1KOqLBfjjXod0bste6GqSrwSpggXN05P6Mdb4upUY-GRFnRMratwvP-lJUSc7WV7FNIhJMDrGo/s1600/Arhat+9.JPG" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old arhat statue</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>This is the
teaching that came down from Dogen Zenji’s teacher to him, and from him to us.
If you look for where your mind is, you notice, “it’s not here, it’s not here,”
or, “it’s here, it’s here, it’s here.” You could look at it either way. You
have a certain feeling when you do zazen, but it’s not a feeling exactly. No
one is special in their accomplishment; we are all the same. If you tried to
put your own experience of zazen into words, it would be impossible. Just
words.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>We really worry
about things more than we need to. The trees, the stars, the rivers, the rocks,
they don’t worry nearly as much as we do. The Buddha is inviting us, in zazen,
to be like the many beings of the world – the trees, the rocks, the waters, the
stones – to be in their family. To do zazen is not to be concerned with our
desires to become this or become that. If you think you’ll get something out of
zazen, some great idea, you’re just being sucked into the world of confusion.
Good or bad in zazen is irrelevant.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCrS-1havGuuSEzuRFA9aYYh2sNgqLrADikXDrKHi-WuZwSXTP_BzKhvy92bU4YHjXHUdPwICLHxLqMfD8wRsKLIQS4COMrDfhV4HYsx1k9CA6tsjdw2j979-W2CRY8oBfXe39T4cxkOQ/s1600/Tiny+Frog+II_Susan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCrS-1havGuuSEzuRFA9aYYh2sNgqLrADikXDrKHi-WuZwSXTP_BzKhvy92bU4YHjXHUdPwICLHxLqMfD8wRsKLIQS4COMrDfhV4HYsx1k9CA6tsjdw2j979-W2CRY8oBfXe39T4cxkOQ/s1600/Tiny+Frog+II_Susan.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiny frog. Photo by Susan Elbe</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I was watching
the pond today, and tiny little frogs were coming out and climbing up the
mountain. My father loved frogs. There’s a very big kind of frog here in Japan,
or maybe a toad, that almost never croaks, and doesn’t move much either. But
when a little bug comes flying, it moves fast! (pantomimes a frog catching a
bug)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i></i><br />
<i></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>My father was
like that big frog. He was put in charge of the monastery when he was about
twenty, but he had studied English and he wanted to go study zazen in a place
where English was spoken. When the opportunity came, he jumped, just like that
frog. “Within the stillness there is sudden movement. In movement there is
stillness. Don’t forget your heart-mind.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>It took my
father ten hours to prepare an hour talk in English. He must have been very
busy, but when you read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, it seems that he was very
calm. He must have had a very calm steady heart, even though he was busy. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8WHKinC8XSbwY9r0aSrVSdApWPCRwd-OYJd8Jit7HWbPpEIdrHptvn3uYTINmbLV20kCJIUbOIPcPUYqteLyUTg3kMm1cOBTcYy1sR1jnk6qb6bKvJvN-slqLOh7WLq7XEH7eEVHg77w/s1600/Shungo+at+memorial_Kwee.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8WHKinC8XSbwY9r0aSrVSdApWPCRwd-OYJd8Jit7HWbPpEIdrHptvn3uYTINmbLV20kCJIUbOIPcPUYqteLyUTg3kMm1cOBTcYy1sR1jnk6qb6bKvJvN-slqLOh7WLq7XEH7eEVHg77w/s1600/Shungo+at+memorial_Kwee.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shungo-san at Suzuki Roshi's ashes site, surrounded by the memorial stones of the many abbots of Rinso-in, We did a ceremony for Suzuki Roshi here. Photo by Kwee Downey.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Zazen is a good
thing. It’s not a matter of being good or bad. There is no one who is good at
it and no one who is bad at it.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>My father went
to Poland with Bill Kwong. Someone asked, “Is it OK if I do zazen as a
Christian?” He answered, “So you’re Christian, but when you do zazen you are a
zazen person.” Kobo Daishi, who brought Shingon Buddhism from China, didn’t
tell people, “Forget about indigenous religion.” He said, “Indigenous religion
is very important, and let’s practice Buddhism.” And because of that, Buddhism
was able to penetrate and sink into Japanese culture.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Just do zazen.
That’s it! <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Question: When
I’m doing something and thinking about something else, am I having a direct
experience? <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>You can really
only do one thing at once; you can really only think one thing at once. It’s
really always like that. It might seem like you can think or do more than one
thing at once, but you really can’t. It’s OK.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Question: What
is the relationship between ceremonies and zazen?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>[Quite a bit
around the translation of “ceremonies”...perhaps no good Japanese word for it,
but he understood when Shungo-san pantomimed hitting a mokugyo]<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>There is no
relationship. Zazen is zazen. Ceremony is ceremony. But there is an expression
of gratitude, “Thank for the teachings.” Or when we are doing our jobs. All of
that is Zen. This is written in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Why do we do
ceremony?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>It is all,
“Thank you very much.” And also how we help support each other. The natural
things we do to express gratitude are all ceremony, like bowing, or saying,
“Good morning,” saying, “Thank you.” All are ceremony.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivYqtjpF28azxuItvihGZhISOnjGsSZfRqRasaRUTb0W4UgE6PExBjq01pLUIEafYI7d3YOBuMXNmKoQwVUx3eLzTxAcFrpiqtOIU56jbjtM7zv7zJdufm152pn9PUtcGCQY49AnjWcZ8/s1600/Arhat+6.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivYqtjpF28azxuItvihGZhISOnjGsSZfRqRasaRUTb0W4UgE6PExBjq01pLUIEafYI7d3YOBuMXNmKoQwVUx3eLzTxAcFrpiqtOIU56jbjtM7zv7zJdufm152pn9PUtcGCQY49AnjWcZ8/s1600/Arhat+6.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old arhat statue</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Question (my question): What
kind of attitude or way of being is most important for a priest?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgM_yH2YqMozAJmFntougA-f7mZg0ulUqPAq0EtGinkSLtoMak7xHtG21mkLezO_9TzyY_Oz7EtXrRtmiT3biEtfw_r1-4lF-o-V_kb_dLr6c-D0X4k8Hmce5VZcisHrm_RTIvgFx04ck/s1600/IMG_3434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgM_yH2YqMozAJmFntougA-f7mZg0ulUqPAq0EtGinkSLtoMak7xHtG21mkLezO_9TzyY_Oz7EtXrRtmiT3biEtfw_r1-4lF-o-V_kb_dLr6c-D0X4k8Hmce5VZcisHrm_RTIvgFx04ck/s1600/IMG_3434.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shungo-san teaching chanting</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>[Leaning forward
intently] EVERYTHING! But “everything” is very difficult. From the top of your
head to the bottom of your feet you are practicing the way of Buddha. There’s
no break, no wasting time. You might be angry or suffering, but you always remember
your aspiration. This is very hard. But your whole body, even the bottoms of
your feet, are dedicated. [The feeling here was sadness, or a strong sense of
how hard the path is of a priest is, to live into these vows.] If your mouth is
smiling but your eyes are angry, then you are not practicing with your whole
body.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i></i><br />
<i></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><i> </i><i>Question: On the
han it says, “Don’t waste time.” What does that mean?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Because we can
only walk one path at a time, we can’t waste time. There is a much deeper way
of understanding this saying, which is seeing deeply into the empty nature of
time. Actually, the original text is in Chinese, and there are two ways of
reading it. The typical way to read it is: “Don’t waste time.” But the other
way is: “There is no time to waste,” which leaves behind our emotional
confusion about wasting time. In the Chinese, it is literally, “Waste time
not.” Our Zen way of understanding this passage is to look more deeply. What we
mean by “path” is not some long road. It’s more like, “this instant,” and then,
“this instant.” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8-Z0qMz_XKdVB7QnZXgWUfXHz_ry1bD5IDHBpP_YG5FNfdOUYjB5r0oJqmJNe2cI9KotPK8eEYkwAL_esIN4eneGZG9BMZjw15px3MLFkK-vXY0nm6KsH94G5R6DL-aMaFaCeYBSwMGg/s1600/IMG_3518.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8-Z0qMz_XKdVB7QnZXgWUfXHz_ry1bD5IDHBpP_YG5FNfdOUYjB5r0oJqmJNe2cI9KotPK8eEYkwAL_esIN4eneGZG9BMZjw15px3MLFkK-vXY0nm6KsH94G5R6DL-aMaFaCeYBSwMGg/s1600/IMG_3518.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Path to the tea house,</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Question: Is it
enough to practice zazen as a way to cultivate compassion, or are there other
ways of developing compassion?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5_EC2yjgIzdzd3w_swV8s8ps_u-JNgJmG5OwgjzGTeog51CFiotOamPh1Q5RDYJY3IZ-6mphTvCqnnO2Vl4AaWpQxwjmY88mTrrXNXI242W8eqRJP6NOwmE6IsN5Ja8RwUNmTfLk2cdI/s1600/Arhat+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5_EC2yjgIzdzd3w_swV8s8ps_u-JNgJmG5OwgjzGTeog51CFiotOamPh1Q5RDYJY3IZ-6mphTvCqnnO2Vl4AaWpQxwjmY88mTrrXNXI242W8eqRJP6NOwmE6IsN5Ja8RwUNmTfLk2cdI/s1600/Arhat+4.JPG" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old arhat statue</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tendo Nyojo
said, “Do zazen only with the heart of compassion.” There are people who do
zazen who think they are doing it through their own effort and strength, to get
something from it, but Dogen’s teacher insisted that we can only do zazen for
and with all beings. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i></i><br />
<i></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>When we are
looking down in zazen, we are looking down, but not fiercely. We are open,
practicing with the heart of compassion, and that’s conveyed to others by our
way of being, quiet and gentle. People would always say, “Oh, your father is so
kind and gentle and nice.” But we children were afraid of him. He was strict,
and would yell at us. So doing lots of zazen doesn’t necessarily make you 100%
nice. You will still be human.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Sitting on the
tan, sitting on the zafu, becoming a Buddha – there is not one iota of
difference.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Dogen
Zenji became a monk because he understood that there is no way to escape
change, and once you are on that path there is no turning back, and therefore
no wasting time. Not that the path is straight: it’s just that there is no
other way when you have that determination. Buddha's way is not something that
someone can teach you; you have to find the way yourself. Your own path appears
before you. It’s not about imitating someone else.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Zen
is simple and easy to understand, but when we use words, we end up drifting
farther and farther from the heart of Dogen Zenji’s words. Ungan Doyo, the 7<sup>th</sup>
ancestor, came to the 6<sup>th</sup> ancestor. The 6<sup>th</sup> ancestor
asked, “Where do you come from?” but Ungan Doyo can’t answer. He practiced for
eight years, and after eight years all he can say is, “I can’t say. It’s beyond
words.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tonight
I’ve probably told you at least 800 lies. Perhaps!<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>*****************<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The
next morning Hoitsu said a formal goodbye to the group after zazen. He said he
would like to come to Canada and someone said, “But our temple isn’t as nice
and big as yours.” He said, “Wherever you sit zazen is a temple as vast as the
universe. Like the old story of building a temple with a blade of grass [Book
of Serenity, Case ?]. Wherever you sit zazen is a temple, a monastery.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjubKOVQEdJr5sM3TLCMksESJU-pPo_P4iqVXlWuvnbkE1eiqb5LxXKLfgUF27fRWVzAA2YyOTyOl2c3Uxu05Wdzz5gDVhPG6SBEZHTA28jyyW1DzUUJLVLAF9sC52C-VhF0pcuGdPtT_c/s1600/IMG_3522.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjubKOVQEdJr5sM3TLCMksESJU-pPo_P4iqVXlWuvnbkE1eiqb5LxXKLfgUF27fRWVzAA2YyOTyOl2c3Uxu05Wdzz5gDVhPG6SBEZHTA28jyyW1DzUUJLVLAF9sC52C-VhF0pcuGdPtT_c/s1600/IMG_3522.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><i> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixI03DUj7Awt85j0x3H_Ifw0UMasKu9eVQM_mlKhlhyphenhyphenQr3ffIkhVLJOkcOMVbi6K9z7j3eFqwJgyBemB5RLTKZATSxM_jn8ArsE_m9beVtg2F8JzGCPsCecqeWPujf0mCPi-3RmWJOR_Q/s1600/Group_Kwee.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixI03DUj7Awt85j0x3H_Ifw0UMasKu9eVQM_mlKhlhyphenhyphenQr3ffIkhVLJOkcOMVbi6K9z7j3eFqwJgyBemB5RLTKZATSxM_jn8ArsE_m9beVtg2F8JzGCPsCecqeWPujf0mCPi-3RmWJOR_Q/s1600/Group_Kwee.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mountain Rain with Hojo-sama and Oka-san in front of the Buddha Hall, Photo by Kwee Downie.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i> </i>Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-42170821991132748552013-08-03T01:23:00.004-07:002013-08-03T10:26:37.360-07:00Japanese Pilgrimage: The City of the Dead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gvB9Mt14OR2k0QMB2r4skkEhwGtzUpr8QvDj461u_GFbp0qs9-5o-z55hXrye0W2XC8Z3RUUNHWwzkj-TW5MCwCduHzccHs49l3O7WaxyT1l66KFWdN7RXrMW05qbQ_Gspvgf4Kt-Cs/s1600/IMG_4154.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gvB9Mt14OR2k0QMB2r4skkEhwGtzUpr8QvDj461u_GFbp0qs9-5o-z55hXrye0W2XC8Z3RUUNHWwzkj-TW5MCwCduHzccHs49l3O7WaxyT1l66KFWdN7RXrMW05qbQ_Gspvgf4Kt-Cs/s640/IMG_4154.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: yellow;"><i>In order to attain serenity of mind and become a person who is like the clouds in the sky and the whirling snow, consider that everyone's fate is to be become a corpse. </i> </span> -- Kobo Daishi (Kukai) translated by Nobuhiro Tamura</blockquote>
<br />
It is night-time, and we are walking through an immense and ancient graveyard. All around us, the huge, straight trunks of 600-year-old <i>cryptomeria, </i>trees, like giant coast redwoods, rise up and disappear into the darkness above, so it feels that we are walking through a forest rather than a graveyard. Stone memorials line the wide pathway where we walk, and continue beneath the trees to either side, as far as can be seen. Some monuments are fresh and white, perhaps only a few years old, while others are covered in a deep layer of moss. Some are massive and pretentious; others are humble, clustered together and leaning toward one another like whispering children. The remains of 200,000 people from the last 1,100 years are all around us.<br />
<br />
It is very quiet, except for the chitters of the flying squirrels, high in the trees above. Our little group speaks nearly in whispers as we walk in the dark: it doesn't seem like a place for raised voices. Unlike a cemetery in the West, there are no bodies here, or even the ashes from cremations. Beneath each stone memorial is a single bone: the <i>nodobotoke</i>, or Buddha bone, a small bone from the neck, shaped like a seated Buddha, carefully separated from the rest of the ashes after cremation.<br />
<br />
This is my introduction to the Okunoin cemetery on Mount Koya, one of the most sacred places in all of Japan, where the spirits of commoners, samurai, monks and aristocrats have all lain down together in silence beneath the great trees.<br />
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We walk a gentle uphill slope through the dark graveyard, and across a series of small bridges. Before the third bridge, the monk who is guiding us, Nobuhiro Tamura, stops and tells us solemnly that beyond the bridge is the heart of Mount Koya, the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi, or Kukai, the 9th century monk and teacher who brought <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon_Buddhism" target="_blank">Shingon Buddhism</a> - esoteric Buddhism - from China to Japan. Kobo Daishi founded the first monasteries on Mount Koya, at 2,600 feet in the remote wilderness mountains of southern Honshu, the main island of the Japanese archipelago. Since the 9th century this place has been the heart of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, and once had more than 1,000 temples nestled between its eight mountain peaks. The whole complex is like an immense mandala, and at the center of the mandala is the Okunoin graveyard and the mausoleum.<br />
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Our monk/guide tells us that it is believed that in the year 835, when he was 61 years old, Kobo Daishi walked into that mausoleum, sat down in meditation, and has been in a deep meditative state ever since, for 1,178 years. He has been receiving teachings in the <i>Tushita</i> heaven from the next Buddha, Maitreya. When he wakes and speaks, he will give the greatest sermon the world has ever known, and that's why 200,000 people have chosen Mount Koya for the final resting place of their Buddha bone, so they can be there when the great sermon is given.<br />
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<i><span style="color: yellow;">The lonely cloud has no path home, and loves a distant peak. I don't claim to know worldly things; I just watch the moon and lie down beneath a green pine.</span> </i> - Kobo Daishi (Kukai), translated by Nobuhiro Tamura</blockquote>
(This poem by Kukai is particularly touching to me because there is a kind of beautiful conifer on Mount Koya called the Koya pine, or Japanese umbrella pine, known as the <i>koyamaki</i> in Japanese. I walked beneath it in the mountains around Mount Koya and saw many offerings of its branches on altars and on memorials in the cemetery. It is a living fossil, a species more than 230 million years old with no known close relatives. It is also one of the five sacred trees of Japan. There are so many <i>koyamaki </i>around Mount Koya that I can only imagine that it was this kind of pine that Kukai lay down beneath, illuminated by moonlight, so long ago.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Offerings of koyamaki</td></tr>
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Our group of Zen pilgrims (17 Canadians and me) stayed in a temple on Mount Koya, <a href="http://www.ekoin.jp/en/" target="_blank">Ekoin</a>, for two nights. (To learn more about our pilgrimage, read <a href="http://zenshin-edz.blogspot.com/2013/07/japanese-pilgrimage-entering-asia.html" target="_blank">this</a>.)<br />
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There are still more than a hundred temples clustered in a high valley amidst the peaks of Mount Koya, and a thousand monks and nuns, and Shingon pilgrims come from all over Japan and walk (or more frequently, ride the vertiginous tram) up the steep mountainside to stay for a night or two in a temple, along with curious Japanese and Western tourists. It might be possible to visit Mount Koya, eat some good temple food (and Japanese vegetarian temple cooking is deservedly famous), buy a few souvenirs, gawk at the famous gravestones in the cemetery,and get back on the tram and go home, relatively unmoved. But I found that the place, and the teachings there, seeped into me like pure mountain water, so even without understanding Shingon, I found myself moved, opened, and touched by something without name.<br />
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Perhaps we were also lucky. Our guide that first night in the graveyard was a young, very sincere monk from the temple where we were staying. Nobuhiro-san speaks and writes English. Here are some of the notes I took, as he offered his understanding to us, standing in the dark in the Okunoin:<br />
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<i><span style="color: yellow;">"The purpose of Shingon meditation is to understand that 'inside' and 'outside', which we normally think of as opposed to one another, are actually one thing....Buddha Nature is everywhere...What makes esoteric Buddhism 'esoteric' is that the teachings cannot be really properly spoken in language. Instead, they are hidden in the world -- in the moon, in plants and trees and animals. The world is speaking the teachings....Kobo Daishi said that our minds are like the moon. The moon is bright because of the sun's rays, and our minds are bright because of the primordial sun Buddha. Just as the moon appears to change from day to day, so do our minds, but actually it is always the full moon, clear and bright." </span> - </i>Nobuhiro Tamura</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wagtail on a painted fusuma door at Ekoin temple</td></tr>
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But there was another side to our time there. Until 100 years ago, half of our group would not have been allowed to enter the precincts of Koyasan. I would not have been allowed to enter. From the 9th century until 1870, no living woman entered this most sacred place.<br />
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At each of the entrances to Mount Koya there was a women's hall where nuns practiced, always outside the gates. There is a path of many miles that leads from one gate to another, skirting the very edge of the sacred area, and this was the women's pilgrimage route, as close as any woman pilgrim could come to the center of the mandala, that mausoleum where Kobo Daihsi sits in meditation in the valley far below.<br />
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Three of us on our pilgrimage were ordained women priests, and we three decided to walk the women's pilgrimage trail. We began at the only surviving women's hall, the Niyonindo, where we read about Kosugi, who founded the hall:<br />
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<i><span style="color: yellow;">According to an old story, there once was a young woman named Kosugi who lived at an inn in the province of Echigo. Her life was full of hardship, but she was saved by Kobo Daishi. Kosugi became a nun and opened here, at the top of the Fudo slope, along one of the pilgrim roads leading into Koyasan, the first so-called "women's hall". She looked after women pilgrims, who at the time were not allowed to enter Koyasan. Kosugi is now venerated as Kosugimyojin, a guardian deity of the Nyonindo hall.</span></i></blockquote>
We spent a day on the steep, up-and-down trail, often in silence, considering those women who had walked here for a thousand years in prayer, those women who had lived in the nun's halls, helping the weary pilgrims as they reached the gates, watching the men pass through, the women stay outside, century after century. Only one of the women's halls still stands, but at each place where there had been an entrance and a hall, we stood in silence, considering. <br />
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The following photos are from the women's pilgrimage route.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reproduction of old map of women's pilgrimage route</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The outside of Daimon, the grand gateway, with the guardian deities on either side. A woman could not cross through.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Kate McCandless on the women's pilgrimage route, beneath a <i>koyamaki</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A view to the main temple precincts from the women's pilgrimage trail<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Irises at the Niyonindo nun's hall<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Jizo shrine along the trail. Women often pray to Jizo for children lost to miscarriage, abortion or early death.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From right to left: Kate McCandless, Flo Rublee, and me (buried under the hat), at one of the gates where a women's hall once stood.</td></tr>
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On our last morning I returned to the Okunoin, the great graveyard, this time in daylight, and wandered among the stones in early morning light. I had brought a brush and black ink with me on the trip, and I sat on a mossy root and sketched the leaning stones, the tree trunks, the offerings of Koya pine.<br />
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I found that I could both celebrate the grandeur of a place of such deep practice and great piety, and mourn the way it had excluded women for so long. I don't really understand - how can I understand, from the viewpoint of a woman of the 21st century? - but I know that the practice of Koyasan did not stop at its gates, that the gates themselves, and the women who lived at the gates, were integral to the mandala.<br />
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I wish I could meet one of those women who sat outside the gates for a lifetime, waking up as she served the pilgrims. I wish I could do three bows to her, offer incense to her, and tell her that her practice inspires this woman of the future, as I walk the hills she walked, stand in the place where she once stood.<br />
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And really, as Kobo Daishsi himself taught, "inside and outside are the same."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A statue in the Okunoin graveyard</td></tr>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: yellow;">Clear streams on the mountain never stop flowing with compassion. </span></i><span style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: yellow;"> </span></i> - Kobo Daishi (Kukai), translated by Nobuhiro Tamura</span> </blockquote>
Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-90326976940958516012013-07-18T22:53:00.000-07:002013-08-02T00:10:44.625-07:00Japanese Pilgrimage: Entering Asia<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gio-ji, Arashiyama</td></tr>
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I am alone in the garden of a tiny nunnery called <a href="http://www.kyoto.travel/2009/11/gio-ji-temple.html" target="_blank">Gio-ji</a>, in the village of Arashiyama on the outskirts of Kyoto, and before me, in the late afternoon light, is a luminously green space, floored by moss, roofed by Japanese maples, the golden light streaming across it.<br />
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It is very quiet, all sound muffled by the maples in full leaf, the bamboo groves below. I have been alone in this dream-like precinct of temples and quiet lanes all afternoon, and my heart is simply bubbling over with happiness.<br />
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This last May I traveled to Japan for the first time in my life - my first time to Asia. This, despite nearly 30 years of Buddhist practice and ordination as a Soto Zen priest. For the first years of my Buddhist practice, I didn't have a strong desire to go to Asia, and later my life circumstances didn't allow it. Three years ago I almost traveled to Japan with a group of senior students from Everyday Zen, my home Zen sangha, but needed to take work in Alaska instead (you can read about those adventures <a href="http://zenshin-edz.blogspot.com/2010/09/southeast-alaska-first-glimpse.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://zenshin-edz.blogspot.com/2010/09/southeast-alaska-second-glimpse-xtratuf.html" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
<br />
Finally, nearly miraculously, everything ripened for me this spring, and I was able to travel to Japan for nearly three weeks with the Mountain Rain Zen sangha from Vancouver, British Columbia, with old friends and dharma companions from my days of living just south of the border in Bellingham, Washington. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU7iM8dNfQMucWldpzRXnh-4QgKPISl9YxroXqZVwNre3wGkBFkTJxCYYz7okmtmRTpeIcNkyKoQ_tOIjiUToTIlPWc5eSDMkzpnEGT1P50H9ihdZdNHSzMjKhB2Utja0cTIX_7Lp9NdY/s1600/Mountain+Rain+in+Yukata.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU7iM8dNfQMucWldpzRXnh-4QgKPISl9YxroXqZVwNre3wGkBFkTJxCYYz7okmtmRTpeIcNkyKoQ_tOIjiUToTIlPWc5eSDMkzpnEGT1P50H9ihdZdNHSzMjKhB2Utja0cTIX_7Lp9NdY/s640/Mountain+Rain+in+Yukata.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mountain Rain in the onsen (hot springs) town of Yamanaka, wearing the cute little yukata one puts on after the bath</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
About half the time we stayed in temples: Rinso-in, the 600-year-old family temple of Suzuki Roshi (who brought Soto Zen to America); Eiheiji, the great 850-year-old mother temple of Soto Zen in the mountains near the Japan sea; and Koya-san, the complex of Shingon temples in the mountains south of Kyoto, dating from the 9th century. The rest of the time we were in a small, unpretentious ryokan (traditional Japanese lodging-house) near the train station in Kyoto, free to explore Kyoto and its environs on our own.<br />
<br />
Like all truly transformative travel, it is all much too large to fit on the page, or the blog. I think that's what's kept me from writing about it, since I returned. I've been daunted by what to write - every day was filled with such richness and beauty. But I truly want to share it, somehow. I kept a journal during my time there, and did a lot of photography. Perhaps I will try to offer some of each, and see where it goes...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiLdY6sbazybLsmEPZCr0Otf3BAwdFMbNHx8zrrlAfZJ5tU5VBtaEwiK1ky3JBNygMi02UfjwwPb_lvK8rFfX3St5lv57toUYY2tH3d-GBGENDGmoeTVMwLaHFN7nkW-oQwg9vYR6tn0A/s1600/Eiheiji_Kannon_IMG_3637.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiLdY6sbazybLsmEPZCr0Otf3BAwdFMbNHx8zrrlAfZJ5tU5VBtaEwiK1ky3JBNygMi02UfjwwPb_lvK8rFfX3St5lv57toUYY2tH3d-GBGENDGmoeTVMwLaHFN7nkW-oQwg9vYR6tn0A/s640/Eiheiji_Kannon_IMG_3637.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eiheiji</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This ancient set of guidelines was offered to us by our friends/guides/teachers, Kate McCandless and Michael Newton, before we left.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Five Excellent Arts of Pilgrimage, 5th century</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Practice the arts of attention and listening</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Practice renewing yourself every day</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Practice meandering toward the center of every place</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Practice the ritual of reading sacred texts</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Practice gratitude and praise singing</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF1kOgr7ISYPBq_H8PbCUZdUQlr03j2HHoShoJWp5JTKrQ5MRcnWMLUXnbl9vI6-HNihiA-6gA_d93x15TvxzErzx3__97pp24hz7uDiCNNjSC1_Cpbj9mml6lEedJfWIei4NgLeX-b1Y/s1600/Roadside+flower+arrangement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF1kOgr7ISYPBq_H8PbCUZdUQlr03j2HHoShoJWp5JTKrQ5MRcnWMLUXnbl9vI6-HNihiA-6gA_d93x15TvxzErzx3__97pp24hz7uDiCNNjSC1_Cpbj9mml6lEedJfWIei4NgLeX-b1Y/s640/Roadside+flower+arrangement.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roadside flower arrangement, Arashiyama</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So in the spirit of "praise singing", here's what I wrote as my plane lifted off from San Francisco airport on May 11th, turning west into the setting sun, above fog and the Golden Gate bridge, headed across the Pacific</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Flying west</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
the way the dead go</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When I come back</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
it will be a different life</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Then, as we approached the Japanese coast the next day (two days later, because of the international date line), after a night in Honolulu and many hours of travel across empty ocean, a verse from the moment I first saw land:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I keep looking for land</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
but each time: ocean, clouds, the wide calm wing below me.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Asia, awaited so long, still just over the horizon.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Ah - mist-blue islands!</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Mountains after mountains</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
soft as smoke or dreams</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZglKuxArUmpXTXDPfORjb5UxyzEs4JQ-dQvsIFUYebGtdURoCRMUHzI64mvcShOdOXiEZulJklQ1Vgo8BPuxQbOI5j38A9EUPAqXNx48THU50qT_h2H2W5PRJ_hqi6KtpA8DInZeHjc/s1600/Koyasan+mountains.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZglKuxArUmpXTXDPfORjb5UxyzEs4JQ-dQvsIFUYebGtdURoCRMUHzI64mvcShOdOXiEZulJklQ1Vgo8BPuxQbOI5j38A9EUPAqXNx48THU50qT_h2H2W5PRJ_hqi6KtpA8DInZeHjc/s640/Koyasan+mountains.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mountains from the Women's Pilgrimage Trail around Koyasan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: left;">In Japan I experienced, for the first time, the deep roots of my own tradition and spiritual life. And it's changed me in subtle and important ways that I couldn't have imagined, that I can feel every time I bow, light incense, or sit zazen. The person who practiced Zen before going to Japan is not quite the person I am now.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_0OvEN1SpNRXjaJeKOxUlGhfGkagKnDbeafojEOVdbwq_mE1A4ifdu__hwNBOjgDJRVDo9ebTTZHuwKhbGE_jREpF2Om9C22Ohzlt-mY-9uLYw6QJ165OiiDEMEwP_8pd_ynN-DGAmqc/s1600/Flo+and+torii.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_0OvEN1SpNRXjaJeKOxUlGhfGkagKnDbeafojEOVdbwq_mE1A4ifdu__hwNBOjgDJRVDo9ebTTZHuwKhbGE_jREpF2Om9C22Ohzlt-mY-9uLYw6QJ165OiiDEMEwP_8pd_ynN-DGAmqc/s640/Flo+and+torii.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Torii gates on the Women's Pilgrimage Trail, Koyasan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
To be continued....</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-5885417049392423632013-04-12T14:35:00.003-07:002013-04-12T17:17:39.786-07:00Zen Priest Goes to Seminary<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRoRbCKdHkuuWTqqfev_y8OB5xw8oANIW1Jujzp7enKglfYN5o0FDDzr2shaVKVFr7-eenBMiU8jN9phQBSUb0qXRhmdB-6boDBfptK5b30-kgaOqBD6QCyAc4kdJIgbIV3PcEeQ0E1_Y/s1600/Buddha.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRoRbCKdHkuuWTqqfev_y8OB5xw8oANIW1Jujzp7enKglfYN5o0FDDzr2shaVKVFr7-eenBMiU8jN9phQBSUb0qXRhmdB-6boDBfptK5b30-kgaOqBD6QCyAc4kdJIgbIV3PcEeQ0E1_Y/s320/Buddha.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Buddha in New Mexico</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_oiWTgAIfiSyVJb9wIkiRHkfLivWyChj_-Y4ie8XmCdL2EAOkdfZqNG4cGE-J3Fe34ChuJcK25ydQ3h00r6lgdm5W2oy8Q-VmUa8zIPJm8vK9UrfNXUxa5JhP7W2mUq9-mxz5FArN0no/s1600/image+(3).jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_oiWTgAIfiSyVJb9wIkiRHkfLivWyChj_-Y4ie8XmCdL2EAOkdfZqNG4cGE-J3Fe34ChuJcK25ydQ3h00r6lgdm5W2oy8Q-VmUa8zIPJm8vK9UrfNXUxa5JhP7W2mUq9-mxz5FArN0no/s320/image+(3).jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The spiral above the main doorway to Starr King School for the Ministry. Photo by Jim Lewis</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Over the last year my life has made a dramatic – and for
some people, somewhat mysterious – turn. I am, for the first time in
twenty-five years, back in school, in the Master of Divinity program at a Unitarian
Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California: <a href="http://www.sksm.edu/" target="_blank">Starr King School for the Ministry</a>, which is part of the nine-seminary <a href="http://gtu.edu/" target="_blank">Graduate Theological Union</a>.</div>
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People ask me, with some concern, “Does this mean that you aren’t a Buddhist
any more? What about your path as a Zen priest?” </div>
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<br /></div>
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The short answer is: “I am as much of a Buddhist as ever,
and this is an integral part of my path as a Zen priest and my path as a human
being.” This post is a deeper exploration of what I mean.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
********</div>
</div>
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First, a bit about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism" target="_blank">Unitarian Universalism</a>, or "UU," as it’s
known to its friends. (If you already know this history, feel free to scroll down).</div>
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<br /></div>
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UU is a merging of two American liberal
denominations, with separate histories until the 1960s: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism" target="_blank">Unitarianism</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Universalism" target="_blank">Universalism</a>. American Unitarianism was born in Massachusetts just before and
during a time of cultural flowering in the first half of the 1800s. This was
the time and place of fabulous thinkers and writers like Emerson, Thoreau, the
Alcotts, Margaret Fuller, the young Whitman, and a host of others. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Massachusetts had been dominated by a particularly rigid and
vicious form of American Calvinism since the 1600s. Only a few were the “elect”
and destined for heaven, and the rest of us poor shlubs were headed for eternal
damnation by a judging and unforgiving God. Those who suggested alternative
views, like the Quakers, were publicly executed. By the early 1800s this system
was beginning to crack at the seams. The water inside these cracks were some
radical ministers, and one of them was a brilliant preacher who drew crowds of
hundreds, <a href="http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/williamellerychanning.html" target="_blank">William Ellery Channing</a>. </div>
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Channing was convinced of the perfectibility, rationality,
and innate goodness of all people, believed
in a loving God, and questioned the divinity of Jesus. Ironically, a
“Unitarian” was one of the worst things you could be called at the time. The
“Unitarian heresy,” rejected and punished by Catholics and Protestants alike
since the 4<sup>th</sup> century, denied the theological concept of the Trinity
in favor of a whole-hearted commitment to the unity of God. This might seem
like a small theological difference, but believers in Unitarianism were
martyred with a passion in Europe for hundreds of years.</div>
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<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAhQDK2ObIvK8shokzPnGDO7edtqpN5bZESnRooObGLO6V8xzX11PiSnRwwPs_39ioldDRkH7yYeLypO1ErTQoexgGrR1Brc97ocGo7DOXBXugNSsvPWxRRU6BzuM83Xs7sm7Tmhg3M3Q/s1600/quote-faith-is-love-taking-the-form-of-aspiration-william-ellery-channing-34840.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAhQDK2ObIvK8shokzPnGDO7edtqpN5bZESnRooObGLO6V8xzX11PiSnRwwPs_39ioldDRkH7yYeLypO1ErTQoexgGrR1Brc97ocGo7DOXBXugNSsvPWxRRU6BzuM83Xs7sm7Tmhg3M3Q/s400/quote-faith-is-love-taking-the-form-of-aspiration-william-ellery-channing-34840.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
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Unitarians, both in Europe and America, were also believers in the tremendous importance
of religious freedom, freedom of thought, and the absolute separation of church
and state. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin held many of the views
of Unitarians, and these ideas found their way into the documents that formed
the U.S. Constitution. </div>
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Had Channing been preaching a hundred years before, he
probably would have ended up a martyr himself, but by the early 1800s, even
Massachusetts had to grudgingly support religious freedom. They could, however,
try to deny him, and other liberal ministers, the right to speak from their
pulpits. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Unfortunately for the old guard, Channing and others were
speaking to the spirit of the times, and the structure of the churches in New England were such that a congregation could vote on their minister and
the teachings. Congregation after congregation voted in favor of the liberal
ministers, with the losing minority forced to leave the church. Eventually,
Channing and others embraced the slur that had been thrown at them, and even
now, “Unitarians” occupy many of the oldest and most beautiful churches in New England, preaching
social justice, activism, and freedom of thought from pulpits that once taught
near-universal damnation.</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxWXyDBQ7obC6XcQkXQgR93xQKj-f4_v83OF6ih96CjFaGxJpUvWGqX48g2U4RiReA2p48ZZpZak39zcHr2voOGrgpl_qr8GShqIpz3C6VwzCS8NrULyPNsjm0JhWVxlxe3iKtCC_gpAE/s1600/First_Parish_Church_(Unitarian_Universalist)_-_Ashby,_Massachusetts.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxWXyDBQ7obC6XcQkXQgR93xQKj-f4_v83OF6ih96CjFaGxJpUvWGqX48g2U4RiReA2p48ZZpZak39zcHr2voOGrgpl_qr8GShqIpz3C6VwzCS8NrULyPNsjm0JhWVxlxe3iKtCC_gpAE/s320/First_Parish_Church_(Unitarian_Universalist)_-_Ashby,_Massachusetts.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First Parish Church (Unitarian Univeralist) of Ashby, MA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I learned some of this history as a child, because my mother came from a long line of liberals, knew her Unitarian history well, and even spent part of her young adulthood as a
Unitarian minister’s wife. I went to Sunday School at the UU Fellowship in my
home town in Indiana, and can say, “Oh yes, I was raised by one of those <i>liberal feminist
secular humanists</i> that the Moral Majority worries so much about!”</div>
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Unitarianism and liberalism runs deep in my family. My
mother’s family came from a small town in northwestern Iowa, called Cherokee.
In 1890 my great-great-great grandfather John Potter, great-great grandmother Julia Cowles, and great-grandmother Hattie Allison, along
with other liberals in Cherokee, formed a Unitarian church and invited two of the leading woman ministers in Iowa, <a href="http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/maryaugustasafford.html" target="_blank">Mary Safford </a>and <a href="http://www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/eleanorelizabethgordon.html" target="_blank">Eleanor Gordon</a>, to be the
first ministers of the church. This was at a time where virtually <u>no</u>
denomination in America allowed women ministers. Over the next few decades, the church had other women ministers too. I feel proud of my family and their commitment to both a radical form of religious practice and to women’s rights and freedoms while living in rural, Midwestern America. It feels like the ideals of Unitarianism are in my
blood.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbcxfIaxAp_-NJ6Y-MpWL15KBxOp-ruln1lBGEJ7qJ2t8CWkfc0FxMxxBJsHLoG1qy1bQ-VHTggxv4PMfTlltZCOj1g9sExVu0OA47_5jcFPAM30Mq4JikrXwIwXWtrTz7LcixOJVfrFQ/s1600/Cherokee1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbcxfIaxAp_-NJ6Y-MpWL15KBxOp-ruln1lBGEJ7qJ2t8CWkfc0FxMxxBJsHLoG1qy1bQ-VHTggxv4PMfTlltZCOj1g9sExVu0OA47_5jcFPAM30Mq4JikrXwIwXWtrTz7LcixOJVfrFQ/s640/Cherokee1.jpg" width="444" /></a></div>
I knew less, growing up, about Universalism, which merged
with Unitarianism in the early 1960s. Universalism was also largely an American
denomination, dedicated to the belief in another heresy (still considered a
heresy by most Christian churches): the universal salvation of all people. In
other words, no one goes to Hell. Universalists say, quite reasonably (I
think): “How could a loving creator God commit so many of his/her creations to
damnation?” <i>This American Life</i> did a
beautiful radio show about a contemporary evangelical minister who had a deep
insight into his own universalism, and what happened to him because of it: <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/304/heretics">http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/304/heretics</a></div>
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So these two radical “heresies,” with Protestant roots, both
dedicated to freedom and social justice, came together in about 1961 to form an even more
radical form of religion, one which embraces absolute freedom of religious belief, up to
and including atheism. UU has become a place where
gays and lesbians, transgender people, pagans, atheists, Christians, humanists,
agnostics, and yes, Buddhists, can all be part of religious community with one
another. In fact, that’s the point.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR1KUdB44ZlD1J6S9T0hU9NvKqPEaEERG3qGhR7hGAGpSx22ndgusIhvswR-9yTtLGa3sTSKHyqPpeRiEX1sPmV7GIAgzYMtQZ-WAdu9j_cd31L0xDL4eErs6hrHOfe-e0I2OgdfIAMWg/s1600/quote-each-of-us-is-meant-to-have-a-character-all-our-own-to-be-what-no-other-can-exactly-be-and-do-william-ellery-channing-34834.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR1KUdB44ZlD1J6S9T0hU9NvKqPEaEERG3qGhR7hGAGpSx22ndgusIhvswR-9yTtLGa3sTSKHyqPpeRiEX1sPmV7GIAgzYMtQZ-WAdu9j_cd31L0xDL4eErs6hrHOfe-e0I2OgdfIAMWg/s400/quote-each-of-us-is-meant-to-have-a-character-all-our-own-to-be-what-no-other-can-exactly-be-and-do-william-ellery-channing-34834.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
In a way, I see UU as an ongoing exploration of a
deep koan: is it possible to create a loving community which genuinely embraces
difference of all kinds, and works together for a better and more just world? </div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
There are many gay and lesbian UU ministers. There are
atheist and agnostic UU ministers. There are pagan UU ministers. And yes, there
are Buddhist UU ministers. The most well-known is James Ishmael Ford, who is
also a writer and Zen Buddhist priest and teacher (and has been a generous
resource for me on this path). James Ford works as a minister but is also an
active Zen teacher, with a large community of students throughout the
Northeast. To read more from James Ford, click here: <a href="http://www.uuworld.org/about/authors/jamesishmaelford.shtml">http://www.uuworld.org/about/authors/jamesishmaelford.shtml</a>.</div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To read more about my own exploration of the mutual history
and issues of UU and American Buddhism, click here: <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-dP04hdh78WU1Y5Z2trT1BtUkE/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-dP04hdh78WU1Y5Z2trT1BtUkE/edit?usp=sharing</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDZ21xZ49JxkJE5lqrLezGCB3vISApc4m3rh4IHOjT-nl-WJMJRLZClNiUZiUKcbZxgHWil-BUVucDFiV5dVkAZT-uc1emdTQnvfBB8G7FXVq8-lb3SuAzdpJZgZx8WriV6EiMdK1lB4/s1600/chalice_simple.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDZ21xZ49JxkJE5lqrLezGCB3vISApc4m3rh4IHOjT-nl-WJMJRLZClNiUZiUKcbZxgHWil-BUVucDFiV5dVkAZT-uc1emdTQnvfBB8G7FXVq8-lb3SuAzdpJZgZx8WriV6EiMdK1lB4/s1600/chalice_simple.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
******</div>
</div>
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<br />
So this brings us back to the original question: why am I, a
Soto Zen priest and field botanist, attending a Unitarian Universalist
seminary? Well, the beginnings are probably back there in the 1890s in Cherokee, but more personally, I think it starts just south of the Grand Canyon...<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROkpextwHqoe1om1odUsCpGr0YIIBiLBPC1eDNKC0T6MyykI2MChF-WbhVaOutI-u7XjkBmuZKJ_DabQmmJAdUxmkIGGQzR_KPrE0yNy9kxowXJiqrGmNxqLcoenYqXRCXmqurHDFTPc/s1600/IMG_2260.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROkpextwHqoe1om1odUsCpGr0YIIBiLBPC1eDNKC0T6MyykI2MChF-WbhVaOutI-u7XjkBmuZKJ_DabQmmJAdUxmkIGGQzR_KPrE0yNy9kxowXJiqrGmNxqLcoenYqXRCXmqurHDFTPc/s320/IMG_2260.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
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I was living in Flagstaff, Arizona, about five years ago. A chronic illness flared
up, and I found myself in pain and in bed much of the time. I
gravitated toward the small UU church in town, where the lesbian minister read
beautiful poetry from the pulpit. The first time I went, I sat in the back row
and cried. I often cry in UU services, and I think it’s because I grew up in
such a conservative part of the country. It’s still amazing and moving to me to
encounter a "church" so determined to love and care for the world and each other.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
California had just legalized gay marriage (briefly) and
every week there were members of the congregation coming back from California
wreathed in smiles, and getting up during the “joys and sorrows” part of the
service to announce that after 10 or 20 or 30 years of loving one another, they
were married. The whole congregation would break into cheers and clapping.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A sweet woman, who is still a friend, heard that I was ill
and immediately offered the help of the church “caring circle.” I didn’t need
physical caring, exactly, but I did need community, so I joined the caring
circle myself, and felt like I had a place and something I could do, even while
sick myself. I started a gratitude circle, and joined the weekly meditation
group. And I started thinking about ministry, and had my first conversations
with James Ford, whom I knew through the Buddhist community.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I began to have the feeling, stronger over the years, that as much as I
love botanical work, something else wanted to happen in my work life. It was a
strange feeling, as if something was growing in me, without my will, and
something else was going dormant, ready to be quiet and underground. I’ve
taught myself to pay attention to these things, and so I was paying attention,
wondering what it was that needed to happen.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh217vEowc72f751JyG85Gw9vlMzHU7hke8HPBo81jG5dnC6GDnVWJEfOJxpCiBuliyFzcMRCELtZJprSNnCGDJANQWm-K_6BND0OnjA8MLnAsQMTcuC8uEt04ODV7TKK6Pc-ke04jt4nA/s1600/buddha+on+altar.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh217vEowc72f751JyG85Gw9vlMzHU7hke8HPBo81jG5dnC6GDnVWJEfOJxpCiBuliyFzcMRCELtZJprSNnCGDJANQWm-K_6BND0OnjA8MLnAsQMTcuC8uEt04ODV7TKK6Pc-ke04jt4nA/s400/buddha+on+altar.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then, last spring, suddenly, almost overnight, it was
completely clear. And as soon as it was clear, everything fell into place, and
it’s been like that ever since. Doors and opportunities opening, people around
me affirming this path, and a deep sense of “this is where I need to be.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When asked why I am in seminary, what I say is, <i>“This world
needs people who are dedicated and trained to be of service to the tender
spirits of others, especially as we enter a frightening and uncertain time
globally. I want to bring my years of dharma practice and marry that deep
bodily steadiness with skills that will help me be more present with others. I
want to keep growing up, and I think this is a way.”</i><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdzpl2IjQHQwFE0OK2aN-rt9TbzyWAHZFWZw2mrMv46dTlpCthrhiDZCc4FwbuvtM-CcsviYvXQ8xMPhaE_kKQOd-g_-OvRwpzmXSMadJZR4bnozsjLDrgcyD0Lpnw9kN11_rN-FZWKyw/s1600/uulotust.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdzpl2IjQHQwFE0OK2aN-rt9TbzyWAHZFWZw2mrMv46dTlpCthrhiDZCc4FwbuvtM-CcsviYvXQ8xMPhaE_kKQOd-g_-OvRwpzmXSMadJZR4bnozsjLDrgcyD0Lpnw9kN11_rN-FZWKyw/s320/uulotust.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Symbol of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That doesn’t mean that it isn’t scary, at times, to be doing
something so far from what I’ve known, or such a big commitment. That doesn’t
mean that I don’t wonder, at times, if and how I will integrate my Buddhist practice
and commitment with practice as a minister in a Judeo-Christian tradition,
however radical. I trust that I will know, as I walk along.</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I do know is that being in seminary is tremendous. I’m
in classes at the Graduate Theological Union with brilliant, deep-thinking
teachers and the most diverse group of people I’ve ever experienced: a Mexican Catholic nun, an ex-Marine studying for military chaplaincy, a Latina transgender woman,
a Chinese Buddhist monk, a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist minister, a woman working with
homeless people in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, an Episcopal priest, a young
Muslim, a young gay Filipino man….each person unique, wise, and extraordinary. This
makes me very happy. I’m learning how to be present with another’s pain, about
my own ageism, about how I might respond to the climate change crisis in a
soulful way, about how to best companion a grieving person, and many other
things.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
I can feel myself stretching and growing, intellectually and
spiritually. I can see possibilities of integrating many parts of who I am: the
writer, the environmental advocate, the pagan, the radical, Zen priest, the
Unitarian liberal, the compassionate listener, the believer in the equality and
dignity of each person.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg9SfrkBQepNXbOT59AFqp2kB_lulDI4-SRfLyYEcHI6vHhfeoiXQ-WQBdLrUvl7BLcuy_sBroITEcJF6AcanMFrhZmayxkfcmEvyYQk_SqSetmfBlehOyHMXaiqstRQGpXBmZzyufVEQ/s1600/quote-there-are-seasons-in-human-affairs-of-inward-and-outward-revolution-when-new-depths-seem-to-be-william-ellery-channing-217886.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg9SfrkBQepNXbOT59AFqp2kB_lulDI4-SRfLyYEcHI6vHhfeoiXQ-WQBdLrUvl7BLcuy_sBroITEcJF6AcanMFrhZmayxkfcmEvyYQk_SqSetmfBlehOyHMXaiqstRQGpXBmZzyufVEQ/s400/quote-there-are-seasons-in-human-affairs-of-inward-and-outward-revolution-when-new-depths-seem-to-be-william-ellery-channing-217886.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
During the orientation and entering ceremony for seminary,
the group of us who were beginning spent one afternoon with the president of
the school, Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, and the dean of faculty, Rev. Dr.
Gabriella Lettini. They did a ritual with us, where each one of us went forward
and the two of them washed and dried our hands, then held our hands in their
own and blessed our hands to ”do the work of love.”<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m traveling from San Francisco to Baltimore, with a stop
in Dallas overnight, on my way to a convocation of the <a href="http://www25.uua.org/uubf/" target="_blank">Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship</a>. I rode a shuttle last night to the hotel. When I can, I like to talk to shuttle
drivers, to catch a glimpse of their world, which is almost a world of
immigrants. Last night the van driver was a young Hispanic man. My assumption,
based on past conversations with shuttle drivers, was that he would be working
three jobs, struggling to survive and take care of a family. But no. He is in
his first year of a seven-year architecture and interior design degree at the
University of Texas, after graduating from high school with a 4.0 GPA. So much
for assumptions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the way back to the airport this morning by taxi, the
driver was an African man, with a beautiful lilting African accent. I asked him
where he was from originally, and he said, “Nigeria.” We talked for a quite a
while after the taxi arrived at the airport, the meter off. He had left Nigeria
ten years before, with his wife and child, after twice being attacked by rebels
and finding himself on the ground with a gun to his head. He is a trained
pilot, and a Christian. He told me about the politics of Nigeria, the role of
the British in creating a divided country, the Muslim north, and his desire to
go back someday and help bring something better to his country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
When I think of ministry, or the pastoral vocation, these conversations seem like a piece of it. To meet whoever is in front of me, to learn from them, to see through my own assumptions and prejudices, and to love. Most of all, to love, to do the work of love.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmywrk-asLkPKhUXoX3fbQ10VBmdcuyQkgK9XFq6EgHJ6-BeV6mjWCfHfJfC-lxGmoGJfqe0w7ZIE3DC24Of1mgVtaUF0SAzPfFvZZOOgCSRiU9VME9uqq_1_MCd-Q-VGWusIBUo74qFI/s1600/Afghan+Buddha+head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmywrk-asLkPKhUXoX3fbQ10VBmdcuyQkgK9XFq6EgHJ6-BeV6mjWCfHfJfC-lxGmoGJfqe0w7ZIE3DC24Of1mgVtaUF0SAzPfFvZZOOgCSRiU9VME9uqq_1_MCd-Q-VGWusIBUo74qFI/s400/Afghan+Buddha+head.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Buddha of Aynak, an imperiled ancient Buddhist site in Afghanistan </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-72105849547291882832012-11-03T20:11:00.004-07:002012-11-03T20:32:44.845-07:00Final Shuso Note: Perfect In Our Imperfection<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRvNsy5_vbnRy61ua4ci-emGSQAnKIJjz8c-TKMhgM20mAC5TkkjMUkgCx1USPzMf0kxZFpIPb0RSRj9tgn3G9FkTa9i1Wf6QEzq7L_soj2AQCd1WXCOb6-pgaeAdATW4GUN0Lx_2wpw/s1600/boat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRvNsy5_vbnRy61ua4ci-emGSQAnKIJjz8c-TKMhgM20mAC5TkkjMUkgCx1USPzMf0kxZFpIPb0RSRj9tgn3G9FkTa9i1Wf6QEzq7L_soj2AQCd1WXCOb6-pgaeAdATW4GUN0Lx_2wpw/s400/boat.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It's been almost a week since the shuso ceremony - and the end of the Everyday Zen fall practice period - on Sunday the 28th of October. The image I have, when I think of the ceremony now, is of a brightly colored, flower-bedecked boat full of revelers, gradually receding toward the horizon, the music growing fainter with each day. I have feelings of poignancy, amazement, and gratitude, slowly fading as I take on what's next in my life. I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico now, about to help a dharma friend lead his first seven-day retreat, sitting at an old wood desk in an adobe house surrounded by pinon pines and junipers, a long way from the California coast and the my dear companions on the path there.<br />
<br />
I thought I would try, for those of you who have never seen a shuso ceremony,to describe it, as best I can, though some of what it is won't fit in words. The ceremony is the culmination of a traditional Zen practice period, or <i>ang</i>o, a time of intensive practice and training. It is also the culmination of a time of training of the person who has been chosen as <i>shuso</i>, or head student, for the practice period. It is a doorway, an initiation, and an intimate dance between the shuso and the people in the practice period. What is required of the shuso during the ceremony seems, from the outside, to be nearly impossibly difficult. Not only does the ceremony require elaborate choreography, intense concentration and memorization, but the shuso must also :show up" authentically and spontaneously in response to deep and searching questions.<br />
<br />
Our ceremony with Everyday Zen was held at the beautiful Marin Headlands, north of the Golden Gate bridge, at the end of a day of meditation. We rent space on an old military base just above the ocean beach. All day long you can hear the waves and birds and foghorns.<br />
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<a href="https://d2q0qd5iz04n9u.cloudfront.net/_ssl/proxy.php/http/gallery.mailchimp.com/f24a0cb39636a713f0062fd69/images/IMG_0071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://d2q0qd5iz04n9u.cloudfront.net/_ssl/proxy.php/http/gallery.mailchimp.com/f24a0cb39636a713f0062fd69/images/IMG_0071.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The ceremony is exceedingly formal and intricate.It starts with a procession into the hall, led by a person ringing a small, high-toned bell, then the teacher, who is walking with an immense black staff, then the teacher's attendant, then the shuso, carrying an ornate Japanese fan, then the benji (more on the benji later) who carries a smaller staff and a book wrapped in cloth, then a person at the end with a pair of wooden clappers. As they walk, there is an impressive set of sounds: the "ding" of the little bell, a pause, the "clack!" of the clappers, a pause, and then an answering deep "boom" of a drum from within the meditation hall. All punctuated by the sound of the teacher's staff as it hits the ground.<br />
<br />
I've sat in the meditation hall as a student for many shuso ceremonies, and hearing the approach of the procession is an awesome experience. You know the shuso is walking toward something frightening and wonderful, and that he or she is in the procession, arriving, arriving....<br />
<br />
In the hall, all the people in the practice period are seated in a tight block, their cushions or chairs right up against one another. On the other side of the hall is another block of people: former shusos, all of whom have been invited by the current shuso to the ceremony. In my case, the former shusos were senior people from Everyday Zen and from The San Francisco Zen Center, people I have lived with and practiced with over decades. In addition, other friends came from around the country to witness the ceremony. On either side of the altar is a cushion: on the left of the altar, the teacher's cushion; on the right, the shuso's.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTfAviJkSw6E3l1qfg46TWW90QNyXbMISWk2F1MRYIundOJLUnf" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTfAviJkSw6E3l1qfg46TWW90QNyXbMISWk2F1MRYIundOJLUnf" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shuso fan, photo by Wendy Lewis</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After the usual Zen bows, everyone sits down and the teacher's attendant carries the book all the way around the blocks of people from the teacher to the shuso, walking very, very slowly, while the Heart Sutra is chanted. When he or she arrives in front of the shuso, they bow together and the shuso takes the book (still holding the fan in one hand: the fan is never put down for the duration of the ceremony). Traditionally, the first koan from the Blue Cliff Record record is read, "Bodhidharma's Vast Emptiness," but in Everyday Zen we read another koan from the Record of the Gateless Gate (this isn't the translation we use, but is the closest one I could find online):<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; line-height: 15px;">Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “What is the Way?” Nanquan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” </span><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; line-height: 15px;">Zhaozhou said, “Shall I try to direct myself toward it?” </span><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; line-height: 15px;">Nanquan said, “If you try to direct yourself toward it, you will move away from it.” </span><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; line-height: 15px;">Zhaozhou said, “If I don’t try, how will I know it is the way?” </span><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; line-height: 15px;">Nanquan said, “The way is not concerned with knowing or not knowing. Knowing is illusion; not knowing is blank consciousness. If you truly arrive at the Great Way of no trying, it will be like great emptiness, vast and clear. How can we speak of it in terms of affirming or negating?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; line-height: 15px;">Zhaozhou immediately realized the profound teaching.</span><br />
<br />
Then the shuso gets up and slowly, slowly walks, carrying the book, the other way all the way around the hall, around the blocks of people, to the teacher (there are a lot of these long slow walks during the ceremony). The teacher and shuso exchange bows, the shuso bows to the people in the hall, and then the teacher hands the shuso a long wooden staff, the teaching staff. Once again, slowly, slowly, the shuso walks with the staff held horizontally in both hands at eye level (trying desperately not to hit anyone in the head) all the way back around the room to the shuso's seat.<br />
<br />
The benji, who is a person in the community who has been side-by-side with the shuso through the whole practice period,stands up and reads an original poem to start the question and answer for the ceremony. My friend Anne Connolly read her poem:<br />
<br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.8152885634917766" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a wandering monk returns to these shores</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the gathering fall light</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shakes her sleeves — “empty!” — she says,</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and then in a neat dharma trick pulls out</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mirrors brooms imposters fools</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">centuries of women ancestors tumbling forth</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with curves like you’ve never seen on form and emptiness</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and fierce compassion offered for our awakening.</span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now let us hear the shuso!</span></span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></b>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I recited some memorized verses, while sitting and holding the staff horizontally: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: yellow;">This is the dharma staff, five feet long. Once a black snake on Vulture Peak, it became the Udumbara flower. Sometimes it is a dragon, swallowing heaven and earth; sometimes a vajra sword, giving and taking life. This staff is now in my hands. Though just a mosquito biting an iron bull, I cannot give it away. Dragons and elephants, let us call forth the dharma! Give me your questions!</span> (And the shuso turns the staff vertically and pounds it on the floor: bang!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then, starting with the benji, each person in the practice period (in our case, about 50 people) asks a dharma question, and the shuso responds. The dharma question is short, but is meant to be a real question, from the person's own life and practice. And the shuso has to respond, with heart and authenticity. At the end of each question, the shuso hits the staff on the floor. It is all very dramatic. </span>After the practice period asks questions, then all the former shusos ask a question. Altogether, about 75 people asked me a question in the ceremony.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is where I learned the most important thing from the ceremony. Answering these questions is impossible. How could any person know "the answer" to someone's deepest question? How could the shuso show up completely for person after person after person? There's no way anyone can do it. But here's what I learned, the great secret: "I" couldn't do it, not on my own. The only way I could do it was with the help of everyone in the room and in the container of the ritual. In a sense, we all did it, though maybe, if someone was a casual observer, it might appear that "I", Florence, did it. There was this tremendous flow of mutual support and love in the room, and in that field this impossible thing was possible. It was like enacting a miracle, or, as Norman Fischer wrote once, "like a group poem." Everyone making something very beautiful, together.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After the questions, there were more walks around the room, more bows, more handing of objects back and forth, and then congratulatory statements from various people, the former shusos, the teacher, and, in my case, my other teachers: Bruce Fortin, who is my current Zen teacher; Jeff Kitzes, my long-timer therapist and a Zen Master in the Korean Kwan Um Zen school; and James Baraz, one of the founders of Spirit Rock, a vipassana teacher, and my very first teacher when I began practicing in the 80s. Having Bruce, Jeff, and James there was extraordinarily sweet. All three of them are men who lead with their hearts. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And of course, the teacher of the practice period, my teacher for more than twenty years, Norman Fischer, without whom I would never have found the path of Zen, never ordained, and never had a chance to be shuso. Norman and I have been through so much over these many years: the years he, as a relatively new teacher, came up to lead retreats in the Pacific Northwest; his time as abbot of Zen Center; my divorce and illness; the beginnings of the Everyday Zen sanghas; misunderstandings, working together, mutual support, mutual frustration, my needing to step away from the formal role as his student, his forgiveness of me, my forgiveness of him.... Somehow, the practice period and the ceremony was big enough to hold all of what we have been over so many years, with grace and clarity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
Near the end of the ceremony, the shuso says these words, after profuse apologies for all the mistakes he or she has made:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;">"Let us continue to practice together in this lifetime and times to come, perfect in our imperfection. </span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span>
Isn't that just it, in all relationships, in life itself? "Perfect in our imperfection"? It's in moments like the end of the shuso ceremony, and in these words, that I remember, vividly, clearly, why I am a student of Zen. Humble, wild, poetic, connected, and full of heart - that's the Zen that called me more than two decades ago, and that still calls me, every morning, to the black cushion and the ongoing mystery of the path.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anne C., Sue M, Norman Fischer, me, ARobin O., Mary Ann S, just after the ceremony. Photo by Ren Bunce.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, I just have to say to anyone reading this who was part of the Fall 2012 Everyday Zen Practice Period: Thank you for your practice, for your support, for your love, and for walking the path with me. I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life. "May we continue to practice together in this lifetime and times to come!"</span><br />
<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-64534800355752735872012-10-23T20:58:00.000-07:002012-11-03T20:31:53.870-07:00Shuso Notes: Cookies, mothers, bodhisattvas, codependents<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Once again, these are my musings on what is arising for me right now, as shuso (head student) of the practice period.<br />
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Here's a koan for you: <i>What is the difference between a bodhisattva and a codependent?</i><br />
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(Thanks, <a href="http://www.sfzc.org/zc/display.asp?catid=1,175,218&pageid=1991" target="_blank">Bruce Fortin</a>, for this. A great koan from a therapist/Zen teacher!)<br />
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This post is my personal exploration and reflection on this wonderful -- and at least to me -- very funny modern koan. I'm not sure why it's so funny, but I keep waiting for the punchline ("A bodhisattva and a codependent walked into a bar...") If someone can come up with a good punchline, please add it to the post comments!<br />
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So, the shuso's tasks are many. One is organizing and attending "shuso teas" with members of the practice period. What that means in Everyday Zen is organizing teas in four separate parts of the Bay Area -- San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, East Bay -- and a tea during the sesshin. This is a very sweet and personal part of the practice period. A group gathers at someone's house, sips tea, munches on cookies, and each person has a chance to say something about how the practice period is unfolding in his or her life.<br />
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Now, you'd think that finding people to host the teas, coordinating dates, sending out invitations to the practice period participants, receiving RSVP's, sending out directions, and then actually showing up to and facilitating five different teas in a two month period would be enough. But no, Florence has to take it one step further. She has to bake cookies. Homemade, from-scratch cookies.<br />
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In my defense, I really wanted to bake cookies for the teas. No one was forcing me, even though I hardly ever bake - I probably haven't baked cookies more than once or twice since I was ten years old and Susan Canon and I made chocolate chip cookies together, singing, "A baby monster cookie for a baby cookie monster," laughing hysterically. I just liked the idea of doing something with my hands and feeding my friends. But I also recognize that this project was every so slightly in the over-achieving realm. This is where we get back to the koan at the top of the post. What, exactly, were my motivations? Bodhisattva? Mother? (After all, mother's bake cookies, right?) Codependent? A little of all three?<br />
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Every Monday for the past several years I have joined in a meditation group with a circle of mothers. I've written about this before, in this <a href="http://zenshin-edz.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html" target="_blank">post for Mother's Day</a>. It has been a tremendous education. Mostly, I've been in awe of what it takes to be a mother: the blood, sweat, and tears of it.<br />
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I have identified myself as the "token non-mother" of the group, but invariably someone else will say,"Well, that isn't really true. You're the mother to lots of people!" And I think that's true, to some degree. By not having children myself, my energy is freed up to care for many people, and for the world. On another level it's baloney: I know perfectly well that my life is way easier and way freer than the lives of the mothers I knows. No matter how many people I care for, I generally get to come home (wherever home is at any time), make myself a pot of tea and read a book all night if I want to, without interruptions. They don't have that option.<br />
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Anyway, during the practice period I have been looking at my desires in relation to others, whether motherly, bodhisattva-like, codependent, or something in between. There is a way that the position of the shuso is like being a mother for a whole practice period, and I'm ripe for the task. I see others' suffering - maybe because I know my own so well - and have tremendous desires to ease it, if I can. I have tremendous desires to serve and to nurture (see "cookies," above). I am inspired by others' willingness to wake up to their lives; discouraged when someone seems to making a choice away from waking up, toward the forces of habit and despair. All these desires and inspirations are lovely, in their way, and also tricky. Very, very tricky.<br />
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After Bruce brought up the wonderful koan, I had to go look up the definition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency" target="_blank">codependency in Wikipedia</a>. It's a term that has entered our vocabulary from the recovery community, and I think most people have a vague sense of its meaning. It was helpful for me to look at it more closely. It's interesting to me that one of the first discussions about codependency in Wikipedia is about its similarities to and important differences from healthy mothering. After all, mothers are dedicated to caring for others, to an immense, often self-sacrificing extent. But I think I would say, from what I've gleaned from my reading, that codependents, who are nearly always people who grew up in difficult or alcoholic families, have a <u>compulsive</u> need to be in a caretaker role, are identified with that role, and avoid or displace their own needs for the needs of others.<br />
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Some psychologist has even developed a <a href="http://courses.ttu.edu/jfischer/Questionnaires%20Inventories/codependency%20scale.htm" target="_blank">series of questions related to codependency</a>, and I'm afraid I ranked pretty high. So between that, the cookie making, and a few other ways I've been in the practice period, I'm more than a little suspicious that my inner bodhisattva and inner codependent are, shall we say, up to some hanky-panky together.<br />
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And all this matters, because the bodhisattva path (the path of awakening, and dedication to helping others to awaken), and the development of bodhicitta (the desire to awaken for the benefit of others) are at the heart of Mahayana Buddhist practice. But wouldn't it be awful if all the time you thought you were training in becoming a bodhisattva, you were actually enacting deep conditioned patterns of codependency? Ack!!!! And it seems that the bodhisattva ideal could be very seductive for people who tend toward codependency, because, like motherhood and codependency, the differences are not as obvious as one might think.<br />
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So how can you know? How can I know? Well, these is my working hypotheses, based on observation of yours truly and her behaviors, and bound to be partly wrong, but I share them with you anyway, as a work in progress.<br />
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<ul>
<li>If I feel resentment or disappointment toward anyone I think I'm "helping," there's a good chance that I have some vested interest in being "the helper." Not a good sign.</li>
<li>But if my heart is wide open, aware, compassionate, and respectful of the other person, not needing them to be a particular way, not needing myself to be a particular way, then the bodhisattva is stepping forward.</li>
<li>If I feel any compulsion to be kind, giving, etc, especially beyond my own capacity or willingness, rather than freely responding from warmth and love, I may be enacting some old pattern.</li>
<li>Being "good," being well-behaved, or being uncomplaining may not be true bodhisattva activity, even if it looks good. Sometimes bodhisattvas are fierce, like Manjushri, with his sword of wisdom. Sometimes they say "no" or "enough." </li>
<li>If I'm willing to be hurt, willing to cry, willing to be vulnerable, and willing to lose others, that's the bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas definitely cry....some are even born from tears.</li>
<li>If I'm willing to respect the suffering of another, and know that it's not my job to fix them, but simply to love them as they are, the bodhisattva is peeking through.</li>
</ul>
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My sense of myself is of a kind of flickering in and out of the bodhisattva and the codependent, from one moment to the next, and my job is to pay attention and notice what it feels like when one is in the ascendant, and when the other is. It feels very important not to judge myself for enacting old patterns, and to understand that "bodhisattva" does not belong to me; it's just the goodness of the universe stepping forward through me.<br />
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I think my job is to get out of the way of the bodhisattva and not attach to any idea of who or what I am, and the best way I know to do that is through basic mindfulness, basic awareness, and basic compassion for this mixed-up, imperfect, confused, but sincerely-trying-to-wake-up person, and for all her friends and fellow humans in the same boat: bodhisattvas, mothers, and codependents all together on a stormy sea.<br />
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Let's go eat some cookies!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Lulu Wong, EDZ sesshin cookies, 2012</td></tr>
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Here's my cookie recipe, adapted from one on the back of Coach's Oats (available at Costco, I believe). My friend Alison gave me a big bag right before practice period. I think you could use quick-cooking steel-cut or Irish oats as an alternative to Coach's Oats. I did this whole thing with a wooden spoon and they came out just fine.<br />
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Oatmeal Coconut Cookies<br />
....with a little bit of chocolate<br />
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1/2 cup brown sugar<br />
1/4 cup granulated sugar<br />
1/2 cup butter<br />
1 egg<br />
1 tsp vanilla<br />
1 Tbsp milk<br />
1 cup all purpose flour (I used unbleached)<br />
1/2 tsp baking soda<br />
1/2 tsp baking powder<br />
1/4 tsp salt<br />
1/4 cup rolled oats<br />
3/4 cup Coach's Oats or quick steel-cut oats<br />
1 cup shredded coconut<br />
1/4 cup or more of shaved dark chocolate, your choice<br />
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Put the chocolate in the freezer overnight for easier shaving. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugars, add egg, vanilla, and milk, and mix just until smooth. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and add to wet ingredients. Add oats and coconut, then shave chocolate and add, mix until combined. Drop by large teaspoons on to an ungreased cookie sheet (I used parchment paper) and bake for 12-15 minutes. Makes 3 dozen cookies, or enough for one practice period tea with some left over to give to neighbors and to take on a hike.<br />
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Love,<br />
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Florence<br />
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-20557626359681056162012-10-15T11:09:00.000-07:002012-11-03T20:32:44.833-07:00Shuso Notes: Zen and Life and Posture<br />
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This last week I've been contemplating posture. I notice in myself, as I write the word "posture", a whole cascade of negative associations, and these associations have no doubt contributed to my own slouchy, unimpressive habitual posture. Somewhere in my head is the idea that to sit or stand with a straight back is to be stiff, formal, unfriendly, affected, a Victorian graduate of etiquette school. This despite my more than twenty years of Soto Zen practice, with its deep teachings about the power of posture and uprightness!<br />
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In my school of Zen, when its 13th c. founder, Eihei Dogen, was asked what he learned about Zen during his four years in China, he said, "All I have is this: eyes horizontal, nose vertical." There are some Japanese (and maybe some American) Soto Zen teachers who teach meditation solely through posture. To sit in the posture of Buddha, legs crossed, back straight, eyes half-closed, is to fully manifest Buddha. What is happening in your head is inconsequential. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, but I appreciate its simplicity and faith.<br />
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I also very much appreciate the dignity of Zen posture in the meditation hall, but have never been able to quite understand why it might matter in daily life. Thanks to an extraordinary movie, I'm starting to have a new sense of the raw power and beauty of posture, the way posture is an expression of fundamental human strength and resilience -- a long way from Victorian etiquette school, and tremendously encouraging and exciting in my own life.<br />
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For those of you who have not been able to see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA6FFnjvvmg" target="_blank">Beasts of the Southern Wild</a>, I say, respectfully, do whatever you can to see it. I have seen it twice, once right before the practice period started, and once last week (here's a link for finding where it's playing: <a href="http://content.foxsearchlight.com/inside/node/5195" target="_blank">here</a>.) It won best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival, and it's a masterpiece. The first time I was so overcome by emotion by the end, weeping in my red plush chair in the theater, that I knew I would have to see it again just to catch the finer details. The second time what I saw was what you can see in these stills from the film: the grand, unaffected, proud posture of the five year old girl, Hushpuppy, who is at the center of the film.<br />
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Hushpuppy (who looks a lot like an older version of my beautiful niece Ellie) and her father, Wink, live in The Bathtub, an impoverished community hemmed in by levees south of New Orleans. They live in a kind of poverty that is almost unimaginable to most of us, even before a storm destroys what little they have. Her father and a few others refuse to leave before the storm, and so they hang on in a devastated place, a little band of drunks and motherless children. But what they have is in their bodies, in their standing upright in the face of terror and loss. None of the "actors" in the film are professionally trained: they all come from places much like the The Bathtub, so what they show in their posture is not learned: it's who they are.<br />
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Ever since I watched <a href="http://www.foxsearchlight.com/beastsofthesouthernwild/" target="_blank">Beasts</a> for the second time, I've been feeling differently in my body. Instead of thinking of Victorian ladies in hats when I straighten my back, I think of Hushpuppy and Miss Bathsheba (a wild-haired, straight-talking schoolteacher and herbalist who lives in a floating house filled with plants). I think of their genuine dignity and strength and grace: dignity and strength and grace I would hope to have if my world came apart at the seams, as their's does.<br />
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This afternoon I watched <a href="http://www.livestream.com/sfzc/video?clipId=pla_0dfc433e-9e67-483f-aad0-f7f78ec8081c&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb" target="_blank">a talk by Zentatsu Richard Baker</a> on the 50th anniversary of the founding of San Francisco Zen Center (skip ahead in video to about the thirty minute mark. There is a <a href="http://www.livestream.com/sfzc/video?clipId=pla_9905d166-b7e8-4734-9235-7e2cb2d272ff" target="_blank">second video</a> for the second half of the talk). He was one of Suzuki Roshi's earliest western students. He talked about the "mental posture" that he learned from Suzuki Roshi, and he said something that really struck me:<br />
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"Practice is not so much a matter of understanding as of incubation."<br />
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By that I think part of what he means is that Zen practice is not a matter of just the mind; it is a matter of the whole being steeped in the practice....mind, body, heart, and something even subtler: our attitude, how we move and live in the world. This can't be learned from books; this can only be learned from the long living of it, just as the actress who plays Hushpuppy couldn't be taught her dignity by acting coaches - it comes from her life, the life of her family, the life of her whole community.<br />
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From the beginning of the practice period I have been moving more slowly, and noticing with amazement how it changes my sense of everything - myself, the world around me, time, how I feel about others. Now, thanks to Hushpuppy and Miss Bathsheba, I seem to be getting over my prejudices about posture. Perhaps posture is what is needed to genuinely face the sufferings of the world. Maybe that's why the hundreds of thousands of Buddha statues are nearly all of Buddha sitting or standing upright. The Buddha knew all about suffering, and yet there he is, smiling, sitting straight and tall and dignified.<br />
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I never met the late Katagiri Roshi, who was one of the JJapanese pioneers who bravely brought Zren to the West, but I know that he too knew about suffering, and he embodied the sweetness and dignity of Zen practice, through and through. I came across this photo of Katagiri, and offer it to you as inspiration, side by side with Hushpuppy Roshi.<br />
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May we all find the courage in our bodies to be truly upright, through joy and through tribulation, whatever our life circumstances.<br />
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Love,<br />
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Florence<br />
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-74893386876061075472012-10-08T21:14:00.001-07:002018-10-22T20:53:15.645-07:00Shuso Notes: The Inner Judge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"><i>The
nun Soma was a disciple of the Buddha. One day she was deep in meditation
beneath a tree in a forest grove. Mara, the Lord of Delusion, approached her,
cloaked in invisibility. He whispered in her ear, “Because a woman has a
naturally limited consciousness, and the realm of wisdom is hard to reach, no
woman has the ability to attain it.”</i></span><br />
<i style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;">Soma recognized Mara and rebuked
him, saying, “How could a woman’s consciousness be a hindrance when her heart
is set on liberation? Am I a woman in these matters, or a man? This question
has no power over me. Mara, begone!”</i><br />
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<i style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">And he was gone.</i></div>
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<i style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"> </i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"> From the</span><i style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"> Therigatha</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For years now I have been thinking about, studying, and practicing with the modern-day equivalent of Mara, the Lord of Delusion, the one who visits Soma in this ancient Buddhist story. I call him "The Inner Judge" or "The Inner Critic." Whatever you choose to call he/she/it, its voice is unmistakable. It whispers in your ear, in just the words that most hook you, "Who are you to think you can meditate/sing/write/paint/love/awaken (fill in your blank here ______)?" </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The effect is powerful and immediate, if you buy the story: a sinking of energy, a feeling of hopelessness, a desire to quit whatever you are trying to do, a deep sadness. At its most virulent, it takes the form of self-hatred. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even the Buddha was whispered to by Mara, on the night of his enlightenment, "What right do you have to seek enlightenment?" And in response the Buddha called on the earth to be his witness, in the famous earth-touching gesture, and the earth shook and roared in response. Sometimes this gesture is also called the "subduing Mara" gesture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I became aware of the spiritual consequences of this inner voice through the work of the teacher Byron Brown, and his book, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.betterworldbooks.com/9781570623837-id-9781570623837.aspx" target="_blank">Soul Without Shame</a></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Years ago I attended a one day retreat with Byron Brown at Spirit Rock, and was so convinced that I needed to work with the inner judge that I signed up for a five day retreat with Byron later that year. I have been using what I learned from him ever since, and sharing with others too, because without an awareness of the inner judge, spiritual unfolding can come to a standstill, shanghaied by self-judgement. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Spiritual ideas can even be used by the inner judge to make you feel like more of a loser: "What kind of Buddhist are you? A real Buddhist wouldn't get angry. A real Buddhist wouldn't grieve this hard or this long. A real Buddhist wouldn't spend an entire meditation period fantasizing about being enlightened some day...etc. etc." I spent about the first five years of Buddhist practice hounded by these sorts of thoughts, and feeling discouraged in my practice a lot of the time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the years of being aware of the inner judge and its tricks, I have become much less frequently or thoroughly at its mercy. But every once in a while I get hooked. I'm thinking about this right now because for various reasons the inner judge has been paying me a visit over the last few days. It's not fun to hear Mara's whisper in my ear. Sometimes it's not even a story: just a vague sense of dis-ease, an undefined sense of lack or shame.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what to do? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">First of all, awareness. Awareness, awareness, awareness. Half the battle is just knowing you're under attack. As I said, the judge doesn't always speak in words...sometimes it's more of a vague drop in energy, a sudden loss of confidence. Sometimes there are words, even a recognizable voice. If I am saying awful things to myself in the voice of my first grade teacher or the meanest kid I knew, then chances are good that the inner judge is in town. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, awareness might not seem like much, but I've found that awareness, all by itself, can take away a lot of the judge's power. As the story at the beginning of this post tells us, "Soma recognized him." Sometimes just the recognition is enough to dissolve the whole thing, open up freedom. There are lots of stories of the Buddha and Mara (you get a sense that by the end of Buddha's life they were old friends), and always there is this element of recognition and naming, and the sudden release: "And Mara was gone." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But sometimes I recognize the inner judge and it just sneers at me and says something like, "Well, yes, this is the voice of the inner judge, but this time I'm right. You really are failing here. You really are a pitiful idiot." What then?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Byron Brown suggests various approaches if awareness alone doesn't break the spell (and it is a sort of spell), and I think the approach depends on the person and the situation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One possibility is what one might call the "wrathful" approach, like those compassionately fierce Tibetan deities stamping on delusion in order to bring freedom. This is using strength or aggression: "Stop!" "No!" "I don't believe you!" After all, the inner judge is an internalized authority figure, and one way to deal with an unjust authority figure is to take back your own power, your own authority. I have to admit that this hasn't been so effective for me. The danger is that the judge will just up the ante, and start yelling back. Then you have a yelling match inside. But this strong approach was what Soma does in the story, and it works well. "This question has no power over me. Mara, begone!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another possibility, more my style, is compassion. An inner judge arises out of a false sense of protectiveness, a false authority. But if I saw a child being belittled or discouraged by a parent or teacher, even a well-meaning parent or teacher, I would want to protect that child. I would want to sit down with her and tell her how wonderful she really is, how deserving of love and praise. We are children in the face of the inner judge, and we can treat ourselves with the kindness we would wish for from the adults around us. It is a sad thing when a human being is judged or attacked, whether from the outside or the inside, and compassion is a natural response. Even imagining putting my arms around myself can help.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A third approach is humor. Often the suppositions of an inner judge are, frankly, ridiculous: "You know, if you go to that party, they will all stare at you, laugh at you, and talk about you behind your back. You should stay home." Or, "Your painting looks like it was done by a third grader. Tear it up immediately," An appropriate response might be, "Oh, come on! It's at least fifth grade level!" Sometimes just identifying the absurd words of the judge can lead to laughter. This has worked fairly well for me too, over the years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And the inner judge really can dissolve just as fast as Mara does in the story. One minute whispering menacingly, the next minute gone, leaving you sitting quietly in the forest. Just like any other thought, the judge only has the power we invest in it. Once seen through, there's nothing left, not even a puff of black smoke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As I write this, I feel a prayer rising up in me. "May anyone who is besieged by inner judgments find freedom from them. May all belittling, cruel and limiting thoughts dissolve into the light. And may each of us know and recognize our own unique beauty, our own capacity, and the gifts we bring to the world." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Amen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Love,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Florence</span></div>
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-82786549928394091672012-10-02T15:46:00.001-07:002012-11-03T20:32:51.898-07:00Shuso Notes: The Eight Worldly Winds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: yellow; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Monks,
these eight worldly conditions spin after the world, and the world spins after
these eight worldly conditions. Which eight? Gain, loss, status, disgrace,
censure, praise, pleasure, & pain. These are the eight worldly conditions
that spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly
conditions."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN" style="color: yellow;"> <i>Lokavipatti Sutta</i>, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.006.than.html" target="_blank">Access to Insight</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN">During
the <i>sesshin</i> (silent Zen retreat) that ended a week or so ago, I had some
insights into what are sometimes called the "Eight Worldly
Conditions", or, my favorite translation, the "Eight Worldly
Winds." These are four sets of two words each:</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Gain and loss<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Status and disgrace<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Praise and blame<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pleasure and pain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Everyone wants
more of the words on the right; less -- or hopefully none -- of the words on
the left. But each set of words go together. Loss and gain are intimately
connected; as are status and disgrace; praise and blame; pleasure and pain.
Life doesn’t dish up slices of one without the other, but most people,
including me, live with the unconscious fantasy that it just might be possible
to live a life of all gain, status, praise and pleasure. “With enough money,
enough friends, enough good luck....maybe....” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So these winds, and the desire
for the right hand side over the left hand side, spin us around and around,
like a puppy accidentally caught in a washing machine: up and down, up and
down, round and round and round. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">John Good in our Everyday Zen kitchen, photo by Lulu Wong</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first time
I saw this list was years ago, posted on the refrigerator in a Zen Center
kitchen. They are particularly apropos for a Zen kitchen. In the monastery,
just as in ordinary life only more so, meals are among the small pleasures that
everyone looks forward to. A really good meal can evoke tremendous expressions
of gratitude and praise. But as I explored in my last post, in traditional Zen
meals there is little or no choice of food, so feelings can also run high in
the other direction. I have seen Zen cooks practically run out of the monastery
for preparing the wrong kind of soup too many times in a row, or forcing their
own food ideas (“salt is a bad idea”) on the whole community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">During the
sesshin I was doing a variant on the traditional <i>shuso</i> job. In the monastery,
the <i>shuso</i> and the <i>benji</i> (his or her right-hand woman or man) are responsible
for the compost and garbage. This is profoundly wise, I think, on the part of
whatever distant Zen ancestor established the tradition. Being shuso is a time
of stepping forward into some degree of leadership and visibility, some degree
of status (see above!), so what better job to balance things out than taking
out the garbage, the stinkier and grosser the better!</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since we don’t
have a monastery at Everyday Zen, there isn’t much garbage or compost. But
there are plenty of bathrooms, so the shuso cleans bathrooms, an equivalently
“low” job. I cleaned the bathrooms at the place where we hold our one day sits,
at the beginning of the practice, with my friend Monica, and doing it together
was both gross (the bathrooms were really dirty) and fun, in a bizarre kind of
way. But Monica was only sitting in the mornings at sesshin, so the bathrooms
were all mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Every afternoon
I would put on work clothes and purple gloves, grab my collection of organic
sprays and sponges, and start going from bathroom to bathroom. For the record,
at Santa Sabina there are seven bathrooms, some with multiple stalls. They were
already quite clean, since the staff cleans them in the morning, but there was
usually just enough accumulated grime and other, um, leavings, to justify a
little spiffing up in the afternoon. Besides, in Zen practice we don’t care how
clean something already is: if the job is to clean an already clean bathroom,
well, you clean it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And this is
where it gets interesting. I got very depressed every afternoon. I was not only
doing a “low” job, I felt “low.” Cleaning bathrooms changed my identity, albeit
temporarily, to “bathroom cleaner,” and I didn’t feel proud of being “bathroom
cleaner.” I walked around feeling, pardon the expression, like a piece of shit
myself, like a very small, very unimportant person. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs232mgB4RDSCs71lE6n7lKXTPJ7hZLQ-VWd9Xp4MMqcTsKgrkTOrX4SUrIxPw35ZkTYXGYEr60Ypta8B-nE10etwqIZ1O6eLBfAMDj8dsgHt262oSVwJzo9BwhgrN-mijdOcqUEtZ4Uc/s1600/hotel+maid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs232mgB4RDSCs71lE6n7lKXTPJ7hZLQ-VWd9Xp4MMqcTsKgrkTOrX4SUrIxPw35ZkTYXGYEr60Ypta8B-nE10etwqIZ1O6eLBfAMDj8dsgHt262oSVwJzo9BwhgrN-mijdOcqUEtZ4Uc/s400/hotel+maid.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">From Leo Prieta, Flickr Creative Commons, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/leoprieto/1792854787/sizes/m/in/photostream/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/leoprieto/1792854787/sizes/m/in/photostream/</a></span></td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">It </span><span style="line-height: 18.18181800842285px;">doesn't</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> take
a PhD in sociology to figure out that the way I felt is probably shared by a
lot of people who do “low” jobs: house cleaners, maids at hotels, dishwashers,
garbage collectors, fast food employees, homeless people begging on the street.
It’s not pleasant, and it would take a very strong, very confident personality
to not be affected by that job identity – at least it would take a personality
stronger than mine! I’m planning to remember that the next time I leave my
unwashed sheets in my hotel room and wonder whether to leave a tip.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But then, for
the rest of the day each day of the sesshin, I was “shuso”. I was the only person in the room not
facing the wall during meditation; I led the morning services; I gave talks; I
held teas. And as soon as I took off those purple gloves, I felt like
“somebody” again. After my first talk, I had so many nice notes from people
that I felt like more than just somebody again: I felt pretty special.
Scared me, actually. How do you accept praise and not get stuck to it? How do you do a “low” job and not get stuck
to it? Clearly the praise is not the problem, nor is cleaning bathrooms. The
problem is the stickiness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This reminds me
of a Zen story about one of the other set of words: praise and blame, It is almost
certainly apocryphal, but it’s still worth hearing:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">A beautiful girl
in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the
father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally
pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living
such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their
daughter's accusation, he simply replied "Is that so?"<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the child was
born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by
the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was
his responsibility. "Is that so?" Hakuin said calmly as he accepted
the child.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For many months
he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer
withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young
man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went
to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they
explained what had happened. "Is that so?" Hakuin said as he handed
them the child.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfDTnfkANOfkGpeTIq3_LF2oEfJVU5QkKWVDD-1RoVlm0B9uFix1nlAJJMzChK6z4k8DbMRuON2Y6stMydZTpio1UrxxxXFG4vUefLYXZyUCu7Lzlo8tlncfBu2ULgKLgwRhk3sI8dNLmt/s1600/Hakuin+self-portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfDTnfkANOfkGpeTIq3_LF2oEfJVU5QkKWVDD-1RoVlm0B9uFix1nlAJJMzChK6z4k8DbMRuON2Y6stMydZTpio1UrxxxXFG4vUefLYXZyUCu7Lzlo8tlncfBu2ULgKLgwRhk3sI8dNLmt/s400/Hakuin+self-portrait.jpg" width="312" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Hakuin self-portrait</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So Hakuin is an example of not being flung
around by the powerful eight winds. Sometimes I think I’m doing pretty well in
relation to the eight winds, that I know better than to be caught by praise or
blame, status or pleasure....but then something as small as cleaning a bathroom
reminds me that I’m just as vulnerable as the next person.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I remember, years ago, hearing something on the radio that really moved me. It was the final speech of a Congressman before stepping down from office after being caught taking large bribes from defense contractors, and other ethical failings. He said, "In my life I have known great joy, great sadness, great achievement. And now I know great shame." I could hear in his voice that he meant it, and he had seen something profound about his life. I might not agree with his politics or his actions, but at that moment I was full of admiration for his honesty, and for his willingness to bear the shame that he carried.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think it's fair to say that most of us will know, intimately, aspects of all eight of the winds. Rather than trying to sidestep them, or pretend they don't matter, maybe, like this unfortunate Congressman, we should bow down to them. "Yes," we could say, "I know this, too, now. This is part of being alive, part of being human." Each wind is part of our foolish, clownish, tragic humanity, after all. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s a final
story, appropriately scatological and pretty funny, as many good Zen stories
are:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A famous Buddhist poet of the Song Dynasty was assigned
to an official post on the northern shore of the Yangtze River. Across the
river was a Zen temple with a famous teacher. One day the poet, feeling quite
advanced in his practice, wrote a poem and sent it across the river to the
teacher:<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Bowing with my highest respect<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To the highest gods, <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whose fine light illuminates the whole universe, <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The eight winds cannot move me, <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For I am sitting upright on the golden purple lotus
blossom."<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After reading the poem, the teacher wrote down one
character as his comment and sent it back to the poet. The word was
"Fart!" ("Pi" in Chinese, which means "utter
nonsense") </span></span></i></div>
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<a href="http://www.words-chinese.com/images2/chinese_symbols_for_fart_7901_2_0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="169" src="http://www.words-chinese.com/images2/chinese_symbols_for_fart_7901_2_0.png" width="200" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Upon seeing this insult, the poet was furious, and crossed the
river to argue with the teacher. When he arrived, he asked, “How can you insult
me like this?"<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Innocently, as if nothing had happened, the teacher
asked, "How have I insulted you?" Without saying another word, the
poet showed the word "Fart." <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Laughing wholeheartedly, the teacher said,
"Oh! Didn't you say that the eight winds cannot move you? How come you are
sent across the river with just a fart?" The poor poet was extremely
embarrassed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How have the eight winds moved you -- or not?</span></span></div>
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-6551402399107181242012-09-25T15:24:00.001-07:002012-11-03T20:32:51.888-07:00Shuso Notes: Zen Bowls and Wake-up Bells<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGuzVZW7tOWIexn2dmIr7XM75mIftsXkUO4yozqlxQG9HjABQS7XBEt2jEbQAhbZKrhyMfx-CcuzffsBLgdDkX8xhCiMsWx2E03Ts7FVVubwABKXVduG38RYQJAqxxI02p3HR4ldrKTc/s1600/IMG_2070.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGuzVZW7tOWIexn2dmIr7XM75mIftsXkUO4yozqlxQG9HjABQS7XBEt2jEbQAhbZKrhyMfx-CcuzffsBLgdDkX8xhCiMsWx2E03Ts7FVVubwABKXVduG38RYQJAqxxI02p3HR4ldrKTc/s640/IMG_2070.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
I'm just out of a 6-day <i>sesshin</i>, Zen retreat, with Norman Fischer and most of the local participants of the <a href="http://everydayzen.org/" target="_blank">Everyday Zen</a> practice period. There were about 48 of us sitting at the Santa Sabina Retreat Center in a large room from 5:30 am until 9:00 pm every day, steeping ourselves like tea bags in the clear water of silence.<br />
<br />
A big part of Zen sesshin is a somewhat arcane meal practice called <i><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.houstonzen.org%2Fpdfs%2Foryoki2.pdf" target="_blank">oryoki</a>. </i>During meals, instead of eating in the usual way, each person has their own set of three bowls, nested inside one another, wrapped up in a particular way in a cloth. The photo above shows one person's bowls all wrapped up after a meal.<br />
<br />
Oryoki is an acknowledgement of the ancient Buddhist practice of begging for and receiving food. The Buddha ate from a begging bowl, and even today Theravadan monks have only a bowl and three robes, and they only eat if someone places food in their bowl each morning. The life of a monk is a life of radical dependence on others and trust in interconnection. When Zen monasteries started developing in China, monks grew their own food and cooked for themselves, but they maintained the tradition of the importance of the bowl, and the recognition of humility, gratitude and interdependence that it symbolizes. <br />
<br />
Oryoki is truly a trial by fire for new Zen students. Each movement of unwrapping the bowls, of chanting, of eating, has its own choreography, and there's no way to get it entirely right, even after years of practice. For someone new to oryoki, remembering even the most basic sequence from one meal to another is a challenge, especially after hours of meditation and the general spaciness that develops after a few days on retreat. I'm sure there are people who have fantasized about throwing everything across the room with a shout, grabbing a plate and a spoon, dishing out their own food, and going outside to eat in peace.<br />
<br />
I know this because one of my jobs for the last few years has been to provide an orientation to oryoki at the beginning of sesshin. I invariably feel like I am torturing people as we go through the innumerable steps, bewildered faces turned toward me, tension in shoulders and trembling fingers. I wish there was some way I could make it easier, but there's no way to skip a step without getting even more hopelessly lost. So I doggedly go on, hoping and praying that with humor and kindness I can ease the anxiety a little.<br />
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Then, the very next morning at breakfast, we all dive in to oryoki practice. Much of the daily rhythm and structure of a Zen monastery (and a sesshin is a temporary monastery, even if it is held at a Catholic convent!), is to some degree built around the ritual of giving and receiving that is at the heart of oryoki. It is really not intended to be a sadistic torture device, as much as it might feel that way to someone struggling with it for the first time. Its intention, from start to finish, is to help bring powerful awareness to our usual mindless relationship to receiving and eating food, the life that makes it possible for us to live.<br />
<br />
The Zen kitchen, which is Soto Zen is as much a practice place as the meditation hall, is focused on providing just the right food and the right amounts for those three little bowls. The kitchen is also engaged in a ritual while they're cooking. They bow to an altar in the kitchen before starting, they work in silence, and, if all goes well, the food appears at just the right moment at the beginning of a meal.<br />
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In the monastery, oryoki meals are eaten right at one's place in the meditation hall. To begin a meal, one just turns around and picks up the bowls that are right beside the meditation cushion. A team of servers bring in the pots one at a time, bowing in silence to pairs of people, dishing up the food (and there are ritualized signals for "that's enough"), then bowing again. A hall full of sixty people can all be served their food in about 15 minutes this way.<br />
<br />
We at Everyday Zen eat at tables in the old convent refrectory, but we still serve one another in silence. Each person serves the person across the table, bowing before and after, using the same signals. We chant verses of gratitude before the meal and after. My favorite line is "May we realize the emptiness of the three wheels, giver, receiver, and gift." Everything is connected: those who grew and cooked the food, those of us who receive it, and the food itself in all its glory. Nothing can be separated out or could exist without the others.<br />
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At the end of the meal, still sitting at our places, we serve each other hot water in the largest bowl. Then, with another series of choreographed movements, we clean all three bowls and our utensils, drink most of the leftover water, make an offering of a small amount of water to the spirit world ("This water, which tastes like ambrosia, we offer to the many spirits to satisfy them"), dry everything, and pack it all back up into its neat little package. No waste, no dishes, no mess. It's brilliant.<br />
<br />
Now's my chance to sing the praises of oryoki. As an ecologist, everything about oryoki delights me (except for the suffering it causes people who are new to it - I could do without that, but there doesn't seem to be a way out of it). I love that it is the practice of "just enough" in a culture of "never enough". I love that from the beginning to end it acknowledges interconnection, and the the interpenetration of our food and those who bring it to us and our own lives. I love that it requires attention, and even love, for what we normally think of as inanimate and use without appreciation. And once past the initial terror and awkwardness, the movements are beautiful: literally a dance of awareness.<br />
<br />
And there is something of a feeling of a "full circle" to oryoki, even to the water offering that is poured on the base of a plant or tree outside the kitchen door. If we lived in the same way as we do oryoki, perhaps things would be a wee bit less dire than they seem to be. Much of monastic life offers similar possibilities.<br />
<br />
The multi-religious theologian Raimundo Pannikar, in his gorgeous book on the "monastic archetype,", <a href="http://monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=353" target="_blank">Blessed Simplicity</a>, suggests that in this era monks may not be people living in monasteries in robes, but are rather people who are "called to a interiority, to a search for the center and for the heart," whatever their life circumstances. I would venture to say that with that search and commitment comes to a growing awareness of interconnection and sacredness, and from that place, naturally unfolds a monastic approach to life: a life of care, of simplicity, and of awareness. Each person who makes this choice helps the world.<br />
<br />
<br />
And on that note, just a few throughts about ringing the wake-up bell for sesshin. That's one of the many jobs of the shuso during practice period: to go into the dark, cold meditation hall, very early in the morning, do three bows to the Buddha, pick up the bell from behind the altar, then run (run!) with the bell ringing wildly, one full circuit of the meditation hall and then past every door of every person in the sesshin. It's an ear-splitting racket in the midst of so much silence and slowness. It's like a fire alarm or an air-raid siren: "Wake up! Wake up! There's an emergency here! No time to waste!"<br />
<br />
I was dreading getting up so early (two alarms set for 4:45 am, and hardly sleeping the first night out of a fear that I would oversleep), but I hadn't expected what it would feel like to ring the bell. Running around the meditation hall felt like a purification of the space, washing out all the stickiness from yesterday's sitting, making it fresh for a new day. And running the bell through the dark hallways, sleepy people jumping out of my way (sorry, everyone), it really did feel like an emergency. Truly, there is no time to waste.<br />
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There is a big wooden block that is struck with a mallet to call people to meditation, called a <i>han</i>. Hans generally have calligraphy on them that says something like what ours says: "Birth and Death is serious business, swift as an arrow, soon gone. Wake up, everyone! Don't waste this life."<br />
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I have always taken that admonition as a reminder that life is short, and so, don't put off what matters, wake up as much as you can to the nature of things, and to compassion. But now, with everything that is happening in the world, I hold it a little differently: we need every one of us to wake up, NOW, as much as possible, and find a way to live lives of greater acknowledgment of our interdependence ---- with each other, with all the creatures in this world, and with the whole world itself, even the very air we breathe, the ocean currents, the rain, the clouds. There is no time to waste.<br />
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And as oryoki teaches, there is also all the time in the world. Each moment is endless, if we're there for it. So, yes, wake up, but wake up to gratitude, to joy, to appreciation for this beautiful world, and the beautiful people all around us. Then we won't have wasted this precious life, so brief, so essential.Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-66365219228800893952012-09-16T22:24:00.000-07:002012-11-03T20:32:51.890-07:00Shuso Notes, Week Four: Silence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The practice period sesshin starts tomorrow at the Santa Sabina Retreat Center. Sesshin is a silent Zen retreat. Ours is six days long, and it's the beating heart of the practice period. It's the one time when a good portion of the practice period comes together, making, as we say in Zen, one body.<br />
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In a residential Zen practice period, sesshin is just a slight intensifying of the life everyone is already leading, but for us, out in the world, it is a dramatic transition into a different way of being. Cell phones are turned off, books are put down, activity is minimized, and all of us live by a schedule that starts at 5 am and goes on until 9 pm. It is a taste of the monastery.<br />
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Our sesshin is held at the Santa Sabina Center, which is an old convent, a place where Dominican nuns who were considering final vows lived and prayed. Now the nuns are gone, but I feel their presence there, in the lovely, flower-strewn, feminine inner garden, so like the courtyard gardens of Italy that I played in as a child, in the small chapel with its wooden choir stalls, in the rectory with its long tables. There is a long association between Catholic monastics and Buddhists: I think there is a similar flavor: an appreciation for silence, for depth, and for sincerity.<br />
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Silence. I remember my first silent retreat, held at another Northern California convent. The huge relief of letting the mask of my persona crack and loosen. I cried at the end, when we were all talking again, because I was so sad to feel the mask return -- that desire to be seen in a certain way, that desire to project a certain image. Many people are frightened at the thought of a silent retreat ("ack, I don't want to be alone with my mind!") but almost everyone I know has found that silence is a gift, an immense resting place where the personality can just give it up for a while. And I think there is an unnoticed hunger for silence in our culture, right alongside the fear of it. We are so seldom at rest.<br />
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I think also there is sometimes a sense that silence is an inward experience. Oddly, that's not really the case. When the voice ceases, there is suddenly room for the rest of the world: birdsong, wind sound, cars passing by. And not just sound, but all the senses waken and clear: the sight of the stars can bring tears; a cookie served at tea is the most delicious ambrosia. Silence is deeply sensual. It is interesting to think about how love making is often silent. Silence is intimate, as close as skin and breath.<br />
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But as I considered how some people in the practice period will be at the sesshin, and some people can't be at the sesshin, I started thinking about silence in a new way. There is overt silence -- the ceasing of speech -- but then there is the silence that is larger than any particular choice around speaking or not speaking, meditation or non-meditation. Silence can be found anywhere. In between my words there is silence. At the end of a breath there is silence. Most of the natural world is silent, most of the time; the tomatoes in the garden are silent, the oak trees in the back yard are silent.<br />
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And perhaps (this is something to explore) there is even silence right in the midst of the loudest sounds. Sound depends on and arises from silence, so surely silence is always there. What makes an operatic aria so exquisite? The silence that surrounds the notes. What would life be like if we were listening to the silence as well as the words of our loved ones? If we felt the silence in the middle of the city, buried in the ambulance sirens, permeating the rush of traffic?<br />
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I remember once someone talking about being annoyed by the little sounds of her fellow meditators on a retreat, and then realizing that she had set up a dualistic idea - they were "out there", snuffling, breathing too hard, whatever, and she was "in here", wanting silence and not getting it, assaulted and offended. So she started exploring what happened if she heard those sounds as her own sounds, not as something separate. Well - I leave it to your own exploration, what happened next.<br />
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So now I think it's time for me to stop talking.<br />
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I'd like to leave you with a beautiful video by Brother David, a Benedectine monk who has lived much of his own life in silence, and silence's gift has blossomed in his heart to the deepest appreciation of the world.<br />
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Love,<br />
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FlorenceFlorencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-30133691115738062952012-09-10T21:15:00.000-07:002012-11-03T20:32:51.881-07:00Shuso Notes Week Three: One Continuous Mistake<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUtFp48K0TN5Rq9Tbh7EtK4SYUmD57cm-jIFBa69Diza4NA5c_r-C8jI64I58i0tLP0-swJgahXTEaZeVUhwql7VJrZP29X73x1RZJ3jT3gidL3ouQ5ovoaXa-zTqSWFBtghMwNU4sVJE/s1600/IMG_2565.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUtFp48K0TN5Rq9Tbh7EtK4SYUmD57cm-jIFBa69Diza4NA5c_r-C8jI64I58i0tLP0-swJgahXTEaZeVUhwql7VJrZP29X73x1RZJ3jT3gidL3ouQ5ovoaXa-zTqSWFBtghMwNU4sVJE/s400/IMG_2565.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Detail from painting by Kaz Tanahashi</td></tr>
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<span style="color: yellow;">"Our life is much more fluid and instantaneous than our thoughts can capture."</span><br />
Norman Fischer, <a href="http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?Itemid=26&option=com_teaching&sort=date&task=viewTeaching&id=audio-1259-996" target="_blank">Seminar, September 5, 2012.</a><br />
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How could it be the beginning of the third week of the practice period already? A dharma friend mentioned that the whole idea of a practice period is arbitrary, even made up: Norman hits a big staff three times, the shuso accepts her responsibility, eighty people decide they are in a "practice period," and poof, it's a practice period! Makes you wonder how much else in life is like that.<br />
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So yes, it's made up, but this made up thing has its own kind of astonishing power. I find myself constantly surprised in this experience of being "shuso," "head student, "whatever that is (and I know what it is less than I did before I started). Surprised by my own responses, surprised by what practice period is like from this vantage point, completely not expecting what happens from one day to another.<br />
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That reminds me of a quote from Dogen that always makes me laugh : "Enlightenment is not like your conception of it....What you think one way or another before enlightenment is not a help for enlightenment." In other words, give it up! Your ideas about enlightenment, or anything else, whatever they may be, no matter how exalted or intellectually sophisticated - they're just fantasies, concepts, smoke rings. There are better ways to spend a day than spending even a moment thinking about such a thing.<br />
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Maybe Dogen's comment could be amended to, "Life is not like your conception of it...What you think one way or another about life is not a help for life!"<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibhM_KaWeSAAaNY5Y7BXG8wCmC5n6ec2_JXNdaaPh4b39GBzCLU3Ic1jRiWrbFXKhcjjL0kc6qAzhatEks43EhljaX7ik3VBgQtNHBg7IT8RCofd7QE1PLI98t0K-CCjlqpTOfMo4VKvc/s1600/waterfall_Hofmann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibhM_KaWeSAAaNY5Y7BXG8wCmC5n6ec2_JXNdaaPh4b39GBzCLU3Ic1jRiWrbFXKhcjjL0kc6qAzhatEks43EhljaX7ik3VBgQtNHBg7IT8RCofd7QE1PLI98t0K-CCjlqpTOfMo4VKvc/s400/waterfall_Hofmann.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~ttstudio/michael_hof/New/Newworks_e.html" target="_blank">Michael Hofmann</a></td></tr>
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I was in the<a href="http://www.lutherburbank.org/" target="_blank"> Luther Burbank gardens</a> in Santa Rosa yesterday, and saw a fountain there, a large bronze basin suspended about ten feet above a pool of water. The water fills the basin and pours over the edge in a smooth, thin sheet, but with the slightest breeze the sheet of water breaks up into momentary, beautiful patterns in mid-air, moving from one form to another, and then falling into the pool, disappearing into it.<br />
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Luther Burbank himself bred hundreds - maybe thousands - of new varieties of plants at the turn of the 20th century. Some of them, like the russet potato and hte Santa Rosa plum, are still being harvested. Others have disappeared completely, absorbed back into wherever it is they came from. Burbank himself, once world-famous, was buried in an unmarked grave in the garden, at his request, and a tree was planted above his body. The tree was a landmark in Santa Rosa for decades, but now even the tree is gone.<br />
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This weekend I was in a Asian calligraphy workshop with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuaki_Tanahashi" target="_blank">Kaz Tanahashi</a>, who, if we had "living treasures" in the United States, would be one. At 79 he is still translating the most difficult Japanese Buddhist texts, writing books, creating enormous multicolored calligraphy masterpieces on commission for museums all over the world, traveling, working for peace....there's no one quite like Kaz, anywhere, and I consider it a great gift to study with him once a year.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.brushmind.net/pix/2012_images/K-11-5_Together.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.brushmind.net/pix/2012_images/K-11-5_Together.gif" width="322" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting, "Together" by Kaz Tanahashi (from <a href="http://www.brushmind.net/index.html" target="_blank">Brush Mind website</a>)</td></tr>
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I am exceedingly clumsy, beginning calligrapher, but I love it. It is so pure and so terrifying! Black ink. White ricepaper. Horsehair brush. The brush is poised above the paper, the mind is collected as best as one can, and then - splat! - the brush lands and moves and whatever it is that you had hoped for generally doesn't happen. It is an exercise in chaos. No amount of intention or concentration can completely control those wayward materials. And there is no erasing, no going back, no fixing or fiddling to make it better. The line shows everything, whatever you might want to hide or avoid - fear, nervousness, a moment of inattention -- or even the faint possibility, if you're exceedingly lucky, of a moment of grace, a little hint of what might happen if a person kept doing this for a few decades.<br />
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This constant "failure" really threw me in my first couple of workshops, as kind as Kaz is to all of us who are struggling there. But this time I found the process, and my reaction to it, both funny and enjoyable. There seems to be a inverse relationship between willfulness and the lines on that stark white paper: the greater the willfulness, the shakier the line. I appreciate a place where I can't make it happen through will alone, and where I can't hide. Or maybe I should say, to be more accurate, that I am learning to appreciate such a place.<br />
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Being shuso is like that too, and not only that, but there is no way to avoid being a beginner at being shuso. There are no "experienced" shusos. So here I am, stumbling around with my brush dripping black ink, splattering paper here and there, getting ink on my shoes, definitely trying my best but completely unable to hide my rank beginnerhood. That's what makes shusos so endearing to everyone, and also what makes shusos so terrified. A friend who was shuso, years ago, told me that she too was walking in the hills before being shuso, and thought she heard a lion, and thought, "Oh, maybe it will eat me and I won't have to do this!"<br />
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Suzuki Roshi's most famous lines are undoubtedly, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." Yeah, yeah, we say, but who wants to be a beginner? It's embarrassing, stressful, awkward, silly. But then he says, "Be very very careful about this point. If you start to practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice."<br />
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Hmmmmm......<br />
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So for anyone in the practice period, or anywhere else, who feels like a beginner, please know that Suzuki Roshi would be very pleased. I'm going to try to remember that too, as I tremblingly sit down to give a dharma talk, or trip over my robes on the way to the altar, or say something stupid or foolish or thoughtless to someone. Practice period begins with a shuso <i>jundo</i>, where the shuso walks around the zendo hunched over and waddling like a duck, in a bowing position, past every person in the practice period. That is actually the shuso's way of asking forgiveness and apologizing, in advance, for all the ten thousand mistakes she or he will make.<br />
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Thank goodness Zen really appreciates this. "One continuous mistake" is one famous expression. "Fall down nine times and get up ten" is another.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL5v7NqC1ZCSDTHZ_aR9oqA57JsOIxBFtnDI4MbY0ZZuJhb5WAMlcT4u8z7pknaX0UKOdWmdf9LmtZjP6fJ4FXvBCj-M00izkirYEWJMgLh89dx_GqcbUdNdYRhTe9_k5V8dLSYJ1FZps/s1600/IMG_2580.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL5v7NqC1ZCSDTHZ_aR9oqA57JsOIxBFtnDI4MbY0ZZuJhb5WAMlcT4u8z7pknaX0UKOdWmdf9LmtZjP6fJ4FXvBCj-M00izkirYEWJMgLh89dx_GqcbUdNdYRhTe9_k5V8dLSYJ1FZps/s400/IMG_2580.JPG" width="392" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florence's "Life"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Falling down and getting up together, day after day, week after week, breath after breath. I know that's an idea about life, and ideas about life may not have much to do with actual life, but it feels like a helpful way to think about practice period. I am very grateful that eighty-four people have bravely and foolishly decided to join up together and fall down together. And I know that this community has so much heart that whatever foolishness I express, they will be able to forgive me and love me anyway (I hope.....) That's what it means to be part of a sangha, the precious jewel of spiritual community.<br />
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Falling down. Getting up. Letting that black ink show every tremor. Living, as Kaz says, "miracles of each moment"....what else is there to do?<br />
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Love,<br />
<br />
Florence<br />
Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-54020446020426797932012-09-03T22:22:00.003-07:002012-11-03T20:32:51.886-07:00Shuso Notes Week Two: Fog, Restraint, Prayer<br />
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The second week of the practice period has just begun, and it feels like this great 80-person-power engine of dharma is starting to hum. All over the Bay Area, all over the country, all over the world, people are sitting in meditation, talking with their practice period buddies, tuning in to the dharma talks, getting ready for silent retreat in two weeks. It's quite a feeling, from this viewpoint: awe-inspiring, encouraging, and humbling.<br />
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I went for a short walk last night up in the hills, just as the sun was setting. The fog was streaming across the ridge from the west, the top of the fog bank brilliantly lit by last sunlight; an immense oceanic presence whipped by the wind into gray-white streamers and banners that dissipated as they raced downhill on the eastern side of the ridge.<br />
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Suzuki Roshi spoke about fog, in <i><a href="http://www.shambhala.com/zen-mind-beginner-s-mind.html" target="_blank">Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind</a></i>:<br />
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<i><span style="color: yellow;">After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, "Oh, this pace is terrible!" But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. So there is no need to worry about progress.</span></i></div>
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As I walked in the fog and felt its moisture on my face, I thought of Jaune Evans, a member of the practice period whose father-in-law, a physicist and meteorologist, studied - and collected - fog. Fog stored in Mason jars - what an idea! Trying to write about the practice period is like trying to capture fog in my hands, reaching out for it as it blows by and through me. There's something huge here, but it's ungraspable at the same time, disappearing and re-appearing as I write, only its sweet, cool breath on my cheek.<br />
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In the practice periods I attended at Green Gulch and Tassajara in the 90s, we were, literally, cloistered. During practice period at Tassajara no one went in or out of the narrow mountain valley except the "town trip" from Jamesburg once a week. Green Gulch was more porous, but still, the request was to stay in the valley for the whole seven weeks of practice period. Those among us who tended toward claustrophobia chafed at the restrictions, but when your energy cannot go outward, it goes downward, deeper into the ground of your life.<br />
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In Everyday Zen practice periods, the walls of the valley are as wide as the whole world. Some people in the practice period will be traveling to Nepal in October. A group of dedicated practitioners are doing the practice period in Germany. But what I find is that the feeling of restraint - of pulling back, albeit temporarily, from some of the outwardness of daily life in order to go deep - is here too.<br />
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Restraint is not a word that we admire these days. In our addicted world - addicted to substances, to motion, to consumption, to distraction - restraint implies giving up pleasure. And yet, this is the little secret of restraint: it seems that most addictions, while having elements of pleasure, are inherently unsatisfying. That's why they are addicting - the hope is that the next hit will finally be the one that completely satisfies. Restraint opens up heretofore unimagined possibilities of pleasure - pleasure in being with others, in actually showing up for one's life, in the simple beauties of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting.<br />
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This was vividly apparent in a delightful book I read a few years ago, <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/noimpactman/ColinBeavan" target="_blank"><i>No Impact Man</i></a>, about one family's experiment in simple living. A crazy writer decided to see if he and his family, living in Manhattan, could spend a year having no impact on the environment, or as little as humanly possible. The book is full of their discoveries of unexpected pleasures: side-effects, if you will, of their earnest attempts at environmentalism. For instance, they lived a while without electricity at night and found, to their astonishment, that they were talking to one another, and spending time with friend (by candlelight) more than they had in years. After the year was over, they continued living with much of their self-inposed "retraint", but not out of guilt – life was actually better than it had been before.<br />
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My own experiments in practice-period-induced-restraint takes several forms. I have an intention to slow down during the practice period, and I asked others to remind me if I'm zooming around at my usual pace. To my surprise I'm actually remembering to slow down - now and again - and it's an astonishing practice. I'll be crossing a parking lot on foot at my usual rapid clip and then, suddenly, boom - I remember, slow my pace, and everything changes. I feel my feet on the asphalt, my hands at my sides, my head balanced on my spinal column. Life seems abruptly quieter and more centered, as if I am no longer leaning forward into the next moment, but actually inhabiting the one I'm in. Exquisite.<br />
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Other restraints have developed more organically, as I work with the intensity of being shuso and what my body and mind needs to stay balanced in this time. Normally, I'm a little bit addicted - OK, a lot addicted - to the news. And even more reasonable news consumers than I tend to get a little obsessed from September to November every four years or so, for obvious reasons.<br />
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But I have found the news quite literally nauseating in the last week (OK, no snide comments about the Republican convention). I find myself driving around with the radio firmly turned off.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Flickr Creative Commons:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/windsordi/4814394292/sizes/m/in/photostream/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/windsordi/4814394292/sizes/m/in/photostream/</a> </td></tr>
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I've been on "news fasts" before, and always appreciate the way my heart and mind feels - less frightened, for one thing, and more open- but this fast feels essential, as if I couldn't be shuso while filling myself on a diet of fear and dread and anger.<br />
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And this brings me to the final thing I've been thinking about this week: prayer.<br />
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Norman brought up prayer at the end of seminar on Wednesday, and prayer is not a word one hears a lot in Zen circles. On Thursday I had quite an extraordinary conversation with an old friend. She is a medical receptionist in Seattle, and I have always thought of her as a quiet bodhisattva. She is one of the most consistently, unfailingly kind people I've ever known (ah, if only all doctor's offices had people like her! We'd all be healther and happier). We have known each other for about ten years, and I knew she is a liberal Catholic, but last Thursday she offhandedly mentioned something I had never known about her.<br />
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She told me that she spends all day praying for people. Before she even gets out of bed she is praying for people she knows who are sick or suffering. All day long, as she is going about her life, working, shopping ....she is praying. I am sure she has prayed for me many times. Her life is a life of prayer. And suddenly what I had seen and experienced in her over the years made sense. I had often wondered how it was that this ordinary woman in her 70s could be such a source of goodness in the world, to everyone she touches, to everyone she talks to on the phone or greets in the office, to her many family members, to patients and neighbors and friends. Now I understood.<br />
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Regardless of your feelings about divinity or faith, a person who spends all day wishing for the relief of others' suffering is a gift to the world. And I think about the choices my friend has made, day after day, year after year, to bring her mind to prayer, and how it has shaped and turned her into a beautiful person, like heartwood turned on a lathe. And I also think of how invisible her practice is. In ten years of knowing me she had never mentioned her practice. I don’t think she was hiding it; it is simply so much part of her as to be completely ordinary and unremarkable.<br />
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I think this is part of what Suzuki Roshi meant when he talked about walking in the fog. His image is often cited as a beautiful expression of the Soto Zen way, the ordinary, undramatic way. Other Zen people sometimes criticize Soto as being too ordinary, not focused enough on life-changing awakening experiences. But walk in the fog long enough and you’ll be soaked through, and you won’t even know when it happened. My friend is a Soto Catholic, I think, or maybe even a Soto saint. She’s been walking in the fog of prayer so long that it has soaked her, through and through.<br />
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Love,<br />
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Florence<br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #ffffcc; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.616666793823242px;">P.S. If you'd like to listen to the talks from the practice period, they will be posted online at </span><a href="http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?Itemid=26&option=com_teaching&sort=date" style="background-color: black; color: #0078c9; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.616666793823242px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Everyday Zen Teachings</a><span style="background-color: black; color: #ffffcc; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.616666793823242px;">.</span>
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<br />Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-52743937702568331692012-08-27T23:40:00.000-07:002012-11-03T20:32:51.884-07:00Shuso Notes Week One<br />
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<b><span style="color: yellow;">The Old Woman, Zhaozhou, and the Tiger</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: yellow;">One day when Master Zhaozhou Congshen was outside the monastery, he saw an old woman hoeing a field. He asked her, “What would you do if you suddenly met a fierce tiger?” </span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"> She replied, “Nothing in this world frightens me,” and turned back to her hoeing. Zhaozhou roared like a tiger. She roared back at him. </span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"> Zhaozhou said, “There’s still this.”</span><br />
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Today I was walking in the Marin hills on a little-used trail. I saw no one else at the trailhead or anywhere in front of or behind me. It was a lovely cool day, and I was enjoying my walk, until I heard a loud rustle in the dried vegetation of a ravine below the trail. I stopped. I listened carefully. <i>Rustle</i>. Pause. <i>Rustle</i>. Definitely a large animal. I tried to see what was there, with no luck. <i>Rustle</i>.<br />
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There are deer and coyotes in the hills, but also mountain lions. I knew it was probably a deer, but I also knew that it could be a lion. I felt very small---in fact, I <i>am</i> very small. The animal was making its way up the ravine, still hidden by the chapparal. It sounded like it was making an effort to get up to the trail in front of me. Probably a deer. But what if it wasn't? No one nearby, a small tasty woman all alone....<br />
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I am not that old woman in the story with Zhaozhou. I turned tail and walked, quickly, back toward the trailhead. Many things in the world still frighten me.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Flickr Creative Commons:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dracobotanicus/3409889096/sizes/z/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/dracobotanicus/3409889096/sizes/z/</a> </td></tr>
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This last Sunday I was "entered" as <i>Shuso</i> for the nine-week Everyday Day Zen Fall Practice Period. <i>Shuso</i> is a Japanese term for a very old Zen tradition, dating back at least a thousand years in China and Japan. It is translated as "head monk" or "head student" for a Zen monastic practice period. The shuso helps the teacher lead the practice period, and it is an initiation into the Zen way of helping and working with people. Within the tradition of San Francisco Zen Center, it is generally the first time a Zen student formally gives dharma talks or teaches, even if they have been studying Zen for twenty or thirty or forty years (we Zen people are slow learners).<br />
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In the small world of Zen practice, it is A Very Big Deal, something both wonderful and terrifying for the shuso. I can remember each of the shusos for my various practice periods back nearly twenty years. If I meet another Zen person that I have practiced with, we can figure out if we were in the same practice period by naming our shuso, since most people are shuso only once in their life, and the shuso is vividly part of creating the whole feeling of a particular practice period. Shy or brave, scholarly, heart-felt, inspiring, sincere, confused, ordinary.....the spirit of the shuso is the spirit of the practice period. <br />
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Even though <a href="http://www.everydayzen.org/" target="_blank">Everyday Zen</a> is a non-monastic Zen community, we have had practice periods and shusos too, for the past eight years or so, every fall. So there I was, Sunday morning, driving to the Headlands, a rented meditation hall north of the Golden Gate Bridge, just above Rodeo Lagoon inside the Golden Gate National Park. The light was beautiful on the Bay as I drove, a sheen of silver, the fog lifting and rolling back toward the ocean.<br />
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I was very frightened. I'm not even quite sure why. The shuso entering ceremony is quite formal, and has a few memorized lines, but that doesn't quite explain the fear. I'm not normally afraid of public speaking. I love this community, and feel love and support from them. I've known the teacher, <a href="http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=62" target="_blank">Norman Fischer</a>, for more than twenty years, and we've been through a lot together. But it was like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, one that I knew I would soon be jumping over. At the moment I was looking out over vast space and swallowing hard, wondering how I would ever manage to leap.<br />
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This is particularly mysterious because I have admired shusos for so long, and fantasized in countless retreats that one day I might be in the role. This reminds me of a favorite old story. Once upon a time in China there was a man who was obsessed with dragons. He collected dragon figurines, studied dragon mythology, wrote poetry about dragons, loved dragons with all his heart. He did this for years and years. Of course, he'd never actually seen a dragon, since dragons are vanishingly rare. But word got out to the dragons that they had a real fan in the human world, so one day a dragon came to visit, just to meet this person who loved dragons so much. When the dragon's head appeared in the man's window, he fainted in fear, came to, and ran away.<br />
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So that's me last Sunday morning, the shuso-lover, about to meet the shuso, and scared witless.<br />
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I made it to the meditation hall, and then spent the day in silence, mostly, sitting and walking in meditation. Every time someone greeted me with "shuso!" I said, "Not yet. I can still walk away!" The ceremony was at the end of the day. And here's the great thing about the ceremony, which is also very old. The memorized lines are all variations on, "I am not ready to be shuso." In fact, at the height of the ceremony, the shuso-to-be tries to walk out of the room, twice, before being called back by the teacher.<br />
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I haven't done a poll on this, but I have a feeling that some part of even the most avid shuso-to-be actually would like to walk out of the room at that point. Or maybe that's not quite right. I knew I wouldn't actually walk out of the room, but saying yes also felt impossible. Suddenly the cliff was in front of me, instead of below me, and I couldn't see how I could possibly climb it.<br />
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Now I see that there is no way to climb it, of course. There is just moving forward, trusting the next moment to be under your feet. It was, and now the practice period is one day old and all of us who are part of it are all moving forward, each in our own way, but somehow linked.<br />
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There are nearly sixty people in the practice period in the Bay Area, and another twenty-six doing a "long distance practice period" all over the world. I chanted their names for the first time this morning, and it feels like those eighty-some people are inside my skin, behind my eyes, sitting with me on the cushion. The practice period is still in front of us, supposedly, but in the blink of an eye it will be over. We will never all be together in this way again, and I will almost certainly never be shuso again, gone in a heartbeat. There is a poignancy there that I can taste, even as we are just beginning.<br />
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For the next nine weeks we will be studying the stories and koans from the book that Sue Moon and I have just handed in to Wisdom Publications: <i>Record of the Hidden Lamp</i>. The book is a collection of one hundred stories of awakened Buddhist woman, from twenty-five centuries, with commentaries by contemporary women teachers. The story that started this post is one of the stories in the book. We have been working on the book for nearly three years. <br />
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It is astonishing to me that this is the focus of the practice period, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude to Norman for choosing to use these stories that are so close to my heart, that I have been living and breathing for so long, and that I think will be so important for both male and female dharma practitioners, going forward. Women have been hidden in Buddhism for a long time, anonymous like the old woman who roared like a tiger. Perhaps this is the first time in the long history of Zen a Zen practice period, led by a male teacher, has focused on women's koans and stories, women's teaching and practice. Incredible.<br />
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My dear friend Dana Velden, always cutting-edge, started the tradition of a shuso blog when she was shuso at San Francisco Zen Center years ago. My intention is to write something every week, something to give a glimpse, for Zen people and non-Zen people alike, into the experience of a particular practice period and the mysterious path of this old tradition.<br />
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Love,<br />
Florence<br />
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P.S. If you'd like to listen to the talks from the practice period about the women's stories, they will be posted online at <a href="http://www.everydayzen.org/index.php?Itemid=26&option=com_teaching&sort=date" target="_blank">Everyday Zen Teachings</a>.<br />
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Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-2148057052398193532012-07-17T20:28:00.001-07:002012-07-18T20:24:15.651-07:00More on the Art of Riding the Waves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since my last post about waves, I've continued to think about the big waves of life, and how to meet them. I was asked to give the guest sermon at the <a href="http://www.eastshoreunitarian.org/" target="_blank">Eastshore Unitarian Church</a> in Bellevue last Sunday, and my sermon was on "The Art of Riding the Waves." If you'd like to listen to it, you can download and listen to it <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/050k9fk095s8wfu/Eastshore%20Unitarian%20Sermon%207_15_2012.mp3?m" target="_blank">here</a>. Or you can read the sermon, below. Before the sermon, I told a story for children, called The Wave, which you can download and listen to <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hl6o8y4cszo7n3i/Story%20for%20all%20Ages_The%20Wave.mp3" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<span style="color: white;">Good morning, It is an honor to be here with you this summer
Sunday morning, when you could be out enjoying one of our tardy summer days. I want to
thank Ann Carden, your worship leader, for inviting me and for the beautiful
and soulful process we went through together in thinking about this service. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">By now in the service you must have an inkling of what the
sermon is about. Ocean waves are, as in my story, nothing at all, merely
temporary, beautiful, constantly changing forms of the ocean, and yet they are
one of the most powerful forces we know. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">What really got me thinking about waves happened in late
March this year, when I was caught in a rogue wave.One
moment I was photographing beautiful wind-whipped breakers and the next moment one of those waves, which looked like every other wave, was
washing around my knees and getting higher, and I was running for high ground. I
experienced the sudden bodily knowledge
that if I didn’t get out of the wave, it was going to take me out to sea with
it when it ebbed. I made it out, but it reminded me of the way a life can
change in an instant. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Almost everyone has experienced these moments, or knows
someone who has, when everything changes. The phone call in the middle of the
night, the pink slip, the conversation with a doctor. Here’s something that the
Zen teacher John Tarrant wrote, after he received a diagnosis of prostate
cancer: </span></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow;">The diagnosis seemed alright at the time I got it but I observed that the small consulting room became large, time slowed down and everyone’s eyes grew big. That room became a ship hanging in space, a ship I can still visit if I wish, and sometimes do. That moment was the last moment when I hadn’t quite absorbed the news, when I didn’t quite have cancer yet. </span></i><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: black;"> </span></span></i><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://tarrantworks.com/2011/12/17/five-reasons-to-get-cancer/#more-47" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://tarrantworks.com/2011/<wbr></wbr>12/17/five-reasons-to-get-<wbr></wbr>cancer/#more-47</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of
course, there are also the big waves which are not tragedies, but no less
dramatic, humbling and transforming: really falling in love for the first time
or the 10</span><sup style="font-family: inherit;">th</sup><span style="font-family: inherit;"> time, or the birth of a child, or the power of an idea
that sweeps you away and calls you to a new life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">So I started thinking about big waves, and what we can do
when the waves hit, and if there might be an art to riding the waves of life,
like tai chi, or surfing. So this sermon is about my exploration of this
question.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I was in my 20’s, I had a realization that has stayed with
me ever since: up to that time, unconsciously, I had thought that when
difficult things happened, it was sort of a mistake, something going wrong in
the midst of an otherwise smooth life. I think, by the way, that this is a very
middle class American idea – most people in the rest of the world know better
by the time they are in their 20’s . Suddenly I realized that life, by its very
nature </span><u style="font-family: inherit;">includes</u><span style="font-family: inherit;"> disasters and accidents and unexpected changes– they
aren’t aberrations, they are PART of life, just as waves are part of the ocean.
A wave is a very different experience if the whole time you’re thinking, “Stop,
this shouldn’t be happening, not in my life” rather than, “Ah, right, this is
the nature of life. I don’t like it, but here it is, and waves hit everyone,
sooner or later.” Then, if you’re
really wild and lucky, you might even be able to have the feeling of those
people who ride the largest waves in the world, “Woooeee, this is a wild ride!”</span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCd8RA0CbSJrZioMoAN2MpYBCoiMNultUyg_tBujB3IkivyuwA6wqCdEediCMW4LArBHNMFi7SbVwfew9PkMqLUagJGeHklmvtcXrxLnpexx-lWh3UWhX5OW-D6bvjGEd3wsAMG5uY2g/s1600/IMG_2298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCd8RA0CbSJrZioMoAN2MpYBCoiMNultUyg_tBujB3IkivyuwA6wqCdEediCMW4LArBHNMFi7SbVwfew9PkMqLUagJGeHklmvtcXrxLnpexx-lWh3UWhX5OW-D6bvjGEd3wsAMG5uY2g/s320/IMG_2298.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Michael Hofmann</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">This may seem impossible, but I know someone who had just
that sort of experience, a person just like you and me. A friend from
Bellingham was up hiking in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with several
other people, and a grizzly started following them one afternoon. All afternoon
it followed them, getting closer and closer. They had no weapons, and they were
going as fast as they could, with increasing terror. Finally they realized that
the grizzly was definitely going to catch up with them, in just a few minutes,
and at the bottom of a small hill they turned around and joined hands. One of
them started to sing, and so they stood there, waiting for the wave, singing
together. When the grizzly crested the hill, no more than 20 ft away from them,
my friend said that she was amazed at what she felt: not fear but awe. The
grizzly, with the light shining behind it, was the most beautiful thing she had
ever seen. They sang and she felt tears running down her face. The bear paused
there and they all regarded one another; then it turned around and walked away
from them. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">Here’s another story about riding the waves. I have a friend
who traveled on a Russian freighter from San Francisco to Asia, many years ago.
He was young, and had no idea what was going to happen next in his life. The
freighter left the Oakland docks at midnight, and the bay was full of fog and
waves. He remembers standing on deck as the freighter crossed under the Golden
Gate Bridge, and in the lights from the boat and the bridge he could see ducks
on the big swells and breakers as they came into the narrow channel of the
Golden Gate. The ducks were completely calm and at ease, bobbing up and down n
the dark with each enormous swell. All my friend’s fear and trepidation about
his life evaporated, and he says that the image of those ducks stayed with him
for decades, as he lived the uncertain and unconventional life of an itinerant
artist in Asia. The message he had understood was “You can trust
uncertainty.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ann shared an old poem with me, from 1947, written by Donald
Babcock, a philosophy professor, about a duck very like the ones my friend saw.
I’m going to read you a little bit of it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">… It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the
surf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">and she cuddles in the swells.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">There is a big heaving in the Atlantic and she is part of
it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">She looks a bit like a Mandarin or the Lord Buddha <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">meditating under the Bo tree,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">She can rest while the Atlantic heaves <o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">because she
rests IN the Atlantic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">Probably, she doesn’t know how large the ocean is …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"> And
neither do we…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"> And what does she do, I ask you?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">She sits down in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">She reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity …
which it is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">That is spirituality, and the duck has it!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">She has made herself a part of the boundless <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;">by easing
herself into it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"> just
where it touches her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">So this brings us to perhaps the most important question:
what about when the wave is too big for you to ride, when it knocks you over,
tumbles you, knocks the breath out of you? What about when you can’t find a way
ride the wave? What then? What do we do when the wave has pinned us to the sand
and every time we try to get up we get knocked down again?</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">I think being caught in a wave in one’s life is one of the
most humbling things around. All your ideas of yourself as a competent,
together adult just fall to pieces, and you are just in the raw reality of your
response, which may be very unimpressive. Being humbled is not such a bad
thing, actually. From a place of humility there is room for learning, and for
receiving. You have fallen, and those who love you carry you in their arms.
Those people who ride giant waves are supported by other surfers on jet skis,
who risk their own life in the waves by going in and rescuing a fallen friend.
Sometimes you can be the rescuer, sometimes you are rescued. Both roles are
important, both need the other. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">As part of exploring this question, I wanted to talk to
someone who really knew about waves, first-hand. I had a long chat with a
friend who is also a Zen priest, and a life-long fanatical surfer. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;"> What I realized,
talking with him, is that, to a surfer, every wave you ride makes you stronger,
makes the body wiser and more able to ride the next wave. A surfer rides the
waves with the body’s wisdom, not the mind’s. Surfers fall over and over again,
and get up and meet the next wave. Learning to ride the waves of life is like
that too. I want to tell the older people here that this is a place where age
and experience are a tremendous advantage. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">You might be surprised at the story of the genesis of
Outward Bound, the famous wilderness survival school. Outward Bound is a
nautical term for a ship leaving behind the safety of the harbor for the open
sea. The school was developed in the 1930s because it had been noticed that
when there was a shipwreck at sea, paradoxically the older, more experienced
sailors were more likely to survive than the younger, stronger sailors.
Apparently, with shipwrecks, as with many other things, practice matters. We
learn something each time we fall, each time we’re shipwrecked. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">Falling is not a mistake; it’s what we need to meet the next
wave, to build our capacity for uncertainty, for joy in the face of hardship,
for compassion, for resilience. We aren’t born with these qualities; they are
forged in the waves.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">And this is where I think compassion is the most important
thing: compassion for yourself if you have fallen, if the wave is too much for
you, and compassion for others, for the whole world, all of us caught in the
waves in one way or another.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">Take a moment to think about your own resources, your own
hard-earned life wisdom about how best to ride – or fall- in the waves....</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">I asked my friend the surfer/Zen guy about what it was like
when he got caught in a wave, and I thought he’d give me some deep wise Zen
answer. You know what he said? He said, when I’m caught in a wave, all there is
is fear. There’s no room for anything else, no time for big thoughts or nice
ideas (on second thought, maybe this really is a deep wise Zen answer). There
is just “Help!” and hardly even that. And this reminds me of the story about
ways to pray, that there are really only two kinds of prayer: Help, and Thank
You. And I would add perhaps, a third,
wordless prayer, from the story of my friend and the grizzly: awe.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">Finally, all waves have their end, subside into foam,
re-enter the sea. That terrible grief, that tremendous confusion, that
desperate love, eases, eventually, miraculously. Waves are impermanent, just as
we are. As solid and overwhelming as they can seem, they have their time and
then they change. We do too, whether we have ridden the wave or struggled in
the foam, our life carries us past and into new waters.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">I want to close with an inspiring quote from our old friend Henry David Thoreau: </span></div>
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: inherit;"><i>You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.</i></span></div>
Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3842329036518659708.post-84913006052342991802012-04-06T12:52:00.002-07:002012-04-06T13:03:24.766-07:00Big Waves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizIVusvgBKYexWM8hh-2Nf88UZGAL983dKL3xu34kMxKJAkXorNtbMs4Dox8J3dEcsw7yTLyQGtfku7FF2NIxWbOxv03Rcd1Ik_XUmudoisGWdXo2S-I7OIwea7ShIFRzwh7r7Rf87O2M/s1600/wave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizIVusvgBKYexWM8hh-2Nf88UZGAL983dKL3xu34kMxKJAkXorNtbMs4Dox8J3dEcsw7yTLyQGtfku7FF2NIxWbOxv03Rcd1Ik_XUmudoisGWdXo2S-I7OIwea7ShIFRzwh7r7Rf87O2M/s400/wave.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">Sometimes you are going along, living your daily life with all its small joys and small sorrows, and in a moment, in a split-second, everything changes. The earthquake, the tsunami, the moment of violence, one of the infinite forms of the shockingly unexpected breaks over you; your world pivots on its axis, and when you look up, your life is no longer what it was. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">Last Friday I was at Tennessee Valley Beach, north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, California. As you approach the beach through the gentle rolling hills that flank the valley, it looks placid, even a little dull. But at the last moment, where the path shifts to sand, the view opens up to magnificent, cormorant-strewn, awe-inspiring cliffs, as stark and uncompromising as the rugged cliffs of the Scottish Isles. I walked with a friend through the gray, foggy valley, and when we arrived at the beach, the waves were big, thundering up against the cliffs, the wind catching the crests and blowing the foam back like the manes of giant white horses. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE06wYk2Gxx_22CH0YaaZa_vPJD6WuPJkj26SWHt4BFZthsu4HqUv1NjxQ1hEitBbTR3SOb1Wque555xIV4mZkyGlOPMfURcLd2bm7kl1ve6Jc32euoRaK-IOWK16tsvkAxt42DPsxQwU/s1600/last+Friday_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE06wYk2Gxx_22CH0YaaZa_vPJD6WuPJkj26SWHt4BFZthsu4HqUv1NjxQ1hEitBbTR3SOb1Wque555xIV4mZkyGlOPMfURcLd2bm7kl1ve6Jc32euoRaK-IOWK16tsvkAxt42DPsxQwU/s400/last+Friday_2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Each wave had its own signature, as it encountered the coastline, each one shaped by wind and current into a unique form. I could have watched all afternoon, taking photographs of the beautiful meetings of rock and ocean. My friend wandered off toward the hills, and I stayed on the sloping beach twenty feet or so from the waves, camera in hand.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx1Ns-GPfRreseABR7PjIo_QP3pQIa5aPVYOzsqfpgfOfse64-wA7yvfhqCQxrBvO_mRNNXm5LckH5GH6Axh_P3lF_rrEcAAo-WMP2aOzk_KcEg_gGvHl_al7CXmSiRy4UnUZo1ORI7fI/s1600/IMG_3156.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx1Ns-GPfRreseABR7PjIo_QP3pQIa5aPVYOzsqfpgfOfse64-wA7yvfhqCQxrBvO_mRNNXm5LckH5GH6Axh_P3lF_rrEcAAo-WMP2aOzk_KcEg_gGvHl_al7CXmSiRy4UnUZo1ORI7fI/s400/IMG_3156.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">Then, in a moment, everything changed. A wave, one that seemed just like the others as it approached me, came on to the beach - and kept coming. I looked down and saw the line of foam coming my way, and then I turned and ran toward higher ground, laughing a little to myself. But the wave was faster than I was, and reached me just as I stepped into a patch of saturated sand that caught and held me as I sank into it. I fell to my knees, no longer laughing, and the wave came over the berm and surrounded me, filling up the lower area of the beach where I was. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">I scrambled up, holding my camera above the water, soaked to the waist and frightened, realizing that no one could see me on this part of the beach, and that I must find a way to get out of the water before the wave turned and headed back oceanward, carrying me with it. I made it to a higher area and then watched the water continue to fill where I had been, turning the moments-before bare sand beach into a swirling, deep pool. Then, as the wave retreated, its force was strong enough to erode the area where I stood, and I had to move still further away as the wave ate away at my refuge.<o:p></o:p></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/83/236562476_f765e07a97_z.jpg?zz=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/83/236562476_f765e07a97_z.jpg?zz=1" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo by Paphio, Flickr</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">Afterward I stood and watched the waves again, and they were as they had been before, breaking many feet away, acting just as one would expect waves to act. My friend returned and I explained what had happened, though it must have seemed unreal, a story from dream or nightmare. I had heard of "rogue waves," but had never really believed that people could be swept off beaches into the ocean by a wave they never saw before it engulfed them. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">We watched for a long time, and no wave came up the beach and over the berm again. I was wet but fine. Nothing much had happened, but my body knew that it had felt a moment where everything could have changed, when a great force meets an individual life and wrenches it, irrevocably, into a new story, or the end of the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">* * * *</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">I have another friend who spent years as a climbing guide in Nepal and South America, but later returned to his hometown (and mine) in Indiana. We try to have adventures together, every once in a while. Our best one was a few years ago, when we spent a joyous few days climbing together in Joshua Tree, sleeping out on big slabs of granite, walking the sandy washes, laughing and joking and eating camp food. My memories of that trip are still vivid and sweet. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_10FjOcV1IP_1Ke8ZarPrES1ZsWqtSUvtWqSx3Gziy2lonY8o0J-rx_DI9gMffc1fFa6M7VHZ5Ho4fLUS7nwdr3JjLLwM7jUes7KXsmTVsLiFMgjijc2q_L5SXDUzFyFEmxoMjAnPEbc/s1600/Hot+rock.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_10FjOcV1IP_1Ke8ZarPrES1ZsWqtSUvtWqSx3Gziy2lonY8o0J-rx_DI9gMffc1fFa6M7VHZ5Ho4fLUS7nwdr3JjLLwM7jUes7KXsmTVsLiFMgjijc2q_L5SXDUzFyFEmxoMjAnPEbc/s400/Hot+rock.JPG" width="291" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">Over the years I have tried to talk him into finding a way back to the mountains and wilderness, but until recently he could never figure out a way to make it happen. But, finally, over the last year, he had fallen in love with southern Colorado, and he was getting ready to move. I was so happy for him. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Although I didn't know it when I encountered the wave on the beach, that same morning my friend was attacked, caught in another kind of rogue wave. He was back in my hometown, working on his house, and he had been arguing with some teenage boys about littering in the alley. They had sworn at him and threatened to "get him." Later he saw them a block away, and several boys surrounded him. He fended off blows, and then one of the boys hit my friend in the face. He fell, knocked unconscious by an enormous, unexpected blow, the tsunami, the earthquake, the pivot. When he came to consciousness, blood everywhere, unable to see clearly, he saw the blurred form of the boys, running away, and laughing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">They had focused only on his face, using some kind of weapon - brass knuckles or something else. They had done enormous damage. It had been deliberate and violent, sadistic, intentional. He was rushed to the local hospital, and then to the trauma hospital an hour and a half away. A few days later he underwent face reconstruction surgery, more than eight hours on the table while three surgeons painstakingly rebuilt bone and cartilege. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">And my friend does not have insurance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">And the frightening "boys" who did such damage, and who laughed as they ran away, have not been arrested yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">I found out about the attack on Saturday, as I was preparing for a potluck birthday party - my own birthday party, as a matter of fact, a couple of days early. And I felt my life pivot too, with grief and sorrow. Suddenly a celebration no longer mattered, was no longer possible. I cried - for him, for everything that had changed with the attack, for a world where this is possible, for the strange fate that had brought him under those fists, in conjunction with those murderous boys, just as he was preparing for a new life. Every day these things happen to strangers in unfamiliar places, and we read about them in the newspaper, but I knew the exact place my friend had been attacked: I had grown up just a stone-throw away, played in the alley where he was surrounded, intimately know the houses and streets around him. I knew his face, his smile, his laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Always, when these things happen, there's a desperate longing to go back and make it happen differently: don't go down that alley, don't argue with those boys, don't stand on that beach. But time seems more irrevocable and implacable at these moments than it does in ordinary life. There is no going back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">I remember realizing, in my early twenties, that I tended to think of life as basically stable, and accidents or disasters as some kind of mistake, some wrongness intruding into the peace of "just living." But of course, disasters are as much part of life as any other moment, and just as inevitable. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">A few years ago I saw the documentary <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/ridinggiants/"><i>Riding Giants</i></a>, about the guys who ride the largest waves in the world. When everyone else retreats from the beach, these guys go and meet thirty-foot waves and launch themselves into them. There's no second-guessing and no turning back once they're committed. To turn back or hesitate is to be pulverized by the wave. <o:p></o:p></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4045/4360784494_007bf4b786_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4045/4360784494_007bf4b786_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Rick Bucich (Flickr) of Zach Wormhoudt, Maverick's Surf Competition 2010</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I was mesmerized by the film. At the time I saw it, I was grieving the violent death of a beloved cat, and struggling with a chronic illness, and I felt caught in the waves of my life, tumbled around, lost and gasping for air. But what I saw on the screen was a radically different approach: a willingness to play in the big waves that come our way, to ride them, to let their power carry us, to not turn away.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">Several days after the attack I had a chance to talk with my friend (amazed that he could talk at all, given his injuries) and I saw the same quality of willingness in him that I had seen in <i>Riding Giants:</i> he was riding the giant wave of what had happened to him, not fighting it, not being pulverized by it. Maybe it's due to all his years as a climber on the high peaks of the Himalayas, facing disaster with every rockfall and avalanche, but I heard not one whine from him in our conversation, and I was talking to a guy who had every reason to whine, every reason to be completely freaked out. But instead, he was clear and calm. He calmed <u>me</u>, which was a little bit embarrassing. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">At the end of our conversation I realized that I had my own story backwards. I had been feeling sorry for myself - all these disasters ruining my birthday - when actually I had been given the finest birthday present of all: my friend was alive.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">I think perhaps this is a big part of the reason that I practice Zen, sitting on a black cushion every morning in front of my altar, spending big chunks of my life in silent retreats. I want to learn to ride giants, to cultivate a mind steady enough to turn toward the wave, for myself and for others. When a surfer rides a really big wave, and gets caught, his only hope is to be rescued by his friends, who go in on a jet-ski, risking their own lives, to pull him out. They know the next time may be their turn. <o:p></o:p></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4038/4360907984_0000f26fa3_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4038/4360907984_0000f26fa3_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Rick Bucich (Flickr), Maverick's Surf Competition 2010 </td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">I'm not naturally very tough or very brave - not like my friend - but I figure that every moment that I can bear what's going on in my mind and body as I sit in silence, even if it's only a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit unbearable, I am cultivating a tiny bit more capacity for the waves. Maybe one day I too can ride giants, play in the rogue waves when they come rolling in, and learn to surf the big mysteries of life and loss and death. That's my wish, for myself and every one of us. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">And if it gets to be too much, I hope all of us have friends who can go in there with us, reach out a steady hand, and bring us to shore.</span></div>Florencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03049656800516421526noreply@blogger.com17