Government

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Be forewarned: What follows is a political statement from an avowed liberal.



This morning I woke thinking about my country. Sleep is a wonderful nurturance. In the Soto Zen Sutra book there is a chant called the Gokan No Ge and we recite it as part of oryoki, (eating meditation). One of the lines says that we are eating “for our parents, teachers, leaders, and homeland,” these are the four benefactors. (As an aside, I have noticed that many centers drop the actual list of benefactors in favor of simply saying, ‘the four benefactors.’) I suppose patriotism is a bit of a problem when our practice is to open ourselves to the universality of all things. Still, it is important, I think, to keep in mind what frees us and what retains us. The United States, as far as I am aware, was founded for the sake of freedom, in response to tyranny, and has made freedom its abiding and deeply held creed since its inception.



Conservatives seem to struggle with this. On the one hand, they want government off our backs. They seek less governance, less regulation, and fewer social programs, i.e., no more Obamacare. On the other hand, they want a more authoritarian government, government overseeing and regulating personal moral conduct, and a strong military and police to enforce law and order, i.e., laws to “protect” heterosexual marriage, laws against sexual conduct between consenting adults, laws against a right to privacy, etc. When looked at closely, it seems less governance of business is good and less governance of individual citizens is bad.



The religious right has a part to play in this. I have noticed conservatives do not seem to trust human beings. Hence, the need for criminalizing certain private, consenting, human behaviors. I believe this comes from a strong affiliation with the Christian right which puts forth the toxic notion that human beings are inherently sinful, and therefore, need a strong and wrathful God (read government) to bring them into line.



All of this points to the need for a separation of church and state and clear lines regarding the reach of government. Religious leaders running for office have a special duty, it seems to me, to be clear about their motives and whether they are actually capable of being objective in their governance.



A case in point: the newly elected Governor of Alabama, a Deacon in his church, a conservative born again Christian, who just after his inauguration proclaimed his belief that anyone not born again in Jesus Christ was not his brother or sister. For a government official to proclaim a division between those who believe and those who do not is disturbing. What’s more, the self-righteous arrogance behind such thinking, is what makes that faith tradition a tradition to closely watch.



I believe Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, New Agers, Tree Huggers, and everyone else has the right to practice their faith tradition, but that rights stop at their door and have no business entering my door unless invited, even if it is a tenant of their faith to attempt to convert the entire world.



Politicians with beliefs residing in faith traditions that require efforts to witness for the sake of conversion ought consider a different line of work. They cannot be impartial and will, sooner or later, allow their beliefs to color their judgment regarding lawmaking for the common good. Oppression is oppression even in the name of saving us from ourselves.



Be well.

Healthcare: Whatr's the Issue?

With palms together,




Good Afternoon Everyone,







This afternoon, after yoga, I decided to read the Healthcare Reform Law, since the Republican controlled House decided to vote to repeal it today. Just what is all the fuss about?







My read of the law suggests that it is rather straightforward. It protects people from being dropped, protects children (and later, adults) from being denied due to pre-existing conditions, and creates a framework for everyone in the United States to be covered by health insurance. For the life of me, I cannot see what the argument against it might be.







I suppose, as I read in some blogs, it might appear to be socialized medicine. So? Private care has not stepped up to the plate and, frankly, service at physicians offices and hospitals could use a good overhaul.







My reading suggests the law will reduce the federal deficit and this is a bad thing?







As Zen Buddhists we vow to do good for others. It seems to me, there can be no greater good than our health. A society that does not care for its children, its aged, and its infirm is a society that lacks compassion, is shortsighted, and is doomed to fail.







Here are the major points. I am very interested in this topic and why people seem so opposed to healthcare for everyone.







For those of you against healthcare reform, please indicate which ought be repealed and why? (excerpted from CBS News)



Coverage:



Would expand coverage to 32 million Americans who are currently uninsured.

Health Insurance Exchanges:



The uninsured and self-employed would be able to purchase insurance through state-based exchanges with subsidies available to individuals and families with income between the 133 percent and 400 percent of poverty level.

Separate exchanges would be created for small businesses to purchase coverage -- effective 2014.

Funding available to states to establish exchanges within one year of enactment and until January 1, 2015.

Subsidies:



Individuals and families who make between 100 percent - 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and want to purchase their own health insurance on an exchange are eligible for subsidies. They cannot be eligible for Medicare, Medicaid and cannot be covered by an employer. Eligible buyers receive premium credits and there is a cap for how much they have to contribute to their premiums on a sliding scale.

Federal Poverty Level for family of four is $22,050







Paying for the Plan:



Medicare Payroll tax on investment income -- Starting in 2012, the Medicare Payroll Tax will be expanded to include unearned income. That will be a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for families making more than $250,000 per year ($200,000 for individuals).

Excise Tax -- Beginning in 2018, insurance companies will pay a 40 percent excise tax on so-called "Cadillac" high-end insurance plans worth over $27,500 for families ($10,200 for individuals). Dental and vision plans are exempt and will not be counted in the total cost of a family's plan.

Tanning Tax -- 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services.

Medicare:



Closes the Medicare prescription drug "donut hole" by 2020. Seniors who hit the donut hole by 2010 will receive a $250 rebate.



Beginning in 2011, seniors in the gap will receive a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs. The bill also includes $500 billion in Medicare cuts over the next decade.

Medicaid:



Expands Medicaid to include 133 percent of federal poverty level which is $29,327 for a family of four.



Requires states to expand Medicaid to include childless adults starting in 2014.



Federal Government pays 100 percent of costs for covering newly eligible individuals through 2016.



Illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid.

Insurance Reforms:



Six months after enactment, insurance companies could no longer denying children coverage based on a preexisting condition.



Starting in 2014, insurance companies cannot deny coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions.



Insurance companies must allow children to stay on their parent's insurance plans until age 26th.

Abortion:



The bill segregates private insurance premium funds from taxpayer funds. Individuals would have to pay for abortion coverage by making two separate payments, private funds would have to be kept in a separate account from federal and taxpayer funds.

No health care plan would be required to offer abortion coverage. States could pass legislation choosing to opt out of offering abortion coverage through the exchange.

**Separately, anti-abortion Democrats worked out language with the White House on an executive order that would state that no federal funds can be used to pay for abortions except in the case of rape, incest or health of the mother.









Individual Mandate:



In 2014, everyone must purchase health insurance or face a $695 annual fine. There are some exceptions for low-income people.

Employer Mandate:



Technically, there is no employer mandate. Employers with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a fine of $2000 per worker each year if any worker receives federal subsidies to purchase health insurance. Fines applied to entire number of employees minus some allowances.

Immigration:



Illegal immigrants will not be allowed to buy health insurance in the exchanges -- even if they pay completely with their own money.

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Re-birth

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,



It is late in the morning already. There is something about being cradled by your partner that is arresting. In such a position, it is best to release one’s grip on schedule and relax into it. Such good practice.



My colleague, Jue Miao Jing Ming, is working on his message regarding re-incarnation for the Zen Living list at Yahoogroups.com. In the meantime he has asked me for my thoughts regarding a book which explores past-life regression. While I have not read the particular text, I have read several excerpts and reviews, but more to the point, have some experiential understanding of the phenomena.



Similar to near death or death resuscitation experiences, past life regression stories are anecdotal evidence. Assuming the individuals are not being guided,, they are simply reporting what their brain is telling them. Our brains are totally unreliable organizers of sense data. Our brains rush to place data in categories. We see this in experiments where subjects read texts with missing letters and are able to make perfect sense of them. Our brain fills in the gaps according to pathways that have been developed. When our brain does not know what to do with particular data, it makes up something that allows the data to make sense to us.



So, under hypnosis, what is happening? Are we actually touching a “past life”? Or are we adding to a sensory data array a frame within which to place the data so that it makes a degree of sense to us?



Trusting a memory can be dangerous. Memories are constructions, like all other thoughts. Three people witness an accident and three versions are described. Someone, a crime victim, just “knows” a particular person did something, only to discover they were in another state at the time. People have used memories of abuse to charge alleged perpetrators only to discover the alleged perpetrator was not, actually, the perpetrator at all. Memories can be, and are, manipulated.



So, does a memory of a past life mean anything? Does it offer any sort of evidence that re-incarnation is an actuality? Maybe, maybe not. I rather think that these things point to other explanations such as a potent connection with all life, a sort of genetic memory, if you will, and not a memory of a single soul migrating through time.



From a Zen perspective, all time is in all being; being and time are not two, but one. So, too, all things. The Buddha’s memories of past lives, memories of animal existence, etc., are, in my opinion, expressions of present moment, deeply interconnected, manifestations of the oneness of life. “My” Buddha-nature is not separate from “yours.” There is no mine or yours, there is just Buddha Nature.



Be well.

Re-Birth

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,



Recently, we decided to begin an educational exchange series on our Zen Living email list. My morning post is my position on our Order’s understanding of “Re-incarnation.”



The Soto School of Zen typically does not use the term, “re-incarnation,” but rather, chooses the word, “re-birth” to refer to continuation of life in the eternal flow of living and dying. To re-incarnate would mean a transmigration of a unique individual’s ego or ‘essence’ into another form after death. We hold to the Buddha’s teaching that there is no such thing, that there is no “soul” that survives after death as a manifestation of a unique individual. I quote Kennett-roshi, Founding Abbess of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives,



“A new being is neither absolutely the same as its predecessor (since the composition is not identical) nor entirely different, being the same stream of life-force which, like electric current, can be tapped when a new bulb is plugged in…so with re-birth there is a continuity of a life force which manifests itself in birth and seems invisible in death; just that and nothing more.”



So, Re-birth, on the other hand, means life as life itself continues as a river continues along its path. The matter and energy that once was a person re-enters the whole and becomes part of the whole re-manifesting in whatever ways it might. There is no conscious choice in this process, only process itself, or ‘flow’ if you will.



Our unique sentience is ours in this moment and, at death, ends forever as “our” unique awareness. That which we were composed of comes apart, the aggregates fall away, and “we” as a “I” are no more. But then again, we as an I never really were, were we? The “I” of us is an illusion created by a physical brain which perceives itself and needs a name.



As a river of life flows past a sentient viewer is the river the same or different at any given moment in time? It is both. It is river flowing. Living and dying are the same. We are river.



So, where does karma fit in?



Let’s suppose the river we are thinking of has the conscious capacity to engage its banks. It might chose at some point to change this or that aspect of a bank. The river flowing before it and the river flowing after it will be the same, yet will have changed as well. Perhaps it will be cleaner; perhaps more polluted. Any change in a system creates changes in all of its sub-systems: this is karma, impersonal cause and effect, but in your face. A wider view reveals the whole: it is still river flowing.

Again, Kennett-roshi:



"re-birth must be distinguished from re-incarnation or transmigration since an unchanging or eternal soul is non-existent; since there is no "I" to think, there is nothing to be reborn."



Awakening, then, is our complete and total realization of this and our total acceptance of it.



Be well.

Words

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,

Mark, on our Zen Living list, wrote to ask why we don’t use our native language in Zen rather than foreign words.



Very good question and one often asked. He framed his question with this:



“To me the words, regardless of the language, are only labels we place on reality and not actually reality. Who was it that said, "The teaching that is spoken is not the true teaching"? The fullness of sitting for meditation cannot be described in any words that I have heard or read, yet it can be experienced.”





I do not exactly disagree. In fact, I agree with Mark. Words are, indeed, just labels. So, then, as such, should it matter which words we use? Actually no, so there may be something else going on, something under this question. Or some other reason for using one word over another.



Is it that we do not like foreign words? Is it that we resist learning new words? Is it a resistance to difference itself or to the fact there is a Teacher offering this new language? Is it a veiled attack on tradition? I don’t know and as long as the subtext is not revealed, I really don’t care to address it.



So, setting the aim of the question aside, we might consider how some words just are better as they are. Dharma is a good example of this. What is Dharma? Do we have an English equivalent? Is it teaching? Scripture? Truth? Reality? Or all of that.



We could use a string of words that get us to the sense of the word, but that would be cumbersome. Why not use the word of the buddhas and ancestors before us? To paraphrase what Master Dogen said about the practice of Zazen, or Suzuki-roshi said about wearing his robes, 'its just what we do.'





As founder of a Zen Buddhist Order I selected certain liturgical pieces to be chanted in their original for two reasons. First, they are a serious and direct connection to our ancestors, a lineage going back to the Buddha himself. Second, they are often far richer than the English equivalents. Take the phrase "sei gon," for example, in the Four Great Vows. It has the meaning of prayerful vow, but not prayer in the sense of supplication. Rather, prayer in the sense of unification with the aim of the vow. A lot of words when "sei gon" will do nicely, and, at the same time, using it connect us to other practitioners worldwide.





Mark also suggested that perhaps there was a mystical reason for the use of certain words, that certain words might be believed to have spiritual power. I think it is less the definition of the words than their sound, cadence, and resonance that makes them "mystical." And if some believe them to be mystical, powerful, or otherwise avenues to awakening, so? Who are we to argue they are not? Perhaps we would do well to regain a little sense of the mystical in our lives.





Our world has been denuded, so to speak, of its living nature, that nature I perceive to be spiritual . When parks are just tracts of land to be developed, or food wrapped in plastic in grocery stores is not recognized for its source, or words are just words, we have lost something very important.





Yours,

What is Zen?

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,



Yesterday was a day full of goodness. Zazenkai was very special to me as my partner, Kathryn Soku Shin, took the precepts with her teacher, Rev. Bobby Kankin Byrd. It was also a delight to witness Michael Inmo Dretcsh, an Army Neuropsychologist, do the same. We were very pleased that my Teacher, Rev. Hogaku Shozen McGuire-roshi and his partner, Rev. Shin Getsu McGuire-roshi were in attendance for the ceremonials, as well. The day was spent in Zazen, but was interspersed with experiencing the film, “Zen”, the story of Master Dogen.



So much of what we do today in Soto Zen are directly traceable to this authentic and courageous seeker of the Way. Dogen’s Zen was clear and direct. Sit. Practice. Let body and mind fall away. So simple, yet so challenging.



We, in the Order of Clear Mind Zen, seek to follow him, not imitate him. His Zen was his moment’s Zen, meeting directly the requirements of his time and place. He went to China, found his true Master, got his own realization, and then worked tirelessly to fashion a Zen practice for his Japanese students.



We do the Master no great service by practicing Zen in the same way and in the same detail as do the Japanese. This is not authentic. It is a copy.



Masters like Dogen, Homeless Kodo Sawaki, Uchiyama, Senzaki, and Matsuoka took their Zen out of the cathedral and theatre and made it living. To do this takes courage, but more, it takes a willingness to look deeply inside to discover our own true nature and find fresh and relevant ways to express it.



Such a search does not mean we have carte blanche to change everything. Zen is still Zazen. Practice is a disciplined activity, not a choice to do or not do. It is everything else that is at the heart of the matter. I read a comment on someone’s blog the other day, it smacked of the sort of attitude and understanding I abhor. The commentator was happy to see that another Zen teacher, a rebellious sort, finally “learned how to wear his kesa.”



This person does not know a thing about the practice. He knows what others do, he knows what others teach, but apparently he pays attention to the finger, losing the moon entirely.



We wrap ourselves in the Buddha’s teaching. A robe of patches, originally taken from corpses, washed and died, an offering from the dead to the living, and it really matters so awfully much that it is folded this way, or tied that way? I am grateful that he wears the robe and offers himself in service to others.



We must find our way. Forms are important, doing them properly is also important, but imitation, as they say, is the poorest form of flattery. Why? Because our heart is not in it. It is not our authentic presentation of ourselves. It is such a presentation that is Zen.



Be well.

Notes

With palms together,




Good Morning Everyone,







Two notes:







Tomorrow we will host Both Sides/No Sides Zen Sangha's Zazenkai and Jukai ceremonies. Rev. Bobby Kankin Byrd will lead the Zazenkai and his students, Kathryn Soku Shin Masaryk and Mike Dretsch will receive the precepts at 4:30. This event includes Oryoki lunch.







Please consider joining us for all or part of the day, but let me know if you are attending so that we can get an accurate count for lunch.









Today at Clear Mind Zen Temple: We will practice Contemplative Yoga at 3:00 PM, our Zen Dicussion group will meet at 4:00 PM, and we will practice Zazen at 5:30 PM.