What Do You See?

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Today I will drive up to the Refuge. I look forward to this drive, as well as to getting there. The drive across the desert from the city is really beautiful. The desert can be very subtle. The colors are so muted and because the sky is so large and unimpeded, a very different scale of relative size is present. People coming here for the first time often just see vast expanses of brown. I know I did. But then, as time goes by and our senses acclimate to the place, we begin to really "see" the desert for the first time.

Such is life. We often see in gross terms and only later see the details and nuances that enrich our lives. It is our practice to make the distance between the gross and the subtle non-existent.

Be well.

Bearing Witness

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Bearing witness is a challenging practice. Many do not wish to see witnesses, few wish to be reminded of things past. Witnesses become our consciences and how many of us truly appreciate that voice in our ear? We assign motives to the witnesses, we can even grow to despise them. We confuse the witness with the event itself and akin to the messinger, want to kill the witness.

To bear witness under these conditions becomes a strength building practice and an important practice in itself.

Yesterday at the weekly Peace Vigil, I sat quietly on my cushion on the sidewalk. The sun was very hot and my robes offered protection from the burning rays, but also allowed the air under them to heat. Zen priest sauna.

I listened as the birds chatter in the trees of the courthouse courtyard. I listened to someone tell the story that earlier in the war, counter-protesters were across the street. One person set up a sign a few blocks away that read, "Terrorists Ahead, Fire at Will!"

The witness, in the end, must simply be present. Rather like being with a very sick person or someone who is dying. We are just present and that presence is, in itself, healing.

In this presence, however, our inclination is to want to 'do something' as if our mere presence as a witness is not enough. Resist this temptation. Listen to your mind as you are sitting as witness. Watch the mental flow, the feelings arise and fall, give them nothing.

When we witness this way we are most effective. We are just peace. We are just compassion. Nothing else.

Be well.

For those who could not access the newspaper article, here it is, without photo.

Holiday honors sacrifice of Las Cruces residents, veterans
BY STEVE RAMIREZ FOR THE DAILY NEWS
May 30, 2006, 04:30 pm

Harvey So Daiho Hilbert-roshi, a Zen Buddhist priest, sat quietly behind the crowd and meditated Monday at the Las Cruces Veterans Memorial Park.
Hilbert-roshi prayed for peace, but was also at the park to support his fellow veterans. He is a Vietnam veteran who, like many war veterans, has his own inner demons to wrestle with.

Monday was 40 years to the day that Hilbert-roshi was shot in the head when North Vietnamese troops overran the town of Pleiku, in the central highland region. Hilbert-roshi was then serving with U.S. Army's 25th Infantry.
"I lost most the people in my company that day," said Hilbert-roshi, a scar across his head a permanent reminder of the attack. "I'm one of the few people who can say I've reached up, been actually able to touch my brain."
Pleiku was strategically important during the Vietnam War because of the presence of U.S. military air bases. The town is at the junction of several highways, including a northern road to Kontum and a highway west to Harvey So Daiho Hilbert-roshi, of the Zen Center of Las Cruces, practices zazen, sitting meditation, at the Memorial Day services held at the Veterans Memorial Park. (Sun-News photo by Shari Vialpando) Cambodia. Hilbert-roshi suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he said past Memorial Days have been hard.
"For me, Memorial Day has evolved," he said. "For many years it was one of great pain and suffering. But I would rather look at remembering it now where we must find a way to live peacefully. We must live in all this violence."
Hilbert-roshi said he didn't go to Veterans Memorial Park to create a disturbance or to protest Memorial Day.
"I have no agenda," he said. "I came out here to show my support for my honored friends."
Hilbert-roshi is one of three Zen Buddhist priests at the Zen Center of Las Cruces. He intends to continue attending public ceremonies for veterans as long as he has enough advance notice.
Hundreds of Las Cruces residents attended three Memorial Day ceremonies conducted at the Rio Grande, Hillcrest Memorial Gardens cemetery, and Veterans Memorial Park. From one ceremony to the next, the emphasis was the respect veterans have earned.
"The price for freedom is not free," Mayor Bill Mattiace said at the Veterans Park ceremony. "Our founding fathers prioritized our freedoms -- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, as precious as life is, your liberty and mine was purchased with the blood of patriots. And as we have learned, war is the business of youth and early middle age."
Larry Candelaria, commander of American Legion Post 10 in Las Cruces and State Vice Commander of the American Legion, said Memorial Day is much more than a day off from work, or backyard barbecues.
"Do some non-veterans really recognize the importance of the day honoring their fellow Americans killed in war," Candelaria said in comments he made at Veterans Park. "Judging from what Memorial Day has become -- simply another day off from work -- the answer it seems is sadly no.' Perhaps a reminder is due, then. And it is the duty of each and every veteran and their families to relay the message.
"Sacrifice is meaningless without remembrance. America's collective consciousness demands that all citizens recall and be aware of the deaths of their fellow countrymen during wartime."
Yvonne Lewis a member of the Mississippi National Guard who is originally from Las Cruces, took time Monday to show her love and respect for a highly-decorated U.S. Marine, her father, Juan G. Evaro, who served in the Korean War.
"Services like this are wonderful," Lewis said after she placed a wreath into the Rio Grande in memory of her father. "My dad was a good man. He was one of the most patriotic men I've ever met. My father just loved the military, and taught us to appreciate the military. He would've loved this."
Lewis was among 12 people, mostly women, who placed wreaths into the river during ceremonies there that were sponsored by District III of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Since Memorial Day 1983, riverside services have been conducted on the west bank of the Rio Grande every year.
At Hillcrest, Clara Hoffer and her daughter Peggy Hoffer visited the grave of their husband and father, Army veteran Arthur Hoffer, who died Nov. 13, 2005. Hoffer's grave was among the approximate 400 graves at Hillcrest that were decorated with small American flags.
"I'm leaving (today) to go back to South Dakota for a month, where I'm originally from," Clara Hoffer said as tears began to well in eyes. "This will be the first trip I'll be making without him."
Hoffer said she "had to" visit the side-by-side graves of her husband and daughter, Jacqueline Rae (Hoffer) Smith, who died May 4, 2004. "I was thinking on the way here how they always played spoons. They were always fighting over the last spoon. It made me wonder, are they fighting over that last spoon in heaven."
Arthur Hoffer served in World War II burying Holocaust victims. Peggy Hoffer said her father rarely told his children about his war experiences.
"There were photo albums he hid from us," Peggy Hoffer said. "Whenever we asked him about it all he would say was those pictures tell you everything.'"
Clara Hoffer still has vivid memories of her four brothers serving in World War II.
"My job every Sunday was to write to all four of them," Hoffer said. "I still remember my mother walking the floor all night, praying, praying. She remembered the couple who lived nearby. They had five sons in the Navy and lost them all."
Steve Ramirez can be reached at sramirez@lcsun-news.com

A Stolen Buddha is a Lesson

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

There was a story in the local newspaper this morning about a statue of the Buddha being recovered after it was stolen. The last paragraph reads "...Buddhists also believe in karma, which says a person's actions in this life determine the quality of their existence in the next."

Yes and no.

This is an example of how language and culturally infused meanings become problematic. Buddhists also "believe" that there is no soul, no substance, that transmigrates from one life to another. Thus, a contradiction.

Buddhists also "believe" there is no birth and no death. Therefore no this life, no next life. Another contradiction.

What are we to do? A Zen Teacher would shout:

Practice Zazen. See your true nature for yourself. Look deeply into the heart of the matter!

We Americans hate this sort of thing! We want to *know* and we want to know NOW!

Otherwise the Teacher is not teaching and the whole thing is just tooooo mysterious! (Or better still, *esoteric*)

To borrow a short, but succinct word from another tradition, "Oy!"

Here's the thing. Lives are constant, there are no breaks between them. I am "born" from cells developed in my mother's uterus, my cells merge with another's cells to form another being that individuates and is "born" and so on. There is no point where I am or was not. We get stuck when we use "I" as a point of reference rather than the universe at large. When seen from the larger, universal perspective, life is organically rising and falling and rising again: always at all times. In this process of rising and falling, the parts have roles to play.

As parts of this universal process we can make our universe a better place or a worse place for all of the other parts. Since we are all constant parts of this one vast universal process, parts past and parts present, we are rendering karma.

We are way too egocentric to see this without much practice. Those living in the Far East on the other hand have grown up with a more universal and collective understanding of their existence with much less emphasis on the individual "part."

Isn't life interesting?

Be well.

Memorial Day

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Do those killed in battle need company? Is it our way to honor soldiers killed in combat to send more in after them? How should we best make homage to those who defend us? Do we need defending? When? At what point?

As you go through your day today, off from work, perhaps, please pay attention to these questions. They are central to this day in the United States.

Cooking on a grill does nothing for this; drinking beer does nothing for this; waving a flag and watching a parade does nothing for this.

We Americans are not very good at reflection, nor are we particularly good thinkers. We are far too emotional for that. We live with the hash marks of real or imagined injury on our sleeves and use them to justify our knee-jerk responses to complex problems. Sad.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance. What we should be focusing on is the complete and total waste of lives war offers us. Rather than rallying around the troops, giving the government carte blanche to spend our future to support corporations making huge profits on the lives of others, I would suggest we consider alternatives.

Today I plan to sit Zazen at the veteran's park on Roadrunner. I will be there at 10:00AM. Please join me if you can.

Be well.

Nothing Holy

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Throughout most of the day yesterday I burnt incense. I sat Zazen off and on throughout the day and late last night.

My mother is in the hospital and was told she does not have long to live.

What does one do with such news. Her lungs and heart are very weak and not functioning very well. She has decided against heroic measures, claiming she is ready to die. We talked a couple of times at length about everything. She has made her peace.

We are neither born nor do we die. We neither come nor do we go. In truth, there is no "we" in such matters. These are all just constructs of a mind hardwired to see linear events discreetly. Yet, as Master Bodhidharma once answered, "Vast emptiness. Nothing holy."

We should add, nothing profane.

Profane and sacred are one, just as life and death are one. In this sense, the ancient Hebrews had it dead-on:

Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echud! (The Lord our God, the Lord is One).

What we do with such news is we live.

Be well.

Stay Small

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Simple tasks make all the difference. Sip coffee. Sit quietly. Water a plant. Avoid stepping on an ant. When we stay small we stay awake.

Keep this in mind.

Be well.