Students

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Waking early this morning I had an opportunity to experience the weather change from stillness to windy. Not a good day for a motorcycle ride, so I will stay home or nearby, paint perhaps, read perhaps, and practice Zazen on my cushion.



I’ve been writing about teachers lately, so perhaps it is an opportune time to write about students. How should a student relate to a teacher? What should a student do to be a student? What are the expectations of a student held by a teacher? How does one end a teacher/student relationship?



First, it is important to say from the outset that there are as many Buddhisms as there are teachers, centers, and temples. Each led by a teacher who has his or her understanding, often gained through years of practice with their teacher. So, any answer I might provide will, of necessity, be mine and my teacher’s, his teacher’s and so on. There are definite differences.



In Zen, there is a long history of teachers saying very little to their students. The expectation is that the teacher will provide a frame of practice where the student will discover their own answers to their questions. Any answer a teacher offers will be the teacher’s, not the students. To be authentic, which is one aim of our practice, one must look to oneself.



We should treat teachers with respect, but not as if they hold the answer. We should wrestle with our teachers, not necessarily directly, but rather in our heart/mind. My teacher often said and did things that sent me into orbit. How could a Zen teacher do or say such things as he so often did? This was my koan. And I chewed on it for a very long time.



I once asked another teacher to become my teacher. He asked if my teacher were dead. I said no. He refused. His point was, from his point of view, an authentic student/teacher relationship was lifelong. My desire to leave my teacher was for me to practice with. My reasons were mine and not my teacher’s. Until I got that, I mean really got that, I was a mess.



Today, too often teachers want to keep their students happy so they don’t leave the Center. So, they re-enforce what the student thinks is correct, do not challenge overmuch the student or his/her goals, and in the process do the student and the Way a great disservice.



A quick review of Buddhist magazines and advertisements for Dharma Centers suggest an effort to make themselves spas, or nearly so, kowtowing to the dollar, the self interest of potential and actual students, and making it something nearly egoistic to be a “Buddhist.” Frankly, the Buddhist magazines might as well be called “Self.” No wonder we in America are getting the reputation of being self-centered and increasingly irrelevant to the original aim of the Buddha himself, which is the extinction of self and the Bodhisattva ideal of selfless service to others.



I can therefore, understand the confusion of students who might come to our center where we have no frills and practice Zazen and the forms associated with it. Students must grapple with their underlying motives, must work to end their slavery to self, and be willing to engage in a disciplined process of self discovery leading to something quite unintended, a deep care and love for all beings.



We are an engaged Zen Order and most of us practice engaged Zen in our private lives. We might volunteer at the soup kitchen, sit in parks or at the courthouse, do hospice work, teach Zazen to children at Peace Camp or elders in retirement communities. As when I was a Child Abuse Unit supervisor who insisted my workers examined their feelings and assumptions about perpetrators, It is important for us engaged Zen practitioners to intimately know ourselves in order to be effective practitioners.



Be well.

On Teachers, Part Two

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Recently, I’ve been caught up in the questions of what it means to study Zen, what it means to become the student of a teacher, and what it means to train for the priesthood. These are important questions in the world of Zen. And they are challenging due to a variety of factors.



First, one does not “study” Zen. For Zen Buddhists, Zen is not a subject to be read about; it is a practice to be experienced. Reading too often fills student’s heads up with “ideas and concepts” and these actually get in the way of true study, which is the study of the Buddha Way, the study of the self. Yet, we read, as reading is what we Westerners do. We want to “know” something. We Google, go to Wiki, read books, journals, and magazines. We watch YouTube videos, movies, and documentaries. But the result is not true “knowing.” Such knowing is shallow and superficial; it can impress, but not sustain. True knowing is something else again. It is eating the watermelon, not describing it. It is riding the bicycle, not talking about it. When we study in Zen, it is to bring consonance between the inside and outside, to come to a unification of body, mind, and environment. As Master Dogen said, ‘to study the way is to study the self’ and in this study, the self falls away. This is as deep as it is dynamic, but it is also quite uncomfortable.



One does not walk into a Zendo and announce that he wants to become a priest and needs a teacher. This is both a complete misunderstanding of “priest” and hubris to boot. A Zendo is not a university and ordination is not graduation. I have found wannabe students to be of three types, broadly speaking: students who enter with eyes set on the credentials of robes and titles; those who approach with humility and deep respect, but still have an ideal in mind; and those who truly don’t know what they want or even why they are in a Zendo in the first place. These descend in terms of challenge. With the most authentic being the last.



The priesthood is not a vocation you train for as one might in a vocational college. It is not a credential. It is a life. Robes are not handed out to be chevrons on a sleeve or a set of letters behind a name. They do not elevate, in fact, they do the opposite. Being a priest is being a priest in a lifelong, complete, and total commitment to selfless service.



After coming to a Zendo, practicing for some time, a student may ask a teacher to create a formal teaching relationship. Please understand, this is not done lightly. Nor is it accepted lightly. It is a commitment to change your life. It is also a very different type of teacher/student relationship than most of us have ever encountered. It is not a friendship. It is not horizontal. In Zen, the teacher has the final word: accept it, chew on it, but don’t walk away from it. The teaching is there to help you, or insist that you let yourself drop away. This often requires intense scrutiny and uncomfortable self-examination. Defensiveness is the tell-tale heartbeat of ego.

Zen teachers can be gruff, funny, contradictory, unassuming, arrogant, compassionate, and dispassionate. But most of all, true Zen teachers care. What do they care about? Mostly about their students coming to a clear mind.

Be well

Everyday Zen

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



The Zen of everyday life: wake at 4:30 AM, make coffee, wash face, brush teeth, do laundry, put away books, wash dishes, sit Zazen in the courtyard, put away laundry…not necessarily in that order. Someone asked , “How do we take the cushion with us?”



In a text conversation with Soku Shin last night (she’s in El Paso to lead the Sunday service there) we talked about Zazen and being. We came to the conclusion that Zazen and being were one and that to take it off the cushion was a sort of ‘being in action.’ The cushion is a metaphor for our state of mind through the day.



So, as I go through my morning tasks, I go through them as directly as possible, letting non-task related thoughts fall away and returning to the task at hand. This is what we mean when we say, “just” in front of something like sitting, walking, or doing samu.



We sometimes call this ‘mindfulness,’ but I believe mindfulness can also be a trap as it often creates a dualism between subject and object. This dualism can be resolved by dropping the “I” in the mindful statements we often recite as ‘mindfulness practice.’ There is no “I” picking up the cup, for example, just awareness. We practice Zazen (or being) in motion to release our ‘self’ as we go through our day.



Now to fold and hang my just finished laundry.



Be well.

On Coffee Cups

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Sitting outside in the courtyard this morning was refreshing. It was 39 degrees and the sky was clear. I sat on a Mexican blanket folded in quarters. The patio is split level, so I put the blanket on one level, sat down and placed my feet on the lower level. I find with my back pain this is helpful. The sky was clear and the stars were bright. My heart opened and I sat with myself until myself decided to leave. What remained I do not know.



One of my students is struggling with the principle of “not knowing.” Many, if not most of us, struggle with this. Our culture places such a high value on “knowing.” We cannot get into college or graduate school without knowing, nor can we get a good paying job without knowing something, but this is not what “not knowing” is about.



Not knowing places its focus on seeing. When we look at something or encounter something we too often don’t ask what it is, we assume we know what it is. This assumption literally gets in the way of truly knowing it. To know something we must see it for what it is. Looking for something assumes we know what we are looking for and it is this picture in our mind’s eye that gets in our way of actually seeing something.



If looking at the coffee cup on my desk and I say it’s a coffee cup I would be correct and incorrect at the same time. Of course it’s a coffee cup. There is coffee in it. Yet “coffee cup” is just a label that tells us nothing about the true nature of the cup itself. What is it we see? Do we see the clay from the earth and the potter’s hands as she threw the cup on her wheel? Do we see the water and its source that made the clay more fluid? Do we see the many hands and many lives that brought us the cup? Labels, knowing a cup is a cup, do not do this for us. Only looking deeply as we touch the cup in our hands do we know a cup is not a cup, but the whole universe. In this, we are not knowing, as that which is the entire universe ceases to have any separation at all and it is in separating that arises what we call knowing.



When we come to things with a “don’t know” mind we offer them an opportunity to speak for themselves without our opinions thrust upon them as a dress over a woman’s body or a suit of clothes on a man. It is refreshing indeed.



Be well

Teachers

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



This morning I sat on my living room floor amid my teacher’s artifacts. His robes, papers, books and boxes of incense surrounded me. I found the guest book from his Dharma Mountain Zendo where I first met him is December of 1994. I felt so alone with my memories of him. He had an imposing demeanor, tall, bald-headed, and robed, Hogaku-roshi worked hard to bring the dharma to his students. In his work with me I loved him, hated him, chewed him up and spit him out and he did the same with me. Together we struggled to know our truth.



I am now alone, his Dharma successor, and charged with the task that his teacher, Matsuoka-roshi, gave to him. It is a heavy load and I feel it in my bones. It feels like an onerous task.



A Zen teacher is alone. He or she must rely on his or her practice. It must be strong, yet fluid. Like water surrounding a root, the student and teacher must consume themselves. At some point there is no wood and the water is now enriched. Water flowing in the stream.



I will be the water and the root.



Be well.

Free & Easy

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



It is a Sunday morning and I woke at the late hour of 5:00 AM. I sat outside in the courtyard for 30 minutes paying attention to the morning starlit sky, my breath, and our two small dogs, Binky and Suki, as they sat with me. Attending to the moments as they arose and fell away I felt myself doing the same: Arising, attending, and falling away. Right Effort, one of the eightfold noble paths, requires concentrated effort on the task at hand; not too much, not too little, but something in the middle. This something is non-grasping.



What does it mean not to grasp? It means letting yourself be supple. We want, we need, but we do not hold tightly to these desires. We go in the direction of our goal, but are not alarmed when we either do not reach it or start to deviate from it’s accomplishment. We make easy adjustments in our relationship to it. When we cannot, we are said to be “stuck.” Rigidity is an anathema to the Middle way.



As we go through our day, develop goals, have opinions, and so forth, we practice letting go. We practice developing an attitude where our mind is free and easy, as the tenth ox-herding picture depicts. This has been my practice for over 40 years ever since I was wounded in action in Vietnam and my body permanently limited. Life presents us with daily koans. We must practice to resolve them and the best way to do this is to relax our attitudes, ideas, and opinions about our goals and the people, places, and things in our lives. This is why a moment to moment practice is so important.



We will practice Zazen at 10:00 AM this morning. Everyone is welcome to join us.



Be well.

Romancing Zen

With palms together,


Good Afternoon Everyone,



At 58 degrees, the early morning air is approaching cold for us here in southern New Mexico. It is 3:30 and I am awake reading email after sitting Zazen in the courtyard under the stars. One of my students wrote to me about Brad Warner having just discovered this rather unique Zenster. He asked if Zen were not “supposed” to be a personal practice and whether the precepts are to be personally understood.



My student’s confusion is a common one as he, like many others, brings an assumption to what he studies as regards what Zen is “supposed” to be. In an earlier discussion with one of my disciples today, I quipped, “D. T. Suzuki did a lot of damage to Zen while he popularized it.” I say this because I think Suzuki’s work romanticized Zen for an American audience who, at the time, had a view of the East as something mystical and inscrutable. Alan Watts, ever fond of Suzuki’s thoughts, continued to popularize the koan/satori inscrutability flames that tickled the Beat Zen generation.



My student gains his idea of Zen from what he reads rather than from his practice. Again, a common error in the West. We like to read about something and replace, as a result, intellectual understanding for realization. We like to watch movies or T.V. shows and enter these as if we were living them. We are informed through this near visceral experience and believe our understanding is the same as actual realization. While books and other media often bring us to Zen practice the truth is this: Zen is nothing special. It is not an “understanding” or a “feeling.” Zen is not a bromide. It is not a path to health, well-being, or anything else. True Zen practice is absolutely without a goal.



In fukenzazengi, Master Dogen says we should just sit down, take up the posture of the buddhas and ancestors, and reside there. It is in this posture that we are awake. Sitting upright with hands in the cosmic mudra, letting thoughts and feeling come and go, is practice-realization. There are no “supposed to” aspects of this practice. There is only the direct experience, unadulterated by thoughts and feelings, of what is right there in front of us. Entering what is there without holding onto it is our way.



We will practice this thousands of years old practice Sunday at 10:00 AM. Please consider joining us.



Be well.