August 29

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



Yesterday was a wonderful day. Soku Shin entered the Order as a Novitiate Priest, the service and ceremony was extremely well attended (Soku Shin and I had to sit Zazen in the outer room!). We then went to lunch at the Village Inn and after that several folks came to the residence for coffee. The last person left at about 4ish and we were plain tuckered out. We watched a few episodes of “Saving Grace” on our DVD player (we do not have a TV) and sipped some wine.



Sometimes certain events just find a place in your heart, you know. Unsui and Shukke Tokudo are such moments. These are ceremonies where one takes lifelong vows, a very serious commitment. Soku Shin mentioned to me that speaking these vows aloud in a public ceremony was very moving. It is, indeed. To enter the priesthood is to leave service to the self and travel a path of service to the universe. All personal things must drop away. One must open one’s heart and take residence in the suffering of others.



In the “Saving Grace” episode we watched there was a father who dowsed his child with gasoline and lit him on fire. The father was vilified by all but “Earl,” the angel. My heart was with the child, with Grace, with all the officers enraged by the father’s despicable act, but it was also with the father who was suffering greatly himself. I think we gain the ability to be in the suffering of others through our practice and experience of actually working with those in great pain. One without the other is both hollow and shallow.



The danger of working with the suffering of others without practice is that we will tend to build walls around our heart, begin to hate those who inflict suffering, and in this, attempt to protect ourselves. No one wants to think fathers are capable of such atrocities. In truth, however, we are all capable under the right circumstances. Our practice allows us to see this by penetrating the delusion of duality.



Being one with the universe has significant implications.



Be well.

August 27

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



Was awake last night after a few hours’ sleep. I finished a painting I am calling “Eden,” wrote a few quick email replies, and took down my copy of “Realizing the Genjo Koan” translation and commentary by Okamura-roshi. This text is very important as it addresses everyday life as an awakening and awakened person. I say both because we are actualizing both in each and every moment. As Okamura points out, “We are both universal and individual, and this universality and individuality are not two separate aspects of our being: each of them is absolute. One hand is 100% hand. Five fingers are 100% five fingers.”



I write about this fundamental aspect of Zen frequently. It is essential that we realize the truth of holding these two apparently contradictory views simultaneously. Because to not do so allows for sleepwalking on the one hand and quietism on the other hand.



If we are stuck in “five fingers” which is to say, individuality, we are in a dualism that allows for all manner of egoistic and narcissistic evil to arise. If we are stuck in “hand” then everything is one and nothing really matters as whatever is, is, and we should not attach to anything.



Living interdependence and deep interconnection means we live with five fingers knowing they are hand and live with hand knowing it is five fingers. Grasping one is at the expense of the other. In our Zen we practice to let go of all grasping.



Just because we do not grasp does not mean we do not engage. We engage without investment of self. My well-being is not dependent on the outcome of my practice or something I am working on. If I am practicing to end war and war continues, I do not stop practicing ending war. This is so because on a very deep level, as I practice to end war, war is ended, regardless of whether or not war continues. Just as our hand is a hand and simultaneously five individual fingers, so practice and realization are one and not one at the same time. Or to use Dogen’s phrase, “The depth is the same as the height.” We make the universe we reside in.



Be well.

August 25b

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



This morning I was reading the news and found myself mystified once again at my countryman. Self interest and “blame the other guy” are our apparent focus and mantra, respectively. We don’t want taxes, but we want better roads, warplanes, bombs, rockets, and ships. We don’t want (and are increasingly suspicious of) scientific research, but we want the best medical care in the world. We want somebody else to pay for everything, but we want to determine what they will be able to pay for and where their money will come from, or where it won’t.



Stem cell research is essential to medical research. The choice of abortion is essential to the health and well-being of women. Health insurance is essential to the health of the nation. Roads and bridges are essential to the flow of commerce, to say nothing of the safety of people. Safety nets like unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare are essential to caring for those who are otherwise unable to care for themselves and by maintaining such programs, we build our character as charitable and generous human beings.



Yet, the view I read is a view that would take away these supports and throw us into a state of anarchy. We don’t trust government, so let’s make it smaller. And this means what, that we should trust industry? Do you really think an industry will monitor itself at the expense of its short term bottom line? Do you really think that private health insurance which profits from controlling utilization will make us healthier? Like the automobile industry would have somehow saw the light and made safer and more fuel efficient cars without the government forcing them to do so! Right.



Those of you on the Tea Party side of this equation might take a lesson from such things. Cigarette companies taught you cigarettes were safe and that it was bad science that said otherwise. Car companies claimed they could not afford airbags, seatbelts, and more fuel efficient engines. It was government, that big, bad ogre which took these industries to task and as a result, we have safer air and more fuel efficient and somewhat safer cars.



Those of you on the side of government take note as well. Government fueled by fear with unbridled controls means great threat to your privacy and freedom. The CIA has been working closely with the NYC Police Department to spy on citizens even outside of New York, infiltrated bookstores, scans computers, and does any number of undercover ops here in the US without benefit of oversight from anyone. Of course this is OK because they were only spying on Muslims and we know they are all terrorists, right? Wrong.



Something the Buddha taught can be of great value today: the middle way. Stay away from extremes on the right or left. Extremes in anything, including religion, are not a good idea and eventually lead to great suffering.



Just something to think about as we read the morning news.

August 25

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



This morning I am feeling much better after taking a day to rest. Tuesday was a long day at the Temple and three bike rides back and forth. All told, 12 and a half miles. It was good, but the afternoon heat on one ride was a bit much. On top of that, while walking through the Temple foyer, I tripped and broke a toe on My Left Foot. At home Tuesday night Soku Shin taped it, but it is quite sore yesterday. Needless to say, I did not do a run Wednesday morning so Suki had to be satisfied with a quarter mile walk. I don’t think she is happy ‘bout that.



Dogs, like people, are creatures of habit. Whereas dogs habituate, they are also ever alert. We humans habituate our daily routines, but in the process essentially sleepwalk through much our essential activities. Rarely on alert, we give ourselves over to habit and use our brains to assume everything will flow as predicted, as it always does, that is, until something happens.



This week something happened on the East Coast of the United States. An earthquake informed people the ground they walked on wasn’t as firm as they had assumed. Something radical happens when that which we hold as a firm foundation shakes.



In Zazen, we practice to release ourselves from any firm foundation, as we discover through our practice no such foundation exists, ever existed, or will ever exist. Everything is change; nothing is firm. Now what?



Making such a discovery is only the opening verse in an epic poem of our spiritual journey. Next we must let go not only of our attachment to what we erroneously thought of as a firm foundation, but also of our desire to seek a firm foundation at all. These are very challenging verses to write as they require us to have faith in the unfolding of the cosmos.



When we realize non-duality, attachment to self falls away and non-attachment to self naturally arises. With no self, the universe is “us.” All time is one. When this is realized, there is, as the sutra says, “no hindrance in the mind. No hindrance, therefore, no fear.”

There is a danger here, though. The danger is becoming attached to non-attachment. In the world of buddhas, there is no attachment, even attachment to non-attachment. We must keep in mind emptiness is also form.



So, we come full circle, as it were. The opening lines of the epic poem start us on the path. We realize everything changes. We come to see there is no self and there is no other. There is only this that is prior to thought, prior to feeling, prior to sensation. We are both self and non-self. We are both one and all. We are “thusness” itself. Yet this “thusness” manifests itself as form. We call these forms the paramitas.



Be well.



Today at CMZT: Zazen at 9:30, Sewing Group at 5:00, Zazen at 6:00. Dokusan through the day.

August 23

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Zen is about disciplined practice and yet, paradoxically, it is this discipline that leads to freedom. What is this freedom? According to Matsuoka-roshi, my dharma grandfather, it is freedom from mind and body and all attachments derived wherefrom. He, like Seung Sahn, used the points on a compass to explicate this. These cardinal points are really markers pointing to the depth of our practice on the one hand or the degree of freedom we have “attained” on the other hand.



At zero degrees we are what some of us might refer to as asleep: living in small mind, attached to name and form. At 90 degrees we see differences in things by varying degrees: we are attached to exteriors. At 180 degrees we have transcended attachment to thinking, attained “emptiness,” but have attached to it. At 270 degrees we attain “imaginative thinking.” We have what both Masters referred to as “Freedom I.” that sense of “I” that is free from the constraints of logic, reason, and so forth. Here the moon can sing, ants might soar, and mountains walk. The danger, as in every step around the circle is in getting caught in it. “This ‘freedom I’ must be transcended also” says Matsuoka. So, at 360 degrees we reach complete non-attachment to thinking. Here we are free from everything: all desire, all name and form, all discrimination. It is here that we are born.



Being born is being free. It is an opportunity to be the buddha you are. From this freedom arises the paramitas, those aspects of our true self hidden by the constraints of thought, name, and form, as well as the need to hold and protect them.



What would it be like to be completely free? This is your practice.



Be well.

clearmindzen.org

Tweaked the site a bit...

August 17

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



This morning I woke later than usual and, as is the case when such things happen, pressure builds. My morning routine has not been the same for awhile. I feel it, too. Typically, I wake early, say around 4:30. I practice a bit, sit at the computer and gather my thoughts, write, and sip coffee. From there I was in the habit of going for a run, doing a weight workout, shower and get to temple. Somewhere in there I would have some peanut butter toast.



When I wake late, everything is squeezed together. This morning Suki needed to go out right away. I did my run with her, a 1.1 mile jog around Mesilla as soon as I got out of bed. Made a protein shake, espresso coffee and tried to settle into the PC. Of course when in a hurry it is inevitable that things don’t work quite the way you want them to and I needed to re-boot the PC.



So, here it is 7:37 and I am just now settling in to write having not had the benefit of a time in meditation. As I sometimes say, “Arrrggghhhh!”



Yet, this is a dharma teacher, this state of being pressed, and a much better teacher than the calm and serene early morning quiet time I often long for. Soku Shin tries to humor me. I deeply appreciate that, but it is not helpful. The only thing that actually helps is to settle down, attend to my breath and be in the chaos residing in my mind.



A casual glance over at Suki reveals a relaxed puppy curled up at Soku Shin’s feet. She is mindful of her breath. Her body is fully flush against the floor. She has run, she has eaten, and she is with her pack. In doggy terms she is complete.



As I sit here at the PC writing to you, I notice my body sinking into my chair, the smell of the coffee near my hand, and the clatter of the keys as both Soku Shin and I do our morning communication with the world., My body is relaxing from its exercise and I am feeling much more centered. Now to the peanut butter toast and a shower. Then on the bike to ride to the Temple. Life is good.