Art

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

Late this afternoon an artist friend invited a gallery owner to come to our house to view my paintings.  I am a bit embarrassed by this, but at the same time pleased.  I just do not know what to make of my work with paint.  Let me try to frame it this way. I know sometimes my painting simply erupts on the canvas. At other times

it takes great care and massaging to bring the image into focus. 

Maybe that is the artist’s way, I don’t know. What I do know:

I love color and soft, mushy lines.  I am less concerned with what something looks like

than what it feels like. Let me in and let me turn it over and over again… 

To quote a line in a film we watched yesterday afternoon, “Does it pull me in or does it repulse me?”  Hard edges do not pull me in, soft openings do. Mystery is good. 

Not knowing what is what is good. Not having the meaning written out in bold,

simple print is good.  Work that draws me in, makes me sweat, and struggle to get every juicy drop out of it is good. Art should be like love and nothing else.

Be well.

New Page

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

This morning I am beginning a new page.  For me, it is important to settle into a routine.  Clearly, in my view, as well as the view of others, I have spent entirely too much time online and with Android in palm.  As I said in my note yesterday, I am limiting this to three times a day. 

I have been feeling as though I have been neglecting my physical and emotional health of late, as well as the state of my relationship with Soku Shin. I slacked off my training and, for all intent and purpose, stopped lifting weights, stopped daily yoga, and settled into the life of a person without a schedule.  The result has been troublesome.

So, this is my new page:  I will check email and phone messages three times a day.  I will respond to messages as needed.  In all cases, I will spend no more than an hour on the machine and will have the phone turned off throughout the day.  The exception here is scheduled Skype interviews with Zen students around the country. 

My exercise plan is simple.  It is the plan I have always used.  Daily aerobic exercise of at least thirty minutes (running, walking/hiking) or biking.  Weights Monday through Saturday, each day hitting two muscle groups, and yoga daily. Of course daily Zazen is a given. We have decided to train for a ten k race in the future.

As to diet, I will be eating much more of a Mediterranean diet with fruit and salads, oils,  nuts, cheeses, and fish.  This diet suits both Soku Shin and myself and is relatively easy to maintain as a lifestyle diet. 

Dean Ornish suggests “opening one’s heart to others” as an essential ingredient in his reversing heart disease program.  I think this is important and I feel that I do this often, but probably not on the deeper levels of intimacy required.  This is certainly something I need to work on.

Those with regularly scheduled interviews with me, please confirm them ASAP as I am not sure I have everyone in place. 

Be well.

Recovery

With respect,




Hello All, It has been two days since my procedure. I am told I can gradually resume my daily activities. By the seventh day, I should be OK to do most stuff, but cannmot resume a exercise program until cleared by my doctor on the 28th. I will resume regular dokusan on Monday morning. To those whom I have missed, my apologies.



You should know I am beginning to minimize my cell phone use and computer access. I will check the Android in the AM, lunch, and again in the PM. At all other timers, it will be turned off. I will be online in the mornings for as long as it takes to write to you, otherwise only during Internet interviews.



I hope to see some of you on Sunday and please remember to pre-register for the Zazenkai coming on November 5th.



Yours,

Daiho

Wisdom Teachings

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

“Seeing matter itself as emptiness produces great wisdom so one does not dwell in birth and death; seeing emptiness as equivalent to matter produces great compassion so one does not dwell in nirvana.” Yun-feng



We should each study these words. They arise from the teaching of the Wisdom sutras and yield much support to our practice. All things come and go, why dwell in the coming and going, the seeking and the grasping? Since the true nature of coming and going gives rise to things themselves, we open to hear their cries. Neither seeking or grasping, we exist as an open channel in the flow of the universe. As an open channel, we experience the shore, the tides, the ebb and flow of all things.



As the meal chant concludes, “May we exist in muddy water with purity like a lotus.”



Be well.

Schedule

With respect,




Zazen for sangha members will be offered at 9:30 this morning. We will continue our schedule as posted. For those in the Zen 101 class, we will begin our study of The Wholehearted Way in earnest on Tuesday. We are still working our way through the smushed-up schedule that occured as a result of Taiun-sensei's visit. We will hold our November Zazenkai on November, 5. Our Rohatsu Sesshin will be an expanded version beginning on the 6th and concluding on the 11th. You have the ability to select the first three days, the last three days, or the entire six days. We are fixing the fee at $15.00 per day for all intensives. We are limiting our zazenkai and sesshin to 12 persons. Priority will be given to those registering for the entire six days. Lastly, we are asking that people register for intensives and pay in advance. This helps us fund the Tenzo and purchase necessary supplies. We will have registration forms available at the Temple. If you are out of town and wish to register, please email me and I will post a form to you.



We look forward to concluding our year in earnest practice with you.



Be well,

Cardiac Care

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



This week will be a slow and careful experience of medicine. Tomorrow I undergo a cardiac catheterization and will, hopefully, experience a repair of whatever is wrong with my heart, if anything. The results will tell me if I need a valve replaced or not. I go to the cath lab at Memorial Medical Center at 7:00 AM and will have the procedure at 11:00 AM. If nothing is corrected, I will be out by nightfall. If something is repaired, they say they will keep me a day. All bets are off. So, I think it is best if I cancel my involvement at the Temple this week, including dokusan. My apologies to each of you.



May you each be a blessing in the universe.

Yours,

Daiho

Practice

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

This morning brings a day of Zazen at Clear Mind Zen Temple. From 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM we will practice Zazen. Zazenkai is an opportunity to gather our mind and body together only to open our grip on them and let them fall away. When we sit we face ourselves, we begin to notice there is nothing that stays the same, everything is changing, and the only constant is change itself.



How do we respond to this constant change? Do we ignore it? Do we try to stop it? Do we grasp and cling and fight against it? All of these create our suffering because just as the ocean’s waves have rolled to shore and receded once again for millennia, so too everything in our lives will continue to change, evolve, transform, and fall away.



One response is fear. We close ourselves, build little barriers between ourselves and change. We see the potential for pain and we erect buttresses against it. Our pain is our fear and our body’s response to change. Some of us manage our pain by retreat. We give pain a place in our lives where it is holding the reins. We think, “when this pain goes away or is more “manageable” I will be able to practice.” This is not so. Our pain is our practice and we will experience it whether we are sitting in the Zendo or in our sofa at home.



One response is no response whatever. It is to notice with an open mind and heart everything that is: our environment, our thoughts, our feelings, our suffering, our joy. This is the deep response of shikantaza. Open, free, and not clinging. We appreciate without possessing. We witness.

Zazenkai is training in this direction.



Be well.