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The Eastern Gate

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The Eastern Gate CAMBRIDGE ZEN CENTER AN AFFILIATE OF THE KWAN UM SCHOOL OF ZEN THE EASTERN GATE F A L L N E W S L E T T E R 2 0 2 0 / C O R O N A E D I T I O N DHARMA TALK by Zen Master Bon Yeon Question: As a flight attendant, my whole career is destroyed. I'm not able to stay in the present. I keep going back to fearing the future, and then I get so rattled, and it’s like a roller coaster...how do I get a new career at 57? Should I just sit and not be attached to that frenetic mind, and then let the universe come to me and guide me in a new direction? ZMBY: It's a really good question. We're all struggling with different aspects of heightened fears, heightened emotions, challenges with unemployment, fear of sickness. When the Buddha left the palace, he noticed birth, sickness, old age, and death. Before he left the palace he Zen Master Bon Yeon (Jane Dobisz) on Zoom had been shielded from those things, and when he saw those four things, he saw that suffering was comes in, where I found it to be most useful and inherent in our life, and so he set about on his constructive, is coming back to the present moment: path and the dharma was born, or his version of What is this? So when you're feeling anything, the dharma was born, and is helping us now. And whether it's fear of change, fear of job loss, fear of so in a way, the situation that we’re in is not getting sick, fear of losing someone who could be really different from what we're always faced getting sick, we come back to what is true. The with. We’re always faced with these things, future is not here, the past is gone; all we have is this where our outside situation is always changing, one thing which is true, which is what are you doing changing, changing, and what we want to do as now and just do it and it's the single most human beings- and it's our nature- is to hold on empowering teaching that I've ever come across in and not have things change, and that's when we my life. It levels illusion- it brings you back into suffer. So where the practice what is true. Continued on next page SANGHADHARMA Zen Master Bon Yeon Dharma Talk, continued Question: Could you tell us ways in which you feel What we're here for is just to keep reminding each like this situation, this lockdown, has affected you other, because sometimes we forget; sometimes we personally? How do people with lots of practice get stuck in whatever emotion or mind-state that we’re experience navigate this rather challenging in, and we have one another to remind us. We have situation? the teaching to remind us: what are you doing now? And when you keep this mind over and over and over ZMBY: It's all about how we keep a perspective. and return to it as much as possible, somehow or Many people here in this virtual room tonight, another, things have a way of working out. Your mind we've all done a lot of retreats. On a retreat we're becomes clear, your choices become clear, your sort of depriving ourselves of a lot of activities. We direction becomes clear, and then life becomes clear. deprive ourselves of going out and being with friends and talking and doing all the stuff that we do, and we're really depriving ourselves to just sit down on that cushion, and breathe in, breathe out. We do that by choice so we can see what's going on. I find that when we move - and I mean literally physically move - all of that is usually driven by moving away from the moment or away from pain, away from discomfort and towards pleasure; even the slightest movements that we make all day long are like that. We're always coming out of the moment. In this particular situation, I'm sure all of us have moments - either we're lonely, maybe we're sitting in our house all alone and feel very isolated, or Life at CZC under lockdown: Tim Jones working in we’re with our family and everyone's tearing their the quiet reception room hair out and you wish you were alone, and So we say, if this moment is clear, your life is clear, everything in between, right? And there are the and then anything that comes - you'll be clear enough challenges of trying to work in this environment to perceive that and go with it, but if we get trapped in and being cooped up and in a small space with people, but I find that the retreat experience and the the what-if scenarios, we can get stuck and we get Zen experience has helped me so much. I used to frozen, and then things don’t work out. So I'm just wish I had more time and that life wasn't so fast, reminding you, and I know the day will come when and that we didn't have to rush around, and now... you'll remind me, and that's what we're here doing It's not a gift in that so many people are suffering together - what are you doing now? and getting sick and dying, and all these people are under so much stress and hardship and losing jobs CZC / Fall 2020 2 SANGHADHARMA Zen Master Bon Yeon Dharma Talk, continued IN MEMORIAM land everything, but this bad situation is really a good situation because it forces us back to this retreat mind, it forces us back into our Zen practice - into becoming really, really simple. When we find ourselves like a horse kicking the stall, wanting to get out, we realize where it's coming from is up here. [Points to head] You make, you get. So when I find myself like a horse kicking the stall, I take that deep breath and ask, “What can I do?” or “What is this? Don’t know…” More practice is necessary at a time like this, The Logic Of The Species that's for sure; more bowing, more sitting. A Poem by Zen Master Jok Um (Ken Kessel) Walking meditation has been really nice, to just in memory of Bob Jay (pictured), a long- go out and do quiet walks outside and time and beloved CZC sangha member. appreciate the little things that in our busy, busy It’s time lives we lose sight of. So now we can return to To return retreating at home and recognizing how we These borrowed bones make everything in our mind, how we're moving away from the moment all the time, and To the land of how to return back to it. For me in many ways My ancestors it's a gift, a great gift. It's how you look at it. For my descendants They were there Before the first Grain of sand Before the first Grain of sand And will last Til the last mote Of dust after The last mote Of dust This I keep In mind keeps Original Drawing by Ying Yao You humble CZC / Fall 2020 3 SANGHADHARMA Nothing Missing, Nothing Extra by Mark O'Leary Like everyone, I am practicing social distancing, and that includes not visiting our prison groups. The last prison group we had was in Framingham on March 9. After that, it was clear to me that the situation was getting bad, and I wasn't comfortable putting myself, the other volunteers, or the inmates at unnecessary risk. So I emailed the administration and told them that we were suspending our programs until the emergency has passed. The next day, the state cancelled all volunteer programs in the Department of Corrections. Mark O'Leary zooming his intro dharma talk From the very beginning of the prison work, which down. An expectation is a desire for I have now been doing for about 10 years, my something that is not here-and-now. And that's thought was that I would go into these terrible where suffering comes from, the desire for places and I would find these people who were something to be different than it is. We think suffering, and I would help them. I would teach this moment is not good enough. We fail to them, and they would learn from me. Today I think recognize the truth that this moment right here of that, and it reminds me of the old joke: What's has everything it needs, nothing missing, the first thing that a good horse trainer needs to nothing extra. It took a long time for that know? Answer: More than the horse. My problem understanding to begin to sink in after I was, I thought I knew something. There's a reason became a prison volunteer, and I forget it all that our teaching uses the phrase, “Don't know.” the time and need to be reminded of it over and over. We think we know. We think we have learned something about the universe and the way it works. Fortunately, I have some great teachers. Some And if we think we KNOW, then as teachers it sets of them are here tonight. but many of them up an expectation, a desire, a kind of pressure for could not because they are guests of the state the teacher to impart some sort of wisdom, and an and do not have Zoom, or even internet equal expectation for the student to absorb it.
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