▶ Beautiful snowflakes: Roshi WHO AM I?: Peeling away the layers EXPECTATIONS AND REALITY:A Kjolhede hits us with a snowball of time, privilege, and gender identity Western Zen student explores Nanjing WINTER 2021 | VOLUME XLII, NUMBER FOUR EDITOR Chris Pulleyn | [email protected] Z E N B O W EDITORIAL CONSULTANT The mind of the Zen adept is taut—ready, like a drawn bow Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede | [email protected] COPY EDITOR Winter 2021 | VOLUME XLII, NUMBER FOUR Cecily Fuhr | [email protected] AUDIO TRANSCRIPTIONIST Psychiatrist John Rolland, in his 3 M SOUNDINGS Jennifer Kyker seminal book Families, Illness, and Disability, A Memorial for the Dead | 2020 ART DIRECTOR makes a distinction between dealing with a hindsight: what last year meant to some Daryl Wakeley | [email protected] medical crisis and coping with a chronic PROOFREADER of our members | Q&A: How do I know John Pulleyn condition. The skills needed for each are if I’m making progress with my very different, and it’s easy to see why. In a practice? | Definition of unsui CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS medical emergency—an accident, an All readers are encouraged to submit essays and unplanned surgery, an unexpected and dire images at any time and on any topic related to Zen diagnosis—most partners and families go practice. Articles may be of any length. Suggestions ROSHI BODHIN KJOLHEDE for articles and artwork also welcome, as are “found on red alert. The adrenaline pumps, plans objects” such as quotations, haiku, and/or excerpts are made and put in place, friends and Layman Pang’s from articles in other publications. Submission beautiful snowflakes guidelines may be found on the Zen Bow page of the family are galvanized, casseroles and Center’s website: www.rzc.org/library/zen-bow. For desserts suddenly make their appearances “When the mind is empty, everything any and all questions and suggestions, please email Chris Pulleyn at [email protected]. on our doorsteps. becomes miraculous. There's no Contrast that with the situation several subject, no object, and no action.” ▶ 6 SUBSCRIBING TO ZEN BOW months down the road…the long haul. As‐ �e subscription rate below reflects current postage suming the medical situation can be LORE MCSPADDEN fees: 4issues 8issues addressed, the initial shock and pain has U.S.: $20.00 $40.00 been transmuted into a dull roar, accompa‐ Who am I? FOREIGN: $40.00 $80.00 nied by countless appointments for med In the wake of Daniel Prude’s death, a Please send checks and your current address to: checks, physical therapy, additional proce‐ long-time member gets a jolt of cis Zen Bow Subscriptions Desk dures, etc. Friends and family will occa‐ white privilege. ▶ 12 Rochester Zen Center 7 Arnold Park sionally check in, but there’s nothing much Rochester, NY 14607 to say other than, “We’re hanging in there.” DHARMA CLOUD (DOUG CARR) PLEASE NOTE: If you are moving, the Postal Service The doorstep is devoid of carbohydrates. charges us for each piece of mail sent to your old Stranger in a address, whether you have left a forwarding This is precisely the situation we’re in address or not. If you change your address, please right now with the pandemic. The initial jolt strange land let us know as soon as possible. Send your address of adrenaline is long gone, and it’s easy to corrections to the Zen Bow Subscriptions Desk at A Western Zen Buddhist on his first the above address or email [email protected]. become bored or even lax with our pre‐ trip to China. ▶ 16 cautions. Rather than the initial “fix it” COUNTLESS GOOD DEEDS mentality of the crisis phase, which can be If you’re thinking about financial planning, estate so instantly rewarding, we need to adopt a planning, or both, please remember that there are 22M SIGHTINGS myriad ways you can help the RZC through planned posture of patience, of radical acceptance giving. �e right kind of plan can help you reduce of the things we cannot change. We will Letter to the editor | Book review | your taxes significantly while providing for a larger, Roshi Kapleau’s relatives visit Arnold longer-lasting gift to the Zen Center. Because there probably never have a greater need for is a wide array of bequests, annuities, trusts, and Zen practice in our lives than right now. Park and Chapin Mill | Movie review | other financial vehicles to consider, you’ll want to And we can probably never offer so much Beyond sustainability: Building a work with your financial advisor to decide what’s regenerative organization best for you. Long-time Zen Center member David unexpected comfort to those in need than Kernan, an attorney who concentrates his practice we can right now.—Chris PullEyn in tax law, has generously offered to help point you in the right direction at no charge. For more information about planned giving and David’s offer, ONTHECOVER please contact the Center’s receptionist. IMAGE BY Giotto di Bondone | Ceiling fresco of the Capella degli Scrovegni, Padua, circa 1305 (detail). �e luminous blue is ultramarine, finely ground COPYRIGHT ©2021 ROCHESTER ZEN CENTER lapis lazuli, appliedsecco , after the plaster had dried; the stars are gold leaf. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN ZEN BOW ARE THOSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS ALONE AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE ROCHESTER ZEN CENTER, ITS DIRECTORS, ITS A publication of the Rochester Zen Center JOSÉ LUIZ BERNARDES RIBEIRO TRUSTEES, ITS MEMBERS, OR ITS STAFF. 2 ZEN BOW WINTER 2021 Winter 2021 Soundings A PANDEMIC PRAYER thing to go after death. For that reason, DURING THE PANDEMIC, Roshi Kjolhede in the memorial prayer we’re addressing has been issuing frequent “Coronacasts” the deceased directly. to members. Following is an excerpt from But if that’s too much for anyone to be- his last Coronacast of 2020. lieve in, maybe it’s a little easier to believe in the fact that we are calling on Buddhas �is is December 17, 2020. And that means and Bodhisattvas, which really means en- we’re settled into the very longest, darkest lightened ones, to help the deceased. nights of the year. And maybe that’s why Maybe the best way is to think of what I’m thinking of all of the victims of COVID- son: their parent, their sibling. or even we’re doing is calling on our own Bod- 19. Last week we surpassed 300,000 COVID their child that is dying. So here you are, hisattva- and Buddha-nature as a way of deaths just here in the United States. I drawing your last breaths alone, alone in honoring and fortifying the deceased as thought it would be appropriate to stop a way that probably none of us has ever she or he finds their way through the in- and memorialize these 300,000-plus dead been, and we’re dying. �e nurses and termediate state that we call the bardo. So in our country, and then the altogether doctors do the best they can but they’re this memorial prayer will be directed to one and a half million dead worldwide. shrouded in masks and shields and gowns the hundreds of thousands of people who �ese numbers are staggering. It’s diffi- and gloves. So imagine that the last thing have died. I will recite the prayer three cult to assimilate them, isn’t it? I keep up you see in this life is this figure whose times.—Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede■ with the news, and so I notice that the face you can barely see. numbers are so abstract, especially when �en consider the grief of the survivors. O Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, it’s day after day, month after month: this Anyone who has lost a family member abiding in all directions, drip drip drip of statistics that come at us. knows that kind of grief. And it’s all the endowed with great compassion, endowed How can anyone feel each of these deaths, more difficult when it’s sudden, when you with love, these terrible deaths? Maybe we’re not haven’t had the time to adjust to the per- affording protection to sentient beings, meant to feel them, but at least we can re- son fading away because the fading away consent through the power of your great member these people. We don’t want to happens so fast. President-elect Joe Biden compassion to come forth. become callous to it. And yet, it’s very has talked about how you’re left with this easy to become numb when we don’t have black hole in your heart and that empty O Compassionate Ones, faces, but only numbers. chair at the table. It’s terrible. Even since I you who possess the wisdom of Someone once said that one death is a began this talk ten minutes ago, there are understanding, the love of compassion, tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. So people who have died alone, of COVID. For the power of protecting in incomprehensible I’m struggling to not become numb to all the survivors there is that terror of final- measure, these deaths, and to try to find a way to ity, the inescapable knowledge that the COVID victims are passing from this world to acknowledge the magnitude of what we’re person is gone. gone. the next. going through. Sometimes writers use �ose of us who believe in rebirth They are taking a great leap. analogies, such as the number of deaths don’t see death as final. It sure feels final The light of this world has faded for them.