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Bundling Mountain Record journals for distrubition, circa 1990. Photo by Pat Enkyo O’Hara.

MOUNTAIN RECORD Dharma Communications President DC Director of Operations Managing Editor MOUNTAIN RECORD (ISSN #0896-8942) is published quarterly by Dharma Communications. Periodicals Postage Paid at Mt. Tremper, NY, and additional Editor mailing offices.Postmaster: send address changes to MOUNTAIN RECORD, P.O. Box 156, Mt. Tremper, NY 12457-0156. All material Copyright © 2019 by Dharma Com mu ni ca tions, Inc., Unless otherwise specified. Printed in the U.S.A. The articles included and the opinions expressed herein are those of the Layout individual authors, who are solely re spon si ble for their contents. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions, positions or teachings of Zen Mountain Mon as- tery or the Mountains and Rivers Order. Production Assistants:

Cover Image: Winter Light by Michelle Seigei Spark This marks the last issue of our paper and ink Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioner’s Journal, which was first published in the earliest years of Zen Mountain Monastery. Whenever I think of the Mountain Record, I think of Daido Roshi and those who made the journal possible over the years, like Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei and Carole Kyodo Walsh. Their dedication to the dharma and to creative expression was the driving force that gave birth to the journal and nurtured its development. This was especially important in the early years when there was little staff and financial resources to bring each issue to fruition. Readers like you have been both the inspiration and the beneficiaries of these many years of publication, and have witnessed the Mountain Record as it has grown and matured into its present form. I bow in deep respect to my teacher, Daido Roshi, and to you and all those dedicated to hearing, practicing and realizing buddhadharma. May we continue to bring forth the great light of wisdom through the sacred teachings old and new, through our lives, and through our next expression of the Mountain Record. We look forward to bringing you an annual published volume of dharma teachings and creative works, and to an ongoing offering of the sayings and doings of Zen Mountain Monastery and the Mountains and Rivers Order online. Thank you for your interest, support, and participation in our continuing evolution. In gassho,

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Abbot, Zen Mountain Monastery Vol.37 No.1 Winter 2018-2019 Mountain Light

4 All the Ancestors are Like This, by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi When the discriminating mind rests, all things appear as they are. 15 Ending Well, Beginning Well, by Suzanne Taikyo Gilman Spanning over thirty years, contributions by MRO teachers and sangha which still shine. 16 Serving the Spirit, mondo, by John Daido Loori, Roshi From Spiritual Calling, 2008 28 Wilderness Camping as Retreat, by Robert Genjin Savage From Compassion, 1991 32 Shikantaza Is for Wimps, by Maureen Jisho Ford From Wellness, 1990 48 The Immovable Spot by Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei From Zazen, 2013 56 Lone Zen, by Bill Kigen Delaney From Fear and Fearlessness, 1992 60 Cars and Trucks too, by Sybil Seisui Rosen From Teachings of the Insentient, 1998 62 Being Born, by Annie Redman From Mystic Earth, 2002 66 Adolescent Buddhism, by Rachel Yuho Rider From Spirituality and Education, 2001 70 The Precepts in the World, by Sangha Members From Morality in the World, 2012 78 All the Way to Heaven, by Amy Shoko Brown From Death and Renewal, 1993 86 The Unspoken Thing, by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei From Practicing the Edge, 2001 94 Facets of the Jewel, interview, by Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei & Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, Sensei with Danica Shoan Ankele From Mother of All Buddhas, 2016 102 In the Footsteps of the Buddha, by Sangha Members Reflections from the 2018 sangha pilgrimage to India.

114 Mountains and Rivers Order News News and Happenings, Book Review, Affiliate Directory

126 Resources and Services Photo Credits—Inside Back Cover 4 All the Ancestors Are Like This by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi

The True Dharma Eye, Case 101

Nanyue’s “Its Not Like Something”

Main Case Zen master of Nanyue went to study with the Sixth Ancestor, Huineng. The Sixth Ancestor said: “Where are you from?” Nanyue said, “I came from National Teacher Huian.” The Sixth Ancestor said, “What is it that has come like this?” Nanyue could not answer. He attended on the master for eight years and worked on this question. One day he said to the Huineng, “Now I understand it. When I frst came to study with you, you asked me, ‘What is it that has come like this?’ The Sixth Ancestor said, “How do you understand it?” Nanyue said, “To say it’s like something misses it.” Huineng said, “Does it depend upon practice and enlightenment?” Nanyue said, “It’s not that there is no practice and enlightenment. It’s just that we should not be defled by them.” The Sixth Ancestor said, “Just this non-deflement is what buddhas have maintained and transmitted. You are like this. I am like this. All the ancestors in India were like this.”

Verse Blue sky, bright sun there is no distinguishing east from west. Yet acting in accord with the imperative still requires dispensing medicine when the sickness appears.

5 n my early training when Daido Roshi to bring us closer to that which we call “truth” spoke about buddha ancestors, they and “reality” yet cannot be expressed by Iseemed like dim, remote characters who words. Because it is not truth, we speak of had a distant role in what I felt was the it as truth. In practice, this means we need most important discovery of my life, the to continually release our mind from words Buddhist Path. I understood that these were and concepts and from any fxedness that we enlightened masters that had transmitted the might give them. teachings across generations, but they were Master Dogen said: not yet a living reality for me. Because the Actualizing buddha ancestors means to bring dharma is vast and deep and we each have them forth and look at them in veneration. It’s our own karmic streams, there can be aspects not limited to Buddhas of the past, present of dharma practice that don’t initially speak and future; but it is going beyond Buddhas to us. As long as we stay open and allow for all who are going beyond themselves. It’s taking possibilities, this can change. As I continued of those who have maintained the face and to study and train, something began to eye of Buddha ancestors formally bowing come to life. I began to see and experience a and meeting them. They have manifested the virtue of the Buddha ancestors they have dwelt connection between my path and the many in it and they have actualized it in the body. people and currents that came before me. This may or may not change over the years, This is such a marvelous passage. We but as long as we stay open and allow for the could study this our whole lives. These few possibilities, the doors are always there. This words beautifully express how what we are is how our experience of the dharma can doing is connected to everything before and become larger and more multifaceted, more everything to come. It brings us right to this nuanced, more beautiful. And really what moment and makes it clear that practice is the this means is that our own sense of ourselves manifestation of virtue. There is dwelling in and our world becomes more multifaceted, that virtue, manifesting it, bringing it forth nuanced and beautiful. and actualizing it in the body. Everything we Some questions require careful study so that do, really, is this. we can understand their signifcance. The basis for the question that Huineng asks in When I was a musician I would spend hours this koan, “What is it that has come like this?” and hours practicing, rehearsing for a appears very early on in the development of performance. Practice, practice, practice, Zen. Tathagata, the one “thus come” and the and then fnally I would perform. All of that one “thus gone,” is an epithet for the Buddha: preparation for a few moments of live music. the one who comes and goes in suchness, as But Buddhist practice is the whole thing, the reality of all things, thus. practice-live. One undivided moment. One When we speak about truth and reality practice-realization. The way we bring forth they can suggest something that is fxed, some the wisdom of the buddhas is by manifesting sort of absolute. The Truth. The Reality. It’s wisdom in our thoughts, words and actions. important to remember, again and again, that The way we bring forth great compassion is words are like placeholders, an approximation, by being compassionate now. We take up and maintain the face and eye of the buddhas by everything that we can know, touch, taste, being the very face and eye, that body and feel, think, experience. The absolute is that mind, by bringing forth the bodhicitta that which has no body, no characteristic, no time every sincere practitioner since the time and space. Each abides in its own dharma of the Buddha brings forth. What did the state. You are like this. I am like this. Buddha practice? He practiced meditation. He practiced walking. He practiced eating For eight years Nanyue worked on this and lying down. question, What is it that has come like this? When In another fascicle, Dogen says, “The a thought appears, it seems to be born. It wasn’t actualization of buddhas and ancestors is there a moment ago, and now something is the real form of exhaustive investigation.” there. There is “somethingness”—a sense Ours is an inquiring tradition. We bring of existence, of having come into being. forth faith, compassion, the precepts—all Like a baby being born—before the egg was of these enlightened qualities—but it is the fertilized there was nothing. Now there’s a investigation that makes it the Buddha Way. person. What is it that has come like this? Is This means we are in dynamic relatedness— there nothing and then suddenly something? with mind, with zazen, with dharma—so And with death, a return to nothing? What is that we can go beyond all relatedness. it that has come? Encountering what we don’t understand is Nanyue was working diligently, day after the door into inquiry. As we engage in these day, year after year. After eight years he various practices, we should examine them came to Huineng said, “Now I understand.” carefully and deeply, with urgency. Master Huineng asked, “What do you understand?” Dogen taught, “Nanyue said, “To say it’s like something All phenomena are the forms of suchness; misses it.” are the nature of suchness; are the body of Now that could be understood by any suchness; are the mind of suchness; are the Buddhist student after a month or so study. world of suchness; are the clouds and rain of It’s in accord with the basic teachings—we suchness; are the walking, standing, sitting, understand that words don’t convey the truth. and lying down of suchness; are the sorrow But Nanyue is speaking at a much deeper level. and joy, the excitement and calm of suchness; The Sixth Ancestor probes, “Does it depend are the staff and whisk of suchness; are the on practice and enlightenment?” Is what you fower-twirling and smiling of suchness; are the dharma transmission and intent to transmit have experienced a result of your practice and of suchness; are the study and practice of realization? Is that which cannot be expressed suchness; are pine(-like) constancy and the in words a result of something? This is a very, bamboo(-like) interruptedness of suchness. very important question. It goes to the heart of why we can get so frustrated in practice. So All dharmas are forms of emptiness. This is often we try to use our practice to try to create another way of speaking of suchness, or thus. a state of mind or to avoid a state of mind, to This is the merging of every duality, the unity create a sense of peace or to avoid a sense of of every opposite. We speak of it in terms of dis-ease. If we do obtain something, then we relative and absolute. Relative is phenomena, need to retain it, right? What happens? We

7 lose it. We can’t possess a single thing. lion’s roar: “Just this non-deflement is what When Huineng says, “Does it depend on buddhas have maintained and transmitted.” practice and enlightenment?” he’s asking What is “this non-deflement” that Huineng if your understanding, your liberation is speaks of? If it doesn’t depend on practice and dependent on practice and enlightenment. enlightenment, then how can training bring Nanyue said, “It’s not that there is no practice awakening? A story in the Mahaparinibbana and enlightenment, it’s just that we should Sutra shows this nicely. When the Buddha not be defled by them.” That should turn was in his fnal days he was invited to a meal us on our heads. Normally we think, “Wait at the home of a lay student, Kunda. Kunda a minute, practice and enlightenment are prepared a wonderful meal of various dishes, to free us of our deflements.” Yet here he’s one of which was called “a pig delicacy.” saying, “Don’t be defled by practice and Translators say that this could have been enlightenment.” Huineng then lets loose a something either made of pork or something

8 that pigs really enjoyed eating. When the Kunda buries all of the remains. “Then in the Buddha and his students arrived for the meal, Blessed One, after he’d eaten his meal, there he called Kunda over and said, “Listen, that arose a severe disease accompanied with the pig delicacy, I want you to serve it just to me. passing of blood, intense pains and deadly.” Don’t serve it to anybody else. Serve all the It seems the Buddha was suffering from food other food you have to the other monks.” So poisoning. The sutra says, “But the blessed Kunda serves all the food and then the Buddha one endured it; mindful, alert and was not tells him, “Take all that pig delicacy and bury struck down.” it. Don’t let anybody else eat it.” And then he What is the merging of relative and absolute? said, “I don’t see anyone in the world in whom, It is the living reality of every moment, each when this is ingested, it would go to a healthy situation. It is the perfect, dynamic expression change, nor would it be good for them, aside of form is emptiness, emptiness if form. It from the Tathagata.” The Buddha eats it and is our fundamental nature. It is also what we are practicing. Within what we call the relative and absolute, we bring forth whatever manifests in this moment into our realized mind. In this sutra, the Buddha is severely sick: a relative experience. And he, with his understanding of mind and sickness and the real nature of things, not only endures it but is “mindful, alert and is not struck down.” The Buddha was able to transform this disease. His illness is not something apart from him; it’s not autonomous with its own distinct power. His realization of mind-body and the formless body of reality, he practiced his illness without it being something. He was not apart from, nor limited by, practice and enlightenment. Then the Buddha calls to Ananda and tells him that if anyone tries to blame Kunda for feeding him tainted food which made him sick, Ananda should say that there are two offerings of food to an enlightened being that are especially auspicious. One is right before they’re enlightened, and the other is right before they die. In fact, the Buddha says, Kunda has created very good karma and merit by doing this; he sincerely offering a nourishing meal and wasn’t intending to make the Buddha sick. In his fnal moments the Buddha is bringing forth his great compassion. We live in what we call the relative, exhausts us—building worlds, tearing them phenomenal world, a realm flled with things down, building worlds, tearing them down. we can touch and recognize and measure. You deserve a rest. Everybody deserves a true Perhaps bodhicitta arises because since the rest, the great peace. beginning of time human beings have sensed Stop the construction. Stop creating, stop that there is something else that we are in the avoiding, stop denying, stop suppressing, stop midst of, something of another realm. And destroying. Stop stopping. Cease from all whether you call that God or the absolute or preserving, lingering, retaining, controlling. truth or the fundamental, it is nothing but “When the 10,000 dharmas are without our own nature being sensed in a way that we self,” Dogen says, “there is no delusion, no may not understand but can’t deny. What are enlightenment, no buddhas, no creatures, no the relationships between these two realities, life, no death.” these two realms? Master Dongshan’s fve Hakuin offers this caution about the frst ranks are a way of talking about this. In a rank, “Even though you remain absorbed in sense, they are teachings on how we practice this state, this place of the darkest hour—no and move into suchness. suffering, no cause of suffering, no old age and The frst rank is the relative within the death—you will never get out of the cave of absolute. Dongshan’s poem describing this self-complacency and the inferior fruits of this says, In the third watch of the night, before the state. Essential though it is, true though it is, moon appears, no wonder when we meet there it is still incomplete. It is inferior. Therefore it is no recognition. The third watch of the is said those whose activity does not leave this night is the darkest hour. No moon, no stars. place sink into a poisonous sea.” Which is just Absolute darkness. Nothing can be discerned. another way of saying training continues. The You can’t raise your hand and see it, or even path is endless. fnd a hand to raise. No wonder when we The second rank is the absolute within meet in this place, we don’t recognize each the relative, the realization of the real nature other. When we look at our minds, we see of phenomena. In the frst rank there is no all our constructions, moment after moment phenomena, no state of mind, no experience, after moment. Worlds appear and disappear. no experiencer. The second rank is how we Memories, people, situations, wars and truces. start to reckon with the world, to see the world What is it when that stops? What remains illuminated in self-nature rather than through when the mind is no longer constructing, the veil of discriminatory thought. Dongshan’s no longer bringing forth? When all self- poem says, The sleepy eyed grandma encounters awareness, all sensations, inside and outside herself in an old mirror. Clearly she sees a face cannot be found? The empty sky vanishes, the but it doesn’t resemble hers. She sees a face but iron mountain crumbles. The Buddha said, it’s not “her” face. Encountering yourself in “Things here are not as they seem.” Practicing an old mirror, everywhere you look, you see and stepping deeply into silence and stillness yourself but it’s not you. It’s a face but it’s not are ordinary aspects of the frst rank. This your historical face. All phenomena are just is how we move towards that darkest hour. this. And so we begin to see the real nature of It’s the ceaseless creation of the mind that things: self, other, thoughts, emotions, actions,

10 consequences, creatures, inanimate objects, Within nothingness there is a path leading away events. Their solidity, their permanence, their from the dusts of the world. Years ago there self is realized as empty. was a student who had the responsibility of Hakuin says, “All the myriad phenomena timekeeper during sesshin. She had forgotten before your eyes; the old and the young, the to light the altar and was sitting in the zendo, honorable and the base, halls and pavilions, so I tapped her on the shoulder to remind her. verandas, corridors, plants, trees, mountains, “Don’t bother me,” she said, “I’m practicing!” rivers, you regard these as your original true We must step off the hundred-foot pole and

Coming closer we see: things are not as they seem. When the discriminating mind rests, all things appear just as they are. Where is the confict?

and pure aspect.” This is the realization of move into the real world of dust, people, egos “Mu”. This is Zhaozhou’s “Oak tree in the and confusion. Walk without moving your garden.” But Hakuin says you cannot dwell feet. Dig without holding the shovel. in this realization because “here you are not Hakuin says, “We must know the moment yet conversant with the deportment of the of the meeting of paired opposites bright and bodhisattva.” Which is a way of saying there’s dark.” We must go to that place and see how no compassion—one is not yet manifesting as light and dark meet, see the unity of good a bodhisattva towards others. “Nor does one and evil, the meeting of all opposites. What understand the causal conditions for a buddha does “meeting” even mean? Is that actually feld. Although you have a clear understanding what is happening when the two that meet of the universal you cannot cause it to are fundamentally one? Or is that just our shine forth in a way that understands the language straining to express something unobstructed interpenetration of the manifold beyond understanding? To meet means we dharmas.” In other words, we will still be have to enter the realm of people and things. confused and confounded and challenged by Here, we will be challenged, which means the world. Which is just another way of saying we’re going to be uncomfortable. This is training continues. how we encounter the perceived limit of our The third rank is “Coming from within mind, of our practice, what we call the edge. the real.” This is really the beginning of our Training continues. coming forth. In training this is expressed The fourth rank is “Mutual Integration.” by our moving off the cushion into kinhin, The poem says, “When two blades cross points into liturgy, work practice and dish crew, there is no need to withdraw.” I’ve always loved into relating with each other and having that line. When opposites meet, there is no responsibility. The poem, in part, reads, inherent confict, but when we withdraw, we

12 reinforce the idea that there is. Coming closer and ashes. Where else would you go to get we see: things are not as they seem. When away? Everywhere we turn, we see all things the discriminating mind rests, all things covering the ground upon which they stand, appear just as they are. Where is the confict? fulflling their own virtue. Practice continues. This rank is also where the bodhisattva’s The path is endless, and isn’t that wonderful! enthusiasm and joy begins to blossom. What we had experienced before as burdens are now Let’s remember that whenever we encounter seen as endless possibilities. Distinctions and a teaching that seems opaque or irrelevant—if boundaries and divisions—all the stuff of our it’s a true teaching—these are just signs that suffering—are seen through. Things are not as we need to keep training, keep examining. they seem and nor are they otherwise. When Because all of it is about you and me, this things seem real, solid and fxed, they give life, this world we’re living in. When we stay rise to so much pain. We bludgeon each other true to this, then the sangha is healthy, the with our delusion and are bludgeoned in turn. dharma is radiant and practice occurs. When Yet all the while, each and every person, each we lose sight of this then that radiance begins and every thing is one. Unifed. One master to dim. called it “undividedappearanceemptiness.” So in just this way let’s continue in our This is where we really begin to see barriers practice of this great wisdom tradition. This as gates. Dogen says, “Just buddha with is the gift we’ve received from our buddha buddha is now able to exhaustively investigate ancestors. When we practice sincerely and the real form of phenomena.” Just buddha free our discriminating mind, this is how we with buddha. The ocean and its waves are repay that gift and offer it to others. all ocean. It’s all waves. It’s all suchness. It’s Blue sky, bright sun just buddha with buddha. Hakuin says, “Still there is no distinguishing east from west. the student shouldn’t consider this state to be Yet acting in accord with the imperative a fnal resting place. Therefore it is said that still requires dispensing medicine when such a person is in and of themselves a heaven the sickness appears. soaring spirit.” This “heaven soaring spirit” is the bodhisattva heart, the joy that arises from realizing that all beings have buddha nature, all people are ceaselessly becoming, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi is the Head of the all situations are, in some way, workable. Mountains and Rivers Order and the Abbot of Zen “What must they do in the end?” Hakuin Mountain Monastery and the Zen Center of New says, “They must know that there is one York City. more rank: unity attained.” Here the poem is, Who dares to equal her? Who falls into neither being nor not being? Everyone wants to leave the current of ordinary life, everyone. But this one after all comes back to sit amongst the coals and the ashes. Having tried to get away for so long, now we return to sit in the coals

13

Editorial: Ending Well, Beginning Well

inding unique, inspiring writing from our Ankele share a conversation about Zen training, thirty-five years of publication was not a patriarchy and the need to create a vibrant, Fchallenge, but deciding what to include skillful practice environment that nourishes was. This scavenger hunt brought out voices and awakens all beings. And Myotai Sensei’s and perspectives which have stood the test of discourse, originally given soon after 9/11, time. Each piece was written by a Mountains speaks from the heart of her work at Ground and Rivers Order student or teacher, some with Zero. Her teachings on grief and illumination added notes from the authors. All speak in are just as relevant and resonant as we live with some way about the path of practice—meeting the uncertainty, turmoil, and loss of today. each other in our awakening bodhicitta while Fittingly, this collection of mountain light striving to live well and bring good into the begins and ends with new material from this world. time and place in our sangha. A discourse Daido Roshi’s teachings to the sangha on from Shugen Roshi explores the Zen teachings spiritual calling took place while he was facing of Dongshan’s Five Ranks, encouraging and his own illness and mortality directly, and offers challenging us to meet each other with the a generous perspective on what is essential to open the heart of compassion. And concluding living life in the dharma to its fullest. This this issue are reflections and images from is followed by Genjin Savage on wilderness sangha members who went on a pilgrimage camping—one of Daido’s favorite offerings to to India this past fall and encountered a full the sangha—as an opportunity to explore our range of challenges, frustration, inspiration and deep affinity with the natural world. Jisho Ford’s appreciation traveling in the footsteps of the piece on facing cancer follows her odyssey of Buddha. self-healing as a student of the Way. Hojin Together, we honor the contributions of Sensei, Kigen Delaney and Seisui Rosen all writers and readers over the many years of our offer reflections on zazen; the dramatic changes publication, as well as the spiritual practice that of childbirth as described by Annie Redman has brought this journal to life. In these pages segues into the bumpy journey through and in the future print and digital offerings adolescence described by Yuho Rider. from the Mountains and Rivers Order, we will More sangha members write on practicing continue to explore and celebrate this ancient the precepts in their chosen spheres—as wisdom tradition as it manifests here and now. lawyer, documentary filmmaker, and parent— May we all enter the path of awakening and all aspects of living with a moral and ethical realize the Buddha Way together. commitment to address conflicts and suffering with an open and compassionate heart. Hojin Suzanne Taikyo Gilman Sensei, Zuisei Sensei and monastic Shoan Mountain Record Editor

15 Serving the Spirit Mondo by John Daido Loori, Roshi From Spiritual Calling, 2008

16 17 In the Zen Buddhist tradition there are several Desires are inexhaustible; I vow to put an end ways of engaging with a teacher and one of them to them. The dharmas are boundless; I vow to is mondo, an informal question and answer master them. The Buddha Way is unattainable; session on some aspect of the Dharma. This I vow to attain it. By what power is that vow mondo was held with John Daido Loori, Roshi, taken? What do we, as lay practitioners and the founder of the Mountains and Rivers Order, at Zen Mountain Monastery in 2008. monastics, have to say about religious calling and vow? And what about commitment? How aido Roshi: The focus of this does that relate to the religious calling? evening’s mondo is spiritual calling. Keep in mind that many of us suffer from Historically, spiritual calling has what’s referred to as commitment-phobia—a D disease of the twenty-first century. Making been seen exclusively within the realm of the religious—people who make life vows a personal commitment involves obligations to a particular religion—in other words, which can be based either on a mutual monastics. But tonight we want to look at agreement or solely self-imposed, explicitly spiritual calling in a broader sense. stated or not. Commitment-phobic people are In the United States, Buddhism is quite frightened by such obligations. Driven by their unique among religions in the way in which imagination, they see all kinds of possible people enter—not by way of a Sunday problems arising out of commitment. Rooted or Sabbath service or ritual, but as full in fear—fear of making a poor decision— participants in the practice of realization commitment-phobia gets in the way of fully and actualization. There’s more to it for lay giving ourselves to anything. That’s why practitioners than simply belonging to a here at the Monastery we have the Guardian religious organization. And while most people Council—a group of senior monastics and are born into their religion, in more recent lay practitioners who help people to probe times people do convert in response to a deeply into their own spiritual questions and religious calling. People convert for all kinds motivations. This process helps candidates of reasons. For example, some people turn to clarify and understand what they’re getting their religion due to a crisis in their life. Is into when they ask to become a student that a religious calling? or a monastic, or when they ask to enter How are vows a response to spiritual calling? residential training or the Daojin track—the In a theistic religion, vows involve making a oblate program for lay practitioners who wish solemn promise to God to follow a particular to increase their level of responsibility and course. How does that work in Mahayana commitment to the Monastery. How do we Buddhism—a non-theistic religion? To whom understand these commitments? All of them are we vowing? What is the basis of the vow? require a fundamental calling of some sort. From where does it derive its power? At many Zen centers you simply pay your dues Vow is very important in Mahayana and you’re in. That’s not the case here. There’s Buddhism—the most fundamental vow is the a process of clarification, of formation, and it vow to liberate all beings. We chant it every derives from spiritual calling. night at Zen Mountain Monastery: Sentient In Buddhism, spiritual calling is the beings are numberless; I vow to save them. raising of the bodhi mind—the aspiration 18 for enlightenment. Initially, to aspire Prize, I knew I was going to be a regular old to enlightenment is like aspiring to some scientist and publish papers and get raises imagined thing. Most of us don’t have a clue and retire at 65 and go live in Florida. It just what that means. It’s simply an idea. Given didn’t seem right. I thought there had to be that, you tell me, what is spiritual calling? more to it. That’s when I began to question What does it mean to you? how I could use what I had, what I was born Student: I see a dual aspect to it. One aspect with, what the universe gave me, to serve that is, I have a spiritual calling and I’m going towards universe. How could I return to the earth, to something that really attracts me. It has a certain the universe, that which I had received? And mysterious quality that seems like it will really do that’s what slowly led me in the direction of a something for me, something that I want to get. spiritual calling. Then I learn about some of the particulars, and S: Historically, if you look at conversion, I go towards the thing that I want. But then there as with the lives of the saints or the great Zen seems to be this other aspect to it, which is what masters, there’s generally a description of a I would call the looking under the rock aspect: sudden, very real yet mysterious encounter, Ewwwwww. And that part has to be accepted like God speaking or showing a sign. And then somehow, or the spiritual calling dies when it there’s a radical shift within the person towards starts to get hard. renunciation—a vow to leave the world to DR: We won’t get into the “ewwwww,” find unity with God—along with the struggle but it’s true. I want to point out one thing, involved in that process. Renunciation seems though. Usually people see spiritual calling as clear-cut when the choice is monasticism or “What I want to get.” Spiritual calling has an asceticism. So I wonder if you could speak about essential element of “What can I give? What the aspect of renunciation within a spiritual can I do? How can I serve?” As I recall, my calling, particularly for lay practitioners who do spiritual calling had to do with the realization not leave the world, not only as the calling to that I could offer something. practice, but as a calling to do some work within First of all, I had tried a lot of things. And that world. they were satisfactory. They were fulfilling. It DR: There’s no question about it. It’s clear was great to be a sailor and travel around the that the practice of lay practitioners is to world, but I knew I didn’t want to do that for manifest the buddhadharma in everything the rest of my life. And I had loved science that they do. That means the way they raise since I was a little kid, so when I started doing a child, the way they grow a garden, the way scientific research I was very fulfilled by it. they drive a car, the way they live their life, And it paid well. I had grown up poor, so to the way they do their work, the kind of work have money and be able to have a big house that they do—that the work that they do is and two cars and go on vacation was great. right livelihood. After a while I reached a point where I said to That was a problem with what I was doing. myself, “Is this what life’s about? Is this why I I realized my work was not right livelihood. was born? To do this?” Once I acknowledged What I was creating—not directly, but that I was never going to win the Nobel indirectly, and it’s easy to do a dance around

19 20 that—was not good for people. My work in powered job, since then she’s in a position to science was basic research. I would determine shift things within that corporation. That’s a reaction mechanisms. The data that I was good reason to stay and to pursue such work. producing didn’t belong to me. It belonged to S: In your life, do you feel that there was a the company. My results would then go to the moment of calling? Or was it more like a gradual development labs where they were using them recognition? It seems that right livelihood can to create products that were going into the simply be an intellectual choice, whereas the foodstuff that we’re eating now. That was my experience of calling seems more mysterious. work. And it’s not good for people. I decided Did you experience that? this was not right livelihood. I wanted to find another way of working, and that led me to DR: Yes, but it wasn’t a sudden thing. search, and that search kept going deeper and Because of my scientific background, I’m deeper. There were a lot of dead ends. usually careful. With me, the only time I Next I got into commercial photography. made a spontaneous, non-reflective decision So what was I doing then? What was my was when I decided to buy this place. It was right livelihood? I was doing fashion and totally intuitive. Everything else I did was very product photography. I was creating a need careful, done little by little, without burning where none existed. I made people drool, too many bridges, until it seemed really clear. enough so that they would pay $1,000 for Until it was ridiculously clear! Everybody saw a dress worth a hundred. That’s not right that I was already a monk except me. I was livelihood. It’s not nice to do that to people. already there, but just would not admit it. I So I kept looking. I began an advertising was tenacious about being Layman Pang of and public relations organization where I the twentieth century. But it didn’t turn out could weed out clients that I didn’t think that way. So that was a moment of calling, were doing good things or treating well their but I got to that point slowly. employees, and so on. And it got narrower S: I’d like to go back to vow. The nature of my and narrower. I had enough to make a living, calling seems to be evolving, as well as to whom but I still wasn’t satisfied. I had to be willing or what I’m vowing. It feels more like recognizing to do everything—aerial photography, hot that I’m a part of this whole thing. When I chant dogs, office furniture—whatever came along. I vow to save all sentient beings, I’m not separate I couldn’t be a specialist. from myself. Something is emerging out of that. Ultimately photography led me to the I’m not making it into something. It’s a statement dharma. I didn’t feel right until I was finally of what’s real, and that is enough for a calling. director of publications for Zen Center of Los DR: If you know it’s real, I would say Angeles. I said to myself, “I’m putting out my so. But think of vow in this tradition as teacher’s teachings, and I think what he has something that you’re doing, witnessed by the to say is good for the world, and I don’t mind bodhisattvas. When you create an invocation, promoting that if it can transform people’s that’s what you’re doing—you’re calling forth lives.” Every lay practitioner needs to consider all the buddhas and bodhisattvas as witnesses this in terms of her work. Sometimes it’s useful to a monastic ordination, or to becoming a for a lay practitioner to work in a very high-

21 student, or whatever. Also consider that when my portfolio. I sent in my astrological profile you vow to save all sentient beings, what too. That was required. That was just so weird does that really mean? How do you save all for me. I was still working as a scientist at that sentient beings? Do you think of some knight time, but I figured I was ready to do anything on a horse, riding around, killing evil and to study with this guy. And lo and behold I rescuing sentient beings? To save all sentient got accepted. He’s very selective. It turns out beings means to be all sentient beings, to it had a lot to do with my astrology, more merge with all sentient beings. than my photography, I think. S: Compassion. So I went. The money did come—an income tax return or something. Then when DR: Compassion. Exactly. I got there, the first thing I had to do was S: Could you talk about the mysterious aspect deal with the astrologer. This woman was of spiritual calling? For instance, meeting your very, very different. She was doing research teachers, Soen Roshi and Maezumi Roshi. What in astrology, and she had all kinds of degrees is that element of—I don’t know if it’s karma— and everything else. She had a funny kind of that you happened to be attracted to certain accent that I never quite placed. She looked people, or certain places, that started your life in at my charts and gave me a comprehensive a different direction? evaluation. She told me that what I was doing at the time—that is, taking this course DR: You mean you want me to give you the in photography with Minor White—really answer to the mystery? I don’t have a clue how had to do with what I would ultimately do. it happens. There was no way that I could I said, “What’s that?” She said, “You will be have known it years before. a high priest in a strange religion.” I laughed I remember very distinctly being completely hysterically. I said, “Lady, you have no idea taken by Minor White, thinking this was an how wrong you are. I’m an atheist! I hate extraordinary being. I loved his photographs. religion!” She said, “No, no—that’s what I looked at his photographs and they would you’re going to be doing, many years from just put me in a whole other world. I talked now. And this is all preparation for that.” about them all the time. Then one day I got a I said, “Is photography involved?” She said, letter inviting me to do one of his workshops. “Yes, photography’s involved. But what’s more I looked at the price—I forget what the price involved than photography is books. You’re was, something like $1,000. We didn’t have going to write a lot of books.” I said, “Books any money, so I threw it in the garbage. My about what?” And she said, “About that wife at the time, Yushin, picked it out of the religion.” I didn’t take her too seriously. Then garbage, and she said, “Isn’t this that guy, I did the workshop. About halfway through Minor White, that you’re always talking that workshop I got turned on my head. about?” I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “He’s That was step number one. I left there doing a workshop. Why’d you throw the letter twenty feet off the ground only to come in the garbage?” I said, “Did you see the price?” crashing down six months later. Back again She said, “Send it in. It’s only a $50 deposit; I went to Minor, now in Cambridge. I visited the money will show up.” So I did. I sent in with him for a day. We just talked—nothing

22 profound—I don’t even remember too much meet Eido because I was looking for a teacher. about the conversation, other than it was I looked at the pictures he showed during pleasant to be with him. As I was leaving the his presentation. They were awful. I said to hotel where I was staying in Boston, I saw in myself, “This guy needs a photographer!” the lobby an advertisement for a talk about That was my excuse. I wasn’t going to study Trungpa Rinpoche’s “Visual Dharma.” It rang with him. I was going to make photographs a bell for me. I went the following week to the to help him do what he needed to do. talk at Harvard Divinity School. I was sitting Another step. From there I met my teacher there, waiting for the teacher to come out Soen Roshi. Then a friend of mine, Millie and I started shivering, my whole body was Johnston, said, “You should be teaching at trembling. That’s step number two. Naropa. I’ll call Trungpa Rinpoche and send That’s where I met Eido Roshi. I didn’t him your portfolio.” Then Trungpa wrote and

23 invited me to teach there. Another step. mother, you have child. Very difficult. Study Step by step. It wasn’t just sudden. While tea ceremony.” So after a while I kind of let it I was at Naropa, who do you think lived go. But years later, I continued to pursue that next door? Maezumi Roshi. He invited me with him, and he continued to say no. And then over for Kentucky Fried Chicken and sake I thought, maybe I have to go a different route and then tea late into the morning hours. here, a different road. After the summer was over he called me up: So being a lay practitioner works very nicely “What’s your relationship with Soen Roshi?” in my life. Once a mother, always a mother. That was his first question. I said, “Soen So there’s a path for all of us, I think. Being went back to Japan. I’m studying with Eido, a mother is it for me. It’s a wonderful thing to but Soen was really my teacher.” He asked, have a spiritual calling and think I want to be “Would you like to come here?” “Yeah, but a monastic. But it’s also a wonderful thing to I don’t have any money.” I was collecting have a spiritual calling and approve of myself unemployment at the time. “Well what do as a mother, or as the tea lady on the side of you need?” he asked. “What am I going to do the road. It’s almost like the same thing, just a with all my furniture?” “Put it in storage.” “I different road. don’t have any money,” I continued. “I’ll put DR: I think the bottom line is: What do we Tetsugen on,” he replied. He put Tetsugen, his do with our practice? What is a calling other attendant, on the phone: “Put it in storage. than a vehicle through which we manifest We’ll pay for it.” I said, “I don’t even have that which we’re called to do? Sometimes gas to get across the country.” “How much do we don’t always recognize what it is that you need?” So we all went—my son, Asian, we’re being called to do. That’s why the very Yushin and me. Why did all those things first thing that has to take place—as in the happen the way they happened? Letter in the healing that I’m doing for myself now—is garbage, poster in the lobby, Kentucky Fried recognizing: This has something to teach me. Chicken and sake…. My tumor has something to teach me. It has Yushin: It seems that calling always involves something to say, and I have to listen to it first a struggle because of resistance—the universe and know why it is there. Then I can take the saying, “Do you really want to do this? Let me steps to heal it. So those subtle messages that give you 9,000 reasons why you don’t have to do are deep below the superficialities of our usual this.” When we moved, we left in a blizzard and motivations—that’s what we need to hear. traveled cross-country. The fact that we made They’re the most difficult to hear. it is remarkable. The fact that you wanted to S: I appreciate the obstacles along the way and be a monk, this teacher—well, it was annoying the power that must be driving me to go through because I didn’t have that in my plan, but I was those things. I look back at the logic of my life, really impressed with the Don Quixote part of and I’m really struck by how I continually orient you. When we got to Los Angeles, I wanted myself back towards something I don’t even to become a nun. I wanted Maezumi Roshi to really understand. It has a kind of gravity to it. ordain me. I asked him three times over the But I’m a little confused about the relationship course of a year or two, and he said, “You are between what you’re calling religious calling

24 and the raising of the bodhi mind. Are they the to keep and to propagate. It doesn’t mean same, or is religious calling the same as monastic I necessarily “buy them.” And the stories calling? come from a different culture, a culture DR: Religious calling is the same as raising very influenced by Confucianism and the the bodhi mind. That’s the definition. But importance of historical relationships, family raising the bodhi mind is very specific—it’s and heritage. But if Buddhism disappeared the aspiration for enlightenment. What does from the face of the earth for 1,000 years, that mean? People are aspiring to something and suddenly someone came along and they don’t even understand. realized himself, the connection would jump Religious calling is a very broad statement. a thousand years—direct, mind-to-mind Let me give you an example. The Catholic transmission. version of spiritual calling is the voice of God. S: Can a crisis precipitate a religious calling? That’s quite different than the Born-again In my own path, there have been a lot of crises Christian who is awakening to Jesus. Raising and failures. When I recognized that there was the bodhi mind is what we have in Buddhism. some dis-ease in my life, I started searching. To appreciate this concept we can look That’s why I looked for something—to try to at how Dogen talks about it: Raise the address my dis-ease. bodhi mind, practice, realize, actualize, DR: That’s “what’s in it for me?” There is raise the bodhi mind, practice, realize.... more to religious calling: “What can I do?” Raising the bodhi mind is the mind of enlightenment. That’s what “bodhi” S: I guess that’s what distinguishes it from means—enlightenment—to raise the mind just someone having a crisis and flailing around of enlightenment. How do we do that? We saying, “Maybe this is going to help.” In thinking do it through practice. What happens when about conversion, is it safe to say that the actual we practice? We realize. What happens after conversion is recognizing a way to respond to the realization? We actualize it in our life. What dis-ease? then? We see that there’s more. We raise the DR: Conversion is when the abstractness bodhi mind. Practice, realize.... It’s an upward of the calling has become an actuality. I look spiral. at the people in the Oncology Department S: Within our own tradition, the ways in where I spend a lot of time—six hours sitting which the ancestors came to their religious lives there with drips going into me. I watch the are described quite differently. For some it was medical staff take care of people. They’re all instantaneous and apparently predestined. I heart—that’s what I see. It’s real. These have don’t really know how to understand that. got to be the finest people I have encountered in years. Some of them have been there ten or DR: Understand it as what it is. It’s not fifteen years. Isn’t that a calling? Isn’t that a historical evidence. That’s the way oral religious calling, in a sense, to serve the way teachings are. To me, the value of oral they do? teachings is the fact that the subsequent teachers thought they were important enough S: Is there something profound in that scenario for it to actually be a calling? If you feel called

25 to do something, whether it’s to be a doctor or a how can you manage that? teacher or a parent, and you have a feeling that S: I guess I feel bewildered a lot of the you are doing what you are meant to do—is that time in practice. It’s true that I came wanting spiritual calling? enlightenment, and I thought I knew what that DR: “Spiritual” is a defining word—serving was. As I continued to practice I realized that I the spirit. didn’t know. It’s weird because in everything else in life, I know what I want and I calculate the S: But can you serve the spirit through being best way to get it, and if I don’t get it fast enough, a doctor? I’m out. But in practice it’s not like that. What DR: Sure you can, if it’s a spiritual calling. I feel to be my spiritual calling is a willingness to But sometimes it’s a monetary calling or a be undermined and bewildered. Rather than a power calling. force propelling me, I feel I have a lot of energy S: But when someone is taking a path in order and I have to put it somewhere, and as it turns to serve, is that a spiritual calling? out, I’m putting it here. It’s not calculated. That seems to me to be the crux of it. DR: I think you have to examine it more deeply. I was watching a report on a doctor DR: You talk about enlightenment, but in Burma: an American doctor who had one of the things that has always been an had a lucrative practice, but left it to work obstacle to enlightenment is enlightenment. in Burma. He’s working in near hopeless The minute you make it a goal, you separate conditions, alone, with no medicine. He is yourself from it. It’s out there, and you’re here. devoting a big chunk of his life to do this People have described to me what’s happened work all by himself. To me he was spiritually in their lives from the time they walked called to do it. He’s the guy I want to go to if through the doors here at the Monastery— I need a doctor. the transformations that have taken place. It hasn’t necessarily been a bolt of lightning S: So what is it that makes that spiritual in out of the blue and suddenly they were your eyes? transformed. It’s a process of transformation DR: I don’t want my eyes; I want your that takes place over time. eyes. What is spirituality to you? It’s a very There isn’t a single person, in the thirty overused word. We need to be careful of that years that I’ve been here, who has spent any word because it’s lost a lot of its significance. appreciable length of time practicing that hasn’t been transformed in some way. There’s S: Can a spiritual calling sometimes take no way someone can get up every morning control of your life and end up directing you in and sit and confront herself on that pillow, unexpected ways? and confront a teacher and engage the liturgy DR: Yes. It becomes an imperative—there’s and work and study and create art and live no choice anymore. the precepts—to be exposed to all this, S: I’ve always understood spiritual calling as a surrounded by this, all the time—without calling to something larger than myself. really living it and making it her own. That’s why cultivating the aspiration for DR: Since you’re the size of the universe, 26 enlightenment is so important. That’s why Buddhism, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and realizing ourselves is so important. Indeed, of the Fire Lotus Temple. Through his life he was a it is the most important thing any of us veteran, research scientist, commercial photographer, will ever do with our lives. Don’t take it for and Zen priest. granted. It’s no small thing.

John Daido Loori, Roshi (1931-2009) was the founder of the Mountains & Rivers Order of Zen

27 28 Wilderness Camping as a Retreat by Robert Genjin Savage From Compassion, 1991

efore I discovered Zen, week-long eyes, and that persistent, unimaginative solo backpacking trips were my bird call starts up again. A sense of waiting B sesshins. The absence of human invades the world. references in the blank stare of nature You seem to be caught in a pause in which can either quiet the mind or drive it crazy. something’s about to happen, only it never I’ve experienced both. Usually the former does. At first you just get impatient, but happens, especially if you keep on the move: soon, deeply-buried anxieties start emerging the flux of data as you pass landscapes that from a dark place. Before actual panic owe nothing to your species, the organic sets in, you have managed to convince shapes of objects and events—lacking right yourself that it’s time to break camp and angles and mechanical repetition—all of put on some more mileage. You “pull a this “talks “ to you less insistently than, geographic,” as they say in the Twelve- say, a city block. Although there are just as Step Programs dealing with compulsive many messages, they are less urgent and not behavior, and move on. While backpacking addressed to you personally. After a couple trips can be true retreats, they only take of days on the trail, the internal dialogue you so far, because there are too many ways wears itself out from lack of fresh input, of avoiding yourself. For instance, even if and you begin to see and hear what’s around you stay put for several days, you can keep you. By the trip’s end you are keenly and yourself distracted by fussing with your calmly aware, glad to be alive. gear or rearranging the campsite decor, Sometimes, however, the opposite or by devising a busy daily schedule that happens, especially if you spend more than you follow as compulsively as if it were a a couple of nights in one spot. As the nine-to-five job. Without the discipline of novelty of your surroundings wears off, a practice like zazen, it’s almost impossible you begin to get spooked. Instead of the to “stay with it” when “it” starts getting entertaining parade of trailside sideshows creepy. that a hiker on the go experiences, you see In sesshin the only trails are in the mind, the same old tree hour after hour, day after and sooner or later they dead-end on you, so day. just standing there...waiting. You avert that you wind up with an inner equivalent your gaze, only to have it fall on that same of the same old tree hour after hour, day old ratty fern or rotten log. You shut your after day. But you can’t break camp. The

29 night creatures come out from hiding, and it’s already happening, here, now, in the you have no choice but to get to know perfectly still, perfectly silent forest. Then, them. By gently stretching the schedule of becoming equally still and silent in the sesshin into the demands and uncertainties posture of zazen, the teeming life emerges of a camping trip, new possibilities arise, from all the nooks and crannies where it especially at that key moment when you had been watching you the whole time, and really start to meet yourself in the lonely you find yourself accepted as part of the wastes of the wilderness. Habitual escape furniture. Field mice flirt and fight around routes and diversion tactics are held at bay your folded legs, and a pileated woodpecker by conscious effort. For example, performing practically grazes your head on its way to campsite chores as “work practice” turns a nearby trunk. Deer catch your scent but them into exercises in mindfulness instead don’t scamper off, not “reading” you as of distracting games of solitaire. Under a the restless homo sapiens they know best watchful eye, compulsive routine doesn’t in hunting season. Cautiously they creep have a chance to take root. closer, heads bobbing, their big wet eyes and Mess kits prove to be marvelously suited big wet noses and flopping ears irresistibly to oryoki, and as the woods ring with your drawn by curiosity—what is it? chanting of the meal gatha, a private act Such magic takes place only when you becomes strangely public, as though the slow yourself down to the pace of the trees themselves were having lunch with world around you and stop looking for you. Chanting in utter solitude, sounding entertainment. There’s a tendency to try words that no one hears but you, can to turn camping into more of an adventure transform a camping trip. You’re alone with than it is: we read up on “survival,” imagine your voice as you never are when you’re ourselves in various worst-case scenarios, back in the social mesh of your species. and treat our unfamiliar surroundings as a You become aware of your own sound-box, challenge if not an actual threat. But the its buzzing resonance and the overtones it real challenge is when nothing happens, generates, and of your public presence in a when things reassume their ordinariness, non-human landscape. No longer are rocks when drinking from a mountain spring is and trees simply present before you: you are nothing special. present before them as well. This is a “no big deal” approach to One of the miracles of zazen in the the wilderness, being prepared for wild is that it transforms that pause, that emergencies, of course, yet not focusing on suspenseful waiting, that coy look of them; being ready, rather, to face boredom expectation in the humble objects around and annoyance, your own greed to get you, into something quite different. For, something out of an experience. The woods lo and behold, it’s you who have been start giving as soon as you stop taking. waiting, you who have been projecting your own impatience onto innocent bushes and boulders. Your desire for something to happen blinds you to the fact that

30 Robert Genjin Savage (1953-1993) was an Insentient before his early death of an AIDS- award-winning composer, avid backpacker, nat- related illness. A student of Daido Roshi, Genjin’s uralist, and beloved sangha member. He wrote a ashes were interred in the Monastery’s Nirvana column for Mountain Record, Teachings of the Fields.

31 Shikantaza is for Wimps by Maureen Jisho Ford From Wellness, 1990

t was in the fall of 1985 that I first came into this painful experience. In his book, Father to Zen Mountain Monastery. What had Johnston discusses the experience of both Zen Ibrought me here was the same search that, and Christian mystics. He refers to the Spiritual 25 years earlier, had taken me to the Novitiate Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (in which I had of the Sisters of Mercy. The decision to be a been trained) as being the prayer of a beginner, nun had been made in early childhood, and, and he stresses how absolutely important it is to in retrospect, I realize that it arose from a go beyond this level of discursive prayer if one is desire to experience God. As a child I had not to give up the spiritual search. I realized that, been fascinated by the stories of the saints and in all my nine years, I had never gone beyond mystics, and although many of the stories had the prayer of the beginner. an almost fairy tale quality, I nevertheless sensed It was the desire to go deeper that finally led that, at their core, they contained an account of me to look to the East for answers. Eventually something I wanted for myself, namely, union the search brought me to this Monastery. After with God, the mystical experience. What better meeting with Daido Roshi, I was determined to place to find God, I reasoned, than in a convent. become his student. I recognized immediately The incredible upheaval within the Church the depths of his spirituality. I was overjoyed to brought on by Vatican Council II raised many have found an authentic teacher. issues for me on an intellectual level, but they Shortly after I became a student, Daidoshi had nothing to do with my decision to leave the assigned me the koan Mu. After several months convent after nine years. It’s difficult to capture of frantic practice, I presented my understand ing on paper the sense of spiritual desolation that of Mu in the dokusan room. Daidoshi began to finally led me to take what had always been test my understanding; my response to each of an unthinkable step. My entire life had been a his questions was immediate until he came to search for God, and yet I was overwhelmed with the last one. I was speechless, incapable of any the sense that the search was utterly hopeless. I response. He reassured me. “Come to the next vacillated between questioning the existence of sesshin,” he said. “There’s a very good chance God on the one hand and doubting my ability you will break through.” to ever achieve union with Him on the other. Heaven and earth could not contain my pride. It wasn’t until many years later, when I read a It was very obvious to me that I was one of the book by William Johnston, S.J., called The Still most exceptional students that Daidoshi had Point, that I was able to gain a deeper insight ever had. I came to sesshin. Nothing would stop

32 me, I vowed. I would bring Daidoshi Mu, and came to the hospital. When he walked into my I would do it in record time. I had joined the room, I held up one finger and told him I was Great Race for Enlightenment. Every student certain now that I could bring him Mu. He just had suddenly become my competitor. smiled and suggested that I wait for dokusan. I Needless to say, sesshin came and went without was disappointed. After all I’d been through, I my breaking through. My practice became that was certain that I must have achieved some deep last question. Arrogance and pride were replaced spiritual insight. Needless to say, I was completely with pain and anguish. I had swallowed the red deluded. hot iron ball of Mu, and I could neither bring it Tentatively, I reached for his hand. I was up nor pass it out. It consumed me, and it gave frightened. We spoke for a while, and then he me no peace. As I struggled with Mu, I learned told me he was going to work with me as I healed that my father was dying of cancer. His illness myself. Daidoshi’s visit filled me with hope. brought up many painful issues for me. I had I began to see that if I accepted the doctors’ long ago abandoned belief in the idea of heaven. prognosis I was in effect signing my own death What would happen to him? Where would he certificate. I resolved to fight for my life, not just go? I asked Daidoshi but there was no comfort in for my own sake but for the sake of the people his response. My father lingered for a few short who loved me. It hurt to see the pain in their months, and then, surrounded by his family, he eyes—my daughter Kathleen, so vulnerable; my died as my sister and I held him. Why? Why partner Natalie, so dear; my mother and my do we have to die? Why does it have to be so sister, still grieving for my father. Always, in the painful? I wept for my father and for myself. Six past, suffering had been a catalyst for spiritual weeks later I was told I had cancer. And then growth. What would it be now? I realized that the news got worse. the choice was mine. My cancer had been discovered too late. I I went down to Memorial Sloan-Kettering underwent surgery and the tumor was removed Cancer Center in New York City. The story from my colon, but not before it had spread was the same one I’d heard upstate. There was, to both my lungs. I was numb. “I hardly ever however, an experimental treatment program recommend chemotherapy to colon cancer available. I volunteered. Then, before the patients,” the oncologist said. “Why is that?” treatments began, a strange thing occurred. One I asked. “Well,” he said, “the drugs we have of the growths in my lung disappeared, and the available hardly ever work. They’re just not level of cancer activity in my body (measured by very effective against this type of cancer.” He a blood test) decreased on its own. The doctors recommended surgery. The lung surgeon said he were dumbfounded. I was overjoyed! They were couldn’t operate because I’d just keep growing convinced there was a mistake on the original more tumors. He recommended chemotherapy! CT scan. I was positive it was the visualization I cried. My heart ached for the daughter I would meditation I was doing. They were uncertain leave behind. She was only eight years old. whether or not to go ahead with the treatments. I insisted. I called Daidoshi. I told him I was going to live An Infusaport was surgically implanted in a deeper, more spiritual life or I was going to die my body, because the drugs were so powerful well. (I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.) He they would destroy the veins in my hands and

33 34 arms. I was continuously infused (24 hours a some of them tried to hide their pain, all of them day, for five consecutive days each month) with had eyes full of suffering. And I could not stand the traditional drug used for colon cancer. They to look at any of them! I hid in my practice. I administered this drug along with another drug, closed my eyes and did zazen. They were dying called platinol, which is so toxic that it would and I was not! I had to shut them out. I had to have killed me were I not given four or five other separate myself from them! As my treatment drugs to offset its side effects. continued, that became more and more difficult Words can never describe how devastating to do. Gradually, I lost my hair. I began to look those treatments were. They made me sicker sickly and yellowish. I looked just like the people than the cancer ever did. The drugs affected not in the waiting room! I stopped looking at myself only my body, but my mind as well. At their very in the mirror. Soon there would be no place left worst, they brought on severe anxiety attacks for me to hide. that found me pacing the floor at 2 or 3 o’clock One afternoon at the end of zazen, I started the in the morning, ranting semi-hysterically and healing meditation, as I usually did. Since I had flinging pillows at the walls. I was utterly terrified been told to end the meditation by visualizing my of going to sleep. As the drugs left my body whole body as being well, I focused on a healing the attacks would stop, my ability to focus my light emanating from my hara and spreading attention would return, and, gratefully, I was able throughout my entire body. But on this particular to do zazen again. The process had to be repeated day, it was as if I had no control over the every month. Since the effects of the drugs were meditation. The light kept expanding beyond cumulative, I got sicker each month, and it took my body, encompassing more and more beings. I longer and longer for their effects to wear off. saw addicts shooting up, destitute human beings The chemotherapy, administered locally at living in squalor, drunks lying in alleyways, Benedictine Hospital in Kingston, was done children crying out in hunger and pain. I saw under the direction of my doctor at Sloan- the elderly, the lonely, the abandoned, the dying. Kettering. This meant periodic trips down I saw the horror of war and I saw unspeakable to NYC so my progress could be evaluated. I atrocities. I saw the anguish of the mentally dreaded those trips. They brought me face to face ill and I saw into the hearts of the walking with incredible suffering. The patients waiting wounded, behind their masks. I saw loneliness, to see a doctor on the fourth floor shared a fear, and unbelievable suffering. I saw it all, large common waiting area that easily seated 75 and I felt it all. It was overwhelming. The sheer people. Many of them were my age or younger. intensity of it caused me to tremble and to sob. (I had always thought that mostly older people It shook me to the very core of my being, and I got cancer.) They came clutching large manila recoiled from it in horror. I wanted no part of it! envelopes containing CT scans and lab reports. I wanted to run and get away from it all. I was They were sent by other doctors, doctors who afraid to sit afraid that all those feelings would could no longer help them. They held the hand come up again. of their spouse, their friend, their child. They And they did. Over the next few days the spoke softly. Some of them read, some of them experience repeated itself each time I sat. I was paced, some of them cried. Many of them looked overwhelmed. I took it to my teacher. Daidoshi thin and sickly, some of them had lost their hair, told me I was afraid because I was unwilling to

35 take responsibility for it. I didn’t understand. question. I would explain it to him when I went What did he mean? How could I possibly take back. responsibility for the whole thing? If I was “In Dante’s Inferno, do you know what’s responsible for it, did that mean that somehow I carved over the gates of hell?” I asked. Before had caused it all? I had come face to face with the he had a chance to respond, I told him, “It says First Noble Truth: life is suffering. My blinders ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ How had been ripped off. Everywhere I looked I saw can it be hopeless,” I cried. “No hope is hell!” unspeakable pain and suffering. It was as if I had “We should carve those words over the gates of developed some kind of x-ray vision. I could see this Monastery,” he said. I was dumbfounded. behind the mask, behind the smile. Even before “We should carve those words over this very people began to speak to me, I could read it in moment,” he continued. Why was he doing this? their face and in their eyes. I took it to dokusan. Couldn’t he see I needed to know? I tried another Still barely able to believe it, I told Daidoshi approach. “Even if I realize myself and become “Ninety-nine percent of all the people in the enlightened, that still won’t stop the suffering.” world are suffering.” Daidoshi nodded that it He agreed, and added that a bodhisattva would, was so. “It seems as though life is some kind of however, keep returning until all sentient beings macabre joke. What kind of a God could allow were saved. “Great,” I responded, “so all I have to such suffering?” He agreed that life could seem look forward to is endless lifetimes of suffering, like a macabre joke. “It doesn’t seem to me that trying to save all sentient beings. It was easier the human race is evolving at all. We’re still being a Catholic. They’ve got the right idea. robbing, killing, raping, and looting. We’re still You’re born, you suffer, you die, and then you get committing terrible atrocities.” Again he agreed to go to heaven!” “You already tried that way,” with me. I was getting angry. I didn’t want him Daidoshi reminded me. I shrugged that he was to agree with me; I wanted answers. “Why? Why right. “Besides,” he said, “there’s no guarantee is there suffering? How can I stop it?” He had no that you’ll ever realize yourself, no matter how answers to give me. long you sit.” “Great,” I said. “It just keeps getting I was certain that if I worded my question worse. First you tell me it’s hopeless, now you tell more precisely, he would give me the answer. me there are no guarantees.” I wasn’t ready to The following week I went back. “Buddhism give up yet. “Buddhism teaches there’s a way out,” teaches that it’s possible to end suffering but I I protested, “There has to be a way to end it!” “It’s just don’t see how. Even if I had billions of dollars utterly hopeless,” he said. “Then Buddhism is full and could feed the hungry and build homes for of shit and so are you!” I shot back, “You’re all the homeless, and if I could cure all illness and fools, and I’m the biggest fool of all because I’m destroy all weapons, still,” I said, “there would sitting here listening to you!” He rang the bell, be suffering. Isn’t that so?” He agreed with me. and I left in more pain than when I went in. “So tell me how? How can I stop it? It seems so hopeless.” “It is,” he said. “It’s utterly hopeless.” My pain drove me. Between treatments I sat for My eyes opened wide in shock and disbelief. He longer and longer periods. It seemed as if my life rang the bell. I was furious. What’s the matter consisted of treatments, zazen, and visits to the with him? What kind of teaching is that? It can’t doctor. On one of those visits, I encountered a be hopeless. Obviously he didn’t understand my man outside the doctor’s office. It was a warm

36 sunny day, and he was sitting in a wheel chair. about the liver, but he felt that the problem in His shirt was partly unbuttoned, revealing a the lung had to be addressed first. still raw scar from a very recent operation. He I called the lung surgeon who had initially was hunched over in the chair, weighed down refused to operate. “Your CT scan shows no with a heavy burden. He lifted his head as I improvement compared to the one I saw seven approached, and I looked into eyes that knew months ago.” “How can that be?” I cried. “I suffering inti mately. He never said a word, but don’t agree with the findings in the report,” he he touched me as no other stranger ever had. said. “I still see the same tumors in your lungs.” In the course of my lifetime, I’d encountered “Can’t you operate?” I asked. “How much of your the suffering stranger, the suffering friend many lungs can I remove?” he replied. “You’ll just keep times. Always my reaction had been the same, growing more tumors.” He estimated how much “Thank God it’s not me.” I’d offer money, a quick longer I had to live, told me he was sorry, and solution, a trite phrase of comfort or wisdom, wished me good luck. I couldn’t stop shaking. I and then make a quick getaway. I was ill at ease called Daidoshi. “Come to sesshin,” he said. and self-conscious in the presence of pain. What Sesshin had begun the night before. Natalie could I possibly do? If I couldn’t make it better, drove me to the Monastery. We arrived shortly I wanted no part of it. This time, with the man after the 10 am sitting had begun. Both of in the wheel chair, it had been different. For the us stood outside the zendo door. I was too very first time I responded honestly to someone frightened to go in and too scared to go home. in pain, instead of turning away. We hugged. It was an embrace full of pain, My treatments continued. The CT scan impossible to know where hers ended and mine showed that the growths in my lungs were began. Gently she disentangled herself and shrinking. As the treatments progressed, I lost guided me toward the zendo door. I took a deep feeling in my hands, feet, arms, and legs. It breath and went in. Daidoshi saw me almost was the warning signal the doctors has been immediately in dokusan. He was reassuring and waiting for: the platinol had caused toxic nerve supportive, but he couldn’t take away my pain. damage. If they gave me any more, it would kill It was mine. I had created it, and only I could me. I was overjoyed! After seven months, the take it away. treatments would finally come to an end. My That simple truth was something I had yet joy was short-lived. After the last treatment, a to realize for myself. And so I used my mind to CT scan had been taken. I called my doctor’s create more pain. As I sat, frightening thoughts office for the results. “There’s still something kept arising, and instead of letting them go, I in one of your lungs,” he told me. My stomach chased after them. The thoughts in turn gave tightened. “And we see something suspicious in rise to strong emotions of fear, hopelessness, and the left breast, the liver, and one of the ovaries.” despair. I greeted these emotions with revulsion My knees began to tremble. I sat down. “What and struggled to get rid of them. I played and do you mean, ‘suspicious’?” I asked. He sounded replayed my conversation with each doctor, almost as upset as I was. “The breast and the frantically looking for some loophole, some way ovary could very well be cysts, but the liver...,” out. By the end of the day I was in a state of he paused. “Is surgery on the liver a possibility?” absolutely frenzy. I asked to see Daidoshi again I wanted to know. He wasn’t certain what to do in dokusan.

37 “I don’t know what kind of a game you’re I cried. But he was far too compassionate to let playing,” he roared “but I’m having no part in it!” me go. He filled the room with the sound of Mu. I was so stunned that I have no clear recollection We did it together, again and again. And then of my response. I was out of control. “What did the bell rang. I left in utter despair. I was at the the doctors say?” he demanded. He was almost very edge of my practice, the very edge of my life, as angry with them as he was with me. “And and still I could not break through. The end of how do you feel?” he asked, making no effort to sesshin found me still struggling with my pain conceal his rage. “Okay,” I whined, “except for and fear. It was undoubtedly the most pain filled the pain in my breast.” He shot me a withering sesshin I had ever sat. look. “When did the pain start?” “When the doctor told me there was something in my When I got home I called Sloan-Kettering and breast,” I responded. “Go home!” he shouted. spoke with Dr. McClure. I told her what the lung “Go home and crawl under your bed and wait surgeon in Kingston had said. She was outraged to die.” “No!” I shot back, “No! I won’t do that!” that he’d sent me home to die without referring “Bring me Mu!” he roared. “I can’t! I can’t do it!” me to someone with more experience. She had

38 started an IV in my arm. We talked. I wished she could have stayed longer. I was cold. Someone covered me with a blanket. And then I was wheeled to the operating room. It was a long ride down a winding corridor. I directed my attention to my hara. The operating room was filled with people. I slid onto the table. It was narrow and high. My eyes searched for a familiar face and found Dr. McClure. She came over to the table. A surgical mask covered most of her face, but I could see the smile in her eyes. She held my hand and spoke gently and reassuringly. It was the last thing I remember. When I awoke in the recovery room, she was the first person I saw. I struggled to focus my attention, to take in what she was saying. She was smiling. “We took it out,” she said. “It was a cancerous growth but it was small.” “Is that good?” I asked. I was confused. “Does that mean I’m going to be okay?” She couldn’t give me what I wanted, because what I wanted was a guarantee. The day after surgery, Dr. Kalema, the oncologist, came to see me. She pronounced the chemotherapy and the surgery a success. “They found scar tissue in both your lungs,” seen my CT scan and agreed to operate. she announced. I looked puzzled. She explained I was scheduled for surgery at 8:00 A.M. the that the scar tissue was formed when the following morning. Natalie was there before chemotherapy destroyed the cancer. “What seven. She helped me climb onto the gurney about my liver?” I wanted to know. “We don’t that would take me to the operating room. She know what’s on the CT scan, but we’re pretty held my hand as they wheeled me down the sure it’s not cancer.’ That’s good enough for me, corridor and onto the elevator. She held my I thought. “What about...?” Dr. Kalema finished hand until we came to the large double doors the question for me. “ ...the breast and the ovary? that led to the pre-op area and then we said Very likely they’re both cysts.” She smiled. “So, goodby. I was wheeled through yet another set does that mean I’m cured?” I asked hopefully. of double doors. As the doors swung open, I She couldn’t give me a guarantee either. What saw fourteen or fifteen cancer patients, like me, she could give me was more chemotherapy. I waiting for surgery. Tears welled up in my eyes groaned. Since I could no longer tolerate the and ran down my cheeks. I could actually feel platinol, I would be getting just the traditional the pain in that room. A nurse came in and drug used for colon cancer. “It’s much easier to

39 tolerate,” she promised me. We’ll see, I thought. Over the course of the next few months, I returned home, weak but hopeful that the Daidoshi began gently to prod me to examine worst was behind me and still struggling with why I’d created the cancer. He did it with such Mu. Maybe, I thought, if I had remembered to great skill that he conveyed no sense of guilt or breathe out Mu as I went under the anesthesia, judgment. It was simply something I had to take I would have seen it when I came to. I played responsibility for or I would just keep growing the maybe game a lot. Maybe if I weren’t taking more tumors. It wasn’t a case of “I’m a bad person so many drugs I’d break through. Maybe if I and my life is terrible,” but rather a challenge tried harder. And, finally, the most devastating to grow and to go deeper. “How can my life be thought of all: Maybe, I just don’t have what fuller and richer? What am I holding on to? Why it takes. Hadn’t Daidoshi said there were no am I creating obstacles?” I threw myself into my guarantees? He was trying to let me down practice with new vigor. Shikantaza wasn’t so gently. All the effort in the world couldn’t turn bad, I decided—just so long as nobody found out an ordinary athlete into one of world-class that I hadn’t passed Mu. stature. It was the same, I decided, with spiritual Interestingly, it was at this time that Daidoshi practice. Clearly, I was lacking in spiritual made it very clear to me that he had done ability. I had been driven by the cancer to the absolutely nothing to heal me. It was very very edge of the cliff, and still I hung on, too terrified to make the leap. The cancer had been an incredible opportunity, and I had blown it. I had to face the truth, painful as it was, that I was a mediocre student. Daidoshi seemed to confirm my worst fears after yet another futile attempt to bring him Mu. “You’re turning into a total neurotic. I want you to stop working on Mu.” I wanted to hug him. It felt as if a huge burden had been taken from me. “I want you to do shikantaza instead,” he said. I was devastated. Shikantaza is for wimps, I thought. All the serious students did koan study. Daidoshi had done koan study. All the monks and senior students did it. Shikantaza was for students who couldn’t make the grade! He must have seen the resistance on my face, because he softened the blow by telling me it would just be for a little while. I agreed. I was delighted to be free of Mu but crushed that Daidoshi seemed to be confirming my mediocrity. Truly there was no way out. To give up practice was unthinkable, to live with my failure was painful. I decided not to tell anyone that I’d flunked Mu. important, he said, for me to know I had done it I decided to get in touch with him. Daidoshi myself. I would need all the confidence I could encouraged me. He told me the man had lived muster because shortly after that conversation, at the Monastery when he first came to this the whole thing came crashing down again with country and that he was not a charlatan. His one phone call from my doctor. My latest CT name was Master Shih but everyone called scan showed another spot on my lung. The only him T.K. He agreed to teach me the ancient way to tell whether it was cancer was to wait and practice of Chi Kung. Chi, he explained, means take a scan in two months time. I was angry. I energy or life force. Through a series of slow wanted it all to be over with. My last surgery had graceful movements similar to Tai Chi, energy been just four months ago, and now I was certain is focused in the body and guided to the various I was already growing another tumor. I decided organs in need of healing. Chi Kung requires to try something different. I stopped taking the total concentration and is, in many respects, chemotherapy. It was not a difficult decision to meditation in motion. make since not even my doctors seemed to have T.K. proved to be a demanding teacher. The much faith in the drug I was taking. Chi Kung would have to be done for two hours I had heard stories about a Chinese Master every day and not just any two hours would who taught ancient Chinese healing practices. do. It had to be done every morning, outdoors,

41 between the hours of 3 am and 5 am. “Why can’t 100% in what you’re doing to heal yourself but it be done later?” I protested. “Cancer cells are you must also let go of the end result—whether most active early in the morning,” he explained. you live or die.” “But that’s a contradiction!” I “You must do the Chi Kung before the cells cried. “Do it!” he said, and rang the bell. I left become active.” I bargained. ‘’I’ll do more Chi dokusan convinced that Daidoshi and T.K. were Kung later in the day.” He was adamant. It was both trying to drive me out of my mind. his way or no way. Very reluctantly, I agreed. Although he was sixty years old, he moved It’s difficult to convey what happened over the with the grace and agility of a truly great ballet next few months because nothing dramatic, dancer. Awkwardly I tried to duplicate his immediate, or noticeable occurred. There were movements. “No! No!” he would correct, “must very small, barely perceptible, and subtle changes relax! Must be peaceful, happy, and relaxed.” taking place. I stopped resisting T.K. and gave “How can I be relaxed,” I wanted to know, myself up wholeheartedly to the practice of Chi “when I’m probably growing another tumor in Kung. What had once been drudgery became my lungs?” “Just do!” he would say sternly. It delight. I did it joyfully. My days were filled with was drudgery, dragging myself out of bed every zazen and Chi Kung, work practice and rest morning before 3 am. The early morning air was practice. And along with all of that, there was cold, and my bed was warm and comfortable. I the always present need to go deeper. Daidoshi fought T.K. every inch of the way. I badgered and I spoke about Jukai, and we agreed that I him with questions, the most frequent one would take the precepts. Taking the precepts was being, “How much longer do I have to do this certainly a way to go deeper. stuff?” “No questions,” he would reprimand, “just As a nun, I had taken part in some of the most do! You all the time thinking! No thinking!” dramatic and powerful liturgical services that How, I wondered, did he know I was thinking? Catholicism had to offer. Certainly there was Finally, I pushed him to the limit of his patience. nothing that could compare with the investiture “Go to Western doctor,” he told me. “I cannot ceremony when I became a novice and received help you.” “No!” I begged him. I pleaded for one the habit. And yet, for all its pageantry and power, more chance. “No more questions. No more for all its beauty and solemnity, it never touched thinking,” I promised. He mulled it over, or so me the way receiving the precepts did. I was it seemed to me, before he finally relented and totally unprepared for the depths of my emotional agreed to give me one last chance. response. As Daidoshi placed the rakusu over I was confused. Daidoshi was prodding me to my head, I began to cry, and I had absolutely go deeper and uncover the causes of the cancer, no idea why I was crying. After we received and T.K. was pushing me to be peaceful. “You’re the precepts, Daidoshi asked us three times if both driving me crazy,” I told Daidoshi. “I feel we would maintain them. Each time we were like I’m between a rock and a hard place. How supposed to respond, “I will.” But “I will” couldn’t am I supposed to be peaceful and happy when convey the intensity of my feelings or the depth of I’m knee deep in shit?” “T.K.’s telling you where my commitment. I wanted to shout, “With every you have to get to,” he responded, “and I’m fiber of my being! With my whole body and mind! telling you how to do it.” “But how,” I wanted With all the strength that I possess!” I settled for to know, “how do I do it?” “You have to believe three heartfelt “I wills.”

42 Now that I was no longer wrestling with There was absolutely no pressure. Truly there Mu, I had a chance to deal with unresolved was nothing to do, nothing to bring Daidoshi in issues arising from the cancer. Was I a spiritual dokusan. I began to realize that it was possible to masochist? I wondered. Was it just a coincidence experience deep peace in the midst of uncertainty that the scar from the colon cancer was so near about the cancer. There was, however, just so my hara? If I could neither pass Mu nor bring it much peace and tranquility that a confirmed up, did I think a surgeon’s scalpel could cut it out? psychological masochist could tolerate. It didn’t Was it a bid for attention, a sort of “Over here, feel right; I was getting bored. I recalled what I’d Daidoshi; notice me, see what a serious student I said in open sozan after my first cancer surgery. am”? Instinctively, I sensed that there was truth in I’d expected that sesshin to be filled with pain; all those statements but still I did not see it clearly. instead it was absolutely still. In fact it was so still I needed to go deeper. that I’d gone to Daidoshi convinced that I was Sesshin was the perfect way to do that. At doing something wrong. “Nothing’s happening,” other times it was possible for me to distract I complained. He assured me that it was okay. myself, to keep my fears about the cancer un der Could he be right, I had wondered. I summed it control, but in sesshin there was no place to up in open sozan: “Maybe it’s because I grew up hide. All the anxious, fear-filled thoughts would listening to Italian opera, but I’d always thought come up, and I would deal with them the way I if there wasn’t drama, tragedy, and pain, nothing usually did: I’d talk to myself about them. Halfway was happening. Now I’m beginning to see that through this particular sesshin, however, I saw that ain’t necessarily so.” for the first time that there was another way to Suddenly, the whole thing became clear to me. use my mind. This time, when a thought arose, I needed the pain! Suffering gave meaning to my bringing with it strong feelings of terror, I neither life. In the words of the popular song, “Suffering recoiled from it in horror nor engaged in dialogue was the only thing that made me feel I was about it. I simply watched it, and it fell away. And alive.” It was the way I had lived my whole life. with it went my fear! It felt right, it felt familiar, and it was, I thought, I raced into dokusan when my turn came. the only way to grow spiritually. I watched in “Now I understand the lines in the Heart Sutra! amazement as I used my mind almost frantically No hindrance in the mind, therefore no fear. No to create problems and pain to replace my peace. suffering, no cause of suffering. I’m the cause of Without the slightest bit of doubt, I presented suffering. I create it by how I use my mind! I’m my understanding to Daidoshi. It was the answer the hindrance!” Daidoshi nodded that it was to the question of why I needed to create the so. “That’s how you live your whole life, isn’t it?” cancer. When I finished, he asked, “Are you in Again he nodded. I was wide-eyed with awe. therapy?” I nodded yes. He rang the bell, and it “That’s how I want to live my life!” I exclaimed. was over. He cautioned me that it took years of practice. “Don’t be disappointed if you can’t maintain it Two weeks later, I went for the CT scan that when you leave sesshin.” I left dokusan elated. would determine what was going on in my lungs. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t maintain it; I had The suspicious spot had grown very slightly. glimpsed the possibilities. It was cancer. I decided I could deal with it. I began to notice that my sitting felt freer. The consultations with the doctors began. They

43 weren’t sure what to do. “What do you mean you the possibilities. “You could grow another tumor don’t know what to do? What do you usually do three months from now.” She paused long enough with a patient like me?” I asked. “I’ve never had a for me to take it in before she continued. “When patient like you,” the oncologist responded. “We we cut you open, there’s also the possibility hardly ever save someone like you,” she said. She of finding many small cancerous growths that presented my case to a board of doctors at Sloan- are too numerous to remove.” I nodded that Kettering. Dr. McClure recommended surgery I understood. She volunteered that she didn’t at the meeting. The other doctors agreed. I expect that to be the case. “If you were going to concurred. She would operate after Thanksgiving blossom with it, I think you would have done it by weekend, It would be my third operation in now.” Before she left she told me she had a feeling fifteen months. everything would be okay. What a wonderful I could see the worry and the fear in my unscientific thing to say. I loved it! mother’s eyes. “Everything will be okay,” I told The nurse offered me a sleeping pill. I turned her. I had a very deep sense of peace as I lay in it down. I watched TV for a while, did zazen, my hospital bed. It didn’t matter what they found and went to sleep. Morning came quickly. Again when they cut me open, I knew that I would be Natalie was there. I repeated Dr. McClure’s words able to deal with it. Dr. McClure visited me the to her, hoping she would find comfort in them. night before surgery. “No guarantees,” she said. I Again I climbed onto the gurney for the long wondered if she knew Daidoshi. She spelled out ride to pre-op, and as before, she walked with me

44 and held my hand. I was alert and calm. This I finished, she said, “We don’t understand how time I had not been given a tranquilizer before Chinese medicine works, but we want you to being wheeled out. Finally we came to the double keep doing whatever it is you’ve been doing.” I was doors, which once again barred Natalie from delighted. It was a wonderful conversation, but it going any further. A squeezed hand, a hug, a kiss wasn’t the high point of my hospital stay. That goodby, the doors swung open, and she was gone. would come the following morning. I found myself in the same pre-op area I’d been in The hospital was just starting to come alive. only seven months ago. There were only four or My room was still dark, but the shift had changed five patients there at first, but it began to fill up and the level of noise and activity on the corridor quickly. The woman who lay on the gurney next was slowly escalating. The day nurse came into to me began to talk. She must have been sedated my room and lowered the guard rail on the side because her speech was somewhat slurred. I don’t of my bed. I was still hurting from the surgery, remember her name; I don’t remember what she still taking pain medication in order to sleep. I said; I only remember holding her hand. And was awake but just barely. “There’s something then they came to wheel her into surgery. I was I want you to see,” she said. The only thing I next. Why, I wondered, are operating rooms wanted to see was my pillow. Before I had a always so cold? Dr. McClure came over to the chance to protest, she had me out of bed and long narrow table I was lying on. Once again she standing on unsteady feet. Slowly she guided me held my hand. She smiled, we talked, we even to the window. We were on the fifteenth floor, laughed, and then everything went black. overlooking the East River. Beyond the river Several days after surgery, my oncologist, lay Queens, still cloaked in darkness. There was Dr. Kalema walked into my room. She was the barest glimmer of light below the horizon. I delighted with the results of the surgery and stood, mesmerized by the incredible breathtaking wanted to know what I’d been doing. She was spectacle that slowly unfolded before my eyes. apparently willing to entertain the radical idea My pain was gone. I lost all track of time. I never that something I had done could have influenced even heard the nurse leave my side. I watched in the outcome of my surgery. “What do you mean?” silent awe as the sun climbed over the horizon I wanted to know. “We can’t explain what we and set the heavens ablaze in a sea of scarlet and found in your lung,” she said. “What did you pink. I stood there until the sun had completed find?” I asked. She explained that they had its breathtaking ascent. As I turned to go back indeed found and removed a small cancerous to my bed, I brushed my hand lightly against my growth. But they also found very recently formed face. My cheeks were wet with my tears. I was scar tissue that had not been there when they last crying, and I hadn’t even realized it. I began to operated. The consensus was that the scar tissue sob. It was impossible to contain my gratitude, represented newly formed cancerous growths that impossible even to say what I was grateful for or my body had somehow healed by itself. She to whom I was grateful. It was simply gratitude, pointed out that since I had elected to stop the boundless gratitude that excluded nothing, not chemotherapy three months ago, the drugs could even the cancer. not be responsible. I proceeded to tell her about Several nights later, I had an opportunity to visualization meditation and Chinese healing express my gratitude. I shared my hospital room practices. For the first time, she listened. When with a woman named Agnes. She was seventy

45 years old and had undergone lung surgery about let it go on the out breath. Let go of the pain. three weeks earlier. She was still hooked up to Feel it leaving your body. Feel your body relaxing. some kind of machine because her lungs had Breathe in strength, breathe out the pain.” I not sealed properly. Her doctors were trying to had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but it spare her the very painful procedure that would seemed to be helping. Agnes began to respond. remedy the problem. After exhausting all other “My body feels wonderful. It feels so light.” Maybe possibilities, however, it was decided that there the morphine had a delayed reaction? Could it was no other alternative. At ten o’clock on this be hypnosis? Was it a variation of the Lamaze particular night, the procedure was begun, and technique? Whatever it was it didn’t matter. Agnes received a morphine injection to help her Agnes was mastering her pain. I sat and marveled tolerate the pain. at the strength of this seventy-year-old woman. Since it was my bedtime, I popped in my ear She was succeeding at something I’d never been plugs, put on my sleep mask, and turned out my able to do. I recalled vividly my own dismal light. (Hospitals, I had learned, are not meant failure with Lamaze when my daughter was born. for sleeping so I had come well prepared.) The I’d spent most of my labor hollering my head off. ear plugs didn’t shut out the sounds of Agnes’s Agnes was truly an amazing woman. moans. There is nothing I can do, I told myself, Finally midnight came. “You made it, Agnes, as I burrowed deeper into my pillow. After all, the two hours are up.” I squeezed her hand and I reasoned, it’s not my responsibility. I just had kissed her on the forehead. As I turned to go back major surgery. I need my rest. to my bed, she cried out that the pain was back. It didn’t work. I got out of bed and rang for “Don’t leave me,” she said. “Agnes, you made the the nurse. No nurse came. I put on my robe and pain go away before; you can make it go away slippers and walked down to the nurses’ station. now.” “You’re right!” She smiled, and fell asleep Couldn’t they do something? They already had; before I did. if the morphine wasn’t helping there wasn’t anything else they could give her. I went back to I left the hospital a week and a half before our room and liid the only thing I could think Christmas. It was for me an especially poignant of: I lied. “Agnes,” I said, “it will take a while holiday. I was all too aware of how very fragile before the morphine works, so let’s see if we can and precious the gift of life was. More and do something in the meantime to help with the more I was coming to realize that all I had was pain.” “Please,” she said. The doctors were hopeful the moment and that in the moment I had that the drug that had been introduced into her absolute freedom to use my mind any way I chose. lungs would seal the area that was leaking. Agnes The possibilities were truly boundless. The only had to change position every fifteen minutes, barriers or boundaries that existed were the ones I lying first on her back, then on her right side, her chose to create. Naively, I wondered if there were stomach, and her left side. She had to do this for any more barriers, while one of the biggest ones two hours. had been staring me right in the face. It had to I pulled a chair up to her bed and began do with a very old and painful relationship that I speaking in a very slow, soothing voice. “Watch had never laid to rest. I had begun having dreams your breath,” I told her. “On the in breath feel which had to do with reconciliation, acceptance, yourself breathing in strength and energy. Now and forgiveness. I decided it was time to contact

46 that person, Chris. created and carried for sixteen years was finally I was ill prepared for the Pandora’s Box I had gone. The relationship was over. unlocked. I fell right back into the same old Almost paradoxically, by letting go, I got pattern of relating. I watched in horror as once back more than I could have imagined. The again my neediness rose to the surface. Nothing relationship that I am in now (and had been in for had changed. How was it possible, I wondered, seven years) began to flourish and grow beyond to have grown in so many other ways and still my greatest expectations. Drama and tragedy be so infantile when it came to this relationship? made great opera, I decided, but I no longer had My answer to this question came from a very room for them in my life. unexpected source. At the time I was still seeing Master Shih. (He no longer had me getting up This story has no ending because I’m beginning at 3 A.M., but I was still doing Chi Kung.) He to realize that there is no end to practice. Before rarely asked me personal questions, but on this I stop writing, however, I would like to go back particular day he did. He wanted to know if I to the beginning of this article. For me, the was in a relationship. I replied that I was. He spiritual journey began as a search for God, and looked me right in the eye and said, “Wanting yet in reflecting on my experience with cancer, I is not good.” My jaw dropped open! How did realize that I never said a single prayer, never lit he know? He just smiled and repeated himself a candle, never made a novena, never asked the and then added, “All energy must go to healing question, “Why me?” When I sat with it, I realized your body from the surgery and not to wanting.” that to even ask the question, “Why me?” is to “After my body is healed, is wanting O.K.?” I was give rise to the pain that comes from separation. shocked by my question. T.K. just shook his head. Somewhere on my journey I had let go of the No wonder the relationship was still the same. I idea of God, the idea that God was a person, realized that I didn’t want it to change. I liked the that God was separate and distinct from myself. ups and downs, the highs and lows. It was full of There is nothing I can point to that is not God excitement, and I was hooked on it. and yet, if I so much as raise my hand to point, I I needed to see it for what it was. It was an have missed it. obstacle to spiritual growth. Only when I finally At first I thought practice had to do with saw it in that light was I prepared to do anything knowing the answer to the ultimate question. about it. I sat with it and let the whole thing Now I am just beginning to see the necessity come up. Anger and hurt, denied for years, of truly not knowing, of “don’t know” mind. threatened to drown me. At first my anger was Daidoshi has told me that I need to be stupid. As directed at Chris for treating me so shabbily, but hard as I can, I’m working on it! then I realized that I had allowed it to happen. I was really angry at myself! Slowly the anger and Maureen Jisho Ford has been an MRO lay student hurt ran their course. I did nothing to hinder since 1985 and continues to enjoy good health and them. I simply let them be until they were gone. well-being in her practice. She recently moved near the After they had passed, I went through a period Monastery with Natalie, her wife, of 38 years. of intense grieving. I mourned the relationship. I grieved for what it was as well as for what it could never be. Months later, I realized that the pain I’d

47 48 The Immovable Spot by Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei From Zazen, 2013

Just resting is like the great ocean accepting hun- dreds of streams all absorbed in one flavor. A practitioner of the way follows movement and responds to changes in total harmony. Moreover, haven’t you yourself established the mind that thinks up all the illusory conditions? This insight must be perfectly incorporated. Discontinue leaks and do not act on them.

— Master Hongzhi Cultivating the Empty Field

49 ow do we leak the vital energy we running away from where we are. need for spiritual awakening? What William James did an experiment around the Hdo we have to do to, “discontinue the turn of the nineteenth century. He wanted to leaks and not act on them,” as Master Hongzhi see how long the average person could actually teaches? concentrate, so he used the example of a bird Each period of zazen, our practice is moment- sitting on a tree limb. How long do you think to-moment trying to be where we are. Every we can keep our full concentration completely aspect of our training basically boils down on that bird? Four point seven seconds. Four to this. Consider all the forms we use in point seven seconds to focus and concentrate training—these forms are offered so that at on that bird before our attention flies off. Our each moment we know exactly how to fill attention can return—the bird may come ourself. They simplify things for us; we can just back and land on another branch. But how fold right into the form and within that form, long is that flight away? Look at your current see our minds clearly. zazen—how long before your attention returns When we come into the zendo, in a sense, we to right here? It could be five minutes. Maybe take up the question, “Where am I?” Although ten minutes? Half an hour? A year? A lifetime? our bodies are clearly here in this space, in a A lifetime…. big way, we’re not here—we’re somewhere else, That gap in our awareness, that flight, is often lost in our fantasies, memories, and ideas. where we suffer, consciously or unconsciously. Hongzhi says, “Haven’t you yourself established Until we learn to meditate, most of us are the mind that thinks up all the illusory unable to see this process of how we get lost in conditions? This insight must be perfectly our head and miss our life. In zazen we study incorporated.” We need to see where we are this moment by simply learning to be. This and be aware of what we are feeling. is “the resting of the streams of tides” that What does it mean to be totally and Hongzhi speaks of: to study the moment, simply completely here, with the whole body and learning to be. mind, all the senses, the intellect, the passions? In another section of Cultivating the Empty It’s incredible to see how uninterested we are Field, Hongzhi says, “You must completely in where we are. We just want to think, to withdraw from the visible pounding and figure life out, to worry or indulge our fantasies. weaving of your ingrained ideas. You yourself Before we know it, we are somewhere else. This establish the mind that thinks up all the is not a sin—we’re just lost in our thinking illusory conditions, false conceptions, and mind at that moment—but the problem is that attachments that we do not realize. Accept we’re unaware. The freedom of our mind is your function and be wholly satisfied.” What that we can go wherever we want to—we can is it to accept? Accept who you are—all of it. fantasize, we can daydream, we can go to the When we come into practice, many of us feel past, to the future—in a way, this is the beauty that we want to get rid of something. But our of our mind. But for us to put our mind where practice is to accept what we want to get rid of, we want it, when we want it there, for as long as because although we can’t get rid of it, we can we need it there—this is very difficult. That’s see it clearly. Accept who you are—we should why we’re in training: to learn how to stop keep this aspiration clear. “Accepting hundreds

50 of streams all absorbed in one flavor.” What is breath, koan by koan, practice by practice: one flavor? Just don’t move away. concentrate. Concentration can be described as a In any commitment of attention things will particular state of awareness that’s penetrating, get larger. We enter not-knowing, uncertainty, unified, focused, yet permeable and open. It’s which puts us in accord with how things are. hard to define, but we recognize when it’s It’s uncomfortable, challenging to be in this present, or when it’s absent. We can experience space of not-knowing, of uncertainty. concentration put into things, like when things are made, we can feel the concentration that was I was recently invited to a middle school to present. For example, every day this floor was speak about Buddhism. The students there vacuumed, and I could feel the concentration were exploring the theme “Be Where You present in that every time I came into the Are.” As part of the visit, I guided a group in zendo. We see it in people—we can recognize art practice with clay. After we’d had a chance when someone has concentration. to warm up and work with the clay for a bit, When we’re offered instruction in zazen, we I invited the group to take up expressing the learn about joriki, the power of concentration, feeling of love. I said, “Does everyone here love the ability to put our mind where we want it something?” And everyone said, “Yeah!” and and keep it there for as long as we need to. piped up with the stuff they love, cars, horses. (I The instruction is to come into our body, remember Trungpa Rinpoche said, “Everybody establish our posture, and then make contact loves something, even if it’s a tortilla chip.” I with our breath. When we inhale count one, always liked that.) We each brought to mind exhale, two. When a thought comes up that something we love and I encouraged them takes us away from the counting, we see the to just feel that love—not what the thing thought, acknowledge it, release the grasp on is, but to feel the feeling, and just let their it and come back to the breath. Every time we hands do what that feeling is doing. While do that we build joriki. We practice putting they’re working, I’m taking in how everyone our concentration lower in the body, in the is responding to this exercise, which is really hara, where the more intuitive, spontaneous asking us to concentrate, to stay open, present, aspect of our being naturally arises from. Often responsive, and to not-know. we’re living from the neck up, top heavy, lost There was a lot of nervous energy, kids in thought, so in zazen we practice bringing coming in and out of their own experience, everything down lower. We sit in an upright looking at each other. I could see one fellow stable form, surrendering our weight to the pull struggling with knowing and not knowing. He of gravity, and letting our breath and attention would get the concentration going, he would move down. be with the clay, with the feeling, and then In the wholeheartedness of concentration, you could see him pull away, like he couldn’t the world and ourself begin to cohere. In handle it. He would have to talk out loud, make zazen, we invite concentration, bringing our a plan for what he was creating, like, “I’m going attention to just where we are. Interesting or to make a…” but then he’d let go again, and not: concentrate. Boring or not: concentrate. release back into not-knowing, eyes closed, just Excitement or lack: concentrate. Breath by feeling the clay in his hands…. He was moving

51 in and out, working with that clay, trusting not-know what this is!” You could just see the the mystery of its form taking shape. But tension: Don’t know. You can’t not-know. Don’t then finally he said, “There! I made a couch.” know. You can’t not-know….This is what we do. Mystery solved. One moment we have infinite We wonder why it’s so hard to awaken. It’s possibilities, the next, he knew something. because that life-force, our ki, our energy that’s Dead on arrival. He stopped concentrating. needed, is leaking away night and day, day and This is Mara taking over, saying, “You can’t night.

52 One of the pivotal realizations in this practice to plug them. One is unnecessary talking. It is to realize the extent to which we live asleep. takes the form of mindless chatter—elevating We sit down, we start seeing, and then it’s ourselves, putting down others, gossiping, painful because we see how much we miss. And complaining or overdramatizing. yet joy comes because we see. We see, finally! Another leak is internal daydreams, whether Hongzhi says, “You must completely withdraw they are planning, fantasizing, worrying, from the invisible pounding and weaving of or just random thoughts about nothing in your ingrained ideas. You yourself establish particular. Random thoughts about nothing in the mind that thinks up all the illusory particular—Leak. Do you feel it? Worrying— conditions, false conceptions and attachments big loss. Gossiping—total leakage. Every time we do not realize. Accept your function and be we indulge in unnecessary thinking, we lose wholly satisfied.” Most of our thoughts arrive a small amount of that energy that could be predictably, mechanically, from our conditions. turned around to penetrate and awaken. Rarely do we know who we are, except in a very The third leak is unnecessary muscular narrow, self-conscious way. We hardly know tension—the physical contraction that results what we’re doing while we’re doing it. But right from the constant struggle to make our life there, when we become aware of this gap, we strategies work. I sat for years with my head can make contact with the energy we need to turned slightly to one side. Each time the awaken. monitor would come by, she would adjust my We also need to acknowledge the extent head back to the center. But then slowly, my to which we do not want to be where we head would turn back to the side. Finally I saw are, the extent to which we make the choice that I was turning away almost imperceptibly; “no”—choosing not to meditate, to just be I just didn’t want to face something. So our entertained, or choosing to blame, to complain. bodily tension reflects the configuration of In one sense, resistance is fine, because we can our mind. When we try to win, to please, to use it to sharpen the lens. We can press against hide, to avoid discomfort, all of that effort is what is being resisted. Hongzhi says, “The a form of aggression towards our self. Refrain. insight must be perfectly incorporated,”—this Remember the Buddha said, “not too loose, is to take responsibility—not to blame the not too tight.” thoughts, the thinker, or anyone else. See the The fourth leak is the manifestation of attachment clearly, take responsibility, refrain, negative emotions. We squander a lot of energy relax, concentrate, and have compassion for that way. Negative emotions, in this case, does yourself. Humor helps. See the absurdity of not mean bad emotions. It refers to an emotion what we’re believing in at that moment. And that negates or denies, that says “no” to life, at the same time, see how profound that is. like anger or irritability. “I don’t want this,” we How absurd, and how profound. Concentrate. say. Or, “bug off.” Nobody escapes anger—it Enlarge. Touch the infinite possibility of mind. arises as judgment of our selves, of others, The Buddha spoke about the ways that we as impatience. How much precious energy is get distracted and leak our concentration. If we consumed in the slog and slush of anger? want to plumb the depths of being here, then The area that has required the most attention we need to recognize these leaks and learn how in my practice is how to work with the negative

53 emotions. In beginning instruction, we’re told on this?” He says, “While I walked, the fear that if a strong emotion comes and we feel and dread came upon me. I neither stood nor like we can’t let it go—if we’ve just created a sat nor lay down until I subdued the fear and thought that has a very strong hook for us, that dread. While I stood, the fear and dread came feels very real, and we’ve identified with it—the upon me. I neither walked nor sat nor lay down instruction is to “be it.” Not our story, but the until I subdued that dread. While I lay down, raw sensation. Get to the feeling on a cellular the fear and dread came upon me. I neither level, experience the energy of it—of anger, of walked nor stood nor sat down until I subdued being hurt. Experience our trembling jaw, our that fear or dread.” This fear and dread is that tightened throat, our pressed-in chest. This Mara-mind—that part of us that turns away, is zazen. This is being where you are. It’s the that doesn’t want to change, that wants to stay hardest practice, but I think we often skip over in ignorance. We all live with Mara. Even the it. We are afraid to feel. Buddha said that until the end of his life, he Our practice is to be where we are—so was always on guard for Mara. we don’t repress or reject emotions, and we But just like the Buddha, we can stay don’t indulge them. When we refrain from steady. In the sutras, it says “Gautama expressing them in words or actions or inward found his immovable spot.” I like that: the thoughts, when we stay with the raw feeling immovable spot, the unconquerable position. and hold the leak, we can see the vital energy Mara approached him and said, “Arise. Get clearly and can actually feel it directly. This is up from this seat. It doesn’t belong to you, direct experience. That’s what’s so wonderful it belongs to me.” Sound familiar? But the about our experience. It’s direct. It’s ours. Buddha sat with that fire of attention, that Nobody can give that to us. Nobody can take deep concentration. He’d been through a lot, that away. and he had deeply developed that power. He From this kind of practice we begin to emerged to say, “No. This seat does not belong experience the transformative process at the to you. It belongs to me. This is my immovable heart of practice. If we don’t actually practice, spot.” And he touched the earth and said, we will keep wondering why the life force “This is my witness.” Own it. Claim your spot. necessary to awaken eludes us. No amount Be where you are. It’s that basic. Renounce the of thinking or figuring out will allow us to clinging and self-identification. This allows us understand what’s at work here, because we to see through the whole round of samsara. are not knowable. We are not knowable. This This allows us to stop running in circles. This will feel uncomfortable for a while, maybe a is how we give life to the Buddha. long time, until we can really see what it’s about. But working through it, there is a lot of Jody Hojin Kimmel Sensei is a dharma happiness. This is why we don’t give up. It’s like teacher, head priest and training coordinator at the an oyster—it needs the grit to make the pearl. Monastery, and co-director of ZCNYC. If we don’t let the grit in, there’s no pearl. The Buddha asked himself, “Why do I always dwell in fear and dread?” Or, in other words, “How do I discontinue the leak, and not act

54 55 Lone Zen by Bill Kigen Delaney

From Fear and Fearlessness, 1992

t the very unmonastic hour of most fundamentally, makes this a different seven AM, in the basement of effort from sitting in the Hudson Valley, A a house in the hills outside the or in New York City, or even in Boston, Chilean capitol city of Santiago, the where I used to live. From Boston, the South American branch of the Mountain four-hour car trip seemed like a big deal. and Rivers Order begins the day. The Now, I’ll be able to manage one trip home ringing of a bell, forty-minutes or so of a year, and that will always be a time zazen, chanting the Heart Sutra. Zazen crowded with responsibilities to family again in the evening, ending this time and friends. Announcing to people you with the Four Vows. see once a year that you’re going “upstate” In the stillness of a cold August winter for a week can be difficult. Explaining to morning, neighborhood dogs bark. At them you’re going on a Zen retreat can evening time, sirens drift up from the city. be, well, let’s just say I keep it simple, In the clear night, the Southern Cross leaving it with “I’ll be visiting friends.” rises over the back yard. This year, my first overseas, already And here in the foothills of the Andes, has served as a kind of test case in the there’s never a problem with over- noble tradi tion of Murphy’s infallible law. crowding. Member ship of the Santiago Everything that could possibly go wrong, sangha: one. went wrong. For the many years I’ve practiced Zen, I’d counted on attending sesshin in June, I’ve almost always done it alone. Two during my four-week home leave. Instead, years ago, I met Daido Sensei, which within twenty fours hours of arriving has of course changed my practice, and in the United States, my wife had to be brought it onto an entirely new level. hospitalized. By the time she recovered, The intimate encounter with a teacher is I’d missed the sesshin and had to return something books can’t convey. to South America before July’s sesshin. I Soon after meeting my teacher, though, managed two days in the hermitage. It’s I found myself eight thousand miles away unlikely I’ll be able to return this year for from him. So far, I’m discovering that a sesshin. practice closer to the South Pole than That should be a kind of disaster. the New York State Thruway can present It’s not. I think every experience, when both special perils and rewards. you’re practicing, can teach. The days in The absence of a teacher and a sangha, the hermitage were difficult, restless. It

56 57 seemed wrong to have abandoned wife I’m seeing sitting lately as a kind and kid back in the city, to go rummaging of disaster anyway, like life. A futile, around in the mountains enthroned on contradictory experience. The one thing one’s posterior amid the birds, sniffing in a life full of “purpose” that’s, well, around for a dose of insight. By the utterly ridiculous. time I finally saw Daidoshi, I had very I respect it for that. little to offer except the accumulated And that’s perhaps the special lesson of frustration of the month. practice in isolation, far from the monas- No big bouquet of enlightenment. tery. Down here, your expectations will Oddly, in the weeks after returning to either bury you and make you give up, South America and my basement zendo, or liberate you, forcing you to drop them the whole experience turned out to be altogether and simply move on. as important a visit to the monastery In my job as a journalist, I see a lot of as I’ve had. Missing sesshin, forced to suffering—people who’ve been screwed return to the practice humbly, even by life from the day they were born. I hopelessly, has brought my meditation think we Zen practitioners can’t forget into a less precious level—made it more about them. We have to be careful not just a part of this messy life. to remove ourselves. Careful not to hide

58 out on the hill, literally or figuratively, The year Liam was born I found the with that ever-so-slightly-self-satisfied- Monastery. I had been searching for a half smile of the “Buddhist.” Buddhist teacher for many years. Like many Zen to me is about trying your best and others I’ve spoken to, when I first stepped then just letting things be what they are. onto the grounds of ZMM, and when I first That’s that. That’s what I like about it. looked into Daido Roshi’s eyes, I knew I It’s nothing more than common sense, was home. I still do. It’s just that over these and it’s utterly profound. It can be serene decades I’ve rarely been able to be at home. and exquisite, and it’s also downright We lived in South America, the Middle silly. It can drive you nearly mad, and East, Europe. Now I live in New York but right at that point, you usually calm down I spend half the month in Seattle. I’ve spent and get a glimpse. virtually all my years of ZMM practice When you’re far away, you just slog mostly on the road. along. You have no choice. No one’s going All those years ago I wrote about practic- to tell you how well you’re doing or how ing from afar. No doubt many in our sangha lousy. And that’s a chance to de-mystify can relate. There are special challenges to Zen. To just do it and see what grows. practicing like this, and it’s not just about Daido understands the problems of a distance. Working a job, raising kids—living foreign practice. That helps a lot. If he was a life—can make it tough to get to ZMM pounding me on the head demanding that too. But it is possible to practice like this. “the practice” be put before everything, Once I stepped onto the path, I stayed on frankly, I’d consider him just another it. I just sat. Somehow, however far away guy with a bill of spiritual goods for sale. I was, however busy my days and nights, That’s not the case at all. He says do the in my experience I was guided. I found my best you can. I still feel like I’m working way. with him. He’s still my teacher, even if What has also flowered, preciously, is l see him once a year. that Gale and Liam now practice too. I Maybe it’s possible to find Zen anywhere, never overtly suggested that they should “try with a little searching, even here in it.” Not once. But Liam has just spent a year deepest darkest Catholic South America. in residency. Gale became a student last The important thing is to be consistent. year. Each found this path in their own way. To keep sitting. So I do-where the water Whoever we are, whatever we do, wherever goes counter-clockwise down the sink. we are, there’s the Way, and a way. That’s the miracle. Addendum 2018: Thirty years is the blink of an eye. I know I wrote this little essay about a quarter that now, for sure. I also know that if you’ve century ago when I and my wife, Gale, and been fortunate enough to open your eyes a my son Liam, were living in Chile. As a little along the way—there’s no greater gift. journalist for many years we moved around quite a bit. My daughter Tess would be born Bill Kegan Delaney still travels but now lives a few years later, in Jerusalem. mainly in New York with his wife, Gale. 59 Cars and Trucks Too by Sybil Seisui Rosen From Teachings of the Instentient, 1998

s everything in the world in the middle referring to our human need to separate reality of my heart?” my nephew Austin asks into comprehen sible pieces. But Austin’s “I me, out of the blue. He is four; I am young consciousness doesn’t divide so readily. dumbstruck. “Y-yes, absolutely,” I stammer. Instinctively he knows that the universe he “Cars and trucks too?” he goes on. “Uh-huh,” encom passes includes not only the natural I reply. world; his boundless heart does not so easily I don’t think he’s looking for answers be cause segre gate the ten thousand things into he already has them. He just wants to see if l categories: the natural and the artificial, the have them too, though I’m sure my experi ence sublime and the man-made. He knows all of them is less direct than his at present. things, just as they are, dwell in him, are him. What really astonishes me is his second The universe, and everything in it, is inher- question. “Cars and trucks too?” Cars and ently, blazingly, alive. Even cars and trucks, trucks - hardly the stuff of spiritual prac tice. even—as Daido Roshi says—the Brooklyn Yet the question resounds. Bridge. As I think about this, it makes sense. Austin and I share a sphere through which Over a century ago, the cement for that bridge passes a never-ending stream of toys and was fired in kilns not far from Zen Mountain spoons, umbrellas and toothbrushes. All these Monastery, in Rosendale, New York. The things sprang into being, into their suchness, limestone from which the cement came was out of a creative impulse of our busy human originally sediment laid down hundreds of minds. Were we beavers, our evolution might millions of years ago at the bottom of a vast have outfitted us with built-in tools: teeth that shallow inland sea. There, shells of lime once never stop growing (handy if you’re in the belonging to primitive aquatic creatures sifted business of gnawing down trees); rudder-like down into the sand and silt; with time and tails that provide ballast when working on pressure they lithified into limestone to be land; noses and ears that close during dives mined, eons later, for cement and ultimately to under water. Instead, we humans de veloped span the New York harbor. All time, all space, problem-solving brains, which led in turn to this moment. the emer gence of external tools—like axes In lnstructions for the Zen Cook, Master and footstools, nose and ear plugs. And also Dogen writes; “See the pot as your own head; provided us with that mixed bag of percep tions see the water as your lifeblood.” He points to a we call consciousness. way of experiencing these things that act as our The Sanskrit word for con sciousness— helpmates in navigating the relative world that vijnana—means literally “to divide,” no doubt we have created, that we surround ourselves

60 with, that are no other than ourselves. A boss as the Monastery was an impactful encounter in of mine used to say: “Take care of the people their very young lives. And they have grown to be who take care of you.” Is it any different with kind, loving, productive men who reminisce often things? about the people they met here and the things we By the by, Austin’s third question to me that did together. day was: “Is everything in the world in the I was a relatively new student when I wrote middle of LaRue’ s heart?” LaRue is the dog. this piece. Re-reading it some twenty years later, I marvel at the certainty of the voice. These days I’m less certain about more things, and as I write Addendum 2018: that, I hear Daidoshi laugh. Daido Roshi told me I’d have to stop telling this story when Austin became a teenager. So I did. But now that he and his brother Jared are in Sybil Seisui Rosen lives in Georgia and is a their twenties, I feel I can embarrass them anew. writer, actor and director for stage and screen. Though embarrass is not the right word. I think they’ll be thrilled to be part of this retrospective

61 Being Born by Annie Redman

From Mystic Earth, 2002

62 63 idwives say that at every birth, a go outside every day, where people smiled at me mother is also born. During all of like I held the best thing in the world, and I Mthe difficulty of my first months with took a shower every day. These were points of Simon, it was comforting to remember that the pride—I thought I was supposed to take care of great cycle of birth that was manifested here myself, too. The truth was that those showers included me, too. That being born inherently were a feeble (however hygienically necessary) involves a mother. And that I was a newborn, gesture at independence against the reality of too. After Simon was born, when the labor was being a mom. over—suddenly and completely over—I had no Simon had a modest case of colic. He idea what I was supposed to do or say or feel. screamed two to five hours every evening. Matt I felt emptied out of all the noise I had been and I took turns putting him in our slings and making and all the space my pains had been pacing the living room rocking and singing taking up. There was a crying newborn on me made-up songs that made us feel like we were with big eyes and a centered certainty, and I was soothing this wide-mouthed squall; it made my totally flummoxed. whole heart ache that he could be so miserable. That night, I couldn’t walk right, I was We’d chant, ‘’A little little walk around a little vibrating with hunger, and there was this tiny little block” as we circled the coffee table, or, curled-up whisp of strong going-to-be that I “Storm cloud, he’s a little bit loud” over and over was charged with mothering (whatever that and over. Matt would try to get me to nurse him meant). It took a week before I could admit to more, but by then we had thrush (which makes my husband Matt that I did not know Simon. I nursing really hurt), and Simon refused most of was scared because everyone kept saying, “Oh, the time anyway. of course you do,” which wasn’t true. I was lost in hot, humid July in our upstairs apartment My life with Simon has changed so many times with a new baby and a new version of myself since then. The colic disappeared at about ten that seemed incredibly important to get right. weeks when I had the bright idea to nurse him I was afraid that my whole life would be this to sleep at 7 p.m. before it all started. The thrush way. I was nursing for 45 minutes at a stretch, went away, so nursing didn’t hurt anymore. which meant not moving from the couch Simon and I started to understand each other, and wishing I had remembered to go to the and to love each other. I felt physical pulls, like bathroom and get a glass of water and a book tides, in my body when he was crying, and I to set beside me before we’d got started. My knew that was good. We started to fall into the butt hurt a lot of the time. Having a baby was same sleep rhythm—stirring at the same time, a new, foggy life and I didn’t have the skills or a quick nurse, and back to sleep. My lifelong knowledge—perhaps temperament, or enough insomnia is washed away by the calming energy love or wisdom, either, I feared— to see what of nursing, and I fall back to sleep easily. needed doing. Simon at nine months is a whole different person. After two weeks, Matt had to spend more He has preferences and desires and ways to time working, and my days opened one after express them. Yesterday he was upset about the other to nursing, and “wearing” Simon in a being in the car when he was tired, and when baby sling while I puttered a little. I made myself I came around to lift him out of his car seat,

64 he stiffened his body and growled at me just to let me know how he felt. When I put some food on the high chair tray, he tries it, and if he doesn’t like it, he picks it up, piece by piece, and drops it off the side, like a teacher making a point. He understands some sign language and responds to my signed suggestions with either enthusiastic arm flapping or indifference. He crawls all over the apartment and pulls himself up on furniture. He laughs when I tickle him just right—and my body sings to hear it. We usually share a bath at the end of the day, which Addendum 2018: is a highlight for both of us. Matt plays him the It was a pleasure to read this piece again guitar, and Simon crawls right up in front and and reflect on those first crazy months from strums too. today, seventeen years later. I’m glad that I didn’t As a mother, I am past the colicky newborn write only about the heart-opening, rapid-fire skill, phase myself. As we ease out of our infancy, building of new motherhood. It was also really our lives seem more particularly human and hard. Having children is not the easy path, that’s civilized than they were in those first months. for sure. I have so much more confidence in my Simon used to just nurse and sleep (and cry) like mothering now, and at the same time know that I any new mammal, and now he plays with toys, have been incredibly lucky to have kids who don’t grabs the cat’s feet, and eats Cheerios. I used to need a perfect mom. just nurse Simon, hunt for food in the kitchen, Simon—a thoughtful and very kind person—is and care for my healing body. Now I grocery applying for colleges now and we will all miss him shop, do laundry, walk to the park, work part- so much next year. Gus is thirteen and is full of time, and think through what kind of life I am affection, snark and surprises! Matt and I have creating with Simon. been married for almost 27 years and look back But my heart still pulls when Simon cries, fondly on our time as MRO students. I turned and I often can’t fall asleep until Simon wakes 50 this year and even while I look forward to the up to nurse. Even while I see that Simon is freedom of having an “empty nest,” I will miss becoming more independent, I feel our body having my dear kindred spirit (Simon) and inspiring connection more than ever, if that’s possible. sprite (Gus) around. His body wasn’t just inherited from his parents I still work as a midwife—baby count about at birth. He is growing with us, and of us, and 2,400 now—and feel so blessed to have the chance intertwined in our lives: in the food we all eat, to be intimately, helpfully present with mamas the air we breathe, the schedule and rhythms being born and their quiet, awake babies. we follow, and the fact of considering each other. Our family is becoming an ever-richer Annie Redman lives and works in Sacramento, CA matrix of roots which support the big trees of with her family. our lives is more and more depth and strength. Adolescent Buddhism by Rachel Yuho Rider

From Spirituality and Education, 2001

uring my childhood, religion was not a the morals and ethics that they professed and major part of my family life, nor was it modeled were my morals and ethics. When I Da part of the life of anyone around me. came into adolescence, my simple black-and- My life revolved around my fam ily and friends; white world suddenly collapsed, shading into the people who loved me. I saw no need for grays. I discovered a freedom of which I had religion and didn’t under stand the importance been unaware existed; this was the freedom of of its presence until I came into adolescence. my own free will to make my own decisions. However, throughout my childhood I I became faced with difficult situations in was exposed to Christianity, Judaism, and painful social relationships and uncomfortable Buddhism. My mother’s side of the family is activities with friends that could not be solved Jewish and my father’s side is Christian. Of by the teachings of my parents alone, but the three religions, Buddhism appealed to with my own head and heart. This was, and me personally. Though it is not necessarily is not, an easy thing to do. I was witness to the case, my exposure to Christianity and and sometimes a participant in, cruel and Judaism gave me the impression that it was devastating behavior toward girls who were separate from one’s life. My friends went to called friends. I was a party to and a victim of Church every few Sundays and would be holy betrayal and deceit, hardly understanding why in church, but as soon as they left the building, it was happening or the suffering and pain it their holy feelings and their religious values caused. At times we all were disrespectful of seemed to evaporate. This was similar at my the feelings, the possessions, even the bodies home. We would be Jewish on Fridays if we of others. I was frequently in uncomfortable were invited to my aunt’s for Shabot dinner situations in which I played a part, confused by and Christian if we were celebrating Easter, these uncomfortable experiences and feeling but after the holidays religion was forgotten. helpless about the way I felt. I found it difficult On the other hand, Buddhism was the way to be secure about what I knew to be right we lived our life. In our family the precepts, when it differed from how other people felt, and though never directly mentioned, were strongly so I felt unable to stand up and act upon my implied in the way that we respected all life feelings. I sensed that I needed a reference point and were taught to be compassionate for the that would help guide me through life with an suffering of others. open heart. This confusion and longing led me At the age of thirteen I became seriously to more deeply seek to understand the Buddhist interested in Buddhism. Up until that time teachings and beliefs. Two of the head teachers my parents were my precepts in the sense that at Zen Mountain Monastery offered to meet

66 with me over the course of a year. During that were separate from me. Through sitting, they year, we discussed Buddhism, the precepts and became a part of me; I believed in them with their relevancy to my daily life as an adolescent my whole heart and being. The melding of the girl. As a result of these decisions, I decided precepts and meditation help me listen to my to accept the precepts in a coming of age heart. ceremony; a public acknowledgment that I was A major part of my life entails attending making them a part of my life. the public school in Garden City, the town in It was only after I started meditating that which I live. (I’m going into my junior year of I truly began to understand that the precepts high school). It is a white upper middle class were not something I studied, but something suburban high school. There is an intense that I lived. Until I began to meditate, the preoccupation with achievement in sports precepts were only a book of rules that I and academics. Ironically though, both these knew in my mind to be right. It was as if they activities are done with a complete lack of

67 passion. It is the goal that is important; the classmates. They drink heavily every chance process of achieving it is regarded only as there is to be had (which is a lot more often the long road of getting there and not as an than one would expect). There is also an accomplishment itself. It is viewed as tedious excessive amount of sexual activity and drug and boring. It seems that not only I, but most of use. It seems that it is only during the use of my peers, find this method of education empty sex, drugs and alcohol that my peers ever feel and exhausting. This process only reinforces connected. The reason that I do not participate disconnectedness because we are not intimately in these activities is not that I am any less involved with our work. It seems that there is a unhappy, but that I have found a way to be bold line distinguishing happiness from school. connected to people who I care about and This is expressed through the actions of my who care about me. The teachers, the monks

68 and the sangha are of huge importance to of turning away from the difficult issues that me. They give substance to my life. When I come up in my life, I have been given a way feel a complete lack of connection in my life to handle them with an open heart and mind. ,I can turn to this net of connection and get I don’t experience Buddhism simply as the “refueled.” They give me security, warmth and lectures given by the monks or as a set of rules, support that replenishes me, enabling me to but as a way to help me listen to my heart. For be connected in my life. As a result I am not me, Buddhism is a way of life. It is my life. enticed by drugs, sex, and alcohol for a false connection. Addendum 2018 During the past summer I spent two weeks It is very difficult for me to re-read the article I at the monastery, because I felt the need to had written almost twenty years ago as a 16 year deepen my practice. During the time that I old. I cringe at my self righteous, over confident spent at Zen Mountain Monastery, Buddhism voice. Adolescent memories wash over me and I was completely transformed for me. It became wonder if any of my assertions about being less personal. Each morning and evening there mean or less involved in intoxicants were really were two thirty-minute meditation periods to true. With that said, I also have reverence for this begin and end the day. This practice was a 16 year old woman who had such a deep trust in significant aspect of my experience. I felt I was her relationship to the dharma. How remarkable able to center myself and clear my mind of the that she listened, trusted and followed her calling noise of the day. The meditation led me to face to practice. How lucky that she had practice in her whatever feelings and thoughts that had come life at such a young age. up during the day. I recognized that I was part When I think about that young girl of 16, I of a community that consisted of people of all am in awe of her. I have no idea what made her ages working together, people who shared the attend week long meditation retreats or find such goal of finding a rewarding way to live. The devotion and resonance for the dharma. But I am feeling of being accepted and welcomed was a grateful to her following her insecure, self righteous very powerful one. There is no question that adolescent heart. I am grateful that she was able my meditation practice and understanding of to listen to the whispers of the dharma in the midst Buddhism deepened during the two weeks I of adolescent struggle and angst. I am grateful spent at the Monastery. that I have continued to listen to those whispers For me, adolescence is a period of emotional and watch them evolve into a strong voice that turmoil, where the waters are being tested in has helped guide me in my practice and that Zen relationships, whether of the same or of the Mountain Monastery has been a place that I can opposite sex. I am surrounded by peers who continue to come back to explore and strengthen deal with the same painful issues as I do but that relationship. who have received much less support and guidance. I feel that it is not only the Buddhist precepts that have helped me listen to myself Rachel Yuho Rider continues her practice with the and trust what I feel to be right and true, but sangha and with her own young family, and lives in Westchester, NY. She works as an executive coach and all that comes with it—the community, the leadership consultant. teachings, the teachers, the practice. Instead

69 The Precepts in the World Reflections by Students in the Mountains and Rivers Order From Morality in the World, 2012

work as an attorney for children in Brooklyn defined by disagreement and conflict; and I work Family Court. Essentially, I represent kids with families-and we all know how crazy family Iranging in age from between newborn can be. The problems of my work environment to eighteen in cases where New York City are further exacerbated by extreme poverty and Administration for Children’s Services has race issues, and overarching all of this madness alleged that parents have abused or neglected is a contradictory and confused bureaucracy that their children. In New York, once a child can represents a citizenry that would prefer that these articulate a position (usually around seven years problems just didn’t exist. All this is not to say old), attorneys for children directly represent the that there isn’t some genuine brightness within child’s position—so if my client wants to return all the gloom, and for some reason that I continue home to their abusive father or their untreated to grapple with, I do like my job. But it can be, bi-polar mother, my job is to zealously advocate to say the least, trying. It is also a fertile for place for that outcome. working with the precepts. Now, my job also includes counseling my I’ve always been struck by the image of clients to help them arrive at a fully considered Kannon Bodhisattva_the one who hears the position and to be aware of all their options, and cries of the world and selflessly responds to just because the child wants to return home to an those in need. In deciding to become a public abusive or unsettled environment doesn’t mean interest lawyer, I wanted to emulate and become that the judge is going to order it. Nevertheless, that selfless responder. Looking back, I realize once my client has arrived at a position, be it what a profoundly naïve and romantic view I returning home, entering foster care, or accepting had of suffering. The image of suffering that I services, that position becomes my position. unconsciously held was probably more gently Normally I represent all the children in the mewling babes and distressed virgin princesses. family, which can be up to seven or eight kids, My response to that need was to be total and and overall, I currently represent around 170 kids. complete and deeply satisfying. Having worked The cases filed by ACS almost exclusively in Family Court for six years now, I can say that involve families from poorer neighborhoods in my experience of the cries of those in need is the borough, and the families are about 95% that it is far more insistent and shattering, and black or Hispanic. The family problems and all too often arises from a seemingly bottomless issues that I deal with range from profoundly and inexhaustible well. Needless to say, I can feel dysfunctional and damaging to mildly off-kilter. powerless to truly respond to this—particularly, To get a sense of my day-to-day, one need only when so much of the suffering is self-inflicted keep in mind that I work in a court—a place and consistently reenacted. When the cry is: I

70 71 wish my mom would stop using drugs; or I wish I they are not worth much. They frequently show didn’t live in a neighborhood of decrepit houses, up in my classroom in distress: enraged, depressed, overcrowded schools, and extreme menacing lost. Daymond was no exception. He quickly violence; or I wish I knew who my dad was— made known the pleasure he took in hurting what do you say to that? When the neglected and others, the pride he derived from his frequent abused child so often becomes a neglectful and vicious street fights. He bragged incessantly and abusive parent—how do you intervene? was adept at a subtle form of bullying. His anger As I said earlier, I continue to grapple with was ravenous—intensely alert to any possible why I like my job. Why am I called to this work? opening, any chance to pounce. Why, when I share so little in common with my I struggled to maintain harmony, to keep clients and their basic life circumstances, why do Daymond’s anguish from engulfing the classroom, I feel a need to place myself in that realm? Why, to keep class from becoming all about him. The when I have had such a privileged upbringing assistant principal was no help. She instructed me and continue to live in such a rarefied world, to write Daymond up as often as possible so that why spend my days amongst such suffering? The it would be easier to kick him out when the time precept that arises for me most often at work is came. Wholehearted learning requires spaces that Realize self and other as one. Do not elevate the are safe and inviting. For students to engage the self and blame others. Why do I do this work? It process, and most importantly, for them to begin touches me deeply—I can’t turn away. I grapple to direct their own education, I must have their because I want to. And, somewhere amongst the permission to teach. Without their permission confused morass of my psychic motivations, I they will still come to class (sometimes), they will know that the issues that my clients deal with are sit in their chairs and go through the motions− my issues. There is no gap in our suffering. And I but they won’t allow me in. They won’t reveal know that I can completely respond to it. Placing their embarrassment at having never understood myself in Brooklyn Family Court somehow heals fractions; they won’t be present enough to engage us—I don’t know how. I have yet to fully realize in a class discussion; they won’t connect to a the completeness of these intermingled realities, text. Daymond’s permission to let me teach him but amidst all the craziness and pain, I don’t want was not easily granted. It was a constant, violent to be anywhere else. tension, in which he was acutely attuned to any —Adam Starritt, lack of presence or any minor judgments. After one particularly grueling day I vented to My principal cautioned me that Daymond wouldn’t a few colleagues. They were eager to demonize go far; he was headed straight to jail where he Daymond. They pointed out that it would belonged. This was not an unusual encounter. be relatively easy to get him on a long-term Many of the folks I worked with were quick suspension, and that what happened to him after to arrive to kneejerk opinions about students, his removal wouldn’t be my concern. Someone dividing them into “good” and “bad” kids. Much added that, with any luck, the cops would arrest of my work in education has been with students him soon and he’d be in jail: problem solved. who, for one reason or another, are labeled Instead of finding the encouragement I had “at risk.” These are the “throwaway” kids, the hoped might help me to reenergize, I found myself students who, all too often, get the message that shutting down and feeling like I needed to protect 72 Daymond from the larger school community. functioned was often dangerously disconnected Over time I learned that Daymond was born from the students it purported to be serving. into a family of Bloods, that he first sold crack at Nonetheless, it is clear to me that I related to my age seven, that he saw people stabbed and shot colleagues’ fear and apathy much the way they before he ever made it out of elementary school. related to Daymond’s. I was not willing to accept Knowing him hurt my heart and wore me down. I their disregard of certain students as if, by not lost hope of there ever being any shift within him. accepting this, I was changing it. Still, I continued to hold space for him, to accept After countless seemingly failed attempts him, even as the delicate dance of keeping him in to shift our school’s culture, I retreated from line while earning his trust exhausted me. those colleagues whose perspectives pained me. Eventually, Daymond began to settle. One In so doing, I infused the distance between day he drew me a cartoon that I hung by my our pedagogies with an obstructive sense of desk. The next day there was another cartoon. permanence. In retrospect, I see that my efforts to That provided me with an opening to animate enliven our school’s culture were dependent upon his cartoons for the class, and before Daymond results in a way that my most successful work realized it, we were all being soft and silly together. with students isn’t. I wonder, what could have From there things moved more quickly. He stayed been possible had I not solidified my perceptions after school to catch up on his work. The other and allowed the intimacy of my soft, unprotected students began to open to him. When he finally heart to function freely? got fractions there was a feeling of euphoria in the —Meghan Chishin Casey room. At graduation Daymond arrived in a three- piece suit, his mother beaming behind him. My I am Buddhist. As a lay practitioner, I vow to follow experience of Daymond’s volatility and apathy, a specific set of moral principles—contained in while it was frequently painful, was never dis- the Bodhisattva Vows, the Sixteen Precepts, empowering. It was an honor to intimately bear daojin ordination vows, and the broader moral witness, to offer him space for new possibilities. and ethical principles contained in the teachings. Conversely, I experienced many of my colleagues’ Work has always been a big part of my life and, responses to Daymond as disempowering. with so much time invested in professional activity, Whenever I mentioned any “bad” student I was it has been important for me to understand answered with the mantra that, “It’s all up to the workplace as a practice field—a setting for the students.” Feeling mildly chastised, I would spiritual, as well as professional, development. As respond with a nod, while anger flushed through an ethics officer, I was responsible for ensuring my body. Yes, I thought, of course it’s all up that key ethical principles of the organization I to the students—but isn’t it all up to us, too? worked for were in place and being followed— I experienced a sense of helplessness in these these values define what’s acceptable within the interactions, a feeling that I was in hostile waters, company and must be consistent with regulation a fear that I was alone in my concern for the globally. students. I found myself both judging and feeling I was very fortunate to be in healthcare, at a judged. I numbed out. Separation occurred. Truly, company with a clear mission to save lives and some of my colleagues were not suited to be in improve the quality of life. This, of course, is positions of power. Moreover, the way our school the first bodhisattva vow. Still, when I started 73 practicing, I felt conflict between corporate life on an issue and that of others. This would result and goals and the personal resonance of the in any number of inaccurate conclusions on my Buddhist path; they seemed incompatible. I part, such as believing that my views represented did not talk about my spiritual practice with a “truer” reality on an issue, or not understanding colleagues at work, and if someone asked what the difference between what I perceived and I did over the weekend, I said I “just sat around.” other valid perceptions. Furthermore, I would Close friends and colleagues began to comment see a difference of opinion as an ethical issue, on a change in my behavior, yet I felt a conflict and I would frame this perceived difference as an between work and spiritual paths, and I struggled inevitable result of the incompatibility of spiritual to find their mutuality. Early in my practice, and commercial values. Perhaps ironically, the my greatest challenges at work occurred when I initial result of my Buddhist study was discord, sensed a significant gap between my perspective the opposite of what I sought.

74 Over time, practice became central to helping As a resident of New York City, a Buddhist me understand and resolve this conflict—it practitioner, attorney, and the parent of a helped me develop an awareness of my own fourteen year-old son, I am concerned about reactions to differences and allowed me to see New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy, a the internal logic and processes I was using- program that gives the police the right to stop, processes that occurred in a fraction of a second. question, and search people who they consider By clearly seeing an ineffective process or a chain suspicious. I am a multi-ethnic, bi-racial person of misconceptions unfold in my mind, I was better of color; throughout my life, people have able stop the process and not incorrectly conclude wondered and overtly asked me about my there was an ethical conflict at play. For me, the race. I’ve been mistaken for Latina, Caribbean ability to see, control, and stop my own mental American, South Asian, Middle Eastern and leaps was hugely valuable for both my work and Sephardic—there is definitely something about spiritual practice—common ground! my appearance that makes people ask, “What With continued practice in an area that was are you?” And what has me scared is that to initially very uncomfortable, I began to see how a white police officer, my son—whose father my emotions of dissonance, disillusionment, or is Caucasian—might look “suspicious.” More frustration were manifestations of the poison of than this, I am afraid for all our sons—how anger. This is not to say that they disappeared, can we teach them about what is right, what but that I recognized them and their basic equality means, and how to treat others while ineffectiveness. living under the weight of stop-and-frisk? Stop- In addition to studying my own mind, and-frisk targets people of color. Last year the reactions, and ways of relating to the world, my NYPD stopped close to 700,000 people (up from work responsibilities also gave me opportunities about 90,000 a decade ago) and last year, 87% of to practice Right Action and Dana Paramita— the people stopped were black or Latino. Nine whether by sponsoring diversity groups, supporting out of ten were totally innocent-meaning once environmental sustainability and community safety, stopped, they were neither arrested nor ticketed. or by participating in community-based outreach As a Buddhist practitioner who has taken the activities. Aside from my own direct involvement, I precepts, it’s difficult for me to remain generous, actively and visibly supported what I felt were other to see the perfection in others and to recognize right-action initiatives within the company. my identity with them in the face of a policy Thus, over a long time, I found there was a lot that gives overt expression to racial bias. Zen of opportunity in the business setting to make a practice is about truth, and it seems plain wrong difference, and to contribute in ways very much to me that the superficial classification of skin aligned with my vows. I was able to use all of the tone is seen as legal grounds for suspicion. I work experience—resonant and dissonant—in a myself am literally afraid of the police. I never positive way. Although it took a lot of effort to see it, consider contacting them for assistance because work ultimately became a practice field no different I was conditioned to fear how I might be treated. from any other part of my life, a place where I was How should I tell my son to deal with the police able to respond to the call of the precepts. when those who are charged with protecting —Rick Shinsui Bowles his safety might hurt him for no reason? As a practitioner, I am seriously struggling with

75 whether it would be right for me to pass my fear of life identify with being multiethnic. More of on to my son. I understand that law enforcement our young people identify with being citizens of faces a difficult dilemma in fulfilling the charge the world—our world is a beautiful and colorful to protect the public. Indeed, the police give up place. We need to acknowledge this and learn to a lot in order to serve the greater good of society. embrace our differences because they are part of It is the sacrifices of many of these officers, on who we all are. To me, this makes stop-and-frisk the streets and in the military, that provide us a moral issue, and an issue that should concern with the freedoms some of us enjoy. But let’s us all as practitioners—people committed to face it, in our society some of us are freer than moving beyond our superficial differences and others. And, while the responsibility to protect into the heart of our true nature. the public carries sacrifice for the officers, it also —Degna Chikei Levister carries concurrent responsibilities. In the role of protector, shouldn’t officers be held to a higher standard of accountability? Soldiers have a saying that when the situation Doesn’t an officer’s duty to the public extend to becomes overwhelming, you do not rise to the treating the public with basic dignity—treating occasion—you fall to your training. That is people, treating children, as human beings? what I found the precepts to be: the training Stop-and-frisk has sown mistrust between police I fall to when nothing I think I know is of any officers and the communities they are supposed use to me. to protect; in some neighborhoods, the police In 2005 I went to Afghanistan to make acronym “CPR,” which stands for Courtesy, a documentary. It took five trips and three Professionalism, and Respect, is understood years to shoot, and another two years to raise as standing for “Cops Practicing Racism.” the money and edit. I arrived in Afghanistan This policy is, at a minimum, humiliating to as a devout member of my tribe, the liberal hundreds of thousands of law-abiding blacks Democrats, and certain in my tribe’s faith in and Latinos. Every single man of color I have the evil of all things war, and in the absolute asked about it admits to a fear of the police. wrong of all things right wing. Once there, I Many of us have read or heard about teenagers found myself surrounded by another tribe, one of color who have been stopped up to sixty that saw me with equal conviction, but from times in their own neighborhoods, and about the opposite angle—as a godless, tree-hugging their mothers who tell them to never leave the feminist, and a liberal member of the lying house without identification—and to never, media. ever run from a police officer. I was embedded, I had permission to be there, The violence perpetrated on communities but it did not mean that anyone had to talk to of color is clearly action based on a negative me. On a Forward Operating Base, surrounded perception of difference, on fear, and on by razor wire, filled with soldiers who were under stereotype. That we sanction this policy is orders to carry their weapons everywhere they especially problematic in today’s super- went, I never felt more alien. During that time, connected world, where people from many there were a million things that happened, but countries and of many races are in more contact the one that began the shift was this: than ever before and when people from all walks A mission was planned down a road where

76 US troops had taken fire before. I had to fight I hear you telling the biggest whopper of a war the commander to be taken along. The guys did story that ever was... know that I will back you not like it—they did not want me there. At the up 100 percent.” briefing before the mission, during which the They laughed, snorted, guffawed—suddenly commander reviewed possible threats, he added they were a group of individuals with individual me to the list, “ ... Intelligence of Taliban along reactions. Here I was, swearing to lie for them. the route, and media will be along.” To preserve their ego. This is moral? But what All eyes turned to me—hostile, judgmental. I caught a glimpse of was boys terrified of being And in response—my judgment of them. This embarrassed in the test of their lifetime. What is where all those years of training came to save they heard me say is, “I understand. We can’t me. talk about the way it really is here. No one gets See the perfection. (You have got to be kidding it. So you say what they want to hear, what will me.) get you laid, what you can hide behind. It’s okay. See the perfection. (I can’t. They aren’t.) I will not bust you.” It was the last thing they See the perfection. Do not speak of others’ errors expected to hear. Or I expected to say. and faults. The filming went on, things blew up, people And there it was—I saw, clear as day, my died. Nothing happened for months. War is mind roiling with judgments: closely held truths boring, and then it is frightening and then it about men and the far right, movie-fed fantasies is impossible—and that creates a bond that is about the honor of the American soldier and complex. There is a kind of terrible love in war potent anti-military images leftover from the that has nothing to do with personality. Kind 70’s. The depth to which these judgments of like sesshin. They love the mountain, too. went in me was sobering—it had always been Some of those men I know to this day. We could reality—but in that moment I saw that it was not disagree more politically, but we take care of nothing but the refusal to listen to another. each other in a very particular way. And my assumption of how they judged me was If we are to create a tolerant dialogue in a built on my judgments of them. nation, we cannot stand around screaming I was older than most of their mothers. “You aren’t tolerant!” It leaves no space for Suddenly I saw boys who felt that being a soldier the mystery of human connection. To me the served something true and good. They did not precepts are what I can bring to a situation want my pity, my wisdom. They did not want when I am seething with righteousness and my compassion or my help. We had all seen the contempt, sobbing with injury, trembling same movies. with fear, accusing with vigor or glowing with I had a nano-second between the craving for righteous pity masquerading as compassion. certainty, and the grasping of a judgment. In There are few things tougher for me to let go that gap, I managed to see what was in front of than being right. For me, that is practicing of me. the precepts. They are not about being right, or It popped out of my mouth: “I am not a doing right. They help me find a clearing so I reporter—I am an academic. I am going to be can respond cleanly and without investment in filming you for the next while. And I swear to the outcome. you on my life: If I walk into a bar stateside and —Carol Kyoryu Dysinger 77 All the Way to Heaven by Amy Shoko Brown

From Death and Renewal, 1993

Spring rain drops cling to the willow Petals fall from the magnolia The unborn and the unextinguished are just this. There are no traces to be found anywhere So how can I express it? Aieeeeeeeeee!

Misty mountains Endless rivers The journey itself All reveal the body of perfection. Don’t you see? All the way to heaven Is heaven itself.

Daido Roshi’s memorial poem to Michael Brown, April 26, 1992

78 or a long time after Michael died I wanted to write but didn’t because Fsomehow it felt like taking advantage of his absence. It was as if in some way Michael was looking over my shoul der and saying, “How could you do this to me?” And now he’s just humming along, looking out the window at the sky most of the time and then at me and he doesn’t even have to read what I write; he just says, “Oh, I didn’t know you felt that way.” And laughs, sometimes pokes me in the ribs, and once while I was writing he cried, “I never knew you felt that way.” I was so frightened when it was just you and me in the hospital, and nurses and a doctor who never arrived in the emergency admittance. One day you were in such pain you could only say, “Amy, I can’t tell you how much it hurts.” And so we did not speak much and you slept as much as drugs would allow and I wish now we had talked of death but that was something that you had never spoken of, that I had only talked of or written to you about a very few times and now I only have my own letters to read and know for sure what I might have told you and you might have heard. This is not settled. I’m still confused about who died and if anything really changed on a fundamental level or if my heart needs to break, to break wide open. When I look at my legs I see Michael’s legs. Smaller, of course, and not hairy in the same way, not as skinny as in his last days, yet not as muscular as in his dancing life. His legs just the same. When I look in the mirror I see Michael’s face, my features rounder, his more defined, but Michael’s face just the same, and when I get my hair cut, Michael’s hair is cut. And sometimes my hands are his and I greet these revelations with ambivalence. Glad to be Michael, shocked when I think, ah yes, decay, but somehow I could go into the room Michael’s hands and legs and face and what and sit down and just be with him anyway. will become of it all? He died. I will die. It was, like hell I’m going to let this shit get Watching Michael die in my memory is in the way of the last time I’ll spend with watching myself die and this is the horror Michael, like hell I’m going to run away from of it: Watching the decay and decline of my him because he looks like...he’s dying. body, helpless to change it, unable to turn it around, my fate out of my control. Out of my I remember the night we spent together, I at control. Until death do us part. I watched a the foot of your bed, halfway out in the main strong young body in three weeks grow old intensive care room, your own room crowded and die. But Michael? Who knows what he with machines. Ken and I had just stopped experienced? Just this—the recognition that by to see how you were doing. You hadn’t I do not know what the experience of life been alert most of the day and we hoped that is for another person even if I witness it. To when you were you would be able to look at admit I do not know is a relief. When it was someone you knew and feel that you were not happening it was not as horrifying as my alone in some foreign land of white sheets, memory of it. I was upset with the tubes and white light, and plastic. We came into the room and you were wide awake. Eyes nearly bulging, looking out between the two of us. We told you we were here and that we loved you. And you lay there unable to say a word with the respirator pump ing and you looked at the ceiling and tears fell from your eyes. And that night we talked about death. We looked into our eyes for the last time that night. I said, “Michael, are you afraid of dying? You may not want to talk about this. I don’t know, but you look frightened and I’m scared too. I’ve never died or had any great religious experience, so I don’t really know what to say. I don’t know how to die, but the best I’ve done living is to just really keep letting go. And that’s hard when you‘re afraid. But just let yourself be afraid. And go on. It’s okay to go on.” We stayed there looking at each other, holding hands, Michael’s gaze getting drowsy, and sweat pouring from his face, his whole body burning with fever. I let go of his hand to wet a cold towel to wipe his face. He woke up and reached his hand toward me—he hadn’t moved for days—and lifted his head. These things I imagine, and though they I reached for his hand and came back to his are “memory,” they are recurring “memory”— side. “Michael, I’m just getting a cold towel as long as my parents live in that house, for your forehead, I’m not leaving you.” His similar scenes will occur every time I visit. hand did not loosen and I stayed by his side But with Michael, there is no hope for the until it did, then got a damp cloth and wiped future, and the disappointment is a dim throb the white sweat from his face. He got drowsy in my neck and a sighing slouch. again, his eyes open and more relaxed. A What is practice in these times? I lose my nurse came in to change sheets and whatever grounding often and wallow in the pain of they do when they ask me to leave and close not being satisfied. the door behind them. I came back in when This life I practice is not pretty and perfect, she left, and let him know I would be nearby, is not grateful and willing to learn day to day. I was just going to take a nap in the waiting So much of zazen is failure. Yet it’s a mystery room. This is the only time in my adult life to sit and really feel “I don’t like this, I don’t that I remember Michael asking me to just be want to breathe, I do not want to remember.” in his presence. I’m constantly amazed that allowing myself to My mother has told me that when she first sit “bad zazen” leaves me open to the brush of brought me home from the hospital, Michael a hand and wisp of a smile afterwards. wanted to play with me. He was fascinated. Of late I have been feeling better and that He stood by my crib and looked at me and is as much a trap as the deep depression— wanted to touch me and I cried. Maybe it was wanting to avoid the deep depression and not a bit much. But he was there from the start, think of things that may bring uncontrollable and I have fond memories of growing up with crying fits and unspeakable fears. And with both of my brothers. the passing of time too the ability to be I think about our childhood because it’s willing to have thoughts of unspeakable nice to remember. It helps me accept these fears. And let the season blow the dry brown cycles and changes and to remember: Yes he leaves away. And let the season cover the died, but he also lived. knotted season past. And let go of controlling these seasons, of doubting these seasons, of Today was difficult. One of those working days imagining that predictions have any value where I’m thinking of two years ago, the last whatsoever. time I spent with Michael when he was well. The image of my brother’s body was with This is the same kind of thought I have about me for a long time. A great teacher. No matter my parents before I go home for a visit. I how dearly we hold on, nothing and no one think of them and what they are doing at this can avoid the passing seasons. time of year: it’s cold and the snow squeaks There are seasons to this grieving; this beneath mom’s feet when she takes Tabb for a week is the return of the haunting fears, walk. She drinks tea and does the crossword the dreams of violence, of being violated, puzzle at the kitchen table while dad gets of having everything taken, of watching ready for work, fixes his own version of grits, my whole family, everyone I love, die. This and weighs his breakfast fish. season I try not to dwell in as reality, though

81 I find it more tempting than joy. enough for me.) I love you Michael. And I This is the season of worrying, of imagining always will no matter where we are.” And I a car wreck, the violation, the hospital. kissed him goodbye. No one having my phone number. This is The next morning Dad called, crying, the season of anger at anyone who I blame “He died.” I said I would pick up Ken and for putting me in a vulnerable position, we’d be right over. When Julie and Ken and any position that I can even imagine as I got to the hospital, Mom and Dad were dangerous. This is the season of fear of losing waiting outside the intensive care unit. We myself. all hugged and cried. Mom said she wanted to go in; she was waiting for us so we could A year ago today my father made the decision to go in together. So my parents and Ken and take Michael off “code blue”—which meant if I walked the familiar path to his room and Michael’s heart stopped, they would not try opened the door. My breath is taken: no IVs to revive him with CPR and more drugs to dripping, no machines beeping, no tubes jump start the heart. Michael hadn’t been from his nose, mouth, penis, or shoulder. conscious for days and had shown no signs of Just his body. I had never seen someone “turning the corner” or making a come-back, dead, except all dressed up in funeral homes. or any of those euphemisms that meant he Mom suggested that we each say something, was dying not recovering, so this decision was so we all prayed in our own way, sharing an admission, acceptance of the situation. that deepest communication with Michael And we wept. together. Thinking of it now I could describe The teachings of my brother’s dying it as all of us breathing Michael and somehow were not really any different from everyday admitting to each other how much we loved, teachings—there is only this time to write, not just Michael, but each other, and life, and only this time to cook, to make love—but his having lived with Michael as we did. dying made all of these teachings painfully When we left the room, Dad turned and real. There really was no other time to be patted Michael’s foot, “Goodbye, little buddy.” with him, there would be no tomorrow when There were arrangements with the hospital things would be okay, when he would be and finding a funeral home and things to be healthy or at least alive and we would be done, and we weren’t quite ready to leave that together. There was no tomorrow to talk familiar spot outside the ICU, so we stood things over, to resolve anything more with and talked. I asked Julie if she would come in him. with me and do a service. Again, the shock of That night, at his bedside, I leaned down his body. Keeping my eyes open and upon his close to his ear. “Michael, I was thinking body, chanting: about that Christmas when you sang songs “Maha Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra. for us. You know that was the best Christmas Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva doing deep present I ever had (and I sang quietly for prajna paramita clearly saw emptiness of all him: ...you’re my best girl, and nothing you the five conditions thus completely relieving do is wrong. I’m glad you belong to me. And misfortune and pain...Oh Shariputra, all if a day is rough for me, having you there is Dharmas are forms of emptiness, not born, 82 not destroyed, not stained, not pure, without ignorance and no end to ignorance, no old age loss, without gain, so in emptiness there is no and death and no end to old age and death, no form, no sensation, conception, discrimina- suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinguishing, tion, awareness, no eye, ear, nose, tongue, no path, no wisdom, and no gain. No gain and body, mind, no color, sound, smell, taste, thus the bodhisattva lives Prajna Paramita...” touch, phenomenon, no realm of sight, The words rang clear, the pure words that no realm of consciousness, no ignorance we had nearly skipped over: no old age and and no end to ignorance, and thus the death and no end to old age and death. I heard bodhisattva...” the chanting as I have never heard the Heart Julie and I looked at each other, shrugged Sutra. I saw my questions as I never had before our shoulders as if to go on, looked at the me. I felt incredibly grateful to Michael for body, and backed up a few stanzas to try again, having given me his life. We stood in silence, “no realm of sight, no realm of consciousness, no then bowed out of the room.

83 Today it has been one year since my brother so demanding, that I’ve just decided to look died. I’m taking the day off to spend some at them and live them and say, “Yes, I have time with him, and to write, chant services, to do this practice, I have to put effort and paint. This I am enjoying, whereas the into ‘accomplishing the Way.’ Even more thought of going in to work today, of trying importantly, I’m alive now, right now, and I’m to force my mind into a task on this one sobbing and it’s not okay, and I’m laughing year memorial day, was incredibly depressing. and forgot if it is or isn’t okay; what is okay Michael gave his life for me, and died for me. is whatever I’m doing. I trust that I am going He was not perfect, but whoever said Jesus to make mistakes and still I am going to live. was perfect either? Perfection has nothing I trust that I am not the perfect practitioner to do with a gift. This is a special day, and it and still I am going to live and practice Zen feels right to honor it with all of my heart. And I hope I am not I have regularly done services for Michael just another buji Zen practitioner, and if I am since his passing: on the 8th of each month that’s okay, because I am going to show my and on any day that I’m thinking of him true buji face and let it die. And I’m going to a lot. I do not know what happens during fail...and I might even succeed. But mostly I’m service, but I can say that something happens, going to live. whether it’s noticing that I feel awful or elated, or just struggling to bring myself Michael at the San Diego Zoo admiring the back to the chant. In any case, I end with sea lions, “My god, what a burp, worse than three bows and breathe more fully when I you after dinner. That one’s swimming upside walk out of the zendo. Service has a way of down! They’re really incredible. I don’t think bringing me back on track, of very viscerally, I ever watched them before.” physically noticing, “ah, that’s what I think happened to Michael.” Or I hear a line from a I feel like Michael has led me through the sutra differently, notice that I thought a line writing of this, given me permission and meant something in particular. It’s not very nagged me to follow through on sitting down often that I just chant. That’s something I and doing it, as he always did when he was always thought I was supposed to do during alive. Though I’ve always thought of Michael service: just chant, blankly. But it’s not at all and me as having very different values, it blank! It’s incredibly dynamic, with all sorts was his urging and pestering that pushed me of mind detours and distractions that are so to practice. His constant questioning of my important for me to notice, to acknowledge, choices, always thinking that I should do and return to chanting. more with my life, and asking me where I A lot of this death and grieving is envisioned my life going? What was I doing? appreciation of living and letting go of my Why do it? He was demanding, and I often fixation on goal. Grieving, both before his cried during a barrage of questions, feeling the death and after, has magnified my habits weight of both his and my own disapproval. and doubts, and continually noticing these This changed when I started to practice, and habits and doubts has strengthened my faith. I made more decisions from the gut. One It’s as if the questions got so strong, so loud, was to move to the Monastery. Michael said

84 that there was more to life than hiding away, my voice to her, the more I could feel her body and added insults that I, thankfully, have resonating, celebrating the prayers. Through her, forgotten. I didn’t argue. I felt my heart beat I learned to pray. It’s like she gave me a piece wildly and remembered to breathe and listen of myself back. So it is that I see Michael, my to him, and I heard anger. I let him finish and mom, really everyone, gives their life to me. simply said, “Michael, I’ve thought about this Even dies for me. Moment to moment, as long a lot, and I’ve taken very seriously what you’ve as I don’t hold too tight to how it’s always been. said about really living my life, about how this In perfect imperfection. When I can receive it, is not a dress rehearsal. And I’m doing what I it’s a blessing. really want to do, maybe for the first time in How much those little moments mean: the my life. I’m sorry if you don’t understand.” He only time Michael asked me to just be in his was quiet, and then said, “I’m sorry I got so presence—knowing, from receiving that gift, angry. I guess I’m not doing what I’d like to how much we all want to matter to each other. be doing and I’m jealous.” And the determination to not let the mind get in Michael, Michael, there are things that I the way of very real connection that’s possible, will never forget and experiences I can never and healing, amidst these circumstances that remember that are living, breathing in me. don’t make sense. How many times did mom say And everyday I die to the Intensive Care absolutely crazy things, and if I just met her in Unit, to the AIDS news, to the little white it, we connected and both felt nourished. AIDS, dog I see on the way to work, to the laugh of Diabetes, Alzheimers, these illnesses that my a friend, to you. brother, father, and mother died from, were truly the medicine that inspired us (or forced us) to We may never get to heaven, let go of enough of our old patterns so we could but it’s heaven at least to try. experience the connection and love that we so —sung by Michael for deeply wanted. So grateful to all who have gone our parent’s 25th anniversary before. So grateful for all who are here now.

Addendum 2018: The writing of “All the Way to Heaven” was (obviously) stream of consciousness. Even I was Amy Shoko Brown lives in Dayton, OH where she surprised when I wrote: “Michael gave his life works as a therapist. for me, and died for me. He was not perfect, but whoever said Jesus was prefect either? Perfection has nothing to do with a gift.” Here I am, years later, having unintentionally reconciled with the Catholic church because of taking my mom to church for three years. It was the one place where she was most at ease, happy, even joyous, to sing and celebrate. As she declined I would speak the prayers right into her ears during mass so she could follow along. The more I freely gave

85 86 The Unspoken Thing by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei

From Practicing the Edge, 2001

87 In the space between desire and despair, most primary matter. From the world of between holding and letting go; between business at the dock, where everyone is clinging and release, in this space involved in taking care of the paperwork and is the unspoken thing. The thing that lives. assembling the resources to survive, we make —Lives of the Monster Dogs this raw journey down the river to the charnel grounds. Arriving, all business stands still. ’ve been working over the last few weeks Conversation withers. Placing a hand on the with family members as they make a small of a crying woman’s back, it feels like I memorial visit to Ground Zero. The trips her bones dissolve for a moment, she leans begin at the Family Assistance Center on in, slowly her bones reform. I remember the Dock 94, where death certificates are being words of Master Hongzhi, “Only silence is issued and other support services can be the supreme speech. Only illumination is arranged. The Center is very big and very the universal response.” When someone is busy. From there we get on a ferry that goes ready for talk, talk comes. Since there is so down river to the World Trade Center site. obviously nothing to do that is adequate to On the water there are gunboats everywhere the pain, all that seems possible is love. We you look, and on board there is significant just are that, loving those whose bod ies are security. The wind blows brisk and the river buried here, each other, the moments when incongruously glistens, and on the way the eyes meet, hands touch. Some construct a clergy and mental health workers make what palpable, fragile crust of solitude around connections they can with the families, them selves, and though we keep an eye out offering support or space as needed. When to make sure they are safe, there is a tacit we arrive at the site, we walk up into the agreement to let them be alone. (Actually, area, and basi cally bear witness. It smells some of the clergy had to be reminded to very bad there. The buildings that are still let folks alone. At one morning meeting we standing seem nor mal until you look up were told, “Someone overheard one family and see how parts near the top or on a side member saying to another, ‘Whatever you do have been ripped off. Their jagged edges don’t cry, or the clergy will come... ‘ So those seem to be gesturing as if caught in mute who don’t know when to back off, learn!”) pain, like a woman raped, walking away The flowers and teddy bears left by mourners trying to look ordinary but with her dress are piled high and thick, kid-scrawled notes torn, bruises rising. The cler gy’s work is to on some, photos and poems on others. attend to the families, so I turn my attention As we leave, there’s a subtle shift in from the site to them, and we spend fifteen the energy, a change in how the grief is or twenty minutes being there together, happening. During each return trip, the offering flowers at the temporary memorial work of being clergy shifts to protecting alcove. When it is time for them to take the spiritual process of each person on the next step, the next breath, we take it board. Kirstin Bacchus, in her brilliant together. novel Lives of the Monster Dogs, talks about The metaphor of the site visit is so bare it “the unspoken thing; the space between strips words down to the most simple talk, the desire and despair.” In the work on this

88 boat, like the work in the zendo, I find that that though we can do our best to secure there’s a chance to enter that space. As each an outcome, we can’t guarantee it. We can’t of us in the sangha finds our way through know that we will live, or that those we love practicing this grief and the other emotions will live. We can’t know whether we will that will emerge in some measure in the be well, or whether others will be well. We coming months, it can help to acknowledge can’t know: we can medicate ourselves with and protect that space. I’m talk ing about probabilities, but we can’t cure the dis ease the space that doesn’t know, doesn’t know that way. The only real refuge, the only cure, why, doesn’t know what’s next. It doesn’t is “the unspoken thing.” Being this moment. know bad or good. It is that space relieved Just that. Zazen is the training to realize of needing something other than what is: that, and Zen practice is the life that it relieved of desire. It is the moment that is creates. It is the ability to take the step that relieved of the sad predictions: relieved of is here. The bell rings, we bow and practice. despair. It just is, and in that, is the only But why go consciously, literally, to where real refuge. Call it “the moment,” yet even death is? Why end each night of practice that doesn’t clearly indicate its strength with the Evening Gatha? The clear and raw and spaciousness. Unspoken, unnamable. symbolic movement, the intrinsic liturgy Without securing ourselves in any way, of zazen should really be appreciated. The we are intimate. Being at zero, if you will. journey of it, to the ground of being, to the Walking from zero. expression of being, is the visit to ground zero every moment we enter zazen utterly. More than ever, in past weeks I’ve come to The bell rings to signal kinhin, the boat appreciate the basis of zazen, the only refuge comes into the dock and we unload at among so many false or temporary refuges. the pier. How will we step forward from Over the last weeks, we’ve had so many ourselves? This is the loneliest and most false refuges sold to us, and we sell them to important work of any of our lives, in that one another. We take temporary refuge in no one can really tell us anything but that probability: it is unlikely statistically that any it is possible. To do it is to live it, and to individual one of us will be harmed or killed. live it may require feeling things that we’d We take temporary refuge in power: we have like to avoid. We can’t predict; we can only one of the best-funded, best-trained military practice. Someone asked, “But when I don’t in the world, and economic influence that is know who I am, where I’m going, what it unparalleled in its capacity to put pressure means, how can I trust enough to breathe, where pressure is deemed needed. We take to move one foot forward and begin?” This refuge in medicine: if we are exposed to a is so much the heart of any religious inquiry, chemical or biological agent, it is likely that any awakened human heart. It’s a delicate we will get treatment, and the survival rates journey, and it’s difficult to do honestly and are in our favor. But all these false refuges in a way that doesn’t add anything extra. In ultimately fail to reach the bottom of our order to do this work, it is helpful to agree anxiety, because they don’t sufficiently deal ahead of time to forgive ourselves and one with the issue. The issue, in one sense, is another, and to be forgiven for the missteps

89 that we’ll inevitably make. We’ll discern judge each other’s practice, now particularly. when our clarity fails, when we become in We can respect the wholeness of our practice any way compulsively protective of that by letting the tears come when it is their which can’t be protected. We’ll err, the word time to come, and the fear, and the anger, will go tin, the connection will go cloudy, and the love. Nothing breaks real practice, and the only thing that saves that is the if we let everything be practiced. capacity to take the next breath together, to Please take care of your own practice not let it break the process that we’re in the and this community’s by being honest, and midst of. respecting one another. It seems no one can skip grief. One of the problems religious institutions are prone to, In “Lives of the Monster Dogs,” there’s a according to grief studies, is that when they point at which the dogs, who have been experience a loss within their congregation, through a journey full of horror and yet they turn so quickly to the religious teachings found a way to be honorable, are dying: of their tradition to secure themselves “ ...we are all burning, we are all murdered. emotionally, that they may lose the wisdom Anyone who lives is consuming himself, and honesty of what they’ve experienced rushing avidly toward the sword, the disease, together. A pastoral care instructor told the accident, toward the day on which his the story of a church where someone came life will end. One is not murdered just at the in the back door during a service and shot moment when the blade pierces him and he the minister in the head, killing him. After knows he will die. For we always know that burying the minister, the congregation ral- we’re going to die. It’s only a question of lied together and became very fervent in their prayer and song, committed to not being brought down in any way by this tragedy. By the time a replacement minister was assigned and began working with them, they had such repressed fear and anger that it took enormous work to open them up and let them really do what they needed to do: grieve. They were singing loud and steady, but they were fighting among themselves about all sorts of basically trivial things. They needed to trust that their tears and their doubts, the anxiety and anger, could all be part of their prayer. That way it would be honest and real, and they could love each other and their tradition more fully. As Zen students individually and as a sangha, we have our own variations on this desire to skip the grief. We need to be careful not to

90 time. However long it will take, it is always trustworthy as teaching from your point of a certainty. As certain as if we had already view. But don’t these “dog-words” reflect received the fatal wound. So we burn, but aptly the practice that is not knowing, that we must burn joyful ly and give off light. enables us to place our practice in the midst Our little glowing hearts grow smaller every of suffering, freely, and to experience our minute, and with them the length of time we burning as illumination, not despair? have left on this earth.” Often I wake in the morning in intense These words are followed by a reflection pain. My body makes charley horses, and on how the speaker has loved and been my nerves and muscles get inflamed easily. I loved, and the ways in which that is ineffably work with what can be worked with, having shown: the contact of the hand on the arm, studied healing and medicine for many years, the eye meeting the eye. “These are the and can often ease things through chi kung, things that remain unsaid, the sparks that stretching, diet, warm water, etc. Sometimes, cannot exist on their own. They’re nothing in though, nothing relieves the hurting, and themselves. They only make up the spaces in there may be times when my coordination between those things that can be perceived. and other capacities are less available. You inside your nets of blood and nerves are Practicing just letting that be has been my always surrounded by these empty spaces. greatest teacher. The desire to have it be They are sparks of light. The earth is full of otherwise can be strong if I let it get going, them.” Between perceptions… what is that? and creates more pain. The despair over Of course, these words are not from some what it means or indicates about my future ancient Zen tome, and perhaps they are not can get fierce if I let it have much energy.

91 To place my practice in the “space between” twenty years. Practice is the only refuge. All and live there saves my life. It is life. To walk the rest is just aspirin, and aspirin fades after from there is to just walk, even if sometimes a couple hours, and never really reaches the that walk is a bit gimpy. The confidence I pain anyway. have about the truth of practice comes from Everyone I’ve met in practice has some having studied with this “teacher” for almost natural “teacher” like this, whether it’s a

92 crummy childhood, a physical illness, or is that habit of letting sorrow become an emotional variability. Many have much more identity. Our minds and hearts are murky; difficult teachers than I do, and some people there’s no life, no spark. “When silent ignore their teacher altogether for long illumination is fulfilled, the lotus blossoms, years. But our teacher fuels our spiritual fire, the dreamer awakens, a hundred streams burning away the illusions that separate us, flow into the ocean, a thousand ranges face warm ing our heart up. There’s no way to the highest peak.” guarantee safety, or good health, or world When he visited with us yesterday, Roshi peace: there is, however, practice—which spoke passionately about his devotion to is refuge, and wholeness, and this great practice, to not letting it become secularized, earth itself. That’s enough. Even when we’re stripped of its wonder, mystery, power. That hurting, that’s enough. And sometimes, it’s is our lineage, the zazen that is beyond actually wonder ful. The tight focus on and characterization. It transforms lives of sense of the sig nificance of our personal pain desire and despair into vital expressions of opens up a bit, and anything can happen. loving wisdom. Listening to his enthusiastic transmission to all of us, I felt incredibly Did any of you see the hundreds of lucky to be here, to be with this sangha, stars that fell the other morn ing? Hundreds. this teacher, to just be. And the sense of Brief, bright blazes in the black morning. protecting “the space between” that I felt You can call it a meteor shower, but that on the ferry to Ground Zero was invigorated barely satisfies. From an old poem: “Up until as well. This practice is not easy, and it has that moment, I hadn’t real ized I had lived my dimensions and depth to it that we can life for that moment.” spend lifetimes just beginning to appreciate. Hongzhi writes, “Responding without Hongzhi says, “Our school’s affair hits the falling into achievement, speaking without mark straight and true. Transmit it to all listeners, the 10,000 forms majestically glis- directions without desiring to gain credit.” ten and expound the dharma. But if illumina- This is the temple that we’re ceaselessly tion neglects serenity, then aggressiveness creating. This is the dharma com bat that appears.” When illumination neglects we’re in the midst of, the zazen that we sereni ty, we fail grief. We see the oneness of protect with tender, unconditional atten- all experience, but not the distinctiveness of tion. It is “the unspoken thing...the thing each experience. And so we want to skip the that lives.” Please take care of it well. uncomfortable, the difficult. We rush grief into the ocean, and we fail to let our tears Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei is the founder be realized as the ocean. “But if serenity and guiding teacher of Hermitage Heart Zen. neg lects illumination, murkiness leads to A priest, Zen teacher and author, Myotai was wasted dharma.” If we forget the ocean’s the first successor in the Mountains and Rivers wideness, the vastness of each moment, Order, Abbess of Fire Lotus Temple, and Vice- we end up locking onto some experience, Abbess of Zen Mountain Monastery. facebook.com/ HermitageHeartZen. holding it, deifying it, making it the point. Then, we can’t move, we won’t move. This

93 94 Facets of the Jewel

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei and Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, Sensei with Danica Shoan Ankele From Mother of All Buddhas, 2016

hoan: I wanted to speak to you as women on developing my mind’s capacity to open and teachers within what has historically relax, I don’t think of that as developing my Sbeen a very patriarchal tradition. As you feminine side—although I see how one could know, some spiritual paths speak about spiritual make that distinction. It’s just that I don’t find development in terms of balancing “the masculine” it so helpful to think about it in that way. and “the feminine” within us. I’d like to begin with Hojin: There’s a language at the heart of this, a question I heard recently that has been nagging and the terms “feminine” and “masculine” at me: “Where is the feminine in Zen?” may not work for everyone. They can confuse Hojin Sensei: I think it would be helpful to the issue. One might prefer the words yin and begin by looking at the language you’re using. yang, or the transcendent and the earthly, So often when we hear the words “feminine” or thinking and feeling, or mind and body. and “masculine,” we go right to gender, right These are all getting at basically the same to men and women. But the feminine, in thing. As Zuisei said, spiritual maturation is the sense you are using it, is not referring to about becoming a whole person, a person gender. These words are describing qualities or who can balance the opposites. We’re trying primal energies in all of us. They are describing to integrate inside ourselves, to have a sacred something that is not based on embodied form. marriage of dualities within our very being, and It’s just that all of us have been indoctrinated to to see that one side always contains the other. favor the masculine over the feminine for the The whole thing is already present. So our past few thousand years, and as a result we’re spiritual development means developing those not so familiar with her ways. aspects of ourselves that are both masculine Zuisei Sensei: Personally, I don’t think of Zen and feminine, regardless of the kind of body practice as masculine or feminine. To me these we are born into. A healthy and whole person terms seem polarizing and limited because what is going to need to develop both these aspects we’re really talking about is our development as within themselves. a whole person. When I am very disciplined Shoan: How would you describe the qualities that or pointed in my zazen, I don’t think, “This feminine and masculine refer to? is my masculine side.” And when I’m working

95 Hojin: As I understand it, the masculine is Shugen Roshi, and being able to talk and reflect aligned with order, rationality, discipline and together. We have made some changes—some logic, while the feminine refers to receptivity, that people notice, like letting go of zendo the all-embracing, the feeling part of us, our seating according to hierarchy, adding the deepest intuition, community, sustainability. long list of women ancestors in our Sunday However, in healthy masculine states there liturgy, and changing words like ‘patriarch’ to is an appreciation for the relaxed disorder of ‘ancestor’ in some places. Some changes aren’t the natural world. And likewise, the healthy so visible, like conversations we’ve had about feminine includes recognition of the importance the role of the zendo attendants, or the way of production, discipline. For example, when I we’re encouraged to share our feelings and am just in pure feeling, I need to find my intuitions with each other during monastic discipline within that, otherwise my emotions meetings. While these shifts may seem small, can swallow me, oppress me, and even oppress they have power. others. So we’re really talking about a relation Shoan: What about the discipline of Zen? of holding opposites. We can also appreciate that the feminine loves tradition. Hojin: It’s a question of how we understand discipline. Discipline is critical to spiritual Shoan: Do you think Zen has a balance of training, but aggression and a militant attitude masculine and feminine energy? are not helpful at all. If we recognize that Zen Hojin: Zen is a way of living in harmony, so was shaped by centuries of Japanese monastic maybe we should look at how it is practiced training, where hundreds of young men had by people. Since I live here at the Monastery, to live together in close quarters, we can I can say we are more consciously looking and appreciate where this comes from. But that working at how we train and create harmony. I kind of aggression is not inherent to what we’re appreciate being able to bring what I notice to practicing, and in a different context, it can

96 be limiting. When I think of bringing more of is. Zazen has given me this space to be deeply, the feminine into training, I think in terms of deeply curious and interested about my feelings trying to make more space, bringing in a more in a way that I wasn’t before. It creates a very all-embracing feeling. safe container for me. Zuisei: I agree with what Hojin is saying about Hojin: Where do we get the notion that making space. I think the question “Where is zazen is all discipline? The form is there so the feminine in Zen?” arises because some of we can enter into it fully, contact stillness, us—women especially, but some men, too— touch the spaciousness, surrender, and learn may feel there isn’t much room to explore what the acceptance of what is already here. it is to be “me” in a tradition that is very linear Zuisei: Many of us come into practice with and hierarchical. We may feel that there are the idea of gaining something, of getting aspects of our being that are left out. In Zen somewhere. In one sense, we could say this is a there is a way to hold your hands, a way to walk, more masculine approach. But actually, wisdom a way to wear your robe. This can be appealing is not dependent upon achievement. One of to those of us drawn to order, but it can also the reasons prajna is so powerful is that it can’t feel confining, even suffocating, to those who be held; it can’t be measured; it can’t be put in are not so linear, or perhaps more emotionally a box. No matter how much we try, we can’t oriented. If we feel like we don’t resonate with control it or force it into existence. It is very the forms, then we may wonder whether we fit much, as Hojin keeps pointing out, a process in within this particular context—whether this of opening and unfolding, a process of making practice is for us. space for what is already there to become fully The point of practice is not to restrict us. It’s manifested—and this has nothing to do with the opposite. In my mind, a fully enlightened feminine or masculine. Or rather, it includes being is one who can respond to what is both. It doesn’t leave anything out. needed. This means to be firm and direct when that will help, and to be soft or disappear when Hojin: Our training is filled with forms. And that is needed. The “true person,” to use a Zen on the one hand these forms can provide us phrase, has access to their intellect and their with freedom, but on the other hand, when linear mind, as well as to the full spectrum something is always done “like that,” we can of their emotions. They are able to skillfully perceive it as having no other sides. We can work with their feelings. In my experience, get stuck there. Breaking out of “like that” is practice and training help us to have more ease something I’ve been experimenting with in within ourselves, to be free within our linear the women’s retreats. We’ve tried sitting with mind and our emotional mind, and to respond the zendo arranged in more of a circle, which accordingly. is not “like that.” The Buddha taught that meditation could be done walking, standing, Shoan: What is the role of form and discipline in seated, or lying down, and so during the last zazen? period of the women’s sesshin at the Temple, Zuisei: We have to learn to let go and focus, but I invited women to take this up. They could I think zazen can support us in learning how sit in whatever way they felt they needed, to love this body and this mind the way that it just keeping the mind focused and staying

97 present. And it was amazing to feel what we speak our truth to authority, when we stand happened. Those who stood up, stood up inside up inside ourselves. We do it when we offer themselves. They knew what they needed. our gratitude and appreciate that we couldn’t Some sat with their hands on their knees. be here without all that came before, when we One woman sat holding her heart. And they recognize that we truly need each other. There were upright! There was nothing slack there. are no easy answers, and while it’s good to There was no problem. I’m not suggesting this experiment sometimes, the tradition that gets is how we should do it all the time, but I do handed across generations is so important to think that something happens when we take honor and protect. It is not about a democracy the opportunity to look at things fresh and, where everyone goes, “I want this, I want if needed, shift the rule. I see Shugen Sensei that, so let’s change it.” Making a change doing this in subtle ways, too. Like how we’re may be a process that needs to be done using the kyosaku (or “awakening stick”) less very slowly, consciously and carefully, being frequently—that has shifted the feeling-tone of open to not-knowing and allowing enough the zendo, and I’ve heard from several people space for things to get a little messy until who feel very relieved by it. something comes through. We, as leaders, need Zuisei: I think the reason that we don’t do to first understand our intentions and clearly this kind of thing more often is really out see our fears. This is the ground from which of fear, fear that if we loosen things up, the a trustworthy change arises. Then we need to whole thing is just going to fall apart. And I study and observe to see what happens. Is the appreciate that fear. In my own life, discipline change of greater benefit? We need to have has served me well. But I recognize that the our own curiosity and wonder to explore. The dark side of this is the fear that if I let up, things person who is initiating any kind of shift or will just collapse. experiment must know what the initiation is about; they also have to have enough trust to Shoan: I feel both of those things. I love Zen let go and let things happen. training and practice and appreciate how we do things here and I don’t want to lose the rigor and As I mentioned, the unsavory legacy of the spirit. But I also see places where I wonder, patriarchy in our world runs deep. We are still is this helpful? When I look at out at the zendo within our ignorance. And if we look at the during sesshin and see that there are almost twice vastness of patriarchy’s influence, it reaches as many men as women, and very few people of beyond our ordinary sense of time. How many color, I wonder if it’s something about how we kalpas do we have to go back to find the time train. How do we both honor the incredible power before patriarchy? We haven’t cracked through of our tradition and also make sure it’s responding this aspect of our human inheritance, but I to people in the present? think more and more people are waking up! How do we do this? I think we have to employ Hojin: First comes an awareness—we have to our ancestors. We have to give them a job, want to care about this. It’s the kind of caring bring them back and learn from their mistakes. that is mentioned in one of the dedications in our liturgy, where “nothing (and no one) is Shoan: What do you mean? forsaken”. A process arises. We engage it when Hojin: Many of our ancestors were ignorant,

98 and I’m speaking here of both our direct our ancestors. They’re not finished with their genetic lineage and our broader human family. work because their consciousness is still in us. I Their wisdom eye was not open, great harm think of the Gatha of Atonement: was created, and so their karma is still waiting. All evil karma ever committed by me, since We are the inheritors of their actions, and of old we can stop their destructive karma—it’s our On account of my beginningless greed, anger, karma to work with now. But we need their and ignorance help. We need to let them teach us about what Born of my body, mouth and thought they did wrong. To change the karma, we have Now I atone for it all. to learn from their mistakes. We have to try to I hear this as a teaching to draw upon see into their minds of the past looking into what’s happened in the past, to acknowledge our own now. What were their actions based it and take responsibility for it in the present on? What were they doing that we don’t want moment, and to address this unfinished work to repeat? Can we see what we are already in order to change the course of the actions repeating? That’s what I mean by employing that follow. This can happen on an individual

99 level, working with the karma of our parents that has to guide us all along. or grandparents, for example, but there is also Shoan: How do you see this unfolding over time? a collective aspect to this work. In a way, it’s about how we deal with becoming conscious Hojin: The dharma is disseminated in very and what we propagate individually and in simple, ordinary ways. At the recent senior’s community—in our families, at work, in our meeting, Shugen Roshi spoke about bringing relationships of all kinds. Are we living in the compassion alive in the zendo. When the zendo truth, with kindness and love as our guides? Or, attendant says, “Be still!” or “Don’t move!” for do we continue in darkness and diversion? It’s many this can feel threatening, and no one about being willing to grow, mature, and work does well in fear. So, how can we offer the same with, not against, others. It’s about whether guidance with loving-kindness? Perhaps, “You you and I are ruled by fear or freedom. It’s can be still because your body already knows about growing up. It’s about what we teach our stillness.” This can be just as effective. Of children. course, different things work for different people, but I think that part of the Zen Zuisei: Right. The only way to know if a mystique has been to keep everyone a little bit path is true is to explore it from the inside. fearful. Our culture is already steeped in fear; We have to live it. And each of us needs to why add more? And although there may have remember that this path is about waking up. been a time when that was skillful, I think we It’s about true freedom, and anything that is are ready to go beyond that. This is what we’re contrary to that is contrary to the teaching. working on, and will always be working on, in a I think it is the responsibility of each of us sense. That’s what it means to offer training— to look very deeply at what works and what that we’re connecting to what people need in doesn’t work, to be grateful for all that we’ve this time and place of dharma practice. inherited and to speak up about what we see. For so many years now, an unhealthy We need to appreciate that the way we train ‘masculine’ has dominated our societies, and may be shutting some people out, and so as look at where we are: Mother Earth is in we move forward, we should consider what we great trouble. What does this mean for us want to create. I want anyone who comes to at the monastery? We have to be awake. As the monastery or the temple to feel welcome. we find our way in our tradition, we need to I want them to feel that they belong—male be sensitive to protecting what is good and or female, black or white, gay or straight, rich nourishing, and to listening for where things or poor. How you look or what kind of body may need to shift. you were born into shouldn’t be barriers. You, I feel a beautiful receptivity developing as a human being, are honored and invited to here at the Monastery and the Temple right practice here. So we might ask ourselves, is this now. We have the Sangha Treasure meetings, a practice space that feels safe and welcoming which are about offering people an open to everyone? If the answer is “no,” then it’s space to share their experience of practice up to us to examine that and reflect on what and training without any agenda. We have an might need to shift, and to do this in a way that abbot who is deeply committed to addressing doesn’t dilute the dharma. People come here to bias and oppression. We have a sangha that is train for a reason. They want to wake up. So 100 slowly growing more diverse, and more and more Jody Hojin Kimmel Sensei is a dharma teach- valuing that diversity. We have opportunities er and serves as the training coordinator at the for women to practice and train together just Monastery and co-director of ZCNYC. Vanessa as women, and for men to recognize why this Zuisei Goddard Sensei is a lay teacher in the MRO matters and to offer their support. The masculine and lived in residential training at the Monastery for over twenty years. Danica Shoan Ankele is a senior and the feminine are just different facets of monastic and serves as the assistant training coordi- reality. We’re learning how to illuminate all nator at the Monastery. the facets of the jewel, and to see that all of this is intimately woven together in a very large tapestry. To hold the tension is a very alive place!

101 102 Sangha Reflections In the Footsteps of the Buddha

103 had never wanted to go to India: I was too Sitting under the Bodhi tree, wandering in Deer daunted by the prospect of the suffering and Park, overlooking the land beneath Vulture Peak, Ipoverty, pollution and crowds. But when the chanting the Emmei Jukku Kannon Gyo at Srvasti, opportunity arose to join the pilgrimage I did not we were in the land where the Buddha walked and hesitate, trusting that the sangha would provide taught, suffered and realized himself, and spent the structure that I needed to undertake this his last breaths. This was to transform words on a exceptional experience. I am profoundly grateful page, abstract ideas and conceptions into tangible that I relied on that trust and took the leap of faith. places, no longer a story but something real. It was

104 endlessly gratifying and profound. Journal entry: BIHAR: Monday 15th Oct 2018 Perhaps the most unexpected joy of this (In the footsteps of the Buddha): Did the Buddha pilgrimage was the opportunity to get to know the really walk through this country? other Sangha members. This common experience If he was leading us today he would see broken bonded us in a truly profound way and made me down trucks, broken down houses, rubbish strewn appreciate how much of a treasure this Sangha is. indiscriminately...a highway clogged with traffic —Rick Shozen Hamlin for miles heading for Varanasi, as we head in the other direction in our air conditioned bus, towards Bodgaya...and the Bodi tree. Out of the window we see makeshift dwellings made from canvas and plastic and sticks and reeds. A toddler stands on a two story balcony with no safety rail and gazes out at the passing traffic. A history of corruption and mafia rule in the 1990’s, which our guide Nirage assures us has “changed completely”, but the average income is still only $500 per year. We have wifi now, on the bus. We get a message from our daughter, with a photo of her and her baby looking so plump, so healthy... This part of the world feels like another zone, a kind of war zone, another planet really, where fairness and collective care and attention as we know are is missing. Those who seem well off, and those who don’t seem to live precariously from hand to mouth, in whatever dwellings they can scratch together: bricks, sticks, mud, plastic, reeds, thatch, and corrugated iron. Children pick through piles of rubbish that spill down the banks into the rice fields. I’m upset and angry; find it hard to accept that this is the way it is. Where is the wealth of this state going? Nirage admits that the “middle man” still siphons most of the farmers’ hard work into his own pocket. My daughter’s baby has so much good karma. What have most of the babies of this state got in comparison? Where is the love and care and compassion, in these, the footsteps of the Buddha? Where is my love and care and compassion as I descend from my air conditioned vehicle into the heat of every day, with beggars and hawkers and mothers’ holding their babies up to me in their arms, and pointing to their baby’s mouth...? A lyric from a Paul Simon song haunts me: “I would not give you false hope on this strange and mournful day, but it’s a mother and child reunion, only a motion away...” How can I help this reunion I ask myself? —Nick Suido Nash

In my mind there is before India and after India. This line is not written with a permanent black marker, but it is indelible just the same. Indelible as the three women in purple and blue saris rising from the ground where they were combing the grasses to remove weeds to pose for a photo, and then, put out their hands for payment from us, the photographers. Indelible as the teenage boy with leg limbs angled in opposing directions so he could only pull himself with a short staff across the dirt road. Indelible as the scent of sandalwood, sweat, and filth and the nonstop beeping of the tuk-tuk driver as if it was the horn that was accelerating us through the multitudes. Along the Ganges River, scantily clad men carried litters of corpses wrapped in white cloth with orange and reflective Mylar decorations. One worker adjusted a head that dangled as if attached with only a piece of soft rope. The prepared wood was ready to ignite for this newest cremation. To the right smoke rose from one bier, while another body had already vanished, only the brush of a broom sweeping their ash. The hazy red ball of sun set over and over as we watched its descent from Vulture Peak, in Kusinagara, and in Bodhgaya. We traveled with friends, with Sangha, and with our teachers, 1200 miles following the footsteps of the Buddha through his homeland. 107 Bumping along in our large bus, I painted one Journal entry: Monday 22nd October. Visit to Kabir’s watercolor on each long ride. Usually on a trip, Twin Tombs at Maghar. I would write, formulate my impressions, try to In the 15th Century the Sufi Saint Kabir describe something I knew I wanted to share. But on began life at Varanasi. He was claimed by both this journey, I painted. Maybe India herself wanted the Hindus and Sufis as a saint so both traditions me not to be too hasty to define her with words, only erected tombs in his honor. On the way there in to open my heart to all her contradictions. I learned the bus, Diane read us some poems of Kabir: how capturing an image can bring wholeness and “Are you looking for me, I am in the next seat.” wonder, how the resolution of contradictions, the letting go, and choosing what to keep is the art, is our Very soon after our arrival, which caused quite practice, is creating peaceful dwelling. a stir as not many “Western” tourists come to Maghar, the Head Priest joined us. Many locals —Linda Shinji Hoffman

108 gathered including two gentlemen from the As soon as I stepped off of the plane in Delhi, local press and TV station who took notes and I stepped out of my comfort zone–and stayed out afterwards asked us all for our names and country of it for the next three weeks. A constant barrage of origin! We gathered under the shade of a huge of unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells while tree and Shugen Roshi was invited up the front immersed in a completely foreign culture created a to talk with the High Priest. Our guide, Nirage constant feeling of disorientation within me. acted as interpreter: While walking through the jam-packed streets Pilgrims gathered under the tree and alleys of Varanasi, I suddenly recalled how Offered tea and Jagary Daido Roshi would often refer to the phenomenal Our teacher sitting beside their High Priest universe as “the whole catastrophe.” Each time he Discussing questions of work and love. did, the word “catastrophe” didn’t quite sit right Curious young men gather with me. But in India, it seemed entirely fitting. Asking for photos. Instead of having the negative connotation I had “When you really look for me heard it with, I now felt it as an ongoing explosion You will find me instantly.” of outer forms that overwhelmed all of my senses. Within the constant stream of unfamiliar —Gwitha Kaido Nash dharmas–some shocking, others beautiful, taking refuge in the three treasures took on a deeper I had a very mixed experience during our meaning as well. The Buddha felt closer as both pilgrimage. I treasured the opportunity to a historical person and an awakened master when connect with our wonderful US and Kiwi Shugen Roshi and Hojin Sensei offered teachings sangha members and I valued the ability get at significant sites in the Buddha’s life. The to know one another a little better. I cherished Dharma became more vivid and timeless as a path the apparent diversity of how dedication to the of liberation, and I felt supported not only by our dharma is observed around the world and the American and New Zealand sangha, but also by physical truth of being in sacred places, but I was the many pilgrims that we encountered from other deeply saddened by the entrenched racism and lineages and countries. sexism I experienced and was painfully moved Since being back home, the familiar doesn’t by the rampant poverty and filth that seemed to look quite the same anymore. And old habits and characterize how most people appeared to live. I ways of seeing have loosened their grip. While the have a poignant memory of being intentionally pilgrimage continues to work within me in subtle excluded from a group photo at the sacred ways, I’m left with a feeling of profound gratitude Maha Bodhi temple because, I suppose, the for the whole experience and for the good fortune enthusiastic local photographer could not to be guided by authentic teachers in the company fathom that I might too belong in a group of of noble friends. white western Zen pilgrims. This, all juxtaposed with the affluent grandeur of the place and the —Richard Kokuan Lawton beautiful colors of people, buildings, faces and clothing will have me working through my Throughout our visits to many important Buddhist experiences for a very long time. sites, I clearly felt the presence of the Buddha and also of Mahapajapati who was to become the founder of —Degna Chickei Levister the first order of Buddhist nuns. We actually stood 109 in the place where Mahapajapati arrived in Vaishali on saffron robes and walked 150 miles to beseech the with 500 followers, their feet swollen, tired and Buddha to admit them into the society of Buddhist tearful. These were women who so wanted to be monastics. With the help of the Buddha’s attendant part of the sangha that they shaved their heads, put Ananda, it was here that they finally convinced

110 the Buddha to ordain them. I too felt their joy and in Vaishali, the stories and the places that I have relief, their exhaustion. I celebrated their victory right heard for decades came alive and inspired me in ways alongside of them and felt deep gratitude for their that I never could have predicted. perseverance and dedication to the Dharma. There —Jean Seisen Lewis

111 Being fortunate to have visited India many times I am aware of how potent that country can be. Even the most casual or diffident visitor from a developed nation cannot visit without encountering aspects of human living which are shielded in their home environment. No matter how closeted your excursion on the sub-continent, no matter how luxurious, and no matter how faultless your journeying, India forces you to address very human issues. These, of course, are the age-old matters of sickness, old age and death. Our societies are rich enough to keep the most raw aspects of old age and sickness from daily view. And we have a culture which endeavours to deny even the possibility of mortality. If you take away modern medical care, live in a community where corruption and poor governance are endemic, and you are born poor in that society, then you will manifest the ills of humanity. The three ‘heavenly messengers’ were what needled Siddhartha to leave his comfortable existence and seek a solution. In contemporary India, if you add density of population to that heady mix, visiting India carries a punch. What always amazes and delights me though is that despite all the negatives, the citizens who live in the lands of the ancient Buddha are an extraordinary bunch. Human nature can manifest astonishing resilience in the face of hardship. That resilience is admirable—and is a source of hope for India and for humanity. —John Tosan McKinnon 113 114 MOUNTAINS & RIVERS ORDER NEWS & TRAINING

115 The Mountains and Rivers Order The Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism (MRO) is dedicated to practicing, realizing and embody- ing the Buddha’s wisdom as it has been transmitted mind-to-mind through the generations of Buddhist ancestors, beginning with Shakyamuni Buddha himself. The MRO offers practitioners an approach to spir- itual training that is grounded in the recognition that all human beings have the capacity to awaken, while acknowledging that this journey requires guidance and support. The MRO includes two major practice cen- ters, numerous affiliate groups, and various organizations dedicated to supporting sincere and vigorous spiri- tual practice. To enter into the MRO is to take up the dharma as a matter of profound personal importance and to be guided by the tradition, the teachers, and the sangha as one embarks on the path of self-realization. Eight Gates of Zen Arising from the Buddha’s original teaching on the Eightfold Path, the Eight Gates of Zen form the core of training in the MRO. The Eight Gates draw on Zen’s rich tradition of practice across disci- plines like archery, haiku, painting and tea ceremony. Accessible and relevant to the lives of modern practitioners, they challenge us to infuse every aspect of our lives with spiritual practice. The Eight Gates are zazen, direct study with a teacher, art practice, body practice, Buddhist study, liturgy, right action, and work practice—points of entry that offer ever-deepening ways of studying the self. Lay and Monastic Training The MRO includes two distinct yet interrelated paths of training: lay practice and monasti- cism. Monastics dedicate the whole of their lives to practicing and realizing the dharma and serving the sangha. Lay students commit to awakening within their daily lives, in the midst of family, home and work. The unique feel of training in the MRO emerges in part from the rich commingling of these two paths, as men and women of all ages, from all walks of life, take up the teachings in accord with their individual sense of spiritual calling.

116 Teachers In the Mountains and Rivers Order

John Daido Loori, Roshi (1931-2009) was the founder of Zen Mountain Monastery and the Mountains and Rivers Order, and served as the guiding teacher for almost thirty years. Daido Roshi was a lineage holder in the Soto school of Zen, and also received Inka (final seal of approval) in the Rinzai school. Roshi drew on his background as a scientist, artist, naturalist, parent and Zen priest to establish a uniquely American Zen Buddhist training center.

Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi is the head of the Mountains and Rivers Order, as well as the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and the Zen Center of New York City. Trained as a musician, he came to the Monastery in his late twenties after ten years of practicing Zen on his own. He has been in full-time residential training since 1986, and received dharma transmission from Daido Roshi in 1997. He is the author of O, Beautiful End, a collection of Zen memorial poems.

Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei has been in residential training at the Monastery since 1991 where she is the training coordinator, and she serves as codirector at Fire Lotus Temple. After Daido Roshi’s pass- ing, Hojin received Denkai, the priestly transmission, from Shugen Sensei in 2012 and dharma Transmission in 2017. Before ordaining, Hojin was an artist and potter.

Ron Hogen Green, Sensei has been engaged in formal Zen practice since 1978 and was in residential training at the Monastery for twelve years. In 2007 Hogen returned to lay life, and in 2016 he became a lay teacher in the Order. Hogen serves as co-director at Fire Lotus Temple and lives with his family in Danville, PA.

Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, Sensei began residency at the Monastery in 1996, ordained in 2005 and returned to lay life in 2014 while continuing on as senior staff and becoming a lay dharma teacher in the Order. Zuisei Sensei is on sabbatical for the first part of 2019.

117 Zen Mountain Monastery: The Main House

Nestled in the Catskill Mountains, Zen Mountain Monastery is the main house of the MRO. The Monastery offers both experienced and beginning practitioners a chance to enter a unique environment where distractions are minimized and all aspects of life are engaged as study of the self. Residents, students, and retreat participants share their days while following a rigorous training schedule. The resident teacher and abbot, Shugen Roshi, oversees daily life and training. Residency at the Monastery means joining the cloistered community, letting go of worldly responsibilities, and giving oneself completely to the training schedule. Each day revolves around practice in the Eight Gates, with time devoted to zazen and liturgy, as well as other areas of study. The Monastery draws its strength from the ancient tradition of Buddhist monasticism, but it’s the rich interplay between the Monastery cloister and the vibrant world outside the doors that keeps the practice earnest and alive.

118 Zen Center of New York City: The City Branch

Located in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn, Zen Center of New York City—Fire Lotus Temple offers lay practitioners a vibrant experience of Zen training in the midst of one of the world’s great cities. The Temple maintains a daily schedule of zazen and liturgy, offering those who live in the city a chance to come and practice together as their schedules and obligations allow. In addition, the Temple offers meditation intensives, right action and study groups, evening classes, community work periods, a Sunday morning program and Saturday retreats. As one of the few residential Buddhist training centers in New York City, the Temple offers a unique opportunity to be in full-time training while simultaneously engaged in the world. Our small community of residents hold jobs or go to school. Residential life is guided by Temple co-directors Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei, the head priest, and lay teacher Ron Hogen Green, Sensei. Temple residency offers a powerful way to take up the crucial but challenging work of extending our spiritual practice into our ordinary lives. Beginning Instruction in Zazen

Instruction in zazen, along with many opportunities to develop and deepen one’s meditation practice, is one of the most important things the MRO has to offer. Beginning instruction is available each week at both the Monastery and the Temple as part of our Sunday morning program and on Wednesday evenings at the Monastery. Retreats

Both the Monastery and Temple offer introductory retreats, including a monthly Introduction to Zen Training Weekend, led by the teacher and senior students at the Monastery, and The Essentials of Zen, a series of seminars at the Temple that take up different facets of lay practice. Other retreats offer opportunities to study and train in the Eight Gates with guest instructors across a range of disciplines. At the Monastery, retreatants step into the residents’ cloistered community for a full weekend; at the Temple, retreats take place on Saturdays. Sesshin and Meditation Intensives

Characterized by silence and deep introspection, extended periods of zazen such as sesshin (weeklong) and zazenkai (daylong) are the heart of Zen training. All intensives include dokusan, or private interview with the teachers, and formal meals taken in the zendo (oryoki). Residential Training

The Monastery and the Temple offer different ways to engage Zen training full-time. Monastery residents join the cloistered community, letting go of their worldly responsibilities; Temple residents maintain careers, pursue degrees, or engage in other focused work while living and training at the center. For more information, visit us online at zmm.mro.org

119 In Memorium: Carole Kyodo Walsh December 15, 1948 - November 19, 2018

Kyodo arrived in Mount Tremper in the very early days, a year after the Monastery first opened as the Zen Arts Center. She soon moved in with her teenage son, Jori. In 1986 she became the first monastic to ordain at the newly re-named Zen Mountain Monastery. She became shuso later that year, breaking new ground for those who would soon join her on the monastic path. Her dedication, talents and playful spirit were key elements in building the Monastery into a place for practice and community life. She was the first writer, editor and publisher of the Mountain Record, which began as a mimeographed newsletter. Her dharma name Kyodo, given to her by Daido Roshi, means “The Way of Respect”.

In 1989 Kyodo went on leave from the Monastery for cancer treatment, eventually moving to Florida to be near her family while regaining her health. She continued practice with Kapleau Roshi and eventually became a student of Daniel Doen Silberberg, Roshi who had also lived at the Monastery in the early years. Kyodo became a much-loved lay leader of the Broward Zen Group in Florida, part of Lost Coin Zen, Inc..

Kyodo passed peacefully in November after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She is survived by her life partner Keeva, her son, mother and three sisters.

She wrote in Mountain Record after Daido Roshi’s passing: In the early days at ZMM there were only about ten of us living at the Monastery, and we were all very close to each other and to Daidoshi. I think our struggles with the cold (there was no heating system back then), developing a training program, and supporting ourselves and the Monastery brought us even closer. It was a difficult time but Daidoshi’s teaching, and our developing practice, made it a very powerful, intense time too. Although he was with me in my heart, we were separated by 1,200 miles, but now that he doesn’t abide anywhere, there truly is no separation.

Kyodo’s funeral and burial will be held with her family and the sangha at Zen Mountain Monastery in Spring 2019. In Memorium: Kathy Tensho Armstrong Jensen December 23, 1941 - November 15, 2018 Tensho was a beloved member of the Buffalo Zen sangha, an affiliate practice group in the MRO. She became a student of Daido Roshi, taking jukai in November 11, 2002, and receiving the dharma name Tensho, which means “Heavenly Star.”

She was a registered nurse for more than four decades, working in various hospitals and local schools, and was also a photojournalist and curator.

Tensho is pre-deceased by her husband, Wallace F. Armstrong, and leaves behind eight children, step children and many grandchildren, as well as three siblings and their families, and her beagle, Barney.

Teaching in the Ten Directions

In October, Shugen Roshi and Hojin Sensei traveled to India with fourteen other sangha members for a three week pilgrimage in the Buddha’s footsteps. Photos and impressions of their trip written by the travelers are included in this issue under Sangha Refections, and a more complete story can be found in Sangha News at mountainrecord.org.

Earlier in the fall, senior monastic Shoan Ankele led a zazenkai with the sangha at the Zen Affliate of Vermont, and in October senior monastic Gokan Bonebakker traveled to Buffalo to lead a zazenkai for the Buffalo Zen affliate there. Hogen Sensei returned to Buffalo in February to lead a sesshin, accompanied by senior lay student Meiju Linet.

121 Jukai

On November 11, six students took the bodhisattva precepts with Shugen Roshi, signaling their development in the study of moral and ethical behavior as it is expressed through the Zen teach- ings. Each of these students has completed a course of study with Roshi looking at the historical understanding of the precepts and how contemporary practitioners can use these ancients teach- ings to help guide their decisions and activities. Left to right in the photo are Jonathan Seiko (“Boundless Peace”) Rosenthal, Polly Kiho (“Radiant Dharma”) Horn, Shugen Roshi, Achong Jusan (“Pearl Mountain”) Chen, Nancy Eisho (“Eternal Bloom”) Meyer-Emerich, Constanza Sokyo (“Everyday Sutra”) Ontaneda, and Steve Seigan (“Sacred Eye”) Miron.

Shuso Hossen

As our Fall 2018 Ango drew to a close, a new senior lay student Kerstin Seishin Maile completed her shuso training by delivering her first public talk and meeting the sangha in dharma encounter. A long time student at the Monastery, Seishin led the ango with dedication and her quiet, inspiring grace. In her talk she asked us to consider how our attention comes to bear on all our activities, and how to meet a divided world with the fruits of concentration practice. Listen to the full audio at zmm.org/media. Soto Zen Buddhist Association Conference

This past Fall, Zen Mountain Monastery hosted the Soto Zen Buddhist Association biennial con- ference for three full days of practice, discussion and exploration. Over 70 ordained priests and transmitted teachers joined the conference, representing dozens of training centers and sitting groups throughout North America and beyond.

SZBA was first established in the 1990s as a way to bring disparate ordained individuals together who are living with shared or overlapping cultural inheritance, and facing many of the same challenges within their sanghas. With close to 300 members, an engaged board of directors, and an active mem- ber listserv, the organization also functions as a platform for aligned Soto Zen priests to take a public stance on topical issues, many of which were discussed during the week.

The conference was officially only open to SZBA members and associate members, which included ordained MRO monastics. Several talks and events were made open to non-ordained Monastery residents who were able to better familiarize themselves with how Zen priests in other orders make their way in the world, including those now living outside the cloister of a training center. Residents, in turn, worked enthusiastically all week to host our appreciative guests. All told, it was a rich expe- rience for all, and you can read more and see photos at mountainrecord.org/sangha-news.

123 30th Annual Dana Dinner

On December 15th, Zen Mountain Monastery held it’s 30th Annual Dana Dinner, a holiday cele- bration open to anyone in our Catskill community, though particularly aimed at those who might not otherwise have a warm holiday meal. The event was founded by Daido Roshi in 1987 as a way for the Monastery to engage with the neighboring communities. It gives us all an opportunity to practice generosity and to benefit from the good company of local folks who otherwise wouldn’t visit the Monastery.

Dana Dinner has always been made possible through contributions from local businesses and indi- viduals, making this a true community event. In recent years, the ranks of volunteers have swelled to include parents and kids of the sangha joining our other volun- teers serving together as hosts and elves, bringing delicious plates from the kitchen and offering each guest their own special gift. It is truly a highlight of our winter season and, with over 300 meals served, many commented that this was one of the most successful Dana Dinners of recent memory.

Visit the Sangha News blog on our website to see more photos from this special day. And thanks again for everyone who con- tributed and helped out! 124

New MRO Students

This past fall Sam Pigott, Josh Dittmar, Michele Laura, Pat Carnahan, Anastasia Gochnour and Phil Duvall sat tangaryo and became formal students of the Mountains and Rivers Order. In February, Laura Cohen and Greg Witkowski also passed through the five gates of entry to become students. Congratulations to all! Appreciations

The Monastery would like to thank all of the bodhisattvas who continue offering their assistance at the Temple, the Monastery, and at all our affiliate groups. Gratitude to Shoju Greenwood for the donation of a new honey extractor, and to Kiho Horne for renovation planning at the Temple. Deep bows for stitchery and dye studio assistance from to the creative hands of many, to Seiyu Lanaghan for the curtain hangings at the Temple, and to Shoshin Chester for her on-going work making oryoki cloths.

Comings & Goings at the Monastery Monastery residents in October included Nyuko Schnadow of Mount TRremper, NY, Selim Anwar of Istanbul, Turkey, Elixabeth Boulter of London, England, Sophie Epstein of Brooklyn, NY, Krisha Heckman of Allentown, PA, Jack Hennessy of Bridgeport, CT, Samual Lord of Montreal, Quebec, Jessica Ludwig of Brooklyn, NY and Diane Vitells of Portland OR. Month-long residential training in October included Sean Byrne of Provincetown, MA, Anna Davydchuk of Paramus, NJ, Hoshu Norris of Madison, WI, Griffin Suess, Benjamin Weingsten of Ellicott City, MD, Constance Slanina, Corey McIntyre of San Luis Obispo, CA, Jason Long of Norwalk, CT, and Mary Pollard. The Monastery welcomed year-long res- ident in August by Genjo Gebauer of Keene, NH, in September Joan Gutierrez of Chicago, IL, Eve Romm of Barrytown, NY, Riley Edson of Alpine, UT, and in December Julia Krupa of Carmel Valley, CA. In January and February we said goodbye to Steven Siegelski, Liam Delaney, Renji Liss, Gregory Witkowski who completed a year of residential training, and also to Josh Dittmar and Doug Hull, who each lived at the Monastery for two years.

Comings & Goings at the Temple In residency in September was Will Lee, and for two weeks Jacob Blair. In October we were joined by Ben Ehrlich for two weeks, Laura Cohen for one week, and Magdelena Ekstrom began a two month residency. In November Ali Harrington stayed for six weeks, and Mariyama Faye began a two-month residency. In December year-long residents Bingwan Liu and Stephanos Koullias completed their commitment, and we thank them for supporting the Temple sangha with their dedication and their practice. In January Anastasia Gochnour began the position of the Temple office manager and Jonas Dojun Leddington joined us for a month.

125 when it is dark enough within (p. 49), Not Hearing the Wood as one might court the Infinite (p. 67). Thrush From a current in the “river” that seems to flow By Margaret Gibson through her poems as her own sense of herself, LSU Press she turns and speaks directly to the ineffable, sometimes as “you,” sometimes as “No one,” sometimes as her late, beloved, “Beloved.” In Oh my gosh! Ripe, she says How did the high I long for you to take me over. I long privilege ever come to me to sink my teeth into you, no longer to review this book? a ripe idea but a peach I am lost in it and about to turn if I don’t eat it, and right now. continually astonished. Margaret Gibson’s Later in “Two Trees” she says, newest book of poems, No one, how relieved I am you don’t Not Hearing the Wood step right up and clarify the mystery. Thrush, is ripe and full and endlessly transcendent. In “Praise” she says, Not hearing the wood Don’t tell me your secret name, thrush is a fine art that we No one– I want to sense it as the blind would all do well to learn. tell words by touch, as wind shivers She makes her way and when the falcon soars from the thicket by the river, takes us with her through rising with wings on fire toward the sun. the dozen doors and windows of her poems into the woods, the river, and the star fields. These are Sitting quietly, she is nevertheless, and passages both text and breath of a life lived close thankfully, moved to write and to speak to the ...to the one vine “you” before her. In “Not to Remain Altogether that unfurls its many blooms Silent” she says, continually beside the door, ...How stark it is to be alive- and whose tendrils and although absence is the form you take brush lightly at my sleeves, in what we call the world, how durable... coming and going. ... (from The Cry). We are grateful that she has decided, “not to Because they are Passage, she dares to give six remain altogether silent”. of the poems the same name; how they enter and Like the kindest of monitors at the back of the take us, through prayer, through grief, through meditation hall, Margaret Gibson helps us: in joy, into the open space of “Opening And Closing The Book Of Changes”, she the dark (p. 9), asks How do I find God? and listens when the sky (p. 32), A voice whispers, the cure for the pain is in the pain... what continues without you (p. 39), and discovers

126 From Not Hearing the Wood Thrush At dusk, deep in the summer woods, a silence. Something that was here, expected to continue being here, isn’t. I see the line in my palm etched by fate and not yet snipped. The afterlife, what is it if not a further body desire turns toward? —Margaret Gibson

...that inside my tiredness, it including her memoir, The Prodigal Daughter: there’s a well. Reclaiming an Unfinished Childhood (2008). Her poem Always an Immigrant was featured in the In an earlier book, New and Selected Poems, last issue of Mountain Record and was among Earth Elegy (1997), she travels across the living the poems she read at the monastery’s Buddhist and dying world like a pilgrim and tells of her joy Poetry Festival in summer 2018 (find the poem in its most delicate leaves and its longest shadows. online at mountainrecord.org). In the title poem, she says ...and the words would In Not Hearing the Wood Thrush there is halo and hallow and blur my descent science, fantasy, metapoesia, the songs of into the barrow of unknowing Orpheus, Hui Neng, Teresa of çvila, and ordinary each moment is. ... house keeping. In the flush of my unabashed rapture, I want to say each song is quintessentially With this reverence and this restraint Margaret poetry, most certainly music. How it lifts us! But Gibson has made her way from day to day, line to Margaret Gibson would admonish and redirect line, book to book. The titles tell much: Broken me and say as she does in Evolution, Cup: Poems (2014), One Body: Poems (2007), ...-waving my fern Autumn Grasses (2003), Icon and Evidence (2001), down the lane, following what isn’t The Vigil, A Poem in Four Voices (1993), Out in the and what is, wherever they lead me- the real Open (1989), Long Walks in the Afternoon (1982). work is not the poem, but what moves me to it. Her poems tell how she is. There is little time given to small talk, so much to unabashed honesty Robert Rakusan Ricci is a monastic in the Mountains and vulnerability and sensuous delight in the life and Rivers Order at Zen Mountain Monastery. she lives. There is a refreshing directness in all of 127 Directory of MRO Affiliate Groups The International Society of Mountains & Rivers is a network of formally recognized affiliated Zen groups, practicing group meditation and other practice forms and in the spirit and style of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism. These informal groups offer practitioners who live locally an opportunity to come together for zazen, as well as for periodic retreats and intensives with visiting MRO teachers and senior stu- dents. These groups are led by MRO students and follow MRO training guidelines. For more information please contact the coordinator.

Vermont Affiliate • www.zavermont.org —Burlington Bob Tokushu Senghas, MRO (802) 985-9207 [email protected] —Montpelier Michael Joen Gray, MRO (802) 456-1983 [email protected] —Rutland Jen Sanford, MRO (802) 353-5585 [email protected]

Buffalo Affiliate • www.buffalozen.com Ray Eigen Ball, MRO & Gwen Kimu Coe, MRO (716) 393-2936 [email protected]

New Zealand Affiliate • www.zen.org.nz —Auckland Monica Seisho van Oorschot, MRO (09) 636-6086 [email protected] —Christchurch Michael Taikyu Apathy , MRO (021) 264-7594 [email protected] —Nelson Graham Houn Snadden, MRO (03) 548-4619 [email protected] —Wellington Rachel Furyo Stockwell, MRO (04) 977-6460 [email protected] —Manawatu Peter Choho Jolly, MRO (06) 356-8811 [email protected]

Prison Affiliate —Green Haven Correctional Facility, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, Woodbourne Correctional Facility, Shawangunk Correctional Facility, Wende Correctional Facility The following groups offer regular opportunities for zazen, but are not formally affiliated with the MRO. Rotorua, New Zealand — Geoff Gensei Moore, MRO 021 23 846 18 [email protected] Augusta, ME — Christopher Shosen York, MRO (207) 622-9433 [email protected] Wayne, PA — Joe Kenshu Mieloch, MRO (610) 933-0594 [email protected] Ottsville, PA — Pam Jinshin Dragotta, MRO (215) 882-1924 [email protected] Springfield, VT — Bettina Krampetz (802) 464-2006 [email protected] Whitesburg, GA — Sybil Seisui Thomas (770) 834-9615 [email protected] Harvard, MA — Judith Taisei Schutzman, MRO (978) 456-6999 [email protected] Victoria, BC — Ted Mousseau, MRO (250) 634-3572 [email protected] or mugezen.ca 128 Directory of Products and Services Centers & Services Buffalo Zen Dharma Community Zen Institute of Westminster Presbyterian Church 724 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY New Zealand Tuesdays 7:00-9:45pm Zen Mountain Monastery Introduction to Zazen, Affiliate First Tuesday of every month, 6:30pm Wellington Sitting Group All newcomers welcome! Rachel Furyo Stockwell (04) 977-6460 Nelson Sitting Group Graham Houn Snadden (03) 548-4619 Auckland Sitting Group Shugen Roshi visits Buffalo Monica Seisho van Oorschot May 16-18 Find out more at www.buffalozen.org (09) 6366-086 [email protected] Christchurch Sitting Group 716-393-2936 Geoff Gensei Moore (021) 23 846 18

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135 Services ZEN MOUNTAIN MONASTERY Podcasts - Talks - Interviews - Dharma Discourses

Visit us at zmm.org/media anytime for new audio and video features.

Podcasts available free on iTunes & Google Play

136 SUBMIT YOUR ARTWORK

Mountain Record is interested in using more works of photographic and fine art by our readers in our print and digital journal. We’re also happy to receive tips on artists you appreciate and who might be receptive to letting us showcase their work.

Please send images and ideas to: [email protected]

Thank you!

PHOTO CREDITS Page Photograph By Page Photograph By Cover Michelle Seigei Spark 69 Matt Mitchell 8 Paul Gorbould 72 Will Carpenter 11 Hans-Gunter Wagner 75, 99 Annelisse Fif 32 Will Carpenter 90 Sebastian Staines 35 Keiho Hughes 93 Eric Fischer 42 Frank Van Dijk 94 Shoan Ankele 45 Florian Rohart 102, 104, 107, 111, 113 Genjo Gebauer 52 Jonathan Bean 108 Kokuan Lawton 56 Eugen Anghel 117 Nicholas Lue 59 Hokyu JL Aronson 122 Shokan McNamara 61 Tenku Ruff 65 Klaus Tan 66 Casey Allen All other photos from MRO archives

MOUNTAIN RECORD Dharma Communications President Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Roshi DC Director of Operations Vanessa Zuisei Goddard Managing Editor Danica Shoan Ankele Editor Suzanne Taikyo Gilman Layout Hokyu JL Aronson, Vito Salerno Production Assistants: Paul Kyudo McCarthy, Myron Shijo Rogers, Kristin Keimu Adolfson, Peter Meyer, John Ankele, Caroline Kamei McCarthy, Laura Close DHARMA COMMUNICATIONS P.O. Box 156MR, 831 Plank Road Mount Tremper, NY 12457 (845) 688-7993