Refuge

 "I take refuge in the Buddha; I take refuge in the Dharma; I take refuge in the Sangha."

The simplicity is stunning. The Three Jewels of Buddhism:  Sakyamuni Buddha himself, a real person who lived and died 2500 years ago, who came to Enlightenment, renounced his titles and status, lived as a Bodhisattva and taught, died and entered Nirvana. The Dharma is composed of his teachings and those of other Buddhist teachers. At their core, these teachings consist of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and pretty much that's it.  The Sangha is the community -- any community -- of practicing Buddhists.

I was taught many years ago that "The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, and the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path, even if they don't know it."

In other words, the trappings of Buddhist belief and practice are nice but not necessary, because everything which constitutes "Buddhism" is already there, present and potential, within the container you call "Me" and I call "You" and immediately adjacent to it.

You don't need Zen; Zen doesn't need you. 

I'm nearing the conclusion of this practice period, and there were a number of times when I was about to quit and didn't. At this point, my intention is to stick with it to the end -- and beyond. Not so much as a Zen practitioner, although once started, it never really goes away, but as someone on a Bodhisattva path nearing the end of his journey in the material world.

I was asked what brought me to this particular virtual place at this time? I could point to a specific individual with this institution I'd encountered online with whom I felt both compassion and communion. That aside, though, my interest was spurred by my isolation over the last year and more due to the virus. I am high-risk and cannot be vaccinated before May at the earliest, probably not till June because the medications I'm given interact with the vaccine to essentially neutralize it until such time as the strength of the medication diminishes sufficiently to allow the vaccine's anti-body production to function. Etc.

In practice, this means that no matter what, I cannot socialize or otherwise engage with other people more than very quickly and at a distance. Mostly not at all. So I've been essentially homebound for more than a year, and I didn't realize how socially active I'd been previously and how important those interactions were to fulfilling Bodhisattva vows, no matter how imperfectly.

Hm.

So if I had to declare a "purpose" to participating in this (virtual) practice period, it would be renewal and restoration of a sense of sangha, community of fellow practitioners on the Dharma Path.

Hm.

How do you practice the Bodhisattva's way of life under these conditions? You can to a very limited extent, but not much beyond that. And that's OK. You do what you can within those confines. And if it means breaking free in some ways, you do that.

Zen, at least the Zen I encountered decades and decades ago, is very precise, simple, yes, but precise, and the precision is part of the practice. Suzuki Roshi would probably say precision is the whole of the practice. Get the forms right, which isn't easy at all, and you're Zenning, doing Zen. Are Zen. You see that even now, getting the forms right, practicing, practicing, practicing, to get the forms right, the signs right, the precise Japanese style, words or rather syllables, just the right arrangements of flowers and candles and bowls and statuary of just the right colors on just the right height tables. I could go on and on. Getting the style just right is practice.

When I was 17, not long after I started zazen practice, I went into a kind of all things Japanese frenzy. 

Our house was sort of Japanese style, built in 1957 on the site of a transfer camp for Japanese Americans rounded up to be taken to the internment camps during World War II. The exterior design was a conscious attempt by the builder to emulate Japanese domestic architecture within the confines of the US post-war housing boom, rapid construction, and American standardization. The interior was an odd mash-up of Early American (especially the kitchen and breakfast room), Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra, and standard cookie-cutter California suburban. The different takes were kind of jarring, but it was what it was.

There were probably no more than 20 or 30 houses in this development (of about 300) built with this exterior design. The others were styled "Contemporary" and "Farmhouse," and there were far more of each.

My interest at that age was to make our house over into as close to an "authentic" Japanese house and garden as I could. Authentic in quotes because I didn't really know what that was, not any more than the builder did. 

There wasn't a whole lot I could do with the inside, so I just collected stuff where I could find it, shoji panels, woven straw mats (not tatami, I couldn't get those), scrolls, lacquerware, low tables, floor cushions, rice paper shaded light fixtures and lamps, and so on. I set to work learning some Japanese. Forgot almost all of it. 

The inside never came together in a "Japanese" style; it would have required too much of a make over, but I didn't give up trying, and by the time I was 20 or so, I had designed a complete renovation plan that would have transformed this sort-of Japanese house into something much closer to a traditional Japanese house inside and out. I believe I still have some of those plans stored away in one of my portfolios.

Outside, I could do more, and I got to work designing, planning and installing a Japanese garden in front and decking and shade overhead in back. 

The Japanese garden included a dry streambed lined with rounded river rocks, a small pond intended for koi but never hosting them, a seating area with a stone bench and Japanese lantern, plantings to mimic pictures I'd seen of Japanese gardens in this country and Japan including azaleas and Japanese maples and a stand of bamboo in the background, reed panel fencing to screen it from the street, and so forth. 

I built a deck in back patterned after the moon viewing platform at Katsura Detached Palace in Japan and put up shade structures roofed with reed panels. There were already fruitless mulberry trees, and I planted more shrubbery and perennial flowers. Got one of those "green egg" kamado cookers, too. Set up benches and Japanese lanterns and put a Buddha statue on a slight rise off the deck. 

I even got some Japanese style clothing which I never wore. 

I was mad for anything Japanese because Zen was Japanese. Zen was my practice, and in my mind part of the practice was to "become" Japanese, or at least become familiar with being Japanese. 

In my mind it all fit together seamlessly, but it didn't come together quite as well in the physical world, and when the projects were about as done as I could get them, there came a sudden realization:

None of this was necessary. I wasn't Japanese, I didn't live in Japan, the "Japanese style" was superficial at best and it was largely an imposition not a natural outgrowth -- even though there were roots but not necessarily happy ones given the house's location atop what had been the site of Japanese American fear and misery.

I'd lived among Japanese Americans who had been interned, for example, and I went to school with their children, and the lingering bitterness bordered on rage. We Anglos knew so little. And until confronted by it directly, felt nothing about what had gone on and its after effects. 

My mother had had direct experience with the whole curse of Japanese American internment during the war. When the war was declared, she was living on a ranch and orchard that was managed by the Watanabes (they didn't own it; in California, it was still difficult/impossible for Japanese to own land). She became very close friends with their daughter who was about my mother's age, and when the order came to assemble for removal, my mother was outraged. It was wrong, wrong, wrong she declared, and she was implacable. Of course there was nothing she could do and the Watanabes were taken away along with more than 100,000 others. When the internees were released, the world had changed, and I'm not sure my mother ever saw the Watanabes again. But she remembered.

My mother blamed Earl Warren and FDR directly for what happened to her Japanese American friends, and she never really forgave them for that terribly wrong action.

So during this practice period, I've seen that many of the participants and teachers live with their own versions of Japanese style, some very consciously attempting imitations of every element of Japanese domestic interiors. Some appear to be quite successful. Others maybe not so much. I don't begrudge them their efforts, and I know from experience making the attempt can be comforting and rewarding. 

Some people just naturally gravitate to the style in any case. They see it as a reflection of themselves, who they are or who they would be if they could be. Who they want to be.

And yet... even the Japanese don't live that way amid "The Style" these days. Or rather, very few do. "The Style" is seen these days in museums primarily.

I think I wrote extensively about the "emptiness" of traditional Japanese houses, an emptiness that was illusory at best, false in many ways, and an impression of "emptiness" that required an army of servants to maintain. It was very Zen, but... 

It wasn't ever real.

With that realization the "need" -- actually desire -- for the prop of Japanese style went away, as did many of the formal trappings of Zen practice. They weren't necessary. Most Roshi would make that quite clear to their students, assuming their students would listen. 

Nevertheless. 

------------------------------------------------