Attachments

On the last day of our Fall Practice Period. I became very much attuned to the ideas of Attachment that pervade the study and practice of Buddhism, that are a big part of the Vimalakirti Sutra, and that shape the Ox Through the Window Koan I was given at my first practice interview of this period. 

Oh yes, it's all about Attachment and how and why we put off Enlightenment. Buddha made many comments about Attachments, Desires, Suffering, and Enlightenment, and Buddhist practitioners are supposed to be training to let go of all that, somehow, some way, and in the Mahayana Zen tradition, become Lights Unto the World, vowing to free all sentient beings from their traps of Suffering, Futility and Attachments.

Right now, of course, I'm attached to those ideas, to the thought processes of contemplation and meditation on Attachments, and there will be no Enlightenment while that process goes on. But that's OK. 

In fact, the more I consider Attachments, the more I realize that :letting go: of Attachments is not something I need to strive for; Attachments. like Desires, are Life (as one of my Zen teachers puts it), you need neither to let go of them nor hold on to them. The useful thing is to notice and acknowledge them.

For example, yes, I am attached to my home, my wife, and many of our cats. I'm attached to my chair, my laptop, my smart-ish phone, my car, my van. I can go on and on and on, listing attachments, and as I go through the day, I notice and acknowledge attachments to various things, people, places, thoughts and ideas, memories and dreams.

They are all part of my life; some are not healthy, others are necessary for right -- or any -- living.

We don't have to judge them, but just notice them, recognize them, acknowledge them. Yes, I am attached to this action of journalizing parts of my days, my thoughts, opinions, joys and disappointments. 

Attachments fall away. They come and they go, much like thoughts and emotions during zazen. The trick is to let them. Let them come; let them go. For most of us, an attachment doesn't last forever or even for  a particularly long time. We may be engaged with our attachments for only a moment or two, or for months or years, or in a few cases for a lifetime. But, like ourselves, attachments are impermanent, transitory, and something like the clouds of the sky. There and then not, growing, diminishing, vanishing, or suddenly re-appearing.

A cloud is real but evanescent. 

Just so with attachments.

And if we can acknowledge them as they arise, greet them even with a bow, then we might be on our way to liberation from hold over us.

Buddhism in essence is very simple. The commentaries on the Sutras are far longer and more complicated than the Sutras themselves in part, I think, because the teachings are almost too simple and direct for many individuals to grasp. A Truth so simple must be bogus, right?

The basics are that we live in the World of Perception -- which is in fact an illusion, in some aspects a delusion. This World of Perception-Illusion doesn't have any corporeal existence. There is ultimately nothing there, that is to say nothing we can perceive. 

This Great Nothingness or Void is the ground state of being. Everything that "is" -- including ourselves -- arises from it, and thus, everything that "is" is ultimately the same thing. Our perception of separateness is an illusion. We can't shake that illusion, and in reality, we don't have to. A better approach is to accept the alternative and apparently actual reality along with the illusion. To understand they are intertwined and cannot be separated, don't need to be separated, and by accepting both, simultaneously, one approaches the nonduality that is the energy of Buddhist thought and practice. 

In essence, this is the process the Buddha went through during his years of fasting, contemplation, meditation, study and struggle to grasp what's really going on. 

And then he shared it with his disciples who then shared it with the rest of us and whose descendants do so today.

"The Dharma is vast and subtle..." Well, yeah, but it is also very simple. 

Vimalakirti's insight -- which he shared with gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople, anyone who would listen -- was that having grasped this subtle simplicity, a whole new universe, indeed an inter-nested series of Universes -- opens up within us. What we can perceive is just a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal corner of the "vast and subtle", inconceivable and incomprehensible reality/unreality that we are part of. Our languages can't adequately express it. We just have to accept it. 

The commentary that came with my version of Vimalakirti's Teaching Sutra (211 page pdf) by a well-known rinpoche is longer than the sutra itself and is centered on how stupid the commentator is and how little he understands the arguments and dialogues of the various gods, goddesses, and so on, with Vimalakirti. 

Well, OK.

He describes the appearance of things as they are presented in the sutra and then states his utter ignorance and inability to grasp any meaning from it.

The Teachings are so far beyond him.

OK. 

No, from my perspective, it's not that hard. It really isn't. And Attachment in the broadest sense is what can prevent an individual -- even a rinpoche -- from grasping the teaching of the Dharma in this (or any) sutra.

We may be attached to our ignorance, for example, or to the appearance of our ignorance, and if we acknowledge and even respect that attachment, it can begin to lose its power over us. It doesn't mean it goes away -- it may be an integral part of our identity in the material world, after all! -- but our attachment to our ignorance, say, doesn't have to be in control.

Much of what Vimalakirti is teaching is to help us (even gods and goddesses) to "let go." Not to deny but to acknowledge and recognize and then to let go of what came to be called our "hang ups." Don't fret over them. 

Don't try to get rid of them. Don't judge them. Don't fear them, but don't yield to them, either. There are myriad Universes beyond our perceptions. We are less than motes of dust in that context. Even as gods and goddesses.

And that's all right.

At the beginning of this practice period, the Dharma teacher said to me, "Desire is Life." It threw me for a loop because I had long operated on the idea (from the Buddha) that Desire or Attachment to Desire was the source of suffering, which ideally we want to end -- for ourselves and all sentient beings. Right?

Right?

In some sense, maybe. But that's what the Buddha teaches; it is the core of his teaching! 

And?

Without Life in the World of Perception, you don't and can't experience suffering nor can you do anything to end suffering for yourself or anyone else. Letting go of our Attachment to Desire and Suffering doesn't end them so long as we are alive, but it does let us see them more clearly and it can end their control over our lives. 

Once we are free of that control, we can begin to help others free themselves, though we are still experiencing Desires and the Suffering they cause. 

And that is the Dharma of Vimalakirti's teaching as I see it. 

 

Living On the Surplus and Study

Part of my study during this practice period and sesshin has been about renewing acquaintance with the people and places that were important during the early period of my introduction to and practice of Zen Buddhism. Not just important to me but important to the Zen movie (as I call it) that was then being made and shown.

This was pre-Counterculture. 1964-1965 ish. Zen came to America earlier of course (c. 1958-59), but it only seemed to be beginning to blossom when I encountered it and got in contact with the Zen Center in San Francisco. I would see it that way because that was when I myself was "beginning to blossom" as a rebellious teenager. Zen practice was part of my rebellion. I think that was true of many Anglo early adopters. Not so much for the Japanese American Zen practitioners at the Sokoji, though. It wasn't rebellion for them. Or was it? 

I have to give great credit to David Chadwick* among others for preserving so much of the Early Days literature, photos, film clips and reminiscences. People who were there then are dying off quickly, probably many more lost than would have been otherwise due to the Covid pandemic. It's a shame, but much has been preserved, and I could spend the rest of my life poring through it. 

It's not just David's stuff, either. The San Francisco Zen Center has preserved extensive archives; Suzuki Roshi's archives at Shunryosuzuki.com is another source. I'm sure there is much more to explore.

*Links to other sites David maintains or recommends are available at the first linked site. 

So much more to explore. And one of the insights I had about it was that all of us -- well, most of us -- were living on the surplus of the post-War (WWII) era. This was one key to the what the Counterculture would become. '64-'65 is pre-Hippie, just barely, but following the assassination of President Kennedy, young people's lives began radicalizing almost immediately. By 1965, many -- particularly on the West Coast -- had effectively separated themselves from whatever had gone before, their parents' lives, the experience and expectations of the post-War suburban life, etc., and were exploring alternatives. 

Zen was (and still is) an alternative.

A certain kind of young Anglo adopted it, tried to adapt to it. Zen wasn't for everyone. It still isn't.

Suzuki Roshi gently tried to guide the newcomers into the practice through his adaptations of Japanese Zen practice as it had been when he was trained (pre-WWII).

I say gently because he was very gentle with his Anglo charges who were attempting to practice a very strict Japanese discipline. 

So gentle that by the time Richard Baker took over after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, only the outward, visible forms of Japanese Zen remained; the inner practice had become something else, for different purposes I think.

Because it wasn't what I had been introduced to -- and what I had studied hard to start to master the practice -- I stayed well away from Richard Baker's Zen Center in San Francisco and whatever they were promoting. 

It wasn't "Zen." They called it Zen but it wasn't.

It had become Baker's vision of grandeur. I hate to say it, but that's what I saw. 

But maybe that grandeur was part of Suzuki Roshi's vision as well. Maybe that's what I'm trying to find out with all this study.

It's possibly useful to see the origins of Zen in America as a pre-Counterculture "living on the surplus" alternative -- ie: pointing the way for what was to come.

Sokoji, for example, was housed in a former Jewish temple, Tassajara was a former "carriage trade" resort, the City Center was a former Jewish women's center and residence. All these locations and many more were surplus, they weren't needed by their original users anymore and they could be reused for alternative purposes -- such as Zen. The alternative lifestyles that came out of the Counterculture were almost all based in the fact that there was a big surplus of practically everything needed for living from which to create and sustain alternative (at least for a while.)

Many of the branches that would arise from the SFZC began in well-off people's homes, unused commercial or religious sites, and other private but surplus locations. None have become what primary Zen sites are in Japan. They all still have this temporary, ad hoc, reused location sensibility about them.

Sometimes it's charming. No doubt about that. 

There's also a sense that none of it is really here, either.

Zen is still trying to plant roots in America.

As opposed to, say, Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village in France. Which seems to be about as permanent and rooted as something Zen can be outside of Japan (and, well, Vietnam...)

I think my study will continue for as long as I can keep it up, and the two practice periods I've been part of this year have renewed my sense of Zen as it was and as it is now (something else again.)

So many elderly women participants... I've been thinking about that. 

How different that is from times gone by. But then, it's probably natural, too.

Not Much Zazen - So Many Things To Do, You Know.

Yes, well.

This sesshin, well, the whole practice period so far, has been one thing after another, obligations piled upon actions and distractions, travel and preparations. Not much time to sit, just sit. Every now and then, sitting seems like the natural thing to do, though, so I sit, and when the time to sit is over, I go about my other activities. 

In between, I've done a lot of study and recollection of times gone by, when all of this Zen shit was new -- or new to me -- and neither the world nor I had quite figured out what it was all about. Hoshi and sensei have given me challenges and questions to ponder, koans to delve into if not answer and the daily Dharma talk confirms or questions my assumptions and beliefs.

Tuesday's Dharma talk was filled with quotes from Suzuki Roshi's Dharma talks in 1969. That was important to me as a look back to the Old Days when this Zen shit was all still very new, and Suzuki Roshi was still in the process of introducing it to the American consciousness, such as it was.

Suzuki Roshi recognized the suchness of the conditions and situations he put himself into or he fell into, and he made the most of it. Nothing seemed beyond his ability to see through or penetrate to reach the essence.   Of course there were many things I did not know and didn't need to know about his life and struggles and disappointments. One thing I can say, however, is that he always seemed to find the humor in everything, and he always seemed to be laughing inwardly or outwardly, never seemed to take himself or anything else too seriously.

Even when he was dying.

He cautioned others not to take things that seriously, either. We're impermanent, everything is impermanent. The moment will pass. All we have is the moment -- this very moment. Live it fully. 

Sometimes when I hear that from some of the contemporary Zen practitioners, I doubt they believe it. They know the words, but do they, can they follow? 

Not to go all Ram Dass on us, but Being Here Now is all we've really got, so why not be -- and let be?

Suzuki Roshi embraced it without reservation. Nowadays, for many, that's very hard.

Now while I haven't sat zazen on a strict schedule or for long periods the way we're supposed to during practice period and sesshin, I have daily engaged in samu (work practice) sometimes for many hours at a time, and samu is practice as much or more so than zazen. 

A practice period consisting mostly of samu is interesting. In the regular schedule, samu comes once or twice a day. Sitting is the primary practice. Hearing/studying Dharma secondary. Samu breaks up the day. 

But for me, it's been samu, Dharma, and sits. 

No less engaging. 

I wonder what Suzuki Roshi would say.

"Good, good (laughs), but it's not zen, you know. (Laughs.)"

How Very Alone He Seemed

Yesterday's Dharma talk included a number of quotes from Suzuki Roshi's own Dharma talks in 1969 soon after Tassajara Zen Mountain Center came to be. 

A film was made by KQED in 1968, shortly after the establishment of the Zen Mountain Center monastery at Tassajara Hot Springs above Big Sur that shows Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker at both Sokoji Temple in San Francisco and at Tassajara as well as various students and supporters talking about Zen in America. 

The film seems primitive by today's standards. It appears to have been shot on Super 8 film (both silent and sound) then transferred to 16mm and overdubbed. The camera work is sometimes shaky and out of focus, as amateur film making tended to be in those days. Yet there's an honesty about it that is both charming and fascinating to students like me whose contact with Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker was physically slight (I'm still sure I never met either of them in person, and yet when I see them in this film or in other clips, I feel as if I must have met them at some point in my journey) but spiritually powerful.

And one thing I notice is that despite being with Richard Baker and Zen students and supporters throughout his sojourn in America, Suzuki Roshi seems always so very much alone. He's an exotic and he seems to know it. He's here to transmit the Dharma and Zen from Japan to the small-ish circle of adherents he was able to attract and keep interested in something new -- as Zen was still very new in the United States, even up to 1971 and Roshi's death from cancer.

He brought Zen from Japan but adapted it to the US and particularly to San Francisco as it was during the young people's cultural transition from the Beats to the Hippies. I don't want to say that Zen led the way, but maybe it did. What I notice though is that Suzuki Roshi wasn't concerned with that so much as he was with communicating the essence of Zen practice -- as he was trained for and knew it in Japan before, during and after WWII -- to a new audience and in forming a community to continue the practice indefinitely.

I've pointed out that I came to Zen when I was a teenager through the novels of Jack Kerouac and an innate curiosity about something I knew nothing of, the way of Japan and Buddhism. Just curious, that's all, and yet I found so many connections, superficial and very deep, between my being and those of Zen practitioners like Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker -- without whom I would not "know" Zen today. (There's nothing to know, so I don't "know" Zen; it's merely a convenient figure of speech...)

Zen was never popular in Japan, and in an overall sense, it's not popular in the United States either. It's a "specialty practice," indeed, often an elite practice, something done by those who cannot find satisfaction of their spiritual interests and needs in other forms of Buddhism or religion. Or like me, it's practiced by those who fell into it at some point in their lives, early or late, learned to practice and never stopped. 

Suzuki Roshi was the catalyst and early teacher, called "Roshi" to his laughter, but in the Zen sense, a sensei. Teacher. 

There's something so simple and straightforward about his presentation, something you don't often see in today's Zen -- which seems to me to be something else, not the Zen Suzuki Roshi and a few others brought to the US from Japan. 

I can't say exactly what it is -- or was. I don't know. Zen-not-Zen-no-Zen.

Cognitive dissonance!

I do recommend Suzuki Roshi's early Dharma talks, and the collection of some of those talks in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Pretty much all of it is available online, easily accessible, and for me at any rate, compelling. 

How very alone he seemed. And yet at root, there is no distinction, separation, or "aloneness." 

Bodhisattvas Again

Zen liberates bodhisattvas into the world of presence. 

That's what I call it: "World of Presence", our ordinary, everyday perception of reality.

As we know, however, that's an illusion.

A dream as it were.

It doesn't have any ultimate existence.

But because it is our general, ordinary perception of reality, and we conduct our lives within it, the bodhisattva's presence is also called for and called forth.

The bodhisattva, on the path to Buddhahood, lingers in the World of Presence, the material world, to help guide other sentient beings to liberation and Buddhahood for themselves. The Bodhisattva vow is to liberate all sentient beings. 

Buddhahood is ultimate liberation from suffering (ie: living in the World of Presence) we are led to believe, and many of us do believe it, and yet some of the sutras says that Buddhahood is itself an illusion, a dream as it were, and there is no ultimate liberation from suffering because there is no suffering at the ultimate level of... well, what is it?

"It" is the wrong term. There is no "it."

If we actually probe to the limit of perception/existence, delve as deeply as possible into the material world, we find, perhaps to our surprise, that there is no there there. Nothing, in other words. What we regard as "something," or "anything" or "everything," is not there. There is "nothing" there -- emptiness, void. Absence of "thing."

That is the ground state we can perceive if we delve deeply enough, from which "thing" -- everything -- arises. Because it is a ground state we can perceive if we delve deeply enough, probe with our minds and with our tools, it too is an illusion, That is not the ultimate. But it is the ground from which, thorough which, everything else manifests.

We cannot probe any deeper with our minds or with our tools, but we know there is a deeper inconceivable "reality" underlying it. "It." But there is no "it."

Bodhisattvas are called forth to help with compassion those on the journey through the material world, perhaps toward Buddhahood, or perhaps not. It doesn't matter. A bodhisattva is a teacher and a guide and a helper. Bodhisattvas are everywhere: not only teachers, guides, and compassionate caregivers. We often don't recognize them or we take them for granted out of habits of mind that simply don't recognize much beyond our own selfish needs and desires. The gift of a bodhisattva can go unnoticed in the press of events and the furious activity of the moment. But they are there, all around us, right next to us, and yes, sometimes the bodhisattvas are we ourselves.

We may not recognize the bodhisattva in ourselves. 

Vimalakirti takes on all the gods, buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike in his teaching we're studying in this Fall Practice Period. Though a layman himself, he doesn't hesitate to correct and instruct those around him, no matter their status, when he perceives them failing or flailing in their efforts to observe the proper forms of observance and devotion. 

In a sense, he tells them to throw it all away. None of it means anything. It accomplishes nothing. At best, observance is an empty gesture; at worst it's merely fraud.

Live your life. That is practice.

Other bodhisattvas, even the Buddha himself, say the same thing. Your life is your practice. Focus there, not outside yourself, not on some arcane ritual, not on sitting in meditation. 

None of it matters.

In Zen, sitting is a duty, but it's not a product, and it is not meant to produce anything. We don't sit for a purpose. We sit to sit. 

Sitting is and isn't a means, skillful or otherwise, toward some end other than sitting. It is a means because sitting can be like opening a window beyond our usual expectations or experience. It can be. It isn't always. 

It isn't a means because there is nothing ultimately beyond it. We sit to sit, no other purpose. But in sitting we can gain a more complete comprehension of ourselves. 

Our roshi got into a bit of hot water a while back by saying that we sit with intention, aspiration, and/or motivation. We don't. Later on, roshi corrected this notion by saying "we sit to sit." No other reason or aspiration in sitting. But our lives -- which include sitting! -- are motivated with intention and aspiration, in the Bodhisattva Way to liberate all sentient beings from suffering. 

We take vows as Zen practitioners, after all. Bodhisattva vows. 

And none of us is perfect. That's all right. 

Second Sesshin of the Year

And second time I've participated in sesshin in my life. 

Starting the first day with Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi's Dharma talk on August 21, 1971 --  podcast or transcript.

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

Note: in sesshin, there are plenty many "don't do's" including "don't journal" like I'm doing now. As an inveterate rule breaker, I feel little guilt at not following the rule here, in part due to the liberation I was granted from monkish observance way back in the day. A whole list of "don't do's", page after page of them, was read off as part of the introduction to sesshin last night, and I'm sure it startled, even put off, some of the potential global participants. 

They can't do that at home; if we were in a monastery, maybe. 

I'll just quote something that Suzuki Roshi said in explanation of a quote from Dogen in that Dharma talk so long ago -- a few months before he died:

“When all things are Buddhism—all things are Buddhism, there are defilement, practice—defilement, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings.”  The point is they are—they are.  All things are Buddhism.  Whatever you do, that is Buddhism.  But there is some danger in your understanding of this kind of words—statement.  “Whatever you do, that is Buddhism.”  You know, whatever you do in Tassajara, or in city zendō, or in city life, that is Buddhism.  It looks like—it sound like this:  “Whatever we do, it doesn’t matter.  Anyway [laughs], that is a practice of Buddhism.”  If it is so, there is—it is not necessary for you to study Buddhism, whatever—if whatever you do, that is Buddhism.

But actually, what Dōgen-zenji meant is not—is not like that.  So there—there is, maybe, in—in—when you understand this statement, “Whatever you do, that is,” you know, “Buddhism.”  There may be two ways of understanding it.  One is, whatever you do [laughs], you know, if you understand—you take this statement literally, from your non-Buddhist—non-Buddhistic understanding.  That is one, you know.

1971, it was a different world, very different I think, and he's getting into the whole notion of Buddhist "liberation" and what it means in the modern world having seen how the idea was misinterpreted by some of his followers who took it to mean license. If everything is Buddhism and there is no judgement then "liberation" means you can do whatever you want, right? Whatever urge you may have at any given moment is OK because everything in every moment is Buddhism, right?

Well, yes it is, but it doesn't mean what you might think it means.

No, you have precepts: right thinking, right understanding, right behavior. And there are rules, many rules, that constrain the thoughts and actions of priests and monks and laypeople alike, though not all the rules apply equally to all practitioners. 

But in 1971, the precepts were not fully understood, nor were they fully observed by many (most?) Western devotees of Suzuki-Roshi. So he tries to make clear, and not for the first time, that "liberation" in a Buddhist concept is not license.

In my own case as a teenager in 1965 or even 1964 -- memory falters -- I wasn't and couldn't be in a monastic setting in San Francisco or later at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, so I was granted a kind of dispensation, you might say, to practice at home and adapt the Rules as was able to. I believe this dispensation was granted by Richard Baker, Suzuki Roshi's right hand and successor at San Francisco Zen Center, as a skillful means of introducing me to and keeping me following Zen practice no matter my situation. Over the years, I've found few Buddhist leaders who require strict observance of all Rules by all practitioners. But the Precepts form the basis of assessment of individuals. How closely do you follow them? What failures have you had? What lessons have you learned? So.

In addition to starting the day with Dharma talks by Suzuki Roshi, I also review the reminiscences of David Chadwick, an early adopter and current practitioner of Zen in America as brought and taught by Suzuki Roshi so very long ago. They are potent reminders of my early practice and of some of the people I never knew.

Then to round things out, there is the study and review of Vimalakirti's Teaching Sutra which I expect to return to many times.

Sitting zazen when I can and am moved to. 

And it's about time to start the Morning Sit. 

 

"Why Are You All So Grim?"

A story is told of Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master, visiting Green Gulch Farms in Marin County, California, sometime in the '80s during a period when the San Francisco Zen Center (of which Green Gulch like Tassajara was a part) was going through some very stressful times.

As he walked around the farm and walked the path of kinhin (walking meditation) used by the residents, visitors and monks, a path that led through forest and toward the sea, he is said to have said:

"You have one of the most beautiful kinhin pathways in North America. Why are you all so grim?"

And when I heard that from a long-time worker, student and teacher at Green Gulch, I had a sudden flash of enlightenment (satori) that yes, students of the Dharma, whether through Zen or some other way, are often, too often, far too grim -- at least appear to be.

We sometimes become attached to adversity and suffering. I witnessed it a few minutes ago when reviewing yesterday's Dharma talk by the Zen center's Roshi.  And when we are attached, we suffer and become grim, even in the presence of natural beauty such as that at Green Gulch. We are not, in other words, in the moment, experiencing and appreciating what is there and then. We are instead immersed in our misery or as we learn from the sutra of Vimalakiriti, in the delusion of our misery.

It's been interesting to see how Vimalakirti's teaching has been approached during this practice period. Many have said they never knew of it, never read it, never studied it, and some at least have not read it even now during the practice period. Of those who have, they seem somewhat off-put by it; it's not in the standard pattern of Buddhist sutras, in fact it's far outside the mainstream. It's in a word: radical.

It's a pageant, it's magical realism, it's a knock upside the head, not unlike the whap with the tomahawk I experienced in July from a stranger who invaded my home.

It's a "Hey!" 

Vimalakirti is saying "Hey!" to all the gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike that, "Hey! You're doing it wrong!" Why are you all so grim?

Vimalakirti has taken on the sickness of the world, as a bodhisattva would, and he is therefore physically "sick" -- ie: feigning sickness. But his realization and teaching is that "sickness" and "suffering" are illusions, delusions if you want, and attachment to them perpetuates them. Detach, liberate yourselves, and even if you are physically ill -- or the world is sick -- on the material plane, that is not, by any means, the ultimate reality. 

I've been reviewing some of Suzuki Roshi's teachings from back in the day. He tries over and over again to get this very point across. Ultimate reality is that there is no "reality"; it's all an illusion. Words fail, however, because our concepts are illusory themselves. The ground state -- what I call the ground state -- is inexpressible. It is neither there nor not there. Neither real nor unreal. It's beyond that. Beyond duality.

But saying so doesn't tell us much. You have to experience it, which Vimalakirti does... But having done so, the challenge is to communicate it. Ever the challenge. Communicate it to the gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike. 

Pfft. 

Well, he tries. And they all say they understand. But of course they lie.

Maybe the trick really is to just ask:

Why are you all so grim?

Thinking Back, Catching Up

Unheard Dharma talks are piling up, I have one chapter to go in the study text, and I'm scheduled for a practice interview with one of the Zen teachers this afternoon. The truth is, I haven't gotten back into the rhythm and discipline of a Zen practice period of sitting and study and meditation and contemplation and mindful effort. I thought it would come back really quickly after that whirlwind tour of the Other California, the one less seen or known. But no. It hasn't.

Part of what I've seen throughout my return to conscious Zen practice after a period away from it is a tendency of some practitioners to want to be perfect. They desire, nay demand, perfection of themselves certainly and sometimes from others. They seek and see perfection, for example, in their teachers; the elevated illuminated ones, the living bodhisattvas, enrobed and wise.

Well, no. I have a hard time doing that, though I think I am open enough to the idea of what might-could be. I saw for myself how a Dharma talk on the Diamond Sutra by one of the current teachers led me in due time to return to the rhythm and discipline of Zen practice, at least for a while. But when I asked him if would consider taking me on as a student, there was no answer, and I realized soon enough that no answer was an answer and it wasn't "no" nor was it "yes." It was silence to open my own consciousness to the fact that I've had teachers all my life and I still do. What is one more? Or one less? 

Also to open my consciousness to the fact that I am and have been a teacher for a very long time, and I am one now. We study the concept of bodhicitta and bodhisattvas, and we study how they are described in the sutras, and we study exemplars, and we aspire or desire to emulate them. But many of us in the program don't realize how close we may already be, nor necessarily do we see the same qualities in one another. We may see or seek them in our teachers, but in Zen it always circles back to we ourselves.

I think back to one of the earliest teachings I received from Suzuki Roshi when I was a snot-nosed rebellious teenager:

The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, the Sangha is with anyone you encounter who is on the Dharma Path.

Buddha-Dharma-Sangha are the Three Jewels of Buddhist practice. We are rarely fully conscious of this fundamental though. We seek the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha outside ourselves, and in truth, it's not there. We won't find it there because it is not there. 

The Dream I had of being in San Francisco after I had experienced The Void during zazen is a case in point. The teacher I told the story to called it a Dream, but that's what "Reality" is in a Buddhist context. Real-Not-Real. The cognitive dissonance of it all. And so forth. And what she saw in my story was basically the Living Truth: the Buddha is within, the Dharma is what is, the Sangha is with whomever, wherever, whenever.

I described how that could be in the past-present-always.

There's a series of podcasts by David Chadwick, an early adopter of the Zen brought by Suzuki Roshi from Japan and popularized by the San Francisco Zen Center at Tassajara and (interestingly) in Los Altos Gatos. Some of what he is describing of the Early Days is not at Sokoji Temple in San Francisco in other words. There was no there there. The there, wherever it was, was at the tips of the branches. At Tassajara, at Los Altos Gatos, Berkeley, Marin, wherever Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker reached out. 

Chadwick -- DC as he calls himself -- recollects what it was like and some of the people who were there at the Beginning, or Not-Beginning. It was so very different. Well, it was a different world, wasn't it?

I can see why Richard Baker and Suzuki Roshi wanted out of the City, to spread out from the City, to put down permanent roots in the country. The Sokoji city temple was abandoned -- well, they were asked to leave -- shortly after the branches were established. Indeed, before some of them even had the dust covers removed. 

They were asked to leave by the Temple board because they appeared to be uninterested in serving the Japanese American community which provided the space and sought to practice. They were more interested in attracting and serving/being served by Anglos and the nascent (white, very white) counter culture of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Los Altos Gatos may have come before Tassajara, I'm not sure, probably not, but who knows? Time is not necessarily linear.

Anyway, during that time, I was a kid out in the Central Valley, a lone outpost of Zen in a place that San Franciscans still don't quite acknowledge as "real." They shudder to think. It hurts their delicate sensibilities. The Central Valley is a place to move through quickly if at all. An Empty Quarter. 

It's kind of like where I am now compared to the delicate sensibilities and sophistication of our Santa Fe friends. 

Well, San Francisco, Santa Fe, what's the difference? 

I can't say that Buddhism or Zen has ever been much of a struggle for me. It just seemed natural. Zen postures -- the strictness of them as described by Suzuki Roshi -- were difficult, and I can't do them now due to infirmity -- but... soon enough I learned that you don't have to strictly follow the "rules" and you can still practice zazen.

If you're a monk practicing at a temple then yes, perhaps, but most of us are not and don't aspire to be, so why make ourselves suffer unnecessarily? We have other more important things to do with our practice. Yes?

The core teaching of the Vimalakirti text we're studying is: (in my view) "You're doing it wrong." In other words there is an ease and simplicity to the practice that the rule bound can't grasp. Let go. It's all right. You'll be fine, and you'll find wonderful things.

And this was 2,500 years ago, during the Buddha's lifetime. 

So I'm catching up but slowly. Still a little zzzzzhy from the trip. That's OK. I've seen some of the Dharma talks and they make me laugh. I had one practice interview before I left, and I laughed then too. 

Without laughter, why Zen?

On Returning Home to New Mexico After One Last Trip to California

My travel companion and I made it back to New Mexico yesterday, and we've been decompressing and dealing with the altitude ever since. Spending a week near sea level for the first time in years means that when you get up at altitude (6-7000 ft) it takes some getting used to. 

And there's all the recollection of the trip to do. My companion may think of herself as "a simple girl from Gallup" but she's been in the Army serving in Korea, is finishing her Masters at a prestigious East Coast university, is planning on a trip to Europe a week from now (subject to change due to possible upcoming job), and is becoming well known in art and museum circles as a force of nature. She's an artist, a curator, a scholar, and a fine human being. The rest of us could take a lesson or two from people like her.

She toured me around Gallup when we got back. It was good because I was not that familiar with the town, and I certainly didn't know all the hidden pockets and the many stories she could tell of families and squabbles and living rough. Gallup has a notorious reputation, some of which is well-deserved, for racism, drunken Indians and more than its share of violence. But she obviously feels great empathy and high regard for the place and the people. So I was grateful to be taken around, to meet an old friend of hers, and to just consider the kind of life she's led, how it differs from the Standard Model, and how those differences can be an advantage and a curse. And to contemplate the differences between her life now and what it was like when she was "just a simple girl from Gallup."

She's been to California before, but she never experienced the places we went or if she had been to one or more of them (like Monterey) she'd never spent the time we did or explored the corners and intersections we did.

Nor had she seen a buffalo herd or an elephant seal refuge in California. Never stood on a beach watching a sea otter hammer a clam shell on its chest. She'd never seen ostriches running free in California nor had she visited a California mission before. She'd never been to Big Sur, never crossed the Bixby Canyon bridge, been in a redwood grove or late lunched at Nepenthe. Never been on Highway 1 at all that she remembered. 

She'd never seen Hearst's Castle glowing in the sunset light atop La Cuesta Encantada, nor did she know exactly what it was.

She'd never had split pea soup for breakfast, nor, honestly, had I. But I love Andersen's Split Pea Soup, and soon enough, so did she. But these days, it's hard to find, and we left the pea soup restaurant with cans to take home. 

She'd never been to the Cesar Chavez National Monument, nor had I, and we both got choked up remembering or learning the story of the rise and struggle of the United Farm Workers Union. She'd never seen field workers in the numbers we saw on our rural journey through the farms and orchards and vineyards and ranches. She saw how hard they worked and sensed how little they were regarded. 

She'd never been a fan of John Steinbeck, but since she read the opening paragraphs of Cannery Row on a street sign in Monterey, she thinks she'll become one. I gave her the book. 

She's never been a fan of "Ti Jean" Kerouac and never read his books, but she thinks she might become a fan and read his books after experiencing parts of Big Sur and hearing my story of how he drank himself to death after achieving fame for On the Road, c. 1957. I gave her a copy of his creative nonfiction novel Big Sur and asked her to read it after reading Cannery Row.

Returning home to New Mexico. Fall afternoon, sun low in the southwest, almost fruitcake weather. Oh so glad we went. Oh so glad to be home, greeted by a passel of kedies. "Where have you been?!" 

Where I needed to be. And now where I need to be. The Dharma Talks I missed while on the road are now posted online. I'll give myself time to decompress and catch up. Routines will return. Life goes on.

Briefly Back to the Theater

As I say, this trip is in part a pilgrimage, and yesterday we were able to briefly revisit the theater where so much of my life and Ms. Ché's life was centered from 1973 to 1983, and really long after that. 

We arrived unannounced and found an unlocked door and proceeded into the lobby where a startled young woman asked, "Yes?" Indeed.

And I explained that I was an alumnus of the institution and was interested in just looking into the auditorium for a few minutes' nostalgia and memory. Would that be possible? And I've brought a friend so she could see where we spent so much of our youth. Could we?

"No. Well, maybe. The theater is closed for the time being, and we're very short staffed, but... " She was acting confused. Another young lady came from behind a door.

"Yes?" So I explained again, and again I was told about the short staffing and how it might be difficult to find someone to go with us, but she would check, and return shortly. 

A few minutes later a young man, well young to me, came through the lobby and greeted me and my travel companion, and I explained one more time, and he was thrilled and delighted, and he said, "Sure, come along," and off we went on an extended and compelling tour of the theater where literally my life was transformed and saved in a way all those many decades ago. 

It hasn't changed a whole lot. Some of it hasn't changed at all. Those changes that have been made are, so far as I could tell, for the better, much better, and everyone involved I think should be proud. 

We went up and down and all around and at times I felt I was home again. I think this is a big part of why I wanted to go on this trip. It's not just for the memories and nostalgia for les temps perdu. It is the recapture, if only for a moment, of "home" -- wherever and whenever that home was established, and whatever sort of home it might have been.

I've noticed the places we've avoided and though I've lived there, they were never "home." Everywhere we've stopped and spent time has been a home-place of one sort or another, and every time we've had wonderful encounters with extraordinary people who in some ways were always there. Even in Monterey, where I've never lived but have always felt a kinship to, comfortable and in place, we had extraordinary encounters with remarkable people, some strangers, some not, and that's how this trip has gone throughout.

And so it goes. Briefly I was back in the theater that became so much a part of me many decades ago. It was strange that at times we were the only ones there, and my mind's eye was filling it with casts and crews and the swirl of activity that was intrinsic to the operation. Ghosts, if you will, of what once was everyday. Now because of Covid, the work has stopped or been transferred off site or... well, it's complicated. The place could even be called an empty shell of what it once was, and yet for me all that life and life-giving and sharing is deeply, deeply a part of me and a part of that place. The building houses spirit. Those of us who have been through it know that, as did our tour guide, the current production manager, and we... bonded?.. with our shared sense of what was and what could be, despite the generation or more that separated us in age.

Things change, oh yes. But some things stay the same.

And the Zen of all this continues to astonish. Enlightenment? Nah. 

Well, maybe...😉🙏

Making Pilgrimage at the Bixby Canyon Bridge

We were on a tight schedule, and Highway 1 twisting along the coast of California is not exactly a quick drive, so we didn't have a whole lot of time to gawp in wonder, nor did we stop particularly close to the Bixby Canyon Bridge of lore and legend and practically every fast driving commercial and movie we've ever seen. That's how my travel companion knows it, whereas I see it as an emblem or avatar of Kerouac's "Big Sur" -- the creative non-fiction novel of his descent into alcoholic madness after the publication and sudden success of "On the Road" in 1957.

Jack Kerouac went to dry out in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin or shack located some distance up the canyon from the bridge, but its presence is a character in the novel. He and those who came to visit him in the shack (and who brought him more liquor) passed under it and it figured as an arcing force throughout the novel. 

Many make pilgrimage to the bridge during the year, and when we arrived, many were already there, performing ceremony and worshiping. So we didn't stop at the first turnout. It was pretty much full,  and we'd already encountered stupid people in the road not far from it. 

We stopped at the second turnout -- which is where the picture above was taken. The bridge is barely visible in the distance -- something I like. 

There were pilgrims, but only a few, at the second turnout, and we had an interesting encounter with one who thought he was a comedian. There is a steep cliff after all below the turnout. Someone could fall. 

We took many pictures, I took deep breaths, became somewhat emotional and then we continued on our journey. 

In some ways, the whole trip is pilgrimage. 

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Note: Alternate names: "Bixby Bridge," "Bixby Creek Bridge," "that famous bridge neat Big Sur," "Big Sur Bridge", "that bridge on Highway 1," "Rainbow Bridge" etc., etc.

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While I was going through some of the literature we brought back from our trip to California, I came across a reference to this:

In some ways, it's horrifying. In other ways, aww, kinda cute and kinky, no?

When I first saw the reference, I thought "Wow, is that the ranch a little further up the canyon from Ferlinghetti's shack where 'Ti Jean' went to dry out and where that sad donkey who came to greet him lived?" But no. This is on top of the hill with a view of the canyon and bridge, not in the canyon by Ferlinghetti's shack. 

I'm sure other wonders will appear in due time...

Traveling Zazen

We made it to our first destination in California on Sunday evening, went to work on our tasks and socialized on Monday, and hopefully we'll complete our tasks here and socialize some more this evening then set off for our next destination. 

How do you practice zazen on the road like this, doing so many necessary things and socializing with friends and relations you haven't seen for a while? Where's the time to squeeze in a little meditation or just sitting in a whirlwind schedule like we've been keeping?

Right now there is a morning sit at the Zen center which I have accessed online, and I spent at least four minutes sitting before I started composing and writing this post. That's probably not enough of a sit, and I'll probably squeeze in a little more time later in the day, but it was enough to let me change my frame of mind and calm a little of the nerves that get me all agitated when I'm agitated in the city, with all the traffic and people and noise around. It's overstimulation for me. I need the relative calm tranquility of the country.

And yet no. I need the tranquility of where I live when I'm there, but here I am in the city in California, skies filled with smoke from the fires burning in the Sierras, I'm sitting in a motel room next to a rushing freeway the sounds of which are not masked much by the a/c blowing modestly cooled air. 

And this is what I need, because this is where I am. And so it will be through the rest of the day and through the days to come. We'll be in very, very different environments, strange locales, meeting with people here and there, on the road a lot, staying in small hotels and large, paying fortunes for gasoline, and so forth. Along the route, we'll encounter opportunities to witness, to view, to appreciate, and sometimes to sit. 

This is the Fall Practice Period and there is a fairly rigid schedule that we can't and don't keep to on the road. But it's there, and I can touch it and check in whenever we have the opportunity, need and desire.

I may only practice zazen a few scattered minutes a day. I may study the text only a few minutes before I fall asleep. But they're there -- the opportunities to sit and to study -- even as we are amid furious activity in the city, sitting beside the ocean at Big Sur, wandering a path through the redwoods, or sampling some Danish food treats in Solvang. 

Every moment of every day is Practice if we let it be.

Why I Stayed Away From the San Francisco Zen Center When I Lived In The City

I lived in the city of San Francisco for a year or so in the mid 1970s. The Hippie era had passed, of course, but the Counterculture was still very much underway. San Francisco was still providing the heartbeat of many alternative ways of life, most of which proved to be dead ends, quite literally in some cases such as the People's Temple mass suicide in Guyana. That happened after I departed San Francisco for the country at large, but Jim Jones and his operation on Geary were very much apparent and in the news when I lived there. 

As was the San Francisco Zen Center on Post, no Bush, or was it Page (I think! Man, I lose track of locations over the years...) where I was invited to attend zazen many times but never did. No. I stayed away.

Here's the thing. Some of the people I was working with had attended zazen at the Sokoji Temple and had moved with Suzuki Roshi to the Page Street facility in the later '60s. Zen was popular among a certain set of artists and actors and such -- as it still is. 

I'd been practicing on my own for oh, a decade or more, a practice I began after getting in touch with the San Francisco Zen Center when I was a teenager, possibly no more than 15. I forget the exact year, it was either 1965 or '66 -- or in a partial memory as early as 1964. The literature and instruction I received was enough to start me on a lifetime Zen path, but because I was not in San Francisco at the time and could not be and there was no nearby Zen sangha become part of, I was essentially a solitary Zen practitioner in the wilderness and I became accustomed to that state. "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the sangha is among whomever you find along the Dharma Path."

By the time I lived in San Francisco, the Zen Center had become fashionable. In fact, it was so fashionable that people competed for spots in the zendo in hopes of brushing knees and elbows with some of its famous practitioners. This grated on me, rubbed me very much the wrong way. What was the point of sitting zazen among a crowd whose minds were taken up with fame and notoriety. Was this any better than the jostling at the People's Temple or the ever-passing scene at Grace Cathedral? (Note: a friend from my time in San Francisco got AIDS and died and his ashes are interred at Grace Cathedral I learned years later...)

I blamed Richard Baker for the fame-seeking that seemed to overwhelm the San Francisco Zen Center. He had been the one I corresponded with early on. He took over when Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, but he'd been kind of the shaper of the Zen Center as an institution from well before that, and his influence is still strong -- which I don't judge as either good or bad, but it is an influence that shapes the SFZC and many others in this country and elsewhere -- toward an appeal to the rich, famous, renowned, politically powerful and those prominent in the arts and academics. 

That's not in and of itself a bad thing, but when it becomes the totality or near totality of the focus of the institution, it warps it, I think, in ways that do it no service in a Buddhist context and form barriers to the bodhisattva way of life for practitioners. 

I struggle with this a bit in the context of my current Zen practice and setting. The Zen Center I'm associated with is a legacy of Richard Baker, quite directly in fact. He founded a sangha at the facility in the '80s and eventually gave the facility, lock, stock, and barrel, to the current roshi in the '90s when he set out on a different quest. 

That legacy is more than just buildings -- though they are very important to the current sangha. I carry some of that legacy with me, but it is very different because it is earlier, much earlier in origin, more closely aligned to Suzuki Roshi who I keep saying I never met, nor did I ever meet Richard Baker, yet when I see and hear film and video and audio recordings of them, I recognize them immediately, and even the zendo at Sokoji -- the earliest Center in San Francisco -- is instantly familiar. I don't know where these memories come from. I attribute them to having seen films of Suzuki and Baker at the Midnight Movies in the later '60s. On the other hand, maybe I did visit Sokoji and maybe I did meet them somewhere, sometime, and I've just lost track.

This is somewhat similar to my memories of meeting Jerry Rubin in San Francisco in the '60s. I'm more certain of those meetings, and where and when they took place and why, but sometimes I wonder: are they false memories? Did it really happen?

Was I really at the Oakland Induction Center in October of 1967 during the Moratorium police riots? As a potential inductee? Yes, I'm certain I was, and there is film of me there and yet... maybe it's all an illusion... 

Which ultimately is the foundation of Buddhist enlightenment. It is all an Illusion, you see? Memories are real and false at the same time. "Reality" is real and false at the same time.

I didn't want to be part of the fame-seeking at the San Francisco Zen Center in the '70s. Even if I had kept to myself, there wasn't a way I could see to avoid it while in the company of others there. So. I didn't take up the invitations, I didn't go, and I continued practicing on my own in the apartment on Geary with the wonderful garden outside the living room bay windows. It was to me very much a Zen garden.

Where something happened. 

I've described it, I think, in other posts, and I went into considerable detail about "what happened" with one of the Zen teachers I deal with these days. The Void. I entered the Void while sitting zazen in my apartment on Geary one day. I wasn't entirely sure what it was, and after a time, I could not not enter it when sitting zazen. So I stopped regular practice. 

I described "what happened" and I also described an incident in San Francisco that took place while not sitting zazen, an incident that came back in brilliant technicolor detail when I was late for a morning sit during Spring Practice. The Zen teacher I described this incident to said, "You know what? That sounds like you were dreaming." Thinking back about it, it was very much like a dream. Yet the memory of it -- after sitting zazen and entering the Void for perhaps the first time that day in 1970-something in San Francisco -- is crystal clear, even now, and I am certain it "happened", but on what plane of existence? 

Was it a dream? Is it all a dream? Was my avoidance of attending zazen at the San Francisco Zen Center justified or even necessary? Or did it even "happen?" But the zendo at the Page Street Center is not at all familiar to me, whereas the Sokoji zendo very much is. So what happened? Or did anything?

Was I there or was I not there? Or both or neither?

Yes.