Sesshin Again

 

I'm such a rebel. 

The Winter Practice Period now enters sesshin, a week of intense zazen practice, silence and withdrawal from the world. I've done sesshin before. Sort of. Well, I'm not a monk, not in a monastic setting, not -- ever -- involved in formal Buddhist practice, and not inclined to the monastic way. 

Sesshin is monastic practice, though lay people can and do participate in sesshin at Zen centers and monasteries. Generally speaking, they do so while in residence at the monastery or Zen center.

And sesshin doesn't work for rebels. At least not the standard, rule-based narrow way. I would be very highly out of place in residence at the monastery! Oh my yes.😛

Elements of sesshin -- whether intensified zazen practice, samu practice, kinhin practice or as the case may be life practice, in silence or otherwise -- can work just fine. In a sesshin period, all these things and more are brought to the forefront.

"Practice" is often seen as solely a matter of sitting zazen, and zazen practice is fundamental to Zen Buddhism. I practice zazen but not as formally as we are expected to, nor as often as sesshin requires. My zazen practice may be only three breaths or it may be an hour in the tub or on a driftwood log on a beach or walking around my place in the wilderness. Zazen is rigorous in a monastic setting -- as I think it should be -- but for householders living in practice, zazen can take any form, can take any amount of time, can take place anywhere, in any posture; in other words it need not follow the rigors of the monastery. I'd go so far as to say it shouldn't, especially if your life is practice. 

Life practice includes the Three Jewels or Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha); the Eightfold Path*, and the Precepts**. It may also include study, commentary, outreach, and much more, but each individual's life practice will differ. In my case, for example, chopping wood and carrying water are literal elements of my practice. 

In sesshin we are to focus our intentions and consideration on the core elements of our practice.

Even rebels like me can do that!

Oddly though, sesshin can focus on not doing.

Letting go of habits and duties that we may consider essential. Just let go of them and see what transpires.

I've been re-reading Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I've gained a new appreciation for it. Especially since, thanks to David Chadwick, I have a greater understanding of where it came from: short Zen-Dharma talks primarily at Marian Derby's house in Los Altos, California, in 1965-66, prior to the acquisition of the City Temple in San Francisco, the Tassajara resort up above Carmel and the Big Sur coastline, and Green Gulch Farm in Marin County.

In other words, before San Francisco Zen Center became world famous and a financial and economic power-house in the Bay Area.

Suzuki Roshi's teachings at that time were so simple and straightforward. There was none of the over intellectualized commentary that we see so much of today. It was almost pure Japanese Zen as Suzuki himself was taught as a monk early in the 20th Century. How to do it. Why to do it. Where. When. And so forth.

So much of that has been lost it seems to me, in an intellectual quest for deeper understanding and ownership.

And during our study of the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, it seems that everything except the text is the subject and object. Dongshan (or whoever) came up with a long poem/song that aids in the transmission of the Dharma of Thusness. Many of the references in it are at best obscure to those who haven't been trained in the Dharma of a Chinese Chan Buddhist monastery a thousand or more years ago. Many references are entirely opaque. All but meaningless. Or they may seem to be.

Yet the Dharma of Thusness is core teaching of Buddhism, Chan and Zen, and the Jewel Mirror Samadhi is one of several means to "touch" that core. 

I say I had that experience -- if it can be called an "experience" -- around 50 years ago, and it was part of a process that changed my life from one of selfishness to one of service. Thusness is ever-present, the matrix if you will, of all else, and of "experience," too. Beyond Thusness and intermixed with it is what I call The Void, Emptiness, the Ground State, from which everything we can perceive (which is practically nothing in the vast, eternal scheme!) arises and returns. But not just what we can perceive. All of what we can't perceive arises and returns from and to the same source.

In my case, it was a matter of absorbing these and other matters, not of intellectual understanding, and certainly not of ownership of knowledge. 

Life change took time, oh my yes! Not instantaneous at all. But in some ways, setting an intention of service 'made' it happen.

One of the aspects of Thusness revealed by the Jewel Mirror (Note, it's a "jewel" mirror not a "jewelled' mirror...) is that when you look into it -- which you are always doing, at least while you are awake -- you see... you. Hard to recognize -- much like Dongshan's reflection in a flowing stream. He saw himself, but the reflection was broken up into a million or more passing images. None of which resembled "himself" or anything he recognized as himself. 

And yet.. and yet...

The point here, if you will, is that your perception, whatever you perceive, is a reflection of yourself. There is no there there except for your own being perceiving "something." And that perception is actually a reflection of... "you."

Thus the Jewel Mirror.

How does that change one's life?

Or how did recognizing that change my life?

I had been in what I call "selfish survival" way of life which had led me into amazing/wonderful realms and experiences no doubt, but also many cul-de-sacs and dangers. I felt and believed my physical and personal survival was in deep jeopardy all the time and that I was on a knife-edge of existence. I suppose it gave me an adrenaline rush, but at the same time, it was an entirely selfish and self-absorbed life. And realistically, it was deadly. Had I continued in that manner, I wouldn't be here to tell about it.

I'd been practicing Zen Buddhism for about ten years when... 

I looked out one day and saw the world in a different way. It was a sudden thing. Unexpected. Real. Life-changing.

From that moment I sensed a calling, and that calling was to serve. It didn't mean that selfish desire disappeared. But it did mean that it would be replaced with service to others. Without expectation, demand, or gain.

And even that is a form of Rebellion.

Sooooo. What is The Jewel Mirror?

We've been studying The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi purportedly by Dongshan, Chinese Chan Master. At least we're supposed to. It's clear that some haven't. But that's all right. We come to our study and take it seriously when we're ready.

So what is the Jewel Mirror? What is the Jewel Mirror Samadhi?

Welp, I came to this study/teaching 50-some-odd years ago, and I'm still puzzling through it. I woke up this morning, for example, with what was for me a new, primary, realization about Thusness and the Jewel Mirror that I think is derived from the story of Dongshan seeing his reflection in a flowing stream and thereby coming to realize Thusness.

Oh? But think about it. What kind of reflection is there in a flowing stream? Is there even one at all?

Well, yes, the water does glint and darken and move constantly, and what you see in the water is made up of reflections, many, many moving reflections, but are any of them your reflection in the water? How would you know?

Yes, it's all "you". Wait, wait, is that what the Jewel Mirror is? 

That was the satori of Thusness I had this morning as I awoke from slumber. 

When you perceive -- whatever you perceive -- you are perceiving yourself, something of you and nothing but you. Everything in your perception is a construction of your mind.

The Jewel Mirror reflects Everything. All at once. Which in the end resolves to... you and nothing but you. Then it dissolves into Emptiness. What I call the Ground State from which everything arises and returns.

Note: it's "Jewel Mirror" not "Jewelled Mirror." The Mirror is itself a Jewel, not unlike the Three Jewels or Treasures of Buddhism. (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha).

The Jewel Mirror Samadhi is the Awareness or Awakening to that realization.

Which we are to "keep it well" -- once we are aware of it -- as is taught in the poem/song. It is the core realization of Buddhist practice. Once you have it, don't neglect or lose it. 

Throughout Buddhist monastic training, the monks and nuns are given koans and teachings (Dharma) that ideally open this awareness, an awareness that cannot be grasped intellectually or physically, but which is everpresent if you let it be. For most, it's hard and takes a long time. Many monks never achieve or accept it. That's considered one of the weaknesses of the monastery.

On the other hand, how does this teaching work -- if it works -- for laypeople not in a monastic setting?

I can only speak for myself and what happened to change my life. I don't know how or whether it works -- or doesn't -- for others. I absorbed the teaching without really "thinking" about it. Without trying to understand it -- something I couldn't do anyway as I had no idea what the many references within it were. I have some better idea now due to all the scholarly commentary available. 

But it doesn't really matter. 

It is what it is, and just this is it.

Thich Nhat Hanh RIP

Yesterday was kind of tough for a lot of the participants in the Winter Practice Period after word came that Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) had died in Hue, his home town in Vietnam, at the age of 95.

He was  not one of my main Dharma teachers, but he was known of by me and respected for his gentleness, kindness and wisdom.

As one of the many Buddhist opponents of the Vietnam War, he was a leading figure in the long struggle in the United States to end it. He was exiled from Vietnam for his efforts, and he was only able to return years after the victory of the North. He settled in France at his Plum Village retreat, farm and Zen Center.

I've heard tell that he was basically incapacitated after a stroke in 2014, and was unable to speak for the last several years. His teaching, of course, is very widespread and continues to profoundly influence the thinking and actions of individuals, Buddhist and not, throughout the world.

Memories were shared at a memorial service held in his honor last night. Reminders of his wisdom included a comment he'd made after another Dharma teacher had died. He said (paraphrase), "Oh, I knew him. He said he always wanted to come to Plum Village but never did during his lifetime. Now he's here! He's here in the trees and the birds and the sky, and we're walking with him now. Isn't it wonderful?"

Another memory that has stuck with me since I first heard it from a Dharma teacher last summer:

He visited San Francisco Zen Center in the 1980s during a period of turmoil and difficulty. Part of his mission was to help overcome the current difficulties and help assure a strong future. As part of his mission, he went to Green Gulch, the Center's farm in Marin County, where he walked with residents and visitors on the trail that led to the ocean. As he was walking, he said to the assembly (paraphrase), "You have one of the most beautiful sites and paths in North America. Why are you all so grim?"

That has stuck with me ever since I heard it last year. To me, it is the essence of Suchness, the epitome of the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, and the core teaching of Buddhism. 

Yes, you may be facing problems and difficulties now, and those problems may grow or diminish, but that's not all there is. Look around you. Take a moment to see outside yourself. Take time to recognize the extraordinary essence of where you are, for example, and the Suchness of the whole. Why are you all so grim when there is so much more than what is bothering you at the moment. Look around. This is the most beautiful place you can be. You're blessed. 

Oh, he may have passed from the material world, but his influence, like that of so many other Honored Ones, will long carry on.

RIP

Coming to Service

 "Service" means different things to different people at different times. We may not know it, but we are all obliged to serve in some way throughout our lives, sometimes willingly, often not. The "Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is one many Buddhist teachings that prepare and enable the service expected of Chan/Zen Dharma participants -- whether priests, monks or laypeople.

As I say, I absorbed the teaching about 50 years ago in San Francisco. It was part of a range of Buddhist texts I had accumulated over the previous 10 years or so of practice. I can't say I know where it came from. I don't. And I can't say I was a particular scholar of Zen or Buddhism at the time -- nor am I particularly so now. Buddhist scholarship and commentary is quite a specialty these days, there is massive amounts of it produced over the last 2,500 years, much of it recently. I'm not sure that much of it has helped me more than the teachings and texts themselves, but because it is produced in such prodigious quantity, it must be helping someone.

Perhaps the primary Buddhist teaching text I absorbed back then was "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (156 pg pdf), which presented Zen and Buddhism in such a gentle, kind, simple and straightforward way that it seemed "easily" graspable despite the complexity and often opaqueness of most of the commentary. 

"The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is not commentary. It consists of admonitions, memory-joggers, reminders, and guideposts originally primarily intended for recipients of Dharma Transmission. In other words, it's not really a text for the lay practitioners not receiving Dharma Transmission, yet it has become a routine chant repeated by all at Zen Centers throughout the world (maybe not so much in Japan, though?) and I question the merit of that, simply because the references within it are pretty much opaque without the background training, study and practice that the song is "about."

In other words, if one simply chants it without the background for comprehension, what merit is there?

I've heard tell that even if you don't understand all the many references within it, that's fine. By repeating it in chant, you are automatically building up merit and understanding... "absorbing it" as it were. Much, perhaps, as I did decades ago. I did not, never have, and probably never will chant it, but by absorption, it became part of me and over time has strongly influenced the course of my life.

Go figure. That seems to be the point of chanting it, too.

When you become "awakened" in the Buddhist sense -- that is able to recognize and (sort of) experience the vastness of the Emptiness within which our material existence arises and returns -- the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, even without knowledge of all the many references it contains, becomes crystal clear. No mystery or struggle to it at all. Like so much else, it is self-evident. Suchness (which I doubt I'll get into in this post, but we'll see.)

"Awakening" in the Mahayana Buddhist sense compels service. Which is the point, you might say, of the Jewel Mirror, Dharma Transmission, and of living. 

One has a role to play and a job to do. An overriding purpose. From which there is no escape so long as your being is contained in your body. And even then.... 

I mentioned in one of the seminars during the practice period that I had absorbed the Jewel Mirror Samadhi many years ago and it was part of the process of transforming my life from one of intense selfishness (ie: survival selfishness) to one of constant service. It was, I believe, automatic. There was no conscious determination to come to service. It's just what happened. 

"Service" takes many, many forms. Bodhicitta is a way of referring to the Awakening that leads to service as a Bodhisattva -- someone on the way to Buddhahood who stays in the material world to serve others and their Awakening. There is no end of what you may do in service to others, and one of the keys I learned about through trial and error really more than anything else, is to wait and listen and be available when asked. Don't force yourself in service to others. The opportunities arise spontaneously. 

It helps immeasurably to recognize that as a material being you are imperfect as can be, and you will make many, many mistakes and missteps, and you will fail again and again. And yet... And yet... 

You must carry on. 

The Jewel Mirror Samadhi says that once you have received the Dharma (the Teachings as well as the recognition of Suchness) you are to "keep it well," and you are to serve. Quietly. Not ostentatiously or forcefully but modestly and openly. As a "fool with no voice" as one translation has it. Just this. 

So as I'm coming on to a year of participation among the sangha-beings of this Zen Center, many questions I might have had were I pursuing intellectual knowledge or a monastic future have been more than adequately answered. I didn't have those questions, but oh well!😉

In fact, once on the Bodhisattva path, questions mostly cease except to the extent they get asked as part of service to others. 

I don't claim to be a Bodhisattva -- far from it -- but I see no end to the service I am compelled to provide, both materially and to some extent spiritually. 

And I've come to recognize all this is related to karma and karmic debt. "All my ancient twisted karma..." indeed. 

So much struggle. So deep. So wide. 

🙏

"It's a Cookbook!"

No. Not really. The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi which I've been studying every day during this practice period/ango is not a cookbook...

And yet. And yet. 

I first absorbed it around 50 years ago. It was a Dharma Transmission poem/document, yet I understood it was chanted by all at the zendo at the City Temple in San Francisco where I was at the time, and I couldn't quite understand the purpose or merit of chanting it. So often that's just uncomprehending rote practice. It's not particularly meaningful.

And when I see so many people struggling with this teaching during the practice period -- oh my yes -- I think that chanting the teaching every day or whenever is possibly what's getting in the way for so many. 

For something Zen, the teaching is very straightforward and simple. It's like a quick sketch, though. Part of Dharma Transmission, it's not the Dharma transmitted but an outline of it in one sense, the essence of the Dharma in another. A memory jog for someone who's been in Dharma Training for years and years. Or for someone who hasn't been in monastic practice, like me, it's a crystallization of the Dharma Essence. The core of the practice. The essence.

But of course, as a literary construct, it isn't the actual Thing, for there is no Thing in actuality. As a construct, it's a lot like a recipe, ergo in a sense, it is a cookbook. 

When I stopped sitting zazen regularly, I was living in San Francisco. This was during the Jim Jones/People's Temple era. There were a lot of nascent cults and cultists around. It was post-Hippie, but there was still plenty of Counterculture, much of it by then a kind of money-making grift or in some cases outright crime. Now of  course that definition will change with time, so I'm not being judgmental. It's merely a case that the Counterculture, for all its merits and good works was also the hothouse of so much that was not merit or good works. It was, for its time, the epitome of selfishness and self-absorption as well.

Unfortunately, in those days, I saw the City Temple of the San Francisco Zen Center in the same way -- an epitome of selfishness in the guise of Zen from ages past. This was judgmental, and I'm not sure it was either appropriate or useful, but it kept me away from there, away from the form while still continuing the practice on my own. I had a Zen corner in my apartment just as I had had pretty much everywhere I'd lived, and I sat zazen at least once and often twice a day for 20 minutes to half an hour at a time. Longer, in those days, seemed like overkill. 

But much as I recognized the zeitgeist of selfishness in others and the context of their lives, I too was being selfish. For heaven's sake. If you're seeing it in someone else, you're seeing it in yourself. You are seeing yourself. So as I sat my selfish zazen, recognizing my own selfishness, and sitting anyway, something changed. Sitting zazen one day, I entered what I came to call The Void. This was not the calmness of counting breaths, or contemplating a koan (which you don't do during zazen anyway) or a meditational state (samadhi). No, this was something else, very much something else, a state of both oneness and nothingness, a unification with what we might call The Ground State of Being. There was no there there, there was no not-there there. It was all One and all Nothing. 

Magical in some ways, maybe. Terrifying in others.

And Zen practitioners had been warned about this. It could happen, this entering The Void, at almost any time in one's practice, and if it did, don't take it as Enlightenment, because it probably wasn't. Though it might be. Instead, let it happen, don't try to manipulate or control it (you can't) and get with a Dharma teacher to help understand or grasp or accept what happened. 

Well, my Dharma teachers were the texts I studied frequently but not rigorously -- it wasn't scholarly study at all -- and memories, you might say, of Suzuki Roshi who had brought Zen as I knew it to America. 

Suzuki Roshi had died not long before I moved to San Francisco, but around the same time as his death, a collection of his talks was published -- "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" -- that I gravitated to and therein found the purest, clearest essence of what is I could imagine. 

So those were my Dharma teachers, and to a one, they said to me: "Don't get caught up in Experience, whether that Experience is The Void or something else. Don't be caught up. Let go. Come to know your nature and your purpose, but avoid getting caught up them, either." 

Let go.

It's all so much more and larger than you are. Let go.

After some experience with sitting and The Void, I let go of them. Every time I would sit zazen, I would enter The Void, and then I came to realize that The Void was a constant. It wasn't happening just when I sat. It was always. The Void was never not there, but I was in and part of the material world, not The Void, and thus had a purpose and that was To Serve. 

How we get to the point of recognizing the purpose To Serve, I still don't know, but it happened, and the Jewel Mirror Samadhi was a part of it. In fact, it pointed the way and was the foundation of a pretty fundamental change in my life. 

I've described the "dream" of leaving my apartment, walking to Union Square, sitting zazen on a bench with an old Chinese gentleman, walking around the Square, and then to Market Street, and back up to my apartment on Geary, and having the whole scene repeat during zazen practice last year. This actually happened after my encounter with The Void in the '70s, and it was part of what led to changing my life.

That it came back so clearly and stunningly last year was startling to say the least, and it's been something of a struggle to suss out why. I don't necessarily have an answer, but it is what it is. 

I left San Francisco and dedicated whatever remained of my life to finding out and acting on the needs of others in my immediate realm. 

And absorbing the Jewel Mirror Samadhi was key.

A cookbook? Sure, why not?

The raccoon roars like a lion. Kitten purrs in my ear.

Bread Karma

Made some soda bread yesterday. We like it. It's quick and easy. No multi-day fermentation of poolish and all the other wonderful yeasty complexity that goes into practically all other forms of bread-making. 

We'll make yeast bread from time to time, but it takes time -- generally all day or overnight or in some cases a couple-three days to get things just right. I think about the housewives who made their own bread daily or every three days or every week or whatever, and I truly wonder how they did it, how they kept their sanity, how they kept their energy level high enough to oversee their yeasty dough, to knead it, to shape it, to patiently let it rise, to bake and cool it, and then to slice it for toasting and serving. They made their own butter to serve with it, too. 

Skill is not the half of it. Much more needed to go into it than merely skill. That's the quality of the bakery in town where skilled bakers create dozens of loaves of simple-same bread every day. They are fine. But they also lack some of the character that the home baker gives to their bread-products. So, my admiration goes both ways, toward the home baker and toward the bakery-baker. Skill and character.

Soda bread is our preferred option when waiting for yeast dough would take too long. A soda bread has no yeast, just bicarbonate and "buttermilk." Well, you can't get real buttermilk at the grocery store in our little hamlet, so we make a substitute by putting a tablespoon of white vinegar in two cups of whole or 2% milk (we almost always use 2%). It works fine. 4 cups of AP flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste), 2 cups "buttermilk"; mix thoroughly but gently. Do not knead. Put on floured or cornmealed parchment on a baking sheet. Form into a round. Cut an X or cross into the top. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes, then 375 for 20 minutes more. Check for doneness by tapping on the bottom of the loaf. Sound hollow? It's done. If a little dull sounding, bake another 10 minutes or so. Cool enough to be able to slice without crushing-mooshing. Slather with butter. Eat.

No skill required. Not much patience, either. Character? Sure.

I don't know whether any of my ancestors were into bread making. Probably not. I know my mother never made bread in her life, and I doubt her mother or grandmother did either. My father couldn't be bothered, and his mother had servants to do the housework. Did they make bread? Maybe. Then going back a little farther to the Irish and German immigrants who started my father's line in America: did they make their own bread? I think probably they did. The Irish ones probably made soda bread. The Germans, yeast bread. 

I don't know enough about their lives in Ireland and Germany, and apart from the Great Famine and all the wars, I don't know why they left for America when they did c.1849-1854.

My father never talked about it. My impression was that his grandparents -- the immigrants -- never talked about it either. I know his Irish grandparents made up stories about who they were and where they came from and sometimes those stories changed so much they by the time they got to my father and me they were so tangled up they were little more than nonsense. When I started untangling those stories and got rid of some of the fantasy, the "real story" was perhaps much sadder than anyone wanted it to be -- thus the many made-up stories of some grandeur. As for the Germans, I never knew much of anything about them except that my father's German grandmother never learned English, so it was hard to communicate with her, and my father's mother was deaf, so it was hard to communicate with her, too.

Karma enters into the equation when I consider who these people were and who I came from. Jack Kerouac wrote a biography of the Buddha called "Wake Up!" in the years before he became famous after the publication of "On the Road" in 1957. It's very simple and straightforward, something like the Lives of the Saints (for children) in Catholic literature. In it, Kerouac proposes that what's called "karma" is in reality mostly a matter of genetic inheritance. Your past lives are for the most part the lives of your ancestors and your genetic inheritance comes through them to you. And that is the basis for your karma; but it may not be the whole of your karma. There may be other elements, known and unknown, that shape who you are. The Buddha, after all, discovers there is more to his Being than simply what he inherits from his ancestors. Oh, so very much more. He has karmic inheritance through many twisted, tangled paths. Lives upon lives. Buddhas upon Buddhas. Universes upon universes.

Becoming aware of it all can be overwhelming.

And so for most of us, we live our lives without becoming aware. It's easier and safer in some ways. But in others, it's unsatisfying. One still has questions; one still wants to know. 

I've found out, though, perhaps more than I wanted to know. But only so much, in the end, that I could handle.

The inheritance from my ancestors is very twisted and tangled, and some of it, I think, is very tragic, horrible, and deeply sad. This comes through both parents. For a time, I wondered if my father was actually my father, for we seem not to have hit it off as father and son at all. How could he be my biological father if we were so distant from one another and never truly connected? Well, but that's part of the karmic load, I came to realize, that I inherited, and not just from him.

Why, I wondered, was my mother so... disturbed and often cruel. What had I done to trigger her rage? But then, I came to understand that she, like me, carried a karmic load she could not dispense with, nor indeed could I undo the karma I was born with.

My mother's maternal grandfather was murdered by his mistress. Her father may have been murdered, too. Her insight into these events was that both her father and grandfather were "bad men." Both her husbands were equally "bad" -- or maybe worse. And that all transferred to me and my sister.  My mother couldn't help the way she felt about us and them. It was her karma.

Lord knows how far back any of this stretched. I would say as far back as any of her ancestors could be traced, and just so with my father's tangled ancestry. Who these people were is as complicated as the most complex bread-making we can imagine.

I think of a sourdough starter for example that takes literally forever and lasts forever -- or it can. The yeast from the air which starts the process goes back to the origin of yeast, whenever that was, and the process, when done correctly, can maintain the "starter" indefinitely, indeed forever. Creating the Perfect Sourdough Bread is seen as a goal in life for some bread-bakers, to the point of obsession, of trying over and over and over again to get it Just Right, and never quite succeeding. Perfection is just out of reach. Something wasn't done quite right, so try again. And again. And again. Karma is a lot like that.

And then there's me and my soda bread. One and done. 

It doesn't have to be Perfect. It doesn't take Forever. It's Good Enough.

All this is vaguely related to our study text for this Practice Period/Ango, "The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi." At some point, I think I'll try to delve into what it meant to me 50-some-odd years ago when I first absorbed the teaching. How it affected and led to a profound change in the course of my life, and yet how strong and heavy is the karmic load I carry.

One day.... 😉

Overintellectualizing... Zen

Well, yes. It's time for another Practice Period, one I have been eager to join -- though I'm having problems doing so given the build up of other things.

The text for study is a translation of the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi by Dongshan, c. 850ce or so. (The link is to a somewhat different translation which includes the original Chinese.)

I recognized it from much earlier Buddhist readings I had done 50-60 years ago, but which I hadn't reviewed in many decades. Much of my Buddhist training and practice was absorbed at one point in my life -- mostly long ago -- and that was it: there was no need to return to the specific sutra or teaching. I think this is how most of us are educated. We receive a teaching in school or life appropriate to the grade or stage of life we're in and once taught the teaching is never returned to. If it is, it's probably due to a contrary teaching we pick up later in our education and life.

That seems to be a the root of some of the problems some of the participants and having with this text. To me, it's very simple, straightforward (though poetic) and... easy to grasp. But then, this isn't new to me. I absorbed it so long ago and in doing so, the text an the thinking of it became part of my being. It doesn't vanish because I haven't sat with it for a long time, and it isn't more difficult this time around than it was the first time around.

For many of the participants, however, this is their first encounter with it, and the whole concept of "thusness" or "suchness" (long academic treatise on the study-text) is new to them. Many, I've discovered, are PhDs, MDs, and so forth, with all kinds of advanced degrees, credentials, academic accomplishments, books written and read, and a certain level of regard if not renown in their fields. 

Who would have thought this would be problematical? Well, it is. The tendency to overintellectualize the teaching is overwhelming. 

It is when it comes to Zen and Buddhist teaching. Which, for the most part, is very simple and is a very different, almost an opposite approach to learning than they or most of us are used to. It can be very hard to accept if it shatters the mold of hard-won learning-living experience. And no, I am not immune as my struggles with the Mountains and Waters Sutra (and lingering disregard for Gary Snyder) have demonstrated.

It is human nature in some respects, and we practitioners of the 8 Fold Path are advised to respect that.

As I've learned that Zen grew out of the Japanese samurai culture of medieval times. It's adapted from the contemporaneous Chan Buddhism found in China which was taken to Japan by Dogen, and which spread rather quickly through the upper reaches of Japanese society. It was never -- and is not now -- a popular practice. 

There are more Zen Buddhists outside of Japan than there ever were in Japan, and there aren't a lot of Zen Buddhists anywhere. It's a particular form of Buddhist practice that can be over-rigorous for many. And also kind of silly. When you're into it, you know how silly it is, and if you don't laugh, your practice is stunted.

Samurai culture is not the culture within which most of us live, and while Zen has tried to adapt, especially in the US, to different cultural expectations and norms, and has adopted a wide range of other Buddhist practices, outlooks and teachings (so much so that I hardly recognize it as Zen Buddhism any more) the samurai origins of the practice are not completely absent.

Samurai were warriors after all, and Zen was a way not so much to tame them as to give them the psychic tools to transcend warriorism and potentially become better warriors. Not all of that has disappeared in today's Zen practice, but it has definitely mutated. 

Warriors are trained in a very narrow and specific manner. Zen opened that narrow path wide. Still does.

I've ruminated on the fact that what's presented as Zen these days in the US only superficially resembles its Japanese roots. Once Suzuki Roshi passed in 1971, Zen in America and subsequently elsewhere except in Japan became something else again. I've struggled with some of those changes, too.

There are plenty of those of us who practice now who struggle with those changes. Why not, we may wonder, just be Tibetan Buddhists if that's what seems right for the moment? Why not follow Tich Nhat Hanh directly in a hybrid Vietnamese/French Zen practice? Why maintain the trappings of Japanese Zen when that practice seems either obsolete or inappropriate? 

We've moved on. Haven't we?

Then we get to study the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi and -- at least for me -- it all falls right back into place. "Thusness," "Suchness" is the core teaching and this is how it can be approached.

I was asked during the last ango I participated in whether I chanted, and I said no, not out loud. The Song is one of the chants used by this Zen Center (widely elsewhere, too) but chants, to me, are rote and ritual like the Pledge Allegiance signifying... what? As a child recites the Pledge, what? Meaning? Nah.

So chanting to me obscures the point and meaning of what is being chanted while reinforcing a tendency to be satisfied with repeated empty ritual. This is one reason I've never been a church-goer or felt tied to a religious institution.

But if "suchness" is the core of the teaching of Zen, what is it?

Wrong question. There's no answer. 

I was considering that "dream" I had when I was late for zazen one morning during Spring Practice, the "dream" of leaving my apartment in San Francisco, walking to Union Square, sitting zazen on a bench with an old Chinese man for a while, then walking clockwise around the square and eventually to Market Street, up to Taylor, then up to Geary and back to my apartment where the whole thing started over again.

This sequence of events actually happened to me as I described it, and as I relived it in the "dream." I didn't know why it came back as clearly and suddenly as it did or why it repeated that morning, but I think my teacher understood though she wouldn't say. Of course, it was up to me to figure it out. 

And this practice period, it seems to be figuring itself out. 

Prior to my physical experience of those events in San Francisco so long ago (what, it would have been 1975? about then) I had sat zazen in my apartment on Geary St. daily. I had a zazen experience during which I entered what I came to call The Void. Nothingness. No sight, sound, color, thought, feeling, anything, just Emptiness. Initially, it was bewildering. I could enter and leave it with relative ease, but I didn't know what "it" was, and I recalled warnings from study-texts that said something like "this could happen while sitting zazen, and don't put too much store in it. It could be false, just another delusion, but one that could be dangerous. "

I took the warnings to heart, and as I didn't have a teacher at the time, I tried sorting through it on my own with whatever study-texts I had (I don't remember the titles except for "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Suzuki Roshi) and recognized/acknowledged that every time I sat zazen after that, the Void would return, and that was that. There wasn't another sitting experience.

So the events described in the "dream" of sitting with an old Chinese gentleman in Union Square happened shortly after a Void-Sit in my apartment. It was an instruction which I recognized as such at the time but didn't have the resources to fully appreciate. I knew "something had happened." But I didn't know what. 

I may know now, thanks to the Winter Practice Period study-text of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi and the somewhat spotty participation I'm doing with the Zoom-sangha. 

It is not really describable in words, however, nor will deeds necessarily clarify. But I understand better why I'm reluctant to become an official member of this sangha. 

I go back to a very early teaching: "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the Sangha is with whomever you encounter on the Dharma Path."

The core of the Teaching (Dharma) is "Thusness."

In other words... no words.