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.