"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.

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.

Mountains and Rivers 4 -- Reflections on Rohatsu and the Waters (Updated with a Tassajara Story of Mountains and Waters Sutra)

I haven't participated in rohatsu in the past so this sesshin was part of my education in Zen forms and rituals that I missed back in the early days of my practice, when, if I recall correctly, Richard Baker or whomever I was in communication with at the San Francisco Zen Center made clear that Zen practice did not require shutting oneself away in a monastery or even following any particular form or rituals or necessarily even knowing what they were. 

I've seen some documentaries on Zen in Japan -- where it has never been popular -- and among laypeople that's the essence of the practice. You sit. That's really all you have to do to practice Zen. None of the rest of it is essential, and there is a lot of "the rest of it."

Sitting is the key.

Rohatsu is the commemoration and celebration of Sakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago in Bodh Gaya, northern India. In the practice I participate with, rohatsu lasts 8 days, and during that time, there is much sitting. Oh my yes! There is chanting (which I don't do aloud) and liturgy and study. Whether we, the lay practitioners, are to achieve Enlightenment thereby, I don't know. I would say, given what I witnessed, that some certainly thought they'd be Enlightened and were Enlightened by the conclusion of rohatsu, but... well, I'll say no more about that.

I would go back to the mantra I was given when time was: "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path."

(Buddha, Dharma, Sangha = The Three Jewels of Buddhism)

This mantra actually gives the practitioner lots of leeway and freedom. It's not necessarily an easy or straight path to Enlightenment (ha!) but one way among many to become enlightened. Buddha says basically, "You're already Enlightened. You just have to discover and recognize it."

The World of Illusion obscures your Enlightenment. Let go.

Many years ago, I had the physical experience of what may have been Enlightenment but probably wasn't. It's not a physical thing. Or... well, no, I don't want to get into the mystical/physical conundrum in this essay. Let that go, too!

But I would say that once there -- wherever -- I never left. I never went back there because I am there all the time, and I've mentioned to some of my teachers in the last year or so that my life is practice. 

In other words, sitting zazen is a minor part of my practice, as it forms a few moments of my daily life that is in its entirety practice.

Imperfect as it is. 

And that's a key to understanding. Our material lives are totally imperfect. It's OK. It's the nature of Being/NotBeing. 

In the midst of our imperfections, however, we adopt vows and set goals -- not necessarily material goals, not at all. To become what we really are. 

That's the hard part, the struggle that Buddha and all Buddhists go through. Who are we? What are we? 

What should we do about it?

Buddha taught, and that was the full expression of his Being/NotBeing. 

Zen, I think I mentioned in an earlier post, grew out of Japanese Samurai culture, as an expression of and adaptation of Chinese Chan Buddhism, for the needs of the medieval Japanese higher warrior aristocracy. It wasn't for the common people at all. 

It was also adopted by the Imperial and some Shogunate households. 

The Zen practice I was introduced to came from Japan in the late 1950s, through the agency of Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen priest from the time of his youth early in the 20th Century, descended from a line of Zen priests. He was deemed roshi by his US followers, and it made him laugh. But then, many things made him laugh. Especially American things.

There isn't a lot about today's Zen practice in America that I identify with the more or less "pure" Zen Suzuki Roshi brought to America. There are forms and rituals that trace back to Japan, certain costumes and physical properties of zendos and such, but not much else. Very little understanding of where this practice came from and why it was important in the context of a particular culture at a particular time and how it has had a profound influence beyond that culture and time. 

I see in the context of every US Zen center I've looked into a deep seated urge to change it, change the practice to more Americanize it, decouple it from Japanese practice, especially from the rigors of Japanese monasteries. Or rather practicing some of those rigors as forms and rituals only.

Make it more like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism. In other words, familiarize it to American notions of Religion...

When participating in the various practice periods and sesshins I have this year, I've noticed strong -- sometimes overwhelming -- resemblances between the Americanized Zen practice and say Catholic and/or orthodox Jewish observances. Why is that? Is it in part because so many influential American Zen priests and roshis and such come from those backgrounds? I would think so. Is it because so few have had an elemental experience of Japanese Zen Buddhism -- which is of course the origin of American Zen practice -- though they may have gone on pilgrimage to the sites in Japan where the practice was formulated.

And I think about these origins in the context of Gary Snyder and his epic "Mountains and Rivers Without End," a kind of Zen-ish gloss on his life and practice and relationship to mountains and rivers.

As I've said, I didn't get along with Gary Snyder, though our meetings were social and very brief. I think there was an immediate repulsion. I'm trying to get over it. I should have gotten over it decades ago, but instead, I held it in me all this time, though I obviously didn't think about it or him until returning to Zen practice, picking up Kerouac again and observing his near-worship of Gary in "The Dharma Bums." 

A worship which, by the way, was not and is not reciprocated. If anything, Gary shows little regard for Kerouac at all. Borderline contempt. The barest of acknowledgement that they ever knew each other. 

Why is that I wonder? There may have been more of a repulsion -- on Gary's part -- toward Kerouac than might have been the case if Kerouac had not been an alcoholic/drug addict, and not shown Gary such puppy-dog admiration and followership/worship for the few months/years they palled around.

A key passage in "The Dharma Bums" is their climb of the Matterhorn of the Sierras, something ordinarily objectively impossible, but they do it, survive it, revel in it.  Gary (Japhy) has magic powers. He practically flies up the mountain and then flies back down while Kerouac (Ray) must trudge and struggle. Kerouac is tied to the Earth; Gary is a free spirit in a jockstrap, so pure he can merge with and walk within the mountain.

In "Mountains and Rivers Without End," Snyder doesn't even acknowledge it happened, and to some critics, Kerouac's description of their climb, and perhaps the climb itself, was fiction. Who knows? Kerouac drank himself to death many years ago, and Snyder isn't saying -- well, not in any detail.

Kerouac is not a wizard. Snyder, apparently, is.

I recall -- barely -- a mountain-climbing adventure I went on years ago. I came "that close" to losing my life due to an allergic reaction to warm trail mix. Anaphylaxis is no fun, and that's primarily what I remember from the adventure. There was also the attempt to hike up to a peak but getting mired in a mysterious bog not on the hiking map. Wondering if it was possible to cross it -- no -- or find another trail -- no. It was barely possible to get out of the bog without sinking ever deeper and getting stuck. There was no surface sign the bog was even there...

Nude swim in a lake. Camping under the stars. Having no real fear despite the hazards encountered or imagined. In fact, from this distance of fifty years or more, that mountain climbing adventure seems more and more imaginary. Did it happen at all?

In going through some of the stuff we moved and brought back from California, that sense of an imaginary past, adventures that never happened, and very faulty memories of what did happen came up again and again. But in Zen, of course, everything is illusory. Delusory. 

There's not much "water" in this reflection. I was born a stone's throw from the Mississippi River, Father of Waters, so there's that. And I've pretty much always been or lived near the ocean or a river of some sort, except for where I live now. Plenty of mountains, but no surface water at all.

There's only what we call 'The Swamp' in the back of our place, a small wet-ish region where there must be water close to the surface, where plants grow lush in the spring and summer, and the ground is soft. There's no water on the surface, nor does it seem like any water is flowing. But it must be there.

Phantom water.

But then, isn't everything a phantom of one sort or another?

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

Here is a podcast by David Chadwick about Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra. Much consideration of Gary Snyder's "Mountains and Rivers Without End." And very much in tune with my own thinking about the sutra...

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.)"

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?

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.

Fall Practice Period

Yes. I've now begun the Fall Practice Period with the Zen Center -- online, of course, via Zoom and several texts, primarily the Vimalakirti Sutra, one I'd never encountered before (oh, there are so many of those😊🙏) which I'm finding both astonishing and hilarious. This is not what I expected.

But then, what did I expect? After the Spring Practice Period, I felt refreshed and renewed and able to accomplish many of the tasks I'd set for myself, like clearing out some of the deadwood on our place and getting set for the arrival of the last of our stuff from California while growing something of a garden of corn and beans and squash and peppers and tomatoes. 

Well, the corn and beans and most of the squash has been harvested. We ate most of the beans already. The blue corn is drying and if all goes well, we'll grind it into flour for atole in a month or so. The squash is waiting for the right meal, but our crop was not abundant. Many, many squash blossoms, but not so many squashes, they say because it's hard to ensure fertilization. Especially without bees, and we've never had those around here. 

The tomatoes did reasonably well. There were a couple of hail storms that caused some damage, though, and so now that we're near the end of the season, picking the last of the tomatoes, we can see how they might have done better in a greenhouse, like our farmer friends down the road do with theirs. Our temporary greenhouse is too small to grow the tomatoes beyond starting the plants, while they have three huge hoop houses where the tomatoes can reach to the sky. 

The peppers were very flavorful and we will no doubt grow those varieties again. 

There were some failures as well. I grew spinach for the first time here (I'd grown it in California). It bolted within a couple of weeks. Will have to re-think planting and caring for the plants. They will need much more shade than I provided, and that's something I have to keep considering. We're so high in the mountains that pretty much anything we try to grow gets sunburned and at least some shade is a requirement for many plants, especially when they're young. Me too. I get sunburned easily, and so I'm usually shrouded in hats and gloves and long sleeves and sunglasses. Quite a sight. 

The corn flourished at first but then was beset by the grasshoppers, spider mites and caterpillars. We harvested a lot nevertheless, so I'm not disappointed. First time growing blue corn last year did not go well, but I learned that it had to do with where I planted it. There are several spots around our place that I think were used as trash dumps over the years, and planting does not do well on those sites. Live and learn!

There are some sites we discovered this year that are almost swampy after rains. We knew there were places where water puddled, but this was different. These were places we hadn't noticed before where water would collect underground rather than on the surface, so there weren't any puddles. Instead, it was wet enough for long enough below the surface for plants (in our case, weeds!) to flourish. And these places were right next to dust-dry areas where practically nothing will grow even with irrigation.

All this is preparation for Practice Period, and there is much more. This afternoon, I'll have an interview with one of the teachers for the month long session, a priest I've met with several times (via Zoom!) since the spring. I've told him he was the reason I got involved with this Zen center -- there are others after all -- because of his approach to the Diamond Sutra a couple of years ago. I thought he was doing it just right through indirection rather than wrestling with it directly, and I appreciated that compared to something that might have been. I told him a bit about my own life and practice. How I got to Zen in the first place (oh, those many years ago) and where I saw myself going with it. 

There has been much progress (I think) since then, but there has been plenty of backsliding too. That's part of the process, but still... I tend to think of things more directionally and I need to discuss and consider the unclosed circle (enso) concept more thoroughly. The direction is around and around, isn't it?

And so we begin. 🙏

A Few Further Thoughts on Being Assaulted Last Week

I've tried not to dwell on the incident though I occasionally find myself mulling over what happened, trying to remember and trying to forget simultaneously. "Trying" is probably a waste of time, but I seem to spend so little time on it, with so many other things to think about and to get done, that it doesn't seem like any loss to me to occasionally ruminate on the topic of being assaulted and what it may mean in the larger scheme of things.

At the simplest level, it was a "knock upside the head." It left a mark, yeah, but primarily it was a reminder of the need for redirection in my life and activities. This has happened to me repeatedly and it probably happens to others in different ways. We become complacent and habituated to whatever routine we're following. It's our lifestyle. We may not even think we should be or need to be on a different path, following different needs and desires, serving ourselves and others differently than we have become used to.

After that "knock upside the head" I was talking to the neighbor the guy was staying with. She's a friend. We're not close, but we get along fine and we have mutual friends and so on, and we help each other out when we can. We're neighbors. 

One of our mutual friends was for years my "helper" Wes. He came around first when I was in a very bad state from rheumatoid arthritis and could literally barely move. He offered to take care of whatever I needed, and I was very grateful for his help. I paid him for his trouble, and he was very grateful for the extra money and for my company for he'd been having many problems himself.

He was about 50, a diagnosed schizophrenic, on disability and living with his mother. She was a retired nurse. He had a son who he loved dearly who lived with his mother (the boy's mother) in Arizona. 

Wes's mother received his disability checks and doled out very little cash to him because she didn't think he'd be responsible with it, and she was probably right. For example, he'd buy cigarettes with the money I gave him, even though he had bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, and sometimes showed clear signs of walking pneumonia. I counseled him against smoking tobacco repeatedly, and sometimes he'd stop for a while, but then inevitably, he'd start smoking again. Having been a heavy smoker myself, I knew how hard it could be to quit, and I told him how I did it, recommended he try it and offered to help him through the rougher parts of the process. He tried but ultimately failed in part because he continued socializing with people who smoked cigarettes and who mocked his efforts to quit. 

Come to find out tobacco wasn't his only unhealthy habit. He didn't drink that I was aware of, but I would learn he used just about any illicit substance he could get his hands on. And it would kill him.

According to my neighbor, he was partying with "friends" one night, and he injected a cocktail of drugs -- she didn't know exactly what -- and went unconscious and never woke up.

I can well imagine how it happened; I can put myself in his place and recognize how vulnerable he was to a partying culture and recognize how tempting and easy it would be for the partiers he was with to take advantage of him and in effect cause his death. "Here, try this! You'll love it!" And he'd do it because why not?

And I can also well imagine that the partiers he was with had no remorse at all. They probably didn't even feel the loss.

Wes was less than nothing to them.

Just so when it came to my own brush with Death last week.

This time wasn't the End, but who knows how close it came? I felt -- absolutely -- the first time I encountered this dude the day before he assaulted me that his intention was to murder me. I didn't think he would do it, but there was no doubt in my mind of his intent.

Where did that come from? On my end, there's a long karmic chain. I can trace it back to 1904, but it probably goes back much farther. My mother's maternal grandfather was murdered (as it happened by his mistress) in 1904, and it's possible but not certain that my mother's father was also murdered in 1916. I actually had long thought that the accident that killed him was no accident, but the more I learned about it, the less sure about it I became. So I don't know. One of my mother's uncles was also murdered (I believe it was in 1898.) He was a police officer who was shot by one of the combatants when he tried to break up a fight in a bar. On the other hand, my mother's father was chased through the streets of Downtown Indianapolis by a police officer who was firing his gun at him. Didn't hit him, but caused quite a lot of damage and mayhem before the chase ended.

An uncle -- my father's older brother -- was accused of murdering his wife, and some of my relatives are convinced he did it and got away with it, but again, I'm not so sure. It's possible, but so is his alibi. So I don't know what really happened there, either.

I've had plenty of brushes with Death throughout my life. How many, I can't say. But enough to constitute a common theme, and it's something that I think most people never experience. I've been shot, mugged, robbed, assaulted, threatened, etc, etc, etc, many times. So far, I've survived every one of these incidents. 

I wrote "many times" and until now, I don't think I realized how often these things have happened to me. And how unusual it is in most people's lives. At least I assume it's unusual.

Part of it is due to my own rebel nature, something I have little or no control over. I tend to be a rebel, I tend to resist convention, I tend to prefer alternatives to expectations, and some of those alternatives lead directly to trouble, including life-threatening trouble. I suppose it's related to dare-deviling. Maybe I get an adrenaline rush from pushing the limits. I'm not sure what the reward is, but the risk is something I have often taken, more or less automatically. There is essentially no conscious intent on my part. 

In the recent incident, I sensed immediately that I was looking Death in the eye. I wasn't frightened. More concerned once he got in my house to keep him occupied so he didn't go looking around and finding my wife. Just keep him occupied. He was clearly fucked up on drugs, couldn't figure out how to do simple things (like working a doorknob or a lock) but he had a fixed idea: to dispatch me with his tomahawk. Maybe somewhere in his mind he saw himself as a hero. I don't know.

I don't remember him saying more than a few words the whole time, most clearly I remember him saying "Sit down" shortly before he struck me on the forehead with his tomahawk. Afterwards, I thought: "Is he counting coup?" But I think that's too sophisticated an idea for the state he was in. No, I don't think he was thinking at all. Some other process was going on, driven by drugs, his mental disabilities, and by something deep inside him. I asked him repeatedly, but he could not tell me what was wrong. 

So here I am, still recuperating. The wound is healing, and the black eye the doctor expected to develop is very faint. There's some pain now and then, I sometimes feel disoriented and dizzy, but it passes. I suspect PTSD, but on the whole, each day is just another day, plenty of tasks to get done, and remember to lock the doors and keep the gates closed. 

I contacted the Zen center to get more information on their prison outreach program. I'd heard about it from one of the Zen priests some time ago. He said, if I recall correctly, that it was focused on drug and addiction rehabilitation through Zen practice in the prison setting. I thought that might be something valuable for the guy who attacked me. I'm pretty sure the Zen priest himself has gone through rehab, probably more than once. Which is no negative reflection on him. What I recall being told about the guy who assaulted me was that he had "gone AWOL" from the rehab program he was in (probably by court order) and he had been partying with friends, got fucked up on something -- who knows what -- and had been flying high for several days. He had not been taking his anti-psychotic meds. And he had threatened or run off several other men who'd come to the house of a neighbor where he was staying. He believed, I was told, that every man was a predator on children.

So what do you do? Just send him back to prison and forget about him?

I'm sure some people would do just that, but that's not the way I think about these things or about people in crisis.

I was listening to an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh the other day. One of the topics was "terrorism" and how a Buddhist responds. Or should. He said, "Listening. Deep listening. Compassion." Not with violence. Of course, that's an ideal. It may not work, and it's not always possible, but without even trying, you're sure to see the cycle of violence repeat. Again and again and again. Why not stop?

The question is how to do that without enabling further violence. I was using tactics of Zen compassion and listening during the encounter with the guy who attacked me. I could see a little bit of a change in his behavior every time I asked him "What's wrong?" But it was only for a few seconds at a time, then he'd revert, we'd go around again, and finally he whacked me on the head. I suspect Thich Nhat Hanh would probably laugh at the outcome, and at times, I have laughed too. He would also say, I think, that simply by asking and listening and staying in the moment, I was moving the situation in a positive direction. Yes, some blood was shed, my own, but think how much more there might have been had I not done what I did.

But how to do that without enabling his demon-mind? I know there are ways, but I'm not skilled at them. That's why I'm reaching out to people who might be. 

One thing I didn't think of is the golden Kamakura Daibutsu 

By User: Bgabel at wikivoyage shared, CC BY-SA 3.0

that sits in the Buddha-shrine in the living room, something he must have seen though it may not have registered. In other words, he probably didn't know what it was, but he must have seen it, and eventually, just the sight could have profound effects. 

Who can say?

So. 

That's all I can say for now. 

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

A bit of an update. Ms. Ché and I have been subpoenaed for a custody hearing on the guy who thwacked me with the tomahawk. Apparently the prosecutor wants us to testify as to what happened and why we think he should stay in custody and not be released on bail while awaiting trial. 

It's fairly simple. He's a danger to others and himself. 

We learned while discussing the case with the police captain that the dude has a history we knew nothing of. He was, for example, arrested in April for stealing the police chief's car and joyriding. He returned the car but refused to surrender his person, so he was tased, trussed up, and taken into custody. At the bail hearing the judge released him into a supervised rehab program which he left a few days before he assaulted me.

Police are very concerned that this not happen again with this dude. 

They want him locked up and not allowed to roam free. We do too. Clearly the rehab didn't work. If he is schizophrenic and he refuses to take anti-psychotics, but will self-medicate with drugs that enhance psychosis, then he's not really capable of handling freedom of any sort at this point.  

I told a friend that what I'd like to see happen is that he is imprisoned for up to a year, then put in a locked mental health care facility where he learns how to manage his condition -- maybe 3 years minimum; then if he demonstrates that he can and will manage his condition with medication and meditation, let him be on supervised release with a minder, essentially 24/7, for up to five more years.

She laughed. "There are no facilities, and no programs like that." I said, "Sure there are if you're rich enough. He's not. So what happens? Turn him loose? Or put him in prison for years and leave him to rot and let him continue to be a threat to others when he's let out?"

We'll see what happens.

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

There was a pre-trial detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me. We attended by telephone and both Ms. Ché and I testified. She was was traumatized by the experience and retraumatized by telling the story to the court. I felt terrible for her. Wasn't there an easier wasy? Well, I guess not, and by tomorrow I hope she'll feel better. I realize how much she's been holding in. She was in a terrifying situation, and though she handled it masterfully (she'd trained for years) she was really badly shaken.

Dude got to tell his side, and what a tangled tale. He has quite a record, including assault and burglary. His charges now are aggravated assault and aggravated burglary together with false imprisonment. He rattled off a list of clinical diagnoses for which he is prescribed several anti-psychotic medications. He said he had been in a locked men's recovery program run by the corrections department as a condition of his probation after a conviction. He was denied his anti-psychotics and began to act out. He said he asked that an ambulance take him to the hospital, he was hearing voices and having delusions. He was taken to the hospital. It's not cleat if or how he was treated. 

He said he called our neighbor while he was in the hospital and asked her if he could stay at her house, and could she come pick him up. Someone else came, and he was brought to our neighbor's house on Sunday. He did not have his medication and he was becoming more and more delusional. I first encountered him on Monday. Our neighbor was not home, but he was there with her children. 

On Tuesday, he came into our house uninvited and assaulted me, scared my wife, and returned to our neighbor's house where he was arrested a few minutes later.

I'll say this for him. He was lucid during the hearing. He didn't make sense, but at least he could speak in full sentences. 

The judge decided he would stay in custody until trial -- for the safety of himself and others.

Thusness, Zen and Not Zen

I was considering a lot of Zenish nonsense not long ago and found some wonderful archival videos (home movies and tv film excerpts) of the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara from the 1960s that was very evocative and memory jogging. What I liked especially were the segments featuring Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the Japanese founder of the Zen Center.

I was driven to find these YouTube videos by part of a day-long intensive program through the New Mexico Zen center I associate with that featured Kazuaki Tanahashi, a Japanese Zen artist, writer and elder who had been a colleague of Suzuki Roshi and who became part of the San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971. He shared some of his memories of those long-ago times, and I sought to rekindle some of my own. The videos I found more than satisfied my interest and curiosity, and I suspect I'll go back to them many more times. This is one of the playlists I found consisting of segments of a KQED documentary from 1968, close to the time when I first got in contact with the SFZC (c. 1964-65). The film above is quite long but includes most of the clips on the playlist as well as quite a lot of other archival material.

Zen has evolved so much in this country since then it's sometimes hard to believe it's the same practice, and I believe that in many centers these days, it's not. Sukzuki Roshi might laugh, I think, at what passes for Zen these days, and yet he'd probably say "Why not? Sure." Zen Not Zen.

Zen practice had been evaporating in Japan since before the War in the Pacific, and after the War it seemed close to disappearing altogether from the land of its birth in the 1200s AD.

This is kind of ironic given Zen's cultural grounding among samurai and the shogunate; ie: warrior culture. It was in effect Buddhism for warriors and rebels. 

And that was the essence of what Suzuki Roshi brought to the United States starting in the late 1950s.

That was still the essence of what I came across through the SFZC in the mid-1960s.

In those days, Zen was sitting practice (zazen) and other Japanese Zen rituals, study of the sutras, Dharma talks which involved extensive Q&A with participants, and learning to live a fulfilling, happy, and 'generous" life. It was not psychotherapy, grief counseling, or rehab. It was practice, training. It was based on Japanese Soto Zen practice, but it was not monastic Zen, at least not for lay people though some monastic practices were incorporated. And after the Tassajara retreat opened, monastic Zen was offered to those who were interested and could withstand the rigor.

But for the most part the rigors of the Japanese monastery were applied lightly if at all, and the practice was less about form and ritual than it was about doing more or less what came naturally within the structure of Zen. The structural outlines of Japanese Zen practice were there, some of the fashion and props, but most of the practice was involved with the rebel counterculture of the era, and that meant many modifications from the stricter Japanese Zen observance, even if those who were involved with Zen practice in San Francisco and Tassajara didn't quite know what was being modified to accommodate them, how or why.

Following those outlines kept Zen in America sort of Japanese yet not. Zen was becoming Americanized, and after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, the San Francisco Zen Center became something else again under his successor, Richard Baker. Something Big. Important. And Eccentrically Fashionable. It was "out there" in the sense that Zen still wasn't commonplace, but it was attracting the rich, the famous or would-be famous, and the well-connected. It was a hotbed for striving to see and be seen among the powerful and influential in California and San Francisco society and what was left of the counter culture. And it began to change.

When I lived in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, I consciously avoided the San Francisco Zen Center though some of the people I worked with attended zazen there (At the Page St. facility) more or less regularly and encouraged me to attend as well as I'd been introduced to Buddhism through the Center when it was at the Sokoji Temple in Japantown. I declined. At the time I was practicing zazen on my own, usually in my apartment on Geary St., but not infrequently in Union Square or in North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, and other destinations where the cable car or 38 Geary bus would take me. (I had a car but hardly ever used it in the City.)

I had learned very early on that zazen practice did not require a formal set up, a zendo, a cushion, or really any of the trappings of traditional Zen practice. It could be done anywhere, any time, for as long or as short a time as one wanted or could, and in any position. Full lotus or no lotus or anywhere in between, or lying down, sitting in a chair, it was fine. The point was to sit without conscious desire or aspiration, without conscious thought, just sit. Once you learned to do that -- it takes practice -- you've found your center, and once you do, you can return to it pretty much any time under almost any circumstance. It was liberating. 

After 10 years or so of regular practice I entered into what I called The Void whenever I sat zazen. It's a state we were warned about because it could be (probably was) a delusion and it was best to let it go if you wound up there. Well, needless to say, striving to "let it go" merely reinforced it in me, so I let go of regular zazen practice instead. 

Afterwards, I engaged in zazen practice a few times a year, always encountering The Void, and being wary about it. I didn't have a formal teacher, so there wasn't really anybody I could discuss it with. 

But I think these encounters with The Void changed me significantly.

After I returned to regular practice this spring, I did not encounter The Void -- so far as I know, and things may have been happening that I was not aware of consciously. I did mention it to one of the teachers, but she didn't think it was particularly worrisome. I found sitting zazen to be easy most times, and that the way of zazen practice was akin to a body memory in me. It centered me. And it was almost automatic. 

I sat to sit, no other aspiration or motivation, and each time it was like a renewal.

I usually didn't sit for more than 20 minutes at a time, sometimes quite a bit less, but I found myself sitting throughout the day, not just at scheduled zazen times. I still do. It's still refreshing and centering and enables me to continue my tasks in a "proper" frame of mind, which means focused on the now and what is real in the now, not wandering (too much) off on tangential matters.

Richard Baker, who took over operations of the San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, appears in a number of the films from the '60s. Though I don't recall ever meeting him or Roshi for that matter, I recognized him immediately even when he wasn't identified. Though advanced in age, he's still around I understand, founder of Zen centers in Colorado and Germany between which he spends his time, an honored if somewhat tarnished elder. As far as I know, the Zen center I associate with in New Mexico was started by him after he left SFZC in the '80s, and gifted in the '90s to the current roshi.

Baker took SFZC into realms and in directions I have a hard time thinking Suzukl Roshi would have imagined, particularly when it came to raising oodles of money, going into business, numerous businesses, buying lots of property and otherwise becoming a significant economic and cultural force in the City and the Bay Area. Numerous offshoots were set up around the country as Baker's vision of expansion came true. Much of it wasn't really Zen in traditional sense at all.

Zen Not Zen.

But it was very rewarding financially and very appealing to some people of wealth, fame, and/or power and that helped keep the expansion going for some time, even after Baker Roshi was asked to resign as abbot. 

I won't detail the scandal or scandals to come at SFZC, but I will say that abuse of authority at Zen and Buddhist centers, monasteries and temples is not unheard of and in fact seems to closely parallel financial and sexual improprieties and scandals that have riven most religious endeavours -- probably throughout history. I'm pretty sure it's in the nature of the beast. Zen abbots and roshis are often granted enormous spiritual, moral, and temporal power and authority over their followers and over quite a lot of property and investments. They are supposed to act with wisdom, and most do, most of the time (at least we'd like to think so), but the kind of power and authority religious and spiritual leaders have or can acquire may lead to significant abuse, too. Zen monasteries in Japan can be notoriously abusive to monks and sometimes lay people as well. Mostly it's been forgiven or excused, or even routinized, but the power abbots and roshis have over participants and monks is nearly absolute, and that too often leads to inappropriate action and uproar.

So in some ways, I feel lucky to have encountered SFZC relatively early on, before it became famous and fashionable, before it expanded into Marin, Berkeley, and other locations, before Tassajara, before it was what it became and to some extent still is. I'm grateful that my first encounters with Buddhism and Zen were through Suzuki Roshi, not through some of his successors -- although apparently I was corresponding with Richard Baker when I contacted the Zen Center '60s, all the literature I received was either Suzuki Roshi's own work or that of previous Buddhist and Zen teachers.

As for Suzuki Roshi himself, I think I must have seen some short films of his Dharma talks back in the day, probably at the Midnight Movies which I attended fairly regularly in the late '60s. When I see the clips now, though I may not remember the individual clips, I do remember the settings, the man, and the sound of his voice rather clearly. "This I've heard before" even though it may not have been that particular talk. 

The zendo at the Sokoji temple in San Francisco looks identical to my memories of it -- even though I'm almost certain I was never physically there. I probably saw films of it, again at the Midnight Movies, and that's what I remember. There is a bare possibility I was there once during a visit to San Francisco with my mother when I was 16 or maybe 17, as we would sometimes go on adventures in the City, but I don't remember seeing the outside of the building (very distinctive) which I'm sure I would recall if I'd been there. 

I have no memories of Tassajara as such. When i see films of it, it's an unknown place to me. I was aware of it, though, soon after its acquisition and I can recall meeting some people who had been there. I was encouraged to go to the Zen Mountain Center myself, but I never did.

As for Green Gulch Farm in Marin, until I heard Wendy Johnson talk about it during an intensive workshop this spring, I can't say I'd ever heard of it at all. Isn't that something? How could I have been so oblivious? However it came about, I was oblivious to Green Gulch and to the various business enterprises SFZC set up around San Francisco and the Bay Area, as well as to the various centers and temples that sprang up around the Bay Area led by former students of Suzuki Roshi and Baker Roshi.

Much of the history of SFZC under Baker Roshi and his successors is still around, the players are still active, and their influence is strong. I'm convinced there wouldn't be more than a tiny bit of Zen in the US or much of anywhere outside Japan but for them. I saw a statistic once indicating that there were more Buddhist practitioners and Zen practitioners in the United States than in Japan and that Japanese Buddhism is slowly fading away. Zen was never a popular practice in Japan in any case, as it was meant for the upper classes where it has largely stayed. Some of what passes for Zen in the United States is also very class conscious and seeks to appeal primarily to the upper strata -- where it's had some success.

In Zen, lineage and history are very important. Though it may be convoluted, you can trace any number of Buddhist endeavors right back to Shakyamuni Buddha or his immediate successors. Some lineages may be partly legendary, but others are extensively documented and there is no doubt of their authenticity.

Those lineages can show how and when the practice was modified and by whom. Adaptations and modifications were going on all the time and still are. Various schools of Buddhism and Zen have developed over the centuries, and they sometimes dispute vigorously and occasionally violently with one another. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Buddhists generally make terrible national rulers. Buddhism is not a governing ideology or philosophy; often it's just the opposite. Not anarchy as such, but rebellion, individualism, and practical autonomy are core principles. Gautama Buddha was, after all, a rebel, and his followers were rebels back in the day, and many stories from Buddhist history are of rebellion from whatever Establishment then existed. Even as part of the Establishment, Buddhists are intrinsically rebelling against it. 

Buddhism concentrates attention on the individual coming to "know" him/herself from the inside out, and from that knowing, coming to realize how interconnected all people and things -- physical phenomena -- are. In the end, you come to the realization that at the ground state of being there is no separation into individuals. Everything is one thing, and one thing is everything. 

But you can't do much with that realization as it has no practical application in everyday life. So Buddhists are encouraged to see their autonomous existence as connected with all of existence and thus be compassionate toward existence as one would be with oneself.

It doesn't always work on the individual level, and it seems impossible to work on a large scale. 

Thusness.

(Which will have to wait for another post)

The Zen of Being Assaulted, The Zen of An Assault, The Zen of Being

Those of us who practice some form of Buddhism -- for me it's a sort of slap-dash version of Soto Zen -- do so with the certain or uncertain knowledge that things as they appear to be, things as they are, aren't.

Maybe it was that suspicion that led us to Zen or Buddhism in the first place, the suspicion that what we could perceive was not all of reality, wasn't reality at all. Through the practice of Zen -- or most any form of Buddhism and many other spiritual endeavours -- we come to a better understanding of the incompleteness of ordinary perception, and if we're diligent or lucky enough, we might gain the ability to perceive much deeper or more fully into 'what is.' Suchness.

The practice is a form of training that alters our consciousness, and for most of us, there is no going back once that's happened. What we perceive and the way we perceive it goes through a transformative process which I can't explain though i have experienced it a number of times over the decades  - satori and samadhi they call it -- that is often taken as 'enlightenment' though I doubt it's anything like that of Shakyamuni Buddha's Enlightenment. Or maybe it's the same. I don't know. It can be debated to the finest of grains, and yet cannot be resolved. We know it when we feel it, but what it is, who can truly say?

I came to Zen at a difficult time in my life, the dreaded teen-age years, awkward adolescence. Zen practice helped to get me through it, and it's helped to ground me through an often chaotic life ever since. I'm grateful, since otherwise I probably wouldn't be here to tell the tale. 

Part of Soto Zen and much of Buddhism in general is the recognition that our Buddha nature is to serve. This is often expressed as following the Bodhisattva Way, living a Bodhisattva life. That was the study we engaged in during the intensive Spring Practice Period Ango I participated in earlier this year. 

Shantideva's A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life was our text. He'd run away to a monastery -- run away from the kingship he was supposed to assume on his father's death, run away to the largest and most famous Buddhist monastery and teaching institution Nalanda -- where he found himself beset by bullying and self-doubt. He felt he didn't fit in on the one hand and he was the victim of constant abuse on the other. He felt like leaving the monastery, running away again, but what would be the point? Instead, he stuck it out and in the process formulated the Guide which he presented as a teaching to the other monks at Nalanda, probably to much mockery and derision, but which has long survived him and them and Nalanda itself (destroyed during the Moslem invasion and conquest of northern India in the early 1200s.) 

While bemoaning his fate throughout the Guide, Shantideva argues compellingly for keeping on with the practice and developing bodhicitta, awakened compassion on behalf of all sentient beings, perhaps most especially those which had been his tormentors. 

It's not really necessary to go into all the details, for we have other things to do, but the point is that one on the Bodhisattva path is called to serve with compassion those they meet along the way with the intent of bringing them along to Enlightenment or at a minimum helping them to do so.

I never knew I was on that Bodhisattva path myself, because that really wasn't a conscious part of my practice; compassion, service to those I encountered along the way was simply what I did naturally, or so I thought, and there was no great argument or self doubt about it.

And so time passes, much time, and time came to a few days ago, and an encounter with someone new to me, a youngish man maybe 30 years old, tall, muscular, blond, standing across the street from my house staring at me as I trimmed weeds in my front yard. I greeted him simply and informally and asked if there was anything I could do. He stood still for a moment then came threateningly across the street, getting right up to me, and after some back and forth it appeared that 1) he was on drugs, possibly meth, and not fully aware; 2) he was delusional, paranoid; 3) he had a violent intent. 

What was I to do? I'm a pretty frail old man these days (though I don't like to admit it), and he was young and strong and full of rage and paranoia and whatever substances he had ingested or injected. I asked him, "Is there anything I can do for you?" He fumed and raged some more, ordering me to stay away from the children who lived in the house where he was staying and threatened dire consequences otherwise, and I told him not to worry, I had no interest in the children and that I was going in to my place now. He stomped away back into the house where he was staying.

I didn't think that that was the end of it. I thought there would be more somehow, when or where or how I didn't know, and fleetingly I thought I had met the image of Death -- and not for the first time -- and that he would be back.

Sure enough. 

The next day, I was sitting in my chair in my living room taking a break from trimming weeds in the back  when I sensed someone standing behind me, and I turned and it was him. He'd come into my house through an unlocked gate and door to the laundry room and kitchen, quietly -- I had no idea -- and stood with a hammer or ax in his hand, breathing hard, ready to commit mayhem and violence. I got up and told him to get out of my house. He advanced on me, threatening without words, waving his weapon around, breathing hard, eyes riveted on me. He got within inches of my face. I could smell chemicals in his body, alcohol on his breath. He advanced and retreated, waving his ax or hammer around, passing it from hand to hand, threatening me with it. He said little, maybe nothing most of the time as I remember almost nothing of what he said. The closer he got to me, the more threatening he was, the less I felt fear. 

I said, "What's wrong? You can tell me. What's wrong?" When I did, he seemed to calm down for a few moments, but then he would become emboldened and puff up and wordlessly threaten me again, and I repeated "What's wrong?" several more times. Each time, he would seem to calm down for a moment or two. He went to the french door in the living room and I said, "You can leave that way if you want." He opened and closed it several times and seemed to be bewildered by how to work it and the screen door beyond. He motioned me to come to the door, and I did, and I tried to show him how easy it would be to leave that way, but he pulled me away from the door and shoved me back toward my chair, threatening with his weapon, which I saw now was a tomahawk, and becoming more and more agitated. I asked him his name; he said I didn't need to know. I asked him again what was wrong. He said nothing. I asked about Barbara who lives across the street. He said she wasn't there -- and I flashed on a vision that he'd murdered her. I asked about the kids, Barbara's kids, and he became enraged: "What do you want with them?" and became threatening again. He told me to sit down, pushed me into my chair. "What do you need? How can I help?" I asked him. He breathed hard, waved his weapon around and all of a sudden hauled off and whacked me hard on the forehead with it. I got up, shocked, blood gushing from the wound, and shouted at him "Get the fuck out of my house, NOW!" He retreated, bewildered, but he didn't leave. "Look what you did! GET OUT!" I shouted as blood dropped in big splashes on the floor, down my face and arm. As I shouted at him, my wife came from the bedroom where she'd been napping. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out!" she shouted at him, and he seemed to retreat somewhat further, but he didn't leave. She shoved him, but he stood still. I looked around, saw my phone on the chair arm, and took it into the bathroom and locked the door and called 911. 

I could hear my wife at first shouting then talking calmly to the man with the tomahawk in the living room as I reported what had happened to the dispatcher. I staunched the blood from the wound with paper towels while I talked to the dispatcher and listened for anything in the living room. 

I heard my wife say, "Is there anything you need, anything I can do for you?" meaning the man in the living room, the man who had assaulted me. I did not hear him speak at all. But later she would tell me what he was doing: going to the french door, opening and closing it, and seeming to be bewildered by it. Then he went to the front door, she said, puzzled by how to work the lock on the screen door. Then she said he went toward the bathroom door, and she saw an opportunity to escape. She said she ran across the street, calling on Barbara to help but realizing eventually that Barbara wasn't there. She said she saw the man with the tomahawk coming across the street toward her, and she realized she was in a sense trapped and she had to be calm. Suddenly, she said Barbara's huge Pyrenees dog appeared beside her and sat down as the man got to Barbara's front gate. "Is this your dog?" she asked. "Yes," said the man. She said, "You know he gets out and runs around. You really need to keep him inside the gate or he'll get hurt." She said she showed him how to keep the gate latch closed as she inched out of the yard while he went inside it with the dog. They passed so close to one another they touched. He didn't seem to know who she was, and he didn't try to harm her. She would tell me that she thought Douglas, the dog, was her angel at that moment. She said with the guy inside the gate, she could escape and she ran across the street to the house next door to ours trying to raise help, but no one came to the door. The first police car arrived seconds later -- no more than five minutes after I called -- and my wife told him where the man was. He took his AK style rifle and went to Barbara's house where the man surrendered without a fight.

Shortly many police and sheriff's deputies arrived, my wife came back to our house, and I could hear her say through the bathroom door, "Are you all right?" and then "The police are here." I was still on the phone with the dispatcher, who was talking to the police and with my wife. 

I said, "OK," and still bleeding and woozy, I came out to witness the rest of the drama unfold. 

There was of course quite a lot of drama to come, but it was anti-climax, so it's unnecessary in the context of this story.

I'm OK, and I'm extremely grateful that my wife was not harmed and was able to handle the situation so calmly and well. She said she was trained to do it when she worked at the courthouse in California, and she was surprised and delighted that her training came in so handy in real life. 

We had used similar tactics in dealing with this violent stranger. Be calm, express concern for his well-being, offer to help, don't agitate him, don't threaten. My approach was through my Zen training and practice, her's was through professional situational training in a courthouse setting. It's not much different. Someone is violent and seemingly out of it, you do better to try to empathize than to confront and further agitate. 

The fact that I was assaulted and wounded in this encounter with a "demon" was in a Zen context something like the shock that sometimes accompanies Zen training -- of which there are many stories. The shock from the Zen teacher whacking the student or pushing him into the mud or from life-experience is supposed to lead to satori -- sudden enlightenment -- and sometimes it does. Physical wounds can happen, but they heal. The point is to awaken. And by awakening, more fully take in the nature of things. 

I see what happened in those terms, and the awakening is still unfolding. So many layers of lessons. What happened was not the first time I have faced "Death." Far from it. Each time, I learn, but not always as quickly or as much as I should. The lessons and awakening and enlightenment this time is coming in spurts, not all at once, as each layer peels back. I physically sleep a lot since the events described, and I see it as symbolic of my non-awakening. And then when I'm awake, realizations tumble down on me. So much illusion and delusion still to dissolve away.

Just a part of the realization, the Zen of Being, is that "I" am not. Not separate, that is. Each element, every participant, was "me." I confronted myself, I was saving myself, I whacked myself on the head with a tomahawk, I was my attacker, I was my wife, I was the police and medics who came to help. I was the ER personnel who seemed overwhelmed by the crush of patients,  and I was every one of those patients. 

I've since talked to Barbara our neighbor with whom this stranger was staying. He's now in jail on a no bail warrant, and he probably will not be released before trial. Well... you never know. Judges in New Mexico are notorious for releasing people they shouldn't. Barbara says he's an old friend of the family who'd been in rehab but had gone AWOL and he had discovered his brother in bed with his girlfriend. Which was why he was staying with Barbara and her family. Further, he was diagnosed schizophrenic and had not been taking his medication since departure from rehab. He'd self-medicated instead. He'd always been nice to her and she let him stay at her house out of loving kindness  -- and in hopes that he would be able and willing to help her get the house fixed up. But he'd been acting odd since he got there. She knew he'd been partying and suspected he'd taken some drug but she didn't know what. She did not, she said, expect him to be violent, though she said he'd run off a pizza delivery guy and another friend of the family who came to visit. She said he was seeing every man as a predator. But she was shocked he'd invaded my home and attacked me. 

She wanted him to get help because "he's really a good guy" and he's fine when he's taking the right meds and stays away from drugs he shouldn't be taking. But this time he went way over the edge, and she was really sorry for what had happened to me. 

Of course, we hear these kinds of stories a lot, and many of us become numb to them. Too many "really good guys" turn into violent monsters, no? Statistically, no. It doesn't happen a lot. It happens much less statistically than it used to, but it still happens, and the victims are multiple, often whole communities with tragic consequences. "Something should be done," but nothing seems to work, right?

Well, actually, some things do work, and they're not always what we think. The guy who assaulted me is in custody, and he should stay there for a long time. Some are saying permanently, and in a sense I agree. But not in the sense of imprisonment, because I don't believe in imprisonment except for the most incorrigible and the most dire crimes. 

No. If this guy is schizophrenic and if medications do work (I've known a number of schizos who are fine on appropriate meds) then he should be confined for so long as necessary to 'train' him to use the correct medications essentially automatically. And to stay away from self-medication substances. As you might expect, there's a Zen program for that. 😃

There are still many more layers to this incident, and I might describe more in time. But for now, let us be grateful.

Some Post-Practice Period Ruminations

It was good to get back into regular zazen practice, though my way is not exactly that of the Zen center. Of course, "my way" started with instructions from the San Francisco Zen Center c. 1965 -- before it became hip and trendy, before New Age, before hippies. Zen was still very Japanese in those days. We were followers of Suzuki Roshi's training, and he went way back in Japanese Soto Zen practice. I think he was made a monk when he was 11, and that would have been sometime around 1915 or so. He brought Zen in perhaps its strictest and purest form from Japan to the United States in the late 1950s, but it didn't really catch on until a decade or so later. Even then, it was still very Japanese.

It isn't any more. Not really. And I've struggled with that. Some of the forms are still observed -- robes and chanting in "Sino-Japanese" (the chants transliterated into syllables, but no translation as such). Zendos. Cushions to sit upon. In fact The Cushion seems to have become the central fact of modern Western Zen. Being On the Cushion is sometimes thought of as Everything. Ok. Well. That's interesting.

During practice period, we had three one hour sits a day and then during sesshin, sitting increased to up to 8 hours a day and could go longer. For me? No. 

Sitting is very important in Zen practice, necessary in fact. But... a wealth of caveats are necessary too. 

Remember, I took up Zen based on instructions from San Francisco Zen Center in the mid '60s. I wasn't at the Center, so I couldn't practice the way they did with such rigid and formal discipline. I wasn't a monk, and I couldn't be. Guess what? I was told I didn't have to strictly observe the forms, that learning how to sit and making time to sit regularly, and the study of the Sutras and Paramitas was essentially all a lay practitioner of Zen needed to do. 

Zen appealed to me because it was so lean and straightforward. You could sit zazen anywhere, any time for as long or short a time as needed. By studying the Sutras and Paramitas, by incorporating the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, becoming the Dharma as it were, you were doing all you really needed to do. 

The rituals that Zen monks and officiants engaged in at temples and monasteries and in this country at Zen Centers that weren't either temples or monasteries were akin to Catholic or other church services. Necessary for some -- some of the time -- but rarely appropriate for continual practice by lay-people.

Who have lives to live. The point is to get to a point in practice where "practice" is everything you do in life. 

There is nothing that is Not-Practice. 

So what happens when this rotten old bhikkhu (as I call myself sometimes) enters the more rarefied and ritualized modern Zen world, and I look around and say, "Wait, this isn't Zen."

And yet it's appealing for what it is, a sort of amalgam of psychotherapy, counseling, Tibetan Buddhism, and bits and pieces of a Zen tradition barely recalled or understood mixed with memories of Santa Fe New Age.

OK, fine, let's go with it, see where it leads.

It was a remarkable experience, and an astonishing reminder of not only where I've been in my wandering bhikkhu phase, but where I'm headed, too.

I learned, among other things, that so much I thought I had forgotten was still with me and had been so incorporated into my day-to-day life, I took it for granted and didn't notice.

Very vivid memories were brought back, and I learned that those memories ("Dreams" if you want) are guideposts. They're there to be recollected, yes, but also to point forward: this is where you've been, and where you're going.

None of what I learned over the years has gone away. It's all still there. And for whatever reason or no reason, I'm not quite done yet. 

I've never lacked for teachers or guides. The Void I entered all those years ago showed me a vision of Truth that has never gone away, and it never left me.

Being as isolated as I've been during this pandemic was disruptive to what had come to be my routine as "bhikkhu in the world." That's not a bad thing at all. 

I've already seen how my viewpoint and actions have changed since starting the practice period, and how much I've recovered, and how much more I need to get done.

Zen is there as a pivot point, but it's not a whole lot more than that, and by golly, it's not for everyone. Nor is Buddhism. It is simply a way among many to exist in the world and act on our better nature. 

🙏