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. 

🙏

Zen Not Zen -- Another Approach

 I don't know what Zen is. It's a contradiction.

I'm becoming convinced that the Zen practice period I'm participating in is not all that Zen when you strip away some of the Japanese-ish names, robes, forms and rituals. It's more in the Tibetan tradition with a large helping of Western counseling and psychological conditioning thrown in. 

It'a a hell of a lot more complicated than Zen -- which I understand is a distillation of Mahayana Buddhism passed from  India through China to Japan and from there to the West where it has.... hmmm, mutated?

Tibetan Buddhism is more of an elaboration than a distillation of Mahayana Buddhism with some other elements added. 

In other words, Zen is lean, very lean.Tibetan Buddhism is not. And Mahayana, as it developed in India after Sakyamuni's Enlightenment and Buddhahood, is extremely complex to the point of nearly incomprehensibility to Westerners. As a side note, there are now proportionately more Buddhists in the United States than there are in India. Go figure. Oh, and about 3/4 of the US Buddhists are not Zen.

Zen practice in the context of this practice period is actually not that important to the program. One of the indications, for example, is the usual near-emptiness of the zendo during practice. I understand there are people sitting behind the camera, but we don't see them on the Zoom and don't know they're there unless they come forward to participate in formal ritual. Otherwise there may be no more than two or three people visible in the zendo during zazen. On occasion there's only been one.

There's been a big fall-off in zazen practice participation by those of us on Zoom, largely because, I think, there is little visible participation at the zendo. 

Sitting Zen is critically important; it's the key to the practice, and if it is not being done, as it appears it is not, at least by many of those participating in this practice period, then it's not Zen. Study is important, receiving teaching is important, samu (righteous community work) is important and all the forms and rituals are important, but none of it matters much if you're not sitting Zen. For it is through sitting Zen that you open up to the contradictions and the coherence of the practice and instruction as a whole and to the Bodhisattva way that is the purpose and practice you're bound for. 

I can't tell you how much of a difference my own sits have made in my ability to absorb and comprehend the teachings. Samu too. All of the Zen stuff is bringing me back to where I was in my practice before I "entered the void" -- which I will try to get into at some other point. 

I'm not terribly rigorous about sitting, but I do try to make at least three sits a day for varying lengths of time, and I witness nearly all the rituals, chants and liturgy. I was very moved by the Buddha Birthday ceremony the other day, as it was almost the first time Sakyamuni Buddha had made a physical/spiritual appearance in the zendo. And then as soon as the ceremony was over, he  was taken away. How transitory we all are!

I have not yet taken the four Bodhisattva Vows, and won't until I am ready. Which may or may not come by the end of this practice period. 

Our text is The Bodhisattva Way of Life by Shantideva, c. 800AD. I've read it in the Stephen Batchelor translation and listened to two other translation in audiobooks. Condensed, it's pretty straightforward about righteousness as a Bodhisattva or becoming a Bodhisattva in the material world. Which is one's purpose as a Mahayana Buddhist. 

Soto Zen which we are sort of practicing is Mahayana Buddhist, and Bodhisattva living is what the Zen practitioner is meant to do. Shantideva makes the argument for it in rather florid Old Indian style, but it is up to the lean Zen practitioner to do it. 

To do it and to fit the Bodhisattva way into a contemporary context is perhaps the central problem. In medieval Japan, that context was dominated by samurai and shoguns and whatnot. The life of the common people was largely devalued -- as was the case in India during Shantideva's time and during Sakyamuni Buddha's time as well. The Bodhisattva's way is intended as a means to convince primarily the aristocracy to be better toward all sentient beings, rabble in the streets included, than they were or than they necessarily wanted to be.

Of course we aren't living in Old India or medieval Japan. We live in a contemporary and often quite vile world of pandemics and exploitation to the point of ruin of the earth and the people in it, the collapse of reliable institutions and systems, and widespread grief and despair. The need for Bodhisattvas could hardly be greater,

A Zen approach would ordinarily be the simplest and most direct. But that's seemingly not the way this practice period is going about it. "Round about" is more like it. 

The Bodhisattva way is to deliver or "save" all sentient beings before the Bodhisattva achieves Buddhahood for him or her self. In other words to help and serve before being served. Many have expanded the call to save all sentient beings to include the Earth as a whole, sentient and non-sentient beings and all living beings together with the earth, the air, the water, and everything necessary for living beings on Earth.

That's a big task, an impossible task, but a Bodhisattva vows to do it to the best of his or her ability come what may.

And so here we are, Not-Zenning or Zenning our way to Bodhisattva-ing in the world as it is.

Bluntly --- and not boastfully --- I've been doing this for nearly all my life. At some point, I stopped regular sitting Zen practice (and I know when it was and to an extent why) but continued to live Zen and the Bodhisattva Way, as imperfectly as I did, whether I was sitting Zen or no.

Once you're in that space or frame of mind, you can't really stop. You'll continue to do it, no matter. 

But here I am nearly back to the beginning of my Zen practice, in a somewhat not-Zen context, relearning or learning for the first time some of the deeper meanings of the teachings.

Living as a proto-Bodhisattva without the vows and without a teacher has had its hazards and many missteps along the way. I know I'm not much longer for this world, but what time I have left is needed for that Bodhisattva task ahead.

How it will manifest remains to be seen.