Cat Zen

We have a number of cats that practice zazen. It was started, we think, by Old Joe, a white cat of stature among the colony. He wasn't an Alpha, nor did he assist one. He was just... a cat who stayed out of trouble, played with the kittens, and took under his wing Larry, a stray who arrived starved and dirty one day and decided to stay.

Larry is a pale ginger cat, obviously from a different strain than most of the colony members. To say he was high-strung is an understatement. He was in bad shape due to apparently not eating much or anything for days or weeks, covered with dust and deeply distrustful of us and the other cats, but he saw food and ate it ravenously. Most of the other cats tolerated him, but sometimes he'd lash out or pace frantically. Old Joe took his number and clearly said, "Hey."

Larry seemed to admire Joe and would sit beside him while restlessly grooming his shaggy and rough-textured coat. Larry is a domestic shorthair, but his fur is rough and brittle and sometimes he gets very shaggy looking as he was when he first arrived.

Joe would sit quietly, front paws nearly in a cosmic mudra, eyes half closed, counting his breaths, innn and outtt. Innnn and outttt. Larry would sit beside him, but he would be agitated and disruptive. 

Joe would breathe.

And in time, Joe got ill, and he began to fail. We knew his end wasn't long off. He seemed to know it too. Still he sat, counting his breaths, and Larry would sit beside him, slowly calming down, and from time to time we saw him counting his own breaths with half-closed eyes, and the other cats saw them, and some took instruction from them in how to zazen.

It wasn't too long thereafter that Old Joe passed on to Kitty Heaven, and Larry was left alone to zen or not on his own. It was surprising to see what he did. At first, he clearly missed Old Joe and their cat sangha sessions sitting zazen. He was agitated and lonely. He hadn't made any other friends in the colony.

But slowly we noticed his agitation reduced as more and more he practiced zazen on his own, and as he did, others learned from him. When I last checked he had at least six disciples in the colony, all of whom would practice zazen, sitting quietly with half-closed eyes counting their breaths. There may be more of them. 

Some of Modern Zen says be mindful of your intentions when sitting, and dedicate the merit of your sit to the release from suffering of all beings. Well, that's not the zazen teaching that I received so many decades ago, and others say sitting intentions and merit dedications aren't "really zen," they're something else. 

But when I watch the cats sitting zazen on their own or in a group, it seems to me they are "just sitting." Any merit is not dedicated by them but just there, if it is, for any who happen by.

Cats, as we know, are closer to nature. That some do sit zazen lets us know how close our practice is to nature as well.

"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.

Traveling Zazen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satori

NOTE: This was written just before the end of the practice period.

One more zazen session this morning, then we're "done." Well, not "done" done, but in the sense that we can return to Normal Life after one last zazen and a final wrap-up council slated to end at noon.

If this practice period and sesshin have had an effect, then we'll continue zazen, study and practice, and it was clear to me that some of the participants are already living practice all the time. 

Some activated bodhicitta at birth if not before. And they have been living the bodhisattva way of life ever since. Maybe they know, maybe not, but I doubt that doing this practice period has changed them in any way or made them better bodhisattvas. They didn't need Shantideva's Guide to tell them what to do. 

But maybe they needed something else, like reinforcement, community, reminders and strength.

Bodhisattvas may be imagined as examples of perfection, but living bodhisattvas generally aren't. They're far from perfect, they fail, they face struggles and heartbreak like anyone else, and they go on. I recognize so many "natural" bodhisattvas who have affected my own life.

At first, I was reluctant to accept Shantideva Bodhisattva's endless plaint as all that worthwhile. Many people reject it in whole or in part because it's just so.... whiny. (Also gravely misogynistic and otherwise offensive to modern sensibility.)

I tried to analyse it from a class perspective, and I think that still needs to be done. Who he was and what environment he came from is, I think, crucial to understanding what and why he wrote. He wasn't "just anyone" (much as Sakyamuni Buddha wasn't "just anyone.") He was a prince, son of a raja if not a maharaja, who, when his father died, was to be placed on the throne himself, and who instead ran way to a Buddhist monastery. Not just any monastery either, but Nalanda, the greatest Buddhist institution the world has ever seen. And there he faced challenges to his very being that he could not imagine.

I know the Dalai Lama has great fondness for Shantideva and his Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life and teaches it often. Why? Could it be that this particular work has special meaning to those whose lives have been turned upside down by choice or circumstance and who need to regularly reinforce their practice (faith, if you will) that they can do and are doing what's right?

Yes, I think that's a big part of it, and it's a big part of why it was being taught during this practice period. The COVID you see has turned all our lives upside down, and we don't yet know when -- or if at this rate -- it will end. 

The psychological and emotional toll has been immense, especially for those in the helping professions -- which seemed to be most of the participants in this practice period, bordering on 90%.

Lives have been ended by the hundreds of thousands, millions world-wide. A horrible period of political unrighteousness has still not completely ended. Isolation and fear and doubt have compounded in so many of us. 

Apart from the clerks at the grocery store and post office, medical professionals are about the only people I've been dealing with face to face regularly for over a year. I know they've been having a hard time, at first really hard, and I've expressed my sympathy, but during this practice period, I've come to a much better understanding of how hard it's been and still is. Worlds turned upside down repeatedly. And much, much worse for many.

I have a wood carved Buddha on an altar that I've bowed to every zazen session. He's modeled on the Kamakura Daibutsu in Japan, I believe the largest bronze Buddha statue in the world. I painted him gold  -- the Kamakura Daibutsu was gilded at one point -- so that he would not fade into the mirrored background. The Buddha on my altar appears to be deep in meditation, but his facial expression has always puzzled me (it's even more apparent on the huge bronze original.)  Then it came to me. It's the expression of profound heartbreak that he has not been able to save, deliver, rescue all sentient beings as a Bodhisattva despite what Shantideva tells us a Bodhisattva must vow to do.

Next to him is a wood carving of the Laughing Buddha that was so popular in the West for so many years -- but you don't see him much any more. It was such a popular image that my father had a small one on his bookshelf in Iowa when I was born, and my mother apparently took it with her when she divorced him because I remember it fondly standing on our bookshelf in California, laughing with hands raised high overhead. (Come to think of it, maybe it was hers to begin with...)

On the other side of the Daibutsu is a wood carving of a Chinese mendicant monk smiling at the Buddha.

There are other images: a horse and an elephant, both references to the life of Shakyamuni, a carved wooden zebra, a carved wooden duck (sentient beings) a brass cricket, a bronze dragon, a ceramic tree coming into bloom with tiny birds on its branches, a greenstone carved abstract figure that could be someone practicing zazen, gourd figures that Ms Ché and I made one Christmas at the Cherokee club, flowers, many flowers and flowering branches, and an incense burner. 

We have several other altars in the house. One for dead friends. One for Native figures. All are sites of honor, and the Heartbroken Buddha altar for now has pride of place.

In addition to the other things mentioned on the Daibutsu/Heartbroken Buddha altar, there's a kerosene lamp, an electric candle, five cranberry colored sherry glasses, a photo of Ms Ché smiling at her desk at work 20-30 years ago, and a Midcentury clock to tell the time. These tchotchkes sort of wound up there without great intent, but somehow they seem to belong. 

Behind the Buddha stretching the width of the altar is a Craftsman mirror in an oak frame. It was part of a collection of Craftsman furniture I picked up at a thrift store many years ago. Draped across the top of the mirror is a length of sari silk, deep, deep teal blue, sprinkled with golden embroidery spots that look something like stars.

It's very crowded, this altar, and any critic would point out it's "Not Zen" at all. That's correct. 

As mentioned in another post, I long ago let go of any attempt at emulating Japanese style or adopting the pretense of Going Japanese. It's not who I am.

Yet I still practice zazen? Sure, why not?

But right now, it's time to chop some wood and carry water.

🙏 ॐ

Ridiculous and Useless

Practicing zazen is ridiculous and useless. That's the point, no?

No.

There is no point. You do it to do it. That's it. Nothing more. The ridiculousness of sitting, the uselessness of sitting simply are. They're not the point of anything, they merely exist. 

When I sit, I sit. I adopt partial posture while sitting on a straightback antique oak kitchen chair with a quilted cushion on the seat. My back is straight-ish, not uncomfortably or rigidly so. My head is slightly down. My hips are solidly placed forward rather than back into the chair. My feet are flat on the floor, legs slightly apart. My hands are placed in the "cosmic mudra" position, palms up, left hand's fingers on top of right hand's fingers, thumbs barely touching, oval space open between thumbs and fingers. The hands land on my lap and rest there, but they can be raised slightly above the lap and come to rest just below the navel. When sitting, my eyes are usually open, gaze somewhat unfocused ahead and down. Not actually looking at anything (most of the time) but not not looking either. 

To the extent I meditate while sitting, three aspects come to the fore. 

First, to concentrate on breathing and body. Counting breaths, but only as a counter to passing thoughts. Otherwise just breathe and be conscious of breathing. Be aware of the body and body sensations. I'm particularly sensitive to joint issues, and when they arise, I note them and also note that body is more than joints; paying attention all the way up and all the way down and inside and out. 

Second, mantras. There are lots of them. At any time, one can pop into consciousness to counter passing thoughts or just be running in the background something like a drone in East Indian music. And then be gone like the thought that might have been countered. Only to come back again.

Third, koans. Insoluble puzzles of words and mind. Nonsense. Paradoxes. Again, as counters to passing thoughts, there and gone.

There are other elements that can happen. Some can become meditations. One that I've feared and consciously avoided is a return to "The Void." A state of emptiness that I encountered many years ago while practicing zazen and did not want to return to without a guide or teacher. 

Well, I've learned that once there, it never leaves. Or rather, you never leave it. Or... It's ever-present, prior to, and everlasting. It is what I called "the Ground State" of everything and nothing simultaneously. All phenomena arise therefrom, but "arise" is not the correct description. Nothing arises, in other words. And there are no phenomena. Everything is Nothing. All the time and everywhere. There is no time, no where. 

And I've always had guides. I've always had teachers. I wasn't always paying attention.

Yes, we live in the material world of consciousness, separateness and phenomena, and yes, they're not "real." They are illusion. The "reality" to the extent we can comprehend it -- imperfectly at best -- is found in that Ground State, which perceptively is Nothing. There's literally Nothing there.

Yet that No-Thing is Every-Thing. And that "there" is not.

Get it?

The paradoxes and contradictions have led to endless commentary on being-no being, Enlightenment, and what the holy hoo-hah this Sakyamuni Buddha character was getting at. 

During this practice period, there's been almost no mention of Sakyamuni. The focus has been on sad, bewildered Santideva and how he overcame the demons of self-doubt and other people's mockery and criticisms to follow the Prajnaparamita and become a Bodhisattva at Nalanda.

They tell us -- maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong -- that most of those who enter the Buddhist monastery never become Enlightened. They don't become Buddhas. Most never become Bodhisattvas. When they die, they don't enter Nirvana. That seems sad. But I believe it.

What then is the point of the monastery, Zen Buddhist or any other?

On the one hand, yes, the monastery is as ridiculous and useless as practicing zazen. There is no point, as it were. 

And yet... and yet...

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

Oh goody. The Book came, the one I ordered from Indiana. And neat, it's got underlining, check marks and a few comments by its previous owner(s). Yay. The Book: Jack Kerouac's "Wake Up, A Life of the Buddha" (1955) that I didn't know existed until recently when I read about it in a commentary on a book by Gary Snyder. 

This should be interesting.

I suspect one reason bhikkhus, bonzes, and monks fail to reach Enlightenment is because they're always being diverted by things like this.

When Practicing Zazen

When I sit, I usually let thoughts just come and go the way they do, as someone said, "Like clouds in a clear blue sky." And as I've sat through this practice period, thoughts have gradually diminished to the point where almost an entire sit will take place thought-free. Hard to describe what that's like, but it happens. 

I don't sit generally more than 15-20 minutes at a time, though on occasion, I have sat longer. The shorter sits are for me the more positive, I guess. Practicing zazen is by its nature both ridiculous and useless. So we do it anyway, and sitting is itself the point, not any great gain or accomplishment. You just sit. 

A shorter sit is for me the more positive because like in the Old Days, I've been getting closer and closer to The Void (as I call it) when I sit, and I'm not going back there without a guide or teacher, and that hasn't happened yet in this practice period. 

But this morning's sit that I was late for made me think more about where I've been and where I'm going with this ridiculous and useless sitting. An image came to me early in my late sit. 

More like a movie clip, really. As I tend to do, I just let it come. At some point I figured it would go. Away.

Oh. 

I was walking toward Union Square on Geary, not far from my apartment between Leavenworth and Hyde. I got to the square and saw space on a bench facing I. Magnin and the City of Paris (tells you how long ago it was), and I sat down on the bench.

At the other end was a craggy old Chinese man in clean but somewhat tattered gray pants and jacket and we nodded and smiled at one another, and after a moment or two, I assumed the sitting zazen pose, and he saw and assumed it too, and we sat. He was my sangha for the moment, I was his.

For I don't know how long, we sat together-apart on the bench in Union Square facing I Magnin and the City of Paris while pigeons and people swirled around us, the cloudless bright blue sky overhead, and the sun somewhere shone into the Square. 

After a time, I don't know how long, I got up from my sit and bowed to the Chinese elder sitting in his gray tatters at the other end of the bench. He continued his sit, he didn't bow back. And I walked around the Square, counterclockwise, feeling strangely integrated with everything, everyone, even the pigeons all a part of me, I was a part of them, even the Square itself and all around it, out into the Bay and vastly beyond.

I walked around the Square to Powell, in front of the St. Francis and walked down Powell through the flower sellers and crowds and smelly trash in the street by the curb, down to Market and I thought of taking the cable car to North Beach Fisherman's Wharf but the line was so long and the day was so nice, I decided to keep walking down Market as far as Taylor then up Taylor through the Tenderloin to Geary and back to my apartment between Leavenworth and Hyde. 

As I got to the wrought iron gate of my apartment house, the clip stopped and started over.

It was in a loop and it was going to keep playing, over and over, and it wouldn't let go of me or I wouldn't let go of it, so I stopped the sit and went into the other room and had some coffee and sat for a few minutes before I started writing this. 

That was a memory, strangely complete and colorful and lively, of something that happened when I was living in San Francisco in 1976 or maybe a bit later. That day stayed with me for sometime, and then it faded and eventually was gone, and this morning there it was again.

In my mind and memory, not in "reality."

Buddhism teaches that we create reality in our minds, and that is the only reality most of us ever know. Buddhism teaches us ways to penetrate the mind's reality to reach what I'd call a "ground state." The truth behind the mind's reality. And I've been there. 

It happened in San Francisco, and in a sense it's never left me -- on the principle that once "there" you can't go back. But then the principle is also that you're always "there" -- you just don't know it.

And this movie-like clip that started playing during this morning's sit that I was late for was a kick from behind reminder. As so many things are these days.

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So I mentioned this episode from my morning sit to one of the Dharma teachers that afternoon, someone not quite of my age but close enough who knows San Francisco well enough and saw, in her own mind, some of what I saw, and after some consideration, she said, "You know, that story of what happened during your morning sit sounds more like a dream."

They say in this process you will encounter satori "sudden enlightenment" over and over and over again, and in the past I certainly did until it became almost routine, subliminal. Almost any encounter was an encounter with satori, to the point where I didn't notice it any more.

And then when she said, "You know, that story of what happened during your morning sit sounds more like a dream," it hit me, hard, that's exactly what it was. I was dreaming-awake. I was/am quite sure the incident and others like it actually happened, but at this great distance in time, it doesn't matter whether it had a physical "reality" or not. It was something I dreamed while awake, while sitting zazen that morning, and the instant of that realization, I could start to let it go. I haven't completely let go of it, obviously, because I'm still writing about it, but I don't relive it. 

We talked about many other things and she asked if I had practiced zazen since the morning sit, and I said I had, and it was fine. She just nodded, sagely. Then we shared stories about her brother and my sister, and we both might have choked up a bit. 

Later that evening another Dharma teacher Zoomed in from Illinois, not only an ordained Zen priest but an ordained and working Unitarian Universalist reverend, and she spoke movingly about many of the things I had spoken with the other Dharma teacher in the afternoon. Her topic was ostensibly "Meditation."

I'll leave it at that.

Late For Zazen

 

Harder than I thought and much easier than I expected to change the habits, good and bad, of this crusty, rotten old bhikku. 

I'm late for morning zazen. Oh well. Have some coffee, strong and hot.

Soooo.....

Nearly every Buddhist teacher I've ever seen or listened to starts most talks with the extended "Sooooo...." often followed by a long pause before offering something along the lines of a koan, a puzzling but universal truth, or contrary-wise, a generous welcome and asking for a count of one sort or another. "How many of you have done X, Y, or Z? Hands?" Usually all three in sequence.

This is standard. It's what you do when sitting on the raised cushion before an assembly of disciples and students. "Soooo........" Even the Dalai Lama does this. Or even especially he does it...

We've been studying the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life which I recall reading some excerpts from many years ago, but I had never read the whole thing, and now that I have, I understand why it was excerped rather than presented whole back in the day. Shantideva wrote in the 800s AD in India, and his audience was pretty clearly other privileged princelings of the region and era like his former self. He wasn't writing for the rabble in the streets -- who couldn't read anyway, so what would be the point, right?

So when we approach this work, we're approaching as if he'd written it for us -- we, the equivalent of the street rabble yet we who believe we are as high and mighty as the princelings of Old India -- when he didn't. I'm struck by how often Shantideva lards his work with line after line of praise and flattery and images of showers of gold and jewels and scented waters that would appeal to the vanity and pecuniary interest of the princes and kings of yore. For us today, this is nonsense, this is bullshit. Manjushri Bodhisattva would cut through all the not necessary bullshit, no? Yet line after line, there goes Shantideva again. What is he doing?

In a flash of insight (sometimes called satori, but maybe it wasn't) it occurred to me he was trying his best to appeal those myriad princes, kings and potentates of Old India and convince them to be better, behave better toward that rabble, themselves and one another and learn to act in the Bodhisattva Way, the way of compassion for all sentient beings (and later, for some, non-sentient and non-beings) and the way of complete dedication to bodhicitta -- bringing enlightenment and end to suffering for all beings and the whole wide world. The basis of Mahayana Buddhism of which Zen claims to be a part.

Shantideva was trying to argue, persuade, and cajole his peers to be better, show themselves as better than they had been, to learn, grow, and unselfishly give and be bodhisattvas themselves.

We are not his peers. This does not diminish his teaching or argument in any way. What it means is that our approach to the Bodhisattva Way of Life must be from a different direction. Most of us are not in charge of much of anything. Few of us have power over many others. For the most part we do not determine conditions of life or death for someone else. Therefore we do not live the lives of princes and potentates -- though our egos may tell us otherwise (smile emoji).

So how should we approach it? What does bodhicitta mean from the bottom up rather than the other way around? What does it mean to bring enlightenment and an end to suffering for all beings when you're not a prince or king or potentate -- and you don't have the power to do it?

So what do you do when you're functionally powerless even over most aspects of your own life, yet you are called upon to adopt the Bodhisattva Way and act on bodhicitta on behalf of everyone and the whole globe?

Especially what do you do when your betters, if you want to call them that, those who do have power and responsibility, act as if they don't. And in many cases behave worse than the worst of the potentates of old?

This is a consideration that I have yet to see enter into this practice period or indeed into much of Zen practice at all. Often enough, even Sakyamuni Buddha doesn't enter into it, either. The Bodhisattvas, on the other hand, are usually everywhere. Oft-times I wonder if I'm practicing Buddhism without Buddha. Or rather All-Buddhas/No-Buddha. (When someone asks me, "What is Zen?" I might say, "I don't know what Zen is. It's a contradiction.")

The class issue, I think, is important, and it runs through Buddhism and every branch of Buddhism from the outset, though often it's ignored today. Or rather it is pretended not to matter. 

After all, Sakyamuni Buddha was a prince, groomed to be king. His rivals and most of his followers were of the ruling class of his time and place as well; according to tradition, he learned from and opposed the Brahmans of his era (though others contend there was no such class in those days).  He may have wanted Enlightenment to be shared by all, and he may have sometimes been seen among the Lesser Orders, but he was not one of them, nor were most of his followers. They were aristocrats. 

Shantideva's situation parallels the Buddha's. He lived many hundreds of years after the Buddha and in a different part of India, but he, too, was a prince groomed to be king who renounced his titles and temporal authority to become a mendicant monk like the Buddha. He wrote extensively, which the Buddha (apparently) did not. He wrote what look like appeals to his aristocratic peers to become Bodhisattvas, Awakened Minds and Hearts, compassionate toward all beings. On the way to Buddhahood.

"All equally empty; all equally to be loved; all equally come a Buddha." The prayer given by Jack Kerouac to Gary Snyder as recorded fictionally in "Dharma Bums" (1958).

That is as concise a distillation of the Bodhisattva Way as I've seen. 

Sakyamuni and Shantideva were arguing strenuously for their aristocratic class to be better, to become bodhisattvas and act with humility and compassion toward "all sentient beings" which includes the rabble in the streets, but except in the abstract, do not become "of" them. The abstract being the realization that all are equal because all are One-NotOne.

And I look around at the others I am among in the Zoom practice period and I see that the vast majority are professional women of a certain age, mostly in the helping/caring professions, and, from what I've seen over time, that is the class (if you will) that this center focuses on. They are the ones to be reached and persuaded to be like bodhisattvas. To follow the Bodhisattva Way and become Buddhas.

They aren't aristocrats in the sense of having much temporal power in the political sense. But actually, they do have a lot of power, indeed power of life and death if they want to use it, in their capacity as healthcare professionals. 

And as I have listened to them talk in Enso meetings, oh, do I hear the same arguments over and over, the same woe is me, the same lack of understanding or rather lack of Enlightenment when they argue with themselves and their beliefs too much. Roshi advises "Don't overthink it..." but I'm not sure that's heard. Or if it's heard, it's not understood, not yet. For the rational argument is often a refuge when the Three Gems aren't enough. 

In my early practice days, I was instructed those precepts ("Buddam saranam gacchami, Dhanam saranam gacchami, Sangam saranam gacchami," or "I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the dharma, I take refuge in the sangha") could be interpreted this way: "The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, the Sangha is with anyone you find on the Dharma Path, even if they don't know it."

For me, much of this is old hat. I learned a great deal -- sometimes unknowingly -- as a wandering bhikkhu for so many years. Some of the people in this practice period have long experience practicing zazen -- one of the teachers said she was taught zazen practice at the Berkeley Zen Center in 1971 when she was 19. And she's been doing it ever since. 

Another has talked about her experience at the San Francisco Zen Center beginning shortly after Suzuki Roshi died, also in 1971 I believe.

I go back before that, 1964-65, also through contact with the San Francisco Zen Center, but not through physical presence at the SFZC. No. Even when I lived in San Francisco, I chose not to visit the Center, in fact, I consciously stayed away, though I continued to practice. It had become a very fashionable and "hip" religious institution in the city, as had at the time the People's Temple and other New Age, New Consciousness institutions of Spiritual Growth and Perpetual Development (yada yada.) I saw them all as money-making businesses, some of them outright scams. Cynical, I know. But something had really changed from the early days, pre-hippie, pre-New Age, etc. of Zen in San Francisco and what it became and what it was by the mid-70s when I lived there. It had become so fashionable that people jockeyed to sit zazen at the new location because, you know what, they might be sitting next to someone famous! Damn, at the time, I was working with famous people every day, and I was not inclined to sit with them in the zendo.

So I continued regular practice on my own until I left San Francisco just before the People's Temple disaster.

Then I continued wandering and intermittent practice. Satori. Another instance of sudden "enlightenment:" I realized why I stopped regular practice once I moved out of San Francisco and went roaming all over the country. A long strange trip.

Which is off track and not the subject of these posts... (wide grin emoji)

One Hour Sit

It was imperfect -- oh my yes -- but I did it. A whole one hour sit -- this time with no kinhin break in the middle. How about that? 

Imperfect for several reasons. First that I wasn't fully engaged in the sit for at least ten minutes maybe more. I was sitting before my Zoom screen, but doing other things on the computer as well such as making sure my Zoom picture was showing up, counting the number of participants in this sit -- less than 40 -- and pulling up an audiobook reading of A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life by Shantideva (c. 800 AD) the text we are studying for this practice period. Once I got that going at very low volume, I settled into my cushion and from the heart called out for bodhichitta, Buddha Mind, Awakened Mind, and compassion. For all sentient beings. Which is our task, if you will, during this practice period and at all times.

Well, one thing led to another. 

I sit in a very confined space. It's our entrance hall, about 5 1/2 feet wide and 7 feet long. I sit on a cushion on the seat of a straightback antique oaken kitchen chair. The laptop is on a metal-framed glasstop garden table, none too stable to tell the truth. There are sunflowers reverse printed on the glass.

There's a full-length narrow window beside the door, a long hand-carved bench from Claudio's Place is against one wall and on it a large number of art and other items are placed; there's an antique oak hall table on which a sculpture of a tree root by a Native (Navajo) artist is placed, a metal three-shelf rack with lots of magazines, a clothes hanging shelf with four hooks and many jackets, on the shelf is an Apache carving of crown dancers, there's a number of large format photos -- black and white landscapes, including an Ansel Adams photo of what may be Kerouac's "Matterhorn" he described climbing in "Dharma Bums", and a photo of an interior room at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon -- as well as smaller works, prints, paintings, needleworks, and other sculptures. There are three clocks. One of which I can see from the corner of my eye when I sit.

Today, I put up a screen of sorts between my sitting place and the living room. The screen consists three silk khata scarves from Nepal hung from a spring rod across the passageway. The house is largely adobe, and the passage between the entrance hall and the living room is about 2 1/2 feet deep.

So I'm sitting. Just sitting, listening or maybe half-listening to the reading of A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life -- I've read most of it and heard parts of it read before -- and suddenly it occurs to me... So much of the stuff surrounding me is hand-made from natural materials by artists and craftspeople. I started with those silk scarves.

Compassion for the silk worms that spun the silk for the cocoons to house their transformation into silk moths, but most of which do not survive the silk making process. The handful that do go on to lay the eggs for the next generation, most of which do not survive to lay the eggs for the following generation. This has been going on for many hundreds, indeed thousands of years. Compassion, much compassion for these tireless insects whose finest threads are unraveled to make the fibers which are woven, they say by hand, in Nepal, to make the cloth for the scarves which are cut (but not sewn) and block printed with Tibetan Buddhist chants and symbols before being bagged and sent around the world. Compassion, so much compassion. I considered all the people and beings involved in creating these three khata scarves and getting them from Nepal to me in far-distant rural New Mexico. I thought to release all of these beings from suffering. 

On the wall are three needleworks, all done by hand. One is a beautifully embroidered Irish prayer -- "May the road rise  to meet you...", another is a welcome, another is a motto: "Life's greatest treasures come from the heart." With lots of flowers and pretty things around it, a gift from a good friend in town. Each was created by a talented someone, using materials made by others, so many people, some animals (wool) and plants (cotton and linen). And the sculptures, four, all by Native artists, carved from limestone, marble and wood. On and on around the room. As I sat, each of the items I kind of take for granted as I pass through every day is almost certainly the work of someone we know or someone we could know, and my heart welled up with compassion for all of them and for all the animals, plants and stone that went into the works now enlivening our house. "All equally empty, all equally to be loved, all equally come a Buddha." 

Another sit will start soon but I think I'll miss it as I process what happened with this one...

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Note: I didn't make the evening sit, though I looked in on it a couple of times. Again, few participants. 

Impressions of Zoom Ango

Hm. Not quite a week into the program, I think I've got a handle on at least some of what's going on. Ango is a study-practice period in Zen monasteries, and this one will be going on for close to a month. Today is Easter, so there is something of a pause -- though we are free to continue practice as we see fit on our own, and there will be several Zoom sits during the day and evening.

"Practice." It consists of hours of sitting Zen, walking Zen, working Zen, and Zenning out. And immersive study. Textural study, dharma study, Bodhisattva study, listening, reading, thinking, and on occasion speaking about this study.

Years ago, one of our cats, Joe, was a Zen master. Joe would spontaneously go into a Zen state and calm everyone and had cat-compassion for everyone. He taught other cats to Zen, too, particularly the hyperactive ones, and Larry was one of his students. Larry was wildly hyperactive and always on edge. Larry learned after many failed attempts that he could sit Zen like Joe, and after Joe passed, it was up to Larry to teach the others. It was something to see. Larry still practices with complete assurance. Others are less likely to, but some of them can, and when they do, in the cat-sangha, there's an incomparable peace and quiet that descends on cat-landia.

Practicing Zen in the monastery is very strict, patterned, ritualized and somewhat... I don't want to say "empty" but maybe that's the right word. There are about a dozen residents and staff at this Zen center, and they go through the rituals several times a day, much as you might see at a Catholic church -- like today at Easter. By performing these practice rituals over and over again, they increase compassion in the world for all beings according to the dharma and bodhisattvas. Practice itself is the increase of compassion. 

Intellectually, this does not make sense. Practice -- on the material plane -- increases or decreases nothing except perhaps one's personal condition. 

Practice

I've been in ango (intensive Zen practice and study period) for the last three four days. It will continue for the next three weeks, seven days a week. It's the first time I've done it, and at first it was very uncomfortable. It's become less so, but it's also difficult to maintain the schedule of sitting and walking meditations, the Dharma talks, study of the Dharma text (A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way, Shantideva) and the many other activities that are part of the ango.

I started Zen practice nearly 60 years ago inspired by Jack Kerouac's descriptions of his own Dharma journey and Zen, and with minimal instruction on how to do it from the San Francisco Zen Center, at that time one of the only Zen Buddhist institutions in the country. I learned sitting meditation (Zazen) with relative ease -- well, at first no -- and continued more or less regular practice for about 10 years when significant life changes meant that Zen practice became very low priority. In some ways, that was a mistake, but there were many other mistakes to come. I've intermittently practiced sitting meditation since then, but I felt something important was missing. At one point, I recalled that one of the Dharma teachers, it may have been old Dogen himself, had said that meditation was good but meditation without study and learning is dangerous. 

Practice untethered is akin to swimming in a void. Not necessarily a bad thing, and yet quite clearly potentially dangerous. And that was what I was doing. Not just swimming in a void but going off in all sorts of directions that were essentially either deadly or dead ends. The void, after all, provides no direction. 

Practice of zazen at best was intermittent during that period, indeed sometimes only once a year if that, and often enough simply automatic. I knew how to do it, so once I sat in the proper position and set about breathing, the broiling boiling mind settled quickly and the "emptiness" returned, pfft, just like that, and I felt, wrongly, that I had accomplished what the zazen practice was meant to do. Ta da! Enlightenment?

No. I was very far from that, and because I had largely neglected study and learning, and my sangha was scattered, I had no real conscious idea what the practice was meant to do or what the point of Buddhahood was. I had an idea but it was not in my conscious mind at all. I was acting on that idea unknowingly and chaotically, scattered as my sangha, devoid of conscious study, devoid of Dharma, just doing and being whatever the moment called for in zazen. Or soI thought. 

And there was always the question in the lower depths of my fragmented mind, "What of the Bodhisattvas?"

In my Catholic incarnation, I was drawn to St. Francis, and would have been a lay Franciscan had I stayed with the Church and followed in the footsteps of the saint. In a virtual sense, I suppose I have done so, retracing his life and works in books and online and immersing myself in his teachings and struggles. In the end though, I was not a Franciscan, and I could not emulate St. Francis for more than a moment or two. He was, however, a Bodhisattva. Who may have become a Buddha.

No, my gravitation has for long been toward Buddhism, not religion; practice, not ritual; relieving suffering, not inflicting or causing it. (Francis inflicted suffering on himself through mortification of the flesh, and he was afflicted with some mysterious condition which put him in great pain and suffering when he wasn't punishing himself.)

I've just attended a meditation instruction session during the ango period. Oh. Well, I suppose I know how to zazen having done it intermittently for nearly 60 years. My ego says I don't need instruction, except that I have found it difficult during this period to sit zen for more than about fifteen minutes at a time, though the zazen sessions are scheduled for 45 minutes or an hour three or more times a day. Maybe I do need instruction? So I sat in on the instruction session, and it was good to have the reminders not so much on how to do it, but on what to do and to an extent why. It's not by any means just form and ritual. Though form and ritual are part of the process of sitting meditation ("zen" doesn't literally mean meditation. It's more in the nature of "calm" or "peaceful.") You do certain things in a certain way when engaging in zazen but you don't have to do it exactly that way, or necessarily do all the things you are supposed to. You don't have to do it in the zendo (the "meditation hall" of a zen center or monastery or temple.) You can do it anywhere and at any time under pretty much any conditions.

But receiving instruction this morning was illuminating regarding the details of what we do, and the underlying elements of why. A zazen sit or session can open body and mind to the reality and illusion of the world, and if we allow it, can help increase our ability to feel and act on compassion for the sentient world which is how we express our Bodhisattva nature, There's more to it,  but that's the essence. 

My own sense of practice was quite different. Not wrong so much as directed inward rather than outward.  And not at all focused on Bodhisattvas or the Bodhisattva Way -- which, of course, is the theme of this practice period, ango.

The next zazen session will be in a few hours. Maybe it will be... easier? Easier to sustain, let's say, for the half hour or forty-five minutes it will last. 

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NOTE: I sat for half an hour -- with many distractions taking place -- but it was a two hour sit with Dharma Talk, kinhin (walking meditation) and liturgy (which I may or may not describe in time). So. Looks like I've got a ways to go yet....😉

Sesshin-ouaciana

When he woke from the glass dream, the backdeck beside the stretched out boxer-dog was surprisingly cool in the morning seabreeze, cooler than in the house for sure. He was happy he went wandering into undiscovered country of sharp edges and shallow angles across the freeways and railroad tracks. The aroma of rose petals and nightblooming jasmine still lingered in the air. He shivered as he woke up remembering, not from the chill breeze but from exhilaration. 

He'd done something, gotten out of his angst, and entered otherworlds of which he previously knew not.

He would do more. 

He entered the still hot house from the side door into the garage, then through the kitchen, padding on his Hush Puppies into the silent living room and down the hall to the bathroom where he relieved his overfull bladder in the toilet and brushed his teeth in the porcelain basin, checking in the mirror to see if he was still there. Wisps of whiskers decorated his face, but at fifteen-sixteen he didn't much care, he would shave perhaps in a few days or maybe not. When he shaved he usually cut open a pimple or two with blood dripping down his face reminding him of a time in another suburban house in another suburban city in another part of the state long ago, only not that long ago in the vast eternal scheme, where he'd wake up bloody-faced and in shock after a cat had taken umbrage at his face lying still on the soft pillow and had attacked with claws out and screaming. Practically every morning, claws out and screaming the cat attacked the boy's face and every morning he had to clean up the blood on his face and place antiseptic on the scratches and cuts. There was blood on his sheets and pillowcase too but he couldn't replace them every day, so he just turned them from one end of the bed to the other, over and over, hiding the blood stains that never completely came out in the wash. 

Cats. And he loved cats.

As he cleaned up the morning after his bhikkhu wander, he had the kernel of an idea. In Big Sur, Jack repeats mention of Zen practice and Buddhism, how despite Jack's falling into madness at the crashing Pacific shack in the rat canyon, he could sit in meditation as he'd learned to do and for a time all the madness and crashing and fear would pass.

Dharma Bums was nothing but constant Zen. In its own way, On the Road was Zen, too.

What was it he wondered this Zen, and why was it so attractive? Who could tell him? He'd found the address of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of the rare Zen practice locations then in the USA. He decided to write his query. What is Zen? Can I do Zen? Where? How? In what way? I am so far away.

His letter went out on a Thursday. He received a response the next Tuesday, a handwritten note from someone named Robert or Richard or something, not Japanese but Anglo, "So glad you wish to know Zen, and learn to practice." With it came some scraps of literature, how to sit and be still and various suggestions for freeing your mind and concentrating on breathing. 

All of it charming and yet it seemed so strict. He couldn't go to San Francisco, absolutely couldn't live there. Didn't have to. Practice wherever you happen to be, take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, the Sangha is whoever you happen to encounter on the Dharma Path whether they know it or not. 

Correspondence continued back and forth with Robert or Richard or whoever it was at the San Francisco Zen Center for two or perhaps three months in the summer and fall, and then trailed off to nothing at all because there was no longer a need. 

The angst-ridden teenager took to heart the brief instructions on How to Zen, and he set up a small meditation corner in his bedroom, a cushion on the floor, a scroll on the wall, and a bell. He learned to bow but he never did it well, always trying to bow too low or not low enough. His first attempts at sitting meditation, zazen, were rough as he wrestled with trying to establish and maintain the lotus position, but Robert or Richard or whatever his name was at the Zen Center said the boy didn't have to do that, no, sit with your legs crossed or sit with them under you, kneeling, or even sit in a straightback chair; it didn't really matter. As long as you could sit undisturbed and reasonably comfortably, quietly for ten minutes, twenty, as long or as short a time as seemed valuable, concentrating on your breathing and letting go. That's all. No wrestling, no trying, desireless being and not-being.

Thoughts and ideas and urges would flood your mind as you sat in meditation, don't try to overcome what comes into your mind, just let it come and let it go, and over time as you sit in meditation (zazen) the flood would abate on its own and continue until... there was nothing. Your mind would be free. Just sit. Breathe. For as long as need be, no longer, and then you can go back to your life and its many requirements and demands and they become part of your practice as well.

Each movement and non-movement can be practice, is practice, and doing this or that whatever it may be -- whether walking to the corner market or picking up a few things for lunch or bathing the dog or yourself, whatever it may be, driving up to the mountains for a retreat or intensive work and study and sitting in sesshin, whatever, it doesn't matter, it isn't matter, it's transformed and it's part of your practice. 

When these were totally new ideas, the boy had difficulty digesting them or understanding them (you can't understand them just be them do them) but nevertheless persevered in practice more or less as instructed, for the initial period relentlessly, three times a day, sometimes more, sitting in meditation for up to half an hour, forty five minutes, till cramping set in and he had to break off and spontaneously discovered walking meditation, kinhin, just walking and paying attention, not wandering mindlessly, was practice too and relieved the physical cramping attendant on sitting meditation. 

He thought of his ramble that night into the sharp-edged and shallow-angled neighborhood across the way and of the scent of jasmine and rose petals. These were thoughts and memories in his mind. While sitting he let them go, but while kinhin, they would not go away. 

He would retrace his steps, but first he would practice in his own neighborhood, saving till later or possibly not at all the miles-long walk and wander he had gone on before.

Practice, practice, practice.