Attachments

On the last day of our Fall Practice Period. I became very much attuned to the ideas of Attachment that pervade the study and practice of Buddhism, that are a big part of the Vimalakirti Sutra, and that shape the Ox Through the Window Koan I was given at my first practice interview of this period. 

Oh yes, it's all about Attachment and how and why we put off Enlightenment. Buddha made many comments about Attachments, Desires, Suffering, and Enlightenment, and Buddhist practitioners are supposed to be training to let go of all that, somehow, some way, and in the Mahayana Zen tradition, become Lights Unto the World, vowing to free all sentient beings from their traps of Suffering, Futility and Attachments.

Right now, of course, I'm attached to those ideas, to the thought processes of contemplation and meditation on Attachments, and there will be no Enlightenment while that process goes on. But that's OK. 

In fact, the more I consider Attachments, the more I realize that :letting go: of Attachments is not something I need to strive for; Attachments. like Desires, are Life (as one of my Zen teachers puts it), you need neither to let go of them nor hold on to them. The useful thing is to notice and acknowledge them.

For example, yes, I am attached to my home, my wife, and many of our cats. I'm attached to my chair, my laptop, my smart-ish phone, my car, my van. I can go on and on and on, listing attachments, and as I go through the day, I notice and acknowledge attachments to various things, people, places, thoughts and ideas, memories and dreams.

They are all part of my life; some are not healthy, others are necessary for right -- or any -- living.

We don't have to judge them, but just notice them, recognize them, acknowledge them. Yes, I am attached to this action of journalizing parts of my days, my thoughts, opinions, joys and disappointments. 

Attachments fall away. They come and they go, much like thoughts and emotions during zazen. The trick is to let them. Let them come; let them go. For most of us, an attachment doesn't last forever or even for  a particularly long time. We may be engaged with our attachments for only a moment or two, or for months or years, or in a few cases for a lifetime. But, like ourselves, attachments are impermanent, transitory, and something like the clouds of the sky. There and then not, growing, diminishing, vanishing, or suddenly re-appearing.

A cloud is real but evanescent. 

Just so with attachments.

And if we can acknowledge them as they arise, greet them even with a bow, then we might be on our way to liberation from hold over us.

Buddhism in essence is very simple. The commentaries on the Sutras are far longer and more complicated than the Sutras themselves in part, I think, because the teachings are almost too simple and direct for many individuals to grasp. A Truth so simple must be bogus, right?

The basics are that we live in the World of Perception -- which is in fact an illusion, in some aspects a delusion. This World of Perception-Illusion doesn't have any corporeal existence. There is ultimately nothing there, that is to say nothing we can perceive. 

This Great Nothingness or Void is the ground state of being. Everything that "is" -- including ourselves -- arises from it, and thus, everything that "is" is ultimately the same thing. Our perception of separateness is an illusion. We can't shake that illusion, and in reality, we don't have to. A better approach is to accept the alternative and apparently actual reality along with the illusion. To understand they are intertwined and cannot be separated, don't need to be separated, and by accepting both, simultaneously, one approaches the nonduality that is the energy of Buddhist thought and practice. 

In essence, this is the process the Buddha went through during his years of fasting, contemplation, meditation, study and struggle to grasp what's really going on. 

And then he shared it with his disciples who then shared it with the rest of us and whose descendants do so today.

"The Dharma is vast and subtle..." Well, yeah, but it is also very simple. 

Vimalakirti's insight -- which he shared with gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople, anyone who would listen -- was that having grasped this subtle simplicity, a whole new universe, indeed an inter-nested series of Universes -- opens up within us. What we can perceive is just a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal corner of the "vast and subtle", inconceivable and incomprehensible reality/unreality that we are part of. Our languages can't adequately express it. We just have to accept it. 

The commentary that came with my version of Vimalakirti's Teaching Sutra (211 page pdf) by a well-known rinpoche is longer than the sutra itself and is centered on how stupid the commentator is and how little he understands the arguments and dialogues of the various gods, goddesses, and so on, with Vimalakirti. 

Well, OK.

He describes the appearance of things as they are presented in the sutra and then states his utter ignorance and inability to grasp any meaning from it.

The Teachings are so far beyond him.

OK. 

No, from my perspective, it's not that hard. It really isn't. And Attachment in the broadest sense is what can prevent an individual -- even a rinpoche -- from grasping the teaching of the Dharma in this (or any) sutra.

We may be attached to our ignorance, for example, or to the appearance of our ignorance, and if we acknowledge and even respect that attachment, it can begin to lose its power over us. It doesn't mean it goes away -- it may be an integral part of our identity in the material world, after all! -- but our attachment to our ignorance, say, doesn't have to be in control.

Much of what Vimalakirti is teaching is to help us (even gods and goddesses) to "let go." Not to deny but to acknowledge and recognize and then to let go of what came to be called our "hang ups." Don't fret over them. 

Don't try to get rid of them. Don't judge them. Don't fear them, but don't yield to them, either. There are myriad Universes beyond our perceptions. We are less than motes of dust in that context. Even as gods and goddesses.

And that's all right.

At the beginning of this practice period, the Dharma teacher said to me, "Desire is Life." It threw me for a loop because I had long operated on the idea (from the Buddha) that Desire or Attachment to Desire was the source of suffering, which ideally we want to end -- for ourselves and all sentient beings. Right?

Right?

In some sense, maybe. But that's what the Buddha teaches; it is the core of his teaching! 

And?

Without Life in the World of Perception, you don't and can't experience suffering nor can you do anything to end suffering for yourself or anyone else. Letting go of our Attachment to Desire and Suffering doesn't end them so long as we are alive, but it does let us see them more clearly and it can end their control over our lives. 

Once we are free of that control, we can begin to help others free themselves, though we are still experiencing Desires and the Suffering they cause. 

And that is the Dharma of Vimalakirti's teaching as I see it. 

 

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.)"

How Very Alone He Seemed

Yesterday's Dharma talk included a number of quotes from Suzuki Roshi's own Dharma talks in 1969 soon after Tassajara Zen Mountain Center came to be. 

A film was made by KQED in 1968, shortly after the establishment of the Zen Mountain Center monastery at Tassajara Hot Springs above Big Sur that shows Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker at both Sokoji Temple in San Francisco and at Tassajara as well as various students and supporters talking about Zen in America. 

The film seems primitive by today's standards. It appears to have been shot on Super 8 film (both silent and sound) then transferred to 16mm and overdubbed. The camera work is sometimes shaky and out of focus, as amateur film making tended to be in those days. Yet there's an honesty about it that is both charming and fascinating to students like me whose contact with Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker was physically slight (I'm still sure I never met either of them in person, and yet when I see them in this film or in other clips, I feel as if I must have met them at some point in my journey) but spiritually powerful.

And one thing I notice is that despite being with Richard Baker and Zen students and supporters throughout his sojourn in America, Suzuki Roshi seems always so very much alone. He's an exotic and he seems to know it. He's here to transmit the Dharma and Zen from Japan to the small-ish circle of adherents he was able to attract and keep interested in something new -- as Zen was still very new in the United States, even up to 1971 and Roshi's death from cancer.

He brought Zen from Japan but adapted it to the US and particularly to San Francisco as it was during the young people's cultural transition from the Beats to the Hippies. I don't want to say that Zen led the way, but maybe it did. What I notice though is that Suzuki Roshi wasn't concerned with that so much as he was with communicating the essence of Zen practice -- as he was trained for and knew it in Japan before, during and after WWII -- to a new audience and in forming a community to continue the practice indefinitely.

I've pointed out that I came to Zen when I was a teenager through the novels of Jack Kerouac and an innate curiosity about something I knew nothing of, the way of Japan and Buddhism. Just curious, that's all, and yet I found so many connections, superficial and very deep, between my being and those of Zen practitioners like Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker -- without whom I would not "know" Zen today. (There's nothing to know, so I don't "know" Zen; it's merely a convenient figure of speech...)

Zen was never popular in Japan, and in an overall sense, it's not popular in the United States either. It's a "specialty practice," indeed, often an elite practice, something done by those who cannot find satisfaction of their spiritual interests and needs in other forms of Buddhism or religion. Or like me, it's practiced by those who fell into it at some point in their lives, early or late, learned to practice and never stopped. 

Suzuki Roshi was the catalyst and early teacher, called "Roshi" to his laughter, but in the Zen sense, a sensei. Teacher. 

There's something so simple and straightforward about his presentation, something you don't often see in today's Zen -- which seems to me to be something else, not the Zen Suzuki Roshi and a few others brought to the US from Japan. 

I can't say exactly what it is -- or was. I don't know. Zen-not-Zen-no-Zen.

Cognitive dissonance!

I do recommend Suzuki Roshi's early Dharma talks, and the collection of some of those talks in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Pretty much all of it is available online, easily accessible, and for me at any rate, compelling. 

How very alone he seemed. And yet at root, there is no distinction, separation, or "aloneness." 

Bodhisattvas Again

Zen liberates bodhisattvas into the world of presence. 

That's what I call it: "World of Presence", our ordinary, everyday perception of reality.

As we know, however, that's an illusion.

A dream as it were.

It doesn't have any ultimate existence.

But because it is our general, ordinary perception of reality, and we conduct our lives within it, the bodhisattva's presence is also called for and called forth.

The bodhisattva, on the path to Buddhahood, lingers in the World of Presence, the material world, to help guide other sentient beings to liberation and Buddhahood for themselves. The Bodhisattva vow is to liberate all sentient beings. 

Buddhahood is ultimate liberation from suffering (ie: living in the World of Presence) we are led to believe, and many of us do believe it, and yet some of the sutras says that Buddhahood is itself an illusion, a dream as it were, and there is no ultimate liberation from suffering because there is no suffering at the ultimate level of... well, what is it?

"It" is the wrong term. There is no "it."

If we actually probe to the limit of perception/existence, delve as deeply as possible into the material world, we find, perhaps to our surprise, that there is no there there. Nothing, in other words. What we regard as "something," or "anything" or "everything," is not there. There is "nothing" there -- emptiness, void. Absence of "thing."

That is the ground state we can perceive if we delve deeply enough, from which "thing" -- everything -- arises. Because it is a ground state we can perceive if we delve deeply enough, probe with our minds and with our tools, it too is an illusion, That is not the ultimate. But it is the ground from which, thorough which, everything else manifests.

We cannot probe any deeper with our minds or with our tools, but we know there is a deeper inconceivable "reality" underlying it. "It." But there is no "it."

Bodhisattvas are called forth to help with compassion those on the journey through the material world, perhaps toward Buddhahood, or perhaps not. It doesn't matter. A bodhisattva is a teacher and a guide and a helper. Bodhisattvas are everywhere: not only teachers, guides, and compassionate caregivers. We often don't recognize them or we take them for granted out of habits of mind that simply don't recognize much beyond our own selfish needs and desires. The gift of a bodhisattva can go unnoticed in the press of events and the furious activity of the moment. But they are there, all around us, right next to us, and yes, sometimes the bodhisattvas are we ourselves.

We may not recognize the bodhisattva in ourselves. 

Vimalakirti takes on all the gods, buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike in his teaching we're studying in this Fall Practice Period. Though a layman himself, he doesn't hesitate to correct and instruct those around him, no matter their status, when he perceives them failing or flailing in their efforts to observe the proper forms of observance and devotion. 

In a sense, he tells them to throw it all away. None of it means anything. It accomplishes nothing. At best, observance is an empty gesture; at worst it's merely fraud.

Live your life. That is practice.

Other bodhisattvas, even the Buddha himself, say the same thing. Your life is your practice. Focus there, not outside yourself, not on some arcane ritual, not on sitting in meditation. 

None of it matters.

In Zen, sitting is a duty, but it's not a product, and it is not meant to produce anything. We don't sit for a purpose. We sit to sit. 

Sitting is and isn't a means, skillful or otherwise, toward some end other than sitting. It is a means because sitting can be like opening a window beyond our usual expectations or experience. It can be. It isn't always. 

It isn't a means because there is nothing ultimately beyond it. We sit to sit, no other purpose. But in sitting we can gain a more complete comprehension of ourselves. 

Our roshi got into a bit of hot water a while back by saying that we sit with intention, aspiration, and/or motivation. We don't. Later on, roshi corrected this notion by saying "we sit to sit." No other reason or aspiration in sitting. But our lives -- which include sitting! -- are motivated with intention and aspiration, in the Bodhisattva Way to liberate all sentient beings from suffering. 

We take vows as Zen practitioners, after all. Bodhisattva vows. 

And none of us is perfect. That's all right. 

Second Sesshin of the Year

And second time I've participated in sesshin in my life. 

Starting the first day with Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi's Dharma talk on August 21, 1971 --  podcast or transcript.

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

Note: in sesshin, there are plenty many "don't do's" including "don't journal" like I'm doing now. As an inveterate rule breaker, I feel little guilt at not following the rule here, in part due to the liberation I was granted from monkish observance way back in the day. A whole list of "don't do's", page after page of them, was read off as part of the introduction to sesshin last night, and I'm sure it startled, even put off, some of the potential global participants. 

They can't do that at home; if we were in a monastery, maybe. 

I'll just quote something that Suzuki Roshi said in explanation of a quote from Dogen in that Dharma talk so long ago -- a few months before he died:

“When all things are Buddhism—all things are Buddhism, there are defilement, practice—defilement, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings.”  The point is they are—they are.  All things are Buddhism.  Whatever you do, that is Buddhism.  But there is some danger in your understanding of this kind of words—statement.  “Whatever you do, that is Buddhism.”  You know, whatever you do in Tassajara, or in city zendō, or in city life, that is Buddhism.  It looks like—it sound like this:  “Whatever we do, it doesn’t matter.  Anyway [laughs], that is a practice of Buddhism.”  If it is so, there is—it is not necessary for you to study Buddhism, whatever—if whatever you do, that is Buddhism.

But actually, what Dōgen-zenji meant is not—is not like that.  So there—there is, maybe, in—in—when you understand this statement, “Whatever you do, that is,” you know, “Buddhism.”  There may be two ways of understanding it.  One is, whatever you do [laughs], you know, if you understand—you take this statement literally, from your non-Buddhist—non-Buddhistic understanding.  That is one, you know.

1971, it was a different world, very different I think, and he's getting into the whole notion of Buddhist "liberation" and what it means in the modern world having seen how the idea was misinterpreted by some of his followers who took it to mean license. If everything is Buddhism and there is no judgement then "liberation" means you can do whatever you want, right? Whatever urge you may have at any given moment is OK because everything in every moment is Buddhism, right?

Well, yes it is, but it doesn't mean what you might think it means.

No, you have precepts: right thinking, right understanding, right behavior. And there are rules, many rules, that constrain the thoughts and actions of priests and monks and laypeople alike, though not all the rules apply equally to all practitioners. 

But in 1971, the precepts were not fully understood, nor were they fully observed by many (most?) Western devotees of Suzuki-Roshi. So he tries to make clear, and not for the first time, that "liberation" in a Buddhist concept is not license.

In my own case as a teenager in 1965 or even 1964 -- memory falters -- I wasn't and couldn't be in a monastic setting in San Francisco or later at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, so I was granted a kind of dispensation, you might say, to practice at home and adapt the Rules as was able to. I believe this dispensation was granted by Richard Baker, Suzuki Roshi's right hand and successor at San Francisco Zen Center, as a skillful means of introducing me to and keeping me following Zen practice no matter my situation. Over the years, I've found few Buddhist leaders who require strict observance of all Rules by all practitioners. But the Precepts form the basis of assessment of individuals. How closely do you follow them? What failures have you had? What lessons have you learned? So.

In addition to starting the day with Dharma talks by Suzuki Roshi, I also review the reminiscences of David Chadwick, an early adopter and current practitioner of Zen in America as brought and taught by Suzuki Roshi so very long ago. They are potent reminders of my early practice and of some of the people I never knew.

Then to round things out, there is the study and review of Vimalakirti's Teaching Sutra which I expect to return to many times.

Sitting zazen when I can and am moved to. 

And it's about time to start the Morning Sit. 

 

"Why Are You All So Grim?"

A story is told of Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master, visiting Green Gulch Farms in Marin County, California, sometime in the '80s during a period when the San Francisco Zen Center (of which Green Gulch like Tassajara was a part) was going through some very stressful times.

As he walked around the farm and walked the path of kinhin (walking meditation) used by the residents, visitors and monks, a path that led through forest and toward the sea, he is said to have said:

"You have one of the most beautiful kinhin pathways in North America. Why are you all so grim?"

And when I heard that from a long-time worker, student and teacher at Green Gulch, I had a sudden flash of enlightenment (satori) that yes, students of the Dharma, whether through Zen or some other way, are often, too often, far too grim -- at least appear to be.

We sometimes become attached to adversity and suffering. I witnessed it a few minutes ago when reviewing yesterday's Dharma talk by the Zen center's Roshi.  And when we are attached, we suffer and become grim, even in the presence of natural beauty such as that at Green Gulch. We are not, in other words, in the moment, experiencing and appreciating what is there and then. We are instead immersed in our misery or as we learn from the sutra of Vimalakiriti, in the delusion of our misery.

It's been interesting to see how Vimalakirti's teaching has been approached during this practice period. Many have said they never knew of it, never read it, never studied it, and some at least have not read it even now during the practice period. Of those who have, they seem somewhat off-put by it; it's not in the standard pattern of Buddhist sutras, in fact it's far outside the mainstream. It's in a word: radical.

It's a pageant, it's magical realism, it's a knock upside the head, not unlike the whap with the tomahawk I experienced in July from a stranger who invaded my home.

It's a "Hey!" 

Vimalakirti is saying "Hey!" to all the gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike that, "Hey! You're doing it wrong!" Why are you all so grim?

Vimalakirti has taken on the sickness of the world, as a bodhisattva would, and he is therefore physically "sick" -- ie: feigning sickness. But his realization and teaching is that "sickness" and "suffering" are illusions, delusions if you want, and attachment to them perpetuates them. Detach, liberate yourselves, and even if you are physically ill -- or the world is sick -- on the material plane, that is not, by any means, the ultimate reality. 

I've been reviewing some of Suzuki Roshi's teachings from back in the day. He tries over and over again to get this very point across. Ultimate reality is that there is no "reality"; it's all an illusion. Words fail, however, because our concepts are illusory themselves. The ground state -- what I call the ground state -- is inexpressible. It is neither there nor not there. Neither real nor unreal. It's beyond that. Beyond duality.

But saying so doesn't tell us much. You have to experience it, which Vimalakirti does... But having done so, the challenge is to communicate it. Ever the challenge. Communicate it to the gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike. 

Pfft. 

Well, he tries. And they all say they understand. But of course they lie.

Maybe the trick really is to just ask:

Why are you all so grim?

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?

On Returning Home to New Mexico After One Last Trip to California

My travel companion and I made it back to New Mexico yesterday, and we've been decompressing and dealing with the altitude ever since. Spending a week near sea level for the first time in years means that when you get up at altitude (6-7000 ft) it takes some getting used to. 

And there's all the recollection of the trip to do. My companion may think of herself as "a simple girl from Gallup" but she's been in the Army serving in Korea, is finishing her Masters at a prestigious East Coast university, is planning on a trip to Europe a week from now (subject to change due to possible upcoming job), and is becoming well known in art and museum circles as a force of nature. She's an artist, a curator, a scholar, and a fine human being. The rest of us could take a lesson or two from people like her.

She toured me around Gallup when we got back. It was good because I was not that familiar with the town, and I certainly didn't know all the hidden pockets and the many stories she could tell of families and squabbles and living rough. Gallup has a notorious reputation, some of which is well-deserved, for racism, drunken Indians and more than its share of violence. But she obviously feels great empathy and high regard for the place and the people. So I was grateful to be taken around, to meet an old friend of hers, and to just consider the kind of life she's led, how it differs from the Standard Model, and how those differences can be an advantage and a curse. And to contemplate the differences between her life now and what it was like when she was "just a simple girl from Gallup."

She's been to California before, but she never experienced the places we went or if she had been to one or more of them (like Monterey) she'd never spent the time we did or explored the corners and intersections we did.

Nor had she seen a buffalo herd or an elephant seal refuge in California. Never stood on a beach watching a sea otter hammer a clam shell on its chest. She'd never seen ostriches running free in California nor had she visited a California mission before. She'd never been to Big Sur, never crossed the Bixby Canyon bridge, been in a redwood grove or late lunched at Nepenthe. Never been on Highway 1 at all that she remembered. 

She'd never seen Hearst's Castle glowing in the sunset light atop La Cuesta Encantada, nor did she know exactly what it was.

She'd never had split pea soup for breakfast, nor, honestly, had I. But I love Andersen's Split Pea Soup, and soon enough, so did she. But these days, it's hard to find, and we left the pea soup restaurant with cans to take home. 

She'd never been to the Cesar Chavez National Monument, nor had I, and we both got choked up remembering or learning the story of the rise and struggle of the United Farm Workers Union. She'd never seen field workers in the numbers we saw on our rural journey through the farms and orchards and vineyards and ranches. She saw how hard they worked and sensed how little they were regarded. 

She'd never been a fan of John Steinbeck, but since she read the opening paragraphs of Cannery Row on a street sign in Monterey, she thinks she'll become one. I gave her the book. 

She's never been a fan of "Ti Jean" Kerouac and never read his books, but she thinks she might become a fan and read his books after experiencing parts of Big Sur and hearing my story of how he drank himself to death after achieving fame for On the Road, c. 1957. I gave her a copy of his creative nonfiction novel Big Sur and asked her to read it after reading Cannery Row.

Returning home to New Mexico. Fall afternoon, sun low in the southwest, almost fruitcake weather. Oh so glad we went. Oh so glad to be home, greeted by a passel of kedies. "Where have you been?!" 

Where I needed to be. And now where I need to be. The Dharma Talks I missed while on the road are now posted online. I'll give myself time to decompress and catch up. Routines will return. Life goes on.

Briefly Back to the Theater

As I say, this trip is in part a pilgrimage, and yesterday we were able to briefly revisit the theater where so much of my life and Ms. Ché's life was centered from 1973 to 1983, and really long after that. 

We arrived unannounced and found an unlocked door and proceeded into the lobby where a startled young woman asked, "Yes?" Indeed.

And I explained that I was an alumnus of the institution and was interested in just looking into the auditorium for a few minutes' nostalgia and memory. Would that be possible? And I've brought a friend so she could see where we spent so much of our youth. Could we?

"No. Well, maybe. The theater is closed for the time being, and we're very short staffed, but... " She was acting confused. Another young lady came from behind a door.

"Yes?" So I explained again, and again I was told about the short staffing and how it might be difficult to find someone to go with us, but she would check, and return shortly. 

A few minutes later a young man, well young to me, came through the lobby and greeted me and my travel companion, and I explained one more time, and he was thrilled and delighted, and he said, "Sure, come along," and off we went on an extended and compelling tour of the theater where literally my life was transformed and saved in a way all those many decades ago. 

It hasn't changed a whole lot. Some of it hasn't changed at all. Those changes that have been made are, so far as I could tell, for the better, much better, and everyone involved I think should be proud. 

We went up and down and all around and at times I felt I was home again. I think this is a big part of why I wanted to go on this trip. It's not just for the memories and nostalgia for les temps perdu. It is the recapture, if only for a moment, of "home" -- wherever and whenever that home was established, and whatever sort of home it might have been.

I've noticed the places we've avoided and though I've lived there, they were never "home." Everywhere we've stopped and spent time has been a home-place of one sort or another, and every time we've had wonderful encounters with extraordinary people who in some ways were always there. Even in Monterey, where I've never lived but have always felt a kinship to, comfortable and in place, we had extraordinary encounters with remarkable people, some strangers, some not, and that's how this trip has gone throughout.

And so it goes. Briefly I was back in the theater that became so much a part of me many decades ago. It was strange that at times we were the only ones there, and my mind's eye was filling it with casts and crews and the swirl of activity that was intrinsic to the operation. Ghosts, if you will, of what once was everyday. Now because of Covid, the work has stopped or been transferred off site or... well, it's complicated. The place could even be called an empty shell of what it once was, and yet for me all that life and life-giving and sharing is deeply, deeply a part of me and a part of that place. The building houses spirit. Those of us who have been through it know that, as did our tour guide, the current production manager, and we... bonded?.. with our shared sense of what was and what could be, despite the generation or more that separated us in age.

Things change, oh yes. But some things stay the same.

And the Zen of all this continues to astonish. Enlightenment? Nah. 

Well, maybe...😉🙏

Making Pilgrimage at the Bixby Canyon Bridge

We were on a tight schedule, and Highway 1 twisting along the coast of California is not exactly a quick drive, so we didn't have a whole lot of time to gawp in wonder, nor did we stop particularly close to the Bixby Canyon Bridge of lore and legend and practically every fast driving commercial and movie we've ever seen. That's how my travel companion knows it, whereas I see it as an emblem or avatar of Kerouac's "Big Sur" -- the creative non-fiction novel of his descent into alcoholic madness after the publication and sudden success of "On the Road" in 1957.

Jack Kerouac went to dry out in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin or shack located some distance up the canyon from the bridge, but its presence is a character in the novel. He and those who came to visit him in the shack (and who brought him more liquor) passed under it and it figured as an arcing force throughout the novel. 

Many make pilgrimage to the bridge during the year, and when we arrived, many were already there, performing ceremony and worshiping. So we didn't stop at the first turnout. It was pretty much full,  and we'd already encountered stupid people in the road not far from it. 

We stopped at the second turnout -- which is where the picture above was taken. The bridge is barely visible in the distance -- something I like. 

There were pilgrims, but only a few, at the second turnout, and we had an interesting encounter with one who thought he was a comedian. There is a steep cliff after all below the turnout. Someone could fall. 

We took many pictures, I took deep breaths, became somewhat emotional and then we continued on our journey. 

In some ways, the whole trip is pilgrimage. 

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Note: Alternate names: "Bixby Bridge," "Bixby Creek Bridge," "that famous bridge neat Big Sur," "Big Sur Bridge", "that bridge on Highway 1," "Rainbow Bridge" etc., etc.

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While I was going through some of the literature we brought back from our trip to California, I came across a reference to this:

In some ways, it's horrifying. In other ways, aww, kinda cute and kinky, no?

When I first saw the reference, I thought "Wow, is that the ranch a little further up the canyon from Ferlinghetti's shack where 'Ti Jean' went to dry out and where that sad donkey who came to greet him lived?" But no. This is on top of the hill with a view of the canyon and bridge, not in the canyon by Ferlinghetti's shack. 

I'm sure other wonders will appear in due time...

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.

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.

On Losing Weight

I've lost about 40 pounds in the last few months. I need to lose 10 or 15 pounds more. But at this point, my clothes are mostly too big, I've got to punch more holes in my belts, I have more energy and can perform more tasks, and losing weight has proved to be quite a counter to the persistent fatigue that is a consequence of rheumatoid arthritis. 

I was at one point getting so heavy (at 240+ pounds) that I could barely get around, but sitting still or lying down was very uncomfortable too. I set a goal to lose weight, but even though I changed my diet, nothing seemed to happen for months. Then all of a sudden, weight started coming off, and I've tended to lose about a pound a week ever since -- with several plateaus along the way when nothing came off for a week or two.

I never consciously tried to lose weight in the past. In fact, for most of my life, I was darned skinny, tallish and not very well-built at all. A "rail." I didn't start gaining weight until I stopped smoking in the early '90s, but even then, I didn't weigh much above 180 or so -- which was still 40 pounds more than I'd weighed when I was smoking. Then when I developed rheumatoid arthritis about 6 years ago and was treated with large doses of prednisone, I gained weight at a remarkable clip, and even when I stopped taking prednisone, I kept gaining weight. 

It's only been about a year and a half ago that I set a goal of losing weight, at least 50 pounds, and less than a year since I actually started seeing weight loss. 

I feel better, much better. My rheumatoid arthritis is largely under control. I have not had a flare in several years, medications have been reduced, and overall, I'm well enough to accomplish much or most of what I set out to do. 

There is still so much more that needs doing. 

One of those things, of course, is this One Last Trip to California. I'm looking forward to it, and yet... there is a finality to it, a closing chapter, that I am struggling with. Ms. Ché isn't going, she has other plans (one of which involves taking a very sick cat to the vet) and she believes she is needed more here at home than on the road with me. And I think about how many times she and I made the trip between California and New Mexico on our own -- she often to attend writers' conferences, me to rest and work on the house -- and the times we came here together though we were still living in California. 

As we age, we see things differently, and reminiscence comes to the fore. As elders, we have stories to tell, and Ms. Ché has spent much of her life preparing to tell quite a story. I've been telling mine all along. But she's held back, mulling over the best way to communicate her extraordinary life. She's done it in plays and poems and creative nonfiction, but she's got so much more to add. I think that's part of what she'll be working on while I'm gone.

As for me, it's more like touching elements of the past, touching lightly, remembering positives, and doing a brief Kerouac-ian pilgrimage along Highway 1, Big Sur and Bixby Canyon and all that, just because. More than just that, though. There is a kinship that goes back a long way, and it's a form of honor. I wouldn't be back with Zen, for example, without Ti Jean's inspiration so long ago that came back in a flood. 

So. 

That's a minor update. Nothing more...

Listening to the Translator

Huh. Last evening's Dharma talk, or just talk, I'm not sure it was to be taken as Dharma, by the translator of the Vimalakirti Sutra was a hoot. 

Dude is 80 and has translated numerous Buddhist works and was ordained by the Dalai Lama and left the monastery to go teach at Columbia and who knows where else, and he has all kinds of degrees and not much of it matters because he doesn't know anything, and don't take what he says as gospel, he's just sharing what he can, you know?

He talked a mile a minute, clearly enjoying every minute of it, and informing the gathered multitude as he did, both about Vimalakirti and himself and Buddhism and whatever you want. I mean it's all the same in the end, isn't it?

I've said the sutra is one of the more enjoyable I've encountered, and after listening to Robert Thurman talk about it last evening, I think I know why. He loves it. He loves what he is able to do, and if he could, he would just keep doing it forever. But he's old, like so many of us are getting, and he won't be able to keep going forever, so why not meet in Costa Rica and have a grand old time? (He said he hoped to meet with Roshi in Costa Rica soon, or maybe somewhere else... but of course with the pandemic and the infirmities of age, it's not clear that that will ever be possible.)

So much of Zen and Buddhism is presented as something so damned serious and it's really not. Not if you scratch deep enough. There's a lot more hilarity and silliness than sometimes the abbots and roshis and senseis and such want to let on. 

And so, Robert Thurman has my admiration for making our task as students of the Sutra of Vimalakirti an enjoyable exercise, an uplifting Dharma teaching, and much less of a struggle than it might otherwise be.

🙏

Thurman's Wiki page is almost as fun as he is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Thurman

And if you're into this sort of thing, go to his own website:

https://bobthurman.com/

Contradictions: "You're Doing It Wrong!"

 Ha.

I do find the Sutra of Vimalakirti's Teaching to be funny and serious at the same time. It is filled with contradictions -- rather like Buddhism itself -- and it is almost entirely the story of Wealthy Householder Vimalakirti (sick) telling everyone, from the lowliest to the highest gods and Buddhas, you're doing it wrong.

Householder: Vimalakirti is a layman, not ordained or having taken vows or shut up in a monastery. Oh my no. He's a rich and important man in a rich and important city, though, and thus he has stature and merit, and he is listened to by the people of the city and his is well-regarded for his wisdom and generosity.

The Sutra of Vimalakirti is said to be over 2000 years old, going back nearly as far as the Sakyamuni Buddha himself. It's very, very different than practically anything you'd find in other spiritual texts of the era, certainly different than anything in the Bible. 

I call it "magical realism" in that the sutra is filled with gods and goddesses, buddhas, demons and their hordes of attendants and myriad people, bodhisattvas, bhikkus, and ordinaries in their various qualities and multitudes listening intently to the teachings of Vimalakirti and becoming enlightened spontaneously. 

Well, sure. Of course. 

It seems perfectly natural given the context.

Contradictions abound. Dualities and nondualities. We live our lives in a hot mess of "what is." If there is a purpose to the practice of Zen and Buddhism, it is threading our way through it and helping others along the way.

As someone said very early in my study: We are already enlightened; we do not acquire enlightenment through the practice or through any effort of our own. What happens is unfolding, rather like a lotus blossom opening. We come to the realization of what we already are. 

OK.

I haven't finished the sutra. I probably won't before leaving for California, but that's OK. There should be plenty of time to read it and re-read it before the end of the practice period. 

Vimalakirti

The Teaching of Vimalakirti Sutra (211 pg pdf with commentary) is the text for this practice period. I'm part way into it, and I said to one of the teachers that I found it astonishing, not at all what I expected, and filled with wonder. "It's poetic, isn't it?" I pondered that for a moment. No, or possibly yes, or both at once. It's a work of art. I thought but didn't say. A work of transcendent art. Not meant to be taken literally, with tens of thousands of gods and goddesses arrayed around the householder Vimalakirti to hear his teaching and obtain enlightenment. It's a metaphor. Magical realism, maybe.

Constant drumbeat of contrasting dualities. This not that, not this not that, nor this either. You're doing it wrong. Teaching the Mahabodhisattvas what they're doing wrong and how to do it right. No matter how close they come, how far they are from perfection, even the Lord Buddha himself.

One of the topics and questions I brought up at the initial practice interview was that of Desire, and how should we approach Desire without becoming attached to it, or rather attached to what we desire. As the Buddha found and says, Desire -- or attachment to what we desire -- is the cause of and source of Suffering. 

And I thought the response was fascinating, not at all what I expected, and something I'm continuing to chew over: "Desire is life."

Oh so many levels in that one simple phrase. I won't go through those levels here right now, as I am by no means of the Wisdom of householder Vimalakirti, but... yes. 

And I brought up the Enso, the uncompleted circle, the pattern of my life. Of so many lives.

I confess, I'm not following the discipline of the practice period this time around. I sit when I sit for as long as I sit rather than formally sitting at set times for set lengths of time with the rest of the participants in sangha. This is not an act of deliberate separation from the sangha. Indeed, when I settle among them, which is every day, several times a day, I feel embraced and embracing. The point, however, is that the sangha is of the mind, much more so than of the body, and once embraced and embracing of the sangha, it never goes away. It is part of you, and you are part of it, no matter what you are doing or where you are. Just so with sitting zazen and other forms and rituals of Buddhism and Zen. And, too, the Dharma. 

The forms and rituals of sitting and practice are training aids.

Once you "get it" you don't have to practice in that way, but you certainly can. Once you "get it" ideally your life becomes Practice. Full time.

Which is part of what Vimalakirti is getting at in his teaching of the gods and bodhisattvas and buddhas. 

Your practice is your life. 

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. 🙏

On Planning (One Last?) Trip to California

Wow. This has turned into a strange and headache making adventure, if you want to call it an adventure given that it's becoming more like a quest or troubled desire.

You see we still have stuff in storage in California that we weren't able to bring with us when we moved (9 years ago!) and haven't had the opportunity to move out here (or get rid of) since. I know moving is a big task -- especially if you've been in the same place many years as we were in our little house in California -- and sorting stuff and getting rid of stuff you don't need can take forever. Easier just to put it in storage and deal with it "later." But then the years go by, you have other things to do, and voila! The task you set never gets done.

So the time came. The storage unit rental had reached astronomical levels (I thought, anyway) and most of the stuff we have there is stuff I didn't know about because I was busy packing up the last of the house into the van while others were taking odds and ends I never saw to the storage unit in the rental truck.  

Three years ago (or was it four?) we did a quick trip out there to work on clearing out the storage, but we didn't get very far. Ms Che found something she treasured in the storage unit, something she thought had been lost forever, something of her mother's, and that was basically it as far as doing any more work there. We took three or four pick up loads of things that shouldn't have been saved in the first place to the dump, packed the treasure and a few other items (pictures and such, an antique floor lamp with a Downton Abbey shade) into the car and drove home to New Mexico.

That's when we discovered how much oil the car uses! Oh, I didn't know. It's an older Subaru and apparently they have an oil consumption issue I hadn't heard of until the engine ran out of oil just over the New Mexico border from Arizona. Well, we eventually made it home after limping into a truck stop and buying quarts and quarts of oil to put in the engine, and the car seems to have recovered well enough. We figure it can make it to California and back one more time -- so long as we add a quart of oil or so at every gasoline fill up. Details.

So after a year of going nowhere because of the pandemic, we got a terse little note from the storage facility that the automatic monthly charge had been turned down by the bank, and oh, there would be a late charge, and oh the rent is going up again (!) and oh, would I like to take care of it by check or credit card?

Oh, I'd like to get the stuff out of there and save the nearly $300 a month for other things.

Twenty Years On

I was going through old papers, burning the ones that didn't need saving -- meaning most of them -- and one that was kind of striking was the receipt from the Executive Hotel Pacific in Seattle for a five day stay, 9/10/2001 - 9/14/2001. The total was just over $600, whatever the Government rate was (I think it was $105 in Seattle at the time). The hotel is across the street from the Central Library and my room (on the 5th floor?) faced the construction site. The old library was being demolished in preparation to construct the new gleaming one that stands on the site today. I remember waking up to the sound of what I thought was a pile driver and a wailing siren. It was just about 6am.

I washed up and kept hearing the siren and pile driver. I remember looking out the window at the construction site. Didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The morning was a little bit foggy. I turned on the teevee, and the news on every channel running news was showing the burning World Trade Center Tower, the hairdos and makeup jobs expressing puzzlement, most seeming to think it was an accident that probably involved a small private plane. And then a large, four engine jet, probably a commercial airliner, appeared out of nowhere on the screen and struck the second tower. I think the talking heads were talking with the camera on them when this happened. It may or may not have been split screen. I'm not sure now. 

But suddenly, the talking heads seemed to realize what was happening was no accident. They were still puzzled. But two planes into two towers was no coincidence. Their ear pieces were were no doubt filled with chatter from producers and floor directors and such. I watched for a while, switching channels, and just after 7:00am, I called the office to find out what the plan for the day would be. "Come in," I was told. "We'll do what we can."

What that was, who knew?

I continued watching the news until shortly after the Pentagon was hit, and then I walked to the office a few blocks away.

What we did was watch the news on the big screen and try to get direction from HQ in DC. They initially said continue with our original schedule. I was conducting training classes, so that's what I was to do for the interim. The class was a disaster. Half the students didn't show up, and those that did couldn't concentrate, so we broke up and went into the meeting room to watch the news on the big screen. Everyone was sent home early, the class told to return in the morning to pick up where we left off. 

Surprisingly, or maybe not, we were able to complete the training the following day, and I spent the next two days in Seattle strategizing ways to get home (no commercial flights, remember?) and helping out with office things when I could. Everyone was in a daze, uncomprehending really. No one that I was aware of was in a rage of bloodlust determined to go war-rampaging in the Middle East. The news was on the big screen, but we only watched occasionally. Nobody actually knew what was going on or what would happen, and HQ in DC was not at all communicative. 

Finally, I was able to rent a car from Alamo and a colleague and I loaded up and headed south. Took two days. We were practically silent the whole way, in shock. Much shaking of heads at the news on the car radio. "This will not turn out well." No, no it won't. And no it didn't. One tragic thing has led to another and to many, many others since. 

I applaud getting out of Afghanistan -- even when Trump announced it. It was the right thing to do, as I believed sincerely that going into Afghanistan on the side of myriad murderous warlords was wrong. Afghanistan was not the cause of the 9/11/2001 attacks, and it wouldn't be the cause of the Endless Wars our rulers decided to conduct. Afghanistan wasn't even a side-show to all of that and yet it bled like any other war-theatre, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or they wore the wrong kind of clothes or the war-gamers in Florida wanted/needed a kill for the win. It was a foolish goon show that did nothing at all to lift either Afghanistan or the US or perhaps especially Nato from the mire of neo-imperialism.

It's supposedly "over". We'll see.

I left government service in 2009, fed up with the increasing insanity within. That's what I saw. A creeping but unstoppable insanity that was consuming government and those who served. It became worse, much worse, upon the election of Barack Obama, and that's when I became convinced I had to get out. I know many of my colleagues saw the same trends, and many got out before I did. Some died. 

On the internet we discuss how Bad this or that Leader is, how deeply antithetical Government is to the wants and needs of The People -- however we define that mass -- and how grotesque the Government is and has been, yada-yada, world without end. 

It's team sports. It's a game. Nothing fundamental ever changes. We may rail and argue constantly, but how many have any intent to change anything for the better or even understand there may be something better to change to? We coulda. We shoulda. We didn't.

So here we are.

Biden is providing a pause to the general insanity of Government, but the overall trend remains the same. The continuing hysterics over the withdrawal from Afghanistan shows how deeply compromised and corrupted the so-called "defense" industry and almost all the media has become -- or maybe they always were. To me, it's most stark on BBC where there appears to be a neo-imperial cult in charge, and where nothing at all is ever permitted to counter the Official Narrative that Afghanistan was Wonderful under the rule of the Imperial Powers/USA, and everything has gone to shit under the Taliban, though sotto voce, you might hear something like (shh, it's the way most Afghans want it....shhhh). 

Getting out was a matter of my own sanity. Getting as far away as I prudently could was part of that. And then one day the Madness came silently up behind me and thwacked me solidly on the head. I still have a divot in my brow-ridge where that tomahawk (come on!) hit me. That was a reminder that I'm not that far away from it at all. It can come up behind us at any time and Thwack! 

Twenty years on, everything is different, but nothing really has changed. 

The Lake Tahoe Place

Well. The Caldor Fire has apparently topped Echo Summit and is burning downslope toward the Tahoe Basin. Summer people and year-round residents are packing up and leaving, though evacuations have not yet been ordered for the South Lake Tahoe area. The smoke, they say, is driving a lot of people to leave now rather than wait for the order.

The Lake (as it was called, still is, I imagine) was a refuge from the summer heat in the Valley. My sister's first husband's family had a "place at The Lake" that they'd go to when the Valley heat got to be too much, but by the time I knew about the Tahoe place, most of his family had either died or had moved away, so the "place at The Lake" sat empty some summers. 

One year, though, we all went up there. My mother, me, my sister and her husband, and their (then) two kids. 

It was kind of crowded, but we made do. The place was no mansion, but it was charming, old and a little creaky, dusty and musty. It appeared to be a log cabin -- and for a log cabin, it was very large. I learned that it wasn't actually built of logs, though. It was a straightforward frame house that had split log siding on the outside, and log-style panels applied to some rooms of the inside. There was a big rock fireplace in the living room made from rocks collected near the building site. That site was on the South Shore, right on the Lake. There was a steep stairway down to the beach and from there was a dock and boathouse. The boathouse contained a Chris Craft speed boat, very elegant but small compared to some of the other boats plying the lake, and not nearly as fast as they were either.

There was a garage on the street, and the back end of the garage was fitted up as a maid's room with a bathroom. There was no maid, though, and my brother in law said they hadn't had one for as long as he could remember. So the room in the garage was kept as a potential guest room but hadn't been used for that either. 

The place/cabin/house itself had two bedrooms and a bathroom, and there was a room upstairs that had a bed in it but was really just an unfinished attic room. There was a "winter kitchen" when you entered (from the back of the house) that had a wood range, and a "summer kitchen" just beyond that had an old gas range on legs and a small old electric refrigerator. 

The living room had an open ceiling, and hanging from the rafters was a huge (at least to me) gas chandelier. Well, it had originally been gas but was converted to electricity. There were other gas lights in the house that were now electric. There was a calendar in the kitchen dated 1904, and my brother-in-law said that this place was one of the first "cabins" built on the South Shore, if not the first. It was very plain and primitive compared to some of the mansions that had gone up since. 

Decorating the place were many Native American baskets, some used for storage but most just on display. I'd say, thinking back, there were probably 20 or 30 altogether, mostly small or medium size, tightly woven, while a few were large and held kindling wood and paper for the fireplace. I thought they were fascinating, and I was told they were purchased from Natives that lived (at one time) in the area.

Furnishings were made of logs, though the beds were brass. There was a dining table set up in the living room. There was a big picture window in the living room facing the lake. A long, not too wide porch was accessed from the living room, but the door stuck, and so the porch was actually reached from the yard after going out the kitchen door which scraped on the floor but wasn't stuck. The yard was dotted with pine trees and was quite large, especially the front yard. The bathroom had a corner sink, a toilet with a high tank and pull chain and a clawfoot tub. 

Altogether, the place seemed idyllic and I enjoyed the time we spent there. It was something completely new to me. It was something that rich people did. My brother-in-law's family was upper middle class. I thought of them as rich, but they wouldn't have agreed. When my brother-in-law's grandmother died in 1962, the place a Tahoe was sold as part of settling her estate. I don't recall the amount it was sold for, but it was not much for such a prime location, and I remember my sister said it was sold essentially for the land value, and she thought it wouldn't be there in a couple of years as the older places on the South Shore were being bought up by developers as tear-downs to be replaced with condos. 

That was a sad thought, but "progress" was what it was. I didn't really think about it much after that. 

Maybe ten years later, I took my wife to Lake Tahoe and drove around looking for the house. I told her I didn't think it would be there any more, that it had probably been replaced with condos like so many had been. We drove down the road on which it had been, and I didn't find it. I saw lots of condos instead, and it made me very sad. 

Turns out, I hadn't driven far enough. In fact the house/cabin/place is still there, looking from the outside almost identical to what I remembered. I found it one day idylly cruising Google Street View. How about that? It surprised the heck out of me. "That's it!" Yep.

Then to my even greater surprise as I was re-viewing the area because of the looming fire catastrophe, I found a listing for it on Bookings.com -- a listing that said it wasn't available now, but had been available for short term rental since 2016. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

This is the listing:

https://www.booking.com/hotel/us/lakeview-holiday-home-897.html

There are 24 photos in the gallery. Some has changed, but much is as I remember it. 

This is the back of the house/cabin/place. The log siding has been replaced with board siding. Where the deck is was a lean-to addition that had the wood-range in it. There was no dormer. Everything else, though, including the pine trees, is as I remember it. 

This is the front porch, lake in the background. Note the slender log posts. This is as I remember it.

This is the living room. Some changes have been made. The fireplace is the same, I think even the mirror over the fireplace is the same, though the wood-stove insert is new. We had an open fire to take off the chill of morning. The picture window is similar if not identical. I don't remember the dining table in front of the window, though. I think it was on the opposite wall. What is so strikingly different, however, is the whiteness of the room and the closed ceiling. It really changes the feel of it. When I was there, the ceiling was open to the rafters above. The walls were paneled in faux logs. It was dark-feeling. But not actually dark because of the big window. The big electrified gasolier that hung from the rafters was turned on at night and despite it five or six globes, it cast a soft warm light rather than the bright light I expected. I wouldn't be surprised if the light bulbs had been there forever and were original Edison 25w or something. 

This is the opposite wall of the living room. I won't say for certain, but it's possible this is the same furniture as was there when I was there, just with new-ish cushions. What was there was made of logs, so... could be. There was no wall heater, no heat at all except for the fireplace, the walls were the faux log paneling, the ceiling was open, and there was no opening in the wall from the kitchen. Other than that, the table and chairs were on this wall, the sofa up against the picture window, and the other chairs were by the fireplace.

Another view of the living room. The corner cupboard was there. Filled with Native baskets and odds and ends. The door to the porch, I think, had glass in it but I could be wrong. All the windows had to be shuttered for the winter, and the shutters were kept in the garage. Taking down all the shutters was quite a job. 

This is the kitchen. It's hardly changed at all. You can see the bathroom through the door at the end. What's different is newish flooring -- I remember rough boards. The walls are white. I remember a kind of buff tending toward orange. The stove is newish, but it's in the same place as the leggy gas stove that I remember. Beside the sink is a laundry tub but the sink is the same, the laundry tub is the same, and the window is the same. There was no window into the living room above the stove though. The open shelves look to be the same as well except for the color. The butcher block next to the stove actually may have been there, but I don't remember it. The ceiling in this part of the house was enclosed as it is now.

This is the bathroom. The sink and little medicine cabinet are the same. The glassed in shower, no. As I say, there was a clawfoot tub. It may or may not have had a shower attachment and one of those oval shower curtain rods. I think it did, but I can't be sure. I know it smelled a little musty. The toilet was where the camera is for the photo.

This is the front bedroom where my sister and her husband slept on a brass double bed. The chair may be original, the bed and nightstands aren't. The enclosed ceiling, though, is what I remember. 

This is the back bedroom where my mother and I slept on two twin sized brass beds. I don't know how they fit in there, but they did! The kids, I remember, slept in the living room, one on the couch (the girl) and one in a sleeping bag on the floor (the boy.)

This is the lake-side front of the house. Except for the dormer, it's the same.

And finally, this is the lake view from the front. You can barely make out the stairs to the beach in the distance. There was a dock and a boathouse with a motor-boat, but they're gone now, I suspect lost in one of the storms that rocked the Lake some years ago. They may have been removed due to policy changes. I don't know. But they're gone.

I also don't know if the fire will get as far as the South Shore. Probably not, but just the chance that it might is disturbing, depressing. I've been seeing some of the consequences of the fires in California on the AlertWildFire website, and it's terrible. 

I don't think California will come out of this fire season the same at all. I grieve for what has been lost, as I did when Paradise burned to the ground. Ironic? Emblematic? I don't know. 

There have been many wild fires in California in the past, and when I was a kid, I used to watch the San Gabriel Mountains burn every year. But this time... it's different. 

I'm planning a trip to California -- probably for the last time -- in October. I hope the fires will be at least contained if not out. But you never know. 

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Going back and embiggening the pictures, there's no doubt that this is the house/cabin/place at The Lake I visited and stayed at many years ago, but my memories of it are... cough... somewhat faulty. 

First, I'm not sure now that the interior and exterior were log or imitation log. That's how I remember it, but looking at the pictures, I suspect the board siding was what was on the place when I stayed there and the interior was wood paneled but not to resemble logs. The rooms were not painted white. The kitchen and bathroom were painted, I think, but none of the other rooms were. The living room had a ceiling over part of the space, but there was no ceiling over the picture window and fireplace area. I note in the pictures that there is a lean-to addition at one end of the kitchen but I remember one where the back deck is now. My memory also turns the kitchen around. What I'm wondering is whether there was an entrance door through the current lean-to as well as an entrance in the now-gone lean-to. There had to be some place for the wood-burning range, and there appears to be no place for it in the current arrangement. 

As I've said before, memory can play strange tricks on us. Sometimes the most crystal clear memories are, for lack of a better word, false. Other times, they're like dreams. Elements are real enough, while a good deal of what we may remember is not real. It didn't happen, or maybe it happened but not the way we remember it. 

This is the place at The Lake, no doubt about it. And it's much the same as I remember it. But details, let's say, are not as sharp as I would like to think of them. 

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So the fires were diverted to Kirkwood, and all is sort of kind of well at SLT these days, smoke or no. 

I loved the media narrative that the folks who had to evacuate were "blue collar workers" who can't afford to live anywhere else in the Tahoe Basin. Yeah, right. 

No, most weren't. They were year-round and summer people, newcomers and long timers who see The  Lake as a kind of Paradise Escape, who -- mostly -- brought the suburbs with them, and their condos and "cabins" showed it. Their places, for the most part, weren't the mansions of the hyper-rich that dot The Lake's margins, but they were by no means shacks of the poor and working class. They are very much upper middle class substantial suburban houses and condos set in the forest. Had the fires come into South Lake Tahoe they would have wiped out this expensive notion of Paradise, like many suburban Paradises -- including Paradise, California --  have been wiped out before. It would have been sad, and for some, tragic. I wouldn't have liked to see it at all. 

But if these people were "blue collar" the notion has no meaning at all.