I haven't participated in rohatsu in the past so this sesshin was part of my education in Zen forms and rituals that I missed back in the early days of my practice, when, if I recall correctly, Richard Baker or whomever I was in communication with at the San Francisco Zen Center made clear that Zen practice did not require shutting oneself away in a monastery or even following any particular form or rituals or necessarily even knowing what they were.
I've seen some documentaries on Zen in Japan -- where it has never been popular -- and among laypeople that's the essence of the practice. You sit. That's really all you have to do to practice Zen. None of the rest of it is essential, and there is a lot of "the rest of it."
Sitting is the key.
Rohatsu is the commemoration and celebration of Sakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago in Bodh Gaya, northern India. In the practice I participate with, rohatsu lasts 8 days, and during that time, there is much sitting. Oh my yes! There is chanting (which I don't do aloud) and liturgy and study. Whether we, the lay practitioners, are to achieve Enlightenment thereby, I don't know. I would say, given what I witnessed, that some certainly thought they'd be Enlightened and were Enlightened by the conclusion of rohatsu, but... well, I'll say no more about that.
I would go back to the mantra I was given when time was: "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path."
(Buddha, Dharma, Sangha = The Three Jewels of Buddhism)
This mantra actually gives the practitioner lots of leeway and freedom. It's not necessarily an easy or straight path to Enlightenment (ha!) but one way among many to become enlightened. Buddha says basically, "You're already Enlightened. You just have to discover and recognize it."
The World of Illusion obscures your Enlightenment. Let go.
Many years ago, I had the physical experience of what may have been Enlightenment but probably wasn't. It's not a physical thing. Or... well, no, I don't want to get into the mystical/physical conundrum in this essay. Let that go, too!
But I would say that once there -- wherever -- I never left. I never went back there because I am there all the time, and I've mentioned to some of my teachers in the last year or so that my life is practice.
In other words, sitting zazen is a minor part of my practice, as it forms a few moments of my daily life that is in its entirety practice.
Imperfect as it is.
And that's a key to understanding. Our material lives are totally imperfect. It's OK. It's the nature of Being/NotBeing.
In the midst of our imperfections, however, we adopt vows and set goals -- not necessarily material goals, not at all. To become what we really are.
That's the hard part, the struggle that Buddha and all Buddhists go through. Who are we? What are we?
What should we do about it?
Buddha taught, and that was the full expression of his Being/NotBeing.
Zen, I think I mentioned in an earlier post, grew out of Japanese Samurai culture, as an expression of and adaptation of Chinese Chan Buddhism, for the needs of the medieval Japanese higher warrior aristocracy. It wasn't for the common people at all.
It was also adopted by the Imperial and some Shogunate households.
The Zen practice I was introduced to came from Japan in the late 1950s, through the agency of Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen priest from the time of his youth early in the 20th Century, descended from a line of Zen priests. He was deemed roshi by his US followers, and it made him laugh. But then, many things made him laugh. Especially American things.
There isn't a lot about today's Zen practice in America that I identify with the more or less "pure" Zen Suzuki Roshi brought to America. There are forms and rituals that trace back to Japan, certain costumes and physical properties of zendos and such, but not much else. Very little understanding of where this practice came from and why it was important in the context of a particular culture at a particular time and how it has had a profound influence beyond that culture and time.
I see in the context of every US Zen center I've looked into a deep seated urge to change it, change the practice to more Americanize it, decouple it from Japanese practice, especially from the rigors of Japanese monasteries. Or rather practicing some of those rigors as forms and rituals only.
Make it more like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism. In other words, familiarize it to American notions of Religion...
When participating in the various practice periods and sesshins I have this year, I've noticed strong -- sometimes overwhelming -- resemblances between the Americanized Zen practice and say Catholic and/or orthodox Jewish observances. Why is that? Is it in part because so many influential American Zen priests and roshis and such come from those backgrounds? I would think so. Is it because so few have had an elemental experience of Japanese Zen Buddhism -- which is of course the origin of American Zen practice -- though they may have gone on pilgrimage to the sites in Japan where the practice was formulated.
And I think about these origins in the context of Gary Snyder and his epic "Mountains and Rivers Without End," a kind of Zen-ish gloss on his life and practice and relationship to mountains and rivers.
As I've said, I didn't get along with Gary Snyder, though our meetings were social and very brief. I think there was an immediate repulsion. I'm trying to get over it. I should have gotten over it decades ago, but instead, I held it in me all this time, though I obviously didn't think about it or him until returning to Zen practice, picking up Kerouac again and observing his near-worship of Gary in "The Dharma Bums."
A worship which, by the way, was not and is not reciprocated. If anything, Gary shows little regard for Kerouac at all. Borderline contempt. The barest of acknowledgement that they ever knew each other.
Why is that I wonder? There may have been more of a repulsion -- on Gary's part -- toward Kerouac than might have been the case if Kerouac had not been an alcoholic/drug addict, and not shown Gary such puppy-dog admiration and followership/worship for the few months/years they palled around.
A key passage in "The Dharma Bums" is their climb of the Matterhorn of the Sierras, something ordinarily objectively impossible, but they do it, survive it, revel in it. Gary (Japhy) has magic powers. He practically flies up the mountain and then flies back down while Kerouac (Ray) must trudge and struggle. Kerouac is tied to the Earth; Gary is a free spirit in a jockstrap, so pure he can merge with and walk within the mountain.
In "Mountains and Rivers Without End," Snyder doesn't even acknowledge it happened, and to some critics, Kerouac's description of their climb, and perhaps the climb itself, was fiction. Who knows? Kerouac drank himself to death many years ago, and Snyder isn't saying -- well, not in any detail.
Kerouac is not a wizard. Snyder, apparently, is.
I recall -- barely -- a mountain-climbing adventure I went on years ago. I came "that close" to losing my life due to an allergic reaction to warm trail mix. Anaphylaxis is no fun, and that's primarily what I remember from the adventure. There was also the attempt to hike up to a peak but getting mired in a mysterious bog not on the hiking map. Wondering if it was possible to cross it -- no -- or find another trail -- no. It was barely possible to get out of the bog without sinking ever deeper and getting stuck. There was no surface sign the bog was even there...
Nude swim in a lake. Camping under the stars. Having no real fear despite the hazards encountered or imagined. In fact, from this distance of fifty years or more, that mountain climbing adventure seems more and more imaginary. Did it happen at all?
In going through some of the stuff we moved and brought back from California, that sense of an imaginary past, adventures that never happened, and very faulty memories of what did happen came up again and again. But in Zen, of course, everything is illusory. Delusory.
There's not much "water" in this reflection. I was born a stone's throw from the Mississippi River, Father of Waters, so there's that. And I've pretty much always been or lived near the ocean or a river of some sort, except for where I live now. Plenty of mountains, but no surface water at all.
There's only what we call 'The Swamp' in the back of our place, a small wet-ish region where there must be water close to the surface, where plants grow lush in the spring and summer, and the ground is soft. There's no water on the surface, nor does it seem like any water is flowing. But it must be there.
Phantom water.
But then, isn't everything a phantom of one sort or another?
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Here is a podcast by David Chadwick about Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra. Much consideration of Gary Snyder's "Mountains and Rivers Without End." And very much in tune with my own thinking about the sutra...
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