The following talk notes are from Ryushin Kate McKenna's Dharma Talk given at her Menjuhai Priest Completion ceremony.
Menjuhai Talk 9/21/2024
Welcome everyone………….
First of all, thanks Tim, for having the vision of a Zen community In Bellingham and holding that for 33 years.
You’ve taken us through many ups and downs and growing pains;
and you worked for long stretches at a time without any breaks to keep us on our feet. Sometimes showing up even when you’re not well.
And, I also know that without that deep commitment, Red Cedar wouldn’t be here today.
And also…… thanks for supporting me all these years through all my whacky ups and downs……and my continuing whacky ups and downs.
Chris, thank you for your continuous enthusiasm for learning and sharing the Dharma. I especially want to acknowledge your practice of giving. Not only giving things, but giving your time, your scholarship and teachings and your example of deep devotion and commitment to Buddha, Dharma and all of us in Sangha. It’s a model and inspiration for me.
And then for my family members; first, my husband Jeff. You not only tolerated my practice, but you’ve traveled right along the path with me. Studying, sitting, discussing the Dharma; (not even arguing with me about it!)
But……. the huge thanks go for sharing your commitment, and care, so deeply and faithfully, for these past 45 years. And for sticking it out through some pretty hard times with a willingness to bend and grow, and especially to love.
And to our daughter Alona and husband Matt. I’m not sure if you quite made sense of what I was doing with this practice, but, in spite of that, I always felt supported and encouraged along the way.
And Dad and I are both so grateful for your everyday support, and also for your continued love and care as we age. Not an easy job.
And I’m just so grateful to all of you for coming together and sharing in this today. Especially people new to us…….. and brave enough to come.
And thank you all for being in my life!
The ceremony was originally announced as a “Completion of Training’.
I was perplexed with this idea and really wondered if there was such a thing as Completion in this Training. And, if that meant that I’ve learned everything I need to know, then I’m pretty far from completion. I’m pretty sure this exploration of the dharma is never finished.
Yet, roles and positions in life do appear to end. Our Lives end, bodies disintegrate, flowers fall; and then they begin again, renewing and recycling themselves. So that makes me think of today’s ceremony as marking a transition or a step; both as a completion of training and as No Completion of Training.
And Our 11th century founder from Japan, Eihie Dogen, in his writing called “Immo”, (“On that, which comes like this”) put it this way.
“On the great road of buddha ancestors there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, realization, and nirvana, there is not a moment’s gap; continuous practice is the circle of the way.”
And here’s how Norman Fischer, our founding teacher, put it: “Each step in this circle takes us one step away from our home and one step back towards it.”
And in my mind, this applies not just to Buddhists, or practitioners of other religions, but to all those on any path of life they travel. All of us, saints, sinners and the secular, are on this circular path. …………..And that path is this mysterious and amazing journey called Life and Death.
Beyond our goals, plans, and what we could ever control or envision. Right here, right now.
And that’s what I really want to welcome you all into today. We’re all celebrating and sharing together in this same awesome continuous thing called Life and Death.
So…This ceremony is not about me. We’re here celebrating all of us and everything. Including those we cherish and those we fear and feel deeply challenged or threatened by.
And…… since this is all about all of us all together, sharing in each other and in the world, we’re immersed in, I wanted to talk about Love. Because I think love is the best word for it; it’s what’s at the bottom of everything we do. Everything!
And this includes all our acts of generosity and compassion, those that flow from our hearts; and, (although it might seem contradictory) all those harmful acts that grow out of our fear and need for control.
And to quote my old favorite, Leonard Cohen, everyone is, “leaning out for love and we’ll will lean that way forever”.
Yet, sadly, sometimes that path of love and learning can get twisted and distorted and then ends up causing a lot of pain.
I may be taking a risk here, and I welcome other points of view, but I want, and feel obligated, to give you an example of this. We have a man now who is running for president – a world leader – who has never known love. And, how could any of us get to know love, if we’ve never received it.
Trumps mother was known to be distant and detached from him; his father grew wealthy through real estate scams and discrimination, and described his business, not as making a living, but as making a “killing”; he witnessed his father shaming and belittling his older brother; and at the age of 13 he was sent off to a military academy where young cadets earned rank and recognition by bullying and intimidating others.
From what I’ve read, it was a tough history fraught with brutal competition and a lack of nurturing. Strong conditioning and hard to escape from.
Yes, we need, to recognize, challenge and take some responsibility to transform the chaos and division that’s resulted.
And…….we need to extend our compassion, with the understanding that we also are fragile, and conditioned human beings, shaped by many forces beyond our control.
All of us have had some rough “ancient twisted karma” that has shaped us. Both through our individual conditioning and our collective conditioning. And some of us succeeded in rising above it, and some, not so much.
And when I forget this, which I often do lately, I think of Tich Nhat Han’s words: “Compassion is most needed where it is most difficult to give”.
So……remember, that underneath the confused and harmful words and actions, you’ll find all of our shared – and sometimes buried- yearnings. And those yearnings and strivings are really asking for the same thing: to be seen, welcomed and held in the warmth of love and connection. That’s the universal longing that sometimes gets so disguised and twisted.
Love doesn’t discriminate. Love doesn’t limit itself to just those who are pleasant, kind or the ones we admire. We all owe our existence to the miracle of our interdependence and that’s the miracle of Life and Love. That’s been given to all of us. It’s the nature of the universe.
I want to read a quote from Paramahansa Yogananda on this: ( He uses the word God here, if that doesn’t work for you, you can substitute whatever word works best; the Absolute, the Divine, Emptiness, the Cosmos……).
So he says: “… Feel the love of God; then in every person you will see the light of Love which is in all. You will find a magic, living relationship uniting the trees, the sky, the stars, all people, and all living things, and you will feel a oneness with them. This is the code of divine love.
Yogananda’s words brought me back to a version of the Baltimore Catechism I read as a young Catholic kid. (it’s from a late 19th century version which resonated with me.)
In answering the question “why did God make us”, the Catechism read: “God made us to show forth her goodness and to share with us, her everlasting happiness in heaven”.
What this now says to me is that the Universe loved itself so much that it wanted and needed to share its joy and exuberance all around. And it did this by manifesting the whole of creation through each individual being. And this includes our own imperfect and finite selves.
In other words, not only Jesus, or Buddha or other “enlightened beings” - but all of us - are Buddha or God incarnate, and our journey is to recognize this and share in this Wholeness of Life.
All this is the activity of Love. And it’s also, every one of Us.
Yet again….. it seems we’ve managed to forget this birthright.
How did that happen?
We start simply as individual bundles of sensations; the sweet taste of our mother’s milk, the smell of her body, or the cold wetness of a dirty diaper. Then we coo or cry in response to those conditions. All without self-possession. There’s no judgement, liking or disliking, or thinking “I’m sweet and lovable, or I’ve been rejected; they really wanted a boy!”
There’s no story lines like that. No time. No discrimination. Just this. Just immersion in the loving work of the universe that brought this newborn into creation.
But soon enough, things change - innocence dissolves. And we get wounded in love - maybe a little – or maybe a lot.
Cognition and social conditioning creep in - perhaps through biological and evolutionary necessity, and all those pure infant sensations convert into words and complex concepts –just abstractions, really. And we mistake those for Reality, that Un-nameable & Boundless expanse we really exist in. The world becomes complicated and contradictory; no longer melting and flowing through the medium of our bodies and senses.
And then…conflict and confusion set in.
Christians would call this the descent from the garden of Eden; In our Zen practice we would say, the fall into Duality. Either way, we’ve reduced existence to two things: me, at the center, and the rest of the world out there somewhere; and we eventually forget our real ancestral home and lose that path back to the Garden.
Then the perennial search begins; it’s that old story of the quest for the Holy Grail, or the Zen parable about the jewel that lies hidden in the poor man’s robe. It’s been there all the time, but he just doesn’t recognize it.
That jewel and that Grail are our Buddha or God-like nature. And that’s our Love and most intimate relationship with all the amazing beings of the earth. All we long for and don’t know we already have in our pockets.
And usually in these legends, the brave hero has a harrowing struggle. It might lead to a battle or the loss of many lives. And it often results in a great deal of suffering.
Our human journey might not be quite this romantic or dramatic, but it is often painful.
And when this is the case, the road out can be pretty rocky.
And that often calls for the universe to give us an uncomfortable, or even a very painful kick in the ass before we can pay attention; before we can reclaim that jewel of our Whole Selves again.
I want to add some words here on this from a contemporary, eclectic, spiritual teacher. He goes by the name A.H Almaas: (Hameed Ali)
The Part That Loves You –
Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life, are not chance or haphazard.
They’re actually yours.
They’re specifically yours; designed for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else.
That part of you that loves you more than anything else has created road blocks to lead you to yourself.
You’re not going in the right direction unless there is something pricking you in the side that’s saying “look here, this way.”
That part of you loves you so much that it will go to extreme measures to wake you up.
It will make you suffer if you don’t listen.
What else can it do.
That’s its purpose. -A.H. Almaas
It seems to me like Almaas is right when he says we just might need our suffering to rise above it. And it seems that we can’t really heal and touch that love that surrounds us until we’ve touched that pain deeply in ourselves; ………..
Yet we don’t have to crucify ourselves to our pain and distress, or struggle to create whole new identities. We Just need to trust the wisdom and love that naturally embraces us; and cradle those tears - and the tears of all beings - with gentleness and care. And with that, they’ll just gently fall away.
So….. this leads me to drift away here into an old Tibetan story that’s helped me through my own turbulent and disoriented times. It encouraged me to both greet my own hungry ghosts and then allow them to gently fly away. And, hopefully, it will help others.
It’s the story of an old Tibetan cave dwelling hermit named Milarepa. Some of you might remember it:
Miarepa had been sitting contentedly alone in his cave for years. But then, one day he comes home after gathering wood and finds his cave full of demons. There were everywhere! Disrupting everything. Flying all about. And his first thought is “I have to get these things out of here! and he forcefully tries to chase them out. But the more he chases them, the more comfortable and settled-in they seem to get. So finally, realizing that he’s failing miserably, Milarepa decides to soften them up by teaching them the dharma, thinking that will change their behavior and then encourage them to go home. So, he begins teaching about compassion and kindness, the nature of impermanence, self and non-self and so on. But they just stare blankly at him with their big, bulging eyes; and they don’t leave.
Finally, Milarepa takes a long breath and realizes that he has something to learn from them. He has to let go. He has to surrender. He looks deeply into their eyes, he bows, and says, “It looks like we’re going to be here together.” So he says: “I open myself entirely to whatever you have to teach me.” And in that moment the demons disappear. All but one that is, and that’s the fiercest, the biggest and the nastiest demon. So Milarepa surrenders even further. Stepping over to the demon, he offers his whole self, holding nothing back. “Eat me if you wish”, he says. And places his head in the demon’s mouth. And, at last, at that moment the largest demon bows deeply and disappears.
I heard this years ago. But now, when so much in the world, including myself, seems to be falling apart, I’m really taking this story to heart. And I’m looking deeper into my own demons….. the impatience, anxieties, anticipated losses.……my need for control… all those demons and hungry ghosts that need befriending. And Milerepa is telling me what needs to be done: to touch them with care, to trust and then surrender and let my small-pre-occupied self fall into that Love and Wisdom that includes all the world’s magic and all the world’s mess.
And to quote Pema Chodren on this, she says
“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen - making room for grief, for relief, for misery, and for joy.”
So I wrote these final words shortly after I got the message that I had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
It isn’t really complicated.
I don’t have to have the well-kept garden like my neighbor has.
Or do what my mother always told me to do
Or even remember the names of my old friends.
In fact, as much as I might feel the social expectation
I don’t even have to talk at all.
I can just walk side by side, silently with another
Or sit alone in the sunshine.
Or grieve the loss of a loved one.
All I need is to be exactly where and what I really am;
In this place, at this moment
And let the Loving Universe do the rest.
This is the continuous circle of the way:
Completion of training; and no completion;
Falling to the ground and getting up again.
Trusting that each joy, each wound, is a new awakening and a yielding into Love.
Thanks for listening.
