Here’s a practice I’m working with - and I guess I have been for decades but it feels more clear lately: don’t control.
Notice when your opinions and preferences spring forth and constellate into a plan. Into the desire to exert control. And let it go.
Even in your mind, those things you’re not planning to say out loud. Those thoughts of how it should or shouldn’t be, or often more powerful, the thoughts of how she or he should or shouldn’t be. Notice those and let them go.
This is an extra rich practice when you’re in a leadership position and it is appropriate to give people some feedback. Check in with your heart: is this a helpful suggestion to support this person and the sesshin, or am I drifting into being controlling?
For those of us more fully protected by the practice of silence the practice on non-control is equally rich though.
Watch your mind and see how often the desire to control something comes up. And include yourself. Wanting to control how you feel, how much you sleep, all kinds of things. Of course make wise choices but just like how you might give wise, kind, simple feedback to another. “Ah dearest me, it’s bed time, you might want to focus on breathing, it’s not the time to figure that out just now.”
Oh and watch this at the notes station too: is this note an attempt to control? Maybe I don’t need to write it after all.
One of the many gifts of sesshin is that letting go of control is totally possible and safe here. You’ll have food to eat, a place to sleep, and stuff to do all day without any planning or executing or controlling of your own.
And maybe, just maybe, releasing from control is also more possible in our daily lives than we think. Here we get to experiment and see what we learn. A this wondrous situation we are co-
creating called sesshin.
So I was marveling anew yesterday at how unlikely this all is. And how grateful I am for all of it.
How unlikely that a middle class American kid with almost no background in religion or spirituality, besides what he discovered smoking dope and going into the woods, was attracted to the feeling in a Japanese style Zendo.
How unlikely that there even was a Japanese style Zendo near the town where he went to high school, another in the town where he went to college, and a residential Zen training temple a couple of hours away.
How unlikely that he felt affinity with a teacher of Zen who was a Jewish poet from Pennsylvania who’d also been attracted to all of this 20 years earlier.
How unlikely that the Jewish poet Zen teacher was willing to fly up to Bellingham and Vancouver six times a year to nurture the emerging Zen sanghas up here. Six times a year!
How unlikely that we found a Christian church camp that was open to sharing their space for Zen retreats.
And that we’ve been having Zen sesshin here every year for 30 years.
And that it’s to the point now that when we got here on Thursday the place was unlocked and empty - ours to do with as we will. For a modest fee sure, but: here you go, the place is yours.
And don’t get me started about buying an office building, doing a major remodel and opening a temple! What??
I could go on and on. And you could too with your version of unlikely and amazing circumstances and choices and coincidences and influences that brought you here. There are an awful lot more ways you could have ended not here.
And I am so grateful. It’s all up there as the most important things, the most important thing possibly?, in the amazing journey of this lifetime.
A few specific gratitudes at this particular iteration:
- Hannah for taking on the tenzo role with steadiness and energy - and honesty about her trepidation, that’s important to make space for too - we aren’t trying to be Zen super humans here. It’s a big role and to do it as practice in a steady and sustainable way is a tricky thing. To stay grounded and steady as we take these challenges on.
- David Clark for being willing to take a big step up from Work Leader to Work Lead and Retreat Manager. Attending to details with laser focus. Making sure we are organized, have what we need, have our workforce organized for this complex little dance we do putting a temporary monastery together. That’s really what this is: a temporary monastery.
- Mari for taking her practice as Ino forward yet another big notch organizing the zendo. Looking for ways to support people. Leading us in the complex ritual of oryoki.
- Our shuso Ken for taking up the “first seat” during our Fall Practice Period and bring up this really important question of how do we practice with seriousness and integrity as lay people. i so appreciated his talk yesterday and my apologies for the sound system not working right at first - that was my own mess up.
- Every single one of us here. We are all co-creating this incredible sesshin practice. This deep deep, and rare!, opportunity.
Ken has brought up the great question of what does committed practice at a lay person look like? How do we do this?
Well at the moment I think our lay practice looks a lot like monastic practice doesn’t it?
A few of us have taken our tradition’s equivalent of monastic vows, Chris and I here, and I know there are several others here interested in doing this, actually we are all living our daily lives as lay people. And yet for these few days we are living and practicing just like monastics. Full time. Keeping the silence. Living this ritualized life.
And if we talk about lay people what’s the other possibility? What does ongoing monastic practice look like?
Well it gets a bit complex for us in the Westernized Japanese lineages. I’m a priest and I’m married, had a child, own property, and have a job in addition to what I get to do at Red Cedar.
Lineages that continue Buddha’s original monastic instructions live greatly simplified lives full time, permanently, it’s a rest of your life commitment. No job, very limited ownership of anything - robes and a bowl mostly - no children. And lots of practice time. Like the Metta Sutta talks about the importance of being less busy and the sutra studies we’ve done with Ken although there are teachings that honor lay practice family live is still described as a hindrance.
The OG style monastics give up most of their autonomy, they are released from economic concerns to live in voluntary simplicity - monastics aren’t allowed to handle money for one thing. They are single and celibate. The full monastics live in a kind of deep symbiosis with their lay supporters. For example: you aren’t allowed to handle food that’s not in your bowl - they carry these large begging bowls - lay supporters put the food in there for you. You’re not even supposed to express any preferences about what people put in there: just express your gratitude. (But practically I’m sure people do know what you enjoy and what you can’t eat!).
Our sangha friend Michel Dietzel is on a pilgrimage trip in India right now with a group of Western born full monastics - it’s a Thai Forest tradition order they are ordained into. And I really recommend when you have the opportunity hanging out and practicing with full monastics. It’s really wonderful and very interesting to see that deep tradition being lived and continued. Wonderful.
But things didn’t go that way in the Japanese lineages. There are I think some small groups and individuals in Buddhist Japan who do live that way but it’s not institutionalized and acculturated like it is in Southeast Asia. Hopefully with Michael’s help we can invite some monks from the monastery in California he’s associated with to come visit Sansui-Ji sometime.
For us the priest ordination seems to mean for us “I am making a lifetime commitment to serious lay practice with at least a few periods of monastic immersion“. Our sangha friends Seishin and Raizelah are doing this right now. They didn’t renounce touching money or handling their own food - although when you eat all oryoki it’s pretty close to that. That’s part of why we do that ritual: you aren’t serving yourself, you are being offered food and receiving that offering. With our signals we do express more influence but sometimes the server gives you more or less than you wanted and you just practice accepting what you receive. It’s probably good for us if that happens.
And then there’s a huge continuum in how each ordained Zen person expresses this. Some do lives pretty close to monastic lives. Like Chris and I know a priest in our lineage, Kokyo Henkel, who stayed for 17 years at Tassajara and lives solely on Dana and just sent out a note that he was going to take the next 30 days to do a solo sesshin - similar to the schedule we’re doing here but 30 days not 3, and completely on his own at the hermitage he and his wife live at. Very monastic lifestyle! But he is married as I mentioned, does handle the bits of money he receives, serves himself food and so on. Even as deeply committed as he is to that end of the spectrum of practice he still lives more independently than a full monastic.
And other Zen priests, like me, do live lives that look more like lay people. We do stints in the monasteries - I’d like to do more now that my child is launched and I’m starting to look at winding down into semi-retirement. Anyone care to join me in a practice period at Tassajara?
I was in residence just for about a year at two different monastic places when I was younger. But I’ve been in Bellingham most of the time expressing practice as a lay person and somehow stumbling into leading and teaching to the extent I can. I actually do live partly on dana donations, which is a monastic practice, from wonderful people like you and from Red Cedar Zen as an organization. It’s about 1/3 of my income currently which is not nothing and I am so grateful for that.
And then this question of lay vs monk gets even more interesting with the ceremony we’ll do tomorrow that we usually call jukai - receiving the precepts.
Actually it’s a combination of receiving the precepts and also receiving a Dharma name and being formally included into the lineage, adopted into Buddha’s family. It’s two ceremonies blended together.
The one about name and lineage and also wearing the rakusu, which is a take on wearing monastic robes, is called zaike tokudo. On the lineage papers and your rakusu I flagged that the 6 people I did papers will be in a taike tokudo ceremony tomorrow.
Norman had always told me that take zaike translates to “staying at home realizing the way”and that’s the English I wrote on folks’ lineage papers. But I finally found the underlying Chinese characters and looked it up. 在家 (Zaike) is literally the word that’s use for layperson in Japanese. Zai is a location, ke is home. Someone who’s located at a home is a Zaike. A layperson.
The ceremony is Zaike Tokudo and tokudo definitely means ordination “to become a monk.” So… layperson who is now also a monk??
In the light of Ken’s explorations with us this is an interesting thing: in the ceremony of receiving precepts you are also ordaining as a layperson.
When I started they did call it “lay ordination” which I found so oxymoronic and weird I dropped it in favor of “jukai” for the whole package. And to emphasize precepts more.
In contrast the priest ordination is shukke tokudo - only the first of 4 characters is different between zaike tokudo and shukke tokudo. For the priests shu 出 is simply “leave” so leaving home and attaining the way. Going off to the monastery. Maybe also leaving your birth name behind, which I seem to be doing very gradually over 35 years going from Tim to Nomon.
What are we to make of all of this?
Well I perhaps that taking the vows in jukai and undergoing the included zaike tokudo - layperson ordination - is all about committing to be being more fully a whole person. Ordaining as a layperson - feeling into the sacredness of everyday so-called ordinary life.
I mean no one can really argue with the precepts - maybe some do think there are a few they can’t keep completely, but I have never heard anyone say, “no I think lying and bragging and stealing are good to do.” The precepts describe the wise, committed kind people we’d all like to be. So we are ordaining as laypeople as fully….people. A full person. Which in the end doesn’t sound that different from a Buddha to me.
In the first Sutra Ken had us study, the conversation between Buddha and the layman Ugra, Ugra asks the Buddha how lay people should practice and Buddha starts so solidly with the Triple Refuge. To take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. To do a continuous mindfulness practice of bringing Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha to mind. To reflect and recollect and tune into Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the great teachings and opportunities of a life in sangha - and of course you can’t have sangha without Buddha and Dharma - but sangha brings it to life. We touch what we might think of a glimpses of Buddhadharma regularly. Maybe a moment of awe about a beautiful teaching, or a moment of clarity in zazen, or deeply seeing a lovely altar with the candles and the statue just so, perhaps in our beautiful new zendo at Sansui-Ji! - all of that is wonderful, but fleeting.
People are solid to us. We love them, we’re inspired by them, we’re alarmed by them, we’re confused by them, they make us nervous, we’re drawn to them, we forget we are them sometimes, then we remember - oh goodness I’m doing it too.
And how can we skillfully practice with and in sangha? Precepts! Precepts! Precepts! There’s a reason we receive precepts just before the ordination whether it’s as a lay person or as a priest. That’s how we practice taking refuge in sangha.
We practice affirming everyone’s aliveness, we practice truthfulness, we practice generosity, we’re super careful about our sexuality together, we practice praising others not ourselves, we watch out for slipping into disparaging others, we feel our strong emotions and reactions and take responsibility for them, we practice non-blaming, and we circle right back to understanding that every moment of joy and every moment of concern with each other in sangha is the three treasures. Is awakening.
And what allows us to sustain this wonderful and for us conditioned beings, challenging, practice of practice as we take refuge in sangha?
Forgiveness.
I’ve been studying Norman Fischer’s good on the Six Paramita Practices of Bodhisattvas - such important teachings for us - and as you might remember the 2nd paramita is exactly the precepts. Sila Paramita. The practice of ethical living. Norman goes through our 16 bodhisattva precepts and then he points out that for the precepts to work we also need to handle falling down and getting back up again. He suggests feeling a healthy regret at our missteps and practicing forgiveness for each other and for ourselves.
I love this paragraph - it’s very Norman:
When we see our mistakes, we don’t justify or deny. Instead, we feel regret and remorse. We cultivate these feelings. We want to feel terrible when we’ve hurt someone. Feeling terrible feels good, because it’s good to feel bad when you’ve caused harm….Regret and remorse keep me honest and lead me to repentence, which includes apology and making amends if I can.
And he clarifies that it’s the mistake we feel this healthy regret about. We don’t regret or feel ashamed of our own being. We are who and how we are. We got to this shape and configuration with this cloud of conditioning, some of it known to us, most of it not, we got here honestly through karma, society, our history and beyond our personal history. He used to repeat a saying I love pretty often, “It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility.”
And forgiveness is a powerful part of how we take that fuller responsibility. We practice releasing our grudges and irritations with each other and with ourselves. And this is an actually active practice we do, it’s not just papering over whether we’re holding about something that happened with “oh well, forget it, everyone makes mistakes” we study our hearts and we see if there’s something we’re holding onto and we realize it’s our responsibility to clear and heal that. Sometimes this involves a cautious and kind circling back with the other person but I think a lot more often it’s not about the other person. It’s our own baggage being triggered.
Forgiveness never means harmful actions are okay, we have to suck it up and learn to forgive, it’s about the pain we cling to in the wake of being harmed, in the wake of causing harm, and when we are unkind to ourselves.
Jack Kornfield shares a saying he heard that I love, “Forgiveness is letting go of having a better past.” (Repeat that)
There’s much to be said about forgiveness but I’ll leave it at that for now. The more I think about it the more important I think it is in practice. An everyday example of non-forgiveness that I see in sangha life, and do sometimes, yes, participate in, is letting the slight irritations and judgement color our understanding of who someone else is and what they’re likely to do in the future. Oh, she’s that kind of person, we should or shouldn’t say this or say that, or ask them to do this role, and on and on it goes. Putting each other in boxes built of judgement.
With the practice of forgiveness and letting go it’s more possible to see each other as mysterious and wondrous Buddhas and to see that we have no idea what anyone will do next so we always assume the best as you would of a Buddha.
So what am I trying to say in this talk. I guess that our work her whether we think of ourselves as lay people or priests or monks or whatever is to deeply follow His Holiness the Dalia Lama’s point when he says over and over to everyone who will listen, “my religion is kindness.” And to understand that this is no small matter to make real. It requires real commitment. It requires being even more fully the Buddhas we are. So I’m so glad we’ll “ordain” seven more lay people and feel the awesome dharma power of their taking the precepts and committing to awareness, to forgiveness, and kindness. We know they’ll mess up sometimes, as will all of us, but we are sangha for each other and will never give up on each other, or ourselves, until all beings are across. All beings.
