Avatamsaka Sutra, Cleary Trans..docx

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Suzuki Roshi's teachings don't get into such psychological topics very much. He has such amazing ways of describing the territory of the awakened life but there's not much here that feels practical or usable in that tool-using kind of way is there? Beyond giving instruction to his students on Zen and the Zen way of ritual life he didn't give much instruction on how to be with your crazy mind.

Sometimes he was more pointed with people in dokusan I know, but in his talks he didn't really say much about how to do practice in a way we'd recognize as practical psychologically minded people.

This is both liberating and frustrating depending on how you look at it.

One of our teachers said the wonderful thing about Soto Zen is there is no method to it. It's a method-less method. No step by step anything. Just practice. Just sit. Open up to Buddha expressing through you. Through your heart, through your body, through your boundless compassionate mind.

And yet, it's helpful to have a little more precise advise from time to time!

In these talks on ZMBM I'll sprinkle in the way his direct students who went on to become teachers themselves spoke about practice. Their expression can indeed be a lot more practical. And it's important to hold "practical" lightly too isn't it?

Who is it that's being practical? What is there, really, to be practical about? The minute we try to be practical about practice and getting better and improving things have we narrowed our scope to that which can be understood and talked about and improved. Which is wonderful but it's not the whole life. It's good to be curious about how form is always happening against the backdrop of emptiness.

So here's a great short teaching from a Suzuki Roshi disciple named Katherine Tanas. A student of hers, Bill Anelli, recently finished a book of her teachings in a very similar way to Trudy Dixon's work with Suzuki Roshi's teachings. Katherine's main teaching situation was at the Santa Cruz Zen Center where Chris and I have both practiced but we both missed her by a little.

I sat there in the 1980's just before she arrived, and oddly just after Edie's first teacher Kobun Chino left there, and when Chris came to practice there a number of years ago it was right as she fell, hit her head, and was soon gone.

I think Chris got to be one of the students who sat with her as she lay there unconscious for several days before passing away. The book is called The Trust of this Life - similarly short and punchy chapters like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Here's a little bit of one called Set Ourselves to Zero which speaks a little to her relationship to Suzuki Roshi and what the scene was like back then.

[Thanas book p. 43-44, stop before Seung Sahn is mentioned]

And here's a really practical teaching called No Pressure to Improve.

[Thanas book p. 14-16]

Some wonderful advice there about the mechanics of being stuck in a tight mind.

When my experience of mind is tight lately I'm starting to be able to feel that a lot of what I'm feeling is fear. I've always known - at some level - that there's a lot of deep fear down there. I remember times in sesshin and during monastic training that I felt like I could feel a dark, cold kind of stone deep in my heart that I intuited with some help from teachers was fear.

Now it seems the fear is ready to express itself more. It can be so intense. One of the ways I practice with it is to really try to name it "this is fear" and turn down the stories that it's attaching to. Most often the story is that I'm afraid so and so is upset with me and the thoughts get busy reviewing the evidence. There's a lot of what the scientists call "confirmation bias" in that mind: it's looking for evidence that I should be afraid. When I can breathe with it and be with it it's more possible to see fear as fear and not make things worse. But wow, when it takes hold it takes hold.

How is it for you?

So I appreciate Katherine's advice here.

Stop veering off. You have to go into it. You take a little step toward it. Then take another little step. You go as slowly as you need to…maybe you don't want to get that close. You can only do what your stomach can do. So you do it slowly at the pace your stomach and heart can handle it.

You don't hear Suzuki Roshi being so directive and step by step I don't think. His focus is letting go of the idea of there being steps. And this compliments his teachings - to see how they were digested and reflected back by his students as they become teachers.

So beautiful and important to be reminded again and again that all of his is happening in the body. Our heads do tend to dominate. For me when the fear state releases it's as she says, the stomach can get soft again. But also there's a feeling of circulation of energy in my torso - it seems to go clockwise and different parts of my personality seem to be associated with different areas - all very fascinating and pretty much all made clear from suffering and confusion and having support from teachers and a really good therapist to explore it all. Train yourself to get back into the body, keep returning there and see what your body is telling you. It might not match the story your mind is spinning.

And of course one day an irruption of fear, next day ease and joy. This happens. Everything changes without our needing to try to change it too. Moods are so powerful. And moods are also empty and transitory. I do know some - clinical depression - are of another order too of course. Not simple answers and yet sometimes we tell ourselves simple stories that lock us in a problem. Zen helps us with patience and allowing the fluidity of life to flow too.

Let's again use break outs tonight. How is it with you with a difficult emotion takes hold. Is it fear? Anger? Shame? I remember at one point at SF Zen Center they were getting into a kind of "3 Poisons" personality typing. Greed, hatred, or delusion. Do you tend to get greedy? Wanting things to be a certain way and not another way? Do you tend towards hatred and anger? Do you tend towards confusion and delusion? If I have to simply down I'd go with delusion as my type. I hardly know how to get into hatred and angry and I'm usually, but not always generous, but boy can I feel tangled up when there's pressure or a strong emotion like fear. I tend to freeze. How is it for you?

[did breakouts last time, decided to leave them be this time, a few very positive comments about the talk and a really deep reflective mood]

Nomon Tim Burnett : The Women at the Beginning of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Kenneth Oates — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 03:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Suzuki Roshi's Life and Teachings, Creating a New Temple

Kenneth Oates — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 03:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : The Power of Stories

Kenneth Oates — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 03:00:00 GMT

Hoka Chris Fortin : What is it to Wake Up and Be Here Together?

Kenneth Oates — Sun, 23 May 2021 17:00:00 GMT

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Anita Feng, Zen Master Jeong Ji : What am I? Awakening to the Question of Being

Kenneth Oates — Sun, 16 May 2021 17:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : How Our Brains Influence Each Other

Kenneth Oates — Thu, 13 May 2021 02:30:00 GMT

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Text: 7 1/2 Lessons of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Kenneth Oates — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 02:30:00 GMT

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Ryushin Kate Korn McKenna : Awakening

Kenneth Oates — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 17:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Jungian Psychology and Buddhism

Kenneth Oates — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 02:30:00 GMT

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The book Tim was working from is Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up by James Hollis.

Nomon Tim Burnett : Living the Awakened Life : Reflections on the Dhammapada

Kenneth Oates — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 19:00:00 GMT

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Keizan resource guide: Keizan Study booklet for SZBA Conference.pdf

Shudo Chris Burkhart : Mara and the Buddha

Kenneth Oates — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 19:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Keizan's "Zazen Yojinki", Part 2

Kenneth Oates — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 19:00:00 GMT

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Keizan resource guide: Keizan Study booklet for SZBA Conference.pdf

Nomon Tim Burnett : Keizan's "Zazen Yojinki", Part 1

Talus Latona — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 02:00:00 GMT

These teachings are offered as part of the shuso's practice period class studying Taking Our Places: the Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up by Norman Fischer.

Continuing Our Maturity 5 (February 27)

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Continuing Our Maturity 4 (February 20)

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Continuing Our Maturity 3 (February 13)

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Continuing Our Maturity 2 (January 30)

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note: One-on-one discussions in this class are masked in the recording. You are invited to have your own discussion with your partner.

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Continuing Our Maturity 1 (January 23)

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Gateless Barrier 4 - Bodhidharma Has No Beard

Nomon Tim Burnett — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 04:00:00 GMT

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The 4th case of the Mumonkan koan collection strips things down to the studs.

The stories so far have been sometimes brief, sometimes longer, but they've always involved some degree of interaction - a little play we can put ourselves in - but at the core they've all had a deep pointer for us around seeing things differently than we usually do.

The first case, Zhaozhou's Mu, pointing us towards our assumptions about the inherent nature of things. The second case, Baizhang's Fox, pointing us towards a deeper understanding of this web of cause and effect we live in, and the third case, Chü-chih's Finger, saying something about wholehearted practice.

And in each case layers of story around this central pointer to help invite us in. We think in terms of story so that is very helpful to us. But we can also feel that these koans - these example cases from the ancient teachers - are more than just stories. There's a deeper feeling.

The 4th case we meet tonight has all the story pretty well stripped away. We can add some back, and I notice a few translators do, but it's just a pointer to the essence of how and what we are.

Here's the whole story in Robert Aitken's translation:

Huo-an asked, "Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?"

That's it. No set up. No "later he said". No monks. No slaps or shouts. Just this question. We've talked before about practicing with a question. This sounds like an odd question though.

We met the trope of the Western Barbarian at the very end of the long Baizhang's Fox koan when the head monk asked him after everything was said and done what would have happened had the earlier Baizhang who's been punished for his arrogance about cause and effect had answered correctly. Remember how the present Baizhang asked the head monk to approach and there was a ritual slap - in this case monk slapping teacher! - which the head approved of: "I thought the barbarian had a red beard but here is a red bearded barbarian!" Approving of his student as an exemplar of Bodhidharma's practice.

And calling a great ancestor a "barbarian" is part of the charm of the koan language where these teachers were deliberately tweaking with Chinese norms as I understand it. A great ancestor would never be called a "barbarian" in Confucian society so they were messing to even use that term.

I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for us. Maybe calling George Washington a "bumpkin" or something. But a bumpkin we revere.

So what is this great ancestor, why has the Western Barbarian no beard?

Some translators do insert a bit of story - I guess we story-driven people just can't help it. Paul Reps who did early translations into English says the case is this - he uses the Japanese version of this teacher's name as was the practice in early scholarship where we were learning from the Japanese Zen teachers about this literature.

Wakun complained when he saw a picture of the bearded Bodhidharma: `Why hasn't that fellow a beard?'

But this one is short enough I can actually, with Google translate's help, and a side by side Chinese-English translation of the case make out there there is absolutely no mention of a picture or complaining in it. Here's the character by character translation and I'll the actual Chinese characters are in my notes which I'll post on the website with the talk recording.

或庵曰。西天胡子。因甚無鬚。

或庵 Huo-an

曰。said

西 Western

天 God (barbarian I assume)

胡 beard

子。small

因 reason (e.g. what's the reason)

甚 very (or just emphasis)

無鬚。No beard

So I think the most literal comprehensible English here is:

Huo-an said, Western Barbarian's beard missing, why NO beard?

(with emphasis on the "no" - there is really, absolutely, completely no beard there - wow!).

So in this story just what the Tibetan's call a pith expression. Just the heart of the matter.

Why are things not as they appear at first? You thought Bodhidharma had a beard - no beard! Aboslutely no beard!

You thought you were you! No you! Absolutely no you! Let these conventional, conveinient notions go!

We don't know much about this teacher but we do have what's reported to be his death verse - a little poem he wrote just before he died and it's in the same spirit as this expression:

An iron tree in bloom;

The rooster lays an egg;

Seventy-two years-

The cradle has fallen.

Of course in the conventional world iron trees don't bloom and roosters don't lay eggs.

The last line, "the cradle has fallen," Aitken interprets this way, "Only at death do we lose the human confines of our birth." We're a bit stuck in the cradle our whole lives. Zen is the path to freedom.

And death is also a an image for awakening in the Zen tradition. That might be unique to Zen in Buddhism I don't know. Dying to your limited self is being born as your unlimited interconnected self.

Here's a nice bit from the modern Chan - Chinese Zen - techer Guo Jun - that somehow speaks to this case for me.

[Essential Chan Buddhism by Chan Master Guo Jun, chapter 8, p. 26-28]

There are some lovely pieces in here that I might share with you during zazen in the next weeks actually - we'll be in Practice Period starting next week so no formal Dharma Talks on Wednesday nights for a while. Just sitting. Wonderful and it's also nice to have a little bit to chew on from time to time. Guo Jun's teachings and path are a nice kind of exploration of maturity I think which is our theme. What is it to be truly mature? Time for us all to grow up a little more.

So what is useful or helpful about a boiled down koan like "Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?"

Well maybe I'll tell what I can remember of the story of my first serious dip into what we seem in the west to be calling "koan introspection" - the deep zazen-based immersion into a key phrase or turning in a koan.

Most often such stories are held very privately mostly because it would be so easy to misunderstand, to judge, to have grasping or comparing mind; so easy for the teller of such a story to egotistical and bragging about their accomplishment. And this last point is a big deal in Buddhism.

Did you know that in the early Buddhist precepts code there were only 3 lapses of precepts that were serious enough to merit permanent expulsion from the order?

The first was killing someone; the second was having sex (these were celibate orders), and the third was bragging about spiritual accomplishments. So I hope I'm not falling into that territory even a little here.

As there is also a bit downside to secrecy. People misunderstand, misinterprent, and assume all kinds of things about these spiritual training systems in the absence of direct and straight forward information about what actually happens.

I honestly can't remember everything that happened when I studied my first koan in this Rinzai style fashion but impressions and a few highlights.

When I was on Oahu at the Palolo Zendo for an 8-day rohatsu sesshin exactly a year ago. The Palolo Zendo was founded by Robert Aitken and the Diamond Sangha in the 1990's - they were previously on Maui. The group actually started all the way back in 1959. And new fact to me is that their small residential zendos on both islands were purchased by Anne Aitken - Robert Aikten's wife - using inheritance money. So it's a little weird that I just said it was founded by him while meantime she was a serious Zen student for 40 years and backrolled the entire venture it turns out!

Anyway the teacher there now, Michael Kierran, I find very down to earth and kind. Serious about the style of practice they do which is completely orientated around koans. The Dharma Talks were all on koans and each person is assigned a koan to sit with. Everyone has dokusan every day - if you make a little effort you can often see him twice a day. And there's just one clear teacher - there were senior students and a head student like we have during practice period but doksuan was offered only with Michael and he gave all the talks.

Michael and I had met the summer before at a Zen teachers meeting in Portland which is what helped me get the idea to try sitting sesshin with him. After an initial dokusan to just get to know each other formally he agreed to assign me a koan. It wasn't the famous MU we learned about which is one of the starting koans but a 2nd one they tend to start people on:

Bassui asked, "who is the one who hears?"

Bassui was a 14th century Japanese master so this one is not from the famed golden age of Zen in China that all of the stories in our book are.

Michael gave me just a few simple instructions: turn this question over in your mind. Sit with it. Breathe with it. See where it leads you. And in our daily meetings I'll ask you about it.

Okay I said. Interested in the process but not too worked up about it. I figured the main thing I was there to do was sit sesshin and this would an interesting component.

They lead a very vigorous sesshin and very quiet. It's not a large group - maybe 25 people and most of them had known each other for many years. The wake up bell was at 4 - and there was no coffee allowed - this concerned me a little - but the neat thing was the morning routine was actually just done all together. A real "one body" approach. You were expected to be in the zendo by 4:20 but it wasn't straight to still sitting. We did fast kinhin first, then a 15 minute peroid of self-directed stretching, then there actually WAS caffiene in the form of a nice full tea cup of strong green tea - only everyone drank that down really fast. And then it was the usual routine we're used to. Sit, walk, sit, walk. Meals were oryoki - a very similar style ot ours. Daily talks in the morning. And dokusan in the afternoon. A special bell rang and we all moved from the zendo to a kind of line up for dokusan. One after the next - meetings were 5 to 10 minutes tops.

My turn came I entered the room with a prostration at the door and a kind of hop up onto the mat in front of Michael and without missing a beat he asked me, "Who is the one who hears?"

I'd been turning it over. I'd been listening a lot - listening meditaiton is wonderful and that certainly seemed relevant who can I explore the one who hears without engaging in hearing itself.

I tried going in with zero agenda at all at first. Just saying the first thing that popping into my mind. To see what came up. I don't remember all of these but one time what came out of my mouth was, "he is far away." I guess I just felt distant from the koan or something. Michael smiled and disagreed: "no, he's right here!" and rang the little bell and off I went.

Sometimes Michael would just ring the bell - just like in the books about Zen - interview OVER. Other times we would have our formal exchange about the koan and then he'd shift the tone to have a brief collegial talk about Zen and sanghas and teaching - but that never more than 5 or 10 minutes. And off I went to keep sitting, listening, wondering. Who is the one who hears.

After a few days I had the intuion that while it's really good not to force things or TRY to hard to figure out an ANSWER still I should include my regular intelligence along with a kind of intuitive from the gut feeling. A kind of meeting of the cognitive and the beyond cognitive that arises direct and fresh in the moment.

And to be honest part of my motivation was I was a bit embarrassed by some of the spontanous things that came out of my mouth….just so obviously…wrong.

I said something in this period like, "he's clear as a bell" - it wasn't those words but something with that feeling. A real feeling of clarity and openness. And Michael said, "not bad, keep exploring."

Then in the break after lunch - all I had to do was dinner dishes! No other jobs! So the breaks after breakfast and lunch felt so luxurious and peaceful - anyway I walked up the hill to an empty property at the top of this lush Hawaiian valley and lay on back and listened, listened, listened. I kind of lost myself in sound and that became my lunchtime routine. And as much as I could all the time - just hearing - listening - who is it? Who hears? Who is the one who hears?

And each day going back to explore what would come up when he'd look at me with a smile and ask "Who is the one who hears?"

Finally what came to me is something around it being about showing up but not getting in the way and the answer that arrived was, "the one who isn't trying to be someone!"

I felt that answer arrive and it just felt right. I sat with it for a bit before the next doksuan.

And Michael said, "Well…that's pretty clear." And he seemed surprised. He never said, "congratuations you passed your first koan." but that was the import of it. He enouraged me to keep with it a bit longer and see what else came up. At the next meeting we had a kind of koan dialog that was interesting - kind of like the exchanges we have here in the shuso ceremony or the shosan dialogs if you've been to those. I can't remember the whole exchange but he said something like how wide and vast it is - shooting out into space. And I said it's extends from right here beneath your feet into the heavens and then I do rememer he said, "no it's right here" tapping the top of his head and I had these kind of deep feeling about that and said, "yes but I can't reach that high." And he laughed and said that usually it takes people some years to pass their first koan but he hadn't worked with someone who already had so much zazen experience.

And I think it helped actually that I was from outside their system. Maybe that gave me a kind of freshness and openness about the whole thing. And I also was pretty non-attached. I didn't feel any need to "pass" - well maybe a little but actually not much!

I didn't have some kind of far out totally out of your body light show experience but the whole thing did I think add both depth and spaciousness to my practice for those 8 days. 8 full days there were, very rich.

So that's my story of Bassui's "Who is the one who hears? " One could practice in a very similar was with "Why has the barbarian no beard?" So it's not not about the words and content - hearing, barbarians, facial hair, gender, indentity - but it's also not really about the words. It does make sense that this process gets written about so weirdly - described as an epic battle with the intellect which is supposed to be totally defeated by these impossible puzzles.

But not the intellect is very much involved but it's intellect playing the fields of emptiness if that makes any sense. It wasn't working when I tried to let go of the intellect. There is a letting go - a softening into the mystery - but there's also a sharpening, a probing, a looking-listing-feeling deeper.

Huo-an asked, "Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?"

Thank you very much.

Nomon Tim Burnett : Gateless Barrier 3 - Juzhi Raises a Finger

Nomon Tim Burnett — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 16:28:32 GMT

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Gateless Gate Koan Collection (Mumonkan)

Case 3 "Jùzhī Raises a Finger"

Featured Teacher:

Pinyin Chinese Jùzhī Yīzhǐ
Wade-Giles Chinese Chu-chih
Japanse Gutei Isshi
Lived c 8-9C

With the third case of the Mumonkan koan collection we encounter our first bit of upsetting violent language. There was a slap in case two. But in case 3 things get more intense.

We didn't talk abou the slap in case two much. Remember in the tail end of the story after master Baijang had the whole encounter with the previous master Baijang who lived 500 years as a fox because of his arrogance about karma. At the very end after he frees the old master with his wise turning words, had the monks hike around the mountain and do a cremation ceremony for the fox body they found there, and then he told the story that night in his talk: his chief disciple Huangbo asked the master, "The old man missed the turning word and rebord as a fox five hundred times. What if he had given the right answer each time he was asked a qusetion - what would have happened to him?"

Baizang invited him up to the teaching platform and the student, Huango, actually slapped the master and this delighted the teacher who exclaimed in Zen code: "I thought the barbarian had a red beard, but here is a red-bearded barbian." Which is saying you're as good as Bodhidharma, meaning: "you've got it!"

He admired his students directness and immediacy we might read that. A real moment of "YES!"

Yamada roshi's commentary says is wasn't a real slap but a mock slap. The student clapping his hands together by the teacher's face like a slapstick routine.

So we might read all the violence in these Zen stories - like cutting cats in two which we'll get to later on - as enacted. A serious enactment - making a point and not just messing around - but also not really hitting people or cutting off arms or breaking legs.

Or Robert Aitken says we might read the violence like we hear in Grimm's fairy tales which we're so used to it doesn't bother us and we just hear it as part of the story, part of the message.

"Fee-fi-fo-fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman,

Be he alive, or be he dead,

I’ll have his bones to grind my bread."

And popping bad children in the oven and so on.

See what you think in this case:

Mumonkan Case 3 - Jùzhī Raises a Finger

Whenever Jùzhī (chOOTs jzuh) was asked a question he simply raised one finger.

One day a visitor asked Jùzhī's attendant what his master taught. The boy raised a finger.

Hearing of ths, Jùzhī cut off the boy's finger with a knife. As he ran from the room, screaming with pain, Jùzhī called to him. When he turned his head, Jùzhī raised a finger. The boy was suddenly enlightened.

When Jùzhī was about to die, he said to his assembled monks: "I received this one-finger Zen from Tiānlóng (tAHN lang). I used it all my life but never used it up." When he finished saying this he died.

There is much here but you do have to get through a little revulsion of that image don't you?

One thing is here is that it's exactly that: one thing. Dogen wrote to sustain one practice is to master one practice. There's a wonderful faith in steady single-minded practice in our way. This is such a great antidote to our endless seeking for novelty and originality I think. What an incredible strain it is to think we have to be original and creative and fresh all the time.

Just raise a finger. Just sit down. But it's in how you do it too isn't it? You can't just copy someone else. You have to do your one practice with a depth of commitment and understanding. To see it through to the bottom. The boy in this story was merely imitating his teacher and didn't really understand his "one finger zen" until the drastic moment of the master cutting off his finger. Then he got it. Or maybe we imagine the master whipping out a knife and pinning the boy against the table and stopping the knife right as it reached the skin. A bit of mock violence to shock the boy into awakening. Still very dramatic.

Or maybe we set aside out literalness altogether and enter into a more mythical allegorical universe with giants mashing up Englishmen and Zen masters chopping off boy's fingers and see what we can learn from the point of the story without being grossed out.

We tend to picture holding up an index finger but most cultures hold up the thumb to show 1, then the index finger is added to make two. I'll always remember buying something small at a convenience story in the middle of the night in Paris. This great big gruff guy behind the counter holding up his thumb and saying "un franc."

And of course it's not really about holding up a finger whichever finger it is. It's about commiting to your practice. Suzuki Roshi said, "the most important thing is to remember the most important thing."

What's really important right now. Right now. And whether it's convenient to you or not, that's it - that's what you do, that's where you go. Divining into just that. Just this. That's one finger Zen.

And so often in these stories a powerful sense of lineage and passing on an understanding somehow. The exchange with the boy did lead to his sudden enlightenment! Would you take that trade. But very beautifully at the end of the koan a sense some years later when master Jùzhī is about to die he remembers his teacher with deep gratitude. : "I received this one-finger Zen from Tiānlóng (tAHN lang). I used it all my life but never used it up."

If we understand what we are being offered we see that what we receive from our teachers, our good friends, our parents, our world is infinite and we can never use it up. And we can be grateful. This includes receiving teachings we don't like. Painful lessons of all kinds.

The great Tibetan Buddhist teaching poem 8 Verses for Training the Mind the author makes the point they are always making in the lojong mind training texts that probably the lessons you didn't want to receive are the most important the most valuable. 3 of the verses speak to this:

When I encounter beings of unpleasant character

and those oppressed by intense negativity and suffering,

as though finding a treasure of precious jewels,

may I cherish them, for they are so rarely found

When others out of jealousy

treat me wrongly with abuse and slander,

may I take upon myself the defeat

and offer to others the victory.

Even if someone I have helped

or in whom I have placed great hope

gravely mistreats me in hurtful ways,

may I view him as my sublime teacher

While I also love how our practice has aspectes of peace and stress reduction and calming down - so nice - it's imporant to appreciate that the Dharma is also a very high commitment, high expectations tradition too. If we want to walk the path to real freedom we may have to really go for it. Not just accepting that others get confused and out of their suffering lash out at us but to appreciate them and feel grateful to them and treat them as our teacher.

They are offering us deep teachings about attachments and aversions of all kinds and greasing the stuck wheels in our heart that allow us open to freedom and equanamity. Shantideva's famous chapter in Bodhicharyavatara about patient has dozens more verses like these. Thank you pissing and shitting on me, you are helping me understand my mind so that I can become more compassionate and understanding. Take a finger while you're at it, I give everything to you freely for the sake of awakening for all beings.

Yeah.

A bit part of the koan tradition is the layers of commentary that are added to these stories. Scholars define a "koan" as a unit of text that gets repeated, more or less consistently, in the Zen literature with commentary attached to it. And then more commentary gets attached. So my commenting on this koan as a koan and your listening to me we're participating in further koan-ing this story of Jùzhī Raising a Finger as a koan.

Wumen's commentary verse focussed on the Tiānlóng, the teacher's teacher in this case.

Wumen's Verse

Tiānlóng made a fool of old Jùzhī

who cut the boy with a sharp knife

just as the mountain spirit raised his hand

and Huanshan mountain range with it's many ridges was split in two.

The mountain spirit here is a reference to another story about Jùzhī - here's how Aitken Roshi retells it.

[Gateless Barrier p. 29-30]

Many mysterious encounters: the nun Shih-chi appearing out of nowhere and confounding the younger Jùzhī. Then in his dark night of the soul a mountain spirit points him towards his true teacher. And from his teacher learning this deeply committed one-pointed - one finger Zen. "un franc!"

Can you commit to your one life just as it is? Can you commit to this practice in whatever way you understand it? Can you embrace the trouble that surely comes and appreciate those you bring you those troublesome teachings. It sooner or later leads you to your true teacher as the mountains are split in two.

Nomon Tim Burnett : Gateless Barrier 2 - Baizhang's Fox

Talus Latona — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 04:00:00 GMT

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Case 2 "Baizhang's Fox" of the Gateless Gate Koan Collection (Mumonkan) features the teacher Baizhang:

Pinyin Chinese Baizhang
Wade-Giles Chinese Pai-chang
Japanse Hyakujō
Lived 720 – 814

Tim's talk notes are below - he often departs from the notes but the notes themselves can be helpful.

Mumonkan 2 - Dec 26, 2018

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

9:05 AM

The second story in the Mumonkan - The Gateless Gate Koan Collection - is about cause and effect. About karma. About the incredible power of our actions of body, speech, and mind. And how we forget this power when we're lost in the fog of thinking that we're separate from everything. And the healing power of deeply unstanding our place in the web of Indra. In the web of life. In the web of relationship.

Case 1 was at the short end of the koan story spectrum - remember the simple exchange between Master Zhaozhou and the monk who asked him whether a dog has Buddha Nature? The teacher answered "not!" and that's the end of the story but the reverberations of that particular exchange carry on to the present day and inform the practice of so many. Like so many of these stories it's about looking more deeply. It's about being the conventional mind of yes or no. It's about not stopping with a concept - "Buddha Nature" here as the example - and stopping to see below the surface of the concepts and ideas and words and assumptions we lay across everything we perceive.

As we think about how our conceptual mind and assumptions and tendency towards dualistic black & white thinking operates I think we start to see that there's a real causal power just to how we think about things. The patterns we lay on the world. Our thinking/judging/evaluating/conceptualizing mind is a powerful tool that is so essential for us to make any sense of anything but does that process of sense-making also lock the world into what we expect it to be in all kinds of ways?

The second story says so. Here it is in Aikten Roshi's translation:

[Baizhang's Fox case 2 from The Gateless Barrier by Robert Aitken]

Koan studies often involve distilling the story down to a key phrase or even word. And in this case that has to be the contemporary Baizhang's answer to the question that so messed up the Baizhang of the past. "Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect?" Is there this enlightened state that means you're completely above the fray? They say that Buddha's are so clear on the nature of things that their actions don't have any side effects and unindented consequence as they aren't the least tiny bit tainted by all the confusion we ordinary folks bring to the table.

Please help me now teacher, says the Baizhang of old who's been trapped for 500 lifetimes as a fox, "Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect?"

Aitken translates the answer as: "Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect."

One of Aitken's Japanese teachers has: "The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured."

The early Zen pioneer to America Nyogen Sensaki whom I've been going on about has: "An enlightned person is one with the law of causation!"

Whomever authored the Wikipedia page on this case has, "Don't ignore cause and effect."

Another I found, "Not in the dark about cause and effect."

So obviously the underlying Chinese is a bit unclear if the translations of it differ so much. The Chinese was more than I can make out with my limited knowledge.

也無。
師云。
不昧因果。

I can make out (with Google translate's help) that he starts his answer by saying, "no" or remember this can just be a negation of a subsequent character.

Then there are two key characters that must be an archaic phrase or a reference
Shi - yun [shi rising, yun falling]
Shi means division - to divide things
and yun means cloud - perhaps cloud also means to obscure like the English it's cloudy or clouded?
And then he says
"No cause and effect".

So the literal transation is something like "no, dividing obscures, no cause and effect" or maybe a little more intelligible would be. "Is the enlightened person subject to cause and effect?"

"Not divided from cause and effect" with the implication that this is an obscure business.

Which is all very interesting I suppose but how is this story with this cryptic answer in the middle of it helpful to us?

I think we can hold this as a powerful mythic example of the great influence of all of our actions including what we think and say. That it's time to grow up from the idea that loose talk or even loose thinking is no big deal as long as we don't do anything too bad.

Ghandi famously said,

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

And the process of practice helps us see more and more clearly and subtley how we are affected by all kinds of things, and how others are affected too. We're both resilient and very fragile. Sticks and stone break our bones and words very much do harm us and the right words also lift us up.

And as we refine our understanding and act more like Buddhas we do indeed do less that's karmically charged. We are less confused and more clear. The unintended consequences of our actions diminish. But never to use enlightenment as an excuse for our behavior. That shows up in some of the sexual misconduct cases in our lineages. The teacher convincing himself and the student that their innappropriate relationships is special and above the fray, pure, or even beneficial - "a teaching" - those teachers deserve their 500 lives as a fox.

A traditional verse for remembering to practice and how important karma is would be worth reciting regularly here if we could figure out a graceful way to add it - touhces on 4 key points, this verse is sometimes called the four thoughts or four remembrances. This is Norman's version published in Training in Compassion with a few tweaks by me:

Consider how rare and precious is this human life.
Remember the inevitability of our death and
accept the inescability of suffering in samsara.
Investigate the awesome and indelible power of our actions.
And you will naturally live a life of practice and benefit for all beings.

If we live with this in mind we won't have any fox problems because living in this way we live with awareness, humility, and see there is nothing better to do than practice compassion and love.

Dogen appreciated this story of Bhaizang and the fox enough that he wrote a whole chapter in Shobogenzo about it - the chapter is called Dai Shugyō or Great Practice. It was written in 1244 soon after Dogen and his students created Eiheiji. The same Eiheiji that Ben and Christina recently immersed us in.

Like all things Dogen there is a lot there but just to highlight a few passages for the moment.

Dogen writes about cause and effect and what a deep practice it is

Investigating great practice is nothing but cause and effect itself. Because cause and effect are invariably comprehensive and completely full, they are beyond a discussion of falling or not falling, or considerations of ignoring or not ignoring. If not falling into cause and effect is a mistake, not ignoring cause and effect may also be a mistake.Whenever mistakes surpass mistakes, there is falling into a wild fox body and there is liberation from a wild fox body.

And he quotes another teacher's comment on this case which is interesting:

Baizhang personally met the wild fox;
questioned by it, his heart was greatly perturbed.

Now, I ask you, practitioners of the way,
have you completely spat out the wild fox’s saliva, or not?

And Dogen is also critical of the present-time Bhaizang's giving the full monastic cremation and ceremony for the body of the fox - which always seemed to me so deeply respectful of the old Bhaizang in a wonderfully mythic way - Dogen says

It is said that Baizhang cremated the body of the wild fox following the customary procedure. This is not clear; perhaps there is a mistake. Know that funeral services for a deceased monk, from the moment of entering the Nirvana Hall to the practice of arriving at the Bodhi Garden [place of death], all have set procedures and cannot be changed at random. Even if the wild fox lying at the foot of a cliff claims it is the former Baizhang, how could this be the practice of a great monk, the bones and marrow of buddha ancestors? Who could clearly testify that this was the former Baizhang? Do not groundlessly regard the transmogriﬁcation of a wild fox spirit as authentic, and do not make light of the dharma standards of buddha ancestors.

Telling us that Dogen took this story quite literally, not as a myth or a fable. As probably he and his contemporaries understood all of these Zen stories and very literally true. And there's a wonderful spiritual power to taking is all seriously I think.

So please consider if at some levels you think you're exempt from consquences. If you think "oh I can get away with this, no one will notice" and that kind of thing. Those are the thoughts that lead you straight to 500 lifetimes as a fox in the form of gradually seeing that there are always consquences to our actions, there is nothing we can get away with and our powerful words and thoughts and deeds ripple through the universe.

There's a story from Kenya about a forest fire. All of the animals run off to safety and are sitting there watching the jungle burn up and mourning and crying and carrying on about this terrible loss. But hummingbird isn't just sitting there, she's dashing around in constant motion. Finally one of the animals asks what she's doing and it turns out she's been flying off to a nearby pond to suck up the tiny amount of water her little beak can hold and then spitting it into the fire to put it out. That was the end of the story the way I heard it, I don't know if the other animals got inspired to realize we can all make a difference, no matter how small. That's a good story for us around climate change I think. So easy to run our fossil fuel cars and so on even through we all know full well that we are adding to this huge problem which may be the end of us.

Perhaps the our children and their children living through the distruptions and unknowns of climate change is our version of this story. We can only hope that things work out well enough that they can live those 500 lives. Is it all bad being a fox? To be alive is to be alive, full of possibilities.

Nomon Tim Burnett : Gateless Barrier 1 - Zhaozhou's Mu

Talus Latona — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 04:30:00 GMT

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Case 1 "Zhaozhou's Mu" of the Gateless Gate Koan Collection (Mumonkan) features the teacher Zhaozhou:

Pinyin Chinese Zhaozhou
Wade-Giles Chinese Chao-chou
Japanse Joshu
Lived 778 – 897

A key biographical point: (on leaving on pilgrimage at age 80) “If I meet an old man of 90 who has something to learn from me I will teach him, if I meet a young girl of 9 who has something to teach me, I will learn from her”

Tim highly recommends this scholarly chapter on what koans are and where they came from: Form and Function of Koan LIterature - T Griffith Faulk - The Koan - Heine Wright 2000.pdf

Tim's talk notes are below - he often departs from the notes but the notes themselves can be helpful.

The great holy book of Japanese Zen - studied very heavily in the Rinzai school especially and also deeply honored by our Soto school is called in Japanese Mu-mon-kan - in English the Gateless Barrier or the Gateless Gate. Mu means negation, mon is gate like in my name No-mon - responding gate - and kan means barrier. So literally it's no gate barrier.

A barrier that has no gate that you have to get through would be the reading in the break through to enlightenment style. But a set of Chinese characters it pretty flexible so we can also read it as no gate, no barrier would fits the idea that we are inherently okay already. This is a step beyond the idea of gradual progress towards enlightenment into the deep idea that we are deeply okay already - just as we are - we are Buddha nature - we are Buddha. It's just our nutty minds get a little side tracked. No gate, No barrier. There is no gate needed here as there was no barrier to begin with.

The book is a collection of 48 Zen stories - koans. The form that it has now was created in the late 13th century by a Chinese Chan master - the character we call "Zen" is pronounced "Chan" in China - his name was Wumen Huikai. Confusingly you see at least three different spellings of every Chinese Zen master. There are two common ways they are written in Roman characters - the older scholarly system called Wade-Giles and the newer Chinese government sponsored system of Pinyin. So this teacher is wumen in as one word in Pinyin and as a hyphenated word in Wade-Giles wu-men. And the Japanese when they see the Chinese characters used pronounce them in their own manner so they say momun. To make things even more confusing the Japanese when they are using borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese words - when they become kanji - have yet another way of pronouncing the exact same character.

The first character in this teacher who compiled the book is relevant to our first story. It means no or negatation in general like "un" in English. In Chinese it's pronounced "wu" and in the Chinese-facing Japanese pronounciation they call onyomi it's "mu" but when the Japanese say no to each other they don't say "mu" they say "īe" (eee-yeh).

Fun with language. You don't need to understand Asian language to study Zen - and I've barely scratched the surface of that vast topic myself - but it's helpful to have a sense of where the sayings and teachings of Zen have come from. And they've definitely bubbled up through many layers of language and culture and translation. Of course Zen tells the story that it's beyond language - we can't introduce formal Zen without sharing the great summary of all Zen teachings that's attributed to Bodhidharma:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,

Not depending on words and letters;

Directly pointing to the mind

Seeing into one’s true nature and attaining Buddhahood.

This from a Buddhist tradition that has produced tons of written literature but it's not wrong to say this either. There is a central feeling - a kind of essence - to these teachings that is indeed beyond words and letters and concepts.

Back to our book. What emerged in the 9th and 10th centuries was a custom of studying witty little exchanges between Zen adepts - usually between masters and students - some of which were codified as "koans" the word actually means public case, like a legal precedent for enlightenment. And these extra juices exchanges once they become koans are kinds of units of story that get passed around and commented on. Sometimes a koan collection will have one set of comments from a master in one century and another master commenting on the first comments a century later so these are layered kinds of texts.

The Mumonkan is on the simpler side with the stories collected by Wumen. He wrote a title to each one - which are all in 4 Chinese characters - the story as it was passed down to him, then a verse commentary and then a poem.

And of course later commentators then comment on his choices of title, his comments, and his verse. Comments on comments.

Here's case 1 as translated by Robert Aitken.

A monk asked master Zhaozhou, "does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?"

Zhaozhou said, "mu."

The same mu we discussed earlier in the very name of the compiler of the collect. This is of course literally untrue. It's axiomatic that everything has Buddha nature - dogs, rocks, people, the air. It's all an expression of Buddha. So why does the teacher say "no"? It's possible that our venacular use of the word "not" would be better here.

You think you know the teachings students? You're just parroting the old teachers.You say a dog has Buddha nature? I say "not"!

So this use of negation in Zen is quite wonderful and quite confusing. And i think quite important. You can't really have a sense of the way the tradition understands itself without a sense of this "no" of Zen.

It's not no in opposition to yes. It's no in opposition to being so sure there is a yes and no to everything. It's the no of emptiness, it's the no of endless possibility. If it's not this is could be anything.

Zhaozhou's no is the no of "not so sure" - this is a wonderful way to practice. Not to be so sure. In English being too sure is a sure sign of arrogance. Our way is the way of humility.

The sound "mu" is taken up as a kind of tone poem to study in zazen. This is a common starting place in Rinzai style koan introspection. You breath "mu" - and remember this is weird to a modern Japanese person sho says "ie" for no, not "mu" - so it's not becoming Japanese. It's a Zen thing.

I've played with this but without the structure of the full Zen koan curriculum and a culture around everyone practing with "mu" I havent' found it that helpful myself. You could try it though As you sit in zazen breathe in "mu" - breathe out "mu" - offer up "mu" to everything you see. Wonderful way to practice.

What I have found very helpful is to invoke the not-knowing and curiosity of "mu" with the phrase "what is it?"

It's simple and powerful. Breathe in feeling the body energizing and lightening and opening and then offer with the exhalation these three powerful words: "what is it?" And repeat.

Don't worry about an answer int he conventional sense.It's not about knowing what it is. Rather let the breathing and offering of a question open you up to not knowing. As another famous Zen koan says, "not knowing is most intimate." This not knowing isn't a passive state or a lack of knowledge, it's an active state of engagement with the world. Not knowing engagment. Curious engagement. Aliveness. Active curiosity.

What is it?

As those words get internalized you might not need the actual sounds -what is it - but just breathe out the feeling of the question. Or just the first word as more of an aspired sound "whaaaat".

it gets interesting when you really commit to this for a while. When ou establish it in zazen and then invite it out into your everyday life. As you walk: what is it? As you wait definitely a great time for: what is it? But gradually this spirit of wondering and questioning and curiosity infuses more and more of your life and you start to see how much suffering there is from being too sure and losing your wonder, losing your curiosity. What is it?

Talus Latona — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 04:38:43 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : The One Who's Not Busy talk 3

Nomon Tim Burnett — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 15:36:55 GMT


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Tim's talk notes:

Opening with a poem:

Rosemerry Trommer - One Morning

One morning

we will wake up

and forget to build

that wall we’ve been building,

the one between us

the one we’ve been building

for years, perhaps

out of some sense

of right and boundary,

perhaps out of habit.

One morning

we will wake up

and let our empty hands

hang empty at our sides.

Perhaps they will rise,

as empty things

sometimes do

when blown

by the wind.

Perhaps they simply

will not remember

how to grasp, how to rage.

We will wake up

that morning

and we will have

misplaced all our theories

about why and how

and who did what

to whom, we will have mislaid

all our timelines

of when and plans of what

and we will not scramble

to write the plans and theories anew.

On that morning,

not much else

will have changed.

Whatever is blooming

will still be in bloom.

Whatever is wilting

will wilt. There will be fields

to plow and trains

to load and children

to feed and work to do.

And in every moment,

in every action, we will

feel the urge to say thank you,

we will follow the urge to bow.

Usual when introducing a koan formally to introduce the players
Yunyan 780-841
Daowu was 11 years older 769-835
Both were students, together, of Yaoshan 751-834 who was himself a student of Shitou
Shitou author of Merging of Difference and Unity wihich we chanted on Monday morning
You may remember we also chanted Dogen's great meditation manual Fuzanzazengi which means "A universal recommendation for zazen" or something like that.
- details about posture
- which mean pay attention to how you arrange your body not that you should really be sitting in full or half lotus
- And then the briefest mention of what to do with the thinking mind (this is embodied practice!)
- "Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Non-thinking."
- This is a reference to a story about Yaoshan, Yunyan and Daowu's teacher:

When Priest Yaoshan was sitting in meditation a monk asked,
”What do you think about, sitting in steadfast composure?”

Yaoshan said, “I think not thinking.”

The monk said, “How do you think not thinking?”

Yaoshan said, “Non-thinking

If our chant book not-thinking and non-thinking are hyphenated which is a kind of clue that these are special words and ideas not just "don't think"
The word used for thinking is shiryō (思量) in Japanese.
Not-thinking is fu-shiryō (不思量)
and non-thinking is hi-shiryō (非思量)
(source https://nyoho.com/2013/06/06/thoughts-on-not-thinking-about-non-thinking/)
I don't read Japanese or Chinese really I looked this up in a talk by a colleague and i can put the referene into the notes for this talk on our website if you're interested in this stuff.
So fu and hi in fushiryo and hishiryo are just ordinary negations. Like the not and non in our English translations. The important bit according to my source is that there are multiple words for thinking and this particular one, shiryo, is actually not that common and means evaluative thinking, the ryo at the end means "to measure".
So the monk asks Yaoshan how he stabilizes his mind and he says "I think not thinking" meaning something like "I engage the mind in NOT measuring and evaluating. So it's not turning off the mind it's not "no thinking" is not-evaluative-thinking and it's an active engagement not a cutting off or a shutting down.
The rest is more or less word play I guess, the monk asking how do you DO that: how do you think not thinking. And Yaoshan just gives a synonym to emphasize and encourage the monk to investigate.
And that Dogen quotes this more or less verbatim is a sign of great approval. Usually he comments or deliberately mis-quotes something to either show how wrong it is or to bring it up to snuff.
So in zazen engaged in the gentle act of releasing from evaluative thinking is what is seems to be saying. How do you work with the mind? Pay attention closely, notice when the thinking that compares or judges arises and release it. Free it to drift away like a cloud.
Or you could read it: "I direct my thoughts awah from directive thinking"- think non-thinking.
Every great master's "record" includes their enlightenment story
Yunyan's - Zen's Chinese Heritage p 142-43 - note that Yunyan earlier studies with Baizhang who is one of the super famous teachers, the Zen Monastic Rule is attributed to him, famous for "day of no working is a day of no eating."
I don't have an enlightenment story for Daowu
Daowu is featured in a wonderful koan that's a meditation on life and death
- BCR case 55, Cleary p. 365
and Yunyan and Daowu are together again in a wonderful koan on compassion, one of few Zen writings that speaks directly about compassion (mostly implied in Zen literature)
- SYR case 54, Cleary p. 229
- Naturalness of this kind of compassion
- Compassion is a willingness to feel the suffering of others and try to help
- The great bodhisattva of compassion - one of her names (Kanzeon in Japanese) meaning she who hears the cries of the world.
- Are we willing to hear the cries of the world?
Koans are also called "encounter dialogs" - dialogs that emerge from encounter between sincere practitioners. This afternoon we'll close our formal sesshin time with a ceremony in which we'll create our own encounter dialogs - explain shosan ceremony and afternoon schedule
- (lunch break pack of your stuff in the cabin/tent zone)
- 2pm work period, bell to stop at 3pm or switch as soon as John's tasks are done
- 3pm clean up cabins (incl. e-cabins, camp bathroom) listen for han or watch the time for
- 4pm shosan ceremony (you might drive your car around)
- Then we'll clean up the zendo as Bob and crew gets our dinner finished up. Also move the pews and table back in.
- 5:30pm informal dinner - paper plates
- 6:30 clean up church bathrooms, kitchen, reset dining hall.
- 7pm s/b all done.
- What to remember - on the hour:
- - 2pm communal work
  - 3pm clean cabins and camp bathroom
  - 4pm shosan ceremony (3:50 han please Reamick)
One last Zen story

A monk asked Master Zhaozhou, "How is it when a man brings nothing with him?"

Zhaozhou replied, "Throw it away!"

The monk inquired, "Since I have nothing on me, what could I throw away?"

Master Zhaozhou said, "Well, then go on carrying it!"

A good answer to the "how do I take this with me" question about intensive practice - throw it away! But I know there's nothing, I know it's empty. Ok, then go on carrying it!

Nomon Tim Burnett : The One Who's Not Busy talk 2

Nomon Tim Burnett — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 17:40:00 GMT


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Tim's talk notes (not a transcription, Tim often stays from his notes, sometimes in interesting ways).

Several of you have mentioned that you're finding breath counting fruitful.

But of course if can be hard to tell which practice is helpful. Sometimes in our subjective experience we have a result we like: like you feel you can concentrate better or there are fewer anxious thoughts or something. But other times we have subjective experiences we don't like: one practice or the other feels boring and mechanical or frustrating.

The thing is it might be that a practice we don't like, especially in the short term, turns out to be the most helpful.

How do we know if a practice helps? Do you we just try things and see if we like them? Do those kinds of preferences help us? Or is there a deeper feeling of connection and possibility sometimes with one practice or another? Is it more logical or more intuitive?

And anyway why bothe with a technique like breath counting anyway? Why not just sit?

Well that's fine if you're really just sitting. Just finding some way of letting everything drop away - opening into the big wide possibilities of our lived experience. But sometimes "I just want to sit" means more like spacing out or checking out. It's so hard to know!

This is why really all instruction in Zen ends up being individual. Sometimes I can help someone feel into what's helpful- I just feel it and there's a kind of knowing. I say that but I also know it's not "me" exactly - I can't look inside anyone's head and I certainly can't look into the future to see what the result of one practice choice or the other will be. It's more like sometimes something emerges in the conversation that we're both contributing too. Some clarity is there and, on a good day, I can name that clarity - that sounds wonderful, please continue; or that sounds really challenging, please continue anyway; or that sounds really like it's not so helpful right now, let's try something else.

And other times I really have no clue. And then I'm grounded and clear I'll just say that - hmm, no idea right now, what do you think? Other times I just feel a little vulnerable and frustrated. I want to be helpful in the dokusan room and that's just not always possible. How could it be? To meet each other with all of our complexity in a few minutes and feel our way forwad with more clarity? Tall order! It's amazing it's helpful as often as it is actually.

This is a vulnerable thing this practicing sesshin, isn't it? I appreciate the way so many people here are in all kinds of new roles and even if you're doing a role you've done many times there is so much freshness and engagement and curiosity. And so much skill - which, yes, includes making mistakes! It's so vulnerable the way we show up together. We're exposed. In the quiet we see each other in a certain way. There's no where to hide. There's a commentary line on another Zen story that I've been turning over my mind lately: "completely exposed."

I realized as I was walking back to my little trailer that there's a big "new" for me in this sesshin too. This is the first multi-day sesshin I've ever led without another Dharma teacher. Usually I'm co-teaching with Eko Jeff Kelley or Seattle Soto Zen or with my teacher Norman Fischer. I've led all kinds of things myself of course but there's something very special and important in our tradition about a multi-day sesshin, especially a residential one were we're living here, it's our deepest ritual and it's a big deal to lead it. I was just going along one step at at time we do not thinking too much about it when I realized, wow this is kind of a big deal!

And I know that's also not really true. I'm not leading this alone. I am surrounded by deeply experienced practitioners and colleagues - some of whom I've had to pleasure to practice with for decades - and there is much leadership and support all around. I love that while we do try to honor the powerful practice of leadership we also do everything we do pretty cooperatively so I feel very supported. So thank you.

And also that this role of "teacher" is just one role of many here at sesshin and they are all important and essential so that's true too. Ringing the bells or cooking the food or painting the cabin or being the teacher, in a deep way every one of these roles is just as important and essential.

And there's something to this role, this form, this wearing this color of robe and sitting in this seat is a big deal, a real hot seat. Completely exposed.

In case I forget to say this at the end I do want to tell you that if any of my words or deeds confuse you or are harmful or unhelpful in any way I do deeply apologize for that. I'm not an enlightened Zen master I don't think but I do have the karma to be offered this seat and so it's my responsibility to show up and sit down here with you. My responsibility and my honor.

In any case breath counting is a very good practice to stick with for some days of sesshin, for some months and years of practice, but ultimately all technique does become a bit extra.

So you could either stick with breath counting, or you could try a companion practice for the rest of sesshin. This is what we might call "open awareness of breathing" - when you first sit down tune in strongly to the body and breath as you can been doing for breath counting. Then as each breath goes by invite the awareness to be light. To be lighter and lighter. And when other things arises that aren't breath awareness have less of a feeling of "oops, wrong - back to the breath" - treat other phenomena that arise more like the weather of the mind: clouds and rain squals, the occoasional thunderstorm, let them there there, let them float across the mind and meet them with a feeling of gently, gently settling back on the breath. So not that kind of strong moving away from the so-called distractions and back to the breath but an allowing, a being with, an opening to that just naturally leads gradually and organically back to the breath. The breath is always there patiently waiting for you, you know?

But do make a choice in each zazen period. Are you practicing breath counting or are you practicing this lighter open awareness of breathing? Make a choice and stick with it. And to just add more confusion you can also do a mix of these two practices: settle yourself in with breath counting for the first half or so of a zazen period then let the counting get softer and softer and drift away and then just rest your awareness lightly on the breath in the way I just described.

There is a great value in choosing how you're practicing and sticking with it for a while. Not rigidly or tighty so much but with commitment and vision.

And if you have questions or want my reflection back we can explore that in dokusan.

And in all of these practices we can invite the spirit of Yunyan's "you should know there's one who's not busy." We are making some kind of effort - there is "busy" in that sense of engagement and occupation - but notice when tense, hurried, striving kinds of effort arise. Can we notice that, feel it, and let it fall away? Hold up the broom for yourself and ask "which moon is this?"

The moon metaphor is from a Chinese sutra called the Shurangama Sutra. It's a longish Mahayana Sutra about the nature of reality that mostly unfolds as a long dialog between the Buddha and his attendant and cousin Ananda. Ananda is my favorite of the early disciples of the Buddha. A brilliant and devoted student with an incredible memory and yet in some deep fundamental way he had a huge problem "getting it" no matter how hard he tried.

In the opening of the Shurangama Sutra, Ananda screws up. It's a little racy actually - he's on his daily begging rounds, on his own which the Chinese commentators of this sutra tell us is a big mistake - don't go off on your own: you might do something you regret. And that's what happens. Ananda falls hard for a woman in one of the houses he stops at and they jump into bed together. No kidding!

But luckily for Ananda, his teacher the Buddha has clairvoyance and he always knows what's happening with everyone. He's actually in the middle of giving a talk over lunch to a donor when he sees what's happening with Ananda and before Ananda can take it too far and violate his monastic vows Buddha sends the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Manjursi, off to fetch Ananda.

Interestingly the woman he's with returns also to hear the teachings of the Buddha. And later in the sutra I'm told she actually gets enlightened before Ananda does. There are some misogynistic aspects to this little fling of Ananda and his, sadly unnamed, woman which I'm chosing to leave out but also these encouraging bits are actually right there in a thousand year old Chinese text. She practices and awakens too, we don't just leave her in bed. At least that's something.

Anyway Buddha realizes the problem isn't whether Ananda knows how to practice or the teachings or what the rules are, the problem is in the very nature of Ananda's understanding of reality so they start this long kind of Socratic dialog to explore what the nature of the senses and perception and reality are. This is a common theme in Buddhism: the problem isn't that you don't have enough information. The problem is you're in some fundamental way confused about who and what you are and what reality really is.

The challenge of these kinds of teachings for us is we are so thoroughly convinced that it all is the way we think it is. I'm me, you're you, the world is this way, not that way, you're thinking x y or z about me, I'm sure of it, the moon is up there in the sky. Sometimes the Buddha recommends practices that may shift our understanding in a meditative way but sometimes he uses logic actually. And this sutra is a vast exposition in logic about perception and reality.

I'm going to give you just a taste of this style of teaching. It's also from China appearing around the same time as the first Zen teachings, but it's a very different kind of literature from the koan stories.

And like most Mahayana Sutras there is a whole little school of Buddhism that sees it as the most important sutra ever and they are deeply devoted to it. This translation is from American students of the Chinese Zen master Hsuan Hua who created a very large center near Ukiah, California called the City of 10,000 Buddhas. Master Hua says early in his commentatary something like, "if you don't understand this sutra that is all the most reason to study it more, because you don't understand it you should study it, not the other way 'round." Which of course you could apply to lots of things but I've really come to love and appreciate devotional logic nonetheless.

After Ananda is back in front of the Buddha here's what happens first:

When Ananda saw the Buddha, he bowed and wept in sorrow. He regretted that, since time without beginning, he had devoted himself to erudition but had not fully developed his practice on the Path. Respectfully and repeatedly he asked the Buddha to explain for him the elementary steps that lead to attainment in the wondrous practices of calming the mind, contemplative insight, and meditation on stillness - practices through which Buddhas from all directions become fully awakened.

That's impressive isn't it? It reminds us that the key ingredient in the practice is actually humility. We screw up and we don't make excuses or blame someone, we also don't keep it to ourself and try to strategize a way to avoid making that mistake again either - Ananda's example is we go to teacher and ask for basic instructions. How do you do this practice again?

That's instructive to me for dokusan room practice too - so often people want to figure out a new strategy to solve their problem - I like strategies, I have some good ones too! - but maybe it's more helpful to go right back to the basics of practice.

Which reminds me of another of my oft repeated stories. This one I'll especially indulge because it happened right here on this campground about 25 years ago [first seshin, me anxious, Norman reminding me to breathe].

So the Buddha then surveys all of the bodhisattvas present in the assembly and gives Ananda an intimate kind pat on the head which actuallly we still do in the Dharma Transmission ceremony it says he "extended his golden-hued arm and circled his hand on the crown of Ananda's head." So intimate and sweet. And then he asks Ananda a key question:

"You and I are members of the same family, and we share the affection that is natural among relatives. At the time you first made the resolve to become enlightened, what excellent attributes did you see in my Dharma that immediately led you to reject the deep familial affection and conjugal love found in the world?"

In other words: so what inspired you to become a monk and devote yourself to practice. What did you see in my teachings that inspired that?

And Ananda says it was the Buddha himself. In the tradition it's said that your body changes in various ways when you become a Buddha - it has 32 distinguishing characteristics - the 32 marks of awakening - like suddenly you can see special dharma wheel symbols on the Buddha's feet and he has a particular kind of head and hair. And eyebrows! There are a bunch of them, we don't need to worry about those details so much as recognize that we see something in our teachers don't we? It's hard to say quite what that something is, too? We see something and feel something. I think in our Dharma age mostly the teachers a lot more human than radiant beings with the 32 marks which seems on the whole healthy as we are so much less likely to put our human teachers up on a pedestal where they may fall hard and hurt people in the process, but something moves us in the practice of others right? We see something in them.

So when Ananda says "I saw something important in you," Buddha sees this as a great vehicle to help him understand reality more fully. To help him deeply example the idea of "I see" the marks of awakening. What is that "I" and what does it really mean to see? How do you see? What is seeing? And so on.

So I'll just read a few pages of their initial exchange and try to refrain from comment just for time. Just let this roll over you.

[read middle of p. 15 '"Now, Ananda, I ask you this: when , in response to the thirty-two hallmarks...." to p 18 skipping Master Hua's comments.]

And then several chapters later the Buddha gets into what is it that's seen. And how we may think we're seeing the moon but is it really the moon? Is there the moon in the sky or in our mind? Or both? Or neither? Is the moon in our eyes? What does it mean to see? What does it mean to be one who sees? How does seeing really happen? Who sees the moon? It's a deep deconstruction of a process we take so for granted and if you really stay with this and study it and meditate on it the idea is just like contemplating the key phrases in a koan story this is a powerful path to liberation. Our perceptions and sense of self are so stubborn! So it takes a lot of patient practice. Whether that's in silent meditation, listening to talks, studying a text like this one on your own or even better with a peer or a teacher, little by little the scales fall away from our eyes. Little by little we see more clearly.

Someone was telling me that because of where she was in the room here she could just see 7 pillars, not 8. I said their were 8 pillars but she counted over and over and saw that I was wrong there are just 7 pillars. Kind of odd that they'd make a 7 sided room but it appears they did. And then she move or something and realized her misperception.

The idea of these teachings as that everything is like that. It's ALL a misperception tweaked out by our narrow-minded sense of a separate self that needs to be defended and promoted. And when we finally stop doing that, wow, what a relief, how liberating, how freeing.

Speaking of liberation and freedom I was talking to someone about our story of Yunyan and Daowu and we came up with another version that you might find helpful:

One day Yunyan was sweeping the ground.

Doawu came up and said, "Too busy!"

Yunyan looked up and said, "You should know there's one with nothing to prove."

Doawu said, "If so then there's a second moon."

Yunyan held up his broom and asked, "Which moon is this?"

This is worth considering too isn't it? Are you living in some way to prove yourself? To someone in paricular? To the world in general? Maybe the one you're trying to prove something to is yourself. Perhaps proving to yourself that you're actually okay, that you're enough.

I think our practice is not to much to cut that off at the knees - you could try certainly - but just to notice it, just to know it. Just to see it. In the traditional Buddhist texts there's a character called Mara who is an embodiment of all of our greed and desire and confusion. Mara shows up in a big way on the night of Buddha's final practice push into enligthenment (the way it's usually told as this big heroic pump through all of his resistance.) Mara throws everything he's got at Buddha but the Buddha doesn't budge, just keeps practicing and eventually Mara's armies are defeated by the Buddha's clear, wise practice (and "defeating the armies of Mara" is an actual phrase is those early teachings that talk about this).

But the intersting thing is that even after Buddha's awakening. During his 30 year teaching career, Mara keeps showing up from time to time. In other words the Buddha still had his issues that would pop up. But the neat thing is how was Mara subsequently "defeated"? Simply through awareness, the Buddha could name him, "Ah, I see you there Mara. That's you bringing these anxious thoughts forward in the mind." To which Mara always says the ancient Indian version of "drat, foiled again!" and dissappears.

So when you notice and name your various anxious projections and self-centered ideas your attempts to impress someone for instance. Just reminding yourself, "you should know there's someone with nothing to prove" even if you can't quite really feel that one right now, that's a kind of naming of that attempt to seek valdiation. Or keep it even simpler, "ah fear I see you." "ah, of thinking I'm not-good-enough, I see you" or "too busy! too too busy and stressed, I see that!"

Does this make your issue go away in a poof of smoke like Mara in the story? Sometimes maybe, sometimes not. But over the long arc it helps, it defuses that energy a little, it's walking the path of awareness. It's a wisdom practice to name your crazy patterns and then be sure to bring forward, as best you can the compassion practice of naming these things with kindness.

With more of a feeling of "ahh...very frightened right now" than "darn it! there's nothing to fear here, straigthen up!"

Okay that's more than enough. Thank you again for listening.

Nomon Tim Burnett : The One Who's Not Busy talk 1

Nomon Tim Burnett — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 17:40:00 GMT


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Note this is a partial recording (recorder wasn't turned on right away).

Tim's talk notes (he often strays from his notes, these are here for reference and in case they are interesting in their own right. It is not a transcription of the talk):

Welcome again to sesshin. Yes it can be a little shock to the system at first. Not sleeping well or sleeping but having really intense dreams is common. Getting used to a new routine can be challenging butit's also instructive isn't it in seeing how routine-bound we can be. You could get easily get into a headspace around how complex and stressful and difficult sesshin largely beause it's different from the complex and stressful day you normally have. But really is there any problem here? All you have to do is do the next thing on the schedule. Sit, walk, chant, eat, breathe. Is the thing that determines whether it's stressful or ease-ful the schedule and format or is it the attitude we bring to it? The way we meet it?

Our central theme this week is being busy. Or perhaps being too busy. Or perhaps being busy is okay but there's a way we get lost in our busy-ness that is a problem.

The dictionary says to be "busy" is just to be engaged. The first definition is:

• occupied with or concentrating on a particular activity or object of attention: the team members are busy raising money | she was busy with preparations.

Zen is all about engagement isn't it? Focus. So maybe busy is good.

But so easily being engaged and occupied becomes a different kind of busy. Harried, hurried, stressed, too busy.

But it's also about balancing different kinds of focus. We're good at a certain kind of narrow task oriented focus and we've derived from that a certain kind of narrow task-oriented way of worrying about things. Did I forget to do that? Did I do is wrong? Will I know how to do it right?

Do, do do.

There's another kind of attention that the narrow task oriented type. There's also a broad, grounded, spacious kind of attention.

On way to think about zazen is making use of the narrow to feel into the broad. We gathering out drifting jump attention that's all over the place - doesn't it feel like a thick cloud of thoughts and worries and impressions and things half-seen and partly remembered that swirls all around you sometimes - zazen does include a technique of narrowing down. Gathering in. Finding the breath in the body. Feeling the breath in the abdomen if you can. And a persistent gentle effort to keep it there.

Out it spreads, pulling it back.

How we pull it back matters a lot but we'll get back to that later, the point is we pull it back, we gather it up.

I first heard the term "sesshin" translated as gathering - gathering the heart-mind - it's all over so spend 3 days or a week gathering it up again. Like a basket full of stuff that you spilled. You're zooming along trying to get stuff done and you trip and spill your mind out everywhere. It's frustrating but what are you going to do just leave all that stuff scattered all over the ground?

In order to gather it up, you have to stop right? The shock of the spilling brings you up short. Maybe there's a moment or rage or frustration but there's also an opportunity there to stop, to take a breath, to get down closer to the ground and gather it all up again. Maybe you do a little reframing from "what an idiot I am who could I have been so careless?" to "okay, this is good, I'm being reminded to stop rushing around so fast, don't freak out, it only takes a few minutes to gather this stuff back up again." And we you do go on usually you go on in a better way, a more grounded and stable way.

So too-busy leads to spilling doesn't it? It leads to mistakes and how we meet those mistakes is important.

So zazen is noticing that we've been spilling our mind all over everywhere this whole time. Maybe our whole lives and we perhaps didn't really notice this fact. So we gather our attention into the breath and body. We stop. We suddenly have the opportunity of a new perspective on our own consciousness.

A powerful and ancient support for this gathering is breath counting. I'd like to encourage everyone to make breath counting your central practice for the next day or so. Whether you've done a whole lot or if you heard about it and rejected breath counting in favor of something else or if you never heard of it, let's all invite breath counting into the middle for at least from now until tomorrow's talk.

[basic breath counting instructions]

And the interesting thing is over time as we gather our attention in this way, as we use what appears to be a narrowing of focus exclusively - just this breath...one....two.... - we start to feel simulateneously included in that a different kind of attention and awareness. A broad, grounded feeling of our life becomes apparent. This is hard to quite explain or talk about. It's not "figuring it out" like we might have the idea of with spiritual practice - if only I could figure out my problems - it's more of a "feeling it out." Or a settling into it.

In one branch of Chinese Buddhism they have this term the "mind ground." Zazen helps us feel the mind ground and there's a great and wondrous sense of security and stability that emerges from this. A sense of trusting in our own life and this world - messed up as it is in some ways, wondrous as it is in other ways.

So the gathering that breath counting support helps withthis.

It also helps to feel the literal ground beneath our feet. Our practice isn't in our thinking mind, it's embodied - it's body-and-mind (all one word) practice. So we feel the ground.

Even if it's relayed through a building or through the furniture, it helps to feel the literal ground beneath our butts and legs when we walk, when we sit.

We feel the way it's the ground that makes it possible to sit: to line up our torso in some kind of balance. Try tilting the pelvis forward a bit - might require re-planting the butt - and inviting your vertebrae to stack themselves up in a slight S curve, the lower spine comes forward a little the upper back a little - inviting a lifting in the sternum helps. Inhale yourslef into the open blaanced posture - we tend to suually lean forward so a little corrective helps - and then....let go, soften, give the body to the Earth.

So our Zen busy-ness is both narrow and focussed together. Simultaneous inclusion

Narrow: keeping our gaze lowered helps reduce the scattering and spilling of the mind, so does keeping yourself out of other people's business - trust the sesshin organization and just do your job as best you can. Often just being quiet and staying out fo the way is best.

Broad: feeling the space, feeling the air, remembering that we're all breathing the same air together, aware of the energies and bodies and minds all around us without getting too excited about that (no need to figure anyone else out), seeing the trees and grasses.

And how it all works together is amazing. When we work this afternoon noticing the flow of the paint off the brush and how the viscosity of the paint and the dryness of the wood dance together.

On the one hand the narrow does seem to be true: you as a separate human being picked up a brush and dipped it in the paint and moved it across the wood so we can say "I am painting this trim."

But really, don't be crazy that's not the half of it! You can't make each of those molecules of paint go from there to there and stick to each other and the wood. You are just cooperating in a much larger story. The early chemists and artists who figured out how paint works are as important in this as anything you could ever do. The nature of wood is important. And that means a tree grew and was harvested and milled. So there is rain and sun and soil and growth and evolution and an entire incredibly rich ecological system operating in every stroke you make.

I'm just illustrating here a few possible ways of thinking about this - a few out of million and millions of ways of thinking and understanding the incredibly rich interaction that's happening when you paint some trim on one of the cabins.

But here's the thing: although thinking about this is a road in, just like gathering your attention in zazen is a road in, the actual practice of it is much deeper and wider than thinking. It's a felt sense of the depth and majesty of every act we take. It's a not falling into a narrow ego-istic view that everything is somehow "me" over here do this to "that" over there. There is an experience of "me" to be sure but our practice supports us in feeling the deeper reality of this and that deeper is reality is so helpful, so supportive, so liberating. It's not all on you anymore. That doesn't make it easy - there's still work to do and some of it is really hard - but the burden of it might not be the burden you think it is. That's the great power of cultivating this broader awareness.

So Zen stories are all about this. Not to be caught in the narrow and the self-centered. But also not to reject the narrow and the self. We are both. And at the same time the whole thing is bigger and more mysterious that this or that or both or neither. Zen stories - Zen koans - get misportrayed in a lot of ways. You read that they are puzzles to thwark the intellect for example. And that mix up has been going on for more than a thousand years we know because Dogen is at his most irate at people who say that koans are irrational. It's just a different kind of rationality I guess.

That said let's start exploring our central case.

When these stories appear as koans or "cases" in the koan collections they've been seriously worked already and these are complex books with many layers of creation and commentary and the system is different from how we build up books and ideas in the West. Ideas around originality and plagarism are very different for instance.

In this case the story is collected as case 21 of the Book of Serenity Koan Collection. The 100 stories in here were first collected by a teacher named Hongzhi (1091-1157) also confusingly called Tiantong which is what Thomas Clearly refers to him as in his book - you might remember Jeff Kelly and I discussing Hongzhi at Rohatsu last year in that eclectic history of Buddhism class we did last Fall we read some sayings of Hongzhi and wrote our own responses to them. Hongzhi put the stories together and wrote a verse in response to each one. He also wrote little pithy responses to each line of the main story, like footnotes. And then later on another teacher named Wansong (1166 - 1246, born a decade after Hongzhi died) took Hongzhi's book and made a new book out of it by writing an introductory verse and a commentary both to the main case and to Hongzhi's verse about that case. And both of these esteemed teachers would have been well read about what other teachers over the centuries have said about this story and about related stories. So it's layers and layers of stories.

We don't dig into this Chinese Zen literature in greath depth too often but I'm glad we are this week. These are our family stories in a way. And like all family stories they do get a bit embroidered and enhanced with each telling so there's really not way of knowing whether any of these events actually happened in a conventional reality kind of way but that's ok we can appreciate them deeply none-the-less.

And it's interesting: writing in English about these stories has gone through basically three phases. At first they were described as literally having happened. And pretty well valorized and held in very high esteem. These are the wise words and doings of our enlightened ancestors, heed them well and try to be like them! Then as modern scholarship started picking holes in some of the traditional accounts - this teacher could actually not have said this to that teacher because they lived in opposite sides of China o r they weren't alive at the same time or whatever - then the presentation changed to a seeking out the "true" original stories and weeding out the later bogus accrections and exagerations. As if it would somehow with brilliant textual analysis and archeology be possible to find out what exactly happened in a conversation in some Zen temple in year 800. And the the 3rd phase is more like: well we're pretty sure this person existed and lived in that area and maybe something like that happened but what's interesting is that the authors of this book 300 years later were trying to make this point with the earlier teachers as the charcters in their storytelling.

But of course these were real people situated in a culture and that culture had serious gender issues just like our culture still does so these are stories written by men about men among other limitations. We do have some wonderful recent efforts to bring the stories of the wise women of Zen happily, but for these talks I'm going to go ahead and dive into the traditional stories even though there is this underlying mysogeny to this whole literature. Let's take a moment to acknowledge that though - there is a deep suffering I know, well it's deeper than I can know, that women were left out in these literatures.

And all of this setting aside the fact that for some Buddhist schools all of this horsing around by Zen masters 1500 years after Shakyamuni's death is kind of beside the point and not really Buddhism anyway. Why not just study the oldest text that purport to say exacty what the Buddha said?

So there are so many layers here.

[skip??]

My famous 3-point approach to studying original texts, regardless of how truly "original" they are might be worth mentioning again. We can focus on the historical, the devotional, and the practical. Three strands. The historical is what it sounds like - what really happened historically as best we can tell? - this is interesting and I do love mentioning it but in the context of sesshin maybe we don't spend too long on this. It's the intellectual side of things. The devotional is kind of like that first wave of scholarship on the Zen stories although a little more realistic because we can do devotional without having to be "believers" in quite that way - whether this is historically 100% true or not let's jump into these stories as if they were true. Let's put ourselves in the room with these wise worthies. Let's feeling into these stories. Let's invest our hearts in these stories and spiritual truth whether we understand them or not. And the 3rd aspect the practical is "how do we practice with this?"

Well with that nutty amount of introduction here's our main story this week.

[Wansong's introduction]

One day Yunyan was sweeping the ground.

Doawu came up and said, "Too busy!"

Yunyan looked up and said, "You should know there's one who's not busy."

Doawu said, "If so then there's a second moon."

Yunyan held up his broom and asked, "Which moon is this?"

There are two key connected teachings here: the idea of busy and not busy and the teaching of the two moons. We'll play with the moon tomorrow.

We all know some version of "I'm too busy!" - just say to yourself now "too busy! too busy!" - what do you feel in the body. Is there a constriction? A narrowing? An increase in blood pressure? An intensity. Too busy is powerful. It's energy. It can be a tool. And it can be a tool that uses us instead of our using it.

Yunyan and Daowu are brother monks and according to some accounts were also biological brothers. So this is an intimate exchange between two people who knew each other very well. It wasn't just some monastery overseer seeing a monk rushing through his work and reminding him to slow down.

In Zen when we hear a statement that's a correction on the face of it "too busy!" we need to learn to see that not as criticism but also as encouragement. Encouragement to look more deeply at your activity. Are you only narrow and ego-centric here, "I have to get this task done, it's on me and everyone else better get out of my way"? Or are you able to also feel the breadth and depth of our intepenetrated life with each swish of the broom?

One day Yunyan was sweeping the ground.

Doawu came up and said, "Too busy!"

We could hear his as Daowu asking Yunyan, "So I see you are trying to show up fully in this world where there are tasks to do whie also trying to feel the depth of the mystery of existing in this vast, mysterious web of interconnection where everything depends on everything and you're just one small part. How's that going?"

The story goes on:

Yunyan looked up and said, "You should know there's one who's not busy."

This might be Yunyan answering, "Thank you! It's good! I'm feeling the depth of the mystery. I am in touch with the one who's not busy even as I sweep this walkway with lots of enthusiasm."

And it could have ended there but the exchange continues. We could read the next part as Daowu not being statisfied and confident in Yunyan's understanding or as Daowu having the compassion and kindness to encourage Yunyan to touch it even more deeply.

Doawu said, "If so then there's a second moon."

We'll explore the origins of the two moons tomorrow but for now maybe we can think of this as a reminder that everything has two sides, two aspects - well infinite sides and aspects but two stands for that - everything. If you think you are this, then think again maybe you're also that. If you think there's just dropping into the depths of the ultimate reality as you sweep then explore that more deeply.

And most importantly, recognize the way you are constructing this reality in your mind. The moon you see is not the real moon is it? It's an image and a concept and a thought that although it seems to be dependent on the existence of a huge rock orbiting the earth it's not the really the moon. That's your moon, that's one moon, what about other perspectives? What about realizations you haven't had yet and things you haven't understood yet. What about the second moon.

And the commentators all agree that it's really wise that Yunyan answered this with a question. We get too sure of everything and it helps to practice with questions - it opens us all up.

Yunyan held up his broom and asked, "Which moon is this?"

Oh! You're right brother there is never one way of looking at it. This is what Suzuki Roshi meant by that great expression "not always so" - and we can't really know anything with that kind of certainty we get that comes from thinking there's just one way - Suzuki Roshi's "beginner's mind" is here too.

Yunyan holding up his broom and asking that question wasn't Yunyan having the answer and quizzing Daowu but him raising up the question for both of them, and for us, and for all beings, which moon is this? What is this? What are my views and perceptions? What are my assumptions? What is this.

Several generations later the great teacher Dongshan in this lineage said it this way: "This this is it."

Sesshin is a wonderful time to explore this sensibility about our lives. This deeply knowing the unknowability of who and what we are. Which moon is this? What is it? Just this is it! Really? Yes, really, and don't take my word for it or your word for it, keep asking.

Let's appreciate the whole story one more time and then we'll continue with our quiet practice of both gathering ourselves deeply and carefully - breathing in, breathing out "one...", breathing in feeling our body, breathing out "two...", breathing in sensing the space around us, breathing out "three...".. Breathing in, what? what was I just thinking about what? and gathering ourselves up again, "one...."

Can we bring this commitment to gathering, settling and opening to everything we do. When we feel tight and busy - even just sitting here looking for all to see like you are doing absolutely nothing you can get pretty darn busy in there right? - notice when it is "too busy" and come back to breathing, settling and opening, that's our way of exploring the one who's not busy.

I'm deeply grateful to everyone for being here, for listening, for your practice. This is just an ordinary every day kind of practice but I'm also deeply convinced that it's really important. Our strengthening our confidence in the one who's not busy is important medicine for us and for this world. So let's take opportunity of sesshin seriously - following the guidelines, doing our best. And remembering at the same time that it's not "me" that does this anyway. Just be here. Just practice. Breathing in, breathing out.

One day Yunyan was sweeping the ground.

Doawu came up and said, "Too busy!"

Yunyan looked up and said, "You should know there's one who's not busy."

Doawu said, "If so then there's a second moon."

Yunyan held up his broom and asked, "Which moon is this?"

Thank you very much.

Nomon Tim Burnett : Bodhisattva Vows of Compassion

Talus Latona — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 03:00:00 GMT

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"Peaceful Life" by Dainin Katagiri Roshi

Being told that it is impossible
One believes, in despair, "Is that so?"
Being told that it is possible,
One believes, in excitement, "That's right."
But, whichever is chosen,
It does not fit one's heart neatly.
Being asked, "What is unfitting?"
I don't know what it is.
But my heart knows somehow.
I feel irrestistible desire to know.
What a mystery a "human" is!
As to this mystery:
Clarifying,
Knowing how to live,
Knowing how to talk with people,
Demonstrating and teaching,
This is the Buddha.
From my human eyes,
I feel it's really impossible to become Buddha.
But this "I", regarding what the Buddha does,
Vows to practice,
To aspire,
To be resolute,
And tells myself, "Yes, I will."
Just practice right here now,
And achieve continuity,
Endlessly,
Forever.
This is living in vow.
Herein is one's peaceful life found.

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Reizan Bob Penny : Blossoming of Spiritual Path

Talus Latona — Thu, 10 May 2018 03:30:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : The Making of Me - Caring for self without elevating self

Talus Latona — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 03:30:00 GMT

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Ryūshin Andrea Thach : The Heart of Zen

Talus Latona — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 03:30:00 GMT

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Shudo Chris Burkhart : Compsassion Bodhisattvas

Talus Latona — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 03:30:00 GMT

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click to download Joan Halifax's G.R.A.C.E. model

Nomon Tim Burnett : Compassion for Self

Talus Latona — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 03:30:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Compassion Kickoff

Talus Latona — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 03:30:00 GMT

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Paul Gilbert's Fears of Compassion

Click here to download the list of Fears of Compassion compiled by Paul Gilbert and used in this talk.

Interfaith Witness Support of Rohingya

Here is the email I mentioned at my last talk and also at the Annual Meeting. Hozan Alan Sanauke leaves on Friday for his trip to Bangladesh to support the Rohinga Muslims. To me this feels like one of those rare opportunities to give directly to people suffering on the other side of the world where we can be very confident the funds will be well used. Alan is co-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center and a life long activist.

Best,
Tim

Dear Friends,

On 23 March I am joining a group going out to the Rohingya refugee camps near Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh. The Interfaith Witness to Stop Genocide in Burma consists of Muslims, Christians, Jews and at least this one Buddhist. We will meet with and interview refugees, talk with representatives of supporting NGOs, and have time both with press and government officials in Dhaka. I imagine this will be a difficult journey, but it is essential witness for those of us in the West, whose every religious tradition teaches compassion.

While my travel expenses are covered, I hope to bring donations of funds for Rohingya support, and connect with organizations that are reliably and accountably supporting the refugees. I know that many of you care about the plight of Rohingya people and have deep concerns about the actions of Burmese Buddhists. If you can help, we welcome your donations large and small at: Clear View Donation for Rohingya Relief

Peace,

Hozan Alan Senauke--

Hozan Alan Senauke
1933 Russell Street
Berkeley, CA 94703
www.clearviewproject.org

Nomon Tim Burnett : Quietism and Activism - Difficult and Easy

Talus Latona — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 22:30:00 GMT

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Zoketsu Norman Fischer : Moral Suffering

Talus Latona — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 18:30:00 GMT

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Nōgen Connie Martin : Shuso's Insights on Anger

Talus Latona — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 22:30:00 GMT

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Zoketsu Norman Fischer : Layman Pang and the Obvious Case

Talus Latona — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 18:30:00 GMT

Talus Latona — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 04:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Trying On Zen

Talus Latona — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 17:30:00 GMT

Nomon Tim Burnett — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 02:30:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim spoke about an essay by Dr. Carl Bielefeldt of Stanford on differences between contemporary American Zen Buddhism and the Buddhism of Dogen's day in Japan. Here is the essay Nomon was speaking about: Bielefeld Participatory Buddhism.pdf

Ryūshin Andrea Thach : Jizo's Vow

Talus Latona — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 03:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Three Poisons and Seventy Farmworkers

Talus Latona — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 03:00:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Franma and the Mustard Seed

Talus Latona — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 03:00:00 GMT

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Talus Latona — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 17:30:00 GMT

Unfortunately there was a recording failure during this dharma talk as we entered into a week of silence. Instead, you can listen to the lyrics that were inspirational to this talk: King Crimson: Elephant Talk

Shuko Edie Norton : Befriend Everyone

Talus Latona — Thu, 25 May 2017 03:00:00 GMT

Talus Latona — Thu, 18 May 2017 03:00:00 GMT

Bendōwa 4a

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Talus Latona — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 04:00:00 GMT

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Report on EcoSattva Training Course

The One Earth Sangha (an online Buddhist organization) recently conducted an online seminar about directing Buddhist practice at the enormous problem of Climate Change. The sessions provided inspiration, information, and reflection on how to use our Buddhist practice to work together to reduce the impact of climate change. At this point we won’t be able to stop climate change, but there are things we can do collectively and individually to limit its impacts. Four of us RCZC members took the course together, meeting from time to time to discuss what we were learning. I want to share a little of the course content with you now.

Looking at climate change—the increasingly devastating storms, fires, floods, droughts and the wars, dislocations, political, social and economic upheavals—we see that individual actions are not enough. We must work together to change the systemic causes of climate change—which are--

The growth imperative of capitalism – requiring ever more natural resources
Consumerism – always craving and getting more stuff
Extractivism – believing there is always more we can extract from the earth w/o penalty
Unregulated & subsidized corporate behavior – polluting air and water, using up resources for which tax payers pay
Politics increasingly controlled by corporate interests, not community values and needs

How to respond to these conditions? What to do?

Buddhist principles can guide us in actions we can take and encourage:

Abstain from all evil:

Rescind subsides to fossil fuel corporations - $37.5 Billion annually
Impose a carbon tax – to ensure economic justice (not tax payer supported)
Reject pipelines & infrastructure that support fossil fuel extraction
Prohibit fuel transportation that pollutes and endangers communities
Reject trade agreements (TPP) that give global corporations economic control over local needs/values
Shift from Meat Agriculture (to reduce dependence on grain and cruelty to animals)

Cultivate all good:

Subsidize clean, renewable energy—individually and governmentally
Refurbish old buildings rather than using up irreplaceable resources
Create more and better public transit to cut fossil fuel use
Establish more ecological agricultural models—climate friendly diets (no meat)

Purify our own minds:

Develop contentment—to replace consumerism
Focus on spiritual values—qualitative growth rather than quantitative acquisition
Develop wisdom. Understand the consequences of our actions
Arouse compassion in ourselves for all people—no exclusions
Advocate for justice for all—no bigotry, racism, sexism, etc.

Benefit all beings:

Vote
Petition elected officials
Divest money from fossil fuel companies. Invest in environ. friendly companies

Buddhist teaching that suffering is caused by greed, hatred, and ignorance or delusion helps us understand that these actions/changes are needed if we are to save the earth. Joanna Macy, widely known for her work in Deep Ecology, advises as follows:

“Our individualistic, destructive culture discounts our deep concern for the earth, our home. When we think about the enormity of the problem, we usually react in one of two ways:

We feel helpless, hopeless, overwhelmed, and we shut down.
In our panic and grief about what’s happening, we look for someone to blame, and we shut down.

“How can we keep from these two ineffective reactions? We can take refuge in sangha--

We help each other—we, in sangha—remind each other that our practice asks us to face the present moment, whatever its contents
We look to each other to help us speak without defensiveness
We trust each other to speak truthfully about ourselves and our feelings
We speak about our love of the earth as well as our fears for it and ourselves

In effect, we practice our true relationship, which is interdependent, Interbeing.

“To do what the earth needs now, we need to shift from our current individually oriented, care-less orientation to acknowledging the true situation, which requires radical change. And we need to support each other in this effort--and we can.”

The EcoSattva course sessions offered questions for participants to answer and discuss. You might want to answer them; if possible discuss them with a friend, for you will learn more.

1. When I see what is happening to our world, what breaks my heart is: __________________

Notice your physical sensations when you speak, including numbing or shutting down.

2. To what extent do I invest in my Buddhist practice as an escape? Can I integrate my zazen practice with engaging in the world (taking action on climate change)?

3. What is the balance between my propensity toward reflection and toward action? Do I want to change this balance? In what ways would I change it?

4. What prevents me from closer collaboration with others? How might I overcome these obstacles?

5. Are there places in my life where I can sense the beginnings of a new perspective that might help me make change?

6. How do I hold on to my habitual behaviors about taking action? Where do I see I could take a spiritual risk? E.g., Does not knowing if I will succeed prevent me from acting? Can I practice Not Knowing and engage anyway?

7. What would stretch me as an EcoSattva (one who saves the earth)? What arises in my body when I imagine doing or being this?

8. What does my heart tell me will support my continued EcoSattva journey toward saving the earth?

Climate change is a really big challenge. We don’t know if we can be successful at reducing its effects. But I believe we must try--for the sake of our children and future generations. I believe it has fallen to us—those of us alive and well now—to try. To make our best effort to reduce the harm to our planet that has begun to manifest.

But what can we as individuals do that will have any substantial impact on such an enormous problem? It is easy to feel helpless and to return to being numb. We can reduce our personal use of fossil fuels—things many of us already do—take public transportation, ride our bikes, turn off our lights, use energy saving light bulbs and appliances, install solar energy, etc. These are all good, but not enough. There are political actions that must be taken. Letter writing, calling Congress and state representatives, educating ourselves, going to meetings, supporting petitions, speaking at city council meetings, attending rallies, going on marches, etc.

BUT what if we don’t have the time or the information or the inclination to do these political things? How do we find something to do that could help even a little bit? I have thought about this for myself because due to my age, I have some physical limitations. So here’s what I have done, and I offer it to you:

Reflect on what your heart tells you you’d like to do—what action you are drawn to.

Then think about the ways in which you might implement that action. First, think small:

Are you hesitant to reveal how scared or overwhelmed you feel about this subject? Then ask a trusted friend to have a conversation with you about the topic.

Talking will help, and it might lead to further actions you could take.

Are you curious about what friends or co-workers think or know about climate change? Ask them, “What do you think about climate change?” or “Do you think that recent [flood, hurricane, drought] was caused by climate change?” You don’t have to engage in an argument or even a big discussion, but you can raise awareness by asking the question. Awareness is what we need.

Are you drawn to speaking at a meeting but you don’t know enough to do so? Make your first action educating yourself about your topic. After that figure out what meetings to go to and then go.

Do you regularly communicate by Facebook? Or read and respond to a blog? Try posting your response or a new post as a way of taking action.
Do you like to write? Study a concern and write an email to your Congressional Representative or Senator. You can do this online through their websites.
Are you better on the phone than in email? Prepare a statement and call your Congressman or Senator and talk with one of his/her assistants about your concern.
Are you good at creating posters or signs or artwork? Prepare visuals for meetings or marches; handouts to distribute; photographs to post.

This type of self reflection can also apply to any areas calling for citizen action, such as

Health care (repeal of the Affordable Care Act)
Safeguarding democratic processes – in the press, in public roles)
Women’s issues (misogyny, reproductive rights)
Rights of diverse identities (racial minorities, LGBT, religious, immigrants)

There are myriad small actions we can take. Reflect. Act. Come for refuge.

Wendell Berry, a American farmer, environmentalist and poet, has the following encouraging words: “Be joyful even though you have considered the facts.”

The final sessions of the EcoSattva course emphasized coming together in sangha for moral support. Also getting past demonizing The Other; instead realizing that WE—everyone—are all in this together, so we must include those with whom we disagree. The course offered the following Buddhist principles to guide us:

Everything is sacred
Deferential listening – in order to really hear what others are saying
Compassion – forgiving mistakes, ours and others’
Honesty – with self and others
Generosity
Humility – not pushing our agenda as the only way
Wisdom – honoring the wisdom in all

Notes prepared for this talk, and the reading at the end was from At Hell's Gate by Claude Anshin Thomas.

This last evening was a "supermoon" - the moon as close as it's been to the earth since 1948 and an opportunity that will not be repeated until 2038. I read this was coming and several friends pointed it out with excitement. And I could feel the anticipation of seeing something special and maybe getting a great photo with my telephoto lens. A little excitement and a little desire arose in my heart.

And not too unusually for the Northwest it was rainy and cloudy - at least when I looked (I'm not too hard core about such things). So I didn't get to see the full moon clear and unobscured.

The first time I looked up at it, I barely looked. All I could really register was the disappointment of not seeing what I'd wanted.

And of course for so many of us for the last 8 days we've been thinking and feeling in all kinds of ways about the unexpected results of our national elections.

The full disclosure here is I'm on the liberal side of the equation, but I hope these reflections are useful for my friends on the conservative side. And the minute I write that I'm aware of how limited and narrow is it to think that there are just two kinds of people in our country. And that people can all kinds of reasons for choosing to vote for one candidate or the other, or choosing not to vote at all.

This morning I was up early and went out to my backyard mediation hut to practice.

Another full disclosure: for the last 8 days I've found it really hard to keep up my daily practice. I skipped several days figuring I'd be sitting with others in mindfulness classes or at the Zen center. Which is true enough but it doesn't serve the same essential purpose as sitting quietly at home in the morning does for me.

I've felt literally a bit ill in the body - queazy, low energy. And I've felt a bit sick at heart. It's been hard to really show up for life. Challenging conversations in classes and at home. Trying to make sense of what's happening and trying to be helpful as others make sense of it. Sometimes trying a little too hard to reassure others. Other times feeling shut down and not wanting to engage. Wanting to hope that everything is okay sometimes. Other times batting down the whisps of despair that everything is very much NOT okay (and again this paralyzing belief in there only being two possibilities).

And then this morning I saw the moon hanging just above the horizon to the northwest. On it's way down for the day. I saw it through the trees and in the clouds. I could just make out some of the details of the lunar surface. Mostly a glowing white orb.

And I stopped. I really saw the moon - the supermoon! - as it was showing itself at this particular moment. Not what I had wanted in my mind, true. And incredibly beautiful and just as it is, also true.

I've heard people (mostly those within my liberal-leaning circles) talking like this is the beginning of dark days. We'll have to be strong. We need to mobilze. So much to do. Anger and frustration needs to be channeled and used. I've heard doubts about peacefulness too: we don't want to chill out too much, we need that hard edge to be strong, to be motivated, to show up.

But of course the America of last Monday was, more or less, the same America that voted the way it did on Tuesday. Either the dark days have been with us for a long time or it's not quite right to say the days are dark.

The days are dark and light. The moon is clear sometimes, obscured by clouds other times. It's still the moon. This is still our beautiful, diverse, strong country. Part of the ultra-liberal ethos is to be a little suspicious of "loving our country" - that could be code for a certain kind of narrow minded, potentially violent, nationalism. And I guess it can be.

But maybe it's time for all of us, not matter what our particular kalideoscope of views is, to learn how to really love our country. What is our country after all but the lands and peoples that live in it. And that live in it now. It's time to learn the effective and clear way to love everyone. That's what I hope our mindfulness and compassion practices will support us in doing. I think we need a much bigger vision than "enduring dark times."

Will sitting on the cushion and bringing our attention back to our breathing with kindness solve anything really? Not exactly, but it can help us find a stronger ground to stand on to do our work of love. If there's anger, we can find ways to include that reality and know that reality, if there's fear - the same, but spilling our anger and fear out into the world only adds to our troubles.

Talus Latona — Sun, 02 Oct 2016 17:00:00 GMT

This is the series of talks given by Nomon Tim during the 2016 study retreat about the Yogachara model of consciousness.

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Talus Latona — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 03:00:00 GMT

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Ryūshin Andrea Thach : Our Embodied Life 4 - Resiliancy and Chiyono's No Moon, No Water

Talus Latona — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 03:00:00 GMT

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Ryūshin Andrea Thach : Our Embodied Life 3 - Who is Senjo?

Talus Latona — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 03:00:00 GMT

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Ryūshin Andrea Thach : Our Embodied Life 2 - Kisagotami and the Tender Heart

Talus Latona — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 03:00:00 GMT

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Ryūshin Andrea Thach : Knock Down the Banner

Talus Latona — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 03:00:00 GMT

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(As an .m4a audio file, this is compatible with fewer audio players than an .mp4; however this is still a fairly common file type so if it doesn't work on your favorite device, try another)

Zoketsu Norman Fischer : Evaluating Doctrines

Talus Latona — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 17:30:00 GMT

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Zoketsu Norman Fischer : When Mountains are Mountains

Talus Latona — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:30:00 GMT

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Zoketsu Norman Fischer : Self

Talus Latona — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 17:30:00 GMT

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Zoketsu Norman Fischer : About Nothing

Talus Latona — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 17:30:00 GMT

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Talus Latona — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 03:00:00 GMT

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Below find Nomon Tim Burnett's talk notes. This is not a verbatim transcript of what Tim says in the recording but for reference and a quick scan we offer these notes. Listening to the talk is recommended.

Good evening,

A wonderful friend of the sangha, of all of the sanghas in Bellingham, was a lively and energetic woman named Joan Casey. Joan died yesterday, she was 75, of pulmonary failure. I didn't see her often but I always so enjoyed her bright spirit when I did. The last time was at a screening of the film States of Grace at the Pickford, an amazing intimate documentary about the recovery of Grace Dammann, a resident at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center and an amazing doctor and bodhisattva who survived a horrible car crash some years ago on the Golden Gate Bridge. Joan had a place in San Francisco and I think used to live in Sausalito and of course knew all kinds of Buddhist practitioners in the Zen and Dzogchen communities down there. Anyway there she was at a Buddhist event and we were milling around the lobby and somehow Joan seemed to know everyone there.

[Early supporter of the original Dharma Hall, and of this one - heater story]

We'll have a memorial for Joan here or maybe also at the Bellingham Shambhala center - perhaps a combined memorial. She left instructions with us on what she wanted which doesn't surprise me at all. She wanted to help and she also took care of herself and knew what she wanted, did Joan. Of course I wish I knew her better now.

There should be a word for that melancholy feeling of wishing you'd spent more time with someone that often emerges when that person dies. When the fiction that you'll get around to seeing them more later on when you have more time comes crashing down.

As y ou know I'm trying to understand something about compassion and connection. I love the groundedness and the wisdom emphasis of Zen but a little Norman did with his study of the Tibetan Lojong mind training slogans and his great book Training in Compassion I've been also realizing I'm low in emotional awareness and compassion. I love people a lot actually but I often don't communicate that very well and I get a little self-focused.

So I've been studying both secular mindfulness-world application of compassion, doing trainings from groups on the cultivation of compassion inspired by Tibetan Buddhism and inspired by positive psychology and the interesting self-compassion movement. And also I've been reading Tibetan materials a little too, trying to get a sense of it. And a year ago we studied a famous Tibetan text that's all about compassion by the 9th century Indian pundit Shantideva.

The contemplation of death is a core Buddhist practice. In the mindfulness sutta there's a long section on contemplating actual corpses in the charnal gounds and seeing how we are of the nature to die very directly. Sometimes I've given people the assignment to go walking in the graveyard - Bayview is very nice for this.

Different branches of Buddhism have different ways of remembering that life is short and human life is a precious opportunity. To see this as a core motivator to practice, to use our time well for the benefit of all.

The Tibetans have a set of four thoughts that turn the mind toward Dharma

“The freedoms and opportunities of this life are extremely difficult to attain.”

“Being impermanent, all beings must die.”

"Virtuous and harmful actions cause their inevitable results.”

“The nature of samsara (self-clinging) is suffering.”

In an early Buddhist text called the Upajjhatthana Sutta - the subjects for contemplation we find the five remembrances, here's Thich Naht Hahn's version

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

And many of our Zen stories contemplate the intimacy of life and death. Here's one of many.

This one happens to feature the great Chinese Zen master Yunmen whom we met a few weeks ago in the story about why do you put on the 9 panel robe at the sound of the bell?

[Blue Cliff Record case 27]

A monk asked Yunmen, "how is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall?"

Yunmen replied, "Body exposed in the golden wind."

How is it when the tree dies, when we die? Is it just gone? Is it just compost?

It's open, it's exposed, it's alive in a new way, it's the golden body open and intimate with the golden wind. There is death and sadness and there is openness and intimacy.

Joan's husband, John Watts, told said to me, "it's sad, but it's okay, her spirit is flying far and wide now."

When people go we all wake up a little, but we don't always pay attention. And that waking up requires falling apart too.

I was listening to a talk by Gyokuko Carlson about the death of her husband and co-abbot at the large center in Portland, Dharma Rain Zen Center. A heart attack suddenly took Kyogen Carlson in 2014.

She said: "who are you without that voice? Without that face? Without that person? Without the mirror reflecting you back to you? We have set out on a journey, we are three weeks into this journey [it had been three weeks since Kyogen died] and this is just…I would encourage you not to be in a hurry. Don't be in a hurry to get remade. Don't be in a hurry to stop being undone. This is precious journey full of possibilities. It may be useful for you to relax around this and accept: just as you didn't choose this time to undergo this journey, you also don't get to choose what you experience along the way. You can relax about that. You can choose to turn toward it. Experience it completely." She's speaking to people who deeply loved Kyogen and were his students in all kinds of ways. She later quoted Kyogen saying "I've thought for a long time that grief is the most underappreciated of human emotions, most people avoid looking at it

And that appreciate of death is not just something to be endured, it's a condition that supports practice and supports compassion when we turn towards it with wisdom.

Here's another case about death, this is maybe the most famous one:

Blue Cliff Record case 55

Is Joan Casey alive or dead? Of course we'd say dead. But don't be so quick. When someone dies like Gyokuko suggests don't be in a hurry to stop being undone.

Are you alive or dead?

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

What should be our answer? How shall we live? How shall we practice? Perhaps it's time to keep studying compassion and wisdom, wisdom and compassion.

Listen to Gyokuko Carlon's deeply touching talk to her sangha and practicing with the loss of her husband, and their teacher

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Compassion 1 - All Beings Want Happiness

Talus Latona — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 04:00:00 GMT

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During my morning zazen today I felt very vivid and awake.

And don't feel bad if that's not always the case for you, it's usually not that way so much for me either.

I have a lot of faith that sleepy zazen and distracted zazen and not remembering what happened zazen are still zazen.

And the whole notion of evaluating zazen with our subjective experience this way is a little suspect anyway. Maybe even a little arrogant. One little slice of our consciousness thinking it's the boss and knows what's going on. The little "me" saying "hmm, your zazen is not so good! Try harder!" or maybe saying "Forget it, you'll never be good at this, just space out. At least we get to hang out with some cool people if we pretend to do this zazen thing."

We make effort in zazen regardless of our opinion or non-opinion on how we're doing, but let that effort be gentle and accepting for the most part. Don't try too hard. Don't just snooze either, zazen is a powerful and rare opportunity really. Think of the many conditions that have to come together Let's treasure and honor that. But it's a fine line, we get too excited and try too hard and what happens? We create suffering.

Anyway this morning I felt very vivid and awake and a powerful thought appeared in my mind. "all beings want happiness and freedom from suffering" In the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on compassion this is the essential thought. This reality is the foundation for compassion and connection.

It seems obvious, a platitude even, but if we contemplate it deeply and keep bringing it into our encounters it changes everything. Someone's misbehaving in some way, you still may not appreciate their behavior, but your response is so different if you perceive a suffering being seeking happiness before you.

I've studied and thought about this idea a lot but somehow this was another degree of knowing and feeling it. All beings want happiness and freedom from suffering.

I think my heart is a bit conditioned by the sad fact that our cat is dying. For 17 years our little black cat Lucca has been a spritely and spirited family member. An especially important companion to my wife Janet who is often stuck in bed. Cats are so good at resting, much better than humans. Of course she is completely alive still but her form is changing. She isn't moving around much. She stopped eating. Happily she's still drinking a bit and we hope she's not too uncomfortable as she sits there so still, breathing, and being. It's hard to not oversimplify her experience as waiting for death. But that's really what it looks like. Of course death is always on the way for all of us. But today it's so clear that we're all hanging out in death's waiting room. It's a big room, the whole universe is here, and there's a lot to do. Death has great magazines and toys and entertainments and work to do and projects and things to learn. But when your appointment arrives it's right there.

This thought "all beings want happiness and freedom from suffering" reminds us to look around the waiting room at our fellow beings. Gets our head out of those magazines and supports us in making contact and helping. This thought reminds us to respond.

One thing I learned I was reminded of in the training I did at Stanford on teaching compassion was the powerful thought that for the response to suffering to actually be compassion you have to feel the suffering. Actually feel it. We can call this empathy. I remember Norman telling us ages ago to think about the word "passion" in the compound of "Com-Passion" - we have to feel something. These kinds of learnings seem to take a while to sink in.

I noticed when Lucca started her decline a few days ago and my wife was so upset that I didn't feel anything right away. My mind went to my head. Went to platitudes like "she's had a long life" "this was inevitable" "if she won't have high quality of life we should let her go" - all true but just thoughts. And little by little I've let myself start feeling the pain and sadness of loving and losing in the form of this little black cat. She's a really inquisitive and smart cat, and up until recently still did kitten type behaviors. Chasing little balls. Jumping up on the bed for pats. Being really engaged with us. And now she's not doing these behaviors anymore. And as I feel a little more of the pain I notice my interactions with Janet are softer, more helpful, more understanding. Becoming compassion and not just sympathy or pity or problem solving.

[more layers and self-compassion: Janet coming in to complain about not being taken into account for weekend plans, and further not celebrated enough in her birthday weekend - ouch. Accept, feel, breathe. Mindfulness, common humanity, kindnesss]

I'm going to miss this little cat too. This morning while sitting with "all beings want happiness and freedom from suffering" it wasn't that I had an image of our cat in my mind so clearly but there was an opening in my gut, an expansion in my heart.

How do we respond to suffering? In Brussels there are now 30 families mourning a big loss. On Monday night those families weren't mourning this loss. And on Tuesday sometime mid-morning as they started to be notified that a loved one had been killed in the madness of violence they all, each in their own way, we're faced with "all beings want happiness and freedom from suffering" which appears in so many shapes and forms.

Jeffrey Hopkins is a wonderful scholar and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and one of HH Dalai Lama's translators. He wrote "The Dalai Lama is fond of saying, when beginning to address a group on a lecture tour, that he feels he knows each individual just like his own brother and sister - even though he's of a different religion and was brought up in a different part of the world speaks a different language and wears different clothes. But his basic knowledge of himself provides knowledge of what all beings want." They want happiness and freedom from suffering. Few things are as universal about beings as this.

Lately I've been enjoying studying the Zen koan literature with some of our senior students. Here's a wonderful story that appears as case 16 of the Gateless Gate collection.

Yunmen said, "See how vast and wide the world is! Why do you on your seven-piece robe at the sound of the bell?"

The seven-piece robe is this garment, the okesa, that ordained people in our lineage have worn to practice for so long. It's a take on the Buddha's original robe. Putting it on means going to practice.

Why do we go to practice at the sound of the bell? Why do we respond to the calls of the world?

And what a world it is. Vast and wide! We now get instant updates on a small slice of the happenings of the world which gives us some idea of what the world is, but do we really know the vastness and fullness of the world?

And how is it we meet that world not with despair but with practice. With compassion. With suffering with and loving the world. With feeling the joy of the world that somehow exists on the one hand even while there is great hatred and anger and fear on the other. Our seven-panel robe is so big it can hold it all. Suffering and joy. Compassion and hatred. The Buddha and all of the ancestors call on us to respond. Somehow. To respond.

It's interesting how the heart seems to work. A close-to-hand personal example of suffering and change - our cat Lucca - is a bit easier to feel. And even there it's can be a practice point to open instead of closing and hardening and making the suffering abstract. A 17 year old cat is supposed to be on her way out. And yet here's this beautiful, beautiful being resting there. Sitting still, waiting for death, reminding me that I'm waiting for death too. And so are you. What will we do to help beings in this vast waiting room of death. How we will be that's helpful? We don't know when the next beautiful natural peaceful death will be, we don't know when the next suicide vest will be worn.

The collector of this particular koan collection added commentaries and verses to each story. He reminds us in this case that we "true Zen students" can access a bigger view. A view that's wider than any view. He says we can "ride sounds and veil forms" that "if you listen with your ear, it is hard to understand. If you hear with your eye you are intimate at last." He reminds us to be deeply curious and not settle for impressions and appearances. We may see before us a difficult co-worker, a dismissive parent, or a ISIS terrorist. And yet, "all beings want happiness and freedom from suffering."

His verse about this case is also interesting, he starts with a couplet that makes easy sense:

With realization, all things are one family;

Without realization, all things are disconnected.

And then like Dogen often does in his writings, he turns this around, reality is never one side. Not always so

Without realization, all things are one family;

With realization, all things are disconnected.

The world calls on us to respond. Can we feel the world, the suffering and joy, and still be able to respond. Or do we bury our nose in the magazines in the waiting room or keep busy with some task. Norman gave me a name that's both challenging and acknowledging. Responding Gate. Sometimes the gate swings freely and all beings can pass easily, other times the gate is sticky, rusty, creaking, it doesn't want to open. I want to hide. The "I" wants to hide.

How is it for you?

Opening lines – the Dhammapada

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday And our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind. If a person speaks or acts with an impure mind Suffering follows, as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that pulls it.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday And our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: If a person speaks or acts with a pure mind Joy follows as a shadow follows the body.

“He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me.” Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate For hate is not conquered by hate Hate is conquered by love. This is the eternal law.

Nomon Tim Burnett : Inner Gold 2 - Handling Inner Gold

Talus Latona — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

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Side note 1: Dogen: "ensure your ears are in line with your shoulders" - benefits of a gentle rising in the sternum, chest opens, shoulders drop, more room for the neck and the heads moves back easefully. Balancing focus on posture with letting go.

Side note 2: I thought you might enjoy hearing some of the teachings of the Science Buddha. This is from

The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation, pullished by Yi‐Yuan Tang of Texas Tech Univesrity, Britta K. Hölzel of the University of Munich, and Michael I. Posner of the University of Oregon in the Journal Neuroscience in April 2015.

Neural mechanisms of enhanced attention control.

Several functional and structural MRI studies on mindfulness training have investigated neuroplasticity in brain regions supporting attention regulation. The brain region to which the effects of mindfulness training on atten- tion is most consistently linked is the ACC 11,23,38,39,73–76 . The ACC enables executive attention and control 77–79 by detecting the presence of conflicts emerging from incom- patible streams of information processing. The ACC and the fronto-insular cortex form part of a network that facilitates cognitive processing through long-range con- nections to other brain areas 11,80 . Cross-sectional studies have reported enhanced activation of regions of the ACC in experienced meditators compared to controls during focused attention meditation 76 or when mindfully antici- pating delivery of a painful stimulus 81 . Greater activation of the ventral and/or rostral ACC during the resting state following 5 days of IBMT was also found in an actively controlled, randomized, longitudinal study 23 . Although ACC activation may be enhanced in earlier stages of mindfulness meditation, it might decrease with higher levels of expertise, as demonstrated in a cross-sectionalstudy 18 . Structural MRI data suggest that mindfulness meditation might be associated with greater corticalthickness 51 and might lead to enhanced white-matter integrity in the ACC 38,39 .

Other attention-related brain regions in which func- tional changes have been observed following mindful- ness meditation include the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), where responses were enhanced during executiveprocessing 82 , as revealed by a randomized longitudi- nal study, and parietal attention regions, which showed greater activation following an MBSR course in people with social anxiety, as demonstrated by an uncontrolled longitudinal study 83 . Furthermore, a diminished age- related decline of grey-matter volume in the putamen as well as diminished age-related decline in sustained atten- tion performance were found in a cross-sectional study of Zen meditation practitioners 34 .

Although there is evidence that brain regions rele- vant for the regulation of attention show functional and structural changes following mindfulness meditation practice, it has not yet been determined whether these changes are actually related to the improved attentional performance.

[BRIEF BACKSTORY IF ANYONE THERE NOT AT PREVIOUS TALK]

Open with "Sometimes we have to struggle" section P.11-13, skip "Creating a Ceremony" (but talk about exchange that happens in our ceremonies - jukai for example), and read "Don't Mix Levels" P.15-16

Sometimes the exchange of gold doesn't go well.

One problem might be that we don't notice that someone is giving us their inner gold. I co-led a mindfulness retreat with someone once where the other leader was a student in a different Buddhist lineage. He was asking me lots of questions about my training and how I came to be a teacher. At first I thought he was just curious but later I realized there was a lot of personal freight and a lot of implied compliments and even awe of me in our conversations. He was giving me gold and he was looking for me to give it back by reassuring him that he was also a good retreat teacher and a good person. One of the things I'm noticing about myself is that I don't do reassurance by default. Maybe it's part of my training in silence, maybe I'm shy, mostly I just assume everything and everyone are fine unless they tell me otherwise. It can be a bit of a blindness, sometimes I miss pretty big hints that the other person isn't fine or is offended by something I did and just trying to keep it together. Maybe I'm a bad match for our passive-aggressive Northwest culture in that way, people don't yell at your when they're mad, at least not at first. They try to be nice and let it go. Anyway I really wasn't getting it with this person. I thought everything was fine and he was just friendly and interested in me and my background. And then at the end of our retreat I made a mistake. He'd expressed a preference about how the closing of the retreat and the cleanup at the facility we were using would go some weeks earlier. I just completely forgot and got focussed on "getting it done" which is another condition that can lead to violating implied gold exchanges. Anyway I asked my co-leader to do something he'd asked me not to do and he wasn't able to say anything or remind me of our agreement when I did. He just got angry. Really really angry. I was astounded actually. And I quickly got a little defensive - "why didn't he just ask for what he wanted? why not just remind me?" - but now I'm thinking it was because he'd given me so much gold that he was extremely vulnerable and unable to right himself. Not only did I not give it back but I acted like I didn't even have it. From his point of view I threw it in the mud and stomped on it. Very painful. And embarassing. So unskillful. So easy also to blame him for taking something personally that wasn't. This teaching on inner gold really helps me see this in a way in which I can take more responsibility.

And yet the exchange of gold is like that I think. Not always obvious. As as the giver or the receiver we can become very vulnerable. It's risky giving and receiving gold.

He's a positive gold story. A woman came to Bellingham for graduate school about 10 years ago and started practice with us. To be honest I don't remember that much about her presence in the sangha then but it was it turns out it was a very important time for her. And it's clear she gave and received some inner gold. Sporadically over the years since she's kept in touch with me on the email. A little update about publishing a book. That she's found a sangha where she lives now. That she's starting to study the precepts. It's all very nice. A few times she's been in the area and we tried to get together but it didn't quite work out. This made me a little nervous. Was I letting down my side? But then finally she was back in the area again and we did meet. Right as I read this little book on inner gold. "oh," I thought to myself, "she's ready for her gold back. Now I see that I've had some of her gold all these years and she's just been keeping tabs on it's whereabouts." We had a very pleasant meeting, no fireworks really but nice, connected for not having seen each other in all those years. A little later she sent me a note about how meaningful the meeting was for her, that this surprised her. I'm glad I could gracefully just show up and give her her gold back with good cheer in a relaxed way.

Of course the exchange of gold gets mixed up in intimate realtionships too. Here's what Robert Johnson says about gold in love and marriage. Read p. 16 "Love and marriage."

I've had the honor to try to support people recently after difficult break ups. Honor and challenge. There are some big debts and surpluses in the gold department there. It seems like the most painful might be that one partner understands the situation as having given the other an incredible amount of gold, a vast horde, having given their entire heart, and the other just didn't notice, or didn't see it that way or did see it but it wasn't gold to them. It was something more ordinary, matter of fact, not special in any way. The gold is missed or cheapened. And there's so much suffering. And both will have a burden from the imbalanced exchange for a long time it feels like.

Robert Johnson feels there's an inherent spiritual dimension to this no matter what. He uses God language, see what he has to say " Gold is Close to God" JUST P. 19 (skip godparent part) and "God is Out of his box" p. 26 - read whole thing. ((And draw parallel to "container" and on authority.)

Johnson's advice for learning how to be more skillful with this. "Making the Exchange Conscious" p. 23 and "Take Inwardly What is Inward" p. 28-29 and onto "Reclaiming our Projections" p. 30.

I hope these ideas are useful to you, and to us as a sangha. May this gold exchange we call Red Cedar Zen be one in which we are willing to hold each other's gold, and always willing and ready to give it back. May we see the urge towards hero worship on the one hand or dismissal on the other hand as a projection of our heart, of something just under the surface that we are almost ready to learn. And when we receive a difficult projection, may be be gracious and patient about it, knowing it arises from suffering and misunderstanding. Know that there is always gold there somewhere. Our sangha's Clear Communication process is a good guide I think for responding to feeling hurt in our exchanges.

And so any of us whom I've held your gold badly or disrepectfully I apologize. I'm always trying to learn and I'm grateful when you are courageous and clear with me. I will try to do the same for you.

Thank you for listening.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer : Devadatta - Trouble in the First Sangha

Talus Latona — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 18:30:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Inner Gold 1 - Why did Zen take root in the West?

Talus Latona — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

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In our study of Zen Pioneers this practice period, those early Zen priests and teachers, Japanese and Western, who were so instrumental in Zen practice taking root in this soil.

And I've been wondering anew why anyone in North America was interested. I was just recalling my first direct exposure to Zen and that sense of bigger possibilities than our material-based American lives, was that what it was? Was the motivation a critique of our culture as materialistic and narrow? That sounds right is too abstract and kind simplistic. Doesn't feel like enough of a reason to drop everything and devote oneself to strenuously and seriously to practice as the early Zen students did.

Or we often say that the root motivation for practice is our suffering. This is true enough. We so want to find a way to be more comfortable in our own skin. To be okay. To at least approach the territory of being enough. And our practice does seem to deeply help with this, but slowly and subtlety. And there are so many other ways to respond to suffering. Maybe if we're enthusiastic about Zen practice we could say, "yeah well all of those other ways don't ultimately work anyway - distraction, hedonism, busy-ism and so on" in the end we need something as radically simple and grounded and non-conceptual as Zen practice.

But somehow that feels like a stretch too. A lot of steps in that chain that would make it hard to sustain practice through the tough spots, through the "muddy middle" - isn't that a cute phrase, I'm adapting that from one of the mindfulness classes I teach - it seems like Zen has plenty of "muddy middle," no? Practice doesn't always make us feel good, that's for sure. So it practice as the answer for suffering really a reasonable reason for people to jump into something so new and so foreign?

Or was it the teachers themselves? Some of the early teachers were quite charismatic. Suzuki Roshi was mostly so charming. Zoom out to the other Buddhisms, Trungpa was apparently just magnetic to be around. And was that charm and charisma something inherent in the teachers or was it something that the mostly young American students projected onto them? Or was it their foreignness and in a cultural moment of rejecting what we had in Western culture - back to materialism and so on - did that moment in time lead to a great exaggeration of the appeal of the teachers' Asian-ness. Sociologists talk about a denigration of Asian cultures - Chop Suey kind of stuff as orientalism and that it also runs the other way a raising up of Asian cultures and a denigration of our own culture: Reverse Orientalism.

And by the way remember that it took a few tries, we were studying a little about the very first Zen pioneers in the the 1900's and 1930's when it absolutely didn't go anywhere and the Japanese priests just went home, or in the case of Nyogen Sensaki had to live quietly in American for 20 years until there was enough interest to give a lecture. So this wasn't a slam-dunk by any means. Now that we have this place and this teaching and practice is seems like, well, of course we have it, but all kinds of conditions being slightly different would have resulted in this not being here. Very easily.

And parallel with this curiosity about the planting of Zen in the West I've been curious about some challenging relationships I've experienced in the last 3 or 4 years as I've engaged the planting of another kind of Dharma in these soils - "mindfulness" which is more or less a contemporary form of Buddhism without the overt Buddhism in it, a kind of Science Buddha where we cite fMRI machines and people with PhD's in psychology instead of Shakyamuni Buddha but the feeling and the practice is quite similar. Anyway I seem to be, surprisingly to me, in a role somewhat similar to the first Zen pioneers and have experienced some really powerful love and connection from people I barely know in that role and I've also experienced some real scorn and mistrust and anger. Especially from some other teachers. This later point makes me wonder how the Zen perioneers thought about each other and there was something about a rivalry between Nyogen Sensaki on the West Coat and Sokei-an in New Year in the histories. That kind of energy is so powerful when it's present but it soon pales in the rear view mirror of history.

What's mostly recorded and remembers now about the Suzuki Roshi's and Maureen Stuart's and Nyogen Sensaki's is how much people loved these teachers. How much they learned. The stories get told over and over again. But I wonder if that's the whole story. I bet there was a lot more strife and suffering in there too. We did look at the stern and uncompromising work of Jiyu Kennet Roshi and around her there are certainly some stories a little more loaded with challenge. And even in the words of our little reader I think we found ourselves a little suspicious of her style even as we admired her incredible commitment and drive in making her was as a Western woman in the Japanese Zen establishment. (An aside: I wonder now why did was compelled to go to Sojiji of all places - the very top headquarters temple, the most prestigious place in the Soto Zen world? There must have been smaller temples and kinder and more flexible Zen teachers she could have found in Japan in the 1950's. Makes me wonder if some of us are just conditioned to move towards the most difficult and most challenging option - but that's another story for another day.)

And this all makes me think of the introduction in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in which Richard Baker approvingly quotes Trudy Dixon, Suzuki Roshi's student and the brilliant editor of the book as follows:

"A roshi is a person who…" p. 18

In 2016 this just seems silly. Over the top. But in 1970 I think it must have seemed just true and self-evident that there is this special kind of human being called "Zen Master" who are this way, this enlightened. Now we call this projection. And bias. Kind of sweet in some ways, pretty destructive in others. Maybe part of what set up a series of Zen teachers to fail spectacularly to keep their ethical vows. If everyone tells you you're perfect, you can't make any mistakes right? Very loaded we think now. Very loaded.

And we think of projection as an unfortunate thing that we should learn not to do anymore. Losing our own power we project either a positive or a negative gloss over someone else. And in this disempowered state we are then dependent on the other, on the Zen Master say, to validate us if it's positive projection, or to fail in the way we expect them to if it's negative projection which also is about validating us. And in this kind of self-power ideology that we hold without questioning it too much giving away our power is inherently bad.

Talus Latona — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 18:30:00 GMT

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Shudo Chris Burkhart - Mara 2

Talus Latona — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 03:00:00 GMT

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Shudo Chris Burkhart - Mara 1

Talus Latona — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 03:30:00 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett : Paramitas - Patience Beyond Patience (Kshanti)

Talus Latona — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 03:30:00 GMT

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Tim's talk notes, including the Mary Oliver poem he read. The actual talk departs from these notes a good deal.

I had the opportunity to listen to Talus's wonderful talk about the 3rd perfection practice- the perfection of shila. Of ethics and precepts. The practice of living in a deeply ethical and caring way.

I appreciate Talus bringing our attention back to the intention to explore these 6 wonderful practices of generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom. And that we all do need to pick up yak poop sometimes. It was a really wonderful talk wasn't it? What a wonderful combination of Buddhist stories, personal reflections, and integration in the deep thought of emptiness. If you missed it please listen online. And there coincidentally we can thank Talus who's taken on the task of putting our talks online the very night they're given. Wonderful

I'm continuing to wonder about the practice of play.

And I realized that play fits right into the next perfection practice on the list.

CONTINUE FOR MOUNTAIN RAIN:

I thought we'd explore a bit the third of these, the perfection of patience. Ksantiparamita.

Ksanti means "unaffected by" or "able to bear". Thought it's most often translated as patience we can also think of tolerance. When we hear patience we think of virtuous patient people. Patience as a quality of personality. That's not exactly what's meant here. And we think of tolerance we think of putting up with stuff. Tolerating we don't think of as an ultimate virtue, more a kind of temporary way to hang on.

So paramita is an usual kind of modifier word. It means not the ordinary patience, a deeper kind of patience than that. Sometimes it's translated as "perfection of patience" which is a bit intimidating, or "patience beyond patience" which has a nice quality of movement and practice even if it's still a little intimidating.

Our Buddhist understanding turns patience and tolerance around a little.

Our minds always go first to me and mine. We feel separate. How can I be patient. I. When I sit down to try to write out my thoughts my mind goes there too. How am I patient sometimes and not other times. What can I say in this talk that might be useful to you in trying to be patient with this topsy turvy life and world.

We start there and return there when we think about ourself. The self turns inward. It's how we're wired.

And then we sit down and practice and the space opens up. We feel our way into a wider understanding, a broader feeling of self and other. A self that includes others eases into view. A self that isn't so separate. A self that instead of trying to be patient with others can merge with others.

And as we sit we see that there are many selves inside our heads too. And that these practices of patient and generosity and energy and wisdom apply equally well in this cacophony of being that we call "me".

The 5th of those practices, meditation helping us to understand a dimension of patience, and the sixth wisdom always supporting all of these to go wider and deeper.

So a possible gloss here on the confusing Buddhist term not-self. Not that we don't have an experience of self, of course we do, but it's one we can dance with. I'm not a fisherman but the idea of catch and release comes to mind. Are we the fish or the fisherman? It depends doesn't it?

The self catches us, we get hooked, and of course we're impatient. Things aren't the way we'd like. Sometimes that desire for things to be different is itself quite virtuous and noble, we want justice, we want human institutions to stop raping the earth, we want the madness in the Middle East to stop. Other times that desire for things to be other than the way they are is quite selfish - it's a little embarrassing isn't it? We want everyone to like us, we want a better office, we want a different assignment, we want the zendo schedule this way not that way, we want our partner to clean up their piles.

Other times we're the fisherperson. Oh you poor tense "me" - I know you can relax about that. I know you can accept that the only way forward to accept things completely as they are. Not just to accept but to appreciate. We gently pull that hook of desire and separation out of our fish and gently ease it back into the stream to swim a little more freely.

Dogen liked to use this metaphor of fish and fishermen and water too. It's hard for us to get unstuck from our self focused point of view, a little imagery can be helpful sometimes. The last time you were hooked by something what was that like? Were you the fish or the fisher-person? What had to shift before the hook came out?

Patience. How can we be deeply patient and tolerant with all of it? It's not easy sometimes. We have a homeless person sleeping sometimes in our back garden at the zendo now for instance. I've noticed a real diversity of reactions in our sangha members. Invite him in or shoo him away "this is private property you can't be here!" He was kind of hanging around in back for a while and then he came inside. Very respectfully taking his shoes off and seeking out "the priest" for a blessing of his special ring. Josiah turns out to be his name. A little smelly maybe but very appropriate. We say save all beings, so here's one now. Practicing patience as engagement instead of turning away.

Chris and I did our best to create a little blessing ceremony on the spot. I felt a little like I was making stuff up and patronizing him, that feeling was there, but also a feeling of just trying to meet him where he was and be of help, that was there to. Can I be patient with these different tides and currents inside me as I'm practicing patience with this interruption from somehow a little outside the neuro-typical mainstream where I'm more comfortable?

After we blessed his special ring he started telling me about a device he'd made of sacred gems that will save the world. It's 90% done. He wanted to show it to us and tell us all about it. We were about to have a Practice Committee meeting it wasn't the right time for one thing, but for another I could feel that my inner resources to engage with him were running a little low. So I asked him to show us the device another time. Then patience seemed to be engaging him kindly and telling him we were done for now. That felt good too. Off he went. It will be interesting to see how practicing with Josiah goes now that we've connected to this extent.

But so often we can't merge with what's happening. We resist, we try to manage it. We push away. We put up with.

There's a kind of unsustainable quality to the idea of patience and tolerance as me putting up with stuff from you. Me putting up with having to wait in line. Me putting up with someone else foibles. Or even me putting up with my own foibles. There's a kind of separation there, a kind of line between me and it, me and you.

The Buddhist idea of perfection of patience of kashanti is a fuller engagement than that. A merging with what is. Whether it's a desirable state or an undesirable state we enter into it and are able to be with it.

But goodness it doesn't take much from the outside to destabilize us does it? We can come up with plenty of worry and trouble on our own. Here's a Mary Oliver poem called "I Worried"

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shally

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

How we know our worries, and she studies them quite carefully there, feel them and let them go?

I think a big part of the practice is this releasing from the story line. The story of what's happening. So and so said this or that. They aren't agreeing with my position so I need to convince them. I am good, I am bad. Our busy minds are so good at rolling forward with the story. It's so compelling. So important. So critical. We're hooked again.

Can we rise up internally out of that a little bit and look at the territory instead? What's the feeling? What are the mental habits at play?

Just naming "worry" as "worry" helps a lot.

The examples of patience and tolerance in the Buddhist literature can be pretty intense. There's a deeper possibility here than skillfully being patient in little bursts with our worries and with the Josiah's that wander in.

In one of the Prajna Paramita texts we find this suggestion for Bodhisattvas:

A bodhisattva should not be afraid if he finds himself in a wilderness infested by robbers. For bodhisattvas take pleasure in the wholesome practice of renouncing their belongings. A bodhisattva must cast away even her body, and he must renounce all that is necessary for life itself. She should react to the danger with the thought, "if those beings take away from me everything that is necessary for life, then let that be my gift to them. If someone should rob me of my life, I should feel no ill will, anger or fury on account of that. Even against them, I should take no offensive action, either by body, voice of mind.

There's also a lovely story somewhere of the Buddha in a previous life cheerfully being chopped up by robbers, so this theme is repeated in various places.

Patience and tolerance not just as putting with a few inconveniences but as a willingness to let go over everything if we think it will help other beings. The first paramita of generosity and this paramita of patience and tolerance are tightly connected. Well really all 6 are connected. We help others because we are ethical, we bring forward good energy to do so, we practice meditation so that the mind can be balanced and stable enough for all of this to work and we free ourselves from separation and limited views through our practice of wisdom.

Generosity, ethical living, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom. That's the plan.

There's a wonderful book on the Paramitas by the Buddhist scholar Dale Wright and he points out that in contrast to this Buddhist view, which was practiced by monastics in another culture, we have the Western view of righteous anger. There are some things in that view not to be so patient about in that frame.

Or maybe the true patient response look more like anger and opposition than acceptance.

He points out that Aristotle came to regard anger as a virtue actually. That the ideal person, the Greeks were all about how the ideal person comports him or herself, takes a kind of middle way approach to anger in the face of injustice. He said we should find a balance between being an irascible person who is always getting angry and a nonirascible person who never gets angry.

The irascible person is a kind of hothead, whether she's ranting on Facebook or the head of a big activist organization, destabilized and confused by his anger. And the nonirascible person is shut down, cowardly, apathetic - not able to rise to the occasion when a strong response is needed.

Aristotle's ideal person uses anger skillfully to help beings. That person may oppose things strongly but thanks to their clear headedness, remember reason was the big virtue for the Greeks, she uses that anger energy wisely. And the response doesn't look like so much like patience.

And Buddha's monastic students just let go and figure that this karmic purity of the act of not fighting, of acceptance, of giving away even their bodies, will eventually in the long long game of Buddhist understanding be the most beneficial for beings.

I think we need both approaches. A question of how we balance all of this. Or maybe balance here isn't quite right. Can we merge the two. Can we be energetic in our patience? Active but with a still core. Swimming hard but knowing that we're a fish on the line right now but it seems that tugging hard on that line might actually help. The hand of suffering holding the fishing rod might just wake up a little bit.

And the stability of the practice, and the insight into our minds supported by the practice may make this possible. Generosity, ethical living, energy, meditation and wisdom with our patience, supporting our patience, integrated with our patience. And through it all I think our most powerful tool is a kind of radical acceptance. What is, is. This can be understated.

A contemporary story from the wonderful Hidden Lamp collection [from which Talus got his story of the Thai nun]:

Crying in despair, an earnest student asked her teacher Seisho Maylie Scott, "I've worked so hard to transform this crippling loneliness. I can neither shake it nor live with it can you help me?"

Holding the student in a steady gaze and offering her confident smile, Maylie ended the conversation with, "Please do not ever think anything is out of place."

Patience beyond patience, tolerance beyond tolerance. Can our practice support us in jumping out of the storyline. Feeling the hook and having some wisdom about whether to cut the line or just go ahead and tug. Feeling the water around us.

Is the loneliness or the anger or the narrowness a problem? Is the powerful, gripping idea that loneliness or anger or even impatience itself is unacceptable - unbearable - is that the problem?

Can we be with what is? It just is. What does loneliness feel like to you. What does anger feel like? What does pushing away feel like?

Sun, 19 Apr 2015 03:05:58 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett talks about our ongoing intention to study what it is to be a bodhisattva throughout 2015 and tells a humorous story of a lapse in attention he experienced, it’s consequences, and the support he received from a bodhisattva. The book mentioned by Nomon as a study guide to the 6 Paramita (Perfection) practices of the Bodhisattva is The Six Perfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character by Dale Wright.

Heigaku Talus Latona: Paramitas – #1 Dana – Generosity

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 02:23:18 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett: March 2015 Sesshin Talks

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 04:55:59 GMT

All four Dharma Talks from the 2015 March Sesshin to close the practice period. See also the individual listings for Tim’s talks which include his notes and poems used. Click on the title link for more details on each talk.

Morning of March 6th – Zokestu Norman Fischer on Relative and Absolute Compassion

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Afternoon of March 6th – Nomon Tim Burnett on Anger and Patience

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Morning of March 7th – Zoketsu Norman Fischer on The Prajna Paramita Teachings

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Afternoon of March 7th – Nomon Tim Burnett on Bodhisattvas are Everywhere

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Nomon Tim Burnett: Bodhisattvas Are Everywhere

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 05:18:36 GMT

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[appreciating precision, the precision that allows 36 people to live in one room for a weekend with some degree of harmony: Ewan lighting the charcoal, Dave hitting the bells just right even when I left early from the mat (I felt so cared for), Bob & Chris and the others getting the food just right just in time, the servers arranging the trays precisely right for us to pass everything down in the right order, the tricky correography of doing dishes in our tiny kitchen, the organizational precision by which John and Kate figured out who would be here when, how Connie figured out exactly which tasks and who should do them, how Jeff and Lee are figuring out who to bring to dokusan when. ]

[appreciating openness, people coming to dokusan and sharing their stories, I’d forgotten how much that helps me to learn about the dharma, and appreciating those who chose not to come to dokusan, that when we say you can pass is actually true and by taking that option you make sure that it is really true – you can be in various situations where it’s supposed to be okay to pass but actually…it’s not. So thank you for coming or not coming to dokusan both]

My theme today is “Bodhisattvas are everything.”

Jeff McKenna who joined us this morning told me a story about bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are everywhere he said and then he told me on of the reasons why he knows this to be true. Jeff runs a suicide prevention task force, an extension of his years of social service and counseling work, and they have been running suicide prevention workshops lately that are open to everyone. He was talking after the training to one woman, maybe mid-thirities, who attended with her mom. He was firstly amazed by the loving connection between this woman and her mom. An adult child and parent attending this training together. The woman shared that she doesn’t know about this kind of stuff very much, “I just work in retail” she said and that’s what she’d always done. Her mom turned to her with loving eyes and “well I think your pretty special” and they held a moment of love and connection for a moment. This was remarkable enough. And then she spoke about her work. “I’ve learned over the year that my job isn’t to tell anybody anything” – this made Jeff wonder, she works in retail and her job isn’t to sell anyone anything? But she went on, “my job is to understand what they need – it doesn’t matter if it’s something we sell in the store or not, I really want to know who they are and what they need. Then if it is something we sell her they’ll probably buy it, or maybe they’ll buy it somewhere else. That’s okay, but I want to know what they need.”

And then she said that recently a young woman had come into the store. And she found herself disliking this young woman. The way her hair was done, her tatoos, the way she was moving nervously around the store. And she realized, she said, that she had to do something about her own mind. She made a kind of flittery gesture up and down the sides of her head representing this thinking. “I knew I woud never be able to find out what she needs with all this going on.” And that she had to clear that out, waving her hands smoothly down again. In other words she knew that the afflictive judgmental thinking in her mind was going to prevent connection. And she needed to connect. So she had to work with her inner life first.

Only she’d done that she felt ready to approach this young woman. “Hi, can I help you?”

And it’s interesting I think to reflect on that overused phrase, “can I help you?” – that can mean a lot of things. In this case she’d done what she needed to do for that to actually mean “can I help you?”

The young woman said something like “I was thinking of writing something, do you have anything for that?”

And our retail bodhisattva realized they had wonderful hard-made diaries in the store. She said the leather was so soft you couldn’t believe if was leather. That just touching it made you feel something. So nice to touch. So she walked the young woman over to the diary display and handed her one. “Maybe you could write in this diary.”

And the woman stood there, feeling the diary, feeling the kindness of our bodhisattva store clerk, and opened up. She talked for half and hour. A flood of word. How depressed she’s been, how isolated, no one to talk to. That she’d had the idea of write down her last thoughts and messages before she ended it all. And well, maybe now she could just write, write her thoughts in this diary, maybe that would be enough.

Bodhisattvas are everywhere. And Bodhisattvas are willing to appear in whatever shape and size and culture that they need in order to serve.

I don’t know about you but I’m a little resistant to the idea of working in retail. I have the story that this would be below me, and dubious ethically – just a way of facilitating the materialistic consumer culture. Helping the Man.

I hope one day I can be as willing to be a bodhisattva in every circumstance as this woman is. The great way has no difficulty, just set aside picking and choosing the great Zen poem goes. Or maybe we could re-write that: the great way has no difficulty just choose love, just choose connection. And stop being so damned picky..

Norman has been suggesting that the nature of this empty universe is love. Is compassion. Could this really be true. Could it be true giving some of the spectaular examples of evil behavior we see in the media. We all know about IRIS and their televised beheadings. And I pay attention also to a Somali group called Boko Haram because they’ve been performing attached on non-muslims in Kenya and our honorary daughter Mercy Ukumu is there in Kenya. She graduated from university by the way and is working for a non-profit that provides literacy education to rural populations, with an emphasis on economic and financial literacy and empowerful. She’s also going to night school to start towards her Master’s degree. An incredible, motivated, smart beautiful young woman. Boko Haram recently pulled into an isolated rock quarry. In Africa it’s pretty common for workers to live on the site where they work, so they attacked in the middle of the night. Lined up everyone whom they thought weren’t muslim and killed them. Horrible. That greed, hate, and delusion in the mind can manifest in such a way that such a thing makes sense. Because of course people only do what makes sense to them.

Could this be a world of love and compassion co-exist with IRIS and Boko Haram? We’ve also seen plenty of sociology and crime statistics data coming out that says actually the world is the most safe and most prosperous in history. One statistic is that the most common cause of violent death by far is homicide, and also that homicide is most often committed by someone you know well, and homicide is down, by a lot, pretty much everywhere in the world. And standard of living is higher in many many places.

But, the mind goes “but” so quickly, doesn’t it? We also have the largest world wide extinction event in the hisotry of the planet going on, we also have global warming, we also have IRIS and Boko Haram. What do we make of this world?

One time the Zen monk Dizang in Tang China was out working the fields below the monastery. A visiting monk came walking up the road in his monk’s travelling clothes. Dizang popped the Zen question that Norman mentioned yesterday: “Where do you come from?” Xiushan replies “From the south.” Dizang digs further with his shovel and his words, “How is Buddhism in the south these days?” Xuisan says, “There’s extensive discussion.” Dizang is not impressed, “How can that compare to me here planting the fields and growing rice to eat?” Xiushan: “What can you do about the world?” Dizang answers “What do you call the world?”

What do you call the world? We take in various bits of information, we tell various stories and have conversations with ourself and others, we collaborate to call the world into existence. We see images in the media. We participate in the continuation of the internet which makes YouTube possible, which allows IRIS to have a free world wide TV channel of their own to show us what makes sense to them. And we bow to each other here. We sit, we smile, we breathe, we scowl, we love, we feel anger arising, we practice patience, we feel connection, we touch the soft leather cover of the hand-made diary, we notice the flittery thoughts in the mind, we are calling the world. The world is calling us.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

When we make the world are we making ISIS or retail bodhisattvas. Do we have any way of knowing which way the balance tips? Can we hold in our mind the billions of people simply living their lives, practicing kindness. There are bodhisattvas everwhere, we may need to remind ourselves that we aren’t the special ones who are learning about this special teaching and that makes us the bodhisattvas. Maybe we’re just the ones who needed the remedial education and many many other beings are already active and wise bodhisattvas without all of this.

Bodhisattvas are willing to go anywhere to serve, including into hell. The 6 worlds that come up in our chants are the 6 levels of existence that you can get born into. We heard a little about the heavenly realms this morning. Pleasant but a little stupifying, in Buddhism the gods are to be pittied a little. They live long lives full of pleasure but they’re a little dumb and they have the frustration of being interested in practice but not able to understand it. Some of may need to be reborn there to keep directing their attention to practice so that once they finally die and leave the heavenly realms they’ll be reborn as humans who can practice.

And there are the hell realms. Sometimes these get mentioned with a bit of an ironic smile, kind a cute part of Buddhist mythology, these wild hell realms. But maybe there’s more to it than that which might be useful to us as bodhisattvas in training.

I’ve been studying a book by Jeffrey Hopkins who’s a scholar-practitioner who works closely with HH Dalai Lama and from him I learned about the nice practice of visualizing someone you know and dedicating your practice to them which we did yesterday. I didn’t specify which kind of person to pick and I bet most of us picked someone we’re close to and care about. Did you? That’s just the beginning of that practice, you continue to visualize mulitple different people and as you get comfortable with it you visualize people who aren’t so close to or even have trouble with. Similar to the progression one does in loving kindness. Our first stab probably pretty pleasant, and even widening the field in that practice still mostly pleasant.

Professor Hopkins also relates that visualizing people stuck in the hell realms is also a way to cultivate compassion. Compassion requires three elements. First to be willing to notice that someone is suffering, you don’t even notice that you can’t do much; second to actually feel something of their suffering so that there is an empathetic, felt connection; third to be willing to do something about it. To be willing to help. And sometimes 4th to actually do something.

The contemplation of hells is designed to help us with the willingness to feel pain deeply. This is not so fun. And traditionally if you took the mythology of Buddhism literally these hells were probably really powerful images: there are the first 2 of the 8 hot hells. There are 8 hot hells and 8 cold hells in this system.

• Sañjīva, the “reviving” Naraka, has ground made of hot iron heated by an immense fire. Beings in this Naraka appear fully grown, already in a state of fear and misery. As soon as the being begins to fear being harmed by others, their fellows appear and attack each other with iron claws and hell guards appear and attack the being with fiery weapons. As soon as the being experiences an unconsciousness like death, they are suddenly restored to full health and the attacks begin again. Other tortures experienced in this Naraka include having molten metal dropped upon them, being sliced into pieces, and suffering from the heat of the iron ground.[3] Life in this Naraka is 1.62×1012 years long.[4] It is said to be 1000 yojanas beneath Jambudvīpa and 10,000 yojanas in each direction (a yojana being 7 miles, or 11 kilometres).[5]
• Kālasūtra, the “black thread” Naraka, includes the torments of Sañjīva. In addition, black lines are drawn upon the body, which hell guards use as guides to cut the beings with fiery saws and sharp axes.[3][5] Life in this Naraka is 1.296×1013 years long.[4]

This idea is to mentally switch places with someone stuck in one of these hells. tO really visualize and feel what that would be like. To use the strong concentration we develop in meditation and direct it to this. To fully commit to feeling the pain of being in hell.

What I realized though is that these hells aren’t so real for us. But the horror of ISIS or Boki Haram is plenty real. So we can do thise practice by imaginging ourself as one of their victims. And we can even imagine ourself as one of the perpetrators. I won’t have us do this, but it’s worth considering really allowing yourself to turn toward these horrors. Deliberately, as a meditation. Ideally with some guidance and support. Our full humanity involves heaven, hell, bodhisattvas, delusion, greed, generosity, hate, kindness, patience, all of it. The idea with bodhisattva practice is not to become perfect and clean ourselves up perfectly. It’s to be radically and fully human and able to move through all of the worlds to help beings.

Someone asking me, how do you feel oneness? How to you take the backward step. How do we touch emptiness? How can we find out for ourselves whether this compassion-empty-interconnectedness is really the nature of things? How do we touch the emptiness that isn’t a thing?

I don’t know if I have a good answer. There’s a feeling to it, at least that’s my experience, sometimes I’m in contact with some version of that fluid and changing feeling in a conscious way, other times not. I’m sure it arrises in different ways for each person, and could it even be an it if we really listen to the emptienss teachings – no thing has essential nature. There’s only flow and connection and relationship. But all kinds of energy can emerge from connection and relationship right? Love can arrive. It can arrive over a candle lit dinner, or it can arrive over the diary display at the department store. But so can hate and anger, so can desire and greed, so can confusion and misunderstanding. What governs it, what gives us at least a chance of glimping what Abraham Lincoln called “The better angels of our nature.”?

Maybe a little more on emptiness as a teaching is helpful. Wisdom is seen as the wisdom root of compassion.
[Lewis Richmond, Emptiness: the most misunderstood word in Buddhism]

I got to do a study retreat on the Heart Sutra in Mexico last summer. A real treat for me. And talking about his fluid, interpenetrating nature of things I learned my favorite Spanish word: “fluido” – fluid, basically the same but somehow if I say to myself fluido I hear it better, the feeling of the word is the feeling of emptiness to me. Fluido. I recommend that as a word to return to or breath with when you find that you’re believing the opposite – that your believing reality is not fluid, that it’s STUCK. What’s the feeling of stuck?

Another Zen story about compassion. Perhaps some of you had the privilege of sitting with Michael a few weeks ago when he led a retreat all about this story and Dogen’s take on it

Yunyan asked Daowu: “How does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion [Kannon] use so many hands and eyes?”
Daowu said: “It’s just like a person in the middle of the night reaching back in search of a pillow.”
Yunyan said: “I understand.”
Daowu said: “How do you understand it?”
Yunyan said: “All over the body are hands and eyes.”
Daowu said: “What you said is all right, but it’s only eighty percent of it.”
Yunyan said: “I’m like this, senior brother. How do you understand it?”
Daowu said: “Throughout the body are hands and eyes.”

These two are brothers, my favorite Zen worthies from the cannon, Yunyan is referring to the depiction of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokitsevara or Kannon, when she’s shown having a thousand arms so that she can help people. Sometimes a different tool in each hand. And she has a lot of eyes because she has 8 or 9 faces, each face with a different expression to meet beings. How can we be that compassionate? How can we really use all of our hands and eyes, everything we’ve got, to help beings.

Brother Daowu’s answer is so beautiful. It’s natural. It’s not something you try to do. It’s like reaching for your pillow in the middle of the night. Instinct. Comfort. Warmth.

Practically speaking to be a bodhisattva we do have to try. There is effort involved. That the relative compassion side. But there’s also naturalness, there’s also fullness, there’s os just being-ness. The absolute compassion side starts to flavor the relative over time. One way this shows up is we learn there are times to do less. Times to just bear witness and be with. Times to see that we’re creating a the problem in the mind, that circumstances are just circumstances. Sometimes we can just be with what is without bother it or letting it bother us. This is equanimity practice and it requires a conversation between the relative and the absolute.

When a distracted person who doesn’t look like you and is acting funny appears how will you respond?

I’m teaching classes right now to King County employees in Seattle. It’s skillful for me to take the bus down if I can which means arriving some hours early and staying a few hours after my class the next morning. So I have a little time on my hands in downtown Seattle and I walk a lot. Looking around, doing an errand, I got a membership to the Y, I can go there. Anyway I run into a lot of panhandlers. Sometimes I give them a dollar, sometimes not, I always try to make eye contact, turn towards them at least a little, acknowledge their humanity whether I’m supporting the panhandling or not. This one guy came up though, he was asking for an odd amount, 87 cents or something, I said no. And he walked with me, he kept asking, I kept saying now, I could feel myself shrinking in, feeling threatened, a desire to lash out and yell at him and set him straight arose in me. Stuck in the relative I didn’t respond well. I ask Daowu know, “How does Kannon greet the aggressive panhandler?” What does he answer?

And sometimes we do respond skillfully. En route to Seattle this last time on my beloved BoltBus and…

I’ve been promoting the BoltBus as a great way to do Bellingham Seattle. Affordable, on time, comfortable, as fast as driving.
Today cruising south en route to teach for King County. Relaxed, working a little, time to think, reading Alan Wallace on mindfulness (he has some interesting interpretations of the main Buddhist sutra that’s quoted) then this beep-beep-beep alarm started up, kept happening. Soon our driver is changing lane to the right. Eventually beep-beep-beep we are on the shoulder. Water system leak this bus isn’t going anywhere. Side of the road a little south of Everett.
And I teach tonight – ut oh, trouble?
Nope, no trouble. The driver gets on the phone with Greyhound which also has a southbound bus running. We wait about 45 minutes, the Greyhound shows up and whisks us away. The drivers even haul all of our gear (including my bike) from one bus to the next. Interesting moment walking along the edge of I-5 with the traffice roaring by.
Given that I usually hit Seattle two hours before class starts I’m just fine. Didn’t particularly increase the blood pressure. Just cruising along. The broken bus in our wake not my concern. Greyhound even has wifi now.
Nice job, Steve from Bolt getting us down the road. I asked him if a bus breakdown is a right of passage for drivers and he says “oh that was nothing, last time was in the middle of Montana. In the snow.”
And then a little while later I hear this moaning, sobbing sound. I look back and see a man, skinny kind of odd expression, late 60’s or so. He looks at me but with that kind of look where you aren’t sure he sees you. Was it him? I could feel that pulling in you do in a public situation like a Greyhound bus when there’s a hint of mental illness going on. We often hunker down to ignore whatever’s going on. Engaging might make it worse we tell ourselves. Not our business. And sometimes that’s true. But we don’t check it out.
A little further down the road more moaning, definitely seems to be from this fellow.
Then we pull off the highway en route not to the Greyhound terminal but to where the BoltBus drops people off. Different exit than usual for the Greyhound. And how our friend is talking and I can pretty much make it out. “We’re not going to the terminal! OH NO! We’re not going! This is all wrong! All wrong!” I look more carefully and he has a cell phone to his ear, maybe talking to a friend picking him up? Maybe just holding a cell phone. And I realize he’s just not understanding what’s happening. That he looks like any of us, able to speak English, wearing clothing, sitting in his seat, but his mind couldn’t process what had happened and he was scared. Really scared, a big problem was happening for him. The bus was going to the wrong place and he was helpless.
Finally I mustered the bodhicitta I needed and got up and stood right in front of him leaning over the seat in front of him. Looked him in the eyes and said as clearly as I could “The bus will go to the terminal. Just a stop first. The bus will go to the terminal. It’s okay the bus will go to the terminal.” He seemed reassured but didn’t say anything to me. So many ways we can misunderstand, be misunderstood. This is ignorance in it’s basic sense, misunderstanding reality. Here misunderstanding a detail in the relative world, but our bigger misunderstanding is believing in the reality of the relative world. Giving it a solidity it doesn’t have. A permanence. Hanging it out in front of ourselves like a lure – if only I could share this reality in the right way I’d be happy, but it doesn’t quite work.
The poem I read at the end yesterday seems like it landed well. I mentioned the poet Mary Oliver when I presented it but actually the poem was by Naomi Shihab Nye. Here’s a story-poem from her that fits our topic:

Gate A-4

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement:
“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately.”

Well–one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. “Help,”
said the flight service person. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly.
“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to
her–Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies–little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts–out of her bag–and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo–we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend–
by now we were holding hands–had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate–once the crying of confusion stopped–seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other
women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer : Prajna Paramita Teachings

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 01:14:45 GMT

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Nomon Tim Burnett: Anger and Patience

Sat, 07 Mar 2015 02:24:02 GMT

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We’ve been enjoying studying the great 9th century sage Shantideva’s long poem on how to be a bodhisattva during this practice period. Shantideva’s verses talk about nurturing the deep wish for the happiness and joy of all beings. That we not just kind of hope that might happen sometime but that we root our lives in that wish – called bodhicitta – the thought of awakening. A famous passage is often chanted and we’ve been chanting it at the openings of our study meetings:

Class Opening Verse (from chapter 3)
May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,
A guide for those who journey on the road;
For those who wish to go across the water,
May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.

May I be an isle for those who yearn for landfall,
And a lamp for those who long for light;
For those who need a resting place, a bed;
For all who need a servant, may I be a slave.

May I be the wishing jewel, the vase of plenty,
A word of power, and the supreme remedy.
May I be the trees of miracles,
And for every being, the abundant cow.

Like the great earth and the other elements,
Enduring as the sky itself endures,
For the boundless multitude of living beings,
May I be the ground and vessel of their life.

Thus, for every single thing that lives,
In number like the boundless reaches of the sky,
May I be their sustenance and nourishment
Until they pass beyond the bounds of suffering

A beautiful sentiment no? May we really serve others. But how to do this skillfully? We had the most lively discussions when we were examining how to be a guide to beings when things get tough. The chapter on patience opens with a strong statement about how easy it is to screw this up:

Good works gathered in a thousand ages,
Such as deeds of generosity
Or offerings to the Blissful Ones –
A single flash of anger shatters them.

This verse seems to make this an impossible task. Who doesn’t feel a flash of anger from time to time. And if it’s not anger exactly it’s something else. One self-awareness tool is to consider one’s tendencies in light of the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance. Those three words are a little extreme but let’s think about what they mean.

Greed stands for desire, for a persistent feeling of lack, a powerful urge to acquire more of something, it doesn’t have to be material stuff either. Desiring things to be other than how they are. Are you a desire person?

Ignorance stands for confusion, bafflement, not getting it. Just tooling along doing your thing and suddenly someone’s upset with you, huh? You missed it. You feel into a blind spot. I usually put myself in this category although it comes in a close second to greed and desire in me.

And hatred stands for anger. Fiery emotions. Grief can show up here. Despair. Regret. People in this category can be powerfully passionate and energetic and also overrun by emotion.

There are positive aspects to all of these of course too. Each of the defilements motivates us to practice and brings us useful qualities which we can learn to use skillfully. Greed and desire people are focused on results and get stuff done. Ignorance and confusion people are stable and often quite kind and pleasant to be around. Hatred and anger people are also powerful, passionate and inspiring.

And yet Shantideva says, one misstep and so much damage is done. The mind is powerful and the results of our words and deeds are huge. It’s a big responsibility being a person. And yet we can only do our best.

Does this mean never be angry? Never be greedy? Never be confused? I’m not sure that’s possible. And I don’t think that’s what Shantideva means. He means to take the inner life seriously. To recognize it’s power.

I was speaking to someone recently who had a great wave of anger pass over him. He lashed out at a few friends while in the throes of anger. He could feel that it was rooted in the pain of the past and only triggered but a few things of the present. He was asking me how to practice with it. I inquired into what happened and it turns out he sat down in zazen and sat with it. He took a break while driving home out of concern that he was so distraught he might crash. He took care of himself at home as best he could and a little later when it had lifted he apologized to the people he’d lashed out at. And then asking me how to practice with it. It was really nice to be able to point out that he already knows how to practice with it, that exactly what he did was a wise, stable and patient response to anger. When we’re in it’s grip, that how it is, but we can cultivate the ability to be mindful of being caught and we can respond wisely. And each wave of anger, or desire, or confusion that washes over us which we meet with patience and skill is a little more of the karma of the past used up. A little less is there to take over next time. Being with our strong emotions and not feeding them is a huge thing. Transformational. Powerful. And no it’s not fun when we’re caught but caught with awareness and wise response is the practice.

And Shantideva says that we can really appreciate the people that set us off. There’s helping us learn. And when we meet pain and difficult with the vast vow of bodhicitta we realize that it’s not that we just don’t want anger and want happiness, that’s selling outselves too cheap. When there’s difficulty we can feel our way into the radical turning that’s ultimately possible with practice.

My favorite pair of verses about this:

Praise and compliments disturb me.
They soften my revulsion with samsara.
I being to covet others’ qualities, and
Every excellence is thereby spoiled.

Those who stay close by me, then,
To ruin my good name and cut me down to size –
Are they not the guardians who protect me
From perdition in the realms of sorrow?

In other words getting caught in praise and blame means we’ve put ourself in a pretty small box. Samara is Buddhist lingo for thinking that if we just got what we want and got rid of what we dislike everything will be peachy. We know better of course, but there’s a part of us that’s caught in a very simplistic and unworkable model. There’s a part of us that thinks, or maybe doesn’t think, that reacts to the world on that basis. When something we don’t like happens we get defensive and angry. Sangha life is a great place to study this. When something we’re excited about happens we get too excited, we keep repeating to ourselves how great this is while under the surface the fear that it’ll soon be gone, or we don’t deserve it and so on bubbles up.

So we can let ourself be a little disturbed by compliments and appreciate of insults. When we have enough support and are in contact with our vow to awaken with all beings we aren’t so caught.

One of the Lojong mind training slogans is: whichever of the two arises be patient. The two are bad things and good things. When bad things arise, be patient – how can I work with this, what do I learn, can I learn that the category of good and bad, this living in samsara, is ultimately not going to work out? And when good things arise be patient – be patient with getting too excited, be patient with the fear and instability than can co-arise with the good things, and again be motivated. Can I feel the peace and happiness that’s not so contingent on good things and bad things.

This talk by Pema Chodron was recently re-published, let’s see what she has to say about that practice of patience and I’ll add a few comments.

The Answer to Anger & Aggression is Patience
by Pema Chödrön | March 1, 2005

We can suppress anger and aggression or act it out, either way making things worse for ourselves and others. Or we can practice patience: wait, experience the anger and investigate its nature. Pema Chödrön takes us step by step through this powerful practice.
The Buddhist teachings tell us that patience is the antidote to anger and aggression. When we feel aggression in all its many forms—resentment, bitterness, being very critical, complaining and so forth—we can apply the different practices we’ve been given and all the good advice we’ve heard and given to other people. But those often don’t seem to help us. That’s why this teaching about patience caught my interest a few years ago, because it’s so hard to know what to do when one feels anger and aggression.

I thought, if patience is the antidote to aggression, maybe I’ll just try that. In the process I learned a lot about what patience is and about what it isn’t. I would like to share with you what I’ve learned, to encourage you to find out for yourself how patience works with aggression.

To begin with, I learned about patience and the cessation of suffering. It’s said that patience is a way to de-escalate aggression. I’m thinking here of aggression as synonymous with pain. When we’re feeling aggressive—and in some sense this would apply to any strong feeling—there’s an enormous pregnant quality that pulls us in the direction of wanting to get some resolution. It hurts so much to feel the aggression that we want it to be resolved.

So what do we usually do? We do exactly what is going to escalate the aggression and the suffering. We strike out; we hit back. Something hurts our feelings, and initially there is some softness there—if you’re fast, you can catch it—but usually you don’t even realize there is any softness. You find yourself in the middle of a hot, noisy, pulsating, wanting-to-just-get-even-with-someone state of mind: it has a very hard quality to it. With your words or your actions, in order to escape the pain of aggression, you create more aggression and pain.

At that point, patience means getting smart: you stop and wait. You also have to shut up, because if you say anything it’s going to come out aggressive, even if you say, “I love you.”

Once, when I was very angry at a colleague of mine, I called him on the telephone. I can’t even remember now what I was angry about, but at the time I couldn’t sleep because I was so furious. I tried meditating with my anger and working with it and doing practices with it, but nothing helped, so I just got up in the middle of the night and called him. When he answered the phone, all I said was, “Hi, Yeshe.” But he immediately asked, “Did I do something wrong?” I thought I would very sweetly cover over what I was really feeling and say something pleasant about all the bad things he had done, whatever they were. But just by the tone of my greeting to him, he knew. That’s what it’s like with aggression: you can’t speak because everyone will feel the vibes. No matter what is coming out of your mouth, it’s like you’re sitting on top of a keg of dynamite and it’s vibrating.

Patience has a lot to do with getting smart at that point and just waiting: not speaking or doing anything. On the other hand, it also means being completely and totally honest with yourself about the fact that you’re furious. You’re not suppressing anything—patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don’t feed your discursive thought, you can be honest about the fact that you’re angry. But at the same time you can continue to let go of the internal dialogue. In that dialogue you are blaming and criticizing, and then probably feeling guilty and beating yourself up for doing that. It’s torturous, because you feel bad about being so angry at the same time that you really are extremely angry, and you can’t drop it. It’s painful to experience such awful confusion. Still, you just wait and remain patient with your confusion and the pain that comes with it.

Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it, but it also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting. You let the words go and just be there.

This suggests the fearlessness that goes with patience. If you practice the kind of patience that leads to the de-escalation of aggression and the cessation of suffering, you will be cultivating enormous courage. You will really get to know anger and how it breeds violent words and actions. You will see the whole thing without acting it out. When you practice patience, you’re not repressing anger, you’re just sitting there with it—going cold turkey with the aggression. As a result, you really get to know the energy of anger and you also get to know where it leads, even without going there. You’ve expressed your anger so many times, you know where it will lead. The desire to say something mean, to gossip or slander, to complain—to just somehow get rid of that aggression—is like a tidal wave. But you realize that such actions don’t get rid of the aggression; they escalate it. So instead you’re patient, patient with yourself.

Developing patience and fearlessness means learning to sit still with the edginess of the energy. It’s like sitting on a wild horse, or on a wild tiger that could eat you up. There’s a limerick to that effect: “There was a young lady of Niger, who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They came back from the ride with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.” Sitting with your discomfort feels like riding on that tiger, because it’s so frightening.

When we examine this process we learn something very interesting: there is no resolution. The resolution that human beings seek comes from a tremendous misunderstanding. We think we can resolve everything! When we human beings feel powerful energy, we tend to be extremely uncomfortable until things are resolved in some kind of secure and comforting way, either on the side of yes or the side of no. Or the side of right or the side of wrong. Or the side of anything at all that we can hold on to.

But the practice we’re doing gives us nothing to hold on to. Actually, the teachings themselves give us nothing to hold on to. In working with patience and fearlessness, we learn to be patient with the fact that we’re human beings, that everyone who is born and dies from the beginning of time until the end of time is naturally going to want some kind of resolution to this edgy, moody energy. And there isn’t any. The only resolution is temporary and just causes more suffering. We discover that as a matter of fact joy and happiness, peace, harmony and being at home with yourself and your world come from sitting still with the moodiness of the energy until it rises, dwells and passes away. The energy never resolves itself into something solid.

So all the while, we stay in the middle of the energy. The path of touching in on the inherent softness of the genuine heart is to sit still and be patient with that kind of energy. We don’t have to criticize ourselves when we fail, even for a moment, because we’re just completely typical human beings; the only thing that’s unique about us is that we’re brave enough to go into these things more deeply and explore beneath our surface reaction of trying to get solid ground under our feet.

Patience is an enormously wonderful and supportive and even magical practice. It’s a way of completely changing the fundamental human habit of trying to resolve things by going either to the right or the left, calling things right or calling things wrong. It’s the way to develop courage, the way to find out what life is really about.

Patience is also not ignoring. In fact, patience and curiosity go together. You wonder, Who am I? Who am I at the level of my neurotic patterns? Who am I at the level beyond birth and death? If you wish to look into the nature of your own being, you need to be inquisitive. The path is a journey of investigation, beginning to look more deeply at what’s going on. The teachings give us a lot of suggestions about what we can look for, and the practices give us a lot of suggestions on how to look. Patience is one extremely helpful suggestion. Aggression, on the other hand, prevents us from looking: it puts a tight lid on our curiosity. Aggression is an energy that is determined to resolve the situation into a hard, solid, fixed pattern in which somebody wins and somebody loses.
When you begin to investigate, you notice, for one thing, that whenever there is pain of any kind—the pain of aggression, grieving, loss, irritation, resentment, jealousy, indigestion, physical pain—if you really look into that, you can find out for yourself that behind the pain there is always something we are attached to. There is always something we’re holding on to.

I say that with such confidence, but you have to find out for yourself whether this is really true. You can read about it: the first thing the Buddha ever taught was the truth that suffering comes from attachment. That’s in the books. But when you discover it yourself, it goes a little deeper right away.

As soon as you discover that behind your pain is something you’re holding on to, you are at a place that you will frequently experience on the spiritual path. After a while it seems like almost every moment of your life you’re there, at a point where you realize you actually have a choice. You have a choice whether to open or close, whether to hold on or let go, whether to harden or soften.

That choice is presented to you again and again and again. For instance, you’re feeling pain, you look deeply into it, and you notice that there’s something very hard you’re holding on to. And then you have a choice: you can let go of it, which basically means you connect with the softness behind all that hardness. Perhaps each one of us has made the discovery that behind all the hardness of resistance, stress, aggression and jealousy, there is enormous softness that we’re trying to cover over. Aggression usually begins when someone hurts our feelings. The first response is very soft, but before we even notice what we’re doing, we harden. So we can either let go and connect with that softness or we can continue to hold on, which means that the suffering will continue.

It requires enormous patience even to be curious enough to look, to investigate. And then when you realize you have a choice, and that there’s actually something there that you’re attached to, it requires great patience to keep going into it. Because you will want to go into denial, to shut down. You’re going to say to yourself, “I don’t want to see this.” You’ll be afraid, because even if you’re starting to get close to it, the thought of letting go is usually very frightening. You may feel that you’re going to die, or that something is going to die. And you will be right. If you let go, something will die. But it’s something that needs to die and you will benefit greatly from its death.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s easy to let go. If you make this journey of looking to see if there’s something you’re holding on to, often it’s going to be just a little thing. Once when I was stuck with something huge, Trungpa Rinpoche gave me some advice. He said, “It’s too big; you can’t let go of it yet, so practice with the little ones. Just start noticing all the little ways you hold when it’s actually pretty easy and just get the hang of letting go.”

That was extremely good advice. You don’t have to do the big one, because usually you can’t. It’s too threatening. It may even be too harsh to let go right then and there, on the spot. But even with small things, you may—perhaps just intellectually—begin to see that letting go can bring a sense of enormous relief, relaxation and connection with the softness and tenderness of the genuine heart. True joy comes from that.

You can also see that holding on increases the pain, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to let go, because there’s a lot at stake. What’s at stake is your whole sense of who you are, your whole identity. You’re beginning to move into the territory of egolessness, the insubstantial nature of oneself—and of everything, for that matter. Theoretical, philosophical, distant-sounding teachings can get pretty real when you’re beginning to have an inkling of what they’re actually talking about.

It takes a lot of patience not to beat up on yourself for being a failure at letting go. But if you apply patience to the fact that you can’t let go, somehow that helps you to do it. Patience with the fact that you can’t let go helps you to get to the point of letting go gradually—at a very sane and loving speed, at the speed that your basic wisdom allows you to move. It’s a big moment even to get to the point where you realize you have a choice. Patience is what you need at that point to just wait and soften, to sit with the restlessness and edginess and discomfort of the energy.

I’ve come to find that patience has a lot of humor and playfulness in it. It’s a misunderstanding to think of it as endurance, as in, “Just grin and bear it.” Endurance involves some kind of repression or trying to live up to somebody else’s standards of perfection. Instead, you find you have to be pretty patient with what you see as your own imperfections. Patience is a kind of synonym for loving-kindness, because the speed of loving-kindness can be extremely slow. You are developing patience and loving-kindness for your own imperfections, for your own limitations, for not living up to your own high ideals. There’s a slogan someone once came up with that I like: “Lower your standards and relax as it is.” That’s patience.

One of the Indian Buddhist teacher Atisha’s slogans says, “Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.” It means that if a painful situation occurs, be patient, and if a pleasant situation occurs, be patient. This is an interesting point in terms of patience and the cessation of suffering, patience and fearlessness, and patience and curiosity. We are actually jumping all the time: whether it’s pain or pleasure, we want resolution. So if we’re really happy and something is great, we could also be patient then, in terms of not just filling up the space, going a million miles an hour—impulse buying, impulse speaking, impulse acting.

I’d like to stress that one of the things you most have to be patient with is, “Oops, I did it again!” There’s a slogan that says, “One at the beginning and one at the end.” That means that when you wake up in the morning you make your resolve, and at the end of the day you review, with a caring and gentle attitude, how you have done. Our normal resolve is to say something like, “I am going to be patient today,” or some other such set-up (as someone put it, we plan our next failure). Instead of setting yourself up, you can say, “Today, I’m going to try to the best of my ability to be patient.” And then in the evening you can look back over the whole day with loving-kindness and not beat yourself up. You’re patient with the fact that when you review your day, or even the last forty minutes, you discover, “I’ve talked and filled up all the space, just like I’ve done all my life, as long as I can remember. I was aggressive with the same style of aggression that I’ve used as long as I can remember. I got carried away with irritation exactly the same way that I have for the last…” If you’re twenty years old, it’s been twenty years that you’ve been doing it that way; if you’re seventy-five years old, it’s seventy-five years that you’ve been doing it that way. You see this and you say, “Give me a break!”

The path of developing loving-kindness and compassion is to be patient with the fact that you’re human and that you make these mistakes. That’s more important than getting it right. It seems to work only if you’re aspiring to give yourself a break, to lighten up, as you practice developing patience and other qualities such as generosity, discipline and insight. As with the rest of the teachings, you can’t win and you can’t lose. You don’t get to just say, “Well, since I am never able to do it, I’m not going to try.” You are never able to do it and still you try. And, interestingly enough, that adds up to something; it adds up to loving-kindness for yourself and for others. You look out your eyes and you see yourself wherever you go. You see all these people who are losing it, just like you do. Then, you see all these people who catch themselves and give you the gift of fearlessness. You say, “Oh wow, what a brave one—he or she caught themselves.” You begin to appreciate even the slightest gesture of bravery on the part of others because you know it’s not easy, and that inspires you tremendously. That’s how we can really help each other.

From <http://www.lionsroar.com/the-answer-to-anger-aggression-is-patience/>

[a few comments]

Let’s close with a poem:
Naomi Shihab Nye – Shoulders
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
9:00 AM
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 21:03:10 GMT

Revised with new recordings on Feb. 18th, 2015

Chapter 1 - The Benefits of Bodhichitta

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Chapter 2 - Offering and Purification

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Chapter 3 - Embracing Bodhichitta

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Chapter 4 - Carefulness

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Chapter 5 - Attentiveness

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Chapter 6 - Patience

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Chapter 7 - Endeavor

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Chapter 8 - Meditative Concentration

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Chapter 9 - Wisdom

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Chapter 10 - Dedication

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Shudo Chris Burkhart: Study Group 3 – Way of the Bodhisattva

Nomon Tim Burnett — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 02:31:15 GMT

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The third study group meeting facilitated by Chris Burkhart – we covered chapter 4.

Shudo Chris Burkhart: Study Group 3 - Way of the Bodhisattva

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 21:26:30 GMT

The third study group meeting facilitated by Chris Burkhart – we covered chapter 4.

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Reizan Bob Penny: Study Group 2 – Way of the Bodhisattva

Nomon Tim Burnett — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 02:25:59 GMT

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The second study group for the Way of the Bodhisattva was facilitated by Bob Penny. We covered chapter 3.

Nomon Tim Burnett: Talk on Shantideva by Stephen Batchelor

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 04:50:40 GMT

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This talk by translator and author Stephen Batchelor (who was part of one of the first efforts to translate Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara into English) is highly recommended. Great overview of who Shantideva was and how the text is constructed.

Nomon Tim Burnett: Dharma Talk 1 – Way of the Bodhisattva

Nomon Tim Burnett — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 02:38:10 GMT

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Unfortunately the beginning wasn’t recorded so in case you can make sense of them I’ll include my notes below.

Compassion and Fears of Compassion

Last week we talked a little about pathways of training, how do we open our hearts at Bodhisattvas – how do we practice compassion and how can we make the compassion more possible. Let’s touch briefly on a few pathways and then let’s think a little about fears of compassion.

HH: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Compassion 6 ways:
- The first way of cultivating, or allowing compassion, is a naturally arising when the mind is settled – this is what’s emphasized in Zen, once the craziness of our mind settles out what arises is compassion, there are various techniques for inquiring into the craziness that’s swirling around – all of our conditioning – we do get interested in the mind and the process of mind, but not it’s better not to get too interested. Just enough awareness and understanding to dance with it all and let it go. And in that settledness is a grounded acceptance that supports compassion. A famous example of this is a priest named Hakuin who lived in a fishing village in old Japan (tell the story). So the first of six ways to practice compassion is just settle, just let go, just be present, just respond. The practice of zazen is all about this. And the extension of zazen into daily life from this settled place is a one-pointedness. The classic Zen phrases like “when walking just walk” are an expression of this. And we can hold that space in more complex situations too, I’ve really been trying to apply that sensibility more to using the computer. When doing email, just do email. Set a period of time to focus on it, attend to each message mindfully and move on. This first way is a kind of getting out of our own way as wise and compassionate beings.
- The second way is we study cause and effect. We often have a narrow understanding of what leads to what which can cause us to misjudge what’s really helpful. HH has a nice comment on this: “The view of interdependence makes for a great openness of mind. In general, instead of realizing that what we experience arises from a complicated network of causes, we tend to attribute happiness or sadness, for example, to single, individual sources. But if this were so, as soon as we came into contact with what we consider to be good, we would be automatically happy, and conversely, in the case of bad things, invariably sad. The causes of joy and sorrow would be easy to identify and target. It would all be very simple, and there would be good reason for our anger and attachment. When on the other hand, we consider that everything we experience results from a complex interplay of causes and conditions, we find that there is no single thing to desire or resent, and it is more difficult for the afflictions of attachment or anger to arise. In this way, the view of interdependence makes our minds more relaxed and open. By training our minds and getting used to this view, we change our way of seeing things, and as a result we gradually change our behavior and do less harm to others.” And we become more skillful in helping and supporting ourselves and others in ways that really matter, that really help, that really lead to the way of living we so deeply desire.Here’s a poem by Jane Hirshfield

I Imagine Myself in Time by Jane Hirshfield

I imagine myself in time looking back on myself —

this self, this morning,

drinking her coffee on the first day of a new year

and once again almost unable to move her pen through the iron air.

Perplexed by my life as Midas was in his world of sudden metal,

surprised that it was not as he’d expected, what he had asked.

And that other self, who watches me from the distance of decades,

what will she say? Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion,

I whose choices made her what she will be?

The third way to bring forth compassion is to put energy into our intention, and Buddhism focuses strongly on the power of intention, or vow, we arise the deep deep wish for all being to be happy and free from suffering. And Buddhism frees up intention from our doubts about it by unzipping it from action, by encouraging us to look deeply at intention before action arises. And even if our actions aren’t as we hope they would be we can turn back to our intention and strengthen and clarity there.
This probably should have been the first think I mentioned. Practice vow. You might take on the practice of reciting the Bodhisattva Vows every morning during practice period.In the life of the Bodhisattva the hope or wish or intention to be compassionate and kind is seen as a pivotal thought – there’s a wonderful term for this thought: “bodhichitta” – the mind of awakening – in the chant we did at the beginning this morning we vowed to awaken “true mind” which is the Zen way of expressing this. Bodhicitta arises both spontaneously from our practice, and the possibility of it’s arising is supported by the first two practices of settling to make room for bodhichitta and understanding karma so that we see it’s a natural and logical thing. Bodhicitta is also cultivated and encouraged. We invite it forth.
The forth way of developing compassion is to work actively with mind states that block compassion. This is called “apply the antidote” this is emphasized a lot in the Tibetan tradition. If you’re angry you can’t be compassionate. If you’re withdrawn and depressed it’s hard to be compassionate. These kleshas or afflictive emotions are to be really worked with. They often use military language actually: we see these afflictive emotions as enemies and do battle with them. Each one that arises we respond by fighting back with what they call the antidotes, so they mix military and medical language. When stinginess arises you practice gratitude. When anger arises you practice loving others and seeing yourself in others. There is a relative, conventional, realm to this work with emotion that we’re quite familiar with. It can feel like such a tempest in the tea pot of the mind when we are in the middle of this relative realm. In the relative realm we are buffeted by desire, by impatience, by wanting things to be a different way than they are. And in the Tibetan system we notice each of these arising and apply the antidote. One antidote to desire, rooted in early Buddhism, is to contemplate how whatever it is we desire won’t really satisfy us in the lasting way we crave – they say to examine it’s essential ugliness, like if you desire someone’s beautiful body you contemplate how it’s really full of phlegm and guts and feces and so on, which isn’t language I find so helpful. But we can certainly all relate to how temporary the satisfaction from whatever it is we’re crazing really is. And how surface level our understanding of objects in the world and in our own mind are. Once we get them close they turn out to be different from what we thought! Another antidote to desire for something for ourself is to practice generosity – go get whatever that is and give it to someone else! The antidote to impatience is to practice patience and so on. So we’re trying to actively dance with our afflictive emotions so we can re-emerge into the field of beneficial conduct for all beings.
It’s worth acknowledging that this is a little different from modern positive psychology and the the mindfulness meditation movement which encourage us to accept and befriend our negative emotions. American Vipassana teacher Tara Broch says the Dharma is “radical acceptance.” Here is some commentary from HH that seems to completely contradict that idea: [p.37]. So which is better? To accept and befriend or to neutralize and remove? Well I think both approaches are important and we can learn to discern when to be firm in this Tibetan Bodhisattva Warrior way and when to accept and relax. I think part of what the enemies language reminds us is not to be complacent, to be active in our curiosity about how to respond to our mind states, and most importantly not to identify with our negative emotions. When we tell ourselves I’m an anxious person that’s just how it is that’s a kind of surrender that limits the scope of our life. On the other hand if we refuse to acknowledge the arising of anxiety because we are a fierce warrior of awakening and anxiety is not permitted in consciousness we need to relax and practice honesty and acceptance as the place to start from. So we can see this language of getting rid of the enemy of afflictive emotions as a deep encouragement to be vigorous and active in our approach when that’s helpful. And, and this is a very important and, we can also look a the whole drama of emotional life from an other angle.There’s also an ultimate realm to this working with afflictive emotions. The difficult emotions are hard on us because we think they’re real. When anger is here we think “she made me angry” or “I am angry” or “this is my anger” which is true enough in the relative realm, but we’re also doing ourselves a real disservice if we stop there. Is the anger real? Is it solid? Is it making me feel in some way or act in some way? Really? What if it’s more like an illusion, more like a shape made out of smoke, not so solid, what if it’s not real at all? And here we practice the ultimate or absolute bodhichitta: [HH p. 38]Another Tibetan system of practice that we’re studied before called the Lojong mind training slogans has a number of suggestions for how to work with this ultimate level, the true antidote. My favorite is the slogan – “regard all dharmas as dreams” – dharmas here means everything that we experience. Can we hold it all so much more softly and relate to it as we would a dream. We participate and are a part of our dreams, they have a reality to them certainly, but they are just dreams, no?
The Genjo Koan text by Dogen is also all about the relative and the absolute levels. Did you notice that? From the opening lines [read from chant book] If we can learn to dance a bit better between these two aspects of reality we will be so much happier, so much less will grab us and pull is into suffering.

So this idea of relative and absolute is the deep wisdom thought of Buddhism. Probably the most important teaching that Buddhism contributes to the conversation about being a human being.
The fifth way of cultivating compassion I want to mention is encouraging its arising through compassion meditation, using phrases and visualization and encouraging the nascent compassion to manifest and be strengthened. Most of us our familiar with loving-kindness meditation which is popular in the Vipassana world emerging from the South Asian traditions. We can add to that universal wish that others be happy a deeply felt acknowledgment that all being suffer. That we share in common a universal common bond as beings – we do suffer and we do want to be happy. This is such a profound thought and it sounds simple and is easy to underestimate. We can systematically bring up that thought in various ways in meditation. Usually you start with yourself so if you like let’s dip into this practice for a moment and if it strikes you you can continue through the day with this. It’s also great to just rest in simple awareness of body and breath. You start with yourself “May I be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.” [loved one, friend, neutral person, difficult person, all 5, all beings].

And the sixth and last way to cultivate compassion is to get out there and do something. Actually help someone with your words and deeds. But that help won’t be compassion unless we have a wise attitude. The wisdom piece is essential, you can help others in ways that don’t cultivate compassion. So we have to be a little careful not to wait until we’re all wise and so on but in the Buddhist tradition the inner work is seen as essential training that brings wisdom forward.

It’s important to acknowledge the deep parts of us that don’t want compassion. That don’t want connection. That are afraid of exposure. That worry about losing control or something. A really interesting psychologist in the UK named Paul Gilbert has done a bunch of work with people who have pretty several psychological illnesses – scitsophreniza and the like – and he’s found that working directly with compassion and connection to others is a powerful treatment. In other words he’s training them to be bodhisattvas in some way. And what’s interesting is that he’s done research into what blocks people from accepting their compassionate nature; from accepting compassion for themselves, compassion from others, and their ability to be compassionate and connected.

One way to think about compassion is that it can operate in three directions.

Compassion from Others – think about how open you are to the help and support of others? Is there resistance to receiving that help or love? Do you deserve it? Do you trust them to give you the right kind of help? Do you not want help from others?

Compassion for Others – there’s only so much energy to go around isn’t there? I mean we’d give more if we could, right? Well maybe not to everybody. Do they deserve our help? Well, maybe they do but how can we really know what would really help? Can we know how to help?

Sometimes I don’t story from How Can I Help?

Compassion for Self – boy, tough one. Do we take care of ourselves in a way that’s truly nourishing? Why not?

Paul Gilbert created a list of questions that he uses to measure fear of compassion and I have a selected list here, let’s read this over together and see what strikes us and then have a conversation with a partner. The partner conversation will be pretty structured but we’ll get to that in a minute.

If time after getting back together Tibetan Medicine story from How Can I help?

Nomon Tim Burnett: Study Group 1 - Way of the Bodhisattva

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:14:56 GMT

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Our first meeting on Shantideva’s text. We discussed background info on who Shantideva was and read verses from chapters 1-3. Copy of the text is linked in below.

Printable PDF of Shantideva cited by HH Dalai Lama

Eko Jeff Kelley: Hearing Buddha Speak (Rohatsu 2014)

Sun, 07 Dec 2014 04:12:25 GMT

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Hearing Buddha Speak – notes

Rohatsu talk, Dec. 6, 2014

Following the ancestors, following the body

Through the forms, connecting to all the practice that has gone on before

Suzuki

Because we want to find out the actual value of the teaching, we practice Zen and train ourselves to have the actual living meaning of the scriptures. But this practice must be quite serious. If we are not serious enough, the practice will not work and the teaching will not satisfy you. If you have a serious friend or teacher, you will believe in Buddhism. Without an actual living example it is very difficult to believe or practice. So to believe in your master and be sincere—that is enlightenment. So we say, “Oneness of enlightenment and sincere practice.”

Placing oneself in a vertical relationship (with something larger than yourself)

Opens us to the dharma, to life, from above and below
Allows us to receive, barriers are set aside
This is humility This is freedom
This is dropping the fight—the bumper car relationships of the horizontal
This opening to a fluidity of roles

Retaining our sovereignty in a vertical relationship (with the world?)

This is not placing yourself in the teacher’s hands
This is not giving yourself to the teacher, but giving yourself to the universe using the teacher as a model
This is following the body
This is taking on the shape of the mind
The teacher’s job is to guide you toward relying on your own connection to the dharma

This is scary, requires lots of letting go. Through zazen, we must develop acceptance of not-knowing

This is wholeheartedly giving away your preferences and taking on a different way
This is allowing ourselves to be transformed in a way that we can’t imagine. When we get there we say, “Of course.”

We verify for ourselves

Suzuki

. . . So Dōgen said, “If you want to listen to a Zen master for absolute truth, you must not think about his rank, his accomplishments, deeds, or shortcomings. Accept him just as he is because he is a bodhisattva.” That is the right attitude toward life—just accept it.

Allowing the teacher to be a bodhisattva. To learn what it is to be a bodhisattva, you must meet a bodhisattva.

Teacher must continually hand back the gold that has been entrusted

Teacher just needs to be mostly trustworthy

Following the body (of the ancestors) through the forms of practice

Following the body that leads to the true self

Suzuki

. . . So Dōgen said, “Everyone is your master, don’t pay any attention to whether they are a layman or priest, a woman or man, young or old. Everyone is your teacher and your friend, but as long as you discriminate this from that, you will not meet a Zen master.”

. . . If your attitude is right, everything you hear will be Buddha speaking. Then the master is not teacher or student, but Buddha himself.

Opening to another human being, vertically, is s step toward allowing grasses and trees, fences and walls, to express the dharma.

Allowing pillars and lanterns to expound the dharma, Dogen, EK #10

Taking a step forward or backward at the top of a hundred jo pole, with a single mind, turn your face and transform your self. This mountain monk [Dogen] will allow the pillars and lanterns to expound this principle for everyone. Have they finished expounding it yet or not? They expounded it last night, and also the night before. Tomorrow they will expound it, and also the day after tomorrow. If they have finished expounding it, has everyone heard it or not?

All things expounding the dharma

Intimate exchange with each thing in this moment

Dogen, EK #68, Jumping and Stumbling in a Fragrant World

When we exhaust our strength to express it, the pillars help us from the sidelines with half a word. Training the mind and verifying enlightenment, a wooden ladle energetically adds another mouthful [of sustenance for practice]. For a person who can hear and who can practice, emotions are not yet born and forms have not yet appeared. Voices babbling on, every bit is naked. Without awakening, advancing each step we stumble over our feet, making seven mistakes and eight mistakes. Without resting, taking a step backward we stumble over our exposed legs; arriving at two and arriving at three. Jumping up and kicking over Mount Sumeru, pick it up and place it within everyone’s eyeballs. Stumbling and overturning the great ocean, pick it up and place it within everyone’s nostrils. Why doesn’t everyone awaken and understand?

After a pause [Dogen] said: Last night a flower blossomed and the world became fragrant. This morning a fruit ripened and bodhi (awakening) matured.

[1] “Making seven mistakes and eight mistakes” implies the mistake after mistake in our practice, which may be necessary for our practice to develop. In Shobogenzo Sokushin Zebutsu “This Very Mind is Buddha,” Dogen says, “Without making mistake after mistake one departs from the Way.”

2 “Arriving at two and arriving at three” seems to imply something extraneous.

3 Nostrils refer to the original face, or true nature, as the nostrils are at the center of our face but we cannot see them. Eyes refer to understanding. When Dogen returned from China he said that all he brought back was that his eyes were horizontal and nose vertical.

In the last moment a flower blossomed, in this moment the fruit is ripening

Each thing expounding the dharma

Nomon Tim Burnett: This Precious Opportunity Together (Rohatsu 2014)

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 04:25:15 GMT

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THIS PRECIOUS OPPORTUNITY TOGETHER

December 4, 2014 Rohatsu 2014 Bellingham

Let’s reflect a minute on how rare, how precious, this opportunity to practice together is. So many factors have to be present for us to be able to do this. Of course each of us made some kind of choice to be here. To show up. Sometimes we notice that level of condition, our own choice, or own motivation. But it goes much deeper than that, doesn’t it?

Spend a moment feeling your breathing. Feeling the body. Feeling contact between the body and the cushion or the chair. Giving yourself to yourself. Dropping in.

Not perfectly comfortable maybe, not utter joy and contentment may, but pretty good eh? A body and mind that can sit, can practice. Be with that a moment

Now visualize someone you know, or have known, who wouldn’t be physically able to be here. So many people are ill. Bedridden. For so many people just keeping alive is the main thing. Or maybe someone who was hurt or in an accident. The frustration of losing mobility and being stuck somewhere. I was visiting a Zen student yesterday who’d just moved to Bellingham, very excited to come practice with us. She went out to dinner with her brother. On her way out the door after a nice meal her foot caught on something on the floor. Down she went breaking her arm and her leg both. She’s been stuck in a rehab place for nearly two months now. I’ve been trying to encourage her to practice there but it’s not easy. Conditions are more challenging than we are enjoying. This really happens to people. So visualize yourself in that situation. Ill. Hurt. Broken. Unable to come to the zendo or receive teachings.

Feeling the feeling of that. How would you practice?

And return to the feeling of being here. Now. Ah….

And now visualize someone who suffers from a serious mental disability. Retardation of some kind. Dementia. Alzheimer’s. There’s a day treatment facility for adults with autistic spectrum in town, sometimes you see a group of those folks walking around downtown with their supporters. They give off some happiness for sure but they are not going to be able to practice in the way we are in this lifetime. So many people just lack the mental resources to do spiritual practice.

Imagine if you were in that situation. What would that be like? Can you get inside that and feel into it. Would everything that happens be disorienting? A surprise? Maybe you can think of a time you were really disoriented and confused? Or just imagine the roughness of that kind of mind.

And return to the feeling of being here. Now. Ah….

Now think of the many people throughout history, and now, who live in situations where the luxury of spiritual practice would be unthinkable. People living in war zones. People living with intense economic hardship. I often remember a powerful encounter with a homeless who was hungry that I had during one of our weekend retreats with Norman at the old place on State Street. The folks living under our bridges are just trying to stay warm this morning, figure out how to get some food or some basic needs. And of course we have so many war zones all over the world. I read a wonderful thriller set in Somalia and Kenya which helped remind me of the daily existence and poverty there. There are no meditation retreats. What would it be to live as a refugee or a homeless person. Day to day to day to day. Be in those shoes.

And return to the feeling of being here. Now. Ah…

Lastly visualize the great teachers and spiritual masters who practiced so diligently to develop these ways of practice. To drop through the projections and craziness of their minds. Many of them practicing with very little support. So isolated, either physically or spiritually and emotionally. We don’t really know what it was like for Suzuki Roshi and Katagiri Roshi coming to America in the 50’s. Barely speaking the language. Conflicting demands and requests on them. The people around them not having any context for this practice. We highlight the ways they celebrated the openness of that – beginner’s mind – but I’m sure it was also really tough. Disorienting. I don’t think they magically knew just how to present Zen practice. What to emphasize? What to leave out? When to correct the students’ form and understand? When to just give them time to grow into it. What if they never get it? We romanticize them now but I’m sure it was pretty tough. Put yourself in their shoes. How hard to keep going sometimes!

And return to the feeling of being here. Now. Ah…

This opportunity to practice is so precious. So rare. And how easily we get distracted. How easily the mind focusses on our dissatisfactions and issues. Not that we can’t bring up our issues – we can and we should – but what do we hold closest to our hearts? Do we show up whether we feel like it or not? In the traditional Buddhist scheme this birth as a reasonably healthy human being who somehow is able to practice the Dharma is extremely rare. Extremely precious. Let’s do our best to bring that thought back to mind throughout our retreat. And if you’re visiting for the talk, you too can practice in this way out in the busy world.

Speaking of Suzuki Roshi, our Rohatsu Buddha’s Enlightenment sesshin is a celebration of ancestors. We celebrate Buddha and we celebrate the chain of men and women who’ve practiced from Buddha’s time to now. We celebrate that aspect of this precious moment now. This sesshin brought to you by Buddha and company.

Since we are in the Suzuki Roshi and Katagiri Roshi lineages here I thought we’d appreciate some words of Suzuki Roshi together. I was looking through a treasure trove of digital dharma files I have and found a folder called “SR Archive” which turns out to be all of the transcripts the students at San Francisco Zen Center made of his talks. They are arranged in date order so I thought it might be interesting to read the earliest one.

TEACHER AND DISCIPLE, Shunryū Suzuki-rōshi, December 1961 and February 1962

Emptiness does not mean annihilation; it means selfless original enlightenment which gives rise to everything. Once selfless original enlightenment takes place, very subjective and objective existence resumes its own nature (buddha-nature) and becomes valuable jewels to us all.

In Mahāyāna Buddhism every teaching is based on the idea of emptiness, but most schools emphasize its expression in some particular sutra—the Lotus Sūtra, the Avatamsaka-sūtra, the Mahāvairochana-sūtra, and others. In Zen we do not emphasize the teaching until after we practice, and between practice and enlightenment there must not be any gap in our effort. Only in this way it is possible to attain the perfect enlightenment from which every teaching comes out. For us it is not teaching, practice, enlightenment; but enlightenment, practice, and the study of the teachings. At this time every sutra has its value according to the temperament and circumstances of the disciples.

This “gap” is an important teaching. Not turning away from what’s arising now is how I understand it. Not pulling ourselves away. Being right there. Right there with everything that arises. Breathing it in. Merging with reality. With what Suzuki Roshi called “things as it is.”

Confusingly a similar concept of finding the space between stimulus and response as things come at us is an important skill in practice too. We find a spaciousness so we aren’t led around by the nose by our judgments and resistances. We learn in that space to see this is just what it is I can be with it.

So oddly the practice of feeling into the spaciousness is the same as the practice of no gap. It’s a question of point of view or language.

So it is the character or personality, the cross-current of teacher and disciple, that makes transmission and real patriarchal Zen possible—practicing from the point of view of the enlightenment of the Buddhas and patriarchs. So the relationship between the teacher or Zen master and disciples is quite important for us. By believing in one’s master, one can attain his character and the disciple or student will have his own spiritual unfoldment.

This is a central idea in Zen and also in Tibetan Buddhism and probably other schools too. Less so in the Thervadadin Buddhism that informs Vipassana where the teacher is seen as more of a spiritual friend. The traditional understanding in Zen is that the teacher embodies something that cannot be expressed in words. And an experienced teacher is an essential element in our practice.

The aspect of me, Tim Burnett born in La Jolla, California in 1966, which operates in words through my personality and history feels a little funny talking like this though. I am apparently sitting in the teachers seat and giving a teaching but I do not feel special or wise or enlightened in a self-conscious way. I don’t go around making too many brilliant insightful remarks like a mythical Zen master either.

And it might be that’s just your bad luck that we are entering the age of ordinary teachers. Suzuki Roshi was operating in the age of Special Teachers. And in that situation he was empowered to do lots of special things and his surviving students still talk about the amazing things he said and did and his presence. I remember Norman complaining about that at one point. They’d have a special celebration of say, the 50^th Anniversary of SF Zen Center’s founding, and round up all of the surviving Suzuki Roshi students they could find who would then tell the same old stories they always tell. Wonderful stories though.

But there’s another aspect of this where it might be this archetype of the teacher and student is alive and well. Fully functioning. It’s more subtle and you have to hang around a while to even notice it. A long term practitioner who’s received some support to practice in an insightful way does embody something. There’s a feeling to it that’s hard to describe.

One time I went to Norman’s house in California to spend the day with him learning how to do the calligraphy on the back of the rakusu people receive in the jukai precepts ceremony. Norman and I hung out all day and practiced that. He made me some really tasty coffee and a nice lunch. We went for a walk in the neighborhood. He didn’t give me any particular teachings or advice. We just spent a quiet day together.

And when I got back to where I was staying that night I noticed how different I felt. How much more grounded. A sense of depth and appreciation for this human life. It was really striking once I noticed it. I think my sister in law pointed it out actually and I was like “yeah…you’re right!”

Norman was just present with me. And come to think of it I don’t remember him having to veer off to attend to other things all day. Maybe he answered a phone call at some point I don’t remember but he was really there with me. He was present. And it wasn’t like he was doing me a big favor or felt like he was “working” that day. We were just enjoying our companionship in the Dharma. And it was a really profound day I will never forget.

Maybe if we’re lucky here in Bellingham and in Seattle we can be that kind of teacher for each other. Each in our own way. It’s not about spiritual zingers. It’s about being deeply together. Walking the path together.

Suzuki Roshi goes on and tells a story from the ancestors

Once when Yakusan-zenji was asked to talk about Buddhism he said: “There is the teacher of scriptures, there is the scholar or philosopher of Buddhism, and then there is the Zen master. Do not acknowledge me.” Day after day, from morning until night, he behaved like a Zen master. “Why don’t you acknowledge me” is what he meant. To practice Zen with disciples, to eat with them and sleep with them is the most important thing for a Zen master. So he said, “Why don’t you acknowledge me? I am a Zen master, not a teacher of the scriptures or a philosopher.”

So we say, “Only to sit on a cushion is not Zen.” The Zen master’s everyday life, character and spirit is Zen. My own master said, “I will not acknowledge any monastery where there is lazy training, where it is full of dust.” He was very strict. To sleep when we sleep, to scrub the floor and keep it clean, that is our Zen. So practice is first. And as a result of practice, there is teaching. The teaching must not be stock words or stale stories. But must be always kept fresh. That is real teaching.

But we do not neglect the teaching or sūtras of Buddha. Because we want to find out the actual value of the teaching, we practice Zen and train ourselves to have the actual living meaning of the scriptures. But this practice must be quite serious. If we are not serious enough, the practice will not work and the teaching will not satisfy you. If you have a serious friend or teacher, you will believe in Buddhism. Without an actual living example it is very difficult to believe or practice. So to believe in your master and be sincere—that is enlightenment. So we say, “Oneness of enlightenment and sincere practice.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but the first problem given me by my master was this story about Yakusan-zenji, which I have just told you. I could not acknowledge my master for a pretty long time. It is quite difficult to believe in your teacher, but we must know our fundamental attitude toward Buddhism. That is why Dōgen went to China. For a long time he had studied in the Tendai school, the very profound, philosophical school of Buddhism, but still he was not satisfied. Dōgen’s problem was, “If we already have buddha-nature, why do we have to practice? There should be no need to practice.” He was quite sincere about this problem.

I do worry a little if we’re serious enough here. It’s a subtle thing to be serious in a wholesome way. Not too heavy. Not judgmental or too precious. Not reinforcing the illusion of our separateness or the illusion of our incompleteness.

I worry that I’m not devoted enough to the Dharma. And it’s okay I can practice with that worry and be with it. Try to invite it to encourage me to sit every day and show up for my life. To not lay any trips on anyone else but to be upright in my own life.

We can see the effects of taking this seriously in an uwholesome way. That feeling of never being good enough. Not living up to some kind of idealistic monastic vision. And we can see the effects of not taking it seriously at all. We know that “everything is practice” but that is so damn easy to misunderstand. But each of will have our own expression. Not everyone can come to the zendo all the time. And I have to admit I worry about this point a bit as I said.

So I’ll just invite each of us to consider: what does serious practice look like for me? What’s the right way? We need some encouragement sometimes to work through our desire for comfort and our laziness but do we turn it into self-aggression if we try too hard. It’s a subtle and important point.

Buddha-nature, you know, is neither good nor bad, spiritual nor material. By buddha-nature, we mean human nature. To be faithful to our nature will be the only way to live in this world as a human being. So we call our nature buddha-nature and accept it, good or bad. To accept it is a way to be free from it; because we do not accept it, we cannot be free. If the idea of human nature exists in your mind, you will be caught by it. When you accept it, you are not caught by it. So to accept does not mean to understand it psychologically or biologically. It means actual practice. No time to be caught, no time to doubt.

A more eloquent way of exploring this question of what our practice is about. Are we trying to improve ourself? Or are we trying to understand the actual nature of the self. I love the active verb in this sentence: “We call our nature Buddha-nature and accept it, good or bad.” We need to call out to our life. Call out to the world. Call out to each moment. Engage. Re-engage. And accept the answer that comes back in response to our calling. And this acceptance is not a self-conscious kind of psychological understanding. Dogen reminding us over and over that we may not know enlightenment in a self-referential cognitive way. It’s a deeper feeling than that.

Dōgen tried to be satisfied with some teaching or answer which was written, but as long as he was concerned only with the teaching, it was impossible to be satisfied. He didn’t know what he wanted, but as soon as he met Zen Master Nyojō[1] in China, he knew. Dōgen was quite satisfied with Nyojō’s character and Nyojō said to Dōgen, “That I have you as a disciple is exactly the same as Shākyamuni Buddha having Mahākāshyapa.” So that was the relationship.

The teachings come to live in embodied relationship with real people. This is so easy to miss. We like to make things abstract. And we like to make them our own in a way that limits the teachings. The teachings are bigger than that. Nyojo by the way is the Japanese version of Dogen’s teacher Ryujin’s name.

In this way, Zen teaching and understanding is transmitted. Nyojō said, “You must transmit this teaching to someone.” This looks as if he were trying to bind the disciple, but once you understand what he actually said, everyone you meet and everything you have becomes valuable to you. So Dōgen said, “Everyone is your master, don’t pay any attention to whether they are a layman or priest, a woman or man, young or old. Everyone is your teacher and your friend, but as long as you discriminate this from that, you will not meet a Zen master.”

If we are real Zen students, we sleep where we are, eat what is given to us, and listen to the teacher, good or bad. The teacher may say, “How are you? If you answer, I will give you a hit, if you don’t answer I will give you a hit.” He doesn’t care what you think about it. If you get hit with the stick, you will get something. Whether the answer is right or wrong, whether you get hit or not, is not the point. So Dōgen said, “If you want to listen to a Zen master for absolute truth, you must not think about his rank, his accomplishments, deeds, or shortcomings. Accept him just as he is because he is a bodhisattva.” That is the right attitude toward life—just accept it. If your attitude is right, everything you hear will be Buddha speaking. Then the master is not teacher or student, but Buddha himself.

This last part is quite a relief because I myself don’t feel so accomplished. And that’s okay.

Let’s practice carefully and fully together in this retreat. It will be over before we know it. Please don’t waste time. And the way to not waste time is to forget about time, forget about you. Just keep showing up. Just meet everything fully, with no gap. When there’s no gap there’s no me, no you, no zendo, there’s just this. And our willingness to enter fully into just this without any holding back is a great gift to ourself, to the world. That’s truly making wise use of the precious opportunity of human birth.

Nomon Tim Burnett: Every Day is a Good Day

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 04:43:20 GMT

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Blue Cliff Record Case 6:

Yun-Men taught by saying, “I do not ask you about before the 15th of the month. Come, give a phrase about after the 15th:”

He himself responded, “Every day is a good day”

What I love about the Zen koans is how they don’t explain but they show. Master Yunmen shows his gratitude in this story. His complete appreciation for every day. Whether it’s a day we like or a day we don’t like. Whether it’s the full moon or before the full moon or after the full moon.

Yunmen lived in the 9th century – 860 to 949. These Zen masters lived a long time. 89 years old when he died. He was seen later on as the founder of one of the Five Houses of Zen.

He is found often in the traditional koan collections. 18 times in the Blue Cliff Record that this case is found in.

He is the subject of one of many famous and somewhat violent Zen stories.

While a boy, Yunmen became a monk under a “commandment master” named Zhi Cheng in Jiaxing. He studied there for several years, taking his monastic vows at age 20, in 883 CE.

The teachings there did not satisfy him, and he went to Daozong’s school to gain enlightenment. According to a legend, first mentioned in 1100, he had his leg broken for his trouble:

Ummon [Yunmen] went to Bokushu’s temple to seek Zen. The first time he went, he was not admitted. The second time he went, he was not admitted. The third time he went the gate was opened slightly by Bokushu, and thus Ummon stuck his leg in attempting to gain entrance. Bokushu urged him to “Speak! Speak!”; as Ummon opened his mouth, Bokushu pushed him out and slammed shut the large gate so swiftly that Ummon’s leg was caught and was broken.

We don’t push so hard in our temple here. But I think we should be clear that there is a real place to devotion and discipline. It’s okay to take this practice seriously.

And it’s good to learn how to relax and put it all down.

I do not ask you about the day before Thanksgiving; come, say something, about what happens the day after Thanksgiving?

Every day is a good day.

Every day is a day to offer thanks.

I had a challenging interaction with some colleagues yesterday morning. They were questioning some of my choices and how I’d expressed a few things. They were actually very careful to be kind and supportive in how they brought this up. And I could feel myself taking it in, and starting to shut down. It didn’t feel like a good day any more.

And as I hung out at home that night I thought about this conversion. The morning I woke up I thought about it. It came and went all day. It distracted me a bit when I was out walking with my wife. My mind was on the conversation and I wasn’t really there with her part of the time. And then this afternoon, somehow it lifted. I could feel it lifting. When it was settled on me I couldn’t quite imagine that possibility of it just lifting. It felt like something I had to solve and figure out. I wrote a long email which, thankfully, I didn’t send. While in this state. In my journal I wrote that I realized I’d been “enflammed” and enflammed state. This will happen in our sangha conflicts too. We enter a disoriented state and we have one attitude, one approach.

Sometimes if we can just be with it it will shift or life and then we have a different situation. There is still stuff to work out with those colleagues but it doesn’t have the same fear and urgency that it did. I return to a wise place. I return to gratitude. I return to every day is a good day.

Maybe one day we can learn to rest in every day is a good day….every day. I don’t know. But I do know it’s a space we can return to. It’s a space we can feel. It’s a space we can stand in even when there’s no where to stand. And from that place we can be kinder, clearer and wiser. Compassion and wisdom are found there.

John Tarrant is a Zen teacher from New Zealand who teaches in California and I understand does a weekend retreat in Seatlte once a year – we should all try to go. He’s big on koans and working with them in a very flexible way.

I found some comments he made on this case.

The teacher said, “I’m not asking about before the full moon, say a word or two about after the full moon.”

The teacher answered the question, “Every day is a good day.”

Gratitude comes with a feeling of openness, shyness, vulnerability. The person who is grateful can be hurt or rejected, she is taking a risk. With gratitude, there is more at stake, life is not small.

Gratitude can surprise me just the way a poem or a song can surprise me, and fling me into another wider air. When the ancient Chinese thought of waking up as intimacy, they were referring to an appreciation for trees and rivers, an appreciation so strong that it amounted to identification—what’s outside of us is us too. They also meant that our own innermost experience leads us outward to connect.

Gratitude is an impulse that creates a community, it’s my contribution to living with others. It doesn’t happen to me as a solo Ronin meditator practicing the dark arts of consciousness alone in a hut. Because of this and because other people are always doing unexpected things, gratitude has to confront anti-gratitude, bitterness, and despair. If we want to speak for gratitude we have to go down into desolation,damage, and hurt and find space to breathe exactly there. In that way gratitude is a path, as much as a feeling; it asks me to look where I’m putting my feet.

Gratitude is what we feel for every single thing that occurs since we would rather be alive than not, would rather be here than not and perhaps our only job is to celebrate being here, being happy for each other.

Shudo Chris Burkhart: Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, part 1

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 04:10:09 GMT

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Shuso Chris Burkhart discussed the Chinese Zen poem “Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi” which is chanted as part of the Soto Zen liturgy.

Talk is continued with Part 2.

Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi Composed by Dongshan Liangjie (Tozan Ryokai)

The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well.

Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight – taken as similar they’re not the same; when you mix them, you know where they are.

The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse.

Move and you are trapped; miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire. Just to depict it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. It is bright just at midnight, it doesn’t appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings, its use removes all pains. Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech.

It is like facing a jewel mirror; form and image behold each other – you are not it, in truth it is you. Like a babe in the world, in five aspects complete; it does not go or come, nor rise nor stand.

“Baba wawa” – is there anything said or not?

Ultimately it does not apprehend anything because its speech is not yet correct.

It is like the six lines of the illumination hexagram: relative and ultimate interact – piled up, they make three, the complete transformation makes five.

It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like a diamond thunderbolt.

Subtly included within the true, inquiry and response

come up together. Communing with the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory and treasure the road. Respecting this is fortunate; do not neglect it.

Naturally real yet inconceivable, it is not within the province of delusion or enlightenment.

With causal conditions, time and season, quiescently it shines bright. In its fineness it fits into spacelessness, in its greatness it is utterly beyond location. A hairsbreadth’s deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement.

Now there are sudden and gradual in which teachings and approaches arise. Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are guiding rules.

But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended, true eternity still flows. Outwardly still while inwardly moving, like a tethered colt, a trapped rat -the ancient sages pitied them and bestowed upon them the teaching.

According to their delusions, they called black as white; when erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent mind realizes itself.

If you want to conform to the ancient way, please observe the sages of former times. When about to fulfill the way of Buddhahood, one gazed at a tree for ten eons, Like a battle-scarred tiger, like a horse with shanks gone gray. Because there is the common, there are jewel pedestals, fine clothing; Because there is the startlingly different, there are house cat and cow.

Yi with his archer’s skill could hit a target at a hundred paces. But when arrow-points meet head on, what has this to do with the power of skill?

When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing; it’s not within reach of feeling or discrimination – how could it admit of consideration in thought?

Ministers serve their lords, children obey their parents; Not obeying is not filial and not serving is no help. Practice secretly, working within, like a fool, like an idiot. Just to continue in this way is called the host within the host.

Shudo Chris Burkhart: Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, part 2

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 03:51:20 GMT

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Shuso Chris Burkhart discussed the Chinese Zen poem “Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi” which is chanted as part of the Soto Zen liturgy.

The discussion began with part 1.

Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi Composed by Dongshan Liangjie (Tozan Ryokai)

The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well.

Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight – taken as similar they’re not the same; when you mix them, you know where they are.

The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse.

“Baba wawa” – is there anything said or not?

Ultimately it does not apprehend anything because its speech is not yet correct.

It is like the six lines of the illumination hexagram: relative and ultimate interact – piled up, they make three, the complete transformation makes five.

It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like a diamond thunderbolt.

Subtly included within the true, inquiry and response

come up together. Communing with the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory and treasure the road. Respecting this is fortunate; do not neglect it.

Naturally real yet inconceivable, it is not within the province of delusion or enlightenment.

Now there are sudden and gradual in which teachings and approaches arise. Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are guiding rules.

According to their delusions, they called black as white; when erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent mind realizes itself.

Yi with his archer’s skill could hit a target at a hundred paces. But when arrow-points meet head on, what has this to do with the power of skill?

When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing; it’s not within reach of feeling or discrimination – how could it admit of consideration in thought?

Nomon Tim Burnett: El Sutra del Corazón – Heart Sutra Teaching in San Miguel de Allende, México

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:12:53 GMT

A series of 7 talks given at a study retreat and a public meditation in San Miguel de Allende, México, in August 2014. The first 6 talks are in English and Spanish, the last talk is only in English.

Una serie de 7 lecciones dictadas en un refugio de estudio y una meditación pública en San Miguel de Allende, México, en agosto de 2014 Los primeros 6 conversaciones son en Inglés y Español, la última charla es sólo en Inglé

Talk #1

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Talk #2

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Talk #3

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Talk #4

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Talk #5

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Talk #6

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Talk #7

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Attached is an essay on Shariputra, it is in English only. (Se adjunta un ensayo sobre Shariputra, es sólo en Inglés.): The Life of Sariputta – Nyanaponika Thera

Also here are the poems read during the retreat. / También aquí están los poemas leídos durante el retiro.

ONE MORNING – Rosemerry Trommer

One morning
we will wake up
and forget to build
that wall we’ve been building,

the one between us
the one we’ve been building
for years, perhaps
out of some sense
of right and boundary,
perhaps out of habit.

One morning
we will wake up
and let our empty hands
hang empty at our sides.

Perhaps they will rise,
as empty things
sometimes do
when blown
by the wind.

Perhaps they simply
will not remember
how to grasp, how to rage.

We will wake up
that morning
and we will have
misplaced all our theories
about why and how
and who did what
to whom, we will have mislaid
all our timelines
of when and plans of what
and we will not scramble
to write the plans and theories anew.

On that morning,
not much else
will have changed.

Whatever is blooming
will still be in bloom.

Whatever is wilting
will wilt. There will be fields
to plow and trains
to load and children
to feed and work to do.

And in every moment,
in every action, we will
feel the urge to say thank you,
we will follow the urge to bow.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit… but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

-Portia Nelson from here’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

Llámadme por mis verdaderos nombres – Thich Naht Hahn

No digas que partiré mañana porque todavía estoy llegando.

Mira profundamente: llego a cada instante para ser el brote de una rama de primavera, para ser un pequeño pájaro de alas aún frágiles que aprende a cantar en su nuevo nido, para ser oruga en el corazón de una flor, para ser una piedra preciosa escondida en una roca.

Todavía estoy llegando para reír y llorar, para temer y esperar, pues el ritmo de mi corazón es el nacimiento y la muerte de todo lo que vive.

Soy el efímero insecto en metamorfosis sobre la superficie del rio, y soy el pájaro que cuando llega la primavera llega a tiempo para devorar este insecto.

Soy una rana que nada feliz en el agua clara de un estanque, y soy la culebra que se acerca sigilosa para alimentarse de la rana.

Soy el niño de Uganda, todo piel y huesos, con piernas delgadas como cañas de bambú, y soy el comerciante de armas que vende armas mortales a Uganda.

Soy la niña de 12 años refugiada en un pequeño bote, que se arroja al mar tras haber sido violada por un pirata, y soy el pirata cuyo corazón es incapaz de amar.

Soy el miembro del Politburó con todo el poder en mis manos, y soy el hombre que ha de pagar su deuda de sangre a mi pueblo, muriendo lentamente en un campo de concentración.

Mi alegría es como la primavera, tan cálida que abre las flores de toda la Tierra. mi dolor es como un rio de lágrimas, tan desbordante que llena todos los Océanos.

Llámame por mis verdaderos nombres para poder oír al mismo tiempo mis llantos y mis risas, para poder ver que mi dolor y mi alegría son la misma cosa.

Por favor, llámame por mis verdaderos nombres para que pueda despertar y quede abierta la puerta de mi corazón, la puerta de la compasión.

Call Me by My True Names – Thich Naht Hahn

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to, my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

Notes from Thich Naht Hanh about “Call Me By My True Names”

Zoketsu Norman Fischer: On Blake, Joyce, Concentration, and Love

Sat, 21 Jun 2014 01:52:22 GMT

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Seventh, and final, Dharma Talk at Samish Island Sesshin 2014.