Chicago Zen Center Quarterly

Right Livelihood and paying people what’s right

2009-11-16T11:36:00.003-06:00

by Sevan Sensei

When I was a boy and asked my coal miner father one time too many for money, he got me a job as a "myrtle plugger." I sat all day in a field of ground cover with a special tool and "plugged" one plant at a time from the ground into a "flat" -- a large wooden box. Each plant took up a four-square-inch space. I saw immediately that I could fit between 50 and 60 plants into the box. Upon filling a flat I was to take it to the Yard Boss who was to "count" it and give me a fresh one to fill. I was to be paid five cents per flat. This was child labor, and it was in the early 1960s in Pennsylvania.

When I took up my first flat, the Yard Boss reached into the box and used his hand to squeeze my plants together to one side. They now filled 40 percent of the flat. He smiled, winked, grunted, and handed it back to me.

This was wage theft, and although I was only 10 years old, I knew it. I quit that "job" at the end of my first week. My father simply said, "Now you know what a union is for."

I was too young to understand what my father meant, but I was developed enough to see that the yard boss did not see me as human in some important way. He regarded me as the "other" -- as a tool like any other tool, to be used as needed for as long I held up to his purpose.

Many years later I heard a talk given during my priest training in which Yasutani Roshi, a well-known Japanese Zen Master, said these words: "The fundamental problem for all humanity is that you believe that you are there and I am here." This sums up how Buddhism casts a critical eye on the behavior of people -- especially in commercial enterprises.

As long as we regard each other not as humans but as the "other," we will suffer profound abuses in the workplace. Employers will steal their workers' wages, either overtly or covertly. And all the while they will deny both to themselves and others that this is the case. After all, they are only employees. I -- or we -- happen to be management, and as such are responsible for the survival and the thriving of the organization. Except that the workers are the organization and a theft against them is one against the group -- and me too.

I'm sure that the Yard Boss was being stolen from in some way by his betters back in that myrtle field. He could not have invented the workplace abuse of a child all on his own. I'll bet it went all the way to the top. After all, what happens at the top flows directly to the bottom in organizations. If "the other" is how we see individuals, we will guarantee they will see us this way also.

So from a Buddhist perspective it is not quite enough to say that we each are our brother's keeper. We need to feel instead that we actually are our brother. And from this, fair treatment flows naturally. There is then what we Buddhists call Right Livelihood -- mutually productive work, with everyone being treated fairly, everyone being treated Right.

Originally published on The Rag Blog.

The Layman Sinks His Boat: Thoughts on (Considering) Burning Bridges

2009-07-06T21:33:00.002-05:00

by Kevin Geiman

According to the story, Layman Pang one day took all his possessions, loaded them onto a boat, rowed out to the middle of the nearby lake, and sank the lot of them. He didn’t give them away, and he didn’t see to it that they went to some good use. He just destroyed them.

In Case 28 of the Mumonkan, Tokusan, the renowned scholar of the Diamond Sutra, came to a realization under Ryutan. He then proceeded to make a bonfire of his notes and commentaries, burning them all in front of the main hall. He didn’t hold on to them to check them against his insight or to use as materials for future reflection or teaching. He just destroyed them.

Burning in flame and sinking in water are perhaps the most common ways of signifying complete detachment. Fire and water are primordial, basic, fundamental. To commit anything to them is to lose any hope of getting it back in the future. To pass by way of them is to emerge renewed, ready to begin, free of cumber. We are given to understand that the Layman and Tokusan did, indeed, continue to go deeply in the Way, and the tradition holds them out to us with hopes that we might deepen our resolve to do so as well.

These cases raise the age-old question whether we should understand such renunciation figuratively or literally. Certainly we would not be hearing of the Layman or the Sutra Scholar if they hadn’t done such drastic things. Their actions stood enough out of the norm that they stuck fast and hard in the collective consciousness of the tradition. Let’s face it: we don’t hear tell of those who held back, who kept some reserve, who made as if they would be willing to surrender at some future time, but just not yet.

So let’s assume a matter-of-fact renunciation for the moment. What’s the harm? Quickly the objections rise: “Such things might be useful in the future.” “Those things should have been given to the poor.” “Such egos! Why the drama?” It’s this last one we should be most worried about, of course, but it might be a misguided objection here, one that mistakes effect for cause. Let’s look at the Layman again. If he were submerging the goods in order to diminish the self, then there would be a problem. If he thought that doing this would produce some realization, then he would be mistaken. If he thought he was making the difference in the world, he would have been wrong. And we wouldn’t still be hearing of him.

A different reading would suggest that the Layman’s work was already accomplished when he loaded the dinghy and headed away from the dock. John Woolman, the renowned colonial Quaker abolitionist and himself a man of some insight, put it this way: “Rather than renouncing power, wealth, and honor in a noble sacrifice, we simply discover that they no longer hold such interest for us." Perhaps it’s like what we experienced as children and adolescents, now allowed to continue into adulthood. How many of us held on to our teddy bears once we found other more age-appropriate amusements? We didn’t white knuckle our way through cleaning out the toybox; we probably wondered why we hadn’t gotten rid of the stuff sooner. We didn’t leave childhood behind in a great significant act of ego. Childhood had already left us.

Still, the Layman’s story makes the whole thing sound instantaneous. This may not square so neatly with our own experience, for there are times in life when, to return to Woolman, the interest one thing holds for us is waxing while the interest another holds is waning, not as a process of natural growth but as a matter of choice and commitment. These are the times when we begin to know deep in our bones just how different things are going to look from here on out, the times when we need to be opening ourselves completely and honestly to that difference. At these times we are rightly cautioned to not be too hasty. It’s not a matter of still holding back as much as giving ourselves over as deeply and fully in as patient and as thorough a way as possible – a matter of letting go with eyes wide open. Marrying is like this, so we have engagements. Ordaining is like this, so we have novitiate periods.

Our lineage has no Dharma equivalent of a Vegas drive-thru wedding chapel, and for good reason. Asking to ordain is not the same thing as entering on the novice path, nor is entering the novitiate the same thing as ordination.

I had no clue at the beginning of last January’s sesshin that I would be asking to be ordained by the end. (“Just where did that come from?” I still sometimes wonder….) I also had no clue how many nights’ sleep I would lose once I did ask. Little did I know what points of resistance would subsequently emerge, what aspects of ego would show up, what it was about the whole thing I was scared of. Every now and then it becomes clearer to me what further things will have to be left behind. Then I have to pause, consider, discern. Remember, the Layman didn’t wake up one day and just walk away from his home and possessions, either. That would have been too reactive. Rather, he took it all out, bit by bit, looked at it all, saw the things for what they were, and then – only then – paddled them out and away. We only hear of the day on the lake. Who knows how long he took in his mind to get the stuff out of the house? And if he had found that he really couldn’t part with the heirloom credenza, then that would have been good, too, for it would have been honest.

In our life in the sangha we really don’t compare notes with others, so it’s quite easy to make overinflated assumptions about others’ practice, depths of insight, levels of commitment and the rest. Perhaps we see someone getting ordained in the same way – that they are somehow special, have something we don’t, etc. I know I did. When I witnessed Sthaman and then Vinati being ordained, it was like watching the Layman in the boat. It seemed stark and definitive, a moment of real crossing, an act I was incapable of doing. And it was.

But looking at ordination as an isolated incident or as an expected outcome of a natural process misses something, and I now realize how profound and welcome this quiet, patient novice time is. It’s not so much a metamorphosis stage as a trying stage (in the old-fashioned sense in which we speak of trying a case to see what sticks and what doesn’t). Announce your intention to the sangha and see how it sits with them. Wear a black rakusu in a public, non-ZC context for the first time and see how that goes. Clean out everything but the blue, black, gray and collarless from the closest and come up with something to go to work in. Look ahead on the calendar one, five, ten years out and take stock of what won’t be happening that you might have had your eye on. Let the full weight of the tradition you’re looking to bear start to rest on your shoulders and see how it feels to stand.

Perhaps even all this smacks a little too much of calculation and deliberation, for there is throughout this time a growing “right as rain” sense as well. The Verse to Case 7 of the Mumonkan comes to mind:

Because it is so very clear,
It takes long to come to realization.
If you know at once that candlelight is fire
You know the meal has long been cooked.

The Layman’s possessions were already at the bottom of the lake before he packed up the first thing. By the time the novice accepts the new name, so it seems, the ordination will have already taken hold, the letting go will have been accomplished, the destruction of another form of life will be over and done with. At least that’s what I’m guessing. At this stage of the process, though, I sometimes eye my goods still on the boat at the dock and wonder…

Why the Economy Has Fallen Apart (and other matters)

2009-07-01T11:18:00.001-05:00

by Sevan Sensei

Editor's Note: Sensei wrote this article in January; apologies for the delay. You'll have to picture snow as you read, but this shouldn't be too difficult in Chicago, even in July. -JL

I arrive at the designated room early to get my marching orders. I’ve been contacted to speak at an interfaith gathering here on the campus of a local major university. I enter a huge room which has been assembled into a lectern-versus-chairs-in-rows situation, all looking very formal. Except that behind the lectern, where there are maple panels hiding many closets for chairs and props, the panels have largely been left open so that the audience sees the speaker against a background of equipment – an area that looks as though it had just been sifted through for loose change and pop cans.

A student (we will call him Ira) approaches me, thanks me for coming, says he is the organizer, and then walks away. Eight students stand around a table, or rather shift back and forth from one leg to the other around a table. I settle into a discarded couch nearby, close my eyes, and listen to the instructions they are being given by Ira.

“You have to be willing to interrupt the speaker to say that they’re out of time, but you have to be nice. Be indirect.”

“How? Like what?”

“We would all like to hear how you feel about that, how you feel Israel should do things. We know you have super ideas, and we appreciate how much you’ve thought all this through, and we want to respect your space here, as well as your right to articulate your feelings. The thing is . . . well, we have to be sure to give everyone a chance to talk here, to express their feelings and ideas as well, and we only have so much time, so I need you to pass the talking item on to the next person . . . .”

“Ok, so what happens if they wander off topic? Like, you know, um, they, um, start off talking about their feelings about Lebanon and then wander over to how they feel about the violence in Gaza, um, something like that?”

“It’s the same kind of thing, you have to . . . . “

I close my eyes and start to fall into a pre-lecture sleep. I notice that my feet are cold from the walk here through the snow. I’ve walked a long way here from the transportation line in the dark and snow. On the way I was almost struck by a woman on a bike. She was using the sidewalk instead of the street. We have a lot of snow here in Chicago this year, and it is dangerous to walk or ride anywhere, since the already crowded streets are even narrower, the alleys are totally unplowed, and the sidewalks vary from two-lanes to goat paths. The woman never called out, rang no bell. There was suddenly a moving blackness obscuring the lights of the city ahead, like an imagined black hole sucking up the urban landscape. Bike riders here apparently have a strict dress code. Except for a few who put strobes on their bikes so that they look like mini emergency vehicles passing by, most bikers seem to prefer black outfits and no lights. They ply the streets like so many insurance liability ninjas. This makes driving (especially around universities) a kind of ESP experience. You come to know by simply using The Force that a ninja bike will appear from the left, though it is not visible through the grime of the windshield, the flutter of the wipers, the glare of the city.
I used to try hollering at the ninja bikes. I used to yell at them that they were going to get killed, cause an accident. After years of this I suddenly realized that I never once got a response. Nobody ever even threw me the finger. I toyed with the idea that perhaps they were all deaf. This was a comforting if temporary theory. Then I went through a phase of a couple of years of being a good Buddhist, working on my anger at the ninja bikes. While this was useful and fulfilling, it never helped explain why they never responded to voice or horn.

Through my remembering of ninja bikes past I hear a voice. It is Ira. He is standing in front of me as I am sunk into the discarded couch. He is almost standing on my feet, he is so close. As he begins to talk to me I search my peripheral awareness to uncover what is so odd and uncomfortable about the position we are in here, with him towering above me, too close, and me looking way up at him, partly blinded by the ceiling lights that halo his head. I recall, while he is carefully explaining how students need to amplify their power by staying in contact with other students in other campuses and how he is just the man to pull them all together, that my Zen teacher always taught me that we should speak to other people at their level – that it was rude and bad form to literally “talk down” to someone. Or was it my mother who said this, or my Jr. High science teacher?

Deciding now that it may be important to listen to what Ira is saying, I focus all my attention on him. He is smiling at me and handing me papers now which seem to explain all the interfaith communications, connections, networks, aware nesses, bulletin boards, conferences, groups, events, teas, dinners, drives, and other forms and masses of the interfaith goliath that apparently thrives right here in Chicago under my very feet. And he launches anew into how students need more power and must communicate more, and how he is just the man to arrange it.

But I’ve wandered off again with my attention. I notice that in the corner of the room (with perhaps fifteen students present now, all wandering around, some with iPods in place) – in the corner there is a piano, and one of the students is playing the piano. He is playing a Jewish song of some kind. The tones and rhythms make clear that it is a Jewish song. Another student starts to clap along. Another starts to sing-chant along. While I’m wondering whether we may yet witness some break dancing, or maybe a wedding here, I catch myself and decide anew to focus my attention on Ira, who is explaining how it is critical that students stay in touch with each other. Apparently this is a huge problem I have not been aware of. They are in reasonably good contact with each other on their own campuses, he passionately assures me, but they need to text and e-mail each other much more between campuses. While he is driving home this point I notice that his group here is stepping up to the plate by texting even as we speak. Ira may well be succeeding in his mission.

Past Ira I spy a wall clock and realize that we are set to begin in ten minutes. So I interrupt him to ask a question. I shade my eyes from the glare of the lights, focus on his smiling face, and through the talking and music ask, “Ira, can someone tell me what I am supposed to speak about, for how long, where I might stand, where to sit, if I can get some water?”

“Sure! Awesome! No problem! I’ll go ask Hanna.”
“But aren’t you in charge here?”
“Hanna picks out the topics?”
“I talked to her on the phone this morning, and she didn’t know the topic.”
“She probably picked it by now.”

As he wanders off to find Hanna before I can re-ask him about getting a drink of water I notice two things: We have eight minutes to start now, and there are students arriving and signing sheets and getting nametags. No one gave me a nametag. I decide that in the hierarchy of unknowns here the lack of my nametag ranks low, so I ignore that problem – no, issue. I also notice that I am decades older that anyone in the room. There are to be six speakers here tonight. A jolt of fear passes through me. Can it be that I am the only one who has actually arrived?

While this kind of fear seems silly to me upon reflection, it is not unfounded. Years ago I attended a local interfaith event at a university on the last day of that school’s existence. The university was going bankrupt. Couldn’t get enough students to stay open. Closed its doors and put the property up for sale. Still today you can drive by and see the chain link fence there wrapped around the entire university, encircling Old Main and everything else. Looks rather like a prison, or maybe a prison camp. A sign says For Sale, but apparently nobody wants to buy a university, since it has stayed like that for years. When people give directions out there in that area they still refer to it as the University, even though it is only a ghost of itself now. They will say, “Turn left there on Washington Road, go past Grant and Lincoln (All streets in Chicago seem to be named after presidents.), and follow the road around the Ghost University. You’ll come out right where you want to go.”

So I showed up that day, years ago, there for the interfaith forum at Ghost University, and it was the last day the school was open. It was also the last day my first Zen teacher and dear Dharma guide Roshi Kapleau was alive. I found the room in Old Main, attended the reception, sat on the Panel, met a Hindu teacher and an Imam and various ministers. But almost no students came. Perhaps it was asking too much of them to show up for such an event when they had just been told two weeks ago that the school would be closing immediately. Perhaps if they had more power, perhaps if they had been better connected, perhaps if they had had Ira there working hard so the students could communicate more, then the school could have been saved. But none of these things happened and the school closed, and we religious leaders bore down on the few students who came and gave them what for about interfaith issues. I swore that day, right after I was able by cell phone to whisper words of goodbye to my old teacher, that I was through with the interfaith world on university campuses. So the fear that perhaps all other ministers, imams, rabbis and gurus had taken the same vow swam through me this night. I could see no other speakers.

Hanna stood staring down at me in exactly the same way Ira had done: “Ira says you have questions.”
“What’s my topic?”
“Oh, Peace and Non-violence.”
“How long do I have with this?”
“Four minutes. But you can go over a little if you need to.”
“I have four minutes to speak about peace and non-violence. Great. Any suggestions?”
“Just tell everyone why we shouldn’t kill people.”
“I see.”
Then, before she escapes I ask, “Where can I get some water?”
“Oh, um, a, I don’t know. I have a bottle.”

But wait, this last part is said, of course in an interrogative, rising-tone manner, completely as though she is asking me a question, so I’m not sure if she’s asking or telling me about her bottle. It’s hard to communicate this low-level confusion, but I find myself often now noticing how almost all of these students don’t seem to say anything, but rather appear to be asking everything with a clearly rising and sometimes even shrill tone. One will be “saying” to another, “So I asked him like what was covered in class?? And he like said nothing new?? And I said like how y’know like boring she is??” I feel the urge to lend a hand here after each interrogative, especially because each seems to end with a pause. “I woke up this morning with a headache??” (rising tone and then a pause)

I find I just want to jump right in there at the end and assure her with, “Yes, go on. Yes, about the waking up with a headache. Please, go ahead. I’m all ears.” But I have come to realize that I am alone in this low grade insecurity about the true state of mind of the speaker. Apparently these statements are not questions at all. The other day I was walking behind two students who were talking, entirely in interrogatives like this, and while suppressing my urge to run up and emotionally rescue them, I came to realize that they were not only confident in their remarks about a third student who clearly must be sleeping with every man and woman on campus and the surrounding area, but they were being forceful and sure in their pronouncements. “I think she’s such a bitch??” (rising tone and then a pause) This is then agreed to with, “I can’t stand her??”

“No, please, I wouldn’t want to take your bottled water.” (even tone, no pause) “Is there a fountain nearby?” (rising tone and then a pause)
“I don’t know. I’ll send Sid over. He needs to talk to you.”
With that, Hanna melts into the crowd which is forming there at the sign-in nametag area. I spy a man in his thirties wearing a suit and feel relieved. I will not face these folks alone. The piano music has stopped now, and Sid arrives. Like the others, he practically stands on my toes, but he offers a firm handshake and a smile. I’m encouraged.

“Hey. I’m Sid. How do you spell your name? What is your title? What organization do you represent?”
“Hanna has all that.”
“I will be introducing you.”
“I see.”

I stand now, move further away from Sid, and ask, “Where do I sit?”
“In the front.”
“Are there special chairs? Do we face the audience while each of us addresses them? Is there a ceremonial component here? Are prayers being offered? Where can I find a drinking fountain?” (rising tones and then pauses throughout)

But he has walked away, so I wander off to find water. Most students seem to have water bottles, so the uninformed would think that there must not be a place to drink water for miles, but of course this is not the case. As I lumber down the hall I recall Yasutani Roshi’s now famous analogy for teaching the truth of the Dharma – selling water by the river. While he is my Dharma Grandfather, I more often consider my family grandfather in these situations. Old Dominic Russo would raise those eyebrows and utter something simple on seeing all these people pay for water when it’s free everywhere. He would stare in disbelief and shake his old coal miner’s head. “What-a the hell! Stupido! Such a Cut-a-butch! (his version of cabbage – meaning cabbage head) All dis-a money you pay out, and-a for what? So you pay some-a Big-a Wheel bastard for the water? You get-um for free, no? Just-a look!”

I walk perhaps twenty feet to a water fountain. The water is cold and wonderful and I linger there. Briefly I wonder about fountains. Will these disappear because of the bottles? After all, TV used to be free. All one needed was a set. And consider phone booths. I was at Chicago’s huge train station recently without my cell phone. It felt like going back forty years, back to when one had to find a working public phone where there were few and they were far between. I’ve been assured that there’s no money in public phones anymore. Everyone has a cell phone. So I wonder what may happen to this fountain when everyone pays for bottled water. I bend down to enjoy one more cold drink. I have to bend down pretty low, even though I’m short. The fountain has been strategically placed so that children could drink from it. As I walk away I wonder how old you have to be to get your first water bottle. Perhaps one might say it is directly after breast feeding.

I arrive again at the lecture area and sit at the front, facing the open closets. All the action is behind me now, and so again I close my eyes and try to conceive of a way in which I might speak of peace and non-violence from a Buddhist perspective in four minutes. But I’m interrupted by a young woman who sits next to me. We say hello. She is clearly Muslim, perhaps 19. I ask her what this is all about. She tells me that this is a dialogue.
I sit up and offer, “Interfaith dialogue?”

“No, just dialogue.”
“But dialogue about what?”
“Our feelings.”
“Our feelings about anything particular?”
“I think about Gaza.”
“Oh, Israel’s invasion?”
“Yeah, the violence in Gaza.”
“I see.”

I close my eyes again. Peace and non-violence in four minutes. Maybe I can talk about anger and how to see it as . . . .

“Hello everybody!” A young man has acquired the podium. “Is this too loud?”
It is. He adjusts the mike and introduces two other men. They are co-presidents of an organization I never heard of. I mentally toy with the concept of co-president. There is a five-minute presentation of all the dialogue events coming up over the next six months, all of which are presented as “super” or “awesome.” I turn in my seat and try to figure out who the other speakers could possibly be. I’m assuming now that the Rabbi is one, though he is seated in the middle of the thirty or so people who have come. I alone am in the front, except for the woman next to me. I begin to search the faces of those who have shown for dialoging. They are young, in many cases child-like. Everyone is white, and I see no trace of Hispanics or Asians. Chicago is over 60% African-American, and there are over one million Hispanics in the area, and many Asians. So clearly I am in a room of Muslims and Jews. I guess the Hispanics and Africans and Chinese don’t feel like dialoguing about Hamas or Gaza or Israel. Maybe they were not invited. But I was invited, and I’m an Italian-American Buddhist. As I’m asking myself what they could possibly want with me the first speaker begins.

He is Jewish, looks as if he is twelve, uses “um” for every other word, inflects every sentence as an interrogative, and takes ten minutes of his allotted four to basically say that we shouldn’t kill one another – that God doesn’t like this. People erupt into applause. The MC submits during the applause that the talk was awesome. Then the next speaker – another young student – announces that he has been asked to speak on Muslim finances and he launches into a dizzyingly detailed account of how a Muslim bank helps a person with a mortgage, and assures us repeatedly that this makes the bank a partner in the house purchase in a manor quite different from the way Western banks approach things. I get so lost in the numbers and percentages that I forget that he talks for what must be twenty minutes. While convincing myself that he has made a serious math error in his explanation I hear my name from the podium and I’m up.

Never preparing for spoken remarks, classes, teishos, etc. is one of my many great flaws. Long ago when I was a classroom teacher I had a great awakening one day that it never improved things to prepare, and so I just stopped doing it. Just dive deeply and selflessly into the moment – you will always know just what to say. And so here is the moment, and I have nothing whatever to say. As I look over the little group I am struck dumb by how many are playing with electronic devices. And so I begin with, “Once there was a Zen master named Hakuin . . . .”

As I speak I see people text messaging. Ira is in a non-stop conversation with someone in the back, loud enough for me to pick out words. Everyone seems to have a water bottle and they all are apparently very thirsty. Everyone seems snug and comfortable. But then I ask if anyone can name for me any war in history which was fought directly in the name of Buddhism. All ticks are stilled, all eyes return to me. A few people shift in their seats. I say I will wait, they can take their time. Silence. I wrap up my remarks and assure them that a good handle on one’s anger will help control violence. The moderator moves on to the next speaker through the applause. The next speaker turns out to be the young woman next to me who was tasked with the question “Love Thy Neighbor.” As she speaks I notice that I never got an “awesome” from the MC. Maybe I should not have brought up the war remark. I look back to see if anyone is staring at me or pulling out a knife, but they are blankly watching the speaker, texting, drinking water. I notice that the Rabbi is texting on a Blackberry.

Soon we find ourselves broken out into small groups, each arranged in a circle for dialogue. A toy football is passed around and we are instructed to speak only when we hold it. For the first go-round we are to tell everyone only what our emotional reaction has been to the violence in Gaza. We are to make no political statements. The first student speaks so quietly that I cannot understand what he is saying. He is Muslim. Then me. Then a Jew, then a Muslim, and so on. I pick out statements I hear which do not seem to match the assignment and I remember the instructions given to the moderators before the event. The moderator for our group is a very young woman who giggles after everything she says. She never interrupts any speaker. She never redirects. When someone offers that Israel is the most awesome place in the world, she says nothing. When someone lists specific statistics counting the number of civilians killed, soldiers killed, etc. she says nothing. When the oldest (except me) of our circle carefully couches his statement that Israel has the right to impose itself on the people in Gaza because the Jews have been looking for a homeland much longer than the Arabs have in personal emotional terms, she says nothing.

I excuse myself and leave the building, stopping at the water fountain for a cold drink before walking to the train. But before I can make good my escape I am again confronted by Ira, who assures me again that he is empowering students to communicate with each other, to dialogue. I want to ask him what exactly will be the impact of this dialoguing, seeing as people seem inattentive and thirsty. I want to ask him where the change in behavior will come from in these interactions. I want to suggest to him that when dialogue process itself is governed by the more powerful or popular side of any issue or stance there must be exceedingly more care taken to be tender and fair to all concerned. I want to take him by the ear and force him to come to the Religions in Dialogue course I and others offer at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I want to run back up front and close the closets, step to the mike and holler, “It is not about ME or I! It is about US!” (even tone, no pause, emphasis on US)

But I look at his smiling face and I realize that he can’t hear me, not any more than the people on the ninja bikes or the students who failed to show for the interfaith dialogue at Ghost University. So I wish him luck and walk away. As I walk down the hall I see more students, each packing an iPod, each listening to something I am not privy to, each listening to something different. On the train many are texting. But they seem to be well hydrated.

What to Do With Our Assets in These Troubled Times

2009-07-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

by Sevan Sensei

Interest is up and the stock market’s down,
And you only get mugged if you go downtown.

But I live back in the woods, you see,
My woman and my kids and my dogs and me.

I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a four-wheel drive.
A country boy can survive . . .
Country folks can survive.

-- Hank Williams Jr.

In these troubled economic times we regularly wonder if we will survive. We worry about our self, wonder about our home, job, family, status. We are concerned with our place in society. Are we slipping? Are we adequate?

We wonder spiritually too. Where we have always been somewhat self concerned – how many koans have I done, will I ever get anywhere in this practice – we now play these ego tapes even more, largely because we are beginning to consider everything in life as more of a struggle, and everything can be lost. We are growing more insecure about everything outside the zendo and off the mat, and so our more-or-less native insecurities about our spiritual “progress” start to grow too.

This breeds more self concern and even deeper insecurities. In economic terms, our stock starts to fall. Stock in the spiritual corporation we call “I,ME,MINE” starts a slow and steady decline. We seem to be failing and losing value pretty much everywhere these days. While our company used to borrow funds – take heart and encouragement, that is – from our teachers and the masters, from the tradition, and from the mat, we increasing feel as though we can’t raise much spiritual cash now. Our sitting suffers. And so we slough off more assets and personnel (effort), make fewer investments (sit less, sit with less vigor), make poor purchases (like books filled with gimmicks about practice instead of books by real masters, or workshops promising Great Mind in an afternoon), and we stop auditing ourselves as closely. We start subscribing to the “outside consultants” (magical thinking drifting in from the hustlers of the New Age).

While our bond rating suffers and we can’t even get credit, we complain to the teacher in dokusan that we are spiritually powerless, that outside market forces have somehow brought our I,ME,MINE company to near ruin. There we are, crying out in the interview room about how we are losing our spiritual market share. It is as an embattled CEO of an old and broken down ego firm that we ask, “What can I do?” Poor teachers may offer a “Now now, there” kind of government bailout while they hold our hand. Better teachers may offer tougher-to-swallow, bitter tasting business advice – sell out while there’s still time! Merge with a far better firm!

The teacher advises us (assuming for a moment that we are working on MU) to go with the smart money – sell all stock to MU Inc.

Interfaith Dialogue

2009-01-17T09:10:00.002-06:00

-Vinati DeVane

I feel like part of practice is continually unlearning our inclination to label, categorize, or contain our zazen. It is easy to give our practice a “name” – verbally, experientially, or emotionally, even – to feel “I am doing this kind of zazen now; I was doing a different kind of zazen yesterday.” I suppose this is a natural way we understand our practice, but it can also launch us into the world of “things,” ideas, fabrications, separation. All this verbalizing instead of just sitting…

Yet, before we are seated on that proverbial airplane and the hypothetical passenger seated next to us observes we are reading a book on Zen and asks, “So, what is Zen about?” we need to cultivate some measure of understanding our practice in order to respond. Smacking the armrest or yelling “Mu!” isn’t going to cut it.

This is the challenge I faced recently in auditing Sensei’s team-taught class, “Religions in Dialogue,” at the Lutheran Seminary this past fall. I was not directly asked the question, “What is Zen?” so much, but the experience was more about steeping in an array of these sorts of questions: “What does Buddhism say about sin?” or “Is there no god in Buddhism?” or “What is karma?” Further, the diverse class was asking reciprocal sorts of questions about the other religions represented, Christianity and Islam.

At the heart of our weekly discussion, our mission was to learn about and practice respectful engagement in interreligious dialogue. Short of summarizing the experience, I just want to mention a few issues I unearthed.

First, I think it is important to be tender with our uncertainty. There is a temptation for any dialoguer to offer concrete definitions of faith or belief as a religious “position” instead of recognizing one is still “in progress.” Perhaps we feel we shouldn’t engage in dialogue unless we are somehow “finished.” But staking out a personal position is the fastest way to become defensive and paint oneself into the “us v. them” corner. Yet, there are times when boundaries have to be recognized in establishing difference. Figuring out in dialogue what is called for and when is a delicate dance, and one doesn’t always know when one has stepped on one’s partner’s toes. The best I can offer is to dance with open uncertainty, not only toward the vast and wide teachings of Zen, but toward Islam, Christianity, Judaism. I’m in trouble if I can wrap up my understanding of Islam, put it on the shelf, and stamp “finished” on it. And I’m equally in trouble if I can package my understanding of Zen, complete with label.

Second, I feel in this dialogue all parties have to become “we” to actually hear what is being said – the “we” of a dancing couple, the “we” we experience side by side in the zendo. If we fix our discriminating mind against what we hear of other religions – by parsing its details, for instance – we haven’t really listened. On one of our class outings it was a great lesson to cover my hair for iftar dinner at the American College of Islam – an experience that needed to be felt more than understood. In the absence of the opportunity to join in the practice of a given religion, we have to feel our dialogue partner’s words as if we are saying them. Otherwise I don’t think we’re really listening.

Also, our view of interreligious dialogue is predicated on our view of our own religion. The kinds of questions we ask, the way we listen, what we hope to understand about ourselves and our neighbors, all these things are flying around the room in a dialogue situation. What we bring to the table is based on our own feeling. If we are insecure in our practice, we will too easily absorb, adopt, or agree with whatever our neighbor says – or there will be an indistinct but palpable resistance to true engagement. The fellow on the airplane really wants to know! And it won’t help if we shrug our shoulders. Our willingness to engage must come from our experience of truth, from whatever path we are apt to seek it, from whatever step we are taking on that path. I feel we owe it to ourselves and our partners not to fall back on our labels.

One’s teachers come at different times and places, and in this vein, I offer deep bows to my classmates at LSTC.

Four Haiku

2009-01-17T09:00:00.001-06:00

-Jon Laux

in this incensepot
endless blind passions burn up
releasing fragrance

tell me, Shitou, why
when "the dark makes all things one",
still i stub my toes

without thought of gain
the radiator spreads warmth
in shivering limbs

last year's dancing leaves
now, only stains on the stone
do we have more time?

Dancing on the Wires

2009-01-17T08:15:00.001-06:00

-Jody Wilson

On Tuesday, November 4, at the stroke of 7:00 pm., I stepped out into a promising Evanston evening and called loudly, “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now closed,” and burst into tears.

The emotional release was deeper than my exhaustion from the long day just passed and my anxiety about dealing with the complexities of closing the polls that was ahead. I had been caught up in anxiety and anticipation of this election for months. Not just for the conclusion of that endless campaign, but for the only possible outcome, the outcome I was sure the country needed and I passionately wanted. And now — at least in Evanston township, ward 8, precinct 4 — it was finally beyond the reach of all spinning, tweaking, winking, fluffing, framing and maverick-y top of the ticket Valentino suits; beyond million dollar info-mercials, auto-dialing and laugh-out-loud bumper stickers — “Republicans for Voldemort,” surprising yard signs — “Rednecks for Obama – even we've had enough! And even beyond U-Tube — “Hockey Mama for Obama” sung to the tune of “Don't Cry for Me Argentina,” accompanied on the piano by a guy wearing a moose hat.

Jacta alea est. The die was cast, you betcha.

In September, my practice started to become sporadic and uneven. My 20 – 30 minutes on the mat each morning was gradually reduced and finally surrendered completely to an obsessive checking of e-mail, RSS feeds, The New York Times and The Washington Post. And when I finally and infrequently did get my butt down on the zafu, I squirmed and plotted and obsessed. As Election Day approached, I wasn't sitting at all. The future of the world hinges on this election. This is different. This is really important. I was completely gone.

At first I tried to justify this situation as “engaged Buddhism.” But the truth is that just because I am a Buddhist and an activist doesn't make me an “engaged Buddhist.” Truly engaged Buddhists follow the Eight-Fold path into the world and bring their practice wholly into the fray. I wasn't doing any of that. I was simply “engaging” at a very low level in the political process. There was very little Buddhism about it.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, no one I knew was or even aspired to “be peace.” We were militantly against the war in Viet Nam, violently opposed to the draft and aggressively against everyone who didn't agree with us. “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today” is not Right Speech. Chant it like a mantra and pretty soon you've got hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of angry kids. Chant it — or something like it — long enough and you've got Kent State. And now, thirty and more years later, I was at it again. Churning the same kind of disdain, righteously convinced of my own rightness and obsessing endlessly over an outcome I had little hope of effecting.

It was especially disappointing because a few months before, I had an experience that led me to hope I had come a bit farther. One evening, just before the April primary, I was filling up my car when the man who was at the neighboring pump came over and, gesturing at my “Gore and Obama” bumper sticker said in the friendliest possible way, “That's an interesting combination.” I agreed. “Better than Hillary,” he says. Again, I agree, adding, “I think she's great, but she's too much of a hawk for me.” Smiling at each other, we both return to our pumps. “What do you think is going to happen?” he semi-shouts to me across our respective cars. And I know that he's talking about the results of the upcoming primary. “I don't know,” I semi-shout back. Then I walk over to him and confide, “Essentially, the outcome doesn't matter to me. Whoever the Democrats nominate will get my vote. I'll never vote for a Republican as long as I live.” He smiles as he says, “And I won't ever vote for a Democrat.”

“Really,” I say, “why is that?” I notice that I'm more curious than defensive.

“I work hard for my money,” he says. “I grew up in Europe and we didn't have much. I work hard for myself and my family and the Democrats always want to take my money and give it to others.”

I say, “I also work hard for myself and my family. And for you.”

He blinks. We smile.

“Almost 85% of Americans think Bush is on the wrong track,” I say.

“I think he's one of the greatest presidents we've ever had,” he replies. “He and Richard Nixon.”

Before I could even think about what I was doing, I reached out my hand and introduced myself. “We could talk for a long time and never agree,” I said, smiling. Smiling back he says, “That's right, but we're friends, aren't we?”

“Yes,” I confirm as we shake hands, “we are.”

I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back on my drive home.

So where did all of that freshly realized equanimity and heart felt good humor disappear to?

No mystery. It disappeared when I stopped sitting regularly.

“Upholding the precepts,
repentance and giving,
the countless good deeds
and the way of right living all come from zazen.”

Duh.

I become angry with myself for not knowing this. But I do know it. Of course I do. And then my ego is captivated or my imagination enchanted by a situation, a personality, an idea, whatever. And the temporary novelty fools me into believing that this is different, this is really important. That this — whatever this is — is more worthy of my attention than, well, than my attention. And I'm completely gone. Again.

I'm so glad we call what we do practice — and not mastery.

Autumn Notes

2008-10-02T23:03:00.007-05:00

Fall has arrived, the leaves are turning, and the air again has a crisp chill. Meanwhile, the economy struggles and Americans must decide who will lead them during the next four years. What better time to sit? At the Zen Center we will be celebrating the Fall as we always do, with several sesshins and zazenkai, Jukai and New Year's ceremonies.

Upaya in the Marketplace

A gentle reminder that the last day to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election is October 7th. If you have moved since the last election, will turn 18 on or before November 4th, have changed your name, or have never registered to vote before, now is the time to act. If you need more information on eligibility or voting in general, please see this document, published by the state Board of Elections.

Sit well,
J&J

Gratitude

2008-10-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

When you give an anonymous gift, you remove the self from the gift. Sure, it makes you feel good to give. But your thoughts can turn to others by way of imagination. You are now free to think more about the recipient and what s/he might be thinking. The recipient may try, at first, to figure out who it was that gave them the gift. But that is just a fantastical past-time, even if the recipient is ‘sure’ that s/he knows who it was. Really, in the end, can one really know? It may be narrowed down, possibly. But what happens when a person is given something anonymously? S/he is forced to think about the altruism of all the possible candidates. What a way to spend an afternoon thinking about friends, acquaintances, and loved ones!

-Mike McKane

Sesshin Instructions

2008-10-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

The dream we sleep in
is slated for demolition.
Sound travels slowly in this old house.
Feet travel faster. Hurry, hurry.
We must sound the alarm.
We must save the flashlights, the fire extinguishers,
the wax apple off the altar with a bite taken out.
We must save everything.
It will take just a minute,
one minute after another.
After innumerable eons,
I will meet you on the back deck.
We will count each others' heads.
When that day comes,
may we have no more than one each.

-Hugh Thomas

Sabbasava Sutta, Illustrated

2008-10-02T08:01:00.002-05:00

In September the Center had its first discussion group session on a selection of Pali suttas. The Sabbasava Sutta begins:

The Blessed One said, "Monks, the ending of the fermentations is for one who knows & sees, I tell you, not for one who does not know & does not see. For one who knows what & sees what? Appropriate attention & inappropriate attention. When a monk attends inappropriately, unarisen fermentations arise, and arisen fermentations increase. When a monk attends appropriately, unarisen fermentations do not arise, and arisen fermentations are abandoned...
-Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, available here

This inspired the following comment, which in turn inspired a cartoon:

"[Inappropriate attention] is like trying to get milk from a cow by pulling on its horns."

Copyright 2008 Franklin Habit
the-pantopticon.blogspot.com

Visit from Sujatha Bhikkhu

2008-10-02T08:00:00.001-05:00

In September the Sangha had an opportunity for a bit of Dharma exchange with the Venerable Bhante Sujatha Thera. On Thursday September 11, Sujatha Bhikkhu visited the Zen Center for an evening of instruction on loving-kindness (metta) and wisdom meditation.

Born in Sri Lanka and a Buddhist monk since the age of 11, Sujatha currently serves as abbot of Blue Lotus Temple in Woodstock, IL and leads sitting groups throughout the United States. While respecting the Theravada tradition, he seeks to make the Dharma accessible and relevant in the fast-paced culture we live in.

On September 13 Sevan Sensei paid a visit in kind to Sujatha's Sangha in Woodstock. A deep bow to all who took part in this exchange!

Vinati DeVane's Ordination

2008-04-19T13:09:00.008-05:00

Over 40 Sangha members, friends, and family came together Sunday, Feb. 3, to affirm the transformation of Caroline DeVane, long a resident of the CZC, into Vinati DeVane. (Vinati means humility, service, bowing in Pali and Sanskrit; it is pronounced vin-NA-tee.) The ceremony was moving, and the potluck wonderful. The party raged on for hours. Thank yous go out to all who pitched in, most especially Kathy, Gerrie, Jim, Elie, and Deena. Nine bows to all.

Precept #8

2008-04-19T12:51:00.003-05:00

“I resolve not to withhold spiritual or material aid, but to give them freely where needed.”
by Jon Laux

One of the great challenges of Zen is to integrate practice with daily life. Even if we do daily zazen and attend sesshin, most of our opportunities for practice will be “off the mat”. And daily life certainly slings its share of opportunities. That we call it “zen practice” is a gentle reminder that this work is never finished, never perfect; in each instant we do the best we can, that’s all.

Not long ago, I responded to a situation in a way that immediately disappointed me. On a Sunday afternoon last fall, I was driving home after several hours spent studying for an upcoming exam. The sun was going down and I was tired. As I headed east on Wacker toward the Lake Shore Drive entrance, traffic was backed up. An SUV had stalled in the left lane, and cars were merging to drive around it. A woman – presumably the SUV owner – was trying to talk to the drivers as they passed. Several drivers exchanged some words with her then drove on.

Finally, it was my turn. The woman asked for help: she was out of gas, and she and her nephew were trying to get back to Elgin. I believed her. I could have pulled over in front of her – I almost did. But I didn’t. Maybe I was nervous because of the line of cars stuck behind me, impatient and honking. Maybe I was anxious to get home and enjoy a warm meal. But mainly, the reason I didn’t pull over is that I just wasn’t there.

Most Chicagoans are well acquainted with the Panhandler Ritual: someone shakes a cup or asks for money, and you respond with whatever combination of fear, mistrust, calculation, judgment and compassion that you muster at that moment. Most of us have performed this ritual enough that it becomes an abstraction, like the half-hearted rolling stops that we make at stop signs. It’s easy to build up a callous so as to avoid looking directly at the situation before us. We’ve all heard numerous reasons not to give money to panhandlers, and most of them are no doubt justified in some circumstances. But these reasons can so easily accrete into rules that help demarcate the boundaries of self. Can we still abandon the rules when we see a need? Can we avoid switching into autopilot?

I drove on. Almost instantly I was filled with remorse. She just needed some money. Not five minutes earlier, I had paid $13 just for parking my car! Even though I drove on, thus solving “my problem”, that woman was still stuck there. Her problem had not been solved. And sitting in that SUV with an empty tank was a boy who was learning firsthand how Americans respond to the problems of their neighbors. I feel low.

As Sensei said during the last Jukai, we need to keep taking the precepts because we keep breaking the precepts. There is value in this. When I was 16 and wanted a driver’s license, I had to digest (and regurgitate) the DMV’s rules of the road. I’ve forgotten most of those rules. (Should you stop your car when a schoolbus is unloading on the other side of the street? Does the answer change if the street is divided?) Jukai gives us a periodic reminder of rules to live by. But it goes deeper. There are the rules of the road, and then there is driving safely. The precepts too can be seen as rules, but as another Sangha member wrote, the precepts actually describe mindful living. And they provide a feedback amplifier that can show us our mind at a given instant – usually when we’re out of step in some way.

When I was in high school, a popular yearbook quotation went as follows: “The trouble with life is that you get the test before the lesson.” The quotation really tells us more about the mindstate fostered by our schools than it does about life. If I had to do that day over again, I would have acted differently. But of course, that day is gone. We handle each moment in life with the karma that has brought us up to that exact moment. In hindsight you can earmark moments in your life that have been “pivotal”, what your motivations were, why you did what you did and why you are where you are now. But you cannot identify when the next pivotal moment will come or what it will look like. Hence the need for continued practice.

One faces similar challenges in the business world. I work in the insurance industry, where the annual performance of companies oscillates between pretty good and spectacularly awful. Insurance is predicated on the idea that similar-looking risks will behave similarly, and thus if you insure enough of them the group as a whole will behave somewhat predictably. This is true most of the time, but then there are the catastrophic events that nobody can foresee, the ones that can completely wipe out a company – think of 9/11, Katrina or asbestos lawsuits. The companies that lost money a few years ago will all tell you, “We’re a much better company than we were a few years ago.” But the only response I can find is this: wait until the next Big Thing happens. Then we’ll see. Until then, just keep working.

So... this article was supposed to be about spiritual and material aid. I wish I could say that after my experience last fall I began volunteering at a homeless shelter, or that I started a relief fund for people who run out of gas, or that I’m now in the habit of randomly dropping $20 bills on major roadways in case someone needs them. None of these things has happened. And yet, things are different. The experience was a flash point for me to examine the mind in daily life: how busy the days are, what’s important, what needs to be done but can wait five minutes, what to let slide. Having seen myself fail, I identify less with success.

Zen training is an ongoing process, and in many cases our efforts will be horrible blunders, ill-conceived in theory (if we have the time to theorize) and botched in execution. But if we pay attention along the way, each blunder can be a lesson, and the next effort might be a little less botched, a little more compassionate.

Precept #1

2008-04-19T12:50:00.003-05:00

by Laurel Ross

I RESOLVE NOT TO KILL, BUT TO CHERISH ALL LIFE is the first cardinal precept. I sometimes think that in directing us to “cherish all life” this precept encompasses all of the other precepts and the rest are details of how to accomplish this. I like to imagine a world where all people follow this guidance. No war, no homicide or suicide, no slaughterhouses or gallows—massive changes resulting in less pain and suffering for trillions of sentient beings.

Following this precept means adopting a vegetarian diet and most of us understand this to mean that animals will not be killed, a worthy outcome. The benefits to the world are far greater than that however and worth thinking about.

Hardly a day goes by that literate Americans do not hear about impending environmental catastrophe, usually accompanied by a plea to make personal choices that will help.

The global supply of clean fresh water is shrinking and the poor suffer most. Women and children all over the world spend a large percentage of their time seeking clean water. We are asked to be responsible--stop watering a useless lawn; shower with a friend; turn off the tap while brushing our teeth.
Climate change is upon us. Some recommendations are to turn down the thermostat, change to efficient light bulbs and install a green roof.
Fossil fuel supplies are dwindling. We try to take public transportation, dump that gas-fueled lawn mower, snow blower and leaf blower, ride a bike, or drive a hybrid. Recycle and reuse of course.
Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate. We can send a check to the World Wildlife Fund.

These are serious issues and these good ideas for conservation and many more are promoted by well-meaning people (like me). What is not being promoted much in the mainstream media though is one simple change in behavior that would result in enormous environmental benefit: STOP EATING MEAT.

Consider the issues raised above.

Water: Sometimes described as “the new oil,” potable drinking water is increasingly scarce because of depleted aquifers, droughts, and pollution. In the face of this more than half of the US water supply goes to livestock production. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, and 2,500 gallons for a pound of beef. Water used in livestock production is not for direct consumption, but for the corn, roughage, and other crops that are grown as feed. There is also considerable water pollution from nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and “manure lagoons.”

Fossil fuels: Raising animals for food in the horrific factory conditions now common in the US accounts for more than one-third of all the fossil fuels used in our country. The creation of a single hamburger patty (potentially containing the flesh of up to 100 different cows) uses enough fossil fuel to drive an average American car 20 miles and enough water for 17 warm showers.

According to one source (see below—John Robbins) if people in the United States chose to give up eating meat, our oil reserves would be extended from current estimates of 10-30 years to up to 260 years. This is because vast amounts of petroleum products are used to produce feed, which comes from corn and soybeans that are raised using huge machines and immense amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The feed has to be transported to the animals. The animals have to be transported to the “processing” plants. The flesh has to be transported to the markets, etc.

How many real solutions to the oil shortage have been proposed? Not many that I know of. A mass switch to a vegetarian diet might buy us some time to find viable alternatives.

Extinction crisis and climate change: Livestock production has resulted in the destruction of millions of square miles of habitat all over the globe. In Latin America massive areas of rain forest and other tropical habitats have been cleared to raise soy beans and corn for cattle feed and to directly graze animals. The carbon released into the atmosphere by this landscape-scale deforestation is a major contributor to the serious situation that is at last becoming understood by the general public in our country. We are living on a warming planet that in the foreseeable future may no longer be able to sustain life as we know it. Deforestation also means the loss of habitat for millions of plant and animal species that can live nowhere else—hence the rapidly rising rate of extinctions. Not insignificant, although rarely talked about, is the loss of livelihood for millions of indigenous people who have subsisted in those forests for thousands of years, resulting in the rapid growth of urban poverty.

Eating meat is a choice, and one which currently contributes substantially to the overall excessive consumption patterns in our culture. We can make better choices and a good place to start is by following the first precept.

I have consulted three books for this short essay. Michael Pollan’s recent best seller, Omnivore’s Dilemma, Barbara Kingsolver’s personal and charming memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and John Robbins’ provocative and occasionally hyperbolic Diet for America. I am happy to lend them to anyone interested in learning more.

Precept #4

2008-04-19T12:45:00.002-05:00

“I resolve not to lie but to speak the truth.”
by Jody Wilson

Seemingly straightforward, the Fourth Precept goes deeper than just a George-and-the-cherry-tree goody-goody resolve not to tell lies, although it certainly encompasses that kind of simple honesty.

This precept, like all of our practice, brings us relentlessly back to that pesky question — what IS truth? Since that is a question I’m not qualified to answer, maybe it’s best to start with what is not truth. I’ve made a handy list:

Story: “. . .and they all lived happily ever after.”
Literature: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
Poetry: “I hear America singing . . .”
Myth: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Social grease: “What an interesting dress!”
Exaggeration: “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times!”
Excuses: “The dog ate it.”
Ego protection: “The check is in the mail.”
Blatant: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” *
Dangerously delusional: “And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.” **

Then there are the filters through which we see and experience our lives and the world around us. We’re so used to these distortions and take them so much for granted that we don’t even notice that they’re there. It’s the way we think about things, the unconscious way in which we interpret the events of lives, even our expectations of outcomes. In scientific terms, it’s called “the observer effect.” More mundanely, we see what we expect to see.

So how do we come to see things as they are, including ourselves, our exaggerations, our fictions, our opinions, our delusions, our ego protections and preferences, regardless of consequences?

I have no idea. Except to sit. Except to keep on with the hard questions. Except to be willing to have a cherished “truth” exposed as an ordinary opinion. And, to be willing to not speak at all.

That is, frankly, the hardest for me. I’ve got a million ideas, not to mention opinions, thoughts and – above all – feelings about all sorts of people, places and things. A friend once said that if I didn’t feel something — anything — I’d cut off my arm and beat myself with it until I did. I feel too strongly about too many things. And although it may make for interesting conversation, it’s a real burden in the search for truth. And can lead to unintended consequences.

In 1995, I traveled to Tibet. Feeling strongly about the Chinese occupation of that country and having personal connections with both local Tibetan refugees and staff at the International Campaign for Tibet, I brought along a slew of Tibetan language pamphlets, from a “Free Tibet” point-of-view, of course. I was warned not to actively distribute the pamphlets, but to leave them behind in hotel rooms and rest stops where the locals could pick them up. About six weeks after I returned, I read that a couple of French tourists had been arrested for doing exactly the same thing I had done. I realized that I had risked the safety of everyone with whom I was traveling. Plus, I didn’t always follow the advice I was given and had actually visited family members of a Tibetan friend living in Chicago, where I included these pamphlets with the family letters and photos I had been asked to deliver. With the clear resolve “Not to lie but to speak the truth” and with all “good” intentions, I had thoughtlessly jeopardized the lives of many. I still shudder at the possible consequences.

And I still muck around in the muddy ground between truth and propaganda, between facts and my opinions, between my ideas about what’s happening and what is actually happening.

I cannot tell a lie — some days I long for a cherry tree and a little hatchet!

* Cheney: 8/26/2002
** Bush: 5/29/2003

Precept Essays: Introduction

2008-01-21T17:00:00.000-06:00

Twice a year, our Sangha gathers to take Jukai and recommit to the Buddhist precepts. For reference, the precepts as we take them at the Center are as follows:

1. I resolve not to kill but to cherish all life.
2. I resolve not to take what is not given, but to respect the things of others.
3. I resolve not to misuse sexuality, but to be caring and responsible.
4. I resolve not to lie but to speak the truth.
5. I resolve not to cause others to take substances that impair the mind, nor to do so myself, but to keep the mind clear.
6. I resolve not to speak of the faults of others, but to be understanding and sympathetic.
7. I resolve not to praise myself and disparage others, but to overcome my own shortcomings.
8. I resolve not to withhold spiritual or material aid, but to given them freely where needed.
9. I resolve not to indulge in anger, but to practice forbearance.
10. I resolve not to revile the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha), but to cherish and uphold them.

Before the last Jukai, I invited Sangha members to write something reflecting on a particular precept that was important to them. Some initial responses appear below.

To examine the precepts carefully is to rediscover our own efforts, and inevitably, our own shortcomings. While these efforts can be very personal, these writings are offered as a lens through which to see our efforts in their universality-- though the names and forms differ, much of what follows should sound quite familiar.

-JRL

Precepts #6 and #7

2008-01-21T16:00:00.000-06:00

I resolve not to speak of the faults of others but to be understanding and sympathetic.

I resolve not to praise myself and disparage others, but to overcome my own shortcomings.
by Caroline Devane

These precepts seem self-explanatory and clear, right? For the first few years of my coming to the Zen Center I see now that, in a way, I dismissed the precepts because they seemed so obvious: “Oh yeah, of course you don’t lie, cheat, steal, kill, etc.! No problem!” What I didn’t see or understand was their continual applicability, that they weren’t commandments from above that only applied to rarified situations, but they describe mindful living. Their subtlety is great and unless our awareness is gauged to that level of subtlety, easy to dismiss as obvious. Apparent truths are easy to overlook.

Recently, someone unconnected with the Zen Center asked me a few questions about Buddhist practice. He was amazingly curious about practice, but was avowedly committed to a different tradition. He asked me if the practice of zazen changes your behavior in any way, to which I replied that it can. I tried to explain that, given enough time and effort, our sensitivity to the world deepens and brings with it a deeper morality. If engaged in regular zazen, we start to notice our imperfections. My questioner looked confused, so I tried to elaborate on what it means to develop sensitivity to one’s missteps by saying, “Haven’t you ever said something to someone and then walked away and felt like a jerk?” I was then going to say that for some, practicing zazen helps one to catch oneself sooner – that one’s awareness of one’s unskillful actions, and further, the motivations behind such actions, becomes clearer if one works at it. I remember one of our former members describing a new-found sensitivity to ants after a sesshin. He was walking to the train stop and, looking at the ground as he walked, fumbled so as to not step on an ant that was directly underfoot. In terms of these precepts, though, what a different feeling it is to encounter someone who used to really push your buttons and catch yourself before you retort with something unkind. Or even nominally unkind. It’s the need to defend oneself in the face of oftentimes imagined opposition that has gotten me in trouble. If Zen can teach us to open up and let it go, and that opening this way is morality itself, then in those situations where we walk away feeling like jerks, we can still find the courage to hold ourselves accountable.

But all of the above went unsaid in the dialogue with this fellow. To my question if he’d ever said something he regretted, he replied, “No. I am very careful about what I say, and I never hurt anyone’s feelings.”

Really? Perhaps this person actually is perfect and has never said anything out of place! But for the purpose of this article, let’s assume for a moment that this person is simply unaware of himself. We often are not aware of the impact we have on people, especially when it means we would have to admit to ourselves that we did something wrong. Or maybe the pain of realizing that we screw up is too great, and we get trapped in believing that, most of the time, we don’t screw up. I believe this was the attitude behind my initial understanding of these precepts. Simply because I believed that the precepts described the right way to live somehow made me feel like I was living the right way. What a conclusion! And a convenient way of avoiding pain.

The precepts are obvious, self-explanatory, and clear. Yet it seems there are two ways to see them as obvious, self-explanatory, and clear: with self or without self. One way is the way of my questioner (and a way I am familiar with): “Of course I don’t kill, steal, abuse, lie, act stingy, angry, ignorant, greedy, or mean! I am an upstanding person who does his best to be nice, generous, gentle, open, nurturing, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate, and clean!” Speaking from experience, in this position there is a lot of effort to retrace the lines around “who I am.” The other way (echoing the precept itself) is to approach the precepts with the willingness to overcome our shortcomings. It’s a willingness to let the ego take a blow, and not ignore the truth of the situation at hand, no matter how humbling or painful it may be. This alternate way places the evolving truth of the moment above our self-interest. Even if we’ve come to a place of admitting to ourselves that we have work to do, it’s only half the battle. The need to be brutally honest with ourselves about our unskillful actions and speech will never go away.

And in the end, since these precepts do not come to us from “on high,” but are really descriptions of how a skillful person lives, what do we do when faced with the brand of denial we may be encountering in my questioner? If my questioner can’t be brutally honest with himself about his past transgressions, it likely doesn’t fall to me to tell him. If I said something in response, would it really help? Perhaps it would be better to spend time looking at all the occasions in which I was so unskillful – the times I walked away feeling like a jerk.

Precept #5

2008-01-21T15:00:00.000-06:00

On Intoxicants
by Seanna Tully

When Sensei first asked me to do the meal chants, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, “How does he know? I’m chanting to myself, I’m the hungry ghost.”

You see, when the precepts ask us to abstain from intoxicants, my primary choice of intoxicant is food. It can be overeating a meal and under-eating the next few, consuming lots of sugary food, partaking in restrictive diets, obsessing about the next meal or a particular food, and any other way the compulsive mind twists itself around into that dance between prohibitions and loss of inhibitions.

The fact is my choice of intoxicant is far from extraordinary. It’s a truly an American way of life. Our food is overloaded with highly refined carbohydrates like high fructose corn syrup, and additives like caffeine that cause the blood sugar levels to first rise unnaturally high and drop terribly low, leading to more carbohydrate cravings. So on and on the cycle goes. And that’s just the biochemical part.

Coming out of the holiday season, it seems that as an American citizen, I was born to consume. Commercials on television endlessly grab the mind’s attention to “Eat this,” or “Buy the next greatest and latest gadget.” By the end of this holiday week, the garbage is piled high on the curbside with emptied boxes, torn gift-wrap, and other skeletons from our holiday feast of consumption.

This “hungry ghost” cycle lives on in me as arms grab and eyes want without my conscious intervention in a given moment. It lives in 1,000 unconscious moments eating in front of the Internet or the television set. (Have you ever noticed how easy it is to consume entire bags of stuff while just sitting there, or how commercials lead to cravings for something else?) It lives on at parties when I’m eating because I’m uncomfortable, or in any particular moment when an emotion seems too difficult to bear. It lives on in that particular anxious moment and a need for escape until life, itself, takes on the tenor of this behavior of escape.

Escape from what, exactly? And who runs? There is an opportunity in that unbearable moment to see that we are much more than our old habits. Sometimes, I don’t feel so motivated to take those opportunities. But, ultimately, in order to change compulsive behavior, I’ve found it useful to become a student of my addictive process. Motivation comes from understanding, historically, the damage caused by continuing on the path I’ve been on, taking responsibility for what I’ve done, facing those that I’ve hurt, and resolving not to make the same mistakes. By numbing myself with food, I have failed to appreciate the gift of this precious life/moment and missed seeing when I’ve hurt the dear hearts of those around me.

Hence, Kapleau viewed the fifth precept on intoxicants as a gateway to breaking the others. The precept (1) and Buddhist literature, however, speak more directly against the use of alcohol and drugs. Ordinary observation of an intoxicated person clearly demonstrates that the loosening of inhibitions due to alcohol, marijuana or other inebriant can and often does result in poor judgment, promiscuous and rude behavior (2). It’s less obvious with compulsive behaviors like those related to food, or even trashy novels, romantic infatuations/encounters, the video games, and endless other compulsive distractions (3). Yet, the long-term effects of not learning to bear difficulties without a crutch or distraction are ultimately the same. The act of continually justifying and perpetuating one’s addictive behavior can cripple one’s ability to gain emotional maturity and wisdom from the bumps and bruises that come with life. It’s the “Big Baby” syndrome as coined by the folks at AA. Those innately human and childlike voices in us that say: “That’s not fair!” “Life should be going according to my plan” and “Why me?” Emotional maturity arises when we learn to take ourselves by the hand as gently and firmly as we need and let go in the midst of all life’s turmoil. Once attention is given, the voices usually quiet down and what actually remains and what needs to be attended to is a bit clearer.

Sometimes I’ve found that willing myself out of a compulsive behavior is a bit like trying to pull out a root from the ground that just won’t come. And, setting myself up with “emotional maturity” as bait (or any other bait) is utterly inadequate. Gaining, losing, forward, backward: is one better than the other? Changing for the sake of gaining an abstract notion of emotional maturity is ultimately about getting caught up in conditions. Craving… just craving…no craving…just no craving. But, while change is natural, we do have the will to steer ourselves in a direction that is healthier for us, and perhaps, for the world. That is, if we are not too preoccupied or intoxicated to notice.

On the practical end, what does this act of “steering” look like for me? One handy tool I learned from Sevan Sensei is to insert time between a desire and the gratification of a desire. With food, I generally need to have a plan which makes it easier to be more intentional and attentive about what, when and how I am eating and when I am not eating. So that I’ll take something I’m craving and put it into a future meal or snack I’ve planned. That way, I am less likely to be mindlessly shoving something into my mouth and then later regretting it. This waiting period also is effective in taking the pressure out of going “cold turkey” on other compulsive behaviors (4). For example, I’ve found it useful to have dates with myself to watch a movie or a TV show, rather than indulging an undercurrent of escapism by flipping on the TV, pouting, and tuning out.

Second, there are no foods or compulsive behaviors that are inherently evil (heinous acts of violence too complex to discuss here). Fundamentally, there is no “disease,” no “self” and no “God” to save this ‘self’ from a ‘diseased’ compulsive behavior. However, through experience and biochemical realities, there are certain foods that are more likely to illicit a compulsive response than others for me. I found that talking to a nutritionist helped to flesh out the details of how to better work with the biochemistry of craving in my body. Meditative practice, of course, is invaluable for working with addiction. While meditating for the sole reason of ending one’s addiction is a ultimately a dead end (5), practice does help to provide deeper insight into life’s problems and cultivates innumerable practical skills for dealing with the addictive process, from equanimity and letting go to angry determination and fiery will.

In practice, I can’t expect myself to maintain perfect adherence to my own guidelines, and ultimately the Buddhist precepts too, or I become terribly guilty and defeated. During a Teisho, Sevan Sensei once said of the precepts: “First, we have to forgive others for breaking them, and also to forgive ourselves for breaking them.” To borrow again from AA, “progress, not perfection” is a laudable goal here, one I usually try to keep in mind.

And now, as the offering plate passes my way, I tear off a piece of this writing as offering, circle it three times around…. “May it fill the ten directions and satisfy hunger in realms of darkness…”
“Oh hungry ghost, oh tortured spirit, abandon greed and rouse the desire for enlightenment!” [clappers]

1. CZC’s version reads: “I resolve not to cause others to take substances that impair the mind, nor to do so myself, but to keep the mind clear.”
2. Kapleau flushes out the complexities of alcohol and enlightenment in Five Pillars, see footnote 16, pg. 344.
3. As discussed in the Fall 2007 CZC discussion group on intoxicants: Recreational drugs, addictive prescription meds, stimulants, cigarettes, alcohol; Gambling; Romance and/or Sex, Pornography; TV, Internet, video games; Reading (esp Romance novels, Thrillers); Food, Fasting/Restricting, Speeding, Shopping and Runner’s high.
4. I’m not speaking on drug/alcohol addiction in this instance that may, most likely, require professional help.
5. A book I’ve found to be helpful on this topic is: Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. 2002. Shambhala.

Real Spiritual Teaching or Not?

2007-11-03T17:06:00.000-05:00

Some Suggestions on What to Look Out For
Sensei Sevan Ross, Chicago Zen Center

There is confusion on all fronts.

An individual faces a bewildering scene when looking for or working with spiritual teachers. In Asia there is a narrower array of options than in the West. There we find Traditions which are quite old, and a temple structure and lineage apparatus which lay down some clear guidelines for the shape, duration, and boundaries of spiritual training. From the Zen temples of Japan to the mountain enclaves of Tibetan Vajrayana, from the Thai Forest Monks to even the loose structure of Hinduism, there is long and entrenched tradition to look to when considering spiritual guidance. While these deeply enculturated structures do not in any way guarantee high quality or uniform behavior on the part of practitioners or teachers, and while to a Westerner these structures can even be seen as a lack of choices, this more traditional environment does usually at least provide a stricter set of guidelines to both teachers and students for defining exactly what a spiritual teacher is. While I am most concerned with the Zen teaching scene here in America since that is where I hang my hat, the following reflections may also be applied to not only other Buddhist traditions but to any spiritual work where there is a mentor.

In the USA we find an environment with a rich loam in which to grow both legitimate and illegitimate spiritual teachers and traditions. While we host here in this multicultural landscape all manner of traditions, we add to these traditions a highly (and some would say overly) psychological framework. On top of this we may add an aggressive commercial bias. Throw in all the New Age inventions and blendings, water it down with a hankering to change and reshape virtually everything until it is exactly what we would prefer (read, make it easy and shallow), and you no longer have a spiritual garden which is being cared for by well-trained and dedicated master teachers. Not at all. Instead you find a garden which may grow both useful and desirable spiritual food (even if these plants are naturally of somewhat uneven quality), but along with this crop grows a tangled patch of weeds. These weeds may look like spiritual traditions, but they may be dangerous to the real food plants, and are often downright poisonous to would-be practitioners.

While a careful examination of this whole scene may have great value, and while there have been attempts to make some sense out of either all or part of it, our purpose here is merely to offer some insights aimed directly at the questions which arise when one is looking for a teacher, or is looking to augment one’s practice with the teaching of someone other than one’s root teacher. Our interest lies in the personalities and psychologies of teachers. To use a more familiar commercial lens: Who are the producers and what is offered? And while we are surveying this garden, let us consider the likely impact of the crops grown.

Traditional spiritual training as I understand it (from my clearly Zen Buddhist bias) has as its aim the shaping and refining of thoughtful, active, caring, social, deeply grounded people who (at least from the Zen perspective) come to approach the world from a mind steeped in insight. This particular insight surpasses simple intellectual realization. It arises from the “gut” where it has been awakened through years of hard, unremitting practice. This practice happens in the context of a community of fellow practitioners as well as in the society as a whole. The impact of this training is nothing less than a reorganization of one’s approach to life and to others, as well as to one’s self. In my tradition we help the student pry the mind loose from its barnacle-like hold on its routine – its ego-centered habits and pain-producing attitudes.

The teacher’s place in this training model should be one of coach and example. While in the strictest sense the teacher has nothing whatever to give the student, what the teacher can offer the student is a living example of how one might address the world after a great deal of development and insight in one’s spiritual life. Along with this example of the fruits of long practice should come a firm but kind guiding hand which both challenges the student in his or her journey, and protects the student from influences which may sidetrack or even cause harm. It is well understood that these influences may well include aspects of the teacher’s own personality, will, or desires. Teachers are here to guide students along, not sidetrack them into another agenda. A real teacher must not twist the teaching in such a way that the teacher, the lineage, or even the tradition itself is seen in a better light. We are in service here of the highest truths, not in service of the teacher and the teacher’s image or desires.

All the above is said to set the stage for a number of crucial questions which every student should ask when considering a teacher or teaching. As one of my students put it once, “Buddhism treats you like an adult.” This should be true of any religious tradition. The practitioner is an adult in that the practitioner should never simply check her or his brain at the door of the temple or meeting. Finding the right relationship is all rather like dating (perhaps a little too much so). Even somewhat further into the relationship, after some time and experience working with a teacher, one should keep one’s eyes open for flaws that are possibly serious. If one feels one has found such a flaw, one must reconsider the relationship of teacher and student.

In referring to these training and relationship issues commentators often reminded us of three things which should be red flags: Seeking name and fame, sexual involvement with students, acquisition of riches. These three are classic warning signs for students of teachers to avoid. Central to our use and understanding of these is the fact that they all share some clear characteristics. All spring out of and are evidence of an inflated ego on the part of the teacher. All are related to power. In each abuse we see the workings of a special type of domination paradigm where the teacher acquires more power and stature and the student is in some way further subjugated.

So what follows here are the classic warning signs. But first a warning: There is always the problem of exactly where the lines are on these. For example, if the teacher buys a very nice car as opposed to a merely functional one, some observers will write off such a purchase as necessary to either attract certain donors or to help the teacher with his bad back whenever he travels. Others may feel that any car at all is unnecessary. And there may be opinions everywhere in between. We could spend our whole discussion trying to pin down where these lines are, but since we have a long way to go, let me instead suggest some simple questions to ask in these classic areas. I am herein appealing to the deep compass which I feel is available to most people. I’ve discovered through the years that we as a society often do not engage these deep moral instincts enough, either because they were underplayed or not taught at all when we were children, or because of some misguided over-application of our current sense of political correctness. I feel strongly that we need to revive and engage our common sense.

So simply put:
1. How much money is too much for a teacher? If you find yourself or others reaching for justifications to explain the opulence, look out. If you find yourself justifying the fact that your spiritual guide just bought a new decked-out Harley, congratulations – you are now in the same neighborhood as the families of alcoholics who stretch to justify the drinking. It’s a dangerous neighborhood.

2. Sexual contact with students: There should not be any. If there is, then what should occur is disclosure, counseling, mea culpas, guidelines, community healing. We need to be careful here, however. I feel that because of the recent abuse issues growing out of the Catholic Church and other high-profile organizations, we are nuclear in all our responses to these situations. I heard of a state government which recently enacted a law which provides mandatory prison terms for anyone who has sexual contact with clients when they are providing counseling. I submit that this will neither prevent this contact, nor will it reform the perpetrator. This kind of thinking is draconian and shows once again our lack of simple common sense. Of course there are situations when this sort of punishment is needed. But one cannot legislate the human heart, and people will not only cross care-giver and client boundaries, but they may actually fall in love, and moreover, some of these relationships may well last a lifetime. A complex range of interactions can and will occur between spiritual teachers and students.

Because of the power disparity which is tipped in favor of the teacher and the clear vulnerability of the student we must do everything in our power to prevent this – that is without beheading people. More important for our purposes here, however, is the notion of Pattern. Did the teacher cross sexual boundaries because he or she fell in love – or is this just lust and abuse? If this behavior occurs again and again, we know the answer. If a community of women, say, is polled confidentially, and they strongly agree that the teacher is safe, and they have a good bird’s eye view of the teacher’s habits and history, then we can be somewhat assured (though never entirely) that we do not have a sexual abuser on our hands. Bottom line: Ask the women of the community (if considering a heterosexual man teacher). If they all smile beatifically and admire him, but they can’t tell you about any of his flaws, they may not be reliable. But if they have seen him at close range over a long time, can tell you that he is not perfect in various areas, and still tell you that they see him as sexually safe, he may well be safe. And this may be true even if he has once had some slip in this department. We have to look at the whole record. What’s the pattern? What’s the history?

3. Is the teacher self promoting? Self-promotion is easy to see, even if the teacher is not famous. Does the teacher speak of her or his attributes often? Are they trying actively to “promote” themselves? A gauge I can offer here is quite simple: How much time do they spend working on building their practice and community compared to the time spent out on the lecture circuit promoting themselves? More on all this below.

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Beyond this set of useful guidelines there is the world of pattern, instinct, and simple observation. My father shocked me once while we were sitting on his back porch in Pittsburgh when he confidently predicted that a red-tailed hawk that had been lurking around the birdfeeder would soon “pick off two of those sparrows.” Not more that five minutes later that bird swooped down on the hapless flock, talloned one sparrow, twisted around the tree the feeder was mounted on and surprised another who had fled in that direction. Two birds under wing, the hawk silently glided further down the hill. Of course I asked Dad how he knew. He replied, “I watch ‘em.”

Careful observation will give us certain patterns which, while not infallible, can provide us with amazingly accurate predictors. Then we can engage and even improve our instinct and avoid trouble. So we are indeed here in the business of making judgments. When we cross the street and we see that a car is careening toward us with a drunken teenager behind the wheel and we jump far back onto the curb we are also making judgments. This is not sinful, no matter what the politically correct crowd may say. This is a survival instinct, and to ignore it is to do so at great peril both to ourselves and to others. If my father came to his bird observations with what some might see as an “open mind,” he would be blind to the damage about to be done. I appeal to the reader here directly: You have witnessed human abuses, abuses by commercial marketing thinking, abuses by predators – use what you have seen; look for the patterns; watch for the signs. Perhaps this can help:

Let us set up a sliding scale, and we will do this using an old playground toy as our metaphor – a kid’s teeter-totter. On one end we have the traditional institutions charged with delivering a certain spiritual message and/or providing for a certain, well defined kind of spiritual training experience. In Western Zen we call these Zen Centers, Zen Temples and such. These are classically monastic or semi-monastic in nature, but in this new environment of Western commercial society they may also be entirely lay institutions. The point is that they advertise little, uphold the traditional training in pretty much the form they found it, and stick to their spiritual knitting. As we move toward the other side of our teeter-totter we typically start adding stuff. Some of this stuff comes in the form of adaptations of Western religions and psychology. Many of the add-ons are not only innocent but are helpful – Sunday schools for kids, coming-of-age ceremonies, famine relief days, church socials, layers of oblate or deacon-like lay ordination, interfaith programs. In Zen Centers we may adapt things for the local Sangha by changing Sesshin retreat schedules somewhat, tweaking the sitting rounds to be longer or shorter, adding to the schedule holidays and celebrations and possibly even rites that are outside the tradition but are very helpful for our community. But we are still sitting on the teeter-totter with our feet on the ground. We are still focused on training, the tradition, the insights of the tradition, and the community. The influence of the commercial market society as a whole is there, of course, but it is in check.

But let’s see what happens as we move our attention (and intention) up that board to the fulcrum – to the point of confusion. Near the fulcrum there is danger. But to understand the danger we must look to the other side of the continuum – the marketplace. Far out on the end of our teeter-totter we have an environment of, well – to put it bluntly – sales and business success. This is the theme that now runs through pretty much all American life, from our measurement of sales at the box office and the bookstore (how to gauge artistic quality) to our income comparatives and (can you believe) our credit scores. In all areas of life here now we measure quality by quantity. I suspect that we do not even really know the difference between them most of the time. Growth is king in every field, and when it comes to the world of the spiritual mentor things are apparently no different. At an American Zen Teachers Association meeting a few years ago I was involved in a workshop in some management aspects of operating a Zen Center. We had about twelve Zen teachers in our group there and we were simply discussing the things we do or have considered doing to attract students. (The significance of the very existence of such a discussion should not be lost on us.) At one point I commented that we should all remember that a conscious decision to limit the growth or the size of our own temple is not only okay but may be desirable. To my surprise this passing comment brought sighs of genuine relief from a number of the participants. They went on to say that they have always felt a quiet inner pressure to grow the place and that lack of growth (let alone shrinkage!) marked some sort of failure of theirs as a teacher. One teacher put it beautifully when he offered, “Let’s face it, all Zen teachers count the shoes.”

There are, to be sure, good reasons to wish the temple to grow and prosper. We want our tradition to remain healthy for future generations. We want it to serve its members and community. We want it to be a guiding light for as many people as possible. But just under these noble concerns may well lurk others: Am I a good teacher (like the movies, measured in attendance numbers – confusing quality with quantity)? Is what I am doing popular (read, do I make people feel good about themselves)? This reveals the insecurity of our age, an era in which people will broadcast drunkenness, sex acts, and silliness through the internet just so they can garner more viewers to their apparently all-consuming video attempts to shore up the self. (Do spiritual teachers need personal Blogs? Would Zen Master Hakuin have even considered this?) And naturally there are all manner of other compromises spiritual teachers can and do make to promote themselves, their temples, their teachings, their lineages – their product.

So on one end of the balance we have the traditions themselves, and on the other end the marketplace. But now back to that dangerous fulcrum. The unique danger of the tipping point is that we often don’t see it. I propose that to teach our traditions, teachers should never allow their feet to leave the ground – pardon the image, but we should be happiest with teachers who remain grounded in their respective traditions. Our seesaw has a unique danger built in at the fulcrum because as we get further from the traditional end with our attention, we become enamored with our success (at improving whatever score we are keeping) and find ourselves more open to changes and ideas just a little further down the board we are sitting on. If we attract more (people, admiration, attention to the temple, money, whatever) here, why not go a little farther toward the commercial model? Certainly it can’t hurt to push a little more. The problem is that somewhere out there the balance suddenly changes and we find our spiritual community morphing into a commercial enterprise.

Why is this important for our discussion here about finding a teacher? It is crucial to know the difference between real training and the simple consumption of a commercial product. Real training always centers itself around the benefit and welfare of the student, while the commercial enterprise here does not, and may well focus on benefits for the spiritual director. The traditional neighborhood is safe and loving while the other neighborhood takes your money, your time, your mind, and your body. In this neighborhood what you reap from the enterprise is of little value as spiritual nutrition, but it tastes great going down. The spiritual-commercial neighborhood is a dangerous one indeed, and it is filled with scams and crooks, rapists and con men. It looks safe to the untrained eye because it is made to look safe. And on the commercial side of our seesaw the most dangerous area is right near the fulcrum, since what is offered from this place may well look like traditional training. It is well for the observer to remember that crooks and con artists can appear anywhere along the continuum, but the possibility of danger grows exponentially as one feels ones feet lifting off the ground of traditional training and one becomes grounded instead in a marketing world.

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There are certain requirements for having a spiritual community and the most important among them is that you have to have a community. If you have a monastery you have a community. If you have many lay practitioners in close proximity to one another you have a community. If you have only a schedule of retreats where many of the practitioners of a given tradition convene and sit together, you may still have a community, but things are more tentative. If you only have a retreat schedule there is not much of the day-to-day interaction among practitioners that defines community. It only happens during, right before, and right after the retreat, and even at these times there no real continuity. Continuity is important because it sets up and demands repeated encounters among the individuals in the group. We get to see and hear the idiopathic maladies that plague individual personalities. Bluntly put, in day-to-day interactions among practitioners everyone’s shit gets revealed. This may take some time, but it absolutely will happen. If we only see each other around retreats, there is far less opportunity for this level of revelation.

Pushing this still further toward the marketplace end of our seesaw, what happens to our sense of community when we attend only workshops or presentations or “teachings” given once or twice per year at some forum open to the public? The teacher gets off the plane, is nurtured by the group, fed, praised. Everyone smiles. He always appears happy and content. He always has wise things to say. And he is so generous to give us a few minutes out of his busy schedule. And in the end he gets back on a plane and is gone, and our “community” of practitioners falls apart instantly.

Where is the interaction and important feedback in this? How can we see the flaws of the teacher if all we get is this polished presentation? How can he or she know us at all? (Does he or she even want to?) How can he or she council us about our practice? E-mail? How do we get to know each other as individuals and as practitioners? (Do we want to?) How can we support each other through the difficulties of practice? (Do we want to?)

If our idea of a spiritual community is wrapped around attending “events” which cost money (especially a lot of money), we need to see these for what they really are – they are commercial affairs at which we are “entertained” and may purchase trinkets and more propaganda which is designed merely to get you to attend more such events. We are consumers here, nothing more. We are supporting a jet-setting, marketing-driven institution which is not a community of practitioners in any form, is not designed to develop and support such a community, and which is almost certainly wrapped tightly around one charismatic personality, and this for the benefit of that personage’s ego, power, riches, and freedom to continue this celebrity lifestyle.

In this marketing/commercial/consumer modality there is neither the accountability of the teacher which is demanded by emersion in a real practice community, nor is there any way for the “student” to see the teacher’s warts. Beware the “expert from afar.” We may chuckle at the image of the devotees, by the hundreds, chanting and throwing money while they dance and look to the heavens, all the while waiting for the rented helicopter of the guru which finally hovers above them for a few minutes, dropping millions of special flower petals to them while the guru smiles down and makes a few bows. We may chuckle, but I just described a real scene which happened recently not fifty miles from this spot. And if people can buy into that, they can certainly be wooed by a teacher who will stand in front of them for a few hours and spout platitudes in all the right language, then retire to his hotel room and all the temptations of the road while his accounting people and handlers pave his way. Should we not instead be able to see the living teaching of the living teacher? Should we not be able to check the words with the deeds and either be given a good example of the living truth or be shown that the teacher also has work to do?

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At the Lutheran School of Theology here in Chicago a course is offered every year called “Religions in Dialogue.” Three instructors, all steeped in their traditions, engage the students in deep and spirited discussion concerning three major world religions. These traditions are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. We ask the students who sign up for the course a question the first class meeting: Why these three traditions? Why not Judaism, Hinduism, or other traditions?

These traditions have something in common historically – all three have consistently shown the ability to move from culture to culture, the ability to transplant themselves and grow to a magnitude that often allows them to come to dominate the spiritual life and landscape of their new home. Each goes about this in a different way, each having its own unique ability to adapt to its new home and attract adherents from native traditions, no matter the cultural template of the new adherents. In the course at the seminary we spend considerable time examining exactly how each tradition grows in its new cultural landscape. Buddhism does this by being extremely flexible in its forms and traditions and also by taking a very soft approach. Buddhism is not confrontational. Buddhism is dynamic by nature with its forms, traditions, and even its primary literature constantly being added to. It embraces change naturally.

When we consider the West, especially the United States, we consider a culture hell-bent on change, often simply for the sake of change itself. We could even submit that change, adaptation, augmentation, and the blending of all cultural traditions (most especially religious ones) pretty much define our American approach to traditions. We can never embrace traditions as we find them. Soon after an American adopts a new religion, it seems, she or he is looking for ways to change it, to make it more user friendly, to make it more modern, to make it . . . different.

We here in America have a questionable habit of altering overnight traditions which have taken centuries to develop. This habit is a pernicious weed in our spiritual practice garden. If we alter the tradition enough, in fact, we no longer even have a tradition at all, but have what the post World War II Japanese called (and embraced to the point of the absurd) a “New Religion.” Here in the West we capture all this sort of activity in the rather global term “New Age.” We speak with a straight face about “classic” New Age religions. We have such a weak sense of what a tradition really is and what it requires from us that many in our culture could not tease out “traditions” which count their history in years from those which measure theirs in centuries.

In a culture for whose members geography is a dreamlike state, for whom history often confuses the Civil War and the first World War, it is asking a lot to expect that people could sort out even major world religions, let alone understand the dizzying array of various amalgams out there. Words like “Master,” “Roshi,” “Guru” are tossed right into the same salad as “porno” and “operating system” and “ISP.” (I have heard Guru used with all three of these.) If someone simply calls herself a Master or a Teacher or a Sensei, then surely she must be. And if many people, no matter how badly informed on the subject, call her so, well then no one can question such a title.

For example, Frederick Lenz, AKA Zen Master Rama (“Zen” and “Rama” being an oxymoron – but no matter), sold himself as a great teacher with no real training I could ever find, all by using the marketing presentation described above to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were otherwise sensible and who paid lots of money for his “teaching.” He sexually abused his students (read customers), took their money (sold spiritual trinkets to the natives), and lived high (just read the testimonials on the internet). How could this happen? Simple. We are not educated when it comes to false teachers, and we are not educated when it comes to the traditions which they so freely abuse, dissect, steal from, and Frankenstein together in order to give themselves a platform to speak from.

I have a simple guideline to offer here: If a many-centuries old tradition works, why does it need to be radically “adapted” or “augmented?” Has it not already shown that it already IS adaptable? We may laugh at the turtle because it is prehistoric in design, but it has come all this way without our “help.” I’m not proposing that we do not look for sensible adaptations to our traditions. This is necessary and natural. But why must we insist that our limited experience can enable us to turn a centuries-old vehicle for the truth inside out and in doing this come up with something better? This is akin to handing an eleven-year-old the keys to the White House and inviting her to run the country. While our frustration with our leadership may at times run deep, we would never do such a thing. Would we?

I am personally troubled by Buddhism’s need to cling so tightly to a concept like Rebirth while at the same time teaching Emptiness. But I am allowing this skepticism to endure decades of testing on my part and I’m not about to toss Rebirth out as some totally fictitious notion just because I may see it as such if you catch me on the right day. But in our quasi-scientific mode these days, with all our real and pop psychology, with all our rampant political correctness and all our sureness of our historical hindsight and perfect grasp on all human problems, we pass final judgment in minutes on the contained and applied wisdom of the ages.

The irony of ironies here is that it may be our very apprehension about not wrapping ourselves in a more traditional set of spiritual values that drives us to try to adapt these traditions to our hectic lives. We know we should be doing something deeper. Yet we do not have the spiritual grounding to judge what is best to do. So we do what we always do when we feel inadequate here in America – we shop. And if the product LOOKS like it may be legit Buddhadharma, we buy. Never mind that it has been mangled into something which can be presented as a “product.” We do not have the context to grasp that it is not supposed to be a product at all, but a practice. And more, it is a practice with a teacher within a practice community.

So we must beware of psycho-babble filled tradition look-alikes, since these are almost certainly Frankensteined just for our consumption, at a price. They are just too friendly to be transforming. There is an old saw: “Effective medicine tastes bitter.” Herein we have the next warning: If the teacher comes down to our level too much, look out. He may not really want to aid in your transformation into a spiritual adult. He may only desire our adoration as a spiritual child. Not only do the commercial gurus offer alternatives to the traditional approach, they offer teachings which have been rather “modernized” (read dumbed down) by them (of course), for your easy consumption (oh how nice). I am a Zen teacher. Zen is HARD to grasp. It is certainly NOT simply sitting and staring at a wall. The doings and sayings of the Zen Masters are rough stuff, hard to understand, hard to absorb. I’m in roughly the same boat I was in when I was a high school English teacher many years ago here: I can interpret Shakespeare so that the students do not have to stretch too far to work with the vocabulary and syntax, or I can be a hardass and force them into Shakespeare’s language. If I do the former they will have it easier. If I do the later they will struggle. I can go down to their level, but I prefer to force them up to mine. If you think this cruel, ask yourself this question: Who were my best teachers in school, that is to say the ones I actually grew with and learned the most from? Those who push us help us the most.

But this runs opposite to our wishes as a student. We want the easier road, at least until we mature and discover that the easy road is always a fraud. If we are to be spiritual students, we will struggle. Period. “Enlightenment before noon with our workshops,” is a product advertisement designed to cater to the instant gratification, spiritual chocoholic in all of us. Beware. Practice is not only about an “experience” which has been carefully orchestrated by re-wrapping a tradition in contemporary psycho-speak. Practice must have legs. It must work in us over a long period of time, and almost always this time occurs both BEFORE AND AFTER the occurrence of anything that can be called an enlightenment (read any kind of meaningful breakthrough). There is no easy road which will have lasting effects for us, and there is no simple formula for realizing the truth. If you feel that you are being addressed in a language and in a style which seems almost commercial and which claim to take the heart of any major spiritual tradition and turn it over to you without much effort on your part, then that little voice of caution squeaking inside you should be attended to. It is the very same little voice which warned you away from the huckster car salesman, the real estate woman, the friendly man who wanted to date you and who magically adored your kids, and the man in your childhood nightmares who leaned out of the car offering candy and a ride. Listen to that inner voice.

If someone is selling an experience, we can be sure that the situation we find ourselves in is being orchestrated so that we feel we have that experience. If it seems too obvious, too slick, too quick, too impossibly easy, guess what – it is.

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One of the many tools in the toolkit of the commercial teacher is the “specialness” of any given student. Teachers with a hidden agenda often tell certain students (read rich, beautiful, sexually available) that these students are “special.” Amazingly this is often the very word used – “special.” This is often the beginning of a come-on of a sexual nature, of course. After all, this line shows up, and with some success, in other areas – work, associations – where it is simply a baited hook. So it also is used in a spiritual context to cast a line with only slightly different bait. Here we have a great power disparity between guru types and student types, and so this pick-up line is particularly toxic because it is used to hit below the belt (pun intended) and get right into the emotional mushiness of the student.

We need to be aware of this sort of fisherman, and although many of us are, it is nevertheless astounding just how many people ( mostly women who are baited by men teachers) fall for this “you are special” line. But here I would like to introduce another brand of specialness which is used not only by sexual predators who disguise themselves as teachers, but by the entire commercial guru set. This is the specialness of anyone who can “really hear my message.” The auditorium filled with nodding heads. The agreeing masses. “Mega Dittos, Rush!!”

I was once, many years ago, working as a teacher in a small business finishing school in Upstate New York. I was underpaid, overworked, and I felt sorry for myself. The office building next to the school housed a regional office of IBM. One of the IBMers happened to be in our school one day and we were introduced. He was a middle-aged, middle management type who was articulate, even smooth. He pulled me aside and said that he was involved in a side business and that there may be an opportunity for me. Three days later I found myself being driven to a meeting seventy-five miles away. We ended up in a large Ramada Inn party room with 200 strangers. This is where I would learn the scoop about how to make money on my own. We sat in the middle of the auditorium-like setup. On the dais paraded one speaker after another, all booming inspiration. Charts were used, and testimonials too. The only evidence of any sort of corporate unity was the pervasive presence of a triangle-shaped logo.

But after even half an hour of this there was no mention of products or services. Also, it became clear to me that the onlookers consisted of two distinct types. There were the believers, understanders, ones who could identify with the message with nods, grunts of knowing, and smiles. The other group (far fewer of us) was the novices, the uninitiated, the anxious, the ones left out who wanted in. At forty-five minutes into this initiation-cum-stage show I noticed something. People around me who were clearly soldiers of the system kept doing two bothersome things. They would turn (just as the man who brought me would turn) to their uninitiated charges and smile during key moments in the testimonials, or during moments which were “don’t-you-get-it” moments in the presentation. They would smile, but housed within that smile was a look of stern “checking.” They seemed to be checking to see if the ideology, the point of view, the system (read brainwashing) was taking root there in the psyche of the new recruit. This discovery was chilling. I realized in a flash that we were to be “hooked” in this initial stage into staying and participating in the small groups to come. In these (I discovered later from a friend who stayed the whole evening) there was not just push but also shove, and this done on a personal level, all directed at making the recruit a believer.

The other annoying habit of the soldiers was the breath spray. It was the 1970’s, and these little canisters of breath spray were popular. I noticed that everyone around me was using these – that is the soldiers were. Finally I also noticed that they all used the same brand, and when we were reaching the one hour mark in our indoctrination I caught a glimpse of the brand – Amway. I leaned over to the IBMer and asked if this was really an Amway meeting. He did not respond. I asked again, and he would not look at me. I then, in the rude carelessness of young adulthood, stood up and called out, “You new people! This is an Amway recruiting meeting!” Pandemonium broke out, arguments, smiles, breath spray galore. I made good my escape and called my wife, who rescued me with the smirk of Alice of The Honeymooners. My friend escaped later and assured me that the meeting survived my meltdown (and later his) and new recruits were gleaned from the initiates.

If you stay up late enough and watch enough cable TV, you will find these hucksters in operation, selling everything from cooking ware to spiritual wellness, from nutritional supplements to speed reading. There are always nodding heads in the audience. There are always people who really get it. We are shown camera shots of these people all throughout the presentation. We may even sit back and shake our heads and marvel at how anyone could be taken in by such hype. Well hear this warning: This stuff is much more effective in person. And the smaller and more intimate the group, the more effective it can become. False teachers offer charming false teachings and they do this in a very charming way. Charm is the word. They mesmerize us into entering a self-referential and make-believe world which will contain all the right buzz-concepts. Enlightenment. (Some of the best Zen teachers I know never mention that word. Wonder why.) Peace & Justice. Inner strength (or peace). Focus and success (Why these, I wonder). And, of course, they use the framework of either the spiritual world or the corporate world, since they know that we will speak one of these two languages when addressing our own inner landscape.

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We need to be wary when the setting is a familiar institutional one (read dumbing down, coming too much into our arena to reach us) – lecture circuits, conferences, motel party rooms, revival tents set up in your own neighborhood. These settings are far from community and the watchful eyes of peers. We need to be wary when there is a perfume of insiders and outsiders, of charm, of several hours of a very casual but carefully controlled environment, where outside information has carefully been controlled, most especially when this happens in a “safe” place we are familiar with (where we have lowered our guard). Watch out when the teachings are represented as deep and yet they are familiar both in language of presentation and in concept. If the group is quietly special, or you yourself are made to feel special, run.

If this teaching is a Frankenstein of at least two seemingly disparate traditions, consider hard the efficacy of this. In a sense we are facing in such teachings the founding of a new religious tradition and this tradition in usually being presented by the founder. And often this founder is charismatic. The excitement of this sort of moment can adversely influence our decision-making and reasoning process. We need to reflect on the simple statistics before us. How many of these new approaches or new-age inventions or blendings get presented each year? How many survive to become even minor contributions to our human approach to spirituality? Is the man before us really in the league of a Christ or a Mohammad or a Buddha, even ignoring any thoughts of divinity, even as an original spiritual thinker?

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And what of the typical trajectory of such teachings? What historically happens to these Masters who have commercially presented their new approaches? Let me try to present a pattern here. We are all free to find our own examples. Basically, while the initial teachings of many false teachers will contain the underpinnings of the tradition these teachers were trained in (often not for very long), the teachings (product) tend over a few or even several years toward two features: The product slowly morphs further and further away from the teachings of the root tradition in content, form, and manner of presentation, and the product also tends to spawn additional products.

Both of these trends are corporate in nature – this is to say that these are product and service trends very familiar to anyone involved in selling and developing new products and services. We start out with simple toothpaste. We might even market the toothpaste as an alternative to more mega-corp products out there by advertising that our toothpaste does not have evil artificial ingredients in it and is not tested by torturing rabbits like our competitors’ products. We do well. We gain market share. Some time later (a few years at most) we discover that our sales growth has stopped, or even reversed, that our competition has responded with a more “natural” toothpaste of their own, etc., etc. We need a shot in the arm. So we morph the product and offer basted turkey flavor toothpaste. Sales rise since all consumers are addicted to New and Different. We also develop natural dental floss, make from recycled underwear (don’t worry, we wash it!), and this morphs us laterally into new but parallel markets. Sales go up, but only until the competition responds and the consumer gets bored again, at which time we will develop even further.

Silly as this example may seem, if we take a careful look at the mainline Christian churches in our neighborhood, we will quickly discover that for years they have been at least dabbling in these very marketing waters too. Modern dance and music at Sunday Service, children’s groups that go way further than Sunday School, no Latin, easy-read Bibles, field trips, all manner of social activities and charities and discussion groups. And if we go back to our seesaw and watch the trends carefully, we may also discover that there are all manner of break-away churches which may disagree with some religious or practice tenant of the mainline organization, but may also simply find themselves on the commercial side of the seesaw.

And once there the marketing morphing starts in earnest. We have here in Chicagoland a number of these huge mega-churches. They are literally the size of huge high schools or small colleges. Auditoriums seat 5,000 and attendance runs past this capacity. Inside one I visited recently I found a large restaurant, a Borders-size bookstore, several meeting areas, many offices, huge grounds, exercise room, etc. There were programs available (all for hefty fees) on all manner of human situations. Charities galore. Small groups to join. Something for everyone. But nowhere in that mammoth building – nope, nowhere – did I see so much as one cross. Not on the outside, not in the literature, not in the rooms. The pulpit (I actually hesitate even designating it as such.) that stands in front of thousands of in-the-semi-round easy chair seats has no cross on it, nor above it, nor behind it. I was thunderstruck. This was a deeply reminiscent moment for me. The real product, the real import, the real purpose lay hidden from those thousands at the Sunday gathering. I went chill, because I remembered this – an Amway meeting at a Ramada Inn nearly thirty years ago.

So the trajectory of these operations is pretty consistent. There is an original message which may be delivered from within one of the familiar religious traditions. Then, with the passage of enough time, the message widens and morphs. Within a few generations of its Godzilla-like life cycle the lopped off arms which look more promising from a marketing standpoint grow new bodies, and soon the whole spiritual product bears almost no resemblance to the original tradition which spawned it. Now it is offered in today’s version of Ramada Inn party rooms and has a slick format. It and its chief champion are no longer accountable to the tradition’s forms nor to the authority figures in the tradition. It has become product-like in that its teachings are to be consumed (after having been “purchased”) along with various add-ons and sister products. Newer products will come out soon. It is homeless both in temple venue and in any real sense of community to which it may be accountable. It is adaptable, but only in a marketing sense – it has learned how to bring consumer attention to itself. The “teacher” has, eventually, lost by degrees all respect when it comes to his or her peers (that is the ones who count, those in the original tradition). There may be exceptions to this latter feature – he or she may have the grudging admiration of those peers who themselves either privately or publicly covet such fame and fortune and power. I’m embarrassed to say that even among the leadership of many spiritual traditions these days there is a dearth of good judgment when it comes to crossing the fulcrum of our seesaw.

The “teacher” is often a marketing genius who knows how to develop and sell his product, at least for a while. He or she is almost always personally magnetic and charismatic. These people could sell ice cream to Eskimos. Actually, this is exactly what they are doing, since these great inner truths are really always there simply for the taking – or maybe the uncovering. If the customer feels eventually that crossing over to the other side of the seesaw is healthy, he or she may seek out real teachers. These real teachers have real communities and accountability within them. They have peer review of some kind. They have a tradition to adhere to, and not necessarily rigidly adhere to. They do not ask for so much money for themselves. They live humbly and otherwise seem to generally embody the spirit of their teachings. They may not be perfect, true, but there is no real question as to where their heart lies. It lies with helping the student, the practitioner, to benefit from the same system which they themselves found so helpful. And if the customer can finally embark on the long and difficult journey of deep spiritual work, these real teachers will sacrifice anything to help.

Summer Notes

2007-08-15T21:20:00.000-05:00

Ceremonies Galore!

Thus far, 2007 has been eventful for those who like Zen ceremonies. First off, on February 25 the Sangha gathered for Caroline Devane's novice ceremony. Caroline is now undergoing a novitiate period that will last for roughly one year, following which she will undergo full ordination in the Three Jewels Order. Congratulations and gasshos to Caroline for making this commitment to the Dharma.

Then, on May 18 Sevan Sensei received Dharma Transmission from James Ford Roshi in a public ceremony at the Center. Ford Roshi is a sanctioned teacher in the Robert Aitken lineage and the Jiyu Kennett (Soto) lineage; Sensei has now received Dharma Transmission in these lineages along with the Kapleau/Rochester Zen Center lineage as transmitted through Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede. More than 40 people attended the ceremony.

Finally, Elie Nijm has decided to become a lay-ordained practitioner in the Three Jewels Order. The ceremony to begin Elie's training for ordination took place during the July sesshin.

Why I Might Own an iPod (Yet)

The CZC has joined the list of Zen Centers (including Rochester) that are making teishos available by podcast. This means that you can automatically receive teishos as they are posted online - no need to check manually to see if anything new has been added. To subscribe, visit our site feed or simply search for us on Apple's iTunes in the podcast directory (should be available in the next few days).

We hope this feature will provide additional convenience for members and allow us to reach a wider audience. If this entire description sounds horribly confusing, don't worry - the same teishos will still be available for download on the Center's website as they've always been.

Three Moments

2007-08-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

by Laurel Ross

Three flickers of light

1- Confusion
2- (Out of) My Mind
3- True self

In Zen practice we actively explore our own minds and along the way make surprising discoveries—some delightful, some upsetting, some forgettable, some life-changing. What can we do with these discoveries though? Can they lead to making changes? Or might they lead to acceptance of what is?

Lately it seems the universe is presenting itself in ways that beg for my attention. Something is up. Small experiences offer a potential conduit to wisdom. I offer three such small experiences here.

1- Confusion
Recently I agreed to help someone close to me deal with the household of her terminally ill father who is now living with his sister. She had warned me that the situation was extreme, but I wasn’t prepared for floor to ceiling debris, unorganized STUFF. Many objects in the confused mass were of some “value”—kitchen utensils, random hardware, art supplies, etc. But all of it was heaped in enormous sagging mountains on the floor and furniture, together with what can only be called garbage—junk mail, newspapers, wrappings from pizza deliveries, dead batteries, etc. making it all appear to be trash. I am struggling to convey the scale and bizarreness of it all.

The man who had been living in this hellish place had created little tunnel-like pathways in order to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom. The kitchen and all other rooms were impenetrable and hadn’t been used for a long time.

Our assignment was to retrieve objects and papers of value in the chaos—family photographs, documents, etc.—because the daughter had hired people to remove and dispose of the rubble so the house could be sold. As we sifted through the disorder we started to see what was there. Many, many unopened packages—bags containing purchases that had been discarded without ever being opened or even looked at again. Much of it was books, and the most common category of books was self-help books—all the familiar themes: better sex, more money, and how to gain control of one’s life through meditation.

After retrieving some morsels with meaning that were packed and moved to a storage unit (a surreal story of its own), we used snow shovels to fill huge bags that were dragged to the dumpster.

When I retreated to my own home afterwards my own stuff looked different. I have my own messes and objects and books and stuff. When I die someone will have to look through it all and pluck the very few things of value. Not only that, while this stuff is here it is in my way, using space and time to deal with it.

Let me get my snow shovel now while I can.

2-(Out of) My Mind

In May I contracted a very nasty case of poison ivy—far worse than my usual spring dose. Several days after the rash erupted I woke up with eyes swollen shut and big, itchy, blotches everywhere. My doctor explained that my body’s antigens were in high gear and I could expect to have three weeks of increasing symptoms UNLESS I wanted to try steroids. When she offered this treatment I felt desperate and barely asked about side effects as I listened to the three week course of medication.

My time on steroids provided a new window into my mind—or someone’s mind. “Who is this crazy and decidedly unpleasant person?” was the operative question during the short weird time. I was tense, jumpy, short-tempered. Not the warm, generous and kind person I see as me. For a Zen student this presents a hell of a question: If a tiny dose of a chemical can change “me” so significantly, how real is that person I am fond of thinking I am?

3- True self

Working in my garden early this morning I noticed that my cat Dottie was focused on something across the yard. Before my eyes she was suddenly transformed from a quiet, silky, even lethargic and elderly pet into a virtual bullet that flew across the 10 yards of the garden and returned with a shrieking baby rabbit in her mouth. Her brother, Jack, joined her as she dropped, then recaught this mouthful, and to my horror I watched them race into the back door of our apartment with their treasure squealing pathetically.

“Now what?” I followed them tentatively, hoping I would not see anything too gory and was further horrified to hear chasing around and crashing of breakables as I entered the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of Jack in a posture quite different from his usual casual self as he watched a corner in the pantry. As he sat and demonstrated alertness so effectively the thought that crossed my mind was that I was looking at his true self, just as Dottie had shown me her true self in that moment of blasting across the yard.

This story does not have a happy ending for the rabbit. I considered intervening and trying to “save” the poor thing, but decided I was an outsider in this event, so I went back to working in the garden and hoped that the poor bunny wouldn’t suffer too much.

After some time had passed I ventured back into the house and found the body under the dining room table with a big gash in its gut and its liver exposed. Eyes were open, but life was gone. True self of bunnyness? Any ecologist will tell you that bunnies are born to be eaten. Another lesson in an afternoon designed to reveal. I bowed, covered it with towel and planned to bury it.

Now Dottie walked into the room and without hesitation pulled off the towel and sat down next to the body looking relaxed, but clear in her intentions. As she began licking it, I retreated to the garden. When I came back into the house for a glass of water, Jack was tearing meat from one of the haunches having pulled off and discarded the fur.

An hour later both cats were back in the yard—was it over? Using a piece of cardboard and a trowel I picked up the now really gory corpse from under the table and stashed it behind the raspberry bushes thinking and hoping that we were near the end of the excitement.

But not yet. Moments later it reappeared in the center of the yard with both cats sprawled next to it looking for all the world like lions in the Serengeti. “Mew,” said Jack.

I bowed to the three of them and finally surrendered control. It was a wild and natural day.

Signs

2007-08-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

Among the myriad billboards and corporate signposts that flank I-294 south of the O'Hare toll, south-bound commuters can learn daily from the simple teaching of this sign. In shape it resembles the han, and so it calls us to practice. Like a visual koan, it invites us to question the very fabric of reality. (Is it advertising an electronics company? Where has the "ith" gone to? Where was the "ith" before the sign was born?) Like numerous masters throughout the Buddhist canon, it teaches us with gentle pragmatism. ("Hey-don't stare at me! Watch where you're driving!") And the sign's dilapidated condition - hinting at the many years it has stood watch over millions of passing cars - subtly reminds us that all things must fade.

Photo by Jon Laux. Mike McKane was standing very close by.

Master of Poetic Elegance

2007-04-01T12:43:00.000-05:00

Welcoming Mara: Reflections on the Value of ‘Ego Storms’

2007-04-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

by Cynthia Stone

The essence of the Zen experience for me is the suffering of the emotional pain which I call ‘ego storms’ and emerging lighter, with less emotional baggage, at least for the time being. Just living provides endless possibilities for experiencing anger in all its variations, and the storms associated with jealousy, grief, feelings of failure, hopelessness and despair. Being caught up in one or the other of these emotions propels one into a hell state in which one is trapped and consumed by the emotion. However, sesshins provide a unique opportunity to both have strong emotions provoked by the work and the structure to have to sit with the emotion for hours or days until it dissolves.

Anger happens to be the fuel for the ego storms that I am most susceptible to. Initially I thought my anger at something the teacher or monitor or other Zen student did was justified. I had ready reasons for why my anger was a natural response to some kind of slight or offense. But even then, there was nothing I could do about it except maybe complain to the teacher when I next had a chance which might not come for hours and hours. Meanwhile, I could nurse the grudge or listen to the frequent injunction to let it go, to not replay the script and focus on the work.

It was rather like having to postpone the desire to move the leg that has fallen asleep or scratch an itch or endure hunger pangs until the appropriate bell is struck. This discipline which seems to have to do only with physical needs now seems quite relevant to the practice of dispelling disturbing emotional states. It not only creates the capacity to wait and endure the unpleasant physical state but it also happens to create the capacity to endure painful emotional states and in the process begin to see them for what they are.

It helps to experience the same or similar emotion over and over again. One begins to recognize it and remember how it all dissolved in a previous sesshin when external circumstances changed or when one did indeed let go of the situation and concentrated just on the work. These shifts have been powerful experiences for me and it has gradually dawned on me that realizing the ego storm will pass is a part of the work.

The process of living through an ego storm to its passing requires the letting go of images of self as competent, achieving, unflappable and strong. Instead one appreciates these images are transient illusions entirely contingent on circumstances.

While everyone has their own triggers, I cannot imagine anyone calmly experiencing the flunking of a koan repeatedly and being rung out of the dokusan room in less than two minutes over and over again while it seems that everyone else is having very long dokusans. Have this happen four or more times in a row and one’s passions of anger, greed and jealously arise along with serious consideration quitting all this nonsense as a total waste of time. And one can develop illusions about the teacher. What IS he doing in there with so and so? Why is he treating ME so harshly? Maybe he doesn’t like me or thinks I am a hopeless student.

The teacher often addresses these states, indicating he knows all about ‘ego storms’ and how distracting they can be from practice. However, I think ‘ego storms’ are a necessary and useful part of practice. They expose the primitive ego, clinging for life to the wish for success, for the achievement of a goal and the avoidance of the shame and humiliation of defeat which sometimes feels very public. Since one has to let go of images of competence and achievement, there is not much left but sheer perseverance in the face of confusion, helplessness and despair. The ego which is storming has to be abandoned. There is nothing left but sheer perseverance which has its own strength based in blind faith that eventually there will be a break through. And when this happens it does not feel like an ego achievement but more like an opening to the obvious.

A Tibetan Buddhist abbess recently gave a talk on this subject of strong emotions and shared the teaching of recognizing the emotion and stopping the story line that accompanies the emotion. If one can do that and just feel the emotion, great energy is released in a clear and open inner space. Finally she said that the ability to do this rests on the attitude of kindness toward oneself. This practice, she said, is called “Welcoming Mara”, reminding us that Mara represents the negative energies and thoughts that tempted Buddha. Like Buddha, we are besieged by Mara and wish to banish her. Mara seems like a distraction from the ‘real’ work, but the concept of ‘welcoming Mara’ echoes my realization that ‘ego storms’ can be both the most painful and the most valuable part of practice.