Dharma Friend

In the mad rush to dokusan
I see your brown robed blur
A fast, spinning, dharma wheel
Spurring me on through the battle
With small-self and big-ego

Katsu!

Gassho, my friend, gassho.

In The Bunker

My daughter said it best the other day. "Winter makes me want to hibernate like a bear!" It is grey here most of the winter, in addition to the snow. Some mornings it is hard to get to the zendo at 5:45 AM, and I madly dash to get my robe on before the strike of the han.

Thanks to comments on previous posts, I am again looking at all those ten-thousand householder things as integral to practice and the Way. As Dogen said, the point of doing zazen is not just to do zazen. Life is zazen is mu is practice. Be mu in every one of those ten thousand things. Hard to realize that sometimes. Gassho!

Snow

The family is house-bound today with the heavy snow, making it hard to find any space/time for zazen. The house is small, and we use every room. Besides, I always feel a bit guilty sitting when the kids are awake and want time.

I slept in this morning, and by the time I was awake, so were the kids. Waffles and toast replaced zafu and mu. I know that mu is not separate from waffles and toast, but I have not seen this with my mind's eye. Nevertheless, householder practice is punctuated by such interruptions. Siddhartha Guatama took leave of his family to search for enlightenment, leaving such disturbances behind. He never returned. Sometimes I wonder if a practice founded on such a base can possibly succeed for a householder. Must leave-taking precede insight?

Contrast the monastic approach with that of the householder Dipa Ma, a householder, mother, and Buddhist teacher/master.

Zazen Panic

Panic during zazen can be most challenging. Sitting in the midst of stillness, and then the ego pulls the fire alarm. Suddenly, your body is still but your mind is screaming: Fire! Your zazen body-mind tells you to observe and let it go. Not easy. Even worse, you are "trapped" in the zendo, and the round has just begun. In the urge to flee, every pain, sound, and sensation are amplified a thousand-fold. Soon, the panic has passed, and mu is back. Both will come and go again, ebb and flow, fire and still water.

Ice Storm

Ice covers the trees, like a clear barrier to seeing one's essential nature. Groaning under the weight of this burden, branches break, great old trees fall, and ice-covered branches clank against each other noisily. The temperature changes, and ice turns again to water. No longer bent under the weight of their load, touching the sky again. Tree, water, ice, sky and change.

Children and the Dharma of Change

Children embody the dharma of change, and transmit that dharma mind-to-mind to their householder parents. I experience this most acutely when some new hungry ghost appears in my house. Who switched my kid? Or more directly, who is this child now? Who? The Dharma of Change stands before you, persistent and noisy, demanding that you be mindful of it. Wake up, look, show me mu! This often appears as some new attachment, desire, or aversion. But when I watch closely, the thing that I assumed was a poison changes, and my child is again transformed. Even the meta-patterns of these transformations change. We were all once these children, and still are. Thus manifests one unique benefit of parent-householder practice, reality bonking me over the head with a stuffed animal, even though I would like to hide from that reality by doing zazen in the zendo right now. Like our children, we all walk on the Path, even if we do not know it.

Travel Practice

About once a month I travel. When it is for work, I often have some time for solitude, and am able to sit more often then I can at home. But I miss my family (still working on attachment...). I have found that planes are ideal for zazen: the drone of the engine, no pagers, cell phones, or e-mail. A flying monastic retreat. For sitting in the hotel, I have a great inflatable cushion, which is really a beachball in a zafu cover (no kidding!). But when I travel with family, finding a time and place to do zazen is almost impossible, even with a beachball zafu. After coming home, it takes several days to get back into my schedule. The balance is not easy.

NOTE:  See my more recent post for how to make your own travel zafu.

Koi

Watching my children watch koi in a pond. So simple, and I again realize what tremendous concentration they have. How is it that we unlearn what we knew as children, splinter simple moments into ten thousand fragments?


Golden fish
The world reflected
Who is under water?

Pager Practice

In my work I carry a pager. When I began to sit zazen, I viewed my pager as a formidable impediment to practice. How could you sit in stillness, focusing the mind, when at any moment a shrill beeping could interrupt? But then, I realized that although pages are like boulders dropped in the taught still pond, those beeps must point to the existence of that stillness! It seemed to me that the mind states invoked by the pager’s summons could have merit in the daily practice of a householder. Thus, I began pager practice.

As my pager practice settled, I began to notice mind states familiar to me from zazen. First there was aversion. Why was I being paged all? There was anger at the existence of pagers in general, and the one attached to my belt in particular. Pleasant mind states arose after being paged with good news. There was also attachment to consider, the pathological inability of going anywhere without the pager, even if I need not carry it at the moment. Next, there was picking and choosing. Should I set the pager on vibrate or audible mode, and which ring tone? Should I save some messages? I deleted them all, and then lost my focus, with monkey pager-mind ruminating about pages lost and those yet to come.

As time continued, it slowly dawned on me that pager practice is simply a manifestation of modern householder practice: the reality of children, work, and cleaning up the dishes. These commitments, gladly shouldered as obligations of being in the world, bring intrusions fused with practice opportunities to a householder. The pager beeps, focus returns!

Two Views of Self

"Of course there is no us and them
But them they do not think the same"

Illumination
Gogol Bordello

How to observe the first vow in the face of violence? "All beings without number, I vow to liberate" What should be our response to suicide bombers, torturers, and those who deliberately inflict violence on others? Clearly, if you sit on the zafu, you cannot do violence. But what of those who do not sit? How to engage them is not clear, aside from simply being in the moment. What is a Zen response to the janjaweed in Darfur?

Empty

Empty mind

Empty day

Empty zazen

Strike the student bell

Ten thousand things are here!

Change of Season

Autumn tastes like change and transformation. Leaves fall, the plants and squirrels sleep. We plant bulbs and hope for blossoms in spring. Zazen takes on a serious tenor, sitting like a mountain awaiting a blanket of snow. I take out my warm under-robe for sitting in the zendo. No hibernation for Mu!

Snowflakes fall within the smell of incense
Can you smell spring?

Falling Away

Autumn is here, and the Japanese maple outside is bright red. The leaves fall away one by one, and litter the grass. Zazen takes on a crisp new hue in the cold morning air. The family asleep upstairs, a sunrise outside, and a cat on the windowsill. Breathe in... breathe out.... fall away.

Householder Zazen

As a householder, finding space for zazen is hard. The distractions and demands of family and work make it difficult. Most teachers recommend setting aside a special space for zazen, uncluttered, light, and free of distractions. I suspect they have no children, nor live in a smaller house. Perhaps fitting, my cushion and mat are in nestled in a family area, facing a curtained window, with my back to the scattered toys. My children's schedule changes, and so! The time set aside for zazen is taken by a different obligation. Ho! Time to beg for new space.

Energy in the Zendo

There is nothing like sitting in the zendo the morning after sesshin has ended. At the zendo I attend, many participants gather the after sesshin ends for informal sitting and a brunch. The first time I joined a sitting during this period, although I had not attended sesshin, I was stunned. Electric air, a clear stillwater lake at sunrise. What dharma transmission is this?

Zazen And The Suffering Of Others

Can the zazen of one person help others who are suffering?

We don't really know until we see for ourselves

The first vow is liberating all beings. It's practice begins by sitting on the cushion, with our own suffering, attachments, aversions, and hungers. We teach by our actions in the world, including the time we dedicate to zazen. Seeing this, or simply finding the stillpoint when with one who is suffering, demonstrates what is possible. It is transmission, in a very small way, that all are endowed with enlightenment, here and now.

What is the brush of a cupped hand on a cheek, a fully attentive gaze, a softly spoken "I'm so sorry"?