Zen Buddhism El Paso / Juarez--Sitting January 23

Yes, folks, we'll be sitting tomorrow, January 30th, 330pm. I hope you can make it. And I hope you've enjoyed this day.

SWIMMING WITH THE FISHES
(AKA a two Ha! Morning)

This morning before my meditation--coffee in hand, a bit of snow on the ground--I was standing at the back window and listening to the finches and sparrows at the bird feeder. Also I was scanning through Zen Flesh, Zen Bones in search of a story I’ve been thinking about. I wanted to make a blog entry for our blogspot. That’s what I do on Thursday or Friday mornings. It’s my pleasure. I didn’t find the story. Instead I happened on the story which concludes the book, the story which answers in one way the question, What is Zen? It's a story about fishes. "Ha! That’s a cool story," I thought. "I’ll put that in the blog." I finished up my coffee and went to sit. I lit the candle and the incense and, in reciting the San Ge Rai Mon, the Three Refuges, I was startled awake by the first:

I take refuge in the Buddha—together with all beings, may I understand through my body this cosmic life leading to the incommensurate awakened mind.

"Ha! It's like the story of the fishes, now I see." Then I sat on my zafu and stared at the wall. The wall hadn’t changed a bit. So what is Zen? Here’s how the story about swimming with the fishes explains it—

Inayat Khan tells a Hindu story of a fish who went to a queen fish and asked: “I have always heard about the sea, but what is this sea? Where is it?

The queen fish explained: “You live, move, and have your being in the sea. The sea is within you and without you, and you are made of the sea, and you will end in the sea. The sea surrounds you as your own being.”

--page 211, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Zen Buddhism El Paso / Juarez--Sitting January 23

We'll be sitting tomorrow, Saturday the 23rd of January, 330pm, at 711 Robinson. Hope you can join us.

Sunrise over the Pacific Ocean (NASA)

Back in the day when I used to drive up from El Paso to the Las Cruces Zen Center to sit on my ass and stare at a wall for an hour, Harvey SoDaiho Hilbert used to talk about that damned koan with the monk atop a 100 foot pole. You sit on meditate and you study and you get to the top of the pole. But what's the next step? There are several like-minded stories in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones where, for example, the hero is hanging over a cliff for dear life. A hungry tiger is waiting for her if she climbs back to the top and she falls to her death if she lets go. She has to make a decision. Well, of course, the answer is to let go. But who, for God’s sake, wants to let go? You can understand the answer intellectually and speak or write it, but that’s not nearly enough. You really got to let go.

So I remembered all of this when I was reading Philippe Coupe's commentary on Dogen's Fukanzazengi in Simply Sitting. Coupey is talking about the two kinds of “faith”—the faith of the small mind that says if I do that then something good (or bad) will happen; and faith of the big mind, the universal mind, which arises out of the emptiness of the universe itself and simply allows for us to let go:

Not long ago there was an interesting news story about a sailor who was crossing the Pacific Ocean on a freighter. He was at the bow of the ship when he was overcome by a wave and thrown overboard. It was dark out and no one noticed that he had fallen into the sea. It wasn’t until nine hours later that his cabin-mate realized it and informed the captain. Nine hours is a long time. But the captain decided to go back to see if they could find him, or what was left of him…if he hadn’t been eaten by sharks! Miraculously, eighteen hours later, they found the sailor. He was floating on the waves, sleeping peacefully atop the swells. They woke him up with the foghorn. He opened his eyes and saw the boat. They threw him a ladder and he climbed onto the bridge.

“How did you do it?” asked the captain.

“Since I couldn’t get anywhere by swimming,” replied the sailor, who was, obviously in the middle of the ocean, “I decided there was nothing to do but float on my back and give myself over completely to the powers of the ocean.”

Also apropos, Harvey even kept a little plastic bathroom ducky on the altar for a while as an example of how to live the life. The duck floats, like the sailor in the Coupey story, atop the waves and, come rain or shine, gives herself over to the powers of the water. Of course I didn’t like that little ducky. It was too cute and, besides, I didn’t want to let go. But some time or another we got to let go. We have no other choice.

I hope you're well.
Bobby

Zen Buddhism El Paso / Juarez--Sitting January 16

Yes, folks, we'll be sitting and staring at the wall, same time, same station: 330 pm at 711 Robinson. Hope you can join us. In the meantime, last week during tea I read the following eulogy that Father Robert Kennedy read at the funeral services for Taizan Maezumi Roshi. I thought it something we could all think about as the Both Sides / No Sides Sangha begins our New Year. 


Maezumi Roshi and American Zen


Below the photo is the Afterword, or concluding story, in American Zen Bones: Maezumi Roshi Stories. The little book was put together by Philomene Long, a student of Taizan Maezumi Roshi, and it's a collection of stories about interactions between Maezumi and his students, Philomene included. Coming to the U.S. in 1956, Maezumi is one of the three or four grandfathers of American Zen, greatly influencing our practice and, through his own teachings and the teachings of his Dharma successors, how we perceive Zen and its transmission from Japan to here. The obvious model for the little book is iconic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. AZB is certainly not a replacement for that book. It's uneven and has a taste of self-service about it. That said, it's a fun book, with bunches of interesting stories about Maezumi, his teaching methods and his communication with students. If you're like me, it's a wonderful book to keep in your library in the bathroom, ready for the Head Librarian. But this last story, which served as the Afterword, was very interesting to me and worth the price of the book. If you talk with Zensters for any length of time, you'll hear discussions about what American Zen will look like. Maezumi's take on this subject is very interesting. But a word of caution--what does not change is Zazen. Zazen is the bedrock of our practice. Father Robert Kennedy (the author of this eulogy) recalls, "Maezumi Roshi was so adamant in his insistence that we sit well that he advised us not to sit at all if we were not attentive to form." And it's said that he carried the stick for a reason.

This [eulogy] was originally delivered as a tribute 

by Father Robert E. Kennedy, S.J., a Catholic priest and Zen master

at the funeral of Maezumi Roshi, August 27, 1995.

Distinguished guests and dear friends. It is my pleasure to relate to you my last and most memorable conversation with Maezumi Roshi here in Los Angeles.

Maezumi Roshi told me that Buddhism today differs fundamentally from the Buddhism of the time of Sakyamuni Buddha.

“Surely not fundamentally different,” I asked the Roshi.

“YES,” Maezumi answered, “fundamentally different.”

Maezumi Roshi said that Buddhism in Japan today with its strong ascetic emphasis was nowhere known in the time of Buddha.

More than that, Maezumi Roshi said that not only can Buddhism change fundamentally but it must change change fundamentally. In every century and every culture Buddhism must find new forms to teach the people standing out in front of them now. It is unthinkable to have a static Buddhism in a changing world. It is unthinkable for Buddhism to imitate old forms of teaching and living, no matter how precious those forms may be.

More than that, Buddhism must not only leave its old forms of expression, Buddhism must leave Buddhism itself in order to enter the Field of Blessings, the Field of Blessings that transcends every human insight and every religious civilization.

More than that, Maezumi Roshi said that Buddhism must be open to the non-Buddhist. Self-giving knows no boundaries, self-giving knows no end.

And then to my delight Maezumi personalized his teaching. He said how happy he was that I, a Catholic priest, came to Buddhism to study and to learn. And he said how happy he was that Glassman Roshi had prepared me to stay and teach.

For me this is the spirit of Buddhism: subtle and generous and open to the stranger. And for me this was Maezumi Roshi’s spirit--subtle and generous and open to the stranger.

More than that, Maezumi Roshi knew there was no stranger.

Maezumi Roshi, may I bid you farewell in a poem of your own language that you once said you appreciated and surely matches your spirit.

Kudakute mo
Kudakute mo ari
Miso no tsuki


Though it is broken and broken again
Still it is still there
The moon in the water

Zen Buddhism El Paso / Juarez--Sitting in the New Year!

This Saturday, January 9, we'll be back in the zaddle, 330pm, 711 Robinson. Hope you can be there. Below is a bit of a commentary by monk Philippe Coupey in his book ZEN: SIMPLY SITTING. The book is a gathering of dharma talks about Dogen's Fukanzazengi, which is translated as "The Universal Guide on the Correct Practice of Zazen." Coupey discusses Dogen's little essay line by line. A good book. By the way, he quotes a poem by Cold Mountain, or Hanshan, a famous Chinese poet who lived in the caves of the mountain where he took his name. I love his poems, and I first ran into them in poet Gary Snyder's freer translations. Thus, I've typed the Snyder translation of the same Hanshan poem below the other. Enjoy.

And Happy New Year!



Dogen tells us that zazen is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Reality can’t be anywhere but here, right where you are. Reality isn’t yesterday or tomorrow. That’s illusion. Reality is a succession of heres and nows. Reality is what is. It is original nature.

Hanshan was a Chinese poet who practiced zazen in the 7th century. As is often the case in Buddhist history, he took his name from the mountain where he lived. Here is a poem by him about reality in which he talks about the mountain, the valley, himself, and, finally, the present moment:

Strange is the way that leads to Hanshan.
No ruts or hoof prints can be seen.
Valley winds into valley, peak rises above peak.
The grass sparkles with dew, and the pines whisper in the wind.
Don’t you understand?
Reality asks the shadows for directions.

--p55, Zen: Simply Sitting

●

And now the Snyder translation of the same poem. Except for the last two lines, the Snyder poem is clearly the better. The last two lines, however, makes me wonder if Snyder lost the point of the poem. It makes me want to look at other translations. I always wonder about translations, how simply a misplaced word can lead a person off in the other direction, huh?

The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?

Zen Buddhism El Paso / Juarez--the end of 2009

Our schedule for the rest of the year: Tomorrow, Saturday the 26th, we will be sitting as usual--330pm, 711 Robinson, but next week, the 2nd day of 2010, we will not be sitting. I hope to see you all tomorrow, but if not, I hope you are all having a wonderful holidays, full of joy and reflection, and I hope that in the New Year we will all sit strong and live our lives mindfully.



Joshu Sasaki Roshi once told the story of Siddhartha’s birth--the baby born to a King who would one day become the Buddha--and in the telling he told about the prophesies and miracles that surrounded the birth of this very special baby. And when he was finished telling the story he giggled and said, “Well, of course, it didn’t happen like this.” He paused then, and a few seconds later added, “But let’s see what the story is telling us.” Then for at least an hour he talked about the very human and spiritual meanings that are the foundation of that story.

Every Christmas I remember what the Roshi said--“let’s see what the story is telling us”--and it has long helped me think about and consider the story of the birth, life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Our culture here along the U.S./Mexico border, as well as our so-called Western civilization, is saturated with the story. It’s part of the way we think because it’s part of our mythos (in the old sense of that word) and our language. As practitioners of Zen I believe it’s of no use to argue with the story, just as it’s of really no use to accept the story as fact. It’s best to simply listen to the story and to sit with its meaning--the birth of Jesus, his teaching, his death and resurrection. What does this mean to us? Individually and as a people? In Zen our only fundamentalism is sitting Zazen, the place where the gate swings open between the relative and absolute worlds.

I wish you all a Happy Holidays. And for the New Year, please join me in lighting a candle and a stick of incense for our friends and neighbors--indeed, our sisters and brothers--in Juárez. May the New Year bring them peace and justice.

Zen Buddhism El Paso / Juarez (12/19/2009)

“The entire universe shines and preaches the Dharma.”
—the Chinese poet Wanshi

Join us tomorrow if you can: Saturday the 19th, 330pm, 711 Robinson. We'll be doing the same boogie-woogie. Funny how that doesn't change much and people still come. Last week we read aloud the FUKANZAZENGI by Dogen, recognized as the founder of the Soto Lineage of Zen. The text seems so transparent and simple on first reading, but as you read it and reread it you find yourself diving into a very deep pool.


Below is probably Dogen's most well-known quote. It's a foundation of Zen understanding--

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.

And while reading Dogen's biography on Wikipedia I found his death poem which he wrote a few days before he caught the boat to the other shore--

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky.
A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.
Hah!
Entire body looks for nothing.
Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.

I hope to see you, but if I don’t I wish you all a wonderful holidays. The Winter Solstice is only a few days away and the year will be changing anew. The older I get the more I find that these same forces pull at my heart. May the near year bring each of you peace, good health and spiritual well-being.

--Bobby

Zen Buddhism El Paso Texas (12/12/2009)

It's good to be back on the zafu in El Paso. I should write a song. But I won't. We will be sitting this Saturday, December 12, at 330pm at 711 Robinson. The same old, the same old. El mismo, el mismo. I hope you can join us.

A few weeks back, during the Thanksgiving Weekend when I was coming home from one business trip, getting ready for another and enjoying my family all at the same time, I had wanted to put something on our blog about giving thanks relevant to what we do when we sit and stare at the wall and then study the dharma, either separately in our own homes or together as members of the Sangha in our Zendo with such great sun light. And so I remembered these two little bits of text that I'm pasting below. I am also pasting a couple of the recent magnificent photographs from the Hubble Telescope, that remarkable instrument wandering around in the great beyond and sending us messages about this vast universe in which we live. [See notes at the bottom of this post for captions for the photographs.] Thinking about this post, it simply occurred to me that those photographs help illustrate the two verses below, especially the first.


The first is "The Verse for Studying the Dharma" which is repeated in our strand of the Soto lineage before a dharma talk. I did not include this verse in the Both Sides / No Sides sutra sheets because we were short on space, and, besides, at the time I thought the language a bit extravagant for my tastes. However, the more I sit the more I come to realize the wisdom of the verse. We should truly give thanks for the opportunity to practice the Dharma.

▲

The Verse for Studying the Dharma

The Dharma, incomparably profound and minutely subtle,
is rarely encountered in hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas,
we can no hear it, listen to it, study and hold it,
may we understand the tatagatha’s true meaning.

The second verse is one of my favorite poems from the last century, one I've pasted in an email before, but I wanted to copy into the blog. It's Philip Whalen's whimsical "Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis." As I said in that email, the poem is one of my signposts for getting me to go sit on a zafu somewhere. I remember where I first read it--sitting on the floor in the stacks of the library at the University of Arizona. A long time ago. For me anyway, but not for these stars and galaxies in the vastness of where we live.

▲

Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis

I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick

splashed picture--bug, leaf,
caricature of Teacher

on paper held together now by little more than ink
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world & several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it--
Cheered as it whizzed by--
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.

▲▲

NOTES ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS

The first Hubble photograph I found at the New York Times website. Its caption reads: "The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, took this image of hot gas fleeing a dying star 3,800 light-years away in the Scorpius constellation. A so-called planetary nebula, it is also known as the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The star itself, once about five times as massive as the Sun, is some 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest known in the galaxy. In what amounts to a kind of galactic recycling, the lost gas, enriched by elements like oxygen, nitrogen and carbon produced by the formerly massive star, will form the stuff for future stars."

The second Hubble photograph I found here. The caption for this one reads: "The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across."