Of Gods and Men

For years now I remember and think about the koan where the monk climbs to the top of the flagpole and he's asked, Well, what do you do now? Daiho Hilbert in his dharma talks always came back to that koan. And that same koan is told in a number of different ways throughout Buddhist and Zen literature. Sometimes, for instance, the monk is hanging on a branch of a flimsy bush at the edge of a cliff. He's holding onto to the branch for dear life. If he climbs back up to the top, a hungry lion is waiting for him. If he lets go, he dies. So what does he do? I recommend watching this French movie Of Gods and Men for a way to consider this koan. It's the best movie about the life of the spiritual practice I have ever watched. A community of Christian monks in contemporary Algeria are confronted with the Mujaheddin on one side, the corrupt government on the other.Their practice has carried them to the very top of the flagpole, to the edge of the precipice. What do they do?

The Practice of the Eightfold Path is a creative act.

Below, like the title of this blogpost, are quotations from Stephen Batchelor's memoir The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. I highly recommend the book. Batchelor is also a photographer. I found this one from his collection "Sospel's Shadows"-- Bobby Kankin

"Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to imagine things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama’s teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world." —page 181, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor

"Nonetheless, old habits die hard. In my quest for the historic Buddha, I still keep catching myself in search of a perfect person: one how can do no wrong, whose every thought, word, and deed springs from infallible understanding. But Gotama cannot be perfect because he is not God. He did not exempt himself when he said that all hings are impermanent, suffering, unreliable, and contingent. He tried to respond as best he could to the situation at hand. When I try to imagine myself in his present moment, I hae to cancel everything I know abobut what happened to the centures that separate his time from my mine. He had no inkling of the worldwide spread of Buddhism that would occur after his death. In the fractious environment of his time, he did not know whether he, his community, or his teaching would survive even for another day." —page 186, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor

Thanks, Mr. Li Po

Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain

The birds have vanished from the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

--Li Po (aka Li Bai, Li Bo, etc)
Chinese poet, 701-762

The poem is from the beautiful little book from Shambala Press entitled The Poetry of Zen selected and translated/adapted by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton.

Emptiness & Form

Dear All, sometimes for my Tuesday night dharma talks, I jot down notes and sometimes these even become whole pieces. Like an essay. I keep them on my computer but I never get around to sharing them. I have excuses. Oh well. That's not right. I'm a writer. So as time allows I'll add my dharma talks here when I have them fully developed. Thank you.

  --Bobby Kankin Byrd

 Rio Grande Gorge Enso (see note)

This dharma talk, in a different form, was given April 19, 2011

Here’s something the Buddha said: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.” If you’ve had the opportunity to practice at the Clear Mind Zen Temple, you’ll see this statement on a nice piece of embroidery hanging on the wall hanging next to the altar as you round the far corner during kinhin. It’s a nice flag for remembering yourself.

Tonight I want to talk about the two fundamental laws, the central paradox, or koan, through which we come to understand our true nature. These are one, the Law of the Relative, and two, the Law of the Absolute. These two laws are expressed in our very breath, our bodies, our mind. Right here, right now. We say it this way in the Heart Sutra—form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Zen uses silly stories and sutras to redirect our mind, to confuse us, to make us think differently, to make us set aside thinking. But these stories—the riddles, koans, sutras whatever—these should never be considered “the truth.” They only suggest the truth, point to the truth. Like the old Zen saying, they are like fingers pointing at the moon, but they are not the moon. If the sutras or the stories or the koans are the truth, then we would be bound to the law of the relative, to “the this and the that,” to the yes and the no. Truth would exist outside of us, over there. This is the dilemma of most Christian thinking, which tends to be very dualistic. Thus, the Bible becomes the word of God. A Zen practitioner would say, No, the Bible is not the word of God, but the Bible is full of good stories, sacred stories, through which we can study ourselves, gates through which we can perhaps experience our true nature.

So how do we make stories and commentary that point beyond the relative to the absolute, toward the inexpressible? No, that’s not right. Let me say it this way: how do we make stories and commentary that reveal the emptiness—the Absolute—in form? In that sandwich you’re having for lunch. In that broken down man who came up to you to ask for a dollar. In the breath that you take.

Many teachers talk about water, the way it flows downhill toward the sea, and then it evaporates and circles back again. Or the waves in the sea, each of which—when viewed up close—has an individual identity, but which quickly melts back down into the body of the sea. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi talked about his journey to Yosemite and witnessing the waterfall there. Each drop of water, as it tumbled down off that magnificent cliff, became a separate entity, just for a second, and then, when it hit the pool, it once again became one with the pool and the river below.

It’s important to note that in the metaphors that teachers and the sutras use, “emptiness” is not “nothing.” “Nothingness” is not “nothing.” These words simply don’t work, but they are what we have. We need to re-think our understanding of these words. Emptiness, the way it’s expressed in the Heart Sutra, has no boundaries, it contains everything. For some the word “God” might be useful here but only if you’re able to insure that you understand “God” not as something other than you. “God” or “Absolute” or “Emptiness” or whatever word you use—it must contain us all. It must contain everything. But without boundaries.  

So there’s the famous story about the two monks and the 6^th Patriarch.

The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks started an argument. One said the flag moved, the other said the wind moved; they argued back and forth but could not agree who was right. The Sixth Patriarch Hui-Neng heard the two monks arguing back and forth, and he said, "It is not the wind that moves, it is not the flag that moves; it is your minds that move." "Oh," they said, and they were then able to sit there in peace.

The monks were arguing about yes and no, about the ying and the yang, about the right and the wrong. They believed in the words they were using. Flag. Wind. Me. You. These were their truths. The 6^th Patriarch pointed to their mind—the wind and the flag are a function of our mind. Like the Buddha said, we create the world in our minds. So for us to experience the absolute, to experience our true nature, then we must redirect our gaze and discover our true nature. Our Buddha nature. This is the practice of Zazen. We let go of our boundaries and we experience our True Self, our True Nature—little drops of water falling into the great pool of emptiness.

Thank you. 

Bobby Kankin

Note: I took this photo on Lee's and my journey up to Taos, NM in mid-July, 2011. Just as the highway enters the gorge north of Española and then the little town of Velarde, we pulled over the side of the road to pee. I climbed up a little arroyo for privacy and there was this rock carrying the pictograph of circle. New Mexico can be magical like that. The cactus--here with its miraculous blossoms--was a gift from my daugther and her husband Ed for my 69th birthday. /bb

Poem by Ryokan

I was cleaning out my office at home. It's a mess. Books and CDs and lost ideas. It always takes me a long time because my mind wanders like a housefly. And I stop to visit with old books of poems. Like this poem I opened to in Between the Floating Mist (White Pine Press, 1992) by Ryokan and translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. The poem brought me back to myself. Have a good weekend. Sit strong. --Bobby Kankin Byrd

The flower does not invite the butterfly
and the butterfly has no intention of visiting the flower.
But when the flowers bloom the butterfly comes
and when the butterfly comes the flowers bloom.
I don't know these others,
and they don't know me either,
but we are all followers of the way.

Evening Gatha & Everyday Life

Evening Gatha

Let me respectfully remind you
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken.
Take heed.
This night your days are diminished by one.
Do not squander your life.

●

My practice has resonated with the Evening Gatha since I heard the Ino at the Still Mind Zendo in New York City chant it with so much heart to conclude evening services. It’s a powerful reminder for strong practice, both for sitting on the zafu and for doing our daily tasks of life—whatever is in front of us to do. The next step. Breathing in and breathing out. Just being here, this is enough.

I found the nice Enso (“circle” in Japanese, symbolizing the Absolute) to illustrate the Gatha at the website of Converging Paths Meditation Center in Sandusky, Ohio. A bow to them and their practice.

I’m delighted to be home in the desert sunshine. I thank you all for your practice. I hope to see you soon.

—Bobby Kankin Byrd

Sitting Still Mind in NYC

Still Mind Zen Zendo @ 37 West 37th, 6th Floor, NYC

Many thanks to Harvey Daiho Hilbert Roshi, Kathryn Soku Shin Masary, Mauricio Rosas and Polly Perez for stepping in for me the last two weeks. This next Tuesday the 24th we will not have services but come May 31, the day after Memorial Day, we’ll be back at our zafus sitting strong and quiet. I look forward to sitting with you all again. I thank you all for your practice.

Last night I sat with the Still Mind Zen Sangha. I enjoy going to different Zendos and visiting with different Sanghas and practitioners. Everything is different and everything is the same. Sort of anyway. The SMZ is a spacious Zendo up on the 6th floor on West 17th Street two blocks from Broadway. The Sangha members were happy to welcome me. And it turned out that one, Bruce Kennedy, is a business acquaintance. He gave me a big hug. I felt at home.

It was a cool wet night—it’s been raining here for two days—so the windows were open, the city sounds drifted up to give some music to our zazen and a breeze refreshed us. Their teachers are Janet Jiryu Abels and Gregory Hosho Abels in the White Plum Lineage of Maezumi, and their teacher is Roshi Robert Jinsen Kennedy—a Jesuit priest and psychoanalyst who received transmission from Bernie Glassman. Jinsen Kennedy is respected for his work in showing how Zen and Christian practice, if viewed rightly, are pieces of the same cloth.

Tuesday nights are their primary nights for sitting, and they filled the place up with 30 or wordless Zensters. They don’t bow as much as we do; they sit toward the center one time and the next time they face the wall; their kinhin is half Soto-slow, half Rinzai-fast; the chanting is sparser than ours and of course their translations are different. I just did everything that the lady to the right was doing. How hard is that? Since the two Abels were out of town, one of their primary students Marisa Cespedes gave the dharma talk.  She spoke about contentment—accepting your life as you are and being complete with who you are. The cornerstone of her talk was Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s statement “Just being alive is enough.” Being right here is great good fortune. Breathing this breath and typing these words. There’s no other place to be, no other person to be. Later, going home on the subway (the N train to 42nd to change to the 1 train) I remembered talking to Mike Immo Dretsch about the practice of home zazen and hearing sounds—wife in the kitchen, a car going by, the neighbor’s dog barking—and not attaching meaning to those sounds. Simply letting them be sounds. If we attach meaning, then our mind follows off on a thought. The next step is to hear words—say, from a partner or a friend or an enemy even—simply for what they mean. Don’t attach the baggage of personality to hearing those words spoken to you.

When I left that evening it was 9pm and I realized that I was putting on my shoes about the same time our Sangha members at the UUCEP were taking off their shoes. That made me happy. From a note this morning I heard that my friend David Gallardo was there with his son Alejandro. David and I used to drive every Monday every to sit at the Las Cruces Zen Center. We became good friends, going back and forth. He and his family have since moved to Tacoma, WA. He had great El Paso stories about his growing up. I miss him.

Sunday morning I plan to sit with the Village Zendo and hear Enkyo O’Hara Roshi speak.