Felicidades to Susan Feeny

I’m delighted to announce that our Sangha member Susan Feeny will be receiving Jukai-─taking the vows, the recognition of her practice-─from Sydney Musai Walter Roshi of the Prajna Zendo outside Santa Fe. To take the vows she must first sew her black rakusu, following the ancient pattern diagrammed above. She’s an artist. It will be a snap! The ceremony will probably be in September, although the date is not finalized. Susan will keep us posted.

Susan is a long-time practitioner of the Dharma, having studied with Genpo and others from the Maesumi Lineage. Since I’ve known her,she has regularly attended sesshins and events with us and the Order of Clear Mind Zen, but the bulk of her practice has been with other sanghas. She became attending our services when we were at the Unitarian Center, and she has been a regular ever since. She didn’t want to become a “member” of our Sangha. She just wanted to come sit with us. She loves sitting and practicing with others who are committed to the dharma. That was fine. We should be so lucky to have three or four more such “non-members” be such good members.

Susan is a steady presence in our Sangha. She adds by her quiet and steady presence, she adds with her thoughtful discussion, and she adds by her balanced nature. Once before services (we were still at the UU Community), I asked her if she could gather some flowers for the altar. The desert garden out front was filled with flowering Texas Ranger sage and desert willows. She did so with such delight, I asked if she would bring flowers on a regular basis. That’s been well over a year now, and when she’s in town, she never forgets the flowers. They are always beautiful and thoughtfully arranged.

I wish to congratulate Susan now for her decision and for her practice, and we look forward to celebrate her Jukai when she returns with her rakusu hanging around her neck. We’ll di the Both Sides / No Sides Sangha usual. A vegetarian potluck!

Eating

Last Sunday I attended services at the Village Zendo. In her teisho Pat Enkyo O’Hara Roshi talked about how we can help one another in our practice, how we can honor one another and practice compassion. She told a story that went something like this: an old monk lived in the mountains doing zazen, gardening and all the other chores of being alive. He had one student, a young man who had come to live with him. One morning, after zazen and breakfast, they were working in the garden. They saw two birds fighting over a frog. The frog was wounded and suffering, but the birds kept fighting. The old man did nothing. He just watched. The young man, anguished, turned to the old monk.

He asked, “Why does this have to happen?”

The monk said, “It happens only for you.”  

Eating Dinner Alone in New York City

Glenn Powers prepared this veggie paella for a sangha potluck in February. Good stuff.

I’m in New York City for a month, lucky to have some time to read and write. The dilemma is that, without Lee here, I need to pay attention to all the food I eat. The responsibility is mine. Needless to say. I miss Lee. The habits of our 40 something years together. At home, although many times I cook, she's usually the cook, and I'm the cleaner-upper. Besides, the conversation is fun, the food delicious. All the ingredients of our lives together. A true well-seasoned feast. The practice here, though, is good, although monkish in a way. I remind myself each meal to give thanks for the food. I use the prayer that I've pasted below, and it reminds me that the food comes to my table through the lives and the hands of many beings. In fact, the more I understand it, I’m beginning to understand that it’s the whole universe collaborating to feed me. To feed each of us. And so I’m learning to give true heartfelt thanks. It’s taken 70 years.

A note on the prayer. It’s an adaptation of a meal prayer my friend Rob Dowtin sent me (see the second rendition). Rob found the prayer in one of Brad Warner’s books, so its probably a translation of something from his teacher Nishijima. Private practice is just that: private. And I'm always fiddling with words. So I reworked the prayer to fit my own understanding, sense of language and needs.
--Bobby Kankin

●

This food nourishes our lives and our practice,
A gift from the universe, arriving at our table
From the efforts of all sentient beings past and present.
We offer this meal to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha,
And to all life in every realm of existence.
With this food we pray that all sentient beings
Be sufficiently nourished in their body, mind and spirit.

●

And the prayer from Rob via Brad.

This food comes from the efforts of all sentient beings past and present,
And is medicine for nourishment of our Practice.
We offer this meal of many virtues and tastes to the Buddha,
Dharma, and Sangha, and to all life in every realm of existence.
May all sentient beings in the universe be sufficiently nourished.

Another Question for Old Joshu

Do the dead have Buddha Nature?

This question popped into my mind while we sat staring at the wall last night. I remembered it and then went back to wall staring. Later, remembering it, I thought it was a frivolous, silly question, but then I remembered Joshu's answer about the dog. Maybe it's not such a silly question. Mu. 

--Bobby Kankin

●

So I found the image above on The Empty Page blog managed by Steve Naegele. His description is more interesting than mine: 

The first character in the above painting is the character for “Mu.” the two character taken together are “Mu Shin” and refer to the empty  mind of Zen or sometimes Buddhism in general. This is a painting which hangs on my wall. I got it in San Francisco Chinatown one day about 15 years ago  while in a card/paper shop which I often visited/ I lfirst learned at that time that the shop would be closing and the old man there would write calligraphy for you for a price. I asked him to write MuShin which he did for $15.00 ($7.50 a character), but he obviously was not familiar with the Buddhist meaning and muttered aloud about whatever for someone would want the characters for “no heart.” He still wrote beautiful characters and I enjoy seeing this everyday.

Just Sitting @ Both Sides No Sides (April 2012)

For a while now I’ve been tinkering with this blognote. I want to give persons interested in Zen practice in El Paso a taste of what we do here at the Both Sides / No Sides Zen Community.

I’m the leader of our community—Bobby Byrd, and my Dharma name is Kankin, which means Sutra Reader. Like so many dharma names, it comes from one of the chapters in Dogen’s Shobengenzo. Our practice is rooted in the lineage of Matsuoka Roshi, and it came to me through Harvey Daiho Hilbert Roshi, the founder of the Order of Clear Mind Zen in Las Cruces, and from whom I received my dharma name. I hang a brown rakusu around my neck, which means I am a novice priest. Two years ago, April 3 2010, I received the rakusu during the Shukke Tokudo Ceremony. But I don’t like the word “priest”—it resonates with too many confusing memories of my growing up—so I don’t use it unless I have to. Like here. Also, I’m leery of the word “Zen” these days. It’s become a commercial word. All sorts of things are “Zen.” Like tea. Restaurants. Ice cream. I like better the phrase “dharma practice” which Stephen Batchelor uses in his writing. But we’d not get many google hits if we inserted Dharma Practice instead of Zen. In my life I am a poet (my blog is here), and my wife Lee and I are co-publishers of Cinco Puntos Press here in El Paso. We’ve lived here in the same house since 1978, and this year soon I will be 70 years old. As we said growing up in Memphis: “Holy shit!”

As of now, April 2012, the No Sides / Both Sides Zen Community conducts two services during the week—one, the Sunday services 10am; two, 7pm Tuesday night. Both are at 2709 Louisville in the Five Points Central area of El Paso. This is Lee’s and my home, the place where we’ve lived for 34 years. It’s just simpler to use our home. Other places didn’t work out. It’s free here, and we are not disrupting anybody else’s life. So we thank Lee for the opportunity to sit here. It’s a nice place. It’s homey but it opens up like one of those robo-toys into a nice place to practice together. Perhaps in the future we’ll find more formal digs. But for now we’re home.

The services usually take one hour and 30 minutes, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. Each is rooted in 40 to 50 minutes zazen practice, but we do chanting of sutras before and after zazen. I consider our sutras as tools for our practice (or as sangha member Susan Feeney called them, “instructions”). They are not religious doctrine, and you can pick and choose what, if any of the ritual, you want to participate in. Anthropologists are welcome. But we do ask that you practice zazen with us. That’s what we’re there for. And if you want instruction on how to sit, we have folks who can help. 

Tuesday nights we sit in the office that sits behind the house. To get to our Tuesday zendo, you go through the gate on the left of the house and follow the driveway back. It’s one of those old detached garages, 1923, river stone walls, rickety roof. Lee and I had it remodeled in the 1980s for my office. Our neighbor Arturo Alemán (now deceased) plastered the wall and lay in the red Mexican clay tile floor. Chuck Telehany framed the ceiling and windows. A fragile place really but it doesn’t feel fragile. It’s quiet. Like a cave almost. A comforting place with special ambiance. It has a special feeling for me, full with memoires, because this has been where I write and think and daydream and sit zazen for the last 30 years. Now it’s a pleasure to sit shikantaza there with my friends. We have a small altar built by Ken Hogaku Roshi, the teacher of Daiho Hilbert, with a beautiful brass Buddha in a teaching pose (also a gift from Ken Roshi and his wife Fern Roshi). Our Tuesday zendo is a quiet place in the evening, the bell resounding on the stone walls.

Tuesdays we are usually not too populated.  Three or four of us. Sometimes five. We are always welcoming newcomers, but Tuesdays nights are a difficult time for some. Unless there are newcomers, we have one forty minute sit so we can really settle into zazen. If newcomers do show up, we go back to the normal schedule: two 20 or 25 minute sits with a kinhin. We have our regular services—sutra chanting before and after our zazen, a tea service and I talk a little bit during tea. People ask questions. We talk about practice. When we’re done, we collect the cups, chant the Four Great Vows and blow out the candles. Recently we’ve been going down to Kiki’s for a late dinner. The vegetarian black bean burritos are a favorite. Maybe we share a pitcher of beer.

In early March only Loretta Lopez and I were sitting staring at the wall in silence. Like birds on a wire. During tea, Loretta and I talked about our own home practice. It was nice. Loretta is a double-dipper—Sundays she goes to St. Albans Episcopal down the street. She likes the music and the ritual there. And the Lenten Season—it was that time of year—is important to her. It was good to hear her talk about it. But Tuesdays she saves for zazen with us. Then the next Tuesday only Rob and Polly showed up. It was a beautiful spring night. After chanting the Heart Sutra we paraded outside in kinhin (walking meditation) and did our zazen on the wood deck. A few early spring bugs, but it was nice to be in the breeze and the neighborhood sounds (cars, dogs, kids, the grackles and mockingbirds—everybody getting reading for sleep) as the evening light faded into darkness. 

Sundays are different but the same. We usually have between six and eight Sangha members, sometimes more. We sit in the dining room of the house where we can easily accommodate up to 12. To enter the Sunday zendo, go through the gate on the left of the house, and enter the house through the kitchen, the first door on the right.

The dining room where we sit is surrounded by big old-fashioned windows, so the room is bright with sunlight. It takes some work to get the room ready.  Some folks come early to help. We move the table and chairs; we tote the cushions (aka zafus and zabutons) in from the office; likewise the bells, our Buddha, candle, and other paraphernalia; and we move the big altar (another gift from master Zen carpenter Ken Roshi McGuire) into place. Susan Feeney brings flowers for the altar. People come one by one, say hello and talk some. At 10am the Ino rings the bell and the room goes silent. It’s a magical feeling, that sudden silence in the bright light of day. Sangha members are standing in front of their cushions, their hands in gassho. I light the candle, silently we repeat the Prayer of Atonement, those of us with rakusus hang them round our necks, and we are all ready to practice. We chant the Three Refuges and the Heart Sutra in English.

We sit facing the sangha, not toward the wall. The windows can offer too much distraction. A wandering grandkid, a neighbor in need of sugar, and always the cats. Three of them wander around our house. Usually one or two decides to sit on the window sill and stare through the glass at the crazy humans sitting cross-legged and silent, doing nothing. Perhaps it may seem like home to them, these weird people so close to each other, but not talking. Not even looking at each other. So we settle into our practice—the two 25-minute periods of zazen with a kinhin in-between, the final sutras, the incense ceremony, the tea service and dharma talk. Instead of the solid quiet of the office, the house has creaks and moans, refrigerator sound, the neighborhood waking up to Sunday morning. We don’t notice those sounds until we sit zazen and experience our breath. Oh, the bits and pieces of noise are always a surprise. And then during kinhin, our walking meditation, the old oak floor boards groan and squeak as we slowly circumambulate the zendo (aka dining-room).

After services on Sunday we all pitch in to return the house to normal. The zafus and zabutons must be carted back to the office, the altar moved back into its hiding place, the dining room table returned to its place of honor under the ceiling fan, the chairs and all the other knickknacks put back so that Lee won’t even know, if I didn’t tell her, that we’ve had a huge crowd of peculiar zensters sitting zazen in her living room. Both the preparation for services and the cleaning up afterwards is a form of “samu,” work meditation. We work together, especially afterwards, easily and with a nice energy provided for us by zazen. We can feel the difference in our energy and alertness. It’s a pleasure.

Sitting zazen with Sangha members is very important to Dharma Practice (aka Zen Practice). We are mostly householders, we have jobs and families and responsibilities, and we don’t have many opportunities to experience long periods of intensive practice. It is, as the saying goes, what it is. Thus, our home practice and our practice with Sangha—sitting there and concentrating on our breath—giving to the universe, receiving from the universe, all of our senses present—are nourishment for each other.

Zazen is the study of self, and as we study the self, the self drops away. We come to experience ourselves as expressions of the absolute, and vice versa. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

Oh, that’s what it means!

We are the membrane through which we experience what these words point to. We are the Gateless Gate.

But such useless words. Oh well.

Sit strong.
My best to you all.
Bobby Kankin Byrd

ZAIKE TOKUDO For Mike Inmo Dretsch

This Saturday (February 18th) Mike Inmo Dretsch will take the next step in his Dharma Practice--he will be ordained in the Zaike Tokudo Ceremony at the Wiregrass Zen Center in Headland, Alabama. Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi of the Silent Thunder Order will be officiating. The service schedule is detailed below in Mike Inmo's letter to me.


Several years ago Mike was in El Paso to do research at William Beaumont Medical Center and Fort Bliss. He was staying at the home of John Fortunato where our sangha was practicing at the time. Mike sat with us one Sunday and he immediately started walking down his own path of dharma practice and the study of self. For several years he studied with me personally through phone and Skype conversations, and he received the precepts at a Jukai Ceremony concluding a sesshin at the Clear Mind Zen Temple in Las Cruces. His Buddhist name became Inmo. I chose Inmo because it's rhythm has a certain manliness about it, and, if you know Mike, he has the presence of an athlete. When I first met him he was concluding his active career as a martial artist (free-style), but he still trains students. "Inmo," literally, means "it," as in "That's it!" or "Do you get it?" But the way Dogen and other Zen teachers use the term, it has come to mean reality or truth. I thought it a perfect fit for Mike.

Later he and his wife Elizabeth honored me by asking me to serve as the priest in the celebration of their marriage. Mike Inmo, as part of his practice, began the Long Leaf Zen Center at their home in Enterprise, Alabama. On the way to their wedding celebration, it was my honor to sit with them one night and to offer a teisho. 

 Mike Inmo's 1st Rakusu: Jukai January 15, 2011

From the beginning Mike Inmo knew how to bow. This might sound strange and insignificant, but usually when a person first bows in a zendo during all the rigamarole of Zen services, the bow is accompanied with all sorts of personal baggage--hesitation, embarrassment, pride, whatever we come with. It's interesting to watch over the weeks, months and years as a person's bow evolves. But with Mike Inmo it was different. From the first, he bowed with presence and authority. At the time I said to him he came from Alabama to teach us how to bow. My feeling is that he learned to bow in his practice as a martial artist--respecting his opponent, respecting the act of fighting, respecting himself. He's strengthened this understanding as he continues to sit and stare at a wall and as he shares his understanding with others. I am proud and delighted that he's taking this next step.

May he be a blessing to his family, his community, his Sangha and to us all.

To send Inmo your congratulations, his email is dr.dretsch1@yahoo.com. Here's his announcement:

Mike Inmo Dretsch to receive Zaike Tokudo

Please mark on your calendar Saturday, February 18th. I will be going through a lay ordination ceremony called Zaike Tokudo.  Zaike Tokudo means "remaining at home and attaining the Way"  versus Shukke Tokudo which means "leaving home and attaining the Way."  With Shukke Tokudo leaves home... and you often see the monk shave his or her head. Luckily, I already do this :)

Zaike Tokudo symbolizes and reinforces a path in life devoted to practice. Zaike Tokudo is the penultimate ordination prior to ordination as a novice priest (the first initiate ceremony being Jukai). In essence, I will receive official status as a disciple of the Silent Thunder Order under the purview of Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi.

The day will start with a morning of sitting meditation (zazen) and liturgy. We will break for tea and prepare for the ceremony which will start at 1pm. All of this will be held at the Wiregrass Zen Center, 610 Mitchell Street, Headland, AL. A special thanks to Frederic Ji Ryu Lecut for hosting the event. Those of you that live closer to Enterprise where we practice can follow us from my house or meet us along the way. If you cant make it for the morning session, you can just attend the ceremony. After the ceremony we will have a potluck style luncheon. I will send out a sign up list for those that want to bring a vegetarian dish.

It would be a great if everyone could make it for the ceremony. For the last several years I have undergone mentorship (with Rev Bobby Kankin Byrd and Rev Harvey Daiho Hilbert out of Texas and New Mexico, and most recently with Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi from Atlanta Soto Zen Center/Silent Thunder Order), academic study (and sewing two rakasu's), and rigorous zazen/shikantanza from various cushions locally and at various locations (El Paso, TX; Las Cruces, NM; and Atlanta, GA).

For me, this ceremony is something I want to share with all of you, which I am very grateful for having crossed paths with, and without hesitation, consider my Sangha (community) and my family.  Without the Sangha, there is no refuge in the Three Jewels. For it is the Sangha that brings about abundant good. Similar to what they tell you in football games... there is no "I" in Sangha :)

Gassho,
Mike

Michael Inmo Dretsch
Experimental Psychologist/Soto Zen Buddhist
http://longleafzen.vpweb.com/

Zenshin Philip Whalen on Writing and Meditation

The poetry and life of Zenshin Philip Whalen is probably one of the big signposts along the trail that led me to become a Zen practitioner. His poems cleaned up all the intellectual mumbo jumbo along the way and helped me realize that it's okay just to sit down on a round cushion (aka zafu) and stare at a wall. I started reading Whalen's work in the mid-60s. First he pushed my own poetry along. In the 80s, when I first got down to some "erratic practice," his poetry was there waiting for me with some goofy advice. Just recently, because of some correspondence with a friend, I pulled out his collected poems. Perfect timing. His advice, goofy as it is, has always been a nice antidote to my psyche when the damn thing takes over and starts SERIOUSLY driving down the road like it's in charge. Here's some quotes I copied from my journal. They rang some bell for me. Ding. 

--Bobby Kankin Byrd

from the essay ABOUT WRITING AND MEDITATION

by Philip Whalen

(Pages 840 and 843, The Collect Poems of Philip Whalen

I thought I’d write books and make money enough from them to travel abroad and have a private life of reading and study and music. I developed a habit of writing and I’ve written a great deal, but I’ve got little money from it.

With meditation I supposed that one could acquire magical powers. Then I learned that it would produce enlightenment. Much later, I found out that Dogen is somewhere on the right track when he tells us that the practice of zazen is the practice of enlightenment. Certainly there’s no money in it. Now I have a meditation habit.

I like the idea somebody mentioned of erratic practice. It immediately reminded me of rocks that were left around when the glaciers receded. A lot of times setting out in a field there are no other rocks. It’s a very strange appearance. You can’t account for the rock’s position unless you remember the glacier that carried the rock there and then went away. Zazen is slow but leaves erratic boulders.

•

So far all we’ve been able to invent in the United States is the business of building small cabins in the woods and going there to hide out, then come back and write a book about it. That practice, that sort of individual, hermit, erratic practice is something that’s really important. The danger of Zen Centers or monasteries is that people will take them seriously as being real. We should find our own practice; we might start out in an official place, but we should discover somehow that we don’t need official institutions. It’s exactly like Lew Welch says in his poem about the rock out there, the Wobbly Rock, “Somebody showed it to me and I found it for myself.” The quote isn’t exact. Lew was an erratic Zen practitioner who was a great poet.

--Zenshin Philip Whalen