Dear Sangha,
Lately I’ve been thinking that a key part of our work of maturing at human beings is the work of letting ourselves be seen.
Of course in a way people see us, and in a way we see ourselves, but there are deep forces at work in us urging us to hide. To obscure. To act in a certain way. To put on a front. Perhaps this is intrinsic to our creating a personality – to our “selfing” from day to day. Through all of the forces at work within us a kind of simulacrum of a person emerges and we hold that between us and the world as protection – as a human shield that hides our true humanity.
A bit of evidence for this from the body: when we work with the body in meditation, or in mindfulness classes lately I’ve been appreciating the practice of the “body scan”, we find that the face is almost always tense – held in a certain way. The face is the social interface between us an others. Check your face right now – is it relaxed or held in some position? How do the cheeks and jaw feel? Are they tight or relaxed? The forehead? This is done so constantly that we may not even be aware of it.
It seems that if we are in some way hiding from others, true intimacy is blocked. Others can’t really know us. They can’t help us. They can’t really be with us because we have hidden ourselves away. This can happen even in the middle of quite intimate relationships. This not being seen leads to a strong separation. A dividing.
A deep cause of suffering and unhappiness is so clearly that sense of separation. At first we notice a sense of feeling separate from others but as we practice meditation I think we also notice an odd sort of separation from our own self, from our own heart you might say. It’s hard to quite describe this feeling isn’t it? How could we be separated from our own self? And yet as we watch the voices and feelings and ideas and sensations come and go there does seem to be a voice calling out for healing and union doesn’t there? For a coming together and a connection. And maybe some other voices blocking that call.
How can we work with this sense of hiding, this sense of not being seen even by ourselves?
How to turn towards this resistance to opening up to ourselves and others, this fear of rejection or scorn or humiliation or whatever it is for us? This feeling that the wound within us is too big. Better to hide it.
Our Zen practice always brings us back to the powerful tools of awareness and attention. We start there and return to there, breath by breath, moment by moment.
There is so much in the mind and in the world the mind creates around us we don’t have a lot of control over. But it seems that with some training and patience we do have a lot of influence over how we attend, how we pay attention, and what we become aware of as a result. Awareness is an amazing thing. Something can be right in front of us but if we aren’t aware of it we just don’t know that it’s there. This is what is meant by “ignorance” in the Buddhist tradition – not being aware of things as they are.
So we can turn this little beam of attention back to the actual feeling that’s arising now. Right now. The feeling in our heart, in our gut, the flow of emotions and thoughts the actual experience of this moment of living. This powerful human attention which we so often let skip wildly from thought to thought, from anxiety to planning, to memory. This attention we often just let be absorbed into rumination.
The English phrase “lost in thought” is really a deep truth, isn’t it? When we’re lost in thought we really are lost. We aren’t here. We are missing a part of our life. We aren’t present.
Working with attention systematically in meditation is a big part of the answer of letting ourselves be seen. The actual steady work of meditation on the cushion is a powerful turning. Slow, unpredictable, hard to understand, but powerfully healing. If you haven’t begun to practice meditation with some regularity at home yet it might be time to bring to the foreground if it’s time to look at that. Perhaps at our upcoming Winter Practice Period you might seek some support with beginning or renewing home practice.
Science is a support here actually! We know from recent studies of attention, happiness, and how the mind changes with regular meditation practice a few really important things about the topic of being lost in thought and unable to fully see what’s happening.
1) the average person is ruminating and not attending to what’s actually happing now about half the time. Half the time we aren’t present to what’s happening. That’s a lot.
2) regardless of the activity you’re doing you’re likely to be less happy if you aren’t paying full attention to what you’re doing – being lost in thought actually makes people less happy. Regardless of what the activity is – even something you really “like” to do – if done while lost in thought is not a happy time.
3) regular mediation practice causes the centers of the brain where self-referential thought and rumination happen to be both less active and more fully moderated by other areas of more insightful and empathetic thinking – we ruminate less and we believe in our ruminations less when we do get sucked into them if we practice meditation.
So we start by simply paying more attention to what’s happening, that’s foundational. And then we can turn our awareness to a practice issue or a challenge like this question of being seen in a wise way. With the foundation of awareness practice we can work with being seen in a way that’s beyond self-concept. That’s felt deeply in the present moment of our living. In an in-the-moment way instead of a ruminating, self-concept kind of way.
Can we let ourselves be seen more fully? By others? By ourself? Can we allow it to all hang out in a certain way. Our craziness and insecurity? Our joy and passion? Our mistakes and follies? Can we admit our addictions and crazy little habits? Can we show ourselves as we actually are?
This is very vulnerable work. We need a lot of support. We need to draw on our deep inner resources. But it may be the most important work there is.
To allow yourself to be seen with all your blemishes doesn’t mean you have to improve yourself first either! Quite the opposite. That thinking is the crazy dream of the self that prevents vulnerability. You can’t improve yourself in that way anyway! That’s a real pushing of the river because you are up against the mind that is never satisfied with you anyway.
This being fully seen is not a revealing of the version 2.0 me that we’re talking about. It’s letting yourself out into the world as the buggy beta version you already are.
We can take some baby steps here in revealing ourselves. And as we take a baby step, feel what that is for us. Is there fear? Are there persistent thoughts of some kind? Perhaps thoughts of imminent rejection by the other maybe? And what actually happens? How does it actually feel one that moment. Can we distinguish our dread of what might happen from what really does happen?
Working with myself and working with others around this question I’m noticing that as we allow ourselves to be seen our fears do not become realities. Quite the opposite! As we allow ourselves to be seen others can help us more; there is more connection; there is more understanding and many times a huge sense of relief on all sides. A great opening and a feeling of setting down a huge burden. That shield we carry between ourselves and world is really heavy!
Winter Practice Period 2012
January 18 – March 4
The theme for this year’s 6-week practice period will be “The Heart of the Matter.” We’ll encourage each other to consider what is the heart of the matter in our lives and also study the Heart Sutra and the many strands of Buddhist thought and teaching that are tied together in that dense and abbreviated work which is chanted daily in Zen temples around the world.
As always our annual practice period offers an opportunity and a lot of support for making practice a more central part of your life for 6 weeks in the Winter. Sometimes we say to “intensify” your practice but I wonder if we can turn “intense” into a kind of aggression towards ourselves. Perhaps we should think of practice period as a time to bring Dharma practice into the foreground. To make it really the central piece that our so-called ordinary life hangs off of instead of something in the background that’s supporting something else we call “life”. Switch foreground and background a bit.
As always there will be time at the opening ceremony (Weds. eve. Jan 18th this year) to state your intentions for the 6 week period. A time to express how you want to practice during this time. People usually mention which events at the zendo they plan to come to and often people make home practice and study resolutions or think of particular personality traits or practices that want to work with for those 6 weeks. We’ll also have the opportunity this year to start intentions in writing and participate more from a distance, see below.
This year’s practice period will have few differences from past practice periods for those of us who’ve been at them:
1) no shuso – we won’t have a shuso (head student) this year – we’re following Norman’s suggestion that in this first year after my Dharma Transmission that I take up the center-of-the-wheel role that the shuso takes. So I’ll be the main teacher for this practice period.
2) Weds. eve. Dharma seminar – instead of having our Wednesday night practice include extra zazen and having a separate class on another evening or Saturday we’ll turn Wednesday evening into a Dharma seminar with talks and discussion every week after a period of meditation.
3) Written practice intentions – I’d like to foreground the practice of writing down our practice intentions. We already do a ritual where we state our intentions orally on the first evening of the Practice Period (those of us close enough to Bellingham to show up do anyway), but this year I’d like to recommend that all Practice Period participants to fill out an intentions sheet. There will be opportunities to do this on paper and with an online form.
4) Participating at a distance – Participate in practice period from a distance this year! Those of you at a distance can participate in a number of ways: we’ll post the weekly talks online promptly, we’ll pair you with another distance participant and encourage you to connect on the phone or email regularly about your practice, and we’ll assign to you a sangha leader you can check in with at least a few times during the 6-week period. This “distance learning” option will also be available to people who don’t live so far away but for whatever reasons (health, transport challenges, schedule conflicts) can’t come to the zendo regularly.
A partial calendar of events is already online with more details to follow soon. Be sure to consider whether the opening one day sesshin (Jan 21st)and closing 3 day sesshin (March 1st-4th) fit your calendar and if you can attend the opening ceremony (Jan 18th, 7pm) or the closing ceremony ( March 4th, 11am).
More details and how to sign up to participate at a distance will be available soon.
New Monthly Lecture Series and Public Program
I’m happy to announce that starting in February we’ll have a new program on the 1st Saturday morning of each month. This new Saturday morning program will run from 9:30am to noon include meditation instruction, zazen meditation, a Dharma talk, chanting and bowing service, and a little social time over tea and cookies.
The talks will be by both Red Cedar Zen teachers and other Zen teachers in different lineages from around the region.
A great way to come together with sangha to practice and hear teachings.
The kick-off speaker schedule is:
Feb 4 – Nomon Tim Burnett (Red Cedar Zen Community)
Mar 3 – Zoketsu Norman Fischer (Everyday Zen Foundation)
And on the following first Saturdays look for other Pacific Northwest Zen teachers:
Apr 7, May 5, June 2, July off, Aug 4.
And note that we will have this program even if there is a sesshin happening that day. If you are attending the sesshin the sit and talk will just be a part of the schedule and if you aren’t coming to the public program will be a way to plug in to that sesshin day.
Full schedule details will be posted on the website and by email soon.
Marti Bartlett is our Saturday morning Ino (zendo coordinator) and primary organizer of this exciting new event. If you have ideas for speakers or are willing to help with setup or offering zazen instruction (training is available) please contact her at bartlettmartha@gmail.com.
And note that our 6am-8:20am every Saturday morning meditation program continues every Saturday morning. On the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month a potluck breakfast continues until about 9am. Participation in both early and mid-morning programs on those 1st Saturdays is an option!
Thank You to our Members and Friends
Every year in November we ask our members and friends for help and if others would like to join us in this project of offering Zen practice in Bellingham and every year we are moved for the response.
Thank you so very much to everyone who’s become a new member or friend of the sangha and to the many people who have renewed.
As mentioned in Board minutes and in our annual letter this upcoming year is a pivotal one financially as our rent will reduce October 2012 and the monthly contribution from our primary renter and building partner, Bellingham Insight Meditation, will increase at the same time putting us on much better footing going forward from there.
Until then things are tight – we’re been running at a mild monthly deficit closing out 2011. We so appreciate the help completing our first 5-year lease at Red Cedar Dharma Hall. We’ve learned a lot in these first years about how to manage having our own building!
Connections in the World of Zen
Now that I have completed Dharma Transmission I am eligible to become a full member in the Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA) and to become a member of the American Zen Teachers Association (AZTA). Both groups have conferences and active email listserv’s which I’ve already found helpful.
I hope going forward that both myself and many of us in the sangha can nourish more connections with other teachers and sanghas in the North American Zen movement and at other Buddhist centers as well. There are a lot of benefits to sharing information, making personal connections, and learning about the many different ways this idea of Soto Zen is expressing in our times and society.
Dharma in Science
The three points I made in my introductory essay about science supporting us in our work with meditation and attention are from these two really ground breaking studies:
Paying attention, not doing what we prefer, is the key to happiness:
Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind. Science 12 November 2010.
Abstract (if you’d like a copy of the full paper, email me and I’ll send it to you, it’s quite readable.)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932.abstract
New York times summary article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/science/16tier.html
Meditation changes the “default state” of the brain such that there is less mind wandering:
Judson a. Brewer, et. al. Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. October 2011.
Abstract:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/11/22/1112029108.abstract
Los Angeles times summary article:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/22/news/la-heb-meditation-mind-wandering-20111122
And on the topic of vulnerability if you haven’t watched this 15 minute video of a talk by the University of Texas Psychologist Brené Brown yet I recommend it highly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoMXF73j0c
Dharma in the Media
Peter Levitt’s interview on CBC about Dogen
From Peter Levitt, Zen teacher of the Saltspring Island Zen Circle, and co-editor of the full translation of Dogen’s Shobo Genzo (look it up under editor Kazuaki Tanahashi):
“i thought you might enjoy this 16 minute interview I did on CBC radio about Shobo Genzo and Dogen – about two weeks ago. Imagine, Dogen on Radio!! It was a great honour and I felt so happy to know that people would hear about Dogen and his understanding. “
http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/2011/09/04/peter-levitt/
Zen Center of Pittsburg on local public TV
I also really enjoyed this film about the Zen Center of Pittsburg featuring the priest there, Kyoki Roberts, 28 minutes long, very nice and relevant to us in many ways.
http://www.wqed.org/tv/horizons/?id=301
Veterans, PTSD, Mindfulness and Loving Kindness
This 30 minute film made by and about the folks I work with in Seattle on mindfulness is really wonderful. 3 veterans with some really powerful challenges who participate in a 12-week course on mindfulness and loving kindness meditation are featured. Yes, loving kindness meditation being offered at the Seattle Veteran’s Administration hospital!
http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3171005
Rohatsu pictures
Jeff Kelley of Seattle Soto Zen let me know he got a few pictures of our recent combined rohatsu sesshin on the Seattle Soto Zen website – check it out at
http://www.seattlesotozen.org/recent-happenings
Wilderness Practice Opportunities
Two wilderness-based practice events led by Red Cedar Zen teachers are planned for the summer of 2012.
July 9 – 16: Zen & the Practice of the Wild. Near Sitka, Alaska
Jeff Kelly and I have been invited by our sangha friend Kurt Hoelting to join his Inside Passages project this summer to co-lead a gentle Zen retreat based out of his wilderness lodge near Sikta, Alaska. The daily schedule will include the usual meditation, dharma talks, and interviews, and also sea kayaking, saunas, and activites and discussions around the meaning of wilderness and what “wild” means to us personally, as a society, and as a planet. Registration is open via Kurt’s website at
http://insidepassages.com/alaska-program/alaska-2012/
And here are a few pictures for inspiration:
http://www.redcedarzen.org/photos.html?album=AlaskaTrip
September 7 – 23: Circumambulation of Mount Rainer
As our annual Mountains and River’s backpacking retreat moves into it’s 12th year, coordinator Reizan Bob Penny is planning a more ambitious wilderness Dharma adventure: hiking the 100 mile Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier!
Here from Bob about the ideas behind this new offering:
The process of circumambulation is ancient in Buddhist practices, involving intimate ritualized contact with and around a sacred center. It evolved from the original forms of the cloisters carved into living rock, which by their details indicated that there were earlier temples made similarly, but of wood. These chambers had columned passageways, carved inside of cliffs, going around stupas (ritual mounded forms containing relics) at the end of a nave. Eventually the stupas were constructed outside, and then increased in size, essentially to emulate sacred mountain forms. Here the process of circumambulation was brought out of the cloister and the stupa, or “World Mountain”, became the focus of pilgrimage journeys. This coincided with the rise of Mahayana Buddhism and the new emphasis upon the role of the laity in Buddhist life. In the Mauryan period, ruled by the great Buddhist king Ashoka two centuries before Christ, it is reputed that 84,000 stupas were erected throughout the kingdom. Over the next few centuries many of these were expanded and enlarged as the ritual of circumambulation increased and grew. Eventually the stupa form was transported with Buddhism to become the pagodas of east asia and the chortens of Tibet. In China, Tibet and Japan the ritual of pilgrimage and circumambulation was brought to actual mountains….So, my thought is that this form of practice would be the basis of the Mt. Rainier experience…
Please contact Bob directly at bobp@nas.com if you’re interested in this exciting opportunity. He needs to start booking campground reservations soon.
Note that this year’s Mountains and River’s hike is tentatively scheduled a few weeks earlier than usual for August 23-26.
Upcoming Events
December 2011
- New Year’s Ceremony
Saturday December 31
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
Ring in the New Year with 108 rings on the bell, a fire/purification ceremony, meditation and chanting.
January 2012
- Annual Sangha Meeting with the Board
Saturday January 07
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
Annual Board + Sangha meeting - Koan Study Group
2nd Monday each month: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
A study group on Zen Koans led by Seishu John Wiley - Winter 2012 Practice Period
January 18 – March 4
Red Cedar Dharma Hall & Vancouver
Our annual winter practice period: retreats, classes, tea, community, and study. - Practice Period Opening Sesshin with Nomon Tim Burnett
Saturday January 21
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
Fee: $10 – $50
Scholarship deadline: Jan 15, 2012
Registration deadline: Jan 20, 2012
A full day sesshin in the middle of the practice period. All welcome regardless of attendance at other practice period events.
February 2012
- 1st Saturday Public Program: Nomon Tim Burnett
Saturday February 04
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
New monthly program of meditation, public talk and discussion, and service. Speaker this month is Nomon Tim Burnett of Red Cedar Zen Community. - Introduction to Zen
Sunday February 05
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
Fee: $20 – $50 (includes dana for teacher)
An introduction to Zen practice at Red Cedar Dharma Hall with Seishu John Wiley & Raizen Edie Norton
March 2012
- Practice Period Closing Sesshin with Zoketsu Norman Fischer & Nomon Tim Burnett
Thursday March 01 – Sunday March 04
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
Fee: $60 – $120
Scholarship deadline: Feb 20, 2011
Registration deadline: Feb 27, 2011
A three day formal Zen retreat with Zoketsu Norman Fischer and pracitce period leader Nomon Tim Burnett closes the Practice Period. Oryoki meals. Thursday 7pm – Sunday 3pm. - 1st Saturday Public Program: Zoketu Norman Fischer
Saturday March 03
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
New monthly program of meditation, public talk and discussion, and service. Speaker this month is Zoketu Norman Fischer of Everyday Zen Foundation and the guiding teacher for Red Cedar Zen Community.
June 2012
- Samish Island Sesshin 2012
Friday June 15 – Saturday June 23
Samish Island Campground
Dates for our 2012 7-day (8 night) Zen sesshin at the beautiful Samish Island Campground in the Skagit Valley.
July 2012
- Zen & the Practice of the Wild
Monday July 09 – Monday July 16
Inside Passages Lodge, near Sitka Alaska
A week long practice experience at wilderness edge with Nomon Tim Burnett, Eko Jeff Kelly, and Kurt Hoelting.
August 2012
- Mountains and Rivers Hiking Retreat with Bob Penny, M.S., and Nomon Tim Burnett
Thursday August 23 – Sunday August 26
Mount Baker area
Fee: $120 – $160 (includes dana for teacher)
Scholarship deadline: Sep 02, 2011
Registration deadline: Sep 09, 2011
Our annual 3-day Zen and hiking retreat – gentle 7-mile backpack into the Mt. Baker Wilderness. [tentative dates]
September 2012
- Circumambulation of Mount Rainer
Friday September 07 – Sunday September 23
Mount Rainier National Park
A 17 day mindful backpacking adventure.