Dear Sangha,
I had the good fortune to visit with the Seattle Soto Zen group last Sunday. They had been studying Bodhidharma with Jeff Kelley so I dug out Keizan’s Denkoroku to read his take on Bodhidharma and his student Huike (pronounced hway-kuh) and spoke a bit about the qualities in those stories. And I was a bit surprised by what I came up with.
These poems were read on the opening evening of the annual Mountains and Rivers retreat in the cedar grove at Hawk Meadow Farm. At this point of the evening it was completely dark in the woods where we sat, and many of the poems were selected for their relationship to the night, sleep and dreams, and the process of waking up.
Dear Sangha,
We had our first snow of the year yesterday. The world cloaked again in clean, bright white. When it really came down for a while in the early evening Janet and I went outside marveling at how bright it made the formerly drab and dreary winter landscape. We are such creatures of the eyes, of visible light, aren’t we? How it looks is how it is to us. And suddenly it looks so very beautiful so the world is very beautiful.
I didn’t know quite what to expect on my first weekend Buddhist retreat. Bob, Jeffery, Terry and I embarked early Saturday morning for the annual Mountains and Rivers Retreat after an evening spent meditating, listening to a dharma talk, and cleansing ourselves in a sweat lodge ceremony.
The morning was lovely – cold with a blue ski and sunshine. The drive to the trailhead filled with conversation. We hoisted our packs and began the 7.5 mile journey up the trial to the high mountain meadow that would be our home for the next few days. As we walked in silence I admired the beautiful autumn day and immersed myself in the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest.
Dear Sangha,
We’re in the midst of the annual Buddhism in Bellingham lecture series here in Bellingham and last Saturday I gave the talk. I wanted to explore the theme of “All things are our teacher” which is adapted from a phrase in our ordination rituals. Is that really true? Or are there some things from which there is nothing to learn?
I struggled more than usual in preparing for and giving this talk. The struggle that comes from trying to put the wonderful sensibility about our living that arises so wordlessly into words I guess. Or maybe it’s just my own struggle to make sense of things even while I know this life doesn’t quite add up or make sense.
Dear Sangha,
Just back from our annual Samish Island sesshin. This formal Zen retreat of 7 days and 8 nights has become an important event for many of us. This year’s sesshin was the largest ever at about 60 people in the zendo at any one time.A large, powerful retreat.
Zen practice has a deep flavor of remembering. Not that I’d forgotten how powerful, transformational, and sometimes difficult sesshin can be, part of me remembers that. But every time I attend sesshin it’s a powerful feeling of entering into an experience both new and deeply familiar. A feeling of remembering something basic and fundamental.
Dear Sangha,
I set out in December and into our Winter Practice Period to study kindness.I guess I was concerned about a feeling of narrowness and tightness in my heart. That I wasn’t being fully kind to myself and others. That I am great at doing and getting stuff done, much of that in service of others, but not so much at fully being generous in spirit and heart.
I am surprised by what I found and oddly it took me exactly to the end of practice period to make some discoveries and, I think, a real change in feeling. I am struggling now to describe this. It seems to have to do with softness and warmth. With directing my energy more towards giving and reducing taking. More on that in a minute.
Dear Sangha,
This morning as I sat down to sit, I was really appreciating that I’ve learned (more or less) how to give this gift to myself. The gift of just sitting quietly early in the morning, not trying to figure much out or somehow jump start the day, just sitting quietly. Just breathing. Just being in that wonderful quiet before dawn.
I had missed a day or two (I am these days fairly steady in daily practice but thankfully also not too worried if I miss a day here or there) and there was a real sweetness to sitting down on my cushion. To offering incense at the little altar, doing three prostrations, and sitting down right there in the corner or our somewhat cluttered living room to breathe, to be, to heal. Giving it a full 30 minutes, not just sitting for a few breaths and dashing on. So sweet.
Dear Sangha,
When I start to create the Responding Gate newsletter each month I start with a copy of the previous months. I was very amused this time to see that my opening lines last month were about boredom and restlessness! This month has been quite the opposite. Difficult, intense, kind of exciting, pretty draining, but ultimately hopeful.
So much has happened and is happening. Sangha reorganization is going forward at a good pace (and more details on that below if you are feeling a little out of the loop), we lost a bunch of funding but then got a bit back, a major world economic crisis, a historic and groundbreaking national election. And meantime we all of us are supporting each other to touch ground. To sit down each day and let it all settle. To rest as best we can in the mind ground below all of this. Below excitement, below frustration, beyond any idea of how it’s supposed to go or not supposed to go. That is our bedrock, this is what renews us and sustains us, and that is what we have the privledge and responsibility to practice and to share with others as best we can.
Dear Sangha,
Last month I shared some thoughts with you about healthy discipline. In the meantime circumstances have led me from studying healthy discipline to the study of ambition. I spoke at length the other night at the zendo about my own professional and personal history around ambition. Like most realizations it is painfully obvious to me now but I really didn’t get it before a few weeks ago that I’ve been really very ambitious in life. That conditioning towards ambition with all of its striving and desire and with all of its productivity and rewards, has been a major theme of my life.