Originally given at Worcester Zen Community then this version here in Bellingham and later in Seattle. Stone bridges, log bridges everywhere.

Every moment is a kind of giving birth. Each moment arrives. You can feel this if you pay attention. Moment by moment.

Returning to breath and body and the present helps to make this experience of the moment by moment of our life.

And as each moment arrives if we are present to it we have some influence, some possibility to hold and support that moment in a certain way.

We are like midwives of each moment. We don’t create the moment but we are there in the room by the bedside of the mother of our becoming and we have a role to play at the birth. At the birth of each moment.

Our precepts practice suggests that we have a big responsibility as this midwife of the moment. To support the moment and encourage the birth of this moment. That it be a moment of kindness, a moment of returning to our amazing potential as human beings to open our hearts. And even just remembering this possibility – this is the act of mindfulness – to remember this possibility of giving birth of a moment, moment after moment, that in itself is an incredible thing.

And we can do this not as some heavy obligation but as a joyful expression of the vast possibility of this life. The possibility of connection, of deep joy.

And as I realized this I found myself feeling so happy. So peaceful. A sense of the possibility of this passed into being in me somehow. Or maybe through me is more true. We can give birth to happier, kinder, more connected moments. That possibility is right here.

And yet. There’s always an “any yet” isn’t there?

And yet, there are tough times. There are such challenges in this being human. There are times when we don’t feel that. Things go horribly wrong too. There is such suffering in us and in our world. What about those moments?

And so this week I also had some difficult moments. I was tired, grumpy. There was a strong sense of dis-ease and dis-satisfaction arising and I felt this urge to stop it, to clamp down on it in some way. To reject it. I didn’t want to feel badly. I wanted those happier moments.

And then I could feel – oh – we have to be a kind midwife to those difficult moments to. If causes and conditions are such that an unhappy moment of needs to be born we need to support that. We need to show up. There is no hiding.

We need to allow the full functioning of mind in that way. We need to let it come. And as with these happy moments we prefer we can come forward with this warm presence of Buddha to attend to that unhappiness. And then it can come and it can pass. Then we are in cooperation with what is, whether we prefer it or not, instead of in opposition with what is.

And then sure enough the wheel of moods and ideas and all that happens can turn and there is a sense of ease there. And after a day of feeling pretty grumpy and down I could feel the mood lifting again as one moment replaced another.

This simple turning towards each moment. There are such possibilities in this practice. It’s amazing really.

So what is this moment we are giving birth to right now? What is that for you?

It’s wonderful at these occasions to also simply tell the stories of the Buddha. We celebrate each year Buddha’s birth, death, and enlightenment. (well because of the schedule we missed his death this year, but that’s okay).

Just like our moments of living these stories are a mixed bag. Wonderful in their way and also embedded with various cultural stuff that we may like or not like. So here’s one retelling of the story of the birth of the Buddha with a little bit of commentary from someone named Barbara O’Brien which I found online – it’s close enough to what I wanted to tell you that I’ll just go ahead and quote her article.

Twenty-five centuries ago, King Suddhodana ruled a land near the Himalaya Mountains.

One day during a midsummer festival, his wife Queen Maya retired to her quarters to rest, and she fell asleep and dreamed a vivid dream. Four angels carried her high into white mountain peaks and clothed her in flowers. A magnificent white bull elephant bearing a white lotus in its trunk approached Maya and walked around her three times. Then the elephant struck her on the right side with its trunk and vanished into her.

When Maya awoke, she told her husband about the dream. The King summoned 64 Brahmans to come and interpret it. Queen Maya would give birth to a son, the Brahmans said, and if the son did not leave the household he would become a world conqueror. However, if he were to leave the household he would become a Buddha.

When the time for the birth grew near, Queen Maya wished to travel from Kapilavatthu, the King’s capital, to her childhood home, Devadaha, to give birth. With the King’s blessings she left Kapilavatthu on a palanquin carried by a thousand courtiers.

On the way to Devadaha, the procession passed Lumbini Grove, which was full of blossoming trees. Entranced, the Queen asked her courtiers to stop, and she left the palanquin and entered the grove. As she reached up to touch the blossoms, her son was born.

Then the Queen and her son were showered with perfumed blossoms, and two streams of sparkling water poured from the sky to bathe them. And the infant stood, and took seven steps, and proclaimed “I alone am the World-Honored One!”

Then Queen Maya and her son returned to Kapilavatthu. The Queen died seven days later, and the infant prince was nursed and raised by the Queen’s sister Pajapati, also married to King Suddhodana.

***

Aspects of this story may have been borrowed from Hindu texts, such as the account of the birth of Indra from the Rig Veda. The story may also have Hellenic influences. For a time after Alexander the Great conquered central Asia in 334 BCE, there was considerable intermingling of Buddhism with Hellenic art and ideas. There also is speculation that the story of the Buddha’s birth was “improved” after Buddhist traders returned from the Middle East with stories of the birth of Jesus.

There is a jumble of symbols presented in this story. The white elephant was a sacred animal representing fertility and wisdom. The lotus is a common symbol for enlightenment in Buddhist art. A white lotus in particular represents mental and spiritual purity. The baby Buddha’s seven steps evoke seven directions – north, south, east, west, up, down, and here.

In Asia, Buddha’s Birthday is a festive celebration featuring parades with many flowers and floats of white elephants. Figures of the baby Buddha pointing up and down are placed in bowls, and sweet tea is poured over the figures to “wash” the baby.

Newcomers to Buddhism tend to dismiss the Buddha birth myth as so much froth. It sounds like a story about the birth of a god, and the Buddha was not a god. In particular, the declaration “I alone am the World-Honored One” is a bit hard to square with Buddhist teachings on nontheism and anatman.
However, in Mahayana Buddhism it is said the baby Buddha was speaking of the Buddha-nature that is the immutable and eternal nature of all beings. On Buddha’s birthday, some Mahayana Buddhists wish each other happy birthday, because the Buddha’s birthday is everyone’s birthday.

Sometimes in Zen we talk about “the great matter” – the most important thing in our practice, the key point of Zen. The great matter is birth and death. But not as we usually think of it. That birth is over here at the beginning of life and death is over there at the end of life. And not that we like birth and we hate death, or maybe we learn how to deal with death, but we still don’t like. The great matter is birth-and-death connected together with hyphens. It’s understood as two sides of the exact same thing. And by the way the four characters on the han, the sounding board outside, that’s what they say “the great matter of birth and death” so we pass by this teaching every time we come into the Dharma Hall.

This is harder to understand than the possibilities of being a midwife to every moment of our life. And I do by the way encourage you to try practicing with that teaching. As often as you can remember to take a moment, to center in body and breath perhaps, and see – what is the possibility of this very moment to be born.

But to be midwife to the death of each moment? Or the funeral director of our own life? What would that be?

Is it possible to work with this great matter of birth-and-death so that even our death is a moment. Is not a problem or a big disaster but just a moment. I was about to say “a moment in our living” but that’s not right is it? Even this very idea of “living” is maybe a little narrow. Every moment is a moment in our living-and-dying perhaps.

So we celebrate birth, we celebrate death, we celebrate that this life-and-death world is just what is it. And we are just in the middle of it. Human beings waking up to the possibility of being human beings.

Our Zen ancestors often wrote poems right before they died. A practice called jisei – farewell to life poems. A practice that’s a kind of giving birth to your death in a way. A kind of bringing the ending of life up as a living practice, or a living-and-dying practice, and filling the world with gratitude and wonder for this unbelievable is-ness. How could all of this be? It’s a miracle. It’s really a miracle.

So this is a little odd from a conventional point of view but from Buddha’s point of view it’s wonderful to end my talk about the birth of the sweet and wise baby Buddha with a few poems about the death of Buddha’s spiritual children many years later.

And so we have poems appreciating the beauty of this world and also the beauty of leave it:

This is the last day
I shall see the mallards
crying over Lake Iware.
Then shall I disappear
into the clouds.

and

Overtaken by darkness
I will lodge under
the boughs of a tree.
Flowers alone
host me tonight.

And also poems appreciating the transient nature of all of it:

This world-
to what may I liken it?
To autumn fields
lit dimly in the dusk
by lightning flashes.

And these worthy practicioners of the way of Buddha were not always all peaceful about dying, they could also give birth to powerful regret in these death poems. We are not trying to paper over something here.

Like a rotten log
half-buried in the ground-
my life, which
has not flowered, comes
to this sad end.

And also in this tradition is a willingness to turn towards the coming time of death. It is not long away for any of us.

I wish to die
in spring, beneath
the cherry blossoms,
while the springtime moon
is full.

I was just realizing we can turn that last around around and it’s just as beautiful – does the meaning change if we replace death with birth?

I wish to be born
in spring, beneath
the cherry blossoms,
while the springtime moon
is full.

The springtime moon is nearly full right now. Happy birthday Buddha. Happy birth moment every one. May we all turn towards these birth-and-death moments of our life-and-death with grace and kindness.

As Mary Oliver wrote in her poem about death:

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

And that’s really how we understand the birth of Buddha. As a great reminder, a great support to fully be here. So that we can fully live. So that we can be fully present right in the middle of this birth-and-death.

Thank you very much.

Saturday June 4 – Yuzan Nancy Welch (Red Cedar Zen Community)

Saturday July 7 – David Dae En Rynick roshi (Boundless Way Zen Community, Worcester, MA)

Saturday September 1 – Anita Feng, JDPSN (Blue Heron Zen Community, Seattle)

Regular Zen in Bellingham schedule
9:30 – Zazen instruction (library)
10:00 – Zazen - all welcome, open sit
10:30 – Kinhin
10:40 - Dharma Talk
11:30 – Bowing and chanting service
11:45 – Tea & Cookies & Conversation

The Lotus Sutra – Introduction

(based on introduction in Burton Watson’s translation, 1993)

The Text and Its Context
The Lotus Sutra is an important Buddhist scripture in the development and establishment of Mahayana Buddhism. It is a collection of sermons and stories said to have been delivered by the Buddha toward the end of his life.  It is made up of 28 chapters, written in both prose and poetry.  Scholars think the poetry was composed first as an aid to memorization and the prose restatements were added later for emphasis and pedagogical reasons.

Where and when it was composed is uncertain.  It is thought it was first composed in a local dialect and later translated into Sanskrit.  By 255 C.E. it was in existence (750 years after the Buddha, who lived in the 5th or 6th century B.C. E.).  By 406 C. E. it was read widely in Chinese.

Although the Sutra presents the teachings as the Buddha’s words, of course, since it was composed after his nirvana, it was the work of his followers.  As such it reflects both the evolution of the Buddha’s thinking and the actual development of Buddhism in the world.  The Sutra acknowledges the early Buddhist path of the ascetic seeking to become an Arhat (one who has nothing more to learn).  But the main theme of the Sutra is to reject the early Hinayana practices of individual accomplishment and monastic practice and promote the development of the Mahayana practices of the Bodhisattva– of compassion and liberation for all beings, not just for the special few adepts.

In this sense The Lotus Sutra (again, remember it was written down in the first or second century of the C. E.) was a political or polemical document (written after the historical Buddha’s death) to persuade people that the Mahayana way (which they claimed was The Great Vehicle) was superior to the Hinayana way (which the Mahayanans now termed The Lesser Vehicle).  Thus Buddhism developed in much the same manner as early Christianity, with various schisms and arguments about which side held the truth.

The Lotus Sutra does talk about the evolution of Buddhist thinking from the original Indian ascetic practices available to only a few who could bear such a difficult life, to the inclusive practice that invites everyone to participate.  There are passages in the Sutra that state that the ideas of the Buddha himself had evolved from directing his teaching at a few adepts to reaching out through skillful means to all beings, encouraging everyone to seek and find liberation.

Early Buddhism—what was later termed Hinayana Buddhism—adopted from Indian thought the belief in Karma, that life is an endless cycle of death and rebirth, in which the only way to escape bad Karma was by striving to do good so that over many rebirths, one could eventually achieve rebirth in more favorable circumstances.  Indeed, the Buddha himself was believed to be subject to rebirths; the Sutra speaks of the countless former lifetimes of the Buddha—and of many buddhas—being the proving grounds for the Buddha’s eventual enlightenment and nirvana.  The lesson being that with right effort, etc., all beings can move up spiritually.

Mahayana Buddhism denied the Indian belief that there was any individual soul or identity that carries over from one life to another life, but it did accept the idea of rebirth or transmigration. Thus it confirmed that good behavior and practices would eventually insure being born in more favorable circumstances.

There is evidence that in the early years of Buddhism, Hinayanans and Mahayanans co-existed, but later they broke apart, the Hinayanans going to South East Asia—Thailand, Burma, Cambodia—and the Mahayanans going to China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, Viet Nam. And much later both strains traveled to Europe and America. So as Buddhism evolved, the goal of the Hinayana practice of a few adepts becoming an Arhat through great individual effort changed to the Mahayana goal of everyone having the capability of becoming a Buddha—or realizing Buddha nature.  Assistance toward Buddhahood would come from Bodhisattvas, those highly developed beings who were capable of becoming Buddhas and achieving nirvana, but who, out of compassion, chose to remain in the world to liberate all beings before liberating themselves.

So the primary differences between early and later Buddhist thinking was in who were the primary beneficiaries of Buddhist practice—the individual or all beings.  Although this difference is no longer emphasized in contemporary Buddhist practices—e.g., Vipassana Buddhists value and practice compassion just as much as Zen or Tibetan Buddhists do (witness the Metta Sutta), still that original emphasis on seeking enlightenment or liberation for the individual vs. seeking liberation and enlightenment for all beings does play out subtly in the two traditions.

I think the Zen practices of meditating with our eyes open and letting go of our thoughts over and over again so we can be fully awake and present, moment to moment, are an expression of our Bodhisattva vow to save all sentient beings; whereas the closed eyes and careful attention to ones own mental processes of the Vipassana practice are expressions of the earlier Buddhist effort toward individual development as the way to salvation.  Today the two practices are similar in many ways—and we make an effort not to disparage either practice—but these small differences, I believe, are subtleties carried down through the centuries from the original doctrinal differences in the two strains of Buddhism.

The World View of The Lotus Sutra
The Buddhist world view as reflected in the Sutra was derived from the traditional Indian cosmology which said that the world was made up of four continents, which ranged around a great central mountain, Mt. Sumeru.  It said that “we” live in the southern continent, called Jambudvipa, but that outside our present world there are countless other worlds, some of them also with four continents, some of them with other realms.  But all worlds are presided over by various Buddhas.  And all worlds are caught up in the cycles of formation, continuance, decline, and disintegration—all of which cycles occur over VAST kalpas of time (Red Pine defines kalpas as follows: a minor kalpa lasts slightly less than 16,800,000 years, an infinite kalpa lasts 20 times as long, or 236,000,000 years; and a great kalpa lasts 4 times as long, or 1,344,000,000 years).

According to Buddhist cosmology, in our world, we ordinary beings occupy six realms of existence from low to high:

1. Hell dwellers (there due to bad actions)
2. Hungry ghosts (tormented by endless craving)
3. Animals
4. Asuras or demons (constantly in angry warfare)
5. Human beings (with the fortunate opportunity to become Buddhas)
6. Heavenly beings (who, while happy now, don’t have the opportunity to become Buddhas and can only move downward in the hierarchy)

These six levels were the original realms from Indian cosmology. Buddhism added four higher realms:

7.  Shravakas (voice-hearers—originally those who heard the Buddha speak)

8.  Pratyekabuddhas (self-enlightened)

9.  Bodhisattvas (dedicated to saving all others)

10. Buddhas

Mahayana Buddhism teaches that all beings can and should seek to become Buddhas, and humans have the good fortune to have been born in the ONLY level of the spiritual hierarchy
in which enlightenment and liberation are possible.  Thus many Buddhist texts—particularly Tibetan texts—encourage us to take advantage of this precious human opportunity that our life offers.   

The Doctrinal Assertions of The Lotus Sutra
The Sutra is known for its teaching on Skillful Means and the Bodhisattva Way, but central to its teaching is the concept of Emptiness, the idea that phenomena are empty of permanent identity.
Early on historically in the development of the concept of Emptiness, there was much negative reaction and criticism—and there is still this misunderstanding today about Buddhism—arguing that emptiness indicated that Buddhism was nihilistic, that it was saying that nothing exists.  But Mahayana thought argued that emptiness does not imply nihilism.  Instead it says:
The phenomenal world is empty because all phenomena, all of which arise from causes and conditions, are constantly changing.
Thus phenomena have no permanent characteristics; thereby they are empty.
They argued further that if all phenomena are characterized by emptiness, then emptiness must be the unchanging and abiding nature of existence.
Therefore the absolute, unchanging nature of existence must be synonymous with the phenomenal world.
Therefore all mental and physical distinctions we perceive or conceive must be part of a single, underlying unity.
From this progression of thought, the Mahayanans came to assert that samsara (the ordinary world of suffering, cyclical birth and death) is actually identical with nirvana (the extinction of passion and karma).
Thus ordinary life IS nirvana, itself—if we could but realize it.

We are the inheritors of this subtle logic in the Heart Sutra: Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

The Setting and Principle Teachings of The Lotus Sutra
The Sutra describes extravagant, unimaginable scenes, eons of times, and numbers of followers gathered to listen to the Buddha preach.  These hyperbolic descriptions are intended both to praise the greatness of the Buddha and to boggle the reader’s mind in order to shake us loose from conventional thinking about space and time.

In the Sutra the Buddha preaches three main messages:

1. There is only one vehicle or path to salvation (Buddhahood).  It is the Bodhisattva way, not his earlier teachings of the other two vehicles, the Shravaka way and the Pratyekabuddha way. (The Bodhisattva Way is further elaborated in the Diamond Sutra, also taught toward the end of the Buddha’s life.)
2. The Sutra proclaims that all humans (not just adepts) can achieve enlightenment—even women.  Buddhahood is accessible to all.  (Surely this was a monumental breakthrough.)
3. The Buddha is ever present in the world—an eternal being (though not God) that appears in form after many kalpas.  (Thus we have the future Buddha, Maitreya, yet to come.)

The Lotus Sutra, which presents itself as a devotional work, enjoins us to Accept, Uphold, Read, Recite, Copy, and Teach the sutra to others. In these ways, we can move toward liberation.
——-
We will start with the major concept of the Sutra, Skillful Means—in some texts, also called Tactful Means or Expedient Means.  In this chapter and later ones, the Buddha explains how he teaches what he has assessed his listeners can understand.  By doing so, he is able to teach people at all levels of understanding and development—thus saving all sentient beings, regardless of their current capacities.  But first, let’s set the scene. (read pages 53 – 54).  And what does the Buddha look like?  Read pages 27 – 29.

Reading for next two sessions: pp. 82, 85 – 102 – Skillful Means.

And then I read a section of Dogen’s essay Raihai Tokuzui from the Tanahashi / Levitt translation (they title it “Bowing to Receive the Marrow”) where Dogen says quite firmly that women teachers are just as good as men and should never been seen as inferior in any way.  Dogen thus refuting the first of the Buddha’s Eight Special Rules for women which do place women in an inferior position.

And we talked a little about bringing this home. How do we few gender and the messages we’ve received about it? How do we view the self? Can we be really aware of all of these attitudes and tendencies.

Listen on….

Past Issues available at http://www.redcedarzen.org/index.php/category/news/

Dear Sangha,

I’ve been fortunate lately to have conversations with sangha members about the unsolvable problems in their lives.  Those places where we really explore the edges of what it is to be a person. A real person.

Of course there are things we can change and influence but so much of what troubles us is more or less unsolvable.  These issues can’t be fixed in that way of fixing things. And yet we have all the choice in the world in how we respond. How we enter into relationship with these challenges.

And there are serious challenges. We are worried about these things. Worried and concerned. People we love are ill or unstable or not acting in their own best interests. Institutions are set up poorly and causing harm. Financial troubles are all around.  And in the background the planet itself may well  be racing towards large scale catastrophe as the climate shifts and changes in response to our actions. There is much to be worried about. Concerned by.

What do we do? Stay busy? Get angry? Try our best to deny these troubles are even happening? Sink into despair and despondency? Rationalize that the problem as someone else’s fault? Someone else’s responsibility? Think that it’s all our fault? So many ways to enter the gates of hell in these situations.

A sangha member came up with an term for a healthy approach that I’m really appreciating – “the practice of concern.”

The practice of concern seems to be neither turning away and not running around trying to fix.

Maybe the practice of concern manifests as showing up in the hospital room even when we don’t know what to say or do. Maybe it’s making a 10 minute phone call to an ailing relative every day as a practice, but not dropping everything to spend the next two months at their bedside. Or maybe it is dropping everything and giving ourselves fully.

How the practice of concern manifests outwardly flows out of a creative, heart-felt engagement with out own fear, with our own discomfort. A kind of “feeling into” the situation. These are things we don’t want to face. And even when we think we are getting in there and doing something – “making a difference” perhaps – it might be that unless we bring up the practice of concern we are fooling ourselves. We are there in body but the spirit is off.

The inner work of the practice of concern seems to be the pivot point here.

How to be enter this inner work? There might be symbolic actions that guide us and remind us of our concern and how to practice with it. Putting the picture of an ailing loved one on our home altar for example. But really this inner work is not problem solving or direct. It’s an opening to the space where there’s fear, it’s a deep acknowledgement – a breathing into – that sense of our own inadequacy or our own tightness and resistance.

The practice of concern is an opening-the-heart practice. To open the heart we must also open the hand of thought.  Because our thinking closes in on us like a vice. To much of our thinking is so limited, so narrow. I should be such and so – a good daughter, a good grandson, an effective activist. I should try harder. What’s wrong with me? Oh forget it, there’s nothing I can do.

How fortunate we are to have the tools from the Zen tradition that help us to see that a thought is a thought. Just a thought! That conditioning is conditioning – naturally the mind generates such thoughts. And they are empty. They need not have the hold on us we used to give them.

And so the practice of concern is just that. A practice. A turning towards. A gentle return to the fullness of being. It includes our stumbles. I recently learned the Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” This seems a good description of this practice. If never got up we wouldn’t fall, true, but how much more beautiful we are as we get up again.

And yet the mind is funny. So easily confused. How do we know when we are practicing our concern instead of being bowled over by it or denying it?

One way: we feel our own suffering and pain more accurately, more sensitively. We become more and more sensitive to the pain of separation and disengagement – we can’t help it really, sooner or later we have to feel the full weight of these things. And if there’s more pain and anger and fear then we are not practicing with our concern – we’re running from it.

The great miracle of this is that we can be of more help and feel much better when we practice creatively and actively with our concern.

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying:

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

This is the practice of concern. We can’t solve it and fix it maybe, but we can face it. We can be with it. We have this deep human capacity and it’s time to exercise it. How is it for you? What are the worries in the back of your mind and how do you practice with them?

best wishes always,
Nomon Tim Burnett

Spiritual Director, Red Cedar Zen Community
tim@redcedarzen.org   360-223-0687

April Events

Lots of little events. Be sure to check our new online events calendar to sort all of this out and here are some highlights.

Sanctuary Garden Fundrasier – April 7th & 8th

The steady conversion of an ugly back parking lot behind the Dharma Hall into a beautiful landscape is off to an amazing start. The funding for the first phase was almost entirely from the surpisingly successful massage fundraiser last year. In a few week: another round which if successful will be enough to bring the garden fully to life.  A variety of different body work sessions may be purchased at really reasonable rates with proceeds to support this Sanctuary Garden (which will be an offering to the whole community – open to all). Details online here or contact Danielle at (360) 220-5280 or  danielle@bodywalkmassage.com

Buddha’s Birthday Sesshin – May 5th

An opportunity to practice all day together. Breakfast and lunch will be provided (along with instruction on the formal oryoki style of eating). Day includes a dharma talk, sitting and walking meditation, breaks, and opportunities to meet with the teacher(s) privately. Registration is open. Various part time choices are available. Let us know if you’re coming so we can plan volunteer jobs and meals.

You can come to the included Zen in Bellingham morning event that morning without registering. Zazen instruction at 9:30am, zazen at 10:00am, talk follows at 10:40am and on this particular month the talk will be followed by a Buddha’s Birthday ceremony. Details to follow on the exact timing.

Samish Sesshin – registration to open April 1st

It’s time once again to consider your attendance at our annual 7-day/8-night sesshin with Zoketsu Norman Fischer at the beautiful church camp we rent on Samish Island.  The full retreat is Friday afternoon June 15th until Saturday noon June 23rd but first half (Friday afternoon – Tuesday 5pm) and second half attendance  (Tuesday 5pm – Saturday noon) is also available.

Do note that no other part time options are available. You can make it easier on the registrar by not making us say “no” to other part time requests – this sesshin is just too full and complex for other choices to be possible.

Hope to see you at Samish this year, but remember also that if you want to study with Norman in the Pacific Northwest he also comes twice a year to Vancouver – the next retreat coming up soon May 18-20. Details on our website, below, and also at www.mountainrainzen.org.

Zen in Bellingham / Zen Work Mornings

We are now offering two regular all-morning practice times each month. Nice for those who aren’t always up for our weekly 6am zazen meeting.

1st Sat – public talk: The 1st Saturday of each month is our public-facing “Zen in Bellingham” program. Zazen instruction offered every time at 9:30am. Zazen at 10:00am. A dharma talk with visiting and local teachers at 10:40am. Then usually we follow this with service and a tea/cookies/hang out time. (If there is a sesshin retreat in progress the program usually ends after the talk but the instruction / zazen / talk schedule is consistent).

Coming up weekend after next we have an honored guest – Eido Frances Carney the abess of Olympia Zen Center and an old friend of Edie Norton is coming to speak. Please come if you can.

And then on May 5th I will give the talk (that during the one day Buddha’s birthday sesshin, so there will be a Buddha’s Birthday ceremony included in the public program too). On June 2nd, Red Cedar Zen lay teacher Yuzan Nancy Welch speaks, and then on July 7th another visiting teacher: David Rynick of Boundless Way Zen Community in Worcester, Mass., joins us to speak about his new book This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons which I’ve just started and it’s quite delightful.

Mark your calendar for those 1st Saturday mornings of the month, this wonderful program seems like it will just get better and better.

3rd Sat – work period: And then on the 3rd Saturday morning of the month also 9:30am to noon we enjoy a Zen work  morning. Working together is a deep and core Zen practice.  We’ve had strong and delicious tastes of this practice: the work period after lunch during Samish sesshin, remodeling our burned out hulk of a building into a beautiful zendo together, but we’ve not had work as a regular part of the schedule. I’m so happy that we do now. Coming together to practice meditation in action. Important tasks get done with a spirit of fellowship (and there’s a reduction in the burn-out creating isolation of doing all sangha work separately and alone) and it’s a great way to get to know each other.

Without visiting teachers and Dharma talks and such hoopla, these 3rd Saturday of the month work mornings will probably never get as much promotion or attention, and maybe that’s just as it should be. Just come down and help out for a bit. There is often lunch included as the tenzo wants to test out soup recipes for our retreats! Don’t miss it.

Movie Night! April 13th 7pm

Another special evening event. I’ve been supporting combined Red Cedar Zen / Bellingham Insight movie nights on Fridays all Fall but never quite made it to any! I’m excited to make this one. We’ll enjoy Amongst White Clouds a highly recommend film about Chinese Buddhist hermits based on pioneering work by Red Pine in China. Bring your own popcorn.

Fire Monks reading – April 16th 7pm Village Books

Colleen Morton Busch reads from her new book Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara about the wildfire that nearly destroyed the Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery where I and most of our teachers did at least some of their Zen training. Colleen is in our lineage as well: a  lay-ordained student of Sojun Mel Weitsman’s in Berkeley, CA.  I invited her to visit the zendo for zazen and to meet sangha but it turns out this trip is too tight.

Lotus Sutra Study Group – April 11 through June 13

Very pleased to announce that Edie Norton is preparing to lead a 6-week study group on the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus is a seminal Mahayana text full of stories, allegories, and extravagant enthusiasm for Buddha. In much of Asian Buddhism it’s the most important Buddhist text bar none.  Wednesday evenings 6pm – 6:45pm right before zazen starting on April 11th. Details online here.

The excellent monthly Zen koans study group facilitates by John Wiley continues this Spring on the 2nd Monday of the month (see full schedule list below).

Helping Mountain Rain move – this Saturday

I’m planning to leave right after Saturday morning service (8am) and drive up to the Mountain Rain Zen Community’s old zendo this Saturday March 31st to help them move into their new zendo.  It’s their moving and set up day! An exciting and important step for any Zen group. Their new zendo is similar in many ways to ours: a visible and accessible place in a leased commercial building with room for weekly practice and retreats.  If you’d like to join me there is room in the car.  If someone wants to organize a congratulatory card we can take that up as well.

Scarce Sightings of Tim in April

I’ll be away the 1st week of April visiting my grandmother (just turned 93) and other family in San Diego. Then back the 2nd week, then gone again the rest of the month to a training in teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with the good folks at the Center for Mindfulness in Worcester, Mass.  So my zendo appearances will be just Weds the 11th, Friday the 13th, and Saturday the 14th. I’ll miss seeing everyone and regret the many excellent events I’ll be missing.

Announcing Mindfulness Northwest

I’m pleased to announce the formation of a new non-profit organization called Mindfulness Northwest devoted to offering the broader community access to a system of teaching about meditation, stress reduction, and awareness called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). This is the system devised by Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues in the last 1970′s that is now gaining wide acceptance as it’s being validated by psychological and neurological studies left and right.

The goals of Mindfulness Northwest are to offer the MBSR class as well as a variety of workshops and retreats in this secular system to the general public and also to professional helpers of all kinds (psychotherapists, nurses, massage therapists, doctors). The idea of “mindfulness” is of interest to these professionals and we want to offer them quality experiential education in what it really feels like in body and mind to practice mindfulness and share these practices from that felt sense.

And MBSR itself is proven very helpful for people under all kind of adverse conditions – chronic illness, pain, stress related psychological and physical issues.

You can read our first newsletter here.  Or just go to the homepage of the Mindfulness Northwest website. There is a separate email list for Mindfulness Northwest which you can sign up for on the contact page.

If you’d like to be consistently informed about the classes and workshops that Mindfulness Northwest will offer as well as receiving notes from me and other mindfulness teachers about emerging science and practice points do sign up on this mailing list – we hope to send a message every month or so.

(This Responding Gate newsletter is oriented around Zen practice and Red Cedar Zen Community only and I will only include the occasional mention here of Mindfulness Northwest events.)

A few people have asked me if this supplants or replaces my involvement with Red Cedar Zen Community. Not at all, it’s a supplement and a compliment to the work we do in Zen. While the root feeling is much the same, the MBSR style is quite different from Zen. There is more explicit body-mind integration practice, there is a lot  more instruction (a lot more), and a lot more discussion. It involves more tie ins from poetry and literature and to make it fully accessible to people of all (or no) faiths, and there is little mention of specific Buddhist teachings or terminology.

My long term hope is to reduce my day job in technology work, not to reduce my work as a Soto Zen teacher and priest. The dream here is that a combination of Zen and mindfulness work supporting me and my family. But I will take it all one step at a time.  As Spiritual Director for Red Cedar Zen Community I work for the members,  don’t hesitate to contact me about anything that’s on your mind.

Upcoming events with Red Cedar Zen Community

Zen in Bellingham – Eido Frances Carney
Saturday April 7, 2012 9:30 am – 12:00 pm

Zen in Bellingham is our new once a month public-facing program offered on the first Saturday of every month from 9:30am – Noon. The community is warmly invited to join us for a moment of Zen with plenty of instruction and support. A little bit of each element of a Zen meditation meeting is offered with a introduction to meditation available to everyone coming early.

Sanctuary Garden Massage Fundraiser II
Saturday April 7, 2012 – Sunday April 8, 2012

Sign up for a massage to help the Sanctuary Garden behind Red Cedar Dharma Hall come to fruition. Massages are available by appointment at the Dharma Hall on Saturday April 7th from 2pm – 6pm and again on Sunday April 8th from 10am – 3pm. Email Danielle AhMaiua at Danielle@bodywalkmassage.com or call her at             360-220-5280       to schedule an appointment.

Koan Study Group
Monday April 9, 2012 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Monthly Koan Study Group with Seishu John Wiley

2nd Monday on the month, 7:30pm – 9:00pm

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday April 11, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Movie Night: Amongst White Clouds
Friday April 13, 2012 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Enjoy a very special film along with our friends in BIMS on Chinese Zen hermits. The film inspired by the work and book by Red Pine (Bill Porter), our Zen neighbor in Port Townsend.  No charge, donations to the Hall always welcome.

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday April 18, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Introduction to Zen
Sunday April 22, 2012 9:00 am – 1:00 pm

Our quarterly introductory class and retreat with lay teachers from Red Cedar Zen. The basics on sitting and walking meditation and other ritual forms. On the spirit of living a life of healthy discipline with the guidance of Zen Buddhism. Designed for new students or those wanting to renew and deepen their understanding. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday April 25, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Zen in Bellingham – Nomon Tim Burnett
Saturday May 5, 2012 9:30 am – 12:00 pm

Zen in Bellingham is our new once a month public-facing program offered on the first Saturday of every month from 9:30am – Noon. The community is warmly invited to join us for a moment of Zen with plenty of instruction and support. A little bit of each element of a Zen meditation meeting is offered with a introduction to meditation available to everyone coming early.

Buddha’s Birthday Sesshin
Saturday May 5, 2012 6:00 am – 9:00 pm 

Registration required.

Join us for all or part of a full day Zen sesshin (formal Zen retreat) including three oryoki (formal three-bowl) meals: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Koan Study Group
Monday May 14, 2012 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Monthly Koan Study Group with Seishu John Wiley

2nd Monday on the month, 7:30pm – 9:00pm

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday May 16, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Weekend Zen Retreat with Zoketsu Norman Fischer (Vancouver)

Friday May 18, 2012 7:00 pm – Sunday May 20, 2012 4:00 pm

This non-residential silent retreat is suitable for both beginners and experienced students.  Beginners are advised to discuss the schedule with the registrar. It will include periods of zazen (sitting meditation), kinhin (walking meditation), chanting, and talks by the teacher. There will also be opportunities for individual or group interviews with the teacher, and with MRZC resident priests Kakushi Kate McCandless and Onshin Michael Newton.

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday May 23, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday May 30, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Zen in Bellingham – Yuzan Nancy Welch
Saturday June 2, 2012 9:30 am – 12:00 pm

Zen in Bellingham is our new once a month public-facing program offered on the first Saturday of every month from 9:30am – Noon. The community is warmly invited to join us for a moment of Zen with plenty of instruction and support. A little bit of each element of a Zen meditation meeting is offered with a introduction to meditation available to everyone coming early.

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday June 6, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Lotus Sutra Study Group
Wednesday June 13, 2012 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm

An 8-session study group on Wednesday evenings in April, May, and June prior to our 7 pm meditation led by Zaren Edie Norton on The Lotus Sutra, a seminal work establishing the Bodhisattva Way in early Buddhism.

Samish Island Sesshin 2012
Friday June 15, 2012 5:00 pm – Saturday June 23, 2012 12:00 pm

Our annual 7-day (8 nights) silent Zen sesshin with Zoketsu Norman Fischer includes seven days and eight nights of silent practice of sitting and walking meditation in this beautiful church camp on the water on Samish Island in the Skagit Valley. Retreat includes dharma talks by Norman and other Northwest teachers, doksusan and practice discussion, sitting and walking meditation, and delicious vegetarian meals. A deep time for practice and reflection with the support of sangha and teachers.

Zen & the Practice of the Wild
Monday July 9, 2012 – Monday July 16, 2012

A week long practice experience at wilderness edge with Nomon Tim Burnett, Eko Jeff Kelly, and Kurt Hoelting.

Explore the connection between contemplative practice and wild places within the context of the Soto Zen tradition in this exciting offering with Inside Passages, Kurt’s project integrating mindfulness practice, eco-tourism, and wilderness near Petersburg, Alaska.

Mountains and Rivers Hiking Retreat with Bob Penny, M.S., and Nomon Tim Burnett
Thursday August 23, 2012 7:00 pm – Sunday August 26, 2012 6:00 pm 

Our annual 3-day contemplative backpacking retreat to Mount Baker. Held earlier in the summer this year to make room for the Mount Rainier trip.
Registration required. [Note: tentative dates]

Circumambulation of Mount Rainer
Friday September 7, 2012 – Sunday September 23, 2012

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!

Full List of Events: <http://www.redcedarzen.org/index.php/events/>

Handy Events Calendar: <http://www.redcedarzen.org/index.php/calendar/>

A little bit of this and a little bit of that really – enjoy.

Norman spoke deeply about impermanence – that central fact of our living and our world that we so easily sequester off into the conceptual construct of “later”. And yet if we don’t fully embrace impermanence our life will also be lived on a shaky foundation.

As seems to be usual for me lately I didn’t stick too close to the notes, looks like I started out “on script” so that’s below in case helpful.

“The Myth of Me”

Gaia creation myth as retold by Donna Jo Napoli (The Treasury of Greek Mythology) – my own additions in [brackets]

	How do you get something from nothing?

	Not easily it would seem.

	From empty Chaos, somehow sea and earth and air appeared. They drifted around, pieces of each getting lost in the other. No water was swimmable, no land was walkable, no gas was breathable. Anything hot could quickly turn cold. Anything cold could burst into flames.

	Shapes shifted, textures shifted. Objects merged one into the other effortlessly, then suddenly-slam! One or both turned inexplicably hard. What was heavy became weightless. What was weightless crashed through earth and sea and air, shattering and splattering and scattering bits of everything and nothing.

	Rules of nature? They didn't operate. Indeed, there was no nature. There was nothing reliable in this turmoil expect lack of order. And lack is the essence of need.

	Out of that original need came the mother force, Gaia. All on her own. Need can do that.

	Gaia sucked up heat and stored it in her heart. She wrapped herself round and round with anything solid she could reach, growing firmer with each layering. She pulled together her glassy sands, lifting them, grain by grain - free of air, to form deserts; free of water, to form beaches. She pushed together gigantic plates of rock until her mountains rose high, so far from her scalding heart that snow settled on their peaks.

	As Gaia disentangled herself from the waters and the gases, the seas fell together in giant puddles, the heavens arches over it all. In this way the emergence of Gaia led to both the wholeness of the seas and the wholeness of the heavens.

	But Gaia was generous, as a mother should be. She opened her veins so water could rush through rivers and creeks, and pool together in large low lakes and small hidden ponds. She yielded here and there to the gases, allowing crevices to cradle them.

	One crevice in particular was huge and gaping: the waiting hole for the dead. But at this point she didn't know that. She knew things only as they happened, like a child encountering everything for the first time. She created the hole almost as though she understood instinctively all the gain and loss that would follow from her generosity.

	The seas learned from Gaia and welcomed islands. The skies learned from Gaia and welcomed stars. And then the seas and skies went further and worked together to cycle water from the salty seas to the skies, then fresh and sweet to the lands, who returned it once more to the seas.

	But Gaia was not the only child of the enormous original need that came from Chaos; there were two others. One was Tartarus, the Underworld. The other was Eros, Love. 

	Then Chaos gave a giant yawn and out flowed the total darkness of night as well as Erebus. Erebus, like Gaia, was a place as well as a force, seeking to fill crannies. Erebus settled into the hole for the dead and became the upper part of the Underworld.

	Eros was beautiful, but not ordinary beautiful. Eros' beauty made the others quiver. It made them dream of being enveloped in warm caresses. Of getting drunk on thick creamy honey. Of swooning from ambrosia. Of whirling to tinkling music. Of being dazzled by sparkles in this lightless world. [ For it was still so dark.]

	So Night and Erebus fell in love, and Night gave birth to Day. And with light, in the lushness of fresh and salty water and in the expansiveness of air, life on Earth began. Grasses and vines wound their way around the globe. Bushes gently bloomed. [The Earth had become and everything to come, good and bad, was soon to follow.]

That’s a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of creation, beautifully retold by a children’s author named Donna Jo Napoli, that I found in a book of Walker’s the other day when I was casting around the house for something to read to him to help him wake up. He loves stories so much that reading him a story is the only reliable way to get him to wake up at 7am for school. He wants to wake up so he can hear the story. So this is a story of awakening in that way.

But it’s a tale for us too of how we create the world isn’t it? The world we perceive appears to be orderly but only because of the quick work of the mind to make sense of the jumble of perceptions and thoughts that emerge each moment, and each of us does this in our own way, and out of this wrapping of our arms around the drifting forms and the opening of our heart to the heat of life each of us creates our world. Each world unique. No two of us quite the same. And each of us in the center of the world we’ve created believing it to be the real world. With our heavens and our hole into the underworld. We our dark thoughts and pain and our poetry and joy and amazement at it all.

Sesshin is such a wonderful opportunity to watch it all happen. To watch our own mythology arising and expressing itself. Norman used to say “everyone’s a philosopher” and we could also say “everyone has a mythology” – everyone has a creation myth of their own life, a creation myth of their self. And we carry that myth forward constantly editing and adding and embellishing, and at times feeling really stuck with. It’s so heavy sometimes isn’t it to be stuck with yourself. Couldn’t I be someone else today?

Sesshin a real opportunity though to slow down the myth making and watch the myth arising and doing it’s thing.

Sometimes we misunderstand sesshin as a time to improve. As a time to get some understanding or some peace. We’re starting to understand that it’s not that – it’s not a process of manipulation and control in that way. The American Zen understanding of the word sesshin itself belies this- at first we were told by our dharma leaders that sesshin means to gather up the mind. To take all these pieces of chaos and gather them with the arms of Gaia into a new whole in accord with the teachings. Deep and subtle work but nonetheless a great work of improvement and refinement. But then someone looked up the world , I think it might have actually been Kate McCandless so this is a teaching local to our Pacific Northwest practice life, someone looked up the word “sesshin” and we learned that it means to “touch” the heart-mind. To touch, to hold, to experience. A very different thing than to gather.

We gather things with a closed hand. And we expect to pull the hand back to the body with something. To capture and hold something. To finally find some way of bringing the swirling chaos to a stop. At last to a stop.

But we touch things with open hand. And when we bring our hand back we expect to have only an impression – a feeling – a sense of the texture and nature of what we touched. And that which we touched is allowed it’s own function. The chaos is allowed to be chaos.

And so here this weekend to touch the heart, to touch the mind. Just to touch it. Gently. With care. With kindness. With so much patience. And to feel the warmth of our life through the palms of our hands.

This retreat is the closing of our Winter practice period this year and we’ve been exploring what we’ve been calling the Heart of the Matter using the Heart Sutra and the emptiness teachings of our school as a jumping off point.

The Heart Sutra is such an odd little text though, isn’t it? We usually say that it’s a summary of a broader set of literature about wisdom – the Prajna Paramita literature – but it’s not the kind of summary any of us would write really as it’s totally different in style from the longer sutras. Some scholars think that it might have been composed in China actually which was apparently quite a shocking notion to many. Maybe it’s more of a blast of enthusiasm and wonder about the practicing of Prajna Paramita. And as we’ve been studying it we’ve been realizing that it might not be the worlds of text itself that matter so much as the transmission of those words and the actual practice of reciting the Heart Sutra.

One of the things that’s come up in conversations about the Heart Sutra are people’s memories of where they first encountered it. I’ve heard some really interesting stories! For me it was at Santa Cruz Zen Center in about 1985 or so. It turned out later that this was in the middle of a several year transitional time for that center – the founding teacher and most of students gone, the new teacher not arrived. Just a few long time Zen students quietly minding the store. A couple named Jerry who was an aikido teacher and I can’t remember his partner’s name. It was usually just me and the two of them, sometimes this other younger man. One period of zazen maybe around 6am and then we chanted the Heart Sutra and said goodbye. I was a bit shy so I always resisted chatting or having tea or anything, I would hop back on my bike and continue up to campus getting there in the quiet of the morning with some time to study before my first class. I didn’t pull this off every day but for a while I was pretty regular.

Anyway one time Jerry and his sweetie were away on a trip and they left it to the other young man to take care of the zendo and I remember he didn’t want to chant the Heart Sutra. I was really surprised by how appalled I was – it just didn’t feel right at all. I don’t know now if it’s just the way we habituate to what we’re used to or something about the sutra itself. I remember that translation had a lot more Sanskrit in it. Especially I remember that it had annutara samyak sambodhi – complete perfect enlightenment. And I think some other phrases. It’s power is somehow beyond it’s words though isn’t it.

That it’s more a piece of a much bigger unfolding of something. That although it’s packed with meaning and references so deeply that in 5 lectures I’m sorry to say I only got a few lines into the text, maybe we should just continue on later in the year and see if we can finish it. Or maybe that doesn’t matter so much. But the deeper meaning might not be in the words. There’s a Zen poem that says “the meaning is not in the words, but it responds to the inquiring impulse.” Perhaps the way it is for us is this: from warm hands in the past we’ve been handed forward a feeling of that inquiring impulse and we chant the Heart Sutra in celebration and recognition of that. Another way to look at the Heart Sutra is that it’s not a short explanatory text ending with a mantra but actually the whole text is a mantra. A mantra of wisdom, of compassion, of connection. It seems to work that way.

And so it’s wonderful and strange for me to be sitting here in my 46th year, 28 years after I first set foot in a zendo, wearing a version of Tang Dynasty Chinese robes with the color coding of a lineage holder sitting across the altar from my own teacher who is more or less in the same position. Oddly sitting here through the courtesy of many karmic twists and turns as are each of us. I often reflect on how strange it is that all this could have happened. I really don’t take it for granted. And I really don’t think there’s anything extra special about me, or just that every one of us is extra special – each a jewel reflecting the other jewels of the universe. And those jewels end up in different roles somehow. And we honor that and work with it as best we can. But thank you. Thank you for your support all of these years. I know it isn’t always so easy.

So I want to read a few lines from the Perfection of Wisdom In Eight Thousand Lines which is one of several prajna paramita texts. I read these lines briefly the other night in seminar more as a kind of impressionistic example of the literature but let’s spend a little longer with them this morning. The bookmark I have here is a folded up piece of paper that’s been in this book a while – it’s a syllabus that Norman gave out in the Winter of 1988 at Green Gulch when he led a class on this text. It’s been sitting there all this time I guess, waiting for this moment.

It starts like all good myths do, by setting the stage. And it’s a big stage full of worthy beings. Listen…
[p. 82-84, emphasize the freedom from despair that the Bodhisattvas experience by completely letting go of being bodhisattvas.]

So my myth of the world involves a pretty rich material world. Well very rich really in all sense of the world. This talk written on a very powerful computer – although from my point of view it’s just my crummy old laptop, getting close to time to replace it. But because of our connections to Kenya I’m little by little broadening my sense of the material world. And I found out recently that one of the thing I very much take for granted is access to electric light. Without electric light you can’t work or study in the evening. And if you can’t study you can’t get a very good education especially because there are probably many important tasks to do during the day, even if you are child who is lucky enough to go to school. After school there is work to do to help your family survive and then if you live near the equator its getting dark around 6pm every day, year round. So you can’t really study and you can’t do well in your education and nothing much changes.

Janet’s family likes to give us little gifts for Christmas and they us this toy solar light. For us it’s a toy, it sits around mostly. Walker and his friend used it inside the fort they made of pillows and sheets last weekend.

But I read an article that reminded me that in another circumstance this light is the difference between poverty and not for some child somewhere, for some family somewhere living in a village or a shanty town in all kinds of places all over the world. A fifth of the world’s popular doesn’t have reliable access to electricity it turns out and so their houses are dark at night. Not only at night but many of these houses, or shelters really, don’t have windows either so they’re dark during the day too.

The technology is the easy part of solving problems.  There are zillions of cool ideas.   Plenty of college students have come up with a great new technology for the poor.

The bigger challenge comes from the questions around any new device:  How do you build a market for a technology focused on people with no money?   How do you physically get it to where it needs to be?  How do poor people acquire it?   How can it be adopted on a wide scale?   How do you make it last?

If you look at the market for solar lighting in Africa, you’ll be excused for thinking that you’re looking at the mobile phone market some 15 years ago.   Both are leapfrog technologies — neither land lines nor the electrical grid is going to reach much of the continent, so let’s just skip that generation of technology and move to the next one.   Like cellphones, solar lamps are getting cheaper, smaller, better.    Both are life-changing, indispensable.  And the market is enormous.  Today, about 1.5 million people in Africa use solar lamps.  That’s a huge number — but it’s less than 1 percent of the potential market.   A fifth of the world’s population lives without electricity. Another large group of people do have access to electricity, but need an alternative because it is too expensive and power outages are daily events.

People without electric light usually rely on kerosene, a terrible alternative.   It gives poor light — really, not enough to study by — produces noxious fumes, and is a major hazard for burns and fires.  Indoor air pollution kills 2 million people each year and kerosene is a major source.  Kerosene itself is also expensive; the very poor typically spend 10 percent of their income or more on kerosene.   Its users pay 600 times more per unit of light than people who use electrical-powered incandescent lamps.

The unsolved problem for lighting Africa isn’t designing a great lamp.  Great lamps are out there.  It’s designing a great business model.

The solar light business in Africa is enormous.    Many companies make solar lights — d.light and Barefoot Power are two of the best-known.  These companies are growing exponentially; Barefoot Power reached 1.5 million people by the end of last year, and is on target to reach 5 million this year.  Stewart Craine of Barefoot believes the market will serve half of all unelectrified households in the world by 2020.

These commercial solar lamps vary from $10 desk lamps to five-lamp systems that sell for more than $100.   The manufacturers say the lamps pay for themselves through savings on kerosene in two to six months.  But this is still far too much money for many people.

“We currently don’t target the poorest people in the community, as we sell products for cash, and $25 is still hard to find at one time for many villagers,” Craine wrote in an e-mail.
Barefoot and d.light do try to reach poorer customers, both physically and financially.   Joyce DeMucci of Barefoot said that the company often sells in bulk to nongovernmental groups that run camps for internally displaced people.  These groups give away the lamps or subsidize their sale.  The solar companies also work with local women’s groups or microfinance groups that can provide distribution and financing.

Sam Goldman, the co-founder of d.light, said that the major challenge for selling to villagers was supply chain and logistics — “how do we sustainably deliver products and provide after-sales and warranty services?”  The company sometimes distributes lamps through businesses already designed to reach the rural poor — sellers of dried frozen fish, for example, or a kind of low-cost roofing, and d.light is starting to work with a multinational company that distributes products in rural Africa.  In Guatemala, d.light sells its lamps in mountain villages through the microconsignment system that I wrote about last year.

These programs are small, in part because the potential market for full-price sales is so big.  But the price of solar lighting is likely to drop substantially.  Gaurav Gupta, who heads the energy and environment practice at the consulting firm Dalberg,  makes the point that the demand for portability and energy efficiency is being driven by rich consumers, who want smaller and smaller mobile phones and better solar lights.  But those improvements will end up bringing down the cost of solar lighting for the poor. If it gets cheap enough, then there just may be a simple business model that can serve almost everyone — the market.

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/innovations-in-light/ ]

So this little solar battery powered light is one thing here, another thing there. Any concept we might have about this little light or anything really becomes more fluid and dynamic the more we learn. The Heart Sutra is teaching us this, our hearts are teaching us this, the world is teaching us this.

Dizang said to Xiushan, “Where do you come from?”
Xiushan said, “From the South.”
Dizang said, “How is Buddhism in the south these days?”
Xiushan said, “There’s extensive discussion.”
Dizang said, “How can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice to eat?’
Xiushan said, “Don’t you care about the world?”
Dizhang said, “What do you call ‘the world’?”

[book of Serenity, case 12]

Avalokitesvara saw the emptiness of our experience and she knew there was space there to help even more as all fear and distress lifted.

Let’s use our time skillfully during this sesshin. Touching the heart. Just touching it. Opening to the mystery of this mythical life. Remembering the broad context of this world. What do you call the world? What do you call me? What is the myth of this moment. This breath. Just this.

This.

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2012

Freeman Dyson, 88, is a pioneer quantum physicist, pure mathematician, metaphysicist, beady examiner of such givens as global warming and tireless explorer of our future as bio-engineering space colonisers. A Fellow of the Royal Society for 60 years, he left Britain at the age of 23 because he believed “Americans held the future in their hands and that the smart thing for me to do would be to join them.” When he took up his post at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Einstein was still working there. Startling propositions and inconvenient arguments are the signature of this human neutrino, widely regarded as one of the Nobel Committee’s glaring omissions.

His father, Sir George Dyson, was a composer and director of the Royal College of Music. Freeman has six children, including George, a historian of science, who is about to publish a history of the digital age, and Esther, an internet analyst and entrepreneur dubbed “the first lady of cyberspace”.

I e-mailed to ask him: (1) why he remained hard at work; (2) what were his strengths and weaknesses now compared with earlier in his career; and (3) what advice would he give to those who have been working for (a) one year, and (b) 30 years? This was his reply, received the next day:

Thank you very much for your friendly invitation. I am delighted to share with Her Majesty the distinction of hanging on longer than expected. Here are brief answers to your questions.

1. I continue working because I agree with Sigmund Freud’s definition of mental health. To be healthy means to love and to work. Both activities are good for the soul, and one of them also helps to pay for the groceries.

2. In my younger days my work as a scientist was deep and narrow. Now, as I grow old, my work grows broader and shallower. As a young man, I solved technical problems of interest only to a few specialists. As an old man, I write books about human affairs of interest to a broad public. In both halves of my life, I tried to make the best use of my limited abilities.

3. (a). Advice to people at the beginning of their careers: do not imagine that you have to know everything before you can do anything. My own best work was done when I was most ignorant. Grab every opportunity to take responsibility and do things for which you are unqualified.

(b). Advice to people at the middle of their careers: do not be afraid to switch careers and try something new. As my friend the physicist Leo Szilard said (number nine in his list of ten commandments): “Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.”

Now I look forward to reading what other survivors have to say. Thank you again for including me.

Yours sincerely

Freeman Dyson

 Charles Nevin is a freelance writer who spent 25 years on Fleet Street. He is the author of “The Book of Jacks”