Talk Notes:
How's it going with the lowered gaze practice? It take a while to really get into a practice. I do hope you take that up long enough to feel into it's benefits. There are many other practices like that. So many ways to encourage ourselves to go deeper. To be more settled. More aware. Quieter. I am tempted to go on about the wondrous practice of using the zendo bathrooms quietly too but I shall restrain myself. (Hah! Slipped that in didn't I?).
And more important than our perfect quiet sesshin conduct of course are the teachings Chris shared us yesterday on listening to the teachings of the insentient beings who are preaching the dharma all around us all the time. At sesshin we learn how to listen a little deeply. Ah, but wait: one supports the other. Being quieter in body and mind you can hear oh so much more. Dongshan didn't mention the toilet preaching the Dharma but I'm sure he wouldn't want anything left out. Listen. Just listen. Every moment. This place does have so so so many teachings to share with us. As does your own tender heart.
Back to the history of Samish sesshin. If you weren't here earlier maybe you'll listen to my first two talks to get the 1990's bits.
To fully understand what happened in the sesshin here in the 2000's we have to go back to the early 1980's in San Francisco. Norman started practice in Berkeley in 1970 when he was 26 just before Suzuki Roshi died. He never met Suzuki although he had a few opportunities to do so, just didn't quite get around to it he says. With Sojun Mel Weitsman at Berkeley Zen Center he found a spiritual home and a practice that helped him start to become more grounded. Mel quietly supported this smart, and by all accounts kind of erratic and goofy, young student. Norman was for a time one of the first residents at the Zen center too - Mel really took him under his wing.
In 1976, by then married to Kathie and with twin sons soon to follow, Norman and Kathie left Mel's place for five years at Tassajara to study with Richard Baker. Dick, Norman always called him that in my hearing, never "Baker Roshi", was by all accounts a brilliant leader and teacher and Norman served as his jisha for some years - at Tassajara and after they moved to Green Gulch Farm in 1981. Green Gulch itself had been operating for 8 years at that point. Norman went on to serve in most of the leadership positions at Green Gulch. He was Director when I met him 5 years later in 1986. He was one of the Abbots of SFZC from 1995 to 2000.
Anyway one could give many talks about the heady early days at the three campuses of San Francisco Zen Center. But the karmic factor I wanted to get to was Richard Baker's blow out. The way I remember Norman telling it: Dick worked really hard for the community and he got a lot done, we was very good at what he set his mind to, and it just seemed natural to him that he needed a lot of support to do what he was doing. Logical. He needed a nice car and a Zen student to drive him between the three centers so they bought him a BMW. He needed duplicate libraries with all of the books shelved in the same order so he could grab just the book he needed when writing talks so they did that too (And remember he was head teacher, more or less the only teacher for a few hundred students, as well as head of the whole organization. And the organization wasn't just a Zen Center with three residential places, but also had several businesses like a bakery, a meditation cushions business and a restaurant. He ran it all. He was also an incredible fundraiser. All at the same time. One wonders if he might have been a bit bipolar actually). He simply needed everything arranged for his convenience everywhere he went. And apparently he needed demonstrations of everyone's respect too. I remember they told me at Green Gulch that whenever he was driving away they would all go out to line the driveway to bow to him in his BMW. There is a bit of formality traditionally when an abbot arrives and leaves at a monastery so he didn't totally make that up, but still...
So eventually, this is Norman's telling as I remember it, Richard Baker felt like he needed several girlfriends too. And, it turns out, at least one of them was married. Not to mention the insane power imbalance and utter inappropriateness of him having even one of those relationships.
I think it's hard to imagine the sound of the bubble breaking as the news came out about this. These were people, many still in their 20's and 30's, who had been working and practicing very very hard for years. Living simply in residence. Getting up early every day for zazen then going off to their Zen center jobs. Who believed so deeply in what was happening. For them Zen was not just an important practice for themselves and the world, but more like they were building a new world, a new society, a wise and grounded alternative to both mainstream materialistic culture and also to the ungrounded alternative hippie communities many of them had come through. This was the perfect blend - a society based on awakening and wisdom. What they were doing was a very big deal. And now it all had been badly betrayed by Suzuki Roshi's only successor. This was bad. It threw everything into question.
So the community fractured. Roughly a third chose to focus on Richard Baker's skills as a teacher, as their teacher, and those were considerable. They went with him to start a new community in Colorado. About a third stayed put and worked their way though a difficult time of transition and re-invention for SFZC. I remember someone telling me that for several months the zendo at Green Gulch was empty in the morning. The schedule fell apart. People just couldn't keep doing what they had been doing anymore.
And about a third left formal practice. And that's what I've getting to with this historical pre-amble to our history here at Samish. Most of them had no savings, not much work experience, and no plan. Things were a little easier economically then though, especially for middle class white folks. The SF Bay Area wasn't astronomically expensive and the early 80's economy was reasonable healthy so they could find their way in the mainstream way. Raizelah's teacher Chris Fortin and her husband Bruce are a good example. They went off with another Zen Center couple to a rural area an hour or two north of Green Gulch and went in on a piece of land together. Built a simple house. Bruce got a job at a retirement community where he ended up being the director. Chris went back to school to become a psychotherapist. They raised a child and live their lives. I think they sat together at home some but no going to Zen centers that was over.
And then after Norman started his Everyday Zen Foundation in 2000, they started hearing that their old Dharma friend Norman was teaching independent of the Zen Center now. I guess there was enough of a Zen Center telegraph still functioning that word got out. Norman stayed, got fully transmitted, did the thing, but he was also seen as "one of us" to these folks. Let's go see what he's up to.
And so they did. Norman soon attracted a good number of people who came in the door as senior students who had been his peers back in the day.
Richard Baker had done a very large priest ordination in 1980. I've seen a picture of the Buddha Hall at SF Zen Center just jammed full of ordainees. 30 or so I think at one ordination.
Several of the people who came to practice with Norman were ordained with him, and Kathie too, at that same ordination. But they hadn't continued in formal training and he had. They'd only been ordained a few years when things went south. They hadn't been shuso, head student, they hadn't gotten to learn much about priest craft or had as much space to study the dharma, they certainly hadn't had the opportunity to receive Dharma Transmission. So they were peers in one way but in another Norman became their teacher. And the way he's wired that worked. He could be both their old friend and colleague and their teacher.
So if you wanted to study intensively with Norman you'd consider coming....here. Norman kept the schedule pretty simple with his Everyday Zen. A weekly evening meeting - simple Dharma Seminar about study and conversation around the Dharma. A monthly one day sit. A single sesshin a year. To sit with him more you could join him at his annual sesshin in Mexico or his annual sesshin at Samish. And a little later a sesshin in Canada too.
We weren't exactly overrun by priests doing this kind of "catch up" training with Norman but we had a good number. People who weren't ordained too. Every year a good sized contingent flew in for sesshin. Maybe 5 or 6 from the Bay Area, a few more from New York and Boston. One guy from Colorado every year. Some years it was enough people that we rented a bus to shuttle them all up here. Bobbi here is keeping that tradition alive this year, thank you Bobbi. And Juriki Samuel is following in the footsteps of giants flying up from the Bay Area.
Also in 2000 we started having Northwest native priests too. I was ordained in 2000, Kate and Michael in 2003, Rick Spencer in 2004. We were a bit of a 4-some from there until Dharma Transmission which we all received in 2011.
And so the character of Samish sesshin morphed in response to these developments. I mean sesshin is sesshin and that's always the root of what happened here. Zazen, kinhin, service, silence & schedule. But now it was also an annual training monastery for novice priests, senior students, and lay entrusted teachers, and all kinds of people who appreciated Norman. It was one of the places to go to practice Zen with Norman intensively.
People from Norman's other Dharma projects came too. He'd started doing retreats on Jewish Meditation, meditation and legal mediation, mindfulness in the corporate world. All kinds of things. We had several rabbi, university professors, lawyers. All with meditation experience but several of whom hadn't sat a Zen sesshin before but they'd studied with Norman and loved him. I remember one orthodox rabbi felt like it wasn't appropriate for him to come to service so he did his own prayers under the gazebo. We'd see him shuckling away intoning softly Hebrew as we walked by in procession to the meal.
Norman from then rarely left the dokusan room. And he was very generous there. Often seeing people for as long as an hour.
And we made the unusual choice of having a priest and teachers meeting with him during sesshin every year. We'd slip off somewhere for the last work period plus another hour or so leaving the rest of the sesshin to keep chugging along. I always wondered what the people who weren't included in that meeting felt about that. And boy that meeting got larger every year. We kept having to find bigger rooms to have it in.
I do remember, happily, one year - maybe the last year we did it - having the rest of the community take the work meeting off as a break. I remember we unlocked the canoes down in the lake. I remember Kata particularly enjoying padding around - or maybe you went swimming? Do you remember that?
Odd to do that during sesshin, but it was a way for that group to stay connected, discuss our practice, for Norman to see us together. And of course it soon became the norm for those who were included and it was a thing when I was ready to stop having it again.
It's hard to explain how wonderful and how complicated this sesshin-as-training-ground was for me. These were my peers, most of them chronologically older than me (maybe all of them!) but I was the local leader. Our sangha were the hosts. It wasn't an Everyday Zen event. But not everyone quite saw it that way. Wonderfully, and again sometimes challengingly, Samish became it's own sangha. It's own thing. Something people were very invested in it. It was the first thing people who put into their summer plans. If we didn't have the registration open in January we'd get all kinds of inquiries, "hi I'm ready to arrange my flights! When can I sign up?" The e-cabins would sell out on the first day. We started doing an early opening for Red Cedar members so that maybe a few people from the Bellingham area could get one.
And we wanted to help with the training of course. So we'd have a different doshi every day so different priests could practice. We'd divide up most responsibilities, like tenken, into 1st half/second half both to make it less of a burden but so more people could practice doing each position. We've simplified back to one person all week now. Thank you, David!
The real high water mark of Samish-as-training-monastery was in 2008. That year we had a mini practice period here! We added an 8th day and split the time in half. The first half we had classes and some informal time each day in addition to morning and evening practice. I think I taught a class on the precepts. Peter Levitt did a Dharma writing workshop. There were other classes by Sandy Taylor, Florence Caplow, Kate and Michael and several others. And then the 2nd half was a sesshin. During the sesshin Norman gave a talk every day and one of us gave a talk in the evening. I do remember, I'm a little embarrassed to say, that I was pretty judgmental of some of my peers' evening talks, but somehow Norman found something positive and quite genuine to say about each one the next morning.
The numbers grew in the 2000's and 2010's. 50 or so was a small year. From 2015 we had 58 people, 73, 70, 70 again, 70 yet again, 80 online in 2020, and 57 in 2021, and then when we were back in person in 2022 it was 62, then 78, and our peak the year before last: 83 people signed up for Samish sesshin in 2024. (This year it's 46 signed, but with a big first half/second half differential and several illnesses and issues, so there are 26 of us in the room right now if everyone's here.)
And every year I learned a lot. Often through the interpersonal challenges of managing a large sesshin with all of these varied and invested stakeholders while also being tenderized by sesshin practice. I worked with feeling criticized a lot for one thing. There were all kinds of "you can't please everyone" moments. And darn if these older students, many started in the 1970's when I was a little boy, when they didn't agree with a choice I made were of the mind to just bow and say "thank you, you're our host of course we'll respect your judgement." Naw, they'd argue. They'd tell me that wasn't the "Everyday Zen way" They'd complain to Norman. And I'm sure sometimes the were right. Sometimes anyway. Probably it would have been easier if I'd relied more on my local colleagues, Chris here, John Wiley, Talus, and others for support. If I didn't have the tendency to go it alone. Maybe I can related to Baker Roshi a bit more than I care to admit - at least in that regard. Another area I continue to learn about.
Anyway for a while there not a year would go by when I wouldn't have a day or three when I was really upset. Working hard to process. More than once in tears. Much of this was internal. My own karma working it's way through - it's not like Norman's funky students from the Bay Area and the East Coast were a big problem. They are all delightful people, deeply devoted to the Dharma. Most remain close friends to this day. And yeah..sometimes they were a problem. A few of them never did quite get the knack of silence practice for one thing and as I bet you know that's a trigger for me! I am really into silence. Can't be deep enough.
And even there, I remember complaining about one of the Bay Area priests not keeping the silence even kinda to Norman and he was like, "Oh yeah: she mostly comes to see her Zen friends not to sit sesshin so it's understandable." This with a grin and no offer to straighten that person out for me. Just how it was.
And of course I learned a lot about all kinds of Dharma leadership and teaching things. How to be kinder and more aware with people. How to set boundaries in a gentle loving way (a trick I'm still learning about!). How to express myself clearly. And the biggest lesson of all: when to just leave things alone. Norman is a great one for leaving things be. Sometimes he is actually good at that to a fault but mostly often...he's spot on. Just leave it. They'll figure it out. It's not that big of an impact on sesshin anyways, don't magnify it in your head. Trying to correct them will do more harm than good. Don't be sure you're right anyway. Leave it and see what happens.
I've always loved the Suzuki Roshi leadership tip to see someone you're overseeing in some way like a cow in a big meadow. Don't try to pen them in. Let them do their thing. But, he emphasizes this, watch. Watch your cow carefully. We aware. Pay attention. Norman's very good at giving everyone a big meadow to play in. I learn this from him. Sometimes you do need to whisper in your cow's ear though. I'm working on that.
Wow, this was supposed to be another short chapter on Samish Sesshin and then back to Mountains and Waters but there was a lot to say. Maybe if I had more time I could have divided this in half. But let's do some "actual" Dharma now before we close.
[Does everyone have the handout?]
In Dōgen's Mountains and Waters Sutra, section 1-6 (and these numberings are from our trailside rituals at the backpack) we went deep into the mountains. Seeing ourselves as mountains, the mountains as us. Walking as mountains. Flying through the clouds as mountains. Solid, immovable, and radically free.
Now in section 7, Dōgen breaks into some straight up complaining. It's funny as Shohaku found a passage in the book where his student Ejo collected what he told them at the first monastery, Koshoji, Dōgen is quoted as saying that was remembering a teaching in the classical stories about monks complaining where the wise teacher urged his students:
Shogogenzo zuimonki
Even if you think that you understand the Dharma more deeply than others, do not argue, criticize, or try to defeat them. If there is a sincere student who asks you about the Dharma, you should not begrudge telling him about it. You should explain it to him. However, even in such a case, before responding wait until you have been asked three times. Neither speak too much nor talk about meaningless matters.
Then Dōgen said:
Shogogenzo zuimonki
After reading these words of Zhenjing, I thought that I myself had this fault, and that he was admonishing me. I have subsequently never argued about the Dharma with others.
But here a few years later he is ripping into the monks in China who, in his eyes, take a kind of short cut when they don't understand Zen teachings. The sin in question is say, "oh Zen is just illogical anyway." An unforgivable kind of avoidance in his eyes. The opening line here "Now, in Great Song Chinga there are careless fellows..." and so on? In the first version of Kaz's translation where he has "careless fellows" now he used to have "bald headed rascals" - I always thought that was a shame no lose the bald headed rascals. The official scholarly translation goes with "little simpletons". We don't need to spend time on the details of his complaint I don't think. One year preparing for the backpacking retreat where we chant this sutra, we thought about just cutting this section but in the end decided we couldn't. These are the great master's words. Shokahu seems to just take comfort in it: if the even the Great Dōgen loses his shit sometimes there's hope for all of us limited human beings as we learn Buddha's Way.
Then in section 8, we have a kind of reprise of the mountain teachings. A very cute little passage in there at the very bottom of the page: "All mountains walk with their toes on waters and make them splash."
And now we have arrived at the waters section. Here he doesn't seem to have a cannonical teaching to quote - like with Daokai and Yunmen's sayings about mountains walking - and it's all Dōgen riffing on the water. There is some wonderful stuff here about perspective that, for a Dōgen piece, is actually quite understandable - obvious even - but so helpful and important.
Let's chant together sections 9 and 10.
So let's really be careful to study these teachings on perspective within the context of our sesshin experience. What are the ways I'm assuming my own perspective is the only way of seeing things? Am I even aware that I have a perspective or am I just seeing whatever's in my mind as "the truth" as "how it is." Or even more pernicious, "how it should be."
I appreciated at our first work meeting how Work Leader Juriki shared that sometimes he experiences strong emotions during work period. That he figures the zazen practice stirs it up and then in work he can feel it and experience it. That this is important. What a beautiful observation and I'm sure one born out of some challenging moments and feelings.
Because here's the thing. We aren't usually so perceptive at first are we? We don't realize, oh this is a strong internal state being stirred up by practice. This is my ancient twisted karma.
No, we often project it out on others, or project it back on ourselves in a distorted way. So you may find yourself feeling impatient with someone - during work? during the meal? During the sometimes loooooong delay at the meal before we actually eat? You may find judgments coming up about him or her or they. About how it should be done. About how they should have organized things. You might think that you are right, and well, everyone else, is wrong.
Sometimes it's about pretty mild things which is easier to practice with. You may be able to catch yourself and say, "oh silly me: look how attached I am. That doesn't matter. It's fine." Or even get all the way to a practice of exchange, "oh that behavior triggers a reaction in me, I wonder what I'm triggering in them with my behavior?"
And sometimes we do get very upset. People leave leave nasty notes. They yell at someone. They leave sesshin. This happens. We've had dramatic and pretty public examples of this a few times - have you been here for one of those? - but mostly it's a quiet affair and if you weren't one of the 2 or 3 people involved you probably had no idea.
Sometimes someone can feel the upset and can see both sides at once: that happened not too long ago. The person who was triggered definitely had a few judgments around the details of the thing that happened, but could also see, "oh this is really my stuff!" too. Such wisdom mixed into the suffering.
And it gets so tricky in all of our Dharma relationships as just like Dōgen says here: one person's water is are wondrous blossoms and jeweled palaces and another person's water is is raging fire, pus, and blood. But there's just one Dharma water. It's all we can offer. Just don't think you know what it is either.
Okay, I think I've mostly told the story of Samish Sesshin so on my Friday talk we'll be free to hang with Dōgen for most of the time. Or maybe I'll think of more interesting Samish stories that I just have to tell you. If David Chadwick can write a whole book of Tassajara Stories about the first year of Tassajara monastery I guess I can burn up half of a Dharma talk or 3 on Samish Sesshin stories too. That's a lovely book by the way. And may David be happy wherever he is now after his passage from this world earlier this year.
And may you all be happy. Sesshin can for sure be tiring. Exhausting sometimes! Puss and blood, man. And it's also the most beautiful way of being together and opening to our deepest hearts too. It's truly a jeweled palace here at Samish. I don't know why the traditional Buddhists loved jewels so much. Our jewels are sunsets and great blue herons and bunnies and the quirky calls of the eagles (mixed into the complaining crows trying to drive off off the ravens, did you hear that: man they were going at it but the raven was having none of it.).
Take care.
