Talk Notes:
Well, it's day 7. At last? Suddenly? Oh YES? Oh no? Sorry, what day is it again?
It's a really common trope in sesshin Dharma talks to kind of walk through the days. Acknowledging the challenges of day this or day that, pointing out everyone's strength and resilience, giving a few tips and suggestions for sesshin practice. Often the teacher might give a few last encouraging words, or consoling words for those really struggling, with the last bows in the evening.
But Norman never did that. I don't know that he consciously thought to him, "naw they don't need that, they're strong and reliant, they'll find their way, I don't need to be a coach here" - mostly I think it just didn't occur to him even though I'm sure he experienced that as a student. He just wanted to share something about the Dharma he found interesting. Maybe provide a little distraction and entertainment for the hour of the talk while he did so. And other than that he offered his support through his embodied presence and one on one in dokusan. In fact he hardly mentioned sesshin practice at all in the couple of hundred sesshin talks I've heard him give. So as I started being invited to give the first talk my inner teacher and coach, and maybe just being a few decades closer to when sesshin felt like a really hard struggle I was more inspired to offer some suggestions for how to practice to the whole group.
And to be honest, part of why I started being invited to give the first talk was practical. Norman often had one reason or another to come to sesshin a day or two late. Some of those reasons I fully supported - illness, a major funeral - some I found a little more challenging - a poetry event or a one day sit he wanted to lead in the Bay Area even though he'd committed to the Samish dates long before. Some just baffled me and I figured well...ok then!....like his granddaughter's elementary school graduation in New York. Yes I said elementary school. It's a big deal there these days apparently. Your future it well tracked out by the time you're 10 in the Big Apple.
But it was also yet another demonstration of trust from Norman wasn't it? He could come a day or two late because he knew we'd be fine. He knew I'd be fine standing for a day as head teacher and giving the talk.
But yeah, he didn't talk much about to practice sesshin while at sesshin. And at the root I do think there is again that deep trust. That we were all fine. Fine can included challenges, even big ones, but nonetheless: fine.
That said I do want to mention silence practice again. I'm a bit obsessed with silence to be honest. And I know that's not news. And of course that'll make me a hypocrite here and there too but so it goes. Silence is such a powerful part of how sesshin changes our lives.
The aspect I want to encourage is watching out for the way you may now be feeling pretty relaxed and happy - we're just about through! - and also how you may be feeling like Chris does, and I do too, you may be feeling the love for these wonderful bodhisattvas all around you. And we want to say acknowledge each other. To say hello. Sitting on the bench in the sun with our coffees side by side. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to say "oh isn't this lovely."
And then you're chatting away. In a public area. At sesshin. Distracting everyone in earshot and in eyeshot, but you're not thinking about that. You're enjoying the company of your neighbor and it really is lovely. You're pretty quiet together - I mean you're not slapping backs, hooting, and hollering. It's a quiet conversation, but it's still breaking silence and impacting your own practice and those around you. It's a lot of impact actually - our neurology is finely attuned to notice interactions. So, please don't start conversations. Even quiet short ones.
SO that's about as negative as I tend to ever get! Let's bring in the positive because it's a much better motivator than some authority figure telling you what to do. I want to warmly encourage you to tune into how intensely pleasurable a truly companionable silence is. How rare. We have moments of silence around people all the time but usually it's a little awkward. There's some idea that you should say something. Here we are in agreement to release from that idea of needing to say something and we can truly enjoy sitting together, breathing together, just being together without needing to add anything at all. It's a true joy that, so rare in this world.
So I've shared enough of the chronology of the Samish Summer sesshin so let me add in another thread or two this morning of what happened across those years.
Let's go back June of 1993 at our first ever retreat, Florence Caplow, of course, was here. She I were the main co-conspirators running the sangha in the early years. Maybe you've met Florence or know her name from her wonderful book of women's Zen stories called The Hidden Lamp. Anyway Florence loved to sit. One time she told me on the weekends she had to bargain with herself so she wouldn't get sit all day. "If you get the vacuuming done then you can sit for a few hours." This was amazing to me. I deeply appreciating sitting but it sure doesn't call to me like that. Especially early on it was often pretty painful.
Anyway she was sitting up late one night all alone here at our first sesshin and she had a shocking and horrific vision. I don't remember how visual it was or if it was more of a sudden and frightening bunch of feelings - an experience of pain, horror, and suffering. But that it wasn't just a mood or arising some experience she was chewing on. She was just sitting there breathing and all of a sudden this thing came over her. I doubt she slept much that night.
So she went to see Norman in the morning and they intuited together that it was an experience of restless spirits of this place. One thing to know about Florence was she was quite connected to the tribes. She'd recently married a guy who worked for the Lummi tribe and the wedding was on their sacred lands at Madrone Point on Orcas Island - the officiant and most of the guests were tribal members. Most of us got on a boat in Bellingham they'd organized and went out there. This was my first time with local tribal members and it was quiet interesting to me. But anyway this led weight to their conclusion to me.
This was long before most of the information about the Samish Nation was posted here and we didn't know about the village with it's longhouse but we knew indigenous people lived all over the islands and Florence said this sure seemed like a good site for a village. So Norman said we should do a spirit settling ceremony. If you've ever been to Segaki, or Sejiki, the hungry ghosts ceremony it was that kind of thing. Zen isn't just meditation, it includes esoteric rituals and an appreciation for the unseen world. Some of the other Japanese Buddhism, like Tendai and Shingon, have a richer set of ritual tools for this - mudras, mantras, fire ceremonies, ascetic practices - and Zen isn't afraid to borrow from them freely.
So we did. We gathering all kinds of offerings - everyone in the sesshin did this together - we looked for natural things that would've been here pre contact - and we made a large altar. We did several chants - the Dai Hi Shin Dharani for sure - and as doshi I was invited to try my best to open the doorway to the spirit world. I'd watched Norman officiate at hungry ghosts ceremonies and I did my best to kind of drop into my gut and reach out. Somehow with the few ritual tools we had we put together something quite powerful. A few years, Kate and Jeff McKenna joined the sangha. Jeff is adopted into the Nooksack tribe so he had a good sense of native ritual and he'd advice us about how to arrange the altar. He was surprised that what we'd already been doing seemed very similar to a funeral ritual called a burning and that some of the words and gestures were quite similar.
Norman led this spirit ceremony for first few years but pretty soon I was ordained and he was full time in the dokusan room, and it was something he left to me to lead. One of the many areas where he just gave me so much space and trust - that I'd feel my way and he was around if I needed him. Some years later this might be one of the few times he regretted not being more of a presence though.
I grew up non-religious as the son of a physicist in the suburbs. I didn't know anything about spirits or shamanism or anything like that. Is there really any such thing as a spirit world? I'd definitely been loosened up a good bit by experiences I'd had on psychedelics, in nature, and in meditation but I didn't have any real background in any of this. And I absolutely was quite allergic to new agey stuff. I did go to school in Santa Cruz - a bastion of hippie culture with plenty of shops selling crystals and offering time in the healing pyramid in back and that kind of thing. I guess I was a kind of combination of spiritual curious and a total skeptic.
Oh I just remembered one data point: one of my best friends in high school's father was actually a researcher into paranormal phenomena and everything I'd heard and read about his work had me convinced that was total bunk. Do you remember the Israeli psychic Uri Geller who would bend spoons with his mind? My friend Nicky's dad studied people like that.
And here I was calling to the spirits and making offerings and appologizing for the pain in this place. Shouting out into the wind that we feel their pain and hope for healing in all of the worlds throughout space and time. Funny how things can go in life.
And the interesting thing was I felt something powerful during and after these annual ceremonies. It'd a kind of dense warm feeling centered in the gut. I can't come up with any word for it other than a kind of presence in my body. It would gradually fade away as we walked to dinner after the ceremony or maybe I'd still feel it a bit during dinner or soon after. But it arise during these ceremonies each year and then vanish and it wasn't something I'd ever feel any other time. In fact I'd pretty much forget all about it until the next year, woah there that feeling is again. I think I mentioned this to Norman who pretty much just "hmm, that's interesting..." but I was also a little uncomfortable and embarrassed about it. Is this real? Am I just making it up? Am I kind of like trying to hard to manufacture some kind of "spiritual experience" - but it was uncanning. Same feeling every time.
And over the years it seemed like it was getting stronger.
And it was also just one hour in a lot of rich and complex hours of sesshin so I would tend to forget all about it until the next time that ceremony came around. But there was this felt sense that something was happening here. I was pretty sure I wasn't somehow making this up.
And I started learning more too. About the history of what happened here. Right here. And on first learning there was a lot of urgency and intensity in me for sure. I learned about how smallpox arrived in the Northwest - on a boat arriving in Victoria BC in 1862. I remembered being taught that the story of disease was mostly just bad luck for the natives: how Europeans had better immunity to the European diseases they brought with them. And that deepened my shock when I learned that that was a half-truth at best. Maybe someone who survived the slums of London would at least get really sick if they got smallpox but it's not like they were immune. And yes the indigenous people died. Almost all of them. 60-90% mortality in each village. And that Europeans had a vaccine but didn't share it with the natives - maybe you remember the story of infecting cows with a mild does of smallpox leading to the invention of the first ever vaccine that was back in 1796 - it's always featured in high school biology textbooks. A few altruistic doctors did go out and vaccinate a few villages but that was the exception not the rule. The rule was, pretty much, let them die. I ran into an editorial from the Port Townsend newspaper pretty much endorsing that approach.
This made me and my sangha cronies a bit messianic about sharing the information. For a few years we felt compelled to tell these stories at sesshin. People need to know this stuff. Sometimes I'd speak at length during zazen about the genocide that happened here. I, and several of us really, had a lot of intensity and zeal about this. Probably partly born by guilt: the guilt of being a privileged white person who didn't know something this central, this much of a core truth to why things look like they do right now in Skagit County. Why there are dikes and roads, why this island isn't even an island anymore, and almost all white land owners including the lovely couple you see pictured in the bulletin board over there - the Olsens - who gave this land to the community of Christ in the late 1940's. We were having a DEI awakening I guess and it's fair to say we were a bit woke about it.
We didn't think that all of our forbears were evil people or anything. One realization I had was, wow if most of the native folks were dead and then pretty soon most of the remain ones were forced onto reservations, those early settlers literally would have no idea who used to live here. And how they lived here - without out farms and draft animals - unimaginable. And you've got your 80 acre claim given to you by the government. I'm sure some of those folks wondered but it'd be easy to put out of your mind. Plus you had to work really, really hard to turn an old growth forest into a working farm so they didn't have a lot of sit around and consider the morality of this situation time either.
Then in the Spring of 2009, the Community of Christ organized a 50th year anniversary event - they founded this campground in 1959 - and we were invited to come. I led a meditation for a bunch of church elders which was fun. But the amazing thing was the Samish Nation sent several elders too. And they spoke about this place. I heard about one of those folks just a month or two earlier. Jeff McKenna had been to an event I think it was event at the first of the wonderful Maiden of Deception Pass statue made by a Samish carver. Anyway he'd been somewhere that the Samish leaders were too and went to say hello - he's a talker our Jeff - and an elder named Rosie said to him, "oh, are you the ones who's been calling to us?"
All we could think is that was about the ceremonies we'd been doing. We had not tried to call them up on the phone.
And then here she is at Samish. I don't think I managed to speak with her but I talked to a tribal member woman about my age and shared about this ceremony. That we'd be back in a month or so for our retreat and I wondered if she'd attend. She said yes and she and her husband who was from one of the plains tribes did come. And they were so appreciative. Tears in their eyes.
And like we did yesterday after the outdoor ceremony we all filed back into the zendo to bow out and she followed us in and offered her thanks in the Samish language. This is a moment I will never forget. Wow.
Bob was just reminding me that recent efforts to reach the Samish people and see if they'd like to visit with us again have come to not and I so regret not remembering that woman's name and getting her contact info.
And the next year it all went a little off the rails. We were gearing up for our usual big ceremony and I was spending some time outside just taking it all in - which I did yesterday too but apparently you were waiting for me longer than I thought you were. And I think Jeff was by my side. Even if he couldn't sit the sesshin he'd come for this ceremony. Where was a Zen priest from that batch I was telling you about named John Bailes there too.
This time I felt that strong gut feeling right away. Before we started offering and chanting and proclaiming our sorrow, regret, and gratitude. And I felt a strong pull. We were setting up a few cedars out there - kind of across from their compost and rubble piles. We thought we'd be there in open ground facing the small graveyard in the woods by the point. But I suddenly that this clear as day intuition we weren't on the right spot. I walked a few hundred feet closer to the water and it was like a lodestone or a geiger detector - the feeling in my gut just got stronger. And I felt like I knew that was the right spot. My mind speculated maybe there were people buried there, who knows, but I knew it was whether the spirits - the "old ones" Jeff called them - wanted us to do the ceremony.
And so I called out - in a kind of odd sounding voice, it sounded very distant to me - that we should move everything. And we did. I'm sure a few people were starting to feel alarmed though. And wow did I get into leading that year's ceremony. Intensely focussed. Giving it my all.
And that gut feeling was so strong. As we walked dinner it didn't start to fade like it always had. If anything it felt stronger. And I started feeling a wild mix of emotions: maybe fear and pride, lots of confusion. What if they never goes away? Am I being...possessed? What's happening?
Jeff and John took me under their wing and concocted some kind of "clearing" ritual. I remember a large bowl of water was involved. And maybe the parts of this that were more internally generated started to relax as I felt their kindness. But I think the sticky kind of prideful aspects might have been a bit fed. They were concerned but also kind of excited I think. The old ones are showing themselves. Anyway it did start to fade a bit.
Where I alarmed everyone even more was by going into the zendo, the next period of zazen had started by then, and saying - what in my altered state thought was a very calm and reasonable voice - if you're feeling any weird feelings after our ceremony please take care and get some help if you need it.
But yeah I pretty much felt like it would a good idea to add a new announcement to the Ino's repertoire: "possession alert, possession alert - your resident priest has been possessed by spirits, don't let this happen to you."
And it's not surprising that that evening a whole delegation of the senior people present went to see Norman about me. Without my knowledge, I found out later. They wanted him to fix it I guess. I think the request was that someone else should be leading the rest of the retreat! He pretty much just told them, well it does sound like Tim's had a strong experience, let's let him get a night of sleep and see how it's going. Basically he expressed his trust for me and that everything would be fine. And it was of course.
And then a few days later, Norman called me up to say, "so, let's not do that ceremony any more. It might well be important work to do but our main purpose is to offer sesshin. I suggested we try a simpler ceremony, more of an acknowledgment and less an attempt to feed the hungry spirits and said, sure let's try that and see how it goes." And that day I wrote the ceremony we did yesterday and it's been fine. I do feel a little mild version of that somatic in-the-presence of the spirits feeling but it doesn't dominate and I don't worry about it too much. And I try to stay tuned into gratitude and I think a much clearly sense of not knowing too. Spirits is a word that seems like the best approximation for whatever the heck but it's just a word and we really, really don't know. But like I was saying in work circle, it's also our honoring of the tradition throughout China and Japan of Zen people including and honoring the local spirits.
That's one part of Zen as meditation science that mostly didn't cross the ocean with the pioneering Zen teachers beyond the hungry ghosts ceremony. Last I was there they didn't include mention of the spirits of the Esalen people at Tassajara or the spirits of the stones and grasses and waters of that valley because Suzuki Roshi didn't. They did have some contact with native people from the beginning so it's curious but they didn't.
And yet here at Samish the kami, the spirits, did the teaching and we did our best to respond. Maybe a little over the top at first, or maybe not, who really knows. But I feel fine about where we landed and I appreciate everyone's sincerity in supporting the ritual yesterday and we can each in our own way feel into the horrid trajedy that's behind every place in this continent but somehow this is one of those special places where the divisions between the worlds we generate in our heads are just thinner and we feel something. Everywhere is sacred ground and the sacredness was earned through suffering and loss. And here you may be able to really feel this.
I feel a bit self conscious going into this for so long and I don't expect I'll tell this story again but it felt like it needed to be told as part of these musings on the history of our practice here.
Let's go to Dōgen's Mountains and Waters. Section 14.
Now Dōgen explores relationality. As we remember the true nature of mountains and waters, how do we enter these mountains and waters. This brings us to another poem by Su Dongpo:
Poem by su dongpo
Mount Lu
Regarded from one side, an entire range
From another, a single peak
Far, near; high, low; all its parts
different from the others.
If the true face of Mount Lu
cannot be known,
It is because the one looking at it
is standing in it's midst
As conditioned beings we can't have clear perspective on our own lives. We're in the middle of our mountains and we can't see the mountains. We're in the middle of it all. But that's where we live, that's where we practice, that is practice-realization. Dōgen coaches us in this over and over again.
But when we are in the frame of separateness, of ego, we either try our best not to notice that we don't know where we are, or - maybe sometimes even harder - we take up the practice and we see how little we know. We start to see that nothing is certain, nothing can be known in the way we thought it could. And this can be upsetting for us. If mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers what the heck are they? And what are we? Where can we stand if there's nowhere solid to stand?
As we live into practice-realization that storehouse of potential experiences Chris was talking about yesterday - the Alaya Vijñana - starts to transform. And here again is why you don't want to start spraying your weed killer, as it turns out those weren't weed seeds after all, they were the Buddha jewels to help us awaken.
Dōgen says it this way:
14.1
Mountains have been the abode of great sages from the limitless past to the limitless present. Wise people and sages all have mountains as their inner chamber, as their body and mind. Because of wise people and sages, mountains are actualized.
And further he says it's not about figuring it out and doing the right thing. And it's absolutely not about finding someone who will pat you on the back and validate you:
14.2
You may think that in mountains many wise people and great sages are assembled. But after entering the mountains, not a single person meets another. There is just the vital activity of the mountains. There is no trace of anyone having entered the mountains.
And Dōgen is also sympathetic. He knows we're going to get tripped up by our delusions - our core belief in our separate solid selves - so he offers us a bunch of coaching:
14.3 4
When you see mountains from the ordinary world, and when you meet mountains while in mountains, the mountains’ head and eye are viewed quite differently. Your idea or view of mountains not flowing is not the same as the view of dragons and fish. Human and heavenly beings have attained a position concerning their own worlds that other beings may doubt or may not have the capacity to doubt.
Do not remain bewildered and skeptical when you hear the words Mountains flow; but study these words with buddha ancestors. When you take up one view, you see mountains flowing, and when you take up another view, mountains are not flowing. One time mountains are flowing, another time they are not flowing. If you do not fully understand this, you do not understand the true dharma wheel of the Tathagata.
And then he does his kind of harsh sounding encouragement that we can really trust this process of practice-awakening.
14.5
An ancient buddha said, “If you do not wish to incur the cause for Unceasing Hell, do not slander the true dharma wheel of the Tathagata.” Carve these words on your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow; on your body, mind, and environs; on emptiness and on form. They are already carved on trees and rocks, on fields and villages.
And then, maybe as a kind of apology for being kind of intense just then he tosses us some love.
15.1
Although mountains belong to the nation, mountains belong to people who love them. When mountains love their master, such a virtuous sage or wise person enters the mountains. Since mountains belong to the sages and wise people living there, trees and rocks become abundant and birds and animals are inspired. This is so because the sages and wise people extend their virtue.
To me this is that it's okay to suffer and struggle, to over do it and under do it, that it takes us a really long time to have any kind of clarity on anything. That we mess it up over and over. And that that's okay. The mountains - the world of practice - are our place of love, our place of abundance - the birds and animals are inspired by us even though we might in a bad moment feel like a total dope. We are at the same time virtuous sages, we are wise people. It's easy to forget that so look up! See the mountains. Feel the waters. Mountains are mountains again, and waters are waters again.
And the rest of this section is more of the same. Even wise rulers and Shakyamuni Buddha himself had to learn this. So have faith, and also don't aim too low. Don't underestimate practice-realization - can you hear this last paragraph as warm, loving encouragement for all of us to practice endlessly and awaken completely?
15.4
Know that mountains are not the realm of human beings or the realm of heavenly beings. Do not view mountains from the standard of human thought. If you do not judge mountains’ flowing by the human understanding of flowing, you will not doubt mountains’ flowing and not flowing.
For human we can read "conditioned" or "separate" - and it's not about getting rid of the separateness eitehr - it's not the realm of heavenly beings. The mountains invite us to leap clear of all of this. It's not about separateness or oneness. Mountains are mountains and mountains are not mountains. Let go! Let go! Flow as mountain waters and beyond mountain waters.
