Held during our One-Day Sit on September 21st, this wonderful ceremony acknowledged Ryushin Kate's life of practice with the transmission ceremony of Menjuhai ("Face to face, Bowing in Completion"). After a peaceful day of sitting with the theme of "opening to joy" featuring a warm and insightful talk by Seiu Hannah, Kate formally shared that she was ready to take this step. Nomon Tim formally declared “The Dharma Gate of face-to-face transmission between Buddha and Buddha, Ancestor and Ancestor, is now realized.” The ceremony culminated with a wonderful Dharma talk by Ryushin Kate. Although the ceremony is named, "completion of practice", Kate reminded us that in reality, "there is no completion--our practice continues on forever...."
We thank you, Kate, for the deep and insightful talk and for your many years of deep heart practice.
The weekly schedule at Sansui-ji Mountains and Waters Temple will include richer offerings for the sangha, with two weekly zazen and study meetings per week:
In addition, look forward to a variety of interesting programs on several Sundays of the month. Sangha members are always invited to organize programs and events themselves! We look forward to the many opportunities the new temple will afford.
Rohatsu Sesshin is a celebration of Buddha's Enlightenment. The traditional retreat is 8 nights long ending on the morning of December 8th when, in the Japanese tradition, Buddha is said to have awakened.
We've generally held our a 2 or 3-day long Rohatsu ending on the 1st or 2nd weekend of December. However, now that Fall Samish Sesshin has proven so successful it has become clear that having another multi-day sesshin a month after Rohatsu to fit into the traditional dates is not viable.
Teachers in Western centers vary a lot around how freely they shift tradition for practical reasons, and there is value in holding to tradition even when it's awkward. In this case, where tradition and practicality have some friction, Nomon Tim and Practice Leaders have decided to honor practicality and will shift Rohatsu to early January.
It will be a time for the sangha to "Awaken in the New Year!". This year's retreat is expected to be on January 3rd and 4th.
Our Red Cedar Zen 8-week Practice Periods have always been in the winter, generally mid-January through early March. Due to challenges in January with snow and infectious disease, starting in 2025 we'll have our Practice Periods in the Fall. Additionally, Fall is a common time for Western Zen sanghas to have Practice Period. And, importantly, this winter we'll have the incredible opportunity to help our contractor remodel our building and set up our temple. (See details for our first construction work party in October here.)
Practice Periods will start during the 4th week of September and end on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The 2025 Fall Practice Period will run from September 24th through November 23rd. Practice Period will now include the Fall Samish retreat too!
A few key dates if you like to plan ahead for the Fall 2025 Practice Period:
To increase the ease and availability of doksuan (private interviews), Nomon Tim has set up a self-sign up appointments system. You can sign up for 25 minute dokusan appointments in the next two weeks at any time and accurately know when Nomon Tim is available.
Appointments are currently offered:
We encourage you to take advantage of the increased ease of connecting with our Guiding Teacher.
Nomon Tim's Bookings Page | Learn more about dokusan
You can enjoy reading Kate's wonderful talk given on September 21st at her Menjuhai Priest Completion Ceremony here.
From the September 2024 Red Cedar Zen newsletter:
From Nomon Tim
Dear Sangha friends,
I've been thinking a lot about this upcoming stage in our development as a community. One important pivot is that after over 30 years of doing our formal practice in shared and rented spaces we'll be the proud owners of our own practice space once we move into Cedarwood next year.
With that fact, and our general deepening of our community over the years, it's clear to me that this new space should properly be considered a Zen Buddhist Temple.
The term temple as opposed to Zen Center or Dharma Hall (or Rented Church Basement!) has a feeling of deep roots. Deep roots in our Zen Buddhist tradition through Japan; deep roots in the soils of our Cascadia bioregion; deep roots in our hearts as we together practice, and live into, serving as bodhisattvas in a wonderful and tragic world.
And temples have names. While we'll continue to be Red Cedar Zen Community as an organization, we'll be practicing at a space, at a temple, which also has a name: a marker or a pointer to something about that particular spot on the planet as well as our deep intentions as practitioners.
So I've thought for a year or two about what that name might be. I've pondered how we practice and where we practice. I've consulted with Japanese priests around the kinds of names that are appropriate and fitting.
An idea came to me early but I didn't want to be too quick to be sure that was it. While temples are sometimes renamed, pretty much: that's the name of our temple from here on.
Then during my sabbatical in July I was sitting on the banks of Gamma Creek at my camp in the Glacier Peak Wilderness area. I was thinking about all of this as I studied Shokahu Okumura's wonderful commentary on Dōgen's Mountains and Waters Sūtra.
Shohaku-san shares that Dōgen was deeply inspired by the work of an 11th century Chinese poem named Su Shi. Here's a poem that particularly moved him (in my translation based on several different English possibilities):
Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors This mountain stream is Buddha's long, broad tongue This vast mountain is Buddha's formless body All night long - listening to 84,000 sutra verses When the light returns, how will I explain it?
Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors
This mountain stream
is Buddha's long, broad tongue
This vast mountain
is Buddha's formless body
All night long - listening to 84,000
sutra verses
When the light returns,
how will I explain it?
As I felt the solidity of the mountain beneath me and listened to the mountain stream's teachings I felt in my bones that the temple name idea I'd been turning over in my heart for a while was the right one. Here's what I chose for us:
山水経 Sansui-ji “Mountains and Waters Temple”
Sanjui-ji includes a clear reference to the Mountains and Waters sutra (山水經 San-sui-kyo) and it honors where we sit between deep mountains and flowing waters as well that at our annual backpacking retreat for 25 years we've chanted this text trailside as we've moved through the mountains and streams below Koma Kulshan (Mt. Baker).
But not just that. As as Shohaku-san helped me see more clearly with his commentary, the mountains and rivers aren't things outside of us. We don't actually go to the mountains and look at them from over here while the mountains are over there.
We are mountains and rivers. We are solid, we are flowing, we are beyond any ideas of solidity or flow. We are impermanent and always changing but we are also beyond such ideas of permanence and impermanence. These are the deep truths also pointed to by the teachings on going beyond birth and death.
As we mountains-and-waters beings plant these deep roots of practice in our local mountains-and-waters soil, may we all feel the depth and transformational power of what we are doing, and what we have to offer.
And so after returning from the mountains I sought input from our Practice Leaders group, shared the decision with the Board of Directors, and am so happy to share our temple name now with you. What a miracle that all of this is coming together! That we have the incredible opportunity to help this world by establishing a temple together.
I so very much look forward to practicing with everyone at Sansui-ji Temple.
This month we are featuring sangha member David Clark. We want to extend a big thank you to David for his devotion to taking care of our zendo space. David often takes the lead in setting up our weekly "flash zendo" in the basement of the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, ensuring that its ready for practice every Thursday night and then lingers to help finish clean up.
Here is a short interview conducted with David; a bit about his life, his background, and his sitting practice.
Desiree: Tell me a bit about your early years and how you came to practice Soto Zen.
David: I was born in New Mexico, and lived in Boulder, CO, for a brief time, in the late 1950’s. I remember when I was only 10 years old, I took a vow of non-violence, and I’ve held to that ever since. In 1970, in CA, I was doing some yoga, and experimenting around. I had a profound transcendental experience after taking LSD that never really left me. Then, in 1973, my brother went to Green Gulch [part of the SFZC] and stayed as a resident there for a while. He sent me a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki and I found an affinity for it and for Soto Zen Buddhism.
I was doing a lot of sitting over those next years, on my own, often getting up at 5 am to sit for a couple of hours before heading off to hard, physical work.
I moved to Marblemount, WA, working in the “Shake Mills” (roofing lumber).
It happened that I met our dear friend Seiu Hannah while planting trees in Marblemount when she was doing the same in Bellingham. It was tough in those years - living in a tent, being exposed to the elements - and I gave up sitting for a while then.
I realized over some time that I couldn’t sustain that kind of work and did some career counseling. The counselor and I both thought the idea of becoming an EMT “medic” really suited me, so that’s what I became.
Starting in 1983 I was a medic for 25 years. It was a very rewarding and satisfying career. When I retired, I was surprised by symptoms of PTSD, which included prolonged and severe depression, and overwhelming emotion. The tears flowed out and were never-ending; I also struggled with anger—especially while driving. I returned to sitting during this time and didn’t know what else could help heal me. In 2022, after years of this intense suffering, I had a breakthrough. I found a huge root of my suffering. As I started really allowing and listening to myself, opening up to that 3 year old child in me, I understood that it was not the suffering of those I attended - on its own - that caused me so much anguish - it was being in the position time and time again where I was having to decide on the outcome of someone’s life - sometimes having to make decisions about stopping resuscitation - knowing that their life was ending and I couldn’t save them - even if they were only 14 years old.
Desiree: Wow…So I’m hearing that the recognition, the awareness that this was the root of a deep suffering, was a beginning to the path of healing…to a release?
David: Yes, after that breakthrough, I was able to allow myself to start driving again, and to do more outside my home. I started at Red Cedar in 2019, but then the pandemic hit and we were back to not meeting together live. Finally, over these past few years, we’ve been able to be back to being in person for our main programs, and I’ve been able to attend.
Desiree: You’ve put yourself in the steady role of being our zendo set up person, nearly every Thursday, for a while now. What prompted you to take on this role? I know you often tell us about your love of work, and you demonstrate this to us every week, by sweeping the floors, setting up the entire zendo, paying attention to details like who is in what role for the evening. We also asked you to be our work leader for the summer Samish retreat, and you carried a strong work ethic in that role also. You are quite a reliable, dependable person!
David: I have a need to contribute, to be useful, and this zendo set up role suits me well for now, as we use this rented space. I can drive up here early - and only have to come once a week from Anacortes - and I can spend time in a quiet, environment, doing work I enjoy, and take care of the sangha in that way.
Desiree: Thank you, David, for your ongoing commitment to the sangha, and inspiration around your devoted Zen practice.
~David relayed to me that these days he continues with a steady sitting practice consisting of 3 hours every morning, and with Red Cedar. He says that through all the hard experiences, and the traumas of his life, he has returned again and again to the thing that makes the most sense: “just sitting” and finds that this is the most important thing.
Desiree/Red Cedar
The community is on the cusp of beginning construction as we wait for final steps in the permit approval process.
Heidi Epstein (architect) and Julie (interior supply specialist and Ken Oates' wife) are teaming up to gather info and samples of paints and flooring, taking into consideration the environmental impact, appeal, utility, and cost of various possibilities. Potential options will be shared with the community as they pare down on choices.
Robin Kucklick (landscaper) is also working on garden design choices.
Progress continues!
And note that our monthly work parties are important for maintaining the existing landscaping in a semi-attractive state. Once construction begins the focus will shift to helping our contractor and his crew with the actual construction!
The next work party is on Sunday September 15th from 9am to 3pm. Please come help if you're free. Details can be found at the link below:
September Cedarwood Work Party
During the months of July and August community practice leaders have been offering - and will continue offering - talks on the teachings of Eihei Dogen on Thursday nights. These talks are now available in RCZC's Dharma Library, or may be accessed directly in the links below.
Red Cedar Zen Community is a 501(c) non-profit organization.