One of the problems I see is that collectives are more difficult to observe in the awakening process than individuals. There are no references in the Pali Canon to an organization being deeply enlightened. Afterall, how do group boundaries become permeable. Can the collective become orientated towards service where compassion and wisdom are valued over worldly gain? Can groups awaken and let go of the attachment to self? Consider all the groups and associations that influence your sense of self – family, gender, ethnicity, race, class, culture, subculture, religious, professional and political associations, just to name a few.  What are the ways of being in the world, habitual perceptions and behaviors that are proscribed by each?  How does the boundary between inside and outside function?  Collective boundaries, that are essentially psychological, evolve more slowly, and yet do change as emergent symbols and myths replace outdated structures that no longer serve. The question remains how we practice as Buddhists with these boundaries.

As Loy points out, when it comes to the ecological crisis before us, the technology we’ve devised to control the conditions of existence is now a threat to that very existence. As many consider its cause a political and technological problem, he reminds us it is fundamentally a spiritual problem, a delusion of separation, nation versus nation, species versus species, supported by continuous institutional reinforcement of greed and ill will, a human experience set apart from the true reality of our vital interdependence with all things, sentient and insentient. To practice with this awareness means we notice where we have adopted rigid boundaries unthinkingly and explore the teachings of radical nonduality.  Too often we practitioners focus solely on the individual boundary, the “small I,” and forget to look at the collective boundaries, the “small we,” in which our role may only be as one member among many, but is no less vital.

We should begin to open up to the reality that much suffering in the world is wrought under the name of a group identity, one group at the expense of another where no one person is accountable. Many Western practitioners are unaware of the way Buddhist teachings of karma worldwide serve to rationalize tragic social injustice of one class against another. In contrast to ways teachings work to reinforce a fragile status quo, I recently ran across some powerful examples of compassion and wisdom performed on the level of the group. A few months ago, a Portland Muslim community sponsored a blood drive on the anniversary of the New York City Trade Tower attacks with the goal of donating enough blood to represent each life lost. Even though their group, including any members personally, did not have to answer for the actions of a separate radical group, they chose an action of selflessness and generosity that recognized a way to address our polarized society and take responsibility for an association by name. Another group, the family descendents of members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, recently made a sacred canoe for a Native American tribe from whom one was stolen hundreds of years ago by their ancestors. Again, these individuals were technically innocent of that crime, but chose to do something to answer for transgressions of a group of ancestors in the past. These are just a few ways group actions that could not have been easy to enact, yet expressed the Buddhist teachings of interconnectedness perfectly.  We should look for and partake in other examples. Inspired by these actions, I hope we can continue to explore this practice edge together on how to work with collective karma, awakening on many levels, for the sake of all.

As practitioners of Zen, we integrate this awareness with movement and it in turn transforms our lives, moment to moment and touches not only our own hearts but those around us. Being in contact with each participant, I am struck once again by the good medicine that this practice of retreat is – how each person receives what they need without having to craft it deliberately. No adjustment to the medication needed….30 mg’s of mindful sweeping and a double dose of zazen. We all get what we need. It just happens, sesshin just happens when we can settle the mind that is busy busy busy doing doing doing. The retreat leaders are no exception – we are busy busy busy busy getting things arranged so we can slow down. But over time, the body of the long time practitioner knows the drill, and drops quickly into its place of receptivity and pointed presence.

Sesshin is not an easy practice by any means, we face all our struggles there – physical and emotional discomfort without the usual coping strategies, self consciousness, obsessions, boredom and restlessness. This is why we do it together and support one another. But what emerges when one stays the course is unprecedented in many of our modern settings – and the preciousness of that is what fuels continued efforts in practice. At some point, you just have to take the plunge. It is hard to find the time to come to sesshin, but if you can, consider the experiment of attending some extended sitting, some crafted glass box held in the water for a brief time to catch a fish.

Palms together,

Seido

Participants at the Interdependence and the Four Elements Retreat requested this poem to be posted:

To be of the Earth is to know

            The restlessness of being a seed

            The darkness of being planted

            The struggle toward the light

            The pain of growth into the light

            The joy of bursting and bearing fruit

            The love of being food for someone

            The scattering of your seeds

            The decay of the seasons

            The mystery of death

            And the miracle of birth.

            – John Soos

Seido’s version:

To take up the path of Zen is to know

 The restlessness of being a seed

            The darkness of being planted

            The struggle toward the light

            The pain of growth into the light

            The joy of bursting and bearing fruit

            The love of being food for someone

            The scattering of your seeds

            The decay of the seasons

            The mystery of death

            And the miracle of birth.

Our small group the zendo has been cultivating the koans that arise on the way to work, out to weed the garden, reading the paper, taking the kids to the park. What brought us here to this meditation hall? What are we looking for? What beehives are working in the night? What shadow crossed your path this morning?

To take up Zen meditation, you do need a question. It isn’t so much you need to get one out of a book, or even have something profound, like, What is the meaning of life? It’s that you need to uncover the curiosity, the uncertainty, the nagging itch, the intuition somewhere in day to day life that is a doorway to unfolding something you’ve forgotten. The Latin root of curiosity, curiosus, means “diligent inquiry” and also “meddlesome.” Where ever there’s some “meddlesome” in life, there’s some question we can unbury.

If we look at the the direction of most questions – who, what, when, where and how – Zen has simplified the matter and already responded to three.

Who? You.
When? Now.
Where? Right here.

It’s about being intimate with this, right here, right now. That leaves us with the two great gate openers – What? and How? What and how are the right and left hand that hold the unknown – they are wonderful mantras that should salt and pepper our days.

The questions about living this life are already there since they come with a breathing body. There is no insignificant query. How do I tell my friend the truth? becomes, How do I meet the Buddha? What will I do if I can’t get a job? is the same as What can I control in my life? As we went around the circle in the zendo a couple of weeks ago, it seems everyone’s questions distilled down into three themes: What does it mean to sit zazen? How do I take the next step in life? How do I alleviate the suffering of the world? In beautiful way, each of these questions are responses to the other and lead to an action in the world the summons compassion and wisdom – the universal qualities we study in this practice.

By living inside the question, something happens. It looks like this.

No, my soul is not asleep
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence*

It doesn’t matter where we start, it only matters that these questions matter to us and help us dig around to get to something authentic, something that touches our hopes and our fears, something that seems intractable, or impossible, yet demands a response. Resting in the uncertainty, being willing to sit with the discomfort, the practice of zazen helps us soften the edges of these questions and hatch surprising creative joyful moves meeting impossible circumstances and intractable problems.

Something happens. What is it?

Palms together,
Seido

* Is My Soul Asleep by Antonio Machado, trans. Robert Bly

The grad student experience has given me an appreciation for what it means to establish practice amidst the hectic overloaded lives many lead in the contemporary world that occludes access to our natural wisdom. It has renewed my commitment to make space for myself and others, to meet zazen amidst the cultivated fields anew and see where the stream leads. I hope to see you there, which is here, in the not-knowing, in this moment, in deep silence, in this garden, with this very body – this perfect place of possibility born of a clear blue sky.

Palms together,
Seido

I consider myself an accidental traveler in the field of couples and family therapy. Several years ago, I went to a panel talk one evening at the University of Oregon on Buddhism and Psychotherapy. Without it having been announced, almost all of the local sangha members showed up, scattered amongst a packed hall. At that time, although many people of practice regularly engaged therapists, there seemed to be some inhibition sharing this fact despite other intimate disclosures that are shared on a regular basis. That evening confirmed the need to make overt and examine this Western therapeutic process fueled by our impulse to understand this life and the nature of suffering in our own native language. I wanted to enter that conversation. The next morning I awoke and, despite having a long time thriving business partnership at the farm, received the distinct message, Go back to school. I know that voice well in my life – and though it causes temporary problems, has yet to lead me astray.

Several years before that (I laugh at this memory) I’d been struggling with what seemed like the failure of my Zen practice, despite my heart being filled with great faith and openings, to address the particulars of some emotional suffering. I felt like I could not talk to my teachers at the time about my interest in seeing a psychotherapist, as it was not uncommon to hear collective disdain towards therapy as self indulgent delusion. If only everyone would just sit zazen, they wouldn’t need therapy! Even my own teacher refers to therapy as “a neurotic solution to a neurotic problem,” and though I appreciate what he means, didn’t find it a fond endorsement. In some panic, I ended up cold calling a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist in San Francisco who’d written an article I admired titled “Coming to Life,” and am indebted to Joseph Bobrow to this day for indulging my nervous Zen student self seriously fearful that my intuition was evidence of deficiency of my faith. We talked for a long time in his office on Clement Street, but the only thing I remember is him saying to me most kindly that, at the time it may seem like you’re traveling away from practice, but in the long run, you will be a stronger practitioner. He didn’t steer me wrong.

Over the subsequent years of insightful personal work, I fell in love with Jungian psychology, an approach that beautifully articulates what we come to know intimately in Zen training over time. The Jungians connect the meaning of ritual and process of surrender to universal journeys of transformation and gives a place for the collective unconscious and shadow work sometimes lacking in Buddhist psychology. Having considered my training options the next morning after the Buddhism and Psychotherapy lecture, instead of a Jungian program, the family therapy training appeared to offer the straightest and most thoroughly well trained route to actual hands on clinical experience.

Ironically, the CFT field is about as far away from Jungian psychology as say, mechanical engineering. Jung is not even mentioned in the curriculum. However, while I did not fully know what I was getting in to at the time, I am now happy to consider that the family therapy field more closely aligns with Buddhist psychology than many other psychotherapeutic fields based on pathology. This is especially true when it extends the systems theory upon which it is based beyond the family or couple unit as we classically know it. I appreciate the sentiment of Mother Theresa who said, “The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.” That is the view from which real change will come – when “family” knows no bounds.

Though it has its dissonant edge with Eastern understanding of human suffering, the CFT field rescues psychotherapy from itself by opening the door to the awareness of interdependence and eschews the idea of pathology located within the individual. Against the tide of our obsession with “abnormality” and new mental “disorders,” it is a profession based on the inherent goodness and capacity of people rather than the eradication of their neurosis. It is also a profession that challenges the protective clinical expert position of the therapist and honors the simple beauty of warm, honest, compassionate human encounters.

When I consider what I am doing in the CFT field, I think of our Buddhist image of Indra’s Net, shining jewels at each juncture of overlapping twine, reflecting every other jewel in the net. This is an image of boundless awakened clear undivided mind. I think of the CFT field as studying the net itself in the world of particulars, the pulsing threads of connectedness between the jewels, the communication and complications, the breaks and frays as well as lifelines and powerful charges in which we awaken and invigorate one another. I imagine this net drenched in salt water from the deep – old and ancient and full of archetypal motions. The warmth of entangled human interaction doesn’t change the relationship of the jewels, yet we tend the net, strengthen the weak spots, and unfurl the twisted strained areas, so we can see the jewels again in their perfection, free and undisturbed.

The CFT craft which examines the subtleties of our human exchange has brought me a clearer understanding of where we sometimes go astray in practice. Watching the layers of social interaction elucidates my own many mistakes over the years and helps me to hold practice more loosely. It is easy with any new Buddhist training to think, “This is it!,” an example being our Zen mondo style of communication – a powerful transformative training – which can be seen as a training for moment to moment life, and yet when adopted as habit becomes inappropriate. Habitual blunt honesty becomes insensitivity, the impulse to challenge invites deflection and self protection, always searching for someone’s edge misses their strengths. Ultimately, this training in psychotherapy has brought me both a deeper respect for our Buddhist tradition and its much needed offering to our “neurotic” culture. It also offers a language to address the shadow created by any practice clung to too long. The dialogue between these fields brings life and freshness to this instinctual ancient impulse to awaken.

Palms together,
Seido

The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive – it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.
- Toni Packer

Resources on Buddhism and Psychotherapy

The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychotherapy by Jack Kornfield

Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue edited by Jeremy D. Safran

The Psychology of Awakening by Wellwood

Zen and the Heart of Psychotherapy by Robert Rosenbaum

I appreciate the Chinese five elements system of medicine in which there are five seasons, not four – summer being divided into summer and late summer. It’s very astute – the associated developmental theme of late summer is transformation, its paramita is dana or giving, and its taste, sweetness. In the human experience, it’s connected to the sound of singing and the emotion of anxiety – how intimate is that view of the body with the landscape.

Here on the farm, you see the plants relaxed, acceptant, and rested – the deed of prolific growth fulfilled. The crisp air promising autumn that is held at bay in a city is wildly free here to live with the starry summer night pierced by owl calls. It is a good place to study the green mountains walking.

How swiftly the strained honey
Of afternoon light
Flows into the darkness
And the closed bud shrugs off
Its special mystery
To break into blossom
As if what exists, exists
So that it can be lost
And become precious
- In Passing by Lisel Mueller

***

To cultivate the way really means to cultivate your own heart, and this cultivation brings its own sweet fruit of gratitude and appreciation. A single carrot freshly observed brings gratitude. A glimpse of something wild, surprising and long familiar, leaves you humble and free. Even the weeds, the brambles that prick our soft skin and sting, are met with a “yes.”

***

The crisp air promising autumn…Thirty two outside the zendo. Thirty two inside the zendo. Hundreds of years ago, in the snowy Eihei mountains, Dogen’s instructions to the monks were this: Thus, do not fear the suffering from cold. The suffering from cold has never crushed the way. You should only be concerned about not practicing. Lack of practice leaves a person divided and hinders the way. Do not be put off the suffering from heat. The suffering from heat has never crushed the way. You should only be concerned about not practicing. Lack of practice leaves a person divided and hinders the way. This is not a message to become a marine, it’s a message of kindness, because we want something more than a comfortable pain free life, we want to know what it’s like to be undivided. Being undivided is being natural, in harmony, and we start by working the empty field of awareness, pulling the weeds with the inbreath and the outbreath. Becoming very quiet, the autumn moon finds you. The closed bud shrugs off its special mystery.

Sit well friends,
Seido

Excerpted from dharma talk given at this year’s Interdependence and the Mind of Liberation Retreat, July 2010.

Welcome friends.

George Eliot understood something about interdependence and the mind of liberation. She said this:

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Why is it we do not hear the grass growing? There certainly is no shortage of grass.

There is a term used by Dogen called zenki, translated as undivided activity, meaning the workings of the entire universe. Dogen might say we are the undivided activity of the birth and death of grasses, and I would add a cause for great celebration this weekend. The breakfast that is now turned into fire in our bellies, animating our movement, is the life of grasses of oats and wheat and sugar cane. Their pollens bring tears to our eyes, the mating ritual of green plants carried by the wind. Green grasses exhale oxygen fill our blood stream.

Grasses live everywhere, from the cracks of the inner city to the great plains creating whole worlds for earthworms and antelope. Zenki – the entire working of the universe, the wholehearted, fully exerted expression of all things. This isn’t just an idea, although our global ecological view of this small planet knows this to be true. For the Zen student, this is mitsugo – intimate or secret language. We know for ourselves the sound of the grass growing and the heartbeat of a squirrel found on the other side of silence.

In Buddhism, grasses represent the 10,000 things of life. No shortage of grass means no shortage of particulars, of the stuff of our life, of delusion and therefore moments in which to wake up. Most of us think we need some really special grass with which to really practice Zen, but in truth, all the grasses of this world are embedded in the same earth, the same empty field. To simply let go is the invitation of zazen. Zazen is the invitation of grasses.

I am not so if George Eliot was aware of what dying of that roar on the other side of silence means to the Zen student. Although it sounds grim, it is a celebration and relief that allows us to fully inhabit our place in the world of grasses. Dying here really means waking up to the interdependence of how things are already operating, all the time, without stop, without hindrance.

I would like to offer a small practice outside the zendo this weekend, and that is to quietly, without too much deliberation, question and examine how everything is helping you and supporting your practice in this moment, and how in turn you are helping and supporting everyone else’s practice. Discover how the smallest insect helps you concentrate and sparks your curiosity, how the breeze moves your blood circulation, and especially, the biggest irritation reminds you study dukkha and our ideas of how things should be. Sit very, very still and see if you can allow yourself to let go of judgments about this. Just notice the function of those particulars we overlook in our hurried lives. If this practice here this weekend doesn’t involve the whole of your life and include the very core of your question, the grasses have no one to enlighten.

To sit zazen is to develop a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life. It is hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat and delivering that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Sit well.

~ Seido

Although it’s likely many conditions and situations converged to create this moment, it just took these simple words for this young man to wake up to the cause and effect of his life and step out of a destructive pattern. This wake up moment didn’t require a lot of deliberation, weighing the pros and cons of action, evaluating the advice of self help books – it was decisive and calm – he didn’t plan his next activity, just called the jail deputy and the rest unfolded from there. That clarity of action is very different from impulsiveness, or fantasy of how wonderful things will be once we make a strategic change. This man’s life in many ways is now much more difficult, the price of living from the core of one’s being.

Although I have no way of knowing, I hear these words spoken in a calm quiet selfless way from this old wizened inmate resting his elbows on the cell grating. I imagine this inmate had seen dozens of young men come and go with the same illusion that they will beat the system. His words hold up a clear mirror to this person’s life, an aha! moment that arrests us in the moment. Like Buddhist practice, this kind offering comes from a fellow traveler, a friend who has made all that same mistakes and wishes you a better life. In turn, the older man expresses a kind of freedom despite his jail cell through his own bodhisattva action.

I was very grateful for this story and want to avoid romanticizing it. I cannot know what this young man’s life has been like, but wish him strength and courage in the coming time. All our lives contain subtle and not so subtle prisons from which the only freedom is something completely out of character. In many ways, to sit zazen and meet others on the path invites a calm clear mirror in which “this is your life” is inscribed. Lest this read too dismal, it’s important to know that our light as well as our shadow is equally reflected.

“Out of character” suggests another kind of move, another way of answering the koan, in which a new potential unfolds and the activity of wisdom, of instantly knowing what it is you need to do, guides your body, speech and mind. In practice, the more we move in this way, the more we trust the not-knowing and the risk, and life unfolds from the deepest place. It is not something that is planned out, but rather cultivated or invited. When we can find “out of character,” then our character, our maps of how to be in the world, ceases to be such a problem and serves the dharma. The old wizened cell mate offered his words from a place in which his own life experience served another, nothing wasted, nothing lost.

Palms together,
Seido

An altar is fundamentally an unhidden truth, a Buddha or bodhisattva in full view held in a suspension of ledges that both give and receive. The temple altar is what catches the eye when you enter while at the same time, being that which beholds you, a gaze with a clear view of the room. It is an orienting presence no matter where you are – entering, exiting, bowing, sitting, or offering. There is never a moment the altar is not still and present. Many a time over the years I have walked to the altar and been surprised by my sense of fear, and although it would be easy to say at this point that that fear was unfounded, I think of it as fear for good reason because we need to step beyond the threshold of what we hold certain. One of the reasons altars seem to historically become grander over time is to ensure a sense of awe in the uninitiated. But you don’t need giant sculptures to be awed. To be in the presence of our own truth is to lay bare the tepidness of our dreams, to know a kind of grace despite the limitations of this human view.

Before the altar, our human motion is to approach. To walk as we are and make offerings. Offerings to whom we ask in a non-theistic religion? This is a good question. I cannot tell you if there are beings who receive the scent of incense and come to our aid, but I can tell you that to live in light of an altar is a transformative act for the one who makes the approach. It might be useful to take time to consider where the altars are in your life. What happens for you as you walk towards or away from the altar? How do you stand before it or surreptitiously glance? Do you think it is only for special people in robes to mediate a connection? Are there old memories from past religious experiences good or bad? Do issues of worthiness appear? Can you be there as a question?

When the altar is no longer confined within the temple walls, but becomes the whole of the universe with nothing missing, we find a way to move in the world in right relationship. The whole of the path can be described through the activity of engaging an altar and the teachings of flowers and light. (Or you could say flowers and fire, the other side of burning.) Flowers are the unexpected gesture of plants in which something completely new is brought forth from a series of expansions and contractions of green growth. Fire and light are universal symbols of purification and illumination. Flower and light depend upon one another, the right and the left hand. There is much to say about this, but my intention is more about encouraging us to make a fresh relationship with this ancient form, to bring our questions there and allow something new and vital to touch our hearts as we walk this path together, straight between blooms and brightness.

In gassho,
Seido

Here is the scene: I often sit in bed with a cup of strong tea and the candles lit for a time before zazen – against the ideal rules of order, it is coveted time of contemplation I’ve enjoyed for decades. Outside the picture window, Mr. Robin sits on a tree branch a few feet away from the glass. He stares for a moment, and then hurls himself at the glass, presumably to take care of the “other robin” he sees threatening its space. He usually lands on the sill, unharmed and obviously unsuccessful, and returns to the branch only to repeat the process. This goes on for an hour or more until the light from the east shifts or some other call of duty preempts his routine.

This used to drive me crazy.  I’d tried to dissuade him by whapping the glass, hanging props to scare him away, only to rile him up more. I used to think I was trying to save him from harm, but really, I was far more interested in saving myself from having to experience the ruckus and preserve my peaceful space! Having given up on that folly, now I usually just carry on, ignoring him for the most part with a peripheral acceptant appreciation of the valiant attempt and seeming lack of alternative from his point of view.

Watching this tragi-comedy unfold, I think of my own day to day hurling against the glass – those moments of seemingly clear action at a reflected threat found in an envy, an ambition, or a resentment. It looks so real! we plead with the universe or whoever will listen. That person really DID take my place in line! I was supposed to have that situation in my future! It is really how things look. Dogen says with great compassion in his Genjo Koan, When you sail out into the middle of the ocean, the ocean looks like a circle and does not look any other way. Accepting the truth of our projections is continual practice and paves the way to meet our circumstances as they are – to be open, to be surprised, and to be responsive.

Mr. Robin has another teaching as part of his dance. In between the fighting rounds, my bird friend spends some quiet moments on the sill, right up against the glass and turns his head sideways and looks in. I imagine he sees the candles and my silhouette, wondering if perhaps things aren’t as they seem. Then he pecks at the glass a little, hops to the left and the right and flies back to his branch only to repeat his usual attempted solution. I think of those little breaks in his pattern as his first moments of awakening, his own contemplation:  There’s something else in there but I can’t get at it, and worse than that, I don’t know what it is…what is it, what is it? This only lasts a short time – there’s nothing to mate or fight with sitting on the windowsill looking in. Without something to grasp, he returns to the usual routine and the drive of life.

At first, I envisioned a kind of enlightenment for Mr. Robin in which he would stop this craziness, see into the profound nature of delusion, and just sit on the branch. Letting go of the struggle, he could become an example to other robins that would be quite curious and inspired by his bizarre yet benevolent change of character. It’s not a bad plan, but there is another move to explore which is subtler yet: to return to the activity of being a bird with great compassion and clarity of mind. Although there are moments when we behold the seeming other through the invisible barrier, there is the particular thing to do in this moment that is not separate from enlightenment. A robin’s nature is to protect the nest and hunt for food for his charges. The witness is reflecting behind the reflection. My pen, the window, these two sides all become one activity of enlightenment. Though it is important to see the delusion of the reflected robin in the window, and the futility of repeated attempts to vanquish its image, the harder motion is to let go of the desire to live on the other side of the glass beyond the vicissitudes of life, a place where we are not touched.

A whole practice involves all of these things. Sometimes we see the emptiness of the reflection, sometimes we hurl our bodies wholesale into the moment, and sometimes we are the curious meeting of eyes across the limited view of the ocean. My teacher would say freedom lies in the non-opposition to all of these states. That motion becomes an endless stream of practice and has the most profound effect in how we live our life in this world, on this side of the glass, but not separate. By now my winged friend has moved on to searching the garden for worms, telling me there is only so long one can reflect about reflections!  I will have to do laundry and prepare for class. We will both be back tomorrow. Old friends.

- Palms together,

Seido