“Just turn the light around to illuminate.”

Reading Charles Egan’s Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China, I stumbled upon a striking little tidbit of context for this phrase.

Egan translates the phrase as “shine the reflections back” and notes that the Chinese phrase “…(huiguang fanhao) – the term in general use refers to the glow of colored light in the sky at sunset.”

I find myself returning to reflect on zazen as the glow of colored light in the sky at sunset.

Looking at several translations of Dogen’s Universal Recommendations, I see that most have something like “turn the light around to illuminate the self.” Or “turn the light and shine it inward.”

The text itself, though, has no character for “self” or “inward.” Literally the whole sentence is “Just learn the backward step, turning the light around to illuminate.”

Granted, the English is a bit awkward and we’re left wanting a specific subject. Like “Illuminate what?” Just the point, imv, and an important one for practice.

Most translations also drop “just.”

This “just” also seems like a rather important practice detail.

The post Zazen: Just Turn the Light Around appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

That phrase is from an astute Viner student. And by the way, if you think that Zen work cannot be done via online processes, think again. I see it every day.Click here for more information.

But back to the “idol” in question – the idol is whatever we’re worshiping and relying on to magically fulfill us. It could be a relationship, exercise, money, job, or some material possession.

Or it could be the spiritual path, specifically for Zennies, our zazen or our kensho.

Even though the teachings tell us again and again that this life just as it is, is it and even when we see it through, we find our propensity to externalize and idolize runs deep. Ego has this nasty habit of reconfiguring.

What to do? Throw out the idol? Bash it to bits?

And then we might find ourselves down on our knees worshiping the chasm or the broken bits.

In the Ten Oxherding Scenes (a visual presentation of the path), we are encouraged to glimpse the ox, to see our true nature. And after diligently following ox traces – poop and all – then finally we do catch a glimpse. After long-yearning to glimpse the ox, we might be really frustrated to find that the journey isn’t over.

“It should be! Why won’t the new idol (our little kensho) deliver?”

My friend, your kensho is not Domino’s Pizza. It won’t deliver if you don’t.

The Ten Ox system offers us some pointers – after glimpsing we have to catch it, tame it, ride it home, and forget it.

However, it’s important to make a note to self – this is our agenda, not necessarily the ox’s. Our dear ox (our greed, anger, and ignorance) may enjoy the status quo and have little interest in being caught, tamed, ridden, and forgotten.

The path, in short, is to come closer and closer to our idol and worship-orientation. When we meet, we find that it is us.

The post Why Won’t the Idol Deliver? appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

Here’s a post from 2008 where I give some of the detail of his life.

Hayashi Roshi’s dharma name was Kaigai Daicho, meaning “Beyond the Ocean, Great Tides.” His name is strangely prescient given that his disciple, Katagiri-roshi, would come to America. I am interested in his story in part because it shows the huge changes that we’ve gone through in just a few generations. What follows is information about him that I’ve gleaned from conversations with Tomoe Katagiri and others.

I don’t have Hayashi-roshi’s exact dates yet but he lived from late in the nineteenth century until the mid 1970s. His father was very wealthy and high in the government and served both as a prefecture governor and as the first education minister of Japan during the the Meiji reformation.

Hayashi-roshi’s father had a “second wife,” a geisha, for whom he dumped his first wife. For some time while Hayashi-roshi was young he had thought that the second wife was his mother. Then one day when he was six years old he did something wrong and the second wife tied him to a persimmon tree and left him there. Apparently, this wasn’t unusual in Japan in those days. His nanny eventually found him and sobbing said, “She wouldn’t have done this if she was your real mother.”

The next morning Hayashi-roshi said he was going to go to school but instead went to a Zen temple and asked to become a monk. The master (my dharma great grandfather, Yozan Genki) said he had to get permission from Hayashi-roshi’s father because he was so young. Hayashi-roshi’s father came to the temple and said, “This boy lied and went to the temple when he said he was going to school. Therefore, he is not my son and not my business.” He never came to even visit after that and Hayashi-roshi never saw him again. “Hayashi” was Genki-roshi’s family name, not his biological father’s.

Hayashi-roshi went to Eiheiji for many years. While at Eiheiji he became the jisha (ceremonial attendant) for Kumazawa-roshi when the latter had some important position there but before he was abbot. Kumazawa-roshi later became abbot Eiheiji and was abbot for a long time, including when Katagiri-roshi was a monk there, explaining how Katagiri got to be the anja (daily-life attendant) of the monk in charge of training, Hashimoto-roshi.

Hayashi-roshi’s master, Genki-roshi, had a big temple in Nara and was raising money to rebuild some part of it when the old teacher lost most of the money gambling. This made the relationship between him and the community rather cold. Hayashi-roshi was offered the opportunity to become the abbot of the big Nara temple but hesitated because of the cold relationships with the community.

About that time he was traveling on a train and his real mother and he recognized each other and were reunited. Hayashi-roshi had searched for her for many years. She was eking out a living taking care of a small shrine for a famous samuria near Tsuruga on the Japan Sea. Hayashi-roshi somehow was offered the chance to rebuild a small temple at that site. He felt very torn between being the abbot of the big temple in Nara or taking this very small temple in Tsuruga. Eventually, he decided to rebuild the shrine and it became Taizoin, the temple where Katagiri-roshi lived and trained with him. Hayashi-roshi took care of his mother there until she died and also Chozan Genki when he was old.

Before and after he found his mother and settled at Taizoin, Hayashi-roshi traveled widely as a lecturer, not only on Kyushu but going way up into Komosomul’ska-amure (big island north of Hokkaido that before the war was part Soviet Union and part Japan). Hayashi-roshi loved to travel, just like Katagiri-roshi.

Hayashi-roshi liked that Katagiri-roshi came to America as he hadn’t gotten the chance. He had stopped traveling when he got older. Hayashi-roshi rebuilt the hondo (ceremonial hall) at Taizoin but not the keisando (living area) so that the ceiling was almost nonexistent when Tomoe stayed there – snow fell in all over and you could lay on your futon on look at the stars. Eventually it was rebuilt.

Hayashi-roshi lived very straightly, always wearing robes, etc. He thought that he was very unlucky when it came to disciples, except for Katagiri-roshi. Hayashi-roshi had ordained about twelve priests but they had run away, gone crazy, were in jail, etc.

Hayashi-roshi ate all his meals with oryoki and kept the practice schedule even when no one was there. He didn’t go into the village and hang out with people or talk much at all. He didn’t drink and was allergic to alcohol but that wasn’t the reason that he didn’t drink. He was allergic to many things and was often sick. Mostly he quietly followed the schedule and then sat in the room with the hibachi (even in summer) and loved to smoke a pipe with a long bamboo stem and metal bowl. Sometimes he listened to the radio but because Taizoin is surrounded by mountains in the direction of cities, the reception was bad.

Tomoe-san brought a small TV with her when she stayed there for four months in the early 1960′s and they put the antenna on the top of the hondo roof. Hayashi-roshi loved to watch sumo even though the reception was awful. I saw a picture of Hayashi-roshi from about this time and was impressed with his happy, relaxed demeanor. He had a big smile in the picture (traditionally Japanese people don’t smile in photographs).

Hayashi-roshi had broad and deep learning although Tomoe-san said she never saw him read a sutra – that was already inside him, she said. Hayashi-roshi had studied medicine for a long time and like to read books about healing. When he was growing up and young, he had been the helper of a doctor who came to his temple once a week and would treat people. His interest in healing came from there. He also helped people at Taizoin. He also was very interested in I Ching and kept the sticks for throwing the I Ching in a special box that was kept in the altar. Village people would come to him for advice about all sorts of things. In those days the temple was the center of the village life and people came to the temple for everything.

The woman that Katagiri-roshi had first gone to and requested ordination was a Pure Land priest. She knew of Hayashi-roshi and took Katagiri-roshi to him and introduced them. Katagiri-roshi was accepted and stayed three months practicing as a novice before ordination. Then shortly after he was sent to Eiheiji. After Eiheiji he wanted to go to Hashimoto-roshi’s temple for more training. Hayashi-roshi told him, “You can go but a teacher will not change you. You must change you.” Katagiri-roshi was deeply impacted by that and so stayed with Hayashi-roshi.

Katagiri-roshi told me that Hayashi-roshi called for him before he died. I believe Katagiri-roshi felt quite badly that he hadn’t been present for his master’s death.

The post Beyond the Ocean Great Tides Memorial Day appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

I don’t know.

The “Zen Center” model, though, is less than sixty years old, so I hope the innovators of that model – especially the guys in the front row (priests left to right, Katagiri, not sure who, Suzuki, Maezumi, and  probably Chino) – would see online Zen as a natural extension of what they were trying to do, making Zen accessible to those interested and capable.

The Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training is about six weeks old (click here for the previous update) and as we’ve gone along, the brave trail-blazing practitioners that jumped on board (the early adopters, as they say) have come up with great ideas for developing what is available and have helped me clarify the work.

This post is another update in our meandering efforts.

Zazen, study, and engagement continue, of course, to be the three focal points of Vine of Obstacles training. Study is particularly (and perhaps unusually) important in how I teach Zen, following Katagiri Roshi’s style of being a scholar-monk.

Study gives the heartmind something to chew on as we do our sitting and engagement, putting, pushing, prodding, and pulling the whole process more and more in line with the buddhadharma.

Luckily, one of the virtues of the cyber world is the possibilities it offers for study. So we’ve launched a Vine Moodle site that has become the living room of our practice place. It is the Vine Moodle that I’ll be discussing in the rest of this post.

In the Vine Moodle, we have several courses and a forum. I’ll describe the forum first.

“Engaging the Way through the World” is a place where practitioners can post practice-enlightenment success stories, engage with other practitioners about the Vine process, and also ask me dharma questions. For ethically navigating our relationships together, we have a “What is said in the Moodle, stays in the Moodle” guideline.

“Zazen Workshop: Getting Started Where You Are” is a resource for zazen and includes a range of materials from basic instructions to more advanced topics like translations of the classic zazen manuals, and some short essays on the more subtle considerations in shikantaza and koan work. We’ve also started a “Zazen Workshop” where practitioners can send in photos of their zazen and ask for an online posture adjustment.

“Guidelines for Studying the Way” is a ten topic course based on the Dogen text of the same name that serves as the in-depth orientation. I encourage practitioners to work through the entire course at their own pace and to make one at least one Vine Moodle contribution each week. In this course, students have the opportunity to clarify their intention for practice, wrestle with Dogen’s opinions about the teacher-student relationship, and develop a solid basis for either koan or shikantaza. And establish a working relationship with me.

“Genjokoan: What is Realized in the Issue at Hand?” is almost ready for roll-out. I’m excited and even enthusiastic about the possibilities for this course. I’ve integrated koan work with the text and used the best of my educational training for an outcome-based learning experience.

In terms of dharma pedagogy, the online method of learning may well prove to be more effective than the one-way lecture style because it requires active engagement from students, allows for more detailed and precise feedback, and promotes more frequent multiple-way communication than is possible in the old model (going to a Zen Center once a week or so and listening to a dharma talk, enjoying some private feelings about it, then moving on).

Next up is to develop a “Buddha Nature” course and to include more in-the-flesh students in the nonsegmentation of cyber and noncyber worlds. In my view, presenting dharma offerings that erase the gap between those two worlds, seamlessly integrating the possibilities of online learning and practice enlightenment, is an exciting and challenging new frontier for teaching and practicing Zen.

Your thoughts welcome.

Oh, also there are a few more student spaces available in the Vine of Obstacles, so if you’re interested in getting more information, let me know at wildfoxzen@gmail.com.

The post Vine of Obstacles Update: What Would the Old Guys Say? appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

The April full moon, as you may know, is the pink moon – and isn’t exactly pink.

The moon in Zen-ese, as you may know, is often used as a metaphor for enlightenment. Ah, the soft light of illumination. And it also isn’t what it might seem.

For me, it’s a good time for a full moon – I’m in the thick of developing a Genjokoancourse for the Vine of Obstacles: Support for Online Zen Training, and have been digging into the famous passage by Dogen,

“Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.”

“Reflecting on Dogen Zenji’s teaching can educate consciousness,” I wrote in Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile, “and be solace at those times that we fear the moon. Making fear itself the practice through thorough intimacy with the bodily sensations of fear is actualizing the moon in a dewdrop.”

The moon, as we know, isn’t as big as it seems. And I learned from students recently that science cannot explain that illusion. I checked their understanding (as usual) in Wikipedia (not as usual) and found this: “After reviewing the many different explanations in their 2002 book The Mystery of the Moon Illusion, Ross and Plug conclude ‘No single theory has emerged victorious’.”

Our fear of enlightenment is also based on an illusion.  The water doesn’t get broken. Enlightenment (and delusion) go on and on.

Like Dogen writes in this poem:

The post Reflecting the Full Pink Moon Tonight appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

A couple thoughts about this today thanks to a gHangout meeting with Steve.

First, I’ve found it helpful to think about home-based practice more like hermit practice than monastic practice. Here’s one important difference – in monastic practice, we can relax into the flow of the group, into “the schedule,” and be held up in our intention by the group. At home, we must work our edge much differently, take much more personal responsibility for practice, and apply much more sensitivity to what brings life and joy to our practice. And most importantly, we must celebrate our successes.

“Celebrating” might not sound very “Zen” and I suggest that is exactly (part of) the problem. When practicing at home, if we don’t enjoy our practice, even have fun with it, then it is really difficult to continue.

Granted, we might need to develop a hinky sense of humor to find fun in the great matter of birth and death.

Anyway, many home-based practitioners suffer from allowing a negative self-told narrative to colonize their attitude toward their practice-enlightenment project. One way to address this is to focus on the positive – yes, patting ourselves on the back from following through with heart’s innermost request.

Second, the technology is now available to support home-based practice like never before. From video-voice practice meetings, online forums, and moodles it is more possible to practice with intensity in the home-based world than ever before. The Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training is one program designed to facilitate just such a practice.

Real Zen work can be done in this manner.

One barrier for many of us oldsters is that we live in a segmented universe – the online technologies and in-the-flesh worlds being two. Many twenty-somethings seem especially ready for this kind of practice, living in a non-segmented universe with technology and in-the-flesh life integrated seamlessly.

And like someone once said about plastics, it’s the future, boy. Think about it.

The post The Future of Zen Practice in One Word: Celebrating Successes and Embracing Technology appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

“Pay Attention, Be Kind, Remember that the World is Vast and Wide” was the theme of the talk I gave there on Sunday. I’ll get the recording up here soon.

Today the bombings in Boston are up for me.

On another “day after.”

“Pay Attention, Be Kind, Remember that the World is Vast and Wide” is all I’ve got to say.

That’s my prayer today for one and all.

The post Zen is Simple: Pay Attention, Be Kind, Remember that the World is Vast and Wide appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

Sound familiar?

I remember taking the pictures about a month ago. The determined Bodhi struggled through about fifty yards of undergrowth in this manner.

At first I laughed at him … and then encouraged him to drop the stick – but he was steadfast. After “Drop!” didn’t save him, I related with his predicament and just stayed with him.

He finally dropped the stick when he was ready, swirled around, and bounded freely through the woods, as if he was getting the last laugh after having played the fool.

The following koan from Record of Transmitting the Light comes to mind:

Ejo came to Dogen. One day, in the course of seeking guidance, he heard the koan, “A single hair penetrates many holes.”

Hearing this, at once he attained to realization. That evening, he went to the teacher’s room, made his bows, and said, “I do not ask about the single hair. What are many holes?”

Dogen smiled and said, “You penetrated it.” Ejo made bows.

Of course, the whole works is just holes and hairs … well, that seems a little weird but stay in the context, stay in the context!

Like I was saying, the whole works is holes and hairs. Every which way, penetrating and being penetrated so much so that it all collapses.

So Ejo asked Dogen not for a presentation of the hair but of the holes.

Dogen smiled and we are invited into this smile as well, joining Dogen, Ejo, and Bodhi in tender compassion for the whole works – hairs and holes, horizontal and vertical, form and emptiness.

Keizan’s verse (Cleary translation):

Space has never admitted even a needle;
In the vastness there is nothing to rely on,
So who is there to discuss it?
Do not say one hair goes through myriad holes–
The bare, clean ground hasn’t a trace.

The post The Life of a Dog: Dragging a Stick Horizontally Through a Vertical World appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

I’m not excluding in-the-flesh work at all but offering the Vine of Obstacles as part of the mix, depending on the person and their circumstances, intent on utilizing the available technology to facilitate practitioners’ practice-awakening projects through a personalized approach.

Another post-traditional aspect of this work is my teacher role. Especially in this format, I see myself more as a coach and trainer and not as a feudal-power authority on all matters … or perfect Zen Master.

So Vine of Obstacles was rolled out a few weeks ago. My aim is to work closely with a small group of students through the synergistic play of zazen, study, and engaging the world, supported by practice meetings via Skype or FaceTime and personalized study.

I’m inspired by the responses and interactions I’ve had with practitioners. The possibility for authentic work in this entanglement is palpable.

Not surprising, given the nature of the medium (and the metaphor), the Vine is twisting with some fresh tangles.

I’ve added a Moodle (“…a free, open-source PHP web application for producing modular internet-based courses that support a modern social constructionist pedagogy” – phew!) that will serve not only as the basket in which practitioners can discover themselves by interacting with modern and classical sources but also will give us the important opportunity to engage with each other as a practice group in conversation forums.

The first Vine Moodle course is complete enough, “Zazen Workshop: Getting Started Wherever You Are.” It includes general suggestions for practice (like Love and have fun. Live a creative life of wholeheartedness in work, home life, and play. Even sleep.), beginner’s-mind zazen instructions, Dogen and Keizan’s zazen advice, sections that address the subtleties of just-sitting shikantaza and koan, and a posture workshop.

Now I’m almost complete with “Guidelines for Studying the Way” and “Genjokoan: What is Realized in the Issue at Hand?” will come next. And more to come, all intent on provoking intimate self knowledge in the big open field of practicing awakening. Like I said … through the synergistic play of zazen, study, and engaging the world, supported by practice meetings via Skype or FaceTime.

For me, this is big fun.

If you’d like to be involved, contact me at wildfoxzen@gmail.com for more information and an application.

The post New Twists in Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

He’d just walked out of a hospital room where a woman lay in bed, holding her still-born infant daughter.

Our Zen practice, whether of the just-sitting shikantaza or koan frames, is about authentically negotiating the Way in each a specific dharma situation (aka, daily life). Even the really raw and painful ones like this.

So I reframed the koan for him: “Explain mu to a woman holding her dead baby in her arms.”

In such a crushing situation, to drift even slightly into preaching, philosophizing or proselytizing not only misses the point, but is offensive to all involved.

And not to be intimate with the matter at hand, the truth of this moment – a mother and a dead baby – also is a betrayal.

How to respond?

I’m reassured to report to you that this student hit the bulls-eye.

Today as I reflect on this, I remember a similar tragic event from long ago when Katagiri Roshi was alive. The sixteen-year-old daughter of one of my fellow Zen students died suddenly from blood poisoning. We had a memorial service in which Katagiri Roshi offered some dharma words that so penetrated my heart that they’re still fresh twenty-seven years later.

I’ll offer them to you now and leave this post at that:

Dharma Words:

Life: Where do you come from?
The flower of the iron tree gives forth its fragrance.

Death: Where are you heading?
The clouds disperse and the moon clearly appears.

(to the deceased): You had sixteen years of life as brief as the sound of a finger snap; as swift in passing as a flash of light.

One day, as people turned to go east, you chose to go to the west without looking back at those whom you left behind, lonely.

One day, even though people reached out to help pull you from life’s quicksand, in reaching out to them, your hands did not meet. At this time, you learned of your own great loneliness.

One day, your life was unexpectedly supported by the warmheartedness of other beings. In knowing of their love and warmth you could become aware of how you and these other people were somehow linked together by many ties originating in the remote past. For you, they were no longer “others,” but friends – boys and girls with whom you could make promises of walking together, hand in hand, in the mountains or by the rivers.

Now you have the opportunity to reach out, take their hands and invite them to walk with you. In doing so – with your mother, your father, your friends – even with a tiny flower in the mountain – you do so with the realization that it is within the Spring-like warmth and radiance of the heart that all things – sadness, joy, love and hatred – are melted away to become fertilizer for the growth of new life.

Can you speak to us a single word about the world as you see it here and now?

And ancestor says: “When the mind has been extinguished, even fire is refreshing.”

But I want to say:
“Life and death, coming and going.
Both are extinguished.
Fire is hot of itself;
breeze, cool of itself.”

(originally published in Udumbara: Journal of Zen Practice)

The post Reaching Out a Hand: Birth, Death, and Raw Zen appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

“Practice intimately, working within, like a fool, like an idiot. If you can achieve continuity, this is called the host within the host.” – Cave Mountain Virtuous Servant

Overview

This post-traditional Zen training is designed for practitioners living at home who yearn to realize and actualize the great matter of birth and death. “Vine of Obstacles” acknowledges the difficulty of following through with our practice aspirations in the midst of daily life and the truth that this very bind can be a dharma gate.

This program is intended to support you in this very entanglement.

Vine of Obstacles Zen requires commitment to ongoing awakening and the capacity to carry out daily practice alone and regularly engage with Dosho via Skype and email.

Our primary basis for practicing enlightenment is daily zazen (integrating just-sitting and koan Zen) and engagement in the world.

Intended outcomes

• Practitioners will learn to embody the Buddha way, developing fluency in actualizing awakening in daily life.
• Practitioners will become happy, powerful, and positive influences at home, work, and in the community, “making manifest the great earth’s goldenness.”
• We will have a fun, lively, edgy time together.

Process

• Just-sitting/koan zazen
• Practice meetings with Dosho: two thirty-minute sessions via Skype each month, focusing on koan presentation and issues in your practicing-enlightenment project and study
• Study selected works of Dogen, beginning with “Points to Watch in Buddhist Practice” and “The Issue at Hand”
• Listening to monthly dharma talks by Dosho, Katagiri Roshi, and others accessed through Sweeping Zen (or other venues) and follow up exercises with Dosho via email

Initial consultation to explore whether Vine of Obstacles is right for you

As well as application, fees, sample study assignment, or more information, contact Dosho at wildfoxzen@gmail.com

About the teacher

Dosho Port is a Zen teacher, practitioner and successor of Dainin Katagiri-roshi, currently involved in koan introspection with James Ford and Melissa Blacker of Boundless Way Zen. Dosho began studying Zen with Katagiri-roshi in 1977 and trained with him until his death in 1990. He did shukke tokudo (home leaving) in 1984 and received shiho (dharma transmission) in 1989. He is fond of “hammering nails into empty space” so has also studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, Tangen Harada, Shodo Harada, and Daido Loori. Dosho has been actively teaching since the early 1990’s and his in-the-flesh teaching project is Wild Fox Zen, Transforming Through Play Temple in White Bear Township, MN.

The post Invitation to Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

“The kings are dead,” I said, “and thank God.”

And what a mixed legacy they leave behind.

It seems to me that the traditional, feudal power models that the Japanese Zen pioneers brought with them served to rapidly establish practice, enlightenment and institutions in the West AND led to serious abuses of power.

Worse than in other areas in life?

Maybe not. That’s hard to assess. It’d be nice, you might think, if Zen was special but that naive wish is certainly a big part of the issue.

As Myoan Grace Schireson observes in How the West Won – Creating Healthier Sanghas, “…We need to examine how through suppression of emotional intelligence, critical thinking and genuine intimacy, we can become active defenders of spiritual abuse in Zen communities. Let us learn how to create and support healthier Zen training models.”

Nonin has a nice piece too on Sweeping Zen, Unethical Practices.

It seems to me that the correction to the tilt in our dharma ship from leaning way over into steeply vertical, feudal power has been under way for decades, going back to the implosion at San Francisco Zen Center in 1983. And what we have accomplished, at least in the Zen narrative, is a big emphasis on community.

For example, when asked in the recent Inklings, “…what are you goals for Dragons Leap in year two?” Dairyu Michael Wenger responded:

“I hope we can both open and deepen our practice. I am clear that this will be collaboration-what do students and community members want? How can Dragons Leap work with them to create a space that meets their needs? I am excited about the voices and ideas we will nurture here in year two.”

A fine expression of a horizontal, shared power and vision. Michael also says, “This is a place where Buddhist practices, creativity, compassion and fun are inter-related and encouraged.”

That sounds good. I’m into fun, lively, and edgy myself.

Yet, given that I’m prone to fretting, my concern is that the dharma ship has leaned too far into doing what community members want, to meeting people’s needs, rather than practicing enlightenment.

Some of us old hands wonder if there is enough intensity in modern Zen for truly open and deep practice. This is the ages old debate between emphasizing samadhi (as team silent illumination did in China a thousand years ago) and insight (emphasized by team koan in the same period and then transmitted to Japan and the West).

Clearly we need both – samadhi and wisdom – like two foci engaged in intimate dialogue.

Real ethical reflection and creative living are not nurtured when traditional power is predominant (the tyranny of the autocrat). Nor are they likely to occur when group think is pervasive. This is “modern power” where the group acts as the authority, prescribing and enforcing norms (which can become the tyranny of the collective). The ideal would be to come together as responsible beings, tolerant of others’ narratives, and reflect open-heartedly about how to apply practical wisdom in whatever situation we are in. This is what I regard as post-modern power and is an on-going way of being, not a place fixed in the horizontal or vertical dimensions of power.

See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2013/03/the-king-is-dead-thank-god-reflections-on-new-training-models-for-zen-in-the-global-culture

The post The King is Dead, Thank God: Reflections on New Training Models for Zen in the Global Culture appeared first on Sweeping Zen.

God disturbs us toward our destiny
By hard events
And by freedom’s now urgent voice
Which explode and confirm who we are.
- Norman Hirsh

I recently learned of a big change in my work life. A friend had shoulder surgery. Another prepares for dialysis several times a week for the rest of her life.

“God disturbs us toward our destiny.”

How can we move freely through the disruption?

We know, of course, that we are change and we are also resistance to change. We humans gave up clinging and swinging through tree branches for clinging and swinging through stories, for expressing the dream within the dream.

Waking in the wee hours, the swirl of confusion, sadness, blame or self-justification – and all the other 52 flavors – gains momentum, and the inner voice cries out, “I am not that story! I am this other one!”

Returning to the hara point, again and again, my will is not sufficient to let go.

David Rynick at This Truth Never Fails expresses it well:

“In the abstract, I have a great philosophical preference for surrender.  Given my estimate of the relative power of my self-will versus the power of the universe, the only sensible thing to do is to say YES to whatever arises.  But this clarity of thought and belief is not always enough, actually is never enough, when things turn desperate.  Just because I want to or think I should, I can’t will myself to surrender.  Consciously choosing to surrender does not actually loosen the grip of my opinion about how things should be.  The intention to surrender is not the same thing as surrendering.”

Yet the “mysterious pivot,” as Katagiri Roshi used to call it, somehow (sometimes) wondrously appears, and I don’t have to be or do anything other than fully step into and express this dream in a dream. Notions of self power and other power are dissolved by the elixir of grace, the quiet settling of sweet dew.

Reaching out for the hand of God (or Avalokiteśvara if you prefer), the hand of God suddenly appears as a kind, warm surrender.

Really not so bad after all.

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Marc Lesser, a business consultant, former CEO of Brush Dance, and Zen teacher in the San Francisco line, has written a comforting book, making me re-think what a mature person is all about.

And that’s just from reading the book because I’ve hardly even met the man. I think that Marc might have been director of Tassajara when I visited there 30 years ago and I may have had a brief conversation with him.

So in this case, I’m innocent of the charge, “Ah, your just trying to sell books for your friends.”

Yes, Marc spent ten years as a young man in the San Francisco system as a resident, including five years at Tassajara. So he’s done some Zen work. He then went to business school and eventually started Brush Dance and was its CEO for years until he got fired.

And in some of our lives, out of crisis, failure and disappointment our underlying gifts can arise, and our inner-most request for this great life can become clear.

Let’s hope the same for all of us.

Marc’s tone is steady and clear, displaying an engaging openness to all of the wild vicissitudes of this wild life. The five truths in Know Yourself, Forget Yourself: Five Truths to Transform Your Work, Relationships, and Everyday Life are these:

1. Know yourself, forget yourself
2. Be confident, question everything
3. Fight for change, accept what is
4. Embrace emotion, embody equanimity
5. Benefit others, benefit yourself

I especially benefited from Marc’s “fight for change, question everything” section. He lays out a process for setting your intention, envisioning success that includes looking at resistance and measuring the gap, including making a financial snapshot that flows into writing a business plan – all contextualized within the Zen narrative – that makes the process of getting clear about our great dream and digging deeply into present realities much more palatable.

Marc tells a story (and there are a lot of good ones here) about teaching at Esalen on accomplishing more by doing less (see his previous book Less – now on my reading list). He asked the group, “How do you respond to a particular need or challenge in growing and managing a business?”

Most responses were in the new-age think category of pseudo-dharma: “whatever the universe may bring me.”

Marc responded, “When it comes to growing or managing a business, I’m not awhatever the Universe brings me kind of guy. I’m a write the f*#%ing business plankind of guy.”

That nudged me over the edge from thinking Marc would be a fun guy to have a beer with, exchanging our old Zen war stories, to putting the exercises in this chapter on my to-do list.

Some of my readers – those with a purist Zen impulse that’s yet been unchecked by reality – may find the book mostly about translating Zen teachings in a way that can help people in the relative world rather than presenting the real fundamental deal.

Kind of an odd paradox, no? Is there something wrong with being helpful?

There has been a lot learned in the past century in the worlds of psychology and business, so to cut that off is to make dharma practitioners poor. On the other hand – the one that I’m often writing with here – to miss the Zen truth in the midst of all that, also leaves us as “one chopstick” kind of guys.

So, sure, Know Yourself, Forget Yourself is a self-help Zen book with a business-background tilt. And I could drop into my “Zen bitch” mode and quibble about Marc’s presentation of koan work and koans, as well as the deepest meaning of Dogen, but that would miss the point.

What is the point?

Hey, Marc, thanks to your work of getting to know yourself, I feel as though we’ve met.

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First a caution. True Zen practice is exclusively about clarifying the Great Matter of birth and death. Other pursuits not directly in the service of this purpose are, at best, interesting and benign distractions.

You might be able to know past lives through dream interpretation, for example, but from where I sit, it looks like wandering on the byways of spiritual fascination.

Remember that our Soto ancestor Dongshan said that wearing the robe but not clarifying the Great Matter is the most painful thing in all the world.

And the fourth Soto ancestor in Japan, Keizan, said, “…This is not a path you can pass on to your children or a path you can receive from your father. You have to do it yourself, awaken to it yourself, and acquire it yourself” (from Record of Transmitting the Light, trs. Cook, p. 193).

Dogen’s teacher, Rujing, put it this way (quoted in Dogen’s “Expressing a Dream within a Dream”):

“Dreams going awry and dreams coming true,
Holding and letting go,
All playing freely like flowing breezes.”

Some dreams, though, are more like mighty gales.

Recently I met a practitioner who told me of a dream that had blown him into focused Zen inquiry. He’d had the dream more than a decade ago, when he was first reading about Buddhism. The contents of the dream seemed extraordinary to me as well and had left our friend in quite a pickle. Was it “just a dream?” Or was it a message from himself … or from the ancient Buddhas? What was he to do with it?

Is there anything in the Zen tradition that points to how one might work with a gale of a dream like this – other than to dismiss it as delusion? Fortunately, there is. Take this, for example.

Back in the old times, Guishan was taking a nap and his close disciple, Yangshan, entered his room but seeing the old teacher sleeping turned to leave. Guishan woke up and called Yangshan back, saying, “Let me tell you my dream.”

Yangshan leaned forward to listen to the dream. Then Guishan said, “Please interpret the dream for me.”

Yangshan took a bowl of water and a towel to Guishan who then scrubbed his face and sat for a while.

Another close disciple, Xiangyan, then came into the room. Guishan said, “Just now Yangshan demonstrated a supreme ability in supranormal powers! This ability is not about personal salvation.”

Xiangyan said, “I was in the other room, but I clearly perceived this.”

Guishan said, “Now it’s your turn to interpret.”

Xiangyan made a cup of tea and brought it to the master.

Guishan said, “You two disciples have supranormal powers that are beyond the abilities of Sariputra and Maudgalyayana (disciples of Buddha).”

Here we have three fine practitioners living the dream, expressing Guishan’s dream in elegant service of one and other.

A warm towel.

A cup of tea.

How extraordinary.

How will we be of service within this dream?

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