1. This morning after a period of zazen, Misha Merrill, Jane and Patty's extraordinary teacher, and the treasured guiding teacher of our Twining Vines Sangha, gave a dharma talk. Then we cleaned the temple for an hour, the kitchen cupboards emptied and all its contents washed and dried, the bathrooms scrubbed right down to the grout, every surface dusted, every zafu and zabuton beat whisked down to purest black. Then, after coffee and sweets, a few of us rehearsed tomorrow's Shuso Hossen ceremony, reviewing the complex choreography, the unfamiliar playing of instruments--han, inkin, the brass bowls of the doan. Among us plenty of uncertainty, even anxiety--will we get it right? Amazing, the distraction of the ego. I had my own version for most of the morning. Oh, but the waste, the endless waste of it all; how lost to the moment, to the connection we might share when instead we are caught up in the fear that we'll blow it. Of course we're human and that's what we do. Except when we don't. Except when we are so completely present for each strike of the brass bowl, each bow, each call of the Shuso's "Hai!" that there is no ego, there is no thought of failure or success, no I striking the bowl, no bowl, only striking; no I, no bow, only bowing.
2. It's over. The practice period ended last night. Tonight's entry is the mirror image of the one I wrote the night before practice period began. I offer no summary, no sweeping insight cast like a bright light over these 30 days. No last thoughts, no questions, no answers. But these days, the zazen, the incense and candles burned, the services and sutras chanted, the meals prepared and served and eaten, the dana bowls emptied and filled and emptied again are alive in this body, and ripple out from each of us, touching, as Misha said this morning, every shining figure of Indra's net, all sentient beings, all inanimate objects, sky, weather, light, space and time.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
No more basket
1. At some point this summer, I began to use the garden basket, brief early summer home to lettuce, broccoli, herbs, to carry my sewing things to and from the zendo. But the sewing is done, at least the rakusu sewing. The scissors are back in the home sewing kit. The reading glasses return to my night stand. The basket at its post by the front door awaits the ripening tomatoes and string beans. And I am strangely bereft.
2. At five yesterday afternoon, seven of us trooped from Francis and Sondra's West 11th Street loft across West Side Highway to one of the newly finished piers that juts out from the West Village stretch of that roadway into the Hudson: Sondra in glamorous sunglasses and pink Converse All-Stars, aide Marva-the-Marvelous driver of Sondra's wheelchair, Francis and look-alike son Jonathan, Sondra's brother Joel visiting from California, me and our friend Darryl, also visiting from California. Over that while of walking and looking out at the river and visiting with a jolly 8 month old baby, all kicks and giggles, we kept reconfiguring ourselves into pairs, then individuals drifting off to walk alone or in trios, always someone with a hand on Sondra's wheelchair. The kicking, giggling baby was one of a pair of twins. A nanny pushed the other twin and a third child in the twins' stroller. A man in a bikini sat on a poured concrete wall talking on a cell phone, rising to stretch, showing off his tan to no one in particular. Then it was time to head back to the loft. The family and Marva were looking at a take-out menu from a local Chinese dive as Darryl and I said our goodbyes, and went on to meet Joy at the apartment, then on to Ben & Jack's where Elyse joined us. Drinks, dinner, good stories, a wonderful Croatian waiter named Miro, laughter. We put Elyse in a cab, a dog at Joy's apartment and a long drive ahead for him and me, good nights.
Day and night, we were all liquid, melted by the heat and the love among us.
3. Joko Beck talks about building an ABC, a bigger container--for conflict, for judgment, widening the reach of the heart of compassion, an endlessly useful tool. Susan Postal told the story about her resistance, decades ago, to Buddhist practice because of all the rituals and trappings, the bells and whistles of ceremony. The man who became her teacher explained that it was as if he had an egg which he wanted to give to her. But without a shell, he could not put it in her hand.
There are days when it feels like there is only ritual, and days when the ritual feels full of intention, vibrant with the Dharma. And there are days when the ritual falls away and the big empty sky sings.
2. At five yesterday afternoon, seven of us trooped from Francis and Sondra's West 11th Street loft across West Side Highway to one of the newly finished piers that juts out from the West Village stretch of that roadway into the Hudson: Sondra in glamorous sunglasses and pink Converse All-Stars, aide Marva-the-Marvelous driver of Sondra's wheelchair, Francis and look-alike son Jonathan, Sondra's brother Joel visiting from California, me and our friend Darryl, also visiting from California. Over that while of walking and looking out at the river and visiting with a jolly 8 month old baby, all kicks and giggles, we kept reconfiguring ourselves into pairs, then individuals drifting off to walk alone or in trios, always someone with a hand on Sondra's wheelchair. The kicking, giggling baby was one of a pair of twins. A nanny pushed the other twin and a third child in the twins' stroller. A man in a bikini sat on a poured concrete wall talking on a cell phone, rising to stretch, showing off his tan to no one in particular. Then it was time to head back to the loft. The family and Marva were looking at a take-out menu from a local Chinese dive as Darryl and I said our goodbyes, and went on to meet Joy at the apartment, then on to Ben & Jack's where Elyse joined us. Drinks, dinner, good stories, a wonderful Croatian waiter named Miro, laughter. We put Elyse in a cab, a dog at Joy's apartment and a long drive ahead for him and me, good nights.
Day and night, we were all liquid, melted by the heat and the love among us.
3. Joko Beck talks about building an ABC, a bigger container--for conflict, for judgment, widening the reach of the heart of compassion, an endlessly useful tool. Susan Postal told the story about her resistance, decades ago, to Buddhist practice because of all the rituals and trappings, the bells and whistles of ceremony. The man who became her teacher explained that it was as if he had an egg which he wanted to give to her. But without a shell, he could not put it in her hand.
There are days when it feels like there is only ritual, and days when the ritual feels full of intention, vibrant with the Dharma. And there are days when the ritual falls away and the big empty sky sings.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Impermanence
1. I woke too early. The sky, just growing light, was solidly overcast and cool. I lay in bed for a good while, listening Morning Edition, petting Aanakin, frankly dreading the day because I sometimes do.
There's been no rain for ages. I last watered the gardens Thursday evening. Out went Anakin and me, hose tap on, a good soaking for the chard, tomatoes, green beans, herbs, celery, onions and peppers. A little ball, a little dog leaping to make the catch. Breakfast, 'pecial K (with a nod to toddler Evan) and blueberries, orzo and chicken for the dog currently bland dieting.
To follow: Email. Job. Zendo. The final stitches on this rakusu. Zazen. Somewhere in there, the dread will probably turn to something else, the way the early morning sky is clearing now.
2. youtube.com saves the day. After the Beatles, after Ray Charles singing "What I'd Say" after Van Heylan (sp?) singing "Jump," I listened and watched the Isley Brother, "Shout." After the splits, after the backup brothers whose upper bodies move with no reflection of each other but whose lower bodies are in perfect synch, after recognizing in their footwork the way my brother and I dance, I had a really nice day.
3. Jane placed a half dozen dots on the mineki, the tab that hangs from the rakusu straps at the back of the neck. Then she directed me as I made the stitches--a dozen?--to "draw" the pine branch, the mark of our Soto Zen lineage. Then it was done, and I put this blue rakusu in the case I sewed for it, and I stood in front of Jane and presented it to her, exchanging bows, and noting, I believe, in the way we looked into each other's eyes, our shared love for the Dharma and our gratitude for these years of shared practice. Now she has eleven days to write and draw on the white backing, and give me my Japanese jukai name, and return it to me when I take the precepts on the 14th.
Then we had dokusan (face-to-face meeting to discuss my practice) and I told her something I realized only minutes before: Jane has stronger equanimity than I do. "That's good," she said, not because she wouldn't wish great equanimity for me, but because it's good for me to have her maturity for company, for inspiration.
4. Tonight Patty gave her third talk on compassion, focusing on her many years of hospice work. The open heart of compassion. She must have said that four or five times in the last six or eight minutes of her talk. The open heart of compassion. The heart unencumbered by ego. Imagine.
There's been no rain for ages. I last watered the gardens Thursday evening. Out went Anakin and me, hose tap on, a good soaking for the chard, tomatoes, green beans, herbs, celery, onions and peppers. A little ball, a little dog leaping to make the catch. Breakfast, 'pecial K (with a nod to toddler Evan) and blueberries, orzo and chicken for the dog currently bland dieting.
To follow: Email. Job. Zendo. The final stitches on this rakusu. Zazen. Somewhere in there, the dread will probably turn to something else, the way the early morning sky is clearing now.
2. youtube.com saves the day. After the Beatles, after Ray Charles singing "What I'd Say" after Van Heylan (sp?) singing "Jump," I listened and watched the Isley Brother, "Shout." After the splits, after the backup brothers whose upper bodies move with no reflection of each other but whose lower bodies are in perfect synch, after recognizing in their footwork the way my brother and I dance, I had a really nice day.
3. Jane placed a half dozen dots on the mineki, the tab that hangs from the rakusu straps at the back of the neck. Then she directed me as I made the stitches--a dozen?--to "draw" the pine branch, the mark of our Soto Zen lineage. Then it was done, and I put this blue rakusu in the case I sewed for it, and I stood in front of Jane and presented it to her, exchanging bows, and noting, I believe, in the way we looked into each other's eyes, our shared love for the Dharma and our gratitude for these years of shared practice. Now she has eleven days to write and draw on the white backing, and give me my Japanese jukai name, and return it to me when I take the precepts on the 14th.
Then we had dokusan (face-to-face meeting to discuss my practice) and I told her something I realized only minutes before: Jane has stronger equanimity than I do. "That's good," she said, not because she wouldn't wish great equanimity for me, but because it's good for me to have her maturity for company, for inspiration.
4. Tonight Patty gave her third talk on compassion, focusing on her many years of hospice work. The open heart of compassion. She must have said that four or five times in the last six or eight minutes of her talk. The open heart of compassion. The heart unencumbered by ego. Imagine.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
untitled
Yesterday I went to Brooklyn Zen Center to hear Grace Schireson (Mel Weitzman's student--he gave her Transmission some years ago, and she serves I think three CA sanghas) give a dharma talk, drawing largely from her book Zen Women. The Zen center, between 3rd and 4th Avenues in Brooklyn's Gowanus section--between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens--is beautiful--open, light, spacious. I was moved to see this place made for the care and nurturing of the Dharma. Grace's talk was intelligent, thoughtful, the Q & A which followed was more of each, much more--I loved hearing her on her feet, drawing spontaneously from the decades of experience and study and zazen, zazen, zazen. I would like to be just like Grace when I grow up, if I ever do. At 63 I have my doubts. Still, it's nice to have her for a model.
During her talk, I asked about her use of the word "transcend." I set up the question by trying to explain my own historical relationship to the word, and when I paused she said, "Would you like mt to tell you what I meant by that word?" Of course I said yes, but I felt pretty dumb. Really, all I had to do in the first place was says, "Can you tell me what you mean by the word 'transcend'?" There I was with my ego hanging out. I've been batting all that around since yesterday morning, especially the hanging out with my ego part.
Some years ago, I came across something I remembered this evening from one of Pema Chodron's books. She'd been giving the basic teachings of meditation, including the instruction to note one's thinking and bring the attention back to the breath without making oneself wrong for thinking. After her talk, a guy came up to speak to her. He introduced himself. I think he said he was a truck driver. He'd been practicing meditation for a while, and when he noted that his attention had wandered off to his thoughts, he told her he'd he'd say to himself, "Thinking, Good Buddy." Nice, right?
At about the same time I remember reading in one of Natalie Goldberg's books that she and a friend were having a lousy day, so they decided to sit. After their zazen, they seemed disappointed not to feel better. That was sort of a surprise. It never occured to me to sit in order to feel better. Clinging and aversion. The teaching is, it's no biggie. You don't like it? Don't worry it'll change. You like it? Don't worry, it'll change. There's no holding on because there's nothing permanent onto which we can hold. Grace had a funny expression--an acronym for a phrase something like "Wishing it were otherwise." WIWO. Tonight I am thinking that charity begins at home. Chodron also talks about how programs in self-improvement are a kind of assault. Start where you are. And then stay there. A different take on the expression, There's no there there. Oh yes there is. There it goes.
During her talk, I asked about her use of the word "transcend." I set up the question by trying to explain my own historical relationship to the word, and when I paused she said, "Would you like mt to tell you what I meant by that word?" Of course I said yes, but I felt pretty dumb. Really, all I had to do in the first place was says, "Can you tell me what you mean by the word 'transcend'?" There I was with my ego hanging out. I've been batting all that around since yesterday morning, especially the hanging out with my ego part.
Some years ago, I came across something I remembered this evening from one of Pema Chodron's books. She'd been giving the basic teachings of meditation, including the instruction to note one's thinking and bring the attention back to the breath without making oneself wrong for thinking. After her talk, a guy came up to speak to her. He introduced himself. I think he said he was a truck driver. He'd been practicing meditation for a while, and when he noted that his attention had wandered off to his thoughts, he told her he'd he'd say to himself, "Thinking, Good Buddy." Nice, right?
At about the same time I remember reading in one of Natalie Goldberg's books that she and a friend were having a lousy day, so they decided to sit. After their zazen, they seemed disappointed not to feel better. That was sort of a surprise. It never occured to me to sit in order to feel better. Clinging and aversion. The teaching is, it's no biggie. You don't like it? Don't worry it'll change. You like it? Don't worry, it'll change. There's no holding on because there's nothing permanent onto which we can hold. Grace had a funny expression--an acronym for a phrase something like "Wishing it were otherwise." WIWO. Tonight I am thinking that charity begins at home. Chodron also talks about how programs in self-improvement are a kind of assault. Start where you are. And then stay there. A different take on the expression, There's no there there. Oh yes there is. There it goes.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Daily Practice
[A brief continuation of yesterday's entry. 5. My mother died on June 16, 2009. Last fall, Joy and Evan and I invited our friends Melissa and Shayna DeLowe (they were married last month and Shayna took Melissa's last name) to help us bury Mom's ashes. Melissa was Evan's Hebrew tutor over the months leading up to his Bar Mitzvah in Israel. Shayna is a cantor at Temple Rodef Shalom in NYC. The five of us spoke some Saturday about what we wanted it to be like, down where the ashes of my mother's best friend and Tyler, mom's cat are buried. We made plans about what we'd say, what we'd do, what we'd sing. When the time came, I forgot it all. "What do you want me to do?" Shayna asked. "Just sing," I said. She sang for what may have been five minutes or twenty. She opened her mouth and the sound poured out of her as though she couldn't possibly hold it back, clear, pure, at once heart-felt and light. After she stopped the singing was still there.]
In the years when I taught fiction writing, I encouraged my students to write daily, explaining that though there was no reason to expect they'd write something brilliant every day, it was a good practice, an announcement to the unconscious: I will be available to you every morning between 7 and 9AM to receive whatever you want to offer me. I'd forgotten about that teaching until just now, as I realized that the consequence of this blog writing, my thoughts turn to practice, to looking to see through the lens of practice.
Another thing I encouraged my students to try was writing on the subway. I know it's sort of obvious, but the subway is underground. The unconscious is its own underground. Riding the F train to Coney Island and back was how I worked through a lot of snarls in stories I was writing. In the Fukanzazengi, Eihei Dogen wrote, "take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward." In. Under. Jane and I were talking recently about prepositions, how these words which describe out relationships to all phenomena are among the most challenging for students of English as a second language. Where is inside? Where is under? No place. Everywhere.
In the years when I taught fiction writing, I encouraged my students to write daily, explaining that though there was no reason to expect they'd write something brilliant every day, it was a good practice, an announcement to the unconscious: I will be available to you every morning between 7 and 9AM to receive whatever you want to offer me. I'd forgotten about that teaching until just now, as I realized that the consequence of this blog writing, my thoughts turn to practice, to looking to see through the lens of practice.
Another thing I encouraged my students to try was writing on the subway. I know it's sort of obvious, but the subway is underground. The unconscious is its own underground. Riding the F train to Coney Island and back was how I worked through a lot of snarls in stories I was writing. In the Fukanzazengi, Eihei Dogen wrote, "take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward." In. Under. Jane and I were talking recently about prepositions, how these words which describe out relationships to all phenomena are among the most challenging for students of English as a second language. Where is inside? Where is under? No place. Everywhere.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Practice of Art
1. I watched a 1992 documentary about Joan Mitchell last night and this morning. She was one of the New York abstract expressionists who came up in the years following World War II. She painted large canvases brimming with color, dancey and bold, emphatic, surrounded mostly by men whose work got a lot more attention than hers did, but she kept painting. She lived in France for a good deal of her life after the NYC years. In the film, there's a section of an interview with Mitchell conducted by a French art critic. Again and again, with what seems to me to be an obsequious, disingenuous smile, he pushes her to answer questions about the meaning of her work. Again and again she doesn't answer him, except to say the art is the art, the painting is the painting, it is what it is. How moving that this woman, sixty-seven at the time the film was released and dead before the year was out, was so clear and unshakable about her experience of painting, which sounded like samadhi to me--no painter, no painting, no separation.
2. I'm watching "Word is Out," a 1977 documentary about the lives of a couple dozen gay men and lesbians, among them poet Elsa Gidlow. In a scene at a kitchen table with three or four other women, she explains how she views the filmmakers--as wanting to pigeon hole her, because it fulfills the demands of their film. She uses the analogy of writing a novel; the novelist uses her characters to fulfill the demands of her story. Not where I come from. I have to get out of the way and let my characters tell the story, since I certainly don't know what it is. And if I can't hear a character speak truthfully, then no story follows. Again and again, I have to get out of the way in this exercise in non-attachment.
3. Some years ago, when Francis was without a studio, I offered to sit for him so he could draw. Out of about a dozen meetings came a couple of dozen drawings. About the best of them, Francis said he'd exercised over them no control whatsoever--and this is a skilled draftsman, an artist whose sculptural work requires great precision. These best drawings came, he said, out of not knowing, having no idea--no idea about how he was going to respond to the figure in front of him, and no thought or feeling about having no idea.
4. I once asked my yoga teacher Dave if there was a difference between the OHM we chant three times at the beginning of class and the ones we chant at the end. Yes, there is, he said. The chanting at the end of class is unobstructed. Some part of the obstacles of containment, holding, tension have been released so the sound can come out full voiced, ore rotundo. Between the breath and posture, pranayama and asana, the ego that produces those obstacles releases its grip on the body. (Ana, I'd love for you to weigh in here.)
************************************************************************************
Day 20 is almost over. This night my days are diminished by one.
I have only the stitches of the pine branch to put into the mineki of my rakusu and then the sewing will be finished. I put it on this afternoon so Jane and Patty could measure the straps. It feels substantial. I want to wear it. Here is the verse we recite before we dress ourselves in these robes of the Buddha in miniature:
Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form and emptiness
Wearing the Tathagatha's teaching
Saving all beings
Oh, practice. Oh, art. Oh, life which grows shorter with each passing day.
2. I'm watching "Word is Out," a 1977 documentary about the lives of a couple dozen gay men and lesbians, among them poet Elsa Gidlow. In a scene at a kitchen table with three or four other women, she explains how she views the filmmakers--as wanting to pigeon hole her, because it fulfills the demands of their film. She uses the analogy of writing a novel; the novelist uses her characters to fulfill the demands of her story. Not where I come from. I have to get out of the way and let my characters tell the story, since I certainly don't know what it is. And if I can't hear a character speak truthfully, then no story follows. Again and again, I have to get out of the way in this exercise in non-attachment.
3. Some years ago, when Francis was without a studio, I offered to sit for him so he could draw. Out of about a dozen meetings came a couple of dozen drawings. About the best of them, Francis said he'd exercised over them no control whatsoever--and this is a skilled draftsman, an artist whose sculptural work requires great precision. These best drawings came, he said, out of not knowing, having no idea--no idea about how he was going to respond to the figure in front of him, and no thought or feeling about having no idea.
4. I once asked my yoga teacher Dave if there was a difference between the OHM we chant three times at the beginning of class and the ones we chant at the end. Yes, there is, he said. The chanting at the end of class is unobstructed. Some part of the obstacles of containment, holding, tension have been released so the sound can come out full voiced, ore rotundo. Between the breath and posture, pranayama and asana, the ego that produces those obstacles releases its grip on the body. (Ana, I'd love for you to weigh in here.)
************************************************************************************
Day 20 is almost over. This night my days are diminished by one.
I have only the stitches of the pine branch to put into the mineki of my rakusu and then the sewing will be finished. I put it on this afternoon so Jane and Patty could measure the straps. It feels substantial. I want to wear it. Here is the verse we recite before we dress ourselves in these robes of the Buddha in miniature:
Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form and emptiness
Wearing the Tathagatha's teaching
Saving all beings
Oh, practice. Oh, art. Oh, life which grows shorter with each passing day.
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