Post-Sesshin Post

Dogen said that he reached enlightenment by making "one mistake after another" or "one continuous mistake." If that is the case, I am well on my way.

On Monday, about two hours before leaving for this past Sesshin, the Thursday night "Benji" (the unfortunate word for the Shusso's assistant) e-mailed me to ask what was planned in Hogen Roshi's and my absence. Thus began the scramble to actually plan something, and thankfully, Chozen Roshi agreed to come down and do Shosan, or public Sanzen.

And in that vein, though billed as the Generosity Sesshin, this was, for me, the Humility Sesshin.

Indeed. This time I was not the Head of Tea, just a tea server. See this post for comedy of errors occurring under my watch as Head of Tea. What a relief this time, right? Just serve tea! And cookies. On a wooden tray. Bowing at the waist with the tray at about eye level, while the seated person you are serving bows to you. Then kneel down with the tray to serve. And try not to CRACK THE SHUSSO RIGHT ON THE HEAD with your tray because she is still bowing!


Yes, I did. At the end of Sesshin, Chozen Roshi said that over the years they have witnessed "hundreds of near-misses." Wow.

Usually at Sesshin, there will be lines from a chant that had once been opaque and mysterious that just jump off the page into technicolor understanding: 'Stone woman gets up dancing,' Yes, I see it!

This time, it seemed all the lines about obstructions and difficulty were revealing themselves in my experience:

'Move and you are trapped, miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation.'

It took quite a few days to settle the mind, and it never really got all that quiet for long this time. One of the residents at the last Sesshin described that level of not-really-quiet-mind was like watching CNN on mute, always with the moving scrolls of thought down in the very bottom of the screen.

It took me until Wednesday to remember that I can actually observe what the mind is doing, notice its patterns, then maybe come up with something to help move through whatever mind pattern is happening, like creating an internal suggestion box for a particularly active complaining mind.

So once I started doing that, things settled a bit. Except I kept falling for one thing: The Comparing-Sesshin-to-Sesshin Mind: "It's Friday and you're still not quiet?! This is terrible! What are you doing wrong? You should be in much deeper samadhi right now. Remember last year when you had that big insight and it was like all colors and light and all the cells of the universe dancing together? Yeah, this is sooo not that. But wanting to return to that is definitely doing it wrong, too, so you better stop that. Because maybe stopping that is the way to deeper samadhi and a big crashing insight!"


Just like a dog endlessly chasing her tail. Continued practice seems to have given me more endurance for that kind of thing, so I can grind away like this for more days at a time before hitting the wall of exhaustion and surrender.

I've been ambivalently doing koan practice. Taking it up, putting it down, and scared to really commit. I find myself presenting in Sanzen with these conditionally structured sentences: "If I were to do koan practice..." "So if I continue working with this koan..." Talking about it is surely not doing it. It feels like walking all around the edges of a very very deep, dark body of water, and trying to imagine what it would / might / could be like to jump in.

And yet, apparently, I am working with this koan. Or it is working with me. Because I find all my extraneous holding and self-protecting and holding back is completely revealed. And because I am at times genuinely scared. It feels like something deep inside is slowly breaking.

Over and over, not every time, but many times in the last few Sesshin, I'd go into Sanzen, and return to sit weeping on my cushion for the rest of the period. Because I can just see it all so clearly:

Wanting so desperately to be doing it right. Wanting to know the answer. Wanting to know anything. Wanting to be a good student. Wanting to be good. Wanting to obtain validation from some outside authority. Not wanting to fail. And continually thinking that all of this is where safety comes from. It feels like being a scared 8-year-old pulling out all of her coping skills that have ever worked before and finding them completely ineffectual.

Yeah, it's like this sometimes.

This experience of having these deep knots revealed and the subsequent feelings of fear, sadness and frustration is becoming familiar. So much so that I was able to recognize one of its origins: Being a good student was one way that I tried to manage my parents' anxiety. No need to go into detail, but there it is.

'Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like massive fire.'

Wouldn't it be great to let all that go? I find myself really wanting to let it go. Yeah, really wanting to let it go. And in that wanting, there is a lot of grasping and clutching. Like trying to grasp and clutch water. Or fire.

'Just a hair's breadth's deviation and you are out of tune.'

At some point I could feel a lightening up. And then I had this wonderful image which sums up what this practice is like: Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner. In one episode, he ends up falling through the air, and suddenly remembers his parachute. He pulls the ripcord, and then camping gear and kitchen utensils fall out. Then the fall and the puff of landing.

This is what my mind is doing! Throwing all the ways I have ever developed to think my way out of things, to problem solve, to look rationally at things, to try to effect outcomes, being invested in outcomes, trying to find certainty and safety... all completely ineffectual.



Free Falling indeed. (The whole Road Runner episode with the stuff falling out of Wile E. Coyote's parachute pack is here at about 2:00.)

'...heart humble and grateful'

Hogen Roshi shared a lot of poetry by Rumi during the Teisho. Here is one poem.

Enough Words

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don't try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don't wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it's in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there's no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.

Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?