Manual Labor of the Mind

It's a Scary World out There by BGLewandowski

I wasn't sure whether to add a post before I depart for Sesshin -- this time it's Koans Sesshin! Big, bad, scary, super-Zen-y, Rinzai-style Koans Sesshin! Stirring up the hungry ghosts and scary thoughts in my mind just in time for Halloween.

How did I even end up on the path of Zen, anyway? I think in some alternate reality, I am really a Vipassana practitioner. I love colorful scarves and shawls, and would love to wear them while meditating with the community. Or maybe I'm a Shambhala practitioner at heart. There's a common stereotype about Zen that it's the most hard-core, and the Vipassana and the Shambhala practitioners are so much gentler. I have a very high tolerance for fidgeting in the Zendo, and can sometimes feel out of place with what seem to me like a bunch of stone Buddhas. But now I have more black shirts and pants than anyone I know. And I pack nearly every one of them in a big suitcase to stay one week at the monastery where nobody is looking at me.

It's all just pre-Sesshin jitters. Pre-Sesshin jitters are very interesting to watch. The small mind just knows the jig is up, and that it will not get to live in the manner to which it has become accustomed. It can get very energetic and create some mighty delectable and hard-to-resist trains of thought.

I am also noticing that the more I go, the less I understand why I do.

Anyway, I was inspired, as I usually am, by the Dalai Grandma. Today, she writes about that tender feeling of compassion for those who leave Sangha, or leave the practice of meditation because they think they can't meditate, or it has become too hard. Which it is. Hard. Which is why we need to be so compassionate to ourselves in practice. And yet disciplined. Sheesh. She explains it a lot better than I do! Give a bow to the Dalai Grandma.

I have kept the July issue of the Shambhala Sun right by my computer, because I have been meaning to turn a few sentences of an article from it into a blog entry. Again, this koan of Right Effort.

Here are a few snippets from "It's Not Us and Them" by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche:

Because as practitioners we are doing something that is good and wholesome, we too have difficulties. It’s important for us not to give up. We should not be foolishly seduced into fantasy, thinking that somehow something miraculous is going to happen. When it comes right down to it, the practice path is manual labor of the mind, and it’s hard work. But that doesn’t mean that there is no magic. When we pay attention to the details of our life, we do find magic. This particular magic is all-pervasive; it is something that is part of us all the time. Seeing it, we appreciate the honesty of this spiritual tradition that says we have to work to uncover it.

With gentleness and mindfulness, we can appreciate what we have....

...we all need to practice responsibility and discipline ourselves. We must look at our own habits and begin to alter them. We can’t hire out our practice and have somebody else do the work, but we can do the manual labor with delight and decency. True relief lies in finding what lies under the chaos and negativity—our inherent awakened nature. The notion of fearlessness is finding it now.

Manual labor of the mind.

I believe it was last year on Sesshin when I was assigned to groundskeeping, and was a crew leader for a team of us assigned to dig out blackberry crowns. Not cut them to the ground -- that had already been done. But digging them out, digging down to the root ball and removing the whole plant once and for all. That is the stated goal.

The reality is not even close. More often, the roots travel sideways in many directions, and wrap around and under big rocks the shovel clanks on. Then it's digging up a big rock. The roots also wrap around and hide under tree roots, so it is hard to know what to dig out and what continued digging might be harming a tree. More often than not the blackberry roots get cut by the shovel, and end up escaping and not found again, and then there's a huge series of holes that need to be filled back in. Factor in rain, or mud, or cold.

Workhorses, SoulCollage card by Laura

At one point, checking in with one of my workmates, who was not feeling well, we broke Noble Silence. She said, "It's no use. These are all just going to grow back."

I realized then one of the reasons for Noble Silence. Her words echoed in my head for days.

But sometimes, I could find the crown-- some people called it the heart, one person called it the brain -- the tangly ball that is the source of the lanky, leggy, stickery, pervasive blackberries. I started calling it the shin -- the heart /mind. Sometimes I would find it, and successfully dig it out. Only then could I know that at least this one blackberry plant would not return.

At the monastery, they say everyone who is assigned to the blackberries for work practice always returns saying "It was just like my mind!"

I enjoy this kind of manual labor. I know nature can and often will just grow right back without some regular maintenance. It's so obvious. So unarguable.

This practice keeps saying that the result is not what's important. Matching reality to a picture I have in my mind is not what this is about. It's the process, including the compassion I might bring to a wholesome day of work, whether that is shoveling around in the mud at the monastery, or just pinching the spent geranium blossoms, or lying down because I'm bone tired.

It's our intention --- to just be open to the experience of this life. Simple. Not easy.

Maybe there are ways to meditate lightly, to do what you can, still maintaining the essentials. What are those? The intention, I think. It has to move from being the hope to feel peaceful or to rest to being something more, like the hope to be fully human, to be entirely with it for this moment.
~The Dalai Grandma

Life Among the Brambles by bibliona

The sweetness of women never ceases to delight me.

This story begins with The Festival Hankie:
I think this hankie came from an antique store on "Antiques Row" in Sellwood, once a suburb of Portland. I think I bought it when I first moved to Portland and was still doing fun, touristy things, like visiting Sellwood.

"The Festival" is the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, to which I have been making the pilgrimage for 16 consecutive years (until just this past August). There, in womyn-only space, I get to spend a whole week with my sisters from all over the country, and all over the world. We all converge on this place, to create this place, for one week out of the year which is like no other.

In a place without men, the threat of stranger-perpetrated violence is just about absent*. That's just the truth of the matter. And to have the opportunity to let go of the 24-hour vigilance that is reality for women everywhere causes something amazing to happen: Joy erupts. It takes a lot of energy to be vigilant. And when all that energy is available for something else, and I happen to be in a place with 4,000 other women who are also channeling that energy into fun... well, it's about as sweet as can be.

My best girlfriends and I camp together and meet every morning and evening in a camping-gazebo we have to haul in from Portland, or Cleveland, or wherever we are coming from. And in this safe little container within a safe big container, reconnecting with each other, we usually end up processing some sensitive, deep, painful material. And also laughing a lot.

One way or another, inevitably, there are tears.

It wasn't with this in mind that I happened to have it on me one night in the gazebo-- the hankie, that is. But I did, and it was a tearful moment for my dear girlfriend Amy P. When suddenly presented with this sweet, soft floral hankie, she enjoyed it so much that she started laughing, and to this day, we don't remember why she was crying.

So that year, or maybe it was the next year, there was a craftswomon who was using these old floral hankies and stamping words on them. Amy bought me a hankie with some flowers and ferns embroidered on it and the word "feminist," which I used as a little nightstand decoration then, too.

And then she sent me this one:
This hankie, you may recall, was featured in its very own blog post in June called "Sesshin Sweetness." I place all my nightstand and toiletry items on it at every Sesshin I attend. It includes the reminder in the corner that every day is a good day.

~~~

We recently had our Jukai ceremony. Jukai is a ceremony in which people are essentially committing to the path of Buddhism. They ask to be given the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. Beforehand, they take classes in the precepts, attend at least two Sesshin, make a chart of the lineage all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha, and sew a rakusu, a small version of a Zen robe. So in this ceremony, the teachers give them the precepts, their "robe" and a Dharma name. It is incredibly meaningful.

Four people took Jukai, and two took the Five Precepts. There were a lot of family and friends in the audience, many of whom had never and maybe would have never stepped foot into a Zendo! Whenever there is a Jukai ceremony, it is an opportunity for the rest of the community to take the precepts in our hearts right along with those in front of the teachers. It is a very active, meaningful ceremony for everyone involved.

So it was not surprising that there were tears. From someone in the ceremony.

Where I was seated, I couldn't see their faces, but Shinju, who was seated right up close to the ceremony in the audience looked to me and indicated need for kleenex.

The zendo was absolutely packed, and I was all the way in the back. Getting kleenex from downstairs would have been disruptive, but it was really early in the ceremony. Ah! I recalled the hankie, neatly folded in my pocket, and unobtrusively handed it to her.
After the ceremony, I enjoyed letting the newly-named Yushin know that this hankie had its own lineage. Now that it had now been employed in dabbing Jukai-induced tears, well that added another layer of preciousness onto it for me!

Yushin asked if she could please return it to me washed.

I got it back yesterday, in a cute little bag, and when I took it out to put it in my samue pocket, I found this:
Another beautiful, soft, floral hankie. Thank you, Yushin! May such sweetness continue to extend out into the four corners and in the ten directions.



*Yes, there are other places where this threat is practically absent: A house with many deadbolts, the monastery grounds, etc. Yes, women can and do perpetrate violence. But not as much as men do, and not usually towards strangers. Yes, there are non-violent males. I'm married to one.

It Takes A Village, People

I just finished a weekend with my 22-month-old "Buddha-son". It's easier to introduce him to other folks at the park as my "nephew," but my husband and I were invited to be the Buddhist half of his spiritual guides along with a Christian couple.

One of his moms is an old friend from college, who stood up at my wedding, and is a sister to me. She is also on the path of Zen. Amazingly, we both came to this path completely independently of each other. She is about to take Jukai in Iowa next week. Incredible.

I had not spent any significant time with Hans since his baby blessing when he was an infant.

He departed blowing kisses from his carseat. I found him to be a surprisingly agreeable little guy, especially for an almost-two-year-old. His meltdowns are usually for good reason: HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired), just like mine. Well, I guess you could add poopy diapers. And I bet it would not take long for me to melt down if I had poopy diapers. That might appropriately fall under the "angry" category.

Anyway, I feel like I just did a Beginners' Mind weekend retreat. Entering the world of a toddler is just not much different than Sesshin. He was even awake at 4:30 am (having come to Pacific time from Central time). We spent time at the park, and at one point watched a little iridescent bug for what, five, ten, fifteen minutes? It's relentless; a roller coaster of emotion, requiring constant consciousness and intentional widening and narrowing of focus. The difficult times just keep calling for more growth to contain it all. The sweet, wonderful times feel so cosmically delightful. And Hans simply embodies wholeheartedness. He would give big hugs, one by one, to everyone's who was standing in the kitchen in one moment, and then fling himself, inconsolably sobbing, from one end of the house to another in the next moment.

But there was a point on a hike we took at the coast, at which I felt like an Auntie in an elephant herd. I simply knew that if anyone ever tried anything on this boy, they would have to get through me first.
What is that? What causes this connection? Is it biology? It sure feels biological. But I've been around other kids, and don't necessarily experience that, or at least I'm not conscious of it. Is it the closeness between me and his Mommy? The time spent with him? I find it kind of astounding.

So I googled around and discovered that the word for these "aunties" of either sex in species of animals who do share parenting is called "allomother."

I ran across an article in the NY Times discussing a primatologist's research into this phenomenon. Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in her book called Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, theorizes that humans developed this ability to cooperatively parent not to be competitive with other groups, but because it was effective:

“I’m not comfortable accepting this idea that the origins of hypersociality can be found in warfare, or that in-group amity arose in the interest of out-group enmity,” she said in a telephone interview. Sure, humans have been notably violent and militaristic for the last 12,000 or so years, she said, when hunter-gatherers started settling down and defending territories, and populations started getting seriously dense. But before then? There weren’t enough people around to wage wars. By the latest estimates, the average population size during the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution that preceded the Neolithic Age may have been around 2,000 breeding adults. “What would humans have been fighting over?” Dr. Hrdy said. “They were too busy trying to keep themselves and their children alive.”

She posits that it's this development of cooperative breeding that is the source of much of our behavior and extreme sociability (empathy, cooperation, relative pacifism, and trust), rather than the complexity of our brains.

And that somehow, it's those helpless babies who trigger and promote "many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one’s guard, uncurl one’s lip and widen one’s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine."

So apparently it takes a village, not only to raise children, but to evolve ourselves.

May we all be serene through these transitions

John Diado Loori originally uploaded by albill

Honored Teacher John Daido Loori Roshi has passed away this morning.
Here are some writings about him.
James Ishmael Ford's post is the best. Alive or dead? I'm not saying!


May he and all of the Zen Mountain Monastery Sangha be serene through these transitions.

Anatta is MINE!!!

Baring Mountain and Skykomish River by brewbooks

If you are deluded you are mountains and rivers away from it

Anatta is MINE!!! Just kidding. Well, not really. It would be a funny bumper-sticker though. Because anatta is a Pali word basically meaning "no-self". The Buddha said that his teachings could be boiled down to one thing: "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I', 'me', 'mine'." And yet, there I sit, trying to figure it out, and claim it. "Anatta is mine." Hilarious.

My mind seems to shut down on anatta, and sunnata ("emptiness" or "voidness)". I mean, shutting down in a not-so-skillful way. Or more like putting up walls and / or trying to wrap them in a measurable box or concept. This "self", this idea, this sense of "I, me, mine" is pesky. This self wants to acquire, to attain understanding of anatta, something like a merit badge. *sigh*

Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness

So into the crucible of Sesshin I hurl this l'il self. Again and again, softening its edges and questioning its existence.

Longing for the Ancient Way, a this year's Autumn 10-day Sesshin with Hogen focused on the Dark. The schedule was a bit different, so to enable lots of sitting through the stillness of the night. We awoke at 6:30 a.m. Yes, you read that right: 6:30 a.m. Hogen, after 40 years of Zen practice, says that he still finds the usual 3:50 a.m. monastery waking hours to be "ghastly." We had a schedule that included 8+ hours of meditation, and we sat until midnight, after which Yaza, additional sitting, was encouraged.

Loch Duich from Eilean Donan by atomicjeep

The last two sitting periods each night, from 11p.m. - 12a.m. were spent in gradually increased darkness. Each night, more and more lights were extinguished, until the Zendo was as dark as it could be.

Sesshin can be a roller coaster. Especially at first, as the mind often acts like a high-strung thoroughbred being coaxed, flailing and panicked, into a racing gate.

Except this time, my mind didn't act like that.

Charge! by Harry Willis

I noticed a great deal of willingness to be there. A comfort in being in Sesshin with my teacher, and a fair absence of over-reactivity to the mind's habits of unwanted music, conversations, and the like. There was a fast descent into concentration, and a familiarity to the breath practice, using the syllables "Bu" and "Dah" on the respective inhales and exhales. I did this practice in Sesshin last year, and had some amazing insights that time.

Despite Hogen's daily warnings to the contrary in his Teisho (Dharma talks); that we can never return to a previous state, that it's gone, and not to look back. That kensho comes when we are not expecting it. All we can do is tend the ground, and we don't get to choose what, when or if anything grows. Growth or fruits of practice are completely dependent upon our impossibly complex karma, and impossible to predict. Nevertheless, a small part of me, comparing and noticing how "fast" I was able to drop my usual kinds of discursive thought, kept hoping for that same state again. And then trying not to hope. Or hoping for some different but equally fabulous insight. Wondering what insights I would have this time. But attempting to hope and wonder surreptitiously. And occasionally successfully dropping even all that altogether.

I had returned to the small flowerbox of zinnias and cosmos, where previously I had enjoyed the zeppelin-like fat bumblebees in mid-August. The flowers were more sparse, many were brown, and it was a September offering now. Still plenty of bees to observe, as well as some spiders.

Then one sunny afternoon, I saw right on top of a lower petal from a large, tall, pink zinnia, there was a teeny little tree frog, its little hind end sticking right out of the flower. Its little moist skin and teeny little breaths as it sought refuge from the direct sun in this hammock of a flower petal was almost too cute to bear. That is, until later that evening, when it turned around and was facing outward! Cute overload! Its little frog face peeked right out of its flower petal hideout.

Who you lookin' at? by jacki-dee

Throughout the Sesshin, I returned to that flower dozens of times, wondering if it would be there again, and it never was. So that was a comforting anology for me about trying to get the same insight or experience from one Sesshin to another.

At times, I was writing this blog in my head, deciding that my mind maybe isn't a 2-year-old black lab that eats poop, but an OCD dog trainer who needs to take a chill pill sometimes. Because I was having such a peaceful Sesshin without all that policing in my head! Such willingness, such ability to turn the mind away from this waiting for kensho, as silly as waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Just stopping and returning to the breath. Wonderful!

Then, about halfway through, I was given a koan.

That was when my blissful idyllic Sesshin fell completely apart.

If you do not see the Way, you do not see it, even as you walk on it...

Koans do not respond to our usual, habitual mind's assumptions and strategies. And as such, they reveal in technicolor what they are:

• "I can usually figure things out."
• "I know what I am doing."
• "I am a good student."
• "It is important that others think well of me."
• "I like to have the right answer."
• "I like to be right."
• "I like to know what's going on."
• "I am smart."
• "I tend to catch on pretty quickly."
• "Being right, being a good student, being smart, and fostering others' fond opinions of me will keep me safe."

Because it was impossible to create the conditions in which any of these were "true" or matched the ideas in my head about how it "should" be, these habits of thought, these assumptions were flushed from their usual context, and revealed to be completely worthless. This was experienced as an affront to the small self. And that caused a reaction of huge judgment towards self and others, as well as a painful irritability, lasting a few days.

Getting Angry by M Kuhn

I started noticing this connection between irritability and not-knowing at previous Sesshin, when I could observe minor moments of irritation during the formal morning service. The formal morning service involves what sounds like four different bells, the ordained and long-term residents marching around with incense, and a mysterious pattern of bowing and not-bowing by the people in the service and the rest of the Sangha. To me, and apparently to many other people, it is completely unclear when to bow, what direction to turn, compounded by the fact that the usual meanings of the bells do not apply during this service.

Generally, when I am not sure what to do in a service at the monastery, I fix my eye on one of the ordained or long-term residents to watch and emulate -- because I like to know what is going on. I like to be doing it right. But because the morning service is formal, most of the ordained and residents are in it, and there's nobody left who knows what is going on! So we're all tentatively stepping on or off our cushions, glancing around, hands in gassho or not, being faked out by what sounds like a bell to bow...totally irritating! Stupid morning service! That bell outside sounds like somebody is hitting a pie pan!

Just as with this koan, it becomes all too clear that I have no idea what I am doing. I don't really know how to work on a koan, what a koan is, and no amount of logic, or smarts, or other people's admiration will be useful in the least.

Back I would return to the cushion after Sanzen, and cry for an entire period. Not because Hogen was harsh. But because I could really see these old, ineffective patterns crumbling underneath me like a pair of ancient and rotting crutches.

It felt like all my life I've truly believed in an imaginary friend that's been collecting accomplishments, good grades, pieces of identity, resume items, relationships, clothes, cool points, opinions and views (oh, the opinions and views), but then suddenly finding out that it's not real at all.

It's like the whole world has related to and played into the imaginary friend thing. Except Hogen does not play. "Where is this I? Show me." And all I can do is feebly thump my chest, but I know this body is not "me." I don't know the answer. And I probably won't anytime soon. Whatever soon is.

It all reminded me of Roland Burris' mausoleum. Roland Burris is a Senator from Illinois. although he is still alive, he has an enormous mausoleum built for himself in a Chicago-area cemetery, upon which he has been carving all of his accomplishments, and has left room to add more.
Are we really that much different than this? My self-making is as much an act of folly, is as irrelevant, and will all disappear, just as sure as this mausoleum eventually will. You can't take anything with you. Not even into the next moment, much less the next life.

So back to the cushion to stew in Don't Know. Which is so much more fun and interesting on paper. My experience was that it triggered more old habits of looking around, comparing myself-- favorably, unfavorably, all of the above-- to others to try to get some sense, some toehold on where I am, and the nearly constant question: How am I doing? A koan provides no such toehold.

Do not judge by any standards...

All this judging was exhausting. I am not sure how many days it went on. I found myself more drowsy in the Zendo than when I arrived! Maintaining focus on the breath was slippery and frustrating, like trudging up a cold, muddy hill. I tried breathing into the whole body, to get out of my head. I tried breathing into the hara, which worked before. I tried breathing into the hands. And the judgments kept coming. Of myself, of others. I even got irritated at Chozen, who at one meal said maybe seven or eight words to bring us all back to awareness (which I usually deeply appreciate), "Quiet the mind for three breaths. Quiet. Open mind." My reactive thought was, "Geez, what's with all the talking?!" So touchy. But I could see that this was just an old reaction to feeling insecure, not knowing, to feeling groundlessness under my feet.

Even so, it was enough for me that one morning during breakfast, after four particularly difficult periods of Zazen, in spite of Hogen's regular imploring of us not to judge, I continued to be frustrated and discouraged. I finally appealed to Kwan Yin for aid. I stopped eating, then silently and wholeheartedly asked her, "Please help me. Help me now."

Immediately, I "heard" a clear instruction: "Breathe into your heart."

Which I did. With a clear and enduring focus. Grateful to have "heard" a response, this practice continued through the remainder of the Sesshin. I noticed that my posture changed to accommodate the breath in the chest. In walking I was leading with the heart. In sitting the breath was rhythmic like the ocean. Which I realized, this pulsing of life I could no more voluntarily stop than I could stop ocean waves. I was breathing the Ocean into my heart.

Avalokiteśvara - Quan Yin by ~Ans~

I became acutely aware of water. Without any effort. We often have weekly mindfulness tasks sent via e-mail, one of which some time ago, was awareness of water. And like most of them, I forgot about it in a matter of hours. But this awareness was intense and unbidden. I noticed the dew on the grass, the feeling of hot and cold liquids as they were swallowed and then dispersed until I couldn't feel them as separate anymore. I noticed the last drop of water after cleaning my bowls. The soft watery sense of this body.

kwan yin fountain by Mindful One

I came to my cushion, and met my rakusu case, which I sewed with a fabric depicting ocean waves on the outside, and a solid satin blue on the inside. I recalled the metaphor of the ocean -- that even with swirling turbulence and waves on the surface, there remains a quiet, dark stillness in the depths.

I went to the cafeteria and the giant blue enso by Kaz Tanahashi jumped off the wall. I saw, for what may have been the first time, that it is called "Ocean Within." I have always loved seeing people sitting underneath it, because to me it looks like there is a huge question mark over their heads.

I went to my dorm, and on the shelves overlooking my bed was a painting of Kwan Yin, who had been watching over me the whole time.

Jibo Kannon near Fushimi Inari by (debug)

I walked in the woods on a break and found a small snail shell, the nautilus shell I associate with the cochlear listening of Kwan Yin.

The four elements return to their nature like a child to its mother...

This calming down, turning away from judgment, and turning towards the soothing watery compassion of Kwan Yin enabled me to approach the theme of the retreat: Darkness.

Watching the element of water "return to its nature" seemed less frightening somehow. Without relying on intellectual scientific knowledge that water is just molecules made up of atoms, instead I can observe that water disappears into air, into nothing. It disappears, evaporates, becomes absorbed.

The dark makes all words one

One of the real senior students said it best at the end. He said that the dark just absorbs everything. Like a drop of ink in an ocean of water. The dark absorbs thoughts. The dark absorbs pain. He also said that as we sit Zazen, we are expressing the dark. Embodying it.

Hogen instructed us on the last night to just look directly in the dark. To experience the dark in our own unique way. Through the week, during the last two periods in darkness, I admit, my posture would slump a little, and I'd be a bit more fidgety with the relief of having no appearance to attend to. This last night, though, I sat on my bench with my feet in front of me, knees bent, and elbows on knees, holding up my head by smushing my cheeks with my hands, looking into the dark with an unintentionally childlike and wondering posture. I enjoyed having no appearance in the Zendo.

I looked into the darkness, and saw that it is quiet. Accommodating (though this word is laughably inadequate. Like saying the entirety of the universe is "nice"). Patient. Timeless. Weightless. Utterly non-judgmental. The backdrop of everything.

Hogen has used the example of holding up his hand, and pointing to the space around the hand, the non-handness, being what makes the hand possible. The silence is what allows us to hear sound, which emerges from and returns to nothing.

One night, I went outside with my sleeping bag, and lay down on the Earth, just looking at the clear sky and the stars, which have even maybe already disappeared, but in this ever-changing sky, the dark accommodates them for their inevitably impermanent duration, and is untouched, even as it fosters their existence--our existence.

After the last two dark periods, the lights came on, and we did the closing chants. During which I wondered "Where did the dark go?"

It does not go anywhere. It is everything else that disappears.

candle in the night by jcarlosn