A Poem from Life Vows Sesshin

"Not Two"

Possibilities for a life fill the open sky
like a flock of swifts.
Each bird with a wing of wisdom, and a wing of compassion.
Now moving as one body, they vow,
concentrating themselves down
towards one point,
like a cyclone touching ground.

So, too, the geese
decisive in their direction,
forming the 'v' of vow.
Sticking their necks out
together they point the Way.
Chanting dharanis as they move their wings,
wisdom and compassion are not two things.

Myriad Jizos

Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin.  This sesshin is also focused on Jizo Bodhisattva.  It's a kinder, gentler sesshin, in that there is a great deal of outdoor meditation.  There is a large meadow, and a generous woods, and everyone grabs a little 3'x3' section of tarp and heads out with their cushion to a spot for most of the meditation periods.

Except for the one block of meditation after the lunch break when we were making ceramic Jizo statues for the Jizo garden.

The taller ones are the main molded ceramic Jizos made at the Monastery.  Articles of clothing are made for them during Jizo ceremonies to honor children who have died.  

One of the amazing Japanese Jizos at the entrance of the Jizo Garden

There are many kinds of Jizos all along the trails and tucked away in the Jizo Garden.  

Chozen Roshi would talk about Jizo in her Dharma talks, and then we'd go make them.  I had no idea we would be doing crafts at sesshin.

She spoke about Jizo's "division bodies" or "transformation bodies".  Whenever there is a need, and a person calls out for Jizo to help them,  Jizo comes to their aid in whatever form is needed for that person.

"...When someone is suffering and cries out even silently for help, a transformation body is born because of that request.  How many transformation bodies are there?  As many beings as there are right now who are in distress and asking for help, that is, right now, the number of transformation bodies.  

This has important implications... If we are in need of spiritual help, we should ask for it.  Our asking is the causefor the arising of division bodies.  If we don't ask, not only are we stuck in our own pride, but we are blocking the arising of bodhisattvas like Jizo.  

We all have had the experience of being transformed by becoming aware of someone's vulnerability and suffering.  We are often not aware of their plight until they ask for help." 

So our ceramic Jizos are little division bodies, being made for the garden and everyone who comes through there.  Each day, more little "division bodies" would be created.  I loved to go and visit them on the breaks as they dried in the sun.  Some of them were bisque fired, glazed and completed by the end of the week.  Some were left from last year, and other people glazed those and put them out in the Jizo garden, dedicating them to someone or something.

This is my overwhelming favorite.  Clearly a division body -- a Jizo called into being by and for parents with tantruming children.    The person who made this later shared that her whole sesshin was spent struggling with her own tantruming child mind.

I don't know who made the Kitty Jizo with Mice.  But wow.  

Some pieces from last year that were bisque fired but did not get to be glazed.  

Some Jizos from a previous retreat in which people carved Jizos from stone.  

The Path.  It is like an Easter egg hunt out there in the Jizo garden.

 Here are some of the ones that got finished during the week and placed in the garden:

A Monastic Life in a Day

Heyall,

I have returned, and will post some about personal retreat, but first, here is a great video from my friend Sam, who is currently a resident at Great Vow Zen Monastery.

I like how the first 70% or so of the video is the morning routine. I suspect it simply feels that way, when you're starting at 3:50am.

Thanks for being awesome, Sam!

Jomon vs. The Smog Monster

Ah, Sesshin... no better way to draw out some of the less functional life patterns and bring them into clear, stinky, funky, wincing view. What is this koan stuff -- is it like a poultice or something? Incredible. Roshi talks about koans' ability to "drill down" into the mind and find any places of holding. Gah! She is right again!

I found myself dealing with a persistent energy of competitiveness against a Sangha member. Ridiculous? Definitely. But in Sesshin, it became impossible to ignore or avoid.

It is not news to me that I have a strong competitive streak. It has been mostly beneficial -- so I thought. Has made me get good grades, excel in sports, extracurriculars, work, etc. Just like I was supposed to, I guess.

I especially loved the rush of it in dragon boating. A 2+ minute sprint at full force, powerfully stabbing the water in unison with 21 other paddlers, shouting, grunting, with a caller in the front of the boat yelling their head off, and often full boats on either side splashing and vying for the finish with all their might, every ounce of energy. Which is really what is demanded at Sesshin: Completely wholehearted, every-ounce practice. We used to say before a race, "Leave it all on the boat," meaning don't save any energy for later. This race is now.

Dragon Boat Festival 2008 originally uploaded by monkeyleader

Maybe I should be surprised that it took this long for this competitive habit to finally try to express itself in Zen practice. Nevertheless, it was this Sesshin, I became sick with feeling less-than a particularly powerful practitioner. This person really is one whose practice is inspiring. I am still not clear how this happened, but I kept finding myself wanting to wear shades around their polished brightness, feeling comparatively lethargic and dull against their energetic vibrance, and wishing they would turn down the volume a little on their silent still-as-a-stone-Buddha awesomeness.

Perhaps the most hilarious part is that I was housed all week in the dorm called "Sympathetic Joy."

~~~

Work practice, was again, clearing blackberries, a guaranteed metaphor generator for the week's practice. Here it is: I hacked my way into a patch of the thorny vines, cutting and lopping through to the bare earth, clearing away, then I found an old beer bottle which may have been there for decades. It seemed half-full of mud. I started pouring it out, and out came... sludge. Not just any sludge, but sludge with weird black-and-orange beetles and unidentifiable lumps. It seriously was out of a horror movie. And then there was... the smell. It was the funkiest, nastiest, anaerobic cloud of fetid decay that permeated my work area and encroached on two other people's.

In silence, unable to apologize or explain, I was at a loss to figure out what to do about the puddle of stench that was now the neighborhood of stench all around me. I think it was only Day 2, so I did not have the presence of mind to bury it, or any number of options I now see. I just dealt with the feeling of having let out some really disgusting stink into the community.

Welcome to Sludge Lagoon, originally uploaded by George Vnoucek

Which is how it felt to be sitting on my zabuton in a cloud of comparative, dualistic, petty, irritable, misery hour after hour.

I would catch myself in what ended up being officially ruminative thought about this, and return to practice. Then slide back into the same. Then return to practice. I actually began to find refuge in the koan! Even that was much less miserable than the auto-immune disorder my mind kept practicing -- mounting this competitive response against someone in my own Sangha body. Perhaps this was what Nansen's cat felt like.

I suspect though it was the koan practice that triggered some of it. Here I am again and again stepping out into the unmeasurable Mystery. Where there are no metrics, no barometers, no way to tell this l'il self how it's doing. And I have no idea what the hell I am doing. And that is scary. Terrifying. So at least if I am not doing as well, then there "I" am. And falling for it over and over.

I also wonder if being competitive isn't a way to continually escape my own body, and focus on (my projection of) another person's experience.

Whatever. This competitive energy is a dirty fuel. Polluting and stinky. Costly and unsustainable.

Old-time Shell gas pump at the colorful ghost town of Chloride, AZ - chloride025x, originally uploaded by mlhradio

At least at this Sesshin, I was no longer sitting with disappointment and obsessing about when I might have, or not have some huge insight or kensho. I managed at times to stave off the rumination and just sit. Just appreciate sitting. Sit through pleasurable times, sit through painful times, sit when I felt like it, sit when I didn't, and watch it change like weather. Sat a little yaza (late night sitting) for no discernible reason I could detect. Sat "just cuz". And made super-sure not to look at the clock when I did go to bed. This was a much cleaner energy. I felt like a meditating little Prius.

I confessed my issue to the person after Sesshin was over. They of course could feel it, and we'll be chatting about it soon. Brave practitioners.

Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them.

Pari-Nirvana Sesshin

The Reclining Buddha, Ancient City, Bangkok, originally uploaded by Miek37

I'm not sure what I expected, but my expectations did not, of course, resemble reality. The Teisho were all about the Buddha's last weeks of life, and his teachings during this time. This much I expected. But what I wasn't expecting (why not?) was that we meditated upon death -- our own death -- for the week:

Breathing each breath as if it were our last. Eating each meal as if it were our last. Visualizing our own death on the cushion in as much detail as possible. Then visualizing the responses of others in those first moments, a day after... a week after, maybe a memorial service. Then one month, 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 years later. What endures?

I was surprised by how quickly life moves on. What a self-centered and wrong view -- that the whole world will stop upon my death. Sure, there would be a few people who would really be hurting with the loss for a while. But for the most part, and in the long run, it's like taking a spoonful of dry sand out of the beach. It all just fills right back in.

We held the awareness of the inevitability of death for ourselves and also for others. We were encouraged to look upon others as we passed, worked, ate together with the knowledge that they could die tonight. To look at the monastery as if it were a hospice.

My resistance to all of this was subtle. As I watched people come and go the moment I picked up the hospice visualization, my first thought / sense was something akin to sympathy: "Aw, you guys are in a hospice." Then immediately realizing, "Fool, you're in the hospice too!" I found this kind of resistance a bit comical.

Another kind of resistance was noticing some holding onto ideas of the Heaven of my Christian upbringing. This idea that the self not only continues indefinitely, but that you get a body upgrade, complete with wings and no suffering. And Heaven has all your favorite foods and all your deceased relatives, friends, and pets. I don't even believe in this anymore, but that's where the mind wanted to go; a simple, sure, solid answer, rather than really holding the question, holding the not-knowing, and just sitting with the fact of total dissolution.

But it's not even the death of the body that the mind had as much resistance to. I can see the interconnectedness and this body's place on the food chain. No, it's the end of this small self, this personality that freaks me out and causes my mind to comfort its anxiety with humor.

I initially found this response years ago when a friend who was in medical school took me on a tour of the cadaver lab. I noticed my nervous laughter for what it was. But I also could not seem to stop it.

During the retreat, I couldn't really feel anything when telling myself this was the last meal. The last chance to taste anything in this body. The last time to hear frogs singing. The last time to feel the breath in the belly. The last breath I would ever take. There's a store of denial there. Apparently I just don't believe it. So I ended up trying different ways to settle this awareness more deeply. I tried to find words to convince myself of the permanence of death -- that I would cease to exist. Then, of course, I just ended up thinking of the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch:

"It's not pinin,' it's passed on! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late parrot! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he would be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolical processes are of interest only to historians! It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-PARROT!"

And in one of my visualizations -- dying on the patch of ground I was (again) digging out blackberries for work practice, I ended up having a rather hilarious vision of the monastery immediately just rolling right on with the schedule, without even moving my decomposing body from the side of the driveway. At least not until their Japanese Gardening Consultant advised them about a week later that this was not the most auspicious placement for dead bodies. So then someone had to move my dead body out to the back forty for their work practice.

One person shared that they kept having visions of flowers throughout the retreat, and didn't know why. Isn't it obvious? Aren't we all just these various fleeting little expressions of life? Here to be seen and appreciated, and treated with kindness?

I ask you: What endures?

Life Vows Sesshin III

Life Vows Sesshin is a bit unusual in that one of the two-hour meditation periods in the day consists of a meeting with a small "Wisdom Cohort", the format of which is inspired by the Quaker Clearness Committee. There are four people per group, and each person has a half hour to speak from their hearts about a given topic. The rest of the group is in Zazen and deep listening. No advice-giving; only open-ended questions, which are defined as questions you do not know the answer to.

Each day, we are given topics. The first day, we reflected on our history. We were to speak about the most positive and negative events of our lives, and what our gifts and strengths are, which for the most part, seem to have come directly from those difficulties.

The next day, we spoke about past vows we have made -- positive, negative, mindless vows (I will never be cold again in this lifetime!), reactive vows, great vows.

Reactive vows may not be something we are even conscious of, but sound something like this: "I will NEVER be like ___." I have a small reactive vow to immediately throw away pens that do not work. In my family of origin, we had a huge plastic gallon ice cream container full of pens, and the broken or dried-up ones would get put back in the bin over and over. I also have some reactive vows to being on time and such.

Day 3 we spoke about obstacles, resistance, fears, inadequacies and doubts. Things that get in the way of manifesting our vows, or even making them. Making vows is scary, especially for those of us afflicted by FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. Also known in the Debtors Anonymous world as experience greed. Making a Vow means you are choosing this and not that.

By Day 4, Hogen Roshi let us know that not only did this Sesshin consist of talking, but also crafts. We would get to paint our vows on rocks.

One of Hogen Roshi's vows is to manifest the Stupa of Wholesome Vows. It is / will be a series of large cement rings, into which vows -- symbolized by these rocks -- will be placed. As they get stacked on top of each other, the foundational ring will fill up, and a second ring will be placed on top of that. And so on. He estimates it could rise 16-20 feet in the air.

On Day 4 we spoke about people we admire. What is it about them we admire? And if time and current limitations did not apply, what would be the biggest goal we might aspire to.

I spent nearly my whole 30 minutes going on and on about Marsha Linehan. She is the person who created DBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a mental health treatment that was originally designed for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. I have been in the mental health field long enough to have seen how people with BPD were treated before and after DBT, and I can tell you that Marsha Linehan has relieved suffering on a grand scale. She effectively merged Zen and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Compassion (called "validation") is a good half of the equation in DBT. I really could go on and on here. Someone in my group had to just stop me by saying, "So you admire her a lot." Yeah, I do.

I would also add Jon-Kabat-Zinn, who was the first to bring meditation and yoga into the fields of science, and with his background in research, was able to bring this into the medical mainstream. It was woo-woo before. Now it's a standard recommendation for all manner of health concerns. Again, relief of suffering on a grand, unimaginable scale.

Both of these luminaries have their own decades-long spiritual practice from which to draw. It is amazing what can come of deep practice like this.

So we got word that we needed to pick out a rock or rocks from a couple designated piles (not the landscaping rocks, please). These rocks had been dug up from what had previously been blackberry fields. Those of us on blackberry work practice (yes, I got it again) were instructed to dig the blackberry crowns up at the roots, and also remove any rocks from the field, smoothing out the pocked ground as we went.

I knew of just the perfect Great Vow rock. I had unearthed it myself a couple days prior. It clanked on my pickaxe and was shockingly large -- probably 20 pounds. A stone, really. I had to carry it up a hill to the little cairn that was one of the rock piles on offer. I also knew of the vows that would go on it.

The Precepts. I recited the Precepts as I carried it to the hose, and lugged it into the drying area. It's not that I feel the Precepts weigh me down. Living in accord with the Precepts to the best of my ability is simply, undoubtedly changing the course of my life. Here is a way to live.

Ajahn Amaro spoke about them like the "wake-up bumps" on the sides of the highway. They are the warning that you are veering off course.

The Precepts I feel closest to are the ones I have historically been furthest from. The ones I have learned the hard way. The ones I have seen for myself. This has happened enough times to me that I have faith that this is a sane way to live. Every time I witness a Jukai ceremony, it feels like I am taking the Precepts for the first time. Choosing this rock, carrying it, painting it, writing out the Precepts on it. It was like taking Jukai again.

On the final day, we got to share any vows that had come from this week with our Wisdom Cohort. At the end of the retreat, when the Monastery was opened up to the regular Sunday service, the Stupa of Wholesome Vows was consecrated. After a Jukai ceremony, we all processed to the Stupa, chanting the Jizo Shingon, rocks in hand. We placed our rocks, our vows, in the first ring. We chanted Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, and then adjourned to lunch.

What a blessing in the world. How can the effects of such a powerhouse of beneficence ever be measured?

Life Vows Sesshin II

At Life Vows Sesshin last year, I was finally able to articulate some vows after two years of nothing, or maybe just a little trickle of a poem coming out. In fact, last year, for whatever reason, they just poured out nearly fully-formed and required very little fussing. My organize-y self loves the fact that there is a bit of a preamble, and then vows arranged under the Three Treasures, with subcategories that speak to how the vows may actually manifest in the world:

JOMON’S VOWS

To be a grateful and generous servant.

To be motivated by wisdom and compassion.

To be fearless and wholehearted in all that I do.

To appreciate this life with constant awareness, openness and wonder.

BUDDHA

TO HAVE FAITH IN THE WISDOM OF THIS BUDDHA BODY TO CUT THROUGH THE CONFUSION OF THOUGHTS AND WORDS

• To appreciate and take loving care of this body, nourishing it with optimal water, food, rest exercise, and nature.
• To discern the Truth about what is alive in this body, taking a moment to pause before taking on agreements and activity. Giving only what is truly mine to give; maintaining balance, concentration, and potency by saying no.

DHARMA

TO ALWAYS RETURN TO PRACTICE. TO ALWAYS SEEK THE TRUTH.

TO FULLY REALIZE THERE IS NOTHING TO ATTAIN.

• To prioritize and intensify my practice, deepening in both wisdom and compassion.
• To weave Dharma in all that I do, shifting the focus of my work to share with others any insights I may have in order to relieve suffering.

SANGHA

TO OFFER LIGHT ONTO THE PATH. TO BE A WELCOMING REFUGE.

TO TEND THE HEARTH FOR THOSE WHO SEEK SANGHA.

• To cultivate a healthy marriage in which Bansho and I can continue to walk the Path of Awakening together, with love, enjoyment, and respect.
• To found Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple, rooting Dharma as deeply as the Earth itself.

I typed them out and shrank them down onto cards, along with the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts, and laminated them. I have been carrying a card in my wallet, and a card in my Rakusu holder all year. It would be ideal for me to practice reviewing them each day, but that did not happen in 2009. There were times this year that I would look at them and think, "Who the heck made these crazy vows?" It was the clear bright mind, I guess, because now, after a week of Sesshin, looking at them again, not much is changing. Some additions. I will share about those later.

I am feeling a little nervous about just putting them out there.

What are some of your vows?

Life Vows Sesshin I

It has taken a few years of focus and inquiry to articulate the vows that are guiding this life.

I have a heckova time doing that thing people sometimes call "life visioning". This was very popular in the New Thought church I attended for a time, and I was always pretty terrible at it. I wonder if that's not from my years in social work making treatment plans, with their focus on achievable, measurable goals and objectives. Or maybe I don't engage much in fantasy (definitely rumination and catastrophizing, but fantasy not so much). Anyway, when the New Thought life visioning exercises would ask me to "imagine your DREAM job, the most AMAZING life, the PERFECT life with EVERYTHING you want" I would tend to sputter and start mumbling into my shirt.

Which is fine. Vows that are bite-sized and realistic are no less important. And who wants to be a vow-breaker?

Chozen Roshi said in one of the few portions of video that exist of Maezumi Roshi, he is interviewed about whether Buddhists believe in a soul that endures through lifetimes. He apparently paused for a moment and said that it is not a soul, but the Vow that continues.

Shrine to the Ancestors at Great Vow Zen Monastery

What vow could I possibly make that would continue -- intentionally -- beyond this lifetime? Could I make a Great Vow?

Here is what came out of the 2008 Life Vows Sesshin. A vow/poem. First a smidgeon of background:

It may have been my second sesshin ever. At that time, the monastery was allowing some very limited use of a hot tub for women on the last night of Sesshin, men the last day. Its use was to be a sacred bathing process, and to include vigorous Japanese-inspired scrubbing in the shower prior to entering the tub, and three full prostrations to Kannon before and after bathing.

I recall going to bathe on the last night, and feeling the body's bows after bathing to be much like a wet noodle! All that tension from a week of Zazen just soaked right out! I recall the week being overcast and Portland drizzly every day, except that night, the skies cleared (just like my mind!), and I could see the stars when I walked outside with my head steaming from the hot bath.

I also recall thinking I would easily go to sleep afterwards, but instead I found myself lying vibrantly awake, not because of any sot of rumination or anxiety, although a small piece of my mind wondered if I was having a manic episode (despite the fact that I do not have bipolar disorder). I could almost hear a talk I downloaded in which Chozen Roshi describes this phenomenon of joriki, and when this happens at night and you can't sleep to: "Get up and SIT!"

So I did.

Also, on Thursday morning of the Sesshin there had been the monthly Jizo ceremony, in which they uncover a large golden Jizo statue, and he looks out lovingly over the Zendo for the remainder of the week. The poem refers to this as well.

Anyway, here is the poem/vow from that retreat:

I Am Not a Thing, But a Process

Bowing three times to Kwan Yin

Steeping in the waters of compassion

and the heat of practice.

Brewing the body and essence of Jomon

Accepting all that is.

Aspects of Life Vow emerge One by one, like stars in the night,

As I emerge to look, listen, and love.

I have only to name them and connect the constellations:

Practice, Truth, Gratitude, Service, Healing, Receptivity, Creativity,

Liberation.

My guides.

Orienting to Openness.

Returning to sit,

Gestating under the golden gaze

of Jizo Bodhisattva,

A warm, undefended heart.

I vow to relieve suffering.

The vow to relieve suffering seems to be the North Star vow. The one that I can be sure of. The one that shines the brightest, even when my mind is cloudy.

It took a whole 'nother year of practice and a whole 'nother Life Vows Sesshin to articulate the vows I currently live with. They got refined at this last week of sesshin, and there are even some additions.

More on that next post(s).