toning

Last month's Sesshin was a 10-day Sesshin, a few days longer than usual. We got word a day or two beforehand that this would be a caffeine-free Sesshin. You may have heard the scream from wherever you are when I learned of this.

Turns out, it wasn't so bad. I mean, the first two days are rough anyway. What's a little headache behind the eyes in addition? One thing that certainly eased it was for the first five or so days, we did a practice called toning. It seemed we were doing this for 10-15 minutes each period.

Here is some video:

Not your traditional Zen Sesshin activity, but definitely skillful means. Toning has a way of allowing the breath to fill the body. We could choose to tone the sounds 'mu', 'om', or 'ah'. We were not to be striving for prettiness, or harmony, or sounding "good" or any of that. Rather, filling ones whole being with the sound, becoming the sound, allowing the sound to be large, to fill the room... this was the experience. And sometimes the focus would be completely on the body, the individual sound, and other times, the sound would weave all around the room to join the other sounds. Sometimes the sounds would migrate together, like a flock of birds lifting and landing together. Other times it was a cacophony.

I have never in my life been able to project my voice in this way. It took a couple days, but finding a way to open open open and let out a sound that was not straining, but deeply powerful. Completely surprising.

Sometimes when the room settled into the 'ah' sound, it evoked an ethereal, angelic quality. Of course, the video doesn't capture the experience at all, but maybe you can get the drift.

MBBR: Mindfulness-Based Bus Riding

Untitled by Ian Sane

Riding the bus every day just seriously rocks. I am not kidding. This after 9 years of a 45-minute-one-way commute in the car. Now I have a 20-minute-each-way bus ride every day. I have been folding it right into practice, or rather, it has been offering me some practice opportunities. Here are some Mindfulness-Based Bus Riding (MBBR)* practices I have been enjoying:

Just Getting on the Schedule: Yes, there's a schedule and technology to help track each bus' moves to the minute, but still, the bus is on its schedule, not mine, and adjusting myself to that schedule is a change. Not being in the drivers seat moves me one more welcome degree away from the center of the universe.

Driver Practice: Watching the attentive eyes of the drivers take in the road, the periphery, the doors, and the passengers, around and around, over and over. Just maneuvering these mammoth beasts throughout town is a remarkable skill. Some of the drivers are anxious and cranky, some of them are incredibly cheerful and open. Appreciating their training not just in the technical aspect of the job, but in how each of their personalities and their millions of interactions with the passengers sets a tone on their bus that is palpable.

Love Bus: Metta Practice is perfect for the bus. My friend Gensho and I spent an afternoon practicing Metta on MAX, the light rail train (see Lovingkindness to the MAX). The bus is a rolling metal tube hurtling people through town, and it can be filled with a powerful heart-wish for each and all the beings on it to be free from fear and anxiety, to be at ease, to be deeply happy.

TriMet: A Bus in Downtown Portland by Trimet

Bodhisattva Detective: The bus can call up images of human suffering, and suffering is certainly there, but the bus can also be full of moments of human grace. People moving aside to share a seat, people giving genuine attention to relative strangers talking about the health and lives of their families, the young African American man who jumped off the bus to take the hand of the blind woman and escort her all the way into her doctor's office (she was having some difficulty navigating the corner, and the driver was trying to verbally help her for some time). It's easier to find these Bodhisattvas when you're looking for them.

Body Scan: This can be difficult, as the bus is full of so many distractions. So there's always the option to sit down and cue up a body scan meditation on the iPod. What if we all did this?

This is my preliminary list. I hope to add more practices. Anyone else have their own Mindful Bus Practices? Or anything similar?

*apologies to Jon Kabat-Zinn and the Center for Mindfulness

Absorbed

The blog has been a little quiet lately. I am absorbing some recent food sensitivity testing (ah, West Coast). It's like absorbing a bowling ball, now that I realize this body may not optimally benefit from the foods that have been primary in my diet for years: Dairy, eggs, soy, and wheat effing gluten. There are a few more oddities, like almonds and flax.

It's been about a week since I've gone off these foods. It's taken most of my attention. I'll be reintroducing them in the next little while to see how the body does. It's a very experiential, observational process, which I appreciate.

First realization: NOBODY wants to be this person!

Second realization: I have been rather unconscious about my food choices. I do pretty well being awake and aware in the moment of eating. But wow, that cheese habit was an ingrained rut, even as a student of the Roshi of Mindful Eating!

Third realization: I am noticing a much more stable energy. My usual energy crashes at 10am (followed by mozzarella stick or yogurt) and 3pm (followed by cheese & crackers with tea) have not happened in the last couple days. I even forgot to eat dinner the other night. Lunch and dinner time roll around, and it is a surprise to me. One I can even put off with no discomfort. This is new and interesting. The Naturopath I have been seeing uses the metaphor of using the wrong fuel in your car -- it won't run as well, and could even be damaging. Right fuel, optimal operation!

My aspiration is to find the Middle Way in this: Somewhere between complete refusal to deal and aggressively neurotic obsessiveness.

Just letting Wallace & Gromit enjoy the cheese & crackers for me for a while.

Body as Sangha Body

I'm returning to a primary practice of body awareness. Realizing that I have an auto-immune disorder or two has gotten my attention, and so my intention is to tune in to this body.

Sitting with awareness of the body was the first meditation practice I ever learned when I sat with Julie Wester at a weekend women's retreat -- my very first meditation retreat evah. I had no idea who she was at the time, and no idea that her root teacher was Ruth Denison*, or the significance of that to a feminist looking at what appeared to be just another patriarchal religion.

Anyway, when I first started going to Sanzen, Hogen Roshi suggested I focus my meditation on the practice of body scan. I did this as a primary practice for a few years. It feels very powerful to return to it again.

It is a bit like that movie -- Fantastic Voyage. In this movie, a crew of scientists gets shunken down in a wee little submarine, and they explore inside someone's body, and well, hilarity ensues, or something. Body scan consists of paying attention to each part of the body, each particle of the body, and shining the light of awareness on it.


And yet...

As the Shusso, when sitting with the community, my role is to monitor the Zendo. To be the one who responds when someone walks in late and needs assistance. To be the one who makes sure the evening's service positions are filled, so that things run smoothly. To be the one people can go to with their questions. All of the Shusso's actions are taken with the purpose of holding the container of practice, and cultivating harmony in the Zendo and in the Sangha.


It is different to broaden my attention in this way, but recently I've begun to look at it as a similar kind of body practice -- awareness of the Sangha body.

Sanghakaya

Ven Thich Nhat Hanh writes eloquently about the Sangha body - the Sanghakaya. He likens each individual to a cell or tissue in the larger body of the Sangha, using the metaphors of nature:

The Sangha is our body. It is like the beehive is the body of the bee, the anthill is the body of the ant. And when we are able to live in that spirit, considering the Sangha as our body, most of our suffering will vanish. Taking refuge in the Sangha is not an expression of faith, it is a practice.

Joko Beck has described that in the West, we don't have the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha), as much as we have "two jewels and a rock." Sitting alone in our houses, reading Dharma books, Chozen Bays refers to this kind of practice as "take the Dharma and run."

Sangha practice-- even just talking about Sangha practice -- certainly stirs people up. I have noticed extremes of romanticizing or scorning practice with a physical community. Certainly practicing with people can be incredibly supportive as well as incredibly frustrating. It usually does not run smoothly or work out according to our ideas of how it should. But it runs, and mostly in spite of ourselves.

The body metaphor continues to be apt:

“Herein, Bhikkhus & Friends, the Bhikkhu contemplates the body from the soles of the feet upward, and from the top of the hair downward: This filthy frame with skin stretched over it, which is filled with many impurities consists of:

Head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, vomit, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestine, membrane, stomach, excrement, brain, bile, lymph, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin, tallow, spit, snot, joint-fluid, and urine.

Just as if a man with good sight would examine a sack with openings at both ends, filled with various kinds of grain; paddy, beans, sesame, on opening it would recognize its contents thus: That is paddy, this is beans, that is sesame, this is husked rice: Exactly so does the Bhikkhu investigate this body.”

When we investigate what the Sangha body is made of, it can be downright ugly, and yet, is a nothing short of a miracle.

But like Jon Kabat-Zinn has been saying to the people referred to his MBSR classes, some of whom with multiple diagnoses and many layers of suffering: "There is more right with you than there is wrong with you."

The Sangha body is impermanent and precious. It is interconnected and interpenetrating. Whole. Applying these insights in the other direction -- to the reality of this physical body -- helps me see this body in a different, larger perspective.



*Ruth Denison is a first generation female Vipassana teacher pioneered not only leading all-women retreats, but also practicing with movement and dance. Her biography, Dancing in the Dharma is a riveting story of many life chapters, including her growing up in Nazi Germany, her harrowing journey across Poland after the war, ending up in the epicenter of the counterculture in California, training with U Ba Khin, and at one point, using her training in body awareness to help Timothy Leary come down off a bad trip.