Exuberant Helpers

From innocent donuts, a wonderful post from my backyard, Providence St Vincent Hospital in Portland, OR.

Let me just take this opportunity to encourage some exploration of the pink-ification of breast cancer, the amazing organization Breast Cancer Action and their campaign, "Think Before You Pink", and the speech I heard Barbara Ehrenreich give in 2001 that got me questioning the value of all these pink ribbons, and her latest article on the subject. This is what I consider breast cancer awareness.

Nevertheless, this video is irresistible. Especially when viewed through this lens:

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."
~Mister Rogers

It Ain't Just a Platitude

While occasionally, my perspective can be a bit lost, generally, I am grateful more often than I am not. I love making gratitude lists, whether in my head, or on paper, at the beginning of the day, or at the end of the day. Thanksgiving Day is a great holiday, and I am not sure if this is true, but sometimes it seems like I can feel the gratitude in the energy all around me as most of us allow ourselves this focus.

I have called my parents, and feel grateful for the simple fact that they are still alive.

Assuming that the next few hours bear some resemblance to today's plan, I am about to take a hot shower in a lovely house, put on a few layers of warm, dry clothing to take a half-cheese-covered, half-vegan casserole to the Zen Monastery where there will be a giant room (former grade school cafeteria) full of my dearest spiritual companions.

One practice Chozen Roshi has taught is that of connecting gratitude with this very moment. To cultivate gratitude in any moment, even while just sitting and breathing. With each breath, repeating the phrase, "This is what is being given to me now."
To be given life in every moment is such an incredible mystery. One that in moments of sanity, I can actually appreciate.



And dogs. I so appreciate dogs. Maybe one is on its way to come and live with us someday soon. It's been almost a year since Cody died, and I find my heart opening more to the possibility of another dog. Here's some video medicine from the Oregon coast two weekends ago. May we all live with the exuberance and wholeheartedness of our canine Roshis.


Happy Thanksgiving!

Jo-Mama!

I'm changing the name I post under to my Dharma name, Jomon. When I started this blog, I was really not sure what its purpose would be. It has become mostly a diary for Zen practice. And a way for my friends to keep up with me in this area if they so choose. And to connect with other practitioners. What a lovely practice -- to allow things to evolve on their own and not know how they'll turn out!

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?

Do Not Want!

A brief entry that will probably not be as eloquent or graceful as I'd like it to be: I apparently have alopecia areata. This is an auto-immune problem, in which the immune system attacks hair follicles. It's relatively common, though I'd never heard of it before.
It was diagnosed by my barber about 2 months ago, and started out about a dime or nickel-sized spot. The original bald spot has since gotten bigger, and a new bald spot has developed behind my right ear too. So I am seeing my D.O. next week. Y'know, for an actual diagnosis.

Like many auto-immune issues, this is apparently totally unpredictable. Many people spontaneously start growing their hair back. Some go on to have alopecia totalis, and lose every hair on their head and body.

I guess I picked the right religion if I go bald.

So here it is, an opportunity for practice. I am so glad I have some skills to deal with this mind! Were it not for some very functional brakes, the Scary-Thought Train goes non-stop to complete debilitation with Rheumatoid Arthritis or Systemic Lupus, or some other one of those big scary auto-immune diseases that are often associated with alopecia areata, and Raynaud's Disease, which I also have.

But that is not happening right now.

Also what is not happening: About 5,000 other worse things. There are many worse things than these odd little bodily quirks I am currently experiencing. This is not to say I am not paying attention. My dear friend Amy P who has been a nurse for nearly 2 decades and is currently an acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist has given me a free consultation, and says that my collection of problems are quite comprehensible within the framework of Chinese medicine.

This is apparently a metal and wood problem.

And it may also be related to celiac disease (hi, Tay!), and there's a whole 5 stages of grief that wants to happen around saying good-bye to gluten. But that's not happening right now either.

So now my job is to fill out a daily log of ten categories, with many things that western medicine wouldn't probably care too much about.

That and go to sesshin. So I need to get packing and go within the next hour.

There, at the monastery, I get to sit down with this mind's habits, and one of my greatest hits, which is really awake and triggered by this newest change: What does everyone think of me? Good lord, this is boring, but there it is. Again. This hair loss has resulted in me wondering what stories people make up when they see the bald spot. As if it looms as large for anyone else.

I have been trying to cover it with hair, and subsequently have cared more about my hair than I have for years and years. I have even used a hair dryer for the first time in about 10 years. It is so exhausting, this thought habit of my mind, and I am really so tired of it.

Off to sesshin.

See you next week!

Sanzen: FAIL

Inspired by failblog.org. And Zen practice.

Sanzen (参禅), aka nisshitsu (入室), means going to a Zen Master for instruction. In the Rinzai school , it has the same meaning as dokusan, which is specifically a private interview between student and master, often centering around the student's grasp of an assigned koan. If the master rings a bell to dismiss the student, this means the student's understanding is not right and that their work with the koan must continue.

From a talk by Yasutani Roshi given in 1961 and translated by Philip Kapleau Roshi in The Three Pillars of Zen:

The great merit of koans, which range over the vast area of the Mahayana teachings, is that they compel us, in ingenious and often dramatic fashion, to learn these doctrines not simply with our head, but with our whole being, refusing to permit us to sit back and endlessly theorize about them in the abstract.

What Heinrich Zimmer says about certain types of meditation is especially true about koans, the spirit of which must be demonstrated before the Roshi, and not merely explained. "Knowledge is the reward of action... for it is by doing things that one becomes transformed. Executing a symbolical gesture, actually living through, to the very limit, a particular role, one comes to realize the truth inherent in the role. Suffering its consequences, one fathoms and exhausts its contents..."

It must not be supposed, however, that one reaches this point easily, or without a generous measure of frustration or even desperation. In his Zen Comments on the Mumonkan (p 101), contemporary master Shibayana quotes his teacher on the function of the koan:

"Suppose here is a completely blind man who trudges along leaning on his stick and depending on his intuition. The role of the koan is to mercilessly take the stick away from him and to push him down after turning him around. Now the blind man has lost his sole support and intuition and will not know where to go or how to proceed. He will be thrown into the abyss of despair. In this same way, the koan will mercilessly take away all our intellect and knowledge. In short, the role of the koan is not to lead us to satori easily, but on the contrary, to make us lose our way, and drive us to despair."

The complete solution of a koan involves the movement of the mind from a state of ignorance (delusion) to the vibrant inner awareness of living truth. This implies the emergence into the field of consciousness of the immaculate Bodhi-mind, which is the reverse of the mind of delusion. The determination to struggle with a koan in the first place is generated by faith in the reality of the Bodhi-mind, the struggle itself being the effort of this Mind to cast off the shackles of ignorance, and come to its own Self-knowledge.

Re-entry

Bare reflections on Sesshin. Because I can't put it together in a coherent post right now, or maybe ever. Funny how some of them are like that. So instead I will share a few photos. I don't take photos during Sesshin, but these I took right after.

Found on the sidewalk Saturday evening, perfectly intact, appearing to be sitting nobly staring into the sunset. Alive or dead? I won't say.

Work practice this week was on the groundskeeping crew. Another woman and I were assigned to clean the rock gutters on either side of the Zendo. It took the whole week, and we still were not quite finished. Here is part of one side:
And another side.
This may not appear clear, but there are several yards of rocks that meet in a 'V' shape. The rocks allow rainwater to flow and soak into the ground, not puddle up on the sidewalks. There are two of these 'V' shapes on wither side of the Zendo.

The process of cleaning them is as follows:

Gathering a large bin, about two or three feet long, and a foot or two wide. Removing the rocks, filling bin about halfway with rocks. Adding water (blessedly warm water, brought by our crew leader, full of the kindness of Avalokiteshvara). Rinsing the rocks. Pulling up the screening beneath the large rocks, and removing all debris, weeds, seeds, sprouts, roots, grass clippings, scraps, and anything else not-rocks. Tending to the smaller gravel below, leveling and returning the screen. Then returning the rocks, clean, warm and steaming back to the gutter.

It is lovely to have a job with such visible dividends. And so audibly rich -- the sound of rocks -- rubbing, hitting, plunking. And one that allows the deep examination of the many worlds and communities of creatures we inevitably dislodged in the process of our work practice. Such a miracle. The spiders, pill bugs, worms, caterpillars, grubs, beetles and things were simply captivating.

I have a recurring fantasy of creating a photo project of Sesshin cushions throughout the week. So often people's mind states are reflected in how they arrange their cushions when they are gone, and there is such a wide range from person to person, and from day to day: Tidy or disheveled; one spare zafu, or a veritable nest of cushions, blankets and props. I can't do that, but I did take a few photos on the last day.

Here is the aforementioned hankie toiletries-holder, reminding me that ever day is a good day:
The Spring Garden outside the Sympathetic Joy dorm:


And on the drive home, I heard myself loudly exclaim: "I believe that is the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile!"

Indeed, it was.

Coming home after Sesshin, usually cleaning the house is the only thing that makes sense.

And plowing the work of Sesshin back into home practice.