Sitting with what sucks -- I mean, what is.

Maybe my hair is ready to ordain.

Head-shaving has long been a symbol of renunciation in Buddhism. Head-shaving has been a way to physically express the cutting off of the three poisons -- greed, anger and ignorance. Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn even called hair "ignorance grass".

From Only Don't Know:

The Buddha taught that hair is ‘ignorance grass’, so cutting is necessary. If your hair is long, maybe your ignorance is long. When you have hair, you always worry how it looks … We put so much concern and time and effort into keeping this hair the way we like it. So this hair is always pulling our minds around. Being a monk or nun means cutting off all attachments and becoming a completely free person. Being attached to your hair cannot help you do this, so we cut it.

The bald spots on my head are getting larger, and a new one was just found at my last trim at the barber. Alopecia Areata is presenting me with quite a practice. Despite my ideas about myself as a pretty wash-and-go gal, ready or not, I am getting better-acquainted with these attachments to my physical presentation: Thirtysomething woman with cute, short, thick, dark, slightly graying hair.

Holding onto that idea of myself is painful when it's falling apart every moment.

For many people, hair loss is often a side-effect of chemotherapy. Something that adds insult to the injury of life-threatening illness. Mine is certainly not that severe, and even if it gets to that point, Alopecia Areata will damage only my ego, and so I try to keep that in perspective, and see it as an ally in this way.

Also:

• I should always have a full head of hair, the appearance of which loosely commensurate with my age.
• I should be able to control this body.
• I should understand why this is happening.
• Something is wrong with me.

The glue holding this self together is made up of thoughts like those.

Also revealed are my pet notions of how a Zen student "should" respond to this. Well, not just any Zen student. I would not expect others to have some miraculous calm about such an experience, but I have apparently been feeding this notion that I should welcome this teaching with instant acceptance, serenity, equanimity, and even humor or delight at the opportunity to further simplify my daily routine. Let me be clear: That's not how it's been.

There has been quite a bit of resistance to actually feeling the truth of my feelings around this; pain, embarrassment, anger, irritation, shame. And so many of these are secondary emotions; embarrassment about feeling embarrassed. Anger about feeling anger.

Lama Surya Das on renunciation:

...it doesn't necessarily imply suddenly, impulsively, dropping everyone and everything. What renunciation really means is letting go, openness, relinquishing the tight-fisted grasping. The heart of renunciation means allowing rather than controlling; letting go of the controlling and the contrived, selfish manipulation you do in order to get what you think you want. We try to see through the manipulation so that we're less invested in the fool's gold of materialism, of spiritual materialism, or anything that we believe is going to save us or make us happy for ever.

Not a pushing away, but a letting go. Not a wrenching away, but a releasing.

I've actually had that experience with Zen practice. As this life turns more toward practice, the things I used to spend time doing just fall away quite naturally and without much fanfare. Like the time I had signed up for a week-long Sesshin, which turned out to be the week that my home team, my beloved St Louis Cardinals went to (and won) the World Series. I was surprised that my reaction to missing the final games was such a non-reaction. I was surprised to be so satisfied with turning my attention to practice instead of the games. Even missing the games, I did not have any sense of missing anything. It was easy. Effortless.

Lama Surya Das again:

In Tibetan the word (renunciation) is very interesting. It means the arising of certainty, which has a highly positive valence. It doesn't mean throwing away your life, your wife, your husband, your kids, your career, your health, and flagellating yourself in various ways. It means the arising of inner certainty. For example, drinking salt water does not alleviate thirst, so when you know that, you don't have to renounce drinking salt water when you're thirsty; it just doesn't make sense so you naturally relinquish such an action. It doesn't help, so you effortlessly renounce it. When you have inner conviction and spiritual certainty, what is there to renounce?

That is why the Buddha said:

"Adopt and cultivate what is wholesome and beneficial;

Relinquish what is harmful.

Purify your heart and mind;

This is the way of enlightenment."

The way the Tibetan idea was translated from Sanskrit was not sacrifice, but more like the ridding of excess baggage. We have to pay for every kilo of excess baggage, so sloughing off the excess is not a very dire renunciation. Buddhist teachings strongly emphasize notions such as non-attachment, renunciation, simplicity. This is not because Buddhism is pessimistic, but because it's practical and realistic. Everything is passing and changing, so resistance or holding on to fleeting things and relationships is ultimately unsatisfactory. These are the first sublime truths the Buddha taught; they're just the facts of life, not some holy ontology or mythology about the beginning of the universe. These are the facts of life: If you want to suffer less, then resist less, grasp less, identify less with ephemera. It is very unsatisfying to hold on to what is ungraspable.

Yeah man, very unsatisfying. Like getting a crutch kicked out from under you.

All the while, I continue to turn my mind toward looking at this as simply what is; not struggling, but cultivating willingness to actually feel the pain of trying to hold onto something that is transient. To really be awake to how it feels to take refuge in a burning house. To sit and feel the feelings of embarrassment that are not in fact the result of hair loss, but are the result of identifying with these thoughts, this idea of a self as is "should" be.

So instead I just let myself cry, and wordlessly go through this process as it is. To open and widen beyond the tight little clutching confines of me, me, me, self, self, self. Actively receptive.

Heart-Warming

Is it the bowl that rolls around the pearl,
Or is it the pearl that rolls around the bowl?
Is it the weather that is cold,
Or is it the person that is cold?
Think neither cold nor heat.
At that moment,
Where is the self to be found?

~Capping verse from Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi

Our downtown Sangha --The Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple -- practices at the Portland Dharma Center.
This space is owned by our sister Sangha, Dharma Rain. Most of them are now up at Great Vow Zen Monastery for Rohatsu Sesshin. Including the Dharma Rain teachers and their Shusso, who are the only ones who have Transmission of How to Restart the Furnace.

The furnace is a wonky old thing; an old boiler and radiator system that clanks and rattles when it's getting going. It makes sitting with sound a lively experience, although my imagination tends to drift towards visions of seven dwarves with their shovels and pick-axes hammering and tapping away somewhere underground.

We've had a cold spell here in Portland (which means it's been below freezing for a few days in a row causing Portlanders to wring their hands and wonder if they are being punished for something), and on a bright and crisp Bodhi Day morning, the heater at the Dharma Center went off again.

The optimistic folks who were at our Tuesday morning service told me it was 56 degrees in the Zendo, and figured the furnace would kick on at some point in the day. By the time I got there Tuesday night, it was 40 degrees in the Zendo. It was only slightly warmer downstairs, as the Zendo has large drafty windows and a very high ceiling. Ordinarily, when this happens, the Heart of Wisdom Shusso is authorized to tinker with the thermostat a little, then failing that, go across the street and get Dharma Rain's Teacher or Shusso. But nobody was home there. They were all in the middle of Sesshin an hour and a half away.

What to do? I called the monastery and left a message for the Dharma Rain teacher, figuring he'd get the message in the morning, and let me know what he wanted me to do. Despite my mind's continual returning to problem-solving, that was, in fact, all that could be done there.

As people arrived for Tuesday night's sitting, I warned them of the situation, letting them know they might not want to remove so much outdoor wear just yet. We moved zabutons downstairs, and suspended the no hats rule. People wore their hats, and their scarves, socks, gloves and coats! To see a wagessa slipped on over a ski jacket -- well it was just the picture of dedication! There were a few blankets that got distributed and wrapped around people as well.

The bell rang, and the meditation period began.

Nobody left, there was no fidgeting, no complaining (at least not audibly). Just sitting. Just being with the situation as it was.

We ended the meditation period, and proceeded with the Tuesday night program, which includes some reading on a Dharma-related topic, then discussion. People got up to stretch, acquired some cups of tea (primarily as hand-warmers), and we read about the Buddha's enlightenment -- a particularly storybookish version. We took turns reading paragraphs, and for me, it was just like hearing it for the first time.

Our discussion centered around the archetypal Hero's Journey, and how aspects of this infuse our own lives, our own practice. What have our spiritual searches entailed? How have we tried the strategies of decadence and asceticism in our attempts to avoid suffering? What is the Middle Way in our lives? What temptations and distractions do we face? How do we transmute what feels like negativity coming at us into something more skillful? What does the golden bowl floating upstream mean? How do we call upon the Earth as our own witness? Is enlightenment really possible?

We ended the evening with our chanting service -- the new service position holders focusing deeply in their new roles -- and that was that.

I am left just struck by the willingness I observed. This willingness to feel our lives, this willingness to participate in something that didn't match an idea of what was supposed to happen. This willingness to hold the space for each other to just sit, in any circumstances, and look into the truth of this life.

Service

I was asked to give the talk last week (yipes!) -- the occasion was the transition of Sangha members from service positions they may have held for six months or longer into a new or different service position. An occasion of gratitude. The topic: Service.

There are so many people who actually create the container of practice. In my bumbling initial months as Shusso, I was struck by how the whole thing runs by itself. Like those spinning playground contraptions, which take some real effort to get going, but once they're going, just need a push every so often. The momentum of the energy and efforts of past Shussos, past service position holders, all the behind-the-scenes work, and the teachers' unflagging dedication was all present, is all present. So much life-energy channeled and poured into this practice community. It is humbling to think about.


So who is doing this serving? Who and what is being served? Our meal chant encourages: "May we realize the emptiness of the three wheels -- giver, receiver, and gift."

In the field of social work and in many "helping" fields, we get trapped in "helping prison." This concept is from a wonderful little book called How Can I Help, by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman. In it, there are many reflections and helpers' accounts of many facets of service, and particularly professional service.

If I am a helper, and am clinging to that identity, then I need you to be the helpee. There is a clinging to a particular outcome in order for me to strengthen my identity as a competent, successful, knows-what-she's-doing helper, and this causes our interaction to have quite possibly many layers of walls between us, and to become less-dimensional. We are all set up for disappointment.

So how do we let these walls fall away, and blur the distinction of helper and helpee -- that is, without breaching certain standards of ethics and professionalism?

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self
To study the self is to forget the self
To forget the self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas
To be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas is to free one's body and mind
and the body and mind of others
No trace of enlightenment remains
and this traceless enlightenment continues forever.

~from the Genjokoan

In service, something much larger is happening. And our small self cannot possibly contain all that is.

I am hoping for some comments on this post. What facets of service can you articulate?

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?