A Brittle Bowl

After being on retreat for three weeks, I'm catching up on medical appointments.  As I get closer to 60, I'm noticing all there is to do to maintain this human form.  Monday i saw my primary care physician, Tuesday my dental hygienist, and today I had my eyes examined, dilated, stained, and photographed and saw my ophthalmologist   According to all of these wonderful people who regularly examine parts of my body, I'm doing very well for my age -- as fit as can be expected.  But of course, this fitness comes and goes.  Cholesterol levels, blood glucose levels, weight and blood pressure rise and fall.  My father died at age 55 of a stroke after some heart attacks, so my physician is cautious with me.  My family history of gum disease always plays a role in my dentist's concerns about my gums receding, and my myopic, dry eyes need daily care -- glaucoma or a detached retina might be right around the corner.

According to a note to a koan in the collection Entangling Vines (recently translated by Thomas Kirchner in an elegant new Wisdom edition), the term "brittle bowl" is used by Xuefeng to describe the human body.  The Chinese word he uses literally refers to a "bowl that was fired from clay containing sand and that was therefore easily cracked or broken."  When Ying'an Tanhua asked Mian Xianjie of Tiantong, "What is the True Eye of the Dharma?"  (or, what is the eye of enlightenment that can discern the true nature of reality) Mian answered, "A brittle bowl."

Brittle indeed -- easily cracked, gone in a moment, in need of constant care.  And the only vehicle for coming to understand the true nature of this world -- capable of holding anything, nourishment of all kinds.  It doesn't always feel lucky to be born a human -- sometimes it feels like an intolerable burden.  But the promise of the brittle bowl is always present, ready to be filled and fulfilled.

You are Buddha

On Saturday the Temple hosted an art event called "Buddhas Over Worcester."  Fifteen local artists made sculptures that demonstrated their understanding of the spirit of awakening.  Over 100 Buddhas, disguised as visitors to the Temple garden, walked around throughout the afternoon to view these amazing works of art, which will be on display through July 5.  Here are a few scenes from the day, including one of my favorite examples of Buddha nature, not herself an official entry.  Her father is a refugee from Bhutan, and he contributed a carving, in marble, of the traditional Buddha.  While he is not a Buddhist himself, (he and his family practice a native Bhutanese religion), his actual name happens to be Buddha, much in the spirit of people from Spanish-speaking countries who are named Jesus.  Our true nature always shines through, whatever our name might be.  As the koan goes, when Huichao asked, "What is Buddha?"  his teacher replied, "you are Huichao!"

Talks from sesshin and the ango

All of the talks given in April at our ango and sesshin are now available on-line.  Enjoy!



http://www.boundlesswayzen.org/recorded.htm

Peaceful Dwelling Place

Our yearly "open house" retreat at Boundless Way Temple is in full swing.  This is a retreat where you can attend any or all of the practice periods, and if you want to stay overnight, there's that option, too...you do have to register to reserve a bed for any number of nights.  It's based on the traditional three-month ango that is common in Zen communities, but ours only lasts for three weeks.

We have been studying Dogen's "Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance" during this retreat period, and enjoying talks by many of our Boundless Way Zen teachers -- guiding, senior dharma and dharma teachers.  You can listen to the talks by clicking on this link:  http://www.boundlesswayzen.org/audio/bowz/ango-2013/

Below is the schedule and more information.  Please consider joining us, either in person, or by listening to the talks.  Many bows from Boundless Way Temple!

Boundless Way Zen Ango

(Peaceful Dwelling Place)

April 6 - April 25, 2013

The ango period is an "open house" meditation retreat.  You may join us for any or all of the practice periods listed below.

 You do not need to register for ango unless you plan to stay overnight.  For overnight registration:  (boundlesswayzen.org).  Donations for any part of a practice period will be gratefully received in the collection bowl in the front hallway.

6:00 AM - 8:00 AM Early morning practice period

Includes dokusan (individual meetings with a teacher or senior student)

10:00 AM - 12:30 PM  Late morning practice period

Includes sutra service, teisho (dharma talk by a teacher or senior student) and dharma dialogue

2:30 PM- 5:30 PM Afternoon practice period

Includes dokusan

7:00 PM - 9:00 PM  Evening practice period

Includes teisho, dharma dialogue and dokusan

note: breakfast, lunch and dinner will be served buffet style, so there's no need to bring your own food unless you have special needs, and you won't need an oryoki set.

During the ango, dokusan and dharma talks will be and have been offered by our Boundless Way Guiding Teachers (Melissa Blacker, David Rynick, James Ford and Josh Bartok), by Boundless Way senior dharma teachers (Ken Walkama, Kate Hartland, James Cordova, Michael Fieleke, Robert Waldinger, Diane Fitzgerald, Dominik Kulakowski and Jeanie Erlbaum) and by guest teacher George Bowman.  Dharma talks will be and have been offered by Boundless Way senior dharma teacher Jan Seymour-Ford and by Boundless Way dharma teachers (Ed Oberholtzer, Steve Wallace, Harold Stevens, Jeff Seul, Julie Nelson and Alan Richardson.)  David, Melissa, Diane Fitzgerald, Steve Wallace and Fran Ludwig are in residence for the entire ango.

Boundless Way Temple/Worcester Zen Center

1030 Pleasant Street Worcester, MA 01602 508-792-5189

www.boundlesswayzen.org             www.worcesterzen.org

A Few Thoughts on the Zen Precepts

There are three ways of working with the Zen precepts:  as guideposts left us by our ancestors, as mirrors for our behavior, and as paradoxes or koans for deepening our Dharma practice.

photo courtesy James Cordova

When we first begin working with the precepts, many of us approach them as rules of behavior, similar to what we learned as children in the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Ten Commandments.  While this may have some validity, the effect of using the precepts in this way can be quite constricting to our practice.  We become victims of the mind of right and wrong, and put ourselves into the wrong column on the great list of do’s and don’ts leftover from early religious training.

To understand that the precepts were developed to meet actual conditions in the lives of our ancestors in the Dharma allows us to see them in a different light.  Each time someone did something or said something that created difficulties in the community, the Buddha and his followers and descendants created a precept to help future students.

Each time we encounter a situation that produces suffering in others, or in ourselves, we may try to trace back all the causes and conditions that created the situation.  At a certain point in our practice, we begin to understand that tracing all of the causes and conditions is impossible.  We may be able to discern a few, or even many, but not all of the events that occurred in the past that have lead to this moment.  This is one helpful way to understand the workings of karma in our lives – that there is definitely a law of cause and effect, but one cause does not create one effect.  Numberless causes contribute to each effect.  And numberless effects stem from each cause.

This is where the precepts become helpful.  Someone else, not necessarily wiser than we are, but with the benefit of long experience of life and the mind, has seen patterns of cause and effect that are consistent.  Certain thoughts, words and behaviors seem to lead to certain effects that are damaging and cause suffering.  Avoiding these simply makes sense.

Of course, in order to do this, we have to have faith in the perceptions of our ancestors.  In Zen we value the path of self-discovery, so one way to develop faith in the precepts is not to follow them, and see what the consequences are.  “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom” as William Blake advises.  Wisdom develops in some of us through this stubborn path of trial and error.

A short-cut might be to simply follow the precepts.

In working with the precepts as koans, we begin by considering them as described above:  first as literal guideposts, handed down as gifts from our ancestors.

After that, we look at the precepts with the eyes of limitless compassion, recognizing that all beings create suffering, mostly through ignorance, and rarely or never on purpose.  Everyone kills, lies, steals, and on and on.  We see ourselves and others "breaking" the precepts on a regular basis, and we meet this human activity with a spacious, never-ending  and somewhat sorrowful understanding.

And then finally we look at the precepts through the lens of emptiness, thusness, shunyata, in which there can never be any right or wrong.  

We discover that we may have a preference for one of these three views, in which case, it is important that we cultivate the other two, until all three ways of understanding human behavior through the precepts become one, and we learn to live in an ever-shifting reality of human aspiration, error and the all-encompassing dharmakaya that surrounds and is everything.

Surprise of the heart

Lake Como between cypresses

In case 47 of the koan collection the Book of Equanimity, a monk asks Great Master Zhaozhou, "What is the living meaning of Chan Buddhism?"  And he replies, "The cypress tree in the garden."  Another master,  Zhenru Fang, when still a student, once woke from a dream with this story in his mind.  He went to his teacher who asked him how he understood Zhaozhou's meaning, and Zhenru replied, "All night the bed mat's warm -- as soon as you awaken, dawn has come."

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that a holy teaching is "an occasion when the heart surprises the mind."  The stories and sayings of our Zen ancestors can seem remote and strange.  But when we pause, just for a moment, and simply see what is here, bypassing the filter of the discursive mind, things become clear.  Trees declare it, and the warmth of the bed and the light of dawn speak of it.  When there is nothing in the way of this clarity, life reveals itself.

Wansong comments on this case: "The cypress tree in the garden, the wind-blown flag on the pole -- it's like one flower bespeaking a boundless spring, like one drop telling of the water of the ocean."    

The tree, the bed, the dawn light -- let your heart be surprised by what is right here, and the words of the ancient masters come alive, personally and immediately.

A Mirror

Snow has covered all but the face of the Buddha in the front of the Temple.  The year is slowly fading away, and I find myself reflecting on all the events, sorrowful, shocking, disappointing, joyful, satisfying and amazing, that have filled this time.

Two topics in particular have lingered in my heart these past weeks -- the sudden horror of the Newtown shootings, and the ongoing revelation of ethical lapses by spiritual teachers.  I have been sitting and wondering for weeks about what to write about these things.  They appear to be reflections of the ordinary evil that lies in all our hearts, made real in the world through narrowly-viewed actions.  The death of children?  It happens every day.  Religious leaders as sexual predators?  It's an old story.

The Sufi poet Rumi, in a translation by Coleman Barks, says, "Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working.  Expecting the worst, you look, and here's the loving face you've been longing to see."  

To clearly face the arising of pain from the actions of others provides an opportunity to look deeply, as if in a mirror, at my own heart, and all of the evil I am capable of -- subtle and overt -- through my unskillful actions.  To look at the suffering of the world as it arises within me is not easy, but feels like the necessary step that precedes compassionate, wise action.  Take the spacious view, see others as yourself, and then go out and do what needs to be done.  Vote, ban bullets and weapons, create ethical guidelines and live by them -- cradle the anger and grief and fear in loving arms, and then do something.  

And see that longed-for face, surrounded by snow -- a mirror for the deepest knowing.  Make a vow to heal the world, action by action, moment by moment.