No Other World Sesshin

photo by Pierce Butler

 This past weekend, in the midst of our recovery from the US presidential election, we had a deep and community-building on-line sesshin.  Our tanto, Jenny Smith, assisted by Pierce Butler, Sabrina Mills and David Linshaw, named the sesshin "No Other World."  This was in honor of the text the teachers (Dharma Holder Michael Herzog, David Rynick, Rōshi and me) used as the theme of the retreat, and also a poem by Gary Snyder that I read and commented on called "Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier than Students of Zen" which ends with the line "There is no other life."  Our text came from a dialogue in the Record of Xuansha:

A monk said, “I’ve just arrived here and I beg the master to point out a gate whereby I may enter.” Xuansha said, “Do you hear the sound of the water in the creek?” The monk siad, “I hear it.” Xuansha said, “Enter here.” 

In these wild times, Xuansha's teaching remains relevant and inspiring.  Whatever we may feel: grief, anger, fear, happiness, joy...and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, the teaching of the Great Way invites us to enter into this life as it is.  Here we can find the way to being a bodhisattva in this burning world.  And, there is no other world.

Ethan Nichern's Confidence

 

A few months ago I received Ethan Nichtern's amazing book, Confidence: Holding Your Seat through Life's Eight Worldly Winds.  I've been interested in these teachings for many years.  My first Zen teacher used to mention the eight worldly winds at the beginning of every sesshin.  His teachings focused on how the winds could be transformed through deep meditation.  

The winds are:  pleasure and pain, praise and criticism, fame and insignificance, and success and failure.  These pairs of opposites assail us regularly as human beings.  Nichtern is an American-born Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and his book couldn't be more timely, as we all work with these worldly winds in the aftermath of the recent US election.  

Nichtern lived through an organizational crisis in his own sangha, much as I did in Boundless Way after the 2016 election.  He is open about that, and other aspects of his personal life, without getting caught in whining and "too much information."  All of the ways we process our difficulties, blown about as we are by circumstances, show up clearly and with great heart and tenderness in this book.  Free of Buddhist jargon, it's a clear-eyed guide to navigating human life in all its complexity.   I highly recommend it!