Happy Birthday, Henry!

Happy birthday, Henry!

2009 Gathering of the American Zen Teacher's Association

A wonderful weekend in Clatskanie is winding down...

This was perhaps the smallest of the American Zen Teacher's Association gatherings in recent years. Still twenty-five teachers representing Soto, Rinzai, Harada-Yasutani, Chogye and mixed lines gathered at the Great Vow monastery to visit, to reflect and to renew.

We had wonderful Dharma presentations from Genjo Marinello, a Rinzai priest from Washington State and Taihaku Gretchen Priest, a Soto priest teaching in Vermont. Our final speaker will be my collaborator David Dayan Rynick, who brings the Son Linji line into our Boundless Way project.

We had presentations and discussions on various subjects ranging from psychological issues encountered in practice centers to the relationship of the Dharma and the Internet. We had small group discussions on a variety of issues including current trends in koan study, innovations and successes in sangas and lay empowerment.

And I found, as I suspect many of us did, the real heart of this gathering were the opportunities for peers to gather and just be together. This is a rare opportunity for those of us who have been gifted with the responsibility of presenting the Zen Dharma in the west to be with folk who share in this project, its heartaches and its joys.

Our hosts Chozen & Hogen Bays and the sangha of the Great Vow monastery were graceful and inviting.

This evening which wraps up most of the events, save only zazen and a public Dharma talk tomorrow, concluded with a vegetarian feast followed by homegrown entertainment. The Great Vow's renowned marimba band played, Soto priest Ejo McMullen turned out to be an accomplished magician, Rinzai priest Shinge Roko Chayat gave a powerful reading of something from Oregon's poet laureate Lawson Inada, and we concluded as David Rynick and Buddhist Society of Compassionate Wisdom sunim, Haju Murray, led us in a beautiful round adapted from the Metta Sutta.

I'm ready to go home. I've been on the road a bit too long.

And I'm so grateful for these coworkers in this great project, grateful for all they've done and will do, and for the way they're willing to reach across traditions in service and friendship, and for what these gatherings can mean for the Zen Dharma as its tender roots sink into our rich Western soil...

Off to Clatskanie

I've driven Jan to the Portland airport and am now waiting to pick up my friend and co-conspirator in the Boundless Way Zen project, David Rynick. We will be driving out to Clatskanie and the Great Vow Zen temple to join with about twenty-five other Zen teachers for our annual American Zen Teacher's Association gathering.

This is an only in the West, perhaps an only in America sort of thing. The AZTA membership accounts for nearly every Zen lineage in the West and is a unique opportunity for teachers in these different lineages and perhaps more significantly from different Zen schools to spend a little time together. As someone who attends professional meetings in other contexts I can report this is at the low end of such enterprises. Actually this is a strictly amateur operation, and, frankly, I like it that way. Some program, always. But mostly we're just gathering to talk and listen and learn about the kaleidoscopic manifestation of the Zen dharma in the West.

Super cool stuff. At least from my perspective.

One other thing. I don't think they offer wireless web access, so I may not be posting anything more for a couple of days.

Here's an informational video in two parts that our hosts for this conference, Great Vow has posted at Youtube. Gives a bit of a picture of who they are and how they approach the great matter. I like them very much. Perhaps you'll consider visiting them sometime...

Another Footnote on Dharma Transmission in Zen

Over at his blog the wily fox Dosho has been ruminating on the nature of Dharma transmission in Zen. He notes how the forms are a necessary although not sufficient condition for the making of a teacher.

Dosho has open comments at his blog and they have come. Mostly, I’m impressed. A bit too much Zen talk, and a tilt toward either faith in capital letter masters or faith in Zen without any actual form or people, two mistakes; but on balance and I'm speaking even of those who have been tangled a bit in their ideas of what Zen should be, they struck me as folk genuinely dedicated to the way trying to make their way through the confusion.

The outward confusion (there is that inner confusion, as well. but a different point...) largely arising out of the obvious conflict between the mythic master, one who stands in an unbroken line of approval reaching back to the Buddha of history and the various realities which include the fact that Zen lineage first appears in early medieval China a thousand years after Gautama died and how a majority of early Zen teachers in the west have been embroiled in one scandal or another, mostly involving sex.

So what is the reality?

Teachers are the guardians of the practices of Zen. There are two principal practices both rooted in a practice of sitting down, shutting up, and noticing...

Most recently Dosho posted a lecture by his old teacher, a master of Dogen’s style, of complete submission to the form of practice. Just sit this way. Just bow this way. Just shit this way.

As someone who has found his heart way in the other Zen discipline wandering through the tangle of words and phrases, I’m a bit wary of the shadows of that just do it this way practice. Too many martinets, too many spiritual robots without a glimmer of insight into what they're doing.

And, of course, of course, my way isn't off any hook. I'm painfully mindful of how the way of words and phrases often produces glib folk who can talk a good Zen game, but whose lives are a complete shamble…

So two disciplines, each compromised.

So what’s the bottom line?

For me, like for Dosho, the credentials are critical. Well, critical if one follows the Zen way. There is no Zen without Zen teachers. (And no Zen teachers anywhere in the land, you know... But that's a snare laid out by the old teachers of my Zen school...)

And by no means are the documents sufficient. They only guarantee someone missed the obvious gaps in their student's realization and manifestation and gave them some bits of paper in a great flurry of bowing and incense and the spilling of small amounts of blood...

That question Dosho alluded to in his reflection, asked among that gaggle of Zen teachers about awakening as a prerequisite for Dharma transmission and its answer has haunted me for years now.

What do you mean you don't need a verifiable experience of awakening to be made a Zen teacher?

And some insight, great or small, isn't enough, either. Answering koans isn’t enough, either...

My take away about the disciplines and the acknowledgments is this.

Both the practice of bowing and the practice of words and phrases actually appear to be complete. People take them up and live their lives through them, with them, within them, around them…

And they live lives of grace, whether as Zen masters or just as foxes...

Some wake up, some don’t.

Same grace is there...

And the disciplines continue, the line of teachers struggle to keep the baby while pouring off, each in his generation, each in her generation, a bit of bath water.

Sometimes the baby goes and the way is lost.

Sometimes the baby is lost and the way is preserved.

Zen is like that.

Each heir does her best. Each heir does his best.

Some succeed. Some fail.

The Zen way is like that.

And even if one teacher doesn’t quite get it, or even a string of them in succession don't get it, still, sometimes the student does.

It’s kind of magical.

And the way continues…

Zen is like that.

So, Dharma transmission in Zen is just a device. Usually skillful means, and sometimes just a way to get a girlfriend or a boyfriend or just to make a living.

But it is also a dragon hiding in the weeds, revealing only its tail to most.

And of those who grab it, some are extremely fortunate, and the dragon reaches around and bites ‘em.

And the Zen Dharma continues…

Zen is like that.

Nearing the End, or Keep Portland Weird

Well, the trip with Jan is almost over.

We made our way up the Oregon coast to Astoria then left 101, heading east on 30, drove past Clatskanie, where I'll be returning tomorrow, and on into Portland.

As has been the case for this whole trip we've not contacted friends in the area, choosing instead to spend our time together. I've felt small tinges about this decision, but mostly have been so grateful to have time to just be with Jan. Haven't had time together like this in years...

And what a place to do it. The Pacific Northwest is flat out amazing beautiful.

Now we're ensconced in Portland, and have few plans. A visit to Powell's, of course. A walk around the city's small Chinatown, probably. I do love slipping into the Chinese gardens.

Otherwise we'll probably just follow our noses.

There's certainly enough here to occupy us...



Do love Portland!

Architect of the Vietnam War Dies

Robert McNamara 1916 - 2009



Hard to think of anything to add here...

Nature's Sacred Text

This morning I opened the New York Times online and saw that a scholarly consortium has brought the scattered parts of the Codex Sinaiticus together online. It is a very important document, being the oldest extant collection of what we think of as the "New Testament," if enriched with two texts not considered canonical by most modern Christian churches...

Which set me to thinking a bit about sacred texts.

Yesterday we covered some three hundred fifty miles from Fort Bragg to Coos Bay. We clung, as best we could to the coast. As we drove along, as we stopped at various vistas, I found myself thinking of something the Sufi sage Inayat Khan observed. Later with a little rummaging around the web I found, if not exactly what I had been thinking, something close.

"It is said, 'Cry aloud the name of thy Lord, the most beneficent, who hath by his nature's skillful pen taught man what he knew not,' which means: who has written this world like a manuscript with the pen of nature. If one desires to read the Holy Book, one should read it in nature."

Here God gives us as a primary text nothing less than nature itself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his monumental essay, Nature, says much the same thing.

For me, however, neither statement is quite it. While I don't believe either Inayat Khan or Emerson were suggesting a complete break between nature and the divine, the language of text implies separation and needs further addressing.

Now there is a subtle truth in seeing author and text, now this, now that... Still, it implies a pure dualism, a break between the world and the divine, and in that sense positing an author beyond the text isn't how I've encountered reality.

Back at General Assembly during the debates on a draft replacement for the UU Principles and Purposes one person who objected to the draft language found the substitution of respect for the interdependent web with reverence for the web unacceptable. I don’t want to put words into her mouth but it seemed she had two objections. One was that we shouldn't worship matter, which is finite. And reverence is close enough to worship to fall within that objection. And the other was that nature “red in tooth and claw,” was just to horrific to deserve reverence…

Those observations have stuck with me, and I found myself ruminating on them as we drove up the coast. Mostly we were sheltered from the harsh aspects of the natural on this drive. A dead cat, obviously a pet, lying in the road. The hint of the power of nature in the shape of rocks and bend of trees and the swoop of a hawk. Not much harder than that on this trek… But enough for the active imagination to recollect Hindu versions of the divine as creator and sustainer and as destroyer. “Lo, I am Death, destroyer of worlds” hangs behind that hawk's rapid descent out of the sky, even what it was seeking was hidden beyond the curve of a hill.

Nature, god, death, all one…

For me the natural world is as close to eternal as we humans need care about. Although it strikes me that within the great play life and death each has a place, each is a face of reality. Eternal life, and death eternal: one thing. But then I’ve spent lots of time on the Zen pillow, just looking. And one need not look long to discover how things are connected, in flux, now this, now that, now not this, now not that.

As to the face of nature as the face of reality as text, author and the thing in itself, the Zen teacher Dogen commented on it all in the fourteenth fascicle of his Shobogenzo, the Sansui gyo.

"Mountains and waters right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha way. Each, abiding in its phenomenal expression, realizes completeness. Because mountains and waters have been active since before the Empty Eon, they are alive at this moment. Because they have been the self since before form arose they are emancipation realization."

The deal is that each and everything in its separateness is also one. And the one manifests within separateness.

There is a dynamic in this.

It births the world. And it births the world we actually live in, the one that certainly is red in tooth and claw, and it births the world that is unspeakably beautiful and is filled with sorrow and joy.

Which brings me to another complicated word.

I find the world love points to this reality as we experience it in our human condition. Love, with its Indo European root in desire is both divine and diabolic.

It all comes together in how we hold it.

We hold tight and Satan and his minions ride with the vultures. One love.

We hold it with open hands, loving fully, but openly, and Guanyin manifests, pouring the waters of mercy upon the world. Another love.

I can go with awe.

I can go with respect.

And I can go with reverence in a shut my mouth, this is it, up close and personal, ultimate up close and personal sort of way...

All lessons taught in nature’s sacred texts.

All revealed on a walk on the beach…

Driving North With a Stop in Berkeley to Visit Moe's & Black Oak

We overslept our planned leaving time.

But it is a holiday, fr goodness sake!

Groggy, but refreshed with caffeine, each through our preferred modality, and some fruit for breakfast, Jan & I turned off of Highway 1 to 17 and crossed the mountains to San Jose and on to our featured pass through for the day, the legendary Berkeley.

We parked on Telegraph Avenue (thanks to it being the 4th of July and the light traffic), and spent a half an hour at Moe's. I'd worked there briefly in the eighties and to this day consider it the greatest bookstore of my personal experience. At least for the area of my primary interest. It and Black Oak, another Berkeley store, are the only bookshops I've ever encountered with a substantial used selection of general and scholarly books on Buddhism. If I wander into a used bookstore I fully expect to find no book I am unfamiliar with and rarely one I wish to own that I don't already possess. Never so at Moe's. I carried a large pile to the cashier where they shipped my treasures home.

We walked down Telegraph Avenue



to the campus and back, where Jan spent some happy time at both Rasputin's and Amoeba. She left both record shops with treasures of her own.

Ah, memories... Some, actually good...

We had a quick lunch at a little Korean restaurant and then drove up to Shattuck's "Gourmet Ghetto" planning on spending an equal amount of time at Black Oak Books. Black Oak had been founded by three people who had worked at Moe's about the same time I was there, Bob Baldock, Bob Brown & Don Pretari. Following Moe's business model of high end general and scholarly used books, supplemented with a wide range of new and remaindered books although even there with an emphasis on literary, they carved out a substantial slot as Moe's only real competition.

We were shocked to arrive and find the store empty and large "for lease" signs up.

Turns out the market had hit the store hard, they were swimming in debt, no longer able to meet the steep rents ($16,000 a month) and were on the verge of closing it last year when an angel stepped in, purchased the store and tried to reshape it to meet the new markets. Didn't work. The store closed in June. There is a warehouse somewhere and official plans to open another brick and mortar shop somewhere in Berkeley, but the skilled used book buyers are all gone, so, whatever reopens with that name I have no hopes for the store I loved being resuscitated.

I hadn't thought about it, but I assume Moe's survived in large part because they own their building. I wouldn't be surprised if they're working with less staff, as well, at least during these hard times. But I rather doubt they'll be shuttering their doors anytime soon. In fact we saw posters announcing their fiftieth anniversary celebration...

May Moe's flourish for another fifty, at least!

Shaken by confronting that empty store front I didn't even feel like walking around the corner to the site of the original Peet's Coffee house. Nothing to see there, anyway. The original funky roaster location is today just another of their chain stores. But, there are two holy spots for me regarding coffee. That location is where I first encountered serious coffee. And, of course, the Mediterranean on Telegraph Avenue (famous as a location spot in the Graduate) where I first sipped a latte.

So, with broken hearts, we climbed back into the car and headed north.

When we hit Cotati we turned onto 116 and drove through Sebastopol to Guerneville where we once owned a bookshop (the location which in our time was a small space above a laundromat is now what looked like a private apartment above a real estate office), followed the Russian River to the coast and headed north.

We are now in Fort Bragg, shaking the sand out of our eyes and slowly getting ready to take off up the coast...

Waking Up in Santa Cruz

I'm writing this in the semi-dark of a motel in Santa Cruz. Jan is still asleep. I have a cup of coffee in hand and have just worked my way through emails. Yesterday we made our way up the coast from Los Angeles. This drive is arguably the most beautiful in the country. And while I've made it a dozen times, it has been many years, and the chance to drive north (the only way to go with those drop offs to crashing waters below for miles and miles) along the left coast, and who knows, as we seem to have cast our fortunes to life in the East, maybe, maybe for the last time; the chance to do this felt irresistible.

We got into Santa Cruz with enough time to walk around the downtown a bit. I don't know, in some ways it felt a parody of the sixties. My emotions were partially nostalgia and partially, you know, guys, it really is the twenty-first century... Still, I can't remain too judgemental about the lotus land. After all, this is my natal country, the home of my first four decades (not Santa Cruz, but California...). And I did enjoy the morphing of white kids with dreads to white kids with dreads and tattoos...

I bet it wouldn't take a lot of time to get used to it...



Too tired for much else, we ate, made our way back to the motel and collapsed early...

Today we will be ignoring our many friends in the greater Bay Area as we drive through (well, maybe a quick stop at Moe's and Black Oak, but only to peek..). Our plan is to spend the night in Fort Bragg...

So, after I finish this I need to gently awaken my companion. Perhaps I'll hold a wafting hot cup of one of her favorite traveling teas under her nose. That could do the trick...