seeds of infinite possibilty

This is a formal meditation practice and also a practice that can be done at any time in your life, on the spot. In fact it seems to be most useful to people on the spot when things come up in our everyday life. But the formal practice is very important as a support for having it even be something that occurs to you to do in the rest of your life. Without the formal practice it’s just life as usual and it doesn’t occur to you to do the exchange of breathing in and breathing out, taking in and sending out. But as a formal meditation practice, usually it’s recommended that there’s a period of just basic sitting that precedes it and that also when your finished with tonglen session that you just sit again. So there’s some sense of absolute practice of connecting with the openness and freshness, unbiased quality of mind  before doing the tonglen. Then the tonglen is really getting into the nitty gritty, the pain and pleasure, the actual relative true experience of our lives. There’s nothing very absolute about it, it’s very relative and down to earth, how things really feel to us, how we get caught, and how others do as well. And when the tonglen session is finished, then one goes back to the regular sitting practice.

The formal practice of tonglen, the practice that one would do as a formal meditation practice, has four parts. And sometimes it’s described as three parts, 3A and 3B because parts three and four are very interconnected and always go together. So I’ll describe the four parts:

The first stage is what’s called “Flashing the Absolute Bodhicitta” or connecting with absolute bodhicitta. What this means is that just for a moment to begin the practice you rest your mind, rest with the stillness of mind, with the spaciousness of mind, but some sense of a gap or an open space or stillness or freshness, right there at the beginning.

Then the second stage is one works with a visualization, breathing in dark, heavy and hot, breathing out white, light and cool. And this is synchronized on your breath. A very important feature of this visualization part of the practice, is that you breathe in through all the pores of your body, and you breathe out – a sense of radiating out – through all the pores of your body. So right away it introduces the notion that it’s large, it’s spacious, it’s big. It’s not just a teensy weensy little breath, breathing in and breathing out. You synchronize it with your breath, but there’s a sense of taking in fully and completely, three hundred and sixty degrees, radiating out fully and completely three hundred and sixty degrees. This is important. Also, another thing that is important is that you give the in-breath and the out-breath equal time. Usually in the basic sitting practice it’s recommended that you do not manipulate your breath, that it’s just your ordinary breathing. But with the tonglen you can extend the in-breath and the out-breath if you feel that it’s helpful, but they should be given equal time, not the big, deep in-breath and then a 1.4 second out-breath or whatever. So they get equal time.

Then we move on to step three and four, and this is actually the main part of the practice. The third stage is something very real and very personal to you. That can be your own personal experience of being caught up in your own experience of pain or things that are unwanted in your life, or it can be your own personal experience of somebody else’s suffering that you wish to alleviate. But the main thing about the third stage is that it’s very real, it’s not theoretical. Sometimes people use meditation to distance themselves, sometimes people use meditation to abstract reality, to abstract the relative. And this practice is very real, it’s not about abstracting. It’s about getting right into the feelings of pleasure and pain that we all share. So nothing theoretical, point three is very real, personal experience.

 But then the fourth stage is universal. Whatever it is you’ve been working with in the third stage, then you extend that out. For example, if in the third stage you’re asked to work with an unresolved issue in your life, perhaps that’s the end of a relationship. And you’re not even sure what to call the feelings, but they definitely hurt. So, bringing up the memory and thoughts of this relationship that’s ending that’s very painful, you actually breathe in, you let go and you get in touch with what it feels like. Instead of pushing those feelings away, you breathe them in and then what you send out can be anything – you can send out an idea, a concept, like compassion or lovingkindness or bravery, courage, patience, sense of humor. You can send those out to yourself, if that helps you; or you can send out an image such as nice cup of coffee or flowers on the table or a funny joke. But something on the outbreath is whatever helps you to relax and ventilate the sense of being caught in a very painful situation.

 Sometimes what people like to do with the outbreath is just relax and let go on the outbreath, ventilating the whole thing. But it’s very personal, and as many people as there are in the room will come up with different things, it’s a very personal practice. So if that’s what’s happening, you’re working with the end of a relationship and the feelings come up, letting the story line go and then really working with what’s left there, those feelings, then you would pretty soon move on, doing it for all the people on the earth who are at this very moment feeling what you’re feeling.

(end of side 1 of tape)

 (begin side 2)

. . . basic feeling of being claustrophobic and being caught up, imprisoned, and working with the feeling of ventilating or opening up the space, bringing some sense of appreciation, gratitude or joy into your life.

 So, when Chogyam Trungpa taught this practice, he said that if you just do this practice for all sentient beings, it doesn’t have enough guts to it, it’s too abstract; on the other hand, he said, if you just do it for yourself, it doesn’t have any vision, it doesn’t have any big perspective, it’s not connecting with the universality of pleasure and pain, the universality of the human experience. And, since this is a practice of awakening our compassion for ourselves and all beings, it’s necessary to have both of these elements, of the very real experience, and then universalizing it. Again, the universalizing isn’t abstracting, it’s just taking what you understand of your own experience and contemplating the reality of how many people are feeling like this. So three and four are the personal and the universal, going from one to the other. And it’s always like this, our personal experience becomes a steppingstone for realizing our kinship with all beings.

 So, just going back, a quick review or the four stages:

(1)  The first stage is “Flashing the Absolute Bodhicitta”, and in the beginning you actually sometimes just don’t know what to flash! One thing that’s good, I’ll hit the gong to begin meditation, and just the sound of the gong sometimes is enough. You just stay with the sound of the gong and that’s a very open, spacious feeling. Some people use images, they just flash on standing by the ocean, looking out to sea; or being in the mountains, looking across the meadows; or anything that works for you, that has a feeling of big perspective, any memory, whatever it is. But just some sense of connecting with open, fresh feeling at the beginning. This is quite short, it’s just to establish the ground of the practice.

(2)  And then you begin breathing in the dark, heavy and hot, breathing out the white, light and cool. And when you’re doing this by yourself you just do this stage until it’s synchronized with your breath. The dark in, and the light out. You can visualize this any way you like. People sometimes get into it as being like soot, and then very radiant white light going out. Or sometimes people have their own images, sometimes people even change the colors. That’s fine. Someone told me they like to work with red in and blue out. No problem. But traditionally it’s this dark, heavy, hot feeling coming in, which is like a visualization (and as I say, through all the pores of your body), then radiating out white, light and cool.

A good image for this is, as if this room were filled with coal dust, and it was so thick that we couldn’t see each other. So we all decided for the sake of everybody else in the room that we would all breathe in, and when we breathed in, we were taking in this coal dust; and then we would all breathe out, and when we breathed out we would send out fresh air, fresh, unpolluted, clean air. Then we breathe in again, breathing in the coal dust, and then sending out the fresh air. So whether we were breathing in or breathing out, we were air conditioning the room. And then, rather than any of us getting sick from this, basically we would all start breathing clean air. It would just be that the room would become fresh and clean and there would no longer be any coal dust in here. And so this is the idea of the practice, it’s not like you catch anything, it’s basically transforming negative, or things that we don’t want, just transforming it into the material for opening our heart, for opening wider. So, breathing in and out with the visualization.

(3)  Then we’ll move on and I’ll ask you to just think of the most unresolved issue in your life. And if you don’t have one [laughs], just think of the last thing that irritated you; it can be a very small thing, but something that really irritated you. Then when you’ve connected with some kind of feeling – sometimes people say they have to actually reflect on someone’s face or something to get the feelings going, but basically use whatever – and letting the story line go, breathe in, connect with what that really feels like. Then send out whatever you need; it can be the sense of just ventilating the whole thing, or you can send out an image of something that represents gentleness to you, or represents some kind of lightness to you, represents happiness to you. Then you’ll  breathe in again, and breathe out again. And you’ll work with this issue in this way.

(4)  And the, very soon, you move on to universalizing it. And you breathe in for all the people that are feeling what you’re feeling. And you breathe out to those same people. But it’s important that you realize that when you move to point four it’s sort of bringing together the relative and the absolute. It’s not like you leave yourself behind. It’s important that you realize that this is how you begin to understand about exchanging one’s self for other, is that we share the experience of being human. We share the experience of pain, of shutting down and pushing away, and we share the experience of happiness or freshness.

 We’re going to do the practice at this point, and I’ll leave a little time for questions.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          

 First just begin by sitting (GONG)

 (about 40 sec)

 (GONG) Begin tonglen with a flash of absolute bodhicitta. The eyes can be open or closed.

(40 sec – no gong)

Move to the second stage, breathing in (through all the pores of your body) black, heavy, hot; radiating out (through all the pores of your body) white, light and cool.

And this should be synchronized with the breath.

 (2 1/2 min)

 I your attention wanders, just come back to breathing in the dark and sending out the light.

 (2 min)

 You should do this stage just until it’s synchronized with your breath, then move on to the third stage.

And today do the tonglen for the most unresolved issue in your life.

Letting the story line go, connect with what it feels like as your breathe in, let it touch your heart.

And if your heart feels to restricted, you can have a sense of opening the heart bigger, breathing it into your heart, making the heart as big as it needs to be to give room and space to painful feelings. The radiate out whatever you choose to send out that opens up the space further still.

 (30 sec)

When you connect with something that you want to do, practice for a feeling that you want to work with, work with it until it feels like you’ve really connected with it, and then, quickly move on to the fourth stage of universalizing it, doing for all the people who are feeling like you do at this very moment of time, breathing in and out for all of us.

And then you can go back and forth between the relative and the absolute, the personal and the universal.

 (5 sec)

 And if different subject matter comes up, that’s fine. You can keep changing it. Let happen what happens.

 (10 sec)

 If your attention wanders, come back to any point in the technique. You can start right from the beginning, or just where you were when your mind wandered.

 (35 sec)

 ROLLDOWN ON GONG

ROLLDOWN ON GONG

GONG            GONG            GONG

 Return now to the basic sitting practice.

 (28 sec)

Siddhartha sat down under the Bodhi tree, determined to sit there until he found what he was seeking. He was probably exhausted from trying so hard, so at that point all he could do was to give up trying to get something. All he could do was just sit there, waiting, watching.

He saw how desires, conflicts and the idea of a self create suffering. He continued to just sit and gradually he was able to see life as it really is. Simply sitting and waiting allowed him to see deeply the source of suffering, and how we cause suffering for ourselves and also freedom from suffering. And he recognized the impermanent and interdependent nature of life. When he let go of his great effort and stopped looking for results, he was able to see life as it really is. And he knew true freedom.

Yet because he discovered the cause of human suffering and the source of freedom, it doesn’t mean that he never experienced delusion again. It is a delusion to believe that awakening is permanent because everything in life is always changing. Delusion is part of the human condition – although we know that things change we choose to ignore this, consciously or unconsciously.

When we sit without grasping or pushing away and experience life with openness to whatever comes, we experience joy. This is what happened to Buddha. He was human, so his enlightenment had to do with what human life is. What he awakened to what the nature of human life, the impermanent and interdependent nature of life.

To experience life as it really is brings freedom and joy.

“Plunging into the ocean is your effort. The usual idea of effort implies the egoistic aspect of life. But you should understand swimming from two aspects: something created by your effort and something created by nature’s effort. When you make your effort and jump in, you can see the other aspect because something appears that is beyond your effort. The universe is helping you; nature is taking care of your human life. Then swimming is called vivid activity. This swimming is called play – playing with the water, with all sentient beings in the water, and with the five skandhas of your body and mind, before you’re conscious of them. Your consciousness cannot pin down what intimacy is because consciousness is very picky, always picking out one thing and looking at it separately. So consciousness never knows the true sense of action. But we can know in other ways. You can intuitively know something simultaneously with action. That is our practice.” Katagiri, Each Moment is the Universe, pp143-4.

“Spiritual practice has a great power to help all sentient beings. If you practice, you can have great influence. When you stand or when you do zazen, it’s beautiful, and people are very moved by your posture because the power and influence of truth is there. But spiritual power is not something you create on the surface of your life. Real spiritual power is the power behind power. The power behind power is the true meaning of effort. It is pure action without needing a particular goal. Instead of expecting to get a result from our effort, we give quality to our effort. This is a very important practice for us. That’s why spiritual life is very calm, very quiet, and very stable. That’s why you can be very stable and calm. IIbid. pp 171-2

For me right effort is to take that step into the unknown, not for the purpose of stepping out of life, but for the result of stepping into life. We prefer to have challenges that we can meet, which really are not challenges at all. We want to feel confident about what we do, so we stay within the realm of knowing.

Buddhist practice challenges us to not know, not for the sake of itself, but because everything is always changing, so there is nothing that we can say for certain. We are always stepping into the unknown, whether we are aware of it or not; we tell ourselves that we understand – we make stories to convince ourselves that there is something to know. And if we don’t understand we believe that somewhere there is someone who does or some explanation.

When we drop our ideas and opinions we experience life, even though it doesn’t make sense.

Non-discrimination is not simply an idea. Learning to recognize the subtle ways we create preferences and judge things as good or bad helps us to be free from suffering and not cause suffering for other forms of life. Zazen assists us in this process of awareness by limiting our sensory stimulus and helping us see the value of disengaging, going into neutral. These moments of disengagement allow us to see human life within the broader context of life and to experience the relationship we are within.

 The experience of interconnection with permeates our entire being and helps us to see our actions from a bigger perspective. This brings about actions (or non-actions) that are appropriate to what is happening in each moment, taking into consideration something besides ourselves and our own needs. When we act purely from our narrow human perspective we continue to suffer from the nagging feeling that there is something more, and we spin our wheels chasing after what we think will make us feel better.

 What does this “dharma” mean in human life? In a lecture entitled “25 Years of Transmitting Dharma in North America” Katagiri Roshi explained:

 There are two worlds for anyone to go through in order to lead a religious life. We call our world, “Saha-world.” Those who seek spiritually stable worlds, very deeply taste the Saha-world, feel something and when they cannot rely on it, seek something beyond – the spiritual world.

 [This kind of thinking creates] a gap between the Saha-world and the spiritual world. The Saha-world is [seen as] wicked and ugly; the spiritual world is pure and beautiful. But there is another world. That is the world of dharma.

 The world of dharma is an all-embracing world without opposition between the Saha-world and the spiritual world, forming a great world where Saha-world and spiritual world are intimately interacting. Then there is no gap between the Saha-world and the spiritual world.

 When a top spins, various colors merge into one. When something is set in motion, individual beings … become un-individualized to make an integral composite. This is the nature of motion. This is the dharma. Dharma is not a concept, it is quite dynamic, active energy. Getting into the world of motion is like a world where a drop of water merges into water instantaneously upon falling into it.

In Maka hannya haramitsu Dogen Zenji quotes his teacher Rujing’s poem about the emptiness:

 "The whole body [of the windbell] is like a mouth hanging in empty space-

Without distinguishing the winds from east, west, south, or north

Together expressing prajna equally to all beings-

Ding-dong-a-ling ding dong"

 Shohaku Okumura explains this poem in this way”

 “This whole body of the wind bell is ourselves. The winds come from all directions, yet the wind bell never discriminates among them. There are many kinds of wind. Spring brings pleasant breezes. In winter a cold north wind blows. In summer the wind is hot. Wind has a different meaning in each situation, each season. All different kinds of wind come to the wind bell, yet the wind bell never discriminates. It abides ‘Equally with all of them, speaking of prajna.’ The wind bell expresses the prajna or wisdom that sees the reality of our life. The empty wind bell is hanging in emptiness. When wind comes it makes sound that is prajna. The last line of the poem, ‘Ding dong a ling ding dong,’ is the sound of the bell. This is our practice of zazen. We are empty, but when we encounter others we make a sound that is prajna. Together with all beings we express prajna. This poem is an expression of the reality of our zazen and our lives.”

 “The wind bell or hanging mouth represents ourselves and the winds represent all of the different circumstances that can face us. Regardless of what comes our way, when we view the world without discrimination, we express prajñā and see the reality of life. The sound the bell makes is the expression of prajñā, wisdom of reality itself, and the interdependence of all things.”

 Dogen’s explanation of empty space/emptiness in Shobogenzo Muchu setsumu (A Dream Within a Dream) is like a dance. Conditioned understanding of emptiness is based on discrimination, unconditioned understanding is based on the experience of oneness. We may prefer one way of seeing truth over another. But Dogen Zenji points out that this preference is also discrimination.  When we discriminate in this way, part of life is being ignored and we suffer.

 Suffering, dukkha, is the condition of not being aware of the present. Dukkha is the nagging feeling of “if only” – if only I do this, then I will be happy. In doing this we are constantly chasing after something and missing the moment.

In a short Sutra named Suttanipada, someone asked Buddha, “We experience many problems when we interact with people, we argue, and fight, and we have pain, sorrow, annoyance. Where does this suffering come from?”

And Buddha said that this pain comes from preference - we prefer one thing, and someone else prefers something else, so there is disagreement. And when we discuss these things sometimes the discussion becomes an argument and the argument becomes a fight.

Then the questioner asked where this preference comes from. And Buddha said preference comes from taṇhā: thirst, or clinging or craving - we want to get something, or we want to throw something away!

And the questioner continued, “What is the cause of clinging?” And Buddha said sensation causes clinging - because we have pleasant and unpleasant sensations we want to make things our own, our possessions, or when we encounter something we don’t like we want to push it away. But even if we push it away it comes back, and then we become angry and hate develops. So our life becomes chasing after something or escaping from something.

And Buddha said the cause of sensation is contact, our connection with something through our senses - eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind.

So the questioner asked what is the cause of contact? And Buddha said contact is caused by perception and nama rupa. Nama rupa means object. In the six links of causation nama rupa refers to the object of sense organs - nama is “name” and rupa is “material.” When our perception encounters nama rupa we have contact. When we put a name to something, a relationship is established between subject and object - a relationship between us and some thing. In other words the object of our sense organs takes on a meaning, and that creates a relationship between the thing and the person perceiving it. And when this thing and my perception encounter each other, this causes contact, and this contact is attachment.

As humans we are all subject to the cause and effect Buddha talked about in Suttanipada - it is part of our human condition. Buddha noticed that we can be free from suffering when we recognize how our mind grasps. This recognition opens our mind and allows us to let go and let be. This doesn’t mean to try to eliminate the perception which is the source of the problem - in fact we cannot do this. Rather we are not deceived by that perception, we see false perception as false. This is what we do in zazen - when we see the problem we let go, and each time it returns we let go until it no longer has a hold on us.

Katagiri Roshi says, “Emptiness is that which enables us to open our eyes to see directly what being is.” Returning to Silence, p.49 

Shohaku Okumura says, “ … emptiness means connection with others,” and “.. wisdom, prajna, is the emptiness of all beings.” Ikka no Myoju commentaries, section 82.

Emptiness does not describe a lack in life. It is not the absence of life, rather it is the realization that what we think life is is simply our creation and has no reality in and of itself. When we see life through the telescope of our beliefs, when we adhere to what we think life is we are trying to hold on to something; when we let go we can see life in it’s fullness, it’s completeness. When we recognize the belief system we have created for the purpose of living in this world and are able to suspend this understanding for even a moment – then we can see life directly and fully. Experiencing life fully and directly is emptiness, wisdom. Emptiness is like hanging in empty space – there is nothing to hold onto. Yet our connection with all beings is always present, we are supported by all of life. 

The beginning of each new year is an opportunity for reflection and renewal. Looking back at the positive things from the last year and looking forward to awakening our intentions in the coming year helps us to see the big perspective of our lives.

  We mark each year with wishes and resolutions, exploring new possibilities. We look at our life over the past year or two and pinpoint where we’ve been and where we want to be.

  Let us reflect for a moment on what is the most important thing we wish to accomplish in 2014.

  Let us cultivate patience and diligence to allow our intention to unfold naturally, neither rushing forward with grasping mind nor falling into lack of awareness and not seeing what is in front of us.

It started as a road trip to visit my teacher Katagiri Roshi’s stupa (burial site) at Hokyoji, in southeastern Minnesota. Hokyoji is the land that was purchased by the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in 1978 as a place for residential practice. When it was bought, it was just a piece of land. Over the years it has developed into a small practice community.

         There were four of us traveling together, soon to be called “pilgrims” because by the time we got on the road, the trip had expanded beyond a visit to Roshi’s stupa to an expedition that included stops at seven Zen centers and a Catholic monastery.

The trip was divided into six-hour driving segments to make it relaxing and provide space in the schedule to explore. The distance to Minnesota from Great Tree is about 1,000 miles, and I have traveled this route many times by car, so I had a good sense of how to break it up. The first stop was Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky.

  The Abbey of Gethsemani 

Gethsemani is not a Zen center but a Catholic monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky, founded by French Trappist monks in 1848. I became familiar with it through reading the works of Thomas Merton, and I have visited Gethsemani several times over the years when driving to and from Minnesota. Because Thom- as Merton was interested in Buddhism, and Zen in particular, many of the monks there have cultivated an interest in Zen. I feel very comfortable there because of my Catholic/Buddhist approach to spirituality.

I was looking forward to the silence, which is almost palpable at Gethsemani. Conversation is allowed only in designated areas of the monastery. When we arrived around 4 pm, everything was very quiet, including the front desk. There were a few young boys whispering in the waiting room. One of them told us he thought the brother who was taking care of the desk was in the kitchen, so we went back there to find him having his afternoon snack. He immediately jumped up and walked us to the front desk, pointing out along the way that we could come back and help ourselves to drinks, fruit and bread if we wished. He checked us in and sent us to our rooms. We had just enough time to get moved in and settled before Vespers recitation at 5:30.

         After Vespers, I found a Trappist Brother at my door. He was Brother Paul Quenon, and he invited us to have supper with him. Brother Paul has been a resident at Gethsemani for 55 years and was mentored by Thomas Merton, known at Gethsemani as Father Louis. He had just finished a weeklong retreat at

the hermitage built by Merton, which is about a 20-minute walk from Gethsemani proper He was very friendly and eager to talk with us. His first question, “How often do you shave your head?”

After supper Brother Paul took us to the hermitage, where we sat on the porch and shared haiku he had written during his retreat—haiku that brought us right into the present moment with their descriptions of the nature all around us. In the distance, we saw a family of deer watching us.

  Sanshinji – Three Minds Temple

When you drive to Minnesota from North Carolina, you drive through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Sanshinji is located about halfway between Asheville and Minneapolis, in Bloomington, Indiana.

         Started by Rev. Shohaku Okumura, Sanshinji currently has one building on about three-quarters of an acre. It houses the Okumura family and a large meditation hall in the basement, as well as a small office. Shohaku is a Japanese monk, a disciple of Uchiyama Kosho Roshi. The emphasis in his lineage is on zazen, with rituals and lectures on the back burner. Forms are not emphasized. For a Japanese teacher, it is a very nontraditional approach. Still, Shohaku was formerly the director of the American head- quarters of Soto Zen—the Soto Zen International Center in San Francisco—so he has incorporated some formalities into the practice at Sanshinji. We had dinner with Shohaku and his wife, Yuko, watched a family of deer who seemed to be very comfortable living in the yard (and who watched us in return), then headed for Ryumonji in Decorah, Iowa.

  Ryumonji – Dragon Gate Temple

         Ryumonji is a monastery built in the architectural style of a traditional Japanese monastery on 40 acres of Iowa farmland. Rev. Shoken Winecoff, also a disciple of Katagiri Roshi, raised money and oversaw the building of this unusual heart- land sight. Eastern Iowa is very beautiful, and this small monastery fits right in with the natural beauty despite its oriental look. Though much smaller in size, Ryumonji has all the elements of a place of Zen training as prescribed by Dogen Zenji, based on his experience in China.

         At Ryumonji I felt tinges of being in a 13th- century-style Japanese monastery, but I also felt I was being propelled into the future. We were very happy to be there. The monastery has a calm and settled feeling, as though it’s been there for years, yet the meditation hall and dormitory were dedicated only this past summer. The last time I visited in 2004, there was only a large ceremony hall and an old Iowa farmhouse, which housed Shoken and the meditation hall. So this was a very nice surprise. We joined the schedule, and it had a comfortable familiarity for us. Based on traditional Zen style, the rhythm and forms were similar enough that we navigated in quite easily. At supper the night before, Shoken had told us the early-morning schedule. At tea after breakfast, we were filled in about what we were doing until lunch. It was a relaxing and comfortable visit, and we settled in very quickly. After lunch we headed to Hokyoji.

  Hokyoji – Catching the Moon Temple

I think perhaps my fellow pilgrims were not prepared for the still-somewhat-primitive lifestyle at Hokyoji. Purchased in 1977 by Minnesota Zen Meditation Center (MZMC) in Minneapolis, the mortgage did not get paid off until the late 1980s.

         It was challenging to both take care of the needs of the run-down building in Minneapolis where MZMC was housed and to pay the mortgage on the land which now houses Hokyoji. Structures were originally built from green wood harvested on the property. Hokyoji remained part of MZMC until about four or five years ago, when the two were separated on paper. But the problem of keeping up two centers with not much money lingered until that time, so development has been slow.

         We arrived at Hokyoji in mid-afternoon and were met by Rev. Dokai Georgeson, who was busy with the weed eater trying to get things ready for a retreat beginning in a few days. We joined the schedule, but also took some time to walk up to Katagiri Roshi’s stupa. It’s a bit of a walk up the hill to get there, but one can see a lovely view of the valley, so we spent some time up there, weeding the stupa and enjoying the beauty.

After lunch we headed for Dharma Field in Minneapolis.

  Dharma Field

         Dharma Field is a Zen community in South Minneapolis started by Rev. Steve Hagen. It is housed in an old church, with the sanctuary turned into a very simple meditation hall. A large rock sits in front in lieu of a Buddha statue. It has a nice friendly atmosphere, but also a quiet, focused feeling. Steve lives in the pastor’s house on one side of the church. On the other side is a house with extra sleeping space for visitors. This is where we stayed for the next five days as we explored centers located in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

         We arrived at Dharma Field on Thursday evening and settled in. The next morning we joined zazen, then met with Steve, Rev. Norm Randolph, also a resident teacher, and Rev. Bev Forsman, a disciple of Steve who is in the process of taking on the leadership of Dharma Field. Steve had to leave town right after breakfast, but we had some time over the next few days to meet with Norm and Bev. Norm was a long-time student of Katagiri Roshi’s who followed him to Minnesota from San Francisco in the 1970s. He also resides in the dorm where we were staying, so we had many enjoyable moments with him. Bev has been studying with Steve for about 20 years. We were grateful to be able to stay in such a lovely environment.

  Compassionate Ocean Zen Center

         On Saturday morning, I gave a lecture at Dharma Field that was attended by many old friends from Minnesota Zen Center, including Rev. Joen Snyder and lay teacher Michael O’Neal, long-time students of Katagiri Roshi, as well as teachers and founders of Compassionate Ocean in northeast Minneapolis. After the lecture at Dharma Field and a short social gathering, we jumped in two cars and drove to visit Compassionate Ocean.

         First we visited its current, though temporary, gathering place, located across the street from a not-quite-finished Zen center. Michael is, among other things, an excellent carpenter and has overseen the building of a very-well-thought-out zendo. As with most Zen centers, money has been an issue, so construction has been a stop-and-go process. Nevertheless they have built a little community by renting a space in the artists’ cooperative across the street. Both are lovely spaces and have a warm feeling. We had a nice lunch and tour of the new zendo. The name Compassionate Ocean comes from part of Katagiri Roshi’s ordination name: Compassionate Ocean Great Patience.

  Clouds in Water Zen Center

         Founded by Rev. Dosho Mike Port, Clouds in Water, located in downtown St. Paul, is now led by Rev. Judith Byakuren Ragir. Dosho was also a disciple of Katagiri Roshi, and Byakuren is his disciple.

On Sunday morning, we joined the program, which included zazen, lecture, and social time. Clouds has a contemporary feel about it. Though they follow forms, it doesn’t have a formal feeling. The young man who was lecturing used very 21st-century technology and modern-day examples. At one point, I smiled as he pulled out his iPad and scrolled through it to find a quote he wanted to share. We stayed afterward and talked with people from Clouds, including Ken Ford, another student of Katagiri Roshi, who is a senior lay teacher at Clouds.

         Monday morning, we went back to Clouds to meet with Byakuren. Parking in downtown St. Paul is a little confusing, and we had some trouble figuring out how to tell the meter which parking spot we were in. Or maybe we didn’t know which parking spot we were in! We put about $3 in the meter, but when we went back to get something from the car five minutes later, we already had a parking ticket. This was a perfect segue into to some of our conversation with Byakuren about why they are feeling the need to move. Clouds has been in this space for a while, so they are pretty settled, but the downtown area around them has become so developed that they are experiencing a lot of noise and parking problems. It’s a lovely place though, and we enjoyed our visit.

  Minnesota Zen Meditation Center/Ganshoji – Cultivating the Clouds Temple

         Our final visit was to Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. The name Ganshoji was given to MZMC by Katagiri Roshi. It is taken from a poem by Dogen called “Yearning for the Ancient Ways,” and is the other half of the line that includes the name of Hokyoji,“Catching the Moon.”

Yearning for the Ancient Ways

  The Way of the Ancestors coming from the West I transmit to the East.

Yearning for the ancient ways,

Catching the moon, cultivating the clouds,

Untouched by worldly dust fluttering about

Thatched hut, snowy evening, deep mountain.

–  Zen Master Eihei Dogen (13th C)

           First we met with Rev. Tim Burkett. When Tim studied at Stanford, he was a student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and he knew Katagiri Roshi from that era. After Tim and his wife moved to Minnesota, he started practicing at MZMC and was, along with Norm, the first to be ordained by Katagiri Roshi. Norm told us that Tim had invited Suzuki Roshi to teach a small Zen group at Stanford, and those lectures were the source of the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. We had a nice visit with Tim and visited MZMC the next evening for a pro- gram, which again included zazen and lecture.

         At Hokyoji I had given a lecture about traditional approaches to practice and contemporizing Zen practice, and I mentioned that, just among Katagiri Roshi’s disciples, there are dramatic differences in style, forms, etc. At the end of my talk, someone commented that the common thread was zazen. Visiting all of these centers within such a short period of time really gave us a strong sense of that. We were often confused about forms and the schedules as we moved from one center to another, but the point of familiarity was zazen, and this proved to be very grounding.

         The trip back to Asheville was very direct. We stopped back in Bloomington for one night and spent the next night at homes of Zen practitioners in Knoxville. When I got home, I felt the momentum of travel still inside me, with our theme song, “On the Road Again,” running through my head for several days after. It was a great trip with lots of camaraderie and, though I was exhausted when we returned, I’m grateful for such an experience. I felt as if I had gone back in time, seeing old friends and going back to familiar places, yet there was also a sense of going forward, getting new ideas, and experiencing Zen practice in fresh ways. 

Forms have been created up by humans to help us live in the human world. Since we created them, we can also let go of them. Human creations usually do have a purpose however, so when we say to “let go” it doesn’t necessarily mean to throw them away. It simply means to recognize the spirit of what we are doing. In that way we experience the oneness of life, jijuyū Samadhi.

  The way of the Ancients was one of simplicity. In Dōgen Zenji’s poem he describes it as “A thatched hut, snowy evening, deep mountain.”  Someone at a Great Tree Sesshin wrote the following poem:

  Snow comes.

Sweep snow,

Sprinkle sand

  More snow comes.

Sweep snow,

Sprinkle sand

  More snow comes.

Have tea.

  This is the spirit of simplicity that comes from following the forms, taking the step past resistance, recognizing the non-substantial nature of the self.

  When we worry about doing things a certain way, this is something extra. “Just do it” means don’t add anything extra, no extra thoughts, no personal preferences. Just follow the form without obsessing about the form. This is the simplicity of life and this is subliming our activity: to trust, to not be self-centered, concerned about control, feeling good, or making an impression. Just do it. Then everything in our life becomes jijuyū Samadhi the self which experiences life fully.

  Many of us were attracted to Zen practice because of its simplicity. What makes it complicated is our own adherence to form. This is how our life gets complicated. Letting go of our own obsessions is the way of the ancients.

   “Yearning for the Ancient Ways”


The Way of the Ancestors’ coming from the West
I transmit to the East


Yearning for the ancient ways, 


Catching the moon, cultivating the clouds, 


Untouched by worldly dust fluttering about


A thatched hut, snowy evening, deep mountain.

Dōgen Zenji Says:

if there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjōkōan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality (genjōkōan).

  According to Dōgen, investigating our entire life will not bring us any closer to the path.

  This practice is not a practice of defining things and then we understand. It isn’t a matter of getting psyched up and then we can jump into the practice.

When we make the effort to look deeply, the way opens up.

Even if we make mistakes along the way in our search, if we are asking the real question, the genuine question, the path will appear

If our question is based on what excites us, if we’re looking for something to motivate us, we will reach a dead end at some point. We can find excitement, but still we are not satisfied; we always want more.

  It happens like this: One day we just find ourselves on the cushion. We are searching, yes, but not for something in particular. And then we are there. That is the path, just sitting on the cushion, just preparing the meal, just cleaning the temple, cleaning your room. Then very naturally we know how to help others.

The path is the practice of putting one foot in front of another and stepping constantly into the unknown. Life unfolds before us, and we know what we need to do. Finding one’s own path and place cannot be orchestrated by someone else. There is no prescription for how to do it. The path is that there is no path, just where we are within life in each moment. That is place and that is path.

  .

The unknown is all there is. The unknown is life.

What is the right question?

It is the very simple question of where am I now? And then in the next moment, where am I now? And on and on in each moment. We should appreciate where we are, and that will guide us to the next moment and the next. This is zazen practice.

  In Shōbōgenzō Genjōkōan Dōgen Zenji says,

 “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 verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly express the ungraspable trace of realization.”

Buddha described the human condition of feeling incomplete in the First Noble Truth, and explained that this can cause us to suffer. It is the feeling that there is something we can get that is always just a little out of our reach and we believe this is due to personal inadequacy and even though we try to find satisfaction we cannot.

Dogen Zenji says that this feeling of lack is present because the Truth of life is that we can never see everything at the same time, and also it is the recognition that everything is changing, so there is nothing to hold onto. The feeling that we can grasp Truth or Reality in some way is delusion, but the feeling of incompleteness is a recognition of how life really is.

Dōgen says that the experience of true reality is to know that what we see is incomplete, that something is lacking.

Satori means “to wake up.”  When we wake up we take a step with clarity. This doesn’t mean we understand exactly what our destination is. It simply means that we do not stand at the intersection without moving.

  When we practice zazen we experience impermanence and also the interdependence in which we live. We can experience this at other times too, but zazen practice can help us to understand the process. Zazen helps us to recognize and believe in our experience, and to trust the process, which is not a logical one. At that time we can be awakened by the teachings and by the Sangha and by all beings.

  The process we practice in zazen can be called “Opening the Hand of Thought.” We can awaken from delusions by “opening the hand of thought” because our thoughts themselves are the source of illusion. When we let go of our thoughts and become vividly aware, all the illusions that create desire, anger, and group stupidity vanish immediately. This is the way of awareness. We must neither fall asleep nor get carried away by our thoughts. The essential point in zazen is to be vividly aware, opening the hand of thought.          

  And when let go in this way, we become what Dōgen Zenji calls, an “original person” meeting reality as it comes, without clinging to any particular fixed concept of reality.

Dōgen tells us that we must think of the reality that is unthinkable to release ourselves from the prison built by our karmic experiences and habitual ways of thinking.

  In Realizing Genjokoan, Shohaku Okumura says: “When we perceive the body and mind in a confused way and grasp all things with a discriminating mind, we mistakenly think that the self-nature of the mind is permanent

Bodhisattva practice is not just about doing things for others, helping in the usual way we think of it. Rather it comes from the recognition of Big Mind. We are illuminated by the moon because we are the same as the moon. We and the moon are illuminated together. But moon is moon, which means there is not something which illuminates and not someone who is illuminated.

Dōgen Zenji always tells us to stop thinking of life in terms of subject and object and recognize that it is an interconnected network of which every dharma is a part. When we think of how inadequate we are and aspire to be more adequate the best thing to do is to let go of the perception of adequacy and inadequacy and recognize that we are a part of life’s illumination. This is mindfulness.

In our practice mindfulness is discovered in the details. Sometimes the details seem overwhelming and unnecessary. But the refinement of each and every thing we do keeps us awake on some level. The details create a rhythm, and when the rhythm is broken the sudden break in the rhythm is startling and wakes us up. And this awakening puts us right in the middle of the moment, the only true Reality.

Details show us where we are. Sometimes we miss something because we have fallen asleep; other times we become compulsive and get ahead of ourselves so we aren’t present in the moment. Details are a way of bringing us back to the present moment.

The Middle Way is right in this moment. Sometimes we have to wake up from our delusion to be in the moment, and other times we have to back away from being hyper-awake. When we practice the Middle Way we neither linger nor rush forward. We just live in the present moment. Details help us to do this.

In section 8 of Genjōkōan, Dōgen isn’t trying to explain how being time can be understood in relation to seeing time as a sequence. Rather, it’s about awakening to the reality of the moment, that the person we are in the present is a completely new person with a completely new birth and death from anything we were at any other time in our life.

Seeing life as a continuum which sustains one life while growing into another life gives us the impression that we can make sense of how it is. And it is the reason for our insecurity about life and death.  Making sense of life means we are attaching to a perception of how it is. And the attachment is the very thing that causes us suffering.

So Dōgen Zenji is trying to show us how the recognition of our non-past and non-future frees us from our suffering by helping us to not be influenced by our perceptions of what is based on our memories of the past or what could be based on our speculations about the future.

  Just being aware of the fact that a moment has no length boggles the mind in such a way that we can be jarred loose of our constructs about time, even briefly. It feels like a flash in the pan and we question it, trying to make sense of the flash. Realizing that each moment is a new life gives us the opportunity to stop comparing our current situation to our perception of our past situation. This means we can start where we are, without getting stuck in old habits of thought which have taken hold either about who we are or what we are trying to attain.

Part of recognizing that we are a different person in this moment is acknowledging the reality of the constantly changing interrelationship which we are a part of.  This recognition is like a huge embrace which has no boundaries. It is at once supportive and elusive.

Each moment is a Dharma position, or Dharma situation and is completely unique. There are so many influences and possibilities in life that the ever-changing reality can never manifest in the same way. So every moment is birth and death and it’s always something new, not seen or experienced before. This is hard to fully comprehend because we want to see clearly the relationship of these moments, and life is just moving too fast to be able to make those kind of connections.

When we release our preconceived ideas about how life is or what we think it should be, at that time we can experience what is actually happening – life as it really is.

  Learning to see “how you do what you do while you’re doing it” isn’t a technique that can be imposed on every situation equally. It is remembering to notice and pause. At that time we can recognize the direction we need. This direction is not something we need to impose. The clarity comes from the recognizing, the awakening.

  Life is constantly changing and rearranging, so we can only guess what will happen in the next moment. If we think we know, are too sure of the future, it is easy to get stuck in a certain mental/physical position and not have the flexibility to adjust to how things actually unfold. The flexibility to respond authentically and naturally in each moment is called “Beginner’s Mind.”

  “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities…”

  Let’s take the backward step and allow the hand of thought to open to al the possibilities of life.