TZC

March Break affords much freedom, and this week, Julie and I took some for ourselves.  While our parents each took one of the girls, we went to Toledo do do some shopping, spend sometime alone together, and visit the Toledo Zen Center.

This is my immediate sangha, 2 hours and one nation away.  Over the years that I have been going down to there, it has changed from a arduous adventure, to a quick little jaunt.  I attribute this partially to familiarity, but mostly to the increased importance of Sangha in my life.

Touching in with people who practice always has a nourishing affect on me.

I am still the one who needs to sit, work with anger and difficult people, be mindful of the precepts and practice compassion to all beings.  (No one can take my naps for me ;) )

Despite all of this, it remains important to me to connect with other practitioners.  It helps me keep my arrow pointing north.  It helps me to not get lost.  It helps me to not get overwhelmed.

It improves my practice.

In Kinhin, we take the focus cultivated in Zazen and put it into motion.  We endeavour to develop a working samadhi that functions in all actions.

In the Sangha we engage others with the mind of practice.  Others who also practice, and support us.  We endeavour to manifest the same compassion and fresh mind when we meet the rest of world.

When I can't be there, I still have other supports.  My wife, the TZC forum (toledozencenter.org) and the podcasts (thedrinkinggourd.org) are big helps.  But being able to maintain a sense of a larger community of practice feeds my spirit.

I take refuge in the sangha.

Lent and Ango

Today is very important day for Roman Catholics around the world.  We are on the eve of Lent, the period of preparation for Easter.  For most of my life in the Church, I never gave Lent more than passing attention.  Most of what I gave up was for dietary and life style reasons, and WHAT I gave up was fairly insignificant (such as chocolate).  On top of that, I had never been able to keep these tiny sacrifices.  I never really understood why.

In the end, I realized that I what I tried to do in Lent was for myself, and in the grand scheme of the universe, that motivation didn't cut it.

A number of years ago, largely out of frustration with a lifetime of failed Lenten sacrifices, I decided to give up something that would be hard to casually forget.  I gave up all meat and alcohol.  This was made more difficult by the fact that there was no one around me sharing in this particular package of self denial.  However, something shifted during that lent.

The extent of the inconvenience continuously brought me back to the question of why I was doing it.  It drew my mind back to the purpose of Lent as a time to prepare yourself to receive, accept and embrace the redemption that was brought to humanity in Christ's death and resurrection.  Now that particular spiritual message may not be what floats your boat, but it helped me better understand the experience of spiritual preparation or seasonal training.  All traditions have it, whether it is Lent, Ramadan or Ango.

Ango is a period of intensified practice in Zen Buddhism that dates back to much earlier times.  Ancient monks would spend much of their time on pilgrimage, but in the rainy seasons they would gather together and practice.  Various groups practice this in North America, albeit in a modified form.  Since I don't live close to a community that engages in Ango, I have had a hard time paralleling the experience.

So this year, I am making a vow to a personal Lenten / Ango schedule.  In addition to my Lenten observances this year, I am making a vow to sit more regularly.  The primary form of this is to begin each weekday with Zazen.  I have set out to increase the frequency of my sitting at different times in the last 12 years, with varying degrees of success.  However, these past years of Lenten practice have helped me to clarify my understanding of this time of seasonal preparatory training.

The Lenten portion will take me to the last weekend of April, but my vow is to maintain this practice for 90 days, which will take me into June.  I won't explain what I plan for the traditional Catholic Lenten practice.  A priest who used to be in my parish always emphasized the value of keeping such things close to the chest, and that it was more important to DO something, as most motivations for giving up things in Lent tend to be self serving.

The goal is to deepen my practice, and in doing so, become more skilled in seeing each moment of my life as practice. 

Zazen, prayer, art practice, sesshin, cooking, bedtime stories, helping with homework, patience when it is called for, directness when it is called for.  As I continue to ask myself what the practices of this period are, my entire life comes up in answer.  

As the dark of winter begins to show the hints of the rising spring, I wish upon all that they find the renewal and growth of the season to be mirrored in their own lives.

Bows.

The Texture of Life

It seems that through most of my life I have looked at this existence as a journey of joy and "meh".  The tragedies that came along, though not really avoidable we things that derailed that path.  They brought sadness and gloom, and generally made life feel like it had slowed down or stopped for a time.

I imagine that it would be just as easy to see life as a journey of pain and disappointment, from which joyful moments occasionally provide distraction.  This sounds like the outlook of the pessimist, or the clinically depressed.  The problem I find with these models, is that they both focus intently on one aspect of life, while pushing away the other as though it was extra, or flawed.

 But what about a perspective or sense of a life that does not see these things as "other"?

The pattern of unhappy events is not constant, and it seems to be on the up-swing lately in my life.  Friends have died of cancer and of their own hand.  Some young children I know have been very ill.  Divorce and separation have shook the lives of people I care for in just about any direction I look.  Family members are confronted with the limitations of diseases and conditions that will end their lives sooner than expected.

In all of this I can feel different conditioned responses vying for my attention.

Life sucks dude.  The only things you can rely on are death and taxes


or

you just have keep your chin up and look at the silver lining.


These reactions fit the world very well.  Just about anyone I might turn to in these moments would offer me some version of this.  But what if there was a different way to see?

What if a heart could be so big as to hold the moment in which I read to my daughter before bed AND the sorrow I feel at the loss my friends Keith and Dale?

What would it be like to have an awareness that could perceive the suffering, joy, and "meh" of each moment, meeting it fully, accepting it all, turning away from nothing?

I still must be very mindful to avoid letting the condition responses rule the day.  However, when I approach this seeing, I am struck dumb by the fullness of life's texture and the magnitude of it's beauty.

Sick Day

I am amazed that it has taken me 40 years to learn how to be sick.  Getting sick is no problem, I can do that without even trying, but being sick is a relatively new skill for me.

Usually, when I come down with a bad cold or the flu, I spend a lot of energy being upset at the fact that I am sick.  I yearn for the many things I would get done if I was not ill.  Of course these thoughts come up, but in the past I spent most of my sick time with them.  Sometimes I would even ignore the fact that I was sick and try to muscle my way through the day anyway.

Even if I took the day off, I would see my time alone at home as a chance to do stuff I can't normally do.  I would tell myself I was resting, but I was very busy, and continually exhausting myself.

These days, I have learned that listening to the mind to the exclusion of the body is just as bad as listening to body to the exclusion of the mind.  Nowadays, these two companions walk with me through the day.  Working together, they instantly know when it is time to lay down and time to get up.  On their own, there is a great deal of confusion.

This state of "just being" is the very essence of zazen.  On the cushion, in the bed, or driving the car.  This is the presence of mind to have the mind present.  Fully.  Fearlessly.  

When you get sick, know how to be sick.  Hopefully it won't take 40 years to learn.

Shaken

I ring in this new year with a profound appreciation for being shaken.  This is one of the primary roles played by the Zen teacher, and at this point in my life, I am very lucky to have 2 who see into me.

One of the great struggles of my life is learning to be a stable and strong individual.  I become self-critical of the extent to which I rely on some things, like the approval of friends, and rush to rely on other things, like structures and definitions.  In Zen practice, this means examining what it means to be stable, strong and an individual.

Enter the Zen teacher...

Despite what I have read, even though I have seen the words that tell how all things change and the self is more than / not this bag of skin or list of accomplishments or labels, encountering that reality manifest in a person is real and powerful.  Face to face with my teachers, these things, in a great sense, mean nothing.  They don't help.

Out of habit, all our familiar tools are applied, but there is no friction, no purchase, they don't hold.  We continue to try, but nothing works.  At this point we are exhausted.  To our small mind we have tried everything.  No options remain.  Then, still on the spot, we take a wobbly step in a new direction.

Torn open and laid bare, I am just this being, alive and trying desperately to walk across the room.  The steps taken are shaky, but they are pure.  They are me.  They are free.

In 2010, I worked on not being surprised by the range of my reactions and those of others.

In 2011, I resolve to become friendly and intimate with this raw shaken feeling.  I have my suspicion that is...  freedom.

The Project 4 Awesome

One of the worst things about the internet, is anyone can put up anything.  One of the best things about the internet is ANYBODY CAN PUT UP ANYTHING.  This is the case with Project for awesome.  It is not about any one thing.  It is a collection of Youtuber's who make a special attempt, once a year to draw extra attention to causes and charities that make the world a better place.

This past week, I had an absolutely horrible time at work.  Probably the most stressful week of my career.  But, I got through it.  I got through it largely because I was able to keep from completely turning inward and focussing only on myself.  I reach out to help others who needed me and it made me very bouyant in difficult times.

That is basically what project for awesome is about.  We connect with others who care to help others who need it.  John Green of the Vlog Brotehrs put it wonderfully...

"As humans we have a bad habit of imagining that people who live far away from us or in different circumstances from us as fundamentally other. "


Things like P4a and Youtube (when harnessed appropriately) can help us make the connection to that far off strange person that makes them more my brother or sister, and less of a distant other.

Here is my contribution to p4a.  Lord knows I am not an A1 Youtuber, but the hope is that it helps.

The Whirlpool

One of the great challenges I find in this practice is maintaining a ceaseless willingness to encounter and address my own conditioning.  This is coming up a lot lately, largely due to the amount of suffering I am encountering.  It takes many forms:  the death of a friend, the stresses of the holidays, difficult people, etc.  In all of these there is a familiar and seductive layer of conditioning that I am trying to work with.

All encounters involve people with a particular story or agenda.  When that comes to bear in an angry or painful way, it can be difficult to not to get pulled into the story and the drama.  When that happens, being fully present and open to these moments seems impossible. (make the slightest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart).

The reaction might be anger, or gossip, but when the story is spun, we can get caught in the fabric, and make it our own.  From within that fabric, we can see nothing but what we are weaving that moment.  To take in the entire fabric and the environment is to see in context of the whole.  As I develop the ability to realease the conditioned story (to which I may feel VERY entitled too), I believe I am starting to understand what it means to "forget the self".