Putting on the Filth

"Don't be like the young Buddhist novice, who, after speaking to a woman, washed himself because he believed he had become filthy. It was not the woman, but his own notions that made him 'impure.' Purity has nothing to do with morality."

Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki

We dress ourselves in filth everyday. Most of us. It's a habit we have been trained into, believing that doing so will make us the successful, problem solving, smart ones on the planet. Problem is, it's the very way we step into hell and get burned.

I seem to be drenched in fear lately. At work, I walk around thinking all sorts of things about how no matter what I do, it won't be good enough. Not enough students will pass their standards, and I'll get fired before I can find another job and move on. The idea of getting fired plays into all my failure narratives, and also into the hook of drama itself. The reality is, it's probably slim to none I'd get fired anytime soon, so all the stories around that are just filth I'm wading in.

The monk in the story above is not only displaying the mysogenist strain that runs through our tradition's history, but also a variation of the same spin I'm doing at work. Fears of being found out as a failure, a screw up, and not the profound spiritual guy he desires to be.

It's a boring thing, really, seeing these tapes roll on and on in your head, and experiencing the fear, confusion, and dissatisfaction that arises in the body/mind because there's still some hooking on going on. However, trying to wash away the mud in your mind doesn't really work either, so you have to approach it some other way.

I was sitting with the following koan today, which seems to have some connection to this discussion in my mind.

Chao Chou’s Seven Pound Shirt - Blue Cliff Record Case 45

The Koan:
A monk asked Chao Chou, “The myriad things return to one. Where does the one return to?”
Chou said, “When I was in Ch’ing Chou I made a cloth shirt. It weighed seven pounds.”

Most days, maybe everyday, I get the sense that I'm putting on that seven pound shirt. Do you understand what I mean? And as I was sitting the question came to mind "Do I have to remove it, or can I just let it rot right here where it is?"

The first half of the question is about doing something; the second half is about letting be what is. Both require effort, don't you think?

In a way, when I look at the long narrative of my life, and many of the decisions I have made, it has been a lot like this monk - if different in content. Pushing to the edge in workplaces, but bowing down to authority to avoid the black mark of getting fired. Saving money to the point of having a "cushion" in the bank, even though I've never made above twenty thousand in any given year. Making every last payment on time, to the point of getting into a argument with a creditor solely to avoid a black mark on my credit record. Marching in protests and rallies, but running off or standing off the moment things get tense, and arrests are possible. Seeking to find points of agreement too soon in arguments with others. Failing to look people in the eyes when I am angry, scared, or profoundly sad. In other words, more often than not, I have opted to be "on the safe side," even when doing so has sucked some life out of me. And really, this is the kind of error being displayed by the monk in Sokei-an's story above. Like him, I've wanted to be viewed as pure - but we both have mistaken the very nature of purity, thinking it resided in some moral or behavioral code.

Developing Patience with Communal Samsara

Maybe this post won't interest too many people, but I have a little extra time, so I'm going to write it.

The post I wrote this morning about the Treeleaf online community, and the tussle they recently had with one of their members, wasn't one of my better ones. I didn't want to take a firm stand for or against the leaders of Treeleaf, who decided to eject the member in the middle of the tussle, because I really don't know what to think of the situation. It raised a lot of questions for me about online Buddhist practice, and communities - many of which don't have clear answers. So, I wrote the post this morning without a lot of clarity, and failed to make it clear that I wasn't sure what I felt would be the best approach in dealing with challenging behavior in an online setting.

To be honest, what most interests me about the situation is how everyone, including the teachers involved, struggled to work online with the messiness of the various narratives playing out within their community. I saw similar strugglings in my own sangha several years ago, during a major upheaval. And I've seen them at my workplace, in my family, and most everywhere at different times.

Working with communal samsara is tough, sometimes brutal. And even people with great wisdom don't know how to proceed all the time, or maintain the peace. There isn't always clarity available when circumstances arise, and action is called for. You have to do the best with where you are at, and who you are with.

I'm interested in this lack of clarity because I've been experiencing a lot of it in my own life lately. What I have found in my own experience is that not being clear can manifest in many different ways. You can become mousy and subservient, afraid to say or do anything. You can become loud and defensive, feeling like everyone is against you. You can become pious, thinking that if you act the "right way," maybe you will find the way out of the mud. And you might even become nihilistic, saying fuck it to everything because hanging in the murkiness for a long time is just too challenging.

One of the things I've seen online over the time I have been active on here is that there isn't a lot of tolerance for this kind of muddiness. The various kinds of "acting out" that occur in peoples' writings tend to be responded to with another form of acting out. Not always, but pretty often. People struggle to be kind and generous when others are acting out, myself included, which is why I think it's too much to simply slam Treeleaf and call it a day.

This post feels a little clearer then the last one. Maybe some of you would rather I shut up until I knew what I was talking about.

But that is precisely my point. If there is no place in sangha - online or "brick and mortar" - for struggling, confusion, and messiness, then what's the point? If the teachers must always be beacons of wisdom and excellent action, and the students always good and righteous followers, then why bother having a community at all?

Banning Online Buddhist Practitioners?

Online Buddhist practice seems to be on my mind a lot lately. I think I have a pretty strong interest in seeing the internet become another arena for spiritual life, and feel that there are already steps being taken in that direction. In my view, unless the vast majority of us all unplug, we need to treat what we do online as part of our practice no matter what. Otherwise, there's just more compartmentalization and separation going on.

I found this today over at Gniz' blog about Brad Warner:

Everyone around these parts is aware of Jundo Cohen (leader of Treeleaf Sangha, sometimes feuding dharma brother of B. Warner). Jundo has frequently come on Hardcore Zen in the comments section and whined about how ill-treated he's been by Gudo and Brad and others, even to the point of posting a bizarre deposition about a fight that took place in Japan some time ago.

Recently, I took a gander over at the Treeleaf site and found this thread.

I believe it's a very telling thread in as far as bringing to light the basic way in which Jundo appears to operate. Behind closed doors, Jundo seems to be a very different guy than what he lets on in public. When called out on this seeming "difference" in his private and public persona, he gets indignant.

I went over and took a look at the thread in question. It was a messy affair no doubt. The principle player, Chet, is someone who has been what you might call an agitator in the Treeleaf community for a while now. Having spent some time as a lurking observer over at Treeleaf, I've found Chet to be one of those people who has some pretty quality questions, and comments, but who also can be highly combative and offensive at times. There was a great thread awhile back about the Benefits of Being Bad, during which Chet displayed all of this in his comments.

Anyway, Gniz' post is about what led up to the decision to "ban" Chet from commenting on Treeleaf. Gniz takes the position that the way all of this was done is an indication that the teachers over at Treeleaf, especially Jundo Cohen, are "passive-aggressive" liars.

Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that in my own "brick and mortar" sangha, our teacher has had to ask a few people to leave over the years. This isn't done lightly, but I think there is a place where the sangha as a whole must be placed above the needs of any one person in it.

When I look at the Treeleaf thread in question, I do wonder if this would have played out differently in person. Would those involved have been able to work through their disagreements in a way that allowed everyone to remain in the community? Or would it have just happened quicker, the ejection of Chet?

What all this brings up for me is the struggle a lot of spiritual communities seem to have with issues of power and authority. This blog is called "Dangerous Harvests" partly because I have been in situations like Chet, being the only one to openly challenge something a power figure said - it's a scary place, kind of like walking across a rope bridge over a thousand foot gorge. And like Chet, I've gotten defensive and combative at times - all the while trying to hang with both what I've learned from Buddhist teachings and with the heart of whatever it was I had to say.

The fact is that in a forum like the one at Treeleaf, all the people involved have are each others' words. Body language is missing. The context of how a person's day is going is often missing. Smell, touch, hearing, and taste are missing.

My point in bringing all this up is that it's easier to be dismissive of people who are a pain in your ass when they are reduced to mere words on a computer screen.

In saying this, I do not wish to be dismissive of online practice opportunities like Treeleaf - I want them to continue to develop because there are people out there who need this kind of approach. However, I do think it's incumbent on those of us involved in the "online practice world" to remember the limitations present, and to act accordingly. It's especially important for those who are in leadership roles, such as the increasing number of Zen teachers doing online-based practice, to figure out ways to be examples of how to conduct oneself online. It has to look different in some ways than how one approaches "regular life" situations.

For example, Jundo's comments sometimes have sarcasm in them. I think online this often fails. People react to it differently, and rarely in a "haha" kind of way. This is a very minor criticism of Jundo, and I'm really in no position to say one way or another whether his removal of Chet from the Treeleaf community was justified or not.

However, I do wonder if this situation is another example of how the technology is further along than the humans using it. We have the capability to interact with people all over the world, but we haven't quite figured out that this experience calls for paying attention in a different way than talking to our neighbor does.

Blogs are Useless

Buddhism is a face-to-face transmission. When Buddhists say that Buddhism is not in books it's because Buddhism cannot be contained in books. Books are a good way of pointing in the direction of Buddhism. But they always fall short. Blogs, by the way, are pretty useless in doing even that much, if you ask me.

Good old Brad Warner, stirring up shit again. During the same post, he also says Buddhism is not a religion, another quality doozy.

Anyway, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I would disagree with Brad about his point that blogs are useless. My own experience is that this blog has become a part of my practice, and that it's pushed me to be more focused on how Buddha's teachings impact my day to day life. And writing in public about large scale social issues, convert Buddhist practice life, how sanghas function, and about my own personal life has forced me to be more attentive to it all, and also has provided another bullshit detector - all of you - in my life.

But today, I'd like to say that I also agree with Brad. It's mostly useless, in the same way that meditation is mostly useless, rituals are mostly useless, and sutras are mostly useless. Why is that? Because that which is useful is all about being serviceable for an end, or being productive somehow. In other words, it's about gaining something - and at the end of the day, there's nothing gained from blogging or meditating, for example, even if we think there is.

I suppose that could be depressing sounding. It is to the mind that was trained to be productive and useful in this society.

And yet, when I think about all the effort I have made, or have been told I need to make, to prove what I'm doing is useful and productive, it seems to be just as useless as everything else, and more harmful than some other activities because it just keeps some "I", some construction of a "me," hanging around.

Effort isn't the problem. Effort is necessary to keep life going. But effort to prove one's usefulness or value is about as helpful as reading 80 percent of the comments on Brad Warner's blog.

In case you've never visited Brad's blog, here are a few choice comments from the post I referenced. Enjoy and happy blogging!


"Help, I used the Enlightenizer™ and am experiencing anal leakage. I've just ruined my favourite brand new zafu!"

"I AM A VIRGIN WHORE!!!!!"

"I became a Self-Debunker through the Fire of belief, through research, and practice, just short of taking up rattlesnakes and drinking poison."

"I like the idea, to be blogging in a useless comment section of a useless blog.
Let us all be useless."

Living on Dogen Time

Over at Ox Herding this morning, Barry has a post referencing a selection from Zen Master Dogen's teaching Uji, or The Time-Being. Sometime prompted me to go back to the whole teaching, and take another look myself. I found this:

Although the views of an ordinary person and the causes and conditions of
those views are what the ordinary person sees, they are not necessarily the
ordinary person's truth. The truth merely manifests itself for the time
being as an ordinary person.

How do we take care of what we see without getting caught by it? This is what I seem to be working with these days.

I had a wacky period of zazen before bed last night. Burning ball of fire. Floating upwards and out of my body, all except a tingling in my fingers as they tensed in mudra. Deliberately sending Metta towards those who abuse others in the world, wishing them liberation from hatred. A breaking calm followed by a return of "ordinary" mind chatter. All of this in about a half an hour.

I think I have spent much of my life caught up in a pressurized sense of time. It's a time punctuated by achievements, failures, and fears around both. A time littered with longings clung to and avoided; a time that feels relaxed when things are viewed as going well, and frantically calling for fixing when things are viewed as not going well.

This probably sounds familiar to many of you. I don't know anyone who doesn't get caught up in the appearance of things sometimes. Perceiving nouns where there is only verbing naturally leads a person to that.

When I was 13, my mother's father died of cancer. He was like a second father to me, and for various reasons, his funeral ended up being a traumatic experience. At one point, I was sitting with two or three of my cousins, waiting in the funeral home for something I can't recall now. My grandmother came up to us and, responding to our wet eyes, said "Don't cry. You're grandfather wouldn't want you to cry."

I haven't cried easily in the twenty years since. And recently, I've found myself wanting this release, talking to myself to just let it go. In fact, this has come up during difficult periods for much of the time since I started meditation practice. An awareness of this blockage and a desire to get it to move, believing I'd be more alive to the pain of the world if I just cried easier.

Death and crying. Both releases that really can't be forced. Even a person who is murdered, whose death appears to be forced, still dies in his/hers' own way. The release comes when it comes, in other words.

How do we take care of what we see without getting caught by it?

Begin by not getting caught up in getting caught up.

Losing "Yourselves"

I spent the day watching various strains of bullshit arise in my mind, and then fade away. A few times, I got hooked into it, but that only lasted a couple of minutes at most. I have had this dual - or what feels like dual - experience going on over the past week or so. Various things in my life seem to either be unraveling, or are being revealed as relics in need of letting go. Some of it is job related, some relationship related, and some even related to writing.

To the fellow bloggers I interviewed last winter, both drafts of the article I wrote for Tricycle were rejected. The second rejection came a few days ago. I intend to submit it elsewhere, and will publish sections of the first article on here when I get around to it.

The article rejection came on the heels of a non-interview call from a prospective employer I thought I had a good shot at getting hired by. I was fooled by a general e-mail they sent out telling candidates they were about to set interview dates, and would get back to us.

About a month and a half ago, I was midway through an interview with another prospective interview - one that was going well and seemed equally promising - when I brought up the fact I didn't own a car. I figured given that it was a community gardening organization focused on eco-friendly urban environments, that such an admission would maybe even be a plus, showing some commitment to what I preach. The
job was mostly in an office anyway, and didn't seem to require much outside travel, and all the travel was in the city anyway, all pretty easily accessible by bus. The director ended the interview two minutes after I said "I don't drive."

So, there's this identity thing going on. The tugs of how I have lived, and how I want to live, and how I have probably hung too tightly to certain narratives and ways of acting in the world.

I had a meeting today with the new director at my workplace. Things will be changing there no doubt. Things are already changing there actually. I can feel it, even as the residue of the previous two plus years of fighting, struggling, arguing, bitching, and surviving live on. I shared a little bit of that with the new director, mostly because he asked for it - for an honest assessment of what has been going on from my perspective.

At the same time, I was listening to his responses. The ways in which he both agreed with me and disagreed with me, sometimes simultaneously. It was kind of fascinating to just experience the whole thing - I barely got the words "Expect for this year, we have mostly met our standardized test goals" out of my mouth, and he shot back "No, we didn't. Don't tell me we did because we didn't." And I sat with that about ten seconds before saying "And how do our scores compare with the other schools?" And his tone became a little more quizzical, even as he stuck to the idea that we needed to be more "accountable" as an organization.

We could have been talking about anything - apples, terrorists, the price of printer ink cartridges - but the repetition of the whole accountability issue stood out for me, as it's one of the main reasons I've lost passion for the work I'm doing. More and more, the emphasis is on making sure whatever collective of outside forces (government agencies, wealthy foundations, and hotshot individual donors) are pleased, that they feel like the money is being spent "wisely." I used to think I might have some positive impact on this conversation. Maybe even make some political impact on some of these issues. Now, after about 12 years volunteering and working in this field (adult basic education), I'm just ready to move on.

So, it was totally interesting to be in the middle of what could have been a heated conversation and being able to see that I had the choice to speak or be silent, and also the choice to defend or let pass any given statement he or I said. There was a pause available in other words, one I don't think I often felt in the past at work.

The same, for some reason, has been present as my relationship with my girlfriend has seemed to unravel. I've experienced plenty of sadness, longing, and some anger even over the past three or four days, and yet almost parallel to this has been this calmness that no matter what, things will be alright.

I'm honestly not terribly happy that all this stuff is happening one thing after the other. In fact, it kind of feels like a lot of who I have been is sort of tumbling down a hill, very intent on getting to the bottom as quickly as possible. I can feel the fear around this experience, not really knowing what it means in terms of the future. And yet, why wouldn't there be fear? If anything is universal, it's fear.

And love -
but unlike fear,
the mind has a certain investment in love
that must be watched over
by the heart
again and again.


*Van Gogh's self portraits seem particularly apt for illustrating this discussion.

Grasping to Let Go

I have heard many times others teaching that grasping at things is, according to Buddhism, the cause of suffering. In the Sandokai, a staple teaching in many Zen sanghas, there is even the line Grasping at things is surely delusion. I can imagine many of you have a negative view of grasping as it occurs in your life. You'd like to diminish it's power over you, or maybe even destroy grasping all together. Last Sunday, our head teacher introduced a koan I had heard once before, and I found myself grasping for some kind of understanding of it. It befuddled me completely. But really, none of us need a koan to feel the intensity, stickiness, and icky feeling of grasping. Food. Sex. Comfort. Ease. I've grasped for all of those. I can imagine you have too.

Grasping is an interesting word. A noun and an adjective, it has several related, but not exactly similar meanings.

In adjective form, it points to desiring to acquire, to excessive wanting of wealth and/or material possessions.

In noun form, there are the following meanings:

1. gripping something tightly with one's hands

2. the activity of managing or exerting control over something

3. understanding with difficulty or after some difficulty

Other than noun definition number three, which maybe resonates with how many Buddhist practitioners experience their lives and practice out there, grasping sounds like trouble. however, I came across the following teaching from the Alagaddupama Sutta that speaks of grasping in a different manner, suggesting that we need to learn how to grasp rightly in order to awaken in this life.

Here is the Buddha speaking to a group a monks:

"Suppose there were a man needing a water-snake, seeking a water-snake, wandering in search of a water-snake. He would see a large water-snake and grasp it by the coils or by the tail. The water-snake, turning around, would bite him on the hand, on the arm, or on one of his limbs, and from that cause he would suffer death or death-like suffering. Why is that? Because of the wrong-graspedness of the water-snake. In the same way, there is the case where some worthless men study the Dhamma... Having studied the Dhamma, they don't ascertain the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment. Not having ascertained the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment, they don't come to an agreement through pondering. They study the Dhamma both for attacking others and for defending themselves in debate. They don't reach the goal for which [people] study the Dhamma. Their wrong grasp of those Dhammas will lead to their long-term harm & suffering. Why is that? Because of the wrong-graspedness of the Dhammas.

"But then there is the case where some clansmen study the Dhamma... Having studied the Dhamma, they ascertain the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment. Having ascertained the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment, they come to an agreement through pondering. They don't study the Dhamma either for attacking others or for defending themselves in debate. They reach the goal for which people study the Dhamma. Their right grasp of those Dhammas will lead to their long-term welfare & happiness. Why is that? Because of the right-graspedness of the Dhammas.

"Suppose there were a man needing a water-snake, seeking a water-snake, wandering in search of a water-snake. He would see a large water-snake and pin it down firmly with a cleft stick. Having pinned it down firmly with a forked stick, he would grasp it firmly by the neck. Then no matter how much the water-snake might wrap its coils around his hand, his arm, or any of his limbs, he would not from that cause suffer death or death-like suffering. Why is that? Because of the right-graspedness of the water-snake. In the same way, there is the case where some clansmen study the Dhamma... Having studied the Dhamma, they ascertain the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment. Having ascertained the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment, they come to an agreement through pondering. They don't study the Dhamma either for attacking others or for defending themselves in debate. They reach the goal for which people study the Dhamma. Their right grasp of those Dhammas will lead to their long-term welfare & happiness. Why is that? Because of the right-graspedness of the Dhammas. [6]

The sutra goes on to introduce the famous simile of the raft, the view that we ride the dharma across the river and then, not needing it anymore, we can let it go.

Translator Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes:

Many a casual reader has concluded from the simile of the raft simply that the Dhamma is to be let go. In fact, one major Mahayana text — the Diamond Sutra — interprets the raft simile as meaning that one has to let go of the raft in order to cross the river. However, the simile of the water-snake makes the point that the Dhamma has to be grasped; the trick lies in grasping it properly. When this point is then applied to the raft simile, the implication is clear: One has to hold onto the raft properly in order to cross the river. Only when one has reached the safety of the further shore can one let go.

It's interesting: in studying the Diamond Sutra with my sangha recently, I never got the sense it was saying we had to let go in the way he says. Maybe I missed it; that's certainly a possibility.

Anyway, for those of us who are practicing or are influenced by Zen, I think it's really easy to read the teachings of the Zen ancestors and conclude that a line like "grasping at things is surely delusion" is the definitive teaching to live one's life by.

Well, as Suzuki Roshi said, "Not Always So."

So, let's look at a rather mundane example of this. You want comfort, right. You want to feel that everything is not only ok, but that it feels "good" somehow. Now, think about it. If you immediately leap to "I shouldn't grasp," then you might be bypassing the opportunity to fully understand what comfort looks like, feels like, tastes like. In other words, you might abandoned the raft before you cross the river, and because you have let go too early, you end up drowning in suffering and confusion later.

Here's the thing: grasping is delusion. And yet it's only through our delusions that we awaken and are liberated. Right?

So, I believe the Buddha is trying to tell us not to shun, bypass, abandon the stories of our lives too early. We have to have patience in other words, something I sometimes do well, and other times not so much.

I've read a lot of stuff about staying with the appearing, intensifying, and disappearing of emotions in the body. A lot of "western" convert Buddhists take these teachings to heart, myself included.

And yet, life is more than emotions, and Buddhist practice is more than just refraining from everything that causes suffering.

In fact, it might be that we have to do a lot of sloppy grasping in order to learn to grasp rightly so that we can let go. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?