The House Sparrows Chant

I recently revised a post about the death of a friend that I offered here a few years ago. One of the elements I added was a small section towards the end about the meaning of words in our prayers. How each syllable can be packed with wisdom, whether we recognize it or not.

You can read the entire article here, at the webzine Life as a Human, where I have a regular column.

Along the lines of prayer, this morning we began a two week meditation intensive at the Zen center. With about a dozen others, I woke up around 5 am and committed to sit with the sangha and study Dogen's "Bendowa" for the next two weeks. There's something prayer-like about this kind of commitment. It goes beyond the act of meditation, or chanting or bowing - all of which we did this morning, and will do during the rest of the period together. In fact, meaning itself isn't really an issue. Whether I know it or not, I am just there, breathing in and breathing out the life that comes.

What was interesting to me this morning is that part of me isn't so fond of the Bendowa. Being from the early period of Dogen's teaching, some of strikes me as excessively disparaging of other approaches to Buddhism. Such as the chanting focused schools of practice.

Kaspalita Thompson (no relation to me) offers beautiful insights into continuous chanting practice in this post.

What the continuous practice gave me then, and still gives me, is a deeper relationship with the practice of chanting the Buddha's name, and a deeper relationship with the Buddha. In the continuous practice you are turning yourself to the Buddha over and over again. Sometimes this happens consciously, but for me it's mostly unconscious. My thoughts wander far and wide but my voice keeps calling to the Buddha - and something sinks in. Something happens at the core of my being - I am pointed towards the light.

Sometimes this is blissful, sometimes it is painful (the light shows me how aching small and flawed I am), and sometimes I don't notice at all.

Sitting zazen with our group this morning felt similar to me. The repeated call back to Buddha occurring on the cushion. In each footstep during walking meditation. In each inhale between phrases while chanting.

Western Buddhists, frequently haunted by Judeo-Christian notions of prayer, often reject the word "prayer" and its attendant "faith." And with that rejection tends to go the actions themselves.

We struggle to live faith. To trust in the emergence before us, in each of us, and all around us.

Going back to Dogen's Bendowa, beyond the bluster and perhaps elitism present in some of the words, there's something else. An embodying of Buddha in form beyond form. I don't know if Dogen would agree with me or not, but as I see it, the repeated return to particular forms - zazen, chanting, bowing, etc. - are about maintaining right direction. In that we'd probably agree.

Perhaps the disagreement would be that I don't elevate one form over another. The dharma gate of continuous chanting of the nembutsu has the ability to re-turn a person to their buddhanature just as seated meditation does. A little differently, but the same as well.

In these modern days, filled with seemingly endless ways to loose one's direction, it strikes me that we'd be wise to have a wide tool box. To recognize that the long term rhythms of each our lives will probably call us to different forms to remedy our spinning, internal weather vanes. Even the devote of zazen, if awake to these rhythms, will practice slightly or greatly different forms of meditation, depending upon the nature of the misalignment.

I often walk the skyways of St. Paul during the winter months, offering metta to those rushing to their jobs, appointments, or meals while on break from work. In the warmer months, I do the Jizo Bodhisattva chant while riding my bicycle to and from various places.

As I left Sunday service this morning, I heard the birds in a nearby parking lot, and stopped. Stood still. Let the freezing cold air penetrate my coat, straight through to the bone. With it, the songs of every bird, and all of them together. Stoking the fires within. Warmth there in the cold.

What is practice anyway? Can you draw any hard and fast lines?

The house sparrows chant; I bow to myself.

Continuous Buddhist Chanting

Here is a short description of the reasons behind a ten day continuous chanting service being held by the Malvern Pureland Sangha in the UK. Some folks in the "Western" Buddhist world tend to look down on this kind of thing, suggesting that seated meditation is required to "be a Buddhist." Personally, I feel that's a limited view, and would rather spread the joy of the diversity present in our ancient tradition.

Amida Buddha is the Buddha of infinite light and life, and by chanting we put ourselves in relationship with this 'ideal'. His sparkling golden qualities rub off on us, just as we become better people when we're in a relationship with anyone wise, ethical and loving.

But this theology, in some ways, is neither here nor there.

What's crucially important (and what feels impossibly difficult to explain) is that we are chanting to connect us to a kind of universal love. And we are chanting for the benefit of everyone.

We are reminding ourselves and other people that we are held by something much bigger and more complex than we can imagine. We are expressing our gratitude for this.

Please go read the rest of the post. A little further down, the author's words remind me of how silent meditation retreats can feel. It looks different, but perhaps heading in the same direction?

Mouths closed in noble silence. Mouths open in Buddha's name.

"Namo Amida Butsu"

May you all be well today.

*Update. I am now on Twitter. If you want to follow me, click the Twitter follow link on the sidebar.

A Short Meditation on Grief

I'm having one of those days. There's nothing in particular going on, in fact I'm just sitting in a coffee shop, reading and writing. But for whatever reason, I feel extremely sensitive to the unease within and around me. Earlier, there was a short, but really sarcastic and bitter discussion about the recent elections here in Minnesota. The one guy was talking almost right across the space I am sitting in to two others. I felt the energy run right through me. Then there was a father and daughter sitting next to me, discussing some poor choices she had made, and the disappointment they both felt. And then a woman sat down next to me, and wanted to plug in her laptop. I thought the person on the other side was still plugged in, and as I bent over, said "there's no outlet available." She responded there was, and I turned, saw it, felt a little twinge, and said "I'll just shut up now."

It's easy enough for me to point to a few reasons for this sensitivity. One being that there have been some challenging discussions about the direction of our zen center going on, and I have been in the middle of many of them - doing a lot of listening, some risk taking talk, and some wondering about where it might be all going, and what impact that might have on my practice life. I also have had a few more people in my life flake out on things they said they would do, presenting me the opportunity to either stand up for myself, or let it slide again. And finally, I just think this breath practice work we've been focusing on this fall has opened me up some, but I'm also finding the increased attuned to what's present quality isn't always easy to experience. My own dis-ease is more palpable when it's there, and so is everyone elses'.

I find myself relying more on chanting practice, short mantras like the one for Jizo Bodhisattva, during this time. Even though I'm also doing more zazen than I had over the summer, the slashing through the story lines quality of chanting - even silent chanting - allows for a sense of ease with whatever is return quicker.

Slowing down and taking time to listen to your life's deeper wishes unfolding is not only difficult at times, but it's so completely unappreciated by the culture at large that the alone-ness (sometimes coupled with loneliness) of doing so is striking. Some societies and cultures, in the past and today, have dealt with such pivotal periods more reverentially, which perhaps made the alone-ness each person must go through a little less challenging. I'm starting to see how any loneliness I feel is somehow ultimately tied not to the fact that I don't have a romantic partner right now, or that several friends have dropped out of my life over the past year - no, it's really tied to the fact that there is almost no cultural support for living out the bardo periods of one's life fully, so that transformation may occur.

I think maybe awhile ago, I accepted that for the most part, going fallow for a period of time, being mostly "not productive" in a conventional sense, is not appreciated or embraced. Unlike some people who get lost in their grief and anger over this, I have sought out enough kindred spirits, and learned enough teachings sympathetic to these periods of life, so that I have support to carry me through.

But there's still grief there. I feel it for the time I've spent muddling to get to this point. I feel it for all those who, when faced with an opportunity to listen and be transformed, end up lost in their own fears and confusions and feelings of having no support. I feel it for those who never even reach that point for whatever reason.

I think a lot of people mistake feeling the kind of grief I'm speaking about for depression or some other form of mental disorder. This is one of the unfortunate byproducts of the saturation of western psychology that has occurred. Historically, many people viewed grieving well as a sure sign of an ability to both move on in one's life, as well as an opportunity to transform whatever was lost into the gold of the next stage in one's life. Perhaps, more of us need to return to such a view, to be able to recognize that there is no such thing as awakening without going through deeply felt loss.

p.s. For those interested in poetry, I've posted some new poems over the past week on my creative writing blog. Enjoy!