The Buddha Taught Rahula: "This is Not Mine, This is Not I, This is Not Myself."

Life has a way of swooping in with heat, and drying out the noise that flies from your mouth. Since I left Minnesota, and my home sangha, my Zen practice has become something else. Still Buddha, still Zen, but not really visible as such. I've had a lot of internal knots unwind over the past year and a half. Limiting stories and emotional tangles that have defined me for decades. That unwinding has been excruciating at times. To say that I felt lost and groundless would be an understatement. A nice, tidy phrase to bind an endless array of emotions and actions that came and went, each feeling like a final statement on who I was in the world.

The Buddha once taught Rahula: "This is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself.”

And so it goes. This "I" is still a Zen practitioner. Still a social activist. Still a writer. However, it doesn't quite feel the same as the guy who used to write for this blog so devotedly.

In September, I began a clinical herbalist training program here in Berkeley. Although I have long been calling myself an herbalist, at some point, there came the recognition of needing to hone and deepen. My roots were entirely too shallowly planted, in soils deficient of nutrients, and also companion healers. In other words, I needed sangha, and I found one.

I also practice at East Bay Meditation Center when I can. Another sangha.

And yet, more often than not over the past year and a half, I've found myself alone with myself. Living with a partner, being part of various sanghas of sorts, in an urban area of several million people: the greatest sangha I felt was within myself. The sense of facing arising stories that I thought were "me," and then feeling more myself once I recognized them as simply stories. Not mine, not I, not myself.

There are more stories to face. Perhaps there are always more stories to face.

Years ago, I considered the online Buddhist blogosphere as a kind of sangha. It felt like one for awhile. Now I notice that it has kind of dissolved. Both the actual Buddhist blogosphere (at least the one I knew), and also the feeling I had.

A few weeks ago, I helped plant some cover crops in a local garden I volunteer in. Soon, they'll sprout and spring forth, filling the soil with nutrients.

Our sanghas are the soils, and our individual lives are the cover crops. Mutually beneficial, and entirely intertwined.

The Buddha Taught Rahula: "This is Not Mine, This is Not I, This is Not Myself."

Updates from Zen Land

My writing here has dropped off a bit in recent months. However, I haven't been idle. It's actually been a big season of growth for me and those around me.

On Sunday, our sangha held a council to affirm a new head teacher. Our current head teacher will be moving into a "senior" role, where she'll be able to focus on what she wants to study and teach. The council was rather remarkable because it truly was an affirmation. People spoke movingly to the gifts our current teacher has brought to the community over the years, and also to their support and excitement for the new head teacher. I've been in plenty of meetings where people played nice in order to preserve some false sense of unity. There wasn't any of that here. No jealousy or suspicion. No hidden agendas being played out. Just wave after wave of goodness, which gives me hope for the other issues that lie ahead for us in the coming months, including finding a new building to move to.

Meanwhile, on my end, after about 15 years of study and self practice, I've decided to do something bigger with my herbal medicine knowledge. Today, I launched NGTHerbals, celebrating the power of plants, our interconnected planet, and offering handmade herbal tinctures steeped in my love for all things green. Please help me spread the word!

Here's a short selection from the first blog post over there. Don't worry, though. I'll need to find a new balance now, but I'm not quitting Dangerous Harvests. In the meantime, enjoy a bit of plant love!

"Dandelion, plantain, goldenrod, milk thistle, nettle. Behind the invasive species labels often slapped on them are a storehouse of health benefits. From the liver detoxifying power of Dandelion to the anti-inflammatory nature of Nettle, these weeds seemed to have it all.

And yet there was more to it than just the medicinal benefits. Like the way they taught me about my mind. How the nettle patch, for example, mirrored the way my critical thinking sometimes turned into heavy negativity and pessimism. Once I slip past the border, the negativity literally takes over, stinging parts of my body and leaving it tense and pained."

A New Sangha of Social Action

Hi Everyone! I've been hard at work over the past week on some new material. As of July 1st, I am the new Guest Editor over at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship's Turning Wheel magazine. It's totally exciting, and to get us all started, here's my first TW post. Enjoy!

Tears for the Buddhist Sangha

I have been following Harvey Daiho Hilbert's blog for a few years now, and enjoy his short, clear posts on the dharma and affiliated topics, including social engagement and service. In today's post, he announces the closing of his zendo, and end of the sangha as a non-profit institution. Given that he still intends to teach and work with students, this the huge deal it may sound to be. However, the note at the end of the post is pretty revealing. It speaks directly to one of the major issues convert American Buddhist sanghas are facing these days: failure to truly build sangha.

This decision has many roots and we have been considering it for months. Over the years I have had to make up the rent and other expenses myself most months. I felt good doing that for the most part, because I had faith that eventually the Sangha would be self-supporting. This has simply not been the case. Attendance is down and remains low. In the end, however, I will say that the primary cause of my decision is the evident lack of Sangha cohesion and mutual support of each other as Sangha. We have talked about Sangha often. We take refuge in Sangha. Yet this vow must be more than words, it is action and as a Sangha, we do not act like a Sangha. This was made painfully clear to me when yesterday only Rev. Dai Shugyo, Rev. Shukke Shin and one friend were able to make themselves available to support me as we went through a memorial service for my deceased brother. Many emailed me their reasons for not attending and I understand them. Still, I am deeply hurt. I do not ask for much from members and offer myself to all those in need. It has been rare that I have not been willing and able to set aside my own needs to meet the needs of others at a moment’s notice. This is what Sangha is all about. So, quite frankly, illnesses aside, it was hurtful that Sangha members could not for one morning set their own needs aside to be in support of me during this very emotionally painful period in my life. This is all I will say on the subject.

I have a feeling of sadness reading these words. It's probably true that one could argue that a priest's vocation is to let go of their needs in service of others, and to not expect anything in return. However, there's also the compassionate angle which says that you make an effort to support people when something like a loved one's death occurs. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing Harvey's response to people not coming may have been different if they had otherwise been a strong sangha. If he hadn't felt again and again that sense that those coming together weren't really a community of spiritual friends, but more an assemblage of folks mostly doing zazen and studying in the same room.

I feel fortunate to be part of a sangha where this aspect of the three jewels isn't so absent. I've felt supported during difficult times over the years, and have offered my support to others as well. And yet, even in our community, I can see holes and cracks. Places where the insidious "me and mine only" consumer mentality seeps in, cloaked in words like "practical," "pragmatic," and even "practice." There's something a little off when people "have the time" to show up for zazen and dharma text study. And yet rarely, if ever, have the time to show up for a sick sangha member, or to help stuff envelops or sweep the zendo floor, or to simply sit and listen to the struggles of another in the samgha, even if you don't know each other well. Thankfully, I have witnessed all of these actions at times in my community. Unlike what Harvey seems to be facing, for my sangha it's more of the degree of care and compassion at issue. It's just not quite in the water we drink together yet. There's definitely effort being to change that, so perhaps it will come with more ease in the future.

What I find interesting about Harvey's situation is that he has a small sangha. Much smaller, I'm guessing, than my sangha, which has somewhere between 120-150 members. Size does matter. It's more difficult to maintain intimacy and foster mutual support amongst hundreds and thousands. And yet, it's pretty clear to me how deep the roots are of the "me and mine only" mentality. Capitalism upholds it. "American dream" narratives stoke the flames. Underneath the same three poisons that hang out in every last human mind on the planet - greed, hatred, and ignorance - are sourcing this mentality.

Whatever folks choose to do to counter all of this, to create more alive sanghas, peeling that onion is going to bring with it tears. There's no way around it. We must cry together.

Real Zen Practice

I seriously love this post by long time reader and blogger Jeanne of the Dalai Grandma blog. Among other things, it speaks to American Zen's obsession with form and "real" practice, and to our collective failure to live compassionately.

Special-endurance Zen is a masculinist tradition whose paramilitary rituals play to testoserone. It is fed in this culture by the failures of the nuclear family, by the American craving to succeed, to be special. It is supported by teachers who write and talk about how important it is for you to have a special understanding born of mystical insight. They don't talk nearly as much about simple everyday kindness. They chant hymns to Kanzeon (Kuan Yin), but are not trained in compassion. Koan study throws fuel on the flame of striving. Robes, hitting with sticks, still worse.

I don't know whether the man who sat next to me so briefly the other night had ever attended that group before, or ever will again, or where he went when he left. I hope it wasn't to a bar. In the discussion of generosity afterward, no one talked about the generosity of heart that should mean you set up plenty of chairs so that every visitor can find a comfortable seat. The compassion that should mean you welcome every person who comes in the door.

In that other Zen group, whose karma lingers on, I overheard one of the regulars tell another about his visit to one of the big East Coast Zen Centers. I've visited there. There were a lot of Lexuses and BMWs in the parking lot. This guy, who was married with children, said, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to go there for a three-month retreat and "really practice?" I kept walking, thinking They don't get it.

Yesterday, I was in a meeting with one of our senior teachers, talking about vision for the Zen Center. As board president, I've been doing this kind of stuff for multiple years now, reflecting together with my dharma brothers and sisters upon what our sangha's values are, and how we might go about implementing those values into functions and structures in the future.

What is it that we are doing well, and what is it that we could improve or change completely? I asked those questions to this particular senior teacher yesterday, amongst several others. His responses were interesting. A blend of we're perfect just as we are, and we could use a little improvement, to echo Suzuki Roshi.

One thing I noticed though - and I've long admired this teacher's calm, wise, and reflective presence - is how there was a current of this "real practice" thing that Jeanne mentions in her post above. Namely, that what constitutes real Zen is found in retreats, periods of sutra study, and lots and lots of upright seated zazen. Now, the chair vs. cushion bit isn't an issue here. The teacher in question moved to sitting in a chair several years ago in response to his aging body. He, in fact, has even given time during dharma talks to speak about this move, and others. Like I said, I've long respected how he carries himself, and so it's important that I offer a more complete picture here.

When I read posts like Jeanne's, and consider my own, twisted and evolving practice, what I think we're getting at is the failure to really practice the relational. That Americans especially, steeped in individualism as we are, don't tend to do community well. Struggle sometimes with basic kindness. And sharing. Working together without lots of conflict. Feeling gratitude for each other. Embodying the relational qualities of Buddha's teachings, in other words.

For those of us who aren't living in monasteries, there's a lot of forgetting - or never knowing really - of all the ways in which Buddha's teachings were born of, and enhanced by, being in sangha together over the long haul. In a much different way than we lay folks are "in sangha." And yet, at the same time, Buddha's teachings were not exclusive to monks and nuns, and didn't emphasize one way of practice to awaken. He offered different forms and focuses for different folks. Those who came along later were the ones that decided certain forms and focuses were "the best" or "only true" ways to wake up in this life.

Even though I have rarely done formal retreat practice at zen center in recent years, I continue to have a love for its ability to support people to let go and see deeply. I wouldn't be the person I am today without the hours and hours of zazen and bowing and chanting and fumbling through oryoki I have done at zen center over the past decade. Nor do I think to myself "I'm done with all that." Not at all. It's more that I'm listening to the rhythm of my life and trying to be the reed for the current sound to come through. Which of late, has meant some unright zazen. And things like walking meditation with silent lovingkindness chanting in the skyways downtown during lunchtime. Or yoga nidra practice lying on my back. Or studying Dogen with dharma friends in their homes. Or simply offering a kind word, sense of gratitude, or a bit of humor for whomever I see when I'm at zen center.

What is real practice? How do you know?

Teacher Scandals: An American Zen Koan

There's another American Zen teacher scandal flaming up the interwebs right now. I knew nothing about Joshu Sasaki Roshi before the current discussion. Other than that he's an old dude. Really old. 105 to be exact.

And about that discussion. It's unfolding so much like the others. Lots of fluffy Zen talk amongst those who wish to defend the teacher. Lots of hell and damnation talk from those who are outraged at the teacher's alleged conduct. More than a little bit of puritanical talk about sexuality. Accompanied by some good ole boy "guys will be guys" nonsense from others. Finger pointing is commonplace. Calls for greater oversight at a level higher than the individual sangha continue to ring loud, if not hollow.

I used to love to dissect all this kind of stuff. It felt very important, vital really - having been from a sangha that went through it's own teacher scandal several years back.

Now. I don't know. We seem terribly muddled about both the power of sexuality, and the nature and forms of power itself. There's a lot of abuse of power, and seemingly endless numbers of people writing about it, trying to figure it all out. Perhaps most humans in general, but American Zen in particular, since that's the focus here. And for all the muck brought to the surface, and revelations that seem to be made, the heavy muddled quality remains.

When you think about it, the intersections of sex, money, and power - the three biggies in nearly all of these Zen teacher scandals - are perfect koans for Americans. We think we understand them, have penetrated their depths, but I doubt many of us do. I sure as hell haven't at this point in my life. In the absolute sense, they're empty of inherent nature, right? But in the relative world, each of them has a myriad of forms that baffle and shift, stick and cause us to stumble.

Yes. Sasaki, like Suzuki, Katagiri, and other founding convert Zen teachers, weren't born in the U.S. However, it seems to me that they plugged right into the particular matrix we have here around the big three. The odd mixture of puritanical views coupled with provocativeness when it comes to sexuality. The curious blend of anti-authority individualism mixed with obsession with heroes and guru figures. The heightened tension between viewing voluntary poverty as a sign of divinity, and the desire for more, more, more than drives the capitalist machine. None of these founding teachers really exhibited all three entry points in the way many American born Zen teachers in scandals have, but they've still be in the matrix all the same.

Will this matrix that's causing so much suffering change, and for the better? I don't know. I'd like to hope so, but that's just hoping, something I don't put much faith in these days. I do think, however, that cracking the koan nut of this matrix - or set of matrices - may be the key to truly establishing a living Zen tradition in this country. As opposed to a struggling copy. Or a lot of "not bad" institutions that are helpful to people's lives, but ultimately fail to foster enlightenment.

Fellow Zen blogger Algernon has a cantankerous post up right now in which he offers the following:

What happens when you have an elaborate ecclesiastical structure meant to support and inspire dharma practice, but the dharma practice is shallow or, worse, pretend? What happens when you have temple full of people who have robes and know a lot about ceremonies and ritual, but they can't function spontaneously and ethically? Well, what you are left with is a dead religion. And when you have dead religion, there is nothing left to do except fight over the property and the money and the social position. This is not unfamiliar in human history, is it? Indeed, many of the teachers who brought their zen to the United States in the 20th century said they did so because this is what happened to zen in their homelands. They wanted to work with hippies who could jump into practice with a fresh perspective. My generation, on the other hand, is a generation of experts. Generation X and Generation Y zenboos organize big, fancy conferences for people in their thirties and forties who have become "Buddhist leaders." So much expertise. And yet. Hmmm.

I have a sickening feeling that a lot of zen in my country is a bad play. A play of the sacred. The stink of zen.

How to stay fresh, responding with right now mind, even when what we are responding to is great suffering? I'm not sure questions like this are being asked enough, especially during "dark times," such as the unraveling of a teacher scandal.

Community of Excellent Friends

Convert Buddhists have under-emphasized sangha (or community of excellent friends, as one of my dharma sisters frequently says). There are many reasons for this, and I have written about the ones I know about on this blog in the past. For those of us in the United States, there often seems to an extra layer of hindrance to building sangha that comes from the mainstream cultural emphasis on individualistic pursuits and privatized everything as priority.

But enough of the macro-level narratives. Today, I want to share a few stories of sangha actually functioning. Of a group transcending whatever hindrances are there. These are simple stories. Nothing earth shattering.

On Sunday, we had our monthly board meeting. Having just had board elections the previous month, a new member arrived to the group to experience her first meeting. Her dharma name is Gentle Dragon, and for a few years now, her and I often exchange dragon's roars whenever we see each other. Seriously, we roar out loud at each other. It's fun. It keeps us both light. And it's kind of become a way we recognize and support each other.

Anyway, as the meeting opened, I looked over at her and gave a roar. She roared back. And then, the thought came to me to bring everyone else in. So I called the meeting to order, and made the first item of business a group roar.

Here are two other stories with a different flavor. This morning, I had a meeting with our Executive Director to plan a talking circle about our current financial status. There are a lot of big, long range issues on the plate for the sangha right now, and while part of the meeting was planning, part of it was simply sharing our own questions and ideas about how things are going. Our Executive Director is also dealing with the challenges of having an ill family member, and our meeting ended with some sharing about that and a big hug.

And then a little while ago, I opened my e-mail and found that another dharma sister, who works with me on the board, just gave Dangerous Harvests a donation. On the donation e-mail, she wrote:

"I love your blog, Nathan. It helps me to lessen how static I can become."

This from one of the major players in creating our sangha's development and strategic plan over the last year or so, and also someone I consider to be one of those excellent friends on the path.

It's fairly easy to find stories of spiritual communities gone awry. Of sex and power scandals. Of people failing to not only get along, but to truly embrace each other. So, I offer these experiences as a small counterpoint. As a small taste of what it can be like to be apart of a community of excellent friends.

May you all be well today.


* photo is from our Segaki Day/ Hungry Ghost Carnival 2011

New On Dangerous Harvests

I can imagine that many of you have noticed the color changes on the blog. A regular reader wrote me a few weeks ago, requesting that I change the color scheme because she was having a hard time reading the old one on her computer screen. Looking at it, I realized that maybe more of you might also be having trouble, especially if reading it from a battery run computer not currently plugged in. Or perhaps on a phone. In any event, I changed the colors to the shades of green you saw last week. And then received some more feedback on those changes, which led to the current blue/green approach. Hopefully, this works better for most of you.

In addition, after all of this talk about money and writing, I decided to add a "donations" button to the blog (see sidebar). I have always felt like Dangerous Harvests is an offering to my readers, something that allows me to share a bit about my spiritual life and views, and also to have excellent conversations with those readers who choose to do so. In the past, I stood against the idea of making income off the work I'm doing here, for a variety of reasons.

As the blog has evolved, not only has it become a part of my spiritual practice, but it has also helped me to extend the notion of sangha, or community beyond the brick and mortar and beyond the local. In addition, as my own understanding of sangha has evolved over the past few years, in great part due to my role as Board president of Clouds in Water - my "home" zen center - I have realized that interdependence also includes offering opportunities for others to give back in the ways that they can. Discussions we have had on our board about sangha finances have led to discovering creative ways to open doors to giving back to the community. Giving time. Giving material items of need. Giving mutual support. And giving money. All of these, and more have come up over the past few years, and have slowly helped reshape my own relationship to giving and receiving.

And so, I'm offering you, my readers, the opportunity to support my work financially through the donation button. I do so without any expectations really. If you feel moved to give a little financial donation, great! If not, no worries. I fully intend to continue writing as I have been, as this blog continues to benefit me in many ways. However, it just seemed time to recognize that it's ok to have a donations ask on the blog, and that doing so doesn't diminish anything being done here.

Thank you to all who have supported this blog through reading, commenting, and offering other means of support as well. It's all part of sangha - of sharing community together, and growing along the way. Bows.

* Photo above is from my garden. Enjoy!

Working Class Buddhisms

Thanks to Katie over at Kloncke, who just celebrated her birthday, I got to read this cool article on Buddhism and working class folks by Joshua Eaton. He brings up many excellent points in his writing, but what struck me most was a comment left by "amayfaire":

I came to Buddhism as a working class kid, seeking some sort of spiritual home that didn’t require me to rely on fancy clothes, or tithes, or praying to deities that seemed to have little connection to my daily life. I found Buddhism as a spiritual home that argued against all those systems that held me in. Nobody brought me Buddhism, I found it.

Is the problem that the working class needs help finding Buddhism? I don’t think so. I think Buddhism needs help finding the working classes. We in the working classes know all about sangha, because our networks of community are integral to our survival and the survival of our families. We know all about death, and disease, and living in poverty, because we live with it each day. I think that, too often, there is an assumption that a lower income somehow correlates to a lack of intellect or spiritual engagement, as though being working class means someone has to bring “enlightenment” to “the masses" or working class folks are too attached to understand non-attachment. The working classes, however, have much to offer mainstream American Buddhism about what it means to be enlightened, about what it means to be Buddhist. For us in the working class, a spiritual life cannot depend on income, so it does not. We don’t need a sliding scale, nor do we seek a teacher other than the ones we carry within ourselves and our communities. We are a sangha surrounded by struggle, by disease and death, by the realities of a life that requires hard work and social invisibility. And from my sangha I have learned more about being Buddhist than any experience in my life.

As long time readers of this blog know, I have always felt like a "tweener." I have a decidedly middle class education, but have spent much of my life living fairly close to the bone in material terms. So, this comment really resonated with me, and I think that it's various messages have something really important to teach Western Buddhists.

I recall having a discussion with a few members of our sangha recently about personal finances and the larger, slowly tanking global economy. One person was, in particular, struggling with fears of losing her job, and suddenly finding herself homeless or in some other really difficult pickle due to lost income. And she turned to me and another dharma friend who lives close to the bone and said "I worry about you guys."

Now, in one sense, it was heartening to hear such a statement. After all these years of practicing together, I do feel the caring and compassion of the folks who have been there - kept going at the practice, even when it felt like the last thing they wanted to be doing.

I another sense, though, I noticed a difference in view that in some ways is built upon differing levels of material wealth. Simply put, while I do have a bit of fear around going completely broke and having nothing, it's also the case that I don't have a whole lot to lose anyway. Furthermore, like the commenter above, I have developed a network and understand that not only survival, but thriving depends upon deeply interwoven, and sometimes really diverse relationships.

What that conversation got me thinking was this: how would our sangha handle a situation where one or more of it's members faced "financial ruin"? Do we understand "sangha" deeply enough to move past the privatized, post World War Two middle class notions that often divide us, even as we sit next to each other on the cushion?

What do I mean by that last question exactly? Well, to my sangha's credit, we have had an ongoing, informal group called "Hearts and Hands" which was set up to help support members facing some kind of crisis. People have cooked meals and brought them to sick members. Or driven people to appointments. Or taken care of children. As I have seen it, this group - when it's been active - has been a step across the line into a deeper understanding of sangha.

But is that the culture of our sangha? I'd say not really. It's the culture of a subsection of our sangha - something that some of us probably hope would spread throughout the sangha, but which hasn't done so as of yet.

Why? For various reasons. However, I'm quite certain that one of the reasons is class-based. Because middle class folks don't tend to see whatever networks they have as integral to their survival. When the chips are down financially, they usually seek individual or nuclear family-based solutions first, believing - even if they deny it - that personal responsibility trumps everything else. That "I" or "my family" must figure it out, and that "I" or "we" are not going to be "dependent on handouts," thank you very much.

Now, there is some of this attitude amongst working class and poor folks, but not nearly as much. And while some in this wide ranging and diverse group have given in to lives of "gaming the system" and not making much effort, I'd argue that the large majority are living with an understanding of sangha - of community - that is sorely lacking amongst middle and upper class folks.

As the global economy wobbles on the edge of total collapse these days, my mind has shifted towards how to be creative when it comes to meeting material needs. If things really fall apart, I'm convinced that one of our greatest hindrances collectively will be these middle class notions that "I" and/or "my immediate family" must take care of ourselves first, and foremost. We talk so much about breaking down attachments to that "I" on a psychological/spiritual level - but what about on a material/economic level? When will I/we finally see that interdependence actually is our birthright, and is actually calling us to reclaim a much deeper sense of living in community(s)?

There are signs in my home sangha that, if financial crisis hit a number of members, we might be able to break through the shell and support each other. Maybe even find a new sense of what it means to be a sangha. Our collective commitment to working with children, and seeing them as dharma practitioners in their own right, is a great positive. The Hearts and Hands group is another. And our head teacher's desire to diversify the sangha is yet another. At the same time, the privatized, middle class narratives are pretty damned strong, and there is plenty in the broader national landscape working against truly embodying interdependence.

I even wonder about myself, feeling some of that privatized, pull yourself up by the bootstraps narrative floating within my body and mind. I'd like to think that I'm capable of stepping beyond the pride, guilt, middle class "success" narratives and whatnot that help to maintain separation amongst people in community, but I just don't know. So, writing this is part of that process of opening, and/or remembering.

What are your thoughts on all this?

Awakening Bodhisattva Energy

Uku has an interesting post considering several things, but much of it is focused on the evolution of both personal Zen practice and collective Zen practice. Having just finished our "lay practice intensive" this morning, with a discussion about the experiment we just did, what Uku wrote struck a chord with me.

When I started my group during spring 2009, I decided to start it with traditional way with robes and shit. But later on I realized maybe it wasn't such a good thing because people seemed to look at me with strange eyes. One dude even suggested privately that I was enlightened. Something else also happened in the Zen scenes and in my personal life, so I decided to change my style into more secular way, or should I say, my life moved into this direction. Of course my talks and my behaviour were secular before but eventually I just didn't wear robes or stuff anymore. Of course when I have to, I put them on (like Rohatsu Zazen etc.).

And now it seems my practice is going more and more into some concrete helping of other people: less talk, more action. I'm trying to find ways to help homeless people, drug addicts, alcoholics and so on. I have some plans but maybe I'll mention about those later on. Like I wrote to my teacher, " It seems my practice is moving more and more to real people, to real problems, away from robes and shit. I think that's the essence of Buddha's teachings, Dogen's teachings: what can we do to help others and ourselves? What can we do as Buddhists to help those who are really suffering? Arguing about the colors of robes and Zen monkhood is not essential when people are actually crying, I think."

It's interesting to hear this evolution, as well as the issues with sangha members and their perceptions. The early years of my Zen practice, I was totally in to pushing hard, meditating like crazy, and trying to appear like a "good Zen student." The culture of our zen center supported that approach, which included lots of group zazen, retreats, and over-extending yourself. We were going for fucking enlightenment, and nothing else mattered! Even if that wasn't the stated mission, this is how it felt.

Over the years, my practice has evolved, along with the rest of my life. I'm more interested in experimenting with forms, working with a diversity of teachings, and putting myself forward, even if it negates the "good Zen student" story. It's interesting to me that Uku had the kind of troubles he did with people projecting ideas upon him based upon the clothes he wore. Not surprising at all, but an interesting dilemma for lay practitioners and communities.

One of my dharma sisters expressed her frustration that there weren't more members of the sangha attending at least one or a few of the sections of the practice intensive. She looked around and said "We're the ones upholding so much of the container here." Which is true in many ways, although not completely. The whole sangha helped make that 2 weeks of practice possible, in various ways. As well as all the other causes and conditions that came together, including all the veggies, beans, and other "beings" that gave their lives for us to eat morning meals, and keep going.

But she was totally right in that it was the group of us there, plus three or four others, who do the lions share to keep the sangha going. About 15 people for a center that serves probably one hundred fifty. I point this out because I sometimes wonder if the general membership looks around, sees those of us with robes or rakasus and thinks: "they've got it covered." Or "it's their role to have it covered."

One of the wonderful things I have witnessed over the past four or five years is the development and increased emphasis on "sangha" in our community. More people seem to feel connected, are willing to share, and yes, more people are also volunteering their time not out guilt I don't think, but because they genuinely want to build and maintain a healthy community. In other words, we're going in the right direction, but there's still an imbalance.

What can we do to help others and ourselves? What can we do as Buddhists to help those who are really suffering?

These are simple questions, but very important, don't you think? It's worth examining deeply what "help" and "helping" means, and whether what you do or don't do is going to just add more trouble.

However, in the context of a Zen sangha, or any spiritual group really, how do you individually and collectively cultivate an orientation towards benefiting others, both inside the sangha and in the rest of the world?

I say orientation because that's what I believe it is. If you look at how Uku describes his life, it's a shift in orientation towards service, towards struggling people, towards embodying the bodhisattva vows. This takes time. Effort. And a willingness to break sometimes with the prevailing culture, even the culture inside your sangha (if that culture doesn't support such a shift).

Somehow, whatever we do, it should boil down to awakening that bodhisattva energy that pulses through us all. Or awakening to it. And making use of it, as it makes use of us.

Simple sounding. Not necessarily easy to do. But also maybe not as difficult as it seems. These past two weeks, I saw my mind produce several variations on the theme of "you can skip out on this." A few mornings, it was a thought that I had done enough, what's one missed morning. During sitting a few times, it was the thought that "it wouldn't hurt to just sit out this period of zazen." I'm not all that polished when it comes to oryoki practice, and mostly would rather not do it, even though it does has a beautiful rhythm. However, I found myself paying attention to even the mistakes I made, checking around the room to see what the "correct way in our sangha" was, and then attempting to correct what I had done. Not to say I didn't check out sometimes during the past two weeks, but what I found was that those "skipping out stories" can be overridden, sometimes pretty easily without effort.

Ultimately, there's an unflagging optimism lurking about in Zen. My good buddy Jizo Bodhisattva is said to be the representation of that embodied optimism, but when you look around, you can see it running throughout Buddha's teachings and practices. And that's good because if it wasn't there, the whole thing would be too much of a drag. If it were all just suffering and emptiness, there wouldn't been any evolutions, personal or collective, going on.

It would be like being trapped on a train tracked between samsara and nowhere, which makes frequent stops that all were basically the same. Dante's rings of hell come to mind. And I suppose there's bodhisattva energy running through all of that as well, but it's a hell of a lot harder to see it, touch it, and finally be it.

Renewal of the Online Buddhist Practice Discussion

Sing it now - "You're own - digital - Buddha..."

Ok. So, it's been awhile since I have seen discussion about the online Buddhist practice/in the flesh Buddhist practice divide. Yesterday, Brad Warner offered his standard rant against the internet as a practice venue.

Computers are very good at producing simulations of reality. But simulations are not the real thing. A zendo in Second Life is not a real zendo. Your time spent reading blogs about Zen, including this one, is not real time spent with a Zen teacher.

There is some validity in this view. People are very good at hiding behind computer screens, chatting away intellectually, but not actually applying the teachings in their everyday lives.

However, I think Brad's view is missing something.

This is what I wrote in response to his post:

I'm with you on concerns about the impact of over-dependence on technology on relationships and communities. Collectively, we aren't skilled with using the internet, cell phones, ipods, etc. in ways that support healthy, engaged lives. Too often, they are tools used to distract, or avoid the rest of our lives.

However, you do seem pretty fixed on separating online land from meatspace, and I believe that separation is faulty. Consider the ways in which laws have dramatically shifted, workplace policies have dramatically shifts, and education have dramatically shifted in response to the real life impacts of internet use. A threat made on Facebook is now often treated the same as a threat in person. People are hired and fired based on what they've said and/or done online. Police looking for prostitution rings or child molesters certainly see internet behavior as more than just imaginary or a distraction.

As a student of art history, this reminds me of how the camera and photography was viewed by other artists in the early days. Lots of arguments over whether photos were "real" art or not. There was also a certain democratization that happened in the art world during the mid-late 19th century as a result of photography. People who couldn't paint, for example, suddenly had access to a tool that allowed them to capture the beautiful and the awful. And they could do portraits, formerly the bread and butter "possession" of painters.

More recently, with the advent of digital cameras, the same debate has reoccurred. Suddenly, millions of people could take hundreds of photos in a clip, and then work with Photoshop or some other program to "clean them up." Film photographers mostly hated the development in the beginning. And then some converted, seeing the advantages. And others split their efforts between film and digital.

But what I see in that story is a turf war between old ways and new ways, the resistance from the "old school" partly intelligent effort at preservation, and partly a power game based on a belief that they have the only "true" way.

Before the internet, you had teachers and students talking on telephones. Students and students talking on telephones. And before that, you had teachers and students communicating through letters, or artwork, and students talking to each other in the same way. Written teachings are all, in a sense, artificial just as the internet is, and yet those teachings are at the center of most Buddhist schools regardless of lineage. Works of art are also artificial in a sense, but they too offer a vehicle through which awakening can be sparked.

Over at Mind Deep, Marguerite takes up the issue in slightly different way, asking whether or not a person needs a physical, in the flesh sangha to practice with.

Because the body and our relationship to it play such an essential role in our unfolding along the path, it only makes sense to also pay attention to the embodied aspect of our spiritual friendships. If the Buddha was to live in our times, I am pretty sure he would be on Facebook, and Twitter, and blogs, AND I have also no doubt that he would insist on maintaining a live practice community.

A few of us responded that there are many practitioners out there who don't have much access to a sangha where they live. I offered a further suggestion that even those who don't have a sangha close by can try and locate friends on the path to practice with sometimes. After a few years online now, I have come to the conclusion that doing it alone, solely relying on online resources, probably isn't advisable. Obviously, I say this as a long time member of a fairly large community. In other words, I don't know what it's like to do all of this alone for years on end.

But I do think that Buddha placed a strong emphasis on spiritual friendship, on having dharma brothers and sisters to practice with, at least some of the time. In fact, having a few strong friendships, where you can really dig into your lives together, might be more important than a larger sangha or easy access to a teacher. Easy access to a teacher, in fact, is probably a fairly modern phenomenon. Most of the old stories emphasize long treks and difficult entrance barriers around working with a teacher. The number of people who could practice with their teacher on a frequent basis was probably much, much smaller than it is today. And the nature of sanghas was clearly different, at least in the early days. Coming together for a few months and then splitting off for awhile seemed like more the norm. Once temples were established, more settled sanghas could evolve, but still the numbers had to be smaller than they are today because lay centered communities were few and far between, if existing at all.

So, when considering this whole issue, I tend to place a stronger emphasis on having multidimensional, long term relationships with a few or more dharma friends, including "in the flesh" practice and study. One of the main weaknesses I have seen online is that there's a lot of disappearance and a lot of fluctuation. Internet sanghas are a mixed bag - for every Treeleaf that seems to keep going with a decent number of people committed to it, there are a dozen others that die off fairly quickly. Some never get off the ground. Others split up over some intellectual row. Still others get entirely too narrow in focus to maintain a healthy sized membership.

Certainly, any of the above can happen with "in the flesh" sanghas, but the fluctuations that happen online seem to have a greater impact than those that happen online. A Zen group with half a dozen members can keep getting together, even if they don't attract many new folks. Whereas an online group with half a dozen members usually dies off.

What do you all think about these issues? If you're a member of an "in the flesh" sangha, how is your community using the internet, and what do your leaders think about the place of technology in spiritual practice? If you're a practitioner without a sangha, what has your experience been with online-based practice?

Eido Shimano and Social Responsibilty for the Wider Sangha

A few days ago, Al over at Open Buddha posted a set of letters concerning Zen teacher Eido Shimano Roshi, who has been embroiled in controversy for nearly three decades now. Memebers of the American Buddhist blogosphere, including the late Robert Aitken Roshi, have been pushing hard on the various breach of ethics issues involved in this case for awhile now. Sex and power abuse scandals are not at all unique to Zen Buddhism, so this can be viewed as yet another one of those cases. But it's also one that has, for various reasons, gone public, including in the NY Times article cited in the letter from Eido Roshi that appears on Al's blog.

This morning, Zen teacher James Ford, who has had some recent involvement with the case through general counsel of leadership at the NY Zen Studies Society, issued an open letter on his blog that includes the following:

I was among those who counseled Shinge Roshi and Genjo Sensei to seek outside intervention this past year. I was heartened that you chose to go with the FaithTrust Institute and specifically the Reverend Dr Marie Fortune. I was less sanguine to learn you, the Board, were not willing to follow their counsel precisely. At the same time I wasn’t there and again I felt my task was to support Roko & Genjo as they sought a way through that could bring healing to Eido’s many victims while allowing your sangha and its important mission to go forward.

With Eido Roshi’s letter it is no longer possible to seek a compromise.

I counsel you as strongly as I can to dismiss the Reverend Eido Shimano from any position of authority in the Zen Studies Society or its affiliates.

For the sake of his victims, for the sake of your sangha, for the sake of the Zen Dharma, I hope you will take this action.

Thank you Rev. Ford. May more follow you publicly, in support of those who have gone before.(The two bloggers cited here are amongst many others.)

I have written a little bit about this situation in the past, but have mostly stayed away from it, given that I am not a member of this sangha, nor intimate with the details of the case. But I've seen what happens to a sangha when leadership goes astray and power abuses are committed, and believe that whatever happens in one community can happen in all of them, if we don't take the opportunity to learn from it. In addition, as I suggested in this post, it's imperative that Buddhist sanghas - especially in places of more recent transplant like the U.S. - take a deep look at the power dynamics of their group and the teachings around power, and put in place specific, concrete plans that address power and use of power within the community.

As I said in April, taking someone like Eido Roshi out of his teacher's position is a necessary, but not sufficient step. Each of us is, in a certain way, responsible for upholding the integrity of the sangha. And you can take that in terms of a specific sangha one is involved in, but also the sangha of the world as a whole.It begins with our commitment to practice, and fans outward from there. May we all wake up together, one step at a time.

* Update: Here is an ongoing discussion from the Tricycle blog.

Here is a post from Mumon supporting the removal of Shimano.

And here's a post reminding us a little about Zen history concerning teachers, and the serious consequences that come from trying to protect corrupt or abusive teachers.

And Nella Lou's current post on the commonplace struggle humans seem to have around leadership.

And finally, here's an amazing letter from Zen teacher Joan Halifax Roshi.