Fushimi Inari and Ryōan-ji

Dear Ones,

Today we visited two iconic sites in Kyoto — Fushimi Inari Taisha with the thousands of bright orange torii gates snaking up and down the hillside, and the powerfully understated rock garden at Ryōan-ji. Very different places, each with its own potency and challenges.

These first two images are from the entrance to Mount Inari and I have placed them here just to show you how many people visit this site. It is packed. Sometimes it is even hard to move forward, a human traffic jam walking through a true wonder. The full circuit is around 2.5 miles and takes two to three hours at a normal pace. We had all morning. There is a stopping place midway along the trail with a great view of Kyoto below. Most people stop here, enjoy the view and go back. We did the whole thing which was quite a workout. You go up, up, up seemingly forever, heart beating and breathing heavily. And then you come down, down, down with increasingly aching knees, pounding away on the stone steps.

The experience reminds us that walking is a practice, and the unending gates remind us that repetition is an important part of practice. Ten thousand gates is not ten thousand different things. It is one thing, ten thousand times, and after a while the counting stops, and you just continue. Just like sitting and walking practice in the zendo.

Sandals of former pilgrims walking the mountain.

There are also thousands of private altars along the way tended by families. The kitsune, or foxes, are the spirit guides of the mountain and you see stone images everywhere. In other places, all over Japan, you see Jizo bodhisattva statues with their caps and bibs. Here you see foxes and each holds something in its mouth or under its paw. They vary and have meaning. They are not decorative.

Every one of the gates (Senbon Torii) was donated by an individual or a business, and the donor’s name and the date are painted in black on the back of each post. Walking up you see the vermillion color. Walking down you see a wall of names: companies, families, sake breweries, some from a hundred years ago and some from last spring. The mountain is made up of gratitude and hope, itemized.

Going up…

Coming down…

After a shared lunch in the neighborhood just outside of the main gate, we traveled back to the hotel. Some folks chose to rest after what was a challenging morning physically, and others of us decided to go on to Ryōan-ji for the remainder of the afternoon. It is one of the most famous gardens in the world, and as a result, one of the hardest to see. I was there on my first visit in the late 1990s and I was eager to return. The grounds of the temple are extraordinary even though the main attraction is the rock garden. There is a lake, a bridge, mesmerizing paths, rocks and trees, moss and stones.

There are lovely gates inviting you in.

School girls were examining this ancient calligraphy screen as we entered the temple building which is the entrance to the rock garden.

You can see images of the rock garden itself online and in many places. Here are a few views from the gaitan (wood walkway around the temple, above the garden). The prime spot, if you can get it, is to sit on the edge of the gaitan, letting your feet dangle, and essentially sit zazen. People are milling about and are not totally silent, but it is amazing how much people slow down and quiet down once they enter the space. It stops you. Here are a few simple shots of the famous views.

Notice the one leaf in the gravel.

You can see a few knees showing along the gaitan in this one. An important and famous fact that underscores our practice: There are fifteen stones in the garden. From any one position you can only see fourteen. There is no place from which you can see them all. There are many interpretations that have been given over the centuries, but this is the one that Roshi Joan gave which takes us right into the heart of our practice. The garden is not withholding a secret and this is not a trick. It is a small, beautiful demonstration that a complete view is not available from a position, and we are always taking a position. Sit on the edge with that teaching.

Past the rock gardens there are many beautiful details along the paths.

I happened to be on the trail surrounding the lake when I looked up to see Roshi Joan and some others from our group standing on the stone bridge going out to a small island. There were many branches in the way, but I managed something.

The bridge itself is lovely and invites stopping and looking out over the foliage and the water.

And finally, an homage to DeWitt Jones, my photographer friend who has done amazing impressionistic photographs as an homage to Monet in his gardens in France. Here is mine from Ryōan-ji.

Tomorrow is Nara, and another of Japan's great Buddha statues.

Much love,
Flint

Transition to Kyoto

Dear Ones,

Before I get into today’s activities, I want to backtrack a little and offer something new from Eihei-ji. I didn’t know that Roshi Joan and Wendy (Dainen), were able to take pictures inside the monastery. Here are a few glimpses that I said you would not get.

Here are two images that show the kind of landscape you are walking through as you climb from the road up into the monastery.

Once we got to the top of the long road up the hill, through the cedars that are over 700 years old, we came through the gate.

I loved the English signs they put up to mark our dormitories.

Being weary, us guys crashed for 15 minutes before we met withe the monks who would give us a tour. We had not unpacked or spread out our sleeping mats. We also had to change into robes for evening zazen.

We gather in front of a large map of Eihei-ji ready for our tour.

This is the sign over the entrance to the training monk’s living area.

Here is an image in the lecture hall at Eihei-ji where Roshi Joan gave her talk to the monks. She was doing this as we wee sitting zazen for the first time. This was a rare event — a woman addressing all of these men in an institution that has been only men since the 13th century. Interestingly, the perspective of the photograph makes her appear to be very small. An apt metaphor for some.

Ushering us to the zendo for our first sitting.

Roshi steps into the zendo in the early morning. It was the first time I had seen her in her robes.

Getting seated. Notice the kyosaku (stick) on the zafu next to Roshi Joan. They didn't use it during that season, but got it back in Kamakura.

Two more tans with some of us. I'm not in any of these.

We go to breakfast after zazen and the very long, formal morning service.

We got to keep our chopsticks with the Eihei-ji logo on them as a souvenir.

All of us eating breakfast. Notice the monk standing in front of the white shoji screen watching over us.

Kaz and Wendy supporting Roshi Joan and each other after the long service.

On our last morning we met the Roshi in charge of international relations and learned more about the training.

So that brings us back to Kanazawa and our departure to Kyoto. We will be in Kyoto until the end of the pilgrimage this coming weekend. Our bus ride today was the longest - about 3 hours - with some breaks for snacks and restrooms.

As we made our way along, Kaz gave us a brief orientation to haiku and some of its history. Then, for the first hour going up to our first break, he asked that we write haiku and be prepared to share two of them when we departed for our second hour. It was fun to write and even more enjoyable to share our little poems as we drove along. None of us are seasoned on this form, but there was a lot of joy. Here are three that I shared:

The bus is loaded
Kyoto waits
Turning the key

The last phrase is about starting the bus but more.

Walking in the rain
New friends so close
Completely soaked

It rained steadily and incessantly in Kanazawa. What does it mean to be "totally soaked" when walking with friends?

What Japan would he see
Through his eyes
Now only through mine.

This one was for Erin, of course.

As we drove along, we passed Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake (over 250 square miles) and one of the oldest on earth (around 4 million years old). This area has been important in many ways, partly because the routes from the coast to the capital run through this region and there are many shrines around the lake. I didn't get any good pictures as we were moving all the time and the morning sun was a bit bright. We did pass by one of the big red torii gates coming right out of the water. I tried, but couldn't get it as we swiftly passed by.

[PHOTO]

We ended up at Hiyoshi Taisha Shrine, an enormous complex of temples, shrines, and sacred grounds. I couldn't even count the number of shrines. The gardens were the most beautiful I have seen to this point, and that is saying something. My pictures won't really capture the scale and mature beauty of the walkways.

Beautiful details on the old shrines

There were clusters of shrines of all sizes throughout the forest of enormous cedars.

We completed the trip into Kyoto and are now at yet another nice hotel, resting, and ready for the final few days.

With love,
Flint

The Poetry of Chiyo-ni

Dear Ones,

This morning (Wednesday the 21st), we took a bus to the neighboring town of Hakusan, where the famous female poet Chiyo-ni was born and is now buried. Our destination in Hakusan was a temple of Shinshū Ōtani-ha (the Higashi Honganji branch) in the Pure Land school of Buddhism. Shin Buddhism had its roots in the 15th century, and the temple we visited was originally built in 1898. The eleven buildings on the grounds are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan.

This is the main hall, where we gathered to spend some time with the Abbot, learning a bit about the Pure Land school.

Most of Chiyo-ni's personal effects and a substantial collection of her surviving brushwork are housed here. She lived from 1703 to 1775, and there is a natural stone carved with her death poem, put in place in 1799 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death. Her famous death poem translates:

I also saw the moon
as for this world
ah — goodbye.

In her verse, the moon symbolizes spiritual awakening and enlightenment, while her parting words reflect a peaceful, graceful acceptance of death rather than fear.

On the bus over to today's site, Kaz and Roshi Joan read some of her poetry to us. Kaz had translated many of the poems this week, so he read the original in Japanese, and then Roshi read his English translation twice. It was a lovely way to enter Chiyo-ni's former home. One thing I learned is that the death poem ends with the word kashiku. This was a conventional way for a woman of her era to sign off a letter. Here she was, facing the most consequential moment of her life, and she closes it with the ordinary courtesy of everyday correspondence, the way she might end a note to a personal friend.

Why she matters: she built a first-rank reputation as a woman, in a form and a literary establishment overwhelmingly run by men. She also did it from the provinces (Kaga), not Kyoto or Edo. Kaz and Roshi wrote, "The work itself has an exactness so unforced that it can make some of her more famous contemporaries look like they are visibly trying."

Her best-known poem is about discovering one morning that a morning glory vine had taken over the well bucket during the night. She ended up going to the neighbor's to ask for water rather than tear away the vine. Again, Roshi: "At first the reader hears sentiment. It isn't. The poem turns entirely on choosing to be inconvenienced, and on the fact the inconvenience is never framed as sacrifice. She just goes and asks for water. Nothing is renounced. Something is noticed, and the noticing rearranges the morning."

The morning glory became her signature, and it is now the official flower of Hakusan City, which holds the Chiyo-ni Morning Glory Festival every year, where citizens compete for the loveliest flower.

One translation of the famous poem:

The morning glory!
It has taken the well bucket,
I must seek elsewhere for water.

The one that speaks to me:

morning glory!
the well bucket entangled,
I ask for water

This is a scroll with an image and the poem, done by an artist at the time it was written. It is not her calligraphy, but it is contemporaneous with the poem and is among her archives. We also saw her monk's bag, in which she carried her writing instruments, some personal effects, and the hat she wore when traveling on foot.

She wrote something like 1,900 poems, a body of work that has never been fully translated into English. Her poems were not officially haiku. That word, I just found out, was coined by Masaoka Shiki in the 1890s and then applied backward to poets writing in a certain style. Chiyo-ni wrote hokku, the word for the opening verse of a linked sequence. She also wrote the sequences themselves, haikai no renga, composed collaboratively with other poets. This is important as well, because we usually think of the solitary nun with a flower, but her work was much more social: linked verse composed in a room with other people, each verse answering the one before it, under strict rules of season and image. She was not alone. She was a professional operating within a network of creativity.

Gayle, one of our pilgrims, looking through ancient texts with the figure of Chiyo-ni sitting above her.

I loved this description of her poems by Roshi Joan: "These are shikantaza with a text. No object, no method, nothing to attain. You put your attention on something and decline to do anything with it." She suggested that if our daily sitting has made any sense to us, then the poems will as well.

Terry Tempest Williams is here with a famous painting of Chiyo-ni: white hair to white hair. Two important women writers of vastly different times and genres, but their work has resonances. Here is a description of Terry's latest book, The Glorians: "They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world." A sister to Chiyo-ni.

Another influential woman writer is Rebecca Solnit, who pushes outside of tradition and convention, ringing the bell of wakefulness through her writing and speaking. Here at the temple, she literally prepares to ring the bell. Her words and work send out powerful calls. Remember the temple bell poem from Eihei-ji?

One more important woman, since I am featuring women in this post. Molly Crockett is not a writer in the usual sense but a scientist of the first degree, pushing the envelope in the study of ethics, knowledge, and power, areas that are literally of survival value at the moment. She surpasses any man I know in the cognitive sciences. She is now at Princeton, having trained at Oxford and taught at Yale. Her postdoctoral work was with economists and neuroscientists at the University of Zurich and University College London.

All these women are making a difference, and all were called together by Joan Halifax, another woman still making a difference. I bow to them all.

Eventually we finished our visit and had lunch. As we were leaving, there was the requisite Japanese tradition of bestowing gifts on the host. Here we see Kaz and Kimkio Bokra, our trip coordinator and translator, along with Roshi and the Abbot.

Tomorrow we check out of our hotel in Kanazawa and head to Kyoto. There are several stops along the way to take in more beauty and cultural heritage, more history, and as-yet-undiscovered surprises.

With love,
Flint

P.S. from the Upaya website

There are several stories about the powers invested in Chiyo-ni's haiku. According to one, the governor of Kaga had heard about Chiyo-ni's fame and once asked her to write haiku as gifts for some Korean envoys. Later, when he needed her to revive his garden's most beautiful cherry tree, which was ailing, he invited her to the palace. There she spontaneously composed this haiku:

spring will come again—
without flowers
you'll be firewood

To no one's surprise, the tree began to bloom again.

Excerpted from Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi.

D.T. Suzuki Museum in Kanazawa

Dear Ones,

We got to sleep in! Coming out of Eihei-ji, we needed the rest.

Beginning in Tokyo last week, we visited a very contemporary expression of the dharma at teamLab and then went to the very tourist-oriented temple at Asakusa. We also did a little shopping. Then on to Kamakura, with the Great Buddha, followed by both Kenchō-ji and Engaku-ji temples, where we met several amazing teachers. Finally, we traveled to Eihei-ji. No longer visiting and touring, we stayed overnight at the monastery and followed the schedule with the monks. This is the inflection point of the journey, where we begin coming back out of the mountains and the deep practice experience we had there. Our next stop is Kanazawa.

Our group gathered at 1:00 PM to visit the D. T. Suzuki Museum, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi. The architect (Taniguchi) and the man being honored (Suzuki) were both born and raised in Kanazawa. D. T. Suzuki was born in 1870 and moved to the US in 1897 to work for a publisher, translating Chinese texts. He did more than any other person to bring Zen into the English-speaking world. He trained at Engaku-ji in Kamakura, which we visited only a few days ago. His Essays in Zen Buddhism, a series of lectures at Columbia in the 1950s, and the personal relationships he cultivated with people like John Cage, Erich Fromm, Thomas Merton, and many of the Beat writers gave him a broad reach.

The museum, which opened in 2011, is a marvel. Taniguchi is the architect who was selected to complete a renovation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he has designed many impressive buildings around the world. I said to my fellow travelers that if there had been nothing in the building, I would still have been satisfied with my visit. It is not large, but it is exquisite. Maybe some of my images will give you a small feel for the spaces. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the part of the museum where the Suzuki artifacts and archives were displayed. Here are some images featuring not only the architecture but some of my fellow pilgrims.

With love,
Flint

Kaz entering the museum

Entry hall

Visitors waiting across the pond

Roshi Joan and Wendy in the contemplative space

Roshi’s two phrases to describe zazen posture:

Soft front

Strong back

Emerging from Eihei-ji

Dear Ones,

You may have noticed that there was no message from October 18 or 19. We were at Eihei-ji, following the schedule as guest monks, with no internet, limited phone service, and no time. It was a great honor to be there again after my last visit with Blanche Hartman and Mel Weitzman, led by Hoitsu Suzuki (Suzuki Roshi’s son, who is now Vice Abbot at Eihei-ji). This is home to our Soto lineage. Today we have been in Kanazawa, and I am trying to catch up. It is the halfway point, with Dogen being the inflection point in the middle.

Getting there from Kamakura was a “trip,” literally and figuratively. We took a bus from Kamakura back to the main train station in Tokyo. Those of you who regularly deal with massive train stations (New York, London…) are more familiar with this kind of situation, but it is always a bit overwhelming to me. We rode the Shinkansen, the bullet train, from Tokyo to Fukui Station. I did post a quick impressionistic image from Tokyo Station. This is how it felt to me.

The line we were on ran north through Nagano and the mountains (the Tateyama Range), then down to the Sea of Japan, and finally along the coast through Kanazawa (where I am now trying to finish up on Tuesday afternoon) into Fukui. We boarded yet another bus from Fukui Station to Eihei-ji.

Eihei-ji (Temple of Eternal Peace) was founded by Dogen in 1244. He had returned from China in 1227 and lived and taught near Kyoto. With an invitation from a local lord and pressure from the Tendai establishment, he moved everything to the mountains and spent the last decade of his life there. He was 43 when he came to this mountain site, and he lived to be only 53. He wrote most of the Shobogenzo while living there, but he died in Kyoto in 1253 while being treated for his illness.

There is much to learn about Dogen and the Soto school, so I will not attempt to offer anything comprehensive. Kaz Tanahashi, who is with us and who has translated the entire Shobogenzo, has spent more of his life translating Dogen than anyone currently alive. It is because of him that a great many English speakers have any access to Dogen at all. Roshi wrote to us: “You are walking into the building where these words were written, with the one person who carried them into your language. Whatever else happens on this trip, this is the center of it.”

I found Kaz contemplating a poster with Dogen’s portrait while he was waiting for everyone to arrive for the next activity. He then turned to offer instruction for what was next. Kaz is 93 and still going strong.

Because the monastery has been built into the hillside for seven centuries, seemingly endless stairways connect the buildings, built in the most beautiful ways.

One of the important things to remember is that we are on pilgrimage, sensing deeply what it is like to enter these places and meet these people along the way. Here is one of our group walking in the forest on the Eihei-ji grounds, looking a lot like the pilgrims of old.

Having arrived, we slept dormitory-style on the floor of a tatami room, with a futon and pillow. The men were in one room together and the women in another. We set our alarms for 4:30 AM for morning zazen, followed by the full Eihei-ji service in the Buddha Hall. Photographs weren’t allowed in that space at that time, but I can say that it was a profound experience.

As a transmitted priest, I was ushered onto the “inner” tatamis in the Buddha Hall during the elaborate, formal service, along with Roshi Joan, Dainen, and three other priests in our group. We were sitting (kneeling, really, for most of an hour-long service, only getting up now and then to do full bows) with the other older priests in brown and gold robes. There were around 150 monks in training, and the many officials and teachers all surrounded us. It was an experience outside of time. It is also done. No need to go back. I was there 28 years ago as a much younger man, and now, at almost 75, I don’t feel I need to return. But this special visit on pilgrimage was a moment I will always remember.

There was a Dogen museum in the visitors’ center. There were many things of interest, but one that brought me to tears was the original Fukanzazengi, written in Dogen’s hand on one long scroll. Seeing it somehow made it real in a way that learning about it and reading translations does not match. Here are images from the two ends of the scroll.

An astonishing piece in the museum was Dogen’s “backpack.” This is the original one he took on his famous, life-changing trip to China. It seems impossible that he could have carried it, but apparently it held what he needed. I wish I had taken another photo from the side so you could get a better sense of its size. It is as deep as it is wide: a very big wooden box. The picture behind the backpack shows the route Dogen took on his pilgrimage to China.

This is the oldest known portrait of Dogen, which I am sure many of you have seen reproduced. It is so amazing to see the original.

As we were leaving, we walked along the stream that flows through the beautiful gardens and cemetery. I have had the great privilege of practicing at Eihei-ji with two of the most influential women in American Zen: Blanche Hartman Roshi and Joan Halifax Roshi. Roshi Joan was invited to give a lecture to the monks the first night we were there. We were not allowed to attend, but for a woman to address this monastic assembly is a very rare thing. Here the two of us are in front of a rather odd statue of Dogen with hair. I don’t actually know the story.

And finally, Roshi Joan approached the large temple bell. Dainen helped her up the steps on the side onto the platform so she could sound the bell.

Last night, as I began working on this post, I got a call from Dainen saying everyone was waiting for me in what we call the “Enso,” essentially a check-in circle we convene every few days. I had completely forgotten and was embarrassed to be late. I had been working on a poem inspired by the bell and what it means to be on pilgrimage, especially the edges we meet along the way. Once I arrived in the room with everyone else, Roshi asked us to go around and speak to what was most alive for us and what edges we had encountered so far. This was what I had been writing about! Very strange how these things go. I didn’t share the poem because it was not finished, but here it is for you now.

Much love, as always,
Flint

The Temple Gate

A great bell waits at the entry gate.
If struck, a deep call is sent out.
A powerful sound,
something more akin to gravity,
invisibly pulling us toward the threshold,
beckoning us to enter the sacred space,
carrying our vulnerable longings
and hidden fears with us.

The bell’s echo penetrates
the deep well of silence
left by those who
have come before us.
The sound goes out further,
nudging the shadows of those
still waiting to arrive.
But if we are still enough
and silent enough,
we might hear
their whispered voices
and feel their tender presence
already abiding in our own hearts.

We are not always able
to simply turn toward the call
and step through
the open gate with ease.
Pausing, we are also unable —
or unwilling — to turn away,
to deny the call of the bell.
No, we’ve arrived at the thin place
between birth and death,
hesitating to enter
the frightening places
that could save us,
knowing we must eventually cross
the turbulent threshold
where love and loss collide,
to face what we must face,
to do what we know we have to do.

No matter, someone must eventually step
onto the platform if the bell is to speak.
Bowing, and with ordinary human effort,
the heavy log must be set in motion.
Finally striking the bell,
the sound is sent out.

What is it signaling?

The willingness to carry on,
even when we know the disturbing truth
of impermanence and uncertainty.

The faith to continue to care for each other —
and ourselves —
even when emptied and discouraged.

The ability to love the life we have,
even as everything changes suddenly
and without warning.

The temple gate remains open.
The great bell waits.

Can you hear it?

Old Temples, New Approaches

Dear Ones,

We remained in Kamakura for another day and planned visits to two very old temples led by two very contemporary teachers with innovative ideas. But first, Rebecca Solnit invited all of us to participate in the “No Kings” demonstration from Japan. We met at the large Torii Gate just outside our hotel and took some photos to post back to the US, letting people know we were supporting the activities of the day. Several Japanese people stopped to cheer us on. Rebecca knows how and where to post these things so we followed her lead. These are a couple of the images.

Here is how large the gate is. We are dwarfed under it.

Here we are lined up. Terry Tempest Williams is holding the “K” and Rebecca Solnit is holding the “I.” Roshi Joan is between and just behind them. Molly Crockett is holding the “N” and the “G” is held by Kimiko Bokura, our organizer and teacher of mindful leadership for Google and other companies both in Japan and the US. You can see me peeking above the “O.”

Now, back to the previously scheduled pilgrimage. We began with a walk to Kenchō-ji, the oldest Zen training monastery in Japan. Interestingly, the founding abbot was a Chan master from Sichuan (in China) who came to Japan in 1246 and never went home. So Japan's first proper Zen monastery was founded by a Chinese immigrant, at the invitation of a Japanese warlord, using a Chinese blueprint, in a foreign language. Zen in Japan began as a transplant.

We were told that the layout is the teaching. The temple is built on a strict Song-dynasty axis: the outer gate, then the Sanmon (“Mountain Gate” or main gate within the temple), then the Butsuden (Buddha Hall), then the Hatto (Dharma Hall), then the abbot's quarters, all in a straight line up the valley. Almost every Japanese temple is arranged around a courtyard or scattered on a slope. This one is a spine. We could stand at the bottom and look up at it all before walking it. Something special is met right away as you enter.

There are juniper trees in front of the Buddha Hall, grown from seeds which were brought from China by the founder in his monk's bag. The trees are around 750 years old and stand as buddhas themselves, hence the bow from me. There is a second photo of the tree with Terry Tempest Williams. Please read her latest book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, and you will know why these trees caught her eye (and mine). It has to do with the controversy surrounding the removal of the "Divinity Oak" at Harvard Divinity School where she taught for many years.

We were there to meet Rev. Fujito, the abbot at a small temple close by and a man revered by Kenchō-ji's own abbot. He is cherished in Japan for sitting with people contemplating suicide. This is important because Kenchō-ji, the monastery, stands on a former execution ground and enshrines Jizō in the Buddha Hall — not Shakyamuni Buddha — as the figure on the main altar. Jizō is the bodhisattva who declines to remain in comfortable heaven and instead walks down into hells, not to remove anyone out of their suffering, but to keep them comfortable inside it. This is a description of the job that is done regularly by the monk who was hosting us. Here is Roshi Joan introducing us to Rev. Fujito.

Rev. Fujito spent most of the morning talking about his work with all kinds of people approaching death, and demonstrating the embodied practices that he uses with these people for whom zazen is not an appropriate or possible practice. Like Issho Fujita the day before, he was about embodiment.

We then walked to Engaku-ji, founded by another Chinese master in 1282. We were taken through the entire complex, with special access to places that not all of the monks are permitted to go. One of those places is the Relics Hall, a National Treasure, and the finest surviving example of the Chinese-derived Zen architecture. Here, one of the senior monks is pointing out details of this very old and very special building.

We also were shown the house where D. T. Suzuki and his wife lived. Suzuki is buried on the grounds of the temple as well. The Abbot of Engaku-ji, Nanrei Yokota Roshi, was a delightful man, very flexible in his training methods, open to change, and yet upright and clear about real training. Here he is sitting in a bit of light in the new zendo which is still under construction. I just happened to capture the moment.

Tomorrow we leave early for Eihei-ji on the Shinkansen — the Bullet Train. When we arrive at Dogen's temple we will join the monks for practice and sleep in the training quarters for one night.

For now, the light is fading as we depart Engaku-ji and it is time to return to the hotel, have dinner and pack for Eihei-ji.

My best to everyone,
Flint

The Great Buddha of Kamakura – Kōtoku-in

Dear Ones,

Today we left our hotel early in small buses to visit the bronze Amida Buddha of Kamakura, which was cast around 1252, the year before Dogen's death. It is about 44 feet tall and weighs around 121 tons. It was originally housed in a great hall which was destroyed more than once, and around the end of the 15th century the rebuilding stopped and the Buddha has since sat in the open air for over 500 years. As a result, it sits in a magnificent space rather than in a dim building, and has developed a patina that is lovely.

This is how the Buddha appeared today.

We were invited to notice certain things. The face is angled slightly down, so the gaze meets you at standing height as you approach. The proportions are subtly distorted, with the head being oversized and the torso compressed, corrected for the human view from below. Roshi Joan said, "It is a piece of engineering designed around your body's position, seven hundred years before you got there."

The hands are another thing we were instructed to notice. The mudra is the meditation gesture, thumb tips touching, and the whole posture is one of settled downward weight. This image is not in the act of teaching or doing anything else. It is just sitting, a prelude to what we were to experience in the afternoon.

This is what it looked like as I got closer.

We discovered that you can actually go inside the great statue. It is quite another world inside. Very industrial, and you can see all the seams which were used to piece together all of the sections of the great bronze statue, as well as reinforcements which were added after a major earthquake in 1923. It is a hollow bronze shell, another part of the teaching we received. Roshi Joan said before we scattered to enjoy the entire complex, "You might want to go inside the buddha, although we are always with Buddha, and the Buddha is in us. The image is a shell which you can enter, but you are the living being of the Buddha."

Here is a glimpse inside as one of our group reached up to touch the heavy bronze.

On a very personal note, many of you are aware of the appearance of a hawk that was significant around Erin's death. I will copy my poem about it below if you are not familiar with the stories. As I approached the Great Buddha, a hawk appeared and began circling high above the statue and the adjoining hillside. I was stunned to see it. It made several passes and then departed, an auspicious sign for me. I was able to capture one image of the hawk and I overlaid it with the image of the Buddha (double "exposure"). This is the result:

While we were still in the shadow of the Great Buddha, Kaz Tanahashi explained more of the history of where we were at the moment.

Roshi Joan then gave us a preview of where we were going next and the wonderful monk we were about to meet.

We loaded up again and traveled to a private rural retreat of Rev. Issho Fujita, a dharma brother of Shohaku Okumura, whose work many of you know. They were both students of Uchiyama Roshi, whose book, Opening the Hand of Thought, is very familiar to many of us.

This is what we were told to expect. "The thing to know walking in is that he has spent decades teaching shikantaza to Westerners, which has forced him to articulate things more traditional Japanese teachers don't speak about in an embodied way. He is adamant that zazen is not a method for producing enlightenment; zazen is enlightenment taking the shape of a person sitting. This is straight Dogen. The literal translation of shikantaza is 'hitting the mark of sitting, nothing but.' No object of concentration. No breath counting. No koan. Nothing to do and no way to check whether you are really doing it. It is the most austere practice in Zen and the one most likely to make a new practitioner feel they are likely failing. You are not failing. There is no exam."

Issho-san is lively and funny. Upon arrival, Rebecca Solnit was standing with the group and he looked over and said, "Oh, you are Rebecca Solnit!" She replied, "How did you know who I am?" He immediately said, with a great laugh, "Because you are famous (in his thick Japanese accent) and I have read your books." She had come prepared to gift him with her latest book. This was the moment.

I took a few more photographs as he began to teach outdoors before we had lunch and went to his little temple for zazen and more teachings. I was playing around and made another double image because I had captured a moment of him both extending his hands and immediately turning them back toward himself. I liked the juxtaposition of these two gestures. Then later in his lecture he spoke about Dogen's three domains of practice being Release, Receive and Appreciate. Here is the image with the teachings, which he had me airdrop to him via our iPhones. A very contemporary monk!

Another full day. I hope I am not burdening you with too much. The pilgrimage is rich and deep and joyful.

With palms together,
Flint

P.S. Here is The Hawk poem which I promised. It will be part of my upcoming collection of poems, Flowers Fall, which I hope to have available by Spring. I will keep you posted on the publishing release date. I have included an endorsement which is very kind and generous. It was written by a poet many of you know. Some of you may also know that she lost her teenage son to suicide several years ago.

"With vulnerability and great courage, Flint Sparks guides us into the tender terrain of loss. I am humbled, broken open, and blessed by this book, by the honesty, the raw ache, the deep devotion, and the fierce willingness to be present while companioning a loved one through their death. So beautiful, this love. So devastating, this grief. So human, so real, so generously shared, this story."

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Wonderment and host of The Poetic Path

The Hawk

The hawk arrived
as he was leaving.
With flared wings,
talons reaching
for the perch,
it came to rest
as if having been called
by his ragged breathing.
A magnificent
and mysterious
meeting.

Perched as a steadfast
witness on the crown
of the larkspur pine
outside the north facing window,
the great bird held vigil,
the embodiment of
attentive stillness.

Indigenous wisdom
tells of the hawk
accompanying the soul
from this world
to the next.
And so it seemed.
Waiting patiently,
the hawk silently departed
as everyone gathered
at the bedside
and he took
his final breath.

On graceful wings,
disappearing into
the late morning sky,
Erin followed into
the great mystery.
Two elegant feathers
were left behind
at the base of the tree.
Totems of the great leap.

Two more visits
completed the holy trinity.
His ashes were interred
and a graveside memorial
observed three months later.
The hawk appeared,
circling the old church
and family burial grounds
as we spoke our final words
and the remains entered the earth.

Another three months passed.
The family gathered once again,
this time to dedicate
the elegant stone
marking his ashes site.
High above, the hawk appeared,
gliding effortlessly on invisible
currents as if circumambulating
a sacred altar.
Three graceful arcs were inscribed,
as silent testimony
to the passing
of a great being;
the final consecration
of a beautiful life.

Moving from Tokyo to Kamakura on the pilgrimage

Dear Ones,

Today was very full. We checked out of our hotel Thursday morning and took a very nice bus to Sensō-ji, Tokyo’s oldest temple. Here is part of the founding story which is quite interesting. In March, 628, Hinokuma Hamanari and his brother Takenari were fishing in the Sumida River. Bringing in their net, they were surprised to see that it held one statue . They realized they had somehow snagged a statue of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, also called Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan. After this, Hinokuma devoted himself to Buddhism. He made his house into a temple and devoted the rest of his life to worship and holding memorial services for this statue. In 645, a Buddhist priest named Shokai came to this region and built a hall for the Kannon. Following a revelation he received in a dream, Shokai decided to hide the statue from view. Since that time, it has remained and has never unveiled. It was thought that revealing the statue in a public way was a kind of violence against it, so it continues to be held in a sacred vault in the main temple. 

Today, we were allowed inside the temple, into places visitors do not usually go, and we were taken through some of the beautiful gardens one the ground of the temple.It was a powerful experience to all stand in front of the enormous altar, behind which was the vault holding the sacred statue, and chant the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo. The Buddha Hall was spectacular. We were not allowed to photograph inside the temple, but here are a few  random images that ight interest you and with will give you a feel for the temple grounds. There are many images online if you want to see more.

One of the fierce protectors at the main gate.

There were so many architectural and garden details that caught my eye.

The gardens were astonishingly beautiful.

We then re-boarded the bus for a 90 minute drive to Kamakura, the place where Zen arrived in Japan. After checking into our hotel we all waked to the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, the spiritual and physical center of Kamakura. Again, there are beautiful pictures and descriptions of the temple and shrine online. The approach is interesting, a raised path called the Dankazura, built by one of the early powerful leaders of Japan, as a prayer for his wife. It subtly narrows as it goes toward  shrine, an old trick of forced perspective that makes the shrine look farther away and the walk seem longer. We were deliberately slowed down, and we made the walk at dusk, the traditional way pilgrims meet Kamakura. Here are some impressions I captured on our walk.

The entry to the Dankazura, the walkway to the shrine.

Evening sun reflected in one of the great lanterns at the entry to the shrine

Roshi Joan leads us in the purification ritual done before entering the shrine

Sandals waiting for the monk to return

Evening architectural detail

I hope these small descriptions and reflections help you feel like you are participating in the pilgrimage. There is more to come. We meet the Great Buddha of Kamakura tomorrow, cast in the mid-thirteenth century.

With a warm bow,

Flint

Being Actualized by the Myriad Things

Dear Ones,

On our first full day we plunged into a contemporary world of art and technology which reflected the deepest and most ancient teachings. I am going to transcribe some copy from our "Pilgrimage Companion" book about the exhibit. To know more about the place we visited you can go online to teamLab.

From our Pilgrimage Companion…

teamLab Planets Tokyo

Opened in 2018 as a temporary exhibition and repeatedly extended by demand, teamLab Planets holds the Guinness record as the most-visited museum devoted to a single artist or collective. It has become one of the most visited art spaces on earth. It is currently scheduled to run through the end of 2027. It is a collective of artists, engineers, mathematicians, animators, and architects, and their governing idea is stated plainly in their work: the boundary between the viewer and the artwork is a fiction, and so is the boundary between one artwork and another. They call the pieces here "body-immersive." You enter barefoot. You wade through water to the knee. You walk on a floor of mirrors, then cross a room filled with enormous spheres, and the space deforms around your body while your body deforms the space for everyone else in it.

The intellectual claim underneath this is not decoration. teamLab has said, in various forms, that modern life has trained us to move through flat, hard, rectilinear surfaces until we forget that the body has a consciousness of its own. The installations are designed to give that consciousness back to you by making the ground uncertain: water, mirror, softness, light that responds.

What to notice: In Floating Flower Garden, the orchids rise as you approach and descend behind you, so that you are always standing in a small clearing that exists only because you're there. In the water room, the koi are generated in real time and dissolve into flowers when they touch you; nothing is on a loop, and nothing you see will happen again. If you want a Dogen entry point, that's it: this one, unrepeatable, and then gone.

The resonance: Placing a digital art museum on day two of a Zen pilgrimage is a deliberate move, and a good one. "To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things" is not a metaphor here; it is more or less the operating instruction for the building. The ancient wooden temples later in the trip make the same argument with different technology.

My experience: It is hard to put into words. The exhibit asks you to surrender your body to the experience you enter and to relinquish thinking while, at the same time, maintaining uprightness and respect for the others immersed in the experience around you. Sound familiar? It is dazzling, mesmerizing, de-centering and brilliant. As always, here are a few images.

Descending into a new world. The practice of descending into the dark.

Wading through water that responds to your movement with beautiful and colorful movement of its own. Your colorful waves then interact with the waves of the others; mutual causality.

A cathedral of infinite points of light (long LED strings in an immense labyrinth with mirrored floors). You can't quite tell where the edges are and yet you are spellbound as the light changes and the perceived immensity of the space swallows you.

A cathedral of infinite points of light (long LED strings in an immense labyrinth with mirrored floors). You can't quite tell where the edges are and yet you are spellbound as the light changes and the perceived immensity of the space swallows you.

The spheres respond to your touch, changing colors and position as everyone moves through the space.

It was very difficult to walk in this room. You see people sitting or lying on the floor. The room was perfectly stable, but your perception was that it is moving. What is the truth?

Prehistoric animals prowl the forest in which you walk.

The living orchid garden you walk through rises up slowly in response to your slow walking, like kinhin, making space for you if you don't rush. The floors and walls are mirrored, so the garden is immense. It was Erin's heaven.

Resting and having something to eat and drink at the end. Not disparaging others ("glass houses!") and sitting at the Emptiness Table, being nourished by the world.

With palms together, Flint

The Beginning

Dear Ones,

After a relaxing time in the ofuro early this morning and some enthusiastic shopping with friends in the Ginza, I took a brief nap and then wrote in my journal. On our shopping excursion I was introduced to Itoya, a store like nothing I have ever seen. There were 12 stories of stationery, writing instruments and desktop objects. Very dangerous for those of us who love these kinds of beautiful things. I didn’t get in too much trouble but found a new fountain pen and a special mechanical pencil. There is a picture below of the entrance to the building.

Today everyone has finally arrived, and in less than an hour we all gather for the first time to officially begin the pilgrimage. This is what came this afternoon, writing with my new pen.

The Pilgrimage of No Beginning and No End

We say we gather tonight to begin,
a circle of beings outside of body time,
both weary and joyful,
known and unknown to each other,
preparing to take our first shared steps.

But are these really the first steps?
Is this our true beginning?
So many of us having been shaped
by prior shared experiences,
and many of us formed by practices
handed down through the
succession of ancestors —
the true pilgrims of the past.
Were they our beginning?

Whatever path we've taken along the way,
our eyes may have been opened a bit,
hidden places in our hearts revealed,
renewed — even healed —
but would we say all of that came before?
Or were those moments the true beginning — of Now?

Our practice of stillness and silence
has no beginning and no end,
one breath simply follows another,
until there is no breath at all.
Would no-breath be the end?
Was our first breath the beginning?
Or was that cry the end of
everything that came before?

No matter, we've been given this gorgeous, unfathomable life,
the true pilgrimage with no beginning and no end.
Still embodied, we vow to take the next step — together.

Resting and recovering

Dear Ones,

To sustain oneself on an extended journey, being able to rest and recover are both essential. I am not so good at this, so I am meeting a personal edge which, if practiced in a wholesome manner, allows for restoration of body and mind. I arrived a day earlier than most people in order to recover from the travel and be ready to enjoy what the pilgrimage has to offer.

Our group is gathering at the LaVista Tokyo Bay Hotel to officially begin the pilgrimage on Tuesday, October 13. It is already getting dark here on Monday evening around 6PM as I type this message. I have a beautiful view from my room, one that is helping me simply sit and enjoy looking out over the city and the bay. I’ve been taking long walks and short naps, enjoying the great weather, and eating such amazing sushi. We are next door to the Tokyo fish market, the largest in Japan, so the fish is as fresh as you can get.

I took a picture early this morning and another just now from my window in the hotel. The pictures aren’t the main thing, but they are reminders of the cycles that make up our impermanent, interdependent lives — night and day, inhaling and exhaling, birth and death, light and dark. Each day of pilgrimage will have its own cycle and as a group we will find our rhythm, a temporary chosen sangha.

Once we are all here and begin our shared journey tomorrow, I am not sure how much time I will have to send messages like this, but for now I want to send my love and show you the view — both from very early this morning (5AM) and now just over 12 hours later, in the evening. This is where I have been sitting.

With love,
Flint

Departure and Arrival

Dear Ones,

Yesterday was the beginning — a long travel day from New Mexico to California to Japan. Everything was on time and went smoothly. I am now sitting in my hotel, very early in the morning, although my body thinks it is afternoon, taking time to let you know the pilgrimage has begun. I have one small poem, written in the Admirals’ Club in Los Angeles before boarding the flight to Tokyo, and one image I was surprised to get as we approached for landing at Haneda airport.

My very best to all my companions on the Way,
Flint

Stepping off the Curb

— 10-10-26, LAX

Standing quietly at the curb
in the stillness and chill
of early morning darkness,
with my luggage as my only companions,
I waited for my ride.

What I may have forgotten
is simply forgotten.
One has to eventually commit,
despite the inevitable uncertainties.
What is to come has yet to arrive.

Then stepping off the curb,
as if pulled by an invisible force
from the headlights of the approaching car
that will take me to the airport —
it was time.

Such an ordinary, everyday step.
And yet…

Every real pilgrimage begins
with an ordinary, human step
through an invisible threshold
in the night.

Mt. Fuji appearing through the clouds…

Retreat opportunity in 2022

Dear Friends,

Just as things seem to be contracting again during the newest wave of this pandemic, I wanted to offer a bright spot on the horizon and something to look forward to for the coming year. Each in-breath is filled by an out-breath in the endless cycle of change in our lives.

As many of you know, Donna Martin and I have led retreats in Hawaii since 1999. After twenty years of teaching at Hui Ho’olana we decided to discontinue organizing and managing these retreats. However, we still feel like we have something to offer and we have generous and committed students who have offered to assist in organizing another retreat. We have also heard from many of you who have asked for another opportunity to be with us, especially after the particularly barren time we have all lived through over the past 18 months. We will be returning to the Hui in May of 2022 assuming the pandemic has shifted sufficiently by that point.

The retreat is titled Hakomi as Spiritual Practice and will be a body-centered week of relational practices founded in mindfulness. We will have periods of meditation, mindful movement, interpersonal exploration, and deep internal work, all focused on living with more freedom and choice. We expect there to be Hakomi practitioners interested in continuing their training experience with me and Donna, Zen students looking for a deepening of their spiritual practice, and people from many other disciplines who have studied and practiced with us in the past and who long to return to the Hui. Whatever the motivation, all are welcomed, and I trust that the group will become a gathering of those who are called to this particular time and space to be nourished and renewed.

Donna and I are not in charge of registrations, but for more information about details or to register, please follow the link here: https://www.hakomicascadia.com/retreat-hakomi-as-spiritual-practice

With our warmest aloha,

Flint

What is the point?

Q:  A friend recently asked me an important question and wondered if you could shed some light. She asked, what is the point of living? … (she) wondered if all is perfect then why create or manifest humanity? Are we trying to work through something? which of course suggests imperfection. Perhaps you have a suggested reading?

This is such an important question today as we face unimaginable change, losses seemingly on every front, the swirl of fear and uncertainty, a profound erosion of care, and yet we also see immense creativity, a deep commitment to shared generosity and basic goodness,…and much more.

“What is the point.” we sometimes ask, as we veer between nihilism or despair on one hand and fantasies of protection and the many forms of grasping hope on the other. Is there a way to understand our everyday, grounded practice as it relates to this huge question — what is the point — and how does it bear on our lives now?

Remember, spiritual practice, and Buddhist practice in particular, is not about creating new ways to solve problems. Our practices help us open to a more wise and compassionate space from which we can respond creatively to our inevitable and unending problems. Zen practice won’t give you a new solution. It will, however, shape and inform how you come to every solution and reminds you that every solution is provisional. 

Here is what I wrote…

A: As to your friend’s question, “What is the point of living?” The point is to live. We are given this amazingly miraculous thing called “a life,” so we have a responsibility to take care of it and to care for each other—to care for all things that have been given a life. I don’t have the capacity nor inclination to tackle the larger philosophical or theological issues surrounding your question. People have been speculating about these big questions for as long as people have been given lives, and I sense that a good deal of the philosophizing is done out of a vulnerable and fearful attempt to face the existential question of existence in a way that will give them some ground to stand on or some assurance that they are doing the right thing or going in the right direction. In our spiritual search, we want answers that will console us, or at least ones that offer us something, rather than nothing.

The Buddha refused to answer most of these kinds of questions, not because they were not important, but they were not the essential questions that would help inform and guide a life. The question you pose in your note, along with the additional query from your friend, “if it is all perfect, then why create or manifest humanity?” includes some pretty important assumptions. Things are “perfect,” meaning they are a perfect manifestation of all the causes and conditions that went into manifesting each thing and each moment. Things are not perfect in some ordinary way of matching human preference from a self-referenced perspective. Obviously, many terrible things happen, seemingly daily, and these are also perfect manifestations of the causes and conditions that went into manifesting them. Human beings are part of that perfection—part of that manifestation—not some separate aberration set aside from “nature” which can be romanticized as “perfect.” Each of us are also a perfect result of everything that went in to making us. This is the foundation of the natural world and it is also what we chant in our confession and repentance [All my ancient twisted karma…]. 

Our lives on this earth are temporary and precariously balanced along with everything else, and we are also likely to become perfectly extinct as a species if we allow our self-centered minds and egoic desires to rule. We humans are supremely creative and also ruthlessly destructive, but those are just human creations — linguistic descriptors of perfect actions (i.e. naturally interdependent, arising as mutual causation), but offered from a single person’s individual viewpoint. Remember — awakening is stepping beyond a personal viewpoint.

The universe is an equal opportunity employer—everyone gets a chance—but everyone and everything has to play by the rules, which means that no matter what we think or wish, everything always effects everything else, intimately and without end. So, it is probably a good idea to be awake to what we do and to the consequences of how we are doing it — how we live our lives. And herein lies a response to your friend’s question. The point is to live a life in the service of life. Our purpose is to support and cherish this miraculous existence so that the ongoing perfection of impermanence and mutual causality, the contingent flow of dependent origination, this vast web of one-thing arising, might be wholesome and generative to all. We are all part of the game and how we play it matters. There is only one thing happening, and it looks like this!

Of course, I am making my own assumptions in my reply—that there is no master manipulator calling the shots. There may or may not be some divine direction, but that is not what we are discussing here and it open up an additional discussion that is not required now. The lawful interdependence of everything is what is in charge. The dharma might be called the guiding energy of “god" or “great spirit” or “universal mind.” But, these are, again, additional human descriptions of what is always and already happening anyway. There is no perfect existence which exists out there which is then spoiled by humans. Humans do spoil things but that is part of the immense fullness of existence, including clumsy and brilliant humans, and we are not more or less important than anything else in nature. However, because we have been given these big brains which can imagine and create almost anything, we do have an enormous impact on each other and everything else on the planet. So we have an immense responsibility to wake up. The point is to pay attention, to care, to love, and to be humble in the face of it all. Ultimately, we don’t really know.

With a respectful bow,

Flint

P.S. You can also see and hear my offering of this at online Inquiry: September 8, 2020

The Shock of Vulnerability

Throughout my life I have been blessed with relatively good health and vitality. I have decent genes and come from good stock, for which I am exceedingly grateful. As a college student, my father was a record-setting athlete in track and field, and has remained physically active into his 70s. As a young girl, my mother was an energetic ranch-hand working cattle right alongside my grandfather. She has always been hearty and healthy, from a long line of women who typically live into their 90s. As a result, I have lived most of my life with an uncritical assumption that I, too, would remain healthy and active without any extraordinary effort on my part, and that I would naturally look and feel more youthful than my chronological age. Of course, this set of assumptions is really a kind of self-centered entitlement, completely in accord with our society’s preference for youthful bodies and infinite good health, a form of clinging that has set me up for a certain kind of painful fall as things have begun to crumble. As they say, “aging is not for sissies.”

When this kind of grandiosity or entitlement is confronted by undeniable experience, therapists call it a “narcissistic injury.” It is a terrible shock to confront one’s messy humanity and to realize that this very special self you have cultivated and protected for so long is not so special after all. It is embarrassing and painful to be ordinary and vulnerable. It can also be a big relief.

The first time I went to San Francisco Zen Center as a guest student I was thrilled and nervous at the opportunity to practice in such a well-known and historical center. I had planned the trip for over a year, had carefully designed a way to take the time off from my therapy practice, had negotiated with my partner to be gone for a week, and had read everything I could about the Zen Center and its history. I had made it a big deal. The second day I was there I was given a soji assignment (a temple cleaning job) following morning service. My job was to vacuum the residents’ lounge. I found the vacuum cleaner and began doing the job in the way I thought an enthusiastic Zen student should. At one point as I reached over to pick up and move a rather large chair in order to clean the area it covered, I was thinking about how cool it was to finally be at Zen Center after so much fantasizing about the trip, and how much I was going to learn by being in this wonderful place with these wonderful teachers. As I lifted the chair, something unpleasant happened in my back. I felt something like an electrical shock in my lower back, immediately followed by muscle spasms. I was unable to straighten up without intense pain. I somehow managed to slowly become upright enough to drag myself, along with the vacuum cleaner, back to the closet. I was then able to sneak down to the men’s dorm in the basement without attracting too much attention. to myself. I lay down on my bed and pondered my situation.

Here I was, just beginning my special week and I was flat on my back. I knew this wouldn’t just go away and I was slightly panicked. I also knew I couldn’t even pack my things and go home. I wasn’t able to sit on a plane in this condition. I was trapped and embarrassed. My body had betrayed me and I couldn’t escape this temporary disability nor could I leave and hide my embarrassment. I had to face THIS! My roommate came by and I solicited his help in going to the store and getting ibuprofen for the inflammation. He also took a note to both the Ino and the Work Leader to tell them the situation and then I just lay there – miserable and in disbelief.

My journal and pen were right by the bed and I found a small piece of paper I had been using for a bookmark. I wrote the following three phrases on the paper:

• SLOW DOWN

• PAY ATTENTION

• DON’T GIVE UP

After a while I rolled over onto the floor, got up on my hands and knees, and pulled myself to my feet using the desk as a crutch. I could walk if I remained very upright, but I couldn’t bow. I even found I could move around slowly and I could sit carefully in a chair, a big embarrassment for this enthusiastic beginner who was trying to sit on a zafu in full lotus. However, I could only do these basic things if I followed the three suggestions I had written on the paper. If I took my time, with very mindful attention, and didn’t get caught in my story or trapped by fear, I could keep going. Of course, I also had to rest and allow healing rather than trying to be the best beginning Zen student ever.

Throughout the rest of that week I had the opportunity to meet myself, and the challenges of this new practice, in ways that I had never anticipated. I couldn’t depend on my body as I could ordinarily. I couldn’t move about in habitual or unconscious ways. I had to be very focused and present in my body or I had a painful reminder that I just become distracted. I had never had such exquisite and precise help with practice before. This was not the teacher I had expected to meet at the San Francisco Zen Center, and yet I was intimately connected with what all the teachers would have suggested: enter practice through your body; be present with “things as it is”; let go of your preferences; study the self- centered dream and drop the clinging to that self. This list of practice recommendations could go on and, in fact, continues to this day.

Ten months later I returned to Zen Center to participate in my first seven- day sesshin. I carried that small piece of paper with me and put it on the altar in the room where I stayed. Each day of that difficult and wonderful week I was reminded to slow down, pay attention, and to not give up. These phrases helped me make my way through the sesshin and became important guides that have stayed with me. I began to have a visceral understanding of Pema Chodron’s phrase — “the wisdom of no escape.” I found myself backed into a corner with nowhere to turn except to follow the schedule of practice, The events which offered me this painful and useful opportunity were literally physical blows to my self-centered image of myself. I was shocked at how vulnerable I could feel and I began to wake up to the truth that simply by being alive we are always vulnerable, no matter what grandiose stories we have about ourselves. Actually, each day is a gift and a blessing, best met with gratitude. Our temporary bodies are miracles, the source of the most amazing pleasures and often very difficult pains. This is where we live – in this body. This is where we practice – with this body and mind. And this is what the young Gautama saw on his secret trips outside the palace; that everything wasn’t always beautiful and pleasant; that sickness, old age, and death are real and inevitable for everyone; and that the shock of this human vulnerability has the power to awaken us from the self- centered dream and liberate us from suffering if we slow down, pay attention, and don’t give up.

Living Renunciation

I wrote the following piece as a personal message to the students in my Practice Discussion groups last month (February 2019). It was a way to reflect on my own practice at the moment, and as such, it was an invitation for others to reflect on their own lives and practice. I hope it will serve as a similar invitation and prompt in your life.

Renunciation:
“The formal announcement that someone no longer owns, supports, believes in, or has a connection with something.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

“Renunciation is not giving up things of this world, but simply realizing that they all go away.” (Suzuki Roshi)

This series of images are a contact sheet from images taken during my priest ordination ceremony in April of 2001. Cassy Weyandt, the photographer and one of my longest students, later gave me a copy of these unedited photos. This particular sheet contains images of the private head shaving ceremony done is advance the formal public ceremony. At this stage in the process a very small bit of hair, about the size of a dime, is left on the back of the crown of the head. This is the shira, and is only shaved off by the Ordination Teacher during the formal part of the public ceremony. These acts of shaving the head, taking a new name (a Dharma name), and new clothes (the robes), are supposed to represent renunciation, ritual acts which “announce” that a person has severed their previous relationship with something (or, in this case, everything).

During the Tokudo ceremony (priest ordination; literally “leaving home and following the way”), there is a line that is chanted as the shira is taken off. This happens twice during the ceremony, one half of the shira removed each time until no hair remains. Here are the lines:

“Only the mind of a bodhisattva can cut through this drifting-wandering life and take the path of nirvana. This virtue cannot be defiled. Within our past, present, and future karma, the bonds of attachment are hard to break.”

The bonds of attachment are certainly hard to break. We all know this to be true, and if we live long enough we also come to know quite powerfully, and sometimes painfully, what the Buddha taught:

Everything coming together falls apart. Everything rising up collapses. Every meeting ends in parting. Every life ends in death. [Buddhist Scripture: Udanavarga 1.22]

In David Chadwick’s biography of Suzuki Roshi he recounts a night in the zendo at Tassajara after a lecture when David asked the old teacher, “Can’t you just put the whole of the teachings in a nutshell.” Unexpectedly and shockingly, Suzuki responded to the question: “Everything changes.”

But the lines from the ceremony point to much more that simple change. “Only the mind of a bodhisattva can cut through this drifting-wandering life and take the path of nirvana.” In other words, it is not enough to simply understand what the Buddha taught. Impermanence is actually not difficult to understand. These lines from the ceremony suggest that it only by living the Bodhisattva Vow is one then able to cut through the enchanting and entangling attachments of everyday life and take the path of freedom. Our karmic bonds are indeed hard to break.

In the midst of this chant there is a curious line: "This virtue cannot be defiled." Renunciation is not as act of virtue in itself. We have often been told that it is virtuous to renounce certain things (chocolate, alcohol, sex, money, TV, etc.). However, this unusual line of the head-shaving verse says that the Bodhisattva’s commitment to mutual awakening is full of virtue which cannot be defiled. In other words, we don’t create this virtue, but neither can we destroy it. You can turn away from this virtue and try to ignore it, but you also have the choice to enact and practice it for the remainder of your life. This is the practice of renunciation, the commitment to practice for the benefit of all beings, renouncing the “self-centered dream” as the unconscious organizing principle of this “drifting-wandering life.” You have the opportunity to bring forward and express this virtue.

By sitting zazen we enact renunciation. We take the posture of a Buddha and relinquish all other activities as we sit. We express what we can’t even conceive of, our nature as a Buddha, and it is said that the virtue of even one person’s zazen cannot be comprehended. In Bendowa (The Wholehearted Way), written by Dogen Zenji, he says: “…the zazen of even one person at one moment imperceptibly accords with all things and fully resonates through all time.” This is the virtue which cannot be defiled. I know some of this may sound strange or difficult to understand, but I am hoping that this helps you begin to ask yourself some important practice questions.

Where do I cling habitually? What are the bonds which are hardest to break.
What am I willing to let go of and what am I not?
How does my clinging get in my way or cause suffering for me or others around me?
Do I really have the faith that the Way of the Bodhisattva makes a difference in any way whatsoever?
Can I imagine that some virtue is my deepest and most enduring quality which cannot be defiled?
Do I really believe I will die? Not know intellectually, but know!

I, like many of you, have had to deal with the recent death of Mary Oliver. I find it hard to comprehend that she is no longer living. Aren’t her poems ample evidence of her existence? At the end of one of her classic poems, In Blackwater Woods, she writes:

Every year, everything
I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this:

the fires and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world you must be able
to do three things:

to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

“Everything leads back to this.” Love what you love as deeply as you can, down to the bone. This is an embodied, everyday vow of a bodhisattva. Realize that your life depends of all other life. This is why you must dedicate your life to others. This is the understanding of renunciation and impermanence.

I am facing these practice challenges now. I left Austin and I lost a lot in doing so. I thought I knew something about renunciation when I was ordained, in the images you see here, but I didn’t know it in my bones in the ways I do now. And I know that there is more to come. My parents and friends are moving toward death. I am moving toward death. I am aging and I am having to make hard choices about what I can do and want to do, and more importantly, what I can no longer do. It feels like one long string of losses, “whose other side is salvation” as Mary Oliver assures me. Continually turning toward these realities will save me/us from unnecessary suffering, but there is a cost.

In the midst of his poem The Layers, Stanley Kunitz writes:

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?

“How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses”? Sometimes it is tough to look back, as I am compelled to do from my hillside here in Hawaii. I am happy to be here. That is not the issue, but do you ever wince as you reflect on your past, feeling the sting of regret, the broken heartedness of loss, the indescribable beauty of special moments, the overwhelming gratitude and grace of real love, or the tangle of loves and losses which are inevitable? I have to take a very deep breath and “gather my strength to proceed on my journey.” Practice helps. Friendships help more. Things I worked so hard to accomplish all my life are now fading in the rear-view mirror. “I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon.” Things which used to be calling me forward are now fading in the distance, and the places and people which were central, like a campfire is central to a campsite, seem abandoned now, and that exquisitely beautiful line, so gorgeous and hard to bear, “over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.” I created a self, a life, an identity, a story, a reality, and attached to it as we all seem to do. My “affections,” my attachments, evolved as my “life,” are now scattered. What I thought was permanent, or at least solid, has been shown to be impermanent and flimsy. “How shall the hart be reconciled to its feast of losses?” This is our question.

Did you notice the grease pencil markings on a few of the images on the contact sheet? Cassy could see something interesting or important in some of the frames once she had printed them. Focusing on a more narrow portion of the whole suggested a new perspective — a fresh story or a better story, or somehow revealing the real story to her. I love seeing those marks. Some of us write poetry, some photograph, some journal, or paint, or sing. There are so many ways in which we take what life gives us and then shape it into a life's journey that we imagine is going to be good and real and satisfying. Practice shapes our lives over time and focuses our imagination in ways which reveal our true virtue. Without renunciation real life is not possible.

Empty handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going –
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
(Kozan Ichigyo, 14th century Zen monk)

Notes to Myself

So much has changed in the last year. I have let go of so much and embraced so many new challenges and opportunities. What follows are a few things that arose as I anticipated meeting with my Appamada practice discussion groups online earlier this month. I shared a very brief version of these reflections with the groups which convened online in July, but I decided to revisit my notes in preparation for resuming our beloved meetings and then decided to write a bit more in the hope of encouraging you to consider your “in-most request” as Suzuki Roshi would say, or your deepest desire for not only these precious meetings but everyday practice no matter where you are.

Truth be told, most of us long to simply reconnect, to catch up with each other, and to be reminded of the warm nourishment of mutual care which a sangha and spiritual friends afford. However, these simple points of practice may support us in remembering what it really means to sit together and open to the transformative potential of community. What is possible when we practice in a vibrant community with dedicated spiritual friends? Here are the things that came to me.

We start with the basics. We sit down, sit still, and settle into a generous silence. By continuing these practices over time we encourage each other to stick with it, and as we do we have a greater capacity to meet whatever arrives with more kindness and maybe a bit more patience. We practice paying attention to our body, our heart and mind, and in doing so we release that which binds us to the self-centered dream and separates us from the fullness of lives and from our love for each other. Through ongoing practice we are able to more fully integrate all that moves in us and between us, learning to embody the Bodhisattva’s Way.

Here are the notes I wrote for myself as reminders about practice essentials. They are things I needed to remember. You might consider your own essentials and make a list of your own important reminders.

1. The Willingness to Begin and the Perseverance to Continue
What are you willing to begin to do which you have previously avoided; to what have you been clinging which you are now willing to release; what do you now have the courage to meet given the support of your friends; and, what do you now see that you must turn away from or refrain from which you realize to be unwholesome?
Perseverance in the face of any challenge requires courage and constancy, two important qualities which can best be fostered through spiritual friendship.

2. Embodied Immediacy and the Discipline of Practice
- Intimacy with the present moment is foundational; we begin with attention to the body and we continually return to the body, all the while cultivating a capacity to witness our impermanent thoughts, feelings, inclinations, and entrancing stories.
- Mindfulness is a form of remembering — remembering to wake up within the present moment.
- Discipline is remembering what you want, not what you crave or fear.

3. Deepening and Letting Go
- Bearing witness to both our private inner world and our busy and complicated outer worlds, without being too caught up in the content of either world, allows us to rest more deeply in pure awareness. The contents of awareness are held more gently and are allowed to arise and pass away more easily with practice, especially if we refrain from manipulating and fighting with our minds.
- What is an “appropriate response?” What is called up in this body-mind by present moment circumstances? -- What is called for if we are to live by Precepts and the Bodhisattva Vow?

4. Integration and Opening to What Comes
- “Being just this moment” becomes understood as a natural and continual unfolding of our True Nature, not as an elevation of consciousness or any kind of specialness. In doing so we learn to step forward more fully into our gifts because they come to be seen as responsibilities and opportunities to serve.
- “Compassion’s Way” is more deeply understood as offering our attention and energies as care for each other as well as for ourselves.

I also encountered this wonderful set of instructions given by Patrol Rinpoche, a wise Tibetan teacher:
Don’t invite the future
Don’t prolong the past
Don’t fear appearances
Don’t disturb your innate wakefulness

My great friend Donna Martin once noticed that these very concise instructions are all couched in the negative. She suggested that we might consider what they would look like if they were transposed into invitations rather than as prohibitions. “Don’t invite the future” becomes, “Be here, now.” Further, “Don’t prolong the past” could also be stated, “Be here, now.” The instruction “Don't fear appearances” (not to get caught by our reactive constructs) would become, “Be here, now.” And, of course, the last warning, “Don’t disturb your innate wakefulness,” (the very essence of our True Nature) could also translate as “Be here, now.” All four admonitions or encouragements are essentially instructions for zazen — not leaning into the future, not clinging to the past, not overly identifying with thoughts and feelings, and not manipulating or disturbing our primary awareness which is already awake. We sit to express our nature which is that of a Buddha, not to achieve something extra or special.

If we have the willingness to begin again and again, and to persevere no matter what; if we commit to embodied immediacy and the discipline of mindful awareness, we find we can rest in the simplicity of our natural wakefulness. From this perspective we can discover, or maybe re-discover again and again, that we are actually generous resources for the world rather than needy demands on it. By practicing gratitude and humility, we are naturally more generous and kind. This is the Way we are when we are together in with our spiritual friends and practicing in a warm sangha. These are some of the qualities which call us back to practice and to each other, both giving and receiving spiritual and emotional nourishment, the necessary food of life.

With my warmest aloha,
Flint

P.S. Sometimes it is as important to stand together and look in the same direction than it is to turn to each other and look into each other's eyes.

I'm Awake! Now What? Podcast Episode #1

I recently completed a lively interview with Krista Xiamora on her podcast, "I'm Awake! Now What?" Episode #1 is linked here and I will post again once Episode #2 is online. You can also access the podcasts through iTunes. I hope you enjoy our conversation and I look forward to your comments. With love, Flint

I'm Awake! Now What? Podcast Episode #2

Here is the link to Episode #2 of the conversation with Krista Xiamora on “I'm Awake, Now What?” Once again, a reminder that these podcasts are also available on iTunes Podcasts. I hope you enjoy this second installment. With love, Flint