Day 1: Leaving Home

Today was the big day. I looked at the house I've enjoyed living in for more than a year, the one I thought I'd be living in for a while longer, for the last time as someone who lived there.

As the days led up to that moment, the physical reality of the situation has grown and grown but it will still be a while before I'm settled. This is definitely going to be a new experience. That's what I was expecting coming into it but I knew it would be nothing like what I'd expect.

It's been so weird to see new things in a familiar setting, familiar things in a new setting, and seeing what's going on in front of me as a new person. This will really take my idea of who this person is that I am to a very new place.

One of the first few days I was in orientation for my job, sitting in a conference room looking around and considering how alien it all was to me and how different it was to who I thought I was, I felt as if each moment I would wake up from the dream. I almost feel like that now, thinking I'll just remember that this isn't who I a really am and I'll just pop back to my old life.

But now it's here and so am I with nowhere to run.

There will be more responsibilities to come but for now I'm acting almost as a night watchman, making sure all the doors are locked in the evening and that the appropriate lights are either on or off.

There will be lots of zazen, ideally more than I'm comfortable with. I don't have that much of a problem with that since I've been slacking off in the last few months and it now should be a good time to utilize both aspects of the practice for insight and calming.

As I said, the gravity of what's going on in my life is really sinking in and I feel I haven't dealt with it enough emotionally. Between the changes in my personal life and the stresses of work, I'm really wound up but I can't feel it like I think I should. As I was sitting tonight I just wanted to get it over with and feel a good release but I know it doesn't work that way, it'll happen when it happens and I can only hope it does so at a convenient time.

For now each time I feel resistance to what lies ahead I remind myself it's only temporary and I will be stronger for putting myself through it, even more so if I do it with a smile in my heart.

I've really wanted to address how little all of this has really pulled me along by my emotions like I expected, but while I've been searching for a way to express it, it's kind of catching up with me.

I'll have to see how tomorrow goes and maybe I'll be able to address it a little more then.

Changes!

A lot has changed since my last post and a few more lie ahead as I'm transitioning from a major phase of my life. In chronological order, I've left the food service industry for auto sales which is about was about as a big a surprise to myself as to every one else in my life. The new hours have cut me free from my aikido practice which I miss dearly. I've also been unable to participate in the weekly activities of my sangha since I work 9 to 9 every Saturday.

So pretty much the three biggest things that have defined who I am as a person no longer do. More recently my longtime girlfriend and I are in the process of separating so there's another thing down in the list of who I am.

The circumstances of this last event have left me with the opportunity to ride out what's left of the lease on our house by practicing as a resident at the Zen Center which will begin later this week. I'm looking forward to this opportunity a great deal as things have lined up just right for it to happen.

Since the only real obligations I'll have will be practice and work and I won't have a television, I'm intending to get back into keeping this up and using it as a tool to examine the practice I'll be fully engaged in. I'll be pushing my practice further than I've been able to before since, aside from going to work for twelve hours a day, I'll be essentially in zen boot camp practicing with and living in a community setting.

So starting with what I have once again, I'll see what happens.

I Survived Ango and All You Get Is This Crummy Post

45 calender days is a really long time. We had Fridays off, but most days started at 5:15 am with an officer's meeting and didn't end until 9 pm with chanting the Three Refuges. Half day sits changed the schedule for Saturday and the last five days finished it all off with a sesshin, but every other day was spent in zazen, kinhin, soji, oryoki, services, dharma talks, study, and class. Just about a tenth of the year, and it was interesting.

A lot happened over those six weeks that didn't really sink in until it was almost over and I didn't get a chance to write about hardly any of it.

I received the precepts the second weekend, which was a huge event on its own but it was quickly lost in the blur of the following weeks. We had two priests ordained by my teacher come visit for a while back to back, the second of whose ordination I attended late last year. I sat down with him for an hour and we chatted around the theme of ceremony which I'll get to writing about later. We also hosted Brad Warner for a Dharma Punx organized retreat which was fun to attend and cook for. I also got to go out for breakfast with him with two other people one day, so that was cool. Rereading Hardcore Zen after so long was interesting. It's a chicken-or-egg type deal but the book really matches my current attitudes and I read it at an influential time in developing my practice. I had thought all these views were my own but now I'm not so sure. It doesn't matter, they are mine and I don't have them because someone said that I should.

We had two other guests that same weekend so the buildup was something else. The second is the founder of the Dallas Meditation Center and practices in Thich Nhat Hanh's Order of Interbeing. His style was quite different but I intend to get to know him better since his center is down the street from where my parents live in Dallas. (He was out of town when I was there for Father's Day)

As tenzo, my first practice period (and only third sesshin) had its own special challenges. Three meals were served nearly every day; oryoki breakfast and lunch with an informal dinner. During the week we ranged 6 to 10 participants with around 20 for Saturday breakfast.

I started out really organized, planning a week's worth of meals at a time with my own spreadsheet displaying which day, meal, and bowl's food, condiments, number of diners, and who would be preparing/helping prepare the meal. I made two shopping trips a week, one on our off day, Friday. Two dinners a week I was able to let someone else plan and prepare to give me a break.

All this time, I'd been re-reading sections of the Tenzo Kyokun for inspiration and insight and came across something funny. One part I'd always read without too much care is the section where Dogen outlines the day's activities for the tenzo. With my professional training and guidance from within the sangha it never really matched up with Dogen's instruction. As I settled into how I thought things should be done, I realized I was actually doing it the way Dogen suggests. Setting up and soaking the rice for breakfast at night, preparing lunch while breakfast cooks... it was nice.

Before my term in charge, meals were prepared a day in advance and the recipes were overly complicated. With my menu and experience I didn't have to do this. It made storage much easier and I had a greater degree of flexibility if something unexpected came up. Because of this the third week was almost entirely improvised off leftovers.

There were a couple points where the whole thing was getting old and I was ready for it all to be over with, but that's all part of practice. It's not all that different from sitting; once you're in it you have to see it though.

One thing that I really enjoyed about the practice period was it's intermediate nature between daily life and sesshin. Daily life (for me, especially while unemployed) is very dynamic with almost no structure. Sesshin is completely regimented with nearly every moment planned out. During Ango, each piece of the day was optional and we could come and go as our outside life needed. This allowed a daily blending of “lay” and “monastic” life whereas the two extremes usually exist pretty independently. Sesshin is also really short so as soon as you're really settled it's over. But as I said 6 weeks is a long time.

All of this makes for a powerful reminder that practice is all the time. The practice period really helps establish practice as a daily habit and six weeks provides a good amount of momentum.

I really enjoyed participating and intend to go into some more detail about some aspects of it soon.

Waking Up from My Dream and Being Angry About It

So after a few short weeks, I woke up from my dream job.  I should remember to never get a job working for owners who either aren't silent or aren't restaurant people.  It doesn't matter how great your crew is or how wonderfully they're led by the management, if the owners won't let go their ego in favor of the success of the business, it's doomed to fail. 

So here I find myself with two paths.

1 - Be pissed off, and for good reason.  This really was a dream opportunity.  I was coming into a restaurant that needed my particular skills.  It was a delightful atmosphere, very casual yet mature enough that things still got done.  The management was sincerely invested in every employees success and saw the greater picture.  After just long enough to start making plans for the future, like committing to cook three meals a day for my sangha for 45 days, around my work schedule, the chef that doesn't even work there told me my next scheduled day, I wouldn't be on the kitchen schedule. 

Not "we have to let you go, sorry," but, some lame story about how business is slow and they want to keep me around because I'm a quality employee but due to loyalty to other (less skilled or motivated) employees who don't know they should have asked for a raise because they deserve it, that I should talk to the front of the house manager about serving or bartending.  Other gems concerning the owners and a whole mess of trouble arose after that, but that's what I had to deal with then.

== OR ==

2. I see it for how it's benefited me.  I did make some new friends and had some fun in a cool environment.  I learned some new skills and recipes since I'd never worked as a prep cook before.  My interest in returning to the kitchen was renewed, whereas before I was dreading it as an obstacle to my graduation.  I also rekindled that spark from my first job of "the people in charge are irresponsible and/or stupid, I can do this better. What's stopping me?"  After taking it easy for so long I feel that assertiveness again.  This time I can taste the ability to actually help a restaurant prosper and grow, not just survive.

It also held time for me in a way.  I was able to get at least 3 weeks into the practice period before really having to get another job.  I could have gotten a different one that wouldn't have afforded me that option.  Being tenzo for Ango is more valuable to me in experience than any job I've had so far.  I really am behaving and working as a chef, not like a chef, but as a chef.  I'm planning daily menus once a week, putting together shopping lists and purchasing ingredients.  I'm also learning to delegate responsibility to make sure things get done when I'm not around, and have had to deal with the consequences of it not getting done.  I'm actually cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner Saturday through Thursday with the exception of two dinners.  I've had to pay attention to dietary needs as I haven't before since what I cook is essentially the diet for 8+ people for nearly two months.

So take a guess at which path I've chosen.

Both actually, and it's been an interesting experience.  Being angry is just as legitimately a Buddhist experience as sending love to my tormentors and wishing all beings happiness.  The Ninth Grave Precept is a prohibition against harboring ill will, not ever feeling it.  Allowing myself to feel what I feel is in accord with the teachings.  I can feel angry all I want as long as I'm mindful of why I'm angry.  Harboring ill will is holding on to and giving it shelter.  Once the emotion has done what  it needs, it should be let go.

The anger still comes up about the whole thing, as well as the joy in what may most likely happen to the whole operation.  But that dream I had about what my future path would hold in that life really is just that, a dream.  There was never any guarantee that that's how my life would turn out, and it definitely wouldn't be everything I imagined, it never is.

So now I return to the moment, take the bad as bad and the good as good.  I have other hopes of employment lined up, ones that may be infinitely better and that wouldn't have been available to me in the same way two months ago.

How can anyone argue with that?

Right Here Between Two Worlds

Halfway into this third week of Ango, my fellow participants and I have made some interesting observations of the atmosphere of practice now that the excitement of receiving so many guests has passed.

While this is my first practice period, it is the third for Houston Zen Center and others have made some thought inspiring comments about how it feels.  Having only done two week long retreats and a handful of half day sittings, this hasn't quite had the same feeling.

With sesshin, you're there.  You're there to practice and that's it: sitting, eating, and working.  It's a full immersion experience for the week.  For most you only leave to sleep.  It's very different than daily life in that you don't have the distractions or responsibilities of the outside world to interfere with... well it's called a "retreat" for a reason.

In our daily life, practice is something we sometimes only do on the cushion.  It's easy to forget about it as the distractions of every day life get in the way.  Yeah, that's not how it's supposed to be, and even though I pride myself on how my practice is especially my everyday life, none of us is perfect and we all forget.

What's been interesting about the practice period is that it has us situated between those two extremes.  We're all participating in different ways, but there's always someone there practicing away.  There's the intensity of sesshin, but with each of us venturing out back into the world to conduct our affairs independently then returning in various capacities.



Normally a handful of us show up in the morning and get everything going for a little more than an hours worth of activities and then the place is cold until the evening when it happens again.  Four hours on Saturday we have activities but each time we have to get back in the mood.  During this practice period, someone has been there to keep the place warm by feeding the practice fire.

It's been an interesting experience in the kitchen for me as this practice blends my usual daily life with life at the Zen Center.  I spend a lot of time planning menus and preparing shopping lists if not shopping myself.  One of my first comments to my teacher upon completing my first sesshin was of how different it seemed from everyday life, to run away to Tassajara was especially exotic after living a taste of what it could be like for a week.  It troubled me how easy it was to assume the culture of monastic life and how much I would miss "normal life" if I spent a summer there.  She told me that when you're there, that is normal life, which didn't exactly ease my concerns.
But nearly a month into living a life between the two, the "practice" life has become my daily life.  I don't feel I have had to, or become, a different person to live it.  There's an extreme nature to monastic life that, while I can see the appeal, it still doesn't seem like the life for me.  In the Ox Herding series, "returning to the marketplace" is the last step and refers to coming returning to mundane life to live as an example of enlightened activity.  The tradition is that temples were up in mountains so returning to the market place was synonymous with leaving the monastery.  I've always said that I never want to leave the marketplace.  I'm not interested in an enlightenment that involves going somewhere else.  Even if it takes longer, I want it right here.

I really feel that 45 days of this with an actual sesshin at the end will be very different and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.  The regime of sesshin helped my provide my own structure to life afterwards but wore off fairly quickly.  Maybe a little over a long time will build better habits and I'll continue to live right here, between the two worlds of mundane life and the monastic.

Silence Does Not Apply to Almonds

So Week 2 of Ango is underway and I'm really starting to get the feel for this tenzo thing.  I've made notes of some changes to menu items that need to be made and others items (especially some of my originals) have been wildly successful.

Monday, I inadvertently started the week off for everyone with a laugh during breakfast service.  I'd prepared quinoa, cottage cheese, and some frozen applesauce (care of Dale Kent, there's still more and it was tasty).  I figured we could use a little more texture so I toasted some almonds as well.

Now I've toasted almonds, cashews, and walnuts before but don't remember anything like this happening when I did.

So we're all sitting there at the table at 7:30 after two hours of meditation and a service.  My teacher, the ino, work leader, ino's assistant, jisha, visiting priest, a couple others and myself being all intense and focused for oryoki when we notice that the bowl of almonds are popping like rice crispies as they were cooling.  We each top our cottage cheese with a scoop and the bowl makes its way down the table.

Inside, I found this condiment's noisy irreverence, with all of us being so solemn, really funny and was trying not to smile about too much since my teacher was sitting to my right.  I thought I had it under control when the ino's assistant sitting right next to me on the left starts up with the giggles.  It was just too much and I had to snicker along with a few others.  I couldn't see my teacher's face but I'm sure she enjoyed it too.  They kept popping throughout the meal.

(I wish I could have been there for lunch when they ate the "So wonderfully mild gazpacho," as my teacher called it after dinner that night.  Two serrano chilies was one too many, it just got spicier as it sat in the fridge for three hours after I made it.  I said that I was glad "hot" was one of the Six Tastes and Three Virtues.)

What a way to start a Monday.

(I'm so lame...)

I'll have to write about my super exciting weekend receiving the precepts another time.  Plus I've gotta prepare for cooking a half day retreat for a bunch of Dharma Punx hosting Brad Warner.  It'll be cool to finally me him. Dunno how long he'll be in town though.

Two Months of Fun (?/!)

Ango started today and I'm not too sure what to expect out of this summer practice period so I'm trying not to expect anything.  It marks my first official assignment as tenzo (as far as I'm concerned, all the other stuff was a warm up).  I have full control over the kitchen as well as all planning and purchasing.

Since I can't take two months off (my supercool and exciting) job, I'll only be able to prepare breakfasts and a couple dinners during the week.  I've planned out all of the meals with the exception of two dinners a week and will coordinate purchasing and prep for all of them.

My activities this week will be limited in the evenings by Aikido since I have a test Thursday, and this weekend because my dad will be coming into town for the weekend for a visit and to attend my jukai ceremony (which I'll write about later).


It's an odd feeling with so much to do and no real choice about doing it.  It has to get done and I'm best qualified to do it.  I feel some resistance at times, it comes and goes.  The meals don't have to be fancy, people just need to get fed.  It's definitely far easier to do what I need to do when I'm in charge.  I've always been more comfortable as a second in command, just making sure nothing slips through the cracks, but it's good to be calling the shots and being successful.

By the time the sesshin rolls around the last week of June, everything should be running super smooth and should be a very different experience than the last two sesshin I worked. The previous retreats have had a huge buildup right before the start as we go from normal life to retreat life with meal planning and coordinating to do, but all of that anticipation will have been burned off by then, it already feels like a relief just to have it started.  All the meals for the whole practice period are oryoki, so by the final week I will have run through most of my recipes a couple times leaving no questions about prep, leaving me more mental space to just relax and enjoy it.

Every meal I prepare for the sangha feels like a session of zazen and after so many it feels so much more comfortable to slip into tomai sanmai (rice-washing samadhi)*.   It should be interesting to see what happens after  I've prepared the next 80 something meals in the Zen kitchen.

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*a new term I discovered that my girlfriend refers to as "cooking face."  Apparently I do a mean Bodhidharma impression while I'm cooking and have for years.  Virtual high-five to anyone who can find the kanji for "toumai sanmai"

The Form and Emptiness of the Teacher/Student Relationship

According to tradition, the "proper" way to become a student of Zen after finding a teacher is to present him or her with a small gift and formally request to be his or her student (I guess "traditionally" it would have only been "him" and "his," but whatever).  Being a sucker for traditions, I couldn't allow myself to proceed any further in my studies, especially as I approach closer to receiving the Precepts, without doing this.  I don't know how far this practice will take me, but I don't want to break with tradition.

So I did this yesterday.

During dokusan, I presented my teacher a small memento of a powerful experience that I had had many years ago and asked to be her student.  I was of course accepted, since this is essentially a formality and I had already been her student for some time.

There is no way of me knowing how common this practice is in my sangha, let alone in the world today.  I consider this practice to be more a cultural thing; a holdover from different times when becoming a student was an absolute thing where the request was akin to signing a lease to live in a monastery.  In today's world people wear many hats and dropping in on a teacher every once in a while is more the accepted practice.  Here in the United States, as Zen is still finding its identity, our American practices do not expect such a formal request.  For many people, even just the need for a teacher isn't all that strong. I wouldn't have known about this formality if I hadn't read about it in some books.  It doesn't really matter to me whether any of my fellow students have done this at all, but I felt it was right for me.

So what's the big deal?  I was already a student, why make the request and present a gift?

The relationship between student and teacher is just as empty as anything else.  This doesn't mean that it doesn't matter, but that it's like a bucket labeled "teacher/student relationship."  It has no fundamental definition.  Until we put our own thoughts and feelings as to what it means to us, the bucket remains empty.  Until now, my bucket held the idea that here was a person dedicated to spreading the Dharma and saving all beings living a vow to help anyone asking for it.  We were fellow travelers on the road and I was being offered advice.

To me the gift represents the idea that this request is more than just a verbal thing.  It shows a higher level of commitment. Time and effort were spent pondering it and I am giving something of myself to this relationship.  The formal request is just as symbolic.  To surrender to the idea of needing help to walk the path is humbling.  To make this request to a teacher is to both admit your own humility but to also acknowledge your worthiness of pursuing the path.  Until we can do both things we will never quite arrive at our destination.

With this formal acceptance, my bucket holds some new ideas.  My actions signal my commitment to the path and that I don't intend to just wander off.  Because of this, a new intimacy exists.  While I still consider my teacher as a fellow traveler, I now fully acknowledge her as one who has "gone before"* and I will wholeheartedly follow her lead.  More than just pointing her finger to the truth for me to see, I have given her my hand so that she may point my own finger. 

Our origins are different so in places the route will be completely different.  Where it's the same, the road may have changed a little since she passed through. While my exact destination may differ, the direction is the same and I am one step closer to getting there.

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*a rough translation of sensei

Epic Fail

Now that I've got the posting of my interview taken care of, I've got a lot of catching up to do.  Last weekend we had guests from several places come to stay at the Zen Center for a priest ordination.  They had to eat, so I answered the call to prepare a few meals for guests and residents.

In the almost twenty years that I've been cooking, half of that professionally, I've never cut myself with knife anything more than a scratch.  So within fifteen minutes of prepping for breakfast I dragged my knife across the tip of my finger, cutting deep. Of all the places and times for it to happen, it happened at the Zen Center, where cooking is emphasized as mindful practice. I'm professionally trained in various knife skills and even I managed to cut myself just slicing apples.  I wouldn't necessarily call it hubris, I was still being careful, but my mind drifted.  This served as a painful reminder that it doesn't matter how experienced you are, you always have to pay attention to what you're doing.

I disrespected my knife by not giving it my full attention and it bit me.

Knowing that the painful lessons are the ones that we're most likely to remember, I think (hope) that I learned my lesson.  A few days later as I was watching it heal, I wondered if it would leave a scar.  I've never been one for battle scars from the kitchen as many line cooks are, but I thought a permanent mark might be fitting as a reminder to remain present while cooking.

The thought of scarred fingers took me a few digits over to a mark on my index finger about an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide with three pairs of dots along side.  This is an old scar from my childhood that resulted from some poorly thought out creativity.

I used to make all kinds of things from the cardboard that came in my dad's laundered work shirts.  On this occasion I was trying to poke a hole in a piece with one blade of a pair of scissors.  I was successful in making the hole, but on the other side was the gap between my index and middle finger.  The gap wasn't wide enough for the blade to miss slicing my finger.

At first I thought it was just a scratch... until I moved the cardboard away.  There was so much blood!  Before my mind could make sense of it, there was blood all over the desk where I was sitting.  I'm not sure if it actually hurt as much as I thought it did at the time, but seeing that much of my own blood incited panic.

This happened at the school where my mom was teaching at the time, on the day before school started.  I know that she was in a meeting, but I don't remember all of the details between seeing the blood and sitting in the trauma room at the ER other than the pain and terror.  By the time the doctors came in to stitch me up, it'd worn off.  I don't remember if it still hurt, but I'd calmed down and was hoping it wasn't going to require stitches.

The cut was deep.  When the bleeding slowed and they cleaned the wound I could see through the layers of skin into the meat.  The doctors decided to skip injecting the local anesthetic and just poured it right in, saving me the added trauma before the sutures. 

Without the pain as a distraction, it had become a learning experience for me.  How often do you get closer than front row seats to a finger getting stitched back together?  It was interesting and made for a great story on the first day of school back from summer vacation.  Plus, on the way home from the hospital all I could think about was the sight of some poor second grader showing up for the first day of class to a dried pool of blood on his desk and floor.  (I was told later that it had been cleaned up shortly after we'd left for the hospital.)

It's weird how life teaches us lessons.  We're always supposed to learn from our mistakes and sometimes we do, but other times the point just doesn't get driven home enough.  Sometime life uses erosion and slowly etches the lesson in over time, but other times it cuts right to the chase and splits us right open.

I'm not sure if my recent cut will leave a scar, so its lesson may come and go.  What I do know is that I've sure watched where my fingers are before poking a blade through an object over the last twenty some years. 

The Cycle of Life

Saturday morning we had a sejiki, or segaki, ceremony at the Houston Zen Center.  It's a ceremony to give offerings to the gaki or "hungry ghosts" and calm the restless spirits of the recently departed.  In a psychological sense, it gives us the chance to recognize and accept the loss of loved ones.  Traditionally it's held in the summer during the Japanese festival of Obon, but here in the United States it coincides with Halloween and is very similar in spirit to the festivals of Dia de los Muertos.

I was honored to serve as one of two jisha or attendants to the doshi, or the priest performing the ceremony.  There are several resources online that give descriptions of the various ways the ceremony is conducted in different places, but that's not what I intend to write about.

During the ceremony, the doshi reads a statement about the body of the Buddha and the transitional and interdependent natures of all things.  One line that struck me as echoing a belief I've had for a while was

"...the living are living on the dead, the dead live on mostly in the living."

 (as close as I can remember)  This thought has many layers for me.

Initially, to me at least, "the living are living on the dead" has to do with food.  Nothing we eat wasn't alive before, and with very few exceptions is dead when we consume it.  Plant or animal, the living are living on the dead.  This food becomes us physically.  The proteins that make up our muscles, the cholesterol that holds our cells together, the carbohydrates and fats that fuel our metabolic processes.  In this way "the dead live on mostly in the living."

Another way I've always seen this has to do with people who pass living on in their loved ones.  Whether in memory or physically as offspring.  We live off of the dead, or at least those that have come before us, by way of the feats accomplished or lessons taught.  Our civilization is built on top of all the others that came before.

The theme of the Dharma talk that followed the ceremony touched on the fact that in Buddhism, and in Zen especially, the person to person historical lineage that reaches back through time to the historical Buddha is very important.  He discovered something for himself and sanctioned the teaching of those who followed only when he saw what he'd discovered in each of them.  In this way the Dharma has been "transmitted" person to person unbroken for over 2500 years.

For this reason the respect for our ancestors is very important in Zen, not just in the lineage of Dharma transmission, but in everything.*  Despite Zen's focus on the present, our appreciation for our current existence relies not only on the history of humanity, but life on Earth and even the development of the Solar System all the way back to the beginning of the Universe if not earlier.

In this way the cycle of life continues throughout time, uninterrupted with all beings interdependent on one another.  Nothing really ever dies and nothing new is ever really born, but both happen constantly.

So as the season drifts inevitably from the vibrant life of Summer into the cold death of Winter, we should remember that thus is life: ever changing, but always the same.

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*since the Dharma manifests in everything and is presented as an opportunity to learn from anything that we experience.

The Middle Way Isn't Just the Middle

This weekend I was honored to be able to spend a lot of time around Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi.  I was lucky enough to be asked to help prepare breakfast for him, my teacher, the resident students, and the Ino as well as a couple others the past two mornings.  It was wonderful to be around him and the others in a relaxed setting.

For those of you who don't know, Sojun Roshi is the abbot of the Berkley Zen Center and a treasured student of the famous and influential Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.  He's a very kind and gentle, insightful person who has obviously worked very hard at cultivating himself.

He's also realistic and modest enough to admit to us that while he is a priest, he's also a bad person sometimes, too. "Seriously?" you ask, "how is this possible? He's one of a handful of the most respected Zen teachers in the country if not the world."  Even so, he's still human and his practice continues after all these years just as ours does.

He admitted this as part of his dharma talk on Saturday morning at the Houston Zen Center in which he discussed a deeper dimension of what the "Middle Way" of Buddhism really is.

To begin his talk he brought up the first koan given to students in the Rinzai sect.  As I think I've mentioned before, Soto Zen doesn't use koan the same as Rinzai, but they're still a useful teaching tool that I've recently come to appreciate.

So the koan.  It's actually a pretty popularly known one, known even outside of exclusive Zen circles.

A monk asked Joshu, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Joshu said, "Mu."

 Mu essentially translates as "no." It's not a literal translation, that's closer to "not any."  On another occasion the same monk asked again and Joshu replies in the affirmative.*

It is an accepted Buddhist concept that all beings, sentient or insentient, have Buddha nature so the initial negative answer wasn't what the monk was expecting which is probably why he asked again later.  The truth didn't change even though two opposite answers were given.

The reality or truth, Sojun Roshi said, is the Middle Way. Both answers are correct and neither are correct at the same time.  This is tricky ground because it is the use of dualistic language to explain a non-dualistic concept.  Language by definition is dualistic since each word is defined just as much by what it means as by what it doesn't mean, that's just how it works.  Not every word has an opposite, but each word both includes and excludes meaning.

Before whenever I thought about what makes the Middle Way, I thought it meant the mean between any two extremes, moderation  Everything he said lead me to understand that the truth of the matter is that the Middle Way isn't just the middle, but it's all inclusive.  The answer to the question of whether or not a dog has Buddha nature is yes and no because everything is interconnected, nothing is independent.  To say something is independent implies that it is separate from something else.

So because the dog has Buddha nature it doesn't have Buddha nature.  A tree is no different than a car, they're not exactly the same but they're not separate.  The nature of a tree depends on the nature of the car for its identity.

Sojun Roshi also applied this to truly live life is to walk the Middle Way among birth and death.  Each moment the self we are (as well as the whole universe) dies and is reborn as a new moment takes its place. This reminds me of the image used in Japanese swordsmanship schools of a piece of paper with the character for "life/birth" printed on one side and "death" on the other.  This is to remind us that the spacing that separates survival and death in an attack is the thickness of a piece of paper.  In Zen we live in this space sandwiched between birth and death.  It is not exclusive of birth and death but is neither birth and death.

See how the duality of language makes illuminating the truth so difficult?  Zazen is the practice of sweeping away the structure of definition and duality we've built up over the course of our lives.  There's no way to intellectualize our way to the heart of the matter since each thought we grasp at builds up new layers to hide the truth.  Our true nature is always there it's just waiting for us to settle the dust clouds we've kicked up by labeling and defining every new thing we encounter.  The common image used in Zen is that of the reflection of the moon (perception of the truth) in a pool of water (our minds).  Until we quiet our mind, all we see is the shattered multiplicity of the reflection.  Actively thinking just stirs up the water as we grasp at the reflection.

So everything is the same, without difference: comfort and discomfort, good and bad, right and wrong, you and me, matter and energy, true and false.  You name it (or don't) it's all the same just as much as it's different. 

Why worry about anything, what is there to fear?  You do what you do because it's what you can.  To truly experience the undiluted life, to be free of discontentment, we have to make the effort and investment to shake off our attachment to duality.  Excessive focus on the past, whether fond memories or regrets is leaning into death.  Focus on the future with dreams and worries is leaning into birth.  Neither is bad, we don't live exclusively from them, but we don't live in either of them.  We need to learn from our mistakes in the past and organize the future.  We have to see that our hesitations and fears are the product of our ego struggling to establish itself as perfect (and sometimes unconsciously just as oppositely tragic) .  Let yourself make mistakes, we all do.  Accept them and learn from them.

As we all stumble along our own paths, struggling to walk the Middle Way, we drift to the right and to the left.  Coming back to the middle is no more than an intention to not ignore either extreme, not trying to avoid either. 

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*The previous explanation that I'd always heard didn't include the "yes" response.  Instead "mu" is a non-answer, telling the monk that he's asking the wrong question.  There is no answer because the question is irrelevant.  We can't find the truth by asking questions, it can't be given to us.  We have to find it on our own.  The Buddha found the truth through zazen, there was no one for him to ask questions.  For that reason, we sit.  Questions help us understand what we experience, but there is no new information.

New Opportunities

So after my "fantastic" weekend, some awesome opportunities opened up for me.

The first I didn't know about until yesterday, but actually happened Friday.  Andy, author of the Bayou City Buddhist invited me to join in on the Buddha bus at the Bayou Buddhist Houston Belief site.  Of course I said yes, so that's in the works right now. <<<EDIT: It's up now>>

The second, and somewhat expected but still exciting, was the first leadership meeting we had at the dojo concerning the future developments my teacher wants to make for the school.  Lots of volunteering for various things occurred, one of the more notable for me that of dealing with organizing food for our parties.  The other was formally signing up to be instructors for private lessons as well as administrative duties, which should bring me some much needed cash.  We also intend to have Zen meditation to complement our class occasionally, so I was volunteered to (help?) organize that due to my experience.  So all of that's pretty exciting.

The last has to do with business at the zendo.  The Rohatsu Sesshin is coming up in December and me being without a job/money wanted to see if there was something I could do in exchange to be allowed to attend.  Seeing as I have yet to even attend a 1 day sitting, I though offering my services in the kitchen would be a nice transition into such intensive practice.  Since the preparation and service of food is formal practice as well, I won't really be missing out on anything but a little extra boredom and aching legs.

My offer was received with great enthusiasm.  It turns out the tenzo has held the position for two years and done most of the work all by himself so an assistant would be wonderful.  I was told today that someone had provided a scholarship for me to attend.  I kind of thought they came from the community as a whole, but it seems like I have an anonymous sponsor.  If that's the case, I may have a feeling as to who it is but know if they wanted me to know, I would so I'll just be grateful to the community at large.

I've also been asked to help in the kitchen for a couple other occasions before the sesshin that won't be as formal so I jumped at those as well out of gratitude and the opportunity for experience.

So once again, I'm grateful for the generosity of the communities I find myself a member of, inspiring me to return the favor.

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I also applied for a job yesterday that I'm pretty excited about, but won't know anything about that for a little while

Dokusan

I had my first dokusan this morning, which you may or may not know is a formal discussion about your practice with your teacher. While that was pretty much about all it was, it was also a lot more.

I've known her now for almost nine months, but today was the first time I'd actually referred to her as "my teacher." It wasn't intentional, it just came out that way. Before it was always by name, or as "the teacher" or "the head teacher", but I guess the intimacy of this meeting changed that.

This wasn't the first time I'd discussed my practice with her so in a way it was comfortable, but the formality combined with the full attention of someone so experienced was intimidating. It was a very powerful lesson to feel myself as the focus of concentrated attention. In a way I could grasp onto the thought that if I practice longer, I too could posses such focus. But to do so would be to stop the mind and fixate on a goal. Instead I find it comforting to just know that it is possible to cultivate. If it happens, it happens.

For now, my practice comes fairly easy. I told her it's become a habit so the hardest part of just doing it is past me. From my experience with Aikido, I know that there may be plateaus in my progress, but my attitude is to accept them, to push through them. Practice is ongoing, I should enjoy the plateaus just as I should enjoy the easy spots for being comfortable and hard spots for what they can teach me. This caused me great difficulty when I tried to define what I considered ups and downs in my practice.

It was a little strange discussing my practice so openly since I usually try not to gush about it to other people who may or may not be interested and/or understand. After I'd left, I realized things I'd wanted to bring up or how I could have articulated something better. There'll be other times though.

I find the most difficult aspect of discussing practice is avoiding dualistic speech, judging and desires for its path. As these things came out, I knew what I was saying. Normally when I make some mistake similar to this and it's pointed out, I feel like I'm being told something I already know. Somehow when she pointed these things out, I still learned something else, something about how I perceived it.

All around it was a very pleasant experience. Sitting has had an observable impact on my life after such a short time. I'm happy to formally have a teacher and enjoy being a member of the sangha. It's nice to have a mirror that functions as both something to reflect what ideas you send out but also reflects similarities as well as setting examples of where practice can lead you.

Discipline and New Habits

Since I set this thing up a couple days ago and haven't really done anything with it, I guess my first post should be about discipline. This ties in nicely with my zen practice, culinary school.. and well, a lot of other things in my life.

One of the reasons I'm still in culinary school after four plus years is due to a lack of discipline. I missed a lot of class the first couple years so I had to repeat a lot. I don't want to make excuses anymore and it doesn't really matter anyway, but discipline was pretty much the problem. It was too easy for me to make excuses that I could accept as suitable reasons to either just stay home, drive all the way there and not get out of my car, or just drive around. I've dealt with this for waaaay too long, but I'm fairly confident I've broken that habit. I didn't see it as being lazy, because I really struggled with it. I cared that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, I was just better at making and accepting my own excuses.

And habit was a big part of it. For many years I've halfheartedly looked for some sort of meditation practice to incorporate into my daily life. I'd tried different moving and sitting forms of meditation, but never really stuck with it. I knew the benefits of such things from my previous experience with aikido. Most of it's benefits were from focusing and staying in the moment, but I had trouble taking those things off the mat into daily life. And of course the reason that was my previous experience is because once I started to lose interest, I gradually stopped going. It had been a hobby, but not yet a habit yet. Every time I was given another chance, I'd psych myself up that it'd be different this time, but I just wasn't able to follow through.

So what's different? What changed that allowed me to make new habits and break the old ones? Now that I think about it, it's not all that obvious. I think the credit rests with resuming Aikido. Last summer, I found a book (not in a store to be bought, but in a box in the woods, but that's another story) called Zen in the Martial Arts. I'd set it aside for a while but read it eventually and it got my interest back up to get back into Aikido. I'd never really lost interest in it entirely, it always kind of stuck with me and colored my worldview in some way, but now I realized I actually had the time to train. The instructor at the dojo I found required a one year commitment, which I did hesitate to commit to (fear isn't really the right word, but in sense it is appropriate).

Over the first few months I had some frustrations, but stuck with it since I was in for the year. Now I've always felt the need to share things I learn with people, mostly as a courtesy to what I've learned, so I've always respected people who teach. But I think the most important lesson I could ever learn was when my teacher told me that there were days she didn't feel like teaching us, but she did because that was the commitment she'd made.

I don't know why that had the effect on me that it did. Of course it was to be expected of her, she's only human; no one could be expected to really want to do anything four days a week with almost no break for years on end no matter how much they enjoyed it. But for some reason, this acknowledgment really struck a chord. I became more aware of the years of effort and dedication to reach that point and that without all of that she would not be in the position to teach us.

As someone who habitually adjusts interests time after time, this sort of dedication was brought into a new light. I couldn't help but see this revelation in the other parts of my life, my teachers at school for example, but not just them: anyone who was any kind of authority on anything had made the conscious decision to commit and follow through with it.

About this same time, I was reading an awesome book, Zen Heart by Ezra Bayda. I credit this book with me actually beginning my practice and will talk about that more some other time. My point, though, is that here was another person who'd dedicated themselves to something that hit home in me somehow. I'd put off actual practice for so long, but this book inspired me in a practical way to make the commitment myself.

Now there were other reasons to do it, and they are all legit, but in an idealistic move I cut my hair about as short as I could tolerate to mark this commitment. I'd needed something concrete that I couldn't ignore and it seemed an appropriate way to mark my commitment to my new life and new practice.

Now whenever I'd scratch my head in wonder about doing what I'm supposed to do, I get that nifty scratchy reminder. Plus, about once a month, I have to renew that commitment by cutting my hair again.

But discipline... yes, back to that. I had started sitting in the evening after my girlfriend went to bed, and that was fine for about a month. It was calming and became a little habitual. I followed what was laid out in Zen Heart for practice until I was able to take a free intro class at the local zen center. I've always been an evening person, but after sitting once early one morning, I learned how sitting can affect my day. I was actually somewhat awake and motivated.

I was fortunate enough to be given a scholarship for a deeper six week intro class to sitting meditation a month later and applied my new perspective on teachers and commitment. Here were two people teaching this class who had dedicated themselves to this life sharing their experiences with me, and on top of that, they had agreed to share it with me without charge. I had to take this seriously to honor this as a gift. It definitely paid off.

I committed myself to get up an hour earlier than I was accustomed to sit for twenty minutes everyday. For anyone who hasn't sat zazen, it's more than you'd think. Just sitting for twenty minutes? How hard can it be? It's pretty tough not just mentally, but physically as well. Discipline is needed to keep from stopping when it starts to hurt or when you get bored. Rather than have a watch in front of me and decide on a time I'd stop. I set a timer and refuse to look at it. I won't move until it goes off so there's no, "eh, that's close enough to twenty minutes.."

Sitting is so simple, and it's a great way to build discipline, among other things. I make the commitment and there's nothing else to do until the time is up. After six months, it has become a habit, and one that spills over into other parts of my life. Gotta go to school? Just go, it's more exciting than just sitting there, and I'm supposed to do it anyway. After enough days not missing: new habit! Don't feel like scooping the litter box, washing dishes, doing laundry? Won't take more than twenty minutes, and my legs won't hurt after doing it.

So the irony of the title of this blog and the title of this post: did I have everything I needed already? Did I have discipline? Well, no... I didn't, not then, but the past is the past. I've learned my lessons, and now, in the present, I do have more discipline than I did. I definitely had the seeds before, otherwise I would have just been lazy without a care of whether or not I did what I was supposed to do. So in a way I did have what I needed already, just not at that present, it was waiting for me in the future to learn my lessons and then I would be ready.

What an ungodly long way to make a point, but before starting this, I didn't have anything at all. So here's to new habits.