​[from a talk given by Roshi Eve on April 16, 2019]
 
When I was at sesshin in Switzerland, someone asked me about the importance of zendo and liturgical forms. She came from a sangha where these were observed very strictly, and she felt that in our sesshin they were observed more loosely. Of course, the sesshin had participants from a number of different sanghas, and everyone brought with them the forms they were accustomed to, so it was challenging to do something uniform.
 
But here we are, towards the end of our three-month winter intensive in which we studied liturgy, or ceremony, and spent a lot of time focusing on the forms of ceremony—chanting, playing the various instruments, setting up the altar, bowing, reciting names of ancestors, service dedications, etc. I think there is something ironic about this because many of us come here to get away from all that. We escape a busy life full of forms to come to a meditation hall for a sense of formlessness, spaciousness, and total freedom.
 
Instead, look at what we’re taught to do right away: Bow to the altar when you come in; set up your cushion or chair; bow to the cushion, bow to the person across from you. Look at all the signals we’re given: one ring signaling the end of the sitting period, two rings for walking meditation, three rings signaling the beginning of meditation. There are different bells to signal the beginning of zazen, the beginning of service, the beginning of meals, the beginning of a talk. And that’s before we even get to oryoki, our ritualized retreat meals.
 
Who wants all that? Didn’t we come here to escape from all those bells and whistles and discover timelessness and empty space?
 
Unmon said, “Look! This world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your priest’s robe at the sound of the bell?” The essential nature of this world is that it’s vast and wide, yet when the bell sounds we put on our robe. Another bell sounds, and off we march to the dining hall. Another bell sounds, and off we march to do work practice. All this despite the fact that our practice is not to follow sounds or cling to forms.
 
Dogen, in his Fukanzazengi, warned of this: “[t]he bringing about of enlightenment by the opportunity provided by a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a hossu, a fist, a staff, or a shout, cannot be fully understood by man’s discriminative thinking . . .  It must be deportment beyond woman’s hearing and seeing¾is it not a principle that is prior to her knowledge and perceptions?” While stories have come down of great enlightenment experiences that seem to come from something seen or heard, he’s warning us not to make the mistake of thinking that this came out of regular perception through our senses.
 
There is a koan that appears in our upcoming Book of Householder Koansthat deals with this directly. I believe it’s called The Retch. It tells the story of a woman who moves into her dream apartment, except for one thing. Every morning the man next door goes into a prolonged cough and retching that penetrate the thin walls of the apartment and disturb her peace. In fact, it disturbs her so much that, without having met him, she refers to him as The Retch. Till one morning, deep in meditation, she hears the same loud, retching noise, and something else happens.
 
To live fully in everything we do is the secret of our practice. I encourage you to fully settle into every form, plunge in and discover its limitlessness. The opposite of that is picking and choosing: I want this but I don’t want that.You may think that the forms that we follow in retreat are an upaya, skillful means, because you’re following a schedule without having to think anything out, without picking and choosing, but even that’s not enough. You must plunge into every form, penetrate each cue and signal. When the person who does that disappears, then the ringing of a bell, the smell of freshly brewed coffee or the taste of an orange can bring about the kind of experiences Dogen referred to.
 
I do a certain flip whenever I come into the zendo. We all come from home or office, from making dinner for the family or picking up something at the drug store. Here, we take off our jackets and shoes, step into our small and simple sitting space, and a certain flip happens. Till now we were following our individual lives, picking and choosing various things, but now we do whatever everybody else does. We bow with our hands together, turn, bow again. A cue from the bell and we chant the Verse of Atonement, another and we put our rakusus on top of our heads and chant the Verse of the Robe. We listen for three rings of the bell, sit, hear two rings, make a small bow and get up. Another ring and we turn and put our hands across our chest and start walking slowly, like everyone else.
 
I flip right into these forms every time I enter the zendo: sitting, chanting, bowing, and walking. No picking and choosing, just doing things wholeheartedly.
 
The same goes for the forms of our day-to-day life. When we work with the forms of our life with conscious awareness, we get out of our minds and our small selves, leave the subject-object dichotomy behind. I leave the land of the brain, the land of disconnection, and focus attention on just this.
 
Forms are the container for your practice. They are the container for your life. Whatever forms you choose, really fill them and use them to the max. For years I saw Bernie wear his kesa. With his pudgy body and short neck, he didn’t wear a kesa elegantly, but he settled into it completely. I watched him wear the same old ragged brown samuejacket in the Greyston years, running from a meeting with the construction crew to a meeting with the mayor of Yonkers, always wearing that same old samue jacket totally and comfortably. After he disrobed, he also had robes, but different ones: jeans, Hawaiian shirt, suspenders, sometimes a vest or sweater, sometimes a beret, and always sneakers. In his pocket always went a pen, a cigar, and a telephone. He completely settled into those robes, too.
 
Whatever you wear, whatever form you take on through ceremony and vow, please honor it completely. Honor the form and the role it represents. Playing it middle-ways, one foot in and one foot out, doesn’t do anything for anyone. It might give you a sense of keeping all your options open, which many of us mistake for freedom, but it’s far from genuine freedom. When we genuinely put on the robes of our life, nothing is impeded. As Shibayama comments on Unmon’s koan, “It has to be the Truth, not as an idea but as the fact actually lived by us.”

[From a Dharma Talk given by Roshi Eve on December 6, 2018.]
 
This is a retreat to awaken. Awaken together.
 
Bernie had total faith in the oneness of life, that everything manifests oneness. Recently I read an article written by the scholar Thanissaro Bhikkhu, in which he said that the Buddha didn’t talk about oneness, but of course did talk of interdependence. In some way it comes down to the same thing. Bernie’s faith in the interdependence of all things came out of his two major enlightenment experiences, both of which were confirmed not just by Maezumi Roshi but also by other Japanese Zen masters.
 
This happened early in the development of Zen in the West, when much of the Soto Sect in Japan didn’t believe that gaijins in the West could study and practice something as subtle as Zen. Maezumi Roshi, Bernie said, wanted to show them that this was not true, but for this purpose he needed other Zen masters to validate Tetsugen’s experience in addition to himself.
 
So it was significant that Koryu Osaka Roshi said that Tetsugen’s was one of the profoundest openings he’d ever seen. After Bernie’s second great awakening experience he and Maezumi Roshi went to Japan where he had an interview with Koun Yamada, who tested him on this opening and confirmed it as well.
 
But the rest of Bernie’s life kept on confirming the oneness of life, in fact more and more all the time. You could hear it not just in what he said but how he said it. He didn’t have a doubt in the world about it. It was as clear to him as day.
 
At that early time sitting practice was everything to him and he was a harsh taskmaster in the zendo. I laughed in reading a post by Roshi Myoyu Anderson, Bernie’s dharma sister, in which she recalled that he recommended starting sesshin at 2:30 in the morning rather than at 4, their usual beginning time. He was then Tetsugen, very different from the Bernie who, in his later years, insisted that practice was everything, not just sitting meditation. Much later he would shake his head sadly whenever he heard someone refer to sitting as practice. Of course it was practice, but so was everything else.
 
This retreat is in that spirit. We start sitting late, around 8, and we stop at 6 so that we could go home and take care of our families. I began such a schedule after Bernie got sick because I didn’t know how else to take care of him. We go home to take care of people and life, we go to bed, get up, prepare and eat breakfast alone or with others, and then come to the zendo.
 
When you practice this way you must really plunge into whatever life presents you—stroke, cancer, caregiving, children, grief, loss. You can’t do that without letting go of your conceptual conditioning surrounding these things.

When Bernie died, he plunged into death. A moment after the doctor said that he died I couldn’t see him in his body at all. I noticed his ears had changed color; he was gone. We brought him home and some people said, he looks peaceful, he looks at ease. When his daughter arrived and saw him for the first time, she said That’s not dad.

People ask me if he appears in my dreams. They say: “Don’t you feel he’s always with you?” There’s no doubt that he’s an integral part of me. But is he with me? Does he visit in dreams? Frankly, no. When it was time to be gone, Bernie was gone. No halfway measures for him.
 
I sometimes think that we get lazy when it comes to the koans of our lives. We get involved in memories, abstractions, speculations, analysis. All these certainly have their place if you wish to investigate certain karmic elements of your life. But we also have to be here and now, breathing in the moment even when it’s filled with anguish. Bringing my attention down to my belly makes breathing in those moments a lot easier.
 
Bernie had two great awakenings. He may very well have had more, but he only talked of two. The first was when he worked on the koan Muwith Koryu Osaka Roshi. The second came when he worked on the koan What is the source of mu? He had already passed that koan twice with two different teachers. A personal situation came up that troubled him so much that he brought it up with Maezumi Roshi. He told me that that was the only time he ever brought up a personal situation in formal dokusan with his teacher. Roshi didn’t respond directly; instead, he suggested to Tetsugen that he work once again, for the third time, on What is the source of mu? And that’s what Tetsugen did.
 
One morning, while carpooling to McDonnell-Douglas with other engineers, he had a major breakthrough. This time, he said, he saw all the hungry spirits of the world and made a vow to feed them all.
 
Did he succeed? Of course not. He tried to fulfill his vows in different realms, in areas of poverty and homelessness, in areas of illness, business, and of course, working with students in the zendo. But he couldn’t feed all the hungry spirits, there was karma, there were always limits.
 
Still, the man had confidence. He was the most independent man I knew, but when the big stroke rendered him dependent on others, he could let go of independence and plunge into needing the help of others. That was his not-knowing. He was ready to receive everything.
 
It’s really important to let go as much as possible of our story lines, of the mantras of our lives, the same old same old. Not to dwell in some abstract night but to come by day, as the koan says it.[1]Close that gap, be this incredible life that we’re given, and do what comes up. That is this retreat, and it doesn’t end on December 8, it goes on forever.
 
 
[1]“Attention! Master Joshu asked Master Toshi, ‘When a man who dies the Great Death revives, what then?’ Toshi replied, ‘Going by night isn’t permitted. You’d better arrive during the day.’”

From a talk given in summer retreat, August 4.

           Elder Ting asked Lin-Chi, “What is the great meaning of the Buddhist Teaching?”
          Chi came down off his meditation seat, grabbed and held Ting, gave him a slap, and then pushed                  
​          him away. Ting stood there motionless. A monk standing by said, “Elder Ting, why do you not
          bow?” Just as Ting bowed, he suddenly was greatly enlightened.
 
Like the great teacher he was, the founder of the Rinzai Sect tried to undercut the concepts and mental barriers that stood in the way of Elder Ting perceiving the answer to his question: What is the great meaning of the Buddhist Teaching? It’s the question we all ask, isn’t it? And each of us must come up with his/her own answer, our own very specific answer. An answer that doesn’t leap from the letters of a book or someone’s talk, but from personal experience. Of course, even your personal experience isn’t yours alone, it’s interdependent with the many things of life.
 
The teacher, like a thief, has to steal away the mental constructs we all create that act as barriers to the visceral experience of life. For example, I often hear people say that they live to alleviate the suffering of others. Is that really what they live for? When you get up in the morning, what do you do? Maybe you go to the bathroom, take a shower, make coffee, maybe you do zazen. How much time has passed before you give a thought to the suffering of others? You have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you check the news, you talk to your family and friends, you make plans. How much of your day is actually given to the suffering of others? And still the person will maintain: That’s who I am, that’s me. It’s really our concept of who we are, not who we are.
 
Elder Ting had similar mental constructs. He also had a teacher known for physically shaking things up. And Lin-Chi, as was his custom, got very physical with Elder Ting, grabbing him, slapping him, and pushing him away. This was probably pretty outrageous to do to an elder in 9thcentury China. But it’s the monk’s words that move me here: “Elder Ting, why do you not bow?”
 
I don’t know who that monk was, perhaps a senior monk, perhaps not. Why did he tell Elder Ting to bow? Probably because that was the customary thing to do. The teacher intervened showed you something, providing guidance in his idiosyncratic way, and you should bow. Elder Ting, shocked and motionless, did what he was told, and that simple action brought on deep insight.
 
It’s the simple things, finally.
 
I think of another koan:
 
         “Regarding the matter of the dharmakaya eating food, the master asked, ‘What is it that eats when    
          you eat food?’
          Again he said, ‘What is your entire being?’
          And again, ‘How far is it between body and mind?’”
 
The dharmakaya refers to pure essence. When you eat food, is it just you eating food? In a way yes, in a way no. How far is it between body and mind? Is there a gap? When your body bows, what is your mind doing? What is the dharmakaya doing?
 
I see it as some kind of humility, acceptance of things as they are, of things being simple. I make plans, prepare, work towards a goal, but do I really know how important any of that is?
 
I often bring up the bees that fly from flower to flower to obtain the nectar for their young, and in doing so pollinate the flowers. Flowers can’t move in order to pollinate each other. Instead, the pollen sticks to the fuzzy part of the bees and then fall as the bee lands on the next flower. Are the bees even aware of the crucial task they are performing? Do we ever know what our work in the world really is? Do we need to know in order to do it?
 
There’s a quality of relaxing into what is. When Elder Ting bowed, the dharmakaya bowed. We search for something. Where is God? Where is the Unknown? It’s sitting, talking, listening, breathing, wiping sweat from the brow. How far is it between your body and mind? Is there a distance? When we experience distance, we experience brokenness. And when there’s no distance?
 
Yesterday I talked about stress. Stress invites fighting. When I’m stressed, I’m fighting in some subtle way, or else distracting myself. But even in the distraction, the minute I pay attention there is awareness. At that moment dharmakaya is petting the dog, dharmakaya is eating a Greyston brownie, dharmakaya is looking at the flowers after rain.
 
Zazen is great way to see how I fight the moment, how I maintain distance to avoid stress. I don’t want to fight anything anymore. More and more, I find that practice is a matter of relaxing.
 
Albert Einstein said: "I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’”
 
If it’s friendly, I don’t have to be on guard, I don’t have to distrust myself or anyone else. If I think it’s unfriendly, I will be vigilant and maintain a defensive posture my entire life, living a life of stress for the illusion of control.
 
We can do things simply, even complicated things. We know what it is to get caught up, to lose our way because everything feels complicated. I wake up this way most mornings. Then I get up, take a shower, light a stick of incense, bow, sit, feet on the ground, hear birds, see sunlight. Live simply, give simply.
 

 from a talk given by Sensei Genyo during the Winter Intensive, 4/17/2018


In the flow of experiencing, we encounter what seems to be self and other, inside and outside in a dance of interaction.  When we relate freely and compassionately, not stuck in our preconceptions, our lives go better, we create less harm.  It’s not that we do not encounter pain, it’s just that we learn to live and respond skillfully in the midst ot it.  When we are caught up in the pain, seemingly a victim of it, or a perpetrator or it, what can we do?

We have been asking these questions throughout this winter intensive:  What is this reality we encounter? How do we respond?  Why do we react unconsciously sometimes, and how do we learn to respond freely without creating harm?

*  There is a model in Yogacara called the Three Natures which is useful to contemplate.  In encountering reality, any situation or phenomenon, we can see: 1) It’s imaginary nature 2) it’s other-dependent nature, and finally 3) its complete, realized nature.
  - Imaginary nature is when things are conceptualized by conceptualization, in other words, are perceived purely in the realm of our minds, our imagination. 

  - Other-dependent nature is a conceptualization arising from conditions. This is a recognition often prized in Buddhist practice, seeing how all things are in fact interdependent with all other things.  Thus we see the clouds in the water we drink, the tree in the cutting board we chop our vegetables on.

— The complete, realized nature to begin can be thought of as the other-dependent nature free of conceptualization. Thus we recognize the infinite interdependence of all phenomena with no conceptions layered onto it.  But this is just a starting point which is still within the realm of conceptualization. In reality the completely realized nature is even beyond all such descriptions:  it is none other than the inconceivable vast presence, or suchness of experience, of things, and arisings, and their interdependent web.  As commentator Ben Connelly writes:  “A state of pure non-dual awareness, where there is only interdependence.”    

These three natures are all without self, simply ways of experiencing.

The Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers remain a highly useful guide for how we might practice.  By practicing Not-knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action as we encounter life’s myriad realities, we are able to encounter situations more freely, less caught up in the delusions of the imaginary and conditioned, more able to be present with the complete reality as it is.

We can never avoid or escape conditions, pain, and loss.  But in this practice we are invited to “rest” right in the middle of it all. Learning to rest the mind in the midst of life’s situations is the Mahayana understanding of nirvana.  In the midst of any and all conditions (the inner conditions of our emotions, and our personal storehouse consciousness, as well as the seemingly external conditions of our lives), in the midst of our unfolding Karma, we rest our minds, even as we are active and engaged. This is how to remedy afflictions, this is the only real nirvana.

[from a talk given by Roshi Eve on December 9, 2017]
​​ 
Shakyamuni saw the morning star and returned home to his wife and son, having realized that attachment, like old age and death, is an inescapable part of being human. (as told by Barry Magid)
 
On this December 9, I asked us to sit with the above version of the Buddha’s story of enlightenment, rather than the historical story that the Buddha, after his great experience, went on to form what was predominantly a sangha of monks that wandered across India. What would have happened had he indeed gone back home to wife, child, palace, and governing responsibilities for his Shakya tribe? What would have changed? Why might it be important?
 
The Buddha had an experience, but we say that the bigger job is to then actualize the experience in your life. In fact, Eihei Dogen says that only after an experience does practice really start because now you have the confidence to go on. At the same time, Dogen himself wrote of Chinese monks he met whom he greatly admired and who told him they never had a kensho, an experience of awakening.
 
We all have glimpses. You feel bad, you take a walk, and you experience a sudden clarity. You look at a flower, someone says something, you gaze vacantly out the window, and it’s as if our mind has unloaded a weight of confusion like the snow suddenly falling off a heavily laden branch. Whatever is at work is beyond our understanding, and that causes us to somehow relax. We don’t really understand how it happened, but we’re grateful and over time we develop a confidence in this things we call the Dharma, teachings about the One Body. We develop faith is the glimpses we’ve had. This is especially visible in long-time practitioners.
 
At the same time, there’s something archetypal in the Buddha’s enlightenment, it has such a hold on our imagination that people sit day and night around December 8 to commemorate it. We want to have such an experience even when we have little understanding of what it was.
 
Many years ago I spent a summer at Zen Mountain Center doing the three-month summer intensive with Maezumi Roshi. We sat at least 8 hours a day, and even longer if you were ready to go on sitting past 9 pm. I did that often, and I have a powerful memory of leaving the zendo at night and encountering mountain deer that would approach me and nuzzle my hand. At that time I thought the deer were so gentle because no one would harm them at the Center, but actually it was I who had become gentle, it was I who became tame, and therefore approachable.
 
What changed was that I wasn’t fighting anymore. I wasn’t fighting life as it unfolded, wasn’t fighting for control, wasn’t fighting for my ideas of right and wrong. And the deer could tell.
 
Once you taste that lack of fighting, you want to live like that for the rest of your life. People would come to the intensive for a week or two, then leave, and you could sense their sharpness and intrusiveness. Their nervous energy was palpable even if they didn’t speak; there was no missing it. And you could tell how they changed over time, just as you had changed the longer you were there.
 
I wanted that for the rest of my life. I didn’t think of enlightenment as a Sound and Light show; to me it represented the end of fighting; it meant real peace.
 
December 8 lends itself to the delusion that you can have it all in one night, that if you work hard and sacrifice a lot—including your family—it will come in some great burst, all fully cooked. That’s not my own much more humble experience. I don’t believe that Shakyamuni arose from his seat under the Bodhi tree in perfect peace for the rest of his life. I think that he saw some very deep truths, and then had to develop and cultivate them, and he was lucky that he lived long enough to do that.
 
So why do we try to imagine that perhaps he went back to be with his wife and child? Because he realized that attachment is part of life. Loving a child, a partner, a parent. The other night someone said that she doesn’t wish to bend forward all the time, going after an experience or a goal. But when our child cries, we do bend forward towards him or her. When someone we love turns to us, don’t we bend forward?
 
We are relational beings. In some ways, we’re meant to bend forward towards certain people and goals, but we can’t be like that all the time otherwise our body will get hurt. We move forward, and then we move back and sit or stand straight. Move forward, then back. We hold something, and then release.
 
There are two more points I’d like to make in connection with December 8. Some people take experiences like the Buddha’s as being special, and therefore pointing to you as special. As though, to put in deistic terms, you've been chosen by the Lord. You’ve worked harder than anyone and are more dedicated; hence your reward. This is a trap; please avoid it.
 
Secondly, many describe this as an altered state of being. They talk of ecstasy and a heightened state of peace, like taking LSD. So I’d like to end by quoting the Christian theologian Cynthia Bourgeault:
 
Because the emotional content is so delicious, the tendency is to put the emphasis on the experience itself rather than the shift in perceptual field that it signals. But from the point of view of real spiritual growth, it’s an immature state—a state rather than a stage, in the helpful language of Ken Wilber. A state is a place you go to; a stage is a place you come from: integrated and mature spiritual experience. It’s true that a mystical experience can indeed be a sneak preview of what the universe looks from the point of view of non-dual consciousness. And it’s true that this consciousness does indeed operate at a higher level of vibrational intensity, which at first can overwhelm our normal cognitive systems. But the point is not to squander this infusion of energy on bliss trips, but to learn to contain it within a quiet and spacious consciousness and allow it to permanently bring about a shift in our operating system, so that unitive (or nondual) perception becomes our ordinary, and completely normal mode of perception.

​[from a talk given by Sensei Genyo, 10/3/17]

Today I’d like to work with Case 35 from the Book of Serenity. It begins like this:  
        
Attention! Rakuho went to visit Kassan. Without bowing, he stood and faced him.  Kassan remarked, “A chicken lives in a phoenix nest. He’s not in the same class. Get out.”   (Thus Rakuho comes to see Kassan but acts rudely by not bowing, and Kassan rebuffs him on this.) 
 
Rakuho said, “Your fame has made me come from afar.  I beg your indulgence.”  Kassan replied, “There’s no one before me, and no old monk here.”  (Kassan again challenges Rakuho, probing his depth with this statement.) 
 
At that, Rakuho gave a shout.  Kassan said, “Stop! Stop! You shouldn’t rattle on like that.  The moon and the clouds are the same.  Valleys and mountains are differerent.  It’s not that you can’t cut off tongue tips of everyone under heaven, but how can you make a tongueless person able to talk?”  Rakuho had no reply.  Kassan struck him. Henceforth, Rakuho acquiesced.
 
In this koan, we have one of those classic dharma battles between an upstart student and a master. Rakuho had studied with Rinzai and therefore was fond of shouting. Rinzai had approved of him. However, Kassan was more of a Soto style teacher, and this is the story of how Rakuho came to accept Kassan as his teacher.
 
There is a lot in this case, but there are two things in particular I want to speak to:
The first is this statement by Kassan:  “It’s not that you can’t cut off the tongue tips of everyone under heaven, but how can you make a tongueless man able to talk.” When we think of meditation and Zen we often think the aim is to quiet the mind, the cutting off of thought.  Manjushri’s sword.  The shouts and blows. Going into silence.  Emptiness. Of course, alll this can have much benefit.  But it is also not the whole dharma.  When we only want to silence, it is too easy to think we know.  We silence others.  We cut them off.  We cut ourselves off.  We hurl insults at ourselves and each other, and cause each other pain.  But how do we give life?  How do we support the silenced to speak? 
 
We cannot become whole only by silencing and cutting off our pain in zazen (or in shouting, or in distraction). That pain actually gives life if we live through it.
 
The second thing, and not unrelated, is the moment of acquiescence.  Often we hear of the journey of taming the mind, taming the bull of the self. We can link this endeavor to the silencing process, however this koan suggests that silencing can itself be a form of self.  Rakuho was a powerful practitioner:  He could cut off speech, but in that his ego was still alive. It was only by being challenged to give voice (and support others to give voice) to the voiceless, that he realizes he doesn’t know.  He acquiesces and accepts his teacher.  This kind of acquiescing is the taming we are looking for, the taming of self-absorbedness.  Letting the voice of the tongueless speak.
 
In my own experience, over and over, the way teaches me, “Don’t rattle on like that,” and don’t be stuck in my own self-absorption. I see that my desire to somehow succeed, to be approved of, actually creates my disappointments. When I acquiesce to what is arising, I have the chance to harmonize with the situation, meet the situation. This is not-knowing and bearing witness, rather than thinking I know.  In practicing this, in acquiescing over and over, we become clearer, more flexible, and thus more resilient.
 

(From a talk given by Roshi Eve on July 11, 2017)
 
 
I’d like to talk about what studying with a teacher means, and this koan points to that very precisely. As some of you know, it’s the question put to Monk Myo as he chased Huineng after Huineng received dharma transmission from the Chan master they both studied with. The Monk Myo had been a general, ambitious and determined; Huineng was a woodcutter, illiterate and new to Chan, yet it was he who received dharma transmission. Myo chased after him, determined to get the transmission for himself, but at some point met with great doubt. Apologizing to Huineng, he asked him for a teaching, and Huineng asked aloud: Without thinking good or evil, in this very moment, show me your original face. Sometimes it’s referred to as your original face before your parents were born.
 
Studying with a teacher doesn’t mean hanging out or getting low-priced counseling. Whether you do formal koan study or you wish to work with the situations of your life, the point is the same. In fact, one translation of Genjo Koan, which refers to the koan of your life, is actualizing the fundamental point, which points directly to studying with a teacher.
 
What is actualizing? What is the fundamental point?
 
In life there is ground and figure. Ordinarily we’re completely taken up by the figure of our life, the people, the action, the give-and-take. The ground in which the figures get drawn and in which they act is often ignored. Some scientists theorize that since human beings are primed for survival, our brains are always on the lookout for people or actions that could threaten us and less inclined to pay attention to the ground, the big picture.
 
When people first start to study with a teacher, they talk about what brought them to practice, which is essentially the events of their life: the drama, the ins and outs, the figure. After sitting a while they slowly begin to experience life as it is, not the story of their story as seen through projections and scripts, as dealing with the satisfaction of wants and needs (or lack thereof). That’s when they begin to experience the ground of things, which feels softer and more primal than the figure.
 
We get born, we die. We are conditioned by cause and effect, by parents, society, and culture, by the needs of the body, by its aging and passing. But the Buddha said, I set my eyes on the deathless. There is something that doesn’t die and isn’t subject to yes or no. That’s what I mean by ground. It’s not mystical; it’s right now, that sense of life that doesn’t get warped because you feel good or bad or because life is going or not going your way. None of those matter. You see life as it is, for its own sake, not as a function of whether it fulfills your wishes or not.
 
I’m not talking about resignation. 
 
When we forgive life for not being what we thought, expected, wished, or longed for it to be, we forgive ourselves for not being what we might have been also. I wear my Three-Tenet Mala for a very specific purpose now, and that is to remind myself not to indulge in self-judgment, but rather to dwell in not-knowing as much as possible. No self-judgment is also no judgment of life. No condemnation of my self results in no condemnation of life. Our usual handle on life is to condemn it, to find fault. Bearing witness is to have no such handle, to just bear witness.
 
I’m no different from other people, I want fulfillment of my needs and wishes and I take action for that purpose. But that’s different from wanting to control things, and from feeling like a victim when I can’t. Always I ask: What is my prison? The prison is the handle I’m using all the time.
 
Private study has to do with opening up a space in which the mind is not building its prison, of helping the student to see not a way out, but that there was never a prison to begin with. Private study does not require answers or solutions, but rather cultivating a space that helps you let go of that prison. In that space, you will notice joy and aliveness and a sense of having a link to eternity. This is the neighborhood of awakening. Then the space will close up, perhaps leaving a sense of loss. But it will open up again. You can just notice these things without grabbing them. Over time you will find yourself living more and more in this space.


Show me your original face before your parents were born. Regardless of the situation you bring to a teacher, the teacher will always find some way to throw this question back to you: What’s your original face beyond the kids, beyond the sick husband, beyond the demands of the job, beyond the needs of your parents? What is that original face? Where is it? What does it feel like, taste like, smell like?
 
Don’t get impatient and harsh with yourself. Our concepts and frameworks of thinking can often stand in our way, but that’s human. With great compassion, without condemning yourself, go on.
 
There is nothing linear about this. You will still experience painful states of mind and you’ll think this practice isn’t working except for providing you with some refuge of stillness and rest. But with the help of teachers and sangha, and even without changing the content of the life, you can transform oppression into freedom. The question is, how much do the bars of our lives open, so that we can experience our lives not as doomed or fated by circumstance, but lived freely and peacefully?

[from a talk given by Sensei Genyo January 24, 2017 during sesshin]

​In Buddhism there is a wide variety of methods related to meditation and spiritual practice, and of course there are many more in other spiritual traditions.  In Zen, we also have a number of methods such as “turning the light around”, following the breath, locating the attention in the hara, focusing intensely on a koan, and so forth.  However, in its essence Zen practice is radically simple: in meditation we just sit, and in life we just live, attending to each moment directly as it arises.  We might affirm that this essential reality is present in all approaches to meditation and life; even if it is not named.
 
What does this mean?  How do we practice just sitting, just living?  Aren’t we always just living?  Roshi Bernie once gave a talk in Germany, and at the end asked if people had questions. Someone raised his hand and said, “Roshi, how can I be here now?” clearly referring to the phrase made famous by Ram Dass.  At that point Bernie looked at the audience and said, “Whoever’s not here now, please stand up.”  No one stood up, and that was the end of that.  We are always here now,  yet . . .  we often feel like we’re not. It’s a paradox. We’re not just sitting, we’re thinking about stuff that happened in the past, or might happen in the future.  So we’re not just sitting; we’re sitting and thinking, sitting and worrying. 
 
So our practice of just sitting means we let go of our addiction to thought, and we just sit.  Whatever arises just arises  Of course thoughts arise. So we let them arise and gently let them go, refocusing on the simplicity of our sitting, just breathing and being aware.
 
We might say that Zen practice is the practice of suchness.  Yunyan proclaimed to his student Dongshan, a founder of the Soto lineage:  “Just this is it!”  Pondering his teachers statement led Dongshan to his own enlightenment, which he described as merging with suchness. 
 
Tibetan Buddhism has a huge variety of meditation methods— but at their heart is something very much along this line. I read an explanation of a core Tibetan meditation which is called the samadhi of suchness:  Here are the instructions: “Start out by relaxing your mind from within; don’t follow after any deluded thought. Mind itself is empty yet aware — a bare reality beyond anything you can think or say.  Settle for a moment in this simplicity . . . This is the absorption (samadhi) of suchness.”  This is also known as the practice of emptiness — we could say “not-knowing.”   The Tibetans go on to name a second absorption, which the samadhi of total illumination, which is simply the natural radiance of the suchness practice, manifesting as compassion towards all beings. 
 
In this way, in just sitting, in letting go of following after our thoughts, and settling into just sitting, the natural radiant heart of our being arises.
 
Thus we begin in paradox. We feel like we’re not here, when we already are here.  Then, like big goose dummies (to borrow a colorful image from Chaung Tzu) we practice being right where we are. In doing so, our natural energy and compassion unfurls itself.  We benefit as our inner energies are freed up from their habitual, obsessive patterns, and we experience the development of our inner chi, the jori-ki as they say in Japanese Zen.  We also benefit others as compassion arises, and loving actions manifest naturally. 
 
In meditating daily, we are practicing being right where we are, aware and present, and we develop our joriki, our natural inner energy.  We can also complement our sitting with the Three Tenets as a way to focus the natural unfolding of our practice via Not-knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action.
In this way we can expand the circle of our practice into all the arenas of our lives.

[From a talk given by Roshi Eve on March 25]

      A monk asked Yun Men, “How is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall?”
     Yun Men said, “Body exposed in the golden wind.”

This is one of my favorite koans. It gets better with age, meaning with my age, for I uncover new teachings in it each time I study it anew.

Why are we here, practicing in the zendo? Why and what do we practice at home? We all have different motivations, but there’s a basic one for me, and that is wishing to experience the oneness of this world and of all life, and then deepen the practice. There is nothing abstract about this, I have learned that the more things I experience as me, the less harm I will do in the world.

I am trying to describe something that is beyond the reaches of my brain and the karmic laws it follows. I beat the drum of the deathless, the Buddha said in one of his discourses. He sets his eyes on the deathless, not the things that depend on life conditions and will therefore pass as those conditions pass, but that which isn’t born and doesn’t die.

How do you experience this? By letting go. And this koan asks, what happens after you do that? What happens after years of practice, when we see our attachments finally falling away like leaves, when all the concepts that made up my consciousness of who I am finally fall bare, the powerful needs and cravings finally released—what happens then?

I’ll tell you what doesn’t happen: quiescence and lack of response. Look outside, see the bare trees still tremble in this late, cold winter. They will feel the caress of a warm breeze when that happens, and now they shiver when it’s cold. Either way, there is complete exposure to everything in the universe, and a response. Full exposure doesn’t mean no response, it means no reactivity. In fact, you can’t help but respond. I’m hot, I sweat. I’m cold, I shiver. I’m old, I get stiff, or my memory deteriorates. What’s the use of self-consciousness then? What’s the use of complaint? What old version are you comparing yourself to?

Full exposure doesn’t mean apathy. It doesn’t imply quiescence or passivity.
For sure, there are those early mornings when I seek shelter from the storm in my practice. That’s okay for a short while, especially when I feel overwhelmed, but in my gut I know that that’s not the point. This practice does not conflict with activity, it is at the very essence of activity.

I beat the drum of the deathless. Tan, our wonderful monastic friend, was here last week and I drove him home. We talked about our different ways of life. Both of us, I believe, seek the undying and unborn in the middle of the dying and the born. Whether you are a monastic or a layperson, this is hard to do. In some ways, his is a much more exposed life than mine because he follows the rules of the Vinaya. They mandate that he must wear certain robes even in the harshest of weather, with no added layers for protection. He has to beg for food every single day in order to eat, completely relying on the bounty and generosity of the world rather than on his own efforts. He carries no money. He is much more exposed to the elements and to the rawness of life than I am.

You and I don’t follow those rules. We change clothes, depending on the weather and the occasion. When we’re hungry we reach into the refrigerator or else we go into a restaurant and pat our pocket where the money lies. We are not exposed like him. But we may be more buffeted by winds of change, by family, friends and work connections. We may find ourselves in many more unfamiliar neighborhoods than him.

In these times I think especially of the work involved with helping illegal immigrants and refugees, with fighting against climate change, at a time when so many hard-won, forward steps are being undermined and even dismantled. But I keep in mind Thomas Merton’s caution:  . . . [N]on-violence seeks dialogue, not victory . . . [T]rue non-violence requires spiritual discipline and a deep love for people.

When one works, fully exposed, we seek dialogue with everything, not victory. We seek relationship at every moment with every thing that arises, including every thing inside ourselves. Merton says: The enemy is not the other but the tendency in all of us to make the other different and to declare ourselves the norm and the center of human behavior.

That tendency is gone when the leaves fall, and then, what’s left? Continuing work, not out of denial or violence, but out of relationship with everything.

A friend who went to Standing Rock last winter wrote: I’ve identified a new goal/mantra: Instead of starting a path or endeavor with the goal of achieving perfection, change, resolution, or any kind of end goal at all, I commit to simply showing up, bearing witness, and participating in the world.
​
Exposure comes with practice. There’s no talk of winning, because winning comes with losing. There’s no need for honors or riches, for recognition or success. We bend with the wind, we feel the woodpeckers creating holes in our bark, we shiver with the storm. No conflict anywhere, just the deathless in very moment.