Author: Jeff

Ashes to Ashes: On the Terror and Beauty of Life (with a Brief Tribute to Maurice Sendak)

Jeff

This post is based upon a Dharma Talk I gave tonight, our last at “Waldo,” as our practice space at First Church in Boston has been known.

 

Zhimen’s  Lotus Blossom (Case 21 in The Blue Cliff Record)

 

A monk asked Zhimen, “When the lotus hasn’t emerged from the water, what is that?”

Zhimen replied, “Lotus flower.”

“After it emerges from the water, what is that?”

“Lotus petals,” replied Zhimen.

 

I traveled much too much last year, and that alone wore me down.

 

A few weeks after I returned from a crazy, 12-day trip around the world last May that included a stop in China, however, I also started having serious health problems.

 

It began with three, 48-hour bouts of severe flu-like illnesses, spaced about 10 days apart.  I was completely bedridden during the first two of these periods.  I had a high fever, and I was borderline unconscious, and mildly delirious when I wasn’t completely passed out.  I really only remember what seems like 10 minutes of the first episode, which was here in Boston.  I remember a bit more of the second, which was in a hotel room in Paris, but I don’t remember much.

 

I was in a hotel room in Stockholm, Sweden, and on an overnight ferry from Stockholm to Talin, Estonia, during the third episode.  It was slightly less severe, and so I was more conscious.  That wasn’t a good thing, because the experience was nearly intolerable.

 

I began having terribly debilitating gastrointestinal problems after the first episode.  (I’ll spare you the disgusting details.)  I lost 10 pounds in a couple of weeks.  I had other awful symptoms, some persistent, like extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, and gushing eyes at night, and some that happened once or twice and never returned, like pounding headaches in the back of my head that woke me in the middle of the night and kept me up for several hours at a time.

 

I went to see my doctor about a week after the onset of symptoms, and I saw him and many specialists frequently for the next seven months.  I had many rounds of blood and stool tests, a colonoscopy, and an endoscopy.  These tests and procedures didn’t offer any clues.

 

We eventually began to suspect parasites that one finds in China, but not so much here, even though the many tests designed to reveal the full range of likely suspects had been negative.  Sneaky creatures, these.

 

Infectious disease doctors began to treat me “empirically,” which basically means throwing a series of drugs at the patient to see if anything sticks.

 

I got the pounding headaches at night while taking a two-week course of one of these drugs, which targets a broad range of parasitic worms.  The headaches prompted an emergency MRI of my head, because a pathologist friend of mine feared I was plagued by a worm which attacks the brain and requires immediate surgery that’s done well in just two places in the U.S., neither of which is Boston.

 

The drug I was taking when the headaches gave us that big scare actually seems to have been a turning point.  I had my first solid you-know-what in ages shortly after that.  They remained a rare occurrence for months, but things have slowly gotten better.  I’m now somewhat more regular, and I have considerably more energy.

 

Still, I haven’t yet fully recovered, and the past year has taken a toll.  I started turning grey during this illness.  There are a few other signs of “extraordinary wear and tear.”

 

I turn 50 in July.  I felt like 30 before this saga began.  Now I feel like, well, 50.  I hope to feel like 40 again, and I now believe that’s possible, but 30 somehow doesn’t seem realistic anymore.

 

I’m not telling you all this to evoke expressions of sympathy, though I’ve certainly appreciated the support I’ve received from family and friends.  It’s been a tough year.

 

I’m telling you about this experience because it really got me thinking about life – my life, and life in general.  And death.  About the fact that I am of the nature to get ill, grow old, and die.

 

And because it got me thinking about worms.

 

Worm infections were common in North America generations ago, when public health standards weren’t what they are today.  They’re now pretty rare here, but they’re still relatively common in many places, including China.

 

During one of the most intense phases of this whole episode, Josh reminded me that a worm infection is one theory about the cause of the Buddha’s death.

 

According to this story, the broad outline of which is surely credible, he and his entourage were visiting a village where someone offered him a bowl of rice and meat.  Typically vegetarian, he was hungry and wanted to be gracious.  (Actually, some versions of the story, perhaps the most mythologized versions, say he knew the meat was bad, and he was staging his own death.)  He ate the meal, became ill, and died.

 

If I did have worms, and if I got them from meat I ate in China, it’s pretty ironic.  I mainly feed myself plants, and I typically only eat meat when someone has prepared or purchased a meal for me and I don’t want to decline the generosity.  I’ll certainly be reconsidering that policy before my next trip to the developing world.

 

Anyway, this whole experience was bizarre and unsettling, and also strangely reassuring, in a variety of ways.

 

Here are three ways in which it was both unsettling and reassuring:

 

First, and most obviously, there is the very tangible reminder of my mortality, for which I’m strangely grateful.

 

Talk about a practice of not knowing.  I mean really not knowing.  Not knowing what I had when I was very sick, and not knowing still.  It seems we’ll never know exactly what it was.

 

What a powerful reminder this has been to try to live meaningfully.  What a powerful reminder that my number truly will be up someday – perhaps sooner, and differently, than I’m inclined to imagine.

 

One day as I walked from home to catch a train to Boston for work and more doctor visits I heard a HUGE bang.  I looked to my left to see that two cars had just had a head-on collision perhaps 15 feet away, and that one of the cars was now hurtling right toward me.  My heart pounding, I jumped out of the way before it hit the spot where I’d been walking.

 

The illness, the car wreck, turning 50:  It seems the universe really does want me to be aware of my mortality.

 

I get it.  I truly get it now.  And I’m truly grateful that I do.

 

Second, there’s the reminder that our day-to-day experience is contingent, just like our very existence.

 

The “me” I know and tend to think of as stable from moment to moment is contingent upon my physical condition, which is contingent upon what I eat, which is contingent upon what I eat has eaten.  Etc.

 

Everything is related through-and-through, and constantly changing, and so contingent.

 

And, it follows, I’m not completely in control.  I suppose I’m not even mostly in control – physically, mentally, and otherwise.  In fact, the whole “I’m in control” narrative is coming from a distorted conception of “me.”

 

The reassuring flip-side of this is that I don’t have to go through life burdened by the delusion that I am in control.  I can let go of that feature of what seems to be the human mental default mode, and just be part of it all.

 

I can have an influence.  In fact, I will have an influence, whether I try to or not.  To breathe in this realm of radical interdependence is to have an influence.  So I’ll try to have a positive influence, knowing all-the-while that I’m not in control and I can’t be sure what will come of my actions.

 

Third, there’s the reminder of the terror and the beauty of life.

 

The experience of being delirious at times, and of generally being a bit off-kilter, excitable and irritable when I wasn’t completely delirious, was really scary.  This was not the me I know.

 

We were on vacation during the latter two delirium episodes – the ones that occurred in Paris and Stockholm.  Having two little kids cooped up in hotel rooms with a crazy man was not a recipe for fun.  The kids’ bouncing on beds, shouting and screaming playfully, would have mildly pressed my buttons even if I’d just spent a week on sesshin.  I had almost no capacity to deal with that under the circumstances.

 

It’s not our practice to yell at our children.  The wisdom of that policy was confirmed by my behavior during our stay in Stockholm.  I lost it with the kids a couple of times.  That was really disturbing for them, and the confusion and guilt I felt when I began to regain my senses was just horrible.

 

Yet it also provided great opportunities for redemption and learning.  The delirium, the yelling: they were the muck at the bottom of the pond in which the Lotus blooms.

 

I learned to apologize to a six-year old and a three-year old, deeply, sincerely.  I don’t think it necessarily was bad for them to see an adult – their father – do that.  They were incredibly understanding and forgiving.

 

(My wife assures me that we had a lovely vacation nonetheless, and that these moments were passing little blips.  I feel like I owe my family a very pleasant, sane vacation, and we’ve got one planned next month.)

 

As I make this point, I’m aware that it’s easy to get lost in, to try to cling to, the beauty of that Lotus when it’s in full bloom.  To favor what appears to us to be beautiful, worthy, redeeming or whatever.  But this koan invites us to see that no Lotus, Lotus, Lotus petals are all one.  All part of an unbroken cycle.  All present in whatever is present here and now, whether or not we deem it to be desirable.

 

From one perspective, it’s terrifying and disgusting to think about worms burrowing through sewage and trash as pigs eat it and them; of the pig’s slaughter; of me eating the pork and the worms; of the worms making Swiss cheese of my innards; of the pork, the worms, and, ultimately, me, returning to the soil.  Yet, the soil the worms turn is the soil from which the Lotus blooms.

 

I started sitting in the Christian contemplative tradition, which developed in monastic circles.  I’ve always been struck by the image of the medieval monk with a skull on his desk.  Often these images have a worm slithering through the holes in the skull.

 

A reminder of our mortality.  And of renewal.  Of terror-beauty.  Life-death.

 

Two sides of one coin; not even two sides.  Not even one.

 

Where to go with all this?  There is no conclusion, really.  Nowhere to go.

 

I’ll close with a few lines from the German romantic poet Rainer Maria Rilke that I’ve always loved:

 

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror . . . and we are awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

 

Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final

 

One more thing:  It is both odd and quite personally meaningful to me to be giving this particular talk, coincidentally, on the day Maurice Sendak died.  I learned of his death early this morning, when my wife sent me a text after hearing about it on NPR as she drove to work.

 

Sendak, of course, is widely considered the most important contemporary author of children’s literature.  His Nutshell Library – a collection of four small books – which was published in 1962, the year I was born, is among my favorite works of literature of any kind.  Many people know Sendak through Where the Wild Things Are, his genre-transforming book that was made into a movie a few years ago.

 

Sendak upended the idealized images of the physical and social landscape, and of our interior lives, that were so common in most of the children’s literature that preceded him (setting aside some exceptions like the tales of The Brothers Grimm).  He embraced and held together the beauty and the terror of life in his writing, incorporating the full spectrum of human experience and emotion in contemporary children’s literature.  Kids also experience the terror of life alongside the beauty, and he validated that experience for them.

 

Sendak certainly initiated me into the beauty and terror of life, as he’s now done for my own children.  I’m deeply grateful to and for him, and I’m unsettled and strangely reassured to be giving this talk on the day he died.

 

Sitting is Bad for You

Jeff

 

I recently got a standing desk.

 

We’ve known for some time now that sitting all day will kill you.

 

Sure, there’s no way to avoid death, but why hasten it?

 

Makes me wonder about the wisdom of sesshins.  So good and life-giving in so many ways, and yet . . .

 

Ironically, one of our sanghamates fainted tonight while we sat at Waldo (which is soon to be blended into the Greater Boston Zen Center).

 

Fortunately, he’ll be fine.

 

First time I’d seen that one in 21 years of frequenting meditation halls and other such establishments.

 

I believe

Jeff

This is the text of a talk I gave this morning at the annual Credo service at the Unitarian Church of Sharon.

 

The modern translation of Credo is “I believe,” and the word creed has come to mean a statement of religious beliefs.

 

Being asked to talk about my religious beliefs presents something of a problem for me.  I’ve come to think beliefs aren’t the most interesting or important – or even an essential – element of religion.

 

In fact, I’ve come to think that metaphysical beliefs can, for many – present company excluded – be a real impediment to development of a sense of wonder and reverence, of a broad and deeply felt connection to the universe, other beings, and oneself.  For me, these are hallmark traits of mature spirituality.

 

Any praiseworthy ethical framework flows from this sort of orientation.

 

I suppose I do have my religious beliefs (including those just mentioned), but they’re quite spare.

 

I didn’t arrive at this perspective through a syllogistic reasoning process or an act of mental will, though I certainly have done my fair share of thinking about religion.

 

I was raised Catholic and still have a deep appreciation for the mystical tradition in Christianity.  I’ve always had what I’d call a contemplative orientation.

 

As a young child I was troubled by the confusing and inconsistent ways in which people used the word God – it seemed like the free space in Bingo, or that proverbial blank to be filled in however one might wish – and yet I felt the deepest connection to . . . to . . . to what?

 

I made a secret shrine in a construction zone near the new subdivision to which we moved when I was eight or nine, and I sneaked away to pray there several times a week.  I read the Bible, Jonathan Livingston Seagull – for those of you old enough to remember it – and all the Hardy Boys novels, of course, in a quiet little monk’s cell I made on my closet floor.

 

I eventually attended a Jesuit university.

 

In my late 20’s, shortly after finishing law school and entering law practice, I began to meditate.  I soon became very involved in a movement called Contemplative Outreach, which is reviving the ancient practice of silent prayer within the Christian community.  It was started by a Trappist monk, Fr. Thomas Keating – a lovely man who has had a big impact on my life, and on the lives of so many others.

 

I also encountered Zen during this period, initially through Kyudo, or Zen archery.  I studied with Kanjuro Shibata Sensei, an archery master and the Imperial Bowmaker of Japan.  He lives in Boulder, Colorado, much of the year.

 

I spent a great deal of time on silent retreat at monasteries and convents in Colorado and New Mexico.

 

During this era, I began to feel that my world, that I myself, was divided between interior and exterior, between the contemplative perspectives and pursuits that had become so important to me, on the one hand, and the rough-and-tumble world of business and corporate law, on the other.

 

Unable to reconcile these seeming poles at that life-stage, in 1995 I turned down an offer of partnership in a good law firm to study at Harvard Divinity School.  I planned to get a Ph.D. and become a scholar of comparative religion.

 

It turned out to be an absolutely brilliant move, but not for any of the reasons I thought I was making it.

 

During my first year I took a class on comparative theologies in which one session’s readings, and much earnest discussion regarding them, focused on the problem of syncretism – of combining religious perspectives and forms.

 

In reality, all religions are syncretistic, a fact too few religious people appreciate.  The overt syncretism of Unitarian Universalism is one of the things that attracted me to it.

 

One of those class readings and the discussion that flowed from it revolved around questions like, “If a person borrows from Christianity and Buddhism, might his brain be reincarnated in a newborn’s body and the rest of him end up in heaven?  Are these people putting themselves in some sort of metaphysical jeopardy?”

 

I’m not joking.

 

In the very probing, yet balanced, manner of the scholars I had come to learn from, I reflected for a moment, then raised my hand and asked the group,

 

“Are you serious?  Who cares?”

 

This didn’t endear me to the professor or most of my classmates.

 

Around the same time, the NY Times published a huge expose about the battle of Srebrenica, which occurred in July 1995, near the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia.  Thousands of Bosnian Muslims were massacred in an assault the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia later declared to be an act of genocide, and the worst mass slaughter on European soil since World War II.  It seems NATO – the Clinton administration and other western powers – may have let Serbian General Ratko Mladic overrun a supposed UN safe zone where the Bosnians were encamped.  It was inconveniently located in territory western officials believed would have to be ceded to the Serbs in order to achieve a peace accord.

 

The NY Times article contained a picture of a Muslim woman hung from a tree limb, a rope around her neck.  She killed herself to avoid being killed.  I broke down in tears.

 

I knew then that the academic study of religion, or of theology, at least, was not my calling – at least not then.  I retooled my program, and my path, by combining my legal background with my interest in religion and international affairs.  I created a course of study in international conflict resolution, and eventually ended up teaching and practicing in this area at Harvard Law School for several years after I graduated.

 

I eventually returned to private law practice, but I’m now also part of an NGO that helps create and support broad-scale peace processes to end civil wars, as well as broad-scale national dialogue processes to help avert them.  We helped end Nepal’s civil war in 2006.  Our current project is in Lebanon, and it’s beginning to spread elsewhere in the Middle East.

 

The meditation practice I began 20 years ago seems to have contributed to the progressive dismantlement of the religious conceptual framework I inherited.  I sat alone during 10 years in the middle of those 20, until eventually finding a spiritual home in the Zen tradition.

 

I’m part of an emerging western Buddhist community called Boundless Way Zen – BoWZ for short.  Last year I became one of its very junior teachers.  BoWZ has a strong, if informal, connection to Unitarian Universalism.  Our most senior teacher, James Ford, is minister of the First Unitarian Church in Providence.

 

I consider myself nontheistic, which I prefer to the term atheistic.  For me, non-theism is about being religious without a reified idea of god, or even needing to speak of god, nor standing in opposition to the many wonderful people who do speak of god.

 

A revered, ancient Zen teacher once said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”  That’s certainly my experience.

 

This “not knowing” is not the “I don’t know” of agnosticism.  It’s not the product of indifference or laziness or resignation.

 

It’s a full-to-the-brim sort of not knowing.

 

Unlike the author of the author of the late 14th century classic of contemplative Christian spirituality, The Cloud of Unknowing, however, I don’t experience this “not knowing” primarily in theistic terms.  That just doesn’t resonate with me completely anymore, particularly not in terms of the person-like images of God presented in the Hebrew Bible and some of the sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. All ideas break down.

 

For me, this not knowing can’t be contained.  In words, in beliefs.

 

Or, rather, it’s contained by, and it contains . . . this.

 

 

Just this.

 

 

Nothing extra.  Nothing less.

 

Now I look back at that nine-year old praying at his shrine – or throwing a ball, or chasing his dog, or hugging his parents, or staring at the night sky – and understand why Jesus pointed to children, and the lilies in the field, when adults asked him how to enter the Kingdom of God.

 

He also reminded them that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

 

 

Here, now.

 

 

These hands.  No hands but our hands.

 

My family is new to this community, yet Esther and I saw immediately how it accommodates a range of religious perspectives, including those that emphasize belief more than mine does.  I’m so impressed by the open-mindedness and big heartedness that makes this possible.

 

Just this includes everything.  In the words of another revered, ancient Zen teacher, there is “nothing worth begrudging.”  Nothing that can’t teach us; no fact, experience or viewpoint that can’t serve as grist for our individual and collective mills.

 

The modern meaning of Credo is “I believe,” but I understand its ancient usage conveyed a somewhat different meaning – something more along the lines of “I give my heart to this.”

 

And, I do.

 

After an afterthought

Jeff

 

Soon after I walked out of dokusan last night, I realized the right response to the koan I’d just gotten “80% right” (as Josh put it as he suggested I sit with the koan a bit longer).

 

This often happens:  I present a koan that isn’t yet ripe – or, rather, I’m not ripe with the koan – and then it ripens and falls from the tree moments after I’ve left the dokusan room.

 

I woke up for a moment last night thinking about this.  Half-awake, half-asleep, I thought:  I wish I could go back to that koan and that meeting.

 

Then, immediately, another thought:  Always a koan.  Always a meeting.

 

Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice

Jeff

 

 

This post is based upon a Dharma Talk I gave on February 4, 2012.  During the Boundless Way Zen Winter Ango, each of the Guiding Teachers, Senior Dharma Teachers, and Dharma Teachers is giving a talk on Bodhidharma‘s Outline of Practice.  Recordings of our talks can be found online.

 

Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice

 

Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice. To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion. Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason. Without moving, without effort, they enter, we say, by reason.

 

To enter by practice refers to four all-inclusive practices: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma.

 

First, suffering injustice. When those who search for the Path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, “In countless ages gone by, I’ve turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I’m punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice. The sutras say, ” When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes sense.” With such understanding you’re in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.

 

Second, adapting to conditions. As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions. If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it’s the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past. When conditions change, it ends. Why delight in its existence? But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes. Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.

 

Third, seeking nothing. People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something — always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with Prosperity. To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path.

 

Fourth, practicing the Dharma. The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure. By this truth, all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist. The sutras say, “The Dharma includes no being because it’s free from the impurity of being, and the Dharma includes no self because it’s free from the impurity of self.” Those wise enough to believe and understand these truths are bound to practice according to the Dharma. And since that which is real includes nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life, and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift, or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And to eliminate impurity they teach others, but without becoming attached to form. Thus, through their own practice they’re able to help others and glorify the Way of Enlightenment. And as with charity, they also practice the other virtues. But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all. This is what’s meant by practicing the Dharma.  (Translated by Red Pine)

 

I’ve read Bodhidharma’s little practice manual several times since it was selected as our Ango text a month or so ago.  It’s almost impossibly rich.  There are so many directions in which one could go in a talk on this text.  For a while, I really wasn’t sure where to go myself.

 

When I first read the piece, however, I had immediate, stream-of-consciousness reactions to each of the five paragraphs describing the two paths Bodhidharma identifies.  I jotted down these reactions – each of them a little phrase – in the margin of the text.  I ultimately decided just run with them.  To use each these little reactions as a launchpad for reflection on the paths Bodhidharma charts for us.

 

Each paragraph of this text is action packed, so I’ll just tug on a thread here and there.

 

The Path of Reason

 

When I read the first paragraph of our text, which is on reason, I thought, “The dog stops chasing its tail.”

 

Reason as we think of it in the west has this quality of parsing.  Of dividing the world into pieces.

 

This is endlessly useful in a relative sense.

 

Yet, this slicing and dicing can make us crazy.  It does make us crazy, individually and collectively, when we lose the perspective that embraces the whole, unifying the parts.

 

We can become like dogs chasing our tails when we’re stuck in this parsing mode.

 

The irony is that the dog thinks it’s chasing something other than itself, when in fact it’s chasing a feature of itself it doesn’t recognize as such.  It sees this and that.  The dog sees itself as this, and pursues that.  Jeff pursues cessation of pain.  Pursues happiness.  Pursues wisdom.  Pursues enlightenment.  Pursues his tail.  The answer is out there.

 

To my thinking, Bodhidharma is telling us, with more than a touch of humor and irony, that the tails is us, and we can’t lose it.

 

I chased my tail for decades in spiritual and other matters, and sometimes still do.  I turned down an offer of partnership in a good law firm nearly 20 years ago to do graduate work at Harvard Divinity School, in part, as a strategy for getting answers to life’s questions.  I thought I’d get a Ph.D. and become a scholar of comparative religion.

 

It turned out to be a brilliant move, but not at all for the reasons I expected.  I eventually exhausted my search for tidy, rationally satisfying answers –not ended it the way a mathematician ends her work by logically equating one function to another, but literally by exhausting myself from the search.

 

And that’s when things really started to happen.

 

For me, Bodhidharma’s wonderful guidance has this quality.  Reason isn’t always about making one’s way syllogistically toward an answer.

 

The “right” answer to a koan often has this non-linear quality.  Just like life.

 

A personal case in point:  My dad is rather conservative.  When my youngest brother – the other center-left member of our family — or I visit, our father often tries to draw us into debates about politics.  Often he succeeds, and this can lead to fireworks – and not the glorious kind we enjoy seeing and hearing on the 4th of July.

 

I was telling Josh Bartok about this dynamic and, specifically, about an encounter with my dad during a visit this past Thanksgiving.  I knew I’d handled the moment poorly, and I was still unsettled about what had happened.

 

Shortly after we arrived at my parents’ home in Colorado, my dad said, “We’re not going to talk politics this time, Jeff, but you have to answer one question for me:  Do you still like Obama?”  I smiled, then thought for a minute before venturing a nuanced answer I hoped would create an opening for some genuine, open dialogue:

 

“It’s a complicated question,” I said.  “He’s acted differently in some respects than I expected.”

“You haven’t answered my question.  Do you still like him?”

“I’m trying.  My answer is nuanced.  As with most human beings, he’s done some things I like, and some things I don’t like.”

“You won’t answer the question.”

Sigh.  “Yes, on balance, I still like him.”

“He’s a jerk,” my dad said.

 

I walked away muttering similar expletives.

 

When Josh heard this story, he asked how I could have approached my dad’s question as a koan.  I was stumped – stumped the way I’m often stumped when I’m too close to something, when it’s in my blind spot.

 

Josh gently slapped me on the back, smiled, and said, “It’s great to see you, Dad.”

 

Yes.  The answer is orthogonal to the question, yet meets it perfectly.  So simple.

 

I don’t intend to denigrate this tail chasing, and I don’t think Bodhidharma does either.  It can be very productive; it can lead to something.  For many of us, as in my case, that something is a sort of exhaustion, which can create an opening in which we realize what we’re after is not an object of thought – not something we can conceive of.  It’s in subject position. The subject encompasses us, and yet isn’t limited to us.

 

The dog discovers itself.

 

The Path of Practice

 

Bodihdharma’s little practice manual breaks the second path – the Path of Practice — down into four practices: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma

 

Suffering Injustice

 

When I read Bodhidharma’s paragraph on the practice of suffering injustice, I thought, “You’re bound to step on a stone from time to time.  Just don’t curse the gods when you do.”

 

I imagine the path of practice as having stones here and there.  Some of them are jagged.  Every now and then one jabs us through the sole of our shoes, and it hurts.

 

I don’t see these stones as the natural, personal conditions of existence – old age, illness and death.  For me, that’s the subject of Bodhidharma’s next practice, adapting to conditions.

 

I hear Boddhidharma talking more about the social landscape – the conditions we create for ourselves.  This includes our own past transgressions and their karmic effects in the present.

 

But I also hear Bodhidharma talking about something more diffuse and subtle.  Much of our misguided behavior can be traced back to our various human default modes, chief among them the illusion of separateness at the root of our greed, anger and ignorance.

 

I think Bodhidharma is holding this up for us to see, in ourselves and in others, and he’s inviting us to use it as grist for our mills.

 

He says, “When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes sense.”  Makes sense, how?  With so many of us striving to make life conform to our selfish ideals, we’re bound to spend much of our time scheming and railing against the world and one another.

 

And, he says, “With such understanding you’re in harmony with reason.  And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.”

 

When we see through the illusion of separateness, without losing sight of our own and others’ genuine distinctiveness, we’re no longer compelled to try reflexively to make the world conform to our selfish ideals.  We see how that impulse is one source of injustice.

 

But, what does it mean to suffer it?  I don’t think Bodhidharma necessarily means we suffer it passively.  I suspect he means one now has freedom of choice – choice not to respond tit-for-tat, or else to internalize our feelings of hurt and let them fester and progressively break us down.  One has the choice to respond skillfully, in ways that tend to reduce suffering.  And because everything is connected in this Indra’s net of a universe, all beings are saved in the process.

 

Adapting to Conditions

 

Why delight in good fortune, Bodhidharma asks?  “Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.”

 

When I finished reading this last line of Bodhidharma’s commentary on the practice of adapting to conditions, I thought, “Yes, but don’t resist the urge to smile as that wind passes through you.”

 

Zen sometimes is seen as overly stoic and serious.  It probably is in some quarters, but our teachers make it rather hard to maintain that perspective here.

 

Reading this paragraph, however, one could be forgiven for concluding that Zen is a super intense and dour religion.

 

I’m inclined to think Bodhidharma is having a little fun here.  He’s just told us to smile at the injustices we suffer.  Now he seems to be telling us not to enjoy our good fortune.

 

It seems pretty clear to me that he’s simply reminding us that things change, and that getting too attached to anything we like is a recipe for suffering.

 

I had an awful affliction for a long time – an illness of the heart.  I suffered with it for decades (as did some of those around me).  My life was filled with mostly wonderful stuff, but I couldn’t enjoy it.  I eventually came to understand that I had walled off my sorrow – or at least I thought I was walling it off.  In truth, I was attached to it.

 

It seems to be a law of emotional physics that we can’t know happiness unless we can grieve, and vice versa.

 

So, I hear Bodhidharma telling us:  Things change.  Be happy and grieve as they do.  But, don’t get attached to the happiness or grief.  Let them pass.  Know that you are the ground over which they pass; the space through which they pass.  Find your ultimate joy and consolation there.

 

Seeking nothing

 

As I read the sentence “When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path,” I thought, “The path is boundless.  Don’t get lost!”

 

I think “seeking nothing” can manifest in several ways:

 

When we seek to understand/know this nothing – when Mu is burning in our gullets like a hot iron ball – we’re on the path.

 

And when, having been seared by that iron ball, we’re truly seeking nothing, not even nothing, we’re on the path.

 

And, being unaware of the Buddha Dharma and wandering through this life, unaware of this nothing, and therefore not seeking it, we’re on the path.

 

We can’t be off the path – and, still, it’s easy to feel lost.  And, feeling lost, it’s easy to transgress (see above).

 

Practicing the Dharma

 

Bodhidharma gives us his definition of Dharma right up front:  It’s “the truth that all natures are pure.”

 

Having previously talked about delusion and attachment as if they’re real – and he of course knows they are, relatively speaking — he tells us “Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist.”

 

And he tells us “Those wise enough to believe and understand” all this “are bound to practice according to the Dharma.”

 

One could be forgiven for thinking this sounds rather circular, like that dog chasing its tail:

 

All natures are pure.

 

That act of kindness that seems so good, it’s pure.  Just like that act of violence.

 

If we realize this, we’ll practice according to it.

 

Sounds like it doesn’t much matter what we do.

 

But, Boddhidharma encourages us to practice charity and the virtues, everywhere, always, precisely because everything is worthy of our attention and loving regard.  “[T]hat which is real includes nothing worth begrudging,” he tells us.

 

Nothing worth begrudging.  I love that phrase.

 

That person who committed that violent act – not worth begrudging.

 

The act of violence itself:  What does it have to teach us about the world we live in, the world we and innumerable past and present conditions – physical and social — have helped create?

 

I heard a scientist who studies serial killers interviewed on the radio some time ago.  He’s identified a genetic condition he believes all of them share.  He contends this genetic condition predispose them to do what they do.  It prevents them from feeling empathic the way other people do.  They know what they’re doing is wrong, but they can’t regulate their conduct; they can’t relate to the pain they’re causing.

 

I don’t have the skills to assess the strength of this scientist’s claims.  If they’re true, then, for me, this provides another very compelling argument against the death penalty.  Who knows?  Perhaps his research ultimately will lead to a gene-based therapy eradicating the suffering this type of conduct causes so many people.

 

I’m holding this up here simply because I’m so impressed by the open-minded, open-hearted way this scholar approached his work.  He certainly didn’t approve of this conduct, but he approached it with great curiosity.  He didn’t just begrudge it, or the killers.  And this disposition may eventually help save many beings, in a very literal sense.

 

It wasn’t until I’d read the next to last sentence of this final paragraph of Bodhidharma’s text that I had my little stream of consciousness reaction:  “But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all.”

 

I hear Bodhidharma saying, “Ultimately no merit, but let’s all try to keep up the good work anyway.”  It does make a difference here and now.

 

I’ll stop here, except to say, maybe this is why Bodhidharma came from the west:  to give us this wonderful little text for our Ango.

 

Song Lyrics

Jeff

 

There’s so much wisdom to be found in song lyrics.

 

There’s also plenty of drivel.  I guess it’s all in the ear of the beholder.

 

I’m partial to stuff at the intersection of folk and rock, sometimes leaning a little one way, sometimes leaning a little the other.  Here are just a few of the many, many songs in this broad genre that speak to me dharmically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Reflection

Jeff

The kids unwrapped their presents hours ago.  There were a whole lot of them.  They — we — definitely are among the most fortunate people on this planet from almost every point of view, not least of all our access to basic and not-so-basic material resources.  I am very grateful for that.

 

The kids seem grateful, too, though, at six and three, they don’t yet have a global perspective on their good fortune, nor even a particularly keen local perspective. Ellis, our six-year old, is developing a pen pal relationship with a boy in Uganda, but his ability to relate to the differences in their circumstances is limited at present.

 

The relative abundance we enjoy prompts so many questions:

 

How have we arrived at a moment in history when some children wake up on Christmas morning to a rash of presents while other children wake up starving?

 

How on earth can we tolerate this?

 

How and when does one sensitize one’s children to these realities without overwhelming them or being a complete killjoy?

 

Beyond the moral shock one hopefully feels and expresses at these disparities, what — practically speaking — can and should we do to change things?  Needless to say, the problems are complicated, and so many social, political and economic efforts to address them have failed miserably.

 

From one perspective — which is global, longitudinal and diffuse — things are changing decisively for the better, and they have been changing with increasing rapidity for some time.  Watch these short, amazing videos by Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician, public health scholar and statistician, to see how and why:

 

200 years that changed the world

 

The magic washing machine

 

(The rest of this post may not make much sense unless you watch the videos, or at least the first one, which is just four minutes long.)

 

I can relate a bit to Roslings’ story about his mother’s first washing machine and what it meant for their family.  My paternal grandmother, who died in 2003, six months shy of her 100th birthday, told me many stories about how cars, air travel, modern medicine and other innovations she had witnessed transformed her world.

 

My father (her son) worked three jobs when we were young — as a laborer for the Northern Illinois Gas Company (by day), as the foreman of a janitorial crew (at night), and as a floor salesman at Sears (on the weekend) — to make ends meet and better our living standard before eventually getting his first white collar job as a bank teller.  Many of my own early Christmas presents, some of which were technological innovations like the walkie-talkie, were “purchased” with S&H Green Stamps that my mother collected from gas and grocery store purchases throughout the year during that just-making-ends-meet era, so the space beneath the tree would seem to overflow for my brothers and me, just as it seemed to overflow for our kids this morning.  Her mother, my grandmother, who was widowed at an early age, no doubt was equally ingenious at providing more for her three girls at Christmastime than her secretary’s income otherwise allowed.

 

My parents wanted to create better circumstances for us than their parents and immigrant grandparents had been able to create for their children.  Stories like this abound in the west and, increasingly, around the world.  Stories of aspiration, of hard work, of creative insight skillfully applied, and of resulting innovations that help transform the world and improve others’ lives.  The Rosling family’s washing machine.  The Internet that made the Arab Spring possible.

 

I’ve worked in entrepreneurial environments for much of the past 25 years — sometimes as part of new businesses, sometimes as an advisor to them.  I’m presently involved in a solar energy startup that’s developing technology with the potential to supply the world’s energy needs, cleanly, at half the cost of the cheapest fossil fuel.  I advise a new fund which invests only in companies that treat their employees well, engineer their operations for sustainability, and the like.  Many of my colleagues and friends are involved in similarly promising enterprises.  These and many other businesses like them are examples of the types of enterprises that give Rosling, and me, hope for our common future.

 

The picture is not all rosy, as we know.  Businesses are profiting today by solving problems created by past business activities, and some of today’s new businesses no doubt are creating other problems.  There’s way too much greed and corruption.  Wealth distribution within some rich and developing countries is far too uneven, and currently moving in the wrong direction.  Even at their theoretical — imaginary, really — best, business activity and technological innovation are just two potential forces for positive change.  Happy endings aren’t guaranteed.  But, like Rosling, I’m inclined to be hopeful, in part because I’m in the business world, see parts of it that give me reason to be hopeful, and so can’t paint it all black with an overly broad brush, as I see many people doing these days.

 

There is much progress on other fronts, as well.  Steven Pinker’s recent, exhaustively researched book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, makes the case that (in Peter Singer’s words) “our era is less violent, less cruel and more peaceful than any previous period of human existence.”

 

You may doubt all this, insisting that the world surely is going to hell in a hand basket, but, with the exception of a few notable and not-to-be-discounted problems like global warming, the trend data is decisively against you.

 

There’s another perspective, of course — this one intensely local, in-the-moment, and specific.  Seven billion of them actually, way too many of which still are defined by poverty, anguish and hopelessness.  It’s the perspective of that starving child, whether he is in Mumbai or Manhattan.  Of the poor, lonely, elderly woman who has no one with whom to share Christmas.

 

This is the perspective to which Jesus and other ancient and contemporary prophets give voice.  Though hope for the future is a key theme in prophetic discourse, from this perspective there really is no hope other than the hope that’s actualized here-and-now.  There is no arc of progress.  Only food for the hungry.  Shelter for the homeless.  Clothing for the unclothed.  Speech on behalf of the voiceless.  Here.  Now.

 

We obviously need both perspectives.  Moreover, and more than ever, I think we need to integrate both perspectives, in relations among nations, within national governments at all levels, within companies, within our homes, within our hearts.

 

All seven billion of them, but especially those relatively few hearts that awoke to plenty this Christmas morning.

 

Koans that kick butt (and those that don’t)

Jeff

 

Hakuin Ekaku, the 18th century Zen master who brought the Rinzai school back to life, grouped all koans into five categories.  He dubbed eight “nanto,” which means something along the lines of “difficult to pass through” (a/k/a really frickin’ hard).  As James Ford and Melissa Blacker note in The Book of Mu, these seem to be the koans Hakuin personally experienced as difficult.

 

Those particular koans may or may not seem difficult to you or me, but most students experience some koans as more difficult to pass through than others, and some of these as especially difficult.

 

Here’s one that kicked my butt, for example, Muzhou and the Thieving Phony (Case 10 from the Blue Cliff Record):

 

Muzhou asked a monk, “Where have you come from?”

Instantly, the monk shouted.

“That’s a shout on me,” said Muzhou.

The monk shouted again.

“Three shouts, four shouts, what next?” asked Muzhou. The monk did not answer.

Muzhou gave him a blow with his stick and cried, “Oh, you thieving phony!

 

Muzhou’s opening question is an old Zen teacher’s trope.  In Case 15 of the Gateless Gate, for instance, Yunmen asks his student Tung-shan, “Where were you most recently?” (The Gateless Gate is a collection that precedes the Blue Cliff Record in the Harada-Yasutani tradition in which BoWZ participates).  Tung-shan replies, to his teacher’s disapproval, that he has just returned from the village (or some such).

 

Yunmen was looking for a different answer, which I knew by the time I met Muzhou and his shouting student.  When Muzhou asks the question, however, his student’s response seems to come from left field.  And Muzhou doesn’t exactly disapprove of it – at least not initially.  Muzhou’s early reactions are more descriptive and curious.

 

What’s going on?

 

(I’m not going to say, of course.  A joke explained is not funny, as Shakespeare observed.  A koan exposed by others is not your koan – and it is your koan, after all.)

 

Anyway, I tend to learn a lot about myself – often about my own less reflective, default orientations to the world – when a koan kicks my butt, as this one did.

 

Koans aren’t riddles.  I think of them as little slices of life: sightlines, from varying angles, on this experience of living and dying.

 

When a koan exposes a sightline that is new to me, however, it sometimes can feel much like a riddle, and I may experience it as challenging (even to the point of being maddening) in all the ways a good riddle can feel challenging.

 

In time, difficult koans that have this riddle-ness feeling invariably help me see that the riddle is my life, and that there is a way beyond the riddle-ness, a way to meet the challenge.  They shock or prod me out of some unexamined or habitual way of knowing and being.

 

Then there are koans that one doesn’t experience as particularly challenging.

 

It’s too easy – at least it was too easy for me for a time – to appreciate them, to even be inspired by them in one way or another, perhaps even to be amused by them, but to think they don’t have much to teach, and even to feel a bit self-satisfied about passing through them.

 

As I reflect back on these koans, however, I see how much I’ve learned by encountering them (individually and collectively).

 

For starters – and this is just about me and my particular programming and neuroses – they’ve helped shine a light on the downsides of some of my Type A-ness; on a certain greediness, manifesting, in this instance, as a desire to achieve; and perhaps on my (very human) desire for recognition and approval.  Certainly they’ve shined a light on my grasping for an anchor and shown me that being rooted in the rootless rock-solidness of the here-and-now ultimately offers more security than any other anchor I might imagine to exist.

 

One soon learns that the practice of presenting koans to a teacher is not about recognition and approval – at least not in the sense of seeking and receiving pats on the head.  In my experience, it’s more about recognition in the sense of offering two people – indeed, teachers and students throughout time and space, and, more broadly, all of us – the opportunity to encounter one another genuinely.  The koan provides the pretext and context for an honest and open look at, and mutual recognition of, some important feature of human experience.

 

Besides, there are so many koans in the Zen tradition.  We use something like 500 of them in our little branch of the family.  If one does the math, it quickly becomes clear that it will take many years to pass through them all, even if one is living in a monastery and has multiple opportunities to meet with a teacher each week.  (I’m not, and I don’t.)  So, why not focus on enjoying the ride instead of the brass ring one imagines to be dangling at the end of the line?

 

There’s no brass ring anyway, and, as Melissa once said to me with a wry smile, there always are more koans.

 

Whether one experiences them as easy or hard, koans offer us something more precious than a brass ring:  a gold mine of insight and potential for transformation.

 

Lunch

Jeff

 

Crazy day.

 

I left my office around 12:30 to get something to bring back to my desk to eat.

 

Stopping for plastic utensils and a paper napkin before leaving Au Bon Pain with my soup and sandwich, I thought, “I need this spoon, but do I need a fork?  I shouldn’t take it if I don’t, but maybe my sandwich will disintegrate.  Better take it.  I’ll stash it in my desk for future use if I don’t need it.”

 

I unpack my lunch sack back at the office to find . . . two plastic forks (and no spoon).

 

Ugh.

 

I open my desk drawer to deposit one of the forks, only to find . . . seven plastic forks living there already.  Guess I’ve been here before.

 

Ugh.

 

Monkey mind.

 

Taking Refuge: Nowhere to Hide

Jeff

 

This post is based upon a Dharma Talk (my first) that I gave on October 25, 2011.

I take refuge in Buddha

I take refuge in Dharma

I take refuge in Sangha

The Three Refuges we chant during our Zen liturgy seem to me to be the closest thing we have to a creed in this non-creedal religion. Creeds are statements of belief. In some religions they are the litmus test for “true believers.” They often require one to submit to improbable metaphysical claims and rigid authority structures.

I was a questioning Catholic 20 years ago when I first encountered Buddhism and the refuges.  Elements of the Nicene Creed, which Catholics recite, always have been hard for me to swallow; certainly in any literal sense. Creeds of any kind – even the UU Covenant – tend to press my buttons to some degree.

I know from talking to other members of our sangha that I’m not the only person who has been agitated by one of the traditional Zen forms. Bowing. Chanting. The Four Vows. Whatever. For me, it was the Three Refuges.

But, here they are. We chant them every week. And, though we don’t make much of “being Buddhist” the way some religions do – there’s no salvation, spiritual or otherwise, in simply self-identifying as a Zen practitioner – “taking refuge” by reciting and embracing the Three Refuges is the traditional way Buddhists the world over signal their commitment to this path.

I had little choice but to sit with my agitation and get to know it. Why this discomfort?

I ultimately concluded that my agitation stemmed from two sources.

First, the very idea of “taking refuge” offended me. I’ve tended to think of myself as autonomous and self-reliant. Taking refuge seemed like submission. I’ve tended to think of myself as strong. Taking refuge seemed like an admission of vulnerability, of weakness. I’ve tended to think of myself as engaged and action-oriented. Taking refuge seemed like hiding.

Second, my early ideas about what Buddhists must be taking refuge in troubled me.

What’s Buddha? Another messiah? Hmm.

What’s Dharma? Did I hear doctrine? Dogma? Forget it.

What’s Sangha? Another exclusive community? Only true believers are saved? Can’t go there.

These reactions were conditioned, of course. I’m a product of western culture, in which values like autonomy, self-reliance, strength, action and the like tend to be privileged over values like interdependence, connection, community, vulnerability, and introspection. Then there’s that Roman Catholic upbringing. There’s so much that’s rich and beautiful about Catholicism, and also much I can only relate to in a mytho-poetic way. Perhaps my reactions also were gendered to some degree.

My early encounters with Buddhism actually helped me discover the Christian contemplative tradition. D.T. Suzuki sings the praises of various Christian mystics in one of his books – names that were unfamiliar to me when I encountered them there 20 years ago. I soon learned that a form of sitting practice that’s often called centering prayer today was developed and preserved in Christian monastic communities through the ages, and that there was a budding lay movement (catalyzed by monks) that embraced it.

I sat in that tradition for many years, and I think my sitting practice ultimately contributed to the disintegration of my Christian religious worldview. (This doesn’t happen for most who sit in that context, and I’m not saying it should, but this was my experience then.) I continued to sit alone for 10 years before making my way to Zen.  And, Zen ultimately helped me appreciate the contemplative strain of my birth tradition in new ways.

I decided to take refuge on this Zen path, in part, because I began to feel that what I was looking for wasn’t to be found in solitude, at least not in my case. I wanted a supportive context, open and devoid of dogma, and I sensed I would find kindred spirits along the Zen path.

I’ve ultimately come to think of the refuges much differently since the time I first encountered them. Those old notions have been turned on their head.

These days, I take refuge from the illusion of complete separateness that seems to be the lens through which so many of us see things – our default mode, if you will. It’s the source of endless personal and collective suffering. I take refuge from my narratives and mental constructions that indulge this illusion.

I now think of this taking refuge from as more of an opting in, than as an opting out. I’m choosing to opt into life as it really is. It includes this illusion of complete separateness and all of my narratives and habits that indulge it, but the whole of life isn’t defined by that illusion, even if my subjective experience sometimes seems to be.

We are distinct, but there really is no sense in which we are separate. We’re immersed in it all. We’re of it all.

What do I choose to opt into?

Buddha signifies a couple of things for me.

It’s our potential to awaken to the reality that we’re not separate from the rest of this universe and everything else in it – we’re not a sort of two-dimensional, Flat Stanley sort of sticker of a human being laid over a flat, background universe. Buddha is oneness, and our capacity to experience this oneness – not just to intellectualize about it, but for this background reality to become our new foreground. Our new ground and no-ground.

But we’re also reminded time and again that we’re Buddha just as we are now, however we are. That each of us embodies and reflects this oneness at this very moment. So Buddha – or Buddha nature – must be me, with all of my foibles and failings, my doubts and insecurities.

Buddha when I snapped at my wife about something senseless the other day. Buddha when I apologized after 15 tense minutes had passed.

Buddha as my mind wanders on or off the cushion, brooding about some perceived indignity, anxious about the demands of work and family life, plotting to better my lot, or whatever.

Dharma includes Buddhist texts and teachings, of course, but, more broadly, I see it as the 10,000 things: ants and sticks and grizzly bears, the steam rising from my teacup, that noxious pile of trash, my kid’s tantrum, you and me as distinct beings, and all the rest. It’s the diversity that exists within the oneness. It’s what each being and thing has to reveal to us.

One of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had was several hours spent sitting alone in the branch of an old tree on a moonlit night. The learning didn’t result from that experience; it didn’t consist of thoughts I thought while I was up there, or after I climbed down. The experience was the learning.

That experience and others like it help prod me beyond belief, beyond the false certainty of our creeds and fixed views, which come in so many forms in religion, in politics, in families, in one’s conception of oneself.

What could it possibly mean to believe in a tree? To believe in moonlight?

I’m reminded once again of Dogen’s lovely verse:

Entreat trees and rocks to preach,

and ask rice fields and gardens for the Truth;

ask pillars for the Dharma,

and learn from hedges and walls.

We engage texts and ideas with our whole being, holding them lightly even as we revere the better ones, but, just as importantly, we engage fully and openly with this universe and all that arises.

Sangha, for me, is our little sitting group and our broader Zen family, and it’s also the broadest community that’s the unity of Buddha and Dharma. The community of the 10,000 things, all of them Buddha, all of them Truth, all intermingling and utterly interdependent.

The tragedy of the human condition, in my view, is that too many of us believe and feel we are utterly separate, and so think and act in ways that reinforce those beliefs and feelings in ourselves and others.

There’s also blessing in this; there’s no doubt some evolutionary necessity to this illusion of separateness. But, we also have the capacity to experience not one, not two, and to make that the orientation from which we think and act, from which we express our distinctiveness.

The term spirituality is problematic even for theists, I think, and it’s doubly so for anyone who considers him- or herself non-theistic. I’ve come to think of it as a sense of connectedness to oneself, others, and the universe – and the felt quality of those connections. Sangha.

So, for me, the refuges have come to serve as a reminder that there’s nowhere to hide. We’re in the stew, and there’s no way out of the pot.

These days I try to take my refuge in:

  • The special mess that I am, including my fears, my insecurities, my shame, my greed, anger and ignorance
  • The 10,000 things, especially the 5,001 to which I’m particularly attracted or averse, and which therefore have much to teach me
  • My utter inseparability from, and therefore complete vulnerability to and dependence upon, all of this

This may all sound a bit free-form, and in an important sense it truly is. But these free-form thoughts can be stood on their head, as well. I also want to stress that I do experience Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in the more formal ways those terms are used – the historical Buddha’s teachings and example (and the example of our many other teachers), our Zen practices and texts, and our community – as a refuge. They form a context in which I try to summon forth and present “the better angels of my nature” with the support and companionship of others who are trying to do the same.

The question that agitated Dogen and animated his practice for years was, “If we’re already Buddhas, why must we practice?” There are many possible answers to this question. For my part, I take refuge on this path and in this community because I need to in order to do my best to show up to life in the way I truly want to show up.

I suspect the illusion of complete separateness never loses its attractive force. The trick, I think, is to see it as the doorway of compassion – compassion for ourselves, as well as for others. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha – they prod me toward that doorway, and help me find it again when I’ve lost sight of it.

I’ll conclude with a thought and an image.

The thought is about this word “creed,” which is from the Latin root for belief. “Credo” often is translated “I believe.” But, it’s apparently a modern definition. I’m told the ancient meaning of “credo” was something more along the lines of “I give my heart to this.”

I like that.

The image is this: A revered, ancient Zen teacher is said to have spent his final, dying days walking around a pole in his room, on which he had inscribed the words Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

He clearly found his refuge there, all the way to the end. What a powerful image. What a powerful, final teisho for his community, and for all of us.

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

I can, and do, give my heart to that.