Each time our sangha moves its place of practice, I like to pause for a moment and ask what it is exactly that we are doing here? You would think a teacher should know this, but it is better that a teacher ask and maybe not know for a while. I agree with many who have a felt sense that the energy of our practice becomes infused with the setting, with the woodwork of the flooring and the scent in the air.
What is a zendo really — this place of practice where we undertake a rather simple set of instructions and shine the light of dharma on the most intimate details of our life? Perhaps we can look closely at what exactly stirs our hearts and not take it for granted these things come with the building’s dimensions or are stuffed in the cushions. The real life of the practice arrives through the front door when you arrive.
It is easy to let our comparing and evaluating mind list all the differences between our numerous places of Zen practice and choose what we like and don’t like. One center appears very formal and wears robes, another sits in a circle and wears flip flops and shorts, and another chants in a sonorous style, another recites Ryokan and watches contemporary films on retreat. As Dogen’s words in Fukanzazengi suggest, none of these things are the point (albeit a small measure of group pride is human and healthy).
Although there are ten thousand distinctions, and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen. Why leave behind the seat in your own home …?
Why indeed?! Ten thousand distinctions even in medieval Japan — I’m guessing at least twice that by now. Of course, now we can add ten thousand distractions to that list. Aside from zazen, the obvious and only non-negotiable in Zen practice, what is it in a setting that creates the causes and conditions that support our practice? Why leave behind the seat in your own home? What is your experience? After 17 years in zendos large and small, formal and informal, traditional and modernized, these are the elements that I have found in common with our Zen ways.
Desire
Perhaps a curious beginning, given the perception that Buddhism is about extinguishing desires. But this is not about any small potatoes desire, but about identifying and following down our own most intimate longing for an authentic life, an awakened life, a life of meaning. What is your own way of saying this? Where does it reside in the body? This awakened being is something we have an intuition that exists, some part of us recognizes the truth of it, this inspiration that there’s something to clarify and know. Where is it in your life and how far back does it go? As a child wondering about the death of a grandparent? Or a college student reading what …. Kierkegaard, Kurt Vonnegut, the Brother’s Karamazov? A light goes on and we feel compelled to follow that light.
Each and every place of practice has this energy fueling its activity. It is found in the way we engage a koan with energy, tears, and heart, the way we meet one another across the hall and bow, and the way we show up week after week to sit in deep silence. To cultivate this seeking and nourish the growing tip in ourselves and others is what it means to establish a practice. Now I know why my teacher Kyogen was fond of calling attention to this teaching, “the mind that seeks the way is the mind of Buddha.”
Let us nourish a place of practice where this one desire is listened for and revered.
Danger
This element is not so obvious either, but it must be present. By danger, I mean the quality of an unknown perceived by our ego self when it senses that it cannot figure out this life on its own, cannot permanently satisfy the need for safety and accumulation, or perhaps realizes it may encounter something that will change the self forever. While most of us need lots of encouragement, welcome, support and appreciation, without this element of danger, no growth can take place. We must be willing to go outside of the known map of the world. We need just the right measure of danger or the journey is not a journey. We start by courting this in the deep silence of the zendo, putting aside our usual validating ways of being, and listen inward.
Little by little we learn to take risks through practice. To enter into the places that scare us, to show up and hang out with what we don’t know, helps us grow into a life based in wisdom and compassion. There is a concept in group psychology called “risky shift” which is this phenomena that happens in a group when we act in more daring ways because of the group than we do as single actors. While we can struggle with perceived pressure of group norms, this other element is what really happens. The sangha helps us face what we fear, and enter those dharma gates to find the real gem. This happens when someone new starts to serve as a chant leader and finds courage to put forth her voice in the room, or when we confess in front of another that we don’t know, or when we sit through a zazen period with our own self doubts, and pain and sadness with an open heart, steady on this diamond seat of practice.
May we be present for one another and support the risky shift that liberates and enlightens.
Delight
Despite the very serious face of Zen engaging VERY serious matters of the meaning of life, goodness, what a fun loving and zany crowd we really are. On the other side of these life questions emerges the laughter when we let go of taking ourselves so seriously. There it is, delight in simply being present. It is found in the wonder at the setting sun coming into the zendo warming the body. There it is the exquisite taste of newly harvested tomatoes from the garden on a green salad. Delight is the gift of practice that keeps us fueled for the long haul. After we’ve exhausted the ins and out of our problems, the world’s problems, other people’s problems, what is left? There we are, a curious collection of folks, prone to joy at all times and ready to see the world through the eyes of beauty and appreciation, in this moment, where it’s happening. When our cup is full, we are encouraged by the whole universe to continue our journey, to sit, to engage the hard questions, and to love the blessings that arrive in our bowls.
May we practice with an eye for beauty, simplicity and appreciation welcoming delight when it arrives.
Perhaps you have your own additions to the zendo in three dimensions? Each one of us touches a place of practice and leaves our mark. The awakening emerges in the right season from that collective act. See you in the zendo.
In gassho,
Seido