Within the vast mystery of Mind there exists a propensity to seek personalized understanding. This is often done by codification, compartmentalization, identification and reductive intellectual processes of thinking and experience, that fit most comfortably with our idea of Self, and the world, as such. Each individual personality has a propensity to engage with belief systems that contain imagery and processes that bring meaning to the formations we believe we most need to comprehend our state of Being and our placement in a perceived, constructed, universal order.

Some of what we find meaning in is fantastical for anyone other than ourself. Some find meaning in psychological analysis, mysticism, religion, methodology, gurus, deities or the natural order, but most everyone, in the creation of self-narrative supported by these means. To each their own. The list is virtually endless, as diverse as the individual manifestation of Mind in each being. Some say that we seek a gradient to wholeness, a unity, non-separation from self and our psychic-physical environment; union with the Whole. Some go in for radical devotion, others for rejection. Much confusion and disillusionment has resulted from this samsaric propensity.

Generally we believe in the “truth” of our sensory experiences. Perhaps this is, in part, because we believe that our body-minds exist objectively to everything else; in-here vs. out-there. Born of self-preservation and the attempt at avoidance of a meaningless existence, humans nurture and maintain a belief that the physical and mental universe that surrounds us is ancillary to our central sense of being; that which we refer to as Me. It seems to be a safe default, and easiest to exist as a separate self within the illusion of control and the comfort of self-creating opinions forming a warm cocoon.

We may however, take a different view; that each of the internal structures that we call “myself”, and that which we refer to as “external” are but one-in-the-same. Non-dualism is a popular phrase for this idea, but does not fully encompass the deeper reality. To go one step beyond and recognize the clear awareness that subverts all sense of distinction of inner and outer is to dwell in our natural disposition of being, this is to experience our life as the clear, unalterable expanse of interdependent, co-arising of Mind.

Every perception is imbued with intrinsic awareness that is also cognizant; free of discursive thinking. When we discover this lack of distinction of inner vs. outer, reality is experienced as ground of being (fundamental, primordial state, our absolute nature, which is already perfect and always present). It is in those moments that we realize the completeness of Mind as encompassing the arrangement by which all transformation, creation and perception emerge from and are dispensed into our experience.

The vast array of Mind arising is like a movie on a screen. Although the images constantly arise and change, the screen itself, the ground of being, remains constant, containing and reflecting all light projected upon it. Neither is separate from one another, nor are they solely one, but exist interdependently and through this, manifest as one. This is the “magic of mind”.

Deep Peace & Great Love,

Issan (author)

_{…and Zenho, from Kathmandu}

Schedule 10/15-10/22

Zenho out of town until 11/3 or so.

Issan out of town 10/18-10/24.

Wednesday and Thursday; 6:30 AM ZAZEN at the Teahouse, Andy opening.

Friday; 6:30 AM, ZAZEN at the Teahouse, Mugen opening.

Please remember: ZAZENKAI and COUNCIL: DECEMBER 1,2 & 3.

Noah’s Poem:

Lined up on the border of 

Battle 

But

The point is not to scare oneself into awakening

The point is not to rile oneself into the 

Brotherhood of Heart

The generations and generations of

Of grief

Still must be felt 

So no need to repeat repeat

Just cry and cry 

And 

Melt into Life 

And let the tears kiss your mouth and dry upon your cheek

And see the patient trees

The laughing birds

And each other

once again

“The deity Light of Beautiful Flower Garlands found the door of liberation of pure light illumining the bodies of all sentient beings and causing them to produce oceans of joy and faith.”  – Avatamsaka Sutra

BOUNDLESS LOVE

What is the desire creating my emergence……..The infinite full-of-emptiness womb…..nurturing without judgment…..All the possibilities…..And even more possibilities…..For the flourishing of….Lives Love….Propelled from her Ocean of Reality….Into this salty wet confusion….Wave crashing against wave….And rock….And sky. ..And where do I belong….When nothing seems quite so good….As what I knew before knowing…..What came before without time and space….And the trauma confusion….Now of change….Always change…..The aching discomfort of change…..One peach devoured in this five year old mouth…..Sticky juice flowing from lips to lap….Immmersed in longing…And my older eye consumed by the ground swallowed….Rotting peach……Unable….Unwilling…..To absorb the changing ….Flower and bird and bee and …Fruit falling to ever willing Earthtomb….Beetles and birds and bees….One year….Eons….For to embrace this….Is to embrace my very own body….As food for the beetles and birds and bees….Which is quite painful…..In confusion….And different when fed….From love and generosity….What is the desire creating my emergence

We often enter our practice from a place of lacking. From a place of overwhelm by the confusion of “There is something WRONG with me.” All Buddhas agree that there is only the RIGHTNESS of me that is interpenetrated by the Field beyond right and wrong. From the confusion that has descended upon us, it appears necessary to experience the RIGHTNESS first. This RIGHTNESS is nurtured by the enlightening of Mother Prajnamaramita’s love and generosity. All that is this great Earth and I and Mother Prajnaparamita are.

Tantra is about the path of intimacy that leads inexorably, through joy and pain and bliss and grief, to deeper and deeper conscious experience of love and generosity and me-as-you and you-as-me and me-as-Earth and me-as-me and Me-as-Mother-Prajnaparamita.

The union in Tantra may be between two people walking a path of hearts pure in the intention of mutual love and generosity. The union may be between a person and their art…a person and their music…a person and their sport…a person and their puppy dog…or kitty…or the whales in the ocean…or the rising and falling of the ocean…or feeding wild birds…a person and their previously mundane appearing work…and on and on.

Until we find that spark of love and generosity that propels us into the practices of union, we tend to abuse all those around us. In confusion. This not our fault by the way. Not our fault. Not our fault . Merely a preparatory phase on the path, like rotting fruit carrying the seed.

When the spark lands and ignites, walk your path wholeheartedly. Never explain or justify…those who do not feel the spark will not understand until they’ve received the gift of the spark. It is Mother Prajnaparamita’s gift. No need to caretake and believe it can be our (ego’s) responsibility to provide the spark. Follow your path wholeheartedly in love and generosity, giving and receiving love and generosity. In the field beyond right and wrong, there is only love and generosity.

8 Deep Bows,

Zenho (author) and Issan Sensei

__________________________________________________________________________________

What is wrong? What is wrong?

The baby wails 

Just born in her mother’s arms

 מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخطأ؟

What is wrong? What is wrong?

The young man in helmet and boots

Blinks towards the beating desert sun

מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخطأ؟

What is wrong? What is wrong?

Weeps the Autumn tree

Bursting in gold

Burnt at its roots

מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخطأ؟

What is wrong? What is wrong?

Whisper a wrinkled couple 

Behind a newspaper stained with coffee and tears

מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخطأ؟

What is wrong? What is wrong?

Cries the muddy child

Wrapped around his ab(a)(u)’s legs

Shivering within concrete walls

מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخطأ؟

What is wrong? What is wrong?

The bruised and bleeding man

Bawls into his Passing

מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخطأ؟

What is wrong? What is wrong?

Shouts the night 

Embroidered with stars

Ablaze with metal and fire

מה לא בסדר?

ما هو الخط

-Noah Selzter

______________________________________________________________________________________

SCHEDULE October 8-October 15

Note: Zenho will be traveling in Nepal 10/10/23 – 11/2/23

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE,

NO DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE, ANDY OPENING

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEA HOUSE   

DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE 

One of the earliest meditations I learned was written by Thich Nhat Hahn. My dear friend Dave Ernster, a potter in New Hampshire, turned me on to it. I enjoy this very much.

The meditation is simple, it goes like this:

Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain. Breathing out, I feel solid. Mountain/Solid (3x).

Breathing in, I see myself as still water. Breathing out, I feel calm. Still water/Calm (3x)

Breathing in, I see myself as space. Breathing out, I feel free. Space/Free (3x)

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower. Breathing out, I feel fresh. Flower/Fresh (3x)

Mountain/Solid. I learned not think that I was like a mountain but actually feel the roots of the mountain extending into the earth, immovable, solid rock, as my own body and the peak into the empty sky..

Still water/Calm. I would picture myself in a pond in the woods, body submerged with eyes right at the water level gazing out over the absolutely still, glassy surface of the water. Feeling my breathing slow. I learned to feel the weight and depth of water, the subtle currents below and the depth of potential energy within that water with its glassy surface unmoved. Calm and potent.

Space/Free. Drawing in my breath I learned to feel it filling the spaces between the electrons within my body, realizing the spaciousness within my body. I began to understand that the solid mass I imagined my body to be was an illusion. Along with my body, shin (heart-mind) became spacious. Free, but not from, rather to be.

Flower/Fresh. During the summertime there were amazing white peonies growing on the sunny side of my pottery studio. Huge blooms, as big as cantelopes. One time I picked one and floated it in a square bowl with a deep cerulean blue glaze. I focused my attention on it, uninterrupted for 20 or 30 minutes. It was an experience of deep seeing. When the ideas of flower, beauty, white, tiny red veins, aroma all fell into the background and I actually experienced what was in front of me with out the chatter, I felt it’s freshness in my blood. I became as the flower itself. Like a coolness flowing through me. So vivid, so fresh, so alive.

These early meditations stay with me, as poignant as the they were in the early days. I sometimes practice them still. Throughout my hours, days, weeks months and years on the zafu I began to wander mindfully into many other types of practices, mantras, sadhanas, meditations, shikantaza and zazen, most all fruitful in their gifts of realization.

The meditation that came to me at my first sesshin with Jitsudo Roshi went like this:

As certain as the mountain slope.

Jewels within jewels tumble forth unceasingly.

The sky does not know when the wind blows.

I wrote it in the guest book that weekend before leaving his and Diana’s home. It was a mantra of sorts for me at that sit. I experienced the certainty, absolute-ness of what was being transmitted in that room, in so many forms, by all beings present, not the least of whom was Jitsudo. The effortless tumbling forth of one glittering jewel-revelation after another, being in repose, yet opening, opening, opening, as vast, connected and incomprehensible as Indra’s net. The sky-mind, the encompassing of all-is-one. Everything, all beings, nothing left out, all under that empty sky. As a road so wide it has no edges. A circle so vast it has no perimeter. All of it happening without any knowing. So direct and so beautiful!

Then, a few years ago another meditation arose:

Abiding in emptiness.

Resting in naturalness.

Dwelling in awareness.

Life and death, an ordinary moment.

No gate.

Abiding in emptiness, in that all phenomena are devoid of self-nature. Just thus-ness, not-this-not-that-ness. The prajna-wisdom of the ten thousand things as they are.

Resting in naturalness. Allowing mind to take its own seat. Not conceptualizing, or poking at it. Just leaving it alone to just be. (Gregg Allman said; “Leave your mind alone, and just get high”.)

Dwelling in awareness. Self-mind dissolving as cessation of connate and imaginative unawareness naturally occur. Cognitive awareness taking over. Two nights ago, standing in the yard, moon nearly full, somewhat unfocused eyesight gazing out front of me, the pear tree, the salt bush, grasses, chamisa and smoke tree, stars above, night clouds, all naming-things dropped away and what came was this; This is it. This really is all of it. Right here, right now. It’s all happening without consent or intentional creativity on my part. The same way the thusness I call me is just happening. Awareness recognizing its own face.

Life and death an ordinary moment. No coming, no going, Tathāgata. This is what is, no more, no less. Nothing special.

No gate. No gate to enter practice, or anything else. There really is no entering. The realization that there is no gate to enter is the realization that we’re always here. Sometimes called by names; dharma, life, buddhafield, bardo, nirmanikaya. Just names. Actually, just here, just now, when and wherever we are, as we are; always, throughout beginningless time.

It is deeply mysterious, delightful, surprising, sometimes challenging to engage with the birth of new understandings, meditations and practices. But this is what we get, the great gift, the benefaction, as a result of all our sitting. As our lives and consciousness evolve, which never stops, so too, our practices. To embrace this unfolding with an open heart, an inquisitive mind and compassion, and experience it as the manifestation of being, the heartbeat of the cosmos, this is our gift as awakened beings.

Deep peace & great love,

Issan (author) & Zenho

Here’s Noah’s Poem:

In the soup of this

Reality

There is something

As opposed to

Nothing

Like the sun birthing itself

Over misty mountains

In the Autumn

SCHEDULE October 1-October 7

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, DAVID OPENING

NO DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE, ANDY OPENING

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87672161959?pwd=NXhhTkhncWdkbnM4VU16YnM1ZDk4UT09  

DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEAHOUSE 

DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

One of the aspects of Zen that attracts me is that it does not require a disposition to believe too readily in something. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. There is no requirement to believe in a God or deity that needs to be supplicated or worshiped, no dogma that needs to be adhered to and no predetermined outcomes in an afterlife that requires faith. Just sit, eventually, face to face with your heart-mind and with reality, realization happens without any of it.

This practice that we refer to as Zen can easily be mistaken for awakening, but it’s just a path, not the actual thing. Being predisposed to seek a peak experience we can deify methods, sutras, icons, teachers, gurus, accessories and mistakenly see those things as the way. Actually there is no Way, just the ceaseless burgeoning forth of things as they are. If we are constantly looking for something that “resonates with me” we are seeking an answer that we hope may ease our dukkha . When we find this “answer” we become disenchanted with it because what we’ve found is something that we believed in, rather than what is. We should not pretend that believing is knowing. Believing may temporarily fill an existential hollowness in us, but knowing is not the result of finding, it is the result of seeking, questioning everything.

There is no protection or hiding place in a practice or a path. We are prone to wishful thinking, especially those of us who feel that there is something more in this life. This hope is natural but creates lack of clarity. Instead of living with a resolve to directly experience our own be-ing despite our fears of what we might find, we seek an answer, a refuge from the chaos of living and a place of repose. Often times we perceive this answer to be manifest by engaging in something that we hope will provide the answer, albeit our own unconscious desires. The fact is; it is necessary for each person to experience deep questioning and draw whatever they may from that. Grasping for an answer, in itself is natural, but it takes great doubt, great courage to recognize this propensity and resolve and overcome it.

Hui Neng overheard these words: “Depending on no thing, you must find your own mind.”

Hui Neng’s clarity came from not in the finding his own mind but in the looking for it, without dependence on any thing. This “without dependence on any thing” seems to indicate he did not look to doctrine, gurus, teachers, Gods, paths, no ideas of enlightenment or expectations of divine intervention by something or someone outside his own mind. He remained vigilant within. I think of the sword of Manjusri. I imagine it took immense courage to let go of reliance on the wisdom of others, or on something thought of as the Way.

In Case 23 of the Gateless Gate, an elder monk who was the heir-apparent of the monastery wrote: “The body is the Bodhi tree. Holding heart-bond like a mirror bright. Never cease to polish it. And never let the dust alight.”

Hui Neng, who thought of as a barbarian working in the kitchen, when responding to this wrote: “The mind of Bodhi has no tree. There’s no stand for a bright mirror. Buddha-nature is ever self-clearing. So where could dust alight?”

Pretty clean slate I’d say. Just Hui Neng’s native intuition. No path, no wisdom, no gain…

Native intuition, cognitive awareness. This type of understanding actually gives us a clean shot at just be-ing. That is really all there is. Ups and downs, joy and anger, ecstasy and terror. Just be-ing. Actually experiencing life as it is, without the protection of a belief. This, it seems to me, is the essential point. Every practice, teacher, master, method, sutras that I have encountered all make this same point ultimately.

There is no acquisition, just recognition.

So how are we to view Hui Neng’s words? I’d say like the finger pointing to the moon. Not the moon.

It’s up to you alone. Will you release your ideas about the path, the teaching, the posturing, the comfort-seeking-thinking, the striving and just be? It’s a process of realization, not discovery. And you know it, it’s already there. Just be-ing, depending on no-thing.

Layman Pang approached a teacher and asked to be shown his true nature. The teacher remained silent a long time. Tired of waiting, Pang got up and walked toward the door. Just as he got to the door the teacher called out; “Oh, Layman Pang.” “Yes?”, replied Pang. “That’s it”, said the teacher.

_{Hui Neng}

Deep Peace and Great Love, Issan (a). & Zenho

Noah’s Poem

Around and around the 

Fire pit of stones 

Unlit candle resting 

In the ashes

In the center 

What is the prayer? 

What is the question?

When does the candle 

Become become 

Alit 

in the dawn filled 

Breeze of the forest 

SCHEDULE 8/10-8/16

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

TUESDAY, 6:30 AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE, DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

_{Enso tile, ceramic, 2023, David Ernster}

“All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient beings, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek Buddhahood. They do not know that if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and Buddha is all living beings.”

_{~Huangbo Xiyun}

Much of Zen practice is thought to be reliant on a teacher, however the teacher has no-thing to teach and the student no-thing to learn. Having no-thing to learn doesn’t require any special training in Zen, but only those who have awakened to their original nature can learn nothing.

When my teacher asked me, “Who is sitting on the zafu?” I was confused and I tried to think up a clever answer and came up empty. I babbled some pseudo-spiritual Zen crap in an effort to come up with an answer that I thought might demonstrate my position on the path to enlightenment. He smiled kindly at me and gently shook his head and instructed me; “Go sit on your zafu and find out.”

Through many hours on the zafu I contemplated his question. I thought maybe its “No-one”, “the Buddha”, “the universe manifesting as me”, “just me”, and loads of other thoughts, just mental constructs. The harder I tried, the more I felt it slip away in confusion. “Dogen!”, I thought, “he’ll surely have the answer to this one!” I read The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. Took a long time! The more I tried to learn the less I understood. I searched in the sutras, Tibetan tantras, koans and biographies of the Great-Enlightened-Ones. Came up with lots of very intelligent, clever and perhaps “true” answers. Unfortunately, they were not the answers that belonged to the questioner called Issan. So remarkable it seems to me now, how clearly Roshi Jitsudo pierced my mind and revealed to me the erroneous thought process I was going through to find the answer to his question.

In attempting to answer the question there was hope of trying to “improve”. Progress farther up the path. Make a better realization, a more clear, Buddha-like understanding of “it all”. A goal-oriented mindset. The problem with this approach, is of course, that there is “no-thing” to improve and there is “no-thing” that needs to be improved upon. It’s never been a matter of “becoming”. It’s only a matter of realizing that our original nature is nothing other than our own breath, not separate from Huangbo’s “One Mind”. It’s simply a matter of being.

After years of sitting zazen, through many doubts and many kensho, it’s become clear to me not to seek the path to enlightenment in books, sutras, tantras, and not even in a teacher, because it is not found there, though these things can be helpful pointers. In fact, it’s not found in seeking. It’s not found as an answer at all. It’s much more natural than that, more at ease, so much more readily present. Available to you , right now.

Dropping away seeking,

dropping away enlightenment,

dropping away hope and doubt,

dropping away dropping away,

that’s where I found the question in Roshi’s question.

“I do not say that there is no Zen, but there is no Zen teacher” ~Huangbo

Deep Peace & Great Love, ~Issan (a) & Zenho

Noah’s poem

Sun still melting 

The drip drip tick tick of 

Late Summer 

What is left when there is nothing left?

What is contained within the synchronistic song of these

Nats above my face.

What is a bee that lives its entire life without 

A single sting?

And what is a summer without the nectar of the salted sea 

Or the one perfectly ripe nectarine? 

What if the flavor of this moment was richer than the

Thick batter of nostalgia?

The present always slipping itself into oblivion before my eyes

The drip drip tick tick of 

Late Summer 

The cheer of the childrens’ delight

Changes 

Like the pitch of a passing siren– 

SCHEDULE 8/27-9/2

{Issan out of town 8/30-9/6}

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, DAVID OPENING

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEAHOUSE: DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

_{Cable Beach, Rye, NH}

Author and friend Matthew Cheney recently introduced me to one of my new favorite songs; “Change” by Big Thief. It talks about the dichotomies of desire we face, about the ceaseless movement of time and our choices.

“Change like the wind, like water, like skin… Would you live forever and never die? While everything around you passes? Would you smile forever and never cry? While everything you know passes?” It goes on: “Would you stare forever at the sun? Never watch the moon rising? Would you walk forever in the light? To never learn the secrets of a quiet night?” And in between it brings this up: “Death like a door to a place we’ve never been before. Death like space, the deep sea, a suitcase.”

I’ve been away for a while, back “home” lately. To the Shire. Sparkling lakes, emerald-jeweled-green forests. Clean, so clean, white picked fences, perfectly manicured lawns, planters of blooming flowers on the porch of every white Cape. Each year that I go back it seems as though it becomes more difficult to see the place as it actually is; it slips, misty with nostalgia more into the postcard-memory of it than the reality. Reminded by Adrienne Lenker’s song, I force myself to ask; would I stay forever in that memory and never change, to never see the subtle and vast movements of living around and within me? Would I paint those memories with only rose colors and not bring up the sharpness and darkness as well? If I do so I miss out on the secrets of the thing we call the-other-side-of-the-coin. Doing so would diminish the gifts of understanding, insight, feelings and my experience of having lived it.

Many Tibetan Buddhists teach their children from their earliest years to recite this daily; “It is my nature to grow old. It is my nature to become sick. It is my nature to be separated from those I love. It is my nature to die.” In our diseased Western culture of plastic-fantastic-forever that won’t fly. But these children, as time passes, accept these changes without anger, grief or surprise. Change is the reality of All. Everything else is filtered memory, nothing more.

Can we embrace change as the sole constant of being? As the only actual energy that there is? What, if anything, is not brought by change? Can we feel its flowing through us as water, as blood, as breath, as wind and as darkness and decay without seeking otherwise? This isn’t a discussion of the metaphysical existence or non-existence of time. This is here as it actually is happening to you now.

Perhaps the question we ought to ask ourselves is; “What will you give up to hold on to what you already know?”

This is only the first question.

What’s the next one?

~Deep peace & great love,

Issan* & Zenho

NOAH’S POEM

Sujata came to Siddhartha 

As if in a dream

As he sat and strove

She welcomed each morning with him 

And watched in 

Simple Love

He did not need to penetrate the nature of Experience

To be greeted with cool milk in the morning

He did not have to strive and strive

And he did not have to love her back 

He did not have to go upstream or downstream 

Or follow his breath

Or crack the koan open open

Somedays he opened his eyes in 

Anger

Somedays in hate

Somedays in fear

Somedays in hopelessness

Somedays in joy

And each morning the milk 

Was of Love

And there was no special spice 

And there was no special word

Or smile or wink

She would sit as he drank under the shade of a tree

And then he’d burp and she’d giggle 

And she’d take the empty cup 

And tread through the field to her home

SCHEDULE  August 20-August 26

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE, ANDY OPENING

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM Drag your body to the Zendo, or Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, ANDY OPENING

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, OR ZOOM
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09 

THURSDAY, 6:30 AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE. DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE WITH ZENHO AT THE TEAHOUSE. DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

“Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens.” ~CG Jung

C.G. Jung the father of (modern) dreamwork, categorized individual psychic propensities of one’s experience of the world into four primary functions: Feeling, Intuition, Thinking and Sensate. The rational functions being thinking and feeling and the non-rational functions being intuition and sensate (one who perceives through the senses). According to Jung, everyone has a primary function supported by a secondary (and also by the lesser third and fourth) functions. The interpretation of what we call “feeling” is quite different from the perspective of each individual’s primary function. Jung thought each one of these functions to be inherited as well as part of the collective unconscious.

My own personal Jungian typology is Feeling-Intuitive. My less pervasive functions are rational, logical, linear calculation. I am supported by the sensate function; My understanding of materials comes quite naturally without much effort, (metals, clay, wood, earth etc.), wet, dry, cool, hot – what stuff is made of. Interestingly enough, different geographic regions also correspond with one’s typology. Here’s a Jungian typology test if you’re interested: https://www.123test.com/report/LRMU6HPLY8OXW0VRFU/

In our sangha we focus on exploring feelings. I believe that when we explore our feeling-space we are able engage the deep wisdom of our unconscious mind and experience the sensibilities of our own psyche as well as the collective unconscious. Much great art is made from this very place. It seems to me that from the feeling-space we experience the universe manifesting, and our participation in that. 

We are asked in dokusan, in dream work, in koan practice; “How does that feel to you?, “What feelings are coming up for you around that…?”. Initially, we might some feel tension and search our thinking mind for what we think the questioner may consider the “right response” in order to protect what we perceive as “ourselves”, but in this case there is no right response. This question isn’t approaching our thinking mind. Because we do not find ourselves being asked these questions frequently they may seem very complex and initially confusing to answer. This is why we practice engaging in the vocabulary of feeling, this is the place where the experience of being arises. The direct experience of the dharma. 

Dogen reminds us to “Forget the self”. But, if all we experience is the habitual thought formations that come up in our conscious mind as “self” then we do not clearly recognize or understand what needs to be “forgotten”. The modal mental blocks (thoughts that relate to structure as opposed to substance), that arise first and speak to us loudest, maintain a self-preservation narrative in its many forms; some necessary and many more destructive, banal and perverse that cause separation in our own psyche and move us away from any real intimacy with others. Some of these modal blocks we are familiar with, sometimes consciously and sometimes not. Unconscious energy is expended is very frequently in defense of the “I”. This makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, to access the self-reflection of feeling. In order to “forget” this “self” and experience the clarity of the ten thousand things that continually approach us we have to somehow access a deeper wisdom. The dharma gate to this deeper wisdom is the unconscious material produced in dreams. The ombudsman of this dharma gate is our feelings. This is the practice of engaged dharma.

Certainly, we are not solely defined by typology, Jungian or otherwise. We are the myriad manifestations of the magical illusion of being, the synergistically arisng collective unconscious, the universe experiencing itself, and we are fortunate to have the curiosity to seek and become engaged with the depth and root of this experience we call living, and notwithstanding, meaning.

This is the entry point to what we seek: the primordial unchanging light, the central origin of all mandalas that embodies the vast ocean of wisdom and compassion that this practice makes available to us. Every place and all time is a dharma gate. When the buddha at the gate asks about your feelings search your whole heart, respond courageously and with great love and you will pass through the dharma gate of genuine practice.

Deep Peace and Great Love

~Issan & Zenho

SCHEDULE  July 30-Aug 5

Issan will be out of town August 2 – August 16

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, KEKANSAN OPENING

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM Drag your body to the Zendo, or Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM, WITH ZENHO. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM WITH ZENHO 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09 

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE WITH ZENHO AT THE TEAHOUSE  DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

Poem from Zenho Sensei

Birds this morning 

This morning  

My heart filled with 

An ache that feels like sadness 

My eyes welling with tears 

___ 

That blur my vision of the 

Bird bath centered upon the sanded porch 

Sparrows arrive,  

3 then 4, quickly looking left-right-left 

A solitary Grosbeak perches 

Sparrows shifting away from its bulky aura 

Left-right-left 

Before dipping a head for a sip,  

Water glass Mirror  

Shatters in response  

And  heads twitch right-left-right 

Anticipating another sip 

Until until until 

One is overcome  

Jumping through the mirror 

Into an cstatic wingdunksplash 

And a second and a third  

And then leftrightleft  

The fourth an explosion 

All bursting in unison through western air 

At a change in shadow, or breeze 

Unnoticed by me 

___ 

Oh how I long  

To soak my wings in that bath 

Undisturbed by rightleftright 

Unruffled by shadow and breeze 

___ 

My heart aches 

And my tears flow 

A poem from Noah

The Moon is ready to face the Sun 

Once again

To enflame itself in

This radiance 

And share it with us all

This momentary 

Completion of

Desire desire

And then to begin again this 

Infinite yearning 

An end an end in itself– 

Noah Seltzer

“The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma Gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. You you must know that just there in zazen the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.

~Dogen

Student: What is enlightenment?

Master: Enlightenment is an accident.

Student: Then why do we do zazen?

Master: Zazen makes us accident prone.

Zazen is the fundamental root of Zen practice. Zazen is what Zen practice actually is. There are many forms of Buddhism for which Zazen is not the basis of practice. Some seek enlightenment in the sutras, or mantra and mudra or elaborate visualizations of celestial beings or koans. Not Zen. The practice of Zazen, being Zazen, dropping intellectual understanding, and shining the light of mind inward to illuminate yourself is the practice that we are instructed to follow by Master Dogen; ” Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifested. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Cease all movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. have no design on becoming a buddha. The zazen I speak of has nothing to do with learning meditation. Zazen has nothing to do with sitting or lying down. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of total accumulated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality.”

Who is sitting on the zafu?

What is your original face?

How can you answer?

How does it feel to you? Are you excited? Bored? Does it feel forced? Uncomfortable? Blissful or joyous? Free or compressing?

Each time I am on my zafu it feels like coming home. In the place of no-place, no effort, free. Initially I feel a sense of abiding in emptiness, resting in naturalness, dwelling in awareness. Then all that dissolves into clear sky. Mundane concerns and thoughts drop away of themselves without effort. Realizing a still point and expanding beyond self, beyond beings and buddhas, melting into mugai. For a long while I tried too hard to make my thinking stop, to bliss-out, to space out, to day-dream enlightenment. It is said no matter how much you sweep, you’ll never sweep the mind clean. Eventually “something” happened, an accident perhaps and I quit making an effort. These days Zazen manifests on its own.

There was a conversation a couple weeks ago with Ralph Kendo Bruce-Fritz, a Zen priest and dharma holder of Jitsudo Roshi’s lineage. He explained to me the meaning of mugai as “the-limitless-out-there”. The infinite circle which contains all and does not have a line drawn around it. As Jitsudo Roshi once described it to me; a road that has no edges.

In Zen we have some enigmatic language that elicits awe. Beginnigless time, prajna-the wisdom of things as they are, maha; the all-encompassing oneness, the empty sky. These words are useful as a jumping-off place for our minds to explore the conceptual. A nudge to raise the Bodhi mind. But what happens when we exhaust the intellect, the creative and physical experiences of these concepts? What’s then?

I shared a dream about being-space. About an experience of mugai. Presence in the cosmos, points of light that I dreamed existed as what was thought of as “myself” through out beginningless time. In the dream I knew that thusness had never come-and-gone, and there was no longer a fear around the life and death concept. I felt the essence of being as pervasive, regardless of its manifestation or non-manifestation. There were countless points of light in the cosmos in my field of vision in this dream and each one part of, and also, the limitless whole itself.

It’s really not possible to clearly define the experience of “dropping away”” as Dogen poetically refers to the essential point of Zazen because for each one of us it feels different. We can feel it in one another, sense it in presence and like a whisper of perfume left in the air and we know what is here. Delving into your feeling, not thinking is essential to practice-realization, then forgetting it. It is the “forgetting the self” that actualizes practice- realization.

May your practice-realization go well.

Deep Peace and Great Love,

~Issan

SCHEDULE  July 16-22

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, KEKANSAN OPENING

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM Drag your body to the Zendo, or Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM, WITH ZENHO. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM WITH ZENHO 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI 

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE WITH ZENHO AT THE TEAHOUSE  DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

SATURDAY, 6:30AM: TOKUDO CLASS, AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89637678671?pwd=TUpWeDl5T2xRbjlYU1VNWEcrVGtUdz09

A poem from Zenho:

In the midst of this heat wave 

Animals and people and plants 

Alike shriveling 

I descend into a volcanic theater 

There greeted by this life quenching 

Indigenous torrent 

Hmmm…aaaH 

         -Zenho 

“…you call it rain, but the human name doesn’t mean shit to a tree.”

-Jefferson Airplane, Eskimo Blue Day

Walking up the canyon today on the La Luz trail I was thinking about how a hike, bike ride, kayak trip, can create an alternate chemistry in my mind. The experience of nature is transformative. (“Nature will kill you!” -Werner Hertzog) It’s always a humbling experience if one looks closely. It seems to stop the erroneous thought processes and it brings me back to a perspective that I sometimes can lose track of.

Dogen wrote, “That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion; that the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self is called enlightenment.”

So often we become so self-analytical, so self-absorbed, such navel-gazing fools, so full of of Zen sickness; completely and mindlessly unaware of being engaged in our conceptual thinking that we fail to see how desperately we are “seeking” (something) while convincing ourselves that we are not seeking anything. The stories our minds tell about ourselves, about what we name and what we feel and see and desire and find repulsive melt away with the approach of a claret cactus flower and the heat driven scent of Spring sage and the trill of a canyon wren in the pristine sky. At that moment mind ceases advancing and “the ten thousand things” advance as tzu-jan, burgeoning forth of themselves, and confirm our being as “enlightened”.

We all crave affirmation in one way or another. From within or from outside ourselves it seems to be common to most humans. We all ask the same questions about meaning in our lives. We all strive in so many self-deceiving guises to find IT. But there is something else, a mercurial thread that reaches us from deep space, from the smallest fractal geometric fleck, from our deep experiences with nature as-it-is, something that is primal, that needs no explanation or reasoning or validation. When we realize that, even for a moment, that is the experience of “the ten thousand things advancing”, confirming.

We all need to be killed by nature. We need our discursive minds silenced, if only for a moment, so that all that seemed so important, so critical, all that ego-bolstering garbage can disappear for a moment and we can be approachable by what is.

This is why we practice zazen. Zazen alone is the practice. Nothing else needed. No need to stack tiles on our heads that will eventually fall off.

Zazen allows the ten thousand things the space to advance;

and that is…

~Deep peace, Issan

Noah’s Poem

Heart beating 

In this silent room

Wondering if it matters what I do

Tomorrow morning 

Before the sunrise 

What I do upon waking

Or if I just

Wait 

For awakening to wake me

When the ferocity of the melting sun

Shakes me

SCHEDULE  June 4-10

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, SCOTT OPENING

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM Drag your body to the Zendo, or Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM, WITH ZENHO. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM WITH ZENHO 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI 

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE WITH ZENHO AT THE TEAHOUSE  DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

Zenkai and Service Training is June 23-24. Please prioritize this event. It’s a rare occasion for the sangha to be together. It is important for folks receiving Tokudo to attend this event. Friday 6-8 PM and Saturday 6:30AM-5PM. Dana encouraged.

Deep Peace & Great Love,

Issan & Zenho

Tuesday May 9, 2023, is the third anniversary of Jitsudo Roshi’s death. I can’t possibly express my gratitude and love for my dear friend and guide in a Blog post. So I won’t try. There will be a memorial service on Tuesday morning at 6:30. Two periods of sitting, followed by Identity of Relative and Absolute Service. Please join.

8 Deep Bows,

Zenho and Issan

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Jitsudo’s Smile

Battered butterscotch-smooth

Antelope leather suitcase

Lined with Celtic shearling, 

Clasps of antler worn and grooved

The gold lettering worn

And worn til there is just

A faded “I” and an even less

Distinct “m” the gold wisped away

By the packing 

And unpacking

Of my hands

And my mothers’ hands

And fathers’ hands stretching

Back before the antelope 

Itself was stretched across

A savannah painted green and brown

And yellow by a déjà vu brush

Unknown in these modern towns, modern times

This packing the past

To seek the future

Purchase of more antelope and lamb

And elephant and deer 

To quell the rising risen fear until

At the cusp of outside and inside

A gap appeared in the fabric of

Space leather and 

Shearling time 

Acquiesced to and from

An emptiness pouring into a realm

That unfolds beyond limit

Brim-full with activity of antelope and lamb

And elephant and deer and Sujata

And Shakymuni and Yeshe Tsogyal and

Roshi’s biggest smile that swallows me

So completely that thought of

Getting something out of this

Are abandoned with that old old bag

Zenho

_______________________________________________________________________________________

SCHEDULE  May 8 – 15

Zenho will be out of town from Tuesday afternoon through the following Tuesday morning, so there will be no Zoom after Tuesday

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, DAVID KEKANSAN OPENING

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM

Drag your body to the Zendo, or Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM, WITH ZENHO. MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR JITSUDO ANCHETA ROSHI. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE