When I came out of my hotel on Monday morning at 4:30 AM at the Wyndham Garden Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio to drive back to Albuquerque I went out to the parking lot to my car and

there it was,

gone.

It’s the first time my car had ever been stolen. I even got to watch the instant replay of it happening on the hotel parking lot security video. I felt mostly disappointed because I had gotten out of bed so early to have an easy escape from the awful San Antonio morning commuter traffic. Guess not. Went to the airport and while waiting for my flight the SAPD called to tell me they had found my abandoned vehicle and apparently it was still drivable. I canceled my flight, took a LYFT across town and there it was. Parked in a mud puddle. Like it had been waiting for me. Naturally, everything was emptied out of it, including all my precious Zen stuff, and my art show display units, jewelry cases….you get the picture, everything. It was vandalized. The rear window had been smashed and the ignition ripped out. I drove 10 hours home with the back window booming and shrieking at 85 MPH all the way. With plenty of solitude to reflect on this occurance.

Don’t freak out… til it’s freak out time. It was one of those things. One of those BIG things. You know, the kind of thing that’s so BIG you don’t even freak out. You just know you’re gonna be dealing with it. Despite the irritation, aggravation and inconvenience of it all, you just know, down deep, that this BIG THING really isn’t such a big thing and you go ahead and deal with it.

I remember something I had read recently by Trungpa Rimpoche about how things become workable. How our meditation practice allows us to be able to work with things that come up. In our lives, in our practice and in our feelings. Sometimes it BIG STUFF. Sometimes its just perception. Sometimes it’s the news we don’t want to hear or a circumstance that is devastating. But what we learn through practice that whatever it may be, it is indeed, workable.

What we often work out is not so much simply the circumstances themselves, but we are able to bring a lens to the situation that allows us to view our inner workings. Our reaction, our emotions around these circumstances. Our attachments and aversions and our feelings. There is a mistaken notion that as a result of Zen practice that we become calm, we react with equanimity in all situations, we’re centered and grounded. But this is simply not so.

What our practice brings to us is the notion that circumstances we encounter in our lives are workable. From the inside out. Reacting spontaneously, anger, frustration and sadness do come up. We may express them quite vigorously. Being in them fully. But we return to calmer waters quite naturally and realize quite readily that there is something here that can be worked with. We can examine the obvious and not so obvious aspects of ourselves as the result of these circumstances.

Zen practice is recognizing that it’s all workable. Sometimes it’s best to just leave karma, enlightenment and emptiness out of it. Don’t get tangled. Whatever happens, recognize that it’s workable.

And get to work!

SCHEDULE  APRIL 30-May 6 

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. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

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

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

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

Issan is out out town Thursday -Monday, offering his easy to steal vehicle to the Dark Side in Kansas City.

Deep Peace & Great Love,

Issan

& Zenho

Here’s Noah’s poem:

Agitation 

Into the 

The storm of the 

Universe

Tornados scouring the land 

Plowing towards me

But I 

Stand

And meet it all 

Rising and rising 

In my

Aliveness 

Every moment a chance to yell 

I am 

Every moment a chance to yell 

I am

Out on the river the past two Sundays. Feeling the roll and flow beneath me in the boat, breathing in the pristine blue sky. The heat -driven scent of water and mud. Burbling and tickling sounds of the flowing water’s riffles and eddies. Feeling the silky water, cool and soothing. Staring in awe at the mountains, the bosque, the new leaves, lime green on the trees and bushes, the birds and intense light reflected off the water. Aliveness. The exuberance of IT ALL.

Have you ever felt that whatever it is you’re doing that you’re somehow watching yourself? A discomfort in this, a disconnect? Minor sometimes, but you’re aware of it, right? There is the sense of an observer that you’d like to dissolve so you can have the pure, right-now experience as its actually happening. Some part of the psyche seems to be always watching. Do you feel like you’re a split-second behind the experience, getting a filtered sense of it?

Tom Wolfe, in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test wrote about the Merry Pranksters attempt at dissolving that “synapse-lapse-gap”. That moment when the observer interprets the experience then “reports” it to “you”. They tried to eliminate this by taking copious amounts LSD so the nano-second of mental processing of an experience might disappear completely, and immediate no-gap, spontaneous consciousness results. (They felt, in the end, that they were less than successful.)

When we are observing ourselves, I say, it’s because we’re doing, rather than being. A common state of ignorance. This discursive mind separates everything mercilessly. Mind constantly proceeding to a conclusion rather than resting in intuitive cognizance. When mind arises as such we are engaged in doing rather than being. Doing in this case, is preconditioned acting by the observer.

Being, is drifting and dreaming, flowing and floating, effortless. No aversion or attraction, no “self-making” stories being told. Being arises unnoticed, naturally and unselfconscious, because, no-you is there to notice it. The observer has disappeared. A moment, just then, and not noticed until after it passes. Then we deeply, viscerally recall the blues and greens, the sound of water rolling, the sky and wind, the sound of trees. The Being of IT ALL. Thusness, tathātā, free of conceptual encumbrances. Relax now.

Thusness is Prajna Paramita, the transcendant nature of things as they actually are, the wisdom-law of Being-ness. Have you seen it? Have you felt it? It cannot be approached, it must approach of itself. Be still.

Zazen and the experiencing of the living dharma are opportunities so very rare and precious because they realize Prajna Pramita in our living lives.

Actually living, actually being.

~Issan

SCHEDULE  APRIL 16- APRIL 22 

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. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

TUESDAY, 6:30PM, Tokudo Meeting, at the Tea House OR ZOOM. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89738637937?pwd=S3ViQ2dubGpoQzBURktqUjlaeExCdz09

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

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, ANDY OPENING (Issan out of town Thursday-Tuesday)

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

Happy Earth Day on Saturday April 22nd!

Deep peace & great love,

Issan & Zenho

Here is our poetic gift from Noah this week:

Pulling down spirals of 

understanding

into my own relationship with 

this

this

‘go to sleep’

this

‘feel’

this

‘presence’ 

concepts 

that whisper of revelation

that beckon and beckon 

to the non-conceptual

I know is 

here

“The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will“

~Robert Hunter

Congratulations to Sokukai & Ryūdo, turning the dharma wheel!

I was thinking about what it means to practice this Way. There are so many teachers and teachings, so many schools of Buddhist practice and ideas about what to study, how to study and what the interpretation of the teachings might mean.

Without a doubt, it is beneficial to read and study Buddhist thought and look into the myriad opinions and teachings of awakened masters in various traditions of Buddhism.

There is something that seems most important to me. Like many who come to the dharma, my initial practice was sparked by a desire to become a more peaceful, kinder, mindful person, to understand how to fix the discomfort of living, to unlock the deeper mysteries of what it means to be in this world, and to somehow find a Way to have it all make sense. I quickly learned that as the more I studied, the more I practiced there arose a much bigger question than I had imagined at the outset. As time went on my questions and intent to practice changed. As I began to open-up the experiences I was having, as the teachings from Roshi and from study began to ferment, I began to understand that my initial goal oriented outlook was wrong view. The harder I tried, the further away I felt from the answers I sought. More than once I felt it to be futile. I felt like I wanted to quit. Once I did quit out of hubris. I missed my friends and the zazen experience so much. Zenho held up the mirror of steadfast unconditional love and I began to realize what I was doing more clearly. I’d seen the revolving door spin frequently at the zendo and gradually recommitted my efforts to return to my path. I did not want to run from the challenge-of-being-challenged. I was being asked to go deeply into the question by my teachers and the teachings. It didn’t feel comfortable or easy a lot of the time.

And the question did change, the question became; What is it to Be?

Like a koan, the more effort I exerted, the more trapped I became. But I felt that it was the correct question. It felt real. At one point Jokai gave me koan: “I don’t expect anything anymore, I just come and sit.” It seemed like a waste of time. If there’s nothing to expect then there’s no possible progress. And finally it dawned on me that Jokai is correct in his view; actually there is nothing to expect. What it is, is just this. Just to Be. But how?

Feeling. I began to feel the texture of my life as I allowed this teaching on no-expectation to sink into my living, which is my practice. No separation. I became aware of feeling the softness and openness, the feeling of scraping and bumping-up, the feeling of claustrophobia, the feeling of ease and comfort, the feeling of naturalness in being at home in my skin and the feeling of irritation of the same. The experience grew from a realization that the feelings that arise in me are the primary experience of the dharma, the Being. These feelings are the actual experience of what it is to Be before the ego-mind builds “the story of Me” about the feeling.

I’m probably not more mindful, more peaceful, kinder or more comfortable. That goal seems like doesn’t matter so much. It’s so much more numinous to get what the feeling brings than it is to understand the thought about it. That is what “Hands on the Wheel, Eyes on the Road” really means.

I am awake to the being of feeling.

And I know it.

~Issan

SCHEDULE MARCH 26- APRIL 1

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. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

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

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

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

Deep Peace & Great Love,

Issan & Zenho

This coming weekend we’re going to celebrate the Jukai Ceremony for Michael Stoffel and Madison McClintock. Friends, family and children are all welcome.

The ceremony is at 8:30 Saturday, March 25 at the Tea House. Please be 15 minutes early.

Jukai is a somewhat more formal welcoming into our Buddhist community of these dear friends that we’ve known for a while now. This weekend is an opportunity to embody our commitment to one another by supporting Michael, Madison, and each one of us by our coming together as one, the true meaning of sangha. Please make every effort to prioritize your presence at the Tea House as a gift to our Jukai recipients and the sangha and as a manifestation of our solidarity.

Receiving Jukai is joining the Buddha family. It is an acknowledgement that we are buddhas. This is something that unfolds through out our whole lives in our practice and living moments as ever deeper realizations. Jukai expresses the commitment and intention of the student to become a disciple of the teachings and a disciple of the teachers in a most serious manner. It makes clear this precious being is making a significant outward commitment to the practices, the sangha, their teacher and themselves. This person is now joining the whole ancient lineage, the actual heart-to-heart direct and unbroken line of transmission of the teachings back to Sujata and Gautama Buddhas. The blood and marrow of the Buddhas is clearly acknowledged to be that of the one taking Jukai.

The commitment the students both inwardly and outwardly make is to uphold the Three Treasures; the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Also to embody the the Three Pure Precepts as Dogen describes them: “To not commit evil; this is the abiding place of laws and rules of all buddhas, this is the very source of laws and rules of all buddhas. To do good: This is the dharma of Sammak-sam-bodhi; this is the Way of all beings. To do good for others; This is to transcend the profane and to be beyond the holy; this is to liberate oneself and others.”

The rakusu, representing the patchwork robe of the buddha, sealed and inscribed by the teachers along with the Great Sila (lineage chart) now containing the student’s new dharma name is presented. The Verse of the Kesa becomes an internalized sacred vow, recited and renewed each time the rakusu is worn. The vows blossom in the heart of each one of us:

Vast is the robe of liberation.

A formless field of benefaction

I am the Tathagata’s teaching.

Intimate with all Being.

This weekend’s Jukai Ceremony is an opportunity to be in solidarity with the principal of No Separation, to be one with the vows you have already taken or may be about to take, to show your love, support and commitment to Michael and Madison, the Sangha and teachers and revisit and renew your own Buddhist path; in short to be present.

~ Issan

SCHEDULE MARCH 19-26

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. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09

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

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

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

SATURDAY, 8:30AM, JUKAI CEREMONY, AT THE TEA HOUSE

POTLUCK AT ISSAN’S HOUSE AFTERWARD.

10601 CALLE LINDA, CORRALES, NM 87048

Deep peace & Great Love,

Issan and Zenho

we have been prayed for

under ancient night skies

around dinner tables

upon the sun as it rose again

generations and 

generations of 

prayers upon

prayers 

and now we 

too 

take our place

amongst this

infinite 

chant

~noah s. 

“Don’t waste your mind on nursery rhymes,

fairy tales of blood and wine,

it’s turtles all the way down the line.”

~Sturgill Simpson

As a Buddhist, I don’t believe in prayer.

So I don’t pray.

Not really.

I don’t worship or “believe-in” a supreme being, a godhead, a goddess-head, Santa or the easter bunny, or turtles all the way down the line.

It feels like a cop-out to me.

I am what you may call “apatheistic”. I simply don’t care. Don’t have the conversation about it with myself or others.

Buddhist teaching says that it does not matter if there is or isn’t a supreme god-ish-thingy out there.

Buddha, as far as I know, refused to address the existence of a god.

It’s my behavior that matters. It’s up to me alone, I should behave well, compassionately, mindfully regardless of the the existence or non-existence of a god-figure.

All my responsibility.

Before I realized this Buddhist teaching I spent decades praying for myself and others, for stuff and desired outcomes, all out of fear. Fear of facing reality. Fear of taking responsibility.

Mind games.

We’ve learned that the actions of a bodhisattva are without hope, without self, without other. They are actions just as they are. No eternal reward, no karmic debit paid, no merit.

Just as they are.

This is a difficult call. If nothing is to be gained then why bother?

I suppose that we bother because we have, through meditation, experienced a sense of actual being within ourselves, without the self-centered chatter and ego inflation of a busy mind. And just a glimpse of that seems to be enough to change our minds about our motivation and who is actually responsible for our actions.

We begin to see “things as it is“, so says Maezumi Roshi.

This is all easy to understand, but it’s really hard to do everyday, all the time, in each and all of the frustrating, maddening, boring, aggravating common daily situations.

But we have an awareness of it, an intention to try. (Is this a bodhisattva vow?)

Is intention the same as prayer?

I don’t think intention is the same as prayer. Prayer is petitioning, it transfers responsibility to something outside ourselves. Responsibility for our actions is 100% our trip alone.

I say “I don’t pray. Not really.” What I do is outwardly express my intentions, my aspirations. My intentions and aspirations may manifest as actions, ceremony, service or acts involving others.

When I sit zazen, chant, recite a sadhana, or a sutra, or perform a ritual, I don’t consider it prayer. I experience it as an expression of my inner being engaged in the action of aspiring, embodying, expressing, intending and being.

Aspirations and intentions can serve as guideposts for my actions.

It’s not going out there to someone or something.

It’s in here.

It’s the myriad expressions of the magical illusion of the dharma worlds.

If somewhere out there a godhead, a goddess-head, Santa, the easter bunny, or turtles hear it…cool.

I don’t care.

~issan

SCHEDULE 2/26- 3/4

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, BRING YOUR OWN KEY AND OPEN

MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
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 
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

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

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

Deep Peace and Great Love,

Issan & Zenho

“From the lying mirror to the movement of stars
Everybody’s looking for who they are
Those who know don’t have the words to tell
And the ones with the words don’t know too well”

~Bruce Cockburn

the real-true-fact is that there is no answer. so here it is:

.authenticity

.potency

.emptiness

.issan-gee says: authenticity is potency, potency is authenticity. emptiness is the heart knowing no separation; what could be more authentic? what could be more potent?

.authenticity-potency is a symptom of the realization of emptiness. the potency in that transformative realization is the most powerful nascent energy ever unimaginable.

.do you experience the inability to grasp where you are at any given moment?

.don’t know too well.

.without effort of any kind the immensity actualizes, vast, inconceivable and mysterious.

Here is a jewel from Mugen’s Tokudo reflections:

Tokudo: 2 Tokudo 2 Furious: Tokudo in the City

I’m writing some of this as I watch The Relic, a movie from the 90s in which an anthropologist is transformed into a horrific monster by way of his research and subsequently terrorizes a museum full of people in Chicago.  It’s not very good, but I like monster movies and it has Tom Sizemore. The moral of this tale, if we’re so generous as to say this film is a cautionary morality tale, is that the search for knowledge is treacherous for both the searcher and those around them and often yields unpredictable results. 

I’m finding my own misguided search for knowledge to be fraught as well.  As I continue to sit with what’s coming up during meditation and dreams, I’m finding the fear and loneliness I’ve written about in the past giving way sometimes to a feeling of deep hurt. As in the past, I want to pin the hurt to something, maybe something from when I was a kid, maybe something to do with my family, who knows.  But in a recent dream I was given peyote and told to walk on a desert path under the night sky, it was a path lined with desert plants and it led into a black void. I’ve often found great comfort in embodying this void in dream group and Zenho’s exercise of “going to sleep,” finding it boundless and containing all things, including my struggles. But I turn away from the void in the dream, back to something familiar and safe.  On my return, I find myself laying on the desert floor completely covered with snakes that are like a blanket. I’m aware of what it feels like to lie on the earth and the snakes are comforting, the feeling of the earth on my skin is firm and real, and this is new for me in dreams. I’m more familiar with dreams of swimming underwater and the feeling of freedom and vastness it often offers. 

So I have been staying with the snakes lately, touching the earth. Staying with that feeling and the snakes, that deep hurt has emerged a couple times and also something new. An awareness that I look outward to other people and also to having answers to be with this hurt and soothe it.  But often people can’t be with my hurt and sometimes aren’t willing to be, I myself can’t be with it and am not willing at times.  And this is an unfair demand maybe, to expect someone to be with my hurt or their own, as much as I am attached to the idea that these are the kinds of experiences that bind us together more closely in common humanity. Other people have their own shit to deal with, things they’re aware of and things they can’t even see, lurking in the blindspots we all have.  And as for having answers and the search for knowledge…that has not ever served me well and it continues to serve me poorly, even as I try harder to collect and store answers.  The intellectual answers I arrive at, I’m finding more and more often that they’re meaningless in and of themselves. They’re hollow shells on which I can build a mighty tower of ideas I invest value in. It’s a tower where I feel safe but am agonizingly distant from just being with the snakes and the earth.  I’m aware that I came even to Zen and later to Zenho to fix this hurt and find answers and solutions, even though I had little or no awareness of the hurt being there at the time.  The hurt feels related to the loneliness and anger I’ve written about in the past, maybe underneath it, maybe running alongside it, maybe woven together. 

That is where I’m at now. As these things arise, I’m immensely grateful that I have you all and the sangha is a place that encourages these expressions and conversations. I love you all. 

SCHEDULE 2/12- 2/18

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

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
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09

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

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

DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

SAVE THE DATE: MARCH 18

~JUKAI DAY~

At the Tea House, 8:30 AM

FAMILY AND FRIENDS WELCOME!

POTLUCK TO FOLLOW AT ISSAN’S HOUSE

deep peace & great love,

Zenho & issan-don’t-know-too-well-Gee (auteur)

a poem from Zenho:

The Sun has just gone

down

The earth has just gone up

Either way

I take off these tight

sunglasses

a poem from Noah:

Forging a process

A knife in a

Furnace

Waiting in faith for

More faith 

I am I am 

I am 

I say to myself 

And sometimes I 

Land in that beautiful groove for a 

Moment 

Yesterday, Zenho shared a profound teaching, informed by a powerful realization on attachment.

Following is Zenho’s writing:

ATTACHMENT

As some of you are aware, we (issan and Zenho) have been playing with changing The Four Boddhisattva Vows: “Sentient beings are numberless…” The one that we have ;had great difficulty with is the second vow. It was presented to us, handed down from ZCLA, as “Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.” We have offered such variations as “Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to explore them,” and most recently “Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to be free from attachment.”

Attachment. ATTACHMENTS. Does this carry a negative, dirty flavor for you. I not only have this desire, which is somehow impure. Now I have this attachment to the desire. A double dose of dirty. Bless me Father for I have sinned. “Mea culpa, Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” No matter how many culpa kalpas, it still seems to be there. What is wrong with me? For surely, I am somehow at fault here.

I had the following experience today:

I was engaged in signing and stamping some lineage charts. “The Seal of the True Dharma Eye.” Candles and incense. Roshi beside me, as always. I was carrying the photo image that Diana had shared with me of one of Roshi’s hand-written cards: “Don’t Look for it. It finds You”

I had completed two charts and stopped to join my friend Fabrice. Fabrice is in Cabo, so we meet on Zoom. We chatted amiably, and then entered Zazen for 30 minutes.

Early in Zazen, clear emptiness pervasive. A thought arose. The thought was of a girlfriend I had when I was 20. I have always regretted how our relationship ended. There is usually a long story attached to this memory. 

The thought arose. And to my amazement…no story. No attachment to the thought. Just the next moment. Clear and bright and FULL of energy. Wide awakeness. Just clear bright awake energy.

There is also awareness of several other dimensions. This ATTACHMENT is not something that I have/had created. It is a Being, not much different from the Time-Being experienced by Dogen. ATACHMENT-BEING. The attachment-being was gone. I had not created it. And I had not caused its disappearance. And it is definitely gone.

ATTACHMENT-BEING, as small as mote of dust or as large as a Buddha-Field Universe.

ATTACHMENT-BEING as Anger-Beings. As Greed-Beings. As Ignorance-Beings.

ATTACHMENT-BEING as an energy vampire, carrying us and our energy down memory rabbit holes, draining our energy for the moment along with it. Into old stories. The Akashic records require so much energy to maintain as memory.

Freed of the ATTACHMENT-BEING, each moment vividly energetic, energy filled to the brim. Vibrancy meeting each moment directly. No possibility of dozing off.

Moment-by-moment complete.

We have several teaching methods that we emphasize. 

Within zazen, we encourage “Go to sleep.” This is not an encouragement to doze off. It is a reminder in the moment to drop all effort and rest in naturalness. It is funny – everyone seems to know just what we mean without explanation. Just go to sleep. And It finds You.

Dream-Koan practice reveals, from deep within the non-conceptual unconscious, the warp and woof of our Attachment-Beings. Attachment-Beings draining our energy, creating deluded perception, creating Anger-Beings and Greed-Beings and Ignorance-Beings. Our dreams also filled with Buddha-Beings creating the space between the attachment-Beings wherein we can once again rest in naturalness.

Attachment-Beings. Zenho was talking with a friend the other day. He was suddenly aware of the movie Good Will Hunting. More particularly, the scene in the movie when Robin Williams and Matt Damon have the following exchange: “It’s not your fault.” “Yeah, I know.” “No! Really! IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.”

Here what comes up for me when sitting with Zenho’s teaching:

Attachments are being, the essential life experience, the “all-encompassing”. They are not separate from the the burgeoning forth of all things of themselves. Attachments arise and release without any “doing” on our parts. Because really, there is no doer.

Releasing self-judgement and criticism is the action of realizing. Attachment arises in and of itself, and is without stain or flaw. The pain of self-inditement arises because the ego-indulgence of investigating these thoughts, resulting in clinging to them and so begins the cycle of attempting to apply effort to release the attachment. Clearly, erroneous mental gymnastics.

Zenho’s transformative realization as non-doing in “the creation of” or “the cause of” or the “release of” the attachment and his realization of the state of “attachment-being” is a liberating teaching. Through this the “I” dissolves when we realize attachment as it actually is; a state of being. There is naturalness of mind along with an ease and comfort in surrendering the ego. In doing so the immensity of All This floods in bringing with it freedom from striving and the release of energy Zenho describes.

Please read Being-Time (or Shobogenzo Uji ) by Dogen as a follow up to this.

Deep peace, great love ~Issan

SCHEDULE for Jan. 15-21

Zenho & Issan are not at the Tea House this week.. There will be NO Zoom meetings.

Please coordinate with one another on the group messaging if you want to sit together this week.

MONDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, David will open

Thank you Noah for the poem this week!

The 

Struggle

has been so 

Yummy

Tiptoeing on the edge of a knife 

As if I wanted to slip

And perhaps soon

I will let it go as they say 

Being content 

Just to watch the snow drift down

For the first time this season

But for now it is too

Delicious

Agonizing over which

Street to turn down

Until I walk

Straight 

Into the

Ocean 

       

The Winter Solstice is Wednesday, December 21st this year.

The longest night of the year. Light a candle or two.

The late Stone Age, roughly 10,200 BC is estimated to be the earliest period that humans recognized the Winter Solstice. Monuments such as Stonehenge, in England, Newgate, in Ireland and Maeshowe, in Scotland are aligned with the Winter Solstice sunrise. It was then and is still, an event of mysterious significance.

For many years, when I lived in the icy-cold, dark forests and hillocks of Northern New Hampshire, I fervently anticipated the Winter Solstice. The sun would (some days) come up over Mason Hill around 10 and by 3 in the afternoon Pumpkin Hill was already casting long, cold shadows across the cabin yard and studio. I dreaded Winter’s frigid cold and the seemingly endless dim days and the solstice was the harbinger of hope. The celestial certainty of Earth’s wisdom; unrefutable seasonal change. A new season, albeit winter, but from the Solstice on, the days would begin to lengthen. The slow, but assured, steady increase of the light of the Sun!

The Solstice is a cairn-in-time that marks a turning point. So many of the processes of constant of change; rejuvenation, fresh understanding, beginnings, and renewed commitments, are born from the darkest times, the deepest velvet of no-light, inky, mysterious and dreamlike. The Solstice was then and still is, a time of rejuvenation.

The Sandokai states: “Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness; within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light.” What stands out is the looking for. Looking seems to refer to seeking, grasping for it. We need not look for it. Yet we do experience darkness and light, we feel it and know it’s there. It’s an awareness of that light, an awareness of that darkness, reaching for neither but dwelling in both simultaneously. Noticing, cognizant and filled with it. Perhaps the Winter Solstice is an auspicious time to be holding our awareness of this; no-light-no-darkness.

~Issan

SCHEDULE 12/18-12/24

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

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

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

THURSDAY, 6:30AM: At the TEA HOUSE or ZOOM ZAZEN & Recitation of the Aspiration Prayer of Samatabhadra

         DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

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

         DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

Deep Peace and Great Love, Happy Solstice!

Issan & Zenho

*Watching The Dark is the title of my favorite Richard Thompson album!

Here’s Noah’s poem for us this week:

The falcon flew to me

And I had a choice

I knew which one I wanted

But was it that easy 

Just to choose and it would be?

Is love an emotion?

Or is it the river of emotions 

That I wade in 

Until I am pulled in 

Drowned in 

Myself 

At last 

Greetings Friends,

It is such a wonderful Bodhi Week! Sitting zazen, mini-sesshin, together and engaging in service makes Rohatsu time special. For those who have not been able to attend in person we hold you in our hearts and your presence is palpable in the zendo among us. We still have a few more days until Bodhi Day on Thursday and we wish you a peaceful and enjoyable time of zazen practice in all forms for the rest of the week.

It’s an auspicious week to sit as much as you can, and please join at the tea house, when you can. Deep Peace & Great Love ~Issan & Zenho

SCHEDULE 12/5-12/10

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

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

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

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

         DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

         

Deep peace and Great Love,

Issan

…AND HERE’S NOAH’S POEM FOR THIS WEEK:

I am learning that sometimes I don’t want to 

Speak

That the pace of life might just have to be 

lived

For there are too many books

Too many I-know-the-solution 

Too much wisdom 

that doesn’t change me

So I have returned to my 

Carpet floor

Lying on my back

As the sun scrapes across the sky

Loving the puddle of self-pity I become

Feeling a tickle of magic in the rolling day

And a glimpse rest 

Like a child

Resting on his mother’s lap 

After a day of glistening 

Life 

Issan: The first question you must ask yourself is when are you going to make friends with your own mind?

Zenho: Good luck finding that. I’m making friends with an eggnog latte.

Zenho’s now famous eggnog latte teisho!

The realization that eventually settled upon me when I experienced this teaching is this: The spontaneous manifestation of all non-objectified phenomena is the play of ornamentation of primordial consciousness.

Pretending your mind doesn’t exist (for some, no pretending is necessary!) is your mind pretending your mind doesn’t exist. Confusion. Eggnog latte is simply the arising ornamentation of creativity. A manifestation from the basic space of timeless awareness. Subsumed in mind.

There is this idea in Dzogchen, (Tantric Buddhism), of magical display. It’s the manifestation of all things as the result of mind itself. Expounded upon by Longchen Rabjam:

“Just as all light is subsumed within the sun as its source, all phenomena are subsumed within awakened mind as their source, even the impurity and confusion in the universe of appearances and possibilities. Whatever occurs, by examining basic space as its matrix and abode you find that it has no foundation, but is subsumed within the timeless freedom of mind. Beyond labels and their meanings, confusion and its absence are subsumed within the true nature of phenomena- the timeless expanse, a supremely spacious state.”*

Soooooo… eggnog latte, you, me, Zenho, all phenomenon in fact, are by nature free of any objective frame of reference, subsumed within the basic space of timeless awareness, which is not the ordinary seeking mind.

Great realization awakened by an eggnog latte, a Dzogchen master and one great teacher!

Groovy how this stuff works!

-Issan

Longchen Rabjam

*A Treasure Trove of Spiritual Transmission: A Commentary on The Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena by Longchen Rabjam Padma Publishing, 2001, ISBN 1-881847-30-6

SCHEDULE 11/27-12/4

MONDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, someone will need to open

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

TUESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, someone will need to open

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

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

         DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

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

         DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

FRIDAY, 6PM-8PM, BEGIN ROHATSU, ZAZEN

SATURDAY, 6:30AM-11:30AM, ROHATSU ZAZEN, SERVICE

SUNDAY, 6:30 AM-11:30AM, ROHATSU ZAZEN, SERVICE

Here’s Noah’s Poem for the Sangha this week:

I dreamt of snakes

Piercing gold

Slithering in sensuality 

upon the Great Mother

Every movement an erotic 

Dance of 

Devotion 

And she saw me 

One of the snakes

She whipped her body

And I ran for her 

And I danced for her

But could not escape 

How naive to think that I could ever escape 

fangs that were meant for biting

skin that was meant for shedding

Oh snake

Bite my skin

Shed my soul

Put your poison

Where you please

And let me see as you see

And let me feel as you feel

And swallow my tail back to myself 

And know thyself and know myself  

As 

I must