So as the spring blooms the day grows late I am thinking about Zen Buddhism, and how I came to find myself practicing a strange ol’ “religion” in a strange land as if it was totally natural . . . I stumbled across a great website of photos from the Zen Master whos lectures I used to hear in college… check it out. . . http://www.johndaidoloori.org/ I didn’t know he was a photographer.
I remember the first formal Zen practice I did at Mount Tremper temple in New York, where they did a strict routine of bows chanting and Zazen meditation every Sunday… The Zen Master Dadio Lori Roshi would come out after that, preceded by banging on a huge Drum and Gong…There were many monks there always who sat very straight listening.. I always tried to keep eye contact with the teacher as they prescribed… Afterwards we’d have lunch in the basement, always-yummy home cooked stuff, and the Zen Master might come down dressed in some classily cat skill outfit of army colored carhart pants and jacket… I never got a chance to talk to him personally; listening to those talks every Sunday made a big impression on my life, though I can’t remember a word of what was said now.
One day I was walking up the road and a nun was walking the other direction…the sun was out and the snow was finally melting that day… “Did you see a robin?!” she exclaimed as I was passing… it seemed such a strange question at the time. . . That’s all I can recall from Mount Tremper besides some other fleeting images and feelings.
Here the Zen style is much more loose… Ajuma’s cell phones going off as the Zen master comes in the room in a spontaneously comical moment, everyone laughs… Hyong Gak Sunim, one of the teachers, likes to go out to dinner after the talks and gets me to eat “pajang” pancakes… While I’m worrying about what to do and the meaning of life, he is always totally present, and just putting food on my plate cause he knows I’m too stupefied to reach for it myself. With a kindness that will put a lump in your throat, the Korean people and the Sunims I met at Hwa Gye Sa have given me a new perspective on what it means to be selfless.. and how many thoughts I have are all about “me me me me me,” the mantra for ruining your life says my friend Joshua…
My grandma asked me what the title to my book of Koans -“The Gateless Gate” - means last Christmas when I was visiting home. While I wanted to come up with a profound explanation for her, I found my self at a bit of a loss. Now that I think about it, the gateless gate might be like loosing something, and looking everywhere for it, then realizing that it was in your teeth all along… Something like that came to me the other day walking down the street, a metaphor that’s oft used… I remember a Roshi who visited bard telling us a story about someone being very kind and selfless to someone else, and how that was the gateless gate.
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an inspiring entry Annie. xox Mom
here's Rigpa's Glimpse of the Day from last week, by Sogyal Rinpoche
Above all else, we need to nourish our true self—what we can call our buddha nature—for so often we make the fatal mistake of identifying with our confusion, and then using it to judge and condemn ourselves, which feeds the lack of self-love that so many of us suffer from today.
How vital it is to refrain from the temptation to judge ourselves or the teachings, and to be humorously aware of our condition, and to realize that we are, at the moment, as if many people all living in one person.
And how encouraging it can be to accept that from one perspective we all have huge problems, which we bring to the spiritual path and which indeed may have led us to the teachings, and yet to know from another point of view that ultimately our problems are not so real or so solid, or so insurmountable as we have told ourselves.
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