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Two Bodhisattvas meet on the road

IMG_0027I had a peaceful and lovely holiday this year. We’re now passing through the final days of the dark tunnel that is the solstice, and coming out into the light of the lengthening days and rising sun.

My son gave me a wonderful Christmas gift, in a wish to support and recognize my practice. He often does so, which also challenges my practice as well This after all is the the boy whose first tattoo was the quote from Buddha placed on his forearm just below the crook of his elbow: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future. Live here, live now!” He said the grandkids had chosen the gift, but it bore the marks of any boy’s choice. It was a 6 inch figure of Hotei, which he explained excitedly, “Glows in the dark, too!”

It looks like a jade figurine. Charge it up under the light, and it glows that bright, oddly comforting radium green, like the pop up traveling alarm clock my grandmother would have in the bedroom when I’d visit her as a young boy. But without the loud tick, tick, tick. I roll over in my sleep and see him there, quietly watching over me with his bag.

I’d always just thought of Hotei as that figure that people would say, when hearing I am a Buddhist, “Oh, that laughing guy with the big belly?” And I’d dutifully explain how he is not the actual Buddha. So I did a little more research on him that I had now that I have him next to my bed. I was surprised to find he’s not just a mythical bodhisattva figure, but based on an actual Zen monk. According to Chinese history, Budai was an eccentric Zen monk who lived in China during the Later Liang (907–923 CE). He was a native of Fenghua. His name means “Cloth Sack.” His Buddhist name was Qieci (literally: “Promise this”). He was considered a man of good and loving character. He is also associated with Maitreya Buddha, and yes, because of his association with giving gifts and food, is often displayed in restaurants and stores. In that bag he carries candy and food for children, though it was also said later in keeping with his Zen practice, that the bag is empty.

And getting him at this time of year I was struck by how similar he is to that other Bodhisattva who carries a bag and is always ready to give time and attention to children. I introduced them to each other amidst my holiday decorations, though I feel they already know each other

I was also pleased and surprised to find there is a koan that Budai is found in. Budai is said to travel giving candy to poor children, only asking a penny from Zen monks or lay practitioners he meets. One day a monk walks up to him and asks, “What is the meaning of Zen?” Budai drops his bag. “How does one realize Zen?” he continues. Budai then takes up his bag and continues on his way. Certainly a good koan, and a good model for how to practice in this new year.

Happy New Year to all. Picking up my bag…

Speaking the names

“Perhaps we are here in order to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window – at most: column, tower. …But to say them, you must understand, oh to say them more intensely than the things themselves ever dreamed of existing.”   Rilke

Such intimacy, to call any being by its name
a knowing, an understanding
I would speak the name house
as I fully lived in it grateful
for the floors that supported me knowing
where the creak in the joists answers
the call of my foot
how it bends its back to shelter me from the rain
where the dust collects in the corners
knowing how each room holds the memory
of those beings who have lived there

All of them–

the bridge that spreads out before me to carry me from one side to the other shore
waiting until all beings have crossed before it crosses over

the gate, singing on its hinges as it lets me pass
or keeps me out

the window surrendering to transparence
that it may be of use

all speak my name, whether in a whisper, a shout
or a language I cannot speak
I bow in gratitude and wonder at how they stand
present and ready in this world
whether I know or their names or not

In the wild weeds

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I was saddened to hear on Saturday of the death of Peter Matthiessen, Zen teacher and writer.  His work “The Snow Leopard” had a great impact on me when I was taking my first tentative steps into Buddhist practice.  And “Seven-Headed Dragon River,” his book about a trip to Japan with his teacher, was a help to me at a time when I’d wandered away from the path.  This is said to be his last interview.

One of his obituaries included this distilled description of what practice is:

“Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake,” he told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2002. “We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about the future and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware of five minutes a day, then you are doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, and there is no reality apart from the here and now.”

Just after hearing the news, I came across a line in “Zen Sand,” a compendium of capping phrases for koan study, that seemed somehow appropriate: Old, uncaring, he wanders into the wild weeds.

Loving the questions

Long ago, after a day of early morning sitting, lecture, and work on the decrepit old porch of the Zen Center, Greg, a more experienced student and carpenter asked me, “So, has Zen practice sunk its teeth into you yet?”  He was asking about that moment when practice has you hooked.  I remember the excitement in this world of Zen which was beginning to open in front of me, how I loved getting a new book, or a new chance to hear another lecture.  Yes, hooked, but also awash in joy of study and learning. 

I remembered that this week, as it seemed Zen had again sunk it’s teeth into me.  I also thought of an old phrase from long ago days of psychedelic experimentation, (which is roughly around the same time as my conversation with Greg) and substituted one word in the old saying: “I think the koans are kicking in now.”

This was after a few days lost in reading the history of koans in “Zen Sand,” and a more modern but nonetheless telling of the history of the ancestors rich work, “Acequias and Gates,” by Joan Sutherland.  I seem to have fallen into the deep well of koan study, and don’t mind it one bit.

My beginnings were in shikantaza and Dogen, and that was where I remained, despite a lifetime interest koans–at least in reading them from a distance.  I was always drawn to them, but never had the opportunity until now to really work with them as part of my practice.  And I have to say though I was glad to finally have the chance, I remained cautious for a time.  I was afraid, perhaps, to fall into them too deeply.

Listening to a talk about Ummon’s four sicknesses this week by Subhana Barzaghi , I realized partly why that was.  She spoke of how we can get stuck in an opening, in a glimpse into our true nature.   We keep wanting to stay there, to return to it, or, or to recreate it.  I had a very small such opening years ago, and it was joyful and wonderful.  It made me want to dance around the zendo, and hang onto it as tightly as I could.  As Roshi promised it would, it informed and deepened my practice, and was always there beneath it.  But the fireworks, the desire to dance around, was hard to come by often.  Not the least I think because I was trying so hard to get back there.  For it was small, but just big enough and joyful enough for me to want more of it!

So I came to mistrust that experience.  Or at least classified it as a nice thing that happened that I wouldn’t want to do again.  Though I seemed on the surface to have moved beyond it long ago, to have left it behind, that very coolness betrayed the wish deep within me to have it again..

And I know that wish was a strong part of what was behind the desire to engage with koans—thinking, maybe this is the thing that will bring that joy, that feeling of knowing back to me.  Along with that of course were the defensiveness and protectiveness to not wish for too much.  To not want to say outloud that it was enlightenment I was wanting. 

But of course what I find all too often, is that what I think I want is not what I really want.  I understood that as I felt myself falling completely into koan study this week.  The dam bursting open.  Not the dam of understanding held within koans.  The dam with in me holding back from throwing myself into them.  The joy in studying them, in being able to hold one deeply inside myself.

There is the popular conception that koans are about solving the puzzle.  As much as I hear that’s not the point, as a human being I still approach them that way.  And as someone who loves puzzles, who loves getting the right answer, attaining understanding; I held to that idea that this was what the study of them is about.  Like one of those small wooden puzzle boxes you’d turn it over and over in your hand, wanting to find the spot just there where the panel would slide to the side or twist just so, and what was within would be revealed.  Failing that there is always a hammer to get to the inside. Image

I approach studying a koan that way too.  Instead I find when I throw myself into it, yes, there is a puzzle box there to be opened.   But it isn’t the koan–I am the puzzle box and it is the koan that does the opening.

I am enjoying simply studying the history and the development of koans, the fact that they are composed of two of my favorite things: words and stories and poety!  What’s not to love there?  I take such joy in that study, in being able to make friends with a koan and hang out with it.  I think of the friendship of teen agers, where we’d sit together and ask, “what do you want to do?”  And the reply was always, ‘I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  It’s just like that.  The koan and I can sit and don’t have to do anything but hang out.  I want to see all that is revealed, not to be done with it, but so I can make friends with the next, and the next. 

I find myself thinking, I wish I’d started this study years ago, knowing how long it can take to complete all of them.  Then I realize how wonderful it is that there are so many.  It’s a good thing to take up now, in that I can study them for years, probably for as long as I have, and not complete them. Who’d want to be done with them anyway?

I first thought it was enlightenment I wanted to find, and hoped to find it in koans.  But I was wrong.  What I wanted was enlivenment.  That feeling I had when practice was so new and fresh, and had sunk it’s teeth into me, and I was excited to begin the journey.  Koan practice has given me that again.  I think of Rilke’s advice, which is very helpful in this practice:  “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.”