Who Keeps Feeding These Fish?

 

 

We often hear our teachers tell us to "cut off all thinking." This does not mean to suppress thinking or strive for a quiet mind. Rather, it means to stop paying attention to your thoughts.

Recently on a canal tour in Bangkok, I saw, from a distance, some tourists on a dock throwing food to the fish that live in the canal. The water around the dock was alive with the thrashing, hungry fish. I thought, " That is exactly how my mind looks sometimes No wonder it is so hard to meditate."

A bit later that day, walking along another canal, I took some pictures of the fish to share with you. You can see so clearly what happens when the children offer food and what happens when there is no more food.

So the next time you think, “my mind is too busy to meditate today” ask yourself, “who keeps feeding these fish”?  

 

The Three Marks of Existence—or is it four?

According to the Buddha, there are three marks of existence: suffering, impermanence and anatman (no self).

Suffering (dukkha)

When most of us think about suffering we think about great trauma and affliction: people starving to death in Darfur, the victims of suicide bombers, suspected terrorists under torture, battered women. But suffering (dukka) is a lot more subtle and pervasive that that. It’s more like “dissatisfaction.” Life is not inherently satisfying. We eat—and then a few hours later we become hungry again. The best food in the world cannot give us lasting satisfaction. The same is true for all aspects of our lives. We lose what we have and that grieves us. We reach for something better and when we get it, we worry that we’ll lose it. We grow dissatisfied with our life—our job, our car, our spouse. We reach for something better.

Impermanence (annica)

It’s a very interesting fact that food ultimately turns into shit.

Properly applied, shit turns into fertilizer and that way becomes food.

The whole entire universe is exactly like this. Nothing lasts forever.

Some things have a longer life span. Some insects live for a day. Human beings live up to about one hundred and twenty years. Civilizations last a few thousand years. Our sun is has a predicted life span of about 9.5 billion years.

So food turns into shit turns into food.

So joy turns into grief turns into joy.

No self (annata)

If everything under the sun must die, so must the self. And not only the body, but the psyche, the ego, the “I.”

Actually, the self was never born so the self can never die.

The greatest cause of human suffering lies in our refusal to see that the self is nothing more than a collection of feelings and perceptions and memories and opinions with no more substance than a spider web. We cling so desperately to something that we know we cannot keep, something that is already a ghost.

Enlightenment

Some later commentators view enlightenment as the fourth mark of existence. For a long time this puzzled me. Wasn’t the Buddha’s teaching already complete?

Now I think, why not? Enlightenment is our natural state. It is who and what we are even when we refuse to see it. But when we relax, even a little, we see that it’s always appearing disappearing appearing.

It’s the the spider and the web

the living fly and the corpse of the fly

the anchoring tree and the pull of the wind

the wind and all the time and all the space within which

a child watches a spider spin a web and turns around and dies

and the light that follows

Paying Attention

Yesterday and today were easy work days in the garden, watering, weeding, tying up and pinching. And this forms my first commentary on the post of a couple of days ago: while it's true that if you want to harvest, say, carrots, you must plant carrots and not lettuce. But if you want to harvest carrots it's not enough simply to plant them: you must also attend to their needs on a daily basis. This means keeping the little seeds moist enough for them to germinate (and carrots can take a long time to germinate), keeping the seedlings with their shallow little roots moist, weeding around the carrots so they have room to grow, thinning the carrots so they don't crowd each other out. So it is with our minds. It's not enough to plant a seed -- think a kind thought or perform a compassionate deed. We must pay attention to our minds, moment by moment, cultivating awareness of the living complex of thoughts and feelings that comprise our karma, learning when to keep it all to ourselves and when to share.

Planting Seeds

I don’t remember the context for this story but it’s one of my favorites:

A man approached the Buddha and asked him for help resolving some difficulty. The Buddha asked, “You are a farmer, aren’t you?” The man said, yes. The Buddha then asked, “Tell me something. If I plant pomegranate seeds can I harvest coriander?” The man smiled. “Oh, no, Buddha, if you plant pomegranate seeds you can only harvest pomegranate.” “Oh,” the Buddha replied. “Well, then, if I plant pepper seeds, can I harvest spinach?” Again the man smiled. “Oh, no. The same principle applies. If you plant pepper seeds you can only harvest pepper. If you want to harvest spinach you must plant spinach seed.” The Buddha became a little stern. “This is what I have told you and told you and yet you do not heed my words. If you plant the seeds of anger and greed you will harvest anger and greed. If you plant the seeds of wisdom and compassion, you will harvest wisdom and compassion. Whatever difficulties you are now experiencing are the fruit of the seed you planted in the past. If you want to avoid these difficulties in the future you must now plant a different seed.”

I would add a little to this teaching and say that anger and greed are like weeds. They grow willy-nilly (like dandelions or bindweed) and can be very hard to eradicate. But wisdom and compassion need to be nurtured more carefully. In my experience, one word of anger can destroy an acre of love. Over time, wisdom and compassion can grow to towering heights, like the cottonwood tree, casting such a long and deep shadow that anger and greed whither and die from a lack of sun and water. But all those qualities--anger, greed, wisdom, compassion-- are part of our human karma and can never be fully eradicated. Even the most bitter and hardened person is capable of love. And the most loving person can burn with anger. 

What seed are you planting right now?

It's Alive!

I've been gardening a lot this year and thinking that I should blog about it, if only to have a record of the slow transformation of our backyard. I decided to resurrect this blog rather than start a new one. So here goes:

My Zen teacher, Linc Rhodes, was here last weekend to lead a retreat. We had some free time and spent part of it in the garden. Linc staked up my two healthy tomato heirloom tomato plants ( a Lemon Drop & a Speckled Roman, both from Seed Savers Exchange) and reminded me to pinch the new growth that appears exactly in the joint between two stems. This is to encourage the plants to produce fruit rather than leaves. He also reminded me to give the peppers some sulfur by burying match sticks upside down in the ground near them. Yesterday morning, I gave him the first of the tomato harvest, a single hybrid cherry tomato. This is the smallest possible token of my gratitude to him for all his teaching and help.

This morning I watered everything except the tomatoes, which had two good soaks over the weekend, one due to a storm, the other due to my efforts. I also gave two of the tomato plants a little extra support (the Lemon Drop & one of the hybrids), pinched some unwelcome growth, pulled grasses out of the summer squash / cucumber / winter squash bed, and planted a little 1' x 2' patch of Miner's Lettuce (Bountiful Gardens) and a nearly four foot row of Painted Pony Beans (Seedsavers) along side the most pathetic tomato plant in my garden, a hybrid Margaret picked up at the TCF's spring plant sale. I plan to put in two more rows over the next few weeks. These beans can be eaten green; left on the plant they'll dry into cooking beans. Sixty and eighty days to harvest, respectively.

I did a bit more rigorous work, moving a barrowful of compost into the tomato / bean bed and weeding out some tall grasses that were a) encroaching on a path and b) harboring chiggers. It is hard for me to want to save those sentient beings. Perhaps they too are my great teachers? If so, I must admit that I am a reluctant, even hostile student!

What's Real?

I've been sick for a few days now. At first I thought it was a bad cold, but now I think it's the flu, maybe even the dreaded H1N1, aka "swine flu."

I had a hard time falling asleep last night because I felt so hot and feverish. I kept running a damp wash cloth over my forehead and cheeks--ahhh, cool. But the intense heat soon returned.

I don't remember falling asleep. But I do remember waking up with a very small, very intense pain in my gut. Uh oh, I thought, diarrhea. So I got out of bed and sat on the toilet in the dark and tried to relax while the pain twisted its way through my bowels. But nothing came out, not even a fart. I went back to bed. When the next cramp came, I got up again and sat on the toilet in the dark. I did this several times because I really did not want to release a pint or more of liquid shit onto our bed or the hardwood floors. Finally, sitting on the toilet, with my head between my knees, half-asleep, I felt my bowels began to release. Ahh.

It wasn't what I'd call diarrhea though it was nasty enough in its own way and took its own sweet time easing out of my feverish body. I remembered reading about a woman, my age, in good health, who died of swine flu. I thought, I don't care, let me die now. Then I looked out the window and saw by the light of the just waning moon, the maple tree in our back yard. Ah, that's real, I thought. And went back to bed.

ALL Beings?

The other night, as I was brushing my teeth, I leaned over the basin and let a dollop of toothpaste infused saliva fall from my mouth. Too late I saw the tiny green bug upon which--plop--the white glob fell.

I felt bad.

At first, I tried removing the mess with my finger but my spit was so sticky and the bug was so small. Then I got the idea of gently using an ear swab to pick the whole conglomeration, bug and all, up with one deft swirl. I put it into a small bowl and rinsed the bug clean and then, using the other end of the swab, picked it up and put it on a dry spot on the counter.

When I got up in the morning the bug was not where I left so I thought, "maybe I saved it."

That night, sitting with Margaret on out patio eating supper, I felt a mosquito bite. One slap and it was dead.

What kind of mind is this?

A Bag of Manure

Once Linc Rhodes JDPSN offered a student a bag of manure for her garden. The student politely refused, saying, “Oh, no, I couldn’t." Linc told her, “When someone offers you manure, you should always accept it.” The student was enlightened.

Commentary: One by one each thing has it. One by one, each thing is complete.

Questions:

1. What did the student attain?
2. If you were there, how would you have answered?

Singing Impermanence

I've been doing most of my blogging over at Professor Hauck these days. You might want to mosey on over there for a look at some of the other sides of my blogospheroself. In the meantime, here's another reflection from the Cave:

Even before Margaret and Linc and I stepped out of the Providence Zen Center on Tuesday night, we could hear the frogs in the pond calling loudly to one another, singing for love. I felt so happy, knowing they had awakened from their long sleep in the cold mud and were ready to do it all over again, the feeding and singing and breeding. Pretty soon tadpoles will be swimming voraciously through the shallows. Many will be eaten by larger creatures, koi and egret, but many will survive, tails dissolving, arms and legs sprouting. And then they’ll hop up on the shore and add their voices to the cacophony. This is the way of the world.

Frogs hold a special place in my heart because of their transformation, not simply from baby to adult, but from fish-like swimmer to reptilian hopper. They are visible and audible manifestation of the impermanence of all things.

You know perhaps that frog populations are in decline world-wide. Scientists speculate that they are ultrasensitive to environmental changes such as increased toxins and shifts in air temperature and water quality. A day may come very soon when the frogs sing no more in the spring. This is very sad, and yet completely inevitable. Their extinction—and one day ours—is as much a part of the vast cycles of birth and death as the changing of the seasons. We all know these things, but as we go about our day-to-day business we tend to push them to the far frontiers of our consciousness. It is hard enough to contemplate the death of those we love or of our (gulp) own dear selves, but almost unbearable to think about the extinction of life on our planet.

As it happens, a friend's death had brought us and many others to the Zen Center that night. We all felt very sad, because JW suffered so much before he died and because we will miss him and because one day each of us will also pass. So the loud lewd singing of the frogs lightened my heart because I could remember that all this suffering and death is part of a larger cycle, one that is perhaps too large for us to grasp.

When we got back to Linc’s apartment, Margaret gave me a gift she had purchased earlier that day thinking to give it as an anniversary present in August. But suddenly decided it was supremely appropriate for that time and place.

Will it surprise you know that she gave me a sterling silver frog pin?

As long as I own that pin it will remind me of more things than I can say, of Margaret’s great love, of JW, the singing frogs, the blue tiled roof of the Diamond Monastery high above the pond, our dear teacher, the waning moon, our grief and our laughter, the long ride home.

Ji Jang Bosal

JW Harrington, May 8, 1958 - April 7, 2009.

JW, for twenty years the Executive Director of the Kwan Um School of Zen, took his own life yesterday afternoon in Providence, Rhode Island. He is survived by his wife, Jayne, his mother, and thousands of friends around the world.

I did not know JW well, but in our many phone conversations and emails he was always friendly and efficient. Once, during Kyol Che, I did some office work for him. He had such a beautiful calm light. Now I feel so sad for him. He must have felt so desperate and alone.

Let us keep one another close.

Last Breath

A friend of a friend died yesterday. His name was Ken. I didn't know him. But my friend was distressed, and I feel sad for her. 

I suppose I feel sad for us all. Death is so close to us always, separate from us by nothing more than the thin tissue of our breath. But it's only when somebody dies that death becomes visible. We shiver. We draw closer together. Then life sweeps us up again, and we forget this constant companion who one day will take each of us.

The proximity of death is one reason to practice. It gives us the courage to keep following our last breath, without fear, whereever it leads. 

Bowing to See True Nature

In the Kwan Um School of Zen we are supposed to perform at least 108 prostrations every morning. I say “at least” because we also have a tradition of performing extra prostrations, usually 500 or 1000, during times of distress. It is a great way to burn up extra karma. I believe that Zen Master Seung Sahn did 500 prostrations a day for most of his life as a monk, which perhaps accounts for his ceaseless and amazing energy.

I have done extra prostrations at various times and can attest to their amazing efficiency. I have never felt so alert or spacious so quickly, nor have I maintained that openness for so long. And I never even got the full benefit because I have bad knees, and they never let me do more than 270 a day. Even then, after a few months, I developed some kind of stress injury in my lower leg where the calf muscle joins the knee joint. When the pain started waking me up at night, I knew it was time to stop!

For a long time I couldn’t do any prostrations, and this became an excuse to cease morning practice altogether. But over the past two or three years, with a little determination and great patience, I have found that I can do 108 prostrations most mornings. It helps if I take a day or two off every week.

Recently I made a vow to do 108 prostrations every morning for 100 days. This has had a wonderful effect on my practice and life. My sitting practice is much deeper and my mind, even when I get up off the cushion, is noticeably calmer and more balanced. Unfortunately, it has begun to cause some problems with my feet and ankles, such that the first few prostrations are painful until I get warmed up, and my feet feel stiff and sore not only in the morning but at various times throughout the day.

The other morning I had to admit that I am giving myself another stress injury. If I don’t stop doing prostrations every day, I am going to have a serious problem. But how can I protect my feet and keep my vow? Easy: I’ve started doing standing bows, peppered with a prostration every ninth or tenth bow. The first day I was in kind of a hurry and was bowing quickly and somewhat carelessly. But somewhere around bow thirty or forty my mind suddenly slowed, and I began to pay attention to my bows. The standing bows are really no different from the full prostrations. This surprised—and delighted—me.

After only two days of this practice, I find that my feet are still sore when I first wake up, but my ankles don’t hurt at all. Maybe in a week or two I’ll be able to resume doing full prostrations—but only five days a week!

Deep Roots in Buddha's Garden

The last job I undertook before I left Sonoma Mountain Zen Center last Thursday was to clear the Buddha's Garden of the lemon balm, which someone had planted years ago and which had slowly overtaken many of the other plants. It was somewhat strenuous work, but deeply satisfying. The plants were tall and closely spaced, and the ground was soft from having been watered, and the plants came up easily with some, but not all of their roots intact. Lemon balm is deeply aromatic. As I worked my gloves took on a lovely citrus-y smell. It took me about an hour to clear the garden and another fifteen minutes to carry armsful of the weed to the composting bin--which happened to be exactly as much time as I had to give. Sally, the head gardener, was happy. It was a good beginning to her job of transforming the Buddha's Garden from a neglected to a loved space.

As I drove away I thought about the hard work she faces if she wants truly to control the lemon balm. For the plants I pulled up are not singular individuals but rather offshoots of a larger plant whose deep roots wind throughout the bed like a river from which many creeks flow. From time to time as I weeded I would touch that larger structure. I could feel its age and strength. Eventually, it will need to be dug out with great care and determination. Until then someone will have to go in and pull up lemon balm on a regular basis or it will re-take the entire bed. Even as I write this four days later I imagine that new shoots of the lemon balm have begun to appear.

Intensive practice--staying at a Zen Center or going on a retreat--is a little like weeding lemon balm. Sometimes the work goes smoothly. Other times the ground is hard or the weather extreme and the work is difficult, even painful. But at the end we can feel the results: a greater sense of mental ease and spaciousness, a new sense of joy and calm. How wonderful! But sooner or later, within hours or days, the deeper structure that gave rise to all the karma the retreat cleared away--the anger or sense of grievance or restlessness or boredom--gives rise to new karma, and our minds become crowded again with the exact same species of dissatisfaction that we worked so hard to eradicate during our intensive practice.

This is the great work of life and death. If we want to finish it then we have to find a way to dig out that deeply rooted karmic system that lies at the sub-stratum of the self. And that's why we promise to return, lifetime after lifetime, because those roots are deep and strong, and it takes a long time to discover where they lie and how best to remove them.

Back in Berkeley

Today is my fourth day in Berkeley. I arrived on Thursday, played a little pool at the Broken Rack in Emeryville then headed over to the Empty Gate Zen Center for a retreat. The YMJJ started at 9:30 a.m. (we are in Berkeley after all). For the second time in as many months, I found myself wanting to leave almost as soon as the retreat had begun. Why, oh, why didn't I at least take the morning off to run around Berkeley and drink tea and buy stuff? Fortunately, that passed quickly (or at least what passes for quick at a retreat), and by Saturday morning I felt incredibly present. Or rather, I felt the presence of something that was neither inside nor outside what I think of as myself, and I found myself just letting that something carry me. The deep clarity of that long sustained moment wore off after a couple of hours, but I trust that it is (as the Soto Zen liturgy says), "not near and not far."

The highlight of Sunday was Margaret's arrival. We hung out at the Zen Center for a while, then went for a hot tub (Albany Hot Tub and Sauna, if you are ever in town), checked into our hotel (Rose Garden Inn), ate Ethiopian food, and went to a gay AA meeting. Now we lying on our bed watching the fire burn in the fireplace (yes, it's cool enough for a fire). Tomorrow we go to get our marriage license and buy rings.

Four Great Vows

In the Kwan Um School of Zen we recite the Four Great Vows once every morning before practice. Here at SMZC, we recite them three times at the end of evening practice. The phrasing in each case is quite similar but hardly identical. Here they are, with a third translation that I copied from an article by Ajahn Amaro ("Between Arhat and Bodhisattva: Finding the Perfect Balance," BuddhaDharma, Summer 2008 p 25):

Sentient Beings are numberless, we vow to save them all.
Sentient Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Living beings are numberless; I vow to save them all.

Delusions are endless, we vow to cut through them all.
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to transcend them.
Afflications are endless; I vow to cut them off.

The teachings are infinite, we vow to learn them all.
The dharmas are boundless, I vow to embrace them.
Dharma-doors are numberless; I vow to study them all

The Buddha way is inconceivable, we vow to attain it.
The Buddha way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it.
The Buddha way is unsurpassed; I vow to accomplish it.

Which one do you like?

Hot and Cold

We woke this morning to heavy fog that had saturated the trees and fell like heavy rain on the roof of the zendo. It was very cold and even though I wear a long robe and had on a long sleeved shirt I got colder and colder. Walking meditation--kinhin--was better and worse: better because I could move a little and rub my arms to try to warm them; worse because I had not worn socks and the floor was so cold.

During the second round of sitting I had to laugh at myself. Last week was incredibly hot and sitting, especially at night, was very uncomfortable. I am not an especially sweaty person but the sweat was rolling down my face and neck and shoulders. I hated it. So there I was this morning hating the cold and wishing I were warm.

As I told my new friend Vicki tonight, I must try to find the place where there is no hot or cold. She said, "where is that place, Christina." I hit the steering wheel and said "don't know." Vicki laughed and said, "when you find it, take me with you."

Free Time

Saturday afternoon from 1 p.m. till Monday morning at 5:15 a.m. is free time here at Sonoma Mountain Zen Center. I spent some of that time off the mountain. Yesterday I drove down to Petaluma to play pool at the local pool hall, "Bank Shots." One of the residents, Natalia, and one of the other guests, Sterling, rode with me, but were more interested in each other (I think) than playing pool, and they took off once we got to town. I warmed up as I usually do, shooting some straight pool. The table was tough one, with tight pockets and fast cloth, and I had to work to stay focused and get into stroke. After a while, the guy working the counter came over and asked if I wanted some competition. Oh yeah, I said. We played nine ball for about an hour. We were pretty evenly matched.

Today, I picked more blackberries (yum) and did my laundry (ho hum). Then I invited one of the residents, Susan, to go to Sebastopol and drink tea at a tea shop called "Infusions." Another resident, Mike, asked if he could catch a ride into Santa Rosa. After dropping him off at Starbucks, Susan and I had a lovely Second Flush Darjeeling and walked around a bit before heading back up.

A fine day.

Desires Are Endless

Thursday, Sally asked me if I would pick some blackberries. There's a good sized patch on the southside of the garden, so I started there. The berries are many and many look ripe but so resisted my efforts to remove them that I knew they need more time. Nonetheless I spent several hours combing those bushes, and the vast patches down by the workshop and the pond, and I finally got about two and half pints.

What I like about work practice is how it lets you see your mind in action. So, for example, blackberries are even more finicky than raspberries--tug a little too hard at that fat purple berry, let your desire to fill that bowl quickly take charge, and you end up with bowlful of sour berries. I had to really see that desire (and taste it) before I could resist it.

The more I picked the more it seemed that the really ripe berries were just out of reach, high overhead and deep in the thorny patch, and I schemed and schemed to reach those only to discover, once again, that the blackberries are just not quite ripe, and only one in ten was ready to surrender to my hands.

About lunch time I myself surrendered--to the heat, the belly's hunger, the fact that July is not ripe for blackberries, and so I stopped trying to exceed my own reach and went back up to the house. I knocked at the kitchen door crying out, "special delivery for David." Someone came and took the berries from me. As I walked down the stairs I could hear the cooks exclaiming over their beauty and I felt a little pride appear. But I didn't grow them, I reminded myself, the sun and the rain and the earth and the air grew them, with a little help from the bees.

Ripening

Yesterday, David, the cook, handed me a small bowl and asked me to go pick raspberries. It took awhile for me to find enough ripe ones to fill the bowl about half-way, which was no problem really because the garden here is lovely and I enjoy picking berries: peering through the brambles, looking for that shade of red, taking the little berries between thumb and forefinger and pulling very very gently. The ripe ones just fall into your hand. As I walked around and around the row of bushes, I thought--probably for the hundredth time--that enlightenment must be just like that: when conditions are ripe, it simply appears. All of our effort is only to pay pay attention moment to moment.

This morning, I was weeding in the strip of ground between the raspberry patch and the kale patch. Inching my way down the row on my knees I discovered dozens and dozens if not hundreds of ripe berries.

When it cools down a bit, I'll go pick them.

Not in Kansas (for the time being)

I’ve come to California for three reasons. First, I am doing some intensive work with my psychotherapist, Naomi. We’ve been “meeting” on the phone for two years now, and it’s time for some face-to-face work. Second, I am here to deepen my practice. I’m staying at the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center, which is led by Kwan Roshi, a dharma heir of Suzuki Roshi and a good friend of Zen Master Seung Sahn. I’ll also sit a YMJJ down at the Empty Gate Zen Center in Berkeley, with Jeff Kitzes and his students. Last, I will be joined by Margaret on July 20th and on July 22nd we will be married.

As I write this I am aware of the dwindling resources on my computer’s battery and that I left the re-charger in Topeka. I can feel a breeze on my face through the open window and hear the rooster across the road crowing. A fine day on planet earth.