Fall schedule at Bird Haven Zendo and Manzoku-an Hermitary

 Let us know of errors, omissions and details as needed, and we will follow up. 🙏

Sept. 1     Manzoku-an morning service and zazenkai, 10-11 a.m. Pacific time Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays on Zoom. Two periods of twenty minute zazen. This schedule through December 8th.

Sept. 4   Friday morning zazenkai at 8:30-10:30 a.m. approx. Pacific time, on Zoom. Weekly thereafter.

Sept. 7   Monday afternoon zazenkai at 3:00-5:00 p.m. approx. Pacific time on the Zoom. Weekly thereafter.

Sept. 20 Avowal of karma and renewal of vows. September 20, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Pacific time, on Zoom.

Nov. 26 A reading of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address at 10 a.m. Pacific time, on Zoom.

Nov. 30 Manzoku-an Ecotonglen and 108 Bells for Lost Species event at 10 a.m. Pacific time, on Zoom.

Dec. 8   Manzoku-an Rohatsu sesshin from 10 am. Pacific time, on Zoom, with a service and three  periods of twenty minute zazen, ending with a recitation of the Fukanzazengi. 

You may generally find out about or join with a Zoom event directly from the calendar. 

Soto Zen Sangha of Florence

Sept. 7 12:30 PM Pacific time, and Mondays thereafter. Hybrid session: at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, at the intersection of 19th and Tamarack Streets, or one may attend via SZSF's Zoom. 

Berkeley Zen Center

Our parent sangha has many hybrid attendance opportunities.
 https://berkeleyzencenter.org/

 

 

 

Put it down first

Dainin Katagiri: 

"Under all circumstances, we must be rooted in the source of existence. Right in the middle of the dynamic unfolding of our daily life, we must remain calm, quiet, and unperturbed. Whatever praise or criticism you receive—either from yourself or from others—there is no need to get bogged down in it. Just be straightforward.

"To accept life in a straightforward manner is to have a flexible mind, not clinging to ideas of good or bad, right or wrong. We need to learn how solemn, dignified, and sublime human life really is. No matter who we are, we should respect others and not judge them. Nor should we judge ourselves. For example, usually we try to do something about our reputation. We hang on to it when we should instead be learning how to free ourselves from it. If you hang on to thoughts of your reputation, your mind will not be calm, because you are stirring up the water of reputation.

"If someone slanders you, what should you do? Just make the waters calm. In other words, just forget it. This is not an easy practice. But if you hang on to the slander, you will become angry. You will fight. This just perpetuates the problem. This problem is not confined to slander or blame; it applies to praise and admiration as well. If you are admired, don’t hang on to admiration. Just get on with what needs to be done.

"If we are carried away by pros and cons, successes and failures, gains and losses, flattery and disgrace, we will not take care of our daily life. In order not to be carried away by these kinds of things, we must first touch the source of existence.

"Stability, imperturbability, and tranquillity are not stagnant water. They are dynamic and active, and they are constantly working. They are life itself. We can’t know them through ideas. Only through our actual experience can they be known. And only then do we touch the source of existence."

In context (You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight) he ties this to human relations. Manifesting here means something like showing. We model Buddha as Buddha modeled Buddha for us. This, Katagiri implies, is how we fulfill the four vows.

While the Precepts seem to be mostly about manifesting Dharma socially, the Diamond Sutra approach seems much more left-hand-must-not-see-what-right-hand-doing. "Manifesting" also when only the wilderness witnesses is consistency in practice.

I used to do a good deal of backpacking, and sometimes came upon heaps of litter at campsites. I learned to carry a trash bag along with me to gather up the stuff, but grumbled in righteous indignation as I did so.

It occurred to me to ask a Zen teacher (this would be about 1971) about my unwitnessed behavior on these occasions. "I find litter in the wilderness and it throws me off my game -- I get really upset with whomever was ahead of me to that site. Am I better off picking up the litter in that state, or just leaving it alone, thus remaining more tranquil?"

"It's good to pick up litter, yes? But maybe not so good to speculate on how it got there. I'd say put it down first before picking it up."

-- shonin

 

Let's heat up some water

 Stonehouse says:

The whole Buddhist Canon 
is worthless old paper 
seventeen hundred tangled vines
who can see through the mess
one thought is still too many (tr. Red Pine)

Finally it rains, and I sit staring out the kitchen window past the sunflowers and sunchokes to the chopped and dropped Deer Garden, tomatoes and corn (not much of either) gathered, hoses and shades put away, listening idly to the rain barrels filling. Having done the things, I'm caught between the Zoom zendo and the neighborhood walk, a fly in amber, a slow brain complemented by slow moment. There's not enough motivation in this moment to move tea things around on the table and convince myself I'm doing. A crow on top of the neighbor's ash tree seems to agree, hardly bothering to swivel its wet head and inspect its retinas for signs of an approaching hawk. Do soaked crows shrug?

We've been talking a lot around here about "entangling vines," those tendrils of the world reaching out to curl round our ankles and demand of us the tribute of at least aversion if not attachment. If we are to have no preferences, why not let the hawk have us? Why struggle to live? Or, perhaps less momentously, why get up, dress, come to the hut, make tea, wake the Mac mini, say the Robe Verse, put on the rakusu, log in, and begin Morning Service?

Well, if it seems to us like Right Action, we pull ourselves together and do it.

The morning after Philip Kapleau and Professor Phillips arrived at Ryutakuji Monastery they were given a tour of the place by Abbot Soen Nakagawa. Both Americans had been heavily influenced by tales of ancient Chinese masters who’d destroyed sacred texts, and even images of the Buddha, in order to free themselves from attachment to anything. They were thus surprised and disturbed to find themselves being led into a ceremonial hall, where the Roshi invited them to pay respects to a statue of the temple’s founder, Hakuin Zenji, by bowing and offering incense.

On seeing Nakagawa bow before the image, Phillips couldn’t contain himself, and burst out: “The old Chinese masters burned or spit on Buddha statues! Why do you bow down before them?”

“If you want to spit, you spit,” replied the Roshi. “I prefer to bow.”

-- One Bird One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories, Sean Murphy

That sure is a lot of rain. Maybe I'm done pushing around the tea things. Let's heat up some water!

-- shonin

Much the same

There's a groundswell of faith activity around the world which was perhaps not expected, given historical attitudes toward people with disabilities and/or shut-ins.

Here is the Zoom studio/zendo of Manzoku-an, the converted tool shed.

 

It consists of a decade-old Mac mini on ethernet cable, with monitor, external cam, mic and speakers, facing a zero-gravity chair and bench serving as a table, with tea and a book (doubles as mousepad). Across the 9X13' room there's an old telephone table serving as an altar, with Shakyamuni and Kannon and their accessories. Kannon was two dollars at the local thrift.

I serve as doshi for two online groups, and sit with two others, all in this space. It doesn't take much. Get up, take two steps into camera view, do the rightward shuffle, bow, make offering, bow again, rotate two steps back, bow, remain in gassho (two hands together) while the online kokyo/doan chants and rings bells, bow three times with the online sangha, walk back, sit. Kinhin (walking meditation) is ten steps toward the other end of the hut, turn, ten steps back, in my case often with a walking stick, until the bell rings. People who don't have huts like mine do all this in their bedrooms; some do what they can from hospital beds. 

Covid sparked this kind of innovation worldwide. Now even many sanghas that returned to in-person sitting (or never stopped) have an unobtrusive laptop on a table in the corner of the zendo or Buddha hall, with offsite attenders participating in the only way (in many cases) they can. When visiting their websites, if you have a yen to sit in meditation with them but can't show up in person, check for a live video link. You'll be very much welcome. 

A fellow Soto priest in one of my groups lives in Ukraine. He hosts online zazen from his apartment, and sometimes, out of necessity, hosts from a bomb shelter, on his smartphone.

Much the same is occurring in churches and other religious assemblies. I'm also a member of a Friends Meeting and a link is provided to remote attendance at a number of their events. Our Yearly Meeting took place in Olympia, WA this year and I appreciated being able to be a fly on the wall during plenary sessions.

I, and there are others in like case, have compromised immunity and must steeply reduce in-person contact beyond my household (who make efforts on my behalf, such as masking at the grocery store).

It sounds lonely, but in good weather (we're currently socked in by wildfire smoke) my friends come to see me (I'm no longer allowed to drive) and we walk out back to sit, socially distanced, in the breezeway. I pour them tea, they tell me their triumphs and tribulations, the birds sing, the bumblebees check out the sunflowers.

I'm wondering about prisons. I know some prisoners in some places, certainly some in house arrest, have Internet. I have been following a former RN who got into trouble, who vlogged his circumstances while shut in (he's out now and walking the Pacific Crest Trail). And some prisoners have meditation groups. My teacher has worked with such a group in a women's prison, and a member of my Friends Meeting also works with prisoners. But none of these, I think, are allowed online. I'm interested in finding out more -- search engines haven't been much help as of yet.

In the Shushogi there is a passage on how to behave toward other humans (and presumably all beings). It begins: "There are four kinds of wisdom that benefit living beings: giving, kind speech, beneficial deeds, and cooperation." None of this requires ableism or even freedom of movement.

"Do not disdain even a small offering; its giving will surely bear fruit."

"Kind speech means, when meeting living beings, to think kindly of them and offer them affectionate words."

"Beneficial deeds are one, universally benefiting self and others."

"Cooperation" means not to differentiate; to make no distinction between self and others."

Even in a Zoom room, or with a blog, or on social media (with the caveat that the techno-purveyors of most of these means do not have your best interests at heart), it is possible to do all these, and with considerable geographical reach. Throughout history, writers of letters or epistles have offered expressions of ministry or healing at a distance. Today, friends and associates console or advise one another via texting, messaging, blogging, vlogging and microblogging. Sitting in zazen together online is much the same.

-- shonin

 

  

There is no one who is not the iron ox

 

There is no one who is not already the iron ox, but we hide it from ourselves, to endless trouble. There is another way to live, and with practice we can unfold it to ourselves and grow it, like corn and beans, like apples, like rice.

Buddha is said to have been asked by King Bimbasara to differentiate his followers from the followers of other teachers and assigned the design to Ananda, with the instructions to make it like a rice field. The idea is that those wearing Buddha's robe nourish the whole world with the dharma, as farmers nourish the world with rice.

You can of course be a helper without calling it Buddhism or wearing a robe; Buddhists are a relatively small subset of the world's helpers. I was drawn in by the similarities of the Four Sights and Four Noble Truths to the human struggle with biotic entropy. Thinking about that happens to be my hobby. 

But anyone who notices that the world tends toward chaos and suffering and resolves to do anything about it is what I mean by a helper; and these are to be encouraged, I think, in any way possible.

This is not a matter of scale. Jesus talked about the woman who brought, like, two cents, to the temple. A gift need not even be intended as kind to be a gift; children playfully put mud in Buddha's begging bowl and he reverently handed it off to be used in maintaining his hut. 

Dogen, in the Shushogi, mentions someone giving a blade of grass. The Shushogi is a pastiche of things Dogen wrote, some of it taken out of context, but it's functional, and is the official statement of faith and practice for the Soto School of Zen Buddhism. The whole passage with the blade of grass is all about generosity:

There are four kinds of wisdom that benefit living beings: giving, kind speech, beneficial deeds, and cooperation.

That is, giving (donating), giving kind speech, giving beneficial deeds, and giving cooperation.

Here's the rest of the passage:

These are the practices of the vow of the bodhisattva. “Giving” means not to covet. In principle, although nothing is truly one’s own, this does not prevent us from giving. Do not disdain even a small offering; its giving will surely bear fruit. Therefore, we should give even a line or a verse of the dharma, sowing good seeds for this life and other lives. We should give even a penny or a single blade of grass of resources, establishing good roots for this world and other worlds. The dharma is a resource, and resources are the dharma. Without coveting reward or thanks from others, we simply share our strength with them. Providing ferries and building bridges are also the perfection of giving. Earning a living and producing goods are fundamentally nothing other than giving.
    "Kind speech” means, when meeting living beings, to think kindly of them and offer them affectionate words. To speak with a feeling of tenderness toward living beings, as if they were one’s own infant, is what is meant by kind speech. We should praise the virtuous and pity the virtueless. Kind speech is fundamental to mollifying one’s enemies and fostering harmony among one’s friends. Hearing kind speech to one’s face brightens one’s countenance and pleases one’s heart. Hearing kind speech indirectly leaves a deep impression. We should realize that kind speech has the power to move the heavens.
    "Beneficial deeds” means to devise good ways of benefiting living beings, whether noble or humble. Those who encountered the trapped tortoise and the injured bird simply performed beneficial deeds for them, without seeking their reward or thanks. The foolish believe that their own interests will suffer if they put the benefits of others first. This is not the case. Beneficial deeds are one, universally benefiting self and others.
    “Cooperation” means not to differentiate; to make no distinction between self and others. It is, for example, like the human Tathagata who was the same as other human beings. There is a way of understanding such that we identify others with ourselves and then identify ourselves with others. At such times self and other are without boundaries. The ocean does not reject any water; this is cooperation. It is because of this that water collects and becomes an ocean.

Might we not all consider devising ways of cooperating in kindly communication and beneficial action? There is a world of hurt; what's to stop us from making it a world of healing?

-- shonin 

 

No hindrance

Gardens occupy the mind/bodies of gardeners. The vegetable gardener benefits from the garden not by receiving vegetables alone, but also by having a relationship to the natural realm; by exercise, fresh air, quietude, focus. And the world benefits from the gardener's renewed equanimity as well as, perhaps, some of the food. 
 

Monastery gardens focus on food but also on medicinal plants and plants for craft, ranging from bamboo to indigo, as well. Asian monasteries are often located in or near forests to which they have access for making anything from furniture to roof-beams.

Hermits often don't have as many resources as monasteries, unless they reside near one with which they have an arrangement, or near a kindly disposed settlement, perhaps. Most hermits are agile enough, until near their end, to be their own gardener, herb-gatherer, wood-cutter, carpenter, glazier, cook, tilesetter, candle-maker, or whatever needs arise. Their resources are, within reasonable limits, whatever or whomever they can reach. I reach for many things, in season, right here on this 1/5 acre lot. There are dandelions, cat's-ear, spearmint, peppermint, lemon balm, blackberrry, Oregon grape, calendulas, marigolds, nipplewort, deadnettle, plantain, self-heal, thistles, herb-Robert, camellias, cascara (use with caution), ash, Douglas fir, and cedar right at hand, and a short walk along the street provides, with permission, rose petals and hips, birch foliage, hawthorn, bigleaf maple, assorted pines, deodar, crabapples, pie cherries, broadleaf plantain, chickweed, chicory, and on and on. Some are for topical agents, some for medicine or tea, some for walking sticks or to prop up peas or beans.

Concerning the peas or beans, we do have the usual variety of vegs and fruits, and the family also collects a bag of vegetables each week in summer from the Youth Garden CSA. These they use during the week, and then the day before the next batch arrives, I raid the leftovers for things to add to my own stash of vegetables for chopping and pickling.

It's a small, satisfactory, labor-intensive and meditative practice. I'm more in-the-zone at the cutting board than anywhere else. Enough diced root and leafy veg to fill the rice steamer is enough to fill several half pint jars with pickles, or combine two batches to fill several pint jars.

I mostly don't use quart jars for this any more, because I go through the contents too slowly. I still have a number of half gallon jars from my more manic canning days, and these I'm using to keep bulk dried sundries on hand.

 

 

The idea, then, for much of the year, is to steam a handful or two of (soaked) black beans, pinto beans, chickpeas, split peas, lentils, or rice or tofu or pasta, open a small jar of pickles to throw in at the last minute, serve into a bowl, sit down, be thankful, and eat.

Stonehouse noticed his food routine made up the bulk of his practice.

Lunch in my mountain kitchen
there’s a shimmering springwater sauce 
a well-cooked stew of preserved bamboo
a fragrant pot of hard-grain rice
blue-cap mushrooms fried in oil
purple-bud ginger vinaigrette
none of them heavenly dishes
but why should I cater to gods
(tr. Red Pine)

Life is short. If you have salt, reach for the salt. If you don't have salt right now, reach for the dried kale flakes you've made. There's always something, until there really truly isn't. And "really truly isn't" comes to us all in its own time. As it will do so whether we have salt or don't, there's no need to rush around or fret. This is called "no hindrance."

-- shonin

  

  

The nothing zazen is good for

Chitting potatoes

Rev. Dainei, my Dharma brother, chose the following quote as the footer for a recent email:

It is necessary for us to keep the constant way. Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. If you become too busy and too excited, your mind becomes rough and ragged. This is not good. If possible, try to be always calm and joyful and keep yourself from excitement. Usually we become busier and busier, day by day, year by year, especially in our modern world. If we revisit old, familiar places after a long time, we are astonished by the changes. It cannot be helped. But if we become interested in some excitement, or in our own change, we will become completely involved in our busy life, and we will be lost. But if your mind is calm and constant, you can keep yourself away from the noisy world even though you are in the midst of it. In the midst of noise and change, your mind will be quiet and stable. -- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (emphasis added)

 The more time I spend with Zen, the less I know about it. Maybe you have had this experience as well. I'm going through a phase of making it to a fair number of sits, thanks to teleconferencing. Sometimes we chant, have dedications and bows, and so on. I'm grateful for these opportunities, as they do seem to help with centering.

I come most alive in the in between times, cutting chard and lifting a few potatoes, then sitting at the hut's "kitchen" table with cleaver and chopping block. I cut up potatoes, garlic scapes and chard stems, with some dried chili pepper, and steam them for fifteen minutes or so, meanwhile chopping greens (chard leaves, dandelions, a cabbage leaf maybe, some clover buds and self-heal) to put into the steamer in the last minute. I drain these and stir in some olive oil, soy sauce, chili powder and sesame seeds, briefly offer the bowl at the altar, and dig in. Have with water or "yard tea" -- currently dock, ash leaves, fennel, herb Robert, self-heal and camellia leaves -- and, after a while, go check some chitting potatoes and water the garden beds and young trees from the rain barrels.

This routine requires very little if any thought, and also very little if any thought suppression. There's no aim here to "become enlightened."

Strangely enough, what has sold me on the effortlessness of "concentration on our daily routine" is that I'm in the early stages of cognitive decline. Memories and words are getting harder to access. Since I don't have many responsibilities nowadays, there's little cause to be stressed about it. Loss becomes not so much "oh, I lost that" and something more like "this is what there is right now" -- which is of course the entire universe.

My youngest, who lives with us (he's 42) also goes out and "just gardens." He remembers to stop by the strawberry bed on his way back to the house. He finds me resting in my chair and holds up a ripe strawberry. I open my mouth and he pops it in, like a starling feeding its chick. This is the nothing zazen is good for.

--shonin

 

A shorter "eight great realizations"

One can find enough to do for a lifetime in a few short phrases: be undesiring, be content, be tranquil, be practicing, be mindful, be meditative, be discerning, be steadfast.

It doesn't take much from us to do these things, but there is a consistency of "effort" called for. We might call it be present, be present, be present.

If we think it is easy to practice because we have a beautiful building, that is a mistake. Actually it may be quite difficult to practice with a strong spirit in this kind of setting- where we have a handsome Buddha and offer beautiful flowers to decorate our Buddha hall. We Zen Buddhists have a saying that with a blade of grass we create a golden Buddha which is sixteen feet high. That is our spirit, so we need to practice respect for things.

I don't mean that we should accumulate many leaves or grasses to make a big statue, but until we can see a big Buddha in a small leaf, we need to make much more effort. How much effort I don't know. Some people may find it quite easy, but for someone like me great effort is needed. Although seeing a large golden Buddha in a large golden Buddha is easier, when you see a large Buddha in a blade of grass, your joy will be something special. So we need to practice respect with great effort. -- Shunryu Suzuki, Not Always So.

-- shonin 

But live

 As shonin approaches 77, she takes stock of her intellect and finds it ... gummy. The most one can hope for is that this is a peaks-and troughs experience, and she's going through a trough. But she knows, by interior inquiry more than from doctors, who tend to wave her off with talk of sleep apnea, that she's not getting enough brain food by day as well as night. She spends some time with her cannula, whiffing concentrated oxygen, and watches earnest videos by younger and brighter folks as the days wear on.

When there is some energy, she walks, cooks, gardens, gathers herbs and forbs for tea, plays at being doshi (altar officiant) for a tiny sangha. During the last peak, she read aloud some poems to YouTube.

It's a long, slow spring with April frosts, confusing for plants that have seen temps as high as 80F already. But she, and they, persist.

After all, what is there for the living to do, but live? 

-- shonin

Reverse takuhatsu

 

"Entering the village with bliss-bestowing hands"

 For Buddhists (and anyone like-minded): if you have been going for walks, and you live where pindapata/takuhatsu is not a thing, and you pass something like a Little Free Pantry along your route, carry a little appropriate something with you, bow to the pantry, put in the something, bow again, and be on your way. 

Don't think about what just happened. Just admire the shadows of trees on the sidewalks and the singing birds. Everything is the same as everything else in the realm of giving and receiving.

 -- shonin