"So what do you do for fun?"

I've heard this several times across the dinner table here at Green Gulch and I had to really let that sink in. What do I do for fun...

It seems at some point I did fun things- Jiu-jitsu, writing, Dungeons and Dragons, movies, video games, punk rock, go out dancing, go out-

Back then, Zen practice, running, reading- these were things I did, not for fun, but because I had a lot of time to do a lot of things.

But when I started teaching, my life was pared down. Pretty much everything except Zen practice was cut off. This wasn't hard and fast, but my compass always pointed to practice, as I think I was baring witness to great suffering in the inner city of New Orleans.

Inner city- what a term! Means so much, and seems so appropriate. My students were going without, their parents were a mess, one was shot, and in the witnessing I didn't feel quite valid in saying, "Hey, I'm suffering, too!" I was seeking the inner-city in the inner-city.

That edge is a scary one- when it's time to recognize, acknowledge, and touch your own suffering.

So, my vacations, my free time, everything went to practice. Now I live in the place I used to spend vacations in. So what do I do for fun!?

Well, I'm joining a fiction writer's work shop. I hike every weekend. I sit in the sauna and listen to dharma talks. I never miss a workout. I go on dates with my wife (which might mean going to her parents house and watching our secret The Mighty Boosh DVDs!).

I do cross fit with a friend, but that doesn't feel so fun, I'm pretty sure that's just taking care of this body. That might be more suffering, actually!

Right now, I'm pretty deep into my study of the Lankavatara, but when the class I'm taking is over, I think I'll get one of those old fantasy fiction novels I used to love so much and just read it.

Oh, and there's a Tai Chi class down at the beach, 3 times a week, only 21$ a month. I'm pretty sure I'm going to give that a try.

Fun is important. I have a new whole hearted approach to it. I'll keep you updated.

Baring Witness: Boundless Dharma Gates, Numberless Beings

Knots tied, knots untied, my teacher writes to me:

"Don't worry about the rope. Sometimes it is a snake. Just keep your heart and mind as open as you can, keep the schedule, keep your nose clean, and the Dharma that you are so surrounded with there soaks in gradually."

And at 5:15 AM , I heard the head teacher’s Jisha (personal assistant) walking behind me as I settled into my posture, glad to be breathing, stretching upward with the top of my head, and I thought Please, not today. But it was today and he whispered, not so gently, dokusan.

For those outside of formal Soto-zen practice, dokusan means one on one time with a teacher, usually in a little room, like a cave, except given the Zen aesthetic treatment; scroll on the wall, two or three alters, clean tatami mats, a teacher sitting and waiting, a place for you to do prostrations, a cushion for you take your seat. This varies, of course. There are sometimes bells to ring twice, sometimes three times, and sometimes not at all-depends on the temple, the amount of teachers and dokusan rooms, the level of formality. Sometimes you enter with a question, sometimes you enter to see what arises.

My questions were gone. I requested dokusan with Tenshin Reb Anderson because I had some pressing questions about Mind-only and the yogacara school, but they seemed to have vanished or settled in a month, so I had nothing pressing to ask, nothing pressing to express. This can be slightly dreadful- not so much with my own teacher, with whom there seems endless things to talk about, or comfortable silence to enjoy-but with someone who you don’t know, even if you’ve ate dinner with them many times, it can feel like a blind date.

Further, dokusan is translated as “ to go alone to a high one” and the contents, especially in the Rinzai sect, are secret. They’re secret because answers tend to differ student to student. However, there are a lot of recorded conversations illustrating this wonderful tradition, like the teacher Zhaozhou who told one monk a dog does have Buddha nature and another monk a dog does not have Buddha nature.

In my experience, dokusan ranges from seriously detailed practice discussion to therapy. It must be just as scary for the teacher, to open up and meet the student where ever they are.

I was feeling a bit torn open, as I had my first trip to the hungry ghost realm (Whole foods, Walgreens, and this hungry ghost ate a cheeseburger, rare) and I had spent sometime with in-laws, who are lovely, but where I find my own vulnerability; they don’t have to love me. So this morning, I repeated what I said to my own teacher a couple of weeks ago, because that’s what came up:

I feel knotted and unknotted. Worn and fraying. This path is as wide as it is long. I thought Mind-only was my gate. Then, back to the 4 noble truths and 8 fold path. Then, opening up to the disorganization of Zen Buddhist dharma, and meeting fully what comes up, even the poison oak I ignored for a whole week, because it was going to disrupt my schedule. Then,letting go, not because it’s the Buddhist thing to do, but because you just can’t grasp every grain of sand on the beach, but it is possible grain of sand to drift through your open hands. It is possible to attend, show up, pay attention seek the truth, and be open to whatever is revealing itself.

And what reveals itself is hardly ever what I want to see. I want to taste the fruit of sutras, I want body and mind to drop off our upright posture, but I don’t want to take care of my poison oak, acknowledge, recognize, and touch the painful truth that this body is breakable, and bare witness to impermanence and suffering, like I felt the kid in Walgreens was open to, like I couldn’t be, as he followed his mother who was not so nice to him, his eyes wide open and present.

12 hours later, I’m nestled in my little room, writing, studying, thankful for the rain our farm and garden need. I might feel a little guilty for this luxury, while others can’t fathom how I put up with the forms and schedule, waking at 3:50am everyday. I wonder if I am privileged, or if this way of life is accessible to every being in every place. Two answers come, yes and no.

We’re not doing anything special, but then, this feels very special.

My Father

Master Sergeant Keith and Baby Brother Charlie Byrd

This morning I ate breakfast with Jiryu and his son Franky. Hot tomato drink, Tempe Cabbage, and brown rice cream; Franky ate his with salt and sesame seeds, I had sugar and milk.

Breakfast is silent during the practice period. Franky, at almost 2yrs old, has developed his own forms, which include a lot of forehead to forehead, big bright eyes, and a huge smile. As he fed his father little chunks of tempe and played, I saw some of my own father in Jiryu's shaved head, black clothing, salty look.

My Dad was very salty, but not with Zen temple gomasio, but salt from the sea, as he put in 21 years a Marine. I remember very early mornings when he would be shining in his cook whites, his mat black metal sergeant chevrons on his collar, and same playful demeanor, while holding something very heavy up- the tradition of the Marine Corps, the long work day ahead of him, his worry of being deployed or sent to float again.

I also remember floating with him, out in the pacific ocean while we were at Camp Pendelton, snuggled on his chest on a raft in the middle of it all and tracing with my little fingers the sparrows tattooed on his chest. He earned those sparrows when he floated across the equator without the family, while we floated on base without him.

Warm salty tears. Boundless love.

Dharma Gates are Boundless, I Vow to Enter Them

In addition to keeping this blog, I also keep a composition note book (modgepodged with neat pictures). I’m 2 pages from filling my current note book. In one month at Green Gulch, I’ve written half of it full. During my 4 year teaching career, I filled a composition once a year. This means I’ve written more in one month than I did with 6 months in my old life. I don’t know what this points to, but it’s interesting, and I must admit, it feels just plain good.

It might have filled up so fast because I do about 4 things in the same notebook now: Chart my moods with a line graph, write a haiku everyday, confess ancient twisted karma, investigate kensho or satori (delusion?), and take copious amounts of cornell notes on what I am studying.

Please let me express my elation at having time and teachers for formal sutra study. It is slow and tedious work. For the last week, I’ve read the same three pages of the Lankavatara sutra and it’s not getting old. I pop out of bed at 3:50am so I can get 40 minutes of study in; it is a wonderful life! I think this may be my dharma gate.

Just to let any non-zennies know, this is a completely optional, perhaps even discouraged practice. In the Zen tradition, you don’t have to read a lick if you don’t want to, and I really take refuge in that. This path is open to anyone who has the will to pick em’ up and puttem’ down (the feet), follow the schedule, open their hearts, let go, and radically accept.

But before and after I do all that, I like, I love, I lurve, to read the old instructions, the old stories. Hearing that Shi-Shi Bodai got his head cut off and milk squirted to the sky and the old King’s axe wrapped around his hand, which fell off, brings me opening. Unpacking the the 5th skhanda and its 8 levels inspires me. It speaks to me; it tells me there is more than I am seeing, it tells me that the story may not be “true” but it the story is truly being told, maybe a thousand years later, by us, and that’s the warm hand to warm hand warming my heart.

Some others, before and after, practice the way of tea. Poetry for the other others, and onward to calligraphy, flower arranging, archery, sauntering in the mountains (which I dabble in) and countless, boundless, dharma gates.

So...what is your dharma gate?

Dragons Taking to the Water

With clouds and water

Dragons take the zendo

There, they sing like whales.

I had this notion that maybe people would like to read about what it’s like to be neither lay person nor priest. Suzuki Roshi said it like this: “ I understand it this way: That you are not priests is an easy matter, but that you are not exactly laymen is more difficult.” With that, he’s speaking to the ordained and the lay-ordained, or the non-ordained, or the ordained wearing clown noses. He’s not the first to say it. In the Parinirvana Sutra, the Buddha addresses the fact that his disciples are not lay, not ordained.

So, there’s old time Zen priests here, beautiful purple Okesas, humble brown Okesas, even shiny mustard Okesas from Japan. There are also old time lay practioners with fraying lay robes and dark blue, bright blue, and dark green rakusu. There's even a lay practitioner who has received dharma entrustment who wears a green Okesa. Some of them are married, some aren’t. And then there’s a steady flow of youngish people (from to 20-50) who come and stay from anywhere between 3 months and 5 years. Some of them take lay ordination (Jukai) and some don’t. Some don’t believe in it. Some lay-ordained don’t believe in full ordination. It’s really a vast, vast phenomena.

Sometimes a monk, sometimes a priest, sometimes a lay person- where do my wife and I fit in? We have a little room in Cloud Hall. We sleep in separate single beds. We wake up around 4 am. We meditate, we chant, we work, we go to class. I want to ordain, she’s very open to not interested in ordination. What do we look like to the outside? That were not priests is simple; that were not exactly lay people, harder for those outside our tradition to see.

I started this post with a Haiku. I wrote that after hearing Dogen’s “ With clouds, water, and cooperation, dragons take to the water.” The singing of the whales is the sweet range of voices that come together every morning when we begin to chant:

Great robe of liberation

Field far beyond form and emptiness

Wearing the Tathagata’s teachings

Saving all beings

I hear so much from our ancestors; we are not lay people, we are not priests, we are dragons, we are elephants, we wear the the tathagata’s teachings...

What do you think? To ordain or not to ordain? What’s all this robe culture about?

Buddha Nature II

Look to the right. Hell yeah! Now that's the Buddha Nature I've been looking for. Blue sparkles-check. Golden majesty exploding from heart-check. Super novas-quadruple check!

However, I've never seen anything as cosmic as this in my entire experience. Would I listen if someone told me they did? If I did see this, would I file it into enlightenment or delusion?

Oh, of course I'd file it. And that's what it would be: a neat folder full of boundless glory, stashed away for me to peak at. I'd label it too, "Sweet Buddha Nature Experience, 2090, 5:25 am, end of Rohatsu"

Don't ruin my file. Don't even touch it.

Class with Jiryu continues. What a seal breaker it's been! Many of us in the class have been practicing for years (9 years for me...) and this might be the first time in our Soto Zen experience someone has asked WHAT is Buddha Nature. I know it's my first time. What does a person say when you have to say something? With no place for a perfect soul to hide, I say (or quote):

"Water, vessel to vessel." But bring your own cup and water, extra if you have it.

"I don't know, who doesn't know, you have no expectations and "the Buddha eye" sees beyond seeing. This experience is beyond the realm of human thinking."

"Know 'no' Buddha. Know 'yes' Buddha."

And my teacher said it has nothing to do with me or you, with subject and object. Jiryu cautioned us to not make this "Buddha Nature" topic something to get, some object, despite our class studying "it."

All of the above quotes come from Dogen's fascicle Shobogenzo Bussho, or Buddha Nature. Anyone who has something to offer on that fascicle, please chime in! As I read Dogen, little page by little page, I feel like I'm on top of a house, reeling in white Christmas lights, finding knots, untying knots, accidently tying new knots, and all the while missing the bright warm twinkly lights I have right in my hands.

Exhausted, I retire to our practice of following the schedule, sitting up straight, doing 9 prostrations every morning, silently, like this:

I take refuge in Buddha

I take refuge in Dharma

I take refuge in Sangha

I practice softening

I practice letting go

I practice radical acceptance

I practice beginer's mind

I practice loving kindness

I practice secretly, working within

Buddha Nature!

I'm taking a class on Buddha Nature with Jiryu, a long time resident and priest at Green Gulch.

Last night was the introduction, we all said our names and what we thought Buddha nature was. Scary!

I said, My name is Austin, and I think Buddha nature is open hearted, radical acceptance, which I regretted saying all night. Then I thought, I SHOULD have said, "Cultivating way seeking mind, letting go of way seeking mind." (Then they'd love me...reallllllllllly love me.)

My wonderful wife, Lulu, said "It's like a star, you can squint your eyes and try and see it, but never really know what it looks like, while all the time, it's right there."

What does everyone else think Buddha nature is?