Proust and Zazen

My husband, Brad, and I have been reading Proust’s The Search aloud for three years.  We drive to a beautiful spot and read about ten pages (which actually takes awhile).  Saturday, parked high above the Golden Gate Bridge, we have just finished volume three, The Guermantes Way. The main characters in this volume are the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes, who are aristocrats in Parisian society of the late 1800’s.

 

Proust is known as one of the greatest Western novelists, and, indeed, he has great descriptive power.  He can write ten pages on the beauty of a Hawthorne bush.  But, he can also be really, really tedious, especially when he describes a Parisian salon or dinner party, as he does here, at the home of the Guermantes.  Near the end of volume there is a long dialogue – forty or so pages – between the Guemantes about their aristocratic and noble families.  An excerpt:

 

In the past we were Ducs d’Aumale, a duchy that has passed as regularly to the House of France as Joinville and Chevreuse have to the House of Albert.  For instance, my sister-in-law’s son bears the title of Prince d’Agriente…

 

These descriptions became so boring and oppressive that I wanted to skip them.  But Proust always has a “method to his madness.” Near the end of this long dialogue, an old friend, Swann, is ushered in by the footman.  The Guermantes are on the way to a dinner and ball. Their discussion about their aristocratic heritage continues as they are about to enter their carriage. When the Duchess blithely asks Swann if he will accompany them to Venice, Swann says he cannot go because he is terminally ill.  The duchesse dismisses this as impossible.  She is poised with one foot inside her carriage when Swann asserts that he is, in fact, going to die within three months.  She hesitates. 

 

Will she stop, turn to her friend, and speak earnestly of his illness, or continue to enter her carriage, denying any possibility of her friend’s death?  She enters her carriage.  She is completely caught in the habit energy of her life.  She can speak for hours on the most trivial of subjects, but she cannot pause for her friend.  She gets into her carriage, missing any opportunity for meeting the actual truth of her life – that she and everyone she loves will one day die.

 

And the genius of Proust is that this applies to us all.  I often feel the rushing of my mind and life energy.  I often feel as if I have an appointment, but this is absurd, since I am retired and rarely have appointments.  I am especially aware of this crazy energy when I sit zazen. It can be very difficult to be quiet, to step out of the river of my rushing habit energy. 

 

But sometimes I can sit straight, and my mind is still, and this feels like the most important thing I can do for myself and for those I love.

 

 

 

 

Unrelenting Passion

I am listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and I visualize him full of passion and longing and grief – a passion that brings forth this sad but beautiful music. 

 

I struggle with this passion, a lifelong friend and challenger.  What is this?  What is this driving insatiableness?   Earlier in life it felt like sexual desire.  And now ­­­­­­­­­­­­it doesn’t.  I once was an actress, using this passion to express myself, but once the curtain fell, the thrill was gone, and the passion has been as strong as ever.

 

One of the greatest causes of suffering is the feeling that one’s life is unsatisfactory.  So I cultivate gratitude as the antidote, but I know deep in my heart that I am still desperately dissatisfied.  And then I am disturbed that I must not be grateful enough.  What do I want?  What would fill me up?

 

I am practicing Soto Zen from the same place of longing and passion.  Zen could be seen as both easy and difficult.  Easy because there is no dogma and no fixed beliefs to which I must subscribe.  And this is a good thing, because I have arrived at a state of intellectual anarchy.  And yet I have faith that sitting zazen is the way.  To what? 

 

Now that is the hard part.  We are meaning constructing beings and our passion and longing is for some kind of coherence.  Do we need this because of our certain death – and as an older person, I think of this daily – or because there is something we need to become, to actualize?  Whenever I hear Mary Oliver’s line about how are we going to live “our one and precious life”, I cringe.  Don’t remind me.  I need to chill out around this.  I need to relax.  I shouldn’t take things so seriously. 

 

Wouldn’t it be great if “just sitting” was enough?  I think the spin on “just sitting” in Zen could mean to focus on zazen and not on scriptures or other forms.  But the “just” might mean: drop all hope of identity and purpose in this lifetime.  Drop all aspirations and longings and passions – even for the good stuff.

 

I think this is what Zen is about.  Just being yourself.  Clinging to nothing.  Now we all know these words very well, but there is a reason that bodhisattvas are called “fearless.”  Because if you really, really drop all hope for meaning and identity, you might end up in a very scary place. 

 

On the other hand, passion and fire may be our very selves.  To be alive is to be passionate.  The practice may be just to sit with that passion and expect nothing.

 

 

Green Gulch practice period Part 4: Reb Anderson

It amazes me that I have been in the Bay Area for 40 years and had never met Tenshin Roshi, aka Reb Anderson.  I was delighted to spend time with this great teacher.  He is, as most know, one of the original students of Suzuki Roshi and has subsequently been the abbot and senior dharma teacher of the San Francisco Zen monasteries for many years. 

Reb has the amazing gift of greeting every person with great love.  He has a penetrating, almost unnerving, look that seems to create an immediate intimacy and friendliness.  And I was able to meet his look without fear or shyness.  I particularly remember being only a few feet away from him in the dish room.  We looked at each other eye-to-eye, in a way that one rarely fully meets another.   

I must say I was a little wary of him.  I knew very little about him (and still don’t), but I had heard he had a lot of charisma and personal power.  I spent many years with charismatic gurus in the tradition of kundalini yoga, and while I received many gifts of insight and love from them, I now believe that I will be very careful about giving my complete devotion to any teacher. 

Norman Fischer advised me to have dokusan with Reb, so I set up a meeting.  I felt strangely exhilarated in his presence.  We were both laughing, like two children in a sandbox.  I told him how I had once asked Norman if he was a Zen master, and Norman replied, “Unfortunately, no,” and how later Norman told me that I could study with Reb, a genuine Zen master.  After telling him this story, I looked directly at him and said, “Are you a Zen master?”  He smiled his enigmatic smile and said, “I don’t know.”  I asked him what a Zen master is, and he said both the “unknowable and mysterious” and “all the stories we tell about him.”  I was flattered that Reb asked my permission to tell the story at Sunday’s dharma talk, without mentioning Norman’s name.  It was interesting that Richard Baker was there at his talk, which could have been entitled, “What is a Zen Master?” 

In my second dokusan – encouraged by Norman – I told him about my many years with kundalini gurus and the hurt I had suffered by their betrayals of my trust.  I told him I am now reluctant to trust any teacher.  Although I am very devotional by nature, how can I love the teacher but not the man? This is my lifelong koan.  His answer at the time was a little vague to me.  He seemed to be linking the Perfections (generosity, etc) with how to love the teacher.

But a few days later, I experienced an important insight, which I saw as a profound answer to my question.  Reb and I passed each other in the dining room.  We looked deeply at each other.  Afterword, I was filled with great love and joy.  I realized that it was just love, not really directed to Reb, because, after all, I do not know him at all.  It was just love – fluid, dynamic, alive!  Anything added on is just extra.  Love is the mysterious and pure.  When we add on our stories to the person, we open ourselves to attachment and suffering. 

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful practice to greet each person with this non-clinging and mysterious love? 

Green Gulch Practice Period Part 3: “Everyday mind is the way”

I had heard many of the senior dharma teachers in Everyday Zen say that Zen is a “body practice.”  I never really understood what they were saying.  Zazen is sitting in the body, but isn’t every meditation technique also in the body?  What could this mean? 

I would say that one of my greatest insights during this Practice Period is that Zen is indeed “washing your bowls.”  Or, in more rustic terms, “chopping wood and carrying water.”   

The monastic schedule was very rigorous.  I was up at 4:15 am to take a shower (primarily to wake up, but it also seemed like the only luxury, since the lavender scented shampoo smelled so good).  There were two periods of zazen, and the rest of the time I was working in the kitchen until 2 pm, with breaks for breakfast and lunch.  There was a rest period between 2 and 4 pm.  I learned to fall asleep the moment I lay down!  At 4 pm there was a study period, but I have to admit that as much as I love reading Buddhist books, I was not interested in this at all.  Then zazen, dinner, and two final periods of zazen. 

The kitchen work was fun but really exhausting.  I became one of the official onion choppers, since I was one of the few people who could tolerate this work. We chopped in very close quarters, and as fast and efficiently as possible.  I was concentrating so hard that once Martha de Barros came to stand right by my side, and I didn’t notice her, until she softy said, “Hi, Barbara.” 

There were days that we have a half day sit, with 5 periods of zazen in the morning.  On the full day sits and during sesshin, we had ten periods of zazen. 

The thoughts in my mind were no more intellectual or “spiritual” than asking myself, “What’s next?”  "Do I have dishes tonight?"  "Do I ring the Bonsho bell today?"  On the way from the kitchen to my room in Cloud Hall, I would often look at the mud and leaves on the path and think, “Just one foot in front of the other.” 

In zazen, my thoughts did not race.  In fact, as I look back, I am not sure I was thinking of anything other than how to hold my posture in such a way that I could make it to the end of the meditation period.  Sometimes I actually counted my breath.  Sometimes I did deep breathing, not because it was recommended that I breathe from the “hara” (an area around the navel), but because it felt good to get oxygen to as many cells as possible! 

So, my awareness was literally in my body – either sitting upright, or paying attention to the sharp knife so I wouldn’t chop a finger off. 

Perhaps this body practice is good because it keeps you very mindful in the present moment.  The “be here now” sort of thing.  I think that we mostly don’t do this in our usual everyday lives, so it was an important experience for me to live this way for two months. 

“Everyday mind is the way,” as it is said in a famous koan.

Green Gulch Practice Period Part 2: Zazen

 

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.  It is simply the dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally illuminated enlightenment.

                                                Dogen’s Fukanzazengi

 

Zen is, after all, zazen: just sitting.  But how many of us have wondered whether Dogen was making some kind of cruel joke?  Where is the repose?  Where is the bliss? 

Zazen, zazen, and more zazen.  Sometimes a minimum of two hours a day on the cushion, usually 3 hours, and during the 7 day sesshin, ten periods of zazen.   I checked the sesshin schedule, and there were 295 minutes of zazen a day (equaling 4.91 hours), and if you add in the dharma talk, tea, and three oryoki meals, that is an additional 3.5 hours on the cushion.   

I thought I had trained for this.  I was sitting 30 minutes a day, 3 times a day, for two months.  But I felt as if I had never sat at all.  I knew that I should not condemn myself or feel like a failure – although that was often how I felt.  As my good friend and mentor, Chris Fortin, said, “It’s not that you were a failure, it was just not what you expected.” 

The big shock was on Day 2, when we did a tangaryo.  I went to the Ino, the head of the hall, and said, “Let me get this straight.  I sit from 5 am until 9 pm with bathroom breaks and three short breaks for meals?” “Yes,” she said, “do your best.”   

Doing my best was an ever-present koan.  What is my best?  What is the discomfort one works through in order to gain a strong posture that one can hold?  What level of pain is simply too much – pain that would cause any reasonable person to stay in bed?   

During the entire practiced period, I was dismayed by how much my body hurt.  I switched between a chair and the cushion, but I can tell you sitting motionless in a chair for 40 minutes can be just as painful as sitting on a cushion. On the chair, I felt burning sensations in my neck and shoulders.  On the cushion, pain between my shoulder blades. 

One good thing:  during the 40 minutes, I was constantly making small adjustments and learned my true posture.  My teacher, Norman Fischer, said that I would become intimate with my spine.  How true! If I slightly bent my head or tucked my chin, my neck and shoulders felt better.  I would adjust my spine and learned that if the vertebrae were in a line, like children’s play blocks stacked in a column, I could sit better.  There was a balance between using muscles to sit upright and yet staying (relatively) relaxed.   

 

This must sound pretty masochistic, and one would reasonably question whether this is a “cult of pain,” – words my mind repeated at my very lowest experience.   There were instructions from the Abbess to stay with the schedule, to stay with the pain.  I do not agree with this philosophy at all.  I think intense pain is not necessary and possibly harmful.  But I do think, now, that pushing through discomfort can be useful. 

So, although this description might sound grim, it was, in retrospect, a wonderful challenge.  After these two months, it is as if I found my posture, found my foundation, and I am now able to just sit for several hours.  Not exactly in repose and bliss, but with a body-mind open awareness that is actually refreshing.

 

 

 

 

Practice Period Green Gulch Zen Center (part one)

I went to the two month practice period at Green Gulch Farm, one of the San Francisco Zen centers, to immerse myself in monastic practice.  These centers, founded by Suzuki Roshi of the Soto Zen lineage, are the “mother ships” of Zen practice in America, and I am extremely fortunate to have had this opportunity. 
 

I agreed not to leave from October 13^th until December 11^th.    

I imagined that my primary training would be in the “forms” – seated meditation (zazen), chanting, bowing, and moving in the zendo (meditation hall).  But upon reflection, I see that my primary training was how to live in harmony with a lot of people,  and the importance of following the precepts. 

Precepts are the foundation of Buddhist practice and evolved around the time of the Buddha.  The purpose was to create harmony in the sangha (community).  In fact, the precepts derive from The Six Harmonies, which include right speech and how to handle conflict. 

I lived with 2 other women in a very small room.  [Scientific studies have shown that if you put 3 elderly rats in a small space, they become aggressive, and subsequent studies have shown that this remains true for elderly women as well.]  I meditated, moved, ate, and worked in very close quarters with 30 other practice period participants.  It was so tight in the kitchen and the dish washing room that we were rotating and working around each others like small gears in a wristwatch.  

I was so exhausted that I had no tolerance for conflict.  Once a new arrival – a very large man – blasted a torrent of anger at me in the kitchen, because he thought I was violating “functional speech” by wanting to clarify whether we tore lettuce by hand or cut it with a knife.  Normally I would have a quick retort, but I was so tired that all I could say was “wow!”
 

Once I had a squabble with a roommate over the placement of a very bright light.  Of course, this seems absurd, and it is, but at the time it was very irritating.  But I saw immediately that I did not want my composure ruined by anyone or anything.  And the only choice is to let go.  Let go and let go and let go. 

I met up close and personal my own impatience and irritability and aggression.  I have a wonderful husband, and we rarely argue.  I am retired and spend most of my time alone, so I have not had to cultivate the virtues of patience and holding my tongue.  In effect: right speech.   

There is a precept that says “A disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will.”  I was probably in continual violation of this precept.   But it is probably human to have antipathies toward certain people, and I learned that some people who have lived there for a long time, did, in fact, have feelings of ill will.  The difference is that they had learned to live skillfully and harmoniously.  You bow to everyone.  

So, yes, the most important lesson was how to live and move harmoniously with a lot of people.  It was to my benefit to cultivate these virtues.  The motivation came from within and was not something imposed from the outside – some way I “should” behave. 

When I think back to the conflicts I have had at my various workplaces, I think I would have been much happier if I had lived for two months in a Zen monastery.   I doubt the American corporations would endorse this kind of training, but it’s not a bad idea!

 

First seven day retreat at Green Gulch monastery

Seven days in a monastery, with seven periods of meditation (zazen) per day and three hours of classes per day and working in the kitchen and washing dishes and getting up at 4:20 am – understandably I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to do this.  Even a young person, even a relatively healthy person would have difficulties.  But, I was able to follow the schedule, and I loved it! 

Sometimes I was so tired that I literally could not walk a straight line; I would not have been able to pass a test for a DUI. There were times in meditation that I felt as if hot lava was flowing down my neck and shoulders and back.  There were times that I felt as if little bugs were crawling all over my face, but I managed to sit without moving.  Why would I voluntarily do this to myself?  But there were times that I felt a kind of peace and calm, and rather than going forward to the practice, it came forward to me.  Make sense?

I especially loved the classes by Rev. Okumura on Dogen’s fascicle Only a Buddha and a Buddha.  He mentioned “dropping away of body and mind,” an important experience for Dogen.  I asked him, “I would like to know more about ‘dropping away of body and mind.’  I know I am entering the realm of trying to attain something (a kind of no-no in Zen), but I find it hard to believe that in my zazen there is dropping away of body and mind.”  I was surprised by Rev. Okumura’s answer.  In summary: don’t ask.  We are always trying to understand meditation or aim for something in meditation, but this is not possible.  This is all just conceptual.  Just sit.

I did, however, experience a kind of dropping away of my mind.  One morning I looked at the clock and it was 4:20.  I got up and got dressed and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth before everyone else.  I wondered why it was so quiet in the guest house.  I looked at my clock again:  1:30 am.  I was so embarrassed that I went back to bed fully clothed.

Once in the kitchen, I was supposed to crack 70 eggs.  I cracked 17 and then added on a piece of paper the 30 eggs in the flat of eggs in the carton, and that equaled 47.  Then I figured that 70 minus 47 equals 23, so I cracked 23 more eggs.  The problem is, I forgot to add the 30.  So, in all I cracked only 40 eggs.  Since they were to be used for frittata, there would have been a lot of hungry people, if I had not remembered in zazen, “Oh my God, I didn’t actually crack the 30 eggs, I just wrote that number on a piece of paper.”  Immediately I rushed to the kitchen to tell the cook.  He just laughed.  I was glad that zazen was good for something.

In a monastic setting, if you are alone, you know you must be in the wrong place.  Several times I wondered, “Where is everybody?”  And then I knew I was supposed to be washing dishes or attending a work meeting.  Kind of humbling.

It is impossible to explain why this seven days was so wonderful.  Certainly the classes were great, and the beauty and harmony of everyone moving in unison in the zendo was great.  But ultimately it makes no sense that I now want to do a two month monastic retreat.