Zen Mountain Monastery

Just spent the weekend at the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York, at a retreat they offer each month called “Introduction to Zen Training”. I actually took this same retreat several years ago and have been back there a few times since, but wanted to take their “introduction” again as a refresher.

The Monastery is located in the Catskill Mountains area, fairly close to Woodstock. It’s not too far from The City and you can actually get there by bus, but the site is very much outside of the metropolis – it is even outside of cell phone contact! Zen Mountain Monastery is the main center of the Mountains and Rivers Order, founded by John Daido Loori. Originally started as a Zen arts center, the site has evolved into an authentic Zen training center and is affiliated with the Soto zen sect in Japan. The Abbott John Daido Loori received transmission from Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi along with many other accomplished teachers in the White Plum Asanga.

The Monastery is currently housed in a former Catholic Monastery building, built around 1920 or so. I entered through a massive wooden door set in beautiful stone masonry and descended to the office area. The staff were very welcoming and I was soon ready to go after registration and an orientation. After settling in we had a light dinner of soup, salad and bread in the large dinning area downstairs.

There was a pretty good crowd for the weekend – about 25-30 retreatants in all. As usual, the ages and backgrounds of my fellow attendees varied greatly, including a group of high school students, a number of college age and older adults on their own or as couples. Most were there for the first time but a few were back like myself to try the retreat again or to bring a partner or friend along. There were also the usual census of residents there, staying at the monastery anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 years for residential study which is also offered at the center.

After dinner and cleanup, it was time for evening zazen and service. Us newbies gathered in a smaller meeting hall for zazen instruction during the first sitting period. One of the senior monastics instructed us on the various types of posture we could try and directions for sitting on a zafu, seiza bench and chair. Then we were given instructions on breathing, the “basic” practice of counting the breath – and the minor detail of what to try to do with the mind while all of this is happening!

We joined the rest of the community in the main zendo hall to give this a go. The order encourages strict stillness in sitting and a zendo monitor will enforce quiet and stillness in very direct manner. While there are certainly differing opinions on this topic, I think it’s worth giving this type of practice a try. It is extremely powerful to have over 60 people sitting in one room and have it be very silent! I’ve also found that the mind resists being quiet and tries break it up by creating unease and discomfort. So striving to keep the body still will help the mind to settle down, eventually.

We made it through the sitting and then there is a brief evening service that closes with the Evening Gatha:

Let me respectfully remind you,
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken! Take heed!
Do not squander your lives….

The next morning starts very early with wake up bells sounding at 5 AM. We’re asked to be up and in our places in the zendo by 5:20 for the first sitting. Two periods of sitting are punctuated by kinhin and then we re-arrange a bit for the morning service.

Liturgy is another main element of practice at the monastery. Morning service includes the Heart Sutra and other recitations. Dedications are raised to Shakyamuni Buddha and the successors in the lineage and to members of the sangha for healing or commemoration. Services are quite traditional and richly choreographed, and this is offered as an extension of the sitting period – just in a somewhat different form. Liturgy is also involved in many of the activities throughout the day at the temple – with services and gathas at meal times and when starting work and other activities. There are also a number of other services and dedications that take place throughout the monastery at different parts of the day.

Training and practice in the Mountains and Rivers Order are arranged in a program of “Eight Gates” – in a parallel of sorts to the Eight Fold Path. Zazen and Liturgy are two of the gates, and we are introduced to a few more during the day. The next one we tried was Body Practice with a Yoga session led by one of the monastics. A physical form of practice is encouraged as another way to focus on the present, and this can take any number of forms including yoga, Tai Chi or martial arts.

The next gate we explored was Art Practice with a series of exercises with ink and brush. I’ll just say here that the idea of doing this was very daunting to me, but turned out to be a very enjoyable and memorable part of the weekend!

Another important gate in the Eight Gates program is the Teacher – Student relationship. We were given background on this by one of the monastics, with time for discussion and instruction on how the interview works. We were offered the opportunity to interview with the teacher in the next zazen sessions and I think everyone got the chance that did venture to take their place in the interview line. When I took my place on line, I was very nervous even though I had done this several times before! I just tried to do what they recommended when your mind wanders in zazen meditation: acknowledge the feeling, let it go, and go back to focusing on the present. This practice did help me get through the anxiety of waiting and the interview itself.

I’ve wondered why the interview should be so formal and daunting, but it occurs to me now that a bit of pressure has helped me to focus on what I really needed to ask – or not ask. Each interview I’ve had there has been very memorable and the intensity helps with that. I can’t remember what I was told word for word every time, but certainly do recall the gist of each piece of advice and guidance received.

All in all, the weekend was very worthwhile. The retreat is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in or curiosity about Buddhism, Zen or meditation and mindfulness. I know I’ll be back there. To me, as the Pennsylvania Dutch say, “it tastes like more”.

Pop Dukkha

A local “oldies” station, WDRC, is playing their entire music collection from A-Z for New Years’ and through the weekend. My spouse and I both happened to listen to this station quite a lot back when the songs were Top 40  and not old! So we we’re having fun hearing some things we hadn’t heard in decades, and even a few for the first time.

They’re all pop songs, so of course most of the songs are about love, heartache and other forms of suffering. I’m reading Mindfulness In Plain English By Ven. Henepola Gunaratana and he has a great explanation of suffering and the term Dukkha in Buddhism:

Suffering is a big word in Buddhist thought. It is a key term and it should be thoroughly understood. The Pali word is ‘dukkha’, and it does not just mean the agony of the body. It means the deep, subtle sense of unsatisfactoriness which is a part of every mental treadmill. The essence of life is suffering, said the Buddha. At first glance this seems exceedingly morbid and pessimistic. It even seems untrue. After all, there are plenty of times when we are happy. Aren’t there? No, there are not. It just seems that way. Take any moment when you feel really fulfilled and examine it closely. Down under the joy, you will find that subtle, all-pervasive undercurrent of tension, that no matter how great the moment is, it is going to end. No matter how much you just gained, you are either going to lose some of it or spend the rest of your days guarding what you have got and scheming how to get more. And in the end, you are going to die. In the end, you lose everything. It is all transitory.

[The book is available for reading on-line and may be downloaded in PDF format from here: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html.]

That’s a wonderful explanation of Dukkha, and it sure fits what I’m listening too!

It turns out there are hundreds of pop titles that start with the word “I”, but that should be no suprise as they tend to be very self centered. (The “small self” that is). They started on the “I” titles yesterday afternoon and that continued through most of the evening. It turns out too that there are quite a few early Beatles hits in this group: I Saw Her Standing There, I Want to Hold Your Hand, If I Fell, I’m Happy Just to Dance With You to name just a few.

Someone asked me once which I thought were better: Early Beatles or Later Beatles and that’s a tough call! I saw A Hard Day’s Night recently and just about every song was a pop gem – quick,sweet and fun. I Should Have Known Better is one of the best in my book.

And they sure seemed to be having fun at that time, as in this video of Can’t Buy Me Love from the same.

Of course, Later Beatles had much more variety of musical styles, themes and sophisticated recording technology. I guess my favorite album would be Revolver which perhaps is the transition between the young and mature stages of  the group. Or maybe that’s just a cop out of choosing between the two.

A great pop song is timeless, and captures a story and the feelings good and bad in 2-3 minutes – with a catchy refrain. So I feel like I’m listening to a gallery of dukkha in amber all weekend.

So if pop music is all about suffering, should I be listening to it? Won’t that add to my suffering? Mindfulness in Plan English has this to say about suffering as well:

You can’t ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option. You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of this endless cycle of desire and aversion. You can learn to not want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them. This does not mean that you lie down on the road and invite everybody to walk all over you . It means that you continue to live a very normal-looking life, but live from a whole new viewpoint. You do the things that a person must do, but you are free from that obsessive, compulsive drivenness of your own desires. You want something, but you don’t need to chase after it. You fear something, but you don’t need to stand there quaking in your boots.

So I can listen to the pop station and try not to get caught up in it. I can appreciate the craft of stirring the listener’s emotions so they feel better or know that they are not alone in hurting. At the same time, I don’t need to shut off the radio or shun this type of music.

Or maybe I should turn it off, they are on the L word now:

L. hangover
L. her madly
L. hurts
L. is alive
L. is here
L. is in the air

This could go on all night…

Dharma Easter Eggs

Another Christmas has passed, and I’m thinking of…Easter Eggs? No, not the kind you decorate and hide in your yard. And not the chocolate or the deadly Cadbury Egg. But the hidden messages and symbols found in films, other media and computer programs and hardware — also called Easter Eggs.

I’ve noticed a few scenes and themes in films that clearly illustrate principles of the Dharma, so might we term these Dharma Easter Eggs? Perhaps this concept represents some kind of opposite to the Dharma Burger, a misuse or mis-represenation of the Dharma for commercialization -  lovingly documented in The Worst Horse site!

Perhaps it’s best to illustrate the Easter Egg idea by example. One that struck me a few years back is a scene in the film Smoke about an unusual photo collection. Auggie (Harvey Keitel)  is the owner of a tobacco shop in Brooklyn, which is the focal point of a series of overlapping life stories. He has a camera and takes a picture on the street outside of his shop every single day at precisely 8 AM. He shows his pictures one day to Paul Benjamen (William Hurt) in this scene.

Here is part of the dialog:

Paul: It’s kind of overwhelming
Aug: You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down my friend
Paul: Whadda mean…
Aug:I mean you’re going to fast. You’re hardly looking at the pictures
Paul: They’re all the same…
Aug: They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You got your bright mornings and your dark mornings. You got you summer light and your autumn light…

It’s well worth watching the whole scene

So if you take a picture of the same place at the same time every day, it is the same – yet always different. Seasons change, styles change. People appear, re-appear sometimes and go away. And we might even see people that have an impact on our lives but are seemingly lost and gone forever.

I’ve started my own project to take a picture off of my back deck every morning around 8 AM, before I normally go to work. I started around the Winter Solstice and hope to capture the changes in the back yard throughout the year. I’ve started posting these here. It’s no Brooklyn street corner, but even after a week you can see a number of differences from day to day

Another very enlightening scene is from Spaceballs we can call, When will then be now?

If I remember correctly, the “bad” guys are looking for the rebel “good guys” and get the idea of watching a tape of the movie they are in to find them! So you get this crazy scene where they are watching the part of the movie where they are watching the movie, in the movie.

Perhaps this is an homage and and interesting twist to  that old stage comedy routine the Mirror Gag. Of course, this routine is seen in a number of Marx Brothers’ films, such this scene from Duck Soup.

But the scene also has a brilliant “Zen” quality about it and is beautifully written and acted out. Because if you stop to think about it, does “Now” really exist? Because we have a delay in our senses, we can never know Right Now, but only Just Now. So how can we ever truly be in the moment? Maybe we are just being dragged along behind it – kicking and screaming. It certainly feels that way most of the time.

Another great Easter Egg for me is the ending of American Beauty. Really, the whole movie is a great example of Dukkha and it’s close relative Avidya. We pursue the things that we are told will make us happy but what do they bring us? We long to recapture our youth but we can never really go back to that mixture of innocence and ignorance. When I first saw the film, it struck me that Lester had finally come to peace with everything right at the end. Perhaps he was liberated? We don’t know. Do we need to know?

Now I have no idea at all whether the writers, actors and directors of these works have any background or interest in Buddhism at all. The scenes above are great Dharma illustrations, to me anyhow, whether these are intentional Easter Eggs or entirely coincidental.

I’ll keep an eye out for more hidden treasures out there. Contributions are most welcomed too!

Wheel of Giving

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I was browsing a forum on-line and came across the following quote:

May we, with all beings,
Realize the emptiness of the three wheels:
Giver, receiver and gift.

The above is actually part of a verse recited in Oryoki but was referred to in the context of making donations to a practice center. I had Christmas shopping on my mind, with a pretty long list of things yet to do, so these words stuck me as very relevant to my mindset at the time!

Certainly much has been written about the commercialization of Christmas and I don’t have too much to add to all that. I find that I do enjoy buying gifts for the people who are special in my life. It takes at least some attentiveness to figure out what to get someone, even if they do drop the occasional hint or two! But it is so easy to get caught up in stress when trying to figure out the “right” thing that your special someone will appreciate – and for everyone else on your list! And choosing and balancing gifts for kids just adds a whole level of angst and insecurity.

As I set out on my errands, I found that keeping the above verse in mind reduced the usual stress of the last minute rush. I was in a long line at the grocery store and took time to watch what the people around me were getting and their reactions. The cashier was very elderly and somewhat incapacitated so things took a little longer, but I didn’t mind. The guy behind me started making noises of impatience and “joking” about the delay to others in line. I normally get quite self-righteous about other people’s impoliteness but just tried to take that in stride as a natural reaction – we all have impatience in us. Driving to the next store, I saw drivers cutting off pedestrians, people driving way too fast and aggressively on busy streets and more rudeness! But I tried to see all these things as manifestations of the “empty wheels”, and just tried to take my time and stay attentive.

I had about 10 things to get for our families to finish things up but I did find everything I needed in 4 or 5 stops, and appreciated a couple of very helpful sales people and merchants. And a Salvation Army volunteer that blessed me and really meant it – so I made a donation, of course!

But I had one last thing to get that required a 20 minute drive to one of the shops at the Mohegan Sun. That is one of two major casinos in the area that have been a large part of the economy and local culture for quite a few years now. I’m not interested in gambling but have gone to them on occasion for dinner, a show or to a particular shop like today. Since the opening of Foxwoods, and later the Mohegan Sun, the casinos have been bustling from Day One, all night and day ever since – especially on the holidays! So it was quite a shock go walk through the casino floors and see about a tenth of the traffic you’d normally see on a weekday. There was a fair amount of activity at some of the gaming tables, but only a few sections were open. The slot machines were pretty well vacant, with only a person or two per each section of 100 machines or so. It felt like a ghost town compared to the usual crowds you see there!

I found a very nice ornament at Sarovsky’s, which was the intended goal. On the way out, I put $5 in one of the slot machines and spent a few minutes trying my luck at the wheels. The initial stake nearly ran out a few times before being boosted by a small payout. But the last spins did come up empty. So the slots spun and stopped and left me without my five dollars. I suppose some does go to the state then, and the rest to the Mohegan nation, but what will it bring them? Probably enough on that day to pay for the lights, heating and upkeep of the huge gaming hall I was in for less that a minute – so my “gift” to them was likely empty as well!

Now I don’t want to give the impression that finding a gift, buying it and giving is necessarily meaningless or shallow. (Although this all can be when done without thought of course). Giving is a great way to show appreciation for someone at Christmas or any time. But the giver is not always there to keep giving, the gift will grow forgotten or lost or broken someday and the receiver may not be there tomorrow – or perhaps may not even want to receive another gift from the giver! So I suppose that Buddhist can and will agree with the Christian that giving the gift should not be the true focus of the season.

Happy Holidays!

Holiday Consumption

On the week of Thanksgiving, NPR’s All Things Considered aired an interview with Dr Brian Wansink, who studies and writes about Mindless Eating. He has a book on the subject and an interesting web site, based upon extensive research on how and what we eat – and what signals tell us when we’ve had enough.

The daily choices we make, and how they shape ourselves and the world around us was one of the main topics I had in mind when I started this blog – and this work is a great example of why we should be more mindful of all of these “little” daily choices!

Since last week, then, I’ve continued to log mediation practice and have added a section on food and other intake. I’m not keeping a lot of detail on quantities and estimated calories. (I’ve done that before and it certainly is instructive). But I just wanted to keep a rough log on what is consumed and when, to get a sense of what I might be doing right and what could use some change.

Now, one of the problems with keeping a log of oneself is that it tends to keep you on your better behavior! Perhaps this is something like the principle in physics known as the Observer Effect – where the action of observing or measuring an event affects the outcome of the event. Another way to put this, I suppose, is that what you see depends upon how you choose to observe it.

Sparing the boring detail, the log looks pretty good after 10 days or so, even with a couple of holiday events thrown in. Breakfast is typically a bowl of shredded wheat cereal with milk, or sometimes a bagel (God’s chosen breakfast food after all!) Lunch is usually a sandwich with some pretzels and a yogurt. Dinner is usually pretty reasonable, but this is the meal where I tend to eat till I’m full, or more sometimes.

Snacking hasn’t been too bad, but when I do it is usually when I just come home from work. I’ll tend to grab anything tasty that’s handy and keep eating for a while without being very mindful about it.

Not too much to change really, except that I do tend to take in too many carbs, so I need to substitute carrot sticks and such for pretzels at lunch and take heed when I come home from work.

I’m also tracking alcohol consumed, which is often a glass of wine or two in the evening. This is definitely the first thing to cut back on to reduce calories and so I’m cutting this out most week nights, which has not been a problem at all.

I’m also checking my weight every morning. That’s been very constant the past 10 days – going up or down only a pound or so. I had started to do yoga on a daily basis and get more walking in last month and am keeping that up. After I started getting more exercise, my weight went up a few pounds, dropped a bit and has kept on a plateau since then. I think I have put on some muscle and would expect to see some pounds come off if and when I do start to limit portions – in the evening especially!

I’m about 5 pounds over where I had hoped to wind up by the end of the year, so I’ll see if I can get closer to that goal in the next few weeks, just be making these few relatively minor changes. I don’t need to do any thing drastic, and I think the best way to make changes I can sustain is by changing habits a bit here and there. Kind of like steering a large ship – it will get there but does take some time!

OK, off to the gym then, and we’ll see how it goes in the next few weeks!

More Time to Sit!

Continued to log meditation and other practice this week. Didn’t get quite as much time in as the previous week but did manage to get something in every day! Having a variety of ways to practice really helps in a number of ways.

I think that is my main lesson, so far, — to try to do some type of practice every day when possible. As a householder, there’s a need to be flexible, but I need to think of practice as essential – right up there with sleeping and eating! I may not get to it every day, but should think of it as a Minimum Daily Requirement for the soul.

It also looks like early morning is the best time, for me, to find some time. I can always get up a little earlier and this seems to be the best way to get some space. But I am also working on excusing myself in the evening if need be to go a sit for a while — without feeling so self-conscious about it!

Saw an interesting post on e-Sangha on Six Meditation Mistakes. It has some excellent points for beginners such as myself to start and sustain a regular practice. Another one I would add to this list is “Don’t Go it Alone”. It is very helpful to find a group to sit with or attend a retreat with others at least once a year. Just sitting with others in a local practice group and sharing ideas and experiences can be invaluable. And, of course, it’s really hard to get anywhere significant without a teacher.

One problem I have sitting at home is timing myself. If I say I’m going to sit for 30 minutes or so, I am often peeking at the clock at 12, 18, 22, 24 … minutes. And it’s easy to say “enough” and just stop before the intended time. I could use a kitchen timer I guess, though they tend to have an annoying sound – by design! I found that the Audiodharma site has a set of audio files of different lengths you can play to provide a meditation timer. A bell is rung once to start, there’s a lot of empty space – and then 3 bells at the end of the alloted time! Sounds silly, but I found these to be a great help. I don’t have to worry about how far I have to go – the computer is taking care of that for me, so it’s one less distraction! I think these files should work just fine on a hand-held digital recorder or personal music player of any kind.

Time to Sit!

One of my goals in starting this blog is to help motivate me to estabish a more regular, daily practice!

I was poking around online last weekend and came across E-Sangha – an on-line forum site related to all aspects of Buddhism and practice http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php. I thought this would be a great place to find out what others do for a daily practice and how they manage to find time, so I posted a question to that effect.  One member has a daily routine that includes zazen and kinhin (walking meditation) and I thought that all sounded good to try this week. They also recommended You Tube as a resource for liturgy – there are many videos of the Heart Sutra in different languages for example. Fantastic idea!

Another thread suggested keeping a daily log and that sounded great to try this week as well. I think a log should help show how consistent my practice is for one thing!

Anyhow, here a log of meditation for the week:

Monday

20′ zazen
10′ kinhin
30′ zazen

Tuesday

20′ yoga
15′ zazen

Wednesday

30′zazen
10′ kinhin
30′ zazen
20′ body practice

Thursday

30′ zazen
5′ kinhin
20′zazen
20′ body practice

Friday

25′ zazen
5′ kinhin

Saturday

20′ zazen
5′ kinhin

Sunday

20′ zazen
5′ kinhin
25′ zazen

One of my dogs tends to wake up very early to go outside – often 4 – 5 AM since the change back to standard time. So I was up before dawn for most of this practice, rather than crawling back into bed! I found it to be a very good time to reach a solid, deep stillness, before my mind is starting to worry about everything that needs to be done that day….

So I think this is all useful and will try my best to keep it up. This blog site lets me post pages that can be kept private, so I can keep a weekly log and choose to share it — or not! I hope I can see the log as a way to observe the constancy of my practice and not as a way to keep score or rate my performance for the week…

I also plan to frequent the E-Sangha on a regular basis and am starting to look at some of the many internet resources cited there. Here’s a great one to start with por ejemplo: Buddhism in a Nutshell

Glacial Erratic

I have 2 dogs at home and take them out for a walk nearly every morning. Our shorter route goes down the street, up one side of the Four Mile River, across to the other side, back down to our street and back across the river. After making this trip with our first dog for about 6 months, I happened to notice a large boulder one day at the side of the road – not far from one of the banks of the river. I’d been walking right by it for months without seeing it!

OK it’s not the largest boulder in the world, and a bit off to the side. And I’m not the most observant person in the world – au contraire.  But it struck me that we pass so many things along the way that we never notice at all.

The rock also interested me because it is a great example of a glacial erratic. ‘Erratic’ is what a geologist calls a rock that is different from the others in it’s immediate area – as if it were picked up from somewhere else and dropped there. If you go walking in the woods in New England or other northern areas, it’s not uncommon to see huge rocks out in the middle of a stretch of woods – or even a group of erratics. So the question is, what could pick up such a mass and carry it? In the 19th century, geologists supposed that these boulders were displaced by The Great Flood. One problem with that theory is that you would expect them to be found all over the world! Geologists also noticed other land features found only near the poles that suggested sculpting by massive ice formations and began to realize that much of the continents were covered by glaciers in a previous Ice Age.

So this boulder down my street likely hopped onto the back of a passing ice flow 20,000 years ago and was dropped off where the river is today. And that was only yesterday in geological time! The rock might have been part of another continent that merged with the others to form the super continent Pangea. Parts pf that continent then split apart right here in Southeastern Connecticut to form what we now call the North America and Africa.

This glacial erratic will be sitting right there along the river long after I’m gone, to be smashed sone day into another continent, worn down to sand, or pulled back into the crust of the Earth. Everything changes.

PS Here’s a couple more erratics at the Rocky Neck State Park Nearby: