NOVEMBER 1-5, 2010 AUSCHWITZ BEARING WITNESS RETREAT
To read descriptions and/or to register, please click here. This retreat includes Young Adults from Israel, Palestine, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, USA, and other countries.
First Major Symposium for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism
August 9 to 14, 2010
at the Mother House of the Zen Peacemakers in Montague, MA
There are many ways of studying the precepts. What I would like to do
here is to use the 8th precept to illustrate a way of actually
practicing with the precepts. There are two parts to this practice, as
I see it. One is to use one's imagination to extend the narrower, more
literal meaning of the precept to cover much more than we normally
think of. By doing this the precept can come alive for each of us in
our own individual lives in exactly the way it needs to. Once I
identify the best way to understand the precept for me, then I can take
it into my life and work with it. This is the tricky part. We have a
tendency to treat the precepts as fodder for the superego. Not only is
this not what the precepts are, but also this is no way to practice
anything, since it involves rejecting parts of ourselves, which leads
to rejecting others. The precepts are not about 'should' or 'should
not.' We could, I suppose, try to distinguish between using the
precepts as 'guides' of some kind as opposed to 'shoulds' and 'should
nots,' but there is a deeper way to practice with them, even for the
beginner. Once I see the best way for me to understand the precept in
question, then I can get to know myself in relation to that precept.
This is a practice of no preferences, no judgments, no shoulds, no
ideas of failure. It is a practice of simply allowing what is. I will
explain more below how to deepen that practice, but the outcome of
going deeper and deeper is that the precepts begin to manifest
themselves naturally in my life.
"Stingy"-it's a funny word. I think of Scrooge. It's a word that gives
me a certain feeling. "Stingy." We usually think of it in terms of
possessions and possessiveness. Not sharing what I own. Being tight
with money. And notice the word "tight" that we use here. It describes
what it actually feels like to be stingy. There are many ways of being
stingy. For example, a friend of mine, someone I dearly love, is very
stingy with the servings that she gives to people, whenever she is the
hostess. It's noticeable. Everything is very small. Here's a perfect
version of what we normally mean by "stingy." It's a poem of Rumi's.
Dervish at the Door
A dervish knocks at a house to ask for a piece of dry bread.
Or moist, it didn't matter.
"This is not a bakery," said the owner.
"Might I have a bit of gristle, then?"
"Does this look like a butcher shop?"
"A little flour?"
"Do you hear a grinding stone?"
"Some water?"
"This is not a well."
Whatever the dervish asked for, the man made some
tired joke and refused to give him anything.
Finally the dervish ran into the house, lifted his robe and
squatted as though to take a shit.
"Hey, hey!"
"Quiet, you sad man. A deserted place is a fine spot to
relieve oneself.
And since there's no living thing here or needs of living,
it needs fertilizing."
The dervish began his own list of questions and answers.
"What kind of bird are you?
Not a falcon trained for the royal hand,
Not a peacock painted with everyone's eyes,
Not a parrot that talks for sugar cubes,
Not a nightingale that sings like someone in love.
Not a hoopoe that brings messages to Solomon.
Or a stork that builds on a cliffside.
What exactly do you do?
You are no known species.
You haggle and make jokes to keep what you own for
yourself.
You have forgotten about the One who doesn't care about
ownership.
Who doesn't try to turn a profit from every human
exchange."
The One. Ultimate Reality. The faceless One, who never tries 'to turn a
profit' from anything at all. We, on the other hand, are always trying
to turn a profit from every human exchange, and from other things as
well. We're always trying to get something-admiration, love,
recognition, praise, acknowledgement, even just staying connected.
Think how we manipulate and bargain and negotiate to turn a profit from
every human exchange. Much of this is very unconscious. Habituated.
Even when we give, or serve, or love, or pay attention, we're trying to
get something. Sometimes it's just to get back some of what we give.
So what are we stingy with in all these cases? One of the things we're
stingy with is one hundred percent. We're stingy with the possibility
of doing something one hundred percent. Imagine loving one hundred
percent. Imagine acknowledging someone one hundred percent with no
thought of getting something in return, which would take part of it
away, and make it seventy percent. Sometimes twenty percent. We're
also stingy with the truth. Stingy with the truth of what's really
going on in us, with us, what we really want. We hold onto it, hold it
back, withhold it. We play our cards close to the chest--covering the
heart.
We also try to turn a profit in practice. We always try to get
something from practice. We try to get better. We try to get
enlightenment. We try to get seen for doing it right. What am I being
stingy with here? Wholehearted surrender to the present moment. Think
how stingy we are with that. Think how much we hold on. We also imagine
that in practicing what we will 'get' will be ours, which is, of
course, the greatest delusion of all.
And then there is surrender. In addition to treating it as a bargaining
tool-"I'll surrender to the present moment and then get something
back"-we imagine that it is something we can do. So, how do we
surrender? How do we do this non-doing? We have to be taken-ravished,
if you will. We can only prepare the conditions for being 'taken.'
Taken by what?-by the present moment, by Ultimate Reality, by the
Absolute, by God. And the way we prepare those conditions is what I was
talking about last night. It's by staying here now. By going
vertically. By giving up all of our horizontal negotiations.
Bargaining. Something stingy people do all the time. Bargain, bargain.
I'll do this if you do that. I'll do this in order to get that. So it's
always a kind of tit for tat. Conditional. Think of the notion of
unconditional love. It's interesting that we usually think about how
nice it would be to receive it.
So, we are stingy with anything we hold onto. We are stingy with
anything we're unwilling to open to. Any person we are unwilling to
open to. Any situation we're unwilling to open to. Anything that's
going on in us that we are unwilling to open to. Stingy when we're not
fully participating in what's happening. What's here. What's now.
Imagine fully participating, wholeheartedly being here, whatever it is.
A class. A meeting. A dinner. Gardening. Fully participating. We are
stingy when we're withholding anything about the truth of where we are.
We're stingy when we don't take risks. We're stingy when we're not
compassionate. We're stingy with our tears. With kind words. With
open-heartedness. With open-mindedness.
What else are we stingy with? What else do we hold onto? Security.
Self-images. Pain. Suffering. Unwillingness to suffer. Being right.
Truth. Love. Being a victim. Need for recognition. Time. Praise. Think
how we hang onto those things. We don't give them away. We don't share
them. One of the important things that we're stingy with is gratitude.
Remember the practicing we did with saying "thank you," with noticing
what gets in the way of saying "thank you" and how different it can be
for each of us? It's amazing how stingy we can be with "thank you."
Think of the meal gatha, which is about gratitude, and begins with,
"Seventy-two labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes
to us." Are we whole-hearted in knowing that, in expressing that
gratitude? Or are we stingy? Do we even remember it each time we eat? I
think Mary Oliver is reminding us of this whole-heartedness in this
poem.
Rice
It grew in the black mud,
It grew under the tiger's orange paws,
Its stems thinner than candles and as straight.
Its leaves like the feathers of egrets, but green.
The grains cresting, wanting to burst.
O, blood of the tiger.
I don't want you just to sit down at the table.
I don't want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.
We can also be stingy with receiving gratitude. With receiving praise.
I've told you many times the story of my great lesson at age sixteen
that took so many years to really sink in, when my favorite teacher
complimented me on the stairway. I remember exactly where I was
standing. And I behaved like a stingy sixteen-year-old, embarrassed and
pleased, wanting to hang onto it probably, but in any case, making a
mess of it. She took my forearm with her long, slender fingers and
said, "Don't be so ungracious." And I'll never forget it. It was a kind
of stinginess. To not receive what is given to us as gratitude, to not
be gracious. This is being stingy. Many of Mary Oliver's poems are
about being grateful for and graciously receiving the world. Here are
two lines from "Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches":
Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy to let you in.
What about being stingy with our lives? Actually, before getting to our
lives, I think it might be worth going back to Dogen. "One phrase, one
verse, ten thousand forms, one hundred grasses, one Dharma, one
realization, all Buddhas. All teachers. Since the beginning there has
never been being stingy." What he's talking about there is Ultimate
Reality, the Absolute, the faceless One, the "One," as Rumi calls it.
There is nothing stingy about the One. Nothing. This world that is
manifested over and over and over again-from moment to moment. There is
nothing stingy there. It is a gift. And we are given. And it is given
to us. Constantly. Alive. Pulsating. Love, trees, fingers, the sea and
its dividing water when we step in. Everything, even Auschwitz
From Master Keizan's Denkoroku:
The light of the Mind- moon, and colors of the eye-flower are
splendid;
Shining forth and blooming beyond time, who can appreciate them?
É É É É É É
Sourceless stream from a ten-thousand-foot cliff,
Washing out stones, scattering clouds, gushing forth.
Brushing away the snow, making the flowers fly wildly-
A length of pure white silk beyond the dust.
Look at the language here: "shining forth," "blooming," "gushing
forth." That length of pure white silk beyond the dust displays no
stinginess in its manifestation. Spring blossoms, sweeping, walking,
Auschwitz, nuclear waste, life, death, our lives-all 'gushing forth.'
Another verse from Master Keizan uses my favorite image:
That One whose whole life is extremely active and lively
We call the One who raises the eyebrows and blinks.
That One, the faceless One, raises the eyebrows and blinks. A wonderful
image of this manifest world, this world of many-ness, that we live in,
that we are. That One, whose life is extremely active and lively.
Nothing stingy here, or, as Dogen says, "Since the beginning there has
never been Being Stingy."
What about my life? What about myself? What about not being stingy with
my life? With the ingredients of my life? But much more than that. To
not be stingy with my life, with myself, is to fully express myself at
every moment. Fully, bursting, expressing myself. Everything that I am.
And this is not 'exercising my talents.' So I can say, "I want to fully
express myself." And I'm just sitting here not doing what I really
could be doing with my life, with my gifts, with my talents. That's not
what fully expressing oneself means. Those talents may be expressed
when one is fully expressed-and maybe not. When we are fully expressed,
we are transparent. There is no one there to know they are talents much
less my talents. Nor is it my life. Again, from "Have You Ever Tried
to Enter the Long Black Branches," Mary Oliver has the following two
lines:
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
É . For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
I would add 'stinginess.'
Not being stingy with one's life, with one's self, with this precious
short, short gift we've been given is often associated with voice, with
finding one's voice, one's 'own voice,' we say. And it's amazing how
this shows up in all the traditions. I think the throat chakra is about
this, it's about the voice, about being fully expressed. Here are some
short poems of Rumi's about this.:
Let your throat song be clear
and strong enough
To make an emperor fall full length
suppliant at the door.
É É É É .
You that come to birth
and bring the mysteries.
Your voice thunder
makes us happy.
Roar lion of the heart
and tear me open.
In Buddhism we have the lion's roar. Mary Oliver in a prose poem has a
version of this. Notice, the speck of my heart, my heart is just a
speck, when I am stingy.
And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh
and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun
would sing if the sun could sing, if light had
a mouth and tongue, if the sky had a throat É
Voice, our primary example of expression, shows up as a metaphor for
the manifestation of the One as well in the notion that everything
"preaches the Dharma." As Dogen says in a little verse, "Are not even
the sounds of the bustling marketplace, the preaching of the Dharma?"
No stinginess here. Everything preaches the Dharma-nuclear waste,
skunks, flowers, grass-and does so fully and completely. What is is not
stingy. There is nothing withheld.
So here we are, stingy in this way and that, wanting not to be. How do
we work with this? The first thing is to not be stingy in discovering
who we are in relation to stinginess. "Where am I stingy? About what?
With whom?" we need to ask. Can we take a good, neutral look at
ourselves, with no preferences? Can we compassionately allow what is,
or who I am in the relative sense? Can we explore deeply enough to feel
the withholding, the tightness, maybe even the fear? Can we feel safe
enough, not-stingy enough to express who we are, where we are, to
another? Coming to terms with who I am in relation to stinginess and to
do so with no judgement is one thing, but to be not-stingy enough to
place my stinginess right out on the table before others takes the
practice even deeper. This is where our practice circle work is really
useful.
What are we doing when we do this? What is happening? Master Sosan, the
author of the poem that begins with "The Great Way is not difficult for
those who have no preferences" also says something in that poem about
letting things "take their course." It's as if everything wants to
liberate itself, to take its course, and we, out of our fear, out of
our stinginess, prevent that from happening. Here is another poem of
Mary Oliver's precisely about this:
The Kookaburras
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
By opening that cage door, by letting out whatever we hold in us, we
are letting things 'take their course.' We are then not being stingy
with stinginess, stealing, speaking ill of other faults and all the
other precepts. By letting the kookaburras fly away we let them take
their course and transform themselves. Then the precepts begin to
naturally manifest.
I will end with Dogen on his enlightenment.
For fifty-four years
Following the way of heaven,
Now leaping beyond
shattering every barrier.
Amazing!
To cast off all attachments
While still alive!
Plunging into the yellow spring!
This is the precept of not being stingy.
Family Treasure
by Sensei Bruce Seiryu Blackburn
Good morning! We’re happy to be with you at this joint practice day of the
Baltimore Shambhala Center and Clare Sangha. Our collaboration goes
back some years now. You first invited us to a practice day in 1998. Since
then, some of you have attended our seasonal retreats, and our joint practice
day last year.
Allow me to recount a debt of gratitude I’m carrying these 29 years. It is for
the initial meditation training received at the Dharmadatu – Shambhala
Center in Washington, DC. I’ll always be grateful for the dedicated
instructors who taught me there, and for the books they introduced me to,
including Meditation in Action by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Zen
Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
And I am grateful for the wisdom of the practice learned then. It is the basic
shamatha practice, peaceful abiding in breath awareness. Breath awareness
helps us to look inward and let go. Shamatha practice facilitates Zen
training that is directed to silent inquiry and self-emptying.
***
I have a pop quiz for you today. There is only one question; it’s not an easy
one. How long should a man’s leg be? A student told me it should be as
long as the other leg! Not a bad answer, but it’s not the answer given by the
famous person who asked this question. Any ideas?
The answer is: a man’s leg should be long enough to reach the ground. Do
you know who said that? President Abraham Lincoln said that.
I like the statement because when our legs are long enough to reach the
ground, we’re always standing on our path. It is right beneath our feet.
When we feel our feet on the ground, we are in our body and directly
connected with the path. The path is not behind us – though we want to
know the lessons of our experience. And it’s not ahead of us – though we
need to make plans in this world. Both our planning and the lessons of
experience arise and are included within the path today.
***
When asked about her experience of meditation, Sharon Salzberg of the
Insight Meditation Society gave illuminating answers. She said:
“The experience of meditation is one of the most healing things we can do.
“One thing meditation has taught me that I would like to share with all
people is: we have greater capacities than we can imagine;
“The most profound way in which meditation has changed my life is that it
has changed my view of who I am.” When asked about this change, she
answered: “I went from confusion to clarity.”
For Salzberg, these words sum up her experience: meditation is healing; it
convinced her of great capacities; it clarified her view of who she is. How is
it that meditation can lead to such powerful and encouraging experience?
In Clare Sangha, students often mention a feature of meditation experience
that encourages our practice as well. When we practice together for longer
periods of time – such as in a day of silence or a seasonal retreat – we sense
the falling away of barriers between ourselves and others. The walls just
come down when we practice zazen or shamatha together. We don't have to
take the walls down. There’s no need to push them over or pull them down.
No chisels, pulleys or sledge hammers are required.
All we need is silence and to be present. From the power of practice comes
a sense of oneness, of relating, of simplicity. A friend once described it as
the joy of freedom and support altogether.
If we're a little curious, we can ask what’s behind such a falling away of
barriers and walls, the feeling of it? How can this be? Is this the same
power of which Sharon Salzberg speaks?
There’s a handy two word answer to such questions: family treasure.
Seekers in all the spiritual traditions speak of this family treasure.
(Sometimes it is called the family secret or family style). To illustrate, let’s
look into a few teachings about our family treasure. When a teaching comes
through to us fine and strong – in clarifying or ringing true with our
experience – it invites us to make it our own.
***
The Christian mystic Jean Pierre de Caussade said this about family
treasure: “What is the secret of finding the treasure? There isn't one. The
treasure is everywhere. It is offered to us at every moment and wherever we
find ourselves. All creatures and families, friends or enemies, pour it out
abundantly, and it courses through every fiber of our body and soul...and
reaches the very core of our being...We couldn't choose a better, more
miraculous...way than the simple use of the means offered us by God.”
We draw on our family treasure by living what Caussade calls the
“sacrament of the present moment.”
The great Sufi mystic of Islam, Rumi, spoke of it as follows:
“Don't worry if you're not famous; God knows best and hides his servants
like a treasure, for their security and in places that are little known. Would
you put your treasure where any fool could discover it?”
Rumi continues: “The love of God is a fire that consumes all difficulties.
You are loved by Him; look for the reply in the same place the question
comes from: The cornerless corner of the heart is the royal road to God:
the radiance that is neither East nor West comes from a single moon.”
And Rumi asks “How can I - or anyone else - ever cease being astounded
that He whom nothing can contain is contained in the heart?”
In Jewish tradition, the great Rabbi Bunam of Eastern Europe would tell
those who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eizik, son of
Rabbi Yekel of Cracow:
After years of poverty, Rabbi Eizik dreamed that someone bade him look for
a treasure in Prague, under the bridge that leads to the king's palace. The
dream recurred twice, so Rabbi Eizik prepared for the long journey, and set
out for Prague.
But he found the bridge was guarded day and night, so he dared not start
digging. Still, he went to the bridge every morning, walking around it until
nightfall.
Finally, the captain of the guards, who had been watching him, kindly asked
if he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eizik told
him of the dream that brought him from faraway.
At this, the captain laughed: “And so to please a dream, you, poor fellow,
wore out your shoes to come here?”
The captain went on to say “As for having faith in dreams, if I had had it, I
should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow
and dig for treasure under the stove in the house of a Jew.
“Eizik, son of Yekel, that was the name. Eizik son of Yekel! I can just
imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over
there, where one half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other half Yekel!”
And the captain laughed again.
At this, Rabbi Eizik bowed and traveled home. He found and dug up the
treasure from under his own stove. And he went on to build the House of
Prayer that is called Reb Eizik–Reb Yekel's Shul.”
“Take this story to heart,” Rabbi Bunam would say to those who came to
him, “and make what it says your own. There is something you cannot find
anywhere in the world, not even at the Rabbi's. There is, nevertheless, a
place where you can find it. It is a great treasure, which may be called the
fulfillment of existence. But it can only be found in one place.”
***
The founder of Shambhala, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, called this
family treasure our basic goodness. Zen names for it include true nature or
Buddha nature, among others. The Zen tradition is typically brief and
aphoristic in alluding to it. “If it comes through the gate it's not family
treasure.” Or “it is hidden deep but ever present!”
In his General Recommendation of Zazen, Dogen Zenji speaks of the
“treasure chamber.” What is the treasure chamber, you may ask?
Valerie Forstman, a teacher at Ruben Habito’s Maria Kannon Zen Center,
writes of this in her article, Zen Practice and Music:
“In relating Zen practice to music, two koans come to mind, both from Dogen’s Fukan
Zazengi (General Recommendation of Zazen), that have especially offered direction in
my daily practice as a musician. First, ‘the treasure chamber opens by itself, and one
uses the treasure at will.’
“The treasure chamber is the present moment. All that we need is available here and
now, offered freely for our taking; just as we are entirely free in the present moment to be
ourselves. In other language, this is called grace. For me, it is an invitation to experience
God’s immediacy – or the vast and specific dharma – as a vibrating presence in all things.
“As a musician, I am all too familiar with the weight of past successes and failures, and
anxiety about future opportunities and outcomes hanging on my flute each time I pick it
up. The treasure chamber is open and, to step into it, I must leave that thinking at the
door. My freedom lies in preparing for a concert or audition simply to play at that
moment, with no thought of what it might lead to. This is “attention,” a quality of being
we cultivate as we sit here on our cushions, following our breath.
“The second koan is: “If there is a hairsbreadth of difference, it is the difference between
heaven and earth. The difference is a concept. In performance, this ‘difference’ is
manifest in the activity of judgment and fear (with being outside myself a prerequisite),
or the direct experience of attachment to an idea of what I am doing…
“Truly, in the moment of creating a musical sound, I do not exist apart from that sound
and that sound makes my existence possible. I play the sound; the sound plays me:
hearer and heard are one.”
***
Mr Yamada-roshi – ancestral teacher of my first Zen teacher Sr. Elaine
MacInnes – called the family treasure our essential nature. As Yamada,
MacInnes encouraged students wanting to deepen their practice to
experience and clarify this for themselves. Both aimed to help students
bring forth the prajna power of essential nature into their daily life. I think
this power is what Sharon Salzberg means by “greater capacities than we
can imagine.” The Zen tradition calls this the Way of wisdom and
compassion; it includes knowing what to do as well as what not to do.
Seeing one’s essential nature is seemingly no big feat. It’s simply
recognizing what has been with you from the start. It’s not something
outside you, but within that you are using constantly. With the family
treasure ever at hand, there is ample opportunity for realization experience.
But, it is taught of old that, from the beginningless past, a karmic sickness
has built a nest in the field of the eighth consciousness. And since it is a
matter of breaking through this nest, including ego-consciousness, realizing
one’s self nature is not so easy. (Regarding the eight classes of
consciousness, see Chapter 10, Zen Vocabulary, in The Three Pillars of Zen,
by Philip Kapleau.)
John Daido Loori-roshi of the Zen Mountain Monastery was akin to
Yamada and MacInnes in his encouragement that students taste the tea for
themselves. These Masters avoided the shopworn, dualistic debate in Zen of
gradual v. sudden insight, simply noting the value of direct personal
experience.
In this, Daido Loori-roshi taught that the experience of joriki (concentration
power) and samadhi (absorption in non-dual awareness) is the beginning of
body and mind falling away, of forgetting the self – two of Dogen’s
expressions for realizing self-nature. The key is to build a strong foundation
in practice.
If one wishes to deepen practice via direct experience, the Zen tradition
offers the option of expanding from the harmonizing practice of zazen, or
shikan taza, to the questioning practice of koan study. Koans are one of the
upayas or skillful means of Zen training.
***
Let me close by simply expressing gratitude for our shared practice of zazen
and shamatha. Silence has no tradition. We don't have to fiddle with our
practice to make it work, we were born with all we need. If we just let the
practice work as it has from remote antiquity – for more than 2500 years
through the lineage of our ancestral teachers – it shows us the way to this
wondrous family treasure that we share most intimately. This is the truly
transformative element of Zen practice and training.
Alright then, that’s more than enough talk from me. By all means, let’s take
care of our family treasure this day. Let’s carry it lightly throughout our
time together, then safely home tonight. Thanks for your attention.
Given By: Bruce Seiryu Blackman, Clare Sangha
Baltimore Shambhala Center, June 27, 2009
Roshi Bernie Glassman Talks and Transcriptions
Zen Houses
Skillful Means (Upayas)
Miscellaneous
Bernie at Harvard
In the Fall of 2007, Roshi Bernie Glassman taught a graduate course at the Harvard Divinity School entitled "Buddhist Arts of Ministry in the Zen Peacemakers Order."
The course focused on new ministry paths developed by the Zen Peacemakers, which integrate Zen precepts and practices into social action programs that work with the unemployed, homeless and people with AIDS in urban ghettos and war-torn situations. Students were trained in the means for transformation of individuals, neighborhoods, and society according to the practices of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Students also are helping in the planning stages of a new project to establish Zen Houses in impoverished areas of the U.S.
The following are unedited recordings of Bernie's lectures for you to download. Edited transcripts of the lectures and the remaining audio recordings of the lectures will be added as time permits.
The following are unedited recordings for you to download. They are from the January 2008 retreat of Zen Peacemakers Sangha Seniors with Roshi Bernie Glassman. The topic is "Skillful Means (Upayas) in Zen Peacemaker Groups, Circles and Zen Houses." We will add a brief summary of each recording as time permits.
The House
of One People is a place where the world sought for unity in diversity
is housed. Here students from every race, tradition, and culture
come and practice zazen. This House can be a zendo, a barn, a
hall, the streets; any place where people come to live their vision
and where teachers promote the highest ideals of Zen insight and
integrity.
When did
I become aware of the House of One People and myself as a member
of it? It was one hot summer afternoon some years ago. My Zen
teacher Glassman Roshi led several of his students on a street
sesshin for a time of living, eating, and sleeping with the homeless
of New York City I their own habitat, the streets. As we walked
from the Manhattan Bridge to the Bowery, I overheard one student
as Glassman Roshi, "How can you make Father Kennedy a Zen teacher
and your dharma successor? After all, he is a Catholic priest!"
Glassman Roshi turned on his student with some show of impatience
and replied, "Are we one or are we not?"
Then, as
always, I was struck by the extraordinary generosity of Glassman
Roshi who did not turn away from students because they were not
Buddhist, and did not scoff at traditions other than his own.
hence I am not surprised that he now expresses his Zen vision
by welcoming all his students and friends into the House of One
People. Now that I am a Zen teacher myself I remember these lessons
learned years ago; integrate them with my own personal style and
convictions, and make my own contributions to the House of One
People. What follows is a brief description of my perception of
the role of a teacher in this House:
As a teacher
in the House of One People where my students are not Buddhists
but Jewish and Christians and atheists as well, I have changed
the procedures for bowing during interviews with my students:
instead of having them bow to me, I rise and we both bow together
to the image of the Buddha. The traditional procedures for bowing
during interviews date from the feudal period of Japanese history.
I believe they can be inappropriate in an American setting, can
lead to misunderstanding and need not be imposed on an American
student. The Buddha is an image of truth, the student's truth,
my own truth, and the truth we seek together in the interview.
Because I
am a Catholic in the House of One People, I see my role as a Zen
teacher is not only to tolerate and accept the truths found in
other faiths, but to promote them. No faith has a monopoly on
truth and students are not expected to renounce the truth that
life has taught them. My role is to promote a truth other than
my own and to repay the debt I owe my Buddhist teacher by helping
Buddhists be better Buddhists when the occasion calls for it.
Being a teacher
in the House of One People, I know I am not a model for my students
and should make no attempt to clone them after my personal vision.
No teacher should deflect students from their own truth, by neither
speech nor silence impede their personal path. The great Bodhidharma
said he taught his student Eka nothing; he just corrected his
mistakes. Even correcting "mistakes" must be done with the greatest
care. I believe only those should be Zen teaching who have made
a serious therapeutic effort to know their own unconscious motivation
that would lead them to correct a splinter in their student's
eye while ignoring the log in their own. The Tao says we should
so teach that when we finish our student says, "I did it all by
myself."
Although
I am a teacher in the House of One People I don not have a Zen
center of my own. When my students are ready to lead a group in
sitting, I encourage them to do so. I urge them to start their
own center and I teach at their center with them and slowly empower
them to take greater responsibility and to find their own voice
and vision. Then when they are ready to become teachers themselves,
they won't have to leave my center to find their way alone, but
I will leave their center and begin my work with another student.
I believe
Zen teachers in the House of One People should guide their students
free of charge. None of my teachers charged me for my development
into a Zen teacher and now I freely give what I freely received.
I support myself with work outside the Zen world and do not charge
my students for the dharma or for my personal support. My students
rent an apartment near me for their use, but it is their apartment
with their own board of trustees that accounts for all expenses.
It is a privilege
to teach in the House of One People where students who do not
usually agree with one another still dwell together in peace and
support the efforts of all who sit with them. And if we teach
well in the House of One People we will learn from our students
that we do not know the truth even in a dream, but that we will
see it blaze before our eyes moment by moment in the lives they
live together.
Meeting in the Darkness
by Francisco Genkoji Lugoviña
"If
you ask me what we do with people who come in the door, the people who
live with chronic hopelessness and fear, I'll tell you that we try to
live comfortably in their darkness. And that's the hardest thing of all."
On January 8, 1945,
my birthday, I asked the priest at La Iglesia del Perpetuo Socorro in
Bayamon, Puerto Rico, if I could become an altar boy. I had just turned
six. I was turned down outright. Too young, I was told: I had to wait
until I was eight. The tall, pale, lanky Irish priest with the kind eyes
was firm. But I would not take no for an answer and continued to ask even
though I continued to be turned down.
One day, after one of my entreaties, Father Keegan turned to me and said:
"En tu inocencia esta la sabiduria"-in your innocence lies your wisdom.
I had worn down Father Keegan and he agreed to make an exception and let
me serve.
Once
I was to assist Father Keegan at mass by myself. The moment
came when I had to move the huge prayer book from the Epistle
side to the Gospel side behind and around the priest. I
went up the three steps to the right side of the altar,
picked up the book, descended the steps, turned at the middle
of the altar, genuflected and attempted the climb of the
three steps to bring the book up to the Gospel side.
The
waiting priest, who had his back to the congregation, turned
upon hearing their laughter to see that the book was so
heavy that little Paco could not make it up the three steps.
Every persistent attempt at stepping up brought me to the
edge of being toppled back by the weight of the big book.
The priest rescued me by taking the weight off the book
as he lifted it slightly, allowing me to complete my mission
with recovered dignity. Six months later, my very close
friend, Juan, was killed by Father Keegan as the priest
was backing up his car and did not see the small child who
was waiting for him. Juan was trying to talk to Father about
he, too, becoming an altar boy. From then on, whenever I
saw Father Keegan, I was impressed by the fact that his
face and neck had become beet red, a permanent mark of his
deep grief. All he could do was hug me and cry-no words.
Soon
after the accident he told me I could not continue my altar
boy training. I felt wounded; my heart was broken. But something
had happened in the brief days I was allowed to serve. I
had learned everything I ever needed to know about being
a priest, even though I would forget lots of it and would
have to relearn it. I believe it was in that period long
ago that the seeds for my life's work were germinated.
I have
now been living and working in The Bronx, New York for fifty-one
years. What I have relearned in these many years working
in the second poorest Congressional District of the United
States (second only to one in Mississippi) is that in order
to serve one must have the openness and innocence of a child.
That compassion and love for oneself and others is essential,
and that being always mindful of the moment you are breathing
is the way to heal yourself and others.
My
mission is to work with people whom I call "wounded healers"
and their organizations in the South Bronx, to build sustainable
neighborhoods with a sound, spiritual underpinning. In light
of the many years I've spent as a businessman, I teach that
doing well should not be seen as evil or an obstacle to
spiritual transformation. My bedrock foundation is meditation
and prayer.
The
challenge is that people are very cynical, very scared,
very hungry, and very wounded. Most of all, they are feeling
very tired and uncared for. A friend once told me that wounded
humans do not care what you know; they want to know that
you care, and only then they might be interested in what
you know. If you ask me what we really do with people who
come in the door, the people who live with chronic hopelessness
and fear, I'll tell you that we try to live comfortably
in their darkness. And that's the hardest thing of all.
Somebody
comes into the employment program.
"Tell
me what you can do," I ask her.
"I
can't do nothing. I got no skills, no diploma, no job. I'm
on welfare, my mother's been on welfare, don't fuck with
me!"
I enter
her darkness.
The
hardest thing is being with people who are hurting, with
no agenda of their own, no answers. You need to stay with
them in this place and help them find the light within this
darkness.
So
I continue my interview.
"Tell
me, do your kids get fed?"
"Course
they get fed."
"Who
feeds them?"
"I
feed them."
"How
do you do that?"
"I
go to the fucking refrigerator. I look inside, I make a
list, I go to the store."
"You
know what you're telling me? You're telling me that you
do inventory, you do planning, and then you get the job
done. People go to college and get a BA to do what you did."
As
Father Keegan had done with me, I intervene only enough
to lighten the weight so they can move to the next objective
with a whole change of perspective. A wounded mother begins
to mend.
The
Latino Pastoral Action Center (LPAC) is a living experiment
testing these premises on a daily basis. LPAC was founded
by Reverend Raymond Rivera in 1992, and it is where I established
my first Peacemaker Village soon after my ordination in
July, 1997.
Raymond
has struggled with the dichotomy between the sacred and
the secular and the personal and the structural, while responding
both to those who want to save the soul and those who want
to change the system. He founded LPAC because he found it
difficult to integrate these two perspectives within the
church and the social activist communities. Since I have
also found myself in similar struggles, the LPAC Peacemaker
Village is his and my heartfelt attempt to respond to this
challenge.
The
work that our village carries out is to bring peace to these
wounded healers and their organizations. We also teach alternatives
to violence-particularly to parish youth, but also to gang
members. We accomplish this by teaching people to sit and
just be quiet; we dialogue and even teach Aikido, not necessarily
as a defense mechanism but rather as a state of mind.
At
our weekend workshops for young people, we even use some
of Thich Nhat Hanh's mindfulness practices. That's when
I can tell them about myself, that I have brailled my way
through life. That feeling my way through long periods of
darkness, I've learned that the darkness and the light come
from the same source, and that for too many of us, getting
through the darkness is our only road to getting to the
light.
For
many of the youngsters we work with, La Aldea de Paz del
Sur del Bronx (The South Bronx Peace Village at LPAC) is
the gateway out of darkness and the back to dreaming, imagining
and creating hope under circumstances that appear hopeless
to them. Our approach is to meet them where they are.
Healing:
Some Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions
by Diane Soshin Shainberg
A woman said recently
in my office, "I'm exhausted," and wept.
A man looked out
the window, was still a few moments, and then said, "I can't lie to myself
anymore about this."
These are moments
of truth. They are the moments when we feel that whatever we've discovered
or found can't be reduced any further. We've come to the very bottom,
there is nothing more left to unpack. This is it!
It sometimes takes
years to come to these moments of truth. And when we do, the potential
for healing arises.
As a peacemaker priest
I live with the tenet of healing and uphold it. As a psychologist I study
the process of how we heal. As a psychotherapist I recognize and validate
moments of healing as they occur. I encourage clients to see and appreciate
their healing process.
Our dictionary definition
of healing is to recover from sickness or a wound. This is a process,
not a final state or cure. It is the process of learning to touch with
kindness and awareness what has formerly been touched with fear. Stephen
Levine, a famous teacher of healing, says that healing occurs when we
begin to send merciful awareness into what we formerly dreaded and hated.
Often that starts
with the recognition and admission, without judgment, that we have a sickness,
that we have a wound within. As we make contact with our wounds or traumas,
memories of how the wound happened will often spontaneously arise. We
are asked to pay attention and recognize what's going on inside us, become
aware of our bodily sensations, our thoughts, changing memories, feelings,
images and dreams, without judgment or opinion. As we do that, as we stay
present, the hurt begins to ease or soften. We feel the experience in
our body, we open and shift.
We see that it is
we who are creating our own unhappiness. It is not something that happened
to us in the past, it is not something our mothers and fathers made happen.
It is something we are doing right now, all day, every day, hour after
hour, as we cling to our stories, dwell and indulge in them, obsess over
them. We become aware of how we hang onto our images, stories, identities,
old object relations. We explore the effects of this attachment, we stay
present in the pain this evokes and ask ourselves whether it brings us
what we want.
By staying open and
present in the healing process we learn what it truly means to begin to
trust the universe. We are asked to just be. We don't have to accomplish
anything, there's no pressure to become or produce. We come into the present
moment and stay open, stay present. We leave behind our stories and beliefs,
our obsessions and preoccupations, and come into the terrain of nowness.
We enter the unknown.
In that state of
openness and presence, we come into contact with a personal treasure house,
a moving, dancing force within us that keeps bringing to us sensations,
feelings, and thoughts that could be called our healing power. It contains
within it all the seed potentials we were born with and that have been
hidden in us since childhood. They come forth into our awareness when
we let ourselves be and get out of our own way, and we begin to heal.
It is a therapist's skill to recognize the emergence of these potentials,
such as strength, clarity, will, peace, creativity, immediacy, compassion,
love, and self-value, and to support and validate them.
To heal is to recognize
what is there, and to let "it" unfold as it will. We thus trust that there
is a wisdom in us that will bring forth whatever needs to be heard in
the moment. We heal as we learn to respect this innate wisdom within us.
As we let go of trying to control this flow of life, we begin to heal,
for we naturally let our organism do what it does with brilliance: spontaneously
bring us arisings and naturally let them pass.
Healing occurs as
we let the fresh new possibilities arise in each moment and tell us what
they have to say. This happens when we choose to drop our story and come
into contact with NOW, and commit to staying present and seeing how life
will unfold.
Kalu Rinpoche, head
of the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu lineage, said this in a talk before he died:
"When you enter
the moment
As it is arising
So are you
healed
So are you
complete
When you
see that you are nothing
Then you
are everything.
That is it."
Our healing is to
surrender the "I," "me," "my," and to fall right into the heart of the
moment. As we stay present we see the "whole catastrophe" played out in
front of us. We have every conceivable idea, fantasy, mood, and mental
state pass through us. We recognize what is arising and let it be. We
don't indulge or repress. And when we do that, something radically revolutionary
happens. We see that whatever arises, self-liberates. Whatever arises,
when seen and heard and given its space to exist, naturally dissolves
and passes on its own. This process of arising and existing and passing
frees us forever from being stuck with anything in our life. Everything
that arises passes when we don't choose to cling to it.
That means that everything
in our life is workable. Nothing will last if we don't grasp onto it.
This means that we can choose freedom. We can choose to let go of our
stories and see what will happen. And whatever happens will be a new moment
with new possibilities.
We can either carry
around the baggage of our stories or pop out of them into the vivid aliveness
of the moment. Our life literally hangs on a breath. Moment after moment,
we are free to make a choice to be free or to cling to the past. We can
be the Buddha of 1998 rather than aspire to the one who lived 2,500 years
ago!
Andrew Harvey wrote
a book on Rumi's life called The Way of Passion in which he said that
the work of the Sufi master is to tear our heart open. Then tear it open
some more. Then tear it more and more until it is so open it holds the
whole world within it.
Moments of grasping
our magnificence occur and they break our hearts open, for ourselves and
others. Someone recently said that you might as well not try to fix your
broken heart for it will just break over and over at seeing how beautiful
we all are and how we often don't appreciate it. I recently said to a
client asking about love, "Love is as is. It doesn't ask for anything
to be different."