MINDMOONCIRCLE

Journal of the
Sydney Zen Centre
Winter 2009

Dedication
This issue of Mind Moon Circle chronicles the beginning of the Sydney Zen Centre. It records
how we came to be. 2009 is the 50th anniversary of the Diamond Sangha and the 30th
anniversary of Aitken Roshi’s first visit to Australia to lead sesshin. These stories tell how wecame from there to here.
It is dedicated to:• Robert Aitken Roshi and Anne Hopkins Aitken, with deep gratitude for their wisdom,
their teachings and their dedication to the way
It is also dedicated to:• John Cooper, who guided so many to the way. A deep bow of gratitude.
Contents:
Kathy Ratliff 1
Leigh Davison
Patrick Kearney
Paul Maloney
Geoff Dawson
Marion Bagot
Kim Bagot
Subhana Barzhagi
Gillian and Tony Coote
Allan Marett
Brendon Stewart
Caroline Josephs
Philip Long
Sally Hopkins
Carl Hooper
Clinton Smith
Jean Brick
Brain Gutkin
Larry Agriesti
Jonathon Case

Robert Aitken Roshi and Anne-Hopkins Aitken: Founding the
Diamond Sangha
We all have questions
Finding Bodhidharma
How a brolga came to the billabong: Confessions of a sleepwalker
My time with the Sydney Zen Centre
Family Zen
In silence you hear its greeting and some meanderings
I met a stone bridge in a tiny room
Sangha Building
Asking the way to Cold Mountain
I get to Zen in my car
20 years with the Sydney Zen Centre
Phone Zen
Mysteries glimpsed in the rear vision mirror
How did you ...?
Invocation
Coming home
How I got here
From there to here
Getting here

Attributions for visuals used in this edition can be found on pages 15 and 20.
Editors:

Jean Brick; Paul Maloney

Mind Moon Circle is published quarterly by the Sydney Zen Centre,
251 Young Street, Annandale, NSW 2038, Australia. www.szc.org.au
Annual subscription A$28. Printed on recycled paper.
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Reprinted from The Diamond Sangha at 50: 1959-2009. Program for the 50th Anniversary Celebrations. Honolulu
Diamond Sangha

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Founding the Diamond Sangha
Robert Aitken Roshi & Anne Hopkins Aiken:
Robert Baker Aitken first tasted Zen
while he was interned in a Japanese prison campduring World War 11. He was a civilian employee
on Guam when the Japanese invaded, and was taken
to Japan for the duration of the war. There was little
in the camp to read, but he was given a copy of R. H.
Blythe's Zen in English Literature by a Japaneseprison guard, and it captured his imagination. He
read the book multiple times during his internment
years, and surprisingly, met R. H. Blythe, who wasinterned in the same camp. Returning to California
after the war, he searched for a Zen teacher, finallyfinding Senzaki Nyogen Roshi in San Francisco. He
also met his second wife, Anne Arundel Hopkins,
who hired him to teach English at the Happy Valley
School in Ojai, California. As soon as he could, he returned to Japan to pursue his Zen training, bringing along
his new bride on their honeymoon. Senzaki Roshi gave him letters of introduction, and he became one of acohort of now well-known Western Zen students that included Gary Snyder, Phillip Yampolski, and Ruth Fuller
Sasaki. Eventually he worked with Yasutani Haku'un Roshi, and after Yasutani's death, with Yamada Koun
Roshi in the Sanbo Kyodan line of Zen, a line that descended from Harada Roshi and combines elements of both
Soto and Rinzai teachings.
Bob Aitken and his wife moved back to Hawaii, where he had grown up, to be near his young son Tom, who
was living with Bob’s first wife. He entreated both Yasutani and Yamada to lead sesshin in their small house in
Kuliouou, and later in the house he and Anne purchased in Manoa Valley, and at the property they had acquired
on Maui. Yasutani was able to do so on several occasions, and Yamada Roshi visited frequently and was integral
in the formation and development of strong sanghas on Maui and in Honolulu. It was Yamada's inspiration that
named the Manoa house Koko An, and the Hawaii group the Honolulu Diamond Sangha.
In 1974 Yamada gave Bob permission to teach. By this time, he was living most of the time on Maui, having
inspired a large group of motley souls who were mostly hippies, with the.Zen fever. He and Anne traveled backand forth to Honolulu, teaching at the Koko An Zendo in Manoa Valley. His book, Taking the Path of Zen, waspublished in 1982, and is still required reading for new students in the Honolulu Diamond Sangha. By the mid
1980s the sangha was concentrated in Honolulu and the Aitkens moved back to 0’ahu. The Maui Zendo property
was sold and land was purchased to build a new practice center in Palolo Valley with living quarters for Aitken
Roshi and his wife. This center was built mostly by Zen students, and was completed enough to hold the first
sesshin in 1993. Anne died in 1994, and Robert Aitken retired from full-time teaching in 1996, moving to the
Big Island of Hawaii to live near his now adult son Tom. In 2002 the Koko An property was sold and the sangha
activities moved full time to the Palolo Zen Center.
Aitken Roshi named four of his students his direct descendants in the late 1980s; Nelson Foster, John Tarrant,
Pat Hawk and Augusto Alcalde, all of whom started Zen centers of their own across the United States and theworld. Others followed. At this celebration of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Diamond Sangha in
Honolulu in 2009, Aitken Roshi is 92 years old. He is enjoying the presence of almost all of the 25 Zen teachersaffiliated with the Diamond Sangha from Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and multiple states across the U.S.
mainland. He is living at the Palolo Zen Center, in the heart of the sangha, and he continues to participate in its
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activities as he is able. He has published 15 books over his lifetime and his teachings of authentic Zen continue
to multiply around the world.

Anne Hopkins Aitken was born in Illinois in 1911 to a family of some means, and was able to travel
during her early years, and also to study. She had a BA in English from Scripps College, and a MA in sociology
from Northwestern. She was interested in poetry and art and literature. She traveled a lot, did volunteer work
during the war, and enjoyed life, She was living with a group of friends in Mexico when she decided that it wastime to begin her adult life. She moved to California and took a job as assistant to the headmaster at the Happy
Valley School in Ojai. Anne always thought of herself as a person who enabled others to do great things. Her
position as assistant to the headmaster put her in the place she felt she had the most skills. She was happiest
being in the background. It was at the Happy Valley School that she met Robert Aitken - she hired him to teachEnglish.
After their wedding, her new husband Bob Aitken whisked her away to Japan on their honeymoon - he, topursue Zen training at Ryutakuji, and she - well, she wasn't sure what she was getting into. Anne's mother had
pursued many spiritual paths and exposed her daughter to numerology, Krishnamurti, and other spiritual pursuitsthat she had come across. But Zen was new to Anne. At that first sesshin she was not a participant. She stayed inher room in the temple, wondering at the monks who hit others with a stick, the bell that rang intermittently
outside her door as sesshin participants sat waiting
their turn for dokusan, and the serious expressions on
their faces she saw when she peeked out at them. At
the second sesshin, when her husband abandoned her
yet again, putting her in the care of an elderly woman
who lived across the fields from the zendo, shedecided to see what it was all about. She couldn't bearto let the 80-year old woman traipse across the field tothe temple at such an early hour by herself, and so
Anne went with her.
By then, Anne realized that Zen was a serious pursuit,and she tried her best. The celebrations around the few
practitioners who attained kensho at the end of sesshin
made her realize that there might be something thatmattered here. In her story, In Spite of Myself,
published in Kahawai, Anne talked about the 12 years she practiced before she was able to realize her own
kensho. Her discouragement and disillusionment parallels many of our own experiences, and through writing
about them, she encouraged us to persist. Although she enjoyed her koan study, she did not want to teach. She
wrote about her joy in beginning her koan practice all over again in her later years.
Through this time, she and Bob were.active in Hawaii, on Oahu and Maui, starting and nurturing a growing
community of folks in their own Zen practice. Anne led work parties, supervised young undisciplined andidealistic hippies in building and maintaining temples on both islands, and forged ahead with her own practice.
She inherited some money, and used it to support both her husband's Zen practice, and the fledgling Zen centers
on Maui and Oahu. The Maui and Koko An Zendos were both purchased by Anne, and eventually donated to thesangha.
Anne was an inspiration to the members of the sangha. Her lightness of being, her strong enthusiasm for thepractice, and her conviction about the potential of every person she came in contact with elevated her beyond the
support person she envisioned herself to be. She particularly supported the women by listening, paying attention,and communicating her certainty that everything would work out just fine. When she invited you to tea you felt
special.
2Anne died of heart failure in 1994. She had been marshalling her energies carefully for several years before her
death, but the end came swiftly, in just a few days. The last thing I heard her say, in a breathless and soundlessutterance at her hospital bedside was whispered into Aitken Roshi's ear as he bent down to her. She said, 'I loveyou.’
The Kahawai editor's comment introducing Anne's article, ‘In Spite of Myself’, said, ‘This sangha would not live
without the love and dedication of Anne Aitken.’ What a legacy for this beatific woman who liked to standbehind others. In spite of herself, indeed.

We all have questions
Leigh Davison
We all have questions. In the early 1960s two theories competed for the explanation of why theuniverse appeared to be expanding. One was the now familiar Big Bang Theory. The other was
the Steady State Theory which proposed an expanding universe in which the gaps created byexpansion were filled by matter which continuously manifested out of nothingness. I was astudent of physics and found the Steady State Theory to be the more appealing of the two. But
after reflecting on the issue of why matter would manifest out of nothing, either continuously or
as a one-off singularity, I got stuck on the question of why would matter manifest at all. My
question became ‘why isn’t there just nothing?’
Fast forward to January 1975. ‘Sit like Buddha and you become Buddha!’. The speaker was a Japanese Zenmonk, Rev. Shibuya. The place was the Japanese Temple at Bodh Gaya, India. Shibuya san had studied English
literature in Japan and written a thesis on the works of William Wordsworth. His professor, unable to answer hisquestion: ‘What is mind?’ had directed him to the local Zen temple, where he learned that there is a placebeyond questions and answers and to get there you will need a zafu. On being posted to Bodh Gaya Shibuya san
had trained a local tailor in the art of zafu making. I spent two months with Shibuya san, sitting for an hour with
him twice a day and chanting the Heart Sutra every evening without having any understanding as to its meaning.
The intervening hours were spent pleasantly enough, mostly in a restaurant run by Tibetan refugees, discussing
topics like karma with other western travellers and Buddhist dabblers and dilettantes.
Karma works in strange ways. In 1974, just prior to my India trip, I had taken two Tibetan lamas to the Zoo.
‘Fantastic karma,’ I was told. When people realised that I was planning a trip to Nepal later that year, theeyebrows were raised even higher. ‘You must visit their monastery in the Kathmandu Valley! Don’t blow thiskarmic opportunity!’ The purpose of the planned trip was to clear my mind after four years of post grad study on
the stresses and deflections in the hulls of Royal Australian Navy frigates. The plan was to walk to the Everest
base camp and back with a view to experiencing the scenery and the culture and to forgetting the recent frenzy ofacademic pursuit. After the walk I did go to the monastery, but found it difficult to visualise every sentient being
as my mother in a previous incarnation. Rational mind still getting in the way. And it made me wonder about thekarmic implications of my previous work on warship design. Too threatening. The higher you get in the game ofspiritual snakes and ladders, it appeared, the further you can fall.
While the previous year’s trip to the Zoo was said to be my reward for several lifetimes of saintly behaviour, I
was in danger of blowing an opportunity that was said to be as unlikely as a turtle putting its head through a gold
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ring thrown into the ocean. Nevertheless I had left Kathmandu with the lamas’ blessingsand headed for Bodh Gaya at their suggestion. The meeting with Shibuya san was timely
and the practice refreshingly straightforward. For someone with an overly active left brain
the idea of ‘just sitting’ had appeal. The incomprehensible Heart Sutra added a tinge of
mystery. However the comfortable routine of my spiritual endeavour was interrupted by
the karmic intervention of a hepatitis virus, which must have been carried by a fly from thepit toilet at the Tibetan restaurant to my plate of chapattis and scrambled eggs. It was lateMarch and the north Indian plain was already heating up. No place to recover from hep.
Where to go? I was about to flip a coin in New Delhi. Heads to London, tails back to
Sydney, a job and everyday life. But as fate would have it I met an old acquaintance on her
way from London back to Sydney. She gave me the address of a squat in London where I
could stay for free. That’s karma for you. I knew I wasn’t quite ready for everyday life. I
put the coin away and packed my zafu for the flight to England where I discovered
Throssel Hole Priory, a Zen monastery in Northumberland. I found the daily routine offour one hour zazen periods interspersed with periods of mindful work
most agreeable. The abbot was a chubby cheerful gent whose previous
job had been lead guitar in a rock band. The sutras were chanted in
English to the tune of a Gregorian chant. I spent a total of two months
there. There was a sense of loss in learning what the Heart Sutra was
all about. This was offset by the realisation of its relevance to myquestion.
On returning to Sydney in late 1975 I started looking for others withwhom to sit zazen. Within a short time Paul Maloney, Peter Thompsonand Liz Statis were coming around to my mother’s place in Brisbane
Avenue, East Lindfield. An old acquaintance, Stuart Glanfield, waslooking to set up a Buddhist house and he and I rented a place in
Norwood Avenue, Lindfield in early 1976. We held regular weekly
sittings and monthly overnight zazenkai. John Cooper’s yoga classproved to be a fruitful recruiting ground and before long a sangha ofcommitted practitioners had emerged. The events at Norwood Ave
were complemented by Sunday sittings at John and Shirley Coopers
beautiful studio at Hunters Hill. Jeff Dawson arrived fresh from a long
period of Zen practice in Kyoto. It became clear to us that do-ityourself Zen was a good way to start but that we really needed to hookup with an established teacher. A group in New Zealand was having
annual sesshin with Sazaki Roshi and a few of us went over for asesshin near Wellington. Meanwhile Jeff had acquired a cassette tape of a talk by Robert
Aitken Roshi. The idea of an American teacher was appealing. We made contact and Roshi
sent us personalised tapes and was very encouraging. Jeff and I decided to go to Hawaii tomake direct contact and enrolled in the training period at Maui Zendo to commence in June
1978. Meanwhile the early months of 1978 had been particularly active with a bunch of us
travelling to the Forest Meditation Centre at The Channon (Lismore area) for a one weekretreat. Then an Easter sesshin at Dungog in a converted milking shed. Up to my departurefor Maui I had been the secretary of what had emerged as the Sydney Zen Group. This office
was taken up by Patrick Kearney on my departure.
And with that, I’ll let Patrick take up the story.
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Finding Bodhidharma
Patrick Kearney
How did I come to the practice of Zen? Through a cushion, and a posture. Let me explain.
Early in 1976 I travelled to Sri Lanka and India in search of a meditation practice. As an existentially-troubled
professional university student, I had experienced a revelation while reading Nyanaponika Thera’s book, The
heart of Buddhist meditation. Reading it I knew, ‘I have to do this!’ Nothing seemed available in Australia at thetime, so I dropped out of university and went to Asia. Where, instead of enlightenment I found hepatitis. Late in1976 I was back home, wondering how to proceed.
At this point, I saw an advertisement in the paper about a talkto be given by a visiting Tibetan lama in North Sydney. I
attended, and found the lama’s dharma talk to be extremely
boring. But he was conducting a weekend retreat in Sydney,
and I went along to meditate and listen to more talks. While
his talks continued to be boring, there was one thing thatcaught my interest.
In the meditation hall I was sitting on a hopelessly inadequate
cushion in a hopelessly inadequate posture when, in a
moment of distraction, I noticed the cushion next to me. Big.
Black. Firm. Supporting. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get a cushion
like that!’ Then I noticed the legs supported by the cushion,wrapped in full lotus, the back rising vertically, and the handsin perfect mudra. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get a posture likethat!’At the time I was too shy to speak to the owner of the cushionand posture, but I did have the presence of mind to sign on toa mailing list he distributed at the end of the retreat. The only
communication I received from it was an advertisement for ayoga course run by a fellow named John Cooper. I went, andthere, in the class, was my cushion-posture owner, cheerfully
Xuanzang:doing impossible asanas. At the end of the class John allowed
Going to the west to collect sutras
him to advertise a regular meditation gathering he hadorganised, which he called the Sydney Zen Group. Lusting after both cushion and posture, I joined up.
I am speaking, of course, of Leigh Davison. I joined the Sydney Zen Group because they offered the appropriatetechnology for the job (refer to cushion, above), meditation periods of appropriate length (30 minutes, later, in aclear indication of the decline of the dharma, reduced to 25), and instructions in posture. Also, they offered what
I have never seen so strongly displayed in a meditation group since — a robust sense of self reliance. We had noteacher. We were not just practising Zen, we were inventing it as we went along, supporting each other in our
discovery of the dharma. It was this determination, I think, that attracted Robert Aitken Rōshi to Australia.
After three years with the Sydney Zen Group, I followed our pioneers to Hawaii. I planned to do a three monthtraining period at the Maui Zendo before returning to Asia, but stayed two years — I liked it there! As for Zen
practice, the Rōshi examined me on the Mu kōan, but resolutely refused to accept my ‘I don’t know’ asequivalent to Bodhidharma’s ‘I don’t know.’ I am tempted to say I don’t know why he did this, but suspect I do
know why.
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I returned to Asia to find what I found missing in my Zen training — the specifics of meditation method. Not
naturally talented in this regard, I needed to be taught how to meditate. I kept asking the Rōshi questions along
the lines of, ‘Such-&-such happened during the last sitting period, so I did this-&-that — was that right?’ But hewas not interested. He just wanted to know about Mu. I was more interested in meditation itself.
It was in Burma, at the Mahāsī Centre, that I received the detailed training in meditation practice, as well as an
introduction to the classical Buddhist tradition, that I was looking for. Years later I became a dharma teacher inthe lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw, and my main focus has been the conveying of a skill — the art and craft ofmeditation practice. I have also studied the Buddha’s life and teachings, in an effort to understand what he wastrying to convey to us. While I was living at the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre as their resident
teacher I renewed my friendship with my old Zen mate, Paul Maloney, with whom I would occasionally discuss
the idea of a return to the Mu kōan, to see if I could really not know what was going on.
Eventually Paul became authorised to teach, and not long after came to the Centre and announced, ‘Right! Now
we can talk!’ He hustled me off to begin my kōan training. Thus I got sucked in again. Now I find myself
exploring the Zen tradition from a base in the Theravāda, not trying to force them together, but allowing them to
inform each other.
As to this ‘Mu’ business, I’m still working on not-knowing. It’s difficult, though. Too simple. Even ‘I don’t
know’ is too much. And working on not-knowing is far too much. Maybe I’ll go for a walk, instead.

How a Brolga Came to the Billabong:
Confessions of a Sleepwalker
Paul MaloneyMarked by encounters with passing strangers and unexplained choices, my journey to the SZC started 50 years
ago. At the age of 20 I was trying to come to terms with two major issues in my life: the Death of God, and theprospect of nuclear annihilation in the event that the Cold War became hot. A life expectancy of 20 minutes is
not very comforting.
Kirkegaard’s Christian existentialism held no appeal for me, although I had some admiration for the atheistic
existentialists, such as Satre, for their stance in the face of nothingness and absurdity. However, I did not feelsatisfied with their response to the Death of God. In fact, one of the things that first attracted me to the Way of
Zen was that its exponents seemed to be able to play in the void, rather than stand in despair on the edge of theabyss.
In 1959 ‘Australian Zen’ was the antipodean child of American ‘beat Zen’: a strange creature marked by
Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Camus, washed down with red wine and black coffee to the accompaniment of modern
Jazz. It was a long way from where we are now, but it was good fun all the same. I had to start my journey
somewhere.
It’s 1961 and I am living in Melbourne, having dropped out of university and given up my engineering
cadetship. During the day I am working on tool design drawings for the Mirage jet fighter, and hanging out with
11artists at night. Existential ambivalence. In my boarding house room one Thursday night I answer a knock on
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my door. A stranger introduces himself as George (??), a yoga practitioner on his way to India to find a guru. A
mutual friend in Sydney had asked him to call on me when his ship reached Melbourne. Knowing nothing aboutyoga, I listen to what he has to say. He gives me a list of books on yoga-related subjects and departs; out of thedoor, and out of my life. The following Saturday I go down the road and discover a newly opened second handbookshop. I walk in as if drawn by a magnet, go straight to the back of the shop, reach down to the lowest shelf.
Sitting there are three of the books on George’s list, 10 shillings each; a bargain. I hurry home and read withwonder and awe. My mind is opened up to new possibilities. Hinduism, the Vedanta, Yoga. Thank you George,
wherever you may be.
Back in Sydney in ‘61 I start hatha yoga. Continue reading Zen while drinking red wine and black coffee, adenizen of Lorenzini’s Bistro. The ‘zen’ in denizen is the closest I get to the subject in these years.
In ’63 I return to Sydney after another year in Melbourne. I start modern dance training with Margaret Barr, who
introduces me to my body. Until now its main function has been to carry my head around. In finding my body I
also find movement and rhythm. It is a wonderful gift. Thank you Margaret, and all those, including a very
young Caroline Josephs, who danced with me during those five wonderful years.
One day in ‘65 friends visiting from Melbourne invite me to a
pub lunch – beer and steak. It is at that moment I make thedecision that is to change the course of my life. I decline theirinvitation and choose to go to a Lebanese vegetarian restaurant
in Liverpool Street. There I run into Russell Atkinson, myformer yoga teacher, who introduces me to his dining
companion whose name I promptly forget. What I do not forget
is what he tells me. He has been studying Aikidō in Sydney!
How can that be, I enquire, as I only know of Aikido as amysterious Japanese Martial Art. Not so, he replies, there is aJapanese Aikidō teacher teaching in West Ryde. I go to theclass the same night and my life is re-directed. The stranger
never went Aikido again. I, on the other hand practiced every
week.
It is June 1966 and I am sitting on a beach looking into a fire. I
have been on this beach for almost two weeks. I had a deep urge
to get away by myself and sit on a beach, and somehow ended
up on a desert island. Just me, me without books: that wasdifficult for the first few days, as I could not remember a time
without books. That time alone, without the possibility ofescaping into words, has changed me. I have sunk into a deep
quiet and, looking into the fire, I notice that I am, ever so
subtly, anxious. And I notice that this anxiety is a chronic
condition, one that I had always been too busy to notice. And I
ask myself, ‘Why am I afraid?’ The question sinks into me, andI sink into the question. I go to bed with the question. It turns
out to be a ‘natural koan,’ although I did know that there wassuch a thing at the time.
I have a dream that I am standing outside a stone castle with six doors. I enter each one and walk to the centre. I
each case I find no one there, the castle is empty. And I understand that I have no self, there is no one to protect.
The castle has been constructed in vain. I wake up, go outside in the dark. I now understand that the wind,
waves, trees, everything, including me, are but the forms of a universal ‘substance.’ Years later I read Hakuin’s
Song of Zazen, ‘All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water.’ We are all brothers and sisters. More7

to the point, I understand that dying is nothing more than an ice cube falling into the ocean. The form dissolves
while the ‘water’ goes on. I am at peace. I like this feeling.
It is October ‘66, and I am on another beach, this time north of Cairns. In The
Matter of Zen, I read that when it comes to Zen there are two things. There isreading about Zen, and there is the practice of Zen. These two should not be
confused, so don’t think you are doing one while you are doing the other. This
struck home. I fashioned some sand and made my first ‘zafu’, sat down and started
zazen for the first time. It had taken me seven years to reach this point on my Zen
Way. I do zazen every day, morning and evening for the next three months,
gradually deepening my practice. Returning to Sydney I continued with my zazen
and determine to go to Japan.
It is May ’68 and I am in the Aikidō dōjo in Tokyo, having been gifted with a rarecultural studies visa allowing me to stay in Japan for six months. I tell myself that I
have come to Japan to study Zen, but in fact all I’m doing is Aikidō. But hey,
hasn’t D.T. Suzuki told the world that Zen and the Sword are one (zen ken ichi)?
So if I am studying martial arts I am also studying Zen, right? Well, no, not right.
But self deception is a great comfort. Furthermore, Aikido has nothing to do with
Zen as its spiritual basis is Shinto not Buddhism. But I did not know that either.
Sunday 1 December 1968, the start of my first sesshin at Ruytakuji with Nakagawa
Sōen Roshi. I have come with the expectation of getting enlightened, instead I get aweek of pain! The zazen pain is to be my faithful companion for many years. I am
like a hungry dog by a vat of boiling fat; enticed by the smell but wary of the pain. Suzuki had not mentioned thepain. Then again, he did not mention that zazen was central to Zen. In retrospect it can be seen that there wasmuch of Zen that he did not mention. Philip Kapleau, in his Three Pillars of Zen, was much more realistic about
the practice. I was introduced to his wife in Kamakura, but that was before I had read his book. So I did not
realise until many years later how close I had come to meeting Yamada Roshi and possibly even to Aitken
Roshi. Such is life.
Instead of sitting with the Sanbokyodan, I find myself practicing at Engakuji, one of the oldest Zen temples inJapan. It was at Engakuji that I learned to really sit. At the interview prior to starting practice, Adachi Roshi
asked me why I wanted to do zazen? I bit the bullet and confessed I wanted satori. He said, ‘All you foreigners
are like that. If I had satori I would be dead.’ I realise, once again, I still have much to learn about Zen. In
particular, the closer one comes to practice, the less one hears about satori or enlightenment.
It is 1974. I am back in Sydney with an interest in starting a Japanese cultural centre and have been advised that
I should talk to a John Cooper at the Australia Council. So here I am sitting opposite John Cooper, this large
jovial man with a full beard and glasses, and a great smile. While sitting there I suddenly realised that he is thestranger who directed me to the Aikidō teacher so many years before. And here we were again: the circle wascomplete. He is as pleased as I am surprised. From there I attend his yoga classes, and it is here I first meet Leigh
Davison. In the meantime I continued to sit zazen by myself.
Late in ‘75 Leigh calls me after returning from close encounters with Zen in India and England. He suggests westart doing zazen together at his mother’s house. On the first night there were three of us, Leigh, Liz Stanis andme. That is how the Sydney Zen sangha started. I often wonder if, had Leigh not called, would I still be sitting
alone?
Sunday 18 February, my 40th birthday, and the first day of our first sesshin with Aitken Roshi. I am sitting with
Mu. Home at last, after 20 years of wandering, lost on dark paths of ignorance. I gassho in gratitude to all those
who did so much to set me right.
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My time with the Sydney Zen Centre
Geoff Dawson
I began my Zen training in Japan in 1976. I had travelled there specifically for that purpose as there were no Zenteachers or Zen groups anywhere in Australia at that time. I studied with Kobori Roshi at Daitokuji in Kyoto for
one year. At the end of that time I decided that I didn’t want to become a Zen monk but I was serious about
practice and wanted to belong to a Zen community to further my training. Kobori Roshi told me about Robert
Aitken Roshi who headed a Lay Zen Community in Hawaii and who would be a suitable teacher for me. I
returned to Sydney planning to follow up this lead.
In Sydney I met Paul Maloney, who was working at the Japan Information Centre. He told me about a small
group of people who were sitting together in Lindfield and suggested I contact Leigh Davison, who had started a
Zen meditation group. This was the seed from which the Sydney Zen Centre grew. Leigh was (and still is) a finegardener and the seed flourished. I remember vividly many people from those early days. Paul Maloney, Kim
Bagot and Marion Bagot, Peter Thompson, Patrick Kearney to mention just a few. Leigh had also started anewsletter called Nothing Special, which some years later when I became the editor, I changed (for better or forworse) to its present name Mind, Moon, Circle.
Leigh had written to a number of Zen teachers to invite them to come to Australia to teach. However he nevergot any takers. I then wrote to Robert Aitken to explore the idea of practising with him in Hawaii and also to
invite him to Sydney. He responded very warmly and generously and began to regularly send tapes of Dharmatalks, general chit chat and encouragement. In the meantime, we also held the first sesshin in Australia, without ateacher, at the Forest Centre built by Subhana and other community members of Bodhi Farm and Dharmananda.
This must have been a very formative sesshin as there are number of people who did this first sesshin who havegone on to become teachers, Subhana, Paul Maloney, Chi Kwang, and myself.
As far as coming to Australia was concerned, Robert Aitken proposed that some of us go over to Hawaii first to
train to see whether anything could grow organically from it. However he was already rather impressed that we
had conducted a sesshin without a teacher as this was unheard of in America or Japan. The Australians started toget a reputation as quite a feisty lot!
Leigh, myself, John Tarrant and Susan Murcott. John’s American partner at the time, went together to Hawaii in
1978 and began our first training period at the Maui Zendo. Robert Aitken soon decided that we were serious
and decided to go to Sydney the following year and hold sesshin. I was not at that first sesshin in Burradoo as I
was still training in Hawaii but I believe it attracted about 30 people. Aitken Roshi came with Michael Kieran as
his assistant and they continued to come each year for many years.
In the meantime, Leigh returned to Australia with Ellen Davison after one year in Hawaii and they married andsettled at Dharmananda in The Channon near Lismore. John and Susan continued to live in Hawaii and I
returned to Sydney after two years.
By that time the Sydney Zen Group had moved from Lindfield to meeting in a Buddhist temple in China town. I
was keen to develop the group further and have our own place so I rented a terrace house in Kirribilli across theroad from Paul Maloney and it became the centre of the Sydney Zen Group’s activities. After six months wefound more suitable accommodation back in Lindfield and were there until 1986. During this time the groupgrew in both depth and numbers with an ongoing schedule of daily sitting, zazenkais and sesshin, conductedwith and without a teacher. Robert Aitken continued to come each year and nurture the group and other people
started to go to Hawaii for more intensive practice. The roots were becoming deeper and the relationships
stronger.
9

One year, I think 1982, Robert Aitken was having a long bout of illness and I was over in Hawaii visiting him
and doing sesshin. He was too ill to come to Australia the following year and I asked him to suggest analternative teacher. He recommended Charlotte Joko Beck, who held sesshin in Burradoo in his place. A
number of people from Brisbane and Sydney were very impressed with Joko and her style of teaching. In order
to avoid any conflict of interest, it was decided that Joko would continue to visit Australia as the teacher of the
Brisbane Zen Group.
During this time I was keen to find land to start a country retreat centre as well as having a city centre. I found
Gorrick’s Run after much searching and as soon as I drove up onto that wide open paddock after travellingthrough muddy creeks and winding back roads, I knew in my gut that this was it.
The Sydney Zen Group became incorporated as the Sydney Zen Centre and after some difficult legal wrangles
with the vendors that lasted over a year, we finally owned it - or it owned us. Tony Coote designed the firstbuilding and supervised the construction over many, many working weekends. In the meantime, the group
moved from Lindfield to Killara for about a year and finally moved to Young Street Annandale where it remains
today.

Postscript
In writing about my involvement with the Sydney Zen Centre I have been pondering over whether certain
unpleasant aspects should be left out, but decided to present the bare facts without apportioning blame.
In 1991, along with Subhana and Ross Bolleter, I became an apprentice Zen teacher under John Tarrant. In 1992
I moved to live in Hobart with my newly wedded wife, Diana and set up a Hobart Zen Group. After a conflictwith John Tarrant over the way decisions were being made, my apprentice teacher status was revoked by John,10and in either 92 or 93 I withdrew my membership of the Sydney Zen Centre and the Diamond Sangha. Thisdecision was not made by Robert Aitken but he supported John as the senior teacher and this led to my loss oftrust in him as a teacher.
My decision to stay or to leave the Diamond Sangha came down to a decision of maintaining personal integrityor the need to belong to a Dharma family that had been very important to me in my life. It was a very painful
experience for me emotionally. I had been frustrated with the decision making process of the Sydney Zen
Centre and some of the directions the Sangha was going in for some time and the revocation of my teaching role
was the catalyst that finally led me to leaving.
After I left I furthered my training and my relationship with Charlotte Joko Beck over another ten years, set up
the Ordinary Mind Zen School in Sydney and received Dharma Transmission from Joko in 1993.
In the meantime I initiated a reconciliation some years ago with Robert Aitken, not with the intention ofrejoining the Diamond Sangha, but just to put matters to rest. It was not successful and I let the matter go andcame to the conclusion that the only resolution was that there was no resolution. However I met up with Roshi a
few years ago in Hawaii with the view to just having a chat as old friends, and we parted warmly. There is truthin the clichéd expression that time (plus practice) heals all wounds. I am hoping to meet up with him again later
this year on my way to see Joko. Both of them are well into their nineties and I would like to see them again face
to face before they pass on to express my gratitude for the teaching they have generously given me.

Family Zen
Marion Bagot
I came to Zen through John Cooper. First some basic breath counting
at the end of his yoga classes; then a day of introductory zazen at hisplace – a Sunday of sunlight and stillness there in the bush – my first
introduction to the power of silence. And to Leigh, generous withyoghurt cheese, raw cauliflower salad and an air of chuckling even instillness. After that lunch, time for questions and the somewhat scary
Paul Maloney with his absolute attitude to dealing with pain.
From there, weekly zazen at Leigh and Stewart’s in Norwood
Avenue, and later in the old Chinese Buddhist temple before Dixon
Street was done up, with intermittent Chinese visitors offeringbunches of incense at the altar while we sat. The night when we took
the wrong staircase and found ourselves in a doss house of elderly
Chinese men.
I didn’t mind zazen on the whole, but Kim had seen the light. It was years before I caught myself running fromthe kitchen to the dojo, and realized I actually wanted to be there. But at the beginning, Kim couldn’t understand
why I was lukewarm; I couldn’t understand the passion. There seemed no choice but to go along with it – notunusual I guess, where passion confronts the lukewarm. I resisted my first zazenkai; I hoped fervently that therising waters would keep us from getting to our first Easter sesshin at Dungog. Still, I have fond memories of11

sitting in the old cowshed there – keeping an eye out for the floorboards in kinhin; cooking with Paul, shockedthat he would signal lunch before Leigh signalled the end of sitting. We were working things out as we went inthose days.
We also held sesshin at Wat Buddha Dharma in the days before we had a teacher. I recall waiting in the predawn to use the kitchen, while the stars faded to thin musical chanting about galaxies. For years I sat on a zafu
stained with sap from the first sala there, built with Sydney Zen assistance anduncured pine.
Aitken Roshi came in February of 1979, while Geoff was in Hawaii and I was
pregnant with Kathy. For most of us, it was all new. I recall the naïve excitement ofgetting things ready, and Kim saying how great the dojo looked with blankets
neatly folded to sit on; I recall also, Michael Kieran later saying how he had
despaired that first evening of getting things together. I started learning at that
sesshin that sitting and children don’t mix in ways that sustain romantic illusions. I
was seeking stillness; whenever I started to find it, Kathy would turn and heave,bothered somehow by the lack of movement and dashing my illusions ofenlightenment.
The next year, we moved to the OLSH sisters at Burradoo, where we sat for several years – the beginning for
Kim and me of half sesshins, with one of us always with the children. Wanting uninterrupted concentration, I
learned that sitting is sitting and silence cannot be imposed on a child who, after all, had no commitment to zen
practice, and plenty to teach. And I had to learn to listen. For years I didn’t really understand Roshi telling methat it was a whole sesshin I was doing.
Zazen for me was interwoven with children. Carrying the baby basket up the stairs in China Town. Getting up
early one day a week to sit at Geoff and Lisa’s place, trying not to wake the baby, who would delay me forfeeding. Organising work bees at our old place in West Ryde and Kathy learning to suck her first apple at one ofthese while people pinned and sewed and stuffed around us. It was good to work communally to make the zafus
and zabuton we sat on, and I was sorry when the communal interest was no longer there. And later the years oftaking turns to go to sesshin, Kim returning to hugs from the kids, with the smell of someone who has beenaway.

In silence you hear it’s greeting,and some meanderings
Kim Bagot
Meeting Robert Aitken Roshi in person for the first time in 1979 was an axis point in my life. It had the feel ofencountering a character who has stepped out of a book, of experience out of time. I had been sitting with theZen Group since 1976, and listening to tapes of his teishos had revealed a path of great integrity and earnest life
practice where I felt I was coming home. I had been seeking relief from the anxieties which from time to time
had riven my life - Roshi's full-hearted walking of the Way showed me the way through my difficulties.
I had been musing on ideas of Buddhism from childhood. My dad, who took his books and religion seriously,
once gave me a book which revolves around the journey of a Buddhist monk on a quest to find the fabled sacred
12

river started by Shakyamuni. The river had sprung up where an arrow fired by the Buddha fell to earth. In
primary school I was enchanted by the voices of the bewildering array of characters, castes, religions, andregions presented in this story through the words of the characters scooped from life by the gifted journalist
Kipling. To help open one’s ears to Kipling, who is sometimes dismissed as an unthinking jingoist, it is good torecall that T. S. Eliot wrote of Kipling, 'on the whole it is the Indian characters who are treated with theunderstanding of love'. In India, the monk on pilgrimage from Tibet adopts an Anglo-Indian street orphan, Kim(!), who looks after the unworldly monk. When the monk arrives, it is in a tumultuous Lahore bazaar. In his
poise and other-worldliness he ‘looks like such a man whom Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had neverseen’. At the end of the book the monk realizes that the sacred river is flowing right beneath his feet, and ‘smiles
the smile of one who has found liberation for himself and his beloved’. This unfolded much later for me in Zen
practice.
As Roshi and Michael emerged into the tumult throughthe doorway at Sydney International Airport I was
focussing on my breath, not thinking anything inparticular, waiting with Marion and Paul. I recognised
Roshi from a distance: he looked older than in any
photo. With a pensive poise like no other man I had everseen, and a gait somehow noble without a hint ofarrogance, Roshi put me in mind of a long-legged
wading bird mindfully choosing each foothold: maybe
he was jet-lagged. His gaze suggested perhaps thealertness of someone lost, but thinking about it. Now I
think he was returning to his breath and the silence heseemed to lapse into in many social settings. In any casethey both stood out in silence from the madding crowd.
I'm not sure what I was expecting but his first
appearance left lasting impressions. Roshi's black suitand shoes somehow advertised impermanence - later hetold me that he had been trying to use non-leather shoes
but gave up. The suit seemed Japanese in style, old-fashioned and maybe hand-stitched. In the spirit of truthfulreporting, I have to say that when closer I noticed a small amount of dandruff on his shoulders; returning homewith Michael later, as we walked through the door Patrick happened to ring. For fun I picked it up and just said,‘He’s arrived, he’s real, and he’s got dandruff!’. Patrick exclaimed, ‘How real is that!’ Michael got a big laughwith this story later in an orientation talk illustrating Zen’s avoidance of setting up teachers as gurus.
As I studied Roshi’s long, intelligent face I became aware of an asthma wheeze, an evocative sound for me as
my father, especially, as well as several siblings, were chronic asthma suffers. At the same moment I met thebrightest blue eyes, which I can only say shone with kindness and wisdom. Gazing and absorbing all these
impressions, I simply forgot to speak or greet him. Perhaps I was thinking he would speak first, but I was restingin a comfortable, connected space. After a long moment, Roshi with a gentle expression of his eyes and a halfnod, indicated that I should say something, which I did, welcoming him. I had never experienced this sort ofstopping before, having been born, I believe, in a voluble and anxious caste.
I think Roshi felt a lot of affinity with the Zen Group. He said that when he heard we were doing sesshin without
a teacher he just had to come. He seemed comfortable with Australians and the Australian sense of humour. He
said once he wanted to be reborn as Australian. At the Diamond Sangha 50th anniversary celebrations in 2009 hereminisced about his travels and said that he came to Australia to learn about a sense of humour, retelling a story
from our first trip to the Blue Mountains thirty years before; he repeatedly offered money for petrol until one ofus said (ironically), ‘Typical Yank! Coming down here trying to throw your money around!’... Well, anyway, helaughed a lot
13

I met a stone bridge in a tiny room
Subhana Barzaghi
I climbed an old rickety stair case, red paint worn down to the boards, to the first floor of the Chinese Buddhist
Temple in the centre of Chinatown. Even on the first floor the evening bustle and clamour from the street
permeated the dimly lit room and the smell of incense melded with the aromas of Chinese wok-fried cooking
wafting up from below. The ornate red and gold painted ceilings and gaudy decorative dragon archways andwalls bombard my senses: it seemed an unlikely place to meet a Zen master. I had travelled more than 600
kilometres from the wet sup-tropical sclerophyll forests of the Northern Rivers to meet with Robert Aitken
Roshi. His reputation preceded him, he was known to a handful of people in the dharma circles in the alternative
communities of the Northern Rivers. Dear friends Ellen and Leigh Davison, who lived on the neighbouringcommunity, had inspired me to meet him. The journey was confirmed after consulting with the I Ching which
advised, ‘it furthers one to see the great man’. I was a passionate, determined, yet naive 25 year old, full of
unrealistic expectations and stories about enlightened sages. I expected to meet a towering, fierce samurai figureof a Zen master in a serene, austere, holy place. On the contrary, the Chinese Temple was a colourful oriental
brocade of a place, like a revamped geisha past her prime. It was not a serene meditation room, more like an
exotic aviary, a cacophony of disjointed foreign sounds and Aitken Roshi was a quiet, reserved, serious
gentleman.
My surprise meeting with Roshi reminds me of an old Zenstory about a monk’s expectations on meeting great master
Zhaozhou.
A monk said, I have heard about the great stone bridgeof Zhaozhou for a long time, but I’ve come and foundjust a simple log bridge.’
Zhaozhou said, ‘You see only the simple log bridge andyou don’t see the stone bridge.’
The monk asked, ‘What is the stone bridge?’
Zhaozhou said, ‘Donkeys and horses cross over’.
When the monk actually meets Zhaozhou, he intentionallydowngrades Zhaozhou’s grandeur. He cannot see beyond
the appearance of things and probably encounters Zhaozhou
in his simple work clothes, mindfully raking the leaves in
the monastery grounds. Teachers of old were often named
after prominent mountains and places. Hence the teacher
Zhaozhou was named after the province and city ofZhaozhou, which was also renowned for its great stonebridge. Zen master Zhaozhou’s mind was fluid, and playedwith the confusion and inter-changeability of person/place
as a teaching device. He is saying, you don’t see the greatstone bridge of Zhaozhou, you don’t see the expansive
selfless heart-mind of nirvana where all beings cross over and abide here: donkeys, horses and even small
minded monks.
Back in the hall of the Chinese Temple, in 1979, a small, motley bunch of folk had positioned themselves on thebare floor to listen to Roshi’s dharma talk. After the public talk, I requested a personal interview to see if I
wanted to sign up to the forthcoming seven day Zen sesshin. I was ushered into a tiny room more like a broom
cupboard or a confessional cubicle and suddenly I was sitting face to face with this Zen master. How strange,
14

how terrifying and how wonderful! I found his black robed, upright posture formal, silent presence and intense
gaze somewhat unnerving and confronting. After my initial moment of shock, I managed to gather myself andask him the most challenging questions that I could muster. His responses were clear and to the point. I
considered myself part of the new age movement of ‘free-spirits’ in the 1970’s, the beat generation and was

Zhaozhou’s stone bridge
instantly confronted with the formality and traditional etiquette of Zen. Yet, in that tiny cubicle of a moment,
my heart opened and I knew that I could trust this quiet, serious man. I could bear my soul to him. I had comewith a heavy heart, full of angst and turmoil. I felt he could indeed meet and see what was still not yet at peacein me. Here in this bizarre little room was the great stone bridge of Aitken Roshi. I had found a true teacher. As
the door opened the aroma of Chinese noodles enticed me downstairs and nourished another more palpable
pocket of hunger. Little did I know that that moment of trust would span thirty years and pave the way for a
deep and long-term commitment and relationship to Zen practice and the Diamond Sangha.
I met a stone bridgein a tiny room,
my heart fell open,
laughing.

Attributions: Visuals on pages 2-23
Bronwyn Oliver
DeiryuAnonymous
SengaiGlenys Jackson
Glenys Jackson
Anonymous
Bronwyn Oliver
AnonymousAnonymousAnonymous
Gillian and Tony Coote
HokusaiHans Heysen
Gail Burrows-Davis

Freshwater
Begging monks
Xuanzang: Seeking scriptures in the west.
Linji
Seedheads
Early Morning, Gorrick’s Run
Thousand-armed Guanyin
Ammonite
Zazen
Tenryu-ji ceiling painting: Dragon
Zhaozhou’s stone bridge
Gillian and Tony Coote
Mount Fuji
Gum Trees
Culburra

2
4
5
7
8
10
11
14
13
14
15
16
17-18
19
21

15

Sangha Building
Gillian and Tony CooteTony and I have been members of SZC for nearly thirty years, through thick and thin, turmoil anddisenchantment, joy and friendship, inspired by Roshi and Anne's example of clarity, virtue and discipline, andby the many Diamond Sanghas and teachers we have encountered on the way.
In l980, through mutual friends John & Shirley Cooper, we first met Roshi further up this river. He inspired trustin the Dharma, and Tony took a leap and went off to sesshin. So we began sitting with the small group of Zen
students in Sydney who had paved the way in the l970’s, some travelling to Hawaii to train with Roshi. Sydney's
first sesshin with Roshi was held in l979, then annually for nearly ten years, in the beginning with Michael
Kieran, later with Anne.
In l982, inspired by Gary Snyder (on an Australia Council visit to Australia), we journeyed with our son Gully to
the San Juan Ridge to help with the Ring of Bone Zendo building, where we discovered an energetic, creativeand joyful sangha. This experience led to the purchase and gradual development of our wilderness zendo at
Gorricks Run; Kodoji, where people worked side-by-side one weekend a month over many years, getting toknow each other well, working side-by-side. Hammering and painting are indeed the voice of the law. Samubuilds sangha.
HDS women began producing Kahawai in the late 70’s, which provided support and inspiration for a women'sgroup to form in SZC, meeting monthly since its inception, and holding annual women's retreats. And when
Roshi spoke of the fledgling Buddhist Peace Fellowship in the early l980's, the baton was taken up, first by theNorthern Rivers folk, and then handed on to SZC people in Sydney, where BPF was active for over fifteen years.
On this 50th anniversary of the Diamond Sangha, we celebrate the virtues and values of our lay tradition,
embodied by Anne and Roshi, the long line of teachers past, present and future, and the trees and stones andclouds. Thank you all.
16

Asking the way to Cold Mountain
Allan Marett
Victoria University
Wellington 1968
Ah, these chancy
John Cage works!

The Kanze Noh Theatre,
Suidobashi 1972

What does dice throw’n have

Economical!
So intensely focused!
Utterly mysterious!

to do with Zen?
Not a lot!

this Nohcaptivates
me far more thanJesus College
Cambridge 1973

Cage.

Fresh from a year at
Tassahara
Jonathan joins ourresearch team.
We sit together
every day
It helps keep theblues at bay.

Throssel Hole monastery,Yorkshire 1973 – 1974
Work, sit, work, sit
for seven days
(twice)Selling waterby the river!

Enkakuji,
Kamakura 1976

The good old Soto way

Whack, whack, whackdokusan!
thump, thump!
Mari andi run
away
This is no way
to celebrate
her birthday.

17Juniso 1976
Fresh from a year
at Bukkokuji
Herb and Judyjoin my language class.
Hearing Yamada
Roshi’s name forthe first time
I say:
this too might keep
the blues away

The Omachi House
Kamakura 1976
Sanunzendo
Kamakura 1976
Why are you here?
He asks
I’m interested in
Buddhism,
I say(oh dear)But he is kindand soI don’t sit outside
the gatein the snow
for three day.
Why are you here?
he asks
again.

The zen house has a visitor!
Bob Aitken! (ashe is known then)we meet on the mossy path
drink tea and okashi
and talk of temples

Japan Information Centre
Sydney 1978
Paul says: Aitken
Roshi is coming to Sydney tolead sesshin.
You mean Bob Aitken?
I (now) famously ask
and here I am.

To keep the blues
away,
I say
Wrong!
I should have said:
To realise
my own self
nature.
(oh deary me!)

Palolo Zen Centre
Honolulu 2008
I thought I came here
to put my-self back together
but now I findthat each and every pieceis nothingbut
the whole deal18

I get to Zen in my car
Brendon Stewart
Spring opens the hundred flowers in one puff
I like the drive home after sitting on Monday nights. Usually Kerry asks, did you have good sit? I mostly say yes,
did you? And then we drive home in silence (sometimes). Simple questions.
Did you have good sit?
Writing about the path taken, as a Zen student could be a little like an obituary and so I hesitate.
Once upon a time there was a Yoga teacher, John Copper. One of
his favourite postures he called The Hans Heysen Asana. We
each would stretch as high as a gum tree, our bodies swaying
slightly as we pushed the extension and John would walk in andaround us, calling on the great Australian gum tree painter, topush our hans heysen. John laughed and smiled through hisclasses.
John lectured at Sydney University, taking on a mixed assortmentof classes in Religious studies. He also knew Robert Aitken. John
was a Buddhist of sorts. Sometime in the middle 1970’s heinvited anyone interested to come along to his home in Boronia
Park, for an introduction to meditation. I think I went once.
The heavenly pillar so high and lofty
Tony Coote reported back from one of the first Sesshins lead by
Aitken Roshi that you only had one set of eating bowls and after
each meal you would wash and clean these with lemon grass tea
and then drink the swill. And something like Oliver Twist, you
couldn’t ask for a new set. I was a cool hippy but this seemedbeyond the Lantana. And anyhow what was a Sesshin?
One evening in front of a fire at my home Tony and Gilly
explained how to sit in Zarzen. I kept my back straight. I could do
this. I went with them the next week to the little cottage in Killara
where Zen Buddhism was taking shape.
All I remember was how excruciatingly painful it was to sit, with my back straight for more than a single countto ten. I could never concentrate on my breath and I never got to ten. In some miraculous way my knees didn’t
explode.
Riding backwards on an ox, drunken and singing (if only)
Whose home was it at Killara?
How is it that one might keep coming back to something? Pain isn’t always a turn off or a cue to turn away. Still
I was a slow starter; occasionally and occasionally I would go along to Killara. Then the Zendo moved;somewhere else on the north shore; I forget, then another move and eventually to Annandale. One day I meet
Tony and Maggie at the Coote’s home.
19

The sky is vast without horizon
Once upon a time we would play volleyball after building sessions at Gorricks. On another occasion there was acricket match when we zennies took on the Balmain teachers. A pitch was mown somewhere free of wombat
holes and the verandah of the cottage served as the pavilion for both teams. The game seemed to take all day,that’s what some of the women folk said.
Who won?
On other occasions it has rained very hard up Gorricks way. Not so many Easters ago the rain started falling on
Good Friday night and by Sunday the creek was up close to the higher level of the road. We were sitting thatmorning, the rain pelting down when at the door to the Zendo a women appeared, her clothes all topsy-turvy.
Her skirt was hitched up to be were her knickers should have been while her knickers were stretched around her
knees. She cried in a desperate way and we all ran after her down to the crossing. There, half submerged was the
Toyota, the driver still trying to steer. With ropes and grunting we got it out. Then we went back to our sitting.
When we returned during the rest break they had gone. It’s hard to stop a Toyota.
The ancestor does not appear or disappear
Once upon a time I was up among the Black Wattle behind the Zendo cottage and I saw a women walk by on her
way to the showers. She had her hair held high on her head and kept in place with chopsticks. This was the firsttime I had set eyes on Subhana. Once too, I was talking to Gilly sitting on the verandah and said that during thenight I’d seen a white horse galloping across the paddock, was it a dream? Oddly she had seen it too. I often
dream at Gorricks, mostly during sittings.
The River of Stars flows pure
On every occasion I have got to Zen by car, I have never taken a bus or used a bicycle. Kerry on the other hand,during a very wet time, walked, together with others from the weir crossing into Kodoji. She said it took about
an hour.
Apparently there are three sorts of Zen students. There are ‘the best’, they, it seems have resolutely given up
worldly relationships and seek only their true natures, whatever that is. Then there are those who find distraction
appealing and prefer to read books about Zen. The least admired Zen students seem to have an appetite for the
Buddha’s spit, which somehow eclipses the light of their true natures. That’s one in the eye for you!
I have been practicing the Hans Heysen Asana for many years now and I still sway slightly as I stretch up like a
gum tree. I carry a handkerchief to wipe off the spittle.

Attributions: Visuals on pages 24 – 29
Konstantin Brancusi
Xu Bing
Cai Guoqiang
Hakuin Ekaku
Cy Twombly
Qi Baishi
Cover Images
AnonymousAnonymous
Sengai
Hakuin Ekaku
Anonymous
Sesshin photographs

Newborn
Seedling Field
Drawing for transient rainbow
Blind men crossing a bridge
Three studies from the Temeraire (detail)
Lotus

22
24
26
27
28
29

Buddha figure from SZC altar, Annandale
Bodhidharma
DeshanSelf portrait
Robert Aitken and Anne Hopkins-Aitken
Subhana Barzaghi transmission; Gillian Coote transmission; Easter sesshin 2006

20

20 Years with Sydney Zen Centre
Caroline Josephs
In 1965 I was reading Krishnamurti with a few friends. The talks intrigued me … I wasn’t sure what they meant.
While in the UK in 1967 I arranged to visit Amsterdam, where Krishnamurti was to be giving a talk. There I
met some Dutch students through a Canadian girl I was travelling with. Gerrit was one of them, and he was on
his way to India as a Canadian volunteer after spending time at university in Canada. In late 1967 I visited India,
intending to stay 10 days, and visit Gerry. He was staying in Chandigarh, teaching in schools and living with an
Indian family where the father was a guide for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I stayed with the family, learned tomeditate, was given a mantra. And before long, found myself speaking to 400 devotees in Amritsar about myexperiences with Transcendental Meditation!
In 1968 I returned to Sydney and married.
Family life and work took over for ten years.
I found Zen through John Cooper. We
worked on a project together in Arts
Education in the days when he was at theAustralia Council for the Arts and I worked
in Canberra coordinating a national
Education and Arts project. My marriage hadjust dissolved. It was 1979 and I was
searching. John suggested I read The Three
Pillars of Zen by Phillip Kapleau. I walked
out of his office and straight to the nearby
Adyar bookshop, bought, and devoured thebook. I recall thinking, ‘This is for me.’Later, I attended John’s meditation and orientation group in his home at Hunter’s Hill. Inspired, three of us (thethird a woman who had been briefly in Hawaii) set up a sitting group, moving between our homes in Canberra,buying in audiotapes of Roshi’s teishos, and the newsletters of the Honolulu Women’s group from Hawaii, as
well as setting up a small library of books.
Eventually we organised and advertised a regular sitting group. We cleared the living room and bought numbersof zafus and zabutons. Many people came through the door. Twice a week we sat together, doing kinhin in ourlarge garden. Twice I sat with Geoff Dawson and Paul Maloney for 3-day sesshins at Lindfield. It felt like akind of torture and I wondered why I kept going back to zazen. After about two years the group fell apart aspeople dispersed. Eventually I moved back to my original home town of Sydney again after an absence of 15
years.
At the Harold Park Hotel I met Gilly Coote at an Aboriginal Writers’ night and subsequently started sitting at
Annandale. I also had begun to sit with Siddha Yoga at Dulwich Hill ashram. For about two years I went toSydney Zen Centre for the strong zazen, and to Siddha Yoga for the vibrant chanting.
After meeting Gurumayi at a 3000-strong retreat in Melbourne, I gravitated towards Zen. That was about 1989
or 1990. Gradually I began to do 7-day retreats with John Tarrant Roshi, and later with Subhana Barzarghi as
she became Roshi. I became a member of SZC. Over the years, I visited Hawaii three times for Rohatsu,
attending the 40-year celebration there and once staying also for a week on the Big Island with Roshi and Tom
and a small group of practitioners, on the lava that formed the foundation for Roshi’s house. Nearby were hotsprings where we could swim and waves where we could see the turtles surfing!
21

I have been a member of the SZC’s Women group over the 20-year period, been a practice leader, regularly
written and provided photos for Mind Moon Circle (and edited it a few times), done countless samus building thedojo at Gorrick’s, done leadership roles at sesshin and evening zazen, given talks, run creative workshops,
helped to organise an Art Exhibition and sale,oriented about 90 newcomers, attended
Transmissions for Ross Bolleter, and for

Subhana, contributed to fund-raisings,
provided about twenty or more documented
albums of photographs of SZC’s sesshins,
activities and events. A rich and varied
involvement in the Sangha and its activities
and retreats. Friendships have been carved
and sustained over the years.
Recently my two younger grand-children, Zoe
and Ben, with their parents, Abi (my daughter)and her husband, Mark, attended a very joyous
Baby Naming at the zendo.
It has been an intense learning time. The Dharma
continues to intrigue and draw.
I am grateful to Robert Aitken Roshi for having
established this Sangha in the West. For having
having given us so much – the subtlety, the nuances from a scholar, the commitment to ongoing embodiment of
the practice. To think that half a century has passed in this journey. Wondrous teachings. Deep gassho to all
who keep the practices alive!

Phone Zen
Philip Long
Early in 1988, I found myself on my hands and knees on the lounge room floor of our house in Paddington infloods of tears and crying out: ‘All my dreams have gone.’ In December, 1987, I had experienced a sudden
increase in severity of a condition I had been suffering from since 1981 and eventually diagnosed as M.E.
(myalgic encephalomyelitis) or latterly CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome). The first onset was in August, 1981,
and there had been a significant downturn in late 1985.
The change in 1987 was so severe I had to cease working. The incident on the lounge room floor was theemotional low point of the whole journey. I was overwhelmed by flu like symptoms, gastro-intestinal
disturbances, skeletomuscular problems and neurological and psychological symptoms, including depression andextreme anxiety. My whole body and mind was devastated and there seemed nothing left to cling to.
I was visiting a psychiatrist at the time and even he was at a loss as to how do deal with the high levels ofanxiety I was suffering from. During the day, I often needed desperately to rest but could not lie still for morethan a few minutes. At night I could only get to sleep by taking a strong tranquiliser to which I had become22addicted. My psychiatrist decided to get me to try meditation and handed me a tape featuring the rather drone
like voice of a colleague of his.
I had practiced a self designed relaxation technique since around 1970 but with theonset of the illness this had fallen by the wayside. Around the same time as I took
up this technique I had started to read a lot of books on psychotherapy, particularlyon the radical fringe of the field (Fritz Perls, R. D. Laing, etc). I had started
psychotherapy in an attempt to come to terms with the fact that I was gay (in thosedays homosexual or camp) and the reading was an attempt to understand thepsychotherapeutic process (and probably to subvert it). One or two of these books
mentioned a thing called Zen and eventually I ended up reading some of Alan
Watts’ writings. I bought a book by D. T. Suzuki but could not make head or tail of it and put it aside. What I
took from this very limited reading on Zen was that it basically involved ‘letting it all hang out’ and ‘following
your instincts’, in other words some kind of freedom or liberation. No-one had mentioned meditation.
When I took up meditation I decided togive it a good go for 6 weeks. At the end of the 6
week period my anxiety levels had
dropped significantly and I could lie still in
meditation for a good 30 minutes. Overthe next few months I got to hate that tape and thedroning voice and gradually I began tolook for something better. I decided to dedicate
myself to the kind of peace of mind that
I felt Buddhists practiced. One day at the airport
waiting for a plane flight to Melbourne
to visit my in-laws, I met a Jesuit priest from myold school, Saint Aloysius College at
Milson’s Point, and he began to ramble on about aschool colleague of mine who hadjoined the Jesuit order and was doing very wellthere. I had won prizes at school for
Religious Knowledge and I knew that a number ofpriests at the school, including the chap
I was now speaking with, had high hopes that I
would join the order. Suddenly, and at
great surprise to myself as much as to the priest, I
said: ‘I have decided to become a Buddhist’. The exclamation went right over the head of the priest and hebabbled on as if I had said nothing at all.
But the exclamation crystallised my intention to improve my meditation. I thought to myself: ‘The Buddhists
have been doing it for 2,500 years. Their meditation will be rock solid’. I decided to go for Zen Buddhism; I’m
not really sure why. Was it my earlier reading of Watts, etc; was it some kind of inner instinct that it was rightfor me? Perhaps it was that idea of freedom. I really don’t know. How to go about it? In those days there was no
Google so I decided to look Zen up in the phone book and there it was: ‘Zen Centre, Sydney’.
Turning up one evening at the Zendo, I was given instruction and shown the way to the Dojo. The first thing thatstruck me was that there was an altar, bells and incense. ‘Oh, mygoodness,’ I thought, ‘It’s a religion’. This was something of a problem
for me, because I had left the Catholic Church around 1970 andprofessed a kind of atheistic psychologism for the next 19 years. I only
wanted to learn how to meditate, not to get involved with anotherreligion. I suppose I thought of Buddhism and Zen as not being religions
in any true sense. Over time I changed my mind on all these matters.
The second thing I noticed, over the next few weeks, was that meditatingwith others was much more powerful than doing so alone. After a few months I had gone completely off all
medication and my meditation went very deep. On one occasion on a bus going down City Road I had aprofound experience which confirmed my faith in the Buddhist way. Paradoxically, when in the middle of theexperience, I exclaimed ‘Oh, this is what people mean by God’. I had come full circle and recalled the words of
my mother when I announced that I would no longer be attending mass: ‘You’ll come back one day, I know it’.
Perhaps so; I was back at my beginning but it was a very different place.
23

Mysteries glimpsed in the
Rear-Vision Mirror
Sally Hopkins
Stories are just stories, so there are multiple possible accounts. How did I come to Sydney Zen Centre? I’d say,pure chance. I was not searching. There could have been other outcomes. Things came together and, as it
happened, I’m here.
There had been a time of desperate searching after failed beliefs, a failed marriage, a failed job, generaldisintegration; though I could put on a good face, I was going mad, my right arm strangling me. I found Primal
therapy, a self practice that, I think the theory was, aimed to unite thoughts and feelings that had been separated
by trauma. I practiced continually for 16 years, and a great deal opened up. I experienced just how much of thepresent is distorted by my own ideas and feelings that come from the past. I learned that life unfolds continually,
generously, and that fundamentally, all is well whatever happens. I’d read some zen poems, and Allan Watts,
been to a Chinese exhibition where there was alittle bamboo hut that I’d like to live in. But I
had no real interest in the practice.
In 1989 we were farming on the Great Divide
surrounded by Wollemi National Park, intimate
with weather and seasons, the ways of animals
and growing plants. Day followed day, fulland ever changing. I was never really lonely,
though the nearest shop was 40 miles away,
and farming friends miles off. Farming friends
who had lived their lives on, or near, themountain were ‘of the earth’: wonderfully
practical, wise, full of stories of a fence built,
horses hard to catch, rabbit skins, dingoes, ayear of fires, or rain, or drought, the potato
crop that brought riches. But some things could not be shared. I was leaning towards meeting some people oflike mind. I was not looking for a practice.
At that point there was a talk on the ABC with Phra Khantipalo. He said, ‘The energy of anger can be used forgood purposes.’ Yes, I knew that was true. This led to my going down the mountain to Wat Buddha Dhamma
for a weekend, where I was taught how to meditate; a simpler, more socially adaptable process than my previous
practice. So I changed practices and have meditated ever since.
In 1990 I went once more. Things were falling apart there. Someone who was moving into the Sydney Zen
Centre wanted a few bits of furniture taken to Annandale. I, with my little blue truck, offered to deliver them, as
I was to visit my son near by. At Annandale there was a very warm welcome, and an invitation to sit with themwhenever I was down visiting my children. So I did. Zen? Therevada? What difference?
1992: the Zen Women held a retreat at Gorricks. ‘Singing and Dancing are the voice of the Law’. I loved
singing. Looking for song, companionship, not the Dharma, I went. The women were wonderfully genuine. The
language was different, but beneath the language, something wordless was alive. I felt ‘at home’. It seemed I wasa Zen student, if there had to be a name.

241996: Colin’s father in Sydney phoned, ‘Mum’s fallen backwards in the bath. Come!’ So we went, and neverreturned. Through the stressful years that followed, family in Sydney and Melbourne growing more feeble, lessable to cope, dying, it was wonderful to be sitting with all, not from afar, but right here in the Annandale zendo.
2002: We came even closer to SZC. My mother-in-law went into care, and we moved into the room above thedojo. There we remain.
Though I did not think I was coming for the Dharma, I have been gifted with this rich wonderful tradition that
we all hold for those to come. I am grateful for this straightforward, down to earth, subtle, demanding practice:most grateful for the presences, the pointings, of teachers present, and past, formal teachers, and sangha
members. The open-ended little bamboo hut was speaking all along. Thank you all.

How did you ...?
Carl Hooper
And the master said,'How did you come to Zen?'
The question sounded innocent enough,And sensing the hurdle, but not the water-trap,
With muscles blind I rashly made my jump.
And the master said,'How did you come to Zen?'
There was a mango tree, I blurted out,
And guavas growing by an old tin shed,
A water tank, an ill kept lawn behind.
And the master said,'How did you come to Zen?'
Behind my aunty's weathered boarding house,
Some empty paddocks, railway tracks,
The old complaint of the sawmill saws.
And the master said,'How did you come to Zen?'
And there was the sky, the blue of the sky,That empty winter sky, and a boy of ten
Struck suddenly silent, solitary, still.
And the master said,'How did you come to Zen?'

Invocation
Clinton Smith
Far west of the sunset and beyond all forgiving is an
island, an inner island. It has no name.
It’s ramparts are so steep, a thought begins alandslide. I has air so pure, the body fills withwonder; stars so bright, the soul cries out.
This place asks all. mountaineers find no handhold.
Travellers are stripped of comfort and reduced tobones. No compromise survives this almost
impenetrable land. Description is dumb and theheart amazed.
Here is no progress, future, past. No god, hope,
goodness, warmth. Just the pain of an emptiness too
passionate to bear. Here all masks fall. All opinions
are exposed. All possessions become vapour. All
human love is tinsel.
This land of passionate dispassion has unimaginableriches. People who find it are considered mad. Its
austerity is nectar. Each moment there is death.
Who dares face the sunset and begin?
Who dares?
Who dares?
25

Coming home
Jean BrickIn retrospect, that glorious summer of 1988 seems doomed. As usual in Beijing before industry and traffic turned
the air thick, the summer skies were high and blue, the cicada song intense, the lakes in Beihai full of lotus.
Water melons were piled high along the footpaths and the air was heavy with the scent of peaches and hot earth.
But on the buses and sitting chatting under street lights on those long summer nights, people worried about
rapidly rising prices, and what would happen when, as rumoured, the government stopped guaranteeing jobs andsubsidising housing.
Meanwhile, sitting in the roof-garden of the Friendship Hotel drinking Qingdao beer, I was reading Feng
Youlan’s History of Chinese Philosophy. So it was from the pen of a decidedly positivist nascent neo-Confucianthat I came across Hua Yen and the net of Indra for the first time and was enchanted.
Later that summer I set off for Wutaishan, abode of Manjusri, and one of the four great, and at that time
forgotten, Buddhist mountains in China. It was then a quiet upland valley full of dilapidated temples beingbrought back to life by young monks from China’s vast rural
hinterland. I wandered from temple to temple, and Manjuri wasalways there to greet me, sword raised high. It must have beenaround the forth day, when I was back at my favourite temple
bowing for the umpteenth time, that a middle-aged monk
approached me. ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked. ‘What doyou want?’ What indeed? I didn’t know. But I knew there wassomething important to be found, and later that afternoon,
thinking about his question while sitting on an open hillside highup the valley, I decided I had to do something about it. I wascommitted to another year in China, but after that I’d go back toAustralia and find a group and a teacher.
So I went to Shanghai and moved into the student dormitory andstudied Chinese while the tiny cloud of fear on last summer’s
horizon grew and swelled and grew again until it burst in red ruinover Tiananmen and dozens of other cities. The tide swept meback to Sydney and into a black pit where I thrashed for two and a half years, causing great suffering to myself
and to those around me. Then on December 29th 1991 at approximately 10.30 in the morning the pit closed as if
it had never been and I found myself standing in the sunshine thinking, ‘What’s next?’
It took me another 18 months to find my way to the zendo. I still didn’t know what I was looking for, but I had agood idea of what I wasn’t, having found it in quite a number of groups round Sydney. But one day Gilly gave atalk on Zen at Macquarie University, and though I missed it, (I as teaching), I did manage to get the address, andwithin a week I was sitting on a cushion facing the wall at Annandale. And I knew, with absolute and complete
certainty, that this was it. I was home. I could get started. Now. Luckily, there was an intensive retreat coming up- sesshin, it was called, and so I put my application in, explaining as I did so that I would have to leave for one
day because I had to give a paper. At a conference. But I would come straight back. It would be fine.
It wasn’t fine. Maggie rang me. She was polite and patient and infinitely compassionate but the only way I wasgoing to get to that sesshin was by going full time. My memory is of logic, of pleading, of complete convictionthat I could leave in the middle of sesshin and return a day later without any ill effects. Her memory is ofargument and anger. She is right of course, both about the anger and about the undesirability of a complete
26

newcomer leaving in the middle of her first sesshin to return 24 hours later. But I didn’t know it then. So, acouple of weeks later when Gilly, all unawares, asked me how I was going, I took her nose off. ‘I need ateacher,’ I said. Snapped. Barked. ‘I need a teacher’. ‘Well’, she said, ‘Why don’t you go to Rohatsu in Hawaii.’
Rohatsu, it turned out, was an eight day retreat … a Great Sesshin … the longest of the year. I had the planeticket within 24 hours. Sesshin acceptance come a little later. Meanwhile, Maggie reeled away from that
telephone conversation mauled and bloody to report a fierce woman to Subhana.
And so, a few weeks later, I was lying on a mattress on the floor in one of the dormitories at the newly
constructed Palolo Zen Centre, a centre so new that this was the first sesshin held there. I lay there, looking at the
shadowy ceiling, with a feeling of deep content and quiet triumph. I had made it. Finally. The journey, whatever
it was, could begin. And eight days later, lying on that same mattress, I knew that nothing would ever be thesame again.

How I got here
Brian Gutkin
No satellite navigators then,
You couldn't goggle Buddhism/Zen.
I came from the North, Manly,
Needing to know how I got here.
I cannot recall the year,
But the Ino was Steven Crump,
And I believe I once saw David Engelbrecht in full
regalia
Floral dress and handbag; or was it just a dream.
You will find him now at Gorricks,
On the way down to the creek,
When the Jiki takes you walking,A black pole in the ancient ground,'Harbour Star', alive or dead,Who can say?
The Great Way is simple, just ask Telstra.
Is there Zen in Sydney?
Yes, living, in Annandale.
Clutching a Gregory's,
I came by car, the five Skandha’s.
No 'Ho', 'Ho' on anyone then.

It was Jean who greeted me inside,
Just as she did last week,
Restive, enthused, smiling, alive,
Genuine, I liked it.
Sitting, wrapped by the silence,
Remembering when I was last here.
I came because of Kerouac's ‘Dharma Bums’,
Inspired by Hesse's ‘Siddhartha’And a beat-up copy of Conze’s ‘Buddhist
Meditation’
Stolen from a Dublin store,
And despite Christmas Humphries ‘A Western
Approach to Zen’
That truly set me back, twenty years.
Born again, Qi Gong and Chinese Herbs, just in thenick of time,
I suddenly remembered I had always wanted to doZen,Years ago, when I was still alive.
It is because I got here,
Crossing the water from north to south,
That I am still here, right now.

27

From There to Here
Larry Agriesti
Some people are born in Australia, some arrive by
airplane, some by boat; I arrived by observing mybreath. How is this so?
Living as a gay man in San Francisco during the1970s, I was caught up in the madness of delusive
thinking; too much sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I
was deeply unhappy and a friend recommended acourse on personal development that might help. On
the first night of the course, the instructor told us toclose our eyes, sit comfortably in our chairs, and focus
on our breath without judging it; just watch it comeand go. What? This is pure nonsense I thought, andconfronted my friend with my objections. I wanted arational explanation before I continued. Well, he said,
if you are so smart Larry, why haven’t you figured out
how to get out of your misery by now? Just do theprogram; stick with it!
And so I did. After time I noticed some amazing
things. I could observe thoughts and feelings without reacting. I felt calmer. I was able to distinguish between
what was actually going on in my life, and the artificial world and consequences of drugs and denial. I began
taking full responsibility for myself. I began to work with what I had; not with what I wished I had.
A year later, some 25 years ago, I arrived in Sydney with $1,000 in my pocket and no ticket home. I had neverbeen here before. I had no job. I did have my meditation practice. Within 6 months I had a job, a partner, andwas enrolled in graduate school. Life was good. Very good. So I decided I didn’t need to practice meditation any
more.
Fifteen years later I was in hell again. Ooops. I was in a painful, deceitful relationship with my partner of all
those years. I was being lied to and felt unable to face the truth and what it would mean; what I would have to
do. And then one afternoon staring at the sky in my beautiful backyard, I remembered the last time I felt strong;able to take charge and do what I could to change a very unpleasant situation: it was when I was meditating,seeing things for exactly what they are and, where possible, doing what I could to improve my circumstances.
So I reached for the phone book, called the Sydney Zen Centre, and spoke with Tony Coote, who encouraged me
to visit. When I arrived, Jean Brick gave me an orientation and a few minutes later I was on the mat. Whew!
Several months later I was able to walk away from my partner and begin living an honest life; no more delusive
thinking, no more denial, no more pretending or wishful thinking.
For the past ten years I have continued my practice, helped by all the wonderful people at the centre. Truly,
committing myself to mediation practice is probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done. It is priceless, and I am
so grateful to the Sydney Zen Centre for all the support and guidance they have given. Life is good. Very good.

28

Getting here
Jonathon CaseI arrived at the Sydney Zen Centre in April 2005, really not knowing
what to expect but knowing I needed to learn to meditate. I had long becurious about Japan, Buddhism and Zen in particular, but hadn't had the... what? … the fortitude? to really dive into it. Browsing my bookshelf I
find many books on Japan and Buddhism dating from the late 70s andearly 80s: Peter Mattheisen (Snow Leopard, Nine-headed Dragon River), Oliver Statler (A Japanese Pilgrimage), Yasunari Kawabata's works,
Basho's haiku amongst them. My copy of DT Suzuki was purchased in
the mid-80s; Zen Flesh, Zen Bones slightly later, but it always seemedthat the Zen way of understanding was beyond me. This made me feel a
bit foolish; I mean, how hard can this stuff really be? Surely I'm not that dumb that I can't understand it? I wasstuck in the mind-road mire, trying to rationally think Zen through. I think I was intimidated by this.
In the few months before I found the Zen Centre, I had experienced one of those not-so-pleasant crises that wemay fall into. I was working in a high-pressure job for a US company, and the 24x7 ‘lifestyle’ was steadily
breaking down my physical and emotional health. It reached a point where in January I had been forced onto
extended medical leave so I could recover. Part of my recovery was to attend relaxation classes with a wonderfulperson who happened to have previously been a Buddhist nun. After completing my relaxation course, anddrawing on the several discussions on Buddhism and meditation I'd also had with this person, I searched the web
and found an article by Subhana comparing and contrasting Vipassana and Zen meditation. A short e-mailexchange followed between us and I decided to step off the cliff and seek experience in meditation first-hand.
Eventually, after a mis-direction to a Tibetan Buddhist group called the ‘Diamond Way’, I turned up at the SZC
for an introduction by Kim McShane (a fellow escaped Tasmanian!), who guided me through the basics of Zen
meditation. With the usual aching knees and neck I proudly ‘survived’ my first 2-hour sit, and knew that this iswhat I had been seeking.
I have approached Zen by studiously avoiding too much studying. I have always found it too easy and enjoyable
to immerse myself in a topic, wanting to learn as much as I can; rationally absorbing all I could read on a topic.
But this seemed to be self-defeating for the reasons I was there in the first place; and clearly from previous
experience, Zen is not something that can be learned like a school or university subject.
Zen meditation became an intermittent part of my life. Almost every Monday evening 7--9pm I would turn up at
SZC and sit for 2 hours, completely unsure and partly unwilling to ‘progress’ further or deeper into the Zen
experience. It was also relatively easy to find small gaps in my day where I could grab a few minutes of Zenpeace and breath, and this was a pleasant source of clarity and relaxation in my then still-hectic workdays. I have
tried to be stubbornly patient and not seek to ‘push’ forward for the sake of achievement of some sort. I attended
a part Sesshin in December 2005, but it wasn't until Autumn Sesshin 2009 I was able to attend a full 7-day
Sesshin and now realise what a wondrously different experience it is to do this. Meditation is now much more apart of my daily routine and I am better for it. I rise around 5am and sit for a while before exercising and thebefore family awakes. I am, by the measure of those I sit with, still a very new-comer to the Sydney Zen Centre.
Every day I strive to become even more a new-comer to Zen.
29

journal of thesydney zen centre
251 Young Street Annandale
NSW 2038

Distant thunder,
The thirsty creek can welcome
spring time’s precious gifts
Leigh Davison

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