That's So Zen Tuesday, September 8, 2015 Taking the Precepts in Gibberish This week I was chatting with a new Buddhist friend, and I kept making jokes about how I was breaking precepts-- by gossiping, or creating divisions in the sangha, which aren't technically precept violations in the Soto Zen tradition (but are in others!). Over the course of the conversation, I kept adding to the list of my imagined precept violations. "Sorry," I said finally. "I actually don't know what the precepts are." "That's because you took the precepts in gibberish," he said. I've received the precepts four times in gibberish: twice in Japanese and twice in Tibetan (from Tibetan Rinpoches in America and India, when I was in college). I wonder how much difference language makes. Because the precepts are something we work with and evolve, break and renew, ingest and digest on a very personal, individual level, language matters. I think saying the precepts in our own language (or at the very, very least, understanding what we are saying) matters a great deal. But in another sense, I don't think language matters so much. The hard-line, conservative view of the precepts is that it doesn't matter if you're aware of the meaning or not; it doesn't matter if you believe in them or not. As in zazen, you sit and this is in itself enlightenment. Sutras abound with descriptions about how simply the act of receiving the precepts is the basis of our enlightenment. In this view, receiving the precepts does the work for you. There's some doctrinal debate about this, of course. According to Buddhist studies professor William Bodiford, Kyogen [Dogen's disciple] argued in traditional Tendai fashion that the bodhisatva precepts are not merely precepts but actually embody the essence of the Buddha. Kyogo asserts that in contrast to the Hinayana precepts, which just control our karmic actions, the Mahayana bodhisatva precepts describe buddha nature (i.e., reality) itself. The Mahayana precept "not to kill" should be interpreted not as a vow against killing, but as a realization of living enlightenment that clears away the "dead," static entities of our illusions (Zen in the Art of Funerals). This is pure esoteric-mumbo-jumbo gold. All this time I thought I was just vowing not to kill mosquitos! Turns out it's not about not killing, but about not needing to not kill because I'm already enlightened! Screw you, mosquitos! Wait, what? Ugh. That's not right. The more I read about the religious culture Dogen was born into, which was heavily seeped in the esoteric Tendai view of original enlightenment (as articulated by William Bodiford's explanation above), the more I understood how I could have been allowed to receive the precepts in Japan (and ordain!) without actually knowing what I was saying. My silly precept story starts to make more sense. If I could add a footnote here I would mention that the precepts are the same whether you are ordaining as a lay person, a monk-nun-priest, receiving dharma transmission (!), getting married, or you are dead and somebody is doing your funeral. It's all the same precepts. But what I am talking about below is my first encounter with the Sixteen Bodhisatva precepts as a lay person. This is my story: About four months into my stay at the monastery, I was told there would be a "sewing sesshin" during which we would sew all day for a week. I dutifully showed up and sat down. A couple old ladies from the village had been invited to come help us. There was some chanting and bowing, and then somebody handed me a few small pieces of black fabric, and taught me how to sew back-stitch. For a few days I just sewed the pieces like I was shown, alongside a bunch of really cheerful old Japanese women who laughed merrily at my terrible stitch-work. A few days later, one of the resident nuns mentioned that I would probably take Jukai since I was sewing a rakusu. I did not know what that was. One evening I was washing the dishes in the kitchen when the abbot of the monastery manifested next to me, drying dishes. I'd never seen him in the kitchen before, and I think I never saw him there again, but there he was, busily wiping down plates and bowls. Eventually he asked me, "Do you want to do Jukai?" "What's that?" I asked. He said, "Receiving the precepts." "I've already taken the precepts from another teacher, is that okay?" "Yes." "Okay," I said. And that was that. I assumed there would be some kind of formal teaching or class about the meaning of the precepts, but there never was. A few days before the ceremony was supposed to take place I marched to the abbot's room and knocked on the door. He let me in and made me tea. I asked him to explain the meaning of the precepts. He scrunched up his face and winced. "Hmm, very difficult to translate." He pulled out a book in Japanese and started leafing through it. "Hmm, too difficult to translate. Why don't you ask Hobai?" Hobai was an American man who practiced at Zen Mountain Monastery and could read classical Japanese. I asked Hobai for the meaning of the precepts and he printed them out from the ZMM website. Those precepts are: The Three Treasures I take refuge in the Buddha I take refuge in the Dharma I take refuge in the Sangha The Three Pure Precepts Not Creating Evil Practicing Good Actualizing Good For Others The Ten Grave Precepts Affirm life; Do not kill Be giving; Do not steal Honor the body; Do not misuse sexuality Manifest truth; Do not lie Proceed clearly; Do not cloud the mind See the perfection; Do not speak of others errors and faults Realize self and other as one; Do not elevate the self and blame others Give generously; Do not be withholding Actualize harmony; Do not be angry Experience the intimacy of things; Do not defile the Three Treasures I took one look at this and said, "These aren't the real precepts." By the way, I am a brat. By "real," I of course meant "Japanese." Japanese= real! Obviously! Hobai sighed and very kindly spent the next several days translating the precept for me from the classical Japanese. When he finished he handed me a piece of paper and laughed, "There you go! No sex, no sake." That's basically the language that's used. Don't kill. Don't lie. No sex. No sake. Concerned, I stopped the abbot in the hallway. I think I was really thinking about sex, but I asked about alcohol. "I don't think I can stop drinking alcohol," I said. "Well, don't drink too much," he offered. That was the best explanation I ever got. That was the teaching about precepts. The night before the ceremony, I turned in my rakusu to the abbot to sign and authorize. I had sewn my rakusu at the same time as an older, Japanese monk. He vehemently hated sewing, and so he had left most of the sewing to the old Japanese ladies. Because of this, his rakusu was really well-made. Not knowing the back-story, the abbot assumed that the better quality rakusu was mine (because I'm a girl?), so he wrote my name on the Japanese monk's rakusu, and gave my rakusu to the monk. The rakusu I wear today is actually the rakusu of a middle-aged Japanese monk named Jitsugai. I'll probably end up his mother in my next life. The ceremony happened, and I received my new name, Gesshin, which I continue to use. But the precepts are still a question mark for me. I still wonder: what is the power of ceremony? What does it mean to promise something you can't understand? What is vow? I have never related to the precepts as "vows." Maybe I should. Partly because of writing this, I decided I would like to do the precept ceremony again. It's been about five years, and a lot has changed for me. So I made the calls and it looks like I'll receive the precepts again this December. Only this time around, I'm insisting on saying the words in English. I'm going to translate the precepts from Japanese, and my teacher even agreed to say his lines in English, too. I'm excited. How often do we get to write our own vows? Part of me keeps waiting for the teaching, the teacher, the external source of clarity, to show up and tell me what's right, and what to do, to shoot some magical transmission juice on me, but this never happens. Instead, I am always in the position of translating my own tradition, of creating my own clarity and meaning. Sometimes it feels very lonely, but other times I think this is the reality of existence (and practice) for everyone. We can always only ever practice our own practice. With some help. I will be literally translating my own precept ceremony from Japanese to English, and I'm starting to wonder if this is actually what's going on all the time, anyway. Even for people who receive the precepts in their own language, there is always some kind of interpersonal translation going on. We hear "do not abuse sexuality" and our brain goes "Whaaaa?" and then spends a long time figuring out what healthy, consensual and ethical relationships are for us. We hear "do not give rise to anger" and then think "Okay, sure, good plan" and two hours later loose our shit when a friend is late. This compels us to return to the drawing board to figure out a way to work with anger that works for us. For some people, dealing with anger is easy. For some it's not. For some people, not lying is difficult. For others, honesty is easy. Everyone's relationship to precepts is unique and individual, and the work we do is only ever our own work. Even though the precepts are something we symbolically "receive" from an outside source, nothing is actually passed between student and teacher. Nothing is transmitted. This is because we are already basic goodness and inherent enlightenment. Personally, I view the precepts as pointing us back to where we already are, an external sign that say, "Look inside!" When I give up anger and clinging, when I stop bitching about other people, when I remember that oh yeah, I don't want to have sexual relationships that make me feel confused and icky, there is a feeling of tremendous relief. This relief is the feeling, for me, of returning to what I already know to be true about myself. I don't think there's some kind of magical "vow juice" that shoots out of the preceptor for us to mindlessly ingest. The only power the precepts-- or any of this practice-- has is the power we give it, the meaning we make of it. This is why I have such a high tolerance for teachers, ceremonies, and ritual; they're inherently devoid of meaning until I create my own, through and with those external points of reference. It's an exchange between target and source language, between teacher and student, between external and internal. It's not entirely "mine," but it's also not something that's directly passed into me. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe somebody really is squirting invisible, magical vow juice. But I doubt it. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 3:25 AM 1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, August 30, 2015 The Human Fulfillment Checklist I just got back from a week at Green Gulch Farm, part of a covert mission a friendly experiment to infiltrate and destroy American Zen to see if I would enjoy doing residential practice there at some point. One afternoon after my work was done, I went to the snack area by the kitchen to spy and started talking to a guy I knew from my time at Tassajara. I mentioned that I'm coming back to the United States soon. We were eating peanut butter on toast, and drinking tea. There were apples and bananas on the snack table as well. "What do you think about American Buddhism so far?" he asked. "I'm not sure," I said. "It's pretty fun," he smiled. "There are snacks." Indeed. Green Gulch is pretty lovely. There's zazen, and then you work really hard and get really tired, so you can fall asleep early. People are nice, things are relatively well-organized, there's enough food, and there are a couple people I respect and could learn from. That's basically a functional monastery in a nutshell. So part of me wants to go. This last week I've been thinking hard about where to go when I come back to the United States, and I'm being confronted by a variety of options. When I dream about coming back to America, this is where my brain goes to in terms of things I want: Love! Lots of money! Education on things I am passionate about! Fulfilling professional work! To practice true Buddha-dharma sincerely and completely! Nice clothes! Snacks! All of these things seem like very pressing needs-- essential to my "personal development"--, and of course I want to chose a scenario where I can have as many of them as possible. In our modern society sometimes it seems like a given that we should have all of our dreams fulfilled. Especially for people born into educated and/or upper-middle class backgrounds, there seems to be a kind of Human Fulfillment Checklist, and if we haven't checked off the right number of items on the list, we think we are failing or incomplete. But the truth is, I would be very lucky to have just one of these things from the Human Fulfillment Checklist in my life. Some people have none of those things. Okay, snacks isn't such an unrealistic expectation. And while it might be very possible to have a life with both money and love (and snacks), I don't think it's possible to have all of the things on that list at the same time. I know one of the promises of this age is that we can have it all; we can have fulfilling relationships, spirituality, good food, work that makes us happy. We can live in spiritual abundance. But the truth is, doing one of the items on the checklist means doing some other things less well. "Work that makes us happy" often means "work that pays less than boring, mindless work." "Work that makes us happy" is often a job that needs a second job to pay the rent. "Love," no matter how joyful and fulfilling, can also be a vacuum of time and energy; spouses need our love, attention, and commitment, and children need diapers, clothes, books, and food (and love and attention!). "Education" means less money and less time for work (and love, and practice). And then there's good old Buddha-dharma, which seems to be the most time-consuming of all. Practicing the Buddha-dharma-- at least how I'm talking about-- means spending a lot of time in silence, or in isolated conditions. I really believe, because I've verified for myself, that if you truly want to practice Buddhism, if that's the only thing you want to do in your life, then the material side will happen. The money and food will happen. There will always be communities and organizations throughout the world which support people who want to practice full time, but it takes really committing to practicing full time to have people meet your spiritual yearning with material support. Dogen wrote in the Zuimonki: I have never read in the collection of all the Buddhist sutras of a single buddha or patriarch who transmitted the dharma in the three countries, dying of starvation or cold. In this world, inherently each person receives a certain amount of food and clothing as a gift. It does not come by being sought after nor does it stop coming by not seeking after it. Just leave it to fate and do not worry about it. I used to think of this as a terrifyingly large leap of faith, but now I see it in more practical, rational terms. Basically he's saying that people support monks who practice sincerely. And it's true. They do! I've been very lucky to receive a lot of material support by strangers, friends, and teachers, but I'm pretty sure it's because they have an idea I'm some kind of spiritual badass (not really sure why). This is how big dharma centers work as well; there's always space for people who want to practice badly enough. "Wanting it badly enough," though, usually means giving up most, if not all of the items on the Human Fulfillment Checklist, at least for a period of time. Even snacks, depending on the situation. Basically, I'm starting to view Dogen's view on material support and the dharma like that song in Chicago, when the queen of the cell block sings, "When you're good to mama, mama's good to you... There's a lot of favors I'm prepared to do, you do one for mama, she'll do one for you." If you are good to the dharma, it will be good to you. You won't get rich, but you will get something. Actually, what you will get in return is the opportunity to practice, which sometimes feels like enough and sometimes feels woefully insufficient. Did I just compare the dharma to a cell block queen rationing out cigarettes and magazines? Why yes I did. It's not an entirely unproblematic relationship. As I work on making a decision about where to live and work in January, part of me is striving to check all of the things off the Human Fulfillment Checklist, but another part of me knows I will make my life a lot easier for myself if I just focus on one, and maybe two of the things on that list. And I suspect that what is a priority now will in all likelihood shift over the years. I have different priorities now than when I was five, fifteen, or twenty five years old. Education, work, practice, and love will be important in different ways at different times for me. I remember a few years ago having some kind of pressing problem and calling my teacher on the phone. He listened to what I had to say and then said very sincerely and very simply, as if this were an entirely new concept to me, "You know Gesshin, your problem is that you want too many things." I laughed really, really hard into the phone. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 12:34 PM 2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, August 23, 2015 Will the Real Buddhists Please Stand Up Last month I read an essay in Tricycle Magazine by bell hooks called "Waking Up To Racism." This article was difficult and painful for me to read. bell hooks has been a personal hero of mine since I was in college, living in a primarily African-American dorm dedicated to social justice work on campus. At that time, I read her books obsessively and willingly applied her ideas to my mind like someone might use a pair of pliers, screwing and unscrewing certain nuts and bolts inside of me until the machine was drastically different. Franz Kafka wrote, "We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply... a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us," and this is exactly what bell hook's writing has always done to me. This time around though, it felt particularly personal, like an attack directed at me specifically (good ol' ego! I'm sure bell hooks is sitting in her office, envisioning my face and typing a criticism against me as we speak!). In her essay, hooks takes on the problem of the relationship between white colonialism and spiritual seeking; the two aren't so different, she theorizes. As a white spiritual seeker myself, the way she phrases her idea is pretty devastating. She writes about the problem of spiritual seeking: We cannot separate the will of so many white comrades to journey in search of spiritual nourishment to the “third world” from the history of cultural imperialism and colonialism that has created a context where such journeying is seen as appropriate, acceptable, an expression of freedom and right. Nor does it surprise me that black people, and other people of color who have grown up in the midst of racial apartheid and racist domination, often feel the need to stay home, to stay in our place. Often we feel we have no right to move into a world that belongs to someone else seeking to discover treasures—not even if they are spiritual gems. It is important to recognize and interrogate these two positions without the judgment of good and bad. I appreciate bell hook's ability to let complex issues exist side by side. It's not that spiritual seeking or spiritual seekers are bad people, she argues, but that the impulse to seek out "spiritual nourishment" often goes hand in hand with a colonial impulse, or at least, cannot be separated from this colonial history. I read this entire essay and flinched inwardly. It does not feel good to have the thing I care about the most implicated in a destructive, colonial rampage, especially one I didn't even know I was doing. But this is what bell hooks does; she is an axe to that annoying frozen sea within us we don't want to acknowledge. What do I do with the fact that I am who she is writing about? Does being a white seeker diminish the importance of the connection I've made to Japan and Japanese teachers and friends? bell hooks is suggesting that all of these things can exist simultaneously; there can be racism and exoticism alongside genuinely seeking and spiritual yearning. It's a nuanced position. Two weeks later, cooking lunch in my teacher's tiny mountain temple in Okayama, my friend and former student Solomon got to talking, as we do, about authenticity, dharma, and transmission. He brought up bell hook's article and I immediately started ranting about it. "Dogen was a seeker!" I tried to argue. "He went all the way to China for God's sake! And the Buddha! He left his whole family! You can't get away from renunciation and seeking in Buddhism." Eventually, Solomon suggested that what bell hooks is criticizing is not spiritual seeking itself (or white people practicing Buddhism, for that matter) but the attitude which privileges and respects certain kinds of methods and practices over other ones. She writes, Lately, I often playfully want to ask the “real Buddhists to please stand up.” Studying different traditions, I learned early on that “real” Buddhists have teachers they know and name, have studied specific paths, done translations, can speak with authority. Certainly there is always a need for experience and knowledge rooted in traditions, but it is not a spiritual given that these are the places where peace, union, and spiritual awareness are found. Recently, as I move in and out of American Buddhist communities I see a strong impulse both in myself and others to want to claim authenticity-- to be walking the "true path." I think this is a pretty basic, human impulse, to want to think your own way is the best and most true. It gets trickier, though, within the Zen Buddhist tradition because many of us want to trace our lineage back to the historical Buddha in an "unbroken lineage." We want The Truth. There is a push to want the true practice, to practice "like Dogen" or in "Dogen's spirit." But what is this spirit? How can we know? Historians point out that much of what exists in Soto Zen today (dharma combats, transmission ceremonies, the accessibility of The Shobogenzo) was purposefully invented in the last 150 years by clerics wanting to codify and spread a certain kind of religion. In Japan, dharma combats during the hossenshiki (head monk) ceremony are scripted. I was shusso quite young, at age twenty-five, and this is pretty standard timing. Other than having a whole lot of work and being exhausted, I did not have special leadership responsibilities. Before my hossenshiki I questioned Aoyama Roshi about this practice-- wasn't the head monk supposed to be a leader? Isn't the dharma combat supposed to be a spontaneous expression of your understanding? She explained briefly the realities of head monk ceremonies in Japan, how it is a bureaucratic necessity for training monks before they are qualified to own temples. Being a head monk who takes on leadership within the community would need a monastery with a very large number of students. In a monastery of twenty-five, with people leaving every three years, having a head monk take on teaching responsibilities would be unrealistic. "In Zen Buddhism," she said, "There is the ideal and the real. There is 'in theory' and 'in actuality.' Of course we would like to do things the ideal way, but the reality is different, and at the end of the day we have to live in reality." Well, hell. It's hard for me to argue with reality. And why should I? I will always strive for the ideal, because I think this yearning for the ideal is really just the yearning for truth. But it so easily becomes a contest about what is most authentic and correct. As bell hooks points out, this very human impulse to seek what is true can get tangled up in the impulse to want to designate who is the "real Buddhist" and who is the hack-- the devotional Buddhist, the material Buddhist, etc. I'm not ready to give up seeking for truth, but I hope I don't do it in a way that puts myself above others. I think bell hooks agrees, and I'm pretty sure she's seeking truth too, even if she stays home. As she points out in her article, there can be fruitful truth seeking if it is accompanied with humility. She writes, "It is often racism that allows white comrades to feel so comfortable with their 'control' and 'ownership' of Buddhist thought and practice in the United States. They have much to learn, then, from those people of color who embrace humility in practice and relinquish the ego's need to be recognized." I don't think this means we should stop seeking. In fact, I think she is urging us to keep seeking, but to do it better. She wants us to seek truth with humility, patience, and self-awareness. She wants us to be boats but also be our own axes and pliers. She wants the truth just as much as I do. This is the epigraph to her book Killing Rage: Ending Racism, the first book of hers I read in college: i keep the letters i write to you in a folder with a postcard attached. it is a reproduction of the image of a black man and woman in south africa in 1949 walking down a road side by side-- the caption reads "seek what is true"-- it is that seeking that brings us together again and again, that will lead us home. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 2:30 PM 3 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Saturday, August 8, 2015 The Life of the Temple France I’m flying to San Francisco tomorrow! I have been in Japan for only five days, and I’m off again. After the Hossenshiki in Switzerland I traveled to France to visit my friend Jokei-san’s temple. Jokei-san is a French nun in her fifties whom I met at Nisodo. She is incredibly energetic and positive, but tough and no-nonsense in the best possible way. At Nisodo when I would be having some personal problem and thought it was the most important thing in the world, she would glare at me and say, in a thick French accent, “We have a lot of work to do and you are still thinking about yourself.” Jokei-san lives alone in what looks like a converted farm house, an hour’s drive away from the nearest train station. The center is small and very French, with stone walls, a big vegetable garden, and these amazing red flowers that stand tall on long stalks, like sunflowers, but more bell-shaped. The zendo has wood floors, no tans, and there is bread at every meal. Jokei-san works hard and seems to always be moving. It’s a wonderful place. The first morning I arrived for zazen and was given a seat right by the door. After zazen there was a morning service all in French. I wasn’t exactly sure where to stand, so Jokei-san pointed out a spot separated from the lay people, with a bowing mat. I stood there and just followed along, bowing when I heard the bell, or sitting down when Jokei-san did. Every temple has its own unique schedule and rhythm, and the best way to act in a new environment like that is to just follow along with whatever everyone else is doing. After breakfast there was work period, and I was sent to the kitchen. I didn’t know where anything was so I just asked what I could do and chopped the vegetables people gave me. At tea time, Jokei-san introduced me to the members of the temple. She said, “Gesshin-san and I haven’t seen each other in years, and even this morning we haven’t spoken a lot because we are working, but she understands very well about the life of the temple. We can work silently together because we both understand about temple life, and this is very touching to me, watching her.” This was an interesting thing to say. In actuality, Jokei-san and I are friends. We like each other’s personalities, we can chat for a long time, and we support each other, which is why I came to visit her. We have a good interpersonal relationship, but the way we connect ultimately is through a shared, impersonal experience. It’s the impersonal experience of being nuns together which makes our personal relationship thrive— however that’s possible. Learning how to act in a temple doesn’t happen through conscious effort. Of course there are actual details to think about, like what time things happen, how to hit certain instruments the right way, or what groceries to buy on a given budget. There are phone calls, bills, scheduling details, and depending on the place, textual studies or language studies. I studied tea ceremony at Nisodo, which required memorizing a lot of details. But really how to behave in a temple, the underlying attitude of it all— how to move, how to stand, sit and bow, how to work well with others, how to follow the schedule without complaining, how to keep your head about water in the midst of everything— this can’t be learned consciously. It happens gradually and subconsciously through years of repetition, years of showing up again and again to work and bow and sit, and above all, be quiet. And because it happens subconsciously, because it’s in many ways an impersonal experience, it isn’t something you can be aware of when it’s happening. It takes someone else on the outside pointing out, “Look, you are working well with others,” before you know that’s what’s happening. It took me a very long time to adjust to this kind of life. It was like being thrown into a river without knowing how to swim, and then floundering, drowning, until enough people showed me how to relax and float down stream. Harmonizing with temple life is a lot like learning how to float, instead of trying to swim upstream (or drown). It doesn’t happen naturally. Though there will always be rocks to avoid, it’s our job to relax into the river, to allow ourselves to be carried while also making the individual effort to stay afloat and avoid the rocks. The life of the temple has nothing to do with being a monk or a lay person, a man or a woman. It has nothing to do with age or intelligence. The life of the temple doesn't care about your personality, or harmful thought patterns. It’s a physical activity that is learned by watching and following. And then, when you find yourself doing it without effort, it’s not really yourself doing it, but something along the lines of… the life of the temple living itself. So what good exactly is this shared, impersonal experience, this river floating, this life of the temple? What bearing does it have on the rest of the world? How can it help? I’m sure it has not made me a kinder or nicer person. I’m not more gentle. It hasn’t increased my communication skills. It has made me more patient only in the sense that I can endure more pain. It has made me “better” only at those relationships which exist within a clear hierarchy; I am “better” at respect but I’m pretty sure I’m “worse” now at love and intimacy. I’m harder and less affectionate. As I look forward to returning to America, I have to think this life of the temple is not enough. But I carry this life of the temple with me always, somewhere underneath everything, and it’s an incredibly subtle, precious thing. Insufficient, definitely, but precious. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 6:56 AM 5 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Thursday, July 30, 2015 Don't Throw Up In My Okesa I'm in the Italian part of Switzerland, in a town called Ascona! Hold on while I go buy some gelato. Okay, now I'm back and eating chocolate gelato. This is important to my spiritual development because I'm trying this new thing where I just enjoy the simple things around me and don't make everything so difficult and serious for myself. The Italians already have this figured out. When we checked into our hotel today, the guy behind the counter said, "Technically I'm supposed to give you a single room and make you change to a double tomorrow, but I'm just going to give you the double for the whole time and not charge you extra because otherwise I have to change the reservation, and that means work, and work makes me unhappy." I'm not sure why Buddhism exists in Europe, because there is limitless gelato, pasta, fine art, and rolling, green hills. The men smoke cigarettes casually and endlessly, scowl and have huge muscles. I'm not sure how these things could ever cease to be amazing. I have had a bizarre week. I came to Switzerland with seven members from my sangha: my teacher, my dharma sister Shugetsu-san, who is an Australian woman in her forties, two young Japanese monks who trained at the monastery, a monk's wife who teaches goeka, and an abbot from the area near our temple who plays the shamisen and is an all-around good sport. We were invited by the monastery Kosetsu-ji to help with the hossenshiki of one of their nuns, Doko-san, who also practiced in Japan. Kosetsu-ji is an incredibly beautiful monastery surrounded by carefully cultivated gardens and a big mountain range. They have a really interesting mix of Western and Japanese elements, and lots of strong women practitioners. It was an honor to be invited. The hossenshiki was like the United Nations of Zen; everyone was there. The bishop of Europe! My mother! My teacher! Two Japanese Zen nuns! And about eighty other people from throughout Europe and Japan. The day we arrived, we heard that the shusso and a few other nuns at Kosetsu-ji were sick and had slept the entire morning. This was obviously not good, because the shusso is the star. Luckily, she recovered, and business carried on as usual. Shugetsu-san and the monk's wife taught a goeka class. I served some Japanese monks coffee. The Swiss nuns drove and coordinated endlessly. Somewhere, a tireless tenzo cooked up a vegetarian lunch for fifty people. We performed the Ango opening ceremony and ceremonial tea. The evening before the hossenshiki, we all went out to dinner at the nearby hotel. It was a wonderful vegetarian, Swiss meal of wine, stewed mushrooms and pastry, and lasagna. About an hour into the meal, the older Japanese nun had to be taken back to the monastery to rest. Apparently she wasn't feeling well. A few other people left with her, also claiming to feel unwell. Then, towards the end of dinner, the nun sitting next to me threw up over the whole table. I didn't think too much of this. Reflexively I wiped down her vomit-crushed purse with a napkin and brought it to the bathroom, where another nun was helping her. Then I said goodbye, went to my room, and fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up nauseous. At first I just thought it was "empathy nausea." You know how when your friend is sick, you kind of feel sick too? But this was no empathy nausea. I could barely move. My mother, who had met up with me in Switerzland the day before, woke up and puked several times. It turns out everyone in the town had been infected with E coli from the water supply, but we didn't know this yet. My mom decided to opt out of the hossenshiki she had traveled all the way around the world to see, but I knew I didn't have this option. I had one purpose alone, and that was to be my teacher's Jisha in this damn thing. So I called him on the phone, searching for a way out. "Good morning," I said. "Hello." "How are you? " "I'm fine," he said. "How is Shugetsu-san?" I asked. Shugetsu-san was my out. If she was healthy, I could be sick. But it was not to be. "She is sick and I haven't seen her all day. She is sleeping." "Oh dear," I said. "I'm sick too. My mother just threw up a bunch of times. I think she can't come to the hossenshiki..." I let that sentence linger, waiting for him to tell me I could stay back, too. He didn't. "How are you feeling?" I asked finally. Turns out he was sick too. I hung up the phone and lay there in bed, trying to garner some strength of will. I remembered a story he told me one of having a 104 degree fever and having to do three funerals in one day. Between the second and third funeral someone called an ambulance to come give him an IV, and then he kept going. I lay there thinking about that ridiculous machismo Zen story and it got me out of bed. I brought a plastic bag with me in the car in case I threw up on the way to the temple. I got to Kosetsu-ji a half an hour before the hossenshiki started, which is pretty late. I changed into my okesa and koromo, then went to see my teacher. We was lying in bed, sick. "I want to throw up," I told him. "Don't throw here," he said solemnly and quietly, using his broken English. "Throw in your own room." That's pretty Zen. I brought him some medicine and water, and then he put on his ceremonial robes. Very, very briefly he told me what I was supposed to do during the ceremony, which was open his zagu one time so he could bow, take off his ceremonial hat, and put it back on. Usually my dharma sister does this kind of thing, but she was singing goeka during the ceremony. We weren't sure if she was going to be able to do it, but she also managed to get out of bed. Eventually we made our way to the hall. I was feeling increasingly nauseous and put a plastic bag inside my robes in case I had to throw up. I really felt like I was going to throw up, and was terrified I would vomit during the ceremony, in the midst of opening my teacher's zagu. Or inside his hat. We took our seats and the ceremony started. I opened his zagu at the right time. I sat in my place, fighting back vomit. Everyone once in a while, my teacher would randomly stand up and sit down again, I guess to avoid vomiting. The shusso had her dharma combat. Then there were the words of congratulations, thankfully vomit free, and we exited the hall. Next was a group photo and then we were finished. We went back inside and I managed to fold my teacher's okesa and koromo. "Were should I put your koromo?" I asked. "In the suitcase, on top of the okesa." I put his koromo inside the suitcase and then had to sit down, my head in my hands. The room was spinning. "Are you okay?" he asked. "No," I said. "I really want to throw up." "Don't throw up in my okesa." I left, went to the bathroom, and then found a random bed. I lay down and slept for the next six hours. As I drifted in and out of a fevered sleep I smelled curry from a Sri Lankan lunch, and heard the not so distant the sound of the shamisen. That is my hossenshiki story. I'm glad we were invited, and managed to stand in our positions and not throw up, and support the temple in some small way. Now I'm in the Italian part of Switzerland with my mother, and the next five blog posts will hopefully be detailed descriptions of gelato flavors and photos of rugged Italian men scowling and smoking cigarettes. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 2:56 PM 2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Saturday, July 18, 2015 Relationships and Cultural Exchange Members of my Japanese class at Nanzan University I've been living in Asia for almost six years now, but I have only recently begun thinking about the idea of "cultural exchange"-- mostly thanks to one of my brilliant student/friends from the study abroad program I worked on this fall who often spoke to me about cultural exchange and its challenges. "For cultural exchange to work," he said one time to me, "Both sides have to want an actual exchange." This might seem like an obvious statement, but its implications are important. When my student said this, he was referring to the experience of being a foreigner in Japan studying Japanese culture and religion. Japan was a "closed country" for centuries-- meaning foreigners were not allowed to enter, just as Japanese were not allowed to leave-- and though this changed over a century ago, Japan remains fairly isolated and racially monolithic. Western countries have a fascination with Japan, and there are lots of tourists who come here. But while there are many tourist bureaus and study abroad programs, the relationships that form in these situations between Japanese and non-Japanese are usually of teacher and student, or "gracious host" and "grateful guest." Very, very rarely, does an actually exchange among equals take place. In my opinion, there is a huge difference between a host/guest relationship and actual, mutual friendship. This isn't to say the blame is all on Japan, because when we show up as tourists or even students of a foreign country's culture we are looking to gain a certain kind of thing, to extract a certain special kind of experience for ourselves. And similarly, the host/guest relationship can be a beautiful, unique thing, as it is in the tea ceremony, but it's different than an exchange between equals. In cultural exchange, both sides have to want to be there. True cultural exchange is rare because, like my student pointed out, both parties have to be willing and self-aware enough from the beginning to actively seek out this exchange. The kind of self-awareness necessary for cultural change is the awareness of oneself as a unique human being conditioned and shaped by karma, culture, language, history, biology, and personal experience. One of the beautiful things about Buddhism is that it recognizes we are united in our universal desire to be happy and avoid suffering. However, our unique karma, culture and history shapes how we view the world, how we react, what we value, and even what we like and dislike. A brief perusal of world news gives clear examples of how incredibly difficult it is for people and cultures to communicate across this divide. Since humans are nothing without culture-- and by culture I mean not only the art and customs of our unique communities, but also the values and privileges that shape our experience-- acknowledging who we are, our identities, and how we have been shaped by our culture has to be the first step in inter-cultural exchange. For example, in conversations about race in America, usually the first thing that happens is getting white people to acknowledge that they are in fact white, and then from that, coming to an acknowledgement of white privilege. Without an acknowledgement of race, there can't be a conversation about it. Most expats who live in Japan will tell you that it is very difficult to form meaningful, lasting friendships with Japanese people. It's so infamously difficult, in fact, that we devoted an entire class period to discussing "How to Make Japanese Friends" in my Japanese language class. We brainstormed ideas and came up with a short list including things like "learn Japanese," "acknowledge personal space," "don't say your opinion too strongly," and my personal favorite, "wait a long time." In my experience, forming good relationships with Japanese people-- or any people from outside my own culture-- does include giving up, at least temporarily, huge parts of myself that I deem essential. For example, to form good relationships in the monastery where I lived, I had to constantly restrain myself from saying my opinion or speaking out against practices I thought were unfair. Expression of personal views and preferences has an entirely different connotation in Japan, and to get along with other people I had to be hyper-aware of my own natural tendency to want to "be honest" and "speak my truth," which is usually viewed as arrogance or lack of tact in Japan. Still, I can learn Japanese, be polite, and silence my personal opinion till the cows come home, but unless the other side wants cultural exchange, it's not going to happen. Most of the Japanese people here who I have long-lasting relationships with are those who have traveled outside of Japan-- who have lived and studied abroad or who have a deep interest in the English language and Western culture. Not surprisingly, they are often people who have a (negative) reputation for being "interested in foreigners." But there is an interest, commitment, and willingness on their part to show up for Westerners and communicate across the divide, with self-awareness. This is pretty rare. It's very difficult to have a meaningful, mutual friendship-- i.e a cultural exchange-- with a Japanese person who does understand what it means to be Japanese. I think this is true not just of Japanese people but with all people, myself included. I did not understand what it meant to be an American until I left America, and similarly, I've found that Japanese people who can articulate Japanese culture to Westerners are those who have spent a considerable amount of time away from Japan. They know who they are and so they know who I am. I'm writing here about culture, but of course when I say "culture," I really mean "people." Human beings are culture. So when I'm writing about "cross-cultural exchange" in a literal sense, as in dialogue between countries, I'm also writing about the relationships we have with people within our own communities. Any meaningful relationship between two people is going to have to entail mutual willingness and commitment, as well as the ability to give up certain long-held ideas about who we are and our own, unique importance. I fell in love for the first time my sophomore year of college, right when I was beginning to practice Buddhism. Looking back on that time, my heart goes out to all of the nineteen year old girls in love with boys their age, because I'm pretty sure theres no male less equipped at being in love than a teenage boy who has just left his parent's home for the first time. Needless to say, I was madly in love with a boy who had no idea what to do with my love-- how to reciprocate or deal with my emotions in a responsible way. At the apex of my one-sided love affair with this well-meaning but utterly hapless nineteen year old boy, I went to a dharma talk by Ethan Nichtern (who apparently has blown up recently as a famous teacher, but who at the time was I think twenty-five or six and did shots with us in the kitchen while showing off his tattoo. He was pretty cool). I asked Ethan Nichtern a question about generosity. I can't remember the question exactly, but it was about how to know when you are giving or trying too much. I framed it in the context of Buddhist practice but of course I was also thinking of my romantic relationship. He said, "Sometimes people are not capable of receiving the generosity we give them." Those words worked magic on me because they framed the problem as a lack of capacity, not a moral failing. Sometimes other people simply do not have the capacity to meet us where we are or see us for who we are (or would like to be seen). Sometimes they simply do not have the interest. Recently, as I reflect on my time in Asia as a Westerner attempting to learn Japanese language, culture, and religion, I've realized that actually I have given up on seeking out friendships with Japanese people in the way I used to. What I mean is that I am tired of trying to force some kind of exchange, assimilation, or understanding where there cannot be any. I am done trying to seek out friendships with people who will only ever see me as their "American friend," rather than as their friend. I have stopped seeking out Japanese friends because deep down I know that a lack of my personal willingness and enthusiasm on my part is usually not the problem. I have willingness; others usually do not. And yet, even though I have given up, I am also committed 100% to showing up for communication and connection if it's there. I promise myself that I will always show up to do the work, self-reflection, communication, learning and yes, self-sacrifice and renunciation of culturally conditioned values and ideas, to make meaningful cultural exchange happen. I have simultaneously given up and remain eternally optimistic. I will always take that step forward across the divide, enthusiastically and wholeheartedly-- if and when the other side does too. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 9:22 PM 2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Thursday, July 9, 2015 Politics "As A Buddhist" My teacher often tells his students, “You can’t hold two things with one hand.” He usually says this kind of thing to rebellious students like me who are trying to divide our time and energy between the monastery and a more worldly, engaged kind of life. This is also his reasoning for why monks shouldn’t get married or have 9-5 jobs. So I was surprised when I called him this week to bemoan my current state of monastic failure and he was eerily supportive. “I’m just a college student now,” I complained. “Yes, but you’re studying Japanese as a monk.” We were talking in Japanese and he used a grammatical tense I didn’t know, として、which means “to do a role as something.” Ever since then I’ve been wondering what it means to do something as a Buddhist, or as a monk. Maybe it’s better just to be one thing and leave it at that— to not try to be a student as a monk or a politician as a Buddhist, but to just pick one role and do it well. But of course, what if I can’t chose? This week I read a fascinating article by Bhikkhu Bodhi called “Facing the Great Divide,” about the differences between so-called “Classical Buddhism” and “Secular Buddhism.” He describes Classical Buddhism, generally, as the more traditional approach to Buddhism which emphasizes belief in rebirth, kharma, support of the monastic community, generation of merit, and release from the cycle of samsara. Towards the end of the essay, he writes how the strength of “Secular Buddhism” is its social engagement: For all its unsavouriness, politics has become the stage where the critical ethical struggles of our time are being waged. Any spiritual system that spurns social engagement to safeguard its purity risks reneging on its moral obligations. Its contemplative practices then turn into the intellectual plaything of an upper-middle-class elite or a cushion to soften the impact of the real world. This passage gave me pause. I was a social activist before I became a Buddhist, and throughout my adult life I have constantly been looking for justifications as to why Buddhist practice is complimentary to social activism. Almost ten years after encountering Buddhism in the context of social justice work, though, I’m not sure that they are as happy a marriage as I wished they would be. In fact, I do think that at a fundamental level, they are profoundly different. The strength of (“Classical?”) Buddhist practice is, as I see it, the encouragement to turn inwards and to let go. Whether we are taking a Theravaden approach and speaking of relinquishing desire and attachment, or if we are trying to “drop off body and mind” and “forget the self” as it’s articulated in the Zen tradition, there is a common theme of renunciation— letting go of our narrow perspective and self-identification. From the “Classical Buddhism” perspective, letting go is freedom itself. Social activism often requires the opposite: it asks that we engage, that we don’t let go, that we find ways to channel our very understandable responses of rage and anger in the face of brutality and unjust systems into meaningful work, that we look outward and around at our world and examine what is not right, what is harmful, and the best ways to redress these inequalities. This often means very tangible, practical things like reading history, writing letters, boycotting, attending workshops, speaking up for others when it is uncomfortable or dangerous to do so, giving up personal privileges, etc. Earlier this year after the events in Ferguson, I felt moved to try to articulate why Buddhist practice had to necessarily include political action, but I wonder if my own writing is the result of wishful thinking. Whereas ten years ago I sought to seek a way to rationalize this contradiction or to reinterpret the fundamental bedrock of Buddhist practice to be something other than letting go of craving or a narrow sense of self, these days I don’t think this is so necessary. I’m starting to think that these two things— Buddhism and political action— can exist as dissimilar, contradictory things and still be effective, radical practices. What happens when we engage with politics “as a Buddhist?” The extreme would be the current situation in Myanmar, where hard-line Buddhist monks (monk politicians?) just passed a law prohibiting Buddhist women from marrying Muslims. I’m wary of any kind of political action done in the name of religion, whether that religion is my own or someone else’s. A less extreme version might be using Buddhist principles of compassion and empathy to engage in political activism or social justice work— which I have spent many years trying to do, because I longed so deeply for the spiritual practice that nourished me to match the political ideals I held. Still, If I am speaking truthfully I have to say that when Buddhism tries to be anything other than Buddhism, it loses its primary strength as a radical, profound, existentially liberating practice. And similarly, if we articulate social justice work in terms of dharma practice, this has the potential to dilute the kind of social engagement required to dismantle fundamentally oppressive systems of power. When anti-oppression work is articulated to white people as a way to help or augment our spiritual practice, this puts the focus back on white peoples' needs. Rather than explaining why social justice work helps everyone feel better, or explaining why Buddhist principles necessitate racial equality, for example, I wonder if it might be more useful to encourage white folk to love justice for its own sake, whether or not this kind of justice conforms with our notions of what we want Buddhist practice to look like. I am wary of engaging in political action “as a Buddhist” because I think it is more effective to engage in political action first as an intelligent, independently thinking, ethical and empathetic human being. I’m starting to think that ethics based on external reference points like religion or philosophy will always be inferior to the ethical system I cultivate myself through thinking, reflection, and cultivating empathy. Buddhism offers an incredibly sophisticated and profound ethical system— which is why I was attracted to it in the first place—, but it falls short of addressing contemporary issues like global warming, systematic racism and sexism, the threat of nuclear warfare, etc. While it might be tempting to say that we should adapt Buddhism to address these issues or create a new kind of Buddhism altogether (“Secular Buddhism?”) I think it might be possible simply to strengthen our internal ethical muscles through reading, independent thinking, self-reflection, and empathy, while continuing to practice renunciation and meditation in the spirit of the historical Buddha. I say “it might be possible” because this is a motivation I have only articulated to myself very recently. It sounds nice, but I’m not sure yet what that would look like. I’ve found it important personally to clarify what Buddhist practice has been historically and then, how this historical precedent can carry into the present moment. This is not loyalty for the sake of loyalty but for the sake of clarity, which is as close as I can come these days to “truth.” Clarifying what Buddhism has been in the past and understanding the profundity of the historical Buddha’s call to renunciation, as well as the traditions that developed from that is important because otherwise I am engaging with a fantasy. Still, honoring the profundity and simplicity (and difficulty!) of the Buddha’s core message in no way diminishes my ability— and obligation— to engage socially as an intelligent adult living in a global society. It’s just that I'm starting to think they are actually entirely different things. Whether this means I am, like my teacher says, trying to juggle two things in one hand, or whether I am strengthening my ability to use both hands— as all humans must do in order to move through life with dexterity and ease— I am not sure. Posted by Gesshin Greenwood at 3:56 AM 11 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Older Posts Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) I am supported only by scholarships and donations. I appreciate your help! About Me Gesshin Greenwood My name's Gesshin. I'm Soto Zen nun living in Japan. I was born in 1986, so I wouldn't say being a "Zen nun" is an easy or natural thing for me to do at all. I spent about four and a half years in monasteries, not thinking or writing about anything, so now that I'm out in the world again I'm thinking and writing about a lot. This blog started out as a way to communicate with friends and family back home and post silly pictures of weird Japanese things, but it kind of became a blog about Buddhism because Buddhism is the only thing I really do or care about, besides talking to my mom and reading novels. Sorry. I don't have any other hobbies or interests. Let me know if you want silly pictures of weird Japanese things, and I can send them to you. View my complete profile You can write me at thatssozenblog@gmail.com Follow by Email Blog Archive ▼ 2015 (31) ▼ September (1) Taking the Precepts in Gibberish ► August (3) ► July (4) ► June (3) ► May (3) ► April (2) ► March (6) ► February (3) ► January (6) ► 2014 (26) ► December (3) ► November (8) ► October (7) ► September (8) I am supported only by scholarships and donations. I appreciate your help! Simple template. Powered by Blogger.