Sunday, August 22, 2010

Amazing Grace

Schireson sensei and friend, Hokkeji, Japan. Original image and Grace's good words here. Further on down, the image of First Church Boston can be located at good ol' Wikipedia.

Blooming on a busy corner of Boston's gorgeous, historical Back Bay is First Church Boston, where a modest wattle-and-daub room for worship created by the founders of Boston eventually grew into a soaring-from-the-ashes phoenix of an early-70's architectural dream of a church. And this is where I found myself, by no small miracle, this past Saturday night: staring into a bright night sky through the odd frame of a burnt-out rose window.

By miracle, I do mean miracle. Like many an at-home mama, I'm not quite sure how I made it out of the house, into the car and down the street after the day I had. And I'm less sure of how I managed to navigate the unfamiliar streets to actually make it to Marlborough Street armed with only a few scribbled notes from Google maps and an intuitive guess where street signs were lacking. But nevermind that-- once I arrived, I actually found a parking space right in front, thankyouverymuch. Indeed by then it was a miracle that I made it just in the nick of time for a short period of zazen. After all, the sit was scheduled to begin at 6:15, and I had only just wedged myself into the aforementioned miracle-parking-spot at precisely 6:14...

Yet even that was not the real miracle of the night; did I mention I somehow had enough time to quickly visit the ladies' restroom? Ah, me, late as I was, I did; and just as I ran up a long flight of stairs and slipped off my shoes and snuck onto an available zafu, Zen teacher, abbess and author Grace Schireson bowed and snuck on to her own directly across from mine. Grace has been on the circuit promoting her new book, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters, and tonight she was to share an intimate talk with some of the sangha of Boundless Way Zen.

It was rather a miracle that I found myself meditating beside her, and not just because of that incredible, aforementioned parking spot. No, I'd actually had it in mind to meet Grace for about 4 years now, an impulse harking back to the days when I lived in Northern California, closer to my own Zen teacher who encouraged me to join the two of them at an all-women's retreat at Grace's Empty Nest Zendo. But as it was I was nursing a new babe-in-arms, and though they promised to accommodate, such a retreat was (and has been) a luxury of thought only. One day, has been my mantra. Maybe next year. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I learned she was coming to me-- in a way, it felt to me that my own teacher, and even the entire energy of that all-women zen retreat, would somehow be in the room with her. (The joy of that thought helped my navigation through the squirrelier parts of Boston rush-hour traffic, I can assure you.)

Yet even the serendipity of that was not the real miracle of the evening.

The real miracle, the real grace of Grace, her book and this talk tonight was the imparting of a long-held secret: the reality and beauty of a women's Zen Buddhist lineage.

Lineage is the cornerstone of Zen; it offers something of an immediate access to Buddha himself, as if saying the names of the people he touched somehow allows us to touch him, too. At any rate, the offering of this chant also reminds the practitioner of just how close we are to Buddha, and how long our history with him has been. So it was that each day in our Soto service at my temple, we chanted the names of the... patriarchs. And so how sweetly it is I can remember the surprise of tears that came the first time I chanted the names of our female Buddhist ancestors. The woman who would later become my teacher had brought the list with her to share during the sesshin that culminated with my ordination ceremony. I had had no idea that just reading the names of these women would draw such a strong, emotional response! The real gift of Grace's book, then, is that she has gathered so many of these Zen ancestors' stories into one place, into one resource. She has given them light of day, and granted new life to what were once (in lucky instances) just names on a page.

It's hard to explain why this is important; rather, I trust that my body and my psyche know it is. For it is still true that in many parts of the world, and in many instances here at home in our own Western culture (78 cents on the man's dollar, anyone?), women are conveniently regarded as second-class citizens. And even if this is not at the center of one's concentration, the shame of being treated as less-than-whole emerges in interesting, least-expected ways, such as crying one's way through a most touching lineage chant.

As for that chant? Sure enough, the paper carrying all those women's names was folded up and recycled once the sesshin was through. And although the addition of those names cost perhaps 2 minutes extra time during our daily morning service, we never again chanted them. Does sex-- the female sex-- matter in Buddhism? If we are all one, what does it matter? It's a long debate and it certainly deserves its own post, but my focus right now is the grace that came once those names were given breath, once those women's stories were given life.

When something that you had no idea was missing shows up in your life, it is profound and permanently altering. And how appropriate it seemed to me then that I should find myself at the end of my first Saturday-night-out in a long while gazing up at the burnt-out grandness of a 19th century rose window, the fresh breath of a late-summer night breezing through an untold past feeding my own breath, my own hope. Here, here then, to 'untold' pasts made manifest!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Contemplatively Contemplating Contemplation...


Forgive the absence, dear ones; it's been a busy summer. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled Zen Adventure in the weeks to come. In the meantime, though, a friend, who is a new mom herself, asked me: "how do YOU practice in this new phase of your life?" I think there are more than a few of us who would sum it up as "I basically daydream about meditating while I'm vacuuming, and I feel guilty..." But as I wrote my response to her, I realized that while the practice itself may look different, the intention, concentration and effort are very much the same.

lol-- laughter and guilt. That seems to sum it up for me these days!

This morning I sat, actually, for the first time in many weeks. (Alright, technically we should call it "months" I guess, at this point!) My last great effort was my At-Home Retreat, which was in May if memory serves. What was interesting about that time was the amount of teachings that popped up in least-expected places, not the least of which was an admonition from my Teacher (Kobun roshi) on some random website I found, to "not feel guilty." To practice zazen when you practice zazen, and not sit zazen when you're not sitting zazen-- not to pine after it when you're not doing it.

Simple enough, but the rest of the message got my head straight: "The best way to live is to consider the people who relate with you in your day to day life and emphasize how they feel about your absence. Their tremendous kindness makes you able to join this sitting practice."

The other interesting thing that happened in that week was that true to any sangha in deep practice, the fissures in my marriage began to show. My annoyances and resentments toward my husband were painfully present and in truth, it's why my Retreat lasted only a week. I think of it as a ripening time, where I allowed myself to really open to what was happening here in my family-- and I understood, finally, what a great mirror we are for each other, in all our guises.

So in a way, I feel like the Great Cosmic Zen Master stepped in and hooked us with a good whallop from the kyosaku ("encouragement stick"), because that's when everything began to unravel. Which is excellent now, from this vantage point at least: attention has been received where it was most needed, and we are all working together now, rather than each in our own separate corner, trying to get it right on our own.

I dunno. I miss sitting, I miss the discipline of living at a temple and waking earlier than the rest of the world, that sense of the night-creatures heading back to bed and the morning earth drowsily rolling through sunrise. I miss being a part of that and part of a quiet group of folks all really dedicated to... something, their own inner hope. When I say I'm a priest now, usually my mind follows up with, "Yeah, right..." so that I don't really even know what it means anymore. A friend recently posted, "How are you of service?" and that focus has shifted from, "I'm going to be the next Joan Halifax and save the whole, big world!!" to "I'm going to go fold socks!"

But seriously, I don't doubt for a moment that this service is important. It's a physical manifestation of chanting the Heart Sutra, is my take on it. Bringing a new human into this world is the hardest work there is. You CAN'T get lost in your ideals within this practice-- it won't LET you. And you cannot escape it, even on the worst days. It's all you have and you know it. It is an excellent, excellent teacher and opportunity in the way that Temple living cannot be, because in Temple life, truly the back door is always a little ajar...

So, there you have it. My practice these days consists of a healthy attention to Right Thoughts, with Right Speech and Right Action following as the branches off that trunk. (That just means I spend a lot of time in my head, talking to me'self ;) I've taught my son how to make an incense offering and bow, and we do that quite often because he likes it. Once in a great while, we actually sit zazen together, and oh there is NOTHING sweeter than sitting zazen all of 54 seconds with a toddler!! And each night I soak my tired feet and use that time, right there locked away in the quiet bathroom and perched on the closed toilet, to sit zazen. I read a lot of Buddhist blogs, and I write on my own blog, concentrating on the relational aspect of all of life. And each day I'll make an offering on my altar, giving thanks to my teachers.

When I first moved to Boston, I decided to make an adventure of my practice and visit each meditation center the area offers. There are a lot of places, it's rather like a mini Buddhist mecca! Alas there are no strictly Soto sanghas here, so it's been a lot like visiting different "countries" of Buddhism.

The other nice thing is the local Insight Meditation Society offers a GREAT program for children called Little Buddhas, so we're attending that monthly as a family.

So, that's it for me- how about you? What does your practice in the Family Sangha look like?