Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Doyu (Tom) Oak's First Rohatsu Sesshin, Nov. 30 - Dec.8, 2013

Greetings Loved Ones!
On Sunday, December 8th, 2013 I returned home after participating in my first full-on Rohatsu Sesshin. I feel that I would be remiss if I did not stop to write something about this experience while it is fresh; forestalling, for a few moments longer, taking up the tasks which have accumulated in my absence. I write this and make it available to you to read. Though should you choose to read this and, in doing so, find it palatable and, if so, digestible, I cannot say.
First off, let me explain what a “Rohatsu Sesshin” is. This is a Zen Buddhist silent ‘retreat’ spanning eight days in the first week of December. This corresponds to the week that the historical Buddha, in around 600 BC, after years of spiritual journeying around India, decided to stop and sit under a tree until the answer to his big question, ‘what is the cause of human suffering’ (unease, dissatisfaction) became apparent. On the morning of the eighth day, after a harrowing week in which all manner of demons tormented and tempted him, attempting to dislodge him from his post, Buddha experienced Awakening and finally cracked this great question. In short, the cause of human suffering, he realized, is our attachment to the illusory belief that we have a distinct ‘self’. Our ‘true self’, he discovered, lies below our superficial, egoistic, troubled, separate sense of ‘self’. This true self, he discovered, is seamlessly at one with the universe; all that is, was, and ever will be.
I don’t expect you to ‘get’ this, Buddhist’s practice hard for years to achieve a similar awakening and understanding. And Rohatsu is one of our key pushes in this regard.
Rohatsu Sesshin is a powerful tool of Zen practice whose form has been honed by a succession of Zen masters and communities in China and Japan over many centuries. It was clear that what I participated in this week, in all its rigor and multi-faceted torments and revelations (a sort of reenactment of Buddha’s original week under that tree) is an ancient, very carefully and deliberately crafted, awakening tool. One which I learned is very effective when wielded well and taken up with earnestness.
The setting was Camp Indianola in Washington state, situated on the edge of a woods looking south east over Puget Sound, Mont Ranier, and the lights and skyline of North Seattle.
Our teacher and Sesshin leader was Genjo, abbot of Seattle’s Chobo Ji Zen community. Genjo, 59, is a recognized and increasingly well respected and renowned Zen Master whose concerted Zen training and practice has extended over more than 30 years. Genjo also has a professional practice as a psychotherapist.
This marked the first time in my now seven years of Zen practice that I had practiced with Buddhists outside of my home Sangha (community), Zenwest (see zenwest.ca). And this is the first time that I have studied with a Zen Master. Genjo now tells me that I can consider myself his student. After working under his skilled and loving guidance this week, meeting with him for brief ‘interviews’ 3 times daily, I cannot adequately express my gratitude and joy about this relationship. Genjo, I discovered, is a man to whom I can (and did) bring my most pressing and intractable questions; even the unspeakable personal and private issues which I had come to feel the need of swallowing as my bitter lot. He was clear that the road to awakening can leave no stone unturned and that, miraculously, he is keen to be there with me as I apply my shoulder to even my most formidable obstacles.
What do we do in Sesshin? We live together with virtually no verbal communication. Certainly all idle conversation and casual greetings, even eye contact, are discouraged. And, of course, we sit still a lot! That’s the main thing. For multiple 25 minute or so periods, amounting to 6-7 hours per day, we sit. Mostly, to the extent that we can hold such a position, we sit cross legged. Sitting in a chair is also permitted, as is sitting up on one’s knees. There are also a few daily chanting periods in which we invoke the inspiration and experience of past masters for our efforts. There is a talk in the morning given by the teacher. There are three formalized meals. There were three 15 minute periods per day of meditative walking; in step, in line, around the property and along the beach. The day started with wake up bells at 4am and concluded anywhere from 10:30pm to midnight.
Three times a day one had the opportunity to go to a one on one interview with Genjo. For the most part this is optional but a couple of these are compulsory. (I concluded that I would be an idiot to pass up a single opportunity to meet with Genjo!); interviews typically last anywhere from less than a minute to up to as long as 5 minutes. In effect one is having a serial conversation with Genjo interspersed with multiple periods of sitting in which one is working on the material that came up in the previous interview; in preparation for the next.
Sesshin is not a ‘retreat’ in the sense of being a time and place one goes to rest and recuperate. Sesshin is a time when one is severely put to the test. The shortage of sleep and seemingly endless and often agonizingly painful hours of silent sitting are designed to pry open the iron grip of our limited, delusional, egoistic, and entirely constructed and artificial sense of self in order to allow space for an experience of our deeper, true self. The former self is comparable to the surface of the ocean, where our needs, wants, fears, and daily circumstances are waves that buffet us around continuously. In experiencing the latter self one sinks below this tumultuous surface to a place of limitless energy and calmness. There is, apparently, no limit to this depth. Being in this depth doesn’t mean the waves of life disappear, just that they do not buffet us. In this depth one doesn’t experience these waves as ‘me’. 
With Genjo’s skillful guidance and a lot of grueling sitting work, in a way that had been heretofore unprecedented, I gained some access to an experience of this depth. Let me tell you, it is a wonderful place. Being there is akin to best ever ‘trip’. But, unlike a drug induced trip, on this trip one is entirely present and more in control than one could ever be on our egoistic surface.
This was my first Rohatsu Sesshin, my first 8 day retreat. I have undertaken a few 5 day Sesshins with our Zenwest community, led by our own able teacher and Abbott Eshu Martin. This work was essential preparation for my premier Rohatsu.  Though I expect to return to Genjo’s Rohatsu yearly I will continue to rely on my teacher Eshu’s skillful training and care to keep my feet to the fire throughout the rest of the year.
I don’t recommend that you sign up for a Sesshin yourself. What I did this past week was (barely) possible for me because I have been practicing daily Zen sitting and participating in a range of more and less intense Zenwest community sits for a number of years. This background placed me, still, at a relative beginner’s level compared to the other 18 participants in this Rohatsu Sesshin.
This practice, admittedly, is not for the faint of heart. I do however, urge you to consider sampling Zen practice if you, like me, find yourself at odds with some big burning questions in your life. The benefits available through this practice are profound and life altering, dwarfing the costs involved in obtaining their achievement.
To conclude, I found that Genjo’s particular skill as a teacher was his skillful instruction on how to enter a state of ‘samadi’. This is the ‘trip’ I earlier referred to. Learning to enter a samadi state was, for me, comparable to learning to ride a bicycle; tremendously freeing and exhilarating! Samadi felt like a trance-like state where I might, with an amazing feeling of being in complete control, traverse anywhere and anytime in this universe and in my life (true self encompasses all of this!). Like a child just learning to ride I stayed on my street for the most part, I have a lot to learn about how this thing works! I used samadi in the hours of sitting time available to me on this Sesshin to make extensive visitations with Tommy; myself as a child. I visited him as he went through many of the most troubling episodes of his lonely, early life. I witnessed with him and often comforted him. I experienced the surreal sensation of, in many cases, easing the isolation, suffering and traumas he had gone through. Amazingly, miraculously, but still somehow matter-of-factly, I provided a measure of healing to many places of hurt that have existed in me for decades. There is less hurt in those deep places now. And today, as a result, Tom is a much happier man.
And truly, that is a HUGE payoff!

Doyu (Tom) Oak.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Intensive practice

One of the side benefits of being the VZC Registrar is that when sending out announcements of upcoming courses I get to reflect on my own experiences in those courses and appreciate what they opened up for me in practice.

With a new Intensive Preparation course starting on Feb 19 & 26th I am reminded of experiences with the one-day and five-day intensives offered by the Victoria Zen Centre, as the intensive prep course is a prerequisite for this type of intensive practice.

Mostly when I've talked with other people about intensive practice I've talked about the difficulties. Sitting for long periods of time is physically demanding and the form of practice also removes the distractions that mask unpleasant memories and feelings that come up from time to time. Having to experience all that stuff is tough.

A pointed comment by Ven. Eshu about this reminded me that it is in some ways easier to talk about the difficulties of intensive practice because it is tangible and concrete. Most people, even those who haven't done intensive Zen practice, can relate to "my legs hurt" or "it was hard to relive memories of crappy stuff that happened when I was a kid".

But there is so much going on in intensive practice that is really amazing too, I've just found it hard to put words to that. In the one-days there is the beauty of watching the sun come up and go down together, of eating together and experiencing the Sooke zendo really fully and deeply. In the five-day practice (sesshin) there is the residential component, 13 people living together in close quarters for 5 1/2 days with little sleep, all breathing together for 18 hours a day and working so hard in various ways (cooking, teaching, cleaning, serving tea, correcting form, leading chants, supervising zendo officers) to create the sesshin for each other. The depth of relationships with other people in the sangha who have shared intensive practice is a very special thing, unlike any other community I've ever experienced. And there are the hilarious things that happen in residential practice (who knew that dropping a bell could make it ring?).

There are also the things that happen before and after intensive practice from the powerfully transformative nature of intensive practice -- little and big shifts in everyday life. Those are much harder to express, but I was reminded at the Dana meeting last week how significantly different my life is now compared to pre-intensive practice. I'm actually here to enjoy my life instead of being completely entangled in thinking about the past and worrying about the future, which is a gift not to be taken lightly. And even though things aren't always easy there is so much more resilience, humour, and determination than was there before to get back up after falling down.

Although I'm not planning to re-engage with intensive practice in the immediate future, it is a very special component of what the VZC offers and I hope anyone thinking about it will go for it, to experience it for yourself and see what it is like!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Appreciating 'Other'

Since a friend gave me a Karen Armstrong book, I’ve found a feast of other books and talks by her, including a recent interview by Jian Ghomeshi on the CBC radio show Q:

Jian Ghomeshi interview: Click on Jan 17/2011 and start listening 51 minutes into the show.

Karen Armstrong’s winning talk on TED or actually here

Karen Armstrong speaking about the charter for compassion

The charter spoken on youtube

One year anniversary of the charter

Let me know what you think. Is any of this useful in your life, and how would you put it to work?


Soshin


Friday, January 7, 2011

Talking about sexual misconduct

I’ve recently been following the letters on Sweeping Zen about Abbot Eido Shimano’s sexual misconduct over the last 45 years (many people have been silent about this and other cases for a long time). A lot of attention is going to the issue of his misconduct and how his organization, the Zen Studies Society in New York, will be dealing with it.

While many teachers and abbots are rightly concerned about how Shimano is dealt with, and how those harmed by his behaviour can begin the healing process, it seems to me that individual sanghas could take this opportunity to talk about sexual violence, the abuse of the teacher/student relationship, and what it would take to never have this happen again.

I’m not condoning what Shimano did at all, but changing our culture of shame and secrecy would help empower the potential victims of this kind of abuse. If we create a sex-positive environment people might more clearly see when they are in danger of being abused or being abusive.

One of the really useful articles I’ve run into recently on this subject is ‘Real Sex Education’ by Cara Kulwicki (in an anthology Yes Means Yes! Visions of Sexual Power & a World Without Rape). According to Kulwicki the goal of real sex education is to teach people that sex should be “consensual and pleasurable”, and that we need to move from thinking ‘no means no’ to ‘yes means yes’. In other words we need to teach that “sex when someone doesn’t openly and enthusiastically want it is wrong.”

I hope you’ll read the article and then post a response here. What do you think? How does this apply to you and to our sangha if at all? How do you think we should break the silence?

Soshin

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Back from Rohatsu sesshin


Cuddled the cat, went for a walk enjoying the beauty of the neighbourhood, dropped off the recycling and visited Aubergine in Fernwood (very full of happy pleasant people), had a simple meal and watched the Korean film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring. Gently easing into each moment here on Roseberry Ave.

Soshin

Friday, December 3, 2010

Sesshin memories

Back in the day, when Doshu would go off to sesshin and a visit with his folks, leaving the kids and I to fend for ourselves, the trickster would rub his hands with glee and before Doshu was at the end of the driveway, something would invariably break or go dreadfully wrong.

One year the chimney in our one room cabin developed a carbon monoxide-spewing leak. My plan to clean the chimney while Doshu was away quickly became an emergency, and with preschooler and toddler in tow, I made the trek (on working logging roads) to the coop hardware store to find replacement parts. Thank goodness for small communities! Although the sales clerk had never done the job, she cornered one of the old-timers in the store, who cheerfully gave us all the how-to wisdom and encouragement we needed to get the job done. Picture mom on the step ladder replacing sections of stove pipe with tiny kids bundled in winter coats playing happily amongst the debris.

Then there was the year the key broke in the ignition (again while Doshu was on retreat), but luckily while the kids and I were in town, and the local mechanic, who understood a lot about expediency, and resourcefulness, fixed the car by showing me how to start it with a screwdriver. Somewhere around that time there was the challenge of always parking our car on a slope, to get it started again.

In our family we consoled ourselves with food. So for years whenever Doshu went away we would clear cut the store and eat all the forbidden stuff: coffee, meat, sausages, bacon, real maple syrup, cake made with sugar, and ice cream!

It helped keep the trickster away.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

ANNOUNCING...the Zennies!

1st Annual Victoria Zen Centre Awards -- Call for Nominations

The Zennies are an opportunity for VZC members to honour and thank the many people who have contributed time, money, skills, and love to our zen centre in the last year.

These are awards where you get to choose both who wins and why: choose the nominee and the category! The rules:
  • You can nominate anyone, whether they are a member of the VZC or not,
  • You can nominate the same person for multiple reasons,
  • You can nominate as many people as you want to, and
  • Your nomination has to be true.
The awards will be presented at the VZC's Harvest Potluck (Nov 27th).

DEADLINE = Sunday, November 14th
Email nominations to Ekō at jgoldberg@shaw.ca

Sunday, August 29, 2010

A hole in the sidewalk



I’ve been reflecting on my practice lately, now that I’m sitting again (after bounce number…3?). I came across a story that resonated pretty strongly with me and my relationship to practice.

The story was about a woman that encounters a hole in the sidewalk and falls into it. It’s a very deep hole and it takes her a while to climb back out.

The next time she is walking down the same street she encounters the hole again, but is oddly attracted to it, she gets curious of it and once again falls in. But this time she manages to climb back out a little quicker.

The next time she walks down the same street, she encounters the same hole again. But this time she is certain she can jump clean over the hole, but when she tries she falls back in.

The next time she is walking down the same street she knows there is a deep hole, but is curious about it. She carefully walks up to the hole and peers in, thinking “Damn, that’s a really deep hole”. Then she carefully walks around it…

Finally, she chooses to walk down a different street entirely and decides not to walk down that same street anymore because she knows there’s a great big hole there!

I’m not sure exactly where in this process I am. But I’m hopeful that the next time I encounter a big, black, gaping hole in the sidewalk I’ll turn around and take a totally different street. The hole isn’t that interesting to me anymore.


Cory.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Four Gardensattva Vows

Oddly, as I killed thousands of sentient beings over the course of the day in weeding the garden this came to mind:

All berries without number
I vow to masticate
Endless bindweed plants
I vow to uproot
The fallen down arbour
I vow to levitate
The great veggie garden
I vow to maintain.

(with thanks to Reese for his help adapting the Four Bodhisattva Vows)

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Warning: Administrator has prohibited access



Yesterday my computer warned me : "Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives"

Suddenly I could no longer use the DVD player which has become our entertainment centre here on Roseberry. It's also the backbone of my language studies now that the Greater Victoria Public Library has such a great foreign film collection on DVD.

Doshu and I had recently vacuumed inches of dust out of the computer, had this dislodged a wire? Also, Doshu had upgraded his computer which is networked with mine. Had he done this to me? Lots of opportunity for practice! I'd like to think that because of meditation the situation was a little lighter than it could have been. (Doshu says MUCH lighter-but maybe he's being his usual kind self)

The fix, after I googled the warning message, was to uninstall a desktop driver, reboot and reinstall it. Apparently the Intel Desktop Utilities program that helps us monitor the cpu temperature, and has access to the motherboard, was interfering with a patch, or an upgrade, or a virus?? that was also trying to access the same area of the motherboard?? Result: no dvd capabilities and a weird warning message.

What came home to me was how very, very little I understand the workings of this computer. How the hell does it do what it does?

When I apply that sense of wonder to my own programming and wiring, I see how little I know about myself, and how simple and insignificant core beliefs like "being too tired is a valid excuse", or "I'm entitled to this" or "what I am is real and lasting" can have huge and unforeseen effects in my life.

Similarly, what if meditation, which seems too simple (breathe), too easy (just be present), too gentle (I don't feel any different...) to change 50+ years of habit, what if meditation really is the "simple fix" that can have deep and unexpected results in my life?