A thank-you to all

At the recent commitment ceremony, I experienced the most wonderful outpouring of love and kindness from all who were present, and from many who were unable to attend. Thank-you all.

I particularly want to acknowledge my wife Soshin, for her patience and unqualified support, my fellow initiates, Seishin, Myoshin, and Myoko, who made the day so memorable, the sangha of the Victoria Zen Centre, for their energy and encouragement, and our teacher, Venerable Eshu, without whose guidance none of this would be possible.

nine bows,
Doshu

A Moment of Change

I am standing on a dirt road in Cambodia. It is hot. I feel connected to the sky above my head and to the ground underneath my feet. I feel that I am where I should be, doing what I should be doing.

I have just finished giving out packages of school supplies to lots of children. The kids have gone off to look at what they have received and I am speaking with an old Cambodian woman. We are talking about how the Khmer Rouge killed her husband. She asked if I could give her any money and I have quietly pushed a US twenty dollar bill into her hands. She asks me why I am doing this.

"Because I am a Buddhist." I reply.

At this point, I had been practicing Buddhism for almost exactly 2 years, but that was the first time I told almost anyone that I was Buddhist.

I had just spent 6 months in Southeast Asia visiting a variety of Buddhist countries. I was keeping my head shaved at that time (looking a lot like a Buddhist monk). Folks kept asking me if I was Buddhist. I would side-step the question and just say that, "it was a good way to keep cool."

I didn't want to say that I was Buddhist.

For 18 months previously, I was in Victoria (before we left on the trip) and I didn't mention my involvement in Buddhism to anyone except a few close people.

For 24 months, I was worried about what people would think if I said that I was Buddhist. I was worried that people would think I was flaky. I was worried about how this would change what it was to be Eric. Would this change my identity (both in my own eyes and in the eyes of others)? I was worried that I was pretending and somehow a fake. Perhaps I wasn't as sincere as others? Somehow Buddhism belonged to someone else and I was intruding.

In that moment on the hot dirt road in Cambodia, I acted differently.

In that moment in Cambodia, the most truthful, deepest, honest and authentic answer that I could give to the old Cambodian woman was, "I am giving these things because I am Buddhist."

That was a turning point for me. Since then, I have been very open about my involvement with Buddhism. I had feared that I would find rejection, concern and disagreement. Instead, I have found interest, curiosity and so much more acceptance than I would have thought possible. What a wonderful surprise!

The acceptance started in this important moment with the old woman in Cambodia. When I told her, she nodded. There was no scolding or anger. There was only happiness, warm acceptance and understanding. She replied to me, "Of course you are. I am Buddhist as well."

She held my hands tight, smiled and her eyes beamed. Then she walked with me out of the sun, to sit with a dozen or so mothers and their children. We enjoyed fresh coconut milk while the room filled with smiles and laughter.

Names, Names and More Names

I Want A Cool Buddhist Name!

So when I first got involved with Buddhism, I thought it was so cool to have a Buddhist name. What a great thing! To have some cool sounding Japanese name that I could use. I wanted one!


Name? I Don't Want A Buddhist Name!

I practiced with the VZC for a few years and then had the chance to attend my first sesshin. During that sesshin, I had my first clear memories of my abuse as a child. It was a very overwhelming experience. Part way through the sesshin I lost my interest in getting a Buddhist name. I asked myself, "Why would I want that? I feel so f**ked up. I am just going to focus on meditating."


Don't Think About It Too Much...

After another year and a half, I met the requirements for Jukai. I wasn’t working towards this, but it happened anyways. Eshu asked me if I wanted to do the ceremony. The idea rolled around in my head and when Eshu asked for the second time, I said yes.

The night before the ceremony Alizeh was sick all night. I stayed up with her, thinking that if I stayed up, then at least Mitra will have rested and I could get some sleep the next day after the ceremony.

So, the ceremony was very surreal on account of my exhaustion. During the ceremony, I received my Buddhist name. I hadn't really thought too much about the idea of a new name since my first sesshin almost two years earlier. I found when I had the new name, I wanted to use it. I like being called Sei-in.


There Can Be Only One!

However, I liked Sei-in so much that I wanted to get rid of Eric. I wanted to fix on Sei-in. Out with the old and in with the new.

I figures that I would try out my new name and give myself until after my third sesshin to make a decision. I really wanted to go one way or the other.

I did the sesshin in May and was confused when I came back. I wanted a decision about by name. I wanted one name. But that is not what happened for me. It felt like I was forcing it. So, I took some time and space just to let things settle.


Two Names Are Better Than One

I am not sure what I will do in the future, but for now I am using both names almost equally.

In the confusion that comes from using two names I have found the constant reminder that I am both of these names and neither of these names. I am other names too: Dad, Brother, Sweetie...

Without fixing on one name reminds me on a daily basis that I have the freedom to be all of those names and none of them. It is like the saying, “The person with one clock always knows the time, while the person with two clocks is never sure.”

I have found both fear and freedom in doubt.

Practice with saying goodbye

Yesterday I got a series of emails and phone calls from my mom. Her father, age 94, is very ill and we are going to Vancouver today to see him and to say goodbye.

Zeyds (affectionate family nickname for him based on a modification of the Yiddish word for "grandfather") has been an iconic figure throughout my life. Growing up in Vancouver as part of the secular Jewish community we spent a lot of time with my cousins and grandparents not just for holidays but also for community events and the at-the-time dreaded "Saturday school" at what is now the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture where we learned about Yiddish, history, food, and social justice.

I don't have many memories of childhood but do have a lot of memories of Zeyds. He had a small boat and we spent a lot of time on it fishing, which thinking back on it was perhaps my first experience of just sitting. There is a picture of me as a baby standing on the fish gutting deck in diapers with Zeyds' fish hanging beside me -- the fish is bigger than I was, a very good day for him.

Later in life when I transitioned from female to male, my mom's first reaction when I told her I was planning to take hormones and have surgery was that I couldn't tell her father, that it'd kill him. She eventually broke the news to him and he told my mom to get over herself and start using my new name. When I next saw him he said he was so excited to finally have a grandson and couldn't wait to show me the funnel he'd rigged in his basement workshop so he could pee standing up at the sink without having to go upstairs to the bathroom.

He also kept me honest politically. Even when I was a messed up teenager far more concerned about boys and being liked than anything else, he would ask me what was new with the class struggle and expect me to have an intelligent answer, to care about what was going on in the world and to remember what was important beyond self concerns. In his basement was a hidden stash of classic communist literature that he had hidden away for many years after the red scares of the 50s. Some years ago when I was studying Chinese medicine he gave me one of those books, a biography of Norman Bethune written by Chinese comrades. It was spotted with mold from all those years in his basement and the spine was held together with scotch tape and eventually I said goodbye to the book.

Now I am going to Vancouver to say goodbye to Zeyds. This moment is not at all unexpected. Having had many people in my life die the reality that we all die is ever present. And at age 94, having suffered a lot in the last year from dementia and physical pain in some ways it feels overdue for him.

Still it is really hard to mentally and emotionally stay in the present moment. Anticipating the time later today of saying goodbye, the mind alternatively comes up with all sorts of fantasies about what that moment and the future without him will be like, and memories of the past. There are complicated family dynamics, and complicated dynamics with the care home staff being divided about my family's instructions to provide non-invasive palliative care rather than invasive treatments to try to cure the infection that is damaging his urinary tract. In all this although there is genuine concern for him there is also a lot of self concern. I am losing my grandfather. I am losing someone who completely loved and accepted me. I am angry that he's dying in a care home and not in the home he lived in for 60+ years, where his wife died. I'm dreading dealing with my parents' grief and the rest of the family. It's a lot about me and my wants and losses and wishes and preferences, the way I feel the world should be unfolding to suit how I think things should happen.

So, my practice today will be to just be with him and my family and continuously let go with each out breath. To know where I am and what is happening in this moment, to experience this moment fully rather than missing it because my mind is caught up in future and past. When the moment does come to say goodbye, to say it fully.

“Be reminded that this great matter of birth and death is of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes us by like an arrow and opportunity is lost. Each of us must strive to awaken. Don’t squander your life.”