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.
