A Tea Story - Doshu

One time at a Tuesday UVic sit, Shoji and Shoshoji were a little late arriving for the setup before the sit, so as Shika, I started making the tea to help them out. Our ususal routine is to boil water and make the tea in two thermos jugs, so that it will be hot for serving at tea time following the sit.

When it came time for tea, we were served luke warm water, and I realized someting about meddling in other people's business. As part of my 'helpful assistance' I had filled the thermos jugs with warm water to preheat them, and failed to communicate this to Shoji when she arrived. As Shika, I am supposed to be training the officers, and one of the cardinal guidelines is to do one's job and let others to theirs.

I am grateful for the wisdom embodied in the form we use.

Go and boil your bottoms!

‘Twas in what I believe is called the “vestry” at the Interfaith Chapel. The crew were getting ready for the Tuesday sit.
I spied upon the counter two halves of a coconut. Naturally, I grabbed them and, knocking them together in the famous way, began to ride about the room.
“Please,” I begged, “can we use these for kinhin tonight?”
I believe the Venerable was deep in thought, for he appeared not to have heard me, although he was looking directly at me.
Young Matheo asked, “How did they get here?”
“A swallow must have brought them,” I answered, naturally.
“What? A swallow carrying a coconut?” Matheo demanded.
“It could grip it by the husk!”
“It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut,” exclaimed Matheo.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said I. “We’d best set up the zendo.”
“Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?”
“Look, I have to make the tea.”
“Am I right?”
I was so pleased that young folks still value the classics.

Zen practice, habits, and the bounce

Sei-in's post about fingernail biting helped me reflect on a habit pattern that I've been struggling with lately (thank you Sei-in!); the opportunities that the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha provide to face the difficult emotions that can come up around habits; and an associated phenomenon I've been noticing a lot lately, the desire to withdraw from things that feel unpleasant.

I grew up in a secular Jewish family and community, and have lots of strong and pleasant memories about food from my childhood -- associations of food with physical sensations of delight and also emotional sensations of comfort, love, abundance, and security. I also grew up in the 1970s, a time when there was a lot of attention to diet and being thin, and was often teased at school for being fat (along with being Jewish and in an actively left-wing family with a working mother, which was not a happy combo in a rich, right-wing, WASP neighbourhood). So, like many people there is both a neurotic tendency to cling to food and want more of it because it makes me feel good, and at the same time a neurotic aversion to it because it brings up feelings of disgust, self loathing, and shame.

Shortly before starting at the VZC I was at an all time low in terms of my physical and mental health. A very stressful job, burnout from years of difficult community work, grief over deaths of scores of friends and clients, and difficulty walking due to a brain virus several years previously led to increasing reliance on food both to cope with the difficult feelings and also, in hindsight, to try to obliterate my self and create a wall between me and the world. Although I took a political position on fat pride, really I was completely embarrassed at the binge eating I would do, smothering rage and frustration with loaves of bread and bowl after bowl of noodles.

When I started practising with the VZC there were obvious and dramatic physical changes. I put down the cane I'd been using for several years and realized that I had been hanging onto it far past the point of recovery from the brain virus. I also lost forty pounds. The physical pain from sitting, and the seemingly endless enthusiasm of Seishin ("It'll be SO MUCH FUN!"), inspired me to start Bikram Yoga and I started to regain physical strength. Then my gallbladder succumbed to the years of food abuse and I had a very restricted, no-fat diet to try to prevent more gallstones from developing. Another thirty pounds came off.

At this point I got pretty cocky. I figured I had beaten my old food habits and had got to a resting place of being balanced and healthy around food, body image, and using Zen practice to deal with difficult feelings. My family oohed and aahed at my bucking of the genetic and cultural trend. I had it all figured out. I was in control.

So, in April out came the gallbladder. I could eat whatever I wanted again, and the physical recovery of surgery was more difficult than expected and so I stopped going to yoga for a while.

Right back into old habits. Eating compulsively for comfort (to alleviate the physical pain of recovery from surgery and to deal with work stresses), and also for the physical pleasure of food. It has been mortifying to realize the depth of depravity still there for me relating to food. Not only am I greedy, I'm so greedy that I'll sneak food out of my husband's bowl just for the sheer satisfaction of knowing I'm getting more than him. It's a mess. I'm a mess. And I'm totally embarrassed that all the people who have been giving me props for losing weight are going to realize that I'm gaining it back and think I'm a loser.

So, I take it to the cushion. What the hell. Isn't sitting supposed to give me strength to face things that are difficult? And isn't that going to make me feel better?

But of course sitting is not an escape. Increasing awareness is not just of the interconnectedness of all things, the possibility of letting go of the constructed dramas of ego into the fundamental activity of the universe, of letting go of self and relaxing into just being. It is also seeing, more clearly, the crazy neurotic crap that arises again and again. And again. And again. Ouch.

So, the bounce, the desire to separate out from the experience, pull away, and blame everything around me for making me feel bad. I'm mad at practice. I'm mad at my teacher. I'm mad at the sangha. I'm mad at the board and the people I work with within the VZC. I'm mad at my gi. I'm mad at the cushion. I'm mad at myself. I'm mad at people who are at a place in their practice where they're excited about its transformative potential. I'm mad at my yoga mat and the yoga teacher and how hard it is to be the worst one in yoga class and have to sit down all the time because I'm physically and mentally weak again. Bleah. I hate practice. I want to pull away, to bounce away from the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, to run away from practice and from myself.

Aha. It's really myself I'm mad at. So I just keep sitting with it, even lean into it a little. Because this is not the first time in practice that something difficult has come up. So I start talking about it with the person who I trust most to help me when I'm being a nutcase, my husband (who is unfailingly supportive without letting me get away with feeling sorry for myself). Next steps are to talk with my teacher and with peers in the sangha, who I know from experience will provide that same fantastic balanced support to practice with what is happening without getting ridiculously fascinated by it. There is no real crisis. It's OK. Relaxing again into the activity of the universe and letting go just a smidge, it all seems kind of funny, this freakout about self and wanting to look good and be in control. I'm good, I'm bad, I'm thin, I'm fat, I, I, I, I. Ding a ling a ling! More zazen!

Fingernails, Math and Meditation by Sei-in

(Typed on the float plane ride from Vancouver to Victoria)

Hmmm....

Let's see... I recently turned 40. I have been practicing with the Victoria Zen Centre for about 5 years. When I was a kid, I started biting my fingernails. I am not sure how old I was, but I know that I was biting my nails in elementary school. Let's say I started at 10 years old. This means that by the time I came to start practicing Zen, I had been biting my fingernails for about 25 years (40 years old now -started with VZC 5 years ago - started biting fingernails at age 10).

For 25 years I bit my fingernails all the time. I would bite them when I was happy. I would bite them when I was sad. I would bite them when I was excited and when I was scared. I bit them until they hurt and even when the started to bleed.

Of course, I tried to stop. I would try to get myself to stop biting them. But then I would go see a movie and find myself already biting them, without ever being aware of having started again. I never sought outside help to stop biting them (I hear that hypnosis works...), but when I was little, I remember my mom putting some foul tasting stuff on my nails so that I would hate the taste and not bite them.

This didn't work. I got used to the taste and just kept biting them. My sister stopped and my mother stopped when I was still living at home, but I did not. I continued biting my nails long After leaving home.

I learned how to hide biting my nails. I learned how to hold my hands so that people could not see my nails. In general, I didn't do it where other people (except those very close to me) could see.

So for 25 years this happens. For 25 years I bite my nails. Then I start practicing with the Victoria Zen Centre. I learn to meditate (having never done this before) and start a daily meditation practice.

I have tried a lot of things to process my intense emotions and nothing has worked as well as meditation. From the first time that I sat, I found meditation to be extremely powerful in processing emotions, reducing stress and generally making me a nicer guy to be with (my wife will certainly agree with that).

After about 6 months of practice (usually sitting at home for 25 min per day, 6 days out of 7), I looked at biting my nails and just realized that it wasn't very effective. I was biting my nails to process emotions and it didn't do a very good job. Or perhaps a better way to say that is, meditation did a much better job. Of course I had heardball of this before, but one day I just saw it differently.

It is hard to describe how it was different. It was just different. What had made sense as an activity before (biting my fingernails), no longer made sense. It seemed like a bad idea, even though I had been doing it for over 25 years. Now that I had a much more effective mechanism for dealing with stress, it just didn't make sense to bite my nails.

So I stopped.

After 25 years of habit, I just stopped.

It has been 4.5 years since that realization and I haven't bitten my nails since. Well, that isn't completely true. There have been a few times when I did bite the nail on one finger on one hand. But then I would catch myself and stop. Why am I doing this? I know that it doesn't work too well. And then I would stop again.

In hindsight, I think that two powerful things have worked to support me. One is the initial insight where I saw something that I had heard for many years completely differently. It is almost like seeing the same thing from the top, instead of the bottom. Now it makes complete sense. The other thing is the awareness of my present moment that comes with regular practice. I know that since I have started meditating, I have become much more aware. That awareness has helped a lot if I fell back into my old habits. Through that awareness, I could quickly adjust my actions.

So there is my story of how a habit pattern which was reinforced over 25 years was changed on one day and one clear insight.

The Past Present

What I learned at the five day intensive was awareness of some of my programmed responses and behaviour patterns. These ingrained buttons that when pushed often result from the "same" cause and produce the "same" effect ~ suffering. The more awareness sharpens, the more chance to act from a place of "true" response rather then "same old".  I strive to nourish "true" me. Learning through the past in the present.

May 2009 Five-Day Intensive

This May we had 13 participants four our annual spring five-day intensive. Back row left to right: Sei-in Eric Jordan (shoshoji), Joshua Goldberg (joko), Joan Doerksen (shoden), Jundo Jaron Holder (jikijitsu), Luke Rogers, Mateo Ham, Hoyu Tommi Boulter (shoji). Front row left to right: Yushin Charles Rose (shoten), Soshin Ruth McMurchy (tenzo), Eshu, Doshu Lars Rogers (shika) and Seishin Susanne Ledingham (densu). Seishu Ben Morton who participated part time is not in the picture (sorry Seishu!).

With only 2 newcomers, the intensive was a solid and stable opportunity for all of the participants to dig into practice together. Consider joining us for our Winter five-day intensive December 5-11, 2009. Register early to ensure that you get a seat!

January Jukai Photos

My friend Darrell Pacini was in attendance at the January Jukai ceremony and took some awesome pictures of us. He also spent quite a few hours editing and polishing the pictures to get them to the state they are in now. I have uploaded them to Flickr and you can view (and comment) on them by following the link below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/86302038@N00/sets/72157618117698118/

I have identified those of us going through Jukai in most of the pictures through comments...feel free to pass along to friends & family. I decided to do this through Flickr rather than Facebook as not all of us have an account. The pictures in the link should be viewable by anyone.

Enjoy!

Yushin

Zen Birthday Card

Japanese Pronunciation #1

Pronunciation of Japanese Vowels

Now that we have the updated, revised, corrected, super-duper new chant sheets, perhaps folks would be interested in getting their pronunciation of Japanese sounds a little closer to “correct.” I’ll start with trying to explain the vowel sounds.

First: Why do we have trouble with Japanese vowels?

The Japanese sound system challenges English speakers because it’s simple.

If you ask most English speakers how many vowels there are in English, they will usually answer something like, “Five or six. A E I O U and sometimes Y.” But those, of course, are just the roman characters that we use to REPRESENT the vowels in writing.

How many actual vowel sounds there are in English depends on the dialect you’re looking at: West Coh-oost Canajun? Noo Yawk? Strine (Australian)? Etc. But whichever dialect of English you’re looking at, the vowel sounds will almost certainly number well over twenty. The machinations we go through to represent those vowel sounds with six measly characters cause our own young a certain amount of grief, and have foreign learners shaking their heads in dismay.

How many vowel sounds are there in Japanese? Well, putting regional differences and the complexities of phonological processes aside, we can say with confidence that there are five vowel sounds in Japanese.

FIVE VOWEL SOUNDS!

That’s right. Compare that to the 25 or more vowel sounds in most English dialects.

Because of its plethora of vowel sounds, English tends to be quite forgiving of weird pronunciation. Often people can substitute one vowel sound for another and they still have a good chance of being understood.

The same is not true of Japanese. Here’s an example of what can happen:

Kirei (beautiful, clean, pure)

Kirai (dislike, hate)

One little difference makes a big difference!

Ok, I could go on and on about the phonologies of English and Japanese, but I’d better get down to brass tacks. What ARE the five vowels of Japanese, and how are they represented in roman letters (romaji)?

THE VOWELS OF JAPANESE

A I U E O

You might like to start by listening to a song about them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xST1wANc3qU

Click on the romaji to hear an audio file of the vowel. (I hope the links work!)

/A/ is more or less like the /a/ in “father” for Canadian speakers.

/I/ is like the vowel sound in “cheese.” NOT like the vowel sound in “hit.” So, for example, “Yushin” would rhyme with “you seen.” Have you seen Yushin?

/U/ is like the vowel sound in “soon.” Not exactly the same, but close enough.

/E/ causes a lot of trouble. It’s like the vowel sound in “bed.” This is true even when it comes at the end of a word! A place where I often hear it mispronounced is in the syllable /ke/ that shows up in our chants. Since this vowel sound doesn’t come at the end of words in English, we tend to turn it into the Canajun “eh,” eh? Try to isolate the /e/ of “bed” and say it by itself. You’ll be on your way to saying /ke/ the way it should be said.

/O/ Big trouble for Canadians. We tend to turn this into a diphthong, which is the fancy word for one vowel sound gliding into another. Just say, “No, I won’t go” and listen to your vowels. By the time you’ve finished saying “No” or “go” the vowel has actually become /u/, hasn’t it? This is especially pronounced in most Canajun English, eh?
The deal is, /o/ is not a diphthong in Japanese. It’s just /o/. Imagine you started to say “Oh” and suddenly had to stop before you got to the end of it. Just /o/, without gliding to the /u/ the way we Canajuns do.

You can listen to sound files of all the syllables at:
http://japanese.about.com/library/blhiraganaaudio.htm

WARNING: THE VOWELS ARE WHAT THEY ARE!

So, if you see a couple of vowels together, like “ee” or “oo,” the sound represented doesn’t change! “oo” is just /o/, but you say it a little longer. Same with “ee.” It’s the same sound as one /e/, but you say it a little longer.

If you see two different vowels together, such as “ai” or “ae” or “ei” or “ie,” each vowel of the pair is pronounced in the usual way, separately from the other. For example, “ai” is the sound /a/ followed by the sound /i/. “Ei” is an /e/ followed by an /i/.

This was an issue, now fixed by the new super-duper chant book, in the word “Rifui,” that appears in the Offering to the Hungry Ghosts. If it were written in hiragana, the Japanese syllabary, it wouldn’t have been an issue because it would obviously be three syllables: ri, fu, and i. But naturally this wasn’t obvious to English speakers who hadn’t learned about the sound system of Japanese. (Perhaps your computer will show you these three kana: りふい )

Here are some more songs about A I U E O:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crsG1TRpXZk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJTtnRpQzk

Happy chanting!

Sesshin Followup

Returning from the recent 5 day intensive, I have been mulling over what happened for me there. On the last night, after the closing bell, we put the house furniture back in order and had a group meeting in which we talked about our experiences – I didn’t say much at the time, and now want to offer to the group a little of what is going on in my practice.

This practice really calls to me. Particularly during chanting and dharma talks, it is often painfully clear how much I long for liberation, and always have - what else is there to do? It is as if all the patriarchs and ancestors are inviting me to just 'drop body and mind' and follow this deep yearning that I feel – so natural, so simple. At the same time, I become gripped by fear, even terror, mixed with a sense of being unworthy to aspire to such an exalted path. At some underlying level, my daily life unfolds as though I’m inauthentic, or perhaps an impostor, and if I don’t manage my external façade of competence adequately, I’ll be found out, to my great shame.

I cope fairly well in most situations, but when the chips are down and a challenging interaction arises, what will happen if I don’t measure up as a father, a husband, a Buddhist practitioner, or just as a person? So I build my walls and hide behind them. I seek familiar and safe situations, like interacting with and manipulating objects, and avoid, or tiptoe cautiously through, the inevitable human relationships that life requires.

I see now that it was no accident that for years I practiced at a centre located 3000 miles away from where I lived – a comfortable buffer that I could deal with. I could show up once or twice a year for sesshin, drop in and do my solitary practice, and then disappear when it was over, without the need for engaging with the people in that sangha.

It’s a different story at VZC, and I want you all to know that I truly appreciate the love and support that you show me, and the opportunity that I have to contribute to this community we’re building. The sesshin form is so wonderful – a chance to engage with our private delights and demons, and to do it together with others, in a loving crucible. This time around I find that I’m a little more at ease and comfortable in my own skin, a little less driven to ‘get better’, and a lot more excited about the adventure of life and practice. I was Lars for 55 years, and have been Doshu for a little over 2. Now, with ordination approaching, I feel like maybe I’m leaving Doshu behind and moving into something else - I don’t really know what yet, but the prospect seems less daunting than it has in the past. If I’m lucky, I may get 20 or 30 more years in which to kick this can around, and I want to do it with it my family, friends, teacher, and sangha.

To all of our sangha, to Venerable Eshu particularly, and to my family and friends, I just want to say thank-you for all that you do.

nine bows,
Doshu