108zenbooks

remedial practice

After a conversation recently, I got the impression I needed some remedial practice – something to remind me of the usefulness of boundaries.  buddha41 is the outcome of setting the frame of practice and working through what the hell is happening on this journey of going nowhere, being no one.  Yes, I’m frustrated and angry and really not feeling much faith in what I’m doing or who I am.

End of pity party.  Please take the empties and leftovers as you leave.

Zen practice is no different from calligraphy practice.  In Zen, we go from the 2.5 sq feet of mat and cushion to the vastness of the life we inhabit.  With calligraphy, we start with a frame to define the space in which the character must develop and move into vast canvasses and variations.  Traditionally, the practice sheet is a grid of 9 x 15 squares which are also outlined to highlight units of 3 x 3 squares.  The little squares allow practice of the character itself.  There’s not much room to fake it in one square inch.  The larger 3 sq in squares allow for composition and a bit more freedom of expression.  I chose the 1 x 1 inch squares and counted off 108 squares, a 9 x 12 grid.

The intent was to see where my attention drifts and where my entitled mind kicks in.  Square #1 is the answer.  First character in the first upper left corner got me off on the wrong foot.  It looks like “Buddha” but it actually isn’t; it’s what I’ve been practicing for the last few months, a swooping set of lines which may suit the post-of-the-day but is not the intent of this exercise.  By square #25 (circled), I realized I had not even started the project honoring the intent.  Square #26 corrected that.

Such is practice, I suppose.  We start out with all our skills sharpened on other desires and are blind to the fact that the starting point is not when an event touches our life any more than when the brush touches the paper in this moment.  It began sweeping its downward arc long before this singular desire, this moment of wanting something to emerge from the joy and mess we’re in.  Correct it in the next moment.

Attention held well for the next 27 squares and I decided I need to let go of the wrist support (starts with the second circle outline).  It’s not a really bad habit to brace on my wrist when I’m using a small script brush but the actual skill is in the brush tip being the only contact – and fulcrum of balance.  Shaky, insecure, uncertain strokes invited the peanut gallery of Inner Critics.  Then the fear and grasping kicked in: I can’t do this without more support.  I NEED more… more… more.  Not asking for or taking what is neither offered nor available is a deep practice.  And I rarely see it as applicable to what I ask of myself too.  Correct it in the next square.

By the third outline circle, I’m ready to fly solo with variations.  All kanji characters have variations drawn by the Old Masters.  There’s a dictionary-like book of them – a lexicon of pretzel lines and ancient scripts .  I neither speak nor write Japanese so I’m pretty proud of being able to find the variations of different characters.  Sometimes I get it wrong or I can’t find the version I need.  Such is practice too.  Zen centers, Zen traditions, Zen teachers, Zen concepts – the language of communities is as complex as their practice preferences and the variations are all in a format which takes persistence to decode.  I find myself leaning into some variations but, as with this exercise, I devote time to as many as I can before settling on one… or two, remembering all the while that while the flesh and bones vary, the marrow is the same.

On the last line, I choose the formal script and become hyper-focused – yet the mind has wandered off – until I realize I’ve lost the grid and am drifting up into the previous lines.  I reset using two of the last three squares (fourth circle outline) for a seal script – the ancient style used to inscribe characters onto hard surfaces like tortoise shells and wood.  This is where I am in practice: returning to the source teachings, seeing that the grid of discipline has faded from the paper and that the drift says I still need these constraints.

Still, that’s not going to stop my rebellious 108th character from falling totally outside the wire!

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

July 12, 2010 Posted by 108zenbooks | 108 thoughts, reflections | , , | 3 Comments

first love

the stream of all ancestors

carrying the wisdom
of all my teachers

in empty hands,
shaped, hollowed out,

by the stream of
all ancestors

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thich Nhat Hanh has written almost a hundred books; I’ve lost count.  Each one is a jewel but none as challenging and raw as Cultivating the Mind of Love.  In it, he speaks candidly of his first love, a nun met when he was teaching at a temple in the Highlands of Vietnam.

I knew that I loved her.

How simple.  How incredible.  I knew that I loved her.  Thay takes this story of his “first love” and weaves it into a journey to find our “original face.”    Just as the face we are born with may not have been our original face, our first love may not really be our “first love.”  So he “goes upstream” to show the many streams that feed into who we are in this moment.  For Thich Nhat Hanh, the source of who he is in the present moment arose in his childhood experiences of seeing a drawing of the Buddha, searching for the hermit in the woods, drinking from a clear mountain stream, his brother’s ordination as a monk, and his mother’s dedication to his well being.  When he met the young nun who ignited strong feelings of love, he writes that he could see the line of ancestors that flowed into the stream of his life and hers.

Please look into the river of your own life, and see the many streams that have entered it, that nourish and support you.  If you practice the Diamond Sutra and see the self beyond the self, the person beyond the person, the living being beyond the living being, the life span beyond the life span, you will see that you are me, and you are also her.  Look back at your own first love and you will recognize that your first love has no beginning and no end.  It is always in transformation. (p. 60)

He goes on to say,

Whether water is overflowing or evaporating depends on the season.Whether it is round or square, depends on the container.  Flowing in spring, solid in winter, its immensity cannot be measured, its source cannot be found.  In an emerald creek water hides a dragon king.  In a cold pond it contains the bright full moon.  On a bodhisattva’s willow branch, it sprays the nectar of compassion.  One drop of water is enough to purify and transform the world in ten directions.  Can you grasp water through form?  Can you trace it to its source?  Do you know where it will end?  It is the same with your first love.  Your first love has no beginning and will have no end.  It is still alive in the stream of your being.  Don’t believe it was only in the past.  Look deeply into the nature of your first love, and you will see the Buddha. (pp. 75-76)

I struggle with this, trying honestly to see all the loves and not the losses.  Going to the source of the mind of love, bodhicitta, means letting go of the loss and opening to each love as a branch of the stream that originates deep in the past and flows forever into the future.  If I value that powerful, steady outpouring of love in the river of my life, I have to value myself as a steam in the lives of those I touch.

For now, I invite you to look far enough into the future, so far that you cannot help but see yourself, become yourself, the source of a stream of love and life.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

July 1, 2010 Posted by 108zenbooks | 108 thoughts, Eastern Teachers, reflections | , , , | 5 Comments

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