Tag Archives: chaplaincy

bisy – backson

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September 17th was the second anniversary of 108 Zen Books and it closed with a quiet lowing of the transformed Ox.  I think Ox was quite happy to have its story told – although I’m sure it was sometimes unhappy, as Ox tend to be, with my renderings of its transformation.  108 Enso was quite the challenge too.  How hard could drawing a circle be! I told myself when I started.  Well, it certainly was and yet every enso reflected the moment – unfiltered and transparent.  

Thank you to all the faithful followers of the Ox and those of you who wrote back channel to share the pleasure you find in these convoluted missives on life, love, fallings, and failings.

But now.  Onto other pressing matters in my to-do list.  As you can see from the picture below, the art table has been conscripted for a more nefarious project.  The time has come for Walrus and Carpenter to set to digesting the minutiae of the (drum roll) Chaplaincy Thesis.  I hope to accomplish this without becoming a single case self-study of burnout – or would that be a non-self study?  I’ve set aside a day a week to write but have realized that the writing is not the problem.  It’s the “what-the-heck-do-I-write-and-how-the-heck-do-I-write-about-it” part that seems to be a sending my Ox-ish mind off into the reeds.

Interestingly, this will be a practice of beginner’s mind and not knowing.  Having written a couple of these tomes before, I find myself caught in the arrogance of pre-knowledge.  Don’t worry.  It won’t be long before I’m reduced to a weeping, sopping mess, filled with humility and convinced of my inadequacies.  Some of you may wish to start planning the celebrations for my ego downfall now.

That being said, I will have to limit, or better said, divert my love for 108 Zen Books over the next… Oh, let’s not start predicting and committing to relationships with time that can only bring us to misery.  I will send up these electronic smoke signals but not as frequently as I have in the last 730 days (of which – excluding weekends – I’ve only missed 4 or 5 or something ridiculous given my inattentive nature).  Perhaps you may even get a chance to vet some of my thesis thoughts so sharpen those slice and dice gadgets!

In the meantime, I offer you the moral lessons of Rabbit and Owl trying to decipher Christopher Robin’s budding writing skills when Rabbit delivers the note:

GON OUT 
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON

C.R. 

Owl breathes an enormous sigh of relief now that he actually knows what they are talking about, and explains to Rabbit that what has happened is that Christopher Robin has gone out with Backson. Rabbit asks what a Backson looks like, and Owl begins to explain about the Spotted or Herbaceous Backson, but then he realises that he doesn’t really know anything at all about the Spotted or Herbaceous Backson, and admits as much to Rabbit, who says thank you, and goes off to find Pooh. (from The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, p. 78)

Let’s hope this does not portend the fate of my thesis!

 

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

faith

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It’s good to be home.  We landed back in Ottawa last Tuesday night after driving along winding blue-line roads that blinding rain rendered sleek and sinuous.  It was a fitting close to 7 days of intense work with the Trauma Resource Institute (TRI) that took us from Fort Drum to Saranac Lake, NY.  After completing the first part of the trauma resiliency training last year, Frank and I were asked to join them for training in the coaching phase of TRI.   This brought us into a tight circle of highly competent people facing the challenge of how to deal with the psychological wounds of war as the US veterans return home from Iraq and Afghanistan.  The sad truth is that where we have never had enough well-trained, informed professionals who could deal with the aftermath of carnage, we now have even fewer with a much higher demand for them.  This is as true of the US as it is of Canada where the extent of our wounded not as overwhelming but the available services is proportionally just as meager.

In Fort Drum, we helped train military and local Chaplains in the skills of dealing with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.  It was a fascinating experience at many levels, not the least of which was the tricky process of honouring religious beliefs about the origins of mental distress while teaching an approach that placed the physical/physiological nature of distress front and center.  Although all the Chaplains were Christian, this is a delicate balance I’ve run into with Buddhist teachers as well.

There is a deep part in us that wants to believe that if we simply believe, it will be enough to take away the suffering.  I would truly like to think that is true in all circumstances of suffering.  It would be lovely if 108 prostrations will take my mother out of her wheelchair and restore her ability for self-care.  If only 10, 000 Butsu chants fingered along a strand of mala beads would bring back lost loves, heal rifts, and back-fill ideological schisms.  What if 84, 000 doors all lead to one Truth: just believe and it will be well?

Although my faith in psychological interventions needs well-adjudicated data, my faith in my spiritual path really doesn’t.  And I wonder if I’m being judgemental to wish more people of the spiritual ilk knew that difference.  I’d like to say it’s because Buddhism is different but I’ve heard too many teachers say things about people returning from death’s door that make me cringe.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just jealous.

This stumbling towards nirvana is tough work.  And some days I miss those multiple prayers to St. Jude (the patron saint of the impossible) or St. Christopher (the patron saint of lost things – before he was de-sainted).  I think I will start a novena to Manjushri; I’m in need of someone to wisely wield a few swords. And for good measure, I’ll go practice a few moves myself!

sweet nothings

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The deadline for our Learning Reflection Papers has crept up on me.  Has it already been one month since the Core Chaplaincy Training retreat?  On Sunday, I pounded out the LRP on the segment delivered by Dr. Merle Lefkoff on Complexity, Spirituality and Compassion.  The Science of Surprise and black swans appearing when you least expect.  The Theory of the Black Swan (authored by Nassim Nicholas Taleb) is of an unpredicted and undirected event which is then rationalized by hindsight.  It reminds me of one of the most powerful books written in Psychology by Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails.  Following one of those planetary catastrophes predicted by messages from aliens, Festinger and his research pals noticed that the failure of the event lead to some interesting backwards engineering – or forwards propping.  In this specific case, the group who had predicted the end of the world gathered to wait for salvation.  When the predicted end didn’t happen, they announced that it was because they had gathered, full of faith in the aliens’ intention to destroy Earth, that the aliens had changed their plans.  Thus was born the concept of cognitive dissonance – how we change past thought history to cope with things not going the way we expected.

I used to sneer at this kind of cognitive reverse engineering.  As I did at sweet whispered nothings which had the effect of derailing a hot date in my youth.  These days I’m finding it harder and harder to see the line between things I don’t expect and things I didn’t predict.  Ultimately, they both have to do with a form of blindness.  I don’t expect things because I’m blind to the causes and consequences of my actions.  I can’t predict things because I haven’t yet allowed the data into my consciousness.  Either way, the blindness has its own consequences.

What does this have to do with practice?  May be nothing.  I might be procrastinating on writing the next LRP on the shadow side of the paramitas.  Or, maybe I’m starting to consider the metaphoric Black Swan Event when I come up against moments that turn out to be acts of generosity, virtue, patience, love, stability and wisdom.  I understand that Taleb meant events of global and cultural consequence however missing such unpredicted and undirected moments in our practice lives can also have wide-reaching impact.  And, I fear that when the realization hits of the true nature of the act I received, my backwards rationalization may not do service to myself or the other.

Would mindfulness be enough to notice the growth of a Black Swan?  Taleb, in his 2010 revision, added a section on how to avoid Black Swan Events (getting fired may be a Black Swan Event for the employee but guaranteed it wasn’t for the corporation).  So perhaps, the sweet nothings I disregard or the assumptions I make about intentions and a common humanity could stand a bit of scrutiny.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

step into the fire – kalyanamitra & constructive social change

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On 2011 March 12, nineteen Chaplaincy candidates in the Upaya Chaplaincy program received jukai as part of the two-year training.  Along with us, three other spiritual friends received the kai and another took novice priest ordination.  This last is significant for being a ceremony in which two women Zen masters ordained a woman.

I suppose all ceremonies are significant for being a moment in which the dharma is pulled further and further into the future.  It is a turning point in which past and future converge for constructive social change.  But how can we hold this delicate vision in an even more delicate and fleeting instant as it occurs?

As Frank and I sat in our favourite restaurant having brunch, he transmitted a powerful dharma from The Moral Imagination by John Paul Lederach.  Lederach explains Elise Boulding’s concept of a moment as being a “two-hundred-year-present.”  This is how it works: remember the hand of the oldest person you held (your grandmother, great-grandfather) and that of the newest member of your family.  Subtract the date of birth of the oldest person from the potential date of the passing of the youngest.  This is your 200-year present.  My “200-year present” spans from 1899 to 2080.  As Lederach writes, it is the moment “made up of the lives that touched (him) and of those (he) will touch.”

A spiritual community must also take this broad scope of time.  We cannot as spiritual friends hold to the narrowed vision of attraction and repulsion in each moment.  As each cohort of practitioners steps into the fire, this 200-year moment becomes the turning point from which our future is born.  As a practice that is based in a heart-to-heart, hand-to-hand connection we are touched by hands that have touched a lineage of teachers; and we, in turn, touch hands that will be touched as teachers.

We cannot be limited by the moment.  Our practice, to be effective in creating change, must encompass and be the compass of all that has gone before and all that is to come.  To ask for and receive the kai is a commitment to “such a view of time (which) must take place within what we touch and know but never be limited to a fleeting moment that passes us by.” (Lederach)

Thankyou for practising,

Genju

step into the fire – helping Japan and the world

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The irony doesn’t escape that I’ve been out of the worldly loop because of the Chaplaincy Core Program at Upaya Zen Center. Although there was some time to get online it was limited and I’m only just getting caught up on the tragedy in Japan.  Adam Tebbe of Sweeping Zen and Nathan Thompson of Dangerous Harvest have put together ways we can help.  [Edited] Maia Duerr of Jizo Chronicles also has a list of suggestions and commented “The Tzu Chi Foundation is one of the oldest socially engaged Buddhist organizations — they are launching an initiative to help relief efforts in Japan. Please consider supporting them.

Please take advantage of their generosity in compiling this information.  A permanently maintained list is also available on the Ways to Engage page here on 108 Zen Books.

It was a remarkable week of topics ranging from precepts and paramitas to complex systems theory and resiliency.  Nineteen Chaplaincy candidates received jukai along with three others, and we all participated in the novice priest ordination of one of Upaya’s residents.  It was a reconfirmation of my jukai taken in August 2010 but so much more intense because I went up to the altar with two women who represent creativity in and dedication to practice.

At this time with so much suffering and trauma erupting in the world, it helps to be with those whose vision is set not only on bearing witness to that suffering but engaging in compassionate action.  The Upaya Chaplaincy graduates have engaged in the world wholeheartedly from the Gulf disaster to transforming organizations.  These are large footprints to step into but the world gives us little choice.

Whether it is for Japan, Africa, Burma or your small square of earth, please consider how you can step into the fire.

Thank you for practising,

Genju