Category Archives: Western Teachers

Teachers primarily of American and European cultures

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good enough for me & abhi d

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I’m off today for the wilds of Barre MA and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.  It’s been a lifelong dream to sit and study the dharma/dhamma.  Somehow, life always had other things for me to study and in the last few months I’ve made a commitment to play hard ball with its demands.  So, I’m off!  Headed down the highway to my favourite breakfast stop and then to Burlington VT to lunch with a dear friend.  And then to land in a community of contemplation and study.

This week of learning about and through the Abhidhamma is going to be a challenge.  There are many dreams and delusions that will get in the way of sinking into the teachings.  Being mostly self-taught, I’m hoping it won’t be too much of an ego-thrashing.  But maybe I’ll get lucky and it will be!  Good enough for me.

As I typically do before I go on long trips, I update my will, make sure every knows where it is, and where the password list for all my computer accounts is stored too.  I take a moment to tell everyone I love them and that yes, I expect the dishes to be done before I get back.  This time, I’m also thanking Frank for holding down the fort over the septic tank (yes it has to be replaced and the “designer” is coming on Monday morning).  I also let people know they are in my will.  Really.

I’m telling you that too: you are in my will – the one I carry around in my back pocket and pull out which says: May you receive all you need to be safe and well.  May you receive all the blessings you need and fully deserve – whether you think so or not.  May you receive clear messages that you are precious and loved and valued.

Be nice to each other and I’ll see you on the other side!

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

For some reason, I was humming Me & Bobby McGee as I wrote this post so I bequeath it to you.  I’m a Janis fan but this is nice rendition.

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entering zen: the wabi-sabi of practice

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GRATITUDE

Whatever it is,
I cannot understand it,
although gratitude
stubbornly overcomes me
until I’m reduced to tears.

Saigyo

Entering Zen by Ben Howard is one of those stealthy books that can overcome you page by quiet page.  And at times, as I read it in a cabin tucked into the misty Catskills, it did reduce me to tears.  There is a simplicity in Howard’s words, something that makes this book and his blog posts (One Time, One Meeting ) a place of exploration that is simultaneously safe and challenging to enter.

These 75 essays offer teachings on Zen that show the practice as basic yet intricate, ordinary yet elegant.  To shine these jewels of practice, Howard draws from his immense knowledge and wisdom of literature, poetry, Buddhist practice, and an intimacy with his own life.  The tone of each chapter is by turn filled with delight at a child’s creativity, nostalgic for ways of living long gone, and delicate in unfolding a complex concept like sabi or wabi sabi.

Weathered Wood, the chapter which does the latter, is likely my favourite because Howard draws us in with a lovely poignant explanation of sabi and extends it to an appreciation of how our lives progress as a “bloom of time.”  He teaches from the wisdom of Tadao Ando, an architect:

Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time.”  It connotes natural progression – tarnish, hoariness, rust – the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled.  It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting…Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough.

Howard goes on to point out that sabi carries a suggestion of imperfection.  This is not the imperfection of wrongness or improper creation;  it is the imperfection that confirms the authenticity of a life being lived.  And this is the heart of Zen practice: the confirmation that an authentic life is one lived intimately with the truth of imperfection.

Throughout the book, Howard writes with an ease that comes from his skill as a teacher of English Literature, a musician, and his long-standing practice with different teachers.  He brings out the wisdom and compassion of Dogen, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Toni Packer with the same precise skill as what he extracts from poets Seamus Heany, Mary Oliver, and Gary Snyder.  It can be intimidating and somehow Howard manages to make the accessibility of the complexities of the dharma seem to be our own wisdom.  And, his consternation at vanity plates that say “ME” notwithstanding, I do feel the urge to whisper at the end of each chapter, “I did it!”

As the current trend in Buddhist writings leans towards snappy phrases and promises of liberation by the last chapter, Howard’s writings are refreshingly honest.  Practice takes effort.  It is worthy of our attention.  It grants us “refuge… more dependable than any bank and more durable than any mountain.”  It is no more or less than this, just this.