Tag Archives: chaplaincy

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looks like coming

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It’s not possible to separate going and coming.  In a literal sense, I’ve gone from and come to a number of different practice centers.  In the very real sense of life-and-death, it’s been a persistent struggle to embody oneness with what is.  In Returning to Silence, Katagiri writes,”This is just going, just coming.”  He tells the story of Gutei’s one finger: Tenryu, Gutei’s teacher, always held up one finger in answer to everything.  Gutei thought this was a terrific answer so copied it.  The long and short of it was that Tenryu chopped off Gutei’s finger.  This enlightened Gutei to the truth of authenticity, of being exactly who you are without parroting another’s reality.

This is a tough path for a fundamentally deluded person.  How can I skillfully use the teachings without pantomiming the teacher?  At the level of practice, I began with TM and slowly unfolded into zazen.  I don’t recall how that evolved except that it has.  I’ve been sitting since I was 19 years old when meditation began as an attempt to sustain a relationship with a boy friend who wanted to learn TM.  Later, as I faced challenges and disappointments, meditating became first a way to cope with stress and then just a way to be with myself.  As I became involved with mindfulness communities, particularly as a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, practice emerged as a way to be with others.

The process of mimicking the teacher is a natural beginning for any student.  We take on the persona of those we perceive to be more powerful or who, we believe, have salvaged our lives.  We fall in love easily with the person who plucks us from the wild ocean, confusing relief to have escaped death for an enduring commitment of the rescuer.  Inevitably, that kind of clinging, greedy connection will be severed like Gutei’s finger.  When it has happened to me, the pain was overwhelming and the silence made some forms of practice intolerable.  I can’t tell you why I’ve persisted with my practice through such pain, except that it’s now the only thing I know to do.  I think it’s a form of skillful waiting: waking, washing, eating, working, crying, laughing, drinking tea.  Laying down the path, moment by moment, step by step – not because anyone has told me so but because it is what is going to get done anyway.  Eventually, out of that process comes a clarity – first, of what is being practiced and then, an authentic ownership of practicing.

Through all the transitions and evolutions, however, I’ve felt a sense that the song stops short of the last verse, the last note.  Perhaps this is what the Chaplaincy path is about: a transition to practice what is outward-moving, a challenge to cultivate a way of being for others that is built on all the joy and disappointments that form the bedrock of my practice to this point.  Keeping that don’t-know mind is going to be a particular challenge over the next two years.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

Next: gate of silence

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looks like going

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Dosho Port at Wild Fox Zen informs us that today is the 20th year memorial of Katagiri Roshi’s passing.  This week’s posts for 108ZB were prepared before I learned of the memorial.  Katagiri’s writings, especially Returning to Silence, were a huge influence and support in my practice.  May we continue on and carry his gift of dharma forward throughout space and time.

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Tathagata (Buddha) means “looks like going, looks like coming.”  In Buddhism we say, “no going, no coming.” Buddha is just going, just coming. “Looks like going” is a wonderful way to express the Truth.

from Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri

Spiritually, March is likely to enter like  a lamb and leave like a lion.  At least, that’s how it feels in this moment.  My calendar for the first three weeks is a whirlwind of work which allows me to be away for two weeks from the churning of billable hours.  My first job several decades ago was with the federal government; my parents thought I had won the lottery.  A regular pay cheque, retirement funds, paid vacations, sick leave, and extended health care were their markers of success.  I can’t deny that for the three years I lasted in a mind-messing bureaucracy, it was a relief not to worry about finances. Then again, in those spiritually dark ages, the depth of my practice amounted to figuring out the best scuba package offered at resorts in Bermuda.  (It was karmically appropriate that I discovered I can’t dive because of inner ear problems which cause me to lose my sense of direction.)

These days, being self-employed, planning my path to enlightenment requires a bit more forethought.  It takes about a year to set up the contracts and scheduling so that the cost of retreat, training, and what-have-you is covered along with the cost of not earning anything while away from the grindstone.  So here we are,  a year after I made the decision that the next stage in my life is to commit to a path of service.  On March 19th I leave for two intense weeks of training, the first leg of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program.  Actually the first leg – or more accurately the first toe – of the journey began with the Zen Brain retreat which I hope you enjoyed reading through the month of February.

I think for the first time in my life, I’ve made a very conscious and deliberate commitment to a process.  As compelling as it was to grab the opportunity when it was first presented to me, I found myself holding back.  This is uncharacteristic, of course, being one who is totally immersed in the thrill of crazy – and Frank will say, crazy-making – decisions.  That list is long: the horses nobody wanted or could tame, the dogs no one could control, the roads others preferred not to negotiate.  But the spiritual path has been more considered yet also directed by unexpected opportunities.

My deeper life has been lived in a shell slowly cracking open, tap by tap.  The first was administered by my Buddhist grandmother who took me to the Botataung Pagoda every Sunday so I would not be exposed to the weekly poker parties my parents held.  Even if my liberation required rebirth as a man, she was going to ensure it was not to be diverted.  The second was my Religious Humanism professor who risked his career and shocked his class by asking us to consider our real resistance to a human Christ.  After much pussy-footing, he growled, “You can’t abide the thought of God’s Son needing to take a piss!”  I was stunned into considering the difference between a cult of personality and the real nature of faith.  Several years later, at the second History of Psychology class, the professor walked up to me, slammed down two volumes of Tscherbatsky’s Buddhist Logic in front of me and said, “Go away.  Come back with paper why Buddhism is cognitive science.”  His action baffles me to this day because he knew nothing about me yet opened a door that lead directly to confirming the form of my practice.

This storyline is only a reflection of what I need to believe has brought me to this point.  It’s just my way of making some sense of how I’ve laid down this path.  But in the end, as Katagiri writes, it’s like trying to understand “fish” outside the context of “water.”

It is just oneness…  Life and death means “looks like going, looks like coming.”

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

Next: looks like coming – the path of practice