Tag Archives: zen

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zen smells

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Zen can get pretty twisted.  As I go along trying to be creative with my practice, I find myself getting caught in the twists and turns of form and freedom.  Some time ago in sangha, we had an implosion that resulted from a multiplicity of unspoken expectations.  Too much form, too little form, too much sitting, too little sitting, too much talk, too little talk.  We put all the desires into a pot one day and cooked up a mess that reminded me of a durian – rank and requiring significant fortitude to ingest.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of smelling (and you of great courage who have eaten) a durian, it is an experience that is difficult to describe.  Frank used to make fresh durian ice cream – or what The Kid called “dirty socks ice cream.”  When she was able to drive and there was any indication of durian in the home, she would vanish for days, leaving no forwarding address.   The smell of a durian fruit is so powerful that restaurants in the Far East have banned serving it and apparently there are “no durian allowed” signs found in many places.

Me, I love durian and could eat it all day long which makes me somewhat desensitized to the stench of form.  And truth be know, I like my stinky form of Zen.  It goes like this:

Practice is like picking up a durian; it can hurt.  Practice, like the durian, is covered with pointy, pokey, hard thorns that aren’t going to give just because I have soft, tender skin.  There’s an art to hoisting practice without getting impaled by my unskillfulness.  That art is acquired by entering the zendo just as I would a roomful of people given truth serum.  I’m going to hear about what is smelly, see what is rank, and – if I persist – taste the nectar of the fruit in brief moments.  Sometimes, it may well be people who impale me on the pointy end of practice; usually it will be the various inanimate teachers – the cushion I toss onto the mat, the mat I kick with my feet, the butt I stick in the air as I pick up a chant card, the look, sigh, clench of jaw as something or someone invades my mental space.

If I want to leave the zendo without looking like an overused pincushion, I’m going to have to learn how to pick up that prickly durian of practice.  It starts with stopping: at the entrance of the zendo, at the mat, at the cushion, at the moment of walking, turning, sitting back down.  The art of picking up the durian of practice is in letting these pinpoints rest lightly on the raw skin of my life.  It is in resisting the desire to close my life around the thick thorns in the belief that if I can grab it, I can heave it up onto the cutting board, cleave it open and get to the meat of things.

It means bowing, lighting incense, chanting, reciting the sutras, following the format of council because all this hardens the skin and strengthens the muscle of awareness.  It is committing to picking up that fruit over and over no matter how heavy, how painful, how smelly the forms get.

Someone once asked me, “What’s the point of practice?”

The answer: “Anything that impales your delusion.”

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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zen thoughts

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It’s been a bittersweet weekend of change.  My dear dharma friend from Upaya Zen Center is in town and I used the joyful energy of her visit to carry me through a fear I’ve been nurturing for two years.  I needed (desired, wanted, was desperate to) transplant my parents’ roses from their (now-empty) home in Montreal to my rose garden here on the farm.  They were both avid gardeners – specifically of roses and the length of the bungalow was lined with bushes that regularly produced huge, fragrant blooms.  None of this floribunda nonsense; these were fleshy, vivid, aromatic tea roses.  In early Summer, the scent would fill my bedroom as I studied for one exam or the other and to this day, the very thought of calculating the time trains leaving cities would meet in the wilderness triggers the scent of roses.

Digging up the roses and transporting them was an adventure.  I was – and still am – overwhelmed with anxiety about the risk.  Part of me wanted to leave them in the ground to see out their days; there were only three left from the dozens planted over 20 years ago.  Part of me wanted to possess them because they are the last objective, sensory connection I have with my parents.  And part of me, tired of the scentless hybrids, truly wants a real rose, one that evokes  a heady surrender to the sensuous.  But roses, especially old ones, don’t take kindly to being hauled out of their home and dumped into new soil.  In the end, rationality won out; left they would likely die, taken might survive.

By Saturday evening, all three had been planted lovingly by my friend with Frank serving as brute labour.  I played the role of somewhat useless philosopher trying to find a metaphoric link to Zen practice. There is elegance in the classic, traditional form of these (now called) heritage roses that, when experienced, helps to apprehend, comprehend, and appreciate the variants that grew from this original form.  My shodo teacher insisted that only by mastering the the classic lines of a kanji script (buddha13) could a variant or modification make sense or even flow.

Maybe there is something in this about coming to Zen practice.

When I listen to what brings people to Zen practice, it becomes clear that few come because it’s Zen or a practice.  In fact, they have little idea of a Zen practice – and often after a few visits express little interest in the forms of practice.  When I respond to initial inquiries via email or on the phone, I emphasize, “We are a community that practices in the ZEN tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.”  The reply is usually “Oh, I’ve read all his books!” or “I love Thich Nhat Hanh.”  That’s a good place to start, I say.  And I add, “It’s a Buddhist community so we do things that are Buddhist like chanting and reciting.”  There’s usually a silence followed by “When can I come?”

At this point what I really want to say is, “Are you sure you want to transplant yourself to this new ground?  You know, it’s hard clay some days.  And others, it’s like sludge or a swamp.  Your roots may not be able to absorb the nutrients quickly enough to nourish you or they may find them toxic.  You’re likely to be planted beside a bed of majoram or chives or a space hog who bullies you like the climbing rose beside my new Black Rose.  It may be too hot, too wet, too dry.   And what about the deep, deep freeze in the long dark months when it seems nothing will ever grow again?  There will be nothing to do but sit, you know.”

But they’ll insist.  And now I think I understand what they are searching for: that heady memory of the scent of roses from some distant moment when the world was secure, when everything seemed predictable, and there was a plan for the next ten years.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju