One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same any place in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear. — Dave Brubeck
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Sonja Margulies Roshi and a note about Dharma Transmission
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Smokey the Bear Sutra
SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA
Sister Kuon Elaine MacInnes Roshi
not broken, what do catholicism, zen, yoga & prisons have in common? a profile of Sister Elaine MacInnes by Talya Rubin
The Fires that Burn explores the life and work of Sister Elaine MacInnes - professional musician, Roman Catholic nun, Zen master, and prison activist - and her unusual journey to greater understanding. The documentary retreads 80-year old Sister Elaine's life path of spiritual redefinition, and uncovers the journey from her harrowing days as a body shield and activist during civil war in the Philippines, to her present-day campaign to get meditation teachers into prisons across Canada.
Flowing Bridge, Guidance on Beginning Zen Koans, By Elaine MacInnes. Elaine Roshi took some flak for writing about a koan practice that had been almost entirely an oral tradition, but I see it as her simply starting from the beginning.
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess
by Rick Fields
Sunday, July 14, 2019
The Gift of Tears—For my Mother, Leona Carroll
I woke up this morning missing my mother who has been dead now for several years. Given the contentious quality of our relationship for most of our 60 years together, I am surprised that oftentimes I find tears in my eyes when I think of her. I still remember phone calls where she slammed down the receiver, long periods of not speaking—her cold punishment for my seemingly uncooperative nature—her steely resolve that by the force of her will, I was going to get straight somehow, and marry. We were locked in a stalemate for almost 20 years.
Then a few short years before she died, I got really lucky, or was blessed, when I was able to touch the pain her actions tried to mask. That took away their power to hurt, and allowed me to experience a kind of love that I could not have imagined.
This is what I write about this Mother’s Day morning.
"A painted cake doesn't satisfy hunger." |
After many years of getting nowhere, when his teacher died, convinced that realization was beyond his capabilities, he retired to a remote temple where he tended the teacher’s grave. One day, the story continues, as he was raking the stones in the orderly zen garden (I like to imagine the ones you see in the fancy books with perfectly ordered lines in the rock), a small stone bounced off the garden wall with a Ping! Just that sound, and in a tumble his mind gulped in all his training in a single instant. And he got his life.
Even someone who has never practiced long days of meditation can understand the appeal of Hsiang-Yen's story. Everyone I know has some dilemma like this in his or her life. For me my relationship with my mother was a huge conundrum.
I have flown to Tucson to be with my mother after her first serious heart episode. It is decided that she get a pacemaker; that the doctor electrically jolt her heart, and, hopefully, restore a normal rhythm. Then the elements of a really bad melodrama started to unfold—my father disappeared for several days when he can’t take anymore, my mother brawled with her sister and a pretty buffed nursing attendant as she tried to put on her clothes to leave to go out into the street and hail a cab to take her home given that no one in her family seemed willing to obey her command and return her to a normal life. Eventually a really well-trained and compassionate case manager was the voice of calm, and mother agreed to the procedure. The drama to follow can be a quick note in the margin—further refusal on the operating table; family crisis; harsh words exchanged in anger; the heart specialist looks like the 14 year prodigy, Doogie Howser M.D., on the TV (I’m not kidding. He really did look like a teenager). I started to laugh, . . . this kid is going to thread electrodes through the arteries to my mother’s heart? What is she going to think? She thinks he’s cute, and refuses his treatment. Back to square one. That evening we will try again.
Before her surgery, she can have no food; even water is restricted—only small ice shavings. I hold a plastic cup and gently spoon the shavings on her tongue. She chews, and sucks, and swallows with smiles. I hear the ice click against the side of the plastic cup as I scoop it up. I use every bit of all my long zen training just to be with my mother for what might be her last moments of life—just her, just this spoonful, just this ice, just my breath and hers, just her pleasure in ice and water. It is very sweet, and I feel like the good son. If nothing else about zen, it does train you to be present in the moment. And that moment will have to be enough for this particular gay son after many long years of feeling outcast and abused. Yes, I decide it will be enough.
The medical procedure went as well as any scripted denouement on the Doogie Howser TV show. You couldn’t hope for more: the patient got well; the family crisis was temporarily resolved when the stubborn mother agreed to go to the nursing home; the father returned, shaken, humbled but unharmed, forgiven and loved; the gentle sister has taken over managing the mother’s care. And I boarded Frontier Air to return to San Francisco.
Friday, July 12, 2019
Koan Bibliography
Koan Collections
The Blue Cliff Record
The Blue Cliff Record (Chinese: (碧巖錄) Bìyán Lù; Japanese: Hekiganroku (碧巌録?); Korean: Byeokamrok, 벽암록(碧巖錄);Vietnamese: Bích nham lục (碧巖錄)) is a collection of Chán Buddhist koans originally compiled in China during the Song dynasty in 1125 (宋宣和七年) and then expanded into its present form by the Chán master Yuanwu Keqin (圜悟克勤 1063 – 1135).
The book includes Yuanwu's annotations and commentary on Xuedou Zhongxian's (雪竇重顯 980 – 1052) collection 100 Verses on Old Cases (頌古百則) — a compilation of 100 koans. Xuedou selected 82 of these from the Jingde Chuandeng Lu (景德傳燈錄) (Jingde era Record of the Transmission of the Lamp), with the remainder selected from the Yunmen Guanglu (雲門廣録), Extensive Record of Yunmen Wenyan (864 – 949).
Another key legend regards Dogen Zenji (道元禅師; 1200 – 1253), who brought the Soto Zen sect to Japan. After an extended visit to China for the purpose of studying Zen, on the night before his planned return to Japan, Dogen saw the Bìyán Lù for the first time, and stayed up all night making a handwritten copy of the book. Given the size of the book, this story is almost certainly apocryphal.
The most widely used translation is The Blue Cliff Record, J.C. Cleary and Thomas Cleary, trans.
The Gateless Gate
The Gateless Gate (無門關, Mandarin. Wúménguān, Japanese. 無門関, Mumonkan) is a collection of 48 Chan (Zen) koans compiled in the early 13th century by the Chinese Zen master Wumen Hui-k'ai (無門慧開)(1183–1260) (Japanese: Mumon Ekai). Wumen's preface indicates that the volume was published in 1228. Each koan is accompanied by a commentary and verse by Wumen. A classic edition includes a 49th case composed by Anwan (pen name for Cheng Ch'ing-Chih) in 1246. Wu-liang Tsung-shou also supplemented the volume with a verse of four stanzas composed in 1230 about the three checkpoints of Zen master Huanglong. These three checkpoints of Huanglong should not be confused with Doushuai's Three Checkpoints found in Case 47.
Along with the Blue Cliff Record and the oral tradition of Hakuin Ekaku, The Gateless Gate is a central work much used in Rinzai School practice. Five of the koans in the work concern the sayings and doings of Zhaozhou; four concern Ummon.
There are 3 widely used English translations:
Yamada, Koun, The Gateless Gate, Center Publications, Wisdom Publications. 2004
Aitken, Robert, The Gateless Barrier, The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumokan), North Point Press, San Francisco. 1991
Gateless Barrier: Zen Comments on the Mumonkan by Zenkei Shibayama is somewhat hard to find in print.
Other Koan Collections
Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues Shoyo Roku, Hung-chih Cheng-chüeh, Cleary, Thomas, trans., Shambhala, 1998
Entangling Vines, Shumon kattoshu, is one of the few major koan texts to have been compiled in Japan rather than China. Thomas Yuho Kirchner (Translator), Nelson Foster (Foreword), Ueda Shizuteru (Introduction).
Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵, lit. "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye")
Master Dogen’s Shinji Shobogenzo: 301 Koan Stories, Nishijima, Gudo, Michael Luetchford & Jeremy Pearson (eds), Windbell Publications, Woking. 2003
The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koans, John Daido Loori, Kazuaki Tanahashi (Translator)
Other Books
Cleary, Thomas, Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record: Zen Comments by Hakuin and Tenkei, Shambhala, Boston & London. 2000
Cleary, Rational Zen; The Mind of Dogen Zenji, Shambhala, Boston & London. 1993
Cleary, No Barrier: Unlocking the Zen Koan, Aquarian/Thorsons, London. 1993
James Ishmael Ford (Ed), Melissa Myozen Blacker (Ed), John Tarrant (Foreword) The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen's Most Important Koan. 2011
Heine, Steven, Dogen and the Koan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shobogenzo Texts, SUNY, Albany. 1994
Hori, Victor Sogen, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2003
MacInnes, Elaine Ruben L. F. Habito (Foreword)The Flowing Bridge: Guidance on Beginning Zen Koans
Miura, Isshu & Sasaki, Ruth Fuller, The Zen Koan: Its History and Use in Rinzai Zen, Harcourt Brace & Co., San Diego. 1965
Nishijima, Gudo & Cross, Chodo, Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, Book 1, Windbell Publications, Woking. 1994
O'Halloran, Maura, Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: The Life and Letters of an Irish Zen Saint
Japanese Buddhism and the Meiji Restoration, The American Academy of Religion, 1997
Sasaki, Ruth Fuller, A Man of Zen: The Recorded Sayings of Layman P'ang
Buddhist Heaven
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