The Tragic Story of Sesshin

From May 8th to May 10th, the Laughing Teabowl Zendo in conjunction with the Great Mountain Zen Center (Lafayette, Colorado) will be holding a spring sesshin. Roshi Gerry Wick and Sensei Shinko Perez of the Great Mountain Zen Center will be coordinating this event.

Unfortunately I won't be able to go. The fee of $100 is reasonable but completely outside of my range these days and I would feel guilty about leaving Bevin alone all weekend with Eliza while I was out enlightening myself.

So, I figured that I could at very least explain what a sesshin is and why it is important in Zen practice. A sesshin (接心, 摂心, 攝心), literally means "gathering the mind", and is a period of intensive meditation (zazen) usually within a Zen monastery. However, they can take place anywhere. Daily routine in a Zen monastery or Zen center usually requires monks to spend most of the day in zazen with periodic breaks for kinhin (walking meditation), dharma talks/combats and samu (working meditation) all devoted to in the same manner one would devote themselves to seated meditation. In the traditional sense, a sesshin is meant to mimic the period of time the historical Buddha spent in meditation before his awakening on December 8th (I have no idea where that date comes from, so don't ask).

While monks are used to this routine, most lay-persons do not have the ability or time to practice in such a manner so they are afforded the opportunity during a sesshin (basically, "pretend to be a monk" day) with the added benefit of deepening their own practice.

Basically, you are looking at rising at dawn. Eating a traditional meal for breakfast and then about 6-7 hours of meditation in some form while not talking at all with some punctuated breaks and dokusan (or personal meetings with a Zen Master).

It seems rough and it is for the most part. But that roughness has a point. The sesshin, in typical Rinzai style, is meant to be stressful and strenuous. I know a few monasteries that do not utilize controlled environments at all during their practice. So if it is cold then it is cold, if hot then it is hot, and just hope that it doesn't rain. All in all, it is psychological torture but just a little bit.

Our most defining moments in life are those that require some amount of change. They tend to be painful and stressful because we are afforded little ability to prepare for them. Marriage, births, changing jobs or death are all examples. And from these experiences we grow in some way. These events happen infrequently (in the case of death and job change, we are happy that they do not happen too often) but as our static lives continue we grow complacent. A sesshin provides that small amount of stress to affect some amount of change within ourselves. It hurts to meditate all day and it is hard to not speak (especially when you are in a group of people) and dokusan are NOT easy and should challenge your thought.

In the end, you are affected by a small amount of change and discomfort to deepen your practice and understanding. It is like trail by fire but only with a small flame.

Sesshin can be traumatic and so are usually not recommended for novices and some can last 3, 6 or 9 days. Personally, I only attending one sesshin is college and it lasted a weekend and that was hard enough. Some also attend summer or month long sesshins but I believe these are called something else.

Anyway, this is explaining a typical "Westernized" sesshin. Click here for a description of a typical Rinzai "Traditional" sesshin and be properly warned. You need to read this. It is awesome. The words "Cracker Jack Nuts" was used and that in and of itself makes it awesome to me. However, the fact that the Zen Mountain Retreat (which I am familiar with) didn't TELL the kid what he was in for is absolutely reprehensible. He shouldn't have been allowed to do the sesshin in the first place without some amount of training first (and more than one day sitting). You need to build your stanima up first before attempting anything like that described in the link.

Also, there are fanatics and loonies in every group (religious group or not) and sometimes the people that are willing to do 100 day sesshins may just be that...crazy.

The sesshin offered in the Black Hills is nothing like that and from what I am told is quite enjoyable. It should be stressed that the horror stories in the link above is from a traditional Rinzai zen monastery. The words traditional and Rinzai together will ALWAYS equal stress and pain. That is what they do and it is why it was so popular with the samurai back in the day.

Cheers,

PostScript: I reread this and I was thinking some more on the pain aspect of some sesshins and I thought that it relates to martial arts practice in many ways. Especially in the context of a belt examination or some such test. My yellow belt test was an all day affair from 8-4. Sparring, locks, sweeps, kata, recitation and throws. Intermixed with periods of meditation (my sensei was a practicing Buddhist and any time spent not in the physical aspects of the test was spent in meditation).

I looked at the link to the sesshin experience at Mountain Zen center and much of what he was feeling through out the week; I experienced during my day long belt test. I don't actually think that there is much difference. The idea being that the goal of the ordeal is to bring your practice, whether or meditation or a martial art, to another level of understanding and appreciation. It just takes longer to achieve that in Zen.

I definately had that feeling of "what the hell am I doing here" and "why am I doing this" at my belt test and I still get it when I sit at home or in the zendo. I think that the sesshin does bring the "why" out for you. It just is somewhat painful. Although, you should NEVER feel as if you need to be pushing yourself beyond your limits. I can't do a full lotus anymore so I don't even try and if I knew I was going to be meditating for a week long sesshin, you KNOW I would be doing the easiest posture I could do. I would skip on the chair though. Still too full of pride for that just yet.

Hardcore Zen and Sex

That is perhaps one of the best titles in existence. I wish I could take credit for it but it was mentioned in this article here by Violet Blue interviewing Brad Warner (Zen Master and writer). Personally, I enjoy the fact that he writes an occasional article for Suicide Girls which is basically a soft-core porn site (and a good one at that, I hear) I suppose some others have taken issue with in the past.

I listed a few of the excerpts from the interview anything in red is my comment.

• Violet Blue: What's the basic philosophy about sex from a Zen perspective?

• Brad Warner: There's no specific philosophy as such. When you enter the Buddhist order either as a layperson or clergy you take ten vows, one of which is not to abuse sexuality. But there is no specific definition of what that means. In the earliest Buddhist sanghas they decided that meant you had to be celibate. And some orders still interpret it that way. Lucky for me, Japanese-style Zen Buddhism does not interpret it in that way! In Zen it's up to each individual to decide what "abusing sexuality" means. For me it's even more vague because my teacher changed the wording of that precept and rather than asking them to avoid abusing sexuality he asks his students to vow to "not to desire too much."

• Damn! I love this aspect of Buddhism and always have. Very little is stated about sex or sexuality and nothing is stated about guilt from the Pali canon (earliest Buddhist writing usually the central scriptures of the Theravada tradition). It is likewise absent from most Zen liturature although there is a large amount of Zen literature that I have not read or is even translated.
  
• A central idea in Zen and Buddhism is that anything that could lead to unhealthy desire be put in its proper context (the Middle Way). This includes everything from food, attention, fame, credit, sex to enlightenment and meditation. Personally I place the precept of "abusing sexuality" in the context of individuals who use sex to gain emotional power over another, to mask prevelant insecurities or to in some way harm another. Other than that, I think it is pretty much open season. Just keep your mind on what you are doing. If you clean then clean; if you sit then sit; if you fuck then fuck. The whole thing is simple, really.

• There is also a precept against abusing alcohol or drinking. Translations of this vary from no drinking or encouraging drinking allowed to drink moderately all the way to DRINK...NOW HIT YOURSELF WITH THIS SHOE AND PUNCH YOUR TEACHER IN THE FACE.

• VB: Do Buddhists "do it differently?" Do they "do it" at all?

• BW: I don't think there are any special Buddhist sex practices or techniques. (I use the "Buddha's Palm" quite often does that count?) Even in the celibate Buddhist orders only the clergy is celibate. But there are no specific restrictions for anybody else. It's not like the Catholic Church proclaiming contraception is sinful or anything like that. Buddhists "do it." Otherwise there wouldn't be so many of us!

• This reminds me of a Dogen story about a monk that swears to another monk that he would never touch a woman ever as a testimony to his enlightenment. The other monk's reply being something along the lines of "Well, that's stupid". Even with some Zen monestaries being celibate, most aren't especially in the West. The heads of these monestaries or Zen centers are married and most monks are of both sexes.

This always brings me back to why would you want to practice a religion that doesn't accept who you are? This being said I don't consider Zen to be a religion since it is, in essence, a meditation school. Every week I sit with Buddhists, Catholics, Christians and a smathering of atheists and agnostics. Zen is, for better or for worse, just an aspect of their faith, spirituality, practice or skeptisism.

But if I were a woman why would I want to go to a Catholic or Orthodox church? They basically say that woman are not good enough, for whatever reason, to be priests or deacons. And their viewpoint on homosexuality hasn't changed in ohhhhh 2000 years? This was the main reason I stopped being a Christian. I could not believe that I was aligning myself with people who overtly or covertly believed in this. It was misogonystic and homophobic on one hand and then just plain weak on the other.

Time and Practice or the Zen of a Crying Child

I have been wanting to talk about time and practice. I have been finding it more and more difficult to find any time in the day to sit in zazen or to even get to the zendo every week (I usually get there on Sundays for an hour and a half).

So what to do instead? With an infant child at home, it becomes more and more difficult to find an opportunity to actually sit. I feel somewhat guilty when I leave for some sitting time in the mornings since I then have to rely on my wife to watch the baby. But again, I find this an important part of my day spiritually so where do you go what do you do.

The answer...just accept it. Just sit back and accept it. I am not defined by my sitting at a zendo or by my sitting everyday anymore then I am defined by my dinette set or by my throw rug (thank you "Fight Club"). I am defined by the effort I put into everything in my life as well as the effort put into my practice when get the chance to actually sit. I find the moments with Eliza (usually trying to do kinhin while carrying her) just as important as sitting in a quite zendo or doing the dishes or raking the yard or folding clothes. Unfortunately this has not spread to my activities at work but give it time.

Plenty of oppurtunities for mindfulness exist at home. Any daily task. Any chance encounter. So I guess my practice is doing fine. Still angry and still alive but calm and at rights with myself. I had the time to sit this morning for 20 minutes while a storm whipped itself up into a frenzy outside. It worked out well and I felt good. Tomorrow maybe better or worse. Who cares?

Cheers

Women, Buddhism and non-religion

Great article by Brad Warner on women and religion. To start off with, I was never a fan of Brad Warner. That is until recently. I tend to dislike when people add "Zen" to everything that they could possibly imagine (ie. Zen and Marketing, the Zen of Selling) and I sort of lumped Brad into that group.

I was mistaken but the thought of a Zen-punk sub-culture still irked me. However, Brad's writing is succinct and understandable and I tend to enjoy most of it. This one in particular was on the mark since Buddhism (especially in the west) has had a long and complicated history in relation to female monks, which were usually segregated from the men in monastaries but accorded the same level of respect (unlike Christian nuns which are usually considered lower in "rank" than a priest who is usually male).

This is besides the point though. His article is linked below. It is a great read.

http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/23598/

...with another good blog on female monks (Bhikkhuni) mostly from the Theravada tradition.

http://www.buddhapadipa.org/pages/buddhism_femalemonksinbuddhism.html

and to end with a Dogen quote from the 13th century from the Shobogenzo

Dogen goes on to say, “Even in China, there was a stupid monk who made the
following vow: ‘Through every life, in every age, I shall never look at a woman.’ Upon what morality is this vow based? What wrong is there in a woman? What virtue is there in a man? Among bad people there are men who are bad people. Among good people there are women who are good people.”

Article Pulled from "New Scientist"

This Article got pulled from New Scientist's online edition. Good reading...I enjoyed it.

How to spot a hidden religious agenda

Amanda Gefter New Scientist Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:35 UTC

As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to... well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I'd share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science's clothing.

Red flag number one: the term "scientific materialism". "Materialism" is most often used in contrast to something else - something non-material, or supernatural. Proponents of ID frequently lament the scientific claim that humans are the product of purely material forces. At the same time, they never define how non-material forces might work. I have yet to find a definition that characterises non-materialism by what it is, rather than by what it is not.

The invocation of Cartesian dualism - where the brain and mind are viewed as two distinct entities, one material and the other immaterial - is also a red flag. And if an author describes the mind, or any biological system for that matter, as "irreducibly complex", let the alarm bells ring.

Misguided interpretations of quantum physics are a classic hallmark of pseudoscience, usually of the New Age variety, but some religious groups are now appealing to aspects of quantum weirdness to account for free will. Beware: this is nonsense.

When you come across the terms "Darwinism" or "Darwinists", take heed. True scientists rarely use these terms, and instead opt for "evolution" and "biologists", respectively. When evolution is described as a "blind, random, undirected process", be warned. While genetic mutations may be random, natural selection is not. When cells are described as "astonishingly complex molecular machines", it is generally by breathless supporters of ID who take the metaphor literally and assume that such a "machine" requires an "engineer". If an author wishes for "academic freedom", it is usually ID code for "the acceptance of creationism".

Some general sentiments are also red flags. Authors with religious motives make shameless appeals to common sense, from the staid - "There is nothing we can be more certain of than the reality of our sense of self" (James Le Fanu in Why Us?) - to the silly - "Yer granny was an ape!" (creationist blogger Denyse O'Leary). If common sense were a reliable guide, we wouldn't need science in the first place.

Religiously motivated authors also have a bad habit of linking the cultural implications of a theory to the truth-value of that theory. The ID crowd, for instance, loves to draw a line from Darwin to the Holocaust, as they did in the "documentary" film Expelled: No intelligence allowed. Even if such an absurd link were justified, it would have zero relevance to the question of whether or not the theory of evolution is correct. Similarly, when Le Fanu writes that Darwin's On the Origin of Species "articulated the desire of many scientists for an exclusively materialist explanation of natural history that would liberate it from the sticky fingers of the theological inference that the beauty and wonder of the natural world was direct evidence for 'A Designer'", his statement has no bearing on the scientific merits of evolution.

It is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines.

He DOES, you know

Yes! Our Great Lord does have a huge dislike for the Phylum Chordata. Gotta be careful these days less his great tentacled wrath comes down upon you...he has an annoying tendency to rip sanity straight from your soul.

...one doesn't usually find cultists so attractive to spread his word.

Ai Ai Cthulhu Ph'Tagen! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Rl'yeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!

God Trumps the Buddhists

These are awesomely hilarious. I think they should be expounded upon to include some of the wackier sects. The daffiest doctrine portion is very apt. You have to reread some of the obscure stuff over and over and it still doesn't make any sense.

Soto and Rinzai Zen Part 1

A Brief Explanation of Rinzai and Soto Zen Part 1

or…

"Why sometimes Zen Practitioners can be assholes"**.


I think some explanation of the history and practice of these two often confused and intertwined traditions in needed. Especially here in the West where the Zen we are exposed to tends to be a combination of both these traditions rather than the original tradition as originally developed. This is likely to be quite a rambling account spanning a few blog entries so bear with me. Also part of this is typed while either holding Eliza or punctuated by occasional dances with her in the kitchen.

I think, to start with, a story helps to explain some of the concept of Rinzai Zen:

“during a public reading at St. Louis University by Lucien Stryk from his translation of After Images: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi, a young woman from the audience began deliberately tearing a copy of the book (purchased before the reading) into tiny pieces and letting them fall to the floor. Some in the audience began to complain because they could not hear the talk but the young lady continued her shredding of the book and politely replied “I know”.

Someone in the audience (sarcastically, I think) commented that the lady was probably trying to communicate something in a Zen fashion and Stryk answered that he got the message and continued reading. The book continued to be shredded and as the lady finished the last page, another lady from the audience gathered the pieces and delivered them to the podium. Dropping them at the reader’s feet, the woman gasshoed and with Stryk responding in turn and saying “gassho” as he bowed.

The ladies left the auditorium; the talk continued somewhat uncomfortably with Stryk commenting that he was no Zen master but at the same time wouldn’t pass judgment on the actions of the ladies.”

Well, the ladies were fellow lectures and also followers of Rinzai Zen. The said that the actions were not deliberate and instead arose from the moment and in essence they were giving the lecturer a chance at enlightenment (which of course he didn’t get which is fine b/c I don’t get it either).

The ladies weren’t followers of Rinzai and even if they were I believe that they were primarily assholes. This is a big issue with the western perception of Rinzai Zen: That Zen must be obscure, random, mystical and unexplainable to be Zen. This is bullshit…pure bullshit.

The image of Zen as being this mystic and sublime entity is mainly due to the 1960’s. The counter culture at the time was quick to grab whatever they could that fit in with their anti-establishment, anti-government and anti-intellectualist worldview. I have no problem with this worldview, BTW. It is fine with me. However, most of the Buddhist literature at the time being spread was from Rinzai masters such as D.T. Suzuki and his students or contemporaries such as Philip Kapleau and being hugely misinterpreted. Three main things were pulled from these works:

1. That Zen is steeped in mysticism and contradiction. This came mainly from the collections of koans that are so important to the Rinzai tradition. These supposedly unanswerable riddles are actually very answerable and each does have a correct response or interpretation. It is the concentrating on these koans that lead to an understanding or breakthrough.


2. That Zen is spontaneous and immediate. Never mind that fact that Zen monasteries are usually rigorous and the training of the monks very regimented.


3. That Zen is Japanese. Its not and honestly I don’t know if people really say this or not but it wanders in front of my path occasionally. I prefer to think of Zen as Zen and still in the process of transforming and evolving as it did when it moved from the Indian subcontinent as dhyana (steeped in the yogic tradition of the area) through to China (supposedly via the Boddhidarma as Ch’an) and then through to Vietnam (Thien), Korea (Seon) and Japan (Zen). Korea has a very deep and prominent tradition even over here in the West and the Kwan Um School of Zen has always been a great resource.
   
   

More space will be devoted next time on the actual differences between the Rinzai and Soto traditions.

And true to the Zen tradition I will leave with a haiku:

On how to sing
The frog school and the skylark school
Are arguing
- Shiki

Cheers!

Upon reread it may sound that I have a distaste for the 1960s Hippie Movement and/or Rinzai Zen. I have a dislike for neither of these. I do however dislike filthy beatniks.

**I think the faulty perception of Zen that it must be abrupt and random leads to some acts that can be construed as assholish as described in the story above. For example if my teacher, in order to provide some abrupt enlightenment, decided to throw a floor tile at my head I would classify him as an asshole. Now if a complete stranger did this to me for the same reason then it would come to fisticuffs. These examples seem so ridiculous but traditional Rinzai methods do utilize "striking, kicking and shouting" to bring forth enlightenment. But more about this later...