Kwan Um School of Zen

Summer Kyol Che 2013

Kwan Um School of Zen — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:14:14 +0000

Saturday July 6 – Friday August 2, 2013

A Kyol Che (“coming together”) is a longer, intensive meditation retreat held in the winter and summer. Held at our Diamond Hill Zen Monastery, it is modeled after the traditional winter and summer retreats in the mountain temples of Korea. For more detailed information, download the Kyol Che Information Booklet (pdf format).

Please register for Kyol Che retreats at least one week in advance.

Entry and exits are Saturday and Wednesday mornings 8AM only.

Retreat fees are:

$455/week for non-members and associate members;

$315/week for students, clergy and school members;

$245/week for Dharma Teachers and Dharma Teachers in training in the Kwan Um School of Zen.

Half price for Eastern Europeans who are members in good standing of their home zen centers (does not apply to Eastern Europeans living in the U.S.).

SEE YOUR GUIDING TEACHER FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO OBTAIN A SCHOLARSHIP.

Print out and mail in your scholarship application.

To register for your retreat online – fill out the retreat registration form.

Teachers are as follows, schedule to be announced.

Zen Master Bon Haeng
Nancy Hedgpeth, JDPSN
Linc Rhodes, JDPSN
Zen Master Hae Kwang
Zen Master Bon Hae

Inka Speech

Barry Briggs JDPSN — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:04:43 +0000

Inka Speech

[Raises stick overhead. Hits table.]

Yes means no and no means yes.

[Raises stick overhead. Hits table.]

No yes and no no.

[Raises stick overhead. Hits table.]

Yes means yes and no means no.

Which of these statements is correct.

KATZ!

Outside, pale sun. Inside, bright faces.

A long time ago in China, Zen Master Un Mun went into town one day with one of his monks. As they walked down the street, Un Mun looked ahead and saw a shop with a sign that read, “Dragon’s Treasure Chest.”

On seeing the sign, Un Mun turned to the monk and asked, “What kind of treasure comes from a dragon’s treasure chest?”

The monk couldn’t answer, so Un Mun said, “A flattened toad!” The monk still didn’t say anything, so Un Mun spoke again: “A fart!” When the monk still didn’t reply, Un Mun tried one more time and said: “Steamed buns!”

We can imagine the two of them walking down the street and coming across a flattened toad on the road; then Un Mun cuts a fart, as people do; and then they pass a bakery display of steamed buns.

We can also imagine the monk’s mind. Anyone who has done kong-an interviews can imagine the confusion, embarrassment and resistance in the monk’s mind as he walked down the street with his teacher.

Perhaps we can also imagine Un Mun’s incredible kindness and generosity as he repeatedly tried to bring the monk to the reality and aliveness of the moment as the two of them walked down the street.

That’s our job as human beings: to bring others and, of course, ourselves into reality, even when reality is a dried toad, or a smell, or a meal. That’s what I wanted to talk about today. How do we come into reality in each moment?

Some years ago, I studied Aikido, the Japanese martial art. I was a spectacularly poor Aikido student, ungainly and awkward and resistant. That’s probably why I remained a white belt. But I did have a certain kind of dedication and persisted in trying to learn the forms.

One time, during a weekend workshop, I was partnered with a black belt practitioner who I had never met. He was an imposing, nearly immovable man who had clearly trained for many years, and I was quite nervous about working with him. I couldn’t move him – I was like a stone bouncing off a wall.

In one exercise, I was the attacker and he was the defender. Of course, I was my usual inept self and couldn’t really execute the attack properly, and both of us were frustrated after my first few attempts. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me right up against his chest and whispered in my ear:

Come closer. When you’re close to me, I can’t hurt you.

This man was almost certainly referring only to the Aikido exercise, but of course his words have a resonance that goes beyond the martial arts studio. And I understood them in that larger sense.

I took the words home with me and really tried to examine what they meant in the context of my own life. And the truth is, beyond thinking, I couldn’t really bring this teaching alive at that time.

There might be very good reasons for this, of course. This teaching about coming closer is deeply counterintuitive, in part because we have genetic heritage that causes us to move away from things we view unsafe. It’s a useful impulse at those moments when we encounter a Siberian Tiger.

But most of us don’t regularly meet tigers – we only encounter our partners, friends, coworkers and ordinary strangers. And in these situations, pulling away doesn’t usually produce very good outcomes.

In our teaching tradition, of course, we have a wonderful tool for working with our tendency to move away – really it’s the only thing we have to offer – which is don’t know. And it’s through the practice of don’t know that we can discover a genuine way to be safe in the world. Don’t know brings us closer to whatever the world presents, moment to moment.

Often, we respond to life’s demands by saying to ourselves, “I don’t know what this is and I don’t like it,” or we say, “I know what this is, I’ve been here before, and I don’t like it.” And we move away.

And so separation appears, and with separation comes a tremendous loss of safety and intimacy. We pull back from the great love that we so much need.

We chant about Great Love in our chants every day: it’s the dae ja in dae ja, dae bi. Traditionally in Buddhism we say that Great Love is the vow to help all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. That’s what we commit to when we begin our practice and every day, when we chant, we renew the vow to manifest Great Love.

About eighteen months ago, during the height of the Occupy Movement, I saw an online interview with a young economist associated with Occupy Wall Street. During the interview, the economist said:

Economics means: the more for you, the less for me.

But love means: the more for you, the more for me.

When I saw this interview, it hit my mind very strongly. And it caused me to look again at how I live my life and how I relate to other people in this world. And I discovered, once again, that I didn’t live, day to day, as if the more love you got, the more love I got; the more contentment you had, the more I had.

And once I began to get a sense of my failure to manifest love, I became really uncomfortable. I couldn’t live that way any longer.

So I developed a little exercise. I said to myself: Start saying “yes.”

Start saying, “yes” to the world. Now, this was not the “yes” of acquiescence; rather, it was the “yes” of acceptance. So when someone would ask me to give or do something, I would try to find a way to respond with a “yes,” even though, to be honest, “yes” was often not my first response. And sometimes, even when I did say, “yes,” I often didn’t feel it inside.

As I worked with this practice, I noticed something. People got really happen when I said, “yes.” Others got what they wanted and that made me happy. Oddly enough, that’s how the world works. That’s what Un Mun was trying to help his monk understand: that the whole world is right here, present with us, if we can just say, “yes” – even to a flattened toad.

So that was an incredible teaching for me and over time it became almost second-nature to say, “yes,” to all kinds of situations – until one day last year when my guiding teacher and dear friend, Tim Lerch, Ji Do Poep Sa Nim, asked me to consider receiving inka.

And then I said, without hesitation, “no.”

Of course, I offered Tim a really good reason why I could not accept inka. And Tim, in his own exercise of Great Love, gently set aside my reason. I didn’t like that so I offered another “no” and another reason, which Tim also set aside, and this continued for a bit until I agreed just to sit with his request.

I did sit with this possibility for several days and still couldn’t get to “yes.” Then one day a friend of mine asked, “Why does your teacher want you to receive inka?”

And that simple question cut right through my defenses. In a moment, I realized that inka had nothing to do with me. Tim wasn’t asking for me to receive inka. Instead, he was asking for the sangha to receive inka through me. Inka was about you, the sangha, and of course I could say, “yes” to the sangha. I could immediately say, “yes” to the sangha. So I picked up the phone, called Tim, and said, “yes.”

That’s our work as human beings: to find ways to say, “yes” to life, as it arises moment to moment. Sometimes a “yes” can present as “no,” and that also can be a manifestation of Great Love. But however it manifests, each of us has to find and offer that kind of Great Love. Everything depends upon it.

[Raises stick overhead. Hits table.]

Dionne Warwick sang:

What the world needs now, is love sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

[Raises stick overhead. Hits table.]

And the Beatles sang:

All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need. Love is all you need. Love is all you need.

Where can we find the love we need?

KATZ!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Zen Master Wu Bong

Kwan Um School of Zen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:01:36 +0000

Dear Sangha,

With the deepest sorrow we inform you that Zen Master Wu Bong passed away in Paris after a cardiac arrest on April 17th at 1 pm.

Please dedicate Namu Amita Bul chanting for him.

The 49 day ceremony for Wu Bong Soen Sa Nim will be held in the European Retreat Temple in Warsaw Falenica on June 2, 2013. The one year commemorial ceremony will be held at Berlin Zen Center in Germany, which was Wu Bong Soen Sa Nim’s home in Europe.

Spring 2013 Primary Point

Kwan Um School of Zen — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:04:46 +0000

Dear Sangha,

The new issue of Primary Point, Spring 2013, is now available to view online:

Primary Point Spring 2013

In this issue, you’ll find:
Go Drink Tea, by Zen Master Dae Kwan
Desert Paramita, by Zen Master Wu Kwang
See True Nature, Strong Center, Clear Direction, by Zen Master Dae Bong
Inka Ceremony for Hye Tong Sunim
Strong Faith and Building a Zen Center, by Zen Master Wu Bong
Karma Is Relentless: Everyone Here Is Buddha, by Ken Kessel JDPSN
Iceworld, by Arne Schaefer JDPSN

We hope you enjoy reading this, online or in print.

We welcome advertisements from Zen centers and sangha members in Primary Point. If you’re interested in advertising with us, please contact Tamarind: tamarind@kwanumzen.org

Yours in the dharma,

Ken Kessel JDPSN
Editor-in-Chief, Primary Point

Iceworld

Arne Schaefer JDPSN — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:28:20 +0000

White full moon in the sky

White snow on trees,

meadows and pagoda

Did the world become ice?

Did the mind become ice?

Stone pagoda licks

Ice full moon

Crack, crack, crack

Steps on frozen snow at …

Strong Faith and Building a Zen Center

Zen Master Wu Bong — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:56:48 +0000

During a working Yong Maeng Jong Jin at Zen Center Berlin

Very often in the Zen tradition, Zen Masters have not made it easy for students to practice with them. Initially the student is presented with some sort of test. One of the most famous Zen stories is that of Hui Ko. Hui Ko visited Bodhidharma and asked to be taught. Bodhidharma ignored Hui Ko for seven days. Hui Ko waited in the snow and it was icy cold. So finally Hui Ko cut his arm off to show his earnestness in wanting to be taught by Bodhidharma. And then Bodhidharma asked Hui Ko: “How may I help you?”

Once there was a young man who was a bit of a dilettante. He would visit different teachers and afterwards criticize them saying: “This teacher is too old and the other teacher is too young. I don’t like that teacher’s dharma talks and I don’t like the last teacher at all.” He would try various ways but he always found a fault with something about the different practices. Of course he didn’t have any knowledge himself and ended up being a “jack of all trades but master of none.”

One day this young man arrived in a temple where an old monk taught and he decided to stay. He was tired of trying so many things and he decided that for once in his life he would stick with something and really give it a chance. Perhaps his reputation had preceded him, because as soon as the old monk took one look at him he exclaimed: “You want to be a student here? Forget it! Go away.”

The young man pleaded with the old monk: “Please, I really truly want to be a student here. Please admit me!” However the old monk ignored him. The temples in Japan have a waiting room and the form for asking to be admitted involves the aspiring student to sit in the waiting room until the Zen master lets him or her in. Sometimes according to the different forms, students wait one night or three days and three nights or sometimes seven days and seven nights. During this time the student is not forgotten and is offered a little food.

The aspiring students cannot leave. If they return they have to start all over again.

This temple was not so formalized and there was no waiting room. But the young man decided to wait nonetheless. And after some time the old monk came out and seeing the young man said, “You are still here? What do you want?” The young man replied: “I want to be a student here!” Then the old monk replied, “No! You are not sincere! I don’t believe you! It is just a waste of your time and a waste of my time and a waste of temple resources. Go away! Do something else!”

But the young man would not leave. And after more time had passed, the old monk appeared again: “Oh! You are still here!” The young man replied: “Yes! I really want to do this!” The old monk asked, “Have you seriously decided that this is what you want?” “Yes! I have decided!” replied the young man. “Even if it means you would lose your life to be a student here? Would you do this? Would you give up your life to be a student here?” asked the old monk. “Yes, I would do it!” said the young man.

“OK. Let me ask you something. Is there something in your life that you do well?” asked the old monk. The young man thought for a while. He thought of all the things he could do. But what could he do really well? Then, “Ah, yes. I can play chess rather well.” The young man had played chess ever since he was a boy. He was a fairly decent player.

The old monk said: “Good. We will test you now. You will play against one of my monks. If you win you can stay as a student here. If you lose you will never be allowed to enter this temple again. If you do enter you will lose your life. If you still choose to stay in this temple after having lost, then you will give up your life.” The young man replied: “I will not leave even if I lose. I will give up my life.” The old monk said, “We have agreed, then.” It was a very serious situation. Also the Zen monk was very serious.

He called one of his attendants. He brought a big sword. He summoned one of his monks who was a chess-playing monk. And he told this monk: “You have been a monk in this temple for many years. You trust me, I trust you. I am going to ask something very difficult of you. You are going to play chess with this young man. If you lose this chess game I will cut your head off. I swear to you at the same time that if that happens, I will guide you well in your afterlife.” The monk said: “No problem. I agree.” Then the young man and the monk sat down at the table with the chess board between them. The Zen master stood at the side of the table holding his sword, watching. (In those days the laws were different. Everything was legal because the young man had agreed to the rules. These days the Zen master would go to jail.)

So the young man had agreed. It had been easy to agree with words. But inside he was wondering; “What if I really lose? I am a pretty good chess player but . . .” The monk was very calm sitting across from him. He had started the first move. The young man was thinking, thinking, thinking and as a result of so much thinking after three moves a mistake had already appeared. “Oh no! What shall I do now?” So he thought some more. And again after a few more moves, another mistake appeared. His position was not good. But what could he say? It was too late. No way out now. If only he could take back his word, he would do it, but there was no way now. So finally he thought: “OK. I did something stupid. I made a foolish commitment and now I will die. Well that being as it is, I must die!”

Once he accepted the fact that he would die, his thinking disappeared and then the chess board became very clear and slowly he began to make very good moves, his position changed and became stronger. Suddenly he realized he was on the way towards winning the game. He relaxed and looked instead at the face of the monk sitting across from him. Then he thought, “What a beautiful face this monk has, so kind and gentle and so peaceful. This monk will die if I win. All my life I have been uselessly wandering around getting nowhere and achieving nothing. And this monk is such a treasure.”

Then looking again at the chess board, he decided to purposely make a bad move. Then another and then a third bad move which reversed the positions and again he became the losing player. And at that very instant, the Zen master raised his sword and smashed it on top of the chess board. Then he said, “Chess game is finished!” He looked at the young man and said: “Keep this kind of mind for your practice and you will never have a problem. Keep this kind of attention and this kind of compassionate mind and you will become a good Zen student!”

This is a true story. This young man became a great Zen master. A chess Zen master!

We always say that Zen is not special. Paying attention to your life is not special. This story points to that. We do what we are supposed to do, moment by moment. We do this completely and wholeheartedly. Not only Zen students understand this. Everyone understands this.

The other point which is vital to our Zen practice is the direction it takes. In the story the direction that the young man took was compassion. He understood that being a Zen student was not only for him, it was also for the monk and for others. He attained the point: “Why should this wonderful monk die so that I can become a Zen student?”

This Zen retreat has been a working Zen retreat. We have been working to build this Zen center. Sometimes checking mind has appeared, “Not so many people have been helping with the work.” Frustration appears. But we think again about our direction. And then it is not important who is coming or not coming to work. Important is what each of us does. Do we do it completely and whole-heartedly?

We simply do what we can and our direction is that others will come and enjoy the fruit of this labor. This is correct direction.

Zen Master Seung Sahn says, “Zen means you must become crazy.” For most people building a Zen center and putting so much work into it is crazy! In Paris we are also building a Zen center and friends cannot understand why we have left everything behind and moved to Paris where we still cannot speak the language. They ask: “Why leave America? Why leave a good situation? Why do all this? You are crazy!”

Recently we received a phone call in the center and we were asked how many people were coming to practice. We said: “Well . . . ah . . . a few Polish people and, ah . . . two French students.” It is crazy! So in a way if you continue practicing it will lead you into a kind of insanity.

I have already mentioned that this retreat was a work retreat. Actually there are two kinds of work. Inside work and outside work. Inside work means keeping a non-moving mind and outside work means helping all beings. Building a Zen center is extremely important. If you look at this world and all the varieties of problems in our lives, then it is of utmost importance to examine the underlying causes of these problems or even diseases. Doing this we see that there are three causes: I, me and my. Eliminating I, me and my means eliminating the causes of suffering.

Building a Zen center means offering a place where everyone can come and deeply examine the mind and the causes of suffering. A Zen center is not actually a place but rather the people who come. Many people will come to this place and practice.

So building a Zen center is very important outside work.

Being concerned only about inside work is not correct Zen practice. Only inside work means nirvana and peace of mind only for me. Including outside work into our individual practice means living with a direction for others and not only for me. How can we share with others? This is a wonderful way and makes a lot of sense.

So I hope that everyone will continue this everyday working practice, everyone will soon get great enlightenment and save all beings. _____________________

Excerpted from Zen Life, Moment Life by Zen Master Wu Bong (ISBN 978-3-937983-34-9). Copyright © 2012 European Kwan Um School of Zen. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Johannes Herrmann Verlag.

Go Drink Tea

Zen Master Dae Kwan — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:12:37 +0000

The following talk was given at the Opening Ceremony for Kwan Lin Chan Lin Zen Meditation Centre in Singapore, on September 25, 2012.

In this world and in our life, many things are in duality: negative and positive, good and bad. When we hear something negative, we would probably feel bad. At that moment, our life is not on the middle path.
Learning Zen gives us a way out; to be free from good and bad, free from our emotions. It leads us back to the middle path. Zen Master Seung Sahn often said, “Our original state is like a mirror. When red appears, it reflects red, when white appears, it reflects white. Our practice is like a rehearsal, training ourselves to become like a mirror.”
When hearing others’ speech, only reflect. This means to accept reality. Salt is salty, sugar is sweet. This is truth. When someone says something irritating, perhaps you could invite him to have a cup of tea. In many kong-ans, when someone said something to Zen Master Joju, he only answered, “Go drink tea.”
When we first learn kong-ans, it feels like we are using a formula or giving random answers. Even when we do give the correct answer, we lack confidence in our answer. We tend to think that as long as we have passed, it’s all right; however, we do not appreciate this process. I encourage everyone to experience kong-an practice, as it is like a continuous rehearsal of life. During times of difficulty and karma, you will then know how to apply the different kong-ans to resolve your problems.
I encourage everybody to have confidence in kong-an practice. In every moment, whenever emotions arise, just bring up the question, “What is it?” At the moment when we have no answer, we call this cutting off thinking, or don’t know. Thus we return to the middle path and are no longer slaves to our emotions. In our life, we should rehearse continuously until nothing can bother us. Then you become free. At this point, you are the master.
I would like to congratulate and thank Gye Mun Sunim (Ven. Chi Boon) for his perseverance and clear direction in founding Kwan Yin Chan Lin, offering us a place to return to the middle path, to practice the dharma and attain our true nature so that we can repay our country, our parents, our teachers and all beings. Gye Mun Sunim, thank you for your effort. You are great!

Inka Speech, Hye Tong Sunim

Hye Tong Sunim JDPSN — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:15:46 +0000

Inka Ceremony for Hye Tong Sunim

September 2, 2012, at Seoul International Zen Center, South Korea

Dharma Combat

[In Korean]

Question: Hello. Congratulations.

Hye Tong Sunim: Thank you.

Q: I have a good family and my job is also quite good. But to be honest, I’m not sure what to do for my life in the future. Can you give me any advice?

HTSN: What are you doing now?

Q: I’m a scientist in a research center and . . .

HTSN: No, what are you doing right now?

Q: [Surprised, then slowly] Sitting and talking with you . . .

HTSN: Live in that way!

Q: Ohhh . . . Thank you very much!

Question: Good afternoon, Sunim.

Hye Tong Sunim: Good afternoon.

Q: Congratulations.

HTSN: Thank you.

Q: One man and one woman are walking in the field, they stop and they see a hole in the ground. And they see something that is coming up from the hole. Then, he says, “Oh, it’s the head of a snake.” And she says, “No, it’s a seed.” Who is right? He or she? They both are not right. What is coming out from the hole?

HTSN: You already understand.

Q: [Silence]

HTSN: [Stares at imaginary hole]

Q: [Closed eyes and silence]

HTSN: Not enough?

Q: [Keeps closed eyes and silence]

[Laughter]

HTSN: Go back to your hole!

[Laughter and applause]

Zen Master Dae Jin: Good afternoon.

Hye Tong Sunim: Good afternoon.

ZMDJ: I have a question for you.

HTSN: Sure.

ZMDJ: So, I have some bad news.

HTSN: What is that?

ZMDJ: Last night, around midnight, all the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, all the patriarchs, they all suddenly fell down, got sick and died. What can you do?

HTSN: You already understand.

ZMDJ: Please tell me.

HTSN: I am so happy to see one that still survived sitting in front of me.

[Laughter]

ZMDJ: Thank you for your teaching!

[Applause]

Dharma Speech

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick]

East is west, west is east.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick]

Originally, no east, no west.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick]

East is just east. West is just west.

So three statements. Which of them matches your dharma?

KATZ!

In the morning, the sun rises in the east. In the evening, the sun sets in the west.

Good afternoon. It’s nice to see all of you here in the beautiful Mu Sang Sa dharma room. It’s a great honor for me to give an inka speech.

I just would like to share two short stories. Here is one.

During the Shilla kindgdom in ancient Korea, there was a monk whose name was Hye Tong, which is the same name as mine. Actually I found this in some encyclopedia, because I was wondering if there was anybody in Buddhist history who had the same dharma name as mine. I was a little bored at that time. So I tried to find it and there was one in the Shilla kingdom, Hye Tong. So that’s actually how I came to know this story, because it touched me a lot, even though we’re not exactly the same: while our names are pronounced the same, they are written with different Chinese characters.

One day, when Hye Tong was a layman before becoming a monk, he went to the lake shore on the edge of his village and there he saw an otter. This animal is small—less than a meter long—with a round, small face. It can also swim well in the stream. So he saw it on the shore, and as soon as he saw it, suddenly he felt hungry. So he did what you are thinking of now: he just caught it, killed it, and now he had a barbecue party for himself. Then he just left.

A few days later, for some reason, he came back to the shore, and he remembered what he had done, and he was curious if it was still there. So he went to that spot, and there were the ashes from the bonfire he had made. But he found one other interesting thing: the bones that he had thrown away after he ate all the flesh had just disappeared. So he was wondering where they could go. He looked around in the sand and eventually found the outlines of where the bones had been. In addition, there was a small trail of blood. So he just followed this blood trail and it led him into the forest nearby. It ended in front of what looked like some animal’s hole. And he heard some little animal sounds coming from the hole. He leaned toward the hole and looked into it. There were six baby otters crying, and they were so young they had not even opened their eyes. And looking further, he was startled at the sight of something else. Guess what there was? There were the bones he was looking for, an otter skeleton, and it was hugging the baby otters. So even after she died, this mother otter couldn’t forget her babies.

And then, a few days later, Hye Tong left home and became a monk. So what this story says to us is, even animals have it. Have what? The one thing beyond life and death. The one thing which is beyond life and death.

And here’s the second story. And this is my experience.

So in the early days of Mu Sang Sa, as Zen Master Dae Bong mentioned, I had lived here for a while. At that time, we only had this one building. We had no kitchen. Sometimes, rarely, Zen Master Seung Sahn would visit here. Back then, when he would visit we’d all get together, having tea, and he told us to ask him any kind of question. And I had actually one question, which I had always wanted to ask him.

When I was a haeng-ja, I had read a book about Zen Master Ko Bong, who was Zen Master Seung Sahn’s teacher. In that book, when Ko Bong was giving dharma transmission to Seung Sahn, he told him, “You and I, let’s meet again, five hundred years later.” So I was wondering what it could really mean. Actually, I didn’t like that speech because even though I admired both of them, it sounded a little like some kind of prediction or even some fortune-telling. [Buddha said monks and nuns should not do fortune-telling. —Ed.] So I didn’t really like that speech and I wanted to ask Zen Master Seung Sahn what it meant. So here was a good chance. In that tea room, I think there were about 11 or 12 students, including some Zen masters and teachers who were Zen Master Seung Sahn’s students. I asked him, “Sunim, I read this in a book about Ko Bong Sunim, that when he was giving you dharma transmission, he told you, ‘You and I, let’s meet again five hundred years later.’ So, what does it mean?” And Zen Master Seung Sahn just stared into my eyes for a second, and immediately answered, “That means, he and I will meet five hundred years later.” And I was completely stuck. Actually, I had prepared one or two more questions, so that if he answered one way, I’d hit that way, and so on. But when I heard this, I couldn’t do anything. And then he just kept staring into my eyes, and he pointed his finger at me and almost shouted, “Never, ever, have doubt at all!”

So when your direction is clear, it is already beyond all the opposites. Life and death, possible or impossible, good or bad, right or wrong—it’s already beyond all the opposites. And what kind of direction you have is also important. What do you think about the mother otter, the skeleton that walked to its babies, bleeding, even after it had been killed—can it be true? Is it possible? Or is it impossible? Zen Master Ko Bong and Zen Master Seung Sahn will meet again five hundred years later. And they seemed to know already, before they had died. Would it come true? Is it possible? Or is it impossible?

Sentient beings are already numberless, they cannot be counted. Is it possible to save them all from the suffering? When your direction is clear, actually it doesn’t matter that your wish or hope is going to come true or not. It’s not about success or failure. It’s not about truth or untruth. It’s not about coming true or not coming true. It just keeps going on straight, for infinite time. Which means, actually, you’re the direction, the direction itself is you. We just try, try for ten thousand years, for life after life, as Seung Sahn Sunim used to say. So I’m sure that many of us had it, when we just began our practice. Many of us had it when we were just a beginner. Do you still have it?

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick]

When the direction is clear, you will see the sun rises in the east in the morning, and sets in the west in the evening.

[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick]

When the direction is clear, in this dharma room, see in the east, the colorful, strong Hwa Um Seong Jung painting; in the west, the white wall. And, between them, compassionate eastern and western bodhisattvas’ faces.

Thank you very much for listening.

Winter Kyol Che 2013

Kwan Um School of Zen — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:29:42 +0000

Investigate your life closely……

Winter Kyol Che 2013 at Diamond Hill Zen Monastery

Kyol Che starts on January 5, 2013 at 10:00am and ends on April 5, 2013 at 1:00pm.

Guest teachers:
January 5-12: Zen Master Bon Haeng
January 12-19: Zen Master Hae Kwang
January 19-26: Do Am Sunim
January 26-February 2: Nancy Hedgpeth, JDPSN
February 2-9: Nancy Hedgpeth, JDPSN
February 9-16: Zen Master Bon Haeng
February 16-23 Zen Master Bon Haeng
February 23-March 2: Linc Rhodes JDPSN
March 2-9: Hye Tong Sunim JDPSN
March 9-16: Hye Tong Sunim JDPSN
March 16-23: Paul Majchrzyk JDPSN
March 23-30: Zen Master Soeng Hyang
March 20-April 5: Zen Master Soeng Hyang

For more detailed information, download the Kyol Che Information Booklet.

To view and print out the 2013 Winter Kyol Che flyer, please click here.

Retreat fees are:
$4500/entire retreat or $455/week for non-members and associate members;
$3000/entire retreat or $315/week for students, clergy and school members;
$2500/entire retreat or $245/week for Dharma Teachers and Dharma Teachers in training in the Kwan Um School of Zen.

Half price for Eastern Europeans who are members in good standing of their home zen centers (does not apply to Eastern Europeans living in the U.S.).

A Zen Motorcycle Odyssey: Women and Children in the Jails and Prisons of our Nation

Kwan Um School of Zen — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:04:17 +0000

By KC Walpole

Seldom in a lifetime, if ever, arises the opportunity of a physical challenge coupled with a meaningful experience. Last summer, I had the opportunity to ride a motorcycle on an odyssey to the four corners of the nation to speak on women and children in our jails and prisons. On the surface, it was a 10,585-mile ride, done in 59 days, with more than 20 talks.

The motivation for the journey came from a group of nine female youthful offenders I had in a mind-body stress reduction program at the women’s prison in Lowell, Florida. Seven of them had at least one child, and two of the children had been born to women shackled behind bars, and they had been taken from their mothers within an hour of being born.

As I came to know these kids, I learned that none were incarcerated for violent crimes, nor were they a threat to society. There were three questions that came from the experience for me. The first was, why? The second was, what is the impact on the children? And finally, what could be done about it?

The tragedy is that, according to national statistics,¹ 60 percent of those released from prison will return within three years, and about 70 percent of their children will end up incarcerated too.

Statistically, three out of five of those youthful offenders with babies will return to prison within three years, and their children will be without their mothers for a second time. Multiply that by maybe 100,000 and you can see we have a real train wreck headed our way.

I am often asked if there is a thread that runs through the non-Zen classes I teach in prison. The truth is that the bones come from The Compass of Zen. The backbone rotates around Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which was developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Frequently I will refer to these threads as “stealth Buddhism.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn is clear in his book Full Catastrophe Living that “. . . it is no accident that mindfulness comes out of Buddhism, which has as its overriding concerns the relief of suffering and the dispelling of illusions.” However, I build on this concept in two classes I developed, “Inward Journey” and “Success in College,” by constantly coming back to The Compass of Zen for a consistent set of bones that supports both classes and builds on the experiential practice of MBSR.

The basic dynamic I use in teaching reentry into the free world emphasizes building a plan based on one’s direction, which translates into “What is the cosmic glue that gives meaning to our life?”

The question of direction is put to students on the first class of each cycle, and there is a full two-hour block of instruction built into the two-month cycle of instruction. The key to direction is that they need a benchmark for every decision they make, not just in planning for reentry but in the daily moment-to-moment decision making process when they get out.

One challenge in particular is that those people who knew them before they went to prison have no reason to change their own behavior, because they did not go to prison. However, clarity in direction and knowing that circumstances have changed often means the difference between living a meaningful life or going back to prison.

There is a reason why 60 percent of the women that come out of prison go back. Those women sitting in the Inward Journey classes give vocal testimony to the importance of understanding change and direction.

My experience of riding through the highways and byways of the country has been that the mind operates on two levels. There is the mechanical level of “what if” coupled with processing all the what ifs. Then there is a deeper level of processing that goes on at an unconscious level.

Essentially in the last 15 years, I had been teaching in prisons without a break. The 60 days I spent on the road afforded me the opportunity to process a lot of stuff I had not yet processed. My talks were in a constant state of change as I was verbalizing all that I processed. Also, each day I blogged, I was verbalizing a lot that I was processing between talks. The best description of the odyssey was ride, blog and talk, with scenic breaks in between.

I have been asked a ton of questions about being on the road and the particulars of how and what we did. I tried to put together as much as I could, and a lot came together in no particular order. However, at the core of a road trip, as at the core of life, is just the direction.

You cannot plan such a trip simply by getting a tent and sleeping bag and having a vague destination. The characters in the movie Easy Rider traveled without direction, and that ended most tragically. Aside from that, a Peter Fonda or Dennis Hopper I am not. I was a retired soldier in the summer of his 69th year who was on a mission. Essentially, Easy Rider was just a bike trip from California to New Orleans.

Our trip had a clear direction. It was to raise the level of awareness of women and children in the jails and prisons of the nation, and to do it, we took motorcycles to the four corners of the country as a vehicle to spread the message.

Even though a lot of people opened their homes and organizations to our presence, it was still an expensive project. In an effort to reduce expenses I chose a combination of camping, staying at people’s houses and at nonprofit organizations, and occasionally sleeping in motels when the situation demanded.

Beside that, in many respects, motorcycles are not only hard but most inefficient. It takes time to load and unload them with camping gear—about an hour or two at the end of each day’s ride. Loading a bike is a mindful exercise, and the price of carelessness is becoming instant roadkill at highway speeds. In addition to camping gear, we packed computers and projectors, as well as clothes to wear during the presentations.

We created a blog to generate interest in the trip (http://gatelessgatezen.com) and to help students prepare for the talks beforehand, as well as review them afterward. Although this sounds nice, it also required from me at least two hours a day.

The blog did serve its purpose, and by the time we got to Cambridge there had been more than 5,500 hits on it. I decided to continue the blog after the odyssey, based on requests from ex-offenders as well as from volunteers at talks around the country. Also, we had to expand our Web server’s bandwidth during the trip as the visits and downloads exceeded our existing contract.

I think the biggest surprise of all was crossing the Florida-Georgia state line on the last day. The question that occupied my mind was, do I really want to come back to my life of teaching in prisons? The simplicity of life as a motorcycle vagabond has a great deal of appeal. However, return I did, and when I went to the prison to give my first class of the 19th cycle, I knew I had done the right thing.

Know then, that I will ride anywhere to speak to any audience in any venue on the issue of women and children in the jails and prisons of our nation.

Note

1. See, for example, www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/216950.pdf.

Only the Mind that Wants to Help

Kwan Um School of Zen — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

By Dae Soeng Sunim

This article originally appeared in the newsletter of Cheong Am Sa Temple in Korea.

This article focuses on how the practice of Korean Zen Buddhist meditation can profoundly help all people to realize their true self. Many people can benefit deeply from Korea’s long Buddhist tradition if it is made more culturally accessible for Western people.

In today’s world it is of the utmost importance that human beings change their views of where contentment, satisfaction and overall happiness can be found. My own journey through the process of becoming a monk has changed my view as to what is important for a healthy and meaningful life.

I was raised in an upper-middle-class family where I was expected to take over my father’s business, get married and have children. At an early age I was enrolled in Catholic school, where I arrived early every day to help the priest perform the morning services. I was an altar boy, so I put on the robes and performed the mass with the priest; I looked forward to this time every morning—it gave me a sense of peace and connectedness with something inside myself.

Growing up in America, we had all sorts of pressures, such as “What kind of car do you drive? Where did you go on vacation? What neighborhood did you grow up in? What college are you going to?” I decided that I wanted to study music and the arts, but was soon discouraged because of all the pressure of performing and producing, and the inevitable comparisons of good to bad. Achieving success was a bittersweet experience for me. There was always something inside of me that was never satisfied.

In 1972 I met Zen Master Seung Sahn, and the first question he asked me was “Who are you?” I had visited many yogis and other spiritual masters, but I was never directly challenged with such a simple question. I said, “My name is Carl.” He said, “That is the name your mother gave you. Who are you!?” He said it with such force that I replied, “I don’t know!”

He then said, “Correct!” I was puzzled—how could “I don’t know” be a correct answer? He told me to come back to the temple the next morning at 5 a.m. to begin practice.

The following morning it was just the Zen master and me; he hit the morning bell and chanted the Homage to the Three Jewels beautifully. We then meditated for 40 minutes.

I went and told my friends about this Korean Zen master who was in town and the next day there were five of us for morning practice. He told the women of the temple to go out and buy an American-style breakfast. After morning practice was finished there was a table prepared with Korean soup and rice, kimchi, peanut butter, cereal and milk. None of us had ever seen Korean food before—the idea of eating rice and soup in the morning was completely foreign to us. The Zen master perceived our hesitation and promptly mixed everything together in one bowl; this made everyone laugh. He put kimchi, rice, soup, cereal, peanut butter and milk all together, mixed it up and began to eat it with a big smile. We all tried to do the same, and laughed as we ate. This was the beginning of the Los Angeles Zen Center, which later was named Tahl Mah Sa and finally Dharma Zen Center.

In 1994, after getting married and raising a family, in a short period of time several of my family members died, which caused me great sadness. I was in L.A. visiting my friend and decided to go see Zen Master Seung Sahn at the Dharma Zen Center, where he was giving a series of lectures on his forthcoming book The Compass of Zen.

As he perceived my condition, and being a great bodhisattva, he asked me if I would like to become a monk. Without hesitation I agreed to go to Korea and become a monk. It had always been a dream of mine to become a monk; at an early age I wanted to be a priest, and then as a teenager I wanted to go to Thailand to become a monk. On December 27, 1994, I boarded a plane to Seoul, Korea, to start training at a Buddhist temple named Hwa Gye Sa.

My first day at Hwa Gye Sa I exchanged my street clothes for a set of brown haeng-ja (postulant) clothes, and proceeded to wash dishes for the 300 people who came to lunch. It was a grueling job that involved sitting on a small stool and washing everything that came to me in a tub of water. Every time any thought of regret passed through my mind, a bosalnim (Buddhist lay woman) would put some food in my mouth. It is not everyone who gets hand-fed while washing dishes.

After six months I went to haeng-ja training at Hae In Sa Temple. In my 45 years of living I never worked so hard, endured such hunger, slept in the same room with so many men or showered with so many men.

The ordination ceremony, during which the novices receive their precepts, was officiated by ten senior monks. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, and all of Korean Buddhism. I felt like I had returned home.

Inspired to continue my training, I went to Jeong Hye Sa Temple, the Zen hall above Su Deok Sa, and asked for permission to sit the spring retreat for one month. The head monk of the Zen hall told me it was full, but that if I came back on the first day of the retreat a monk might have canceled, so it could be possible to join the retreat. Fortunately there was a monk who did not show up, and I was able to join the one-month retreat.

I learned more about living in harmony with other people during that one month than I had in a lifetime of lay life. Eating, working, sitting, walking in the mountains, and sleeping together—all the monks were willing to share with me their years of experience in the meditation rooms.

By eating nutritious Korean food and walking up the mountain after every meal, I lost weight and never felt better in my life. As I did well at that retreat I was taken to Dae Seung Sa Temple in the city of Mungyeong to ask permission to sit the three-month winter retreat. The abbot of the temple said that if I could sit the 21-day no-sleep (that is, no lying down) meditation retreat, where you sit in meditation 22 hours a day, then he would let me sit the three-month winter retreat.

There is not enough space here to talk about what finishing that retreat did for my self-confidence. At the end of the retreat the abbot said with a smile, “Dae Soeng, you are welcome here anytime.” That was a wonderful moment for me.

I went on to sit many retreats in Korean Zen halls during the next 10 years until my teacher became sick and needed my help. I took care of him for the next two and a half years until he passed away. The funeral was held at Su Deok Sa—a big ceremony where we all watched his body burn all night. It’s hard to explain the feeling when a person dies who has unconditionally helped you—a truly great bodhisattva like Zen Master Seung Sahn.

I returned to Seoul and stayed at my friend’s temple to continue practicing, after which I went back to school to study the Korean language. Two years later I was asked to go to America to help the Korean temple Won Gak Sa in upstate New York. After two years, I finished my job there and was asked to teach meditation at Bul Kwang Sa Zen Center in Tappan, New York, where I currently reside.

We have meditation classes three times a week at Bul Kwang Sa. The classes are well attended, with a wide variety of cultural and religious backgrounds represented among the members. Our common bond is this question, “Who am I?”—the investigation into our self-nature. Jewish, Catholic, Hindu and various Protestant faiths all come together with this same question.

We sit two 40-minute periods with walking meditation, and then share our experiences after I give a short dharma talk.

There is a great thirst for Buddha’s teaching in America; my dream is to be able to lead retreats like the three-month ones they have in Korea—with modern, ecologically friendly buildings and broad multicultural acceptance.

This world now is suffering, like it has always been, from desire, greed and anger. Meditation can bring our minds to equanimity; great joy and happiness will follow and one will naturally want to share it with others.

I once asked Zen Master Seung Sahn, “What is a monk’s job?” He replied, “Only the mind that wants to help is truly enlightened.”

Karma Is Relentless. Everyone Here Is Buddha.

Ken Kessel JDPSN — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 10:08:00 +0000

From a question-and-answer session at the New Haven Zen Center on December 16, 2012.

Question: This is kind of a big one. I was having a conversation with my friend. He’s a very rational, pragmatic person. Very smart. And I said, “So, do you believe that anything has a purpose? Is there a reason?” And he said, “What about what happened in Connecticut, in Newtown? How could that have a purpose? What about those kids? How could they deserve that?”

At some point in my life I knew a pretty decent answer to that—maybe. I’m not sure what it was. I just wanted to bring it up and see how you would respond to that.

Kessel PSN: Why is he your friend?
Q: Because he’s a good listener.
Kessel PSN: There’s lots of good listeners. Why is he your friend?
Q: I have respect for him.
Kessel PSN: There are lots of people you respect. Why this person and you? If you see that, the root of what brought that together is the root of what made Newtown appear. That may not be very satisfying. On the one hand we have mind, or Buddha-nature, or God, something that’s vast and indescribable and exists before words appear. And then we have the unfolding of cause and effect, which we call karma. You could say he’s a good listener; you could say he’s very intelligent; you could say you respect him—that’s all true. But over the course of many tens of thousands of years of human history, what brought you and him together in New Haven? We don’t know. Exactly!

Some of it is immediately clear. He’s a good listener. You like somebody who listens well. You like to listen well, too. He’s intelligent. You’re attracted to that kind of mind. You respect him, and it’s important to you to be in the presence of those you respect. So in an immediate sense, the two of you have some affinity. But what shaped you to have that particular affinity, and what shaped him to have that particular affinity? How could it be that two people with a similar affinity came together in New Haven to talk about something important?

In the Lankavatara Sutra, Mahamati asks Buddha, “Where do words come from?”

Buddha answers, “Words come from the conjunction of the nose, and the lips, and the teeth, and the jaw, and the throat, and the chest.” Mahamati isn’t satisfied and asks for a more philosophical explanation, which Buddha provides. But at the start, he says what’s simply true. Human beings make human sounds. Dogs make dog sounds; cats make cat sounds; birds make bird sounds. There’s some function to those sounds that is there before the words are uttered and that goes beyond them.

In talking with your friend about something important, something appeared that wasn’t about the words. It was just about the nose, and the lips, and the teeth, and the tongue, and the jaw, and the throat, and the chest. You feel some connection with each other. The presence of that sustains love and attention, awareness and peace, caring, compassion and wisdom. Getting too caught up in the words you say to each other can interfere with that. But the intention to come together and explore something vital is a valuable thing.

If you value those things you’ll find other people who value those things. You’ll attract each other. We call that the karma of having similar affinities, which is kind of like saying your right ear is on your right side.

Just sit and investigate: what is a human being? We have that question, somewhere, and we may do many things to distract ourselves from it, but when we stop distracting ourselves that question resonates all by itself. When you were born, who taught you to breathe? When you were born, who taught you to see? When you were born, who taught you to hear? Who taught you to smell? Who taught you taste? Who taught you to touch? That’s what this lump of flesh does.

Somebody may have taught you something about seeing that helped you see better. Somebody may have taught you something about hearing that taught you to hear better, but the innate ability to see is with you from the beginning.

We learn something about being human from the humans around us. Some of us have more fortunate experiences and some of us have less fortunate experiences about that. If you just sit, then you see, we have this innate clarity, and simultaneously, we have things that attract us and things that distract us. We reach out for things that we want but we don’t have; we want to get them, even if we can’t, and that makes our energy go off in one direction. We try to hold on to things that we have and we don’t want to lose, even if their nature is to go out, and that also makes our energy go off in a certain direction.

That’s a little bit like, I want air so I won’t stop breathing in. Then it feels like I can never get enough. Still, at some point you have to stop breathing in. Or, I don’t want this air anymore because it doesn’t feel good, so I’ll breathe it out. In fact, I don’t want any air; it keeps changing into carbon dioxide. I don’t like that, so I’ll never stop breathing out. While this is an exaggeration, we all do something like that.

Receiving and giving become clinging and rejecting. To the degree that clinging and rejecting become the centerpiece of our life, we start to construct things mentally and emotionally that support clinging and rejecting, because we think they’re important. When we do something a lot we get good at it. If you cultivate careful listening with your friend you become better at careful listening; it becomes satisfying. You get good at it, so you like it so you do it more. If I cultivate clinging and rejecting I get good at it, so I like it so I do it more. Even if I don’t like the result, I no longer connect cause and effect, and I’ve cultivated a habit.

Add that up: we have seven billion people, now. Beyond just now, there have been a lot of human beings on earth. Not all of what we do nurtures life. Even if it feels like it nurtures my life, it may not nurture life broadly. It reflects “I want, I want, I want, I want. I don’t want, I don’t want. I want to make my situation good and comfortable.” So add that up, generation after generation, billions of people before us, and billions of people now.

Our founding teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, was fond of saying, “Human beings number one bad animal!” Everybody gets that. If he’d said it more eloquently it wouldn’t have been as striking. Buddhist traditional teaching is that in the past, people killed many animals both for food and for recreation in a way that was thoughtless, so those animal consciousnesses then get reborn as human beings, and carry that thoughtlessness with them.

So now we have many human beings who are not human beings. They have human bodies, but they have dog mind, or cat mind, or falcon mind, or duck mind, or bird mind or tiger mind. Sometimes people even have two minds, half dog, half cat, so they’re fighting inside. Zen Master Seung Sahn used to talk about broken consciousness. And if you have tiger mind and I have lion mind, I want to hurt you. If you have a dog mind and your friend has a dog mind, you have some affinity. You can play that out, and you’re free to take it literally. And in fact I can’t disprove it, nor can I prove it, for that matter.

But it also paints a picture of the kind of things that persist, and how they persist. As Buddha says, karma is relentless. We collectively cultivate the habit of not being mindful of how we live on the earth. This creates generations that don’t pay attention to that well. That has consequences.

Of course, there are pockets of people who are more committed to being more broadly mindful. Some of those pockets of people are sure that their way is the only way. Some of those pockets of people have a sense that this is a good way, and I’m glad that other people are also paying attention in a way that seems to work for them—we have something in common.

If you add that up over time, there’s something natural about this awfulness. Ignorance plus ignorance plus ignorance plus ignorance equals a lot of ignorance. That creates a certain field, a context. We have collective vulnerability and individual vulnerability. Sadly, finally, naturally, at some point, this kind of thing tends to happen. And naturally, if it happens close to home, we notice it more, we feel it more, we ask questions about it more.

But as Paul noted in his talk, there are other pockets of people on the earth where these large tragedies happen a lot. And in fact some of it we’re participating in by proxy, just because we pay taxes. And we don’t pay attention to that the same way. It’s hard to feel a similar horror, partly because it’s far away, partly because we’re not participating directly, and partly because we learn of it through sources where we’ve taught ourselves that what comes through those sources is pretend or we can just turn it off.

We feel what happened close by in Newtown very deeply, and we should. If we didn’t, something inside us would be dead. But we don’t necessarily feel everything else that deeply.

So, you have your friend, and in a deep sense, you don’t know why, but you know you have him. You feel it’s good.

Recently, I had pneumonia and I don’t know why, but I had it. I can also pick it apart: I had certain constitutional weaknesses and certain bad habits and certain vulnerabilities, and all that adds up to pneumonia. And I feel that’s bad. We don’t necessarily wonder why, if something is good. But if it feels bad, then we do wonder. Why me? Why children? Why this child? Why in Newtown? Why any one at all? How can it be satisfying to say that there are aspects about the unfolding of karma, where we just can’t see the particulars?

What can we do?
What do you want to do? That’s the first question. Everybody’s here, so you want to do something, otherwise you’d be someplace else. But you’re here, so you want to do something, because you’re suffering, because you’re human, because you have desire, because you have a body. Those of us with bodies who are human who have suffering don’t like that. That’s good.

If I step on a thorn, I feel pain. If I’m letting my body function, I’ll pull my foot away, and then if I continue to let my body function, I’ll look down at the part where I stepped on the thorn. I’ll try to take it out, because the pain directs my attention to something important that’s toxic. If I direct my attention in the right way, maybe I can bring some nurturance to the thing that was toxic or injurious and allow healing to happen.

What do we do with pain? What do we do with suffering? Partly, we want to say, “Shhh! Quiet, I don’t want to see it.” Or we want to push it away, outside, to make a space that’s safe, inside. That feels better. But it’s not safe. It’s also not unsafe. We have ideas about safe and unsafe. Something’s holding the skin and bones together, but that’s very tenuous and dependent on a lot of things. We happen to be on a planet that supports our life. There are lots of ways of not supporting that. It’s safe and it’s not safe to be in this body, but here we are.

I want something, but I can’t get what I want, so I’m suffering. In some ways, everything boils down to that. Just look at the raw form of it: I want something; but I can’t get it, so I’m suffering. If we’re clear about what we want, then the inevitability of suffering guides our attention in a way that lets compassion emerge. That’s like looking at the thorn you stepped on. As a race, we’re throwing out thorns and then stepping on them and then saying, “Who put the thorns there?” We did that. We did it collectively; we also do it individually. It’s hard to do something about how we’ve done it collectively, unless we want to do something about how we’re doing it individually. That allows us to participate in a different way.

That’s where we have some authority, in how we participate. I don’t have so much authority about how someone else participates. I have some. I may have some influence; I may have some power. But really, the most we can do something about is how I participate in this area that we occupy, what this skin and bones occupy. And if we do something about this area that our skin and bones occupy, we might start to have a more clear and tempered influence over other spaces. We move through space and time with other beings who occupy similar spaces that we recognize, the same way that dogs recognize dogs, and birds recognize birds.

First, then, is to recognize what is a person, and the first person to recognize is the one sitting on the cushion. Oh, that’s a person. There’s one! There’s one, there’s one, lots of people. Oh, also, I’m a sentient being. Oh, sentient beings are numberless. That’s a lot. You too, you too.

Zen practice is taking a complicated mind and allowing it to become simple. That doesn’t mean disowning your intelligence. It doesn’t mean deadening your capacity to feel. It doesn’t mean inhibiting your capacity to respond. Because that’s also denying something. That’s also a form of ignorance. But if we become intimate, in the sense of very familiar, with what this [points to body] is, then that’s portable; we carry it with us everywhere. And it’s difficult in the sense that distraction is easy. Cultivating distraction is tempting, and then it becomes habitual, and then it feels like we have no choice. It’s easy in this sense: [hits the floor with Zen stick] that’s clear. Nobody mistook it for a duck. When you walked through the door, you didn’t come through the wall, but instead you sat on the cushion, and you didn’t try and sit on the ceiling. How can that be? It’s actually kind of simple.

So with this sense of simple-difficult, if we start to direct our energy toward appreciating what it is to occupy this space, that changes the perspective on everything else. Because we like to distract ourselves, we have to make some effort to create circumstances that support the intention of attentiveness and clarity. It’s a powerful yet fragile intention, like most of our intentions. So we help each other. We made a room, we bought a house. And then we put out cushions, and some of us wear lay robes. Some of us take precepts to live life in a particular monastic way. Together, we have practice. Oh, you’re a nun, that’s wonderful, how can I support that? That’s me practicing generosity, because it’s good for me. She gives me an opportunity to practice being decent with another human being. Oh, she wears those robes, so I’m supposed to be decent with her. Maybe I think, him, I don’t care, but I’ll get bad karma if I’m not decent with her.

If I recognize that her presence is my opportunity for practice, so I’m grateful to her for doing it, then I get better at practicing that, so maybe I can be nicer to Paul. Sunim, on the other hand, practices the same thing from the other side of the coin, for which I’m grateful. So we support each other by taking different jobs. And we recognize that this is a good thing. Chanting is a good thing. Bowing is a good thing. Having interviews is a good thing. Sharing meals together is a good thing. Working together is a good thing. All of these opportunities in this space are opportunities to practice what we know is most important, but we try to avoid. We do it here so we get good at the simple form of it, so we can do it someplace else.

If we make that kind of energy and intention to practice, we find a way for it to persist beyond the cushion. A couple of years ago I just decided to carry beads around all the time, because I’m a little stupid, so I need a reminder to practice. I found a way that works for me. This is good; we have to remember. So I want to thank everybody for remembering to come here. I want to remind us that this is a place to come where the more of us who come, as you walk through the door, there’s a feeling that it’s really good to sit in a room with all these Buddhas. Not just that one, on the altar, but that one and that one and that one. Everybody here is Buddha. Everyone outside of here is Buddha. Remember to look.

Buddha’s Birthday Poem, April 2012

Zen Master Bon Hae — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:24:53 +0000

Siddhartha!
It’s not too late!
Don’t do it!
Demons wait.
Heavens wait.
Arhats lose weight from anticipation, and
Rats race from their ships
Towards what?
Have you thought
About what comes next?

Go to the fortune-tellers.
Ask them. They
Utter: Prince or Holy Man.
This is what you’re in for,
And your father doesn’t forget.
Meanwhile your mother,
Away from home, clings to a branch.

Shakyamuni,
Her death comes soon,
Almost as soon as you’re born. Nobody owns this
Karma.
You could stop the wheel right now. But
Already you’ve forgotten the future.
Maya reaches
Upward, the tree supports
No one and somehow
In its shadow you are

Born.
Unleashed ocean of
Dharma! Un Mun would have thrown you to a hungry
Dog. “Only I am
Holy.” KATZ! The tree in front of you is already 100%
Awake.

Notes:

This is an acrostic. The first letters of each line spell out Buddha’s given names followed by his clan name followed by his title: Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni Buddha.

References are made to the following:

Before his birth, Siddhartha’s father, King Suddhodana, consulted fortune-tellers (aka “wise men”) who said that the new baby would grow up to be either a great king or a holy renunciant. (The fortune-tellers were called in because Siddhartha’s mother, Queen Maya, dreamed that an elephant pierced her side; this is not in the poem.) Towards the end of her pregnancy, Queen Maya decided to return to her parents’ house to give birth, and while on the road she went into labor, giving birth while standing under a sal tree, holding on to a branch. (Supposedly, Siddhartha was born from her right side, another detail not in the poem.) Queen Maya died 10, or maybe 7, days after Buddha’s birth.

Upon being born, baby Siddhartha took seven steps in each of the four directions; under each step a lotus flower appeared. He then proclaimed “In heaven above and earth below, only I am holy.”

About 1,500 years later, Un Mun referred to Buddha’s birth by saying, “If I had been there I would have fed him to a hungry dog.” About 750 years after Un Mun, So Sahn spoke of how Ananda “unleashed this ocean of sutra teachings” derived from the Buddha’s words.

Pilgrimage to India, 2011

Zen Master Bon Soeng — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:05:39 +0000

Pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, tuk-tuks, bicycle rickshaws, cars, trucks, buses, cows, goats, pigs and dogs vie for limited street space. Everyone and everything within one inch of disaster, going in every direction with horns blaring . . . if you are lucky enough to have a horn. Fortunately, no one is hurt today and we make it to the temple for full-moon chanting. On the road to Ranakpur to visit an amazing Jain temple constructed exclusively of carved marble, we share the road with hundreds of sheep, goats and camels. Some of the camels carry the babies of the herder families. Getting 22 kilometers from the airport to our hotel in Varanasi takes over an hour and a half. Patience, patience, patience: the code words for travel in India!
In the darkness before dawn the eighty or so Kwan Um pilgrims set out on foot from our hotel to chant and sit under the Bodhi Tree at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, where the Buddha experienced his great enlightenment. In the quiet before dawn, the cows and dogs own the streets. Sellers of beads, buddha statues and fabrics are slowly setting up their wares. Beggars are lining up with one hand extended, the other pointing to their mouths. . . We pilgrims walk single file in silence, allowing the place and our intentions to become one. Under the Bodhi Tree we meet up with other fellow Kwan Um pilgrims who have spent the night under the tree. These overnight pilgrims watched as a flashmob of Thai gilders applied gold leaf to the fences that surround the sacred tree. All night long, as these pilgrims were bowing, chanting and sitting in their mosquito-netted tents, dogs were howling and fighting. Joining together for chanting, voices from Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, America, Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Canada, South Africa and Australia merge in reverence for
the place, the teachings and our ancestors. As our chanting ends we immediately hear beautiful chants sung in Thai, Cambodian, Korean, Chinese and who knows what else. All of us practitioners from all points around the globe and all styles of Buddhist practice chant as one, revealing the beautiful voice of the mahasangha echoing the Buddha and his disciples, who wandered and practiced deeply in these very same places of our journey.
It is a few days later and we have rolled our way through the Indian countryside into Nepal. This small-town border crossing is choked by colorful trucks full of merchandise from India trying to pass through customs. In the other direction these same colorful trucks are now empty, slowly, slowly, rolling back into India. We wait, more patience required, as all our passports are checked for visas. Finally, in darkness, we arrive at the Korean temple in Lumbini, Nepal, Buddha’s birthplace. With no one to greet us we again wait and we laugh. Twelve hours on a bus and now this?
It’s dawn the next day and we pilgrims walk in silence, two by two, toward the stupa and pillar marking the “exact” birthplace of the Buddha. As the sun rises, for the first time on the pilgrimage we can actually see the bright yellow sun. Gone is the pollution-filled sky of India with its hazy red sun. The path to the stupa is beautifully kept, the landscape calming and lovely. The silence, beauty and warm sweet air are almost intoxicating. A sense of peace and aliveness comes over me. I realize that I haven’t heard this silence since arriving in India. I haven’t seen the bright yellow sun in days. Then I realize that there are no beggars around; no one is trying to sell me anything. Alone with my fellow pilgrims I am in heaven. Ahh . . . wonderful!

We are here in Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha. This is the last stop on our 10-day pilgrimage, which has been retracing, in a very odd order, the major places of the Buddha’s life. Every major spiritual tradition has some kind of pilgrimage as part of their tradition. It is the duty of every Muslim who is able to go to Mecca once in their lifetime. Jewish people travel to the Wailing Wall, the last remaining section of the Second Temple, in Jerusalem. Many Catholics travel to northern Spain and walk a route of many churches culminating in a visit to the Cathedral of Saint Jerome.

I was thinking this morning as we were walking here that maybe now we are in heaven. There was no honking of the traffic. Nobody was coming up to us trying to sell us beads. We didn’t have to look at beggars, naked children with their hands out or children singing Buddhist chants, not really as a spiritual practice but as a performance so that we would pay them money. But here it is silent. The sun is rising, bright and yellow. The air is cool. The birds are singing. And I thought, we’re in heaven.

And that’s the kind of life the Buddha was born into. The Buddha was born into heaven. He was born into a world where there was no suffering. Every wish he had was granted. His father tried to make sure that he couldn’t see the suffering of the human world. So he pampered him and kept him cloistered in the palace. Every whim was granted.

But something happened in the Buddha’s mind. The Buddha eventually saw suffering and realized he was human. He couldn’t live in heaven anymore. In the mythology of the heavenly realms, you can live there and you can have a wonderful life, but ultimately you dissipate your karma. You eventually lose everything. This world is impermanence and your good situation will end. So the Buddha somehow intuitively realized this and he jumped over the wall of the palace and he left heaven. In doing so he entered into the suffering world of human beings. Without a moving mind, unflinchingly, he looked at the suffering of this world. He cried with the people when they cried. He suffered just like everybody else suffered. And he didn’t need to. He could have dissipated his karma in the palace but instead he jumped over the wall. And in that jumping, he set our practice life in motion. Our practice is to unflinchingly be with the suffering of the world. Not to separate ourselves off, but to be with the suffering that is all around us.

All of us traveling on the buses have seen the poverty, the pain, the sadness, the despair, along with the joy and the wonder of life in Northern India. We have no choice but to witness the pain. Our pilgrimage is to be touched by the truth of all of it. We all know our joy. We all know our happiness. We crave these mental states. But we also know that they don’t last. And it is our deep practice vow to unflinchingly be with the pain and the suffering of this world. That is the bodhisattva mind.

On this pilgrimage, we learned about the life of a man named Gautama Shakyamuni, who became the Buddha. We have also learned about his disciples. We learned about his cousin, Ananda. We were told that Ananda argued with the Buddha when the Buddha wanted to leave Vaishali and go to Kushinagar to die. Ananda said, “What’s wrong with my hometown?” Forty years practicing with the Buddha and still he argued with the Buddha! So even the disciples of the Buddha were human beings just like us.

When our guides speak about the Buddha he is called Lord Buddha. And when we bow to the Buddha on the altar it’s very easy to think of him as a god. But he’s a man. We learned about the Buddha’s aunt, who argued so forcefully with Buddha to allow women to become nuns, to be part of the sangha. We were told that the Buddha couldn’t quite agree. He couldn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. Perhaps even the Buddha’s mind wasn’t completely clear when he was arguing with his aunt.

Practice is nonstop. It’s easy to think we get enlightenment and we’re done. Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say, “Enlightenment is easy to get, hard to keep.” Moment to moment to moment, what are we doing now? We learn a very simple practice: keep a don’t-know mind. But we all know how difficult it is to keep this don’t- know mind. But we keep a try mind. Only try, try, try. What am I? Don’t know.

This don’t know is the light that brings us into our life.

So I talked about the pilgrimage as a journey over land, but a pilgrimage is also an inner pilgrimage. What am I? As we have been traveling on this trip, all of us have been confronted with our own karma, by our own conditioned mind, this I-my-me. We have likes and dislikes. We think that some things are good, some things are bad. All of us at one time or another on this trip have tried to change India. “If only they did it this way, then it would be a good country.” I realize that it is not really possible that I am always right, and six billion other people are wrong. But that is how our minds operate.

Just as we unflinchingly face the suffering of this world, we also go inward and unflinchingly observe and wonder, what am I? It’s so easy to jump into the heaven realm and ignore the truth of our experience. Our practice is to face the experience that we have right now. But we shouldn’t be fooled by our idea of that experience. That’s just our mind. We’re always asking, what is this? What am I? Don’t know!

So here we are at Lumbini Garden, the birthpace of Buddha. We are having our conference at the Korean temple here in Lumbini. This conference is called the Whole World Is a Single Flower. That name points to a calligraphy that Zen Master Man Gong, our great grandteacher, penned or inked when he was told that the Japanese had been defeated in World War II. So I thought I would recite a short poem by Man Gong for us today. It’s called “Prajna Ship.” He said,

Everything is impermanent.
But there is truth.
You and I are not two, not one.
Only your stupid thinking is nonstop. Already alive in the Prajna ship.1

Everything is impermanent, but there is truth. When we were at the Mahabodhi Temple there were many different groups coming to pay respects to the Buddha’s enlightenment place and sit under the Bodhi Tree. There was Thai chanting. There was Burmese chanting. Our Kwan Um group was doing Korean chanting. Together we chanted the Heart Sutra in English, Korean, Chinese, German, Lithuanian and Polish. At the Mahabodhi Temple there were people from all over the world. All these different practice forms come and go. We all like to think my way is the right way, but really it’s just “my way.” Our way is a wonderful way. We should practice it single-mindedly. But it is only one way.

The diversity of our world is always changing. Zen Master Man Gong could never have imagined that all of us from all these different countries would be here in Lumbini celebrating the dharma that’s been passed down from the Buddha to Man Gong to Zen Master Seung Sahn to us. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined it. This world is always changing.

You and I are not two, not one. We are one, we are two.

How is it we are not two, not one? The whole world is a single flower. All one thing. And, each individual flower in this world is the whole universe. From one to many, from many to one. Where do I stop and you begin? Don’t know.

But only our stupid thinking is nonstop. We’re always thinking, thinking, thinking, making ideas. Before I came here to India, I made many plans. I packed many things. Half of them I haven’t touched. I had so many ideas of what it would be like. And India is not what I thought. Only stupid thinking—making making making, judging judging judging.

So we raise this don’t know mind. Cut off all thinking. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a thinking mind; it means we don’t attach to our thinking. We say don’t make anything. That doesn’t mean we don’t have an idea. But we don’t hold our idea so tightly

In this last line of the poem, Zen Master Man Gong says, “already alive in the Prajna ship.” We have this magnificent life. What will we do with it? Prajna means wisdom. Can you bring this wisdom mind into your life? Without really digging deeply—what am I?—there is no wisdom. There is only opinion. It might be a good opinion but it’s only an opinion. You have to cut through everything, and from that place become alive.

The Buddha is alive right here, right now. The Buddha is not some fantasy who walked this land 2,500 years ago. Right here, sitting under these lovely trees in this beautiful garden, the Buddha is alive. How will you manifest it?

Back in Varansi after the Kwan Um pilgrimage, and it is the night of Diwali, which is like Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Independence Day all rolled into one. We take an auto rickshaw down to the river on the main ghat (path or stairs down to the river). The driver tells us that he he can’t get any closer than a half-mile from our hotel because the traffic and crowds are too great. Rolling our bags behind us, we move into the crowd. We sort of know where we are headed, but are unclear how to get to the exact location of our hotel. Fireworks are exploding, families are shopping at the street stalls, and as usual the cows meander from garbage pile to garbage pile. A man comes up to us and asks us where we are going. After telling him that we are going to our hotel he smiles and says “follow me.” We trail behind, trusting him because we have come to trust India and Indians. We weave through the crowd, entering the space he has cleared for us. When we arrive at the hotel, tired and exhilarated by our walk, we offer him some money for his guidance. He smiles, refuses, and wishes us a happy Diwali.

1. Seung Sahn, The Whole World Is a Single Flower (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1992), 106.

“I Want!”

Zen Master Wu Kwang — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:34:36 +0000

A kong-an interview with Zen Master Wu Kwang

We used to have a different translation of the second great vow: “Desires are in- exhaustible. We vow to extinguish them all.” Once, during an interview, a student asked Zen Master Wu Kwang:

“Desires are inexhaustible. What does this mean?”

Zen Master Wu Kwang: “I want!”

Student: “Then how do you extinguish them all?”

ZMWK: “I want!”

Commentary: Human life is “I want!” Even to direct yourself toward extinguishing desires is a want or desire. Strictly speaking, desire or even preference is not the problem. Clinging and self-centered craving is really the core of the issue. Why do “I want,” and for whom? How do I use the energy of desire to go beyond just I, my, me? When you’re hungry, eat; when someone else is hungry, give them some food.

Buddha’s Birthday 2002

Zen Master Wu Bong — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:30:08 +0000

This is mistake day, so my talk points the same way.

Buddha was born and the gods enjoy: Big mistake.

Six years under the Bodhi Tree, then enlightenment: Another big mistake.

Your life, my life: Also a mistake.

Today it’s Buddha’s birthday celebration: Mistake celebrating mistake.

Then how will you make your life correct?

In one gulp swallow all oceans and rivers.

Then someone hungry, give them food; someone thirsty, give them drink.
Very simple.

The tradition says that when Buddha was born, in heaven they had a big celebration because all the devas, all the gods, they could see that it was somebody great because a great light shone from the Buddha’s birthplace into heaven. So they were very happy. They already understood that Buddha is born, future Buddha is born. But as several people pointed out, if you are born, already a mistake, so the same thing is true for Buddha. He was a human being, not a god in heaven, so as a human being, already a mistake.

You are all familiar with Buddha’s story, sitting under the Bodhi Tree, getting enlightenment. Somebody once asked a great master about Buddha’s enlightenment, and this master said: “Golden sand in the eye.” Zen students want enlightenment, but the problem is that as soon as you want something, this something is binding; it becomes your prison. Whether this prison is golden and beautiful, or bad and terrible, still prison is prison. So, if you are attached to something, want something, then already you don’t get freedom.

In our life it’s that way. We start, we begin our life with a mistake, then the continuation of our life is this moment, just now. In this moment we are also making a mistake, because we are celebrating a mistake. That’s why it’s a mistake celebrating a mistake. So everybody has a challenge: How do we make our life correct? How do we use this mistake and make our life worthwhile? I already said, if you are attached to something then you can’t get freedom.

Then what is freedom? In one gulp swallow all oceans and rivers. That’s absolute freedom. That means you can be anything, but if you are attached to this freedom, then this freedom itself becomes your prison. That’s also a mistake, so the final step is most important—this final sentence of the speech: Then, somebody is hungry, everybody understands what to do. Somebody is thirsty, also everybody understands what to do. So only one thing remains to do: do it.

Thank you everybody for coming here. It’s wonderful to see people from many countries, many places, and I’m sure if Buddha was with us, Buddha would be very pleased.

_____________________

Buddhadharma

Kwan Um School of Zen — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:22:05 +0000

by Zen Master Man Gong

1. If you say “buddhadharma,” already that’s not buddhadharma.
2. Everything, as it is, is buddhadharma. If you get up on a soapbox to preach about buddhadharma, the meaning is already lost.
3. Material things are to be used; Mind is the basis. When Mind and the material become one, this is buddhadharma. If you don’t attain the buddhadharma in this lifetime, there is no guarantee that you will find the path in future lives.
4. Buddhadharma is appropriate for any historical period or human circumstance.
5. If your life is not touched by the dharma, then you have already lost your human status.
6. Buddha is Mind; dharma is the material. Before the buddhadharma appeared as name and form, and even before the historical Buddha appeared, true nature existed. If you put down the small “I,” which is like a piece of unglazed pottery, then you will get a dharma body which is like the seven treasures (gold, silver, lapis, crystal, coral, agate and pearl).
7. It’s not the mouth that speaks; it’s not the hand that works. When you find the one who really speaks and works, then you will become an authentic human who can truly speak and work.
8. Buddhadharma is responsible for the body and the mind. A life where buddhadharma is not in charge is a life without purpose. Once you realize this you will return to the buddhadharma immediately.
9. Worldly principles and the buddhadharma are not two. Buddha and sentient beings are one. When you attain this “not two” dharma, you will become a true person.
10. Someone who knows the buddhadharma is not attached to dualistic thinking. (They have left home.) If you haven’t attained the buddhadharma, then you are just like a common, worldly person.
11. To open different locks you need many kinds of keys. If you want to comprehend the numberless obscure
principles of samadhi, you will need 10,000 wisdom keys.
12. Denying the buddhadharma is denying oneself. If you reject the buddhadharma, you reject yourself, because you are the Buddha.
13. Every sound is a dharma talk and every thing is the true body of the buddha. But we always hear that it’s very difficult to encounter the buddhadharma even once in 10 million kalpas. This puzzling situation deserves our serious consideration.
___________________
From the book The Teachings of Zen Master Man Gong

Invitation to the new Zen Center in Las Vegas

admin — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:01:43 +0000

During the weekend of May 4-6 2012 the Zen Center of Las Vegas celebrated a grand opening of their new temple. Zen Masters and teachers from Europe and Asia as well as the United States were on hand to take part in the ceremonies and festivities. The new two acre Zen Center with its magnificent zen garden, koi pond, and walking paths is the result of 18 years of commitment and vision by sangha members led by guiding teacher Thom Pastor, JDPSN. “Now that we have a strong practice environment, we must use it on a continuous basis. A Stradivarius violin is beautiful and expensive, but it is not bought to be looked at,” Pastor says.

PRACTICE & SANGHA LIFE

The Zen Center offers both morning and evening practice every day except Saturday. Wednesday evening is long sitting night and on Sundays an informal brunch is provided and the center’s gift shop is open after practice for two hours. Free Qui Gong classes are offered on Thursday afternoons. Volunteer work practice takes place every second Saturday.

SPACE FOR RESIDENTS

The Zen Center has space for three residential training students in addition to the one current.

RETREATS & SANGHA GATHERINGS

There are tentative plans for week long retreats beginning in 2013. The dates will be posted well in advance on the ZC’s website. Zen Master Jeff Kitzes and Thom Pastor have discussed plans for a west coast sangha gathering scheduled for the first week of November 2013.

EVENTS

A famous Qui Gong Master, Lam Kam Chuen, will be visiting on March 16th next year to conduct a seminar. He hails originally from Hong Kong, lived in London for a number of years, and has taught extensively in Europe.

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Photos of the new Zen Center and the opening ceremony are available for viewing here.

Click here to watch the welcoming video with the Guiding Teacher Thom Pastor.

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Anyone wishing to visit or reside in Las Vegas for a period of time should contact the Abbot, Thom Pastor at: sittinzen@aol.com

First Zen Teacher to move to Indianapolis

admin — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 14:35:56 +0000

Lincoln Rhodes, JDPSN, a Buddhist teacher with the Kwan Um School of Zen, has moved into the Indianapolis Zen Center and is now resident teacher at the center. His title, JDPSN, is Ji Do Poep Sanim or “Guide to the Way.”

Rhodes was one of the earliest American students of Zen Master Seung Sahn and received certification to teach in 1981. He helped found the Kwan Um School of Zen, the largest Zen school in the United States. Rhodes was the abbot of Providence Zen Center, the Head Temple of the international school, for many years.

Rhodes holds a PhD in biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has owned his own construction firm for twenty years in Providence, Rhode Island, and is a master wood crafter. Rhodes has been the guiding teacher of Indianapolis Zen Center since 2004. He is also the guiding teacher of two Zen Centers in Kansas. Rhodes is invited every year by Jakusho Kwong, Roshi (successor to Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi) to lead a retreat at Sonoma Mountain Zen Center.

The Indianapolis Zen Center, at 3703 Washington Blvd., is affiliated with the Kwan Um School of Zen and offers regular meditation sessions, retreats, dharma talks and a residential program. The group has promoted the practice of Zen in Central Indiana for over 20 years.

Dharma Teacher Retreat 2012

admin — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 13:56:50 +0000

We are pleased to open the registration for our 2012 Dharma Teacher Retreat. This special weekend is for all Kwan Um School Dharma Teachers, including Dharma Teachers in Training, Senior Dharma Teachers, and Bodhisattva Teachers.

See below for registration information. There is a discount for those who register before September 24!

Our annual Dharma Teacher retreat is being held at the Providence Zen Center on October 13 & 14, 2012.

We have an exciting lineup of new workshops and panel discussions for you! Our schedule is not yet complete, but here is some of what we have planned:

> Arne Schaefer JDPSN from Germany is our special guest and will be doing a session on Conflict & Practice.
> Panel discussions on the following subjects: Starting & operating a Zen group, Balancing practice & our jobs, What to do when you are in charge of practice, Balancing practice & family life, Helping people in crisis, Cooking for retreats.
> Workshops on these topics: Solo Retreats, Four Wisdoms, Mind Inscription & Mind-King Inscription, Lankavatara Sutra, Calligraphy.
> Of course, we’ll have our ever-popular “Skills for Fielding Dharma Questions” for everyone on Sunday morning.

We will be posting more details soon. Please consider joining us for this great learning and together-action retreat!

Registration Information

Online Form

Please note: an online deposit (via PayPal or credit card) is required with this online registration. Click here to register online.

Printable Form

If you wish to register early, please send a check for $25 (or full payment) to the office (address below) with a printed registration form. Your registration must be received in the office no later than September 24th.