Dharma Rain Character

Still Point

Newsletter of Dharma Rain Zen Center

Portland, Oregon

Volume XXVII Numberc 3

May-June 2002

 


     
     
     

 

 

By 'Faddah' Steve Wolf

"Ecology is rather like sex - every new generation likes to think they were the first to discover it." - Michael Allaby

dancers1In contemplating my social activism and engagement, I've noticed that I have been holding these rather disparate views of the form and practice of Zen Buddhism. On the one hand, there is its direction to give everything full attention and complete use as part of the eightfold path, the meaning of such new age leftist movements as spiritualist deep ecology, and also the opposite views - that truly, the planet itself is just fine. It's humankind that is in trouble. The good news is that the planet will probably survive us. The bad news, which we as a rather self-centered species don't like, is - the planet will probably survive us.

There are times when all our mucking about, saving our cans, bottles and scraps of paper, putting grey water to re-use, growing our own vegetables, veganism and vegetarianism, using rain barrel collectors and not running so much water when there's a shortage, using public and alternative means of transport, etc., seems like so much whistling in the graveyard to me. As George Carlin, one of my humorist heroes, put it, "Environmentalists don't give a damn about the environment. All they are concerned with is getting more bike paths and Volvos." It can seem more like eleventh hour, selfish, species-centric deal-making with whatever deity or force we think rules our fates, shouting our fears down the abyss. As in: "Look, we get the idea now, o.k.? A lot of us are cleaning up our act, recycling, re-using, carpooling, being corporate watchdogs, etc. That counts, right? Look, if we keep this up, please, please, please, O Mother Nature Divine, will you promise to not smite our species off the face of the planet and out of our lofty top-of-the-food-chain position?" And the truth may very well be: no one is there to listen, really. Cause-and-effect may simply mean: species die; planets die.

So into this mix of these opposing, dualistic views, I took my eco-way-seeking mind to hear Joanna Macy's lecture on January 11th at the Unitarian Church in our own Downtown Portland. The event was sponsored by the local Northwest Earth Institute. Ms. Macy is a renowned peace and environmental activist, a founder of Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the author of a number of books on the spiritual view of the planet, such as, World As Lover, World As Self.

First, Ms. Macy complimented Portland and Oregon in general, and talked about how privileged we must feel to live in an area that promotes such ecologically sound practices, that has light rail and strives for public and alternative transport, a state with a governor who insists on making "sustainability" of our environment part of his platform.

Next, she talked about a concept borrowed from an Asian monastic group. This approach earmarks methods in the form of specific actions by which we can effectively work together for the planet. It draws upon the concept that by employing these actions in our lives, "everybody wakes up" - all together.

She defined these types of actions as the following:

First, there are Holding Actions - those which slow the destruction and put the brakes on our hand basket to environmental hell - be they daily practices of recycling, re-use, alternative transport, political and legal actions and activism we take, civil disobedience, etc. The same actions listed above that environmentalists are known for. The difference however, as Ms. Macy puts it, is that all these are important, but they must be seen as just that - Holding Actions, and just the first step. They work to stop blood flow from the wound, but are not the cure or the long-term goal.

Next are the Alternative Actions - what Ms. Macy terms as the new seeds, new ways of approaching how we do things. These new ways can include actions like how we own land and farms as co-ops, alternative healing, alternative technologies, and alternative fuel sources. Often, she says, these new alternative actions can seem very much like the fringe, but that's just because we may be the first to try them! Their eventual incorporation into mainstream living is what we must work for.

Ms. Macy indicated both of these types of actions are good work, but their efforts will shrivel & die unless we root these actions in a deep part of our being. Hence, the final step is Shift-In-Consciousness Actions. These are a letting go of old ways of thinking, and moving from a "stuff" based view to a more holistic view, what Ms. Macy and her peers term a "systems-based" view of the world. (I'm sure even George Carlin would appreciate someone who was looking to move us away from a "where do I put My Stuff?"-based view of the world.)

To help with this final type of action, Ms. Macy proposed Five Guidelines :

Come From Gratitude: For her, there is no time or place so dark that we cannot come from gratitude. We need to concentrate more on what we have to be grateful for.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: This one rang true especially for me. Often, in facing all that needs cleaning up, and those interests in place who would make it seem as if we just could never do it any other way, it's easy to despair. In the light (or darkness) since the September 11th attacks, it is hard not to feel hopeless when you keep reading in American news outlets further calls for war. Ms. Macy indicated this is not only a fight against such hopelessness, but also against the dark fears deep inside that also limit us. She quoted Sufi poetry, "Overcome any bitterness you feel, because you cannot meet the magnitude of pain you have been required to face."

Ms. Macy indicated our job is to meet pain in joy instead of self-pity, because it is an opportunity to connect you to the rest of the world. She also noted that even in biblical terms, the root of that much feared word, "apocalypse," actually comes from the meaning, "revelation" - who we are, or can be, is being revealed to us through how we meet these events. Ms. Macy feels we should not shrink back when we are confused by such events - "the mind that is not confused is not really being employed."

Link Arms, Join Hands: Clichéd as this may seem (I cringed a bit with the memory it conjured of the lukewarm, failed "Hands Across America" campaign), such change is not anything we can do alone. Ms. Macy feels American Culture needs to move beyond the age of the rugged individual, the single hero, the single Messiah, the single Buddha who will come save us. It is not coming from anywhere else but us, but it has to be all of us. Everybody wakes up. "Our leaders got confused, so we're all leaders now..."

Act Your Age: And by this, she does not just mean she's senior citizen, I'm 41, you are a thirty-something, etc. She means act our species age. Or even greater - our age as a planet, four billion years old; or as a universe, 15 billion years, if you go by the atoms that make us up. She had the audience do a simple, yet profound exercise of looking at each other's hand, and consider the evolutionary process necessary to form that appendage. The hand is usually naked, very vulnerable, easy to irradiate, crush, burn. But it is also made to explore, experience and feel your world, make tools, make fire. This was a very moving meditation on just what acting our age means.

Feel The Future: We contain in ourselves the very future of our planet. Literally - every human who will be is in our genetic material right here, right now. Ms. Macy calls for workshops where we call upon the future ones inside us to advise us now.

So I still sit with my disparate views, whether on the zafu or on my bicycle. But now, maybe there are also some tools for my actions by which, as Kyogen has told me, we give our full attention and care to all while we are here. Perhaps, instead of being another whistler in the graveyard, I face that "Dark" Ms. Macy spoke of. The Dark that says it cannot be done any other way. I face it in the same way that I face my own cause-and-effect and non-existence on the pillow: full on, neither flinching by saying, "Screw it, humans are doomed anyway," nor grasping out of fear, holding out for some last hope of salvation from somewhere else besides ourselves as a species. And with great joy, for whatever shall be revealed.

Joanna Macy's web site is: http://www.joannamacy.net

Northwest Earth Institute's web site is: http://www.nwei.org

 


by Pamela PLOW Hiebert

 

Why do I attend the Zen Center? What is it that brings me to this place each week?

I am coming to the zendo, compelled to follow the pattern of letting go and accepting, struggling to meet each gassho with the spontaneity of the moment and to experience the wholeness of Sangha. I have an unrelenting reason having to do with illness and pain, having to do with life and the joys in transition. Fundamentally, it has to do with seeking the directexperience of truth, reflection, and life expression. Coming into the zendo, my relationship to being changes. That connection grows more accepting, kinder, more quiet with devotion. I begin to assume more responsibility in relationship-being. I am able to see more clearly the blaming which manifests in my mind. Because of zazen I have begun to more easily recognize the linear side of my thinking and have been able occasionally to open to a more spontaneous side of being.

When I first learned of my life-ending illness, I experienced tremendous deeply-felt loss that I could not name. I tried to articulate the loss, but could only find limited satisfaction. The shifting of balance began, and adjusting to the loss seemed the practical approach. I have read that Zen demonstrates beginnings and endings, where more linear Western thought holds to principles of climactic expression; critical periods defining form. Zazen provides a context where I simply observe that my mind chatters with pain and tries endlessly to fix it. Or, where the thought - Damn, I never expected to be forced to cope with this kind of stuff; I want to return to the past! - is simply observation. Slowly, I am learning to settle into the center of chronic pain and to sit with it.

I feel the experience of pain is transferring into just a piece of my life. The physical aspect of Zen is a channel where I am learning to flow. Zen says to me, just move, without fear of pain, without projecting, just move and be here and be now. As I write, I sense my connection to the stern, unrelenting teacher I call pain. Not a friendship, but a certain presence in my life willing to instruct, if I am willing to humble myself and be student. This is why I attend zazen and Dharma talks, to learn to humble myself, again and again.

(Web Editor's Note: Pam PLOW Hiebert died on April 7, 2002. The next article tells about her dying.)

 

By Sylvan Rainwater

This is one of a series of e-mailed journal entries I sent to various people, including many in the Sangha, during the three weeks Pam spent in the hospital before she died. Most nights I would come home and compose an e-mail outlining and summarizing the day, and then copy it and send it out to various groups and lists. This allowed me to let go of the day and face the next day as it came. Several people said it helped them stay in touch and also perhaps to feel less fear of the whole process of illness and death that will, of course, come to us all.

Monday, April 8, 2002

It's been an exhausting time, and I had to get a good night's sleep last night, but now I can write to everyone. Pam died at about 4:10 a.m. yesterday, April 7. It was a peaceful night. I think hospital people who were coming in to do nebulizer treatments, etc., began figuring out that she was dying around 8 p.m. The woman who came in was the first respiratory therapist we saw in the hospital, and is someone we both liked a great deal. She looked at Pam's breathing, and looked at me. I kind of nodded, and she asked if I was okay. I said, "Yes, I have great support," and she said, "That's good." She went ahead and did the treatment, and left.

Other visits from nurses and the night respiratory therapist made it clear that they knew she was dying. They asked if anyone should be called, whether I had a funeral home picked out. I asked one nurse if she thought it was close, and she said it was hard to tell - it could go on for minutes, hours, even days. They checked in, saw I was sitting beside her, and made sure we were undisturbed. I said the first Exhortation to the Dying to be read when death is imminent. That includes singing the Litany of the Great Compassionate One. I kept trying to lie down and get some sleep, but my body just wouldn't do it -- I had to get up and sit beside her. I wrote in my journal, read some of Old Yeller, which Pam picked out for her grandson, and just sat and watched the process.

At some point the breathing definitely changed, and finally ceased. I put my hand to her chest, and there was no heartbeat. I said the second exhortation intended for the moment of death and then called both priests (Tibetan and Zen - Ani, the Tibetan priest, was her first Buddhist teacher, a good friend, and had visited her on Friday morning to do sort of the equivalent of the Tibetan last rites; Domyo, the Zen priest, has stayed in close contact and has been a great support to us all the way through). I also called her daughter Amber to let them all know. I knew the priests would come as soon as they could to do a private ceremony. Then I sat with the body and left it undisturbed for the 45 minutes it took them to come. Ani came and gave me a hug, and I told her I hadn't told anyone at the hospital yet. She came in and did the Powa ceremony (I think that's how it's spelled, though I couldn't swear to it), and then told me to tell the nurse, which I did. The others came in and we began to set things up. The Zen Center has a portable altar and a kit for doing these ceremonies. We had to wait for a doctor to certify that she was dead, and then we washed the body and dressed it in a white kimono.

The service was a curious hybrid -- primarily the Zen form, but celebrated by the Tibetan priest, because the transmitted Zen priests are out of town. I felt it was fitting for Ani to be the celebrant and assisted by two Zen junior priests, a teacher, lay disciple and me. Both traditions were important to Pam during her life. We did the service, which included chanting and singing. After the service, I cut off my braid and laid it in her hands. Then we called Amber, who came in to see the body. She cried for a bit, held by Ani, whom she knows, and me, and then asked if Pam was asleep. I said, come and see, and led her closer. I pointed out how there was no breathing, no movement. I knew what she meant, because even sitting beside the body all night, I still found myself thinking I was seeing breathing, some movement, twitching of toes or something. I had her feel Pam's cold waxy hand; we just stood and looked at the body for a while. Others left, and the two of us sat with her, sometimes talking of other things, sometimes talking about her, sometimes just looking and taking it all in.

It was lovely, really, and the nurses and hospital people were wonderful about supporting us in doing the service there in the hospital room. I told Pam she had perfect timing -- a Saturday night/Sunday morning is a rare undisturbed quiet time in a hospital that really made this kind of peaceful passing possible.

I stayed and helped the funeral home take the body, signed for it, and gathered up everything from the hospital room, and came home. Fixed my own breakfast and slept in my own bed (hadn't been home in two days), which was wonderful, even though the phone rang three times while I was sleeping. Got up, took a shower, sorted through a few of Pam's things, and decided to go to support group.

At the support group, of course, we talked about Pam and the process of her dying, and how people felt about it, as well as checking with other people and their needs. It was wonderful to be there. Afterwards, I called Amber and Shawn, and they came and picked me up and we went to dinner at Old Wives Tales. I was yawning a lot by then, so even though Don (Pam's brother) called and told me they had arrived at the airport, I had Amber and Shawn take me home -- they were going to meet Don and Pam's dad, but I was just too tired.

This morning, I have my list of things to do. I'm tentatively planning to return to work Thursday and Friday this week, but certainly have plenty to do between now and then. The house doesn't feel as empty as it could -- there's been a gradual transition that is quite gentle. Pam has been doing less and less, being less and less present, and then the last three weeks she's been in the hospital, so I became accustomed to coming home to an empty apartment. I'm staying present as much as possible with each moment, noticing when something strikes me as odd and giving attention to it, considering how my life has changed/is changing/will change. For the time being, I'm not planning additional drastic changes in my life - it's clear that time is needed to sort through things and settle into a new reality before making big decisions.

I thank you all for your indulgence in reading my long-winded e-mails, and for your support, both expressed and unexpressed. It has meant a great deal to me through all of this.

 

 

 

by Jeanette Ryan, Board President

The board has been very busy over the past twelve months. We have been faced with the necessity of applying for both a new Conditional Use permit for the Zendo and the Dharma House, and a Change of Occupancy Status for the Dharma House (after a visit by the fire marshal). The application process itself is quite expensive and the changes that need to be made to the Dharma House to conform with city codes, are even more costly. At the same time, last fall the center seemed to be facing falling revenues from pledges.

The board has spent many anxious months trying to figure out how to keep the facilities open for our use, and at the same time pay for modifications that needed to be made so they could stay open. At one board meeting, after giving us the really bad news, Gyokuko pretty much summed it up for us when she said, "There have been times this week when I didn't know if I wanted to be a Œgrown-up' after all!"

Luckily it was the Sangha to the rescue! Individual members with expertise in the construction business helped make plans to modify the Dharma House, made cost estimates, and some cost-cutting suggestions, such as specifying which jobs could be done by volunteer labor, etc. Gyokuko, Domyo, and Kakumyo spent many hours deciphering city codes and drawing up plans, filling out forms, meeting with city officials, going to neighborhood meetings, etc. (A big gassho there. They were magnificent!) John Schultz helped us with our legal work. (Another big gassho needed here.) Kyogen and some of the lay disciples rallied our friends in the neighborhood so that our application for Conditional Use was quickly approved with few changes. (Kyogen had negotiated for parking spaces with the new president at Safeway Credit Union, so parking was a non-issue at the hearing, a big change from last time!) The work continues on the Change of Occupancy status for the Dharma House.

The next thing the board tackled was to decrease the amount of interest we are paying on a commercial loan on the Sangha House. This was done by taking out a residential mortgage (at a much lower interest rate) on the Dharma House and paying off the mortgage on the Sangha House. DRZC now owns the Zendo and the Sangha House free and clear. Included in the new mortgage were extra funds to help pay for improvements needed at the Dharma House for the Change of Occupancy Status application. Thanks again to John Shultz for doing a mountain of legal work for DRZC, pro bono.

What next? Although we have spent a lot of time and money on our present facilities, we are still interested in finding a single facility which would house all of our activities in one location. One of the goals of the board is to get DRZC into a financial situation so that we could act quickly if such a facility became available. Our financial situation is looking much better, thanks to increases in pledging and year-end donations. See the treasurer's report for the good news. Again, thanks to all of those sangha members who have donated time, expertise, hard labor, and materials. Special thanks to Kyogen and Gyokuko, who have worked so hard to keep all of this on track.

 

By Gary Oshiro, Treasurer

For most of calendar year 2001 we were showing a net loss. However, due to the generosity of our membership stepping up with year-end donations, we ended up the year with a net income of $8,428. Contributions in 2001 came to $83,292 as compared to $57,246 in contributions for the previous year 2000.

Below are some summarized figures for the calendar year 2001 as compared to 2000. Bear in mind that when it comes to the Zen Center property, the figures for assets and equity involve depreciation expense against the purchase price, and not the assessed or current market value.

 

Item

 

Calendar Year 2001 Calendar Year 2000
Total Contributions   $83,292   $57,246
Total Income $139,901 $121,263
Total Expenses $131,473 $117,462
Net Income     $8,428     $3,801
Total Assets $334,428 $357,676
Total Liabilities $217,747 $249,423
Total Equity $116,681 $108,253

 

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STILL POINT archive edit of 30 August 2002
Dharma Rain Zen Center Newsletter
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Volume XXVII Number 3 May/June 2002
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