VOLUME XXII NUMBER 3 MAY-JUNE 1997
As the first woman and first foreigner at Shoboji, a large training temple in Japan, I became deeply aware of what it must have been like for Roshi Jiyu-Kennett thirty years earlier at Sojiji. Her pioneer spirit made it possible for me to be there in this decade. I thought often of her ability to practice amidst the fierce pressures of Japanese culture.
In the summer of 1994, I visited Daiyuzan Saijoji where Yogo Suigan Roshi was Chief Abbot. Suigan Roshi had been assigned as Jiyu-Kennett Roshi's helper and translator at Sojiji. Suigan Roshi invited us to tea and recounted fond memories of Jiyu-Kennett Roshi and the times they had spent in training. He had the deepest respect for Jiyu-Kennett Roshi and expressed that clearly. He was obviously touched by those memories and talked for nearly two hours, perhaps taken by the similarity of our training experience, lingering on one thought or another as if he didn't quite want to have the moment disappear.
Roshi Jiyu-Kennett's translation of liturgy in Soto practice is remarkable and immeasurable and I most deeply value this particular aspect of her great contribution to practice in America. The occasion to meet face to face never came, but through her teaching and translations she lives behind my eyes.
-Eido Frances, Olympia Zen Center
I was raised about thirty miles from Shasta Abbey, in a beautiful landscape of manzanita and scrub oak and pine, full of blue jay song and starry skies. Returning many years later for sesshins at the Abbey provoked in me powerful and complex feelings of both homecoming and homesickness. It was hard to leave, even though doing sesshin as a layperson among monks is not an easy thing for many reasons.
Roshi Kennett, as we called her, moved like a mountain, and on April 20th, 1984, I knelt with dozens of other nervous preceptees in the Hondo at the Abbey while she ponderously took her seat. One by one we moved up to kneel before her, and when it was my turn, she looked with great penetration into my eyes and said, "Is it your wish to become a Buddhist?" A door opened. "Yes," I said. And walked through, and the door swung closed behind.
Not that many months later, during my first retreat as a lay minister trainee, I was told to choose between my teacher and sangha, and the Abbey. I stood in the cloister, in the scent of manzanita, hearing the birds, stunned with pain. But the fact of being forced to make such a choice made my choice clear.
Close to thirteen years later, I still fold towels in thirds, saying, "Homage to the Buddha, Homage to the Dharma, Homage to the Sangha," because that's the way I was taught to do it at the Abbey, and sometimes I still feel homesick.
-Sallie Jiko Tisdale
I have been blessed in my life with the imprints of women - my mother, for whom I am so grateful for giving birth to me so that I have this opportunity to be in the human realm; Roshi Kennett, for her courage and resolve to follow her Way-seeking mind and bring the Dharma to the west; and, last but not least, my most beloved Teacher whom I would not have had the blessing to meet had it not been for Roshi Kennett.
My heartfelt wish is to be able to be as generous with my life as they have been with theirs, and to share the merits of what I have received with all beings. Many full bows to them all.
-Diane Kyonin Lee
I've been with the Dharma Rain Zen Center since it was affiliated with Shasta Abbey and was known as the Oregon Zen Priory. In the days before the Priory had a priest of its own, a Wednesday class consisted of a circle of people sitting on folding chairs around a small cassette player, listening to one of Roshi Kennett's lectures. Roshi Kennett herself always emphasized that Zen teachers were humans with faults and foibles. Nobody in the room seemed to believe it, though. Her teaching was impressive, and her disciples, when they visited, treated her with the same exaggerated reverence as the lay people did. This was especially evident during a rare visit she made to the Priory, during which she was surrounded by an entourage of senior disciples who made special arrangements so that everything was just so. The visit was meant to console the Priory for a loss it had just suffered, but it only created added stress. Still, we felt honored when we were favored by her presence. We heard about difficult conditions imposed on her disciples, and she talked on the tapes about teaching methods that "seemed cruel to the worldly mind," but since we weren't directly affected, we didn't think about it too much.
Then we members of the sangha suddenly found ourselves on the receiving end of the difficulty. The Abbey issued a new, retroactive edict that it was not acceptable for practicing priests to be married. This made no sense to us. We thought that surely a misunderstanding existed which could be worked out. The ensuing communications from Roshi Kennett and made us doubt whether we were being understood at all, and a rash of monks leaving or being expelled, made us face the issues squarely.
The interesting thing to me, as a lay person, was not that pathological conditions could exist in an isolated monastery. Much more crucial to me was the issue of what could be expected from arduous Zen training. We had hoped that if we trained with all our hearts, as we were surely doing and as Roshi Kennett had obviously done, we would be somewhat immune from serious delusion. Some of us lost our faith as a result of all this, and walked away from our training to some degree. That didn't seem to be an option for me. Still, it took away some of my enthusiasm to know that I could devote my life to zealous training and still finish up deluded. But knowing gives me the freedom to make up my own mind about things that enlightened teachers say - possibly even to reject methods that appear cruel "to the worldly mind." Maybe those methods really are cruel, and I should reject their use. And it served as a strong reminder that everyone needs to do a reality check once in a while.
-Dorothy Mokuren Robinson
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-Jill Bukkai Washburn 2/97
It was quite an experience going back and forth from hours of meditation to the world of work, parenting and relationships. At the opening of, Gyokuko invited us to take this opportunity to sit beneath the Bodhi tree with the Sangha, to travel in the greater vehicle as we focused on the essence of the Precepts. After she finished speaking that night, I felt weightless, hollow, ready to float. It was a little alarming, but I returned my attention to in-breath and out-breath, parsing out the mantra, Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu.
The next day went well, with morning sitting, work and family life, evening sitting and Kyojukaimon. It felt inspiring and uplifting to take the Precepts again and renew the commitment to walk the Eightfold path of the Buddha. I felt connected to the Sangha, especially to the new people taking the Precepts for the first time.
The next morning I was bicycling to work after attending part of the morning sitting. I was chanting the Heart Sutra when I turned a corner on my bike just as a car was turning onto that street from a nearby corner. There seemed to be enough room and time for both of us to maneuver around each other, but the driver of the car beeped his horn and sped up to challenge (and perhaps threaten) me. I responded with a yell and a famous hand gesture. Within less than a minute, I was in another confrontation with a car about "right of way." There were more gestures and shouts. We went our separate ways. "When the opposites arise, the Buddha mind is lost."
In a heartbeat, the still point had shattered. In its place was I and you, me and them, with anger, fear and self righteousness between. My mind took off and constructed more scenarios of violence and self vindication, blaming and beating "them." What had happened to right thinking and right action? As I rode on to work, the Precepts went off like giant bells in my head - GONG! The anger at the cars subsided, vanished like the earlier feelings of peace had. I could see that, under different circumstances, I could be just like these drivers I was so harshly judging, hating and fearing. I was especially grateful for the Precept that speaks of not dwelling on our past mistakes.
Two years ago when I took the Precepts for the first time, I had a similar experience during Jukai with another bicyclist. I was then, and am now, shocked at the aggression and hate I see in me sometimes. "The beast of self" is powerful.
At work, another side of me came out. I intuitively helped two team members do some difficult work on their resentments towards each other. I welcomed the teenagers who came to my office. Many have been the victims of abuse and neglect, and are now taking actions around drugs, sex and babies that seem likely to create only more suffering. At times, I felt that compassion was in the room with us.
Back home, making dinner, helping kids with homework, talking with my partner, I felt humbled by the morning's events. Back to Jukai. Sitting, walking, sitting, walking, sitting, the cycle, the flowings and changings of the interconnected whole. It seemed easier to "brush aside the distractions and dive deep," as Kyogen encouraged us to do. The busy mind quieted for awhile. The Precepts seemed friendly and inviting, not harsh and judging. I imagined their voice: "Yes, do no harm, do only good; but if you do harm, if you indulge in anger and hate, resentment and blame based in delusion and duality, please make note of it and return to me, to the guideposts, the bells, the path. I will be here for you, for all of you." Perhaps it was the voice of Kanzeon.
The days continued, and I swam back and forth between Jukai and the world of people, places and things. Gyokuko and Kyogen spoke of cultivating the compassionate mind of the Bodhisattva, meeting the world with this mind and attitude, and not seeking enlightenment by extinguishing the self by social isolation and negation. Engaging with the world with a sense of kindness and joy is essential. Maybe fighting with drivers of cars is a step of learning on this road. I meditated on the view that the Precepts are the expression of my true nature and that I can experience this in deep zazen, "where not one thing arises."
In Sanzen, I was told that my angry response was an instinctive reaction to threat, probably normal under the circumstances. Passion based on delusion arises, and then falls. After the storm of passion passes, we have a choice, and following the Precepts is at the heart of the Path. I was relieved to hear this - but I must admit that the task of becoming a Bodhisattva seems like "Mission Impossible."
On Sunday, two dozen people took lay ordination, vowed to follow the Precepts and became lay Buddhists. The wheel of Dharma turned. What a joy and relief when the retreat was over! I was grateful and exhausted. I had been living two lives the last week, two sides of the same coin. On my future bike commutes, I will practice more acceptance, yielding and kindness; safety with a sense of humor. Homage to the Buddha, homage to the Dharma, homage to the Sangha.
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Sue Rhodes, a member of our sangha who practices with the demands of multiple sclerosis, uses this as a daily mantra:
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In honor of the little Buddhas we celebrate at Wesak, we offer this excerpt from a column by Joan Ryan, which ran in the San San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 24, 1996:
I sat in a darkened room at a Zen retreat not far from my house. The room was packed with people who had come to meditate then listen to a lecture on spirituality. The teacher mentioned how he had traveled to Asia as a young man to learn the ways of the monks. He sat in a snowy forest for days with little food, drink or sleep. He sat like a yogi on the bank of the Ganges River for 20 hours at a stretch though his legs burned with pain and his eyes longed for rest. He explained that the effort of his mind to overcome the deprivation and distractions took him to higher states of clarity and vision and taught him patience.
I was thinking about this as my son and his pal staged a sword fight in the hallway. Connections of the last few days began to fall into place. I thought about the repeated admonishments we parents deliver through the day, the noise, the lack of sleep, the long waits for our child to get dressed, clean his room or get out of a car ("C'mon, we're going into the store now. Put down the soccer ball. No, we can't take the dog. What are you doing? That cookie's probably been under the seat for a month. C'mon. Now. I mean it. Don't worry about the cookie. We'll throw it out in the store. "Let's go." The only things children do quickly are go to the bathroom, eat dessert, open gifts and climb fences separating playgrounds from deadly freeways.)
Suddenly, it clicked.
I understood why monks must sit in snow and on the banks of the Ganges. They don't have children!
It occurred to me that, in my search for self-improvement and spirituality, I had everything I needed in my own home. Every parent does. There are the long painful nights we sit without moving because one twitch might wake the baby in our arms. There is the excruciating mind and muscle control to stifle a smile when our child earnestly tells us he didn't pick up his toys because he got hit with a ball at school and suffered brain damage.
There are the tests of concentration when you're talking to a client on the phone and your child appears in the doorway in nothing but boots and a gun belt and acts out the final scene from "High Noon."
There are the years on end of getting to sleep after midnight because only when the kids are asleep and the phone isn't ringing can you get your chores finished, then you're up at 6 to make lunches and get breakfast and shuttle them to school before you go, bleary-eyed, to work. Religious students travel the globe to find tests of will, patience, deprivation and selflessness. Parents live them every day. All the components are there: rituals, generosity, penance, guilt and desperate prayer, all punctuated by moments of transcendent clarity and unmatched joy.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but I'm wondering if we can get tax-exempt status.
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