"Guru" means venerable teacher.
"Guru" means venerable teacher.
by Ven Jinmyo Fleming,
ino
jinmyo@trytel.com
http://www.wwzc.org
| * Simple Minded | |
| * Flowering Garbage | |
| * Lineage | |
| * What Does It Take To Be A Buddha? | |
* Is There A Problem?  |
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| * Meeting A Zafu | |
SIMPLE MINDED
Ven. Jinmyo Fleming ino
A Senior's Dharma TalkMarch 21, 1998
http://www.wwzc.org
Simplicity is..not so simple. For example, there is nothing simpler than sitting in zazen. There's not much that we need to do. We just sit with our ears over our shoulders, nose over the navel, aligned. We feel the movement of the breath, the sensations of the body. We pay attention to the details of our experiencing. And, as Zen Master Anzan Hoshin has said, we watch our minds run down the wall. It is simple, but we often don't experience it as simple. So why is that?
The reason simplicity is not as simple as we think it might be is because our thoughts and the ways in which we think are themselves so complex.
Anzan sensei often speaks about simplicity and richness -- and complexity and poverty. He points out that reality, experience, is very simple, very straight forward and yet at the same time is very abundant, very rich. Our thoughts and storylines however are so entangled that we wind up with a great deal of complexity, but this complexity tends to simplify and reduce our experience. And so our thoughts tend to be like cartoons.
When we choose the limited views of our simple-minded thoughts over the richness of reality, we delude ourselves. For example, compared to seeing someone's face, a caricature of it is a poor imitation. The differences between the reality of seeing someone's face before us and a cartoon-like thought image of it is vast - all the details of colour, texture and nuances of expression. I had an experience recently which will illustrate my point.
Now there's not much that is simpler than walking through a door. If somebody else is trying to walk through the door at the same time, then you pause and get out of the way. But people get into power games about who is going to do what.
The other day, the Sensei and I were at a computer store. We were just walking out, just moving into the doorway, when a young man barreled in and then just stopped right in front of us. The Sensei paused momentarily to see what he was going to do. He came straight at us, just trying to push everything in front of him. He was determined, not even to get into the store, but just that we were going to get out of the way because he was there. So, we moved to one side and let him rush through. The Sensei looked at me and couldn't help but laugh aloud and I just couldn't help it either. It was all just too obvious.
So there is this disparity between simplicity as it actually is and the simple-mindedness that people have when they are wrapped up in their stories and are therefore unable to deal with what is going on. The mind needs to become truly simple-minded, as simple as reality is and then to be open to that richness. But because there is that disparity, because there is that gap or distance between how people usually are and what's really going on, it is very much like the structure of a joke.
It's quite simple to understand how a joke works. It works on two different levels. It leads along a certain plane and then there is a level shift and it is that level shift that we find to be funny. Now, although it is very simple to explain a joke, that explanation wasn't particularly funny because although we can understand the structure and what is generally true about something, it is the details that are actually fun.
How self-image is, is a kind of joke because it thinks that this is what is going on. And it is not. And so, often, when the Sensei encounters this he just can't help but laugh because he gets the joke. He sees who we are, that how we are is an avoidance of the richness of who we are, and how ridiculous the suffering we impose on ourselves is. Much of the time, when he begins to laugh
under those kinds of circumstances, the other person begins to laugh too, even though they don't know why. Actually, at the moment that they are laughing they do know why, but later on, when they try to think about it, they don't understand anymore.
The simplicity of zazen shows us how to explore the details of experiencing and through this practice, we begin to really have fun. We begin to realize a freedom from taking the mechanisms of self-image seriously or personally. And we find that when we release them, and allow ourselves to pay attention to our lives as they are, things can become very simple. When things are allowed to be simple, we have much more fun. Our understanding changes and our humour changes.
When we become stupified by the patter of our patterns, instead of continuing to follow along with it or struggling against it, we begin to get the joke. Perhaps we might laugh, or grin, or cry. After all, when we recognize how caught up we were in nonsense a moment ago, it can be a little embarassing. But to who? Who do we think we are when we take that stance seriously? Then we realize that this is another pattern. Ack! What now? Should we laugh, be a good sport about it? Would that be the right "Zen" kind of thing to do?
It is not a matter of laughing at out own expense. It's more like releasing grasping and avoidance and stepping past complexity. You don't have to do anything about the patterns. Simply sit. Simply walk. Simply talk. Simply listen.
Sitting shows us that this moment is simple. This simplicity is richness and abundance. And it also shows us that the complexity of usual mind equals poverty and simplification.
I think that usually if someone were to say to us, "Oh, you are so simple-minded" it would be an insult. It would mean that we are something like foolish or half-witted.
But you know, in the context of practice, "simple minded" might well be said as praise.
But our practice is beyond praise and blame.
It's all so much simpler than that.
Have a good morning.
-- Ven Jinmyo Fleming, ino
LINEAGE
("The Moment Is Slippery")
A Senior's Dharma Talk
by Ven. Jinmyo Fleming, ino Dainen-ji,
May 1, 1998
Practising mindfulness of this moment can seem to be a very slippery thing. After all the moment is always going away. The moment isn't anything solid that we can take hold of and say "Look moment, I'm going to mindful of you." The breath is moving. If we try to mindful of a step by getting hold of the sensation then we wouldn't be taking a step anymore, we would be standing.
I have seen people do this in kinhin. Focussing on the sensation of the step, they slow down and stop, standing there with one foot in front of the other while the line of people before and behind them continue to move. They shake themselves awake from this focussing and then continue to walk.
Mindfulness is not taking hold of anything. It is more a letting go of whatever you are focussing on and opening up. Moments come and go, always in motion. In each moment we must reinitiate our practice and begin again. As our practice continues, something begins to happen. Instead of our renewing our mindfulness of the moment, the moment begins to renew our mindfulness. Sounds, sensations, whatever is going on, whatever is coming and going shakes us out of our habitual focussing and wakes us up.
In the book Mountains and Rivers Zen Master Anzan Hoshin says something very interesting. He says that Zen is "waking up to Waking Up." It is just a small comment. He said this in passing. The words were spoken and the moment of saying them was gone. Fortunately the words were recorded, transcribed, and published.
There is something in this simple phrase that unlocks practice. Zen practice and realization are a process of endless Awakening. Anzan sensei always points out to us how rich and fresh Reality is. When we see what is being pointed to, we wonder how we never saw it because it was so simple. For almost 2,600 years there has been a Lineage of such Teachers pointing, and students looking and seeing. I thought it might be useful to talk about Lineage because there is nothing at all like it within our experience of our culture.
Many books have been written by many people for a long time. Today there are philosophers inspired by Heidegger. There are scientists inspired by Newton and Einstein. Carpenters use principles worked out by people who lived hundreds of years ago. Many recipes that cooks use have been around for hundreds of years. But the Lineage of Awakened Ancestors is not a matter of inspiration. It is a direct Transmission between a Teacher and a Sangha, a Community of students.
It is not the same as a sect or an institution although some people have made it into that. In Asia, people belonging to different Lineages often dislike each other. Politics between these sects cause slander and hostility. But all of the Lineages are the same when we trace them back. The Rinzai and Soto Lineages were once the same and throughout history many Soto and Rinzai monks have studied with each other.
So, as students of Zen Master Anzan Hoshin of the Hakukaze stream of the Soto Lineage, you are not members of some Japanese Buddhist Church. You do not need to say to yourself, "I'm a Soto so nuts to those Obaku Zen people." Forget that. You are members of the family of Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors and get to sit and share the wisdom of their experience.
Very recently the Sensei was ill and so Fusatsu, the Renewal of the Precepts was delayed. He decided to combine the Monday evening formal sitting with the general sitting so that the monastics leading the general sitting could attend. On this Monday evening there were some very new associate students, two of them attending their first sitting as students. I was very worried that the situation would be chaotic but everyone did very well. The Sensei said a few words to everyone so that the new students would have some context for what was going to happen. Part of what he spoke about was an explanation of the chanting of the names of the Lineage of the Awakened Ancestors. I wrote this down afterwards. He said, "Lineage is the thread of continuity of the availability of Reality through realization and practice. From teacher to student, from moment to moment, the Dharma has been Transmitted and renewed. In chanting through the names of the Awakened Ancestors of the Lineage we invoke this thread of continuity and are reminded to ourselves take responsibility for it by renewing our practice."
So this is what I want to talk about. With empty hands we bow to the Lineage, to those who with empty hands gave us what cannot be held. When Dogen zenji returned to Japan bearing the Transmission from Rujing zenji he said he came back with empty hands. With these empty hands he was able to pick up and show Reality to his students. When we chant the Lineage, we chant the names of people we never met, most now long dead, like Eihei Dogen and Tiantong Rujing and Daiji Tenku and Joshu Dainen. They never chanted in English, as we sometimes do, but if we practise chanting as they did, feeling the breath, hearing the breath become sound, aligning ourselves with Awakened Awareness, the Lineage fills this room, here and now.
The Lineage is a succession of realized teachers. They were unique in their style and vivid in their presentation, but what they were presenting was not a system of beliefs or a set of rules. The Teachers of our Lineage stand as exemplars because they were each individuals who chose to dedicate their lives into the investigation of what is true. Their understanding, collectively, is a multi-facetted jewel of Dharma, which shines in all directions, pointing to the Luminosity which is our true nature.
You may have thought that a Dharma Talk entitled "Lineage" would be a sort of history lesson. If Dharma could be understood through memorizing and regurgitating texts, it would be very easy to speak for an hour as though I knew all about it. But I am not going to do that. In fact, the truth be known, I usually avoid quoting from the accounts of my ancestors. From whatI have read and have come to understand about any one of these Teachers, I find it extremely difficult to say anything about them that I think will accurately represent what they were pointing to, so I'd just as soon not, just yet.
When I first began to practise, a very simple question came up for me. You see, I had studied with various systems, schools and some organized religious approaches for some twenty years before I met Ven. Anzan Hoshin Sensei. These included Sufism, Hinduism and various philosophical systems. And while I learned all sorts of names and dates, stories, theories, and so forth, none of these seemed to have much to do with my life or the lives of those around me. And I had often found that the knowledge acquired by people within such systems was used in ways that I found quite incomprehensible. Often it was used to defend a stance, to exert power over others or as a strange form of entertainment.
When I began to practise, it was immediately apparent that what I was being taught was how to enter into my own life, my own experience in a very simple and direct manner: Feel the breath, feel the hands, feel the feet, know where you are. The truth about how we sit, stand, walk, lie down, feed ourselves, do anything at all is not to be found in a thought about it.
The Sensei's instructions were very clear, very precise. But then, I wondered, what about Buddhism? What was I to do about all of those books I had not read, stories and names and dates? The practice of Zen is practising practice, literally something that we do. So, for some time, the question of what to do about all things "Buddhist" loomed before me in my imagination as a towering wall of dusty books. And the wall had not finished growing, but was being added to with endless volumes of new interpretations. There are so many books being published every year. Trying to understand all of this must inevitably result in an impossible exam that I was doomed to fail and I thought "Acckkk! I will never be a 'Buddhist'".
I was very hesitant to admit to the Sensei that I thought it most likely that I would flunk even elementary Buddhism. Most certainly if he knew what a dunce I was, he would throw me out. After all, not only is he a realized Master, but a great scholar as well. He reads sutras for fun. He reads doctoral theses for entertainment.
But, one day, the subject of "classical Buddhism" came up and I decided to throw both fear and caution to the wind and show him my wall of dusty books. I asked, "Sensei, why Buddhism?" He was not at all taken aback and, in fact, smiled and responded as though he found this to be a perfectly reasonable question. He said, very simply, "Because Buddhism works."
Well, actually there was a lot more context given. He said that what is true is just true. All kinds of things can seem to be true but what seems to be true depends upon the context given. A small context in which most information is shut out can make anything seem to be true because we don't know anything except what that context allows. If we take that truth into a larger context then usually it is no longer true. So, to know what is true, we must look at the context and see if it is open or closed. If what we know and how we know it has to close out the feeling of the feet, the richness of the colours and sounds, then it might seem to be true but cannot be. What is true is true for everyone, always. No one owns the truth.
There are all kinds of spiritual systems and most of them have meditation techniques of some sort. Even prayer. But what works is the same. When a Christian monk gets up at 4 in the morning and kneels at a hard wooden pew and says his prayers, it doesn't matter what he is saying or who he thinks he is praying to. It is the knees on the pew that matter. I remember he laughed while he said this. It is working with the experience of the bodymind that works. "Unfortunately", he said, "these spiritual systems tend to get confused about what works because they take their doctrines and prayers too seriously. So whether that form of spirituality works or not is kind of hit and miss."
Buddhism is about what works, what doesn't work, and why. Zen is more direct about this than most other forms of Dharma. The Soto Lineage has been concerned with making sure that this is practised in each moment, gyoji dokan, or Turning the Wheel of Continuous Practice. The Hakukaze Soto stream has kept this as clear as they could while many other streams within the Lineage became confused by the subtlety of the practice and now think of zazen as a kind of sacrament instead of a rice and tea (or bread and butter) matter." He also said that he did not care whether what we do is called Zen or Dharma or not.
What matters is that it works. After the Sensei had taken my wall down so effectively, I found myself surrounded with books which recounted the stories of students, like myself, learning to play with experience, taught by teachers, like our own, who must first teach us how to have fun. I could go back in time and find dozens of examples of this but everything the Awakened Ancestors have said has already been transcribed by those who were there to hear it and those who had the time to write it down.
So here, instead, is my transcription of an encounter between our living Lineage holder and a student: In the evenings a series of strikes on the densho, umpan, and han signal that the monastic and lay residents of Dainen-ji are assembled for the Shushin-ge, the chants which close the day. Following the bows to the butsudan and then to the Sangha, Zen Master Anzan Hoshin always asks, "Is there anything we should discuss?" On one such evening a student from one of the branch centres of the Zen Community was on the second day of his second retreat at Dainen-ji. The Sensei asked, "So, are you having fun?" "Sometimes," the student said. " 'Sometimes'?," the Sensei asked in mock suprise with raised eyebrows. "Why only sometimes?" "I...don't know," the student said. "Oh. Well, when you are not having fun, why is that?" asked the Sensei. "I...don't know," the student said. "Oh. Well, when you do have fun, what is happening?" "I...don't...know..." "Oh. Well then, how do you know if you are having fun or not?" "I...don't know..." "Oh. So then, what *is* 'fun'?" "I...don't know...." "Fun is what happens when you allow the natural expansiveness of bodily feeling, of seeing and hearing and so on to express themselves past your usual round of contractions. It is releasing structures of attention based upon configuring sets of knowings as a knower relative to knowns and releasing all of this into the Knowing in which they arise. It is not a matter of feeling good or of feeling bad but of feeling, of allowing whatever is present to point to the space it arises in. Good night."
The Lineage is always fresh in each moment that we wake up to this moment. Enountering ourselves through this wonderful practice, we meet who the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors were and are. Mindfulness of the moment can be very slippery because the moment is slippery. Sometimes we have to just let go of what we are holding onto, let ourselves slip and fall, and learn how to stand up freely. Have a good morning. Gassho, Ven. Jinmyo Fleming, ino Dainen-ji (Zen Centre of Ottawa) WWZC jinmyo@trytel.com http://www.wwzc.org
FLOWERING
GARBAGE
Senior’s Dharma Talk
by Ven. Jinmyo Fleming ino
July 13, 1996, Honzan Zazen-ji
(While training as "Shuso")
Our lives are the flowering activity of the Lotus Matrix Treasury. Really. I know this because that is what it’s called in the Brahmajala sutra, the text that I am translating with Zen Master Anzan Hoshin. But I also know this because it is what we are all practicing and realizing here in the Zendo at Zazen-ji.
The Brahmajala sutra is the source for the Precepts that the monks of the Northern Mountain Order practice and part of the inspiration for the shingi or standards of deportment that allow us to recognize how to live as that. The whole environment of the forms, of zazen, of the ikebana and artwork and Teachings of the Teacher is one in which our lives become opportunities.
Our greatest difficulty in living as the flowering activity of the Lotus Matrix World is that we are convinced that we are less than that. The Lotus Matrix World is a description of what is true but it is not just a story about who we are; it is part of a set of instructions that help us to realize who we are beyond all stories and concepts.
But for most of us, all that we seem to be are our thoughts and feelings, our stories and concepts; the stories we tell ourselves and tell each other. And most of our stories are based on a sense of poverty, of problem, of unworthiness. And so instead of living face to face with Reality in all its richness, we stumble over scraps and husks, we wade in garbage.
But even this isn’t a problem. Every gardener knows that the worst garbage can make the best compost. From the garbage of our confusion we can learn to grow the flowers of Richness. Coming face to face with Reality begins with facing the fact that we tend to make ourselves feel like shit; that we rub our noses in whatever seems wrong; that we find unconditioned joy to be uncomfortable.
I would like to tell you a story about this involving Anzan sensei. Bear in mind that what the Sensei does is to free people from their states. In order to tell you a story about the Sensei, I have to tell you about a state I was in which he opened. But the difficulty of conveying anything about it to you is that when we are in a state we become dysfunctional and can’t remember anything. Still, I’ll try.
Recently, I bought a beautiful pineapple. It was quite large and had a crown of thick, very green leaves. When I unpacked it at the monastery, I decided that it should go in the fridge until it was to be used because the heat and humidity was causing fruit to spoil very quickly. But it just wouldn’t fit. It was too large for the shelf. So I proceeded to saw off the crown and left it sitting on the counter. A few moments later, the Sensei came into the kitchen to make lunch. He saw the cluster of pineapple leaves on the counter and, without the least hesitation, reached for a black bowl. He placed a kenzan in it, arranged the pineapple crown and filled the bowl with water. Turning, he walked directly to a bookcase in the kitchen, on top of which stands a rupa of Kwannon, the bodhisattva of graceful compassion. He set the bowl next to it and we both moved back to see it.
It was beautiful. The pineapple crown ikebana looked like an exotic tropical plant. It certainly didn’t look like garbage. I think that this is a good example of the kind of everyday art we are presented with at Zazen-ji.
Another would be the ikebana that have been mounted recently in the Zendo. One was an arrangement that the Sensei called, “the bamboo kami.” It was just a bunch of bamboo garden stakes that he cut into different lengths, arranged their lengths in unpredictable ways with each other and bound with raffia. It was beautiful. It wasn’t kami or sacred because it represented the god of bamboo. Nor was it that each piece of bamboo was kami. It was the presence of the sacred, present as bamboo.
Or, right now, there is an arrangement made from lengths of willow that were pruned from the willow in the garden. They were bent into a curve, allowed to dry, and again wound around with raffia. It is not just that garbage can be used to grow flowers. The Sensei shows us that garbage can be flowers.
Now I will tell you something about the moment to moment art of the Teacher. Every morning the monks assemble one hour before the morning formal sitting begins. The Sensei leads us in Ta-kesa no ge, the Verse of the Kesa, and then we do the shinrei or morning bells. Following this, as the shuso, I lead the monks in the Samu no ge, or Verse of Caretaking Practice, and then we prepare the Zendo and the monastery for the sitting.
The morning after the Sensei transformed the pineapple crown into an ikebana, I went into the kitchen to get something, just as the Sensei began speaking to one of the monks. The Sensei asked if he had noticed the ikebana (which had been sitting there since the afternoon before in full view). Unfortunately, the monk hadn’t.
We miss so many moments of dignity and richness if we don’t make ourselves available to what is right before us and right here, (as the Sensei would say), as us. I allowed myself the luxury of a moment of pity for the monk. Something like, “Poor benighted fool! Hee hee.” I heard him say, “It’s the crown of a pineapple! We cut the top off and put it in water. Do you like it?” The monk responded enthusiastically. Standing behind them, I glowered, although no expression showed on my face. The Sensei then turned to me and said, smiling, “Shuso, I’d like to see you outside for a few minutes.“
I followed him out to the garden, where he sat down on a bench. I stood in front of him and he began to ask me what I would like for lunch. As he spoke, I tried to follow what he was saying, but my attention kept turning to a feeling tone and a sense of contraction. In the middle of a description of a type of soup, the Sensei’s face suddenly changed expression. “What?” he asked. A familiar shock wave moved through my body along with, as nearly as I can approximate it, the thought: “Oh, oh. He’s got me and there’s nowhere to go.”
You see, monks don’t get away with anything here; at least, not for very long. With the Sensei, nothing is hidden, no matter how small. He might let us stew in something for a while, but sooner or later we find ourselves standing in front of him, being asked to take responsibility for how we are, to open up around it. I said, “Oh, well... I just got caught in some stuff.” Now, with the Sensei, this kind of dishonesty is tantamount to a full-blown lie. I was still caught in the state even though I was able to recognize that I could just drop it. We just can’t hedge. He can see exactly what we’re doing and this is only slightly less dishonest than saying, “Nothing, Sensei,” and grinning or acting cute. Once asked, any attempt to re-arrange the landscape to try to hide, to make it look like nothing or to make it look like something other than it is, is absolutely futile, because he comes right in after us. Which is precisely what he did. His face completely changed and it was nothing short of terrifying. He said, “What are you doing?”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I also knew that I had about three seconds to admit it. “Oh, I had some poverty stuff come up this morning...um...(hedge, hedge) about the pineapple top.” “What about the pineapple top?“ Admitting to being poverty stricken was a start, but I still wasn’t coming out from behind my conviction about the contraction. I whined, “You never say that I do anything, that I had anything to do with things that are done.“
Now this is garbage and had nothing to do with anything that actually happens in my real life but at that moment I was stubbornly determined to be that garbage. The moment I admitted to what was actually going on, the Sensei’s face changed again. It was no longer terrifying. First he laughed, and then said, “So you wanted me to say that you cut the top off the pineapple? But then I would have to talk about the person who put it on the shelf in the store, the people who brought it there and the person who grew it. I would have to talk about the size of the sun, the mass of the earth, the relative distance between the sun and the earth, the whole history of the universe up until the point that I am speaking right now. Everything is intimately involved. Each thing makes everything else what each thing is, intimately. Everything is done by everything and everyone. For the sake of convenience we can say, ‘I’ or ‘you’ but there is no one being spoken about.”
As he was speaking he was showing me the Total Field of Richness and I could see for a moment from the point of view of the Lotus Matrix, if not from that of Awareness itself. But it was too big for me to be me. In the next moment, a cascade of fragmented thoughts arose and I stood there, desperately looking for something to grasp onto, some form of escape. Watching this, he stopped in mid-sentence and said , “Now what?”
“Oh, I had just better go and finish my samu.” He said, “You know that we’re not finished until you’re finished with doing this to yourself. After everything I’ve just been saying to you about this, you’re still holding on to this feeling tone. You just don’t want to let go of it, do you? By doing that, you’re taking what I just taught you and you’ re throwing it in the garbage. You can’t do samu with this going on because then it’s not samu.“ Another shock wave passed through me as I realized what I was doing. But this time I gave it up. He smiled and bowed me out.
Just as grace, dignity, and art is an everyday bread and butter (or rice and tea) matter at Zazen-ji, living past roles and social identities is simply how things are here. For example, gender distinction is something that is seldom discussed at Zazen-ji. It just isn’t an issue for the most part because the shingi, or rules of monastic deportment as taught by the Sensei really make any discussion unnecessary. The shingi transform our garbage into flowers and situations will tend to look after themselves because as we follow the shingi, the alignment that they create corrects deviations of any type that come up. It is only when we step outside of the shingi that things become complicated.
I have another little story about garbage to show you what I mean. Earlier this year, we were invited to a Vietnamese Buddhist temple to visit with other monks and share a meal that the abbot, Thich Bon Dat, wanted to offer to the Sensei. In the gathering of 8 monks, 2 were female, 6 male. Towards the end of the visit, we gathered in an office to share tea, fruit and some sweets. I helped to pour the tea and passed it to junior monks sitting to my right. Although I am a female monk, the fact that I poured the tea had nothing to do with gender. I happened to be seated closest to the tea pot and it was simpler for me to pour the tea and pass the bowls of fruit and sweets to the other monks. The monk to my right took a piece of fruit, and a sweet. I noticed in my peripheral vision that he did not know what to do with either the pit or the wrapper and so kept it in his hand. When we were finished the tea, we stood to say good-bye. The monk to my right stood with his hand hanging awkwardly to his side, clenching his little store of garbage. I reached across the table, pulled a kleenex from a box, turned and handed it to him.
I didn’t do that because I was a female acting out a mothering role for the poor messy male who’s much too important to know how to take care of himself as I used to feel compelled to do. I did it because, as his senior, I was responsible for him and I knew what he needed to do and he didn’t. He nodded in appreciation, and, laying the kleenex across his left hand, placed his garbage in the centre and then very carefully folded it into a small bundle. Then he handed this neat little package of garbage to me. I looked at it, and then I looked at him, and then I handed it back. We looked at each other and both of our faces simultaneously blossomed with smiles. Have a good morning. Gassho, Ven. Jinmyo Fleming, ino Dainen-ji (Zen Centre of Ottawa) WWZC jinmyo@trytel.com http://www.wwzc.org
. >Hi Ino -- thank you so much for your reply. One point: in addition to understanding that failure is more humorous than triumph, I wonder if you also agree that allowing the students to analyse and come up with their explanation of how Bhodhi should have done it is quite productive, from an educational standpoint, as spposed to using the cartoon to illustrate the proper method.
Ino: It's difficult to say something that is true about practice in a few paragraphs, let alone in a few sentences inside of a comic. When the Buddha taught monks, he taught them to practice. When he taught lay people, he spoke about moral or ethical issues. I find that teaching new students very basic things takes a lot of time. During a half-hour practice interview, little can be conveyed. I lead two-hour long Introduction to Zen Workshops at Dainen-ji. Yesterday we held one and 17 people attended. As is usually the case, most of the participants had little or no information about practice in any form. A few had read a little or had dabbled in other forms of practice, but were quite confused as to how to actually practice. The explanation and instruction given at the workshops is very simple, very clear. For example, I give them instruction in how to take care of one's zafu, and why we should care - turn it clockwise and press four times because it's filled with kapok and over centuries someone figured out for us that if we do this, it won't bunch. And if we take care of the zafu, it will take care of us. And we don't know when our last breath is going to be, so we shouldn't leave a mess for others to clean up - And how we clutter up our own lives and the lives of everyone around us with the messes we leave through not taking care of things - that kind of thing and a lot more. It's very basic, absolutely essential to and leads to good practice and people love it. They laugh when I tell them this, because it's so true, so obvious, and they want to take care. But nobody tells them how to unless it's all about making them feel bad. I think that many of the people approaching your site will be like the people I describe and that if you keep the themes of your cartoons as simple as possible and address moral and ethical issues, they will have a very good time with them. And if they have fun, they'll come back.
Gassho, Ven. Jinmyo Fleming, ino Dainen-ji (Zen Centre of Ottawa), WWZC jinmyo@trytel.com http://www.wwzc.org
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