Let me respectfully remind you – (And me!)

I’m going back up to the Zen Mountain Center one last time for this training period. It ends this Sunday. The gang up there has been sitting hard for almost three months and I have enjoyed sitting with them once a month for the last two.

This weekend I will sit and then say good-by to my friends as they go off to new adventures. I will then drive back to Phoenix in time to see Apollo at Doc’s Place and say good-by as he heads out for his new Traveling Poet adventure. Monday I go back to work and say good-by to my seniors as they too move on to new adventures. With every hello comes good-by.

I called teachers troublemakers in a past post. Well, actually, Pema Chodron called them troublemakers. I borrowed her title and added my own two cents.

Not everyone liked the word troublemakers. Bad connotation I guess. How about the word instigator? A spiritual teacher drives us to strive harder and push further that we could on our own.

Ah, but there’s nowhere to go and nothing to gain.

True. . . .

NOW pick up that pen and write! Open that book and read! Go deeper into that Koan! SIT Stronger! Sew that rakasu! Build! Create! Help! Love! Smile! Shout!

STRIVE HARDER & PUSH FURTHER!

Yes, right now you are perfect and complete. But you’re not finished.
(And why would we want to be finished? To be finished is to be done.)

During training periods, like sesshins, there is a gatha (verse) that is spoken at the end of each day before we leave the zendo for sleep. It goes something like this:

Let me respectfully remind you -
Life and death are of supreme importance,
Time swiftly passes,
Opportunity is lost:
Awaken!
Awaken!
Take heed. Do not squander your life.

When I was up at ZMC in April it snowed and was quite cold for a little desert rat like myself. One afternoon I had a vivid dream. There was a break of a little over an hour after lunch. The sky was grey. I was cold, tired and decided to take a nap. I went back to my cubbyhole, set my alarm to give myself 25 minutes before the next sitting, and was out in seconds.

In my dream I was in the same room at the Zen Center, but it was down in the desert with palms trees out my window. I was a beautiful sunny day out so I opened my door and stood at the threshold taking in the sun. Then, literally out of the blue, Genpo Roshi walked up to me with a big smile on his face; arms outstretched, and hugged me warmly.

He said, “Dan! How are you?”

Still shocked by his surprise visit, I did not respond.

“And you say, ‘I am well. Good to see you Roshi. How are you?’”

I repeated what he told me to say. He pulled back with his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said a bit sarcastically but playfully, “There you go. Good.”

He let go of my shoulders, snapped into a serious look and said, “Oh and Hoen, WAKE UP!”

I sat up in my bed and saw that I had slept through my alarm. I had 8 minutes to get to the zendo. I swiftly put on my robes, ran over, and made it seconds before the first bell.

Thank you, Roshi, as always, for the push.

Hello. Good-by. Hello. Good-by. Hello. Good-by. Endless Practice.

Beautiful.

Tozan's "No Cold and Heat"

A monk asked Tozan,

"When cold and heat come, how should one avoid them?"

Tozan said,
"Why not go to a place where there is neither cold nor heat?"
The monk said,
"What kind of place is it where there is neither cold nor heat?"
Tozan said,
"When it is cold, the cold kills you; when it is hot, the heat kills you."

-Case 43 from The Blue Cliff Record

Spring is a time of temperature extremes in the Southwest. We literally can go from 60F/15C to 95F/35C in a weekend and when you include the whole elevation factor it gets even more extreme. You can go from sweltering heat to freezing cold in an hour or two.

When I went to Zen Mountain Center in mid-April the forecast for the weekend was sunny and 70F/21C. Before I drove up that Friday afternoon I had lunch with my friend Andy in the valley. It was 85F/27C. We were in shorts and sandals. Then, my Hyundai Santa Fe climbed up the mountain. It was a bit cooler but nothing too extreme. I sat with the group that evening and headed off for bed around 9:00.

When I got up Saturday morning at 4:00am I heard what sounded like wind and rain outside. In a sleepy daze I washed my face and got dressed for early morning sitting. I grabbed my umbrella, opened the door of my cabin to go to the zendo, and stepped into wet, heavy snow.


I was wide-awake. It was about 26F/-3C and I, a little desert rat, was walking though the snow in sandals. Needless to say, it was a bone-chilling day of sitting. All I could think of as I froze was sitting with Andy the afternoon before eating in the hot afternoon sun.


My friends all offered warmer clothes and better shoes but after walking a sitting during the arctic part of the day without them, I decided to just be cold.


By the following afternoon it was sunny and 70F/21C again and within a few hours I was driving through the desert on I-10 sweating in 100F/38C. After freezing my feet off the day before I decided not to turn on the air conditioner but to bake in the sun and just be hot.

I turned the vent on but it was so hot outside that the air blowing on my feet felt like a hairdryer. I could still remember the ice cold sensations in my toes from the day before but now, in the heat of the desert, the idea of running around in my sandals through the snow felt good just as it had only been in the snow that the burn of the desert sun on my feet felt good.

“When cold be cold. When hot be hot. When in pain be in pain . . .” Etc. Sometimes that’s easier said than done.

“Just watch your breath and count to ten. Then start again at one,” I was told by a teacher back in 1988. “If you lose track or get distracted just start at one again. The key is not to get to ten but to forgive yourself for not getting to ten.”

Someone recently asked me what to do in his head when he’s meditating. I told him about counting to ten. Then he asked me what it was like to get to ten without a thought. I told him when it happens to me I’ll let him know.