NEW CH’AN FORUM An approximately quarterly journal published by the Bristol UK Ch’an Group. Dharma Adviser: The Venerable Ch’an Master, Dr. Sheng-Yen Teacher: Dr. John Crook [Chu’an-Teng Chien-Ti] Editors: Hilary Richards, Peter Howard THE QUESTION OF LAY ZEN The role of Zen in the West, its value, practice and potential contribution to our times has become a vital issue. This is especially so, because some of the features of its contemporary presentation have been called into question, particularly in America. Western Zen is practised predominantly by lay persons. What then is Lay Zen? In our last issue we began publishing articles on this theme by fellow practitioners and colleagues. Stuart Lach’s account of Zen problems in American centres raised fundamental issues for us all. In this edition we begin to explore the present situation in our British society to see in what ways Zen may operate within it. Ken Jones sets out the context and examines the way in which Buddhism may bring about a shift in ethical understanding and behaviour. We also include a supplement to this issue in which John Crook writes in depth about the nature of the culture within which we live today and considers the place the Dharma may have in this world. Lest our readers fear we are becoming too academic we assure you that further articles in this series deal with a wide range of themes. Coming up will be Susan Blackmore on awareness, James Crowden on agricultural labour, Simon Child on retreats, Peter Howard on Zen in industry, and more. There will be articles on many aspects of life, the interpretation of self, Zen practice and pilgrimage. And of course we will continue to present other articles on the multitude of themes that concern us. In this issue Tim Blanc writes beguilingly on baking bread. We also include more reports by participants in retreats at the Maenllwyd. The drawings, by Ros Cuthbert are of the statue of Green Tara who stands in the garden at Maenllwyd. Evie Body made and donated the sculpture, as all who know her will recognise. We are always interested to receive articles, drawings, poetry and letters from our readers. If you have any comments you will find our addresses on the last page. Also listed are details of retreats in the Mendips, Wales and New York, and the growing number of small groups affiliated to us. EDITORIAL FROM THE CH’AN HALL John Crook In June this year the Network of Buddhist Organisations (NBO) in Britain is holding a conference on the “Student- teacher Relationship” at Amaravati Monastery. The intention is to explore the many facets of this relationship from the viewpoints of both teachers and students. A fundamental concern is our understanding of the present state of our own society. Buddhism is new in the West, it is spreading rapidly, diversifying and responding to socio-economic pressures few of us actually understand. Mistakes have been made and continue to be made, yet at the same time a Buddhist voice is developing that can have some influence on affairs directly, or more usually indirectly. We who practise the Dharma and are concerned in Dharma education need very much to understand the historical process in which we are embedded. It is complex, diversifying and unstable.(1) By contrast, those who are beginners look to the Dharma for simplicity, unity and stability. Unfortunately they cannot have this on a plate. Such an outcome can only arise from the inner work of Dharma practice. Desires for an easily adopted, comforting and simple belief to help shore up an unstable lifestyle are opposed to the need for an actual understanding of self and situation. This opposition between wants to be supplied from outside and the necessity for inner work generates a tension which may impose a threat to Buddhism. Why? Simplistic “outer” paths are illusorily attractive because the “work” thereon is done by the institutions and the teachers that provide them, rather than by the practitioners. The “practitioner” may have faith, but no serious personal practice. The result is a cult centering on some simplistic version of Buddhism and focused on a charismatic figure - all too familiar elsewhere in the “New Age” world of make-believe religion. Such cults become fixations that enclose the mind of a believer in such a way that severe distortions of the Dharma can result, taking on fundamentalist, exclusivist, even fascist tones. If the Aum cult of Japan has roots in modern Japanese derivatives of Buddhism, we can see the danger. The failure of American Dharma institutions to provide safeguards that would protect both the centre and the participants from abuse by so called “masters” has been well discussed.(2) There is clearly a need for critical feedback and democratic structuring. This is something that the Eastern models have failed to supply and Western adherents too immature to insist upon. Such feedback and social control was a feature of the original monastic life - certainly so in Tibet, where the “shung”, the body of monks governing the institution, elected abbots on a relatively short term basis. The later focus on reincarnating lamas and Zen masters for life has weakened this healthy basis and led to abuses of power. These Western failures are set in the context of our social condition. The European “Enlightenment” that disposed of medieval superstition and replaced it with clear minded thought, science and social progress, has also led to a breakdown of community in a world dominated by market place economics.(3) The focus on individual rights, personalised fashions, unique identities and private belief systems is an end result of a long process, leading us away from the constraints of communal ethics and towards a personal freedom that can also become an alienation from society itself. Society in the West is now fragmented to an extraordinary degree. This fragmentation is expressed in many ways. For example in Christian disunity and factionalism extending to an almost total neglect of its deeper roots; in the multiplicity of mutually competitive psychotherapies and counselling services and the pages of mostly dotty activities engaged in by New Agers as advertised, for example, in South West Connection. This deconstruction of community goes along with a freedom of action and expression which for poorly educated persons amounts to a loss of orientation. All guidance is open to doubt, the only control lies in debatable ethics and laws which are often out of date. The result is the creation of fantasy worlds in which identities unconstructed in a community float freely, seeking some sort of anchorage. In this situation the social holding of an individual is so weak almost anything can happen - as events this month in the USA are revealing. Those with money can survive and thrive in such a world. At best it encourages a style of life that is critical, sceptical, healthy, expressive, open and innovative. At worst it descends to personal ostentation, egoistic idiosyncrasy and the flamboyance of the merely stupid. However, for the underclass or the unemployed the lack of any community ethic, the Thatcherite neglect of the social and the morality of market capitalism can lead to disastrous alienation and an inward turning to cults that are based in the private worlds of the isolated. How does all this apply to the Dharma? The danger is that lost individuals may seek to reconstruct elements of the Dharma to their own convenience. This would be akin to sick persons rearranging their drugs and dosages without recourse to a doctor. Indeed this may be to some extent already occurring, although most British institutions appear loyal to one or other of the orthodox and traditional modes of Dharma presentation. I do however know of one self styled “Zen master” who is totally without orthodox training, and one self proclaimed “Rimpoche” whose original ambition was to be a magician! Both have some following. One cannot however simply lay down the laws of what is and is not “safe”. The Dharma has always evolved into fresh and invigorating forms; Hinayana to Mahayana, Sutra to Tantra, Yogachara to Zen and so on. These changes are creative but all of them, except possibly some of the more extreme Japanese movements, retain a root anchorage in the Sutras and Sastras and the great Mahayana scriptures and commentaries. I think that the depth of Buddhist psychology matches that of Western psychological understanding and that each can inform one another. The same is true of contemporary philosophy and in discussion about the nature of the cosmos. It follows that positive debate between these polarities can be vastly creative. Such debate however requires the willingness to study, read and think - both in terms of contemporary thought and with respect to the Dharma. For this, only a few have the inclination, time or energy. Those seeking the Dharma simply for personal relevance and security could undermine such debate if their influence produces more cults and sects centred on simplistic versions of Buddhadharma. We need to be cautious, neither too restrictive so as to limit creativity, nor too indulgent of the personal needs of the alienated who bang upon our doors. I feel this is not an easy path. We need to develop a user friendly Dharma community of which the Network of Buddhist Organisations could be a beginning and within which individuals can find enough support to begin the investigation of self that leads to openness. References 1. “The Place of the Dharma in Our Time” by John Crook attempts to explore this issue and is included as a supplement to this edition of NCF. 2. See “A Slice of Zen in America” by Stuart Lachs; New Ch’an Forum No 10. Autumn 1994. 3. See “The Zen of Social Action” by Ken Jones in this edition of NCF. ALWAYS HARMONISE WITH LIVING BEINGS Master Sheng-yen Text selected from “The Compassionate Vows of Bodhisattva Samantabhadra”. Ch’an Magazine Winter 1993 with permission. Lightly edited. “Living beings” means all sentient beings. Harmonising with living beings means giving to sentient beings whatever they wish. Even so, if they ask for your head, do you give it them? If they ask for your body, do you give it them? If they ask for your money, what then? You give - but only when it is appropriate. It depends on whether sentient beings really need these things. Often it takes the wisdom of a Bodhisattva to decide properly on this question. Sometimes sentient beings ask for heads, bodies and money but the Bodhisattva in return will give them a scolding or a beating or lock them in jail. These are all expedient means of teaching. Harmonising with living beings entails judging needs in terms of the teaching and helping appropriately. In the T’ang Dynasty of China, Master Hsuan Tsang had a devoted disciple, K’uei Chi, who later also became a great master. When Hsuan Tsang asked him if he would become a monk. K’uei Chi said, “Monks are not allowed to eat meat. If I become a monk I want to continue eating meat”. “All right,” said the Master. “No problem. I give you permission to eat meat". K’uei Chi continued, “Monks are not allowed to marry. If I become a monk I would like to marry too." Hsuan Tsang answered , “You have my permission.” K’uie Chi added, “Monks cannot wear beautiful clothes. I must be allowed to dress handsomely.” Hsuan Tsang said. “OK. I also give you permission to do that". When it was time to have his head shaved, K’uei Chi demanded beautiful clothes, a wife and meat. Hsuan Tsang said, “No, even though you have shaved your head, you are not yet a monk. Wait till then.” Later on K’uei Chi repeated his requests. Hsuan Tsang said, “Still you have not fulfilled the requirements of being a monk. When you are a good monk you may do all of that.” So K’uei Chi worked very hard becoming an excellent practitioner. One day Hsuan Tsang asked him, “Do you want to marry?” K’uei Chi said, “Well, I am a monk now. I don’t need to get married." Hsuan Tsang asked him, “Do you want to eat meat?” K’uei chi replied, “I am a monk now, how can I eat meat?” No longer did K’uei Chi have an interest in these things. Hsuan Tsang harmonised with the needs of K’uei Chi. Through the Master’s promising him what he wanted K’uei Chi gradually discovered what his real needs were. Other ways of harmonising are through introducing people to the Dharma in four ways. The first is making offerings. The second is through kind words. The third is through helpful action and the fourth lies in sharing activities that lead to proper practice. Depending on the situation, we seek to find the skilful means to help. This is not only for some sentient beings but for all. Till they reach Nirvana we continue. We constantly look for ways to help all sentient beings. Bodhisattvas can help all beings. We must help those with whom we come into contact. THE ZEN OF SOCIAL ACTION Ken H Jones 1. The Privatisation of the Dharma Buddhism comes to Westerners as a monkish other worldly religion of meditation embedded in a culture of monasticism. It brings with it all the assumptions of a traditional hierarchical culture where society and nature were perceived as an unchanging back drop to the human condition. Public virtues enjoined upon ‘householders’ (and even rulers), charitable action, right livelihood and just rule, were about personal behaviour confined within the the established order. Monastics were honoured by lay support precisely because they were ‘purer’, not engaged in the pursuit of wealth and fame like everyone else. Monastics generally supported the existing social order. For Zen, this meant, successively, the aristocracy, samurai dictators, imperial militarists, and latterly, the corporate business establishment(1). Westerners who approach Buddhism swim in a very different culture, an intensely individualistic culture with a social milieu utterly different from that in which the teachings originated. These circumstances present the lay practitioner with two unique kinds of work, the first ‘inner’ and the second ‘outer’. Personhood for the traditional oriental, as for the medieval Western individual, tended to be made meaningful through social context, whether it be occupation, hierarchical grade, caste, corporate membership or geographical community. In 1486, in his Oration on the Dignity of Man, Pico della Mirandolla proclaimed the arrival of the free, self-defining individual thus starting the trend to individual rather than collective sensibility. Three hundred years later the Rights of Man were proclaimed,sounding the death knell of the ancient culture of communally rooted responsibilities. The collective virtues of acceptance, humility and restraint rapidly disappeared from view. After another two hundred more years of this high egoic era (as Ken Wilber calls it), this free and demanding individualism - of an affluent minority - has accumulated enough wealth, developed enough technology, and dissolved sufficient constraining norms and institutions to be able to enjoy the utmost ‘personalised convenience’. It might be the ready convenience of switching on television or switching to another partner when the first - and the kids - become too tiresome. Just about everything can be individually fixed except mortality. The progress of this individualism is associated with the widening split between the public and the private. The public is the outer, rational ‘masculine’ world of the economy, politics, war and peace. The private is the world of the psyche, the emotions, spirituality, the arts, the ‘feminine’ - all subordinate and suspect. Encouraged by the demise of the great value-sustaining secular myths of our time, socialism and communism, and likewise of the Welfare State, privatisation of the public has become intense. Associated with the decline of civic pride and enterprise and indeed of civil society itself, the public realm has been crushed between the upper and nether millstones of State and Market, the latter becoming increasingly narcissistic and turned in upon itself. Individualism is associated also with the sense of a loss of social relevance, a personal alienation, which has increasingly marked the past hundred years of Western culture. In the search for ever greater individual freedom Westerners have dissolved all those personal, social and ecological restraints, reciprocities and responsibilities which were the sources of collective support and security. Eco-social crisis and the widespread crisis of personal identity and meaning are ultimately one and the same. Alienated individuals seek an intensely individualistic spirituality with a functional sensibility, ‘fast food’ expectations and an obsession with achievement which reifies enlightenment. This stubborn and rootless individualism makes community (or even playing at community) difficult for many Westerners. The high pressure inner/outer crisis may lead to ‘spirituality’ as a last hope for finding meaning and security. Yet at every point there is antithesis to the assumptions of oriental monasticism. Perhaps a hundred years from now we shall better appreciate what a bizarre Western creature it was that began to take an interest in Buddhist spirituality - of all things! Our deeply conditioned assumptions could hardly be more different from those of the world of Shakyamuni Buddha, or of Zen Master Dogen. I conclude that the practitioner of lay Zen or any other kind of Western spirituality has a special and urgent need to become fully aware of these Western assumptions in order no longer to be unconsciously governed by them. This is a process which, in my experience, can occur quite naturally in the course of traditional practice, but the more readily if both student and teacher are socially knowledgeable (this being one of the advantages of an aware Western teacher). This is a dimension of the Westerner’s ‘inner work’ which has received little discussion. Moreover, the monastic tradition has, understandably, virtually nothing to say about it. For example, as a European reading in American Buddhist journals of attempts to respond to problems arising along the Western/Oriental, lay/monastic interface, I have often been struck by a seeming unawareness of how culture- specific, how American, such responses can themselves be. This or that characteristic American response may or may not be the most appropriate, but how can we know as long as we are inside its American-ness? The second historic task for the lay Western practitioner follows from the first. This is the ‘outer work’ of shaping a new social culture which is informed by spiritual insight and manifests it in its social norms and institutions. Although this is a radical conservative perspective which retains and transforms all the supportive and compatible achievements of, yes, the high egoic era, I none the less see monasticism as a perennial stabilising force, whatever outward changes it may undergo. 2. The Outer Project: Social activism encounters Buddhism Over the past five hundred years Western society has become increasingly complex, dynamic and fluid. Its development can be and has been substantially affected by government policies and social and political movements which are a part of the process. There is a general assumption that it is possible to remedy and even abolish poverty, exploitation and the injustices of gender, class, and race. In spite of this often unthinking optimism, acquisitive industrial growth has now begun to undermine the planetary ecosystem itself. We face an ecological crisis which arguably can only be resolved by radical social changes on a global scale. In looking at the Western interest in Buddhism I am struck by the gap between the great secular, humanistic movements of our time and an ancient monastic Sangha specialising in wisdom and insight. What are the implications then, for a lay spirituality founded on such a monasticism? In the West, and particularly in the United States, ‘engaged Buddhism’ has become widely acceptable, though it is still not well understood (2). It questions both the quietism of Eastern monasticism and the privatised Buddhism of the West, and is undoubtedly the most noteworthy achievement to date of modern lay Buddhism, and particularly of the American Zen communities. It is significant that the communiqué from a four day meeting in March 1993 between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and twenty-two Western Buddhist teachers, declared that ‘Our first responsibility as Buddhists is to work towards creating a better world for all forms of life. The promotion of Buddhism is a secondary concern.’ Understandably it is in the Buddhist countries of the East that the potential of engaged Buddhism is most fully demonstrated, in a variety of lay Buddhist movements. Sarvodaya is an extensive grass-roots self- help movement in Sri Lanka. Out of the struggle of Vietnam’s Unified Buddhist Church for peace, social justice, and religious freedom, Thich Nhat Hanh and his Tiep Hien Order have developed as an influential international movement. The opposition to the brutal military dictatorship in Burma is essentially both a lay and a monastic Buddhist movement. Thailand is the centre of a variety of engaged Buddhist initiatives inspired by Sulak Sivaraksa, most notably the remarkable International Network of Engaged Buddhists. A wide variety of (mostly lay) New Buddhist Movements concerned with world peace and social welfare flourish in Japan and exercise a significant influence in national life. In Japan there have been a number of Zen writers and teachers who stood out against the endorsement of Japanese imperial militarism by mainstream Zen monasticism. One of the heroes of this dissident tradition was Ichikawa Gudo, a Soto monk executed in 1911 for his opposition to the demands of the imperial regime. In the post-war period Ichikawa Hakugen, a Zen priest and university professor condemned Zen’s collusion in Japanese aggression in books like The War Responsibility of Buddhists (1970) (1). For the purposes of our present enquiry the most significant proponent of an engaged Zen is Hisamatsu Shin’ichi (1889-1980). Hisamatsu was a Zen practitioner and university professor who founded a lay Zen organisation and devoted himself to a critique of monastic Zen: as has been the case with Zen, activity starts and ends only with the so-calledpractice of compassion involved in helping others to awaken, such activity will remain unrelated to the formation of the world or the creation of history, isolated from the world and history, and in the end turn Zen into a forest Buddhism, temple Buddhism, at best a Zen-monastery Buddhism. Ultimately this becomes “Zen within a ghostly cave"’ (3). Hisamatsu rejected monastic Zen as outmoded, advocated a ‘Zen for all people’, and did not regard a direct relationship with a master as absolutely necessary. In these respects he differs from most lay advocates of engaged Buddhism in both East and West. Engaged Buddhism also tackles the current questions and controversies in our society with regard to gender, race and class. It is troubled by the spectacle of a Sangha so exclusively able-bodied, white, and middle class, practising within a patriarchal tradition. The (American) Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s journal Turning Wheel has devoted whole issues to such questions. Yet I cannot recall reading any similar discussion on English social class. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that there are working class would-be Buddhists who are alienated by the middle class tone of many British Buddhist organisations and centres (the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order is one notable exception). My informants found the insulated ‘niceness’ and the ‘smug intellectualism’ offensive and, more seriously, the teaching coming from an outlook and lifestyle remote from those of working class people. Since similar class barriers have been seen as a problem in other walks of life it would be unwise to dismiss them here. Raising awareness of our own previously unconscious social identities, and the message they send to others, could undoubtedly be a ‘skilful means’ (upaya). 3. The scriptural approach to engaged Buddhism The eco-socially engaged Buddhism of activism and service can be approached in terms of scripture, intellect and insight. The scriptural approach involves selecting and interpreting relevant scripture, including the moral precepts. Now that all the world’s religions are being required to present their green credentials(4), it has been most recently employed to demonstrate the ecological relevance of Buddhism. Although the scriptural approach provides a useful introduction, it has serious very different from our own, and in any case the amount of traditional socially engaged scripture is quite small, for reasons noted earlier. Secondly, Buddhism is not a religion of the Book; its scriptures are at best a verbalising of insight aimed at guiding and inspiring those who are seeking insight. They have an indicative authority, but it is intended that you should find out the truth for yourself. My third reservation is that, in the absence of the other two approaches (below), it is only too easy to read our own cultural values into scripture, as also into monastic practice. The Buddha becomes an early human rights champion, the monastic Sangha a model of propertyless democracy, and Ashoka validates the Welfare State. Instead of Dharma changing contemporary perceptions and aspirations it is simply appropriated in order to reinforce them. Such unconscious secularisation is a typical hazard to be found in the laity’s inherent concern to ‘update’ the monastic Dharma and make it more ‘relevant’. An opposite example, where it is Dharma which informs our contemporary situation, is to be found in the precepts of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Tiep Hien Order. Thus, ‘Right Livelihood’ is interpreted as ‘Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies which deprive others of their chance of life. Select a vocation which helps to realise your idea of compassion’(5). 4. The intellectual approach The intellectual (Buddhological) approach seeks to develop a theory of socially engaged Buddhism by amplifying the Buddhist diagnosis and remedy for the human condition in terms of our understanding of contemporary society. Like other world religions, Buddhism has traditionally been limited by very simplistic social theory and assumptions. Only comparatively recently has society become sufficiently dynamic and complex to stimulate the development of adequate explanatory social theory. From the time of our birth we each respond not only in a personal sense to the precariousness of our human condition, but also as inheritors of delusive social institutions and shared meanings about the world. The ideologies of ‘us’ and ‘them’, of good and evil, which bestride our world tend to be experienced as reality itself rather than as the alienating projections of the insecure and fearful beings that we are. ‘The world grasps after systems’, observed the Buddha, ‘and is imprisoned by dogmas’ (6). Particular beliefs, feelings and behaviours tend to become ingrained as dispositional tendencies (samskaras) which shape our character and our future for better or worse. There is, however, nothing retributive, judgmental or fatalistic about this karmic momentum and we do have the capacity to modify it or even break free from it. A striking example which is both personal and social is the consumermentality (green or otherwise) which drives millions of people beyond all reasonable need and ultimately towards ecological breakdown. To paraphrase Marx, we do make our own history, but not of our own accord or under self-chosen conditions, but under given and transmitted conditions. The situation of a society at any given point in its history, is the amplified resultant of the interacting karma of all its past and present members. Thus the great institutions which embody the aggressiveness, acquisitiveness and divisiveness of Buddha’s ‘Three Fires’ appear to take on a life of their own, entrapping in ‘the system’ even those reluctant to meet its demands. In the Over- Developed World millions of kindly people accept ‘ordinary’ lifestyles and an economic system which are both unnecessary and hugely destructive both ecologically and in relation to Third World peoples. We are entrained in a headlong global karma which repeatedly overwhelms such good intentions as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. A further example of social karma is the way in which violence breeds violence. The acquisitiveness of the powerful is expressed through social institutions and public policies which create conditions of ‘structural violence’ against the dignity of the disempowered and their freedom to shape tolerable lives for themselves (unemployment, homelessness, chronic ill-health, erosion of welfare support and so on). Structural violence provokes criminal violence, culminating in a climate of violence which eventually entrains even children as rapists and murderers while creating a deprived underclass. The well-informed bodhisattva has a much more difficult and radical undertaking demanded of him or her than limiting herself to giving everyone a big smile, using bio-friendly washing-up liquid and radiating good vibes to distant prisoners of conscience. Without reservation she strives to respond to the three great moral imperatives of our time - to heal the violated planet, and to enable both the underclass at home (one in five of the population) and the wretched of the earth to win dignity and freedom. To the traditional Buddhist task of calming the mind is added that of employing it to transform and dismantle social systems and processes which supercharge the suffering of humanity as well as encompassing the ruin of the planet and its creatures. Without the inner work we become part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as the history of communism has so tragically demonstrated and as the history of capitalism is on headlong course to demonstrate in an infinitely greater tragedy. As Mahatma Gandhi observed, the belief (whether of Lenin or Adam Smith) that we can devise a social system so perfect that no one will need to be good, is one of the great delusions of our time. But without the outer work the inner work cannot be socially manifested on the scale that is now required. The good society which enables its citizens to nourish themselves spiritually as well as socially and materially needs continually to be created in the present, step by step. Ecotopias are at best no more than skilful means, and carry the constant danger of ideological petrification. Two perspectives are on offer, the one monastic and hierarchical, the other lay and democratic. On the one hand the tradition of the Dhamma Rajah, the spiritually enlightened absolute ruler, has inspired the ‘Dhammic socialism’ propounded by the famous Thai monastic teacher Ajahn Buddhadassa (with overtones of Plato’s Republic) (7). William Ophuls, an American Buddhist political ecologist, takes a similar though more reluctant view, but from a Hobbesian standpoint(8). At the other extreme are those, like the compilers of the 1984 Green Buddhist Declaration, who propose a libertarian socialist vision of a confederal, non- violent, mutualistic, grass roots polity founded on E F Schumacher’s ‘Buddhist economics’(9). I share the view that the power of the increasingly centralised State, and the greed of the free market sustained by it, are incompatible with the stable steady state economy which ecological harmony requires, and with the degree of social justice and egalitarianism necessary to sustain such an economy. The Buddhist, Christian and Humanist metta (‘loving kindness’) required to cement a Green commonwealth will need to be nurtured by individual and group ‘inner work’ as a lifestyle norm. It will also require a civil society of communities wherein social, ecological and spiritual responsibilities figure as prominently as rights. In such a society the monastic tradition could once more exert a stabilising influence. Though few in numbers, Buddhists are peculiarly well placed to play a valuable part in realising such a scenario. A contemporary paradox concerns the monastic-style discipline and absolute authority of traditional spiritual teachers in contrast to modern lay people who value their democratic and egalitarian secular culture. Americans in recent years have been moved to invoke that culture in order to safeguard against the abuses of power which have shaken many Buddhist centre teachers’ sexual misconduct with their students, abuse of alcohol and drugs, misappropriation of funds and abuse of power. Lay pressure has modified the traditional monastic absolutism with codes of practice, complaints procedures, arbitration and lay management boards. Here as elsewhere the balance is shifting from lay subordination to lay partnership. (See article by Stuart Lachs in the last issue of New Ch’an Forum.) The social diagnosis outlined in this section needs to be experienced as profound awareness, and then there will be no hesitation in acting out the prescription from the ground of our being. Hisamatsu emphasised ‘the unity of academic study and religious practice’. ‘It is not the objective and impartial study of ethical, philosophical or religious phenomena, but gaining knowledge of how to “live” morality, philosophy and religion that must be the essential concern’(10). Seng- ts’an, the Third Zen Patriarch (c. AD600) reminds us that: ‘The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the further from it you go. Put an end to wordiness and intellection and there is nothing you will not understand’(11). 5. The insight approach Although all three approaches are needed, the cultivation of insight is the one that goes to the heart of a socially engaged Buddhism. Apart from some specialised concerns such as meditation and non-violent action, the practice is simply the classic awareness of mindfulness, moving through the three phases of awareness, ‘acceptance’ and ‘empowerment’. Through this practice we become aware of the impulses underlying our thoughts, feelings and behaviour, driven by our root rage, fear and insecurity. We become aware of how we shape a self-serving reality which creates suffering for ourselves and others and which disables appropriate action. Such awareness in itself begins to change the way we experience reality. The world begins to look a different place, and we also begin to act differently. Awareness can be focused helpfully ‘where the shoe pinches’ - that is on some specific discomfiture which can provide some workable practice in awareness whether or not we choose to formulate it as a specific question or koan. It will not let us rest, whether it be some nagging irritant or our own mortality, or the latest bloody minded episode in some part of the world or other, or our despair at feeling unable to do anything about the ruin of our planet. We so much want things to accord with our desire. If we are in a helping role, for example, we want to feel that we are able to help (and we may enjoy feeling virtuous and maybe somehow superior to the poor wretch who needs our help). As well as such focusing, the practice requires also an all-round ‘bare awareness’ (Krishnamurti’s term) which continually clarifies perception, both of our emotional states, (whether oceanic or volcanic), and an uninterrupted view of what is actually happening out there. Clarity is enhanced by sessions of formal meditation and retreat. Arguably, this is what meditation is really for. As awareness deepens it may bring not only frustration but total despair as we are exposed to more truth than we can sustain, coming up against the powerlessness of the small, alienated self. This is the sharp end of Hisamatsu’s ‘fundamental koan which includes all traditional koans, and which has particular relevance for spiritual action and service: Right now, if nothing you do is of any avail, what will you do? This, for example, is the end of the line for a would-be helper who realises s/he really doesn’t have any ‘answer’ to the predicament of a suicidal person. Sooner or later, given sufficiently sustained practice, awareness will flip over into ‘acceptance’: we give up struggling to maintain how we want it to be and how our society has conditioned us to see it. ‘Acceptance’ is here used in a special sense in two respects. First, it is not ‘I’ accepting, usually grudgingly, but rather some falling away of the self’s insistence on how it should be. Secondly, the activist is not accepting the evils against which s/he has so long struggled; s/he is accepting the undeniable reality of those evils, which are henceforward to be met without evasion and distortion. ‘Formless form’, as Hisamatsu calls it, is thus freed to respond appropriately and unreservedly to the demands of the situation, and can indeed do no other. This is experienced as a liberative release, an ‘empowerment’ which is the opposite of self- empowerment. Freed of doubt and anxiety, here all actions do ‘avail’. At this point the delusion of a privatised Dharma is exposed. The liberation of self and the liberation of others are seen as inseparable. Engaged Buddhism is the daily actualisation of the boddhisattva vow chanted in Zen monasteries: ‘Sentient beings are innumerable, I vow to save them.’ This ‘inconceivable liberation’ is expressed by Kenneth White, our finest living European Zen poet, as follows (from his long poem Walking the Coast) ‘knowing now that the life at which I aim is a circumference continually expanding through sympathy and< understanding rather than an exclusive centre of pure self-feeling the whole I seek is centre plus circumference and now the struggle at the centre is over the circumference beckons from everywhere.’(12). This empowerment is the empowerment of compassion, of a generosity of spirit. And so, in the depths of the night, the Samaritan gives up trying to help and just hangs out with the would-be suicide in the humanity of a mutually sustaining intimacy - two small figures joking together adrift on a life raft. When a fellow monk fell down in the snow, Master Joshu lay down beside him... Similarly, the activist discovers what it means to love his adversary - to feel compassion for the person but resolutely to oppose what he stands for. And so... right now, if nothing you do is of any avail, what will you do? Disappearing in front, disappearing behind, the forest path unwinds me. 6. The interdependence of Activism and Monasticism In Western Zen, monasticism commonly amounts to (a) a teacher or teachers, based on (b) a centre, sometimes with resident senior students who may be veritable monastics, with (c) retreat programmes and facilities, used by (d) more or less committed lay people. By monastics I mean specialists who are sufficiently preoccupied with spiritual practice and maybe the teaching of it as to be more or less excluded from a lay life style. This illustrates the interdependence of monasticism and activism which I have touched on at several points in this paper. Testimony as to this interdependence can be found in different religious traditions, whether it be that of the famous Thai activist Sulak Sivaraksa in respect of Ajahn Buddhadasa, or of the American peace workers who looked to Thomas Merton ‘to help us keep our balance and sense of reality’ (13). When Hisamatsu rejected monastic Zen he had in mind highly insightful but totally cloistered monastics devoid of any social ethic or else unthinkingly supporting the established order. He therefore maintained that (in Christopher Ives’ words) ‘true practitioners must study such areas as politics, economics, history and the natural sciences in order to understand more fully the issues facing humanity and to work out skilful means (upaya) of responding to them. In short, practice without such study is blind’(14). Similarly for the eminent Zen Master Joshu Sasaki, ‘Zen is a preparation for life in the world, not the goal of life in the world, and in its highest stages involves the study of sociology, politics, economics, etc.’(15). Widely experienced and knowledgeable lay people in this partnership surely have a role to play in helping keep the spiritual specialists well informed. This is necessary both to counter, in teaching, the privatisation of spirituality in our contemporary culture and also to ground themselves in their students’ daily concerns, whether the traumas of neighbourhood crime or the tragedies of the recession, the grief for a dying planet or the effects of childhood sexual abuse on later life. I recall how moved I was, as a peace campaigner, to be asked by Ajahn Anando, the then abbot of Chithurst forest monastery, ‘How can we monastics help?’ And I recall the walks together in the woods, where each offered the other whatever might be most helpful - some periodical articles from me; a fortnight in one of the monastery’s meditation huts from him!(16). It has been suggested that disillusionment with many American Zen masters’ ethical behaviour has been paralleled by disappointment with the elusiveness of Enlightenment. Correspondingly the monastic tradition associated with both has been downgraded in value. One American Zen teacher observed to me that the tenacity of his European students stood in marked contrast to a high turnover among his fellow countrymen and women. The yearning for perfection seems in America to be shifting elsewhere. Riskfree exemplars emphasising a less problematic ethic than many of those tricky masters and lamas of old, are preferred as teachers to insightful discomforters (17). But having got rid of THIS may there not be a danger of getting stuck with THAT? Both teacher abuse and the characteristic outcry about it are perhaps superficial and sensational facets of a deeper malaise of a Western Buddhism still to come of age (18). Is it perhaps not a question of politically, ethically, correct lay zen against questionable monastic traditions. Rather, we need a new approach centred on a monasticism with an integrity strong enough to enable lay practitioners to withstand and transform a social culture which is on course to secularise a Dharma of inconceivable liberation. If we are to live up to our social and ecological responsibilities, this is essential. Without it a trivialised Buddhism will melt into a socially reflexive New Age preoccupation leaving an unremarked minority of adepts to their yogic enlightenments in mountain fastnesses. The importance of anchoring social action and service in a strong and mature monastic tradition cannot, I believe, be over-emphasised. Engaged Buddhism is a ‘radical conservatism’ in several senses, not least in that the more radical and potentially disturbing the action, the stronger and more conservative does the monastic support need to be. The following Vow of Humankind, formulated by Hisamatsu and his students, provides a summary of socially engaged lay Zen: Keeping calm and composed, let us awaken to our True Self, become truly compassionate humans, make full use of our gifts according to our respective missions in life, discern the agony both individual and social and its source, recognise the right direction in which history should proceed, and join hands as brothers and sisters without distinctions of race, nation or class. Let us, with compassion, vow to bring to realisation humankind’s deep desire for Self-emancipation and construct a world in which everyone can truly and fully live’(16). References 1. Daizen Victoria, ‘Japanese corporate Zen’. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 12(1) 1980, pp61-68. 2. Ken Jones, The Social Face of Buddhism, Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1989. 3. Quoted in Christopher Ives, Zen Awakening and Society, London: Macmillan, 1992. 4. See, for example, Martine Batchelor and Kerry Brown, eds. Buddhism and Ecology, London: Cassell, 1992. 5. For the Tiep Hien precepts, see ref. (2), above, pp165-168. 6. Samyutta Nikaya, xii, 15. For an extended Buddhist treatment of political ideology, see Ken Jones, Beyond Optimism: a Buddhist Political Ecology, Oxford: Jon Carpenter, 1993. 7. Ajahn Buddhadasa, Dhammic Socialism, Bangkok: Thai InterReligious Commission for Development, 1986. 8. William Ophuls, ‘Political Values for an Age of Scarcity’ American Theosophist, 69(5) May 1981. For fuller treatment see his classic Ecology and the politics of scarcity, San Francisco: W.H.Freeman, 1977. 9. E.F.Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, London: Abacus, 1974. 10. See ref. (3), above, p71. 11. Seng-ts’an, ‘On Trust in the Heart‘ (‘Hsin-Hsin- Ming’) in Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959. 12. Quoted, with grateful acknowledgement to the author, from Kenneth White, Walking the Coast’ The Bird Path: Collected Longer Poems, London: Penguin: 1990, p58. 13. See ref. (2), above, p190. 14. See ref. (3), above, p71. 15. Quoted in Christmas Humphreys, A Western Approach to Zen, London: Allen & Unwin, 1971, p192. 16. See ref. (3), above, p82. 17. Those who are uneasy about the new “politically correct” Buddhism will be cheered by John Stevens, Lust for Enlightenment: Buddhism and Sex. Boston and London: Shambala.1990. 18. Helen Twerkov gives a useful overview of the debate in the US around these issues in the ‘Afterword’ of her updated Zen in America (Kodansha International 1994). See further in depth discussion in Tricycle, Spring and Summer 1994 numbers. See also Stuart Lachs, A Slice of Zen in America. New Ch’an Forum No 10 pp 12- 20. Bristol Ch’an Group. WORDS OF A GURU John Crook Roger Housden was taking a tour party down the river Ganges. Half way they stopped in Lucknow and Roger took the participants to visit one of the truly insightful guru’s of modern India, a man of no-nonsense clarity. All but one of his party stayed on. Even the Ganges was forgotten. Poonja is is a Hindu without a label. Whether derived from Sankaracharya or the Buddha or both his thought is direct, immediate, personal, touching the present. Only in one respect does his insight veer off from Buddhism. On a taped interview he was asked. “Poonja, who are you?” Quick as a flash, he replied. “I am THAT!" A Zen master would have said “I am THIS .” No dualism. Listening to this taped interview, I was inspired by much of what Poonja had to say. Here is a brief summary for your reflection. “HOWEVER MUCH YOU HAVE PRACTISED, WHETHER FOR FIVE YEARS, FORTY YEARS OR TWO DAYS, WHEN YOU WAKE UP IT TAKES TWO SECONDS. SO WHAT IS THE USE OF ALL THOSE YEARS OF PRACTISING? WHY NOT WAKE UP IMMEDIATELY? YOU ARE IN A DREAM, THE DREAM OF LIFE, ALL THESE PREOCCUPATIONS, OCCUPATIONS, RELATIONS, WORK AND PLAY ALL ARE THE DREAM. SUDDENLY YOU TURN OVER AND AWAKE. WHAT IS THIS MOMENT? YOU CAN DO IT NOW. WHY WAIT? PRACTICE IS WAITING. NO NEED TO WAIT. NO NEED FOR SHEPHERDS OR PREACHERS. THE TRUE TEACHER KNOWS EMPTINESS AND, WHEN YOU FALL INTO IT TOGETHER, TWO MINDS ARE ONE MIND AND ONE MIND IS EMPTY. THEN YOU BOTH SEE IT. THE TEACHER’S MIND IS EMPTY. WHEN HE HEARS THE QUESTIONER THE REPLY COMES FROM EMPTINESS - NOT THE TEACHER. THE TEACHER IS ONLY A VEHICLE OF EMPTINESS. HOWEVER DEEP THE KARMA OF MANY YEARS STANDING, ON AWAKENING IT IS ALL CLEARED UP. BUT WHAT IF YOU GO TO SLEEP AGAIN? STAYING AWAKE IS NOT PRACTICE, IT IS CONTINUOUS REALISING. CONTINUOUS REALISING REQUIRES ATTENTION. WHO IS IT WHO DREAMS THE DREAM OF LIFE? CAN YOU GET TO HIM? WHEN YOU FALL INTO A DOZE AT NIGHT WHAT IS THERE AT THE MOMENT OF THAT FALLING? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE IT ALL UP. WHAT IS THIS GIVING UP? NO NEED TO HOLD ON. NO SUCH NECESSITY. OTHER THAN THE IMPUTED THERE NEVER WAS A REALITY, PAST, PRESENT OR FUTURE, SO WHAT IS IT THAT IS? REALISATION IS JUST PERCEIVING THAT YOU ARE NOT BOUND. SUCH A FREEDOM IS THE AWAKENING. NOTHING ELSE HAS CHANGED. WHAT YOU THINK -YOU ARE. IF YOU DO NOT THINK THE DREAM THEN YOU ARE AWAKE. WHY THE COOK BAKES THE BREAD Tim Blanc Why have I come to this desolate place? Why have I kept pushing myself to find the ultimate “truth”? Why did I launch myself on this quest, why didn’t I just ignore my doubts, close my eyes and enjoy the bliss of uncaring ignorance? Such were my thoughts as I struggled up the muddy path, against a bitterly wet wind, towards the cloud shrouded hills. My destination was a Dharma retreat, famed for its great libraries of wisdom, its gifted enlightened teachers and its diligent monks and nuns. I was desperate to believe that this place would be my final destination, the place where I would discover exactly what the “truth” really is. The skies grew darker, the damp drizzle turning to driving rain as I concentrated on every step , my mind running through its rut of thoughts again and again, I looked up and saw a huge oak tree away to the left of the path with a welcoming shelter of massive spreading boughs. Coming closer, I spied a small figure sitting on one of the gnarled roots that bulged out of the ground near the tree, and beckoning to me to come and sit there. Approaching through the sheets of rain I saw that the figure was dressed in a shimmering maroon robe and wore a marvellous golden helmet which spread out over his shoulders. On his lap was a white bundle wrapped with a red sash and he was surrounded by a mysterious haze. Was this a wandering Rimpoche, on his way to the monastery, carrying the texts of the Dharma teaching? Only as I reached the shelter of the tree, did I realise that the splendid helmet was a huge brass wok, that the mysterious haze was clouds of smoke billowing forth from a small clay pipe that the stranger was puffing and that the shimmering effect of his robe was due to a random sprinkling of flour which appeared to have come from the large sack which he held on his lap, under the shelter of the rim of the wok. Who was this rogue? I sat down beside him, but he continued to stare into the rain sodden landscape with puffs of smoke wafting from under the wok over his head. In a silence filled with the sounds of rain, wind, the creaking of the trees branches and the occasional chimes of drops of water falling from an overhead branch onto the wok, we sat together. Impatient to get to my goal, thirsty for more information about it, I decided to use my time in conversation. “Terrible weather today, its not fair on living souls !!!” “Hmm”, came a snarl that I took for a reply. “Do you know of the great monastery in the hills ?” “Hmm”, another grunt. “Is it far from here ?” “No”, he snapped. “Have you ever been to the monastery ?” “Yes”, came the reply, followed by a cloud of smoke. “Is it a wonderful place ?” “Yes”, he sighed. “Why did you go there ?” “Because I am a cook in the kitchen, where I bake the bread for everyone who stays there”, came the whispered reply, followed by another cloud of smoke. “Do you not wish that you were up in the meditation hall, with all the diligent monks and nuns, hearing the teachings of the venerable masters, rather than by the oven, baking bread?”. The cook took his pipe out of mouth and tapped the bowl against the root of the oak tree. Satisfied that only ash remained, he carefully placed the pipe in a small cloth pouch attached to his belt. Then he turned and looked me in the face. Under the rim of the wok, behind the cook’s mess of hair, were a pair of clear wizened eyes, filled with an ocean of calm love. A smile swept across the cook’s face and then he spoke, “I know what you are looking for and what you would like to know, for I have also looked for the same and I have seen many others searching like you and me, but now I will tell you what I have learnt whilst baking bread. Sit, listen and please do not disturb me with any more of your questions.” So I sat quietly and heard the cook’s tale. “Just as there is always the quest to fully understand our lives, there is always a need for bread for there are always hungry bellies to fill. Baking bread never ends. A long time ago, a sage said that it is wise to empty the mind and fill the belly. There is truth in these words, good foods fill the belly, nourishing the heart and allowing for the emptying of the mind. You need to have sorted out your belly, before you can sort out your heart and mind. You can only use the method of fasting when you have had enough food to set the heart and master the mind. Food is a necessity for life, just as life is a necessity for understanding; you need to eat to live just as you need to have tasted the joys, sorrows, love, hatred, gratitude and anger of life, before you can understand the great Meaning of all things. My bread is served at every meal, with breakfast porridge, lunch time soup and supper time stew, it is the common base to every meal. The bread fills the last corners of the belly, where the porridge, soup and stew do not reach. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to provide this vital ingredient for the work of the monastery. By providing sustenance for their long journey I have the opportunity to serve all these sentient beings, to help many along the Path. I am a very fortunate seeker for my teacher is the mysterious magic of baking bread. The teaching never stops, as every time I bake bread, it is always eaten and it is time to bake again. Right now, I am returning to the monastery, having collected a fresh sack of flour from the miller and with the rain coming, I took shelter here under the oak tree, as should my sack of flour get wet, it would be ruined, useless for baking bread. When one is carrying a sack of flour, it is not the time for heroic dashes, through the rain and mud, so I rested here to enjoy the tranquillity of the desolate weather and smoke my pipe. I saw you in your cursing struggle along the path and knew that you too needed to rest a while, so I beckoned you here. Why rush when everything is here ?" The cook beamed a smile across his face from ear to ear and he gave his sack a hefty thump, so that swirls of white flour flew up and settled on his robes. “In the monastery, the bells ring for rising, for working, for sitting, for bowing, for eating and for sleeping; the cook’s work has no start and no finish, simply continuing with doing what has to be done. The moment comes when it is time to bake bread, there is only one loaf left in the bread bin, there are hungry bellies that will need feeding, there are seeking hearts that will need their strength sustaining and there are wandering minds that will need holding still. Baking bread is not work that can be rushed or hurried, it needs time, a joining of moments of action and inaction. When it is time to bake bread, I clear and clean a large space on the kitchen table ready for my work. I gather all the ingredients, the flour, the sunflower, sesame and poppy seeds, the salt, the sugar, the oil and the yeast. I arrange all the utensils, the mixing bowl, the kneading board, the wooden spoon and the baking tins. I check the fire in the grate to see how much life it has in it, whether it has the heat to bake bread and if needs be, I riddle the grate, clear the ashes and add a measure of coal to give it the boost that it will soon need. So many things, of so many qualities, from so many places, laid out before me. Into the mixing bowl goes the flour (enough for the five loaves that will fill the oven to capacity, no more and no less), the five pinches of salt, the ten handfuls of sunflower seeds, five handfuls of roasted sesame seed and two handful of blue poppy seed. But the flour is cold, it must first be warmed up to make it ready to welcome the busy yeast. I must put the mixing bowl onto the warm shelf above stove and leave it there till the flour has lost its chill. Now I must wait for the heat from the stove to do its work, it is time for cook to sit. ‘Just sitting ‘ is not work that can be hurried, it needs time, a joining of moments of action and inaction. When it is time to sit, I go to the zendo, I bow to the Buddha, I go to my place, I bow to the other seekers in the zendo, I unfold my blanket and arrange my cushion, I sit and settle into a comfortable, stable posture, I bow to the wall, I am ready for my work. Up comes the cornucopia of thoughts and feelings that is my life. There in the front of my mind are the dancing phantoms of my desires, my worries, my plans for the future, my feelings of guilt about the past. My life unfolds in front of me as a collection of items, like the bread ingredients and the baking utensils on the kitchen table. There is my desire to see the enticing dakini smile of the miller’s daughter, my worry as to whether I will have enough sesame seed to last until the travelling merchant comes by again, my plans to bake some cakes and my guilt over the terrible state I got into last time I visited the miller and indulged in his excellent wine. As the thoughts and feelings arise, I pour them into the great mixing bowl of the Silence that surrounds me. I sit watching the mixing bowl fill and then overflow. I just sit and let the resonance of the Silence do its work. Sitting in Silence is my preparation for life’s practice, just as the chopping of vegetables is the preparation for the cooking and tasting of soup. Whilst sitting I have time and space to remind myself of the true nature of awareness, of the essence of being, of the purpose of the stillness of my posture and the surrounding communal silence of the Zendo. The practice of awareness, being and purpose does not end when the sitting ends; it continues when I rise from my sitting; the sitting in silence is only a period of apprenticeship for my life work. Just as I have to stand still to light a match to light the fire and let the flame establish itself before carrying it to the grate, in the same way, must I sit still to experience the path of practice within me . The bells chime, I bow and rise and return to the kitchen. It is time to continue making the bread. The heat from the stove has done its work and chased the chill off the bowl of flour. I fetch a jug and half fill it with warm water, by carefully mixing hot water from one of the steaming kettles on the stove and the freezing cold water from the tap, so that the water is slightly warmer than my body temperature, to provide the ideal environment for the yeast to carry out their busy work of eating, excreting, respiring and multiplying. I stir a couple of generous tablespoonfuls of sugar into the warm water, to feed the ravenous yeast and then I sprinkle in five teaspoonfuls of dried yeast, followed by two more teaspoonfuls of dried yeast for luck and a good rise. One last good stir of the warm yeasty water and I put the jug on the warm shelf above the stove. Millions of yeast cells are suddenly cast into their short life of intense action. The yeast cells’ lifetime is such a short one, but then my own lifetime is not that much longer, so I smile at the good example set by the energetic yeast, who waste no time in getting on with their lives. I prepare more warm water in a large saucepan, refilling the kettle which I have used. I smear the insides of bread tins with oil and put them on the shelf above the stove, to warm them up, ready to receive the dough. The yeast starts to froth in the jug, a spiral of thoughts swirl around in my mind, the flour sits still in the mixing bowl. I dig a well in the centre of the flour and pour the frothing yeast water into it, slowly turning the flour into the pond of cloudy water, so that the water does not spill out over the dry flour. The knot of thoughts in my head comes, tangles, unwinds and goes again. My hands are busy pouring water from the jug and turning the spoon, all of my attention must be given to the work in front of me. What was once a collection of separate ingredients, spread upon the kitchen table, slowly becomes a sticky ball of dough. What were once my multiple state of being, the collection of my thoughts, my emotions, my worries and my expectancies, slowly combine to be simply me turning the spoon in the mixing bowl, feeling the resistant, stiffness of the dough. I add more warm water, not too much now, the dough must not become too wet and sloppy. The dough is ready for kneading, I can not turn the spoon any more, it is time to use my hands. I sprinkle a generous amount of flour onto the kneading board and empty the lump of dough out of the mixing bowl onto the board. I sprinkle flour over the great lump of dough, as it settles and spreads to become a half globe in front of me. I roll up my sleeves, I cover my hands with the soft flour, I take a deep breath, I lay my floury hands on the warm dome of dough and I start to slowly fold, push and knead the dough. The secret of baking good bread is in the kneading. A good flour, milled from the best wheat, produces a strong dough, where all the ingredients cling tightly together, but to make bread dough that will rise and give an even light texture, the dough must be kneaded until it becomes soft, supple and smooth. It takes most of my strength to pummel, fold and push the dough into its final state, ready for the bread tins. As the sweat rolls down my back I may have to take my robe off, all my strength must be applied with caring hands, massaging the yielding dough with all the love and feeling of a lover caressing a partner. If my muscles are exerted with feelings of anger, hate or even indifference, then the dough with become hard, lumpy and uneven in texture. The bread from dough kneaded without love and care will not fully rise and on baking, it will produce inedible, jaw breaking bricks, which even the hungry ghosts can hardly eat. I have baked loaves like this in my time and when this happens, I have to throw the loaves out and start afresh with a full heart of love rather than the wrath of desire and frustration. Is not the Path to find the Truth the same as kneading dough? True progress is only made when the heart is full of the ever flowing love of life, rather than the burning, frustrated, expectant, overriding desire to find something special. My life is filled with its pains and joys, combined in its own particular fashion, but like the lump of dough, I need to treat myself with love and care, before I can realise and resound with the great Truth of the deep compassion of the Buddha’s heart. As I knead the dough, it starts to soften and move with my folding and rolling. I can feel the rewards of my caring exertions. I constantly sprinkle showers of flour over the ball of dough and the kneading board, to ensure unrestrained movement, free from sticking. I do not have to force the dough, it responds to all my contortions. The great ball of dough is now ready to be split up into loaf size chunks. I knead each loaf size ball of dough, until it becomes completely soft, even and pliable, just like glazier’s putty, before carefully placing it into one of the warm bread tins on the shelf above the stove. I brush oil over the top of each loaf-to-be and sprinkle each one with blue poppy and sesame seeds. Now it is time for the yeast, coaxed along by the gentle wafts of heat rising from the stove, to do their work and make the dough rise ready for the baking. Now to tidy and clean up the kitchen, putting all the unused ingredients away, washing the utensils and the kitchen table, ready for the next round of kitchen work. The bread tins are neatly lined up on the shelf above the stove, covered with a damp cloth; the kitchen is tidy; the hidden yeast are busy raising the dough; the fire is rising inside the stove; everything is as it should be; how could it be otherwise? It is now time for the cook to sit. I go to the zendo, I bow to the Buddha, I go to my place, I bow to the other seekers in the zendo, I unfold my blanket and arrange my cushion, I sit and settle into a comfortable, stable posture, I bow to the wall, I am ready for my work. It is all of me that is sitting on my cushion on the zendo floor now. My thoughts are me, my emotions are me, my worries are me, my plans are me and my fears are me. Just me, sitting in front of the wall. All the ingredients that make me, are mixed together as one, like the dough rising in the bread tins on the shelf above the stove. A smiles rises, some tears fall, an ache sets in, a bird sings in a tree, someone sneezes, I am just sitting in front of the wall. The silence is doing its work. The yeast is raising the dough in the bread tins. A second, a minute, an hour passes, a bell rings, the sitting breaks, a bell rings and the sitting starts, time flows on unnoticed in its silent passage. My thoughts, desires and worries move me this way and that way, they are me, theircomings and goings are my comings and goings, I am just sitting in front of a wall. The noise of silence is all around and within me. The bell chimes, I bow and rise and return to the kitchen. The yeast has done its work, the dough has risen in the bread tins, I can now see the shape of the loaves that will be. The coals in the grate are flaming away, the oven is hot, I open the oven door and quickly put the dough filled bread tins in and close the oven door. The spell is now cast, the baking of the bread has begun, there is no going back from here. The heat of the oven now has to do its hour of work. The bread is baking in the oven, unseen behind the cast iron oven door. I sweep the kitchen floor, the wind shakes the leaves on the trees in the kitchen yard, a blackbird sings on the fence post, a coal in the stove whistles and crackles. A waft of the smell of cooking dough spreads through the kitchen, I wash the porridge pot, a sheep in the field coughs and splutters, some drops of rain patter against the kitchen window. To an onlooker, it is might appear that the process of baking bread only involves the periods of the cook’s action, the gathering, preparing and mixing of the ingredients, the kneading of the dough, the greasing and filling of the bread tins and the putting of the tins in the oven. But the process of baking bread also includes the periods of the cook’s inaction when the stove warms the flour, when the yeast raises the dough and when the oven bakes the bread. In fact the process of baking bread is continuous, so even though you may see me sitting in the zendo or sweeping the kitchen floor or collecting water from the stream or washing the pots, I am also baking the bread. All too often, the seeker will focus only on the periods of action that seem to be make up the practice, the sitting in meditation, the chanting of the sutras and mantras, the reading of the literature, the listening to the words of teachers. In focusing only on the moments of action, the seeker will fail to see that the Path is continuous, that the “Truth” is ever present and that the development of awareness of the moment is an endless process, happening all of the time. Just as when the bread is baking unseen in the oven, filling the kitchen with its warm, welcoming, appetising smell, whilst I sweep the kitchen floor and wash the porridge pot, the unseen Path of my life is continuously unfolding and my awareness is forever growing, the thought free understanding of the moment which has always been present within me, although often hidden, is also slowly baking within me, fusing and integrating into my everyday existence. The kitchen, the dining area and the shrine room are now filled with the smell of the bread baking in the oven. Unseen behind the heavy iron doors of the oven, the bread is ready. Unseen behind the ephemeral, illusory veil of my thinking mind, the nature of the Universe is resounding throughout my being, the kitchen, the valley, the skies and everywhere beyond. I open the oven doors, to be enveloped by a cloud of bread sodden steam, to behold five brown loaves. Carefully I remove each bread tin from the oven and turn each loaf out of the tin and onto a wire grill to cool off. I always find it a great joy to see the freshly baked loaves, lined up together on the wire grill, each perfectly formed in its own way, the domed top, maybe a fold in the crust, straight sides; each loaf is a resplendent testimony to the fact that the age old process of baking works. The bread cools by the kitchen window. The blackbird in the kitchen garden sings a new song. Following the Dharma Path requires a slow, patient, constant turning of the wheel of Samsara. How many turns of the wheel must be made before one can escape? How many expectations must be dropped, how many illusions must be broken, how many desires must be forgotten, before every opposite is united and the silence of the Buddha mind is found? From my patient experience, I know that there will always come the time when the bread is baked, when the Buddha mind is found. Look, the loaves are ready and Buddha mind is all around and within me, how could I ever have doubted this? I place a loaf on the bread board and with a razor sharp knife, I cut through the crust, revealing the unseen heart of the loaf, one slice at a time, just as it is. I put the first slice onto the offering plate for the Buddha shrine in the kitchen garden, in grateful recognition of the reason why the bread needs to be baked, the need to give strength to all sentient beings on their journey to become Bodhisatvas. I arrange the rest of the slices on plates for the coming meal, the loaf unveiled, ready for eating. I smile and bow in gratitude. Who has made the bread? Was it the cook? Was it the oven? Was it the yeast and flour? Who has created the thoughtless understanding of this moment? Was it the seeker? Was it the Practice? Was it the silent unfolding of the Universe? Each had their role to play, each part indivisibly intertwined, but right now, I do not need to know about cause and effect, I am pleased that the bread is ready, I am thankful to be present in the moment, the bell rings for meal time, I put the plates of bread onto the dining tables. The tables fill with the diners, sitting in silence, eagerly awaiting their meal. The grace is spoken in unison and the eating begins. I take a bite of the bread and savour the secrets of its taste and texture, the flavour only becomes apparent on one’s tongue, always remaining a mystery until that moment of the first bite, even to me, the cook. I take each bite anew; taste each moment anew. Every moment savoured in this way discovers the Buddha mind. Where is the flour, seeds, salt, yeast and water now? Where is the dough now? Where is the bread now? Just a few crumbs on the plate and a filled belly. Where is the Truth now? Just a few words receding into the horizon of a bygone time leaving an empty, silent mind. Where is the Path now? Just doing that which is there to be done, with a silently laughing smile, a sparkle in the corner of your eye and a heart that knows no boundaries!" Somewhere up the valley came the faint echo of a bell, the rain had stopped, a few heavy drops fell from the branches of the oak tree and went ping, ping, ping onto the cook’s protective hat. We sat in silence, watching the clouds break up to reveal tiny patches of blue in the sky. A bird whistled a song that raced up and down the scales, jumping from note to note with an instantaneous ease. Nothing needed to be said. Another bell rang out, rippling down the valley as the echo bounced of the hillsides. The cook stood up and slung the sack of flour over his shoulder, securing the weight to his back using the red sash that was wrapped around the sack. He removed the wok from his head and carefully placed and tied it in position over the sack of flour. Looking like a tortoise carrying his precious belongings beneath the protective brass shield, he turned towards me and, making a small bow, he said with a smile: “The moment has come when it is time to bake bread, there is only one loaf left in the bread bin, there are hungry bellies that need feeding, seeking hearts that need their strength sustaining and wandering minds that will need holding still.” He set off up the valley, skipping from rock to rock, nimbly avoiding the mud and puddles, with the surefootedness of a mountain goat. I saw the cook only a few times in the monastery as he came and went from the zendo and as he put the platefuls of bread onto the dining tables at the mealtimes. I greatly appreciated the bread at each meal. Indeed it filled the last corners of my belly where the porridge, soup and stew could not reach. Somewhere within me and all around me, I realised that the thought-free understanding of the moment was rising, being baked, being sliced, being tasted. RETREAT REPORTS We are grateful to retreat participants for writing so honestly about their experiences on retreat. This gives us valuable help in understanding the retreat process. The reports also provide an insight into the difficulties and benefits of attending a retreat. We continue to publish these accounts anonymously. We regret that we are unable to publish everything that we receive. A NAMELESS DREAD Ch’an Retreat, June 1994. I arrived at the retreat in poor shape. I was tired and stressed and, although there were no major problems in my life, the general wear and tear had taken its toll. I always expect the first days of a retreat to be difficult but this time they were exceptionally so. During a previous retreat I had developed a severe middle-ear infection which had required a course of anti- biotics. I had had an adverse reaction to the drug, Along with various physical symptoms I had experienced an overwhelming feeling of agitation and dread, hard to describe and understand. This experience had endured for two weeks gradually reducing in intensity Now, on this retreat, the nameless dread returned. I could no longer excuse it as an effect of a drug. Although weary, I was not at all ill. What was happening? In a lengthy interview with John, I explored the aetiology of this debilitating sentiment. I suspected that a deeply entrenched pattern, a samskara, which had a strong connection with the powerful impression of impermanence that I had had since childhood, had surfaced in me. The underlying anxiety was intense. In my everyday life I compensate for this underlying pattern very well and whenever I have this feeling I point to an exterior circumstance as its cause. It was like a hungry ghost that was accustomed to a diet of worries, responsibilities and problems; now it found itself with a soup kitchen dharma diet and was not happy. I realised just how joy-destroying and energy sapping this obstruction was to my life and practice. It was not due to anything exterior; it was created in my own mind. My interview and the talk John gave that evening had a profound effect upon me. The talk addressed the reality of transience and touched upon its nature, drawing on Dogen Zenji’s “Being-Time ” sermon. During the talk and all next day I had a powerful insight into the identity of time and existence. I realised that time does not happen to things- it is things. Time is the very fabric of the Universe. To wish that something was not impermanent would be to wish that it did not exist. I felt this at the time not as a merely intellectual understanding; it was a gut-felt knowing. I also realised that the ego did not exist, indeed could not exist in the present moment at all. In the Now it is completely superfluous. It could only exist in a reference to the past and future, but past and future play no part in being. For two days my practice sailed along. Direct contemplation came to me as easily as breathing. I had a feeling of serenity and I began to apply myself to illumination as serenity’s necessary conjunct. But then, extraordinarily, on the final day of the retreat the feeling of dread returned full force for no discernible reason. The practice of Ch’an and the teaching of the ultimate emptiness of self-existence does not excuse one from working out one’s personal vexations! I was clear that I would have to do some solid work on this business and that, far from allowing me to escape from my neuroses and negativities, Ch’an would confront me with them and force me to deal with them at the most fundamental level. At the end of the retreat I felt shaky and sobered. There was none of the elation I have felt at the end of previous retreats. I knew that my practice had greatly improved but, equally, I had this frightening business of the ‘dread’ to sort out. I wouldseek help and be prepared for some painful and maybe extended work on myself. I had signed up for the mountain walk which was to take place as a continuation of the retreat. I was feeling so “wobbly” that I almost made up my mind to drop out of it. But some wise and compassionate words from some of my fellow retreatants persuaded me that, if I was cracking up, I‘d be better off hanging out with the Sangha in the wild Welsh mountains than back in the ‘market place’. So I went. Over the three days we spent in the mountains, three elements came together for me; the Sangha, the Wilderness and Dogen’s “ Mountains and Rivers” sutra. John read this to us on the night before our pilgrimage began - around the Welsh Kailas, otherwise know as Pumlimon. I cannot say I understood the sutra, but in some mysterious way the words “green mountains walking” hit me like a thunderclap. For the rest of our time all the extraordinary natural world about me seemed alive in a shimmering, flowing way I had forgotten since childhood. Not just the skylarks and the heart-rending beauty of the Red Kite that came to inspect us over the source of the Wye, but the very streams and mountains, even the sheep-shit. The presence of my companions moved me too. We all seemed able to be what and who we were without fear of disapproval or criticism. We could discuss and disagree without a trace of rancour or point scoring. I think all of us were struck with how easily human beings could live together with the benefit of mindfulness and practice informing our lives. I had time to experience the Sangha outside the discipline of silence on retreat and I realised the importance of the third refuge. I would like to say how deeply grateful I am to John for his guidance over the last ten days. I know he must be feeling his way into his position as lineage holder, and how difficult this must be at times, and how isolating. To mix the roles of friend and teacher is never easy, but then, fortunately for us all, John isn’t stuck on roles. I found a great affinity with his teaching and deep commitment to brooking no bullshit in the pursuit of wisdom. What passed between us in interviews and on the mountain has been of greater help to me than anything else I can remember. All the mountains, all the rivers - such a beautiful landscape! During endless aeons, in each life, this world has appeared - no amount of praise could be enough. It is not the product of anyone’s strength; Every single aspect of it arises from your own mind. (Master Kusan Sunim) WESTERN ZEN RETREAT Maenllwyd, March 1995 Previous Western Zen Retreats have been enormously powerful and emotional experiences and I brought with me all sorts of expectations. My koan was “What is life?” The aspect of my life that came up over and over again was to do with my work, specifically the job I am doing now, which involves four hours travelling a day and is turning out more and more to be not what I want to do. Last summer on the Ch’an retreat I felt that for the first time I had begun to understand what is meant by “practice”, and for the first time I was practising in the sense of working; working progressively and steadily, taking the ‘good’ meditation sessions along with the less ‘good’, in the knowledge that all is practice and it leads somewhere. This WZR felt like a fairly steady progression. A deepening of steadiness in the practice. I felt a great love for the practice. For the things it teaches me. I feel confirmed now in the certainty that I can take whatever comes up in my life and sit with it with the Buddha. The word that keeps coming up for me is “maturity”. I am facing life issues that are to do with maturity - what to do about my working life after 20 years in the same line; about not repeating errors. It feels a very big and very serious thing. So the practice is rooting itself very deeply. No youthful fireworks. I am continuing. ALL THINGS ARE TEACHERS Ch’an Retreat June 1994 On the first evening John told us that he was going to teach silent illumination. This is a method that I have felt affinity for, and have begun to use on previous retreats. I have had glimpses of serenity and silence but I have found it difficult to sustain and use at home. Should I stick to my plan of “raising the doubt” as I had set out to do? I decided that the only thing to do was to go along with the retreat the way it was and not the way I wanted it to be. I suppose from the very beginning I had to accept that it was no good having any expectations. I started off watching the breath. Things that I have learned on previous retreats proved helpful. I relaxed. I gave my body to the cushion and my mind to the method. I watched my breath and watched thoughts coming and going. I found that I was able to let them through, let them be and let them go. I was not becoming involved in great long trains of thought. I understood the metaphor of the feather and the fan. By the second day I found that I was enjoying myself. Sitting was going well. I did not find the pain in my legs too much of a problem. Space had somehow opened up around me. I was in it and part of it, but not bothered. It was light and airy and gentle. During the evening talk I felt like I did as a child listening to a bedtime story. It was simple and it was OK. There was a phrase from Thich Nhat Hahn that kept coming back to me and that John used during the talk. It was “Shining the lamp of awareness”. The middle day of the retreat was difficult. I wanted to find the serenity that I had experienced the previous day. I wanted to be in the space that I had been in before. I found that I was fighting myself. I was tense and my legs were painful. I knew that I should drop wanting and drop resistance, but couldn’t. I began to wonder what on earth I was doing here. I thought about going home and abandoning Ch’an completely. Was I just conning myself? Wouldn’t I be better off just getting on with life instead of trying to find all these spiritual experiences which none of my family understand anyway? My job was dealing with the firewood. After the load of logs had arrived from the farm James got me shifting them and splitting them. They were tough logs and I couldn’t split them. The axe got stuck and I felt angry and helpless. After a while, Frank, (who had been taught log splitting by a Canadian lumberjack) took over. I pottered about tacking the logs. I was then asked to split the little logs into bundles of faggots using a little chopper. Making kindling requires mindfulness but little strength. The logs just split themselves. It wasn’t me splitting logs, it was logs splitting. During the rest period I noticed a quotation on the wall of the bedroom: When we wish to teach and enlighten all things by ourselves we are deluded. When all things teach and enlighten us we are enlightened. Genjo koan Dogen Zenji The logs taught me to tackle the things that I can manage. To chip away at the edges. No heroics. I went back to watching the breath. During an interview John spoke to me about how the method of silent illumination is sometimes likened to gardening. Preparing the soil and carefully cultivating the plants. It’s gentle, it’s careful, it’s mindful, but it doesn’t need a bulldozer. A garden is something that needs regular attention. Sometimes enormous weeds grow and choke the plants, but with correct cultivation and creativity a garden can be a place of peace, serenity and joy. Instead of climbing a slippery glass and ice mountain I was sitting at the bottom waiting patiently. Gardening on the lower slopes. The retreat continued but I find it difficult to write about. I was sitting in the Buddha room, but I wasn’t. Everything was just there in the sunlight. Quite OK, just there, no worry, no hassle. Shapes presented themselves. The buttercups glowed in the grass. I noticed what it is like to be present with presence. Time sped by. Yet what is time? There is no time. At one level I have an intuition about this. At another level I find reason takes over. Of course there must be time. Time, on the other hand is just a fabrication of humanity and of the mind. It is impossible to reason about the intuition. The intuition is so much at odds with the time that we have learnt to live by. Yet some everyday experiences we call “timeless”. I can sit on the rocks by the sea at home. It is timeless. It is always changing and yet has not changed for thousands of years. I found “freedom and ease of body and mind”. Indeed it had always been there. “What is this anguish of seeking in the future that which is already lying in the palms of our hands?” PROGRAMME AND EVENTS MEDITATION EVENINGS We continue to meet on Wednesday evenings, 7:30 until 10:00pm, during term-time, at the Iyengar Yoga Centre, Denmark Place, Gloucester Road, Bristol. The Autumn term runs from 20th September 1995. John will be available occasionally for personal interview and will continue to teach on aspects of Ch’an. We ask you to contribute £2:00 to help pay for the room. CARDIFF GROUP This group is run by Eddy Street and meets on the last Tuesday of every month. For further details, e-mail Peter, as below MANCHESTER GROUP Simon Child is setting up a group in the North West. For further details contact him on simon@child.demon.co.uk SWINDON GROUP After a short break, this group now meets on Monday evenings. For more details, contact Peter as below EDINBURGH GROUP Contact Frank Tait via Peter DHARMA STUDY GROUP Tim Paine is co-ordinating this group which will start in Bristol in the Autumn. If you are interested contact Peter RETREAT PROGRAMME AT MAENLLWYD For further details of the ‘95/’96 programme, please contact Dr. John Crook,. Tel.or FAX +44 1 934 842 231. RETREATS WITH SHI-FU. Ch’an Centre New York. For information about retreats in New York, contact: Ch’an Meditation Center, Institute of Chung Hwa Buddhist Culture, 90-56 Corona Avenue, Elmhurst, New York 11373, USA. Tel: +1 718 592 6593, FAX: +1 718 592 0717. ABOUT THE NEW CH’AN FORUM Please send articles, poems, letters, general comments, subscription or back-copy requeststo: Peter Howard, 100540,3662@compuserve.com Hard-copy vesions of past and future issues [which includes drawings, etc.] can be obtained for the sum of 2 pounds sterling each, including surface postage anywhere in the world. Contact Peter for more details. Under the terms of the DATA PROTECTION ACT, we would like to remind regular recipients of the NCF that their name and address is held in a personal computer database for the sole purpose of producing a mailing/contact list. Anyone not wishing to have their details stored or used in this way, or who no longer wishes to receive NCF, should write or otherwise contact Peter Howard, as above.