Zen Lingo: Intimacy

The mind of the great sage of India
is intimately transmitted from west to east.

- Sandokai

The word 'intimacy' gets throw around a lot at the Zen Center, and at first it's a bit of a surprise. Intimacy has long been relegated to a euphemism for sexual intimacy; but, for the most part, that's not what we're talking about. Nope, it's just good old fashioned closeness, deep familiarity, the feeling of family.

A lot of time when we use the word intimacy in colloquial speech we're using it to highlight the lack of intimacy implicit in a brief or sudden relationship: "Those two used to be intimate, now they don't get along so well." Or, "I heard Sam and Max had an intimate encounter after leaving the bar." Usually these are followed with chuckles, maybe a little eye rolling and preparations are made for dealing with the fallout of the two parties actually developing some intimacy only to find out that they really don't want it.

Decades Together

When relationships start to stretch out longer than a few hours, the intimacy that develops starts to really highlight the delicate nature of our connection to each other. Those first few days and weeks set the tone for the months and years to follow, the first steps should be careful and mindful if we intend to build something that lasts. And as the years add up the depth of the connection grows, and we can see the strength of it as well. This is easy to understand when thinking about the intimacy that can develop between bonded partners over time, which, I hear, can be really nice.

Now, look at the issue in the context of developing stable relationships with an entire community, and we have a real challenge on our hands. All human communities deal with this one way or another, and spiritual communities have the even greater challenge of integrating people who show up looking for refuge from their lives and sometimes themselves. Nobody signs up for this because their life is going great (or maybe they do, but I haven't run into any of them yet), people come to spiritual community because they want to make themselves better, and they realize that it takes committed long term relationships to do that.

San Francisco Zen Center has had a regular residential population since before the monastery at Tassajara opened in 1967. Some dedicated students rented apartments across the street from Sokoji before the group moved into City Center in 1969. That's more than 45 years living together as a community, which creates a level of intimacy that it's hard to understand from the outside. A year in I'm only beginning to see the vague outlines of what it means to practice with a group of people for that long. Maintaing a stable community over that length of time also requires a lot of stewardship, and thankfully the annals of Zen are full of accounts of monks being ejected from the temple, so there is ample precedent for doing so. Even the Abbots aren't immune.

They Come and They Go

The first hurdle to clear is just showing up more than a few times, a lot of people come and go: Lay practitioners will drop in for a practice period, Green Gulch hosts farm and garden interns for part of the year, there is a guest student program running at Green Gulch and City Center for people who are interested in engaging in the practice for a week or longer. Many come for the experience in organic farming and gardening, stay for the duration of their internship and are never heard from again.

I introduced myself to one of the Priests In Training at the farm, who I'd seen on and off for more than six months but had never talked to, and had my suspicion confirmed in the following chat: for the long term residents, building relationships with new arrivals who'll be gone in six months is a bit of a loosing proposition. They come, they sit, they leave. Not all of them, a few stick around, either for extended internships, the following practice period or possibly a work apprentice post.

Managing this influx and out flux of people is tricky, and intimacy issues crop up quickly. In a community of more than 55 people there are bound to be people you don't see eye to eye with, people that are attractive, people that trigger aversion, and on and on. There are some interesting guidelines, guest students in particular agree to the following:

"guest students are asked to refrain from drug or alcohol use and from initiating new sexual relationships during their guest student stay"

This might seem a bit heavy handed at first, but having had some experience with community when I was younger, I have to say that it's not a bad idea at all. And if you dig into the Ten Essential Precepts you'll notice something interesting, the 3rd get's more coverage than any of the others. Clearly there are still Shoes Outside the Door in many people's minds around here.

So intimacy is a big deal, both the euphemistic kind and the day to day living with over decades kind. Just a year in and I'm starting to feel like part of the community, getting to know some of the quirks, personalities and stories that come with even just occasionally intersecting with the residents once or twice a week.

Face to Face Transmission

Getting back to the Sandokai, there is another form of intimacy around here that's critically important. The transmission of the lineage requires deep intimacy between teacher and student, it's a level of face to face engagement that we seldom get in life. Some people have it with their therapist but that relationship is focused on the patient, but what goes on in dokusan is (or should be) very different.

The goal of the teacher is to push the student towards their awakening, and to give confirmation when they reach it. This process of transmission requires that the teacher and student are able to see into each other in a way that is impossible without decades of intimacy. Understanding is only part of the process, there must also be decades of practice and devotion to the process of pouring oneself into the behavioral mold of the Buddha. The conventional wisdom is that it takes a decade to get it, and another to figure out how to teach it.

This is the true intimacy at the heart of practice, it's what we get up at 4:30 in the morning to experience. Sitting and breathing together, in silence, then chanting and bowing together, is it's own intimacy. Learning about each other and ourselves as we go through the forms, each deviating in their own way, the community coming together to show us our rough edges. It's this intimacy that allows us to get beyond the facades we present, to see ourselves reflected in the community, to get feedback from people who are trying their best to simply be helpful. For the benefit of all beings.

The Religious Question

Zen isn't really a religion, it's more of a philosophy…
- radom co-worker

Is Zen a religion? Or is it more of a philosophy? I've heard this question asked a few times, it's sometimes generalized to Buddhism in general but Zen has attained a particular mystical quality in the Western consciousness since it's introduction. When seen from outside, it has all the trappings of religion but there is no supernatural power to worship, as we find in most other religions.

Sakyamuni Buddha was a bit of an agnostic—though that term didn't exist until Thomas Huxley coined it 1869—when asked if there was a god or supernatural powers his answer boiled down to, "I don't know, it's not important to your enlightenment. don't worry about it." Zen continues this tradition of relying on direct experience, you can imagine a Zen Master responding to the same question in much the same way the founder did, though they might make you do a Koan or two first.

So the open question is how do you define religion, there are plenty of definitions that either imply or require a God to fit the bill, here's the first definition from the dictionary that I have handy:

religionnoun, the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods

Zen, and Buddhism in general, with their emphasis on direct experience and the present moment, don't so much say that there is or isn't God or a life after death, but that it's not really possible for us to know and thinking about it is just another mental formation which comes and goes and has no reality. Another way of looking at it is that the question itself separates the asker from God; the idea that you have a self individual from the universe and that there is another, separate entity which is more or less than you is what prevents you from directly seeing the answer to the question. In essence, Zen refuses to answer the question when posed in this way: it's best answer is, mu.

Enter Avalokitesvara

Buddhism is at first glance polytheistic, as there are many different statues of various Buddha and Bodhisattva incarnations all over the temple, altars to the myriad various forms taken by the Buddha over the two and a half millennia of development and transmission across Asia. D.T. Suzuki describes Kannon or Avalokitesvara in Manual of Zen Buddhism:

Kannon is exclusively the Bodhisattva of compassion. In this respect he resembles Fugen (Samantabhadra), … He is one of the most popular Bodhisattvas of Mahayana Buddhism.

Except, if you clicked the link to Kannon, the Japanese name for the god, you'll notice that the figure depicted is the earlier feminine form Guanyin, which came from China. Some scholars argue for an origin in Tamil or Hindu traditions suggesting that Bodhidarma brought the idea of the Bodhisattva across with the Dharma and welded it onto an existing popular figure.

What's going on here is called syncretism, it's the combination of previously unrelated religions traditions after they are exposed to each other. Buddhism, as it's made it's way across Asia and eventually to the shores of America has synthesized with established religious order and modified itself to adapt to local tradition, the Bodhisattva ideal being used to explain the actions of the existing local deity. It happened in Tibet with Bon, in China with Confucianism, in Japan with Shinto and here in America with Church Culture (which is why we have Saturday and Sunday programs with a talk for lay practitioners, for e.g.).

At each stop along the way Buddhism adapts itself to the local religious environment, never trying to displace and freely adapting it's symbolic language to match the local idiom. The concept of a Bodhisattva, one who surrenders their own enlightenment for the sake of others is an easy match in most religions. Jesus Christo Bodhisattva, already exists in peoples minds, I think.

This provides us with a tantalizing clue about what we're looking at; the symbols in our altars are just that, symbols. The priesthood understands this and allows the symbols to change with context while maintaing their meaning within the dharma. The dharma is modular and adaptable to different religious environments, it's also able to coexist with other traditions in relative harmony because of this, but is that enough to make it a religion on it's own?

If It Walks Like a Monk…

Here's where it's hard to look at Zen and not see religion: monks, monasteries, chants, prayers, ceremonies, candles, incense, bowing, retreats, study, sutras and the congregation of lay followers all scream organized religion (the kind that makes the new age, 'spiritual but not religious' crowd recoil a bit). If all the external trappings of religion are there, isn't it a religion? If it walks like a monk and chants like a monk, isn't it a monk?

And yet without one or more deity we question it, we wonder if it isn't all just a complicated pacifier for the human need for structure and ritual, evolved over the centuries as a way to give our natural desires for religious experience an outlet while preserving and perpetuating the dharma. The priests like to say that "emptiness is form" which implies that even the absence of something can make something else a reality.

The First Science of Mind

Buddhism is arguably the first psychological science since it relies and insists on direct experience of the practitioner to develop an enlightened mind. Buddhism developed and evolved during a period of great religious and philosophical diversity in Asia, to survive and perpetuate it needed a freely relatable set of symbols which could be mapped to other religious systems, creating a bridge from one system to another.

By venerating the local gods and idols for their most noble traits, no sense of competition is created and the ideas in the dharma can be introduced. By having a strictly agnostic stance on the existence of any sort of god or gods prevents conflict by essentially avoiding the sort of questions which lead to religious wars.

These features of Buddhism have allowed it to survive alongside one or more religions with relatively little cultural cost. When engaged in theological discussion there's very little firm ground in Buddhism to defend, so it's hard to win or loose an argument about any religious topic when the opponent openly professes to not knowing the answer and isn't interested in fighting at all.

What is This Thing Called Zen?

So if, Buddhism itself isn't a religion, but a system of psychology and practice that uses the religious nature of humanity to perpetuate itself and maintains a parasitic or viral or symbiotic relationship with one or more 'traditional' religions, what then in Zen? Has the vast silent emptiness of sitting meditation taken early indian, Himalayan, Confucian, Shinto and finally American traditions and given us something that is the ultimate subversion of religious thinking (is there a soul? how can there be when there isn't even a self!) but which could not have come down to us through the ages without it's close alignment and coexistence with several different religions.

Zen then is the syncretic product of the original Buddha Dharma and a number of religious and philosophical traditions, the rituals, robes and forms carried forward and absorbed from various contacts over the millennia. Leaving us with a rich history of literature, ceremonies and artwork depicting the development and transmission of the way (an idea borrowed from the Tao). Buddhism may not, in itself, be a traditional religion because of it's lack of any recognizable god, but everywhere that it is practiced it has adopted and preserved the rites and icons of some other religious institution, along with the seed of the dharma itself.

There is another definition of religion in the dictionary, one which I think fits Zen much better than the first:

a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance: consumerism is the new religion

Zen sees the transmission of the Buddha Dharma as being of supreme importance, it is pursued with religious fervor by the priests as they spend each day trying to make themselves into a Buddha for the benefit of all of us. I can't think of any greater act of devotion or worship or faith. If that's not religious I'm not sure what is.

Zen Lingo: Aversion

Every group has it's own idiomatic phrases and concepts that it uses to ease communication. Sometimes the meaning is immediately clear even if there are subtleties that take some time to grasp. Aversion, at Zen Center, is one of those words. It's used more or less in line with it's dictionary meaning but the subtext of any discussion of aversion around here is a little different than what you might be used to in everyday life. It's actually not unique to Zen Center, I've heard it used in a number of spiritual communities with roughly the same sense.

For starters, Aversion comes up much more often than you would hear in typical North American English, Aversion is a bit of a 50¢ word, people use it when they want to sound fancy. It's also typically considered perfectly normal to express aversion to a person place or thing, though we often use other constructs. So you might say, "I'm having some aversion to work today" in stead of "work sucks" and everyone would understand that you're bitching about work and showing off a little in the process.

Not so in the 'spiritual' sense, Aversion means just what it does in english, "I don't like it!" but the implication is much more serious. Hey, you're avoiding this, maybe you should, you know, look at it and figure out why maybe? There's a call to action included in the use of aversion that is intended to draw the subject's attention to the object and a request to further inquiry.

So when I say that I'd developed a bit of an aversion to sitting, to going into the Zendo even, after my last one day sit, well there was nothing to be done about it but to sign up for something more serious. In between the one day and seven day sittings I clocked exactly one session in the Zendo. Even going into the Zendo was a bit of a motivational challenge, I was helping with the children's program last month and Nancy had to give me a little head-waggle to get me to take off my shoes and go sit down with the kids for all of ten minutes before we headed down to the farm.

The only way to really deal with aversion is to face it and watch what comes up, see what the root of the disgust is and see if it's really something you want to hold on to. Typically the answer is no, though there are times when aversion is well founded, but most of the time you'll learn something important about yourself if you take the time to face it.

That said, I haven't been back to City Center for more than a month. Guess I'll have to face that sooner than later.

独参 Dokusan

Dokusan (独参) is a formal meeting with a Zen teacher, typically a priest who has received Dharma Transmission from their own master. The point of dokusan for the student is to get instruction on how to move forward with their practice, how to keep progressing towards, well, nothing.

I scheduled a meeting after my first one-day sit, because I had some questions about my experience and wanted to know what steps to take next. That meeting was at 6:30 in the morning at Green Gulch—apparently you have to get up early to catch a zen master—so I booked a room overnight, got up at 4:30 for the first siting period in the zendo, left at the first walking break and wandered around in the misty foggy morning for a few minutes before the appointed time.

What goes on in a dokusan meeting is private, variable to the student's needs, and for an outside observer probably not that interesting. What is interesting are the forms for a teacher interview, which vary from temple to temple, even in Japan. I did some reading ahead of time and found the following in D. T. Suzuki's, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism:

…seeing the master does not take place openly; the monk is required to go individually to the master's room, where the interview takes place in a most formal and solemn manner. When the monk is about to cross the threshold, he makes three bows, each time prostrating himself on the floor; he now enters the room keeping his hands palm to palm in front of his chest, and when he comes near the master he kneels down and makes still another prostration.

This ceremony over, no further worldly considerations are entertained; if necessary from the Zen point of view, even blows may be exchanged.

D. T. Suzuki was principally concerned with Rinzai Zen, which differs in it's forms from Soto Zen as practiced at the Zen Center. Fortunately there is an excellent description of the forms for dokusan as imparted by Shunryu Suzuki in Crooked Cucumber:

[Suzuki Roshi] gave dokusan in the congregation's office at the bottom of the stair. When it was Betty's turn for dokusan, she sat zazen in the hall until she heard Suzuki's handbell ringing to announce that it was her turn. She fluffed her cusion, bowed, and slowly walked into the office. There Suzuki sat on a zafu facing an empty zafu a few feet in front of him. Behind him was a little altar that had been set up for the dokusan, with a candle that provided most of the light in the room. Following the procedure Suzuki had taught them, Betty bowed upon entering the room and did three full bows [prostrations] before Suzuki.

Similar, but there are some differences, the number of bows, the use of the bell, when to gassho, etc.. Of course, all that reading left me somewhat over-prepared. The forms for my teacher meeting were abbreviated versions, I was ready to prostrate myself but only bell ringing and gassho bows were required.

However, the fundimental form of teacher and student meeting face to face is unchanged. The heart of the process is the same and the forms are only there to create the right atmosphere. The forms of Zen are empty of meaning but critical to set the stage and prepare the mind, they exist to create a situation where you are bound to make mistakes, where you are forced over and over to retreat to your beginners mind.

Like the precepts, forms are made to be broken, they represent a goal which is impossible to attain but which we can always aspire to. To quote Suzuki Roshi:

"Every thing you do is right, nothing you do is wrong, yet you must still make ceaseless effort.