Deming Zen Group

[Zen Master Seung Sahn tells this story about his teacher, Zen Master Ko Bong.]

When he was a young monk, my teacher, Ko Bong Sunim, was travelling in the mountains. He visited a small chanting temple in a beautiful spot and decided to stay there for a week. There was only one other monk there, the abbot of the temple. After a few days the abbot asked Ko Bong Sunim to stay alone in the temple while he went to visit the house of a student. Ko Bong Sunim said, "O.K., no problem," and the abbot left.

At noon a woman came to the temple carrying a large amount of rice and fruit and asked for the abbot. "He is visiting a student,'' said Ko Bong Sunim.

"Oh, I wanted to have a ceremony," said the woman.

"Fine, we can have a ceremony," said Ko Bong Sunim. So she cooked the rice, got everything ready, and put the rice and fruit on the altar.

Ko Bong Sunim did not understand the first thing about ceremonies. He had been a monk for a few years, but he had stayed in a Zen temple, where the monks only sit Zen. In Korea, ceremony monks take care of ceremonies; sutra monks study the sutras; Zen monks just sit. So Ko Bong Sunim didn't know when to bow or how to hit the moktak.

"Time to begin," said the woman.

"O.K."

Ko Bong Sunim read the sutras a little, but he didn't have them memorized. However, he did remember some Taoist texts he had studied before he became a monk. So he began hitting the moktak and chanting a Taoist sutra. Sometimes he would bow. He just made it up as he went along, and he kept it up for about an hour, just chanting. At the end, the woman said, "Thank you very much. That was a wonderful ceremony!" Then she left.

On her way down the mountain she met the abbot of the temple coming home. "Oh," he said, "did you visit the temple?''

"Yes, and we had a wonderful ceremony.''

"Ceremony? That monk knows nothing about ceremonies!''

"We had a Taoist ceremony.''

The woman had been a nun, so she knew all about Buddhist ceremonies. During Ko Bong Sunim's ceremony she had sat in the back of the hall, laughing and laughing. But she said to the abbot, "It was wonderful. Throughout the whole ceremony he kept one mind. Sweat was pouring down his face. It was all wrong, but it was wonderful!''

When the abbot returned, he said to Ko Bong Sunim, "I hear you had a good ceremony today.''

"It was terrible! All I could remember were some Taoist texts.''

"The woman said it was wonderful." said the abbot. "She used to be a ceremony nun. She said you went straight ahead, with completely no hindrance, so she said it was a wonderful ceremony.''

"Really?" Ko Bong Sunim and the abbot had a good laugh.

"She was very happy. She said you hit the moktak as if your life depended on it. Only one mind.''

So this is a correct ceremony: only one mind. Whether it is a Buddhist text or a Taoist text doesn't matter. Understanding or not understanding the correct form is not important. What is important is this child's mind; we call this Buddha's mind, just going straight, without thinking, keeping try mind. So you must attain this Buddha's mind, O.K.? O.K.

[From a talk by Zen Master Dae Bong, an early student of Zen Master Seung Sahn who now lives in Korea.]

Before it moved to Cumberland, the Providence Zen Center was in a house in Providence [Rhode Island]. Everybody had jobs taking care of the house, and the woman who was house master did the laundry in a little room on the second floor. At that time I was working as a welder in town. I was removed from my former social life, and in some ways I felt alone. I was really trying to push myself in practice. It was very hard for me to get up in the morning and stay alert, and when we'd read the chants I couldn't even focus. I was very tired, and there wasn't much chance to get involved in something satisfying socially. But I would come home and run into the house master on the second floor. She would have just come home from her job, and would be hanging out the laundry. We would talk about something or other, and usually I would end up helping hang out the laundry. I remember a lot of people would end up there with their problems, their despair or their unhappiness, and everyone would get a certain amount of air time. Then they would end up hanging out the laundry and talking about something else.

There was something very affecting and helpful about that for me...it's very rare for people to live their lives without a lot of resentment either toward their relationships or toward their work.

We talk about practicing in our everyday life. There's a great saying: "Zen mind is everyday mind."... The meditation room is one situation, but every moment is most important. It's painful to look at our lives because we can see our reactions, and they may not match our understanding of things and the ideas we have. I noticed when I was a new student that if I was really trying hard- getting up before the wake-up bell, really trying to do mantra,doing all the chants, eating formal meals, working all day, not goofing around at night - when I really tried to do that, my mind was like shit. I could do it, but all this garbage thinking was going on all the time. If I decided one day not to go to work, to just go someplace and read a book I might feel great. But if I looked at my life, I wasn't doing my job. It's very difficult sometimes to just do what you have to do without resentment. If you can do that, you give other people such a tremendous gift: you relieve their suffering automatically. That's the heart of our practice. If we can really do it, really digest the anger, ignorance, and greed that keep us from living our lives without resentment, we will produce tremendous energy.

In order to help this blog attract more readers, this blog entry is necessary.  We are posting a special code that Technorati uses to verify ownership of the blog. 

The code is:  azujtmg2dq

There is nothing else here to see, readers.  Please enjoy our other postings of dharma talks, stories, and information related to Deming Zen Group.

[Zen Master Seung Sahn]

Boring is a very important word. If you attain boring, then everything is boring. Then this is no desire, no anger, no ignorance. Desire is boring; anger is boring; ignorance is boring; everything is boring.Then, you will get Enlightenment. So boring is very important. Everything is equal. But people don't like boring. They want something, and boring is not interesting. It's like clear water. Clear water has no taste, but no taste is great taste. Everybody likes ice cream, but eating ice cream all day is not possible. However, if you're thirsty, clear water is wonderful any time -- better than honey, better than ice cream, better than anything. The truth is like this.

[Zen Master Seung Sahn tells this story...]

One time, my great-grand teacher, Zen Master Kyong Ho, was walking with his student Yong Song Sunim, who was to become a famous Zen Master in Korea. Kyong Ho Sunim was a person of wide mind and wide actions. Yong Song Sunim was a person of kind mind and kind actions. As they were walking, they saw a group of children who had captured some frogs and were torturing them.So Yong Song Sunim offered some money to the children and bought the frogs from them. Then he put them back in the pond.

They started walking again. Then Yong Song Sunim said, "Today I brought free life to many frogs. That certainly is good karma for me and for the frogs." Immediately Kyong Ho Sunim said, "That's wonderful action, but you will go to hell!"

Yong Song Sunim was very surprised, "You said it's wonderful action. But why do you say I will go to hell?" "The frogs are free but you will go to hell," said Kyong Ho Sunim. Yong Song Sunim begged him to explain. Kyong Ho Sunim said, "You keep saying 'I' brought free life to the frogs; this 'I' will go to hell." Then Yong Song Sunim understood and bowed to him.

Therefore, anytime you have "I,"you have a problem. Our teaching is only do it. Don't make I. When you do a good action, it's not "I make good action"; it's your original job as a human being. A helping action is not good, not bad. Nature does its job without making good or bad. Water is flowing; is that good or bad? Sky is blue, tree is green; is that good or bad?

Don't make anything. Just do it.

[An excerpt from a letter written by Zen Master Soeng Hyang to a student many years ago.]

There are two basic divisions of checking. One is checking yourself and the other is checking something outside of yourself (i.e. other people or situations). I can use the example you gave me in your letter about your foot falling asleep to explain something about ways of checking.

There you are, sitting in meditation at the PZC and the chugpi is hit,indicating that it is time to stand up. You try to stand up, fall back down and start to laugh. Then you start thinking, "don't laugh, everyone is keeping silence at this time." If that is all you thought, that is not checking. That is what is called "following your correct situation." If you had continued to laugh, you would have disturbed the formal meditation, so you and Buddha are the same. Congratulations!

But let's say you start having more thoughts about your sleeping foot situation: "I hope nobody saw me fall. If they did see me fall, they probably think I'm stupid, just a beginner, a clumsy slob. No, it's not their fault, maybe I am a clumsy slob. I'm lazy and no good. Why are we doing this?' Sitting cross-legged is not natural, this whole system of practicing is too strict. Oh, I wish I could be like Soen Sa Nim!"

So that's checking. Instead of digesting each moment completely and understanding it intuitively, the mind turns, twists, and holds it. If we were not attached to our idea of I, my, me, we would not have to manipulate reality. But because we think we are separate from everything else, we have to defend our self-image and consequently expend tremendous amounts of energy doing so. We make up a complex world of Opposites, running from, or clinging to things in order toavoid feeling threatened or hurt.

Practicing with the question, "What is this?" will stop the habitual process of thinking in terms of opposites, and the mind then becomes one with each moment.

Question: What is the underlying essence of Zen?

Zen Master Wu Kwang (lifting up his cup and drinking): Cold water. Zen Master Seung Sahn told me that's what they say in Korea when they want to tell someone to just keep a clear mind: "Go drink cold water." Only that.

I had an interesting and useful experience a few weeks ago. I was talking with Ken Kessel, a longtime student of Zen Master Seung Sahn. He told me that sometimes he likes to practice for two hours straight in the morning. He doesn't walk,he doesn't get up, he just sits there for two hours in his full lotus position, without moving. I got inspired to find out what that was about, so I tried a couple of times. I got pretty close, one time an hour and fifty minutes. One of the interesting experiences I had when trying this was coming to a moment when I had the recognition that it was just sitting. There was nothing miraculous that was going to appear, even if I sat for two more hours straight. It was just sitting, pure and simple, just like drinking cold water is just drinking cold water.

That's our teaching, our way, and yet it's difficult to believe. Over and over we want to make something, add something, romanticize something. It's very difficult to just believe in the truth of something that simple. So maybe there is no essence of Zen, none at all.

As soon as we start to think about the essence of something, we're already caught up in some subtle conceptual framework because we're looking for something called an "essence." If you sit for two hours straight, you can go on a long journey towards essence. Your nervous system and your mind and everything will do miraculous and extraordinary things in two hours of sitting, that is, along with the pain in your legs. So one of the fundamentals of the Zen way of talking is to talk about "no self"and "no trace." No trace means that experiences or phenomena have no trace of something conceptual sticking to them. That means no essence.

There's a story about a sea turtle who comes out of the ocean, crawls up on the beach, buries its eggs, smooths over the sand so that no one can find anything and then goes back down the beach to the ocean and swims away. But this turtle has a tail. As it crawls down the beach, the tail drags back and forth in the sand, leaving quite a clear tracing of just where the eggs were. So, the Zen way emphasizes existing with no trace, no tail. Somehow we have to cut off our tail, or have the patience to endure just waiting until it falls off by itself. It's doubtful to me,at this point in my life, that we could really cut it off once and for all. If you cut it off, it just grows back anyway, like a salamander.

Richie said last night when I came in that it was good to have the retreat going on here and it was amazing how quickly things fall away and you get back to the simplicity of natural mind. After saying that, he said, "It's amazing how easily things fall away, and also how quickly they come back."

We need the patience just to let these things wear themselves out, over and over, until there's no trace left. It's like sandpaper, getting things smoother and smoother. We're all looking for the essence of Zen, and that's creating many problems.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

From a talk by Zen Master Wu Kwang, guiding teacher of the Chogye International Zen Center in New York.

All are cordially invited to participate in our first formal retreat.

Deming Zen Group will host a one-day meditation retreat on Saturday, July 18.  The retreat will take place from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at the St. Augustine Anglican Church, 521 S. 8th Street, here in Deming.

When the Buddha lay dying, he told visitors,"Life is very short.  Please investigate it closely."  A retreat is an opportunity to look closely at one's life over a period of hours.  We practice sitting and walking meditation, and we keep silence while walking, sitting, eating together, taking a break, sweeping or cleaning, for each and every moment.

If you are new to meditation, we recommend attending a regular sitting of the group first and getting meditation instruction.  If this is not possible, you are certainly welcome to the full day's retreat.  Please plan on attending an 8:30 AM meditation instruction for beginners when you sign up. 

Registration for the retreat is required so that we can plan accordingly.  Traditional meditation cushions (zafus and zabutons) will be available at the retreat, and so will chairs.  A vegetarian lunch will be served, and we will eat together informally (but keeping silence).

During afternoon meditation practice, there will be optional consulting interviews with the leader of Deming Zen Group.  Consulting interviews are an opportunity to talk with a senior student about your practice and its application to your life.  There will be no koan practice during these interviews.  The consult is strongly recommended but not required.

A donation is required so that we may give something to the church that is hosting us and defray the expenses of the retreat.  The suggested donation is $25, but please give what you can and if times are tight, please don't let money be a barrier -- come and sit. 

Here is the retreat schedule, subject to change:

8:30 AM - Meditation instruction for beginners

9:00 AM - Retreat orientation for all participants

9:30 AM - Sitting and walking meditation

12:00 PM - Lunch

12:45 - Dharma Talk

1:00 - Sitting and walking meditation, with consulting interviews

3:30 - Chanting

3:40 - Circle Talk

NOTE: Throughout the day, we will maintain silence, including lunch and break time.

To ask questions or to sign up (seating is limited!), please click on "Contact Us" above.  We hope to see you on July 18!

[Zen Master Su Bong was an early student of Zen Master Seung Sahn who became an internationally beloved teacher in his own right.  He passed away in 1994.  He answered this question at a retreat in 1983.]

Q: Recently a lot of us have been learning about the medical consequences of a nuclear war. My question is, if you have a friend who is drowning or if you're aware that a nuclear bomb can wipe out all your friends, what is the correct thing to do?

ZMSB: You must practice very hard.

Q: But if you are sitting on the shore, practicing very hard, then your friend will drown.

ZMSB: If you are practicing very hard, then you will be able to jump into the ocean and save your friend.

When the Buddha lay dying, he said to his visitors, "Life is very short.  Please investigate it closely."

Retreats are an opportunity to practice together for longer than our usual one-hour meetings.  Over the course of a day, we pay close attention to each moment of our life: during sitting, during walking meditation, while eating together in silence, while sweeping a floor, while resting during a break, and so on. 

Leading up to a retreat and sometimes at the beginning of the retreat itself, there can be a forlorn feeling.  Cars go by outside, and we think of things we would like to be doing elsewhere.  In time, this restlessness settles down and by retreat's end there is a feeling of accomplishment and gratitude.  Those are wonderful feelings, and underneath that there is even better news: the challenge of a retreat gives us a chance to strengthen our sitting practice, and to practice the art of returning to center.  Things come up during a retreat: resistance, desires, frustration, fantasies, and more.  As we return to what we are doing in face of every one of these challenges, we develop a stronger "moment to moment" practice of Zen that serves us well throughout our lives.

On July 18, we will have our first retreat.  We will try a single-day retreat first, with an informal lunch eaten in silence.  It will be held at the St. Augustine Anglican Church, and many thanks to Father Win Mott for welcoming us there. 

A full schedule will be posted in this space closer to the date.  But for now, please plan on a 9:00 - 4:00 day.  There will be no charge for the retreat, but we will ask for a donation to defray the retreat costs and to make a gift to the church or hosting us.