Village Zendo Bulletin

April 2024

April 2024

I’ve always wrestled with the Buddhist notions of interdependence and emptiness. As far as I understand it, the fact that everything depends on everything else—that no single thing exists in and of itself (and apart from everything else)—is what ensures that no solid, abiding, individual self exists. Or, to put it another way, because everything leans on everything else, emptiness pervades the universe. Out of relationship: emptiness.

And yet—out of relationship, what fullness! What life! Out of relationship, flower, moon, mountain, heart. Out of relationship, a helping hand, a warm hug, a kiss. Out of relationship, Sangha! Yes, who could imagine that out of emptiness, this heartbreakingly beautiful tenderness, this love, this support—and yet as Shuso Hossen so wonderfully demonstrates, this is what we belong to: this is who we are, and what life is. Or, as Jyākuen wrote in a recent email, “We are all part of the most Amazing Community—Sangha, Sangha . . . SANGHA.”

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March 2024

March 2024

I stole the above Ram Dass quote from the wonderful conversation between Ryusho and Tendo on the joys and hardships of parenting (see below for the whole interview—it’s a really good one). One of the things that stuck with me from their intimate discussion—besides the great truth that family is a relentless place of practice—is how valuable Sangha is in letting us know that we are not alone. As Tendo so eloquently puts it, “The idea, ‘There’s something wrong with me,’ shifted to, ‘Well, this is what people experience.’”

Me, I’ve always been a bit of a loner. Even today, despite (and perhaps directly related to) the demanding relationship of spouse and kid, I imagine an escape to the mountains of Tibet—some solo hermitage, a cozy cave perhaps, where I could have the space and time and solitude to finally figure it all out, become enlightened, and live happily ever after. Of course, the whole point of the Ram Dass quote is exactly how insubstantial that kind of enlightenment is—who cares if you’re one with the universe when you’re on some distant mountain? (Especially if when you come down from the mountains and rejoin your family, you immediately turn back into an asshole.) The enlightened way has to be practiced in the everyday—in relationship—or it probably doesn’t mean much.

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February 2024

February 2024

I’ve been noticing my nonsense a bit more as of late. (Not that I’ve been able to do much about it, but I guess noticing is a start.) For instance, my moods around the house with my wife and kid. I see myself clinging to momentary misery with such determination and loyalty, when really, what actually has happened that’s so awful: Undone dishes? An unwalked dog?

Of course, there’s a perverse kind of satisfaction in feeling like the world is out to get you—it buoys up the self. It’s you against an unjust universe—a real underdog story. Massively indulgent, you wallow contentedly in self-righteous indignation. Who knew there could be so much pleasure in misery?

The real absurdity of this behavior is how much real misery there is out there in the world. I mean, there’s more than enough suffering already—do I really have to invent more? Apparently, yes, I do. I’m not sure, but I suspect that, as with most human issues, this may be a fear thing. Because just as a dedication to misery can solidify the self, so can true joy dissolve it. And as much as we Zen students profess to want to forget the self, I know from personal experience that often that’s sort of the last thing I want. Instead, I’ll do anything and everything in my power to keep myself from disappearing.

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December 2023

December 2023

As we’re coming up on the holiday season, I’ve had shepherds on my mind. As both metaphor—and vocation—shepherds hold a prominent place in almost every religion. Some of the great figures in the bible were, of course, shepherds—Abraham, Moses, little David who would one day become king. Muhammad, himself a shepherd in his youth, once said, “There was no prophet who was not a shepherd.”

So it is in Zen, though of course, instead of shepherds, we talk about bodhisattvas—but it’s sort of the same thing. To take the bodhisattva vow of saving all sentient beings, this is to be a shepherd to all of life—to your own life—to guard this precious universe and everything in it with great tenderness and love.

Life would be so different if we were all there for each other in this way—not in any sort of annoying in your face kind of way—just there for each other. (Shepherds aren’t all up in their sheep’s business either, when you think about it—they watch over them quietly, their simple, alert presence enough to keep them safe.) Interestingly, I believe that in some senses, we are all already doing this.

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November 2023

November 2023

I admit—it’s been a bit of a damp, drizzly November in my soul as of late, and it’s not even November yet—in fact, as I’m writing this, it’s a warm, bright, clear October day. I could go into all the reasons I’ve been feeling this way—there’s plenty for us all to be depressed about these days, no doubt—but better, I think, to focus on all the ways I could theoretically do something to extricate myself from this grim state. In other words, how can I, like Ishmael, get to sea?

Well, one thing I can do, and I did it the other day for the first time in almost four years, is get my butt to the Zendo. And it did indeed help—even though I’d never before sat in the new space, it truly felt like coming home. And zazen itself is of course another good response. I’ve heard Myoko Roshi talk about how zazen can create a kind of spaciousness—almost like it opens up a sea within us—so that we have a little more room to breathe.

Another good response is touched upon in an interview below with Tsuh Yang, who talks about the intersection of his Zen practice and his volunteer work: Do something for someone else. Get out of your head and into the world, shift your focus away from yourself and onto someone else, and do what you can to help. (As Tsuh Yang mentions, one of the interesting questions that inevitably arises is: who is helping who?)

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October 2023

October 2023

It’s Halloween this month, which has me thinking about masks and costumes and that eternal, terrifying question, Who are you? Well, as Whitman reminds us, the answer is not always so singular and simple. After all, each one of us contains multitudes—one moment we are happy, the next we are sad; one instant we are compassionate, the next full of rage. We are angel and demon, hero and coward, lover and hater. We change costumes, one to the next, swiftly and often with little to no consciousness about it. And beneath these ever-shifting masks, what? Who?

My own honest answer to this age-old question—I don’t know—is not a very satisfying one (at least not for me it’s not). In fact, it only serves to heighten the question itself, and to deepen the terror inherent in my lack of a response. Zen’s apparent answer to this question doesn’t seem to help much either (or at least for me it doesn’t). After all, our practice maintains that the idea of a permanent or abiding self—a solid internal “you”—is just an illusion.

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September 2023

September 2023

Dog years are a devastating phenomenon, if you have a dog you love. Seven years to our one, is the formula. That means my sweet little girl-puppy, nearing ten years old, is really almost seventy now. It also means that one day is, for Brooklyn, somehow seven. Yes, each day is a week, each week is near two months, each month is more than half a year. Oh, for time—for life—to move this quickly, galloping so relentlessly on.

We humans are not immune to this version of time. Indeed, that one year suddenly becomes seven: this is the nature of our lives, too, is it not? Certainly, it did not take 47 years for me to become 47. Time skips and lurches and falls away—great gulps of it are swallowed up—and then, impossibly, here you are.

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July 2023

July 2023

As it’s soon to be Independence Day, I’ve been thinking about freedom, which is, of course, one of the goals of our practice. (Not thinking about it, that is, but enacting it.) The strange thing to me is that, by all standards, I am free—and yet of course I don’t always feel that way. To be sure, there are moments (rare ones, often unnoticed) in which this freedom is briefly realized—on the cushion or on the tennis court, dancing, writing, laughing—moments when I lose myself and find myself all at once, and there is ease there, and spaciousness, and yes, even joy. But then there’s the other 97% of my life, in which I feel inexplicably awkward and restricted, as if something is binding me.

As Maezumi Roshi notes, nothing is binding us. We are all innately free—we need only realize it—but that’s the trick, isn’t it? After all, if we don’t realize it, does it even matter if we’re free? And besides, just how exactly do you break free when nothing’s actually constraining you—when the feeling that you are bound is just a delusion?

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June 2023

June 2023

These are the days the helicopter seeds come whirling and shimmering down. From a distance, it looks like the air has come to life—a flashing cloud of glint and wink. Pollen, too, has been creating this illusion, great gusts of it pushed from out of the trees, so that in the late afternoon light, you can see the wind filled with the vibrancy of things that one day will be—the great shining dust of existence. It is June, and all around us, everywhere, flower and leaf and weed—the lush wildness that is summer. To honor this explosion of new growth, the Bulletin is thrilled this month to run an excerpt from our own Marco Seiryu Wilkinson’s, Madder: A Memoir in Weeds—as well as a poem that explores the wilds of a community garden by editor-at-large, Nina Shuka Klippel.

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May 2023

May 2023

We’re honored this month to share here in the Bulletin an excerpt from Neil Soten Theise’s new groundbreaking book, Notes on Complexity. In the first chapter, Soten reminds us that “complex” doesn’t necessarily mean “complicated”— but while the book focuses on complexity, I found my own thinking over the past few days veering helplessly to the topic of complication. After all, life can seem so complicated, sometimes, so overwhelming. Health, money, family, friendship, love, work, practice, suffering, desire, etc., etc. etc.—how is one to handle all this stuff on a day-to-day basis? My honest answer is: I don’t know. I realize this is part of practice—to simply live your everyday life as best you can, complications and all—but personally, I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed as of late. Which is, I guess, sometimes just how it goes.

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