Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / Carrying the Baton: Leadership, Loss, and the Long Arc of Practice-Jomon, Zen Teacher

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Carrying the Baton: Leadership, Loss, and the Long Arc of Practice-Jomon, Zen Teacher · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week. All right, welcome everyone. Thank you for being here.
• 0:33
  If you'd like to join me in taking refuge, I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha. Nice to see folks here online too. New people, people who've been here all along.
• 0:57
  So, would like to talk a little bit about what ends up being about lineage, the lineage of our practice. We come from and contribute to a lineage just like a family and kind of what are we doing here sort of the question or answer or something that that was just in my mind and I wanted to share a little bit about on Sunday we had an annual meeting of the board of directors, but also it's a once a year bigger meeting kind of a taking our pulse and all the different places of practice all the different departments might do a slide presentation or just a overview of the year that has already come to be. And many of you were there how many of you in this room were actually at that annual meeting? So, have some good representation from Vancouver and so for those of you who weren't there I'm here to say that the organization the Zen Community of Oregon is in very good condition. Our programming or spiritually there are wait lists for a lot of our primary offerings like retreats at the monastery and at Heart of Wisdom.
• 2:39
  Our classes in the precepts taking the ethical precepts those are often full and more are in demand that's just good news in general right that so many people want to learn about and practice ethical living. That's just wonderful. People are involved. There's a lot of ways to get involved in the community or kind of figure out what your relationship might be. That's an option that's available and always what's interesting to me is our retreat costs the costs to people who want to attend a retreat at Great Vow those costs are actually lower than it actually costs to participate in the retreat the dues for our organization somehow is also low and yet that and all the other ways that people practice generosity and offer their time and finances and efforts to this community make it possible that people can attend these retreats at very low cost it's really quite beautiful.
• 3:54
  And the buildings and grounds that we do own in Portland and Klatzkenai those are in good care and our finances are in sound shape we're able to respond to unexpected things of course those are always you can always expect some unexpected thing things are getting replaced vehicles are safe and well cared for, so it's all pretty good news and the organization is growing and we here right here are proof of that. I as I was driving in and it was 90 degrees outside I thought, oh yes again a 90 degree Tuesday, but today we're in a pretty comfortable spot. So, where we were before did not have air conditioning, not really, but everybody just we just practiced with it as you do. That's just what you do. So, are some growing pains in the organization.
• 5:03
  A small family sized organization growing into a much larger organization, you're going to get that and so we're going to have some leadership expert, an organizational development expert come and help us define role clarity in the organization among many of the leaders that'll happen in August. So, all these things are exciting. It really boils down to the simple fact that it's a bunch of human beings who have come together because of a love of the dharma the Buddha dharma the teachings of the Buddha and and our own direct experience of Buddha dharma sangha our own direct experience of what the teachings are offering to us, we get to practice those ourselves and see for ourselves and feel for ourselves and live for ourselves what these teachings are. It's not for me to tell you, we are just kind of describing where we happen to be on the path and that's helpful for us to get clear about what this path is and what it looks like. And in that practice, we might find some relief of suffering our own.
• 6:18
  We might be able to offer some relief of suffering to someone else. And there's something here too about commitment and vow. We that's that's a that's somewhat uniquely stressed in this in our particular flavor of Buddhism. We look at Vow and how do we offer ourselves to all beings. So your participation here, your relationship here, we're not evangelical here in Zen, kind of the opposite of that.
• 6:54
  Sometimes it can seem a little cold to some people, we try to be welcoming, but the offering is just open handed. It's not pushing, it's not chasing, it's not holding back either, it's not trying to be mysterious. It's just, you know, here it is. You're welcome to show up and practice to the extent that you really can and you can dive in quite deeply. So sometimes it takes a while to figure out what's going on here.
• 7:33
  It may not always be readily obvious, But if you kind of stick around, and some people do stick around for years or decades, then all of a sudden there's another generation of practitioners sharing the Dharma. So, may have heard if you were at the annual meeting, Hogan Roshi's announcement and if you weren't I'm going to share that he has prostate cancer and he will be entering into treatment at some point soon. Hogan and Chosin Bayes are the founders of the Zen Community of Oregon and they are my teachers and my husband Bancho are teachers. Some of you are teachers in here and we are in the long process of passing the torch they are in that process we are in that process Boncho is preparing to become the next abbot of the monastery and Hogan and Chosin are thankfully and wonderfully still quite lively and have a lot to offer and nobody wants them to stop teaching, nobody. We are figuring out what a Roshi Emeritus is and the word Roshi just means old teacher it's an honorific in this country.
• 9:00
  What is a Roshi Emeritus? So I'd like to read you a letter that we're sending out to the community maybe you know Hogan and Chosin well, maybe you just met them here at a ceremony that they officiated or maybe you haven't met them at all, but here's the here's this letter from them it says, Dear Sangha family and friends, this is a brief note to let you know about our current health status. We are both vital and alive. We are planning to visit Japan and The Netherlands this June. We are also getting older and slowing down.
• 9:34
  Chosen is nearly 81 and Hogan is 77. In our hearts and minds we feel 35 or 40 but our bodies tell a different story. Our joints are stiffer and we need daily naps and help with heavy lifting in the garden and wood shop. These are the natural accompaniments of aging. Hogan has recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
• 9:57
  He says This is simply part of life and I'm meeting it with as much skill and clarity as I can. My life expectancy is about five years, slightly below the norm for my age and genetics, which feels like a reasonable runway for the work still ahead. So, that's Hogan. The plan is to enroll in the Knight Cancer Center's PSMA radioligand treatment program for prostate cancer. Our MD PhD friend who works on the forefront of medical treatments says that this therapy has revolutionized the treatment of this type of cancer.
• 10:36
  We are actively working with the new spiritual leadership council, our teachers and senior members of the sangha to continue the transmission of leadership as smoothly and wisely as possible. We will keep you informed in the Dharma, Hogan and Chozan. So in real life, Hogan keeps saying this is just stuff. This is just stuff. So Chosin had to kind of massage that letter a little bit.
• 11:06
  He's like, well, then get cancer. What's the big deal? So there is not going to be a big deal made of this, at least not by them, and they would like us all to receive this as a teaching about reality. It really parallels a lot in our tradition, frankly. This is from one of the sutras when the Buddha died it says, Some of the monks present who were not without passion wept uplifting their arms as if their feet were cut out from under them they fell down and rolled back and forth crying all too soon as the Blessed One totally unbound that is passed permanently out of the world having attained Nibbana.
• 11:55
  Then the Buddha's foremost disciple and dharma heir Mahakashapa addressed the monks, Enough friends, don't grieve, don't lament. Hasn't the Blessed One already taught the state of growing indifferent with regard to all things dear and appealing? The state of becoming separate, the state of becoming otherwise? What else is there to expect? It's impossible that one could forbid anything born, existent, fabricated, and subject to disintegration from disintegrating.
• 12:33
  I mean, he might he basically just said, this is just stuff. It's pretty much makashyapa. This is just stuff. That said, of course, we have our feelings. Of course, we have our responses in this body, heart, mind, and it may touch on something from your own experience, your own family, your own relationship to cancer or illness.
• 13:02
  And it's just important that we notice that too. And as we say practice with that. What are these feelings? What thoughts arise in response to the situation? Is there a belief that it should be otherwise?
• 13:30
  There's another story about death in the teachings about a woman named Kisa Gotami and I'll just read this it's a story as told by Domio Burke and her website. Apparently Kisa Gotami had difficulty finding a husband, but once she finally did and he was very loving and able to see her in her beauty, but her husband's family was very hard on Kisogotami as she came from a poor family and was apparently not beautiful by their standards. When the young woman gave birth to a son, however, her status with her in laws improved considerably. Kisagotami loved her son deeply and was very happy, but unfortunately the son died suddenly. His mother suffered not only his loss but the loss of her whole social status as a woman who had proved her worth through the birth of a son.
• 14:35
  Kisogatami was utterly devastated, driven mad with grief. She refused to believe her son was dead and carried his body around with her, knocking on people's doors and begging them for medicine to cure him. Finally, someone told her to go visit the Buddha, the best of the physicians. When Kisukotami asked the Buddha if he would give her medicine to heal her son, he said yes. All she had to do was get a few mustard seeds, which were incredibly easy to come by.
• 15:11
  However, the Buddha said they had to come from a household in which no one had died. Kisugotami, excited for a cure, started knocking on doors again. However, at house after house, they were happy to give her mustard seeds, but when she asked about death, they always told her stories about various family members they had lost. Some of them had even lost children. Gradually, Kisigatami came back to her senses.
• 15:46
  She buried her son and she goes to the Buddha and asks to become a nun. So, in Buddhism, talk about the inevitability of old age, sickness, and death. Old age, sickness, and death. These are three of the signs or sites that Siddhartha Gautama, the young man who eventually became the Buddha, Old age, sickness and death are three of the signs or sights that he saw when he sneaked out of his palace. They blew his mind because he had been insulated from them, sheltered from them by his father.
• 16:42
  And in many ways, we are too. We too are sheltered from these sites. You don't have to raise your hand, but if you're comfortable with that, how many people here have been present for someone's death? A fair amount, but not everyone, not all of us have. And I'm in the generation right now, some of us are in this what's called the sandwich generation that is navigating both I don't have children, but some people are navigating dealing with children and aging parents.
• 17:18
  So I'm I'm all about that with my mom, and I'm listening to all these podcasts. The best one is titled How's Your Boomer? My mom's not a boomer. She's in the silent generation, but it still holds. Not knowing what the future holds, many people don't have the means to have a great many choices in their old age or their medical needs will decide that for them.
• 17:50
  And don't get me started on the health insurance industry in this country. Old age, sickness and death, we have a strange relationship maybe in this country. And it's hard enough without that, without the imposition of all of our cultural baggage or our personal karma or particular wherever we happen to find ourselves in relationship to those things. But it is worth turning towards. It is worth turning towards old age, sickness, death.
• 18:27
  It is worth looking at directly because it's here. It is reality. And if we're not able to see that, we suffer. It's so interesting how we do in adulthood tend to freeze in our minds about who we think we are. We think we're 40.
• 18:54
  We think we're we think things stop somehow. Our music taste stops unless you really work at it. And then we see children we have known since birth, and they're going to college now, and it's just terribly shocking, isn't it? Interestingly there's one more sign that the future Buddha saw on his escapade. He saw a holy person, he saw a mendicant ascetic, a person who was devoting his life to spiritual practice in hopes of finding clarity, in hopes of finding relief of suffering, letting go of all the trappings of what one would think would be the necessary comforts of life just completely renegotiating the relationship with comfort renouncing those things.
• 19:59
  This can be something we see too. This can be something that we see that can change our own lives as well. Certainly the inspiration of Chosen and Hogan have long inspired me and a great many people. They are true exemplars of ethics and depth of practice, generosity of sharing the teachings. This is their life.
• 20:27
  This is what their lives, their lives are about. Sometimes we need to see an example of this in human form, in real life, before we can imagine our lives any differently, before we can even maybe just borrow a little bit from that and think, oh, wow, maybe something like that might be possible. Seeing a woman teacher was very important to me. Certainly, Chosen and Hogan are a tag team for sure, but my main teacher has been Hogan. In Buddhism we call this first teacher our root teacher, he's my root teacher.
• 21:17
  And it's taken me a long time to figure out what I'm doing here, so I don't expect anyone really here to have that all figured out right away that's really okay. As a Zen practitioner, but certainly as a teacher, I'm still figuring it out and learning how to trust and be flowed to the next thing and the next thing. And that flowed into being a transmitted teacher, this brown rakassu, so this enables me to perpetuate the teachings in a particular way. Not that I just can, but I am compelled, I am impelled to do so. The prime directive is that the teachings must not die out.
• 22:12
  That's it. I'm not a priest so I can't form priests, but I can have my own students and I can maybe someone or someone's will become another a lay teacher, a householder teacher. And we'll carry forward these teachings to people that we don't even know, to people who may not even be born yet. I used to talk about how I started practicing Zen Buddhism, Banshou and I, seeking a spiritual home. And we tried lots of different things we have some funny stories about that too before we happened upon Great Vow's End Monastery, But at some point, and I feel like it's only been quite recently that I realized I did not pick Buddhism.
• 23:22
  I did not. I was adopted. I was adopted by this lineage, taken up into it and entered into this long line of people who have kept it alive all this time. Everyone in the over 80 generations of this lineage, with the exception of Chosin and Hogan, they're all from India or China or Japan. I love that.
• 24:08
  What a what a beautiful family to get to be in. What a generous thing to be brought into a family in this way. It's a it's sometimes it comes up in a situation like this where someone might wonder gosh are we are we doing cultural appropriation here are we maybe just doing but no you can't steal something that's been given to you wholeheartedly. So we chant the lineage and we will chant the whole thing when we do our Zazenkai here next month in July it's a few pages I used to hate chanting the lineage because it takes so long I remember the first time I did it I'm turning the page and then I we turn them another page and there's two more pages and we're keep going what what is this but now I love it I really do really love it I've got sometimes I get tearful chanting it just gratitude these people devoted their lives to making sure I get to practice that we get to practice it couldn't have happened without all these people. We can realize that the arc of our practice is a lot larger than we thought it was it's not just about this particular sitting period or this particular life of practice, it's way bigger than that.
• 25:41
  It's the arc of it all and we get to take our place in it, so small really. But it's a relay. We carry the baton. That's it. I've only just realized this is is my job right now.
• 26:06
  And it's and we can't do it. I can't do it by myself. What will be the point of that? That isn't even a thing, is it? It's all of us.
• 26:14
  It's all of us. Every one of us. And there's I mean, that's all the names that aren't even in the lineage. How many nameless people also made it happen in the quietest ways. I just think we're so lucky to get to do this together.
• 26:41
  I really do. So when the practice feels small or frustrating or disconnected, like what's the point? Just look around, open it up and join this much, much larger community of practitioners. We're here to practice and realize the Buddha way together. Together.
• 27:17
  Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendest.org. Your support supports us.