This is the first day of this, December, 2024, two day. Seshin, if my voice is too quiet, kanji, would you please just shout out, speak up or something. Thank you. I'm going to be reading and commenting on a book called deepening Zen by Metra Bishop Roshi. Mitra is somebody I know from having practiced with her in the 80s. She is a Dharma Heir of Roshi Kapleau, and so her experiences here, I think, would resonate with many of you, some of you who may even remember her. She was a pretty fierce head of Zen. Do I have to say we used to call it the snow falling, because after each keenheim there would be little notes on everybody, on a lot of people's mats. Over the years, she softened enormously through her own suffering and her own energy and effort. So I'm going to read a little bit about her from the book here. Born eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into the Second World War. Mitra Roshi grew up with war, the threat of war and the threat of loss and violence always as a backdrop. When it came with it, came a pervasive sense of suffering and the sense that there was, that there is something deep, profound and liberating that could be found in the midst of suffering, if she could only return to experiencing it. When her grandmother bought her a Bible for her 10th birthday, she studied it, determined to find that connection somewhere in those tissue paper, thin, gold edged pages. But it was too soon, decades later, after many years of intensive Zen practice, she would return to that book and find within it expressions of the light she sought. On January the first, 1974 she found her true home in Rinzai Zen Buddhist practice for it offered not only glimpse into that sense of something deeper she'd always had, but a set of tools zazen koan work support for that essential, wordless inner questioning that could make possible that reconnection after sitting zazen on her own for a year and a half, a deep spiritual experience brought her to seek more intensive training at the Rochester Zen Center. Following tou seshin, she was accepted to residential training at the center, and trained intensively under Roshi Philip Kapleau until he retired and moved to Florida in the late 1980s she was ordained by him in 1986 when Harada Shodo Roshi visited the Rochester Zen Center. In 1991 she recognized a deep connection, and a friend gifted her a seshin with him in the Northwest United States. A year later, she attended a second seshin with him there, and continued on to spend three months in Japan, two of which were spent in residence at sogenji Harada Roshi Training Center in Okayama. This was followed by sitting with morinago, Soko Roshi, Sangha at daishu in in Kyoto, and finally, by attending the rohatsu seshin in Obama at bukoji under Harada Tangen roshi, before returning to the Rochester Zen Center with the firm knowledge that she needed to return to so Genji to continue her Zen training. Months later, she did return and trained intensively at sogenji and Tahoma monastery, Harada Roshi American monastery, until Philip Kapleau called her back to Rochester in 1996 to authorize her to teach. She then moved to New Mexico and established mountain gate San mon G and concurrently was asked to take over as teacher at the Hidden Valley Zen Center in San Marcos, California. The. Hmm, she continued to return to so Genji for five to six weeks every year for the next 15 years for additional training, and attended every seshin in the US, taught by Harada Shodo, and divided her time between building mountain gate and teaching you.
Mitra Roshi retired from her position as spiritual director at Mountain gate in 2020 to devote full time to teaching at Mountain gate, a natural outcome of her growing up during a period fraught with wars in 2013 Mitra Roshi expanded the offerings at Mountain gate from 12, seven day seshins a year to also we do six here, to also include Three to four special retreats, the regaining balance retreats for women veterans with PTSD, somehow, in the midst of a very full teaching schedule, she still finds time to continue her deep connection with her family, her sons and their families, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren fully convinced that spiritual longing is at the heart of all religions and that the deepest truth can be found regardless of religion, her teaching draws from the wells of Buddhism, the teachings of Jesus and other Christian contemplatives, including Meister Eckhart, Rumi and other Sufi saints, as well as other deep spiritual seekers. She continues to teach full time at Mountain gate. I think you can see in this incredible dedication that metta Roshi has to practice and to sharing that it also points to affinity when, when finding a teacher, you have to find that affinity. We have it with people. It depends on your background, on your you're growing up your own experiences, but she found that affinity with Harada, Shodo, Roshi, first with PK, and so it's an important thing to know you. I think it said that the rivers of I think maybe it was Ramana Maharshi, famous Zen teacher in the Advaita tradition, rivers of all the world's great religions flow into the same ocean. We could also say, out of that same ocean rises the moisture that becomes the clouds and the rain and falls on the mountains and the great cycle continues, of which we are definitely embedded. The first chapter I'm going to share with you is chapter one in this book, and it's called expectations of new Zen students. We have here a few people who never gone to seshin before, and I sometimes think I'm a new Zen student. Every time I sit down, I Here we go. Roshi, Philip Kapleau, the earliest American pioneer in Zen, used to say, your life depends upon it. Your life depends upon it. I recently was writing a background for the Wayman, who was my husband, who passed away in June. And one thing he said, which strikes me now, he said, Zen saved my life. And I think there's a lot of people in this room who have suffered in many ways, different ways, family, generational trauma, you all have suffering. And I think that why we're here, or why we go to sesshin is because we have this sense that our life depends upon it, and that it will, in fact, help to save it.
How we live our life, what enriches our life, how we're able to respond to adversity, all these. Positively enhanced by deepening practice. This book is called deepening Zen. So metta s whole emphasis on is this deepening process not just grabbing a Kensho and running or, you know, thinking, Oh, well, this makes me feel good? No, it's a it's a lifelong, continuing change with what is always changing. In the beginning, when people first start Zen practice, there is often an inherent sense that we sit down on this Magic Cushion, and instantly we're transported into a very lovely place. Suddenly we're free. Suddenly it's joyful, it's even possibly blissful. But that is a vast misunderstanding. The promise is there and the promise is real, but it takes, depending on how caught we are, a great deal of work to reach that point. Yet, if we're willing to do the work, it can happen. Zen has been misunderstood in modern cultures, beginning with the beat generation of the 60s. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and others. Jack Kerouac wrote about, among other things, spiritual questing. He was raised French Canadian, Roman Catholic, and for a while dabbled in Buddhism, until encounters with significant Buddhist authorities such as Didi Suzuki took the wind out of his sails. The beats had had a romantic but mistaken idea of what Zen practice was. They appeared to think it meant doing whatever you wanted to do, whenever you wanted to do it. Zen practice ultimately will bring us to a point where whatever we are faced with, whatever positive or negative situations we find ourselves in, we are able to easily, healthily, appropriately, move through them, without being caught, without being filled with suffering. But it doesn't entail doing whatever we feel like, whenever we feel like it, and that brings us to Jacques luceron story. Lucerne was French when he was about eight years old, he was blinded in a school accident. He was wearing glasses, and back then, this would have been in the 1930s no eyeglasses were shatterproof. The accident took place when his classmates were rushing out to recess, and somebody in haste shoved him from behind. The push sent him into the corner of his teacher's desk. His eyeglasses smashed into his eyes and he lost his vision, but perhaps because he was not seeing very well before the accident, he had already developed an expanded awareness. He wrote that after the accident, he began to realize that if he was playing with friends and got angry or jealous, suddenly he was bumping into things when he was not in those negative mind states, he was able to move freely about with ease in I think we can say that when you're not clouded with thoughts, when you're not having a narrative running in our heads, chewing over something that just happened, or thinking ahead, We do have expanded awareness. It's getting harder and harder in these days, with devices and constantly exposed to technology, to actually stay in this more expanded awareness state, but definitely something that we develop more and more in seshin, I expanding our awareness is something we're called upon to do, whether we are blind or not, an awareness that goes beyond how we are told things are, beyond how we think things are, beyond how we're accustomed To assuming things beyond the wall of expectation and assumption is a place of absolute clarity.
I'll just read that little bit again, an awareness that goes beyond how we're told things are, beyond how we think things are, and beyond, how we're accustomed to assuming things are those three habits are very prevalent in all our lives.
Roshi Kapleau always said, don't assume anything. Uh, somebody tells you something about something. Check, what is it true? You know, don't just go along with assumptions. Now, back to Jacques. When Jacques Lucerne was in high school, France was invaded by the Nazis. He and his high school friends had a favorite uncle. They would visit frequently. One day, they went to see him and were told by the concierge of his apartment building that the Gestapo, that was the secret police, had taken him away that morning, and they began to see other people disappearing as well, people they cared about, people they had great respect for. At that time, also, the French population was becoming increasingly frightened, so due to Nazi propaganda, so Jacques and his circle of friends decided they needed to do something about it, risking their lives and the lives of their families, they listened to clandestine radio and typed up the Truth in a little newspaper that eventually grew to become Francois, the most important daily newspaper in France. In subsequent years, they pedaled their bikes all over the country, distributing their mini newspaper to sympathetic Frenchmen, the initial group of high school kids, high school kids moved as so many of young people today are moved, it's worth remembering and honoring that. And Jack, because of the intuition and perception he had enhanced when he went blind, was the gatekeeper for the group anyone wanting to join. First was interviewed by him if he felt the person was going to be loyal and work well, they were let in. Otherwise, he wrote it was just an afternoon conversation with a blind man. So he's using his intuition, and we all have intuition. That's really our true nature. Mostly we don't pay attention to it. But I think everybody knows a gut feeling, and to honor that and respect it. At one point, a person arrived, and his inner Jack's innocence said, No, don't let this guy in. But because he came with a perpetuated recommendation of someone Hua respected, he let him become a member of one cell in the group. Not long after that, the very person betrayed them. The Resistance group had wisely been set up in cells such that each cell contained no more than 20 some participants. Thus, even though the group eventually grew to 600 young people, if any part of the group was betrayed, only a few would be revealed. Jacques, of course, was one of the people who were turned in. He was held first in a French prison. After some months in solitary, he was taken by train to buchaenwald, one of the death camps in Nazi occupied Europe. The train was so crowded with other prisoners that the occupants of the cars were forced to stand up the entire three day and night journey, except for rare stops when they were forced to run on the tracks, chased by the guards dogs and occasionally shot at. Unfortunately, these kinds of ill treatments by humans are not isolated to that period in Europe, certainly in Russia, the gulag and many terrible situations even in the world today, at Buchenwald, his good karma allowed him to bypass instant execution when one of the intake prisoners whispered to him to claim that he was a translator. Otherwise, because he was blind, he would have been instantly executed. He was housed in what was called the invalid block where anybody who was old, missing a body part, deaf, blind, mentally ill, gay or had sexually transmitted diseases, was kept in the camp. It was a building that would have been crowded with 400 people, and there were 1000 men in that barracks. After five months in that environment with death and the constant threat of death and the lack of sufficient food to maintain his health, he became extremely ill. His body could no longer handle the stress. But diagnosis wasn't an issue. He was diagnosed by three doctors who were also prisoners. He could feel what was going on in his body, and this was critical. He could feel his face swollen with a dangerous condition called ERISA. Bliss. He could feel the writhing of his intestinal tract as if it was filled with razor blades, and he could feel the wildly out of sync beating of his heart and his kidneys shutting down. He was dying, and he knew it. Pretty much all his organs were failing. So recognizing this two other prisoners, friends of his carried him to what they euphemistically called the hospital, a piece of concrete on the ground, outdoors. But then what happened? Because of the total presence that he was able to bring to that experience, and this is critical, he died, but only to his ideas of what he needed in order to be happy. That profound letting go brought about a very deep awakening, and it was still alive and functioning decades later, when his college students, fascinated by his quiet energy, asked him about his history, an awakening that doesn't move into functioning is a useless awakening. Functioning is vital. What shock had wakened to transformed him. It was clearly functioning.
She then mentions things about how the beat generation skewed the understanding of Buddhist practice. So she goes on to say, then, what is it? What is Buddhist practice? It is to be so profoundly present that ideas about ourselves and about any situation we would encounter would not hinder us, potentially causing suffering. With that level of presence, we sink into an open awareness so profound that we naturally respond seamlessly, clearly and appropriately to whatever circumstances arise before us. This is what Jacques did in that dying to his self image, he found joy after that, people led him to other prisoners who were freaking out because he had such a profound calm that he was able to help other people calm down. They quit stealing his bread. He had been able to find joy in the midst of hell, and in his words, that joy never left him, I think it's important to find that joy in our practice Zen can seem pretty lonely, kind of, you know, intense effort, which is required, the silence, the Yeah, it can be very lonely. And if we aren't joyful, then we're only half living. And this joy can be found in other ways, so that being eclectic music, love all kinds of things that we do, but if you are not experiencing joy, then it's definitely something to seek.
She goes on, we can't sit down on a cushion or a chair or however we are doing our zazen and immediately plunge into that enlightened mind state. Moreover, many people, not everybody, but many people, come to Zen practice with a history of trauma. When we experience a traumatic event, our natural inclination for self preservation is to shut down our senses to become, as I was rightly accused of in high school, a zombie walking, talking. But nobody's home and nobody's home on purpose, because to be there would be so painful or so frightening that we couldn't bring ourselves to it, even with a history of trauma, with appropriate guidance, it is possible to come to a place where we can respond in a very different, Free, unhindered, yet fully present way to whatever arises. This is the promise of our Zen practice. And of course, we haven't if we haven't experienced trauma, then it might unfold faster.
Trauma is experienced as a feeling in a body so zen can help us to ignore that and shut down that part of us and simply do the concentration. And but that trauma needs to be embraced in whatever way we can, whether it's with therapy, whether it's but it will bubble up. A very good friend who practices in Madison, went to 17 seshins, and that wouldn't have been more than three a year at the most, so six or seven years before his childhood trauma, which was very significant, came bubbling up, he then had to take two years doing therapy because zazen was only making things worse at that point. So for people with serious trauma, it is important to recognize it and to go share that with your teacher if you feel like it or not, but to definitely embrace it and work through it, We can't be whole if we're half shut down. You
another image of Zen, prominent in popular culture is that we can leave our challenging life behind and pop into a place of bliss and peace. Unfortunately, while that can ultimately be true, to uncover, it takes time courage and a willingness to be present even in adversity. I and of course, that adversity we will typically our lizard brain will respond with fight, flight, freeze or submit. And so those elements will come into play, especially with trauma, with dedication, perseverance and faith, it is possible eventually, to open to what is innate in all of us, profound peace, ease and an ability to seamlessly experience whatever comes along in life, regardless of how positive or negative it appears. So many new Zen students hear that part and don't realize that to reach that it's a long process that involves little by little, recognizing through insight where we are caught in rigid and conditioned ways of thinking and acting in a blog long ago, Bernie Glassman, the first Dharma successor of Maya zoomi Roshi Zen Center in Los Angeles, wrote, as writers and philosophers have already said, there's no language for Auschwitz. I can only add there are no thoughts either we are in a place of unknowing. Much of Zen practice, including many teaching techniques used by Zen masters, is aimed at bringing the Zen practitioner to this same place of unknowing, of letting go of what he or she knows. If you're working on a koan, you can't think your way to an answer. It's it's an experience, not something that you can think your way through letting go that she goes on is not so easy, but that is the ticket, letting go of thoughts, letting go of what we think we know based on our thoughts, behavior and past and future thoughts and behaviors. How do we do this? We cannot let go until we see where we're caught. And that's not what we usually think Zen practice is about. That's where zazen comes in, breath practice, the kind that she does, called susakhan, is especially effective in this endeavor, the practice in our daily life are amplified and enriched when we pay attention, because what a breath practice does is to require attention. It trains us in both attention and letting go. It's invaluable. It's so common to quote pay attention. Attention at certain maybe critical times, but the attention spoken of here is 24/7 fundamental presence, real presence, constant, ongoing presence. What that means is that loading the dishwasher, we focus on the full body experience of putting a glass in the place it belongs in the rack. We focus as we load each separate item into the dishwasher is the glass or dish or plate in a condition where the dishwasher will actually be able to clean it. And where are we when we place that item sunning on a California beach? Are we on automatic putting stuff in because we've done it so many times before. When we close the dishwasher and hit the start button, do we feel that motion and that sense of contact again when the dishwasher has completed its cycle? Are we fully present when we're unloading it and putting the dishes and pots and silverware away, or do we later realize when we're cooking and we reach for a utensil that is not where it's supposed to be because we absolutely mind it, put it somewhere else. I think also of working with children. Many people here have kids. Children require our attention. That's all they're asking for to be seen. Actually, that's what all we want to do. We all want to be seen for who we are. So when we greet a child, where are we about to tell them what they ought to do, not to do pick up this because, of course, those things are part of the training to be a grown up. But what is that little body, that essence? What do you what are we greeting? It's love, really. You know, we don't use that word love in Zen much we use compassion, which is the ability to be the other, we use loving kindness. These are the brahmaharas, loving kindness. People who have the experience of awakening will say that there is always love present. And this is this giving so with your children, with your partners, with your friends, or, I should say, our How present are we? Are we giving, or are we trying to take Zen practice is entirely about giving and in that giving, it allows our true nature to come through Sadhguru, who is a modern day guru, of course, Indian in India, there are two kinds of practice you can do in that particular tradition, like Ramana Maharshi, who am I? Is the koan really, because everybody has the sense of I am. You can't get rid of that. That's to be alive is to be am. But the other way is by devotion to the teacher. Now we don't have the kind of deeply enlightened, deeply, deeply Enlightened Masters and teachers that can give us the the grace aspect of of that practice. But what he says is, make your life an offering if you do not know how to become an abode of divine grace, which would be the abode of divine grace is to be in your two true nature. There are simpler ways of getting there. One simple way is to make yourself porous enough so that the grace of the Divine eventually enters you. If your every step and every breath is a process of giving you will naturally arrive at a state of union. So to go back here then talking about our children and our partners, it is this giving, the it doesn't mean it's all hunky dory either. You know, sometimes giving is very painful. It sounds picky, but all the rules and regulations of monasteries everywhere are there only to help things flow, but at least as. Importantly, to help us pay attention. For it is the most profound attention that is what will bring about the liberation we seek, and it begins with the most mundane things. And so that's why, in seshin, you know, we have so many opportunities to pay attention. They're not just when we're on the mat. We spend 10 hours on the mat. So not to discount that at all. But when you go to lunch, when you clean your teeth, when you do ever you do pay attention, it's so easy to coast along on automatic. We've done something once twice. We're going to do it many, many more times, and our body gets into gear, but our mind is wandering elsewhere.
It's like riding a bicycle. You have to pay attention to learn how to ride a bicycle, but after that, you can pedal around without thinking about it. Sadly, we get that way, absent minded, moving around on automatic pilot about everything. If we are to live a fulfilling life, it's important to really, really pay attention. It can seem boring, but actually, if you really pay attention to the most subtle aspects of whatever you're doing, the sensations in your body, the quality of the air, the feel of your hands as you're touching something, it can be quite a rich experience, and that's How Jacques found lasting joy through ongoing, profound presence. We too can experience the level of joy he did. But in this day and age with our tech toys, it's a lot harder when we grow up with television, for example, when with, excuse me, when we grow up with television, for example, where the screen flashes a different image every few seconds, our brains are trained to disengage if something new isn't happening constantly. So we have to slow down. We have to re learn how to be in the moment. Initially, zazen can be a big challenge because of this, most people will note when they first start sitting, it's great. And I'm counting the breath, so I'm doing really fine. I'm counted to 10. I'm back to one again. I'm doing really great. And then suddenly it's like your mind exploded and all kinds of images and thoughts, and you think, Whoa. What's happening here? Well, it's simply that as the mind quietens down somewhat and the body is still, then the thinking mind just lets go and but that will settle that doesn't last you.
So to open to an inner state of peace and tranquility, train your mind. Unplug for significant periods of time each day so you're not looking at the screen all the time. Go for a walk, outdoors, if possible, get up in the morning and feel how the weather feels by going outside and actually feeling it before you turn on the tea TV, look at a newspaper or your cell phone or your computer. There are so many ways people can return to living in the present and find the joy that is inherently there. That's a big start and establishing a daily ritual of sitting zazen, ideally for at least half an hour in the beginning with full commitment and concentration, it will begin to take you along the path of true freedom. You
I wonder if this point, if anybody has a question, go ahead Angel. So he said, Joy is something we should be seeking. No, it's, that's a misunderstanding. Joy appears, you know, it won't. It does not come. It's not something to get. It comes out of paying attention, out of being present, out of, yeah, that's that's work. Thank you for the clarity. Anybody else.
So she's keeping on with this theme, guys. So we're back to embodiment. Now. Do. Attention and awareness are extremely important, not just for our Zen practice, but for our life. One aspect of attention and awareness is known as embodiment. To explain this, a little here is a writing from a man named Kardon Rabin, who recognizes, as many other mental health practitioners have that embodiment is a key to comprehending what we're experiencing, not thinking about it, but tuning into our bodies, even while experiencing challenging feelings.
In the blog post described here, Rabin is searching for a definition of embodiment. To do so, initially, he shares entries from a number of prominent dictionaries, none of which seem to express the term accurately. And then he shares what an Saffi biaseti has written about it. Embodiment can be simply defined as living life in form through the sense experience of the body. That, in a nutshell, is what is essential for fulfillment in our life and success in our Zen practice. But it comes with challenges for many people, as mentioned in the first chapter, if we have been traumatized in any way, our response is naturally self protective. It usually involves distancing from the sensations in our body, because those sensations are not comfortable and can even be frightening. Even in a life without trauma. There are times when we are uncomfortable, if we're being chastised, for example, or embarrassed, or get a disappointing grade on an exam, and don't know what to do with those bodily sensations that express that discomfort. We're taught to put great value in thinking, often at the expense of intuition or tuning in years ago, a friend spoke about a confusing experience that he had in second grade. Someone had gifted him a ballpoint pen, the first pen he'd ever had, and he was exploring what it could do by doodling with it, feeling experiencing that ballpoint pen in action when the teacher noticed she came to his desk, smacked his hand and took the pen away. He wasn't doing something productive, she announced, American children normally have 12 years at a minimum of school in which analysis and thinking are emphasized, but using these skills to deal with everything that comes up in our life doesn't necessarily resolve all problems nor lead to a fulfilling life. Living by intellect alone leaves something important out another dimension of knowing, tuning in can provide valuable information. It can also offer an avenue through which to fully accept the energy of difficult or unpleasant experiences, resulting in a life that is more rich and fulfilling. It's popularly known that the scientific genius Albert Einstein spoke of sitting with his mind unfocused, during which the amazing discoveries he made would bubble up. He wasn't thinking his way to those discoveries. He was opening his mind to what is beyond thought. This is the place from which insight arises.
Read that little bit again. He wasn't thinking his way to those discoveries. He was opening his mind to what is beyond thought. This is the place from which insight arises. Rabin finally comes up with his definition of embodiment. Embodiment, in our context, is not a noun, it's a verb. It's an active and intentional process, not a static thing. Furthermore, it's a choice to consciously inhabit the full spectrum of our experience of being a human being. I like to say that we usually come to embodiment work for repair, but we stay with it to transcend
Eugene Gen Lin, as a graduate student, did research focusing on understanding what people who made rapid and significant progress in their psychotherapy did differently from those who stayed stuck. Some people undergoing therapy develop a mental understanding of why they are caught, but experience no freedom from it, whereas other people within the first three sessions appear to be able to move forward, resolve their issues and transform their lives. Gen Lin quickly realized what the difference was. Those able to progress in therapy were able to tune in to their bodies. He labeled that tuning in as experiencing the felt sense, which is embodiment. His book focusing is still in print, inexpensive and worth studying. Feeling the felt sense is about feeling the energy in our body, feeling the sensations that describe that energy flow and staying present with them as they ebb and flow and dissolve. Although healthy toddlers in healthy environments are able to be embodied. It is not something that is easy for anyone who has experienced difficult events in their lives, and there are plenty of difficult events in people's lives just go to high school, not knowing how else to shut out painful feelings. We tend not to tune into that felt sense. We shut down our awareness of those bodily sensations, and their energy remains trapped, driving our interactions without our realizing it. It leaves us living a two dimensional life, and we wonder why we're not fulfilled. Rabin continued by saying, I like to say that we usually come to embodiment. Work to repair, but stay with it, to transcend, to transcend the limitations put upon us by disassociation from our felt experience when we can safely embody again. Life goes from black and white to Technicolor, from pixelated to high definition, from 3d 2d to 3d the example he gives is before embodiment. I knew I loved my wife after embodiment. I could feel my love for her.
There's a lot in this chapter, I think maybe it's too much for us to get into. We'll probably finish it more tomorrow. Want to give too much. And certainly listening to a talk, please try not to hold on to things that may have caught your attention. Listening to a talk is simply feeling it, responding to it, and then letting it go. I
i will just leave this one thought that if you have a history of trauma, however, it's important to work with an experienced, well trained trauma therapist who also understands or better practices Zen meditation, particularly if you're having intense flashbacks.
