given by Nomon Tim Burnett
Red Cedar Dharma Hall
August 12, 2009
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It's natural that we'd want to know what doing this practice leads to. I think we all have some ideas about this, some vague, some explicit. This morning I want to look again at a particular teacher in our lineage as an example of what practice seems to lead to.
I read to you a month or so ago a nice tribute that Norman Fischer wrote about his teacher Sojun Mel Weitsman in honor of his 80th birthday. It turns out that that essay was for a book, a book of essays by all of Sojun Roshi's Dharma Transmission students.
And today I like to do a sort of impressionistic reading of the themes in that book which is called Umbrella Man. I quite recommend this book. It's in a way specific to a time and a place and a particular group of people but in another way it's a really interesting and important look at the inside of American Soto Zen as it's playing out.
And as you hear this talk I hope you'll notice the ways in which you are holding various expectations about the practice, about yourself, about your teachers. I wonder if your expectations will be met or if somehow their being met or not being met is in the end so important.
I'm going to link together a series of quotations from the book from different authors, pretty much all of whom are themselves practicing Zen teachers now. It's a powerful testament to Mel's legacy that all of the people he did this training with are so involved and steady in the practice. Or maybe he just knows how to pick 'em. A historical detail here is that Sojun has ended up being a sort of closer of a teacher for the San Francisco Zen Center community. A closer like the pitcher they bring in at the end of the baseball game to finish things out. This because of the whole blow out they had there in the middle 1980's with Richard Baker roshi who was a very powerful and charismatic teacher who made unbelievable strides for that community and was on the one had a very useful teacher to this group and on the other hand it seems like it worked out well for them to have the big exciting teacher leave and end up with the quiet and unassuming teacher to finish their training. This wasn't the official plan or anything organized but it is clear now that this is what happened there. And somehow in the background Suzuki Roshi was always there directly for the older students who worked with him and indirectly but still importantly for those who didn't study with him.
So that's a theme of reconciliation and much struggle in the book which I won't quote from directly too much. Most of these practitioners started out with Richard Baker or worked with other teachers and then completed their training with Sojun Mel Weistman. A few in here were the more stereotypical apprentices from start to finish but most of them were that way.
So what does Zen lead to? What are the fruits of practice? What does someone who's been practicing devotedly for 45 years look like. Not that one person tells us anything definitive but it's worth considering this one important example. I'll suggest themes and make some comments but mostly read quotations. And to keep the talk flowing I am not going to attribute the quotations or explain what I know of the different people in this book, several of whom I've met but several not. I'm just gong to let them speak. You can read the book if you want to sort it all out more. Happy Birthday, Mel.
Steadiness, devotion and endurance.
It seems to me that the main characteristic of Suzuki Roshi's teaching, and of Soto Zen, is faith and steadiness and endurance to keep going with the practice no matter what. As Dogen taught so profoundly, the practice is enlightenment. There is no enlightenment outside of practice. In the early days (and I know it is the same now) it was clear without anyone ever needing to say so that this was the value most encouraged by Mel. There was sitting every morning at 5am, and Mel was there every day, always on time. Whether there was one person or two or three joining him (and there were seldom more than three or four in the early days) he was always there sitting in his place at the head of the stairs. So that when you walked up the stairs you would see him first, just there, always there. Motionless and quiet.
Generous and steadfast
And he was steadfast. Now that I can look back at those years when he was in the hinterlands and the big Zen thing was happening in San Francisco. [and Mel was quietly running his smaller center in Berkeley]. He just steadfastly practiced, taught, and followed his way, followed Suzuki Roshi's way. Just a tremendous steadfast quality and not fancy. Mel is not a very fancy kind of person, no frills. Very different that the flavor of the way Richard Baker taught.
Humble
Associated with all of that is tremendous humility. When Steve Stucky, Paul Haller and I did Dharma Transmission with Mel at Tassajara in 1993, each of us had to do the series of ceremonies. After the final dharma talk, we went to Suzuki Roshi's ashes site up on the hogback. We offered incense and bowed and Mel was standing in front of Suzuki Roshi and the three of us were a little further back. Mel looked at us and said, "I'm not so good. But you are good." And went on to say that passing on the dharma to us was a good thing and that we would manifest it in a good way, good things would happen. This statement, "I'm not so good, but you're good," is one of the most important things anyone has every said to me. Not because it makes me good, but because the quality of humility is so authentic. When I teacher and practice now I hope to convey that spirit.
The practice of letting go of results.
The evolution of my sense of zazen is a lot about polishing a tile: challenging the whole idea that you're going to get somewhere or get something out of it. Now I'm not as focused on getting something or being some particular way, in zazen or in general, as I used to be. I realize wherever I am, it's not going to be so good, it's not going to be the way I wanted, so I might as well get used to it! [Dogen said] those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. You know there's no place to go. The place where you get to be a Buddha, so to speak, is in delusion, and there's plenty to go around. You get up where you fall down. You don't get up someplace else. It's where you fall down that you establish your practice. That's what Mel manifested when he talked to me [during our training], being supportive and open and friendly and helpful. He was just assisting me in getting up where I fell down.
The reference to polishing a tile there is to a koan in which a very eager student is practicing zazen really really hard, night and day. The teacher comes up and stands next to him, then picks up a roof tile from some temple repair work, gets out his handkerchief and starts rubbing the tile with it. Maybe standing right on top of the student sitting zazen. Finally the student gets exasperated and asked, "Why are you polishing that tile like that?" And the teacher says, "I'm trying to make it into a mirror!" And the student says, "You can't polish a tile into a mirror!" And the teacher replies something like, "Nor can you make a Buddha by constantly sitting zazen like that." That the quality of his zazen was like polishing a tile to make it a mirror. This is an important story for us.
Being upright.
Once when I was studying my tendency to want to be regarded as a "good guy" by everyone, I asked Mel, "I know true dharma goes beyond the duality of good and bad, but isn't it valid to choose the good?"
After a brief pause, Mel looked me in the eye and said, "Our practice is being upright."
Connecting to the feeling of practice.
When Mel was abbot and I was the Ino, managing the Zendo, I wanted to clarify one of the details of kinhin. I asked Mel, "Okay, and then when do we hit the clackers?" He looked at me with conviction and said, "You hit them when it feels right!" That was his notion of precision. Not just a notion of precision, but an invitation to attend to the precision of being in tune with the whole activity.
This makes me thing of our detailed doan instructions and that they both help us learn how to ring the bells but in a way it hampers us to be following a script. And the same in life, we want the script, we want the rules and this can distract us from just feeling. Just feeling when it feels right to move forward.
Working with difficulties.
When significant difficulties arose at Berkeley Zen Center, how they were handled was admirable. In a direct way, his senior students were saying, Hey Mel? What are you doing? And without defensiveness he'd respond, yeah, you're right. But it wasn't "Okay well, then you're not going to be my students" or "you're not going to be our teacher." Mel has trained them and worked with them in a way that, whatever the issue, their relationship could be sustained and they worked it through.
That is certainly my hope for here. That we can have that feeling and understanding and feel safe talking to each other about the difficulties that arise.
Ordinariness.
For me Sojun's genius is in his ordinariness. Once, at a big hospice fund raising dinner at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Ram Dass was the guest speaker and I knew that Sojun would be making a speech after him. Ram Dass was a famous spiritual teacher. I began to wonder what Sojun would do, how would he express himself to these potential donors and people from the wider community. When his turn came, Sojun just got up and spoke to the crowd like he always spoke. He was the same old Sojun; there was no persona, no charisma, no personality or person to project. There was just Sojun - the same Sojun I knew in the zendo, in the dokusan room, and at Zen Center staff meetings. It is hard to put into words how much Sojun's lack of desire to make an impression on others impressed me. It is easy to say, "Just accept who you are" or as Suzuki Roshi said, "When you are completely you, Zen is Zen." but it is rare to have a living model of this. I am most grateful to Sojun for his embodiment of this teaching.
And another reflection on just being ordinary, just being yourself.
From this first encounter, I was inspired by what I took to be Mel's ordinariness. He wasn't trying to impress anyone or stand out in any way. He seemed like a very ordinary, accessible person. And yet in that ordinariness was something that meant a lot to me. It seemed to me that he was the first person I had met who was settled and at peace with himself. I saw in Mel a form of everyday, straightforward Zen practice that didn't make Zen into something esoteric or mysterious.
Appreciating disagreement.
Mel wanted to know how I understood my relationship to him. I told him I trusted him implicitly but that I didn't know if I agreed completely with his dharma understanding. To my amazement he stopped, turned to me and said in a very direct welcoming way something like, "Great! Where we disagree is where we can meeting!" I believe he also brought his two hands together to emphasize that meeting.
Being yourself, not trying to be someone else.
More than anyone else, I see Suzuki Roshi in Mel's face. I myself tried for several years to be Suzuki Roshi: "It's okay that you've died, " I thought, "you can have my life." But I ended up abandoning myself [when I tried to practice that way]. Mel is just Mel, and there's Suzuki Roshi.
Deep listening.
After my Dharma transmission, I said to Sojun, "Remember, I'm not going to start a Zen group. That's not what I do." He didn't say anything.
A few years later, after I had started a Zen group and it was thriving, I was again talking with Sojun and reminded him, with a little embarrassment, of my earlier comment. "I guess you must have known something back then that I didn't," I said.
He replied, "Oh, I don't listen to what people say."
Right. What he meant was, "I don't listen to what people say. I listen to what people say."
I have tried to do that in my own work as a priest.
Just listening without controlling or advising.
I felt deeply known, seen, and accepted by Mel. He was interested. He listened. I was totally neurotic at the time and had so many problems. His mind was so wide that whatever yammering was happening in my mind would just float away into the ether as I talked. After five minutes of talking to him, my gigantic problems, of which I had many, floated away in his big mind. There was nothing else to say, so we'd just sit there, quiet and content. He never answered, he never solved anything. I couldn't have articulated this at the time, but I was going there to be with his mind. I would talk for five or ten minutes then we'd be quiet. I'd sit in his spaciousness.
I hope to be able to offer people a little bit of this myself. This is for sure a lot of what I have gotten over the years from speaking with Norman. Confidence in dharma. Confidence in spaciousness. That things can work out.
How to teach others.
In relationships with people who come to study the dharma with me, I can see how deeply I have been shaped by Sojun Roshi's way. Om grow up svaha. Take seriously your life as it is, make it a Buddha-field of generosity and mutuality. Sit zazen, be honest with yourself and others, don't fall for fancy ideas about practice, keep at it. As a teacher you can rely on me to show up and share my understanding but not to tell you what to do. It is up to you to realize the Way, find joy in the feel of your feet on the floor, live in your world. This is some of what I received from Mel. It is my life's work to live out all I have been given.
Just being straight-forward with ourselves and others.
Sojun Roshi values and embodies directness. He cuts through delusion, no hesitation. My experience is that this comes directly from zazen. He is quite willing to tell me my "stuff," to show me my shadow. Usually he is right. It is sometimes painful to hear but it is helpful. Once, I had been harboring ill will toward a dear friend and could not let it go. I found I kept trying to convince her that she was wrong about an exchange that had hurt me. Finally I went to Sojun Roshi and told him about my difficulty in letting the matter drop. His response: "Can't you just say 'ouch!' and go on?" As is my practice with him, I said "Yes," and left. Then I practiced with it. I found that I had neither voiced nor even let myself experience the ouch. So I did, first experiencing it, them meeting with my friend and sharing the hurt part. She apologized and we both dropped it and moved on.
Working honestly with faults.
I have seen Sojun Roshi when he was accused of crossing boundaries. This happened with gay students at Tassajara and with women students a Berkeley. What impressed me was how open Sojun was with he students who confronted him. Somehow he managed to demonstrate humility and yet not be servile. He always maintained his dignity and authority. About a year ago, in shosan [formal question and answer ceremony] someone asked him what his greatest difficulty as a teacher was. Without hesitation, he said, "I tend to fall in love with my female students. I work with it by trying to think of them as my sisters." I was moved by his honesty.
Boredom is okay.
Over the years, Mel's presentation of the dharma has often put me to sleep, until the unique quality of his teaching beings to permeate the bones. Then I wake up deeply nourished….he would talk about the virtues of ordinary conventional life, and he would go through the teachings word by word, reading them again and again.
Mel and I would meet for dokusan [private interview] every so often. I began to notice that whenever I started to go on and on about my problems, he would fall asleep. Often in the middle of presenting an emotional reaction to something that had happened, I would gradually notice him nodding. Sometimes he would open his eyes very wide, to try to stay with me. But when my voice became authentic and fresh, he would completely wake up.
This boring approach has taught me an important lesson about how to meet dharma and life. When a situation or person presents itself in an unresolved, undeveloped way, one can meet it with matter-of-fact, self-nourishing patience. Mel's dharma is to offer a few words, then stay until awakening occurs.
For some reason this last quote has been particularly helpful to me. Helps me work with the part of my desire to help people that seems at odds with being boring. That impulse to be interesting, to be clever, to give good advice. To be right about the other person in some perceptive way. To let myself be boring and ordinary, just listening and giving space is an important teaching for me.
One thing we can note from these list of qualities about a Dharma teacher so beautifully expressed by his students are the things that are not there. No one talked about how Mel was always right. That he could look into their souls and see just what needed doing. A few mentioned that he gave insightful advice sometimes, a few mentioned that they didn't agree with him sometimes. It's just common sense but we have the mystique of the amazing perfect Zen teacher who knows us better than we know ourselves. We need I think to let that go.
Our teachers can really help us by having another perspective and having a feeling grounded in practice and in how to turn our difficulties towards practice, but our teachers cannot look inside us and see what we need to do. That's up to us.
Today we have a wonderful opportunity to practice Zen in Sojun Roshi's way. Let's use it well. Staying steady in zazen. Practicing continuously through zazen, kinhin, service, breaks. Not diffusing our energy by talking or going shopping or reaching out for something beyond what's been offered by the schedule and this formal Dharma container. We have the opportunity to bring up contentment with what is even if we get tired or there are difficult thoughts or painful feelings. And even if we feel very happy and excited or have some idea or insight we want to capture and elaborate on, even then to just be content to just let go, to just sit. I it really wonderful that you made the choice to come here today and give yourself to the practice. Wonderful for you, wonderful for the others in your life, wonderful for the world. We can understand the practice best when we see that it's not getting something or improving in some way, it's giving a gift. Giving a limitless gift of our true self. Giving that gift away to the world over and over. Please let us continue.
Resident Priest Nomon Tim Burnett has been a student of Zoketsu Norman Fischer since 1987 when he was a resident at San Francisco Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm. After sitting practice periods at Green Gulch and Tassajara Zen Monastery, Tim helped found the Bellingham Zen Practice Group in 1991. Tim was ordained as a Zen Priest by Norman in June, 2000. Like his teacher, Tim is interested in the possibility of deep and complete practice by lay people.
A person of wide-ranging professional interests, Tim has been a botanist, elementary schoolteacher, writer, and computer programmer. In addition to his work at the Resident Priest of Red Cedar Zen Community, Tim works as a software developer.