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Responding Gate: On Kindness

by Nomon Tim Burnett
December 18, 2008

Dear Sangha,

 

This morning as I sat down to sit, I was really appreciating that I've learned (more or less) how to give this gift to myself. The gift of just sitting quietly early in the morning, not trying to figure much out or somehow jump start the day, just sitting quietly. Just breathing. Just being in that wonderful quiet before dawn.

I had missed a day or two (I am these days fairly steady in daily practice but thankfully also not too worried if I miss a day here or there) and there was a real sweetness to sitting down on my cushion. To offering incense at the little altar, doing three prostrations, and sitting down right there in the corner or our somewhat cluttered living room to breathe, to be, to heal. Giving it a full 30 minutes, not just sitting for a few breaths and dashing on. So sweet.

And then it came to me so clearly that practice is all about kindness. That giving myself permission to sit and to have a spiritual life embodied in this old-new Way of American Zen is really a practice of kindness. Of gift. Of giving and receiving bound so well together that there's no real knowing who is giving and who is receiving.

The kindness of Zen is not naïve or white-washed kindness, it's realistic. It's kindness with careful and accurate consideration of our actual condition. That even in this land of plenty we suffer, our hearts are not at rest. We don't fully appreciate the miracle of being alive. We so often don't really see flowers and clouds and children sleeping. 

Kindness that's not based on a clear study of our actual suffering and actual joy is a house built in the sand. So in Zen we start right here, we start by sitting still enough that our actual lived experience can bubble up, we stay with it long enough that we can learn how not to look away. A project of years, decades, lifetimes.

I think I used to feel that the process of Zen was something like: (1) figure myself out, (2) then from there learn how to be helpful to others with hopefully some very cool mental states thrown in en-route. Or maybe I thought that the process is a mix of both: while figuring myself out, be helpful to others. Repeat. Difficulty? Bad news but I can deal with it, keep practicing, keep working. Practice as work to do. A project.  And perhaps a neat identity on the side (what's more cool than being a person of Zen? The word itself is an adjective for cool).

But what's missing there? What's missing is being helpful to myself. Being kind to myself. This confused person with my hang ups and my strengths, with my narrowness and my vision. What's missing is to learn to be truly kind. And to extend that kindness to everything, absolutely everything without exception. To change the criteria away from desire, progress,  right-ness  to just kindness.

And kindness in all directions. When the mind is grasping or upset I see more clearly than before that kindness is the best response. Better than rationalization. Better than figuring something out. Better than indulging in some new story about identity.

For example I've been continuing my study of ambition. I recently devoured James Ishmael Ford's very readable Zen Master Who? A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen. A nice overview of the American Zen scene.  So many great stories of American and foreign-born Zen heroes who have created that scene. Very inspiring! And Ford's suggestions for consideration in the future of American Zen (secularism, Zen and science, our relationship to lineage) are interesting and important.

And as I read this book I could see the mind building up its usual desire for more time to practice. A powerful thirst for more study and time for study. How wonderful it would be to quit my job and work on study and Dharma projects full time. I wouldn't just sit around reading and writing either, I'd have wonderful dharma projects.  And the mind just gets rolling: I could start a Chai House at the Dharma Hall! I could be more available to families - it's pained me lately to have trouble scheduling an hour to spend practicing Zen with a family who really wants to do this with me. I could teach meditation here and there! Reading this book full of the accomplishments and trials of real life Zen heroes got me revved up and activated my ambition anew.

And yet over the last months I've made a decision that it makes sense to stick to my day job as a software developer. The work is not unpleasant, it's a steady job with salary and benefits enough to support my entire family. A rarity in Bellingham and increasingly all over the country. Something to appreciate and take good care of. And here I was reading an inspiring book hopping on the ambition express yet again. Inspiration is wonderful and also upsetting and destabilizing, no? So where to go with these feelings?

This morning sitting with this delicious feeling of kindness and compassion for myself I realized "that's it!" That I can practice kindness with my own mind. To be kind with the mind of ambition and oscillation. To just be kind. To smile and relax. To work with it and go with it. It's just thought, it's just emotion, it's just…mind after all. And then there's the next thing.

The kindness of Buddha is rooted in wisdom and insight. My sense of the power of kindness is I think based on years of practice and study. I can only be fully kind and open with the oscillations of mind and the mental formations of ambition, desire, and regret if I see them as such. If I can see an oscillating mind conditioned by inputs and experience then I can give it space and kindness. If instead I am believing the usual narrative, "this is me! I'm always this way, this is an unhappy state, why can't I just accept my lot in life, ugh!" or "what on Earth don't I quit my job tomorrow, the universe will provide!" I have no room to practice.  Without some perspective and insight a practice of kindness becomes self indulgence or self-pity. We need practice and teachings and study to develop that perspective, otherwise we are just too bound in the middle of the story.

Buddha's teachings on perception and non-identity are concrete and helpful here. The me-model is just one model of our lived reality. The five skandas ("heaps" of experience) is another. The 12-fold chain is another. The 8 consciousnesses is another. Conditioning and cause and effect are never absent. None of these concepts is really right or "real" but so far it seems clear to me that Buddha's essential focus on suffering and the end of suffering as the measuring stick for conceptual frameworks is a much better place to start than our usual "is this good for me or not?"

When considering an interaction with another or a difficult situation what is the question we ask by habit? "Am I right? Do I like this?" I think things will work out better if we set that aside a little and ask instead, "What is kind?"

The kindness of the Zen path is also a disciplined kindness. I have to set my alarm an hour early if I'm going to create the space to really appreciate sitting in the morning. It's a choice I make. Sometime I won't make that choice, there are reasons why that I understand and reasons why that I don't understand but yesterday is past. The next day I click the alarm on again. But discipline is so often confusing. Discipline can have a feeling of militarism or even self-harm to us so often. Perhaps one of the great contributions that we can make to our world is the discovery and maintenance of kind discipline.

Sometimes kindness is easy to practice and feel, other times it isn't. Sometimes it's the opposite of kindness we notice. We notice judgment, negativity, a habitual inner dialog that adds a sense of inadequacy and desperation to everything we do.

Just now I remembered I wanted to read an article my teacher sent me a while ago. Finding it in my email I was briefly shocked that it's been nearly a year. Instantly the mind popped up with an imagined dialog: me telling my teacher, "Well I finally read that article by Bob Sharf, sorry it took so long." A bit of embarrassment, shame even, at not keeping up. This is not kindness and it's generated by the conditioned mind. There was no deadline or expectation when and if I would read that article. The non-kindness is an addition. Just noticing this really helps to dissipate it.  The light of awareness all by itself is a help to kindness practice.

And from our own practice of kindness grounded in honesty, insight, and discipline we so naturally can be kind with others. And when we aren't kind we are offered an opportunity, offered a choice, can we turn towards that suffering inflicted on the other who is ourself and let that be a learning and a guide along the twisting path to deeper and real-er kindness? Or will we shut down and buy in and sink into the pit of human suffering. It might be that the human being is the species most able to experience real kindness and also real suffering and despair.

We all of us start from a different place but if we turn our hearts towards kindness we have wonderful company along the path. All the great spiritual teachers in all the wonderful books we want to read someday (when we have more time!) are walking with us but so are our closest teachers: our parents, our siblings, our closest friends, lovers and companions and our sangha members if we have the karma to be connected to a spiritual community.

May all beings be happy. May they know kindness and may they practice kindness so that all may benefit. As Christ promised. As Buddha saw.

Wishing all of you a wonderful holiday time which is just what it needs to be for each of us to support us and teach us as we walk the path together with all beings.

Our new Board of Directors
Our new Board of Directors and Sangha Workgroups are off to a good start. A few workgroups still need some energy if you're interested: Outreach and Sustainability. And we are looking for a sangha member who would like to be Vice President. We hope a woman would like to fill this job give the male orientation of the rest of the Board to date. With the emphasis on mutual support and the Full Value Contract (see below) we believe being Vice President would be supportive and rewarding position.  The new Board has already a feeling of safety and mutual support. The Vice President looks outwards towards the community and helps support outreach and connection.

Red Cedar Zen Community Board of Directors

Contacting the entire Board by email can be done by emailing a message to

leadership@redcedarzen.org

This will copy every current member.

New phone line at the building (Voice Mail generally checked by Welcome Workgroup) is 360-312-7088 but it does quietly ring downstairs you might reach someone if you call during an event.

The Full Value Contract

In this leadership of the Board and sangha Jeff McKenna brings significant experience in group facilitation and experiential education and he's asked us to agree to and work with a social contract to support our efforts in sangha work as healing and connection (not drudgery and burn out!).

The contract has three points:

1) SAFETY - Maintaining safety, physical, psychological, and emotional.

2) WORKING TOGETHER -  Committing to work together to foster both group and individual goals. We give the group what it needs and individuals what they need to realize these goals.

3) COMMUNICATION -   Speaking and listening fearlessly to one another with a commitment to fully talk things through.

The Board adopted this plan at our November meeting and Jeff has been visiting workgroups to discuss this emphasis on working together consciously and lovingly.

For more on the Board and the Workgroups please see the new workgroups site. Follow the workgroups link from the main www.redcedarzen.org website or direct link is

http://sites.google.com/site/redcedarzendocs/workgroup-home

Members and Friends and a Bridge

I haven't seen financials or statistics yet but I know I've been working on thanking a pretty long list of new and renewing Members and Friends and several people giving Bridge Fund donations as well. Thank you so much. People near and far are responding in such positive ways. Simply sending support and also sending helpful suggestions for moving forward. I continue to be completely optimistic that we have a broad enough base of support to continue practicing at Red Cedar Dharma Hall and I am committed to fully supporting our existing programs and slowly moving forward with other ways of supporting community with Zen practice. The Dharma Hall is such a wonderful base for both aspects of our dharma work. Thank you.

The Board hopes to evaluate where we're at our January 7th meeting. Minutes to that meeting will be emailed out to Members and can be read by anyone on the workgroups site. Follow the links to Board of Directors then Meeting Minutes.

Health and Well Being Ceremonies

On the first Wednesday eve. of the month we are now performing the Health and Well Being ceremony.

This is a ceremony dedicated to the well-being and recovery of those who are ill or suffering a difficulty.

We chant the Heart Sutra to remember the healing power of emptiness and the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo to invoke Kannon (Avaolokitesvara / Guan Yin) the Bodhisattva of compassion and then we chant the names of the people we are dedicated the ceremony to.

Whether you can be there in person or not you can have a name of a loved one read during the ceremony. Post it to the Health and Well Being topic in the Ceremonies forum, add them to the sign up sheet at the Hall, or email me (tim@redcedarzen.org). There is also a time in the ceremony for people who are there to call out names if you do not have a chance to get the name on the list.

Memorial Ceremonies can also be done on request and maybe in future we'll start having a regular time for memorials or conducting the segaki ceremony as we did some years ago.

May all beings find relief from suffering and joy in the fullness of the present moment.

upcoming events

Red Cedar Zen Community invites you to participate in any of the following upcoming events. For more information about these events, including online registration, visit our web site at www.redcedarzen.org.

January 2009

Saturday morning meditation and breakfast

First and third Saturday mornings, 6am-8:30am

Red Cedar Dharma Hall

Our new regular Saturday morning program has had a good turn out so far. We hope regular Saturday programs will provide a way for people who are busy during the week to access the practice and come together with community. But we also hope those who need to sleep in on Saturday morning will take good care of themselves. And please note the flexible schedule options in terms of arriving at different points in the morning.

The next two regular Saturday morning programs will be January 3rd (followed by sangha work, we're behind on cleaning :) ) and 17th (followed by John Wiley's Intro to Zen class).

After that the practice period schedule will begin and we have practice on every Saturday morning (except Feb 14th, BIMS is using the Hall that day) through February.

Sangha work morning

Saturday January 3rd, 9:00am - 11:00am

Red Cedar Dharma Hall

Come to the new 1st and 3rd Saturdays early morning meditation and breakfast or just come to the work period.

After the snows we're behind on cleaning!

Early morning schedule THEN today's extended Saturday morning schedule

9:00am zazen

9:30am sangha work

11:00am closing chant in the zendo

Check this out, I think it's very interesting that someone in the Vipassana world is experimenting with conscious dialog. I hope to attend the opening talk to see if the way they're practicing with this is similar to the system of small group conversations we've learned from Norman. --Tim

Insight Dialogue Retreat with Gregory Kramer

January 9-11, Red Cedar Dharma Hall

Bellingham Insight Meditation Society invites new and experienced meditators to share a non-residential weekend retreat of Insight Dialogue. Insight Dialogue is a meditation practice that takes our practice of the Dharma into our relationships with other human beings. Gregory has dedicated himself to developing meditation practices that bring us into relation with each other while maintaining the awareness and stability of mindfulness. This gives us the opportunity to practice together in a way that can begin to free us from the suffering that we experience interacting with others. He has also developed a relational understanding of the Dhamma that keeps these practices grounded in the wisdom tradition.

Gregory Kramer is a meditation teacher, author, director of the Metta Foundation, and a visiting faculty member of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts. He has been teaching Vipassana and loving-kindness meditation since 1980. He is the co-creator and developer of Insight Dialogue and teaches the practice worldwide. He holds a PhD in ‘Learning and Change in Human Systems.

Schedule:

Friday Evening, 7-9 p.m. - Gregory's talk is open to all.

Saturday, 9-5 p.m. and Sunday, 9-4 p.m. – We will continue to practice Insight Dialogue interwoven with traditional, silent vipassana.

Retreat Cost: $25 BIMS dues-paying members, $35 non-members. For information and to register, contact John Fries, email:  jnfries@yahoo.com phone: (360)325-8977.

 

Intro to Zen with Seishu John Wiley

Saturday January 17, 9:00am - 1:00pm

Red Cedar Dharma Hall

An introductory class and retreat with lay teacher Seishu John Wiley. The basics on sitting and walking meditation and other ritual forms. On the spirit of living a life of healthy discipline with the guidance of Zen Buddhism. Designed for new students or those wanting to renew and deepen their understanding. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.  Preregistration request for this class but not for the early morning Saturday Zen and Breakfast (6am - 8:30) which precedes it.

January - March 2009

2009 Winter Practice Period

Thursday January 22, 7:00pm - Sunday March 08, 4:00pm

Red Cedar Dharma Hall

Starting with a shuso (head student) entering ceremony on Thursday eve. Jan 22nd, and ending with a 3-day meditation retreat, or annual 6-week practice period is a time for more intensive practice. Look for extra zazen meetings, classes and special ceremonies as we practice deeply during the depths of winter.

The schedule is now out and on the website. On the website you will also see links to a printable copies of the full schedule and the Intentions Form which we recommend filling out for yourself.

Direct link to event description on the website:

http://redcedarzen.org/events.html?event=94

June 2009

Samish Sesshin 2009

Friday June 19, 5:00pm - Saturday June 27, 12 noon

Samish Island

Save the date for Samish 2009. This year's retreat will be a silent Zen sesshin (meditation retreat).

Check back again for registration information.

yours,

Tim

 

Nomon Tim Burnett

Spiritual Director

 

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