INQUIRING MIND Volume 10, Number 2
Inquiring Mind: A Semi-annual Journal of the Vipassana Community (Volume 10, No. 2 -- Spring 1994: "Storytelling"). Articles by Tenshin Reb Anderson, Lama Surya Das, Rafe Martin, Steven Smith, Corey Fischer, Michael Meade, Jeff Greenwald, Kate Wheeler, others.
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TITLE OF WORK: Inquiring Mind: A Semi-annual Journal of the Vipassana Community (Volume 10, No. 2 -- Spring 1994)
FILENAME: IM_V10N2.ZIP
AUTHOR: Tenshin Reb Anderson, Lama Surya Das, Rafe Martin, Steven Smith, Corey Fischer, Michael Meade, Jeff Greenwald, Kate Wheeler, others
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DATE OF PUBLICATION: Spring 1994
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INQUIRING MIND
A Semi-annual Journal of the Vipassana Community
Volume 10, Number 2 * Spring 1994
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
S T O R Y T E L L I N G
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~INQUIRING MIND is published two times a year by the Dharma Foundation, a nonprofit corporation.
- EDITORS Barbara Gates & Wes Nisker
- DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Dewey Livingston
- PUBLISHER Alan Novidor
- COPY EDITORS Anne Brown, Lynne Prather, Nancy Van House
- CALLIGRAPHY Lynne Prather
- CIRCULATION Ruth Hirsch & Jane Deutsch
- PROOFREADERS Peter Gradjansky, Tessa Morrone, Mudita Nisker, Judith Stronach, Terry Vandiver
- THANKS TO: James Baraz, Lorraine Capparell, Maryann Clark, Marianne Dresser, Nancy Dyer, Gil Fronsdal, Jean-Luc Moreau, Suzie Rashkis, Michael Rinaldini
- SPECIAL THANKS TO: Kerry Livingston, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Susie Stark, Fred von Allmen
INQUIRING MIND is an independent publication and does not represent the Insight Meditation Society or any particular teacher or ideology. This journal is produced for and supported by the Vipassana Sangha, and as such reflects the interests of that community. Our collective purpose is to inspire, stimulate and share. We welcome controversy; we invite fresh perspectives. We will consider the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows in all their multiple shapes and forms.
Copyright Dharma Foundation
All rights reserved, 1994
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Table of Contents
{0} Logo Contest
{1} Correction
{2} Editors' Notes
{3} Letters
Features
{4} A Conversation on Zen and Stories -- an interview with Tenshin Reb Anderson
{5} The Practice of Storytelling in Tibet -- tales from the roof of the world (by Lama Surya Das)
{6} Jataka Tales -- the Bodhisattva takes many forms (articles by Rafe Martin and Steven Smith)
{7} Sometimes We Need a Story More than Food -- storytelling in the Jewish tradition (by Corey Fischer)
{8} Stories of Lives Lived and Now Ending -- as told to Frank Ostaseski at the Zen Hospice Project
{9} Once Upon a Time, Once Under a Time -- an interview with Michael Meade
{10} Water Music -- an excerpt from Snake Lake by Jeff Greenwald
{11} The Monk -- a short story by Kate Wheeler
Departments
{12} Books & Bodhi
{13} Practice Pages (1): Sangha News
{14} Practice Pages (2): 1994 Vipassana Retreat Schedules
{15} Practice Pages (3): Sitting Groups
{16} Practice Column: The Next Buddha May Be a Sangha -- by Thich Nhat Hanh
{17} The Dharma and the Drama: Learning to Love the World Anyway -- by Wes Nisker
{18} Support Your Mind! (Donation Coupon)
{0} LOGO CONTEST
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{1} CORRECTION
We apologize to Jill Bart for the printing error we made in presenting her poem "The Poet, Autumn and the Sixth Zen Patriarch" in the Fall 1993 issue of //Inquiring Mind//. We would like to share the corrected version with you.
-- Editors
THE POET, AUTUMN, AND THE SIXTH ZEN PATRIARCH
The poet deep in autumn writes
A yellow leaf
spirals down
moved by wind
a dervish
brought to ground
where all things
in time are
at the last
combined
The Sixth Zen Patriarch bows and offers
It is neither
leaf nor wind
that moves
what moves
is mind
by Jill Bart
Water Mill, New York
{2} EDITORS' NOTES
Editors' Note
"Once upon a time, once under a time, before digital time, beyond any time at all...." So we begin, as consummate storyteller Michael Meade puts it. For this issue we have asked Buddhist teachers and storytellers to tell us their tales and to discuss the role of storytelling in dharma transmission. Adding different flavors to the mix, we have included Hasidic tales, contemporary fiction, and a Poetry Page full of questions. Through reflections from the Zen Hospice Project, we have looked at how telling life stories can be important both for the dying and for those who love them. We have juxtaposed our interviews and stories with works by artists and photographers engaged in Buddhist practice. Statements by the artists accompany their pictures.
So join us. We invite you to enter the terrain of the stories themselves.
Editors
A Plea for Funding
Our heartfelt thanks to the thousands of you who offered kind words and financial support in response to our 10th anniversary issue. Your many notes of appreciation, congratulations and good wishes for the future have inspired us, while your generosity has provided us the opportunity to continue and to creatively grow into our new format.
Although we are pleased with the financial support we received during the last six months, our optimism is tempered by a few financial challenges we know we will be facing in the year ahead.
Among them is the long overdue replacement of the database program that we, along with Spirit Rock Center, use to manage our collective mailing list. To ensure that we have the adequate computer resources needed to serve our expanding sangha, we will soon be incurring significant, yet necessary, expenses for installation, training and upkeep of this new system.
Also, another in a series of postal rate increases for nonprofit bulk mailings is scheduled to take effect during this year, and could increase our mailing costs by as much as 20 percent.
Finally, our mailing list is growing by thousands of readers every issue. As a result, the cost to print and deliver a journal of this size continues to escalate, as does the number of hours every week it is taking our staff to respond to the many more requests and questions we receive.
Last year, less than 12 percent of our readers sent in donations. This year, we hope that many more of you -- including those who may not have contributed in a while -- will find it in your hearts and budgets to help us meet the financial challenges we face in the year ahead. So we ask you now to take a few moments, while the //Mind// is on your mind, to make a contribution. There is a convenient, easy-to-use return envelope hiding somewhere in these pages. If for some reason the envelope is lost, the donation coupon, which has had a home on this page since 1985, has been moved to the inside back cover.
With this Spring 1994 issue, we begin our second decade of trying our best to provide inspiration for our growing sangha in the West. We thank you all for helping us in this endeavor.
To Potential Patrons
We still have about a dozen copies of the "Dalai Lama and the Penguin" photograph left. We would love to find homes for these wonderful 8_ by 10_ frameable prints, signed by the photographers Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager, co-authors of //Here Today: Portraits of Our Vanishing Species// (Chronicle Books, 1991). To receive one as a gift, all you have to do is be one of the next twelve to become a Patron of //Inquiring Mind// by making a tax-deductible donation of $250 or more. The return envelope and the donation coupon both have categories for Patron contributions.
A Letter to the American Buddhist Community from the Dalai Lama
Brothers and Sisters,
We are all just human beings. Like everyone else we seek to find happiness and avoid suffering. This is both our right and the very purpose of our lives. As a Buddhist monk I try to cultivate love and compassion in my own practice and it seems to me that these are the very source of peace and happiness for myself and others.
The force of different circumstances has resulted, at the present time, in increasing interdependence within the global community. On the other hand, we are witnessing a new era of freedom as peoples long suppressed seek to assert their liberty and preserve their distinct identity. At such a juncture, understanding and mutual respect, natural expressions of the love and compassion central to Buddhist teachings, are absolutely necessary for the survival of our world. We must learn to live together in a nonviolent way that nurtures the freedom of all people.
As you know I have a longstanding moral responsibility for the six million Tibetan people, who have been suffering under ruthless occupation for decades. They continue to look to me and the international community to help peacefully resolve the predicament. Meanwhile, however, the situation in Tibet remains extremely grave and the very survival of the Tibetan religious, cultural and national identity continues to be at risk.
I feel sure that many friends in the American Buddhist community will share my concern at this crucial time in Tibetan history. Therefore, I ask you and everyone interested in justice and freedom to include in your prayers and activities support for human rights worldwide, and particularly the well-being of the people of Tibet.
H.H. the Dalai Lama
More on Tibet Support
Dear Friends,
A unique window of opportunity to bring about a significant change in conditions inside Tibet has appeared. Future renewal of China's Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status, a trade status they desperately want to maintain, hinges partially on the Chinese taking steps in "protecting Tibet's distinctive religious and cultural heritage." Please call your congressional representatives (U.S. Congress switchboard (202) 224-3121) and urge them to keep the pressure on the Chinese to improve conditions in Tibet before the MFN renewal deadline on June 3. Please ask your Representative to contact you on how they have responded to this issue.
Your active help right now can really make a difference. I urge you to get involved with a new urgent action campaign being launched by the International Campaign for Tibet. For information call (202) 628-4123. Thank you.
Lodi Gyari
Special Envoy of His Holiness
the Dalai Lama
{3} LETTERS
Abortion
Dear Inquiring Mind,
In reading Yvonne Rand's article, "The Buddha's Way and Abortion" (//Inquiring Mind//, Fall 1993), I was both touched by the author's commitment to healing the wounds of abortion and saddened by her poor logic in determining why abortion should be supported as a choice. I share much with Rand. As a minister I have walked and prayed with women (and even some men) who have been involved in abortions. Further, like Rand, I believe that a fetus is an unborn human being and that abortion is a violence both to the mother and the child (lethal for the child). As a Buddhist, Rand embraces the Buddha's precept against intentional killing. Both conventionally and ultimately, she says, this is fundamental. And very clearly for her, abortion is intentional killing. Given these suppositions, it escapes me that she would support abortion as an optional choice. Essentially what Rand is saying is that she supports the option of the violent destruction of innocent human beings. Is that a valid option?
Rand describes the need to recognize the "voice" of the "fetal baby" and acknowledge her/his "in utero presence." I agree. I also see that in one sense we must be that voice for the voiceless and protection for those utterly vulnerable.
I applaud Yvonne Rand's commitment to the healing of women and men who have been part of abortions. It is no time to condemn or shame. I share that commitment. I believe that we must also be committed to assisting women in problem pregnancies and protecting their unborn. Given the Buddha's precepts, it seems that we should be talking about preventing the tragic deaths of the vulnerable innocent and saving mothers from karmic results of violent acts they may make against themselves and their children.
Peter Feldmeier
Berkeley, California
To the Editors,
I commend Yvonne Rand's use of Buddhist ceremonies to help women deal with grief and guilt after abortions. But I am surprised that she still favors abortion on demand.
She writes: "In 1955, when abortion was illegal, almost one out of four American women had an abortion by the age of forty-five, and some perished in the process." Illegal abortion was not nearly this common. Since //Roe// in 1973, the abortion rate has more than doubled to 1.6 million per year; it is estimated that before legalization, there were about 300,000 annually -- a fraction of the current rate. Further, maternal deaths from abortion plummeted after the discovery of antibiotics, and continued to decline with improving medical care. The National Center for Disease Control lists 39 maternal deaths from abortion in 1972. This trend has continued without any apparent impact from legalization. In 1987, there were eight. Legal abortion has not saved women's lives, but multiplied the death rate for children.
Rand says she is anti-abortion, yet she supports a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn child, without government interference. But the question for Buddhists isn't "Who decides?" but "Who dies?" Slaveholders also thought the question was whether the government should control the decision to own slaves. If people are treated like animals, or children are being slaughtered, don't they deserve protection? As Buddhists we protest the legal killing of guilty criminals; can we endorse the legal killing of the innocent? "May you be safe from inner and outer harm, but I support the right to kill you" is moral schizophrenia, not Buddhism.
Mother Theresa calls legal abortion "war on children." Can Buddhists support the right to wage it? Gandhi wrote: "The measure of a civilization is the protection it affords its least powerful members." Thich Nhat Hanh states the first precept: "I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in my thinking and way of life." The prochoice stance is flatly incompatible with all of these. The Buddha more than any of the above, stood for the protection of life "just as a mother protects her child." In the Jataka tale of the Banyan King, he offers his life to save an unborn child. He emphasized the priceless value of a human incarnation, and he was totally opposed to killing as a means of solving personal or social problems. We shall have to face the fact that the Buddha could never have accepted abortion on demand.
Our teacher's response to abortion is clear: compassion for women, protection for children. Rand's description of the "remarkable grief" that haunts women for decades after an abortion shows how these goals converge.
Judith Crane
New Orleans, Louisiana
Dear Editors,
I have just read Yvonne Rand's moving article about the suffering of women (and men) who choose abortion. What I have to say may ease their suffering, their guilt at having taken a life. For I am an "unaborted child," one who would not be here if abortion had been legal when my mother conceived me.
As we now know from the experience of people in altered states of consciousness, fetuses are very much aware of their mothers' feelings. I am one of many who re-experienced the grief of knowing in utero that my mother did not want me, that I was an evil to her. That news, though, was not news to me; it was verification of what my mother had told me. As soon as I was able to comprehend, my mother took pleasure in telling me I had been a mistake.
I was a family joke, "the gold button baby," the child who'd managed to work her way under the gold cap my mother had had fitted over her cervix because two damn children were more than enough. My mother told me many times about that gold cap -- it was one of her favorite stories. And mine too; child that I was, I pictured myself entering the world in a golden glory. It never crossed my mind that my mother shouldn't have told me that I was a mistake or that she'd tried to unwomb me. Feeble attempts -- hot baths, laxatives, enemas, jumping up and down; she was too afraid to go to a back alley abortionist. But I, alas for her, survived, defied her will. Disobedient child, causing my mother so much trouble! I felt truly guilty about it; I didn't blame her at all for trying to prevent me or get rid of me. I'd been such a bad child -- being when I wasn't supposed to be.
Some mothers, after giving birth to an unwanted child, are able to love it. Nevertheless, the wound the baby receives in utero remains a wound that has to be healed because such children suffer from the conviction that they have no right to exist; a deep part of them says "No!" to life; they have to struggle to feel they "belong;" their self-hate begins very early.
That is why, despite the joy I often take in being alive, I think that it may be a gift to an unwanted child to abort her. Those who have an abortion and believe in reincarnation might be comforted to know that the aborted, unwanted life has been spared an enormous amount of suffering, that the child's soul may find birth again in a less hostile atmosphere.
Sincerely,
Barbara Una Stannard, Ph.D.
San Francisco, California
A Nun's Plea
To the Editors,
One of the real contributions that western Buddhists can make to the world and to the Buddhadhamma is a deep and thorough questioning of cultural bias. As an awareness of the relative, conditioned nature of our own mind grows, so too does an awareness of the strict relativity of cultural attitudes.
Thus it is with more than a little dismay that I read in the Spring '93 issue of //Inquiring// Mind of plans to establish the Metta Forest Monastery "to build both a monastery where men may receive full training as bhikkhus and a center where lay people can come for individual short-term or long-term meditation retreats. (An affiliated center where women may ordain as nuns is tentatively set for a later date.)"
I would urge all men, and more significantly maybe, all women, to question what they are supporting.
The situation for Buddhist nuns is far from satisfactory. The opportunity to ordain is rare; the opportunity to live in a suitable environment respectful of one's spiritual intention and potential is more rare; the opportunity to live within a religious community where nuns and lay women can mutually support each other is so rare I'm not sure it even exists.
As a nun myself, I wish for the chance to live the contemplative life free of the "holy housewife" role imposed by traditional monks. Not only is it disempowering, it's time consuming!
So to read of yet another monastery where facilities for nuns are merely a vague plan for some future time when the needs of monks and lay people have been taken care of no longer shocks, but it continues to dishearten.
Sister Jutima
Dharamsala, India
{4} A CONVERSATION ON ZEN AND STORIES
Full Expression, Full Recognition:
A Conversation on Zen and Stories
with Reb Anderson
edited by Barbara Gates
Tenshin Reb Anderson left advanced study in mathematics and Western psychology to practice Zen with Master Shunryu Suzuki, who ordained him as a priest in 1970. In 1983 he was made Dharma lineage holder, and in 1986 he became Abbot of the three Zen Center locations at Green Gulch Farm, San Francisco and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. He specializes in Buddhist philosophy and psychology and the relationship of Zen to the social and ecological crisis of our time. Reb Anderson took the //Inquiring Mind// editors on a delightful journey through tales and reflections, leaving us engaged and wondering. When we asked him how he first became interested in Buddhism, he told us the following story:
I was introduced to Zen through the stories that were coming out in the mid-1950s such as those collected by Paul Reps in //Zen Flesh Zen Bones//. I think now particularly of one story about Hakuin, a Zen master of high repute who lived in a fishing village. A girl in the village got pregnant and told her parents that this monk was the father. So the parents went and said to the monk, "You are a terrible monk. How could you do this? You are a disgrace to your profession, and not only that, you can take care of the kid." The monk said, "Is that so?" When the baby was born, the girl's parents brought him to the monk. He took the baby and, with great care, raised him for two years. Then, the girl finally told her parents that the monk wasn't the father, that some other young man from the village was the father. The parents went back to the monk, who by this time had lost his reputation. They highly praised him and they said, "We're so sorry. We now know that you didn't do this. And not only that, you didn't defend yourself and you took care of this baby. You are really a wonderful, compassionate Buddhist practitioner." And he said, "Is that so?" When I read this story, I thought, "That's a story of how I want to live my life." Do you see the circle? "Is that so" closes the circle. So the story has the quality of completion, recognition. Moreover, we recognize Hakuin and we want Hakuin to recognize us. If we live as he did, he will recognize us. So that is an important story to me and my practice. There are many other stories that come to play when I need them. It's good to know those stories.
Barbara Gates and Wes Nisker conducted the following interview with Reb Anderson at Green Gulch Farm in Muir Beach, California, in November 1993.
Inquiring Mind: We're interested in how stories transmit dharma. Could you tell us some stories and discuss how they work in the Zen tradition?
Reb Anderson: Let's begin with a dog story. I've raised a very well-behaved, long-haired, golden-colored Labrador/terrier cross, a beautiful female dog. Since I didn't want her to have puppies, the first time she came into heat, I kept her inside the house. Contrary to my plan, there was something outside that she wanted to do. She kept trying to get out, and I kept bringing her back inside.
Finally one day she got out and ran down the stairs ahead of me. At the bottom of the stairs I saw all these male dogs. They could smell my dog in the house and they were waiting for her. When she ran towards those dogs, I felt like I had lost control. Yet I still wanted to retain some control. I wanted to choose the dog with whom she would mate. I saw that there was one beautiful big white husky and there was also an unattractive runt, a spotted, short-haired little guy. I wanted her to go to the husky. But she didn't. The little mongrel got her. Then I told my very well-behaved dog to come in the house. Now you may know that once dogs get engaged, they can't disengage until they have finished. But I didn't know that at the time. So I told my dog to come in. When she came in dragging this little guy up the stairs, I had the same reaction you just had. I saw that I had gone too far.
That's a story about me trying to control a living being who is willing to respond to my attempt to control. By responding to my attempt to control, she taught me how stupid I was to try to control such life process. The story closes itself.
IM: Yes, the story does close itself. And in listening to it, we participate in that closing. You didn't even have to add the moral. We got the point on our own before you voiced it, and it went much deeper than if you had told us first.
RA: Right. You made a face when you got the picture of my dog dragging the little guy up the stairs. The look on your face was just how I felt, except you felt a little different from me because I felt ashamed and stupid. I learned something from that, but I didn't learn enough. And so there is a sequel which is related. This intercourse I described caused fertilization and pregnancy. When my dog was approaching the time to deliver her puppies, she started to swell and spread, and various bloody fluids started to ooze out all over the place. Usually she slept on my bed, but during that time I made a separate bed for her in the kitchen. I imagined this stuff all over my bed, dry cleaning bills and so on. So I told my dog to stay in her bed in the kitchen. She would keep coming into my bed and I would keep sending her back to the kitchen.
Once again, I wanted some control. And again, I had the same obedient dog. When I told her to go back in the kitchen, she went back. But then, because she really wanted to be in my bed, she kept forgetting, and she kept coming back again. One day when I came into my room, she was up on my bed on the pillows. I saw red stuff all over the white pillows. So then I got angry and kind of mean. I said, "Get into your own bed." Obediently, she hopped down and went into her bed in the kitchen. And I went to clean up the mess. There, behind the pillows, I found four little puppies. It was then that I realized how stupid I had been again, and I invited my dog back up onto the pillows.
The moral is the same moral, but there is something additional: I was deeply touched by her trust in, and obedience to, me. If she had stood by her puppies and not obeyed me, I wouldn't have felt quite as embarrassed. And I wouldn't have learned what I learned. The fact that she would abandon her own puppies at my instruction, that she would go against her instinct to do what her master said, showed me how much more stupid I was and how much more noble she was.
It's a great lesson. It again reminded me of the nobility of life, and of the stupidness of my attempt to control it. Sometimes life gets messy, and sometimes you get the point that it's not about keeping your bed clean. It's about this thing going forward. Yet there is some play in it and some chance to learn.
So training was involved in these two stories. Through language, my dog entered formal training with me and I entered formal training with her. My dog learned how, upon instruction, to come inside the house or to go to the bed in the kitchen. Through my dog's willingness to cooperate with me, I learned something about human control and obedience, about devotion and love. Likewise, in Zen training, I ask someone to do something and we go off together to struggle through the communication process until he or she actually understands what I mean. The training is mutual. And there is a closure in the communication, a circle.
When I tell you a story about how this closure in communication happens, you probably feel gratified in your mind to see the closure in that relationship. You can carry that story in your mind about how to close the circle of communication with other people.
IM: Isn't there a more formal use of stories in Zen training?
RA: There are two phases in the full story of Zen practice. One phase is intrapsychic; it's what we call just sitting. Just sit and become intimate with yourself. You really work to come down to pure mindfulness. This phase is usually not mentioned in the stories, but should be understood. The next phase is interpersonal; it's called going to the teacher and discussing dharma. You can go to the teacher and discuss dharma before you've actually settled in order to get some instruction about how to settle. But once you sense that you have settled, you go to get reflection, to see if the teacher will reflect your settling. You hope that your teacher has also been settling. So you have two people coming together who have settled on themselves who then express that settledness to each other and recognize it in the other.
There is no such thing as a buddha by herself. The Buddha wasn't sitting alone under the Bo tree. He was sitting with the tree, with the stars and with all sentient beings. He was recognizing them, and how they work, and they were recognizing him. A buddha by herself is a buddha that hasn't yet thoroughly realized dharma. In a sense, Buddha was not really Buddha until he started teaching. Buddha was somebody who had great insight. But when teaching, he showed that he could express his insight and recognize others who would express themselves and be recognized by him. So the second phase of Zen practice is this mirroring. And Zen stories are about that. These stories are not about somebody sitting by himself and having awakening. That happened //before// the stories happened. Or else it didn't happen. And then the monk came, expressed herself, and the teacher said, in essence, go back and sit some more.
IM: Does a monk alone in a cave ever use stories just to get himself settled?
RA: We need stories about how to let go and stories about how to sit down and stories about how to deal with ourselves. A Sufi story just popped into my head. In this story, a man was put in prison. When a friend of this prisoner sent him a prayer rug, he was not happy. He wanted something more along the line of a saw or a crowbar or perhaps keys. But given that he had the prayer rug, he figured he'd just have to use it. So he started bowing on the prayer rug. As he bowed, he became more familiar with the pattern woven into the rug. Finally, he started to see an interesting image in the pattern. As you may have guessed, it was the diagram of the lock. So this is a story that you can remember. If you like this story and it rings a bell in you, then when you are sitting in your meditation, you may realize that there is some pattern of bondage in your thought and see how it may be unlocked.
IM: Of course! This is your own story.
RA: Right. You are sitting in your own stories. You watch your own stories, and you watch your own stories watch your story. You realize that there is some pattern there, and the more you realize it, you see that your story is your way out of your story. So, if you were sitting in a cave, the story of the prisoner and the prayer rug would encourage you to work with the story that you were living right then of your being in the cave. There are a lot of stories that you might use if you started wavering and losing enthusiasm, other stories that say, "Oh no, stay here." When you would get angry, or sleepy, or depressed, hopefully you would have other stories about each one of these things. And if you didn't have the appropriate stories, you would go to see your teacher. The teacher would then give you a story about how she had experienced that same thing, or how she knew somebody else who had experienced it. So you would go back and use the story to continue your meditation. Then once you felt as if your story had done its job, then you would go to the teacher and say, "I'm cooked, I'm done," and see if the teacher recognized you or gave you another story and sent you back for more work.
IM: How does a koan differ from a story? Or are they the same?
RA: Zen stories are koans, and koan literally means "public case." In other words, it's out in the public. The stories are records of actual conversations, public examples of actual reality. Actual reality is realized when two people completely express themselves and give reflection. The stories or koans help us understand these fundamental interactions between people.
A lot of the Zen stories are showing that the teaching is both ways. It's from the teacher to the disciple and from the disciple back to the teacher. And sometimes it's between two teachers that are both teaching each other. Here's an example from //The Book of Serenity// of a story between two Chinese Zen masters. Both are masters, but still one is the teacher of the other. The younger one, San Sheng, is the disciple of the older, Linji (Rinzai). When the older master, Linji, who is known for his shout, is about to die, the younger master is standing next to him. Linji says, "When I die, please don't destroy my teaching." And his disciple responds, "How would I dare destroy the master's teaching?" Linji says, "After I die, if someone asks you what my teaching is, what will you say?" In response, San Sheng shouts. Linji says, "Who would have thought that my teaching would be destroyed by a blind ass?" After that time, nobody ever again could truly shout in that lineage. Everybody that shouted after that was said to be just copying the master. The shout that the younger master gave put an end to shouting. That's the story.
If you study the history of Buddhism, then you know that in the living lineage the new generation must destroy the previous generation. That's what keeps the lineage alive. In order to become a successor in Zen, you have to make the previous teacher obsolete. In this particular case, in order to transcend the teacher, the disciple used the shout, which was the teacher's specialty. If a student does something a master does, but does it very differently, the master says, "Well, she's just got her own thing." But if she does the master's thing in almost the same way, but slightly differently, then the master says, "No!" So, in this story, the young master gives a great shout that leads to no more shouting. The older master responds, "Who would have thought that my teaching would have been destroyed by this blind ass!" This is recognized as the dharma transmission between them.
IM: So the story is saying that the tradition will be destroyed if it isn't destroyed!
RA: Exactly. A student can only be sure he has done something new when he draws blood. In this case, the older teacher is dying, and when his student yells at him, the teacher calls him a blind ass. Blood has been drawn! And, at the same time, we know that the master's response is ironic. We know that this is the moment of transmission. Now there are other stories where the teacher says, "This is my wonderful disciple."
IM: But mightn't that be ironic as well?
RA: Remember, ironic doesn't mean "not so." It has a contradiction, a dynamic in it. If it were just the opposite, it wouldn't have that bite.
IM: So there's a lot more in the story than meets the eye! I imagine that there could be endless commentary on that final exchange.
RA: There is. In almost instantaneous interchanges such as this one, there is a whole universe. Generation after generation can look at a few sentences between two masters and see almost all of Buddhist practice. In this story, and in the one I am leading up to involving that same younger master and another senior master, the crucial teaching is about mutual recognition and mutual expression. In usual social interactions, people take turns. When I am expressing myself, I take a little break and don't pay attention to you and recognize you. Or people take different roles. A lot of people are good at recognizing others but they don't express themselves very well. Some people are good at expressing themselves and getting recognition, but they aren't good at listening to and recognizing others. But in Buddhism, if the teacher can't recognize the other, the process is dead. The place of reality is where you are both simultaneously connecting. And it is very difficult for human beings to stay in that place. We veer off to one side or the other to play in one of those roles, because it is so intense and so paradoxical to be both fully expressing yourself and fully listening to the other. But that's what these stories are about: simultaneously meeting and making each other happen.
IM: It seems to me that in a lot of those stories there is a subtle one-upsmanship.
RA: Right. In the story I have been leading up to it may //look// that way.
After San Sheng becomes Linji's (Rinzai's) dharma heir, he goes traveling around to visit all the great Zen teachers in order to get recognition. It's as if he is saying, "I'm the successor of this lineage. Do you recognize me?" So he goes to visit another teacher senior to himself, Xue Feng, and says, "When the wonderful, mysterious golden fish breaks out of the net, what will you feed him?" Xue Feng says, "When you get out of the net, I'll tell you." Then San Sheng says, "You are the teacher of 1500 monks, and you don't even have some words that are appropriate." And then Xue Feng says, "I'm so busy with my tasks as abbot."
So first the story is just a wall. Then, if you watch it a little bit, you might see that San Sheng is saying, "I'm the golden fish that has broken out of the net. I've broken out of the net of confusion, subject-object dualism, and so on. I'm a free fish. What are you going to give me, teacher?" It looks like the senior teacher is saying, "You're telling me that you have attained this great freedom, and I don't think so. But when you do get out of the net, I'll tell you." On that level, the hot shot young master seems to be saying, "Here you are, the teacher of this great assembly and you can't even say anything better than that?" On the same level, one might understand the teacher to be saying, "I'm too busy to make the effort even to make a good comment to a guy like you."
IM: It sure looks like a putdown.
RA: It looks like a putdown. But remember, in Zen stories the most common rhetorical device is irony. In a certain sense, it is a putdown, but that's not all. Let's review the story. The young guy challenges the older master to see him as equal by strongly expressing himself in way that may sound arrogant. "I am the wonderful, mysterious golden fish who has broken out of the net." But, it is through this full, seemingly arrogant, expression of himself that he shows his respect for the older master.
Now it looks like the teacher puts him down, but actually the teacher does the same thing. He strongly expresses himself in a way that may sound like a putdown, "You aren't even out of the net yet!" But it is through this full, seemingly insulting, expression of himself that he shows his respect for the younger master.
IM: So the master's comment can be seen as a recognition of this young guy's chutzpah! These two might be seen as expressing the heights of mutual compliments.
RA: They are. They compliment each other through fully expressing themselves to each other.
On still another level, the ironic way that they talk to each other suggests something else that is very important: no matter what you say, it can be a form of recognition. The reality of human meeting is that we //do// recognize other people and that we //do// express ourselves. This is the reality of dependent co-arising. We do actually create each other. At the place where we create each other, it's paradoxical: I create you, but you create me. And I can't create you unless you create me.
IM: It's amazing! So many teachings in this tiny exchange! And each story has its world of meanings. In a Zen community these stories must be a great resource. How are they passed on?
RA: Commonly in Japan these days, Zen teachers will meet individually with a student and give him a story to meditate upon. Then the student returns to present his understanding again and again, until the student and the teacher reach an accord. Teachers also present their understanding to groups in a form called //teisho//, which literally means "presenting the shout." These presentations are not interactive; that is, the students do not express their understanding or ask questions but just sit and listen to the teacher.
We have also used these forms here; but, in addition, we have developed a much more interactive way of sharing these stories in a group. Over a period of several years now I have had a class with a group of people where we have been going through the one hundred stories of the //Book of Serenity// and intensively studying them. In this last round of classes we spent seven weeks on one story. We work with a story until I feel like people are really using it in their meditation and I see it functioning in the community. Then I feel like we can go on to the next story. I don't keep doing it until I think everyone completely understands a story, because I don't think there is ever an end to this understanding. The more you study these stories, the more you realize how vast they are.
IM: So after weeks of discussion, the story takes over and actually starts to work as its own teacher.
RA: Exactly. In the past, I followed a system similar to that followed by a lot of Rinzai teachers. They assign stories to people. The people are supposed to work on those stories until they get to a certain kind of understanding which is standardized and checked in certain systematic ways. But I'm not following that system. In my approach, I'm systematic in the sense that I go straight through this book and don't skip anything, but I am not systematic in checking understanding. My interest is in building a vocabulary with these stories in the community -- a vocabulary of how to talk, a vocabulary that helps us know how to relate to each other. This vocabulary teaches us how to assert ourselves and listen to others and enter into the very dynamic space which these stories are showing.
In this class, the people in the room are a crucial resource. To begin each meeting, I say everybody's name and then everybody else repeats their name. We start off by everybody recognizing everybody, and everybody being recognized by everybody.
IM: Throughout our conversation, you repeatedly talk about "recognition." This concept seems fundamental. What does it mean "to recognize the other"? Is it to be as present as possible in that moment with that other person?
RA: It means being as present as possible with yourself first. Then, you notice how there is a place where you seem to end. And that leads you to a more vital place. Really meeting the other is like meeting your death. Just as you reach the fullness of your life at your death, you reach the fullness of you when you meet the other. And the kind of understanding that we are working towards in this class is not an understanding that one person can have by herself. This kind of understanding is something that you do with other people. It's something that happens between people. And the stories themselves, as conversations, are modeling this!
IM: How would you differentiate these stories, these koan cases, from the one-line puzzles: if everything returns to the one, to what does the one return? Or, does a dog have buddha nature? Aren't those what people generally call koans?
RA: Let's look at how a conversation between a teacher and a student might become a story. When a monk would come to a teacher, the teacher would ask, "What's your name? Where are you from? How long have you been practicing?" Then the teacher would give the monk instruction. After giving that instruction, either right away or later, the teacher would say, "What's been happening with that instruction I gave you?" If the monk had an answer that other people witnessed or that was interesting enough so that the teacher or the student mentioned it to somebody, then the record of that interaction would become a story. The one-line koan that you are talking about would be the instruction insinuated in the middle of that story.
IM: So the one-line koan is the key sentence in the story?
RA: Let's take the //Mu// koan. The story is a record of a conversation that actually happened. A monk asked a teacher, "Does the dog have buddha nature or not (//mu//)?" And the teacher said, "//Mu//." Later, the monk asked, "Does the dog have buddha nature or not?" and the teacher said, "Yes it does." The //Book of Serenity// has both of those stories. So the story has nothing to do with whether a dog has buddha nature or not. And //mu// has nothing do whether you have it or not. Buddha nature is not something you have or don't have, right? But you work with this dynamic of existence and non-existence around this koan.
A teacher may assign you the //mu// koan when you go for instruction. When you are actually meditating, it's easier to work if you just pick one character. Usually, in the key sentence of a story, there is a pivot, a particular point in the sentence which is the best place to concentrate on that sentence. This pivotal character, or head word (//wato//), is at the beginning or end of the sentence. The //wato// in the sentence, "Does the dog have buddha nature or not?" is //mu// (not). So you study the whole story, and then you focus on this one character. As you focus, you start to feel the context of this character, which is the dependent co-arising of the word //mu//. You use //mu// to zero in on a fundamental question. Do we have or not have enlightened nature? Are we awake or not? But you know the story around it. And the story around it is the entire universe.
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Koans are the folk-stories of Zen Buddhism. Like folk-stories, koans are ahistorical and are meant to be personalized here and now.
When the monk asked, "Do dogs have Buddha nature?" he was expressing doubt about his own. Chao-chou responded "Mu." Mu means "does not have," but Chao-chou was showing Buddha nature. You can personalize his response by asking "What is Mu?" What is conveyed through telling a story that might not be conveyed in any other way? An experience of Buddha Dharma, no less.
Robert Aitken
Honolulu, Hawaii
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{5} THE PRACTICE OF STORYTELLING IN TIBET
The Practice of Storytelling in Tibet
by Lama Surya Das
"Spiritual teachers have universally used stories to illustrate their teachings, and the lamas of Tibet are no exception."
-- H. H. the Dalai Lama
Storytellers preserve history and knowledge and keep culture alive through, as it were, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The Irish "shanachies" stood second only to the king and had to know by heart hundreds of major tales along with countless minor ones. The African "griot" transmitted a living oral flame to the next generation without a single word committed to writing. Navajo singers could recite by heart their tribal creation myths, uninterruptedly, for several days. Tibetan masters committed to memory hundreds of volumes of canonical texts, including all the historical records and tales of Buddhism, while unlettered wandering storytellers recited by rote lengthy Tibetan epics such as "Gesar of Ling" around nomadic campfires.
Tibet -- the Roof of the World, Shangri-la, the Forbidden Kingdom -- has always been renowned as a repository of arcane and occult wisdom. A great deal of that wisdom has been passed down through oral teachings. Tibetan historians of old regarded the ancient, pre-Buddhist storytellers and singing bards as protectors of the kingdom. In fact, reciting the legends correctly by rote was necessary for upholding the order of the world and of society. In the tantric Buddhist tradition -- the nondual Vajrayana or Diamond Vehicle -- there are innumerable stories of the ecstatic eighty-four siddhas of ancient India, tales which make up one of the most popular genres in Buddhist literature today.
The teaching tales told by Tibetan lamas help explain the world and our place in it. These stories have traditionally been received as spoken instructions from teacher to student -- like little gifts of love, ferries to that far shore of genuine inner experience, truth itself.
The following three stories are from my unpublished manuscript, //Once Upon A Time in Tibet: Himalayan Folk and Fairy Tales.//
Milarepa's Last Testament
After the enlightened cave-yogi and songmaster Milarepa left this world, a scrap of rice paper was found inscribed with his handwriting. His ascetic followers were astounded, for it stated that beneath a nearby boulder was buried all the gold that ascetic Mila had hoarded during his life.
A few eager disciples dug around and under that large rock. In the earth they discovered a ragged cloth bundle. Opening the knotted bundle with shaking hands, they discovered only a lump of dried shit.
There was another scribbled note as well. It said: "If you understand my teaching so little that you actually believed I ever valued or hoarded gold, you are truly heirs to my shit."
The note was signed "The Laughing Vajra, Milarepa."
Death and a Woodcutter
It was just before nightfall in the thick forest of eastern Tibet. A bent-over woodcutter named Lakpa was overwhelmed with his daily work. Staggering under his enormous load of firewood, with miles to go before reaching home, he cried: "Ah, if only death would come, I'd be free!"
How many of us, crushed by life's burdens, haven't mindlessly appealed to the higher powers in such a way? And, just as so many prayers are often, surprisingly, answered, suddenly Lakpa encountered Death.
The looming, shadowy figure of Death intended to take him immediately away to the Other World, but the poor woodcutter desisted. "I have an entire family to feed and care for," Lakpa told him. "Make a deal with me, and you shall have my whole family after twelve years."
"I shall have them all eventually anyway!" Death retorted, with a laugh from his yawning, cavernous mouth of darkness, deeper than a moonless night. Spreading wide his long, tree-like arms, he demanded: "What can you, a mere mortal, offer me that I don't have?"
The clever Tibetan was not stymied. "I can offer you a home, Lord Death. What can you call your home now?"
"I am at home everywhere," the gargantuan ogre-like specter answered. "What house in this dream-like world have I, Death, not visited?"
"Excuse me, Your Enormity," Lakpa explained, gesturing to the east with his right hand, "but everyone in my village knows that there is an immortal hermit in a cave in the mountainside beyond this valley. That yogi is over one thousand years old; he has been sitting unmoved in silent meditation for so many years that his beard has grown to the ground and taken root. Birds nest in the thick, matted hair piled atop his holy head. You have obviously never been invited to visit him, for he is immortal. Our lama proclaimed that this yogi has totally transcended the illusion of birth and death, and sits above the winds of changing conditions, free forever from the snares of duality."
"Where is such an immortal abomination!" roared Death, rearing up to his full height, taller than the surrounding trees. "Who is there whom I cannot carry from this world? Who dares to pretend not to be born and, at the mercy of their own delusions, again helplessly blown hither and yon by their karmic winds, like dry leaves in a storm? I shall eat that so-called Immortal for breakfast tomorrow!" Death shouted, in his fury forgetting the bent little woodcutter Lakpa as he stomped off towards that cave. Death's war cry -- "Nothing is permanent in this world, nothing remains forever, not even the trees and the seas!" -- echoed and re-echoed like peals of thunder throughout the wooded valley.
Lakpa dropped his heavy bundle and hurried home, having narrowly escaped the clutches of untimely death. At midnight he and his faithful wife bowed repeatedly and prayed to the compassionate Buddha to forgive his willful deceit of the terrifying specter of death. Then they made offerings to the Buddha of Infinite Life, Amitayus, praying thus: "May one and all reach that which is beyond birth and death."
There was no immortal yogi anywhere to be found in that region, though ancient legends were rife; and Lakpa well knew that one day Death would again stalk him, as he would eventually claim everyone, without exception, in this fleeting, dew-drop-like world. For who can forever escape the clutches of death?
More Proud Than a Sow
Once there was a proud pandit in Nalanda. Rather than taming and transforming his arrogant nature, as the Mahayana mind training is genuinely intended to do, it seemed that this monk's extensive Buddhist studies had only served to harden his recalcitrant character.
One day he was out for a walk after lunch, when he spied a lithe young milkmaid carrying a clay pot of warm goat's milk into her house. Greed -- so unbecoming in a venerable abbot-professor -- took hold of him.
The monk restrained his haste for several minutes. Then he approached the humble home and knocked on the door, as if soliciting alms -- which, in his hubris, the monk never deigned to actually do.
The woman of the house welcomed him. "Excuse us, reverend sir," she exclaimed, "we have just eaten our daily meal and all the bowls are soiled. Just one minute and I will fetch you a bowl of fresh milk." Then she hurried off while he waited patiently at the threshold.
Soon the lady returned, a bowl of warm milk in hand. As the proud scholar stood and drank it, the family pig came rubbing against his legs.
The young girl came to lead the fat sow away. The supercilious monk turned to her mother and said, with warmth, pointing at the sow: "This is truly a devout, if unlettered, household. See, even she recognizes a saintly sage when she sees one!"
"She recognizes her bowl!" the lady declaimed, laughing. For she was herself none other than the haughty Sow-Crowned dakini, the deity Vajra Varahi. Deflated, the humiliated scholar slipped away.
Lama Surya Das is an American poet, writer and meditation teacher. After spending eight years in seclusion studying with some of the great Tibetan Buddhist masters, Lama Surya Das established the New York based Dzogchen Foundation. His first anthology, //The Snow Lion's Turquoise Mane: Wisdom Tales from Tibet//, was published by HarperCollins in 1992. He is currently working on another anthology of stories and a book about living a spiritual life in the twentieth century.
{6} JATAKA TALES
Jataka Tales
by Rafe Martin
Jataka tales, or stories of the Buddha's earlier births, remain at the traditional core of the Buddhist canon, stretching back to the time of the Buddha himself. Indeed, in the traditional view their original narrator was none other than the Buddha himself. In these stories he reveals the trials, tests, and triumphs of his own past births. The ideal of the Jataka tradition, however, is not simply to show the Buddha's unique past, a past which extends through many animal as well as human and even superhuman lives and realms, but to reveal the mythic present of every Bodhisattva, each being on the Path, each of us. Archaic times and archetypal zones of the psyche take form. Animals speak, gods and goddesses appear and disappear, beings die and are reborn, and the precepts come to life.
The central genius of the Jataka vision is to //demonstrate// the teachings. They present Buddha-mind in activity. In a sense these tales are the communal koans of the Buddhist tradition, giving us ways of exploring together the spiritual ground of our daily ethics and living. Engaged Buddhism, then, has always been at the heart of the 2,500-year-old tradition. In these tales we see that the Buddha's own path was a path which took him into all the realms of the world. Often he had a wife and a family. He did not simply remain alone in concentrated isolation in the forests and mountains, and certainly he did not shirk the many struggles that can lead to balance and integration. I find that the Jatakas, then, can speak to American lay practice, clearly saying, "Take heart!"
Still, I would not say that the Jatakas "teach" dharma so much as that they //are// dharma. They point directly, without needing additional symbolic referent, to their own reenactment, to their own experience. Rather than being fingers pointing at the moon, they //are// fingers, //are// moons. What's crucial, then, is that we re-experience them, that we read them, tell them, share them. This is their life. In these actions their good work continues. This is their breath, this is the flesh and blood of the Jataka tradition. It comes down to me, to you. In telling and retelling the stories, we bring to life their many facets, their dynamic interplay of good and evil, the struggles of the Buddha's own path. In us, once again, //now//, the Buddha struggles to find the right path. In us, once again //now//, he is in the midst of life's complexities and difficulties. In this creative and ritualized imaginative re-engagement with the tradition we ourselves are renewed. As one old teacher put it, "The ancient teachings illumine the Mind and the Mind illumines the ancient teachings."
The Brave Little Parrot
Once, long ago, the Buddha was born as a little parrot. One day a storm fell upon his forest home. Lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and a dead tree, struck by lightning, burst into flames. Sparks leapt on the wind and soon the forest was ablaze. Terrified animals ran wildly in every direction, seeking safety from the flames and smoke.
"Fire! Fire!" cried the little parrot. "To the river!" Flapping his wings, he flung himself out into the fury of the storm and, rising higher, flew towards the safety of the river. But as he flew he could see that many animals were trapped, surrounded by the flames below, with no chance of escape.
Suddenly a desperate idea, a way to save them, came to him.
He darted to the river, dipped himself in the water, and flew back over the now raging fire.
The heat rising up from the burning forest was like the heat of an oven. The thick smoke made breathing almost unbearable. A wall of flames shot up on one side, and then the other. Crackling flames leapt before him. Twisting and turning through the mad maze of fire, the little parrot flew bravely on. At last, when he was over the center of the forest, he shook his wings and released the few drops of water which still clung to his feathers. The tiny drops tumbled down like jewels into the heart of the blaze and vanished with a hissssssssss.
Then the little parrot once more flew back through the flames and smoke to the river, dipped himself in the cool water, and flew back again over the burning forest. Back and forth he flew, time and time again, from the river to the forest, from the burning forest to the river. His feathers were charred. His feet were scorched. His lungs ached. His eyes, stung by smoke, turned red as coals. His mind spun dizzily as the spinning sparks. But still the little parrot flew on.
At this time, some of the devas -- gods of a happy realm -- were floating overhead in their cloud palaces of ivory and gold. They happened to look down. And they saw the little parrot flying among the flames. They pointed at him with perfect hands. Between mouthfuls of honeyed foods they exclaimed, "Look at that foolish bird! He's trying to put out a raging forest fire with a few sprinkles of water! How absurd!" And they laughed.
But one of those gods, strangely moved, changed himself into a golden eagle and flew down, down towards the little parrot's fiery path.
The little parrot was just nearing the flames again when the great eagle with eyes like molten gold appeared at his side. "Go back, little bird!" said the eagle in a solemn and majestic voice. "Your task is hopeless! A few drops of water can't put out a forest fire! Cease now and save yourself -- before it is too late."
But the little parrot only continued to fly on through the smoke and flames. He could hear the great eagle flying above him as the heat grew fiercer, calling out, "Stop, foolish little parrot! Save yourself! Save yourself!"
"I don't need a great, shining eagle," coughed the little parrot, "to give me advice like that. My own mother, the dear bird, might have told me such things long ago. Advice! (cough, cough), I don't need advice. I just (cough), need someone to help."
And the god, who was that great eagle, seeing the little parrot flying through the flames, thought suddenly of his own privileged kind. He could see them high up above. There they were, the carefree gods, laughing and talking, while many animals cried out in pain and fear from the flames below. And he grew ashamed. Then one single desire was kindled in his heart. God though he was, he just wanted to be like that brave little parrot, and to help.
"I will help!" he exclaimed and, flushed with these new feelings, he began to weep. Stream after stream of sparkling tears poured from his eyes. Wave upon wave, they washed down like cooling rain upon the fire, upon the forest, upon the animals and upon the little parrot himself.
The flames died down and the smoke began to clear. The little parrot, washed and bright, rocketed about the sky laughing for joy. "Now that's more like it!" he exclaimed.
The eagle's tears dripped from burned branches. Smoke rose up from the scorched earth. Miraculously, where those tears glistened, new life pushed forth -- fresh shoots, stems, and leaves. Green grass pushed up from among the still glowing cinders.
Where the teardrops sparkled on the parrot's wings, new feathers now grew. Red feathers, green feathers, yellow feathers -- such bright colors! Such a handsome bird!
All the animals looked at one another in amazement. They were whole and well. Not one had been harmed. Up above in the clear blue sky they could see their brave friend, the little parrot, looping and soaring in delight. When all hope was gone, somehow he had saved them. "Hurray!" they cried. "Hurray for the brave little parrot and for the miraculous rain!"
From //The Hungry Tigress// as told by Rafe Martin. Parallax Press, Berkeley California, 1990.
Rafe Martin is a long-time Zen student and an award-winning author and storyteller. His most recent children's books, //The Rough-Face Girl// and //The Boy Who Lived with the Seals// (both published by Putnam), have been featured in //Newsweek//. Another of his books, //Foolish Rabbit's Big Mistake// (Putnam), is a retelling of a jataka tale for children. Those who want more details on the Jataka tradition, commentaries on their meanings, and a selection of dramatic retellings might look at //The Hungry Tigress: Buddhist Legends and Jataka Tales// (Parallax Press), also by Rafe Martin. This collection has a foreword by Roshi Philip Kapleau and received the Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Award.
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Eddie Would Go
by Steven V. Smith
Stories of the Bodhisattva are the stories of our journey toward authenticity and liberation. The Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) devoted countless lifetimes to bring to completion the qualities of the true human being. These qualities are the ten paramis or perfections: generosity, moral beauty and strength, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, lovingkindness and equanimity.
The Jataka tales or birth stories are a kaleidoscopic map of the gradual fulfillment of these paramis. Jatakas describe the hero's journey of the Bodhisattva through innumerable lifetimes toward spiritual maturation. Such "innumerable lifetimes" can be seen as a mythic space/time, not predicated on the rational mind, a place where characters like those in our own psyches reside: the shadowy ogre who is transformed by a brave teenage prince; the queen who must realize her true queen nature of caring and nurturing; the ascetic who is challenged by temptation.
I use at least one Jataka tale in nearly every dhamma talk I give. The Jataka tales humanize the teachings. There are many modern day Jataka heroes and heroines demonstrating for us the Bodhisattva journey. One hero is Eddie Aikau, a legendary Hawaiian surfer and superlative waterman born in 1946. His ancestors voyaged to Hawaii from southern Polynesia 2000 years ago. A high school dropout, Eddie found his way as a big wave surfer and became the first lifeguard at Hawaii's famed North Shore beaches, notably Waimea Bay, where some of the largest waves in the world are ridden. Visitors to Hawaii are often struck with wonder at seeing thousands of bumper stickers and T-shirts with the words: EDDIE WOULD GO. It's simple. Eddie would take off on the largest waves ever ridden; and Eddie would save the lives of others. He danced with waves, merging with their power, gracefully, fearlessly. In these treacherous winter waters with mountain-size waves, lives are lost yearly. Yet no one ever drowned when Eddie was on guard. By some estimates, he saved over 1000 lives.
In 1978 Eddie was sailing on the traditionally-built double-hull voyaging canoe, the //Hokule'a// (guiding star), a prototype vessel of the early Polynesian voyages. The boat and crew of nine were sailing between Oahu and Molokai in one of the most treacherous stretches of ocean on the planet, Kaiwi Channel. They were preparing for a long journey to the South Pacific in commemoration, study and duplication of the earlier journeys over the past two thousand years. Suddenly they were hit at midnight with heavy weather, 12-foot swells and gale-force winds. The //Hokule'a// took on water and flipped over. By late morning they were still adrift, out of air and shipping lanes, clinging to the overturned hull, wet, cold and undiscovered. Eddie, tied to his favorite surfboard, took off toward Lanai, a small island 12 miles to the east, to seek help. It was just his way to risk his life for others. He was never seen again. For the last time, Eddie would go.
Steven Smith, a guiding teacher at IMS and co-founder of Vipassana Hawaii, teaches metta and vipassana retreats worldwide. He uses traditional and contemporary Jataka-style tales to convey the teachings.
{7} SOMETIMES WE NEED A STORY MORE THAN FOOD
Sometimes We Need a Story More Than Food
by Corey Fischer
Corey Fischer is a founding member of //A Traveling Jewish Theatre//. In 1990 he created a solo theatre piece, "Sometimes We Need a Story More Than Food," which he has performed in San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles. He has been attending vipassana retreats since 1981. We invited him to write about stories, drawing on both his explorations in Jewish lore and his experience with Buddhist practice.
-- Editors
At meditation retreats I often find myself hungering for the nightly dharma talk. Of course anything -- meals, interviews, showers -- besides sitting or walking meditation is a blessed relief. But I experience a particular longing for the human voice. Almost all the dharma teachers I've sat with tell stories when they give talks. It's the stories -- whether traditional or autobiographical, mundane or poetic -- that provoke goose bumps or tears or laughter in me. The stories connect me to the teacher, to the sangha, to generations of dharma students, to my own experience.
I begin my theatre piece with the following story adapted from versions by Elie Wiesel and Gershwin Sholem. Like all good stories, its meanings are inexhaustible but it has always spoken to me of the magical ability of storytelling to encode, carry and transmit human experience.
Whenever the community was threatened by a pogrom or by a natural disaster, the Baal Shem Tov would go to a secret place in the forest. He would make fire and he would say a prayer and the catastrophe would be averted.
In the next generation, after the Baal Shem Tov died and the community was again threatened, his daughter, Odel, would go to the same place, and she would say: "//Ribbono Shel Olam//, God, I can no longer make fire, but I can still find this place and I can say the prayer and that must be sufficient." And it was sufficient, and again the catastrophe was averted.
In the third generation, when the community was again threatened, Moishe Lieb of Sassov would go to the same place and he would say: "//Ribbono Shel Olam//, I cannot make fire, and I have forgotten the prayer. But I can still find this place and that must be sufficient." And it was sufficient, and again the catastrophe was averted.
And now, here we are facing all sorts of catastrophes. And we say: "God, we too have forgotten the prayer. The fires we make seem to destroy everything. And if the place still exists, we certainly can't find it. All we can do is tell the story. And that //must// be sufficient."
Stories unfold in the spaces between people. They move in circles, not in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles, because there are stories inside stories and stories between stories. Finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home and part of the finding is the getting lost.
This is a retelling of a story I heard on a radio program about storytelling called //Word of Mouth//, produced by George King in Atlanta. I don't know who told it on his program.
Once there was a tribe in Africa who were somehow given a television set, a generator and a satellite dish -- so they could get all the channels, which is exactly what they proceeded to do. The normal life of the village ground to a halt as everyone sat around the TV and watched, non-stop, day and night, night and day. But at the end of two weeks, they turned it off, went back to their traditional life and never turned it on again.
Now, there happened to be an anthropologist who was studying this tribe and he was very curious about this turn of events. So he asked one of the elders why they had turned the television off. And the village elder said: "Because we've seen it."
The anthropologist wasn't satisfied with this answer. "What do you mean you've seen it? You don't understand. It changes all the time. It has many, many stories."
"Yes," said the elder, "but we have our storyteller."
The anthropologist still wasn't satisfied. "You don't understand. The television knows many, many more stories than your storyteller could ever possibly know."
This gave the elder pause. He stared at the ground for a long time. Finally he looked up with a big smile on his face and said: "Yes, it's true, the television knows many, many stories, but the storyteller knows me."
This next one is my retelling of a traditional story that I consider to be a definitive statement of classic Hasidic dharma. It must have parallels or variants in other traditions.
One time, on Yom Kippur, Reb Dovid was about to begin the prayers, when suddenly the Baal Shem Tov cried out: "Reb Dovid -- your life is a waste. The works of your days are like ashes and not even your pain has meaning!"
Reb Dovid wanted to run from these harsh words, but the Baal Shem Tov said: "Now! Begin the prayers!"
And Reb Dovid prayed. And he prayed. And he prayed.
After the prayers, the Baal Shem Tov came up to him and said: "Reb Dovid, none of what I said is true, but there was a barrier over us tonight and our prayers were blocked. I was only able to open a very narrow path. And the only prayer that can travel that path is the one that comes from a broken heart."
I once asked Zalman Schachter, that amazing human bridge between the worlds of traditional Hasidic practice and the modern American spiritual smorgasbord, what characterizes Hasidic storytelling. "In a Hasidic //mayse// (tale)," he said, quoting Heschel, "'the soul surprises the mind.'"
During a recent run of my performance at the Magic Theatre, I improvised a story each night. This started to become a kind of "practice" in itself. Small moments that might be easily overlooked took on new value. I began to pay a different kind of attention to the events of each day, waiting for "the story" to emerge. I'm suggesting that our own stories can become objects of meditation. We can question our own stories as we would a traditional story. What does it mean? What's the message here? What elemental forces are being embodied by the characters? What is the teaching?
Corey Fischer teaches ongoing workshops in storytelling and improvisation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call (415) 383-6121. //A Traveling Jewish Theatre// will be presenting new work at the end of April in San Francisco. Call (415) 399-1809 for information.
{8} STORIES OF LIVES LIVED AND NOW ENDING
Stories of Lives Lived and Now Ending
as told by Frank Ostaseski
Edited by Barbara Gates
Inspired by a 2500-year-old spiritual tradition, Zen Hospice Project encourages and supports a mutually beneficial relationship among volunteer caregivers and individuals facing death. Volunteers work in San Francisco both at the Guest House, a home-like residence providing 24-hour care, and at Laguna Honda Hospice, a 28-bed hospice and AIDS unit, located in the nation's largest public long-term care facility. Each caregiver cultivates the "listening mind" through regular meditation or spiritual practice. This helps to develop the awareness, compassion and balance to respond to the needs of the dying and to hear their stories. Frank Ostaseski, Founding Director of Zen Hospice Project, says, "As hospice workers, one of our central tasks is to be available when stories are ready to be told." Recently, the Hospice has begun an Oral History Project in which the volunteers support people who are dying in telling their stories. A volunteer either writes down a story in the form of a letter or, more commonly, records it. These stories are then sent to friends and family.
The following article is excerpted from an interview with Frank Ostaseski by Barbara Gates and Wes Nisker, Inquiring Mind editors. Names have been changed to protect the confidentiality of clients.
Adele was an old Russian Jewish woman staying with us at the hospice. I got the call that she was dying and came to her room to find her curled over in bed, gasping for a breath. Her eyes were wide open with fear. An attendant tried to reassure her, "You don't have to be frightened." And Adele replied through her gasps, "If it was happening to you, you'd be frightened. Believe me." The attendant began stroking her while she continued to heave. "You're awfully cold," the attendant said. And Adele, again through her gasps, replied, "Of course I'm cold. I'm almost dead!"
As I began to attend to her, I listened closely to try to understand what was actually needed. While she was gasping for the air, she was suffering. While she was pushing out the air, she was suffering. In the middle, right in between the breaths, was the place of relief. I said simply, "There's a place to rest right there. Can you feel it?" In that moment, her attention went to that place, the in-between place. And, for an instant, she rested there. It was as if something washed over her face; her eyes softened and the fear dissipated. She took four or five more breaths and she died.
At Zen Hospice Project, we act with minimal intervention and attempt to meet whatever is arising in front of us. "There's a place to rest right there. Can you find it?" That was all I said. And she did everything else. She was honest and straightforward in her process all the way.
* * *
Sitting on the cushion, we watch the mind do its myriad activities. Hopefully, we are attending to it with some degree of equanimity. At the hospice, it's not appreciably different. We sit at the bedside and we listen. We try to listen with our full body, not just with our ears. We must perpetually ask ourselves, "Am I fully here? Or am I checking my watch or looking out the window?"
At the heart of it, all we can really offer each other is our full attention. When someone is dying, their tolerance for bullshit is minimal. They will quickly sniff out insincerity. There may be material that arises which we don't particularly like or even strongly dislike. Just as we do on the cushion, we need to be able to sit still, to listen not knowing what will come next, to suspend judgment -- at least for the moment -- so that whatever needs to evolve will be able to do so.
* * *
In a hospice there are lifetimes of stories that have been lived and are now coming to an end. They are stories of grief, of joy, of regret and reconciliation, of reflection and anticipation, of denial and acceptance. For the person dying, as well as for family and friends, telling these stories is a way of preparing. The process of dying involves relinquishing our identities. Telling our stories can give us distance and help move us through the process. Often this is the way we make sense of our lives and discover their meaning. But every story needs someone to listen.
* * *
Sometimes when a person tells his or her story, something changes. There was a very sweet elderly Italian woman, Rose, who stayed with us. She came with a prognosis of seven weeks to live. Seven months later she was still with us at the hospice. Volunteers kept describing the same conversation with Rose. Someone would walk in the room and say, "Rose, how you doing today?" With a tone of resignation, she would say, "I just want to die." Every day the same response. This became a running gag in the house. I told the volunteers, "We're not taking Rose seriously. We're laughing at her and we need to listen to exactly what she is saying."
So the next morning I went into her room and said, "Rose, how you doing today?" And again she said, "I just want to die." I said, "What makes you think that dying is going to be so much better?" She looked at me as if to say, 'What kind of a question is that to ask an eighty-year-old woman?' And I pushed on, "You know, Rose, there are no guarantees that it's any better on the other side." And she said, "Well, at least I'd get out." I asked, "Out of what?" So she began to tell me the story of her relationship with her husband.
As she told her story, it became clear that in the fifty years of this marriage, she had always taken care of her husband, cooked his meals, balanced his checkbook, accommodated his moods. Now that she was sick and dying, she couldn't imagine how he could possibly take care of her. She didn't want to be a burden. Better to go to strangers to be cared for. So she moved into the hospice. After she told me her story, we spent some time talking about it. Later, she had a talk with her husband. I wasn't there for that talk. All I know is that three days afterwards she moved out of the hospice and returned home. She lived at home for another seven months before she died.
As people tell us their stories, we have to really listen, trusting that insight may well arise from the telling. There is a place in the story that will often deliver what is needed. So pay close attention to whatever you are presented with. Start with that. Take it. Believe it. And see where it leads you. In this woman's case, when she sensed that someone had truly believed her, when she felt really heard, she was able to tell the story which led to her going home. Before she had told her story, she was convinced that her only solution, the only way she could "get out," was to die. Through telling her story, she realized that her illness and her need to be cared for -- what she had imagined to be a burden -- was the culmination of her life, a final gift to be shared. She made a reconciliation in her marriage and died at home with her husband and her daughter.
* * *
So the basic rule in listening to the story of someone who is dying is to believe that person. Take them literally and, at the same time, try to hear the symbolic language through which they are trying to communicate. There was a fellow who was referred to us by San Francisco General. He had lived in a Tenderloin hotel before he went into the hospital. When I first met him he was restrained in a bed because he had said that he wanted to end his life. He saw no purpose in continuing. So I walked in the room and I sat down next to his bed. I sat there for some time without speaking. Finally he started to speak. He said, "You've been sitting there for an awfully long time." And I said, "Yeah, I have." And he said, "People don't sit around like that here." I said, "Well, I get a lot of practice sitting; but, look, I came to talk to you about staying with us at our hospice. I wanted to know if that would be interesting to you?" He said it might and then went on to complain about the hospital restrictions. I said, "What do you want?" And he said, "Spaghetti." And I said, "We make spaghetti. We make really good spaghetti. If that's really what you want, then that's where we'll start."
And we did start with spaghetti. We moved him in the next day and we had spaghetti waiting for him. This guy stayed with us for about three months. Near the end of his time with us, he wrote a letter to the volunteers telling the story of his life when "pain had become unbearable" and "to cry could no longer pacify a miserable existence." And he told the story of his coming to the hospice and how his life had changed there. Here's how his letter closed:
"The greatest desolation in my life was the contemplation of a very lonely existence. From the moment I arrived here I knew that a totally new experience of life was about to begin. I knew that there was something about this circle of friends that was about to reveal to me a life that most of us seek but never find, namely one of peace and kindness."
We had taken him literally and served him spaghetti. And we understood what spaghetti symbolized to him. Spaghetti was nurturance; spaghetti was home. So we served him his spaghetti made with great kindness. He, in his turn, opened his heart and revealed his story. In the midst of it, he found the quality of life he had believed he had lost.
* * *
Stories transport us, offer us relief. AIDS dementia or senility is common in maybe 75% of the patients that we see. One of the things that happens in dementia is that we have a short-term memory loss. So we can't remember what happened a few minutes ago. But often, what happened several years ago, or even longer, is very available to us. There are lots of ways to work with AIDS dementia. Often the most effective way is for the caregiver to remind the patient of what is going on in the hospice at this moment. But, sometimes, it's more interesting to follow the story.
A very sweet guy came to the hospice. The most pleasure he had gotten from his life was from traveling. Now he was completely bed-bound. Martha, a coworker, speaks of how she would sit down next to his bed, and say, "How ya doing, Peter?" He'd say, "Wonderful. I'd like to take you to lunch." And she'd say, "Fine," and pull up a chair. "Where would you like to go?" "Paris," he'd say. And Martha, without hesitation, would respond, "Let's go." So the next thing you knew, they were on the Concorde. "I've always wanted to fly on the Concorde," Peter would giggle, "Would you like some more champagne?" Getting off the plane Martha would inquire, "Where are we headed?" He'd say, "The Left Bank." So off they would go to the Left Bank. Now in a cafe, he would describe Josephine Baker singing in the corner. They would have an incredible lunch. Martha has said that she would walk away from this experience feeling very satiated and delighted, as if she had actually just gone on a wonderful little trip. And Peter, never having actually left his bed, was equally delighted. The next day they would decide to take a drive up the coast to Mendocino, stay at a bed and breakfast and walk along the headlands.
Martha could have said to Peter, "Remember you're not in Paris or Mendocino. You're in your bed. You're in a hospice. There is an IV line going in. Let's get real here." She could have interjected her agenda. But these trips were as real to him as anything that was happening in that hospice. When someone is telling us a story, no matter where that story is coming from, whether it's coming from a demented mind or a clear mind, it's real in that particular moment. We have to be able, at least at some level, to believe it and to find the place where we can enter.
* * *
Sometimes what people need to tell are the stories of their regrets and their dreams. There was a fellow, Jack, who lived at the hospice. He had been a heroin addict for fifteen years. He'd lived on the street or in the back of his car. He'd thought he had a chest cold and had gone to the emergency room at San Francisco General where he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Three days later he was moved to the hospice having been told that he had less than six months to live. He never went back to his car.
In the course of his stay with us, we encouraged him to write some things down. He said that he'd never done that kind of a thing, but he'd give it a try. Here's an excerpt: "Over the years, there have been things put off or postponed because there was always plenty of time later on. That's all changed now. At least I've managed to do one major project. I finished that training to be a motorcycle mechanic. Been making plans to go back to work soon. Then to have this. They tell me less than a year. I'm gonna fool them. I'm gonna make it last longer than that...Who am I kidding? To tell the truth, I'm scared, angry, tired and confused. I'm only 45 years old and I feel like I'm 145. I have so much that I want to do, and now there isn't even time to sleep as I should. I need to save every moment that I can."
We often think that grief is about what we have had and lost. Sometimes the grief about what we never got to have is much more profound and much more present. The story of "what we never got" may be the one that needs to be told.
* * *
The stories we hear from family members often precede an important shift in their relationship to the person dying. Dusty was the brother of an elderly patient. We had contacted Dusty to let him know that his sister was dying. He hadn't seen her in twenty years. Dusty was a rough-hewn cowboy, a weather-beaten kind of guy. He had a belt buckle the size of his belly, lizard-skin boots and a ten gallon hat.
In those days, we took care of patients in the residence building at San Francisco Zen Center. So when Dusty arrived at the door at Zen Center and saw the shaved heads and black robes, his first question was, "What kind of place is this you got my sis?" When we went upstairs to her room, he could barely get across the threshold. He looked through the door, saw his sis, and couldn't go in. It had been a long time. He'd been out on the rodeo circuit for years. Finally, he got up his courage to enter the room, but only for a few minutes at a time. Eventually, this old cowboy and his sister picked up making small talk right where they'd left off years before. He'd start to talk about his belt buckle collection, life on the road, his trailer. Then he'd leave the room. We'd go downstairs to the garden and smoke cigarettes. Then he'd go back up for a few minutes. And it went like this for days.
One day I said to Dusty, "You know, Sis is getting much closer to dying. If there's something that you want to say to her, you don't want to waste too much more time." It just got slipped in right in the middle of one of those belt-buckle conversations. And he said, "You know, I want to tell her it, but I can't. I've never been able to say it."
About two weeks later, we were sitting in the garden and he just began to speak. I was about to get up and go do something else, but I thought, "No, I better stay still here for a moment." That's when the stories seem to come, when you least expect them. This hard-edged cowboy began to tell the most incredible, and in many ways tender, story. He started when he and Sis were young children. They had lived with their parents until they were four or five when both of their parents had died. They had been split up and both moved to separate orphanages, then later placed together in a foster home. Over several hours, as this story unraveled, he described the horrific life they had as kids -- moving from household to household. He also spoke about the kinds of injuries that he had inflicted on her -- the abuse, the ways he had abandoned her. There was tremendous embarrassment and shame as he spoke.
Mostly, during this story, all I did was sit still and nod my head. After he had spilled it out and brought us up to that moment, I said, "Let's go upstairs and see your sister now." That was practically the only intervention I made in several hours. We walked upstairs and went into the room.
I don't know if he had ever shared this story with others or not. But after telling it, his manner was totally changed. He said, "Sis, I got something I want to tell you." In that moment, he was available to her in a way that he never could have been before in his life. She saw it, and immediately there was a meeting that happened between them. She turned to him and offered the most exquisite piece of forgiveness I've ever witnessed in my life. She said to him, "Look, I have somebody who bathes me. I have somebody who feeds me. I am surrounded by love. There is no blame."
For me that's the power of a story. In telling this story, he was able to meet her in the same vulnerable place in which she was now living. This kind of storytelling is essential to healing, especially when there have been hidden difficulties in the lives people have shared, and particularly if there has been some shame.
* * *
After having watched someone die, one might think that the reality of their death would be undeniable. But, in fact, it's not. Our capacity to protect ourselves is very well developed. Sometimes, in order to truly acknowledge the death of someone we love, we need to tell their story.
A woman had died, and her sister had watched this process of her dying. An hour had passed after the death, and I was sitting at the bedside along with the sister. I asked her if she would like to wash the body. And the sister said, "Not yet. She's not dead yet." I said, "Okay." After some time, I asked, "When was she most alive?" This was all she needed to begin to tell me her story.
She started with the tale of an incredible day when, as a twelve year old girl, her sister had climbed down into a cave. Then the story of her sister's life began to unfold, how brave she was, how she later worked in political movements, then became a writer, then a traveler. As she told the story, the woman was able to move through her dead sister's life, grieving the loss along the way. And the period at the end of the story was her sister's death. That's how she had to finish her story because that's where we were. Then she said, "Now I would like to wash her body."
Once or twice a year the Abbot at San Francisco Zen Center, Tenshin Reb Anderson, comes over to speak with the hospice volunteers. One night he gave a very insightful talk that included the best advice I have ever heard on caregiving. He said simply, "Stay close and do nothing." That's how we try to practice at the Zen Hospice Project. We stay close and do nothing. We sit still and listen to the stories.
Frank Ostaseski counsels the dying and those in grief. He leads volunteer trainings and teaches workshops on Death & Dying, including an upcoming program in San Francisco, June 4-5. For more information contact the Zen Hospice Project, 273 Page Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, (415) 863-2910.
{9} ONCE UPON A TIME, ONCE UNDER A TIME
Once Upon a Time, Once Under a Time, Before Digital Time, Beyond Any Time at All
an Interview with Michael Meade
Michael Meade is a cross between a social worker and a shaman. As a leader of the men's movement, he works with story, myth, and ritual to both heal and inspire. In Meade's hands, storytelling becomes a fine art, full of nuance and drama, transporting listeners into gritty archetypal realms. In performance, he uses a conga drum to accompany and accent his tales, and while we can't present him live, even in conversation his speech contains a pulse, an incantatory rhythm, always moving toward elemental truths. Meade is the author of //Men and the Water of Life//, published in 1993 by HarperSanFrancisco, and co-editor of //The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart//, an anthology of poetry used in men's gatherings. We talked to him by phone at his home in Washington state.
Inquiring Mind: What makes storytelling an effective medium for teaching? How does a story work on us?
Michael Meade: Telling a story creates a different world. A door opens, and both the storyteller and the listeners subtly slip into what I call the inner-other-underworld, which is where stories come from. Story is a vehicle for traveling to this world, the one which both penetrates and surrounds us at all times. And in that other world, which I am using in the old Celtic sense, we find what is ailing, injured and unfinished in this world, and also we find its healing and completion. Interestingly enough, the other world has troubles also. All the stories have problems in them, confrontations that have to happen and huge dilemmas that must be resolved. It turns out that the trouble in the other world gets solved by dealing with it in this world, and vice versa. So the story is a vehicle that goes between both worlds and is somehow necessary to both.
For a more mundane explanation, I think stories allow the listener to let go. If someone begins to accept the symbolic power that a story carries, then their ego attention is overwhelmed by the universal qualities in the story. There is some relief from the personal. I'll explain how it works according to my understanding. The key elements of the stories I use are symbolic images that are connected to the great themes of human life and death. The beauty of a symbolic image is that it shows itself to each person differently. Whether it be the image of the Buddha, the image of the cross, the image of a giant or a dwarf -- everyone has to make their own picture of it. Each person has to meet the image in the story with the material of their own life. They bring their imagination into play, as well as the feelings that are coursing through them at the time that they are hearing the story. So the symbolic image, in a sense, feeds each person differently and allows each person to connect their personal story to the mythic story. Two things happen during this process. There is relief for the individual who no longer has to carry everything; the load is partially carried by the story. Secondly, I think a community occurs; what people used to call "communitas." Everyone winds up connected to the same story, even though they may be connected in different ways.
IM: So people begin to understand their individual dilemmas as common to the community, or, in a broader sense, as part of the human condition. Everyone, in some sense, is part of the same story.
MM: Yes. At least everyone can enter the same story. I think it is important to remember that the story reveals that suffering is common and distinct at the same time. The universal has everyone engaged, but each person is engaged in their own individual way. I try to get people to pour their personal story into the mythic story. Because these ancient stories contain huge dynamic symbols, they can accept and illuminate hundreds of personal stories at the same time.
IM: When you are choosing a story, do you look for certain themes or images that will evoke the feelings you want? How do you decide which story you want to tell?
MM: Well, I sometimes try picking stories. I call it hunting. I hunt through books or oral traditions, looking for a good story. But what usually happens, shortly after I go hunting, is that the stories start to hunt me. Often I have a long day of hunting and don't find anything, and I go home hungry. A couple of days later a scene from one of the stories will come after me. I'll be walking down the street or sitting in the yard, and all of a sudden a scene from one of the stories will light up before me. That's the story I have to tell. I've learned over the years not to trust my own interest as much as which story is choosing me, which story is hunting me down. The rewards are much greater that way. With this method, in the beginning I sometimes won't understand the story at all, not even a little bit. As a matter of fact, there are stories that I have been embarrassed to tell because they seem stupid or weird or strange, and I haven't known the first thing about them. But I find that when I'm telling a story, it begins to teach me.
IM: So once the story has found you, all you have to do is tell it. But that seems to require a special skill or magic to be effective.
MM: The first job of the storyteller is to bring the story to life, and everyone has to learn their own way of doing that. I use drums. I have learned -- and I'm still learning -- this storytelling technique associated in the old Irish tradition with the "shanachie" or storyteller, and in Africa with the "griot." It's a technique that combines the ancient with the absolutely current. It tries to bring the oldest and most universal archetypes together with the most immediate thing that is happening in the room where the story is being told. So the story becomes extremely timely while remaining universal.
IM: You are Irish, and a lot of your stories come from the old Celtic legends. How do you understand the use of story in the Celtic tradition?
MM: I think they are old teaching stories. They used to be told by itinerant bards, homeless wanderers, who were often blind. In other words, the storytellers weren't seeing this world. Their vision was in that other world. They would go from area to area, and when they arrived, everyone would gather. That was one way that these storytellers created community. Their stories, interestingly enough, were connected to rituals. In other words, the stories were grouped according to stages of life or great transitions in life. So there were wooing stories and wedding stories, death stories and funeral stories, birth stories, adventure stories, hero and heroine stories. Sometimes the bards would tell a story because of the calendar of rituals. Other times they would tell a story because of what was happening in that community at the time. And everyone would gather to hear that story.
The storytellers were very clear about the fact that their stories contained the architecture and territorial elements of the other world. And the other world is always the world of mystery, and the world of spirituality, the world of wonder and beauty. In a sense, the elaborations and intricacies of those Celtic stories are like Tibetan Buddhist paintings with all the devas and demons, flames and clouds, all completed down to the finest dot.
IM: And each element of the Celtic story, like each image of the Tibetan painting, probably represents a particular energy and evokes a special feeling.
MM: Yes. And the idea was to draw everyone into that world. The stories were traditionally told at night. And they would typically be told over several nights. The idea was to break people's daily pattern of time. At the beginning of a story I like to joke, "Once upon a time, once under a time, before digital time, beyond any time at all..." and so forth. Part of the job of the story is to break the strictures of the ticking of the clock, to break out of the prison of the daytime world.
IM: Would you walk us through a story, or some parts of a story, and point out some of what you have been describing?
MM: As you say that, my mind immediately begins walking down the road of a story. I can't help it, and I've given up trying. And the one that is there is the story "The Water of Life," which I used as the title for my book //Men and The Water of Life//. And the story has in it exactly the elements we have been discussing. First of all, the realm is coming apart. Everything is breaking down because the king of the realm, the ruler, is sick unto death and nothing can cure him.
IM: Sounds familiar.
MM: Yes. Was that in the old time or in this time? Anyway, there are three sons. There are always three sons or three daughters, because the psyche repeats these things three times. I don't know why. Anyway, there are three sons, and they are weeping over their father. The first thing that happens in the story is this weeping. And their tears and sobbing attract the attention of an old man. He hears their weeping and comes and says, "What's wrong?" And they say, "Our father is dying, and there is no cure." And the old man says, "There is a cure. It's called the water of life." They say, "Where can we get it?" And he says, "I didn't say I knew where it was. I just said there was a cure." So this is like the first visit of information coming from the other world or the spirit world.
So the oldest son heads out to find the water of life. He doesn't know where it is, but he gets up on a powerful horse and, not looking at anything, charges straight down the main highway that leads out of the kingdom. As he is going along, a small voice calls from the side of the road, saying, "Where are you going you up on that horse, so certain in your mind, so direct in your ways? Where is it you are charging off to?" And the oldest brother looks over and sees a small dwarf standing on the side of the road in the dirt. He frowns at the dwarf and says, "Don't bother me, you runt. Why should I listen to questions from someone mixing with the dust in the road?" The first son turns and heads on his way.
Well, the dwarf gets very angry at this and he "fixes" his mind, as they say, on the oldest brother and befuddles him. The oldest brother then finds himself riding into a valley that gets more and more narrow, with rocks coming in from either side and growing into huge cliffs. Finally he is stuck between rocks on both sides. He can't go forward, and he can't back out. He can't turn the head of the horse. As the story says, "He may just as well have been in a prison."
So when the first brother doesn't come back, the second brother has to go out. Of course, exactly the same thing happens to him. He ridicules the dwarf, the dwarf fixes his mind on him, and sticks him in the rocks. And the second brother may as well have been in a prison.
So then the third brother goes out. The last one. He charges out the same way. As he is going along, he hears the voice of the dwarf saying, "Where are you going?" But the third brother stops, gets down off his horse, walks over to the dwarf, and says, "I have no idea at all. I'm out looking for the water of life to cure my father and to heal the illness in the kingdom, but I have no idea where the water might be found." And the dwarf says, "Well, I do." So the dwarf proceeds to not only tell him where he can find it, but also gives him the tools to open the gates and feed the lions -- because you have to get past these lions in order to get near the water of life. The dwarf instructs him on what to watch out for, and everything he needs to do.
The dwarf is the guide in this story, and he is a strange combination of youth and age. He is small, and we usually connect smallness with the child and youth. But the dwarf is also very old. I call him the original indigenous person. He combines deep knowledge of the earth, and everything in it, with a spontaneity that can turn into great anger and fix people, stick them in positions hard like a rock. He can also be extremely generous, opening up the trails into this other world, and giving all of the instructions and tools needed to get to the water of life -- the deep flowing universal spiritual water of compassion and love that everybody is looking for.
IM: So the act of humility, admitting that you don't know where you are going, is the first step to finding the water of life. The third son did not feel he was above talking to a dwarf.
MM: What is essential is the willingness to get off the great horse charging down the main road of life, the willingness to get out of the BMW, the willingness to step off the beaten path and to not act like what I call the two older brothers, the ego brothers. Remember, they need to get stuck first before the younger brother can go out searching. I think the story says very clearly that the ego brothers or ego sisters need to feel like they are in a prison before the youngest part of the psyche will come out. Before the prince or the princess of the psyche will come out with, like you say, humility. But that youngest part of the psyche is also called foolish. It's the one who is willing to have a conversation with a dwarf, more or less in public. People will be passing by and saying: "That's kind of weird. You know there aren't any dwarfs. Who are you talking to?"
Be aware, as well, that the guide, the dwarf, lives inside of us as well as outside. In other words, we try to find a teacher or a guide on the outside who is a reflection of the wise person inside. Then we can start up a dialogue that will teach us how to travel these crooked, strange, labyrinthine paths that go aside from the main road. And anybody who is willing to follow these paths might someday find the water of life.
This story is full of information. Story is related to the word "storehouse." It's where things are stored. Some say it is where the treasures that are lost from this world have fallen into the other world. All of those treasures can be found in stories.
{10} WATER MUSIC
Water Music
An excerpt from //Snake Lake//, a novel in progress
by Jeff Greenwald
A thick mist clung to the surface of Nag Pokhari. Droplets dripped off the golden cobra's snout, plinking into the water beside the tall square column that served as its support. A single lotus bloomed on the lake, popcorn yellow in the chrome light. There was only me, sitting under my pop-out Chinese umbrella on a damp wooden bench in the sunken plaza.
Not a hint of life was visible beneath the surface of Snake Lake. If any nagas [snakes] lived here they were keeping a low profile. What they ate was anybody's guess. In all the years I'd lived in the neighborhood, I'd never seen anyone pour any kind of offering into this lake.
Which begged the question: were there nagas here at all? Or was Nag Pokhari an expired shrine, site of an ancient encounter long since faded into obscurity? Was this still a holy, percolating abode of snake gods, or a mere historical marker, like the commemorative plaques you find outside California missions and New England steakhouses?
I threw a silvermohar, a half-rupee coin, into the water. It sank without a ripple. I shuddered, wondering about its murky destination...
...and wondered if the very fact of my wondering was, perhaps, the point. Maybe Nag Pokhari was here, and had always been here, to serve as a physical reminder of mysterious and unseen depths; the slithering uncertainties of life. Could it be? Were the Nepalese that subtle? I couldn't put it past them. This was, after all, Asia, where things always turned out to be far more complex than they appeared; where even the simplest objects turned out to be onions of spiritual symbolism, wrapped in layer upon layer of metaphor.
Take the lotus, for example. Back in the U.S.A. the word 'lotus' has very distinct meanings: it's either a flower, spreadsheet software, or an eighty thousand dollar sports coupe. Throughout Asia, however, the lotus -- padma, in Sanskrit -- is the universal symbol of the fully awakened mind. Rooted in the muck and mire (i.e., the material world), the determined stalk makes its way upward and blossoms, victorious, in the lush light of liberation.
The lotus is the throne of the Buddha, and the symbol of his teaching; it is the womb from which Padmasambhava ("lotus-born"), the great Indian mystic, emerged. To gaze at that single blossom yawning upon the dark surface of Snake Lake, or to see a lotus anywhere, was to be reminded of humanity's Ultimate Goal. It's like staring at one's mind in a mirror, and beholding its most perfect reflection.
Sometimes, though, a cigar is just a cigar. The lotus floating on Snake Lake that misty March morning didn't need to be anything more than a lotus -- even if the muck it was rooted in was probably a pretty accurate model of my subconscious mind.
But can the same be said for snakes? No way. Not in Kathmandu; not in Asia; maybe nowhere. For some mysterious reason, in east and west alike, snakes are highly charged creatures. What's astonishing is the difference between the eastern and western perspectives. The Judeo-Christian tradition views snakes as evil and conniving, representative of the slimiest emotions that tempt men's (and women's) souls. In Asia, on the other hand, snakes are so well respected they even have their own holiday. Nag Panchami falls during the summer monsoon, a crucial annual event produced and directed by the rain-controlling nagas.
When you examine the western prejudice, it's embarassing how superficial and misdirected it is. Our irrational loathing of snakes seems to date back to a single morning in Eden, when a typically magnanimous example of serpentine generosity was falsely cast as a duplicitous bribe.
"Ignorance," that archetypal snake bravely cautioned Eve, "is not bliss. God knows it, I know it, and that big brain of yours knows it, too. But don't take my word for it; have a bite of this fruit."
Was the snake wrong? He was dead right. But without his help, how on Earth would we have known better? God wasn't about to tell us...
And yet despite that incalculable boon, despite that mythical serpent's astounding sacrifice, something in us that yearns for dependency, for security, for the harmless bliss of the cradle, remains eternally bitter. A snake got us kicked out of our snoozy little garden, and we've been bashing them with shovels ever since.
Some western sages and mystics knew the truth about snakes and were gracious enough to leave us clues. Using a code called gematria, 'number play,' they developed their ancient languages in line with canny mathematical cyphers. Secret messages and dangerous images were buried within words and phrases, accessible only through a kind of linguistic alchemy.
Hebrew was (and is) a gematria language. In the kabala, the ancient Jewish book of wisdom, it's revealed that the mystical numerical value of the word snake -- 358 -- is identical to the value of the word messiah.
Why'd they do this? What do snakes and messiahs have in common? It's obvious: both are experts in the art of transformation. Once every year (maybe more, I'm not sure), a snake actually wriggles right out of its own skin and emerges as a sleek, rejuvenated being. Whatever might have been clinging to it is left back in the bushes to dry up and blow away.
And what is a Messiah for, if not to teach us how to do the same? What use is a savior, unless he or she can show humanity how to shed its own skin?
In Hindu and Buddhist lore, nagas seem to pop up at every crucial moment, serving as savvy brokers between the spiritual and elemental worlds. Shiva, the Creator/Destroyer, source of the Ganges, wears cobras in his hair. Nagas are responsible for providing the monsoon rains and for guarding the Earth's trove of diamonds, jewels and underground treasures. And it was Muchilinda Naga, a benevolent seven-hooded cobra, who sheltered Gautama Shakyamuni -- the aspiring Buddha -- from the elements during his seven-week meditation under the Bodhi tree.
In the science of tantra, India's "secret teachings," snakes symbolize the deepest and most potent source of human spiritual power. The kundalini, as it's called, rests coiled in our lowest psychic pressure point: the muladhara ("root") chakra, located right between our legs at the base of our spines. Through specific practices -- like measured breathing, sexual yoga and the recitation of secret mantras -- we can get that snake to dance.
The kundalini climbs the spine, electrifying the six internal chakras. It reaches the ajna chakra, situated between the eyes; then it rises still higher, passing through the cranium. There it illuminates the sahasrara chakra, the Lotus of a Thousand Petals, which hovers like a mosquito above the top of our skulls. When your kundalini has reached that point, you know you've arrived: you embrace with a single glance all the manifestations of existence and are totally liberated from the tyranny of time. (Bring your Month-at-a-Glance along anyway; a human being can survive this state for only 21 days.) You have taken another bite out of that big, juicy apple and, once again, you'll have a snake to thank for it...
The mist was beginning to break, as it always did by eight or nine. Shafts of light shot through the branches of a nearby eucalyptus tree and stenciled the green water, but I couldn't see more than a foot down. How deep was this pool anyway? What lived at the bottom? Did I really want to know?
Peering over the edge of that thought, I realized something. There was more to the snake thing than the idea of transformation; more, even, than the directive to shed our 'skins.' Snakes, I remembered, have another quality, too. They thrive in the murky depths. Black water is their domain, and we enter at our own risk.
So what was Nag Pokhari, then? What was it really? It wasn't the brackish pool in front of me, covered with slimy green algae. It wasn't the cartoony cobra with goofy eyes and forked tongue. It wasn't the flowering lotus or the little temple by the entrance gate. It wasn't even the snakes themselves -- assuming that any even lived here.
No; this domain of the nagas, this Snake Lake, was nothing less than a double-edged, all-purpose allegory for everything ecstatic and horrific about the prospect of transformation. Staring into its depths, seized with a sudden terror of what might be lurking below, I suddenly realized what all those ancient myths are about. I realized why Grendl lived in an underwater lair; why Gollum stood between Bilbo and the Ring; why the golden apples are always guarded by some kind of dragon.
Suddenly that mysterious alphanumeric formula, contrived by a bunch of misfit rabbis, made perfect sense. What snakes and messiahs share, I understood, is the knowledge that our best shot, our only shot at liberation is hidden inside ourselves. It's lurking in the depths, dozing in the silt, slithering between the smooth black fingers of the lotus roots, coiled between our legs. Unless we plunge in, with a torch in one hand and a flute in the other, we'll never charm it awake.
Jeff Greenwald is the author of //Mister Raja's Neighborhood// and //Shopping for Buddhas//, and he has written extensively for magazines and newspapers. He is currently traveling around the world by all means of transportation except airplanes, working on a book entitled //The Size of the World//. "Water Music" is an excerpt from his novel in progress, //Snake Lake//.
{11} THE MONK
The Monk
by Kate Wheeler
Each day, the Western bhikkhu allowed himself one indulgence: to walk near the Thai women's meditation hall before dawn while they chanted the Refuges and Precepts. He justified it to himself, saying it was a time of privacy and upliftment of his heart, and necessary to compensate for loneliness: he was the only Westerner at this //wat// in a patch of forest two hours north of Bangkok. His justification was unstable, though, working against a more solid sense that he should not have been walking there, in the deeper predawn darkness under the mango tree. Each of his days began with this ambivalence, two thoughts fighting against each other. Mere thoughts, he noted.
It was always quite dark, and the women silent, and no birds yet chirping as he slipped off his rubber thongs and began quietly pacing up and down in mindful meditation. The ground, redbrown clay, was cool and springy under his feet. When he stopped at one end of his track he could glimpse, without turning his head, the women dressed in white, sitting in long rows. Like jewelry in a lighted window, they displayed an undecaying realm where faith and time did not move. Their hands prayed; their legs were tucked neatly, like deer's legs, behind them; their dark, shining heads were slightly bowed. Their submissive postures excited his respect. How much better women really were than men! His teacher always said that women attained enlightenment more easily, because they were more obedient and flexible.
He did not care for their Refuge chant. The tune that was too flat, their voices nasal and dull; but he started really listening when they swung into the Precepts. They sang round syllables and clear divisions, in a mournful sliding tune no Westerner would ever invent.
"Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadhiyami..." The Buddha's words turned them away from killing, stealing, lying, sex, intoxicants, eating after noon, music, dancing, the wearing of garlands, perfumes and ointments, and the use of high and luxurious beds. The Western monk's mind filled with contentment as he imagined the purity of vigilant women. Secretly he imagined them as protectresses whose white-hot dedication could burn away his mental defilements.
The women's reedy, Third-World voices began joyfully and then, halfway through each intention, slipped into a minor key. At that instant the Western monk's heart turned over and slipped downward into some belly region cold and pure and dark as the water of a jungle river. This abrupt motion of his heart was the deepest reason for this morning habit -- why he became a shadow walking among shadows, choosing the thicker darkness under the mango tree that rose above the walkways like a thunderhead, instead of the lit road where the Thai monks walked, getting up even earlier than he. He had to stay in the dark, because the chanting made him tremble all over, sometimes even hyperventilate and cry. At these moments he was completely naked and did not want to be thought of, much less seen, by anyone.
In more ways than one, his listening was a dangerous practice. One morning in rainy season a green viper jumped in fright against his right ankle and attached itself by sheer momentum, as the tail of a whip would wrap and cling. Cool, dry, and alive! Luckily, the snake did not bite the monk as he leapt and danced, shaking his foot so violently that his under-robe slipped off. The snake flew into a bush; he stood trembling for a little while, his skirt loose at his knees, before composing himself. Only at breakfast did the monk actually feel the smooth, leathery life that had touched his skin -- the memory came to him vivid, the past experience wrinkled over to replace the present. "I and the snake felt the same fear," he realized.
For the rest of that morning his mind filled with towering uncontrollable thoughts and emotions, so that in the afternoon he went to confess to his Thai master. He had been doing something strange, creeping in shadows among legless serpents. Was listening to the women's chanting an infringement of the sixth precept against music?
Absolutely not, the old Ajahn said; and countered with two questions. Was the Western monk troubled by visions of the women's sensuous forms? Did rapture arise in hearing the Dhamma? The Western monk said yes, there was rapture; and no, he was not troubled by visions of the women's sensuous forms, but there was attachment to the rapture. The explanation sounded narrow and flat -- his Thai had been learned in ten total-immersion lessons before boarding the jet for Bangkok, with a few Buddhist enrichments gained since reaching the //wat//. //Dham-MAH//: the Truth. The monk had been an electrical engineer in his previous life, a man who did everything properly.
It disappointed him that Ajahn often answered him in English. As now: Ajahn shrugged and said, "You too much worry," then suggested that the Western monk inspect the ground with his flashlight before each stretch of walking meditation. Then he leaned forward on his chair and asked, in Thai, intently, what was the experience just when the snake had wrapped itself around his ankle. The Western monk said he'd lost his mindfulness completely. He waved his arms to show his consternation.
"And?" Ajahn said. "What left?"
His mind had been unified by the shock into one massively heavy lump with nothing left over. Or a wave, engulfing itself. He had failed to experience the experience. This was beyond his capacity to explain in Thai, so he said, in English, "Nothing."
"Sword cannot cut itself," the Ajahn said. "Chanting is okay for you. You hear, faith increase." He was always instructing the Western monk to observe Thai habits.
And so, the next dawn, the Western monk resumed his morning custom, inspecting the ground as his teacher had told him. Of course, today there was no viper. Why did he find the bare dirt so ugly? He switched off his flashlight, taking his chances in the dark.
The women began chanting, the words flattening against the backs of their throats. "Buddhang saranang gacchami. Dhammang saranang gacchami. Sang-//hang// saranang gacchami."
The Western monk felt ashamed, defiant: with each step forward he was proving Ajahn wrong. Walking near the women's hall was not a source of faith, but the pivot of his delusion, a seed from which ruin had spread through his practice. It was not that he desired the women, but that he felt love for their voices, for his own emotions as he listened. He stood still, waiting for that instant when their song changed key, and his heart flipped over, and he no longer wished for escape from this world.
Kate Wheeler is the author of //Not Where I Started From//, a collection of short stories published by Houghton Mifflin (See "A Mind Reader's Briefing", in Section {12}, below). She is currently working on a novel.
{12} BOOKS & BODHI
Books & Bodhi
Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty by Anne Herbert and Margaret Pavel, art by Mayumi Oda (1 page, 7-1/2 feet long, 255 words, Volcano Press, $14.95)
Reviewed by Joanna Macy
Looking for a fold-out, wrap-around sutra? You can read it in one minute (if you don't pause to relish the exuberant artwork, which is unlikely). You can chant it aloud in three minutes (it's great, I discover, for intoning in groups). You can stand it upright around your zafu to make an instant six-inch-high temple courtyard; and you will return to it ever again for sanity and delight.
This is the real article, brought to us by streetwise bodhisattva, Anne Herbert, who authored the phrase you see on walls and bumperstickers, and Margaret Pavel, word wizard, systems thinker and global therapist, along with Dharma artist Mayumi Oda, whose wondrous frogs remind us that this time we awaken with all beings.
Good things come in small packages. About as long as the Heart Sutra (I counted the words), it distills -- in ordinary, inspired language -- all we need to know right now in order to let our lives count in building a sustainable world. It tells us about the kind of power we each have right now to take choice -- and the delight that can be ours, if we are not afraid to seize it.
I would say more, but it would be tacky for my review to be longer than the book itself. (I just checked: same word count.)
Joanna Macy, whose books include //World As Lover, World As Self// (Parallax Press, 1991), is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology.
* * * * * * * *
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
(270 pp., Hyperion, $19.95)
Reviewed by James Baraz
After my initial exposure to vipassana practice, I used to meditate secretly when visiting my family so as not to upset them. Each retreat I signed up for seemed to stir up confusion and anxiety in my parents. "What's happening to our son? Another retreat!?" "Didn't you get it last time?" they would ask. I would have loved to give them a book devoid of Buddhist jargon that could explain practically, cogently and convincingly the value of meditation practice. Twenty years later this book now exists.
//Wherever You Go, There You Are// by Jon Kabat-Zinn is a wonderful offering that makes mindfulness practice accessible to the neophyte and also reminds more experienced practitioners of the value of being present for our lives. Kabat-Zinn, who was featured in Bill Moyers' //Healing and The Mind// PBS television series and book, is the founder and director of the highly successful Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Since 1979 he has trained health professionals, judges, athletes and priests in mindfulness practice and has established thriving programs for bringing mindfulness to inner city residents and prison inmates (see //Inquiring Mind//, Fall '93).
Kabat-Zinn believes that everyone can, and is ready to, meditate if they understand in simple terms why and how to do it.
Meditation really is about human development. It is a natural extension of cutting teeth, growing an adult-sized body, working and making things happen in the world, raising a family, going into debt of one kind or another (even if only to yourself through bargains that imprison the soul), and realizing that you too will grow old and die. At some time or another, you are practically forced to sit down and contemplate your life and question who you are and where the meaning lies in the journey of life...your life.
Kabat-Zinn's enthusiasm for practice grabs the reader's attention, challenging us to wake up. His particular gift is to present dharma as both contemporary and timeless. He draws heavily on diverse non-Buddhist Western minds such as Thoreau, Martha Graham, Steve Allen, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Black Elk, Emerson and John Steinbeck. Quotations from these westerners are interwoven with others from classical Eastern thinkers such as Dogen, Lao-tzu, Basho and Chuang-tzu. The result is what Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama have been urging Americans to create: a truly American dharma.
Written in a down-to-earth style, in short, easy-to-read chapters sprinkled with stories and poems, this book addresses the essentials of formal and informal mindfulness practice.
Guided meditation tapes are available as a companion to the book, so that anyone can get started regardless of how tentative they feel about meditating.
//Wherever You Go, There You Are// looks at all areas of our lives as practice. Married and father of three, Kabat-Zinn describes the practice of parenting:
You could look at each baby as a little Buddha or Zen master, your own private mindfulness teacher, parachuted into your life, whose presence and actions were guaranteed to push every button and challenge every belief and limit you had, giving you continual opportunities to see where you were attached to something and to let go of it.
Kabat-Zinn purposely stays away from what may be considered spiritual trappings. Buddhist philosophy, language and concepts are minimized. Terms like the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path are not used. In a chapter entitled "Is Mindfulness Spiritual?" he writes:
As much as I can, I avoid using the word "spiritual" altogether....The concept of spirituality can narrow our thinking rather than extend it. All too commonly, some things are thought of as spiritual while others are excluded. Is science spiritual? Are dogs spiritual? Is the body spiritual? Is the mind spiritual? Is childbirth? Is eating? ... Obviously, it all depends on how you encounter it, how you hold it in awareness.
Mindfulness allows everything to shine with the luminosity that the word "spiritual" is meant to connote...Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and inter-connectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see it this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense.
Kabat-Zinn's attitude towards the "spiritual," as well as his approach towards Buddhism, may concern some who fear that, when the teachings are popularized, the essence of the Buddha's message is being abandoned. As a dharma teacher, I certainly would cringe at the thought that the possibility of awakening might be lost as the teachings find a larger audience. I don't see that happening, however. Many people who are not interested in exploring the spiritual teachings may be motivated to investigate mindfulness as a way to reduce stress. Yet the practice itself can lead to deeper philosophical inquiry.
There is a story from the time of the Buddha about a monk who was having difficulty remembering all the rules and lists that bhikkhus are supposed to learn. The Buddha realized that this man was so frustrated that he was ready to leave the order. So the Buddha asked the monk if he could remember just one rule. The monk, very relieved, said he could. The Buddha told him that the only rule he needed to remember was to be mindful. All the rest of the teachings would be revealed if he could stay with that task.
As we learn to slow down, to listen with honesty and to be present for our lives, seeds are planted. These practices can move us toward seeing the cause of suffering and the path towards inner peace. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a master plowman who will plant the seeds of dharma in the hearts of many through //Wherever You Go, There You Are//.
James Baraz is a teacher of vipassana meditation and cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He lives with his wife and son in Berkeley, California.
* * * * * * * *
The Moon Bamboo (179 pp., Parallax Press, $12.00)
Hermitage Among the Clouds (135 pp., Parallax Press, $12.50)
A Taste of Earth (121 pp., Parallax Press, $14.00)
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Reviewed by Amanita Rosenbush
In //The Moon Bamboo// and //A Taste of Earth// (short stories) and //Hermitage Among the Clouds// (an historical novel), Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen master and poet, interweaves stories with his reflections on their meanings. He often cuts away from the main tale in order to interject a teaching, as if to remind us that the unfolding of events isn't the only thing that's important; we must pause to listen if we want to pick up on the rhythms of the meaning and lessons in life.
For the Western mind, Nhat Hanh's approach to storytelling may often diverge from expectation. He does not enter the long tradition of fiction wherein an author "shows" the reader his meaning instead of "telling" the meaning. Occasionally he even goes off on tangents from the main story line without weaving them back in again. Yet after an initial discomfort, I found myself -- a fiction writer -- swept along by Nhat Hanh's sheer gentleness of spirit. His writing has a lightness, a loveliness, and a delicacy that is somewhat akin to a slightly sweetened biscuit. It never overpowers; it simply calms and nourishes. "When the earth cakes were done, [Lieu] opened one up. The banana leaves had left a faint imprint of green. When he cut the cake open, up rose a familiar and delicious smell. He knew that his square cakes were a worthy symbol of Mother Earth, and his round cakes a worthy symbol of Heaven."
Nhat Hanh has the unusual ability to write the most horrific scenes -- a Vietnamese girl who is raped by pirates on a refugee boat in "The Lone Pink Fish" (//The Moon Bamboo//) -- without oversimplifying the ambiguities between good and evil and without making a monster out of any of the players. In the hands of most writers, all characters would be divided into right and wrong, sides would be taken, the "wrong" side would be condemned. But -- as in "The Stone Boy" in which a small girl is blinded by chemical warfare and loses her mother -- Nhat Hanh manages to unflinchingly describe the horrors of war without losing his compassion for the poor souls who are playing out their parts in ignorance of their true natures. What is to be most appreciated about this teacher/author is that in the telling of these stories he is manifesting the totality of his life. He personally went through the Vietnam war, absorbed the pain, and transformed it into a wisdom that is gently held in the lap of compassion.
In //Hermitage Among the Clouds//, Nhat Hanh tells the story of Amazing Jewel, a woman who begins life as the daughter of a king-turned-Buddhist teacher and then becomes a nun, Sister Fragrant Garland. As the head of Tiger Mountain Convent, she assumes the role of teacher in her own right. Again, the message is often presented in the tale //alongside// the story line instead of //through// it. Whole sections of text are carved out to deliver a teaching. But the overall effect is not ponderous and weighty. Rather, I got the feeling as I followed the tale, of a toy sailboat bobbing lightly on the waves of a small pond; the story trips along revealing not only the events of the characters' lives, but what life in general was like for the people of Cham (presumably present-day Vietnam) five centuries ago. The author describes how the nuns used to split bamboo to make baskets, hull rice, and bind childrens' schoolbooks from rice paper. His deep felt appreciation of nature is evident throughout, as when he compares a woman to a young green banana leaf or describes the sweet fragrance of a rice paddy or the refreshing taste of cool mountain water.
Like all cultures, Vietnam has a view of the beginning of the world. In //A Taste of Earth//, Nhat Hanh first narrates the tale of Au Co, a goddess, who transforms herself into a snow-white Lac bird in order to explore Earth. In tasting of Earth, she unintentionally binds herself to it forever, thereby insuring that she can never turn back into goddess form. Her tears of grief then become the rivers and streams that give the earth greenness and life. After she meets the Dragon Prince who comes from the sea, they mate and populate the planet. The subsequent traditional stories tell the continuing tale of human life through the offspring of Dragon Prince and Au Co, the Vietnamese Adam and Eve. In four sections -- Beginnings, Food and Customs, Conflict, and Changes -- the author depicts the quality of basic goodness and the spirit of cooperation in the people.
In all three books, Thich Nhat Hanh shows his deep respect for the land, for human beings and, indeed, all life, and for the wisdom of the Buddha. In the end, the mystery is that his simple technique gives rise to something beyond technique. He evokes a vision/feeling of the deeper meaning of heartache and loss, violence and hatred, upheaval, friendship, and love in all forms. His books left me with the feeling that in spite of every calamity, mishap, and tragedy fate throws in our way, truth is still worth pursuing and the world is still a beautiful place.
Amanita Rosenbush is a writer and editor working in the Bay Area.
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A Mind Reader's Briefing
Not Where I Started From
by Kate Wheeler
(239 pp., Houghton Mifflin, $19.95)
Fiction lovers and meditators -- especially those who are both -- are finding jewels in this collection of stories. Author Robert Stone compares Wheeler's writing to that of E. M. Forster and Doris Lessing, and vipassana meditators are recognizing themselves and their friends in some of her vivid tales of American monks and nuns in Burmese monasteries. In all of her stories, whether they deal with Buddhist themes or not, Wheeler confronts cultural and emotional homelessness with understanding and humor. A great read.
Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision
edited by Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan
(293 pp., Tarcher/Perigee, $13.95)
Over a decade ago, a collection of essays, entitled //Beyond Ego//, appeared offering the first comprehensive look at the emerging field of transpersonal psychology. This new book, put together by the same editors, reveals a discipline growing in size, sophistication and scope. //Paths Beyond Ego// includes pieces by the Dalai Lama, Aldous Huxley, Ken Wilbur, Fritjof Capra, Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Daniel Goleman, Christina and Stanislav Grof, and others. For dharma students, this book offers interesting psychological and philosophical perspectives on the perennial wisdom as well as a glimpse at other possible paths beyond ego.
Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Culture and Consciousness
by Duane Elgin
(382 pp., William Morrow and Company, Inc., $23.00)
In his new book, Duane Elgin traces the history of human consciousness by looking at how it manifests over time in social, technological, and cultural changes. It is an original analysis, as well as a hopeful one, pointing to a coming era of "oceanic consciousness," a time of bonding among the human family. Like his classic '70s book, //Voluntary Simplicity//, this new work is thought-provoking and inspiring. Whether you agree with his predictions or not, it sure is sweet to contemplate the possibilities with him in this book.
Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey
by David Schneider
(239 pp., Shambhala, $13.00)
This book works as a Zen koan, ironic dharma teaching, a study in compassion, and a great biography. A drag queen drops his cabaret act to put on Buddhist robes and walk the path. It's an excellent story, beautifully told, of an exceptional man.
Love In Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change
by Thich Nhat Hanh
(154 pp., Parallax Press, $13.50)
A collection of sixteen of Thich Nhat Hanh's essays on nonviolence and reconciliation. Whether exploring the roots of war or describing the path to peace, nobody makes more sense than Thich Nhat Hanh. What else to say, except that these are the writings of a contemporary saint.
For A Future To Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts
by Thich Nhat Hanh and others
(281 pp., Parallax Press, $16.00)
A collection of essays on the fundamental Buddhist precepts, freshly interpreted and applied to the dilemmas of modern society. If only our politicians and scholars would read this book.
Learning True Love
by Chan Khong
(258 pp., Parallax Press, $16.00)
The life story of a Vietnamese Buddhist woman whose faith was forged and tested in the fires of war. As a teenager, Chan Khong (Sister True Emptiness) began a life of service in the slums of Saigon. She later worked alongside Thich Nhat Hanh as co-founder of the School of Youth for Social Service in Vietnam and at his community-in-exile in France, Plum Village. Maxine Hong Kingston compares Chan Khong's dramatic and inspirational book to the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi.
{13} PRACTICE PAGES (1): SANGHA NEWS
Insight Meditation Society
Barre, Massachusetts
Annex Challenge Grant
A private foundation has offered the Insight Meditation Society a grant of up to $75,000 for the purpose of renovating the yogi rooms of the Annex building, provided that the funds are matched by other donations of an equal amount. If this goal is reached, the foundation will consider a further matching grant of $25,000, bringing the potential total of the initiative to $200,000. With about $100,000 in donations from last year's appeal already in hand, this would put us about three quarters of the way to being able to finally undertake the project.
If you would like to help see the somewhat shabby rooms and the antiquated heating and plumbing systems of the Annex building renovated into simple but warm and comfortable rooms -- to help support your meditation practice -- please feel encouraged to make (tax-deductible) donations to the Annex Fund. By bringing the rooms for our guests up to modern building codes and safety standards, we hope to put IMS and the service it provides on a safe and solid foundation for many years to come. With the help of the IMS sangha, we hope to complete the project by the summer or fall of 1995.
4th Of July Weekend Retreat
Rodney Smith will be joined in his 4th of July weekend retreat by Narayan Liebenson Grady of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, and //not// by Carol Wilson as stated in the Fall schedule brochure included in the IMS Newsletter, //Insight//. We apologize for the misprint.
Study/Practice Intensive Program -- A Success
For two weeks in January the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, the study center located next door to the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, offered a pioneer program combining the intensive study of the Buddhist tradition with regular sessions of vipassana meditation. By all accounts it was a great success.
Enrollment was limited to 17 students, who lived together for two weeks in the newly constructed dormitory building at the study center. Each day began in silence with group sitting practice, breakfast and a short work period, and then continued with morning and afternoon lectures and reading periods. Each evening there was a two-and-a-half hour seminar led by one of several visiting teachers, and the day ended with a final meditation period in the new meditation hall/meeting room. The weekend between the two weeks was a traditional two-day vipassana meditation retreat.
The first week focused primarily on the Pali tradition and was taught by Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., the executive director of IMS and a scholar of early Buddhism. The second week examined the growth of Mahayana Buddhism and its culmination in the Zen tradition, and was taught by Mu Soeng Sunim, the director of BCBS, Zen monk, and former Abbot of the Providence Zen Center. The evening seminar series included Dorothy Austin, Ph.D. (professor of psychology of religion at Drew University), Diana Eck, Ph.D. (professor of Indian religions at Harvard), Perrin Cohen, Ph.D. (professor of science and ethics at Northeastern University), Jack Engler, Ph.D. (author and director of psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital), and Joseph Goldstein (dharma teacher and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society). Senior practitioners Michael Freeman and Amy Schmidt coordinated the community aspects of the program and led the meditation periods and retreat.
This intensive residential program in Buddhist studies has experimented with approaches to the integration of study and practice and thus offers a new model for spiritual education. The mix of students was quite interesting -- undergraduates majoring in religious studies, graduate students in related fields, some veteran yogis of the IMS three month course, and others with little or no previous exposure to insight meditation. Yet all seemed to get a great deal from the program, and the study center is enthusiastic about offering a similar intensive program regularly in the future. Stay posted for new developments.
New Books
Joseph Goldstein's new book, //Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom//, has been recently published by Shambhala Press, and after only a couple of months is already into its third printing. A collection of short gems on both practical and theoretical issues, the book draws upon Joseph's years of experience as a meditation teacher and has something to offer both the neophyte and the seasoned veteran of vipassana retreats.
Sharon Salzberg is working on a book about the practice of //metta// or lovingkindness. Look for it on the bookshelves this fall.
* * *
Wanted -- Associate Director For Operations
The Insight Meditation Society is looking for someone who can oversee and supervise all of the day-to-day operational affairs of the retreat center. The associate director for operations will be responsible for:
//Finances//: (In cooperation with the executive director) manage all the routine financial affairs of the center, including deposits, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, projects, the disbursement of dana, the preparation of monthly financial statements and general troubleshooting. A professional accounting consultant is available as a resource for this responsibility, along with a staff of a part-time bookkeeper and administrative assistant. IMS currently uses the Peachtree accounting system.
//Computers//: (In cooperation with the staff computer specialist) coordinate the information processing output of the center, including the membership database, registration processing, retreat management tools, word processing programs and the interface with accounting programs. IMS currently uses a customized R-Base system.
//Retreat Management//: (In cooperation with the registrar and the front office staff) oversee and coordinate the management of meditation retreats, including registrations, scholarships, special needs, teacher support, and general interdepartmental communications, troubleshooting and decision-making.
//Administration//: Work with the executive director, resident teacher, personnel director, teachers and members of the board of directors to provide leadership and a center of gravity for the management of daily affairs.
The position requires a good deal of worldly experience in running a business, a nonprofit organization, or some other similar enterprise. The ideal candidate will have a sound training and considerable experience in accounting or bookkeeping (Peachtree experience is a plus), will be familiar and comfortable with computer systems (especially R-Base, though it is not necessary to be a programmer), and will have the ability to coordinate a complex operation gracefully.
Because of the special challenges of IMS as a community, the position further requires maturity and balance, excellent communication skills, good insight and judgment about human nature, flexibility, compassion and a deep commitment to the dharma and vipassana practice. The ideal candidate will have a strong personal practice and some experience living in community.
This is a potentially long-term administrative position offering food, housing, excellent health benefits, generous vacation and sitting time, and a modest but adequate salary.
Qualified applicants should send a resume and letter to: Executive Director, Insight Meditation Society, 1230 Pleasant St., Barre, MA 01005. IMS is an equal opportunity employer.
This is a unique opportunity for right livelihood in a beautiful rural New England environment with unsurpassed dharma support.
* * * * * * * *
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
Woodacre, California
First Ever Gathering of Western Buddhist Teachers
By Jack Kornfield
"As long as followers of the way hold regular and frequent assemblies, they may be expected to prosper and not decline."-- from the Buddha's last instructions
The first large-scale gathering of Western Buddhist teachers, held in September 1993 in Northern California, was marked by surprising honesty concerning both practice and personal life. One-hundred-fifteen teachers from Zen, Theravada, Pure Land and Vajrayana centers across North America joined together at Spirit Rock Center and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center to discuss the art and role of teaching as Buddhism develops in the West.
The goal of the conference was to foster dialogue among the first generation of Westerners to become lamas, Zen monks, and meditation teachers about how to keep the Buddhist tradition alive and adapt it to best serve their North American students. In the past, there has often been sectarian competition and it has frequently been considered dangerous for Buddhists from one tradition to mix with those from other traditions. To hold such an open gathering, in contrast to the few formalized councils held in Asia, made a remarkable cultural statement.
It was heartening to see the ease, immediacy, and pleasure with which the teachers spoke to one another. Right away difficult issues were raised. These came from formal presentations by a dozen teachers on topics ranging from the evolution of Buddhist forms (Should the Zen students keep their Chinese-style Tang Dynasty robes?) to deeper questions of adaptation (Does the Venerable Kalu Rinpoche's encouragement for his Jesuit students to visualize Jesus in place of Bodhisattva Chenrezig still constitute a Buddhist practice?). Presentations explored how to distinguish the essence of Buddhist practice from Tibetan, Japanese, and Thai cultural practices and how to reinvigorate the role of women and reclaim the abandoned feminine in patriarchal Buddhism. The one African-American Dharma teacher present passionately spoke about the need to address racism and to include all races in American Buddhism.
Then the presentations turned to the inevitable problems facing teachers in the area of power and authority. Should Western teachers present themselves in the traditional way as enlightened masters, to be bowed to and visualized as embodying the wisdom of the Buddha's perfection? Or should Western teachers be more like guides in the areas of meditation and Dharma studies? Should teachers choose the role of "perfect teacher," or admit their own weaknesses?
One teacher's presentation directly confronted the gathering with the question of our wounds. What do Dharma teachers do with their own wounds? And what about the great number of deeply wounded students who come to practice? Are traditional meditations alone enough or should we also learn from the practices of Western psychology and healing?
To start off, a Tibetan lama, a Zen master and a vipassana teacher each told their Dharma stories, how the joys and struggles of long years of practice were intertwined with years of difficult integration, how, in the midst of family problems, divorces, wrestling with money, and the death of children, they sought to deepen their wisdom, and to find ways to make all of life their practice. They spoke not so much of the ideals of enlightenment but of the growing compassion and understanding that is needed to bring one's humanity into the path of practice.
In the following small groups, some teachers described "holding the most intimate discussions of teaching they had ever had." Discussion topics ranged from the joy of working with the awakening of committed students to the feeling of failing one's true responsibility as a Dharma teacher or the experience of difficulty with one's own lineage.
Several mythologists and psychologists were invited to join the teachers -- Michael Meade, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Amy Weston -- to speak to the teachers' dilemmas through the universal language of story and myth. They warned about inevitable betrayal on the path. They taught about the success of teachers who expose their own vulnerability and hold the role of the wounded healer, and they illustrated the essential need to balance the masculine in Buddhism with the spiritual feminine. As Zen teacher, Jan Bays described it, "The gathering was a wonderful smorgasbord of offerings, meditation and drumming, music and myth, laughter and grief, dancing and psychology, to mysticism and self-mortification, practical hints and grandiose statements, group therapy and academic papers. Where else could we get three days of this, great food and famous people, for only $100?"
As the gathering developed its own momentum, the unspoken problems of teachers and students were expressed more openly. When Peter Rutter, a Jungian analyst, who has worked with the San Francisco Zen Center and the Zen Center of Los Angeles, discussed the problem of boundaries and ethics, he was joined by one teacher's frank presentation of her own participation in the cycle of abuse in her community...the planned presentations on Dharma livelihood and engaged Buddhism had to be postponed as more personal stories poured forth.
The Buddhist scriptures begin with many volumes of such difficult accounts, describing the troubles of various practitioners, what was learned, and how these troubles were solved by the Buddha. In this spirit, the Gathering of Western Buddhist Teachers became a spontaneous circle for those with a Dharma history of grief and betrayal. Previously unspoken accounts of loss, abuse, isolation and secrecy, were voiced aloud. Teachers described the ensuing fiery journey to search for the true Dharma in the midst of these difficulties.
Throughout the meeting, the teachers expressed tremendous gratitude and devotion to the Buddhist tradition and to their own teachers. They made clear how deeply their lives had been transformed by the generosity of their lineages, and how much love and respect they carried for the Dharma. So for many, the outpouring of grief was not easy. This process did not leave the Dharma tied up as a universally neat and transformative package. It challenged all present to reject secrecy, and for members of each community to separate any unnecessary misuse of the teachings from the wisdom and living spirit of the Dharma.
As the meetings moved forward to their close, final presentations were made on kundalini and spiritual emergency, and teaching stories offered with ways to transform the loss of trust and reawaken the wise knowing that is at the core of every being.
To end, the teachers sat together, chanted blessings, and offered the sharing of merit. It became clear that the three days together raised more questions than answers, and that this conference was simply a beginning. An expanded organizing committee, chaired by John Tarrant Sensei, and including teachers from most of the traditions represented, is planning the next gathering to be held on the East Coast in May 1995. The topics will be expanded to include monasticism and its connection to lay practice, engaged Buddhism, teachers' relation to money, authorization and empowerment of teachers, and more.
As Buddhism becomes more fully established in the West, we hope that "holding regular and frequent assemblies" of teachers can aid us, as followers of the way, to "prosper and not decline." It was an honor for Spirit Rock to act as one of the hosts for this first gathering.
Jack Kornfield is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Center.
The Kitchen/Dining Hall is Finished!
After many months devoted to planning and design, the first permanent building now stands on the Spirit Rock land. Come join us in celebration on Sunday, May 15 beginning at 10am. There will be a morning sitting in the new building, a potluck picnic lunch (bring your favorite dish or salad), songs and music with Betsy Rose and Georgia Kelly. Much appreciation to Glenn Peterson, architect of the building; Roseann Dal Bello for site planning; and especially to Edward Lewis, Spirit Rock's board member who gave enormously of his time and energy acting as the "owner's rep" for Spirit Rock.
Some people have asked why we built the kitchen/dining hall before having the sleeping facilities and meditation space needed for overnight retreats at Spirit Rock. As many of you may recall, the original Master Plan calls for a facility which will sleep 150 and house staff and teachers. Some time ago, it became apparent that the substantial financial resources needed to complete the Master Plan would take many years to develop. In the interim, the board decided to build a smaller retreat facility sleeping 60 plus staff and teachers, which would allow overnight retreats while planning and fundraising for the larger vision continued. The kitchen/dining hall is the first manifestation of this "middle plan."
The next phase (Phase III) will include residential buildings, meditation hall, additional parking facilities and cost an estimated $2.5 M. The design process itself will change for Phase III, with more sangha expertise and inclusion desired. More information on that process will be provided in the coming months to all active sangha members. Meanwhile the new building will be used in a variety of ways supporting retreat days, classes and community building.
* * * * * * * *
Notices
Ongoing Dialogue For Psychotherapists
Spirit Rock Center will host a new series of events to provide an opportunity for psychotherapists, counselors and students of psychology to gather together for ongoing dialogue. The focus will be to explore different psychotherapeutic perspectives and how we can continue to bridge and integrate the wisdom of sacred traditions and practices into our work.
James F.T. Bugental, Ph.D., a much-loved and respected teacher of the art of psychotherapy and a senior spokesperson of the existential-humanistic perspective, will lead the first of these days. His presentation, entitled "Existential Inquiry, Meditation & Presence in Depth Psychotherapy," is scheduled for Saturday, October 22, 1994.
The next two events to be scheduled will consist of panel/audience discussions exploring the question, "What Heals?"
//Dialogue for Psychotherapists// events will serve as benefits for Spirit Rock Center and are being coordinated by Joan Fenold, MFCC. For further information, please call (510) 526-8748.
Vipassana Psychotherapists' Circle
Psychotherapists from the Bay Area community meet monthly for a sitting, to get to know one another, and to explore the relationship between mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism, spirituality and psychotherapy.
Meetings are held on the third Sunday of every month, from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. in Berkeley. If you would like to participate occasionally or regularly, please call Joan Fenold, MFCC at (510) 526-8748.
Reflective Writing, Mindfulness, and the War: A Time for Veterans and Their Families with Maxine Hong Kingston
Award-winning novelist Maxine Hong Kingston will lead writing workshops for veterans and their families throughout the year in the Bay Area and a retreat for veterans within a larger retreat for helping professionals at Omega Institute in upstate New York. For a veteran or a family member of a veteran, writing and reflecting on one's life can bring healing. The wounds of war and social injustice can be deeply explored and transformed through writing and mindfulness practice. For information please contact: Community of Mindful Living or Parallax Press, PO Box 7355, Berkeley, CA 94707 (510) 527-3751.
{14} PRACTICE PAGES (2): 1994 VIPASSANA RETREAT SCHEDULES
Most of the courses listed in this schedule are traditional silent vipassana or metta retreats that are suitable for beginning and seasoned meditators. They include sitting and walking meditation, instruction and dharma talks. Courses followed by (*) combine silent meditation practice with themes of special interest. They may also include discussions or other exercises. For more details about a specific course, please contact the particular center or contact name.
The courses listed in the Practice Pages are approved by the Dharma Foundation Teacher Board. They are, to the best of our knowledge, taught by leaders who skillfully represent the Buddha's teachings of wisdom and compassion. While we recommend them, we do not accept responsibility for what takes place within any given retreat. However, we welcome any feedback you feel is important for us to know. In addition, there is an Ethics Committee to whom you can address any relevant comments. Please send correspondence c/o Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
-- The Dharma Foundation Teacher Board
* * * * * * * *
IMS/Spirit Rock Teacher Community
These courses are taught by teachers who regularly lead IMS/Spirit Rock sponsored retreats.
CALIFORNIA: AT SPIRIT ROCK MEDITATION CENTER NON-RESIDENTIAL RETREATS ALSO SEE EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS, BELOW
May 14, 9am-5pm
Vipassana Daylong -- Jack Kornfield
CONTACT CODE: JK7
May 28, 9am-5pm
Meditation and Inquiry (*) -- Howard Cohn
CONTACT CODE: HC3
June 5, 8:30am-9pm
The Noble Path and the Red Road (*) -- Shinzen Young, & Fred Wahpepah Native American practice from the perspective of Buddhist practice. Optional sweat lodge ceremony. Limited registration.
CONTACT CODE: SY3
June 19, 9am-5pm
Vipassana Daylong -- Jack Kornfield, Gil Fronsdal, Mary Orr, John Travis
CONTACT CODE: JK8.
June 20 - 24, 9am-5pm (with optional evening sessions) -- Jack Kornfield, Gil Fronsdal, Mary Orr, John Travis. If possible, please attend the Sunday, June 19 daylong retreat also.
CONTACT CODE: JK9
June 25, 9am-5pm
Vipassana Retreat for Lesbians (*) -- Arinna Weisman with Carol Osmer Newhouse & others
CONTACT CODE: AW1
July 9, 9am-5pm
Enliven Your Practice (*) -- Anna Douglas & David Christensen. Includes Dzogchen energy/breath work and yogic exercises
CONTACT CODE: DZO
July 16, 10am-4:30pm Taming the Inner Critic (*) -- Ernest Isaacs. Senior Student Series
CONTACT CODE: EI1
July 23, 10am-5pm The Writer's Way (*) -- Nancy Bacal
Senior Student Series. For non, occassional and professional writers. Includes writing, reading, discussion and meditation.
CONTACT CODE: NB1
Aug 20, 9am-5pm
Four Foundations of Mindfulness #1 (*) -- Gil Fronsdal. The first of a 4-part series. Focus on mindfulness of breathing.
CONTACT CODE: GF1
Aug 24 - 25, 9am-5pm
Do I Accept Myself? (*) -- Christopher Titmuss & Sharda Rogell
CONTACT CODE: CT1 (Aug 24) & CT2 (Aug 25)
Aug 27, 9:30am-5pm
Men's Retreat Day (*) -- Jack Kornfield, Robert Hall & Wes Nisker
CONTACT CODE: MD1
Sept 10, 9am-5pm Relationship as Spiritual Practice (*) -- George Taylor & Deborah Chamberlin-Taylor. Senior Student Series
CONTACT CODE: GT1
Sept 11, 9am-5pm
Four Foundations of Mindfulness #2 (*) -- Gil Fronsdal. Focus on mindfulness of the body. See August 20.
CONTACT CODE: GF2
Sept 14 - Oct 5 (4 Wednesday evenings), 7-9:30pm
Enliven Your Practice (*) -- Anna Douglas & David Christensen. See July 9 description.
CONTACT CODE: DZ1
Sept 17, 9am-5pm
Vipassana Daylong -- James Baraz
CONTACT CODE: JB3
Sept 24, 9am-5pm
Women's Vipassana Day (*) -- Julie Wester
CONTACT CODE: JW1
Sept 25, 10am-5pm
Day of Forgiveness Practice (*) -- Anna Douglas
CONTACT CODE: AD2
Oct 1, 9am-5pm & Oct 2, 10am-7pm
Gay & Free (*) -- Arinna Weisman & Eric Kolvig
CONTACT CODE: AW2 (Oct 1) & AW3 (Oct 2)
Oct 8, 9am-5pm
Four Foundations of Mindfulness #3 (*) -- Gil Fronsdal. Mindfulness of emotions and mental states. See Aug 20.
CONTACT CODE: GF3
Oct 9, 9am-5pm
Day of Meditation for People of Color (*) -- Jack Kornfield, Michele Benzamin-Masuda. Registration is required; by donation.
CONTACT: Lewis Aframi (510)644-1444 or Interracial Buddhist Council, P.O. Box 11211, Oakland, CA 94611
Oct 23, 9:30am-5pm, Oct 25-27, 7pm-10pm, Oct 29, 9:30am-5pm
Metta Non-residential Retreat -- Sharon Salzberg & Sylvia Boorstein
CONTACT CODE: SS1
Oct 30, 10am-5pm
Cultivating the 10 Paramitas (*) -- Sharon Salzberg & Sylvia Boorstein. Exercises on developing the 10 paramitas.
CONTACT CODE: SS2
Nov 5, 9am-5pm
Four Foundations of Mindfulness #4 (*) -- Gil Fronsdal. Focus on mindfulness of dharmas. See Aug 20.
CONTACT CODE: GF4
Nov 12, 9am-5pm
Vipassana Daylong -- Jack Kornfield
CONTACT CODE: JK11
Nov 13, 10am-2pm
Compassion Practice (*) -- Jack Kornfield
CONTACT CODE: JK12
Nov 17, 6-10pm
Sitting and Full Moon Chanting -- Ajahn Amaro. By donation; no registration required.
Nov 19, 9am-5pm
Meditation, Movement & Crazy Wisdom (*) -- Wes Nisker & Adrianne Mohr
CONTACT CODE: WN4
Dec 3, 9:30am-4:30pm
Vipassana Daylong -- Mary Orr
CONTACT CODE: MO1
Dec 10, 9am-5pm
Monastic Day Retreat -- Ajahn Amaro. By donation; no registration required.
Dec 17, 9am-5pm
Meditation and Inquiry (*) -- Howard Cohn
CONTACT CODE: HC4
Registration Information for retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
Charges:
1-day retreats $20, 2-day retreats $40
Make checks payable to SRMC
Please include retreat contact code number on check and mailing envelope.
Unless otherwise noted, send payment to:
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
PO Box 909, Woodacre, CA 94973
Phone: (415) 488-0164 FAX: (415) 488-0170
Registration information for SRMC retreats at other locations: For all retreats, please send deposit ($50 for weekends, $100 for all others) to the contact person. Make checks payable to SRMC.
Please pre-register. Occasionally a program is canceled and, if you are pre-registered, we will contact you when this happens. Carpooling is required only for the Monday night sitting and a few large special events or retreat days.
Scholarship rates for SRMC California residential retreats -- a rate of $10 less per day is available to those who are unable to pay the full cost. Ask for a scholarship application form when you send your deposit to the contact person. Also, deferred payments for the remaining portion can be arranged for these retreats when students find this necessary in order to attend a retreat. To apply for a Mudita or Karuna scholarship, ask the contact person for information.
CALIFORNIA: AT OTHER LOCATIONS RESIDENTIAL RETREATS
SANTA ROSA
May 6-14 Women in Meditation (*) -- Christina Feldman & Anna Douglas. For women only.
CONTACT: Julie Martin, (415) 721-7149
217 Los Angeles, San Anselmo, CA 94960
LOS GATOS
May 27-29 Vipassana Retreat -- Gil Fronsdal. Limited to 20 yogis.
CONTACT: Leelane Hines, (415) 968-2887
SAN RAFAEL
July 10-17 -- James Baraz & Carol Wilson
CONTACT: Beth Baker, (415) 459-5670
290 Redwood Road, San Anselmo, CA 94960
SANTA CRUZ
Aug 5-14 Vipassana Retreat -- Gil Fronsdal, Mary Orr, John Travis
CONTACT: Eileen Phillips, (916) 361-7128
2911 Gwendolyn Way, Rancho Cordova, CA 95670
SANTA ROSA
Aug 26 - Sept 2 Insight Meditation and Inquiry (*) -- Christopher Titmuss & Sharda Rogell
Sept 2-5 Labor Day Weekend (*) -- Christopher Titmuss, Sharda Rogell, James Baraz
CONTACT: Janet Hewins, (415) 759-6461
173C Parnassus, San Francisco, CA 94122
LOS GATOS
Aug 26-28 Vipassana Daylong -- Gil Fronsdal. Limited to 20 yogis.
CONTACT: Leelane Hines, (415) 968-2887
WATSONVILLE
Sept 25-28 Vipassana Retreat -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Mt. Madonna Center, (408) 847-0406
SAN RAFAEL
Oct 7-14 Vipassana Retreat -- Christina Feldman & Anna Douglas. For both men and women.
CONTACT: Theresa Koke, (707) 539-8701
5200 Gates Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95404
SANTA CRUZ
Oct 20-23 Women in Buddhism (*) -- Mary Orr & Sangye Khadro. For women only. Includes vipassana and Tibetan methods.
CONTACT: Land of Medicine Buddha, (408) 462-8383
SAN RAFAEL
Nov 18 - Dec 4 -- Old Students Retreat -- Jack Kornfield, James Baraz, Sylvia Boorstein & Howard Cohn. Must have sat a 7-day vipassana retreat.
CONTACT: Cathleen Williams, (415) 252-9056
300 Page Street, San Francisco CA 94102
CALIFORNIA: AT OTHER LOCATIONS NON-RESIDENTIAL RETREATS
CARSON CITY/RENO
Vipassana Daylong Retreats -- John Travis
May 22; July 16, 9am-5pm
CONTACT: Christie, (702) 882-1662
NEVADA CITY
Vipassana Daylong Retreats -- John Travis
May 8; July 2; Sept 18; Oct 8; Nov 5; Dec 18, 9am-5pm
CONTACT: (916) 265-0582
PALO ALTO
Vipassana Daylong Retreats -- Gil Fronsdal
April 30; June 18; Sept 17; Oct 15 (with Mary Orr), 9am-4:30pm.
Unitarian Church, 505 E. Charleston.
CONTACT: Berget Jelane, (408) 255-2783
SANTA CRUZ
Vipassana Half Day Retreats -- Mary Orr
May 29; Sept 10, 9am - 12:30pm (beginners and old students)
June 26, 9am - 12:30pm (old students)
Vipassana Daylong Retreats -- John Travis
July 9, 9am-5pm (beginners and old students)
Vipassana Daylong Retreats -- Mary Orr
Oct 16, 9am - 4pm (old students); Nov; Dec TBA. No pre-registration; bring a lunch.
Santa Cruz Zendo, 115 School Street
CONTACT: (408) 427-0807
CALIFORNIA: AT DHAMMA DENA
HC-1, Box 250, Joshua Tree, CA 92252 (619) 362-4815
May 1-14 Spring Women's Retreat (*) -- Ruth Denison
September 23-25 Weekend Retreat for Lesbians and Gay Men (*) -- Arinna Weisman & Eric Kolvig
October 23 - November 6 Fall Women's Retreat (*) -- Ruth Denison
December 16 - January 14, 1995 Holiday Retreat -- Ruth Denison
NORTHWEST & WEST
GRAND FORKS, NORTH DAKOTA
May 6-8 -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Sr. Brigid, (701) 772-4607
Koinonia Spirituality Center, 2801 Olson Drive, Grand Forks, ND 58201
WOLF CREEK, MONTANA
June 3-12 -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Nomi Lev, (406) 721-3687
336 South 5th Street, Missoula, MT 59801
DETROIT, OREGON
June 20 - July 1 -- Ruth Denison
CONTACT: Breitenbush Hotsprings Community, (503) 854-3314
P.O. Box 578, Detroit, OR 97342
TUCSON, ARIZONA
July 1-4 -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Jonathan Cates, (602) 574-2948
BOULDER, COLORADO
July 15-17 -- Joseph Goldstein & Sharon Salzberg
CONTACT: Debra Trausch Thornberg, (303) 642-0132
771 Lakeshore Drive, Boulder, CO 80302
SANTE FE, NEW MEXICO
August 5-14 -- Steven Smith & Michele McDonald-Smith
CONTACT: Nancy Shonk, (505) 471-0422
2502 Alamosa Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87505
GRAND FORKS, NORTH DAKOTA
September 30 - October 2 -- Gil Fronsdal
CONTACT: Sr. Brigid, (701) 772-4607
Koinonia Spirituality Center, 2801 Olson Drive, Grand Forks, ND 58201
MISSOULA, MONTANA
November 11-13 Non-residential Retreat -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Nomi Lev, (406) 721-3687 after Aug 1
336 South 5t East #1, Missoula, MT 59801
NORTHWEST & WEST: AT CLOUD MOUNTAIN RETREAT CENTER Castle Rock, WA
CONTACT: 311 W. McGraw, Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 286-9060
May 27-30 Memorial Day Weekend Vipassana Retreat -- Julie Wester. includes movement meditation
June 17-19 Vipassana Retreat -- James Baraz
July 1-4 Insight Meditation Retreat -- Steven Armstrong
July 4-17 Intensive Insight Meditation Retreat -- Steven Armstrong & Kamala Masters
August 19-28 Vipassana Retreat -- Michele McDonald-Smith & Steven Smith
September 2-5 Labor Day Weekend Vipassana Retreat -- Rodney Smith
September 23 - October 2 Nine-day Vipassana Retreat -- Rosemary & Steve Weissman
NORTHWEST & WEST: AT VIPASSANA HAWAII
CONTACT: Yuklin Aluli, FAX (808) 262-5610
415C Uluniu Street, Kailua, HI 96734
July 15-17 (On Molikai) -- Steven Smith & Michele McDonald-Smith
Sept 9-11 -- Kamala Masters & Steven Smith
Dec 30 - Jan 1, 1995 -- Steven Smith & Michele McDonald-Smith
MIDWEST & SOUTH
WINONA, MINNESOTA
May 20-24 -- Anna Douglas & Howard Cohn Traditional vipassana format.
CONTACT: Betty Kuhn, (612) 770-9165
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA
May 27-30 -- Rodney Smith
CONTACT: Aprita Brown, (405) 478-8407, 13904 Wellsburg Ct, Esmond, OK 73013
or Denise Newman, (405) 843-7333, 1313 Brighton, Oklahoma City, OK 73120
FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS
Sept 16-19 Residential Retreat -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Joy Fox, (501) 444-6005
147 East Spring, Fayetteville, AK 72701
KANSAS CITY AREA
Oct 27 - Nov 2 Residential Retreat -- Mary Orr
CONTACT: Bob Mikesic, (913) 841-0567
EAST: AT INSIGHT MEDITATION SOCIETY Pleasant Street, Barre, MA 01005 (508) 355-4378
May 6-8 (Weekend) & May 9-15
Vipassana Retreat -- Vimalo Kulbarz & Erik Knud-Hansen
May 20-30
Metta Retreat -- Steven Smith, Michele McDonald-Smith, Carol Wilson & Kamala Masters
May 20 - June 10
May 30 - June 10
Vipassana Retreat -- Steven Smith, Michele McDonald-Smith, Steve Armstrong & Kamala Masters
June 14-19
Men's Course (*) -- Steven Smith & Steven Armstrong
June 23-27
Young Adults (*) -- Steven Smith Specifically for young adults ages 13-18.
July 1-4
Independence Day Weekend: The Heart in Vipassana Meditation (*) -- Rodney Smith & Narayan Liebenson Grudy
July 8-17
Old Yogi Course -- Larry Rosenberg & Corrado Pensa. Retreatants must have sat at least one 9-day vipassana retreat.
July 22-31
Vipassana Retreat -- Christina Feldman & Anna Douglas
Aug 4-9
Family Course (*) -- Christina Feldman.Integrating meditation and family life. Child care is shared cooperatively.
Aug 12-21
Insight Meditation and Inquiry (*) -- Christopher Titmuss, Sharda Rogell & Jose Reissig
Sept 2-5 ( Labor Day Weekend) & Sept 2-11
Vipassana Retreat (*) -- Ruth Denison
Sept 21 - Nov 3 Partial #1
Nov 3 - Dec 17 Partial #2
Sept 21 - Dec 17 Three Month Retreat -- Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson, Steven Smith, Michele McDonald-Smith, Steven Armstrong. Prerequisite is one 9-day retreat with an IMS teacher or special permission.
Dec 28 - Jan 6, 1995
New Year's Retreat -- Jack Kornfield & Rodney Smith
Registration Information for retreats at Insight Meditation Society
To register for IMS retreats, please call or write for a registration form. We are unable to accept registrations over the phone.
Scholarship funds are available for those who have difficulty in paying regular course fees. Please send for a scholarship application if needed. Also, special scholarship funds are available for people with life-threatening illnesses.
EAST: AT CAMBRIDGE INSIGHT MEDITATION CENTER 331 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 491-5070
CIMC is a non-residential urban practice center providing an environment where contemplative life can be developed and protected amidst the complexities of city living. A particular emphasis of the Center is the integration of mindfulness in sitting practice with mindfulness in all aspects of everyday life. CIMC offers group sittings, classes, evening talks, special programs, and retreats (day-long retreats are scheduled twice each month and longer retreats are held several times a year). For more information, please write or call.
Additional Retreats of Interest
The following courses are led by teachers who are not regular IMS/SRC retreat leaders. They are, however, leaders the Teacher Board can recommend as qualified to teach their offerings.
CALIFORNIA
JOSHUA TREE
May 27-29 Memorial Day Retreat -- Jim Hopper
CONTACT: Jim Hopper, (818) 543-0669
401 S. Fischer Avenue, #5, Glendale, CA 91205
ENCINO
Sept 15-18 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. Clear description of the practice using contemporary vocabulary.
CONTACT: Vipassana Support Institute, (310) 915-1943
4070 Albright Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90066
JOSHUA TREE
Nov 23 - Dec 4 Thanksgiving Retreat -- Jim Hopper
CONTACT: Jim Hopper, (818) 543-0669
401 S. Fischer Avenue, #5, Glendale, CA 91205
SANTA BARBARA
Dec 26 - Jan 5, 1995 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. See Sept 15 description.
CONTACT: Vipassana Support Institute, (310) 915-1943
4070 Albright Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90066
CALIFORNIA: AT MANZANITA VILLAGE, SOUTHERN CA Ordinary Dharma, (310) 396-5054 247 Horizon Avenue, Venice, CA 90291
Vipassana retreats with a focus on deep-ecology and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.
May 27-30 (Weekend) & May 27 - June 4
Memorial Day Weekend Retreat (*)
Aug 18-28 Alaska Wilderness Retreat (*)
Sept 11-14 Weekend Retreat (*)
Nov 23-27 (Weekend) & Nov 23 - Dec 3 Thanksgiving Retreat (*)
Dec 24 - Jan 2, 1995 Holiday Retreat (*) -- all retreats led by Christopher Reed & Michele Benzamin-Masuda
NORTHWEST & WEST
TUSCON, ARIZONA
May 26-30 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. Clear description of the practice using contemporary vocabulary.
CONTACT: Jonathan Cates, (602) 574-2948
TCMC, 2033 E. Second Street, Tuscon, AZ 85719
BOULDER, COLORADO
Sept 1-5 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. See May 26 description.
CONTACT: Alicia Gunderson, (303) 440-4153
CVN, P.O. Box 19031, Boulder, CO 80308
TUSCON, ARIZONA
Oct 12-16 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. See May 26 description.
CONTACT: Jonathan Cates, (602) 574-2948
TCMC, 2033 E. Second Street, Tuscon, AZ 85719
CASTLE ROCK, WASHINGTON
Oct 14-16 Weekend Vipassana Retreat (*) -- Robert Beatty
Dec 9-15 Winter Solstice Vipassana Retreat (*) -- Robert Beatty
Recognition of the psychological dimensions of practice and inspiration from other spiritual traditions.
CONTACT: N.W. Dharma Assoc., (206) 286-9060
311 W. McGraw, Seattle, WA 98119
MIDWEST & SOUTH
MANKATO, MINNESOTA
May 13-15 Vipassana Retreat (*) -- Mary Jo Meadow
CONTACT: RES, P.O. Box 6, Mankato, MN 56002-0006
Applications to everyday life from the Noble Eightfold Path.
ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS
June 18-23 Stillness and Knowing (*) -- Mary Jo Meadow. A vipassana retreat for Christians (and anyone else).
CONTACT: Jim Ferolo, (815) 652-4742
4094 W. Timberlane, Dixon, IL 61021
MANKATO, MINNESOTA
July 1-8 Heart of Mercy, Heart of Wisdom (*) -- Mary Jo Meadow & Barbara Brodsky. A retreat experience in Christian-vipassana meditation.
CONTACT: RES, PO Box 6, Mankato, MN 56002-0006
WINONA, MINNESOTA
July 15-25 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. Clear description of the practice using contemporary vocabulary.
CONTACT: Hal Barron, (612) 332-2436
TCVC, P.O. Box 14683, Minneapolis, MN 55414
ATCHISON, KANSAS
Sept 1-5 Stillness and Knowing (*) -- Mary Jo Meadow. A vipassana retreat for Christians (and anyone else).
CONTACT: John Van Keppel, (913) 338-2331
11216 Juniper Drive, Shawnee Mission, KS 66211
MIDWEST & SOUTH: AT SOUTHERN DHARMA RETREAT CENTER Route 1, Box 34H, Hot Springs, NC 28743, (704) 622-7112 CONTACT: Nadine Delano
May 27-30 Vipassana Meditation with Metta -- Kamala Masters
July 15-17 Meditation and Living a Full Life -- Susan Augenstein
July 29 - Aug 1 Insight Meditation and the Heart -- Rodney Smith
Sept 2-5 Labor Day Vipassana Retreat -- Marcia Rose
Nov 3-6 Awareness Meditation and Yoga -- Bhante Rahula
Dec 27 - Jan 3, 1995 New Year's Retreat -- John Orr & Marcia Rose
EAST
CHILDS, MARYLAND
June 15-19 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. Clear description of the practice using contemporary vocabulary.
CONTACT: Celia Coates, (301) 718-2920
7102 Brennan Lane, Chevy Chase, MD 20815
WESTON, MASSACHUSETTS
July 16-24 Silence and Awareness Retreat -- Mary Jo Meadow & Kevin Culligan, ocd.
Includes the teachings of Christian mystic St. John of the Cross.
CONTACT: RES, P.O. Box 6, Mankato, MN 56002-0006
CHILDS, MARYLAND
October 26-30 -- Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton. See June 15 description.
CONTACT: Virginia Rush, (302) 239-0746
14 Deer Run - Little Baltimore, Newark, DE 19711
EAST: AT BHAVANA SOCIETY
Rt. 1 Box 218-3, High View, WV 26808, (304) 856-2341
June 3-5, Aug 5-7, Oct 7-9 Weekend Retreats
July 1-10, Sept 2-11, Nov 4-13 Ten-day Retreats
Aug 18-21 High School and College Students' Retreat CONTACT: Dr. Arvoranee Pinit, (410) 744-9295
Sept 23-25 Family and Work Retreat
Dec 16 - Jan 2, 1995 For advanced meditators
All Retreats led by Bhante Gunaratana or Bhante Rahula
Retreats Outside the United States
CANADA
VANCOUVER, B.C.
May 27-29 Vipassana Weekend Retreat -- James Baraz
CONTACT: Dave Wollacatt, (604) 687-2802
TORONTO AREA
October 7-10 -- Norman Feldman
CONTACT: Peggy Swan, (705) 870-0829
128 Durham St., W, Lindsay, Ont K9V2R5
CORTES ISLAND, B.C.
October 16-23 Vipassana Weekend Retreat -- Anna Douglas & Howard Cohn
CONTACT: Hollyhock, (604) 935-6533
Box 127, Mansons Landing, Cortes Island, BC, Canada ZOP 1KO
ENGLAND
AT GAIA HOUSE
Woodland Rd., Denbury, Nr. Newton Abbot
Devon TQ12 6DY, England, Tel: Ipplepen (0803) 813188
May 21-24 The Truth in Daily Life -- Christopher Titmuss
May 27-30 Meditation and the Art of Working -- Martine Batchelor
June 3-6 Insight Meditation -- Yvonne Weier
June 8-24 16-Day Insight Meditation Retreat -- Christina Feldman & Fred von Allmen
July 3-10 Letting Go Into Life -- Christopher Titmuss & Yvonne Weier
July 16-23 The Way of Zen -- Martine & Stephen Batchelor
July 29-Aug 7 (Weekend July 29-31) Meditation and Living a Full Life -- Susan Augenstein
Aug 12-21 Exploring the Way of Devotion -- Kittisaro & Mary Weinberg
Aug 26-31 Yoga and Insight Meditation: Exploring Body and Mind -- Dan Lupton & Yanai Postelnik
Sept 2-4 Learning to Decondition the Mind -- Vimalo Kulbarz
Sept 9-11 Mindfulness, Ethics and Integrity -- Stephen Batchelor
Sept 16-18 Metta: Lovingkindness Meditation -- Christina Feldman
Sept 24 - Oct 1 Dzogchen: The Innate Great Perfection -- Lama Surya Das
Oct 8-15 The Embrace of the Unknown -- Christopher Titmuss & Yvonne Weier
Oct 21-23 A Sense of Wonder -- Yvonne Weier
Oct 24-30 The Four Foundations of Mindfulness -- Mae Chee Patamwan
Nov 1-30 Solitary Retreat Month -- Christina Feldman, Martine & Stephen Batchelor
Dec 2-4 Insight Meditation -- Christopher Titmuss
Dec 10-17 Silent Illumination: A Ch'an Retreat -- John Crook
Dec 27 - Jan 2, 1995 New Year's Retreat -- Christina Feldman,
Christopher Titmuss, Martine & Stephen Batchelor
For solitary retreats throughout the year...
To enter into spiritual solitude is a rare and precious experience, a profound resource for realization and awakening.
Solitary retreat facilities are available throughout the year and guiding teachers, Christina Feldman or Christopher Titmuss, are available for regular interviews. Previous insight meditation experience and agreement of one of the guiding teachers is required.
Daily charge after 30 days: ú11 (approx $20). After 60 days: ú10 (approx $18)
Gaia House sets aside every February and November exclusively for solitary retreats.
Longer group retreat: 16-day intensive starting June 8.
For further information, bookings and 1994 programme contact:
Gaia House,
Woodland Road,
Denbury, Nr Newton Abbot
Devon, TQ12 6DY, England.
tel: 0803 813188
AT AMARAVATI BUDDHIST CENTRE
Great Gaddesden, Hemel Hempstead
Herfordshire HP1 3BZ, England
Phone: Intl. Code + 44 + 44284-3239 in UK 044284-3239
June 25 - July 9 -- Ajahn Munindo & Ajahn Subbato
Sept 9-18 -- Ajahn Sumedho (For those who have never done a retreat with Ajahn Sumedho.)
October 7-18 -- Ajahn Attapemo
November 1-30 One-month Retreat -- Ajahn Succito
Dec. 27 - Jan. 1, 1995 -- Teacher to be announced
Weekend Retreats: May 27-30; August 5-7; September 2-4
December 9-11 Death and Dying
CONTINENTAL EUROPE & ISRAEL
KANDERSTEG, BE, SWITZERLAND
June 4-5, July 2-3 -- Ajahn Tiradhammo
CONTACT: Buddhistisches Kloster, Am Waldrand, CH-3718 Kandersteg
ST. GEORGES, VD, SWITZERLAND
May 20-23 -- Fred von Allmen
CONTACT: Santapalo F. Biner, Au Paradis, CH-1261 St. Georges
NICKENICH, GERMANY
May 20 - June 5 -- Ven. U Pandita Sayadaw
CONTACT: Waldhaus am Laachersee, D-56643 Nickenich
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
May 27 - June 4 -- Fred von Allmen
CONTACT: Maja Fredricksson, Sîdermannagatan 57M, S-11666 Stockholm
NIEDERBAYERN, GERMANY
June 1-5 -- Ajahn Tiradhammo
CONTACT: Seminarhaus Engl, D-84339 Unterdietfurt
ROMA, ITALY
June 13-17 5 Evenings on Buddhist Psychology -- Stephen Batchelor
June 18-19 Non-Residential -- Martine & Stephen Batchelor
CONTACT: A.ME.CO, Via Adamello 10, I-00141 Roma
MALLORCA, SPAIN
June 27 - July 3 -- Fred von Allmen & Yvonne Weier
CONTACT: Carlos Gil Sobera, Apartado de Correos 528, E- Palma de Mallorca
CLIL VILLAGE, ISRAEL
June 26 - July 1 -- Christopher Titmuss
CONTACT: Stephen Fulder, Clil Village, IL-25233 Doar Nah Oshrat
MANNENBACH, TG, SWITZERLAND
Aug 7-27 Metta & Vipassana Retreat -- Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Fred von Allmen
CONTACT: Dhamma Gruppe, Postfach 5909, CH-3001 Bern
HARTLISBERG, BE, SWITZERLAND
Aug 22-27 Meditation Retreat for Women -- Sylvia Wetzel
CONTACT: Dhamma Gruppe, Postfach 5909, CH-3001 Bern
NICKENICH, GERMANY
Aug 12-21 -- Ruth Denison & A. Zinser
CONTACT: Waldhaus am Laachersee, D-56643 Nickenich
ROSEBURG, GERMANY
Sept 1-4 -- Fred von Allmen
CONTACT: Haus der Stille, D-21514 Roseburg Å. BÅchen
KANDERSTEG, BE, SWITZERLAND
Sept 2-16 for beginners
Sept 17 - October 2 for advanced students -- Ajahn Tiradhammo
CONTACT: Buddhistisches Kloster, Am Waldrand, CH-3718 Kandersteg
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
Sept 26 - Oct 1 -- Fred von Allmen & Ursula FlÅckinger
CONTACT: Arik Kopelman, 400 Daled, En Karem, IL-95744 Jerusalem
NIEDERBAYERN, GERMANY
Oct 28 - Nov 1 -- Ajahn Tiradhammo
CONTACT: Seminarhaus Engl, D-84339 Unterdietfurt
NICKENICH, GERMANY
Nov 4-13 -- Vimalo Kulbarz
CONTACT: Waldhaus am Laachersee, D-56643 Nickenich
NIEDERBAYERN, GERMANY
Nov 12-16 Buddhist Psychology -- Stephen Batchelor
CONTACT: Seminarhaus Engl, D-84339 Unterdietfurt
MALLORCA, SPAIN
Nov 16-20 -- Christopher Titmuss
CONTACT: Carlos Gil Sobera, Apartado de Correos 528 E- Palma de Mallorca
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
Nov 21-27 Meditation and Inquiry, Non-Residential -- Christopher Titmuss
CONTACT: Torbjîrn Sasserson, Falugatan 20 BV, S-11332 Stockholm
ROSEBURG, GERMANY
Nov 24-27 -- Christina Feldman
CONTACT: Haus der Stille, D-21514 Roseburg Å. BÅchen
STAFFELALP, BE, SWITZERLAND
Dec 26 - Jan 1, 1995 -- Fred von Allmen & Ursula FlÅckiger
CONTACT: Dhamma Gruppe, M. Schurter, Eulerstr.47, CH-4051 Basel
ROSEBURG, GERMANY
Dec 26 - Jan 1, 1995 -- Vimalo Kulbarz & Ingrid v.Haslingen
CONTACT: Haus der Stille, D-21514 Roseburg Å. BÅchen
KANDERSTEG, BE, SWITZERLAND
Dec 26 - Jan 2, 1995 -- Ajahn Tiradhammo
CONTACT: Buddhistisches Kloster, Am Waldrand, CH-3718 Kandersteg
ASIA
KOH PAH-NGAN, THAILAND
May 16-25, June 16-25, July 16-25, Aug 16-25, Oct 13-22, Dec 14-23 Ten-Day Retreats
Dec 14 - Jan 2, 1995 20-Day Retreat (For accepted old students only) -- Steve & Rosemary Weissman
CONTACT: International Meditation Center
Wat Kow Tahm, Koh Pah-ngan, Surat Thani, Thailand 84280
BODHGAYA, INDIA
Jan 7-17 and Jan 17-27, 1995 -- Christopher Titmuss, Sharda Rogell, Fred von Allmen & Norman Feldman
CONTACT: Thomas Jost, c/o Poste Restante, Bodhgaya, Bihar, India
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CLASSES AND SITTINGS
CLASSES FOR NEW STUDENTS
To join, bring a cushion to the first class. No pre-registration is necessary.
Woodacre -- Howard Cohn
Thursdays 7-9pm, 5 weeks beginning April 28; Sept. 8
Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Cost $30.
Meditation instructions are also given in one-day retreats which are suitable for new students. Carpooling NOT required.
Berkeley -- James Baraz
Mondays, 7:30-9:30pm, 5 weeks beginning May 2, Nov 14
Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda
San Francisco -- Howard Cohn
Thursdays 7-9pm, 5 weeks beginning June 2, Mondays 7-9pm, 5 weeks beginning Sept 26
675 Dolores (near 20th), (415) 821-6378
Santa Cruz -- Mary Orr
Guided practice on first Thursday of each month, 7-8:30pm, suitable for everyone.
6 weeks beginning in November. Call (408) 427-0807 after Oct 1
Santa Cruz Zendo, 115 School Street
Palo Alto -- Gil Fronsdal
Mondays 6:45-7:30pm, 5 weeks beginning April 25; Oct 17
Call Berget Jelane (408) 255-2783 or Gil (415) 642-0354 for information.
The Friends Meeting Place, 957 Colorado (near Louis).
Nevada City -- John Travis 6 weeks beginning in September
Auburn -- John Travis 6 weeks beginning in September
Sacramento -- John Travis 6 weeks beginning in October Call (916) 265-0582 for information on above.
ONGOING SITTINGS
At Spirit Rock Meditation Center
5000 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Woodacre
Mondays, 7-9pm -- Jack Kornfield
Ten dollar parking fee per car (five in car no charge). This fee is charged only at Monday night sittings and for some special events.
Wednesdays, 9-11am -- Sylvia Boorstein
Sit & practice oriented discussion, suitable for beginners; 2nd Weds of month 7-8am sit and precept renewal; 8-9 potluck breakfast and 9-11 regular class.
Berkeley -- James Baraz
Thursdays, 7:30-9:30pm
Albany United Methodist Church, 980 Stannage (at Marin), 2 blocks up from San Pablo.
San Francisco -- Howard Cohn
Tuesdays 7:30-9:30pm
675 Dolores (near 20th Street)
San Francisco -- Eugene Cash
Sundays 7-9pm
2150 Lyon St. (415) 979-4879
Southern Marin -- Howard Cohn
Wednesdays, 7-9pm Meditation and Inquiry
For information call (415) 821-6378
Santa Cruz -- Mary Orr
Thursdays 7-8:30pm (first Thursday of each month is a guided practice, suitable for beginners). Tuesdays, 12:30-1:45pm
Santa Cruz Zendo, 115 School Street
Palo Alto -- Gil Fronsdal
Mondays 7:30-9:30pm
The Friends Meeting Place, 957 Colorado Street (near Louis).
San Jose -- Gil Fronsdal & Mary Orr
Wednesdays 7:30-9:30pm
For information call (408) 371-8543
Nevada City -- John Travis
Mondays 7:30-9pm
128 Nevada Street. Call (916) 265-0582
Santa Rosa -- Robert Hall
Wednesdays 7:30-9:30pm
Suitable for beginners and experienced meditators 666-7th Ave (1 blk east of Mendocino). Call (707) 579-0465
For more information about Bay Area sittings and classes, call Spirit Rock Meditation Center at (415) 488-0164.
The Kalyana Mitta (spiritual friend) network continues to expand. Led by pairs of senior students, these small groups offer support for practice outside the retreat setting. For information, call Sam Masser (707) 664-8598.
EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS ST SPIRIT ROCK MEDITATION CENTER
An Evening with Douglas Harding
May 11, 7:30pm-10pm
A workshop on how to see who you really are, including several "experiments" that make seeing your real identity very easy. No pre-registration or carpooling required. By donation.
Open House and Blessing for the Kitchen Dining Hall
May 15, 10am (See article on page 40)
Working Mindfully
May 22; June 12; July 10; Aug 14; Sept 18; Oct 9; Nov 6; Dec 11.
Come from 9am-noon or 1-4pm -- come to some or all of the day.
Informed Citizenship as Spiritual Practice -- Roger Kamenetz
June 8, 7:30-9pm
The author of The Jew in the Lotus will talk about the interface of Buddhism and Judaism. Facilitated by Sylvia Boorstein.
Annual Town Meeting and Picnic
July 2, 11am-4pm
A chance to reconnect with friends, teachers, and board members and have fun. Bring a picnic lunch to share. No charge.
Family Program
If you would like to talk with someone concerning integrating dharma into parenting, contact Janis Paulsen (415) 381-1516 or Mary Wagstaff (415) 927-0941.
SPIRIT ROCK BENEFIT WORKSHOPS
A Day with Stephen Mitchell
April 30, 10am - 5pm
A day of Dharma and poetry.
A Day With Rachel Naomi Remen
June 11, 10am-5pm
"Consecrating the Ordinary: The Practice of Daily Life"
A Day with Andrew Harvey
June 18, 10am-5pm
"Awakening the Sacred Feminine"
Dialogue for Psychotherapists
October 22, 9:30am - 5pm -- James F.T. Bugental, Ph.D.
"Existential Inquiry, Meditation & Presence in Depth Psychotherapy." See "Notices" in Section {13}, above.
108 Blessing Dinner
October 15, evening
Benefit for the Karuna and Mudita scholarship funds
{15} PRACTICE PAGES (3): SITTING GROUPS
EAST
CONNECTICUT
Cindy Rutledge (203) 232-7628
Hartford, CT
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Washington Buddhist Vihara
5017 16th St.
Washington, D.C. 20011
Tara Brach (301) 299-3830
MASSACHUSETTS
Cambridge Insight Meditation Ctr.
Larry Rosenberg (617) 491-5070
331 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
Cambridge Ctr. for Adult Ed.
George Kinder (617) 547-6789
42 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02238
Bart & Marion Gruzalski
(617) 983-0621
11 Grovenor Rd. #6
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Newbury Insight Meditation Ctr.
Daeja Napier (508) 463-0131
One Rolfe's Lane
Newbury, MA 01951
Northampton Zen group
Al Rapaport (413) 586-4269
10 Jewel St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Paul B. Coombs (413) 586-6070
28 Pine St.
Northampton, MA 01060
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Ferris Urbanowski (603) 924-4209
10 Route 101 West
Peterborough, NH 03458
NEW YORK
Amy Souzis, Sterling Post
(518) 453-6445
865 Lancaster St.
Albany, NY 12203
Sam (716) 833-5660
Paul (716) 885-1066
72 N. Parade Ave
Buffalo, NY
Ch'an Meditation Center
90-56 Corona Ave.
Elmhurst, NY 11373
Metta Foundation
Gregory Kramer (914) 424-4071
Nelson Lane
Garrison, NY 10524
New York Buddhist Vihara
(718) 849-2637
84-32 124th Street
Kew Gardens, NY 11415
For beginning students,
Open Center (212) 219-2527
For old students,
(212) 260-0086 or 473-5797
New York, NY
David Flint (212) 666-4104
311 West 97th Street. #6E
New York, NY 10025
Donald A. Jasko (212) 875-1363
113 West 85 Street
New York, NY 10024
Susan Augenstein (212) 473-5797
New York, NY
Village Zendo (212) 674-0832
Pat Enkyo O'Hara
15 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003
Open Heart Circle
Charlie Malek (212) 249-0835
New York, NY
Jose Reissig (914) 876-7963
141 Lamoree Rd.
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
John & Jane Hein (914) 725-4308
Scarsdale, NY
PENNSYLVANIA
Mehrdad Massoudi
(412) 348-9116
Box 175
Library, PA 15129
Philadelphia Buddhist Assn.
c/o Glenn Alexandrin
(215) 449-8025
#6 Old Lancaster Rd.
Merion, PA
Mt. Airy Vipassana Group
John Preston (215) 242-4742 7445 Sprague St.
Philadelphia, PA 19119
VIRGINIA
Lee Sonne (804) 263-8345
Charlottesville, VA
VERMONT
Robbie Khan (802) 864-5220
Bill Petrow (802) 425-3411
Burlington, VT
Michael (804) 622-5231
Norfolk, VA
WEST VIRGINIA
Claymont Seminars
Rt. 1, Box 279
Charleston, WV 25414
Bhante Gunaratana
Bhavana Society (304) 856-3241
Rt. 1, Box 218-3
High View, WV 26808
MIDWEST
ILLINOIS
Bruce von Zellen (815) 756-2801
Box 261
DeKalb, IL 60115
Lakeside Buddha Sangha
(708) 475-0080
PO Box 7067
Evanston, IL 60201
INDIANA
Orlando Gustilo (317) 259-1462
7632 Harbour Isle
Indianapolis, IN 46240
KANSAS
John R. van Keppel
(913) 338-2331
11216 Juniper Dr.
Shawnee Mission, KS 66211
Bob Mikesic (913) 841-0567
Lawrence, KS 66046
MICHIGAN
Barbara Brodsky (313) 971-3455
3455 Charing Cross Road
Ann Arbor, MI
Alan Delamater
1002 Seminole
Detroit, MI 48214
MISSOURI
Ginny Morgan (314) 875-8473
717 Hilltop Dr.
Columbia, MO 65201
Gregg Khemacara (314) 875-8473
427 S. Main St.
Carthage, MO 65201
Ozarks Buddhist Assoc.
2541 W. Monroe
Springfield, MO 65802
NEBRASKA
Kearney Zendo (308) 236-5650
3715 Avenue F
Kearney, NE 68847
NORTH DAKOTA
K.E.S.C.
(701) 772-4607
2801 Olson Drive
Grand Forks, ND 58201
OHIO
Yeshua Moser (614) 448-2701
Route 1
Amesville, OH 45711
Marvin Belzer (419) 372-6074
215 Pike St.
Bowling Green, OH 43402
Zen Center of Cincinnati
Michael Atkinson (513) 281-6453
Fran Turner (513) 271-0834
1546 Knowlton
Cincinnati, OH 45223
Wm. Graetz
1815 Countyline Rd.
Rushville, OH 43150
Yellow Springs Sangha
Diane Wanicek (513) 767-1034
502 Livermore
Yellow Springs, OH 45387
WISCONSIN
David & Barbara Lawrence
(608) 832-6658
Victor & Annie 274-9056
1836 S. Sharpes Corner
Mt. Horeb, WI 53572
SOUTH
ALABAMA
Birmingham Dharma Study Group
(205) 933-0167 or 979-6950
Birmingham, AL
Mystic Journey Retreat Center
Fr. John Groff (205) 582-5745
P.O. Box 1021
Guntersville, AL 35976
ARKANSAS
Bkni. Miao Kwang Sudharma
(501) 253-6685
5 Dickey St.
Eureka Springs, AR 72632
FLORIDA
Florida School of Massage
(904) 378-7891
6421-C SW 13th Street
Gainesville, FL 32608
Bodhi Tree Dhamma Center
(813) 392-7698
11355 Dauphin Avenue N.
Largo, FL 33544
Bob & Jackie Leshin
(305) 248-1095
18450 S.W. 244 St.
Miami, FL 33031
Lola Ashburn (305) 945-6929
3550 N.E. 169th St. Apt. F-109
Miami, FL 33160
Ross Payne (407) 894-2850 2832 Waymeyer Drive
Orlando, FL 32812
Insight Meditation Group
Gordon Meinscher
(904) 623-4290
Pensacola, FL
GEORGIA
Zen Center with No Walls
(404) 320-1038 (Karin Center)
Atlanta, GA
Mark & Veletta Gebert
(404) 974-8057
49 Vista Woods
Cartersville, GA 30120
KENTUCKY
Loel Meckel (606) 253-4897
Allie Hendricks (606) 255-2760
Lexington, KY
LOUISIANA
Larry Androes (318) 221-6833
1600 Fairfield Ave.
Shreveport, LA 71101
MISSISSIPPI
Luke Lundemo (601) 981-6925
781 Broadmoor Dr.
Jackson, MS 39206
NORTH CAROLINA
Ashville Vipassana Group
David or Marijo
(704) 255-7635 or 252-9704
34 Lawrence Pl.
Asheville, NC 28801
John Orr (919) 286-4754
1214 Broad St., Apt. 2
Durham, NC 27705
OKLAHOMA
Robert & Arpeta Brown
(405) 478-8407
13904 Wellsburg Ct
Edmond, OK 73013
Joseph Pearl (918) 599-0365
1328 W. Xyler
Tulsa, OK 74127
TENNESSEE
Delta Insight Group
Clark Buchner (901) 327-2545 975 North Graham
Memphis, TN 38122
The Buddhist Temple
230 Trautland St.
P.O. Box 121191 (615) 254-6108
Nashville, TN 37212
TEXAS
Insight Meditation Metroplex
David Overton (214) 412-2303
4600 W. Davis
Dallas, TX 75211
John Sieber (713) 667-4397
3621 Georgetown
Houston, TX 77005
WEST
ARIZONA
Diane Prescott (602) 634-1232
P.O. Box 577
Cornville, AZ 86325
Doug Pittman (602) 323-8379
P.O. Box 77026
Tucson, AZ 85703
Community Meditation Center
Mary (602) 327-1695
2033 E. 2nd St.
Tucson, AZ 85719
COLORADO
Vipassana Dhura Med. Society
Achan Sobin S. Namto
(303) 341-0818
1932 Beeler St.
Aurora, CO 80010
Jim and Jane Comerford
(303) 949-6066 or 949-4857
Avon, CO 81620
Boulder Vipassana Group
Terry Ray (303) 444-4228
Boulder, CO
Lucinda Treelight Green
(719) 635-7556
P.O. Box 6386
Colorado Springs, CO 80934
Denver Central Vipassana Group
Al Reed (303) 988-7647
1566 South Dover Ct.
Denver, CO 80232
Hillary Pheasant (303) 259-4239
3237 E. 7th Ave.
Durango, CO 81301
NEVADA
Dharma Zephyr Sangha
(702) 882-1662
6205 Franktown Road
Carson City, NV 89704
NEW MEXICO
Joan Granger (505) 299-8000
1157 Laurel Loop NE
Albuquerque, NM 87122
Bob & Dixie Ray (505) 454-1671
715 Sperry Drive
Las Vegas, NM 87701
Dharma Sangha Zendo
Geoffrey Landis & Dan Shimp
(505) 988-5293 or 473-0555
1404 Cerro Gordo
Santa Fe, NM 87501
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (More listings in No. Cal. Classes in Section {14}, above.)
Auburn
Rosemary Scarmon
(916) 663-2725
Hayfork
Silver Spring Mtn. Retreat
W.K. Dolphin (916) 628-5489
Los Gatos
Los Gators Zen Group
Arvis Justi (408) 354-7506
Monterey
Helen Miao (408) 655-0400 (w)
or (408) 375-2749 (h)
Napa
Judith Day (707) 226-3273
Novato
Daniel Barnes (415) 883-6111
4 Cielo Lane #4D
Novato, CA 94949
Sacramento
Joyce Rietz (916) 446-5962
San Francisco
Nama Rupa Foundation
10 Arbor Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
(415) 334-4921
Gay & Non-Gay Men's Group
Jim Thomas (415) 469-7286
Gay men's group
Gregory Eichler (415) 861-2379
227A Collingwood Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
Sea Ranch
Dianne McKenzie
(707) 785-2567
Sebastopol
Grendel Winkler (707) 829-7326
Marge Starbuck, Bill Boykin (707) 829-6796
Sonoma
Marjorie Moench (707) 938-2913
Turlock/Modesto
Stan Cunningham (209) 634-2172
Walnut Creek
Ernie Isaacs (510) 526-0711
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES AREA
Jim Hopper (818) 543-0669
401 S. Fischer #5
Glendale, CA 91205
Community Meditation Center
Shinzen Young (213) 384-7817
1041 Elden Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90006
Ven. Walpola Piyananda
(213) 737-5084
Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara
1847 Crenshaw Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Don't Worry Zendo
Michael Attie (213) 655-8659
444 N. Flores St.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Gay & Lesbian Buddhist Group
(213) 461-5042
P.O. Box 29750
Los Angeles, CA 90029
Two Pats (310) 540-2532
424 Mirimar Drive
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Ordinary Dharma
Christopher Reed (310) 396-5054
247 Horizon St.
Venice, CA 90291
ORANGE COUNTY
Larry Howard & Dick Martin
IMS/Orange County
(714) 856-0814
SAN DIEGO AREA
Alby Quinlin (619) 436-2368
141 Beechtree Dr.
Encinitas, CA 92024
S.D. Vipassana Med. Society
Mark Berger (619) 225-0817
1335 Santa Barbara St.
San Diego, CA 92107
Pat Dunn (619) 274-5328
4204 Taos Drive
San Diego, CA 92117
Rick Avery (619) 291-9308
4258 Hawk Street
San Diego, CA 92103
Metta Forest Monastery
Thanissaro Bhikkhu(619)988-3474
P.O. Box 1409
Valley Center, CA 92082
Ordinary Dharma
Manzanita Village (619) 782-9223 Warner Springs, CA
SANTA BARBARA
Fran Ryan Griffin (805) 569-0340
VENTURA COUNTY
Donna Noland (805) 987-5718
P.O. Box A-34
Camarillo, CA 93011
NORTHWEST
IDAHO
Seven Oaks Center
(208) 267-7711
Box 1031
Bonners Ferry, ID 83805
OREGON
Dot & John Fischer-Smith
Three Treasures Sangha
(503) 482-3269
Ashland, OR
Dharma Study Group
(503) 754-9189
Corvallis, OR
Mary (503) 683-3274
1446 A Lawrence Street
Eugene, OR 97401
Columbia Sangha c/o
Mike Echols (503) 233-2813 Portland, OR
Portland Vipassana Sangha
Robert Beatty (503) 223-2214
3434 SW Kelly
Portland, OR 97201
Salem Meditation Group
c/o Bob & Martha Abshear
(503) 581-1545
Salem, OR
WASHINGTON
Bellingham Meditation Society
John Robinson (206) 647-2066
Bellingham, WA
Ralph Flores (509) 332-5569
Pullman, WA
Northwest Dharma Assoc.
(206) 782-9423
Seattle, WA
Seattle Mindfulness Group
c/o Richard Groomer
(206) 522-4545
Seattle, WA
Laughing Frog Sangha
c/o Katy & Gary Gill
(206) 692-5908
Silverdale, WA
Sara Conover (509) 468-9361
7526 N. Espe Rd.
Spokane, WA 99207
HAWAII
Steven Smith (808) 373-3641
380 Portlock Rd.
Honolulu, HI 96825
Erik Knud-Hansen
(808) 323-3681
P.O. Box 2386
Kealakekua, HI 96750
Madhul Joshi (808) 244-0838
80 Mahalani Street
Wailuku, Maui, HI 96793
CANADA
ALBERTA
Calgary Theravadin Med. Grp.
c/o Shirley Johannesen
(403) 243-3433
3212-6th St. S.W.
Calgary, Alta. T2S 2M3
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Susan Brooks (604) 338-6253 Courtenay, B.C.
Karuna Meditation Society
Richard Piers (604) 222-4941
#19-555 West 12th Ave.
Vancouver, B.C. V5Z-4L6
MANITOBA
Keith Millan (204) 237-8866 Winnipeg, Man.
ONTARIO
(416) 525-2865
Hamilton, Ont.
Norman Feldman (705) 878-0829 Lindsay, Ont.
Andre Vellino (613) 237-9117
146 McGillivray St.
Ottowa, Ont. K1S 1K6
Toronto Vipassana Community (416) 488-5485
666 Balliol Street
Toronto, Ont. M4S 1E7
Paul MacRae (416) 924-5574
14 Cluny Drive
Toronto, Ont. M4W 2P7
Nine Mountain Zen Gate
(416) 534-6935
8-1268 King Street West
Toronto, Ont. M6K 1G5
{16} PRACTICE COLUMN
The Next Buddha May Be A Sangha
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Following are Thich Nhat Hanh's closing remarks to over two thousand people attending his Day of Mindfulness at Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California in October, 1993.
My dear friends in California, happiness is not something you get from outside. To me, happiness is born from peace. With the practice of mindfulness we can calm our body and our mind. Then peace and happiness become possible. The Buddha body is in us. Using the energy of mindfulness we can touch the body of the Buddha within us and around us at any time. And I know the sangha body is in me and around me. The trees, the grass, the blue sky, the flowers are all elements of my sangha. And you are my sangha body. You take care of me.
In Vietnam, we used to say, "When a tiger leaves his mountain and goes to the lowlands, he will be caught by humans and killed." When a practitioner leaves his or her sangha, at some time she will abandon her practice. We have to take refuge in our sangha, our community of practice. We cannot continue our practice very long without a sangha. The art of sangha building is crucial to our practice.
If a sangha is available in your area, please keep in touch and take refuge there. If the sangha doesn't have the quality you expect, don't abandon it. Do not look for a perfect sangha. Stick to the one you have and try, with your practice and by your joy and peace, to improve its quality. This is very important.
If there is no sangha available where you are, then practice looking deeply in order to identify elements of your future sangha around yourself. Members of your sangha may be your child, your partner, and a beautiful path in the wood. The blue sky and the beautiful trees are also members of your sangha. Please use your talent and your intuition to create a sangha for your own support and practice. We all need a sangha very much.
Our practice should be supported by the people around us, and we can learn how to support them in return. We support them by looking deeply so we can recognize the seeds of peace, joy and loving kindness in them. We touch these seeds, we water these seeds every day in order to make other persons bloom like flowers. And when these persons bloom like flowers, we all become happier. We have to help each other in our practice. The practice of meditation is not an individual matter. We have to do it together.
The Buddha, Shakyamuni, our teacher, predicted that the next Buddha would be Maitreya, the Buddha of love. We desperately need love. And in the Buddha's teaching we learn that love is born from understanding. The willingness to love is not enough. If you do not understand, you cannot love. The capacity to understand the other person will bring about acceptance and loving kindness.
It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation.
We know that in the spirit of the //Lotus Sutra// we are all students of the Buddha, no matter what tradition we find ourselves in. We should extend that spirit to other traditions that are not called Buddhist. We can find the jewels in other traditions -- the equivalent of the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Once you are capable of seeing the jewels in other spiritual traditions, you will be working together for the goals of peace and brotherhood.
We should include everyone in our practice. Use your talents, your creative ideas. Organize a day of mindfulness in such a way that children love it. Many children who have come to retreats in North America have had a joyful time. And parents become happier when they see the children happy. Organize a day of mindfulness in such a way that our friends enjoy it and want to practice more and more. One day of mindfulness can bring about a lot of peace, friendship, understanding and love.
My friends, once again, you are my sangha body. I offer you all my support and wish you very strongly to take care of the sangha body which is our refuge. I take refuge in you, my sangha.
{17} THE DHARMA AND THE DRAMA
Learning to Love the World Anyway
by Wes Nisker
"In sacred space people suffer what they need to suffer, and fear to suffer."-- Carl Jung
While meditation has brought great solace to my life, sometimes despair and cynicism still manage to sneak in through the cracks of my practice. To help guard against this, I have recently found myself turning to ritual. More and more, I find myself drawn to ritual events -- happy and sad ones, new and used. Finding some way to honor life helps me fend off the nagging nihilism. So I light some incense, call out the gods, try to usher the seasons in and out. Through ritual, I bow down to this manifest world, in spite of its inherent emptiness.
One ritual that really grabbed me took place at a weeklong men's retreat, held at a redwood forest camp in Mendocino, California. Jack Kornfield convinced me to attend this gathering, which he was helping to lead along with psychologist James Hillman, mythologist Michael Meade, and African medicine man and ritualist Malidoma Some. I was nervous as I entered the camp, suspicious and somewhat critical of the other men, immediately taking the stance of the outsider.
After registration I was asked to choose a clan that I would belong to for the week, either the Red Deer, Raven, or Trout. My cynicism flag went up. This sounded too much like boy scout camp. I finally decided to become a raven, because they are trickster figures in many mythical traditions and I figured I could play that familiar role. However, the ravens at this men's retreat were given a somewhat different agenda, written out for us on our clan assignment sheet:
"The ravens catch the shadows of men and walk among the bones of the battlefields. They never neglect the darkness. Bearing hard, truthful messages from the invisible, they nourish the lonely soul with gifts of intuition, for their intense sharpness sees the jewels others miss."
It was difficult for me to find the raven within. When I asked myself why it was so hard, all I could answer was, "beCAWS, beCAWS." As the week progressed, however, my cynicism began to wane, and by the time we performed the grieving ritual, I was prepared to let go.
Malidoma Some conducted the ritual, based on the funeral ceremonies of his West African tribe, the Dagara. Malidoma is a fully initiated Dagara medicine man whose elders sent him to be educated in Europe and the United States. After meeting him, Bly and Meade recruited Malidoma to help teach the men's gatherings.
During a discussion one day, Malidoma told us that he had been trained by his tribal elders to see directly into people's spirits. When he first came to the United States, he said, he was frightened by the sight of so many people "who had a big hole where their necks should be." Walking around New York City, he also saw many "ghosts of the ungrieved dead," as he called them. Before his second trip to the West, he asked his elders to remove this power to see spirits. I don't think Malidoma was speaking in metaphor.
As we prepared for the ritual, James Hillman explained, "Grief in our culture takes the posture of solemnity. People just stand around in the church or at the cemetery, and it's all bowed heads and muffled sobs. Visually, it resembles shame as much as grief." According to Hillman, the grief gets stuck inside. It doesn't move, and it poisons the soul.
The ritual took place on a field between two stands of redwoods. At one end of the field was "the village," the gathering spot, where men played drums and sang a sorrowful chant. On the other end of the field was a sanctified area bordered off by stones, which represented "the other world." In the West African ceremony this was where the dead were layed out, but for our purposes this became an area that contained all our losses -- not only the imaginary bodies of those close to us who had died, but also the lovers who had left us, the America that had disappointed us, the Vietnam War dead, our dying cities, the sorrow of all our enormous twentieth century confusion. We symbolically placed these losses in the sanctified area, and then gathered in the "village" to join the drumming and chanting.
The ritual turned out to be African gestalt therapy, transplanted in North America. Its intended purpose was to break open our hearts, and for most of us it did. In the West African villages the mourners attempt to throw themselves over into the sanctified area, to follow their loved ones into the other world. At the men's gathering we were told that when we felt grief arise, to walk or dance or even run across the field over to the shrine area. Once there we were to "hurl our grief into the other world."
It is difficult to create a new ritual. It requires agreement by a particular community that certain acts and words have a shared sacred meaning. Without time and tradition to give significance to a ceremony, whether it be celebration or mourning, the effect can feel contrived. So much depends on the participants' ability to release themselves into the mystery, and that requires a kind of foolish bravery. Sometimes I can let go, and sometimes I can't.
I resisted the grieving successfully for an hour or so, but as I watched other men begin to weep, I started to feel the sadness inside myself. At first I felt a little embarrassed to sob in front of other men, but as I let it happen, my sadness soon changed from something personal into sadness for everybody's sadness. I felt the inevitable pain of our bodies, subject to sickness and certain death; the ongoing sorrow of losing our loved ones; the awareness of a troubled world with its vanishing species and burgeoning human population; that, and all the ordinary suffering humans go through in any era.
Aside from the emotional catharsis it provided, the grieving ritual made me aware of the fact that I usually keep a certain distance from my emotions. That stance has cut me off, not only from suffering, for which I am always thankful, but also from a degree of intimacy with the world. When I close my heart to protect myself from sorrow, no matter how slightly, it also gets closed to the emotions of love and joy. As always, for any taste to exist at all, you must have both the bitter and the sweet
I realized as well, that I was often hiding inside my meditation practice, using it to maintain my distance, to stay an outsider. The equanimity developed in meditation can sometimes turn into sterile detachment; instead of feeling more human after cracking open the shell of ego, it is also possible to feel ex-human. Like the Buddhist heart-chakra practices of loving kindness and compassion, the grieving ritual seemed to work as a corrective to meditative detachment.
* * *
Working with ritual and myth can have its downside, however. For instance, over the years my archetypal house seems to have become a bit crowded. I have Greek gods and Celtic knights and deities from Tibetan Buddhist mandalas and old rabbis with torahs all dancing around together in my head. Of course, I contain multitudes, just as Whitman and all of us do, and I have enjoyed getting acquainted with some of these characters. Still, it can be confusing. When I go over to my little private altar in the morning, I find a stately Buddha, a laughing Buddha, a picture of the monkey god Hanuman, a couple of Zuni fetishes, a string of Tibetan prayer beads made of human bone, each bead carved into the shape of a skull, a little photograph of Mahatma Gandhi with Charlie Chaplin, various feathers, rocks, bells and other ritual objects. Sometimes I ask myself, "Which of the ten thousand names of god should I invoke today?" Should I rub the laughing Buddha's stomach or say a prayer to Mother Kali, and if I do both will they cancel each other out?
Still, when all is said and done, I think I'd rather have too many gods and amulets in my life than too few. Maybe my desire to merge with the One has been answered, in some way, by the many. According to the Heart Sutra, "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form," so as long I keep the emptiness over my left shoulder, I might as well join the dance. As Edward Abbey says, "The world may be an illusion, but its the only illusion we've got." Having a metaphysics that makes sense is important, but poetry and imagery are what give it life. Not only do I want a spiritual practice, I want a mythology, too. Even if it is second hand; even if it is a polyglot. Mythology keeps me in the world, and teaches me how to love it better.
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Please make checks payable to INQUIRING MIND. Donations to INQUIRING
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