Freedom of Speech

A woman holding a placard in opposition to a candidate for political office, was thrown to the ground and her head stomped on although she was not badly injured.  Her attackers were refusing to allow her to hold her view in the public arena because it didn't agree with theirs.  Naturally, both candidates have spoken out against violence at any political gathering.  It is clear though, that the election is heating up and people are feeling passionate about their positions on issues and candidates for office.

Last week I gave a Dharma talk about the use of speech and our practice to understand the nature of motivation and intention.  Motivation we said was related to reason (a reason to make a point in speech) while intention is related to action (wanting something to happen as a result of our speech).  We were also enjoined to consider in what ways our speech was a manifestation of greed, anger and ignorance, the three poisons that Shakyamuni Buddha teaches are at the heart of suffering.  Right speech is one of the Eightfold Path, the Buddha's prescription for getting beyond suffering.  Right speech is also connected to several of the Precepts:  to refrain from false speech; not to slander; to not praise self at the expense of others.  The Buddha's teachings essentially say that if we don't do these things, we'll be much better off, much happier.

Of all the Precepts, perhaps right speech is the most difficult because there is such a short distance between the reasoning brain and the acting mouth.  Speech is a creative activity.  We invent language all day long in all our interactions.  That is, we don't sit and think up every word.  We simply speak and "words come spilling out of our mouths when our lips move."  If we have been harboring ill will toward someone, if we have unacknowledged anger or resentment, speech is the most immediate way to let loose and inflict harm in retaliation.  If we have a handy listener, it's an obvious way to attempt to get others on our side.

False speech can also make us appear to be something we are not, something we want to be but haven't achieved.  The precept, not praising self at the expense of others includes not painting ourselves to others in a way that makes us look good in order to achieve some kind of gain, inferring that we have a competence in something when we do not.  This is obviously related to greed.

We can see these shortfalls in the campaigns of the people running for office slinging hurtful, outright lies, and dispensing meanness all in pursuit of gaining a place in public office.  It really makes us wary.  If this is how one would be in the campaign, how will the person be in office?  It's not a happy situation that causes us to trust our candidates.  It behooves us, nevertheless, to understand our own use of right speech and to examine the ways in which we use speech to our own ends.

Ryokan san had a very strong practice around right speech and he articulated his own understanding of the precept.  Just as the Buddha taught, Ryokan san listed these as cautions and prohibitions that if we refrained from these activities, we could find a greater happiness within ourselves and in our relations.  Almost anyone, of any tradition could find these helpful, but not at all easy.  They have to be practiced with mindfulness of the wagging tongue and awareness of all around us.  If we take on a strong practice of this, then what we hear via the heated election, will not upset us, it will instead, teach us what not to do.  We will express even greater gratitude for the environment of the Dharma.  We will come to truly understand Freedom of Speech.

And, in view of Ryokan san's cautions about not being long-winded, I cut to the chase.  Be well out there.

Ryokan’s Precepts of Right Speech

TAKE CARE NOT TO:

Talk too much

Talk too fast

Talk without being asked to

Talk gratuitously

Talk with your hands

Talk about worldly affairs

Talk back rudely

Argue

Smile condescendingly at others’ words

Use elegant expressions

Boast

Avoid speaking directly

Speak with a knowing air

Jump from topic to topic

Use fancy words

Speak of past events that cannot be changed

Speak like a pedant

Avoid direct questions

Speak ill of others

Speak grandly of enlightenment

Carry on while drunk

Speak in an obnoxious manner

Yell at children

Make up fantastic stories

Speak while angry

Name-drop

Ignore the people to whom you are speaking

Speak sanctimoniously of gods and buddhas

Use sugary speech

Use flattering speech

Speak of things of which you have no knowledge

Monopolize conversations

Talk about others behind their backs

Speak with conceit

Bad-mouth others

Chant prayers ostentatiously

Complain about the amount of alms

Give long-winded sermons

Speak affectedly like a tea master 

Long Time Away

It is a month since I've written here.  The summer was full of expected and unexpected travel and it seemed that as soon as I arrived home it was time to depart again.  Travel isn't over quite yet either.  I've still a few trips to make before the end of the year.  The days filled up with one thing and another and some days were only about the rain falling.  We had a wet, wet September.  Now the tress are turning color in various pockets of habitats here and there and leaves are sailing through air like huge orange globs of snow.  We can't deny that it's autumn even without having had much summer.


I wanted to mention a most interesting blog
sweetcakeenso.blogspot.com
It is a blog that is focusing on the Zen circle, the enso, as an art endeavor but also includes teaching and commentary along with it.  Various artists will be showing their work there and discussing the meaning behind their art.  I do recommend it for artists and Zen practitioners, or for any folk interested in Asian art and art history.


I've agreed to edit a book of essays by Soto Zen women priests on Dogen's writings in SHOBOGENZO.  There are very few examples of women's teaching in print today.  Yes, we have our websites and blogs, and we get around and do workshops, but written down published teachings are hard to find by Soto Zen women.  We have some brilliant teachers in our American Soto Zen Sangha and to think of their voices coming together in one essay collection is rather exciting.  We are at the moment in search of a publisher and I have high hopes that we can find one to help us give tribute to Dogen Zenji whose teachings allowed women to come forward to stand in fully equality in the monastic sphere.


Meantime, several of us continue to meet on Sunday afternoons for creative work.  It will likely be poetry from here on out as the rains make it impossible to do plein air.  Nevertheless, there's watercolors and sumi to set up which are not so impossible inside.  We'd been complaining about the lack of color (except for green) and the preponderance of trees and brush that don't allow for a distant view.  Allyson came across a book by a painter in the PNW and commented that there were the colors we seem to face:  grey, black, brown, with a bit of dark blue.  We seem to have to reach deep into the soul to find inspiration in this landscape.  Painters of the Pacific Northwest are notoriously dark in color.  But we press on, longing to find a way to make that solid wall of salal and brush interesting. 


Hoping to work my way into this blog voice in the coming weeks with a bit more conversation.     

Another Kansas Poem

Stories of pioneer women amaze me. I look at the luxury of heat and light I live with today and feel I don't know what it is to sacrifice. I can't imagine what they went through in the journey west. We have people living today in brutal situations because of natural disasters, and it will be a long hard time before they recover. Their stories too are compelling and instructive because they show us how we are destroying ourselves, physically and spiritually, through the endless need for comfort.

By popular request, another poem about a Kansas woman pioneer.

Mary Roberts

Spring Creek

August 1, 1874

The summer was going well. You came of age, sewed the green gingham bonnet you wore in the hazy sun that first August day. You walked hand in hand with young Jeff in the wheat and oat fields the straw color of your hair swaying with pasture grass, cattle idle and fat beside the low slung barn.

When you noticed the cloud, you both ran home, not believing the white, glistening

approach of grasshoppers that filled the horizon like a massive sudden snow coating fields five inches deep with green hunger.

Your father already at the plums with your sisters and brother grabbed the still hard fruit

to save what you could. You rushed the buckets into the house listening to the thud of insects land like stinging hail destroying your crops.

The watermelon field disappeared, twigs eaten, the merest sprout devoured. A branch of the cottonwood snapped from their weight.

Your mother rushed bed sheets to cover vegetables near the house, but green clouds landed and ate through the cloth, leaves vanishing in minutes. Only pits left hanging on the peach tree like stranded red bumps - onion skins left as paper shells gobbled from the inside - house curtains shredded, handles of hoes and rakes, harnesses and furniture eaten through.

Your little sister Betsy screamed in fear when insects invaded her hair and climbed into her clothing along her back. When you went to help they landed on your hat and ate through before you could get inside.

For two days your family fought them off and slowly they left when they’d finished the land.

Water in the pond, every fence post, gully and crevice oozed with green excrement.

Chickens, turkeys and hogs swelled from eating grasshoppers off their backs in the hopeless battle, their meat made inedible from the stench. Every bit of food gone for the year.

You stuck fast to the soil and hoed, the family gathering into itself, weathering that long, bleak winter, your young heart releasing and holding to what might come of your life, and your love in that wind swept land.

The following spring on a quiet morning, the loamy earth began to tremble with a pale imperceptible white, as eggs from the summer before, emerged and hatched, opening into daylight and sky, a green lakeof hind legs instinctively jumping.

Again, again, before your dispirited hearts,

the creatures swallowed with elemental vigor

the whole of God’s terrain and your

family’s backbreaking toil.

At Palolo Zen Center, Honolulu Diamond Sangha, Hawaii

I offer brief thoughts on the Memorial Service for Aitken Roshi last Sunday at Honolulu Palolo Diamond Sangha. Hundreds of people came from all over the world to bear witness to Aitken Roshi’s life and teachings. The Zendo and all the surrounding rooms were shoulder to shoulder with people in the soft Hawaiian breeze that filtered through as the service proceeded. The service included Zazen, music by Beethoven, a Dharma talk by Michael Kieran, Aitken Roshi’s successor, chanting, offerings of words speaking directly to Roshi, and offerings of flowers by his grandchildren, special friends, and representative of the Hawaiian nation. It was a deeply moving experience to be present for this taking leave.

Lunch was served afterward. Awhile later, about 60 people gathered for several hours in a circle in the Zendo to share their special stories and memories of Aitken Roshi. The stories were deeply personal, sometimes very funny, and always demonstrated Roshi’s love of Dharma and his ways of teaching.

A tribute to Aitken Roshi will take place in the Bay Area, California on October 30. Time and place are yet to be determined due to the potential large numbers who would attend on the mainland.

Aloha Aitken Roshi out there on the moon. Aloha everyone. I leave the Island tonight. With farewell to this grand blue/green ocean that heals and caresses the body, the sun blazing with healing rays. Gratitude to the Hawaiian people for their beautiful hospitality and allowing the waves of people to share in the bounty of light. Mahalo.

When in Brooklyn

I was in New York when word of Aitken Roshi's death came. For many years I'd considered myself a friend to him, corresponding occasionally, sending post cards from my travels, receiving much comfort and growth from his teachings. He was 93 when he died. Lucky he was to have lived a long life and to have so many years to influence the world with wisdom and insight. I'll go to his Memorial Service on August 22nd and be away for about five days. This time I'll bring my computer and write a report to the blog from there.

New York was a personal trip, a journey to find out where I came from and to see where I've been in the meantime. I had a wonderful time.

(The photos compress differently from the draft to the published version. They are parts of my neighborhood and I can't tell the order : the old Savoy movie theatre; Bedford Avenue with the original Loehmann's at the center in the distance; the street leading to St. Teresa's church towers; my high school, Bishop McDonnell Memorial.

The first four days I spent alone, staying at the Herald Square Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The plan was to visit my old neighborhood in Brooklyn and go to places I'd been in my youth. I simply wanted to experience the streets where I'd been as a child and to see how it looked. Traveling in New York is really easy. Public transportation is exceptional and one can get around the city and go from one borough to another quite easily with a Metro Card, a train/bus ticket which you slide through a slot which reads the metered amount. The subway stops are stifling hot, but once you board the train, they are all air conditioned. It's quite pleasant.

My neighborhood, which I hadn't seen in 50 years, looks the same except that the cultural mix has changed. In my day it was a mix of Irish, Italian, Jewish, African American. Today it is all African American and Haitian. I was an anomaly in the neighborhood, the only white person walking deep into an area where I appeared strange and perhaps threatening to some. Clearly, I was on alert, but I was not frightened. It amazed me to see the buildings all the same and some improved with the stone and brick having been washed clean. There was no graffiti to be found. The streets were swept. The shops had all changed with different owners and different wares and interests. My school and the church remained although the stucco was peeling from the church building. The convent stood exactly the same. It was ghostly to see it without the life in it that I had remembered. Friends apartments were intact, my own apartment a bit changed because a gate had been built around the entry. On Google Earth, the apartment had been an evangelical church, but that too has gone. It's simply an apartment building. The walls where we played ball were still there. All of it there. It was remarkable. But, I could not take photos in that area as I was truly an outsider and it would have been threatening to go around taking photos. But, no matter. It was my own mind and memory that I wanted to experience and no photo can really do the job of first hand witnessing. I may go back again another time to see it to tell me more about my life and where I've been. That is the real thing, I think. That sometimes we have to go back in order to find out where we've traveled, where we've been, what road we took and why.

Next: more events in Brooklyn and Manhattan

Back Home

I haven't written here since traveling to San Francisco and New York. On both trips I had not brought along my computer and thus it made it very difficult to write any sustained words onto this blog. My iPad is wonderful for incoming information, but it's very difficult to do any meaningful writing.

There were two reasons to go to San Francisco. One was to attend a meeting of the Association of Soto Zen Buddhists at Sokoji in Japantown, and the second was to visit my grandchildren who were visiting from Zurich. The family rented a house in the Castro district since they were staying for three weeks. The house was a grand and spacious Victorian with a lovely back patio for dining or sunning. Yes, the sun did come out although the temperature was quite chilly most of the time. I was glad of the sweater and scarf I'd brought. Summer can be bitter in San Francisco and this year it is downright disheartening.

I went out and about with the kids, through the Castro and up and over Dolores Park with a fabulous view of the skyline downtown. The kids are troopers, sophisticated in their acceptance of the varieties of peoples found on the streets of San Francisco. This is quite different from what they experience in Zurich where the people are generally far more conservative in dress and demeanor. The grandkids seem to flourish in the freedom of expression they find here and felt they didn't want to leave when it came time to go home. They were both born in San Francisco and remember living there before they moved to Europe. Still, as children, they have more freedom of movement in Zurich. They can go out alone to the playground in Zurich. Julian walks Esther to her ballet lesson. When out shopping, the kids can wander alone in other departments or stores. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen today in the U.S.

The day the folks were leaving for Switzerland, I went on to my hotel for the ASZB meeting. It had been difficult to find a room in Japantown, thus I got a budget hotel within walking distance but right at the edge of the Tenderloin at Geary and Polk. Holy moly. I live in sweet little Olympia and although I'm from Bed-Sty in Brooklyn, I haven't seen such sad life in a long time. I went out to find a snack shop after dark and walked along Polk street for two blocks to a convenience store. The pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers were all out. The streets are narrow in that area so you can't avoid close contact. To let you know they are available, as you walk by they simply say, "Hey" in a quiet tone. I'm certainly not frightened by any of this, just I'm so out of place in my looks, I must have seemed very comical to them. I wonder what they thought when they saw me. Did they think I was innocent and foolish? Do they wish they had another life? I know that when I see their lifestyle, I am intensely grateful for what I have. Any of us could wind up on the streets for a variety of reasons. Any of us could be born into dreadful poverty and hopelessness. For them, this is how they know to make a living. This is how they survive.

The meeting itself went well and I enjoyed the company of my peers. We're all getting older and we wonder how the next generation will flourish in the Dharma. We wonder how the tradition will go forward and how it will be changed in and by the American culture. We have many concerns and these are discussed in our interactions at such meetings. It is tremendously helpful to feel supported by one another and to feel the depth and strength of other teachers.

So, a report on my New York trip is the next blog before I pack and get ready to go to Honolulu to Aitken Roshi's Memorial Service which will be held on August 22.

Tribute to Robert Gyoun Aitken Roshi

Robert Gyoun Aitken Roshi, beloved teacher and founder of the Diamond Sangha and teacher to a vast number of students and teachers worldwide, died on August 5, 2010, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was 93 years old. In his final years, despite numerous health challenges and bound to a wheel chair, Roshi remained active in his writing and teaching, and in his presence in practice at Palolo Zen Sangha.

A complete biography of Aitken Roshi can be found at the Honolulu Diamond Sangha website: www.diamondsangha.org

After he retired, Roshi continued to publish, each book seeming to be his last. Several years ago, Roshi declared he was writing his final book, a personal one-copy book to his grandchild. Four books were to follow. His fourteenth book with the working title, RIVER OF HEAVEN, was underway when he died.

Roshi died peacefully not long after entering the hospital with the condition of pneumonia. His Memorial Service will be held at Honolulu Diamond Sangha, Palolo Zen Center, on August 22nd.

A memorial service expressing gratitude for Aitken Roshi's life and his teachings which have influenced and sustained us in many ways, will be held at Olympia Zen Center on Wednesday evening, August 18th, beginning with Zazen at 7:00 p.m.