Category Archives: Dharma

We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

Lately, our Buddha ancestors–past, present, and future–have been very much on my mind and in my heart.

At the September 12 interment ceremony for Sojun Roshi’s ashes at the memorial site at Tassajara, the doshi, Norman Fischer, read this statement:

We are keenly aware that birth and death give way to each other; day and night, cold and heat–all things turn and turn by opposition, coming like a lightning flash in a black sky, going like waves calming on a great sea. Today our Great Teacher Hakuryu Sojun Daiosho, White Dragon, Essence of Purity, Lineage Source, Teacher of Teachers, holder of the dharma seat for half a century, faithful disciple of his teacher, our founder, Suzuki Shunryu Daiosho, husband, father, friend, and support in this Sahā world, whose dharma life connects us all, everywhere, newly returns to the source.

Honoring Sojun Roshi, our old teacher, his old teacher Suzuki Roshi is right there; they cannot be separated. This lineage, passed warm hand to warm hand, is what made it possible for all of us to be brought together, all of us blessed with the amazing and rare gift of having encountered the true dharma in this lifetime.

In the Jukai (lay ordination) ceremony on October 25, the new ordinees received lineage papers (kechimyaku) along with their rakusus. It represents the blood vein of the ancestors running in an unbroken transmission from the Buddha, all the way through Bodhidharma, Eihei Dogen, Suzuki Roshi, Sojun Roshi, to the preceptors, and to the new ordinees. It does not end there–the line of lineage curves back up to Shakyamuni Buddha, thus forming an unbroken circle.

It is this continuity through space and time that makes it possible for the lineage to extend not only from past to present, but into the future. In Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon, Dogen says:

Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we; we in the future shall be buddhas and ancestors. Revering buddhas and ancestors, we are one buddha and one ancestor; awakening bodhi-mind, we are one bodhi-mind.

How do we manifest this in our own practice? Suzuki Roshi said:

If you can express yourself fully while sitting in zazen without dreaming of anything, that is the actual practice that includes everything. If you have that practice, Buddha is with you, Bodhidharma is with you, and every sage should be with you. . . . Who are they? They are you yourself. How is it possible for Buddha or the great sages to exist forever? The only way is for them to exist with us. When you think about the sages, they are with you in some form, and when you do not think about them, they are also with you. This point should not be forgotten. [Becoming Yourself, p. 39]

Staying home, attaining the way; leaving home, attaining the way. This is the great, creative experiment that we are all living together. Discovering what it means to take the precepts–and even more so, what it means to live them, from day to day, and year to year, in finding out what practice asks of us today, whether on the cushion or outside the temple gate in our daily lives. Meeting each moment with whatever we can bring forth of intention and awareness, kindness and clarity, perseverance and compassion.

Dogen’s Eihei Koso continues:

By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, we melt away the root of transgressions by the power of our confession and repentance. This is the pure and simple color of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith.

This is the practice of showing up completely, with our whole, perfectly-imperfect being, complete with missing parts. Accepting each successive moment just as it is, letting go of attachment to outcome. This is the heart of confession and repentance–to be willing to be deeply present and alive to our own experience, whether the light of awareness is turned inwardly or outwardly. The practice itself is simple, but not easy, especially to practice continuously.

Entering the dokusan hut in the early morning darkness and lighting the candles, I bow to images of Sojun Roshi and Hozan Roshi. The whole of our lineage is immediately present, fully lived. In that moment, it manifests as humility, support, and encouragement; bowing in greeting with the person who enters, it is just this.

In the Family of Buddha

Dear Berkeley Zen Center sangha, beloved community,

One year ago, Greg and I arrived back at BZC, our home temple. As I sit here writing to you, my heart is so full, and I am finding myself at a loss for words. Still, as Katagiri Roshi said, “You have to say something.” So I will do my best to express what is in my heart, and see where it takes us.

I will start with what is most clear and present, which is the profound gratitude I feel for all of you, the Berkeley Zen Center sangha. From the time we arrived, people have been asking, “Do you have everything you need? How can I support you?” It is humbling to receive such sustained and attentive kindness and care. I hope to be worthy of the abundance of your warm offerings.

I also want to express special gratitude to the Tanto-Ino group, Laurie, Ross, and Susan, and to Board President Karen Sundheim. In our weekly meetings they shared their feelings for BZC forms, ceremonies, organizational structures, past and present, as well as the depth of their practice. They helped guide Greg and me in so many ways, and their generosity, patience, and availability have been an enormous support in our continuous learning and growth over the past year.

As I look ahead, I see that my view has gradually shifted from just what needs to be taken care of immediately to a longer view. More recently, my horizon has expanded to the next three to five years and beyond. BZC is such a vibrant, thriving place of practice, and my fundamental intention is to support the continuation and further flourishing of the warm heart of our practice and sangha life.

I have also been reflecting deeply on what “appropriate responses” might look like as we explore ways to meet the increasingly urgent cries of the world, which includes the suffering being experienced here and now by BZC members and our friends and families. I have been in conversation with both individuals and the Board, and I hope that I will have the opportunity to hear from many more of you regarding your own experiences, feelings, and suggestions.

Not surprisingly, I have been reflecting on all that brought me to this present moment. I see that over time I have become inextricably woven into this, my chosen family—the family of Buddha—and to find my true place in Suzuki Roshi’s lineage and Sojun Roshi’s house. I am deeply honored to be entrusted to pass on our lineage in their names.

When Greg and I finished dharma transmission with Sojun Roshi at Tassajara in 2012, on the morning after the conclusion of the week-long ceremony we gathered in the Abbot’s garden. Hozan was taking lots of pictures of the three of us, Greg and I in our new brown okesas. Sojun turned to the two of us and said, “Your practice is just beginning.”

Today as I contemplate the coming months and years, I am feeling the truth of his words in my bones. To continually return to beginner’s mind, letting go again and again of how we think things ought to be, making space for the unexpected, keeps our practice fresh and alive. I have been feeling particularly fresh this past year, and I know this practice will keep me grounded as I continue to walk this path with all of you.

I am blessed to have two heart-homes, Berkeley Zen Center and Tassajara (a great fortune that I share with Sojun). My first period of morning zazen at BZC felt completely right, so I just kept coming every day. I went to Tassajara because I felt called to devote my life to intensive practice in community, and to be of service.

After twenty years of whole-hearted training, to be invited to dedicate myself to service to the sangha jewel of my home temple, to throw myself into the house of Buddha in this completely unexpected way, is a gift of trust beyond anything I could have imagined. I feel the flow of trust in both directions, the mutuality of giver, receiver, and gift.

Closeup of a footbridge whose path is decorated with many overlapping ribbons of bright color.There is a small footbridge in New Orleans over the bayou in the City Park sculpture garden. Appearing as a tangled braid of brilliant colors, it illustrates the transformations of the course of the lower Mississippi River over millennia. Each color is an image of the river’s path at a specific geologic period, layered from past to present, revealing multiple manifestations of the no-self of the great river over time.

For me, this image expresses what it is to be thoroughly and intimately woven into the tangle of roots and relationships in the broad flow of the family of Buddha through space and time. The power of the Buddhadharma is ungraspable, untamable. Yet at any given moment its form is made manifest within the texts and teachings, the forms and practices that continue to evolve over time, meeting whatever arises both in the world and within each individual.

This is why I have faith that we will continue to find our way forward in the midst of impermanence and change. Because we will be giving and receiving the mutual aid of walking this path together—with each other, with the broad family of Buddha, and with our ancestors.

Bowing and bowing with gratitude for this life and for all of you,

Linda Galijan

Awakening Together

We are so blessed to have such a strong community in Berkeley Zen Center. A community that comes together in mutual support time and time again, most recently to cocreate our 34th practice period and June sesshin, which, to quote the Lotus Sutra, was “Good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.” Our study of the Lotus Sutra and Case 78 from the Blue Cliff Record, which was assigned to our shuso Mark as his case for the practice period, shared in common the theme of awakening together. The sixteen bodhisattvas all got in the water together and woke up together.

The Lotus Sutra says in chapter 2, “Only a buddha together with a buddha can fathom the ultimate reality of all things.” In the shuso ceremony, the shuso makes the scripted statement that finishes with “Let us call forth the Dharma!” We call forth the Dharma together. We awaken together. Nobody can do it for us, and we can’t do it alone. In these frankly frightening times in which we find ourselves, it is most incumbent upon us to give each other the gift of our true selves. We give each other the gift of non-fear. There is great strength in this community, and with our practice grounded in daily zazen and other activities of this temple, we are able to tap into this strength for ourselves and for each other. We discover capacities we never knew we had before, like finding a precious jewel sewed into a sleeve.

It is not for nothing that we call Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha the Triple Treasure. This is true wealth. A life worth living is something that money can’t buy. And it’s something we freely offer to each other in a web of mutuality and love. May our practice always continue like this.

Linda and Greg

Dogen’s Four Embracing Actions

Dogen’s Four Embracing Actions (Excerpt from a talk by Hozan Roshi, July 2016)

I’m going to talk about how we cultivate and manifest Bodhisattva nature in our practice here in this wonderful room, and in our practice in the world, which are not two things. The context is with such alarming public discourse, based on fear, on separation of one group from another, but my question is not about Republican or Democrat or politics as such. It’s about how you and I can carry our practice, the composure, effort, and patience of zazen from this room into the world. How can we cultivate our ability to plant seeds of peace to replace seeds of violence, greed, and delusion that we actually all have within us, to transform them?

This is an important teaching, one of the most accessible teachings by our ancestor Dogen from his Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. The first is generosity or giving. The second is loving or kind speech. The third is beneficial action. And the fourth is identity action. These are the ways a Bodhisattva goes forth in the world, ways one can operate, the natural functioning of an awakened Bodhisattva. They are also ways we can cultivate our Bodhisattva nature, develop that nature to give birth to the Bodhisattva within us by living in these ways, returning to these practices, particularly when things are hard or things are going wrong.

Dogen starts by talking about generosity, or Dana: “Giving means not to be greedy, and not to be greedy means not to covet. Even if we rule the four continents, in order to teach, to offer the teachings of the true way, we must simply and unfailingly not be greedy.” He says it’s like offering treasures we are about to discard to those we do not know. “We give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tathagata, and we offer treasures accumulated in past lives to living beings.” In his time, to give flowers blooming in the distant mountains was to give the Buddhists something they already had; flowers just bloomed. In our time, we have to make an effort to sustain those flowers because what we are doing on our mountains is stripping them for timber, strip mining them for coal, developing them for housing projects. There’s no room for the flowers to bloom in many places. For us to give flowers on the distant mountain to the Tathagata, to the Buddha, calls for a serious effort or intention, and that’s in the spirit of giving. Dogen writes that we offer ourselves to ourselves, and we offer others to others. That’s to me the turning line. We offer ourselves to ourselves. In other words, we allow ourselves to be as we are, to be as our true selves, not necessarily as our narrow selves or small selves, but to be as free and open as we can, to hold this posture when we offer ourselves to ourselves. That’s what we’re doing when we’re sitting zazen.

The second of these embracing actions is loving speech, which he says means to arouse compassionate mind when meeting with living beings. It means don’t immediately stake out your position to challenge or oppose, but actually listen. He says, in general, we should not use any violent or harmful words, which leaves a little opening for when sometimes there might be a need for strong speech, not necessarily harmful, but strong speech. When your child is about to step off the curb into traffic, you have to speak strongly. You may have to do things, to exercise that strength to help people, but in general, not. And then he says speak with a mind that compassionately cares for living beings as if they were our own children. That’s loving or kind speech. The third principle is beneficial action, which means creating skillful means to benefit living beings, whether they are noble or humble. Dogen says we should benefit friends and foes, self and others alike we are all one being. How we treat our friends should not be different from how we treat those we are in opposition to. We may use different language, a different approach, but we have to recognize there’s a fundamental human connection that we have. We are all expressions of this big mind, and this is the way we treat ourselves. When I’m sitting in zazen, there are pleasant and unpleasant thoughts, critical and affirming thoughts that arise in my mind. The practice is to meet them all respectfully and let them walk away. If we push them away, if we react to them, they will hang around and push back. This dynamic of contention is what we feed by our reactivity, so we should benefit friends and foes, self and others alike. Then, Dogen says, because beneficial actions never regress, if we attain this mind, we can perform beneficial actions even for grass, trees, wind, and water. This is the wide vision of Dogen, of Chinese and Japanese Zen. It’s all alive. Everything’s alive, and so it’s not just about me, not just about my family; it’s about the entire world that we inhabit. The fourth point is identity action, sometimes translated as cooperation, sameness, identity meaning being—not like identity politics. It’s being in identity with all that you encounter, meaning we’re all part of one large identity, not to be different from self or others. Do I have an integral sense of myself where I include, as Suzuki Roshi often said, everything as part of myself rather than separating off this and this and this, compartmentalizing it, trying to push this in the basement, sticking this one up in the attic, putting this one forward so people can see it. It’s to not be different from all that one is, to recognize this fundamental oneness of being. He says the ocean does not refuse water; therefore, it is able to achieve vastness. It just takes all the water, as much water as you want to give, and it’ll be as big as it needs to be. The mountains do not refuse earth; therefore, they are able to become tall.

“And wise rulers are not weary of people; therefore they form a large nation. Wise rulers do not weary of their people. That does not mean they fail to offer rewards and punishments, but they never tire of their people. Although people desire to form a nation and have wise rulers, few fully understand why a wise ruler is wise. They are simply glad to be embraced by the wise ruler, but they don’t realize they are embracing a wise ruler.” Thus, the principle of identity action exists both in the wise ruler and the people. A society exists on the basis of our willingness to go along with it. That means sometimes we go along because we’re privileged by it, sometimes because there’s a gun held to our heads, or sometimes for what we perceive to be our children’s sake. But it’s always about society existing on the basis of cooperation.

When that cooperation is withdrawn, societies change; this is how things change. In China’s history, there would be a conflation of natural disasters, probably going on all the time, but people would notice and say, oh, it’s time for us to withdraw our support for this ruler because he’s not wise anymore; we need to find a new one. It’s about this dynamic; the only way a ruler can continue is with either the willing or the coerced cooperation of the people. Identity action means sameness, and this is what Dogen says here: the principle of identity action exists both in the wise ruler and the people. Can I meet people whose views seem diametrically opposed to mine, listen to them, and create an atmosphere where I can present mine? This is highly idealistic, but it’s the best thing that I know how to do. And it’s what I’m working with, basically, when I sit zazen. Can I meet the parts of myself that are deeply troubling to me and just accept them as part of the whole catastrophe? As I develop the capacity to do that, then my ability to include others becomes broader; then, one is bringing forth one’s Bodhisattva nature. And that’s what I wish for each of us. And that’s what I think, at the deepest level, our practice is about.

Abbot Hozan on Practice Periods

Our practice period, in the springtime when the circle of life turns in renewal, is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the practice of living an enlightened life, to renew our beginner’s mind. Practice period includes sitting, walking, chanting, cooking, serving, eating, working, resting—all of this is enlightened activity, woven into whole cloth by zazen.

BZC members have jobs, families, and responsibilities outside the gate. Our practice is as much in our homes and in the world as in the zendo. This is our ongoing Dharma experiment—dedicated lay practice, sitting with everything. During practice period we do have recommended requirements, but within these requirements each person creates his/her/their own schedule. Some will be able to do only the minimum; others who are able can extend themselves further.

Each of us must be realistic about our capacity. The important thing—during practice period and throughout the year—is to clarify and set a practice intention, then do our best to keep to that intention. You don’t have to break your bones to do practice period. But don’t be slack with yourself either. With Right Effort our practice edge comes into view. What is the Middle Way? Whatever commitment and schedule one arrives at, we are all practicing together intimately.

Not everyone in the sangha has the time and energy to participate in practice period. That is completely understandable, and everyone is welcome to come to the zendo when they can. The PP class is open to all, and sesshins will be open to non-PP participants as space allows. All of us are supporting and being supported by the practice period— peaceful abiding. These weeks together can extend throughout the year. As Dogen says, “Practice period goes beyond this.” (from the May‒June 2023 Newsletter)

Looking Back, Stepping Forward

Welcome to 2023 and the turning of the season, the return of light. What will come our way this year is unknown. The pandemic still wanders at will; its course is uncertain and compels us to stay flexible in so many of our activities.
The last three years—marked by the pandemic and by Sojun Roshi’s illness and death—have spurred us to let go of customary patterns and plans, to adapt, to bow to grief and loss, even as we move forward.The Berkeley Zen Center sangha seems to be adept at making these changes. I think this is the deepest legacy of our late teacher: in the spirit of zazen simply to be a true community, a beloved community; to remain flexible and capable of an appropriate response as conditions continually change.
I am now about two years on as BZC’s second abbot. While I had a very long apprenticeship as tanto and vice-abbot, nothing I had previously encountered prepared me for the changes we have had to reckon with. I want to emphasize that I have never felt alone or overburdened by the zigs and zags of the Covid years. Senior students, residents, and long-time practitioners carry so much of the day-to day responsibilities of our temple life. I am deeply grateful to all. As for Sojun, he spent fifty years preparing us to meet uncertainty, even to welcome it. He showed us how to lean into zazen practice and cultivate ordinary mind.
Over the last years, I feel I’ve been mainly trying to support the practice and community. Not everyone agrees about what this should look liked. Should our Covid protocols be looser or tighter? Should we return to our prepandemic schedule more quickly? Are we at risk of losing the practice legacy carefully crafted by Sojun over many years? As a community, how should we be responding to a societal call for a deeper commitment to equity and inclusion? There are other questions.
My response to such issues has been to listen deeply and hear the inner voices of Sojun and our ancestors. To be patient and nonreactive, to try and see the other side of things. When possible, to take the time to build consensus for major decisions. Honoring these principles, much of my energy has necessarily been focused on administration and organizational process. In the coming year I plan to get help sharing these tasks. I’ll say more about this early in the year.
If I can share some of the administrative responsibilities, I’ll have more time as abbot to focus on the dharma. I’d like to do more teaching and studying with people. This would include classes, informal teas, ongoing study groups, etc. Starting in January I will expand my dokusan hours online and in-person. It is important for us to train and refresh the Soto Zen forms, which include basic zendo activity and comportment, the proper way to do various service positions, how to chant, how to bow, and so on.
The practice we have inherited is always a work-in-progress. Many of us have seen small shifts over the years. Like Sojun, I prefer to make changes slowly, honoring what our ancestors carefully carried here from China and Japan. Then the pandemic drove us out of the zendo we love and into the unexpected and challenging land of Zoom. Now, as the pandemic’s effects are more diffuse, we have had to create a “hybrid” practice—in-person and online—which is very challenging.
What next? We don’t know, but we do know how to practice together. On that ground, which is the meeting place of faith and action, I believe we will step forward from the top of a hundred-foot pole.
—Hozan

Koan Study Group

Ryushin Andrea Thach, Ellen Webb, and Ron Nestor will be offering an ongoing koan study group beginning Wednesday, February 1. We’ll meet once a month on the first Wed­nesday evening from 7:15 to 8:45 p.m. We’ll be using The Book of Serenity translated by Thomas Cleary, as well as commentary on each case by Yamada Koan Roshi, a contemporary Zen teacher.

The Book of Serenity is the koan collec­tion most closely associated with the spirit of our Soto lineage. We have found these koans both compel­ling and difficult in their variety of tone, emphasis, and interpretation. The stories in them are based on actual Zen practi­tioners and teachers who mostly existed in the Tang dynasty (roughly 600‒900 A.D.). The Book of Serenity was created in the twelfth century by Hongzhi, who chose the koans to include and created a verse to accompany each one. Wansong provides commentary alongside the koans. His comments run the gamut from critical to humorous, and often seem quite modern. All the koans deal with nonduality in some way, but the devil is in the nuances and the details.

We’re aiming for something between a class and a dharma group. There will be no fee. We’re hoping that participants continue to show up because of their interest. We will start out on Zoom. An announcement and link will be available in the week before the first session, as well as an earlier reminder.

If you would like more information, please contact Ellen Webb (elweb@sbcglobal.net).

Three Aspects of Practice

Some years ago Sojun Roshi invited me to lead a fall practice intensive that we have come to call Aspects of Practice, which focuses on the basics of our Zen Buddhist tradition. With the partnership of senior students, we created this month-long program, which served well as a point of entry for newer students and as a kind of refresher for more experienced practitioners.
This fall’s Aspects of Practice begins on September 10, continuing through October 9, led by Karen Sundheim and other practice leaders. Details can be found elsewhere in this newsletter. But in this space, I’d like to review three essential “aspects” of our dharma practice: daily zazen, meeting with a teacher, studying the Dharma.
When Suzuki Roshi came from Japan to be the priest at Sokoji, the Soto Zen temple in San Francisco, he established a practice of daily zazen that we maintain more than sixty years later. His disciple Sojun moved to Berkeley and followed much the same practice. As we have done for fifty years, BZC is open for sitting six days a week. We strongly encourage people to come to the zendo, sit together, and share a daily practice. Taking into account members’ work and family lives, everyone cannot come to the zendo every day, but the doors are always open. Sitting side by side we sustain each other naturally, and we come to a wonderful intimacy of practice.
The Covid pandemic compelled us to create new modes of online zazen that are not our traditional body-to-body zendo practice. But Zoom has served us pretty well these last few years, even if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But now we are back in the zendo early mornings, afternoons, and Saturdays. I want to encourage you to resume our long-standing in-person practice. Join us. Those of us who have returned to BZC feel refreshed and encouraged again by the opportunity to sit zazen together. This is the shining heart of the Sangha treasure.
The second element of our practice is meeting with a teacher. When I came to BZC in the early 80s, there was an implicit expectation of meeting regularly with a teacher. Back then, our only teacher was Sojun, but in time, students’ maturity and understanding have deepened. Now we have a roster of practice leaders and teachers who are available as guides, as mirrors, as dharma friends or kalyanamitra. This is the Buddha treasure. A teacher as Buddha reveals that you yourself are Buddha. A practice leader or teacher doesn’t dispense wisdom or give out answers to our difficulties. She or he or they help us to stand on our own feet, to find our own inborn wisdom.
As abbot, I welcome the opportunity to meet with people—formally or informally. My dokusan signup for meeting face-to-face during morning zazen is just to the right of the zendo door. To schedule an online meeting with me, see this link: https://calendly.com/asenauke/dokusan?month=2022-08 or contact me at asenauke@gmail.com. Also, if you scroll down the “Teachers” page on the BZC website, there are email addresses to contact all of our practice leaders: https://berkeleyzencenter.org/teachers/.
Studying the Dharma is the third treasure. In the broadest sense, zazen is our principal study. As Dogen Zenji writes in Genjokoan: “To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.” In zazen, we sit still and allow the myriad things—which are the ever-changing elements of our “self”—to arise and to fall away. To complement this experiential study, we immerse ourselves in the teachings of Suzuki Roshi, Sojun Roshi, and our luminous ancestors in Japan, China, and India, going back to Shakyamuni Buddha. Their words and actions illuminate our own lives. During the upcoming Aspects of Practice, we’ll explore the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, a timeless map for living found in his very first teaching.
These three dimensions of practice create a whole, each including all the others. Each of us must find the right balance for the circumstances of our life. May the journey be complete.

—Hozan

Circle of Women Ancestors

At our Jukai ceremony last fall, I spoke briefly about the Women Ancestors document that Gerry Oliva and I gave to all the ordinees. This lovely document honors broadly the women ancestors—known and unknown—who have nurtured the Dharma from its earliest days down to the present. The document was created by members of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, based on considerable research and creativity.

After our Jukai, several BZC members expressed interest in receiving this document. I would like to offer this widely to all women and men who have received Jukai or priest ordination. The document, which centers on the elegant circle pictured below, will be personalized for you, with your birth and dharma names, signed and sealed. I hope that we can offer these in a ceremony and celebra­tion in the next few months.

If you would like to receive this document, please send a note, including your dharma name, to my new assistant Jonathan Koltz (jonkoltz@gmail.com). If you have any questions, please write me directly.

—Hozan

Practice Period

In Dogen Zenji’s Eihei Koroku this is recorded: “Dogen held up his whisk, and with it drew a circle in the air. He said, ‘Practice period goes beyond this.’ ”

For more than thirty years Berkeley Zen Center has offered a spring practice period. These were usually led by our founding teacher, Sojun Roshi. Now, as the new abbot of BZC, I am honored to lead this year’s practice period, as we emerge from strange days of pandemic.

In the Zen tradition, the word used for practice period is ango, which means “peaceful abiding.” In China and Japan this would be a three-month residential intensive, with its own root in the early Buddhist “rains retreat,” when wandering monks and nuns would gather in monasteries during monsoon season.

Our practice period, in the springtime when the circle of life turns in joyous renewal, is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the practice of living an enlightened life, to renew our beginner’s mind. Dogen Zenji speaks of “practice realization,” meaning that our Zen practice does not so much aim toward a goal of awakening, but rather that our practice expresses the enlighten­ment that is always within and available to us. Practice period includes sitting, walking, chanting, cooking, serving, eating, working, resting—all of this is enlightened activity, woven into whole cloth by zazen.

BZC is not a monastery, so our members have jobs, families, and responsibilities outside the gate. Our practice is as much in our homes and in the world as in the zendo. This is our ongoing Dharma experi­ment—dedicated lay practice, sitting with everything. During practice period we have recom­mended requirements, but as Sojun Roshi said, “within these requirements each person can create his or her own schedule. This is the nature of lay practice. Some will be able to do only the minimum, while others who have the opportunity will be able to extend or stretch themselves much more.”

We may wish to do it all, but each of us must be realistic about our capacity. The important thing for each of us—during practice period and throughout the year—is to clarify and set our practice intention, then do our best to keep to that intention. You don’t have to break your bones to do practice period. But don’t be slack with yourself either. With Right Effort our practice edge comes into view. What is the Middle Way? Whatever commitment and schedule one comes up with, we are all practicing together intimately.

Not everyone in the sangha will be able to clear the time and energy to participate in practice period. That is completely understandable, and everyone, of course, is welcome to come to the zendo when they can. All of us are supporting and being supported by the practice period—peaceful abiding. These weeks together can extend throughout the year. As Dogen says, “Practice period goes beyond this.”

—Hozan Alan Senauke