Happy New Year to you!

Like you, I imagine and hope, I’ve been enjoying this cultural and arbitrary thing we call the “end of the year,” reflecting on 2011 and looking ahead to 2012. So here’s a few wandering thoughts about where we might be at and where we might be going.

First, I’m wondering how the old planet will do in 2012. We’re having a really mild winter here in Minnesota. Sweet and great for the commute … but the above photo was taken just a few days ago and we still have bare ground and the high today might be 41 degrees. This is very weird for us. I’m looking forward to doing my biking thing in a bit but also concerned about the effects this drought and warmth may have on all the many beings.

Second thing on my mind this morning is more specific to the humans and what 2012 will bring. I’m reading Don Peck’s Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It. I haven’t gotten to the “what we can do” part yet so I’ll likely be reporting back about this, but the data he reviews, like other dreary things like this I’ve brought up here, is damn sobering. The middle class is collapsing and the male variety of the species is being especially hard hit with unknown consequences spinning out for many years.

2012 could be about the same as 2011 in terms of the economy, maybe a tiny bit better, maybe a lot worse, especially if the European debt crisis blows up. From what I’m reading, it looks quite unlikely that the year will be much better.

All this makes me really grateful for my job and all the many comforts of home, family, and friends. And no matter how bad it gets, (reader alert: we’ve been indulging in some really dark humor here), it is unlikely to get as bad as the Donner Party had it in the winter of 1846-47 when they were snowbound in the Sierra Nevada.

That’s brings me to the third and final point (sorry for the rough segue), reviewing-and-renewing-the-Buddhadharma part of this post. It’s time, isn’t it?

This is on my mind this morning in part because I’ll be leading a three-day sesshin at Kyoki’s place near Pittsburgh March 1- 4 and the theme will be “Reviewing and Renewing the Buddhadharma.” You, of course, are welcome to come and participate. Click here for more information about Deep Spring Temple (sesshin information doesn’t appear to be up yet).

In 1988, in one of Katagiri Roshi’s last Dharma talks, “Review and Renew Buddhism for the Twenty-first Century,” he said,

As to renewing Buddhism, there is nothing to renew in Buddhism itself but instead renew human beings who take care of Buddhism. Buddhism is mainly very conservative in order to maintain the essence of Buddha’s teaching century after century. Wherever Buddhism has gone, Buddha ancestors have tried to maintain this essence. That is why Buddhism has flourished in China, Tibet, and Japan. If you forget the essence of Buddha’s teaching Buddhism doesn’t work for the long run.

You can listen the whole talk on iTunes, btw (and 300 other talks the old boy gave), if you click here and go to #12.

This life we all share, the Buddhadharma that we all are through and through, is always close and ready for renewal.

So let’s roll up our sleeves together and go to work.

In a recent conversation with dharma friends, a quirky detail from the Wild Fox Koan came up. Click here for an old post wherein I quote the whole ugly affair.

Deep into the koan, after the wild fox/former Baizhang has an awakening, he asks the present Baizhang, 

“Would you perform the funeral service for a deceased monk for me?”

In Daishugyo, Dogen comments, “This is not an appropriate thing to ask.”

Why not? “If we look for such precedents, there has never been anything like it.”

And just like Dogen, he looks at the story with fresh eyes, “Do not groundlessly regard the transmogrification of a wild fox spirit as authentic and do not make light of the dharma standards of buddha ancestors.”

How about us here and now? There are many old ways that in the adaptation of Zen to the modern world, we have changed without finding any precedent for.

Monks who don’t live in monasteries or have life styles any different than laypeople, for example, or who live in monasteries but marry and have kids. See an excellent post about this by Jiryu, “Why There’s No Zen in the West” here.

Although Dogen is regarded today as an old fart and dogmatic about tradition (and the above passages support that view), in his time he was and wasn’t.

Dogen was also an innovator, extensively adapting the Chinese way to fit Japan, or perhaps taking the Chinese way and going beyond it (depending on your tastes). For example, Dogen was really into Chinese monastic architecture but developed oryoki-style eating which certainly was not part of Chinese Ch’an. Dogen took the emerging koan tradition of the Linchi (Rinzai) line and the silent illumination approach of the Caodong (Soto) School and integrated them, vivified them, and in the process reinvented zazen (or at least its expression).

Dogen was also an innovator in what defined a monk. He never took the Vinaya precepts (as far as we can tell) like every “real” Chinese monk and almost all of the Chinese Zen ancestors (there might have been one or two that didn’t but the exception proves the rule in this case) but adapted the Japanese Tendai style and attributed it to his teacher Rujing.

And then there’s his dharma presentation based on and within the mosaic of the tradition but playing with it in wild and wonderful ways. That’s why the old fart is still remembered.

And that’s what I think would be best here and now with the various form and style issues too. In other words, it’s best when we have deep familiarity with the tradition, are bound by it, but are free to express ourselves through it – and beyond it when possible.

Like my doggie, Bodhi, above. He’s got a hell-of-a collar and can play so freely within it.