Back from the Seamless City of Chicago

I got back last night from visiting the Zen Center of Oak Park where I gave a talk on Friday night, had dinner on Saturday with a half-dozen other Zen teachers from the area, and then gave the Sunday talk at the Chicago Zen Center.

I enjoyed the trip a great deal and am grateful for the wonderful hospitality of those hosting me. It was fun to get out of town and to talk about my book! It seems like I’ve been holed up for years (having fun but still…) and the writing process is quite solitary … so this was a chance to offer what I’ve been working on, to meet new friends, reconnect with old friends, and get a taste of a piece of the Chicago Zen scene.

Both Centers use koan training while I offer an unusually hinky perspective on shikantaza. I suppose that’s why the major theme in my talks and conversations with students was about clarifying shikantaza, practice-enlightenment, and Dogen Zen generally. If you follow this blog, perhaps you’ve seen some of that here too.

The Oak Park place is in the Maezumi lineage and is just getting going. They’ll have their first nonresidential practice period this spring. Joshin is offering practice that brings together his rich background and seems well balanced with living in the world. He has studied for a long time with teachers from the Maezumi line, including being very involved with the Peacemaker Order, and receiving transmission from Nicolee Jikyo McMahon of the Three Treasures Zen Community. He also studied Vajrayana Buddhism with Trungpa Rimpoche. June Ryushin, Joshin’s wife, also has a strong presence in the Center. She is a Zen priest and also a teacher of Hula.

Dinner on Saturday night included a couple teachers from the Rinzai lineage that I hadn’t met before as well as Maezumi, Katagiri, and Suzuki Soto lines. The evening was capped by June’s beautiful performance of a Hula dance about a Hawaiian love tragedy. Her Hula was simultaneously tender, heart warming, and heart wrenching.

The Chicago Zen Center has been around for quite while and Sevan Ross has been the teacher there for a dozen years. Sevan and I stayed up and talked until after midnight on Saturday night – a rare event for middle-aged Zen teachers. Sevan’s teaching seems focused in the family style of the Kapleau lineage. I’ve bumped into Sevan a number of times at conferences over the years and have always experienced a strong sense of like-mindedness, despite our quite different backgrounds.

And we might have become dharma brothers. I tried to find the Rochester Center and study with Kapleau in 1977. I hitchhiked out there and bummed around the East Coast for a while and planned to end up in Rochester. Unfortunately, I ran out of money and arrived in Rochester during a snow storm. I couldn’t find the place and so late at night with no where to go, gave up and got my girl friend to wire me money for a bus ticket back to Minnesota.

When I hang out with Kapleau folks I’m aware that if I’d found the place or if someone would have picked up the phone to answer my repeated calls, my life would likely have turned out quite differently.