What is Earnest Vivid Sitting, How it’s Often Missed in American Zen, and Why it Matters

July 18, 2014 By Dosho Port

Big life event – retired in early June from a thirty-some year education career (except for a few stints of full time Zen, I’d been at it since I was 22) and headed here to Portland, ME, to start a Zen training center, Great Tides Zen (oh, and please sign up for our newsletter updates in the bottom right sidebar).

Our apartment wasn’t going to be available until July 1, so we drove from Minnesota to Maine at a leisurely pace. I took the opportunity to listen to a half dozen or so dharma podcasts by as many teachers.

It’s really quite wonderful how available the dharma is these days and I enjoyed much of what I heard. There is a similar flavor to a lot of it, a distinctive and emergent American Zen, characterized by a fuzzy emotional tenderness. Quite lovely. If that’s what you’re looking for.

I chose podcasts that were about one of my long-time favorite subjects for inquiry – what is shikantaza? Shikantaza is also known as “earnest vivid sitting” and is misknown, I argue, as “just sitting.”

“Just sitting” has come to suggest a fuzzy, spacing-out, lulling vacancy that is not the way.

I began this inquiry in 1984 with all the energy of a youngster when Katagiri Roshi gave a series of talks extending over several years on Dogen’s Zazenshin or The Healing Point of Zazen, as I render it now. Of all of Dogen’s writings, it is this fascicle that most thoroughly unpacks the nature of what he elsewhere refers to as the wondrous (or mysterious) method of buddhas and ancestors – shikantaza.

Zazenshin is sometimes translated as The Lancet of Zazen which is okay. The “shin” in Zazenshin is also the character used for the acupuncture needle – thus, “healing point.” But perhaps “dynamic balance point” would also work.

In any case, I’ve been at this inquiry for 30 years, doing zazen, studying, traveling to do sesshin, monastic practice, koan introspection, etc., all in the service of this inquiry.

In Dogen’s dharma milieu, the two most common expressions for practice had been Silent Illumination and Key-Word Koan Introspection. Dogen coined the term shikantaza specifically for the essential method of buddhas and ancestors, going beyond these expressions. One important point here is that Dogen didn’t see himself making up a new practice, simply finding a new and more accurate expression for what all buddhas and ancestors have always practiced.

Dogen, a successor in the Soto line associated with the Silent Illumination expression, doesn’t use the phrase a single time in all his voluminous writings. That’d be like a successor in Suzuki San Francisco Zen not saying “beginner’s mind” ever in 2000 pages of dharma talks. Clearly, there must be some meaning.

In my view, a key point of Dogen’s Zen is to present a clear and lively integration of the Silent Illumination and Koan Introspection branches of the buddhadharma. He does this in part with the single word shikantaza.

Listening to the above-mentioned dharma talks, I noticed that what is called shikantaza in contemporary discourse bares little resemblance to Dogen’s shikantaza. It has become a catch-all term that includes things like bare attention, receptive awareness, panoramic awareness, mindfulness of mind, following the breath, and themeless meditation.

Another view has it that shikantaza is a mindfulness of body practice and regards the pose itself as sacred and drifts into cargo-cult (as John Tarrant has said) or fetish attitudes about it.

I’ve come to look at the difference this way – there is meditation practice in contemporary American Zen that is called shikantaza. Then there is the shikantaza that Dogen points to. They really don’t have much relationship.

I suspect that the Rev. Big-Mac Wrappers who go on about shikantaza as a method for vacant lulling, approach it as a belief system.

Why does it matter?

It matters because what we’re talking about here is the essence of practicing enlightenment and the above listed techniques are mostly forms of congealing in tranquility.

So what is shikantaza?

Dogen says repeatedly that “…it is the realization of the kôan.”

He goes on, “The ‘healing point’ in the Healing Point of Zazen is ‘the manifestation of the great function’, ‘the comportment beyond sight and sound;’ it is ‘the juncture before your parents were born.’ It is ‘you had better not slander the buddhas and ancestors;’ ‘you do not avoid destroying your body and losing your life;’ it is ‘a head of three feet and neck of two inches.’”

Yes, the old dog kindly and uncompromisingly gives us a nod toward the many faces of shikantaza as the presentation of the koan.

In our post-Hakuin world, I’d add this – shikantaza is the sound of one hand.

What can you do to begin the inquiry? I’d say that for most people, it might be necessary to do koan introspection (with someone who is clear and insists on clarity and doesn’t wantonly pass students through the system) to discover shikantaza.

Short of that (or in conjunction with that), “sit down, shut up, and pay attention” (as James Ford summarizes the path), is very sound advise.

So here in Portland, ME, we’ll soon begin again the work of this ongoing inquiry.

Shikantaza: Busy, Busy Karmic Consciousness – When Will it Rest?

July 20, 2013 By Dosho Port

My friend and teacher, James Ford, has a recent Monkey Mind post (click here), “Assuming the Position: Zazen as a remembrance of things past and Zazen as awakening,” and has awakened me from a summer-time blog slumber.

James begins by reflecting on the purpose of the dharma talk and whether it is “to encourage practice” or “direct pointing to the matter at hand.”

The venerable then goes on to address what has become a common perspective on practice in the Soto school, at least in the US and particularly in the San Francisco Zen flavor (I believe but please educate me via comment if you think I’m wrong), that zazen is the “liturgical reenactment of awakening.”

That’s what James refers to in his title as “zazen as a remembrance of things past.”

I agree with James throughout and think this is an important post that points to the matter at hand in Zen ever so well.

And I have one quibble: for Dogen, the past is present. This is his holochronic view. In Being Time (Uji), for example, Dogen says,

Each moment is all being, is the entire world.

Koun, btw, works this passage in his recent post, Dogen in E-Prime.

But back to the point. For Dogen, past is present and so authentic shikantaza (aka, earnest, vivid sitting) is a reenactment (a practice enlightenment), of the Buddha under the Bodhi tree and all the successive buddhas and ancestors in the past and future.

Yes, for Dogen and for any of us “…when the baskets and cages are broken (Zazenshin).”

That little word “when” is very important and I believe at the heart of James’ concern. Shikantaza as a dogma is a deadly disservice to our heart’s innermost (and original) request – to awaken and live in peace and harmony.

But I wonder if I’ve lost you, reader, in what Stephen in commenting on James’ post calls “… a vague cloud of fanciful fluff.”

Here’s Stephen’s fuller passage: “Most instructions [for shikantaza] in print seem liberally sprinkled with what seems like a vague cloud of fanciful fluff–there seems to be very little practical instruction on what to do after ‘assuming the position.'”

Stephen also cites John Tarrant on koan practice that by necessity the instructions are insufficient. Not only is koan work a discovery process but what we discover is falling apart as fast as it is discovered.

The same holds true for shikantaza.

What practical shikantaza instruction can I offer?

The best I can do at the moment is to say that shikantaza is only “…the gate of repose and bliss” when it is the actualization of this phrase – “busy, busy karmic consciousness, when will it rest?”

Dogen: the Patron Saint of Passive Zen?

October 20, 2012 By Dosho Port

I was pleased this morning as I reviewed the comments to my recent posts about Soto Zen going to hell. Seems like as real a cyber conversation as we’ve had in these parts. Not everyone agrees, of course, and sometimes feelings flare.

One way to frame the disagreement is as a debate between inherent stability and full aliveness. As is often the case these days, Dogen is brought up as a proponent of inherent buddha nature with a slight twist – there is no enlightenment apart from practice and its corollary, practice is itself enlightenment.

Was Dogen, then, the patron saint of passive Zen, as one tongue-in-cheek commentator says?

The above drawing (not mine), represents the active and passive aspects of what Dogen taught (e.g., “Instructions for the Cook” vs. “Zazenshin”) and reflects the actual practice of Soto Zen. Obviously, there are the active (work) and passive (zazen) sides of training. However, for Zen activity to be fully alive, the activity must spring from stillness. For the practice of stillness to be fully alive, interiority must be dynamically hopping along.

I like the drawing above, but from the view I’m expressing here, I’d like the two monks to be much closer. It isn’t about balancing two things but about the two aspects entwined and hopping along together, sometimes dangerously close to falling down, sometimes falling down. And then, pushing off the great earth, getting up and getting going again.

The form of zazen and the precepts, for example, are the containers for full aliveness, the ground rules for full-out boogie, optimally unfolding full aliveness. Without the intimate engagement of both aspects, practice is either boring and repressive or crazy and dangerous. The beauty of Dogen’s expression is how he points to full aliveness in stillness, still within full aliveness.

This is akin to Suzuki Roshi’s pre-politically correct “Hinayana practice with Mahayana spirit – rigid formal practice with informal mind.”

So this conversation isn’t about authority, but about what Dogen wrote 750 years ago that can inform our practice-enlightenment now and especially for the next generation and beyond. The important point, then, is to take up the teaching and experiment with it … enjoying a good rant from time to time too. The old bugger certainly did.

Different people will come up with different results as they use the body-mind to test the teaching. No problem. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that they’re all equal in power to illuminate one little corner of the world, as they say.

If it could be definitively demonstrated that Dogen totally favored one side or the other … well, ho hum. And that does seem to be the drift in contemporary Soto Zen – a rush to institutionalize, regulate, and normalize – making Zen safe and dull and utterly devoid of challenge and freedom.

A Zen teacher friend recently mentioned to me that when he read through the survey results of Soto Zen teachers that I’ve been groaning about, he found that when there was 60-70% agreement on some point, that he too almost always agreed. After our conversation, it occurred to me that I wished I said to him, “Yes, exactly the point. Ask safe questions tending to the norm and that’s the answers that you get.”

After 30-some years of study and practice, it’s my provisional view that Dogen was not advocating silent illumination or passivity. He was a creative. In fact, that Dogen did not advocate quietism makes him relevant today and is what keeps me coming back to his vivid expression of practice where the active and passive elements are in intimate conversation, with neither aspect dominating the other.

Even in his early years, when he was about 30, Dogen junked the “silent illumination” framing of zazen for the much more active “self-enjoyment samadhi.” Later it became “the acupuncture needle of zazen” as well, of course, as “dropping body and mind” and “earnest, vivid sitting.”

In the early period, as I was saying, it seems to me that he hadn’t fully resolved the nasty moral and practice implications of the original enlightenment teaching (“It’s all good” and “whatever” and “just sit”) that were vogue in his day. Here’s a passage from the “Self Enjoyment Samadhi” section of “Bendowa” with my comments inserted:

There is a path
(emphasizing the relative world with a beginning, middle and end)

through which the unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment of all things
(emphasizing the fundamental, giving possession of perfection to each of the myriad things with or without path)

returns
(the 10,000 dharmas advancing to confirm the self)

to the person in zazen, and the person and the enlightenment of all things intimately and imperceptibly assist each other.
(the practitioner boogieing with the buddha).

Therefore, this zazen person
(this person who has become a zazen person, but not necessarily the person who does not practice, intimately entwines with buddha)

without fail
(stay with it practitioners, you are doing it!)

drops off body and mind, cuts away previous tainted views and thoughts, awakens genuine buddha-dharma, universally helps the buddha work in each place, as numerous as atoms, where buddha-tathagatas teach and practice, and widely influences practitioners who are going beyond buddha, thereby vigorously
(the bold highlight that this dance is not passive)

exalting the dharma that goes beyond buddha
(ordinary being and buddha together go beyond buddha).

Dogen’s creative burst of dharmic, koanic fluency during his early 40’s in Shobogenzo fascicle after fascicle goes beyond his early work in intensely wrestling practice-enlightenment, active-still, sacred-profane. More about that in future posts. I use the above because it is often cited to support the all-zazen-is-enlightenment view while the meaning is considerably more nuanced.

Dogen this and Dogen that. How will I live? How will you live?

Myotai Treace once said, “You can’t live a bunny life and write tiger poems.”

What is the self?

The Koan/Shikantaza Issue: Was Dogen Misguided?

December 27, 2010 By Dosho Port

I guess there’s always more than one opinion.

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“k” has made several comments to a post that appeared here in October about a Dogen passage that I read as giving clear directions for doing koan introspection that featured the Boundless Way Zen teachers’ perspectives. Click here for that.

The jist of “k’s” criticism – as I understand it – is that koan introspection (particularly the “head word” technique, focusing on a single word or phrase in zazen) is a “misguided practice.” k quotes Jundo from a post at the Zen Forum International as saying that he and a couple other people Jundo respects think that Dogen viewed koan introspection in zazen to be misguided.

First, of course, I’d like to agree. On one hand, koan introspection, shikantaza, and following the breath are all quite misguided, gouging healthy flesh, wiping a perfectly clean butt.

Second and with the same hand, these practices all actualize that truth and set up the accident of awakening.

Third, I’d like to appeal for a suspension of judgments about others’ practices being “misguided.” There are, after all, many fine practitioners and Zen masters who’ve engaged in koan introspection, shikantaza and breath practice and found one or the other or all three and more to be the quintessential practice-verification of the buddhadharma.

We’re in a period now in the global culture of digesting many wonderful aspects of our human inheritance and some of us are trying to find a way for Zen to have a clear voice in choir. I don’t think anybody can see yet exactly what approach – or combination – will be the most important.

In this spirit, Dogen encouraged us not to argue about philosophical points but only inquire to see if the practice was actual (Bendowa, question 4) – especially, our own practice, of course. Awakening is the important point, not intra-sect conflict.

And what does it really matter if Dogen had the opinion that koan introspection was misguided? Despite Dogen and God having the same first three letters backwards, Zen is a path of realization, not a revealed religion. Certainly, Dogen was a brilliant, enlightened, profound practitioner and teacher. I’ve spent thousands of hours studying his teaching (really – starting with a couple thousand with Shobogenzo with Katagiri) from the time I was a young pup.

Like everybody else, he said a lot of stuff, sometimes contradictory, and was probably misguided in some ways or at least his guidance for us today, if taken literally, would be to guide us off course. Like sometimes saying that only monks could be enlightened (and by his definition of “monk” there’s only a few left). Sometimes saying lay people can too. And yes, like wiping our butts with clay balls – a Dogen endorsed practice. And to further justify the use of the visual above, I’m confident that His poop stank too, at least from time to time.

In order to be authentic dharma students and teachers, we need to devote ourselves to the way as our teachers offer(ed) it while being lanterns unto ourselves and taking responsibility without depending on others – Buddha, Dogen, Katagiri, whoever.

As for Dogen, in my view, his view was much more complex than a simple “Yes to koan introspection” or “No to koan introspection.” When he was critical of koans he was probably speaking to specific abuses he observed, maybe in his students, maybe they were doing koan introspection. He may have been giving his students guidance in what he believed was the correct way to work with koans.

He does specifically recommend taking up koan introspection in The Extensive Record of Dogen (p. 529). He sometimes says things that are precisely the “answers” to koans in the present Harada-Yasutani system, so much so that I wonder if he had access to the same material. He describes the experience of kensho in vivid and compelling ways. He often gives advice that rings true to all those I know who are engaged in koan introspection. He seems to advocate for the mu koan, for example, “Hearing Joshu’s mu the course of practice to be pursued opens up” (see Bussho, “Buddha Nature” and “Guidelines for Practicing the Way” part 8). He models the process of digesting a koan throughout the Shobogenzo. His own teacher spoke glowingly of the mu koan (see Heine’s Dogen and the Koan Tradition, p. 235). Then there are his immediate successors … and on and on.

These examples can be interpreted differently, I suppose, although it takes quite a lot of thinking. Ockham’s Razor (“the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable”) would slice in favor of some form of koan introspection, imv.

Then there’s the unclear business of what “koan introspection” meant then and now. Dogen lived about 500 years before Hakuin cleaned up and codified the basics of the present koan system so he couldn’t have been talking exactly about what we now consider “koan introspection.”

Dogen was sometimes critical of Ta-hui, one of the key developers of the head word system, but mostly not for the system – for not breaking through himself (see Jisho-zanmai, Samadhi of the Self, Shobogenzo4, p. 41). On the other hand, he praised Ta-hui for sitting zazen even when his hemorrhoids were really severe.

When Dogen talks about shikantaza, for that matter, he doesn’t sound like most people who talk about shikantaza these days. When he talks about koans, which is about 90% of the time, he doesn’t seem to distinguish them from shikantaza. For example, in his chapter “The Healing Point of Zazen,” he uses the thinking, not-thinking, non-thinking koan to present the verified practice of zazen. He could be seen here as assigning a life koan.

In my own koan work, I sometimes focus on the key parts of a koan in zazen, the so-called head word method. I sometimes let the koan just bubble up from my belly. I sometimes call the koan to heart just as I’m falling to sleep (in bed, that is) – this is my favorite way. Sometimes the koan arises in the midst of daily life.

Like the Boundless Way teachers say in the original post, I don’t recommend any special technique to students. One of the virtues of koan introspection is how it calls for us to be creative and free – one of the central compelling characteristics of Dogen’s writing.

As both Soto master Katagiri Roshi and Rinzai master Harada Shodo Roshi taught me, “Zen practice is not something particular.”

Aitken Roshi’s Death and My Taking Up Koan Introspection

August 9, 2010 By Dosho Port

We’re back from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Another fantastic father-son trip and I’m now settling into home life for the next few months, getting ready for another school year, and more regular blogging too.

Above is a shot from our campsite one early morning. I choose this shot because I learned upon returning to cell phones and email that Robert Aitken Roshi had died last week at 93.

“Woe on woe. Oh, Death canst thou sometimes be timely,” wrote Melville in Moby Dick about a blacksmith whose wife and children had died years before and whose death would have been an act of compassion.

Maybe this time death was timely. Aitken Roshi had a long and fruitful Zen career and left about 14 direct successors who have about 20 successors already (my rough count from the Harada Yasutani Zen page).

Melville adds later, “…Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried.”

Aitken Roshi precedes us all into the great Untried. May we try what our hearts call us to try in this very life.

As for me, what my heart has long called me to try is koan introspection. That might not seem strange to you but I was born into a Zen family of shikantaza.

Nonin, my true dharma brother, recently introduced me for a talk saying that I was the Katagiri Roshi disciple with the most Rinzai spirit. Or maybe he said that I once had it.

In any case, I’ve dabbled in koans with several teachers over the years and then recently the opportunity arose to work through the Harada Yasutani koan curriculum with James Myo-on Ford (along with Melissa Blacker and David Rynick too at Boundless Way) and I seized the day. I’m very glad I did.

This crew is among the descendants of Aitken Roshi (although David’s lineage is mainly through George Bowman). I took some koan notes with me to the Boundary Waters that included comments by Aitken and some of his responses to the koans and so I found myself personally touched by his death in a way that I would not have been a few months ago.

One of the moments that drew me to this group of teachers was a while back when I was offering a workshop at Boundless Way on Zazenshin. I got into my usual harangue about how in the modern Zen world koan and shikantaza are regarded as separate practices but for Dogen koan and shikantaza were very intimate.

Melissa jumped in and said that in their system koan and shikantaza were not separate.

That stole my thunder and led to other conversations that led to my jumping into working with them.

I’m much in the thick of the study now so what follows are tentative thoughts, of course.

One of the primary criticisms of koan study made in Soto shikantaza circles is that it focuses on the ugly and evil gaining idea called “kensho.”

It seems to me that kensho is only one little step in the process – and is neither a gaining idea nor ugly and evil. The vast majority of the first 100 koans (including the various parts and follow-ups) are about actualization of insight.

And as I’ve rudely said in this blog before, practice-enlightenment without enlightenment (a.k.a., kensho) is often just practice-delusion.

If we haven’t turned around, how can we practice what we haven’t experienced?

Anyhow, I’ve studied Dogen Zen for 30 years and find the koan system to be wonderfully in line with what Dogen actually wrote, although not necessarily in line with many interpretations that are popular today.

James has generously supported my wish to offer the koans that I’ve passed through to students and so I’ve begun doing that.

Next Monday, August 16th, I’ll be giving a talk about koan practice and how it is intimate with shikantaza in Minneapolis at the Heartwood Mindfulness Center, 7:00pm. If there’s interest, I’ll continue offering a class there on Monday nights in the fall on this same theme.

That’s the change coming on that I hinted at a while back. More later on all this. It’s been a very rich time for me and I hope to offer it to others.

When the Baskets and Cages are Broken: Workshop Recording Now Available

March 25, 2010 By Dosho Port

Here’s a shot of workshop on Saturday at Boundless Way. We’re just starting to come back together after a break, I believe.

Talking about the healing point of zazen, Old Dogen said, “…when the baskets and cages are broken, a seated Buddha does not interfere with making a Buddha.” And that is the main point of the workshop – to encourage a zazen that is in itself the breaking of the baskets and cages, a zazen free of category, including silent illumination or koan. Just complete doing.

An explosive shout cracks the great empty sky.
Immediately clear self-understanding.
Swallow up the buddhas and ancestors of the past.
Without following others, realize complete penetration.
– Dogen

You can find a audio files of the workshop over at Boundless Way by clicking here.

Back from the Boundless

March 22, 2010 By Dosho Port

Above is David Rynick, one of the several Boundless Way Zen teachers, the next abbot of the BWZ school and a very sweet guy, and myself outside of the new Boundless Way Temple in Worcester, MA. Looks like we might be related – and we have the same fashion consultant too.

I had a wonderful time in Boston and thereabouts. We kicked off the short weekend with Sue and Arlene (thanks again for all your warmth and generosity) taking us to visit Walden Pond – one of the places I’ve long wanted to see. Here’s the view from His hermitage:

Almost 30 people showed up for the Saturday workshop on Zazenshin and we played with the first part of the text for about six hours. I found them to be an easy group to study with in addition to being smart and grounded.

The trip highlight for me was a laughter-filled dinner on Saturday night at our hosts’ Bob and Jennifer’s home (thanks again too!), with some of the BZC teachers, including James Ford, Melissa Blacker, David Rynick and a few of the senior students and their more-than-tolerant spouses.

Boundless Way Zen lived up to its reputation as a fine, open, sincere Zen group. I hope to meet up with them again.

One Eye, Two Eyes … and I’m Outta Here

March 17, 2010 By Dosho Port

Here’s to the soft glow of an early spring here in Minnesota. Not much green yet but the snow is almost gone and many people here are preparing for floods.

I’ll be zipping off soon for the weekend to Boston, after the session here tomorrow night, to play with the Boundless Way Zen folks. So this’ll be my last post for several days.

Before I shift into packing mode, I want to address one of the passages from the Instructions for the Cook that has been rolling around for me. I’d like to give it a little spin in your direction:

“…Do not lose sight of either the one eye or the two eyes.”

Simple enough, eh? Click here for the full translation and scroll down to just before note 13 to see the context of the quote.

The translator inserts

“transcendent wisdom” to qualify “one eye” and “discriminating consciousness” to qualify two eyes. I agree with his interpretation.

It is central to the Zen tradition to open the wisdom eye of nonduality even once for a short period of time – or better, to realize that it’s always been open but we’ve been really busy looking off. Now that doesn’t mean you’re a spiritual failure if you don’t know for yourself what this is about. After all, we’re all in it together, success or failure.

The importance of the one eye no longer seems to be a popular view, at least in the American dharma scene, maybe because it isn’t easy and quick. How about over there in Europe? Anybody what to comment?

In terms of the one eye, this practice is to just throw ourselves into zazen and our lives and leave the way to the way. The way often doesn’t give us what we think we want when we want it. It isn’t about lusting after some thing.

And, by the way, if you do get a glimpse through the one eye, well, all hell might break loose in your life (also known as the fourth-sixth ox-herding pictures/stages), contrary to the wishful thinking that after breakthrough our complexion will finally clear up, everyone will loves us, dogs will no longer bark as we pass by, etc.

Anyway, and on the other hand, Dogen also encourages us not to forget the eye of discriminating consciousness.

No matter what Dogen said, discriminating consciousness often receives an unjust beating in Zen circles. “If you can think it, it isn’t it.” “Zen is beyond words and letters,” etc.

But where would we be without discriminating consciousness? Lobotomized zippy pinheads, completely dysfunctional. Ethics, compassion, and making a contribution to this world all require discriminating consciousness.

Imho, discriminating consciousness is our best friend, especially when we undertake a spiritual journey. In Zazenshin, the subject of the Saturday workshop, we’ll look at this more specifically in terms of how Dogen emphasizes the importance of thinking in sitting fixedly.

Further, if the buddhadharma is going to impact future generations, it will be through the deep thinking that comes from our practice and that we then bring into the blossoming global culture.

Discriminating consciousness. Don’t leave home without it.

Back from Anchorage

January 20, 2010 By Dosho Port

I’m back at it here in White Bear after a long weekend trip to Anchorage.

I found Anchorage to be a quietly and dramatically beautiful place, very different in feeling tone than the Lower 48 – white mountains close up to the west and Sleeping Lady off to the east, the Cook Inlet with it’s rough looking ice and silt, and especially the somber, soft tone of light and long darkness each night. I loved it. My hosts, Ann and John, epitomized graciousness so another “thank you” to them.

Koun Franz has been the resident priest there for the last four years and now that he’s moving back to Japan they’re going through a transition, outcome uncertain, like everything else. There’s been a small group in Anchorage for the last 30 years (Katagiri Roshi was their first itinerant teacher) that’s grown quite a lot under Koun’s guidance.

My sense is that they’re in a bit of a tight spot that lots of centers go through (and many more are likely to go through as the baby-boomer generation of Zen teachers reach retirement) – dropping back is unpalatable and it’s hard to see how to move forward.

And (to borrow a phrase from an interview with Kuenstler in The Sun that I read on the plane) the “psychology of the last investment” is a difficult thing to move through. However, they are a sincere group and I’m confident that if they pull together, they’ll find a way. Or to put it more specifically, to the extent that they take detailed responsibility for their individual and group practice, they have the opportunity to have an excellent result … or just limp along.

On Friday night and Saturday I worked through the first portion of Zazenshin (aka, The Healing Point of Zazen). I’ve been working with this material for about 25 years and this is about the fifth time I’ve taught it. I keep refining what’s important and how to present it. A side-benefit is how this process is very useful for my writing practice and I hope it contributed in some way to their zazen-study-living.

I’ll offer a similar workshop in Worcester, MA (Hey, MA, Senator Who?!), in March and I’d be happy to find a time to come to your local zendo too, btw.

On Sunday I spoke about the Wild Fox koan, similar to the chapter in Keep Me in Your Heart Awhile but with more emphasis on the fox’s shape shifting, the bivalent meaning of it all, the moral message of Zen and transmission. I messed up the recording so there’s no trace at all of what was said. Phew.

Sometime in the next few days I’ll be posting a detailed announcement about what we’ll be doing at the Introduction to Online Practice Community, Saturday, January 30, 10-11am. Several people have been playing with the possibilities of the practice partner relationship and I think there’s a great deal of potential for a new kind of home-based Zen with the old kind of transparency and follow-through.

Like I said, more about that soon and about the online practice starting Saturday, February 20 and the in-the-flesh training that will begin here at Transforming through Play and Thursday, February 25.

It was good to go and it’s good to be home.