{"id":2617,"date":"2014-08-18T05:12:31","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T11:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2014-08-18T06:29:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T12:29:41","slug":"thirty-years-a-zen-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2014\/08\/thirty-years-a-zen-priest.html","title":{"rendered":"Thirty Years a Zen Priest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Picture<\/a>Thirty years ago today, Nonin (front), Dokai (middle), and I went under with shukke tokudo<\/em> with Katagiri Roshi. One of the most important days of my life, to be sure.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written a few pieces about all this Zen priest business over the years. \u201cWhat the Heck is a Zen Priest<\/a>?\u201d and \u201cHanging Out with Homeleavers<\/a>,\u201d for example.<\/p>\n

August 18, 1984, was a beautiful summer day in Minneapolis. An internet search says the high was 82. The next day, I believe, we all went to the monastery for a couple months of practice and for me it was perfect. Home leaving was coming home. Deep quiet mind like I\u2019d never tasted it before. Zazen \u2013 which had long been physically challenging \u2013 flew by in samadhi like the\u00a0song of the whippoorwill. And a closeness with Roshi that I hadn\u2019t felt before.<\/p>\n

Good times indeed.<\/p>\n

Today Tetsugan\u00a0asked, \u201cWhat vision did you have of your life as a priest then?\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, I couldn\u2019t find\u00a0any memory of what my vision was thirty years back. But that didn\u2019t stop me from talking about it most of the way through breakfast.<\/p>\n

One of the things I remembered was how back in those days, \u201cZen priests\u201d were not all of that \u2013 and still aren\u2019t unless you\u2019re in the small-town-like subculture of American Zen or nearby environs. And they really shouldn\u2019t be \u2013 all of that, that is.<\/p>\n

Even then in our small community, priest ordination was controversial. A couple of the founding members of the Zen Center had left because they didn\u2019t agree with Roshi about ordaining priests and making some people \u201cspecial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, we had a fancy ceremony and new clothes to wear but we viewed ourselves as altar boys and girls \u2013 more like servants and less like something special. It became\u00a0clear over the next year or two that Roshi now expected us to take responsibility for whatever he assigned (which I thought he had before ordination too) and that Roshi would be more directive with our training and might send us somewhere else, like Japan (all quite vague and quite negotiable) because Roshi at his most directive wasn\u2019t all that directive.<\/p>\n

It was crystal clear and nonnegotiable that there was utterly no guarantee that we would receive dharma<\/a> transmission and be fully ordained priests and teachers. I didn\u2019t consider it a likely outcome and I didn\u2019t ordain for that. I was becoming a priest to train with Roshi. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

Oh, it was clear that we got to wear five or six layers of clothing in 90-degree sweltering Midwest humid heat.<\/p>\n

So what was my vision?<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have much of a vision at all. I was 28 years-old and Katagiri Roshi was 56. I naively expected my life and his to continue as they were. And they almost completely didn\u2019t. The marriage I was in in 1984 died a few years later, in part due to my being more married to Zen than to my wife at the time.\u00a0Roshi died in 1990. My interests in practice led me away from most of the people I hung out with at the time.<\/p>\n

So here I am. Thirty years down the road. I suppose I\u2019ve gone through a lot. And have become a person with not much to do but quite a lot of energy for it.<\/p>\n

What have I learned?<\/p>\n

One of the things that Zen priests receive when ordained is a bowing cloth (aka, zagu) that\u2019s unfolded and placed on the floor when we bow so as to protect buddha\u2019s robe. I\u2019ve tried with the several zagu that I\u2019ve worn through in the course of thirty years to keep them folded neatly, just like on the day their sewing is complete and they get all pressed up squarely. Despite my best efforts, each one looks quite the same after a while.<\/p>\n

Like this:<\/p>\n

\"photo\"<\/a>It really is a process of becoming who we already are.<\/p>\n

Finally, here\u2019s a Dogen poem that expresses how I feel about priest ordination now:<\/p>\n

Evening quiet
\na fish of brocade scales
\nreaches bottom
\nthen goes this way
\nthen that way;
\narrow notch splits.<\/p>\n

This post doesn\u2019t quite have a conclusion yet and none really comes to mind.<\/p>\n

Buddha\u2019s not finished with me yet.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago today, Nonin (front), Dokai (middle), and I went under with shukke tokudo with Katagiri Roshi. One of the most important days of my life, to be sure. I\u2019ve written a few pieces about all this Zen priest business over the years. \u201cWhat the Heck is a Zen Priest?\u201d and \u201cHanging Out with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThirty Years a Zen Priest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Thirty years ago today, Nonin (front), Dokai (middle), and I went under with shukke tokudo with Katagiri Roshi. 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