Integrity

A talk given at Stone Nest Dojo by Richard Collins, 28 May 2023

An integer is a positive natural number or a negative

number, with no fractional part, and includes zero.

One thing that we see in the Zen masters whom we read about from long ago is that they had integrity.

This doesn’t mean that they were perfect, or morally upright, certainly not confined by some rigid ethical code. On the contrary. It means that they were wholly themselves, authentic, vivid, unique, unpredictable, possibly eccentric. 

The root of the word integrity is integer, from the Latin, which means “intact,” whole, undivided, entire, and in that sense perhaps even “pure.” An integrated society is an intact society, a society not split up or torn apart by internal divisions. Integral wheat or grain is whole wheat, whole grain, wholesome. And a person of integrity is one who commands respect for being uniquely who they are. 

Think about the people you admire. Isn’t this true of every one of them? I think this is true of anyone we really admire. They are a whole person, well-rounded. They may not be perfect, indeed they are often exquisitely imperfect, but they are authentic. They are comfortable in their own skin, we say. They are able to act spontaneously in the moment from a certain center or core, whatever that core might be. And that core is rarely a belief; it is more likely to be a lack of any dogmatic belief and a realistic openness to possibility.

Sometimes sitting in zazen we can feel conflicted, torn apart by our thoughts and feelings, our urges and our hesitations. Even more so in everyday life. Being drawn-and-quartered is how I envision it, like the medieval torture that tied each of your limbs to a horse and had them go off in different directions, to dismember you limb from limb.

We are constantly torn in different directions by whatever has been drummed into our conscience by parents, church, education, society, whose gifts to us are their prejudices and myopia. We are also torn apart by our own fears, desires, ambitions, regrets — what we should not have done, what we should be doing, what we hope to do, and so on. And when this happens we are not whole anymore, we lose our integrity. 

That’s why it’s very important to reconnect with your self here in the present during zazen. Not the self that’s been drummed into you or the one that appears on your driver’s license or your permanent record, but the one that has infinite potential. The no-self. Like the enso that represents emptiness but also represents wholeness, people with integrity can take in the moment and do what needs to be done. Not because they have some default dogma or code to fall back on, but because they have a certain openness, an emptiness — no preconceptions. They are empty, not full of themselves.

We too can become this open, this whole, this integrated with ourselves — if we take in and accept and embrace all of our current situation, whatever that might be, without distorting it with our hopes and fears. Not so that we can admire ourselves of course, but so that we can do what needs to be done. Not just for ourselves, but for others, for all existences really, in our modest way.

仙厓義梵 Sengai Gibon (1750-1837), “Eat this and have a cup of tea”

DECIDE!

A talk given at the sesshin, 13 May 2023, New Orleans Zen Temple, by Richard Reishin Collins, Abbot

Sometimes we have to be a sangha of one.

We hear all the time about the Three Treasures: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. These can be very abstract terms, however, so I always encourage you to nail those down to concrete, recognizable examples in your life, anchoring these abstractions in your experience. For example: Buddha is the posture; Dharma is breathing; Sangha, attitude of mind.

We can find buddhas everywhere, all around us, if we just pay attention. It doesn’t have to be something on an altar, something holy, spiritual or special. It just has to be ineffably itself — tathata.

Dharma we find everywhere as well. In the patterns of our experience, we can learn the form and the formlessness of reality. This is especially true in what presents us with cases we can’t figure out. We call these koans when they appear in the literature, but the great koans are not to be found in books but in our own lives. These are what teach us — directly and deeply — about the nature of reality.

And sangha, which is less a congregation of people than an attitude of mind, the practice of mushotoku, with no intention of receiving any personal profit or gain. Sangha is an endlessly expanding community of mushotoku mind, so that even if you are doing zazen by yourself, you’re practicing with others. Even when you are doing zazen with others, you’re practicing by yourself. 

Sometimes you don’t get to choose whether to practice in community with others or by yourself as a hermit. I am speaking of my own experience — because I’ve become a sangha of one for a while in the mountains of Tennessee.

It feels very comfortable for me, this weekend, to come back and sit with you here in the temple in New Orleans, very natural, a refuge. A refuge from a refuge.

But our sangha has always expanded and contracted over the years. In the old temple on Camp Street we had 16,000 square feet to expand into, and yet the ebb and flow was no different than it is now. Sometimes there would be up to twenty or so for a sesshin and yet sometimes there would be no one at all. 

So a group of four or five sitting together feels abundant to me right now. But sometimes we have to be a sangha of one, like a stone dropped in a still pool. Like the Buddha at BodhGaya, in fact, where, as a sangha of one (we are told) he attained great awakening. 

The main thing is to not choose. As it says at the very beginning of the Shin Jin Mei, as soon as you begin to pick and choose, you’re a mile off the path.

Sometimes I think I might prefer to be practicing with more people. Then I relax and settle into appreciating the freedom that practicing by myself offers. The main thing is that I learn from this experience. I have learned this: a refuge can become a hindrance. A sangha can become a problem. Our problems can become a refuge — paradoxically, perversely — when they preoccupy us so much that we forget what’s important. Our neuroses become our safe place. Our problems come to define us and occlude our vision with a cloudy mirror. Then we tend to forget that we are the only problem; we ourselves are the only refuge. This is the vortex into which preferences lead us.

Be careful, though. Not to choose does not mean not to act! It doesn’t mean to do nothing. It doesn’t mean you can’t decide. In fact, when you don’t make preferences you can act spontaneously, you can make those decisions that are necessary, not the unnecessary ones, not the ones that you overthink, but the things that need to be done.

A long time ago, some twenty years or so, when Robert Livingston Roshi wanted to open a restaurant on the ground floor of Camp Street, I asked him if he really wanted to be faced with all the decisions that running a business like that entailed. He said, “I have no problem making decisions.” Now I think I know what he meant.

An even longer time ago, back in the ‘80s, I was a young professor when I interviewed the poet Molly Peacock. She said something that I have always remembered. She said, “One day I decided to be happy.” She pointed out that the word decision is related to the word incision. To be decisive is to cut something away. It is to be incisive. There is a precision to it. Decide is also related to every kind of -cide, from pesticide to homicide, even deicide (the killing of gods), and so on. A killing, a cutting down, a slaying.

We say that during zazen, with hishiryo consciousness we “throw down” or “cast off” body and mind – shin jin datsu raku. We cut to the chase. We slay the Buddha that we meet on the road to reveal the real Buddha within ourselves. This is what we do every time we decide to come to zazen. We cut away the inessential. As Michelangelo said, he cut away what was inessential in the stone to reveal the statue within. We cut away what is inessential in ourselves, to find our true self: the one that we have not yet thought of, as Kodo Sawaki said. The living Buddha in our hara. 

My wife Leigh and I moved to Romania in the early ‘90s. The first morning after we got up in our depressing cinder-block apartment, she went to the market to buy something to eat. As she stood at the counter, trying to decide what to ask for, the line of old ladies behind her started to scream at her. "Alegeți! Alegeți!” She didn’t know what that meant, but they were yelling at her to decide. “Decide! Decide!” Or literally, “Elect!” Select! Decide! Kill off your choices! Cut off your possibilities! Make up your mind!

In the Samurai tradition, of course, spontaneous decision-making is legendary. The Hagekure tells us that “one should make one’s decisions within the space of seven breaths.” This ability to focus with “an intense, fresh and undelaying spirit” is what allows the samurai “to break on through to the other side.” Hesitation in the martial arts is deadly. One deals with an attack spontaneously, automatically, naturally, not with a mind that “goes hither and thither.” A mind that is divided might soon result in a skull split open. You don’t think about it: you don’t worry about right or wrong. You go with your gut. Your hara.

When we practice on our own, though, we tend to overthink our practice. We think too much about the inessential. This activity is just waffling; it’s not deciding. We are not cutting the dross away, we are wallowing in it. We are trying to hold onto everything and to control it, weighing, picking and choosing, making preferences, all of which is very different from decisiveness. Someone who is decisive is not choosy, not picky, not bellyaching all the time about what is or is not appropriate.

As you have probably guessed, this kusen is more for me than for you, so that I can get back on track. But that’s our practice, that’s what a sangha is. We help each other. By helping each other we help ourselves. It doesn’t come down from on high from the Godo. The teaching goes both ways. We help each other to decide for ourselves.

Split Head Sculpture by Eric Kilby

SEWANEE ZEN OPENS APRIL 2, 2023

Sewanee Zen will open for the first time on April 2, 2023, with an Introduction to Zen Practice at the new Stone Nest Dojo at 3818 Sherwood Road in Sewanee, Tennessee.

The three-hour workshop will provide the basics of Zen practice: zazen (sitting concentration), kinhin (walking concentration), and dojo etiquette. Background on Zen Buddhism and bodhisattva practice-enlightenment will be discussed.

A regular schedule of zazen, with several sittings per week, as well as periodic zazenkai (half-day and daylong retreats) and sesshin (longer retreats) will be offered.

The introduction will be led by Richard Collins, Abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and Sewanee Zen, and assisted by Shawn Mitzel, monk, who leads our Blue Ridge, Georgia sitting group.

For information and registration, please contact us at nozentemple@gmail.com or 318-451-3418.

View from Stone Nest Dojo

Sentimental Compassion and Other Demons

So, today I want to talk about demons (or yokai, in Japanese). 

You might have heard me refer to the threshold to the dojo as the demon-tripper. This is a traditional way of describing the purpose of the raised piece of wood that separates the dojo from the rest of the temple. 

Of course, we are not referring to pesky little grimacing gremlin-like creatures who are so clumsy as to be tripped up by a symbolic boundary less than an inch high. 

These demons are not tangible; they are in your mind.

Muso Kokushi, who lived in Japan around 1300 (1275-1351), was an influential Rinzai master. His famous collection of mondo, called Dream Conversations or Dream Dialogues, has some helpful guidance about the pitfalls of Zen practice. 

For example, he talks about the inner “demons” or “devils” that are actually “mental phenomena and mental postures that obstruct the potential for understanding.” These are the demons we leave outside the dojo with our shoes and our cell phones.

These demons include the usual poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance, not only indulging in them but also in fearing them. There are also the problems of hubris such as conceit and opinionated views, or pride in one’s knowledge of the sutras. Then we have issues associated with practice, such as addiction to meditation states, practicing for oneself instead of for others, doing zazen too little out of laziness, or doing zazen too much out of impatience for satori, idealizing teachers [some to the point of eating their excrement or drinking their urine, literally or figuratively], rejecting the teaching because of finding fault with teachers’ personal behavior. He also includes what he calls “sentimental compassion.”

Sometimes we experience these demons because we are not sincere in our practice, but sometimes they arise because we are too sincere, too eager, too pious. Muso goes on to say: “Anyone who wants to realize Buddhist enlightenment is obliged to examine his or her mind and heart for these devils.”

Many of these demons are familiar. But seeing them as demons in our own minds helps to animate them, gives them some agency and some personality — our personality. They are not some abstract noun like greed, or something outside ourselves that we ingest. They are already internal to us; not something we drink but something we think. Or feel.

Muso concentrates on those demons that are particular to religious practice because even advanced students can fall into these traps, or should I say, even advanced students can look in the mirror and see these demons in their reflection.

But I want to concentrate on Muso’s singling out of “sentimental compassion,” one of two limited forms of compassion, as opposed to the limitless kind which he calls“objectless compassion.” 

This reminds me of Katagiri’s distinction in the Lectures on Lay Ordination between “relative repentance” and “absolute repentance,” or “formless repentance in suchness.” It might be the most difficult concept to grasp in Katagiri’s remarks on taking the bodhisattva precepts. Relative repentance occurs when we seek forgiveness for a particular act from some person or some entity like the Buddha, while absolute or formless repentance in suchness is objectless. 

Absolute repentance is also subjectless. We have to ask: who is this “I” who asks forgiveness, or that “other” from whom forgiveness is supposed to be given? Absolute repentance includes all of our actual and potential transgressions (bonno are endless, I vow to drop them all), even though there is no one to blame and no one to give forgiveness. We are at one with our repentance, objectless and subjectless. Or seen another way, the repenting subject and the object of repentance merge into one.

Sentimental compassion is similar to relative repentance in that it is a limited sort of compassion, the sort that is directed toward living or sentient beings. Muso puts it even more precisely: “The compassion whose object is living beings as such is the compassion of one who thinks beings are real and their delusions are real, and who wishes to liberate these real beings from their real delusions. This is sentimental compassion, which is limited by feelings. It is still just emotion and desire, not real liberative compassion.” (He says this is the compassion of Hinayana Buddhism.)

The second form of compassion is an objective compassion that is based on the teachings of the Dharma, specifically the Heart Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism, which sees all beings as conditional productions of causal relations (that is, of karma). But this merely sees beings and their sufferings as illusory instead of real: this second kind of compassion is “illusory compassion for illusory beings, using illusory means to liberate illusory beings from illusory delusions.” (This is Mahayana compassion, free of the “sticky emotions of sentimental compassion” but it is still not liberated compassion.)

We often see these two limited forms of compassion at work in the world. They are not evil, but they are incomplete. And when they are at work in us, they can become demons. There is, Muso says, some element of “contamination” in sentimental compassion, just as there is in Katagiri's relative repentance. By contamination, he means that there is a sense of purpose, a goal that is incompatible with mushotoku mind, free of intention.

How do we achieve “objectless compassion”? By entering the dojo, by leaving the demons behind. By stepping over the threshold that trips up the mental demons of “sentimental compassion” which sees suffering as real, as well as the “objective” compassion which sees suffering as illusory, allowing us to practice absolute, objectless compassion, just as we practice absolute, objectless repentance. By doing zazen without haste or reluctance — automatically, spontaneously, naturally —  without fearing or falling prey to the demons that wait for us on the other side of the threshold.

— Richard Collins

SEWANEE SANGHA

For the past couple of months I have been practicing with the Sewanee Sangha, a student-led sitting group at the University of the South. Sam Kearley leads the group with great commitment, and the university has been very supportive, dedicating space in the Meditation Chapel of the beautiful All Saints’ Chapel.

We sit for only a half-hour, but I have to say that it is a bright beginning to my day, starting with the drive to campus through the burning reds and oranges of the falling leaves, with sightings of deer and the occasional red fox on the way. Then the short walk through the crisp autumn air among the stately stone buildings of the campus to the impressive All Saints’ Chapel and the little side chapel set aside for meditation.

We always have a good group of students in attendance (depending on the exam schedule and what has gone on the night before), as well as one or two community members.

I look forward to continuing practice with this group and to seeing what develops.

In the meantime, the New Orleans Zen Temple should have some news to announce in the coming days about the future of practice there.

—-Richard Collins, Abbot

The Boy Who Loved Dragons

The attrition rate of some professional schools — law schools or nursing, for example — is high. But not as high as the attrition rate in Zen training. Of course, the payoffs for those professional schools are tangible, bankable. There are no such promising returns on investment for the Zen student. 

Still, it always surprises me how the flame of that initial curiosity is so easily quenched. 

Perhaps you know the story about the boy who loved dragons. He was obsessed with dragons. He loved everything about dragons, their flame-throwing eyes, their forked tongues, their whipping tails and rampant claws. He drew the most dreadful dragons and made origami dragons with creases sharp as razors. He dressed up as a dragon and roared and stamped his feet as only a dragon can. They were frightful, these dragons of his, and fierce and breathed brimstone in his dreams. They slept under his bed and hovered on the ceiling.

One day, a real dragon overheard the boy’s invocations to dragonhood and saw his devotion to the dragon domain. So this dragon thought he might introduce himself to the boy who loved dragons. Nudging the window open with his snout, he stuck his head in and said, “Hell-o,” his golden tongue licking the air. And the boy ran screaming away into the house in search of his mother.

This is what often happens with those who are curious about Zen but have only met it through representations. The paper dragons we have played with have no real connection with the reality of Zen practice, which is both more interesting and more intimidating (but certainly less entertaining) than the representations we find in the media and in books.

Some people come to Zen, for example, looking for a safe haven, a sanctuary, for peace, serenity and security. But Zen is not a safe place. If you are stranded on a hundred-foot pole, Zen asks you to jump. If you are teetering on the edge of the abyss, Zen invites you to fall. If you speak, you get thirty blows. If you don’t speak, you get thirty blows. You won’t find validation from anyone in the dojo — except yourself. 

Validation arises from within. Whether the master criticizes you or praises you, it is all the same, and neither praise nor criticism should penetrate your own understanding of your nature, which is not dependent upon any assessment, attack, punishment or reward. This is what is meant by Bodhidharma’s callous answer to the Emperor Wu’s inquiry about what merit he had attained by financing so many temples: “No merit. Nothing sacred. Vast emptiness.”

It’s fine to play with toy dragons, of course. And it’s fine to read about Zen. But if we are serious, we need to grow up and meet the real dragons, practice the real Zen.

Then, when the Zen dragon appears at the window and whispers with its hot breath — “No merit! Nothing sacred! Vast emptiness!” — we won’t need to run screaming away. Instead we will continue to sit in zazen enjoying the warm breeze that has entered one window and exited another.

— Richard Reishin Collins

9 October 2022

Like clothes absorbing the fog

As I enter my eighth decade, I understand why Robert Livingston became impatient with teaching in his later years. One tends to forget how many people come through those doors looking only for their own so-called enlightenment. Which is about 99% — or more like 100% of us — although some (one or two percent?) drop off that self-centeredness — some sooner, some later — and realize that we practice for all existences here and now. Some never realize this, and they leave when things get tough or inconvenient — some sooner, some later, but almost everyone eventually leaves.

Better to have that one or two percent in the dojo, like the four or five of you here now, who can sit for all existences than a whole dojo full of those who are sitting just for themselves, those fidgeters who are constantly making themselves comfortable, those suggesters who always think they can improve on a proven thing.

The fidgeters and suggesters come for the technique to calm themselves, to deal with stress, to become a better person, to get wise. And then they leave. They congratulate themselves on what they think they have attained. They want the technique so they can feel better about themselves. They want a feel-good meditation experience. Or they want a code of ethics, guidelines on how to act in any circumstance, so they can feel good about themselves, pat themselves on the back for their morality, their compassion, their politeness, their politesse. Like good Buddhists. Or they want satori, enlightenment, certification, validation.

Like parched men trying to quench their thirst with the fog, they impatiently lick the air for enlightenment.

We give them the technique. A gift. It’s called zazen. But they rarely get past the technique to the true realization that technique is not enough, not an end in itself. Posture and breathing, sure. Very important. But without the attitude of mind — mushotoku, no personal goal or gain — without mushotoku as a motive (the motiveless motive) it’s just a relaxation technique, an exercise, a spiritual massage, a little bit of soothing self-therapy, like thumb-sucking. They feel “Buddhistic.” Fine. But they miss the essence of the practice. They miss the hard part, the obstacles, the teaching that comes from the disillusionment about what it means to practice. They miss the teaching available to them through wrestling and then harmonizing with others in a sangha. They achieve no concentration, no discipline, no existential confrontation with the true self, no enlightenment. Delusion itself is satori, says Kodo Sawaki. He wasn’t kidding.

How does it happen? How does it work, this zazen, this practice? We don’t know.

But with long practice, diligent practice, selfless practice — gyoji — eventually, your selfish motives drop off and you find yourself acting (suddenly and unexpectedly) authentically in the here and now. Because you have allowed your regrets about the past to drop off, your hopes and fears about the future drop off. Eventually, you realize that you are no longer sitting for yourself but rather for others, for your family, for your neighbors, for your enemies, for the things in your life, for all existences.

But it does not happen immediately. It doesn’t happen after a week or two. It doesn’t happen after a single sesshin. It takes long and dedicated practice, it takes discipline. Sitting through the elation and the boredom, the infatuation with the practice and the disappointment (is that all there is to it?). But it happens, this transformation — over time, naturally, automatically, unconsciously, spontaneously, without our noticing it. But you have to show up and walk the walk — as Dogen says, walking as mountains walk — exposing yourself to the elements, allowing your clothes to absorb the fog. 

— Richard Collins

Jim Dine, Dorian Gray at the Opium Den, 1968. Weingrow Collection, Hofstra University.

Opening of New Dojo in Georgia

Our monk in northeast Georgia, Shawn Hitsuhi Mitzel, will be giving his first Introduction to Zen Practice at his new dojo at the Black Sheep Restaurant in Blue Ridge, Georgia. In the tradition of Homeless Kodo, Shawn will also be doing pop-up dojos in art galleries and other spaces in the area to everyone who is interested in the Way. This kind of resourcefulness and initiative is the future of the Deshimaru lineage in America.