Dear
SMS,
For this Monday’s Community Night, we’ll have a discussion of our customs and
rituals in the Open Source Zen tradition, and in Springs Mountain Sangha.
Lately, and happily, there’s been some lively discussion about the “forms” of
our practice. Questions that come along range from “What are your
customs here and how do I get to know them?” to “Why do we have ritual at
all? What purpose does it serve?” People who arrive having
experience in other Buddhist communities, both Zen and not, often notice differences,
and sometimes ask why we don’t hold the forms more tightly. Others ask
why we are “formal.”
I’m noticing the beauty of the conversation. What “matters” to
us? What do we make matter of—-in other words, what do we embody with
our bodily stillness and movements, our words, our clapping and
bell-ringing? What is touched by these gestures of body,
speech and mind? How do they support our practice and our holding of a
tradition. Do they?
Below is the text of a talk Steve Milligan gave recently. I think it will
help spark some discussion. And here’s a link to a summary of Open Source
forms.
| When Sarah asked me to give a Zen threads talk of the forms, she appended the phrase, “because you love the forms”. I think she might have gotten this slightly off the mark idea because I had said something to her like, “I love the forms”. One must always measure one’s words. To say I love the forms is accurate, but it is what Joan would call “a partial view”. My relationship with the forms is more like a long-standing marriage, a subject upon which I can discourse with some expertise. The forms have caused me no small ration of anxiety, and stand as a more or less constant reminder that even my most determined swipe at them will be found wanting. It is also true that I am thankful for them. They seem to always be able to inerrantly ferret out my foibles, but manage to do it gently and without scolding. One thing that I did say to Sarah on that afternoon that is accurate, is that if our sangha discarded the forms, I would probably leave. I wasn’t sure how I was going to articulate my somewhat ambivalent relationship with the forms, so I called up my brother, upon whom I can usually rely when the muse goes south for the winter. It was after Meredith’s excellent Zen Threads presentation in November. He asked me how Meredith’s talk was. I said that it had been very good. I also said that it had put me a bit ill at ease, because when I looked at what I had to contribute regarding my appointed subject, I came up with nothing. “Nothing?” he returned, “isn’t that what you folks are all about?” he had me there, but it was not of much help. He did, however throw out a quote from G.K. Chesterton that I think is right on the money: ritual is poetry acted out. So the forms have a strong aesthetic dimension, and I think we are collectively starved for beauty. It seems like whenever we are offered the chance to trade off beauty for efficiency, we are always happy to make the trade, be it a stand of trees for a shopping mall or a beautiful building for a rectangular slab with a parking facility. I think it has left us thirsty for beauty. But the forms are not only a beauty we behold, but they are a beauty we create together. The bowing, the flowers, the water, the candles take on a sense of the sacred, and offer us a deep drink in what has become a secular desert. Another aspect of the forms has to do with mindfulness. I’m certain that I’m not telling anybody anything new here. They are clearly designed to frustrate our inveterate tendency to “go through the motions”. Most of you know that I was a teacher for several years. Probably the most difficult part of my job was to see so many people “going through the motions”, in effect, sleepwalking through life. I always anguished about what I could do to awaken them from their somnambulant stroll. I’m not saying this from a righteous point of view, it’s just that my teachers perch gave me a pretty clear look at how people were conducting their lives, and it looked like such a waste of a precious opportunity. Now I am going to be righteous: it also gave me a good look at how I used to conduct my own life. During one retreat I was a tea server and I spent most of my work in the room time working on pouring and bowing correctly. Oh, the form was up to snuff, but the content was wanting. Aligning myself with the purpose of the serving the tea was both difficult and immensely rewarding. “Going through the motions” might just be another form of what we sometimes call “habit energy”. In the Lankavatara sutra study, habit energy is talked about a good deal. It is talked about something not to be discarded or escaped, but as something to be transformed. I feel that the forms generously gift us with small holographic opportunities to transform habit energy. Or not. It is so easy for me to comfortably slither back into relaxing into performing the forms semiconsciously. I probably did so several times today. So to me the forms are not about “being in a cult” or “worshiping a strange deity”. I really don’t care about any of that. When I bow to the Buddha, I am not eschewing anybody else; I am bowing to myself, and to all of you. And I am expressing gratitude for this practice. I find that to be supremely edifying. And when I do walking mediation, I love to feel the pads of my feet gently caress the paving stones of this magnificent church, and the sensation of the cool stone tiles on my aging feet is as significant as anything in this improbable universe. Lest I get too carried away with my own grandiloquence, I should hasten to add that the forms still cause me a deal of consternation, because I don’t cotton too much to being humbled. But they seem to be able to humble me with a fair degree of regularity. The last aspect of the forms has to do with what Carl Jung said about ritual: he said it is a way to bypass the conscious mind and speak directly to the unconscious. Scientists are now saying that 90-95% of our mind is unconscious. It is an interesting sidelight that physicists are saying that 90-95% of the universe is composed of “dark Matter”. You may make of that what you will. So a chance for an opening to such a vast field is not, by my lights, chump change. So the forms offer the opportunity for our quotidian mind to not go to sleep, but to hush up a bit, so other parts of us can be spoken to. We don’t have to do anything for this to happen; we merely have to perform them with a sincere heart. Not always easy, but always worth it. Please look for the next Maha Sangha mail chimp. We will have retreat specifics as well as a registration form. There will be a limited number of private rooms available. Springs Mountain Sangha and Wet Mountain Sangha are collaborating to coordinate this retreat. Contacts: SMS Liz Cramer elizabeth.cramer51@gmail.com WMS Kerry Kramer kerrymariekramer@aim.com Here is the link to our 2019 calendar. https://gallery.mailchimp.com/bbc7215f79587650dd5f75ed6/files/ae40372a-4968-49c2-82e3-0d4623ea22da/2019_Calendar_Notes_Nov_9_.doc This is provided for you to plan ahead, particularly for retreats. We are very pleased to be hosting the Maha Sangha retreat with all the Open Source teachers June 9-14, The teachers have generously offered to not receive a stipend for their involvement allowing this 5 day retreat to be affordable. This is, indeed, a wonderful opportunity. |