Chapel Hill Zen Center News P.O. BOX 16302, CHAPEL HILL, NC 27516 JULY AND AUGUST, 2014 D. T. Suzuki Workshop Sunday, September 7, 11:15 2:30 D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966) was one of the most important figures in the development of American and Japanese Buddhism during the twentieth century. D.T. Suzuki s work, produced over the course of seventy years, contains a variety of insights relevant for scholars and practitioners of Zen today. During this workshop we will see Michael Goldberg s 2006 documentary, A Zen Life: D. T. Suzuki, discuss some of Suzuki s important essays about Zen, and spend time discussing his contributions to Buddhist developments in Japan and the United States. This is an introduction to Suzuki, so prior familiarity with his life and work is not necessary. The essays will be available several weeks before the workshop. Suggested donation is $20, and lunch will be provided. Please sign up at the zendo or contact: info@chzc.org. Richard Jaffe is a professor at Duke University in the Department of Religion. Before beginning graduate school, Richard practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center, including several years at Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery. All-day Sittings There will be all-day sitting on Sundays, July 13, and August 17, from 6:00 A.M. until 5:00 P.M. The sitting will begin with orientation on Saturday night at 7:30, and will include instruction on the meal form and one period of zazen. The regular Sunday schedule, with zazen at 9:00 and 9:50 and Dharma Talk at 10:30, will be open to everyone. The day will include zazen, a lecture, dokusan and a work period, as well as breakfast and lunch. The fee is $10 for members and $20 for others. It is alright to sit half of the day, but please sign up in advance, and please speak to Josho Sensei if this is your first all-day sitting. For more information on the oryoki meal form see www.kannondo.org/oroyoki. Dharma Talks Sunday morning Dharma Talks will be given by Josho Sensei on July 13 and August 17. Children s Program The 2014-2015 Chapel Hill Zen Center Children s Program will be led by Maura High and will begin meeting again in September, twice a month on Sunday mornings, from 9:00 11:00, for kids age four and up. For more information about the program, please visit childrensprogramchzc.word press.com Branching Streams Meeting Branching Streams is a network of zazen groups and Zen centers in the tradition of Suzuki Roshi, which holds a meeting every other year to share what their groups are doing and to learn from each other s experience. The San Francisco Zen Center asked if the Chapel Hill Zen Center could host the next meeting, which will be May 20 23, 2015. The CHZC Board of Directors have whole-heartedly accepted the honor of hosting the next meeting. During the meeting, we will need many volunteers to help with transportation, housing, meal prep and clean-up. Those attending will stay with sangha members, at the zendo, and at New Hope Conference Center. For those staying at New Hope, we will need to provide bed linens, blankets, pillows and towels. Maura High will be coordinating housing and bedding, and Elliott Schaffer will coordinate transportation to and from the airport as well as to and from the zendo. Choro Carla Antonaccio will coordinate details, including the schedule and program, between the SFZC and the CHZC. If you can help or would like more information, please contact Maura at maurahighediting@gmail.com, or Elliott at eschaffer1946@gmail.com. Chinese Calligraphy and Brush Painting Jinxiu Zhao will teach Chinese Calligraphy from 1:10 2:40, and brush painting from 1:10 3:10, on Sunday afternoons, July 6 and 20, and August 10 and 24. The fees are $20 for calligraphy and $25 for brush painting. Please contact Jinxiu at (919) 484-7524 or Jxznc@aol.com to register or for more information. Jinxiu is also available to teach children s classes.
PAGE 2 Recovery Meeting The Recovery Meeting meets on Tuesday nights from 7:00 8:15. This is a recovery group with a Buddhist perspective on the 12 Step Program which meets at the Chapel Hill Zen Center. The meetings begin with twenty minutes of silent meditation. For more information, contact 919-265-7600 or zensetter@gmail.com. Richmond Zen Group Josho Sensei will visit and give a talk at the Richmond Zen Group on Wednesday night, July 9, at 7:00. For more information contact Kevin at 804-366-5546 or see www.ekojirichmond.org Looking Ahead Zaike Tokudo, or the Ceremony of Receiving the Precepts as a layperson, will be held on September 28. There will be an iforam sitting on Saturday, September 27, from 9:00-4:00. All-day Sitting on Sunday, October 26 The SejikiCeremony, the Feeding and Nourishing of Hungry Ghosts, is planned for November 1 Rohatsu Sesshin is planned for December 5 12 Buddha s Enlightenment Ceremony is scheduled for December 14 Kobun Chino Roshi Kobun, who preferred to be called by his first name, came to the San Francisco Zen Center from Japan in 1967 through the invitation of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, serving as his assistant at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center until 1970. Kobun did undergraduate studies at Komazawa University and received a master s degree in Mahayana Buddhism from Kyoto University. He then trained for three years at Eiheiji. Among his primary teachers was Zen Master Kodo Sawaki. Kobun moved to Los Altos and began teaching there at the Haiku Zendo shortly after leaving Tassajara, in the late summer of 1970. After Suzuki Roshi s death in 1971, Kobun became the official head of Haiku Zen Center in Los Altos, remaining there as teacher until 1978. I remember Chino Roshi as a very gentle person who was a true poet. He did the calligraphy on many rakusus and lineage papers for students being ordained at the SFZC in the 1970 s and early 1980 s. One story that has been passed down took place on a summer evening at Tassajara in the warm zendo, lighted by kerosen lamps, in which Kobun fell asleep while giving a Dharma Talk.
PAGE 3 Another story told by his disciple Carolyn Atkinson is that at a gathering of some of Kobun s long-term students in Santa Cruz, CA, shortly before his death, a student asked, Kobun, Why do we sit? He replied: We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Selfacceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don t know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room. Here are Highlights from Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi s Talks found on the Jikoji website: www.jikoji.org/kobun.html. These teachings by Kobun Chino Roshi previously appeared in newsletters of Jikoji Zen Retreat Center in Los Gatos, California, and also were published in the Buddhadharma magazine, Winter 2002 issue. Posture Year after year our physical posture becomes polished. By repeated sitting our muscles become very refined, not pulling one way. When your muscles become very balanced you are able to feel almost nothing is there. Your intestines, your bones all are in the same balance. When your body is able to take the right posture, when you sit as if no one is sitting there, you feel yourself. The way to find your best posture is to focus your attention on the feeling of your body. It s hard to say what it is, an inner eye, an inner sensation that is able to observe every part of your body. When you are awake, you feel every part of your body its surface, a little bit inside, deep inside, all parts. When you take the best posture you can possibly reach, at that time you are weightless and you aren t aware of your effort to keep that posture. The point is to have a stretched spine, with your neck straight along the spine. When you lean slightly right, or left, or backward, you can find which point is your straight posture. This is related to the incredible pull of gravity. A thousand million lines of gravity pull you down. You swing your body from left to right and finally you come to one point. It doesn t continue that way. We again crumble down, so we have to build it up again. Maybe every twenty minutes or so we have to re-do it. It is a very natural position, but we have incredible habits that are hard to correct. Every time we correct our sitting position we always fall back into a more comfortable posture. To have the foot soles facing upward is very important. To have your soles going upward, with your feet pressing down on your thighs, is not an accidental discovery but a polished discovery. They should be like that because then there is a very grounded sensation of being on the earth, not flowing, or flying purposelessly in the air. The eyes should be kept open, and hopefully they ll see through everything, because your seeing is not you seeing you should see through. It is very easy to mess up your posture just by rolling your eyeballs around. You don t have to stare. If you come back to keeping your eyes still then something opens up. All our sense organs are finely constructed awakenings. As you notice, all information from the sense organs comes together moment after moment, and the mind-eye is always functioning. Everyone has mind-eye; it does not newly open. Your sitting still is like a person who just shot an arrow: a moment later the result is there. What you know is the sense that the arrow is moving alright. It has left your realm but you sense it s running well. Stillness is like that. In the stillness you see intuitions are going alright; you sense every kind of intuition. The form of the human body is a continuity of karmic force. Without parents you would not exist here; without you, your children and all future generations could not exist. So in this sense, to have a body on this earth has a very karmic reason and result. Without this karmic condition you cannot exist as the expression of ultimate force. You can say there is a right posture for sitting. Many times during sesshin you hit that right posture and then swing away from it, then go
PAGE 4 back to it. You understand what right posture is for you. You can see it, perceive it it relates with your mind-state at that time. Right posture in sitting creates the contents of sitting from all that you have been experiencing up to now. It requires detachment from your desire to do it; you let it happen by itself. So right posture is not that you are doing sitting; right posture itself is the sitting, and the system of your whole body is going into that posture. The period of sitting is not your own sitting. Physically you feel that it is your sitting that you do. The inner view of one s sitting, which is utterly an external view too, includes your personal existence. It includes everything, from which your mind is continuously working. The arising memories of whatever you ve experienced are always there; no matter whether you deny them or accept them, they are there. Not only that, as time passes the contents change. So posture is how to keep going. As you notice, this physical condition of existence is a very dynamic thing, which you cannot stop. It goes by itself. Maybe all things go by themselves; you are that, and you are able to experience and feel it. Sitting is always pointless, you know. When we touch sitting with this body, it feels like putting a thumb on paper: This is it! Touching time/space, or creating matter in time/space. That s how I feel when I sit. The more sitting becomes still, almost stopping, the more it feels like time stops and there is no more distinction between this body and all other things. Things feel as if they are extensions of the body. It s not a frozen kind of realization, but a very powerful presence of the sensation that you are really there, as what you are, what things are, without naming each thing that s there. Even notwhat-you-are is also there. I mean, the thing which holds the phenomenal, the experiential phenomenon that is your own body, is also yourself. Phenomenon and noumenon are there together. A slight move of mind causes lots of insights out of past experience and out of images that you have been making toward the future. This causes imaginings about the relationship of all people and situations in the present time, with no distinction between past, present, and future. Just the enormous dynamic of where you live, what s there, all existing as yourself. This body is a very fine thing at such a time, continuously pressing this sitting spot. If your mudra is perfect yet you sit slanted, this is strange. It is the same as sitting while you imagine that you are dancing somewhere. No one can see it; only you yourself can feel it. But dance is dance and sitting is sitting, so when you sit you must sit, instead of thinking of some fantastic thing. But it is not necessary to develop consciousness of the self alone. You have to release that conscious self about yourself. Otherwise sitting very well will catch you. The time of sitting is timeless actually. When you take the right position, you have nothing to think about anymore, nothing to bring up from any place, past or future. That which can be called the present moment (where you are and what you are) actually is there, and the physical posture you take in sitting is a part of whole posture, where it actually is. So when you meditate, many, many things are meditating because, essentially, everything meditates in that space. From: http://www.jikoji.org/kobun5.php On Breathing Depending on each person, there is an inner image of what breathing in sitting is. As you notice, there is also a physical element of sitting and an invisible element of sitting, which we call mind. We do mindsitting, body-sitting, and we let the breath sit. Three aspects to sitting exist because we can observe our sitting from three angles. We breathe naturally and appreciate our breath and really understand what the breath does to our body and mind. To really connect the three body, mind, and breath is the point. During sitting, your breath should be very regular, very smooth, with almost no effort, not noticing that the air is gone, or has come in. Breath has an incredible range of volume, strength and speed. There are hundreds of techniques you can use, depending on your health and emotional condi
PAGE 5 tion. Like playing an instrument, singing, or drawing, you breathe; there are many ways. The basic point is not to push or pull, but to let it go. The ancient Sanskrit word for breath was prana. This is translated as chi in Chinese or ki in Japanese ki, as in aikido. Ki is vitality. Sometimes it is called seiki: life-vitality. And this soft part where our intestines are is called hara in Japanese. Hara is also called ikai: the ocean of ki. Our vitals are here. When you have no strength in the hara you feel very weak. When you are full of energy this part is full of energy. When you chant you let your voice come out from this center of your stomach. Basically ki comes out and informs the shape of your mind. The contents of your mind is that voice. The ideal in sitting is to forget the breath. You may breathe as you like; there is an incredible variety in the speed of breathing, and even the emotion of breathing. So if you want to observe your breathing, you should do it for months and months without trying to control it. My feeling is that each breath is an independent thing. It arises and goes and some thoughts go with it. You cannot bring them back. That s it. It s the same as your heartbeat your whole body is needing it. So if you can forget the breath then you are having perfect breath. I suggest that you keep your posture straight, upright good posture, that naturally takes care of the breath. From deep breath, which carries your awareness with it, to very shallow breath, which also carries your awareness, you have to choose the best breath between them. You can be aware of the texture of your breath, from rocky breath to silk-like breath, and finally to transparent breath, like a transparent string of breath. You can feel which is the best breath for your sitting. Try to sit and pay attention to how your breath goes. Each time you sit, your body condition is different, so each time you must try to find your best breath and stay with that. Get really familiar with it. I always feel breathing is like drawing a circle. From: http://www.jikoji.org/kobun3.php Who Is Your Teacher? The real purpose of practice is to discover the wisdom which you have always been keeping with you. To discover yourself is to discover wisdom; without discovering yourself you can never communicate with anybody. In everyday life, we can pick up some glimpse of wisdom, as the polished tool of the carpenter expresses that there is wisdom in the arm of the carpenter. It is invisible; you cannot draw it and show it. Wisdom doesn t come from anywhere; it is always there as the exact contents of awakening; it is always there and everywhere. What you can do is to uncover it, like going to the origin of a river. Have you been to the source of a river? It is a very mystic place. You get dizzy when you stay for a while. An especially big river has several sources, and the real source, the farthest point which turns to the major stream, is moist and misty, with some kind of ancient smell, and you feel cold. You feel, This isn t the place to go in. There is no springing water, so you don t know where the source is. Actually, such a place exists in everyone; the center of us is like that. From this place, the ancient call appears, Why don t you know me? Living so many years with me, why can t you call my real name? Unfortunately, we cannot travel into such place with this body and mind, but we feel there is such an origin, and from there everything starts. From that place you have come, actually, and whatever you do is returning to that spot. In one lifetime you can meet with other people, at least one other beside yourself. So, in other words, two of you discover. This is why you are continuing to live so hard. The way to discover your origin is to listen to the one with whom you feel, This is it! It looks like you can do it by yourself, without others, but actually, by yourself alone you cannot discover that origin. Reaching that point, you never believe, This is it. But pointing to another s origin directly and saying, That s my origin, at that moment another finger appears, pointing at you, and says, No, that s my origin. And you get dizzy. Wait a minute, are you my teacher or are you my student? And both say, No, it doesn t
PAGE 6 matter. I can be your student; I ll be an ancient Buddha for you. The student says this to the teacher. Without throwing your whole life and body into others you can never reach to your own true nature. The more your understanding of life becomes clearer, and more exact, and painfully joyful, the more you feel, I m so bad. The one who appears and says, No, you are not bad at all, that is the way to go, that is your teacher. Don t misunderstand this teacher is not always a person. It can embrace you like morning dew in a field, and you get a strange feeling, Oh, this is it, my teacher is this field. How to go with your true self is to deeply bow to yourself and ask, Please, let me know about myself. Because we cannot do it alone, we have to do it with someone who is able to accept our vow. Letting such an occasion occur is what supreme awakening is. It is not your creation. You just admire the place where you are and be with it, and that place is the place to meet with your teacher. It doesn t need to be some special kind of place. When you are a little bit mindful about yourself you can create such an opportunity between your children and yourself, between your parents and yourself. From: http://www.jikoji.org/kobun2.php Biographical info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Kobun_Chino_Otogawa Amazon Smile Amazon now donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases to the charitable organization of your choice. On your first visit to AmazonSmile, you need to select a charitable organization to receive donations from eligible purchases before you begin shopping. Your selection will be remembered, and then every eligible purchase you make on AmazonSmile will result in a donation. AmazonSmile is the same Amazon you know. The Chapel Hill Zen Center is now listed with smile.amazon.com. Listserv for Announcements You are invited to join an e-mail listserv now available via Yahoo for announcements about upcoming activities at the CHZC. If you wish to become a member of this listserv, please type Subscribe in the subject line and send an email to CHZCannounce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. You can also go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ CHZCannounce/ and click the box Join Now. You may be requested to supply some information or to create a Yahoo identity. Please note the options for making your e-mail address public or for receiving marketing or other messages not directly from the listserv. It is your choice whether or not to receive other messages. Joining this list will not increase the amount of spam you receive. If you have any questions, please contact the list moderator, Lance at lashdown@yahoo.com Electronic Newsletter If you would prefer receiving an e-mail message with a link to a PDF file of the paper newsletter which is mailed every two months, please send your request to: info@chzc.org. The PDF version is always attached to the top of the Events page and to the bottom of the Events page in the pink box on the left. Board Members The board members for 2014 are David Guy, President; Elliott Schaffer, Vice-president; Ken Wilson, Treasurer; Carol Klein, Secretary; and Conal Ho and Kriti Sharma, Members-at-Large.
Chapel Hill Zen Center P.O. Box 16302 Chapel Hill, NC 27516 (919) 967-0861 Sunday Morning 9:00 zazen 9:40 kinhin 9:50 zazen 10:20 kinhin 10:30 service Thursday Evening 6:00 P.M. zazen Schedule Tuesday Evening 7:00 zazen 7:40 kinhin 7:50 zazen 8:20 service Monday to Friday 6:00 A.M. zazen 6:50 A.M. zazen Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage Paid Permit No. 166 Chapel Hill, NC RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED Meetings at 5322 NC Highway 86 2.5 miles North of I-40 exit 266 Josho Patricia Phelan, Abbess Embracing diversity, the Chapel Hill Zen Center expresses the fundamental connection of all beings by welcoming everyone to the practice of zazen. May all beings realize their true nature. The first fire-fly! It was off, away The wind left in my hand. Issa