Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

I’m back in NYC tonight. I spent a few days in Chicago with my girlfriend’s family for Christmas, and we’re leaving tomorrow for our habitual weeklong Zen retreat with the Village Zendo. I’ve had a pretty good year—I ran my first half-marathon, I did a street retreat, I spent August as assistant Zen cook. I had my photos exhibited in two shows, and I took my first regular fulltime job in years, the most exciting job I’ve ever had, as Python Evangelist and software developer for 10gen / MongoDB. My girlfriend and I are finishing our second year together, a relationship of remarkably uninterrupted serenity and love.

This week I’m going to put it all down. I want to just disappear into zazen. My only effort will be the effort I make to make no effort at all. I’ll pick it all up again in the new year.

Spontaneous shrine in Kern County, CA. Photo: Shady Grove Oliver

My friend Shady Grove Oliver blogs about spontaneous shrines. She writes that a “type of stranger-ritual is performed by passersby who stop or change course specifically to experience the shrine up close. Despite the fact that shrines are often located in sparsely populated areas and they often have at least one offering of minimal value (be it a teddy bear or an entire carton of cigarettes), they are rarely vandalized. Rather, the visitor is cooperative, does not interfere with the aesthetic, and does not behave in any way contrary to the orderliness expected of them. To vandalize a shrine would be to pollute a sacred space with impure intentions and actions. However, the strangers who come into contact with the shrines have no personal connection to the deceased or to the living who constructed it. What makes a spontaneous shrine something not to be tampered with? Why is it seemingly understood that there is just something wrong about disturbing a shrine? What gives the shrine its magical ability to make people act in a way they ordinarily would not?”

Spontaneous Shrines Blog

Spontaneous Shrines on Flickr

Photo: Mark Davis/Getty Images

How interesting—David Lynch, who’s practiced Transcendental Meditation for 40 years, gives a million dollars to teach TM to veterans. I’ve never practiced TM and I don’t know much about it, besides that it was popularized in the Sixties by the Maharishi and that The Beatles famously went to India to learn it. In any case I doubt it matters much which practice people learn if meditation is used therapeutically rather than spiritually. I hope Lynch’s gift helps a lot of people.

OWS sign. Photo: David Shankbone.

Two awesome thirtysomething Buddhist teachers I’ve practiced with, Michael Stone in Toronto and Ethan Nichtern here in NYC, have published An Open Letter From Buddhist and Yoga Teachers in Support of the Occupy Movement. My own teacher, Enkyo Roshi at the Village Zendo, is a signatory.

We believe that individual awakening and collective transformation are inseparable. For members of spiritual communities, mindfulness of the situation before us demands that we engage fully in the culture and society we inhabit. We do not view our own path as merely an individualistic pursuit of sanity and health, and we believe it would be irresponsible of us to teach students of mind/body disciplines that they can develop their practice in isolation from the society in which they live. We are inspired by the creative and intellectual work of the Occupy movement as an essential voice in facilitating a more compassionate and ecologically grounded basis for practice.

Hallelujah! Real religion is inseparable from politics.

For the last few weeks a lot of dharma talks at the Village Zendo have discussed Occupy Wall Street. I’ve heard feedback that mixing politics and Dharma seems uncomfortable. But I think most people at the Zendo like that we’re addressing OWS, and I think issues of fairness and compassion belong at the center of our practice.

I’m struck by the example of Charles Grandison Finney, who founded my alma mater Oberlin College. Wikipedia says,

In addition to becoming a popular Christian evangelist, Finney was involved with the abolitionist movement and frequently denounced slavery from the pulpit. In 1835, he moved to Ohio where he became a professor and later president of Oberlin College from 1851 to 1866. Oberlin became active early in the movement to end slavery and was among the first American colleges to co-educate blacks and women with white men.

These days, it seems natural to marry abolitionism and Christianity. But in the early 19th Century slavery was a political issue. We have ceased to consider the emancipation of slaves a political question, and have instead made it a moral absolute, because the right side won the political debate, largely through the efforts of radical preachers like Finney.

What about Occupy Wall Street? Is it political? Certainly. OWS doesn’t support any parties or candidates, but it addresses questions of how we shall govern ourselves fairly. Should religious leaders (or spiritual ones, depending on your preferred lingo) take a stand on OWS? Yes, lest we Buddhists discover that, in our attempt to avoid politics, we sat out the great moral debate of our decade.

My online dharma buddy and fellow Jiryu, Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler, writes:

…silence to noise, stillness to busyness, zazen to work, isn’t necessarily integration—it’s oscillation. So we talk about “balance” as though if we could get the mix right, we’d achieve integration. But integration is more than just the right rate of back and forth.

I too crave a more balanced life. My thoughts usually go like, “If I had more discipline I could be more balanced.” But as Other Jiryu points out, Zen practice has nothing to do with achieving balance. Zen students may want balance as much as anyone does—balance is a nice thing to have—but Zen is not about having a particular kind of life. It’s about completely accepting your life as it is, for good or ill, in sickness or health, balanced or imbalanced.

I hear people talk about balance a lot in Zen circles, and I wonder if it’s part of a larger trend in Western Zen: Zen and Holistic Health. The Zen groups I know here all practice yoga, physical fitness, and vaguely macrobiotic cuisine along with study and meditation. In contrast, my reading suggests that Japanese monasteries don’t care at all about health. White rice and pickles, three meals a day! Take Zen Master Hakuin: in his memoir Wild Ivy, he writes that he drove himself to the point of collapse by fasting, traveling, and by meditating every night instead of sleeping. Eventually, he receives from a hermit the instructions for curing Zen Sickness (first step: get a good night’s sleep), but I think the story proves the rule. Japanese Zen is more interested in pushing you to your limit than in keeping you healthy.

(Pause for disclaimer: I’ve never been to Japan, I’ve only read a little, and what I’ve read tells me more about Zen in the Middle Ages than today.)

Over here in America all the Eastern spiritualities have gotten a bit mushed together. Zen has picked up from yoga and Toaism a belief that a healthy body encourages a clear awareness. I think this is a good thing. Zen can take things a little slower in America, reducing our suffering first by getting us to eat better and stop rushing around so much, while we also practice realizing that our unhealthy, imbalanced life is already Zen.

Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

On of my favorite Zen masters in New York City, Myoji Sunim, is in the hospital. A message from her temple says,

Myo Ji Sunim had a massive brain hemorrhage yesterday late afternoon and was brought to St. Luke’s Hospital after having been found by a student. She is now in the ICU on life support, waiting for her family to arrive. She is not responsive now. Much of her Sangha was there as well.

UPDATE: Myoji died at 4pm this afternoon, Friday November 4.

I’ve known Myoji for about 5 years. I met her at a Buddhist Council meeting when I was representing the Village Zendo. Myoji always invited the Council to meet at her temple, the Korean Buddhism Jogei Zen Temple on the Upper West Side, and at every meeting she served tea, and huge bowls of Korean leftovers cooked by the temple ladies for the previous day’s service. She periodically interrupted our meetings by shouting “Eat! Drink tea!”

Her energy and competence at organizing all the different sanghas of the Buddhist Council—Tibetans, Sri Lankans, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Americans—was awesome. This spring, when the Council was debating whether we had time to organize a Buddha’s Birthday celebration, Myoji interrupted to say she’d raised all the money we’d need and she’d reserved Union Square. Without any drama, she always seemed capable of running circles around the rest of us.

A good description of Myoji is in a New York Magazine reporter’s encounter with her in 2008:

Myoji Sunim, a bald, preternaturally extroverted Korean monk, opened the door and prattled happily with me for a half-hour over tea…. “Who are you?” she asked. I stared blankly. She tried again. I guessed, “Arianne?” She shook her head. “It’s okay. After practice long time, one day you tell me.” She put a bell in front of me. “What is this?” “A bell?” She shook her head. “It’s empty. That Zen.” She rang a different bell, bowed, and gestured for me to leave.

Photo: Michael Dougan

Eido Shimano Roshi has resigned his leadership of The Zen Studies Society, one of the oldest and most traditional Zen groups in the U.S., and his successor, Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi, has taken his place. She will lead the society and its main practice center, the Dai Bosatsu Zendo. The society’s newsletter (pdf) says,

Roshi stood before Eido Roshi, who handed a simple wooden staff to her. For a moment, each had one hand grasping the staff, and the two stood eye-to-eye. Eido Roshi released his grip, and the responsibility for a sangha and a tradition shifted from teacher to heir.

Eido Roshi was forced from his position as a result of a sex scandal. A pretty tame one, compared to the sorts of scandals that have plagued American Zen since the 1960s. The New York Times last year had a fascinating overview of the situation. Since I don’t know the people involved and have not sat with the sangha, all I can say is that it seems very sad, and I can sympathize both with the Zen students who wanted Eido Roshi to stay and those who lobbied to have him removed. UPDATE: I’ve been corrected by commenters. In the year since I last read up on the scandal, much more damning info has been published. Forgive me.

The new abbot, Shinge Roshi, announces quietly that a softer and more democratic time is coming for The Zen Studies Society:

There are changes that I envision. I want to cultivate an atmosphere that is harmonious, warm, open, and respectful of everyone. Since my way as a teacher is more relational than hierarchical, I look forward to sharing creative ideas with residents and visitors alike. I welcome past and current students with deep concern for continuing our heritage and love of the Dharma to take part in shaping the future of Dai Bosatsu Zendo.