No road to happiness or sorrow... Find them in yourself. - Chinese Proverb

By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind. - Hui Neng

Mondays after a weekend away are tough. My next two weekends I will be away. I'm dragging today.

School day is done. The kids have gone home. Time to jump on the bike. :-)

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world...it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

Wishing everybody a Happy New Year and some fun and safe celebrations tonight.

"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." Buddha

Zen Quote: "The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change." J. Edwards

"A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle." Benjamin Franklin

Zen Quote: "Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind." Buddha

Zen Quote: "Your Treasure House is in yourself, it contains all you need." Hui Hai

Zen Quote: Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Zen Quote: "Alas! the world is full of enormous lights and mysteries, and man shuts them from himself with one small hand!" Baal Shem Tov.

Zen Quote:

Kindness should become the natural way of life, not the exception.

Buddha

Zen Quote:

What happens to you does not matter: what you become through those experiences is all that is significant. This is the true meaning of life.

Zen and Patience

In a world of instant gratification and information at your fingertips, we’ve learned to want what we want and expect it now. I see this attitude in my students. Any project that’s not “cut and pasteable” from the internet takes way too much of an effort. And should I require that they actually look at the most antiquated of information reservoirs, books, that’s just too difficult. That entails finding a relevant book and culling the desired information from within it’s multiple pages, for many that seems an unreasonable expectation. We live in a culture of instant gratification, immediate results, and minimum effort.

In this environment it’s not surprising that the book Getting Things Done is a perennial best seller. This book has almost a cult following in the business world and on the web. The world today seems obsessed with increased efficiency, contextualizing actions and goal achievement. In this environment the key questions are: what do I want to accomplish? What are the actions I need to do to accomplish this project? and then somewhere along the way you must assess how important this project is in relation to the plethora of other projects you have on your plate. Sometimes I want to apply these concepts to my Zen practice.

Recently, Sensei asked what questions I might have about practice. In my response I realized that my questions had to do with time-lines and efficiency. My impatience showed. Like my students I wanted the short-cut, the effortless path. At times I forget that effortlessness comes from right effort. Like Tony Gwynn at the plate during his prime, or Lance Armstrong climbing the Col du Galibier. The only reason they make it seem effortless, is because they’ve spent hundreds of hours practicing and honing their skills.

A spiritual practice can’t be reduced to a prescribed set of steps to follow. Dedication and right-effort are integral. The underpinning of this right effort is faith. By faith I don’t mean a belief in a pre-defined outcome, but faith that the process will lead to an answer, a truth, even though I don’t know what that truth is. But this requires what is so scarce in our information age...patience.

Mindfulness...

Why do Zazen at all? It’s a question that often comes up. Usually I’m the one asking. If you saw the video clip from my last post the statement is made that most of the time Zazen is boring. I wouldn’t personally describe it as such, but it certainly not the type of “doing” that we are accustomed to. The type of doing that helps us pass the time faster, whether it’s television, or shopping, or spending time on the internet. For me, Zazen is a more subtle type of doing. It’s sort of doing not doing.

Not doing anything at all implies death of course. So it’s not that. It may look like that on the outside, but sitting on your cushion for 20 minutes or 2 hours takes effort. More effort than you might think. When most people first try to meditate they have a very hard time because the brain kicks in and starts reminding us of all the things we could be doing, and judging the “just sitting” as a colossal waste of productive time. I’ve known people that will sheepishly say, “I just can’t do it, I can’t sit still. My brain won’t quiet down.” This is exactly why I do Zazen.

The human brain is an amazing organ. It keeps track of everything in our lives, sometimes too well. Sometimes it doesn’t know when to just relax. Often it guides our actions with all the messages and lessons learned in life, many we aren’t even aware we’ve learned. Zazen offers at a minimum, the opportunity to observe your mind at work. At first it’s difficult to do this because we are so wrapped up with “I should be doing something else this is a waste of time!” And we become anxious. We spin in our thoughts like Dorothy's little house caught in the twister. Through continued practice of Zazen however we can step back and instead of being in the house we can observe the house. You can take a small step back from the anxiety and analyze why it is that these thoughts cause so much anxiety. Or why these thoughts are even there at all.

This is the beginning of mindfulness. We begin to understand what our thoughts are and how they influence our behavior. For many people this is a huge step, it’s the difference between being in reaction mode all the time and gaining some measure of control over our actions. This isn’t the only benefit of Zazen, and this is a very first and basic step in becoming mindful, but for many of us it would be a very helpful step to take.

Basic Zazen Lesson

Who am I?

The Four Noble Truths are the basis of the teachings of Buddhism. The First Noble Truth as expressed by the Buddha himself was the acknowledgment of suffering in life. This is often expressed as “Life is suffering.” At first glance this seems a very gloomy statement about life. Yet, my sense of this is that the statement isn’t so much a value judgment as it is a statement of fact. Think of how we answer the simply and mostly cursory question “How are you?” When asked by friends or colleagues, I usually answer some variation on “hangin’ in there” or “not too bad” or simply “ok.” I usually get the same in return. This acceptance of dissatisfaction is so ingrained that whenever someone answers “fantastic!” or “I’m doing great!” we actually perk up and ask... “Oh? What’s going on?”

It’s important to note that life is suffering is but one translation. In Sanskrit the term is dukkha, which can be translated as suffering, or often as dissatisfaction. My understanding is that when we use the word dissatisfaction it’s not referring to the dissatisfaction you might feel when you go to a restaurant and your meal is not what you expected, or you go to a movie that isn’t very good. As a Buddhist monk friend of mine likes to say “this isn’t about being unhappy because you got an oatmeal cookie and you wanted chocolate chip. It runs much deeper.” A condition prevalent in the fact of being.

So what is my experience of dukkha? I don’t think my experiences are unique. Deaths in the family when I was fairly young, life-plans gone awry, relationships gone bad. I remember a time of personal upheaval: my job was going badly and my relationship at the time was at the brink of breakup. While some might have looked outside themselves to find blame or to seek solace in others, for me it became a simple equation where I was the common denominator. So I had the very real experience of looking at myself in the mirror and asking “Who am I?” That simple yet profound question led me to a deep personal exploration for which Zen became the vehicle.

Why did “who am I” provoke such a crisis? I had put so much of my identity, my sense of self, my being into my life rolls, that when those got shaken, a crisis developed. I thought I was a great partner in a relationship, yet I found myself divorced and ending a second long-term relationship. At one point in my life I would describe myself as a graduate student. Yet when I was unable to finish my Ph.D. I could no longer be that. Finally, when a series of events in the workplace led me to question my teaching abilities, I felt that I could no longer say, “I am a pretty good teacher.” All the things I thought I was, I wasn’t. With Zazen and therapy it became clear to me that those weren’t the things I was, they were the things I did. I could stop doing all those things and my core being remained. What is that core being? I continue to explore that with Zen, so come back and read some more, I’m sure more will come up on this issue.

How I got to be where I am. (Part 2)

Religion is a universal experience for human beings. It has been around since the dawn of time, when man saw the awesome power of nature over his survival. Even at the dawn of the 21st century, with the growth of science and technology at a time when we want to believe that knowledge, information and reason reign supreme, the major conflicts of the world at best have religious undertones, and at worst, religion is at the center. Aristotle said that man was a political being; the corollary to that is that man is a religious beast as well. It’s not surprising that after my crisis of belief, I felt ungrounded.

The road to Buddhism
When people become disenchanted with a particular religion reactions vary. Some might become atheists, others will find a new belief system. Yet for others, as it was for me, the search was internal. Perhaps it was a disenchantment with institutional religion but I felt that my search needed to be an internal search. There was an innate feeling that it was in this internal search that I would find whatever it was I was looking for. I have to say, I was scarcely aware of the search, much less of what it was I was looking for.

My introduction to Eastern philosophy came in graduate school. A local radio station (I can’t remember if it was the UCSB campus radio station or the local NPR affiliate) aired “The love of Wisdom” a series of lectures by Alan Watts; after listening to him I was hooked. I began to seek out books on Eastern thought. Books on Taoism led to Tai Ch, “moving meditation.” Tai Chi led to an interest in meditation and meditation led me to Buddhism.

Years later I recognize how the internal search manifested itself externally as well. There was turmoil in my life and my relationships. At the time I didn’t quite recognize the connection. Suffering in my life was tangible. Much of it, if not all of it, caused by myself and the decisions I was making. I don’t regret any of those decisions, I do however regret any suffering I may have caused in others.


When the student is ready the teacher will present herself
In my search for a place to meditate I found the Sweetwater Zen Center in what I thought at the time was a most unlikely place. After a few months of practice and the demise of my personal relationship at the time, I ended up living there for a little over a year. It was exactly what I needed at the time. A very gentle and welcoming introduction to Zen and an encouragement for me to work on my psychological issues through therapy. I give all the credit in the world to Seisen Saunders Roshi for giving me the space to do what I needed to do.

After I left the Zen Center I went “back home” to Tijuana, Mexico. It was a wonderful couple of years, where I could step back, take stock, and re-connect with family. However in that time my Zen practice waned. In the last year I’ve entered a pretty amazing relationship with a very wonderful woman. And the call to the cushion has become strong again. Once again, the teacher has presented herself. Sensei Mitra Bishop of the Hidden Valley Zen Center has appeared in my path. Even though our interactions have been brief to this point, I have to accept that there is a somewhat deep connection for me, and more importantly a trust. With her guidance I hope to deepen my meditation practice and let life unfold. By the way, what I write in this blog are completely my understandings or misunderstandings and should not be taken as a reflection my teachers in any way.

San Diego Fires...

May all my neighbors in San Diego County and throughout the state of California find safety and find refuge in the company of their loved ones.

Roberto

How I got to be where I am. (Part 1)

As a high school teacher of World Religions my students often ask, “so what are you?” As a teacher of students ranging from 16 to 18 years of age, I want to present the information in a way that is factual, historically accurate and untainted by what they might see as my personal biases. I do this when I teach Government. One year about half of my students thought I was a Democrat, the other half thought I was a Republican, a few even pegged me as Libertarian. So the deal I make with my students is to not tell them what my religious identification is until the end of the course. However this question presents a quandary for me.

A crisis of faith
The question "so what are you?" forces me to think about how to answer that question. I was brought up Catholic. Nuns in elementary school and all. And to be honest my upbringing was very positive for me. I was baptized, received my First Communion and did my Confirmation. So, in some was the easy way to answer the question is, "I’m Catholic." However, I don’t practice anymore. I experienced what at one point I considered a crisis of faith in the mid 1990s. It came to head when my parish priest railed with conviction about how AIDS was God’s punishment for the immoral behavior of homosexuals. His statement struck me as the most un-Christian thing I could imagine. Had Jesus not given us the example of love and compassion by healing lepers and consorting with prostitutes, both shunned by the society of their time? My priest and in fact to a large extent, the Catholic Church as an institution seemed to lack compassion. In that moment, the Church i had been brought up in, somehow became less genuine to me.

Today I have a better grasp of what I experienced then. It was not a crisis of faith, it was a crisis of belief. In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan Watts makes the distinction between faith and belief. He defines belief as “the insistence that the truth is what one would...wish it to be.” Faith, he defines as the unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.” I often tell my students today that confusion is a good thing. That confusion lies at the threshold of knowledge. Confusion is our brain saying, "what I’m reading or hearing now does not match up with what I recognized as truth just a little bit ago." When the truth in question is a strongly held one, a deeply rooted one, one which takes a lifetime to develop. When confusion arises over the institution that had so pervaded your life...confusion turns into crisis. So I walked away from the Church, not in anger nor curiously enough with a sense of betrayal, but perhaps with a sense of disappointment.

Perhaps walking away was a childish response to an unrealistic expectation. Perhaps the walking away was in and of itself an act lacking in compassion, nevertheless, an internal shift had taken place and my search began. Not that I immediately went from Catholicism to Buddhism. However I did have a sense that I needed to go within.

Next time...how I got to Zen.

Welcome!

Hello! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Roberto Rodriguez. I'm a political scientist by training, a high school teacher by profession, and a Zen student. My intention for this site is to track my personal journey through Zen. A process I expect will last a lifetime.

The motivation behind doing so is threefold. First and foremost, as a writer I find this personal journey fascinating. The internal pull towards something in a very palpable yet inexplicable way is worth some consideration.

Second, Zen is not an easy practice, many come to it and find frustration. Yet, in the Zendos I've participated in I found a strong reluctance to talk about these frustrations. I've decided to share my experiences with anyone who might be interested.

The third reason is that by writing my experiences, thoughts and reflections, I'm able to let the thoughts go, and hopefully obsess a little less. Right now I'm not sure what the subjects will be about, I'm sure they will be varied. While my intent is for the posts to be related to my practice as a Zen student, often the things that come through the practice are related to Zen only in that came through practice. My intent however is truth in advertising, this site will be about the things I reflect on as I try to expand my practice from the cushion to the rest of my life.

So in the first couple of posts I'll share how it is I got to this point. After that, we'll see what comes up.