Painting by Tokushin,

incorporating text from the “Jijiyu Zanmai doka” by Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi

 

eMirror Vol. 11, No. 22

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Edited by Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho

 


Quotes from teisho are run sequentially in the eMirror

 

Everything is dharmata because dharmata is just how everything is. Dharmata does not create anything or destroy anything. It is the rising and falling, the coming and going of everything. It is not in itself a thing. It is just how things are. In fact, in Pali, the term dhammata can mean “natural”, “naturally”, “customary”, “habit” and “usual”. It is what is always true.

            As Dogen says dharmata is not “danken”, a thing by itself that can be located in time and space, and it is not joken, some eternally unchanging mysterious something. It is not a cosmological backdrop to the theatre of the universe. It is a description of the universe as playfulness, as change, as empty and open, as activity, as radiance. “It” does not do anything except metaphorically because “it” is not an “it”, it is just a description of the essentially real.

            And Knowing in itself, knowing as such, is also not a background or container for knowns. Knowns arise within it but it has no edge. It is not something that can be known because if Knowing in itself were the same as anything that is known then there could only be that one thing. The categories that can be used to think about modes of knowing and knowns cannot be applied to it. Depending upon how we want to class things we could say that dharmata is greater than or lesser than the Dharmakaya or Knowing in itself.

            It’s difficult to think about it. So, you know what? Don’t think about it. Practise it. Question into it with this whole living bodymind and see that dharmata is what is essentially real. It is the essence of seeing and seen, hearing and heard, touching and touched. It is there as the stars, the planets, the sky, the earth. Just sit up straight and enter the samadhi of dharmata with your whole life in each moment because it is what your whole life is.

            Please, this evening, enjoy yourselves.

 

-Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi, concluding teisho 4: “This is Not the Samadhi of Dharmata,” Monday, December 6, 2004, in the series “Essentially Real, commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji’s Hossho: Dharmata”

 

Upcoming Events

 

Fusatsu and the Vow of Samantabhadra

Chanting of the Precepts will take place on June 13th and June 27th. The Vow of Samantabhadra will be chanted on June 6th and June 20th.

 

Hermitage

The Roshi began a period of hermitage on Wednesday, May 30th, which will end at 10:00 a.m. On Sunday, June 3rd when he leads monastics in Acalanatha Sadhana.

 

Introduction to Zen Workshop

Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho will present the next Introduction to Zen Workshop at Dainen-ji on Saturday, June 2nd. For more information please see:

http://www.wwzc.org/programs/Introduction_To_Zen_Workshop_Ottawa.htm.

            For information concerning our Long-distance Training Program, please visit this Web Page: http://www.wwzc.org/programs/longDistance.htm.

 

Dharma Assembly

On Saturday, June 9th, Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho will lead a Dharma Assembly, the theme for which is “Stainless”. The Dharma Assembly will begin at 9:30 a.m. (please arrive by 9:15, in time for first Bell) and will end at 9:10 p.m. Dana is $40.00, which includes two meals: lunch and supper. Participants are asked to bring clothing and shoes appropriate for samu practice. To register, please send an email to schedule@wwzc.org or leave a message on the office answering machine at 562-1568. Dharma Assemblies are open to all students.

          The general sitting that would ordinarily take place from 9:30 to 11:40 on Saturday morning will be cancelled due to the Dharma Assembly.

 

June Two-day Sesshin

The June two-day sesshin will begin at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, June 15th, and will end on Sunday, June 17th, at 6:00 p.m. The Roshi will continue the teisho series “Doing Not-Doing Part Two: Zen Master Anzan Hoshin's Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji's ‘Kyojukaimon' and Fusatsu.”

            On Saturday, June 16th, associate and general students may attend a sitting held in the Zendo, which will begin at 9:30 a.m. (please arrive by 9:15 in time for first Bell) and will end at 11:30 a.m.

 

Oryoki for General Students

On Saturday, June 23rd, general students who attend the 6:00 a.m. formal sitting may participate in oryoki practice led by Jinmyo osho. Associate or visiting public students who are in retreat at the monastery on that day may also participate in oryoki. Dana is $10.00. You do not need previous experience of oryoki to attend. For more information or to register please send an email to schedule at wwzc dot org.

 

Hermitage

The Roshi will begin a period of hermitage on Wednesday, June 27th, which will end on Sunday, July 1st at 10:00 a.m., when he leads monastics in Acalanatha Sadhana.

 

 

Recorded Teisho Schedule

 

Congratulations

Congratulations and deep gassho to Tokushin on being accepted by Ven. Shikai Zuiko osho as her deshi.

 

Retreats

Larry Pelcher, visiting from Saskatoon, sat a partial retreat on Saturday and Sunday, along with attending the Samu Weekend. Deshi Vicki Robichaud sat a one-day retreat on Wednesday and a half-day retreat on Thursday. Paul Kadziora sat a partial retreat on Thursday.

 

To Schedule a Retreat

Please email schedule at wwzc dot org to schedule a retreat, even if you have made verbal arrangements with a practice advisor or a Dharma Teacher. Emails sent to that address are routed to all members of the Practice Council who will need this information for the purposes of meal planning, preparing tapes for your retreat and planning samu assignments. Retreats are defined in the following way:

 

Half-day Retreat (you would need to arrive 15 minutes before the actual starting time) Begin at 6:00 a.m., end at noon. Or begin at 9:30 a.m., end at 6:00. Or begin at 3:00 p.m., end at 9:10.

Partial Retreat (You would need to arrive 15 minutes before the actual starting time) Begin at 6:00 a.m., end at 6:00 p.m. Or begin at 9:30 a.m., end at 9:10 p.m.

Full retreat (you would need to arrive by 5:45) Begin at 6:00 a.m., end at 9:10 p.m. Please remember to bring a change of clothes suitable for samu (caretaking practice). If staying overnight, please remember to bring a sleeping bag, a towel and other such necessities. If you have been diagnosed by a medical doctor as having allergies to specific foods, please contact the tenzo, Jinmyo osho at Jinmyo at trytel dot com a week in advance of your retreat to inform her of dietary restrictions as this affects food purchases and meal planning. The suggested dana for retreats is $40 a day, which covers the basic cost of food and other materials. Donations above this figure are very welcome and all donations are tax deductible. There is also a retreat schedule for public students posted on our Website at:

http://www.wwzc.org/Resources/Public.student.retreat.schedule.htm

Public Students’ Retreats

For retreats to be mentioned in the eMirror, public students are asked to send an email to schedule at wwzc dot org after they sit a retreat mentioning the date of their retreat and whether it is a partial, half-day or full retreat. Please also include the name of the city in which you live.

 

Spring Garden work

With the arrival of spring much work needs to be done in the grounds. If you are able to offer any time to assist with garden samu please contact Saigyo chiden at Saigyo at telecomottawa dot net.

 

 

 


 

Office of the Tenzo

Dogen zenji taught that the work of preparing and serving meals was "a matter for realized monks who have the mind of the Way or by senior disciples who have roused the Way-seeking mind." In alignment with this, part of Zen Master Anzan Hoshin's samu for the Community involves personally overseeing the activities of the ancient office of tenzo. Jinmyo Renge osho serves as tenzo and Mishin tando and Saigyo chiden offer assistance as tenzo-anja.

 

 

Meals served during the Samu Weekend:

 

Saturday Lunch

Mixed grain (Lundberg Farm short grain brown rice, Korean white and brown sticky rice, quinoa, barley, gohan, kasha); puffed tofu and atsuage tofu triangles, white onion, red bell peppers, cubanelle peppers, jalapeños and yu choy tips in a Thai red curry with coconut milk, ngoc mam, mirin and lime; roasted Asian eggplants with sweet chile sauce; roasted halved and quartered plum tomatoes with chile oil and basil; slaw of green cabbage, daikon, carrot, and white onion dressed with garlic chives, mayonnaise, and Vietnamese roasted chile oil and lime.

 

Sunday Lunch

Fried rice with red bell peppers, Spanish onion, garlic, scallions with lime, shoyu, and Vietnamese roasted chile oil with peanuts for garnish; thick slices of colossal shitake and eryingi and oyster mushrooms with pillow tofu rectangles in a chile miso soup with ginger; roasted asparagus with sesame oil, shoyu, and sesame seeds; Korean seasoned burdock root.

 

Meals served on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings, prior to the sitting:

 

Monday Yakuseki

Yellow udon noodle salad with chopped asparagus and minced red bell peppers dressed with shoyu and sesame oil; oyster and eryingi mushroom soup; chopped fennel roasted in coconut milk; rectangles of pillow tofu and chopped red onion roasted with sweet red chile sauce.

 

Tuesday Yakuseki

Murgh kaleja kari (chicken livers, gizzards, hearts and rabbit kidneys in a tomato curry with toasted cumin seeds and white, black, and brown mustard seeds, garam masala with peas); deboned rabbit braised in a tamarind and onion sauce; Thai jasmine rice cooked in coconut milk with toasted coconut; roasted shitake, cremini, and oyster mushrooms with methi (fenugreek) and dried chiles with extra virgin olive oil; salad of blanched sugar snap peas and snow peas and avocado and slivered almonds with ngoc mam and lime.

 

Thursday Yakuseki

Warm naan; egg salad (chopped egg, scallions, garlic, Dijon mustard, mayonnaise, salt and cracked black peppercorns); roasted gigantic Paris mushrooms; blackened tomatoes in a salad of Romaine and mache mix, with a dressing made of blended Dijon mustard, fresh basil, olive oil and lime juice.

 

Students attending sittings on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings may make arrangements to join residents for meals prepared by the Office of the Tenzo. Please email schedule at wwzc dot org at least one day in advance; Contribution is $10.

 


Thank You

If you would like to thank someone for a contribution they have made, please feel free to send an email to Jinmyo osho at rengezo at vianet dot ca. (Owing to the volume of mail I receive, please note that an email sent to me containing a thank you intended for the eMirror should specify that it is to be included. Otherwise I will likely assume that you are just sending me an email, will think, "Thank you very much," and that will be the end of it).

 

From the Roshi, “Thank you to Saigyo chiden for his exemplary work as shissui, in particular for organizing the recent Samu Weekend. My thanks to all students who participated in the Samu Weekend and in doing so have clarified the practice environment of the monastery further for themselves and others. My thanks to Chunen ino for ongoing IT work. Thanks as well to Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical for the gift a large number of Ubuntu Linux Live Cds so that students might try them on their computer systems.”

From Jinmyo osho, “Thank you to Saigyo chiden for organizing regular samu weekends and to all of the students who participate. The work done during these samu periods makes things much more manageable for the small group of monks who do the majority of the maintenance of the building and grounds throughout the rest of of the year. Thank you to David Clawson for writing a program to send out weekly issues of the eMirror. Thank you to Gillian Higenbottam for food items she brought from Japan for the monastery kitchen and to Paulette Theriault for strawberries.”

From Doug Somers, “Thank you to Roshi for the teisho series “Doing Not-Doing” and for the many other teisho that have been made available to show in so many ways how we tend to be and how we can choose differently; to Shikai osho for the display outside the changeroom of  “Pecking and Tapping” that points to the relationship between teacher and student,  and for showing how practice so often is needlessly made into a complex activity; to Jinmyo osho for gracing the morning air of the Hatto with the distant sound of her laughter while giving daisan to students in the Shuryo (and reminding us to practice that moment); to Chunen ino, Mishin tando and Saigyo shuso for patiently clarifying so many questions about practice that often revolve around variants of what is the same basic topic, for posture adjustments that show how even minor adjustments make a difference, and looking after many many of the details in running the monastery and making the practice environment available; to Mishin Tando and any others involved with help in procuring a kunsu at late notice; and to Jido anagarika for his kind assistance.”

 

 


Ongoing

 

Samu

Request for Assistance, Office of the Treasurer

As part of clarifying and streamlining the financial processes of White Wind Zen Community, we would like to have pairs of students rotate to help process dana contributions on a weekly basis. To date, most of this work has been done by Mishin tando with the assistance of one or two other students, but it is time to restructure the system so that the work of the Office of the Treasurer becomes more manageable and more students are helping with this responsibility. If you would be available on Saturdays prior to the General Sitting for about a hour (from 8:15-9:15 a.m.), your help will be appreciated. Please email Mishin at trytel dot com. Training will be provided. No special financial skills are needed other than an eye for detail and accuracy.

 

Archiving Samu

Since 2002 the teisho presented by the Roshi and the Dharma Talks given by the Dharma Teachers have been recorded directly onto CD and copies made available to students. Prior to this time all of the recordings were made on cassette tape. Over the last years the monastics, with the help of several students, have worked to transfer the taped material onto CD, not only because cassette tape technology is fast becoming outdated but because the early tape recordings are deteriorating quickly and may soon become unplayable. To lose these teaching would be disastrous. We are presently making direct CD copies of all of the early tapes so that there is a back-up copy available should anything happen to the master tape which makes it unplayable but there is much work to be done. There are still over 100 tapes from the 1980’s and 1990’s that need to be re-mastered, relabeled and copied and this constitutes many hundreds of hours of work. If you are able to commit to a regular weekly schedule of two or three hours samu to continue this vital work, please let us know by writing to tapes at wwzc dot org. Full training will be given.

 

Daily Samu

Samu each day to prepare the monastery for the arrival of the students is a very important practice for the monastics. Any help to assist the monks with brightening and clarifying the practice environment is very much appreciated. If you are able to come early before a sitting to do samu, please consult the samu notice board situated between the side entrance doors to find a task which has not been done recently. If you have any questions about the task please ask any monastic.

 

Improvements to the Second Floor Washroom

A project that has been on the high priory list for a number of years is the renovation of the second floor washroom. Even though this is the most frequently used washroom in the building it has never had any substantial improvements apart from being painted last year. Work on this washroom, which was scheduled to be taking place late this year or early next year, will again need to be delayed due to the necessity of a urgent roof repair to the west side of the roof. This repair will cost in the region of $13,000 and as this is considerably higher than our available budget we have had to cut back on other important work. Because of this, we have decided to fundraise in order to gather sufficient money to make the improvements to the washroom. The work to be done will include a new sink and cabinet and a new ceiling light, fan and exhaust. This will cost in the region of $1000 to complete. Students are encouraged to donate towards this project so that it can be scheduled some time in the winter and the improved facilities will be available by 2007. Improvements to this room will benefit every student that comes to the monastery for sittings.

Thank you for your generosity to help with this project.

Gassho,

Saigyo chiden, shissui.

 

CDs Available to the Public

A selection of CDs of teisho and Dharma Talks is available on our web-site. The page is found at http://wwzc.org/CDWebSales/CDWebSales.htm or follow the link for Dharma Texts and CDs on the home page. Over time more teisho and Dharma Talks from the over 2500 presentations made by the Roshi, Shikai osho and Jinmyo osho will be made available for purchase.

 

Ongoing Project: “All is Change”

Dainen-ji, being a 135-year-old building, is continuously in need of maintenance and the costs associated with this can be astronomical when such things as roof repairs or painting are needed. This is something that we cannot afford to do, yet must do and so the “All is Change” project has been created. The “All is Change” project is very simple. Most of us have a bowl or a jar or some other kind of container that we keep somewhere at home and fill up with loose change because it's too heavy to carry around. Several hundred dollars has been collected so far both in loose change and Canadian tire money which has been put towards the building maintenance fund. Most of the collected money was spent on materials for the new front path and we have also been able to purchase several new tools which will help greatly with ongoing renovations. If anyone would like to contribute to this fund, each penny will be appreciated.

 

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