from the 1980 album “Zen Poems: Read by Lucien Stryk”

http://www.folkways.si.edu/lucien-stryk/zen-poems-read-by/poetry/album/smithsonian

“Ox bridle tossed, vows taken, I’m robed and shaven clean. You ask why Bodhidharma came east—Staff thrust out, I hum like mad.”

From this poem by Zen master Reito (666-760), Lucien Stryk leads us into an amazing Zen poem journey that spans nearly 1,500 years—from the early Tang Dynasty in China (618-907) to contemporary Japan. A variety of types are presented, including enlightenment poems and death poems of the Chinese Zen masters, poems of the Japanese Zen masters, poems by contemporary Japanese Zen master Shinkichi Takahashi (1901-1987), and by Lucien Stryk (1924— ) himself. Stryk is a widely published Polish-American Zen poet, translator, and former English professor at Northern Illinois University.

(my own death poem)

Source: SoundCloud / Smithsonian Folkways

Affirming difference and finding a shared language

This past weekend I attended a panel discussion on the future of Zen at the oldest Zen temple in North America, Zenshuji, on Hewitt St. in Little Tokyo. (Years ago I lived just blocks away for several weeks and never stepped inside! I was far less spiritually curious then.)

Duncan Williams, chair of USC’s religion department gave the keynote address, and he argued for the need to appeal to the multicultural and multireligious identities of those who will participate in Zen’s future here, both Japanese Americans and people of other backgrounds. He talked about helping young Buddhists learn to talk to their Christian and Jewish classmates about what it means to be Buddhist and finding language that isn’t alienating. Speaking of suffering and freedom from suffering, for example, in a way that those familiar with sin and salvation can understand.1

David Ray Griffin advocates a differential pluralism that “says that religions promote different ends—different salvations—perhaps by virtue of being oriented toward different religious objects, perhaps thought of as different ultimates.”2 And this orientation is so important. The spiritual qualities and concepts we operate with can lead to very different results and ways of being in the world. I’m left with the question of how, as “deep pluralists,” we can effectively engage in this dialogue in a way that both affirms our differences and allows us to cross-fertilize, through a shared language of sorts.

     1. Duncan Ryuken Williams, “Soto Zen Buddhism 2022: Aspirations, Opportunities, and Challenges” (Keynote speech, The Future of Soto Zen in North America, Zenshuji Soto Mission, Los Angeles, Sep 8, 2012).

     2. David Ray Griffin, “Religious Pluralism: Generic, Identist, and Deep,” in ed. David Ray Griffin, Deep Religious Pluralism (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 24.

Those who just throw their bodies and minds into Buddhism and practice without even thinking of gaining enlightenment can be called unstained practicers. This is what is meant by ‘not stopping where the Buddha is and walking quickly past where the Buddha is not.’
Dōgen, in A Primer of Sōtō Zen: A Translation of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzo Zuimonki by Reihō Masunaga (from a kōan concerning Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen)

Norman Fischer: Zhaozhou and the Old Woman’s Obstacles

This is superb!

[Excerpt from Norman’s first talk at seminar. See homework assignment at the end!]


The story that I want to bring up tonight is the same story that I brought up on Sunday. It’s called, “Zhaozhou and the Old Woman’s Obstacles.”

An old woman asked Master Zhaozhou, “I have a body that contains the five obstacles. How can I be free of the world of suffering?”

He said to her, “Pray that all beings are born in heaven and that you yourself suffer forever in a sea of hardships.

When you see the words on the page, and you don’t know Zhaozhou, it might seem like some harsh Zen guy, throwing this back in the woman’s face, dismissing her. But when you know Zhaozhou, you realize that he could not have said those words in that spirit. He must have said them in a quiet voice, with a lot of kindness, because he really is trying to help her out. He is really trying to tell her the best way to be free from suffering.

If you want to end your own suffering, this is how you do it. Not by hating the suffering; not by doing battle with it; not by trying to fix it; not by trying to figure it out; not by trying to get around it; not by trying to shrink it; not by trying to minimize it; not by trying to explain it away.

The way to reduce your suffering is to open up to it, to make it bigger, to make it wider. To see that your suffering – if you really know what it is – is the suffering of everyone. The way for anyone to end his or her suffering is to love others and be concerned for their suffering.

When you really love others, and you are willing to have your heart broken by their suffering, that is liberation. Your eyes and your heart are open, and even if you yourself are suffering, it is perfectly okay, and you don’t mind at all.
~ excerpted by Barbara Byrum

This is your homework assignment:

First, think of some suffering of your own, evoking it, breathing it in, and then breathing out relief and love. Then generalize that suffering to everybody in that moment, who is feeling that same suffering – breathing in their suffering, and breathing out relief and love, and sending it to them. It is a version of a compassion practice.

Source: facebook.com