Titus O.

During my few years stint in a Soto monastery in California a decade back, I stumbled across a book in the library there that came to influence me, and my practice, enormously. Called “Cultivating the Empty Field,” it is the most extensive translation of 12th c. Chinese Zen master Hongzhi’s teachings in English. I can’t overstate how much this book meant to me then. It seemed to clearly and directly explain my real inspiration to practice zen, and my experience sitting on the cushion. This was revelatory especially as I had been practicing for years earlier in a Korean tradtion that emphasized chanting, bowing, and kong-an (or koan) practice. The founder of the school, Seung Sahn, my first Zen teacher, often admitted that he wasn’t fond of sitting, and reached “enlightenment” while chanting.

I wanted to refine my sitting practice, explore and season it, and I was always getting called in to the teacher’s room to have to have these absurd theatrical encounters, giving what I felt were somewhat canned responses, unable to talk about the nuances of what was happening for me in the practice, in simple terms. I was totally passionate and commited, and I “passed” plenty of koans; I just assumed in time (when I got more enlightened?) the ‘system’ would start to feel more natural, less stilted and “Korean.” It never really did; but then I encountered Dogen Zen.

I don’t want to get into the wonders of Dogen here, but one of his immediate predessors and influences was Hongzhi. Here’s a passage:

“Silently dwell in the self, in true suchness abandon conditioning. Open-minded and bright without defilement, simply penetrate and drop off everything. Today is not your first arrival here. Since the ancient home before the empty kalpa, clearly nothing has been obscured. Although you are inherently spirited and splendid, still you must go ahead and enact it. When doing so, immediately display every atom without hiding a speck of dirt. Dry and cool in deep repose, profoundly understand. If your rest is not satisfying and you yearn to go beyond birth and death, there can be no such place. Just burst through and you will discern without thought-dusts, pure without reasons for anxiety. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world. Merge together with all things. Everything is just right.”

I just find each line full of liberating insight, and bow a deep bow of gratitude in the direction of 12th c. China. You can have Heiddegger, or Wittgenstein, or Sartre, or the Post-Moderns, or even wacky ol’ Ken Wilber. Throw in Confucius, Rumi, St Francis, Martin Buber, Ramana Maharshi, or even the Dalai Lama. If I had to choose (which thankfully I don’t), I’d just take Hongzhi, and shikantaza (“just sitting”).

Last fall I was looking for a copy of CTEF, and happily discovered that the book’s translator, Taigen Leighton, had recently moved to Chicago. I had been off the Dharma trail for awhile, unable to find a teacher or sangha that felt particularly right for me; though granted I hadn’t been looking all that hard either. I’d kept sitting, but done more yoga and whatnot for a couple years (I needed a fresh take.) Taigen is a Dharma heir, or “Zen Master”, in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, the legendary transmitter of Dogen Zen to the US. Taigen is also probably the foremost western-born Soto Zen practitioner-scholar in the country (with many renowned Asian born translators, and more traditional “scholars” also making great contributions.)

So I went to sit with Taigen and the group he was leading who met weekly at a Catholic retreat in the heart of Chicago. They soon signed a lease on a new space, and opened their own center early this year (I was happy to design the window signage, for an old store front in Irving Park.) I’m trying to make it up once or twice a week, and though it isn’t really that far, with Chicago traffic or having to take two trains, it still takes me close to an hour to get there. Anyway, what an enormous boon to be able to practice this way in the midst of 21st century American urban existence.

I’ve also started a Zen sitting group at the School of the Art Institute, where I’m teaching, and this is enormously satisfying. This reimmersion in the focused study and practice of Zen is having direct results in my life. I can see it (I want to talk about this more next post). Now, I just need to find some income through summer, until fall semester starts…