88. Zen Priest & Householder
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Who is this Zen for?
Yes, you can practice alone —
sangha will survive.
No, this is not the beginning of a bad joke about a priest and a householder entering a bar. Though that certainly has happened a lot in history. No, this is about the anomalies and apparent contradictions that arise in the propagation of Zen in a hyper-secular society such as the good old USA, where a lay Zen priest, the very idea, lands with a thud, like the proverbial lead balloon. Another can of worms to open.
This issue has raised its head with furrowed brow again and again in the history of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) and its umbrella organization, the Silent Thunder Order (STO), and is sure to keep coming back like a bad penny, to coin another cliché, no pun intended. My role as guiding teacher and Zen priest has been the occasion, or the excuse, for mass defections of disgruntled senior students taking entire boards of directors with them, once in 2000 and again in 2010. So we are overdue for a repeat performance. And this is not an unknown issue at other Zen centers, if only in America.
Some feel that nowadays there is no more reason to have to have a physical Zen center, what with the advent of online meetings via Skype or Zoom, or whatever the yet-to-be-named inevitable successor applications arise as antithesis in the internet realm. Why pay for upkeep and maintenance of brick and mortar, not to mention supporting a priest? The entire world of retail, along with much of office space, is going virtual, after all. I must admit to a bias here, which you may interpret as selfish on my part, in that I have some skin in the game. A significant portion of my income — thankfully not a majority — is in the form of what is called, in IRS lexicon, a “minister’s household expense,” provided by donors to ASZC. I began receiving compensation for the first time in 2007, after formal transmission as a priest.
Let me address the personal dimension for a moment, as this is one of many examples of the friction that arises between the social and personal realms that I have modeled as nesting spheres. The choice of the word “nesting” lends a comfortable coloration to the association, like little birdies nesting in the tree, under the care of mommy and daddy birds, who bring them juicy worms. This analogy is not as off-base, or as quaint, as it may sound. Sangha, the Zen community, is our “dharma family” after all.
One reason that this issue comes bubbling up again to the surface of the pond that is the modern sangha, is partially that boards of directors are as impermanent as anything else. Corporate memory is ephemeral. Terms expire in a few years, BOD officers playing musical chairs in a game that most are neither trained to handle with equanimity, nor have the time and patience to become educated in governance of a 501c3.
All boards are widely acknowledged to be somewhat dysfunctional, especially for not-for-profit corporations. Member donors, who are usually paid nothing for their services, volunteer to help with administration of the very program that attracted them, i.e. Zen practice and meditation. But they often find that this duty, however well-intentioned on their part, is not what they came to Zen for. In fact, the sausage-making, as it is popularly caricatured, is precisely what they came to escape in daily life, or at least learn how to cope with on a more balanced basis. Thus, time on the board of directors, or its more demanding committee functions, is the number one burnout venue for earnest and erstwhile Zen practitioners. It is the third rail of Zen. At least in my experience of a half century.
One adverse element is meetings in and of themselves. The old Chinese adage: “Meetings are the bane of progress,” rings true. The accompanying stress is a recurrent surprise for participants. They cannot resolve the seeming contradiction that Zen should require such a level of humdrum. Conflicts arise as to apparently competing needs. Primarily the need to sustain a supportive communal practice, while minimizing turning Zen into just one more tiresome chore that adds to our personal stress rather than reducing it. This I call the “substitution effect,” one of many. Those doing yeomen service on the board, or in maintaining the facility, find that they are not meditating so much anymore, or as well as they used to. They begin to interpret their practice in terms of time they spend on intractable issues or trivial BOD matters, rather than on the cushion.
A quote from Master Dogen’s Jijuyu Zammai [Self-fulfilling Samadhi] may surprise with its relevance to what seems a modern malady:
Because earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles and pebbles all engage in buddha activity,
those who receive the benefit of wind and water caused by them
are inconceivably helped by the buddha’s guidance, splendid and unthinkable,
and awaken intimately to themselves.
This is the true point of the practice, more likely to occur in the zendo than the BOD room.
A bit later:
Grass trees and lands,
which are embraced by this teaching, together radiate a great
light, and endlessly expound the inconceivable, profound dharma.
Here is the fruit of the practice, found in the natural sphere, leapfrogging the social trappings. But Dogen is reminding us that all aspects of life, including even walls and tiles, are expounding the dharma impeccably at all times, for those who have the eyes to hear and the ears to see.
Further:
Grass trees and walls
bring forth the teaching for all beings,
common people as well as sages,
and they in accord extend this dharma
for the sake of grass trees and walls.
Not only is nature constantly preaching full-throated dharma, but the very walls of zendos and buildings that Zen teachers and communities raise, providing places dedicated to Zen practice, constitute direct manifestations of the “realm of self-awakening and awakening others,” another Dogen construction.
Achok Rinpoche, one of HH the Dalai Lama’s inner circle, visited ASZC as a guest speaker in 2004, at the invitation of one of my senior students, who is a major supporter of Dharamshala, their home in exile in India. This was shortly after we had moved into the whole building, tearing down the concrete block wall that divided what is now our commodious meditation hall, and renovated the zendo to reflect a Japanese-like simplicity of interior design. The venerable monk paused briefly after mentioning that “Dana is providing the place conducive to meditation…” As his twinkling eyes wandered over the prevailing white walls and natural wood trim of the zendo, he complimented us for our very nice environment. But, he said, in Tibet, everything is white “…so we like a little more color!” It got a big laugh, but also brought home the same message that Master Dogen is trying to convey.
We do not own the building and grounds ASZC occupies. When the opportunity to purchase arose, we were recovering from the second defection of the BOD. So the current officers did not have the bandwidth to take on the responsibility. Because we do not own the property, we frequently hear complaints about the landlord. The 100-year-old bungalows that we call our Zen home, joined by the concrete block cube we call our zendo, would probably qualify as a tear-down, in real estate terms. It would definitely not be a wise investment to put much capital into the existing facility. Another Chinese saying applies: “When the opportunity is there, the capital is missing. When the capital is there, the opportunity is missing. When both capital and opportunity are there, then I am missing. What a world!”
This blame game harks back to similar complaints in an ancient story. A monk groused to the head master that the rain was dripping in on him in zazen. The master’s response? “Move down.” Why waste a great deal of time and effort in propping up a building, whose destiny is to eventually fall down? Even Eiheiji is ultimately impermanent. Rather than focus on your Zen practice, and perhaps lose your opportunity to wake up in this lifetime. Those who complain about the rent, unsatisfactory upkeep on the part of the landlord, are missing the point, in this sense. They are also misinformed.
Our landlady has generously cut the rent in half repeatedly during hard times over the twenty-plus years that we have practiced in this location. She replaced the peaked gable roofs of the two bungalows, and has patched and finally re-engineered the flat roof of the zendo, after the heavy rains of last year. (Incidentally, all flat roofs tend to leak. Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous flat-roofed buildings all leak. You can’t fool Mother Nature for long. Water will find a way.) Our landlady’s support of our little enterprise amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in investments and concessions. She and her husband, who had me at the revelation that he is a jazz guitarist, are two of our biggest supporters, dollar for dollar. Those who would complain should remember that had we purchased the place, those big projects, with their big numbers, would have fallen in our laps, and decimated ASZC’s budget, instead of theirs. Of course, we have been good tenants as well. We have probably purchased the place a few times over.
So at the risk of compulsively repeating myself, let me remind all that the outer pomp and circumstance of Zen — the robes, the walls of the zendos, et cetera — are not for us. They are for them. We are losing sight of the societal mission of Zen. As Master Dogen speculated on returning from China, bringing Ch’an to Japan may amount to a true mission. Them includes Dogen, Bodhidharma, and everyone in between, back to the founder Shakyamuni. We are indebted to them. They opened the gate wide. It is not for us to close it. Wearing ridiculous robes pays due obeisance to the lineage.
“Them” also includes a local minister of a neighborhood church with a vital congregation, a long-time member and zazen practitioner who invited me to speak and initiate a program of meditation at the church. When I let him know that we are gingerly moving back toward in-person or hybrid practice program, he texted: “Sensei — thanks for the note about the zendo being open again. That’s wonderful news!” and: “Would you like to meet for coffee sometime after this week?” So that is the reason we have a Zen center, in a nutshell. Our dharma-opening verse chanted before a talk says it a bit differently:
The unsurpassed, profound and wond’rous Dharma
Is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas;
Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it —
May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s truth
If we can manage to take off our blinders so that we can actually see and hear the true dharma, another Dogenism, we should not have much trouble accepting and maintaining it. First things first. We might usefully recall the Three Minds, Sanshin in Japanese: Magnanimous, Nurturing and Joyous. Sanshinji is the name of Okumura Roshi’s temple, which by the way is the humble basement of his home. It is magnanimous to open your doors to others, nurturing to offer them a place to practice, and joyous to share the dharma. Of course, that last can be done rather efficiently online. But if you imagine that getting shed of the physical Zen center would be a move in the right direction, please imagine again. Setting aside that ASZC is also the training center for the affiliates of STO, for which we are caretakers. That vagabond world of homeless Zen is where we came from. Indulge a look in the rear-view mirror.
Moving to Atlanta in 1970, I took a hiatus from public practice to reconstitute my personal and professional life. Four years later, I began offering meditation at the largest Unitarian church in town. Every week, I would haul large trash bags full of sitting cushions — the familiar Japanese zafu — into the building, and carry them home after. To make room for sitting, I would have to clear the clutter and shove the donated furniture out of the way to clear the walls, and put it all back before leaving. Later others helped. This went on for years.
When we moved to a suburban home, the commute became unworkable. I made the mistake of offering zazen in our little bungalow. Not a happy balance of personal and social spheres, having the public showing up twice a week in your living room. In the intervening years before ASZC landed in Little Five Points, we sat in storefronts, loft studio space, and for a while, once again in the living room of our first purchased home, where we still live. All this wreaked a certain amount of havoc on normal life.
Those who think, as some have suggested, that we can just rent a hall when and if we need it, and otherwise all sit at home, have not been there and done that. They were not around to witness the downsides of the itinerant, floating zendo. They are unaware of the hundreds who came before and made it possible to just walk in the door and join us on that fateful day they found their way to the center.
It is not just for us that we practice. It is also for others. Arousing Bodhi Mind is inseparable from the Bodhisattva vow. Without a center, newcomers have no place to come to for face-to-face training. Remember your first time.
Without walls, you can forget about hosting retreats, let alone practice periods of thirty or ninety days, formal practice for credentialing the next generation of practice leaders and priests. But I know where these folks are coming from, and fundamentally agree. I will continue practicing no matter what. I do not need the robes. I do not personally need the Zen center to practice Zen. But others do.
To anyone finding themselves sliding down this particular slippery slope, why not just stay home? Stay away from the Zen center for another year or so, post-covid, and maybe they will discover why we bother. If engaging the administrative side — which I feel is the highest form of service to the sangha — is too stressful, simply stay off the board. Don’t join a committee. Focus on zazen.
Meanwhile, my undying gratitude for those who find it possible to make the commitment. To those who give unstintingly of their time and treasure to the cause of propagating genuine Zen meditation and buddha-dharma: “You are the real one” as Matsuoka Roshi would often say. Please do all you can to encourage yourself and others in Zen practice. It is the most a bodhisattva can do.
Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston
Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”
UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.
Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell
