Like a little duck in the ocean

In Zen practice we speak of “no gaining idea.” However, we obviously have something that draws us to practice and some aspiration that encourages us along this sometimes difficult and challenging path. This lovely little poem by the philosopher Donald C. Babcock, “The Little Duck,” is contrasted with a piece by Emerson. The two sides of practice are shown here — the energetic engagement in embodied life as well as the willingness to rest in the always present absolute.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-08-26-inquiry-flint-sparks

Dare to quit the platform,
plunge into the sublime seas,
dive deep and swim far,
so you shall come back
with self-respect,
with new power,
with an advanced experience,
that shall explain
and overlook the old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Little Duck
Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet
beyond the surf.
No, it isn’t a gull.
A gull always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles
in the swells.
He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over.
There is a great heaving in the Atlantic,
And he is a part of it.
He looks a little like a mandarin,
Or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree
But he has hardly enough above the eyes
to be a philosopher.
He has poise, however, which is what
philosophers must have.
He can rest while the Atlantic heaves,
because he rests in the Atlantic.
Probably he doesn’t know how large
the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.
And what does he do, I ask you.
He sits down in it.
He reposes in the immediate as if it were
infinity – which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
He has made himself a part of the
boundless,
by easing himself into it just where it
touches him.
I like the little duck.
He doesn’t know much.
But he has religion.
—Donald C. Babcock, 1947

Listening to the Cries of the World

We train to face what is, and not turn away out of fear. This is the practice of compassion. We train in the meditation with this general orientation as we face the wall: “Thank you very much, I have no complaints whatsoever.” This is the practice of courageous compassion. We learn to listen to the cries of the world, both all around us and inside of us. This is a fierce practice. As John Tarrant once said, “There are no circumstances under which it is wise to refuse life.” Most of our conditioning is a reflection of our habits of refusal.

W. S. Merwin speaks of the fierce practice in his poem,  “Thanks.”

Listen
With the night falling we are saying thank you
We are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
We are running out of the glass rooms
With our mouths full of food to look at the sky
And say thank you
We are standing by the water looking out
In different directions

Back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
After funerals we are saying thank you
After the news of the dead
Whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
In a culture up to its chin in shame
Living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

Over telephones we are saying thank you
In doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
Remembering wars and the police at the back door
And the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
In the banks that use us we are saying thank you
With the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
Unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

With the animals dying around us
Our lost feelings we are saying thank you
With the forests falling faster than the minutes
Of our lives we are saying thank you
With the words going out like cells of a brain
With the cities growing over us like the earth
We are saying thank you faster and faster
With nobody listening we are saying thank you
We are saying thank you and waving
Dark though it is

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-08-12-inquiry-flint-sparks

Searching for Hidden Treasure

There is a children's fable, I believe from Aesop's collection, about a farmer who told his children before he died that there was a hidden treasure somewhere on their farm. Unfortunately, they were not given the location before the old man died. The search for the hidden treasure and the meaning that emerged for the children who searched is the theme of this brief reflection.

Suzuki Roshi made a comment that nears on this search. Here are his words:
“Most of us study Buddhism as it were something that was already given to us. We think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha’s teachings like putting food in the refrigerator. Then when you want to study Buddhism we take the food out of the refrigerator and whenever you want it it is already there. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field and the garden. We put the emphasis on the ground…Usually we are not interested in the messiness or the bareness of the ground. Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But, if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and to cultivate it well. The Buddha’s teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it is grown and how to take care of it…The ground has no special shape or form, but all the forms arise from it. So, the most important thing for us is to take care of the ground.”

In addition, Rumi speaks to this same teaching in his poem, “The Pickaxe.”

Some commentary on I was a hidden treasure,
and I desired to be known: tear down

this house. A hundred thousand new houses
can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian

buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then

digging under the foundations.  With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done

without effort.  And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall down on its own.  The jewel treasure will be

uncovered, but it won’t be yours then.  The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,

the pick and shovel work.  If you wait and just
let it happen, you’d bite your hand and say,

“I didn’t do as I knew I should have.” This
is a rented house.  You don’t own the deed.

You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches

on torn clothing.  Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask? Eating
and drinking.  The heavy cloak of the body

is always getting torn.  You patch it with food,
and other restless ego-satisfactions.  Rip up

one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement.  You’ll see two glints in the dirt.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-08-19-inquiry-flint-sparks

Messy miracles

I just returned from spending a week teaching at the Cape Cod Summer Institute where my course was titled, "Growing Up and Waking Up: Applied Mindfulness and in Psychotherapy and Buddhist Practice." It was a good week with a great group of students. The Institute gave me a lovely gift calendar for the coming year with a quote from an Institute teacher for each month. Mine was the July quote. I had forgotten what I had sent when they asked for a small teaching many months ago. I opened the calendar and there it was:

We are all messy miracles, but we deny the miraculous when we identify only with the mess.—Flint Sparks

Looking at the calendar and reading the quote again, I had a chance to reflect on what this statement brought up for me now.  There is a commonly told story about an old Tibetan teacher who came to the West to teach.  He was meeting with a group of psychotherapists who were interested in the potentials for dharma and therapy to inform each other.  The Tibetan teacher asked the Westerners what kinds of problems their clients brought to them.  After a short conference the group said that generally they would say that some form of low self-esteem was common.  At first the Tibetan teacher didn’t understand what they were talking about.  The idea was foreign and the translation difficult, but eventually it finally sank in.  With this dawning awareness he replied with something like, “Ah, yes, low self-esteem.  I can see how that would be a source of suffering — and, also high self-esteem.”  Of course this was an important and very direct overturning of the therapist's ideas about mental well-being.  Maybe the problem was not the ever-changing level of esteem that required continual maintenance, but something about the sense of self that was the very source of the problem.

There is also the oft-quoted statement attributed to Suzuki Roshi when he supposedly said to a group of students, “You are perfect just like you are, and you could use a little improvement.”  This statement and the story above both came to mind when I read a brief quotation in an interview with Jack Kornfield in which he referenced a Zen Master as saying, “To be enlightened is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.”  This is a lovely way of suggesting profound self-acceptance beyond conditions; beyond good and bad, right and wrong, achievement and failure.  Kornfield went on to say, “...the spiritual path is certainly not about the perfection of personality.  If it is about perfecting anything, it's about the perfection of love.”   His refinement of his statement points to our fundamental practice of zazen which has nothing to do with perfection of our personality or of the “self” to which we cling.

This is the paradox and the fruit of practice — profound acceptance of ourselves.  This does not mean that we don't work diligently to respond to what is needed, both on the outside and the inside.  However, truly seeing "what is needed" and acting as an "appropriate response," is wisdom and compassion in action, not the result of personal improvement.  This is simply wholehearted practice.

The very idea of “perfectibility” suggests a “completeness.” Finishing something might apply to a “thing” but not to our life, which is always changing and has no final completion, even in death.  When one looks out over a vast landscape or the ocean there is the appearance of an “edge” or boundary.  We call this a horizon.  But, a horizon is an illusion, just as perfectibility and self are both illusions.  If the observer moves, the horizon moves.  There is not fixed edge or place that one can approach and finally claim to have reached “the horizon.”  Peter Herschock uses this image to speak of three horizons that are relinquished as we realize freedom from anxiety about non-perfection.

The first horizon is for Readiness.  In an ordinary sense we find ourselves ready for certain things and events in life, and decidedly ill-prepared for others.  As we live our way into freedom we relinquish all horizons for readiness.  Instead, we manifest the potential to respond with something more like, “Ah, now this.”

In addition, we find that as we practice, ready for what comes, we also relinquish horizons for Relevance.  What we habitually and automatically attend to and valorize as important opens further with practice to reveal our unbound interdependence on, and with, all things. Every moment is relevant. Every relationship is an expression of relevance.  There is nothing to discard or dismiss.  We are invited into intimacy with all things, as Dogen suggested. Once again, we find ourselves meeting each moment as, “Yes, this.”

The third horizon that is relinquished with this non-anxiety about non-perfection is the horizon for Responsibility.  If we come to realize that we intimately arise simultaneously with all things, then there is nothing that we can sever from this moment and turn away from.  Sometimes we disconnect from ourselves and others. Sometimes we easily and warmly connect. We develop patterns in our relationships and we can learn to turn toward these habits patterns with Big Mind.  It is not that a separate self could be responsible for everything and everyone.  That would be an impossibility. This is the ordinary burden from which we shrink and the project we face if we believe in perfectibility. However, as the great teacher Uchiyama Roshi said, “...in our daily lives we have to discriminate, but what we must not forget is the fundamental attitude grounding this discrimination: everything we encounter is our life.  This is the attitude of Big Mind.” [From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life, edited by Thomas Wright, 1998, p. 47].  Finally, we respond with, “And even this.”

Maybe this is love’s true function.  When we relax our habitual thought patterns and allow our hearts to be touched, what would we reject as unworthy? Wouldn't we, instead, discover that we are naturally ready for what is offered next, and seeing it all as relevant meet it with responsibility? This is profound acceptance beyond self, beyond anxiety about perfectibility.  This is a humble and wholehearted, “Now this.” This is simple human maturity.

Remember, We are all messy miracles, but we deny the miraculous when we identify only with the mess.

512 Hours at the Serpentine Gallery in London

512 Hours

Marina Abramovic at the Serpentine Gallery

This Tuesday, August 5, there will be no Inquiry at Appamada. I will be teaching at the Cape Cod Summer Institute all week and Peg is away enjoying much-needed rest and connection with family in Chicago. I offer this somewhat lengthy piece to you as a personal reflection on my own Inquiry that occurred at the Serpentine Galleries in London’s Hyde Park this past Saturday, May 2. But first, some context for my experience.

As many of you know, I was asked to travel to London this past weekend to officiate at a memorial/funeral for one of my dear friends, students, and teachers, Carrie Tuke. Carrie was many things in this world, including a Hakomi trainer and therapist, an amazing yoga teacher, a fine friend to many of us, and a wonderful partner to Mark Gray, her husband. For some years, she worked at the Helen Bamber Foundation, an organization that offers “protection and practical support to survivors of human rights violations.” This is an eloquent description of their work you will find on their website. In truth, what it actually means is that Carrie worked with people seeking asylum in the UK, mainly women, who have been victims of trafficking, torture, and other forms of indescribable cruelty in other countries. Carrie was an elegant, courageous, generous, kind and uncompromising woman. I spoke about Carrie and Mark in our last Inquiry (July 29). I also posted the poems and marriage vows on my blog (www.flintsparks.org) as well as Appamada’s blog. The audio of the Inquiry will be posted once Peg and I are home.

On Friday morning, August 1, the chapel at Golders Green Crematorium was literally overflowing for Carrie’s service. Although hesitant at first, Mark was able to speak (with our friend Josh at the ready in case he could not make it through), as did her longtime yoga teacher, John. A lovely woman from the Foundation, TJ, spoke eloquently about the impact of Carrie’s work, and a fellow Hakomi trainer, Trudy, reflected on her amazing personhood and then read the poem, The Unbroken, which I included in last week’s Inquiry. Among the speakers, a musician friend, John, came forward with his saxophone and played an extended “C,” a note for Carrie. He invited us all to hum the note together. He then played a spirited and heartfelt piece filling the grand old chapel as we hummed along. When the ceremony was complete, we all exited to beautiful gardens behind the crematorium on a glorious sunny morning. Eventually we made our way to Hampstead Heath, a large and ancient park on one of the highest spots in London. Family, friends, colleagues, and clients enjoyed time, food and tea with each other at Kenwood House. And then the day was over.

While having tea that afternoon with those who had come to the service, I spoke with Josh and Trudy, the leaders of the Nothing Special sangha in Lancaster. They happened to mention that they had gone to an exhibit the previous day featuring a new work by Marina Abramovic. I was stunned. Abromovic is an artist of immense courage and creativity. Her last major piece at MOMA in New York, The Artist is Present, was incredible — she sat for three months, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, facing whoever came and sat before her. The trailer is linked above. To find that she had a new piece and that I might actually get to see her was astounding. The new piece at the Serpentine Galleries is titled 512 Hours. Here is a description in her own words which I would suggest you watch: 512 Hours. Just as I usually offer a brief reflection to begin our inquiry sessions, it is important to listen to Marina speak about directly and simply about this piece. In it you will hear things that are resonant with our Zen practice although this is an artistic experiment and performance, not Zen.

But, do imagine that she is describing an intensive meditation retreat. She says she begins with empty space. The doors open at 10 AM and close at 6 PM. The galleries are not open on Mondays. Every other day she is there. There are lockers in the outer entry area and each person is asked to surrender their watches, phones, and anything else that might connect them to the outside. Each person is given noise-canceling headphones to wear the entire time so they are immersed in total silence. She says, “They arrive in the space with nothing. I am there for them. They are my living material. I am their living material. And from this nothing, something may or may not happen. It’s a journey. It’s an experiment. I could succeed or I could fail. Let’s see what will happen.” The following is just a little of what happened for me. This is what it was like for me to come forward and “take the seat” as I ask you to do in Inquiry each week.

I was accompanied that day by a friend, Justin, who had been a Hakomi student in Sheffield and who is currently a Principal Lecturer at the Westminster Centre for Resilience at the University of Westminster in London. We found an available locker, unburdened ourselves of things, and received our headphones. Everything went silent and we entered the space. There were three large, white, museum-like rooms. The central room in which we first entered had a low riser (maybe a foot high) in the center, shaped somewhat like a cross. There were a few people standing in stillness at various places in the little “stage.” People would come and go. There was a row of about 10 chairs along the back wall around which you enter and leave, and these were filled with people simply sitting in stillness.

Along the other three walls were small tables, about the size of an old TV tray, with a simple chair at each table. On the table was a pile of mixed uncooked rice and lentils. There was a small stack of white paper and a pencil. People were sitting and counting, sorting, or arranging the piles of rice and lentils.

In the room to the right there were a number of cots, arranged randomly. Participants would lie down and an assistant would tuck them in, elegantly and gently repeating the same motion over their faces as they were invited to close their eyes; a very tender gesture. Each person could stay as long as they wanted. Sometimes you could barely make out snoring in the muted silence.

The room to the left was primarily for what I would call walking meditation. People would do very slow walking from one end of the room to the other, turn around and repeat the path. On one wall there were more chairs with saturated colored squares on the wall in front of each chair — red, yellow or blue — about two feet square. This is where I started, sitting in front of a deeply royal blue square, slipping into a familiar space of zazen, staring at the wall. I felt at home. Behind me people were walking, just as they do during an open period of zazen. Only there was one important difference. When I arrived and say down, Marina was walking with one woman, holding her hand, as they very intentionally moved together slowly across the room with everyone the others. She remained in that room for some time, tenderly releasing one person and then connecting with another. As one woman stood still at the end of the room waiting to walk, Marina came extremely close to her and it appeared that she simply smelled her. Other participants would sometimes join each other, holding hands or walking together closely. Eventually, they would part.

Only in retrospect did I realize that I began with sitting and walking, entering this ambiguous and highly charged space, in ways that were familiar to me. Safety first. Habits organize experience. After sitting for awhile, I returned to the room with the busy bees sorting and counting grains of rice and lentils and did what I also do well — I went to work. Another safe haven. Another habit highlighted. When an assistant silently gestured for me to take a seat I opened one ear of my headphones for her to suggest that I might count the grains of rice. I sat for some time totally immersed in my task, making hash marks in the classic clumps of 5, covering the page, all for no reason other than to engage wholeheartedly in the task.

Once I felt like it was time to do something else, I could see that Justin was sitting in the line of chairs in the central room. I walked up onto the riser and stood in silence and stillness for just a few minutes and then the chair next to Justin became empty, so I sat down next to him. I immediately and gently leaned into him. Our arms and shoulders touched. It was very powerful to feel the simple, warm proximity of another in the deep silence, surrounded by so many people. We sat together for a while, then moved on, exploring the rooms and coming together again shortly to gesture silently that it was time to go. We exited, took off our headphones, retrieved our belongings from our lockers, and walked out into Hyde Park.

But, as I was leaving, I found that my locker was blocked. Marina had followed a pair of women out of the performance space (she broke the rules?) and had her headphones off and was talking quietly to them (more broken rules!). My guess is that this was a mother and her daughter. The mother was elderly and in a wheelchair. Marina had spent some time with her in the performance/practice space making sure she could experience what it had to offer. She was apparently seeing her out and appeared engaged with her in a very kind and generous way. They shifted slightly so I would get to my locked but we did not talk (I keep the rules!!).

This is a brief narrative of what happened on the outside with some references to what I was beginning to detect on the inside. If you are still reading this long account at this point, I will now say a few more things about what happened on the inside. This furthered my “Inquiry” and this is more of my sheepish confession — my avowing of what emerged in that space of “nothing.”

First of all, just like every new student, I wanted to be chosen. I wanted the famous artist who I admire to walk with me, to see me, to hold my hand, to do anything that would indicate that I was chosen or special or even there. I didn’t actually think these things explicitly at first, but they were there, lurking under the surface, and the longer I remained in the container of the space, the louder they became in the profound silence. I even wanted her assistants to be kind to me like they were with others, ushering them to a chair, onto the stage, or taking them hand-in-hand to walk for awhile. The space and the energy revealed the primal, unrelenting longing to be chosen. I did not interact with Marina, she never moved toward me, no assistant did anything except guide me to count the rice, and I never did lie on the beds. Why lie down? Isn’t there always something to do, and how was I going to “get somewhere” or attract my longed-for connection by lying down and resting? I pushed myself to continue. More habit in action, relentlessly expressing itself in the ongoing unfolding of experience.

I was being softened by the experience — opened and tenderize. Then came the shame. As all of this began to reveal itself, not only my totally predictable habits, but also the underlying child-like motivations, I felt incredibly vulnerable and tender. This is what I see in your eyes when you come up in Inquiry or sit in practice discussion with me. Tears came to my eyes as I sat with my friend Justin and simply watched the others. I could see everyone else doing whatever they were doing, propelled by whatever habits of conditioning motivated them, all moving or standing, sleeping or walking, working diligently for no purpose, touching each other shyly, hoping and longing, and I would assume, creating endless stories about it all just as I am now. And this is how it is all the time, with everyone. This is what I see as I sit and look out as we sit together in the zendo. This is what you bring to me as we sit with our small groups in practice discussion, or gather in Inquiry and watch the revelation of each person’s tender heart and questioning mind. The beauty of a meditation intensive, and this particular artistic experiment, is that they both offer the kind of space in which we get to see it all, to inquire deeply, to turn towards it all instead of turning away, and when we do turn away, we get to learn more about what we are turning from and what we are turning towards. Ultimately, nothing is hidden. All that is required is that we are given forms as opportunities — zendo forms or artistic gallery forms – and then to surrender ourselves to them so we can experience surrender itself, the only entrance into grace. And when it is necessary, we break the forms, because mindful care sometimes requires that we make conscious decisions to step aside and meet someone who needs us in a way that is fresh and completely now. This intimacy deepens the waking, the opening, the learning, and the increasing willingness to face what is.

We start with nothing. Through shared practice we decide to be there for each other. We are living material for each other, always. Something may or may not happen. But without a practice of this “nothing” we will never understand the “great matter” of birth and death. Tenderized by Carrie’s death, being greeted intimately by so many grieving friends, holding the space for a powerful service, weary from travel, I entered the Abromovic experience raw, shaky, and grasping. In that space I encountered primitive human longing, real fear, immense peace, cutting shame, profound compassion, and simple curiosity.

Marina says at the end of her description of 512 Hours, “This is the journey. This is the experiment. I can succeed or I can fail. Let’s see what will happen.” My journey these past few days has clearly revealed some real regrets about my failures over these 62 years alongside deep gratitude for what could be thought of as my successes during that time. Either way, this is my journey, irrevocably intertwined with yours. This is the experiment of simply living a life — my life, our life — life. Remember the line from the Lotus Sutra, “Only a buddha and a buddha can understand it.” Let’s see what will happen.

Happiness is Love

I felt a little odd coming to Inquiry and reading the NY Times to the group, but that was my source of inspiration and it held the teachings that touched me. I connected two articles from the Sunday edition of the NY Times and a review from another source of George Valliant's latest book, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. The first article, “The End of Genius,” by Joshua Wolf Shenk (July 20), speaks deeply to interdependence and creativity.  Arthur C. Brooks wrote eloquently in “Love People, Not Pleasure,”  (July 18) about inverting the American formula "Love things, use people." All the evidence says we are to “Love people, use things.” And these two articles led me further to the conclusion of the Grant Study. After 75 years of rigorous research and $20 million spent, Valliant says the conclusion comes down to five words: “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-07-22-inquiry-flint-sparks

The Third Body

I spoke in Inquiry (July 29) about the three bodies — Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Dharmakaya — how all of the manifestations of awakening are evident in these two poems and the connecting vows from Mark and Carrie's wedding. These are intimate expressions of universal truths.

The Third Body

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
At this moment to be older, or younger, or born
In any other nation, or any other time, or any other place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
He sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body that they share in common.
They have promised to love that body.
Age may come; parting may come; death will come!
A man and a woman sit near each other;
As they breathe they feed someone we do not know,
Someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

by Robert Bly, from Eating the Honey of Words, 1999

After reading and reflecting on this first poem, I suggested that everyone say these vows together as if they were speaking from the Buddha within to the parts that manifest in our own bodies:

In you (focusing on yourself), I recognize a gift.
I accept this offering
and embrace our coming together.
To you I offer my
presence, respect, love and kindness.
I trust what is, and what is becoming,
in the constant and the transforming.
May we live this mystery with lightness and joy.

by Carrie and Mark (2008)

After our chanting and reflections, I then offered this Sufi poem as a further teaching on the fullness of the three bodies:

The Unbroken

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound,
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside,
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

by Rashani (Sufi poet)

This is an image I captured of Mark and Carrie in the recent Lake District retreat just this past May.

Nothing is Wrong

There is actually nothing wrong. There are things that are unsatisfying and seem to be lacking. There are things that we do not prefer and that may seem broken or harsh. But "wrong" is an opinion, not Truth. In addition, nothing is hidden. Nothing is being withheld, kept as secret, or special beyond our reach. However, the peace and beauty that abides in all things can be obstructed by these opinions and perceptions. With the dualistic, opinion-based, limited perspective mind we can only find joy in those objects that are more or less in accord with our egoistic makeup — a very narrow view.  In this process we attempt to substitute pleasure for true joy and freedom.  True joy goes beyond desire and offers us fullness and abundance.

Scrubbed clean by the sawn wind, the night mist clears. Dimly seen, the blue mountains form a single line.—Dogen

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-07-08-inquiry-flint-sparks

Studying Our Stories

A highly cultivated person studies the stories of their lives — the self-centered dream. By studying the dream of our lives we are liberated from the dream. The story is not lost or eradicated, but transformed into wisdom by letting go of our attachment to the story and studying what we have let go of.  Through practice we can learn to let go of everything and diligently contemplate the story we just let go of.

Here is the ancient story of Baizhang's Fox and the Inquiry that followed. In it we examine what it means to study cause and effect, to not ignore our stories, and to not obscure the essentials of human consciousness.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-06-10-inquiry-flint-sparks

Reproach and Re-Approach in Zen Practice

In practice we step back from identification with conditioned states and then turn toward them with compassion and intimacy. We "reproach" them and “re-approach” them.

Inquiry recording around these practice ideas:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-06-03-inquiry-flint-sparks

Natural Great Perfection

This unutterable space that is the nature of things,

the apogee of view that is natural perfection —

listen as I explain my understanding

of this sole immanent reality. 

This is the way that the 14th century Tibetan mystic and meditation master Longchempa begins his poetic treatise on Dzogchen, the practice of the “Great Perfection.” These teachings point the way to absolute liberation beyond all concepts, similar to the radical teachers of Zen. This is the text we used in our recent [May 2014] Appamada residential Intensive. The text was divided into four “themes”: absence, openness, spontaneity, and unity. Longchempa goes into great detail to demonstrate the liberated view from each perspective, how to practice meditation from that view, how our conduct is shaped if we live our way into this view, and how ultimately one sees the unity of all phenomena by practicing in this way.

Needless to say, these are powerful teachings that require ongoing study and practice to penetrate fully. On the final day of our retreat which was held at Red Corral Ranch, a retreat facility in the hills west of Austin, we walked the labyrinth together. As we entered the empty space of the labyrinth, we were not sure what would be released, revealed, or received. The only question was, “will you walk?” The way was open as each person stepped onto the path, each participant following another toward the center, the way in being the same as the way out. Spontaneously, we found our individual rhythms even as we walked as one. The experience of walking and navigating the way opened to each person in their own unique way, even though we were engaged in one shared activity. The Heart Sutra says, “Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.” Practicing in this way we can realize that the solid beings we take ourselves to be are actually contingent, ever-changing, and temporary phenomena. At one point I stepped off the labyrinth for a brief moment and captured this image which seemed to reflect the undivided nature of form and emptiness.

Many of the participants reported the experience to be deeply moving and revealing. Listening to their reflections I was reminded of the final lines of Marie Howe’s poem, Annunciation:

 … only able to endure it by being no one and so

specifically myself I thought I’d die

from being loved like that. 

Each person was specifically themselves, and yet fluid and interdependent with everyone else, even as we engaged this ordinary activity of walking together under the trees in the cool early morning. And every ordinary activity can be an act of generosity and love when we awake to the natural great perfection of each moment.

The Light of Practice

Following my reflections on the retreats in the UK, this is the first Inquiry back at Appamada on my return. I spoke more about the teachings from Quaker Faith and Practice and the deep resonances with Zen practice.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-05-13-inquiry-flint-sparks

A final walk

I just finished leading three retreats in the UK and am headed home tomorrow morning. We began with a 5-day residential retreat at Swarthmoor Hall, the "cradle" of the Quaker movement in the Lake District where George Fox established his home in the 17th century with the help of Margaret Fell. After the residential retreat, I traveled to Sheffield and met with the Nothing Special sangha. We enjoyed a wonderful day of sitting, study and Enquiry (the correct spelling here in England). I then lead one-day Introduction to Zen event for them, once again in a very old and venerable Quaker meeting house in the heart of Sheffield. This was followed by a 3-day, non-residential retreat back north in Lancaster hosted at the Quaker meeting house by the Nothing Missing sangha. The Quaker houses in Sheffield and Lancaster both date from the  17th century.  It was a curious thing to find myself over and over again in these very old sites where people have been sitting in silence for so many years.  Looking through the book of Quaker Faith and Practice, I came upon so many teachings from Quakers who, through the centuries, reflected precisely the teachings we find in Zen—discover your own deepest truths, turn toward each moment and each relationship to reveal the "light" (your true nature), do not rely on scriptures but trust immediate experience to open in silence, sit with others, allow your small self to drop away in silent practice, and turn your energies to serving others who need help. It was an amazingly rich time for me and I am grateful for all the people who worked so hard to organize the retreats and who took such good care of the participants. It was a grace-filled two weeks. This morning, on my final day before flying home, Josh Gifford and Trudy Johnston, the leaders of the sangha in Lancaster, took me on a walk along the tidal flats of the Irish Sea at Silverdale. The cold and blustery wind was in our faces as we walked.  Threatening showers approached from the northern hills of the Lake District. The vastness of this seascape and wildness of the landscape was inspiring, just as wholehearted practitioners had been an inspiration to me in the retreats over the past two weeks.  The three of us walked in gratitude for all the people who, over 300 years ago, would walk many miles along these same shores in order to meet other friends to hear George Fox speak. The wildland, the receding swirls of the tides, and the gray sky all came together as a grounded testament to the dedication and silence of those early Quakers. And as we walked, I remembered walking on the western shore of Japan with my Zen teacher, Blanche Hartman many years ago, looking out over the Sea of Japan toward China, in the footsteps of our Zen ancestors who would walk on pilgrimage to meet a true teacher or, like Dogen, who crossed that very sea, seeking the Way. May we all discover our Way, together.

Holding to Self Centered Thoughts

At Appamada, we use the Four Practice Principles as one of our foundational chants. This is a poetic version of the Four Noble Truths and was used originally by Joko Beck's Ordinary Mind sangha. It is a clear and multilayered teaching, functioning as all good chants do by connection us energetically as we chant and inviting us to continually take the teachings deeper into our body. This is the verse:

Caught in the self-centered dream, only suffering;

Holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream.

Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher;

Being just this moment, compassion's way.

The first line is clear and powerful. When caught in our self-involved narratives and resulting embodiment, we separate ourselves from others and from the world and suffer as a result. The second line is often not taken so intimately and powerfully, so I wanted to say a few things about its possible meaning. This was the focus of the Inquiry session linked below this brief post.

When we chant “Holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream,” we are pointing to all the ways we maintain and continually recreate the virtual reality in which we live. It does not refer solely to mental thought. It also means “embodiment” — how can we hold our attitudes and personal views without holding our body in a certain way? The Four Foundations of Mindfulness as taught by the Buddha clearly link the body and breath, the ways we incline toward and away from life through our preferences (attachment, aversion, and confusion), the emergence of emotion-thought (the whole display of our reactive mind), and the establishment of constructed narratives and objects of the mind (the stories and concepts that we take for reality). Actually, there is no duality when we say “body” and “thoughts.” They are all of one piece. They arise together and pass away together. Each of the four foundations shapes and is shaped by the others (which are actually not “other”). The invitation in Zen practice is to engage the body in certain ways, through the forms of practice, in order to awaken to these embodied habits without resorting to the more common habit of fixing. Based on our curative fantasies we hope that practice will help us transcend our life rather than helping us learn to live wholeheartedly the life we actually have. I hope you will benefit from this brief reflection and the Inquiry that followed.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-04-22-inquiry-flint-sparks

Vulnerability and Nothing at Stake

This week I was reflecting on how we consistently misunderstand vulnerability and miss its promise. When we see it as weakness or brokenness, our energies move toward management, reactivity, or even shame. However, vulnerability actually points to the very heart of interdependence and impermanence. The experience of vulnerability in a human body is the reality of dukkha. So vulnerability is another way of speaking about the Buddha's Three Marks of Existence.  We are vulnerable because we arise together with all beings. We shape each other and are shaped through our relationships with everything. And, when we can drop our clinging to the illusion of a stable, individual self, we find we no longer have anything at stake. Nothing to defend. We have the opportunity to enter the flow of existence with nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Here are my brief reflections and the intimate Inquiry that ensued.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-04-15-inquiry-flint-sparks

Student, Teachers and Confidence in Practice

Below is a link to the recording of our Appamada Inquiry session from April 1, 2014. I wanted to speak about the challenges of being a teacher and a student, and the inevitable tangles of these important and difficult relationships. I drew heavily from the words of Zen teacher and friend Norman Fischer. You can read his article I quote from in the Spring 2014 issue of Buddhadharma magazine [“No Teacher of Zen” p. 48.] [Here's a similar article from 2019 in Lion's Roar]. This Inquiry session includes a very tender dialogue between me and my teaching partner, Peg Syverson.

Inquiry recording:
https://soundcloud.com/appamada-zen/2014-04-01-inquiry-flint-sparks

Just As I Am

Dear Friends,

Several years ago I was invited to write a short piece about my spiritual life; a vignette illustrating a significant turn in my spiritual path. This is what I wrote. The story became more important and more intimate than I had anticipated, but this is how writing—and practice—often goes. If we are willing to offer ourselves fully to it, it can take on a life of its own, and we are often changed as a result. For those of you not raised in a traditionally Southern Christian family, the specifics of the hymn and the service may have little meaning. However, I hope you will find something that resonates within the larger story.

I remember sitting in the front pew of East Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday morning as a young boy, watching my grandfather preach. When he finished and it was time for the invitation, he would ask us to join in singing the old hymn, “Just As I Am.” The church was too old, too small, and too poor to have a Minister of Music, so he would point us to the right page in the hymnal and we would sing along as he spoke during the chorus to those in the congregation who were ripe for conversion. I was a serious little boy, having grown up in the Southern Baptist Church, and I was always moved by that song and the earnest request of my grandfather, or any preacher, who was suggesting that this was a life-saving opportunity—the pinnacle of spiritual transformation—to come forward and profess your faith in Jesus Christ and thus to be assured of salvation.

The music was emotional and solemn: “Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood, was shed for me, and that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” The invitation touched that place in me, and I am sure in many others, that longed to be called into a relationship in which we would be fully seen, completely accepted, and infinitely loved. Only God was capable of that we were told, and if we were willing to come to him "just as I am," all would be well. This was all fine and good during the Sunday morning service, but in Sunday School the very next week, the story mysteriously changed. Apparently I wasn't OK "just as I am." In fact, it was probably a good idea that I should actually offer a “plea” to be forgiven for who I was. I could “come home,” but there were rules in this house and entry into the Kingdom had a big price. The truth slowly dawned; being seen was a bit risky, being accepted was definitely going to be conditional, and being loved “just as I am” finally seemed impossible. After all, I knew I was different. I was gay.

I was a really good boy. I did what I was told. I was polite and smart. I had my Perfect Attendance in Sunday School pins and I was a Royal Ambassador. I memorized the 23rd Psalm and repeated it in my father's Sunday School class when I was five-years-old, and was baptized when I was six. I knew what it took to make it in this world of religion and it meant following the rules and pleasing the big people. I knew I could do that and I was good at it. The only trouble was, I had to maintain certain secrets in order to keep it up. Of course, I also noticed that most of the other people in church had their secrets too, but one of the rules we shared was not to notice. It became clear that looking good was sometimes more important than being good, so I became good at that. Over time, the hidden parts grew too large, the pleasing became too much a burden, and the disconnection too great. I left the church, but "Just As I Am" did not leave me. It kept working on me. I became a Psychologist and practiced as a psychotherapist. I dedicated my life to the relief of suffering in others and in particular I was devoted to helping people find a way to accept themselves, just exactly as they were. If change was possible, this was the starting place. I studied, trained, and practiced. I found my place in the field of Behavioral Medicine, with a specialty in cancer care, working in hospitals and cancer treatment centers around the country. These were real life-saving opportunities, or at least life-affirming and healing opportunities. But one big thing was missing - a spiritual path. Psychology only went so far, and these patients were facing much more than passing anxieties or depressions. They were not just struggling in their marriages or fighting with their children. These people were facing the possibility of an foreshortened life and they were living with pain and suffering that was very apparent. I needed spiritual help in my own life and new tools to support my patients. I also needed a break.

Work in cancer care can be demanding, so I finally took a vacation to Hawaii, hiking the beautiful and rugged Na Pali trail on the north coast of Kauai with a friend. Along with the needed supplies to sustain us on our trek, I took along a copy of the Dhammapada, one of the earliest texts of the Buddha's collected teachings. The eleven-mile hike along the narrow trail to our campsite was demanding but the scenery was unbelievably inspiring. The combination of fear and awe left me in a rare state as I finally sat on that remote beach in the Kalalau Valley reading the unfamiliar words of this ancient eastern teacher. Ordinary life had dropped away as I traversed the switchbacks through the hanging valleys along the jagged coast. As I walked, I was held up by the vast sky above me and called forward by the seemingly endless ocean reaching out to the horizon. Something true was being revealed to me in the raw power of nature and more subtly on the pages of the slim volume I carried in my backpack. Here I was, just as I am, without much to prop me up or fall back on, no one to impress and nothing to hide. I stood naked under the waterfall to take my shower, rested in the shade of the rainforest canopy to eat my meals, and took walks along the beach with the shorebirds scurrying along beside me as my companions.

When I returned, I began to slowly find my way along a new spiritual path. This landscape was characterized by mindful awareness, profound acceptance, and deep gratitude for all that is. I studied and learned all I could about the Buddha's teachings. I came to see that his only concern was the cause of suffering and the relief of suffering he saw around him. That was what I was interested in and what my patients needed - relief from suffering. I meditated and went to retreats. I found a mature teacher to guide me and friends to accompany me along the way. I started a meditation group, founded a Zen center, was ordained as a Priest, spent time in a training monastery, and practiced in Japan. Eventually I allowed a good bit of the ancient Asian forms of practice to fall away. Now I teach this same freedom from suffering, just as I am, in this body, at this time, in this culture, under these circumstances, right here in Austin.

And along the way, I turned back to the actual teachings of Jesus and discovered what the young boy could not have seen; that this freedom was what the Jesus story had been about all along. I now understood that the yearning to respond to that “call”—to be seen, to be accepted, and to be loved unconditionally—was a universal desire, not a Christian or Buddhist desire. Everyone wants to be “saved,” no matter what their spiritual tradition; saved from a disconnected life that is not their own. What was touched as I sat singing that song of invitation was the soft spot in all of us, and it was this tender place that Jesus and Buddha had recognized and met with their lives. They responded as compassionate healers and wise teachers, and their kindness has made a profound difference in the world over the past two millennia. As a result, I now have the opportunity to live a life of truth - just as I am - held in that radiant light of wise care that these great teachers demonstrated in their lives. And you have that same opportunity—just as you are.

Horizonless Intimacy

This is a piece I wrote while teaching in Ireland. Recently, I have been drawn back to this image and these reflections because the perspective of “horizons,” those apparent limits we live with, and “intimacy,” the stance of awakening presence, are so important in spiritual practice. I hope this small story touches something intimate for you and opens your horizons.



I captured this image as I took an early morning walk along the beach in Bray, Ireland (County Wicklow) this past Monday morning (7/28/08). I was looking across the Irish Sea as the sun made its way up through the clouds. If I would have been able to see beyond the horizon where the sea and the sky appear to meet, I would have found northern Wales on the other shore. In fact, on the previous afternoon while walking along another stretch of beach just south of Bray near Newcastle I ran upon a granite marker tucked among the boulders of the seawall protecting the railroad that passed nearby. On the opposite side of the railway from the nearly hidden marker was an abandoned and decaying building. The marker indicated that it was from this site and this tiny station that underwater telegraph cables were first laid beginning in the late 1880s, connecting Ireland and Wales. These connections were in use through the early 1930s. What happened then? I suppose technology changed what was possible. Horizons for communication were extended and expanded.

If my view across the Irish Sea could have extended even further that morning, beyond the Welch border, I would have encountered the midlands of England where I had just spent the previous two weeks teaching and walking on the moors of Derbyshire. Further still and the English Channel would have come into view and then the Netherlands, France, and the whole European continent. Where would it have ended? With a higher or more complete view, when obstructions or limitations are released, when horizons vanish, what can be seen? Apparently there is no end to the great view of a liberated mind, which I am only imagining, even while my particular human senses are, of course, quite limited.

These past three weeks have been very concentrated for me—many days of teaching and very deep encounters. I worked with a number of wonderful people who were wholeheartedly offering themselves to a process of assisted self-discovery in mindfulness. They were curious about what they could see and what horizons they might explore as their self-identifications relaxed into the more diffuse awareness and warmth of intimacy. In my reading this morning, I ran across this brilliant statement by the late Irish poet John O'Donohue: "In the human face infinity becomes personal."

As I turned my attention to the vastness of the morning sky, into the cold wind, and toward the glistening sea last Monday, my awareness expanded and opened, inviting the unbound possibilities of my heart and mind to know themselves more fully. In the very next moment, in the reflected light of that same morning sun as I turned and looked into the eye of my friend Donna with whom I was walking, that vastness became personal, close, and alive. This is also what I saw in the faces of the participants in the retreats over these past three weeks. In the reflected presence they offered to each other, they began to see their own brilliance and fullness, flaws and limitations, all perfect because they were whole. This is the same infinitely transformative potential I see in the faces of each person who brings themselves forward in our Inquiry Groups, who come to practice discussion, and who sit in the zendo every day. We offer ourselves to each other so we can remember our vulnerable humanness and, in the bargain, get a glimpse of the divine. “In the human face infinity becomes personal.” What are the limits of this liberating intimacy? Our spiritual ancestors suggest that it is boundless. Let's turn to face each other again and again, and in that reflected presence, discover this truth to be our own.