The Zen Center of Pittsburgh is once again participating with various other Buddhist organizations in the Pittsburgh area for the annual celebration of Vesak (or Vesakha). This celebration is to commemorate events of significance to Buddhists of all traditions: The birth, enlightenment and the passing away of Gautama Buddha. Please see the article below for more information and join us for this worldwide celebration.

By Rev. Kyoki Roberts - Read prior articles: Article 1; Article 2

Last month I talked about the "waking up" defining that as fully engaging in the present moment bringing both compassion and wisdom to bear. When fully engaged in our lives, we drop away the concept of self and other. We are not viewing the world from the side of the everyday reality nor are we slipping into a state of mind where it is all One. Instead there is a dynamic functioning that jumps over the Relative and Absolute view of the world. This jumping over is not something that you can rationally decide to do. Instead we practice it by beginning and ending our day sitting zazen and then taking that into everyday activities. It is these activities of daily life that allow for the interaction between student and teacher.

The most important, really the only tool a teacher has at her/his disposal, is his/her own practice. The teacher displays her/his practice by just going through the day. After morning sitting there is a bowing and chanting service. Everything we need to exist is being supplied by the universe. Human beings as well as other sentient and non-sentient beings are gifting their lives to us. We bow to Shakyamuni Buddha who taught us this practice, to our teachers who have dedicated their lives to handing down their understanding, to all those people known and unknown who have taken care of us, and to all those beings supporting our life. We bow because there is simply nothing to say or do that can repay them for their generosity and efforts. Finally, we just bow.

When I first was training in Japan, I went to Zuioji monastery on the island of Shikoku. There I was put in a small room for five days and taught the ways of eating, chanting, bowing, and moving around the temple. At my first morning service I sat in the back row while forty monks made their bows and harmonized their chanting of the ancient texts. The abbot, Ikko Narasaki, was leading service. He was already quite elderly and appeared rather frail, but after he offered incense and spread out his bowing mat, I witnessed my first bow. Now I had been training for ten years and had been doing morning service every morning for the past four years. I knew how to bow or so I thought! But here was someone who brought every cell in his body to just making this one bow. And then after standing up, he did another bow and then another. Each one was if this was the first and only bow he was ever going to do. I remember saying to myself, "Now that is how to bow" and ever since, I try to bow like this old monk, who just completely displayed his practice. With my painful knee, I've resorted to doing standing bows, allowing me to aim at just bowing with this body as it is.

Morning service is followed by meals, work, exercise, evening zazen, and study-activities of daily life. Students who are here get to interact with like-minded Sangha members and with Jisen and myself. Each moment-by-moment activity is an opportunity to wake-up and the spoon, computer, seed packet, Sangha member become teacher and student. Ninety-nine per cent of the training in Zen Buddhism is the interaction that is occurring all the time. Narasaki-roshi didn't come over and correct my bow, he just bowed. This training-by-example can be very difficult to grasp. Dai-en Bennage, abbess of Mt. Equity Zendo in Muncy, PA says, "You have to steal the teacher's dharma[1]."

Zen teachers also use the hitting of the bells, formal meals, chanting, and the choreography of the zendo and Buddha Hall to teach. Does it really matter if one steps into the zendo using one's right foot (versus the left which is "correct")? Absolutely! To step in with the left requires one to pay attention to even this small detail of life. If we are ever to end the deep suffering in our lives, we have to pay attention to this life right here and now. Take care of this moment, and this moment, and this moment. If I had to say what my Master-that old Buddha Nonin- taught me, I would have to say "It is a matter of life and death", where "it" is every moment[2]. Zen Master Joshu put it this way to a newly arrived monk: "Have you eaten this morning? Then please wash your bowl."