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Blog this Trip (20): Final Work of the Day

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There continue to be emails that need checking, and admin matters for the Zen Center requiring attention. This work for maintaining the continuity and vitality of the ZCR work continues, whether in the Zen Center or not. Because we have many people contacting us from various different time zones, while travelling it is sometimes helpful to check some emails right before sleep, so that I have time to meet up with any of the local members here who wish to consult about some aspect of their practice.

23:00 exactly: lights out.

Blog this Trip (19): More Golden Buddhas

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Speaking of golden buddhas: HERE is what that whole “gold-Buddha” tradition is pointing straight onto: the shining light of our original nature, in this case named “Homa” and “Yogi”.

These are the two golden souls who invite me back, year after year. Homa founded Zen Book and Music in Oslo as the first bookstore dedicated solely to Eastern meditations and teachings. They have brought countless teachers to Oslo, and they continue to put great efforts into arranging these retreats and talks. In addition, they both lead the weekly Zazen sessions in the Dharma Room. They have done intensive retreat work at Zen Center Regensburg on several occasions, and they travelled to Regensburg to attend the Opening Ceremony and meet with Dae Bong Sunim in 2016.

Many many words could be written about our relationship, its sacred meaning to me and its impact on my life.

But silence is best — I’ll let this picture speak for it.

After the guests have left tonight, and they have cleaned up the Dharma Room, it’s time to head home. I notice that Homa and Yogi are both wearing matching NY Yankees caps, and ask to take a shot.

Blog this Trip (18): The Buddha of Oslo

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The Buddha statue in our Dharma Room (Zendo) at Zen House comes from Korea. It does not look like the usual Buddha you see on Korean temple altars because this one was saved by some Westerners from the gold-plated dressing-up that Korean tradition expects of every Buddha. This bling-blingy gold-plated experience is something that took some getting used to, when I began practicing in this tradition. It resembled the flashy stuff that marked so much of the corruption in Catholicism that I struggled to flee. It took me some years of experience in Korea to understand why this gold-plating was done: 1) gold represents the qualities of knowledge, enlightenment, purity, happiness, and freedom; 2) in the Avatamsakka Sutra, and the tradition following therefore, the Buddha is often referred to as “the golden One”, and whenever depicted, they used gold to adorn the image to “bring this to life” in the most devotional way possible — sacrificing even material positions to express it; 3) and this might be most prosaic of all, but also the most important reason: Buddha statues in northern Buddhism were made most often from wood, and wood dries as it ages, and cracks appear. Those cracks can even cause pieces of the statues to fall off. Having a crack right down the face or chest of the otherwise well-crafted Buddha would not lend it to devotion and inspiration. So, there is an elaborate series of tree-sap lacquers that are layered on the statue, and then gold-leaf is pressed on the surface in a manner that “seals in” the natural moisture, preventing cracking from within, and keeping out moisture that can accumulate in drafty Buddha halls in misty mountain locations rife with pine-tree dewiness.

I like this Buddha very very much. I always pray for the donors in Korea who provided this Buddha to help us spread the Dharma in the West. We first transported this Buddha to Norway about eight years ago, and he/she/it has been saving these quirky Norwegians nonstop ever since. I also lent a sibling of this statue to some practitioners in Thessaloniki, Greece, and we have one always with me in Zen Center Regensburg. I also donated versions of this Buddha to Zen groups in Dresden, Athens, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg.

If anyone is interested in donating one of these exquisitely hand-crafted Buddhas to a group practicing with me, please contact the Zen Center Regensburg main office.

Blog this Trip (17): Public Zazen, 17:00

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The shoe rack just outside the Dharma Room (Zendo) of Zen House says that maybe there will be a good crowd tonight for the meditation.

In Regensburg, the practice is open and people appear/not appear and there is no charge for the teachings. We only suggest a donation, and leave it to the universe to provide.

In Norway, it is normal for such things as public Zen meditation teachings that the people sign up beforehand and pay through the event organizers. I thought that was a little weird, the first times I began visiting. I used to ask, “Why should people have to pay for meditation up front like this?“ Yet Homa told me many times, in the beginning, that this is just Norwegian culture. It is standard for all such events and happenings. In the end, having people commit to receiving a place in the event, and paying forward something nominal for it, helps to pay for my airfare here and the humble pension room, so, basically it enables this visit to happen.

In any event, it is always surprising and happy news when large numbers of people commit to attending such a session, right smack in the middle of the week like this.

It is a weekly one-hour session, but tonight I drove it close to two hours. There was such interest and enthusiasm, and it’s good to make this opportunity “work” for them — for some, it might be their only stab at doing this sort of practice, or meeting a teacher with good experience, and you want to give maximal possibility for any question, problem, difficulty, or hindrance to be addressed.

Meanwhile, Homa has stopped complaining playfully at the willful disregard of her meticulously arranged scheduling. It might be that she has just given up on this being fixed.

Blog this Trip (16): Coaching Session 2

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A very nice meeting with a wonderful, pure soul.

The coaching session began at 13:30 and was scheduled to run one hour. We finished at about 16:30 when the client reminded me that my late lunch should probably be eaten before the evening Zazen program, which was to begin at 17:00.

I apologized profusively for so mindlessly running so long over, but it couldn’t be helped — I completely forgot time with him.

Someone needs to coach me, it seems.

Blog this Trip (15): Dust-Thinking

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Back in the room, freshening up for the afternoon sessions, I shake out a pant leg and a flurry of dust catches a shaft of sunlight. So many uncountable flecks tossed up numberless whirlybird in puff upon puffs, arising and expanding and blooming and settling, floating to different places on some invisible draft of air lifting out from somewhere.

Such a happening still causes me such considerable surprise: We witness this reality only when there is a certain kind of light in the room, or a certain angling of the light. So we do not see this happening very often. Yet, even when that just-so shaft of sunlight is not present, that dust is still also always in constant everywhere-swirling. We are swimming in it, completely unawares, even in some of the cleanest spaces.

It used to be a mystery to me how the ancient Greek and Roman structures were first discovered by explorers beginning in the 1500s and 1600s, buried to three-, five-, or more meters-deep. Most of the storied monuments that you find in Athens and Rome, for example, stand on patches of earth located several meters below modern street level. “How was this so?”, I used to ruminate. “How did they get there?”

Even in a land so less desiccated, like Norway, the movement and settling of microscopic layers of dust is an eternal constant. This is a perfect explanation for the law of karma. It also explains why “sudden enlightenment, [yet] gradual cultivation“: though the mind-ground can be seen to be empty and pure, yet the all-pervading entropy of all compounded things means endless cleaning and cleaning.

Work period is never finished.

Blog this Trip (14): Café Study and Work, 07:00-12:30

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Wherever I go teaching in the world, any quiet and settled café is my office.

It took ten years and 15 visits to Oslo to find this sun-filled gem, located just outside the front door of the tiny pension where they put me up for a few days.

Music is low to non-existent. Coffee is excellent. Tables are old Norwegian wood board. Songbirds pop in and out, cleaning the crumbs from the floor. Sunlight is strong and clear.