Tonight's zazen session was very educational: I did almost everything wrong. Up to now, my only frame of reference has been Korean Seon practice, which has its own procedures. Those procedures didn't prepare me for the many extra steps involved in Red Cedar's Soto style.
While the actual seated meditation was no different from what I did at temples in Korea and Maryland, other aspects of the meditative ritual were very different.
Example: in neither Korean temple (Hanguk-sa in Germantown, MD and Hwagye-sa in Seoul) did I ever see people rotating on their seat cushions when standing up or sitting down, but I saw that tonight. Tonight's session also included much more bowing (both from the waist and full prostration), and the chants were mostly different from the ones I heard in the Korean context (one chant was the same; the Three Refuges, though in this Zen center the chant is done in Sanskrit, not the vernacular).
The most amazing difference was in how Red Cedar handles walking meditation. In both Hanguk-sa and Hwagye-sa, walking meditation means walking-- you pad around the dharma hall's interior at a bit less than normal walking speed. At Red Cedar, walking meditation means taking tiny steps at widely spaced intervals, all performed in very slow motion. I doubt I covered ten meters before we sat back down again.
Tonight was also a "work night," i.e., the attendees did chores for the better part of an hour to help maintain the center. I worked with a gentleman named Don to sweep the wooden floors. Don, an urbane fellow, smiled gently as we were sweeping and said, "There's an art to this, you know."
I talked with a few people after we finished the chores, but didn't record the conversation. I asked my interlocutors about their personal backgrounds and discovered that none was a cradle Buddhist (considering the history and demographics of Buddhism in the West, this isn't too surprising). One person called herself Christian (Methodist background), but was at pains to clarify that she meant she cleaved to Christ himself. Another person professed to be an ex-Catholic who had had, at one point, an "antagonistic" relationship with the church. He doesn't strike me as bitter now. Quite the contrary: he's happy that he'll be taking the precepts soon.
I asked what people thought about violence done for religious reasons and got answers that ranged from questioning the assumptions underlying my question (which I think is perfectly legitimate) to a profound observation about the ambiguity of religion and the ways in which it gets used and misused.
It's an interesting group of people in this sangha-- varied in background, but happy together and headed up by a more-than-capable priest. I'll be leaving them in the morning and heading south toward Samish Island... but first there's the 6:30AM zazen!
My thanks to the Red Cedar community for their kindness in having me over. Work out your salvation with diligence!
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Marathon
12 years ago
1 comment:
There's a wide variety of different speeds and procedures for kinhin (walking meditation) in Zen practice. Just about every practice center and lineage has their own little twist on it.
Re the rotating: In some Japanese Soto zendo, one sits (facing the wall) on a dan -- a shelf about 3 feet wide and a couple of feet off the floor that runs around the perimeter of the room. When the bell rings to end the sitting period, if you can execute a 180-degree turn with your legs still folded, you're in a position to unfold your legs onto the floor, stand up, and start walking -- easier to do than standing up from sitting on the floor. So a lot of longtime meditators get very good at the rotation trick.
Of course, there'd be no need for this in Rinzai practice, where you sit facing the center of the room rather than the wall.
Re the 3 refuges: were they chanted in Sanskrit or Pali? It's kind of a trick question, since, as frequently, they're virtually identical in the two languages; in the refuges, the sole difference is the Pali dhamma vs the Sanskrit dharma.
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