EUROPEAN KWAN UM SCHOOL OF ZEN TEACHERS MEET IN YORK

Teachers from the Kwan Um School of Zen Europe meet every year over a long weekend to set policy and discuss various aspects of Zen teaching. The meetings are hosted in turn by KUSZ teachers and sanghas across Europe and this was the first time for York, UK. We met at the end of May, 2024, with 13 teachers attending in person from Germany, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Poland and the UK and those from Israel and the Czech Republic joining on Zoom.

The meeting was held in 14th century Bedern Hall, Bartle Garth, which provided a supportive and inspiring environment for our long and intensive working sessions. After the meeting concluded on Sunday, those teachers who still had some time before heading home via Manchester and Gatwick airports were joined by members of York Zen for special chanting for world peace, our voices soaring and reverberating throughout the ancient hall.

Some teachers from the Kwan Um School of Zen European Teachers Group visiting York for their annual meeting, gathered with some members of the York Zen sangha in Bedern Hall, York.

Members of York Zen sangha chanting with visiting teachers from the Kwan Um School of Zen Europe in Bedern Hall, York.

UPCOMING: "Zen and Buddhist Chaplaincy"

Join Lizzie Coombs JDPSN to explore the what, why and how of being a Buddhist chaplain with the emphasis on prison chaplaincy, informed and supported by Zen practice. Learn about a direct way to alleviate the suffering of others, a way to connect with people practicing other forms of Buddhism and other faiths, and an opportunity for right livelihood through your practice. 

Session One: Monday, December 5, 2022 / 12PM Eastern
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Session Two: Monday, December 19, 2022 / 12PM Eastern
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All classes are recorded so you can choose to join live or watch the recordings later, at your convenience. Recordings of each live session will be available within 48-hours for those who can't attend in person. The price for the two-class series is $30 USD.

KWAN SEUM BOSAL – Global Kwanseumbosal Kido for Peace

KWAN SEUM BOSAL

Kwan Seum Bosal, known as Avalokitesvara in Sanskrit, is the Korean name for the bodhisattva of compassion. Kwan Seum literally means "perceive world sound," which is also translated as "one who hears the cries of suffering of the world”. Bosal is the Korean translation of bodhisattva. The bodhisattva of compassion hears the cries of the whole world and responds with compassionate action.

Global Kwanseumbosal Kido for Peace

Dear Global Sangha,

We will be having a three hour Kwanseum Bosal Kido for the Ukrainian people and for all of humanity on Sunday, March 6th, 2022.

Let’s visualize our moktaks as being the impact that ends all wars, and our voices as being the Big Love that can be received by all beings. We must try. We just do it 100%.

Yours in the dharma,
Bobby

March 6, 2022
8 AM EST / 2PM CET / 3PM EET / 10PM KST
Click here to see this in your time zone

Join Kido: Zoom link
Meeting ID: 884 1103 0213
Passcode: 934993

 Imbalance is our world’s sickness: how can we cure it? Balance means understanding the truth. If you have no wisdom, you cannot become balanced. It is very important for everyone to find their human nature. That is why we sit Zen, to find our true human nature. So we are in a very important position, sitting in meditation. We must find our human nature, then together help each other become world peace. As human beings, we are all equal. We all have the same love mind. We must find the primary cause of this world’s sickness, and remove it.

- Zen Master Seung Sahn

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Keeping Quiet - by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about…

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with 
death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead in winter
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Extravagaria : A Bilingual Edition

by Pablo Neruda (Author), Alastair Reid (Translator) 
Noonday Press; Bilingual edition (January 2001)
ISBN: 0374512388
page 26

Cultivate Only Don’t Know

Here’s an old Taoist story. An old farmer had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbours came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful”, the neighbours exclaimed. “Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbours again came to offer their sympathy for his misfortune. “Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officers came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbours congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the farmer.

One of the Temple Rules of the Kwan Um School of Zen - On Keeping the Bodhi (enlightened) Mind - instructs us thus: “Let go of your small self and become your true self. In original nature there is no this and that. The Great Round Mirror has no likes or dislikes.” In the story the farmer keeps just such a mirror-like mind. He reflects only the truth of each situation, whereas his neighbours hasten to make a story of good and bad from each incident.

It’s easier to see in this story that to keep chasing after what seem to be good outcomes is delusion, whereas to keep an unmoving mind and cultivate equanimity allows one to be with things as they actually are. We can manage this in our own life by developing a meditation practice. Cultivate Don’t Know, which means not having to reflexively condition our experiences by making them into stories, and see where it leads.

Photo by Lucia Macedo. Unsplash.

UPCOMING: "Illuminating the Heart: Art Can Show the Way" with Lizzie Coombs JDPSN

Join us live or via recording for "Illuminating the Heart: Art Can Show the Way" as Lizzie Coombs JDPSN guides us through two classes about how artistic works can speak to our own spiritual life. 

Session One / October 4 / 12 PM Eastern
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Hokusai: “My Master is Creation”
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), best known for his print ‘The Great Wave’, was a prolific and highly accomplished artist with a life-long devotion to spiritual practice. We will see how the two connect and how his work speaks to our own spiritual life. We will also look at the materials and techniques he used and how they inform his work.

Session Two / October 18 / 12 PM Eastern
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Mirror and Moon: Yoshitoshi, Hiroshige et al
A look at how other 19th century Japanese artists articulated their response to all aspects of human life and to the natural world. A selection of prints and drawings expressing humour, compassion, wonder and all the drama of the world.

About the teacher: After receiving a B.A. in art history, Lizzie Coombs JDPSN trained as an art conservator specializing in the preservation and restoration of Japanese woodblock prints and other works of art on paper. She worked in art museums and then in private practice for 28 years. She absorbed much of what she knows about Japanese prints and paintings from the connoisseurship of her late husband, the art historian and scholar of Japanese prints, Roger Keyes. Lizzie started practicing Zen in 1987 and received inka from Zen Master Soeng Hyang in 2018. She is Guiding Teacher of York Zen Group and The Peak Zen Group in the U.K.

All classes are recorded so you can choose to join live or watch the recordings later, at your convenience. Recordings of each live session will be available within 48-hours for those who can't attend in person. The cost of the two-class series is $30 USD. Find out more and sign up below.

[ATTENTION Members of the 360 Zen Study Series: There is no need to purchase this class as it is already included in your subscription.]

We Have A Big Job To Do - Podcast with Lizzie Coombs, JDPSN

This is the episode from 26th January of Sit, Breathe, Bow with Lizzie Coombs as guest - a podcast produced by Ian White Maher:

Each week leading Buddhist teachers share life experiences and insights to help guide your meditation practice as well as your life off the cushion.

Lizzie Coombs JDPSN started practicing with the Kwan Um School of Zen in 1987. In 2010 she moved back to the United Kingdom, her country of origin. In 2018 she received inka, or permission to teach, from Zen Master Soeng Hyang. She is the Guiding Teacher of the York Zen Group and The Peak Zen Center and the Buddhist Chaplain at the University of Durham.

Sit, Breathe, Bow is hosted by Ian White Maher
https://www.theseekerstable.com/

Sit, Breathe, Bow is sponsored by the Online Sangha of the International Kwan Um School of Zen
https://kwanumzenonline.org

What's the Rush?

This piece was written by Tim Lerch, teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen, for the Providence Zen Center newsletter in August 2005, reproduced by permission. It’s the essence of Zen.

---

What’s the Rush?

Zen Master Lin Chi said, “When students fail to make progress, where’s the fault? The fault lies in the fact that they don’t have faith in themselves! If you don’t have faith in yourself, then you will always be in a hurry trying to keep up with everything around you, you’ll be twisted and turned by every environment that you’re in and you can never move freely. But if you can just stop this mind that goes rushing around moment by moment, always looking for something, then you will be no different from the patriarchs and the Buddhas. Do you want to get to know the patriarchs and the Buddhas? They are none other than you, the people standing and listening to this lecture on the dharma!”

Lin Chi said this to his students over a thousand years ago, and this teaching is just as important for us today. Our tendency as Zen students is to approach our practice the way we do most things, by trying to get something from outside to make us feel better inside. But that very tendency is the origin of our suffering! Trying this mantra, trying that technique, going to see this teacher, going to see that teacher, we are always going around and around, searching outside of ourselves for a fix. Approached this way, Zen or any other kind of practice only results in more suffering and confusion. But Master Lin Chi gave us the key: “Just stop this mind that goes rushing around.” How do we do this? Thinking about stopping the mind only creates more movement, more turmoil. But when we look into the question “What am I?” this question leads us to our before-thinking mind, don’t know. This is how we “just stop this mind that goes rushing around.”

When we return to don’t know, our minds become clear. Clear mind sees, hears, smells, feels, perceives, and functions clearly just as it is. This is great substance and great function, our original job. Any environment, tumultous or calm, is just how it is - complete. There is no need to rush around and around looking for something. Everything is complete, moment to moment, just as it is. There is no fault and no progress. This is called having faith in yourself, getting to know the Buddhas and the patriarchs, and moving freely in this world. This is also called the great bodhisattva way.

And Still We Feel We’re Not Complete//Video

This video comes from a question and answer session I led at the Providence Zen Center, Cumberland, Rhode Island, USA in January 2020 for their Sunday Dharma School. Most of the questions came from people just starting to meditate. I hope you enjoy it.

A Bad Situation is a Good Situation

The Founding Teacher of the Kwan Um School of Zen, Zen Master Seung Sahn (1927-2004), used to say

“A good situation is a bad situation and a bad situation is a good situation.”

When I first heard these words I thought they sounded crazy. Being in a good situation seemed the only place to be: find it and hang on tight! How could that be bad?

But he was only pointing to the truth. As he would say: when life looks good it seems as though you don’t need to do anything. Just relax, no need to meditate. Why get up early for bows*, chanting and sitting? But, in an instant, everything can change, the things we’ve relied on to keep us safe, happy and apparently in control swept away. If we are only dependent on external conditions, not having cultivated a foundation of practice, then we may suffer greatly when those conditions disappear.

The Covid-19 virus has shown us just how this can happen. Living in the middle of the ancient city of York my husband Roger and I had a very good situation: beautiful parks, shops, cafes and restaurants, the cathedral, theatre, musical performance. Now, the whole city has been closed down unless providing essential services. We can’t even meet up with our family and friends. Our good situation disappeared very fast! And, for so many others, the virus has brought far worse: mass unemployment, terrible sickness, death and the loss of loved ones.

But, we have found, acceptance has been possible. Our daily Zen practice has become even more precious and focused. Meditation practiced daily gets us to be with things as they actually are, in each moment. It shelters and nurtures, giving focus and courage. So a bad situation becomes a good situation. We sincerely encourage everyone to try it and see for themselves!

York Zen has been transformed by the Covid-19 lockdown. Formed officially a year ago with the launching of this website, it was already becoming a strong and committed sangha but, apart from Roger and myself, had had no interaction with the wider Kwan Um School of Zen. Then, after our last in-person practice session, on March 16th, we moved to online meditation sessions and kong-an (koan) interviews and this has provided a great opportunity for members to explore the wealth of KUSZ resources online and meet teachers and practitioners from sanghas in other countries. As a consequence the sangha is flourishing and even more mutually supportive. Generosity and gratitude abound. And so, here too, a bad situation has become a good situation.

*we begin each day with 108 full prostrations.

Two Retreats. Part Two: Kyol Che at Wubongsa, Falenica, near Warsaw, Poland, March 2017

Sitting meditation at Wubongsa

The monk next to me is falling asleep, his rhythmic breathing has become more audible, his back a little less erect. We are sitting side by side on our meditation cushions, knees just a few inches away from one another. Eighteen Zen practitioners sit facing the walls of the meditation hall for the annual three month winter retreat (kyol che). Some are sitting the whole thing, others, like me, are here for only a week.
Usually we sit erect and unmoving, legs crossed, knees touching our thick mats, eyes gazing softly at the polished wooden floor. Our hands are held gently against our bellies just below the navel in an oval shape, thumbs gently touching, focussed on the body’s energy centre, from where our breathing, relaxed, naturally originates.
After a few moments my friend quietly awakens and the room returns to silence. If my eyes were closed, I would think I was sitting alone. I repeat my mantra while my whole being is absorbed by the question “What is this?” Meditating with this question makes plain what I am not. I am not just my body; I am not just my thinking. But what am I? I don’t know.
Loud clattering of the bamboo clapper signals the end of sitting. We stretch our legs before standing, then begin walking meditation. You can hear the soft thumping of the stockinged feet of those who have just joined the retreat, while those who have been here longer tend to move soundlessly across the polished floor. In settling our minds our bodies just naturally become quieter. What is this? Only try, try, try for 10,000 years. Only go straight, don’t know. Birds sing, a dog barks, the floor is brown and the walls are white.

Daily Schedule

A.M.
5:00 Wake up
5:15 108 bows, chanting
6:40 Sitting
8:00 Breakfast
8:50 Work
10:30 Sitting
P.M.
12:45 Lunch
2:30 Walk outside
3:20 Sitting
5:00 Dinner
6:30 Chanting
7:35 Sitting
9:35 Sleep

Two Retreats. Part One: A Three Week Solo Retreat at Temenos

Image Courtesy of unsplash

Temenos, Shutesbury, Massachusetts, U.S.A., March 2001

All of the large storage cupboards in the cabin I have just moved into have been stuffed floor to ceiling with kindling for the wood-burning stove. The previous retreatant has cut it during his 100 day stay here. A gift, if only he had left some space for my things. Oh well, the floor will have to do.
Snow continues to fall, adding to the several feet already on the ground. I go out in it several times a day to draw water from the well, use the outdoor toilet, get logs for the stove, and just to walk.
Apart from the caretaker who lives through the woods I am alone in my cabin on a small mountain, my husband three hours’ drive away. The amount of snow alarms me, fueling a growing terror that I am abandoned here without hope of rescue. My food will run out, my husband unable to reach me when my three weeks are up. It is familiar to me and, in one form or another, to many others when on retreat. May be the car won’t start when they’re ready to go home, or something dreadful has happened to a loved one. What is going on here?
Days dark with cloud, snow, high winds, sometimes rain: “Why am I doing this?” Sometimes comes the response, “Who is it that complains?” Birds, chipmunks, ground squirrels don’t complain as they go about their daily business, and Zen Master Seung Sahn said “Don’t make good or bad. Everything in the universe is your good friend.” Nevertheless…
How to maintain this retreat when there is so much more solitude than I had ever imagined? The answer is to follow the daily schedule and focus only on the requirements of each moment. How is it right now?
The emphasis on chanting and prostrations is designed to provide the necessary energy, grounding, and focus. When I chant my voice sounds calm and strong. Closing my eyes I focus on this, not on the small, scared person of my fears. Bird song from outside fills the spaces between words, creating a continuous flow of sound. Repeated high, sharp bird sound penetrates and merges. Stillness. Behind the clouds there is a mountain.
One day I hike down to the nearest road so that I can see if it has been cleared of snow. Maybe I can hitch a ride out of here. But after a few moments gazing at the black tarmac I realize that the road to freedom is up the mountain and I turn back.
As I settle into stillness the unbidden voices in my head sound louder. At meals: “C’mon luv, eat up yer rice (pause) yes, well I know you had it yesterday, but it’s brown rice, luv, it’s good for yer.” Or outside: “snow knife” (sun-warmed twig sinking slowly in deep snow); “It’s the snow that’s high, not the branch that’s low.”
Silence, night time. Kerosene lamp casting flickery shadows. I sit in meditation, steady mantra, steady breathing. Then screams coming closer, fast. The door has no lock. Oh no! A party of drunken kids rioting up the mountainside! Closer, closer…Then, gliding past my window, a screech owl. Oh yes, now I remember: the mind makes everything!
This morning I am the only human on the mountain and, when I stop crunching through the snow, the only sound is the whoosh of blood in my ears. The hemlocks are teaching: their supple branches bend to the ground under the weight of snow and are anchored there. They bow unbroken until released by snow’s melt.

DAILY SCHEDULE

A.M.
4:00 Get up, light stove
4:30 108 bows, chanting
6:15 Sitting
7:30 Breakfast
8:00 Work period
9:30 108 bows, chanting
10:30 Sitting 12:00 Lunch
P.M.
1:00 Walk outside
1:30 108 bows, chanting
2:30 Sitting
4:00 Work period
5:00 Dinner
6:00 108 bows, chanting
7:30 Sitting
9:30 Sleep

Rat New Year

Zen Master Man Gong (1871-1946) was Zen Master Seung Sahn’s teacher’s teacher. For the Rat New Year a layman wrote Man Gong a letter saying “Everybody says, ‘Old year going, new year coming.’ I don’t undertand. Old year and new year, what does this mean?” “This is Rat New Year,” Man Gong replied.
In the Chinese calendar 2020 will also be a Rat year. The Chinese New Year begins on 25th January. The Western New Year begins on 1st January. Two different dates to begin one New Year. Which one is correct? Wake up in the morning, look out of the window: “See, sun shining on frosty grass. Happy New Year!”

Zen is Life Living Through You

Tametomo's kong-an and the climate emergency

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Hokusai: Tametomo and the smallpox demon
(CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE ENLARGED)

With brush and ink the Japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849) shows how the legendary warrior archer Tametomo protects the islanders of Okinawa from the deadly demon smallpox. Since the demon cannot be killed he subdues it with his centred energy. Smallpox demon submits and vows to leave the island, stamping its inky handprint as testament.
Hokusai’s drawing is the visual equivalent of what we Zen students do in kong-an practice (Jap: koan). We are given an apparently baffling question which does not yield its answer through conceptual thinking. We must use deep, focussed attention and patience to find our way through the fog of delusion, then the answer will appear as if by itself.
Tametomo is successful because he uses the power of the non-moving mind to win through. We are witnessing a moment of interaction between true self and small self. True self partakes of the energy of the whole universe, not making self and other. Hokusai shows him not separated from his adversary. Small self is inherently limited by the delusion of separateness: I, me, my. Its demon nature is revealed in the glimpse of a clawed foot.
While Tametomo looks down on the creature with single-pointed concentration, the smallpox demon faces us with blind eyes; a shrunken, tattered figure. Perhaps Hokusai is inviting our compassion: how can we share space with what we fear? How is transformation possible?
How we respond in kong-an practice also shows us the tactics we deploy to meet the challenges of daily life: procrastination, complicity, aggression, complacency, flight, to name a few. But when we patiently stick with it and perceive the core issue many a situation can get shrunk to a manageable size and resolved.
Hokusai shows us this work in progress: a perfect visualization of what each of us encounters in our human lives. A situation appears and we must respond. It cannot be resolved unless we do. When we feel threatened we tend to follow our usual habits of coping, such as running away, pretending it doesn’t exist, getting busy elsewhere, getting someone else to intervene, using emotional or physical violence to try and make it go away. But in this drawing Tametomo is not doing any of that, he is simply using the creative wisdom of his non-moving mind, his true self, to dispel the demon. When we do the same we are unblocked and free to respond to any situation with energy and clarity.
How does all this speak to the complicated and overwhelming challenge of the climate emergency? Because of its scale and ubiquity it’s hard to believe that the same principles apply. But both Hokusai’s Tametomo and kong-an practice show us that we have an opportunity here. We can wake up to the part we play and to how we are responding. We can see how our behaviours affect sentient beings everywhere, since we are all connected. We can look with unwavering gaze at our grief and fear and anger, then get centered and act with an open and questioning mind, free of the filters of preconception and pre-judgement. And return again and again and not give up.

Hokusai says

Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention…

Roger Start Keyes, art historian, Hokusai scholar, and co-founder of York Zen, wrote his poem “Hokusai Says,” featured on our York Zen Welcome Page, in Venice in 1990. It appeared suddenly as he was making notes for the “Young Hokusai” paper he was to give at a symposium on Hokusai the following day.

He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing…

Roger describes how he was writing in one of his daily journal books when he experienced a sudden “raising of tone” and found himself writing out a continuous text until the impetus finally died away. On reading the piece through he felt it had the rhythms of a poem, organized it into lines, and made a few minor corrections. He took the title “Hokusai says” from the first line that had appeared.

He says everything is alive…

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Hokusai self portrait

Back in California, Roger showed it to artist friends. One was Connie Smith Siegel, who shared it with W.S. Merwin’s daughter, Susan. Susan wrote it out in beautiful calligraphy and drew a border around it with motifs taken from a Hokusai woodcut.
Connie also showed it to Joanna Macy, scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Joanna started reading it in her workshops and, when later asked about its influence, wrote that “she enjoyed reading it aloud and feeling the impact it consistently had…for the masterly way the words convey a state of grateful and rapt attention that brings one more fully alive to the everyday mystery of life.”

Everything has its own life…

Its influence spread. It was reproduced in the Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center newsletter (1996) and in a number of books, including Mark Williams and Danny Penman’s Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World (2011). It also started appearing online in blogs and YouTube videos.

Roger Keyes

He says live with the world inside you…

Realizing that none of the online recordings of the poem was by Roger, his friend and curator of The Laurence Sterne Trust, Patrick Wildgust, generously intervened. In 2015 he arranged for a recording to be made of Roger reading “Hokusai says” by sound engineer Jez Wells at York University. You can listen to this recording on our York Zen Welcome Page (and online).

Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.

Who knows where “Hokusai says” will next appear?

The Blackbird and Sven

Watching you work, completely focused, single-minded, bringing all you are to make this one thing alive, creating meaning, beauty and function in one whole piece; generated through instinct, and coming into being as we watch, though still invisible to the wider world. Meticulous, patient, bit-by-bit becoming until there it is, in the light: complete, unique and perfect. (And so it is with each of us: one by one each thing has it, one by one each thing is complete.)

As Sven’s fingers move over the keyboard building this website with colour, fonts and photographs, an about-to-become-a-mother blackbird inspects the corner of a shelf against the white-washed wall of our city yard. She hops and settles, repeats. Is this the right place to build a nest? She moves aside some clematis vine to make a space behind it, flies off, and returns with her mate. He looks too and they agree, and so she weaves a bowl of feather, leaf and twig. When Sven and the blackbird each have finished building, he the website, she the nest, you don’t see either of them anymore, but each is present in their creation.

Thank you, Sven Mahr, for building the website for York Zen Group and taking the brilliant photos. You have completely realized our vision, laying out the warm welcome we want to give to all who already enjoy Zen meditation and all who might like to begin. Sven Mahr is based in Leipzig and can be contacted via his website here.

Sven's impressions of York Zen Group