eMirror Vol. 11, No. 14

Friday, April 6th, 2007

Edited by Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho

 


Quotes from teisho are run sequentially in the eMirror

However, it is essential that this be truly and authentically realized and practised. Some configurations of Buddhism place the possibility of Awakening as far away as is possible, as a distant and indecipherable image. This can suit self-image because it can then avoid the simplicity and richness of actual practice by engaging in struggle and turmoil and continue to put off needing to take responsibility for releasing the delusions of hope and fear. Other streams, such as can occur in Zen, say that Awakening is right here and now and so there is nothing that needs to be done. Our passion, aggression, and stupidity is already the wisdom of the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors.

            While it is true, as Great Master Ma has said that, “All sentient beings have never left dharmata samadhi throughout myriads of eons” this means only that it is always the essential reality of their lives and not that they are living it. And so Dogen says, “Know that we enter the samadhi of dharmata through meeting the sutras or meeting a Master. To enter and receive samadhi as dharmata is what is called natural wisdom.” To live it we must enter into this whole moment completely, into where we already are.

-Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi, continuing teisho 3: “This is the Samadhi of Dharmata,” Sunday, December 5, 2004, in the series “Essentially Real, commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji’s Hossho: Dharmata”

Upcoming Events

Fusatsu and the Vow of Samantabhadra

Chanting of the Precepts will take place on April 18th. The Vow of Samantabhadra will be chanted on April 11th and April 25th.

Hermitage

The Roshi began a period of hermitage on Wednesday, April 4th, which will end at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 8th, when he leads monastics in Acalanatha Sadhana.

Introduction to Zen Workshop

Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho will present the next Introduction to Zen Workshop at Dainen-ji on Saturday, April 7th. For more information please see:

http://www.wwzc.org/programs/Introduction_To_Zen_Workshop_Ottawa.htm.

            For information concerning our Long-distance Training Program, please visit this Web Page:

http://www.wwzc.org/programs/longDistance.htm.

Hanamatsuri Two-day Sesshin

The Hanamatsuri two-day sesshin will begin at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, April 13th, and will end on Sunday, April 15th, at 6:00 p.m. The Roshi will continue the teisho series “Doing Not-Doing: Zen Master Anzan Hoshin's Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji's ‘Shoaku Makusa’ and the Three Pure Precepts”.

On Saturday, April 14th, associate and general students may attend a sitting held in the Zendo, which will begin at 9:30 a.m. (please arrive by 9:15 in time for first Bell) and will end at 11:30 a.m.

Oryoki for General Students

On Saturday, April 21st, general students who attend the 6:00 a.m. formal sitting may participate in oryoki practice led by Jinmyo osho. Associate or visiting public students who are in retreat at the monastery on that day may also participate in oryoki. Dana is $10.00. You do not need previous experience of oryoki to attend. For more information or to register please send an email to schedule@wwzc.org.

Dharma Assembly

On Saturday, April 28th, Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho will lead a Dharma Assembly which will begin at 9:30 a.m. (please arrive by 9:15, in time for first Bell) and will end at 9:10 p.m. Dana is $40.00, which includes two meals: lunch and supper. Participants are asked to bring clothing and shoes appropriate for samu practice. To register, please send an email to schedule@wwzc.org or leave a message on the office answering machine at 562-1568. Dharma Assemblies are open to all students.

          The general sitting that would ordinarily take place from 9:30 to 11:40 on Saturday morning will be cancelled due to the Dharma Assembly.

Samu Weekend

The next Samu Weekend is scheduled to take place on May 26th and 27th. Please pencil these dates into your calendar so that you will be able to attend some or all these two days of caretaking practice, and help with the maintenance and improvement of Dainen-ji.

Recorded Teisho Schedule

Saturday, April 7th general sitting – This World of Ten Directions: Reading of the text “Ikka Myoju” by Eihei Dogen zenji.

Sunday, April 8th formal sitting - SAkN: Root Cycle Three: “The Spectrum of Radiance” (teisho 8 of 8).

Monday, April 9th general sitting – Without Difficulty: Zen Master Anzan Hoshin’s commentaries on “Xinxin Ming: Words on Trusting Awareness” by Jianzhi Sengcan: “Resting in Motion” (teisho 15 of 25).

Tuesday, April 10th formal sitting – Mikkyo-zo: Monastic Jishu: “Komyo Shingon” (Class 8 of 15).

Thursday, April 12th associate sitting – Eight Awarenesses: Zen Master Anzan Hoshin’s Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji’s “Hachi Dainin-gaku”: “Samadhi” (teisho 6 of 8).

Saturday April 14th associate sitting - Eight Awarenesses: Zen Master Anzan Hoshin’s Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji’s “Hachi Dainin-gaku”: “Cultivating Wisdom” (teisho 7 of 8).



Congratulations

Congratulations and deep gassho to Gillian Higenbottam and John McCaffrey on being accepted as general students by the Roshi.

Retreats

Nathan Comeau finished a 7-day retreat on Saturday evening. Gillian Higenbottam sat a one-day retreat on Saturday. Nathan Krahn, visiting from Calgary, arrived on March 29th to begin a period of residential training which ended following the formal sitting on Wednesday, April 4th. Nathan sat full day retreats on all but two days of his visit. Francois Fournier began a two-day retreat this morning (Friday).

To Schedule a Retreat

Please email schedules@wwzc.org to schedule a retreat, even if you have made verbal arrangements with a practice advisor or a Dharma Teacher. Emails sent to that address are routed to all members of the Practice Council who will need this information for the purposes of meal planning, preparing tapes for your retreat and planning samu assignments. Retreats are defined in the following way:

Half-day Retreat (you would need to arrive 15 minutes before the actual starting time) Begin at 6:00 a.m., end at noon. Or begin at 9:30 a.m., end at 6:00. Or begin at 3:00 p.m., end at 9:10.

Partial Retreat (You would need to arrive 15 minutes before the actual starting time) Begin at 6:00 a.m., end at 6:00 p.m. Or begin at 9:30 a.m., end at 9:10 p.m.

Full retreat (you would need to arrive by 5:45) Begin at 6:00 a.m., end at 9:10 p.m. Please remember to bring a change of clothes suitable for samu (caretaking practice). If staying overnight, please remember to bring a sleeping bag, a towel and other such necessities. If you have been diagnosed by a medical doctor as having allergies to specific foods, please contact the tenzo, Jinmyo osho at Jinmyo@trytel.com a week in advance of your retreat to inform her of dietary restrictions as this affects food purchases and meal planning. The suggested dana for retreats is $40 a day, which covers the basic cost of food and other materials. Donations above this figure are very welcome and all donations are tax deductible. There is also a retreat schedule for public students posted on our Website at:

http://www.wwzc.org/Resources/Public.student.retreat.schedule.htm

Public Students’ Retreats

For retreats to be mentioned in the eMirror, public students are asked to send an email to schedule@wwzc.org mentioning the date of their retreat and whether it is a partial, half-day or full retreat.  

Current and Upcoming Work at Dainen-ji

Restoration of the chimneys:

On Monday work began to rebuild the two chimneys on the south and west roofs of the monastery. The same company that did such an excellent job of restoring the east-side chimney in 2005 have returned and will spend the next four weeks working on the final two chimneys. Poor workmanship by a previous builder resulted in moisture buildup on the inside of the chimneys, which has been causing alarming cracks to open up in the structure over the last few years. The danger of falling bricks or even of a possible failure of sections of the chimney necessitated a complete rebuild. After taking the brick down to the roof line, digital photographs will be used to re-build exact copies of the original chimneys. They will use a brick colour more in keeping with the original brick of the building. White Wind Zen Community received a City of Ottawa heritage grant of $5000 to assist with the costs of the work, which in total comes to about $30,000 for the three chimneys. This very large sum of money drawn from our savings will have implications on the available budget for 2007 and 2008 especially as essential re-tiling is required to the west side of the roof. 

Improvements to the second floor washroom:

Donations from students have provided the necessary funds to begin work on the first stages of renovation to the second floor washroom. The first project will be to install a new and more powerful ventilion fan and rewire the lighting. This will require alterations to the ceiling and exterior brick to accommodate the vent pipe. The second stage will be to install a new cabinet, sink and faucet. Each of these projects are being designed to take in account a possible major renovation in the future, which will be done if the budget becomes available. The major renovation will open up the space and improve considerably the functionality of the washroom and of entrance to the Hatto. Saigyo chiden will begin on work in the washroom soon.

Installation of gates in the grounds:

With the recent theft of such items as the Buddha rupa and stone lantern from the monastery grounds we have decided to build gates for the front entrance and a gated fence at the side of the building. Saigyo chiden will begin construction of these shortly, using western red cedar, following a design by the Roshi.

Spring Garden work:

With the arrival of spring much work needs to be done in the grounds. If you are able to offer any time to assist with garden samu please contact Saigyo chiden at saigyo@telecomottawa.net. Your help will be appreciated. Thank you.



Office of the Tenzo

Dogen zenji taught that the work of preparing and serving meals was "a matter for realized monks who have the mind of the Way or by senior disciples who have roused the Way-seeking mind." In alignment with this, part of Zen Master Anzan Hoshin's samu for the Community involves personally overseeing the activities of the ancient office of tenzo. Jinmyo Renge osho serves as tenzo and Mishin tando and Saigyo chiden offer assistance as tenzo-anja. The following is a list of meals served prior to the evening sittings on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday:

Monday yakuseki:

Frittata with kishimen noodles, bean sprouts, chopped tomato, ginger, and dan dan; tamarind and lemongrass soup with celery stems and greens, dai gai choy, and tiny cremini mushrooms; sliced plum tomatoes roasted with extra virgin olive oil, white and black mustard seeds and cumin seeds; Asian eggplants sliced on the bias and roasted with red bell peppers and poblano, rubbed with korma curry (coconut and coriander); salad of purple cauliflower florets dressed with key lime, ngoc mam, ginger.

Tuesday Yakuseki

Mixed grain (Lundberg Farm short grain brown and Korean sticky whiter and brown and Japanese rices, barley); slow roasted pork shoulder, blade,. and loin roasts with sweet chile char siu glaze; braised green cabbage; roasted cremini and eryingi mushrooms with chile oil; asparagus with ngoc mam and lime; salad of blanched sugar snap peas with Xiaoxing and lime and Sichuan peppercorns.

Thursday Yakuseki

Mixed grain rice cakes ((Lundberg Farm short grain brown and Korean sticky whiter and brown and Japanese rice, barley). Half of the rice cakes were plain, the other half mixed with toasted mustard seeds and cumin). A shoyu-based mushroom soup made with cremini and porcini mushrooms and puffed tofu; a salad of steamed dai gai choy stems, green and yellow wax beans, snow peas, sugar snap peas, and bean sprouts dressed with gnoc man, lime, and mirin.

Students attending sittings on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings may make arrangements to join residents for meals prepared by the Office of the Tenzo. Please email schedule@wwzc.org at least one day in advance; Contribution is $10.



Thank You

If you would like to thank someone for a contribution they have made, please feel free to send an email to Jinmyo osho at jinmyo@trytel.com. (Owing to the volume of mail I receive, please note that an email sent to me containing a thank you intended for the eMirror should specify that it is to be included. Otherwise I will likely assume that you are just sending me an email, will think, "Thank you very much," and that will be the end of it).

From Jinmyo osho, “Thank you to the Roshi for menu design prior to his beginning a period of hermitage and for taking the time to help me with a computer-related learning curve; to Shikai osho for researching clothing and finding items that are ordinarily impossible to find; to Chunen ino for the many hours he has spent over the past week installing and fixing/tweaking Windows Vista on my computer; to Jido anagarika for patiently undertaking numerous errands.”

From Mishin tando, “Thank you to the Roshi for delicious Chinese dumplings and soup; Chunen ino for making handy-sized cards for residents of Dainen-ji with residents’ contact information; to Senbo shuso for data entry of dana contributions; to Jane Brown and Francois Fournier for dana processing.”

From Saigyo chiden, “Thank you to the Roshi for the design of the new gate and fence which will be built this spring in the monastery grounds. Thank you to Shikai osho for the installation of a new washing line and for her unfailing generosity. Thank you to Jinmyo osho for editing the eMirror each week and for her wonderful good humor; to Chunen ino for work to improve the labeling supplies for the CDs of teisho and Dharma Talks and for his maintenance and upkeep of all of the monastery computer systems. Thank you to Mishin tando for countless hours of work to create and maintain the database of the Roshi’s and the Dharma Teachers' recorded teachings; to Nathan Comeau, Carys Carrington and Charles Enman for regular archiving samu and to Nathan Krahn for samu in the grounds to begin tidying after the spring thaw.”

From Nathan Comeau, “Thank you to Roshi for overseeing the practice environment with such care and for ikebana. Thank you to the Roshi, Jinmyo osho and Mishin tando for the best food I have ever had. Thank you to Shikai osho and Jinmyo osho for daisan. Thank you to Shikai osho for a gift of music and for the picture Kyoto Dog. Thank you to the Practice Council for making themselves available to students in retreat and for practice interviews.”


Ongoing

Samu

Request for Assistance, Office of the Treasurer

As part of clarifying and streamlining the financial processes of White Wind Zen Community, we would like to have pairs of students rotate to help process dana contributions on a weekly basis. To date, most of this work has been done by Mishin tando with the assistance of one or two other students, but it is time to restructure the system so that the work of the Office of the Treasurer becomes more manageable and more students are helping with this responsibility. If you would be available on Saturdays prior to the General Sitting for about a hour (from 8:15-9:15 a.m.), your help will be appreciated. Please email mishin@trytel.com. Training will be provided. No special financial skills are needed other than an eye for detail and accuracy.

Archiving Samu

Since 2002 the teisho presented by the Roshi and the Dharma Talks given by the Dharma Teachers have been recorded directly onto CD and copies made available to students. Prior to this time all of the recordings were made on cassette tape. Over the last years the monastics, with the help of several students, have worked to transfer the taped material onto CD, not only because cassette tape technology is fast becoming outdated but because the early tape recordings are deteriorating quickly and may soon become unplayable. To lose these teaching would be disastrous. We are presently making direct CD copies of all of the early tapes so that there is a back-up copy available should anything happen to the master tape which makes it unplayable but there is much work to be done. There are still over 100 tapes from the 1980’s and 1990’s that need to be re-mastered, relabeled and copied and this constitutes many hundreds of hours of work. If you are able to commit to a regular weekly schedule of two or three hours samu to continue this vital work, please let us know by writing to tapes@wwzc.org. Full training will be given.

Daily Samu

Samu each day to prepare the monastery for the arrival of the students is a very important practice for the monastics. Any help to assist the monks with brightening and clarifying the practice environment is very much appreciated. If you are able to come early before a sitting to do samu, please consult the samu notice board situated between the side entrance doors to find a task which has not been done recently. If you have any questions about the task please ask any monastic.

Improvements to the Second Floor Washroom

A project that has been on the high priory list for a number of years is the renovation of the second floor washroom. Even though this is the most frequently used washroom in the building it has never had any substantial improvements apart from being painted last year. Work on this washroom, which was scheduled to be taking place late this year or early next year, will again need to be delayed due to the necessity of a urgent roof repair to the west side of the roof. This repair will cost in the region of $13,000 and as this is considerably higher than our available budget we have had to cut back on other important work. Because of this, we have decided to fundraise in order to gather sufficient money to make the improvements to the washroom. The work to be done will include a new sink and cabinet and a new ceiling light, fan and exhaust. This will cost in the region of $1000 to complete. Students are encouraged to donate towards this project so that it can be scheduled some time in the winter and the improved facilities will be available by 2007. Improvements to this room will benefit every student that comes to the monastery for sittings.

Thank you for your generosity to help with this project.

Gassho,

Saigyo chiden, shissui.

CDs Available to the Public

A selection of CDs of teisho and Dharma Talks is available on our web-site. The page is found at http://wwzc.org/CDWebSales/CDWebSales.htm or follow the link for Dharma Texts and CDs on the home page. Over time more teisho and Dharma Talks from the over 2500 presentations made by the Roshi, Shikai osho and Jinmyo osho will be made available for purchase.

Ongoing Project: “All is Change”

Dainen-ji, being a 135-year-old building, is continuously in need of maintenance and the costs associated with this can be astronomical when such things as roof repairs or painting are needed. This is something that we cannot afford to do, yet must do and so the “All is Change” project has been created. The “All is Change” project is very simple. Most of us have a bowl or a jar or some other kind of container that we keep somewhere at home and fill up with loose change because it's too heavy to carry around. Several hundred dollars has been collected so far both in loose change and Canadian tire money which has been put towards the building maintenance fund. Most of the collected money was spent on materials for the new front path and we have also been able to purchase several new tools which will help greatly with ongoing renovations. If anyone would like to contribute to this fund, each penny will be appreciated.

 

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