Dharma Reading – All Beings Zen Sangha

How We Live is How We Die by Pema Chodron

Pema Chödrön’s How We Live is How We Die offers profound insights into the nature of life and death from a Buddhist perspective. As a lay Buddhist, I found her teachings deeply resonant and accessible. Chödrön’s approach emphasizes the importance of living fully in the present moment, embracing the impermanence of life with compassion and mindfulness. Her guidance on how our everyday actions and attitudes shape our experience of dying provides a comforting and practical framework for navigating both the ordinary and the extraordinary moments of our lives. The book’s blend of wisdom and simplicity makes it a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand how to live with greater awareness and ease.

Review by- SōShin YōSan/July 2024

Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire

/Colleen Morton Bush – Penguin Press

Whether you are getting ready to visit Tassajara for the first time, or you know it well already, this book will touch your heart. The author flawlessly achieves her aim of “evoking the many lessons of the June 2008 fire”, among them, “the effort and courage it takes just to pay attention.” Buddhist Zen teachings for everyday life abound in these pages. The invitation? to surrender to the idea that fire, in this human existence, is here to stay. For our five protagonists the inferno temporarily manifested as great fear and doubt. But it never seared their commitment, love and determination to do what their souls knew was the right thing to do, in that specific time and context. “Awakening too is on fire. it comes and goes.” The reader is introduced to the landscape of the valley, to the generous nature of the creek as protector of wildlife and humans alike, and to the wisdom of Zen masters such as Dōgen and Tassajara’s cofounder Suzuki Roshi. However, there’s never a moment when one loses track of the most intimate thoughts and the immense physical and emotional challenges the main characters faced. As they navigated their personal relationships, they were often called to make split-second decisions that would later prove to be of great consequential nature. Today, at Tassajara’s Zendo a +2,000-year-old Gandharan relic stills bears witness to the Bodhisattvas’ pledge of mindfulness. A tight daily schedule continues “releasing” practitioners to live in the moment of their assigned tasks. The Zen Mountain Center effortlessly thrives with lush promises of renewal, even as the scorching summer heat reminds those at the canyon that wildfires could at anytime pay another visit. Among the “fire monks”, this book introduces one to Mako. The now Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center, diligently documented (and preserved for posterity) the dangerous magnificence of the blaze. She recently expressed to me her hope that flames don’t come around again. But when she and the others extinguished them over fifteen years ago, they proved Suzuki Roshi’s teachings right: “It’s the effort that counts.” This book superbly spells out the enduring wonders of theirs.

Review by ~ Kōryū Naomi Knoble

Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World/ Barbara O’Brien/Shambhala Books

Do you need to know the history of Zen to start meditating? No. Do you need to know anything about Zen or Buddhist history to practice Zen at all? No, not really. Does the word “history” conjure a feeling of boredom beyond boredom? If so, it’s totally OK. Maybe this book isn’t for you right now.
At some point, though, it may be helpful to have a working understanding of some of Zen and Buddhism’s foundational ideas and influential people. When that time comes, give The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World a try. And, just maybe, in this 2,000-ish year history you may find an introduction to something (Abhidharma, Yogacara) or someone (Dongshan Liangjie, Ruth Fuller Sasaki), that creates connections in your practice you didn’t even know could be there. As Barbara O’Brien observed when describing the resistance that some people have to some aspects of practice, “You never know what’s going to open the door.”
The history of Zen as told by Barbara O’Brien, a self-described “very slow [lay] Zen student,” is the messy, imperfect history of humans. In parts it reads like an epic Tolkien-worthy saga dipped in a Korean drama wrapped in Days of Our Lives. Across centuries of blood-thirsty warlords, rebellions, rivalries, social and political unrest, family squabbles, government mandates, and epic-level strife, somehow — remarkably — Buddhism and Zen practice has persisted through it all. While some of the details are lost to history, as O’Brien points out many of the ancient disputes are still relevant to us today whether or not we are aware of them. Maybe they can inform our present-day lives. For example, could the so-called epic Northern and Southern schools debate offer perspective on present day national political situations (looking at you, Democrats and Republicans)?
Barbara O’Brien also candidly addresses some of the surprising inconsistencies and seemingly factualized fictions in Buddhism and Zen, such as how the historical Buddha may be more of “a hypothesis than a person,” whether a single person named Bodhidharma really did come from the West, and how the lineage of the patriarchs was a 6th century invention by practioners in China rather than a reflection of historical fact. Does this suggest that all of Zen is an elaborate fiction in a complicated social and political landscape? Does it illustrate that Zen is a product of culture and/or somehow transcends culture? Importantly, how does knowing this context and navigating these questions impact your practice?
For me, O’Brien’s book opened more questions than it answered, which is my general experience of practice anyway. It pointed me to writings I’d never come across before, like the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, and illustrated the sometimes complicated relationship between governments and Zen. Does knowing that the military dictatorship (shogunate) in Japan ordered that Soto Zen use Dogen’s teachings as the basis of practice change how Dogen’s writings impact my practice? No, it doesn’t, but understanding how historical political interests shaped present-day practice has helped me see how this process may still be unfolding today. While knowing the history of Zen is not a prerequisite to embodied Zen practice, O’Brien’s introduction to so many previously unknown ancestors and the challenges they met inspires me to be a part of bringing this practice to the future. May this book inspire your practice as well. You can listen to the Q & A the All Beings Zen Sangha had with the author here.

Review by Alveena Bakshi

Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki / David Chadwick/Broadway Books 1999

at WorldCat.org

Crooked Cucumber is the biography of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and a labor of love by David Chadwick. Capturing Shunryu’s life in the Kanagawa prefecture, rich in detail and intensity, is not an easy feat. The entangled nature of Shunryu’s household and temple life, and the practice of zazen at its center, keeps one feeling part of it all. To me, it also proved to be an education in Japanese people, history and culture.

The reverie is broken halfway through the book by the seeming unraveling of Shunryu’s life with the loss of his wife. The resulting changes to his family dynamic, with two of his children in particular, and another who takes her own life, keep the reader and typical zen student guessing, especially against the backdrop of Shunryu’s desire to travel to America, rearing its head in the book, from time to time.

The second part of the book opens to his American experience. Initially not knowing what to expect from his life in parts, it became clear that although the reference points for Shunryu’s day to day life had changed, and that he drew on a new set of skills for instruction, zazen remained his vehicle of choice for his students’ understanding of self, intertwined with the birth, and growth, of the sangha.

My own journey had begun when I was nineteen. When I first landed in the Silicon Valley ten years later at the turn of the century, wrapped around the works of John Cage and Gary Snyder, I may not have heard of Tassajara or known San Francisco Zen Center personally, but the voices had been there all along. Before I sat with All Beings Zen Sangha, I had sat with the schools of Daido Roshi and Bernie Glassman.

Towards the end, David’s description of the passing of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi feel like a warm embrace, inspite of the overarching concern Shunryu has for his disciples. I have heard Suzuki Roshi’s disciples say that in his passing they all felt like children who’s father had left too soon. One can see the same love reflected back by Shunryu when he tells his daughter, “The bond between children and parents is never lost”.

Above is a screen shot of a zoom conversation that ABZS had with the author David Chadwick (in the center of the image joining us from his home in Bali, Indonesia) on September 19, 2020. You can learn more about David Chadwick and see his amazing archive of information about Suzuki Roshi by going to this link.

Review by ShōRyū Christopher Leader

Zen Master Raven: The teachings of a Wise Old Bird / Robert Aitken/Published by Boston : Charles E. Tuttle ; Enfield : Airlift, 2002 and by Wisdom Publications, 2017

At WorldCat.org

Robert Aitkin’s collection of modern American kōans, titled Zen Master Raven, is somewhat novel in its presentation. The Tallspruce Community is populated with Aitkin’s students and teachers in the form of animals, from owls and bears to a porcupine and a wise, semi-traveling teacher known as “grandma.” The events of the forest, and the daily lives of these animals, serve as the backdrop for his modern fables, all told over the shoulder of the titular character, resident teacher, and Aitkin’s stand-in, Zen Master Raven.

While many of the kōans stand entirely on their own, Aitkin’s fondness for thematic jaunts is what makes Zen Master Raven truly special. Rather than reading the collection cover-to-cover, students who have some previous experience with kōan study would be better served by viewing the book by its thematic categories. Sometimes only a few kōans long, these themes provide a broad view of Aitkin’s thoughts and teachings on a subject, which can be helpful when you’ve returned to the beginning of the series to contemplate each kōan individually. His series on the Eightfold Path and the Bodhisattva vows may seem a bit on-the-nose to a practiced reader, but read as a series, and then individually, provide a deceptively strong tide for moving to deeper study.

Robert Aitkin’s Zen Master Raven is a valuable collection of teachings from a renowned teacher, presented with a focus on ease of access. While some students may question the value of some parables as kōans, that in itself may be a valuable step for their practice. However, all students are likely to find value in Zen Master Raven as an introduction to Aitkin’s teachings, and to his philosophy on transmitting the Dharma.

Read Shōryū’s full review go here.

Tenzo Kyōkun/Eihei Dōgen

Review by Alex Langlinais

A thousand years from now, if only one of Dōgen Zenji’s works survives, I hope it will be his Tenzo Kyōkun (“Instructions To The Cook”). In a Zen monastery, or on a retreat, the tenzo is the person responsible for preparing meals for the community. Dōgen wrote Tenzo Kyōkun as a detailed set of instructions for the tenzo “covering a period of one complete day.” And the essay covers everything from fetching and handling ingredients, to planning meals, to cooking with careful attention (remember, “[t]ake special care, lest a mouse accidentally falls into” the rice pot). More than anything, the essay is about the spirit needed to carry out this important work.

If Tenzo Kyōkun were just a set of instructions about cooking and our relationship to food, it would be valuable enough. But the essay is revered because of its central metaphor: the tenzo is you, and the tenzo’s work is how you live your life. The ingredients you receive are your circumstances and the moments of your life, and what you do with them is what your life is and will be.

Not something to be left to chance, and not so easy! In fact, Dōgen says that you really need Way-Seeking Mind (dōshin) to do the job–the sincere resolve to awaken for the benefit of all beings. “If a [person] entrusted with this work lacks such a spirit,” Dōgen warns, “then [they] will only endure unnecessary hardships and suffering.” If you saw this listing posted on a recruiting website, you might not bother to apply. But here you are. You’ve already been hired. Sorry!

So then what does Way-Seeking Mind look like in practice? Here, as I understand it now, are the take-home messages:

Handle each of your ingredients as carefully as if they were your own eyes.
Don’t leave your life to others but “carry out this work with your own hands.”
Give your full attention to whatever it is you are doing, moment by moment.
Never “grumble about the quality of the ingredients,” but “cultivate a temper which sees and respects them fully for what they are.”
Maintain an attitude of joy, kindness, and magnanimity in every moment, without exception (Joyful Mind, Parental Mind, Big Mind).
Make a sincere effort. “The true bond established between ourselves and the Buddha is born of the smallest offering made with sincerity rather than of some grandiose donation made without it.”

I think this last point deserves special emphasis, especially in a year like 2020. For Dōgen, a sincere effort isn’t a perfect one, or even a particularly impressive one on the surface. A sincere effort is just a whole-hearted one, made without pretense. Can we actually practice like that? It may be hard to believe during these times, but Dōgen assures us that if we put forward sincere effort and attend to our lives closely, “a meal containing the six flavors and the three qualities will come together naturally.”

Dōgen also points out that just taking his written instructions to heart isn’t quite enough. In fact, the real heart of the essay are some now famous stories about humble tenzos in China schooling a young and arrogant Dogen about practice. The tenzos’ words and examples touched Dōgen deeply and had a profound impact on the course of the Soto Zen tradition. So maybe above all, Dogen’s key instruction is that we should “listen closely to what those who have done this work have to tell us regarding the details.”

* Quotations from Tenzo Kyōkun are drawn from How To Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment/Eihei Dōgen and Kōshō Uchiyama/Translated by Thomas Wright/Shambhala 2013.

From Myōshin Carlos Moura

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind / Shunryu Suzuki, Trudy Dixon / Weatherhill/Shambhala, numerous editions, 1970

At Worldcat.org

“This book brought me to Zen practice. Behind Suzuki Roshi’s words I got a scent of a whole new possibility …that there can be a new way of understanding that can lead to a healthier outlook and way to live by.”

From Sam Reggio

Gotama Buddha: a biography based on the most reliable texts / Hajime Nakamura / Kosei Publishing Co., Tokyo, 2000

At Worldcat.org

“The title of this book – in two volumes – is nice and self-explanatory. This is indeed a long, in depth biography of the historical person of the Sidhartha Gotama Buddha compiled from numerous Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, and I’m sure a few other texts. Nakamura is going for accuracy here, and so the breadth of this book is wide. I like how he takes the time to explain why specific historical facts, repeated or not repeated in specific texts through the centuries, may or may not come to us as particularly factual or accurate. It’s great to try to get a portrait of a living, breathing human being making decisions given his geographical and social contexts, and Nakamura’s prose is not without personal anecdote or humor. This is not easy reading; it’s wonderfully dry and erudite (if you like this sort of thing). Recommended if you like biography and history, with the religion and language components of the subject matter front and center.”