Sweeping Zen talks with Peter Coyote, actor, activist, and Zen priest

SWEEPING ZEN INTERVIEW WITH PETER COYOTE

 

JUNE 2008

 

(borrowed from the Web)

 

SZ: I know you’ve discussed this elsewhere, but what was the initial draw for you to Zen Buddhism and when and where did you start your practice?

PC: I began reading Zen literature when I was a teen-ager, around 15 or 16. I think The Three Pillars of Zen was the first thing I read. Also very into Norman O. Brown - Life Against Death. I had no idea about sitting per se, but the ‘idea’ of enlightenment seemed to be just what I needed to be the most powerful person on earth, always correct, always knowing what to do. Then, in the late Sixties I met Gary Snyder, and was extremely impressed by him and the good order that his life was in. It took me a while of being around him and checking him out until I connected it with Zen practice. It wasn’t until around 1974 that I was dating a woman at San Francisco Zen Center that I began to sit and then, as they say, “The shoe dropped”.

SZ: I remember reading that you had some drug problems before coming to Zen. Was this just youthfulness, or something more?

PC: I was definitely addicted to drugs. I used heroin and cocaine and methedrine (methamphetamine) extensively. I finally reached a point where it was obvious that I was going to die. (I once counted and between 1965 and 75 I lost 17 or 18 friends in drug-related deaths) I made a radical decision to change my life. I moved into San Francisco Zen Center and began to practice while undergoing a full course of psychoanalysis. My therapist died in the middle of treatment, some two years in, and I started all over again. It worked. I’m still crazy, but I no longer use drugs at all and plan to stay that way.

SZ: I’d imagine Gary Snyder might have influenced you some artistically also, especially in terms of your writing. What sort of example did he leave for you? Were you friends with Philip Whalen?

PC: I’d say Gary has been a major influence on my life. I joke with my friends that “I’m a poet that not even my friends will read.” I say this because I’ve sent lots of my work out and never been published and some of my friends have never even responded. I guess it’s something I do for myself, regardless of talent. Still, Gary’s clarity, precision, and pungency as a writer have defined good prose and poetry for me. His discipline, detachment, steadiness, zest for life and unabashed curiosity have also influenced me greatly.

I knew Philip Whalen before he was a priest, through the San Francisco poets Lew Welch and Jim Koller. I ran into him again at Zen Center when he had been practicing for some time and was a very senior student. I was always a little intimidated by Philip who appeared somewhat unapproachable—not due to unfriendliness, but because it was as if his mind were a kite fixed to earth by a thread, and soaring in rare air.

SZ:  Many people know you as an actor, writer/poet, and social activist. I know you also as the guy who pops up on LINK TV now and again adding your insightful commentaries as a host! But behind all of this I sense that it is your Zen practice that allows you to express your talents and passions to their fullest. I wonder if you could comment a bit on that.

PC: I pretty much think that if we’re not working on our character the world is eroding us. It’s hard to know whether it’s Zen practice per se or my passion for practicing it that does the trick. I don’t know. I do know that there is a powerful, brain-altering quality to sitting still, impossible to explain. I feel as I age and as my practice deepens, more fully ‘myself’—more ‘permitted’ to exist in great and easy spaciousness. Can’t say why or how, but the path works for me and I’m stickin’ with it.

SZ: You were recently ordained a lay priest by teacher Lew Richmond in the Soto tradition and given the Dharma name Hosho Jishi (meaning Dharma Voice, Compassionate Warrior) in 2007. How has this changed your role within the sangha and are you now teaching?

PC: Becoming ordained, sewing a rakusu, all seemed like deepening my commitment. I had been practicing for 30+ years and I felt that I had to take the next step. My teacher has urged me to ‘step up’ and consider teaching, something I had never considered putting myself forward for because it seemed to me as an irrefutable mark of ego to do so. I’ve entered a three year training period called SPOT (Sogaku Priest Ordination Training) which is training for dharma leaders. I don’t know if I will ever be ordained as a priest, but we have a tradition in our Sangha of teachers who wear a green rakusu. They don’t have full transmission and can’t ordain heirs, but they certainly help the Sangha. There are always people ahead of me and always some behind me, so I’ll help where I can and learn where I can.

SZ: I know you practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center during the years when Richard Baker-roshi was abbot there, practicing zazen but not necessarily accepting Baker as your formal teacher. Where you still there during his fallout? What impressions of Baker-roshi did you have?

PC: Richard Baker is an extremely brilliant and charismatic man. He was my wife’s teacher and I was more of a social peer with him (though I did sit sesshin with him.) There would be no Zen center as we know it today without him, he built the institutions, but when Suzuki Roshi appointed him successor, he never empowered others in the community to be able to control him or rein him in. I think of Baker-Roshi a little like a Bill Clinton, with uneven development—-highly highly gifted in some areas and (like all of us) obtuse in some others. He’s a friend and it feels like after all these years a bit of a rapprochement is starting with Zen center. But it was a very painful time and he hurt some people badly, compounding it by not seeming to understand how he’d hurt them.

SZ: I do have one political question! As a self-described progressive, you were critical of the Obama administration early on for not appointing enough progressives in his cabinet and in to positions of power. What are the issues you’d like to see addressed by his administration during his Presidency, and how do you rate his performance thus far on the progressive scale?

PC: I am very concerned at Obama’s drift into Bush territory. Given the billion dollar armored “embassies” we are building in both Iraq and Pakistan, I do not believe that we are planning to leave anytime soon. I’m afraid that Obama is simply going to substitute paid mercenaries for American troops. I know that he has his hands full with the Republicans and the Corporatocracy and Financial centers which really run the government, and so I blame the Left for not being vociferously “out in the streets”—protesting with the nurses for single-payer health care; demanding an end to the foreign wars of occupation, and giving Obama the excuse and opportunity to listen. He is completely surrounded by Center-Right advisors, Free-marketeers, and lobbyists of every stripe and persuasion. Where are the voices of the Left? On blogs! Sitting home alone and privately opining, meaning less than sweat to those in the corridors of power, while the country is gradually steered away from those who elected Obama…and our values.

SZ: What books would you recommend to someone interested in Zen?

PC:  I usually recommend:

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind & Not Always So by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

Taking the Path of Zen by Robert Aitken

The  Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Breathe . . . You are alive

Just a thought . . . Robin Williams . . .

Just a thought . . .

If there is any good that has come out of the tragic suicide of Robin Williams it is the universal outpouring of grief that has followed in the wake of the announcement of his death.

In a world made so callous that we could do nothing in the wake of the Newtown shootings, in a world so jaded that mass shootings on the streets of America barely register a blip on the radar of our national consciousness, in a world so conditioned to violence that we take as ordinary the slaughter of Jews by Muslims, Muslims by Jews, Christians by Muslims, and Muslims by Muslims in their tens of thousands in the bloodstained Middle East, in a world so resigned to sudden catastrophe that the disappearance of one jet and the deliberate shooting down of another are merely news stories that make us shake our heads but not cry out . . .

It strikes me as so ironically hopeful that our hardened hearts can be moved to tears by the loss of one man at his own hand.

The tears that have been wept, the questions that have been asked, they are all a form of catharsis in a world made insensitive. We've become aware --- for however short or long --- of the disease qualities of mental illness. We recognize that Robin Williams, that frenetic, perpetual motion man who made us laugh until our sides ached, had a very dark, sad, and brooding side that he did not share with us, that perhaps he feared to share with us. We caught just a glimpse of it in his dramatic roles, the ones that earned him his Oscar. And we are reminded  that true comedy comes from pain. He was always in pain, clearly, always battling his demons.

We all have those demons, and this week the demons won a round. I can only imagine that a successfully suicidal person must suffer a complete shift in thought and brain chemistry just prior to the act, as the normal instincts for self-preservation are smothered. I don't know. I don't know if anyone knows.

What I do know is that we are all sad, not only because Robin Williams' brilliant voice has been stilled forever, but because we somehow all recognize ourselves in him, laughing on the edge of the Abyss.

Thank you Robin for years of laughter and deep reflection. Thank you for bringing us together to feel alive again even in the shadow of your death.

Friends, all we have is this present moment. Make it count. Set the world alight. Make someone smile. And that includes you too.

Breathe in the world . . .

Love Dogs

 

I heard a man crying,
   Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
   "So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
   "Why did you stop praising?"
  
   "Because I've never heard anything back."

   "This longing you express is the return message."

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your Life
to be one of them.

--- Everyday Zen (Rumi, from "Love Dogs")

Nirvana --- The Waterfall

Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the Universe. This is called “Mind-only,” or “Essence of Mind,” or “Big Mind.” After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling.

You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the Universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing.

When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. When the water returns to its original oneness with the river, it no longer has any individual feeling to it; it resumes its own nature, and finds composure. How very glad the water must be to come back to the original river! If this is so, what feeling will we have when we die? I think we are like the water in the dipper. We will have composure then, perfect composure. It may be too perfect for us, just now, because we are so much attached to our own feeling, to our individual existence.

For us, just now, we have some fear of death, but after we resume our true original nature, there is Nirvana, That is why we say, “To attain Nirvana is to pass away,” “To pass away” is not a very adequate expression. Perhaps “to pass on,” or “to go on,” or “to join” would be better.

We say, “Everything comes out of emptiness.” One whole river or one whole mind is emptiness. When we reach this understanding we find the true meaning of our life. When we reach this understanding we can see the beauty of human life. Before we realize this fact, everything that we see is just delusion. Sometimes we overestimate the beauty; sometimes we underestimate or ignore the beauty because our small mind is not in accord with reality. 

To talk about it this way is quite easy, but to have the actual feeling is not so easy. But by your practice of zazen (meditation) you can cultivate this feeling. When you can sit with your whole body and mind, and with the oneness of your mind and body under the control of the Universal Mind, you can easily attain this kind of right understanding. Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an old erroneous interpretation of life.

When you realize this fact, you will discover how meaningless your old interpretation was, and how much useless effort you had been making. You will find the true meaning of life, and even though you have difficulty falling upright from the top of the waterfall to the bottom of the mountain, you will enjoy your life.

--- Shunryu Suzuki

The Gift

Where do you dwell?

Dalai Lama Renaissance

The Wisdom of Fools Crow

Prayer is anything that connects us to meaning, that helps us believe in ourselves and our purposes, that sustains a faith in life and nature, that connects us to our blood lineage, our children, our elders, our partners, and our communities; anything that serves in this way in prayer, is sacred, is beloved, is full of grace 

 

--- Everyday Zen (Fools Crow, Lakota Medicine Man)

 

Reflections on the Fifth Precept

Visit the Southern Palm Zen Group website at www.floridazen.com

Monday, August 2, 2010

THE 5TH PRECEPT: 

CULTIVATING A MIND THAT SEES CLEARLY. 

THIS IS THE PRECEPT OF NOT BEING IGNORANT.

A Reflection by Konrei

In its simplest form, “Not using intoxicants,” the Fifth Precept would seem to enjoin the use of substances such as drugs and alcohol, and there is that side to it. But lest we fall into the very ignorance we are trying to overcome through a rote and mechanical application of the Precept, we need to look deeper.

A mind that sees clearly is not just a mind that abstains from drink and drugs. As a matter of fact, it could be said that the fixation of the Prohibitionists and the Drug Warriors caused its own delusions, and certainly led to greater evils like corruption and increased crime throughout society. That which is absolutely forbidden is desired all the more, and most of us, being human, will find a way to acquire what we can’t have, even if it is something we don’t truly want to have.

And it is true that, judiciously, intoxicants may bring conviviality and added enjoyment to life: “Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used,” as Shakespeare said.

Ah, but there’s the rub (and the heart of the matter); for our friendly Fifth Precept is all about cultivating a mind that sees clearly. And no one has ever convinced me that the woman he met while wearing his beer goggles has been the love of his life.

There are myriad other intoxicants. Whether a good meal is good depends on mindfulness in eating it. Simply gorging oneself, even in the finest restaurant, leads to indolence and stagnation. One cannot live lightly with a bellyful of bricks, however good they tasted going down.

In our culture we drug ourselves unmercifully with shoddy entertainment, and escapes into fantasy. The fantasies are endless---The I WANT is insatiable, and serves to stoke our sense of insecurity and inadequacy. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a form of intoxication; even the Joneses are busy keeping up with the Joneses.

Our natural and unavoidable inability to fulfill our fantasies leads to the intoxicating experience of anger. Ah, anger, that state in which the ego triumphs, in which the fantasies feed on each other. The drama in my head is so much more interesting than the often boring and prosaic reality---“Why that So-And-So! He never showed up! He did this to me on purpose! Just wait! He’s got it coming!”---I then imagine the five forms of medieval torture to which my friend will be put, while meanwhile the poor schlub’s car’s broken down and his cellphone’s dead, and he needs my help.

Cultivating a mind that sees clearly means cultivating a mind that sees actively. A mind that sees actively counts its drinks, it weighs that second piece of birthday cake in the scales of my own well-being, it monitors its own escapes into fantasy and uses those moments to be creative, perhaps writing the next novel or redecorating the living room, and it determines whether the costs---emotional, financial and psychological---of my desires are worth the results.

Ignorance is both the cause and the effect of my not being in tune with the song the universe is singing.

REFLECTIONS ON SHARING BLESSINGS

Until I attain Enlightenment may I likewise attain the cutting-off of craving and clinging. 

Whatever faults I have until I attain Enlightenment, may they quickly perish.

Wherever I am born, may there be an upright mind, mindfulness, wisdom, austerity and vigor.

May harmful influences not weaken my efforts. 

The Buddha is the unexcelled protector. 

The Dharma is the supreme protection.

The Sangha is my true refuge.

And Peerless is the “Silent Buddha.”

By the power of these Ones, may I rise above all ignorance.