Back by popular demand, we will have an all-day zazen on Saturday Feb. 28, 2009 at the Hill St. Center in Santa Monica (details on your left). The schedule will go like this:
10:00-10:40 Zazen
10:40-11:00 Chanting
11:00-11:30 Zazen
11:30-11:40 Kinhin
11:40-12:10 Zazen
12:10-1:10 Lunch (BRING YOUR OWN!)
1:10-1:40 Zazen
1:40-1:50 Kinhin (walking zazen)
1:50-2:20 Zazen
2:20-2:50 Samu (clean up)
2:50-3:30 Discussion
OK? I'm keeping the first 2 things like we usually do so that anyone who wants to come just for that can do so and then leave if they like. Folks are welcome to come to any segment of this. But if you come in the middle, nobody's gonna show you what to do, so you better know before hand. Instructions by the lovely Liza Rose of SuicideGirls are linked over there to your left.
Remember THERE IS NO ORYOKI LUNCH. You must BRING YOUR OWN LUNCH! We can all eat together, maybe even say the meal chant. But NO ORYOKI!
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I put up a few more Nishijima videos the other day. I'll just put up links this time so that everything runs a little smoother here on the blog. These items are slightly more controversial than the last ones. I was actually baiting him during the talks and trying to get him to say controversial stuff. This is about as much controversy as I got.
Someone asked me why I didn't just put all 3 hours of raw video up. Oy! It took like an hour a piece just to encode each of these short videos in the format you need for YouTube. Maybe someday...
Gudo Nishijima Roshi: The Balance Between Love and Hate
Here Gudo Nishijima Roshi talks about the balance of love and hate in Buddhist practice.
Of course, the word "hate" here does not mean the kind of hate that causes murder, genocide and so on. It refers to the workings of the autonomic nervous system. When hate is unbalanced and overwhelms love we all know there are terrible consequences. Yet when love is unbalanced and overwhelms hate the consequences are equally negative.
I've always found his use of the word "love" and "hate" to describe these subtle states very interesting and useful.
Click here to view
Gudo Nishijima Roshi: Japanese Buddhism in World War II
Gudo Nishijima Roshi gives his opinion about Japanese Buddhism and its support of the war effort during World War II. He agrees with Brian Victoria, author of "Zen at War," that many Japanese Buddhists supported Japan's nationalism during the war and he calls this unfortunate. But he strongly denies Victoria's assertion that his teacher Kodo Sawaki was among them. The exaggerations that Nishijima Roshi refers to in the video are given in great detail on this web page (click to view).
To me, the most telling of these exaggerations is when Victoria quotes Sawaki as saying, "We gorged ourselves on killing" when Sawaki served in the Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese war. The Japanese phrase in the source material translated as "gorged" was "hara ippai." In my eleven years in Japan I never once heard anyone use the phrase "hara ippai" (literally: full stomach) in a positive context unless perhaps when speaking of actual eating. When used metaphorically it means "fed up." The quote should have been rendered "We got fed up with killing." Furthermore, the quote isn't even actually from Sawaki at all but by a later biographer who put his own words into Sawaki's mouth. Victoria evidently knew this when he used it but did not qualify the quote.
Other quotations that Victoria used to demonstrate Sawaki's supposed war-mongering are equally dubiously translated or from similarly discredited sources. Conversely, one can find many other quotations by Sawaki from outside Victoria's book in which he clearly denounces war. Victoria's is definitely an important book and says stuff that clearly needed to be said. He just went a bit too far to make his point.
Click here to view
Gudo Nishijima Roshi: Chanting in Buddhism
Gudo Nishijima Roshi talks about the place of sutra chanting in Buddhism and has a few choice words to say about the Soto sect. One should note that in spite of what he says here, Nishijima Roshi also led weekly chanting of the Heart Sutra and other Buddhist texts at his Zen dojo in Chiba, Japan for many years. So his words shouldn't be taken as denouncing chanting entirely. Still, the main focus of his teaching is always the practice of Zazen.
Click here to view
Gudo Nishijima Roshi: How to Wear the O-kesa
Gudo Nishijima Roshi demonstrates the way to put on the o-kesa (or kashaya), the traditional Buddhist robe. Notice he is wearing a kimono under the o-kesa and a Western style dress shirt below that. These are the clothes he just happened to have on when I taped this. Though Nishijima Roshi often wears full Buddhist robes, he believes that the o-kesa is the only truly Buddhist garment. So he often wears it over Western clothes.
His method for tying it is basically Soto style. But there are variations. Some do not hide the cords used to tie it up. Some fold it in a slightly different way.
Sorry for the video drop-outs at the beginning. It clears up pretty quickly.
Click here to view
