Nishijima Roshi turned 90 on November 29th! The photo to your left is from the party held for him by students of Dogen Sangha in Tokyo, who meet each Saturday at Tokyo University's Young Buddhists Association. I guess 90 is pretty young! At the bottom of this post is a video made for his b-day by one of the Dogen Sangha groups in Frankfurt, Germany.I'm in St. Paul today enjoying their double good hospitality and warmth. I sat in on a poetry reading at Macalester College last night, which was a lot of fun. Especially the poem about burgers! In just a few hours I'll be speaking at the college.
I'm kinda nervous as I always am before these talks. This will be my second talk about Buddhism and sex. It's the subject of my forthcoming book from New World Library. The book isn't due out until next Fall. But it's mostly finished at this point. Still, everything I write is a work in progress as far as I'm concerned -- even after it's already on sale in the stores.
What I've tried to do in the book is take a personal view of Buddhism and sexuality as it has developed for me. It wasn't until I started writing the book that I realized I lost my virginity and began my Zen practice at roughly the same time. So almost all of my life as a sexual being has been affected by Zen practice and Zen philosophy. Whether I am a shining example of how to reconcile the two remains to be seen. I think I'm a little better at it than a few and a lot worse than others. In short, I handle it about as well as can be expected.
But I really believe that the Buddhist approach has been invaluable in allowing me to have a pretty happy sex life without a lot of the intensity and weirdness I've seen a many of my friends deal with. Sure I've had some heartbreak. I break pretty hard when I break. I've done a few things I shouldn't have. But overall, I feel like it's been mostly really, really good -- even when it's been bad. That's probably the part where the Zen stuff helps the most. It's a way of maintaining some kind of balance even when you're freaking the fuck out.
Anyway, as usual I have no clue just what I'm gonna say to the students of Macalester. But I got a few notes written down on a little notepad in my pocket. So I can always whip that out if I completely lose track.
Hope to see you there!
All times, dates, locations and suchlike are AT THIS LINK.
And remember I'm leading a half-day sit at Macalester tomorrow (Saturday) and doing the Dharma Talk at Dharma Field in Minneapolis on Sunday. The info about those is also at the link above (or just click here, lazy-pants!).
And, and, and, as usual zazen at Hill Street Center in Santa Monica is ON this Saturday in spite of the fact I won't be there.
