I'm back in America now. World Tour 2010 is officially over and done. I'm hardly finished with touring this year. I have a new book coming out in September, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between, and one I edited and co-wrote with Nishijima Roshi, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika. So I'll have a lot of touring to do ahead of me once those come out.Still, it's a weird feeling to be done with something that, before I started on it seemed overwhelmingly big. It reminds me of the words you see written on the hans -- wood boards pounded to call people to zazen -- at Soto Zen monasteries all over the world.
生死事大
無常迅速
光陰可惜
時不待人
Shou ji ji dai
Mu jou jin soku
Kou in oshimu beshi
Toki hitowo matazu
Great is the matter of Birth and death;
Life slips quickly by;
To waste time is a great shame;
Time waits for no one;
There are various other translations. At Tassajara they have a different English translation on each han.
It's astounding how quickly even the most amazing events of your life are over and gone. I had a great time seeing the world. I sat zazen in places I never even thought I'd visit. It's a truly incredible world. I'd have a hard time picking out any highlights because it was a trip filled with nothing but highlights. I kept a diary every day of the tour. So one of these days I'm sure there'll be a book about it.
One of my great problems in life is that I'm the kind of person who feels like he always has to be doing something. I don't relax easily. Zazen for me has been, in part, a way to relax and still not feel like I'm wasting time. Vacations are not fun for me because they feel like a waste of time. I want to always be making some kind of progress.
Of course, this is an illusion. But we all have our illusions. The funny thing about Zen practice is that it will show you that your illusions are illusions. And that is a very big deal. That is tremendously helpful. Most people never get that at all.
But zazen will not get rid of your illusions. It shows them for what they are. But it's up to you to do something about that.
What I'm gonna do about it is zazen. In just over a week I'll be at the Great Sky Zen Sesshin. Registration is closed, so you can't sign up anymore. But think of it this way. Gempo Roshi charges folks $50,000 for five days in his presence based on the idea that five days with an "Enlightened Master" will help you make years of progress in just a few days. Well there are five (5) Masters at Great Sky, all with the same Zen credentials as Genpo has, the same level of recognition as an "Enlightened Master." And you get seven, not five, days with ALL FIVE OF US for a twentieth of Genpo's price! Think of how much progress that will get you! What an incredible bargain!!! Someone ought to do the calculations to see how much money you save!
Anyway, after Great Sky I'm heading for Tassajara where I will spend a month or so as a work-practice student. So I'll be up at 4:30 AM and in bed at 8:30 for the next five or six weeks. Zazen every day. Meal chants at every meal. Assigned work schedules. Lots of restrictions and regulations. And I am doing all of this voluntarily when I could be doing pretty much anything else. I'm a writer for Christ's sake! We can do our work getting up at two in the afternoon and staying in pajamas all day! We can even do it dead drunk.
I got no boss. I got no time clock. I'm living the dream, baby! Flying around the world, hanging out with exotic and weird people, eating bizarre food, the whole ball of wax!
Yet I am choosing deliberately to put myself in a position that is very much like the nine-to-five work-a-day grind I spent so much time, effort and energy to finally escape from. Why would anyone do such a thing?
I think the reason so many human beings do the kind of routine drudgery we all complain so much about is because we like it. We like stability and routines. We don't want to live like we're on vacation 24/7. Most writers I know have to force themselves to follow weird artificial strategies in order to simulate what "normal" folks deal with all the time -- what I dealt with until a couple years ago. It's the only way most of us get anything done. This recent tour got me so out of my routines that I feel like I need something fairly drastic to get back on track.
What this means to you folks out there is that this blog will be going on hiatus for a while. You won't see many postings here between mid August and mid September. There's no Internet access at Hokyoji or Tassajara. Maybe I can find a way to phone in entries. I don't know. But more likely the blog will just go dark for a while.
I'm not going away yet. But that's a heads up to let you know what's in store.
Gotta run! See ya!
P.S. The photo this time was taken while driving in to Tassajara two years ago during the big fires there. It's completely unretouched and un-Photoshopped.
