Happy new Year 2011

Well here we are now entered fully into a New Year with all the holiday festivities over. Perhaps you have already made some resolutions as you carefully looked at your life as we enter this New Year with a new decade. Maybe like me you can remember the Communist regions in the past at least outlining “five year plans.” So maybe this is a good time even now if you haven’t done it already to look carefully at the direction of your life. These days everybody seems to be under great pressure of time. A Roman Catholic bishop in England recently passed comment on this and suggested that it was unrealistic to expect that people should be at church every Sunday. My point is to ask each of us to look once again at our allocation of time that we can set some realistic priorities. In doing this we are inevitably forced to consider carefully what place our spiritual practice has in our lives. Fundamentally we consider whether we think that any spiritual practice maybe good when we have the time after all the business of living is taken care of or whether we know that it is absolutely essential in providing the ground from which we orientate our life.
With regard to the Wild Goose sangha we have begun to make some strong commitments ourselves to providing the necessary opportunities to help people grow and consolidate their practice. Most of us find that much of the time our sitting Zazen is done on our own so we often need to come together with others to give a boost to our practice. Such meetings can be for a day or for a weekend. Many of our programmes you will see are provided at the Ammerdown Centre. You can fine the year’s programme for those listed in the Flyer or in the Ammerdown Centre programme. The most immediate one is the Zazenkai at Ammerdown on February 26th. A Zazenkai is a day of Zen practice which gives us an opportunity to have some solid sitting Zazen together with a time of teaching and an opportunity to meet for a personal interview with the teacher. You will also see that there is a weekend Zen Sesshin to be held at Minster Abbey near Canterbury March 18 – 20. This again is a great opportunity to deepen one’s practice and to get encouragement. You can see details of how to register for these events on our calendar of events section. As it usually gets booked up very quickly you may want to consider registering for the weeklong sesshin with myself and Fr. Kennedy Roshi May 27 – June 2.
So will all my best wishes for a good year of silent sitting and personal peace.

Rohatsu December 2010 Although the normal day for the celebration of the awakening of Siddhartha Buddha is usually on December 8 the Wild Goose sangha at Cirencester kept the celebration on Thursday December 9. It was a very lovely celebration where we sat zazen, chanted some of the sutras, listened to a Teisho by Patrick Sensei and then feasted around a tree lit decorated with fairy lights on angel cake and tea.
We found the teisho very interesting so here it is for you all to read.
Bodhi Day or The Buddha's Enlightenment is celebrated by Mahayana Buddhists on 8th December each year or on other dates in some parts of the world. Among Mahayana Buddhists, this holiday celebrates the Buddha's attainment of understanding of the truth of existence, freeing him from all human suffering, and finding perfect happiness. The date, 8th December, is based on the Japanese Buddhist calendar.
Tradition tells us that the prince, Siddhartha Gautama, left his home and family and all his possessions behind at the age of 29 to discover the meaning of life, particularly its hardships. After six years of rigorous discipline and ascetic lifestyles under the guidance of a number of spiritual teachers, he still hadn't found what he was looking for.
Eventually then after trying many spiritual paths about 2,500 years ago, the young prince of Northern India Siddhartha Gautama sat beneath a fig tree and declared, “Even though the flesh falls from my bones and the bones themselves crack, I will not get up from this seat until I have attained supreme and perfect enlightenment!” This determined young man then faced down all of his inner demons, defying and finally taming all of the temptations and distractions of greed, anger, restlessness, laziness and self-doubt. He finally attained a state of calm awareness. His mind had become like a clear and still pool which could perfectly reflect all things within it. During the early evening, Siddhartha reflected on all of his former thoughts, words and deeds. He perceived within himself all of the many things that he had done and experienced in both the present lifetime and in all of the innumerable past lifetimes which became known to him in this state of clear calm awareness. He saw that he himself had created the destiny which had brought him to the point where he could sit beneath that tree at that time and to seek the answers to the great question of birth and death. During the middle of the night, his awareness expanded to include the lives of all sentient beings. He saw that his life was indivisibly involved in the lives of all other beings. He saw how his life affected the lives of all others and how their lives affected his. Furthermore, he perceived that they too were the creators of their own destinies through the consequences of their own actions. As the morning approached, Siddhartha contemplated the vast network of cause and effect itself. He saw how all beings were intimately connected to one another in this vast network of mutual influence and creation. Like a vast net of jewels reflecting each others' light and beauty he saw how all beings arose as part of an unending process of mutual creation. He also saw how ignorance of the true nature of reality was the cause of all the selfish craving which led to suffering, and he saw that this suffering could be ended through a life based upon the truth, the Wonderful Dharma.As the morning star appeared in the sky, Siddhartha’s contemplations were fully realized in the fullness of the living moment in which the Wonderful Dharma is expressed. In that moment Siddhartha became the Buddha, the fully awakened one who realized and could share with others the true nature of reality which could end suffering and open the eyes of all people to the selfless beauty which he had seen and now manifested in his own life. Like Siddhartha, we too, should find time to calm our hearts and minds and allow ourselves to clearly reflect the true nature of life. We too, should reflect upon our actions and their consequences, so we can humbly take responsibility for our lives. We too, should reflect upon the lessons that the lives of others hold for us, so that we can learn from their mistakes and receive inspiration from their successes. We too, should reflect upon the vast and marvellous workings of the Dharma which pervades our lives and in fact is our life. Above all, however, we should realize that the Dharma, the true nature of reality which is so difficult to perceive and understand, has been given to us by Shakyamuni Buddha. In the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha stated, “For many hundreds of thousands of billions of countless eons, I studied and practiced the Dharma difficult to obtain, and [finally attained] perfect and complete enlightenment. Now I will transmit the Dharma to you.”
For Shakyamuni Buddha’s efforts and determination, his great generosity and compassion, and most importantly for his gift of the Dharma which he realized beneath that fig tree 2,500 years ago, we come together today in celebration.

Zen and Verbum Domini
This is designated as a “Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Benedict XVI on the Word of God in the Life and mission of the Catholic Church. It was released late in 2010 following a meeting of the bishops to discuss the use of the Christian Bible in the life of a Christian Community today. Although written clearly for those who are members of the Roman Catholic Church my attention was taken by the fact that it addresses the place the Bible has within the context of Interreligious dialogue. The section begins by saying that the “encounter, dialogue and cooperation with all people of good will, particularly with the followers of the different religious traditions of humanity” is an essential part of communicating the Christian message. Obviously studying the sacred texts of any religious tradition is an essential part in coming to engage in serious dialogue with them. Pope Benedict’s text goes on to point out the fact that the various religions make their own specific contribution to the common good. With regard to the Jewish tradition there is of course clearly a considerable sense of common ground in the use of much of the same biblical material. To a certain extent it points out that this is also true of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. It begins a section on such dialogue by saying, “the church looks with respect to Muslims who adore the one God.” As followers of Abraham they “above all worship God through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.” More importantly for me as and ordained Catholic priest whose personal commitment to interreligious dialogue is with members of the Zen Buddhist community is the positive assessment given to this area of dialogue. Pope Benedict writes “I wish to voice the church’s respect for the ancient religions and spiritual traditions on the various continents. These contain values which can greatly advance understanding between individuals and people. Frequently we note a consonance with values expressed also in their religious books.” He then goes on to say specifically of Buddhism that we can learn from their “respect for life, contemplation, silence and simplicity” In my own case and for many I have found that a great many people are searching for the deeper personal experience of God in their lives that can only come precisely through the practice of meditation or contemplation, silence and simplicity. It is because of this that I personally want to share my own experience of the riches of Zen in giving a way of practice hinted at but not explained or reinforced for the ordinary person in the Christian tradition. Because Zen in its essence is not a belief system with a theology it is perfectly suitable for a Christian to use its practice as a way of experiencing what all the great Christian theologians down through the ages have written about so eloquently. This for me is a blessing and a truly practical demonstration of interreligious dialogue.

Book Reviews
Zen practitioners of whatever faith tradition or none do well to read any of the material by Eithei Dogen the great Japanese Zen teacher from the thirteenth century. His Shobogenzo is lies right at the heart of Zen practice and is rated as one of the most outstanding spiritual and literary works ever written. Having said that most of us need some help to penetrate his text and get help from the riches to be found there. To this end I have two books that I thoroughly recommend.
Francis Dojun Cook. How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2002.

The Forward to this book is written by Taizan Maezumi Roshi the founder of the White Plum Asangha which is the lineage to which we belong. He writes in his forward “Dogen’s expression is like an inexhaustible stream that gushes out of the ground naturally and without impediment.” With those few words he reliably informs the reader on the greatness of Dogen who wrote ninety five chapters in the Shobogenzo. Cook has worked through these chapters himself and out of his own experience of sitting Zazen has chosen ten chapters to translate. He has found that these chapters most particularly express the fact that the “Zen of Dogen is the Zen of practice.” As an introduction to the chapters Cook provides six essays that help the practitioner to make the best use on Dogen in their own practice. To my mind this is one of the best and concise introductions to Dogen’s Zen. I personally have benefitted much from the essays and from the following clear translations. I commend the book as a really good place to start on reaping the riches of Dogen and as an encouragement to your own practice.

Shohaku Okumura. Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo Wisdom Publications, Boston. 2010.

This book was recommended to me by Dave Keizan Scott Sensei the resident teacher of the Stonewater Zen Sangha in Liverpool. Genjokoan is one of the most important chapters in Dogen’s Shobogenzo and probably the one that has been most translated. Okumura with his excellent translation not only gives us a translation of the text but a most insightful commentary that is particularly helpful to Zen practitioners. The author has obviously not only spent much time in reflecting on the text out of his own experience but has also spent many hours sitting on the mat breathing it. Taigen Dan Leighton in his forward a great Dogen scholar in his own right in his forward to the book writes” I have been considering Genjokoan for thirty five years, and still enjoyed the many helpful revelations in the book.” I have only been studying Dogen for a few months now and this book is challenging me deeply in a most rewarding way. But like all reading material on Zen I always ask myself, ‘Is this merely stimulating my intellect or is it deepening my practice?’ With is book I find that it does both and would encourage serious Zen students to use it as part of their own Zen study.