Try Again
I began training at Daikozen-ji just over a year ago. Since then, I’ve participated in two sesshin and train regularly in hojo.
Starting in June, I began a month-long live-in at Daikozen-ji, a decision which has been somewhat surprising to my non-Zen friends and family. While my commitment to training and to the Chosei Zen community is abundantly clear, what isn't clear to them is why I'm choosing this.
The “why”, in short, is that what I experience here – the way we practice, the way we are taught – is something I haven’t encountered anywhere else. This experience has demonstrated to me that change is not only possible, but imminently available.
I don’t know when I reached this conviction about Zen training, but I know I got a feel of it the first time I trained in hojo.
That evening, after class, I was sweating and trembling as I put on my shoes, feeling energized in a way I hadn’t in months. Ellen McKenzie – my now friend, mentor, and fellow student – came over to check in, and asked me how it went.
“No one teaches like this” I exclaimed, gesturing toward the training hall, in a tone that was almost annoyed, as if to say, “Why haven’t I experienced this before? Where has this been all my life?”
Put yourself, for a moment, in my shoes:
Imagine you are a self-conscious, not particularly athletic person – someone for whom being observed by others is uncomfortable, to say the least. Now imagine trying to follow along, for the first time, as your fellow trainees perform an intricate series of strenuous, choreographed movements while swinging heavy wooden sticks, and intermittently screaming.
Now imagine that the people you are training with – in particular, the teacher – are observing you with all of their senses, and with a gaze that is relentless and unflinching.
Imagine enduring that gaze as you repeat the same mistake, and receive the same correction, over and over again. Imagine that you carry on anyway – and this surprises you, because you know yourself to be the kind of person who will forfeit in any situation that makes you feel exposed. Why not now?
What you notice, eventually, is that this gaze, while it makes you uncomfortable, is void of both mercy and scorn, and that even after your hundredth screw-up, there is neither resentment nor pity. Instead, you are simply invited to try again.
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Returning to the present moment as I embark on this month of intensive training, I have committed to remembering that “the objective of Hojo is to cut all the habits one has acquired since birth so that one may return to the original self.” This objective captures why I train, but the how is what ultimately keeps me here, and can be boiled down to this:
That, in our striving to cut through our habits, there is a profound and transformative power to being seen and accepted for exactly what you are, by someone with the eyes to see.
That “The Way” we seek in our Zen training is a path that can not be tread alone, it requires the presence of someone who not only sees us this way, but also compassionately supports our efforts to grow: A teacher.
That such a teacher was also once a student; that they too trained in the presence of someone who saw them for what they were, saw them fail a thousand times, and asked them to try again.
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