Kimchi Zen

So where is the Buddha? Where is enlightenment? Where can you go to find it?

Yeah, there was that guy in India a while back named Sid. But where is Awakening? Where can you go to find it? Not just Awakening, but where did we even get this idea that we can Awaken? Where did that come from?

Without looking within ourselves, seeking the mind of all sages, which is our own mind, the more we talk about answers to these questions, the further away from it we move. We can blather on about what so & so said, and prattle on using all the right Buddhist words and make ourselves sound knowledgeable, but it won’t get us any closer. It’s at best more fingers pointing to the moon, at worst mindless crap. Like Pohwa-seunim said, "If you've caught the sense of the first word, it's already collapsed. After the second word, no one can help you. After the third word, you can't even save others."

After a while, I have to stop pointing at the moon so you can actually see it.

Sometimes, you just gotta eat the damn kimchi, as Pohwa-seunim would say.

Anyone who’s spent anytime in Korea, around people of Korean descent, or been to a Korean restaurant knows what I’m talking about. Kimchi is to Korean cuisine like beer is to being German. It’s inseparable. It’s made by pickling & fermenting vegetables along with hot peppers, garlic, and other spices. The archetypal kimchi is made with cabbage, and is served with every meal in Korea. It was originally a foodstuff made to last through famine and war by being buried in clay jars underground & dug up when there was nothing left to eat.

I can sit here and describe kimchi to you. I could tell you the process that is involved in making it. I can tell you how it tastes, fiery, with a sweet yet sour flavor. I can tell you about the crunch when you get a crisp piece of cabbage. I could gush to you in loving tones how it’s flavor is the perfect accompaniment to SPAM fried rice (HEY PRECEPTS SQUAD!!! I EATED THE MEATS!!!)

Or you could ask someone else, who perhaps doesn’t share my culinary sensibilities, and they might tell you that kimchi is noxious, foul, stanky, & grotesque.

Or you could go read a Korean cookbook, learn about all the different varieties, and all the possible ways to prepare it. You could watch Food Network (it's like porn to me) and watch how they make kimchi firsthand.

Is kimchi fiery, sweet, sour, noxious, stanky?

No, kimchi is kimchi.

Until you eat kimchi, you just have my opinion on it, or someone else’s opinion on it, but you don’t know kimchi.

Rigidly adhering to ritual, to doctrines, to gurus, to the Precepts, to what Bodhidharma calls “the Buddha’s statue”, is like never eating kimchi, but dogmatically insisting to someone who has that kimchi is sweet, sour, firey or stanky. The problem isn’t the ritual, or the teachings of the sutras, or having a teacher, or following the Precepts. The problem is the same for those who dogmatically cling to the ritual, the sutras, their teachers, or following the precepts…as it is for those who doggedly say that the ritual, the sutras, the teachers, or precepts are unnecessary! Both have created cages for themselves, one the cage of the traditionalist, the other the cage of the iconoclast.

That cage is one that will keep them from awakening to their own self-nature.

Events

Friday Night Sit
January 29th
7-11pm

Come join us for an evening of deep and powerful practice in the hermitage at the Baltimore Zen Center. Long practiced at the Potomac Zen Center, we will be engaging meditation lit only by sparse candle light. As the evening's darkness deepens, you'll be amazed at how the intensity of your concentration deepens as well.

The sitting periods will be thirty minutes long, making this an ideal event for complete beginners as well as long-time practitioners. Nightfalls silence and stillness offers a time for reflection and deep introspection. The retreat will begin with a Dharma service of chanting, incense offering, and lighting of the candles. Between sitting sessions, we will practice Paldangeum, an ancient series of stretching and breathing exercises, to help keep our bodies prepared for meditation.

Suggested donation: $20

Gwanseum Evening Retreat
Friday, February 19th, 2010
7pm to 11pm

Gwanseum, or Avalokita, is known as the Bodhisattva of Compassion & Mercy. Represented by the figure of a beautiful woman, she is said to have a thousand hands with which to help all those who suffer. The metaphor means that each of us are two hands of compassion, working in this world.

During this evening practice session we will alternate periods of sitting meditation with chanting & prostrations, three of the primary practice exercises at the Baltimore Zen Center. We will ponder teachings of selflessness & compassion as we chant the Heart Sutra, the Thousand Hands Sutra, and the Universal Door chant of the Lotus Sutra.

The retreat will begin with evening meditation liturgy, and will include a brief Dharma talk by JB MuSsang Jaeger.

Suggested donation: $20

Lunar New Year Celebration
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
9am to 5pm

Across the globe, Lunar New Year festivities typically last an entire week, and at the Baltimore Zen Center, we're celebrating the end of this festival period together with family and friends! The New Year is a time to begin our Zen practice anew and come together as a Sangha to encourage each other for the coming year.

We'll enjoy a day of food, martial art performances, poetry, and of course the New Year Ceremony. We'll start the day with a meditation period, and pay respect to our teachers and ancestors.

The ceremony begins at 9am, and the Dharma Hall will be open all day for anyone who would like to practice sitting meditation or offer incense. We will have a delicious vegetarian lunch at noon, and activities and demonstrations following.

There will be gifts of red envelopes for the Sangha's children and any younger guests!