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!

It's All in Your Head, Part One

Bodhidharma said,

Seeking awakening outside of the mind is as futile as trying to grasp the void.

Think about it. Emptiness is just a concept, an idea. It’s not a something. It’s a lack of something. We can hold something, grab it, pick it up, toss it around. Can you hold voidness?

Now that I’ve said that, some Keanu Reeves mofo somewhere is sitting in half-lotus pondering, “Dude, how can I hold the void?”

Someone punch him in the nose, please.

Cold isn’t the opposite of hot, it’s the absence of heat. Dark isn’t the opposite of light, it’s the lack thereof. Celibacy isn’t the opposite of getting it on, it’s that Natalie Portman won’t return my phone calls.

There’s a classic gatha that Bodhidharma recites for us:

Only the mind is Buddha,
Only Buddha is the mind;
Buddha exists not outside of the mind,
Mind exists not outside of Buddha.

Awakening is within your self. Buddha, Nirvana, all that stuff. Here’s the catch though. They’re all empty. They are all fingers pointing at the moon. Let’s say that through some fancy robes & incense ritual, you gained some level of understanding. Was that understanding in the robes & ritual? What was there before and what is still there after?

On the other hand, there’s a trend in American Zen for rebellion, especially against traditions that existed in Asia for the centuries but the not in the West. These iconoclasts automatically reject things like robes, chanting, bowing to statues, shaving heads, even the precepts, as idiocy, as foolishness systematized and set up by those not truly awakened. They look to teachers like Bodhidharma & say he agrees with them, but in reality, they are fooling themselves just as much as those who say you have to chant this way, and do this ritual, and wear this funny hat.

So where does that leave us?

Turning everything on its head.

Who are you & what are you looking for?

Former & later Buddhas have transmitted mind to mind without depending on the written word. - Bodhidharma

So what the hell am I going to say about it?

One of the central things spoken of about Zen is that it is a teaching outside of the scriptures, a transmission outside of the sutras. The opening lines of the Daodejing say, “The Way that can be spoken of is not the true way”. So, the idea of writing a blog about Zen or talking about it is in one sense the ultimate arrogance. The words I say are not IT.

There’s a great scene in Enter the Dragon where Bruce goes to give one of his Shaolin students a private lesson. “It is like a finger pointing to the moon,” he says, pausing to smack his student, who was staring at Bruce’s outstretched finger. “If you focus only on the finger, then you will miss all of the heavenly glory.” This scene is actually a classic Zen teaching that Bruce Lee brought to life in an iconic fashion that has influenced martial artists and kung fu film buffs since then. A few know it’s a Zen teaching. Very few actually take the time to get what that means.

This is perhaps the foundational lesson we can learn in our Zen practice. We have to cut through these things to see the thing in itself. Our words, our discussions, the sutras, the koan, the talks of great past teachers, even that ubiquitous exercise of sitting meditation…none of these things are anymore true than the finger.

In the Heart Sutra, Gwanseum-bosal, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, tells us, “All Dharmas are empty.” Some love to latch on to emptiness when they begin to study Buddhism, going to nihilistic extremes that many unfortunately never grow out of...

“It’s all emptiness, bro...”

Uh-huh…I got some emptiness for ya right here, buddy.

Dharmas are empty, but not some whacked out trip into the void empty. Dharmas aren’t the moon. They’re the finger pointing at it.

So, while we engage in these practices, and discuss these things, we are at best, beating around the bush. At worst, we’re looking at Bruce Lee’s finger & thinking we understand the glories of the moon & stars. So why still use the finger? Because you have to point with something.

In Zen practice, we don’t seek to understand what the sages taught, to grasp some banal theoretic knowledge, but rather to attain the mind that they taught from. It’s the same mind that we already have. Enlightenment isn’t something we can chase down, it’s not found outside of us in the right ritual or praying to long dead Asian dudes or some ethereal life force outside of us. We are the one’s who awaken. Nirvana’s not some heavenly realm where we eventually go to experience no more suffering. It’s here and now and it’s right within us. If someone tells you it’s somewhere else, be sure to get the GPS coordinates! Then sell them and make a ton of cash. Just remember to donate a portion of it to the Baltimore Zen Center.

Who is the Baltimore Zen Center?

Welcome to the New Year! May 2010 be a peaceful and fruitful year for you and yours!

Recently the Baltimore Zen Center Facebook group surpassed 100 members. We've got a great following on Facebook, a fan page, a some great, witty, and intelligent posters! If you haven't joined in, be sure to stop by and check us out. It's a great way to avoid actually working when you're at the office!

The thing that interested me most when I looked over our member list though, was how many of you I've never met, how many members had never actually been to the Baltimore Zen Center for a class, retreat, movie night, or bonfire. For sure, some live out of state, and are taking the awesome advantage we have in the 21st century of receiving the Dharma through the great & glorious Al Gore's gift of Interwebs. Yet many others, I just had to wonder...why haven't I had the pleasure of sharing a cup of tea with you?

Coming to a Zen Center for the first time can be a bit intimidating, I know. I remember what it was like the first time I knocked on that door. You don't have any idea what you're getting in to, who you're going to meet, if they're gonna try and sell you a headtrip, if you're gonna have to do some crazy rituals or chants or sacrifice small furry animals to Cthulu...ok, maybe not that part, but it's intimidating, isn't it?

Hopefully, this post will ease your mind a bit

Allow me to introduce us, the Baltimore Zen Center.

Who are we?

We're families with young children. Sometimes, we even bring toddlers to class, and everyone learns to practice patience when they cry. We're fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. We live and laugh, cry and fight, and learn how to love each other through it all. We're a family of families, and the bonds of sangha make brothers and sisters out of those with no blood relations between us.

We're workers, blue collar, white collar, and even unemployed, finding peace from our busy lives in the practice, and support for our daily trials in each other.

We're college students and grad students, balancing strenuos studies, late night cram sessions, and grueling exams with moments of peace & introspection in sitting meditation, and challenging our youthful inquisitive spirits with koan practice.

We're Korean American, Irish American, African American, Chinese American, Hyphen Americans, immigrant, resident, citizens, and everything in between, all of us coming from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and families, even when the externals are all the same.

We're lifelong Buddhists, converts from other paths, or still practicing Catholics, Jews, & Muslims who've found renewed faith through Zen.

We're martial artists. From the youthful exuberance of mixed martial arts, the harmonious partnership of Aikido, the dynamic acrobatics of Taekwondo, to the introspective street fighting of Jeet Kune Do, we find a dynamic form of meditation in combative exercises.

We're dancers; performing belly dancers at local events, Wednesday night country line dancing at the local watering hole, life's beats and rhythms and movements can be a koan in themselves.

We're musicians, guitarists, drummers, pianists, Opera singers, and rockers. From chanting the Heart Sutra to belting out a tune on the mic in front of an audience, we find ourselves as we put our all into the moment of performance.

We're Zen practitioners. Beginners, long time members, teachers, all of us walking on a path together, sometimes a few steps on our own, sometimes helping each other along. Sometimes leading, other times following.

We're the Baltimore Zen Center.

Who are you?

BZC Facebook Group Page:
Here

BZC Facebook Fan Page:
Here

Update

On Sunday morning's Fox News Roundtable, former anchor and long time commentator Brit Hume stated Tiger Woods should leave Buddhism and convert to Christianity in order to receive forgiveness and repair his relationship with his children. Tomorrow morning on the Ed Norris Show, Ed & Maynard will discuss this controversial statement with Baltimore Zen Center Director & teacher, JB MuSsang Jaeger.

Tune in at 730am to listen in to the discussion. The station is Baltimore's 105.7, The Fan.

Or listen on-line at the following link:

http://player.play.it/player/player.html?v=4.10.2&id=115&onestat=whfs1