June-July, 2002 A Publication of the Missouri Zen Center 220 Spring Avenue Webster Groves, MO 63119 (314) 961-6138 Visit us on the web at www.MissouriZenCenter.org Rosan Returns We expect to welcome back our teacher, Rosan, sometime during the later half of July. He is normally in St. Louis from late July through about mid-September. Mondays: Beginner's Nights The first Monday night of each month is now a special beginnerÕs nights. Maku will be doan for the first Monday in June, with other sangha members as doans on succeeding first Mondays. The discussion following sitting will be geared to questions and issues of beginning Zen students. As on all Monday evenings, sitting will take place for 20 minutes, from 7 to 7:20 pm, and anyone who wants instruction on how to meditate or on zendo etiquette can arrive at 6:30 pm to receive such. The next time we expect to offer Sitting 101 and Sitting 202, our classes for beginning Zen students, in the fall. Anyone who is unsure of their ability to sit for a full 40 minutes is encouraged to attend the Monday evening sitting and also the final sitting on Sunday morning, which takes place from 8:10 to 8:30 am. Please enter the zendo only during kinhin, from 8 to 8:10 am, if you wish to attend the 20 minute sitting on Sunday. Stay after sitting for the Dharma talk, work period, and tea and discussion. Tea and discussion is a good opportunity to ask any questions you may have about your practice (as well as to enjoy the most delicious green tea youÕve ever tasted). Sesshin, June 8 and 9 The next day and a half sesshin has been scheduled for Saturday, June 8 through Sunday, June 9, with an option to begin on Friday evening, June 7. The sesshin will begin at 6:20 am on Saturday and will include a silent lunch period. Sitting will end at about 9 p.m. on Saturday evening. The sesshin will resume at 6:20 am on Sunday adhering to the normal Sunday schedule. We especially encourage those of you who have not sat sesshin before to join us for all or part of the Saturday sitting. If you have not participated in sesshin before, consider coming for half the day on Saturday, either in the morning or afternoon. Or if you are uncertain about your ability to sit for three or four periods in a row, try sitting two periods in a row sometime during the sesshin. You may enter or leave during kinhin or during the morning service. The sesshin schedule is posted at the Zen Center so that you can plan when to attend. The Saturday lunch period will be less formal than an oryoki lunch. It will be conducted in silence. Please also maintain silence as much as possible during the morning work period, and please respect any sesshin participant who may wish to maintain silence during break periods. Suggested donation for the sesshin is $30. Please notify the Zen Center if you will be attending the Saturday lunch, or put your name on the lunch sign-up sheet posted on the closet door. We will extend the Friday evening sitting for those people who wish to begin sesshin at that time. The normal Friday schedule will be observed for the first two sittings, followed by kinhin from 7:40-7:50 p.m. and a third sitting from 7:50-8:30 p.m. Sleeping space is available at the Center on both Friday and Saturday nights. You will need to bring your own sleeping bag and towel. Help Get RosanÕs Dharma Talks into Dharma Life We are still looking for one or more volunteers to transcribe RosanÕs Dharma talks from tape so that we may publish one of his talks in each issue of Dharma Life. If you want to be of service to the Zen Center, but have other commitments during weekends (when most of our volunteer work is scheduled), transcribing would be an excellent way to be of service. You will be able to work at home, whenever it is convenient. All you need are the tapes, the device they are recorded on (if you donÕt own one, you can borrow the Zen CenterÕs whenever Rosan is out of town), and a means to get transcribed talks to the Dharma Life co-editors. You can transcribe several and send them at the same time. Anyone who wants to help with this or wants more information, please contact the Zen Center. Ideas wanted for Zen Center Garden We are fortunate to have plenty of space for beautiful gardens at the Zen Center, but deciding how best to use that space can be very difficult. Few of us have any experience in landscape design, and we donÕt know what sangha members would like to see in the garden areas. In considering how to best make use of the garden space, the Zen Center Board has taken two steps that will both engage sangha members in garden planning and provide us with a well-integrated design using the ideas that sangha members contribute. A local professor, Dr. Paul Roberts, has agreed to have the students in his class this coming fall work up some possible designs for the Zen Center gardens based on input provided by the sangha. Once sangha members have received the designs and chosen among them, the installation phase will begin. This will likely take place over a number of years. There may be an opportunity for sangha members to donate money toward specific plantings and be recognized for that donation, perhaps by a marker on the plant as is done at many public gardens. Also there will be many opportunities for sangha members and friends to help with the installation and maintenance of the planting beds and plants. During the summer, we invite and encourage all Zen Center members and friends to consider what they would like to see included in our gardens. A few examples could be native plants, a rock garden, a butterfly garden, or a cutting garden to provide flowers for the altar. Suggest specific plants, theme gardens, or any mix of these that speaks to you. Then put your ideas into the garden suggestion box in the Zen CenterÕs kitchen by the end of August. We hope to include as many of these ideas in the final design as possible, so that we can all find a part of the garden that speaks to us and to everyone who sees our gardens of the peace we find when we sit. Painting, Planting Days in June Our Zen Center is in need of paint and flowers to look its best and extend its life. Please join us on Saturday mornings in June to maintain and beautify our Center. On Saturday, June 22 we will concentrate on painting. The other Saturdays in June (except for June 8, when sesshin will occur), we will weed the flowerbeds and plant flowers. In all cases work will begin around 9 am, after the morning sitting. Be sure to wear clothing appropriate for the dayÕs activities, and bring garden gloves and trowels if you have them for planting days. Following work, we will enjoy a vegetarian lunch together. E-mail Discussion List To subscribe to the Missouri Zen CenterÕs e-mail discussion list, send an e-mail message to , leave the subject field blank and in the message body type Ņsubscribe mzcÓ. You will then receive a confirmation message (including instructions on how to unsubscribe). Please only subscribe the e-mail address of individuals; do not subscribe other mailing lists or forwarders to our list. Also, be responsible for anything you forward to people who have not requested it. The Teaching of the Oak Tree Article by Gendo (The following koan is a translation by Paul Reps in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.) A monk asked Joshu why Bodhidharma came to China. Joshu said: ŅAn oak tree in the garden.Ó MumonÕs comment: Words cannot describe everything. The heartÕs message cannot be delivered in words. If one receives words literally, he will be lost, If he tries to explain with words, he will not attain enlightenment in this life. Zen students are supposed to recognize the limitations of words, especially in the matter of Zen teaching. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we have a bias for language-based teachings. Most of us who live in the St. Louis area have visited Seiwa En, the Japanese Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden. But do we think of that garden as a Zen teaching in the same way that we think of the latest book by some well-known Zen teacher? Probably not. As many of you know, I have spent the last couple of years working on a large research project about the Japanese Garden Š my Ph.D. dissertation. This scholarly practice has shed an interesting light on my Zen practice, and vice versa. The koan quoted above, for example, now holds a new resonance for me. It is from a classic Chinese Zen text, Mumonkan, compiled by Mumon (1183-1260). In the past, I had always assumed that the significance of JoshuÕs response was that it was simply a rejection of the monkÕs quest for intellectual knowledge. But now I see it differently. Gardens had been an important form of Chinese Buddhist art for several centuries by the time this conversation took place. In fact, many of the gardening styles that became a part of Japanese Zen gardening began in China. The reference to a tree in the garden is therefore also a reference to a form of dharma teaching, but one that does not rely on words. JoshuÕs answer does not reject the monkÕs quest for knowledge, but instead redirects it. The comment on this koan by Mumon, a Chinese contemporary of Dogen, reinforces this view of the koan. Teachings with words have an inherent limitation. But that does not mean that one should avoid teaching at all, nor does it indicate one should not study. Rather, it points to a teaching that does not use words Š in this case to the art of gardening as a teaching tool. Perhaps one can catch a glimpse of enlightenment among the leaves of the garden that one might miss in the pages of a book. I invite you all to study the Zen teaching of Seiwa En, the wonderful Japanese Garden here in St. Louis. My dissertation is intended to help the visitor experience the garden more fully, understanding its nuances and history. In the next month, I will leave a copy of that work in the Missouri Zen Center library for anyone who is further interested. Cut down on junk mail, telemarketing calls, and spam e-mail by Kuryo The impermanent is unreliable. We do not know on which blade of grass our dew-like lives will fall. Ń Dogen, Shushogi, Chapter 1 (from Limitless Life: DogenÕs World, by Rosan Yoshida) As Dogen reminds us, our time on earth is finite and not to be wasted on trivial matters. Yet many of us are swamped by an ever-increasing flow of unwanted mail, phone calls, and e-mail. All unwanted communications waste our precious time. Unwanted mail is also highly wasteful of trees. Here are several ways you can reduce these time and resource wasters. Stopping junk mail: Companies with whom you have placed mail or on-line orders may obtain extra income from selling lists of their customers to other companies. Charitable organizations also may sell names of donors to other charitable organizations. Follow these steps to reduce the number of unwanted catalogs and fundraising solicitations that you receive. Ń Any time you place a mail or e-mail order or donate to an organization, advise the recipient to refrain from providing your name to any other organization. Many catalog order forms have a checkbox somewhere on the form to allow you to do this easily. If they donÕt, write this request on the order form itself. If you are ordering on-line and there is no checkbox, send an e-mail to the company asking them to withhold your name from the lists they provide to other organizations. If you are donating to a nonprofit, read all the fine print on the literature they send you; sometimes directions for how to withhold your name are given there. If not, include a note on the donation form or separately in the envelope including your donation. Ń You can cut down further on junk mail by sending your name, address, and phone number and your request to remove your name from mailing lists to: Mail Preference Service c/o Direct Marketing Association P.O. Box 9008 Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008 If you receive junk mail under different versions of your name (for instance, with or without a middle initial), provide them with all the different versions of your name under which you are receiving unwanted mail. You can do this in one letter. Also, you can stop junk mail addressed to previous occupants of your home by sending their name(s) and your address to the address above. Stopping unwanted credit card and other financial solicitations: You can call one toll-free phone number to prohibit information contained in any of your files at any of the credit reporting agencies from being used in any credit or insurance transaction you did not initiate. This will prevent companies from sending you applications for credit cards unless you ask them to do so. That phone number is 1-888-567-8688. You can sign up one person at a time for this service. Call and follow the directions to prohibit use of your information permanently; otherwise the prohibition lasts for only a few years. You may call the same number if you ever wish to reverse the prohibition. Also check the privacy policy statements that many firms are now required to send you for other ways you can prevent your personal information from being passed around within large companies or from company to company. This information is usually buried in the fine print. You may be able to make a toll-free phone call or send in a form already provided in the mailing to prohibit information transfers. This will cut down on junk mail you receive as a result of these internal or external transfers of your personal information. Stopping telemarketing calls: There are three different ways I know of to remove your name from lists used by telemarketing firms. Ń Write to the following address with your name, address, and phone including area code and ask to be put on the do-not-call list: Telephone Preference Service c/o Direct Marketing Association P. O. Box 9014 Farmingdale, NY 11735-9014 Ń Many telemarketers do not use the no-call list above. Missouri residents, however, can take advantage of a year-old law requiring all telemarketers calling Missouri residents to use a state-maintained No-Call list and avoid calling anyone on that list. While insurance, phone, and finance companies are granted an exemption, by signing on to MissouriÕs No-Call list, you should be able to eliminate calls from other types of businesses. Furthermore, when you sign up, you will be sent a complaint form that you can fill out and send to the Missouri Attorney GeneralÕs office anytime you receive a telemarketing call in violation of the law. In less than 10 months since enforcement of the No-Call law began, court orders have been obtained against 68 telemarketers, and they have been ordered to pay $535,000 to the state and to stop calling Missourians on the No-Call list. To get on the No-Call list, call toll-free 1-866-NOCALL1 or go to www.moago.org Ń You can also take the direct approach and tell any telemarketer to remove your name from their call list as soon as you can get a word in edgewise. I find the easiest way to do this is to answer their ŅHow are you today?Ó question with, ŅPlease take my phone number off your list and donÕt call me again.Ó Do this in a neutral tone of voice. There is a law requiring that any telemarketer to whom you make this request remove your number from their call list for a minimum of six months.