Empty Hand Zen Center

All photos by Glynn Ensho Debrocky

By Sharon Latimer Mosley

Three minutes of Zazen-seated meditation can feel like a long time to children inside on a bright breezy Saturday afternoon.  Each gathering of “Zen Kids” begins with Zazen instruction, a brief sitting period and includes an art project tied to a Buddhist teaching.

 “We put our hands in the cosmic Mudra” instructed Teacher Susan Ji-on Postal to the attentive young eyes seated in front of her in a semi-circle.

 “I’m holding a pear,” a young boy seated to her right announced with an accomplished smile. Susan smiled back at him with a gentle nod. 

“At the sound of the bell, we will sit for three minutes” she continued.  

After a minute of sitting, the young boy began to fidget a bit.

 “Breathe through your pear” Susan reminded. The young boy settled back into Zazen, her instruction immediately clear.

Susan followed the 3 minute Zazen telling the story of the founding of New Rochelle based on the children’s historical fiction book, “Escape across the Wide Sea” by Katherine Kirkpatrick. The story follows a young disabled Huguenot boy, Daniel Bonnet and his family’s escape from religious persecution in France to New Rochelle.

 The group, dubbed “little detectives” by Susan, was challenged to find historical surnames mentioned in the book at Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery, the original site of the first Huguenot Church some 300 years ago -a short walk from the Empty Hand Zen Center.  

“Well, I like to learn about history,” Zoe of Zen Kids explained. “They lived here and they started New Rochelle.”

When the children arrived at Trinity Church Cemetery, they were each given a long piece of paper, tape and an oil pastel to do rubbings which capture the imprint of headstones of the historical surnames they recognized.

“That tombstone looks cool because of the picture carved at the top,” noted Shevaun. “Like there are angels out there and it tells me not to be afraid to die.”

Some of the stones were toppled, others too weathered to read. Undaunted, the children continued, carefully moving around the cemetery, then shouting their finds with requests for new sheets of paper for a rubbing.    

“He lived 27 years” reported Aiden after viewing the tombstone of “Ashe.” You need to know how old he was. It’s important for kids to learn about age.”

After proudly waving their historical discoveries in front of parents who stood nearby, it was time to return to Empty Hand Zen Center for a light snack.

“It’s nice,” observed Chloe under a berried shade tree in the middle of the cemetery. “because all the Allaires are buried together.”

This was an afternoon of infinite kindness expressed in careful rubbings of time past in blue, green, orange and pink.

With many thanks to Janice Haynes for her kind assistance during this field-trip.

By Caroline Reddy

Stories in words are among our oldest, most powerful, most mysterious tools. Through mere sounds on the air or squiggles on a page, they give us what no other technology can - ourselves. –Rafe Martin

All photos by Fran Shalom

The art of storytelling is a craft - just as powerful and compelling in our fast paced, twitter engrossed society as it once was in ancient India. On Sunday, May 23^rd, author and storyteller Rafe Martin, who has written numerous books, such as the Rough-Face Girl and Birdwing, offered his insights in a dharma talk at the Empty Hand Zen Center which helped our Sangha enter a deeper understanding of The Jataka Tales. These classic tales trace the Buddha’s karmic path - both as animal and human; they were told by Buddha to his disciples over 2,500 years ago to teach about entering the Boddhisatva path. Within the fabric of each tale teachings central to include virtues such as compassion and prajna or wisdom. These attributes are perceived in Buddhism as Paramitas or qualities of perfection that carry us into the realm of a Boddhisatva: an enlightened being who serves all sentient beings.  

Rafe explained that by reading The Jataka Tales we gain a fundamental understanding that the hindrances the Buddha faced are universal in nature; thus, these stories provide us all with an opportunity for growth and insight. As Zen practitioners, sitting upright on our cushions, we begin to awaken to the notion that whatever endeavor each of us may face in any moment is our own Jataka tale - our own life story which carries us forth and becomes part of our own endless path. Rafe shared with our Sangha how these canonical legends impacted his life as he struggled to find his own way.  The author and storyteller described his experience as a “dweller in no-man’s land” since he and his wife, Rose, had children, and were among the few Zen practitioners at Rochester Zen Center who were parents.  One day, in an old bookstore, Rafe stumbled upon a book published in 1878 that contained The Jataka Tales. Each story encompassed a lifetime of efforts that the Buddha had faced as he evolved in his many lives.

Rafe explored The Jataka Tales as an apparatus for our own practice. These timeless tales became a compass for his zazen.  Perchance because the sound of the gong in Zen is so pivotal—bringing us home to ourselves, to no separation between the sound of the bell and our own breath—discovering the Jataka Tales was like hearing the sound of the gong. In a moment of sudden personal insight, the tales linked him instantly to his own practice, his own parenthood, and a way into his own Jataka. He could now share these legendary tales with children, just like his mother had shared fairy tales with him as a child.

Rafe also revealed the story of the Buddha to be the ultimate call of the hero: leaving home on a quest, a journey to unearth the truth of life.  The Jataka Tales reveal virtues that Buddha acquired; his own evolution led him to help his disciples. Timeless tales have always been utilized by human beings as a device to unravel our true nature. Buddha, Rafe explained, often used his empty mind to see into the foibles of his Sangha. He would look into the life of each of his disciples and see many past lives connecting the present situation to past imperfections thus helping the disciple understand his own lineage and his conditioned existence within the framework of a particular difficult situation.

Rafe also shared two Jataka tales with our Sangha. He first told us the well-known tale of The Hungry Tigress, a story that reveals a self-less act of a true Bodhisattva. The thirteenth Dalai-Lama noted this Jataka at the Tibetan Prayer festival and illustrated it as a tale that embodies the virtue of compassion. In one of the Tathagata’s past lives, the Buddha comes upon a hungry tigress who is about to devour her cubs. In a self-less act he feeds himself to the tigress to spare the lives of the cubs.  This story still resonates in our modern world; we see examples of many Bodhisattvas who give themselves completely by performing altruistic humanitarian actions. “What are we willing to do?” Rafe asked our Sangha.

After giving us a dynamic explanation of his own path and The Jataka Tales, Rafe shifted—like a shaman—as he animated the story of The Sage Little Bowman. In this lesser-known tale, a wise young cripple, who is knowledgeable about the way the world operates, and highly-skilled with a bow and arrow, sets out to make a living. He comes upon a mighty man named Bhimasena who is not living up to his full potential; the two men form an unlikely bond. The Sage Little Bowman lives in the shadow of Bhimasena and guides him as Bhimasena saves the kingdom from dangerous beasts. As Bhimasena’s popularity grows, he believes that he no longer needs the young cripple and thinks he can manage well on his own—as he felt he had been taught well; hence, he sends away the cripple. When the kingdom is threatened and Bhimasena cannot aid the king, the Sage Little Bowman comes forth and reveals his true identity: It was he who had the wisdom, knowledge, and skills as the bowman; it was he who had slain the beasts.

In his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, examines the fairy tale as having an essential element which he has baptized as a “eucatastrophe”—in which a sudden catastrophic moment ends on a joyous note instead of in lament. The Sage Little Bowman, offers the same concept; in the bleakest moment in this tale the true hero emerges. This archetypical motif can be found in innumerable myths and legends. Rafe examined The Sage Little Bowman as a story that depicts knowledge, wisdom, skillful means, and compassion—all virtues of a true Boddhisattva. 

Rafe then encouraged our Sangha to discuss The Sage Little Bowman. Some members saw this tale as an allegory for our shadow-self often aiding us in ways we could not fathom. Rafe also explained that a handicap that we possess is in many ways a metaphor for recognizing an inherent gift that helps us as we unfold our true nature on this realm which is often similar to Middle Earth. He challenged us to take a great leap and not be like Gollum—who saw himself as a separate entity—but to wake up to no separation.

The Buddha, as Rafe understood was not only a monk, but had been a family man and had faced hardships just as we do today in our hectic world. In a simple definition, we have now “joined the club.”  In The Jataka Tales we begin to understand that the Buddha’s job was to evolve. The obstacles that we face, the Buddha had faced in infinite lifetimes. Buddha’s fate was to emerge into Buddhahood. He too had made mistakes and failed just like all the great heroes in myths and legends; Frodo, King Arthur, and Beowulf experienced their own struggles, but these difficulties became their champions. Like these beloved heroes, Buddha did not surrender: he walked his endless path, gaining in wisdom, compassion, and countless other virtues.

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campell claims that “the closest thing we have to a planetary mythology is Buddhism. In it all things are potentially Buddha-things.” Rafe Martin asked us to view The Jataka Tales as a gateway to live like a Buddha. In our imperfections we are perfect and in our incompleteness we are complete. 

Rafe Martin's forthcoming book, Endless Path: Awakening With the Buddhist Imagination - Jataka Tales, Zen Practice, and Daily Life, is available in September and can be pre-ordered here.

 By Catherine Seigen Spaeth

Asphalt bubbles up from the earth.  We use it to bind disparate things into a hard aggregate - it skinned our knees at recess and now it gets us where it wants us to go.  Black and smooth at first, it grays, pits and buckles with age.  Our garden has found its way into the cracks of the asphalt, settling into its curves and hollows, earth silting up and washing away on its crusty surface.  There is strong patience in taking root here.

A humble material, asphalt provides the infrastructure for our dependence on oil, the very thing it arose from.  There is pleasure in meeting this hard surface with the softness of the earth.  Our dirt comes from many places – a few buckets here and there of thick grey clay, of forest black soil and acorn husks.  There is  Frank's earth from China, a blend of pilgrimage sites including Tiananmen Square; and Rafe and Rose Martin's earth from Joshu's temple - a cypress tree grows here. 

A giant stump marked where to begin, and the Buddha sits there surrounded in vinca – an invasive plant that worries the foresters but pleases us urban gardeners with its vigor.  As the earth has begun to hold we protect its fragile borders with river stones and thyme, and a Lady’s Mantle has settled in.

Cut flowers from the altar and rose petal offerings end up quickly in the compost heap. As the seasons change so do these flowers – the very first layer of our own cuttings has appeared over store-bought irises and yellow tulips, curling and browning into dank rot softness.  Our pierced garbage can is an enso of what arises and falls.  Stanley Kunitz writes, "We are all containers for composting.  So we cannot approach the compost heap without a feeling of connection."*

Once on a scrap of paper in the dokusan room I left a note for Susan Ji-on.  “Did you see the Buddha head in the Wisteria pot?”  It was the final hour of long zazen, and I couldn’t wait until the silence had ended to verify my sanity, for after days of  silently observing the garden a head appeared from nowhere.  The surprise of this gift had teacher and student both in shivers, and in the next day we learned that it had been snuck into the garden by our neighbor, Ivar, who once lived in the building that is now home to Empty Hand.

Other such gifts have arrived, turtles in a row, and a Hotei too large to be discreet.   In Ed Roberson's beautiful poem, “Hotei:  The Fullness,” is conveyed our delusion to seek transcendence in Enlightenment’s fullness, the mistaken satisfaction “that fullness is assumed upon the full.” Hotei’s belly is for Roberson as much the swollen belly of no possessions, the swollen belly of the poor, distended to the very last minutes of life.   It is as though Roberson urges us to rub this belly not for good luck, but in acknowledgement of the path beyond abundance and lack.  In our urban garden, Buddha’s stillness is in the very left corner, and wandering Hotei is bursting from the right.

 Our feeders are frequented by sparrows and finches mostly.  They perch on springy willows in a gang. But as ground feeders it feels as though it is the pigeons who have really made our garden their home, strutting among the potted plants or resting on Buddha's head.  Transmission bows were interrupted by the cardinal that appeared out the window, but a cardinal has appeared only a few times since then.  There are other creatures who come to the garden to feed, raccoons have cleaned their fish in the birdbath, leaving  unfinished carcasses behind.  And a Red-tailed or Cooper's Hawk occasionally catches a squirrel or a pigeon - here, a Cooper's Hawk is wary as it feeds.

Asphalt belongs to a slower time where the beating of the sun, the pouring of the rain and winter cold barely effect it’s stillness, while thriving upon the asphalt life is as fleeting as a gnat. Our garden has no plan or purpose but to flourish -  when an iris blooms, the garden is the garden of the blooming iris.  We watch for the cardinal as much as we watch for the hawk. When the garden is for the birds we tiptoe up to the window, and when it is for us we do our best not to disturb the neighbors.   

Stanley Kunitz writes:

The garden isn't, at its best, designed for admiration or praise; it leads to an appreciation of the natural universe, and to a meditation on the connection between the self and the rest of the natural universe. And this can come not only from the single flower in its extravagant beauty, but in the consideration of the harmony established among all aspects of the garden's form.*

*Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, NY: W.W. Norton, c. 2005, pp. 65 and 13 in order of appearance.

Photo by Chuck Peters

Deb Mushin Wood was born in New Hampshire and raised in Connecticut.  Early in her career as an occupational therapist she lived and worked in Brazil before settling in Westchester.  In 1981 Deb began her practice with Susan Ji-on at Wainwright House, also joining with Susan at the Zen Community of New York in the mid-‘80s where Susan was an active student. It was at this time that Deb attended retreats and sesshin with Glassman Roshi.  After the sitting group at Wainwright House was ended Susan was offered the key to the Quaker Meeting House in Rye where Deb and others continued to be active members.  When Susan began her study with Maurine Stuart in 1987, Deb had the opportunity to benefit from Maurine's teaching in her own visit to Cambridge as well as in Maurine's visits to the Meeting House.

After nearly thirty years of practice with Susan, in the priest ordination ceremony of Shuke Tokudo on March 28th, 2010 Deb was bestowed with the koromo, rakusu, okesa, zagu and the oryoki bowls of a priest.  Deb has spent the last year sewing her own rakusu, zagu and okesa after attending a sewing sesshin with Blanche Hartman at the San Francisco Zen Center.  Her new dharma name is Myomyaku, meaning “subtle life vein” in honor of her strong and continuous practice, naturally reaching to the support of others as quietly as the flow of life in the vein.

In Dogen’s day, Deb would also have received a willow twig for cleaning her teeth – these would have been all the personal possessions needed for monastic life.  But her toothbrush is in a jar beside her partner of twenty five years, Carolyn Hoffman, who along with Jean DeVeaux assisted in the cutting of Deb's final lock of hair, the shura.

Susan Ji-on Postal is cutting Deb's shura, directly behind her is Jean DeVeaux, and to the right stands Carolyn Hoffman.  Photo by Chuck Peters.

Deb Mushin Myomyaku Wood's name has now been written on her copy of the lineage chart of our bloodline from the Buddha through all the ancestors from those ancient days to Suzuki Roshi, to his son Hoitsu Suzuki, to Sojun Mel Weitsamn, to Dairyu Michael Wenger, to Surei Darlene Cohen, and then here to Susan Ji-on Postal.  She will treasure this document, keeping it safely throughout her life.  In the words of Zen Master Honghzi:

A patched-robed monk's authentic task is to

Practice the essence, in each minute event

Carefully discerning the shining source

Radiant without discrimination, one color unstained.

Photo by Chuck Peters

 By Myles Robert and Emily Zocchi

This photograph of Haiti was taken by Zoriah, whose work can be found here.

On Monday, March 29th, Valorie Lordi spoke at our zendo about her recent experiences in Haiti.  Valorie, a registered nurse, Dominican Sister, and known to many as a teacher of native American spirituality and healing, has previously provided medical services in wars and disasters, but when she traveled to earthquake-stricken Haiti in February her own life was shaken to its very core. The devastation of Haiti and the resilience of its people reordered –as Valorie puts it – “the landscape of [her] life.”

She attested that her first impulse upon hearing the news from Haiti was to resist it, to hold it back, but her resistance eventually wore thin and she became filled with an immediate need to engage with the situation head-on. She reached out to an organization called The Ministry of Presence on a Monday, and thirty minutes later was procuring the last seat on a flight departing on Thursday of that same week. She flew to the Dominican Republic and made a mad rush to get to the Haitian border before it closed. The ten minute van ride past the border-guards and into Haiti encapsulated a “time change” of a sort unfamiliar to even the most seasoned world traveler: “in ten minutes all references to my own life fell away.”

The destruction she described and the images she showed us seemed inconceivable –sometimes described as such even by Valorie who had witnessed it all first-hand. Upon approaching an orphanage she was hailed by what remained of a gesture from a girl whose arms had been amputated. The girl asked for help for her mother. Valorie wanted to stop but her hosts said they would never make it inside to the orphanage if they did not move on. Once inside what remained of the orphanage Valorie was met with waves of person after person approaching her and asking for help. She emphasized to us that there was no time for planning how to help; “What you attend to for the hour comes to you.” Over and over again people would approach her with the words nou pa gen meaning we have no . . . : we have no parents, we have no food, we have no water, we have no home."

Photo courtesy of Valorie Lordi

She showed us photos of a hospital and noted how pregnant woman had given birth under the piles of rubble. She explained how mental hospitals had been demolished and told us how those patients who hadn’t died were now walking in the ruin without care and appropriate medication, many suffering delusions. She explained how prisons had broken open due to the quake and how already desperate circumstances were further exasperated by a spike in crime. She explained how the need for medical care outweighed the number of those who could possibly provide it, that amputation was often the only viable method to ensure safety from fatal infections. She showed us a photo of a trickle of water meandering down a wall and explained how water-borne illnesses are already bringing a second wave of deaths. Valorie showed us one photo after another of demolished buildings and injured people. She reminded us that inside every pile of rubble there were piles of bodies. My own body and mind began to slump into passive disbelief longing to separate from the horror, but Valories reminders and guiding words engaged me with what I saw: “Imagine what you would do if your friends or family were under there. Imagine what you would do if you lived there.”

Photo courtesy of Valerie Lordi

 Even before the earthquake Haiti suffered from extreme conditions of impoverishment. It is the poorest country in the western hemisphere despite being only 600 miles away from the wealthiest country, the United States. Haitian ancestors came as slaves torn from their homes in West Africa and forced to work in the sugarcane fields that supplied Europe and North America until the early part of the 19th century. Although the diasporic people of Haiti ultimately won their sovereignty, they have always been plagued by a struggle for basic life needs. Due to limited supplies of food, water and shelter the population of Haiti has been chronically vulnerable to both desperation and criminal greed. As the Ministry of Presence website notes: before the earthquake poverty affected 80 percent of the population; the economical distribution showed one percent of the population holding fifty percent of the wealth. The struggles that preceded the earthquake have now worsened. The particular orphanage that Valorie has been working with quadrupled its residents in facilities which were already at capacity prior to the disaster.

Photo courtesy of Valerie Lordi.  These are women receiving rations, the military had to make the decision that only women could be given food, as they were more likely to feed their families.

As Valorie spoke, her hands guided us with metaphors and with gestures. “Before I went, Haiti was about there,” she said, holding her right arm out straight, palm facing inward. Her hands came closer to her body as she described the urgent need to travel into Haiti, the “energy in her belly.” She described the terrain with her arm, outstretched again, but this time with her palm flat, facing down. She made a smooth slow arc in front of her body as she said, “horizon to horizon there was rubble.” She clapped her hands once and we heard the crack she felt as she crossed the border. Her sharp clap represented the vibration she felt the moment the van entered “the gates of Haiti.” She drew her hands to her head and hair as she remembered the dust that settled down upon her almost ritualistically - “dust of mountains, of land, of buildings and of people.”

At the same time that she crossed borders, her journey also dissolved boundaries inside her. “Nothing was familiar and everything was familiar.” As the journey unraveled her understanding of her place in the world, it wove no new, precise understanding, but rather one abundant with paradoxes and unanswerable questions. She noted that the purity and light amid the destruction were inexplicable. How could there be no hope and so much hope in the same breath? Many of the photos were of smiling children, families waving to the camera. As we looked at the sheer whiteness revealed inside a mountaincracked wide open, Valorie attested that joy and beauty pervade Haiti. The people she encountered were full of “life, passion, fierceness, and intelligence.” Their litany of what they didn‟t have was real and endless, but with persistence they declared men nou gen yon bon (. . . but we have goodness). She described how people touched her face and stroked her hair and asked her to share with them the stories of her life. How could children who had nothing be so eager to learn how she, a stranger, defined her life: did she have a mother? a father? children? where was she from? The orphans asked these questions with limitless curiosity.  When she asked them if they had brothers or sisters, they gestured to everyone around them.

Photo courtesy of Valorie Lordi

On the other end of her journey Valorie could no longer describe her relationship with Haiti in terms of distance as she had done at the beginning of her talk with her outstretched arm: “Before I went, Haiti was there.” The relationship had changed to something immeasurable, something that could not be quantified, and something that was best articulated through gesture rather than words. She showed us the new relationship through her hands – hands that had been telling her story all night, hands that had carried her journey to us, a healer's hands that had checked vital signs, dispensed medicine, and comforted babies. “It was no longer them and me,” she said, one hand away from her body as she said “them,” the other close to her heart to signal “me”. “It’s just like this,” she said as she began to revolve her hands around one another, each one moving around the other in a continuous circle.

Photo of Valorie Lordi by Chuck Peters

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