KODOJI - DEDICATION AND TEISHO

DEDICATION OF KODOJI : THE COUNTRY ZENDO OF THE SYDNEY ZEN CENTRE:

Sunday, October 28, 2001

Here in the land and waters of the Darkinjung,

the venerated mountain Yungu to the north,

Wallambine to the east, Wanga to the south,

Mellong to the west:

Buddha-nature that pervades the whole universe,

Exists right here now,

We recite the Prajña Paramita Heart Sutra

And the Shosai Myo Kichijo Darani

For you women who dug the sacred earth,

you men who hunted sacred game,

you kangaroos, koalas, currawongs, kookaburras, and spotted perch,

you gums, wattles, bracken, maiden hair, bamboo grass, and springs and boulders--

We are your children;

lend us your power,

that we may empower the Earth,

in our turn.

Oh all you Buddhas coming forth in perfect wisdom,

you Bodhisattvas and guardians of the vast and fathomless Dharma,

you patriarchs and matriarchs who enriched the prajña field,

you teachers of the Three Cloud halls--

We are your children;

lend us your power,

that we may fully realize your vows,

in our turn.

OPENING THE EYES OF KODOJI

With our ceremony of opening the eyes of Kodoji, Temple of the Ancient Ground, it is appropriate that we recall our heritage and our own early beginnings.

When the Buddha was walking with friends and disciples, he pointed to the ground, and said, "Here is a good place to erect a sanctuary.

Indra, King of the Gods, took a blade of grass and inserted it into the ground, saying, "The sanctuary is erected." The Buddha smiled.(1)

Indra's words are a bit like those of Dogen Zenji, when he said, "Zazen is itself enlightenment."(2) They can evoke a kind of magic thinking, and students may be inclined just to sit there complacently, or to feel that any old shack will do for a temple. Such a fundamental misunderstanding! Dogen certainly did not mean that the Buddha had the same kind of busy mind that troubles so many of us. Likewise the blade of grass inserted into the ground was the sanctuary of the Buddha, for Indra. Something to be lived up to, and "living up to" is hard work.

When Pao-fu and Ch'ang-ch'ing were wandering in the mountains, Pao-fu pointed to the ground and said, "Right here is the top of Wondrous Mountain."

Ch'ang-ch'ing said, "That's true, but a pity."(3)

Wondrous Mountain is Mt. Sumeru, the center of paradise in Hua- yen legend. How do you paraphrase Ch'ang-ching's words?--"That's true, but a pity." The Buddha might have said, after he smiled at Indra, "Yes, but where is the women's bathroom in that sanctuary?"

What does "sanctuary" mean for us in these troubled, perilous times? As an American, I think of Rosa Parks, whose sanctuary was the front of the bus at the outset of the civil rights movement in the American south. She did nothing at all, but just sat there. And I think of the young men who just sat there on stools of segregated lunch counters. As Australians, I'm sure you can think of your own heroes and heroines who held fast in the context of iniquity. They are our inspiration,and we can say with all of them, "This is our place, this is our seat of fundamental human integrity." We too can bring the sanctuary of decency and Right Views into reality in our homes, work places, and practice centers, Any old shack really will do, after all, if it's squarely in the way.

Traditional people understood that a place can be sacred to begin with, and mainstream religions have, down through ages, been in touch with this innate human sense of feng-shui. Look around Sydney, or any western city. Catholic churches are located on splendid sites. Down through the ages, spiritual centers have been carefully placed, from the temples of Babylon to the sacred initiation rings the Darkinjung people formed, we are told, at Burbung grounds by the Hawkesbury River near here.(4) We locate our new temple on land we inherit from the Darkinjung, at the head of a deep valley, with a stream running nearby, in keeping with primordial protocol.(5)

Then there is the foundation of the actual structure itself. Tradition and its archetypes again guide us:

Nan-ch'uan and two brother monks set out see the National Teacher Hui-chung. Halfway there, Nan-ch'uan drew a circle on the ground and said, "If you can say something, then let's go on."

Kuei-tsung seated himself inside the circle and Ma-ku made a woman's bow before him.

Nan-ch'an said, "Then let's not go on.

Kuei-tsung said, "What's going on?"(6)

Like Indra, Nan-ch'uan and his brothers are disclosing the significance of the true temple, though their impro is richer. Hsüeh-tou, compiler of The Blue Cliff Record, titles this case, "Nan-ch'uan Draws a Circle," and that is the first kōan point. But there is an architectonic point as well. Adrian Snodgrass, in his cogent study, The Symbolism of the Stupa, explains that the circle, radiated and expanded from a central point, is the primary figure in the plan of a stupa or a pagoda.(7)

It follows that Kuei-tsung seating himself in the middle of the circle, is identifying the central point. "Right here," as the Buddha said. What is Kuei-tsung's living metaphor? This matter too is not to be taken lightly. The point is, as Mircea Eliade declares, the axis mundi, the meeting of heaven, earth, and hell.(8)

Kuei-tsung is like Pai-chang, alone in the universe:

A monk asked Pai-chang, "What is a matter of special wonder?

Pai-chang said, "Sitting alone at Ta-hsiung Peak."

The monk bowed.(9)

Ta-hsiung Peak was where Pai-chang was sitting, there in his monastery. The monk bowed, not a woman's bow, but very much in keeping with the response of Ma-ku to Kuei-tsung's presentation. But the story goes on to relate how Pai-chang hit the monk as he bowed. What might he be saying as he struck? You'll find a paraphrase in the story of Pao-fu pointing to Wondrous Peak. Such a pity.

Art history enriches Kuei-tsung's presentation, there in the center of the circle. Originally, Buddhists had no notion of a Buddha-image. The idea of carving them was inspired by Greek effigies brought by Alexander when he conquered Western India. Before his time, the fourth century BCE, it was the pagoda that presented the transcendent nature of the Buddha, and the lotus, the wheel, and other symbols that presented his teaching.(10)

Ma-ku makes a woman's bow before Kuei-tsung. This is another koan point, and Nan-ch'uan final riposte forms still another. But revelations in the room aside, the circle is the footprint of the Buddha, and the temple is the Buddha body itself. Kodoji is in direct line with this primordial tradition. It is our pagoda, our Buddha body, our Mt. Sumeru, navel of the world.

The architect and chief builder of Kodoji, Tony Coote, is in direct line with this primal tradition with the experience he and Gillian Coote and their son Gulliver had while helping to build the Ring of Bone Zendo on San Juan Ridge in northern California in 1982, and then at the dedication ceremony, led by Yamada Koun Rōshi, which followed.

As the Palolo Zen Center in Honolulu, Kodoji is a transmutation of the Ring of Bone Zendo into Hawaiian forms, so Kodoji is an transmutation into Australian forms--as the Ring of Bone Zendo followed the fundamental intentions of Japanese monasteries, which in turn rework the forms of older sacred centers back to earliest Buddhism, and to those of even earlier times and religions in the misty untraceable past.

Kodoji is also, of course, a child of the Sydney Zen Centre, which in turn evolved from an informal gathering of Zen students in the 1970s who sat together and even held sesshins together without a teacher. The Centre moved around for a while before settling in Annandale, where in time it developed critical mass, ready for a country zendo that could readily serve as a venue for sesshin. Here, after the purchase of the property and the permissions process got under way, the beginnings were a pit toilet excavated in 1984.

When I was blocking out this teisho, I asked for suggestions. An old time student wrote:

To build a temple takes many things, a communal spirit, hard steady, mindful work, sustained perseverance through the seasons, organization, acts of generosity, but above all it is an act of faith. There have been many acts of faith of stepping forth into the unknown over the last 20 years to bring this temple into being. Just as your first flight to Australia in 1979 to teach a small, innocent yet willing and enthusiastic group was an act of faith, so too the people taking up the Zen way with you was another act of faith. Building a temple is another great act of faith, a stepping into the unknown, for we have no idea what the future will hold and what will come forth from this simple step. I am reminded of Lin-chi's great gift, who planted a pine forest for future generations, but he himself would never see the fully manifested fruits of his labor. However, he had the foresight and vision that those trees would provide shelter or shade for generations to come.(11) Hopefully this temple will be like a great tree shading the many beings.(12)

Indeed, I could not express it better. Seventeen years a- building, this is certainly sustained perseverance through the seasons as an act of faith. I made my last visit to this ancient ground to help confirm Subhana Barzaghi as master of the Sydney Zen Centre. We held the transmission ceremony and a sesshin in a great marquee. Now, just a few years later, we have a splendid zendo, a worthy heir of all those sacred centres, from the monastery of Lin-chi and his ancestors, down the centuries through the Three Cloud halls of the masters Harada, Yasutani and Yamada in our own heritage. Kodoji is a worthy heir to those early meetings in Sydney that were fueled with ardent faith in the ancient way.

New temples and newly installed images are traditionally dedicated by having their eyes opened, as the eyes of our temple are now unveiled. Even Bodhidharma dolls, which have escaped their religious bounds to serve as icons in businesses, have their eyes opened at propitious moments in the development of an enterprise. Sometimes just one eye is painted in, to show some kind of partial success. I have seen newly acquired Buddhist images ceremoniously installed in this way, and just the once, in the woods of the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California, I watched with the sangha as Yamada Rōshi inscribed the eyes of the Ring of Bone Zendo and declared them open.

Open to what? What are the particulars of the faith that we act upon today? I think probably there would be many responses to that question. Let me offer my view.

Our faith is a path, It is zazen, the seated practice of focussed inquiry and attunement in relation to a single matter. It is also a certain way of life and attitude. These two definitions, seated practice and a way of life and attitude, go together and are integrated. Both positive and negative definitions are useful. Let's begin with zazen and what it is not.

Though it is often called "meditation," I've come to question that usage. Certainly zazen is not introspection. It is not a close examination of what is happening in body or mind. It is not the samatha and vipassan? practice of Theravāda, or psychoanalysis, or interpersonal problem-solving. It is not itself any of the arts it might have influenced. It is not available by explanatory devices intended to make it accessible. Lin-chi sets forth the main focus of Zen practice very clearly:

All the buddhas and patriarchs of the past, present, and

future and in all the ten directions make their appearance

in this world just so that they can seek the Dharma. And you

followers of the Way who have come to study, you are here

now just so you can seek the Dharma....

My preaching of the Dharma is different from that of

other people in the world. Even if Manjushri and

Samantabhadra were to appear before my eyes, each

manifesting his bodily form and asking about the Dharma,

they would no sooner have said, "We wish to question the

Master," than I'd have seen right through them.

I sit calmly in my seat, and when followers of the Way

come for an interview, I see through them all. How do I do

this? Because my way of looking at them is different. I

don't worry whether on the outside they are common mortals

or sages, or get bogged down in the kind of basic nature

they have inside. I just see all the way through them and

never make an error.(13)

I don't get bogged down in the qualities of students, Lin-chi says. I just see them as earnest seekers of the Dharma. They are impelled by their Dominant Idea, to appropriate Voltairine de Cleyre's expression. For de Cleyre the Dominant Idea in nature and humanity is to grow, mature, flower, and bear fruit. She also used the term to identify the imperatives of people in particular cultures--for example, the compulsion to accumulate property and things and to gain personal power and control in our contemporary western world.(14) For Lin-chi the Dominant Idea of the Zen student is to mature and season in the Buddha Dharma. He sees this clearly in each of his students, no matter how confused they are, and it is solely this Idea that he seeks to encourage.

Nonetheless, not every student is ready to grapple with such a Dominant Idea. In our time and place, it probably would be most encouraging to certain Zen students to take up what Zen is not. Just as psychology does not readily address existential questions about birth and death, so Zen does not take up old personal traumas or marital difficulties. Duhkha, the profound human dissatisfaction with the way things are, is a fundamental concern in Classical Buddhism, and is directly addressed in Vipassan? practice. However, you will only occasionally hear the word mentioned in Zen circles. While the peace and confidence and intimate understanding which arise with zazen do indeed set the stage for self-correction and contentment, I am sure that many Zen students fell away in the past because they were too taken up by what seemed to them to be barriers. Thus as a Zen teacher I don't hesitate to suggest a double track for some students for a while, to include consultations with a wise psychologist, or an occasional retreat with a Vipassan? master. A Zen teacher who is seasoned in Vipassana training can, I am learning, offer certain Vipassana methods to students who are not interested in kōan study, as they pursue shikantaza, or pure sitting.

My first Zen friend, R.H. Blyth, used to say that there is a person for every religion and a religion for every person. Sometimes I meet people who are stuck in their Zen practice for some deeply rooted reason. They really should be meditating in a Theravada setting, or studying psychology in graduate school, or following a teacher of Centering Prayer. Sometimes a Sōtō Zen student wants to clarify the points of old Zen stories, or a Rinzai student is happy with shikantaza. Chacun à son goût. Each to his or her own taste. Each to his or her own character and imperatives. Maybe a good psychologist can help the misplaced student to get at those deeply felt motivations and to acknowledge them.

So then, what is zazen? "The seated practice of focused inquiry and attunement, in relation to a single matter" is a definition that needs taking apart, for virtually every word is loaded. Understanding the freight, one understands the container. Without such understanding, it might seem that zazen is like reading or listening to music. Well, it is indeed like reading or listening to music, but the simile is not the metaphor. The words must be examined one by one, then experienced in their inter- related sequence, and finally put into practice.

The first definition of "seated" in the Oxford English Dictionary is "fixed in position." The Buddha Shakyamuni was fixed in position under the Bodhi tree, in his bodhimanda, his dojo, his "place of enlightenment." Successive teachers for some 90 generations and the students of all those teachers across the world have made his position and his dojo their own. You make them yours, as you seat yourself in the fixed posture of the Buddha in your home or in your Zen center at Annandale or Gorrick's Run.

Yet "fixed" could sound restrictive. "Settled" might be a better word. From outside you look fixed. On the inside you are not wiggling.

You are seated in practice. There are two kinds of practice. One is ongoing action as a way of life, as a doctor practices medicine, or an attorney practices law. The other is action intended as a means for improvement, like practicing the piano. The two meanings elide. The doctor becomes a better doctor; the piano student is Mozart with each arpeggio.

The engine of practice is bodhichitta, literally "enlightenment thought," better translated as "aspiration for enlightenment." "Enlightenment" is a grand word which I prefer not to use. The Sino-Japanese expression kensho, literally "seeing into (true) nature," is instructive, implying a peep into the empty, interdependent and infinitely varied makeup of things. I like the simple English word "realization." Bodhichitta is the aspiration for realization, the aspiration to under-stand the wisdom of the world and to take it upon one's own shoulders.

Practice is ongoing. The most enlightened sages of the past sat daily in their dojo. "Not yet, not enough, not enough yet." Inspired by your bodhichitta you muster body and mind to focus your practice, not just with attention, but also with a receptive spirit--and this is important. You are not trying to bore a hole into something.

The post-modern critic of Zen, Dale S. Wright, clarifies this point:

The creativity and inventiveness of the Zen master is not his or her own ingenuity. It is rather an openness of the self beyond the self in listening and attunement. To be enlightened, then, is to be a willing and open respondent, to have achieved an open reciprocity with the world through certain dimensions of self-negation.(15)

My own teacher, Yamada Rōshi used to say, "The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something." As a loyal successor, I turn his dictum on its head: "The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of receiving the other." Wordsworth clarifies the same point:

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.(16)

Watching and receiving don't require muscular effort. It is the practice of the Buddha's fundamental teaching of pratitya samutpaa, mutually dependent arising.(17) You are focussed and attuned. You face your koan and let it face you. You clarify it; it clarifies you. Then something comes up, a task to be done, or the way to settle a long-standing argument. At that juncture, you can take a turn and tick off items in the agenda of tomorrow's meeting, or rehearse an apology that might set things right. Or you can take that thought of the meeting or the argument as a flavorless prompt, a helpful reminder to maintain the way. Calmly, easily, return to your focussed attunement.

Thoughts are what make us human. Your brain secretes thoughts as your stomach secretes bile. In the Enmei Jikku Kannon Gyo ("The Ten Verse Sutra of Timeless Life"), we read:

Rapidly thoughts arise in the mind;

thought after thought is not separate from mind.(18)

And what is the mind but the great mind! What is realization but a great thought! Zen is noetic, as D.T. Suzuki was always saying. It is knowledge, in the gnostic sense. Understanding. It takes inquiry. You are not tediously repeating, "Mu, mu." Your teacher demands, "What is Mu? Show me Mu!" Relinquishing all the small stuff, you find seek and find harmony with what matters. Relinquishing the notions of great mind and great thought is imperative as well. Which is, of course, not to say that the meeting is not important, or that the argument doesn't await a resolution. Just as there is a time for breakfast and a time for commuting, so there is a time for problem-solving and a time for zazen.

Thoughts can be very seductive. Small stuff can seem like big stuff. I have told about a man who came regularly to meetings and used his time to think about his business problems. Ultimately he stopped coming. Perhaps he solved all his problems.

Random thoughts can also be seductive. Witty notions come out of nowhere and sometimes a student will chuckle aloud in the silent dojo. But such thoughts, too, are just noise. Back to the beam!

The Buddha Shakyamuni asked, "Why should there be suffering in the world?" All his teaching and all the texts of Classical Buddhism grow from his focus on this single question, and from its resolution.

For Zen students, the Buddha's inquiry is further encapsulated as "Why?"--a solitary interrogative on the Buddha Way. Other traditions offer analogies. The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth century Christian manual of contemplation, recommends that you take up a single word of a single syllable "and clasp this word to your heart," whatever happens.(19) Centering Prayer derives its method directly from this injunction. Ira Progoff draws parallels to this old European method with those found in Yoga, Zen, Hasidism, and Sufi.(20)

Of course, comparative religion is not my purpose here. Least of all do I want to imply that all paths lead to the top of the same mountain. That's a risky assumption. I don't go there!

My purpose is rather to mark zazen as a practice that emerges from the nature of the human mind, and from human discoveries in "the world as lover, world as self," to use Joanna Macy's expression.(21) The single point that is our focus in zazen is a door to the world and the self so tiny that it has no dimension. You learn in geometry that the point has no dimension, no magnitude. "No dimension" is truly expansive. There is the vast and fathomless mystery itself, and there it is again, and again. We learn how attunement is the twin and co-worker of focus.

Be careful. You are not practicing emptiness. You are facing the point. "The solitary light shines brightly; it never darkens," wrote Keizan Jokin.(22) It is like the morning star above the Bodhi tree.

What happened when the Buddha glimpsed that point? That is the matter. Like the word "practice," "matter" has two important implications. First, it is the stuff confronting us, the object of our focus, the subject of our attunement. The old masters took their beginning students in hand and showed them breath-counting. This is the way of facing the mystery of the single point of no dimension: just "one," just "two," just "three"--patiently returning to "one" with each distraction, centering upon each number as a task. Breath-counting is not just for beginners, but old-timers too revert there when Right Recollection weakens.

The second implication of "matter" is, of course, the "Great Matter." This is what brought tears and laughter around the charcoal fire in the old days. When the object of focus, which is the subject of our attunement, is clear, imprinted, and part of one's moment-to-moment consciousness, then the question remains, what is that solitary light? Zen practice is not an intellectual process, but it experiential, and the solitary light opens the way to a galaxy.

It is "out there," but "out there" is not objective or even subjective. It is the realization of the teaching, which happens as the student. It is the Buddha's understanding of the Dharma, as the Sangha. Sangha links Buddha and Dharma and encloses them, like a bubble, with inside and outside the same. It is the student who realizes intimately how things are, as the self. It is the power of realized students in synergy that erects and maintains the true temple, to be venerated by Ma-ku and by the world. It is Indra's own sanctuary, Kuei-tsung's own pagoda, "like a great tree shading the many beings." That's something to live up to with our hard work. It's something to celebrate.

NOTES

1. Cf. Thomas Cleary, Book of Serenity (Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne, 1990), p. 17. [back to referral text]

2. Dogen Kigen, Shobogenzo: Gyakudo Yojinshu, cited by Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen Kigen: Mystical Realist (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1987), p. 61. [back to referral text]

3. Cf. Thomas and J.C. Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record, (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), p. 154. [back to referral text]

4. E-mail communication from Gillian Coote, August 24, 2001, citing a survey by R.H. Matthews, Royal Society of Victoria, 1897. [back to referral text]

5. Henry H. Lim, The Art & Science of Feng Shui: The Ancient Chinese Tradition of Shaping Fate (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2000), pp. 107-126. [back to referral text]

6. Cf. Cleary and Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record, p. 386. [back to referral text]

7. Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University, 1985), pp. 12-157. [back to referral text]

8. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954), p. 12-17. [back to referral text]

9. Cf. Cleary and Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record, p. 172. [back to referral text]

10. Robert E. Fisher, Buddhist Art and Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993). pp. 20, 44. [back to referral text]

11. Burton Watson, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi: A Translation of the Lin-chi lu, by Burton Watson (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), pp. 107-108. [back to referral text]

12. E-mail message from Gillian Coote, April 27, 2001. [back to referral text]

13. Watson, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi, p. 29-30. [back to referral text]

14. Voltairine de Cleyre, "The Dominant Idea," in Peter Glassgold, ed., Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2001), pp. 185-195. [back to referral text]

15. Dale S. Wright, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) p. 200. [back to referral text]

16. Mark Van Doren, Ed., William Wordsworth: Selected Poetry (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), p. 38. [back to referral text]

17. When this is, that is;

this arises, that arises;

when this is not, that is not;

this ceasing, that ceases.

Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove, 1959), p. 53. See also the early chapters of Wright, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism. [back to referral text]

18. Robert Aitken, Original Dwelling Place: Zen Buddhist Essays (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), p. 54. [back to referral text]

19. Ira Progoff, trans., The Cloud of Unknowing (New York: Julian Press, 1957), p. 76. [back to referral text]

20. Ibid., p. 27. [back to referral text]

21. Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991). [back to referral text]

22. Cf. Thomas Cleary, Transmission of Light (Denkoroku): Zen in the Art of Enlightenment, by Zen Master Keizan (San Francisco: North Point, 1990), p. 66. [back to referral text]

-Robert Aitken 2001

TRIP REPORT

Michael Kieran and I visited Australia, October 16 to October 30, together with Teresa Vast, Michael's wife, and my son Tom Aitken. Tom and I stayed with Gillian and Tony Coote; hosts for Michael and Teresa were Maggie Gluek and Tony Miller--Gilly a teacher, and Maggie a Dharma leader. Our purpose was to take part in the dedication of Kodoji, Temple of the Ancient Ground, the country zendo of the Sydney Zen Centre. This event came at the very end of our stay. Michael and I also took part in a full three day meeting with all seven Australasian teachers. I met with seven senior students, four in one meeting and three in another, for sharing and dokusan. Michael gave a teisho at the city centre in Annandale, and spoke in a panel with two other Diamond Sangha teachers who who hold forth at some distance from Sydney, Ross Bolleter from Perth, and Mary Jaksch from Nelson, New Zealand. I read from the Raven manuscript at the Buddhist Library. Tom climbed the Harbor Bridge to the top, as part of an hourly tourist program, and knocked around Sydney by himself. Michael and Teresa went sight-seeing. Tom and I saw "The Magic Flute" at the Opera House. There was even time for the occasional luncheon and dinner party.

The dedication ceremony attracted 150 people, Zen students, inquirers, and guests from the nearby Wat Buddha Dhamma, a Theravada Center, and from a group affiliated with Thich Nhat Hanh. The new zendo is a two hour drive north of Sydney in former ranch country, and more formerly aboriginal land. Located at the end of a deep verdant valley, with a stream nearby, it is.beautifully situated. And beautifully designed and constructed, all with membership labor, over a period of 17 years. It was a very nice ceremony, complete a teisho from me and a celebration afterwards with a musical program.The reading at the Buddhist library went well, a responsive audience of 120 filled the hall. I conserved my resources and did not attend Michael's talk, or the panel discussion in which he took part; I hear both were very well received. I enjoyed my encounters with the seven senior students, most of whom I have known for many years.

The teachers' meeting was excellent, and I came away very encouraged about Australasian Zen. At the initiative of the participants, the agenda included extensive sharing, a full morning of koan review, and in-depth discussions of translation problems, teaching methods, teacher support and teacher stress.

I enjoyed reunions with many Australian friends who have visited or actually lived with us at our Hawai'i centers (besides Gilly and Tony Coote, Maggie Gluek, and Ross Bolleter): Ingvar Anda, Subhana Barzaghi, Jean Brick, Ellen Davison, Geoff Dawson, Jim Franklin, Jill Jameson, Caroline Josephs, Belinda Keyte, Diana Levy, Gai Longmuir and her daughter Hannah, Susan Murphy, Kathleen Shiels, and Brendon Stewart. Plus, of course. the many friends I made there over the course of 10 years of teaching who have not visited us here in Hawai'i.

--Robert Aitken

Australia - October, 2001