This is part 2 of a video continued from this post.
Doen Sensei discusses what it means when you commit to your practice and talks about the male & female versions of excelling in your practice.
He also talks about access to teachers, and personal interviews with his Fourth Way teacher Mr. Willem Nyland.
Also discussed are reasons why students sometimes justify not listening to their teacher.
What do Alice in Wonderland, The Blue Cliff Record, San Francisco, and Kill Bill have in common? Daniel Doen Silberberg Sensei, who has recently moved to San Francisco and will be holding the SF group’s first meeting next week.
On December 16th, Doen Sensei will hold an introductory class for anyone who is interested in Lost Coin’s unique blend of Zen, the Fourth Way, science, art, technology, and much more. Doen Sensei is known for his accessible, humorous, and profound teaching style, and his newly-established San Francisco group is growing quickly.
If you’re in the Bay area, please stop by. The meeting will be on December 16, 2009, from 6:00-7:00 p.m. at 77 Park Hill Avenue, near Buena Vista Park. There is no charge, and please feel free to bring a friend or friends.
If you’ve read Doen’s new book, Wonderland: The Zen of Alice, you’ve already had a taste of Doen’s style. This is your chance to journey down the rabbit hole with him in person, without having to travel to Salt Lake City, Germany, Florida, England, or any of the other places where Lost Coin has a strong presence.
We hope to see you there. If you can’t make it to the December 16th meeting, please contact us at contact@lostcoinzen.com, and we’ll let you know when the next meeting will be.
We have learned how to do things by thinking . . . and thinking can be a good tool. It’s not the whole tool set. When all you have is a hammer every problem tends to look like a nail. We think, choose and act–well, sometimes. A lot of the time we just think and then think some more. Perhaps even more problematic is that what we call thought is often just a set of random associations based on the big thing we call fear, its smaller brother anxiety, then there are the cousins inertia and insecurity.
Practice differs from thought – it is practice in being and doing. There is a place for thinking and analysis but there is another area that is very important in our training, development, and ability to do things – the cultivation of this area requires practice.
I would call this the area of “intent”. Other related terms are will, commitment, focus, and spirit – the Chinese “Chi”. Intent can cut through thought with both power and speed. “I”s can be cultivated. When people really want to develop or make something happen it is always there – it is not often spoken of.
Intent begins with the ability to wish. You got to want it and you got to want it bad. We can look at what we really want – then we can cultivate our intent.
Intent and spirit are not something we can understand. They are forces. They don’t seem to increase when we understand or think about them. They do from practice. They grow through focus and attention. The cultivation of intent is a legacy in both the Zen and Fourth Way traditions. Intent can be taught and cultivated. Working in a group, or Sangha, can make efforts stronger. It’s not really taught in words. These words I’m writing are a song about intent.
Intent is a gift we all posses. A lost coin.
Intent is not in the realm of thought and not to be understood.
Photo by JK***
The arts can be ways of expressing insights in a direct intuitive way. They can speak to the emotional intelligence as well as conveying understanding and realization. There is a history of this in Zen and in the Fourth Way. We intend to develop this aspect of practice as part of Lost Coin. As a first offering this is a short piece of music named Sun Buddha, Moon Buddha – a Koan in The Blue Cliff Record. It presents a reconciliation of the dualities of long and short time and the positive and negative of life experiences.
Many of us tend to favor our intellect in our quest for “knowing.” Conscious art can inform the emotions and body. We could call this fuller knowing “understanding.” Understanding has greater potency and is more likely to inform our being and actions.
sun-buddha-moon-buddha
Recently I read a book that was a real eye-opener to me. It was Diamond Heart, Book One by A. H. Almaas. Many of you will have already read it. For those who do not know the author and the book, A. H. Almaas is the founder of the Ridhwan school that is dedicated to inner work and the development of our essence or being. His teaching is–as far as I understand–mainly based on Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, Sufism, and modern psychology.
In his book Almaas explains different facets of essence as, for example, truth, compassion, confidence, worthiness, and how we can realize these facets. He illustrates which psychological barriers in our personalities and which behaviour patterns hold us back from getting in contact with our true being and how to work on them.
What we do is always try to move away from suffering and to move towards happiness, and this tendency keeps us away from where we really are. Almaas emphasizes that we have to do this inner work in our daily lives. Our relationships, our work, and our little and big everyday problems give us the material that we need for self-study.
In every chapter I found many things that spoke to me directly and made me think about what requirements may hide behind my habitual acts and feelings. The chapter “Becoming an Adult,” for example, illustrates that many of our difficulties in life result from the fact that we are acting like children and refuse to become adults.
As an exercise I noticed my emotions and thoughts from this aspect. Of course I already knew that I do not like to take on responsibility and prefer others to do the things I feel uncomfortable with, but I actually did not know that this attitude is ruling my life to such an extent. I also did not fully realize that many of my not-so-nice attitudes like getting angry, blaming others, or lamenting are based on this mentality. This is a little frightening to see, but also gives me a push towards change.
The above is only a short example. I think that this book can really enrich our practice. So if you’re interested and decide to read the book or have already read it, I am curious to hear what you think about it.
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