Living Zen Life

Reading Stonehouse in the cool morning
I'll never be a hermit as was he
Mad Park Hermitage is enough for me.
He left monastic life behind
an abbot with elk tail whisk*
choosing mountain over monastery.

"I was a Zen monk who didn't know Zen
so I chose the woods for the years I had left."*

His years as monk and abbot
duties and endless tasks
coming to know he did not know Zen.
He went to the mountains
built a hut and sat
beginning to fully realize Zen life.

In retreat now I consider
the meaning of "big sangha"
rules money tasks
organization Board of Directors
all the unnecessary rest of it
coming to see that these
do not help me know Zen.

The unnecessary "business" of big sangha
with 501c3 taxable income reduced
legal liabilities protected 
buildings to pay for and maintain
robes to buy cushions to clean
need not be the way of sangha.
Though SSZ numbers may increase
so too will complexity and problems to solve.
The complexity and myriad issues
unrelated to just sitting
are not what I desire.
Were I young perhaps so
but I left that path long ago.

I cannot retreat to a mountain hermitage
as did Master Stonehouse
I can however resist the accretions
that have attached themselves like barnacles
to the rock of zazen.

Taking my "retreat" I was sure to return
resume my place as one
who knew where things were
how things were done.
Yet, if ours is a model of the modern
growing and maturing sangha
I no longer believe it is for me.
Still, I will sit with my sangha community
pondering how things might better be.
My concerns will not leave me alone.

My retreat has opened Buddha's box 
releasing more than I bargained for.
My words express my recognition
of what has been in front of me
unable to see it for what is was or is -
big sangha is a complex and costly enterprise
that does not well serve 
the simplicity and grace of Zen
to just sit and serve as sangha in the world.


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*The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, translation and commentary by Red Pine, Copper Canyon Press, 2014, pps. 9, 41, 61.