While living and doing the Practice Period at the Zen Buddhist center at Green Gulch Green Dragon Temple I had developed a joy for dishwashing after every evening meal during the weekends when there would be some two to three hundred people at the Center. It came to a point that i was attatched to this job that i would go at it alone refusing any help in handling the dishwashing machine, the stacking and so forth. I was bald then alive and burning with energy too due to the very intensive practice that I was into, the Art of Zen meditation or Zazen (sitting Meditation),great vegetarian meals, great company of wise men and women from all over the United States and some from foreign countries, meeting of great minds.
Anyway, every weekends the 'outside public' is allowed into the center to share the monastic life and taste the monastic food, organically grown vegies and homemade bread, the famous Tassajara Bakery kind of bread. They came and the parkng lot was full all the time till there was no more room out there! Saints and Charlattans, Lyers and thieves, the wise and the fools they came to sample a taste of Shunryu Suzuki's Zem Mind and Beginner's mind.
I volunteered the dishes all the time withiout having to be persuaded becaus for some odd reason it was "The Practice place to be". That evening it was normal as any with the crowd loud and enjoying their dinner before they all head on back to 'The City' (san Francisco), across the Bridge. Everyone who came and handed me their dirty dishes had something nice to share, a big smile, a completely fake surprise at seeing me doing the dishes or to harrass me about falling asleep in the Zendo. I was dancing with the bowls stacking them into the circular bowl rack before delivering them into the washer and doing it without breaking my pace as I met the cheerful faces head on smile for smile.
As I laid down the last piece of whit heavy China bowl inot the center of the tray there floated before me a white thousand petaled Lotus Flower in the tray!! I looked up slowly from it and my eyes met with the large round eyes of my Tanto or practice instructor Paul Disco. He nod at me in Gasho and smiled whispering to my ear 'It does happen sometimes...' and slipped away in his black monk's robes. I slid the last rack of bowls into the washer and nothing was said between us on the matter.
The appearence of the flower was so real that it was more real than real and it caught my breath and i wanted to laugh and at the same time felt sad and wanted to cry if it was not for my Zen Instructor's prescence which made the experience just like drinking tea.
The Japanese calls it Satori or what i interprete as Mini-awakenings and this kind of experience is not uncommon when one does intesive meditative practice especially in a large group where one does not feel threatened or insecure when little miracles takes one on a alternate state of conciousness even for a split second or the span of a lightning's flash. The fact that your teacher was there to witness the event whether he was aware of it or not was in itself an auspicious moment for me, I had someone else as a witness someone whose reactions was so simple and ordinary that this miracle v
anished into memory lane just like it never happened and i felt it was perfectly okay!
Those not fammiliar with Zen and Zazen, not well versed in Buddhist practices might have a little bit of trouble accepting such occurences as I claimed and that too is alright because it is not for everyone it is only for the minds of those that the conciousness of the event was connected to. Usually it is one on one however there has been known that a group as a whole can experience Satori at any given moment of their sitting meditation period or during a lecture when a line is said and it was 'The Line' that triggers a colletive conciousness response and transport the group into a whole different state of mind, usually one of peace and tranquility, the lightness of being, the floating on the air kind of feeling and the Love for eachother that recognizes no conditions a feeling of letting completely go of oneself into the whole (Hole!?).
Anyway, every weekends the 'outside public' is allowed into the center to share the monastic life and taste the monastic food, organically grown vegies and homemade bread, the famous Tassajara Bakery kind of bread. They came and the parkng lot was full all the time till there was no more room out there! Saints and Charlattans, Lyers and thieves, the wise and the fools they came to sample a taste of Shunryu Suzuki's Zem Mind and Beginner's mind.
I volunteered the dishes all the time withiout having to be persuaded becaus for some odd reason it was "The Practice place to be". That evening it was normal as any with the crowd loud and enjoying their dinner before they all head on back to 'The City' (san Francisco), across the Bridge. Everyone who came and handed me their dirty dishes had something nice to share, a big smile, a completely fake surprise at seeing me doing the dishes or to harrass me about falling asleep in the Zendo. I was dancing with the bowls stacking them into the circular bowl rack before delivering them into the washer and doing it without breaking my pace as I met the cheerful faces head on smile for smile.
As I laid down the last piece of whit heavy China bowl inot the center of the tray there floated before me a white thousand petaled Lotus Flower in the tray!! I looked up slowly from it and my eyes met with the large round eyes of my Tanto or practice instructor Paul Disco. He nod at me in Gasho and smiled whispering to my ear 'It does happen sometimes...' and slipped away in his black monk's robes. I slid the last rack of bowls into the washer and nothing was said between us on the matter.
The appearence of the flower was so real that it was more real than real and it caught my breath and i wanted to laugh and at the same time felt sad and wanted to cry if it was not for my Zen Instructor's prescence which made the experience just like drinking tea.
The Japanese calls it Satori or what i interprete as Mini-awakenings and this kind of experience is not uncommon when one does intesive meditative practice especially in a large group where one does not feel threatened or insecure when little miracles takes one on a alternate state of conciousness even for a split second or the span of a lightning's flash. The fact that your teacher was there to witness the event whether he was aware of it or not was in itself an auspicious moment for me, I had someone else as a witness someone whose reactions was so simple and ordinary that this miracle v
anished into memory lane just like it never happened and i felt it was perfectly okay!Those not fammiliar with Zen and Zazen, not well versed in Buddhist practices might have a little bit of trouble accepting such occurences as I claimed and that too is alright because it is not for everyone it is only for the minds of those that the conciousness of the event was connected to. Usually it is one on one however there has been known that a group as a whole can experience Satori at any given moment of their sitting meditation period or during a lecture when a line is said and it was 'The Line' that triggers a colletive conciousness response and transport the group into a whole different state of mind, usually one of peace and tranquility, the lightness of being, the floating on the air kind of feeling and the Love for eachother that recognizes no conditions a feeling of letting completely go of oneself into the whole (Hole!?).
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