Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I think we naturally need some way of life as a group and as Zen students in America, and as Hyakujo established our way of monastic life in China, I think we must establish an American way of Zen life. I am not saying this jokingly, I am pretty serious. But I do not want to be too serious. If we become too serious we will lose our way. If we are playing games we will lose our way. Little by little with patience and endurance we must find the way for ourselves, find out how to live with ourselves and with each other. In this way we will find out our precepts. If we practice hard, concentrate on zazen, and organize our life so that we can sit well, we will find out what we are doing. But you have to be careful in the rules and way you establish. If it is too strict you will fail, if it is too loose, the rules will not work.

Our way should be strict enough to have authority, an authority everyone should obey. The rules should be possible to observe. This is how Zen tradition was built up, decided little by little, created by us in our practice. We cannot force anything. But once the rules have been decided, we should obey them completely until they are changed. It is not a matter of good or bad, convenient or inconvenient. You just do it without question. That way your mind is free. The important thing is to obey your rules without discrimination. This way you will know the pure Zen mind. To have our own way of life means to encourage people to have a more spiritual and adequate way of life as human beings. And I think one day you will have your own practice in America.’ (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)

Perhaps it is purely coincidental that the Monday group has reached the end of the book in the same week that my class on Dogen’s monastic writings comes to a conclusion. I will bring these words from the epilogue into the class, as they echo so much of how we have turned the conversation from the 13th Century to the 21st. These are all live questions, and we have to navigate step-by-step without knowing how they are all going to turn out.