Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Overnight Rain

My two talks in the last week went well enough. The Sunday morning online talk to the group in Ann Arbor was very sweet, with about a dozen people in attendance. I spoke somewhat autobiographically, telling my practice story, and read the story of Seppo and Ganto in full (I am a little surprised that I have never posted this story, at least as far as I can tell from searching in the archives; a few days before that I had been looking through my old talks on the Audio Page, and found that I had read the whole story a few years ago at an online Zen Center talk, though you can also listen to the recording of this talk over on that page as well now).

So I didn’t think I should do that again on Wednesday night at Zen Center. In that talk, for which it was nice to be back in the Buddha Hall again after perhaps eighteen months of not giving a talk there due to the renovations, I focused a little bit more on the precepts, ahead of the jukai ceremony on Saturday, and since it seemed that a lot of the people in the room might have been pretty new, I talked about Dharma names, how the two parts of the names come about, using mine as an example. I tied that in with thinking about how we go from externalising the practice to internalising it and making it our own.

I spoke for about half an hour, and worried that the talk was perhaps a little bit under-cooked, though people had nice things to say afterwards, and I enjoyed the questions (I will see if I can post the full audio to the Audio Page once it becomes available). In the end, I did not use the Lung-Ya story that I posted on Wednesday, so I used it in the Thursday night online group instead; I have posted that short talk on the Audio Page as well.

At about this time every year I go through wondering if we have had the last rain of the season. I had not seen any in the forecast, though this week has been fairly dreary and chilly, but when I woke up on Thursday morning, it was clear that it had been raining, and I caught up with the drizzle on my way to Alameda. Perhaps that will be the final flourish – who knows?

Low clouds on Thursday morning.

Responses

  1. Shonen Avatar
    Shonen

    In regards to Dharma names, do you know why in the West, we use the first part of the name but in Japan they use the second half? I remember being somewhat taken aback when Kokai disappeared and reappeared as Shinshu….!

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    1. shundo Avatar
      shundo

      Hey Shonen, I think in the way we do the names, it has more to do with the stage of practice. The first part is how your teacher sees you at ordination, the second is how they imagine you as a fully matured practitioner. So when Kokai received dharma transmission, she could be thought of as having realised the second part of her name. Shosan Victoria, at yesterday’s talk says she uses Shosan, the first part of her name, in the US, and Gigen, the second part, in Japan. I think my lay ordination teacher, Setsuan Gaelyn Godwin does the same; certainly I have heard her referred to as Konjin as well.

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      1. Shonen Avatar
        Shonen

        Thanks Shundo. I heard Vicki say that in the talk yesterday but couldn’t stay for Q & A hence punting the question to you! I didn’t realize that Shinshu’s name change coincided with her receiving dharma transmission so that makes sense. However, I get the impression that in Japan, they take on the second part of the name right off the bat – perhaps to immediately “try on” their matured state akin to getting an oversized sweater as a kid that you eventually grow into.

        I was also intrigued when Shosan said the 1st and 4th characters and the 2nd and 3rd characters go together to form other meanings (I think I’m remembering the combination correctly).

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      2. shundo Avatar
        shundo

        Yes that was interesting. I feel like I have heard that before (maybe reading it in something Shohaku Okumura wrote) but had forgotten it – and hadn’t taken that into account in choosing the dharma name for my student; nor the part about making one character in the first half something natural.

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