Dharma Talk - Intro Talk

Dharma Talk Jan 2021

Cambridge Zen Center

Hi, my name is Seamus Boshell and I have been practicing for many years with the Kwan Um School. Thank you for allowing me to give the introductory talk.

It is customary to begin with five minutes of meditation. A simple technique would be to say to yourself on an in-breath, Clear Mind, Clear Mind, Clear Mind, and on the outbreath to say Don’t Know. I’ll set timer and clap hands when I am done. I always like to start by saying Ready, Steady, Go. So, Ready, Steady, Go.

I gave an introductory talk at CZC twenty four years ago, but have not been invited back until now. Let’s hope this talk goes a bit better : ).

I wanted to begin by thanking the school for their online practice, which is wonderful. Providing chanting, morning and evening sitting, long weekend sitting, retreats and interview with Zen Masters. I have had interviews with four Zen masters, all telling me I am wrong, in relation to Kong-on puzzles. But wonderful and timely teaching.

I came across a nice metaphor for Zen by Katagiri Roshi. He said the Zen practitioner is like the baby chick in the egg, pecking at the shell, trying to free itself. It pecks from the inside, and its parent peck from the outside. 

We as Zen practitioners also too peck, he said. We peck from the inside. We peck at the shell of our thinking and our conceptual view of the world. But something also pecks at us from the outside. The Dharma, the sangha, our teachers, all peck from the outside. 

There is a whole lot of pecking going on.  : )

Like perhaps many others, I started practice because of suffering. At 26, I tore my ACL and my dream of professional soccer ended. I became depressed. A black year. 

I read Guy Claxton’s The Heart of Buddhism, which pointed out to me that I am more than my thoughts, that I am not just my thoughts, and certainly not those depressive thoughts. This was a great relief for me. 

With this encouragement I began attending Cambridge Zen regularly, sitting, interviews, weekend retreats, enjoying the people and the teachers. But I still played soccer and sometimes it clashed with my Zen commitments. One weekend I remember well. CZC held a weekend retreat off site in Lexington, but I also had a soccer match. 

I chose the soccer match. 

Well, I got lost on the way to the soccer match (this was before smart phones). I stopped at a traffic light, thinking I would have to ask for directions. Well, this line of people walked right by me. It was the Zen retreat, on their way to Dunkin Donuts during a break. 

I was astounded. 

Was this the universe pecking at me?

I made it to the soccer match, which did not go well. There was a silly brawl. The match was even abandoned.
Was this the universe also pecking at me?  

Well, I thought so. 
I was determined to learn my lesson.

So, the following weekend I bought a GPS for my dashboard. I would not get lost again. 

No, I am just joking. I chose Zen practice. 

The practice has given me so much relief in my life. There are three areas so far. I call them the three T’s.

The first relief is in Thinking. I work in finance and I write fiction in my spare time (mainly for the unpublished market which I have broken into many times). I spent a lot of time thinking, analyzing, figuring things out. Using my analytical mind.

I did the same with Zen at the start.  

But the practice encourages you to let go of thinking. Everything is designed to teach you the limits of thinking, the limits of language and conceptual thinking. Whether you are sitting, chanting, bowing, doing kong-ons. These allow you to enter Don’t-Know mind. 

This is a wonderful relief for me. 

That cognition is not the path.

Don’t Know mind returns me to the world. After a long sitting, I feel as if I had showered on the inside.

The second relief is its focus on Time, or the Now. The practice points to the present, not the past or the future, which is made from thinking. Yes, you have to plan and schedule, but there is only now, now. 

What a relief!

Only now. Only this. Just this. Just like this. 

The third relief is the Tales, or the Dharma, the teachings. What a wonderful relief that the teachings are alive and relevant, not dense and philosophical. They are colorful, creative, intriguing. Great stories. Great puzzles. Great Kong-ans. 

One Kong-on came visibly to life for me. 

I was back home in Ireland 6 years ago. My mother was in the ICU, dying. We knew she was dying. It was a very difficult time. I spent a lot of time with my father. My sisters were in England. He grew very talkative. He talked a lot about his time as a child, and in particular the people who had died during his childhood, their deaths, their funerals, the sadness and drama of it. His grandmother. Aunts and uncles. Neighbors. Even some young cousins. 

This had a profound effect on me.

I really saw my father as a young boy confronted with death, trying to make sense of it. In his shorts and patchy jumpers. Only a boy. With a boy’s fear and excitement. The treats from the funerals, stories of how people died and where they were found, all that drama but also the shock. And his fear for himself. Only a boy. 

But where was I when he was this real life boy? When he saw his grandmother dead in their front room, laid out for the wake (which was customary in Ireland back then). Where was I? 

My mind got really stuck on this.

Where was I?

But my father also talked about his own father, my grandfather. The tragic deaths during his early life. Aunts and uncles but also children. 

This too had a profound effect on me.

I really saw my grandfather as a little boy, dealing with these awful things. My father was not even born. Where was my father when my grandfather was a boy? And even more importantly, as we say in Ireland, where was I when my grandfather was a boy?

My mind got stuck on this too.

Where was I?

Through all this time. All these things. Where was I?

I began to realize the precariousness of my own birth, the preciousness of it. A miracle. A common miracle. But my own common miracle. 

At that time, this kong-an came to my mind:. What did your face look like before your mother and father were born? 

This blew away all my thinking, all my durable images of myself, my own certainty. It completely pecked away my own complacent view of myself and the inevitable fact of my own existence and continuance. My thoughts stalled. My mind opened into what our school call Don’t Know mind. A common state of mind. Not special at all, but filled with space, and awe, and gratitude. 

I was dumb struck.

My mother died a couple of days later. Which was another kong-an, deserving its own talk surely. My own kids are young, a son and a daughter. Their grandmother, my mother, had just passed away. They too had to take on this kong-on.  

These events have pecked at me every since. 

Who am I? 

What am I? 

Where did I come from? 

Where will I go? 

What is this?

Don’t know. I don’t know. But it’s wonderful to have this Don’t Know.

I often take an afternoon nap. And sometimes I wake up with a conviction, an assertion, a reminder that I will die. Not soon or anything like that. But that I will. This pecks at me for a few hours, the world suddenly fresh and tenuous, before my habitual thinking takes over again. My thinking does not believe in my own death, death is for other people. Not me. 

Amazing what your own thinking can do, isn’t it. 

Well, I think I have pecked at this death business long enough.

Thank you for listening. 

Thank you all for making Zen practice possible, acceptable and available.