The Empty Cushion, the meal left out

No longer empty

I just got home from my Zendo’s annual sesshin, which is Zen-speak for a retreat. This one went from Thursday - Sunday at a convent that serves as a retreat center not far from Philadelphia. Our sangha, the Zen Center of Philadelphia, hosted it, and we were joined by our sister sangha from New York, Ordinary Mind Zendo. We always have sesshin with them because their teacher Barry Magid is my teacher Pat George’s teacher. It’s a lineage, get it?

Whenever anyone says that they’re going on a zen retreat, someone says, “That must be relaxing!”

It’s not. It’s very hard work sitting in meditation for more than eight hours a day. My Zen group has fairly low key sesshins… we start meditating at 7 am and go to bed by 10 pm. Many zen groups start at 4 am and go to midnight. I’m glad I practice in a Zen tradition that is opposed to the strenuous, sometimes harmful practices of some Zen schools of the past. No one hits us with a stick.

Our sesshins are entirely silent. After the opening dinner on Thursday, when people can talk, it is entirely silent except for chanting and meetings with our teachers until Sunday at lunch. I love it. We do not even look each other in the eye. When we do walking practice or eat meals, we keep our eyes down so that we do not interrupt others’ practice. It’s only at the first and last meals that we chat. This year I came on Friday in time for dinner, as people are allowed to do, so I didn’t get the Thursday evening talking meal. I came right into a desperately needed silent space.

This year I was just looking forward to getting into the quiet. I love to sit zazen (zen meditation). I also just love to sit in quiet, any quiet. And after teaching in the public schools of a city, quiet is magical.

A big theme within our school of Zen, the Ordinary Mind School, founded by Charlotte Joko Beck, is “life as it is.” We try to be present to life as it is: not as we might wish it to be, not as it might have been if we had done something differently, not as it might be if we were new and improved. We attempt to stop the process of “fixing” ourselves and everything around us. It’s funny because many people come to Zen with what teacher Barry Magid calls “curative fantasies,” ideas that somehow we will transform ourselves through Zen and our lives will be better. We do change through practice, and often our lives do get better, or our ability to handle them does. But we learn to live with what is. Barry made a painting that he gave to my teacher Pat that says in Japanese, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”

The point is that we are not broken. We don’t need to fix. We just need to be with. Just sit. Just walk. Just eat. Just be.

It was twelve years ago this Wednesday, March 13, 2013, when I sat on a zen cushion for the first time. It was in Jersey City, and I just went because a friend from church invited me to Morning Star Zendo. When I hit the cushion I felt peace for the first time in as long as I could remember. I started to sit regularly, which there meant every weekday morning from 5:30 am to 7 am, then we would eat breakfast together. It was a small group of six or so on the weekdays, with a larger group gathering on Saturdays for sitting, a dharma talk, and a big lunch after. It became my community. At a very difficult time in life, it was what I held on to.

I have found in American Zen practitioners the most nonjudgmental, loving people I have had occasion to become close to. We all have struggles, and we support each other in our silent, humble practice. We just sit together. Sometimes we do other things too. But mostly we sit.

My Zen school is particularly non-competitive. There is no push for becoming a teacher, what is called “dharma transmission,” though it does happen from time to time. People can come and go as they choose. A group of regulars and officers holds down the fort. For several years, I was very active, including being the Wednesday night jikido, which basically means the master of ceremonies who rings the bells and such for our Wednesday night sitting program. Then I stepped back for awhile, and others took on leadership roles.

I’ve very close to my Zen teacher, Pat. She is 86, a retired teacher who worked in urban areas like me. Since January 2021 we’ve been going for multi hour walks once a week, though we had to take some months off when she got a knee replacement. She’s not just my Zen teacher, she’s a real friend. She has lived life off the beaten path, including spending years as a monk at a Zen monastery in upstate New York. She has lived poor and taught the toughest of kids in the toughest of neighborhoods, just like I do.

I’ve struggled with various things over the twelve years I’ve been practicing zen. Illness, death of close friends and family, job loss and changes. My Zen community has been unfailing in its kind, unobtrusive support. No one asks any questions, they are just warm and loving. My father of blessed memory is on the dedication list that we read at the close of our services.

Today at the lunch when we finally got to talk, I was sitting mostly with my friends from Philadelphia, but there was one person from the New York group there whom I’d not met. He said that he was happy to see me because two years ago, at his first sesshin with us, he had been seated next to a cushion that had a sign with my name, but it remained empty the whole time.

That year, shortly after the death of my friend Marilyn who died by suicide at age 24, I signed up for sesshin but was too sick at the last minute to make it or even get out of bed. So my cushion sat empty. I found out today that the woman who is now our sangha president and who is the jikido at the sesshin, among other amazing feats, left out a meal for me that night, hoping I would make it.

That year I never came. The next year I didn’t even sign up. I was about to start a new job and was taking some time off from Zen. I’m not sure what I was hoping to find in that time away, but I didn’t find it. I missed the quiet sitting, the silent community.

This year, I was there, on the cushion with my name on it. I made it in time for dinner and our president who had left out a meal for me two years ago gave me a quick hug in the bathroom right before dinner on the first night. We didn’t talk but for us zen people, we don’t need to.

At the closing ceremony of a sesshin in our tradition, everyone comes forward, bows to the teacher and the group, and says something brief about their experience. It is funny, emotional, moving, profound, and knits us together. One of my friends from my sangha here in Philly said that the Zendo helped them want to stay alive. I have often said that Zen has kept me alive. It has both helped me access the will to live and given me the situational awareness to survive dangerous situations that I might not have otherwise.

Many people say they struggle with meditation, and I never try to push anyone to do it. Like some of my favorite people, we Zen practitioners do not evangelize. But we welcome all. All you have to do is sit down and be quiet. There is no winning, nothing to gain, nothing to figure out or learn. Just sitting. Life as it is.

It makes me sad to think of my cushion sitting empty two years ago, and of many moments when I was not able to be where I wanted to be. I never knew that my friend left out a meal for me until today, two years later. But that’s how Zen people are. No questions, no explanation needed, just concern, a welcoming soft cushion, a meal.

I always sit at home on my zazen cushion. I need the half hour in the morning before I go to work, and I often sit again in the evening. Sometimes I sit for longer, but that half hour needs to happen. When I am not sitting, however, you can guess who sometimes claims the cushion.

I am so grateful for life as it is.

From the end of our mealtime chant:

May we exist like a lotus flower, at home in muddy water.

Thus we bow to life as it is.