I'm heading out for a Zen street retreat tomorrow afternoon. I'll be back Sunday. So if you contact me I'll get back to you next week. And if you meet me on the street, can you spare a dollar?

My friend Jim Roberts emailed me this quote from Master Hua, a founder of Chan Buddhism in the West:

Those in search of the Way should bear this in mind: "I will pick up what others discard." What others do not want, I want; what others will not eat, I will eat; what others will not suffer, I will suffer; what others will not tolerate, I will tolerate; what others will not permit, I will permit; what others will not do, I will do. If you want to support others, you must do it from below. "Seeking the Way from a lower place" means starting from below, not standing up at the top of the mountain. You will never see the Way from the top of Mount Sumeru; but when you are at the very bottom of Mount Sumeru, there you will find the Way.

Jim says this reminds him of street retreat. Yes. Here's my friend Shōin collecting cans during a street retreat last year:

This non-rejecting mind, this mind of spiritual poverty, is the muscle we're training when we're on the street.

I periodically spend four days homeless, with a Zen teacher named Genro and a small group of fellow Buddhists. We live, sleep, and meditate on the streets together and eat at soup kitchens. I think the retreat has a triple purpose: First, briefly abandoning the comfort and certainty of my regular life helps me practice non-attachment, the same as it helped the first Buddhist monks. Second, it gives me a taste of what it's like to be homeless, so I can better understand the homeless people I meet in NYC. And finally, it's an opportunity to raise money for homeless services.

The rule is that I must raise $500 by May 2. The money will be distributed among the organizations that help us while we're on the street, and it will support the social service activities of the Hudson River Peacemaker Center. I have to beg for the money—I'm not allowed to just donate $500 of my own.

So I'm begging you: Will you please donate?

Update: I've now (April 16) exceeded my minimum, with $803. But donate anyway! Additional funds are divided the same as the first $500.

Two weeks ago the Village Zendo completed a week-long urban sesshin focused on our awareness of disabilities. We were blindfolded for part of one day, and wore earplugs for part of another. The retreat ended with the Shuso Hossen ceremony, in which R. Liam Oshin Jennings gave his first dharma talk.

Roshi Genro Gauntt of The Zen Peacemakers and Hudson River Zen Center invites you to join a street retreat in New York City, May 2-5, 2013. We will sleep, meditate, and live on the streets together. It’s a chance to practice with a Zen teacher and a devoted group, to make friends with homeless people, and to feel the liberation of having nothing, like the first Buddhist monks. It's a plunge into the unknown. The barest poke at renunciation.

Logistics

The retreat starts on Thursday, May 2nd at 3pm and will end on Sunday the 5th by noon. Partial participation is not an option. You can only join for the entire retreat. Our group will be together almost all of the time. We will conduct daily meditation, liturgy, and council.

Bring only a poncho, a blanket, a water bottle, and a photo ID. No money, credit cards, phone, change of clothes, books, toiletries, etc. Bring your prescription medicine if needed, of course.

Raising a Mala

We will be supported throughout by social service agencies and charities. Since we are homeless by choice, we want to make donations to those who will be supporting our lives. Raise $500 by begging from your family, friends, and associates, or just on the street. You may not use your own money. To sincerely engage in this experience we need to humble ourselves at the outset, attempt to explain to others our reasons for participating, and beg for their support. This is a hugely challenging and ultimately hugely rewarding experience. When we are sincere and truly speak from the heart, it’s no problem.

One-third of the funds will support the wide ranging social service activities of the Hudson River Zen Center, and we as a group will decide at the end of the retreat where two-thirds of the offerings should go.

To inquire about joining this retreat, please email me, A. Jesse Jiryu Davis, jesse@emptysquare.net.

Thank you for listening. May your life (which includes all life) go well.

Here's a series I did in the fall of 2011 called "Ordinary Zen." I photographed my friends from the Zendo meditating at home, and interviewed them about their practice.

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Bill Seizan Ewing

I used to occasionally spend a weekend not talking. I’d get together with one of my friends, someone I felt comfortable with, and I’d say, let’s do something this weekend, let’s not talk. We’ll have a slumber party, and we’re not going to speak. So when I heard about a silent month retreat with the Village Zendo, I thought that sounded weird and funky and I’d love to try that.

I took beginning meditation instruction at the Village Zendo in 2002. I had no problem sitting on the floor. The instructor said, let’s do this for five minutes, just count your breath up to ten and then start over. I got up to thirteen before I remembered to go back to one!

I’ve been dancing Tango for six years. At the first lesson, you stand really straight, put your hands on your stomach, breath so that you can feel your stomach—it’s this whole physical thing. Tango is really Zen. You have to be in the moment, right there with the person you’re dancing with. Your awareness goes, not just to your center of gravity, but to the center of gravity you’re creating together. And when you connect like that, that’s Tango. The feeling is like nothing else.

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Jean Yugetsu Carlomusto

I’m one of the most un-Zen people on the planet. No one would ascribe Zen to me. It’s because they misunderstand what Zen is. They think Zen is the buddha sitting strong—and that’s true. But there’s also the Buddha having a screaming fit at the dog for peeing on the rug. What elevates it is that you try to be aware of it at every moment. That’s the hardest thing.

I got into Zen through Enkyo Roshi. Roshi was my professor, and one day after I graduated I saw her on the street, and her head was shaved. I thought, I hope she’s ok. She said, we’re meditating at my apartment. I’ve become a Zen priest.

That was the early 90s. I was working at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and at ACT UP. The people I was close to started to die, and there was a period of time for about a year when I didn’t want to go out. I just stayed home. And the meditation helped me recover some kind of savoring of life.

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Emma Seiki Tapley

I got into Zen because my mom was into Zen. I was 23. I went to the zendo and got very formal instruction. It felt like hell. I thought, my mom obviously wants to kill me. When is it going to be over?

I can’t remember which came first, my art or Zen. I’m becoming comfortable taking longer with my work, and as a consequence the paintings are getting better. And that comes from sitting. Slowing down. People are not into that—they appreciate it, but they’re not into it.

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Randall Ryotan Eiger

I’d just had a really bad breakup with a girl and I was moping around, and my roommate said, “Read this. It’ll make you feel better.” It was Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen. When I read it I said to myself, I have no idea what this is, but this is the truth. I started reading a lot of books about Zen. I didn’t start sitting, but I read a lot of books for the next seven or eight years.

I finally did begin my practice in 1989, and for years I was in intense pain. My body is the kind of body that doesn’t like to do that sort of thing. If someone had worked with me on the physical side of it that might have helped but no one did. After three periods of meditation I was scraping myself off the floor.

Some time in my 30s I became a therapist. Because I come from a Zen perspective I’m not interested in curing people. I just let them sit with their hellish problems. I’m fine if there’s no progress at all, because I firmly believe that it’s by going into the problem that you begin to untangle the knot.

Since, as I have mentioned recently, Zen is very much an accredited situation, my temple sends annual reports to The Soto School of North America, which itself answers to Soto Zen HQ in Kyoto.

It's been pointed out to us that no one wants to read a ten-page report about the activities of a small Zen temple in Manhattan, much less translate it into Japanese, so we're mostly sending photos this year. I assembled a little montage and I liked it so much I'm posting it here.

On Wednesday Jeff Bridges talked with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show about his book, The Dude and the Zen Master, which he wrote with Bernie Glassman. I had several reasons to be excited about this event: Bernie Glassman is a prominent Zen teacher in my lineage. I love Jeff Bridges as an actor and humanitarian. He actually knows something about Zen, and he was going to talk about it on national TV!

Unfortunately, the interview was mush. The average Daily Show viewer finished the program none the wiser, still thinking Zen is formless and inscrutable, or worse, that Zen is whatever you want it to be.

In Buddhism we emphasize upaya, or skillful means: speaking to your audience in a way they'll understand. I think Bridges missed the mark, so I'll humbly provide alternative answers to the questions Jon Stewart asked him.

Jon Stewart: For someone who introduces a "Moment of Zen" every day, I know very little about it. How do you become a Zen master?

Jeff Bridges: To become a master you have to study with a master and then he says, "Tag, you're it."

JS: So it's really not an accredited situation. How do you know he's a master? Does he just say to you, "I'm a Zen master," and you're like, "All right"?

JB: I'm going to make you a Zen master.

At this point Bridges put a clown nose on Stewart, and put one on himself too.

JS: So that's all it takes?

In the realm of the absolute we are all the master, and we're all the fool, and Bernie Glassman has in fact performed as a clown to express this. But I don't think this was the most skillful way of talking about Zen at that moment.

For the sake of the Daily Show audience, here's what I'd say: Bernie Glassman is a roshi, meaning he has reached the highest attainment as a Zen teacher. He was certified as a roshi by his teacher, Taizan Maezumi, after 27 years of Zen practice. Maezumi, in turn, was certified by his three teachers, who were all certified by their teachers in their lineages. I'd correct Jon Stewart and say that being a Zen teacher is very much an "accredited situation"—in fact the rigor of our accreditation process is a hallmark of the Zen sect.

JS: What does he help you with? What is the project you're on together?

A top-notch question! Zen, like other sects within Mahayana Buddhism, teaches us to take the Bodhisattva path. A Bodhisattva is a person committed to liberating everyone from suffering. That's the project we're on together.

JS: What has it given you? Do you practice it? Is it an art form? Has it given you a sense of peace, a sense of understanding?

JB: It's interconnectedness, realizing that we're all in this together. That we all are one.

I'd have given a concrete answer: Zen is a practice. It's a practice intended to liberate us from suffering and train us as effective Bodhisattvas.

How do we get liberated? By ending our greedy, unrealistic desires and accepting life as it is. We achieve that by studying Buddhist texts, by practicing with a teacher and a group, by following the Buddhist ethical precepts, and by practicing meditation seriously and regularly—for example, I sit half an hour a day, and I spend a month or more of each year at meditation retreats. I also do a street retreat every year: a practice of being homeless and meditating and living on the streets, a practice invented in America by Bernie Glassman.

Sure, as Bridges said, "It's interconnectedness." But that's useless if we don't know how to realize that interconnectedness. We have to train ourselves in practical, everyday applications of that oneness. The method is simple: learn to meditate and start doing it. Find a teacher, join a group, follow the precepts, study the texts. Then go out and be helpful. It's not a big mystery.

If you live in New York City, I suggest you check out the group I belong to, The Village Zendo, and meet our warm but demanding teacher, Enkyo Roshi. Bernie Glassman is coming to the Zendo February 15th and 16th if you'd like to meet him. To learn to meditate, I recommend the book Opening the Hand of Thought.

Last weekend I photographed my friend Chodo, a priest at the Village Zendo, caring for a friend in hospice.

Each summer during our meditation retreat, the Village Zendo holds a ceremony to feed the hungry ghosts: all those suffering and unsatisfied. Here's my teacher Enkyo Roshi leading the ceremony.

Every mistake I can make in the darkroom I made with this film, so it's not usable for anything. That's disappointing because I love the light and her intensity. I'll try again next year.