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Midwest Zen
Issue 3 | December 2022
A publication of Great Wind Zendo
Danville, Indiana
Midwest Zen
Issue 3 | December 2022
Published 2022 by Great Wind Zendo
Editor: Kristin Roahrig
Address all correspondence to:
Midwest Zen
Great Wind Zendo
52 W Broadway Street
Danville, Indiana 46122-1718
MidwestZen@greatwindzendo.org
The digital version of this publication can be downloaded at no cost from
our website at greatwindzendo.org/MWZ.
The works included and the opinions expressed herein are those of the
individual authors, who are solely responsible for their contents. They do
not necessarily reflect the opinions and positions of Great Wind Zendo.
Midwest Zen © 2022 by Great Wind Zendo. All rights revert to the
author upon publication.
Printed in U.S.A.
Cover: detail from photograph by Jay Tuttle.
Contents
Contents
ESSAYS
ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
David Whyte
Silence
3
Neil SchmitzerTorbert
Do We Really Want to Sit?
7
Sally Hess
Horses and Zebras
13
Gail Sher
Beginner’s Mind
26
Zuiko Redding
Practice and Enjoyment
33
Kyoku Lutz
World Peace Ceremony at the
Frühlingsmond Zendo,
Hanover, Germany
35
Tonen O’Connor
Gassho
45
David Whyte
Sitting Zen
Nakasendo Poems
1
39
Joshua St. Claire
Free Form Haiku
Yuan Changming
A Puti Poem: Meditating
11
Daniel Thomas
Practicing
Two Voices
What Evening Can’t Dispel
21
22
23
Darrell Petska
In the Round
Old Man Rocking
31
32
Tonen O’Connor
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
New Year’s Day Gathering
43
POETRY
6
Jay Tuttle
Photographs
Front cover,
49
Lisa Summers
Photographs
2, 24, 25
Kristin Roahrig
Photographs
5, 12
Lisa Summers
Gail Sher
Beginner’s Mind
"Beginner's Mind" is a term especially connected to
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi because of his book, Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind . It's a term people casually use with the
sense "everyone knows what that means." But I wonder.
Let's take a moment to consider what you think
"Beginner's Mind" means. Can you articulate your
relationship with it? Is it a principle by which you live? Is
it something you hardly think about?
When Suzuki Roshi first saw the published copy of Zen
Mind Beginner's Mind, he said: "It looks good . . . I didn't
write it but it looks nice." It's true he didn't actually write
this famous book. Suzuki Roshi arrived in San Francisco
in 1959 to serve as priest for the Japanese Soto Zen
community in San Francisco. While living alone in their
large temple on Buchanan Street, he started sitting zazen
in the morning and evening. Gradually people, curious
about anything “Zen” (word spread quickly through the
local art-scene grapevine) joined him and the sittings
became more frequent and more formal. A few satellite
groups also sprang up—in Mill Valley, Berkeley and Los
Altos. Roshi would go there once or twice a week for zazen
and to give talks. Eventually the woman who hosted the
group in Los Altos, Trudy Dixon, began, with Roshi's
permission, recording the lectures. After an extremely
lengthy period of transcribing and editing, Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind was published. People love it, but I'm not
sure how many finish it because it is actually not so
simple.
“Beginner’s Mind”—the words—have become
commonplace. Yet it’s the fresh new breath—the “mind” of
this phrase—that Suzuki-roshi so emphasized. Staying
with this—first finding it and then how to bring ourselves
again and again back to it, is at the heart of his legacy.
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Gail Sher
But it isn’t easy. Not because IT isn’t easy but because
the cultural values with which it contends make it
extremely challenging. I refer to setting goals, to winning,
to achievement, to progress—these are all de-emphasized
because the mind behind their direction is at crosspurposes with a beginner's mind.
Reb Anderson Roshi, a close disciple of Suzuki Roshi says
that Roshi considered his main job as a Zen priest to
encourage people to practice upright sitting. For him, Reb
says, the most pure and direct way of sustaining the
Buddha treasure was just to be fully himself in each
moment. His way of protecting the Dharma treasure was
to practice wholeheartedly with no gaining idea. And his
way of protecting and sustaining the Sangha treasure
(Buddha, Dharma & Sangha: the "Triple Treasures" of
Buddhism) was what he called group practice—practicing
together in harmony with others. When you consider that
for Roshi, anyone being fully themselves means to be
rooted in their fundamental Buddha-nature and that to
do this one would have no gaining idea (because there is
nothing to add to one's Buddha-nature)—THIS in itself
would be Beginner's Mind.
When Roshi says "In the beginner’s mind there are many
possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few," by
"beginner" he means our fundamental selves, and from
there being anything the situation requires. The phrase
has a kind of innocence and lack of calculation or
contrivance about it.
It's ironic. Suzuki-roshi loved Americans because "they
don't know anything about Zen so they're receptive to the
teachings." Yet at the same time Americans are steeped in
gaining ideas. If you talk about upright sitting, for many
people their first thought is "I don't have time," by which
they mean "I can't afford not to accomplish something
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Gail Sher
even for 15 minutes." Most of Roshi's first students were
artists who were operating differently already.
"At first the effort you make is quite rough and impure, but
by the power of practice the effort will become purer and
purer. When your effort becomes pure, your body and mind
become pure. This is the way we practice Zen."
Let me give an example. When I was seventy-five my
husband gave me a banjo for Christmas. My back was
weak. My hands were stiff. There were many obstacles,
but I just thought, “Well, I have always wanted to play the
banjo. If I practice every day, every day I will have the joy
of the banjo. Even one tune will be amazing.
Before I started playing, I could hardly believe that I, Gail,
would ever be able to play the banjo. But day after day I
just did the things from my lesson and now, a few years
later, I actually can play a few tunes. And it doesn’t seem
special. It is just me, nothing special. Day after day it’s
just me figuring out how to get the strap over my head
and the banjo so that it doesn’t slip. There are so many
considerations, if I let them, they could get annoying. But
I just say “Nevermind. This is what it takes.” In the end I
get my tune, which at best doesn’t sound too bad. Deep
inside I am very satisfied.
Beginning at seventy-five has many advantages. I am not
thinking, “Boy, if I practice really hard I could win a
competition.” I’m not thinking, “Too bad I can’t play fast
like her.” Instead I am thinking, “Every day I can try as
hard as I can and since I can’t do better than that, I will
have done my best.”
In this way it becomes a “practice.” Every morning for half
an hour. Practice is about HOW—how to simply stay with
how—making sure I have the half hour, that I have what I
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Gail Sher
need with me, that I know what to do during that time,
that I’m alert.
It’s easier to have a beginner’s mind at seventy-five than
at fifteen. At fifteen one is full of fantasies, notions,
looking around, trying things on. At seventy-five you can
just be yourself.
Anyway, playing the banjo is not really about playing the
banjo. Playing the banjo is about sharpening the MindThat-Plays-the-Banjo. Correct Mind creates correct
playing, whether that be awkward, faulty, kindergartenish.
Correct Mind knows that there is nothing to know. This is
important to understand. Knowledge (information) and
Wisdom (spirit) are not the same. Playing the banjo is a
Wisdom practice. You being YOU is the Wisdom practice
of returning to the Source. Actually, when you think
about it, it’s the Source that plays the banjo.
Wisdom practice means NOT KNOWING. Suzuki Roshi
calls it Beginner’s Mind. If you want to do something fully
you need the real you. The real you lives inside (behind or
underneath) all of your knowing—touching the spot of
JUST YOU—first recognizing it, then touching it and then
becoming it in your stillness.
Gail Sher
The word “practice”—you can turn anything into a
practice—means turning it into a relationship. In the case
of my banjo it is a Self-relationship, with the banjo being
a mirror. “Oh I don’t really feel like practicing today,” I
may think but because it’s a “practice” I get to see my
mind when it is reluctant, but I practice anyway. If it were
not a practice, I might just do what I feel like, risking the
whole prospect which could easily fall away.
“Tell me about 'There is nothing to know' when it comes
time to change the strings” you could rightfully ask.
Because, while for big mind there is nothing to know,
small mind needs lots of information. It’s the way you
hold the details, however, that makes the difference. The
details are just details. Just as the waves of the sea are
the “practice of the sea,” so are the information and skills
required to play an instrument—or to sit zazen.
"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities but in
the expert’s mind there are few" simply describes a way of
holding these details.
"Our ‘original mind’ includes everything within itself. It is
always rich and sufficient within itself."
Roshi means that we have everything that we need to
begin and continue with our practice.
"The goal of practice is always to show up and to keep a
beginner’s mind." It means that endlessly we stay with
that fresh effort because boredom (laziness of mind) is
always remediable.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan at
poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart
nominations, 15 chapbooks & appearances in Best of the Best
Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and Poetry Daily.
Sally Hess was introduced to Buddhism at the Zen Community of
New York in 1984. She received lay ordination from Dai-En Bennage
Roshi in 1994 with the Dharma name Daisen.
Kyoku Lutz is a Dharma successor of Rev. Hoko Karnegis,
Sanshinji, and leads the Frühlingsmond Zendo, in Hanover,
Germany. She is a Doctor of Educational Science with training in
Systemic Family Therapy and Counseling.
Tonen O’Connor is the Resident Priest Emerita of the Milwaukee
Zen Center. Her most recent literary adventure was editing and
writing an introductory essay for Ryokan interpreted by Shohaku
Okumura.
Darrell Petska is a retired university editor and 2021 Pushcart
Prize nominee. His poetry appears in 3rd Wednesday Magazine,
Buddhist Poetry Review, Verse Virtual, Soul-Lit and widely
elsewhere. (conservancies.wordpress.com).
Rev. Zuiko Redding is pastor of Cedar Rapids Zen Center, a Soto
Zen temple in Iowa. She has two cats, Roy and Sam. You can see the
Center at www.cedarrapidszencenter.org.
Kristin Roahrig resides in Indiana where she engages in writing
and photography.
Neil Schmitzer-Torbert began his Zen practice in Minneapolis
while studying neuroscience in graduate school. Today, he teaches
psychology at Wabash College and shares reflections on practice
and science at neuralbuddhist.com.
Gail Sher received lay ordination from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in
1970. She is a poet, writer, teacher and psychotherapist in the San
Francisco Bay area. Her weekly talks on Zen practice are at
gailsherdharmatalks.com..
Joshua St. Claire is a corporate controller from rural Pennsylvania.
His haiku have appeared in several international journals and he
believes that small poems can contain the universe.
Lisa Summers lives in rural Indiana and teaches in a women's
prison. She enjoys capturing the world she wanders with
photographs and in writing.
Daniel Thomas’s second poetry book, Leaving the Base Camp at
Dawn, was published in 2022. His first collection, Deep Pockets, won a
2018 Catholic Press Award. More info at danielthomaspoetry.com.
Jay Tuttle finds the mix of art and science in photography very
appealing. Making photographs that others enjoy are a great pleasure
in his life. Enjoy more images at jaytuttlephotography.com.
Poet David Whyte grew up with a strong, imaginative influence
from his Irish mother among the hills and valleys of his father’s
Yorkshire. The author of eleven books of poetry and four books of
prose, he holds a degree in Marine Zoology, and leads workshops and
walking tours around the world.