Receiving the Offering
Emily Marie Bording - Sei Sho E Shu
My first introduction to Soto Zen practice was at The Simple Tea House of Paia onMaui in 1979. My teacher Pat, offered the intimacy of ceremonial tea service, art, meditation and gardening. After my training in residence with her, I returned to mainland for college. These two books influenced my teenage path, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind" and Pirsigg’s, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.
After seven years in college, Sasaki Roshi initiated me into a student/teacher relationship and asked me to serve as his assistant and as Tenzo at his Rinzai Zen centers. Disenchanted with the arduous efforts of trying to integrate koan study with my fast-paced career, as software technician in Silicon Valley, I discovered shikantaza. With boundless gratitude, Soto teacher, Angie Boissevain, accepted me into the gentle arms of her sangha, soon after she co-founded Jikoji - Compassion Light Temple. My boiling life slowed to a simmer and a subtle harmony gradually embraced even the moments of intense stress. Years later, her teacher Kobun Chino Otagawa, Soto Priest, joined his Compassion Light Temple for a sesshin. Our meeting, continues to enchant my life.
In 2004, Angie Sensei, received Dharma transmission from Jakko Eso Vanja Palmer - Kobun’s Dharma heir, and in 2006, she gave me the great honor of a Jukai ceremony at Floating Zendo, which included Sei Sho E Shu - Brightly Shining Constant Effort to Kobun Chino Roshi’s Phoenix Cloud lineage. Angie Sensei offered writing workshops, which instilled the confidence in me to publish my poetry, artwork and accept many invitations to recite my poetry and perform shakuhachi at events. As Way Opens, a CD made available on iTunes, which showcases Angie Sensei’s poetry, accompanied by my shakuhachi.
I am a mother of a secret boddhisattva and a member of Publications committee and Tenzo-Ryo at Jikoji. I participated in two Santa Barbara Zen Center Ango periods, facilitated by Pamela Nenzen Brown, who was ordained by Shoho Michael Newhall and recipient of Dharma transmission from Vanja Palmer. With deep respect, I bow to Pamela Sensei and her commitment to practice with life’s fleeting experiences and our shared love of the Dharma flowing endlessly through poetry, art and shakuhachi flutes.
Receiving the Offering
Every bowl swells with steaming soup.
Hands rest on laps covered with cloth napkins.
After every word is chanted for our teachers, parents and
all beings in the six worlds; together we breathe the savory air.
In a moment of pure “give-it-to-me” desire, we pause -
offer awareness to what is given.
On the altar sits a bodhisattva statue, I don’t remember her name, except,
that like you, she represents a lotus rising above the nutriments of mud.
In the patchwork field of three treasures, we dissolve into a white-petaled peace.
Our heart grows in the spaciousness of presence.
Renouncing the greed of taking, even the names, we thought we would need.
Efforts to attain are resolved in the generosity of just this.
What can we possibly want, when everything is already given, in the offering.
Quenched by Emily Bording
Hungry Horizon
An insatiable wonder attracts me all the way to the edge of sight,
where day breaks bread with night.
The horizon has access to sun shy places;
paper whites whose stems are long, as winter shadows,
chanterelle’s ruffled umbrella, offer of shelter from spring rains,
cozy lovers spooning lashes, under autumn’s apricot moon.
The horizon inspires a longing to venture
beyond thresholds into the presence of new beginnings.
Its tiger striped ribbons
untie the waistband of the world,
freeing its hunger for a wilderness of wonder.
Just as the fluency of listening grows
more spacious with the absence of noise,
leaving the familiar is a returning to ourselves.
Stars drink the vitality of darkness
illuminating the horizon
with their magnanimous presence.
Soil is flint to stars.
It embodies the spirit of long distance listening
sustenance of luminous love affairs.
The horizon has an appetite for presence,
and hungers for the absence of distance.
Love by Emily Bording
Two Sisters Meet on a Temple Bench
Clouds puffed with white, bump and bow,
as if congratulating one another,
while two sisters, sit outside the kitchen temple,
treasuring the deeper blue, beyond.
Rice pots throttled by lids rattling under pressure
and sesame seeds popping over a hot iron pan.
Every measure is made: thin red lines on a pyrex cup,
raised numbers on nesting spoons, multiplied by Zen.
Two sister’s meet on a temple bench, adjusting
and readjusting to their unspeakable oneness.
They ask themselves, “Who are we in relation
to our daughters, their fathers, this great big world?”
Noble silence softens their furrowed brows.
A lively kettle pours itself into a filtered funnel.
An oregano wand stirs course grounds into fine art.
After lifting their bowls, raising daughters, praising fathers,
two darling sisters, sip serenely, watching the moon
slowly rise from the bottom of their bowls.
Gregarious towhees sing, “Drink-to-me, Drink-to-me!”
Metallic bluejays flirt in exchange for tossed breadcrumbs.
Serving and being served, so effortlessly by life’s immeasurable beauty:
Tatami trails crisscrossing saffron hills, turkeys tails fanning amber leaves.
Two sisters wave their oregano wand, stirring silence, until worries,
wilt like crocus threads in the warmth of golden rice and the skies
bow to blue.
Sakura
Solemn song
wisps from hollow reed
amidst the brief
blossoming of cherry trees
Fingers drum
culms and nodes
breath blueing
bamboo notes
Liquid melodies
quench
limp limbs
weeping with buds
Ancient hymns
sway
the bristled
ears of spring
A wave of pink
takes to the air
petaled
with impermanence
Shakuhachi sound
floating on sakura cloud
softening
the passing of their touch