Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training and addiction recovery groups, and works with multi-faith groups focused on intersectional liberation, racial justice, and climate justice. Ben is based at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, has written for Tricycle and Lion’s Roar magazines, and is author of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara, and Mindfulness and Intimacy.

Full Transcript

Um, you know, well, I hope you're all doing well. We're excited here because it's supposed to get above freezing today. So we're just going to run outside and have a lot of fun fixing to go skiing down at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. So, yeah.

And, um, what else can I say? Oh, tomorrow is the 33rd memorial of the death date of Katagiri Roshi, who is the, you know, in whose lineage I am empowered to teach and who founded our Zen center Minnesota Zen Meditation Center here. And it's kind of a big occasion. I'm not able to go in person, but we have people flying in from around the country. So if you love Katagiri, I encourage you to check out the Hokyōji or the Ryōmonji websites which are the two temples which are going to host the memorial proceedings. I am profoundly grateful for the offering of both Dainin Katagiri and his wife Tomoe Katagiri, who I was able to practice with.

So let's see, I came with a topic, the topic for my talk is "show up in a good way." Last summer, I was part of a long movement to stop the construction of the Line 3 oil pipeline in northern Minnesota, which was a tar sands pipeline. That movement to stop that pipeline was being led by indigenous women from northern Minnesota, Anishinaabe women from that land and also others who had gathered from around the country to support the movement.

One morning last summer, I found myself having been in a crowd of a couple thousand people receiving nonviolent civil disobedience training for a couple days and preparing for a major action at a prayer circle. I found myself in a prayer circle prior to going out on the highway. There were a lot of speakers at the prayer circle. It was really beautiful. It was Muslim, Hindu, they had a Buddhist, they found me. They had Christians, Jews, and a number of indigenous people.

One of the speakers was an Anishinaabe woman named Great Grandmother Mary Lyons. I'd seen Great Grandmother Mary Lyons talk before. She shows up for a lot of things that are about climate and indigenous people's justice. She tends to travel with a bunch of her daughters and granddaughters. So she shows up at events and she's this matriarchal power leading this crowd of about maybe six or eight younger women, all of them wearing really beautiful multicolored, handmade dresses. So it's quite a, you know, you know something is happening when Great Grandmother Mary Lyons shows up. And Great Grandmother Mary Lyons is totally hilarious. You know, there's not, I can't, telling someone something is funny never really works, but I'll just tell you, she's funny.

But the other thing she is, is really good at just standing up in front of a bunch of people and being very clear about how much trauma, damage, and violence, the people in her family have experienced in actions that benefit settler communities and white folks like me. So, you know, she just got up at this prayer circle trying to get people sort of prepared to go into this nonviolent civil disobedience and she was talking about the epidemic of murdered and missing indigenous women that we have in this country, which often follows oil infrastructure projects, because you get large man camps, then you get sex trafficking, and then you get murdered and missing indigenous women. They were talking about just how much negative impact building line three was having on the Anishinaabe land and how much more the continued construction caused. Talked about just the horrors of boarding schools, which people in her family had been in.

So it was wrenching, you know, it was wrenching and then she'd just turn around and say something just hilarious and self-deprecating or say something really, she'd be like, "I'm always late because I got these 13-year-olds with me." So, it was powerful. It was powerful. She concluded her offering by saying, "I hope you will show up in a good way. I hope you will show up in a good way." And I believe that the phrase "show up in a good way" is kind of a stock cultural or spiritual expression in Anishinaabe culture, maybe in other indigenous North American cultures. I'm not sure. Yeah, but she's like, yeah, show up in a good way.

So, I was like, oh, all right, we'll find out what happens. Gonna go out here and sing and walk down the highway and see what the police decide to do. And the police did not decide to invite any of the people in my contingent, but they arrested a couple hundred people and sort of brutalized them just a few miles away. So, there we were and showing up in a good way. I was like, okay, this is an invitation.

I understand because you know Katagiri Roshi used to love to talk about the importance of being upright, being upright, which is to say embodying your Buddhahood. The basic idea which underpins the Soto Zen like the impetus is Dogen was like, if we're already Buddha, what does that mean? And it means that we have the opportunity right now to actually embody our Buddhahood to show up with a body that looks like a Buddha, which of course is plural and various and show up in a good way, bring something that is nonviolent, that is compassionate, that is kind, that has some wisdom. I don't know about you, to me, that's hard.

So in Buddhism, even well predating the formation of Dogen's vision of Soto Zen, the idea that you can be a Buddha, the idea that intentionality is what is the most important, the quality with which we show up in any given moment is actually what has impact. There are many, many complex philosophical structures within Buddhism, whose main function is to shift us from attention on apparently controlling external objects to focusing on the quality with which we approach what we're doing. So this becomes primary.

So like, you know, the end justifies the means is a really fundamentally non-Buddhist framework, that would be like an extreme. But, you know, even just like going somewhere and thinking of that going process as just being something that doesn't matter because you're getting to the place that you're supposed to be. That does not qualify as showing up in a good way because are you even showing up? You're just like, ah, waiting for life to be over. So I'll be doing the thing, which is whatever the thing is. And, you know, showing up in the good way. This is about kindness, trust, non-control, offering, generosity, compassion, joyfulness.

And then, well, the next step in my thought process is like, well, that all sounds great. But if I could just decide now I'm going to show up in a good way and manifest all those things, I guarantee you I would do it every time. I suspect, you know, most people are like, oh, I would love to just be, you know, spiritually radiant and beautiful and happy all the time, even when things are difficult. But it just turns out that that's not how we experience life, generally speaking, I think.

So, you know, we have practice to allow us to experience this more, to allow it to arise more often. And, you know, one of the most simple and important aspects of this practice is to show up in a good way for how we are. To show up in a good way for how we are. So if I'm like, yeah, I'm sick of you guys and I'm tired of how it is and I'm grumpy as heck and I can be like, oh, maybe I should show up for like how I feel. Which is like grumpy or could be a lot more grumpy, could be, you know, deeply despairing or mildly anxious or enraged. All those things happen within the field of my experience. And so to be able to just be like, oh, can I show up in a good way for that? So the aspects that we think of as internal are just aspects of the universe for which it makes sense to show up with some care.

So, you know, I went up north to various water protector activities over the last summer. Oh, in the, I'll tell you, the pipeline got built. It's operating. They're running tar sands oil from Canada down to Duluth and into tankers. But this is my secret that I hope no one who was with me in the movement, ever hears me say this, but I never thought we would stop the pipeline. Personally, I'm just being honest. I was just like, these are people with whom being in relationship in this way seems valuable. That's why I showed up. Now, I also show up in movements where I think we will have like material successes. But to me, it's always about relationship. Who am I choosing to be in relationship and why and how?

So anyway, when I was up there, I was shown up. I went to, there was this place called the water protector camp that I went up to a few times. It was formed by Winona LaDuke, who was a leader of the movement up there. Some of you may know because she ran for vice president with Ralph Nader a long time ago. So she acquired this land, which was on the Mississippi River and was directly adjacent so you could walk from the land that she got onto the site. One of the three places where Line 3 pipeline was to be drilled underneath the Mississippi River. So the river is windy. So they kept having to recross the river and they kept having to get to the site.

And I went up there before they started putting in any of the drill equipment and then I was there when they were actually drilling. And so I got up there and we arrived maybe one of these times in about the middle of the summer. You went up and I was there with Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. You probably have a California Interfaith Power and Light as well. So I went up there and I was there. I could not believe it. My Antibes. and you probably have a California interfaith power and light, IPLs tend to be really great groups to be involved with.

Anyway, so I was up here with them, which meant we have like a lot of multi-faith people, so we're going to act like all spiritual. It's pretty spiritual up there in general, but so we got there, we're like, okay, well the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go down by the river, and we're going to have a prayer circle. And our prayer circle is just going to be, we're standing in a circle and open it up and people can just offer a prayer or a song or just say something from their tradition. And so people were offering prayers and songs, it's really beautiful, it's just a beautiful place. So the Mississippi is very small, this place is maybe 50 yards across, it's deep woods, and because they had started, they put in the drill pad and were running the drill under the river. It's a horizontal drill that runs like hundreds of yards underground, so it's just a roaring, churning, raging sound that runs 24 hours a day, so even in the night.

So we're standing there with our spiritual energy next to this beautiful way, just listening to this, it's a couple hundred yards away, but still pretty loud. So there we are, and I'm listening to people's things, and then I was like, oh, I had this idea. I'm like, I know a really great offering. And so I offered this poem that was written by Chinese lei practitioner known as Lei-Women Chen, and this is the poem.

Up on the high slopes, I see only woodcutters.

Everyone has the spirit of the knife and the axe.

How can they see the mountain flowers reflected in the water?

Glorious. Red.

I'll just recite it again.

Up on the high slopes, I see only woodcutters.

Everyone has the spirit, the knife and the axe.

How can they see the mountain flowers reflected in the water?

Glorious. Red.

So I recited this poem to listen to this churning industrial sound, and it seemed appropriate, and we tried to enjoy the beautiful place we were in. And then, so then we left the prayer circle and went back to the camp, and it was a prayer circle and went back to the camp. And basically it's like, you know, I got to wash dishes for hours because you're just like helping out. What are we doing? I was like, oh, I got Zen training. This is something I really know how to do.

Anyway, so I got to wash a lot of dishes, and then this, who was it? Jim Northrup came. I won't even get it, Jim Northrup, but he's an Anishinaabe person. His father is kind of a famous and deceased, so he's the son of a more famous Jim Northrup. But anyway, he came and he was like, all right, I'm going to coordinate the work today for a bunch of people. There's a lot of volunteers. People show up every day to make offerings. He said, oh, I'm going to coordinate the thing. And so he says, here's the deal. And he gets out a big old axe and he gets out a big old pruning shears and he says, we need to go in the woods and cut down about 25 two-inch diameter hard maples in order to build a prayer lodge.

Because Winona LaDuke and Tanya Aboud, her colleague, had built a little prayer lodge right on the water where the pipeline was supposed to be dug before they put it into the pipeline equipment. And they have treaty rights as Anishinaabe people on this land to pray, collect, and fish. So they're like, you can't evict us. We have sovereign national treaty rights here. By the way, they were eventually evicted. But the idea was to put in a second larger prayer lodge for larger ceremonies on the site. And so we were going to get the stuff.

So I'm like, great. And he's like, well, who knows how to use an axe? And I'm like, well, I actually know how to use an axe because my family lives in Montana. And then I said, well, what would lay woman Chen say now? Here I am walking in the woods with my axe to cut down a bunch of trees. Who has the spirit of the knife and the axe now? And, you know, we tried to be pretty prayerful about it. But at some point I found myself just like, I'm cutting down this. You know, I got my Zen training. So I'm like, you just give yourself to the work. All your attention goes to the activity of raising the axe, landing the blow, raise the axe, land the blow. So and I was like, oh, this is great. We're building this log. So I had this idea outside of what I was doing about like why it was great that I was doing it. Very absorbed in the activity.

But, you know, as we left the camp a day or two later, I was like, well, what about the trees? You know, it's amazing how absorbed I got. I was like, Jim Northrup asked me to cut down trees for a prayer life. Sounds pretty cool. I was like, but what about the trees? Who has the spirit of the knife and the axe now? You know, I could be like, I could show up in this way. I could show up in this way that says, oh, the Enbridge pipeline company is terrible. And there you have the big machine. But I'm great. And I'm just cutting down trees for a prayer lodge. Or I could show up in a better way, which is like we're all part of this together. And the boundary between Enbridge pipeline and between me is much smaller than I want to imagine.

So in the Genjo Koan, Dogen Zenji says, the air is life and the water is life. The air is life and the water is life. Of course, water is life is one of the basic slogans of these water protector movements that have been led by indigenous people to stop pipeline construction. We have big banners that say water is life. We're carrying around water is life. The air is life and the water is life. And when Dogen is talking about this, it's in a section of the Genjo Koan where he's talking about a bird and a fish being in the water or a bird being in the air and fish being in the water. I don't want to unpack the whole passage, but basically the point is the bird, you think the bird is alive in an environment that is air.

That's how we're conventionally taught to think about things. And he's saying no. Well, he's saying that's not one, it's not true. And two, it's unhelpful. You see the air is life. We think there's a fish and it's alive and it swims in water, which is like its material context. And again, he's saying no, this is both not true and not helpful. The air is life and the water is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish. Are together, together.

So seeing things as living is powerful. I tend to come from, you know, I was raised in an atheist, Western materialist, humanist kind of thought system where it's like there's an absolute material reality that is real and I'm observing it with as best I can. That's like how human life is. But that's just a way of looking at things. It's just a way of looking at things. And it's not the way of looking at things that Buddhist texts tend to invite us into.

So I want to read you a little bit from Dogen's Body and Mind Study of the Way. And what's this about? It's about mind not being separate from anything. And mind-only teachings can be hard to understand, but the easiest way to access what they're pointing towards is when you hear the word mind, when a Buddhist teaching says something is mind or that it's mind-only, they're talking about experience. They're saying you don't know that thing in any other way than through the frame of your experience. So we don't know anything outside of our experience. The ideas we have that are about things that are outside of our experience are ideas. So they're our experience, mind-only.

So this is going to be one of the main things of this. The other thing that can be confusing about mind-only teaching is that people, because we're raised in a context of thinking the mind is like separate from the body, we think, oh, this is like mind over body or something. This is not the idea. The idea is to think about the body as experienced, not as an object. Body as experienced, not as an object. So to really notice the feelings of your butt on your seat and the feeling in your chest, feeling of the breath moving in the belly and getting closer to it, so close that it isn't an object anymore.

So anyway, I'm going to read you this passage. This is Dogen. So if you know Dogen, you know it's going to be kind of wild. And if you don't, don't freak out if you don't understand it. Just enjoy it. It's like we're going swimming. Everyone's going to go swimming. And when you go swimming, you don't be like, I got to figure out the water. I better figure out this water. Yes, something happens and you experience it. That's good. Okay. So, oops.

Now, mountains, rivers, earth, the sun, the moon, and stars are mind. At just this moment, what is it that appears directly in front of you? Because the study of the way is like this, walls, tiles, and pebbles are mind. Other than this, there is no triple world mind only and no phenomenal universe mind only. Mind is walls, tiles, and pebbles put together before the Shantung era and taken apart after the Shantung era, splattered with mud and soaking wet. Binding the self with no rope, mind has the power to attract a pearl and the ability to be a pearl in water. Some days the pearl is melted. Some days it is crushed. There are times when this pearl is reduced to extremely fine powder. Mind is not conversed with bear pillars or rub shoulders with hanging lanterns. In this manner, the mind studies the way running barefoot. Who can get a glimpse of it? The mind studies the way turning somersaults. All things tumble over with it. All things tumble over with it.

So, yeah, just turning somersaults. You don't have to figure somersaults out. They just turn. So, I'm not going to try and explain everything into what I just read. But mind is tiles and rubble. So, here, Dogen wants to say water is not just life. He's pointing to the fact that everything, whether we consider it inanimate or animate, is all inseparably intimate with our own lives. And this is why showing up in a good way is so important. Because the quality of mind we bring is how we meet that relationship, this vast, incomprehensibly complex web of relationship. To meet it, how do we meet it? That really matters. If how we meet it is to try and control it, fix it, judge it, well, then we're just putting controlling, fixing, and judging into the world. What if we can meet it with just some compassion, care, and attention? Yeah, it's possible. It's possible.

So, in my experience, to do this, to see things in this way Dogen is inviting us into to show up in a good way, it has take, it takes some practice. I mean, like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to sort out how to do this. And it's been a long road. And, you know, there are many ways to practice. But in my experience, talking to people, it really does require taking the time to slow down and give yourself an opportunity to be at rest and to look around a little more quietly.

So, while we were at the, not at the water protector camp, but we were at this big gathering, part of this thousands of people doing nonviolent direct action was a smaller contingent called the multi-faith contingent. It was a few hundred people from all over the world, very religiously and racially diverse, all kinds of queer folks. It was awesome. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, we're in this camp together. And so, we'd all, you know, have dinner, do some kind of like prayerful thing, go to sleep and get up and then go and get with the bigger group for training or for action.

And so, each morning, oh, this is something I forgot to say. When I arrived at this particular camp, the first person I met was a person who had been a resident at Jikoji. And I was like, I was looking at him really funny. They were the greeter and they're like, hi, Ben. And I was like, I must know you from somewhere. And they're like, wait a minute. That was pretty cool. Pretty cool. There were a lot of Buddhists up there doing this. I did some low level organizing and there were at least 40 Buddhist people, many of them clergy involved in these actions.

Anyway, in the mornings, we would get up, guess what? At about 5:30 and sit zazen before the day's activities would begin. And there was often a little group of Jewish folks down praying by the lakefront. And we had a little spot where we just bring cushions down and sit zazen and do a short Soto Zen service because there were quite a few Soto Zen people at this, although it was diverse group of Buddhists.

So the last morning I was there and got up and, you know, I made this commitment to take time to just slow down and see what's here and cultivate this capacity to see that everything is life and to show up in a good way for it. And I set my cushion down and I looked up and there was a leatherback turtle which is about this big maybe 15 inches long, about 20 feet in front of me laying eggs. And leatherback turtles are not fast moving, at least not on the land which is the only place I've seen them. So I just sat there for 45 minutes watching this lady like dig her little hole with her paddling back feet, lay her eggs and then she would get up and after a while she walked all the way around her hole which was just like 20 inches across which took her like three or four minutes and she was surveying how am I doing? Am I burying my eggs well? And then she put her butt back in there and paddled dirt back on top of them with her little feet and then walked around. She did a couple surveys and then she walked back to the lake and she didn't get there by the time I left because it was like you are painstaking. Well she was just taking care of her life, taking care of life. And that's something I would not have seen and would not have taken the time to just be with in most other circumstances. It's just a beautiful moment of relationship.

Okay well I like to do odd things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is I like to do little meditation practices and activities while I'm giving Dharma talks. I don't just do them myself, I'll offer them to you. So what I want to do is a very short sort of guided meditation activity. And what this will involve is I encourage you but do not, it works sitting down but you could stand up if you like. And all you need to be able to do is hear what I'm saying and you can go ahead and stand up now if you want to. You need to be able to hear what I'm saying but you don't need to be able to see me. In fact I would not recommend looking at your screen at all for the next few minutes.

So just going to invite you to find like a stable, settled position with the body. So grounding, what does grounding mean? It means feeling your contact with the ground, just feeling your feet or your butt in your seat. And just bringing the attention to phenomena we consider personal, so the breath, noticing how you feel. And then I'm going to invite you to just start looking around the space that you are in and looking at things in this space and just talking to them as if they were living beings. And you can talk to them however you want to. You can say nice things to them. Or you could, if it, I guess if it feels like you want to you could say something mean but you might want to notice what that feels like if you do. But you're just walking around looking at things and talking to them. Greeting, you can greet them or whatever kind of thing you'd like to say to them. So I'm just going to give you a few minutes, just like three or four minutes, just hang out in your space and talk to things, talk to things.

All right, I'm just going to invite you to find your seat or wherever you'd like to be for the rest of this gathering. All right, well who knows how the people you are just hanging out with enjoyed your conversation. There's a lot of things we don't know but something that I really believe is that what we do and how we do it really matters. So this is a cool thing about Mahayana Buddhism is that you have already showed up in a good way. Right now! Can't help it. Sorry! Pretty cool. Pretty cool. You have already showed up in a good way right now.

All was true. The complete realized nature of phenomena is always there. Or see in the opening of the Genjo Koan, the first line, Genjo Koan is like one of Dogen's most central writings. The opening line is, as all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice and birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. As all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice and birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. Now basically what he's saying is the only ground on which you can say anything exists is that it exists as Buddha. That's the only reasonable way to talk about something is having existence. Because then he goes on and makes other arguments that are various.

But what are you saying? In the opening, or in the beginning of the universal recommendation for zazen, the Fukan Zazengi says the way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be dependent on practice and realization? It's originally perfect and all-pervading. Well, if it's all-pervading, you can't be outside of it. No matter how much you think you are or want to be, or want to avoid the implications of your intimacy with realization, you're awake. I don't know. Are you asleep? Are you dreaming? What would the difference be if you were dreaming this right now? Then if you're awake, you're awake. You're awake in the only way awakeness can be awake, which is aware. You're showing up in a good way.

So to show up in a good way, you might take a more conventional idea of what's showing up in a good way, which is to practice. I don't mean like practice Zen Buddhism. Well, I think that's a good way to show up. I just mean like what you're doing to realize that every moment you're engaged in activity. And it's like, well, how can I make this activity beautiful and healing and liberative and kind? That's a question you can ask. And if you're like, I have no idea. Well, then it noticed, oh, I don't know. Well, then that feeling of I don't know the pain of it. That's something you can show up for. I can't figure this out. Whatever it is, you can show up for. Whatever arises in this moment, all the things we think of as internal and personal or external and impersonal, all just something that we can show up for in a good way.

So you can practice showing up in a good way. And you can also just realize you already showed up in a good way. That's a good practice. So I'm grateful for your kind attention here. And I think it's nice to have some time to hear other voices. So I will offer a bow to close my formal offering here.