Pamela Chōbun Nenzen Brown was introduced to sitting meditation practice in 1976. Forty years later, as her father was declining with a neurodegenerative disease, she decided to stay seated. In 2017, Pamela met Sensei Gary Koan Janka and has been sitting with Santa Barbara Zen Center ever since. Koan Sensei introduced Pamela and SBZC to Jikoji; Pamela was ordained in Kobun Chino Ottogawa Roshi's lineage by Shoho Michael Newhall in 2020.

Pamela practiced law before beginning a 15-year adventure homeschooling her two sons. They are still teaching her the art of listening deeply. Off the zafu, Pamela writes poetry, plays shakuhachi, loves to read, hike and see the world through a camera lens. She makes and teaches the craft of sourdough bread, which happens to be a wonderful metaphor for life.

Full Transcript

Today I'm going to start with an old Zen story, because I love them. This is from the Book of Serenity. These are collections of koans, which are called cases. They're ways of engaging with the teachings. This is Bodhidharma's emptiness, and this is the koan, the case.

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great teacher Bodhidharma, "What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?" Bodhidharma said, "Empty, no holy." The emperor said, "Who are you facing me?" Bodhidharma said, "Don't know." The emperor didn't understand. Bodhidharma subsequently crossed the Yangtze River, came to Shaolin and faced a wall for nine years.

Before I talk more about that teaching, I want to tell you that I was just at Jikoji to help my friend Ocean. Some of you know Ocean. He is one of only, I think, two deaf Zen priests in maybe the world, certainly in America. And he was sewing his brown robe and had transmission, and I went out to sew with him, and also to be present for Kobun Chino Roshi on the 20th anniversary of his death. So there was a sesshin, and I stayed for the sesshin.

Sometimes when you're at a Zen center, including here, one of you will be asked to help a beginner sit and learn how to sit for the first time. I did that today with Yana. And many of you have had that opportunity. I always think there should be a sign over the Zendo that says, "Those big hands, enter here." But we all know it's really enter here, right? It's enter here. And that's our practice, to enter here. Some of you see that I'm facing the wall because that's how I enter here. It doesn't matter which way you face. That's how I enter here.

I want to tell you a story. One time I was in New York. This is many years ago. My kids were quite small, and I was doing the touristy thing with them down in Times Square. And I had the quintessential New York experience. A guy came up and said, "Hey, lady, you want to watch?" He opened up a jacket. And there are all these knockoff watches hanging from there. Of course, my kids are like, "I want a Rolex." I'm like, "No. No, no, no, no, no." But I thought it's kind of an interesting parallel to practice because imagine if a Zen monk came up to you, I'll be that monk today, and said, "Lady, I got something for you." And this is the deal she makes. You give me everything you've got, and I'll give you nothing back.

I feel like that's kind of our practice, right? Give me everything, not me. Give the practice everything, and it'll give you nothing back. That means no satisfaction, no achievement, no recognition, nothing, nothing. And so you look at that offer, and you go, "Huh, is this a deal or not?" Then you start thinking about the things, what everything is that you could give this monk, give this practice. And maybe everything is all of your desire and all of the things that you cling to. Maybe everything is all your suffering, or at least the source of your suffering. And then it starts to look kind of like a good deal, right? I could give it all away, and I could get nothing back.

So it seems to me that's what we're doing, giving up everything in our practice including our beliefs about everything. In particular, our beliefs about who this person is, giving up everything. That's a big piece for me. That's my experience. Who is it? It's giving up everything. And what am I not going to get back? I'm not going to get back a better version of me. I'm not going to get back a better house, partner, life, figure, less wrinkles. I'm not going to get back anything. There is no better version. It's this. We talk a lot about just this. I know it's like beating it over and over again, but it's because that's it. There's not much else to talk about.

So we're going to also have to give up every connection that we think is meaningful to anybody. And that's facing a kind of staggering, maybe stunning loneliness. It's hard for people to do this. That's why Cohen used to say, you'd think that if they knew how free they would be, they'd be knocking down the doors. But OK, it's actually hard to face the wall and face yourself and give everything up to get nothing back and recognize that you're giving up everything. So there's this staggering, stunning loneliness that you must face in order to understand your true nature is not alone. It's not what you're giving up.

At sesshin, some of you have been to sesshin. Maybe not everybody has been to a sesshin. Sesshin is an opportunity to sit a lot, day, early day, all day, little breaks, mostly in noble silence, meaning you only speak if it's necessary. And there's walking, there's kinhin, and there are meals in silence, usually oryoki style. So there's not a lot of opportunity for connection and recognition. You're in the zone of being together. And yet there's endless connection and certainly endless opportunity.

At Jikoji, they have four different annual sesshins. I'm going to make sure I say them correctly. I've sat them for several years now, but I want to tell you that almost every Zen temple has these four sesshins. They're given different names. At Jikoji, there's Nehan-e, which commemorates Buddha's memorial. That's his nirvana beyond death. So he didn't have to come back. There's Tanjō-e, which literally means touching the heart, mind. And that's in April and it celebrates birthday of Shakyamuni Buddha, the actual person. There's Denko-e, which is coming up in early October. That means gathering of light. And it's a study period. So there's a lot of Dharma talks. And then there's Rohatsu, famously no toys sesshin, where often there are no Dharma talks, no nothing. It's really intense. And some people stay up all night. And Rohatsu means the eighth day of the eighth month, by the way, that's Rōhatsu. And that is what Japanese Buddhists and Buddhists commemorate the Buddha's enlightenment.

Some of you know, because some of you are around, that I scrupulously avoided attending sesshin for like a whole year. Koan-sensei was saying, you should sit sesshin. And I would say, I was really afraid to go. And finally, resistant that I was, I asked him if I could come for a day and a half of a three day sesshin. I was so chicken. And then I did. And on the second day, I had a very profound experience. So, yes, I stayed for the whole sesshin. And it was a remarkable experience to go deeply into facing myself and everything. And everything arrived with me at that sesshin. And it pretty much changed my life.

I should also say that most sesshins that you would attend are very strict. If you sign up, you're going to sit the whole thing. There's no exit, kind of like, no exit. But at Jikoji, Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi's way was, Pekka, Pekka, Muggo. You could come in, leave halfway through a sit. You can go take a nap and go for a walk. Famously, it's inclusive. So that, to me, is very meaningful because it strikes me that he's setting an example of meeting people just where they are in their practice. Just where they are in their practice, just how they are meeting who they think they are, meaning somebody who can't sit the whole period, somebody who needs to get out of there, somebody who wants to sit like a maniac, a mountain. He's willing to meet them as they are. We're willing to let them come and go until that idea they have about who they are could maybe soften. I really appreciate this kind of inclusiveness that does not call attention to itself. It just allows. I think it's very generous and I think we need to do that for ourselves.

When I was up at Jikoji, my friend Ben Shinshin Myers gave the first talk of the sesshin. Ben has a disease. He's in a wheelchair. And his disease is called PPMS, primary progressive multiple sclerosis. I've only known him while he was in a wheelchair, but he went to Brooks. So we have photography in common. And that's actually how I first met him through photography. The distinguishing form of his version of multiple sclerosis is that it's progressively worsening and he is never in remission. So it's basically a downhill ride for him. And one of the teachings I heard from Ben's Dharma talk was about, you guessed it, just this. He spoke quite sincerely about how this is all we have to deal with. Doesn't matter what yesterday looked like. It doesn't matter what tomorrow looks like. Just this right now is what we have to deal with.

And around these Zen parts, we talk a lot about just this, including all of our stories about just this, which includes all that history and all that anxiety about the future. In our day to day lives, we do what Ben referred to as make ourselves suffer. And he asked, why do we do that? Angie Boisefan, who is the senior most female woman in my lineage and Kobun Chino Roshi's lineage. I asked her one time, why do we do this to ourselves? And she said to make a self. To make a self. That we cling to our suffering in order to make a self. I thought that was a wonderful teaching. We create, we're always creating the self. We fabricate the suffering self so we can hold on to it because we're comfortable with that suffering self. It's done us a lot of good for a long time. But at some point it becomes kind of a burden.

And then Angie turned around and asked me, how do you stop that? And in my spontaneous expression, I said, it sounds silly, but I look up. I literally looked up and she said, that's right. Get your head off the sidewalk. Get your head off the sidewalk of your own life that you're walking on. She didn't say that part. That's my part, but that's what I do. I walk, I walk all over myself. Right. I'm walking all over this self that I created. That's why I suffer that self.

So these are self-imposed, these sufferings. And for me, they arise all around what ifs, what if this and what if that? Why me? And it's not fair. They're all kind of around those questions. And many of you have had the experience of letting go of all of your why if-ynesses and why me is, and it's not fair-nesses. You've had that opportunity and you've taken it and you've seen, you can live, even if it's for a moment, sometimes a day, sometimes a whole sesshin, letting those what ifs, why me, not fairs, come and go. Come and go just like your breath, just like the clouds, just like everything else is coming and going, including your very existence.

In the week before a sesshin, before Ben's talk, I was there for a week before a sesshin started and I was sitting a lot with my difficulties. You call them my sufferings. I think they're all mine. Of course they're not. They're yours too. Sorry. And I was watching them come and go. And it occurred to me that those places, those shadow places that I don't really want to look at a lot, that is the place to go. That is the place to go. You know, some of you are familiar with Dante's Inferno and the land he goes into. You know what it's called? Dis. The land of dis, like dis-ability. Dis.

So there's Ben in a wheelchair, really can't really speak very clearly. His whole body is not accessible to him. And there's me facing the wall, feeling disabled, myself disabled by my suffering, by my clinging, by my desire for things to be different. And I thought about Dante and that Inferno, how sitting in zazen is a practice of looking at your shadows and the reflections in that wall. And when we recognize those shadows and reflections, that's the place we get to practice, that's the place we get to be free. We get to relieve some of our own torment and our anxiety and our worry.

So my friend Gero B, some of you know him, he's a master calligrapher and a master of tea, he calls this sitting and facing the wall. You face the wall with affectionate awareness. Have you heard that from Gero B? Affectionate awareness. Yeah. I really appreciate that because as we're sitting, we're not beating ourselves up because we're not breathing right, or sitting upright or thinking thoughts or any of these things, we're just affectionately aware what's coming and going for this one. Whoever she is right now, affectionately aware. This is how we take care of ourselves. And this is how zazen works on us, really takes care of us.

You find that everything is already okay and you can touch this in yourself and in yourself, it is everything when you sit zazen. It's already here all the time. It's already with you. And when you realize this kind of interpenetration with affectionate awareness, you can feel free, you can be free, you can put down the suffering. And this is how we enter here. This is how we enter our practice. We give it all up and get nothing back. Just like the guy in the street, I'll give you everything. I'll give you nothing back. I'll give you nothing back. You give me everything. I'll give you nothing. Yeah. So you give up the beliefs that anything belongs to you. Anything belongs to you. Nothing belongs to you. And you get nothing in return. It's actually a pretty good deal.

So talked about Dante. Now we'll go back to Bodhidharma. Like Bodhidharma, who went and sat for nine years when he was asked by the emperor, who are you? And he said, I don't know. He went to sit. Usually that koan, you know, talked a lot about, you know, merit. That's the focus that most people have. What is the merit of all this practice? No holy. But I really liked the idea that Bodhidharma said, I don't know. And he had to go sit for nine years to face the truth. And he said, I don't know. And he had to go sit for nine years to face this staggering truth, to kind of recognize all of his own insanity and penetrate that.

I'm sharing all of these stories with you because I want to encourage you to sit. I think this is why you're here. Right now, right here to do just this, to sit. I obviously don't have a belief system about it, but I've experienced it as have, I think everybody here experienced your own Buddha nature and the freedom that you can find when you just give everything away.

So at sesshin, when we sit for a great deal of time, we get sometimes this experience of there being nothing kind of left up here, you know, nothing left. It's like you've cleaned all the cobwebs out after a few days of resistance, mind you, but you're done. You have given it all away and there's kind of nothing left that is you, that is you, that is you. And you are free. You get to go through your life moment to moment, just meeting what's here. Just, okay, this is what's here. Whether it's a disability, an idea about a disability, whether it's grief and joy and sadness, it's all together. It's just this. There's nothing else. There's no place else that's going to get any better. This is it all the time. It's relentless. And I think that's why I'm sharing this story with you. This is it all the time. It's relentless and it's kind of beautiful.

I know it's kind of paradoxical that many of us enter into this practice to become invulnerable. We just want to, we just want to be able to be protected from all the suffering that we have, that we experience in this world. But the way to the way is through vulnerability. It's not to invulnerability. And in fact, when you sit for a while, you kind of get stewed in vulnerability and it's a beautiful place to be. You're open like Kobun Chino letting everybody in, the people on acid, the people who were Vietnam vets living, poaching on Jikoji's land. He let everybody in. They were doing all sorts of stuff up there. He let them in however they were. He met them. We have to do this for us.

So that's all we can do. Enter here and in here, your delusions and your disabilities, your anxieties and your worries, your torment, anything you bring to this life, anything you see in this life, you can soften. You can stop suffering. You have a choice. It's tough to take full responsibility, but that's what Bodhidharma was doing for nine years, taking full responsibility for himself and his own craziness. And that's what we're doing right now, right here.