I am feeling foul and churlish.
I have been missing Katherine a lot lately. And I wonder what she would say about these times. Mostly I wonder what she would say about the practice of zazen. I felt that she at the end of her life she was curious about different modes of practice—and perhaps, dare I say it, veering away from the party line—which singularly points to zazen as the central practice.
Lately, there is some work about the Buddhism before Soto Shu varietals that evidences a diversity of practices that are Buddhism. Need we be sectarian about all of this?
I also wonder what she would say about the rhetoric of self improvement that is now so pervasive in zen practice —awakenings about race and identity, past traumas, and more generally what sitting practice brings to this one, this self, the world.
Would I be overstating it to say, the soto shu, which in Japan is monastic training of priests, have a singular focus on zazen—and for the wider public a little bit of zazen hurts nothing and might be helpful. Would it be overstating it to say I hear many dharma teachers in the U.S. advocating for sitting practice or practice in general to be a way of waking up about X, Y, and Z?
My question today, is, when someone says wake up about X, Y, or Z, what does that mean?
