Category Archives: David Xi-Ken Astor

January 7, 2014 · 5:55 pm

Spiritual Transformation

By: David Xi-Ken Astor, Sensei 曦肯

Being transformed by experiencing our human nature’s drive to seek the spirit and wonder of our own nature is a rather grand-sounding phrase, but that is what we are engaged in. And hard work it is too. There can be pain and weariness, and there are many doubts and questions along the way. It is not just sitting and thinking, but becoming dynamically aware, sensing with our entire body-mind. Our zazen posture is a posture of awakening. It is open and alert; we are aware of our breath as it moves through us.

The word meditation comes from the Latin ‘meditare’, which is the passive form of the verb, meaning “being moved to the center.” It is not the active form, which is “moving to the center.” Do you hear the difference? This center is our own essence. Sitting after sitting, letting everything drop away, we become more aware of our own personal center. We become more rooted in it. This simple act of sitting absolutely still, letting everything go, has far-reaching effects. Those of you with a dedicated meditation practice know the intent of what I am expressing, but my words are inadequate to express it completely.

Sitting still is not what some of us may have imagined a practice of spirit to be. We may think that it involves something more impressive. But those of us who do it, those of us who are ‘present’ at this moment, know that this is it. Sitting absolutely still, body AND mind are not separate. Our state of mind at any given moment becomes clearer in this condition of being present, completely present. And there is great healing power in this simple act. Of course we may experience some pain. The true taste of contemplation really cannot be understood unless we have some challenges. After our contemplative practice experience begins to develop and mature, we do not find the challenge over whelming. Our teacher works with us in order for us to learn not to move against it; we do not struggle with it; rather, we simply remain aware of our breath and work to change our condition. We become aware of what happens when we pay attention to it, and practice with positive intent.

When I begin to work with a new formal student I often ask, “Why did you come to sit? What is your reason? Do you have a reason? What happened in your life that brought you to the cushion? In essence, “Why are you here?” And most students say they came because they wanted to have some peace of mind. As we sit, there is some temporary peacefulness, of course. But we want to come to a condition of mind that takes us in the beginning through all the circumstances of our life, no matter how difficult. Then, no matter what happens, there is this quiet, truly peaceful space within. All of us with a meditation practice has gone though this phase of development. And still work, at times, to conquer our devils. So you see, it is an ongoing process, not an event. And I am so thankful that I have a Dharma Brother to talk these things through with. Please do not misunderstand. This does not mean we should inflict anything on ourselves. It simply means that if issues come up, we let it come, and we let it be our teacher. Thus, even our personal challenges can be a wonderful teacher for us. We work to cultivate a beginners-mind.

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Changing Weeds Into Nourishment

By: David Xi-Ken Astor, Sensei

According to a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report a growing number of people while not considering themselves as affiliated with any particular religion do not, however, consider themselves as atheists or agnostic either. The report indicates that one in five American adults now have no religious affiliation. While some do consider their spiritual interests as agnostic, a larger number have no interest in identifying themselves in any way when it comes to how they identify with their spiritual thoughts. Pew has been doing this survey for some years now, and they have found that those considering themselves as “non-affiliated” has risen to 19 percent from 15 percent just five years ago.

The number breaks down like this: there are 46 million religiously non-practicing American adults including 13 million self-described atheists or agnostics, and 33 million who don’t identify with any organized religious or spiritual practice. What is interesting is that two-thirds of those non-practicing individuals do not deny that there is a God, and feel some feeling of a deep spiritual connection with nature. These people think of themselves as “spiritual but not religious”. A major factor for this growing trend is the aging of America, where there is a growing number of younger adults that have been raised in non-religious households. The younger generation is less religious, but yet not totally disconnected from a sense of spiritual thoughts either. What is interesting to me is that this younger generation are not seekers. When the researchers ask this generation if they had thoughts that humans have been pondering for centuries about some of the really hard question, they seemed to have little interest beyond immediate interests.
Another interesting trend being reported is that less then half of Americans now identify with any Protestant religion. So while America is becoming less religious, it is, however, one of the most religious among the developed countries. While may Americans seem to be dropping out of more organized religious interest, they seem to be changing also how they talk about religion. Today, we are more comfortable talking about our religious and spiritual beliefs, or disbeliefs, and how we interpret the world around us without any sense of shame or fear of cultural backlash. It is becoming the new norm. The one religious group that has remained consistent are the Catholic faithful. But this group only makes up 21 percent of the religious community.

This growing non-religious community is developing across all income, education, gender, and social class groups. But the younger generation is not the only segment of our society that is becoming less faith-based associated, many older Americans have increased their numbers too. Now 21 percent of “generation-X” and 15 percent of baby boomers call themselves unaffiliated. This growing trend will have unknown impact on future political and social justice issues. We are seeing cultural transformation taking shape in our lifetime.

As Buddhism in America, and in the West in general, gains cultural authority, and integrates into main-stream acceptability over time, opportunities for alternative spiritual interest based on a different philosophical construct rather than a theological one may attract attention among this group that has turned away from beliefs stuck in the past. The challenge for Buddhism is to not forget that Buddhism is by its very nature causality based and subject to change and renewal. We must take Siddhartha’s enlightened experience and put it into contemporary language in order to give it a chance to reflect back to us the modern lesson that science can teach. Buddhism thrives in this enriched soil of modernity. It is up to the growing number of American Buddhist teachers now to touch the spiritual nature residing inside all of us in the language that our contemporary society can recognize, and spark the flame waiting to be lit to burn down the weeds obscuring how we can nourish the self within. This may be what is missing for those growing up in a static religious experience. It is an uphill struggle for sure, but my experience is that when given a chance to present Buddhist principles to those discouraged by their past religious experience, a different worldview can emerge that just may be the spark that shines light on a new path that is as natural as breathing. Master Shunryu Suzuki put it this way, “…it is not to difficult to give some philosophical or psychological interpretation of our practice, but that is not enough. We must have the actual experience of how our weeds change into nourishment.”

A Lesson Contemplating A Contemporary View Of Agnosticism

By: David Xi-Ken Astor, Sensei

I have been ordained as an American Ch’an Buddhist monk, and trained in both the Chinese view of Buddhist principles, as well as influenced by Japanese Zen traditional styles of transmitting the dharma. My Ch’an root teacher, the Venerable Shi Yong Xiang, was very scholarly in his approach to Buddhist philosophy, as well as teaching the importance science plays in informing us of universal realities, especially life-sciences. I spent much time in discussing with him, and the other senior formal students, the logic and critical analysis of Buddhist doctrine. I cherish those moments even today. I came to understand how reason and my own experiences can form a new worldview based on these Buddhist lessons, both directly from primary sources, and through the legacy material that came down to us over the centuries after the death of Siddhartha Gotama. What I was not aware of at the time, is just how future change works in this personal transformation. I thought once I came to an understanding of a specific doctrine, that it became somewhat static. Boy was I wrong. The causal universe had some hidden lessons in store for me down the road.

What attracted me to Buddhism as a logical and spiritual path was that it did not rely on simple faith as my Christian one did, but required me to critically evaluate my own conclusions, and the importance of experiential verification. The Buddha said, “…you should examine my words, and not just accept them because you have faith in me.” The problem with this honest statement for me was in the reality of working with some of the principle doctrines. How was I to achieve understanding when some of them were unknowable. Like rebirth. Being agnostic about it seemed a cop out. Obviously in Buddhism there is no such kind of permanent entity that can go from one body to the next. The principle of impermanence and not-self is very clear on this. There seemed to be a contradiction in the very basic set of core doctrines.

Japanese Zen does not focus on the notion of rebirth all that much, like do some of the other Buddhist traditions, including Tibetan. The early Chinese Ch’an practices did specialize on ritual practices associated with notions of how to comfort the dead, some in complex ways. But anyone that reads both past and contemporary Buddhist literature will encounter the doctrine of rebirth frequently. Over the centuries various traditions have developed ways to explain rebirth, generally in ways that consider how consciousness survives physical death. These early dogmas also found ways to explain the continuity of individual karmic actions that come back to confront us as we appear in another universal expression. A large majority of Buddhists see the idea of rebirth and individual-karma as simply non-negotiable elements of Buddhism.

Right from the beginning, I found a natural acceptance of Buddhist philosophy and practices. But some of the doctrines when studied from a contemporary perspective became inhibitors. Maybe because of my past spiritual training, and natural philosophical mind, I did not have a problem with selecting what principles to “set on the back burner” and work with those that had the most meaning for me. In the first monastery where I studied, this set me apart from most of my follow formal students that took the position that you had to eat everything on the plate. I spent many hours with my first teacher pursuing scholarly training analyzing the concepts and terminology of Buddhism through the Socratic method (as I did with my root teacher later). They did not push my reluctance, and sometimes out-right skepticism, but worked to build a solid platform from which to explore deeper topics. But this one area of Buddhist thought that stems from its pre-Buddhist encounter with Hinduism was, for me, the elephant-in-the-room. When I read how eminent masters ask us to accept rebirth it sounded like, “Don’t worry about understanding it, of course it is not obvious, but when you experience deep states of meditation, everything will become very clear for you.” In other words, it is a mystical spiritual state, beyond normal experience. There are practices in both Tibetan and Dzogchen traditions that help one to experience knowing this nature of consciousness and how the mind has to arise from a previous moment of mind. What was interesting to me that after some time studying the Pali Nikaya’s the idea of brain was barely mentioned.

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