Off My Chest? It would be nice...

Last weekend we tried to make it out to participate in a Boundless Way Zen sesshin but had to turn back as our daughters health wasn't up to the journey.  It seems that the days of us packing our family in the car and making our way to the East for retreat are over, and it its place I suppose Rev. Do-on and I will take turns flying out.  This feels a loss to me on many levels, one of which is the time together.  Another of which is how much I'm going to be able to meet with my teacher James Ford in Dokusan - seems like it will be roughly about half as often as it has been over the past several years.

Humph.

And this weekend we hosted Bill Gleason Sensei at Shobu Aikido of Ohio in what felt to me to be another end of an era moment with one of my teachers.  The teaching and practice with Sensei were great as always.  We have been fortunate enough to be able to bring Gleason Sensei here every 3 months to guide our practice for the past many years - maybe 10 or so?  But now things have changed here as well, and it is uncertain how often Sensei will be able to come back.  Maybe twice a year?  Maybe once?  We'll just have to see how things work out.  To be sure, the dojo could do with more Aikido students as we are down to just a handful of dedicated practitioners, but Aikido is a subtle, deep and demanding tantric path, and is one that will abide no half hearted attempt.

Humph again.

For both of these situations, I feel more alone and on my own than I care to be, for there are those who look to me to guide their practice and have vowed that I'll do my best to be of use to them.

And I do.

And I look for connection with those that I rely on for guidance.

And with absoluely no one at fault, that connection seems to me to be flickering out - at least to some degree.

I think of my own students here in Toledo who have never known anything other than a 20 minute drive to get to their home zendo and/or dojo and I am glad for them.  Glad for us all really.  That is the way things should be.  Full and deep practice should be available to everyone, and there should be teachers of depth and worth available everywhere.  And the reality today is that the practice really it isn't available everywhere, and truly great teachers are rarer than hens teeth.

And time passes swiftly, and the urgency of the great matter is ever pressing on me, on these teachers, and on all who practice with me as well.

In fact, my main musical mentor Charlie Banacos has already 'made the great leap' as we say in Zen.

When I heard the news of his passing back in 2009 I was quickly in shock, and then in tears.  I drove from Toledo to the North Shore of Boston to attend his funeral service only to find that I had missed it by a week, and then I stood there on the grounds of the funeral home trying to be as presentable as possible whilst loosing it completely.

And 'Humph' doesn't even begin to reach it for this one.

Charlie was a most remarkable man.  He went into the hospital thinking that he had a case of pneumonia only to find that he had cancer. Advanced cancer.  Ever the teacher, he offered these two paragraphs from his hospital bed:

"Another great way to practice when you can't move around too much is figure out the chord or chords that you hear in the hospital and use that to practice different sonorities. I'll give you an example of what's happening right now: most of the electronic sounds of this hospital at this moment are B's, D#'s, F#'s and A-naturals. Now there are other sounds, but those are the pre-dominant sounds coming from the electronic equipment (and people yelling "Code Red!!!" Just kidding...) So you could say right at this moment I'm swimming around in a pool of Bdom7. If you use that as a basis, the next time you hear somebody yell "code" you can practice and name its function against the B7 chord as quickly as possible and it makes a type of symphony.

For example, let's say someone says "saline" and you notice that they said it on E and G, you would say to yourself "sa" is 4 and "line" is flat-6. Let's say you hear a nurse say "stat" and it just happens to be an F, you might say "Oh, that was #4 (or flat-5)". This way you can do this all day long and have a mini symphony going on. I hope you never have to use this kind of exercise in this type of situation, but it works everywhere - in diners, supermarkets, etc. So try it and you might have fun playing that game."

Soon after, Charlie concluded his final note to everyone by saying:

"Please continue your prayers for me and keep practicing your usual 10 hours a day. It's nice to see real musicians that do music for music's sake."


And as sad and intense as this loss is for me, it is in the context of Charlie telling me back in the 90's that I was ready, that I could in fact play, and that I was good enough to go to New York city to find my way as a Jazz cat.  I never ended up going there, but for him to have told me that was the Jazz torch passing between he and I.


And I still work on my playing every day, and I still fail at the gig as a regular affair.  But I fail at the level of a true Jazz musician, and I'm happy to do so over and over.  And as I work with my Jazz students at the University of Toledo Charlie is very much in the room.


As for Zen there is such a thing as formal transmission, and in Aikido there is the Dan ranking system.  Both are human and flawed and come under deserved critique, but both exist and are a part of the traditions.  

Maybe its this stupid cold I'm dealing with, and having been in bed all day trying to get rid of this sore throat and nasal discharging, but today I'm feeling heaps of both the urgency and the aloneness.  Important and necessary ground left uncovered and less access to the means to cover it.  I rather feel like the woman in the painting where that demon is there sitting on the woman's chest.


And I don't much care for it.


More importantly, tomorrow we take Isabella to the Ohio State Center for Integrative Medicine to review the results of her most recent tests.  Wish us luck, I have a feeling that it's gonna be a long, long day...