Shukke

With Palms Together,
Good Morning Everyone,

A discussion on Facebook and a confluence of intersecting lines has opened me to seriously looking at this topic: Shukke. Shukke means home leaving.

Zen embraces nothing, but holds a strong, sometimes overwhelming, sense of personal responsibility for all who practice it in earnest. My responsibilities as a monk are to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; to the work of my Order; and to my students and disciples. To use a Zen phrase, I have left family life. This is a challenge and a mystery to me, but most of all to those around me.

This Home Leaving has been going on for awhile in fits and starts and I have actually made quite a mess of it. There are few manuals on the sort of Zen priesthood I am leading. A lay priesthood, a path without borders and walls. It has been complicated by my own need to hold on to the past, to friends, and to family. It was complicated by my desire to be in relationship with everything: Judaism, Zen, Friends, Family, everything. These competing needs made it difficult on everyone, I think, and moreover, was confusing.

I find my Zen is strong and fully able to sustain me. I am grateful to everything that supports my practice and that enables me to walk in the way. I find myself today to be right where I need to be: dead center of the question, “What’s this?”

I put myself “out there” in such forums as Facebook, Tricycle, and YahooGroups not as a friend or to stay in touch with family members, but rather, to teach. It is what I am. Stumbling over, and through life’s processes are all a part of it. None of us gets a free pass or an instruction manual. Along the way, my mess has been yours, my friends, and my family’s. I apologize.

I wear the Buddha robe. I shave my head. I walk in my own authority.

Be well.