Summer is Here!

Dazzling temperatures and sunny skies fill the valley this week.  Mid April starts the "summer" or "growing" season here at Green Gulch.  Farm and garden apprentices arrive, flowers start to bloom, practice periods are over, planting, harvesting, and visitors abound.  The general feeling is to give ourselves over to the natural schedule provided by longer days of sunlight, warmer temps that encourage action, and the overall excitement we feel living in one of the most beautiful places ever!  See the "selfy" to the right depicting me, my new sunglasses, and the Green Gulch private pool.

 The weather this week has been amazing, in the 70s all day.  Several swims and lovely evening walks to the other watering hole, The Pelican Inn.  Of course, like last year, we simultaneously enjoy the warm beauty and worry about the lack of rain (it's probably done for the season and we got about 2-3 inches this year.)  Not much, but the iris below sticks out her tongue and says "I'll be ok."  

So as the high season mounts, I work to find a balance between rest and play.  It's funny how quick I can forget or forsake the early mornings I pull 4-5 days a week.  Yes, tonight will be my third night at the Pelican in a week and a half, yes I will be going to Slide Ranch to see music Monday night, the Muir Beach Community Center for a GGF/Slide Ranch mixer and CSA signup Friday, my Grandma's 93 (94?) birthday at the Russian River the day after.  I really could fill every day with something fun but every soul needs a little quiet time too.  We'll see how it goes.
Come visit this summer!

Holbox Island: Your Travel Guide

Here is a link to a bit of the scarce historical information I could find about Holbox, yes there were some pirates back in the day.

General Travel Tips

• Holbox is pronounced like: hole-bosh (if you want to be super cool drop the 'h' altogether and the second 'o' is not an "ah" sound but an "oh" sound)
• ATMs are scarce, two functioning ones (maybe 3) on the island but they are unpredictable.  One at the central bank (which is a bit creepy and upstairs from the central lockup or drunk tank) and the other at the Hotel Tortugas (although the receptionist didn't seem super keen on my repeated visits even when thinly disguised as an interest in spa treatments.)
• The island is 26 miles long and narrow.  On one side it is the beautiful gulf and on the other it is lagoon inlets, so there can be a decent amount of mosquito action.  Only about 6 miles is developed.  A huge portion of it was recently purchased by Coca-Cola...yikes, stay tuned and see the end of this post for some discussion of the politics.
• You don't have to wear shoes pretty much anywhere.
• Mostly no one takes credit card
• The island is visited mostly by Mexicans and Western Europeans and we met an amazing mix of both.
• Good coffee is scarce if not totally unavailable; at the supermarket the only choice was Nescafe Instant coffee.  So either deal with mediocre coffee or bring your own and do single drip.
• You do not need to book boat trips ahead of time as far as I could tell

Food

We did not drink the tap water anywhere.  We did eat street food.  There were no GI issues.

1. Cariocas (not the one on the beach but a few blocks up, little hole in the wall). Truly good Italian food, hella authentic pizza, slightly higher end dining.  Run by Roberta, rad Italian woman with a buzzed head.
   
2. Empanadas from a little place with a restaurant above it.  I can't for the life of me remember the name but it's in a bright yellow building and has a white board sign advertising hamburgers too; it's across the street from Luis Ocho's liquor store (one of the few places you can get cases).  There's another empanada place, owned by a local, it's called Empanada Conquista, close to the central square.  I didn't think the empanadas were quite as good but you did have more choices.
3. Le Jardin, the best french bakery I have every been to.  Stefano, the owner was the sweetest man ever.  We loved chatting with him and hearing about how he built his bakery to be able to attain just the right conditions for authentic french baking.  He also did his baking training in Louisiana!  We tried pretty much all the pastries (brioche, chocolate croissant, roll, banana muffin with nutella) and had a prosciutto pannini, quiche, fresh squeezed oj.
4. Tortilla shop, locally owned, cheap, delicious tortillas.  It is around the corner from the central bank and has a sign that says Tortilleria.  We would indicate how much we wanted by using our fingers to show the height of the stack.  I think there is another place called Tortilleria but this is different; this one isn't a restaurant, just a one room shop with a window onto the street.
5. At night next to the central square on the beach side there is a place where many locals and others hang out.  There is a great food truck that sets up tables just outside the square with amazing tacos and more at $1+  There were several other street vendors out at night by the square. Also delish.
6. I just found this list on Trip Advisor of locally owned businesses on Holbox, it would have been cool to check out more of these places but I have heard that some of them aren't that good.
7. Tipping: Some places include an automatic 10%.  So I'd say tip at least that if not a little more.  

Accommodations

• Hostel Ida y Vuelta (Coming and Going) is where we stayed and LOVED it!
• Run by David(a Swiss) and his partner Sasha (an Italian), Private bungalow with private bathroom for $35/night and we added a little extra to use the A/C cuz it was getting hot.  If you were in one of the cabanas, it is open air (with screened windows) and a lot of breeze so less need for A/C.  David was super helpful.  Told us lots about good food, helped us order cases of beer for our party (delivered on golf cart!), let us throw a party, helped arrange the boat trip with local captains, was just plain chill.
• It is pretty easy to find upon arrival, even without a taxi (golf cart) ride.  Just start walking down the main road towards the centro and follow the little signs for Ida y Vuelta.
• While staying at the hostel, which is not on the beach, we had easy quick access to the beach and you could walk down to Tortugas and for the price of a drink have access to all their beach lounging equipment, it's helpful when you want some shade.
• There are lots (relatively speaking) of hotels to choose from.  Many are very nice and on the beach.  Tortugas, Casa Sandra, El Paraiso, Xaloc, Los Nubes, nice and a little pricey for our budget.  There are not a lot of options as far as nice and locally owned places.  

Politics

       The island is running into the classic problem of poor but beautiful places.  People from all over the world have discovered its beauty and laid back culture/vibe.  It's mostly a fishing community and of course being an island, making a living can be tough.  So when people from around the world want to live there and maybe have a small business, they offer locals good money to buy land so they can build a little place.  Locals may have been offering modest rooms in their houses or built a modest rooming house but the new people often have been attracting more visitors.  This is also an island community that gets hit by hurricanes (Wilma) and survives on modest trades (fishing), these struggles lend them to exploitation or at least susceptibility to shady business deals.  For example:
     A bigger issue often develops when HUGE companies like Coca-Cola come and offer people large sums of money to give up rights to their ancestral land (which often contributes to a further breaking down of ancient culture).  Here's a great write up in the LA Times about the current dispute that could result in an approval of "three boutique-style hotels with up to 195 rooms, and as many as 872 residential units, including villas and condominiums."  This article is from October 2012, I'm not sure what is happening right now.  Things to consider.

Highlights of Our Mexican Vacation

Kogen (my husband is generally going by his dharma name) and I just returned from 11 days in Mexico.  I don't think I have take a trip for the sake of just vacation-ing since the honeymoon.  The trip started as attendance to my brother Vince's wedding in Cancun just a few days ago.  We figured if we're going all the way to Mexico we should definitely go for longer than 3 days.  On the 'google' we stumbled across an island off the Yucatan peninsula call Holbox Island (the Yucatan having Mayan roots, 'x' is usually pronounced 'sh').  At first glance it seemed to be exactly what we were looking for: small, quiet, not much to do, fishing village.  We went for it!

We stayed at Holbox Hostel Ida y Vuelta.  A hostel that offered private rooms too.  At first I didn't think I was wanting the "hostel" experience of meeting lots of people, etc. but quickly I realized there were amazing people I couldn't help but fall in love with.  Before we knew it, over lunch in la cocina with Diana and Steven (2 Dutch 30-somethings) we got to talking about the environment and politics and global culture and spirituality and living simple and we just clicked.  They finished up their work for the day and we took a bucket of beers to the beach, watched the sunset, the power outage, the pelicans, listened to a variety of world music, and talked more about life and dreams. We went for tacos and found a local party in the square celebrating one of the saints.  I learned about the drink "Palomita" or Paloma, tequila with Fresca (grapefruit) soda and we danced to crazy music.  Walked home happy and tired.


Another highlight, the cast of friends quickly grew wide: Esli and Alan (2 young Mexican brothers), Julie and Pol (couple, she french, him spanish), Elena and Jeremy (her Mexican, him French), Yentz and Mahali (quiet and cute German couple).  Kogen and I arranged a rager of a party and they helped us celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary.  We grilled 6 pounds of beautiful pork, made guac and pico, got a huge stack of fresh tortillas and made bomb-ass tacos.  We also had a bottle of tequila and a lot of beers.  (I must sadly confess I pooped out way too early and missed so much fun!) Drinking games, dancing (yes there's a video) and a visit from a mapache (raccoon)!  As an anniversary gift Diana and Steven arranged a boat trip for our group of 16.  We fished (yes some Buddhists fish, I did quite well as a fisherwoman), took the boat to the mainland where we swam in a cenote (deep natural sinkhole resulting from the collapse of rock that exposes groundwater underneath) and while we swam, the boat captains made the best ceviche I have ever had (did you know that the fish in ceviche is not cooked but the lime juice that is used sorta "cooks" it?)  One more teaching opportunity.  Given that many people partied 'til the break of dawn, the open waters were a bit rough on the system and a few friends ended up a little green in the face.  The lovely Diana suggested that getting into the water may help and it did!  

My little brother! The boy who used to
say "I don't know how to smile!"

Onto Cancun the next day.  I was sad to leave all my new adventuring friends.  But I was on the way to see family.  HUGE change of pace from quiet island to the hustle of "Hotel Zone" Cancun.  We were to join up with the wedding festivities at Sandos Resort an all-inclusive package deal.  We walked in and were immediately offered beverages and a red rose.  Somehow we lucked out and we shared a suite with little brother Brian and his girlfriend Gabrielle.   Slowly the party just gathered and grew at the pool (heated to bathwater temp).  My cousin Jenny and her husband John soon joined us and the 6 of us were something of a Dito-force.  Maybe out of excitement everyone got REALLY rowdy the first night.  Voices got louder, discussions were prone to passion (go figure, politics and the environment had to come up), then moved from dinner to the dance floor.  The energy was irresistible even to those who thought they were tired.  At one point Brian and Vince traded shorts (in the bar) and they 'teen wolfed' beers, luckily they had the sense to do it outside.  We finished the night ordering room service (4 cheeseburgers).  This fun continued and we all overate and overdrank and figured "when in Cancun."  The wedding on the beach was sweet and we danced until our feet carried us to bed.

We left the Mexican vacation for a return to the cool forest, early mornings and the sound of bells.  "Weaving the ancient brocade," as they say in Zen.  All these different strands of life and people and experiences, none of them better than the other, they just are what they are as they present themselves.  What a delight.

Conscious Construction and Leg Shaving

In some schools of Zen, including ours, people talk of "conscious construction," that our entire world as we know it is entirely constructed by our mind.  You can get really deep into the analyses of this idea but at a most basic level it makes sense right?  We can never truly be in someone else's shoes, ours are the only ones that fit.  A great example is that if you ask several people how they remember a certain event they all attended together, they will all say something different.  Or if you feel one way about something that happened to you, chances are you will feel different about it 5 minutes later, 5 hours later, 5 days later, etc. and this has nothing to do with the event changing, you changed.  We bring all of our past (karma) into every moment and it colors what we see.

Bear with me here as I shine this light on the topic of feminism, sex and looking cute (yes I am a little obsessed with these topics lately).  I was talking with my husband about dressing sexy and wanting to look cute.  We may have different perspectives...I think I believe that the experience and pressures of appearance are different for men than women (some may disagree with me and that's cool).  Which brings me to one of my points of personal inquiry: what do I do with the specific baggage that comes along with being me and a woman?  When I want to look "cute" is this simply what men (and other women) have been telling me since I was born ("oh what a beautiful little girl you are!").  Is it possible to look cute, express myself in a way I feel good about, that isn't about being better than other women, consuming (buying and wearing) products made in sweatshops or trying to please some other group by "selling" my body and what it can do for someone?  As humans, how important is it to feel accepted and what does appearance have to do with it?

If I have large breasts does that mean I can never wear anything tight because it is provoking someone and their pornographic fantasy?  Now this may be too much information but what about leg shaving?  As many of you know, I haven't been shaving my legs for quite some time now.  One of the reasons is that it's time consuming, another is, why get rid of something I was born with, another is a big F*** you to people say women who don't shave are manly and unattractive.  BUT I am not at the point where I do it because I think it looks good....(blush, shame) It's easy not to worry about it in the winter cuz I always wear pants but as summer (bathingsuit season) comes I get a little anxious.  I am an Italian woman, which means I have dark hair and a good amount of it and I am not totally comfortable in a bathingsuit.  Now what do I do with that?  Who wants to be stared at, mostly by men, and looked upon with open disgust?  What makes me care about people who act like that?!?!?  

So I have this world view that is consciously constructed by my own mind and includes mainstream ideals of attractiveness.  I have a lifetime of baggage (ie. social feedback) about what is acceptable and what is not.  The wild card is how much control do I have over what I assimilate and what I reject.

The Feminist Current has a great blog post that sort of inspired this post in thinking about how all this objectifying continues.  This is a quote from the post, I definitely recommend you check it out.

"...women shouldn’t have to be sexy and naked in order to get the attention of the media (yet they do) and that this just perpetuates the idea that women are to-be-looked-at. Why do women (and not men) need use their “sexy” bodies to bring about awareness to serious issues like homophobia, dictatorship, sexism and racism?."

Taking Refuge in Evil

Jiryu (click left to listen) gave a talk a few weeks ago that blew a lot of minds.  I highly recommend giving it a listen, even if you know nothing about Buddhism, especially if you know nothing about Buddhism.  But he knocked some socks of when talking about a little known sect of Buddhism that, among other things, talks about taking refuge not just in the good but the "evil."  People had a really hard time with that.  It made me think of a common zen phrase is mentioned often around here, "turning away and touching are both wrong."

For example, the ecosattvas (environmentalist bodhisattvas) have been working on a project of figuring out how to change the way San Francisco Zen Center and Green Gulch invests its money.  (If you thought Buddhists don't trifle with such things as the stock market you are incorrect)  Zen Center is an institution that in many ways is no different than all of the other institutions and corporations we blame for the impending demise of the earth and its inhabitants.  Kogen (my husband) and I seem to respond in ways that to me look a little like turning away and touching.  He is touching the conflict and the pain and feeling it so deeply it sometimes looks like despair and anger.  Whereas I seem to be turning away.  I feel like there is no stopping this train of destruction we're on and maybe also that I know that everyone of us is complicit and we cannot escape participating in some way.  I don't want to see what I can't change.  Both missing the point? Yes I think so.

There is also a saying that "one must be steeped in relative truth before being able to see the ultimate truth."  In other words, we have to slug through all the touching and turning away that humans do, it's called practice.  We will go around and around the wheel of karma (or samsara) of actions and consequences and their consequences and their consequences until...we can truly act from a place with no gain in mind?  I know it sounds crazy!  We debated it for most of one evening's Genjo Koan class.  How we just "sit" here when there is so much suffering in the world?  Are we actually engaging in the world when we sit in the zendo?  When we go out into the world to "fight" the injustice, what exactly do we think is going to happen?  What happens if our goal is not achieved?  How can we work towards something with no gain in mind?

So I think what Jiryu called evil is actually just all those things in the world that are painful, that we don't like.  But they are things caused by humans just like us.  And we wouldn't recognize them as "bad" if it didn't touch a place inside that has felt it before.  So taking refuge to me means not running away from the problems and to let people know you see them and their pain...in exactly the same way we want to be seen.

Reflections on International Women's Day (belated)

So my first reaction to "women's day" was BARF!  Just what we need, another dumb hallmark holiday to pacify an oppressed group.  But it turns out this is a little more than that, maybe a lot more.  This day was started as part of a Socialist/Communist movement and was decidedly much more political than celebratory.  For an overview, check out my friend Wikipedia.

So let me step back to yesterday, the actual "women's day" of March 8.  It was brought to my attention as we celebrated Mahapajapati Gotami or the Buddha's stepmother and the first ordained woman in Buddhism.  As Eijun Linda Cutts talked about in last night's dharma talk, this awesome event was not without struggle.  Buddha refused to ordain her!!!  Yes you heard it people, the Buddha refused to ordain a woman, refused a second time and then was prevailed upon by one of his followers to acknowledge that women are just as likely and able to attain awakening (enlightenment) as any man.  The struggle did not end there.  Sutra writers (ie. not the Buddha) at some point in time claimed that the Buddha added a few (8) extra rules for his new female disciples.  These included: ordained women, no matter how long they have been practicing must always bow down to a male priest regardless of his length of time practicing, women cannot teach men while men can teach women, and women cannot ordain priests.  Many recent scholars have decided that these rules seem to have come into existence actually 500 years later than the Buddha's time....sketchy!  Or at least goes to show that, like the Bible and other religious texts, their origins are decidedly Man made and subject to constant change depending on the times and the social context or maybe even whims.  What that says to me is that we have to dig deep.  We have to dig deep and examine what parts of tradition are important to keep and why.  Because the "Buddha" said so?  Or because it feels right deep in our hearts, hara and guts.

So when a man on another blog tells me that in his teachings, the Buddha most certainly did address my experience as a woman in the 21 century I politely (sorta) will not accept that.  Sure I can be flexible and adapt things to speak to me but I need to have that freedom without persecution of being un-Buddhist.  I need institutional support and guidance.  There is a lot of discussion in the Buddhist community here in the United States about how Zen is settling in the West.  Traditionalists feel that we cannot make adjustments to "fit" our culture because then Zen will just become some watered down self-help group.  I acknowledge the danger of that while also positing that we cannot simply accept the ancient texts as "Buddha's" words and therefore the only way.  I live in a country where women are allowed to ordain as Buddhist priests and yet I am painfully aware that this option is not available to most female Buddhists in the world.  We are pointing at the conventional truth of an inequality that persists.  Linda Cutts thankfully made the connection last night in her talk that this origin of inequality may be related to the current issues of sexual abuse and misconduct rippling through Zen communities. Even our most beloved teachers who did not engage in "misconduct" are still susceptible to weakness.  Suzuki Roshi, founder of San Francisco Zen Center, had a first wife who was brutally murdered at his family's temple back in Japan.  His mother-in-law and a few others including other women warned him of their fear of this man but he did not listen.  Why didn't he listen?  Possibly because women were not listened to.  Suzuki Roshi felt the deep regret of that choice for the rest of his life.

So on this day of celebrating Mahapajapati I turn the light inward and reflect on what I can do to be upright and not slander others nor stand helpless or silent.

P.S. Check out this great article about great Zen women featuring our own Linda Cutta and Emila Heller!  Emila's picture showed up when I was looking for a picture of Mahapajapati.

The Zen of Sex Scandals, Sex and Gender Neutral Bathrooms

Everyone always asks me if my life is really peaceful and great out here at Green Gulch, being all Buddhist and everything.  My answer is: Zen is not a cure for being a hot mess, or an a**hole or any other problematic personal condition.  You have to actually know you are a hot mess and to not want to be one.  So Zen can help with that.  Zen is a practice in studying the self and in that process, if you are honest, you may discover some things about yourself you never knew (or at least never admitted).

This begs an interesting question.  Can you be a hot mess and a good Zen teacher?  I think I might argue that yes you can be both, at least for a little while.  This brings me to ZEN SEX SCANDAL 2012/2013.  Actually it's been going on for years (and of course really for centuries but I'm not going to go there yet).  As reported in the New York Times, more concrete reports of sexual misconduct have come out against Joshu Sasaki Roshi of Rinzai-ji temple.  It is being written about everywhere from the LA Times, Sweeping Zen, Shambhala Sun, and of course the blogs of Brad Warner, my husband and other internet-using Buddhists.

I have been thinking about this for quite some time but was not sure how to approach it in writing, here's my best go.  The question is not whether Sasaki did anything wrong.  The answer is most clearly yes.  He repeatedly made sexual advances and coerced women to do sexual things they did not want to do and many of the things he requested he did so under the guise of the spiritual development of his victims.  The controversy lays more in the response to the occurrence of these events.  It is claimed that the powers that be at Rinzai-ji actively tried to cover up what they knew was going on.  We have a range of reactions in regards to what should be done in a situation like this.  No doubt some people want Sasaki's penis on a stake outside his temple.  Others want him removed from his position, which amounts to more of a symbolic move because he's over 100 years old now.  And still others want more action from the Buddhist community at large to deal with the hierarchy that let this continue when they knew what was happening.  Finally, people want open dialogue.  People want to talk about the rules of behavior in a community where there is hierarchy, "teachers," human beings and the historical oppression of women world-wide (and especially within Zen) since the very days when the Buddha would not ordain a woman.

Brad Warner is a very vocal Zen "teacher" who hails from under the flag of punk rock or hard core and uses this to appeal to certain crowds and as he says "get their butts on the cushion."  This is all very fine and good and his punk rock jam includes approval for teachers sleeping with students.  Part of this may be self-serving, since he also has been involved in such actions (see his book "Doc Martens Outside the Door") but at the same time there is a dose of reality here: we are humans, sexual beings and sometimes this does not follow along the lines of a man-made hierarchical structure.  In other words, there's a grey area!  This is our life!

As a woman, my (first) reaction, and that of many others people is that Sasaki and even Brad Warner are chauvinist exploiters of women and follow their dicks around ('scuse my language) regardless of the vows they took.  Now of course my more rational brain knows that not all "scandals" are as atrocious as Sasaki's wrongs.  And that "scandal" is quite relative, we humans do love some drama don't we?  Richard Baker cheated on his wife having an affair with a beautiful married student.  Brad Warner had a relationship of some kind with a student but neither of them was married and it was consensual.  Priests, and many students, of Zen take vows that include not misusing sexuality.  And this vow is made with no clear outline for what it means.  It is a point of inquiry.

I am really stumped by the question of abuse of power.  It is commonly accepted that in any given situation there is often a power differential that makes it beneficial for the person with less power to please he person with more power.  The benefit could be material (a better job, fancy clothes) or status or some other feeling of increased self-worth based on association.  In a university a teacher can't have a relationship with a student who they have to grade otherwise it's ok but maybe frowned upon.  At a workplace it is against the rules for a boss to get sexual favors in exchange for something but if there's no clear "exchange" it's just two consensual adults.  But is it?  Women have developed over centuries as humans with less power than men and didn't they have to adapt in ways that accept that as the rule?  For another example, is it possible to look at the statistics and experience of African-Americans in the United States outside of the fact that less than 150 years their ancestors were legally still enslaved?  Can we look at the current experience of women outside the fact that less than 100 years ago we couldn't actually vote?  So who's responsibility is it for women to learn how to love themselves without needing to be sexually desired by men?  (Or by anyone for that matter but that's another blog post, this one is quiet long already)

Oh yeah and about those gender-neutral bathrooms.  All of these LARGE questions above boil down to what can I do?  What does all this drama for me and my practice of upholding the vows I just took last weekend ?(!)  What am I doing that contributes to a culture in which men still think it is harmless when they just do it with any sexy woman throwing herself at him or in which people cover it up when high school boys drug and rape a fellow student (Steubenville, OH) or Sasaki Roshi's cronies cover it up when they can't get him to stop?  What am I doing that makes people feel less than?  OR better worded, what can I do to make people feel more welcome and accepted for who they are?  Maybe something like gender-neutral bathrooms at Green Gulch is one way.  And we have to keep a healthy dose of skepticism about the rules and norms.  In a community like Green Gulch, where I live, what is appropriate sexual conduct?  Who can fall in love with who?  Is the topic of sex something that should be kept behind closed doors or discussed puritanically?  Are women the only ones who need to dress modestly?  What does dressing immodestly look like for a man?  Why do we have a small section in the library called "women in Zen?" Etc. Etc. Etc.  The quest continues.