Zenkei Blanche Hartman - Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart

ABOUT THE BOOK

Zenkei Blanche Hartman is an American Zen legend. A teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, she was the first female abbot of an American Zen center. She is greatly revered, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has lived and taught for many years. This, her long-awaited first book, is a collection of short teachings taken from her talks on the subject of boundlessnessthe boundlessness that sees beyond our small, limited self to include all others. To live a boundless life she encourages living the vows prescribed by the Buddha and living life with the curiosity of a child. The short, stand-alone pieces can be dipped into whenever one is in need of inspiration.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN (born 1926) is a Soto Zen teacher in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi and a revered elder figure in American Zen. She spent two terms as abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and was in fact the first woman abbot of a Zen center in America. Shes an expert in kesa sewing (those bib-like things you see Zennists wear that represent the Buddhas robe), and shes been particularly known for her attention to womens issues in Buddhism and Zen.

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SEEDS FOR A BOUNDLESS LIFE

Zen Teachings from the Heart

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN

Edited by

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Foreword by

Zoketsu Norman Fischer

SHAMBHALA

Boston & London

2015

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

Cover photo courtesy San Francisco Zen Center

Cover design by Katrina Noble

2015 by Zenkei Blanche Hartman

Living a Life of Vow, Initiation and Ordination, What Is a Zen Priest? and Reenergizing the Life originally appeared in the Shambhala Sun. Material in part three, Seeds of Advice, originally appeared in Buddhadharma.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hartman, Blanche, Zenkei, 1926 author.

Seeds for a boundless life: Zen teachings from the heart / Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel.First edition.

pages cm

eISBN 978-0-8348-0304-6

ISBN 978-1-61180-284-9 (paperback: alk. paper)

1. Zen Buddhism. I. Manuel, Zenju Earthlyn. II. Title.

BQ9268.3.H38 2015

294.3420427dc23

2015003159

If were open to embracing the surprises as they arise, then there will be inconceivable joy. If we fuss and fume and say, This isnt what I expected, then there will be inconceivable misery. Just to welcome your life as it arrives moment after moment, to meet it as fully as you can, being as open to it as you can, being as ready for whatever arises as you can, and meeting it wholeheartedly, this is renunciationthis is leaving behind all of your preferences, all of your ideas and notions and schemes. Just meeting life as it is.

ZENKEI BLANCHE HARTMAN

(Blanches dharma name, Zenkei, means inconceivable joy)

CONTENTS

Blanche and Lou Hartman and my wife, Kathie, and I started practicing Zen together, at around the same time, at the Berkeley Zen Center with our dear teacher Sojun Mel Weitsman. Now it is forty-five or so years later. Lou has passed on after ninety-six years in this human form (he and Blanche were married for more than sixty of those years, had four children, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren); Kathie and I are still practicing and trying to teach Zen; Mel, in his mideighties, is still abbot in Berkeley, and Blanche has become, in her old age, a Buddhist saint.

I dont think theres any way that I could adequately communicate the feeling of wonder and appreciation that comes with the living of the facts Ive just recited. Forty-five years sounds like a long time but seems like a short time. You turn around, blink once, and a lifetime dissolves before your eyes. And yet nothing has changed, no time has passed. Blanches face looks the same to me as it did when I passed her in the entryway at the old zendo in Berkeley all those years ago.

Knowing one another so long, practicing together heart to heart, not seeing one another for a long time but also being, anyway, side by side... something inexpressibly sweet and deep emerges.

I call Blanche a Buddhist saint. I mean it. Her simplicity, her kindness, her humility, her devotion, her love are, at this point in her life, pure, innocent, and complete. Her faculties are 100 percent sound, but shes slower now, calmer and sweeter. She appreciates everyone, has something to give to everything. Everyone who meets her can see this right away. Above all, her faith in and love for Zen practice are perhaps deeper than they ever were, deeper than that of anyone else I know.

Blanche and I were coabbots together at the San Francisco Zen Center in the late 1990s. She was the first woman abbot, and I was the first of the younger generation that did not study with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. I do not recall a single disagreement or even an unsteady word between us. All I can remember is Blanches constant encouragement and appreciation. Though she began her practice as a capable, strong-willed, opinionated woman (as she says in this book), she became a person of immense openness and generosity (as this book demonstrates). I feel fortunate to know her, to have seen her deepen and grow over so many years, and to remain her friend. Each time I see her I am encouraged in my practice. I suspect the same is true of many others. The job of abbot is a saints job.

In this book Blanche tells two stories that are destined to be, I believe, classical Zen stories of our time. The first took place before she began her practiceand propelled her into it. Blanche is confronting a police officer at a heated political protest. Looking into the officers eyes, she suddenly recognizes that she and he are one person, one fear, one passion, one humanity. Not knowing how to integrate this into her worldview, she begins her Zen practice.

In the second story she approaches her teacher, Suzuki Roshi, with her accomplishment: that she can now sit without much thinking, following her breath faithfully. Whats the next step? He replies to her: Dont think you can sit zazen. Zazen sits zazen!

These stories summarize a lifetime of practice for Blanche and all of us in our time and place. Love, concern for, and identity with the other. And faith in a profound practice that we cant do but that, rather, does us.

This book is more than another wise or interesting dharma book. It is an example of a classical Zen genre not often seen in our times: sayings, compiled by a disciple, of a great teacher at the end of a long life of practice.

The virtue of what you are about to read isnt found in the words or ideas. To savor this book youll have to read between the lines to hear the spirit, the life of the dharma itself, the living dharma, whose light leaks out from between its words and phrases.

ZOKETSU NORMAN FISCHER

I have practiced with Blanche Hartman for more than forty years at all three of the temples of the San Francisco Zen Center: City Center, Green Gulch Farm, and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. When I first met Blanche in about 1971, it was as if she came from another generation; being about twenty years older than I at that time, there seemed to be a huge difference (she was probably about forty-four). However, Blanche had a sprightly gait, a warm and friendly spirit, and an indomitable will to practice that was ageless. She and her late husband, Lou, who was about ten years her senior, practiced along with everyone so wholeheartedly and so completelywith a mixture of energy, maturity, innocence, and powerful way-seeking mindthat everyone was inspired. They showed me a wonderful example of the different ways that practice could manifest and continue throughout ones life.