Fields of Silence

Each day here at the temple begins with long swaths of silent sitting and walking, and is often the most quietly focused part of the day.  There are exceptions of course to this quiet.  Part of my role as Shuso is to wake up before everyone else and ring the wake-up bell.  It is a ceremony, just like most things here.  I hit the han (the wooden block outside the meditation hall) to announce the ceremony is beginning, and then enter the zendo.  There are bows that follow, different kinds of ringing (cascading rings at certain altars, and just a wave of sound otherwise as I run through the building), more hits on the han, and more bows.  People bow as I run past because in zen the wake-up bell is considered a "procession," which I always found fascinating.  Usually a procession means the Abbot or Practice Leader and their attendant, and the Tanto and their attendant, etc., and usually they are stately and ceremonially walking, on their way to open the hall by offering incense or on their way out.  But in this case it's just the Shuso, and a loudly ringing bell, flashing by at full speed.  In fact the bell is so loud that people often bow at the waist with their fingers in their ears, attempting to be both respectful and nonchalant, that happens fairly often.  And I know how they feel.  The activity of running non-stop through every corridor of the building first thing in the morning (4:50 am), combined with the volume of the bell (and yes it is supposed to be loud, the whole point is to wake up) can feel a little jarring.  My ears ring with a foggy trace of the sound for a good while after.

And then moments later we are all sitting so quietly in the zendo together.  I noticed this morning how the contrast from the sounds to the silence help me somehow appreciate the quiet more, notice it more.  It's usually still dark.  And the city outside is still easing into the day, light traffic on Oak street a block away.  Sometimes bird songs are even the dominant call from the world outside these walls.  But inside it is so quiet.  And our minds range over the full possibilities of human life and thought; some days we're more awake to our surroundings, some days we're lost in some inner turmoil.  Yet, whatever our experience on the cushion, it takes place in this palpable quiet, in the feeling of warmth that there are others here with us, supporting us with their presence.  I think to be with others in this way is so unique in our modern city life.

At the end of the second sitting the silence is finally broken by human voices for the first time of the day with the Robe Chant.  It's always been my favorite chant in the zen liturgy, probably because it seems to grow naturally out of this period of quiet - and that it is a unified voice of everyone in the room, confirming what our quiet presence had been hinting, yes, we are here, we are here together.  The chant is three verses. The first two are in transliterated japanese :

dai zai ge da pu ku, mu su fu ku den e, hi bu nyorai kyo, ko do sho shu jo (x2)

Followed by an english poem that I now understand is only the very loosest of translations of the japansese line above:

Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form and emptiness
Wearing the tathgatha's teaching
Saving all beings.

In practice this chant is done with the buddha's robe (either okesa - priest robe, or rakusu -  lay robe) placed on one's head, but still sitting in zazen posture, so it is a continuation of the period of meditation.  On this one level it is a ceremony of dedicating our robe as we begin the day.  But even before I sewed a lay robe or rakusu, i always loved this chant.  I didn't have anything on my head to dedicate, but I knew or felt this "robe of liberation" was actually our practice.  A formless robe we were weaving by our sitting.  And not that "we," ourselves, are exactly doing anything to weave it.  Maybe it felt more like we are this robe, and we sit to actualize that.  The term "field" in the english verse alludes to the fact that the pattern that both the okesa and the rakusu (they are the same, just different sizes) are sewn into was designed by the Buddha, and was meant to look like a rice field - square shapes like seedling beds crisscrossed by the lines of canals.  So, we wear this robe, but also the earth itself is this robe.  There is no place where this robe is not.  That is the feeling of connection these words can sometimes bring.

When Suzuki Roshi first had American students, and I'm assuming before the addition of the 3rd verse in English, one of his students once asked him, "What is the meaning of this chant we do at the end of morning zazen?"  What are we actually saying when we repeat these Japanese syllables?  The way that I've heard this story is that Suzuki Roshi paused, like perhaps he was thinking of explaining it, or maybe mulling over a translation on the spot, and then he just said, "Love.  It means love."