Zen Blog

On a scorching day in July 2019, sweating and shaking with nerves, I knocked on the door of an immaculate house in Staten Island, New York. A sweet-faced young woman opened it, eyeing me curiously. I took a deep breath and launched into my script.

“If you had two minutes to tell President Trump about the job he’s doing, what would you say?” I asked. She had voted for Trump, she told me, but didn’t like the callous way he treated people. On a scale from zero to ten—where zero meant she would definitely vote Republican and ten meant definitely Democrat—she put herself at a three.

“When I vote,” I said, “it’s a political act, but it’s also personal, a gift to someone I love.” I told a story about a teenager I had mentored in a writing program. I loved her for her brilliance and talent, and also for her willingness to resolve the initial conflicts between us. “I’m curious,” I went on. “Does this make you think of someone you love?” She wouldn’t discuss a particular person but said she wanted her gay friends to be free to live as they chose. When I pointed out that she and I shared a value of caring about others—a value that the president’s behavior rarely displays—she moved from a 3 to a 5.

This exchange was my first experience of “deep canvassing,” a method of voter outreach that aims to bypass political speech by connecting with people emotionally and engaging with their sense of ethics. It’s based on the principle that facts and opinions don’t change people’s minds, values do.

I’d finally found a form of political action that matched my own convictions. For the past twenty years, I’ve practiced vipassana, or Insight Meditation. Since the 1960s, I have also participated in political action—marches against the Vietnam War, demonstrations toward a more sustainable climate future, and protests against the war in Iraq. But by the time of the Iraq War, I’d become uncomfortable with angry chanting and strident rhetoric demonizing political enemies, which felt at odds with the shift in thinking about dealing with conflict brought about by my Buddhist practice. I’m absolutely anti-Trump, but I don’t want to hate Trump voters. I want to understand them. And it was now clear to me that not only did anger feel wrong, it was also an ineffective strategy in a country so divided.

Over the past forty years, I’ve trained with meditation teachers in the lineages of Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan, both in Asia and in the United States. I’ve found that, in all of these lineages, learning how to ask wise questions is a huge part of cultivating a skillful practice. Meditative inquiry fosters greater inner freedom and allows us to loosen up and let go of conditioning. But how do we do this? 

In meditation practice we calm our minds, and then we look into the true nature of things as they are, which leads to greater understanding. This understanding brings about inner liberation. Investigation or inquiry is another key aspect of practice. To investigate is to contemplate with a silent mind. It’s to illuminate that which is cloudy or confused—to explore and to discover what we have not yet noticed or understood.

This kind of deep inquiry provides us with the tools to free the mind from suffering and the pitfalls of an unexamined life. Of course, freeing the mind from suffering is the point of the practice and at the core of the Buddha’s teachings. Looking into life as we generally live it—carefully examining our habits and our patterns—encourages us to examine the whole world differently. Asking questions is a way to allow intrinsic wisdom to emerge, wisdom that is there within each one of our hearts, that has not yet had a chance to come forth and inform our lives. 

I also think questioning is part of the Buddha’s injunction to practice ehipassiko, a Pali word that means “comes and see for oneself.” Meditative questioning is one way to understand for ourselves and to build a greater sense of self-confidence and self-trust. We learn to know for ourselves what brings about liberation and what does not, what further mires us in misery or confusion. 

In this practice, doubt is totally OK—we’re encouraged to test the teachings out so that they become our own. But questions like, “Why am I here?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “When can I get what I want, or get rid of what I don’t want?”, “Why am I so deluded?”, or “Why are others so deluded?” tend to take us nowhere. I’ve found that they cause us to circle around and around and do not reveal a way out. The deep inquiry I’m talking about doesn’t mean constantly questioning oneself, obsessing, or running after thoughts. 

Jarvis Jay Masters ends his hunger strike over phone restrictions, the Kung Fu nuns win an award for outreach work, and Thich Nhat Hanh celebrates his 94th birthday. Tricycle looks back at the events of this week in the Buddhist world.

Jarvis Jay Masters with Buddhist teacher Ani Pema Chödrön | Photo courtesy Free Jarvis: The Campaign to Exonerate Jarvis Jay Masters

Yvonne Rand (née Boye), a member of the first generation of American Zen teachers, died on August 19, 2020, shortly before her eighty-fifth birthday. Her life was as rich as it was long, and lived at full intensity. She brought to the world a wide range of gifts and a compassionate mind. An early and enduring dedication to horseback riding had taught Rand to be fluidly settled in her seat, mindful and aware in the moment. Rand’s ability to weave together so many strands of Buddhist teachings carried through her decades of teaching and echoed the diversity of her interests.  

Born September 23, 1935 and raised in California, Rand graduated from Stanford University in 1957. She first turned her attention to Eastern religions during her college years, and began studying the teachings of the Buddha dharma in 1954, entering a Soto Zen path shortly after. She became a close student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1966, served as his secretary and personal assistant, and together with his wife Mitsu Suzuki, cared for him through his dying and death in 1971. After helping to found the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) in 1967, Rand was ordained as a priest there and served on the board of directors for many years, practicing and teaching primarily at Green Gulch Zen Center. She also studied with Dainin Katagiri Roshi and received dharma transmission from him in 1989. 

Committed to rooting the dharma in Western soil, Rand renounced formal titles, such as roshi, the traditional term for a senior priest and teacher like herself.. She described herself as a lay householder priest, emphasizing the importance of the world of family and daily life in dharma practice.

Rand’s profound interest in the dharma led her to study with notable teachers in many Buddhist traditions, including Rinzai Zen roshis Maureen Stuart and Shodo Harada; Theravada Buddhist monks Ven. Henepola Gunaratana and Ajahn Sumedho; as well as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Tibetan teacher Tara Tulku Rinpoche. Her work with Tara Tulku Rinpoche led to her active support of the Tibetan Buddhist community in diaspora and to a recognition of the deep connections between Vajrayana Buddhism and Soto Zen insights and practices.