The Way of Seeking Mind
The Way of Seeking Mind
By Cathy Jikai Rose
For 30 years I worked in the Canadian arctic providing health care, linked by phone to physicians and hours away from hospital, if the weather was flyable. The work was wide-ranging. I was always trying to find ways to upgrade my knowledge to meet the challenges that presented because often I was on my own in the provision of care. That’s how I first stepped onto the path. Early on, I enrolled in a palliative care program delivered by mail. One of the components required students to look at complimentary therapies and because of my lack of access to anything else, I chose meditation and sent away for some tapes from Sounds True (this was all years before the wonders of the internet). Like many others, I’d done some reading and had an interest but had never actually practiced seriously.
That was the start — me, the tapes, and Jack Kornfield instructing. Later that year I noticed in Tricycle magazine a conference, Buddhism in America, coincided with some planned time off and I spontaneously decided to go. In retrospect, it was a rather amazing gathering of teachers and traditions. I attended an extraordinary pre-conference day presented by Joan Halifax (not yet a Roshi) that centered on her work in the area of death and dying.
My work was full-on, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day responding to whatever situation presented at the door to the clinic, which was also where I lived. Sometimes the work would push me further than I thought possible. The communities were small, so the work was intimate and close. These were friends and neighbours, not patients. This was after a time of rapid social change in the North with all the consequences that came with it.
As with so many other clinicians, it was a challenge to maintain personal wellness in the face of the demands of work. The way I managed was to not allow myself to examine its personal impacts. I just kept going. I knew that in the long run, this was not the answer and that I ran the risk of becoming bitter, but it was the best I could do at the time.
My brother meanwhile had gone off to New Mexico because of an interest he had in calligraphy that took him to Upaya. I realised that the Roshi Joan he told me about was the Joan Halifax who had made such an impression on me several years before. That was it. The next break I took, I headed to Upaya and that changed everything.
Truly, the moment I took my seat in the zendo was a moment of coming home, to myself and to the practice. Not that it was easy, no, not easy, but it felt right and so necessary. Upaya and the practice provided the container for the heartbreak of the work I was doing. It was there that I, tentatively at first, allowed myself to feel those experiences I’d pushed away. I cried, sometimes through an entire sesshin and I was witnessed, not given advice, not told to toughen up or to get over it, just witnessed. Over time my practice became more embodied and inclusive and that changed, not only in how I approached my work but how I approached my life.
This was the start of many years of travelling back and forth from some of the most remote communities in Canada to New Mexico and beyond. I would sit two, sometimes three sesshins a year and even managed a practice period or two. When a teacher I’d worked closely with returned to Europe, I had a few years of travel back and forth to Germany and Mallorca.
After I retired, I had hoped to find sangha to practice with locally. As important as retreat work was I was missing community. Zen is very thin on the ground where I live. I sat with a Shambhala group until it dissolved and then with a group connected with True North Insight. In fact, I undertook a two-year training program through them. Always, no matter what tradition I sat with, my Zen practice has been my foundation. During the pandemic restrictions when my local group stopped meeting, the one benefit has been to be able to join in practice periods with Upaya.
Over these many years, I’ve been so fortunate to make good friends in the dharma. I’ve seen Shinzan arrive at Upaya, I was there when he was ordained and saw him as he took on more and more responsibilities within the Upaya sangha and then as he took the teacher’s seat at Upaya and beyond in San Diego. A chance Facebook invitation to join OG Zen for a dharma talk over Zoom made me realise it was possible to practice with him and the community. This began another shift in my practice. Feeling welcomed to meet virtually on a regular schedule has given me a deeper sense of community. Meeting with fellow students during book study and for Monday morning Metta has been a wonderful sharing of our lives and our dharma understanding. I am sometimes so amazed at how deeply one can feel these connections over this distance. And I am so grateful for these connections, nevermore so as when the sangha takes time to troubleshoot the tech so that I can be present with them for talks or events.
It has been almost thirty years of practice so there is much I’ve left unsaid here. Upaya and the connections that have come out of Upaya have been the most precious part of my path. I am so fortunate to have amazing teachers starting with Roshi Joan and now with Sensei Shinzan, a friend and teacher. As to the question of how the practice has changed me, there is on one hand so much to say and on the other nothing to say except that as the practice has unfolded I’ve discovered an inner spaciousness, a place from which to respond to the challenges of life. At first, it was a life of work and service and now, in retirement, I’m trying to determine the shape it will take but however it goes, the thread of this Zen practice and my many good friends in the Dharma connects it all.
