Dharma Transmission

On Dharma Transmission

When I began practicing meditation in college at a Zen center in New York City, I had the uncanny feeling that I had come home to where I was always meant to be. The ritual, the incense, the chanting, the bowing resonated deeply, as if I had somehow experienced them before. The following year I enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University because it was close to my ultimate destination, Tassajara Zen Monastery. While at Stanford, I had the good fortune to sit three long sesshins (retreats) with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and hoped to be able to continue studying with him at Tassajara the following fall. But Suzuki Roshi was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died toward the end of the fall practice period.

For the next 10+ years I remained deeply immersed in Zen practice. I ordained as a monk with Kobun Chino Roshi and practiced with Taizan Maezumi Roshi for five years at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, including periods as shuso (head monk) and director of practice. In 1982 I set aside my robes (though never relinquished my ordination) to study Western psychology and went on to practice both Dzogchen and Mahamudra in the Tibetan tradition before meeting my primary teacher, Jean Klein, a European master of Advaita Vedanta, in 1988.

Within a year of Jean’s death ten years later, a friend introduced me to young man named Adyashanti, who had just begun teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived. His web address at the time was zen-satsang.org, which neatly combined both my practice lineages. When Adya and I had a chance to talk one to one, we acknowledged that it felt more like a meeting of two old friends, fellow monks from a previous life, than a teacher-student relationship. I attended nearly every retreat Adya offered over the next two plus years. In the summer of 2001, after a particularly powerful retreat in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains near Lone Pine, California, Adya offered me Dharma transmission, the culmination of one’s study as a Zen monk.

The paradox of Dharma transmission—one of an infinite number of paradoxes on the journey of awakening—is that nothing is actually transmitted. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment of who we really are; nothing has changed, except now we are knowingly what we’ve always been, with full recognition of our inherently awake true nature. To honor and celebrate the occasion, we met with Adya’s teacher Arvis Justi, and Adya gave me a mala and his oryoki (traditional Zen bowls), and I gave him a signed first edition of a book by American Zen pioneer Nyogen Senzaki. We also exchanged the following poems, which speak for themselves:

Transmission Poem from Stephan to Adya

August 15, 2001

Nothing to teach

yet teaching happens

Nothing to transmit,

yet transmission has already occurred.

Just one mind in every direction

as far as the eye can see

constantly dancing

in a myriad of forms.

The gateless gate: when this mind

recognizes itself from one warm hand

to another, nothing changes

yet the gratitude is inexhaustible!

Hokai Ikko (Dharma Ocean, Pure Practice)

Transmission Poem from Adya to Stephan

August 16, 2001

Everything ends where it began

in intimate friendship.

Clear sky to clouds

clouds to rain

rain to rivers

rivers to mountains

mountains to rivers

rivers to rain

rain to clouds

clouds to clear sky.

Not one step has been taken

and yet walking continues.

The Buddhist journey ends in being Buddha.

I happily sing your name to the stars

as infinite Buddha eyes bear witness to

the birth of great realization.

Nothing has happened

finally.

And yet this heart warms

to the hand to hand

touch being received.

Each time it happens

this life completes itself

again.

With Great Love and Tenderness,

Adya (Silent Wind)