Audio – Zen Mountain Monastery

“May I support the life of boundless untold beings” By Sandy Joshin Del Valle  One Sunday afternoon in September 2023, Hojin sensei announced to the sangha her intention to launch a choir at the Temple. She just needed a choir leader and sangha members willing to participate. No training in voice or experience in singing would be required. We would come as we were. All that was required was attendance; showing up, and willing to practice on our own. In essence, Hojin voiced the Three Essentials of Zen; great faith, great doubt and great determination, as her recipe for success. It felt miraculous when Justin Ward Weber, a fairly new sangha member and a composer stepped up to fill the role. They were willing to work with untrained voices, willing to write a new work based on Shantideva’s “Way of the Bodhisattva,” and willing to have us ready for a performance at the Monastery in December. Hojin imagined the performance as a gift from the Temple sangha to the Monastery sangha given in the season of light and generosity at the end of rohatsu. Here was the Great Faith of Zen manifesting in Justin who in turn, had great faith in us: folks they barely knew who wanted to sing the dharma because it was suggested that we could.  Sunday afternoon Karenji Choir practice session in Brooklyn As we practiced, Sunday after Sunday, I came to think of our singing as sacred chanting. Chants are elemental expressions of faith; they cannot be reduced any further. They are also a healing; in Spanish we would say that they are “curas,” remedies that find their power in the source of grief itself. The world is constantly lamenting, someone somewhere is in a state of grief. We chant to hold that world in a state of grace when no other words will do.  As we began October, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict roared back to the world stage. Far away in Brooklyn, could we mend anything by calling forth our aspiration to “be doctor, nurse, and medicine for sick beings in the world?” We wished for “food and drink to descend ending thirst and hunger.” We chanted our intention to be a balm for the “lost and destitute.” And for me, most poignantly we wished that “even acts of harm” would cause “the violent to awaken.” There is hope here for all of us. We aren’t always good. And we don’t chant just for those who are oppressed or victimized. We chant for the violent as well, who are none other than ourselves, willing all of us to come back to true selves and renounce violence. The song alone, with its evocations of faith and yearning was powerful. When it is sung as a collective, where each untrained voice is supporting the others, it becomes an active response to lamentation. We are in this world together; maybe we are trembling with fear and anguish. But we can chant together. Make this verbal bow to one another. We are calling to the universe, to Buddhanature. When we chant we remember who we are and are enlarged. Where there is Great Faith, there is also Great Doubt. We certainly had that. I had never sung publicly outside of a karaoke bar and I knew that wouldn’t get me far. But doing this together with sangha–-some who were very experienced singers, and some just beginning to find their voices, made all the difference. We were comfortable being led by someone we barely knew to a destination we could barely perceive. Living into the unknown was why we practiced! But I think it also helped that our leader was Justin, one of the choir members dubbed them “our angel.” Justin’s joyful, compassionate spirit and their confidence in us was infectious. We were believed in, so we believed. I remember a moment in particular when I felt the dharma and the singing coming together: Justin told us to listen to each other carefully. “When someone is singing, take your breath and then you pick up and let them take theirs.” We became a choir in this way: singing cohesively, interdependent. Our breath became song.  The Great Determination was there probably all along. From Hojin sensei’s first announcement to create a choir when she had none of the components for it, to Justin’s taking up this project, to our own willingness to try something most of us hadn’t done before. But the seeds were there all along, we just hadn’t named it: we love the dharma, we want to be bodhisattvas even on our worst days, and we just needed someone to show us that all this aspiration and intention could be turned to song. As Shantideva says “Until free from pain, may I be life for all beings throughout the ends of space.”  How do we do this? One breath, one note, at a time. You can listen to the Karenji Choir performing at Fire Lotus Temple on this link. The Karenji Choir continues, albeit in different forms. For more on the Fire Lotus Temple and upcoming programs, see zmm.org Karenji Choir bus trip to ZMM in Mount Tremper, December 2023

May 26, 2019 At the close of our Spring 2019 ango training period, the sangha gathered for this Shuso Hossen ceremony, recognizing Seiryu Rayek as a senior student practitioner of the Mountains and Rivers Order. You can check out an interview with Seiryu from earlier in the ango via this link. Following the ceremony, those in attendance gathered for a group photo to mark the event.

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