Our Ancestors
Zen teachers Soen Nakagawa in Japan and Nyogen Senzaki in California developed a decades-long friendship in the 1930’s, which ultimately led to the building of Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, our root monastery. Unable to meet in person, they agreed to connect spiritually on the 21st of each month, practicing zazen and chanting together across the ocean.
In honor of their friendship, our lineage, and all ancestors who shared this Dharma, Mandala Day is celebrated on the Sunday closest to the 21st day of the month by the Zen Studies Society, both at Dai Bosatsu Zendo and Shobo-ji, the New York City Zen Center.
Shiun Valerie Foote was a resident at Dai Bosatsu and shares this poem:
Mandala Day Prayers
Four a.m., the bell clamors, echoing down the halls.
Woken from sleep, a collective groan goes up.
In the darkness I scurry to morning service.
As gongs ring and incense burns,
I settle down on my cushion like a mother hen on her nest.
The Roshi glides into the Dharma Hall, as if on a cloud
My eyes cast down, he is a dragonfly in his brocade robes,
winged and iridescent.
Droning, chanting, going deep inside oneself
Kanzeon, Namu Butsu…
Yet it is the natural world that awakens me:
It is Mandala Day, a morning of chanting at all the sacred places,
ending through the tunnel of trees and the open meadows
at the graveyard.
Silently we melt down halls, single file, through rooms, to altars.
But today the rain keeps us in.
Alighting at the huge windows,
with reverence and palms together, we sing our sacred words.
The rain falls softly onto the stillness of the lake
weaving a delicate lace of ripples.
Each raindrop unique, individual.
Each raindrop a soul,
returning to its source.
Alone for a lifetime/ then back to the whole!
Ah…., I see!, /and in joy, I weep.
– Shiun Valerie Foote
