A Particular Kind of Joy
Photo by Moon Bhuyan
What is it like to grow and grow into who you’ve always been? Drawing on the evolution of Ocean Mind Sangha, as well as an investigation of joy as an emotion that includes both terror and delight, Zuisei encourages us to be surprised by our lives—so we can be kind and fiercely awake.
This talk includes the Shuso Installation Ceremony of our second shuso (chief disciple), Alexandra Komyo Brown.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
A Particular Kind of Joy
Tonight I’d like to begin with a Shuso Installation Ceremony. In a Zen sangha, a shuso is a junior student who is ready, because of their practice and personal development, to become a senior. But that’s not actually the best way to describe what a shuso is. A shuso is a chief disciple, as the Japanese term says. They’re a chief student, a learner par excellence. A shuso is a bodhisattva who’s not afraid to say, I don’t know. Who’s not afraid to try and fail and try and fail and try again—because how else are they going to grow and become who they’ve always been.
Shuso: Chief Disciple
So, to think that becoming shuso is somehow a badge of honor is looking at the whole thing backward. It’s not an honor to become shuso—it’s an imperative, a responsibility. It’s acknowledgment of how challenging it is to travel this path alone, and to then set forth the commitment to help others by traveling alongside them. The question uppermost in a shuso’s mind should always be “How do I serve?” Their commitment to step forward and do it That’s it. Everything else is static. Now, a shuso installation ceremony traditionally happens at the beginning of ango, an intensive period of training in which the entire sangha is faced with themselves, their practice, their aspiration to wake up, and their wish to do so. And what this requires is to be completely real, completely uncontrived—as my friend Kim Allen calls her own sangha and practice.
In many Zen monasteries, angos usually last three months. Ours last a month each in the spring and fall. And as some of you may recall, last year we were still doing our winter ango in January, but because of weather and COVID, we decided that it would be better for us to move it to the spring, and so we did our first April ango, and then moved the summer one to fall in October, each of these concluding with an in-person sesshin or silent retreat. Given this change of schedule, Ryusan, our first shuso, had the opportunity to do this training for ten months instead of six, as I’d originally envisioned, and I liked that. It gave me more time to work with him, and he could grow into his role with the sangha over a longer period of time. Again, traditionally the shuso is in residency at a monastery or temple for the duration of ango—full-time if they’re a monk, or as much as they’re able if they’re a lay student—so they get a lot of intensive training and a lot of contact with the teacher and the sangha and the various practices they’re learning to do. This is not the case for us, given our online training, so as I was looking back at last year and at the threshold of this new year, I thought it would be good to still have a longer term for the shuso, and as a sangha, a stronger beginning to our year. That’s also why I wanted to start with Fusatsu, our renewal of vows on New Year’s day. That’s why we have a January sesshin (this coming weekend)—so we’re all beginning the year with our vows in mind.
Maybe you’ve done this already, but if you haven’t, I strongly encourage you to formulate this year’s vow—the particular focus you want to have for your practice, the area you want to work on and really devote your energy to. And then, find ways to remind yourself of that vow and keep it alive. So the same thing doesn’t happen that happens with New Year resolutions—the first two weeks of January everyone is going strong. Just outside my apartment, the beltway is now packed with people running in the mornings and evenings. But as the weeks wear on, fewer people come out. It’s hot, it’s humid, it’s festival season which means staying up late. It’s beach weather so why not do that instead? A resolution is a “firm decision,” but most resolutions tend to get shaky over time, they begin to show cracks. The thing about practice—Zen practice, spiritual practice—is we’re in it for the long haul. So, a big part of the work is to keep looking for ways to remember to do what we’ve said we want to do—and to find ways to want to do what we’ve said. To have our choices match our enthusiasm.
So this year I’ve asked Komyo to be the shuso for Ocean Mind Sangha. The name Komyo means “bright light”—it’s the light that shows things as they are. It’s not flashy; it’s not dazzling, it’s simple and unadorned. And being light, it’s self illuminating, and it’s other illuminating. It reveals itself, and it casts light on those around it, until everything is illuminated. That’s Komyo’s work: to be who she is, and by doing that, let everyone else be who they are.
Shusho Installation Ceremony
[Zuisei offers incense] Everyone please Gassho. [Sangha bows in Gassho] Let it be known that Alexandra Komyo Brown will lead this 2025 practice period. [clap clap]
[Komyo]
I come here realizing the question of life and death is a vital matter.
I dedicate myself to wholeheartedly practicing this year 2025 in the Ocean Mind Sangha.
I understand my commitment to myself and to the sangha, and assume full responsibility for observing it.
Please guide me in my practice.
Komyo will do three full bows to the three Treasures. Please return her last bow with a seated bow, then unmute yourselves and briefly and together offer her your congratulations.
[Komyo as shusho does three full bows to The Three Treasures (facing sangha). Sangha bows to shusho once on the third bow and offers congratulations. Shuso expresses humility to the teacher in her own words. Shuso does three full bows to the teacher. Zuisei bows on the third bow. Zuisei offers incense.]
[Komyo to Zuisei:] “May your days go well.”
I have now figured out how to mark someone becoming shuso in our sangha. We don’t wear robes, so the shuso can’t exchange their student’s robe for the white lay robe that was said to be used by Vimalakirti who, according to the sutras, was a lay practitioner as enlightened as the Buddha himself. Since we don’t have robes, I had to come up with another way to mark a person’s entry into shuso’s training, and I will take care of that for both Komyo and Ryusan when I see you in person in the spring. For now, you’ll carry your fledgling seniority as you would carry it anyway, Komyo: lightly and without trace. May you travel well.
[All bow] We’ve completed this Shuso Installation Ceremony. [Clap, Clap!]
Conditions for Practice
Someone said to me recently that they felt a little unsure about coming on Wednesday nights, because whereas before they could drop in and listen to a talk or discussion, now when they came they sometimes find themselves in the midst of a sangha discussion, or a brainstorming session about changes we’re thinking of implementing, ideas we’d like to enact, and given this, they feel a bit outside of this increasingly cohesive group. What am I doing here? they wondered. Do I belong? I understood what they were saying, and while I assured them that everyone is welcome here at any time, I also acknowledged that we’re at a very particular point in our development. We are indeed becoming more and more cohesive, and confident of our particular expression of practice, and nicely growing within it. And all of this creates a container that, if you haven’t been attending regularly, particularly on Wednesday evenings, might make you feel a bit outside.
That’s not our intent, of course. We want everyone to join who’d like to join. And, we also need to move through this period, clarifying our structure and governance and making things tighter and cleaner and a bit more organized, so our expression and practice of the dharma is as strong and rooted as we can make it. So please, bear with us as we do this. I promise that on the other side there’s nothing but good news. And I hope you’ll also see that all of it is dharma. All of it has at its core the purpose it’s always had: our individual and collective liberation. You’ve heard me say that the mind that makes spreadsheets is not the mind that realizes itself. And that’s true in one sense, but it’s also not a different mind. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with spreadsheets lately and I know they’re necessary, at least in part, to keep creating the right conditions for practice.
A sacred space still needs to be cleaned, and the lights paid for so they can stay on, and the people who care for it kept fed and basically cared for. That’s true also of a virtual space, which is still created by all of us and all the many resources that make it possible for us to come together. And so, we continue to shape and refine the container that is the Ocean Mind Sangha, so people can do what people who practice have always done: wake up to who they are.
Going Further
Last week I mentioned that I’d decided to begin the process of turning Ocean Mind Sangha into a non-profit organization, which will give us a number of benefits and offer a structural and legal stability we haven’t had until now. I’d thought about this in the past, and every time it came up, I shot it down in my own mind. I thought it’d be a lot of administrative work—it is—and I’d have to do it all—I don’t—and I didn’t feel ready for the meetings and oversight and reports and all the things we’d have to do to keep that wheel rolling. Then I gave a talk on how we forget we’re each the whole ocean, thinking instead we’re individual, separate waves. And at one point I said something like, “Sometimes we choose to stay small, because it’s safer.” And I heard the words come out of my mouth, and thought Oh. Mmmmh.
And still, I pushed the thought down—it’s too much work. Then I went to visit my family and I saw how swiftly time passes. We get older and then it really does get harder to do things. And I thought, There’s still time—I hope—and energy enough, so stop prevaricating. Since when have you not done something because it’s going to take work? So I started to ask some of you if you’ll serve on a board, and some of you if you’ll serve on a committee. (If I haven’t asked you, it’s because I haven’t gotten to it yet, or I’m unsure about what kind of work you’d like to do, or you’re just becoming a student and I’m giving you time to settle in—but if you’d like to do something, please let me know.)
I’m also arranging the accounts so that they’re clean and separate from my own expenses, and I’m thinking about how to describe in writing what we do as a sangha—specifically, in this new way of training we’ve devised over time. There’s a bit to do, and we’ll do it, little by little, with attention and love. Not because we must, but because we want to. Because we choose to fill our lives with this particular kind of joy. As a text I got from the company that delivers my water said—for the teachings really are everywhere—“Happiness isn’t doing what you like; it’s liking what you do.” So I look forward to hearing your ideas and seeing the things that the various committees put together. I’m looking forward to being surprised—maybe even astonished—by this year and everything we’ll do in it. There’s nothing I like more than thinking I can only go so far, and then discovering I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The Joy of Zen
I was reading an essay on joy the other day. I was reading one essay, that led to another, that led to another. And in one of these essays, the writer Zadie Smith was arguing that joy has less of pleasure in it and more of terror—terror mixed with pain and with delight. The delight of looking at your own child, for example, mixed with the possibility of losing that same child, which you know would undo you completely. That’s joy, she said. It seems almost like a Zen koan, doesn’t it? That joy is made of the marriage of delight and terror. And not only that—that it’s those intolerable aspects of life, all those small and large things we find unbearable, that delight is made possible. What she said, in summary, is that the intolerable includes that which makes life worthwhile.
…if you don’t know, really don’t know anything, then what is there to doubt?
Think about it, though. Maybe it’s not so crazy to say that deep joy is an emotion less like happiness and more like awe—which also contains in it terror, and wonder, and a kind of ignorance. You become astonished by something you didn’t see coming. Or by something you thought you knew, but see, on closer inspection, you don’t really know at all. Like the breath, like your mind. Like this perfect, beautiful, incredible body that has carried you so faithfully all throughout your life. Like this beautiful, wild thing we call living—the thing we don’t really know at all, but are trying so hard to understand. I think therefore joy also has its share of not knowing. Which means openness, spaciousness. It’s not the not knowing of self doubt, which is small and constricting, like being stuck in a windowless room. Ironically, when you really don’t know, you can’t doubt—because doubt relies on knowledge, incomplete knowledge. Some part of you thinks you know what’s going on and assumes you’re not up to the task—whatever the task is. Seeing a koan, taking the precepts, becoming shuso, just getting through today. But if you don’t know, really don’t know anything, then what is there to doubt?
That’s what I want for you this year. That you be able to hold yourself in that place of not knowing with loving patience. Standing on the bank of the pond that is your mind, that you be able to watch the water calmly, patiently, trusting that when the time is right, you’ll see what you have to see, and then you’ll act—maybe not even necessarily in that order. What I want to say to you is, let yourself be surprised by the coming days. Be respectful of what you don’t know, even a little afraid—like someone facing a vast ocean. But don’t let that fear stop you. On the contrary—let it astonish you into action, into movement. And offer all the good and all the challenge of what you might find so that others can do the same thing you’re doing: Which is nothing other than living, kindly and fiercely awake.
Explore further
01 : Eight Realizations of Great Beings (V): Listen to Bring Joy with Zuisei Goddard
02 : Awash with Joy with Zuisei Goddard
03 : What Is a Sacred Space and How do I Create One? by Zuisei Goddard
A Particular Kind of Joy, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard on the joy of Zen—delight, terror, and a kind of ignorance included.