The Teachings of our late Abbot, Sobun Katherine Thanas by Rev. Eugene Bush

We are just past the 10th year anniversary of Katherine’s passing are approaching our community event in her honor. On Sunday, July 24 from 2-4 pm,

Monterey Bay Zen Center is collaborating with us to host  a short ceremony, sharing of reflections on Katherine’s teachings, food and fellowship in person and on Zoom at SCZC

And on July 23rd we will do a half-day sit in the morning to reflect on the teachings of Sobun Thanas. 

I still find it difficult to speak of Katherine in the past tense even though I know, of course, that she is gone. However, there are many ways in which she continues to teach me. Now, at a time when our country is again in upheaval – How does one know what is right? How does one know what to do? – I am reminded of the many times Katherine encouraged us to look no further than our own practice.

The activity of walking meditation, kinhin, for example, is training in awareness of the position of the body in space and time in relation to others who are also walking. The instruction is to maintain equal distance and slow pace, carrying zazen mind into this movement, walking as one body. This is not unlike our current lives, maintaining social space in public places because of covid, alert to the presence of others beyond the concerns of the small self.

Katherine frequently, and with dignity and grace, engaged the rituals of temple life. Again, and again her posture, her pace, her movements pointed at what I now understand as, “this is what zazen mind looks like in activity,” helping the community to bridge the gap between the cushion and the more active facets of our lives. She said, as we read in her book The Truth of This Life:

Zen practice directs us to that quality of mind that simply observes – it is called not-knowing mind, the awake mind, the mind of readiness. At first we cultivate that mind in the meditation room, and then we bring it to each situation in our lives.