Mushin’s Journey
On Saturday morning, in the brown building nestled in the woods, part of church grounds that resembled a summer camp, the screen door swung wide, emitting a woman talking with her companion. The words “Dharma Bum Temple” caught me flatfooted. Oh my, I thought. That might be a place for me. An old bohemian at heart, I’ve lived my version of some of Kerouac’s work. A Buddhist take on recovery? Hmmm…
This week I’d crawled into my first AA meeting after surrender. Alcohol ended February 9, 2015. Following six weeks of hospitalization, I leaned on a walker and stepped into my first home group. Another turned to me and offered, “Talk to me at the close of the meeting.” She, a great first responder in the service of recovery, said, “Oh, yes, I’ve been there. I’ll take you tomorrow.”
I had always been familiar with meditation. An off-and-on spiritual seeker since my late teens, then a drama major, a lot of acting, directing, teaching, many variations on yoga and other meditations, as well as physical exercises, filled my adult years. My first entry into Dharma Bum Temple, where I would much later meet my teacher, Shinzan—I just managed to climb the steep, challenging, winding stairs to their second-floor zendo. I settled in, feeling the collective energy of a room full of people joining in the same spiritual purpose. My heart filled with the warmth of collective energy. I “resonated” perfectly with the meeting of Buddha and 12 Steps.
A year of 12 Steps saved my life, in a powerful home group. The aforementioned great first responder became my sponsor. Within a yearlong plethora of activities and various meetings, she drove me to return to the Dharma Bums a handful of times. Amid the AA tradition of insistence on a very Christian spirituality, the “God of my understanding” was the Buddha in me. Where they prayed freely, my comfort was in meditation.
It is remarkable how the body recovers. Following my diligent Step work examining the self and turning things around, in half a year I purchased a bicycle. At the one-year mark, I was more mobile, now able to get myself around on it and public transport. Shinzan often remarks on my journeys through 40 minutes of bicycle, a trolley ride, then another bike ride to get to the Buddhism & 12-step meetings at the temple, a good three-plus-hour round trip. While he points to my, what …dedication? A skillful version of desire? I don’t know. I need to reveal that the journey got me away from my abode in a just fairly above savage board-and-care house. Ah, freedom! It went further in resurrection. Now, 10 years later, I still ride, now more for exercise than transport necessity, developing my strength and maintaining mind-body health.
I saw, on the temple site, a photo and introduction of a newly arrived Zen priest in residence. Shinzan looked like a southwestern Buddha, enrobed and embodying a strong yet friendly stillness. Soon, I ran into him at the kitchen table, just casually chatting with one of the regular folk there. His easy openness belies the depth of his experience, knowledge, and wisdom.
Shinzan regularly observed the recovery sangha meetings, and gradually our conversations opened the door to more exclusively Buddhist practice. He invited me to check out the intro class, then I segued into a first half day of silence. That felt comfortable and fulfilling, giving me a touch of the possibilities available when looking inward in this way. “I had arrived; I [was] home.” In a short few months of regular attendance, the opportunity for a first weekend silent retreat showed up. As it approached, I suddenly got smacked by a crisis at home. My board-and-care home was thrown into turmoil by a conflict between our managing woman and her landlord. She had collected our rent and not paid him. I stood in the middle. Earlier she had offered me, as I had become more healthy and able to assume responsibility, a position as communication liaison. This Friday night, amid the turmoil, fears, and anger of all they asked of me, I packed my bedroll and a few items to spend the weekend breathing. Along the way, more storms, lightning bolts revealed severely in my chirping phone. I had to pause at the train station and absorb the tornados. Throughout the weekend, volcanic heat pranced around in my head. I did my best to quiet down and focus on the practice. I counted my breaths deep in the troubled nights. Soon, and feeling too soon, mid-Sunday, we concluded. Opening the door, heading out into the bright urban sky, I kicked off my bike to head home. Monday morning followed my sojourn, where I had determinedly avoided seeking solutions, returning again and again to my assignment to focus on breathing only. Lo and behold, I had a newfound ability to look it all over, witness each element, and act the serenity prayer. I saw clear next steps I could take with a comparatively level head. We then went all the way through escaping that house while an eviction procedure gathered around it. I have had other experiences when sudden jolts, or various exigencies of life, weighed as I entered retreats, sesshins, practice periods. Many ironed out; I’ve found so much clarity.
Soon came another opportunity, that of Council. This is a powerful practice passed to Joan Halifax, our teacher’s teacher, by Native Americans who welcomed her curiosity. They urged her to keep it alive and adapt it into our Zen modes. We spend so much time in silence, then return to our lives in our respective homes. In this ceremony, we speak from, and are listened to with, whole hearts. Listening was the skill I had destroyed in the depths of my addictive self-destruction. This council, the first of over a hundred now, opened a great door. As we concluded that day, I ventured out into the downtown streets. My gaze angled upward. Now, moment to moment, I, fully present, saw details in the architecture and colors deeply vivid. Vibrant gleamings surrounded me and lingered throughout my journey home.
Shinzan always reassured me in progressing at my own pace. Eventually, I sat with him and asked the important question. He responded that, gladly, as my teacher, he would meet me in kind. If I want to do 25%, 50%, or go all in, “I will meet you there.” He and I have traveled through my becoming “all-in.” Over this decade, it’s daunting to try to measure all this practice has done to me. When we reach for it, it eludes us. It is so subtle. It advances silently “on cat feet,” taps one on the shoulder, saying, “Look at you now…”
At one point I asked Shinzan, “What’s next?” He pointed to a systematic study of the Precepts, the ethical training of our Buddha nature. He invited me, if I preferred, first to learn about them without taking up projects and doing Jukai, the formal ceremony wherein one declares publicly, “I am a Buddhist.” I watched three colleagues this first year; then it was time for ours. Anzan and I declared our brotherhood this day, one of beautiful, solemn, yet light and loving ceremony. With Shinzan’s example, there’s a feeling of becoming a step more humble, open to serve all.
Now ten years have evolved. Shinzan and our sangha moved from Dharma Bums to dear Mark Gun/Koi’s home in Carlsbad, then to the other venue Daio facilitated, and then landed in a shared relationship at Sweetwater Zen Center. Finally, we found a perfect, lovely home, provided by Paula Jisen and her husband Mike Daiko, just a mile and a half south here now in Chula Vista. Surviving the pandemic, a core sangha was maintained by a few of us, including Joren, Shinzan’s first student from his origins in Upaya, Joan Halifax’s Zen Center in New Mexico.
We grow incrementally. It is such a privilege to grow a sangha from where and when planted, ground up. More and more devotees have taken the Precepts in Jukai, building a strong, careful, loving Dharma family. Among the best of all Shinzan has to offer are the people he attracts. The Open Gate Zen Collective is truly so. Gathering here are several of the most remarkable, extraordinary folks I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. I thrive with a fathomless depth of gratitude.
Blair Mushin Whitcomb, May 9, 2026
