With Dr. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author, visual artist, diviner, drummer and Zen Priest

Training Description

How do we access and walk with what we know in our bones? Each week we will learn to settle our hearts and minds with the purpose of unburying our innate wisdom for the benefit of your life and therefore all of humanity.

We will enhance our awareness by finding the breath, developing heart knowing, and listening to the dialogue of body sensations. Such awareness enables some of us to enter unexplored realms of existence beyond our physical world.  In other words we are learning how to use divination within our own lives.  We will learn how to turn down the volume of confusion and turn up the volume of our true voice.

Thirteen Mondays at 7 pm in Oakland California (tea will be served):

March 5, 12, 19, 26.

April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

May 7, 21, 28

June 3

Suggested Donation:  $20 per session

Limited to 12 participants per session

Address will be shared at time of registration.

Registration

It is best to register for the entire series however you may register for parts.  Please send an email to zenju.earthlyn.manuel@gmail.com with your full name and phone number and the dates for which you are registering.  A confirmation letter will be sent to you with further instructions.

Personal divination or readings with my divining cards the Black Angels are available.

(photo by Simbwala Schultz)

Often I am asked how do I integrate my work as a Zen Priest and my work as a diviner and holder of the Black Angel Cards.  I recognize it as a question that comes from the tendency to view things as separate.  It also comes from a curiosity of how one can embrace their whole life—every aspect.

First it is important to note that the Black Angel Cards, a deck of illustrated divination and healing cards that I brought through in 1996, came in a spiritual lucid dream during my first seven years of walking the path of Buddha’s teachings. As I walk the path of Buddha’s teachings the desire for healing intensified.  At the same time chanting and meditation, without reaching to accomplish anything, enhanced my awareness, developed a deeper heart knowing, and opened me to the dialogue of body sensations that signaled the arrival of profound wisdom from here and beyond the physical world.  The awareness enabled me to enter unexplored realms of existence that are unexplainable and meant to be so.  As the volume of confusion was turned down the volume of my true voice increased.

In February 1996 I had a lucid spiritual dream revealing that untouched place of suffering within and affirmed that not all of me had suffered at the hand of hate and harmful acts.  I was not completely wounded.  There was great light inside bursting through small openings.  The dream itself was an expression of that light– that fire.

The dream was about angels of which I had no particular interest.  The angels in the dream were healers delivering messages to me as I wallowed in a dangerous place of suffering. They were unlike any angels I had ever seen or heard of.  They were not the angels of a specific religion or tradition. They were not of this earth. They were free from intellectual meaning. They were dark, filled with light. They were a community of spirits, guiding light, in the darkness. They came from my dream world to awaken a dormant place within.  The dormancy had created an inability to connect to people and brought on feelings of wanting to end my life.  The dream brought healing waters to my fire and saved my life.  I shared the dream and the manifestation of the dream in the Black Angel cards with many around the world, including Trinidad, Brazil, Canada, England, and of course the United States.

Before the dream, without question or doubt of my actions I dug my feet into the earth of Buddha’s teachings while chanting and meditating.  I came to the temple to heal, not be calm or quiet.  In the temple, with my feet planted, I felt the root of all that I had suffered.  My feet remained buried next to those roots until the earth opened up into a canyon a million miles wide.

Today, I sit in that canyon with my gift to see clearly the present and the affects the past has had on it. The true opening of the eyes Buddha speaks of occurred in my life and continues.  With opened eyes, not the physical eyes but the ones you cannot see, I respond to requests for readings with the Black Angel Cards, which I refer to as divinations.  Divination goes further than a psychic reading in that in a divining session with me you are attuning to the nature of your life, to who you are.  You are coming aware of overlooked wounding.  I do not so much predict the outcome of earthly matters but help to create an understanding of suffering and how the earthly matters have come to be.  Your ancestors that attend the readings assist me.  I hear and see them, without my ears and eyes.  I assist and join many with crossing the bridge between the seen and the unseen worlds.  I help and join many with learning how to develop their own heart attunement to life and the world around them.  To tune into the wisdom and not the chaos, so that the chaos can be responded to in a state of well-being.

In divining I see the connection of human beings across generations, gender, race, etc.  I see our wounding and I am glad to be trained in using the breath to sit with such wounding.

In essence my work as a priest is as a diviner. I am neither Zen teacher nor guru. I am of the earth that feeds me.  I imagine that is the reason my mother named me Earthlyn, despite the fact that she had no idea of what to name me when I was born.  So, I left the hospital without a name.  Several days later she name me Earthlyn, without knowing where the name came from or the meaning of it.

When I received my vows as a priest I was given the name Ekai Zenju (Ocean of wisdom, Complete Tenderness).  I use Zenju (as instructed), meaning complete tenderness, because it is a name and essence I must work at.  A Zen teacher gave it to me because I was not tender and yet she saw that I was. As the tenderness became a divine work, my nature as a diviner has seasoned.

I trust that my relationship with my work in the world as diviner it is complete aligned with the ancient esoteric traditions of many Buddhist practices and Zen.  It is my personal path to sit in the Zen temple, where I wear robes, to continue cultivating integrity, tenderness, and purifying my heart-mind of confusion, and trusting that my work as a diviner will season because of it.

I bow to you and I stand with you.  May all that you have come to do on the earth unfold before your eyes.  If you would like to contact me send an email to zenju.earthlyn.manuel@gmail.com

By Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

May all beings be cared for and loved,

Be listened to, understood and acknowledged despite different views,

Be accepted for who they are in this moment,

Be afforded patience,

Be allowed to live without fear of having their lives taken away or their bodies violated.

May all beings,

Be well in its broadest sense,

Be fed,

Be clothed,

Be treated as if their life is precious,

Be held in the eyes of each other as family.

May all beings,

Be appreciated,

Feel welcomed anywhere on the planet,

Be freed from acts of hatred and desperation including war, poverty, slavery, and street crimes,

Live on the planet, housed and protected from harm,

Be given what is needed to live fully, without scarcity,

Enjoy life, living without fear of one another,

Be able to speak freely in a voice and mind of undeniable love.

May all beings,

Receive and share the gifts of life,

Be given time to rest, be still, and experience silence.

May all beings,

Be awake.

Many ask how do I enter into a silent meditation retreat.  Recently a friend ask such a question in regards to attending a silent retreat that would last one month at a retreat center. I thought to share my response for entering silence and perhaps encourage those who might want to attend such a retreat or create one a day of silence for themselves, even if it is a few hours in a day, an entire day, weekend, a week, or a month, do so with some guidelines.  The silence is to help create an alignment between our inner worlds and outer worlds, a sense of peace with ourselves, and a chance to allow life to unfold with our tampering with it.  Here are a few suggestions:

• A week to two weeks prior to the time of your retreat, go to bed early, rise early, sit, eat less (mostly green vegetables, brown rice, etc.), read less, less TV (news), less phone and email, reduce work and contact with others.  LESS…
• Walk more to move angst.  Drink tea.  Bathe more often.
• Refrain from any serious conversations or dialogues that need process that cannot be completed before your retreat.
• Let your friends know you are gifting yourself with silence and express gratitude for how they have supported you thus far in your journey of life ( you want them to feel you are taking them with you in your heart and that’s it is for them as well)
• If you are driving to the retreat or have to drive on the days of your silence, no music, no news, no conversation if possible.
• Put down all books your reading, projects you are working on, use your vacation days from your jobs, have someone sit with the children, etc.
• When your retreat starts take in each moment as the retreat.  Take in each hour, then each day instead of seeing your retreat as a day long, a weekend,  as a month with beginning and an end,.  No matter what relative time has been set it is a beginning of an infinite practice.
• See the retreat as an extension of the life you are living right now, as a continuum, no different, just one day breathing and seeing, walking, eating..then another day doing the same.  Seeing the mundane life as it is.  No distractions.
• Congratulate yourself for taking time out of your life to commit  to an act of love for yourself and therefore everyone around receives such love and light
• Carry an inner smile.  Laugh at the mind.
• Take a twenty minute break from your practice and express your deepest truth in a spiritual discussion with a spiritual companion or write it down until you can speak with someone who can provide appropriate guidance.  What are you afraid of?  What silences you?
• Look out into the open land, sky or ocean and see it as your life—vast, open, empty of clutter (an image you can carry inside you)
• Cry
• Breathe

May your life be filled with peace and rest in this journey of life.  No worries.

Reflections

No one or nothing can destroy your true spirit.  And yet there are events in our lives that make us feel that the light deep within has been blown out.  The possibilities of recovering may appear impossible. To heal we try on various paths not knowing that our true spirit has never left us.  The inner home we are born with remains intact just as the sun remains in the sky despite a tornado or hurricane.  In thunderstorms some of the sun’s warmth is temporarily blocked but not completely taken away.  If it were lost all together we would completely freeze to death on Earth.  We are like the sun.

Meditations

Today, I breathe in, I breathe out.  I know that the sun is above me even at times when I feel cold.  I recognize myself in the sun.  I breathe in the warmth that I am.  I breathe out knowing that my spirit is completely intact. Today is a good day to get reacquainted with myself, to say, “Hello, I thought I lost you.”  It is a good day to say, “I am here.”  I breathe in and I breathe out.

Greetings,

Here’s the quote for the week.  I am open to feedback.  Have a well week.

Reflection

How long have you contemplated the things that went wrong, the things that hurt you, or the times when you hurt someone else? There may be remorse, regret, shame, or embarrassment. And we may find ourselves walking around with our burden baskets. When our day is filled with twisting the thorns of our lives deeper into our hearts, we lose sight of the vast beauty of life.  We develop a habit of seeing the negative things of life as reality.  In such a state our resistance or struggle becomes a way of surviving our lives each day.  How is it going with such a life?

Meditation

Today, I breathe in being human.  I breathe out knowing that I do my best at easing suffering in my life and for those around me.  Today is a good day to lay down my burden basket.  I turn toward others and myself rather than against.  I wander past the battlegrounds toward an open field in which I can see beyond all that clouds my vision.  I breathe in, I breathe out.

Dear Ones,

Many morning reflections and meditations have been coming to me. I feel that upon awakening I am often filled with a renewed sense of life.  I would like to share them with you. Here’s one that you can sit with this week.  Use it each day and see if you can discovery something new about your who you are.  Have a well week.

Reflection

Perhaps we would not have accepted this life if we knew we would suffer.  However, an evolutionary force out of control has delivered us into a state of living. The same force will deliver us into our death.  So, each day is a chance to pursue the question: What is this life?  And then allow each moment to take place with this question in mind.  With such an inquiry life’s activities throughout the day can be met with an open heart.  Without having an idea that we know what is going to happen today we can see what is happening, explore it, examine it, laugh at it, revel in it or question it.  And if life is a journey of discovering our own hearts then every day is a good day.

Meditation

Today I breathe in my life as it is in this moment.  I breathe out knowing that there may be some challenges as I go into the world.  As I face the day, I say to myself, today is a good day to live.  I say to myself that I will do my best to blame no one or nothing.  I see that I am being given another chance to open my heart to my life.  I breathe in, I breathe out.

Beneath the shelter of the Bodhi tree, upon attaining full realization, the Buddha looked up, and saw the morning star. In that instant he recognized that he and the lone star were one. Light in darkness …

So the story goes. CNN wasnt there, but it’s a story we continue to tell, one of the sacred stories of winter. Whichever tradition, the story reminds us there’s more to life than the material realm. Our winter solstice stories seem to all tell of light, no matter whether flame light or star light, the inward light or the sacredness of light itself. In the telling, we are unburdened and feel lighter.

Our light continues In this pivotal time, in the swing of year’s seasons, winter brings us closest to the greatest mystery: life, and the renewal of life. It is a wonderful life, and is inextricably interwoven with the lives of other lives. Amazing. So, unlike spring, summer, or autumn, we exchange gifts. As Lewis Hyde clarifies so well in his classic study The Gift, the economy of gift culture predates that of commodities and consumers. (Why do we call this moment, this wonderful moment, the present? Because it’s a gift.)

Elsewhere, I’ve written this month about holiday shopping (What Would Buddha Buy?) On any To Do list, along with all the shopping, it’s good also to just stop and take stock. Through what darkness do we move? By what lights do we steer?

Consider our life myths, for example. What are the stories we’ve invested ourselves in, that we’ve banked on during the year. Are they hand-me-down, or home-made? Do they still fit? Are they in keeping with the times? With what light are we one? Does it glow, twinkle, brighten, blaze? What shadows lurk at its edges, making its illumination all the more cause for celebration, cherishing, and nurturing?

It’s good to look too beneath our tales — beyond both dark and light and the interplay of their dance of yin and yang — and appreciate the earth kissing our soles; the soil and grounding of our ego; and the winter light itself, in the sky and upon our naked faces. To omit such essential valuables from our list is to risk remaining a very small package indeed, bound up and wound up in small self, trying to be happy by resolving our past and plotting out our future and never noticing the gift so abundantly and immediately at our feet.

Q: What does a Buddhist blogger say to the Christmas shopper?

A: Be the present.

Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s new book,

After reading Tell Me Something about Buddhism, I wanted Manuel to tell me a little more about her life and practice. Read on for excerpts from our recent email exchange.

How did you come to Buddhism? I was introduced to Nichiren (Soka Gakkai International) when I was eleven years old at a shopping strip in Los Angeles. I remember being fascinated as I was dragged away by my Christian mother. Later the Soka Gakkai practice was introduced to me several times by friends throughout my young adulthood. However, at the time there was an inner pull from Christianity toward the African Yoruba spiritual tradition with a transplanted tribe from Dahomey (in modern Benin.) The tribe returned to Africa, begging me to join them, but I stayed knowing the call to that tradition was bound to resurface—but that is another story. Soon after moving to San Francisco, I was invited to dinner with two friends who had been practicing Buddhism but we first had to go to their Soka Gakkai meeting. After that meeting I began reading Buddha’s teachings and realized just how hungry I was. Finally, I heard what I had felt in my bones all my life—that everyone and everything is interrelated. I knew this but couldn’t understand why others didn’t, given my experience with discrimination and hatred in the U.S. I remained with Soka Gakkai for 15 years, learning how to face the wounds that had piled up at my feet throughout my life.

Why the move from Nichiren to Soto Zen? First I would like to say that the many teachings that have come to me, I carry to the next teaching. So, inside myself Nichiren still is in my cells. I did not move away from it. I still find myself chanting the the title of the Lotus Sutra (as a mantra) when I am in a tight negative situation. Which leads me to the reason I might have taken another path of Dharma. I found the Nichiren tradition as an excellent practice of concentration and learning how to participate wholeheartedly in Sangha. I also learned how to be a teacher in Nichiren as it is important in that tradition to raise leaders starting from the young ones to the old ones. However, I needed a different understanding about suffering so that I would not have to constantly chant but that I would begin to transform the suffering. I believe that can happen in Nichiren but I could not find my way to such change.

One day while doing silent walking meditation in a Zen Center, I realized that I had changed paths. It was seamless. It was time for me to be silent. I had learned how to deal with those tight negative external situations in Nichiren and needed to learn more about my own mind and heart. Even though I was a teacher in Soka Gakkai, I felt called to priesthood and that path was not available to me there. I also felt called to be a minister but the Church of Christ did not allow women to preach. With deeper and deeper spiritual aspiration, I went back to my Nichiren community and announced that I would be following another path. I would have liked to stay with my Dharma family there, but I felt there wasn’t any room for me to combine the two.

Leaving my first Buddhist home was difficult. I had no idea about Zen and knew no one who had practiced it. That was probably a good thing because I began as a baby in a new world, discovering new ways of walking Buddha’s path. I tend to do best in new situations when I have not figured it all out. Eventually, I was able to take the interpretations of Buddha’s teachings by Nichiren and combine them with that of Eihei Dogen’s (Zen) interpretations of the teachings. Therefore, I have a unique way of seeing how the Buddha’s path of liberation affects life from both a chanting and devotional place and from a meditative absorption of life.

How has being a black woman informed your understanding of Buddhist teachings? Buddhist practice is a lived experience for everyone. However, living in a dark female body in this country means the life material for understanding the teachings is constantly in my face. The insurmountable oppression, discrimination, and hatred directed at dark people comprise a thick workbook for Buddha’s teachings. When I walk out my door, it is guaranteed that someone or something will let me know that my dark skin is not good enough or let me know that I am not welcome. All I have to do is look at a billboard, be followed around in the store, or have the clerk smile to everyone but me. So, every moment the depth of my practice as a black woman in the Dharma is one that requires deep-sea diving and unbroken awareness. My understanding of the Dharma comes in living color, so to speak. As a black woman I can see and experience things others may not, which in turn gives me a 24/7 practice of compassion. I have no time to waste, protest, yell back, or play games. And it is exhausting to act out when I feel wronged. So, with Buddha’s teachings I understood that I could change my response to the human condition. I ask each day, how do I walk as vulnerable and as soft as I feel without looking over my shoulder? I walk with what I know to be true if I am awakened to the true nature of my own life. This is my face. I walk with it. That is how I understand the teachings from the body in which I was born.

You’ve said that practicing Buddhism has felt like separating yourself from your Christian upbringing and from other black people. Why was it worth it? How do your friends and family feel about it now? First let me clarify that no one from my family, friends, or those from the church I was raised in blatantly turned away from me because of my taking on a different religious practice. Most of what I felt was an internal process of transformation. I had a grip on what I knew religious life to be in the Church of Christ and I was moving away from it. Church was the place folks who migrated from the Southern region of the U.S. came to find their relatives, their home, their tribe. I was part of that tribe. It was a place I was born, grew up being loved by this one and that. So, leaving the people, the collective prayer, the songs, the communion, the knowing of Christ’s teachings as the way we survived as black people, was difficult. I was leaving home, following a call for something that spoke of freedom in the truest sense—not just freedom from poverty and injustice, but freedom within my heart.

In the end, I did not leave black people. I found us along many different paths once I came down those church steps into the world. We were everywhere. And yes, even when I stepped onto Buddha’s path there were many black people. However, in Zen the numbers were small or non-existent. And this is where I questioned my being a part of a mostly white Sangha. Why was it worth it? I can say that I have walked the hot coals of oppression in the white Sangha and survived. I can teach others how to survive by my being in the pit of our ignorance of each other. At the same time, I was astonished by the love I received in this Sangha that was entirely different than my black church. Even the people of color had different values than the ones I was raised with. So, culture clash was happening all around me. And in this clash I learned. I was no longer ignorant of my interrelationship with everyone, even if there was pain in our being together. I learned that I did not know how to love because my energy was taken up with who and what I hated. Yes, it was worth it to gain a few giant steps toward complete liberation. And I hope to wear my robes one day into my home church and do what I had dreamed of as a child—preach in the pulpit.

Tell me about the tension between “feeling African and being buddha.” How can Buddhist communities best honor multiculturalism and express the universality of the Buddha’s teachings?When I was taught Buddha’s Two Truths, I heard the choir sing hallelujah. There are two basic truths in regards to the nature of life—the relative and the absolute. These teachings are vast, but briefly, the relative is that which you can sense about life—what you see, taste, smell, etc. While the absolute nature of life goes beyond those senses, seeing into the true nature that we cannot touch or see. So, the tension between the two is inherent in our existence. We can find ourselves holding to the relative and not the absolute or visa versa. When I can be African or descended from Africans and be awakened to life, be buddha within my darkness, the tension dissolves. With Buddha’s teachings of the Two Truths, I returned to that expansive way of seeing myself before I was told that I could not go to a particular place because I was black. I returned to that original moment when I was born free from the hatred placed on darkness and on dark things and dark people.

As far as Buddhist communities honoring multiculturalism, I wonder how many white Buddhists are asked this question. When white Buddhists are asked this question as much as those of color, then we began to see the wheel of Dharma turning in a forward motion. We often want to look back and see what we haven’t done rather than look forward and change what we are doing. I feel it is crucial to support other kinds of Buddhist communities that will be created by folks from different cultures. Instead of re-shaping what has already been done, allow for something new to be constructed and not worry about whether it is too far from the root or not. We have already gone a long ways from Buddha’s days. If new relations look and sound different, existing western Buddhist communities must be willing to open to that difference rather than saying, “This is how we do it.” If not, what is different will disappear and what is left is the same. And perhaps keeping a particular sameness is the intention. If so, then that must be acknowledged and the quest for diversity set aside. I say this knowing there are many who will not want to or not able to honestly assimilate into the current western Buddhist communities and therefore the practice must take shape again and again for the people, the time, and the place.

Why do you like to think of the Buddha’s enlightenment as a “vision quest”? I like to think of Buddha’s enlightenment journey as a vision quest because it connects his teachings to the earth. It brings Buddhism back to its origins as an indigenous earth-based wisdom tradition. In the re-shaping of the path for U.S. culture, I feel there are many who like to distinguish Buddhism from pagan practices, from Shamanism, or spirit work. Yet, all that Buddha did on his journey was done in the forest, not in a Buddhist center. He sat in the dark, upon the roots of various trees, and listened to his heart, seeking answers from nature. This is exactly what one does on a vision quest, which is a practice in many indigenous spiritual practices.

Personally, holding Buddha’s enlightenment journey in this way allows me to integrate a sense of spirit as part of the path. It allows me to include what has been suppressed or taken out of many westernized Buddhist practices in this country. Recently, I watched a film called The Oracle by David Cherniack, where the Dalai Lama consults with other worldly spirits. It is an important “coming out” so to speak for the Tibetan tradition and Buddhism as well. In the title of the film Cherniack refers to the Oracle as a 400-year-old secret; but it is not a secret to those who have always held the sense of spirit pervading all. Buddha taught that everyone and everything is interrelated. We cannot leave out anything or make one kind of spiritual consciousness superior and the other inferior. I am so sensitized to that teaching, again, because of how I am embodied.

Finally, African spiritual traditions have existed 8,000 to 10,000 years and I do feel that because of such longevity other spiritualities, religions, or philosophies have been influenced by ancient traditions. Buddhism is not exempt.

What is the purpose of the Sangha on the Buddhist path? In Sangha, everyone has come together with an expressed willingness to deal with their suffering and its impact on others. There is an expectation that all will be good in the land of meditation. We expect the ground beneath Sangha to be stable and strong when, in truth, we are together in the confusion and challenge of living awake. One day, things are one way, and the next a relationship has changed. You feel you’ve made a mistake, and you begin to blame your discomfort on the forms, the Sangha members, or the teachers. Even though all experiences are valid, they still need investigation. This investigation can be carried out in the midst of the troubled souls, the Sangha, you have chosen to commune with. You could leave and find another community, but what happens for you when the earth begins to shake beneath the new Sangha in the same way as it did underneath the Sangha you left?

Many who take on the practice decide to practice alone. Perhaps their workplace, family, or other communities serve as Sangha. However, the difficulty with such Sangha is that the path of awakening can be unclear, or there may be no conscientious effort on the part of others to walk a path of awakening with you. You may not have the support you need to follow the teachings you have embraced.

In Sangha based on the teachings, you are reminded that you are not alone on the journey. At the same time, I have felt alone in Sangha. I have felt different than the others, and many times this difference stood out in a way that was uncomfortable. Then it was time for me to remember that everyone’s path is different. There is no one with exactly the same path as my own. So how do I respond to the uncomfortable situations?

Our Sangha friends are there to assist us by reflecting back to us the ways in which we respond to the events of life. This reflection doesn’t mean that these friends are to sit in judgment of our actions or inform us of any wrongdoings. The reflection is silent. It is in the way we see ourselves in each other. When a friend falters or experiences discomfort, we, in turn, are there to witness the faltering and the discomfort, sensing the familiarity of their situation in our own life. When a Sangha member is happy, we see the joy in our own lives.

Many have said to me that they do not need Sangha. My response has been, “Then where will you go when you begin to experience liberation? Who will know the journey you have taken and your vow to be awake?”

No one or nothing can take away my dreams,
There is no amount of money that can purchase them for me,
No amount of education that can create them,
No enemy that can walk up and rob me of them,
There is no legislation that can guarantee them for me.
No one or nothing can take away my dreams,
I need only be clear of what my dreams are,
Release the fear that holds me back from myself,
that keeps me from giving.
And then understand that the dream requires that I wake up
And do it.