Article Added On: June 25, 2005 - over 3 years ago
Title: One step closer to nirvana
Author: MICHAEL VALPY
Publication: The Globe and Mail
Publication Date: January 01, 2005 - over 3 years ago
Faith Groups: Buddhist
Themes: religious attitudes in Canada

Abstract: High Park's Zen Centre gets its first Canadian abbot

Saturday, June 25, 2005

The newly installed abbot of the Toronto Zen Centre is sitting in an airy room of the community's west-end house. It is an agreeably handsome arts-and-craft building that used to be enveloped once a day in slaughterhouse smells until the nearby stockyards closed and the neighbourhood bloomed upmarket.

The abbot is talking about how Buddhism changes as it moves from country to country, and now from continent to continent, a complaint of purists who grumble that Buddhism practised in North America is not real Buddhism.

The abbot disagrees. "Always there is mutation," he says. "That is how it stays alive. . . . so long as the important teachings don't get changed or sullied."

Several minutes later, Taigen Henderson unwittingly underlines his point.

(Taigen is the name Mr. Henderson, 55, took when he was ordained a Buddhist priest. It means great tranquillity or great energy. Before that, he was Ian.) He is explaining the Buddhist teaching of "do nothing and leave nothing undone."

Because he is a house renovator -- here comes what might be called the Canadian mutation; few jobs are more Canadian than house renovator -- Mr. Henderson uses the analogy of opening up a wall.

Out working on a renovation project, he says, "I didn't want to tear anything down until I understood it. You learn to trust. The work itself tells you what needs to be done. It just reveals itself to you. That's the non-agenda.

"So you have no specific agenda, but everything you do, you do thoroughly."

Zen and the art of (Canadian) house renovation.

The Toronto Zen Centre, founded in 1968 and incorporated in 1971, is Canada's oldest centre for Zen practice. It marked a major milestone this month when Mr. Henderson, who helped found the centre, was installed as its first Canadian abbot and resident teacher to a community that, with children, numbers about 160 members. That makes Taigen Henderson something of a rarity -- there are only a handful of North American-born Zen Buddhist priests.

The installation was an elaborate, colourful ritual in which Mr. Henderson symbolically imprinted himself on the centre by going through each prayer and meditation room and reciting one of his own poems in front of each statue he encountered, stating what he thought the statue meant. Members of the community then peppered him with barbed philosophical questions as a symbolic test of his abilities.

"It was a kind of neat ceremony," he said. Before his installation, the centre had been directed by a priest and teacher from Vermont.

Zen is the Japanese name for the well-known branch of Mahayana Buddhism practised originally in China as Chan. Zen emphasizes the role of meditation (zazen) in pursuing enlightenment. It can be considered a religion, a philosophy or simply a practice. It also has been described as a way of life and of work, and an art form.

The priest or teacher is crucial to the community, because the Zen tradition emphasizes direct communication over scriptural study. Mr. Henderson's role is to teach the dharma (the essential nature of being), to guide adherents through meditation and to perform rituals.

Why does he do this?

He cannot say -- as a newly ordained Christian priest might say -- that he does it to become closer to Jesus or God in heaven. Buddhism doesn't have those sorts of supreme supernatural deities.

Taigen Henderson, who grew up a nominal Anglican and attended Port Hope's Anglican Trinity College School, says he wanted to be ordained because he found ordained Buddhist priests to be inspiring people, with their discipline and service to the community, and he himself wanted to give to the community. (His attraction to Buddhism began as an adolescent in Sri Lanka when he lived there briefly with his family -- his father was working on a Canadian-government foreign-aid contract -- and it never left him.)

"Through giving, you're one with others. You flow."

He described what he called the perfect job he once had: project manager on Streetcity, the inspired and innovative project created 15 years ago in an old Toronto warehouse to provide shelter for some of the hardest-to-house homeless.

"I really loved that kind of work," he said. "You're giving back with all the skills you've ever developed.

"In the East, the emphasis is on giving. In the West, people are hung up on wisdom; they all want to be enlightened."

Mr. Henderson said the Toronto Zen Centre's community is stable but can't be said to be growing.

"People come here, they may not even know why they're attracted. It could be for health. Or for calm in their lives. But we get a lot of people who just pass through. . . .

"It's a demanding practice in a material culture where you can't even take a Sunday off for spirituality."

The interior of the house, a one-time old people's residence across from High Park, is both immaculate and beautiful. The beautifully fashioned cherry wood prayer benches were made by a community member who was a skilled cabinetmaker. Mr. Henderson, of course, did the internal renovations.