It's A Connection to Pure Spirit.
Daijo Scott Duffer
Daijo Scott Duffer is full-on in training with Shining Bright Lotus Meditation Society. He serves as our Shuso - head student. He will be ordained as a priest with Dragon Heart Dharma. He’s working through Mondo Zen Facilitation. He serves as a guide in the Condor Clan leading Condor Vision Quests and he has been a long time member of the ManKind Project. I caught up with Daijo before his work day at Cal State University, Channel Islands, where he teaches in the science department.
Ekai: I’m here with Daijo Scott Duffer, a member of Shining Bright Lotus and currently training for ordination with Fugen Roshi at Dragon Heart Dharma this fall. Daijo is our Shuso, head student, we’ll be honoring in a Shuso ceremony June 28th, online. Welcome, Daijo.
Daijo: Thank you, Ekai. Good to be here with you.
Ekai: Tell us how you got into meditation.
Daijo: Well, it started through a 12-step program that I had been involved with for many years. When it came to the 11th step, which is prayer and meditation, I realized I'd done a lot of prayer, but the meditation portion, I didn't really know I was. So I started taking some classes through UCLA at the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center. I started taking mindfulness classes and attending retreats. Then there was a Buddhist group in 1,000 Oaks, which is near where I live, in which I started jumping in on the lunchtime meditations and building community there.
Ten years after my initial MKP weekend where I had met Fugen Roshi, I got in touch with him, and he invited me to the Hollow Bones retreats the two of you were hosting. Fugen Roshi had facilitated my first warrior weekend carpet work. He sat with me at the end like a great Bodhisattva. He was the full leader on that retreat. At the end, when we had our feast, he sat down with me, and we talked. I hadn’t seen him for 10 years, I just happened to find the staff list, gave him a call to just thank him, and he said, “by the way, I'm involved with this Zen stuff. Would you like to attend?”
Ekai: I met you at that retreat. We were online at that point during the pandemic. Yes, Fugen Roshi and I were all at Hollow Bones then. What attracted you to Jun Po Roshi’s Mondo Zen material?
Daijo: Well, before that I had seen the offerings listed through the MKP website, and I had people that I sat with in my I-group who talked about Jun Po Roshi. One guy, who was an interesting and different character, went through the weekend himself, and I saw this transformation. Wow. I was like, okay. So that was also pushing me that way. When I was able to attend it myself, I knew there was something here. Then I joined the Cyber Sangha, the ongoing training that used to be offered.
Ekai: It must have felt like the right path because you're still on it. You did Jukai with Fugen Roshi at our annual retreat, Gently Sitting like a Stone, and then you continued on into the priest ordination program. How did that decision come about? To really want to take your seat as a priest?
Daijo: Slowly over time. Being involved with the sangha and all the tools that have been presented, getting to know each other from Qi Gong to meditations, all the different aspects. When I chose to enter the stream, it was in a beautiful spot right there at the All Nations Gathering Center. I had been involved with native spirituality, specifically Lakota sweat lodge, many years ago. That was a spiritual path for me as well. So it just felt so right to just do it there. And so it was the combination of entering the stream there with Zen and the native path. After that, having the connection with you and Fugen Roshi, when you reached out, it was like, “Okay, I'll continue this path. I want to serve others. I want to alleviate suffering, be there for others, show up in the world in a good way.”
Ekai: What you're talking about is our annual retreat at All Nations Gathering Center hosted by Koto Washi Dallas Chief Eagle. You’ll be back there for the ordination in October of this year.
You mentioned being of service. You do other things that are of service. Like being a wilderness rites of passage guide. Tell us about that. I'm not sure everybody knows what that is.
Daijo: I've been involved with the community in Ventura County called the Condor Vision Quest. What I found, what I wanted to let go of, what I was stepping into, seemed like the perfect way to mark with the rite of passage. In that model, there are three passages: severance, threshold and incorporation. Severance is about what you're getting rid of or letting go of. Then you cross the threshold into nature. So it's about four days solo with fasting. We have water but no food for four days, immersed in nature. Then you come back and share your story. That is incorporation, incorporating the gifts from the mountain. You're going up to the mountain to be in nature, to receive the gifts for your people. The gifts aren't yours. They're to be given through you for your people. It's a ritual death and rebirth.
So I went through that process. It was powerful and transformational for me. I stayed in that community, and we're one of the communities that continues incorporation. We continue to meet, asking how are you giving your gift, living your vision? I went through two years of apprenticeship, then also wanted to be a part of the lineage. I took some trainings with School of Lost Borders and Meredith Little, as well as Mike Bodkin of Rites of Passage. It's just an area that I like to be of service.
Ekai: It sounds lovely and it sounds like you enjoy the actual process of being with it. The other thing that struck me is that you have extended the incorporation phase, so it's not just the vision quest process. It sounds like you guys have an ongoing offering that goes along with it.
Daijo: Incorporation is the heart and the most difficult, because if you don't have a community or others to continue to relive the vision and give back, it fades like a dream. I just realized how important sangha is.
Ekai: There is also the ManKind Project community that you participate in and the Shining Bright Lotus community. You serve as an IT Jisha for us, running technology behind the scenes. Now you have been nominated as the Shuso, the head student. You’ll be offering your first teaching later in June. Are you looking forward to that? Are you a little nervous? Or how's that feel?
Daijo: Yep, I’m looking forward to it, but nervous too.
Ekai: It's a lovely ceremony. We do dharma combat, which means that sangha members ask you questions. In Zen, there's just the moment. So you know you'll just be yourself, and that'll be perfect. I hear a lot of commitment to training, to several lineages, and to transformational work. Is that something that goes, like, way back?
Daijo: Yeah, I was going through a tough time in my teenage years getting connected with the wrong crowd. I was a teenage father at 19. But my daughter was the greatest gift, which saved my life in a lot of ways. Splitting up with her mother when we were we were young and not knowing how to deal with feelings that would come up, I turned to alcohol and other substances. I was in a really dark place, and eventually it was through a pure miracle that I had an awakening. To surrender to something greater and remove the obsession led me on a path of healing. Now, how can I serve and help others who are struggling?
Ekai: I know that you also like to extend care to animals as well. Is it just cats or all animals?
Daijo: It's all animals, but it started through my wife, this love of animals, and then noticing there's all these cats. People didn't like the cats in some ways. I got into trap, neuter and return. And then I started getting into colony management and fostering. I’ve been involved with different groups fostering, getting kittens into good homes. And then those on the street. I have a group that I feed every night. I sit on a bench, and some will sit on my lap, and I'll meditate out there. They have full bellies. They'll come hang out with me, thank me and meditate with me. It's a connection to pure spirit, pure source.
Ekai: I love that image. St. Francis comes to mind. But apparently, Ryokan the Japanese poet had intense relationships with the animals. And I think Budai (Hotai) as well, the big belly bodhisattva. You're about three months away from your ordination, have you had any chance to sort what that means, like what you want to see happen as a priest?
Daijo: I’ve been attending the Maranasati offering with Reishin. That's the meditation around death, awareness and the five remembrances. When I heard the five remembrances, especially the fourth, which is that everything you love you are going to lose. How do we hold them even closer, knowing that this moment you're here right now? And so just learning how to serve in that area so I could be a death doula. I’m enjoying taking more offerings around death and dying and being with people with chronic illness or loss and grief. That is what is brewing for me right now.
Ekai: Thank you for chatting today. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon. I appreciate you taking the time.
Daijo: Thank you. Always great to be with you.