With palms together,
Good Morning All,
O Shariputra, remember, Dharma is fundamentally emptiness, no birth, no death. Nothing is pure, nothing is defiled. Nothing can increase, nothing can decrease. Hence: in emptiness, no form, no feeling no thought, no impulse, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no thinking, no realm of sight, no realm of thought, no ignorance and no end of ignorance, no old age and death and no end to old age and death. No suffering, no craving, no extinction, no path, no wisdom, no attainment.
This scriptural teaching from the Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra, suggests all of the things we believe are real are just concepts created in our minds. They have no meaning apart from that meaning we apply,. We must be careful, therefore in our application of, and wedding to, this meaning. We must see it for what it is, a convenience, a shorthand, a tool, but most of all, an invention.
When we can move freely from form to no form, realizing birth and death are artificial constructs, living with both purity and impurity as places upon a single plane of existence, then we are truly free.
Clinging to any one of these concepts becomes a knife that cleaves the universe in two.
If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?
Sound is audible, sound is a name for something audible. For audible to be, there must be ears to hear. For name to be, there must be a mind to both name and recognize name. No sense organs, no sense.
So, does a tree falling in the forest make a sound?
Be well.
If, in kindness, I am to acknowledge from your imagination an entire forest, unpopulated, removed from all listening beings, and in that forest a particular tree, that, at such and such a particular moment in time, chooses to fall to earth in illustration of a point; then I humbly beg to imagine but a single sound in return.
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with a single sound
dawn rises from the mountains
the song of morning
the day moves on toward night
leaving shadows in its wake
Thank you for today's lesson, So Daiho-roshi!
Peace,
-S
In the summer of 1969, just prior to the beginning of my graduate career at West Virginia University in the spring of 1970, I returned to my neighborhood immediately following a year in Vietnam courtesy of the U.S. Army. I was able and willing to explore almost any cultural alternative to the one that had put me and my Army buddies in Vietnam, but I was aware of the complexity of the issues, and anxious not to destroy my own opportunity for a decent life. My first direct exposure to Eastern practices had come when my infantry company encountered a Vietnamese monk sitting in zazen in a small (approximately 1 meter square) raised bamboo hut (formally called a “zendo” in the middle of a “free fire” war zone. Two things impressed me: first, the man never moved. He gave no sign that he was aware we were there. Second, we did everything in our power to avoid disturbing this man's religious practices. I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. We entered the open field from the West in such a way that each soldier, by turns, was immediately confronted with the little zendo where the monk sat eyes cast down, directly in front of him. As we entered the field we turned right and skirted around the outer edge of the field, walking as quietly as possible to the point where we exited the field directly opposite our entry point. The image of that monk, and the reverence with which my infantry company treated him in the midst of a terrible conflict, remain vivid for me today. What must the monk have experienced? As you might expect, this monk was a popular topic of conversation for several days. The young men in my platoon seemed most impressed with his stillness in the face of what to them would have been great anxiety stress. I was most impressed with the fact that our leaders respected his display of courage and devotion sufficiently to spare his life. As an adult male he was a legitimate military target. Had he attempted to flee, he would not have survived. Had Buddha saved him? Had our own religious beliefs saved him? Was he just “faking” it? Would it be possible to “fake” it? All of these questions reverberated as we all, young recruits and seasoned professionals as well, tried to make sense of this experience. - Excerpted from Zen Master: Practical Zen by an American for Americans
ReplyDeleteby Raymond Reed Hardy.