Good Morning Everyone,
My car still is not repaired. The parts supplier apparently got my order confused with another and neglected to actually order the strut itself for my car. So now I have the mount but not the strut. Goodness. The SAAB parts department promised to have the part overnight-ed to El Paso and the mechanic promised to retrieve it from there today. Once again I am hopeful.
Meanwhile, today we practice Zazenkai, a day long intensive meditation period from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on the street in front of the Southwest Environmental Center at the downtown mall. Zazenkai should be practiced in mindful silence with our attention always awake and aware.
In a very real way, Zen is our lives. When we appreciate Zen as nothing more than the practice of being awake to the moment we are in, we can see the truth of this. Much of the time of our daily life we seem to reside in fancy and delusion. The fancy is our thinking world, a world not at all real or connected to our actual world. The delusion is that we believe one is the same as the other. So, we spend our day thinking or dreaming about some imagined self in relation to some imagined set of events we wish to embrace or avoid, yet do not do either because we are so busy creating a mental construct of reality that we do not experience the actual reality.
This is one of the underlying teachings of the Kalama Sutra. The Buddha was approached by some villagers once and asked how to know what path to follow when there are so many claiming to be the true path.
Claims of truth, like the power of theory to explain or predict, are only as good as our skill at experiencing them. Truth is relative to the perceiver, theory is a construct of two or more concepts. So all of truth and reality is in the realm of conditioned existence. Our only reliable crap detector is our own actual experience and that should always be suspect. The Buddha asks us to become spiritual scientists investigating our own lives. He asks us not to rely on beliefs or teachers or claims. Rather, to rely on our own powers of investigation.
Does this mean we should not have teachers? Traditions? Theories? Not at all, its just that we should not rely on them. Instead, we use them as they as guides.
This is a challenge to us because it requires us to actually do the practice. Zen is not about thinking about the practice. Zen is actually living life. Today we are so quick to accept teachers and teachings, political actors, talking points of view, wars on everything; so obsessed with appearances rather than substance, that we live in a self made bubble, a fiction we call reality. Are we really authentic practitioners of life? And what do we practice?
We can only answer this question with our actual lives. The Buddha added near the conclusion of his sutra that we should develop four "dwellings" if you will. These are the practice is living in peace; the practice of living in compassion; the practice of living in joy; and the practice of living in equanimity.
Be well.
Reference: The Kalama Sutra from the Anguttara Nikaya
"Rely not on the teacher/person, but on the teaching. Rely not on
the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on
theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because
you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been
handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it
is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it
is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely
on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation
and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is
conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it
and live up to it."
the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on
theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because
you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been
handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it
is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it
is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely
on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation
and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is
conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it
and live up to it."
Here is a link to the entire Sutra:
Rev. Dr. So Daiho Hilbert-roshi
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