A Stolen Buddha is a Lesson

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

There was a story in the local newspaper this morning about a statue of the Buddha being recovered after it was stolen. The last paragraph reads "...Buddhists also believe in karma, which says a person's actions in this life determine the quality of their existence in the next."

Yes and no.

This is an example of how language and culturally infused meanings become problematic. Buddhists also "believe" that there is no soul, no substance, that transmigrates from one life to another. Thus, a contradiction.

Buddhists also "believe" there is no birth and no death. Therefore no this life, no next life. Another contradiction.

What are we to do? A Zen Teacher would shout:

Practice Zazen. See your true nature for yourself. Look deeply into the heart of the matter!

We Americans hate this sort of thing! We want to *know* and we want to know NOW!

Otherwise the Teacher is not teaching and the whole thing is just tooooo mysterious! (Or better still, *esoteric*)

To borrow a short, but succinct word from another tradition, "Oy!"

Here's the thing. Lives are constant, there are no breaks between them. I am "born" from cells developed in my mother's uterus, my cells merge with another's cells to form another being that individuates and is "born" and so on. There is no point where I am or was not. We get stuck when we use "I" as a point of reference rather than the universe at large. When seen from the larger, universal perspective, life is organically rising and falling and rising again: always at all times. In this process of rising and falling, the parts have roles to play.

As parts of this universal process we can make our universe a better place or a worse place for all of the other parts. Since we are all constant parts of this one vast universal process, parts past and parts present, we are rendering karma.

We are way too egocentric to see this without much practice. Those living in the Far East on the other hand have grown up with a more universal and collective understanding of their existence with much less emphasis on the individual "part."

Isn't life interesting?

Be well.

Memorial Day

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Do those killed in battle need company? Is it our way to honor soldiers killed in combat to send more in after them? How should we best make homage to those who defend us? Do we need defending? When? At what point?

As you go through your day today, off from work, perhaps, please pay attention to these questions. They are central to this day in the United States.

Cooking on a grill does nothing for this; drinking beer does nothing for this; waving a flag and watching a parade does nothing for this.

We Americans are not very good at reflection, nor are we particularly good thinkers. We are far too emotional for that. We live with the hash marks of real or imagined injury on our sleeves and use them to justify our knee-jerk responses to complex problems. Sad.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance. What we should be focusing on is the complete and total waste of lives war offers us. Rather than rallying around the troops, giving the government carte blanche to spend our future to support corporations making huge profits on the lives of others, I would suggest we consider alternatives.

Today I plan to sit Zazen at the veteran's park on Roadrunner. I will be there at 10:00AM. Please join me if you can.

Be well.

Nothing Holy

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Throughout most of the day yesterday I burnt incense. I sat Zazen off and on throughout the day and late last night.

My mother is in the hospital and was told she does not have long to live.

What does one do with such news. Her lungs and heart are very weak and not functioning very well. She has decided against heroic measures, claiming she is ready to die. We talked a couple of times at length about everything. She has made her peace.

We are neither born nor do we die. We neither come nor do we go. In truth, there is no "we" in such matters. These are all just constructs of a mind hardwired to see linear events discreetly. Yet, as Master Bodhidharma once answered, "Vast emptiness. Nothing holy."

We should add, nothing profane.

Profane and sacred are one, just as life and death are one. In this sense, the ancient Hebrews had it dead-on:

Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echud! (The Lord our God, the Lord is One).

What we do with such news is we live.

Be well.

Stay Small

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Simple tasks make all the difference. Sip coffee. Sit quietly. Water a plant. Avoid stepping on an ant. When we stay small we stay awake.

Keep this in mind.

Be well.

Show and Tell

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

There is a phrase a Korean Zen Master used frequently: Open mouth already a mistake!

This is so true. Language and the workings of our minds to produce language and the thought behind it, is essentially dualistic. There is no getting around it. This is why many koans have no literal, verbal answer and why so often the Master asks the student to "show" him rather than "tell" him.

Even in literature this is true, oddly enough. We are asked to show something in our stories and poems, rather than tell something. Pictures, painted or spoken, are better than a thousand words spewed out.

Moreover, the moment we open our mouths to speak we are out of the moment and into our thoughts about the moment. Yet we struggle so with this, I know I do.

I want to tell you!

Yet in doing so, I make a big mistake.

You must teach yourself!

You must experience yourself!

There is no telling that is worth anything. From whence does this desire to tell come?

Be well.

Just do

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

So, you are busy. Too busy to take good care of yourselves. And then you die. Whatever you were busy with no longer matters a whole lot.

The most important thing?

In the meantime life happens. Between the tasks, at the stoplight, during a break, sipping a cup of water, just before you speak, these are the moments we are most awake these days. The rest of the time life seems not to be our own. We place ourselves on autopilot and just get through.

This is no way to live.

Stop it. Live in every moment, as you do your task, do it completely; as you drive, drive mindfully; as you speak, speak with care. This is not difficult, but it does take practice. Sometimes you will be there, sometimes not. Its OK, just do.

Be well.

Karma

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

If you, me, and the universe are one then what is the real teaching of karma?

To address this question you must really enter it.You, me, and the universe are products of dualistic thought, convenient and necessary for survival, but weights on the rope of liberation. Karma is nothing other than an understanding of the deep and continuous connections of everything. Often thought of as cause and effect, we understand karma when we mentally step away and see that streams flow in all directions at once.

This is because that is. Very precise. Very exacting. Nothing is individual or seperate or unnecessary. When you are this teaching, karma is just another useless notion, like heaven and hell, nirvana and samsara, you and me, or the many other rafts along the shore.

Be well.