Bodhidharma Day

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Today we celebrate Bodhidharma Day in Las Cruces by being in mindful practice at Zen Center. Bodhidharma was a simple monk who came from India to China in the late fifth century. He taught simply, but consistently, that zazen was the core of the Buddha's teaching. He was a pragmatic and experiential sort who lived in a cave and gazed at its wall. No fancy temples, no fancy clothes, just his body and a wall with a strong determinationed practice. We consider this man to be the First Zen Patriarch. All current Zen lineages call him parent.

If you are nearby Zen Center today and would like to sit in stillness for awhile, please feel free to join us.

Last night some friends gathered at a local ice cream stand:

Eating ice cream in the wind,

Chocolate drops on a field of blue;

The moon is bright in the sky.

Be well.

Holding On

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

We only see things as coming or going when we live as if we are the reference point. Zen practice enables us to realize this is not always so and, in fact, there is no reference point. With no self as a point of reference we are free. At that moment, coming and going cease, as do up and down, and most importantly, birth and death.

Our brain produces the ability to link things and events together. Yet in truth, things and events are not linked. They are discreet moments unto themselves. It is only our mind that puts them together as a pattern. While patterns can be delightful and meaningful in the everyday world of relative existence, they are illusions of our mind and should only be understood as mental tools. If we understand them to be truth, we are lost.

To be lost means to not be able to live directly as each thing presents itself. When we live in a pattern we are living in mental connection and so cannot appreciate things as it is; thusness.

So challenging for us as ordinary people. But when we practice zazen, we are not ordinary and we begin to see clearly perhaps for the first time. This is the frightening aspect of zazen. It demands that we let go of the post that holds us tethered. As we practice we begin to see the post, the tether, and that which is tethered as illusion, and not entirely there yet, we become frightened.

What will happen to me if I let go?


Be well.

Your Own Authority

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Yesterday during an interview with a student, I tried to teach something about walking in ones own authority. This is such a challenging notion. It does not mean being full of oneself. Nor does it mean being a dictator. People who walk in their own authority are confident in themselves and as a result of that confidence have little real need for the signs and symbols of their authority.

When we make ourselves in the world, we should do so simply and directly. The plan and the activity of building should be seamless, as if they were what they are: one.

There is a spin on one of the Dharma seals, "shoho jisso", which means all things are themselves ultimate reality. This is another way of saying "it is what it is" and adding everything is truth.

When I open my eyes and take my breath, I express my true nature. As I pour my coffee, put on my clothes, walk my dogs, I express my true nature. No need to be anything, I am what I am. When we live this way we are living within our own authority. And this is important because it is authentic.

So many of us live in fear of the thoughts and judgments of both others and our inner self. Our choices are the result of an internal dialogue rather than a direct expression of our being. So, what is it, after all, that we fear? Why the chatter? Why the wobble?

If you are going to light that match, light it. If you are going to strike that bell, strike it. If you are disabled, be what you are. No need to hide or get permission to come out.

Our practice is simple, yet so challenging. To be upright on a cushion and live there directly in the moment. Once our mind thoroughly understands there is no threat, no problem. It releases its grip, lets go of the rudder and allows us to be what we are.

Be well.


Team Zen: two mile run/walk ; a chest and back weight workout.

When Dark Encounters Light

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

The recent horror of the killing of school children in Amish country has offered us a teaching on the darker side of dependant co-arising. We see immediately as it happens, the activities of people across the globe: bombings in the Middle East, shootings in Europe and America, starvation in Africa. We feel in response. We fantasize in response. We establish a point of view in response. So, when we go outside each day, this response is our understanding.We behave accordingly.

Communication can be a valuable tool. Interactivity can be a golden opportunity to depen our understanding. Yet each can also drive us into dispair and create chains of toxicity that enslave us to our more base emotions.

We must counterbalance these offerings from the communication network with other practices. We must practice deep listening. We must practice stillness. We must open ourselves to this pain so that none of us suffer. An open wound contains nothing in itself. An open wound can flow freely and clean itself. Close the wound prematurely and we capture toxicity, allowing it to hide and fester. The pain from a hidden wound can be surprisingly challenging.

So, this happens because that happens. When a bad thing happens, notice. Then open yourself to your feelings about it and let yourself flow some. Then offer yourself an opportunity to understand, contextualize, and grow from the experience. And in all of this, if you know that your purpose is to be inservice to others, your experience of the suffering of others offers you a starting point.

Be well.


Team Zen: run three miles

Something Simple

With palms together,
Good Afternoon All,

Today something simple. We have returned home and are settling in. The flights were easy and as always, I enjoyed people watching and reading, peppered with a little conversation with My Little Honey.

I had an opportunity on both the outward bound and inward bound flights to slowly read through some of one of my favorite books, Opening the Hand of Thought by Uchiyama-roshi. I will share some thoughts about the text with you in a bit.

For now, please enjoy this moment. Practice zazen earnestly and with the right attitude. Consider the infinite. Consider the finite. If, as Zen suggests, nothing is born and nothing dies, how do we distinguish these?

Be well.

Atonement

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

From the new Soto Shu translation of the San Ge Mon, the Verse of Repentance,

All my past and harmful karma,

born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion,

through body, speech, and mind,

I now fully avow.

For Zen Buddhists, these words have particular meaning. They speak to our understanding of the deep an intricate interconnection of everything, past, present, future, cause, effect, and release.

Each morning we recite this verse, knowing that our behavior is most important. Our behavior creates good. Our behavior creates bad. These behaviors are remembered by ourselves and others. Good and bad are conditions within which other things grow, both good and bad. When we do harm, harm is added; when we do something healthful, health is added. We see in each the possibility of evil and the possibility of good.

So, we acknowledge these do not exist apart from us; they are us. No devil, no god, just us. Confronting this truth is very difficult as it requires us to understand thoroughly that everything is ultimately our responsibility. Everything.

We could say that our current bad attitude is a result of our parents, thus we live in their bad karma. This would be true. Yet, when we look deeply into our own nature and see our True Self, the self that existed before our parents were born and will be in our great, great grandchildren, as well, we see this is also false. There is no parent, no child, no past, no future. Just the minute to minute manifestation of Buddhanature.

OK, so we inherit, and we plant. What we do with what we inherit is ours and what we plant is ours. Some of us are unaware of this fact. Some of us live in delusion, believing there is a god and a devil who are apart from us and that the world is thus divided. As Bodhisattvas it is our commitment to assist them, to help them, guide them, to see the light of non-duality.

This simple verse allows us to keep in mind precisely where we fit, that is, dead center, in the universe. Each of us, small universes reflecting each other, yet deeply interactive.

The last line of the verse is crucial: I now fully avow. We do not use such words today in everyday discourse. Perhaps we should. According to American Heritage Dictionary, to avow means

1. To acknowledge openly, boldly, and unashamedly; confess: avow guilt. or 2. To state positively.

I would rather understand "guilt" as "responsible" but guilt is also true. We moderns don't like to think of ourselves as guilty of much of anything, we'd rather feel responsible, as if there were a difference. Either way, to avow is to acknowledge our part in what we have created, good bad or indifferent, and to do so boldly, directly, and without flinching.

In contemporary times, we promote the notion that we are OK. We like to think that our behavior is not all that important, certainly not as bad as someone else's. When we are caught we immediately shift responsibility to others. In this way we seem like Teflon. Nothing sticks to us, we think. Yet this is an illusion as well as a serious flaw in our character and a shortcoming of perception.

Moreover, it also takes us away from our humanity, for to be human means to be self-aware and self-awareness carries acknowledgment of responsibility. In the end, this short verse brings us home to ourselves, it wraps us in our humanity like a warm blanket and offers us a way to become better human beings.

What will we do with our awareness? What will we do with our responsibility? This choice is ours and ours alone. Chose wisely.

Be well.

A Moment in Time

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

This morning I woke late. Our visits to Memphis to see Grandson Tate are real vacations. I have set up a small alter in my daughter's walk-in closet. I brought cedar incense my zafu, and small bell. I sit there for a period in the evening before bed.

Morning zazen is out. At least a formal period. Too many people with differing agendas. So, I sit is small moments. As we talk, play with the baby, wait for dinner, or some other activity. I bring my back up, plant my feet like small trees, and sit still. The moment and me join hands.

In this way we can be mindful throughout the day. Taking every sound and scent, taste, and action, as a temple bell. Such moments are delicious. Yet we should never become attached to them. The most important thing is what we do with our mind in each moment. If we use our mind to cling, to add value, diminish value, or in other ways distort the moment, big problem.

Better is to just be.

And so it goes.

Be well.