Making Light

With palms together,

Good Morning All,

 

Last night was so delightful.  We went to the synagogue for Friday evening services which was a children's service and Hanukkah candle lighting.  We had a dozen or so menorahs on a table and before we ate the children recited the blessings over and over as they themselves lit the first night's candles.  Such traditions are as  important as they are beautiful.

 

This season is a time of light.  Menorahs, Christmas trees,  and in the Buddhist tradition, the light of the Buddha's Enlightenment itself.  

 

To bring light into the world is an act of creation.  It is not hope, faith, or charity.  It is the thing itself.  It is dark, we make light. We light a candle, we turn a switch, we dress a tree, but as human beings we make light by cracking out of our shells and unfolding ourselves to the universe.

 

From a Zen Buddhist perspective, light and dark are literally of our own creation.  We do good or we do bad, and these things are judged more from our intent than from the outcome. If you are a theist, and you must have a God in your lives, you can easily understand this as God working through you. You and God are partners in creation: you are His hands, His eyes, His fingers, but you are also His mind...and He is yours.  In Zen, we see this as "Big Mind."  This is the open expanse of time and space, light and dark, the breath before the breath, of life and death.  

 

Now, go make light.

 

Be well.

Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. 
May All Beings Be Free From Suffering

On the web at:

http://www.zencenteroflascruces.org
http://daihoji.blogspot.com/

and http://360.yahoo.com/buddhist99

 

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Hannukah and XM Satellite Radio

 

Good Morning All,

 

For those who celebrate Hanukkah, and for those interested in Jewish culture and tradition, XMSR Channel 108 begins this evening 24 hours per day broadcast of ail things Jewish through the Hanukkah season.

 

Be well. 

 

 

Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. 
May All Beings Be Free From Suffering

On the web at:

http://www.zencenteroflascruces.org
http://daihoji.blogspot.com/

and http://360.yahoo.com/buddhist99

 

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Daily Message

With palms together,

Good Morning All,

 

One way that Zen differentiates itself from other religions, even from Buddhism itself, is on the issue of belief. Zen Buddhists are nothing if not iconoclastic. (An iconoclast is a breaker of icons).  There is a famous saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"  While this should not be taken literally, it should be held closely.

 

Buddhas, images of Buddhas, stories of Buddhas, miracles of Buddhas are all fictions. We create these images and stories, and then use them as yardsticks against which we measure ourselves.  This is wrong-headed.

 

When we break the images, burn the stories, and tear up the scriptures, we are on our own and must confront ourselves.  This is the heart of Buddhist practice and it is not for everyone.

 

We sit facing a wall.  Our bodies upright, our eyes open, our attention on everything present.  No belief.  No doctrine. No dogma. Just this.

 

So, this morning at the Zendo, I lit a stick of incense, bowed and sat down on my cushion.  Facing the wall, I met myself.  Facing myself, I let myself fall away. What is left?

 

Buddha.

 

Be well.

 

 

Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. 
May All Beings Be Free From Suffering

On the web at:

http://www.zencenteroflascruces.org
http://daihoji.blogspot.com/

and http://360.yahoo.com/buddhist99

 

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Our Hurt

With palms together,

Good Morning All,

So many of you have written to ask how we can forgive and move on! It makes me think that perhaps we are taking ourselves way too seriously. People are people, we each seem to live in our own world made of our own thought and feelings, yet we somehow expect others to not only understand us, but perceive within our worldview. This is like asking two hurt puppies to nurture each other.

Will addressing the person who has hurt us make it better? Sometimes. It is doubtful. Only if we possess extraordinary listening skills would this be advised, in my opinion. Getting something "off our chest" is too often for our benefit, yet we go around rationalizing that it is for the benefit of the other. In fact, it actually amounts to 'dumping' our load on someone else's shoulders.

If someone has hurt us, perhaps we should look deeply into the hurt. Often hurtness is more about our expectation of another's behavior than anything else. We expect a sister in law to behave a certain way, or a boyfriend or a girlfriend to love us in a way we believe they should, but then they behave in a way we either don't understand or cannot accept. We see this as an affront to ourselves, sometimes to our values, but most often to our expectations for their behavior.

Ooops, there goes that self-righteous ball a-rolling!

What to do? The hardest work of all: nothing. Sit still and let the universe take care of itself. Hurt only remains with us if we keep picking at it. A daily practice of zazen along with on-going mindfulness practice can be of great benefit with this.

This is very hard work. It requires something of us: that we sit on our hands (to use on old chess training method) and not snap off moves so quickly. Easy? Hardly. I have been at this a very long time and I still knee-jerk with my mouth on far too many occasions. Still, I am aware immediately as I am doing this. And in that awareness is often the desire to be still and not react. Our practice makes it possible to be present without being so swept away by the floods of feelings and thoughts. And on those increasingly rare times when we are swept away by our anger or hurt, we are able to pull ourselves out more quickly, on the one hand, and experience the suffering we have caused, on the other. These then, become opportunities for personal and social growth.

Now, to take my own advice.

Be well.

Forgiveness

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

A friend asked me about forgiveness. I thought it would be nice to say a few things about it. Yet, this thing we call forgiveness is very tricky as it points to the fact that we, ourselves, are holding on to some pain inflicted on us by another. This causes us to suffer. Sometimes the person we wish to forgive hasn't a clue the he has hurt us in the first place.

So, at first blush, we might think that forgiveness is about absolving someone else and letting them off the hook, in truth it is we who are hooked by our anger and hurt. This is one of those curious little scenarios in life that can actually demonstrate to us just how deeply interconnected (and often clueless) we are.

It is that very interconnectedness that makes forgiveness truly possible. And our cluelessness that makes it possible for us to suffer for so long. When we think of how another person hurt us, then look inside and see how we are being just as hurtful against ourselves, we can see our humanity. Each glimpse into our human condition provides us an opportunity to learn. ..and change, or rather, transform.

The first step in forgiveness, then, is to forgive ourselves for carrying such pain and hurt with us for so long. We may not be ready to do this. The pain of an experience may be very important to us. Sometimes this pain is a marker of our prior state, say our innocence, then we are victimized and our pain recalls not only the victimization, but our state prior to our victimization, as well. We blame the perpetrator for both our victimization and the loss of our identity as an ordinary person. Who really wants to confront change so directly?

So, we desperately hold on to what we thought we were, knowing we are not, and feel great anger toward the person who made all this happen. It is now we who are victimizing ourselves.

When we have had enough of this, we will stop. We stop when we discover that we have worth beyond an experience somewhere in the past. We stop when we realize our present is our choice and our responsibility. We stop when we realize it does no good to continue holding on.

This is a liberating moment.

Be well.

.

Foundation

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Those here seeking wisdom and knowledge are welcome, however, it is important to orient yourself to how this process is understood in Zen Buddhism. Wisdom and knowledge are often thought to be something that exist outside of us, that can be imparted by one person to another. That is a dualistic notion and is incorrect.

Wisdom and knowledge are innate: we all possess them. We practice to see what is already there within us and before us. We practice to eliminate the proscenium that separates the actor from the universe.

So, if you are seeking something from me or others, stop. Seek it from yourself. How? Create a time each day to practice zazen. Practicing zazen regularly is a gate to understanding and realization. Let nothing get in the way of this regular practice. It becomes your spiritual foundation, literally.

Then post your experience. Posting is a process of self examination and awareness. I ask replies be explorations rather than fingers pointing to supposed errors.

Best wishes,

Be well.

Careful!

for Joshua

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

In Zen we practice to see our True Nature. Be careful!

Our True Nature
is the Universe
and the Universe
has nothing
to stand upon.

So, what happens when we confront our Self? See our impermanence, our absolute emptiness? Maybe we say "Eureka!" I think not.

Most ordinary human beings, those Dogen calls mortals, require something to stand on. they require a reference point, something to define themselves against: like form and space in a painting. But with our True Nature, we see these are ever in motion, nothing substantial, everything like the clouds in the sky.

Seeing our True Nature, we step into the world of the Buddhas: immortal where each breath is a manifest opportunity, each touch, the creation of kindness and compassion, each step a walk into infinity.

Be well.


Kindness requires patience. Patience requires generosity. Open your heart to yourself and embrace the universe.