Every Day

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

After a steady morning of doing Zazen, hiking and running in the desert (2.4 mi), doing dishes, and so on, KoMyo has prepared a wonderful pot of oatmeal. The scent is calling me to the table.

We will be leaving for sesshin at 3:00 PM this afternoon and will return Sunday afternoon. I am looking forward to being at the Refuge for a few days.

"Setting aside one, you gained seven." (a line out of the Blue Cliff Record, Case 6 Every Day is a Good Day) Katsuki Sekida notes, "You put the past aside, you ignore even enlightenment; that is 'setting aside one'. And in penetrating into the present moment's activity of consciousness, you meet with many things; that is how 'you gained seven'..."

Awake means living in multiple moments that are not at all multiple. We recognize a past, a present, and a future, but we know these are just mental constructs. We recognize a "me" and a "you" a "coffee cup" and a "cat" but we know these are not what we call them, they are just what we call them.

Getting to Awake we take the next step. We get up off our asses and out from under that Bodhi tree and we put one foot in front of another. We sweat. We eat. We work. We sleep. Yet we do these experiencing them both exquistiely and subtly as both real and false; one and many. To know One, set aside Many; to know Many, set aside One. Do this seamlessly.

Be well.

Pay Attention

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

The morning light seems to rise from the ground, and while it is beautiful, it means nothing in itself. Dark and light are the same. Nirvana and samsara, heaven and hell, good and bad: same-same. When we behold beauty, we behold ugliness. Beauty excludes ugliness and thus becomes ugly. A good that excludes bad, excludes itself. If heaven excludes hell, then heaven is hell. Do you understand?

Live in your world. Embrace your world. Seeking bliss is like seeking a narcotic; its use excludes us from being awake. The same with peak experiences. Peak experiences are to be avoided; they separate us from the everyday. Avoid feeling good; avoid feeling bad: reside in the great middle of each moment and be authentic in that residence.

Practice Zazen. Eat life. Share your food.

Be well.

Late

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Late edition today: dishes, a walk, and waking up late took me off schedule. Floating along, son Jacob made the tuna salad for Breakfast Club, and I have a few minutes to write to you now. Friends Allen and Eve just walked in, maybe less time than I thought. So it goes.

Time does not exist, really, there is just this typing on these keys, just now. Late is a notion invented by our mind focused on a point in thought. This point is chimera. Being present is being alive. In a certain sense, then, being in time is being asleep. Time and being are one and in this oneness, time itself, loses its meaning.

So, what happens if we are late? Are we still ourselves? Is our world still not intact? The walls don't crumble, the curtains aren't rent, and the earth doesn't open up and swallow us. We are here.

On the other hand, being prompt is essential to civilized life. Thus a problem. Solution? Plan properly when it is time to plan, be disciplined, and thoroughly be present as you "move" from one thing to another. You are your own master, always, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says, but master of yourself you must be.

Now, it it time for Breakfast Club.

A bow to each of you.

So?

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

So, a student enters a training center and says, "please teach me." The Teacher asks, "Have you finished eating?" The student says, "Yes." The Teacher replies, "Go wash your bowl!"

Case 7 offers us a direct teaching. Very important; deeply profound. Most of us we want teachers to teach us with fantasies of mind. We want our heads filled with thoughts, as if to say, thoughts are the universe. We want to feel smart, philosophical, poetical, artistic, social, loving, etc. We think we can think ourselves into this way of being.

Zen is far more economical: go wash your bowl.

What more is there to teach?

Be well.

Let Go and Live

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

A little while ago friends Allen and Eve walked with me as I jogged 1.5 miles of hills. I did this sort of in-place jogging, enough to break a sweat and really enjoy myself. At home, I did a few different upper body weight exercises, including push ups, then stretched out with a few minutes of yoga. I woke late today, missed writing practice and zazen, but am catching up now.

Sometimes life would be out of sync if we had sync to begin with. No sync, nothing to be out of: when hungry, eat, when sleepy, sleep. Or so I sometimes say. Zen is like that.

Here you are. Zen practice, says Kyogen, is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a cliff. In the ravine below, a man asks him, "Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?" If the man in the tree does not answer, he fails. If he answers, he falls and loses his life. So, what should he do? (Case 5, the Gateless Gate). Always between a rock and a hard place; the devil and the deep blue sea: that's Zen.

I hear the water falling in my pond. My gate needs to be fixed. A friend needs a ride. To let go is to live.

Be well.

Assumptions

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This morning My Left Hand showed itself again. I weed whacked the small patch of grass My Little Honey left last night with our new weed whacker. This paralysis thing is always just a little twisted. Sometimes I can get get my fingers around something and sometimes I can't. It appears always that the assumption is I cannot do something. Bad assumption for a person with a disability. We must assume we can, then set about finding a way to get it done.

I also started two holes for my tomato plants. Just now they are not large enough, but they will get bigger. And when I raked up the cut grass, I saw patches that need whacking.

Disability can create either mindful practice or insane frustration. When I assume I "should" be able to do something "like everyone else" its frustration. When I set about doing it with a beginner's mind, with no expectations, no "how it should be dones", its an excellent practice and a practice prone to innovation. It just might look a little odd.

So, the next time you go into a public bathroom and see someone with their right foot pressing down a faucet with an automatic shut-off, no worries. It could be me washing my hands.

Be well.

1,2,3

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

streetZen this morning after a walk with friends. It is the 4th of July and we celebrate independence from tyranny. The only true tyranny is the tyranny of mind, however. Mind that designs traps; mind that establishes problems; mind that resides in thought: this is the mind of tyranny.

Become independent of that mind. Reside in the experience of interdependence.

1,2,3 is not 1,2,3; it is 1,2,3. What is the difference? Experience one and many simultaneously; let go of one; let go of two.

The soil receives the rain water, but does not keep it.

Happy Days,