Taking Refuge

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



What does it mean to be a follower of the Buddha Way? Yesterday at Temple, I offered a teisho on entering the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. I taught that the thing taking refuge requires first is a willingness to relinquish self. To study the Buddha way, Master Dogen says, is to study the self, and as we practice this Zazen, mind and body fall away. To practice Zazen is to relinquish the self and allow it to fall away.



We sit upright facing a wall. We do not move. We practice releasing our urges, our thoughts and feelings. We sit upright facing a wall. That is all. And in this sitting, we are taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. How so?



Buddha is the state of being awake. Present, Eyes wide open. Everything is there with us. Everything, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, are present and we are allowing them to just be. At some point the allowing ceases, there is no director directing, no perceiver perceiving, there is only awareness itself.



What is awareness aware of? The Dharma. What is Dharma? Pinch yourself hard. Sip a cold glass of water or a hot cup of coffee or tea. Experience directly what is there in front of you. It is your teacher when you get out of your own way.



Sangha is the non-dualistic universe itself. We like to make distinctions: this one is a monk, that one a lay person. This one is White, that one Black. That one over there is a Jew. Oh, and here is a flower, there is a weed. Distinctions. Duality. Delusion. In truth, everything is one, dependent on everything else. A great living web; an eternal green braid. Sangha is our home. It nurtures us and we nurture it. We cannot really do otherwise because if we do, we die.



When we sit facing a wall long enough these truths become manifest. They come from the inside out. They are not “laws” they are the actual nature of things. Entering the Buddha Way is the practice of becoming synchronous with reality.



Be well.

Butterflies

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Waking this morning, my body tells me I am getting older by the day: the pain in my lower back, piriformis, and knee is creating a bent, hobbled look. Very unbecoming. Not at all youthful. But wait, I am NOT youthful, I am old and moving on to wise 



I don’t know about that last part. Maybe I am just growing old. Nothing worse in my mind than an unwise old man. Wasn’t I paying attention to life’s lessons? Maybe I was just too busy being busy.



Last night I painted a bit after going through the “Webinar” presented by Ambercare for professionals. I wrote my piece on it and sent it away. Then picked up a broad brush and made large strokes of a vibrant green on an already green canvas. I am seeking life in the grass. I look into it. I do not know what will emerge.



Maybe my heart. Maybe a butterfly. Maybe they are one in the same.



Be well.

Ambercare

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Last night we went to our first Ambercare Hospice Training session. We had a diverse group: elder volunteers, administrators, and a CNA. Two Zen Buddhists do stand out a tad, if not by our POV, but by our essential silence. We watched the documentary, “Solace” which featured several Buddhists including Stephen Levine and Joan Halifax-roshi. Joan is so clear and right there. She is amazing.



I am not sure I will write too much over the next year of this training about it. Then again, such training opens thoughts and feelings. A physician talked about his surgical experience in Viet Nam which spoke directly to me. He talked about the sense of one soldier coming under fire to rescue another. I had such an experience myself and never quite thought of it the way he talked about it. He said it was an experience of unification. I experienced that, but never put my finger of it as that, itself.



On the ground in the dark, wounded and still under fire, a medic ran to me to treat my wounds. There was no hesitation on his part. I remember his voice. He was soothing and calm. There was just us, this group of men, including “the enemy,” on that muddy jungle floor that night. Our lives were one seething process: death, life, pain, joy.



From that night forward, over these last 45 years, I have lived in the moment, letting the promise (or the threat) of tomorrow go. I am grateful for this experience as it allowed me to see the absolute value of the present moment. Just this breath. It is the entire universe. Appreciate it.



Be well.

Jukai

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Last night we drove to El Paso to provide Zen Services to the Both Sides/No Sides Sangha. Student Rose traveled with Soku Shin and I. Soku Shin acted as the Ino and I did what I do. My Dharma talk was on Jukai.



I find it wonderful that the Jukai ceremony and vows we use today are the same (or very similar) to those used by Master Dogen of the 13th century. We are nearly word for word in the 10 Grave Precepts, although certain slight modifications have been made.



Jukai is nothing more than a certification that one has become the precepts themselves. One has become, or vowed to become, buddha, dharma, and sangha. One has become ahimsa (a vow to cease doing evil), good itself, and is busy creating conditions for good to arise. And lastly, the student has found an authentic way to be a manifestation of the ten grave precepts: No killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, no clouding the mind, no gossip, no elevating self at the expense of others, no giving way to anger, no greediness, and no speaking ill of the three treasures. The teacher recognizes the student in a ceremony, offers a rakusu, and that is that. The student is now in a place to practice even more deeply. Perhaps one day, she or he will become a “patriarch.”



These precepts speak to the dimensions of Zen practice. As such, they do not come about on their own, nor are they imposed from on-high. Zen has no God telling us what to do. Zen Buddhism, properly understood, has no Church. We are each flowers in a bouquet called sangha. The precepts are the flower’s petals as the stamen sits in serene reflection.



Be well



Please Note: Due to our previously scheduled Ambercare Hospice Training Program Soku Shin and I are attending, we will not be at Temple for Zazen this evening.

Knowing

With respect,



Good Evening Everyone,











A recent comment on a Facebook blog made me think a bit. One of my students posted a link to an opinion piece in a magazine by the renowned Dr. Noam Chomsky. I commented on it and a reader of my student’s page commented back that I was “dismissive” of a person who was a “vast fount of knowledge.”







This phrase has stuck in my mind. As well as the perception that I was dismissive. Perhaps I was. Is that wrong? Perhaps. Another time for this discussion, I think, but now I would like to address the notion of “knowledge.”





Knowledge is an area of philosophical investigation known as “epistemology.” Frankly, Zen is all about it. Epistemology examines how we know what we know, its scope and validity. Zen is all about this. We might say that Zen practice is the highest form of epistemological investigation. Why? Because it begins with a radical deconstruction of the knower and the known.









Descartes thought that he found a truth that served as the basis of all knowledge, he said, “Cognito ergo sum,” I think, therefore, I am. He supposed that knowledge was a reflection of internal brain processes, although he likely would not use that language. Many of us today make the same mistake, we think what we think is knowledge.









Yet thinking is just our mental processes at work. These bear no relation to the “objective” world, as if there is such a thing. But rather are reflections of our neurological activity, playing in the playground of our senses. A thought is just a thought. It represents something we have constructed from a perception, another set of electrical impulses striking our brain, but it is not the thing itself.









What do we know? Nothing. We create a system of thoughts, categorize and share them, and call it knowledge. The only true knowing is not knowing: it is prior to knowing, prior to sensation, it is the face you had before your father and mother were born. Anything else is an imposter posing as knowledge. Chomsky thinks. He relies on his thoughts, which are well organized and articulate, but just thoughts. Are these thoughts “knowledge”?







If you say yes, you are saying abstractions are the universe and more, it is the thought rather than the direct experience that counts. Zen says otherwise.







Thoughts do not count as knowledge. They are thoughts about something. What is the something? If you say it is this or that you are still in the abstraction. In Zen we directly experience the thing itself and let the thoughts drop away. This is true knowledge.







Be well.

street zen

Osama and Me

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



The killing of Osama bin Laden has been celebrated. People have been dancing in the streets, waving flags, and celebrating shooting a killer in the head through his left eye. There is a great relief, perhaps a release from fear, it seems to me. Frankly, I see such a thing with a degree of disgust, relief, and admittedly, a degree of satisfaction. I am, it seems, a human being.



Osama bin Laden was a cold, calculating mass murderer. He hid from the world and directed his poisonous actions as if he were a long distance orchestra director, never really touching those he killed, not having to deal in any way with the pain and suffering he caused. We might say he was a coward.



What do we do with him? Or more precisely, with ourselves in response to him and his sort of actions? I read a story just last night about the killing of a Los Angeles neo-Nazi, someone who actively and, in your face, spread hate. Again, a sense of disgust, mixed with relief. Another toxic person no longer able to cause harm.



Our precept says, “I vow not to kill.” It also says, "I vow not to be angry.” Our there poisons are “greed, hate, and delusion.” Our three antidotes are “generosity, love, and wisdom.” I recite these often, if not daily, aloud or to myself. I am reminded of them each and every time I hear of people like Osama or the Nazi. I see myself.



To want to kill, to cause harm, or to take any joy in the killing or harming of another is the same across the board. As Gertrude Stein once said in her poem, Sacred Emily, “a rose is a rose is a rose.” Osama took pleasure in the killing of those he thought were his enemies. We take pleasure in the killing of him. How are we not the same?



To love we must love, to be generous we must be generous, and to be wise we must be wise. This takes a great deal of courage and a willingness to set self aside in service to generosity, love, and wisdom. Clearly, I am not there yet myself, but I have dedicated my life to the practice of getting here.



I wish to mourn for that part of me who wishes to revenge. Let that part of me rest in peace.



Be well.

Daiho