On a Friday Morning

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

This morning we spent quite a bit of time cleaning and organizing the residence.  Clearly I am limited in my abilityand capacity, but Rev. Soku Shin seems to have inhereted genes from the Energizer Bunny.  I did manage to organize the studio/study and re-organize the courtyard funishings.  But this pales in comparison to Ms. Bunny. 

This, as well as some discussions with my physical therapists have taken me aback.  It is becoming quite clear that I will not recover to a state similar to that before I began experiencing leg pain.  I will likely not run again, hike, or even walk very far.  For someone who identified himself as physically active, a marathoner, and so on, this is a challenging reqality.

Yet, every loss has the potential to be a teacher.  Every moment, an oppoprtunity to rebirth myself.  Closing one door, we often say, opens another.  So, here I am with doors closing and other doors opening. The Zen of the Every Moment lies in this: the very existential view that our remaking ourselves moment to moment demands our adaptaion to impermanence.


Yesterday no longer exists, tomorrow is simply a fantasy: it is in the eternal now that we reside.  May we each live as fully as possible.

Be well.

Clouded Sky

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,



This morning I woke at 3:45 AM. I fell asleep at 9:00 PM. So I managed to get a bit over 6 hours of sleep. Anyway, I went outside into the courtyard and sat looking at a solitary star (which, I am certain, was a planet). There were no other visible stars as the sky was filled with clouds masking them. The stars of the night sky were there to be sure, but I just could not see them. Our everyday life is like this. The universe we create with our mind is like the clouds hiding the stars. Remove the clouds and the actual sky appears.

No Hot, No Cold?

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,



The sun just rose over the Organ Mountains, offering both brilliant light and searing summer heat. We in Las Cruces are desert dwellers. Our environment is typically hot and dry. We are now, however, on the back side of the rainy season, although not much rain has come our way, still, the air is wet and the heat creates a sauna within which we sweat. Those of us with refrigerated air are prone to stay inside; those with swamp coolers, well, let’s just say swamp coolers are not at all effective in humidity. People who live with swamp coolers in a humid environment suffer. Yet, refrigerated air also brings suffering. When we stay inside and our bodies adapt, our ability to go out of doors is compromised. As with Old Tozan in Case 43 of the Blue Cliff Record, “How do we escape heat or cold?”

In either direction, there is suffering. Life is like this, with every in-breath there is birth and the construction of our world, with every out-breath there is death and the destruction of our world. How can we escape it? This question reminds me of another koan, Case 83, “The ancient Buddhas and the pillar merge --- what level of mental activity is this?

Yesterday morning I sat in the courtyard witnessing the sun rising over the mountains. I began to sweat. I felt my body giving up its water. And then, I saw the sun in a sweat drop. The sun was -- and was not-- in the sweat drop. There was heat and not heat at the same time. Heat and cold are words we use, they point to something we add to a given moment, just as by suffering we mean: things are not the way we think they should be.

Can we enter a stone pillar? Can we abide in heat or cold without being hot or cold? Can we encounter our daily life as it presents itself and appreciate it fully?

Of course we can, but will we?

Only our practice knows.



Be well.

Blog Follower's Invitation

With palms together,
Good Morning Bloggers

I would like to that you for being "followers" of my blog.  I realized this morning that I rarely post anything on Blogger that I don't post in other venues.  So, I want to invite you each to post a comment on the content of this blog and let me know how you feel about something. 

If you have followed my blog for some time you will know that I have often taken personal life and commented on it from a Zen perspective.  I have done less of that of late.  Moreover, I have not posted much about Zen and its practice either.  What I want to know is this: do you prefer straight Zen talk or content from my everyday life with a Zen commentary?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Gassho

Nothing

With palms together,




Good Morning Everyone,







It is the middle of the night and I have greeted it’s darkness over and over again with an open heart. The sounds of a sleeping world are my companions. A cooling breeze is my blanket. What’s this? I feel as though I am but a shadow in the corner . The fox and the monk are one as karma is the product of a deluded mind.







I realize I have not been posting much and what I have posted has had more to do with my pain than Zen itself. This realization brings me to the question of Zen in Everyday Life, a theme I am exploring in my new booklet under the same title.







At our Zen study group this evening the question came up about practice realization in our daily life. It sprung out of the text of Master Dogen’s Genjokoan. In that text Dogen Zenji says in the comings and goings of practice realization we are deluded, but in practice realization, comings and goings are practice realization. Rather like form is emptiness and emptiness is form, if you get my meaning.







If we live in practice realization our comings and goings (read everyday life) are not deluded. This means we address our lives as not separate from things. In fact, in practice realization, there are no things. We, and the “things” before us, are not separate, but one and we are one with them. So, the cup I am just now sipping from is myself as are the keys on this PC. In this state, the tricky part is, there are, in fact, no cups or keys, no me to sip or type. An infinite circle is no circle at all, as Glassman-roshi points out in his book, “Infinite Circle.”







As we practice and approach infinity we discover our truth, this truth is actually quite simple, in the infinite, there are no limits and as a result, everything falls away as “things” and only the vast emptiness of our true nature resides. Touch a cup and you touch everything that is, touch everything that is, and cup, you, and touch are one. How do we then disrespect the cup without disrespecting the universe?







Yours in the dharma,

Status Update

With palms together,


Good afternoon all,



It seems the two procedures I have undergone to correct my lumbar spinal stenosis have not been effective. My condition is worsening and an appointment with my doctor today resulted in scheduling another procedure called "mild" which is supposed to be effective in most cases. I am scheduled to have this procedure on Friday at Mountain View Hospital. The procedure involves inserting a needle into the part of my spine that has calcification, removes the bone matter, thus relieving the pressure on my spinal cord. It requires about a three day recovery according to the literature. Due to my current condition and this coming procedure I must cancel all temple activities including dokusan until Monday. My jiisha, Rev. Soku Shin, or myself will keep you apprised of my progress. I apologize for this inconvenience and hope to be back at work on Monday.

Bodhisattvas

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



On August 3rd I will travel to Upaya in Santa Fe for a weekend retreat with Roshi Bernie Glassman. I am most interested in his way of engaging people toward engaging the world in order to make the world a better place. It seems to me we spend next to no time on this question. Yet every day we recite the four great vows of the bodhisattva.



How do we live our lives? While obsession ought be addressed as something that leads to suffering, some obsessions are better than others, don’t you think? Are we self obsessed belly button watchers or are we bodhisattva warriors obsessed with creating conditions for improved living? If we are to have one obsession, which would it be?



Our every breath as bodhisattvas ought be directed at freeing others from suffering. Yet, to say such a thing creates, in itself, a duality which traps us in our own suffering. Because this is our choice, we are not actually suffering. The freedom of others is dependent on our freeing ourselves: free yourself and all beings are free. Through this we see the truth of suffering.



Let us practice together: Sunday at 9:00 AM at Clear Mind Zen Temple.



Be well.