Commitments

As a Zen Buddhist I have committed myself to a life of service, a life of introspection, and a life of engaged compassion. These three have been my refuge.

Not always successful to be sure, but always on my mind. And when I fail, when I see myself speaking and otherwise behaving in ways contradictory to these I engage myself in atonement. This is all any of us can do.

This crisis we each face today has been, and will continue to be, a challenge. I pray to maintain an open mind and heart. I pray to allow alternative views their place. I pray to meet these challenges with intellectual and emotional courage. And I pray each of us might do the same for unless we do, unless we see ourselves as being in this together we will lose our humanity and fall into the chaos of fear.

I do not know what this new world will bring to us, save the fact it will be different. And for many of us difference, falling out of our comfort zone, is frightening. May we each meet this newly developing world with an open eye and open heart.

Be a blessing.

Branching Streams

NUMBER 18

One day Senior Monk decided to travel to the Order’s mountain refuge.  Once there he established himself, made a fire in the wood cookstove, put away his supplies and considered his day. It was already late in the afternoon as the refuge was some ninety miles from the city.

The refuge was a large cabin built by himself and his teacher.  It was split log, had a loft, wood cookstove, pot-bellied stove, propane refrigerator and two bathrooms.  The refuge was off the grid, had no electricity, and was 13 miles deep into the forest. Senior monk practiced there as often as he could.

After a short repast of bread and cheese, he decided to hike to a stream a mile our so away.  As he walked, he kept thinking about the stream he was walking to.  It was a fast moving stream, and at one point divided into two.

“Now there’s the question, ‘Are they the same or different?’

After some tough climbing he finally arrived at the fork in the stream.  There, he placed his cushion, took up his robes, and sat down. The birds were quiet, as it was late in the day, but he could hear the buzzing of insects and felt the still hot sun on his face. Putting his palms together, a slight bow, then hands in the cosmic mudra, left hand cradled in right, he began to meditate.

“Are they the same or different? “he asked himself.

The divided streams were moving quite quickly across the rocky beds and the moving water offered a beautiful sound to Senior’s ears. Listening to the sounds of the streams, his mind opened and he had the distinct experience of following both streams simultaneously as they flowed down the mountain side. 

He saw them subdivide again and again and in each case his mind was able to see and follow each as they, too, flowed downhill. Just then a fly landed on his nose and just then he saw all the streams flow into a lake.

The question, he realized, was meaningless.

Faith

Listening to the "Faith" album by George Michael, He sings, "You gotta have faith..." Really? I'm reminded of questions of faith itself, what it is and what it isn't. Earlier this morning, say around 5 AM I happened upon a film on Netflix called "An Interview with God." Avery Christian perspective in most ways, but God asked the journalist a ton of probing questions many of which involved faith and how we understand it.

Do we need faith and how do we understand it in either case? Is it important? Zen Buddhism argues we need great doubt, great faith, and great practice. I really believe these are core to deepening our relationship to the world and all of our relationships,

Challenging our beliefs, our basic assumptions is the only path to truth, truth regarding our world and our relationships within it. Great doubt demands this path even though it is incredibly difficult. How many of us routinely doubt what we believe we know? Doubt to the most basic level, right down to our existential reality?

Faith plays a role in this. We must have faith in both the process of doubt and the processes involved in practice. Our practice rarely yields results we can see and measure and our doubt challenges the ground of our being.

So one way to look at it is faith is more about moving forward into the unknown than belief in a God a particular path. In this sense faith is about courage. How many of us have this level of courage? Each challenge, after all, has consequences. Are we prepared for encountering these?

Be well,

Life is in the details

Good Morning World,

'Just finished opening the day with our morning Zen ceremony and zazen. What a beautiful way to begin a day, especially good, too, is the fact that late last night I baked some chocolate chip raison shortbread cookies to greet me as I woke!

Yet, no amount of cookies and other good things will completely remove the shadow of this pandemic and the dark sounding future we may face. I've read reports that we may have to wear masks and practice social distancing for a couple of years. Can we human beings endure such things as this for an extended period of time? Seems like an apocalyptic b grade movie to me..

Still, there is beauty in each moment. I'm sitting here on my patio listening to the birds sing, witnessing a sunflower begin to open, and looking forward to those cookies with my morning coffee. After that I'll start my Harley and listen to to engine run as it puts a charge in the battery keeping the engine and its electrical system in running order. Then I have seeds to plant, a library to get back in order, as (I'm sure) many other odds and ends will arise to be taken care of.

I believe that old saying, "the devil is in the details" is wrong. Its more truthful to say, "life is in the details." So, may we each live those details with an open heart.

Wisdom Sutra

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Change

With palms together,

Recently I decided to deactivate my Facebook page and shift my work to my blog site.  I will be posting here quite often and will post not only my thoughts, but also my Zen schedule and other events..

So, I will begin to offer morning zazen over Google Hangouts daily at 8:00 AM Mountain Time and a Study group each Wednesday at 6:00 PM.

I will also post video talks over on my YouTube channel. My artwork will be posted on my gallery site here at Blogger.

You may email me at daihoroshi@gmail.com

Current sitting schedule:  Daily at 8:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM Mountain Time

Study Group Wednesdays at 6:00 PM

email me at daihoroshi@gmail.com for an invitation to join me.

May we each be happy and free from suffering.

Gassho

No Fear

“With no hindrance in the mind, no hindrance therefore no fear. Far beyond delusive  thinking we (they)finally awaken to complete nirvana.” (Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra)

One major aspect of Zen practice is to awaken to a certain truth: Our feelings and thoughts are powerful inhibitors to freedom.

When we live in fear created by our thoughts we suffer in a jail of our own making. See the jailer and free yourself. That’s the message.

How to do that? How do we experience fear and dispel it within our mind? One way, I believe, is to come to terms with our own mortality, our own vulnerability, and the fact that in the greater view of things, life simply goes on as it has and will continue throughout the millennia.

Our individuality is a delusion, created by our brain. As Master Dogen pointed out in his Genjo Koan, when we step out of ourselves a realization of the universality of being opens before us and we are no longer just ourselves, but the whole universe.

When in that realization, what is there to fear?

So, in our practice of zazen, one of the things that happens is a confrontation with the loss of self.  Many of us step back when that happens, afraid to go deeper and we retreat into our comfort zone, the comfort of our self. Yet, that self isn’t real. It’s a shadow cast on a screen in our brain.

As we confront these dark days, days of fear, illness, isolation, possible death, look outward to the infinite sky above us. Look downward deep into the quantum level of existence. In either direction, infinity.

Death is life and life is death; they “inter-are.”  Witness the evening, witness the morning. Witness the leaves appear on the trees, witness your neighbors children. Witness the love and compassion surrounding you. What else is there, but the life we live in the here and now?

No hindrance, therefore, no fear.

Be the blessing you are and let the rest go.

Daiho Hilbert