Awareness

With palms together




Good Morning Everyone,







Our Zen 101 group is doing well. Last night we discussed the passages of the Fukanzazengi that relate to the Buddha and Bodhidharma and how it was that they practiced Zazen. There is a Japanese word, Kakusoku, which refers to maintaining awareness. In Zazen, it is the effort of practicing not-thinking.







We sit with no particular aim in mind. We sit just to sit. Naturally, the world rushes to us in the form of sensations, thoughts, and feelings. We need to move. We need to check on something. Our body is not cooperating. Judgments arise: this is stupid, I hate zazen! What, is the timekeeper asleep?







Kakusoku means we notice and return to this moment, as it is, letting everything we are thinking, feeling, or otherwise sensing, fall away. Letting without deliberation. Letting in the sense of allowing. The reality of our world is that everything changes. Kakusoku is our actual experience of this.







The TV commercial asking “What’s in your wallet,” might be adapted here to “What’s in your mind?”







Or as I often say to myself, “What’s this?” with no expectation of following my answer except to ask again and again, "What's this?"







Be well.