August 25

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



This morning I am feeling much better after taking a day to rest. Tuesday was a long day at the Temple and three bike rides back and forth. All told, 12 and a half miles. It was good, but the afternoon heat on one ride was a bit much. On top of that, while walking through the Temple foyer, I tripped and broke a toe on My Left Foot. At home Tuesday night Soku Shin taped it, but it is quite sore yesterday. Needless to say, I did not do a run Wednesday morning so Suki had to be satisfied with a quarter mile walk. I don’t think she is happy ‘bout that.



Dogs, like people, are creatures of habit. Whereas dogs habituate, they are also ever alert. We humans habituate our daily routines, but in the process essentially sleepwalk through much our essential activities. Rarely on alert, we give ourselves over to habit and use our brains to assume everything will flow as predicted, as it always does, that is, until something happens.



This week something happened on the East Coast of the United States. An earthquake informed people the ground they walked on wasn’t as firm as they had assumed. Something radical happens when that which we hold as a firm foundation shakes.



In Zazen, we practice to release ourselves from any firm foundation, as we discover through our practice no such foundation exists, ever existed, or will ever exist. Everything is change; nothing is firm. Now what?



Making such a discovery is only the opening verse in an epic poem of our spiritual journey. Next we must let go not only of our attachment to what we erroneously thought of as a firm foundation, but also of our desire to seek a firm foundation at all. These are very challenging verses to write as they require us to have faith in the unfolding of the cosmos.



When we realize non-duality, attachment to self falls away and non-attachment to self naturally arises. With no self, the universe is “us.” All time is one. When this is realized, there is, as the sutra says, “no hindrance in the mind. No hindrance, therefore, no fear.”

There is a danger here, though. The danger is becoming attached to non-attachment. In the world of buddhas, there is no attachment, even attachment to non-attachment. We must keep in mind emptiness is also form.



So, we come full circle, as it were. The opening lines of the epic poem start us on the path. We realize everything changes. We come to see there is no self and there is no other. There is only this that is prior to thought, prior to feeling, prior to sensation. We are both self and non-self. We are both one and all. We are “thusness” itself. Yet this “thusness” manifests itself as form. We call these forms the paramitas.



Be well.



Today at CMZT: Zazen at 9:30, Sewing Group at 5:00, Zazen at 6:00. Dokusan through the day.