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