Nothing Holy

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Throughout most of the day yesterday I burnt incense. I sat Zazen off and on throughout the day and late last night.

My mother is in the hospital and was told she does not have long to live.

What does one do with such news. Her lungs and heart are very weak and not functioning very well. She has decided against heroic measures, claiming she is ready to die. We talked a couple of times at length about everything. She has made her peace.

We are neither born nor do we die. We neither come nor do we go. In truth, there is no "we" in such matters. These are all just constructs of a mind hardwired to see linear events discreetly. Yet, as Master Bodhidharma once answered, "Vast emptiness. Nothing holy."

We should add, nothing profane.

Profane and sacred are one, just as life and death are one. In this sense, the ancient Hebrews had it dead-on:

Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echud! (The Lord our God, the Lord is One).

What we do with such news is we live.

Be well.

Stay Small

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Simple tasks make all the difference. Sip coffee. Sit quietly. Water a plant. Avoid stepping on an ant. When we stay small we stay awake.

Keep this in mind.

Be well.

Show and Tell

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

There is a phrase a Korean Zen Master used frequently: Open mouth already a mistake!

This is so true. Language and the workings of our minds to produce language and the thought behind it, is essentially dualistic. There is no getting around it. This is why many koans have no literal, verbal answer and why so often the Master asks the student to "show" him rather than "tell" him.

Even in literature this is true, oddly enough. We are asked to show something in our stories and poems, rather than tell something. Pictures, painted or spoken, are better than a thousand words spewed out.

Moreover, the moment we open our mouths to speak we are out of the moment and into our thoughts about the moment. Yet we struggle so with this, I know I do.

I want to tell you!

Yet in doing so, I make a big mistake.

You must teach yourself!

You must experience yourself!

There is no telling that is worth anything. From whence does this desire to tell come?

Be well.

Just do

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

So, you are busy. Too busy to take good care of yourselves. And then you die. Whatever you were busy with no longer matters a whole lot.

The most important thing?

In the meantime life happens. Between the tasks, at the stoplight, during a break, sipping a cup of water, just before you speak, these are the moments we are most awake these days. The rest of the time life seems not to be our own. We place ourselves on autopilot and just get through.

This is no way to live.

Stop it. Live in every moment, as you do your task, do it completely; as you drive, drive mindfully; as you speak, speak with care. This is not difficult, but it does take practice. Sometimes you will be there, sometimes not. Its OK, just do.

Be well.

Karma

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

If you, me, and the universe are one then what is the real teaching of karma?

To address this question you must really enter it.You, me, and the universe are products of dualistic thought, convenient and necessary for survival, but weights on the rope of liberation. Karma is nothing other than an understanding of the deep and continuous connections of everything. Often thought of as cause and effect, we understand karma when we mentally step away and see that streams flow in all directions at once.

This is because that is. Very precise. Very exacting. Nothing is individual or seperate or unnecessary. When you are this teaching, karma is just another useless notion, like heaven and hell, nirvana and samsara, you and me, or the many other rafts along the shore.

Be well.

Rich Beyond Measure

With palms together,
Good Afternoon All,

Over this last few days I have been practicing mindfullness in motion. Practices this as a participant-witness through my day, moving, sitting, eating, talking, listening with full attention. This full attention is special, however, as it is attention without effort. Just witnessing the breath, the sound, the smell, the sight, the mental imaginings, all the while knowing that they are unreal is the truest sense.

I listen now to the baby giggle, then cry, and the delicate chopping and slicing sounds of my son's knife as it expertly cuts through myriad fresh vegetables and herbs as he prepares our evening meal. The conditioned air flows across my face and through the hair of my newly growing beard on my face.

In each moment a lifetime of experiences.

We are so rich each of us. The whole world of experience is ours for the willingness to touch it. It is such a shame that we withdraw so often, blunt our senses, and cloud our minds with the clippity-clap of notions.

Live awake.

Be well.

Happiness

With palms together,

Good Morning All,

To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine-ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn't and has never been, but as it might be. The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an "anticipation machine," and "making future" is the most important thing it does.

From the new book, 'Stumbling on Happiness' By DANIEL GILBERT

courtesy, NY Times Review of Books

Yes, this is one of the functions of the human brain, a great evolutionary step. The ability to imagine has been key to our survival and to our dominance of this planet. It has also lead us down the primrose path of delusion. Don't we all enjoy 'being somewhere else'? Especially when the present isn't as we 'expected' or 'desired'? We day dream, fantasize, and otherwise dream travel: on vacation most of the time.

The practice of Zen is a tool to help us come back to reality. It teaches us to live in the present moment, regardless of the quality of that moment.

Now some may ask why we should want to do that. And those who have been raised on or who are hooked on alternative realities such as television, gaming, film, would have a hard time answering, I suspect, so comfortable and interesting is virtual life.

Yet, in truth, alternative realities and mental imaginings are simple mental constructs, having no more validity than the phosphorescent dots on the old TV screen.

There are uses for such realities, but they are uses only, not habitats.

Time to wake up!

Be well.