With palms together,
Good Evening All,
This morning was different...I did not feel like posting. My apologies. After morning practice, My Little Honey and I went for a walk with our dogs. Then she went a-knitting and I went back to the Zendo. It was good to be there. Regular zazen at the Zen Center is a wonderful, priestly task. I enjoy puttering there, taking care of little things, like watering the plants or replacing the toilet paper and candles.
Susana from Juarez, Mexico joined me at the afternoon practice period. It was good to see her. She is such a good practitioner. We sat upright, then talked over tea in the kitchen until My Little Honey stopped by to pick me up. I rode my bike to Zen Center and it was pretty nasty outside on my ride in, but the weather had taken a turn for the worse since. We left the bike at Zen Center and headed home.
Tonight I sat at home in my home Zendo. I lit a stick of incense, bowed, and sat down. The time was short, but the sitting was just perfect. I then chanted the Maka Hanya Shin Gyo, Four Great Vows and quietly left the room.
Today Student Mu Shin had a surgical procedure and my Aunt had a bone marrow test. My prayers are with both.
Be well.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Mountains and Rivers in Morning
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The silence of the early morning is broken by a siren in the distance. Like a bell, it brings me back to myself as I sit here to write to you.
Morning is not delicate. Open space, it receives sound and light. When through the day, such sound and light is everywhere, morning is still morning. Morning, an equivalent of zazen, does not require silence.
Just as a mountain sits as the rain pounds it, the people trample on it, or fire burns it, so morning opens to the day. Mountain does not require separateness. Morning and mountain are the same as zazen.
The river flows through the valley and as it flows it does not care whether a tree falls in it. It embraces the tree. Eventually the tree and the river become one. The river does not require a path. Morning, mountain and river are the same as zazen.
Sometimes it is our view of a thing that blinds us to seeing it.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
The silence of the early morning is broken by a siren in the distance. Like a bell, it brings me back to myself as I sit here to write to you.
Morning is not delicate. Open space, it receives sound and light. When through the day, such sound and light is everywhere, morning is still morning. Morning, an equivalent of zazen, does not require silence.
Just as a mountain sits as the rain pounds it, the people trample on it, or fire burns it, so morning opens to the day. Mountain does not require separateness. Morning and mountain are the same as zazen.
The river flows through the valley and as it flows it does not care whether a tree falls in it. It embraces the tree. Eventually the tree and the river become one. The river does not require a path. Morning, mountain and river are the same as zazen.
Sometimes it is our view of a thing that blinds us to seeing it.
Be well.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Time
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
My goodness here it is Sunday once more. Have you noticed how time is so relative to age? When we are young and imagine all the benefits of being older, we so look forward to the passing of time that it slows. And as aging people, we are not so looking forward to the end of days and time just becomes a torrent!
Life is like that.
The lesson is to not seek, but to be present. The relativity of time is teaching us this lesson and when we are ready to receive the teaching it is very good news.
Being present is timeless. Being present is being as it is. Our discriminating mind, doing what it does, takes us away from this and thrusts us into the relativity of judgment, recrimination, and, expectation. This mind must be mastered, but to master it is not to control it, it is to passively witness it.
Going back to an image I frequently use: the motor is racing, but you don't have to put the car in gear. Let it race. And as it races, you are serenely reflecting on its racing. Hoping it will stop racing will slow time down.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Saturday, December 16, 2006
Making Light
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
Last night was so delightful. We went to the synagogue for Friday evening services which was a children's service and Hanukkah candle lighting. We had a dozen or so menorahs on a table and before we ate the children recited the blessings over and over as they themselves lit the first night's candles. Such traditions are as important as they are beautiful.
This season is a time of light. Menorahs, Christmas trees, and in the Buddhist tradition, the light of the Buddha's Enlightenment itself.
To bring light into the world is an act of creation. It is not hope, faith, or charity. It is the thing itself. It is dark, we make light. We light a candle, we turn a switch, we dress a tree, but as human beings we make light by cracking out of our shells and unfolding ourselves to the universe.
From a Zen Buddhist perspective, light and dark are literally of our own creation. We do good or we do bad, and these things are judged more from our intent than from the outcome. If you are a theist, and you must have a God in your lives, you can easily understand this as God working through you. You and God are partners in creation: you are His hands, His eyes, His fingers, but you are also His mind...and He is yours. In Zen, we see this as "Big Mind." This is the open expanse of time and space, light and dark, the breath before the breath, of life and death.
Now, go make light.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Friday, December 15, 2006
Hannukah and XM Satellite Radio
Good Morning All,
For those who celebrate Hanukkah, and for those interested in Jewish culture and tradition, XMSR Channel 108 begins this evening 24 hours per day broadcast of ail things Jewish through the Hanukkah season.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Daily Message
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
One way that Zen differentiates itself from other religions, even from Buddhism itself, is on the issue of belief. Zen Buddhists are nothing if not iconoclastic. (An iconoclast is a breaker of icons). There is a famous saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" While this should not be taken literally, it should be held closely.
Buddhas, images of Buddhas, stories of Buddhas, miracles of Buddhas are all fictions. We create these images and stories, and then use them as yardsticks against which we measure ourselves. This is wrong-headed.
When we break the images, burn the stories, and tear up the scriptures, we are on our own and must confront ourselves. This is the heart of Buddhist practice and it is not for everyone.
We sit facing a wall. Our bodies upright, our eyes open, our attention on everything present. No belief. No doctrine. No dogma. Just this.
So, this morning at the Zendo, I lit a stick of incense, bowed and sat down on my cushion. Facing the wall, I met myself. Facing myself, I let myself fall away. What is left?
Buddha.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Our Hurt
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
So many of you have written to ask how we can forgive and move on! It makes me think that perhaps we are taking ourselves way too seriously. People are people, we each seem to live in our own world made of our own thought and feelings, yet we somehow expect others to not only understand us, but perceive within our worldview. This is like asking two hurt puppies to nurture each other.
Will addressing the person who has hurt us make it better? Sometimes. It is doubtful. Only if we possess extraordinary listening skills would this be advised, in my opinion. Getting something "off our chest" is too often for our benefit, yet we go around rationalizing that it is for the benefit of the other. In fact, it actually amounts to 'dumping' our load on someone else's shoulders.
If someone has hurt us, perhaps we should look deeply into the hurt. Often hurtness is more about our expectation of another's behavior than anything else. We expect a sister in law to behave a certain way, or a boyfriend or a girlfriend to love us in a way we believe they should, but then they behave in a way we either don't understand or cannot accept. We see this as an affront to ourselves, sometimes to our values, but most often to our expectations for their behavior.
Ooops, there goes that self-righteous ball a-rolling!
What to do? The hardest work of all: nothing. Sit still and let the universe take care of itself. Hurt only remains with us if we keep picking at it. A daily practice of zazen along with on-going mindfulness practice can be of great benefit with this.
This is very hard work. It requires something of us: that we sit on our hands (to use on old chess training method) and not snap off moves so quickly. Easy? Hardly. I have been at this a very long time and I still knee-jerk with my mouth on far too many occasions. Still, I am aware immediately as I am doing this. And in that awareness is often the desire to be still and not react. Our practice makes it possible to be present without being so swept away by the floods of feelings and thoughts. And on those increasingly rare times when we are swept away by our anger or hurt, we are able to pull ourselves out more quickly, on the one hand, and experience the suffering we have caused, on the other. These then, become opportunities for personal and social growth.
Now, to take my own advice.
Be well.
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