A Middle Way

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

The noise of the dishwasher is loud, but rhythmic, and I notice my mind follows its cycle with no effort at all. As this synchronicity happens, I easily let go of the sound since nothing clashes. Harmony.

The Buddha taught the Middle Way, a way that when followed, produces harmony with all things, all aspects of our life. Yet, sometimes discord is necessary. Sometimes we must eschew harmony in order to right a wrong. Wherefore?

Because we are or seek to be in harmony with the universe does not mean that others are as well. Tibetan monks are in harmony, they follow the Middle Way, practice with great diligence, and because this is so, are deeply offended by the oppressive tactics of their Chinese invaders.

The Japanese monks during the years preceding and during World War II were in harmony, but were so culturally fixated on order as the highest good that they failed to address the oppressive and militaristic nationalism of their own country.

In one case, order imposed is seen as a disturbance of the Way, in another, order imposed is the way.

The lesson here is that harmony must come from within and has little to do with a social order. Oppression is oppression regardless of what it is in service to. When we are serene reflection, we are like water: we become a flood, meeting oppression and surround it with our harmony. We prevent it from standing alone. We erode it with compassion and deep listening. We do not just let it be, fading away into monasteries or practice centers.

In the world today, as in any day, some wish to oppress and exploit others, sometimes even with the highest motives, but we must be alert to this and understand that the method corrupts the motive and only evil remains. We vow not to do evil, we vow to do good, and we vow to bring about good for all beings, We cannot accomplish these vows without action.

Social action must however be done with a harmonious mind, a clear mind. As the noise of the dishwasher rises, my mind meets it and finds its cadence. Noise becomes melody. And as war rages, invasions happen, exploitation and starvation, rape and violence continue, we rise to meet them with our own harmony. We witness for another way, a peaceful, embracing, and loving way. Saying no does not require a bat, but it does require a compassionate heart.

Be well.

Clear Mind Zen

Good Morning Everyone,

Taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is called Kie Sanbo and it is the first ceremonial step in becoming a Zen practitioner in the Clear Mind Sangha. We are asked to say, "Namu kie Butsu; Namu kie Ho; Namu kie So". Why?

Why, if in the Clear Mind Sangha we are open and accepting of all religious faiths and traditions, do we ask people to take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha?

The answer is somewhat tricky and to some extent relies on the realization of the three terms used. Buddha is not the person Gautama who historically became a Buddha, but the realized Buddha as both a model and an actuality.

When I go to Buddha for refuge it means I take refuge in awakening itself and see the Buddha as a model of that awakened personage. We could just as easily say the same of the Patriarchs, Moses, prophets or Jesus. Each awakened person is a model, a potentiality for our own awakening.

Similarly, the Dharma is reality, things-as-it-is, Suzuki-roshi used to say. Every faith tradition has its dharma, but dharma is not dependent on faith tradition. Things-as-it-is is, regardless of our spin on it. The practice of Clear Mind is to see without perceptual filters or the biases of labels and concepts. What is reality before we call it reality, this is Dharma.

Lastly, Sangha is both the community of practitioners and the universality of life. It is truly impossible to separate those who practice with us from those who do not as all life practices living in the Dharma. Its just that some are not fully awake to the fact.

Some of us interdependent beings sleepwalk. Yes, its true. We can see them on any given day, driving along with tombstones in their eyes, knee jerk reacting to whatever is in front of them. Yet, if the universe is One, then they are just as much a part of it as we are.

Part of our practice is re-visioning religion so as to open each to things-as-it-is. To have each begin to see clearly before dogma sets in, or to crack that cosmic egg and let the light contained therein, out.

Anyone willing to see clearly by taking on the practices of Zen is welcome to join Clear Mind Sangha.

Be well.

Peace

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

As you probably are already aware, this is the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. Thousands dead and wounded, billions spent, and a mortgage that will last for several decades in terms of treatment for permanent veteran disabilities, family disruptions, and economic chaos.

Please pray for an end to this disaster, a speedy delivery of our troops home, and a peaceful future.

Also during your prayers, keep in mind the religious and ethnic freedom of our Tibetan brothers and sisters, as well as oppressed people everywhere.

Spring is coming to our hemisphere, let it bring signs of hope through our behavior.

Be well.

Good News

Good Morning Everyone,

The morning air is wonderful: cool, but not cold, with a slight early morning breeze gently moving the blinds so that they perform like wind instruments in an orchestra. I am sitting on the sofa with Tripper and some coffee, listening to these and other dawn sounds. There were times in my life when I would wish to be carried away by the wind, but no longer. At this place in my life, I would prefer to just reside and appreciate whatever presents itself. Gentle breeze or storm, each should be equally welcome as they are only gentle or stormy as we apply the notions.

This is the practice and we are never always in its embrace.

There are times when we wish just to be left alone to reside peacefully in our thoughts. There are times when we are less able to be pliant or even simply present. We practice to make these moments less frequent and more brief in duration. Just so, we practice Zen as life.

Yesterday we finally leased our vacant condo! A great relief and welcome cash to our strained budget. We also made preparations for My Little Honey's book-signing today. A lot of flurry and if I were wearing robes yesterday, they would have been a-flapping. But I wasn't always present, not always joyful or appreciative of the day's events as they unfolded. I had my own agenda tucked into the recesses of my mind: sit, play chess, enjoy the day, take a walk in the desert...you know, that sort of thing.

So while the morning was filled with such delights as Talmud study, Morning Services, a nice lunch; the afternoon, after leasing the condo out furnished, was full of shopping and going and preparing and discussing, none of which I am particularly good at.

The good news is that the tensions are very short in duration and far less frequent than they were historically. Why? Practice. It is good to be a work in progress, let us continue to be in progress through infinity.

Be well.

_______________________
For those on the Zen Living List: It is delightful to see such excellent interaction on the list. Awareness is essential, coupled with a willingness to not press the SEND key in the heat of a moment, but rather, to take a few breaths, step away from your work, then come back later with a refreshed perspective.

What's Important

Good Morning Everyone,

Question: What is the most important thing to do? Answer: Not live as if this is more important than that.

When living a Zen life, we live with everything as it is. So, in this moment, the most important thing are the keys on my keyboard as my fingers touch them while writing to you.

There are many "also importants" such as Pete-kitty resting on the arm of the sofa as I type, the sound of the morning dove's outside, and the pleasurable thought of My Little Honey nestled in our bed sleeping just now. But, the most important thing is always the thing we are doing. What we are doing is our life.

More important, less important; more valuable, less valuable: these judgements get in the way of actual living. They also get in the way of our appreciating our life and the lives around us.

Practice to appreciate what is there before you.

Be well.

Zazen

Good Morning Everyone,


One should not sit without a time keeper. If not in a Zendo with a timekeeper, use a timer. I use my wrist watch alarms. Each period is 25 minutes. You can use less or more, but to sit without a time limit allows for Sloppy Zen. Sloppy Zen is Zen without discipline. Sloppy Zen is anything goes Zen.

Last night at Zen Judaism, a participant talked about his experience of "seeing the light" by which I believe he meant, slipping into a deeply relaxed state where time essentially stopped. This is one type of meditation practice, but it is not zazen. If our aim in our practice is to relax, allow stress to dissipate from our mind-mind, then this "seeing the light" meditation is useful. If our aim, however, is to be present regardless of environmental or internal factors and without getting stuck on them or by them, this is not effective practice.

Zazen, Shikantaza Zen, is the Zen of the Buddhas and ancestors. It is what Master Dogen calls "practice realization" and goes beyond just sitting on a cushion.

To practice shikantaza, just sit with an open mind, a mind that refuses to grasp or seek.

A timer is essential because we cannot be thinking about when to stop. Our practice period is predetermined.

Please enjoy this practice.

Be well.

Workout Note: This morning I did a short one mile walk/jog with Katie, then did six hill repeats. getting my heart-rate to 90% of its max on two and 80% on four of the repeats. My Left Foot was not behaving and I neglected to wear my brace --- a not so good combination. Anyway, at home I did: two sets of twenty push-ups, three sets of bent dumbbell rows, and three sets of dead lifts.

What's This?

Good Morning Everyone,


Monotheism, the belief in one God, is a ubiquitous belief in the West. I said in an earlier post that it was a cultural belief and, as such, forms part of the sociologic fabric of our lives. Yet, we rarely address this belief. Its rather like a "fact" held, but without a serious discussion of the fact's perimeters. There is a cultural assumption that we all "know" what "one God" means. Yet, in truth, we do not.

God is so diversely understood as to render any one understanding of Him/Her/It virtually meaningless in terms of consensus. This is partly due, I think, to the fact that we assume so often we each "know" what the other means when we refer to God, but also I think, to a real unwillingness to explore the topic. We prefer, in a sense, the anthropomorphized version of God so deeply ingrained in our consciousness and pervasive in our religious literature.

Zen demands us to ask, "what's this" at every turn in our conscious life. So when a contemplative student of whatever faith tradition approaches God in whatever context, he or she must first address the question, "what's this" before he or she can go any further.

So, what is God?

You see, immediately we are cast in a different dimension of understanding. No longer are the "he's and she's" of God appropriate.

I suspect God is a meta-label for what is infinitely out of our cognitive grasp. We might in the new age say God is universal energy, the stuff of life, but this would exclude God from matter. We might say, God is infinite love, but then we must understand love on such a cosmic level that the individual must be essentially meaningless, and therefore, the very word is rendered meaningless itself.

Historically, God was understood as either transcendent or immanent, that is, wholly other or completely present. Some might say God is both simultaneously.

Buddha argued that the very question was not helpful. He argued that the existence, non-existence, or shape and form of God was ultimately unknowable, and therefore a distraction from the Great Way.

When we understand God to be the absolute of Big Mind and the Relative of Small Mind, in the Zen context of understanding Non-duality and Duality, we get a somewhat different picture, however.

Letting go our grasp, opening our mind's eye to see the universe as it is, rather than as we would wish it to be, or as we think it is, takes us right to the question, what's this?

It is not the answer so much that is important, its not even the actual question, per se, but what is most important is our attitude toward our life and to the universe around us.

This leads us ultimately to the fact that we cannot really know God in the cognitive sense, but rather only in the experiential sense. We can know God through our experience of opening the hand of thought as Uchiyama-roshi elegantly phrases it. What we "know" is not a concept, not a static positivistic label, but rather, the universe itself. open and immediately present in our lives.

Be well.