Hunger

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

There is a hunger in the world, a ferocious hunger. People are starving in the sterility of mind. People are starving in mountains of books. People are starving in hoards in schools. They eat, but are far from satisfied. No one seems ever to be satisfied. They seek, and seek, and seek: faces blue; necks thin and gaunt, bodies in deep hunger.

What satisfies? What fills the stomach? What relaxes the neck and opens the throat?

Drugs, sex, rock & roll? No.

Another book by Thich Nhat Hahn or the Dalai Lama? No. Perhaps a new version of the Holy Scriptures? No.

A wall. A cushion. A still, quiet room.

Go there.

Sit.

Look inside.

Open the valves and let things flow.

When working at your desk, feel the materials under your fingertips: know the many lives and many hands that brought you the tools you use to make your living. Appreciate your life. Appreciate your friends, your spouse, your parents, your children.

Get wet with life. Feel the dirt. Roll in the mud of not-knowing.

Another book? Maybe. Another path? Maybe.

The most important point? Live without a self.

Living without a self means satisfaction is not an aim. Living without a self is to live in release. Open. In service to others. No worries, No fears. No problems. Just this, the next thing to do.

May you each be a blessing in the universe.

Coming Home, But Never Really Leaving

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

My Little Honey comes home this evening. The bedding is already in the washer. She has been in the Cleveland area for a week sitting with her cousin and niece while her Aunt, who was 96, was dying. She died Wednesday and so Judy is now free to return.

We have experienced a number of deaths and illnesses over recent months. Its as if an age is passing away completely while we are being reminded of our nature. The out breath of the universe is always there, followed by an inbreath. It is the nature of things, including ourselves.

This morning I will set out my potted hibiscus plants. Quickly clean, then prepare the Zendo for visitors. We sit formal Zen at 9:00 AM this morning. This afternoon, I'll have lunch with my family, then teach my first class on Introduction to Kabbalah at the Academy. Life does go on.

Just now,

I sip my tea

and open my heart

to you.

One lotus

to another

One weed

to another.

No lotus; no weed.

May we each

be what we are:

One.

What's in Your Head?

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

So, we have been talking about some 'heady' stuff. Not! Big Mind, Oneness, Buddha Nature, Emptiness, Ein Sof...are decidedly NOT heady. If they are, you do not know them.

Some close friends, learned men, told me a person cannot live in vast emptiness. Heck, I've said the same to my students. I lied.

Well, not exactly. Teaching must be appropriate to the person we stand before.

Here's the thing: as a person practices mindfulness, from cushion to cushion, that person is living in non-duality, He or she is living as one for all and all for one without a thought about it.

Can this be done? Of course. The Buddha did, the Zen Patriarchs did, Abraham did, the some Jewish mystics did, some Chassids did, some Trappist and Benedictine monks did, some nuns of various faiths did.

Yet, a question remains. Is is desirable to live in non-duality today? Are we so jaded, so dualistic in our cultural assumptions, that to live in non-duality is a threat?

Is mutual aid as a distributive justice model which bases itself on the vast interdependence and interconnectedness of all beings a threat?

A rabbi friend pointed me to an article in the NYT yesterday regarding mindfulness and like many things out of New York minds in seemed quite neurotic to me. ('Must have something to do with Woody Allen, I suspect.)

But it does give rise to a question: can those who have open eyes co-exist with those with eyes half open? It depends. If those with eyes wide open are willing to receive the pain of the others without a fuss, I mean truly assuming the suffering of others without an egoistic broadcast about it, then yes. And if not, well, they are fakers.

We cannot walk on water. We must walk in the mud with the rest of the world, getting our hands and feet dirty, and loving all that there is about it. Because there in the mud is buddha.

Remember, its all about our starting point: begin with "I" as a separate self and we are not there. Yet, if we begin with "I" as code for Infinity and there we are.

Be well.

So?

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

There are some interesting questions that arise from a deep practice of Zen. For one thing, as we sit and come to realize this self is not permanent, that it is not the center of the universe, and in fact, all of the universe is One, then what is up or down? What is right or wrong? The lack of an Absolute point is disconcerting as all relative points are in relation to it.

Without an Absolute point that exists apart from us there can be no movement, for example, as movement is defined always in relation to an observer who is presumably at some absolute point. Oy. I'm getting a headache, already.

My temple rabbi suggests that biblical mitzvot are the baseline. Yet, even these exist in relationship to a culture in a time. They are only correct if we say they are correct. and then they can only be correct for those who agree.

On the other hand, we might ask if there are any moral points that are true regardless of the existence of a fixed point, in other words, are there moral imperatives that are correct regardless of context, time, or culture, etc.?

We take refuge in Buddha, awakening, an attainment of true nature, we know this nature to be "empty" yet we vow to cease doing evil, to do good, etc. Good and bad are terms relative to each other. Hmmm.

Jews pray to come closer to God, in the end that God is absolutely unknowable, He is Ein Sof, the Infinite. And He is Ayin, Nothing.

So there we are, on top of that hundred foot pole, basking in True Awareness. Everything is one, everything is empty, we have attained awakening. So?

As the koan asks, what is your next step?

I add, and how do you know that it is the right step?

__________

A reminder, We will practice Zen at Clear Mind Zendo Sunday morning at 9:00 AM, I will begin teaching a class on Kabbalah at Temple Beth El on Sunday at 2:00 PM, and we will NOT practice meditation at Temple this Monday night due to Purim festivities.

Be well.

Notes

With palms together, Good Morning Everyone, Yesterday I offered my second teaching on meditation at the Mesilla Valley Hospice. We discussed chanting meditations and the practice of Tonglen, a Tibetan practice that helps us to create compassion and equanimity in our lives and the lives of others. The teaching was well attended and the participants were excellent students. Offering tools to others is a wonderful practice. Moses Maimonides taught that the highest form of giving was to assist others toward taking care of themselves. And many Zen teachers offer a teaching in very short order, then shuts up. A good teacher offers and then recedes. I am not such a good teacher, I suspect, as I tend to talk WAY too much. I will work on this. Divergent thinkers are like that. We tend to begin on "X" and before we are done, not only have we gotten to "Z", but we've touched on "A" to "W", as well. This can be delightful from an artistic or spiritual POV, but has the ability to drive others crazy. And, of course, it doesn't help with clock watchers, either :) ! OK, time to shut up...or as Rev. Brad Warner, that strange renegade monk suggests in his book by the same title, "Sit Down and Shut Up!" Be well. On a personal note: This morning I drove My Little Honey to the airport to catch a flight to Cleveland. Her Aunt Pearl is 96 and her kidneys are failing. She is in hospice.

The Great Way

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

In Zen we sometimes talk of non-discrimination. This is a tough one to describe. Its as challenging as the fact that we say there is no birth or death. The two are related.

A few lines from the Third Patriarch:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things are not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail. (to read the read of this piece, go to http://clearmindzen.org and click on Hsin Hsin Ming.)

What is the nature of this clarity which occurs in the absence of discrimination? What does the Patriarch mean when he says "When the deep meaning of things" and "the essential peace"?

How can we live without this or that?

Care must be taken. We are asked to see that love and hate are mental constructs. When we live in these constructs we live in relative mind. When we set one against the other, we live in a mind that suffers..

When everything is one, there is no two. There is no subject, no object, no verb. Life is thusness.

These points are being made from a POV that is all-inclusive. They are points made standing upright in Big Mind. This is the Bodhisattva Way. How can we love or hate when there is no-thing and everything is one?

Zazen helps us develop our ability and willingness to reside in Big Mind. It occurs as we sit upright on the cushion and think not thinking. It is a divergent, Teflon-like mind that is at home in every moment.

Embrace yourself; embrace the universe. Likewise, embrace the universe; embrace yourself. In such a place there is no room for self and universe. There is just the embrace.

Be well.

Refuge

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

Namu Kie Butsu

Namu Kie Ho

Namu Kie So.

These are the three refuges. Zen Buddhists take refuge in these. An interesting notion, actually, and not at all what is commonly thought to be the case if we look deeply at the refuges themselves.

Butsu means Buddha. On the superficial level this might mean we take refuge in the model of the man who became a Buddha, or the model of the Enlightened One himself. Yet, Buddha just means awake. In the deepest sense we are taking refuge in the state of being awake, present, mindful, and so on. So, refuge does not mean setting ourselves apart from something, but being completely in it.

Ho means Dharma. Dharma is sometimes thought of as "teaching". So this refuge is about going to the teaching of the Buddha to live. Hmmm. Buddha taught only to be awake. Still deeper, dharma means reality. So we are taking refuge in the real world, the non-dualistic world of the present moment. We might call this "thusness".

So means Sangha, the community. On a superficial level, this would be a community of monks or other like-minded people. Yet, when we are one, who is two? All are one, so we take refuge in the entire world of beings. We both take care of others and are nurtured by others. On a closer level, our community supports our practice and our practice supports our community. Zen, contrary to popular belief, should not be practiced alone. It is not about the self, but rather the Self, not about the mind, but about the Mind.

Community is important to help us along the way, teachers are important to help us to not go in directions that are unhelpful. Buddha taught a very practical practice. If it leads us to complete unexcelled awakening, it is useful, if not, avoid it.

When we open our eyes we see that there is only one community, that is the community of beings on this planet. It may be filled with color and a cacophony of sound; it may come in slow bake, half bake, or fast bake varieties; it may have right wing outliers and left wing outliers on that bell curve: but all are us and the entire curve is one.

When we take refuge, we take refuge in this truth. This is the real meaning of the truth will set you free.

Be well.