Self and Zen, Part Two

The Zen of Getting Naked or Where Did I Go?


Part Two in a series, Self and Zen


Self is an “I Am” a couplet. Subject and object in dynamic process with its environment. If we stand in front of a mirror and ask ourselves, “what’s this?” We reveal ourselves. We point to this or that: this is what I am, that is what I am. “I” am tall, short, fat, skinny, handsome, and ugly. “I” am a father, lover, monk, son, doctor, scholar, helper, soldier, friend, killer, and healer. “I” am weird, normal, and strange. I am hot, cold, passionate, or sterile. I am mad, glad, sad, or scared.


Sitting down on a cushion, I face the wall. There, in that still moment, the I AM no longer is. The sound of the ceiling fan, the birdsong, perhaps a pattern forming in the texturing of the walls, these come and go. I am this? I am that? Good zazen. Bad zazen. Short breath, shallow breath, tight chest, loose shoulders, each of these sensations, thoughts, or feelings come and go: falling away like leaves from a winter tree.
So, when, I Am? In front of the mirror? On the cushion? Naked? Dressed? When?


Perhaps the mirror is best understood as the universe around us. In this way, the “I AM” is dependent. I am nothing if not in relationship.

Shukke

With Palms Together,
Good Morning Everyone,

A discussion on Facebook and a confluence of intersecting lines has opened me to seriously looking at this topic: Shukke. Shukke means home leaving.

Zen embraces nothing, but holds a strong, sometimes overwhelming, sense of personal responsibility for all who practice it in earnest. My responsibilities as a monk are to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; to the work of my Order; and to my students and disciples. To use a Zen phrase, I have left family life. This is a challenge and a mystery to me, but most of all to those around me.

This Home Leaving has been going on for awhile in fits and starts and I have actually made quite a mess of it. There are few manuals on the sort of Zen priesthood I am leading. A lay priesthood, a path without borders and walls. It has been complicated by my own need to hold on to the past, to friends, and to family. It was complicated by my desire to be in relationship with everything: Judaism, Zen, Friends, Family, everything. These competing needs made it difficult on everyone, I think, and moreover, was confusing.

I find my Zen is strong and fully able to sustain me. I am grateful to everything that supports my practice and that enables me to walk in the way. I find myself today to be right where I need to be: dead center of the question, “What’s this?”

I put myself “out there” in such forums as Facebook, Tricycle, and YahooGroups not as a friend or to stay in touch with family members, but rather, to teach. It is what I am. Stumbling over, and through life’s processes are all a part of it. None of us gets a free pass or an instruction manual. Along the way, my mess has been yours, my friends, and my family’s. I apologize.

I wear the Buddha robe. I shave my head. I walk in my own authority.

Be well.

From the Ground Up

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



First, thank you Dai Shugyo and Colette for sitting with me yesterday and for watching the film, and for helping with the bookcases. (Late last night I finished the first one and built a second one: one more to go!))



Second, thank you Bobby,Kankin Byrd, for being on Skype last night. I really needed a friend to talk with.



My student, Dai Shugyo, asked yesterday if it was something priests did, this sudden going into Zazenkai. I answered yes.



We used to have a Zazenkai scheduled once a month. I still think it is a good idea, and even a better, a good practice. One thing that happens over time with contemplative practice is that we become far more in touch with the deep, rolling, tides within us. Small shifts open wide.



I notice I am becoming very much more reclusive of late. It is importabt for me to pay attention to this, honor it, and practice with it.



I believe part of it is that I am now alone and need to be alone. In this space I find my heart/mind and allow it to express itself to me. Sometimes a whisper, other times a shout, this heart/mind is becoming my constant companion.



Throughout the day and night, I take a breath and open myself. Feelings and thoughts come and go, as do the bodily sensations that are a part of the everyday experience of living.



Zazenkai offers a short opportunity to pay attention longer and reside in the subtlties in such moments.



And the point? There is no point. It is said:



Spring comes

and the grass

grows by itself.



I choose to be

its witness.


Be well.


Rev. Harvey Daiho Hilbert-Roshi
Order of Clear Mind Zen
Clear Mind Zen Temple
Our Order's Store
Telephone: 575-680-6680
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HHeart Sutra, Last Section

Therefore know that this wisdom beyond wisdom is the greatest Dharani, the brightest Dharani, the highest Dharani, the peerless Dharani. It completely ends all suffering. Know this as truth and do not doubt. So set forth this profound wisdom Dharani. Set forth this Dharani and declare: Gone, gone, gone to the other shore, attained the other shore, to beyond the other shore, having never left.

A Dharani is a chant, a brief scripture with particular power and elegance. It is often a core teaching that, according to Kennett-roshi, can “encourage a religious attitude of mind, such as compassion, gratitude, or faith” (see Zen is Eternal Life, Kennett-roshi, 1999, p.308).

The Heart Sutra itself is a Dharani that teaches us how to live in a way that allows us to transcend suffering by asking us to look deeply into our true nature, seeing the deep interdependence of all things, and the impermanent nature of the universe. When we live in this way, there can be no suffering.

It is interesting that the sutra asks us not to doubt, when the Buddha himself asks to doubt everything. The point here is not the words, my friends. Scripture is just ink on paper. It is essentially meaningless. Life is our practice and our practice is our teacher. The point is to discover its truth ourselves in our daily lives. When we set forth this Dharani, that is, walk our lives deliberately and sit on our cushions deliberately, with meaningful, purposeful and compassionate effort, keeping the teachings of this sutra as still points in our hearts, we can do nothing but be Buddhas.

When we do get to the other shore, a euphemism for awakening, we find that we were always there. There is no other shore. This shore? That shore? No matter: all shores are one. Indeed, all shores are empty.




With palms together,
Be well.








Bibliography

Conze, Edward, Buddhist Wisdom: The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra, Vintage Press, 2001

Glassman-roshi, Bernie, The Infinite Circle: Teaching in Zen, Shambala Press, 2002

Gyatso, Tenzin (His Holiness, the Dalai Lama), Essence of the Heart Sutra, Wisdom Press, 2002

Hasegawa, Seikan, The Cave of Poison Grass: Essays on the Hannya Sutra, Great Ocean Publishers, 1975

Pine, Red, The Heart Sutra: The Womb of Buddhas, Shoemaker and Hoard, 2004

Hahn, Thich Nhat, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra, Parallax Press, 1988

Heart Sutra, Part Five

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Heart Sutra, Part Five.



Indeed, there is nothing to be attained; the Bodhisattvas live this deepest wisdom with no hindrance in the mind. No hindrance, therefore no fear. Far beyond delusive thinking, they finally awaken to complete nirvana. All Buddhas, Bodhisattvas of past, present, and future, live this deepest wisdom and therefore reach the most supreme enlightenment.


Once we “arrive” at a place where we realize ourselves fully and see deeply our true nature, we recognize immediately there is, indeed, nothing to be attained. When we live our lives in this way, with this understanding, there are no hindrances. A stone is in our path; we simply step around it. A problem at work; we engage in the process of solving it. Our children are injured, we take the time and offer the love to nurture and heal them. When we are in the present moment, fully, with nothing added, then what could possibly be a hindrance?

It is when we want to be somewhere else, someone else, that we are dissatisfied with our present moment. This “want” is something we add to the moment taking us away from what is there right in front of us. Our lives are more projections than reality and as a result, dispair, and suffering.

When we live in the present moment, fully there, there can be no fear. Moment to moment we live. We breathe, laugh, feel, enjoy. We know from our practice that these moments are not permanent. Each will come and go. We accept this as the way things are, yet continue to live as fully as possible. Fear arises from grasping, a desire not to lose what we think we should have or what we think we cannot live without. In truth, we can live without most things really. We can live, that is what we do. As we appreciate the present moment as the entire universe, it is quite enough.

Living in this way is living nirvana. Living this way is to be a living buddha, the same as all buddhas of all time because all time and all places are here right now in this wonderful moment before us. Experiencing this is experiencing complete, unexcelled awakening.

Heart Sutra, Part Four

With palms together,
Good Morning,

Heart Sutra, Part Four,

Hence: in emptiness, no form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no thinking, no realm of sight, no realm of thought, no ignorance and no end of ignorance; no old age and death and no end to old age and death. No suffering, no craving, no extinction, no path; no wisdom, no attainment.

Shariputra, one of the Buddha’s two chief disciples, was a master at analysis and a master of the sutras. His skill at comprehension was supreme. It is interesting then, that this sutra utilizes a form of logical phrasing. In this case and at this point, we are taught that the nature of everything is oneness, a state of eternal interconnectedness. And if this is so, then the conclusion is as follows: negation. This is sort of like the approach the great Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides used to define God. We can define the Holy only by saying what He is not.

In emptiness there is nothing of substance. A great river flows and the water finds its way. There are no senses that last, no sense receptors that last, no objects, mental formations, nothing, not even ignorance or a lack of ignorance, that last. Indeed, it would seem that the point of our practice is to arrive at a place outside the paradigm of our usual thinking and understanding where we experience the great breath of the universe itself as our own. When we know this in every fiber of our being then there can be no suffering, no craving, no extinction.

Moreover, we are told there is no path, no wisdom, and nothing at all to attain. This is an exquisite exposition of samadhi. Just open your eyes! That is all there is to it. Open your eyes! See clearly what is right there before you. Don’t add a thing; don’t take a thing away. Just this.

Therefore, what is there to attain? We already possess everything there is. We are perfect just as we are. So, the outside and the inside are one in the same.

(For a history and good discussion of Shariputra, see “Great Disciples of the Buddha” by Nyanaponika Thera and Hellmuth Hecker, Edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi, 2003). Tags:

Heart Sutra, Part Three

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,


Heart Sutra, Part Three
Daiho-roshi

O Shariputra, remember, Dharma is fundamentally emptiness no birth, no death. Nothing is pure nothing is defiled. Nothing can increase, nothing can decrease.

This fundamental “emptiness” means that nothing that exists has an independent existence. Moreover, even the teachings and reality itself is empty in the same way.

All things, all processes, all energy is subject to change and is, indeed, in constant motion with no fixed point to be experienced or understood. When viewed in this way, our understanding of the acts of birth and death as separate, independent points in time, is false.

Birth and death are named points along a continuum of processes and not as static, independent events. Each are in themselves “empty.” That which has no permanence cannot be “born” as we in the west often understand the term, nor can it die, either. When we truly integrate this understanding, making it part of ourselves, we move beyond birth and death, and remain untouched by them.

This is very difficult for us as we tend to see in both linear and static terms. We see things as “there.” A stone is a stone. This way of seeing arises from a relative view. If we see with an absolute view, a view of hundreds of thousands of kalpas, a stone immediately loses its independence from all other things in all times. It is just one blink in a very large and constantly changing process. In truth, we are all the component parts and pieces, energy and matter of all of existence. Right here, right now, aware of itself.


Notions of purity and defilement arise from delusion, as do notions of increase or decrease. Pure and impure are ideas on the one hand and two sides of the same coin, on the other hand. Our practice invites us to ask, “What’s this?” at each perception and therefore at each breath, as we retain beginner’s mind, we reside in realization.

We live as buddhas by embracing life with dark in one hand and light in the other. Guiding each step is our heart/mind. In such a mind, no birth, no death, no pure, no defiled, no decrease, no increase: just this.