Zazen

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



When practicing Zazen, sit upright. I have taught this from the beginning just as all teachers before me have done. What does it mean, though, to sit upright?



Spine upright, crown of head touching ceiling, bottom touching the floor, shoulders open, chest open, chin tucked and, as Master Dogen used to say, “eyes horizontal, nose vertical!” This is our position, the position of all buddhas. But these instructions are also a metaphor for our attitude toward living our lives, and this is the most important point: serene and unmoving, we take each step making ourselves in the world.



We cannot think that we are practicing Zazen part-time or at home or at a Zendo. We cannot “think” we are practicing Zazen. Our practice is ontological, that is to say, it is “being.” Zazen is not separate from our moment to moment life. Zazen is complete, unexcelled, mindfulness: always aware, always present, always taking a step with deliberateness. This is our practice.



How many of us sleepwalk through our day? How many intoxicate ourselves with television, radio, CDs, DVD’s, Internet? Tombstones for eyes, hardly alive, we stumble through a day and wonder at night where the time went. I am as guilty as any of you. My one saving grace, so to speak, is my dogged diligence in noticing and bringing myself back to the world as it is. I make this paramita my first and last. When we are Zen practitioners this is our work. It is a work that has no start time and no end time. It is our life.



Be well.

More Stages

With palms together,


Good Afternoon Everyone,



We were talking about the Ten Ox-herding pictures. Stage Two is “Discovering the Footprints.” The traces cannot be “hidden.” It is, after all, as plain as the nose on our face. What are these traces? How can our True Self be seen? I think, sometimes, the Ox can be like a bull in the proverbial China Shop. At other times, it is like the disappearing Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. *grin* Everywhere and nowhere, we are what we are, always will be, always have been. Our true self is that which never changes, does not belong to us, yet never parts from us. How can we not see its traces?



Stage Three is “Perceiving the Ox.” There is it, the ass sticking out from behind the tree. Who can see its face? When we look for a face we will never see it, all we will ever see are faces we can imagine: these are not the true face, the face of our true self, but rather, our imagination running wild. So pretty, yet so untrue. Someone got a match?



The thing about these two pictures is they tell you all you really need to know. The Ox is right here, no need to LOOK. Its traces are everywhere because it is everywhere. Where is the one place where your true self is not?



Erewhon.



Be well.

Buddha

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



A monk asks in all earnestness, “What is Buddha?” The Master answers, “Shit on a stick!”



If you think about this, you will go down the path to delusion. So, be careful. Only in your mind is the smell, feel, or judgment regarding shit.



This koan asks us to see how we set things up, make shiny things in our minds, and fail then to see them clearly. Buddha is often shiny and golden. He is often calm and serene. He is always clean and well polished. Yet this, then, is only a clean and shiny Buddha. And if the Buddha is covered in puss? Or being eaten by worms and maggots? This, then, is a worm and maggot eaten Buddha. Are they the same or different?



What makes a Buddha Buddha? Is it the shine, the gold, the purity? Or do these exist in our mind as Buddha attributes?



Perhaps rather than asking “What is Buddha?” We might better ask, “Where is Buddha?” As Buddha is a figment of our imagination and thus a defilement itself.



Cut through thoughts like this and you will meet buddha.



Be well.



Tonight: Zazen at 7:00 PM, Comparative Religion at 7:30 PM.

Zazen

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



The other day in our Zen Discussion Group someone let slip that they did not think shikantaza was the essential method of practicing Zazen in the Soto School. This person was incorrect. I sense her error is based in the fact that the terms “Zazen” and “shikantaza” seem different, and indeed, are seemingly taught differently, but in the end, this is not so. They are one in the same.

The Soto tradition, founded in Japan by Master Dogen, was founded upon the practice of Zazen and its essence is the practice of what is referred to as “Silent Illumination.” Whenever Dogen refers to Zazen, he is referring to shikantaza.

So, why the confusion? I think it is because of how Zazen is taught. Introductions to the practice often include breath watching and/or breath counting, and while one is sitting quietly while doing this, one is not in the posture of Zazen , properly understood.

As Taigon Leighton points out in his introduction to The Art of Just Sitting, “The specific practice of shikantaza was first articulated in the Soto Zen lineage by the Chinese master, Hongzhi Zhengjue in his “Cultivating the Empty Field” where he wrote, “ A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere.” This is to say, we do not place our attention on anything at all, not the breath nor on the wall in front of us. We just sit not thinking. It is in this practice of whole heartedly sitting that we are awake.

Master Nishijima, in his “To Meet the Real Dragon,” quotes Master Dogen saying the following:

“Zazen is not training to attain enlightenment. It is just the pleasant gate to the Dharma. It is the practice and experience of the perfectly realized truth.” And later, “Just sitting in quietness was the realization of the Truth itself. It was enlightenment itself. To sit sincerely in Zazen was the realization of the state beyond body and mind.”

When Dogen wrote his three most famous fascicles, Bendowa, Genjokoan, and Fukanzazenji, her was referring to shikantaza as Zazen. Zazen and shikantaza are one in the same as is Zazen and realization.

This is what the Soto School teaches and what it practices.

Some of us just cannot resist deconstructing our experience and claiming a place along the way to Complete Unexcelled Awakening. We use methods of the Theravaden school to gauge our “progress” Even Daido Loori fell prey to this by utilizing the Ten Ox-Herding pictures as the foundation of a sort of stage theory of Zen. Just because we “need” to “know” where we are, does not mean we should attempt to get a grade for ourselves. This need is the deluded mind seeking an escape. This is not the way of Soto Zen. It is not the way of Clear Mind Zen.



Nishijima writes, “Master Nyojo told him (Student Dogen) not to be concerned about attaining enlightenment. Rather, he should ‘just sit,’ and in sitting find the essence of Buddhism itself…Nyojo did not promote the study of koans, the counting of breaths or other methods of focusing the mind. He stressed the simple activity of just sitting, and he urged his disciples to find the meaning of practice in practice itself.”

Do not deconstruct your seated practice. Such a practice eviscerates the living and thus, examines, the dead. Just sit. Nothing special. Nothing miraculous.

Be well,

The Rascal

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Zazen is the practice of seated meditation, we say, yet it is far more than that. Zazen is a state of being. What are the ontological elements? Steadiness, serenity, surrender, alertness, openness, in short, a state of being that is upright and aware.

We exist naturally in this state of being until we are encumbered by thoughts and feelings. We collect thoughts and feelings and store them for daily reference. They form a sort of vetting process for us. A process which, in truth, actually becomes a veil clouding our ability to see clearly.

My Clouds:

Growing up in poor in Miami, in a household headed by an addict and a co-dependent partner, I saw what other people had and I dearly wanted it. The good life, the life of leisure and fun. I saw in base relief, then, my poverty. Television helped with this, as well. It framed the world and taught me to turn my wants into needs. I had hope.

I saw, eventually, though, that the rich were rich and the poor were poor and never truly will the two actually come together. When they do, it is carefully orchestrated by handlers, as in the case of Movie and Rock Stars. The rich remain rich, the new-rich remain on the outside looking in, and everyone works to maintain the status quo in the hope that no one will notice. Meanwhile we at the bottom continue to bus the tables and wait on others. Still, I thought, I can beat this.

Great Doubt arises.

My hope, my sense of moving up in the world, seemed exposed as a childhood dream by the war. There were those who fought and those at home who fought to find ways out of the draft. Patriotism and trust in government was wrecked by Vietnam and that Dirty Tricks Master, Tricky Dick Nixon. This man, posing as a Quaker, carpet bombed Hanoi and relentlessly assaulted those who opposed the war. White hats were just a costume to hide the evil men do. These were like the swift strikes of a kyosaku. Wake up!

At home, the VFW told me they didn’t want “cry baby” Vietnam Vets in their organization. I was partially paralyzed, retired from the Army at 19, and often spent hours at a Royal Castle hamburger joint. One night, sipping coffee, I remember a police officer coming in and giving me the third degree. What am I doing there? I think, “What else does a kid retired at 19 do?” I caused suspicion, I suppose. Wake up!



Great Determination arises.

When confronted with doubt some of us collapse. Too bad. Life offers us whacks of the kyosaku to give us great doubt. Contrary to what we sometimes think, it’s not a test, in fact, it’s the real thing. Bad things do happen to good people. Life is not fair. Societies are not structured equally. Some of us have to walk to work…if we have a job to go to. Some of us have to make a choice between food and medicine. It’s all very sad, but it’s all life as it is.



I chose not to collapse. I get a GED. I go to college. I get married. I get a job. Life happens. Somewhere within me is a stubborn rascal. I am not going to go quietly into the night. One foot in front of the other. Washing dishes, baking pies, waiting on tables, taking crap from all sorts of idiots, I earn my keep.

Eventually, I get a Ph.D., start a business, and become successful. But who am I?



I have learned not to trust anything but my true self. What I have also learned is that “my” true self is “our” true self, the cosmos. A Ph.D., a successful business, and a life in service to others through that business, was not enough. The backward step demanded to be taken.



Great Faith arises.

When living fully awake, or when living asleep, life is what it is: a great metabolic process with no beginning and no end. In either case there is no difference. What differs is how we relate to it. To fully appreciate our lives we must surrender ourselves to the fullness of the universe itself. We must take that step off the cliff of doubt. Or jump off the pole of awakened being to make ourselves in the world. This takes faith, not courage. Faith that things are what they are, and unfold as they will, and that through it all we are what we are: human beings making choices.



In those choices our true self arises. In this there are no excuses. We are what we do, not what we would like to do, think we are, or try to be. I believe words like “try” “think” “want” are contemporary profanity because they, in fact, profane us. They are the words we use to deceive ourselves and others.



The Mantra of the Upright.

Get out of thought; get into action. Don’t try, do.



Be well.

Notes

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



Recently my practice as abbot and founder of this Order has become challenging, well, more challenging than is usual. We are experiencing a degree of growth that can be a challenge in and of itself. Yet, growth we expect. What I didn’t expect was being faced with such a need for volunteers to staff the Temple, lead groups, and do some of the background work that is essential to the Order itself.



We currently have four groups a week: Comparative Religion, Zen 101, Women in Zen, and Zen Discussion. We are practicing Zazen Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday as formal Zen practice periods. We have two Zen in the Park periods and one Tai Chi Chih class. We are working with Sangha members Tamra and Shelley to bring formal Zen practice to Mesilla and are traveling to El Paso regularly to offer teaching at our Both Sides/No Sides Sangha there. I received a letter from the CYFD Superintendent asking to meet with us regarding bringing meditation to the J. Paul Taylor Juvenile Correction facility here in southern New Mexico. On top of this, our webmistress has asked to be relieved of her responsibilities in that area. We are going to T or C this morning to meet with her.



Our Membership Committee is evolving into a Membership Council. This council will meet to approve membership applications. New applicants will have to go through a screening procedure to be approved as Members of our Order. All Members will be expected to honor their practice commitments.



We need members who are serious, engaged and willing to assist. We have a need for individuals to volunteer to be present certain nights of the week to act as greeters and representatives of the Order. We also have a need for one additional member to become a part of the Membership Council. If you are willing to do this, please contact Rev. Dai Shugyo through our Order’s email address, clearmindzen@yahoo.com.



Lastly, Soku Shin and I have decided we will host the “Gatherings” at the Temple instead of our home after Friday’s group. We will also host the once a month Sunday Gatherings there as well.



Up-coming: Zazenkai on the first Saturday of June. I will have several of my paintings on display at the Southwestern Jewish Art Festival at Temple Beth El, June 12. Tickets are $20.00 and includes champagne, mimosas, and a variety of foods. Please consider coming to that event.



May you each be a blessing and I look forward to seeing you soon.



Yours,

Daiho

Do Not Waste Time

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



The news this morning was difficult to bear. The city of Joplin was devastated by a massive tornado going into the night. People were left to withstand nature’s carnage in the dark of night. As I read the story and watched some video, I was moved to those still, silent tears that come from deep within my heart: people are frightened, huddled against the terror of chaos with little ability to secure themselves, I weep for them.



My heart touches theirs as I have been in that darkness and cannot tell you how overwhelmingly terrifying it can be. Combat in Vietnam; hurricanes in Miami; violent, psychotic assault; these things can touch us to the core in ways that destroy our very foundation, that foundational platform we use to get through the day.



Zen teaches us that nothing is permanent, that everything changes, and we are OK with that as long as the change is slow, giving us time to deal with it. But in the case of such disasters as tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunami, and bombs, we are less able to withstand the assault to our senses. In such times we pull our emotional selves in tight and go into action. Like the medic that braved machine gun fire to assist me, ordinary citizens in Joplin franticly search for survivors and render what aid they are able. It is later we undo ourselves, asking the core question, “what does all this mean?”



For those survivors, life will not be the same. A cold glass of milk, a marshmallow, or a simple daisy will speak to them in ways they never quite imagined. As a survivor myself, I take it as my sacred trust to reaffirm the teaching from the Sandokai: Do not waste time.



Be well