Faith

Listening to the "Faith" album by George Michael, He sings, "You gotta have faith..." Really? I'm reminded of questions of faith itself, what it is and what it isn't. Earlier this morning, say around 5 AM I happened upon a film on Netflix called "An Interview with God." Avery Christian perspective in most ways, but God asked the journalist a ton of probing questions many of which involved faith and how we understand it.

Do we need faith and how do we understand it in either case? Is it important? Zen Buddhism argues we need great doubt, great faith, and great practice. I really believe these are core to deepening our relationship to the world and all of our relationships,

Challenging our beliefs, our basic assumptions is the only path to truth, truth regarding our world and our relationships within it. Great doubt demands this path even though it is incredibly difficult. How many of us routinely doubt what we believe we know? Doubt to the most basic level, right down to our existential reality?

Faith plays a role in this. We must have faith in both the process of doubt and the processes involved in practice. Our practice rarely yields results we can see and measure and our doubt challenges the ground of our being.

So one way to look at it is faith is more about moving forward into the unknown than belief in a God a particular path. In this sense faith is about courage. How many of us have this level of courage? Each challenge, after all, has consequences. Are we prepared for encountering these?

Be well,

Life is in the details

Good Morning World,

'Just finished opening the day with our morning Zen ceremony and zazen. What a beautiful way to begin a day, especially good, too, is the fact that late last night I baked some chocolate chip raison shortbread cookies to greet me as I woke!

Yet, no amount of cookies and other good things will completely remove the shadow of this pandemic and the dark sounding future we may face. I've read reports that we may have to wear masks and practice social distancing for a couple of years. Can we human beings endure such things as this for an extended period of time? Seems like an apocalyptic b grade movie to me..

Still, there is beauty in each moment. I'm sitting here on my patio listening to the birds sing, witnessing a sunflower begin to open, and looking forward to those cookies with my morning coffee. After that I'll start my Harley and listen to to engine run as it puts a charge in the battery keeping the engine and its electrical system in running order. Then I have seeds to plant, a library to get back in order, as (I'm sure) many other odds and ends will arise to be taken care of.

I believe that old saying, "the devil is in the details" is wrong. Its more truthful to say, "life is in the details." So, may we each live those details with an open heart.

Wisdom Sutra

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Change

With palms together,

Recently I decided to deactivate my Facebook page and shift my work to my blog site.  I will be posting here quite often and will post not only my thoughts, but also my Zen schedule and other events..

So, I will begin to offer morning zazen over Google Hangouts daily at 8:00 AM Mountain Time and a Study group each Wednesday at 6:00 PM.

I will also post video talks over on my YouTube channel. My artwork will be posted on my gallery site here at Blogger.

You may email me at daihoroshi@gmail.com

Current sitting schedule:  Daily at 8:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM Mountain Time

Study Group Wednesdays at 6:00 PM

email me at daihoroshi@gmail.com for an invitation to join me.

May we each be happy and free from suffering.

Gassho

No Fear

“With no hindrance in the mind, no hindrance therefore no fear. Far beyond delusive  thinking we (they)finally awaken to complete nirvana.” (Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra)

One major aspect of Zen practice is to awaken to a certain truth: Our feelings and thoughts are powerful inhibitors to freedom.

When we live in fear created by our thoughts we suffer in a jail of our own making. See the jailer and free yourself. That’s the message.

How to do that? How do we experience fear and dispel it within our mind? One way, I believe, is to come to terms with our own mortality, our own vulnerability, and the fact that in the greater view of things, life simply goes on as it has and will continue throughout the millennia.

Our individuality is a delusion, created by our brain. As Master Dogen pointed out in his Genjo Koan, when we step out of ourselves a realization of the universality of being opens before us and we are no longer just ourselves, but the whole universe.

When in that realization, what is there to fear?

So, in our practice of zazen, one of the things that happens is a confrontation with the loss of self.  Many of us step back when that happens, afraid to go deeper and we retreat into our comfort zone, the comfort of our self. Yet, that self isn’t real. It’s a shadow cast on a screen in our brain.

As we confront these dark days, days of fear, illness, isolation, possible death, look outward to the infinite sky above us. Look downward deep into the quantum level of existence. In either direction, infinity.

Death is life and life is death; they “inter-are.”  Witness the evening, witness the morning. Witness the leaves appear on the trees, witness your neighbors children. Witness the love and compassion surrounding you. What else is there, but the life we live in the here and now?

No hindrance, therefore, no fear.

Be the blessing you are and let the rest go.

Daiho Hilbert

Silent Thunder: The Story of Matsuoka Roshi - Final Trailer

Is there a Middle Way?

"If wound too tight it will break; if too loose it won't play." Advice in Buddha's time pointing to the value of a middle way, a way avoiding extremes. We are on the edge of extreme social control out of a reasonable sense of fear regarding something we have never experienced, a pandemic.

A journey down the rabbit hole.

I fear that often our fear, no matter how reasonably based, causes us to put our safety above all else. Social isolation, closing businesses, retreating into the digital world for our social needs, will, it seems to me, have long lasting and profound effects not only on our economy, but on our basic humanity.

We are "homo sapiens" or from its origins, "wise men." One of the characteristics of homo sapiens is we are a species that works in groups. Our identity as a species is defined through our group membership, Forming groups is our natural way to survive, thrive, and feel safe. When we are cast out of our group we feel unsafe, cut-off, isolated, and threatened.

What happens when we believe our neighbor is a threat to us? Think about that. What happens when our larger group, our government, decides to shut down our places of business and social interaction? What happens when grocery items are essentially rationed? What happens when (outside of digital means) we are effectively in the dark about what is going on around us? My personal sense is: nothing good.

Our social connectivity will erode making it possible to see others as threats and, thus, requiring us to defend ourselves at our most basic level: family. Home becomes our safe zone and our prison of which we must defend at all costs. I read this morning that guns and ammo sales have went through the roof since this virus became real here in the US...so? Portent?

It seems to me that some middle ground could be established which would allow for public gatherings, open restaurants, and the like. Precautions could be taken; gloves, masks, anti-viral sprays, for example. In this way we might avoid taking those very slippery steps toward a semi-totalitarian state where government becomes our parent.

I'm considering hosting a series of focus groups online to discuss matters such as these. Let me know if you might be interested.

Gassho,