UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud podcast

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Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions!

1
A Fork, A Precipice, A Decision 24:42

5 dagen geleden24:42

Later Afspelen

Lijsten

Vind ik leuk

Leuk

24:42

Episode Notes [01:14] Unexpected Email from Employer [05:49] The Deferred Resignation Program [06:34] Initial Reactions and Concerns [08:01] Evaluating the Offer [08:21] Enhanced Standards of Conduct [08:55] Personal Reflections and Concerns [12:21] Seeking Advice and Making a Decision [13:01] Option One: Do Not Resign [14:56] Option Two: Resign [16:44] Insights from Conversations [21:30] Making The Decision [23:51] Final Thoughts and Gratitude Resources Mentioned Sebastian Junger The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson Donald Trump Elon Musk Steve Bannon Russell Vought Derek Sivers Sumner Crenshaw Brian Fretwell at Finding Good Chad Littlefield The Thought Leaders Practice by Matt Church Simon Cowell Beauty Pill Producer Ben Ford Questions Asked Is it legitimate, and can it be trusted? How are you feeling? What questions come to your mind? Where does your mind go? Are you seeking safety? Would this have been an adrenaline rush as you raced to send the resignation response? What an "enhanced standard" regarding loyalty and trustworthiness was? What are these new "enhanced standards?" Are they beyond what my Constitutional oath requires? If I don't resign, how bright will the target on my back glow? My leadership has supported all my work, but would termination direction come from higher up the chain of command? What would you recommend if we talked over coffee? What questions would you ask? How would you use listening? How would you use silence? How is this scenario playing out in your mind and body? What is coming to the surface for you? How might that influence what you are about to say to me? What are the chances of my name popping on a list and getting fired? How about the chances of being part of an official Reduction in Force and early retirement? Would the administration make a better offer? What do I know about the pending job market? What did I expect the workplace to be like and did I want to be there as the contractions took place? Will the administration pay me through the end of September or will they renege? Can I sufficiently build the Curated Questions business to transition by 1 October? - Do I have the faith or confidence to step into this future as a sole practitioner and grow Curated Questions into all I envisioned? Was this purpose calling? What would I expect the job market to look like at the end of summer if I hadn't developed the income streams to maintain our lifestyle? What is your recommendation? Did it change from your initial recommendation? Where in your body are you feeling the uncertainty? Are you processing this scenario in parallel with your decision as if you had received the email? What additional questions should I have considered? Who else should I have consulted with? How would you have changed my risk rating? What is the correct length of the pregnant pause before making an important announcement? What processes would you use in my circumstance, and what would be different? What questions are at the top of your list to get to a decision? Who would be the members of your pantheon you would counsel with to gain clarity? Apart from the heady analysis, what other key practices would you include in your journey through a similar situation?…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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A podcast of original teachings and music by Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi, guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order.

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#Society #Buddhist #Religion #Philosophy #Silent Thunder Order

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

12 subscribers

updated 13 dagen geleden

Thuis series•Feed

A podcast of original teachings and music by Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi, guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order.

99 afleveringen

#Society #Buddhist #Religion #Philosophy #Silent Thunder Order

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UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

1
172: Zen Ps & Qs 13:20

13 dagen geleden13:20

13:20

Speaking of watching your Ps and Qs, when taking up the way of Zen meditation, it may seem all too easy to get things backward. In fact, according to the great Zen ancestors, getting it wrong is a natural and necessary part of the process, expressed as "Fall down seven times, get up eight," apparently an old Chinese saying adopted by Master Dogen. He also said that hitting the bullseye depends upon the 100 prior misses. So we are inevitably immersed in trial and error. In considering Buddha's original teaching in the First Sermon — outlining the Four Noble Truths, including the Eightfold Path — one aspect is often overlooked. Along with the fact that they consist of a description of reality and a prescription for practice, respectively, they also include four admonitions, or instructions for how to approach implementing them. I think of these as the four "charges," one accompanying each of the Noble Truths, namely: 4 CHARGES Existence of dukkha - (we are to fully) Understand Origin of dukkha - () Abandon Cessation of dukkha - () Realize Path to cessation of dukkha - () Follow The translator's choice of "understand" in this context seems woefully inadequate, given that even Buddha himself pointed out that what he realized was beyond understanding, in any ordinary sense of the word. But setting aside the semantics, let's consider all four commands as outlining a process of assimilating and acting upon Buddha's teaching. We are to fully understand, or comprehend, the existence of suffering in this world. We are to abandon its main source, or origin, namely our own craving. We are to realize the cessation of suffering, hopefully in this lifetime. And we are to follow the Path in our daily actions, so that everything we do becomes the path. And thus, as Buddha taught in the Lotus Sutra, widely regarded as his last teaching, there is actually no separate Path, if everything is the path. We are on this path whether we know it or not. And, of course, we do not necessarily engage the process in the order implied by the sequencing of the sentence. In fact, we begin at the end, with the Eightfold Path. It, too, is usually laid out in reverse order of its implementation: Right wisdom: view and thought; right conduct: speech, action and livelihood; and right discipline: effort, mindfulness and meditation. Again, we begin at the end, with meditation, which leads to mindfulness and greater effort, which affect our conduct, and so on, leading eventually to right wisdom of understanding and worldview. Or so we hope. But when we consider the difficulty of what Buddha did, and is asking us to do, it seems impossible on the surface — as do the Precepts, when considered as literal and absolute. So we are left with the prospect of figuring out what these directives actually mean, and how they might be accomplished, by contemplating them in meditation, which brings us full circle to where Buddha realized these truths, on the cushion. In Zen meditation, we are encouraged to give up our reliance on the ability of the discriminating mind to analyze and understand, and instead to trust our intuition to come to an insight into reality that is not accessible to reason alone, what Master Dogen referred to as "non-thinking": neither thinking, as such, nor not thinking. So we are to find the sweet spot, the balance between these two aspects of our original mind. In light of this attitude adjustment to the way we ordinarily approach problem-solving, let me suggest another analogy to clarify the long and broad teachings of Buddha's tongue. P's & Q's of Zen Keying off of this common trope, engage with me in an experiment in semantics that may hopefully shed some light on buddha-dharma. Setting aside the "Qs" for now, I propose that we can frame the basics of Buddhism in alliterative form, as a collection of words beginning with P, or more precisely, "Pr," which turns out to be a substantial set of considerations to be assimilated before ("pre-") setting a course of action: • Premises & Principles • Predilections & Proclivities • Prescriptions & Practices • Promises & Predictions Premises & Principles Buddhism, and for that matter any body of teaching, is based on a set of premises, defined as: ... a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion: if the premise is true, then the conclusion must be true . Another pr word pops up in the definition: proposition , which has a less definitive connotation, being a mere proposal, than a premise , which indicates a more settled basis. Premises, when proven out by experimentation or sheer experience, may become principles, much as hypotheses become theories (and with enough evidence, laws, or precepts) of the profession under consideration, such as science; or, well, law. Predilections & Proclivities However, Buddhism — dealing as it does with fallible human nature — also takes into account our predilections, proclivities, and predispositions, as well as any pertinent preconceptions we may be harboring. These words, too, have definitions and synonyms that often reflect each other, such as predisposition and predilection , i.e. sharing similar connotations of preference and propensity. Prescriptions & Practices When it comes to taking action based on the premises and principles laid out in Zen's teachings, and in light of the weaknesses of our predilections and proclivities, semantic hair-splitting does not help much, except perhaps to illustrate the subtlety of the task of discerning which prescriptions and practices might prove to be most productive for following the Zen Way under the present predicament in which we find ourselves. The default mode of action prescribed in Zen is meditation, of course, but many of the practices surrounding and supporting it raise issues of protocols in a starkly different social and cultural environment than that in which the ancestors found themselves. This is the key challenge of propagating Zen today, in a context of over-choice on every level of society. Promises & Predictions The promise of Zen, however, remains the same, no matter the situational causes and conditions surrounding our life and practice. Success in penetrating the koan of existence, while not predictable, may be predicated upon the simple formula of sitting still enough, upright enough, for long enough that the effects of zazen begin to manifest. Buddha predicted the future buddhahood of many of his followers, including his cousin Devadatta, who reputedly tried repeatedly to assassinate the great sage. Afterword This familiar "Ps & Qs" phrase came to mind while mulling over the design of Buddha's initial teachings, and after reading Ben Connelly's excellent commentary on "Vasubandhu's Three Natures." The first page that comes up from an internet search on Ps and Qs tells us that the phrase can be traced back to the 1779 Oxford English Dictionary. The most plausible origin, of several possible provenances, is that it refers to early typography, where "p" and "q" were likely to be mistaken, one for the other, when setting lead type. This factoid comes from a site hosted by The Guardian that you may want to check out if you are interested in the origin of words and phrases (etymology), semantic enigmas, and the evolution of language in general In our next segment we will continue delving deeper into the design intent of Zen's teachings and their implications for living in times of increasing uncertainty. Other than death and taxes, the beneficial effects of Zen and zazen are one of the few things that are certain in life. But that does not mean that we should take them for granted. We have to put in the work, making "effort without aiming at it as Master Dogen prescribes. Please plan to join our new online and onsite practice opportunities for 2025. My new Thursday evening Advanced Workshop, in particular, is designed to take a deep dive into the more subtle secrets of Zen and the details of zazen.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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171: Natural Meditation 14:29

6 weeks geleden14:29

14:29

In the new Thursday Workshop I have initiated for 2025, I am attempting to lay out in great detail what I believe to be the most natural way to meditate: zazen before Zen, so to speak. It may not be your daddy's meditation, but it is that of our ancient forefathers. Meditation, after all, was not the exclusive discovery of the historical Buddha, and his realization could not have been the first in the long presence of humankind on the planet, just the first recorded in history. What he discovered represents a return to something more primordial than Buddhism; Buddha was not a Buddhist, after all. Traditional teachings emphasize the perfecting of the Six Paramitas, which enumerate both personal and social dimensions of the place of Zen philosophy and practice in the cultures of India, China, Korea, Japan, and the far East. They are variously translated as charity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom. But in Zen practice, the perfecting of the paramitas in our daily lives is not merely a matter of remembering and agreeing with them in principle. It is, instead, recommended that we observe them in everything we do, within each dimension of the Eightfold Path; most especially including meditation, the eighth in the usual order, and the first place we begin to make effort. As Master Dogen is quoted as saying, In zazen what precept or ethical principle, is not fulfilled? The main method of Zen cannot be detached from the Eightfold Path, nor can it be left out of the process of perfecting the other five paramitas. Posture Paramita In fact, in zazen we begin by taking up another process of perfecting — perfecting the posture. Matsuoka-roshi would often say that you have to work your way through every bone in your body, and suggested that we develop an attitude of continually aiming at the perfect posture, never imagining that we have achieved it. This amounts to a practical application of Dogen's cryptic phrase, "making effort without aiming at it." This is what I refer to as "posture paramita": an exploratory search for the natural posture. Much like the proposition that we are already enlightened but we don’t yet know it, this approach suggests that our posture is already perfect, but we keep interfering with it. Much of our training in zazen method is about how to stop doing that. The Natural Way to Meditate One of the misconceptions I would like to address up-front is that we can do zazen the "right" way — and its corollary, the "wrong" way. While the ancient teachings mention "right meditation" along with all the other "rights" in the Eightfold Path, this translators' choice is not meant to indicate that there is an absolutely right way to meditate, as opposed to wrong ways. The "right" in this construction is more like a verb than an adjective — as in righting a capsized boat, in order to continue sailing. Or righting a wheel that is out of round, so that it rolls smoothly. In Zen, we continually correct as we go, when we detect that we are off-course. The vacillation is built into our conscious mind, continually swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other. For example, most practitioners interpret the instructions for zazen as strictly indicating that we are to sit stock still. Don't move. And empty the mind of thoughts. The former command to sit still may comprise a more pedantic obiter dictum in Rinzai praxis than in Soto Zen; the latter notion of the empty mind, a Western misconstruing of Master Dogen's "non-thinking." But most Americans, when first approaching Zen meditation, probably harbor these two ideas as a preconception. To which I say "good luck" with either of these notions, especially in combination. Unless you give yourself permission to move, you will never discover why it is that we sit still. Unless you give yourself permission to think, you may never realize what Dogen meant by "non-thinking." This was Master Dogen's expression of the natural state of attention in zazen. It is neither thinking, nor not thinking, which are opposite sides of the same coin. We sit without relying on thinking, our default go-to in most other areas of endeavor. Feeling Gravity Take an example from early childhood. Gravity is said to be the "constant teacher." As a toddler just beginning to transition from crawling to walking, we stand up, we fall down. We stand up again, we fall down again. This natural process may be the origin of the old saying that Dogen adapted, "Fall down seven times, get up eight." I always wonder why he didn't say "get up seven." We don't learn to stand and walk by thinking it through. At that age it is not likely that there is much thinking going on at all, in the ordinary sense of the word. We might better regard it as a process of adaptation. We are learning to navigate and negotiate the causes and conditions of our world, in which gravity is a major player, by trial and error. Which involves intuition and observation rather than intellectual analysis. Similarly, the very act of sitting and facing a blank wall for extended periods of time is a counter-intuitive and counter-cultural act. That is, its simplicity sets aside the usual resort to thinking and analysis, bringing forth the intuitive, instinctual side of awareness. Taken for Granted Once we can successfully balance, standing and walking in the field of gravity, it becomes less and less of a concern, and eventually goes subliminal. We are less and less aware of its influence. Until we take up athletics, dancing, or some other activity that challenges our security in the face of gravitational attraction, such as mountain climbing or walking tightropes. Maybe bungie-jumping. As Master Dogen was wont to say, after laying out an analogy to help us grasp the principles of Zen, "All things are like this." That is, we adapt to all sensations over time, becoming less acutely aware of all the multiple stimuli that are acting upon us at any given time. In doing so physically and sensorially, we take more and more of our world for granted, until some natural or manmade disaster comes along as a wakeup call. Stepping Back Another natural way to de-condition ourselves and recover our awareness of the fundamentals of our existence — like gravity — is to practice zazen. Finding and engaging the most natural posture — upright seated meditation — combined with the most natural breathing pattern, we afford ourselves the best opportunity for discovering, or recovering, our most natural, original mind. As our attention withdraws from our usual ruminations over the ongoing conditions of our lives that we find unsatisfactory ( dukkha ) — in what Master Dogen referred to as the "backward step" — we naturally return to a more primordial state of awareness, sometimes referred to as "bare awareness," becoming aware of, or remembering, what it is to exist as a sentient being. This "returning to" is the root meaning of "refuge" — refugo, refugare from the Latin — rather than escaping or hiding out, we are returning to familiar territory, our true home. I would say, remembering what it means to be a "fully conscious human being," but Zen's teachings caution us to accept that we are not necessarily fully conscious — in fact that we are largely asleep. The Zen Buddhist proposition regarding consciousness is relatively simple in concept, but difficult in execution, as we say of certain problems and processes in design thinking. That is, we were all asleep last night, and we all woke up this morning, and we all know the difference between the two. Although lucid dreaming sometimes calls the difference into question. One key tenet of Buddhism, that I do not believe is characteristic of any other religious or spiritual practice, is that — as wide awake as we may seem to be at the moment — we are still asleep, to a certain degree. And that we can wake up — fully — as Buddha did. The honorific means, literally, the "fully awakened one." And that we will know the difference. This suggests that we can do this on our own recognizance. We don't need no stinking teachers, as the threefold Lotus Sutra reminds us. Zen is pointing at something natural, primordial, that comes with the territory of being a human being. We look to teachings for guidance, but we cannot depend upon them, nor upon our teachers, for our own insight. In this matter, Zen is truly the ultimate in do-it-yourself, which helps to explain its appeal to the Western mindset of independent thinking, the cult of the individual. As we turn our attention away from the pressing concerns of the social sphere, shining the bright light of Zen meditation upon the personal sphere, the natural process of sensory adaptation will set in. By stressing stillness and sameness over motion and change, we begin to experience motion in the stillness, on deeper and more subtle levels. As Matsuoka-roshi would often say, "Zen goes deeper." At bottom, we embrace the reality that these apparent differences are really not separate, that nothing has really changed from the beginning. It is what it is, what it has always been, and what it will always be: everchanging. Please plan to join our new online and onsite practice opportunities for 2025. My new Thursday evening Advanced Workshop, in particular, is designed to take a deep dive into the more subtle secrets of zazen and Zen.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

1
170: Happy New Moment 14:53

11 weeks geleden14:53

14:53

In the previous segment of UnMind, titled "the least important thing," I closed with a call for submissions; quoting myself: If you have any topics or areas of interest in Zen that you would like me to explore in 2025, please let me know. You know where I live. Having received little response, I can only assume that this podcast is not gaining much traction out there, in spite of near-weekly continuity for the past three or so years. Or that those of you who are following it don't have any topics of interest related to Zen, at least none that you would like me to take up. Or some combination of both. In this segment, the last one of the year, let me start with the obvious: the fact that actually, you do not know where I live. That is, none of us really knows what the rest of us are going through, on a year-in-year-out, day-to-day, hour-by-hour, moment-to-moment, basis, except in the most general sense. And that's okay. But we have to wonder whether everyone else is dealing with the same kinds of issues, such as anxiety over aging, sickness, and death, those personal dimensions of dukkha that Buddha taught we all face. Anxiety stems from the unsatisfactory nature of living in the face of impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality, universal aspects of the koan of existence. Are you feeling the angst? Can you remember when it first dawned on you that this life — which seems so substantial, so perfect in so many ways, and that we once took to be permanent — is insidiously deceptive in that regard? That the causes and conditions of it are not part of what you bargained for, opting into birth? Assuming you had any choice in the matter. Few of us would credit a claim of any real intentionality on our part that preceded birth. But in fact Buddha does, explicitly — or at least implicitly — in his explication of the Twelvefold Chain of Interdependent Origination. It is his model of how things got to be the way they are — including, most crucially, our own presence in this world of sentient being. According to this cogent analysis, we come into being owing to our very desire to exist — the desire for knowing, or consciousness itself. Considered dispassionately, how could there be any simpler explanation for life? Upholders of theism would have us believe that there is a separate intent to life, an intelligent "designer" operating behind the scenes, as author and director of its creation. The adherents of deism hold that the creator god is not directly involved, but simply got the ball rolling, perhaps by means of the Big Bang. Atheists deny outright any possibility of such disembodied intent, and agnostics try to walk the tightrope between belief and disbelief, according reality to the limitations of their senses and intellectual understanding. No woo-woo, in other words. Most religious thinkers are resistant to the idea that we are simply a fluke of some kind, the result of a secular-reductionist chain of events beginning with material elements combining physically in a random process; yielding organic chemistry; leading to one-celled organisms; finally culminating in human beings, the absolute apex of evolution, or God's greatest creation. In our human opinion, anyway. Most rationalist thinkers would probably push back on the equally simplistic notion that some creator god is to be given credit, or to be blamed, for our being here, and its corollary, that we have to pass the test of Her intent. On the one hand, this doctrine conveniently relieves us of the burden of accepting responsibility for our own existence; on the other, it tasks us with noodling out exactly what that intent might prescribe for the behaviors and attitude adjustments necessary to pass muster. One logical consequence of this notion is that we assume that our reward will be in heaven, if anywhere, but certainly not on this earth. But we cannot escape or postpone the inevitable onset or aging, sickness and death, simply because we hold to a belief, however compelling. Unless you believe in a scientific possibility of eternal life as suggested by sci-fi speculations such as technologically-enhanced consciousness, uploaded to digital hardware and/or downloaded to new bodies, or the same old carcass rejiggered with endlessly replaceable parts, grown in tanks from genetic sources. With apologies for that discursive ramble into weirder pastures, let us return to the focus of Zen on the present reality of the moment, devoid of any beliefs — religious, scientific or fantastical — that we may tend to turn to for comfort. The Heart Sutra of Buddhist liturgy — a central, condensed summary of Buddha's teaching chanted on a frequent basis in Zen centers, temples and monasteries around the world — takes us through a long litany of what might appear to the uninitiated to be a thoroughgoing denial of reality as we know it. Testimony as to what the iconic "Bodhisattva of Compassion" (Skt. Avalokiteshvara; Ch . Quanyin; J . Kannon ) realized through meditation begins with the cryptic statement that s/he "clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering." Remember that this model of the "five aggregates" (Skt. skandhas ) represented the best science of the times as to what, precisely, sentient existence consists of, in its ultimate finality. Today we would paint a much more complex picture, but Buddha had to work with the sum total of information available at the time. Then he goes on to reduce all of reality to one fundamental dyad, which, like all dual pairs, cannot be separated: Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form; form itself is emptiness,emptiness itself form; sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this. Form, or appearance (Skt. rupa ), constitutes our normal cognizance of the material world, with its near-infinite variations — the "myriad things," or "ten-thousand things" — and the names we give to them (Skt. nama ), taken together as "name and form" (Skt. namarupa ), "the one and the many," for short. This would be roughly equivalent to current terms such as phenomena and noumenon: particular things, and unitary sameness as their essence. This is a thread running through Zen teachings, indicating the nonduality of duality, or the "Harmony of Difference and Equality," as the famous Ch'an poem, " Sandokai ," would have it. In our modern idiom, we would speak of the interchangeability of matter and energy. The other four skandhas — Sensation, Perception, Impulse, and Consciousness itself — are similarly subject to deconstruction, though their position on the spectrum of energy and the psychological plane makes for a more convoluted analysis. Suffice it to say that the prefatory phrase, "given Emptiness" (Skt. sunyatta ) indicates that all five are not what they seem to be, just as solid, liquid or gaseous matter is permeated with space, as we know today. The monolog then goes on to negate all of the familiar dimensions of consciousness, including the Six Senses or realms (Skt. dhatus ) of the Buddhist model of awareness: Therefore given emptiness there is no form; no sensation; no perception; no formation; no consciousness — no eyes; no ears; no nose; no tongue; no body; no mind — no sight; no sound; no smell; no taste; no touch; no object of mind; no realm of sight; no realm of mind-consciousness. That last, the non-reality of "mind-consciousness" itself, indicates that the various findings, conclusions, and recommendations for practice, as well as all broader implications of insight into reality deriving from it, must also be set aside: There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance; neither old age and death nor extinction of old age and death; no suffering; no cause; no cessation; no Path; no knowledge; and no attainment. So where, we might be forgiven for asking, does that leave us? According to Zen, right back where we started. Nothing has changed; nothing that is not already real and true can be revealed by our meditation. Sitting still enough, upright enough, and long enough will simply allow us to see the delusionary aspect of our own interpretation of our own consciousness. "Until we come to no consciousness also," as the first translation that we recited at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago expressed it. Let that percolate for a moment. If indeed Buddha, or Avalokiteshvara, or any one else, can come to a state of "no consciousness" — and come back from it, alive and well — what are we to make of that? This ultimate finality is what I like to call the "singularity of consciousness" —"That of which there is no whicher," as Alan Watts, my brother's favorite commentator on all things Zen, put it. The AI summary leading off the search results (which may be the go-to virtual Zen master, or "buddha of the future," otherwise known as Maitreya) paraphrased: t o describe something beyond comparison, an ultimate reality or absolute that cannot be measured or ranked against anything else Which is eerily similar to a concluding section of the longest Ch'an poem in Soto liturgy, the Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind : No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relation-less state; take motion in stillness and stillness in motion; both movement and stillness disappear; to this ultimate finality no law or description applies. So there you have it. All things are like this, to cadge another repeat Dogenism. Let me close with best wishes for a happy new year; a happy new month; week, and/or day; happy morning, afternoon and evening; a happy hour or half; a happy minute, second, or moment. They are all equally empty. As the same poem reminds us in closing: The Way is beyond language for in it there is no yesterday no tomorrow no today.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

1
169: The Least Important Thing 13:25

13 weeks geleden13:25

13:25

In the last segment of UnMind, we looked at the implications of Master Dogen's expression, "the most important thing in Buddhism," from Fukanzazengi , the set of instructions for zazen he composed after returning from China. We speculated on what he could possibly have meant, by singling out one of the many points he made in the text. I suggested that it may be more useful to consider the " don'ts ," rather than the " do's ," such as: not thinking, not interacting, and not distinguishing between the absolute and relative, rather than speculate upon a single bumper-sticker summation of his broader points, as the singular, "main thing to do." In other words, maybe he is pointing at something holistic, in the visceral realm, rather than the intellectual. This is in keeping with Buddhism's major teachings — that their meaning will be found in our direct experience on the cushion and in daily life, rather than in words, which can point at the truth but fail to express it in any comprehensive sense. So when we consider the least important thing in Buddhism, it may be helpful to turn to the written record of the spoken teachings of Buddha himself, beginning with the First Sermon, reputed to be what he had to say to the five ascetics he had been training and traveling with at that point in his spiritual quest. It starts out with come "don'ts." In that original dharma talk, Buddha essentially dismisses the extreme lifestyles of the rich and famous on the one hand — self-gratification writ large; and that of the ascetics themselves on the other, who had turned away from Siddhartha after witnessing him drinking goat's milk, violating their high standard of discipline, including virtual starvation. Buddha had landed in the Middle Way, after a night of extreme introspection. Here we have to reiterate that "extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice." In articulating the Middle Way between the usual pursuits of the lay hoi polloi and the monastic minority, Buddha indicated the futility of both lines of endeavor — self-gratification versus self-mortification. The most balanced and natural approach is nether to deny the cravings born of body, mouth and mind, nor to overindulge them. This suggests an innate trust in basic human nature — or we should say buddha-nature — our original nature, which is untrammeled by the limits and demands of biological needs and societal norms. Not exactly the noble savage, but the natural sage: a person who lives freely within the bounds of nature as well as those of society. Mr. Natural. Amongst the least important things in Zen would be concerns about our social identity. As one contemporary author's mother told him, You would be a lot less concerned about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. We all see ourselves as the marquee character in our own movie, with all others playing supporting roles. The trouble is, everyone else sees their reality the same way, with us as the bit players. While the most important thing, or things, about Buddhism will necessarily lie within the personal sphere, the least important will be found in the social sphere. Those in the natural and universal spheres will fall in-between. For example, it is more likely that we can safely ignore developments in society that may indirectly threaten our livelihood, safety and security — such as which party is currently in power — than we can those from natural and universal sources — such as climate change, pandemics, and asteroids. The most important things in Zen revolve around personal applications of the method — zazen — and the results of such training in terms of its effects directly upon the body-mind as well as attitude adjustments regarding our misconceptions of buddha-dharma, and some that tend to have a halo effect upon social life. One major overlap is the practice of patience. Sitting upright, straight enough and still enough for long enough, we are forced to become much more patient with ourselves, our general ignorance and the monkey-business machinations of the discriminating mind — citta in Sanskrit — which serendipitously sounds like Cheetah, Tarzan's famous chimpanzee companion, making it easy to remember. Wisdom, or enlightened, mind — bodhi in Sanskrit — comes to the fore. Citta and bodhi, foreground and background mind, or analytical and intuitive mind, gradually or instantaneously, come into better balance: the original, unified mind, in which the apparent dichotomy is "not-two." Much like central and peripheral vision, which collaborate interdependently to make up the whole of the sense of vision, the two aspects of mind are not in opposition to each other. Not competitive, but complementary. The most important thing , then, would be to allow them to work in harmony. Vacillation from one to the other is the natural way that intelligence and consciousness work. The least important thing would be to worry about them as being antagonistic to each other. We do not have to "empty our mind of thoughts." In fact, if we try to, the monkey will turn into a 600-pound gorilla. We will lose that battle. Better to allow the monkey free range. It will wear itself out eventually. When citta finally exhausts its frantic coping mechanisms, it will lie down and take a nap. Then bodhi can manifest as the balancing act. The posture becomes a comfortable stretch, the breath like a sigh of relief. By relinquishing control, we sink into equanimity. The Buddhist jargon term that addresses centered balance, or settling into "calm abiding" (Skt. Shamata ) — and is often defined as the platform for insight (Skt. Vipassana ) — is Samadhi : usually capitalized to emphasize the veneration and importance it is accorded. While I think that — as much as possible — we should endeavor to reduce or eliminate the jargonized nature of much of the written record, it may be clarifying to characterize the method of zazen and its effects in terms of different kinds of "samadhis." The first, the traditional form of the upright seated posture of the body in zazen, we might call physical samadhi — less stress, more equipoise, or equilibrium — basically coming into alignment with gravity. The second, we might term emotional samadhi — less anxiety, more calmness. Since mind and body cannot separate, the most direct path to the "mind" is through the body. The third, mental samadhi — less confusion, more clarity — particularly regarding the true meaning of buddha-dharma, what the teachings are pointing to in reality, which is only accessible within our direct experience. Experiential truth is the only truth in Zen. But we can misinterpret what we perceive. All perceived reality is virtual. I propose that there is a fourth kind of samadhi, which I term social samadhi — less friction, more harmony — in relationships. This, of course, is what most people are looking for in the early stages of their meditative practice. But its manifestation is further down the road. It all begins with physical samadhi in zazen. Amongst the least important things, one of the most important is to avoid creating expectations of your practice of zazen. Setting expectations is the way we approach most activities we associate with learning. We hope to learn something new, to find what is missing. But zazen, and its effects, is not really gaining something new, but remembering something long forgotten, and primordial: the natural posture, the natural breath, the natural state of mind. If we imagine that there is something fundamentally wrong with our mind, and that we have to "fix" it, then we are making a fundamental error, a categorical mistake, defined as "treating abstract concepts as though they had a physical location." There is nothing fundamentally wrong with our mind, or for that matter with the entirety of existence. The only thing wrong is our interpretation of reality, our own ignorance and uninformed opinions. As Master Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The least important things are TBD - to be determined. In your practice and daily life. As we close out the winter season of the old year and anticipate the opening salvos of the new year, let us remember that there is no such thing as a year, and practice with an open mind. Open to possibilities that lie beyond our imagination, and are right before, and behind, our original face. Don't look in the mirror for it. It is the most important thing. If you have any topics or areas of interest in Zen that you would like me to explore in 2025, please let me know. You know where I live.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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168: Election Year Zen part 10 15:35

15 weeks geleden15:35

15:35

Well, now we know. That is, we know how the vote tally turned out. What we don’t know for sure is what will happen next. As I said in closing the last podcast, we are waiting for the next number of shoes to drop. But many of our fellow citizens are worried that they know all too well what is coming, ranging from your worst nightmare to the final establishment of Valhalla on Earth. But this time the hall will include only the living survivors, not those who died in battle, as in the Norse myth. We have been here before politically, which will be remembered by all but those who voted for the first time in this election, who may have known only the recent history, and thus are doomed to repeat it, according to Churchill (who should know). The sanctification of former President George W. Bush by certain religious groups, particularly in his second campaign and term in office, presaged the elevation of the current President-elect to the status of being anointed by God to lead the country. Vilification by the other side reached similar levels of hysteria, if memory serves. One might regard the entire campaign as an example of confirmation bias on steroids. Both sides interpreted events — crowd size, 50-50 polls, mob hysteria at rallies — as confirming their most cherished hopes for victory. Only time will tell which, if either, is the extreme position out of touch with reality. Midterms may be the next major tilt of the teeter-totter. Meanwhile, let us return to the central focus of Zen — reality itself, the ultimate in vacillation. Like a Taoist shaggy dog story, this may be good, but it could be bad. Through this lens, the question arises as to exactly how important — how relevant — the political landscape can possibly be, to the living-out of our daily Zen lives? It might provide a bit of perspective to recall that Buddha did not buck the political establishment of his time in India. Which, if my poor understanding of history is correct, was based on the caste system — from the Brahmin, or priests at the top of the pyramid — to Sudra, or commoners, peasants and servants, at the bottom. Completely outside the box were the outcasts, out-of-caste members of the society — untouchables — who were employed as street sweepers and latrine cleaners. From an online search we find the following AI-assisted definition: India's caste system is a social hierarchy that divides people into groups based on ritual purity and is passed down through families. It has been in place for at least 3,000 years and is considered one of the world's oldest social hierarchies. The caste system dictates many aspects of a person's life, including their profession, who they can marry, and their social standing. The system apparently does allow for some upward social mobility as it functions in modernity, but it appears that originally, the level into which you were born pretty much determined your fate and future in society — what degree of influence you might have on the social sphere, and its degree of influence on your personal sphere. Needless to say, it was an asymmetrical relationship at best. Buddha was born into the Kshatriya, or warrior caste, second only to the Brahmin. Which makes me wonder if he was basically a late-blooming draft-dodger, or resistant to implementing the military misadventures of his overlords. I am fairly certain that had he been born into the lower classes, or as an untouchable, he would not have been able to carry out his program of establishing Sangha, the original order of monks and nuns. It is notable that many who joined him were of his same caste, some related to Siddhartha Gautama by blood. It is also noteworthy that whoever initially conceived the caste system, they justified it based on a notion of inborn “ritual purity.” Compare to today’s stiff-necked, toxic, entrenched and unyielding attitudes on racial and ethnic superiority. In the last segment I encouraged you to vote, without consideration of how you vote or for whom, other than to vote your conscience and for the future. You may have been surprised, as I was, at the outcome, either distressingly disappointed, or irrationally exuberant. In either case, I suggest tempering your expectations as to what may transpire in the next four-year cycle. Again, we have been here, done this, seen this movie, and rode this rodeo, before. The pendulum swings. Though, admittedly, if it swings to far it may break its mount. Uchiyama-roshi, in “Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom,” which we have been studying in the Tuesday evening Cloud Dharma readings this year, encourages us to look at our present life as if we had been aborted at the beginning. That way, we would never even have been here to suffer the vagaries of our lifetime. A less extreme thought experiment is to imagine that you were born into another period in history. In any time, if you lived to the full “three-score-and-ten” lifespan of tradition, the passing political pageantry of a given period may or may not have had any substantial effect upon you. You may have perished in the Revolutionary War, or been enslaved during the Civil War, or you may have been so far removed from the fray that you survived relatively unscathed. In the context of geologic time, a human lifetime is equivalent to the blink of a gnat’s eyelash in human time. In any case, how you lived and died mattered more within your personal sphere of experience and influence, than did the likely impact of your life on the social sphere. It is an asymmetrical relationship at best, and even more so as regards the natural and universal spheres. You may counter with the “great man” theory of history, but that assumes a lot, is over-simplistic, and in any case applies to very few individuals. Most of us are statistical placeholders. So, what to do? I like the old aphorism, “tend to your own knitting.” Not much actual knitting is going on these days, of course, but it points to the same idea as Matsuoka-roshi’s response to the question of how to take up so-called “engaged Buddhism.” He would assume the zazen posture and say: This is the most you can do. A more ancient saying from a Ch’an poem of about 600 CE — third patriarch Sengcan’s Hsinhsinming; Trust in Mind — takes this idea to a new, nondual level: I n this world of suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self To come into harmony with this reality just simply say, when doubt arises, “Not-two.” In this “not-two” nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. So I suggest that when doubt arises in the context of concerning and confusing developments in the social sphere — or even the natural or universal spheres — that we simply double down on Zen. In Zen, even the opposing political parties and their policies are “not-two.” This is not simple. Nor is it easy. But where are you going to find the answers to the social and political dilemmas we face today, if not in your meditation? Remember the old spiritual, “O sinner man, where you gonna run to? All on that day?” Well, every day is “that day” in Zen. I remember an old friend quoting an Indian guru, repeating over and over: “Every day, every day, every day — you must die a little to become the Buddha!” He would do it with an exaggerated East Indian accent, his voice rising higher and higher with each recitation, until he had you in stitches, your stomach hurting from laughing. But, you say, this is not a laughing matter. Are you so sure? It's either laugh or cry, as we say. Only you can determine whether your life is a melodrama, a tragedy, a comedy, or a tragicomedy. The frustration we feel in our inability to influence the outer spheres of our reality to move in the direction we want to see them evolve stems mainly from the futility of any such endeavor. The most we can do to have a direct influence is to put our attention and effort into the personal sphere, beginning on the cushion. The ripple effect hopefully ensues. The Bodhisattva Vow to “save or free all beings” is not a directive to take to the streets and lead the charge toward the elusive “arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.” MLK was a modern bodhisattva who appreciated the limits of what he could do in this regard, but expressed a deep faith that however futile his efforts might be, this is the inevitable direction of existence. In Buddhism, it is the wisdom of waking up to reality, in which we pray “May all beings be happy.” But with reality as it actually is, with aging, sickness and death baked into the cake. By their example, bodhisattvas help all beings to save themselves from their own ignorance, beginning at home, like any form of charity, and up close and personal. We have to get our oxygen mask firmly in place before we can effectively help anyone else. We do so by sharing with them the excellent method of zazen. In the next episode of UnMind, the last segment of 2024, we will return to our primary focus on the practical aspects of Zen in daily life. The “design intent” of Zen and zazen, so to speak. Stay tuned. 2025 is the 85thanniversary year of Matsuoka-roshi’s coming to America. Please celebrate by intensifying your practice.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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167: The Most Important Thing 18:58

17 weeks geleden18:58

18:58

DOGEN ON ZAZEN Upon returning to Japan from China in 1227, at the age of 27, Master Dogen composed the first draft of Fukanzazengi , the tract in which he outlines the principles of seated meditation, or zazen, that he had learned under the tutelage of Master Rujing. In one of the English translations, about two-thirds of the way through the text, he asks a question of the reader: Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism, how can you be satisfied with the transient world? Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning, vanishing in a moment. At this point in the piece, he has said many things about the physical method of meditation, interwoven with suggestions of the philosophy, attitude adjustments and correctives to conventional wisdom that accompany the practice. So what he means to indicate as the most important thing is subject to speculation. This may reflect a translator’s choice anomaly, a known issue in the art of interpreting ancient teachings. To home in on this most important thing more closely, let’s look at a brief, pointed poem, “Zazenshin,” that Dogen paraphrased from a Chinese version. It means something like “Acupuncture Needle” or “Lancet” – a very sharp instrument – for or about zazen: Zazen-shin - Shohaku Okumura, trans. The essential-function of each buddha and the functioning-essence of each ancestor. Being actualized within not-thinking. Being manifested within non-interacting. Being actualized within not-thinking, the actualization is by nature intimate. Being manifested within non-interacting, the manifestation is itself verification. The actualization that is by nature intimate never has defilement. The manifestation that is by nature verification never has distinction between Absolute and Relative. The intimacy without defilement is dropping off without relying on anything. The verification beyond distinction between Absolute and Relative is making effort without aiming at it. The water is clear to the earth; a fish is swimming like a fish. The sky is vast, extending to the heavens; a bird is flying like a bird. So from this we may take it that the most important thing has something to do with not thinking and non-interacting, and not distinguishing between the absolute and relative. It is pointing at something intimate, undefiled by conventional wisdom, and that has nothing to do with our reliance on common understanding, and goal-oriented efforts. To which we can only respond, “Hmmm. Thank you Dogen, for clearing that up.” MATSUOKA ON DOGEN Clearly, this message is about something beyond words, that language can only point at, if it is beyond thinking itself. Let’s explore some more contemporary quotes from Matsuoka-roshi to see if we can zoom in on the meaning of these passages. O-Sensei simplified Dogen Zenji’s instructions for his American students, condensing them into three discrete areas: posture, breath, and attention. The following are three expressions he would use frequently, addressing questions about zazen: Keep aiming at the perfect posture never imagining that you’ve achieved it You have to work your way through every bone in your body When your posture is approaching the stage of perfection, it will feel as if you are shoving your head against the ceiling The first, about aiming without achieving, makes Dogen’s “making effort without aiming at it” a bit more concrete by narrowly defining “it” as the upright posture. This is in keeping with the Zen premise that the zazen posture is the full expression of enlightenment, not merely a means to the end of enlightenment. It also reminds us that there can be no separation of body and mind in Zen, nor, indeed, in reality. And that the natural process of Zen is open-ended, based on aspiration as opposed to expectation. The second indicates that this is going to be a steady, slow process on a visceral level, sitting “with muscle and bone,” as my senior dharma brother in Chicago, Kongo-roshi, titled one of his talks. There are a lot of bones in your body. And the bones, of course, are not separate from the skin, flesh, and marrow, the connective tissue, as Master Bodhidharma taught. “Working your way through” recalls the famous dictum from the poet Robert Frost, paraphrasing, “the only way out is through.” The third seems to contradict the first, when Sensei describes what he frequently referred to as the “sitting-mountain feeling” that eventually comes from zazen. We are to aim at it without concluding that we’ve achieved it, because “Zen goes deeper,” as he would often say. No matter how seemingly complete and transcendent our immediate experience, it is not the end of the process, an attitude adjustment first articulated by Buddha himself in the “Fifty False States” section of the Surangama Sutra. The main admonition is that, no matter what happens in your meditation, not to imagine that you are now completely enlightened. Even Buddha returned to meditation for the fifty years of his life following his profound insight. But this “shoving your head against the ceiling” sensation is something that I can personally attest to from my modest experience on the cushion. I suspect that when we pull back on the chin, stretching the back of our neck with strength, a specific detail of the posture emphasized by Matsuoka-roshi, it has the effect of shoving our skull against the scalp, which would then feel like the resistance of a solid, external surface like a ceiling. The entire body is a tension-compression structure, much like a camping tent, where the bones of the skeleton are the compression members under stress from the surrounding membrane of musculature, tendons and ligaments, like the canvas and ropes of the tent. HAKUIN’S GAS PEDAL The other end of the “tentpole” is the base of the spine, connecting to the coccyx, or tailbone. Hakuin Zenji, a famous Rinzai priest whose life span bridged the 17th and 18th centuries, from 1686 to1769, recommended that we push forward and down on the lower spine until we feel a bit of pain there. That sensation derives from stretching the hard tissue of the discs between the large lower vertebrae. Even more today than in his time, our posture tends to be c-shaped, sometimes referred to as a “cashew,” when we sit in the driver’s seat of our vehicles on the expressway, or the chair at our desk. The natural position of the spine is an “S-shape” curve, bending the lower back in the opposite direction, like a cobra rising from the floor, dancing to the tune of the snake-charmer’s flute. I call this Hakuin’s gas pedal. Like the accelerator of your car or truck, if you keep your foot on it, pressing forward and down, the vehicle moves. If you let up on it, it slows to a stop. On the other hand, if you go pedal to the metal, it speeds out of control. The Middle Way again, in all its manifestations. So the most important thing, as regards the posture, at least, may be keeping these two pressure points in play while sitting. If you do so, you can’t go far wrong in terms of sitting upright. Breathing and attention also come into the picture, but that may be a subject for another UnMind. Let me close this segment with a couple of aphorisms that have come to me in my practice. ME ON ZAZEN I do not claim to have the depth of insight and understanding of our ancestors, and recognize that context, while not determinative of Zen experience, certainly counts. What Buddha, Bodhidharma, the great ancestors in China, and Dogen himself managed to accomplish under relatively primitive conditions in no way compares to what we may expect to realize under relatively cushy but geometrically more complex circumstances. But as they did in their times we must do in ours — namely use what we know to inform our efforts in exploring what we do not know, and cannot know, in any ordinary sense. So, here, I want to introduce two terms that may have no counterpart in their language. PROPRIOCEPTION MEETS VERTIGO Proprioception is a term from modern physiology, defined as: Perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body Vertigo is defined as: A sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve; giddiness. In terms of our experience in zazen, then, proprioception would be akin to samadhi, or at least its early stages, when, as Matsuoka-roshi said: When posture, breath, and attention all come together in a unified way, that is the real zazen. Now, if there is “real” zazen, it implies that there must be “unreal” or “fake” zazen, or the false impression that we are doing zazen when we are not, really. Samadhi is a jargon term that I hesitate to use, as it implies that I know what it means while suggesting that you probably do not. Which sets up the false dichotomy of “you and I,” “us and them,” the in-group cognoscenti versus the great unwashed. Sensei also pointed out, at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, paraphrasing, “When you become dizzy, concentrate on your knees.” And “When you get nauseous, concentrate on your forehead.” Or it may have been the other way around. The main point is that you probably will get dizzy, and you probably will get nauseous, in zazen. This brings up another coinage, for which I claim authorship: Let not the spiritual be the enemy of the practical I detect a vestigial strain of puritanism in the American culture that can infect our understanding and presentation of Zen, as a kind of belief system, a set of doctrines that one must subscribe to, in order to penetrate the inner sanctum of Zen’s purported spiritual secrets. This is anathema to the real Zen, as I understand it. All of Master Dogen’s instructions in Fukanzazengi are physical, not mental, as Carl Bielefeldt points out in his “Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation,” a wonderful, incisive line-by-line analysis of Dogen’s two extant revisions compared to the Chinese original. So let’s stay focused on the physical, and not get distracted by any woo-woo “spiritual.” If we continue sitting without expectation, implementing the two pressure points until we feel tMatsuoka-roshi’s “sitting mountain feeling” of great stability — our head “pressed against the ceiling” — the body and mind will take us where we need to go. We trust our teachers’ intent and wisdom, and we trust our Original Mind, as indicated in the title of Hsinhsinming , the earliest Ch’an poem chanted in Soto liturgy. If we sustain this posture — sitting still enough and straight enough for long enough — it will work its magic. Equilibrium will set in in the tension-compression system of muscle and bone of the body, leading to equipoise of the mind. Sustained for some time, the constancy of our proprioception will inevitably lead to vertigo — the flip side of solidity. “Mountains are always walking” — the planet is falling through space. There is “not even a toehold.” Emptiness is innately form, form innately emptiness. In the next segment of UnMind, we will put a cap on “Election Year Zen,” my tenth and final concluding commentary on the 2024 campaign, now that we know how it all turned out. But like a centipede, or millipede, there are surely many more shoes to drop.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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166: Election Year Zen part 9 15:31

19 weeks geleden15:31

15:31

The DharmaByte™ version of this segment will post in the STO newsletter the first week of November. This UnMind podcast will drop on Wednesday after election day, which is November 5th. The next segment of Election Year Zen will be posted on December 4th, barring unforeseen circumstances such as an outright armed revolution — or “the new civil war” as it has been billed in some quarters — an implied threat depending upon the outcome of the election. In Zen, of course, all future circumstances are unforeseen by definition. Unless you believe in prophecy. In this segment I will encourage you to vote, which I understand may not be necessary. Indeed, I have already voted. I have no desire to influence how you vote in terms of partisan politics, or in favor of which candidate or party conforms more closely to my own view. You should “vote your conscience,” in the current term of art. Or vote for the future — which seems contradictory to Zen’s “being in the moment.” Remember, in Zen we do not deny the possibility of the reality of karmic consequences occurring over the “Three Times” of Buddhism — past, future, and present. Low voter turnout is a concern of the professionals in this election and has always troubled me somewhat. I mean, how important is all this political posturing, when a large segment of the populace does not even exercise their right to vote? I do not mean to suggest that 100% turnout would somehow cure the many ills that befall our system of elected government. For one thing the third or more eligible voters who fail to turn out are not likely to be informed on issues, or qualifications of candidates on the ballots, let alone cognizant of the long-term effects of their vote. I feel confident, however, that readers of my DharmaByte™ column and followers of my podcast share a significant enough degree of concern, and have a sufficient grasp of the stakes in the outcome, to make intelligent and caring choices. Otherwise, you probably would not be listening to this. As I mentioned in the last Election Year Zen segment, I believe the most important measure of merit for a party or candidate to take office is the degree of their conformance to the principles of buddha-dharma, as I understand them. Quoting myself: I leave it to you to decide whether or not, and to what degree, your candidate for the highest office in the land, the most powerful secular position on Earth, are in harmony with these compassionate aspirations. But remember that the teachings of Buddhism were never meant to be held up to criticize others, but to reflect back upon yourself and your own behavior. The “mirror of Zen reflects all” — the good, the bad, and the ugly — without discrimination. You and your behavior are also reflected in that Precious Mirror. President Jimmy Carter made news recently, first by surviving to his 100th birthday, then by declaring that he wanted to live long enough to vote, one supposes for the opportunity to elect a non-white non-male president for the first time in history. I met President Carter during his successful run for the presidency, when he visited the office of the consumer research company that I joined in moving to Georgia in 1970. What do you suppose is so important in his mind about this election, that he expressed his intent to vote for or against one of the candidates? As the former president most famous for his contributions to humanity after his term in office, what do you make of this kind of commitment to the democratic process? I think we can assume that he harbors a belief in the long-term viability of the benefits of the democratic republic for the future of the human race, on a larger timeline than the next four-year election cycle. Let us turn back to the acronym: V-O-T-E, with which I titled the opening haiku poem. One interpretation that came to me is: “Vote Once for Time Eternal.” At my age, it becomes obvious that however I vote, it will probably have little effect upon my personal sphere, with what little future time I have left. But it raises a question. What are we voting for, exactly? The current trope is, “for the children.” Commentators and candidates take up the theme, appealing to the sentiment or question of what kind of country we will leave for the next generations of children and grandchildren. I suggest that we expand our time horizon to a relatively infinite scale. In the Lifespan Chapter of the Lotus Sutra, on which I gave a dharma talk recently, the point is that Buddha’s physical death, or Parinirvana , is only apparent. The truth is that Buddha is still here, forever, but cannot be seen by ordinary vision. Thus, what Buddha was, or is, has only a circumstantial and temporary connection to the person known as Siddhartha Gautama, the conditioned self of incarnation. Similarly, can we look at the act of voting in this election in a larger context? Not in the light of its connection to the short-term effects it may or may not have on the social sphere in the immediate aftermath, but more in line with the long-term vision expounded by Buddha, or at least attributed to him by his successors? That is, from the perspective of the natural and universal spheres, in which the personal and social are nested? From the “Loving Kindness” or “Metta” sutra, we find the following passage: Let no one deceive another nor despise any being in any state Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another Can there be any clearer directive than this as to how to conduct ourselves in the social sphere? Another pair of admonitions comes from the second Five Precepts we receive in the Soto Zen Discipleship ceremony: See only your own faults — Do not discuss the faults of others Know self and other as one — Do not praise yourself at others’ expense Can we see the current campaign in these terms? Which of the protagonists — if either — is adhering most closely to these guidelines? Which is most blatantly violating them? If we interpret all political dialog as equally duplicitous, equally guilty of deceptive and despising attitudes and behavior, equally wishing harm to others, discussing their faults, and praising themselves at the expense of others, then we have no basis on which to make a choice. But abstaining from voting is, in itself, making a choice. We are all complicit in, if not responsible for, the result. This is not to put all our eggs in the one basket of the social sphere, and the limited sub-sphere of political opinion. We should not be distracted from the natural sphere, in which we are witnessing the long-term consequences of self-centered actions of the species for survival and comfort of an ever-expanding mass of humanity, particularly in the form of climate change. Nor from the universal sphere, where we face potential extinction in the context of the geologic time scale, wherein even the history of the human race appears as a blip on the screen. Why vote at all, when the forces shaping reality have so little regard for our place in it? Mother Nature is no respecter of persons, let alone political parties. Returning to the personal, we can detach, on the level of the absolute, from any implications of the present political climate, while engaging in action — voting, for example — on the level of the relative, understanding that our deeper aspirations may not work out in this lifetime. I think we can presume that Buddha’s teachings were not meant solely to affect his followers at the time, but to set the bar for future generations as well. Even though the members of the original Order did not record them in written form for posterity, they went to great lengths to codify and chant them, enabling their memorization and preservation from one generation to the next over a period of four centuries or so. What we are doing in Zen today is, I believe, carrying on this tradition, in the modern milieu and vernacular. We are taking the long-term view. A careful reading of the founding documents of the American experiment, such as the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its amendments, the Bill of Rights, et cetera, reveals a similar aspiration. Stated principles of freedom — the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — do not represent temporary expedients, but hopeful wishes for the future generations of people operating on their own free will. Notwithstanding the contemporaneous exclusion of slaves and women from the privileges enjoyed by white men of means, owners of private property. Like much of our retrospective reading of the history of Zen, we have to resist our penchant for interpreting cultures of a couple of centuries or millennia ago as if they were occurring in the light of modern social science. So vote. But I suggest doing so in the spirit of buddha-dharma. Realizing and embracing the reality that you may not see any beneficial effect on your personal life, at least not anytime soon. We take this approach to meditation, which is, after all, the inmost personal experience possible. We set aside expectations as to the positive effects it may bring about, while continuing to hold an aspiration to realization. We approach it with the famous “don’t-know-mind” of Zen, assuming that whatever comes of it will be the natural consequence of the manifestation of our Original Mind. We sit not because we have to, but because we get to. We vote, not because we have to, but because we get to. Master Dogen said somewhere that at last, we are left with ambiguity. Enjoy the non-knowing.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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165: Zen in Daily Life 20:11

22 weeks geleden20:11

20:11

Welcome to UnMind podcast, number 165. In this segment, with a sigh of relief, we turn away from the horror show that is the climactic crescendo of the current 4-year election cycle, with its implications for climatic consequences — as we are witnessing with the 1-2 punch of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, Mother Natures’ odd couple of the moment and probable precursors of more to come. It is as if God’s eraser is being applied to the original plan for this nation, eradicating whole swaths of our occupation of what was once Her sacred wilderness. In the face of such catastrophe — which we consider “unprecedented,” in the worn-out superlative of the day, “only because of our ignorance,” according to the great Ch’an poem Hsinhsinming, Trust in Mind. Whether innocent or willful, this ignorance causes us to question the bedrock assumptions we make about the importance and relevance of our most personal aspirations in the practice of Zen. Of course, the Earth has endured much worse in its lifetime, known as the “five major extinctions,” where many of the species prevalent on her fragile surface did not survive the change intact. The human species may now be facing a similar extinction, ironically, as an unintended consequence of our success in dominating the planet, or so we are told. In this context, there seems to be little point in paying attention to the relatively trivial aspects of coping with everyday life, let alone hoping that the outcome of the election is going to make much of a difference, but that is precisely what I would like to share with you in what follows. Zen practice is eight days a week. For the last year or so, I have been more committed than usual to regularly attend morning meditation at the Zen center, which for me incurs only a 10- to 15-minute drive, depending on traffic, from our home. Nonetheless, because it starts at 6:00 o’clock am, I have to exercise some diligence in going to bed a bit earlier than I might like, as well as getting out of bed, and out of the house, to arrive in time before the others do. In a city like Atlanta, the commute — to work and back, or anywhere else — becomes a part of the calculation. So I thought it might be interesting to you to hear a blow-by-blow account of what I go through as my morning routine. Perhaps it will encourage you to endeavor to visit the zendo in person more often, as one of many of the “damn your lousy excuses” from that chapter in “The Original Frontier.” Let me touch on some of the repeat highlights of negotiating daily practice around regular sitting in a non-monastic setting. Getting There Master Dogen reported that his teacher in China, Nyojo Zenji, made a vow to leave his bed “like a pair of old shoes” each morning. I am not sure of what kind of shoes they wore in those days, but in my case at least, old shoes can be a lot more comfortable than new ones. And with the process of aging, getting up and getting going each day can be a real adventure in recovery. Moving from the horizontal to the vertical in proprioception becomes an exercise in defiance of gravity. Setting the Alarm A great luxury of being semi-retired, or retired into full-time Zen, as I like to think of it, is the non-necessity of using an alarm. At last I have come into accordance with the old Zen saying, “When tired I sleep; when hungry I eat” — a description of reality, and a prescription for practice, from a time in which no one had a clock, let alone a motherboard embedded in a slab of silicon. I reluctantly set the alarm for 5:30 AM in order to be sure to arrive at ASZC in time to open for the 6:00-7:00 AM sit. When the alarm went off, I was already half-awake. As if my subconscious mind was aware of time as measured by the tick-tock of battery-operated electrons. Dressing in the Dark Committed to attending every morning for five weekdays, and to leaving the house just in time, my morning routine is quick and simple. I keep my Zen outfit readily available, so I can dress as quickly as possible, pick up the things I need, and be out the door. This involves pulling on clothing in the dark, including my long-sleeved tee-shirt made of bamboo. Proceeding by touch in lieu of vision offers three ways to get it wrong, and only one way to get it right. If the garment has a label at the back of the neck that can be felt, it provides tactile clues to orientation to put the shirt on correctly. But If not, you might put it on backward; inside out; or inside out and backward. In one recent instance, I thought I had it right, because in lieu of a label at the back of the collar, my pullover has a small triangle on the front that can be identified clearly through touch. But when I returned home after zazen, and looked in the mirror, I found that the shirt was not on backward — but it was inside-out. The pants I wear to sit in are also made of bamboo, soft and stretchy, so they tend to be clingy when I am pulling them on, so I perch on my bureau, or chest of drawers, and pull them on one leg at a time — they have tie-strings in front, so no problem in getting the front-to-back and inside-to-outside orientation correct there — but my left foot always tries to find its way into the pants pocket. I have to remember to put my socks on after my pants, because the enhanced friction of cloth-on-cloth increases the likelihood of becoming tangled in the leg of the pants. Driving to the Center At 5:30 AM it is still dark in Atlanta at this time of year, so I turn on the headlights. Our car does not have an audible warning if the lights are left on, so I have to be careful about turning them off once I reach the Zen center, and even more so after I return home, when it is light. I have managed to run the battery down more than once. Just another mindfulness moment. Neighborhood traffic is light at this time of day, though where we live is very much an inner-city location. The route to the Zen center is only three miles or so, as a crow flies, but it passes through six stoplights and one stop sign at the various intersections along the way, which takes about ten minutes. Potholes are the bigger nuisance, and I know from the school of hard knocks where each and every one of them is. Sometimes, half-asleep, I forget, and am rudely reminded by the sudden bump and loud noise, like the kyosaku stick, which, as Matsuoka-roshi would often say, will “wake you up.” If all goes well, I arrive within fifteen minutes or so of the start time, turn on the lights, burn a stick of welcoming incense, and settle in at the Doan, or time-keeper, station. One of our current fulltime residents is an early bird, so she is usually there to unlock the door and meet and greet any attendees even before I arrive. But residents are, by nature, transient. Again, we are not monastics, and the modern Zen center is not a monastery. It is more like a bivouac, a temporary gathering place where we reconnoiter to rest up and regroup before reentering the fray of the battle of everyday life. Retreats, or sesshin, are an extended version of this hunkering down, more like an attack on our life issues, than a retreat from them. Attending Soon, I am sitting in my spot with the clock, gong, and clacker-sticks at the ready to time the alternating bouts of sitting and walking meditation. If others arrive in time, I strike the gong three times at precisely 6:00 AM, which signifies the beginning of the period, marking the three bows the head priest usually makes before joining the group in zazen. If I suspect someone is coming but may be late, I wait until 5 minutes or so after to strike the gong. You can hear the cars arriving in the parking lot outside, and it is better to let the late-comers join before striking the starting gongs. Sitting Settling into the posture includes embracing the stubborn resistance of tendons and ligaments in the legs and knee joints to being folded into the pretzel-like figure of crossed legs or kneeling, the so-called “lotus” and “seiza” postures. I favor the more relaxed “Burmese,” or native American style of tucking the legs under, instead of twisting the knee joints to rotate the ankles and feet to turn the soles up, in the classic posture illustrated by various iconic statuary and images of the Buddha and bodhisattvas. Fortunately, these aspects of “sitting upright in Samadhi” are less important than that the spine, neck and head be oriented in one straight, vertical line, “between heaven and earth,” as Matsuoka-roshi used to say. Timing Being responsible for timing the sitting, both for oneself and for others, puts a different slant on our perception of time. We typically sit for two 25-minute periods with walking meditation of 5 minutes in between. I do not like looking at the clock, or timing my own sit at home, but when attending on others, I have to keep track of the time for their benefit. So the apparent friction between “self-and-other” raises its unlovely head, sometimes arousing a mild resentment, to accompany the natural resistance of the body to sitting still. When the time for walking meditation (J. kinhin ) comes, we ring the bell twice, and strike the clacker sticks, twice at the beginning, and once at the end, of the five minutes or so. All signaling is non-verbal, in order to relieve the participants of the irritant of the human voice. Chanting At the end of the last period of sitting, we strike the bell once before beginning the morning service. The sound of the big gong (J. kane ) is said to be the “voice of Buddha.” Reciting the daily feature chant from our “Zen Practice at Home” manual, we are reminded of the various teachings of our Indian, Chinese, and Japanese ancestors. When someone is in need of training, we stay behind for a half hour or so to go over the protocols or leading the service, or whatever details they want to review more closely. Leaving After “leaving no traces” by restoring the zendo to its pristine appearance, and shutting down the facility, I drive home by the reverse route that I followed coming to the morning session, with variations depending upon the local morning traffic that has increased dramatically over the span of a couple of hours. I know all the shortcuts to avoid the morning rush on the main north-south route of the neighborhood commute to work, as well as local parents escorting their progeny to the bus stop, to be picked up and safely transported to the local schools. It reminds me that Master Dogen once commented that what we are doing in Zen — zazen meditation and Dharma study — is developing “true intelligence.” I find myself hoping that the children being herded to their public and private institutions of learning will someday be exposed to this Dharma, the most refined level of education. Arriving Home Within a time span of approximately twice the duration of the earlier commute to the Zen center, given the exponentially increased traffic load, I arrive home again in the daylight of the rising sun. (Although, of course, the sun does not rise, nor does it set, technically speaking. But I digress.) Sometimes, along the way, I will stop and pick up a couple of large lattes — one regular, one decaf — and perhaps a breakfast croissant, from one of the three or four coffee shops along the way, one of the perks of living in a lively inner-city setting. I am reminded of the historical factoid that coffee shops were once banned in the cities of Greece, when they had become hotbeds of revolutionary fervor. The social or political downside of being over-caffeinated, I suppose. Other mornings I will make my own breakfast, or crawl back into bed, depending on the after-effects of the prior evening’s schedule and activities. Then, in 24 hours or so, I do it all over, once again. With enough repetition, it becomes routine, this daily practice of public, group zazen, bookended by sleep, work, rest and re-engagement in the passing pageantry of life. Best way to start the day.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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162: Election Year Zen part 8 14:07

24 weeks geleden14:07

14:07

Returning to the twists and turns of the endless, meandering 2024 campaign for POTUS, and looming uncertainty of threatened challenges to the vote promising to bollix up the results, the question arises as to what this may have to do with Zen. The dedicated Zen guy who produces the UnMind podcast suggested that we take up the premise of the “Bodhisattva ideal” in Buddhism, comparing and contrasting behaviors and apparent attitudes of the candidates — and politicians in general — to this lofty ideal and aspiration. Somewhere in the copious Zen literature I came across the proposition that governmental leaders find themselves in positions of power owing to karmic merit accumulated in past lives, apparently whether they know it or not. We can suppose that this quaint notion arose in the context of predominantly Buddhist societies, such as that of Ashoka the Great in India, or in the later empires or principalities in China. It requires quite a stretch of the imagination to interpret our current political situation from that standpoint, though an online meme that one of the candidates is the “chosen of God” is even more ludicrous to contemplate. Looking at the meaning of “Bodhisattva” thorough the eyes of Google, the first hit that comes up is from the University of Washington, Seattle-based home of the Huskies, the first thing that comes up on their homepage. We will defer any consideration of college football as the key branding element of UW, and higher education in general, for a later segment. Their more-or-less traditional definition of the Bodhisattva assumedly comes from their comparative religion department: Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have put off entering paradise in order to help others attain enlightenment. There are many different Bodhisattvas, but the most famous in China is Avalokitesvara, known in Chinese as Guanyin. Bodhisattvas are usually depicted as less austere or inward than the Buddha. — https://depts.washington.edu Parsing this definition, I have a few quibbles. We prefer the use of “enlightening” beings as it indicates a process in which all of us comprise a work in progress, whereas “enlightened” indicates a state of completion. No true bodhisattva would ever claim to be enlightened in that sense. In the sense of enlightened self interest and the best interests of others, yes. Then there is the idea of “entering paradise.” The Buddhist term “Nirvana” is not pointing at another dimension or plane of existence, but the true nature of this world in which we find ourselves — so-called “Samsara.” As Master Dogen reminds us, “actually, the Other Shore (of Nirvana) comes to us”; we do not go to it. As Shohaku Okumura-roshi once mentioned, “Everybody says they want to go to Nirvana. But when you go there, there is nobody there. Only bodhisattvas can go to Nirvana, and they choose to stay here. So our charge is to change Samsara into Nirvana.” This is what Dogen means by saying the other shore comes to us. The reference to “many different Bodhisattvas” and the most famous being Avalokitesvara, Guanyin in China, or Kanzeon in Japan, reinforces the notion that bodhisattvas are a special class of beings, outside the kin or ordinary mortals — much like the icons of other religions, such as canonized prophets, saints and saviors, or demigods. My understanding of the Zen ideal is that we are all bodhisattvas, whether we know it or not. And finally, the reference to their relatively diminished austerity seems somewhat overwrought. My reading of the original teachings attributed to Shakyamuni reveal a profound humility and accessibility, and a remarkable empathy for his audience, that any bodhisattva would aspire to emulate. Awakening of the Bodhi mind is concomitant with the Bodhisattva vow — to help all others before reaching the other shore — according to Dogen, who should know. So how do our current carriers of partisan banners stack up against this image? I would suggest that their motivations have little or nothing to do with entering paradise, for one. So in that, they are like bodhisattvas — but focusing their efforts on the present and immediate future of prosperity in the secular sphere — not the spiritual realm. In American politics, and perhaps that of Western countries in general, there is an underlying implication that behavior in the societal sphere is indicative of one’s “values,” which tend to land in the ethical, moral, and spiritual column. This may be a vestigial remnant of the puritan ethic that pervaded the early migrants to these shores, the after- effects of which we witness today, including in the performative permutations of partisan politics. But, quoting myself in an earlier UnMind segment, there are brute behaviors of our fellow-travelers in this particular time and space that cannot be excused as politic: When it comes to indiscriminate bombing of civilians and children, we are no longer in the realm of “politics.” If we are silent, we become complicit. Buddha, I believe, would have spoken out against this betrayal of compassion and wisdom. As did Matsuoka Roshi, concerning the corrupt regime in Vietnam, and other atrocities of his time. We can look to the teachings and meditation practice of Zen Buddhism to find a degree of solace and sanctuary from these insults to humanity, but we cannot run, and we cannot hide from them, ultimately. But we do not have to join the partisan divide, either. In the same episode, we provided some historical context by referring to the foundational documents of the Founding Fathers, including the Declaration of Independence, with particular attention to the second section: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. This begins to sound a lot like the Bodhisattva ideal applied to the salvation of others, at least in the secular realm. If we are all equal, we all have equal potential to wake up in the most comprehensive sense, as did Shakyamuni Buddha. We also innately deserve to be treated with the highest degree of respect from our peers. And each and all have equal claim to life — within the realistic constraints of aging, sickness and death; to liberty — in the sense of true liberation from our own ignorance, and the imposition of that of others upon our lives; and the pursuit of true happiness, which does not derive from materialistic sources. Perhaps our political leaders are doing their level best to secure the rights, at least in their secular manifestation. But compare to the Bodhisattva vows, which address serving, or saving all beings, on another scale altogether; two translations give us a better insight into their broader and deeper meaning: Beings are numberless I vow to free them Delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them Dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them The Buddha way is unsurpassable I vow to realize it However innumerable all beings are I vow to free them all However inexhaustible my delusions are I vow to extinguish them all However immeasurable the dharma teachings are I vow to master them all However endless the great way I vow to follow it completely I leave it to you to decide whether or not, and to what degree, your candidate for the highest office in the land, the most powerful secular position on Earth, are in harmony with these compassionate aspirations. But remember that the teachings of Buddhism were never meant to be held up to criticize others, but to reflect back upon yourself and your own behavior. The mirror of Zen reflects all — the good, the bad, and the ugly — without discrimination. You and your behavior are also reflected in that Precious Mirror.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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163: Heart Sutra Paraphrase 16:51

26 weeks geleden16:51

16:51

When we mention Zen practice these days, we usually mean sitting in Zen meditation, or zazen. It was not always so. In Bodhidharma’s time, “practice” meant observing the Precepts in daily life, discerning to what degree our behavior is comporting to their admonitions. If memory serves, this is found in “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma” by Bill Porter, AKA Red Pine. Similarly, when we speak of studying the Dharma, we typically mean reading the written record. It was not always so. When Buddha was alive, the teachings were spoken. You literally had to go listen to live lectures and, later, memorized recitation, to hear the Dharma. This was apparently true of all teachings of all sects at that time; the oral tradition prevailed. It was some four centuries after the Buddha’s death, when his utterances were first committed to written form. With the advent of the Internet we have many more opportunities to “hear the true dharma” — a Dogen coinage with a deeper meaning — as expounded by others in the form of podcasts such as UnMind, audiobooks and other modern marvels. But we have to call into question whether we are hearing the Dharma truly. Whether the meaning we extract from listening to the efforts of others to express this subtle and inconceivable teaching is anywhere near to the original meaning that the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, intended, or for that matter that of any of his many successors in India, China, Korea and Japan, and the other countries of origin. I am not suggesting that we engage in a scholarly examination of the provenance and evolution of the Three Baskets — or Tripitaka in Sanskrit. I propose that we are challenged to attempt to render the meaning in the modern idiom, which involves extracting them from their original cultural context, and embedding them in ours, as well as expressing them in the vernacular, including the language of modern science and philosophy. For one thing, this means divesting the ancient liturgical passages of jargon — primarily the obscure and seemingly mystical terms, mostly from Sanskrit — such as “samadhi” for example — that some contemporary writers seem prone to sprinkle liberally throughout their publications. The downside to this tendency is that it creates an impression that the author actually knows what these terms mean, whether you, dear listener,understand them or not. Another consideration is what is called the “theory-laden” aspect of the semantics of language, as well as our interpretation of direct perception. This conditions the impact that Zen masters’ behavior, as well as that of their “turning words” — in Japanese, wato — can have on their students. This concept was introduced to me by George Wrisley georgewrisley.com , a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Georgia, author of texts on Dogen and Zen, who generously made several technical contributions to my books, “The Original Frontier” and “The Razorblade of Zen.” Professor Wrisley pointed out that, in the now-famous records of Zen students’ exchanges with their masters, including extreme gestures they resorted to, in trying to help the student wake up to the reality of Zen — shock tactics such as shouting, and sometimes striking with a fist or staff — each student’s reaction to the abuse was entirely dependent upon their belief, or innate “theory,” that the teacher was enlightened, and so could “do no wrong,” to oversimplify the point. Ordinarily, if someone hits you with a stick, your reaction would not be one of profound insight, and undying gratitude for the “grandmotherly kindness” of your abuser. Today it would likely trigger a lawsuit. The ancient ancestors of Zen seem to have an intuitive grasp of the importance of language and its effect on our perception of reality, as indicated in lines from the early Ch’an poems, such as: Darkness merges refined and common words Brightness distinguishes clear and murky phrases And: Hearing the words understand the meaning Do not establish standards of your own In Zen, of course, experience comes first, expression a distant second. The interim state, and where we can get it wrong, consists in our interpretation of direct experience, both on the cushion and off. As another ancient Ch’an poem has it: The meaning does not reside in the words but a pivotal moment brings it forth And yet another: Although it is not constructed it is not beyond words Hopefully we have, or will have in future, experienced this pivotal moment. Meanwhile, we are dependent upon words to parse this teaching, and to express it, both to ourselves as well as to others. We can use words to encourage all to go beyond language, and even ordinary perception, in direct experience in zazen. In the face of this design intent of the Dharma, the past efforts to translate it into various languages, and the present effort to paraphrase it into the modern idiom, seem worth the time and trouble. In this spirit, let me share with you my paraphrase of the Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra, or Great Heart of Wisdom Teaching, with which, hopefully, you are familiar. This is a work in progress, subject to revision. The typographical layout available on the UnMind podcast page is designed to facilitate scanning and reading the text while chanting it aloud, usually accompanied by drum and gongs. You might follow it with your eyes, while you follow my words with your ears. In this way, you will absorb a multi-sensory experience, which may be more revealing than hearing or reading alone. I will simply recite it here, a capella: ESSENTIAL TEACHING OF PERFECTING WISDOM When any and all Awakening Beings deeply and directly experience the process of perfecting wisdom, they clearly see that all five traditional components of sentience are fundamentally free of permanence and separate self-existence; this insight relieves all unnecessary suffering. Respected seekers of the truth, know that: the apparent form of our world is not separate from its impermanence; impermanence is not separable from appearances; “form,” or particles of matter, is innately “emptiness,” or waves of energy; conversely, emptiness is innately form. All sensations, perceptions, and underlying mental formations, as well as consciousness itself, also manifest as complementary. All existent beings manifest elemental impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality: they neither arise nor cease, as they appear to do; they are neither defiled nor pure, but nondual in their nature; they neither increase nor decrease in value or merit. Therefore know that, given the relativity of the material and immaterial, there can be no fixity of form; no tangibility of sensation; no persistence of perception; no infallibility of mental formations; finally, there can be no absolute entity of consciousness. More immediately, the principle of complementarity entails that there can be no eyes, ears, nose, or tongue, as such; and thus, no body; likewise there can be no “mind,” as a separate substance; it follows that, in spite of appearances, there can be no independent functions of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching; nor can there be unconstructed objects of the mind; no independent realm of sight, nor that of any other sense organ; nor any realm of mind-consciousness as a whole. This means that there can be neither ignorance in the absolute sense, nor any extinction of ignorance in the relative sense. Neither can there be sickness, old age and death as absolute states; Nor any extinction of sickness, old age and death as relative states. In light of the implications of this insight, suffering intentionally inflicted upon oneself and / or others can come to an end, stemming as it does from confusion as to root causes; while natural suffering such as aging, sickness, and death cannot end. Thus there can be no isolated “path” leading to cessation of suffering; there can be no essential “knowledge” to gain, in any conclusive sense; and no “attainment,” of any consequential kind. Since there is nothing to attain, all Awakening Beings rely totally on simply perfecting their wisdom; their body-mind drops away, functioning fully with no further hindrances; with no dualistic hindrances, no root of fear is to be found; far beyond confused worldviews, they abide in nondual spiritual liberation. All Awakening Ones of past, present, and future rely on the perfecting of this deepest wisdom, thereby attaining unsurpassed, complete, insight and letting go of the attainment. Rest assured that perfecting wisdom is the most excellent method; the serene and illuminating discipline; the unsurpassable teaching; the incomparable means of mitigating all suffering; and that this claim is true, not false. We proclaim the transformational perfecting of wisdom: Gone, gone to the other shore; attained the other shore; altogether beyond the other shore, having never left; the other shore comes to us; wisdom perfected! I do not claim to have captured the essence of the original chant. The afore-mentioned Buddhist scholar and Ch’an translator Red Pine, in his modern translation “The Heart Sutra,” tells us that this condensed version of the larger sutra extolling the emptiness of all existence, including the Dharma, was published in China around 900 CE. This was done in order to counter a prevailing trend toward erudition as the indicator of enlightenment, a distortion of the true Dharma that has occurred more than once in history. Another famous example is that of Master Huineng, sixth ancestor in China, who publicly tore up copies of the sutras to make a similar point. Buddha-dharma is manifest in nondual reality as lived, not contained in writing as doctrine. In a future segment of UnMind, we will take up another of my hopeful efforts at paraphrasing the Dharma. Meanwhile I encourage you to try your own hand — or more precisely, your mouth and mind — at putting one of the historical teachings into your own words. You might want to compose your own version of the Precepts, for example. When and if you do so, it may force you to consider the true meaning of these teachings which — through the sheer repetition of chanting them repeatedly over time — begin to sink into our stubborn monkey minds. But the downside of repetition is that they may become rote recitation, in which their deeper meaning and direct relevance to our contemporary lives may be lost. Not to worry, however — combined with the nonverbal silence and deep stillness of zazen, where we can begin to experience the meaning of the expression — we cannot go far wrong.…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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162: Election Year Zen part 7 15:55

28 weeks geleden15:55

15:55

After taking a hiatus this summer, we return to the political fray with an eye toward its implications for our lives and our pursuit of a more perfect union with the teachings of Zen. It is a good thing that we did not try to say anything about the campaign at the beginning of August, in light of the whiplash nature of rapid-fire developments on that front. Anything we had to say regarding predictions or outcomes would have been instantly irrelevant on a day-to-day basis, rendered moot by the exhaustive political melodrama playing out in the media. One of my online dharma dialogs brought up the question of agency, as in how much effect can one person really have on the direction the country is moving as a whole, not to mention the looming consequences of climate change on a global scale. It may help in setting the context, to recall my model of the Four Fundamental Spheres – those arenas of activity and influence that we all encounter on a daily basis. The four spheres, visualized as nesting in a concentric array, start with the Personal at the center; surrounded by the Social, which includes the political; then the Natural sphere, the world of our surrounding planet and its atmosphere; and finally the Universal, extending into outer space. Our sense of agency and influence diminishes as we move outward from the Personal, inversely proportional to the influence of the surrounding spheres on our personal bubble. It is necessarily an asymmetrical relationship, an understatement of cosmic proportions. Politics is the social sphere on steroids, we might say. It is a mixed blessing in that even those who emphasize our worst angels in the struggle to swing a majority, reveal, unintentionally, the dark underbelly of human nature. Which can be clarifying and even healthy, depending on what we do with it. These days , many of my online dharma dialog calls, dokusan in Japanese, reveal the anxiety that comes with the uncertainty of living in “interesting times,” as in the ancient Chinese curse. We might prefer to ignore the political realm altogether, but unless you are willing to become a hermit and remove yourself from society in some extreme manner, you cannot avoid the consequences of the political actions taken by others, in the cultural hothouse of modern civilization, whether urban or rural. The question arises: Is Zen (& zazen) merely a coping strategy? Or is it only reinforcing our personal status-quo? Or, conversely, can it enable us to change and adapt? I solicited suggestions for this reboot episode from my producer and publisher, the former being an American citizen currently living in the Southwest, the latter a Canadian living to the Northeast. Here is a sample of what they suggested: I think there's something in here about a cautionary tale for people looking to religious leaders for signals on how to vote. I've seen some other Zen leaders on social media endorsing candidates - which is fine, but they wield a lot of power, and Zen really is about thinking for yourself on your cushion. Maybe religion is separate from politics, and that's ok. It also might be interesting to discuss how to have compassion for the “other” – be it democrat or republican – as one cannot exist without the other; and neither are really separate. I was gratified to see the reference to my past emphasis in this series on the value of independent thinking, and engaging in interdependent action, which I propose is one of the outputs of Zen training. As opposed to co-dependent thinking and action, another way of characterizing the partisan divide. If we are developing the ability to think independently of the political forces impinging upon us, and the freedom to act interdependently with cohorts on both sides of the divide, then our Zen training can contribute to evolving the more perfect union that is given lip service in the social discourse. Referring back to the previous UnMind series of three segments on aging, sickness and death, the Three Marks of Buddhism’s worldview, I want to reiterate that the paranoid style in politics seems most likely to stem from irrational fear of aging, sickness, and dying, the personal dimensions of the universal traits of anicca , dukkha , and anatta , or impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self. When we throw the “Three Poisons” of greed, hatred, and delusion into the mix, the result is a true witch’s brew. This is the old “divide and conquer” strategy. The question of how to have compassion for the “other” – be it democrat or republican – goes to a more non-dualistic reading of the seeming divide between irreconcilable opposites. When we look at what conservatives are trying to liberalize, and what liberals are trying to conserve, we see that the labels are not really getting to the essence of the conflict, but merely exacerbating it. The issue of factionalism was raised in the early founding documents of the American experiment as a potential threat to the republic, but since one party cannot exist without the other, and neither is really separate from the body politic, they are mutually defining, and can be complimentary. The real conflict goes to the personal dimension, where we find the question of: “How much is enough?” How much is enough to live happily, and is there enough to go around? Are the global shortages of food, drinking water, clean air, housing, and the hierarchy of physical survival needs real, or are they the consequence of negligence and malfeasance on the part of greedy, profit-driven special interests? Have we as a species been on a decades-long binge of “Hotel-California-everything-all-the-time” wretched excess and the bills are just now finally coming due? Can we all downsize our lifestyle to a level that relieves the burden of the disposable consumption society? When we look to the example of our forebears in the history of Zen, and, indeed, in the early days of democracy in America, going back no further than my grandparents’ generation, we can detect vestiges of a much more moderate way of living that recognized reasonable limits to the answer to how much is enough. Of course there were contemporaneous avatars of wealth and power, living out the lifestyles and fantasies of the rich and famous. And the human slaves of earlier periods in history have been replaced by the “energy slaves” of modern technology, as Bucky Fuller pointed out. In that sense, wealth, as the commonwealth, has been redistributed more widely, but there is still an unseemly preoccupation in some quarters with amassing financial resources beyond the scope of what any one person, family, or corporate entity, can possibly need, or spend, within one lifetime. Except, perhaps, as a defensive reserve to defend against future lawsuits. Or, perhaps, to invest in initiatives for future cultural evolution. But do we really need to terraform Mars, for example, when we cannot even make the Earth function as our home planet? Back to the personal sphere of meditation, and its connection to the social sphere of politics. If we accept the suggestion that our Zen practice is indeed a kind of generalized coping mechanism, it begs the question, Coping with what? Master Dogen asks, about two-thirds of the way through Fukanzazengi–Principles of Seated Meditation : Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism how can you be satisfied with the transient world? Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning Vanishing in a moment. By this point in the long tract of instructions on physical method and philosophical attitude he picked up in China, the first piece he published as a manual of meditation for his student followers, he has made perhaps a hundred different points about what is important in Buddhism. So what he means by “the most important thing” is subject to some interpretation. Just as it is in our modern milieu. What is, after all, the most important thing? Not just in meditation, but in all your daily actions, as Dogen emphasizes in the same writing. Media mavens, including pre-digital traditional channels and ever-expanding post-digital modes, are constantly promoting what they want us to pay attention to as “news,” what they consider the most important events and issues of the moment in the 24-7 news cycle. Most of it is designed to capture eyeballs, ears, and clicks, in order to develop ratings that are used to rationalize the cost of ad buys and other kinds of participation in the public arena, or direct sales. Which items are delivered to your doorstep in ever-greater frequency with minimal effort on your part. Except for disposing of the mountain of packaging and shipping materials. Turning our attention back to the cushion and the wall, the most important thing at the moment cannot be the passing pageantry of the political campaign. Unless you are running for office, or working for someone who is. One important thing is to understand or appreciate the importance of the political to the personal, in particular, your personal sphere. While the central personal dimensions of aging, sickness and death can definitely be affected – directly or indirectly, positively or negatively – by the political arena, it is not typically the most proximate cause of any of the three. And the last thing that you are likely to be thinking, on your death bed, is that you wished you had spent more time on politics. Some ancient sage said to “stamp life-and-death on your forehead and never let it out of your mind.” I am sure he was not morbidly obsessed with death, but that his life, and ours, takes a major part of its central meaning, and sense of urgency, from the fact that birth is the leading cause of death. This, to many, would seem to be wrong. But if you think about it – or as Dogen says, “examine thoroughly in practice” – this idea that something is wrong, it appears that it may only be our opinion. We may be wrong. Reality cannot be wrong. Nature cannot be wrong. But we may be wrong. Only we human beings can get this wrong. And then we blame others, turning against our fellow human and other sentient beings. As the Tao te Ching says, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” We can blame our situation, with some justification, on others, including the pols. But the blaming does not solve the basic problem. Perhaps this is getting at the most important thing. Accepting and admitting that the suffering in the world that may be considered wrong, or unnecessary, is caused exclusively by human beings, based on their assessment of their world as somehow “wrong.” This is the kind of suffering that can end, seen in the clear light of emptiness in zazen. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.” UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order . You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho. Producer: Shinjin Larry Little…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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161: Election Year Zen part 6 16:53

37 weeks geleden16:53

16:53

Following on the previous UnMind series of three segments on aging, sickness and death, the Three Marks of Buddhism’s worldview, we will expand our scope to the broader world of international conflict, characteristic of our modern world, where Buddhism’s three conditions of existence are also manifested, if in a more universal form. Traditional definitions of these basic aspects of life are universal in scope: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self (Skt. anicca , dukkha , anatta ). We can see clearly that in today’s world, these givens of existence are not warmly embraced on the social level in America, let alone on national or global levels, which surely follows from their avoidance on the personal level. Beginning with Buddhism’s “compassionate teaching” – the Dharma – we find that along with the three marks of aging, sickness and death, Buddha promulgated the “Three Poisons,” usually rendered as “greed, anger or hatred, and delusion or folly.” What a witch’s brew is conjured, when we mix the six ingredients together. In the context of aging, greed becomes the longing for longevity, the overreliance on meds to avoid the ravages of illness, and extravagant, catastrophic efforts at prolonging life at all costs. Anger and hatred arise when we are denied the ability to forestall aging, when we are overcome by a pandemic, and when we blame widespread death and destruction on others. Delusion and folly ensue when we act on our mistaken beliefs, attacking others for the natural consequences of our collective and individual actions. The unexpected consequences threaten us all, whether in our dotage or full-flowering youth, with the Four Horsemen – plagues, famine, and the predations of war, and not necessarily in that order. Just who is to blame for this situation and how can we hold them accountable? In the worldview of Zen, everything, including charity, begins at home. To quote Master Pogo Possum, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” The first embrace of reality is to “study the self.” The second is to “forget the self,” as Master Dogen reminds us in his famous teaching, Genjokoan–Actualizing the Fundamental Point. Actualizing the fundamental point of existence requires that we embrace our own aging, sickness and death – the close-up-and-personal reality of impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality, including our precious self – while recognizing that greed, anger and delusion are fueling the fires of discontent, leading to blaming others for our personal predicament. Sometimes, others are to blame for making things worse, of course, just as we are to blame for making their world more crowded. Stop the world and let me get off. Would it were so simple. The blame game can range from blaming our parents for our birth, on one extreme, to blaming those others most distantly related to us by blood. I read somewhere that the furthest removed any human being can be from any other human, biologically speaking, is something like 26th cousin, if memory serves. One wonders, with the growth in population, whether that tenuous kinship is getting closer, or further apart, as time goes by, with 8 billion people and counting. I also read of a laboratory experiment, some years back, where they used the classic maze of rats to find out what happens when you simply keep adding rats to the maze, without letting any escape. At one point of increasing density, the rats begin attacking each other. They “blame” the others for their own discomfort, apparently. The analogy to human population should not be lost on anyone. The anxiety and outright hostility associated with immigration on a global basis is too obvious a parallel to ignore. Or we can aim all of our blame at the political system, or the candidate du jour. Now that the “debate of the century” has landed with a thud, the rats are having a hard time deciding which of the two leaders of the rat pack is most at fault. Much of the anger and hysteria we witness on ideological and political fronts of the public discourse seems motivated by underlying fears, exacerbated by perceived worsening conditions, including density of population. The identified “foreigners” – bringing unintelligible languages, peculiar cultural customs, and bizarre belief systems – induce anxiety, stereotyping and suspicion amongst native populations, triggering the threat of the privileged being “replaced” by them in the great scheme of things. This probably arises from a tribal, protective social instinct, linked to the survival of “our kind.” Hyped to the max by political opportunists, into the bargain. But on a more personal level, this anxiety, amplified by mob hysteria, surely finds its origin in the triple threat of aging, sickness and death, that is inborn with each individual. Birth is the leading cause of death, after all, like it or not. This perceived threat, however irrational, is tied to what biologists call the survival instinct, or imperative. Reality is not a respecter of persons. But biology is designed to privilege survival of the species over all comers, adapting to ever-changing circumstances. Natural and artificial changes in context often outpace and outmaneuver biology, engendering threats to survival, to cycles of “extinction panic,” or to actual extinction of the species, potentially including humanity. Cultural evolution – our ability to pass on technological advances to the next generation, and their ability to further improve on their cultural inheritance – is ensconced in the social sphere. But it likewise runs into trouble when it is not agile enough to keep up with the rate of change of conditions to which it is adapting, in the natural and universal spheres. Such as climate change. Aye, there’s the rub. “Survival of the fittest” is the shorthand catchphrase for dumbing down Darwin’s elegant and complex theory on the “Origin of Species.” To find a cogent example of society’s collective resistance to this notion that we privilege the fit, we need look no further than the recruiting, drafting and conscription of young men and women – the “fittest” – into the modern military – the main mechanism oriented to societal survival – across the globe. Civilian leaders, and those at higher command levels, manage to keep a safe distance from the front lines, so as to return to fight another day, one assumes. But the survival of the oldest is not Nature’s way. It is not natural to put younger members of the species at risk to protect older members. Witness the wolf pack. This biological imperative dictates an age-related triage, protecting those most likely to survive, to survive longer, and to reproduce. Yet humans do the opposite in wartime, and did it again in the face of the pandemic, by sending younger first responders into the fray, while protecting elderly and senior leaders through isolation, quarantine and access to medical care. Notwithstanding how miserable a failure that effort turned out to be, the point is still well-taken. Of course, from a practical perspective, the young provide the necessary numbers, and the vitality, needed on the frontlines. Even if senior members of society were willing to take point in crisis conditions, the question would be whether or not they are able to. Setting aside such considerations of the neurotic societal implications of turning younger generations into cannon and virus fodder, what will it take to finally bring about world peace? Can we beat our swords into plowshares, turn intercontinental ballistic missiles into spaceships, cyberwar into cyberfun? The current national debate is styled as a contest between democratic governance “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” striving toward a “more perfect union” of the republic; versus power elites exerting autocratic control over a hopelessly divided populace. The appeal of the latter is understandable for the “haves,” those who already enjoy a relative elite status of economic and social privilege. They stand to come out on top, liberated from the messy business of compromise with those on the bottom end of income equality. Likewise, the uneasiness of the “have-nots” is easy to understand. They see themselves as already victimized by the unlevel playing field, touted as equal opportunity for all. This, it would seem, is the real wall that is being built, not on the border, but right down the middle of the country. Its building blocks consist of the institutions installed by the founding fathers, rearranged to reassert the original privilege of white, land-owning males. But is all this – the daily fare being served up by the media and opposing forces – really the root of the problem? Whether or not we believe in an eternal soul, or reincarnation, as did the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Hindus, or resurrection, as do modern Christians, we finally come to face our mortality, in person. In Zen, the only mate who will accompany us to the grave is our deeds. Whatever wealth, honor, or powers of reasoning we have accumulated in managing and manipulating the vagaries of behavior and vicissitudes of fortunes encountered in life, they serve us little in the face of death. The same may be said of family, though better to die surrounded by loved ones than alone, or surrounded by hostiles, I suppose. On the cushion we sit “without relying on anything” as Master Dogen reminds us in his version of “Needle for Zazen ( Zazenshin ),” including all the tricks, trash and trinkets we have assembled in our toolkit. Try as we might to think our way to enlightenment, or to reason ourselves into insight, we find ourselves failing again and again. Finally we must surrender to the chaos of not knowing, and abandon reliance on reason itself, spawn of philosophy and the other kind of Enlightenment. We find verification of our practice in “making effort without aiming at it.” Needless to say, this is a very uncomfortable place to find ourselves, at a pass that is not really negotiable, in any ordinary sense. All the stages of grief prove futile in the face of the relentless process and progress of biology. We need to confront reality when we are young and vigorous, as in “Stamp life and death on your forehead, and never let it out of your mind,” paraphrasing a truth long lost to attribution. Life takes its meaning in the context of death. If you find that too morbid, just imagine what life would be like if we did not die. Its meaning would be entirely different, and not entirely positive. When the grim reaper arrives, we may want to embrace her / his relentless, unsympathetic and unforgiving scythe, as being not at all different from the sword of Manjusri, hopefully cutting through our final delusions. Just as hopefully, the passing pageantry of life, particularly the concurrent social-political dimension, will have little or nothing to do with the circumstances surrounding the last breath we take. Preferable to die on the cushion, of course. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.” UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order . You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho. Producer: Shinjin Larry Little…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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160: The Three Marks of Dukkha part 3 16:31

38 weeks geleden16:31

16:31

Closing out our exploration of the “three marks” of dukkha , in this episode we will take a look, close-up-and-personal, at death. In summary, our confrontation with and embrace of the three marks varies according to their universal natures, as well as to our personal nurturing in their recognition and acceptance. Aging is predictable, but typically sneaks up on us, moving far too gradually to register in our youth, even nowadays with our ubiquitous mirrors, selfies, and TikTok videos – none of which our ancestors had in abundance. Today’s living generations may be the most self-conscious in the history of humankind. The famous “polishing a tile to make a mirror” koan anecdote reflected the fact that mirrors were originally of polished metal. Narcissus, remember, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. By contrast, Tung-shan, a 9th century monk, was enlightened upon seeing his face for the first time, reflected in the water. A contemporary stand-up comic, who shall remain nameless, asked, “Did’ja ever look in the mirror in the morning and think, “That can’t be accurate!”? Sickness, whether life-threatening or not, can land like a ton of bricks, flattening you for the moment – and often for the foreseeable future – with the rate of recovery dependent upon many factors, including aging. Sickness can often be the death-knell, as a diagnosis of cancer once was. As one ages, the body becomes less immune to the predations of bacteria and viruses, it seems. Today the threat of mental illness, leading to suicide, also looms large. Usually, the threat of death from natural causes may be safely ignored, postponed, or even denied, until it can’t. But sudden death is even more unpredictable than sickness, and can come in such a variety of modes today, including natural and man-made disasters, which are popping up with greater and greater frequency, notably side-effects of climate change, such as the ever-increasing statistical rate of death from extreme heat. America seems to be the poster-boy for death by guns, accidental or intentional, now one of the major causes of death for children in the USA. Death from complications in childbirth is still far too common, particularly for non-white women. And then there is always stress, aggravated by habits such as smoking. If one thing doesn’t get you, something else will, in the end. Death and taxes, as we say. I must note in passing that much of the hysteria we witness on ideological and political fronts of the public discourse seems motivated by an underlying fear, which appears to stem from the triple threat of aging, sickness and death. Witness the “worship of youth” culture, “self-improvement” programs, and anti-aging products aimed at prolonging vim and vigor and extending life itself as long as possible. This primal, largely subliminal fear is often projected onto the identified “other,” a form of transference that – like the old “I’m rubber, you’re glue” trope – deflects self-criticism, in favor of defining each and every conflict in terms of self-preservation, and resorting to blaming others. As the Tao te Ching reminds us, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” Buddha’s original analysis of the constructed self’s fundamentally dissatisfactory nature of reality, and our place, individually and collectively, writ large. The most dissatisfactory of all affronts and indignities to our ego are the three marks. If, on the other hand, we could all embrace, in all humility, the realities of aging, sickness and death as being perfectly natural and okay, the resulting equanimity of outlook might go a long way to ameliorating the insane intensity of conflict in the world. Aging gracefully includes embracing illness and death as built-in, intrinsic to the natural order of things. How much of our time, energy, attention and resources are dedicated to resistance to this fact – a fundamental denialism that leads naturally to the abdication of truth – in favor of our favorite fantasies as to the nature and central meaning of life? A young Rinzai Zen priest named Hasegawa published a book titled “The Cave of Poison Grass.” He mentioned the fact that most people seem to postpone confronting reality until, finally, they are on their death bed. He declared that this is too late – “like eating soup with a fork” – a memorable phrase. He insisted that we have to confront this “Great Matter” of life-and-death while we are young, and have sufficient strength and energy to overcome it. In the lore of Zen there is a Till-Eulenspiegel-like narrative that captures its sometimes irreverent attitude toward life and death, supposedly a true story. A monk realized that he was to die soon, and began asking other monks what they knew about, or had heard about, others dying. He was curious to know if anyone had ever died standing on their head, but nobody had. So sure enough, when the time came, he stood on his head in the corner and died. His sister happened to be a nun, and when she came to visit for the funeral, the corpse was still standing there in the corner. In disgust, she kicked it over, declaring that he had never had any respect for anything in life, and he still had no respect in death. The story goes that they buried him upside-down. An old saying in Zen says to “stamp life and death on your forehead and never let it out of your mind.” This is not a mark of morbid obsession with death, but simply recognizes that there is no life without death – birth is the leading cause of death. Instead of bemoaning the fact that life inevitably passes back into the great remix that is the universe – the wave returning to the ocean – we embrace the inevitability of “shuffling off this mortal coil” as a kind of relief. As Mark Twain was said to have asked, when in his old age reporters inquired as to whether he wasn’t afraid to die, why would he be afraid of returning to where he came from? It is the stuff of science fiction to imagine a future in which medical science has treated the phenomenon of dying as an unnecessary aberration, a kind of illness, and come up with techniques such as cryogenic freezing of human remains, genetic mutation, and cultivating transplant organs and limbs to achieve what is, for all practical purposes, human immortality. The question becomes, would you really want to live forever? Life takes a great deal of its meaning from the inevitability of death, which is often considered in opposition to life. But Master Dogen treats both birth death as another nondual, complementary dyad, from Genjokoan–Actualizing the Fundamental Point : Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash you do not return to birth after death This being so it is an established way in buddha-dharma to deny that birth turns into death Accordingly birth is understood as non-birth It is an unshakable teaching in Buddha’s discourse that death does not turn into birth Accordingly death is understood as non-death Birth is an expression complete this moment Death is an expression complete this moment They are like winter and spring You do not call winter the beginning of spring nor summer the end of spring In this wonderful analogy, Master Dogen places birth and death on a continuum, each as an “expression complete this moment,” and yet undeniably entangled. We might ask: An expression of what? and the answer would seem to be “life itself.” So birth, which we celebrate, and death, which we mourn, are seen to be inflection points, rather equal in import, in the continuum of life. When my older brother was dying in hospice, I spent about a week attending on him as he drifted in and out of consciousness. I picked up a pamphlet at the clinic where he was cared for, called “The Eleventh Hour.” It was written by a Christian woman, a clergy member or teacher of some sort, but she never once mentioned Jesus or God. One line I recall said something like, “Birth is the death of whatever precedes birth. Death is the birth of whatever follows death.” Very Zen. I hope this brief foray into the most dispositive and determinative factors defining our life experience helps to allay any unreasoning fear you may have of these time-honored Three Marks. Along with Buddhism’s Three Poisons of greed, anger or hatred, and delusion or folly, they form the nexus of all that is wrong with the human universe in the personal sphere. When we move into the next outer layer, the social sphere, we confront them on a more global scale as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. Today we might be coerced to add even more unintended consequences to the deluge, including increasing population pressure and worldwide immigration, as well as advances in technology that tend to frustrate, rather than facilitate, our presumably inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Speaking of which, in the first UnMind episode of the upcoming month, we will look over our shoulder once again to the dread prospect of Election Year Zen, which is gaining on us, assessing whether or not we can see any light of compassion or wisdom at the end of that maddeningly long tunnel. Please add a seatbelt to your zafu and strap in. The haiku poem on the “grim reaper” is from a 2020 series called “Dharma Dreams from Great Cloud.” The text, titled “Swords into Plowshares,” will form the basis of July’s UnMind. If you have any remaining questions as to why I feel it important to examine the current political pageantry from the perspective of ancient Buddhist teachings, which may strike you as outdated and irrelevant, please email me about it. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.” UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order . You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho. Producer: Shinjin Larry Little…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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159: The Three Marks of Dukkha part 2 13:38

39 weeks geleden13:38

13:38

Continuing with a consideration of the realities of day-to-day Zen practice in the context of Buddhism’s central teaching of dukkha – natural suffering writ large – the second of the “three marks,” or characteristics of existence from a human perspective, is usually named as “sickness” or “illness.” Please note in passing that illness, from the perspective of Chinese medicine – which may be closer to its cultural connotations in ancient India – denotes a lack of centeredness, or balance. Something is out of kilter – the yinyang of it all – when we fall ill. Nowadays, of course, we have much more access to many means of tracing and tracking the origins of our maladies, to environmental and other sources. Quoting from the Tricycle web site again, we find a less personal, less specific definition of the three: ...all phenomena...are marked by three characteristics...: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana . Sickness is not called out specifically as one of the many causes of suffering or dissatisfaction, possibly for reasons of cultural context and medical acumen 2500 years ago. We will get around to that throwaway line exempting so-called “nirvana.” I can personally testify to the dissatisfactory and suffering nature of sickness, from my experience contracting Covid-19 in 2022 and, more recently, a suddenly bloated GI tract blockage that had me hospitalized overnight, and bed-ridden for over a week. The pandemic occasioned such wide medical suffering and social unrest that Shunei Oniuda, the president of Sotoshu Shumucho, Zen administrative headquarters in Japan, addressed it from the Buddhist perspective in a public message: I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences for those who have lost their precious lives from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and offer a prayer that they may rest in peace. For those who have been affected by this illness, I pray that they will recover as soon as possible, and I would like to offer my deepest sympathy to their families and relatives who have also been affected by this illness. Also, my thoughts are with all those experiencing tremendous difficulties whose lives have been affected by the spread of this epidemic and the need to stay home. Then Mr. Oniuda relates some interesting facts providing context for the present: In the Kamakura Period of Japanese history when Dogen Zenji was teaching, there were times when cool summers caused by climate change often brought poor harvests. There were outbreaks of plague, and, during the Great Kanki Famine (1230-31), it is said that about a third of the population of Japan perished. In times such as these, Dogen Zenji emphasized that these were the very times to not neglect the Buddha Way. Who is to know it the changes in climate at that time were as precipitous and global as those we are seeing today. As an island nation, Japan is likely more subject to extremes in weather because it is surrounded by ocean waters. A caveat – in our fraught divisive times, it may be necessary to point out that this recollection of similar disasters from the history of Zen – though on a much smaller-scale – is surely not intended to support either side of the ideological argument. Instead, it reinforces the premise that Zen is a practice fully prepared to meet, head-on, the vagaries of life, whether of natural, man-made, or a combination of those causes and conditions. Note that he offers condolences to those who died first, rather than to the survivors; which is characteristic of Zen funerals. The sermon is actually directed to the deceased. While emphasizing the need for disseminating accurate information, and recommending that all concerned follow the practical recommendations for exercising due diligence in preventing the spread of infection, President Oniuda refers back to the compassionate teachings of Zen’s founders, as they apply to this current, international crisis: It is in such a time that the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, Dogen Zenji, and Keizan Zenji are necessary. Shakyamuni Buddha taught right view, right speech, and right practice in the face of the sufferings of sickness and death. Right view, speech and practice – conduct exhibited in crises – do not follow the mob: Even if people are agitated or anxious in the confusion caused by others who are fearful and buy up or hoard food and other goods, let us act calmly. Let us act in accordance with the spirit of Dogen Zenji’s teaching of the intention of first saving others before ourselves and in accordance with the Bodhisattva’s Four Embracing Actions. This is to naturally practice the way of benefitting others. Compare to the panic mode triggered by the pandemic in most circles of the population. Then the President’s message brings it home, uniting both social and personal spheres: Also, Keizan Zenji taught that we should have compassion and love for all things, that we should sympathize with others’ sufferings as if they are our own, and that with the mind of compassion we should be diligent in the practice of zazen. I encourage you to endeavor to practice zazen during this time that we must spend quietly at home. [1] So the prescription for practice in Zen remains the same in good times or bad, whether we find ourselves in truly dire straits, or operating under relatively ordinary pressures of meeting the daily needs of ourselves and the community: Hie thee thither – back to the cushion. His message is directed not just to monastics but to householders as well. And by no means is zazen prescribed as an escape from the wolves howling at the gate, but the most direct and efficacious way to meet them where they are coming from. Matsuoka-roshi would sometimes say, “If you get sick, you just get sick; if you die, you just die. But meanwhile, do what the doctor says.” He frequently made the point that his fellow countrymen and women were usually calm in the face of calamity, whether in the form of personal trauma of getting bad news in a clinical or hospital setting, or even a prognosis of eminent death. This equanimity he attributed to their having been raised in a culture that embraces aging, sickness and death as natural and foreordained, rather than in one that approaches them with fear and loathing. Even young children in Japan are, or used to be, exposed to the teachings of Buddhism, and the practice of zazen, as a regular part of their upbringing. We like to think that Buddha’s experience under the Bodhi tree that night so long ago represented the absolute apogee of good health and wellness, in all its dimensions – physical, mental, emotional, and even social. Yet it included the robust embrace of the ineradicable marks of biological, sentient existence: impermanence manifested as aging; suffering manifested as illness, both physiological and psychological; and no-self arising as the specter of death, the fear of non-existence on the personal plane. It seems that our modern obsession with youth and longevity lobbies against any wide acceptance of these natural marks, or transitions, of our existence as human beings. But all sentient beings are subject to their inevitability - no exceptions, theistic beliefs notwithstanding. Perhaps this may be seen as the true source of the neurotic aspects of this age of anxiety. We are confronted with these marks on a progressive basis, as we age and become increasingly infirm, or frail. It is best to engage them on the cushion, when we are young and strong, but better later than never. In the next segment of UnMind, we will take up the meaning of death, in the context of Dharma as the compassionate teachings. Until then, do not hesitate to allow your view of aging, sickness and death, your personal take on mortality, to enter into your zazen. It cannot hurt, and cannot be avoided in the long run. [1] Published on Soto Zen Net ( www.sotozen-net.or.jp ) on April 3rd, 2020 Translated by Soto Zen Buddhism International Center * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.” UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order . You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho. Producer: Shinjin Larry Little…

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

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158: The Three Marks of Dukkha part 1 17:01

40 weeks geleden17:01

17:01

Returning from the political fray to the realities of daily life on Earth 2 — as the current popular trope would have it — I would like to delve into one of the teachings of Buddhism and Zen that may contribute to its misperception as being overly pessimistic. The “three marks” of dukkha , the Sanskrit word usually translated as “suffering,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” Usually, “dukkha” is related to specific aspects of life, specifically “aging, sickness and death,” as the three characteristics of all sentient existence. From the Tricycle web site we find : The Buddha taught that all phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, and experiences, are marked by three characteristics, or “three marks of existence”: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana . According to the Buddha, fully understanding and appreciating the three marks of existence is essential to realizing enlightenment. (It is a schema that is accepted in both Theravada and Mahayana schools, but more emphasized in the former.) Here we find a much broader, less personal definition of the three than “aging, sickness and death,” but as human beings, we are naturally more concerned with how they apply to our wellbeing most immediately and intimately, than how they function as universal principles. It seem to me that much of the chaos and uncertainty that we are currently witnessing in the social sphere is animated by the unsuccessful resolution of our personal relationship to these three marks, along with the built-in resistance to embracing them fully, with any measure of equanimity. As an octogenarian, I can personally testify to the inevitability of the first two, and their power taking precedence over all other dimensions of daily life, in due time. All you have to do is live long enough to find out for yourself. However, the Buddha apparently came to this conclusion, or confrontation, relatively early in life, in his mid-thirties, when we would expect him to be in the prime of life, though 2500 years ago, life expectancy was not what it is today. Let us consider each of them one at a time, from a problem-definition and problem-solving perspective. In passing, let me recall that the least emotionally-laden definition of dukkha is, simply, “change.” Nothing personal about it. Buddhists may be said to believe these teachings, rather than “believing in” them, as some of the online commentary would have it. As with all of the “compassionate teachings,” one’s own first-person, experiential evidence will drive home the validity and veracity, as well as the long term priority, of these findings and conclusions of the Buddha. The only question becomes how – how do we comport ourselves in the context of these dominant aspects of our existence? The existence of suffering itself Buddha said we are to fully understand. And from the above quote, that understanding must of necessity begin with recognizing and appreciating these three most immediate considerations of life, beginning with aging, or impermanence. It does not help much to place our own impermanence in the context of universal impermanence. Misery may love company, but not that much. It might help to consider the question, When does aging begin? At the moment of birth? At the moment of conception? The current flap over in-vitro fertilization – as part of the larger ethical and ideological debate around all things related to birth control, or the larger category of reproductive health in general – illustrates that aging is actually well under way before conception. The eggs and sperm involved have limited viability, aging out of their own, micro-world shelf lives. Owing to a welcome assist from modern medicine, many of us can expect to live increasingly long lives, with notable exceptions in the form of further life-threatening causes and conditions attributed to the very success, and lack of due diligence, of the human species. In Zen, we hear various expressions such as “every moment reincarnation,” from my teacher, for instance. We read Master Dogen’s framing of birth and death as “expression(s) complete this moment.” Buddha himself was said to have mentioned something to the effect that, owing to impermanence, there must be permanence. His monks were said to have been happy to hear this. One of the theories that I have read, attempting to explain the success of Buddhism spreading throughout history in its countries and cultures of origin, is that Buddha’s followers were so relentlessly happy. So there is a kind of pervasive optimism in Zen and Buddhism, which is hard to explain in the context of impermanence and aging, let alone sickness and death. But just consider, in your own mind for a moment, the possibility that there were no aging. That we would all remain “forever young,” in the memorable phrase from the Bob Dylan tune. What would be the implications, both long- and short-term, of this reversal of biology? What if we did not age? (We can leave the discussion of illness and dying to upcoming segments.) Buddha rejected such speculation as ultimately futile, if taken seriously, but here, we want to treat it as a mere “thought experiment,” for the sake of shedding light on the actual causes and conditions of our existence, no harm no foul. In design circles this is a recognized process, called “synectics,” engaging in the seemingly irrelevant on the chance that it might turn out to be relevant. It is related to “Hegel’s Dialectic,” seeing the existing “thesis,” a present manifestation of reality as impermanent, enabling our recognition and even ability to predict the emergence of the “antithesis” on the event horizon. The model goes on to predict the merging of thesis and antithesis into the new thesis, which arises, abides, changes and ultimately decays and disappears with the next cycle. And so on, and on, forever. Not coincidentally, this terminology of “merging” is used discerningly by Master Dogen in his envisioning the process of Zen realization in Shobogenzo Bendowa , if memory serves (emphasis mine): In stillness, mind and object merge in realization and go beyond enlightenment If we consider aging in this startling, single-point reflection, how does that look? Buddha says, toward the end of his First Sermon: My heart’s deliverance is unassailable This is the last birth Now there is no more becoming If indeed it is possible to come to the end of “becoming,” is that tantamount to the end of aging? Is the essence of what Buddha and Dogen realized is that everything “else” is obviously aging and becoming something else? And must include the one observing the change. And that it has always been thus, from the very beginning. So what could go wrong? Just consider: If the very conditions that we all naturally worry about – all too often to an excessive, obsessive degree – have always obtained in the universe, long before our birth in this lifetime, and likely to persist and pertain long after our death; how can there be anything fundamentally amiss? Not that it’s the best of all possible worlds, thank you Pangloss. But really, as a design-build professional, I can fantasize that I was in charge, and made the primordial decisions that determined that, if there is to be sentient existence, what will that look like? How do I make that work? But most ordinary human beings do not have that kind of hubris. They palm the fundamental questions off to a divine entity, the wizard’s intent hidden behind the curtain of appearances. We simply accept the givens, try to understand and embrace them, and go from there. But there must have been a “before” – before the Big Bang, or the alternative Bounce. There must have been something – the “sound of silence,” and maybe nascent thought — preceding the “Word.” But then, all heaven and hell breaks loose, and here we are. In this moment. None of this explains anything, of course. Whatever framework we have been given to comprehend the brute fact of existence was totally made up by others. You learned that. And it can be unlearned. Zazen seems mainly a process of unlearning what we think. The very idea and ideal of longevity has only one value in this context, according to my feeble grasp of Zen’s teachings: A better chance to wake up! In witnessing – or better, contemplating – aging, I am oft reminded of the unforgettable couplet from musical Zen master Dylan: Ah but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now My sense of the relevance of aging and impermanence in the context of meditation and Dharma teachings is that, like the questionable linearity of the so-called “arrow of time” in theoretical quantum mechanics, taking the view that time is passing in a direction may be entirely arbitrary. What we may perceive — and more problematically, what we may interpret — as aging, may indeed be true, but only half the reality, as with all dualistic thinking. Perhaps we are growing younger at the same time, disencumbering ourselves with learned inhibitions, rules and regulations that no longer apply, as we mature to embrace emptiness. My idle conjecture on aging represents yet another variation on the theme of thinking independently and acting interdependently. This bears repetition: Sitting in zazen with the Zen community, we are nonetheless sitting alone. Any time we sit alone in zazen, we are joining the larger community of Zen practitioners. Somewhere in the world – at any time, day or night – someone is sitting in Zen meditation. We need flexibility of mind to approach Zen practice in this nondual sense, outside of time and space. In the next UnMind segment, we will take up the more abrupt, if no more tangible than aging, mark of “sickness,” which for some reason is not called out as such in the early translation. Maybe the prevalence of illnesses of all kinds was so much a part of daily life that it did not emerge as a perceivable isolate in the social awareness of the time. Meanwhile, as Buddha himself suggested, don’t take my word for any of this. Check it out for yourself, on the cushion, and off. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.” UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order . You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho. Producer: Shinjin Larry Little…

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