It is often a puzzle for us when we practice how to respond when thoughts, daydreams, emotions or fantasies arise. While we shouldn’t try to push them away, neither should we get caught up in them. But how?
The quandary is based on unquestioned assumptions about the self.
In this video, reference is made to one of Dogen’s poems which helps to illuminate a way out of this predicament by challenging the dualistic assumptions which underlie it.
The Poem: A person in the mountains should love the mountains, with going and coming, the moutains are his body. The mountains are the body, but the body is not the self So where can one find any senses, or their objects?
Teaching adapted from Kusen given on 26th May 2020
Transitions, photograph by Anne Dick, Wellington Southern Walkway, NZ
A practitioner’s perspective, on and off the zafu – Two
There’s something rather absurd about rushing to get to zazen (meditation) yet that’s sometimes what happens – arriving to sit out of breath and with a head still teeming with the busyness of the day. For some people lockdown will make that less likely, for some people more of a risk.
Although our practice of zazen is of just sitting without any specific focus it can help to have a transition at times like that, just before the bell rings at the start.
Counting the breath from one to ten can help recalibrate. Counting one on an in breath and two on the out breath then continuing like that up to ten before dropping from the counting into full awareness.
If the body is tight with tension, doing a brief body scan before the bell rings, without making any conscious effort to relax, can allow your body to have the space to release into the sitting.
First becoming aware of the breath in your abdomen before taking your awareness up to the top of your head then from the top of your head, over your face and neck down your shoulders and hands to your fingers then from your shoulders down your torso, back and front, down your legs and feet then returning up the body back to the top of the head, noticing as you travel through the body in each direction how each part feels, without trying to change anything.
When we practice, we release the world and ourselves from the grip of our certainty. However it is not exactly that our limited views are wrong, and we should try to ‘lose’ them, or that some are more illuminating that others, or that if all views could be taken together they would finally fully illuminate the practitioner. All views, no matter how many, are all the expression and life of this phenomena right now, which interpenetrates and is interpenetrated by all dharmas, everywhere.
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth patriarch tells the story – and it is a story, it didn’t actually happen – of the contest to the succesion of the fifth patriarch, Hongren. He asked his followers to write a poem to demonstrate their understanding. His senior disciple, Shexiu was the only monk who wrote a poem, which was as follows:
The body is the bodhi tree the mind the bright mirrors stand always polish attentively to prevent dust from settling.
This was famously countered by an illiterate labourer staying in the monastery, Huineng, who responded:
Bodhi originally has no tree the mirror has no stand the buddha nature is always clear and pure where is there room for dust?
In this video the meaning of the first line of Shexiu’s poem is explored.
Video teaching adapted from Kusen given on 23rd May 2020
More on the mind verses competition can be found here:
A practitioner’s perspective, on and off the zafu – One
When I started sitting with the group the suggestion was to wear something dark and loose to allow for flexibility and minimise distraction.
My first stage of experience with Zen was dominated by a preoccupation with finding the right trousers. Somewhere there was a pair of trousers credible enough to wear to the office and stretchy enough to help me navigate zazen (sitting meditation).
This continued as an undercurrent. Although I had a sense that the sitting I was doing was worthwhile, I gathered aiming to get results was not quite the point so put much of my effort into sourcing the right trousers.
By now I was accumulating a fair number of stretchy black trousers and began to feel optimistic about integrating my work and sitting needs via my wardrobe. Then I cracked it and found a pair which had it all – accommodating but not baggy, pockets, the works.
Although in Zen there is a teacher and a student, the true teacher is the wholehearted interaction between them. The face of this teacher, perhaps now, perhaps lifetimes away, turns towards all beings. Apdated from Kusen given on 12 May 2020
We can often catch ourselves with the attitude that our practice is only ‘true’ when all the mess of our busy minds is cleared away. Even though we ‘know’ that our practice should be all-embracing, there is often the feeling that one needs to paddle hard in order to cross to the other shore. And even though we ‘know’ our practice should be all-embracing, there is often the conflicting feeling that one needs to drop that feeling of needing to paddle hard! This video discusses the way out of such self-spinning loops through an engaged concern for all beings in this moment, the true way to save this being. Not sometime in the future, but now
One of the founding myths of the Zen school in China is the mind verses competition between Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch. In the story, the fifth patriarch Hung-jen asks his senior students to write a verse to demonstrate their understanding of Buddhism. Hui-neng, who is an illiterate labourer in the monastery, hears Shen-hsui’s verse and writes his own, which the fifth patriarch secretly approves and gives him the transmission
