Category: Kusen

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Kusen

215. The breath liberated

In our practice, the breath is absolutely essential.

We are scrupulous about posture because when we sit upright and balanced, the breath is liberated.

The breath is central not because it relaxes and settles us; although it does, obviously.

It is essential because it clarifies our nature.

If we pay attention to the actual experience of breathing – not a conceptual one – we realise there is nowhere that our breath doesn’t reach.

It’s as if our breath is this dynamic vast moving space at our centre.

And the body is draped around it.

We are not this body in space. We are space.

There is no clear divide between the space inside and the space outside.

So to actualise this space inside us is to actualise all space; not as something abstract but as

the space between us.

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Kusen

214. This extra person

The koan stories recall the words between teachers and students, but a person is missing.

That person is the relational space between the teacher and the student.

We could call this space the true, momentary teacher

It’s not that this third person simply exists in the gap between the teacher and student, but rather that both teacher and student exist within this third person; this relational, alive space

Similarly we are not eleven people each pursuing our personal practice; there is a 12th person here.

The space between us. The space which contains us, which lifts us up into being

When people talk of the Dharmakaya, the Universal Buddha-body, they don’t mean something conceptual, they mean just this –

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Kusen

213. A true person of no rank

Master Rinzai said that there is a true person of no rank, always entering and leaving, through our face.

It is tempting to interpret this as fantastical or symbolic, rather than a description of actual experience.

Note that he didn’t say the heart – which extends everywhere – but the face.

People often imagine that underneath all our conditioning is a true person, and the purpose of spiritual practice is to get there, but Rinzai’s expression is entirely contrary to that. The true person is not you. They are not someone else.

It is as if metallic casts of our masks were suspended in Emptiness, like wind chimes.

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Kusen

Book Of Serenity, Case 23 (adapted)

The case:

When students came to see Master Luzu, he simply turned to face the wall in zazen.

Hearing this Master Nansen said – “this will carry on until the year of the donkey”

Nansen then said “when students come to me, I tell them to experience the state before discrimination. However I don’t even have half a student”

Commentary:

This koan is about teaching.

In Chinese astrology there isn’t a year of the donkey.

Nansen is saying that zazen is eternal but also that this way of teaching is eternally deficient.

It is not just a matter of gestures.

But then Nansen, although a great teacher himself, seems to suggest that his verbal teaching was also deficient.

It is not just a matter of words.

We need to understand that neither Luzu or Nansen, or anyone else, are teachers; because the true teacher is a momentary person.

Sometimes he conceals himself within the teacher. Sometimes within the student.

Sometimes partially in one and partially in the other. Sometimes in brightness. Sometimes in memory.

The true teacher always manifests only in this relational space. Because this relational space is without limit, likewise their manifestations.

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Kusen

212. Faith, in buddhism

The most important thing when we start to practice is to have faith.

Not faith in Buddhism or a set of ideas, but faith in our own sincerity, in our sincere practice.

When we start it’s often as if everything which arises within experience is like a smoke or fog or noise; obscuring reality, choking, deafening or distracting us; and we wish rid of it.

But what we need to understand is that everything is reality, all of it. Give each thing space and see it so.

Our task is not to empty the mind, but to make it vast.

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Kusen

211. To make a buddha

In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha says all living beings will become Buddhas.

This may be the source of our belief that we practice, not to become Buddha, but from the perspective of Buddha.

Not to make the person into a Buddha, but to displace the person.

Dogen radicalises this further by declaring seemingly humble objects Buddhas. Drum Buddha. Stick Buddha, Broken Ladle Buddha, and so on.

It’s not affectation. It is pointing to something important and real.

The Lotus Sutra also says that only a Buddha, together with a Buddha, can see how things are.

Usually on our window ledge there are two ceramic buddhas. We bought them in a junk shop 30 years ago.

On Saturday a gust of wind blew these two Buddhas over, damaging them.

A Buddha, together with a Buddha, fell to the ground.

When we saw this we were upset. But we didn’t see this activity as part of the limitless expression of apparently humble objects. It is not that through our brilliance we impose multiple teachings on humble objects, nor that they express these teachings themselves. But together. Together.

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Kusen

210. This time being

If we just see impermanence from the perspective of the self there is only suffering.

If we put the self to one side, the ground of this time being extends in all directions.

It flows from the past to the present, from the present to the present, from the present to the past.

Likewise the Dharma.

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Kusen

209. To all beings

It is useless to start from a general picture of Buddhism and try to match our experience to that picture. Both will be fakes. We have to start from where we are.

From where we are, in this room, twelve feet square.

So, for example, when we chant the first vow “Beings, numberless, I vow to free them”, we should not create an imaginary multitude of beings, we should start from our actual experience. This Being when the bell first rang. This Being now. This Being a child. This Being at death. This Being seen by each person within time’s scattering, in love, or hate, or indifference. This Being in the heart of those now gone. This Being in the heart of those not yet come. I vow to free them.

And from these Beings, like encroaching daybreak, to all Beings.

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Kusen

208. Just like space

“The Buddha’s true body is just like space.

Manifesting its form according to circumstances,

It is like the moon in water”

So what is this ‘just like space’?

The Indians and Chinese didn’t have our modern idea of Newtonian space.

For them, space meant emptiness.

So, when we come into this room and sit, is the space less than before we enter, or not?

If less, where does the space go?

If not, where does the space go?

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Kusen

207. Like a dream

We compare this life to a dream because, amongst other things, dream illuminates suffering, no-self and impermanence.

Our desire – attraction, aversion – is inescapable. But we don’t need to escape. We just need to experience. Just experience.

In dreams, we cannot say there isn’t a self, but nor can we locate it.

And rather than beings within time, there is just vibrant impermanence; a changing, kaleidoscopic whole.