In this video John talks about faith within the framework of practice. In contrast to the common western view where ‘faith’ is synonymous with ‘belief’, here it has a subtler meaning. This has significant implications for how we approach our own practice and our fellow practitioners and how we engage with the lineage.
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The Eyes of Practice
In this video John discusses the difference between seeing the world through the eyes of the self, and seeing the world through the eyes of practice.
“When we see the world through the eyes of the self we grasp things with our certainty. So we say things like, “oh that’s a wall”, “there’s the sky out there”, “oh time is passing”, “my zazen isn’t very good today”, and so on, the quality of our experience has a slightly weird apparational quality about it, neither existence nor non-existence because seeing in this way, through the eyes of the self, through the eyes of certainty, the world exists within our mind, and, as it were, we exist within our mind as well.
Seeing through the eyes of practice is entirely different, we do out best not to grasp our moment to moment experience with our certainty, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves, and when we do we just learn to release that grip of certainty. And the feeling tone when we see in this way is entirely different, it’s as if we become soft, and open, and connected.
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Essence of the Way in each Shodo stroke
Inspired by Master Dogen’s Chapter 93 of the Shobogenzo ‘Doushin’ 道心, at the recent Zen Brush monthly calligraphy group by Zoom we were encouraged by these two well known characters dou 道 (Way/ way things are/ road/path) and shin or kokoro 心 (heart/mind/spirit/ aspiration/essence) that often come up in Buddhist writings.
Brushing them in the kaisho as well as the sousho ‘grass writing’ styles of Shodo calligraphy, we also explored their meanings, as well as their combined meaning when written together which could be variously translated as the essence of the way; the aspiration for enlightenment; the spirit to walk the path of freedom.
Dogen’s waka poem (translated by Heine) conveys this mood beautifully:
Seeking the Way
Master Dogen
Amid the deepest mountain paths
The retreat I find
None other than
My primordial home: satori!
In chapter 93 Doushin he writes:
‘We should see the aspiration for awakening as foremost.. we must not see our mind as foremost.. should not forget the unreliability of the world and precariousness of human life’
Translation by Nishijima/Cross
It was great to see the group enjoying the flow of the brush, particularly with the movement of the sousho calligraphy, and finding balance in their own way.
Folk worked with different sized brushes, ink and papers but were all absorbed by the strokes, shapes and feeling of the kanji 🙂
The next Zen Brush group is on August 24th, for more details please visit the D+P Studio.
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Sitting together for zazen outdoors
Last weekend a few of us met early on Sunday morning at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow to sit together and have some time to chat about the practice and about posture. It was great to physically meet and enjoy summer zazen in the delightful fresh air next to the River Clyde.
We sat for two periods of 25 minutes, with kinhin walking meditation in between – we slowly walked, a small step at a time, around the silver birch trees which was lovely.
To stay up to date about our sittings or events, please see our What’s On page, or join our newsletter.
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The Ghost Cave
The Buddha said that our state of perception when we meditate is not ordinary perception, it’s not a special kind of perception, it’s not disordered perception and it’s not no perception: so what is it?
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Beginningless and Endless
Chinese culture is unusual for us in that it doesn’t have a creation myth of the sort that almost all western cultures have, e.g. there is no divinity or god that brings the world into existance.
This has significant consequences for how we think about the world and structure it. If we think of the world as having been brought about by something else, the world is always secondary. If we think of it as having a creation point, an arrow of time is implied; the precarious present is allways barely clinging on, like a person running across a collapsing bridge into deep fog.
If we don’t have a creation myth in the normal form then all the things that we think of as acting upon the world are qualities of the world.
Having been born to meet the spread of this Dharma, if we cover our body with the kasaya only once, receiving it and retaining it for just a ksana or a muhurta, that experience will surely serve as a talisman to protect us in the realization of the supreme state of bodhi.
Dogen Zenji, Kesa Kudoku chapter of Shobogenzo (Nishijima/Cross translation)
Some of us recently began meeting monthly on Zoom to practice our zen sewing. Our small friendly group started on Sunday afternoon, with two sewing periods. These were interspersed with time in the middle for the Takkesage chant, a brief chat about Master Dogen’s Kesa Kudoku (Merit of the Kasaya/ Okesa) and a break for a cuppa.
The sewing periods are peaceful times of practice where we can carefully attend to whatever task we are working on, and still ask for help when we need it. Michael and Margaret were on hand to give detailed advice, with Margaret expertly guiding us in the warp and weft of the fabric 🙂
Most of us are just beginning our sewing projects, either a rakusu (5 row robe worn over the neck), or seven row okesa (worn over the shoulder) and also zagu sitting mat which is often used for prostrations. Some of us have sewn okesa before whilst others including myself have sewn a rakusu or two but are now preparing for the okesa. And some of us are at the exciting stage of getting ready to sew their first rakusu, with the plan to receive Jukaie precepts after completing their sewing.
Each stitch, each moment of sincere, committed action, one cause in many from which the completed okesa emerges. It can be said that the work of sewing the okesa is never finished. The stitches of the okesa are the actions of our Buddhist life, dedicated to all beings. At the end of that life, the okesa of a lifetime of actions are unfolded and spread out.
Michael Kendo Tait
We have been enjoying chatting online (using Slack) about fabrics and stitching and what equipment is best to use, but it was really nice to have some time together to help each other and discuss in more details about the practice. It is a friendly and easygoing group with practitioners from Glasgow and other places further afield – wherever you are you are welcome to join us 🙂
Please read more on the Okesa Sewing Group page.
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Everyday Life
At the end of chapter 16 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, where Nagarjuna is talking about Nirvana, he writes the following:
“People who say that they want to stop grasping and get the state of Nirvana are really grasping for something. In the state where Nirvana is not something to be attained and everyday life is not something to be abandoned, what is everyday life, how shall we conceive of Nirvana?”
In this Video John examines this question, and how we can understand “everyday life”
In this video, John explores the concept of Nirvana. It is often easy to misunderstand Nirvana as a goal or a state that we must attain. Even when we imagine we have a more sophisticated understanding, it is still often easy to catch ourselves ‘polishing a tile’ during practice, and this seems to be hard to resist, particularly as we are profoundly influenced by a culture that is particularly individualistic and acquisitive, even whilst pretending otherwise .
Here John tries to clarify what is meant by Nirvana and how this relates to the practice of Zazen.
Before you sit Zazen your life exists in time, you pick it up, you put yourself in order, you come to sit, and you understand that your sitting will be of a particular duration and when that sitting finishes then you can resume the form of you life.
So when your like that, the ‘I’ that is you is folded up, sufficiently small to fit within the space of the self. However when you practice Zazen that ‘I’ unfolds and it unfolds to include the whole world