Tag: Kusen – oldest first

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Kusen

201. Samsara

The Tibetan word for Samsara (‘khor ba’) literally means circling. Just going round in circles; blown here and there by karma.

Nirvana is not trying to do something to fix our karma, nor trying to perfect the self, nor making ourselves more wise or more compassionate. All of this is just samsara.

It is simply to stop fabricating. To just allow this experience to flood through us.

My first teacher Nancy said that zazen is like a huge underground river in our lives. We can’t see it, but it’s there. And a river, obviously, is a path, a way. Likewise, the ground above it. Likewise, the space above it.

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Kusen

202. Jiko

In the Genjokoan, Master Dogen wrote:

“To carry the self forward to experience the myriad charms is delusion. For the myriad dharmas to come forth and illuminate the self is enlightenment”

Dogen, Genjokoan

‘Self’ is ‘Jiko‘, which has two meanings. The first is self in the usual sense; the ego, the small, personal self. The second meaning however is the whole of dependent origination. The whole works. The big self.

Dogen switches between the meanings, so we can paraphrase him as saying:

“To sit in zazen and experience everything as my experience, and to be concerned with ‘me’ is delusion. To unobstruct each thing’s illumination of the whole of time, the whole of existence, is enlightenment”

Know this: your practice is not a personal practice. It is entirely unconcerned with your puny needs and wants. It is the whole universe practicing, through this body.

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Kusen

203. Neither existence or non existence

We say this life is like a dream. We say it because we want to point to something which is neither existence or non-existence, neither true or false. Something which can be experienced, but not grasped.

And by not being grasped, the backwards and forwards of expression and of meaning between the dreamer and the dream can be vividly enacted.

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Kusen

204. Good and bad zazen

The Self asserts itself twice : first openly, then by stealth.

We are often told that zazen is not meditation, and that’s true, if meditation is seen as a way of controlling the mind, expanding consciousness, increasing compassion and similar egoic drivel.

But we also need to be alert to a different form of self assertion: imagining that there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ experience. So, when we are sitting, we might imagine (good) raw experience to be somehow dimmed by the (bad) experience of judging, commenting, associating and so on, which our ‘mind’ seems to be doing automatically. But who is it who wishes to get this (bad) experience out of the way?

Our practice is to experience everything in vast open awareness.

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Kusen

205. The point of ritual

Bowing.

1. It is like the heart is a very clever person, a brilliant person, who can only express himself through an infinite number of stupid persons. The stupid person of bowing, for instance

But each of those stupid persons, in that expression, becomes a brilliant person. An infinitely faceted person.

Until skewered on words.

2. When students ask the teacher about bowing, the teacher will often reply that it’s an expression of non-duality. We bring 2 apparently separate things – the hands – together. I’ve done this myself.

It’s not that the answer is wrong, but it’s incomplete.

We could equally say that when we bow, we de-centre the head. When I bow to you, I de-centre my self; I make myself an object in your world. And so, bowing is leaving the prison of the self and entering a cascade of lived, shared worlds.

This answer isn’t wrong either, but it’s incomplete. Because bowing’s expression is limitless.

3. How we view Ritual is the canary in the coal mine. If we misunderstand it, if we imagine that Ritual is language put into physical form – I bow to express gratitude, for example – then we cannot prevent that view gradually seeping everywhere.

Which is our end.

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Kusen

206. The purpose of bowing

Before we sit down we bow to our cushion and bow to everyone.

How so?

In this place of practice, everything has equal and absolute value.

It is not that the person is great and the cushion is menial.

No!

It is not that the cushion, the mat, the floor, the incense, the Buddha are here to facilitate my practice.

No

Everything in this place is conducting this practice.

Because this is so, even though this room is only 12 foot Square, it is the whole universe.

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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.

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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

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

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.