Tag: Kusen – oldest first

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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

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

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

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

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

216. The Buddha’s true dharma body

“The Buddha’s true dharma body is just like space.
Manifesting its form according to circumstances,
It is like the moon in water.”

Mahaparinirvana Sutra

This passage from the Nirvana Sutra talks about the relation between the particular and the universal, the concrete and the spiritual. And, by necessary implication, how we should practice.

“The Buddha’s true body is just like space”: space is boundless. It extends everywhere. It is not the air. It is not like water. When objects appear, when people appear, they don’t displace space; because there is nowhere that space doesn’t reach, there is nowhere extra for it to go to.

So the person, from this perspective, is both person and space. John, Michael, Anne, Rachel, Buddha.

We do not require to exclude the personal, the particular, the phenomenal to attain the universal, that is delusion. The particular is the universal. And vice versa.

“It is like the moon in water” : the moon is a common metaphor for enlightenment, Buddha. And water is a common metaphor for the mind.

Moonlight and water completely interpenetrate each other. It is not that there is a moon, standing somewhere apart, casting its secondhand light upon the water. No. The moon is in the water.

That being so, do not hate or love the thoughts, emotions, sensations and reactivity which arise from moment to moment. They are not clouds obscuring the sky, they are the sky.

Because just this is everything.

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Kusen

217. The Buddhist doctrine of no self

If you were to ask someone to give an example of Buddhist doctrine, the example given may well be ‘the Buddhist doctrine of no-self’.

But actually that isn’t true, in two senses.

Firstly, at no point in the sutras or anywhere else did the Buddha either deny the self or affirm the self.

He just pointed out that our ideas of what the self is are incoherent and contradictory, and whether or not the self existed, we couldn’t find it in any of the familiar places.

And he did this because thinking in terms of self and world is obviously dualistic; but likewise thinking in terms of no self and world is dualistic too.

It is as if one sketched out an outline of a person, filled it up with imaginary karma, and called the whole thing ‘self’. And you then took that content away, simply leaving the outline again, and this time filled up the space with imaginary enlightenment. What is the difference, really?

And this is the second sense. There isn’t ‘Buddhist doctrine’ in the normal sense, because the heart of Buddhism isn’t within the conceptual realm.

If our understanding is theoretical then our liberation will also be theoretical.

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Kusen

218. Is Master Tozan here?

In Memoriam

1. During a Mondo, someone asked my late first teacher Nancy about Master Tozan.

Nancy said to this person ‘Is Tozan here, or not?’

The person said – ‘He’s not here’. Nancy struck him, playfully.

Then she asked again: ‘Is Master Tozen here?’

The person said ‘He is here’. Nancy struck him again.

Alive or dead? Nancy? Tozan? You and me?

2. The ignorant person thinks that this person, whom they call their self, is their possession; and where this person appears in the heart or eye or mind of someone else, then this simply is echo, or shadow

But this person is not a half finished fortification.

This person is multitudes. Being is numberless.

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Kusen

219. You’re the fool

Sometimes, as if in a dream, we enter a house called Buddha, sit at a table called Zazen, and opposite us is a fool; repetitive, moody, mocking. And the more we wish him to shut up, the louder he is. And we think that if we just endure this, at some point he will go away, or at least be silent, and then better companions: wisdom, compassion, stillness and so on will appear; and they need to appear soon, before we are thrown into nothingness.

We need to understand that we’re the fool. Wisdom, compassion, stillness have been there all along.

How so? Because each thing is everything. A pinpoint of light illuminates the entire universe.

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Kusen

220. To control the mind

Dogen said that zazen was not learning meditation. Rather, it was simply the Dharma gate of ease and joy.

But almost always, people coming to zazen do think it is meditation. That is, it is an effort – in which we can progressively succeed – to control the mind. To put down thought and to pick up stillness. To put down noise and pick up silence.

Except, both thought and noise seem inordinately sticky.

So, we need to make an effort to understand what Dogen is saying. First, we should understand that the desire to make our ‘mind’ different is just the continuation of the habitual activity of the self. There’s nothing spiritual about it. We may as well aspire to be beautiful, or rich.

Second, we need to understand that zazen is making a complete effort with all we are; our ‘body’, our ‘mind’. It’s not something restricted to the mind, or consciousness. It’s not psychological. It’s not mindfulness. That’s one of the reasons we emphasise the posture so much. If the posture is balanced then the breath is free. If the breath is free we can start to feel a kind of pleasure, or easefulness when we sit, and that’s very important.