Glasgow Zen GroupMy first teacher said it was impossible to break the mirror of the self with the head.
It’s true. Not because the mirror is unbreakable, but because the attempt to break it is still the activity of the self. And it’s not necessary.
Self is momentary. Buddha is momentary. We wobble between this moment of Buddha and this moment of self. But one does not obstruct the other.
He is me but I am not him.
Master Dogen described our practice of shikantaza as dropping off body and mind.
The Japanese which is rendered as ‘dropping off’ has two aspects. One is intentional, as we might drop off an article of clothing. The other is natural, like leaves falling in Autumn.
Dropping off mind, means dropping off that dualism between mind and world, and which is often prominent, although unacknowledged, in meditation.
So we don’t think, “I must make my mind clear, my thoughts are an encumbrance to that”. But rather, thoughts are just one more thing going on within unbroken experience, where there is not inner and outer, me and not-me.
And likewise dropping off body, we don’t think “My body is experiencing these sensations and emotions”, but rather, there is just this experiencing, which includes everything.
We can drop off Mind, in the sense that we can relocate the mind within the body, but we need to drop off both, otherwise the dualism remains.
So dropping off body and mind is, as it were, sitting within the body of the world. It is not to do with individual gain, or individual effort, and so it is the gateway to peace and joy.
Each time we sit, we chant the Heart Sutra: Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form. But what do we mean by Emptiness?
The meaning has changed over time. In the original teachings, the word simply meant absence. If the room was empty of elephants, that just meant there were no elephants there. The concept wasn’t central, because anatta – No Self – was emphasised. The person was ’empty’ of a self.
In due course, in the Mahayana, all things were seen as being empty of a ‘self’ – an immutable essence – and hence the world was empty: interdependent, dynamic, connected, whole.
But the original meaning of absence, voidness, vacuity has always lingered.
So when the Chinese started using the term, they equated it with Suchness. They said that it meant empty of delusion. And Dogen said it was prajna – before thinking. Hence Emptiness is that felt inexpressible wholeness which is there prior to thinking, which is always there, before the mind tries to amputate a self from the body of the world.
In Chinese Buddhism the image of a mirror is very frequent, both to describe practice and to describe enlightenment.
It is quite difficult for us to understand, because when we think of a mirror we think of two: the image in the mirror and the owner of that image.
The whole point of the metaphor however is that there is not two: there is just the mirror.
In the mirror, what appears to be separate is really just part of the whole image.
So each individual thing is there and not there.
Similarly, and perhaps unlike the thing itself, we can look on the image with equanimity.
Understanding all this, we are inclined to see the mirror as being a description of how the universe is. But actually, it’s a description of how the practitioner is. It’s a description of practice.
The reflection is the whole body: the masks of the present moment reconnected with the faces of the past, the tendrils of thought dipping deep into bodily sensation. The mirror is infinitely angled: from the past to the present, from the mind to the body, from this body to all bodies, from the storm to the lingering debris; all directions.
We can’t see it with the eyes.
At our retreat in November we talked about the Mu Koan. You may recall in that Koan story a monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha Nature?”
Joshu says, “Mu (No).”
The basis for the monk’s question is a passage in the Nirvana Sutra where it says that ‘all living beings without exception have Buddha Nature’.
Joshu’s reply was not denying Buddha Nature. He was denying the ‘have,’ that is, that it is a property of the individual.
It is a very common idea in Buddhism that buried within us, like a jewel in mud, is compassion, wisdom, enlightenment and so on; and if our karmic mind would just shut up, these qualities would manifest.
This is a catastrophically mistaken view of practice. It ensures that we continue to suffer.
Master Dogen re-wrote the passage in the Nirvana Sutra, re-rendering it as ‘all existence is Buddha Nature’. Not denying Buddha Nature, but locating it somewhere other than the self.
That being so, the activity of the karmic mind is not a barrier, is not an obstacle. And so our practice does not need to be a continual exercise in disappointment.
The 93 generations since the Buddha, are like a real person walking through time. All the individual positions are unbalanced, all the individual teachers are unbalanced, and in their imbalance, they are fully expressing themselves.
Because this is so, the whole is a dynamic balance. That being so, we should not be like our teacher, we should be like our selves; balancing our teacher with our fully expressed imbalance.
And so, forward. And so, backward.
Sekiso said that Enlightenment is like a thief breaking into an empty house.
Many people talk about practice as the cultivation of something: wisdom say, or compassion.
Is the thief trying to find the gold, or trying to find the light switch? Either way, he’s a thief.
We need to understand that practice is not the cultivation of compassion. It’s not the cultivation of anything.
It is compassion.
Why do we practice together?
Practitioner monks in India would often practice on their own in their individual cells.
So why together? Because when we sit together we are enacting and making real the alive wholeness of everything. “All beings” is a concept, but we can sit with these beings, and thus all beings. We can’t touch “Space,” but we can touch this space.
It is not your practice of Zazen using your body. It is not your practice, it is the whole universe practicing zazen using this body.
The flowers of emptiness have five petals: compassion, expression, gratitude, love and generosity. But where do they open?
My first teacher, Nancy Amphoux, said that zazen was like a huge underground river. I imagined a large river, underneath the desert of the self, pushing up flowers through the bitter earth.
She asked a person, ” Is Bodhidharma here, or not?”. The person said “not”. She struck him. She asked again, “Is Bodhidharma here, or not?”. The person said “he is here”. She struck him.
The cancer in her bones latterly made sitting impossible, so she would do prostrations instead. We traditionally make prostrations to our teacher, whether our teacher is here or there, here or gone. All our teachers. Even though there are mountains and rivers between us. Even if there is life and death between us. Between us.
Alive or dead? Alive or dead? Answer! Answer!
Where do the flowers open? Answer! Answer!
In these days, it often feels as if we are living in a dream. But whose dream?
Awakening is one of the three meanings of Satori, Enlightenment.
So what is Awakening?
It isn’t waking up into a different world. It isn’t, asleep, imagining that the world is flat, and waking up, realising that it’s round. We have to get out of our fixation on truth and falsity. It is entirely useless.
It is just letting the ceaseless expression of life, flooding through us from moment to moment, be.
We awaken from the small dreams of ‘Me’: self and world, truth and falsity, hate and fear, clinging and so on.
But awaken into which dream?
