Tag: Kusen

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Kusen

145. Zazen mountain

Kusen collaboration artwork by Margaret Kerr

In Uji, Dogen said that being is time.

‘Time’ isn’t quite right. Perhaps ‘moment’ is better. So beingmoment, momentbeing-

He has a wonderful image of a person going up into the mountains. And, from the top of the mountain, looking out and seeing an infinity of other peaks. Moments in this life, moments in all lives

The beauty and majesty of Dogen’s teaching is that the image is alive and infinitely faceted; from the perspective of the Mountains there is just this moment. The mountain is not hovering in mid air. Mountains are the waves of the great earth, they are part of this living ocean of earth. All these mountains. So in this moment Zazen Mountain, Birdsong Mountain, Buddha Mountain, Sky Mountain, Samsara Mountain. Mountain Mountain.

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Kusen

144. The buddha way

We might think that the four vows are distinct.

The second vow is often rendered as:

‘Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them’.

On hearing this, we might imagine our goal is to stop all this inconvenient feeling and thinking, and to live in a kind of spacious equanimity for ever.

This is completely mistaken. Our vow is to let everything flooding through and around this person from moment to moment fully live.

We do that by not appropriating this flood of experience to the self. We see this with the third vow, Dharma Gates are endless, I vow to enter them. In other words, Non duality.

The last vow is ‘The Buddha Way unattainable, I vow to attain it’.

The first three vows are an expression of the Buddha Way. The Buddha Way expressed from moment to moment. Listen

Pay careful attention to the words. The Buddha way unattainable, I vow to attain it. But this way of non duality is ungraspable by the I, the source of duality.

The Buddha way is not a something in the distant future. It is Now. Now.

Now

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Kusen

143. Save all beings

The first of the four bodhisattva vows that we chant after sitting is usually rendered as ‘beings are numberless I vow to save them’. We sometimes abbreviate this to ‘save all beings’.

What does this mean?

With Buddhism in India, the original emphasis was on personal salvation. When Buddhism fruitfully collided with Chinese culture, the emphasis changed to universal salvation. The pivotal person became the bodhisattva, the person who would save all beings. Hence the vow.

It fits in with a broader idea in Chinese culture of heroic, beneficent figures.

But I wonder if, in our age of rampant individualism, and consequent spiritual materialism, if the usual translation is helpful for us? Perhaps it would be better for us to say – although the grammar is problematic – Being numberless I vow to save (it).

Being rather than beings.

And Being ‘being’ numberless in two senses. Numberless because this full dynamic functioning (Zenki/ dependent origination) is infinitely faceted: me, you, the walls and the doors, the trees and the birds and the stars and so on. And numberless also because there’s only this wholeness: there isn’t one or two or three or four.

How do we save all Being? By not burying (it) underneath the self.

So not an infinite number of beings to save over an infinite length of time, but an infinite number of moments, and always this moment, this moment of practice, in each of which everything can fully live.

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Kusen

142. The five skandhas

Dogen said that the five skandhas (form, sensation, perception, mental formation, consciousness) are five pieces of Prajna; before thinking.

It is easier to see with the first two.

With the first skandha, when we sit, we don’t think, I am a man, I am a woman, this is a wall and suchlike, we just sit, right in the middle of our raw experience.

Likewise with sensation. We just feel what is there. We don’t label it.

With perception and mental formation, it’s a little harder to see Dogen’s point, but it’s very important that we do.

We just need to see the incessant urge to understand this flood of experience. This constant ‘What is this?’

It is as if we are in a room with a storyteller. The point is not to get caught up in the stories, nor to speculate if they’re true, nor to get annoyed because they’re not, but just to see the aliveness of the storyteller and, seeing this, the aliveness of everything.

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Kusen

141. Quietening the mind

Sometimes we think of zen meditation practice as developing equanimity. Quietening the mind.

But which mind? Certainly not the personal mind.

What is obvious when we start sitting is the incessant talking itself into existence, which the personal mind seems to engage in endlessly. Like an apprehended fraudster. Talking himself in. Talking himself out.

So if our aim is to have equanimity, it would be foolish to expect this mind to be silent, to drop away, and leave equanimity pristine behind it..

So what do we do?

This personal, karmic mind is occurring within the greater body-mind.

Do our thoughts extend to our felt bodily experience or not?

This bodymind is already sitting within vast space. Do our thoughts extend above our head or behind or in front of us?

Of course not. There is no boundary to this space. It extends everywhere, and holds everything. Practice like this.

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Kusen

140. Buddha is momentary

My 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.

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Kusen

139. Shikantaza

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.

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Kusen

138. What is emptiness

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.

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Kusen

137. The metaphor of the mirror in zen

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.

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Kusen

136. All Existence is Buddha Nature

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.