Tag: Kusen

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Kusen

125. The Karmic Mind

Practice enables us to become aware of the causes of our suffering. When we start sitting we are very aware of thoughts and emotions, and in due course can see this as the manifestation of karmic mind, our personal karmic mind, which has its own way of suffering. It could be anxiety, dissociation, agitation, boredom, fear, it could be many many things.

It is completely understandable that we might want our practice to eradicate this noise, to void the mind. But voiding the mind would be a small practice. It is not our practice; it lacks dignity. It is a miser’s practice.

The ideogram in Chinese for delusion looks like it has little legs. The idea is that delusion is the little legs of our karmic mind. Taking us this way, this way, this way, and this way, ceaselessly.

On top of these little legs is the self. Practice is not to cut off the legs, but to unseat the self.

When seen in this way, the karmic mind is not our possession and is not our burden. It is the expression of the aliveness of everything. We can’t reach that aliveness from a void.

We can’t get to the heart by cutting.

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Kusen

124. What does Satori mean?

What does satori mean? When the Japanese coined the term, they rolled up into that one word three distinct ideas in Chinese Buddhism about enlightenment.

The first was delusion and enlightenment; that is, through practice, we gain insight into our habitual being pulled this way and that by our desires, our habits, our karma, and when we realise this, we can stop.

The second is awakening. We realise that what we take to be real, our whole conceptual apparatus of self and world, is created by us. It’s like a dream. But we don’t wake up into another reality; we wake up within the dream.

The third and most important is practice realisation. That is, we accept the Buddha’s teachings. We then sincerely practice, and through practice we realise that those teachings are true.

And in this context, what we realise is true, is our ceaseless tendency to fabricate the self, to fabricate a world, to fabricate our lives.

In seeing that, even for just moments we can stop that karmic activity. The problem with satori is we think it’s something else that we can acquire. But the whole point is that it’s not about getting. It’s about not-getting, losing, stopping, desisting.

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Kusen

123. Emperor Wu

When Bodhidharma went to China, according to legend, he met with the Emperor. The meeting is usually recounted in this way:

Emperor Wu said to Bodhidharma ‘I have built hundreds of temples, what is my merit? Bodhidharma answered, ‘no merit’. The Emperor then asked, ‘What is the highest truth?’ Bodhidharma replied ‘Unfathomable emptiness’. The emperor then asked, ‘Who are you?’ Bodhidharma replied, ‘I don’t know’.

So in its usual rendering, the Emperor is portrayed as a self satisfied bumbler, being put right by Bodhidharma, fearlessly speaking truth to power.

But, in classical Chinese it is impossible to say if a sentence is a question or a statement. So we can look at this exchange differently.

The words ‘what’ and ‘who’ are synonymous with suchness, emptiness. So the Emperor is simply living his life as a Buddhist Emperor, acknowledging that his only merit is suchness. And because this merit extends everywhere, it is ‘no merit’.

And the Emperor’s final statement is not ‘who are you?’ but rather You are Who, that is: you are a person of suchness. And Bodhidharma’s response is suchness isn’t our personal possession.

Bodhidharma then left, going to Shaolin temple and sat facing the wall for 9 years.

What wall was he facing?

Whose eyes are seeing that wall?

Who are you?

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Kusen

122. In a Spiritual Practice concerned with Gain

From the perspective of the self, the body and the world are within the mind. In a spiritual practice concerned with gain, even though we try to lever ourself into a different position, our head always gets stuck.

From the perspective of Buddhism, the mind is within the body. The body is within vast space. But if we do not make this vast space real, it is “Buddhism”, and we’re just back to the mind again.

When we closely examine our experience Now, isn’t that experience like space? Likewise the body; balanced in space, like a windchime. When we experience our breath Now isn’t it the dynamic interplay of space ‘outside’ and space ‘inside’? In all these cases, melding, intermingling. They are not the same, and not separate. When we sit down to practice, the space which we occupy doesn’t disappear. When we leave, the space does not reappear.

We carry it with us. And it us.

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Kusen

121. Space in Buddhism

Space is both the trope and reality of Buddhism. It makes possible freedom, expression, experience and unfolding.

When we start to practice, we can’t find space anywhere. Our mind feels like a mass of disgruntled demons, packed into a cellar. One part moves, and the rest move, in reaction.

We might imagine space in Newtonian terms, or as an absence, but that’s not what’s meant.

It is both figurative and real. It is not absence. Even though there are many of us in this room, it is full of space: above our head, in front of our heart, behind us. The space holds us.

This space holds all things. But not as something there before being. If there was no space, there would be no life. If there was no life, then there would be no space. If all the fish go, the ocean vanishes. If all the birds go, the sky collapses.

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Kusen

120. Full Dynamic Functioning

In traditional Buddhist terminology, there are three aspects to meditation. The first is stilling the mind. The second is samadhi (balance/ concentration), and the third is vipassana (insight); they are often thought of as sequential.

In our practice, they’re not sequential; they arise together.

You can’t still the mind with the mind. You can only still the mind by locating it within the body. This body, the body of awareness. And this body has no boundaries. It is one piece. It is like space.

Yet even so, we need to have actual experience that when we sit, body, mind and all beings are this one piece samadhi. It’s not enough just to believe it. When we sit together, we actually experience this, and this felt experience can gradually seep out to all existence, like a hand moving through water, infinitely.

And this One Piece is Zenki, full dynamic functioning. It isn’t static in any way. It is vibrantly alive, and all its facets are free to express and experience themselves, through this sitting. And this is insight.

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Kusen

119. Before Thinking

While Master Yakusan was practicing zazen, a monk asked him, “What are you thinking?”

The Master said, “I’m thinking (shiryo) not thinking (fu-shiryo).”

The monk asked, “How can you think not thinking?”

The Master replied, “Hi- shiryo.”

Hi-shiryo is really problematic to translate. It is often rendered as ‘non thinking’, but what is that exactly? My teacher Michael Luetchford renders it as, ‘different from thinking’. But in what way different? Tanahashi translates it as, ‘beyond thinking,’ which has the unfortunate connotation of a transcendent state.

The Ven. Anzan Hoshin renders it as, ‘before thinking’. Although not grammatically accurate, this rendering is brilliant.

Just as the world didn’t flash into existence when homo sapien appeared, this world does not suddenly appear when thought appears. When we sit, full attention is given to all experience, uncooked. It is as if we are looking along a long corridor. Some way along is the shuffling presence of thinking. We don’t negate it.

But we see it through the immediate and un-thought life of this, now

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Kusen

118. Ordinary Mind is The Way

Master Baso famously said, “Mind is Buddha.” He also said, ” Ordinary mind is the way.”

These remarks have been spectacularly misinterpreted. Otherwise sensible people claim he is saying that the nature of reality is mental, or that the self is Buddha, or similar nonsense.

By ‘ordinary mind’ he didn’t mean the karmic mind, the creator of dualities, the storybook of the self. By ‘ordinary’ he meant what is immediately available to us, if we cease our habitual dualistic behaviour.

This ‘ordinary’ mind is like a fragment of sky, it extends everywhere.

The issue is not whether you are illuminated, or not illuminated.

Everything is illuminated.

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Kusen

117. The Zen Doctrine of No Self

One of D. T. Suzuki’s most famous books is ‘The Zen Doctrine of No-Self’. It’s a very seductive title. Once we’ve got the theory clear, we can start to practice. Once we’ve got the map, we can make our way to the territory. It’s a completely erroneous perspective.

My first teacher said, “you cannot break the mirror of the self with the head”. Denying the self is also asserting the self because – just like atheism – what is denied remains there in outline. A god shaped space, a self shaped space. We need to understand that Buddhism is the relinquishing of all views. The relinquishing of all views and discovering in the midst of practice that territory in which the karmic mind is not sovereign.

And in this place there are maps. Some are incomprehensible to us, some are like a dream and some are like daybreak.

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Kusen

116. Anatta

The foundation of Buddhism is Anatta, no self. Dogen’s way of expressing this in our practice is ‘dropping off body and mind’. Dropping as we would drop off a cloak. But a cloak that we keep finding ourselves wearing again.

We might imagine that this dropping off reveals a purer self, but that would be a mistake. This dropping off, the activity of non fabrication, non talking the self into existence, doesn’t reveal a purer self. Rather, it uncloaks this one piece zen, where everything, including the activity of the karmic mind, is an unbroken whole. Everything is as it is, which is nirvana.