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252. All the dust illuminated

The last time my first teacher Nancy Amphoux came to Scotland we sat in a dusty room in Glasgow Street.

In the afternoon while we were sitting, bright sunlight shone into the room, illuminating all the dust hanging in the air.

The light was still, the dust was still, neither obstructed the other.

The smoke from the incense moved amongst both, the dancing of a life.

In Buddhism we keep coming across, in a slightly disguised way, the idea of a person.

Who or what is walking the Way if not a person?

Who or what is balanced, if not a person?

And indeed we can see walking as a kind of dynamic balance. The integration of apparent dualities within a living whole, ‘opposites’ reconfigured as two aspects of something which is dynamic and alive.

We need to find this true person. And our mind cannot find it. All it can ever find is a person who has been cut in half, and no matter how hard we try we cannot restore that person to life.

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248. The purpose of practice

I asked my first teacher if the purpose of practice is to become enlightened.

She said, ‘No. The purpose is to become a human being.’

But what does this mean?

It’s like a person who is a counterfeit painter, painting pictures of the world in the style of great artists. These artists are variously called Compassion, Wisdom, Presence, Enlightenment.

But the person knows that no matter how convincing the paintings appear to be, they are fake and will always be at risk of being seen as fake.

Yet what the person doesn’t understand is that these ‘great artists’ are demons. Falseness is the whole point.

This pictured world is flooding out of us at each moment; vivid, perfect. If we wish to be like human beings, we only need to be like small children: fearless, whole.

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Issho Fujita on posture

Please read a brilliant essay by Issho Fujita on posture from Dharma Eye.

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240. One piece zen

Issho Fujita described our practice as “One Piece Zen”. That is, rather than the individual striving of this person, our practice expresses the dynamic unity of all beings, all being, all space.

The trap is to picture a cosmos, with us within it. To escape that trap, we need to feel this dynamic unity as something real, not imagined. That’s why the posture is so important.

In our posture, we have the actual experience of dynamic wholeness and aliveness with our liberated spines. We have the actual experience of vast dynamic space with our liberated breath.

So, our posture, from the perspective of the self, is the symbolic enactment of the two facets of this dynamic unity, and the unity itself. And, when body and mind is dropped off, this enactment is no longer just symbolic, but real.

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229. Katagiri

What we need to understand about impermanence is that both time and being are momentary, and they aren’t separate.

That’s why Katagiri is able to say that each moment is the universe. Because it is the momentary wave of everything.

It’s hard to see this in our normal life. But we can see it in zazen. The wave of each moment, crashing against the cliff of practice.

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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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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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192. With all beings

Within the dream of the self, although the deaths of others are regrettable, they’re not fundamental: the primary issue is the death of this person. The Buddhist writer David Loy says the fear of death is itself a repression of a more fundamental fear: the fear that the self doesn’t exist, now. The fear of non existence is pushed away into the imaginary future.

What if each death, each birth was the fundamental thing?

We do not practice within the dream of the self; we practice with all beings. Not this person, with all beings, but with all beings. Within all being. When we soften the eyes we see more clearly. Not the landscape of the self, but uncountable worlds. When an eye closes a world closes. When a hand opens a world opens. This unexpressibly vivid expression.

everything matters

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179. This Body of Practice

Fujita described Zazen as ‘one piece’ Zen.

The one piece is everything.

The difficulty with this perspective is that we tend to oscillate between the individual and the universal.

And between self abnegation and self inflation.

Unless we challenge the individualistic assumption that is as natural to us as breathing. More, even.

But we should try:

Examine our actual experience. Our experience now is not that we are practicing with others, but we are practicing together.

Each of us with our sincere effort within this body of practice.

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175. Practice zazen eternally

My first teacher, Nancy Amphoux, asked her teacher – “How should I practice Zazen?”

Her teacher replied – “You should practice Zazen eternally.”

She said that she thought at first that what he meant was that she should practice Zazen for the rest of her life.

To practice eternally, it’s as if we are the ground on which all beings and all moments walk

Or the space within which all beings and all moments live.