In Shikantaza, one learns to have ordinary human preferences, yet simultaneously, no preferences at all, all in the very same instant. We can have wants and needs, yet be totally free of all wants and needs, both together in the same heart. It is possible to have healthy human desires while also free of all desire whatsoever, in a single thought!
It is like seeing out of two eyes, left and right, perceiving and encountering the world from different and opposing angles ... preferences yet no preferences, desires yet no desires, needs yet no needs ... with both eyes open together holding the clarity of a Buddha's Eye.
One learns that sometimes we will fear in life (for there are some scary things) yet, in the very same moment, one knows the shelter beyond all fear to the marrow. Running for our very lives in a cold sweat, yet free of all fear, held in one taste.
These seeming contradictions are like opposite flavors mixed together in a pot, the sour and sweet perfuming and empowering each other, such that fear and fearlessness, goals and goallessness, needs and satisfaction, become one luscious taste.
One learns that we can make choices, have goals and things to do, for we must be active to live, and we can have likes and loves, as well as things we detest, hopes. regrets and dreams ... yet as if sharing the very same heart ..., there is freedom from all preferences, a flood of equanimity, nothing to repair, nothing in need of doing, no goal remaining unfulfilled. We are incomplete yet complete at once.
It is like making a trip, pushing ahead to the goal of desired destinations, yet as one walks, each single footstep is its own arrival, and no matter how far one goes, one never leaves home.
We learn to live in a world of birth and death, aging, sickness and health ... yet, in the same breath, know timelessness, flowing beyond birth and death, wholeness washing away all measures of sickness or health. Death yet no death, sickness yet never sickness, time yet timeless ...
People wrongly believe that we can be, or need to be, only one way or the other: We are either driven to survive by human desires, or frozen like opium addicts so totally content that they forget to feed themselves. They think that fear and total freedom from fear is an either/or proposition, and both cannot logically be true at once, yet our Koan revealed is that "either" and "or" are just two faces of a single mountain, the front and back of one shining moon. A secret of Zen Practice is that one can know total contentedness AND human discontent at once, simultaneously experienced, as two sides of a no sided coin. We can experience ordinary human desires, fears, plans, sadness ... while not being their prisoner, all in lovely moderation ... while further, thoroughly free of all desire, fear, goals and sadness at once, to the marrow, case closed.
Our way to know this Wisdom is to sit in the complete Wholeness and Completion of simple sitting, Shikantaza, filled with equanimity, nothing more to choose, nothing whatsoever more in need of attaining ... all as our eyes remain open, and thoughts drift by, of discontents, choices, fears and all the rest.
This is the wisdom of Shikantaza.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLAH
It is like seeing out of two eyes, left and right, perceiving and encountering the world from different and opposing angles ... preferences yet no preferences, desires yet no desires, needs yet no needs ... with both eyes open together holding the clarity of a Buddha's Eye.
One learns that sometimes we will fear in life (for there are some scary things) yet, in the very same moment, one knows the shelter beyond all fear to the marrow. Running for our very lives in a cold sweat, yet free of all fear, held in one taste.
These seeming contradictions are like opposite flavors mixed together in a pot, the sour and sweet perfuming and empowering each other, such that fear and fearlessness, goals and goallessness, needs and satisfaction, become one luscious taste.
One learns that we can make choices, have goals and things to do, for we must be active to live, and we can have likes and loves, as well as things we detest, hopes. regrets and dreams ... yet as if sharing the very same heart ..., there is freedom from all preferences, a flood of equanimity, nothing to repair, nothing in need of doing, no goal remaining unfulfilled. We are incomplete yet complete at once.
It is like making a trip, pushing ahead to the goal of desired destinations, yet as one walks, each single footstep is its own arrival, and no matter how far one goes, one never leaves home.
We learn to live in a world of birth and death, aging, sickness and health ... yet, in the same breath, know timelessness, flowing beyond birth and death, wholeness washing away all measures of sickness or health. Death yet no death, sickness yet never sickness, time yet timeless ...
People wrongly believe that we can be, or need to be, only one way or the other: We are either driven to survive by human desires, or frozen like opium addicts so totally content that they forget to feed themselves. They think that fear and total freedom from fear is an either/or proposition, and both cannot logically be true at once, yet our Koan revealed is that "either" and "or" are just two faces of a single mountain, the front and back of one shining moon. A secret of Zen Practice is that one can know total contentedness AND human discontent at once, simultaneously experienced, as two sides of a no sided coin. We can experience ordinary human desires, fears, plans, sadness ... while not being their prisoner, all in lovely moderation ... while further, thoroughly free of all desire, fear, goals and sadness at once, to the marrow, case closed.
Our way to know this Wisdom is to sit in the complete Wholeness and Completion of simple sitting, Shikantaza, filled with equanimity, nothing more to choose, nothing whatsoever more in need of attaining ... all as our eyes remain open, and thoughts drift by, of discontents, choices, fears and all the rest.
This is the wisdom of Shikantaza.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLAH
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