SIT-A-LONG with Jundo: WHAT's NEXT!?!

[Myosha]

With gratitude for lesson.

Gassho,
Edward

[Tai Shi]

Thanks, Jundo I am a senior and at my age and being a junior member, I am relieved to know I just am, I don't need to seek change, and I can learn at my own speed, and in my own way. Certainly I am still growing at my speed, and that's okay. Thanks for the lesson. Elgwyn.

[Shokai]

Remember, the answer to the question, "What's new ?" Is always, "Everthing !"

[Kyotai]

I watch this talk every now and again when I find myself searching for whats next.

Thank you

Gassho, Kyotai
sat today

[Kotei]

Thank you.

Still have to learn this lesson inside and outside the zendo.

Gassho,
Ralf sattoday.

[Byokan]

Thank you Jundo

Gassho
Lisa
sat today

[Onkai]

Thank you, Jundo, for this talk and for sharing this practice through Treeleaf.

Gassho,
Onkai
SatToday

[Enjaku]

Just watched this for the first time. Wonderful talk
Thank you.
Gassho,
Enjaku
Sat

[Stevew]

Thank you for this. It reminds me of this story: A student struggling with his meditation went to his teacher and said "My practice! Every time I sit it's miserable and I can't calm my mind!" The teacher smiled and said "Keep meditating. It will pass". And it did. After a time he began to experience deep concentration and even rapture when he sat. One day, no longer able to contain his joy, he went to his teacher and exclaimed "My practice! It's so wonderful I've never felt such bliss". Again, the teacher smiled and said "Keep meditating. It will pass."

What's next? More of the same. We grow old, get sick, and die. We experience an entire spectrum of emotion and create whole worlds of identity that we populate with very specific and inflexible models of self. I forget (oh how I try to forget!) that life on its own terms is messy and unsatisfactory. It is only my clinging to the hope that it could be otherwise that causes me suffering.

Thank you again for the reminder, Jundo.

Steve
Sat today (and oh the suffering!!!)

[Tom]

Jundo,

Thanks. I love the teaching. It's very refreshing. But I'm confused (like it's the first time its ever happened to a Zen student.)

In sitting, and stillness, and the fog, maybe smog that comes up, you see all sorts of things and the way you've done things that aren'tin line with the precepts. Just living with those things seems to offer up a daily laundry list of things that need changing. You know, greed, aversion, fear, grasping, selfishness, all that Mara stuff.

I guess the take home message is don't cling to the Mara stuff? Watch it and let it go? But you need to actively do things sometime and make specific changes, mostly to personal habits. Isn't that change?

Tom
Sat

[Jundo]

Jundo,

Thanks. I love the teaching. It's very refreshing. But I'm confused (like it's the first time its ever happened to a Zen student.)

In sitting, and stillness, and the fog, maybe smog that comes up, you see all sorts of things and the way you've done things that aren'tin line with the precepts. Just living with those things seems to offer up a daily laundry list of things that need changing. You know, greed, aversion, fear, grasping, selfishness, all that Mara stuff.

I guess the take home message is don't cling to the Mara stuff? Watch it and let it go? But you need to actively do things sometime and make specific changes, mostly to personal habits. Isn't that change?

Tom
Sat

Hi Tom,

Yes, just because "there is nothing to change" about us does --not-- mean that we may not have to change some things about us to realize this "nothing to change."

Look at this talk and see if it helps ...

Soto Zen folks say that every moment of Zazen is complete, sacred, a perfect action, with not one thing to add, not one thing to take away. When we sit Zazen, we are a Buddha sitting. In such way, we come to taste all of this life and world as sacred, a jewel, with not one thing to add, not one thing to take away from it. Perfectly just-what-it-is.

But we have to be very cautious here, not misunderstand:

... Saying “we are already Buddha” is not enough if we don’t realize that, act like so!

Simple, exaggerated example …

Perhaps a fellow sits down to Zazen for the first time who is a violent man, a thief and alcoholic. He hears that “all is Buddha just as it is“, so thinks that Zen practice means “all is a jewel just as it is, so thus maybe I can simply stay that way, just drink and beat my wife and rob strangers“. Well, no, because while a thief and wife-beater is just that … a thief and wife-beater, yet a Buddha nonetheless … still, someone filled with such anger and greed and empty holes to fill in their psyche is not really “at peace with how things are” (or he would not beat and steal and need to self-medicate). In other words, he takes and craves and acts from anger and frustration because he does not truly understand “peace with this life as it is” … because if he did, he would not need to be those violent, punishing ways.

If the angry, violent fellow truly knew “completeness“, truly had “no hole in need of filling“, “nothing lacking” everything “complete just as it is” … well, he simply would not have need to do violence, stealing and take drugs to cover his inner pain.

This is a non-self-fulfilling Catch-22.

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?14878-Sit-a-Long-with-Jundo-Zazen-for-Beginners-%2818%29

The excess desire, anger, jealousy, divided thinking is precisely what keeps the person from experiencing and realizing such completeness and "nothing to change."

As I posted elsewhere today: Remember that Dogen not only said that, in Practice, there is "no place to go and nothing to attain."

He also said "Practice never ends" and is in each moment, of endless depths. A Koan.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Tom]

Many thanks. This'll be my koan for the evening walk: "This is a non-self-fulfilling Catch-22."

[Amelia]

"Nothing in need of changing," does not mean, "don't change what you want to change." Another aspect of practice is seeing in the moment what needs to be done.

Gassho, sat today

[Ugrok]

I wonder, reading this, if trying to literally answer the question could not be a remedy to the question. Like : "what is next" ? I mean, what is it really, what does next mean ?

Gassho,

Uggy,

Sat today

[Jundo]

I wonder, reading this, if trying to literally answer the question could not be a remedy to the question. Like : "what is next" ? I mean, what is it really, what does next mean ?

Gassho,

Uggy,

Sat today

Even thinking about that. huh? What does all your thinking about stuff, such as "what is 'what is next''' mean?

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH