I wrote this for another place, but it is so important a reminder that I want to shout it from the rooftops here. Please sit Zazen in this way, tasting this. Live all of life this way ...
Master Dogen often spoke about Zazen as "itself body-mind dropped off". I have this little way of explaining "Zazen is in itself body-mind dropped off":
Our small self, the body-mind, is always filled with countless desires ... the desire to be somewhere else, be getting somewhere, achieving some prize, some distant goal. Our body-mind is always judging this or that as somehow inadequate to what the body-mind wants, its likes and dislikes, needs, regrets and dreams.
Thus, when there is sat an instant of Zazen as wholeness in just sitting, the only place to be and act to do in that instant in all of reality that is required to fulfill life as life ... the Buddha and all the Ancestors just sitting in that instant of sitting, no other thing to attain or which ever can be attained ... no other place to go or in need of going ... all holes filled, whether full or empty or in between ... all lack and excess resolved in that one sitting, with not one thing to add or take away ... judgments dropped away, "likes and dislikes" put aside ... nothing missing from Zazen (even when we might feel that "something is missing", for one can be fully content with the feeling of lack!) ... the sitting of Zazen and all life experienced as complete and whole as just the sitting of Zazen ... the entire universe manifesting itself on the Zafu at that moment ...
... in other words, when the "little self" is thereby put out of a job by the experience of "just sitting" as whole and complete with nothing more to be desired or needed ... then the hard borders between the "little self" and the "not the self" (which is usually being judged and "bumped into" and divided into pieces) thus naturally soften, fully fade away ... only the wholeness of the dance remaining ...
... then "Zazen is in itself body-mind dropped off".
Human beings simply do not know how to engage an action pierced as naturally complete just by the engaging of the action itself, how to live life that is whole just by the act of living life.
This is not sitting 'on one's complacent rump like a bump on a log', but is instead whole ... vibrant ... alive ... fulfilled sitting.
Then, rising up from the Zafu to our day to day lives ... we realize that there is no place to go, even as we have so many places to go ... no holes in need of filling, even as we grab a shovel and get to work to filling holes ... nothing to fix in life, even as we try to fix what can be fixed ... no life or death or disease to cure, even as we take our medicine or head to the gym, all on the road to our own funeral ... aversions and attractions dropped away, even as we lightly hold onto those aversions and attractions necessary to ordinary human life ... nothing to attain, even as we follow the Precepts to keep a healthy and balanced life, manifesting the Teachings in each moment and choice ... fully knowing that each step of life's path is a total arriving, sacred in itself, even as we seek to choose the path to a balanced and loving life (and to avoid the paths which lead off the cliff!)
It is then seen as --all-- the wholeness of the dance.
Something like that. It's not rocket science. Please sit and live in such way.
Gassho, Jundo
Master Dogen often spoke about Zazen as "itself body-mind dropped off". I have this little way of explaining "Zazen is in itself body-mind dropped off":
Our small self, the body-mind, is always filled with countless desires ... the desire to be somewhere else, be getting somewhere, achieving some prize, some distant goal. Our body-mind is always judging this or that as somehow inadequate to what the body-mind wants, its likes and dislikes, needs, regrets and dreams.
Thus, when there is sat an instant of Zazen as wholeness in just sitting, the only place to be and act to do in that instant in all of reality that is required to fulfill life as life ... the Buddha and all the Ancestors just sitting in that instant of sitting, no other thing to attain or which ever can be attained ... no other place to go or in need of going ... all holes filled, whether full or empty or in between ... all lack and excess resolved in that one sitting, with not one thing to add or take away ... judgments dropped away, "likes and dislikes" put aside ... nothing missing from Zazen (even when we might feel that "something is missing", for one can be fully content with the feeling of lack!) ... the sitting of Zazen and all life experienced as complete and whole as just the sitting of Zazen ... the entire universe manifesting itself on the Zafu at that moment ...
... in other words, when the "little self" is thereby put out of a job by the experience of "just sitting" as whole and complete with nothing more to be desired or needed ... then the hard borders between the "little self" and the "not the self" (which is usually being judged and "bumped into" and divided into pieces) thus naturally soften, fully fade away ... only the wholeness of the dance remaining ...
... then "Zazen is in itself body-mind dropped off".
Human beings simply do not know how to engage an action pierced as naturally complete just by the engaging of the action itself, how to live life that is whole just by the act of living life.
This is not sitting 'on one's complacent rump like a bump on a log', but is instead whole ... vibrant ... alive ... fulfilled sitting.
Then, rising up from the Zafu to our day to day lives ... we realize that there is no place to go, even as we have so many places to go ... no holes in need of filling, even as we grab a shovel and get to work to filling holes ... nothing to fix in life, even as we try to fix what can be fixed ... no life or death or disease to cure, even as we take our medicine or head to the gym, all on the road to our own funeral ... aversions and attractions dropped away, even as we lightly hold onto those aversions and attractions necessary to ordinary human life ... nothing to attain, even as we follow the Precepts to keep a healthy and balanced life, manifesting the Teachings in each moment and choice ... fully knowing that each step of life's path is a total arriving, sacred in itself, even as we seek to choose the path to a balanced and loving life (and to avoid the paths which lead off the cliff!)
It is then seen as --all-- the wholeness of the dance.
Something like that. It's not rocket science. Please sit and live in such way.
Gassho, Jundo
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