The Zen Master's Dance - 5 - Fukan Zazengi (Top of p. 23 to Middle of p. 29)

[Jundo]

There is no other place to be, nothing more to do ... and I am so glad that you are here, doing this reading!

This time, we will read from page 23 "The Basics and the Missing Ingredient," stopping before page 29 "And So, 'The Way of Zazen Recommended for Everyone.'"

Today's reading contains this description of the "missing ingredient" of many Zazen instructions:

[W]e must sit shikantaza with the profound trusting that sitting itself is a complete and sacred act, the one and only action that need be done in that moment of sitting. As we shall see in the “Fukan Zazengi” and in Dōgen’s other writings on zazen, this was Dōgen’s unique point, and he emphasized it time and time again in his teachings. Zazen is all the Buddhas and Ancestors sitting in our own moment of sitting, as if our sitting turns us into those Buddhas and Ancestors on the spot. We must have faith in that fact. We must taste vibrantly that the mere act of sitting zazen is whole and complete, the total fruition of life’s goals, with nothing lacking and nothing added to the bare fact of sitting here and now. No matter how busy our lives or how strongly we may feel tempted to be elsewhere, for the time of sitting we put aside all other concerns. To do this, we must have a sense that the single act of crossing the legs as Dōgen instructed (or sitting in some other balanced posture, as many modern students do) is the realization of all we’ve ever sought. That is why there is simply no other place to go in the world, nothing else to do besides sit in this posture.

Even if we do not yet fully believe in the completeness of zazen, we can nonetheless have trust and faith in it, and that trust and faith will
soon turn into an actual experience. ...

... When we truly taste to the marrow the real meaning of “nothing to achieve,” we finally reach a great spiritual achievement. As counterintuitive as it sounds, resting in stillness without needing to run is, in fact, truly getting somewhere.

Let's take this attitude of Zazen off the cushion, into daily life:

Imagine and describe some scene in your life that is tedious, annoying, difficult, frustrating, painful, sad or the like. Describe how you feel.

Now, also describe how it feel when, even as a matter of faith and conviction, one brings a "nothing more to do, no other place to be" feeling to the situation, like the language of this section.

Once again, how is it to experience the event both ways at once, as one?

Gassho, Jundo

[Houzan]

We just bought a new house. Major renovation project. As we can’t afford to have professionals do the whole project, I have taken it upon myself to strip out everything from the inside, tear up floors, and tear down ceiling, walls, bathrooms, etc. There are loads and loads of lumber, stones, tiles, etc. I need to carry down, load the trailer, and drive to a waste disposal site. There are hours and hours of work as you can imagine, and this is next to a toddler and a 6-year old, and then there is my full time work. I feel I can quickly become despaired. I can have two mindsets: 1) I am at A and have to get to B, or 2) just doing. My sitting makes this whole project into a much more enjoyable exercise. Every activity is already at B (not all the time of course, but surprisingly a lot!).

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[Jundo]

"Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder. Painful is birth again & again. House-builder, you're seen! You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole destroyed, gone to the Unformed, the mind has come to the end of craving." — Dhp 153-4

[Bob-Midwest]

Often times I feel obligated to take my two dogs for a walk when they are just bubbling over with excitement. It’s easy for me to fall into a mindset of the walk being a chore.
This changes when I take a breath and just walk, being aware of the seeming surroundings and seeming me.
This simple “flip of the switch” does not change a thing with my busy schedule, but it does change my perception of it all and the walk often becomes not just the best thing to be doing, but the only thing.

bob
sat/lah zz0.tgnioeua3hzz

[Jundo]

Bark! image.png

Gassho, J
stlah

[Hokuu]

At the darkest times, I feel how overwhelmingly empty everything is—every thing, every living being, each interaction, all words, acts, thoughts, emotions, feelings. How annoyingly tedious, and frustratingly boring and dull and sad it is.
At times, though, I manage to stop, and suddenly I see... no, I don't do it—it just comes to me: how breathtakingly beautiful and uniquely, tenderly pretty it all is—a kaleidoscope of simplicity and elegance in every person, every word, every leaf, every drop of a rain.

Gassho
Hokuu
satlah

[Jundo]

The latter is an illumination of Buddhist Empty, Hok. The first part is too, but harder to see.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Hosui]

On Wednesday I taught philosophy to a class of 30 academics, researchers and scientists at my university workplace - part of their professional development as educators. As salaried thinkers they were remarkably reticent to break into an intellectual sweat with my philosophy exercises, leaving me annoyed at their seeming inability for abstract thought: I doubted my own ability to teach, and feared failing in the whole philosophic endeavour. Luckily, also this week, I’ve been crafting a small stepped Sumeru plinth for my home box-altar, a plinth with three normal steps and three impossible overhanging steps, with a Manjushri statue atop. The first three steps represent straightforward, but deluded, faith in the utility of zazen. However, as someone prepared to do whatever it takes, I realise these beginning steps are still bound by the notion of ‘progress’ in practice. My looking out onto a sea of mute academic faces in that class, and the brief flash of frustration and doubt that arose as a result, reminded me of this same unhelpful notion of progress. Sure, my colleagues can do with progressing their fluency in philosophical discourse in order to teach, but I don’t need to progress towards anything. My faith is in the fact that I’m already in the realm of enlightenment, that even the frustration and doubt is enlightenment, and that I don’t need to look elsewhere for anything. Those faces are my teachers, and the reality of that class is what teaches me the precepts - after that there’s only the truth of endless training.

[Jundo]

The philosophy of non-progress-progress.

Gassho J
Stlah