Grass Hut - 26 - "Living Here"

[Jundo]

Hi All,

We move to the first portion of Chapter 21, entitled "Home is Where You Are / Living Here".

Some possible themes ...

Do you always feel at home in life? If not, why not?

Do you feel it is possible to always feel at home with all aspects of life (here's a hint: yes! )

Do you feel that Zazen is a Practice for coming home and being at home with all of life?

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Myosha]

Hi All,

Do you always feel at home in life?

Do you feel that Zazen is a Practice for coming home and being at home with all of life?

Hello,

Thanks to moving six times during the first sixteen years, impermanence is necessarily imprinted into life.

Adaptation/change creates environments of possibilities. All that thrive have home anywhere, here and nowhere . . . .

Zazen is home.


Gassho
Myosha sat today

[Getchi]

In lieu of something longer, "I" exist; that teaching is home to me. It is open enough to include change and nature, and warm enough to seat my ego.Gassho,Ge off.SatToday and realized I am always "home".

[Christopher]

Do you always feel at home in life? If not, why not?

The doctor and writer Oliver Sacks died this week. He was a noted loner and attributed it to his displacement as a youngster at the start of WW II to a place where he was bullied. He described it as causing 'trouble with the 3 B's ; Bonding, Belonging, Believing', throughout his life.

I was too young to be sent away at the start of the war, but the trouble still reached me. Someone recently mentioned feeling at home in the room his father studied in...I might also have the experience if my father had not died on the Thailand/Burma Railroad in 1943. The 3 B's still are a problem for me.

I am trying to make up my mind to take Jukai this year. Perhaps I will win over the 3 B's for once.

Gassho
Christopher
sat to day (and most days),

[Jeremy]

"Here, now" is what there is. If you want to call that 'home', then fine.
I like the way Ben is open about the fact that he's playing with words (-:

step lightly... stay free...
Jeremy
sT

[Byrne]

I grew up in a town that my whole family couldn't wait to leave. All seven of us did one at a time and are now scattered throughout the world.

I lived in New York City for eight years and grew to feel completely alienated by the demands of that place. I joined a punk band early on and got to tour Asia, Europe, Australia, and the U.S. With them DIY and really loved seeing what the rest of the world was like. Japan was a real eye opener for me because it was so different from what I was used to and highlighted cultural trends I had never noticed before.

When I met the woman who was to become my wife we hatched an escape plan to get out of NY, sold all our stuff, hoped in a van and started touring the southeastern U.S. We landed in Charleston SC for several years. Charleston felt more like a home to me than NYC ever did. I was much more involved with our local community and I grew to really love that place. People who actually grew up in Charleston tend to be really attached to that town. So much so that it almost becomes an extension of their sense of self. (Charlestonians do not like hearing anything, and I mean anything, negative about their beloved city.)

But opportunity came a knock' and my wife and I got rid of what little we had holding us down (we've both always loved pretty minimally) and spent the last four years completely transient, playing shows up and down the east coast.

Now my father in law has found himself I a bit of a pickle and needs help so we've established residency with him in Northeastern Pennsylvania on my wife's family's old dairy farm. I love my in laws, but the gravity of the situation there is one that offers no promise of a happy outcome. Things aren't hopeless yet and we are giving it our all, but we are all not counting on things "being just fine" because they aren't. But for now, that's home. It might be for the rest of my life. But also it might not.

Home is where I am. I haven't ever seen it any other way. Sitting has provided me with a sense of stability that I really need as I get older. I can't expect much from the future. Not personally and not professionally. I've lived my adult life with my back to a cliff and I really wouldn't have done it any other way. But I do know that for a little bit each day I can be exactly what I am wherever I am in illuminating silence.

Gassho

Sat Today

[Jishin]

Hi,

Home is where I use the restroom and don't worry about touching anything contaminated. Can I do that in public all the time? Not a chance. But I do use public restrooms.

Gassho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Kaishin]

I grew up in a town that my whole family couldn't wait to leave. All seven of us did one at a time and are now scattered throughout the world.
...
Home is where I am. I haven't ever seen it any other way. Sitting has provided me with a sense of stability that I really need as I get older. I can't expect much from the future. Not personally and not professionally. I've lived my adult life with my back to a cliff and I really wouldn't have done it any other way. But I do know that for a little bit each day I can be exactly what I am wherever I am in illuminating silence.

Gassho

Sat Today

Just a note to say I really enjoy and appreciate your detailed posts. My life has always been very centered on sameness, repetition, and stability, and I find your very different approach fascinating. So thank you!

-satToday

[Joyo]

Home is where I am at, right here, on the cushion, or wherever I am. This helps me to not have as much of an attachment to my personal belongings, or my actual home (although I still do, to a point). From the time I was child, until I started practicing Zen, I had a very real fear of my house catching on fire. I was afraid of losing my home and the things I hold dear to me. I've found that fear is not as real as it used to be, it's still there, but it's dissolved a lot.

Oh most definitely Zazen is a practice of coming home, and being at home with all of life. I've had the opportunity to practice this just this past week.

Gassho,
Joyo
sat today

[ForestDweller]

I resonated with Jeremy’s “Here now is what there is,” and with Joyo and Bryne’s comments on “home is where I am.” These leave out the quaint, traditional ideas of home as a particular house or town, and isn’t it interesting that nobody yet has mentioned that a person/people is the answer to what is home? Yes, I think it is possible to feel at home with all life once we accept facts like impermanence and the Buddha’s teaching on origination. That’s the great thing about Buddhism: The teachings describe reality as it actually exists. We get to understand life on its authentic terms. All that said, there is something about living smack in the middle of a grand boreal forest that truly brings home where we concretely exist. We humans fancy up the world with all our buildings, roads, and other structures, but beneath it all nature – just as it is – hums along, changing in every instant. I just finished re-reading the Mahaparinibbana Sutta concerned with the Buddha’s Last Days. His final words were, “. . . all conditioned things are of a nature to decay – strive on untiringly.” Earlier, he told us that he taught nothing but suffering and its cessation. Bringing these two teachings together is a pretty good way to come home to the basics. ^^ForestSatToday^^ CatherineS

[Jika]

I like, how Shitou's line emphasizes how much work it is "to get free" of something we completely make up.

Question 1: No. Dukkha.
Question 2: Hope so. (Does not hoping for a cure, throwing oneself into a treatment, create more dukkha, at least at first?)
Question 3: Yes. Gratefully.

Gassho,
Danny
#sattoday

[Risho]

Do you always feel at home in life? If not, why not?

Do you feel it is possible to always feel at home with all aspects of life (here's a hint: yes! )

Do you feel that Zazen is a Practice for coming home and being at home with all of life?

Sorry -- a little late on this one:

1. No; mainly because of what I want in my mind doesn't always match my reality (hello Dukkha. lol)

2. Yes but with lots of practice. What I absolutely love about this practice is that it is meant for human beings. Ok, hello capt. obvious. lol What I mean is that I love how it sort of gives you permission to just stop and listen and not necessarily react in the ways you would normally, or maybe you do react in some negative, habitual way but it allows you to see that.

3. Yes, absolutely. It's amazing how you can really get to know what's going on in that crazy mind.

Gassho,

Risho
-sattoday

[Byokan]

Hi All,

In one way I do always feel at home, feeling a part of all of nature, feeling connected to all beings, feeling there is no where else to be in the moment, definitely. In another way I often feel like I got off at the wrong galactic bus stop, and am a stranger in a strange land. But the first feeling seems more authentic, the second more self-imposed and due to attachment or pushing away.

Zazen, yes of course, is coming home, and finding that we never left.

Allowing ourselves to settle and abide, realizing that here and now is the place and time we were so busily seeking, I think gives rise to a great freedom. Running here and there and grasping at things and resisting other things and trying to always get Over There where things are so much better, seems to really limit freedom and be constraining. Whereas being at home opens the doors of possibility and choice.

Gassho
Lisa
sat today

[Meishin]

The Dude abides.

Gassho
Meishin
sat today

[Byokan]

The Dude abides.

Gassho
Meishin
sat today