BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 15

[Jundo]

Case 14 never ends, yet now comes ...

CASE 15 - Kyozan Plants His Mattock (Axe) In The Ground

So many of the Koans sing of the relative and the absolute, separate things & people as the Dance of Emptiness.

Thus, the question "where did you come from?"

The response: "I came to up here from down over there" ... even as a sharp blade edge pierces "Just This".

A follow-up question: "How many were in the field down there with you?"

One being stands silently and tall (The Buddha said: I alone am the world honored one) ... then heads back down to work with the others in their labors.

So, which is it? Here, there, now or then, up or down? One or many? Or Thus which dances all of that?　　　

I say ... YES!

In the Preface to the Assembly ...

The silent utterance before a word is spoken speaks all the books in the library! The darkness where all separate forms vanish is also, at the flip of a switch, the light were the separate people and things suddenly appear! (A famous poem, "The Identity of Relative and Absolute" sings: "The dark makes all words one; the brightness distinguishes good and bad phrases") One monk bows, and the whole temple springs into activity! In deep wholeness and interbeing, when there is dancing in the courtyard, a head nods to the beat in the backyard (another famous Koan is "When Tom catches cold, Mary Sneezes" **).

**　And don't think that Mary sneezes simply because she caught Tom's germs and now has a cold of her own too. There is that, but It is much more intimate ... for Tom's cold is precisely Mary sneezing. The courtyard sweeps in the backyard, and a single monk is the whole Buddha temple.

Questions:

- Tell a real story from your life exemplifying how you came up from the field of some hard labors, and headed back down to "get 'er done" ... yet all is "Just This"?

- Can you express your understanding of how your own individual "bowing/dancing/catching cold" ... is precisely and intimately others & the whole world "springing into action/nodding/sneezing"?

Gassho, J

https://youtu.be/DfrnJy0cWM0

[Jundo]

Here is a mattock in the ground, by the way ...



It is a cutting and digging agricultural tool similar to an axe or pick. Some translations say that Kyozan planted a "Hoe", but the Chinese/Japanese is "鍬子 Kuwa", which may be something more like this ...

[Omoi Otoshi]

Empty-handed, I hold a hoe.
Walking on foot, I ride a buffalo.
Passing over a bridge, I see
The bridge flow, but not the water.
-Bodhisattva Shan-hui

To me, these are the words of someone enjoying the view from the mountain top while working the field at the same time, mindful of the source, the woes of the world not forgotten.

Tell a real story from your life exemplifying how you came up from the field of some hard labors, and headed back down to "get 'er done" ... yet all is "Just This"?

As some of you know, my first son was born with no pulse or breathing, blue and limp in the middle of the night, by emergency cesarean section. Through the fear and anxiety, there was the clear cry of the cuckoo that I hadn't heard for many years, melancholic, beautiful, comforting, calling me home. I had been sitting before, but not regularly. Now I sat daily and in the search for a teacher and sangha, I found Treeleaf. These past wonderful years, there has been a lot of focus on exploring the absolute in my practice. From the field, I have been climbing the mountain, in search for the sky. Then one day, the day my second son was born, I was thrown down the mountain, fearing that my wife and our unborn child was going to die. I found myself back in the field, sky all around me. There was work to be done, so many things and people to take care of, so pulling the hoe out of the ground without thinking, I set to it. I'm still doing hard work, sometimes empty handed, most times not. Sometimes with the help of the ox, most times walking alone. Occasionally glancing upwards, to see that the sky is still there.

Thank you for working the empty field with me,

Gassho,
Pontus

[Jundo]

Perhaps nothing more can be whispered of this Koan than that. Gassho to you are your family, J

[Mp]

Empty-handed, I hold a hoe.
Walking on foot, I ride a buffalo.
Passing over a bridge, I see
The bridge flow, but not the water.
-Bodhisattva Shan-hui

To me, these are the words of someone enjoying the view from the mountain top while working the field at the same time, mindful of the source, the woes of the world not forgotten.



As some of you know, my first son was born with no pulse or breathing, blue and limp in the middle of the night, by emergency cesarean section. Through the fear and anxiety, there was the clear cry of the cuckoo that I hadn't heard for many years, melancholic, beautiful, comforting, calling me home. I had been sitting before, but not regularly. Now I sat daily and in the search for a teacher and sangha, I found Treeleaf. These past wonderful years, there has been a lot of focus on exploring the absolute in my practice. From the field, I have been climbing the mountain, in search for the sky. Then one day, the day my second son was born, I was thrown down the mountain, fearing that my wife and our unborn child was going to die. I found myself back in the field, sky all around me. There was work to be done, so many things and people to take care of, so pulling the hoe out of the ground without thinking, I set to it. I'm still doing hard work, sometimes empty handed, most times not. Sometimes with the help of the ox, most times walking alone. Occasionally glancing upwards, to see that the sky is still there.

Thank you for working the empty field with me,

Gassho,
Pontus

This is wonderful Pontus, thank you for sharing. In a way I can relate, when my daughter was 3 months old she all of a sudden started suffering from Infantile Myoclonic Seizures ... I tell you, the most scariest experience in my life. Up and down the mountainless mountain I go, but one day when all has found its place, I sit with my daughter in the field, sky all around us, happy and healthy.

Gassho
Michael

[Myoku]

Thank you Jundo,
somehow I cannot do much with Jundo's questions, so forgive me when I just say how much I enjoyed this Koan. Not that I understood it when first reading, by far not. But the explanation of Gerry Shishin meant a lot to me. Wisdom and Compassion, stillness and action.
Gassho
Myoku

[galen]

Thank you, Jundo.

And a special thanks to you, Pontus.

I agree with Myoku, totally. This koan seemed to follow a pretty straight path, and pretty easy to understand for a change . Down and up, relative absolute, the dance of two worlds being one, when.... `realized and once embodied; and the ever so slow narrowing of the space between the two hall ways.... get off that damn Ox, for gods sake !!

[Shugen]

Questions:

- Tell a real story from your life exemplifying how you came up from the field of some hard labors, and headed back down to "get 'er done" ... yet all is "Just This"?

- Can you express your understanding of how your own individual "bowing/dancing/catching cold" ... is precisely and intimately others & the whole world "springing into action/nodding/sneezing"?

There are nights/days when it is "time to sit" - my wife doesn't say or do anything - but I know it's time to stay with her, talk or what ever it is that is going on at that moment. And, it's still sitting.

I'm "the boss" at work. But, without my employees, customers and so many others? If I frown instead of smile in the morning - what influence on those around me? If the first customer of the day is frowning instead of smiling, what influence on me?

Gassho




Shugen

[Kaishin]

- Tell a real story from your life exemplifying how you came up from the field of some hard labors, and headed back down to "get 'er done" ... yet all is "Just This"?

Well, I can't say I've ever dwelled in the clear path of the absolute for more than a fleeting moment. So I'm not sure I've ever had to "come back down the mountain." Most of the time I'm mired in the relative. Settling down to zazen is hard labor. Getting up from zazen is hard labor.

- Can you express your understanding of how your own individual "bowing/dancing/catching cold" ... is precisely and intimately others & the whole world "springing into action/nodding/sneezing"?

Reb Anderson once said that we are all 100% responsible for everything that happens in this world. The thought is a bit difficult to accept, but sometimes seeing the "butterfly effect" of even the most seemingly trivial events is revealing. As Saijun said recently, turning one jewel in the Net of Indra turns them all.

[Jundo]

Reb Anderson once said that we are all 100% responsible for everything that happens in this world. The thought is a bit difficult to accept, but sometimes seeing the "butterfly effect" of even the most seemingly trivial events is revealing. As Saijun said recently, turning one jewel in the Net of Indra turns them all.

Ah, the "butterfly effect" ... where a butterfly flapping it's wings in Australia might, under right conditions, start wind currents to trigger a hurricane days later in Florida.

But the "butterfly effect" we are discussing here is something much more intimate ... for imagine that all time and space, each atom and galaxy, is held as a single, flapping monarch butterfly that is everything, fluttering its wings amid empty space. Nothing else. Oh, sure, I may sometimes see myself here as a hair on the left wing, and you there as a bump on the back of the tail ... but left right back or front, just butterfly all around, butterfly through and through (who can even judge which is the left or right or up and down of a butterfly in space, cause that is just where one stands and how one looks at things. How can we even judge here or there as there is nothing but butterfly?). Same for near or far, this or that ... the butterfly is never ever anywhere else. Yes, it is all of us individually working to keep our butterfly afloat, from flapping wings and guiding tail to all of it. Yet, simultaneously, sometimes we can see ourselves as 100% butterfly in the most radical sense. When we truly see ourselves, you are just the butterfly and I am just the butterfly, and there is just butterfly looking at butterfly. For a moment, forget your little self ... do not think of yourself as just part of the wing or leg or tail ... and be the Whole Butterfly! Not simply parts of butterfly, but Buddha-Butterfly through and through ... "you" are butterfly as much as "butterfly" is butterfly (in such case, who can even say what is "big" or "small" or not vital to the whole?). What is not completely butterfly? There is nothing else but butterfly (what else can there be in this butterfly-only world?), and every inch of butterfly is butterfly. Before you were "born", there was butterfly ... after you "die" there will be butterfly flying on ... and since the butterfly is you, there is simply flying flying on.

So, what to do, Buddha-Butterfly?

Flutter flutter flutter. Flap flap flap.

Where is it flying to? To where a monarch butterfly flies on great migration.

Buddhism is really not so complicated as people sometimes make it.

[Kaishin]

Thank you, Jundo. That is a very clear and helpful metaphor. I shall henceforth remember this as "the butterfly sermon"

[Mp]

Ah, the "butterfly effect" ... where a butterfly flapping it's wings in Australia might, under right conditions, start wind currents to trigger a hurricane days later in Florida.

But the "butterfly effect" we are discussing here is something much more intimate ... for imagine that all time and space, each atom and galaxy, is just held as a single, flapping monarch butterfly that is everything, fluttering its wings amid empty space. Nothing else. Oh, sure, I may sometimes see myself here as a hair on the left wing, and you as a bump on the back of the tail ... but left right back or front, just butterfly all around, butterfly through and through (who can even judge which is the left or right or up and down of a butterfly in space, cause that is just where one stands and how one looks at things). Same for near or far, this or that ... the butterfly is never ever anywhere else. Yes, it is all of us individually working to keep our butterfly afloat, from flapping wings and guiding tail to all of it. Yet, simultaneously, sometimes we can see ourselves as 100% butterfly in the most radical sense. When we truly see ourselves, you are just the butterfly and I am just the butterfly, and there is just butterfly looking at butterfly. For a moment, forget your little self ... do not think of yourself as just part of the wing or behind ... and be the Whole Butterfly! Not simply parts of butterfly, but Buddha-Butterfly through and through ... "you" are butterfly as much as "butterfly" is butterfly (in such case, who can even say what is "big" or "small" or not vital to the whole?). What is not completely butterfly? There is nothing else but butterfly (what else can there be in this butterfly-only world?), and every inch of butterfly is butterfly. Before you were "born", there was butterfly ... after you "die" there will be butterfly flying on ... and since the butterfly is you, there is simply flying flying on.

So, what to do, Buddha-Butterfly?

Flutter flutter flutter. Flap flap flap.

Where is it flying to? To where a monarch butterflies flies on great migration.

Buddhism is really not so complicated as people sometimes make it.

Ahhh, this is wonderful Jundo, thank you for this clear explanation.

Gassho
Michael

[Heisoku]

There are nights/days when it is "time to sit" - my wife doesn't say or do anything - but I know it's time to stay with her, talk or what ever it is that is going on at that moment. And, it's still sitting.

I understand and have done this too Shugen. Sometimes the moment of sitting is sorting a problem for someone or just saying you'll do the shopping now. A moment to take away a moment of someone else's anxiety or stress.

Can you express your understanding of how your own individual "bowing/dancing/catching cold" ... is precisely and intimately others & the whole world "springing into action/nodding/sneezing"?

When my bowing/dancing/catching cold is only my bowing/dancing/catching cold, then there is no other and the whole world 'springing into action'. I don't like those moments - they are usually some stress or delusion I've got into. If I sit then they pass... In the positive when there is wholly, whole, wholeness then there is only action and and my day is one part of the whole day world. It's easy to see this in a school where there is nothing but action until 3.05pm!

[Shohei]

Gassho

Shohei

[Jiken]

Thanks Jundo

Gassho,

Daido