BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 15

[Kyonin]

Back in 1985 a huge earthquake devastated Mexico City. I was 14 by then and living about 1.5 hour from ground zero. About 6000 lives were lost. You could imagine how bad the situation was.

So I was a teenager in high school when the quake happened. We were evacuated but a lot of people weren't that lucky. When I got home I learned that some friends and cousins were dead. It was all like a terrible terrible dream.

The government was trying to do everything it could to help, but how can a city can ever be prepared for this kind of situation?

That night my dad, who was unemployed by then, grabbed some of the family's last money and went to the supermarket to buy tons of bread, ham and mayonnaise. He got home saying that survivors would be hungry by then. He organized the family and we were all making sandwiches. We filled a couple of big boxes and went to ground zero to give them away.

When we got there, we opened up the van and started giving food away. People accepted it with tears in their eyes. While we were at it my dad was crying.

We finished and went back to our town. Got to the supermarket again, bought stuff again and went back home to keep on making sandwiches.

At home all the neighbors were waiting for my dad to organize them all... And this is how my house became a meal factory for a couple of weeks.

I had gotten back from the field and went back to keep on working. For 2 weeks we never even thought about us. It was all being one with our suffering countrymen and women.

Wow... memories. This koan is very special.

Gassho,

Kyonin

[Omoi Otoshi]

Thanks for sharing Kyonin,

Gassho,
/Pontus

[RichardH]

- 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"?

.. first job, this was in rural Ontario. We were quite transient always moving but lived for two years in farm country. I was 9 or 10 and there was word that a local farmer was hiring potato pickers. I was underage but it was all done in cash and an extra body was welcome. It was piece work and didn't pay more than $20 a day, but for me it wasn't the money.. it was a chance to just do something. There was a huge field that covered the side of a hill. Along the top of the hill was a windbreak of old trees. The job was to move on our knees along the rows that had been turned by a plow, pull up the potatoes,and collect them in a basket which is dragged along. There were flatbeds place at intervals to receive the full baskets and hand out an empty one. It could take a whole afternoon to complete one row. That was it. Bright summer light, cicadas buzzing along the windbreak, moving cloud shadows, picking potatoes. The days were long but timeless. Solitary. Just picking potatoes.

Gassho, kojip

[galen]

Thank you, Jundo, for the butterfly effect!

[Jundo]

The butterfly is just another finger pointing at the moon ... or butterfly in the moonlight.

Gassho, J

[galen]

The butterfly is just another finger pointing at the moon ... or butterfly in the moonlight.

Gassho, J

Thank you. Put that in lay terms .

[Jundo]

Thank you. Put that in lay terms .

The moon is a classic symbol of Reality/Enlightenment, and descriptions such as poetic images are said just to be fingers pointing to "it". These are just little mental models and poetic images to help get across the Teachings ... images of Reality, not Reality itself (although Dogen often professed that well turned words are thoroughly Reality itself). We are talking about some other more classic images on another thread ...

almost every Zen Master of old, from Bodhidharma to Huineng to Dogen to Honzhi to Hakuin to everyone in between spoke of "True Self/small self, True Face, Dharmakhaya, Relative/Absolute, Mu, Emptiness, Shobogenzo, Big 'B' Buddha, Mirror Mind, Capital "M" Mind etc. etc." ... although each as "fingers pointing to the moon" (the "moon", by the way, yet another metaphorical finger pointing at the moon of Enlightenment"). This has to be unpierced, realized (made real in living) through sitting and all Practice.

However, though "fingers pointing at the moon", that does not take away the central point of their teachings of Zen Practice was not ... to a man ... anything but the need to realize (grock and bring to life) and and break free of the self/other, the Relative/Absolute. ... Even Dogen was about that through his jazzed up, vibrant vision of how the relative and absolute interpenetrate and totally exert as each other.

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?10182-The-fire

[galen]

The moon is a classic symbol of Reality/Enlightenment, and descriptions such as poetic images are said just to be fingers pointing to "it". These are just little mental models and poetic images to help get across the Teachings ... images of Reality, not Reality itself (although Dogen often professed that well turned words are thoroughly Reality itself). We are talking about some other more classic images on another thread ...


http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showt...10182-The-fire

Wow, you are fast, Dude! Thanks, I will visit the link. Very well done, that helps. I had read of this before and got most of the intent, but sometimes it takes a while for `this to sink in, not that it has as of yet .

[galen]

It seems the point>>>>> of one pointedness being... there is no Mt top, there is no Valley, not two... that is the Way.

[Omoi Otoshi]

That's only half true! From one you can proceed to two!

0 (emptiness) = 1 (whole) = 2 (relative) = 10000 (myriad things)

All is empty, all is whole, all is relative, all is a myriad things, all is just what it is, suchness.

Gassho,
Pontus

[Jundo]

That's only half true! From one you can proceed to two!

0 (emptiness) = 1 (whole) = 2 (relative) = 10000 (myriad things)

All is empty, all is whole, all is relative, all is a myriad things, all is just what it is, suchness.

Gassho,
Pontus

Pontus, the above is just another model, another "help us understand" finger ... but exactly right. Thus Masters talk of the "10,000 things" as there way of saying "all the individual things of the universe". Thank you.

I would not, however, say that "emptiness = 0". Rather, "emptiness" is 1, 2, 10,000, 0, and everything before, after and in between, all dancing as one dance.

Gassho, J

[AlanLa]

My story of hard labors is that I am alive at all. That story is posted in my history on here and I don't feel compelled to repeat it. The going back into the fields is the passionate performance of my job (life calling) educating others about disability.

I am a bit stumped on the second question, specifically the "precisely and intimately" part. I feel I understand interconnectedness, but rarely if ever does it feel precise or intimate. Too much ego in the way, I suppose.

[galen]

That's only half true! From one you can proceed to two!

0 (emptiness) = 1 (whole) = 2 (relative) = 10000 (myriad things)

All is empty, all is whole, all is relative, all is a myriad things, all is just what it is, suchness.

Gassho,
Pontus

So by Jundos perception of what Is here, there and everywhere, you were only half right and left, but keep pointing and dancing in the light of the moon. .

Pontus, had to attempt to one up ya, with two, not one, a twist of the mouth.

[Omoi Otoshi]

Dancing in the moonlight!
I like that!

/Pontus

[galen]

Dancing in the moonlight!
I like that!

/Pontus

Your dance seems quite fine, as in darkness you see the light>>>> of only the perception of those two being one.