BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 24

[Heisoku]

Have you ever tasted something of Dogen's existential way of living and dying: when life comes live, when death comes die, do not cling to one or push away the other?

I guess we all have had to face life changing moments in one way or another. For me it was to finally accept that the course I was trying to maintain in my life was not going to work for me. Walking away from cherished dreams and people was my biggest heart wrench... but in doing so it was in this letting go that a new way appeared, which did not depend on control or 'force'. No clinging or pushing but only opening and unfolding. My life changed as each day unfolds and the rhythm of the day became the rhythm of my heart and slowly the pain and damage dissolves and dissolved...until a new life way began to unfold into a family and career that was just me being me....Isn't this called growing up?

[jeff_u]

About a decade ago I was on a flight from Tokyo to Honolulu when we hit some pretty bad, very unexpected turbulence. Without warning the plane must have dropped several hundred feet. At that moment the flight attendant was serving drinks and a little girl (maybe five or six) was in the aisle. Both flew to the ceiling and back, and up, and back. Amazingly the attendant had a keen presence of mind and grabbed the girl mid-air and was able to get into a ball and hold steady on the ground. That simple act still serves to remind me of how to be a hero. The turbulence lasted what felt like hours--it was probably less but time was still. During that time the plane was silent. Hands tightly gripped arm rests. Eyes were but gazes upon the mountain. However, I happened to have a Rubik's cube in my hand (I know... the eighties called, I didn't give it back). My friend and travel companion also happened to have one is his hand. We had been racing each other to see who could solve it faster. Over and over we just kept solving and restarting to pass the time. When the craziness hit we barely flinched. Focused, we kept spinning the sides of the cubes. For over an hour that's all we did. Later, when the bumps smoothed and the sun welcomed us to a beautiful Hawaii morning we began talking to the passengers around us. All of them mentioned that we projected a very calming equanimity. Our calmness pervaded those around us. The guy sitting next to me claimed we saved him from having a heart attack. Our calmness was his calmness. Of course, the irony is that in our minds we were afraid. Very afraid. I could feel the hormones going crazy--you know that drip, drip feeling you get down your neck when adrenaline is rushing? But, somehow having something to focus on allowed me to distance myself from the fear. It was there. It was strong. But I didn't identify with it; it was simply hormones and I had more pressing things to attend to.

I'm not sure if what I felt during that experience was "losing my life" or finding refuge in North Mountain, or maybe Ummon's expression, but it was a taste of something.

[galen]

Jundo... just re-read our exchanges for the first time and will again, thanks for your patience.


Gassho

[Jundo]

Jundo... just re-read our exchanges for the first time and will again, thanks for your patience.


Gassho

Thank you for your patience, and may all this Sangha and all the world always be patient.

Gassho, Jundo

[galen]

Thank you for your patience, and may all this Sangha and all the world always be patient.

Gassho, Jundo

We can hope can't we... but. It seems to be another mix of what is relative, relatively speaking. One mans patience is another's impatience, time has a way of throwing things out of context, out of order, sometimes, as in 'timing is everything'.

You do not, of course, have to reply to this Jundo, but today is the first time I have read Wick's view on this koan and your opening, and none of what I say even seems close (no shit popeye!?) but a lot of what I said does make sense at least to me (another big surprise) and even my take on koan opening cases. I must not have a clue about all this, obviously (everyone in this thread is laughing at that one), but it seems sometimes where we are coming from to make a point can have a certain amount of relevance also (doing my best to rationalize my case).

I just had a posting in my mail box that Jenell posted, but do not see it out here.



Gassho

[Jundo]

Consider, Galen, that like a song or poem ... there might not be one way to perceive such, not one right answer nor wrong answer ... and the "right way" may not even be a matter really of "right vs. wrong". It may depend on the light, the humidity, the angle of view ... like Tsukuba mountain out my window appears different every day depending on the season, weather and time of day.

And like Tsukuba mountain, there is more than one path to climb it ... many good paths ... though many ways to which lead in circles, into poison ivy or off a cliff. Nonetheless, every step is all the mountain, and no place to trip and fall ... even when tripping and falling.

Anyway, WHAT MOUNTAIN?

Gassho, J

[AlanLa]

Backtracking the mountain path away from the cliffs and such is also Zen.
Pausing at the forking path to consider the questions is also Zen.
Once we start up this mountain there is no turning back.
It's all the Path.
What path?

[Jinyo]

Can't pretend I would have made much sense of this Koan on my own - too many obscure references.
There are a lot of binary opposites - the poisenous snake is not to be feared, the donkey's bray doesn't herald stupidity, to lose one's life is positive.

I was reading Shoji last night (On Life and Death) - seeking comfort really. Contemplating my own death is not the same as contemplating the death of a loved one. Or perhaps in Zen it is?

Holding on to a Dogenesque view of life and death is very hard when our thinking minds are constantly drawn to the relative. The mind simply kicks against the dissolution of categories like life and death. In the relative world we feel loss - when we feel loss a distinction arises.

I've also been reading Thich Nhat Hanh's 'no death, no fear'. I can feel my mind working against what he writes - I want to believe that the flow of living and dying is a truth beyond the static categorising of life and death. Dogen writes that if we cling to life and hate death then we can not enter the heart of buddha because 'living and dying is what Nivarna is'.

I've come close to actual death on several occasions, but these 'dramatic' situations are not what really touch me. Its the many smaller, more subtle deaths and births in a life's journey that seem to affect me. This in itself feels like a natural flow - closer to what Dogen means - what Hhan brings to life with his simple vignettes of clouds becoming rain and trees paper.

Apologies if this is a long ramble away from the koan - but I think I've been up and down South Mountain several times over these past few weeks.


Gassho


Willow

[Ed]

Yes my daughter, and now her son are the center of my universe. The Buddhist concept of Emptiness always hits a large obstacle when I think of losing my daughter. I can just about apply it to anything or anyone else, but with her it just stops cold and my daddy instincts kick in. That is why I have made it part of my practice to see 'who' is hanging on to 'whom.' Not an easy thing to do.
Me and her, all of us, are really not essentially there, not the way we think, just that we come with huge karma, a tremendous sense of self-existence. I think. So the sense of reality is that big. That is a good, nescessary thing so we can get up in the morning and function, or not.
The expression "interdependent co-arising" speaks of the ground from which we all spring and into which we all perish. Practice gives us the mind to develop faith in the interdependence of life and our place in it. It just takes wisdom/compassion to drop the relative view and rest in the absolute: I suspect that would be the "no coming no going" the deathless death Jundo mentions. We arise complete and perish the same, every instant. That is anoter difficult concept for me. I
t works with zazen, a lot of zazen. That, for me, is the gate, the snake.
The fear is with my attchment to daughter. That is where the proverbial rubber meets the road.
In gassho, Ed B

[Rich]

It is what it is but pay attention, you wouldn't. Want to step on that poisonous snake.

[Shogen]

Awhile back, Taigu commented this on the poem (when my daughter was very sick in the hospital and we were worried) ... Jundo


In this situation, no need to dress it up and make it cheerful. No need to flee and avoid the problem. We are all invited to participate with joy to this, because it is the very nature of life, fleeting, changing, fragile, the very nature of what is given to us, sooner or later taken back. In front of this, we invite the unknown, throwing body and mind into it, trusting a process beyond thoughts, feelings and fears. As Dogen says in what he left us as a death poem:

...

What a remarkable way to live! Leaping into the unknown, life and death merged and both totally transcended. Every single moment is an opportunity for all of us to exactly do that, that this body of thirty, fourty, fifty years and a few days and throw it into the amazing unknown reality.

...

Nothing left, no traces, no shadow. Just the taste of what is as it is. That's our way to live, far from the hopes and consolations found in so many religions and belief systems.

This is beautiful. Gassho, Shogen

[Jinyo]

Yes my daughter, and now her son are the center of my universe. The Buddhist concept of Emptiness always hits a large obstacle when I think of losing my daughter. I can just about apply it to anything or anyone else, but with her it just stops cold and my daddy instincts kick in. That is why I have made it part of my practice to see 'who' is hanging on to 'whom.' Not an easy thing to do.
Me and her, all of us, are really not essentially there, not the way we think, just that we come with huge karma, a tremendous sense of self-existence. I think. So the sense of reality is that big. That is a good, nescessary thing so we can get up in the morning and function, or not.
The expression "interdependent co-arising" speaks of the ground from which we all spring and into which we all perish. Practice gives us the mind to develop faith in the interdependence of life and our place in it. It just takes wisdom/compassion to drop the relative view and rest in the absolute: I suspect that would be the "no coming no going" the deathless death Jundo mentions. We arise complete and perish the same, every instant. That is anoter difficult concept for me. I
t works with zazen, a lot of zazen. That, for me, is the gate, the snake.
The fear is with my attchment to daughter. That is where the proverbial rubber meets the road.
In gassho, Ed B

Ed thank you - tonight - as every night since my daughter got sick - my mind spirals off into a dark space. Your words have helped me.

Gassho

Willow

[BrianW]

Read the chapter, read the thread...did a bit of zazen and looked out my back door

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[AlanLa]

Best response for me yet. Yeah, got lost here. If only I'd looked there.
Thnx

[Risho]

Sometimes I experience this moment of just letting it go during Shikantaza or when I'm just absorbed in what I'm doing without thoughts of how I wish things were different or by just letting the thoughts of how I want things to be just be and not add any more drama to them. My family and I were able to be bedside while my mother in law passed. It was a very sad but also one of the best experiences of my life. I don't know how to explain it, but there we were all full of love and silence "with her" in her last moments. It's really nice to be "with" others not just there as a zombie but truly with people, with ourselves, here now, allowing ourselves to just be.

Gassho,

Risho