BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 30

[Shugen]

(I think they know, but aren't telling)

Question 1.

God/Buddha/Three Pounds of Flax etc. it can't be answered, it's just lived. Sometimes I need the separation, sometimes I don't. These answers always sound so damn zenny! Nonsense, but not in a bad way.

Question 2.

Sometimes but most of the time not.

Gassho.


Shugen

[Rich]

God, buddha, mt sumeru, catholic, life, death, whatever- being attached to it becomes a problem.

Being slow on the. Uptake, getting the hang of it is a daily effort.

[Heisoku]

Q1- mu Q2 - MU Q3 - ?

[Kaishin]

Q1: In the beginning was the Word. Before the beginning, ...

Q2: I am now very aware of the duality the "I" creates. Not free from the suffering it causes. So it goes...
Gassho, Kaishin

[AlanLa]

Q-1: When I was a little kid in Sunday School they told me that God was everywhere. "Really?" I said amazed, and then I started naming all sorts of places: table, chair, light bulb, etc. "Yes" was the reply to each.

Q-2: Yes, I am hanging on by a thread. Among many things, my practice is grasping and then letting go of dualities. I get caught up a lot, and then I get free for a while. There's always something new to get caught in before realizing it's the same old process/outcome struggle. Rinse, repeat, sit.

Just an observation, we have been at this book for a year and are not quite a third of the way through it. At this rate, it will be a kalpa before we finish, at which point we all may be destroyed in the kalpa fire,,, or not

[Jundo]

Do you think a book like this has a beginning, and end? Where is the fire that you are in a rush to get to with sirens blasting?

[MyoHo]

What??? There is no cool ending to this book?

No thrilling gunfight at the end? Maybe it should be more like a Dan Brown novel?
Wait, hold on, let's check.
Stich by stich by stich.......
Nope, nothing! Then what’s the point?

Just messing around a bit.
Sorry

Gassho

Enkyo

[AlanLa]

Do you think a book like this has a beginning, and end? Where is the fire that your are in a rush to get to with sirens blasting?

I am in it.
I call it life.
The koan asks if I will be destroyed in it.
Yet again, yes.
And no.
Eh, whatever.

[AlanLa]

PS: I am not being flippant or (poorly) poetically zennie here. I feel this life of so many blinks rapidly dwindling to only a few, or maybe there are kalpas left - it all depends on how you count. Anyway, I feel my task in these last few life-blinks is to burn myself out in that fire. My life got both blessed and cursed early, so now my practice is to try and make the most of that tangled mess, and I am finding that it will take all this fading life to bring it all together into something meaningful that lives on. I'd love to end here with some flowery analogy, but it just doesn't fit: I am most certainly not a flower. The image that keeps coming to mind is how a cow eats his eats his grass and grain and then shits in the field. Back in the old days, for those that truly needed it, that shit could be gathered and dried and then burned to make a fire to keep warm and to shed important light. That's how I want to live on, as a shit kalpa fire. Pardon my grandiosity.

As for the book comment that started this, it was just a silly observation. But since Jundo brought it up and made me think more about it ... good teacher that he is ... who among us will see the end of this book? Or do we see that end each and every chapter? Week? Day? Post? Reading? Blink...?

[Risho]

I'm on a roadtrip with limited access to internet and typing on my ipod so I can't fully answer this yet; I should be back in a couple weeks but I was reading Ryokan the other day and found this poem that just seemed to beautifully express question 2's point:

Although from the beginning
I knew
the world is impermanent,
not a moment passes
when my sleeves are dry.
-Ryokan

I really love this and thought how pertinent this is to our koan.

Gassho

Risho

Ps missing my keyboard lol

[Matt]

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax?...
I don't know.

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... are you getting the hang of that?
With practice, yes, some.

Gassho,
Matt J

[Shujin]

Q1 - If we could find a place before thought, I would say yes. Until then...

Q2 - I feel as though one of the hindrances to growing up in a relatively privileged family/country is that one feels one is solely responsible for his own destiny. Conversely, negative things that happen in life are attributed to a certain lack of talent or work ethic. Sitting has opened the idea that some things in my life are beyond understanding, and probably beyond logic. They become an endless mental exercise that leaves me exhausted and unhappy. So, although I don't get it, I'm starting to leave it alone.


Gassho,
Shujin

[Nikola Mironija]

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

I don't really know that right now, but I do know sometimes.

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... are you getting the hang of that?

I don't get it. Not now. But I do get it when no one is looking.

Do you think a book like this has a beginning, and end?

Yes.



Where is the fire that you are in a rush to get to with sirens blasting?


At the end of the book.

[Myosha]

Question 1

It is it.

Question 2

Thank 'it' (!) definitely yes/no.

Gassho,
Edward

[Risho]

Case 29 never ends, yet now comes ...

QUESTION 1:

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

I've been thinking about this one a lot, and if I don't write something now, before I do zazen it's going to consume me during zazen. lol

I don't find any conflict with my belief in God, my Christianity, and my Zen practice. I'm not a fundamental Christian, obviously. I believe in science; I don't have any qualms about it. I believe that God gave us minds to use them. I don't think anyone is excluded from God's Love. I don't think it is my place to judge others' lifestyles. I think those judgements are all on humanity.. trying to impose their idea of God onto others and then claiming that its God.

I don't claim to ever know God's will, but it doesn't stop me from always trying to find out and follow it. I think that is directly in line with Practice. Yes, I think Practice is important and sacred to be called out with an uppercase 'P' . But I don't think my Practice and belief are sacred in terms of them being mine; that's separation and vanity, not sacredness. They are sacred because they are everyone's. I sit for everyone, not to separate myself from everyone. I sit to be more compassionate with others, to understand what real love is for my fellow man... to see the 3 poisons that separate me from my fellow man (and woman of course... damned patriarchal language. lol).

I sometimes pray 'Our Lord's Prayer' after I chant the vow of atonement and the four bodhisattva vows. They are not different. The prayer is about being open and not resisting. Surrendering to Life... but a surrender that is not giving up but a means to real action... similar to Shikantaza. It sounds similar to what Dogen states in Genjokoan, and I'm paraphrasing because I'm too lazy to get it right now

To push ourselves onto things that we perceive out there. That is delusion. "You're gay, you can't get married. You aren't white, use a different bathroom. You are a savage culture, your land is mine." That's the religion of delusion.
To let things permeate our beings... to not resist, to let them come and go without grasping, that is Enlightenment. To allow us to be lived by life. To allow us to be sat by zazen. To let go of our false idol, our imaginary self independent from other things and allow our real self just be and live and enjoy life. That is the religion of God.

That statement that Dogen posits sounds very similar to "thy will be done" in "the Lord's prayer". How many times do I see "people", and myself included claim their stake of some belief they think is true and then use that to harm other people? That's my ego again. That's not God. No. God is 'thy will be done'. God is letting in the universe. God is acceptance. God is the judge, not me. God will worry about Heaven and Hell. I'm here to live right now as the best human I can be. Not best by titles, skills, money. Best by not harming ,by not doing evil, doing good and good for others. Truly finding out what it means to be human.. which includes all the shitty and boring days and not resisting and being there for others because I've allowed myself to truly experience the shit, I know how to empathize with others. That's real kinship. We are only here once, now (at least that's what I think); it's a precious gift not to be wasted. That's my God...well our God. All the same God even if we have different names, to paraphrase Macklemore.

Now going back to letting the universe in. I don't mean that I have to really let anything in... it's here all along, but psychologically I have to drop the imaginary barrier I've erected because I've been building it all my life, habit by habit. To me that's what my path is. That is what Shikantaza does... little by little I see myself, see all those thoughts swirling around and like Jundo says, just let them float on by like clouds in the sky.. not rejecting them, but just dropping them. Not forcing them away because those clouds are just as much me as sky, but not only holding onto the clouds so that I'm constantly living in a struggle of greed, anger and ignorance.

To me that is God. This life is a gift. This practice and this Sangha is a gift. It just take time to stop grasping and pushing to see the beauty that has been there all along.

Gassho,

Risho