BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 51

[Toun]

I read it a few times and this is what "I think"' I'm getting, our maybe actually not getting…

A door is a door and a window is just window. We recognize things for what they are, no more and no less. Where is the boat? Well the boat is in the river. No need to become attached to the thought and meaning or get involved in deep philosophical issues which will further cloud the true nature of our mind.

I came by car which is in the garage but now I’m here. When I leave I will return to the car that’s in the garage and then when I get home, thats where I will be, but for now I am here.

I love it when Seung Sang the Korean Zen master pulled out an orange in front of Kalu Rinpoche and demanded to know “What is this?”. Kalu Rinponche answered “What’s the matter with this fellow? Don’t they have oranges in Korea?”

For a moment it sounded like a little Abbott and Costello routine going on there!



Gassho
Mike

Sat today

[Kokuu]

HOW DID YOU GET HERE? Carried on a thousand grass tips. That took the form of being pushed in a wheelchair. The grass tips took a bit of a beating.

WHERE DID YOU PARK YOUR CAR? Under a tree eighteen months ago. Someone will take it away soon. Another car will park under the same tree.

DOES THE ZENNY LOGIC OF WHAT I DESCRIBE SEEM CLEAR OR CONFUSING TO YOU? I understand it intellectually. Whether it fills my being and penetrates my marrow, I am less sure.

HOW MIGHT IT HELP US LIVE OUR LIVES FREE? I just read Natalie Goldberg's book 'The Great Failure'. She told how Katagiri Roshi would see a problem from angles that other people could not. When the mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers, there is only one possibility. Beyond that, the world opens up and becomes less certain. It is fine for mountains to be mountains and rivers to be rivers but we also need to know that rivers are what we put in the soil, into the air and the bones of our ancestors. It is also good to know that Kokuu is not just this skin bag but the mountains, rivers, car and tree as well.

I don't even know if my car is where I left it.

Gassho
Kokuu
#sattoday

[Doshin]

Hmmm, not sure I am on the right wave length but I got here from a journey that has taken billions of years. When I manifested as "Randy" 66 years ago my path was determined by those around me, the world around me, the encouragement of some, discouragement of others, my mistakes, I would fall down, then get up wiser, the joys I experienced, the sorrow I felt, the disappointments, the successes, those I love, those who loved me....they all brought me here. I wonder where I will be tomorrow.

Where did I park my car? I have almost always had a truck, and as the country song says "I love my truck" and its nearby.


Zen Logic?? Is that an oxymoron?

Gassho,
Doshin
sattoday

[Jika]

HOW MIGHT IT HELP US LIVE OUR LIVES FREE? I just read Natalie Goldberg's book 'The Great Failure'. She told how Katagiri Roshi would see a problem from angles that other people could not. When the mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers, there is only one possibility. Beyond that, the world opens up and becomes less certain. It is fine for mountains to be mountains and rivers to be rivers but we also need to know that rivers are what we put in the soil, into the air and the bones of our ancestors. It is also good to know that Kokuu is not just this skin bag but the mountains, rivers, car and tree as well.

I don't even know if my car is where I left it.

Thank you, Kokuu.

Zen Logic?? Is that an oxymoron?

Cool, Doshin - that's the explanation why it makes me feel a moron.

Gassho
Jika
#sattoday

[Toun]

Hmm...read it a few more times.

One phrase that caught my attention is found in the preface to the assembly when it states that;
"Worldly dharmas enlighten many people. Buddhadharma deludes many people."

What exactly is worldly dharma vs buddhadharma? What are the differences and how can they become one?

Gassho
Mike

Sat-Today

[Jishin]

Hmm...read it a few more times.

One phrase that caught my attention is found in the preface to the assembly when it states that;
"Worldly dharmas enlighten many people. Buddhadharma deludes many people."

What exactly is worldly dharma vs buddhadharma? What are the differences and how can they become one?

Gassho
Mike

Sat-Today

When you drop the question they are one. When you ask the question they are two.

My one cent.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Mp]

When you drop the question they are one. When you ask the question they are two.

My one cent.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

I once heard ...

"Without questions there is no understanding ... with understanding, there is no questions." *hehehe*

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

[Jishin]

I once heard ...

"Without questions there is no understanding ... with understanding, there is no questions." *hehehe*

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

Understanding or lack of understanding is neither good or bad. Thinking makes it so.

"...not knowing is most intimate..."

Gassho, Jishin, ST

[Eishuu]

This is where I am with this: I've been reflecting on the question 'how did you get here?'

The answer that keeps coming back to me is 'I am always here...but I forget' and 'where do I go when I forget?', 'there is no where else to go'.

Gassho
Lucy
Sat today

[Mp]

Understanding or lack of understanding is neither good or bad. Thinking makes it so.

"...not knowing is most intimate..."

Gassho, Jishin, ST

In a beginners mind there are many possibilities, in an experts mind there are few. =)

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

[Jundo]

I really urge folks to delve a bit deeper into this Koan.

There is a way to experience and know the world that is at the heart of this Zen path, whereby separate individuality drops away into something boundless, flowing, free. There is no you or me, windows or doors, boats or cars, rivers or shore. Quite literally there are no separately identifiable boats, no doors and windows. no you to ride the boat or walk through the door.

Actually, the words "experience" and "know" do not truly apply, because both imply that there is someone (an experiencer and knower) and something perceived (the experienced and known) which are separate. In fact, the wholeness is so intimate, transcending knower and object known, that Zen folks sometimes call this knowing as "not knowing". That "not knowing" is actually a very clear "knowing" which transcends subject and object. "Not knowing" in Zen thus has two important meanings, both far removed from the typical meaning of "being ignorant." First, there is our williingness to be so trusting of this boundless, free flowing that we let it carry us where it will in life. We don't need all the answers, we don't need to know what tomorrow holds in store, we don't need anything ... just content with here and this, because we realize that the boundless free flowing here and this is precisely WHO we are and we are just this. Second, this "not knowing" is the very definite, clear and precise "knowing" I described which we "know" when we transcend the barriers between subject/knower and object/known. This is Satori (which means "Big K Knowing").

One purpose of Zazen of all kinds (both the Koan Centered Zazen of the Rinzai folks and Shikantaza) is to have the hard borders between subject and object soften, become translucent, sometimes fully drop away. Then, mountains are not mountains, windows are not windows and you and I are not you and I too. All is this wonderful flowing boundless flowing of the wholenesss that we call (very misleadingly) "Emptiness". Because there is no subject or object, there is simply no place to come from and no place to go to, and nobody to do the going. There is not even life and death, because only the ever flowing flowing.

That being said ... we then can realize that you and I, bricks and mountains can exist in this world in a conventional sense AND also be simultanously that flowing boundless flowing wholeness emptiness too, all along. We then live in a world of coming and going AND no going no going at once. Life and death and no life or death at once.

Look, it can be hard to get our heads around, but that is what this Practice is about at heart ... because seeing through and become unbound from the separate self is liberating.

Gassho, J

SatToday

PS - Zen logic is not an oxymoron, but just not our usual logic about the world. In our way, doors are doors yet doors are windows (because both are just the very same flowing boundless flowing) and, anyway, what doors and windows (because there is just the flowing boundless flowing)? Doors are no doors at once, for all is just the flowing boundless flowing. Understand?

PPS - Worldly things and obstacles are liberating when we find them as truly boundless flowing all along. However, even Buddhadharma can be an obstruction if we turn it into some separate object that don't flow.

PPPS - I know this is hard, like trying to convince a raindrop that it is just the blowing April shower and May flowers, a grain of sand that it is the swirling desert and every dune. Something like that.

[Roland]

BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 51

I don't have anything interesting to say about this koan even though it is so fundamental, or rather because it is so much the core of our practice. It is just there, yet so elusive.

Gassho
Roland
#SatToday

[Jishin]

Hi,

Jundo is a wordsmith and a teacher. I am not. I like to keep it simple. So, I summarize my understanding of what he wrote on # 26 as:

First there is Montains vs Waters (Form vs Form) and this is what drives us to Zen, the suffering that it causes.

Then there is Mountains=Waters and Waters=Mountains (Form=Emptiness and Emptiness=Form). Nice and soothing place to be but the trip is not quite done.

Then there is Mountains=Mountains and Waters=Waters (Form=Form and Emptiness=Emptiness). This is Truth. Things are just as they are. But one more step is necessary.

Proper use of Truth is necessary. This results in decreasing suffering for self and others. Without the clear eye of Truth, it is difficult to come up with right action.

I think that is what Jundo just said but I can't say it like he does because I am just Jishin.

My one cent.

Gassho, Jishin, ST

[Amelia]

I just tried to sum up how the koan makes me feel or respond with as few words as possible. Not trying to sound zenny.

Honestly, where is the boundary between two places? There isn't any.

Gassho, sat today

[Ben]

The story from the commentary in which Hogen says that "Above his door he should have written door..." and so forth reminded me of one of my favorite Far Side cartoons.

34pm6hw.jpg

This cartoon has always seemed to me to be about a sort of delusion: that language allows us to fix meaning and essence. A wall is a wall, the house is the house, a boat is a boat...and yet they are all impermanent and lack essence/self.

Hogen (in that story about the monk painting "mind" on everything) and this koan seem to me to point in an opposite, equally important direction: if our "knowledge" of impermanence is such that we forget that a wall is a wall, the house is the house, a boat a boat, maybe we know less than when we began. Painting "mind" on everything is as surely an attempt to fix meaning as painting "the house," "the dog," etc. And letting the world be the world rather than insisting it is something else is close to the heart of the matter.

Or at least it seems that way to me.

Gassho,
Ben
SatToday