Thank you Jundo! This book has been staring at me on my bookshelf for a while now. It will be wonderful to have a chance to read it with a group.
Gassho,
Jason
Gassho,
Jason
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Wonderful, wonderful reading! I liked his comparisons between Buddhism and Christianity. Coming from a Christian background (which many of us in the west can relate to) it made his writing easy to understand. His view of the Christian god and enlightenment is something I have never heard of before, but that resonated with me.
Gassho,
Joyo
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Yes, at one time I was a strong Christian, and I suppose that will never leave me though churches are not where I found faith. I remember trying to sleep in ICU with pints of blood pumping into my body, and praying so hard, "God, don't let me die. I have so much to give to my little family. I have failed so many times." And God answered my prayer. Today I am a different man. After leaving the hospital and not being able to sleep for months, it was to meditation I turned, and I began to know my own breath with simple breath counting, so eventually I could sleep a few hours, and now about every third night I sleep well. Thank you for welcoming me into this Sangha, for making me a friend though I hardly know some of you.
deep bows.
Elgwyn
Gassho--sat today--_/|\_Peaceful, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive,
for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆Comment
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Welcome, Elgwyn, from another relatively new sangha member. Sounds like you have been up the river and back, so to speak. In my experience, this is always a good place to start or continue a spiritual journey. May I suggest that something called "the great matter of life and death" - the process we are all flowing through - is what answered your prayers. Having been raised Irish Catholic, I understand the residual effects of a Christian upbringing; however, I've also found that saying good-bye to any concept labeled "god" was a wild leap into the actual reality all around and a great liberation. Forgive me, if I intrude. Just offering a thought. Respectfully, Forest Dweller ^^Forest Sat Today^^Comment
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(In discussing the translation of jiko) This is the idea I was trying to describe in another thread, we may all be the whole universe, but for purposes of learning and communication, sometimes the individual self and its colloquial way of expression better serves.It is precisely this, Zen in our daily lives, that Uchiyama Roshi stressed more than anything else. After all, when asked to introduce ourselves or identify ourselves upon meeting somebody for the first time, we will most likely be thought weird if we reply, "Hi, I'm the Entire Universe, nice to meet you."
Gassho,
Sierra
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I don't find this an easy book to read. Some of it seems really clear and other parts I struggle to understand. This chapter is quite dense and full of things to digest.
The one section that I've got really stuck on and can't get my head round is on page 14-15, where he talks about change and interconnection and then starts saying "When I took my first breath, my world was born with me. When I die, my world dies with me. In other words, I wasn't born into a world that was already here before me...and I do not leave everything behind to live on after me. ... I bring my own world ito existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die".
I can understand and accept (to some extent) that I am impermanent, insubstantial and lacking in self and that the whole universe is like this, but why would I take my world with me when I die? It's like the wave taking the ocean with it when it's done being a wave...it doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm not reading it right. What does he mean here by 'my world'?
I'd really appreciate hearing other people's understanding of this section, and particularly how it relates to the relative and absolute?
Thank you
Gassho
Lucy (very confused)
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Hi Lucy,
I am just starting to read this book, being one of the newer folks around.
Maybe another way to read the section, you mentioned, could be:
With my birth, the little self is starting it's existence. From that point on, it is starting to add "meaning", "feeling", "judgement", "views", "separation", etc..
It's not the same way, others might see or judge or smell the things around. It is a very limited perspective of my very human self.
Therefore, 'MY' universe, like my little self is experiencing it (making it up) is bound to my little self and stops existing when my little self stops making it up.
Maybe the ocean and wave analogy is referring to the "outside of self" view that will continue to exist like what we might experience while sitting Zazen.
It's not the ocean, the wave takes with it, it's the idea of the ocean separateness, as the self of the wave has experienced it with it's limited view, that is gone.
Reality is what's left, when we subtract ourselves.
Just thoughts,
Gassho,
Ralf sattoday.義道 冴庭 / Gidō Kotei.Comment
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Hi all,
I will join as soon as I can get the book.
Gassho,
KyoninHondō Kyōnin
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Hi Lucy,
Ralf's description is very very lovely.
Late me take a swing too, as I understand Uchiyama.
In Mahayana Buddhism, there are many wonderful ways to look at the wholeness and interrelationships of life. Of course, there is most likely a "world" that existed before you were born and will go on after you die. (I don't think Uchiyama, already an old guy when he penned it, would have bothered to write that book if he thought nobody would be around to read it after he died).
Buddhist Practice also allows us to see that we are that world, and the world just us, much like a wave is just the sea, or a petal is just the flower. The wave arises from the sea, is the sea in motion and, when the wave finally crashes onto the shore, yet the sea goes on and on and on.
But also, your unique experience of the world is born with you, and will die with you. That's not "--the-- world", but rather, Uchiyama speaks of "his own world" and "your own world".
What's an example? England has had many Prime Ministers ... such as Disraeli, Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher, Blair and Brown. Of course, England existed before and after (I assume). But we might say, for example, that "Thatcher's England" was born when she was elected, had her very unique feel and stamp and vision, and died when she left office. Disraeli's England is not Thatcher's England. Same for your world, which is born and dies with you. Your world is your world, and nobody else's world can live and create your world.
Although I do not like to draw direct links between Buddhism and modern physics too often, Einstein also spoke of each being and thing in the universe as having its own space-time of the universe, in a sense, its own version of the universe. Time and space for you is not the same as the passing of time and shape of space for me. Dogen talked of all of use being in our own "being-time" which is unlike anyone else's being-time. In his essay, "Being-Time" Dogen wrote ...
The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time.
Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. ... Know that in this way there are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth, and yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. ...
Something like that. Your universe (or your experience or version of -the- universe) is thus your own.
By the way, I use "universe" here to mean "everything and then some". It is just a label for that. We Buddhists sometimes use the term to mean "the ultimate whatever and as far as that is". Whatever that "ultimate" or "absolute" is, there is also just "your ultimate absolute" too.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 01-06-2016, 02:20 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Go to "Community," then find the dropdown near the bottom. type in "Elgwyn" at add contacts. When you get to my name, just check the box saying friend--really pretty easy.Peaceful, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆Comment
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Well, there are definitely some parallels ... the fluidity of space time, the fact that both modern neuro-science and the Buddha speak to the radical degree in which we recreate our worldview between the ears based upon data from the senses, how much we are just the same stuff as the rest of the visible universe, the fact that Mahayana Sutras and modern astronomy seem to speak of worlds upon worlds, that biology and all the sciences point to the great interconnection and interflowing of all beings and things ...
... but also too much fluff in the Buddhist-New Age world that too easily draws parallels and bandies about words like "Quantum" this and "Quantum" that.
I note that "Zen" is cool with "what is", no matter what is.Be sure to catch the similar "Deepockets Chopra" page ...
Folks, if you even find me talking like this ... head for the hills as fast as your flying carpets will take you.
Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means an awakening of the holistic. The stratosphere is bursting with bio-feedback.
So, if the earth is round and we evolved from monkeys and a Big Bang 13.7 Billion years ago ... fetch water, chop wood, live gently. We are that.
If the earth is flat and we evolved from Adam and Eve and the Earth is 5000 years old ... fetch water, chop wood, live gently. We are that.
All is the Grand Wholeness-Emptiness Interflowing and Dancing, and you and me are just such.
And that is the Quantum Truth!
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 01-06-2016, 06:06 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Thank you Ralf and Jundo. Your descriptions are really helpful. Still a lot to get my head around. Jundo, if there is also "your ultimate absolute" does that mean that everyone experiences enlightenment differently? Can you elaborate on that a bit more please? I assumed that there was one ultimate reality that everyone experienced when the self fell away. And are all these separate 'worlds' or 'individual space-times' also interconnected, like Indra's net, in that everybody affects everybody else, and Thatcher's England still affects the present day? Or am I making it too complicated? Thank you.
Gassho
Lucy
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Hello Lucy,
thank you for your questions - they are encouraging me to re-read Uchiyama's book more carefully. The first time I read it I experienced at as
a gentle introduction to Zen Buddhist practice but I'm now feeling it's fairly multi-layered.
I prefer the word 'contingent' to 'accidental' - as Jundo suggested. From the moment we are born - and even in the womb - we begin creating our contingent world through our sense organs. Sometimes - in Buddhism - and on other psychologies - this comes across as a bit negative - but our personal contingency is what creates each unique individual - and this is also a positive and productive aspect of being a human being.
But our contingency is wholly impermanent - the knowledge of this can cause us suffering and pain. But there is another aspect to 'jiko' - our inherent Buddha nature - our 'whole self', - our 'universal identity'. This aspect is beyond birth and death and yet is wholly accessible to us in Zazen ( and by that I understand Uchiyama to mean Zazen as in every activity that makes up the fabric of our lived life).
Uchiyama set himself the task of actualizing the eternal self in every aspect of his life. He uses a very firm base for this - firstly a belief in an 'absolute truth' which is beyond logus (reason and therefore words). This is both a philosophical position and a religious teaching with a soteriological imperative.
For me - this is a bit of a sticking point - because I'm not at all convinced that one can call oneself a secular Buddhist - and practice from within this belief system. There is a metaphysical element and I've been chewing on this for the past four years. The metaphysical element isn't a problem for me personally - but when someone asks me if Zen Buddhism is a religion I honestly don't know how to answer. I think it is - I feel this is clearly revealed in Uchiyama's writing yet this aspect seems to get brushed aside.
I feel the metaphysical aspect is what separates Zen from secular mindfulness meditation?
Views on this would be much appreciated.
Gassho
Willow
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