7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

[Jundo]

This week's reading has a bit of Harry Potter, complete with wizards!

But where is found the real magic?

Cook from p55
Hixon from p58

This time, perhaps it is helpful to read Hixon first as a bit easier to follow of the two.

Gassho, Jundo

[Shohei]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Hiyas
At first ill be straight...this struck me funny (and i thought of the Scorpions song lyrics before posting...hrmm) but anywho
Witness the magic of this moment, realizing that all things are perfectly what they are, setting your self and all beings free!
sorcery not needed!

Gassho
Shohei

[Tb]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Hi.

I'm instantly reminded of an quote by another master;

"Clear, your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind the plot."
?Yoda

The hard thing is not letting the boundaries hinder you in the vastness of this.
Nagarjuna said something similar,

When there is grasping, the grasper Comes into existence. If he did not grasp, Then being freed, he would not come into existence.

- Nagarjuna, "Mulamadhyamaka-Karika"

That would not arise if this wasn't here.

Mtfbwy
Fugen

[Taylor]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

No fancy schmancy words from me this week :P Just a few dusty thoughts:

Truly Hui-neng was correct when he said there is no mirror on which dust can land, you may polish and polish but still there will never be anything to rub. Does space get shiny when we clean it? Trying to purify this and that we become caught in our small stream and may end up like a dry river-bed - lifeless. Still good practice though, even if it isn't good practice :wink:

WIth magic we could see 80,000 eons forward and backward, but really why would we need to? All of time, past present and future exist now. Thus is zazen we see for infinite eons forward and backward. Silly magicians :mrgreen:

For me, this week brought to light the idea of the Soto school being "gradual" vs the Rinzai being "instantaneous". That is a huge crock of BS, if you ask me haha how could the Soto school be gradual? We aren't building up to anything! My zazen is zazen just as Dogen's zazen is zazen (however he probably was less caught up in the clouds, or was he?) There is nothing to construct, there is nothing to tear down. It just is, established and non-existant at the same time. Abracadabra!

Gassho
Taylor

[Rimon]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

There is no difference in being able to project yourself in the future fpr one day or having the powers of a mighty sorcerer and being able to predict what will happen in thousands of eons. The real power, the real magic is to live in the now. Nothing more, nothing else.
It was also very helpful for me to understand mind as waves and how there are no smalls streams but only a vast ocean.

Gassho

Da5id

[Fuken]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Every chapter begins by talking about how so and so experienced a great awakening.

I would like to know how it is that nowadays awakenings seem so taboo.

While I agree that there is no need to get hung up on it, what exactly is an awakening?

How do we define it?

How do we articulate it?

How does anyone know who has not had an awakening and who hasn't?

It seems in many cases that awakening is just the beginning, the call to practice and study. And in others it is the penetration of the teaching and in others it is the clarification of that study.

Would it be wrong then to understand that there is continuous awakening?

Do we wake up then go back to sleep?

Do I smell the taint of politics in Micchaka's transmission?

8000 wizards ordained as monks, so it would make sense to make one of those wizards there leader. Is this producing clouds where there are no clouds?
Is this dwelling vainly on thoughts and calculations?

To Hixton's closing verse, I gripe!
Darkness does not become light any more than firewood becomes ash.
The broom can sweep away darkness,
And the empty cup contains the vast sea.

[Nick B]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

The first thing that comes to mind is that Micchaka practices sorcery. Sorcery boils down to cause and effect thinking. The whole idea being that if a state is created through cause and effect it has the three marks. It is impermanent, not-self and suffering. Thus as long as one is caught up in trying to produce certain states etc.. through cause and effect, no matter how great one's experiences may be, one is still firmly on the wheel of Samsara.

Buddha mind is a characterless womb in which one can grasp at nothing yet it is continuously dynamic and gives birth to all things. It is never created nor is it destroyed, it is unborn and always present. It is not an effect of a cause, but is the very matrix of one's whole existence.

Does this Buddha mind refer to the luminous clarity of one's mind or to the fact that there is just this continuous unfolding, this transient flux? Or are they one and the same?

[BrianW]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

But where is found the real magic?

For me zazen is the real mojo!

To exercise any occult power or to immerse the mind in any finite doctrine is to be bound and dragged by a rope.

Manipulating limited energies and inquiring into the nature of Reality from a limited perspective is like being bound and dragged.

I know the analogy doesn’t quite fit, but the first thing that came to mind is science and technology. It is very easy to be awed by advances in science and technology to the point of not accepting the “Reality” that falls outside of these paradigms. The scientific method is but one epistemology. I have colleagues doing psychological research on “meditation” but they have completely stripped away any of the core Buddhist concepts. In conducting a specific experiment this may be necessary, but I had a student who did a fairly compressive literature review on Buddhism and meditation in psychology and came up with very little. I was just rather surprised how these core concepts had been pretty much tossed aside.

Gassho,
Jisen/BrianW

[Jundo]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Every chapter begins by talking about how so and so experienced a great awakening.

I would like to know how it is that nowadays awakenings seem so taboo.

Oh, Great Awakenings are not 'taboo', never where and are not now. Where would you get such a narrow idea?

But what is truly "Great" about these Awakenings?

Where in the Zen literature does one see someone running around after their "Great Awakening" yelling "Eureka Eureka" at the top of their lungs, tears streaming down their eyes, all mysteries of the universe revealed and all one's personal problems and hang ups washed completely away????

NO WHERE!

(except perhaps in certain Kensho-fetishist book like "Three Pillars of Zen" and similar farces. Remember: "After the Ecstacy ... the Laundry!") There are so many Buddhist people with story book images of "Great Awakening" fairy tales in their mind ... and not the slightest idea what the true "Greatness" of "Great Awakening" is and where truly found. Such people have never experienced a True "Great Awakening" ... True Kensho ... True Satori ... Not a one has truly experienced "Great Awakening" ... for "Great Awakening" is a Buddha's soft and sublime smile.

Great Awakening is profound yet subtle, mundane but a miracle, the clearing up of mysteries yet the allowing of others (as the Buddha taught that some questions are not relevant to the quest), the solving of all problems through and through even as so many of life's problems remain.

I am so tired of folks who talk of "Great Awakening" without the slightest idea what is so "Great" about it! They are naive, children.

Nothing is more precious than to be a man who has nothing further to seek. Just do not give rise to any fancies, and be your ordinary selves.

I am so tired of those children who write that the Zen masters of old, based on some "they lived happily ever after" image of "Great Awakening, were thereafter "perfect people without a fault or a flaw." How ridiculous! (save that none of us have a "fault" or "flaw" from the start ... including all the faults and flaws we must labor day by day to repair. Read and reread this sentence three times and three times again, until it is completely pierced ... for it is at the very Heart of "Great Awakening").

After Keizan had his "Great Awakening", and Dogen ... and all the others ... what changed?

Do you know? Do you truly know?

So many folks spouting the words "Great Awakening", would not know "Great Awakening" if it was right before their own eyes (which is precisely where it is ... and one's eyes too).

The first thing that comes to mind is that Micchaka practices sorcery. Sorcery boils down to cause and effect thinking.

Oh, there is a "magic" to this realization ... more ordinary yet spectacular than any dime store trick. People do not realize the spectacular realization of the most ordinary (for who judge's the "ordinary" to be "ordinary"??) This is the Greatest of Great Awakenings!

Gassho, Jundo

[Fuken]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Oh, Great Awakenings are not 'taboo', never where and are not now. Where would you get such a narrow idea?[/b]

I get such a narrow idea from the tone of the attitudes displayed, similar to how you just expressed it.

While I do agree that there is no need to get hung up on a momentary experience, what exactly is an awakening?

How do we define it?

How do we articulate it?

How does anyone know who has not had an awakening and who hasn't?

It seems in many cases that awakening is just the beginning, the call to practice and study. And in others it is the penetration of the teaching and in others it is the clarification of that study.

Would it be wrong then to understand that there is continuous awakening?

Do we wake up then go back to sleep?

Where in the Zen literature does one see someone running around after their "Great Awakening" yelling "Eureka Eureka" at the top of their lungs, tears streaming down their eyes, all mysteries of the universe revealed and all one's personal problems and hang ups washed completely away????

The Buddha saw the morning star and proclaimed, I along with all sentient beings have awakened!

But I agree with your sentiment, after enlightenment, the dishes.

After Keizan had his "Great Awakening", and Dogen ... and all the others ... what changed?

I don't know so much about Kaizan, but for Dogen, he expressed it as a soft and flexible mind.

I think that is a wonderful expression, what is yours?

Do you know? Do you truly know?

I have read that only when you know and understand your own mind can you put the Dharma into practice.
I am working on knowing and understanding my own mind.

[AlanLa]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

A wizard's powers (or any super power, for that matter) is nothing compared to a buddha's powers! What's more magical than a mind that "moves without ever stopping" or that can appear as "skin, flesh, bones, and marrow"? With this kind of magic, who needs sorcery? The cool thing is we have this mind right now!I like keizan's line "[mind] resembles a magician performing various magical illusions, like producing images in a dream."

I am not big fan of magicians or their acts. Why pay money to have someone fool you, especially when you go in knowing you are going to be fooled? It makes no sense to me. Why does religion have to compete with magic acts anyway? I know there are stories in the Bible about how God's miracles are not magic, therefore he is Truth and magic is a LIE, and therefore EVIL. Just another set of dualities, it seems. But with Buddha mind we can cut through all those dualities and see the every day magic all around us.

[Hogo]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Having not contributed thus far I will summerize quickly that so far much of both books have simply bounce off my thick mind, but as i go the flow gets a little eaiser, and little bits here and there seem to get through, the case in this section:

All the magic and awakening seem lost on me, but one image got stuck in my head as I read, that of the ocean and a picture formed of my mind surfing along a single wave. Rising then dissapearing without fuss into the sand.

Made me feel insignificant, yet a genuine part of the whole all at once.

Gassho
Dave.

[Stephanie]

Re: 7/30 TRANSMISSION of the LIGHT: to Michika

Even if you study wizardry and learn to prolong your life, or command the marvelous use of supernatural powers, you can only really perceive eighty thousand eons into the past and eighty thousand eons into the future, but you cannot scrutinize anything before or after that.

This line cracked me up and filled me with delight. It is true; even if we can see 80,000 eons into the past, it is just 80,000 eons! It is the same too with all supernatural powers: no matter how impressive they may be, they are limited in scope. A Tibetan monk who can raise his body heat through tummo--this is impressive! But to spend years studying how to do this, when one could just invest in good warm clothes and build a fire. To walk on water! Ah, a miracle! Though to spend years learning how... one could have just paid the ferry man. Better to have no need for such special powers, to perform the moment-to-moment miracle of being just this moment.

I spent some time studying Western esoterica and the occult. There is much wealth there, but even Aleister Crowley said that magick focused on gaining worldly power is black magick and a waste of time:

The Sorcerer may be—indeed he usually is—a thwarted disappointed man whose aims are perfectly natural. Often enough, his real trouble is ignorance; and by the time he has become fairly hot stuff as a Black Magician, he has learnt that he is getting nowhere, and finds himself, despite himself, on the True Path of the Wise. Thereupon he casts away his warlock apparatus like a good little boy, finds the A?A?, and lives happily ever after.

The ultimate goal of magick for Crowley was the dissolution of the self into the All, which he noted was fearful to a Black Magician but embraced by the true Adept. So even arguably the most advanced ritual magician of the modern age had little use or interest in self-serving displays of power, and instead was only interested in "crossing the Abyss" and dying to the small self.

I like what Keizan has to say about purity: pure or impure, whatever we define in such a way is already It. We can spend kalpas trying to achieve some kind of perfection or exalted state, for what? Is a perfect, exalted state somehow more a part of reality than the state we are in right now?

Keizan quotes Mazu:

No sentient beings for countless eons have ever left the samadhi of Dharma nature. In the samadhi of Dharma nature they wear clothes and eat food, talk together and reply. The functioning of the six sense bases and the carrying out of activities is nothing but Dharma nature.

Interesting, as this quote is almost "pure Soto" in flavor but from a master associated with the Rinzai line and style. Because style and school too are but a mere distraction from the realization that there is no special state to be achieved that is any more true than this right now.

I loved this passage from Hixon:

There are actually no small streams at all. There is nothing but the great ocean, the Great Way. Every dust mote and every star is a dream image of the Unborn. Unborn Nature is the only possible subject of inquiry. If we laboriously travel to some ocean from some small stream, it is certainly not the great ocean. The great ocean already contains every spring, every waterfall, every dewdrop. There is nowhere to leave, nowhere to arrive.

In a single moment, six eons of calculation and manipulation drop away from the mindstream of Michaka. Simultaneously, he becomes humble monk and living Buddha. What wonderful destiny! It belongs to each of us equally! We are meeting and acknowledging our ancient friend, now a living Buddha, who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. The currents of student and teacher flow together within the great ocean. Even this cannot be stated. Is there any difference between water and water?

All this time and effort looking for the Great Source, the clear clear water, when the Great Source is precisely the Great Source because it has no location. It is the root of all things, residing deep within, the freshwater spring at the heart of the Garden of Eden that has always fed all life. Born of ocean, we have never left it, it is always inside us. As Bjork sings from the perspective of Mother Ocean, "Your sweat is salty--I am why."