Homeless Kodo's "TO YOU" - Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2

[Heikyo]

Wherever you look, there’s nothing but you. There’s nothing anywhere that isn’t you.

I like this quote as to me it describes quite simply how all things, including what we perceive as ourselves, are one and the same universe.

Gassho
Paul
Sat, LAH

[Margaret]

Ah! Great help!!
Gassho
Margaret
Sat

[sreed]

As Kokuu points out, our experience of life, this world and even who we think we "ourself" are is all created "between the ears" much more than we know. You think you see a "chair" in your room, but there is (I assume, unless it is totally a dream) only a conglomeration of atoms fashioned in a certain shape which our brain has come to label "chair" because we have butts and have come to assign such meaning, function and name to it. If buttless space creatures ever came to earth, they would be unlikely to see a "chair" until we explained it. An ant crawling across the chair also likely knows nothing but the bare sensory feel of a surface, no "chair." Furthermore, everything that we then add ... such as "ugly/pretty chair" or "comfortable/uncomfortable chair" is our subject experience and weighing of our feelings about it. The chair is none of those things until we put such personal assessment. Even "green chair" is only our brain's interpretation of the photon frequencies entering the eyes ... and there is no "green" apart from our subjective experience inside of those vibrations.

Well, as it is for "chairs," so it is for every darn thing in this life, world, and our own experience of our selves.

Buddhism not only allows us to become aware of how much we "mind create" our experience of the world, but to drop aspects of it completely (primarily the hard divide between "self/not myself" and all the frictions that come with that division). We also learn to drop some of the harmful "junk" between the ears (for example, the excess desire, anger, jealousy, other divided and harmful thinking), to encourage a more healthful experience between the ears. Life is like a dream we dream, and yet ... it is our dream of life, so we had best dream it well.

Kodo's point is likely much more basic, however: Most people run through this rat race life convinced of so much nonsense that they buy into, take for true and tangle themselves up in (anything from the importance of having the right basketball shoes to the "Q" conspiracy). We really become prisoners of our own fantasies, delusions and sometime self-created traps.

Gassho, J

STLah

Very helpful analogy! I'm beginning to grasp this and will "chew" on it more.


Sara
ST/LAH

[Tairin]

I am a huge fan of Kōdō Sawaki and I really enjoy his simple, blunt, down to earth expressions. It is hard to pick but I’ll go with this one today

There's actually no reason at all to look around. Yet it seems like we've been gazing right and left for ages.

It can be hard to not compare oneself to others but a person can only live one’s own life or as Sawaki Roshi puts it

Every single being simply realizes the self, through the self for the self.

Tairin
Sat today and lah

[Shinchi]

"There are some who end up at the bottom of their class and then live out their whole lives feeling like victims. They say their lives have been “screwed up.” And it’s precisely this attitude that screws up their lives."

This quote is one that stuck out to me as well. In my work, I often meet people whose internal narratives have become quite problem saturated in response to the conditions of life which they have experienced ("I am so screwed up"). There are significant implications for how these story lines (or "attitudes") shape our lives and understandings of others.

Walking with people through connecting with and understanding new alternative story lines about themselves and in relation to others is inspiring, and as Zenkon noted earlier, is a reminder of impermanence and our capacity to change these attitudes.

I do think that it's important to remember that these attitudes often arise as a response to one's conditions or experiences with life. In my humble opinion, emphasizing compassion for this development is important, as the tone can otherwise feel a bit harsh and maybe even hostile (if I may be a bit critical of Kodo's tone, with much respect).

Gassho, Steve

STLah

(Sorry to run long!)

Sent from my Pixel 4a (5G) using Tapatalk

[Chikyou]

I love this book already... Sawaki Rishi's sayings seem so modern that I can hardly believe that they weren't written yesterday in some case! I can tell already I will cherish this book.

Many of the sayings stood out to me, but here is a clear favorite:

"During the Tokugawa era, the Confucians said, 'Shakyamuni was so full of himself! He talked about his identity as unsurpassable in the entire cosmos.'

That was their misunderstanding. Not only Shakyamuni has an identity which is unsurpassable in the entire cosmos. Every single one of us has an unsurpassable identity. We moan about it, while all along we're carrying it around with us.

To practice the way of Buddha means to manifest within yourself your own identity, which is unsurpassable in the entire universe."

I love this one because it's a clear reminder of my (and everyone's) inherent worth.

Gassho,
SatLah
Kelly

[Tai Do]

“The bird doesn’t sing in honor of the person in zazen. The flower doesn’t blossom to amaze the person with her beauty. In exactly the same way, the person doesn’t sit in zazen in order to get satori.”

I find the positioning of this in the chapter “To you who can’t stop worrying about how others see you” very interesting. I linked it to this other passage in the same chapter: “An ordinary person can lose interest in anything if nobody’s watching him do it. If someone’s watching, he’ll even jump into a fire.”

I understand, based on my own incomplete experience, that we tend to justify to others and to ourselves everything we do in terms of goal oriented utility. So we have to justify sitting zazen with satori as the goal.

Sawaki Roshi appear to be saying that we can be free of this need to justify our actions to others and ourselves and just sit for sitting’s sake, as the bird sings for singing’s sake and the flower blooms for blooming’s sake.

Gassho,
Mateus
Sat LAH

[Meiun]

'There's actually no reason at all to look around. Yet it seems like we've been gazing right and left for ages.'

I love the fact that on first read this appears to be such a casual statement.... Not so! [emoji38] Such simple words to convey the human condition and the antidote!

Gassho [emoji1317]

Mike

Sat today

[Onki]

This is a very good book! The sayings are so blunt and I love it! Really makes me think about things and how I attach thoughts and beliefs to every day things and believe it is “fact.”

Gassho,

Finn

Sat today

[Nengyoku]

Every single being simply realizes the self, through the self, for the self.

Don't be happy about the grades others give you. Take responsibility for yourself. You're happy or you're upset when others praise or criticize you, but you don't even understand yourself.

I've never praised anyone. Everybody already sees their own strengths-and even better than they really are.

The way of the Buddha means not looking around. It means being completely one with the present activity.

There's actually no reason at all to look around. Yet it seems like we've been gazing right and left for ages.

In the society of the dishonest, an honest person is held for a fool.

You do everything that people praise you for. You run after those who are praised. You are never yourself.

All my life I've struggled with this. Judging myself against another, and doing things to try and gain some sort of approval. And even once I realized I was doing this I struggled against doing it.

Now it is worth realizing that even this was never a bad thing.

... But what's a good environment? What's a bad one? ... Truly bad conditions mean that you have been born a human being without your own self.

Things were exactly how they needed to be to be where I am now. So instead of struggling, just sit. And that too will fall into place.

Gassho,
Nengyoku
Sat

[Onki]

Hi Nengyoku,

That is such a good point…

“Things were exactly how they needed to be to be where I am now. So instead of struggling, just sit. And that too will fall into place.”

So very true.

Gassho,

Finn

Sat today

[Showan]

"The asshole doesn't need to be ashamed of being the asshole. The feet don't have any reason to go on strike just because they're only feet. The head isn't the most important of all, and the navel (I'm assuming he's referring to 腹 here?) doesn't need to imagine he's the father of all things."

I like this for two reasons. First, it calls to mind the line from Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” which has the quality of simultaneously being obviously true but also completely alien to how we experience life most of the time. Everything has a part to play in the Great Functioning which is no less or more important than any other thing.
Second, and I apologize for not being able to recall exactly where I read this, but 20-ish years ago when I first began to read Buddhist scriptures I came across a sutta which quoted the Buddha as saying that, if people were going to incorrectly identify the "self" with either the body or the mind, they would be less incorrect if they chose the body, because we experience our minds as being an unchanging continuum but we can clearly observe our bodies changing over time. I might still feel like I have the same thoughts as a 41-year-old that I did as a 21-year old, but I can clearly see that I'm greyer and paunchier now than I was then. Identifying the body as the "self" is still incorrect, but closer to the truth than identifying the mind as the "self" because it's harder to pretend that "self" is unchanging that way. I really like how Sawaki uses the language of the body to evoke the same sense of disquiet I felt so long ago.
Sorry to run long.

Showan
Sat today
Lent a hand

[ZenKen]

Samadhi means being yourself and only yourself. That's "the mind that is naturally pure and clear".
Only in zazen can you be yourself and only yourself. Outside of zazen, you constantly try to be better than the others or to have more fun than the others.

I both agree and disagree with this one, with great respect to Sawaki Roshi! I think the unquiet mind can bring too many thoughts of attainment to zazen, and I also think that people can bring a pure and clear mind to the rest of life.

I'm a writer by trade. Do I want to be good at my craft? Absolutely. Do I want to be a better writer than my peers and friends? No. I want to be the best I can be for myself, both because I love what I do and because I want to do the best job I can, but I don't want to be better than everyone else, not only because I don't want that sort of pressure to perform, but because 'better' is entirely subjective. In whose eyes/mind am I better? Who measures that? And if we're all one anyway, then their skill is my skill, which is theirs.

Do I want to have 'more fun' than others? No. I want to have fun, certainly. I want to lead an enjoyable and fulfilled life when I can, while knowing that my whole life won't be like that (it certainly isn't at the moment!). But I want everyone, all sentient beings, to lead an enjoyable and fulfilled life, too.

But it may well be that I have misunderstood the second part of his teaching.

Sorry to run long.

Gassho
Anna
sattoday

[Bion]

Homeless Kodo's "TO YOU" - Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2

I both agree and disagree with this one, with great respect to Sawaki Roshi! I think the unquiet mind can bring too many thoughts of attainment to zazen, and I also think that people can bring a pure and clear mind to the rest of life.

I'm a writer by trade. Do I want to be good at my craft? Absolutely. Do I want to be a better writer than my peers and friends? No. I want to be the best I can be for myself, both because I love what I do and because I want to do the best job I can, but I don't want to be better than everyone else, not only because I don't want that sort of pressure to perform, but because 'better' is entirely subjective. In whose eyes/mind am I better? Who measures that? And if we're all one anyway, then their skill is my skill, which is theirs.

Do I want to have 'more fun' than others? No. I want to have fun, certainly. I want to lead an enjoyable and fulfilled life when I can, while knowing that my whole life won't be like that (it certainly isn't at the moment!). But I want everyone, all sentient beings, to lead an enjoyable and fulfilled life, too.

But it may well be that I have misunderstood the second part of his teaching.

Sorry to run long.

Gassho
Anna
sattoday

It’s an interesting paradox! If, as we say in Zen, there is no separation between me and others, then there’s no better or worse, and no one to compare to, but at the same time, it also means that me = other and viceversa, so me wanting to be BEST I can be, means I am comparing me to myself and myself = others.. That’s a lot of mental gymnastics though. I think ultimately, what master Sawaki says is that even that “I want to be the best I can be” can be a source of problems that we are free of in zazen since zazen is free of judgments.

Sorry for running a bit long

[emoji1374] Sat

[ZenKen]

It’s an interesting paradox! If, as we say in Zen, there is no separation between me and others, then there’s no better or worse, and no one to compare to, but at the same time, it also means that me = other and viceversa, so me wanting to be BEST I can be, means I am comparing me to myself and myself = others.. That’s a lot of mental gymnastics though. I think ultimately, what master Sawaki says is that even that “I want to be the best I can be” can be a source of problems that we are free of in zazen since zazen is free of judgments.

Sorry for running a bit long

[emoji1374] Sat

Ohhhh, okay that makes sense!

Thank you and gassho

Anna
st