Risho, have you ever spent time at a monastery or Zen Center for Sesshin, or other retreat? If not, I recommend it. Much of what you say is completely understandable from a lay perspective; the human population is so huge and the world is so vast that it is difficult if not impossible for our brains to grasp the effect we have on each other. I often grapple with the same type of dialogue in my head that you have written here. Spending time at the Monastery helps me to have a visual example, a clear picture of how "engaged Zen" really works, when each individual is an essential cell of a living organism, like the bees in Sekishi's hive. The bees don't suffer by overthinking, they don't think about how they are going to die soon so they had better live for today and not worry about tomorrow, nor do they virtue signal and sit on the fence directing all the other bees to do what's good. They just do their part with the focus of daily bee-life.
In the Monastery it is similar to the beehive, day to day... however, they also set aside time for Dharma talks and scholarly study along with all the usual planning of projects and operations. This is because they have gathered together with one commonality, for all their differences, and that is "Bodhicitta--" according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Bodhicitta is a "spontaneous wish to attain enlightenment motivated by great compassion for all sentient beings, accompanied by a falling away of the attachment to the illusion of an inherently existing self." So the teaching and the learning and the reading, though perhaps not essential to the basic survival needs of the group, are the reason they are there, to learn how to suffer less via the Buddha's medicine.
Outside the Monastery, we lay folks want to cultivate Bodhicitta sometimes, too, and it's a little harder because we are scattered all over the place. We can't visually see how we are preparing each others' meals, cleaning each others' environments, or saving each others' resources with everything we do. But that's exactly what we are doing regardless. It logically leads to discussions here in our Sangha about how we can do all those things as laypeople more in accordance with the Precepts. It's okay to disagree, but there is no reason to discourage awareness and concern about issues brought up here in the Engaged Buddhism forum. We will all sit together later, do Zazen, and drop all the concerns together too! And that is always our Roshi's main message here, I hear it loud and clear--that when it's time, drop all the thoughts of liberal and conservative, good and bad, and just sit!
Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH in a little way.
In the Monastery it is similar to the beehive, day to day... however, they also set aside time for Dharma talks and scholarly study along with all the usual planning of projects and operations. This is because they have gathered together with one commonality, for all their differences, and that is "Bodhicitta--" according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Bodhicitta is a "spontaneous wish to attain enlightenment motivated by great compassion for all sentient beings, accompanied by a falling away of the attachment to the illusion of an inherently existing self." So the teaching and the learning and the reading, though perhaps not essential to the basic survival needs of the group, are the reason they are there, to learn how to suffer less via the Buddha's medicine.
Outside the Monastery, we lay folks want to cultivate Bodhicitta sometimes, too, and it's a little harder because we are scattered all over the place. We can't visually see how we are preparing each others' meals, cleaning each others' environments, or saving each others' resources with everything we do. But that's exactly what we are doing regardless. It logically leads to discussions here in our Sangha about how we can do all those things as laypeople more in accordance with the Precepts. It's okay to disagree, but there is no reason to discourage awareness and concern about issues brought up here in the Engaged Buddhism forum. We will all sit together later, do Zazen, and drop all the concerns together too! And that is always our Roshi's main message here, I hear it loud and clear--that when it's time, drop all the thoughts of liberal and conservative, good and bad, and just sit!
Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH in a little way.
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