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  • Bion
    Treeleaf Unsui
    • Aug 2020
    • 4577

    #16
    NEW PODCAST EPISODE AVAILABLE

    Hello, friends

    A new episode of our Treeleaf Zendo Podcast is now available on all podcasting platforms. This one is an audio recording of an article by Jundo titled "The 'Inner Switch' Of Zazen". You can find this episode HERE or on the podcasting platform you usually use.



    The essay by Jundo, is below:

    Originally posted by Jundo
    Maybe thirty years ago, on the third or fourth day of a week long Rohatsu Sesshin at Sojiji, the traditional winter Retreat at Soto-shu's head temple, I was feeling bored, homesick, a bit irritated and my back hurt. I was cold and lonely, tired and distracted, while time was dragging like molasses. Woken up at 4am in the dark and cold, followed by hours staring at a wall, shivering and knees complaining, days still to survive, missing my family and the cat, longing for my warm bed at home ... It would not take Freud to figure out the causes. I was pretty miserable.

    "So," I thought, "I wonder what might happen if I just try to be the opposite?"

    Let me take on the actor's role of being something and somebody else.

    Suddenly, I found that I had a kind of inner switch, one with which I could "pretend" that I was totally at home, content, feeling like there is no other place to be, lovin' it. I simply remembered what all of that good stuff feels like from other times in my life, stored as body memory somewhere deep down, summoned up those sensations and then was actually feeling them. I very much just played the part of being thoroughly fulfilled in the moment, comfortable, centered, peaceful and at rest, energized and right at home ...

    ... AND SUDDENLY I WAS!

    I had entered into the imagined role of "satisfied sitter" like a Shakespearean thespian entering into the heart of Hamlet, actually embodying Hamlet. I recalled what equanimity, fearlessness and joy feel like, from somewhere in my recesses, and I was flooded with each of those too, as true as true can be.

    Then I played with flipping the switch back and forth a bunch of times ... bored ... content ... restless ... comfortable ... distracted ... centered ... sad ... joyous ... resistant ... equanimous ... homesick ... right at home. I even dabbled with bliss and ecstasy, followed by misery and terror. I could go instantly from being one way to the other and back again, like flipping a switch. And in discovering that I had this inner switch, I found that the whole experience was greatly up to me. Suddenly, I was cruising that Sesshin! ... smooth sailing ... 'in the zone.' Oh, it was still cold, and my back still hurt, but even those things were somehow okay.

    The lesson here is that sitting Sesshin is like an empty container, some bland ingredient like Tofu, that can be decorated or flavored as our heart decides. The experience is bad if you make it bad ... it is whole, complete, fulfilling and welcoming if our heart makes it so. Such is the power of the mind. In an instant, that Sesshin was the only place in the whole world, the entire universe, where I would want to be, and there was nothing else to wish for. In fact, so much of all life is like a neutral canvas to which we add our judgments and reactions, coloring it by our feelings. I could have died right there without complaint. It was like finding a button to turn hell into heaven and back again.

    Now, as a Zen fellow, I made some choices about which buttons to push, and how to adjust the settings: I choose equanimity and contentment over feelings of bliss and ecstasy, knowing that those latter states are not someplace I could or would wish to live for long. I choose acceptance of the situation, and the body's pain, rather than trying to change those, knowing that they could not be escaped short of leaving, either the temple or the ordinary world. Deep deep concentrated meditators can go to such realms where physical pain vanishes, but I would find that no more appealing than diving into morphine and life's dead-end. I will save that for my final cancer bed. Much better is to be content and at home in life's little discomforts and pains, letting them be, paying them no nevermind even though not fun.

    There was a "fake it till ya make it" attitude toward some of it, but I really made it. The human mind has such amazing powers when we let it find its wisdom, one reason perhaps that our ancestors were seemingly as happy and content in their short and trying lives as modern folks, and perhaps more so, despite relative physical hardships (dentists but no novocaine!) and material lack that most of us can barely imagine. One aspect of a traditional Zen Sesshin is that we return for a time to living rather like people of the 13th century. That is probably harder for 21st century us to do, given all the media and modern machines, comforts and conveniences that we must leave behind today to enter the monastery gates. 13th century monks did not miss their smart phones and air conditioned homes, not a bit, because nobody had them, or even a dream of them. Studies have shown that we feel more pain today because we expect and demand to be free of pain that much more, and are less tolerant of discomforts than the people of old.

    And here's the kicker, a nice little twist:

    We Soto Zen folks sit Zazen, like Master Dogen taught, with the hope and expectation that eventually "bodymind will drop off." Then everything will be good, and all this sitting will have its pay-off. Meditators of all kinds engage in practice in search of an inner transformation, in which their "little self" with its demands and frustrations, desires and discontents will finally be tamed, and they will know peace and happiness instead. We expect the dropping away and transformation to come first, an effect of sitting, with the good feelings and liberation to follow. It's something like thinking that we must first head to the gym, do the exercise, grow our muscles, and then health and strength will follow.

    But in Zazen, the opposite can also be true.

    Namely, by sitting with a heart emulating the peace, contentment and rest of a Buddha, we actually come to embody Buddha. Because we feel contentment, equanimity, a lack of demands and desires, the "little self" is put out of a job, is tamed and tempered. It truly rests in its struggles, pauses in its running and seeking. Suddenly, as the frictions and demands on the world evaporate, the hard borders of "self" and "the rest of the world" soften and evaporate too. Dropped off is bodymind. It is almost as if, by summoning the feeling within that we already have health and strength, the big muscles begin to grow, then push-ups and bench presses follow, after which we head to the gym.

    It is for this very reason that there is a vital ingredient to Shikantaza "Just Sitting" Zazen, an aspect that, unfortunately, gets left out of so many descriptions and instructions for Zazen which merely emphasize the "sit in a balanced way, breathe naturally, let thoughts go" parts (although those are all vital too.) Also vital is that we sit in radical equanimity, summoning the feeling and conviction deep in the bones that Zazen is a whole and complete doing, a sacred doing. In fact, we sit with the sense that this is a doing of "non-doing" in which Zazen is so complete that there is nothing left undone, nothing more that can be done, nothing more that need be done, but sitting in the time of sitting. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, by calling up the feeling within our hearts that Zazen and all life are truly goalless and complete, all is rendered goalless and complete. Q.E.D.

    Just Sitting, we must believe, is the doing of the Buddha and Ancestors, complete and whole even before it began. If we leave this confidence out (and, unfortunately, many popular Zazen or so-called "Shikantaza" instructions do) we are leaving the fuel out of the rocket. One must sit with the conviction, deep in the bones, that there is not one drop lacking, no other place to be during the time of sitting, no hole in need of filling, just by sitting. In doing so while sitting for a time, even time and measure drop away, all demands drop away, and one truly tastes the rest, satisfaction, wholeness and contentment of a Buddha sitting. The actor playing Buddha becomes Buddha, and realizes that they and all things, people and moments always have so been. Then, getting up from the cushion and back to the complex world, it is time to seek to live accordingly.

    So, I recommend that you find this same inner switch within you, if not during a long Sesshin, then even during your next Zazen sitting. Play with it, see if you can get it to work too. Toggle back and forth. Getting off the cushion, it is an inner switch which I have made use of at every subsequent retreat, not to mention the many other not so fun times of life ... in the cancer hospital with fear, when life went wrong and dreams evaporated, when there was loss. I emphasize again that the trick is not to pretend that the scary or sad times are just blissful, fun or happy. That's a short term solution at best, a fool's comedy, a running from life at worst. It is not a switch that cures all that ails this world, even as we know the world quite differently. But we can find the acceptance, allowing, flowing, non-resisting peace of a Buddha within.

    For it is within you all along.


    Gassho, J

    stlah

    🙏🏼 Sat Today lah
    "Stepping back with open hands, is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world." - Hongzhi

    Comment

    • Bion
      Treeleaf Unsui
      • Aug 2020
      • 4577

      #17
      TREELEAF PODCAST

      Hello, friends

      Our newest Treeleaf Podcast episode, based on the June monthly zazenkai talk, is now available for streaming on all podcasting platforms. This time around, Jundo tackles the Nyorai Zenshin fascicle of master Dogen's Shobogenzo, in a jazzy performance. You can also listen
      HERE


      Originally posted by Jundo
      From my book, THE ZEN MASTER'S DANCE: A Guide to Understanding Dōgen and Who You Are in the Universe ...

      A fresh take on how to read Dōgen. In The Zen Master’s Dance, Jundo Cohen takes us deep into the mind of Master Dōgen—and shows us how to join in the great and intimate dance of the universe. Through fresh translations and sparkling teaching, Cohen opens up for us a new way to read one […]


      A modern jazz musician like saxophonist John Coltrane, by taking the basic melodies and themes of the standard score, by bending and turning them inside out, changing the beat and going to unchartered places, squeezes amazing sounds and fresh discoveries out of the wellworn original. ... Dōgen does the same in imaginatively re-expressing ancient teachings. Sometimes with Dōgen and Coltrane it is the sound, man, and the hinted implications, more than the straight meaning. People often get tangled in Dōgen’s style because they constantly look for Dōgen’s intellectual and philosophical meaning in every phrase. They shut the book in frustration or think that Dōgen was pulling the wool over people’s eyes. However, although I believe that Dōgen was often trying to impress his listeners with a “hot” set of startling phrases, I don’t think that he was ever just putting on a show. He said what he meant, and meant what he felt. Dōgen was being true to the Buddha’s sound. With Dōgen, we have to learn to feel the music more than to intellectually understand the score.

      It’s not just Coltrane or jazz: Picasso and the other modern visual artists took the concrete image of a table, a human face, or a guitar and, by pulling apart the pieces and reassembling them in unexpected ways, led us to discover new insights into ordinary table-ness, face-icity, and guitar-ism.

      ... Some 700 or so years before these modern folks, Dōgen had the equivalent approach, taking “standard” Mahayana Buddhist teachings, fanciful but traditional Buddhist images, and “samples” of quotes from well-known stories related to his intended topics, tearing them apart, and tossing all back together again, remixing them, in order to discover and uncover new feelings, sounds, implications, visions, and Wisdom, all in what was often pretty wild imagery to start with!

      To me, Master Dōgen was “blowing his Shōbōgenzō-sax”—riffing, rockin’, rollin’, ranting, and roof-raising by expressing-folding-bending-fractalizing-unfolding-straightening-teasing-releasing the “standard tunes” of the sutras and old koans. The untrained ear can’t always make heads nor tails of the complex rhythms, flying notes, wild tempos—maybe sometimes even Dōgen himself could not grab hold of the animal he was creating—but I know that he felt what he meant, and that he knew that the creature he was fashioning had life.
      ~ ~ ~


      SHOBOGENZO NYORAI-ZENSHIN (The Buddha Whole Body):

      ONCE, ON VULTURE PEAK in Rajagraha, Shakyamuni Buddha said to Bhaishajyaraja Bodhisattva Mahasattva [Bodhisattva Medicine King]:

      Bhaishajyaraja, wherever a sutra is expounded, read, chanted, copied,
      or kept, a seven-treasure stupa, tall, wide, and solemn, is erected, but
      do not enshrine the Buddha’s relics in it. The reason is that a stupa
      embodies the Tathagata’s entire body. Make offerings of all sorts of
      flowers, incense, jewels, canopies, banners, music, and chanting verses
      to respect, revere, and admire the stupa. When people see this stupa,
      bow, and make offerings to it, they know that they are closer to
      unsurpassable, complete enlightenment.

      In this way, a sutra is expounded, read, chanted, and copied. A sutra is reality. To build a seven-treasure stupa is to build reality. The stupa’s height and breadth are the scale of reality. A stupa embodies the Tathagata’s entire body means a stupa is the Tathagata’s entire body.

      Thus, expounding, reading, chanting, copying, and so on, are the Tathagata’s entire body. Make offerings of all sorts of flowers, incense, jewels, canopies, banners, music, and chanting verses to respect, revere, and admire the stupa. Or, offer heavenly flowers, heavenly incense, and heavenly canopies, and so on. These are all marks of reality. Or, offer excellent flowers, excellent incense, renowned robes, and renowned garments of the human realm. These are all marks of reality.

      A stupa is erected, but do not enshrine the Buddha’s relics in it: from this we know that a sutra is the relics of the Tathagata, the entire body of the Tathagata.

      There is no greater merit than seeing and hearing golden words uttered by the Buddha. Hurry up and accumulate effort and virtue. When you see people bow and make offerings to the stupa, know that they are closer to unsurpassable, complete enlightenment. When you see the tower, sincerely bow and make offerings to it. Thus, all come closer to unsurpassable, complete enlightenment. Closer to is not come close to or go close to. Unsurpassable, complete enlightenment is all closer to.

      Right now, when you see those who receive, chant, elucidate, and copy a sutra, you are seeing this stupa. Rejoice that all are close to unsurpassable, complete enlightenment.

      This being so, a sutra is the Tathagata’s entire body. To bow to a sutra is to bow to the Tathagata’s entire body. To encounter a sutra is to encounter the Tathagata’s entire body.

      A sutra is the relics of the Tathagata. So, the relics of the Tathagata are a sutra. Even if you know that a sutra is the relics of the Tathagata, if you don’t know that the relics of the Tathagata are a sutra, it is not the buddha way.

      The reality of all things right now is a sutra. Human realms, deva realms, ocean, empty space, this land, and other lands are the reality of all things, a sutra, relics. Hold, chant, elucidate, and copy the relics and unfold enlightenment. This is to follow a sutra.

      There are relics of ancient buddhas, present buddhas, pratyeka-buddhas, wheel-turning kings, and lions [kings of dharma], and there are relics of wooden buddhas and painted buddhas. There are also relics of humans.

      Nowadays, among buddha ancestors in China, there are those who manifest relics while they are alive, and there are many who manifest relics after being cremated. Such relics are all sutras.

      Shakyamuni Buddha said to the assembly, “I practiced the bodhisattva path in my past life. The long life I have achieved by this has not been exhausted. My life span will be doubled in my future life.”

      The relics of eighty-four to [approximately twenty-five bushels] are no other than the Tathagata’s timeless life. How much is the life span of one who practiced the bodhisattva path in the past life beyond the boundary of the billion worlds? This is the Tathagata’s entire body, a sutra.

      Prajna Kuta Bodhisattva said [in the Lotus Sutra], “I see that Shakyamuni Buddha was engaged in difficult and painful practice through innumerable eons, piling up effort, accumulating virtue, and ceaselessly pursuing the bodhisattva path. When I observe the billion worlds, there is not even a poppy seed that is not a place where this bodhisattva gave up his life for the sake of other beings. Thus, he achieved the path of enlightenment.”

      From this I know that the billion worlds are a piece of his compassionate heart, a bit of his boundless realm, the Tathagata’s entire body. It is beyond whether he did or did not give up his life.

      Relics are neither before nor after the Buddha, nor do they stand shoulder to shoulder with the Buddha. Being engaged in difficult and rigorous practice through innumerable eons is the Buddha’s womb and abdomen activities, the Buddha’s skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. This is spoken of as ceaselessly. He makes further effort after attaining buddhahood. He goes further and further, giving guidance to the billion worlds. This is the activity of the Tathagata’s entire body.

      Presented to the assembly of the Yoshimine Temple, Yoshida County,
      Echizen Province, on the fifteenth day, the second month, the second
      year of the Kangen Era [1244].


      ~ ~ ~


      Please DIG this like a beatnik, mannnn ...

      [emoji1374] Sat Today lah
      Last edited by Bion; 06-03-2023, 02:41 PM.
      "Stepping back with open hands, is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world." - Hongzhi

      Comment

      • Bion
        Treeleaf Unsui
        • Aug 2020
        • 4577

        #18
        NEW PODCAST EPISODE AVAILABLE

        Hello, dear sangha,
        A new Treeleaf Podcast episode is now available for streaming on all podcasting platforms. Today's episode is an audio version of Jundo's essay ¨Shikantaza Ipso Facto¨. You can stream the episode directly from HERE . Jundo's original essay can be found HERE



        🙏🏼 Sat Today
        "Stepping back with open hands, is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world." - Hongzhi

        Comment

        • Bion
          Treeleaf Unsui
          • Aug 2020
          • 4577

          #19
          Hello, all
          a new Treeleaf Sangha Podcast episode is now available for streaming. It is based on the February Zazenkai Dharma talk, which reflects on the meaning of our Dedication of Merit that we recite every week. You can find the podcast on all major podcasting platforms, such as Apple or Spotify or you can listen here directly:

          PODCAST


          Originally posted by Jundo

          Our Talk today will reflect on the "Ekō" (囘向), or "Dedication of Merit," that accompanies our Heart Sutra recital. We call ours at Treeleaf a "Dedication of our Hopes and Aspirations," and I will explain why. The Soto-shu dictionary defines Ekō this way:

          Sanskrit/Pali = āmanā. To transfer or give away merit (kudoku 功徳), meaning the karmic fruits or beneficial results of one's own good deeds, to another person or being. In Mahayana texts, especially, one finds the idea that a bodhisattva should from the very start dedicate all the merit that results from his/her cultivation of morality, concentration, and wisdom to all living beings. A great many observances in East Asian Buddhism hinge on the ritual production and dedication of merit. Merit is earned or accumulated by chanting sutras and dharanis, mindfully reciting buddha names, circumambulating, making prostrations and offerings to buddhas enshrined on altars, and other good deeds that are either acts of worship of Buddha or acts that spread his teachings. Merit is then spent or given away by formally reciting a verse for the dedication of merit (ekōmon 囘向文) which (1) states how the merit was generated, (2) names the recipient(s) of the merit, and (3) explains the hoped for outcome of the merit transference. In some cases, merit is dedicated to sacred beings such as buddhas and deities as a kind of offering similar to (and usually performed in conjunction with) offerings of food and drink to ancestral spirits. In those cases, the third part of the dedicatory verse is typically a prayer that asks the powerful recipient for some specific benefits in return.

          Our Dedication at Treeleaf entones ...

          DEDICATION (EKO)


          READ BY INO (CHANT LEADER) ONLY:

          Buddha Nature pervades the whole universe, Reality, existing right here now:
          In reciting THE HEART OF THE PERFECTION OF GREAT WISDOM SUTRA
          (and THE IDENTITY OF RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE)
          we dedicate our sincere efforts to:

          • Shakyamuni Buddha Honored One; the Historical Buddha and Teacher,
          and to those ancestral teachers:
          Eihei Dogen Honored One
          Soji Keizan Honored One,
          All successive Honored Ones up until
          Zuigaku Rempo Honored One and
          Gudo Wafu Honored One
          and to all other Honored Ones throughout history, same yet diverse Honored Ones,
          whose names have been forgotten or left unsaid.

          We also dedicate these efforts to the Three Treasures,

          Buddha, Dharma, Sangha,

          To all Awakened Ones and Teachers in all places and times.

          We especially seek tranquility & well being for all creatures now suffering or ill in health.
          May they be serene through all their ills.
          May their lives be at peace and Wisdom pervade the darkness of ignorance.

          We dedicate our hopes and aspirations:
          To all victims of war and violence and natural events
          To the injured and to all families touched by these tragedies
          To the healing of hatred in all countries and among all peoples
          To the wisdom and compassion of our world leaders
          To the peace of the world and harmony of all beings.

          Thus, let the harmful effects of words, thoughts and actions be dispelled
          and Compassion bloom in perpetual spring.
          May we all realize and live the Enlightened Way together:

          EVERYONE CHANTS TOGETHER:

          • All Buddhas throughout space and time
          • All Bodhisattvas-Mahasattvas
          • Maha • Prajna • Paramita •••••••

          (followed by 3x BOWS by EVERYONE)
          For comparison, the Soto-shu English chant book suggests this:

          Having chanted the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra, we reverently offer the merit generated thereby to our Great Benefactor and Founder of the Doctrine, the Original Teacher Shakyamuni Buddha [or whatever other figure is currently enshrined as the main object of veneration in the practice place], to the Eminent Ancestor Dogen, to the Great Ancestor Keizan, to the successive generations of buddhas and ancestors who transmitted the flame, to the founding abbot of the monastery, Great Teacher (name), and to the eternal three treasures in the ten directions, that we may repay their compassionate blessings. We further offer it to [all the dharma- protecting devas; to the dharma-protecting saints; to the earth spirit of this place and to the monastery-protecting spirits. What we pray for is peace in the land, harmony among nations, prosperity and longevity for donors throughout the ten directions, tranquility within the monastery, and ample sustenance for the community; may all sentient beings throughout the dharma realm equally perfect omniscience.]

          ... May this merit extend universally to all, so that we together with all beings realize the buddha way.
          You can hear a little of the lovely Eko recital style in Japanese here, from the 3:46 mark following the Heart Sutra/Hannya Shingyo:

          GASSHO
          Sat and lah
          "Stepping back with open hands, is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world." - Hongzhi

          Comment

          • Bion
            Treeleaf Unsui
            • Aug 2020
            • 4577

            #20
            Hello, everyone
            A new Treeleaf Zendo Podcast episode is now available on all podcasting platforms, including Apple and Spotify. As we are entering into our Ango period, we dive into a few sections of master Dogen´s ¨Shoaku Makusa¨, looking at how through the Precepts and Jukai we respond to the harmful things that exist in this world. This episode is a recording of the Dharma Talk given during our September monthly Zazenkai, which you can find here: SEPTEMBER ZAZENKAI>>




            Gassho
            sat lah
            "Stepping back with open hands, is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world." - Hongzhi

            Comment

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