Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

[disastermouse]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

I didn't mean anything derogatory, Jundo. Perhaps it's only because I'm often so unbalanced that I interpret your teachings as promoting balance. It's all a matter of perspective. Personally, sometimes I am too committed to my perspective and I wonder if others aren't the same.

As for why I keep falling off the deck, it's mostly a matter of inertia, I'd guess.

As a measure of support to Chugai - Tibetan Buddhists often meditate in charnel grounds surrounded by the rotting and scavenged corpses of dead friends and family.

Chet

[Jinyo]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Pontus wrote

It depends on what you mean by Zen. What does Zen mean to you? There is Zen buddhist practice and Zen buddhist practitioners. Since people are different, their practices are different too. And Zen buddhist practice is different from Theravadin practice. Zen buddhist practice is the direct pointing path. All these practices point to the same moon, but they are not the moon. Zen is not the moon. Brad is Brad and Jundo is Jundo. None of them flawless and both of them perfectly what they are. Zen masters. Nothing holy.

I do agree Pontus - and as Jundo often teaches - many ways up the mountain.

I think what concerns me a little is the notion that we can draw a veil of simplicity over what it is to live a good life, the essence of practice, etc. No - it isn't all that complicated - but the difficulties that we humans have in living a good life that is marked out by simplicity ( for that - I think I might want to read 'love') seems to floor every one of us.

I may need correction on this - but my understanding is that in this sangha the emphasis is on Zazen - as laid out by Dogen - who clearly believed that his formulation of 'meditation' moved on the understanding of what it is to express Buddha nature. Because there is a school of thought grounding Soto Zen (and therefore an ideology of sorts) I personally feel I need to explore this more.

That in itself may not have any fundamental impact on how I experience/practice Zazen. It has been suggested that the whole of Dogen's work (writings/teachings) are merely footnotes to Zazen. I can understand that some may feel that the footnotes can be bypassed (I think even Dogen would say that - as all that really matters is to sit with a beginner's mind).

But how many of us are graced with such innocence - because grace it surely is?

For myself - if I'm going to be authentic - I feel I need to hack away at the pit face of written information/thought. Will it make any difference to the destination? I very much doubt it. Will it slow me down - possibly impede? Yes - it may do so. There's a very fine balance between over thinking and abandoning thought all together.

Now - I could have been sitting Zazen instead of writing this - and perhaps that would have been a better use of my morning - but in all our questioning we're maybe writing our own footnotes - and I kinda think that Ok (most of the time).

Gassho

Willow

[Ekai]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

As a measure of support to Chugai - Tibetan Buddhists often meditate in charnel grounds surrounded by the rotting and scavenged corpses of dead friends and family.

Chet

Yes but they make a choice to meditate in those surroundings and that's fine. I did not expect to see those images and if I knew what to expect, I would have made a choice to not view them. I am completely aware of violence in the world but I don't want to see actual footage. Viewing these horrific images does not add any insight to my practice in any way. I don't want to censor anyone's point of view or way of expressing themselves, but I just think if someone wants to post something that might shock or adversely effect others in the Sangha, a warning beforehand on what they will see is not asking too much. While we teach other truth and reality, let's not forget that the Sangha is also a place we take refuge.

Gassho,
Ekai

[Jundo]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

As a measure of support to Chugai - Tibetan Buddhists often meditate in charnel grounds surrounded by the rotting and scavenged corpses of dead friends and family.

Chet

Yes but they make a choice to meditate in those surroundings and that's fine. I did not expect to see those images and if I knew what to expect, I would have made a choice to not view them.

Hi Ekai,

At our home too, with a 9 year old child, we have the child filters on the computer, and don't want to expose him to anything too shocking. As well, I certainly prefer to look at flowers and pleasant scenery than a car crash or battle field.

But the heart of the matter is that we Practice, and sit Zazen, right in the middle of a bloody car crash or battle field. Yes, even that is swept through and dances as Emptiness, and is the very place for Kannon to extent her merciful hands. Nothing is hidden.

I do not have a battle field or charnel ground to sit in, but I do sit Zazen at a crematorium and on a cancer ward with folks in pain. I have sat when I stumbled over a car accident with people seriously hurt (after offering aid, of course!), holding a dying child in a hospice, at a garbage dump, in a nuclear accident, and at a recent murder house. I sit the very Shikantaza I sit in my comfortable home or on a pretty beach ... dropping all thoughts of this or that or how I wish things would be.

If you want to know the true POWER of Emptiness, it is not only to sit in a cozy warm room or on some Himalayan mountain top right out of a postcard. The POWER of this Way is that it sweeps in and hold gently all these places ... the good and the bad.

So, there is no reason perhaps to go running every day after gory and horrible images in order to sit Zazen, yet often there is no reason to run from them either when they appear. Run neither toward nor away from any facet of life at the Heart of Sitting.

This Practice is always "sweet" and "nice" my ass!

Gassho, J

[Taigu]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Jundo speaks my mind...The world is pretty dark. Leave the computer and televison screen, take a stroll in Africa, the Middle East, South America...Blood, blood, blood.
Airy fairy? balanced? Chet...Did you live in Syria? I did. Did you witness killings? I did. Did your dad wanted to kill you with his sweet gun? Mine did. Have you been there?
The outcome? I have no taste for watching people's suffering.
Chugai, please get your hood off and seek for help.
Chet, just ..., for you don't know what you are talking about.

No need for this.

I sit with people in pain, breathe with people in pain.
The obscene, the pornographic use of people dying to make a would be philosophical point is ...

gassho

Taigu

[Jundo]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

I just added this to Chugai's graphic photo posting ...

WARNING FROM JUNDO: CHUGAI CHOSE TO POST GRAPHIC IMAGES OF VIOLENCE IN THE FOLLOWING POST. While I usually like to keep our community a safe, warm, peaceful place, it is also part of life to look violence and ugliness in the eye. I can understand Chugai's point in linking to the images. However, I also believe it best to give a warning on the materials for the more sensitive among us. I understand why he posted the bloody and ugly images, even as I think he could have made the point in a better way, and even as I ask Chugai, what's up with you today my friend? Gassho, Jundo

I had not seen them until several folks mentioned them here.

I simply can't talk about someone's personal issues because of confidentiality, but in this case Chugai already mentioned the matter himself a couple of places on the Forum, so I have just a little more leeway. Let me just sat that he is undergoing some health issues and chemotherapy right now, so I ask all members of this Sangha to approach him and each other with some understanding of someone's state of mind right now.

Gassho, Jundo

[disastermouse]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Wow. Lots of anti-Chet from the teachers. I can't seem to voice any thought without provoking that response.

Time to move on.

[disastermouse]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Jundo speaks my mind...The world is pretty dark. Leave the computer and televison screen, take a stroll in Africa, the Middle East, South America...Blood, blood, blood.
Airy fairy? balanced? Chet...Did you live in Syria? I did. Did you witness killings? I did. Did your dad wanted to kill you with his sweet gun? Mine did. Have you been there?
The outcome? I have no taste for watching people's suffering.
Chugai, please get your hood off and seek for help.
Chet, just ..., for you don't know what you are talking about.

No need for this.

I sit with people in pain, breathe with people in pain.
The obscene, the pornographic use of people dying to make a would be philosophical point is ...

gassho

Taigu

Taigu,

You act as though you are the only one who has suffered or seen horrors. Work in a cancer unit or with someone slowly dying of heart failure. Until then, politely refrain from telling people they don't know what they're talking about - for you also don't know what they're talking about.

Or would you have that we throw a pity-party for poor old defenseless Taigu? When you repeatedly bring up your traumatic past to try and trump actual discussion, you lose legitimacy in my eyes. Your past may explain your current viewpoint, but it does not allow you to over-ride all others.

I'm tired of fending off the reflexive hostility from you and Jundo whenever I speak up and post a topic I want to explore more thoroughly. Clearly, I need a sangha, but not one where the teachers are so reflexively toxic to any topic I bring up. This sangha is actually probably harmful for me.

Good luck overcoming your issues Jundo and Taigu - and I hope whatever teachers you produce will not create too much harm.

Chet

[Jundo]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Wow. Lots of anti-Chet from the teachers.

Time to move on.

Something must be in the water this week.

Oy vey! ... The Jewish sound of one hand clapping ... :shock:



Gassho, J

[disastermouse]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Wow. Lots of anti-Chet from the teachers.

Time to move on.

Something must be in the water. Oy vey! The sound of one hand clapping ... :shock:



Gassho, J

Jundo,

No need to be an asshole about it, is there?

Chet

[alan.r]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

At the risk of sounding naive and stupid and/or arrogant, I thought this little story, about myself, might be of use:

I'm a fiction writer, so some people consider me an "artist." Whatever, I don't care for labels anymore, but about eight years ago I cared quite a bit. I entered a PhD program to learn more about literature and art and to become a better writer. I didn't care about a PhD, I want to make art. At the same time, I already thought I was a good writer, a real artist, you know. A maker of art. I entered this PhD program and in the first workshops read stories and thought, This isn't art; soon they'll see my writing and what real art is. So, my time for workshop came up, and not only did all the students rip my work, the teacher did too. This happened the entire year: "the writing style is fine, but the story is paint-by-numbers." Holy shit, paint by numbers? There couldn't be anything worse. I started trying to writer better and better, worked harder and harder. In my second year, still floundering, the teachers were coming down even harder, destroying all the new work, and I was seriously considering quitting; they didn't know shit, anyway, they were assholes, they were old and didn't know what new things were going on, they only cared about a certain kind of fiction, art, dickheads. So, I fought them and fought their ideas and threw out their ideas and got pissed off and got even more pissed off and one day when one of my teachers gently confronted me about my attitude and asked why I was so unhappy, I could barely contain my anger (though, yeah, I remained calm on the outside). So, with all this shit swirling in me, there I was, unable to even know what to do: quit, keep going and keep hating where I was, keep writing shit, because apparently that's all I could write. Then, as if in dream, at a break in the semester, I started writing because I was so fucking sick of thinking about how poorly I was doing; I totally lost myself in the writing of a new thing and thought, when it was finished: They'll just trash this, too. We happened to have a fairly famous (if you're in the lit world) writer visiting at the time and I thought: Not only is this going to get reamed, it's going to reamed by a famous writer I love a lot (I liked the writing of my teachers, too). But instead, what happened was: "Yep, you got this one. This is it." I was shocked to some degree. And I began to realize that I was in my own fucking way. Trying to become a great writer? What bullshit. That's what my teachers were trying to tell me, to show me. They were saying, over and over: "this is just a bunch of ego junk, why aren't you just writing?" I couldn't see it, then I suddenly saw it. I began letting go when I wrote, and while there were ups and downs, there were much more: "yep, you're grooving on this one." Things loosened, some publications came in, and I slowly, ever so slowly, began to understand how to work without getting in my own fucking way. My teachers were there to teach me some about craft, but mainly they were there to help me get out of the way of myself, and sometimes the only way to that can happen is if we get beat up a little, or even a lot.

Looking back, was I beat up a lot? Yeah. But those fists had love in them. I love those teachers now, am so grateful for them. And sometimes I still need a good hard right cross.

Maybe this isn't the kind of thing I should be posting here. But, to paraphrase Amy Hempel, the thought that finally occurred to me in grad school, and that I think about often now: how do we know that what happens to us isn't good?

Gassho,
Alan

[Jen]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

I so rarely speak up any more, but sometimes I feel I must.

This thread seems so far away from the original question. Such an innocent question that I interpreted to mean "Do even our teachers bring their own delusions into their practice, and does this affect the teaching?" To which the answer should truthfully be a resounding yes! Are the delusions Zen? No, they are merely a result of the human condition. The Zen part is when we practice in spite of and to overcome those delusions.

Suffering is also human, and it affects all of us, Zen master and student alike. Suffering is not a pissing contest. What is a tragedy to one can barely affect another. So the question becomes : Because I suffer should I not show mercy to those that also suffer, or should I withhold said mercy except from those that have suffered only as much as I?

Pondering, as always~
Jen

[disastermouse]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

At the risk of sounding naive and stupid and/or arrogant, I thought this little story, about myself, might be of use:

I'm a fiction writer, so some people consider me an "artist." Whatever, I don't care for labels anymore, but about eight years ago I cared quite a bit. I entered a PhD program to learn more about literature and art and to become a better writer. I didn't care about a PhD, I want to make art. At the same time, I already thought I was a good writer, a real artist, you know. A maker of art. I entered this PhD program and in the first workshops read stories and thought, This isn't art; soon they'll see my writing and what real art is. So, my time for workshop came up, and not only did all the students rip my work, the teacher did too. This happened the entire year: "the writing style is fine, but the story is paint-by-numbers." Holy shit, paint by numbers? There couldn't be anything worse. I started trying to writer better and better, worked harder and harder. In my second year, still floundering, the teachers were coming down even harder, destroying all the new work, and I was seriously considering quitting; they didn't know shit, anyway, they were assholes, they were old and didn't know what new things were going on, they only cared about a certain kind of fiction, art, dickheads. So, I fought them and fought their ideas and threw out their ideas and got pissed off and got even more pissed off and one day when one of my teachers gently confronted me about my attitude and asked why I was so unhappy, I could barely contain my anger (though, yeah, I remained calm on the outside). So, with all this shit swirling in me, there I was, unable to even know what to do: quit, keep going and keep hating where I was, keep writing shit, because apparently that's all I could write. Then, as if in dream, at a break in the semester, I started writing because I was so fucking sick of thinking about how poorly I was doing; I totally lost myself in the writing of a new thing and thought, when it was finished: They'll just trash this, too. We happened to have a fairly famous (if you're in the lit world) writer visiting at the time and I thought: Not only is this going to get reamed, it's going to reamed by a famous writer I love a lot (I liked the writing of my teachers, too). But instead, what happened was: "Yep, you got this one. This is it." I was shocked to some degree. And I began to realize that I was in my own fucking way. Trying to become a great writer? What bullshit. That's what my teachers were trying to tell me, to show me. They were saying, over and over: "this is just a bunch of ego junk, why aren't you just writing?" I couldn't see it, then I suddenly saw it. I began letting go when I wrote, and while there were ups and downs, there were much more: "yep, you're grooving on this one." Things loosened, some publications came in, and I slowly, ever so slowly, began to understand how to work without getting in my own fucking way. My teachers were there to teach me some about craft, but mainly they were there to help me get out of the way of myself, and sometimes the only way to that can happen is if we get beat up a little, or even a lot.

Looking back, was I beat up a lot? Yeah. But those fists had love in them. I love those teachers now, am so grateful for them. And sometimes I still need a good hard right cross.

Maybe this isn't the kind of thing I should be posting here. But, to paraphrase Amy Hempel, the thought that finally occurred to me in grad school, and that I think about often now: how do we know that what happens to us isn't good?

Gassho,
Alan

Used to be I could post something and it wouldn't get bashed. Then I had a schism with the sangha, and since then, it's been all-bashing. See, there's a point in time where it starts and it has nothing to do with the quality of my posts. If anything, they're less reactive and more thoughtful than they've ever been.

So yeah....you sorta need to know the history better.

Chet

[alan.r]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

you sorta need to know the history better.

Chet

The definitely makes sense. I really didn't think Jundo as picking on you though with his first response. I thought his post with the devil horns was just playing 'devils advocate' or whatever; playing with the idea, showing that a person can't be labeled so easily. In any case, probably better to stay out of things I don't know about.

Best to all,
Alan

[Jinyo]

Re: Even in Zen, God agrees with us.

Alan wrote

My teachers were there to teach me some about craft, but mainly they were there to help me get out of the way of myself, and sometimes the only way to that can happen is if we get beat up a little, or even a lot.

Alan - I truly happy for you that you feel the above approach worked for you. Personally - I find all this talk of 'tough love' and people being needed to get out of the way of themselves, etc a bit macho.

I was actually going to start a new thread on how women seemed to be outnumbered by men within buddhism and within this sangha. There are some very sensitive members here (male and female) but I do wonder if there's some imbalance that starts to show in subtle (and not so subtle) ways in the ethos. This is merely an observation.

I don't understand what Chet has done to elicit the level of harsh responses in this thread - no matter what the past history. It's made me feel very uncomfortable and on edge.

Like they say - if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen - right now I'm finding it uncomfortably hot and I'm not sure I want to stay in the kitchen.

Gassho

Willow