Nothing to attain?

[RichardH]

As fine a way of expressin' Practice-Enlightenment as can be.

Gassho, J

Thank you, Jundo. Like you say it isn't rocket science. This .."By looking, you actually dig the hole of lack..also sums it up for me. Gassho, kojip

[Nengyo]

As I read this, I thought of an analogy between my own zen practice and love of working out. It may not be a great analogy for non attainment (I'm winging it), but I will give it a shot:

When I first started lifting weights I did so because I was short, skinny, and weak. None of that was a primary problem though. The real problem as I saw it, was that girls dug big strong guys (yeah, I grew up in the 80's action hero days). So I began to lift weights. I had no plan, had no clue what I was doing, but I knew I was on the path that would fix all my problems. After a couple years of lifting weights I got stronger. I got better at lifting and I got a girl (a pretty one too, so it was very positive reinforcement.) However, I did not stop lifting weights, I actually began lifting more often. I wanted to be as strong as I could for my body weight. I worked hard and got strong. It was good. However I joined the army and strength was no longer everything. I had to run, do pullups, and all that fun stuff. I still lifted weights, but mostly to help out the other stuff I was doing. After years of just working out as assistance to other things, I put a gym in my house to lift every day. I wanted to get really strong again. I wanted to squat and deadlift over 400 pounds and bench over 305 pounds. I lifted big for a couple of years working towards this goal... until I got hurt. Then I had to start over from the bottom. It sucked, but today I'm almost fully recovered and back on the road to getting strong as ever. Of course you are thinking, "how the hell does this relate to non-attainment?"

At every step of my lifting life, I've had goals. Short term goals, long term goals, daily goals, and sometimes goals that I made up on the spot just to test myself out. For most of my life I would have told you that the goals are it. Lifting without them is spinning your wheels. But here is the funny part. When I was hurt, lifting less than I did when I started 20 years earlier I still loved the gym as much as ever. I would walk into my gym with the same clothes, the same shake, the same rituals and press my tiny physical therapy bands, just like I was pressing a million pounds. I was happy just to be there. I realized that I lift, just to lift. The goal is invented. The experience isn't. One day I will be weak and old as if I never lifted at all. The goals will have all melted away, but the underlying spirit will be there. The calmness of chalking up my hands, the feel of the bench, the smell of rubber matting, friends pushing you to lift more, and the solitude of lifting in my garage on a cold winter morning will always be there. The goals will fade away, but the life, the experience, the path was what mattered all along. I think running is the same. One day you wake up and it isn't about going faster or longer. It's about lacing up your shoes and feeling the crunch of gravel through the sole of your shoes.

It seems to me that some Buddhist schools of thought have you walk along a long path with many goals along the way. They may promise that you will accomplish something at each level and I'm sure you do accomplish something. However the master knows that when you get to the end you didn't accomplish anything at all that wasn't already there. They are like competing exercise programs and Soto zen is the old crazy guy in the gym telling you that it doesn't matter what program you do, but that you should pay attention to your time in the gym because it is more important than you think. Shikantaza is going to the gym after spending years on different programs and realizing the old man was right and that you are just happy to be there.

So, did I get close or is my understanding of zen as bad as my current lifting numbers?

[Memo]

...the magic of ordinary... this rings my bell!...if there is any magic to seek in zen (zazen) it's in this ordinary ...and not that I am seeking any magic...

[Jundo]

[galen]

Actually, this is a good time to bring up something you mentioned, Galen, on another thread.



What you describe may be a lovely and powerful Practice, but it is not what I would call goalless Shikantaza as we Practice here. Why? The reason is rather subtle.

When we sit, we just sit, radically dropping all need or encouragement of some "super-consciousness" or deep experience of samadhi. The reason is simply that, to the marrow, we drop the self's need to get somewhere other than here. Now, if "here" happens to be some deep flavor of samadhi or the like ... that is fine. However, neither do we sit with any desire or attraction to be or remain there over here. In fact, we tend to move on and return to this ordinary awareness, right here in the room where we sit. If "here" happens to be boredom or thinking about the laundry, that is fine too ... although we likewise drop all desire for such thoughts too. We drop all desire for any thoughts ... even thoughts that we want to be either free of or filled with desire (thus realizing true freedom even from such desire!). We let them drift away too without grabbing. We simply sit, dropping all clinging and "running after", thus letting thoughts and emotions (of greed or anger and attachment) drift out of mind without grabbing or stirring them up and becoming all tangled in their net. The radical forsaking of both "special or unusual states of mind" and "getting tangled in ordinary emotions, thought trains and attachments" --IS-- a most special state attained. By repeatedly falling into either some deep concentrated samadhi which pulls one from this world (much as if one were always sitting in some drug induced trance) ... or indulging in thinking long trains of ordinary, unspectacular thought such as "how much I love/hate peanut butter" ... one is losing the point and power of Shikantaza.

Now, of course, rising from the cushion ... we can engage in all manner of activities as a form of "Shikantaza". We can chant the Heart Sutra, change a tire or baby diaper, clean the monastery kitchen or the kitchen at home, work in the garden or the office, with the same core of non-attachment amid attachments, peace at the heart of life's messy pieces, non-doing in/as/through-and-through the 1000 things in need of doing in our busy day. That might include, I suppose, a period devoted to tasting some samadhi as much as making peanut butter sandwiches (both sacred acts, by the way, when the magic of the most ordinary is realized as such).

However, when sitting ... we just sit. We do not seek to feel peaceful, to feel bliss, to feel some other-worldly state or anything such. We simply sit ... crossing the legs and holding the hands in mudra as the only place to be in all space and time, the only place one can be, the only such action to do or which needs doing in that moment.

It is not the samadhi state so much or lack thereof (Dogen and others' definition of "Zen Samadhi" was unrelated to attaining or not attaining such states), but your words "and it is getting better and better."

For us, the Buddha's revelation in seeing the morning star was most ordinary and wonderfully extra-ordinary at once! Here, just here, is here all along ... when one's eyes are finally open, and the mind is open to see. Peanut Butter from the jar is, when tasted with a Buddha's tongue beyond and piercing right through both aversion and attraction (and peanut allergies and the moderation of a healthy diet ), the flavor of all time and space, simply ambrosia.

Gassho, Jundo

Thank you Jundo....... for pointing that out to me again. I am not confused or misled, and was waiting for you to comment on this, much like you have here, once again, thanks. I am not trying or clinging to anything past or in the future. I am also just sitting and in no hurry to get to any level or state, just sharing what was and what process I am comfortable with. No insinuation that someone else might either, but also realize you must make a point for the larger whole that view this site.

Your reading a little into what I said and that is just fine. 'better and better' means nothing but my comfort level, as you could be said about zazen or other meditations.

[Nengyo]

This is going up in my gym for sure. I'll have to put up a notice that any similarities in our built is purely coincidental!

[Jundo]

Thank you Jundo....... for pointing that out to me again. I am not confused or misled, and was waiting for you to comment on this, much like you have here, once again, thanks. I am not trying or clinging to anything past or in the future. I am also just sitting and in no hurry to get to any level or state, just sharing what was and what process I am comfortable with.

Ｌｏｖｅｌｙ．　Ｊｕｓｔ　ｂｅ　ｓｏ．

Ｇａｓｓｈｏ，　Ｊ

[galen]

Ｌｏｖｅｌｙ．　Ｊｕｓｔ　ｂｅ　ｓｏ．

Ｇａｓｓｈｏ，　Ｊ

You are the online clever one.



G a s s h o !!!!!!, g