Please offer any advice

[Jundo]

Hey Buddha Will,

If a buddha thinks too much about the outcome of their actions, then that Buddha is not acting, but is caught up in their thinking. Everyone has the answers in them. Why is Lynn asking for advice when the only advice she needs is her own or the advice she gets from the cushion? If she makes a wrong decision, then she makes a wrong decision. Do what needs to be done.

I guess it all comes back to the shut up and sit (or practice) motto.

Do you agree Buddha Jundo?

Gassho Will

Well, I agree to a point. I do not think that the cushion is the source of all answers. Nor do I think that the Buddha was necessarily about always acting without thinking and weighing (in some situations, such as swinging an ink brush or playing a flute or jumping on a skateboard, perhaps ... but other actions in life take weighing and planning, like the great planning it probably took when Dogen decided to build Eiheiji temple.). Nor do I think that anyone, even the Buddha, has ever had "all the answers" in them about ordinary, everyday, mundane choices in life. Even the Buddha had to weigh what he would do, and how he would do it, in his teaching.

After he had attained Enlightenment, the Buddha sat beneath the bodhi tree for seven days in a deep meditation. When he emerged from it, he went and sat under a different tree to consider what he had come to understand .... The Buddha, too, had doubts about teaching and was hesitant to do so, for reasons unknown but subject to much learned discussion. Legend says that the Buddha decided to teach only after the god Brahma encouraged him to do so. He first thought he should approach his former teachers Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, but they had died.
http://www.as.miami.edu/phi/bio/Buddha/bud-life3.htm

In fact, what the cushion presents to us is our great freedom as human beings, and that means the freedom to make choices. There is nothing about enlightenment that would tell someone absolutely and definitively, I think, whether to have a cheese sandwich or a pasta dish for dinner, which school to attend, what to do in the workplace in a situation like Lynn described. So, in summary, I think the Buddha was enlightened about Reality and the Whole Universe, but not about cheese sandwiches!

Where I agree with you, Will, is that the cushion will clear our thinking and perceptions in important ways ... ego and emotions are reduced or dropped, greed anger and ignorance not our guide, the noise within the head reduced and an inner voice better heard, we can understand the motivations of ourselves and others with heightened clarity. Finally, when a decision is reached, we will pursue it with a steadier heart and balance. Yes, that is true.

What Lynn wrote about Sanzen and Sangha is exactly right I think. Which reminds me, if anyone wants to do some Sanzen, drop me a line.

Now, I think I will go make myself a sandwich.

Gassho, Jundo the All-Konwing and All-Seeing

[Jundo]

Will,

I think that this is a wonderful statement of so many of the fruits of Zazen ...

Insight, Realization, Truth, non-grasping. Shattering the mirror. Knowing fully who and what we are, by sitting everyday and moment. Learning moment to moment the ways that we cause trouble and make mistakes. Not being convinced by our little worries and feelings. Not ignoring them, but coming back to the moment and just letting them go. learning how we get confused and what confusion is. Building character, strength, compassion, understanding, intimacy and EXCRUTIATING HONESTY. understanding hesitation, fear, lust, passion, tension, calm, joy, sadness. Learning to deal with people, understanding people, understanding ourself, Noticing how, when we are angry, the person we are talking to, if not mindful, has a reaction to that. No? You never noticed that before? You never noticed that when you feel uncomfortable or tense that sometimes this reflects on others? However; what ever insight we might have, WE KEEP SITTING

That's a keeper that I am going to refer to from time to time. Nicely said.

But, still, I think that it doesn't mean we will always know how to act in a particular situation, and we will sometimes face dilemnas. In those cases, we should feel free to think of all the possible outcomes, weigh pros and cons, and ask friends ... including Sangha friends ... for advise. That's what I do.

Gassho, J

PS - While making my sandwich, it hit me that the Buddha would have probably just eaten whatever was in his begging bowl. So, not the best example. But, sure you get the point anyway.

[Keishin]

please give advice

Well, don't you know, after reading Will's post, I had to go looking for what in the heck he was referring to and Bingo! I found it.
Quite an interesting read this one, had me on the edge of my seat.
It reminds me of that zen teaching story 'we'll see'
The farmer's son has been away and comes home just as it's harvest time and everyone in the village says 'Oh, what good luck' and the father says 'we'll see.'
The son falls off the wagon hauling hay and breaks his leg and can't help with the rest of the harvest and all the villagers say 'Oh, how terrible' and the father says 'We'll see.' The next day the soldiers come through the village and round up all the fit able bodied men to press them into service and the son can't go with his broken leg and all the villager's say "Oh, what good luck" and the father says 'We'll see....'

A practicing buddhist in the workplace is a very good idea--every workplace ought to have one! (at least)

I for one, am experiencing horrendous things at work. Quite quite despicable.
I really don't care to write it all out, because I've been living it enough already! I'm taking it day by day and doing what I can. If I didn't have my years of practice under my belt, I'd probably be a basket case, but as it is, everything there is to enjoy, I enjoy--even as I am out on a professional limb, with a tiger above and tiger below--right now--a delicious, scrumptious strawberry!
Maybe someday I'll be able to distill the mean spirited minutia into something coherent which may benefit others, but for now, I'm up to my arm pits in alligators.
The obvious would be--leave--and surely that will happen at some point, in the meantime, I can do my best: my best while I am where I am: I can't just walk out, nor is that what I want to do. I made a conscious decision not to take any of it 'personally,' so my interactions are without any such emotional undercurrent.
While I am being targeted, I do not feel myself to be a 'victim'
I can't just walk away, but nothing is 'forcing' me to do anything: I am not invested in outcome. There is confidence it will work out--but no investment as to what has to happen to make things 'work out.'
It's a real 'We'll see' alright!

Anyway--back to this particular thread--I think lay practice is exactly like this:
the issues of an ordinary person in the daily life of the here and now. We can't help but help each other as we get off the zafu and enter places frought with approaches to others that don't square with the BB's (buddhist basics).
It's not an us and them, at least I'm not finding it that way--
it's more of an us and us. One big boat......heading to the other shore....
continuously heading to the other shore.. gone, gone gone...having never left, Bodhisvaha!

Anyway, thanks for a very good thread. Good luck Lynn, and 'we'll see!'
keishin