Cave of Ghosts

[Myosha]

Words fail actions prevail. Yay Zen!


Gassho,
Edward

[Jundo]

Hi Tony. Really good question. We don't do it (sit with the goal you describe) because if we don't "reach" that goal we create problems. oh crap, I'm not zazening well - I need to be clearer, purer, more mindful, more aware. So, it's not that there aren't good days during zazen (and, as Jundo mention, it's not that there's not "good" zazen), but it's also true that there are bad days of zazen, and by dropping notions of good and bad, we learn to accept things as they are. Messy mind today is messy mind today - for a beginner, if this keeps happening, I'm sure Jundo can give some advice; for a person who has practiced for a while, it just means it's messy mind today and that's okay, and in the deep experience of it being okay, maybe there is a moment of just sitting in front of the wall and messy mind is gone; maybe not, too, but the point is that we can't have perfect blue sky blue mind every day, and making meditation about "getting" that mind is making it like all the other crap in our life - a thing to chase. So we drop goals and allow.

When people say there is nothing lacking, they really mean it! But this doesn't mean that we become rocks, wasting all our days in a state seated sleep, as good old Hakuin says. In the end, we intimately come to the realization that all life is practice. Practice done in activity is a billion times better than practice done in inactivity, says Hakuin. Just do it!

Alan, Ben (and Hakuin), nicely said. Cloudy days just cloudy, clear days just clear. One thus finds a "Big C" Clarity and Illumination that shines through and precisely as both "clouds" and "clear".

And we bring that from the cushion into all of life.

If I understand this correctly are you saying we need to sit with the kind of attitude specified above instead of just sitting? Is that only for times when an emotion is overpowering or for all the sitting in general?

Don't you think "sitting with an(y) attitude" is adding something to your zazen? I understand all of that attitude you describe comes as a by-product of sitting. but do we need to try to sit with that attitude specifically? Don't you think trying to maintain an attitude like that itself will set up a goal-oriented approach to your sitting and adds guilt when you realize you are off that during your sitting?

I think that we always need to sit with the attitude that sitting is Whole, Complete, Sacred, Beyond "Good or Bad", with nothing to change, nothing lacking ... the only place to be and action to undertake in the whole universe (during the timeless time of sitting, anyway). Any goals for anything more than "Just This" are dropped away for they are unneeded. It is not just when emotions are overpowering, but always. If one does not do so, it is just what we call "dead sitting". This was Dogen's attitude on Just Sitting.

Why? Well, I believe that we sit in order to see all of life as Whole, Complete, Sacred etc. ... the only place to be. The "little self" which always needs something, runs toward or runs away, has to be someplace else and do something, feels lack or craving, is thus put out of a job.

You say that it may "add guilt when you realize you are off that during your sitting"? Well, with the above attitude of "nothing lacking", how can one be off (except by thinking that "something is lacking", I suppose)?

You said:

What I found though is that in other practices where they have a technique, this goal or the need for enlightenment/progress becomes stronger as you practice as you are investing something (by doing a technique) in your every day sitting. With shikantaza though, as you sit investing nothing in your sitting, the need for progress slowly subsides.

I agree. Yet, as the need for "progress" slowly subsides ... we do get better and more experienced at Practice, and find our True Home, Buddha-Mountain (which we never left). We make real progress!

Funny how that works, huh!?

Oh, Lu and Willow ... I read your comments a few times. I agree that, during sitting, we best "witness" thoughts and not engage them.

When doing so, we may actually find that the friction and "hard border" between the self and the "everything not my self" rest of the world softens, or (some timeless times) fully drops away. What comes is the Interflowing Wholeness and Fullness of "Emptiness" (which is anything but "empty!") The friction evaporates because one needs "two to tangle", like needing two opposing parties in order to have a war.

Without "two", anger is not possible, "problems" and frictions are not possible. One experiences such on the cushion.

Then, hopefully, rising from the cushion ... back into the world of me and you, bosses and problems, war and tangling, sickness and health, beautiful and ugly ... one may still carry some sense of that "not two"too, the Interflowing Wholeness and Fullness.

I saw a nice Dogen quote today from Shushogi, resonating with all this. Nirvana is not apart from life and death and all this tangled life ... the ups and downs of the mountain, the good moments and hard moments of the climb, IS Buddha-Mountain.

The most important issue of all for Buddhists is the thorough clarification of the meaning of birth and death. If the buddha is within birth and death, there is no birth and death. Simply understand that birth and death are in themselves nirvana; there is no birth and death to be hated nor nirvana to be desired. Then, for the first time, we will be freed from birth and death. To master this problem is of supreme importance.

Gassho, J

[kidbuda]

Wow! nice thread. Nothing to add, gonna keep reading.

Gassho

kb