Monthly Schedule at Antaiji

[Koshin]

Great!! In the meantime, lets wait sitting in our butt

Thank you all for your teachings.


Gassho

Sent from Tapatalk 2

[Hans]

Hello Jundo and fellow Treeleafers,

great to hear that Muho has agreed to do this!

Gassho,

Hans Chudo Mongen

[Ishin]

Rev. Mujo, the German born Abbot of Antaiji here in Japan, confirmed with me today that he will come to lead a Zazenkai and offer a talk. However, it will need to be sometime after Rohatsu Sesshin in December.

I look forward to welcoming him, and maybe he can talk about some of this.

Gassho, J

Wonderful!

[Jundo]

Rev. Mujo, the German born Abbot of Antaiji here in Japan, confirmed with me today that he will come to lead a Zazenkai and offer a talk. However, it will need to be sometime after Rohatsu Sesshin in December.

I look forward to welcoming him, and maybe he can talk about some of this.

Gassho, J

[Ishin]

Thank you all for this teaching

Gassho C

[Jundo]

Sam, you seem to have the impression there's something wrong with you.

Is there actually something wrong with you? Or is there just dissonance between who you think you should be and how you actually feel? Maybe the dissonance, not you, is the problem.

Gassho,

Mc.

This is true. Not a thing to change or which can be changed.

Nonetheless, one seeks to do better each moment, changing what needs to be changed forsaking greed anger and ignorance.

Buddha seeking more and more each step to better embody Buddha. Such is not an either/or proposition!

Saying “we are already Buddha” is not enough if we don’t realize that, act like so!

Simple, exaggerated example …

Perhaps a fellow sits down to Zazen for the first time who is a violent man, a thief and alcoholic. He hears that “all is Buddha just as it is“, so thinks that Zen practice means “all is a jewel just as it is, so thus maybe I can simply stay that way, just drink and beat my wife and rob strangers“. Well, no, because while a thief and wife-beater is just that … a thief and wife-beater, yet a Buddha nonetheless … still, someone filled with such anger and greed and empty holes to fill in their psyche is not really “at peace with how things are” (or he would not beat and steal and need to self-medicate). In other words, he takes and craves and acts out anger and frustration because he does not truly understand “peace with this life as it is” … because if he did, he would not need to be those violent, punishing ways.

If the angry, violent fellow truly knew “completeness“, truly had “no hole in need of filling“, “nothing lacking” everything “complete just as it is” … well, he simply would not have need to do violence, steal and take drugs to cover his inner pain.

You see … kind of a non-self-fulfilling Catch-22.

Thus, our “goalless sitting” in Zazen is –not– merely sitting on our butts, self-satisfied, feeling that we “just have to sit here and we are Buddha“. Far from it. It is, instead, to-the-marrow dropping of all need and lack. That is very different. Someone’s “just sitting around” doing nothing, going no where, complacent or resigned, giving up, killing time, is not in any way the same as “Just Sitting” practice wherein nothing need be done, with no where that we can go or need go. For all is faced ‘head on’ and energetically as already whole and complete … even while we realize that the choices we make in life have consequences, that how we choose to walk the walk in this life, and the directions we choose to go, do make a difference!

More here ...

Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part XIV)

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?7692-Sit-a-Long-with-Jundo-Zazen-for-Beginners-%28Part-XIV%29

Gassho, J

[McGettigan]

Sam, you seem to have the impression there's something wrong with you.

Is there actually something wrong with you? Or is there just dissonance between who you think you should be and how you actually feel? Maybe the dissonance, not you, is the problem.

Gassho,

Mc.

One more thing: I come from the French countryside, the first time I visited Osaka in 2003 I told my wife: I cannot live here in this crowd and pollution without a tree to be seen...in 2006 I moved in Osaka and learned to practice with these towers of glass and steel as walking mountains and crowds as Bodhisattvas and Buddhas.

You can do it!

Gassho

T.

Taigu, thank you for this post. It has been very helpful to me.

Gassho,
Treena

[Taigu]

very strict

simplicity


...


T.

[Daitetsu]

By the way, I asked Muho to lead a guest Zazenkai here and offer a little talk. He seemed open to it. I will use this thread as reason to contact him and ask if he is still willing.

That's great!

Thanks and Gassho,

Timo

[Taikyo]

HI Jundo,
You understand me completely and and you misunderstand me

When I mentioned 'intensive retreats' what I actually said was

This not to say the experience has not been invaluable to my practice they have, but been no more invaluable than last Saturdays Zazenkai with Treeleaf or your practice of sitting each day

Now you only highlighted " ...no more invaluable than last Saturdays Zazenkai with Treeleaf or your practice of sitting each day" And if this is all I said then I would have been equating the two experiences in the way you suggest. But if you take the whole sentence you see what I what I meant was "both are as invaluable to my practice" There is a distinction I hope you agree!!

So in your above post I agree with you & I agree with you

Indeed when you say

On the other hand, they are very different ... much as climbing Mt. Everest is not the same as climbing a step stool in one's kitchen. There is a time when long and hard Practice has it's place, beating the selfish "me myself and i" into submission. One sits hours upon hours precisely because the self does not want to do so ... one cleans endless temple toilets and sweats in the fields because the self would rather be sitting watching reruns on the sofa.

It is much the same as I posted when I came back from Kanshoji, i.e:

For me it was not about whether the schedule was hard or long or early or late. To be honest if you want a schedule that in extremis then one can enrol in a boot camp or military training or even prison. So I do not think for me, although the time was hard, my time was not about hardship. It was more an opportunity to understand my self in a certain way. It was a time of choice and choosing flight or fight. What I mean is this, when the schedule dictates then one has a choice: the mental dialogue is “ this is not for me”; “or this is rubbish”; “why should I have to do this – this is not Zen; “How can I get out of this” It is only in such situation when our freedom to act ‘autonomously’, so to speak, is limited that we notice this kind of inner dialogue. ... To let such a flow a movement teach you the practice of forgetting the self or dropping of the ego and expand and merge into the universal self. It is a constant choice of indulging the ego or letting go, and in such a practice the choice is thrown into stark relief; that is an awareness of prominence caused by contrast. So for me I did find freedom in the form; find an inner resource to accept and see ‘as it is’; dropping the mind and doing so be free.

Deep Bows

David

[Jundo]

I have to agree with Taigu and Yugen Sam. Believe me I have sat some intensive retreats over the last few years and doing so will cure you of any 'romantic aspiration'. This not to say the experience has not been invaluable to my practice they have, but been no more invaluable than last Saturdays Zazenkai with Treeleaf or your practice of sitting each day, for as Jundo says

Hey David,

I completely agree with what you write! But also, I very much disagree! (Lovely thing about Zen is one can do that!)

Yes, just sitting in daily life, or our short Saturday Zazenkais are exactly the same as sitting for hours and hours, days and days in a monastery. In fact, sitting a moment of Zazen in one's living room is precisely the same as infinite Buddhas sitting endless Zazen for countless Kalpas of time ... precisely when one drops all thought otherwise. Not a lick of difference. No need to travel to a monastery or Tibet or Japan ... for there is truly no place in need or possibility of going. Truly so. I am not kidding.

On the other hand, they are very different ... much as climbing Mt. Everest is not the same as climbing a step stool in one's kitchen. There is a time when long and hard Practice has it's place, beating the selfish "me myself and i" into submission. One sits hours upon hours precisely because the self does not want to do so ... one cleans endless temple toilets and sweats in the fields because the self would rather be sitting watching reruns on the sofa. Different medicines for different patients and needs and times, and there is a time for many (maybe most) of us to spend long and hard hours struggling to attain the fact that ... there is nothing more in need of attaining.

So, I agree with your totally ... except that you are plain wrong.

By the way, I asked Muho to lead a guest Zazenkai here and offer a little talk. He seemed open to it. I will use this thread as reason to contact him and ask if he is still willing.

Gassho, Jundo

[Nengyo]

Thank you Taigu and Jundo. Excellent reminders for everyone and especially those of us who are prone to daydreaming of "better" places or "better" toys when things get stressful.

Metta and Gassho

[Daitetsu]

Hi Sam,

"The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."
- Robert Pirsig

Actually, no more needs to be said.


However, I'd like to add something. I have watched several interviews with Muho and documentaries about Antaiji (however, all in German as Muho is from Germany), it's a pity I missed him when he came near my region for a visit.
I can only say his Zen is not necessarily about "training hard", but it's about life. It's about what everyone makes of it. He teaches more or less the same Zen as Jundo or Taigu - perhaps with a slightly different flavor, but pretty much the same. It's Soto style, and Muho's influence is Kodo Sawaki (among others).
They don't just sit a lot there at Antaiji, but there is a lot of Samu, physical hard work. I daresay Antaiji is mostly for young, fit people.
Samu practice is the same like Zazen.

However, everything is zazen! Waiting at the bus stop is zazen. Going to the supermarket is zazen. S(h)itting on the toilet is zazen. If you practice with the appropriate state of mind that is.
You don't need a mountaintop, you don't need a lonely hut in the woods - you can find "it" wherever you are. Where do you want to go? It's all right there where you are!

Zen is about life, it's not about testing oneself how much one can endure.
Believe me, people at Antaiji are no masochists. They are not there to proof something to themselves.

BTW: I have seen a nice talk by Muho about the Tenzo Kyokun, I could imagine him as a guest speaker at a zazenkai here, but I don't know whether our teachers have contact to him or not.

Gassho,

Timo

[Taikyo]

I have to agree with Taigu and Yugen Sam. Believe me I have sat some intensive retreats over the last few years and doing so will cure you of any 'romantic aspiration'. This not to say the experience has not been invaluable to my practice they have, but been no more invaluable than last Saturdays Zazenkai with Treeleaf or your practice of sitting each day, for as Jundo says

Yes, there is a time to sit long, there is a time to sit short ... but most vital is to always sit beyond and right through "long vs short". Sit longly short, and shortly long ... softly hard and hardly soft.

And certainly Taigu is right - living your life everday in the world with its multivarious challenges is a great koan. Gassho David