Grit in the Lotus

[FaithMoon]

Thank you Jundo

[martyrob]

Thank you for that ,Jundo.I didn't get your original post on this thread and felt it a bit trite and if I didn't challenge you you'd be no good to me as a teacher and I'd be no good to you as a student. Your further elaborations are really helpful because I began to think why am I doing this if I can't answer the 2.00 am moments!



Before beginning Zen Practice, 2:00 AM was just 2:00 AM.

After a time, 2:00 AM was not longer 2:00 AM.

Now, 2:00 AM is just 2:00 AM again ... yet not.


That makes sense. Next step is to embody it. Thank you.


And thank you Rich for you touching story about your wife. I too appreciate you direct style. Your brevity is so much more eloquent than my prolixity.


Now Zazenkai!


Thank you all.


Martyn


Sitting Now

[Doshin]

Kokuu thank you. Your essay and the discussion that followed was a great teaching. It prompted me to revisit the 2 am moments I spent with others. It reminded me of my many 2 am moments in the past when death seemed a blessing. I do not know if my zen practice helped me. However it was the pain that brought me back to my practice after many years iof being pulled away from it after disillusionment. The thoughts of all here have given me much to consider.

i send metta your way, and thank you for your humanity.

Gassho

Randy
satoday

[Kyonin]

If one looks at their words closely, almost any Buddhist Teacher I know (me too) will teach that death is "an absolute illusion" caused by ignorance (by the human mind judging divisions such as "start" and "finish") ... but that illness and death are also experiences that are truly felt and cause human beings to grieve and greatly suffer. This Way provides complete escape from sickness, fear, hopeless and even death itself right at the Heart of the very real 2AM sickness, fear, hopelessness and death itself.

Thank you, Jundo.

At some very basic level this has been a little of what I have learned living in pain. The more I resisted and fought against not feeling pain, the more miserable I was.

In zaze I have seen this as a revelation in the way that it's something I have read for years, but it's until now that I understand. Or at least I think I do.

By no means I am saying I understand Kokuu's pain or how great zen masters died in stories.

But I am sure that living in acceptance of what is, is much easier not to suffer and just go along with it.

Gassho,

Kyonin
#SatToday

[Rich]

Hi all

A blog post I wrote earlier on illness, stories and seeing life as it is:

https://andykokuumclellan.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/grit-in-the-lotus-or-when-zen-is-not-so-pretty/


Gassho
Kokuu
#sattoday

Some thoughts on pain

The habitual fear based reaction to pain is quite deep and to sit and witness that is not easy. to simply be pain is easy to say but difficult to do.

For some of my chronic pain, the pain is the same but now I don't care.

Internal organ pain is the scariest and most difficult to work with.

Muscular skeleton pain usually responds to rest and then gradual strengthening of the area.

Pain and pleasure are in the same area of the brain. Two sides of the same coin?

Just sitting and breathing deeply can be very healing. Energy just flows up your spine to the top of your head and down your chest to the Hara.

SAT today

[Kaishin]

Rich, your wife sounds like she was incredible woman. I hope I have that kind of equanimity when facing death. Thank you for sharing

-satToday

[Joyo]

If I don't point out that this Way offers a path through and beyond "2:00 AM", then I am not sure what the purpose of this Practice would be. Of course, so long as we are human and in these frail bodies, there will be "2:00 AM" ... yet there is also such which is Timeless Unbound. Further, as we move down this Path, one realizes that "2:00 AM" and "Timeless Unbound" have been one all along ...

Before beginning Zen Practice, 2:00 AM was just 2:00 AM.

After a time, 2:00 AM was not longer 2:00 AM.

Now, 2:00 AM is just 2:00 AM again ... yet not.

If I did not constantly remind folks of that Wisdom, there would be no reason for us to gather here.

Gassho, J

SatToday

Thank you for this, Jundo.


Gassho,
Joyo
sat today

[Rich]

Rich, your wife sounds like she was incredible woman. I hope I have that kind of equanimity when facing death. Thank you for sharing



-satToday

Our whole practice is being just now, trusting just now, and dropping the ego and all the thinking about what will happen. We are fortunate to have this path. Thanks for your comment.

SAT today

[Byokan]

Kokuu,

Thank you for sharing your post. It is beautifully written and very real. Jundo puts it perfectly when he says that you have a ministry, and I bow in gratitude for that.

It’s true, as soon as something happens we seem to instantly separate and begin telling the story of it, to ourselves or to others. This idea of the noble suffering, the illness as a battlefield and a proving ground, is sometimes true, and other times it is something we use, I think, as a shield against the very scary reality that, well, shit happens. Sometimes it seems predictable -- my Dad had a cigarette in his hand every moment of the day for half a century, and guess what, he eventually died of lung cancer. Sometimes it seems random. My boss at my old job had a beautiful two-year old son who had a stomach ache, which turned out to be stomach cancer, and that tiny little kid died a horrible, slow, painful death. Sometimes the reality of illness is too horrible, too real, too much, too fast, or too slow. Sometimes it’s very ugly, and sometimes it’s just dull and grey and endless. We try to make sense of it. We want to know that it isn’t all for nothing. We search for meaning, every one of us.

Here’s a story. Two of my friends got in a car accident recently. No one’s fault -- a moose jumped out on the road. One friend walked away with a few bruises and a cut on her hand. The other lies in the intensive care unit at the hospital, paralyzed, broken and struggling to breathe. Why? Because a moose was walking by. Since this happened I’ve heard people telling stories about it from all different angles, and every story, I’ve noticed, teaches a “lesson” that just happens to coincide with that person’s beliefs, opinions, or worldview. “It just goes to show you...” they all say, and shake their heads, and then fill in the blank to serve their own needs.

Nothing is more human than telling stories. Stories can help us connect, help us know that we’re not alone, help us find meaning, and help us teach, learn, and remember what we need to know. Or help us forget what we cannot bear. Part of our buddhist practice is looking deeper, to uncover the original reality that is there before we tell the stories. Zen practice hopefully enables us to be fully present with what is happening right now, with the weeping sores, the piss, pus and snot, the anger, the fear, the dread, the ragged breath, the scream, the moan, the empty stare, the silence.

Zen practice doesn’t do anything to make any of that better. It doesn’t transform anything. It doesn’t make anything go away. What it does is enable us to see that the suffering is not all that is there. Beauty, grace, freedom, the light shining through, the music... it’s all there too, right inside the ugly, the darkness, the crying out. It really is there. All at once, all one, all real, all illusion, all truth. And yes, I say from experience that this can be experienced in the very midst of suffering, pain, and hopelessness. Right in the worst moment... not only in retrospect after things have gotten better.

But we are human, and none of us is so enlightened as to be in this full equanimity and awareness all the time, no one I know, anyway. Suffering is real. Illness, being human, is not a Zen exam, not for those who are ill, and not for those who love them. All we can do is our best at any time, all of us, those who suffer, and those who bear witness to the suffering. Your post, Andy, wakes me up to be mindful of the stories I’m telling, and inspires me to just be here with it all.

Gassho
Lisa
sat today

[Jundo]

Lovely.

[Kokuu]

Rich, thank you so much for your insights and sharing. Your wife's story is very touching.

Lisa, that is beautiful. Thank you The point about people often writing about suffering post hoc is not that you cannot find the beauty and grace within the very moment of pain but about how it has then become a story all of its own. Your are completely right that we all bring our own story to bear on a situtation and it is completely human. For the person lying in the hospital bed it is a blessing when those who come to visit keep those stories and lessons to themselves and come with an open mind and heart.


Jundo - yes, perhaps there should have been a bit more lotus as well as the grit.

FaithMoon - I love that talk. Thank you


Gassho
Kokuu
#satthismorning

[Jundo]

Jundo - yes, perhaps there should have been a bit more lotus as well as the grit.

Gritty Lotus, Lotusy Grit.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Jakuden]

Thank you everyone for all the shared wisdom in this thread, I have re-read it several times and will continue to do so! And thank you for starting it Kokuu, IMHO the post reflects where you are/have been and therefore is perfect as it is... and is fertile ground for discussing the heart of practice and helping the rest of us learn.

Gassho,
Sierra
SatToday

[Shinzan]

Kokuu, Martyn and Lisa, your thoughts bring forth what, for me, is the essence of this practice, its ability to transform anguish by presence. True empathy is the steadfastness to STAY, to stay with whatever is arising, be it physical pain or emotional turmoil. Being with oneself in the midst of anguish. Being with someone else in their anguish, in the certainty that they have the innate ability to be with it too. And that the act of staying with their pain, hearing their story, allows them to hear it too, by which they transform it. This is the why and how of a buddha's "wisdom and compassion." This also releases my need to fix/help/change/enable/rescue the situation to relieve my own anxiety.

When we sit zazen, we stay with all the turmoil that naturally comes up. In the next hour, I might be able to stay with the angry person in front of me. In the next year, I might be able to stay with the distressing diagnosis. In another time, I might be able to stay with the traumatic death of a loved one. Or maybe not. Then I hope to stay with my own vulnerability, my own escapism. I try to hold space for my heartache. And for others' heartaches. I think that's why the robe and bowl are emblematic of this lifeway: the vast field of presence and the embracing bowl that can contain all our humanness and anguish; wisdom and compassion.

Thanks, all, for triggering up this whole thread of our thoughts.
_/grit\_ Shinzan

[Kokuu]

That is lovely, Shinzan. Thank you. I especially like your notion that the robe and bowl hold that space for us to embrace the difficult stuff. A powerful image.

"All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does."

-- Jane Hirshfield


Gassho
Kokuu
#sattoday