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ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE -
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Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkSat today
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Hi Tony,
I don't know how to answer your questions in posts. I feel that you know the answer to your questions but you go ahead and ask the question anyway. It's very irritating. But this is just my opinion and an opportunity for practice on my part. Thank you.
Gassho, Jishin, STComment
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I believe you Jishin.
But you have to appreciate I really do NOT know the answer to the questions I am asking. In some dark as yet unexplored corner of my mind I may know - but I'm looking for some directions, guidance maybe that will help me see what you see.
I do as instructed daily, as others do. Yet I still feel a fraud as if I am like an Elvis impersonator or one of those people who dress up like an Native Americans but come from Scotland (no offence meant [emoji6]) - my point being it feels contrived and wholly inert.
Yet still I sit....
If my questions help others ground out their faith then my silly mind is by proxy helping so that's a good thing.
Tony...
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkSat todayComment
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If Dogen worked for me......
Hi Alan,
It's a little like a feeling that I'm deluding myself into believing that just sitting equates to something of value - let alone Enlightenment. I am after all, just sitting there.
I can't see how the wish to reduce my delusions and the subsequent reduction in the Dukkha I experience is wrong to seek out.
Do I guess the fraud is this. The feeling that sitting like this is no different than dressing up as a Jedi, or a Wizard, or a Zen monk....its hollow (speaking for myself of course) and there's nothing going on, on that cushion.
Lot of waffle but thought it might work that way
Tony...
Sat today
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by dharmasponge; 12-09-2015, 09:19 AM.Sat todayComment
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Hi Tony,
Hmmm, well, I have several thoughts about this. Maybe others will, too.
First, here's my zennie response: I don't think it's wrong to want to reduce your delusions or to reduce Dukkha. That's okay. We all wanted that at some point - it's why we turned to Buddhism most likely. At the same time, if we don't let that wanting/seeking go, then all we do is seek and seek and seek. Around and around. In other words, then I just seek and want and seek and want. We turn dharma and meditation into a game, we turn life into a play thing, a fantasy, where reality is not right here and right now, it's somewhere else we have to get. But reality is right now. Also, when we do this seeking and wanting and chasing, it becomes all about me. My suffering. My enlightenment. My realization. And that doesn't work - that makes us stuck - that sends us in circles. It can't be all about us. Life isn't just a play thing, though it's nice to play sometimes. So, we sit to let go of ourselves, to let go of our fantasies, our games. When we sit with that attitude, then there is something whole, something complete, something beyond our little self that was always there. Then we can do what we do, which is to be here with others, for others. I've been reading The Wholehearted Way, so right now I like to think about it in the terms of that book: the self settling into the self. The self living out its life as only the self. But the self isn't my individuality, it is everything. Settling into everything is zazen. Everything settled and revealing the self is zazen.
Here's my a-little-less-zennie response: I would say that this feeling of being a fraud is worth investigating. Do you feel like you're a fraud when you eat dinner? Do you feel like a fraud at work? Many people feel they wear a mask in certain areas of their life. That means there is doubt there. We all have doubt. We're all with you. Many people don't feel at home in the world. I didn't for years. So, I would say, investigate this feeling. Other people feel this way too. Could you have compassion for them? I think you probably already do. Then have some compassion for yourself. You're not a fraud - you're just whatever you are right now, and sitting zazen opens that up, allows us to settle into what we are. I'll be sitting with you.
Gassho,
Alan
sat todayLast edited by alan.r; 12-09-2015, 02:48 AM.ShōmonComment
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Ah, more easy softballs!
You have this backwards. It is Buddhism 101 that this daily experience of the life-self-world by the self with its wants, judgments, feeling of incompleteness, frictions and fights, past present future, imposed demarcations of life and death, self-other (aka "Samsara") is the "self-delusion."
So, how could sitting in the Total Immersion of Satisfaction as Just This, beyond judgment, within Completeness, dropping all frictions and fighting, not measuring time, without thought of "life vs. death" and all other mental categories and divisions. letting the hard borders between "self" and the rest of this life and world soften or fully drop away ...
... how could that be the "delusion"?
To say otherwise is to call the state of disease as "health," and mistake the medicine for the disease.
No, it is not wrong in the least. But as you know by now, Tony, some treasures are best found by giving up the hunt! One does not find what is right in hand (and is the hand too) by seeking over distant hills, pointing with the finger to someplace over there.I can't see how the wish to reduce my delusions and the subsequent reduction in the Dukkha I experience is wrong to seek out.
Our daily life in Samsara might be termed "dressing up" and getting on with the theater of comedy and tragedy and little dramas and self-delusion of this so called "reality show" which is just a sometimes beautiful but often ugly farce. This "reality show" is a total set up.Do I guess the fraud is this. The feeling that sitting like this is no different than dressing up as a Jedi, or a Wizard, or a Zen monk....its hollow (speaking for myself of course) and there's nothing going on, on that cushion.
Waking up is perhaps taking off the costume, turning on the stage lights, seeing off behind the curtain and beyond the hard borders to the Total Show. One does that simply by putting down the script, turning up the lights, and sitting in Silent Illumination which is All Broadway.
Don't think the "Truth" is the fraud, and confuse the fraud for truth. Our way is sometimes to drop the "costume" of bodymind completely, but always to see the Truth that shines right through and know it as just this bit of "theatrical staging" even as we get on with life ... because not our time for final bows and curtain calls yet, so the "Show Must Go On". It may be a play, but continue to read your own lines even as one enjoys the acting watching from front row center.
Sometimes the way to be free from the "fiction" of Dukkha may be to replace it with another "fiction" that is closer to Truth? There is an aspect of Zazen which is performative, an "enactment ritual" as some say, sitting as Buddha and thus realizing Buddha, the fakir "Faking It Until Making It" perhaps? Soto priest, Historian and Dogenologist Taigen Leighton speaks of Zazen as such an "enactment ritual" ...
Zazen as Enactment Ritual
This Emptiness is anything but hollow.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLast edited by Jundo; 12-09-2015, 07:32 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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First, take what I say with a grain of salt. I don't know anything. I just try to put what I've experienced into words.
If you read or listen about Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment you'll notice that his experience wasn't the path to ending dukkha. His enlightenment experience was how he saw the truth and the path. That being the 4 noble truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path. He also sat regularly for the rest of his life. A simplified version of the way I see this all fitting together in the way we practice would suggest that zazen is the expression of the eightfold path in it's purest form. Now, obviously, since we're practicing, we won't see all of that immediately, so we have some really nice guidelines to follow on our way to perfect wisdom, the precepts. Even after that perfect wisdom starts making it's way into view, the small self can overcome us with its percieved needs, and I think maybe that never stops, so you have to continue sitting to keep that clarity that allows you to comfort the little self. Another thing to keep in mind is the first thing Shakyamuni said after he awakened was something to the effect of "I, the Earth, and all beings awaken simultaneously." We are already enlightened. We just have to sit down, shut up, and pay attention until we see it, and then, we see we should keep right on sitting there, because we were doing the right thing all along.
But, like I said, I'm not a Dharma teacher(at least not in the Zen master sense, everything is a dharma teacher if you're paying attention), so I could be talking out of my posterior region.
Gassho,
Carey sat todayComment
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Just sitting its just sitting,
Not question..
SattodayComment
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I know you're joking, but here's someone who'd probably agree with you:If Dogen worked for me......
...I'd likely fire him!
"Zen is a pedagogical disaster... Dogen is one of the worst..."
What a nice, good-humoured chap!
step lightly... stay free...
Jeremy
stComment
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Thanks Jeremy,
The professor has a strange understanding of the flow of Buddhist history from the simplicity of South Asia to increasing complexity of detail in the North, but he is not completely wrong.
Goallessness (which is not really giving up and just being without goals) and Thinking-Non-Thinking are a bit tricky to get one's brain around. I suggest all Treeleafers quit and go home. Maybe study neuroscience like professor Hyarinen, which is a much simpler subject to master.
And this did lead me to all of "Zenmonki's" videos, whom I had never heard of before. Apparently, a Zen performance artist connected to Antaiji perhaps? Hmmmmmm.
Hmmmmmm.
Gassho, JundoLast edited by Jundo; 12-10-2015, 04:13 PM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Hello Jeremy,
I have to say that I think the professor makes a good point. I've often wondered if I hadn't sat Vipassana first, if I would've as easily (though it wasn't necessarily "easy") made the switch to shikantaza. Of course, many zen teachings resonated even before I began earnestly sitting, so who knows. But there has been the intuitive feeling that learning shikantaza in a way that leads to it, rather than starts with it, could be of worth (I'm not critiquing anything, just sharing a thought). Learning first something like following breath, then learning something like vipassana or watching thoughts and feelings, and then shikantaza, which encompasses both and is also beyond - I think any student could begin to grasp the real implications of shikantaza in a fairly short period (not years, as he suggests: to use a well worn cliche, it'd be like someone learning to ride a bike: look, here are the peddles, that's where you feet go, here is the seat, these are the wheels, the brake, etc, but you don't have spend years figuring out how a bike works before you can ride one). Anyway, the reason for this feeling is because on the very, very rare occasions that people ask what type of meditation I practice, they are pretty baffled. It doesn't feel confusing to me anymore (well, sometimes it does), but to others, it's pretty outlandish stuff.
Anyway, thanks for sharing.
Gassho,
Alan
sat todayShōmonComment
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Yes, teaching people to give up the "more more more" chase after this and that is hard ... because that is what people (modern capitalist consumer society ones especially) do all day and night, running after the next shiny pair of tennis shoes, job promotion to pay for it, guru or self-help book.
Very hard to teach people to just be Whole with no inner hole to fill, with no other place in need of going, nothing more in need of doing. Very hard to show folks the Silence and Illumination that naturally shines through all the noise and darkness of life.
Worse, when they hear the message, they think it is preaching some inner passivity, quitting, resignation, acceptance of all our inner garbage just as it is.
Very hard to teach them to fill "Wholeness" even as we grab a hammer and fix what needs to be repaired, Stillness even as there are places to go and people to see and a baby to feed, Silence which is heard right through society's noise (including all those tv commercials for new tennis shoes).
Very hard. However, we must try. Some people hear, and some people just don't have the Karmic makeup to "get it". It has always been hard (probably why there are very few Buddhists left in India today, and why the whole population of China and Japan and Korea is not made of Enlightened Zen Masters).
Actually, Alan, I think a lot of folks have come to Zen after spinning through other kinds of Buddhism or other religious or seeking or endless self-help books, yet still struggle with the difficulty of how subtly simple crazy-wise Shikantaza is.
I am planning to undertake a couple of projects in the New Year to try to help things a little bit.
I will be somewhat updating and reorganizing our "We're Always Beginners" introductory materials to slide people into Shikantaza Practice a bit more smoothly. Among other tweeks, I believe I will encourage several months of breath following for those really new to the Practice before throwing them into the boundless and bottomless "deep end" of the pool of Just Sitting. Maybe they need to learn to settle a bit more before learning that there is Big S "Settling" that is not a matter of settled or unsettled.
I am also thinking to write a totally "not really Buddhist" Just Sitting Mindfulness book of the kind that Ken requested on another thread today. It will have most of the important lessons of this Way within it, but just perhaps in a more secular wrapping with so much over use of the "B" word. One reason I wish to write such a book is because I believe that most of the mindfulness courses out there now leave out too much of the important teachings in their effort to be secular. Also, they tend to be Vipassana based. While that is wonderful, it would also be good to offer a form of "Shikantaza" based "mindfulness meditation".
But, otherwise, that Professor is talking out of his hat. So many things in life are hard ... practicing baseball, being a parent, going to cooking school. Some people become good ball players or parents or chefs ... some just dabble ... some don't have what it takes ... some quit ... some stay with it and have a knack, becoming great ball players or mothers or master chefs. That is just how it is through all of life ... folks with different talents and resonances for different things.
Gassho, J
SatToday (stink at baseball, good dad, can make spaghetti and omelettes).Last edited by Jundo; 12-11-2015, 02:08 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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My take on the professor: I can't quite form an accurate picture of the impression of a total newbie. I may be rather new to Shikantaza, but I've studied other maps of the same territorry, and walked different roads that lead there. I can try to recall an image of what it was like at the start. I remember seeing all the talk of enlightenment, awakening, illumination, and true slves, true wills, and what-have-yous, and thiking "I gots ta get me some of that!" This is a patently absurd notion. This kind of practice requires letting go. You don't get anything. You give up everything. Striving to attan is the antithesis of the process. Now, would I have come to that conclusion had I not started with thoughts of a goal? I have no idea. I didn't come here on that road. So,the proff may be right, he may be wrong. I'd wager he's probably both. I imagine it depends on the person.
On another note, Jundo, I tend to get a bit worried when people start talking about secular mindfulness. I know you mentioned other aspects of the teachings in your bit about a "totally" not Buddhist mindfulness manual, and I hope a formal system of ethics is among those other aspects. If that is not addressed, there is potential for negative results. I won't go into detal about that here, but, suffice it to say, that potential is what led me to the Buddhist path, and away from systems that were more pragmatic, or even ethically dubious.
Gassho,
Carey sat today.Comment
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