Moving to the citayyy..Stevie Wonder!!!!!

[Aurkihnowe]

Yes, my first lengthy intro to Buddhism was "one Dharma" by Joseph Goldstein...It starts with a quote, I can't remember the source, that says, paraphrase, "all Dharma's are one, distinctions arise from the needs of the ignorant". I am searching for this book in my apartment, because it came to me that there is a funny story in it regarding Seung Sahn... I will post it when I find it later...Thanks everyone for the feedback..

Gassho Richard

[Jishin]

Hi Richard. I love the following poem. If I got stuck in an island with nothing to read, I would wish to have this poem, the Heart Sutra, Bendowa and a couple of other fascicles from Shobogenzo. Not much is needed other than sitting.

Hsin Hsin Ming:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood,
the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such
erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity by passivity
your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way
fail in both activity and passivity,
assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things
is to miss their reality;
To assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.

Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.
do not remain in the dualistic state.
Avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace of this and that,
of right and wrong,
the mind-essence ewill be lost in confusion.

Although all dualities come from the One,
do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend.
And when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes:
As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind):
the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult.
But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute:
the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited:
Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment
is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way
and there will be neither coming not going.
Obey the nature of things (your own nature)
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When the thought is in bondage the truth is hidden
for everything is murky and unclear.
And the burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with enlightenment.

The wise man strives to no goals
but the foolish man fetters himself.

There is one Dharma, not many.
Distinctions arise
from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind
is the greatest of all mistakes.

Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment
there is no liking and disliking.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams or flowers in air -
foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong,
such thoughts must
finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things are as they are,
of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this One-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached,
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in this causeless, relationless state.
Consider movement stationary
and the stationary in motion,
both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality
no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage:
Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.

All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no exertion of the mind's power.
Here thought, feeling,
knowledge and imagination are of no value.

In this world of suchness
there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality
just say when doubt rises "not two".
In this "not two" nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.

No matter when or where,
enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension
or diminution in time and space:
In it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, emptiness there,
but the infinite universe
stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries are seen.

So too with Being and non-Being.
Don't waste time in doubts and arguments
That have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things,
move among and intermingle without distinction.
To live in this realization
is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.
To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,
because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.

Translated from the Chinese by Richard B. Clarke
Featured in Jack Kornfield, Teachings of the Buddha

My 2 cents.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jyukatsu]

Marina
sat today

[Jundo]

All Buddhism is always exactly the same, although sometimes very different. Frequently quite different, yet just the same. (Yes, that is a Koan)

Personally, I am not a fan of Koan Centered Zazen, especially if practiced with some gaining idea aimed at some Kensho experience as the main point. I also suspect that what often happens in the Dokusan room (especially in the West these days) is all kinds of subjective and wild interpretations of Koans depending on whatever the Teacher or Students feel that day, whatever comes out of the mouth or body in the Dokusan room, what the teacher thinks he or she reads into the situation, and a lot of misunderstanding mixed with more than a little pop-psychology. I think it is these days very subjective, very arbitrary. (In Japan in much of traditional Rinzai, it actually went a very different direction, into a kind of rote memorization process where an "appropriate" response in Dokusan was selected out of a manual. It often became a kind of rote formalism, in which mouthing the "correct" response somehow channeled the understanding. Rinzai Priest and historian Victor Hori writes about this and some other differences of Koan Zazen Practice between Japan and the West from the bottom of p. 73 here. LINK). There is still too much emphasis, especially in the West, on reaching passing Kensho/Satori experiences as the goal of the Practice.

BUT ...

I am an outsider to the Koan Zazen tradition, there are so many experienced people who swear by it and love it. I may be wrong and more power to them. Different patients may benefit from different medicines.

I stick with what I do ... total arrival, no place to go, keep on going.

The most important thing is to learn to be still ... truly Still ... not running after the next shiny thing. Otherwise, people run after "the answer", without realizing that "the answer" largely involves learning how to stop running, and to rest whole and complete right here. Shikantaza embodies the power of radical non-attaining, self-fulfillment and completeness in the action itself, which is sometimes lost in any form of Buddhism which is centered on getting something. Shikantaza is an amazing medicine for the human tendency (especially among modern western folks in this consumer capitalist age) to run run run after shiny things, the next thing. People don't know what it is to be truly still in heart and need nothing else ... even for a few minutes.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[themonk614]

Moving to the citayyy..Stevie Wonder!!!!!

I am an outsider to the Koan Zazen tradition, there are so many experienced people who swear by it and love it. I may be wrong and more power to them. Different patients may benefit from different medicines.

Hmmm... I'm probably in the minority in Treeleaf, since I still sit with a koan. I'm one of those who has benefited immensely from koan-practice. Each koan that I've sat with has been a treasure trove of insight and wisdom for me.

By the way, having been struck with chronic illness 14 years ago and left without a Zen teacher and a sangha, I went back to sitting by myself with my first koan -- Case 1 of the Mumonkan which is known as Joshu's Dog or the Mu-koan.

Why then do I practice with Treeleaf? Having discovered Treeleaf a few weeks ago and having sat live during the zazenkais ('one way') for the past 2 weeks, I've found that sitting with others has been very helpful to my practice.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against shikantaza. And for me it's not really a matter of "right" or "wrong," koan-zazen or shikantaza. Each one of us has to find his/her own way. Or to borrow the words of one of the Miscellaneous Koans, each one of us has to find a way to "walk straight through the narrow mountain road with 99 curves."

As for me, as I go through the series for beginners and allocate at least one period of shikantaza in my daily practice, I'd like to think i'm having the best of both worlds.

Right now, though, I'm still a pretty hard core koan-zazen guy. But I'm keeping an open mind. Who knows? That may change in the future...

Gassho,
Matt

SatToday



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Jundo]

Hi Matt,

Please do what works for you, and where you have benefit.

Here, we do ask everyone do sit at least once per day in total stillness and non-attaining, in the light of the wholeness of all things. We also encourage taking the stillness off the cushion into the busy and tangled world, finding the stillness in motion, the non-attaining as we keep moving toward our goals and needs, the peace and quiet that is simultaneously all the noise and violence of life, the wholeness that is all the world's broken pieces.

Ultimately, I believe that the revelations of Koan Practice and Shikantaza are the same.

Gassho, Jundo

SatToday

[Aurkihnowe]

Hi all, finally found that story about seung sahn...I'm quoting verbatim from Joseph Goldstein's "one dharma".... sometime in the early 1970s, two buddhist Masters met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of them, kalu Rinpoche, was a renowned Tibetan meditation master who had spent many years in solitary retreat in the remote mountain caves of Tibet. The other was seung sahn, a Korean Zen master who had recently come to the United States and was supporting himself by working in a Providence Rhode Island laundromat slowly planting the seeds of Zen in the minds of those telling to wash their clothes. At this now famous meeting of enlightened minds, seung sahn held up an orange and in classic Zen Dharma combat fashion,demanded, " what is this?"

Kalu Rinpoche just looked at him wonderingly.
Again master seung sahn asked " what IS this!"
Finally, Rinpoche turn to his translator and asked, "don't they have oranges in Korea?"

Gassho

Richard

s@ (restlessly) 2day

[Troy]

Moving to the citayyy..Stevie Wonder!!!!!

I live in KC and there is a Soto Zen group that sits at Unity Temple on the Plaza.


•sat2day...合掌

Troy

[Aurkihnowe]

Troy, Lawrence is only less than an hour away...perhaps I will come sit with them occasionally.... Thanks for the heads up.

Gassho

Richard

S@ 2day

[Aurkihnowe]

I'm not going to get political here but let me just say, a la Springsteen, "there's a darkness at the edge of town". America is deeply divided, and so looking up from my navel, I have decided to make a formal Bodhisattva vow....does anyone know of a place near Lawrence, where I can do this? There is Kansas City, and St.Louis if need be, heck, Chicago is only a few hours drive. Any recommendations?

Gassho

Richard

S@ 2day

[Jundo]

Hi Richard,

That is excellent.

You are welcome to also sit in on our Jukai "Undertaking the Precepts" Ceremony on January 15th, which includes Vows of Refuge and the Bodhisattva Vows and all the rest. Although you did not sew this time, or make formal study, you can take the Precepts to heart any time. Please consider to join in the next round, this Fall, as well. You can recite and take them to heart again and again, endlessly.

Gassho, Jundo

SatToday

[Aurkihnowe]

It's true I am a neophyte, but I do have santideva's "way" both in physical and eBook form. I will be glad to take up your generous offer to participate in these ceremonies, and will study to the point of partial memorization his words.

Gassho

Richard

S@ 2day

[Rich]

The universe offers a richness beyond imagination. Even in the Zen world, many styles and methods. Enjoy!

SAT today

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Troy]

I live in KC which is close to Lawerence where the Kansas Zen Center is located. I am considering going because the Soto Zen group that use to meet in KC stopped and I can not find a local Soto Zen teacher. I would like some face to face time with a teacher and want to make some local friends to share my practice with. On the surface it seems the biggest difference between Soto and Rinzai is the emphasis on koan study. To be honest koan study does not really appeal to me but my desire for face to face interaction is stronger than my aversion to koan study so I am willing to give it a try. But, I was wondering what the differences are between Rinzai and Soto Zazen?


•sat2day...合掌

Troy

[Jundo]

Hi Troy,

You should go and find out. Every organization is different, and has its own approach and atmosphere. The only way to know for sure is to go and see.

Gassho, Jundo

SatToday