Feb. 7-8th, 2025 -OUR MONTHLY 4-hour ZAZENKAI- Dogen, Fullness & Sacred Ordinary Life

[Jundo]

Today ... We Dance with an insightful scholar's paper on Dogen, "fullness," "universal liberation,"
the sacred as "immanent in space and time," "Buddhahood" in the "fundamental activity of the world,"
"practice-realization" as "liberating activity," Zen practice as the "practice of Buddhahood,"
the fullness and sacredness of "ordinary life" ...
... and other rich and powerful stuff like that!
(text below)

Dear All,

Please sit our Monthly 4-Hour Treeleaf Zazenkai LIVE with Zazen, Heart Sutra and more. We meet virtually in our Zoom Scheduled Sitting Room here:
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JOIN ZOOM >>.
The password (if needed): << dogen >>

For local times, please check the Practice Calendar here: TREELEAF NOW >> (8am to noon Japan time Saturday morning, New York 7pm to 11pm, Los Angeles 4pm to 8pm, Friday night, London midnight to 4am and Paris 1am to 5am on early Saturday morning) and also sittable any time thereafter:
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However, "one way" live sitters are encouraged to come into the Zoom sitting, and just leave the camera and microphone turned off.
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Audio recordings of the Talks in this series are available here:
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Dharma Talk Audio / Podcast Episode:
LINK

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The Sitting Schedule is as follows:

00:00 - 00:50 CEREMONY (HEART SUTRA IN JAPANESE / SANDOKAI IN ENGLISH) & ZAZEN
00:50 - 01:00 KINHIN
01:00 - 01:30 ZAZEN
01:30 - 01:50 KINHIN

01:50 - 02:30 DHARMA TALK & ZAZEN
02:30 - 02:40 KINHIN & HOKEY-POKEY RITUAL

02:40 - 03:15 ZAZEN
03:15 - 03:30 KINHIN
03:30 - 04:00 METTA CHANT & ZAZEN, VERSE OF ATONEMENT, FOUR VOWS, & CLOSING

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ATTENTION: Everyone, when rising for Kinhin or Ceremonies after Zazen, get up slowly, don't rush, hold something stable, you won't be "late," so TAKE YOUR TIME! Make sure you are careful getting up!

Gassho, Jundo

STLah


PS - There is no "wrong" or "right" in Zazen ... yet here is a little explanation of the "right" times to Bow (A Koan) ...
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Chant Book is here for those who wish to join in: CHANT BOOK LINK

The other video I mention on Zendo decorum is this one, from our "Always Beginners" video Series:
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Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (12) - Basic Zendo Decorum At Home
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...093#post189093

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I also recommend a little Talk on why small rituals and procedures are so cherished in the Zendo:
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SIT-A-LONG with Jundo: Small Things in the Zendo
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...s-in-the-Zendo

[Jundo]

Today's Talk is based on a scholar's paper entitled "ZEN SPIRITUALITY IN A SECULAR AGE II - Dōgen on Fullness – Zazen as Ritual Embodiment of Buddhahood" by Prof. Andre van der Braak, a specialist in the "comparative philosophy of religion" with a focus on Buddhism, and who is ALSO a Zen teacher in Holland! (LINK)

However, I will NOT RECOMMEND that everyone read the full paper (unless real Dogen "wonks" maybe) because it is, well, one of those dense scholar's papers, and is really not necessary to read the whole thing. However, for our talk, the following central notions about "Dogen and more" are very rewarding, I felt, and well worth our reflecting on them ...

I will try to translate the tangled words of BOTH Dogen and the good professor into understandable ordinary English!
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[Charles Taylor] calls "fullness" a deeply meaningful, rich, and fulfilling sense of life, often associated with transcendence, moral depth, and a sense of purpose (contrasted with feelings of disenchantment, alienation, or emptiness, which can arise in a secular world) ... and he identifies three problematic trends, resulting in certain discourses on fullness … The first trend is a shift towards ‘spiritualization’ at the cost of embodiment. Fullness is no longer located ‘out there’ in the objective world, but in a subjective, inner experience. This constitutes an ‘excarnation’ of fullness: it is disembodied and reduced to ‘religious experience’. The second tendency is to further reduce fullness to self-actualization, rather than self-transcendence. … Fullness is located in optimal human functioning, a shift from a religious to a therapeutic healing … under the influence of the human potential movement, and Enlightenment came to be understood in terms of optimal psychological functioning, as a state of psychological health. The third tendency is to even deny the existence and/or attainability of such a sense of fullness. Many exclusive humanists consider it dangerous to strive after a fullness beyond human flourishing, since it sets up unrealistic standards that threaten to damage our humanity. They plead for a reaffirmation of ordinary life, not in the religious sense of the word where ordinary life is sacralized, but in a strictly secular sense. …

In order to investigate Dōgen’s thought, it is important to note [that] Japanese Zen Buddhism must be viewed within the larger context of Mahāyāna Buddhism, that [] reality (the dharmakaya) should not be seen as a collection of lifeless objects, but as a vital agent of awareness and healing. Reality itself is continually co-active in bringing all beings to universal liberation. The sacred is immanent in space and time. Rather than aiming at achieving higher states of personal consciousness, or therapeutic calm, the point of spiritual practice becomes to embody, or appreciate, or participate, achieve a liberating intimacy with, reality itself.

… According to Dōgen, all of existence is grounded, or embedded, in the ultimate reality of the dharmakaya. The dharmakaya should not be interpreted ontologically as a transcendent cosmic Being that contains or projects the world, but should be seen as the fundamental activity of the world itself. In this sense, all of existence is itself Buddhahood … What is ultimately valuable (fullness beyond ordinary human flourishing) is built into existence itself, whether this is recognized and appreciated or not.

…. For Dōgen, the rightly transmitted teaching of the Buddha consists in ‘the samādhi of self-fulfilling activity’ (jijuyū-zammai) … notion of samādhi usually refers to a concentrated state of awareness, but Dōgen uses it to refer to a state of mind that at once negates and subsumes self and other; a total freedom of self-realization without any dualism or antitheses. This does not mean that oppositions or dualities are obliterated or transcended, but that they are realized. Such a freedom realizes itself in duality, not apart from it.

For Dōgen, zazen is not so much a psychological training aiming at particular states or experiences, but the ritual expression, embodiment and enactment of buddhahood. … Zazen is not about attaining a mental state of liberation, but about an ongoing transformation that is as much physiological as it is psychological, in which one ‘realizes’ one’s own buddhahood, in the sense of fully participating in it. It is not a state but an activity. … Zazen does not lead to enlightenment, zazen itself is enlightenment. Dōgen uses the term practice-realization (shusho) not as a psychological state, but as a liberating activity … The human body, in Dōgen’s view, was not a hindrance to the realization of enlightenment, but the very vehicle through which enlightenment was realized (…). …

In an attempt to reaffirm ordinary life, without falling prey to either a crude materialism or some kind of religiosity, many secular humanists have embraced Buddhism as providing a non-religious access to fullness, without any need for notions of transcendence. The various ways in which Buddhism has adapted to the needs and expectations of the West, also include an answer to this need for a resacralization of ordinary life, in the form of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness (being aware of the present moment). Originally a meditation technique developed by monks that ostensibly renounced ordinary life, in order to aim for a fullness beyond ordinary flourishing, mindfulness has found its way into current Western society as a means towards greater affirmation and appreciation of ordinary life. In contemporary Buddhism, it is commonplace to find exhortations to perform the tasks of life with mindfulness and care. In this way, one can realize fullness in the most mundane things and activities. …

Western Zen seems, therefore, to fit perfectly within this trend towards a reaffirmation of ordinary life. Many Western Zen practitioners have been relieved to find a form of spirituality that advocates simply being natural. Zen has become famous in the West for its radical view that in order to realize awakening, there is nothing special that one could or should do. A famous Zen dictum tells the practitioner just to eat when he’s hungry, and to sleep when he’s tired, following his natural inclinations, without running around looking for enlightenment.

But Dōgen is critical of such rhetoric that he calls ‘Zen naturalism’. For him, Zen practice is ‘the practice of buddhahood’ (butsugyo): an active recognition of one’s own buddhahood, and an engagement with it. Practicing buddhahood is for Dōgen not just doing whatever one pleases, but refers to very specific activities modeled on the practice of Shākyamuni Buddha. Such activities include sitting in zazen, but also extend to one’s daily activities. … Dōgen attempts to rethink the dualistic opposition itself between ordinary life on the one hand, and a transcendent fullness beyond ordinary human flourishing on the other hand. In his view, nonduality is not about overcoming duality, but about fully realizing it. This implies the continual uncovering and manifesting the fullness that is already there. Not in the sense of ‘seeing into one’s true nature’ (Buddha nature as buried within us), but in the sense of ‘all of existence is Buddha nature’ (the fundamental interrelatedness of all of existence). ‘The endeavor to negotiate the Way, as I teach now, consists in discerning all things in view of enlightenment, and putting such a unitive awareness into practice in the midst of the revaluated world’.

[Jundo]

Today we will dance the (kinda) traditional Mamemaki (Bean Throwing) Dance for the (very) traditional event of Setsubun, which was actually last Sunday (but that's okay) and is the Japanese way of celebrating the "Lunar New Year:"

What is Setsubun and Mamemaki?
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The Mamemaki Dance ...
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Here are the words:
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Oni wa soto fuku wa uchi (Devils out, good luck in)
Parappara
Parappara
Mame no oto (That's the sound of bouncing beans)
Oni wa kossori nigete iku (The devils just slink away)

Oni wa soto fuku wa uchi (Devils out, good luck in)
Parappara
Parappara
Mame no oto (That's the sound of bouncing beans)
Hayaku wo hairi fuku no kami (Goddess of fortune, get in here quick!)

Mamemaki at a big Buddhist temple, with sumo wrestlers, famous actors and such:
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A footnote on the video says that, at this and many Buddhist temples, because the Buddha is to be kind and compassionate to the devils, they do not chase them away with the "Devil get out" part ... they only say the "Good luck come in" part!

Gassho, J

stlah

[Shokai]

CORRECTION; according to the YouTube video "What's Setsubun" (1:12), the lucky direction is 西南西 West south west ( the red end of the needle)
sorry to be critical but it had me turned around and at my stage in life, dizzy is a no no. especially after eating all my beans

gassho, Shokai

[Shigeru]

Sat with you all this this morning, minus the bean throwing

Gassho
Will

[Jundo]

CORRECTION; according to the YouTube video "What's Setsubun" (1:12), the lucky direction is 西南西 West south west ( the red end of the needle)
sorry to be critical but it had me turned around and at my stage in life, dizzy is a no no. especially after eating all my beans

gassho, Shokai

Good question. This year 2025, the lucky direction is ... southwest!

https://www.kankomie.or.jp/season/ar...%20come%20true!

Gassho J
Stlah

[Kotei]

Thank you everyone!
Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.