June 5th-6th, 2020 - OUR MONTHLY 4-hour Treeleaf ZAZENKAI- True House True Home

[Jundo]

Today's Talk is "True House True Home"

(text below in this thread)

Please 'sit-a-long' with our MONTHLY 4-hour ZAZENKAI, netcast LIVE 8am to noon Japan time Saturday morning (that is New York 7pm to 11pm, Los Angeles 4pm to 8pm (Friday night), London midnight to 4am and Paris 1am to 5am (early Saturday morning)) ... and visible at the following link during those times ...

... and to be visible on the following screen during those times and sit-a-long-able any time thereafter ...

LIVE ZAZENKAI NETCAST IS HERE:

https://youtu.be/fLOjmegjOrI

Dharma Talk Audio / Podcast Episode:
LINK TO BE POSTED HERE IN THE COMING DAYS

FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO JOIN TO SIT LIVE WITH A CAMERA, THERE lS A LlNK BELOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THlS POST. JUST CLICK AND JOIN BEFORE START TIME. 'TWO WAY' REQUIRES INDIVIDUALS WITH CAMERAS, BUT ANYONE CAN WATCH LIVE 'ONE WAY' AND SIT-A-LONG VIA THE ABOVE SCREEN. IF JOINING WITH CAMERA, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR MICROPHONE IS MUTED.

'One Way' folks are also welcome to join the Zoom room, just leaving your camera and microphone turned off:

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

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


Our Zazenkai consists of our chanting the 'Heart Sutra' in Japanese and the 'Identity of Relative and Absolute (Sandokai)' in English (please download our Chant Book at the link below), some full floor prostrations (please follow along with me ... or a simple Gassho can be substituted if you wish), a little talk by me ... and we close with the 'Metta Chant', followed at the end with the 'Verse of Atonement' and 'The Four Vows'. Oh, and lots and lots of Zazen and walkin' Kinhin in between!

Please download and print out the Chants we will recite at the following link (PDF):
HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ENTIRE RETREAT CHANT BOOK INCLUDING THIS WEEK'S FOUR HOUR ZAZENKAI:https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...BTxHsnBOGr/pub



Not everyone realizes that they can join in the Chanting of the Heart Sutra, Identity of Relative & Absolute, Metta Verses, Verse of Atonement and Four Vows (although we ask that you keep your microphone down). Please follow along with the Chant Book, and let your voice ring!

I STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT YOU POSITION YOUR ZAFU ON THE FLOOR IN A PLACE WHERE YOU ARE NOT STARING DIRECTLY AT THE COMPUTER SCREEN, BUT CAN GLANCE OVER AND SEE THE SCREEN WHEN NECESSARY. YOUR ZAFU SHOULD ALSO BE IN A POSITION WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE COMPUTER SCREEN WHILE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE ZAFU FOR THE CEREMONIES, AND HAVE ROOM FOR BOWING AND KINHIN.

ALSO, REMEMBER TO SET YOUR COMPUTER (& SCREEN SAVER) SO THAT IT DOES NOT SHUT OFF DURING THE 4 HOURS.

I hope you will join us ... an open Zafu is waiting. When we drop all thought of 'here' 'there' 'now' 'then' ... we are sitting all together!


Gassho, Jundo

SatTodayLAH

PS - There is no "wrong" or "right" in Zazen ... yet here is a little explanation of the "right" times to Bow (A Koan) ...

The other video I mention on Zendo decorum is this one, from our "Always Beginners" video Series:

Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (12) - Basic Zendo Decorum At Home
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...093#post189093

HOW TO JOIN THE ZAZENKAI '2-WAY':

You can join the Zazenkai two-way in the Scheduled Sitting Room using Zoom any one of the following ways:

- Use this direct link: https://zoom.us/j/4834831244
- Open Zoom and join with this meeting id: 483 483 1244
- Go to Treeleaf NOW and select the Scheduled Sitting Room: treeleaf.org/ssr
- If prompted for a password, use: dogen

Notes:

- When you first join, you'll need to choose an audio source (usually you can simply select "Join with Computer Audio" on desktop or "Call using Internet Audio" on mobile).

- You can switch between the "speaker view" (the default view) and "gallery view" (a grid / tic-tac-toe style view):
-- On desktop, click the "gallery view" / "speaker view" toggle button on the top right
-- On mobile, swipe right for "gallery views" -- only 4 participants are shown at a time on mobile, so keep swiping right to go through different groups, swipe left to go back to the "gallery view"

- You can mute, unmute, etc. with the control bar on the bottom of the screen
-- On desktop, hover the mouse over the window and the control bar should pop up
-- On mobile, tap the screen and the control bar should pop up
-- On mobile, so that your own picture does not take up one of the four slots you see, you can tap for the control bar, then tap "... menu" and select "Remove myself from gallery view"

- If you are on a slow Internet connection and are experiencing drop-outs, try turning off video (you can always turn it on for a bit at the beginning and end to say hi and bow to everyone)

[Jundo]

Today's talk is 'TRUE HOUSE TRUE HOME' ...

... about Liberation and various Buddhist perspectives (and non-perspectives) on who we are in/as this universe.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha is quoted as teaching:

Through many a birth in samsara have I wandered in vain, seeking the builder of this house (of life). Repeated birth is indeed suffering! O house-builder, you are seen! You will not build this house again. For your rafters are broken and your ridgepole shattered. My mind has reached the Unconditioned; I have attained the destruction of craving.

In Mahayana Buddhism, and most especially in the Huayan (Flower Garland) teachings which were so inspirational on later Zen Buddhism, this metaphor blossomed:

Huayan inherits from Madhyamaka the view that all entities are conditioned. To be conditioned is for an entity to be causally or conceptually dependent for its existence and its identity on something else. However, Huayan takes the additional steps of arguing that, because the identity of any one thing is dependent on the identities of other things, “one is all,” and because the whole is dependent for its identity on its parts, “all is one.” ... The Third [Huayan] Patriarch Fazang illustrates how “one is all and all is one” with the relationship between a rafter and the building of which it is a part. He argues that the building is the rafter, because the building is nothing more than the sum of its parts, so each part is essential to its identity. Conversely, the rafter is the building, because what makes the rafter a rafter is its role as a part of the building. (Intuitively, if the rafter were removed from the building, its identity could change to being a bench, or a teeter-totter, or simply kindling.) ...

... Fazang labels the six characteristics [of part to whole, and parts to other parts] as wholeness, particularity, identity, difference, integration, and disintegration. Each of these pertains to some characteristic an individual dharma has as a part of some integrated whole, akin to the relation a rafter bears to a building. ... Roughly speaking, it seems that a dharma has wholeness insofar as it creates some whole; particularity insofar as it is numerically distinct from that whole; identity insofar as it includes all other parts of the whole; difference insofar as it is numerically distinct from those others; integration insofar as its creating the whole does not interfere with every other dharma of the whole doing the same; and disintegration insofar as its creative success does not depend upon the cooperation of other dharmas in the whole.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buddhism-huayan/

Recently, I wrote this mess about the universe and who we may be regarding this ...

[W]e are not merely residents of this universal house we find ourselves temporarily renting and living in, but seem to be more the house which somehow has given birth to its own residents! For whatever reason, over billions of years, the bricks and beams of the house evolved to birth people and ants and cats that seem to appreciate living in the house, feast from its kitchen and gardens, and sometimes make a disgraceful mess of the place with our internal squabbles, junk and failure to properly maintain it. Maybe future residents will appreciate it more. The house somehow sprung up residents who think, see, hear, taste, touch and smell and thus make use of the kitchen, able to appreciate the place and make a house a "home." No, we are not sure all the details about how this house gave birth to its own tenants, but it is pretty amazing that it did ... and here we are, conscious and aware, lease in hand. Since we, the tenants, are alive, conscious, intelligent and aware ... and since we are the house as much as the bath tubs and floor tiles ... we can be 100% sure that the house is also alive, conscious, intelligent and aware, at least to the extent of us, because we are the house ... not only housing us ... but the house housing as us who are also the house.

I suspect and hope ... because we are still real idiots! ... that the house is more intelligent than us. We are like the cat and the ant, far from the highest measure of the potential consciousness and awareness of this "smart" house. At least, I suspect so. I mean, it would be quite the coincidence if a wild forest and a dumb stone quarry somehow by chance and evolution alone wound around totally by dice rolls to form beams and kitchen, bathtubs and garden, then you and me sitting here by the fireplace, smoking our pipes and reading Chaucer or watching Seinfeld. I suspect that there is something more to that surface happenstance. I suspect that the universe tries planets and planets of houses, most of which remain piles of lumber, mud holes, simply uninhabitable ... but some of which become split level ranch houses, a further subset of which become fully furnished with a full set of appliances, fully stocked refrigerator, sofas and chairs, and living asses to sit in them. Seemingly, the house could have remained empty, or a pile of uncut lumber and raw stone, or had only ants, or had other tenants than you and me ... and yet, here you and I sit in our chairs. I suspect that a house ... or at least, the vibrant neighborhood which gave rise to the house as well as lots of other houses, some of which are likely habitable if most maybe not ... needs tenants so as not to itself be totally empty and unrented. Kitchens needs cooks, and bathrooms need bathers.

On the other hand, if we crazy dumb ass humans are the best this universe can do, even if with Chaucer and Seinfeld, then it is a pretty poor dumb ass universe! I suspect that the universal development company ... be it nature or something more ... having a seemingly endless supply of universal building materials, takes a "shotgun, see what sticks" approach to house building, some of which works out, some which never gets off the ground, and some of which ends up burning the place down ... and we are just temporary caretakers of this apartment pending future building and expansion, assuming we don't burn the place down first with us inside!

No, not perfect ... the pipes sometimes leak, the boiler overheats, the chairs are often lumpy, our fellow room mates can often drive us mad or act like madmen, and sometimes a virus sends us to our sick beds ... but not too bad, especially considering the rent charged. )
https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...l=1#post262513

Master Dogen's monastery was his utopian vision of the world as an ideal home ...

Dogen structured his monastery, not merely as a religious establishment, but as a kind of ideal vision of social harmony. I believe he would have like to if he could, but he could not change the chaotic world outside the temple gates, so he built an ideal world inside. There, all residents were entitled to mutual respect in an atmosphere without hate, killing and violence. There were ranks, but not great disparity in treatment, and all were entitled to a safe place to sleep, food, learning and medical care (at least, as it existed in the 13th century). In turn, however, recipients were expected to do their work, their duties as citizens of the community, and to be respectful toward the others. What is vital to note about Dogen's ideal world is that rights and obligations run in ALL directions.

In any case, we don't really need to know all the details of what this universal home is to us who find ourselves here and now in it. To borrow Dogen's sailboat analogy in Shobogenzo-Zenki: To be a Zen fellow is like being a living being in a house. The living resident does not know every inch of the house, every shingle, every plaster crack, every grain of dust in the corners, every ant in the walls, every bricklayer or the full intent of any architect behind it ... but she can know the whole in every light beam through a window which shines on any inch. She then lives in the house, tending the garden, cooking in the kitchen, dirtying and cleaning the floors, getting on with the other residents there, knowing that we are the house and the house gives us life, the house is us and we give life to the house.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH

[Kyonin]

Hi Jundo,

I'll be there live

Gassho,

Kyonin
Sat/LAH

[Jundo]

As our contribution to peace in the Middle East ... we will dance in Arabic this time (by a coin toss), and Hebrew next month ...

https://youtu.be/3ts7H2oHdIo

Gassho, J

STlah

[Bokugan]

I'll have to sit with you all "later" due to work.

Still looking forward to it

Gassho

Ryan S
Sat Today
LAH

[Sekishi]

I'll be there with bells on.

Gassho,
Sekishi
#sat

[Onkai]

Thank you, Jundo. I intend to join two-way tonight.

Gassho,
Onkai
Sat/LAH

[Seikan]

I will have to sit with you all later this weekend due to my schedule, but I will be there in spirit!

Related newbie question: is it possible to join for only part of the live 4-hour Zazenkai, or is that too disruptive to other participants? I could potentially jump on at around the halfway point tonight, but I don't want to disturb the group. No worries if not. I can "participate" later this weekend.

Gassho,
Rob

SatToday


Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Jundo]

I will have to sit with you all later this weekend due to my schedule, but I will be there in spirit!

Related newbie question: is it possible to join for only part of the live 4-hour Zazenkai, or is that too disruptive to other participants? I could potentially jump on at around the halfway point tonight, but I don't want to disturb the group. No worries if not. I can "participate" later this weekend.

Gassho,
Rob

SatToday


Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

It is fine to jump in, preferably during a Kinhin or Talk, not during Zazen itself. However, if you come in during Zazen, it should not be a problem either.

Gassho, J

STlah

[Sekishi]

Thank you all, residents, guests, architects, and builders of this house we cannot separate from.

Gassho,
Sekishi
#sat


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Hoshi]

I have a little poem for today's talk about the house

When looking through the window of his house
the buddha was thinking why does this house
have so many windows?
at that moment a gentle breeze entered through the open window
and he could smell the fragrant aroma from summer flowers

Gassho
SaT

[Jundo]

I have a little poem for today's talk about the house

When looking through the window of his house
the buddha was thinking why does this house
have so many windows?
at that moment a gentle breeze entered through the open window
and he could smell the fragrant aroma from summer flowers

Gassho
SaT

[Onkai]

Thank you, Jundo, Sekishi, and everryone. Nice to know that the house is me and I am the house becoming conscious of itself.

Gassho,
Onkai
Sat/LAH

[Shonin Risa Bear]

Many windows opened wide. _()_

gassho
shonin sat/lah today

[Yokai]

Thanks all. Decorating the House today! Yay!

With you recorded.

Gassho, Chris stlah