Blog Posts

Beyond Thinking

3/11/2017

Great Master Hongdao, was sitting. A monk asked him, “In steadfast sitting, what do you think?” Yaoshan said, “Think not thinking.” “How do you think not thinking?” Yaoshan replied, “Beyond thinking.”

Realizing these words of Yaoshan, you should investigate and receive the authentic transmission of steadfast sitting. This is the thorough study of steadfast sitting transmitted in the buddha way. Yaoshan is not the only one who spoke of thinking in steadfast sitting. His words, however, were extraordinary. Think not thinking is the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow of thinking and the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow of not thinking.

The monk said, How do you think not thinking? However ancient not thinking is, still we are asked how to think it. Is there not thinking in steadfast sitting? How can going beyond steadfast sitting not be understood? One who is not shallow and foolish can ask and think about steadfast sitting.

Yaoshan said, Beyond thinking. The activity of beyond thinking is crystal clear. In order to think not thinking, beyond thinking is always used. In beyond thinking, there is somebody that sustains you. Even if it is you who are sitting steadfast, you are not only thinking but are upholding steadfast sitting. When sitting steadfast, how can steadfast sitting think steadfast sitting? Thus, sitting steadfast is not buddha thought, dharma thought, enlightenment thought, or realization thought.

This teaching was directly transmitted person to person from Shakyamuni Buddha to Yaoshan through thirty-six generations of ancestors. That means if you go beyond thirty-six generations from Yaoshan, you go back to Shakyamuni Buddha. What was authentically transmitted thus was think not thinking.

However, careless students in recent times say, “The endeavor of zazen is completed when your heart is quiescent, as zazen is a place of calmness.” Such a view does not even reach that of students of the Lesser Vehicles, and is inferior to the teachings of human and deva vehicles. How can we call them students of buddha dharma? In present-day Song China, there are many practitioners who hold such views. The decline of the ancestral path is truly lamentable.

There are also people who say, “Practicing zazen is essential for those who are beginners or those who have started studying recently, but it is not necessarily the activity of buddha ancestors. Activity in daily life is Zen, and sitting is Zen. In speaking and in silence, in motion and stillness, your body should be tranquil. Do not be concerned only with the practice of zazen.” Many of those who call themselves descendants of Linji hold such a view. They say so because they have not received the transmission of the right livelihood of buddha dharma.

Who are beginners? Are there any who are not beginners? When do you leave the beginner’s mind? Know that in the definitive study of the buddha dharma, you engage in zazen and endeavor in the way. At the heart of the teaching is a practicing buddha who does not seek to become a buddha. As a practicing buddha does not become a buddha, the fundamental point is realized. The embodiment of buddha is not becoming a buddha.

When you break through the snares and cages [of words and concepts], a sitting buddha does not hinder becoming a buddha. Right now, you have the ability to enter the realm of buddha and enter the realms of demons throughout the ages. Going forward and going backward, you personally have the freedom of overflowing ditches, overflowing valleys.

Practice Period at Green Gulch

12/22/2016

Ango at Green Dragon Temple

4:00 a.m.
My cell phone alarm clock awakens me before the jarring cow bell run of the shuso. A quick shower, and then I don two of the three layers of my new priest’s robes – the Japanese short-waisted white jubon with the grey kimono, and the flowing black koromo – a Japanese name for a Chinese garment that has sleeves twice as long as my arms and that hang below my knees. Then into my Birkenstocks and off to the Green Gulch Farm dining room for coffee. Every morning Steven, Tenshin Reb Anderson’s jiko, brews coffee so he can bring a cup to Tenshin Roshi’s dokusan room before 5:00 am zazen. I take my cup to a bench that overlooks the zendo and the residences, and sip coffee while I watch and listen to the monastery’s daily awakening.

One hit on the han that hangs outside the zendo is followed by that jangling, clanging cow bell being run through the monastery grounds. Windows in the Cloud Hall and Stillwater residences light up, trainees in pajamas stumble into the washrooms beside the zendo. Robed priests and lay trainees swish by me on their way to the dining room for a hot drink. The weather is crisp. The moon is close to full. Day after tomorrow we will do the monthly full moon ceremony where we will stand, kneel and bow in white socks as we recite the names of the ten Buddhas and the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts.
The han begins its call to the zendo. At the beginning of the first ringdown I return my cup to the dining room, wash it in the dishwashing room, where I will be spending two hours of my four-hour work day. In my application for ango I had said that I wanted to cook or garden. But a newly ordained priest does not get to choose. Dishes and dining room set-up it is.

Outside the zendo, I pick my okesa envelope up from my slot on the shelves that store the robes and rakusus and hold it in front of me, level with my nose as I enter the zendo. The converted barn is dark except for spotlights on the five-foot tall Shakyamuni statue that sits in the earth touching mudra on the main altar. Jizo and Prajnaparamita who are on the back altar are also illuminated. I take my spot on a chair in a back corner of the zendo. I switched to this chair after sitting tangaryo for forty-eight hours on my zafu. Such physical intensity was too much for my 71-year old body and my back muscles seized up in unforgiving deeply painful muscle knots. I sat the rest of the ango in a chair.

Immediately following the last three strikes of the han, the shuso does jundo and takes his seat. I know without looking that Tenshin Roshi has entered the zendo by the ringing of the large gong as he does his first bow on the haiseki in front of Shakyamuni. I listen for the sound of his feet hitting the floor and the song of his robes so I can place my hands in gasho when he is behind me. He takes his seat to the sound of three small gong hits. The shoten hits the drum outside the zendo five times and then strikes a small bell once telling us that it is ten minutes after five. I settle in for two hours of zazen. The reverberations of the eighteen strikes on the daibosho, the six- foot tall bell that hangs on a tree outside the zendo, resonate through my body and mind. I follow the sound of the last hit into stillness and silence.
Reb’s voice, deepened by his chest cold, echoes through the zendo after twenty minutes of zazen. “The mind of the great sage of India is transmitted from west to east. It is the stillness and silence of this self-receiving Samadhi that has been transmitted. In one moment of zazen, the whole world becomes the Buddha seal and the sky turns into enlightenment.” This has been the theme of Tenshin Roshi’s teaching from the first day I met him in an introductory gathering. It was the theme of his classes on the ox-herding pictures and of the talks we had during informal teas. It’s what he talked about during the three public lectures that he did when Green Dragon Temple opened to the public on Sunday mornings, and it was the theme of the two dokusans that I had with him in the second early morning period of zazen. It was also the theme that stayed in my mind throughout the work periods as I washed dishes, swept floors and wiped tables. And it remained the theme on my return to Sakuraji to resume my simple country temple life here, in Creston, BC, where, in my first sitting in my backyard temple, it was clear that the ango at Green Dragon Temple had deepened my sitting and moved me deeper into the clear light of the vast intimacy of stillness and silence. Everything has changed; and it’s all the same.

At the end of my first dokusan, just as I was leaving the room, Tenshin Roshi asked me if Matsuoka Roshi was still alive. I answered him from a factual frame of mind. “No, he isn’t,” I said. Later that week we took part in a memorial ceremony for Suzuki Shunryo, Reb’s teacher and founder of the San Francisco Zen Centre, Tassahara and Green Gulch farm. During the ceremony I realized how Tenshin Roshi and the other senior priests who trained with Suzuki have kept his teaching, and therefore, him, alive. I understood the shallowness of my answer and realized a deep gratitude to the senior priests in the Silent Thunder Order who have kept Matsuoka Roshi alive. Now, my answer to that question would be, “Yes, he lives in those of us who are carrying forward his teachings.” I resolved to enter our lineage more deeply.
At the closing ceremony for the whole ango, Tenshin Roshi said, “I pray that you remember the vast intimacy that we have entered into together in the stillness and silence of this temple. Now you have it, so take care of it. Sitting in this stillness is the pivotal activity of all Buddhas.” I share that prayer with him.

Below are two photos: the first is of Tenshin Roshi and myself and the second is the big bell outside the zendo.

1 Comment

Drop the Bucket List

3/23/2016

0 Comments

These posts are based on the teachings of Norman Fischer.

If we really enter this moment and are truly here in our lives we can be fully present with our experiences. But usually, we are not. If we look deeply into our own minds, it’s shocking to realize that there is a constant undercurrent of desire and dissatisfaction. It’s as if we are always searching for something. Identity and ego are a constant feature of our thinking. If we look past ideas about who we are and part the weeds of every thought to see what is behind each one, we find an expression of desire and self interest. It’s an ongoing thing that is always present. “I want to be kind; I want to be loved; I want to be justified; I want to be important: I want to be alive; I need this; I don’t want that. All these things are constant in our minds, even when we don’t know they are there. Thoughts about self are, in fact, behind everything.

This means that as long as self-centred thoughts occupy any aspect of our consciousness we are not fully present. The underlying stream of desire causes us to see mountains and rivers in a two dimensional way. And this underlying stream goes on all the time; even when we practice diligently. Self-centred concerns never go away completely. We need them to survive. But when we see through them, and know them for what they are, we can be fully present, here, in this moment. And when we are fully present, everything that manifests is the Buddha’s expression of profound truth. As Dogen says in his essay, “Mountains and Rivers Sutra,” “Mountains and waters right now are the actualization of the buddhas and ancestors.”

The phrase, “right now” is actually the most significant phrase in this sentence. It has to do with the fact that this moment is not an isolated moment of time that passes away. It does pass away, but the energy that brings it forth has brought the previous moment forth and will bring the next moment forth. This energy is the energy of impermanence. It has always existed, it exists now and it will always exist. Dogen is saying that every moment of passing time is, in itself, eternal. Eternity is not something that happens later. This moment is it.

And that’s wonderful, because it means that you don’t need to go anywhere. Most of us like the idea of a bucket list. I always wanted to do this; I have to do that before I die or my life won’t be complete. But according to this teaching, even if you never left your room you would be everywhere, and you would be able to participate fully with everything, because every moment is complete. That is the profound truth of this teaching.
Suggested Practice: If you have a bucket list of things you are hoping to do before you die, notice how often it seduces you away from present moment awareness.

0 Comments

Bearing the Unbearable

1/25/2016

0 Comments

(Continuing with talks on the Mountain and Rivers Sutra) (based on talks by Norman Fischer)

Soon after we start a regular meditation practice we realize we are stuck in patterns. We suddenly become aware that things aren’t solid. They just slip away. At this point, mountains are mountains, in the narrow way. Then as our idea of a solid self stumbles until there is nobody there, mountains are not mountains any longer; rivers are not rivers. There is nothing to hang on to. We have realized a deep truth about absolute reality.

This experience is both terrifying and freeing. When we reenter daily life, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers once more. This coming back to ordinariness, this knowing that you can’t hang on to ordinariness, brings awareness that our lives aren’t ordinary at all. We begin to cultivate the realization of completion in every moment.
I’ve talked to many whose experience of life threatening illness has awakened them. It seems like we have to go through a horrible experience to find out that who we thought we are, we aren’t, and that who we want to hang on to, we can’t. And then this ordinariness has a whole different quality.

When cultivating practice of ordinariness, although it is not as unconscious as it was before practice, delusion still comes up: grasping, judgment, competition. For Zen Master Dogen, the 13th Century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, it is sitting meditation that brings awareness that delusive thought is coming up, and that we are not it. With practice, human foibles still arise, but we know what they are so we no longer identify with them, grasp after them, and insist on them. You recognize them as suffering. It’s easy to forget this and go down the road of suffering, but if we meditate, at some point we recognize what is actually happening. “Oh, yes, that’s right, suffering.”

With Zen practice there is a consolation that when profound reality – even if it is horrible profound reality – presents itself, there is a part of the mind that knows to say, “This is a delusion, and it’s passing. This doesn’t have substance. Don’t hang on to it.”
Profound reality has no substance, it comes and goes. That’s what makes it profound; and that’s how we bear the tremendous difficulties of a human lifetime. Horrible and unacceptable things happen to each and every one of us. There is no one who doesn’t have to meet loss, or a defeat that strikes us so hard that we can’t imagine how to live another day. This happens to every single person in a human lifetime, and the way we bear that reality is by recognizing that it too is coming and going. What we are experiencing is not the absolute. That’s how fully realizing impermanence helps us to bear the unbearable – even when it is very difficult.

Suggested practice: If something happens that upsets you, step back from your emotions, turn your attention to your breath and remember that this will arise and pass, like everything else.

0 Comments

December 20th, 2015

12/20/2015

0 Comments

Within all Light is Darkness; In Darkness There is Light.

This talk is based on talks that Eihei Dogen, the 13th century founder of the type of Zen that we practice here at Sakuraji gave between 1240 and 1248 in his temple in Northern Japan. When I read Dogen’s recorded dharma talks I often imagine living in that unheated stone temple without electricity or any form of central heating. In the case of these talks, Dogen and his monks had been doing so in the dead of winter. Imagine how, under these conditions, he and his students would welcome the return of the long days of light.

Before getting into the heart of this talk, I want to briefly review the Asian understanding of darkness and light, of yin and yang. It is most important to know that in the Asian view, darkness is not equated with evil; and light is not equated with good, like it is in our western cultures. All too often I’ve read and heard that yin, darkness, is the negative energy and yang, light, is the positive energy. This is a very westernized interpretation. To the Asian mind, darkness is a time when we can know the oneness of all things because we can’t visually distinguish one object from another. It’s all one. It is only when light arises that we make the distinctions that we have to make in order to physically sustain our lives. In a way, darkness gives us an opportunity to know the oneness of all reality; and the light gives us an opportunity to know that each of us is just a unique expression of that oneness.

Dogen begins his winter solstice talk in 1240, by quoting the Tao Te Ching, a text that was written about 1500 years earlier by Lao Tzu in China. “Attaining oneness, heaven is clear; attaining oneness earth is at rest.” Dogen interprets these words for his students. He says, “Attaining oneness a person is at peace, attaining oneness the time becomes bright. “ This idea of attaining oneness is best explained by a classic Zen metaphor. I won’t go on and on about it, but I do want to give you this image.

Imagine that all of reality is as big as a prairie sky. Now imagine looking at that sky through a plastic straw. This is the usual way we view our lives, but if we truly realize that we are, in fact, the whole sky, we realize oneness. Realization of our oneness with all phenomena grows and sustains our best intentions as the days grow longer. And within this growth of light we have an opportunity to arouse awakening mind, to invigorate our spiritual practice, to engage the way with wholehearted effort, and to attain realization of our profound interconnectedness. With clear realization that we are all one body, with and within each other; with and within the earth; and with and within the whole universe, we have no need to express greed (which creates poverty and ravages our planet for wealth), hatred, (wages wars), or delusion (that we won’t get enough, and that happiness is something to seek outside ourselves.)

Dogen teaches that we have already attained the power and vitality that is within this growth towards full realization of our oneness with all being. He says we are all born with original enlightenment. We need only polish this jewel through practice to make it shine. At 9:49 pm tonight, we begin our journey back into the light. This arising of yang (that is the slow increase of daylight) is an auspicious occasion. This is our opportunity to begin our lives anew. Of course every moment brings us that opportunity, but winter solstice is a special time for renewal.

2600 years ago, an ordinary man named Siddharta Gautama sat under a bodhi tree for eight days and abruptly changed his brain through the simple practice of meditation. Like a butterfly, he underwent a complete metamorphosis. His transformation was so complete, enduring and repeatable by all humans that he is still remembered as the Awakened One. He awoke to a complete understanding of how to reduce suffering and increase happiness, and then spent the rest of his life teaching what he had learned. Winter solstice is an awakening of the entire planet.

All year we have been sustaining our lives as best we can. The number of ways in which we can do harm, no matter how small, to ourselves and others in our endeavor to survive is inexhaustible. We can’t survive without diminishing the life of some other sentient being, be it plant or animal. These harmful acts of body speech and mind leave traces – and on one side of your piece of art, you have depicted those traces. Solstice is the time to reach a new maturity.

Today the long length of night departs. In just three hours, we will be at the darkest moment of the year. We will be immersed in oneness. Yin will have reached its fullness. And then, with one tilt of the earth’s axis yang arises. At this moment our state of body and mind changes and we will already be moving toward the growing length of days. As we release our karma by burning our pieces of art in the fire and empower our best intentions for the coming year, we can celebrate with a boisterous clamor. We can feel happy and know that this planet sustains us. We can dance with joy.

On this auspicious occasion of the first arising of yang I respectfully wish you all ten thousand blessings in every area of your life. This is, indeed, an auspicious day and we now enter an auspicious season with ten million changes that begin with the warming of the earth and end at Equinox with the sprouting of greens in our gardens. After we have burned our pieces of art, we can eat the solstice feast and, later enjoy a deep renewing sleep.

Happy Enlightenment Day. Happy Solstice!nter Solstice Dharma Talk 2015

0 Comments

How Old Are We?

11/20/2015

0 Comments

In his essay, “Mountains and Rivers Sutra,” Dogen, a thirteenth century Zen master says, “Because mountains and waters have been active since before the empty eon they are alive at this moment.”

We now know that mountains and rivers are ancient. They have been on earth since long before there were human beings, plants, animals. They go back many millions of years. When we are in the mountains or on the ocean, we sense that we are communing with an ancestral form of existence. Dogen is saying all that, and something more. He’s saying that even before there was a universe, even before anything at all existed, these mountains and rivers were alive.

So what does he mean by that? How could that be? This goes back to a basic feeling that is at the heart of Asian cosmology. Contemporary cosmologists are now coming to the same conclusion – that is, to the idea that there is no beginning, that the idea of a beginning is a projection of a binary human mind, that the origin of the universe is more mysterious than anything our conceptual frameworks could possibly imagine.
When Dogen uses the phrase, “empty eon” he is referring to Buddhist cosmology where there are eons that succeed each other, one of which is an empty eon, a time when it appears that there is nothing. But even though it might it appear that in a given eon that there is nothing, there is this vital energy of movement, of impermanence. Impermanence is the only thing that is not impermanent. Impermanence is constant, as Dogen says, even when there is nothing.

I’m talking as if I know, but I don’t know, I can’t possibly know. All my thoughts feelings, metaphors and ideas about impermanence are incorrect. Whatever I say is misleading. The whole idea of a beginning implies that there is an ending that is prior to beginning. But what’s before that? Another beginning? And before that? Yet another beginning? It doesn’t make sense. But it does make sense that there is only movement and that we exist here, now, in this moment, because that movement has never ceased. So in some way we have always been here and will always be. We might lose our body; we will lose our body and the perceptions that depend on it. We will lose our sense of identity and memory, and a coherent sense of identity that depends on this body. But we won’t lose the essential person that we are or the vital energy that we are made of. That part of us has always been and will always be.

Suggested Practice: Try thinking about mountains and rivers as yourself, and notice how everything becomes quite personal. What if you no longer identified with your body, your ideas, beliefs, possessions, nationality, gender, or family? What if, instead, you identified with this on-goingness of living and dying? Think about this deeply. What would it mean to your daily life?

0 Comments

Enlightenment is Here, Now

9/15/2015

0 Comments

Maybe once or twice in a lifetime we have that wonderful feeling that this is exactly right. Everything is just as it should be – full and complete. It’s a wonderful feeling, but rare. Usually we struggle for completion and self improvement. We try to become whole but never quite get there. But imagine feeling that this moment is exactly complete as it is. Nothing more is needed.

When we think of impermanence we think it means that wonderful experiences are gone before we can grasp them. Impermanence seems incomplete to us because we have this idea of grasping something we can’t get. Often it seems like we are losing everything. But true impermanence is actually the opposite of that. With true impermanence each thing that appears carries the entire profound truth at its moment of appearance. This means that in every moment we can be fully satisfied, fully complete. Isn’t that great?

We could call this enlightenment, but that sounds so unattainable. This description sounds more day to day. That’s why I don’t like the word “enlightenment.” Enlightenment is not something you have to make into a goal. Enlightenment is how things always are, and we are living it every moment. So we don’t have to get enlightened. We are enlightenment itself, because enlightenment is everything that appears.

But there is a problem to be solved because we don’t feel like that. And that’s a problem only because it makes us dissatisfied with our life, as it is, right now. It wouldn’t be so bad if it just made us unhappy, but the problem is we do a lot of stupid things when we are unhappy, and because we don’t know who we are. We destroy relationships; we spend a lot of time trying to get material things we imagine will bring contentment; and in doing that, we are destroying the earth.

This is why Zen students meditate. Every time we sit down in meditation we come closer to realizing what is true all the time. We can’t be destructive when sitting in silence. To live a life in which meditation is the touchstone is a beautiful possibility. And we can all do that. We don’t have to live in a Zen monastery where everything is constantly referring to this truth. We need only practice meditation regularly and see it as the basis of our lives.

Meditation is not just something we do to calm down, like having a hot bath or going for a walk. Meditation is the basis of our life. Whatever we are in the moment, whatever our circumstances are, enlightenment can be realized. But it takes a lot of training. It takes regular practice. It takes diligent examination of our own minds. But after a while, it’s just our life.

Suggested Practice: Find a quiet place, direct your awareness to your breath, and each time something arises in your mind, notice and let it go. Do this for 20 minutes twice a day.

0 Comments