Blogma

What do we mean by ‘Presence’? In one sense we are always present, there is nothing outside this present moment. Right? This ‘presence’ is all there is. And yet we have the experience of being present and the experience of not being present. It is like night and day. What is actually happening in the moment where we seem to not be present? This is worth investigating firsthand.

Dogen Zenji says in the Fukanzazengi “It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.”
What is this ‘like and dislike’? This ‘seeking’ that pulls us from activity to activity, from thought to thought, and propels us to live in a state of, often subtle, but sometime very obvious, dissatisfaction? If we look closely at what propels our incessant and obsessive thinking, we find this sense of wanting and not-wanting, this sense that something isn’t quiet right and that we need to make it right. The steady stream of stressful past and future thoughts that most of us experience are the flowers of a deeper root. The Buddha called this root ‘dukkha’ which is often translated as ‘suffering’ or ‘friction.’ As we practice we often become more aware of it.

Zazen, although it includes this dukkha, is at the same time it’s opposite. Zazen is the practice of satisfaction. We sit down and we say, with our whole being, this, right here, this entire universe right here, exactly as it is, dukkha and all, is enough. Just for this moment we stop trying to make it something else. We become exactly this present moment and this present moment become exactly us. We enter the samadhi of life being itself. How utterly simple! How relieving! How free!

Zazen is an art and like all forms of art it takes devotion to master. “If there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth.” So let’s keep practicing until there is no gap!  And let’s see that already there is no gap!

‘What is my true path?’ A simple zen answer might be, ‘Well, the one you’re on’. The subsequent exchange follows quite rationally: ‘but where does it go??’; ‘well, walk it and find out’. Where do decisions come from? Do we rightly bear responsibility for making them, and for receiving their consequences? The Buddha said it is as simple as ‘good actions bring good results’, loosely quoted. Yet the Dalai Lama says to have patience with complexity.

Sometimes we are ripe to make a decision, sometimes we are not. Even after having made a good decision with a clear mind, there is plenty of room for doubt to sneak in. Doubt obstructs our clarity in the moment. It is unproductive inquiry, taking us away from things. Yet the spiritual path is a path of doubting our firmly help assumptions, dissolving them, and liberating ourselves from their captivity, right? What is the difference?

It may very well be that the wisdom of today is the delusion of tomorrow. We are learning and growing. What we call anything – helpful or harmful – is a matter of our view. May we practice with such steadiness that we see ourselves as wise, yet continually look back upon ourselves as foolish.

Soten

Hostility, competition, love, furniture, money, narrative, excitement all mark the dreaming of this life. There’s always a trail that we are following in a dream. It’s real, it’s vivid, it’s saturated with emotion and meaning. It doesn’t have to make sense in a usual way, only that it appears as real, in the moment. It makes sense in its own way. That’s always the case in a dream in sleep. We don’t even question it. Not until some moment of lucidity stirs aware of a question, “Oh, wait a minute, I’m dreaming. Wake up!” And then our eyes open and the world that was so complete and true a moment ago is suddenly nowhere, replaced by ordinary surroundings, sensations, thoughts, what we believe is really real.

But is it? What happens to this reality, when we close our eyes and awareness drifts, disappears, to re-up in some other realm, which we call “dream”. It’s worth looking into what is it that distinguishes the sleeping dreams from the waking dream? This question is an approach to awakening in both. The characteristics of continual change, profound transformation, infinite possibilities and continual emergence mark both states. Do you find this to be true in your own experience?

How do we know when we’ve made a mistake? Is a mistake something we did in the past, or a consequence we expect to meet us in the future? What if there is nothing within us – nothing at all – endowed with the ability to prevent our making mistakes in the future? Then the next one is around the corner, get ready for it!

We must be intimate with forgiveness. If we are woven with fallibility, then so too are we woven with humility. Don’t stand apart from this grace. Our mistakes are beacons of light. They are means through which we discover what we don’t yet know- especially if we acknowledge them. If this is the case, can they actually be said to be mistakes at all? Perhaps we should change our language to, “Oops, forgive me, I just made an overt learning opportunity”!

But what if the consequences are dire? Let’s be real, some mistakes result in people losing their lives…We should not underestimate the potential impact of our actions. And yet, the more we are able to live in love, kindness, respect, intimacy, attention, care…the more our mistakes will be reduced to mere moments of turbulence within these strong currents of benevolence.

This is the import of spiritual practice – ensuring that our life is fundamentally aligned. If our life is fundamentally aligned, we can forgive our digressions – and those of others. This takes regular practice. This week many of us are engaged in the practice of Sesshin – a meditative intensive investigating the positive qualities of the heart. May this practice bring benefit to many lives. May more beings find peace within themselves. May our mistakes guide us toward evermore humility, love, and clarity. May you have a nice day.

Soten

Every weekday morning after our morning zazen the small group of us have tea around the kitchen table at the Zen center. The guiding teacher (usually Soten) offers a prompt for discussion. This past Monday I offered the prompt, “If you were to substitute another word for the word ‘practice’ what would it be?” Another way to ask this would be, ‘What are we doing when we engage in Zen Practice?’

Some of the words we came up with were ‘Training’, ‘Dissolving’, ‘Life’ and ‘Honesty’. When we practice, we are training our minds, we are dissolving into what is, we are simply being life, we are sitting in/as naked honesty. What would you say? What is this thing you call practice? What is your experience like when you practice? What is it like when you don’t practice? How is it different from your everyday mode of operation? Is it different?

Another word I came up with when contemplating this question was ‘love.’ When we engage in Zen practice, we are loving what is. This upcoming week we will be doing our Divine Abode Sesshin. Everyone is welcome to join for the morning and evening sessions without registering and full/part time registration is also still open. Sesshin is a deep dive into practice. During this sesshin we will intentionally uncover and cultivate the boundless qualities of the heart. The Four Divine Abodes are said to be Compassion, Kindness, Sympathetic Joy, and Equanimity. Yet there are many more…Gratitude, Forgiveness, Appreciation, Ease, Happiness, Love… We can pick any one of these beautiful heart qualities and expand it, let it expand us. We can make it our abode, our home, the place where we naturally abide; a perfect home from which we can truly enjoy this precious life. Which of these qualities do you want to cultivate? Please start today. What we practice we become.

Yours in the Dhama,
Shinei

In zazen on the cushion (bench or chair) we look deeply, carefully, minutely into each breath, each sensation, each thought, or impulse…and come to appreciate how ephemeral this “each” is. Beyond zazen on the cushion, the instants unfold in a stream of nowness everywhere off the cushion, taking the form of things, events, thoughts, emotions…all as expressions of “causes and conditions”. Here and gone. A cause produces an effect or result. But try to find something as simple- seeming as a cause and it will most undoubtedly elude you. A condition is indispensable to the occurrence of something else. For example, the nature of the ice we recently experienced depended on a steep drop in temperature and depended on moisture grabbed into air by wind, moved by temperature currents, buoyed by atmospheric pressure, and holding within ever- smaller particles and molecules of dust.

The relationships of all these elements changed continuously from liquid to solid to gas, round or sheet like, crunchy, slick…with no discernable, discreet beginning as well as no end to what these causes and conditions expressed. This is way the infinite web of all and everything unfolds and manifests as you, as me, as the world in activity. Our Zen practice not only points to each radiant emerging expression of impermanent conditions, but it reveals how the idea of something as separate, causing something else, is a relative insight. When we realize this, we live into a lively emergent mysterious universe, just as it is….