What Is Left Behind

It seems a long time ago now that Dana, then the Secretary, asked me if I would take on the blog as part of my responsibilities as ino. She is gone now, back to the market-place; there is a new Abbess, a new tanto, and everyone else on the senior staff that I started with has rotated to a different job in this period of time. That is the way of things at Zen Center.

This morning I put on my robes and went down to the zendo for the first time this week. Even though the schedule was optional for residents this morning, we had a good turn-out for the Full Moon Ceremony in the Buddha Hall after zazen. I had asked Martha several times before to be kokyo, and it had never worked out, so I was glad that she made her debut this time, for the blue moon; her voice sang out across the room strongly and vividly.
I sat one last time in the ino's seat for the 9:25 period - I was going to say, enjoying sitting with all the Saturday regulars, but actually there were a number of new faces today; perhaps some of these are going to be the new regulars. 
Rosalie had told me she was going to get up at the end of lecture to say something about it being my last day, and she did - apparently it went out on the Livestream as well if you want to hear what she said. I have noticed before that she always has a good knack of finding the right things to say about people, pinpointing particular qualities that stand out and bringing them to light. My karma is such that I found it more embarrassing to be standing there on the receiving end of these glowing words than just to be there making anouncements, but I felt warmly held and appreciated by everyone in the room; there was also applause, which is most unusual in those surroundings.
As happens most Saturdays, a nice group from YUZ got to hang out in the courtyard afterwards, partly organising what we are going to do on Monday, and, since I was getting into a vacation frame of mind and had the intention of not planning anything for today, I lingered with everybody after lunch much longer than is my wont, and had a sweet time with people.

There is a ceremony in one of the folders on the computer for the ino transition, which we have sometimes used; mostly it is a jundo and an invitation for the new ino to take the seat. The timing being what it is, I don't think we are going to do it this time. I will however make a transition right here after I have posted this: I will transfer the administrative control for the blog away from my log-in, and leave it in Valorie's hands.

I would like to say that I have deeply valued being offered this space to express and share the dharma and my practice with everybody, and I have been constantly encouraged and touched by all the positive feedback I have received over the last two and a half years, be it from my closest dharma friends here in the building or those of you with whom I am only acquainted through the blog. It has been a particular and wonderful sangha to have been a part of.

At times, and not just now at the end of my tenure, I have looked around and thought that the most tangible result of my time as ino will be that I got the bowing mat in the Buddha Hall replaced. It took more than a year to actually make it happen, but then I think it had been in need of doing for at least ten years. There are a few other material things that I can look around and think, I was at least partially the cause of this coming into being. For the non-tangible effects...

The truth is that I have been trying to compose this post for a couple of weeks - which would explain why it reads a little disjointed - and I know that it is impossible to be able to find fitting words to say at this moment. However, having read in Living by Vow an extract from Shobogenzo Gyoji, I think it is only appropriate to close with some words from Dogen:
"The essential point is that, in the entire earth and throughout heaven in the ten directions, all beings receive the merit of our continuous practice. Although neither others nor ourselves know it, that is the way it is."

Study Hall

A last offering from Dogen's Genjo Koan, Three Commentaries - Uchiyama Roshi's look at the final paragraph of the fascicle, which starts:

"Zen master Baoche of Mount Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, 'Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then do you fan yourself?' 'Although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent;' Baoche replied, 'you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.' 'What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?' asked the monk again. The master just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply."

"This is a very simple story that we can understand without much explanation. Although the wind-nature is ever present in heaven and earth, if we don't use a fan, the wind is not actualized. If we don't use a fan, we don't have wind.
I would like to use another example. We human beings can be physically alive precisely because we breathe a breath each moment, right now, right here. If we think that because we breathed a lot in the past, we don't need to breathe right now, we will die. In the same way, if we think that because we practised a lot and attained enlightenment in the past, we don't need to practise anymore, such enlightenment is already dead.
Living enlightenment is the same as breathing each moment; we arouse bodhi-mind, moment by moment, billions of times, and practice right now and right here. This is called shusho-ichinyo (practice and verification are one) or shojo-no-shu (practice/enlightenment. This is the way life is."

Study Hall

"According to the Zen tradition, when Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment, he said, 'I, the great earth, and sentient beings simultaneously attained the Way; mountains, rivers, grass, and trees have all become Buddha.' In the Lotus Sutra, there is an expression, 'Ten directions are all within Buddha's land.' The Kanmuryojo-kyo (Sutra of Seeing Infinite Life, one of the three major sutras of Pure Land Buddhism) says, 'The light of the Tathagatha of Infinite Life (Amitabha) embraces all living beings without rejecting any.' We have already been enlightened by Shakyamuni Buddha, and are from the beginning in the hands of Amitabha Buddha, who saves all living beings without exception. This is not a matter of understanding it or not. Whether we know it or not, whether we say I don't believe in Amitabha or not, it is true. It is not a problem. The light of Amitabha embraces all living beings whether we believe it or not.
The reality of life or the 'Life of Buddha' is thus. And yet, all of us think and measure and say, 'I don't believe it.' Don't say such cheeky things! The force which makes us think that our minds are great and makes us say such cheeky things itself wells up from the power of Amitabha or the 'Life of Buddha'. We must deeply understand that whether we think so or not, believe it or not, understand it or not, venerate it or not, accept it or reject it, in whatever conditions, we are living out the formless reality of life prior to its division into dichotomies" - Kosho Uchiyama, Dogen's Genjo Koan, Three Commentaries.

The Eye Of Practice

It seems that these days most of the things I hear and study are pointing in the same direction: 'awakening moment by moment to the reality of life prior to the separation between dichotomies', as Uchiyama Roshi expresses it, or 'mind and dharma are one reality', or 'nowhere-else mind' as I think Baker Roshi put it in his talk. Part of me starts to think, "I wish I had heard this when I started to practise", but probably I did hear it; the teaching has not changed in that time, but my way of relating to it and absorbing it certainly has. I think of some of the things I used to discuss with Paul when I first started meeting him twelve years ago, and some of the things we discuss now, and it is clear that we focus on different things as we continue to practise. As Dogen puts it in the Genjo Koan, "you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach", and part of the teacher's job is to meet you at that level. I have been thinking about the phrase 'luminous mirror wisdom' that we use quite often, in terms of the wisdom to be just a mirror.I was reading a blog post the other day where the author was grappling with rationality, mind, and reality:

"And if all the thoughts and stories in your head - as Zen seems to suggest - are equally meaningless, then so are thoughts about Zen and the thoughts of Zen.  Of course, that is a conclusion that most Zen masters would willingly accept, but it leaves them in a dangerous place, where anything can be said because everything is equally senseless. And that seems to bring Zen perilously close to nihilism, an association that [D.T.] Suzuki is eager to fend off. It's true, he says, that Zen declares that everything is empty, but what emerges when that is realized is joy in the present moment.  But isn't joy in the present moment empty too, bringing us back to nihilism?"

These are deep things to be grappling with; the way I feel this in my life now is that awareness of emptiness does not lead to nihilism, but rather a rootedness in unrootedness. There are no 'stable individual identities' as the author understands and accepts, and being able to accord with this reality does bring a certain ease and joy, which is 'empty' only in the sense it does not have a stable inherent existence, and which is often countered by the stuff our brains starts coming up with to assert otherwise. So which do we trust? The longer I practise, the less I try to listen to constructs of the mind. 'Thoughts about Zen' are basically meaningless; nonetheless they do exist as part of the reality we are experiencing. The trick is being comfortable with both of these things at the same time.
Just in case you have glazed over, some sky pictures from last week, as the sun and fog meet and balance each other:

Monday

Tuesday

Tuesday

Friday

Friday

Saturday

Study Hall

I have been working steadily through Uchiyama Roshi's commentary in Dogen's Genjo Koan, Three Commentaries this week. Here are his ideas on perhaps the text's most well-known phrase:

"To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.

The self Dogen talks about here is not ego in terms of egoism. This is the self as jinissai-jiko (all-interpenetrating self) that is the reality of life prior to separation into dichotomies such as self/other or subject/object.
Previously Dogen Zenji said, 'Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion'. Although the self is originally living the all-interpenetrating self, my brain produces all kinds of non-interpenetrating thoughts. Thoughts well up such as: 'I want money!' 'I want sex,' 'I want a higher position!' and so on. When we are pulled by such thoughts secreted from our brain, that is certainly delusion. And yet, even though such thoughts are delusions, the fact that delusive thoughts come up is nothing other than a function of the reality of life connecting with heaven and earth. 'To study the Budda Way is to study the self' means that we should study the self, which includes all heaven and earth.
Concretely speaking, we should accept everything as the contents of our 'self'. We should meet everything as a part of ourselves. 'To study the self' means to awaken to such a self. For instance, many people visit my house or write me letters. Many of these people talk or write about their troubles and anguish and ask for my advice. I never feel troubled by such requests. As soon as I am asked about such troubles, they become my own. I meet people and problems in such a way. As long as I have such an attitude, these problems are my own. And they enrich my life. If I reject other people's problems saying, 'That's not my business', my life becomes poorer and poorer. Therefore, to meet everything, without exception, as part of my life is most essential to the Buddha Way. This is what Dogen Zenji meant by saying, 'To study the Budda Way is to study the self'".

Footnotes

I am back to my usual habit of studying after breakfast, now that the Tour de France and the summer retreat are both over, and was keen to pick up Dogen's Genjo Koan, Three Commentaries again, while I still have that mind-attunement from the Genzo-e. Starting to read Uchiyama Roshi's commentary - Shohaku is not only a student of his, but the translator for this as well - I came across this footnote, which seems to contain more concentrated teaching than you might find elsewhere in a month of Sundays:
"Because the present moment is always the present moment, there is no way the present moment can become something else. And yet, because our mind often wanders here and there, in the past or in the future, we lose sight of the present moment, and therefore we need to practice letting go of thought and returning to here/now. This returning to here/now is nothing special, it is a really ordinary thing, because through this practice, the present moment simply becomes the present moment. However, within this ordinary practice through which we become simply ordinary, there is infinite possibility."

Study Hall - Extensive Record

Happy to be reading more Dogen, of course, and these are two of the three mountain poems Shohaku refered to during the Genzo-e:
"Zen Master Hongzhi said in a verse,

With coming and going, a person in the mountains
Understands that blue mountains are his body.
The blue mountains are the body and the body is the self,
So where can one place the senses and their objects?

The teacher Dogen followed his rhyme scheme:

A person in the mountains should love the mountains.
With going and coming, the mountains are his body.
The mountains are the body, but the body is not the self.
So where can one find any senses or their objects?"

(Eihei Koroku, volume 9, 25)

It Is Possible To Illustrate This With More Analogies

At a time when riding up Mt Tam seems straightforward, the thing to do is to go to Mt Diablo, which I did today. Once again, I got above the clouds and the greyness of the city, into warm, dry California mountain air. There are two ways up the mountain, and I usually alternate - up one, down the other. The North Road is a very steady climb, which means that you can settle into a sustainable rhythm for the seventy-plus minutes it takes to get up the road, and adjust when the gradient is a little steeper. The South Road, my choice today, starts a little harder at the bottom, but then levels off for a couple of miles, before rearing upward again just before it meets the North Road, four miles below the summit, so you have to find your rhythm a second time. These days I don't worry about anything much until I get to that junction; a mile beyond that is a steeper section, which then eases off at a sweeping bend at Juniper Camp, a spot like the corner of Mt Tam where you are suddenly overlooking the ocean, where I almost always feel a great burst of energy. Then the trick is to see how much is left in the tank for the final couple of miles, which are, or at least feel, a little steeper than average, before the final effort of the last ramp up to the summit, which may only take a minute, but is always hard. As the miles tick by, I focus my effort on relaxing my spine between the shoulder blades, which releases me from a feeling of wrestling the bike, and allows the legs to do the work more fluidly.
I had plenty of energy when I was a kid, and was usually either riding my bike or playing football (the kind the rest of the world plays, with the feet), so it was hardly a surprise that I gravitated towards endurance sports as I grew older, first cross-country running, and then biking. There was something I found purifying about sustaining an effort until the brain subsides and there is just the motion and the intention to keep going, and something gratifying about learning the body's limits, how long you could continue, staying just below the threshold of exhaustion, and at the end, about feeling depleted and fulfilled at the same time. It was a great counter-balance to my tendancy to be cerebral, and has probably spared me much stress and anxiety in my life. Meditation, of course, has the same effect, but at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and I have never stopped being a little surprised that I took to it.
On the way down, since the descent is not so technically demanding, I was nodding at those coming up, noting those who had a clean style and energy to burn, and those for whom it was a greater effort - everyone who can get up Diablo on a bike deserves huge credit. I felt the temperature changes as I dropped through the layers of air, a thousand feet at a time, and then I was down with the traffic again.
I don't think that this is what Shohaku was refering to when he talked about san chu nin (山 中 人), the person in the mountains, during the Genzo-e, but I was thinking of that phrase on Mount Diablo, as well as remembering other details of my time at Green Gulch. There was Shohaku's practice, which I remember well from other times, of starting every class, after he had nodded to the ino to lead us into the chant, by raising up his cup of water, taking a sip, and then bowing and saying "Good morning, everyone", or "Good afternoon, everyone". There was the almost complete silence of the zendo, apart from what sounded like plastic sheeting flapping on the roof from time to time; there were no streams of traffic, no passing cell-phone conversations, and not even the steady creek and bird calls of Tassajara. There was the sunshine, which we arrived in, and which made progressively fewer appearances as the days wore on, but which allowed me to sit out by the tea house after dinner the first few evenings, and feel warm and quiet. There was the intimacy of the priests in Cloud Hall; perhaps twenty priests were participating, and at most junctures in the schedule, before and after soji, before zazen and before meals, there would be a close array of us kneeling on the cushions and either putting on or taking off okesas together in silence. And there was of course the fact that, thanks to Carolyn's understanding and sympathy in the matter, I had absolutely no responsibilities during the sesshin, and could just sit there through it all.
Finally, I feel like I short-changed the garden in my last selection of photos, so here are a few more.

Jizo garden

Overlooking the garden

Starts in the greenhouse

I am reliably informed these are montbretia, or coppertips - they filled the area in spectacular fashion anyway

Sweetpea down at the farm

The Wheelwright Center

These are apparently cosmos, but the colour is cyclamen in my book

Definitely a poppy

Transitions

As the days went by in the retreat, I appreciated the silence more and more; eventually the notes and requests slowed down some, and the after-breakfast schedule of sitting, study, and extended open sitting felt very settling to me. There was something about being able to flow right from one activity to the next that reminded me of being at Tassajara, and was deeply rewarding.
I was still struggling with my own suffering, and this meant that patience, kindness and compassion were in short supply. For anyone from the retreat who was on the receiving end of a sharp glare or a snappy response, I can only belatedly apologise.
Having long been a fan of the format, I had some time ago requested to be allowed to take off for the Genzo-e sesshin at Green Gulch; Teah was kind enough to encourage me to go, even though it would inevitably have an impact on the retreat, and Rosalie and Christina worked to make it happen. Djinn was brave enough to volunteer to sit in the ino's seat, which I will have to make up to her somehow. This meant I had to prepare everything for the City Center sesshin, happening simultaneously, a few days ahead of time before I left - of course there were people who I didn't have in any of my lists who I happened to hear from other sources were intending to come, so I had to do most of the logistics twice. The end of the week before last was filled with sorting out: all the Saturday sitting paperwork, Saturday lecture announcements for two weeks, a sound system guide, the sesshin admonitions, sesshin announcements, sesshin services, sesshin paperwork - schedules, jobs list, participant list, seating charts (some marked for meals), doanryo schedule - as well as full instructions for the other things that were going to be happening during the week: a leaving ceremony, memorial ceremonies, the full moon ceremony, the Suzuki Roshi Memorial ceremony, and not least, a day-by-day checklist of things that would need to be taken care of.
Which was more stressful than to be doing the sesshin myself. Nevertheless, on Saturday morning, for the first time since I came back from Tassajara four years ago, I stayed in my room and let the morning schedule go on without me, and at the end of the morning, rode over to Green Gulch. Once I got over the bridge, I could feel myself relaxing.
Now, I have only really sat at Green Gulch on Sunday mornings occasionally, and been to a few ceremonies, so I was bringing some beginner's mind with me. Carolyn, my counterpart there, was surprised to see me come for the zendo forms introduction, but I had no idea what the form for kinhin was like, or for leaving, and I had never seen a service or done oryoki there. Of course, it was mostly familiar and easily deduceable, but there were lots of little things just different enough to keep me on my toes.
Having spent two weeks getting close to silence, this was another smooth transition from one activity to another. There was just a little bit more sitting through the day, about as much as a regular winter day at Tassajara, which was no problem for my legs. And after two weeks' of study time and Teah's classes, I was already attuned to reading and thinking about Dogen. Now, Teah's style and Shohaku's could hardly be more different: in the city we screened a PBS show from The Fabric of the Universe that illustrated the illusory nature of time, to go with Uji, which we were studying there; Shohaku is more likely to pull out an old Chinese waka to demonstrate how two kanji made their way into a phrase by Dogen, and not by accident, and also give deep contextual meanings to the kanji themselves. Both were completely enlivening - when I was able to focus.
After I had got used to the novelty of sitting facing the wall again, I found myself very tired on the second and third days, and swamped with difficult thoughts again; it was less 'dropping off body and mind' than body and mind falling apart, and on the third day I felt barely functional. In the zendo I made myself focus on three things: the weight of my body on the cushion, the air filling my upper body, and my eyes resting on the richly coloured wood of the tan. A couple of days later, on the last full day, I was back in focus again; I told myself I was not defined by the thoughts, and they receded accordingly; I was fully absorbing the teaching, and feeling energised by it.
My work assignment was the farm; a group of us spent about forty minutes each afternoon variously weeding, hoeing and digging up potatoes, which was very refreshing to do; on Thursday, as I started to feel better, several of us noticed an owl in the trees above the field where we met for work.  Some crows were trying to shoo it away, but it remained unperturbed; horses and bicycles were also ignored. I was happy to keep looking up at it as we worked, and it kept its gaze on us, and the surroundings, right through the work period. That may have been the best moment of the sesshin, for being so unexpected.
This morning once again, back in the city, I heard the morning schedule going on around me, and kept a low profile so as not to be in the way of the sesshin's final hours, which gives me a longer weekend than usual. On Monday the plan is to start training Valorie as my replacement, which will go on through the month before that transition takes place, and that seems a little closer now.

Greens in the fields

Starts in the greenhouse

Lavender with many bees

Watchful owl

Jizo in the zendo

Study Hall

It's nice to have an hour of study built into the retreat schedule, especially as it does not clash with Tour de France watching time. Appositely, I have just bought Dogen's Genjo Koan, Three Commentaries from the bookstore, so aside from chanting Uji, I am getting another fix of Dogenthink.
Here are a few of the simpler paragraphs from Nishiari Bokusan's deep commentary. He is Suzuki Roshi's dharma grand-father in a manner of speaking, in that he taught Kishizawa Ian, with whom Suzuki Roshi studied extensively - Kishizawa is not in the transmission lineage that we chant, but we have his picture in the kaisando.
"Practice is not limited to one form. Sometimes we need to go onto high peaks; sometimes we need to go into the deep ocean. It's no use to say, 'Originally, there is no one thing,' or 'not obtainable,' jumping before your feet are settled. On the other hand it is foolish to be stuck under the ladder for a lifetime by being bound by cause and effect and not knowing how to get through it.
So in practice we need to go to that place, look back at this place, go to the absolute, look back at the relative and continue taking years and years to examine by asking, 'What? What?'
Now each of these pursuits in your practice will become integral to the self. There is no way to practice without the self. This is the guide post for practice in our school. this is the point...
Practice always requires two separate dharmas, which are subject and object. But as long as there are dualistic views of subject and object, that is not Buddha dharma. When the subject and object disappear and have no affairs to attend to, the self is the self and myriad dharmas are myriad dharmas, and nothing gets in the way. We need this today. Being free from subject and object, when we meet people, even hundreds and thousands of people, we have no hindrance and have freedom within the self. Whether we  meet people who are disturbing or attractive, it doesn't matter. When this is not practiced, it is difficult to enter the paths of various beings and save them."

Time Being

Today's offering from the second half of Uji:
''The time-being of all beings throughout the world in water and on land is just the actualization of your complete effort right now. All beings of all kinds in the visible and invisible realms are the time-being actualized by your complete effort, flowing due to your complete effort. Closely examine this flowing; without your complete effort right now, nothing would be actualized, nothing would flow. Do not think flowing is like wind and rain moving from east to west. The entire world is not unchangeable, is not immovable. It flows."

Time Being

We are underway with the retreat, easing our way into an unfamiliar schedule. People have been asking me lots of questions about what is happening, and I don't always have the answer. Great time for everyone to practise with don't-know mind.
For noon service, we are chanting half of Uji per day (throwing in the Loving Kindness Meditation a couple of times during the week as well). This is an ambitious thing to do, given its length and legendary impenetrability, but today I found that parts of it leapt out in an unexpectedly clear way. Following on from the extract the other day, I might lift a few more sentences out, as and when. Here is a little something for you to chew on today:

"Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. The reason you do not clearly understand the time-being is that you think of time only as passing. In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being."

Study Hall - Shobogenzo

On my to-do list before the retreat started was to re-read Uji, since time is the subject of the retreat. I thought that this would be hindered by the Tour de France, but the internet outage on Friday morning, following the previous night's power cut, meant I had the opportunity to sit down uninterrupted after breakfast. This section seemed to sum it up for me this time around:

"Although the views of an ordinary person and the causes and conditions of those views are what the ordinary person sees, they are not necessarily the ordinary person's reality. The reality merely manifests itself for the time being as an ordinary person. Because you think your time or your time being is not reality, you believe that the sixteen-foot golden body is not you.
However your attempts to escape from being the sixteen-foot golden body are nothing but bits and pieces of the time being. Those who have not yet confirmed this should look into it deeply" - Uji, The Time Being.

Study Hall - Extensive Record

When in doubt, there is always Dogen:
"I can remember, Yunmen asked Caoshan, 'Why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy?' Caoshan said, 'Just because it is greatly intimate, we do not know it is there.'
Suppose this were Eihei and someone asked me, 'Why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy?' I would just hit his face with my whisk and ask him, 'Is this knowing or not knowing?' If he tried to answer,  I would hit him again with the whisk" - Dharma Hall Discourse 217.
What do you say?

Study Hall - Extensive Record

Keeping things interlinked, in one of the dinner conversations I had last week, the other person expressed an interest in Dogen's poetry. She declined to take a copy of Dogen's Extensive Record, even though the last two volumes comprise over a hundred pages of poetry, on the entirely understandable grounds that it was too big, and was happier to go with a slim volume that contained just poems.
This nevertheless prompted me to open again my copy of the Extensive Record, and it happened that the page I opened to resonated with the conversation we had been having:
"The great way originally has no names or words. Recognizing this principle, still we are compelled to call it the great way. Buddhas and ancestors appear one after another. The wooden man and the iron bull follow on each other's heels, ascending and descending. However, they leave no traces to appear before us. But assuredly [the great way] does not depart from this very place, but is always deep and calm. We should know that when we seek we cannot see it.
A long time ago, a monk asked Zen Master Guizong [Zhichang], 'What is the way?'
Guizong answered, 'You are it.'
Also a monk asked Mazu [Guizong's teacher], 'What is the way?'
Mazu said, 'Ordinary mind is the way.'
Also there was a monk who asked an [unknown] ancient worthy, 'What is the way?'
The person said, 'What you have been going through is it.'
Are these three venerable masters' sayings ultimately the same or different? If you say they are the same, ten are just five pairs. If you say they are different, eight ounces are half a pound. Ha!" (Volume 8, 2).

Study Hall

Having not settled on a new book to read since my return, I picked up Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community, and while I read Fushukuhanpo, The Dharma for Taking Food, this morning, it is mostly a little specialised in its setting out of guidelines for oryoki. So, instead, from the same book, one of the sections from the Tenzo Kyokun that we studied in Totnes as couple of weeks ago:
"When you take care of things, do not see with your common eyes, do not think with your common sentiments. Pick a single blade of grass and erect a sanctuary for the jewel king; enter a single atom and turn the great wheel of the teaching. So even when you are making a broth of coarse greens, do not arouse an attitude of distaste or dismissal. Even when you are making a high-quality cream soup, do not arouse an attitude of rapture or dancing for joy. If you already have no attachments, how could you have any disgust? Therefore, although you may encounter inferior ingredients, do not be at all negligent; although you may come across delicacies,  be all the more diligent. Never alter your state of mind based on materials. People who change their mind according to ingredients, or adjust their speech to [the status of] whoever they are talking to, are not people of the Way."

The Wholehearted Way

A couple of weeks ago the Thursday morning Young Urban Zen study group polished off Meditation in Action, and we ambitiously decided to tackle some Dogen next; the translation of Bendowa, The Wholehearted Way, by Shohaku Okamura and Dan Leighton was the choice. Amazingly enough, Bendowa has made but one appearance on this blog so far, but I noticed how happy I was to pick it up again. Having gone through the introduction in the last two sessions, this week we began with the text itself. Hearing the first few paragraphs read aloud - several times to allow for their density to unravel a little - I felt both energised and completely relaxed, reconnected with how Dogen's articulation allows my faith in practice to come alive and be grounded in my body. So, what better way to take a leap into the weekend?

"All buddha-tathagathas have been simply transmitting wondrous dharma and actualizing anuttara samyak sambodhi for which there is an unsurpassable, unfabricated, wondrous method. This wondrous dharma, which has been transmitted only from buddha to buddha without deviation, has as its criterion jijuyu zanmai.
For disporting oneself freely in this samadhi, practicing zazen in an upright posture is the true gate. Although this dharma is abundantly inherent in each person, it is not manifested without practice, it is not attained without realization. When you let go, the dharma fills your hands; it is not within the boundary of one or many. When you try to speak, it fills your mouth; it is not limited to vertical or horizontal. Buddhas continuously dwell in and maintain this dharma, yet no trace of conceptualization remains. Living beings constantly function in and use this dharma, yet it does not appear in their perception.
The wholehearted practice of the Way that I am talking about allows all things to exist in enlightenment and enables us to live out oneness in the path of emancipation. When we break through the barrier and drop off all limitations, we are no longer concerned with conceptual distinctions."

Body And Mind Of Themselves

It is often said that the reason we get up so early in the morning is to have the opportunity to be awake - more or less - before the habitual conscious mind can get a firm hold on us. Moving through familiar routines without much mental activity involved, there is the chance for body and mind to experience spaciousness during zazen.
I am often sleepy during afternoon zazen, more specifically during the first half of the period; around the time I hear the six o'clock chimes from up the road, I start feeling more alert. This seems to be the tired body's natural response to stopping after a day of activity, but I have found it a useful place to be  - the other day, somewhere close to the tipping point between waking and sleep, I had the sense that I should tilt slightly to the right from the mid-point of the thorassic curve in my spine. Having adjusted my posture, I felt the release of balance and settledness, but since it wasn't dictated by the conscious mind, I have found it difficult to repeat the movement since then, however much I would like to.
Reading Katagiri Roshi this morning, I came to the sentence, "Dogen constantly emphasizes that practice is shikan. Shikan is just wholeheartedness; it is experience, so practice is experience." At that moment, without really thinking about it, I understood this as the energy to go forward and meet things. I also know that recently I have been practising with letting go of some of the forward drive in my everyday attitudes, which I have been doing by noticing a certain bodily tension and allowing the muscles in my ribs to relax. In both cases, it seems that it is allowing the body to function more naturally without so much interference from the mind, like those twilight moments when the brain is not fully in gear.

Study Hall - Extensive Record

Dharma Hall Discourse 281: "Going to the seashore to count grains of sand vainly wastes one's strength. Polishing a tile to make a mirror is a meaningless use of effort. Don't you see that the clouds above the tall mountain naturally wind and unwind around each other, so how could they be intimate or estranged? The water of a deep river channel follows along the straight stretches and curves without preferring this way or that. The daily activity of living beings is like clouds and water. Clouds and water are like this, but people are not. If they could be like this, how could they ever transmigrate in the triple world?"

Study Hall - Extensive Record

Dharma Hall Discourse 217: "I can remember, Yunmen asked Caoshan, 'Why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy?' Caoshan said, 'Just because it is greatly intimate, we do not know it is there'.
Suppose this were Eihei and someone asked me, 'Why don't we know that there is a place of great intimacy?' I would just hit his face with my whisk and ask him, 'Is this knowing or not knowing?' If he tried to answer, I would hit him again with the whisk".

Hazy sunshine this morning after the rain has moved on