Tag Archives: Kaz Tanahashi

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follow the stream

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Be soft in your practice.  Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall.  Follow the stream, have faith in its course.  It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there.  It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices.  Just follow it.  Never let it out of your sight.  It will take you.

Sheng-yen (in Essential Zen by Kazuaki Tanahashi & David Schneider)

Entering this week of practice for Rohatsu, I made the commitment to be fearless in my sitting.  It felt like I was about to attack the zafu with a vengeful pounce for all the times it met my efforts with undiscriminating silence.  Be soft?  Do I know how?

Sometimes I have a waking dream of falling, falling backwards into the ocean.  Arms outstretched, legs, fingers, and toes splayed open.  Whatever the height I am falling from, there is not a ripple, not a sound as I am absorbed into a vast, liquid, supporting cushion.  Be soft.  It’s worth a try.

Please take the time to practice softly,

Genju


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one continuous mistake

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Subtle-zen-web

When we reflect on what we are doing in our everyday life, we are always ashamed of ourselves….  Dogen-zenji said, “Shoshaku jushaku…”  (It) means “to succeed wrong with wrong, ” or one continuous mistake.  According to Dogen, one continuous mistake can also be Zen.  (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki)

I’ve been looking over my calligraphy.  “One continuous mistake” seems to sum it up. That’s not a bad thing at all.  In fact, it’s probably the one thing I feel I’ve actually achieved: make that single line of errors and step back to actually see it.  Sometimes, I laugh at myself wholeheartedly, there are all 108 lines overwhelming the paper.  Many single continuous humilities to step back from!

Kaz Tanahashi does incredible things with one single line, one brush stroke – though I’d have a hard time calling his single-stroke paintings ‘mistakes.’  Kaz sensei also said one day that it’s not whether something is perfect or imperfect. It’s about being complete.  An enso, Kaz sensei said, is complete.  Complete because it contains everything: the perfect and the imperfect.

I like that.  Much as I have no association with the little demon, hope, that gives me hope.  I am complete: containing  the perfect and imperfect.

So are you.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

completing