Tag Archives: Loori

Unknown's avatar

awareness arises

by

I was watching the birds and noticed one of the female rose-breasted grosbeak had a dash of yellow just under the line at her throat.  The female grosbeak is a bit like a large sparrow and despite the nomenclature, is not rose-breasted.  Mottled-brown and white, the only dramatic flair in her coloration are the thick brown lines around her eyes that give her an intense look.  Yellow stood out.  I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed this in the years of watching the grosbeak.

Noticing is like that.  I can look for something in my study for hours only to have it mysteriously appear just as my frustration is cresting or has crashed.  The joke in our house is to go straight to frustration and surrender which would make the sought-for object appear like magic.  Sadly it works often enough that we might be using it as a standard strategy and missing the point that it is when we let go that awareness arises.

Practice is like that.  Counter-intuitive intuition.  Keizan Jokin writes in “Zazen Yojinki: Notes on what to be aware of in zazen (translated by Yasuda Joshu & Anzan Hoshin in The Art of Just Sitting, edited by John Daido Loori):

Listening and thinking about (mind in zazen), views have not ceased and the mind is obstructed…  True sitting puts all things to rest yet penetrates everywhere…  Being afflicted by the five obstructions arises from basic ignorance, and ignorance arises from not understanding your own nature.

It’s hard to see frustration as nothing, a no-thing.  My mind grabs it as a pivotal moment in which what is happening is not what should be happening.  Confusion arises. 

If you want to cease your confusion, you must cease involvement in thoughts of good or bad.  Stop getting caught up in unnecessary affairs.  A mind “unoccupied” together with a body “free of activity” is the essential point to remember.

And immediately after confusion, delusion sets in.  “I know I performed an action although every shred of data in my current awareness says not.

When delusive attachments end, the mind of delusion dies out.  When delusion dies out, the Reality that was always the case manifests and you are always clearly aware of it.  It is not a matter of extinction nor of activity.

The struggle between what is and what should be stops.  And, the rose-breasted grosbeak can reveal its brilliant yellow collar.

Unknown's avatar

guess what

by

day this is!

Practice 108!

Some of you may remember the 108Buddhas series of last year.  108 days before the anniversary of this blog, I committed to 108 brush paintings of “Buddha” in Kanji script.  That turned out to be a fascinating practice in patience and the willingness to be with the eternal uncertainty of the creative process.  This year I feel the need to practice with wholeness and what better teacher of wholeness than the Enso.

So let me introduce you to Enso1.  For those of you with children, you may know that Red is Best; a delightful children’s story that my daughter and I now use to signal absolute perfection (regardless of the colour we’re perceiving).  Red is like that.  So is the enso.  It becomes a signifier of all that is.

Enso paintings act as visual and poetic koans – apparently paradoxical statements, questions, or demonstrations that point to or suggest the nature of reality.  They reflect the artist’s understanding that, at their best, words and images cannot express the truth completely.

from Foreword by John Daido Loori in Enso: Zen circles of enlightenment by Audrey Yoshiko Seo

Seo explains that how the enso is drawn exposes the character of the artist.  In that case, this enso likely says a lot about my need for perfection and completeness.  Some call it closure.  Inevitably – and probably for the good – my brush-mind has other ideas.  It leaves a space for coming and going and yet… and yet, it respects my anxieties by filling that space with little islands of tenderness.  And there were other lessons.  Frank proclaimed that this was not his favourite of the three I showed him.  I protested.  My favourite has to be his favourite, I proclaimed.  That’s what husbands are for. 

It’s not only the drawing of the enso that teaches me about my character.  It is also all that went before and comes after.

Join me in these 108 days by taking a moment in your day to visit yourself.  Hold up the mirror and look into the circle of enlightenment.  Nothing fancy required.  A pencil, a finger dipped in tea, a brush wet only with water.  A circle drawn in the air.

If you would like to have a practice surface that is the quintessential practice of impermanence, try the Buddha Board or Zen By the Brush.