Tag Archives: zazen

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awareness arises

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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.

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compost 5

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Is it now an Enso-Friday?  Or a Poem-Friday?

Anyway, this is what I get when I want to use up all the ink by holding all four brushes close, squishing the hair bristles together, and GO!

Pre-composting is like pre-satori – it can be fun and turn out some neat stuff.  I’m reading Wild Ivy, Hakuin’s autobiography and am considering the implications of pre- and post-satori experiences, not to mention repeated experiences of satori.  James Austin had a lot to say about that in his Zen Brain talk on ego- and allo-centric processing and the kensho experience.  But more on all that when I finish the book.  What I am struck by, in this moment, is the resonance I feel with Hakuin’s Song of Zazen.  A balm, especially after all the chatter this week about what can only be summarized as “sex, pray, more sex.”

How easily we forget the interpenetration of water and ice.

How quickly we get lost on dark path after dark path – pre- and post-satori.

Hakuin’s Song of Zazen
Translated by Norman Waddell

All beings by nature are Buddha,
As ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, no Buddha.
How sad that people ignore the near
And search for truth afar:
Like someone in the midst of water
Crying out in thirst,
Like a child of a wealthy home
Wandering among the poor.
Lost on dark paths of ignorance,
We wander through the Six Worlds,
From dark path to dark path–
When shall we be freed from birth and death?
Oh, the zazen of the Mahayana!
To this the highest praise!
Devotion, repentance, training,
The many paramitas–
All have their source in zazen.
Those who try zazen even once
Wipe away beginning-less crimes.
Where are all the dark paths then?
The Pure Land itself is near.
Those who hear this truth even once
And listen with a grateful heart,
Treasuring it, revering it,
Gain blessings without end.
Much more, those who turn about
And bear witness to self-nature,
Self-nature that is no-nature,
Go far beyond mere doctrine.
Here effect and cause are the same,
The Way is neither two nor three.
With form that is no-form,
Going and coming, we are never astray,
With thought that is no-thought,
Singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.
Boundless and free is the sky of Samádhi!
Bright the full moon of wisdom!
Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body, the Buddha

Have a colourful weekend!

Thank you for practising,

Genju