Meditation as Experimentation

I have been steeped in reading and writing lately. I just finished teaching a class on the History of Modern Philosophy, I am preparing to teach a class on issues relating to Freedom and Authority, and I am working on a seminary paper that is about the word ‘sutra’ in the Platform Sutra.

At times, it feels like new vistas have opened up before me, both philosophically and spiritually. And perhaps some of these vistas are more than just flickers and flashes passing in the night.

But this morning, while I was sitting, one thing stood out: I cannot think myself through this!

At the same time, practicing with the Platform Sutra and the Diamond Sutra have changed the way I approach practice on and off the cushion.

So here is a thought – passing and fleeting as any other: meditation is a kind of experimentation. Here is an idea for liberation: count your breaths. Then sit and see if you taste peace while doing this. If you sit for 10 minutes, then try 20, then 30, then 60, then 2 hours. When your practice breaks, what remains? What else is there to bring you to peace? In this way, meditation is a kind of experimentation of those crazy ideas we have about Buddha and liberation and peace in our minds.

And then, we experiment off the cushion or while not formally practicing. So we could count our breaths while sitting. Can we still follow them when rushing to work? When talking with friends? When falling asleep? When showering? What does it mean to follow the breath anyways? What are we following? In this way, life is a kind of experimentation of those crazy ideas of peace and happiness we have in our minds.

Doesn’t matter what your practice is: breath counting, hwadu, koan, visualization, and so on. Keep experimenting with it. Let it change as you change, let it change you as you change it, all of which is no change at all, just the practice deepening and illuminating more and more.

Then when you think you are getting it, experiment again and again and again…

 

On a Change of Consciousness and Contemporary Protest Movements

From what I gather, there is a change of consciousness coming about.

But this is not mysterious metaphysics!

It just everyday people waking up to the fact they are responsible for their actions and lack of them, that they can change their patterns of behavior, and that once this is done great change can result.

This is evidenced by both tea party and occupy wall street protest movements.

Although we may be different in our goals, we are not different in recognizing our ability and responsibility to bring about change through action.

Cannot and Do not

One of my teachers, Haju Sunim, would often reply to our habitual stories about what kept us from practicing: It is not that you cannot, it is that you do not.

This is both refreshing and humbling.

It is refreshing because if we simply do not do it, then we can easily change that by doing it. There is no impossibility!

It is humbling because it shifts responsibility for our awakening on to us. Why choose delusion?

So whether it is refraining from harming others with our speech or sitting until we fully awaken: it is not that we cannot, it is that we do not.

Zen and the Cult of “Being in the Moment”

Don’t be deceived by spiritual leaders
And their practices of being in the moment.

Sitting on the cushion, watching your breath,
Eating take-out in your car, late for work,
Drinking fresh brewed tea in noble silence,
Walking with ten thousand sounds in your ears,
Letting plans come and go,
Being ripped apart from the anxiety of I don’t know:
You cannot escape this very moment!

No practice can bring you back to where you are;
Before you move, you are already there.

It’s as easy as falling asleep
And as difficult as waking up.

Zen is Difficult and Dangerous

Following a theme I mentioned in my last post – working with uncomfortable practice – I just read “Zen Practice is Difficult and Dangerous” over at Huffington Post by Rev. Zesho Susan O’Connell at San Francisco Zen Center. (Thanks to Brad Warner over at Hardcore Zen for linking to this article.)

I suggest giving it a read and, if you are engaged in Zen practice with a teacher, taking it into your practice and daily life. What unfolds when we dive in the deep end of practice? What is practice when we move beyond self-help and other-help?

What is the bodhisattva path when we move beyond thoughts of social activism and social complaisance, where there is no perception of a self, a being, a life, or a soul?

Don’t Get Comfortable

During our summer meetings back in July, Ven. Samu Sunim instructed us:

Don’t get comfortable in your practice. When you get comfortable, your training dies! Practice dies!

The specific context was about being frugal and efficient, especially in one’s use of natural resources. His remarks were prompted by our morning practice session. It was humid and we were sweating while prostrating, so we turned on the fan. When we sat, we left the fan on. In neither case was the fan necessary, but especially while we were sitting. We got lazy. And our practice suffered for it.

I want to explore Sunim’s remarks across various posts in the coming weeks. There is physical comfort and psychological comfort and both are dangerous to practice. Also, there is a contradiction in this for me that must be explored through practice. I live a comfortable life. I have shelter, food, a dog, friends, a partner, part-time employment, and good health. And yet I see truth in what he says – I see it because I experience it in my training. So how can I engage uncomfortable practice with the comfortable life I live?

Of course, I will also post about my studies, which now include the Diamond Sutra, the Platform Sutra, and the Awakening of Faith. These have changed my perception of and engagement with practice, Zen, and Buddhism, primarily by disabusing me of previous beliefs – or at least bringing out that I was fond of getting stuck and calling it progress. One way of getting stuck was that I was about to leave this blog altogether. Well, here is my practice of pulling my feet out of the mud.

But, reality is what it is, and I have teaching and job searching and many unexpected things that are calling me. So I will post as regularly as possible, which may be infrequently. Thank you for reading when you cross this blog’s path. Thank you for practicing. Thank you.

Diamond Gathas, Summer Break

Hello!  May this post find you at ease or with a friend nearby to help you through.  Sometimes sitting, sometimes going to a cheap summer movie.  Whatever your poison, whatever your antidote.  May you take up your practice with the fierceness and compassion of a Buddha!

I am coming close to summer retreat and student meetings in Toronto.  I have been busy studying and finishing a paper on the Diamond Sutra and so have not had time to post here.  I don’t expect to post again until later in July.  So please come back and see what arises then!

For now, I am including a small snippet from my paper on Practicing the Diamond Sutra.  This part has to do with composing gathas (four-line stanzas) about it.  Part of this is out of context, since it is only a part of the paper, but hopefully the idea is clear enough – as clear as any of this can be, that is!

Thank you for reading!

——————————————

Another way of practicing this sutra is to compose gathas about it.  The Buddha tells Subhuti that if someone “grasped but one four-line gatha of this dharma teaching and made it known and explained it in detail to others, the body of merit produced as a result would be immeasurably, infinitely” great.[1]  Which four-line gatha of the Diamond Sutra?  This question is mistaken.  There are only two four line gathas in the Diamond Sutra and they occur in chapters twenty-six and thirty-two, long after the Buddha talks about gathas in chapter eight.  So there must be another way of grasping gathas about the teaching than simply turning to one of these two.  Furthermore, it is important to remember that there is no Diamond Sutra text.  The sutra that we read and understand arises from our translations and interpretations.  It is brought to life by our living, breathing, and practicing it.  And the wisdom teachings that it conveys, these teachings – not the words in some book – give birth to Buddhas and bodhisattvas.  Composing gathas about this is to compose gathas about the Diamond Sutra.

Here are some gathas I have composed that are inspired by my practice of the Diamond Sutra.  Anyone can take up this practice.  Even if you have not read the sutra, you can compose gathas about your everyday ordinary life, which is none other than the way of Buddha!

*          *          *

Practicing enlightenment without thoughts of enlightenment

This is just sitting with live hwadu

Sounding the moktak is discipline, birdsong is concentration

The breath that does not end or begin is the mother of all Buddhas and bodhisattvas

*          *          *

How many walked this path before?

And how many will take it up?

Summer rain washes away all traces

Of Winter’s retreat in quiet places.

*          *          *

The Buddha’s awakening is a non-awakening

Thus we say he is awake!

Can we turn the Dharma-eye on ourselves and say:

We too are awake!  There is no one who is awake!

*          *          *

Give, Give, Give! Practice Charity!

There is no gift to give

No giver and no one to receive

But do not forget there are mouths to feed!

*          *          *

How do we decorate the flower hall?

Make peaceful hearts in times of war?

Feed hungry mouths with empty hands?

Live fully in this world without demands?

*          *          *

How do we decorate the flower hall?

Make peaceful hearts in times of war

Feed hungry mouths with empty hands

Live fully in this world without demands

*          *          *

Take up this sutra and practice it

But do not get caught up in this and that

Before you move you are already there

Just a barefoot Buddha, empty hands, flowing tears

*          *          *

---

[1] P. 6 of Red Pine’s The Diamond Sutra; Chapter 8 of the Diamond Sutra.

Dhammapada, Stanza 33

Version 1:

The quivering, wavering mind,
Hard to guard, hard to check,
The sagacious one makes straight,
Like a fletcher, an arrow shaft.

Version 2:

Quivering, wavering,
hard to guard,
to hold in check:
the mind.
The sage makes it straight —
like a fletcher, the shaft of an arrow.

Version 3:

Just as a fletcher straightens an arrow shaft, even so the discerning [one] straightens [her] mind — so fickle and unsteady, so difficult to guard.

(Note: Version 1 is from the John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana translation. Version 2 is from the Thanissaro Bhikkhu translation. Version 3 is from the Acharya Buddharakkhita translation.  Changes made to the text in order to achieve gender neutrality and inclusion are marked with brackets.)

Zen Master T’aego and the Diamond Sutra

T’aego was a Zen Master from Korea.  He was born in 1301 and died in 1382.  His collected sayings are like cracks of thunder in the night.  If you are asleep, they will startle you.

One of the practices in the Korean tradition of Buddhism is hwadu practice.  It is similar to other koan practices, but don’t let this fool you.  There is a unique relentlessness to hwadu practice that will rub your body-mind raw.

One question guiding my study of the Diamond Sutra is how can we practice it?  How can we put the Diamond Sutra into practice in our daily lives, here and now?

T’aego weaves together the Diamond Sutra and hwadu practice in his letter to Chang Hae, Layman Mugye.  He writes:

A monk asked Zhaozhou: “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?”  Zhaozhou said: “No.”  This word No is not the No of existence and non-existence.  It is not the No of true nothingness.  Ultimately, what is it?

When you arrive here, you must abandon all with your whole body, not doing anything, not doing not-doing-anything.  Go straight to the empty and free and vast, with no pondering what to think.  The previous thought is already extinct, the following thought does not arise, the present thought is itself empty.  You do not hold to emptiness, and you forget you are not holding on.  You do not reify this forgetting: you escape from not reifying and the escape too is not kept.  When you reach such a time, there’s just a spiritual light that’s clearly aware and totally still, appearing as a lofty presence.

Do not wrongly give birth to interpretations: just bring up the meditation saying twenty-four hours a day, whatever you are doing.  Do not be oblivious of it for a moment: diligently come to grips with it and study it in fine detail.  If you keep studying like this, pulling it back and forth, when you reach the proper time, you better look back most carefully and see what Zhaozhou’s No means.  When you are [unable to turn back] like a rat going into a [hollow] horn, then views are cut off.

When those of sharp faculties get here, they empty through and smash the lacquer bucket [of ignorance] and capture and defeat Zhaozhou.  They have no more doubts about the sayings of the world’s [enlightened] people.

Even if you are awakened like this, do not speak of it in front of people without wisdom.  You must go see a legitimate teacher of the school.

Thank you for reading, for practicing, for living, for breathing, for smiling, and for striving!

(Note: This extended quote from T’aego is Number 15 in his collected sayings.  These were published as A Buddha from Korea: The Zen Techings of T’aego, translated by J. C. Cleary.  Zen Teaching Number 15 is on pages 106 – 107.)

Dharma Talks: The Teacher and the Diamond Sutra (Part III)

It has been a while!  Here is the final post to a small series I was writing on Dharma Talks.  The posts were inspired by my reading of the Diamond Sutra, so it is fitting that this one brings His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a verse from the Diamond Sutra together!

How should a teacher approach teaching the Dharma?

This question is primarily directed at those we obviously take to be teachers – the ones sitting at the front talking, the ones whose pictures seem to be all over the Buddhist magazines, and the ones we call ‘Roshi’, ‘Sensei,’ ‘Venerable’, and so on.

But the question is wider than this.  It applies to all of us, whether we blog, talk with a friend about Buddhism, sit, stand, walk, or lie down.  The teachings of the Buddha are not just the words we read or hear and so the teaching of Buddhism is not just the speaking or writing about it!

His Holiness the Dalai Lama answers this question.  Before ascending the teacher’s seat, he performs prostrations.  He says, “In so doing, I [am] paying homage to the words of the Buddha that I am going to interpret.  If I were really some very important person, there wold be no need for me to perform such prostrations.  It would be enough for me simply to sit up here and look impressive.  But if the truth be known, I consider myself just a very simple Buddhist monk, a follower of the Buddha who interprets and shares his words.”

He then goes on to say that traditionally, whenever someone takes up the teacher’s seat, they recite this verse from the Diamond Sutra:

Regard all compounded things in this way -
Like stars, hallucinations, and flickering lamps,
Like illusions, dewdrops, and bubbles on water,
Like dream images, flashes of lightning, and clouds.

Why would they recite this?

His Holiness the Dalai Lama goes on: “At that instant, [she] recalls the impermanence of everything; [she] reflects on suffering and brings to mind the lack of identity in things.  Otherwise, when you sit on a throne [teacher's seat], there is a risk that you might start to feel proud of yourself.  The mind of the one who explains the teaching must be peaceful, tamed, and free from any trace of arrogance and pride.”

With that, I offer these posts on teaching to you.  May we all be teachers of the Buddhadharma!  May we cut through our delusions with wisdom, overturn our pride and arrogance with compassion and loving kindness, and see in our suffering the seeds of peace and happiness!

(Note: The quotes from His Holiness the Dalai Lama can be found in Mind in Comfort and Ease: The Vision  of Enlightenment in the Great Perfection, page 10.  I have made some changes to achieve gender inclusiveness and for explanatory purposes.  These are marked with brackets.  The verse quoted above is from the final chapter of the Diamond Sutra.)