Shodoka Verse 2

Verse 2

trans. Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless from Buddhism and Zen

When the Dharma-body awakens completely,
There is nothing at all.
The source of our self-nature
Is the Buddha of innocent truth.
Mental and physical reactions come and go
Like clouds in the empty sky;
Greed, hatred, and ignorance appear and disappear
Like bubbles on the surface of the sea.

trans. Robert Aitken Roshi from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book

The empty, illusory body is the very body of the Dharma;
When the Dharma-body is fully experienced
There is not one thing.
The source of the “I-nature” is the inherent lightened nature.

Nyogen’s Comment

When one recognizes the Dharma-body as such, no matter how beautifully he may define it or describe it, he is still lingering in dualism. but once he has unified himself with the Dharma-body, there is no more and there is no less.

America has had Zen students in the past, has them in the present, and will have many of them in the future. They mingle easily with so-called worldlings. They play with children, respect king and beggars, and handle gold and silver as pebbles and stones.

Dharma-body: original person in full; the sound of one hand; the eternal Buddha; the man of no rank; your face before your mother and father were born.

One Mistake After Another

Chou wasn’t always Chao Chou.  Back in the era Before Zen he was Garab Dorje.  He practiced Samatha and Vipassana with the Trungpa crowd.  He puja’ed with Lama Lodru and Kalu Rinpoche.  Black Crowned with the Karmapa.  But in the end got cocky  . . .  turns out Lama Lodru was right . . .  riding bike is meditation, but without formal practice — “will never learn to do magic.”  Ha! Arrogant he rode away only to find that “the magic” was the magic of “chopping wood and carrying water.”  What good is it if it’s only happening on the bike?  Moment by moment it never stops flowing, but Chao only got it on the bike.

Not particularly visually gifted. all the visualizations seemed particularly baroque.  Trungpa people spoke highly of Suzuki Roshi . . .  B.Z. became Zen Time and Chao was born.  A difficult birth.  Not the best or fastest horse.

Chao Chou’s heart pumped one for the weirdo in us all on reading Pema Chodron’s story in The Wisdom of No Escape.  Roughly lifted here from her book for our encouragement.

The Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism … is sometimes called the “mishap lineage,” because of the ways in which the wise and venerated teachers of this lineage “Blew it” time after time. First there was Tilopa, who was a madman, completely wild. His main student was Naropa. Naropa was so conceptual and intellectual that it took him twelve years of being run over by a truck, of being put through all sorts of trials by his teacher, for him to begin to wake up. He was so conceptual that if somebody would tell him something, he would say, “Oh yes, but surely by that you must mean this.” He had that kind of mind. His main student was Marpa, who is famous for his intensely bad temper. He used to fly into rages, beat people, and yell at them. He was also a drunk. He was notorious for being incredibly stubborn. His student was Milarepa, Milarepa was a murder! Rinpoche used to say that Marpa became a student of the Dharma because he thought he could make a lot of money by bringing texts back from India and translating them into Tibetan. His student Milarepa became a student because he was afraid he was going to go to hell for having murdered people-that scared him.

Milarepa’s student was Gampopa . Because everything was easy for him, Gampopa was arrogant. For instance, the night before he met Gampopa for the first time, Milarepa said to some of his disciples, “Oh, someone who is destined to be my main student is going to come tomorrow. Whoever brings him to me will be greatly benefited.” So when Gampopa arrived in town, an old lady who saw him ran out and said, “Oh, Milarepa told us you were coming and that you were destined to be one of his main students, and I want my daughter to bring you to see him.” So Gampopa , thinking, “I must be really hot stuff,” went very proudly to meet Milraepa, sure that he would be greeted with great honor. However, Milarepa had had someone put him in a cave and wouldn’t see Gampopa for three weeks.

As for Gampopa’s main student, the first Karmapa, the only thing we know about him is that he was extremely ugly. He was said to look like a monkey. Also, there’s one story about him and three other main disciples of Gampopa who were thrown out of the monastery for getting drunk and singing and dancing and breaking monastic rules.

We should all take heart. These are the wise ones … to whom we prostrate when we do prostrations. We can prostrate to them as an example of our own wisdom mind of enlightened beings, but perhaps it’s also good to prostrate to them as confused, mixed up people with a lot of neurosis, just like ourselves. They are good examples of people who never gave up on themselves and were not afraid to be themselves, who therefore found their own genuine quality and their own true nature.

The point is that our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to. It’s who we are right now, and that’s what we can make friends with and celebrate.

Pema Chodron is the cover girl for the November issue of Shambhala SunSpace. There’s an interesting Pema Chodron bio piece in the issue called Becoming Pema. Nice pic of a 20-something Deirdre . . . you can see Pema peeking out at you.