You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2009.
translation by Robert Aitken Roshi from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book
No bad fortune, no good fortune, no loss, no gain;
Never seek such things in eternal serenity.
For years the dusty mirror has gone uncleaned,
Now let us polish it completely, once and for all.
Who has no-thought? Who is not-born?If we are truly not-born,
We are not un-born either.
Ask a robot if this is not so.
How can we realize ourselves
By virtuous deeds or by seeking the Buddha?
trans. Robert Aitken Roshi from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book TX version
No sin, no blessing, no loss, no gain:
Seek not such things in the midst of perfect peace.
Till now the dusty mirror has gone uncleaned:
Today it should be polished once and for all.Who has no-thought? Who is not-born?
If we are truly not-born, there is no no-birth user.
Call puppet and ask about it!
As long as we seek the Buddha by performing meritorious acts
We shall never attain enlightenment.
Nyogen’s Comment
Yokadaishi says, “Ask a robot whether he is happy or not.” I can hear you complain, “Is Zen going to compel me to become a robot?” Do you wish to suffer, filling your mind with illusions? Do you know nothing of the joy of giving thoughts enough room in which to stretch themselves and grow? A Zen student has more time to enjoy life because he allows himself to think or to do one thing at a time, and does not block the flow of inner wisdom with the trash of delusions.
Chao Chou stumbled on some robot poop at Surfing the Indranet by Erik Davis. Techno-hippie Lance Daybreak is holding forth on robotics engineer Masahiro Mori’s book The Buddha in the Robot. Here’s a small pile of the riff. For the whole stinking load, honk the Indranet link.
“Mori states, ‘That which controls and that which is controlled are both manifestations of the buddha-nature. We must not consider that we ourselves are operating machines. What is happening is that the buddha-nature is operating the buddha-nature. From the Buddha’s viewpoint, there is not master-slave relationship between human beings and machines. The two are fused together in an interlocking entirety. Man achieves dignity not by subjugating his mechanical inventions, but by recognizing in machines and robots the same buddha-nature that pervades his own inner self.’
“Thanks, Ariel,” Daybreak said, folding up the contraption. “It’s almost as if Buddhism blurs the distinction between humans and something like a neural net. After all, human consciousness is not a ghost in the machine; there’s no central governor who commands and controls from the top down. We have no soul in the Christian sense, no free agent who can stand alone, to sin or be saved. When you turn the scalpel of meditation on yourself, you find that the sense of continuity we call ‘self’ is merely a self-perpetuating overtone, a point of resonance that emerges from the intersection of all of these autonomous operators–perception, memory, memes, neurotransmitters. Buddhists calls the factors of consciousness ‘skandas’, which literally means ‘heaps’. We’re just piles of automata, bodies without organs.
“And like machines, we are products of causes and conditions. Our ordinary perceptions and inclinations are far more robotic than we’d like to think. Karma is habit, the social programming of countless lives, and awakening spiritually has everything to do with bringing those programs to light.”
Chao Chou and his Stinky Mobile often work as one. Driving into an icy curve . . . surprise! . . . on the edge of slipping away . . . slow and then fast . . . no thought to it. Which is Chao? Which is Stinky?
You may have experienced this mindfulness as well. Not? Call a puppet and ask about it.
The dead and near dead are piling on this lifeline. No escape. Even airport chatter is filled with the “passed on” and “lingering soon to go.”
Where’re those perfect moments of reunion that Loki enjoyed over a bag of popcorn? No joy here. Shared children dropped by dutiful parents to fly alone back to their other life.
Headed to the chaos of Rohatsu, so I’ll end on a happy note. Yunmen told me a secret, “Every day is a good day.”
Since the heart attack, I come up the stairs
and say to myself, “Now I’m opening
the door, now I’m hanging up my coat, now I hear
someone yell ‘Daddy!’ in my extra life.”
It’s like having seconds after Thanksgiving dinner,
savoring my favorite things, but not quite.
It’s as if I now feast on turnips and cranberry sauce,
the mundane side dishes I used to push aside
for more stuffing and gravy, more flamboyant breast.
I count the hops out loud ad infinitum
as my daughter jumps rope in the living room.
In my regular life, I would
have had thoughts in my head.
In my extra life, I don’t.
Second Helping – Doug Dorph
The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks were arguing about the flag. One said, “The flag is moving.” The other said, “the wind is moving.” They could not agree, no matter how hard they debated. The sixth patriarch, Eno, happened to come by and said, “Not the wind, not the flag. It is the mind that is moving!” The two monks were struck with awe.
Mumon’s Comments:
It is not the wind that moves, it is not the flag that moves, it is not the mind that moves. How shall we understand the sixth patriarch? If you gain an intimate grasp of its meaning, you will see how the two monks, intending to buy iron, got gold. The patriarch could not repress his compassion for the two monks, and so we have this disgraceful scene.
Mumon’s Verse:
Wind, flag, and mind moves,
All confirmed as guilty of error.
Only we know our mouth is opened,
we do not know our speech went wrong.
Flapping Mouths turns the tarball neat and sweet.
Four Zen monks were meditating in a monastery. All of a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The younger monk came out of his meditation and said: “Flag is flapping” A more experienced monk said: “Wind is flapping” A third monk who had been there for more than 20 years said: “Mind is flapping.” The fourth monk who was the eldest said, visibly annoyed: “Mouths are flapping!”
Mouths flapping. Reminds Chao Chou of when he was slacking at Damp Sneaker Sesshin. The hall pay phone was getting a lot of attention. No sooner did one zennie ring off, another stepped up. One fellow, after holding forth on a most spiritual plane, indicated he was “feeling totally complete” and went as far as bragging that he was calling from the middle of week long Zen meditation retreat. There was a quiet moment as he waited for an admiring response. And then he exclaimed in exasperation, “Well, sure it’s a silent retreat. So what?”
NATURAL MAN
Dogen’s flowers fall
Autumn leaves wither in glory
A wooden man dances
TREES TALKING
Fall Leaves letting go
Dharmas advance, confirming self
Body-Mind drops away
AUTUMN LEAVES
Ten-thousand things come forth
Moment after monent flows
Leaves rustling. Wind. Rain.
Verse 4
trans. Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless from Buddhism and Zen
When we realize actuality,
There is no distinction between mind and thing
And the path to hell instantly vanishes.
If this is a lie to fool the world,
My tongue may be cut out forever.
trans. Robert Aitken Roshi from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book
When we witness Reality
There is neither person nor thing;
And all karma that leads to hell instantly vanishes.
If this is a lie to deceive people,
May my tongue be pulled out forever.
Nyogen’s Comment
When Yokadaishi said, “If you live in this Zen, you can leave hell in your dreams of yesterday, and make your own paradise wherever you stand. . . ,” he did not mean that an enlightened man can ignore the law of causation. A person creates his own hell in which to suffer, and no one can save him but himself.
Chao Chou remembers when he lived 500 lives as a fox. All he said was, “Realized beings aren’t stressed by the law of causation.” Bingo! 500 lives. Not so bad really. It was a feistier bag of fur than this dog body.
That old goat Mumon observed it like this:
Not falling, not ignoring:
Odd and even are on one die.
Not obscuring, not falling:
A thousand mistakes! Ten thousands regrets!
When asked if any of the old worthies had ever fallen into hell Joshu answered, “They’re the first to go.”
Probing further, the fearless one said, “But they’re enlightened teachers. Why would they fall into hell?”
“Hey, if I didn’t fall into hell, how could I help you?” answered Jo.
Verse 5
trans. Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless from Buddhism and Zen
Once we awaken to the Tathagata-Zen,
The six noble deeds and the ten thousand good actions
Are already complete within us.
In our dream we see the six levels of illusion clearly;
After we awaken the whole universe is empty.
trans. Robert Aitken Roshi from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book
When we suddenly awakened to Tathagata Zen,
The six paramitas and all good deeds
Are already complete within us.
In a dream we see the six paths of delusion clearly;
When we awaken, the whole world is void.
Nyogen’s Comment
. . . one whose meditation is mature receives the same genealogical wisdom. For this reason, Zen lives vividly through human experiences, transcending all scriptures and sectarian doctrines.
Chao Chou
Form is Emptiness, but don’t forget that Emptiness is exactly Form. Don’t take out the garbage. No matter how holy you might be your house is gonna stink. It will not be devoid of funk.
Six Paramitas (Noble Deeds): Dana (charity); Sila (keeping the precepts); Ksanti (perseverance); Virya (striving); Dhyana (meditation); Prajna (wisdom).
Six Levels of Illusion: Naraka (hell); Preta (hungry devil); Tiryag-yoni (animal mind); Asura (fighting devil); Manusya (human being); Deva (superior man).
When Morikatsu, a minor bureaucrat and puffed up little toad, came to pay his respects to Zen master Bukko, he told the head monk, “People here in Kamakura are so illiterate when they write the name of your sect they use the kanji character for loincloth. What a joke – loincloth Buddhists! The stupid clods!”
Shocked that people would disrespect the Zen sect in this way the head monk rushed off to tell Bukko.
On hearing, Bukko laughed. “That’s right! The power of life comes out the front gate. At death the power goes out the back. Life and death is the great matter of Zen. The organs of life and death are wrapped up in a loincloth. Naturally if
you contemplate a loincloth deeply, you get to the bottom of things. So, go use this loincloth to show that ninny Morikatsu our teaching.”
Waving the loincloth in Morikatsu’s face the head monk came forth, “All living beings are contained in this! What do you say?”
Dumbfounded Morikatsu retreated without a word.
True story? Maybe. Trevor Leggett, British scholar, notes: in 13th century Japan Zen was so new many people didn’t know how to spell it. The Chinese character for Zen [right] was sometimes confused with a similar kanji which means loincloth [left].
“All living beings are contained in this! What do you say?”
Chao Chou farts in your general direction.
Verse 3
trans. Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless from Buddhism and Zen
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 five skandhas come and go
Like clouds floating in the sky;
The three poisons appear and disappear
Like empty bubbles in water.
Nyogen’s Comment
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.
Chao Chou’s not too clear on the connection between the text and comment. Maybe the old boss was just throwing a bone. Remember Nyogen’s unpacking the Shodoka and encouraging his students before Dharma Bums walked the earth. His San Francisco Floating Zendo was active from the 1920s. After a timeout at the Heart Mountain internment camp the Floating Zendo settled down in L.A. where another internee, Robert Aitken (detained in Japan), trained and studied with Nyogen. Check the Wikipedia entry for more backstory.
Zen Stains: drinkin' & headed home 