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You can see more pix on Chao Chou’s Facebook.
This is one of the pix Chao Chou snapped after a retreat at Great Vows Zen Monastery. Their Jizo Garden speaks of impermanence and cherishing the lost.
Jizo (Earthstore Bodhisattva) stands by all beings in the six realms. Even reaching down into the hell realm to help out. For Jizo there are no lost causes. No one not worth saving.
Low self-esteem? Lonely? Suffering? Jizo will help.
Chao Chou feels a special connection to Jizo since taking up this Vow to save the many beings:
Bozos, smeg heads, moochers, slaggers, the clueless, chronics. Everybody. Included. We are all in it together. We all have the potential to wake-up.
Jizo is walking tall shaking the six rings of the dragon separating staff. The sound of the rings bring the beings of the six realms to mindfulness.
Stumbled across The Job, a poem, by U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. It reminds Chao Chou just how hard it is to transform Jizo’s encouragement to awakened practice.
Imagine that
the job were
so delicate
that you could
seldom — almost
never — remember
it. Impossible
work, really.
Like placing
pebbles exactly
where they were
already. The steadiness it
takes . . . and
to what end?
It’s so easy
to forget again.
Sometimes my zeal flags. The flow of moment-after-moment-mindfulness becomes more concept and less intimate. That old quandary that troubled Dogen in his youth about the need for practice pops up. If everyone already has Buddha Nature, what’s the point of vigorous practice? Why go at it like my hair is on fire?
Serendipitously Elana at DailyZen.com offered up encouraging words from Rinzai and Kosho Uchiyama.
In The Record of Linji, Linji Yixuan (Rinzai) says:
The true practitioner of the Way completely transcends all things. Even if heaven and earth were to tumble down, I would have no misgivings. Even if all the Buddhas in the ten directions were to appear before me, I would not rejoice. Even if the three hells were to appear before me, I would have no fear. Why is this so? Because there is nothing I dislike.
For Rinzai, the appearance of all the buddhas in the past, present, and future was not something to rejoice over, nor was the appearance of the three hells something of which to be afraid. Of course, not being afraid of the appearance of some hell doesn’t mean that for Rinzai hell had no existence. For him, hell was a kind of scenery that was different from the scenery of the Buddhas. The point is that whether some hell, all the buddhas, or anything appeared before him, Rinzai saw all of these as the scenery of his life. For us this is nothing but the scenery of our zazen.
I hope that people who practice zazen will continue regular sesshins and daily zazen for at least ten years. It’s a tremendous thing to be able to give oneself to this kind of practice and not be caught up in distractions. Our deepest mental suffering will come up during these years of zazen, and we will be able to continue our practice only if we have the stability to see this suffering as the scenery of our life and not be carried away by it. Working through these ten years, we develop a posture of living out the reality of our true self.
If we lead this sort of life and sit zazen, at whatever age, there is no doubt that we will come to have a commanding view of who we are. When we live this way, not only zazen, but daily life itself, is such that we cannot find the value of our existence in what other people say or in things that we want. It is a life that is unbearable unless we discover the value of our existence within ourselves.
What is essential is for us to live out the reality of our true self whether we are doing one period of zazen, a five-day sesshin, or practicing for ten years or more.
The Activity of the Reality of Life
All of us, regardless of whether we realize it or not, are living out the self as the whole universe. Since this is such a critical point, I’ll repeat it here. Usually we make the idea of the small individual self the center of our world and become firmly convinced that this small individual self is our whole self, but this is not our true self.
The reality of life goes beyond my idea of myself as a small individual. Fundamentally, our self is living out nondual life that pervades all living things. This self is universal existence, everything that exists. On the other hand, we usually lose sight of the reality of the life of universal self, clouding it over with thoughts originating from our small individual selves.
When we let go of our thoughts, this reality of life becomes pure and clear. Living out this reality of life as it is – that is, waking up and practicing beyond thinking – is zazen. At this very point our basic attitude in practicing zazen becomes determined. The attitude of the practitioner in practicing zazen as a Mahayana Buddhist teaching never means to attempt to artificially create some new self by means of practice.
Nor should it be aiming at decreasing delusion and finally eliminating it altogether. We practice zazen, neither aiming at having a special mystical experience nor trying to gain greater enlightenment. Zazen as true Mahayana teaching is always the whole self just truly being the whole self, life truly being life.
We all have eyes to see, but if we close them and say that the world is in darkness, how can we say that we are living out the true reality of life? If we open our eyes we see the sun is shining brilliantly. In the same way, when we live open-eyed and awake to life, we discover that we are living in the vigorous light of life. All the ideas of our small self are clouds that make the light of the universal self foggy and dull. Doing zazen, we let go of these ideas and open our eyes to the clarity of the vital life of universal self.
We discover the attitude of zazen as true Buddhism when we believe that the truth of this small self as an individual entity is universal self and actually practice the reality of life in zazen. This zazen is referred to as the activity of the reality of life.
Kosho Uchiyama (1912-1998)
Excerpted from Opening the Hand of Thought – Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice
Checkout the rest of the post of “On The Way” The DailyZen Journal for January 2010. While you’re there stop by the Zendo.
Jim Harrison playfully makes the point.
I once thought that life’s what’s left over after I extricate myself from the mess. I was writing a poem about paying attention and microwaved a hot dog so hot it burned a beet-red hole in the roof of my mouth.
Jim Harrison After Ikkyu and Other Poems
signed hardback
paperback (new & used)
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?”
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).
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.
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.
Here’s something I gleaned from The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha by Stephen T. Asma.
This is a parable told by the highly revered Khmer monk Maha Ghosananda, perhaps the holiest person in all of Cambodia – three time nominee for the Nobel peace prize. Asma notes, “the Dalai Lama actually prostrates himself on the ground in a sign of deep respect and worship when he visits Venerable Maha.” Okay, enough with the foreplay. Here’s the parable as written in Gods Drink Whiskey.
The Dragon meets a bodhisattva on the road one day. The bodhisattva tells the Dragon that he should not kill anymore and should instead adopt the Five Precepts and care for all life. The bodhisattva inspires the Dragon, and afterwards the Dragon becomes completely nonviolent. But now the children who attend the animal flocks nearby, seeing that the Dragon has become gentle, lose all fear of him. And they began to torment him, stuffing stones and dirt into his mouth, pulling on his tail, and jumping on his head. Soon to Dragon stops eating and becomes very sick.
When the Dragon encounters the bodhisattva again, he complains, “You told me that if I kept the Precepts and was compassionate, I would be happy. But now I suffer, and I am not happy at all.” My son, if you have compassion, morality, and virtue, you must also have wisdom and intelligence. This is the way to protect yourself. The next time the children make you suffer, show them your fire. After that, they will trouble you know more.”
Asma spells the lesson — work to be compassionate, but don’t be stupid about it. Trungpa would call the Dragon’s actions idiot compassion. Chao Chou tries to uphold the Precept of Not Indulging in Anger but remembers that the ground we share can burn very hot. The Lotus Land isn’t always a smilely place.
Verse 1
trans. Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless from Buddhism and Zen
There is the leisurely one,
Walking the Tao, beyond philosophy,
Not avoiding fantasy, not seeking truth.
The real nature of ignorance is the Buddha-nature itself;
The empty delusory body is the very body of the Dharma.
trans. Robert Aitken from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book
Don’t you see that leisurely one of the Tao
Who is beyond learning and does not strive?
S/he neither avoids idle thoughts nor seeks after the truth.
For S/he knows that the real nature of ignorance
Is the essential nature itself.
Nyogen’s Comment
If you try to avoid idle thoughts or delusions when you meditate, you cannot enter Samadhi. Whoever seeks after the truth will remain behind the truth. What you consider idle thoughts or delusions are nothing but waves on the vast ocean of Buddha-nature. Just as there are no waves apart from the water, there is no delusion, no idle thought, no ignorance separate from Buddha-nature.
Hakuin Zenji echoes this insight many kalpas later. Included in his lyrics to the Song of Zazen were lines like these: How sad that people ignore the near and search for truth afar . . . No ice without water . . . Without beings, no buddha.
trans. Robert Aitken from Diamond Sangha Sutra Book
Zen Stains: drinkin' & headed home 