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description= 6 posts published by koun during May 2012;
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share, this, zen, the, archives, post, navigation, and, at, of, nyoho, nyohō, monthly, may, 2012, it, really, is, who, you, know, that, not, cultural, preservation, eating, for, more, than, two, glance, bowing, scene, crime, follow, by, mail, koun, elsewhere, online, topics, look, feel, stuff, dharma,
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as to insist that monks only refer to vegetables using honorifics some of the shape that formality takes in japan is naturally very japanese there is a sense from samurai movies and centuries old literature about how one addresses those in power about how to speak and sit and gesture in a very formal way and some of that certainly enters the monastery but monastery formality is its own thing likewise the insistence on very specific physicality hold your hands like this stand with your feet like so and on and on has some parallels in other aspects of japanese culture tea ceremony is an obvious example but i have never seen a version as complete as what one finds in a temple each individual accepts responsibility for participating in and thereby creating a very specific atmosphere one you won t find anywhere else it can be difficult to sort all this out i ve known non japanese who came here and got it all wrong they went home insisting this is how they do it in zen temples when in fact that s just how japanese people sit or the reverse they say oh that s just japanese culture when what they saw was something specific to one temple one lineage it takes time and patience and humility to sift through these kinds of questions but that is exactly what we especially those who represent a lineage have been charged with doing we can bring that beautiful formality into zen in america it need not be japanese at all we can explore the full depths of what it is to create a group practice that sense of synchronicity of singular movement it need not be japanese even now it s not there is a language spoken by people who practice in a traditional way but it s a language of the body a language of gesture a language of delicacy and fierceness and just so it is not the japanese language it s just zen for an excellent discussion of the current state of buddhism in japan and its potential directions please take a look at the lecture by noriyuki ueda in the most recent edition of dharma eye click here for the pdf share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 9 comments posted in uncategorized tagged tibetan buddhism zen zen culture eating for more than two may 18 there s a lot of talk in buddhism about all beings we are connected to all beings we strive to liberate all beings we work for the sake of all beings it s a huge idea one that we can never fully wrap our heads around sometimes we run across the phrase sentient beings but that s meaningless life is too short for us to work out what is and is not a being we should save a being with which we have a connection my friends are beings the dog next door is a being the rock in my shoe is a being that moment of panic i feel when i think i overslept is a being differentiating on that level is precisely what this practice is not about this talk of all beings has evolved over time in the earliest buddhist texts it seems that we don t see so much of it instead we see teaching after teaching about the universality of experience about our shared sameness from the time of the buddha it has been taught that suffering though it expresses itself differently according to each individual is essentially the same for everyone happiness too and anger we may get upset for very different reasons and at different times but that emotional experience of wanting the current situation to be other than what it is we share that intimately much of the pain of adolescence it would seem is just an inability to recognize that fact we feel alone when the exact opposite is true i suspect and i would love for a buddhist scholar to jump in and speak to this more authoritatively than i can that much of the evolution of buddhism has just been a thought exercise a matter of people saying if x is true and if we factor in y then the logical ramifications of that must be z in this case if our conditions dissatisfaction impermanence the absence of an unchanging self are universal then just by that definition alone we share a profound connection if we are fundamentally the same then we are not fundamentally different if we are not different then the distinction between you and me is a false one if that s true then we are in a manner of speaking one if there is no line between you and me then your suffering is mine and your happiness is mine and by extension what s mine is not mine and what s yours is not really yours it s out of this kind of math i suspect that buddhism came to take such an interest in interdependent origination and that it arrived at a figure like the bodhisattva someone who accepts responsibility for all beings it s a logical and beautiful development the difficulty with these kinds of wide scale teachings i think is that they are so overwhelming as to seem unreal it makes for great philosophy but for many of us it remains an abstraction something fun to talk about but not something that is immediate and felt in our daily lives maturity and empathy can lead us to see firsthand that other people s experiences are not foreign from our own and that can make us much more skillful one on one that is no small thing working from that place of understanding is the foundation of almost any truly honest encounter it s something we all need to explore and remind ourselves of daily but extending that to this thing we call all beings is much more difficult how do we interact with all beings how do we take responsibility for all beings we can start with the person we re with following this math the person in front of you is the face of all beings so how you treat him or her is how you are treating the world this applies to objects as well which i want to write about later on a practical level if we can remember just that maybe it s enough but i do think there s value in exploring this heavy looming abstraction of all beings it s there so it s there for us to confront when we re alone where is the confrontation the person that is always in front of me is me how do i treat myself and does it matter we don t need to believe that all beings are one or that we re all connected on some invisible spiritual level to find this worthy of our consideration even the skeptic can recognize that reality is made up of its parts i am one of those parts you are one of those parts just as our organs and cells are our components if one of my cells is unhealthy even if i don t notice that even if it doesn t have measurable repercussions throughout my body still that cell is one part of the picture that is me of my health of my functioning however we frame this it s not that difficult for us to accept that what happens to me is happening to the universe what i do is an extension of everything and everyone this is the basis of responsibility i started thinking about all this differently a few years ago when my wife tracy was pregnant with our first child tracy has always been careful about what she eats but as soon as she knew she was pregnant eating healthy foods became a serious matter she read all the literature and knew what to eat and what not to she was eating for two she accepted responsibility for this other life and in doing so accepted that her body is not completely her own to any mother i think this must seem obvious but it s not limited to mothers i suspect it s also a well known realization among people who dedicate themselves to others firefighters nurses on call soldiers and on and on and on this body is not just mine it is also part of a larger function if i keep it healthy that is in service of that function if i let it get weak or sick or injured then that hinders my ability to be skillful to fulfill that mission watching tracy eat for two i had this idea what if i were eating for all beings what would i put in my body what would i refuse if we take these teachings of connectedness and singularity to one extreme then my body is the body of all beings what i eat is the food of the world i forget this little idea of mine often old habits die hard and i don t always eat the healthiest thing on the menu but when i do remember it for example at the supermarket it changes the way i shop i can use all manner of twisted rationalization to let myself eat those chips or get the big box of cookies however if i imagine even for a moment that by eating i am feeding others then so called foods with no nutritional value reveal themselves to be absurd they are absurd of course but this frame helps me to see it one could completely misinterpret this whole idea in disastrous ways i know all beings sure would like a beer right now i think i m going to treat the universe to a big piece of chocolate cheesecake and so on we have to look with the eyes of an adult or it all falls apart very quickly take this as a true understanding of the body or take it as an exercise in either case the effect is the same when we allow ourselves to feel the responsibility of caring for all beings we intuitively know how to respond if it s just an idea just a philosophy we can get stuck on the seeming impossibility of it how to save all beings we stumble because we re looking for the heroic act the grand gesture but if we take it to its logical end if we imagine that when i eat all beings eat and when i talk all beings talk and so on then we start to simply offer up the best of ourselves of our best selves we listen to those little voices in our heads telling us to sit up straight and floss and walk the three blocks to the post office instead of driving we take care in our actions and in doing so we take care of something much much bigger we know so much already we know what to do we know how to offer ourselves it s good news i think share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 6 comments posted in uncategorized tagged all beings buddhism koun franz responsibility sentient beings zen at a glance may 14 the buddha realized enlightenment sitting under the bodhi tree no wait that s not the right place to start let us start here instead the buddha was an ordinary human being he went to the toilet got hungry had to trim his fingernails some accounts say he suffered from severe back pain for much of his adult life perhaps a consequence of his years of self brutalizing ascetic practices his attempts to transcend the body all together the imagery and myth accumulated over the last 2500 years would have us believe that he was extraordinarily tall or that he had weirdly long earlobes or that his skin was golden he had special birthmarks designating him as a buddha including by at least one account rather frightening genitalia all these signs are supposed to reveal that he was a true buddha that he was the genuine article that he was special but the buddha was an ordinary human being he looked like the people around him the true signs of a buddha are not what we imagine them to be not at all the buddha realized enlightenment sitting under the bodhi tree we don t know what this means we cannot know it s his word we can believe or not but he could not prove it in any scientific way then or today nor could he describe it not if enlightenment is as total as teachings tell us it is this moment of enlightenment would appear to be the climax of the story but it s really just the introduction it s not even the most interesting part after a while the buddha stood and began walking towards sarnath where his former companions continued in their ascetic practices they had deserted him after seeing him step away from self mortification and towards a middle way one which found a healthy balance between the comfort of the senses and the total rejection of the body he had bathed and eaten a wholesome meal from his companions perspective he had betrayed them so when they heard of his approach they agreed that they would not even acknowledge him he would receive no welcome not even a greeting but as his figure appeared in the distance they caught sight of him and they watched in silence they said nothing to one another but when he arrived at their spot on the grass all in unison bowed and asked to be received as his students what did they see as he walked across the grass what did he show them what did he express and how did he express it this is the true story of buddhism specifically of zen this is the start of the wordless transmission this is interesting share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 2 comments posted in implications tagged bodhi tree buddha enlightenment bowing at the scene of the crime may 12 our altar at home our 3 year old offered the elmo towel how do we orient ourselves to the world when we face the center where are we facing what do we confront there a temple is a space any space we create for the sake of practice it s where we allow the practice to play itself out freely without distraction and at the heart of every temple at its core we find an altar what in japanese is called a shumidan 須弥壇 the dan itself means an altar the shumi is a transliteration of sumeru the mythological unimaginably tall mountain at the center of the world according to hindu and buddhist mythology the world that we know the human world is to the south of that mountain but that is not the entire world to the north east and west lie other kingdoms ruled by different kings specific beings inhabit different terraces on the mountain s slope other beings live in the seas surrounding the mountain and so on for a fascinating read and a headache check out the wikipedia page obviously this kind of worldview is like saying that the earth is flat or that corpses spawn maggots we know better and in the case of mt sumeru we ve known better for a very long time yet this image of the mountain at the center of the world has continued as a powerful force in temple life for centuries just as we can make a temple of our current environment so can we face a mt sumeru as a way of giving direction to our lives when we imagine an altar we imagine a buddha statue at the center in reality some temples replace buddha with one of the bodhisattvas avalokiteshvara the embodiment of compassion or especially in rooms where people practice zazen manjushri the actualization of wisdom in any of these cases we are orienting ourselves to an image we find inspirational to an exemplum of the practice i have heard of individuals and zen centers doing away with such imagery all together replacing the buddha image with something like a beautiful rock i imagine that such a choice comes out of a concern about idolatry perhaps such centers feel that a buddha statue would just be too overtly buddhist or maybe the goal is to align oneself with the ...
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