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Text of the page (random words):
about bodily comforts inadequate clothing food and sleep are known as the three insufficiencies and will cause our practice to suffer and it just gets better don t eat anything alive hard or spoiled such impure foods will make your belly churn and cause heat and discomfort of bodymind making your sitting difficult don t indulge in rich foods not only is this bad for bodymind it s just greed you should eat to promote life so don t fuss about taste also if you sit after eating too much you will feel ill whether the meal is large or small wait a little while before sitting monks should be moderate in eating and hold their portions to two thirds of what they can eat all healthy foods sesame wild yams and so on can be eaten essentially you should harmonize bodymind it s very practical eat well don t dress up too much but what interests me is this first part avoid getting caught up in arts and crafts and songs and dancing or writing poetry or calligraphy or whatever it is a point that we come back to over and over and it s particularly relevant in talking about this text because there s a lot of don t is that none of this is about morality there are certainly buddhist texts from this era that would say singing and dancing are immoral so i don t want to pretend that the idea isn t out there but what s at the heart of this is not some idea about purity or impurity he s talking about preparing for sitting what is it that distracts you what is it that invites you to disengage from being here if you re not sure it s an easy experiment go home in the middle of all your stuff and just sit down on the sofa with nothing to do and then start to feel what the magnet pull is for you after you ve been sitting there doing nothing for a while when you start to feel antsy and star thinking i should do something notice what that is for many people today it s their phone you think you have control over your phone but if you could watch a fast forward video of your life you d see that you re just constantly checking it you don t know you re checking it but you re checking it i do this sometimes i leave it in the kitchen and as i walk by i push the button because maybe there s something important that will reveal itself to me and then i keep going and i think oh look i didn t engage but i engaged i checked the window into another world and then i stepped back really what i m doing is i m hoping something exciting happened so that then i can pick it up and play so i can read something someone will tell me something i didn t know when i was younger i didn t have this back then i think my distraction most often was my own mind i was a daydreamer so if i just sat there on the sofa pretty soon i wouldn t be on the sofa anymore my body would be on the sofa but i d be somewhere else i wouldn t stay where i was if there was a remote control i d be in the television and if there was nothing to do at my house i d get in the car and i d drive around or i d go see a friend i wanted to be in motion i wanted to be engaged now in my mid forties i see myself on the other side of that equation where my life contains so much encounter kids sangha job internet that i find i often want to withdraw a little bit i catch myself thinking oh i wish i could just sit on the back deck and do nothing but sit on the back deck but until recently when i hit that place of being overwhelmed my instinct always was to find something something to entertain my mind i don t know what it is for you maybe it s projects some people feel they just have to have a project maybe it s hobbies maybe it s talking on the phone it doesn t mean don t talk on the phone it doesn t mean don t read the news but notice what your relationship is to that notice how it goes beyond utility we have a natural impulse to disengage from the present i think we re just born with it we re born looking for some place for our minds to land certain things out of habit become our vehicle for that impulse it isn t my phone s fault it s just that my phone is particularly suited to the task of taking me from where i am into something else really try to notice this i spend a lot of time thinking about this because i also spend a lot of time forgetting this when i travel and i m in an airport i have three hours before anything exciting is going to happen i sit down in a place where there s nothing to do and there s no one i know and i just start to feel this draw now i need something i need an entertainment i need something that will take me out of this wide view which is sitting here watching all of these people walk around these people from all these different places with all these different destinations something that will take me out of that and into something that s just for me something narrow so i get out a book or i get out my phone or i listen to something anything to make my experience of the present smaller and if possible to make it feel like i m accomplishing something because what a great feeling i can say i ve finished that book or i did some work keizan says avoid getting caught up there s a little humour in this he s talking about what you should do before you sit but in this particular case if you actually did it if you get it then you re basically doing zazen already you ve snuck up on the act i don t know how you re sitting in that moment or how you re standing in that moment but if you can figure this out then you ve largely figured that out it s the same as earlier in the text when he says to figure out who you are first before you sit it s not that if you do a then you can do b it s that if you do a you re already doing b he keeps showing this at the end of this section clothed in this conversation about whether or not you should be eating yams he s really saying harmonize bodymind get in touch with that which again is another way of saying do zazen figure out that relationship before you sit down then you ve solved your problem from every direction he s saying implicitly do not use zazen as a tool to accomplish something zazen is the end it s the endpoint it s the end expression of the practice it s not the metric and it s not the means it s complete it s finished sit like that sit from the top of the mountain sit as buddha not as a buddha to be and don t eat anything alive 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 5 comments posted in uncategorized like a fool like an idiot zazen yōjinki part 4 sep 2 this is the fourth in a six part series on keizan s notes on what to be aware of in zazen you can click here for part 1 part 2 and part 3 the original talk can be found on the zns podcast there are two basic approaches to teaching zazen in this sōtō zen tradition the first one and sometimes the only one that we learn is dogen s it s very straightforward he says choose a place that s like this sit on a cushion like this put your hands just like this hold your back like this this is what you do with your eyes go that s zazen if you were to go to japan and ask for zazen instructions today you would basically get that no one would want to talk about your mind no one would tell you don t think about this or do think about this or this is what it might feel like they d face you against a wall explain the posture and say now do this forever there s a tremendous faith in that that those basic instructions alone are enough so we don t want to confuse you with anything else that s one flavour of zen keizan has a different approach but one that ultimately speaks to the same thing instead of saying choose a quiet place or sit on a cushion like this keizan begins by saying first realize your true nature know who you are and your place in the world then do zazen if there is something that is radical something that is critical in our understanding about what this tradition is it s this rather than practice to become something we practice with that thing as the starting point we are told in this tradition that only a buddha can do zazen that zazen itself is a gesture of awakening not a path not a means not a tool it s an expression of who you already are what you already are and what everything already is so keizan begins not by telling us how to hold our hands but how to hold ourselves in the world it sets a high bar earlier he said putting aside all concerns shed all attachments do nothing at all don t fabricate any things with the six senses don t force anything bring no pretense to this sitting as buddha is not the same as sitting as if you re a buddha imitating one or declaring i m going to be a buddha today it s deeper than that keizan continues who is this its name is unknown it cannot be called body it cannot be called mind trying to think of it the thought vanishes trying to speak of it words die the language here gets very vague when he says who is this it s not the same as who are you he s asking us to question the relationship between body and mind it s not enough to call it body it s not enough to call it mind don t imagine that they re separate he writes it is like a fool an idiot it is as high as a mountain deep as the ocean without peak or depths its brilliance is unthinkable it shows itself silently between sky and earth only this whole body is seen this is very poetic and as we explore it what we see is that keizan is talking about something that we might call awakening or that we might call buddhanature and at the same time he s talking about your body he s talking about them as the same thing it is like a fool an idiot this is language we hear echoed in precious mirror samadhi with practice hidden function secretly like a fool like an idiot this is not advocating for idiocy and it s not celebrating ignorance the fool in the context of these teachings is someone who is not caught up in his or her own mind the intelligent person what does the intelligent person do the intelligent person thinks about stuff and then she thinks about what she thought about that stuff and then maybe she brings in some other ideas that seem relevant to that so that in one instant she can find herself twenty steps removed from the reality of what s happening right now the fool is used in contrast to everybody else everybody else is the smart one everybody else is living inside his or her own mind everybody else is imagining that they are a vehicle for this pink wrinkly mass that rides up here in the skull looking out and seeing the world the fool has no such idea the fool isn t thinking about the fool s thoughts the fool is just present from a cultural standpoint it s too simple there s not enough depth there s not enough analysis there s not enough questioning so compared to the person who has something to say and something to analyze that person who is just simply there looks well like a fool the fool has no reference point not in the way that we do when we identify ourselves with a thought or a story an idea often we think that we are the thing that we re thinking and if we re desperate we think that we are something that we thought once a thought that was just really really good we carry that idea like a trophy but the fool is just here and here and here a karate teacher i met years ago came from okinawa and was trying to give us american students a pep talk he said that to be really good at anything you have to be a little stupid it s the same idea he used the example of digging post holes it s repetitive work there s a tool you stick in the ground to pull up the dirt and that makes the hole you just do it again and you do it again he said there s a particular kind of mind that can do that that can say i m going to wake up today and i m going to dig post holes and i m going to do that until the end of the day and then tomorrow because it s my job i m going to wake up and i m going to dig post holes again smart people he said can t do that they ll overthink it they ll ask themselves in every gesture why am i doing this why am i here what does this mean what does this mean about me what does this mean about my life if you re thinking that way you can t do it for a day much less for a lifetime to dig really deep into zen into an art into a relationship into your work you have to be able to just do something over and over and over again without asking why this is true from the moment of waking up if you ve ever heard the alarm in the morning and lain in bed thinking why why do i even get up in the morning then you re being too smart for your own good keizan says between sky and earth only this whole body is seen we should understand this is exactly the way that dogen talks about buddhanature there s nothing but this we all have a reference point we have that feeling of separation an idea that there s something else keizan is saying there is nothing else this thing that s waking up in the morning is infinitely vast not because you re important but because everything is important this one is without compare he has completely died eyes clear she stands nowhere where is there any dust what can obstruct such a one this image comes up a lot in zen discussion as well the dust you can only have dust on something if something isn t the whole thing and you can only have dust on something if something is capable of being unclean but if we re talking about something that permeates and we re also talking about dust it doesn t work clear water has no back or front space has no inside or outside completely clear its own luminosity shines before form and emptiness were fabricated we like to talk about form and we like to talk about emptiness according to keizan they re both made up objects of mind and mind itself have no place to exist again you can only have a location you can only have a reference point if you re distinct and if you re separate this has always already been so but it is still without a name the great teacher the third ancestor sengcan temporarily called it mind and the venerable nagarjuna once called it body enlightened essence and form giving rise to the bodies of all the buddhas it has no more or less about it this is symbolized by the full moon but it is this mind which is enlightenment itself the luminosity of this mind shines throughout the past and brightens as the present nagarjuna used this subtle symbol for the samadhi of all the buddhas but this mind is signless nondual and differences between forms are only apparent the moon has been a useful tool for talking about form and emptiness or absolute and relative the moon is always full and yet it s also useful to say that it s not that it s always in flux that it s always changing the moon shines but not really it just reflects something bigger we have all sorts of stories about the moon we look up and we say oh it s at this stage or it s at this stage in the same way we look at our lives and we imagine we re at this s...