Reverse takuhatsu

 

"Entering the village with bliss-bestowing hands"

 For Buddhists (and anyone like-minded): if you have been going for walks, and you live where pindapata/takuhatsu is not a thing, and you pass something like a Little Free Pantry along your route, carry a little appropriate something with you, bow to the pantry, put in the something, bow again, and be on your way. 

Don't think about what just happened. Just admire the shadows of trees on the sidewalks and the singing birds. Everything is the same as everything else in the realm of giving and receiving.

 -- shonin  

Rapid niche depletion

Putting this here to remember that it was said, because it's a fairly succinct statement of our continuing problem in 2026, which is rapid niche depletion by our species. Fascism, which while we are attempting with little success to contain it, prevents our addressing said destruction, which meanwhile goes on apace even when not accelerated by the fascists.

 -- shonin 

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.

If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of overpopulation and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite. 

If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable in the precybernetic era, and which were especially underlined and strengthened during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. 

-- Gregory Bateson, "Form, Substance and Difference," Nineteenth Annual Korzybski Memorial Lecture (1970), reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology (1972)

An appropriate response

From the Blue Cliff Record

Case 14: Yunmen’s “Appropriate Response”

A monk asked Yunmen, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?”

Yunmen said, “An appropriate response.”

Shunryu Suzuki says: "Buddha's teaching (as attained by Buddhas) in its pure and formless form, is not expressible by word or idea. Hence, the contribution of each sect to Buddhism is to give system to the scriptures, to set up the true words of the Tathagata ... in a consistent way so that people may understand and follow Buddha's way of life." (Wind Bell corrected text)

That is, that which is real is beyond words, but words can point to the real --provisionally.

Words have no meanings of their own, but are assigned meanings in our minds. The slipperyness of word meaning can be demonstrated by examining the almost universal misunderstanding in English that the prostate is to be referred to as the "prostrate," a verb or adjective supposed to indicate "lying down."

The reason we understand someone who refers to the prostate as the "prostrate" is they use it in either an implied or complete sentence, usually within a context. In language the context is a paragraph, in the world the context may consist of prior conversations or locations. Someone saying, at the front desk of the doctor's office, "I'm here about my prostrate," is likely to be understood and not even corrected by the receptionist.

Language is actually algebra, in which something is conveyed by means of an operator and operands.

Just as a=b is an equation, so is "that stick is a hoe handle." In the real world, "hoe handle" is an abstract concept, but the stick really is a thing, and it's useful to know that the speaker sees it as material shaped by human agency toward a desired end, thus having added value by means of the applied concept. A concept is, for purposes of the material universe, an illusion, but in the case of a hoe it is a useful one. 

In order to convey information, which is made up of a mixture of ideas about things and ideas about ideas about things, we must constantly embed the ideas in formulae, in which the operator ties together two operands, a symbolic representation of a subject and an object, in either a metaphorical equivalency -- assertion -- or denial of equivalency -- refutation. 

In other words, we rely on metaphor to get anything said, trusting in the transitivity of equivalency, a tool used both by those hoping to formulate and communicate a truth and those hoping to deceive.

Information is news of difference (Bateson). To form an argument for purposes of convincing someone that we bring them information requires three implied or actual sentences: 

a = b, b=c, ∴ a=c (assertion), 

or 

a = b, b≠c, ∴ a≠c (refutation). 

The three sentences of the argument form the structure of a complete paragraph. This is solving a system with equations (in disguise).

It's very, very difficult for two humans in conversation to solve systems with equations on the fly, especially if one of them is using chicanery in the construction and conveying of some of the information in order to achieve an end at variance with the end that would benefit them both. Often each is trying to do this to the other.

Where there is plenty of greed, anger and ignorance, there is much politicking and commerce, hence advertising, scamming and so on. These are all about broken promises and failure to honor contracts, and are made possible by appeals to greedy illusiveness by means of malevolently employed enthymemes: incomplete or incorrect paragraphs and incomplete or incorrect sentences, many of which are carefully nurtured fallacies. 

Dukkha is Buddha's word for the not-quite-rightness of the world as he has found it; much if not nearly everything about human behavior seems off to him, like a cart wheel set off center on the axle, causing the cart to go down the road jolting itself apart even in the absence of potholes ... "dukkha, dukkha." We all are of the nature to become ill, to become old, and to die. Accepting that this is so, and helping one another home, so to speak, is wisdom -- a centered wheel and a smoother ride for all. But the world's common sense is non-acceptance: ignorance, greed, and anger that our illusory, greedy expectations have not been met.

Buddha offers a remedy for our vulnerability to fallacy and its consequences, from disappointment all the way up to life-threatening danger. He noticed, immediately upon seeing the morning star, that the remedy would be difficult to explain, because even honest use of language involves imprecision: no one has the exact same set of meanings of signifiers. 

And those who do not mean well are apt to capitalize on the apparent similarity between inadvertently imprecise honest speech or actions and purposefully imprecise (dishonest) speech or actions.

Yet he persisted. The risk, to him, was worth the gamble.

This is why Buddha speaks of "expedient means" (upaya). Even his most direct verbal teachings made use of language; even at their most formal they were all expedient means toward the ending of suffering, yet inevitably open to interpretation, leading to perceived contradictions over time; the more so as agreed-upon meanings of words drifted.

When we talk about Dharma, just as we talk about anything, our talk does not approach the reality of dharmas (phenomena), or, in the case of Dharma, what we might call our secondary reality -- of ideas. 

And yet we trust in Dharma (the set of available truths about dharmas -- Thusness) to hone our behaviors toward the lessening of suffering -- ours and that of others.

There is some truth in truth, enough so that we if we intend be on its side against injuring, lying, stealing, misuse of pleasures, and misuse of resources, a way forward can be found.

Buddhists speak of the paramitas. Theravada traditionally lists ten; Mahayana  six. But it seems clear, as commentators have noted, that the two lists are just two ways of covering the same ground. The main thing is to provide, as best we can -- toward whatever is before us -- an appropriate response.

 -- shonin 

The long haul

Grass, trees, fences, and walls bring forth the teachings for all beings, usual people as well as sages. And they in accord extend this Dharma for the sake of grass, trees, fences, and walls. Thus, the realm of self-awakening and awakening others is fundamentally endowed with realization lacking nothing, and realization itself is actualized ceaselessly. (Dogen, Bendowa, tr. Hoshin and Daien)

Historically, Buddhists have been all about "nature" and some masters, more than others, have included rocks and "fences and walls" within, or hinted that they should be included within, the circle of "sentient beings."

Suppose we, as individuals, were proved to be a kind of baggage, hauled around by the consensus chorus of our mitochondria as convenient packages of nutrients, "intended" as means of preserving the long chain of replication and nothing more?

Lovelock and Margulis proposed, after studying the evidence that Earth's biosphere and geosphere seem to form a self-regulating system that "just happens" to keep the Earth within the temperature and humidity ranges that protect the integrity of DNA-carrying organisms, a hypothesis that the system is itself purposive, a survival project, so to speak.

Were we to decide that's how it is, wouldn't Dogen's quote above remain much the same? All support all, but some may realize it less than others, simply because the illusion of self-importance promulgated by our DNA code is quite powerful. Even those who "get it" relapse continually, and zazen is often described as a process of noticing this and returning, again and again, to realization. 

So, patience is prajna practice for good reason. I say to myself, "hey, self! Be patient with yourself and others." A few minutes later, I may say it again. This is practice. Life is short, yet we are all in this for the long haul.

 -- shonin 

 

 

It's a thing

Dogen makes much of shikan-taza as being the whole of practice. "Although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way solely in zazen." 

He's not wrong. Stillness is where you find true-ness. At the same time, his monks had to get up and go clean the zendo sometime, and there was also construction, maintenance, cooking, water carrying and farming going on. His explanation was that at the root of all this activity there is still that same stillness. Whether or not you fan yourself, air is air.

When we lived for eight years in the outskirts of one small city and I worked in the larger city across the river, I often biked to work along established bicycle routes and across the wide river on a bike bridge, a scenic round trip of some sixteen miles. In heavier weather, I took the bus.

Bodhidharma splits up practice in much the same way. If wall-gazing does it for you, he says, gaze away! It is, when you do it, the entirety of practice. On the other hand, everything else is waiting for you as practice: the whole of life's activity. One of my hardest-working spiritual teachers, a Hutterite, Barbara Maendel, put it drolly when handing out our farm chores from a seemingly endless list: "a change is as good as a rest."

Zazen is the bicycle. Just get on it and go. In heavier weather, a change is good too. Just get on the bus and go.

Life practice is the bus. If you're sitting in the doctor's waiting room, sure, you can work on your stillness, but also there's the check-in and the visit, which may provide vexations. The arriving and the departing may stress as well -- that near-miss in the parking lot, say. Everything seems to push and pull. To deal with these as Dharma practice, form Dharma life habits.

Bodhidharma breaks life practice into four parts: absence of resentment, acceptance of circumstances, absence of craving, and accord with Dharma. 

To form the habit of not resenting can be a big change in lifestyle for many of us. It means accepting circumstances just as they are, with no craving for them to be any different. That doesn't mean don't swim when you fall into the water, it just means don't spend your swimming energy on uselessly grieving the fall or being angry that you were bumped. Swim. 

Accord with Dharma means embodying Buddha's truth by living the six wisdoms (paramitas). Six tools are available to bring us to the place of non-resentment: giving, ethical discipline, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom.

"Giving" is practice in being kind, a way of cultivating a cooperative, productive and peaceful community.

"Ethical discipline" is self-regulation: holding anger, greed and delusion in check, we foster a cooperative, productive and peaceful community.

"Patience" is practice in accepting circumstances as they are; it's rooted in letting go of the past and especially the future, allowing the community's cooperation, productivity and peace to unfold unforced.

"Effort" here is not the willful struggle that might be envisioned by the ascetic, but the steady self-application to practice that leaves behind the constructed self composed of greed, anger and delusion. This too benefits the community.

"Meditation" in the midst of life practice is that stillness in the doctor's waiting room, increasingly expanding into the visit and the coming and going. You may call it equanimity. It is beneficial to the community.

"Wisdom" here is "prajna," an ongoing appreciation of the ontological truth of the Dharma: "thusness." An insight into thusness is provided by the idea of dependent origination: all things are what they are together, in the same nowness, and nothing exists separately. As our illusion of separateness fades, our actions spring from this realization, and we benefit the community.

shonin painted six rocks, each with a paramita, as mnemonic devices. What, she's 76.

To see Dogen's practical application of the principle of life practice, samu practice, read his "Instructions to the cook," Tenzo Kyokun.

If you only have wild grasses with which to make a broth, do not disdain them. If you have ingredients for a creamy soup do not be delighted. Where there is no attachment, there can be no aversion. Do not be careless with poor ingredients and do not depend on fine ingredients to do your work for you but work with everything with the same sincerity. If you do not do so then it is like changing your behaviour according to the status of the person you meet; this is not how a student of the Way is. (tr. Anzan Hoshin and Yasuda Joshu Dainen)

Hongzhi sums up. "You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the ten­dencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness."

The bicycle in good weather carried me to the entrance of the building where I worked. I arrived exercised and healthy, ready to benefit the community.

The bus, in heavy weather, stopped right in front of the same building. I arrived rested, composed, ready to benefit the community.

Not saying I always rose to the occasion. But that clear circle of brightness -- it's a thing. We should all look into it.

 -- shonin 

Just walk

In a lovely manga I've been reading, the Solo Mountain Climbing Girl, near a three thousand meter summit making and having coffee, asks: "I wonder ... 'why is the mountain beautiful/no matter who lays their eyes upon it?'" (A haiku.)

In the next panel she replies to herself, "You are allowed to ask, but you are not allowed to answer ... to limit nature's splendors with words would be foolish." [sip, sigh]

The first three of Siddartha's Four Sights* are: an old person, a sick person, and a corpse. From these he drew the conclusion that drastic measures might have to be taken to avoid these unavoidables, so he took his hint from the fourth sight, that of a meditating sadhu, and left home. 

These sights and their significance stick with him over time:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

-- Upajjhatthana Sutta (“Subjects for Contemplation”) 

So far, so good. He's seen entropy and its inevitability. He also experienced the unsatisfactory path of the self-abnegating sramana.

He and I, raised in different cultures, may not have quite the same take on why one does whatever one does next. Buddha, or certainly nearly all his followers then and since, clearly thought there was some kind of afterlife with rewards and punishments, though he denied the unchanging soul depicted in his natal Brahmanic faith.

The legends do seem to show Buddha expecting his new monks to be able to keep to the path of non-harm as soon as they have accepted his positive instructions on how to live. On finding that they would need guide rails, he reluctantly provided them.

Bodhidharma mentions, almost in passing, that precepts are already implicit in awakened behavior:  "Bud­dhas don't keep precepts. And buddhas don't break precepts." But I think we will all agree the bar is high on that one. Perhaps something more alarming was required by a society already steeped in its own juices -- and still is.

The idea of hell is even enshrined in the Sotoshu's basic statement of faith, stated as applicable to all laypersons and priests (and made up of quotes cut and pasted from Dogen), the Shushogi:

When there is a spiritual communication of supplication and response, devas, humans, hell dwellers, hungry ghosts, and animals all take refuge.

I personally have no reliable data confirming an afterlife or multiple lives, and little if any basis for speculation on these matters. As such, I have no notion of extinction as a goal for escaping the wheel of karma. Per Occam's Razor, I try to ascertain if what I see and do in this life will fill the bill for what I might call the "yearning to do well."

Concerning teleology and eschatology, then, I am allowed to ask, but not allowed to answer ... to limit reality's splendors with words risks entangling myself further in the vines of delusion.

Even without the carrot and stick of heavens and hells, we notice how it feels to treat others well or badly, within our circumstances and cultural touchstones. For me, Buddha's admonition to ground my actions in wisdom resonates with my understanding that to assist in slowing inevitable entropy, while ultimately futile perhaps, is nevertheless exactly that which is ethical.

This entails attempting a drastic reduction in environmental and social harm (as perceived), as way opens. I have elsewhere compared Buddhism with Permaculture, to try to elucidate ways and means. 

Everything is "emptiness." But it may be that wise actions help empty out the emptiness of greed, anger and ignorance through a disciplined process of subtraction.

Simplify, simplify, simplify. Simply fail, again and again, to reach into the world with greedy hands.

Hence the various stories in which teachers and abbots say "when eating, just eat. When walking, just walk."

 -- shonin 

Kinhin. Ango, 2025

 

*Actually this story is originally told of an earlier Buddha, Vipassi, who is said to have lived long ago. It's not told of the young Siddhartha Gautama until centuries later, but, as Siddhartha himself is said to have said, Buddhas tend to follow similar timelines.

Little sips

A repost.

I take a lot of interest in "Occam's Razor," which to me is a base from which we can very fruitfully conduct our explorations. It comes from philosophy and is often used in science, but often also critiqued in science discourse.

Duns Scotus formulated it thus: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate. "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." I guess "necessity" cuts both ways -- don't complexify but also don't simplify past the point where evidence can be replicated.

Aristotle sought to find the lowest common denominator in his search for first principles from which to build arguments: "We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses." Galileo found it so, as did Newton. 

"Necessity" does arise in physics from time to time, as when Einstein outperforms Newton on gravity calculations, something useful to know about when doing orbital mechanics. But the differences between their results are so small that as a rule of thumb we may continue to use Newton in daily life, even the daily life of construction engineers and airline pilots.

I think it's a strong principle when applied judiciously in life decisions.

In popular culture, our Occam par excellence is Sherlock Holmes. In pursuit of his quarry, Holmes gleefully abandons complex explanations in favor of simple ones, not because the simple is always true, but because the complex is apt to be loaded up with irrelevancies, thereby likely wasting effort: "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Stripping away specious explanatory principles improves his chances of arriving at an explanation that correctly describes what actually happened.

Society is struggling right now with a cornucopia of misinformation and disinformation, aimed at preventing rather than encouraging sound decision-making on the part of target populations. This is in fact a war, one we're all losing, and we are most likely entering a period of unprecedented suffering brought on by desire for and addiction to political and economic hegemony. 

Buddhism says we are subject to three poisons in our social setting (for our purpose they pretty much require the presence of others to be venemous): greed, anger and ignorance. I think of two of them as subsumed under the third: anger and ignorance serve greed.

Complex, or rather falsified, explanations are mustered to increase ignorance and foment anger in service of greed. Where someone has been duped by the greedy with such explanations, we have misinformation. The misinformed more easily harbor racism, sexism, anti-semitism, trans- "phobia," science denial, and the like, and can be recruited, wholeheartedly and with the belief that they are doing good, into campaigns against the commons, in the form of democratic elections, public health, public education, libraries and more, all of which may tend to equip us to resist the greedy.

Disinformation is the misinformation which is knowingly propagated by the greedy to boost ignorance and anger, so as to create and direct mobs -- armies that can serve as the shock troops -- in informal warfare to serve a will to power, the will of the greedy whose aim is rule in service of their greed.

Even those who recognize the caveat of "beyond necessity" may attack the razor for its imprecision. Such may have thoughts along these lines: "Occam has an out and therefore cannot be entirely trusted as it stands, hence it is misinformation and therefore its choice of theory is ultimately no better than the alternatives." This can be a reason why disinformers remain entirely within their comfort zones while laying waste to whole realms of the commons.

But it's not the micro-scale accuracy of our tools of inquiry that concerns humanity here. It's the motivation behind the uses to which they are put. We don't simply seek to know; we seek to know for benefit, and the majority (rightly, I submit) seek to benefit the many rather than the few.

When Buddha intuited that there is no permanent soul of the individual, he was applying something like Occam's razor. Dependent origination is for him the simple ontological explanation of existence, as opposed to a more complex and less demonstrable dualism, and gives rise to his four truths.

Buddhism does have an ethical position, but it's maybe hard to describe because we are used to prescriptives. The default Buddhist ethic is to show by example. As in, in case y'wanna try this stuff.

Buddha said "come, monk" to anyone who showed up. And then there was a knowledge commons. But whenever anyone took an action that was outside the bubble of right action arising from right view, he found it necessary to proscribe such actions in future, and from this arose the precepts.

Well and good; the precepts are a magnificent set of "skillful means." But Buddha and Occam both appreciate simple adherence to first principles, and at the center of first principles, I think, there is something like a still point. Bodhidharma says (in effect) Buddhas don't obey precepts because they are the precepts.

Here is the ground of minimalism; non-harm through simplicity. If you sit a lot of zazen, by that much you're avoiding being trapped in consumerism and the burning down of the surface of the planet.

When I sit zazen, I'm not ... shopping. 

If I'm not shopping, I'm not under the influence of advertising. Therefore the ontological parsimony of sitting zazen resists the illusions promoted by the greedy, and by extension may be said to be resistance to fascism.

That sounds strenuous, but we're learning to adapt (ableism can be its own form of seeking power). Here is my current not-shopping zazen, in progress.

This is zero-gravity-chair-zazen, practically-reclining-in-bed zazen, very-intermittent zazen. 😁

Some might object that this cannot be zazen on the grounds that I'm not sitting up straight. Some might also object to it on the grounds that I'm probably only really doing it for a few moments at a time, rather than the full half hour of most of the Zoom zazen periods I attend. I'm just not up to much, as I've been deteriorating for some time. 

The doctors tell me they've finally located the problem(s), which are leukemia and cardiac amloidosis. I'm not in much pain, but I'm definitely sort of weak and woozy as a regular thing, so I've adapted my zazen accordingly. In like case, such as Long Covid, others may do the same. The important thing, as any Zen teacher will tell you, is not to be doing much. 

Not traveling to the lake to zip around on jet skis, say.

The goalless goal, I think, for anyone interested in ontology at least, is to not be fooled. I admire those who aren't fooled for a whole half-hour at a time. I like to think I've been there and done that. If socially acceptable practice is in the rear view mirror, though, I can at least, for the time being, be not fooled in little sips. 

Do you know the story of the tigers and the strawberry? Little sips can be very tasty.

-- shonin  

 

Alms

So the stone woman and wooden man
carry the burden of appearing to be two;
as do the bowl and icy filling,

as do the stork and round moon;
as do form and emptiness
or form and mirror's image.

As do Boy and snorting Ox,
relative and ultimate,
stick and struck,

arrow and flesh,
way and weary feet,
cedar box with cedar lid,

dollar and power,
bully and victim,
peace and war.

We might for metaphor prefer
thousand-armed Monju
offering us, hands extended,

a thousand Shakyamunis,
each with his bowl presented
for our alms.

Sometimes it's enough just to walk
around the block, shake rain 
from umbrella, sit down,

glance around the room.

-- shonin



MUMONKAN (The Gateless Gate)

13th century Chinese koan collection

Case 12: Zuigan Calls His Master

Zuigan Gen Osho called to himself every day, “Master!” and answered, “Yes, sir!” Then he would say, “Be wide awake!” and answer, “Yes, sir!” “Henceforward, never be deceived by others!” “No, I won’t!”

MUMON’S COMMENT

Old Zuigan buys and sells himself. He takes out a lot of god-masks and devil-masks and puts them on and plays with them. What for, eh? One calling and the other answering; one wide awake, the other saying he will never be deceived. If you stick to any of them, you will be a failure. If you imitate Zuigan, you will play the fox.

MUMON’S VERSE

Clinging to the deluded way of consciousness,
Students of the Way do not realize truth.
The seed of birth and death through endless eons:
The fool calls it the true original self.

The exemplar empty place

 Lately I've been fascinated by reciprocal roofs, which are popular with those who want to try a round house with a smoke hole or perhaps a round central skylight. Here's an example from Wikipedia:  

By Adrian Leaman

The roof beams each lean upon one another in an endless progression, each contributing to the strength and utility of the whole, while leaving a hole that also has utility.

I tend to think of certain lists -- the eightfold way, immeasurables, precepts, paramitas, Shishobo, eight great realizations -- as reciprocal structures, each arranged around the same hole. 

The roundhouse smoke hole has function; it lets smoke out through the roof, admits light, and helps to regulate ventilation, temperature and humidity. But by itself it's not a thing. It is brought into "being" by the beams around it.

I came up with these ruminations while reading these lines, for the umpteenth time, from the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi:

    Like facing a precious mirror; form and reflection behold each other.
    You are not it, but in truth it is you.

The mirror is an upaya teaching-metaphor for thusness. "You are not it." This sounds nihilistic, but "it is you." Here there is a teachable (actually, taught) moment: it is when you let go of your personality.

Shakyamuni is said to have been on his begging rounds when he was interrupted by a Brahmin who had heard his teachings were reliable. "Teach me!" "Not now; we are among the houses doing our begging rounds." "Yeah, but something may happen to either of us and then I will not have received the Dharma!" "Okay, I'll give you the short version:"

    In what is seen there must be only what is seen,
    in what is heard there must be only what is heard,
    in what is sensed there must be only what is sensed,
    in what is cognized there must be only what is cognized.
    This is the way you should train yourself.
    And since for you, in what is seen there will be only what is seen,
    in what is heard there will be only what is heard,
    in what is sensed there will be only what is sensed,
    in what is cognized there will be only what is cognized,
    therefore, you will not be with that;
    and since you will not be in that, therefore, you
    will not be here or hereafter or in between the two
    - just this is the end of suffering.  

I was puzzling over this passage, which I had encountered in Charlie Korin Pokorny's commentary on the Jewel Mirror, while on my "kinh hanh" round of the neighborhood, when for whatever reason I saw a very detailed mental picture of Gautama sitting beneath the fig tree looking at the morning star, smiling, and saying "aha! The morning star is me! But I am not the morning star!" -- upon which the rafters of his forthcoming teachings click into place and he becomes the exemplar empty place for us all.

 

-- shonin 

Long range kinhin

 "Intimate with the essence and intimate with the path, one embraces the territory and embraces the road." -- Jewel Mirror Samadhi 

We mentioned earlier that kora in Tibetan means both circumambulation and pilgrimage. Kinhin offers relief to bodies that have been practicing zazen. Our Soto kinhin, as practiced inside zendos, is generally a short circumambulation and may be regarded as a very short pilgrimage. 

Some Tendai monks engage in a practice of performing a nineteen-mile circumambulation of Mount Hiei, visiting 260 sites, for, in the extreme instance, up to one thousand days, to be completed within seven years. "Part of Tendai Buddhism's teaching is that enlightenment can be attained in the current life. It is through the process of selfless service and devotion that this can be achieved, and the kaihōgyō is seen as the ultimate expression of this desire." -- Wikipedia

Famously, some pilgrims walk clockwise around the entire island of Shikoku, a circumambulation of some twelve hundred kilometers. "The Shikoku Pilgrimage or Shikoku Junrei (四国巡礼) is a multi-site pilgrimage of 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kūkai on the island of Shikoku, Japan." -- Wikipedia

 These can be explicitly secular, even if one chants sutras and wears the clothing: "Five young men from around Japan, once withdrawn from society - a phenomenon known as hikikomori - embark on a 1,200-kilometer pilgrimage around the island of Shikoku, on a journey of self-discovery." -- NHK 

And yet the effects are often similar to what one might expect from religious pilgrimage. Many travelers, tourists and long distance hikers talk about how the journey changed their lives. The Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago) is noted for this: "Pilgrims follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth. It is also popular with hikers, cyclists, and organized tour groups."

I have noticed the effects of secular long-distance hiking along trails or roads not associated with religious observances can be at least self-revelatory and uplifting. The psychological effects are similar to those sometimes reported by those who have crossed oceans, or circled the world, on small boats, or those who have climbed mountains. I sometimes think there is little difference between such experiences and spiritual awakenings. To move is to seek dharmas; on a sliding scale, this segues into seeking Dharma.

It is on the strength of such findings that shinrin-yoku has become an accepted form of therapy. "Not only is "forest bathing" a magical way to explore nature, decades of research has shown that it's good for your health. It can boost your immune system, lower blood pressure and help with depression. It can also reduce the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and turn down the dial on your body's fight-or-flight response." -- NPR

My doctor has told me to resume long walks, within my current constraints, as not walking much is a risk factor. At the same time, I'm involved in a sangha's Ango, or 90 day retreat, during which my long walks can be regarded as a form of meditation -- in effect, a kora pilgrimage. The two can be combined by means of intentionality.

From one end of my street to the other is 0.3 mile. If I cross at each end and come back to the house, it is 0.6 mile. This is a circumambulation. Namu Shakyamuni Butsu.

It's a start. Loooong range kinhin!

-- shonin