Ceremony

 

We tuck roots in soil, not

knowing if we will see harvest

with wearing the robe,

it is the same.

 

Ceremoniously offering and accepting tea, 
teacher and student face each other 
across the small table. 

Who knew? ... when we were neighbors 
in the woods some fifty years ago, 
this moment would come?

-- shonin

The luminous moon drifts by so lightly,

The sutra hall lies silent without a sound.

Bits of moonlight pierce the cracks between the bamboo,

Its round refulgence perches in the intersecting pine branches.
The dew dampens the nests filled with noisy swallows,

The wind combs the grasses filled with croaking frogs.

I sit with the master after the ceremony is over

As, face to face, we straighten out our robes.

-- Shiyan, in Daughters of Emptiness tr./ed. Beata Grant

A meditation on the Hsin Hsin Ming

(Better left unsaid, aye?
but I was always one to poke at stuff, yeesh.)

My way now lacks boredom.
It helps to have a veranda.
Our daughter left us hers,
so there you go: grief and ease,

A horrible fact, but one eats,
one sleeps. Things are not
apart, so when we judge we miss.
For? Against? A rock sits

where it is put, so teaches wisdom
without bothering to be wise.
As knowledge has no anchor,
sitting like a rock is available.

Hands can hold as much as we need,
sometimes more than we need,
so our reaching for more smacks of
not understanding reality.

Even trying to grasp this doggerel's
implications as I write shows me
there is no approaching a horizon;
Fatigue is what ends any endeavor.

If I suspend an effort, there is
effort in suspension; If I strive
there is rest in going. Sitting still
in knowing this neither goes nor stays.

My friend has spoken for years
of the circle of discourse
as if it were a sack he wished to escape;
whereas I like a goldfish circle, smiling;

both will end the same. We have both
said so, then sat together, each
contented in the mistaken thought
we have said it better. The not

saying more was the actual prize,
if there were one. Lack a thought about
any entity, and the entity remains
as like a fact as it ever will.

Lack a sight, or hearing, or any sensation
of any event, and it will be
all it needed to be, just as it is.
Most Zen, I'm told, sits at the bottom

of breath, like the moment
after dying. It is then a receding
horizon seems close. Even that
is illusory, but self examination

right then might yield insight. That's nice,
but chuck the insight aside for now,
and, without "holding" the breath,
undo doing without even un-"doing."

It's like not reaching for a beach pebble,
and the pebble is in hand, or like
not looking it over, and knowing its color.
No: beachless until we must inhale,

a taste of endless moment ending life.
"Thusness" cannot be divided into "is"
and "is not," other than as mistaken intellectual
exercise, and saying so is also mistaken.

We do live to eat, though, so take up
the knife without thinking "knife"
and cut the vegetable without thinking "vegetable."
Move through, then eat, then come to rest.

Same with washing the bowl, same with
the bending trees beyond the rain-streaked
window. It's privilege to reach for such
silence while having use of knife and window,

but an animal is neither rich nor poor. We
are already where we are, so must begin here.
Here has only memory for a past and anticipation
for a future, and only while we breathe.

Set the bowl on its shelf and the knife
in its place. So thoughts arose? That's not failure,
even if it was greed for life. Those are
bubbles, like bubbles in the sink.

Let them dissipate on their own.
What's left is still what is: hands drying
on a towel, perhaps. Trees continuing
to bend in autumnal storm.

Sitting is the same as eating or doing dishes.
It's a tree bending, letting old leaves go.
It's hands drying, fingers uncurling
on their own, resting on thighs.

On the power line outside, swaying slightly,
a crow preens, looks about, chuckles,
relieves itself, launches into rain —
taking no account of horizons —

does it even know it was ever an egg?
Does it consider what may happen in winter,
stretched on snow, losing form?
It is all of itself in the now, and is all things. 

-- shonin 

A comment on Hongzhi's Zuochan zhen

The thing about Buddhas (there are many, 
perhaps as many as grains of sand)
is that their being Buddhas is not an identity
(other than for convenience, as we are lazy)

but that they do something (without going
anywhere much, when it is what they do)
and that something is hard to speak of
(not that it's a secret or obscure, but because

nouns slide us far from where verbs are going).
Example (ha ha): while observing a growing
blade of grass, a Buddha observes growing,
letting "blade" and "grass" remain provisional,

unless of course it is time to mow (should a Buddha
chance to live in a neighborhood
with a Home Owners' Association,
in which case there is no help for it). But letting

grasses grow, birds fly, and fishes swim
a Buddha settles a bit deeper into the lawn chair
in shade, and sips glorious tea, without even
thinking not to think "glorious tea," in which case

the grass greens greenly in full sun, the bird
pounces mercilessly upon the fish, the fish
gratefully remembers how kind was its river,
and the Home Owners' Association deeply bows.

--shonin 

The bee moves on

Somewhere out back
the seven-year-old cherry
takes up its found duty
teaching evanescence

 

I sometimes don't make it out to the hut for two or three days at a time, especially in rain or snow. I've reached the age of more or less permanently camping in the easy chair, medications at hand, scarf wrapping neck, wall-gazing like Bodhidharma but with perhaps less intent, my sitting interlaced with napping, like Daughter's very old dog who lives with us still.

Son or Beloved bring me teas and nibblets. This perks me up, and seems to do them some good as well.

The thought experiments I've been sporadically attending to are: Occam's Razor and entropy.

Occam's idea, not completely original to him but close enough, is that there is no call to multiply entities needlessly. That is, if you fell off the cliff due to your own carelessness, you need not also attribute the fall to interference in your short life by a demon. 

Applying Occam will tend to lead one toward a monistic materialism devoid of teleology, which many physical scientists hold either explicitly or implicitly, for reasons. "Literary criticism is a branch of biology ( --I.A. Richards)."

Core Buddhism as it has come down to us does not have a lot of new ideas: 

1. there is suffering,
2. some suffering is self-inflicted,
3. stop that,
4. here's how.

It stands up well under Occam. 

Buddhism has acquired a lot of cultural accretions, some of which go back to the first generation or soon after. Many -- if not most -- of them may not stand up well under Occam.

Entropy can be thought of in lay terms as "everything runs down." 

To assemble what we may call a state or object, we must find and supply additional energy to the amount originally embodied in it to maintain it as such; otherwise it becomes other stuff. 

A car becomes not a car if it is set up on blocks and its wheels taken away. Leave it there long enough and it becomes an unwieldy and rather forlorn flowerpot.

Combine the razor and entropy when looking at the Four Truths and we get a pretty easily tested life engine that strikes me as having some ontological staying power.

Buddha's charioteer brought him to see the Four Sights, the first three of which were signs of entropy: old age, illness and death. The fourth was asceticism, a somewhat extreme response to the first three, which appealed to the young man and led to his years of practicing some rather severe yogas, as if punishing himself for being subject to entropy. 

After a rather simple meal offered to him, that is, some energy input to maintain his state as a living being, he decided against punishment and proclaimed a Middle Way: live without either seeking too great a buffer against entropy or too little. Entropy just is.

The bee checks out the cherry blossoms for at most a few days. The petals fall. The bee moves on. 

 -- shonin

The best way is not difficult

It only excludes picking and choosing.
-- Xinxin Ming tr. Pajin

Nothing need stop us

Slow moving illness
provides time to review
things done, not done:
release them all

Sitting in the new hut, Manzoku-an, or Hermitary of Quite Enough, she is running out of needs.

Buddha's great discovery was re-discovered millennia later. It's called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As dharmas (things or beings) 

are not, or do not have ... 

... states ... 

... but are bundles of energy arriving and departing ... 

... they are ephemeral. 

All are equal, all equally evanescent. Resting from concern or anguish over that which is as it is, nothing need stop us from enjoying ourselves, as we might an evening of fireflies.

-- shonin


Whether I sit or I lie,
My spirit roams with the origin of things.
Singing alone or rhyming alone,
My joy runs to the edge of the sky.
-- Songs of National Preceptor Wongam (1226–1292) tr. Whitfield, Park

 

A cloudless sky

Asan was an eighteenth century Japanese laywoman who studied Zen with Master Tetsumon and was unremitting in her devotion to practice. One day during her morning sitting she heard the crow of a rooster and her mind suddenly opened. She spoke this verse in response:

The fields, the mountains, the flowers, and my body too are the voice of the bird -- what is left that can be said to hear?

-- From The Hidden Lamp, Caplow, ed., et. al.

Xiangyan sat for many years, then his life turned around when he heard the tile strike the bamboo.

I like to think I have had many moments like that, but I'm very stubborn and mightily resist turning. There's maybe half a turn, then the noise sets in.

I drove once a month for years to Bird Haven Zendo. Sit, kinhin, sit, bow, jundo to altars, reflect, receive instruction, eat, trim candles, sit, kinhin, sit, join kitchen table dharma, smile goodbye, drive home.

It was only one day a month, but I count it as steadily ongoing training of a sort, as it set the tone, or it seemed to me it should have, for all the days in between, gardening, making tea, walking with the dog to the river.

Some days, every sight or sound was itself. Others, they gave rise to wandering thoughts. And more wandering thoughts, and more wandering thoughts.

It's as if I am just underwater, and can see the shining sunlight right there above me in a cloudless sky.

I'm the most industriously lazy monkey-mind I know of! It's frustrating because I know the effort to halt this is like paddling to cross to the other shore when there is no paddle. 

Gardening, making tea, walking all happen before there is a single delusion.

-- shonin

Your unborn mind is the Buddha-mind itself, and it is unconcerned with either birth or death. As evidence of this, when you look at things, you're able to see and distinguish them all at once. And as you are doing that, if a bird sings or a bell tolls, or other noises or sounds occur, you hear and recognize each of them too, even though you haven't given rise to a single thought to do so.

-- Bankei, The Unborn tr. Norman Waddell.

 

Lily

Dear Sangha, meet my new toy.

In my own case, it's not yet what it may seem: I walk a lot. Even hike, admittedly with two sticks. But I absolutely cannot stand in a queue. I have obtained the device to get in line for vaccinations and such.

I like it; amazing what all I can store under the seat. I'm sure it will come in even more handy later. 😄 What with the Second Law and all.

I think I will call it Lily, as it is my lily pad where I can sit and wait for whatever turns up. In the evening Jupiter, bright, resplendent. In the morning Venus, resplendent, bright.

-- shonin

A frog's way of sitting is much better than our zazen. I always admire their practice. They never get sleepy. Their eyes are always open, and they do things intuitively in an appropriate way. When something to eat comes by, they go like this: gulp! They never miss anything, they are always calm and still. -- Shunryu Suzuki

In the inn that is this world
People come and go in a flash.
The moon shines on the hill bamboo,
Alone I sit and hear the kingfishers.

Spring rain, a pondful of frogs:
Going in and out, like the drum beat,
Chanting and turning a thousand sutras.
What is the use of reading texts?

All my life I have lacked cleverness,
My early learning was sleeping beneath the trees.

-- Poems of Cheongheodang (1520–1604) tr. Whitfield and Park


If you want to comprehend this essence, you should know that the voices of frogs and worms, the sound of wind and raindrops, all speak the wonderful language of the dharma and that birds in flight, swimming fish, floating clouds, and flowing streams all turn the dharma wheel. -- Bassui

 

The luminous moon drifts by so lightly,

The sutra hall lies silent without a sound.

Bits of moonlight pierce the cracks between the bamboo,

Its round refulgence perches in the intersecting pine branches.
The dew dampens the nests filled with noisy swallows,

The wind combs the grasses filled with croaking frogs.

I sit with the master after the ceremony is over

As, face to face, we straighten out our robes.

-- Shiyan, in Daughters of Emptiness tr./ed. Beata Grant

 

furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water -- Bassho

At my shady house,
My two legs stretched lazily,
I find endless joy
In hearing the summer frogs,
Singing in a hillside field.

-- Ryokan (tr. Nonoyuki Yuasa)

 

Prayer (After Shantideva)

 Prayer ( after Shantideva) 
 
May all beings everywhere
Plagued by sufferings of body and mind,
Obtain an ocean of happiness and joy
And may I assist and not hinder.

May no living creature suffer,
Commit evil or fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled,
With a mind weighed down by depression.

May the blind see forms
And the deaf hear sounds.
May those whose bodies are worn down
Be restored on finding repose.

May the naked find clothing
The hungry find food
May the thirsty find water
Clean and abundant.

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy;
May the hopeless find hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.

May there be timely rains
And bountiful harvests;
May medicines be effective
And wholesome prayers bear fruit.

May all who are sick and ill
Be freed from their ailments.
Whatever diseases are in the world
May they never occur again.

May the frightened cease to be afraid
And those bound be freed;
May the powerless find power
And the people benefit one another.

For as long as space remains,
For as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too remain
Dispelling the miseries of the world. 

Nowhere is there anything hidden

 

From the hut window, I spotted a Cooper's hawk diving into the alley. It reappeared, settling on a power line, holding a stunned garter snake. A scrub jay flew over, parked within a couple of feet of the hawk, and clearly was talking to it, bobbing obsequiously, as much as to say, "you gonna eat all of that?" The hawk, seemingly a bit miffed, lifted its wings and made off to a distant walnut tree to eat in peace.

I gave the scene a little gassho.

What was that?

Sometimes we are the hawk; sometimes we are the scrub jay, and sometimes we are the snake.  Sometimes we are the suddenly snakeless grass. 

There is much to bow to.

When we gassho, one hand is us and the other is ... the other person, the thought we just had, that fleeting feeling, that old familiar pain, the mountain, the river, the hawk, the snake, the jay, the grass, leafless walnut, strumming wire between power poles, wind, hair falling in front of our eyes, a sudden truth revealed, a vulnerability, an unexpected strength, the altar, the universe. One with, one with, one, one, all, all, unspeakable, hence gestured, a candle flame at the ends of our arms, supporting, accepting, being supported and accepted, vanishing into and becoming all past, present and future support and acceptance. 

Nowhere is there anything hidden from the gassho.

-- shonin

Water over stones

  

 
 

Neither/nor stuff is all over Buddhism, and of course it's all true, but only in the cumbersome sense of talking in the realm of talking. 😊 Dharma is in a place where what is not said takes up the whole universe, so we're probably best off, at least in the first moment of full awareness, just standing there stunned by the riffle of a bit of water over stones. 

-- shonin

Now, in the unhindered and unobstructed dharma-opening of the dharma-realm there is no dharma, and yet no non-dharma; no opening, and yet no non-opening. Thus it is neither large nor small, neither in a hurry nor taking its time; neither moving nor still, neither one nor many. Since it is not large, it can become an atom, leaving nothing behind. Since it is not small, it can contain all of space with room left over. Unhurried, it can include all the kalpas in the three time periods; not taking its time, it can enter fully into an instant. Since it is neither moving nor still, samsāra is nirvāna and nirvāna is samsāra. Being neither one nor many, one dharma is all dharmas and all dharmas are one dharma.

-- Wonhyo, tr. Muller   

Image: Dongshan Liangjie attains insight while crossing a stream.