“The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma Gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. You you must know that just there in zazen the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.
~Dogen
Student: What is enlightenment?
Master: Enlightenment is an accident.
Student: Then why do we do zazen?
Master: Zazen makes us accident prone.
Zazen is the fundamental root of Zen practice. Zazen is what Zen practice actually is. There are many forms of Buddhism for which Zazen is not the basis of practice. Some seek enlightenment in the sutras, or mantra and mudra or elaborate visualizations of celestial beings or koans. Not Zen. The practice of Zazen, being Zazen, dropping intellectual understanding, and shining the light of mind inward to illuminate yourself is the practice that we are instructed to follow by Master Dogen; ” Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifested. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Cease all movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. have no design on becoming a buddha. The zazen I speak of has nothing to do with learning meditation. Zazen has nothing to do with sitting or lying down. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of total accumulated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality.”
Who is sitting on the zafu?
What is your original face?
How can you answer?
How does it feel to you? Are you excited? Bored? Does it feel forced? Uncomfortable? Blissful or joyous? Free or compressing?
Each time I am on my zafu it feels like coming home. In the place of no-place, no effort, free. Initially I feel a sense of abiding in emptiness, resting in naturalness, dwelling in awareness. Then all that dissolves into clear sky. Mundane concerns and thoughts drop away of themselves without effort. Realizing a still point and expanding beyond self, beyond beings and buddhas, melting into mugai. For a long while I tried too hard to make my thinking stop, to bliss-out, to space out, to day-dream enlightenment. It is said no matter how much you sweep, you’ll never sweep the mind clean. Eventually “something” happened, an accident perhaps and I quit making an effort. These days Zazen manifests on its own.
There was a conversation a couple weeks ago with Ralph Kendo Bruce-Fritz, a Zen priest and dharma holder of Jitsudo Roshi’s lineage. He explained to me the meaning of mugai as “the-limitless-out-there”. The infinite circle which contains all and does not have a line drawn around it. As Jitsudo Roshi once described it to me; a road that has no edges.
In Zen we have some enigmatic language that elicits awe. Beginnigless time, prajna-the wisdom of things as they are, maha; the all-encompassing oneness, the empty sky. These words are useful as a jumping-off place for our minds to explore the conceptual. A nudge to raise the Bodhi mind. But what happens when we exhaust the intellect, the creative and physical experiences of these concepts? What’s then?
I shared a dream about being-space. About an experience of mugai. Presence in the cosmos, points of light that I dreamed existed as what was thought of as “myself” through out beginningless time. In the dream I knew that thusness had never come-and-gone, and there was no longer a fear around the life and death concept. I felt the essence of being as pervasive, regardless of its manifestation or non-manifestation. There were countless points of light in the cosmos in my field of vision in this dream and each one part of, and also, the limitless whole itself.
It’s really not possible to clearly define the experience of “dropping away”” as Dogen poetically refers to the essential point of Zazen because for each one of us it feels different. We can feel it in one another, sense it in presence and like a whisper of perfume left in the air and we know what is here. Delving into your feeling, not thinking is essential to practice-realization, then forgetting it. It is the “forgetting the self” that actualizes practice- realization.
May your practice-realization go well.
Deep Peace and Great Love,
~Issan
SCHEDULE July 16-22
MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, KEKANSAN OPENING
MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM Drag your body to the Zendo, or Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09
TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM, WITH ZENHO. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86265616603?pwd=WHZEQWNDQnZPS1VicDl6VVlEdmxFZz09
WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM WITH ZENHO
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09
THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE, DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI
FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE WITH ZENHO AT THE TEAHOUSE DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI
SATURDAY, 6:30AM: TOKUDO CLASS, AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89637678671?pwd=TUpWeDl5T2xRbjlYU1VNWEcrVGtUdz09
A poem from Zenho:
In the midst of this heat wave
Animals and people and plants
Alike shriveling
I descend into a volcanic theater
There greeted by this life quenching
Indigenous torrent
Hmmm…aaaH
-Zenho
No Gate Zen Center 