The Dharma Gate of Genuine Practice

“Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakens.” ~CG Jung

C.G. Jung the father of (modern) dreamwork, categorized individual psychic propensities of one’s experience of the world into four primary functions: Feeling, Intuition, Thinking and Sensate. The rational functions being thinking and feeling and the non-rational functions being intuition and sensate (one who perceives through the senses). According to Jung, everyone has a primary function supported by a secondary (and also by the lesser third and fourth) functions. The interpretation of what we call “feeling” is quite different from the perspective of each individual’s primary function. Jung thought each one of these functions to be inherited as well as part of the collective unconscious.

My own personal Jungian typology is Feeling-Intuitive. My less pervasive functions are rational, logical, linear calculation. I am supported by the sensate function; My understanding of materials comes quite naturally without much effort, (metals, clay, wood, earth etc.), wet, dry, cool, hot – what stuff is made of. Interestingly enough, different geographic regions also correspond with one’s typology. Here’s a Jungian typology test if you’re interested: https://www.123test.com/report/LRMU6HPLY8OXW0VRFU/

In our sangha we focus on exploring feelings. I believe that when we explore our feeling-space we are able engage the deep wisdom of our unconscious mind and experience the sensibilities of our own psyche as well as the collective unconscious. Much great art is made from this very place. It seems to me that from the feeling-space we experience the universe manifesting, and our participation in that. 

We are asked in dokusan, in dream work, in koan practice; “How does that feel to you?, “What feelings are coming up for you around that…?”. Initially, we might some feel tension and search our thinking mind for what we think the questioner may consider the “right response” in order to protect what we perceive as “ourselves”, but in this case there is no right response. This question isn’t approaching our thinking mind. Because we do not find ourselves being asked these questions frequently they may seem very complex and initially confusing to answer. This is why we practice engaging in the vocabulary of feeling, this is the place where the experience of being arises. The direct experience of the dharma. 

Dogen reminds us to “Forget the self”. But, if all we experience is the habitual thought formations that come up in our conscious mind as “self” then we do not clearly recognize or understand what needs to be “forgotten”. The modal mental blocks (thoughts that relate to structure as opposed to substance), that arise first and speak to us loudest, maintain a self-preservation narrative in its many forms; some necessary and many more destructive, banal and perverse that cause separation in our own psyche and move us away from any real intimacy with others. Some of these modal blocks we are familiar with, sometimes consciously and sometimes not. Unconscious energy is expended is very frequently in defense of the “I”. This makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, to access the self-reflection of feeling. In order to “forget” this “self” and experience the clarity of the ten thousand things that continually approach us we have to somehow access a deeper wisdom. The dharma gate to this deeper wisdom is the unconscious material produced in dreams. The ombudsman of this dharma gate is our feelings. This is the practice of engaged dharma.

Certainly, we are not solely defined by typology, Jungian or otherwise. We are the myriad manifestations of the magical illusion of being, the synergistically arisng collective unconscious, the universe experiencing itself, and we are fortunate to have the curiosity to seek and become engaged with the depth and root of this experience we call living, and notwithstanding, meaning.

This is the entry point to what we seek: the primordial unchanging light, the central origin of all mandalas that embodies the vast ocean of wisdom and compassion that this practice makes available to us. Every place and all time is a dharma gate. When the buddha at the gate asks about your feelings search your whole heart, respond courageously and with great love and you will pass through the dharma gate of genuine practice.

Deep Peace and Great Love

~Issan & Zenho

SCHEDULE  July 30-Aug 5

Issan will be out of town August 2 – August 16

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 

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE WITH ZENHO AT THE TEAHOUSE  DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI

Poem from Zenho Sensei

Birds this morning 

This morning  

My heart filled with 

An ache that feels like sadness 

My eyes welling with tears 

___ 

That blur my vision of the 

Bird bath centered upon the sanded porch 

Sparrows arrive,  

3 then 4, quickly looking left-right-left 

A solitary Grosbeak perches 

Sparrows shifting away from its bulky aura 

Left-right-left 

Before dipping a head for a sip,  

Water glass Mirror  

Shatters in response  

And  heads twitch right-left-right 

Anticipating another sip 

Until until until 

One is overcome  

Jumping through the mirror 

Into an cstatic wingdunksplash 

And a second and a third  

And then leftrightleft  

The fourth an explosion 

All bursting in unison through western air 

At a change in shadow, or breeze 

Unnoticed by me 

___ 

Oh how I long  

To soak my wings in that bath 

Undisturbed by rightleftright 

Unruffled by shadow and breeze 

___ 

My heart aches 

And my tears flow 

A poem from Noah

The Moon is ready to face the Sun 

Once again

To enflame itself in

This radiance 

And share it with us all

This momentary 

Completion of

Desire desire

And then to begin again this 

Infinite yearning 

An end an end in itself– 

Noah Seltzer