Enso tile, ceramic, 2023, David Ernster
“All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient beings, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek Buddhahood. They do not know that if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and Buddha is all living beings.”
Much of Zen practice is thought to be reliant on a teacher, however the teacher has no-thing to teach and the student no-thing to learn. Having no-thing to learn doesn’t require any special training in Zen, but only those who have awakened to their original nature can learn nothing.
When my teacher asked me, “Who is sitting on the zafu?” I was confused and I tried to think up a clever answer and came up empty. I babbled some pseudo-spiritual Zen crap in an effort to come up with an answer that I thought might demonstrate my position on the path to enlightenment. He smiled kindly at me and gently shook his head and instructed me; “Go sit on your zafu and find out.”
Through many hours on the zafu I contemplated his question. I thought maybe its “No-one”, “the Buddha”, “the universe manifesting as me”, “just me”, and loads of other thoughts, just mental constructs. The harder I tried, the more I felt it slip away in confusion. “Dogen!”, I thought, “he’ll surely have the answer to this one!” I read The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. Took a long time! The more I tried to learn the less I understood. I searched in the sutras, Tibetan tantras, koans and biographies of the Great-Enlightened-Ones. Came up with lots of very intelligent, clever and perhaps “true” answers. Unfortunately, they were not the answers that belonged to the questioner called Issan. So remarkable it seems to me now, how clearly Roshi Jitsudo pierced my mind and revealed to me the erroneous thought process I was going through to find the answer to his question.
In attempting to answer the question there was hope of trying to “improve”. Progress farther up the path. Make a better realization, a more clear, Buddha-like understanding of “it all”. A goal-oriented mindset. The problem with this approach, is of course, that there is “no-thing” to improve and there is “no-thing” that needs to be improved upon. It’s never been a matter of “becoming”. It’s only a matter of realizing that our original nature is nothing other than our own breath, not separate from Huangbo’s “One Mind”. It’s simply a matter of being.
After years of sitting zazen, through many doubts and many kensho, it’s become clear to me not to seek the path to enlightenment in books, sutras, tantras, and not even in a teacher, because it is not found there, though these things can be helpful pointers. In fact, it’s not found in seeking. It’s not found as an answer at all. It’s much more natural than that, more at ease, so much more readily present. Available to you , right now.
Dropping away seeking,
dropping away enlightenment,
dropping away hope and doubt,
dropping away dropping away,
that’s where I found the question in Roshi’s question.
“I do not say that there is no Zen, but there is no Zen teacher” ~Huangbo
Deep Peace & Great Love, ~Issan (a) & Zenho
Noah’s poem
Sun still melting
The drip drip tick tick of
Late Summer
What is left when there is nothing left?
What is contained within the synchronistic song of these
Nats above my face.
What is a bee that lives its entire life without
A single sting?
And what is a summer without the nectar of the salted sea
Or the one perfectly ripe nectarine?
What if the flavor of this moment was richer than the
Thick batter of nostalgia?
The present always slipping itself into oblivion before my eyes
The drip drip tick tick of
Late Summer
The cheer of the childrens’ delight
Changes
Like the pitch of a passing siren–
SCHEDULE 8/27-9/2
{Issan out of town 8/30-9/6}
MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, DAVID OPENING
MONDAY, 7PM, DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81182899201?pwd=UVU4MnJhMG1ZUGJaOHhaSndwQ2dYQT09
WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89605039197?pwd=VTVubW5pUnBCNFBqQjBieERvNDd5QT09
FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEAHOUSE: DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI
No Gate Zen Center 