Benefactions of Practice

One of the earliest meditations I learned was written by Thich Nhat Hahn. My dear friend Dave Ernster, a potter in New Hampshire, turned me on to it. I enjoy this very much.

The meditation is simple, it goes like this:

Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain. Breathing out, I feel solid. Mountain/Solid (3x).

Breathing in, I see myself as still water. Breathing out, I feel calm. Still water/Calm (3x)

Breathing in, I see myself as space. Breathing out, I feel free. Space/Free (3x)

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower. Breathing out, I feel fresh. Flower/Fresh (3x)

Mountain/Solid. I learned not think that I was like a mountain but actually feel the roots of the mountain extending into the earth, immovable, solid rock, as my own body and the peak into the empty sky..

Still water/Calm. I would picture myself in a pond in the woods, body submerged with eyes right at the water level gazing out over the absolutely still, glassy surface of the water. Feeling my breathing slow. I learned to feel the weight and depth of water, the subtle currents below and the depth of potential energy within that water with its glassy surface unmoved. Calm and potent.

Space/Free. Drawing in my breath I learned to feel it filling the spaces between the electrons within my body, realizing the spaciousness within my body. I began to understand that the solid mass I imagined my body to be was an illusion. Along with my body, shin (heart-mind) became spacious. Free, but not from, rather to be.

Flower/Fresh. During the summertime there were amazing white peonies growing on the sunny side of my pottery studio. Huge blooms, as big as cantelopes. One time I picked one and floated it in a square bowl with a deep cerulean blue glaze. I focused my attention on it, uninterrupted for 20 or 30 minutes. It was an experience of deep seeing. When the ideas of flower, beauty, white, tiny red veins, aroma all fell into the background and I actually experienced what was in front of me with out the chatter, I felt it’s freshness in my blood. I became as the flower itself. Like a coolness flowing through me. So vivid, so fresh, so alive.

These early meditations stay with me, as poignant as the they were in the early days. I sometimes practice them still. Throughout my hours, days, weeks months and years on the zafu I began to wander mindfully into many other types of practices, mantras, sadhanas, meditations, shikantaza and zazen, most all fruitful in their gifts of realization.

The meditation that came to me at my first sesshin with Jitsudo Roshi went like this:

As certain as the mountain slope.

Jewels within jewels tumble forth unceasingly.

The sky does not know when the wind blows.

I wrote it in the guest book that weekend before leaving his and Diana’s home. It was a mantra of sorts for me at that sit. I experienced the certainty, absolute-ness of what was being transmitted in that room, in so many forms, by all beings present, not the least of whom was Jitsudo. The effortless tumbling forth of one glittering jewel-revelation after another, being in repose, yet opening, opening, opening, as vast, connected and incomprehensible as Indra’s net. The sky-mind, the encompassing of all-is-one. Everything, all beings, nothing left out, all under that empty sky. As a road so wide it has no edges. A circle so vast it has no perimeter. All of it happening without any knowing. So direct and so beautiful!

Then, a few years ago another meditation arose:

Abiding in emptiness.

Resting in naturalness.

Dwelling in awareness.

Life and death, an ordinary moment.

No gate.

Abiding in emptiness, in that all phenomena are devoid of self-nature. Just thus-ness, not-this-not-that-ness. The prajna-wisdom of the ten thousand things as they are.

Resting in naturalness. Allowing mind to take its own seat. Not conceptualizing, or poking at it. Just leaving it alone to just be. (Gregg Allman said; “Leave your mind alone, and just get high”.)

Dwelling in awareness. Self-mind dissolving as cessation of connate and imaginative unawareness naturally occur. Cognitive awareness taking over. Two nights ago, standing in the yard, moon nearly full, somewhat unfocused eyesight gazing out front of me, the pear tree, the salt bush, grasses, chamisa and smoke tree, stars above, night clouds, all naming-things dropped away and what came was this; This is it. This really is all of it. Right here, right now. It’s all happening without consent or intentional creativity on my part. The same way the thusness I call me is just happening. Awareness recognizing its own face.

Life and death an ordinary moment. No coming, no going, Tathāgata. This is what is, no more, no less. Nothing special.

No gate. No gate to enter practice, or anything else. There really is no entering. The realization that there is no gate to enter is the realization that we’re always here. Sometimes called by names; dharma, life, buddhafield, bardo, nirmanikaya. Just names. Actually, just here, just now, when and wherever we are, as we are; always, throughout beginningless time.

It is deeply mysterious, delightful, surprising, sometimes challenging to engage with the birth of new understandings, meditations and practices. But this is what we get, the great gift, the benefaction, as a result of all our sitting. As our lives and consciousness evolve, which never stops, so too, our practices. To embrace this unfolding with an open heart, an inquisitive mind and compassion, and experience it as the manifestation of being, the heartbeat of the cosmos, this is our gift as awakened beings.

Deep peace & great love,

Issan (author) & Zenho

Here’s Noah’s Poem:

In the soup of this

Reality

There is something

As opposed to

Nothing

Like the sun birthing itself

Over misty mountains

In the Autumn

SCHEDULE October 1-October 7

MONDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT TEA HOUSE, DAVID OPENING

NO DREAM KOAN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM

TUESDAY, 6:30AM, ZAZEN AT THE TEAHOUSE, ANDY OPENING

WEDNESDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
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THURSDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEA HOUSE OR ZOOM
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DOKUSAN WITH ISSAN SENSEI

FRIDAY, 6:30AM: ZAZEN & SERVICE AT THE TEAHOUSE 

DOKUSAN WITH ZENHO SENSEI