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Master Ryokan’s Way
“Ryokan sometimes accepted invitations from his supporters to stay for meals or overnight. Kera reflects:
Ryokan stayed with us for a couple of days. A peaceful atmosphere filled our house, and everyone became harmonious. This atmosphere remained for some days even after he left. As soon as I started talking with him, I realized that my heart had become pure. He did not explain Zen or other Buddhist scriptures, nor did he encourage wholesome actions. He would burn firewood in the kitchen or sit in meditation in our living room. He did not talk about literature or ethics. He was indescribably relaxed. He taught others only by his presence.”
From a new book by by Kaz Tanahashi called “Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan. Ryokan, a Japanese Zen master, lived from 1756-1831.
Shinshu’s comment:
When I read this excerpt from the book, I though how wonderful it is to just live our understanding without needing to prove anything to anyone about what we know. Neither does he feel the need to tell others anything about his opinions or understanding. He helped in the kitchen by stoking the wood stove, he meditated quietly without making a fuss. He did not try to impress anyone with his understanding of literature nor did he spout off about ethics. He just appeared as himself totally relaxed. Although it is not explicitly said, he must have also had a generous heart toward his hosts. If he had not, they would not have felt peace and Kera (who relates the story) would not have felt a pure heart. This is such a lesson for all of us about how to be skillfully present and integrated with life as it is. Nothing special and nothing extra. This is so difficult to do, yet Ryokan’s relaxed generous presence brought ease in the midst of the simplest of everyday activities.
Calling Our Hungry Ghosts
Ocean Gate Zen Center celebrated the offering of food, incense and sweet tea to our ancestral hungry ghosts last night (Oct. 30th) during our annual Segaki Ceremony. In Japan this is a mid-summer ceremony associated with O-bon. O-bon honors the Buddha and the Segaki Ceremony is to call forth the family ancestors to offer peace and sustenance for whatever suffering may be occurring.
In the United States Buddhist community we have transplanted the Segaki ceremony onto Halloween or All Hallows Eve on Oct. 31st. Not surprisingly, the two ceremonies have a similar purpose: to bring peace to suffering spirits. All Hallows Eve seems to have taken the majority of its characteristics from an ancient Celtic celebration called the Samhain Festival.
At Samhain, ancestors are welcome into the human world again and places are set for them at the dinner table. In this very concrete way, offerings are made of food and good will. During this time children would go from door to door receiving gifts of food.
In 835 Pope Gregory moved the All Saints Day from May 13th to Nov. 1st on the Christian calendar. During All Saints Day church bells were rung to sooth the souls in purgatory. Cakes called Soul Cakes were baked and given to children who came door-to-door begging for them, perhaps reenacting the soul’s desire for redemption.
In all of these various events across cultures, we venerate those ancestors who precede us and wish them peace and salvation through offerings of food and comfort. During Ocean Gate’s Segaki Ceremony we begin by drawing pictures of hungry ghosts (Gakis, whose stomachs are bloated in starvation, but their necks are too small to receive nourishment.) and hang them on the walls. Then we call for the spirits with noise makers and chanting. Finally we offer them food, sweet tea, water, flowers and incense and chant for their well-being.
How fitting during this time of transition from Fall to Winter, when for many storms come and the light wanes, we acknowledge and bring forth the mental suffering that might lie in the shadows that come forth in the winter of our suffering. Winter can arrive at any time and our healing comes from bringing our difficulties into the light through our offerings of good will. It is this good will toward the self and others that enables us to find the courage needed for transformation. Let us remember this great truth of Buddha’s compassion as we go forth into the holidays.
Building A Temple
On September 6th, I went to the ground breaking ceremony for Tempyozan Monastery near Lower Lake, CA. The Tempyozan Zendo Project is the culmination of a dream of Rev. Gengo Akiba, former representative of the Japanese Soto School of Japan and current Abbot of the Kojin-an Zendo in Oakland, CA. That’s him on the left in the picture.
In Japan, carpenters are building 5 traditional monastic buildings which will be disassembled, shipped to the United States and reassembled in the spring of 2013. Its completion will be a time of great excitement in both the Japanese and American Soto Zen communities. Rev. Akiba anticipates the monastery’s first training period sometime in 2015.
While it is true that this completed project will be a grand affair, it began as an idea, a dream and as we see in this picture a small mound of dirt in the center of four small saplings. This reminded me of the koan “The World Honored One Points to the Ground”, case 4 from The Book of Serenity. The story is simple. The Buddha was walking with his students. He stopped and pointed to the ground and said “This spot would be a good place to build a temple (or a monastery).” The God Indra, who was tagging along, stuck a blade of grass in the ground and declared, “The temple is built.” The Buddha smiled.
These are the daily occurrences of life, if we choose to recognize that each thing or being is a temple or a buddha. In the case of the Tempyozan Zendo there was a ceremony with incense, colorful robes and bells. In the case of our daily life, it is a breath taken or a hand gently extended. To recognize this truth of each moment is to plant that single blade of grass over and over again.
What makes this act of placing a blade of grass a temple is not the Buddha’s presence or that Indra chose that particular blade of grass. Rather, in that moment, Indra understood that nothing is lacking. When nothing is absent in our life we are always present for the sacred manifesting in the ordinary. When nothing is lacking, nothing is rejected. This is what is called Big Mind or making a temple from a blade of grass.
If we are confused about this matter, we might think that the Buddha was suggesting his students build a huge monument where he was pointing. The beauty of the koan is that Indra was able to meet the Buddha mind/heart to mind/heart and immediately insert a blade of grass in the ground. The Buddha smiled. In this moment the temple was built; the teachings transmitted; compassion and wisdom reaffirmed. We long for this kind of connect with our life. That connect is never absent, yet we have to make an effort to turn toward it, to re-member our true situation. This is the meaning of awakening and actualizing the ordinary in each moment as a refuge for ourselves and others.
Rev. Shinshu Roberts
The Eyes of the Heart
The places the eyes of the flesh can see have a limit The places the eyes of the heart can see have no limit. Gyokko Sensei,from Paula Arai’s book Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals
Daijaku’s Commentary: The eyes of the heart are open – they see clearly and are not obstructed by assumptions and bias. These eyes are not misted over with romantic notions – they are not misted over with any notions. The eyes of the heart see through the obstructions caused by our limited views. Being fully present to ourselves and each other we come to know what is beneath the judgments we can hold and see the ways we are all connected beyond any notion of limitation. Gyokko Sensei is pointing to the clear eyes of wisdom that show us a world of gratitude and effective action. She is encouraging us to enter that world.
Try it, what would it mean if for a day you make an effort to see everyone and every thing around you with the clear vision of the heart?
Still Haven’t Experienced Satori?
Here’s a quote from Hakuin (1685-1768), one of our Japanese Ancestors:
“So what if you don’t experience satori? It doesn’t mean you have to eat your food through your nose. It still goes in through your mouth. It doesn’t mean when you have to piss, you have to do it on a millstone. You still go to the privy. When you want to move, you move. When you have an inclination to sit, you sit. You are from the very first perfectly free. There’s nothing fettering any of your activities. What need is there to seek attainment beyond that some kind of ‘miraculous working’. This self is fine just as it is. It is Buddha…”
Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave, Editor and translator, Norman Waddell
Shinshu’s comment: Whew! What a relief. We don’t have to be perfect and when we fail we don’t have to suck food through our nose. Yuck! Perhaps we don’t even have to worry about becoming enlightened. Does this mean we don’t have to do anything? Well, no. The key is ‘miraculous working’. What is that? It is just the everyday life in which we depend upon the continuous practice of all beings for our very breath. Right now! When we can totally express this understanding there is nothing to obstruct the free express of our life. You and all being are not different. It is the family style.
Inmost Request
In 1965 Suzuki Roshi talked about what he called one’s inmost request, he said:
What is our most basic intention in practice? What is our deepest vow? We will find our true intention rooted in our daily lives. If we try to follow some idea of the Bodhisattva Vow that is not grounded in daily life, we will not be able to find our place in such a large field.
We chant: “Beings are numberless, I vow to save them; delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them; Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them and Buddha’s Way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.” We ask, which Dharma gate? Who do I save? How do I find Buddha’s Way? Suzuki Roshi gives us a clue when he said ‘you will know the oneness of wandering about and enlightened life.” Our wandering is wandering in this moment, struggling with this problem or this relationship. That is where our vow or inmost request will come forward and guide our practice.
We ask, what do I really want? The answer to that question must be specific to our situation. Perhaps you want to be more patience or generous, or less controlling or more compassionate. For example, when we find ourselves caught in anger, and we don’t want to apologize or back down, then we must remember our deepest intention to cultivate patience. At first we don’t want to be patient because we think that we will be diminished, but we keep bringing ourselves back to our intention. What do I really want? How in the midst of this deep suffering can I let go, drop the self and allow this intention to come forward? We have to really want this, because if it does not have true meaning to our specific situation we will not do the hard work it takes to enact transformation.
When we are willing to make this leap into actualizing this inmost request that we make of ourselves, then true practice begins. No matter how much we wander about, we will be guided by this true inner light of our Buddha Nature.
For more information on Suzuki Roshi at David Chadwick’s site, click here.
The Secret of Beauty
“What is the secret of beauty? Purifying the heart. A heart is not purified in a day or two, six months, or a year. It is said that a person is responsible for his looks after the age of forty. Your strivings and the way you have lived over the past forty years are revealed in your face. Throughout the past forty years an invisible chisel has been shaping your face night and day; as you were happy, angry, or sad, the chisel made its mark. The kind of marks depended on what was inside you, and they will have given you the kind of beauty or ugliness that make-up can hardly conceal.”
From Zen Seeds: Reflections of a Female Priest by Shundo Aoyama Roshi.
Aoyama Roshi is the revered Abbess of the Aichi Semmon Niso-do (women’s training monastery) in Nagoya, Japan.
Commentary: By the time we are forty years old we have lived quite a bit of our life and it shows on our face. Is this such a bad thing? In our culture we want to erase the lines and wrinkles on our faces so everyone will think we are young. But we can never really get rid of what life has put right out front for everyone to see. Do we have a kind face? Do we have a face that reflects a life of hardship? Can’t we have a face of hardship and joy?
I don’t agree that the life we have ‘chiseled’ on our face cannot change after we are forty. Our face will always reflect our past as well as the fleeting moments of each expression at just this moment. We should never feel that we are doomed to a face of anger or sadness. Yet, as we reflect on each moment and cultivate our gratitude for this life, more and more we will find humor and a smile.
Last night I saw pictures of two men on the local TV news. Both had just been convicted of crimes. Both were young men, certainly not forty yet. One man had a face inked with a tattoo on his cheek and his eyebrows slanted downward. He had a hard look. The other man had a kinder face, seemingly lighter somehow. The second man’s face seemed to be one that you could imagine smiling, while the first man seemed perpetually angry. Of course, no one should be condemned based upon how their face looks. But we should consider how our heart’s understanding, joys, disappointments and appreciation will reflect and drive the decisions we make. I think this is the point of Aoyama’s teaching. We must realize that the way we see the world is going to impact our experience and how we face the world.
Do we meet each situation bringing forth the totality of our best effort to find gratitude, compassion and skillful means or are we constantly caught in judgement, ill-will and fear? We owe it to ourselves (our beautiful face) and to all of our fellow travelers in this world to practice in such a way that we can find peace and stability. This is the original face we desire to bring forward as we meet each moment.
Even A Single Leaf of Green is Buddha
Dōgen Zenji, the founder of Soto Zen wrote:
“Handle even a single leaf of a green in such a way that it manifests the body of the Buddha. This in turn allows the Buddha to manifest through the leaf. This is a power which you cannot grasp with you rational mind. It operates freely, according to the situation, in a most natural way. At the same time, this power functions in our lives to clarify and settle activities and is beneficial to all living things.” Tenzokyokun ( Instructions for the Cook)
Commentary:
Every single thing in this universe is the body of the Buddha. In Zen we say rocks, tiles and walls are Buddha. Trees, birds and flowers are Buddha. What can be excluded? In Shobogenzo Bussho, Dogen famous translated “All beings have Buddha Nature” to “All beings are Buddha Nature”. This is the understanding of Chinese Zen. Everything constitutes this Buddha world; nothing can be omitted or left behind. When we pick up a lettuce leaf or a carrot, or engage in relationships, each moment and interaction is the body of the Buddha.
Yet, it isn’t enough for the leaf to be Buddha, this is not complete. We (and the lettuce leaf) are Buddha nature, but not in a vacuum. Our true nature arises simultaneously when we fully act in accord with every being and thing presencing itself. We bring ourselves forward and each thing comes forward to meet us. Each thing comes forward and we bring ourselves forward to meet it. This is true for every activity we engage in. When this is allowed to happen then we actualize Buddha Nature together. When this happens we follow the precepts effortlessly.
You can’t make this happen with your intellect; although understanding this dynamic is helpful. We can only have this experience when we jump in, leap off the 100 foot pole and fully presence ourselves, without likes and dislikes, completely meeting each situation. This ‘freely operating’ dynamic, unobstructed by our likes and dislikes, results in a powerful dynamic that makes our world. How wonderful! How mundane! Just washing dishes and sharing a cup of tea.
The result of our total engagement has a transformative power which frees us and frees others. It is the foundation of our settled mind, our mind of gratitude and an attitude of patience. We can freely be generous without fear. Amazingly, all this can happen through how we treat a leaf of lettuce or a difficult interaction. Both require the same openness and total presencing. When we do this, we will be freed as we will free others. This is the beneficial action of a Buddha.
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