The Daily Zen Teisho

Occasionally, readers write that they have difficulty understanding some of the journals and seem a bit perplexed about what to do when they hit something they don’t immediately get. What I like about this selection is that Yuan-hsien hands us some very concrete directions about “looking into a saying.”

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Whenever we are reading part of a letter to a practitioner written hundreds of years ago, we are attempting to bridge time and cultural barriers. Because we all share the same sense of adventure and quest for truth, no matter how many years intervene, we share the same spark that drives explorers everywhere.

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While this method of “turning the light around” seems very simple and direct, there is still some room for further translation. All the various approaches to meditation seem to have a technique that gives us something to hold onto: counting one’s breath, then watching one’s breath; using mantra, asking “Who am I?”; visualization, all as means to focus one’s attention.

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Yokoyama was one of the most unusual Soto Zen monks whose life reminds one of another ordained monk, Ryokan, who is best known for his poetry and love of playing with children. Neither one of them served as head of a temple or trained other monks. Their choice to live without ceremony or pretension demonstrated a purity of practice expressed through everyday life

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To say too much about Taoism can interfere with another’s own direct experience of intuitive understanding. Having read this piece many times in the past, I see how often it takes multiple readings to reveal deeper insights.

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Shosan was born into a warrior family in 1579 and lived through one of the most war-torn times of Japanese history. At age 12, he was adopted by a member of a seventy-man horse troop and thus began his life as a samurai.

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Reading this piece reminds me of listening to a piece of classical music. Each movement transitions so skillfully into the next that we are barely aware that we have just entered a new room filled with new tempos and phrasing, all skillfully balanced around the theme of zazen as the bedrock of our lives.

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Some pieces are overwhelming as we try to absorb the depth communicated. Ma-tsu is delivering a sermon to monks who, just like us, have been practicing for various numbers of years.

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There are numerous sutras, teachings of the Masters, and enlightenment stories in the history of Buddhism and Zen. There are times when we read these writings and feel a million miles away from enlightenment, Nirvana, or equanimity.

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Dropping gaining mind in practice is a huge step; in the beginning, we are all awonder at these marvelous “results” of meditation and when they might appear.

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I’ve built a grass hut where there’s nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When the hut was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it’s been lived in-covered by weeds. The person in the hut lives here calmly, Not stuck to inside, outside, or in-between.

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For those of us who have read the stories of Zen masters’ lives, Bankei’s enlightenment story is among the more powerful ones. His dedication is inspiring, and his insights shared from that ground give us a rich perspective on his deceptively simple-sounding teaching.

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This translation comes from the Tun-huang documents discovered in Cave 17 sometime around 1900. While we don’t usually explore where these translations actually come from, this story deserves some attention.

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At times we feel like we are “successfully” walking with a foot in both worlds where illusion and reality seem balanced. Similar to walking a balance beam, we adjust our heart/mind and respond to what is happening within and without with a sense of naturalness.

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Most of what we have read or heard about sitting meditation has come from contemporary vehicles for Buddhism. This lovely piece, King of Samadhis, helps communicate the direct teaching of sitting meditation expounded hundreds of years ago to monks in Dogen’s assembly.

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Many of us are familiar with the first part of the Platform Sutra, recounting the story of Huineng’s life and how he obtained the robe and bowl after arriving at the monastery as a commoner.

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All of us have been known to complicate our lives and our practice at times. We overthink problems, over-dwell on emotional states from time to time, and try to quantify where we are in practice. To simply sit without the complications, the trappings of practice, even something this simple, can be challenging for us.

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Time to return to the beginning with Spring/Fall around the corner. Many of you have asked for more instruction on beginning meditation.

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Dogen speaks clearly about the mind that seeks the way and how to maintain the intensity of practice over time. We couldn’t ask for a world of more distraction than the one we currently inhabit.

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There are always layers of understanding and misunderstanding in practice. It is similar to a snake shedding its skin; at one stage that is the only protection it has; then, at some point it is time to expand and let go of that empty skin that no longer serves.

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