Right View

             For some reason people today ignore Buddha’s first sermon. It dose not promise enlightenment. It dose not promise magical powers or omniscient insights.  The first and only promise Buddha ever made was that he knew how you could reduce the suffering of this life.

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life means suffering
2. The origin of suffering is attachment
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable
4. The way to the reduction of that suffering is the noble eightfold path

The Eight Fold Path

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right concentration

               When considering the Buddha’s prescription for reducing the suffering of this world the first two admonitions Right View and Right Intention can be called wisdom. They are in fact referring to our fundamental world view, how we see the world and what motivates us to do what we do. Right view is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point of view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics. In fact it is both the beginning and the end of the path.

              The physical and social world we live in can be brutal, merciless and random in how it treats us.  Too many modern Zen practitioners think that they can achieve this without teaching or guidance.  They often see this as “belief” and equate that with superstition and nonsense. What they ignore is the simple fact that they are not changing themselves.  No matter how many hours they sit in meditation, no matter what hoops the have jumped through to gain recognition, until they change, they have achieved nothing. Under their robes they are still whoever the have always been.  All the teachings and all their words are just a coat of paint smeared over their surface self.
             It is not until the world begins to squeeze you hard. Not until the suffering gets to a point where it is unendurable do you begin to see what you have done. When you reach for the support that that world view grants and find your hands grasping nothing but air. Then the world will show you the arrogant crap that glib statements like, “I don’t believe in anything” are made of.   If you really think you don’t believe in anything, you are both unaware of how your mind functions and perhaps just a self deluded fool.  Buddha was not such an arrogant fool.
          You have a world view it is the fundamental basis of your mind.  If you don’t change that view, not coat it with a coat of paint your wasting your and everyone’s time.  No good act without true good intentions will generate good results. No Dana given will have any value.
          Are you obsessed with money? Do you worry more about buildings and cars and robes than about people?  What do you really care about?   The Buddha said you must make the Buddhist world view yours. You must as they say make it real.  This world view is usually called the Dharma. You must do more than take refuge you must make it the world you live in.  If it is not your reality your just fooling yourself and eventually your real world will come calling and there will be no place to hide.

  

Birth and Death

Birth and Death are elements of natural time. They help time obscure eternity. They are a mask on the face of our real selves.

Āditta Sutta - the Buddha's 3rd sermon

            At one time the Blessed one was living near Gayā, at Gayā’s head, with a thousand bhikkhus. Then the Blessed One addressed them:

“Everything, monks, is burning. What, monks, is everything that is burning? The eye, monks, is burning, form is burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning. The feeling that arises dependent on eye-contact, whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, that also is burning. With what is it burning? It is burning with the fire of passion, the fire of hatred, the fire of delusion. I declare that it is burning with the fire of birth, decay, death, grief, lamentation, pain, sorrow, and despair.

The ear, monks, is burning, sound is burning, … and despair.

The nose, monks, is burning, odour is burning, … and despair.

The tongue, monks, is burning, taste is burning, … and despair.

The body, monks, is burning, touch is burning, … and despair.

The mind, monks, is burning, thought is burning, … and despair.

Seeing thus, monks, the well-informed noble disciple is disgusted with the eye, is disgusted with forms, is disgusted with eye-consciousness, disgusted with eye-contact. He is disgusted with the feeling that arises dependent on eye contact, whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. He is disgusted with the ear … with the nose … with the tongue … with the body … with the mind, with thoughts, with mind-contact, with the feeling that arises dependent on mind-contact, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

Being disgusted, he is dispassionate, being dispassionate he is freed. Being freed, he knows he is free, and he knows, “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been fulfilled, what should be done has been done, there is no more of this.”

Thus spoke the Blessed One. Those monks delighted in what the Blessed One had said. And while this discourse was being delivered the minds of those one thousand monks were liberated from defilements without any remainder.

Eating is a fire, breathing is a fire, the fire is the mouth of the Gods who accept this offering and that to is a burning ... 

Just a frog

There is the absolute and the realization of the expressions of the absolute.   Love is such a realization.  A sunset is such a realization.  Living and dying are such a realization. Time has noting to do with eternity; time is simply what obscures eternity from our perception. A frog can sit on a lily pad for a million culpa and still just be a fucking frog.

Walking Zen.

       The other day I was sitting in a crowed restaurant. I saw this elderly man trying to walk among all the bustling people fighting for their place in the buffet line. His was taking small careful steps, walking very slowly and more over with a focus and intent that can only be described as mindfulness.

       All the people around him were focused on the mechanics of getting their food and getting back to their table to eat. He on the other hand, probably due to his own frailty was focused completely at the time on walking.
      As I observed him I suddenly had several realizations about “walking meditation” or “Kinhin” as it is called in Japanese Zen and “Cankama” in Pali, as practiced by the Theravadin monks of Thailand and Sri Lanka.
       This was one of those slap your own forehead moments when you are absolutely positive you’re the last person in the auditorium to get the joke.
        Frankly I had never really utilized our sessions of Kinhin for much more than an opportunity to bring the circulation back into my lower extremities after a long period of sitting meditation (zazen). My focus was almost always on getting the feeling and blood back in my legs.
       In that moment I saw that walking mediation was truly a powerful form and practice. It became clear to me that done with true mindfulness it could be the bridge between  sitting on the cushion and my everyday life and activity, if done correctly it was Zen in action. It would be the ground for a steady and alert mind as I walked into my daily activities.
        As we baby boomers age and become afflicted with arthritis, broken hips slipped or ruptured discs I can see Kinhin becoming more and more a way we older folks can practice Zen, not just as a break between the “real” Zen, but as a powerful meaningful practice.  It can be practiced almost every where and by almost every one. I know this seems stupid but realizing all this made my heart feel very good.

(A Navajo Indian Prayer of the Second Day of the Night Chant (anonymous)


In beauty may I walk.

All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
Beautifully will I possess again.
Beautifully birds . . .
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

Refrigerium

With the loss this Saturday of my wife of 35 years I have been cut in half. I can not even feel the loss, I am just numb. Can half a person sit and find wisdom? I can now speak to some but have nothing to say to anyone. I do not dream.


This morning early in the hours of the day, I told myself I must finish what I have started. Her death was not about me, her life was not about me, she is the one who is taking the journey past knowing, not I. All this pain is mere self indulgence and ego.

All that I have chosen to accept, rebirth Karma and the words of the tathagata say I will dance this dance with her a million times and a million more, that we will spin off through eternity in different guises and different aspects sharing tears that will fill the oceans and joys that will light the sky’s of a million worlds.

How I would rather that the Christians were correct, that she resides in their heaven, and that once in a million eons the dammed are allowed out of hell for a short time, the so called Refrigerium. Then I could visit her and we could laugh for a while. But I think not.

Causality

      Causality describes the relationship between causes and effects, is fundamental to all natural science, especially physics, and has an analog in logic. It is also studied from the perspectives of philosophy, computer science, and statistics. I think it is fair to say that the study of and analysis of Causality Is fundamental to our so called modern scientific world view. All of the so called Laws of Newtonian Physics were simply statements of material causality.
      We humans have always had a very practical interest in why things are occurring as they do. History has also shown that as a species we are simply unable to accept the idea that things “just happen” without an underlying explanation as to what caused these things to occur. This resistance to the “shit happens” world view has in fact served the human race well.
       Learning what has killed the sheep is an important step in protecting the herd. Was it wolves, bad clover or space aliens? If a sheep herder is to succeed he has to have an answer. Knowing what causes to things to happen has allowed us to survive and prosper. In cases where an obvious cause is not discovered, humans may attribute the events to miracles or to evil supernatural agencies. But the one thing we have always rejected is the idea that events are just random, that things occure without a cause. There is a learned preference for some alternative to saying that something occurred without there being a reason for it.
       I have found that in both Tibetan and Chan Buddhist teachings there is a very fundamental teaching as to what a student of Buddha must have as a mind set if he or she is to proceed successfully. In his book on the fundamentals of Buddhism Geshe Kelsang Gyatso states these clearly. In “Master HSU Yun’s discourse in the CH”AN HALL” Lu Kuan Yu quotes his master , Hsu Yun, ( Hsu Yun was perhaps the greatest Chan master of the last century) as stating these very same criteria that Gaytso avers as fundamental to Tibetan Buddhism.

As stated by Master hsu Yun the prerequisites to all Ch’an training are:

1. Firm Belief in the law of causality (i.e. Karma)

2. Strict observance of the rules of discipline ( i.e. The Ten Major Precepts)

3. Faith: The firm belief that the Buddha’s teachings are true, not false and that we all have the tathagata’s wisdom within us.

      These three basic mindsets that both these schools teach have become antithetical to modern Zen. Teachers like Brad Warner’s head would explode at the mere sounding of these teachings. In every modern so called book on Zen I see clearly the modern Deism and the new religion science’s worldview that disconnects spirit and matter. I don’t see these modern Zen teachings as Zen founded but rather a result of the now faltering “rationalistic” world view of the 19th and 20th centuries.
       Perhaps the least supported one of these mindsets in modern Zen is the very first one; a firm Belief in the law of causality (i.e. Karma). Despite the fact that causality is fundamental to all our so called modern sciences and despite the fact that virtually every social system presently in the world operates in the firm belief in causality modern western students of Buddha reject the very idea of spiritual causality. Even quantum theory has several theories of causality. So I must ask myself why so few modern students of Buddhism feel comfortable admitting to the idea of Karma.
       Modern quantum theory suggest that everything material is also mental and everything mental is also material that matter isn’t different from mind. That form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Why then should the law of causality not rule the entire spectrum of reality?
      I can only believe that as the world view of the last so called modern era crumbles this resistance to the nature of Karma will fall away.
       Maybe one day American Zen teachers will again feel entirely comfortable teaching the above three “prerequisites to all Ch’an training”.