“This Dharma, the subtle Dharma that has been transmitted by all Buddha-Tathagatas, is abundantly inherent in each individual; yet without practice it will not be manifested, and without enlightenment it will not be perceived. …Since it is the practice of enlightenment, that practice has no beginning and since it is enlightenment within the practice, that realization has no end.”
~ Eihei Dogen, from “Bendowa” in Shobogenzo
People practice for many reasons. For some, it is a means to establish better physical and emotional health; for others, it leads into deeper realization of their own non-Buddhist religion or philosophy, and for yet others, Zen practice is the direct, living experience of what Shakyamuni Buddha realized over 2,500 years ago. People who come to Zen practice are looking for more than mere words or concepts. Words and concepts by themselves are inadequate to help us most fully with the greatest possible awareness, and to enable us to grow spiritually.
In one sense, Zen practice is like regular exercise: if done regularly, it builds strength, gracefulness, and self-confidence, and helps us more effectively respond to the situations we all face every day. And Zen practice is also like a laboratory: Through practice we can continuously test our understanding to see if it is adequate or not. If we never test our beliefs through actual practice, we cannot find out whether they are true or false. When Shakyamuni Buddha first realized his true nature—and, in so doing, realized the true nature of all beings—he said that from the beginning, all beings are intrinsically perfect, sharing the virtues and wisdom of the awakened Buddha. But, he said, we remain unaware of this simply because our understanding is topsy-turvy. The Buddha spent the remainder of his life after his awakening enlarging upon this statement, and teaching how each of us can realize this truth for ourselves through practice.
But before we have realized it for ourselves, this truth is like an uncut diamond. We could not really say that it is worthless, nor could we say it is something other than a diamond. But until it is skillfully cut and meticulously polished, its sparkling diamond-nature might not be visible. The beautiful color and clarity that make it so highly prized would remain only in the realm of potential. Of course, we might sincerely believe it to be a diamond. We might even tell others, “This is a diamond and is therefore worth a great deal.” Yet it would seem peculiar to say, “I don’t need to cut and polish this diamond; I know that it is a diamond, and that’s good enough for me.” Rather, we must cut that diamond and polish its many facets carefully so that its lovely nature can be shared and enjoyed by all who see it. And so it is with our practice. We don’t wish to make diamonds out of mud—we wish to properly appreciate what we already have, what is inherent in us.
So Zen practice must be done physically—not just through belief. Our whole practice rests upon a physical base, just as our lives begin physically. First we learn to bring our bodies into harmony—we learn how to physically sit in the proper fashion. Then, sitting properly, our breathing settles into a harmonious cycle on its own—we stop panting and gasping and start to breathe easily, smoothly, and naturally. And as body and breath begin to settle down and no longer create disturbances for us, we find that the mind too is given the opportunity to settle into its own smooth and natural functioning. The racket and babble of our noisy minds give way to the clarity and naturalness of our true selves. In this way we come to know who we really are, and we come to understand the true nature of our life and death.
Finally, once we begin to establish this direct physical harmony between body, breath, and mind, we have a chance to extend the benefits of our practice to one another. We can learn to live together in a way that leads to the realization of everyone’s true nature not only on an individual level but also as a community, as a Sangha. This kind of group practice, such as takes place at a Zen center, can be of real benefit to our world—a world in which harmony is scarcer even than diamonds, and in which the realization of Truth is often regarded as an impossible dream.
In fact, we can say that the Three Treasures of Buddhism—Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—are altogether nothing more or less than practice. The Buddha is the one who realizes. The Dharma is what is realized. And the Sangha is the harmony of realization and practice, both communal and individual, in accord with the Buddha Way. Hence, all relationships teach us even as we appreciate and polish each other, endlessly.”
~ Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, On Zen Practice: Body, Breath, and Mind
“The Japanese community often suffered under painful racial prejudice and wanted to gather together for comfort in familiar rituals,” says Chozen Roshi. “They wanted keep to their culture and language alive for their children.” This meant, for Maezumi, performing funerals and marriages, not formal Zen practice. He dug in nevertheless, enduring long hours at the Soto Mission, completing his own koan studies, performing memorials and services while moonlighting as a translator, writing fortune cookies, working as a gardener and never forgetting his vow to serve the dharma.
By the late 1960s, American students in Los Angeles started sniffing around Little Tokyo for a teacher. People like Bernie Glassman (then an aeronautical engineer at McDonnell-Douglas) and Charlotte Joko Beck had already tasted what Zen practice had to offer, but were seeking direct, ongoing contact with a master. Maezumi Sensei, though still busy serving the Japanese community, answered the call. He began holding gatherings in a room at the temple. His orientation towards zazen, sitting practice, set him apart from the bishops who ministered to the Japanese congregation.
Maezumi Roshi’s style was warm, dynamic and direct. He lettered a sign on the zendo reading, “If you want to clarify the Great Matter of life and death you are welcome. Otherwise, better get out!” Buddhanature was “so obvious—” he would say, “right before your eyes.” “He could see through the camouflage of personality and talk straight to the seeker beneath,” says Chozen Roshi. “He had a really great vow to spread the dharma and help people realize the nature of life,” says Wendy Egyoku Nakao Sensi, a third generation dharma heir who received transmission from Bernie Glassman. “Roshi was so clear about it that it didn’t really matter when the obstacles came.”
"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail."
"It is so clear! Everything is stated right here in the first stanza, if we can only just realize it fully. The question is, can we take it? Can we see where we are holding preferences and how these preferences are forms of attachment? We know that attachment or clinging to self is the cause of suffering and confusion.
Buddha’s First Noble Truth—termed noble because it is beyond any question of true or false—is that duhkha, suffering or dissatisfaction, is the nature of existence. The Second Noble Truth declares that the cause of this suffering is attachment. Out of delusion and confusion arises self-clinging, our need to maintain the illusion of a separate self, or ego, which manifests in our forming preferences, in our picking and choosing. We hold on to all kinds of attachments: likes and dislikes, love and hate, passion and aggression. What we generally call love, for instance, is quite often based upon attachment.
We have certain ideas and pictures in our minds that go along with each of our relationships. When we say my husband, my wife, my parents, my child, a sense of possessiveness or ownership arises and, along with it, a set of expectations about how the other should be, as well as feelings of jealousy and fear of loss when we think the relationship is threatened. Thus, because of the concept of the relationship in our minds, we become attached, wanting to control and dominate the other. In this way we treat wives, husbands, parents, and children as less than human, reducing them to mere objects. We are expressing our attachment, not true unconditional love. Then we wonder why our relationships are not working, why we are dissatisfied and others are not happy with us.
Most of us want our children to outdo all the other children, to get the best grades in school and to do the best in athletics. Treating them thus, as extensions of our ego, is another expression of attachment. I used to get very frustrated with my father because his ego became so involved in my competitive swimming. He never got to compete himself because he had to start working at the age of ten. Even though he had always wanted to be involved in sports, he never had the chance; so I became an extension of him, a means to satisfy his unfulfilled desire. Although I used to love swimming, I began to hate it because my father was always on my back, pushing me further, never giving me a day of rest. I would wake up at six o’clock every morning so I could work out from seven to eight before school. Then we would start again at two in the afternoon and go until six or seven at night. After dinner he would take me to the pool again from eight-thirty to ten-thirty.
For twelve years I never took one day off! If there was a holiday and the pool where I trained was closed, we sometimes drove as far as fifty miles to a pool that was open. By now, of course, I have learned to appreciate what tremendous discipline that was. I know it helped my sitting meditation practice later on, but there was a heavy price of resentment. When we try to live through our children, wanting them to be the greatest, we are clinging, using them to gratify our egos."
~ Dennis Genpo Merzel, The Eye Never Sleeps
No comments:
Post a Comment