Dogen Gets In On the Fun

All that is real is imagined, and all that is imagined is real.  The real and the imagined are not two things - separating them one from another is just another discrimination of the mind, another non-dharma/dharma.

But in the upright state of zazen, balanced between making the effort to practice and letting go of expectations of practice, we can glimpse behind (or beneath) our thoughts, and actually experience ourselves as we really are, without the dualistic discriminations of the cookie-cutter mind. Zen Master Dogen understood this, and after returning from his awakening experience in China, one of the very first things he wrote was Bendowa (A Talk on Pursuing The Truth), which includes the following passage (my interpretation, mashed up from several different translations):

All buddhas constantly maintain and dwell in the state of natural balance we experience when making effort without intention, and none cling to any of their thoughts or perceptions, regardless of what arises.  When living beings function in this state, aspects of reality do not appear to them as separate recognitions and perceptions. 

The effort in pursuing the truth that I am now teaching makes the myriad dharmas real in experience; it enacts the oneness of reality on the path of liberation.

Imagine That!

So by this point, you've probably realized that since all dharmas are nothing but the mind's differentiation of the seamless fabric of reality  (the cookie dough), all dharmas are in fact non-dharmas, and since all non-dharmas are indistinguishable from this true aspect of dharmas, all non-dharmas are in fact dharmas.  

All that is real is imagined, and all that is imagined is real.  

Non-Dharmas

Non-dharmas, according to the Buddha, "refers to what has no discernible body of its own, what has no distinguishable characteristics, what is not subject to causation, and what offers no basis for views of its existence or nonexistence.  Non-dharmas are things like horns on a rabbit, an ass, a camel, or a horse, or the off-spring of a barren woman.  Such things lack any form or appearance and cannot be perceived.  They are merely names talked about according to convention.  They are not things that can be grasped, like a clay pot.  And just as what is discriminated as existing should be abandoned, what cannot be known by any form of consciousness should also be abandoned."

Just as dharmas are formed by discriminations of the mind - the mind separating specific "things" out of the formless substance of the universe - non-dharmas are pure fabrications of the mind, things imagined that are not even part of the formless universe to start with.  This includes not only the "pink elephants" the Buddha mentions (horns on a rabbit, etc.), but also abstract concepts such as patriotism, iambic pentameter, tax-exempt status, and (for you geologists out there) chronostratigraphy.

But even though they are imagined or abstract and have no concrete reality, non-dharmas, or imaginary dharmas as I prefer to call them, can cause us real joy and real suffering.  I once heard the Buddhist writer Stephen Bachelor provide a great example of how non-dharmas manifest themselves into our life.  Apparently, he and his wife Martine bought a house somewhere in France, but the house had a large barn in the back yard.  It blocked the sunlight most of the day, and obstructed the view of the surrounding countryside, but since the local feral cats were using it as a shelter at nights, they left the barn up for a while.  Finally, they decided it just wasn't worth it anymore, and had it demolished and hauled away, and immediately rejoiced over the brighter yard and the better views. They spent a lot of time in their backyard afterwards, enjoying the "no-barn."

As Bachelor cleverly points out, the "no-barn" was a non- or imaginary dharma.  If you or I visited their house for the first time after the demolition, we would not have seen a barn, but we would not have been aware of the "no-barn" that was giving them so much satisfaction.  The "no-barn" was a non-dharma that arose in their minds as a result of their past experiences, their memory, their desires, and their aspirations, and while we would not have seen a barn, without their past, we would not have seen their "no-barn" either.  The "no-barn" was an non-dharma that existed only in their mind.

I'm sure you could think of similar examples, as well as instances when non-dharmas have caused suffering instead of happiness.  But non-dharmas are not the problem, as Red Pine points out.  The problem is attachment to the distinctions on which the non-dharmas are based, as well as mistaking the non-dharmas for that which is real.  

Dharmas

"A dharma," the Buddha said, "is whatever ordinary people and followers of lesser and heterodox paths imagine.  Basically, they think a dharma has existence and substance and arises from causes. Such things must be abandoned and avoided.  Don't engage in the projection of appearances or become attached to what are perceptions of your own mind.   The things people grasp, such as clay pots, lack any real substance.  To view dharmas like this is to abandon them,"

Let's not be unclear about anything.  How can a dharma, a real thing, not have existence and substance?  Why should it be abandoned?

To understand, first remember Animal Crackers.  Animal Crackers were little cookies cut into the shape of lions and bears and elephants and so on, but they may as well have been cut into the shape of people and airplanes and mountains, too, because they were all just one substance: cookie dough. The lions, the bears, the elephants, the people, the airplanes, and the mountains were all nothing but cookie dough, but they were cut from the dough into the different shapes and forms.

All of the universe is of one substances, formless and undifferentiated, but the mind is like the cookie cutter that separates things into animals and different people and tea pots and so on.  But without the cookie cutter of the mind, all things are one substance, interconnected and undifferentiated.  

The Buddha is telling us that all things are devoid of separate existence and any real substance because they are only our mind's cookie-cutter differentiation into various shapes and forms.  But they are just perceptions of our mind, how we choose, sometimes arbitrarily, to segregate little parts of the cookie dough from the whole undifferentiated fabric of the universe.  Another mind might cookie-cutter the same thing differently, and what I differentiate as "a friend" that other mind might differentiate "an enemy."

This, of course, is how we live and survive.  If we don't differentiate the oncoming bus from the cookie dough around us, we won't live very long.  But the problem, as Red Pine pointed out, is not the dharmas themselves, those Animal Crackers of the mind, but attaching to the concept that those things are separate and real and not a part of the cookie dough, that they are anything less than the Animal Crackers of the mind.  This becomes really significant when we realize that those Animal Crackers are not just the external world, but that our concept of "self" is just another one of those Animal Crackers.  We only exist separate from the dough because we've cookie-cuttered ourselves from it.

"Names and forms are made by your own thinking," Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn once said. "If you are not thinking and have no attachment to name and form, then all substance is one." Meditation is that state where we quiet our thoughts and are consciously aware of what is beyond thinking.  It is our opportunity to experience the cookie dough.  

How To Teach Your Kids To Meditate

Zen meditation techniques are different from those described here (for starters, no mantras) but the basic principals are the same, and you have to love Gabrielle's energy and enthusiasm here.

Dharmas and Non-Dharmas

In the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha said, "Lord of Lanka, the appearances of beings are like paintings; they are not conscious and not subject to karma.  The same is true of dharmas and non-dharmas."  Let's not be unclear about anything.  The appearances of beings are not conscious or subject to karma, but what does the Buddha mean by "dharmas" and "non-dharmas?"  

Earlier in the sutra, King Ravana asked the Buddha, "What constitutes a dharma, and what constitutes a non-dharma?"  You won't find this question, or its answer, in the edited version of D.T. Suzuki's translation, but it appears in Red Pine's version.

King Ravana certainly wasn't asking what the word "dharma" meant. It was a very common concept at that time, and the best translation of the Sanskrit word "dharma" that I've heard is "what one believes to be true or real."  The teachings of the Buddha are dharmas if one believes them to be true; beings and things are dharmas if one believes them to be real, and the appearances of beings and things are dharmas if one believes those to be real.  So King Ravana was asking exactly what it was that the Buddha said was just an illusion.

"A dharma," the Buddha answered, "is whatever ordinary people and followers of lesser and heterodox paths imagine.  Basically, they think a dharma has existence and substance and arises from causes.  Such things must be abandoned and avoided.  Don't engage in the projection of appearances or become attached to what are perceptions of your own mind.   The things people grasp, such as clay pots, lack any real substance.  To view dharmas like this is to abandon them,"

Dharmas aren't the problem, Red Pine points out.  The problem is attachment to the distinctions on which the dharmas are based.  

"And what, Lord of Lanka, is a non-dharma?," the Buddha continues. "This refers to what has no discernible body of its own, what has no distinguishable characteristics, what is not subject to causation, and what offers no basis for views of its existence or nonexistence."

"Non-dharmas are things like horns on a rabbit, an ass, a camel, or a horse, or the off-spring of a barren woman.  Such things lack any form or appearance and cannot be perceived.  They are merely names talked about according to convention.  They are not things that can be grasped, like a clay pot.  And just as what is discriminated as existing should be abandoned, what cannot be known by any form of consciousness should also be abandoned."

Just An Illusion

Quite a lot was said the other day in that passage from the Lankavatara Sutra, and it deserves a little more contemplation.  

The line, "All that is seen in the world is devoid of effort and action because all things in the world are like a dream, or like an image miraculously projected," is quite expansive with all of its "alls." "All that is seen" and "all things in the world" doesn't leave out much.    

The line is reminiscent of the famous passage in the Diamond Sutra, "So you should view this fleeting world -- a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightening in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."  That  passage closes and completes the Diamond Passage, but the similar passage begins on the very first page of the Lankavatara Sutra, or at least the edited version of D.T. Suzuki's translation.  In other words, the Lankavatara begins where the Diamond Sutra ends.

In Red Pine's expanded translation, the passage includes the Buddha's references to the person to whom he's speaking, King Ravana, the ten-headed king of Lanka.  The Buddha says, "Lord of Lanka, the appearances of beings are like paintings; they are not conscious and not subject to karma.  The same is true of dharmas and non-dharmas.  There is no one who speaks, nor is there anyone who hears.  Lord of Lanka, everything in the world is like an illusion."

D.T. Suzuki's "effort and action" are his translation of the "cause and effect" of karma.  So the rather unwieldy "All that is seen in the world is devoid or effort and action" is merely saying "Things as they appear are not subject to karma," because appearances are like a painting or an illusion.   There is no one who speaks and no one who listens, the Buddha tells King Ravana.  Everything in the world is like an illusion.

Equinox

Amity Methodist Church, Visher's Ferry, NY, 1992

At 10:29 pm, the Southern US State of Georgia experienced the 2014 autumn equinox.  

On this date, day and night are very nearly equal, balanced, in equipoise.  Twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of nighttime.  For the rest of the year, each passing day will lean a little bit more toward the night, toward the dark.

This could be mistaken as a metaphor for sliding into ignorance or delusion, or worse yet, falling into evil, but I don't see it that way.  

With each passing day, we experience less and less of the blinding light of day and all of its attendant distractions and busyness, and we have more time to experience the tranquil clarity of the night sky and to behold the stars and the moon, and to be reminded of our place in the universe.  

It's an opportunity to let go of the mundane concerns of everyday life and return to the stillness of practice.

The Lanka Avatar

Lucaya National Park, Freeport, Bahamas, 2003

Recently, I've started studying the Lankavatara Sutra, a notoriously difficult teaching supposedly delivered by the Buddha in ancient Sri Lanka (the title of the sutra can be loosely translated as The Sri Lanka Avatar).  It is so difficult to grasp, that it's been said that the Diamond Sutra, no easy read itself, was devised as a means to better teach the wisdom of the Lankavatara.    

To study the sutra without the assistance of a teacher, I'm relying on side-by-side comparisons of D.T. Suzuki's translation as edited by Dwight Goddard in his anthology A Buddhist Bible, along with Red Pine's recent and much expanded translation with voluminous and extremely helpful footnotes.

Since this blog is, at times, nothing but musings on my study of the buddha-dharma, be prepared to find passages, comments, and reactions to passages from the Sutra here in the next several weeks, as well as views of the world as seen through the looking glass of this particular sutra.

For starters, one of the earliest passages, as translated by D.T. Suzuki, starting on the bottom of the first page of the sutra in A Buddhist Bible (page 277), seems to both foreshadow and summarize what I understand the principal teaching of the sutra to be, namely:    

All that is seen in the world is devoid of effort and action because all things in the world are like a dream, or like an image miraculously projected.  This is not comprehended by the philosophers and the ignorant, but those who thus see things see them truthfully. Those who see things otherwise walk in discrimination and, as they depend on discrimination, they cling to dualism.  The world as seen by discrimination is like seeing one's own image reflected in a mirror, or one's shadow, or the moon reflected in water, or an echo heard in a valley.  People grasping their own shadows of discrimination become attached to this thing and that thing and failing to abandon dualism they go on forever discriminating and thus never attain tranquility.  By tranquility is meant oneness, and oneness gives birth to the highest samadhi which is gained by entering into the realm of noble wisdom that is realizable only within one's inmost consciousness. 

Jeremiah

Budapest Catacombs, 2004

I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was waste and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved to and fro.
I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at his presence and before his fierce anger.
For thus saith he: The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.
(Jeremiah 4:23-27)

Futbol Americano

Last night, we took a client out to the Georgia Dome to watch the Atlanta Falcons play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a Thursday Night NFL Game.  It wasn't pretty: we left during the Third Quarter after Atlanta had taken a 42-0 lead.  The final score was 56-14.

I'll say this about the NFL: this is as naked an example of American culture as one can imagine. Loud, violent, gaudy, and as commercial and capitalistic as it can get.  The price on my ticket was $209, although I was told it actually cost a lot more than that, but the company bought it, not I, so I can't tell for sure. The luxury boxes, the corporate suites, the expense-account prices - corporations may not be people as some think, but they sure drive the cost up for people.  Add to that the advertising on the big Jumbotron screen, advertising on the sidelines, awkward time outs during the game for televised advertisements, and I give you America - televised, capitalized, and sold to the highest bidder.

Having said all that, it was thrilling and I loved it.

Do You Realize?

Realizing impermanence is knowing that your children and your children's children are all going to die. 

Balance

Bicycle Race, Schenectady, New York, 1991

The state of natural balance we experience when making effort without an intentional aim  (jijuyō-zanmai) is not at all unlike riding a bicycle.  

We experience a state of balance and equilibrium when riding a bicycle, but it doesn't come about as a result of bike riding - it is the state we achieve in order to ride.  In fact, if we thought about riding in terms of "First, I'll get on the bicycle, then I'll find my balance, and then I'll start riding," or "First I'll get on the bicycle, then I'll start riding, and then achieve a state of balance," we'd surely crash and fall.  This is exactly why it's so hard for children to learn to first ride - they don't understand that the motion and the balance are all one thing, they over-think the situation, and they fall to the ground.

It is the same with shikantaza (sitting meditation without an intentional aim).  The balance between making the effort (sitting on the cushion) and letting go of intention is as natural and necessary as the balance of bicycle riding.  And like bike riding, you might not quite get it the first couple of times, but with just a little practice, the balance is as free and easy as a summertime cruise.

Assessment and Settlement

The roof saga continues.  Today, the insurance assessor came by to peel back the tarp, inspect and assess the damage, and offer me a settlement.

They weren't interested in buying me a new roof.  Instead, they estimated the cost to replace three roof shingles damaged by the fallen limb, as well as damage to the bedroom ceiling.  They cut a check right on the spot which was nice, but it's only enough to replace three roof shingles and fix the damage to the bedroom ceiling.   

I'm going to have to find a way to pay for a new roof, which probably means that I will have to sell a kidney dip into my IRA,  Sale of my house is an important part of my retirement plan, and an old leaky roof may well diminish its market value by a greater amount than i would be withdrawing from my savings,

 Impermanence.  Roofs, retirement plans, gutters, economies - nothing lasts forever.

The Path

Athens, Georgia, 2013

The balanced state, called samadhi by the Buddhists, is not the result of effort without aim, called shikantaza in Japanese.  

The balanced state of samadhi is the way that effort without aim is expressed,  It is the journey, not the destination.  

The samadhi of shikantaza is the journey.  The destination is your life-and-death.  In other words, we engage in practice in order to fully experience life-and-death, we do not live-and-die in order to engage in practice.

A Statement About Permanence

Post Theater, Fort McPherson, Atlanta, 2014

"A statement about permanence is about no permanence." - Shakyamuni Buddha, from The Lankavatara Sutra

Roof Update

It looks like I really am going to have to deal with this.  No amount of denial or willful forgetting is going to make the problem go away.

That natural balance when making effort without an intentional aim - is it the effect achieved by making effort without an aim, or is it the actual balancing act between making effort and letting go of aim?   

Or are cause and effect one and the same?

Jijuyō-zanmai

Camp Creek, College Park, Georgia

Jijuyō-zanmai, the state of natural balance we experience when making effort without an intentional aim.

In other words, the more we intend to experience that natural balance, the more off-kilter we become. But if we don't make any effort at all, we'll never get there either.  

 Jijuyō-zanmai.

Home Again

Pilgrim State Hospital, Long Island, NY, 2009

Back home from vacation, settled back into the routine of work, and I encounter life's all-too-predictable setbacks and triumphs.  As Hamlet said,  there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. 

To be more specific and less cryptic, when I got home Sunday afternoon, I found that the fallen tree next door had indeed damaged my home.  The main tree never hit my house, fortunately, but it knocked branches off that fell on my roof, and when I arrived at my house on Sunday, I saw that rain had finally leaked through the roof, soaking my bed and staining the ceiling. It must have been from the impact of one of those falling branches on my roof.

It's thinking that makes this bad, and I can easily conjure up a calamity scenario and fall into self-pity.  So easy, in fact, that the trick is not to.  It's not that I have to like the hassle and cost of a major household repair, it's just that I've trained myself to accept that this is what is, this is what I have to deal with, and I can choose to either be all upset about it, or just go about fixing, repairing, and taking care of it.  Play the hand I've been dealt.

It's not good, but it's the mind that can make it oh so much worse.

10 Days Off - Day Ten

There's no place like home.

10 Days Off - Day Nine

10 Days Off - Day Eight

10 Days Off - Day Seven

If it's Thursday, this must be Raleigh, North Carolina.

10 Days Off - Day Six

Certain readers of this blog may not realize the most amazing thing about this shirt, spotted at the Bumbershoot music and arts festival in Seattle. It's not the quote, a not-half-bad comment on the Heart Sutra, it's the logo beneath it, which is for the Staten Island hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan. I think the quote is attributable to member The RZA, who has written a book, The Tao of Wu, and has found inspiration in the teachings of The Nation of Gods and Earths (the "Five-Percent Nation") and has since delved into Taoism, Christianity, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

The dharma is everywhere, but sometimes it's a lot more obvious than others.

10 Days Off - Day Five

10 Days Off - Day Four

After a slightly rainy Saturday, the weather cleared up for the rest of the holiday weekend.    

Here are some random Seattle street scenes.