As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.
As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.
Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky.
The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.
Dogen Zenji – Genjokoan
Click on the recordings below to listen to the talks from this gathering. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()
Human beings have suddenly been forced to discover exactly how much we touch our faces. Very interesting. And how much our hands are our primary interface not just with the world but with each other’s worlds, in the general run of everyday life.
And then these highly receptive fingers of feel reach like tendrils for our faces… partly searching in space to prove we exist, is that at least partly it?
When I first heard the anouncement of ‘Don’t touch your face!’ as a mutually life-saving slogan for our sudden new world, not only did I begin to notice that soon after hearing it how frequently I did touch my face, I also heard it as a koan.
Face… such an interesting word. What we ‘face’ things with. The face we put upon things. The face behind which we hide. The face that draws the eyes to meet another pair of eyes and begin to read the lineaments of another human being’s soul. The tiny set of variations – minutely particular miniscule differences in shape and position of eyes, nose, mouth – that generates currently nearly 8 billion instantly recognizable personal faces.
As Maxine was suggesting on Sunday afternoon, one way we can locate a very good practice point in ‘Don’t touch your face!’ is most directly a keener noticing of what we are doing and being in this very moment. As Taylor Plimpton suggested recently in Tricycle, “… just because you feel an itch on your face does not mean you need to scratch it.” Instead, experience it fully, and let its sensation keep you present, awake, alive. Notice your desire to solve it, fix it, respond to it—but don’t. Keep your hands settled and calm. Let the itch rise and fall. What’s the worse that can happen if you don’t scratch it? Will that tickle on your nose kill you? No, but apparently, scratching it in the era of COVID-19 might.”
And then if you must, scratch your nose with your sleeve or the back of your hand … before going crazy.
But there’s another way to turn this koan in the light of the Dharma, touching (excuse the dangerous word) into the koan, ’What is your original face, the one you had before even your parents were born?’ In the light of this koan, is it even possible to avoid the touch?
Let’s inquire into this matter of face, and touch, at our next gathering, on Sunday.
If you have a Zen practice you’ll already have a pretty strong sense of the value and productivity of difficulty. And especially of sticking with what is difficult. Of not turning away, not denying but actively including even the most messy and difficult matters, feelings, circumstances that arise in awareness.
I want to take up this aspect of things today, following on from where we were last time, talking about deep fears and the forms they can take, including the strong escape attempts that a lot of feelings can inspire. Such feeling can be as simple and obvious as fear, but fear can also be compounded by shame, anxiety, even envy. Envy in the sense of ‘Why does this have to be happening to me (not that other luckier person)!” And deeper in from that, possibly the fear that wonders, “And why should it not?”
Let’s look into this matter through a case from the Record of Dongshan, the 8th century figure from whose name and whose practice the Soto School of Zen derives…
“As everybody knows who has attended sesshin before, this is the night of not knowing – of not knowing as our most intimate practice-realization.
‘Intimate’ is a way of saying: awake, complete, present, not even a speck of difference, as intimate and close in to unabridged reality as that. And I love the fact that the word intimate also offers the tenderness of being, because that is what awake-ness is.
I was tempted to call this talk, “Awake in the dark”, since it is the dark of not knowing in which we awaken and of course at this moment it’s night as well. But I actually think I’ll call it, “Yes, we have no bananas”. I always loved the fact that there’s such a triumphant “Yes!” before the completely sanguine, “We have no bananas”. The idea that no bananas is so joyously proclaimed, recognized, as a welcome matter in some way.
What would a no-banana taste like?
‘Mu’ is of course this one syllable short of complete silence with which we practice letting go of the mind-road. The mind-road is not the kind of open, empty road we can easily love, accompanying you with no-birds, no-trees, no-insects, and best of all, no-you. The mind-road is more like the pressured highway, whizzing with traffic, burdened with noise, shouting at you with signs, and always making the false promise of ‘somewhere to go’.
