Living Devil

For the next few "sit-a-longs", I'm going to revive a series from awhile back on WHATSA BODHISATTVA, looking a some of the greats ... Avalokiteśvara (Kannon), Samantabhadra and others. Before, we looked at each of the traditional Virtues, the 'Perfections' of a Bodhisattva ...
http://www.treeleaf.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=whattsa+who'sa+bodhisattva&IncludeBlogs=2&limit=20
Today, though, let's talk about the Devil, Satan, Mara, Evil ...
Oh, I believe in the Devil! Bodhisattvas too.
Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows at this link. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
Visit the forum thread here!

Koku 4

The Nishijima Cross translation goes as follows:
Daibutsu would like to tell Shakkyō the fol- lowing: “Before, when you grabbed Seidō’s nostrils, if you wanted to grasp space, you should have grabbed the nostrils of yourself, Shakkyō, and you should have understood how to grasp the fingertips with the fingertips.” Even so, Shakkyō does know a bit about the dignified behavior of grasping space. Even a good player at grasping space needs to research the interior and exte- rior of space, needs to research the deadening and vitalization of space, and needs to know the lightness and weight of space. We should maintain and rely upon [the teaching] that the effort in pursuit of the truth, the establish- ment of the mind, the practice and experience, and the assertions and ques- tions of buddhas and of patriarchs are just the grasping of space. My late master, Tendō Nyojō, the eternal buddha, says: “The whole body like a mouth, hanging in space.” Clearly, the whole body of space is suspended in space.
Grasping space is extra. This reality in this reality, this space in this space practice, teach and preach the Dharma. Like the empty mouth of a bell, space moves in space.
Visit this topic on the forum!

Masterpeace

In our Soto Way, this Life-Practice-Enlightenment is the constant painting of a picture ... a masterpiece ever created and simultaneously complete in each stroke by stroke by stroke.
The goal is not to strip away the surface image in search of blank canvas.
Nor is it a finished masterpiece, done once and for all, then hung in a museum to gather dust.
It is not something one sees outside oneself, as if one merely need see the painting hanging on a gallery wall and is thus done.
It is not simply a matter of realizing that the image on the canvas is a fiction, or real as real can be, or something in between (although all of those). It may be a dream, a dream within a dream ... yet even a painted rice cake can fill all hunger, says Master Dogen.
Rather, it is the art of creation, mastery of the brushwork ... whereby, one is free in life to paint a master stroke, or an ugly stroke, in each here and now instant stroke ... free to create the life-self-world work of art one chooses by one's words, thoughts and acts, one stroke building on the last. It is an ongoing opus, a total composition, paint drop by paint drop, continuing so long as we live.
Nevertheless, while painting onward ... each stroke by stroke is already Whole and Complete, the totality of every painting ever painted contained in each drop.
The 'master artist' is not the mere 'beginner'. Although each stroke is ever new, a new beginning, the true "master" tends to the masterful stokes and compositions, rather than the hack or low or damaging.
All time and space and history painted us into this painting of a world ... and thus we were born as part of its scene, part of this world. Now, alive, we find ourselves with brush in hand ... ready to continue the making of the total composition ongoing from this point forward ... a painted being in a picture, and a being painting the picture, all just the painting all along. Maybe we cannot change the vast, total composition as just one person (the world is a big and complicated place), but we can change so much ... repaint the ugly into something balanced, beautiful, serene. The brushstrokes of our actions, Karma, will be seen far into the future.
The timeless achievement of Enlightenment is A Treasure beyond Measure, a Priceless Painting we realize was (as was the jewel in the Lotus Sutra) hidden in plain view all along! Looking for the painting from inside the painting, we cannot find it. Or, better said, it is a Priceless Painting that we realize was never hidden nor bound by any frame, just who we have been all along, and we that ... for we are the work of art, all of life a work of art.
What is more, the Vast, Powerful composition ... filled with happy faces and crying faces, images of peace and of war, growth and death, majestic mountains and scrawled graffiti on city walls ... is embraced for Totality, rejecting none of it. All painted right in, making the Whole.
All the Master Peace.
Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows at this link. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
Visit the Forum for this topic!

Koku 3

The Nishijima Cross translation gives this version of the text:
Zen Master Shakkyō Ezō of Bushū asks Zen Master Seidō Chizō,“Do you understand how to grasp space?” Seidō says, “I understand how to grasp it.” The master says, “How do you grasp it?” Seidō clutches at space with his hand. The master says, “You do not understand how to grasp space.” Seidō says, “How do you grasp it, brother?” The master grabs Seidō’s nostrils and pulls them. Groaning with pain, Seidō says, “It is very brutal to yank a per- son’s nostrils, but I have directly been able to get free.” The master says, “Directly grabbing hold like this, you should have got it from the beginning.” Shakkyō’s words “Do you understand how to grasp space?” ask “Are you too ‘the thoroughly realized body as hands and eyes’?”Seidō says, “I understand how to grasp it.” Space is one unadulterated mass, which, once touched is then tainted.Since being tainted, “space has fallen to the ground.”
As we are entertaining ourselves with ten thousand things to do, to dream about, to chase; as we imagine the truth to be found somewhere else, we neglect the very precious Koku of this-self-here-now. Getting hold of our nose is to get in touch with the only reality that matters. Everything else belongs to the realm of projection and illusion, we have to start where we live, in this space of being and practice and then we may unfold.
Visit the Forum for this topic!

The Good Fight

Some folks think that BUDDHISTS ARE MERELY PUSHOVERS. Well, sometimes we are "pushovers" ... allowing events to just push us over without resistance, roll past us, all until we (hopefully) roll back up!
Other times ... like the Dalai Lama in his resistance to China, like the monks of Burma, like Gandhi (okay, not a 'Buddhist' really, but ya get the point), even like "Master Caine" in that old tv show ... we may need to push back, protest, resist, fight a good fight appropriate to the circumstances. Stilll, there is a way to do that, and not do that, and non-do that ... hopefully free of greed, anger and ignorance, free of all resistance even in the resistance. It might be against social injustice, it might be against an illness, it might be about something necessary and right in our own life that deserves standing up for (as well as sitting down on the Zafu for).
HOW WE FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.
Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows at this link. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
Visit the Forum for this topic!

Atonement / At-One-Ment

We all make mistakes ... big and small. Perhaps when we are all Buddhas, we will be beyond bad choices and harmful acts ... but now we are each just fallible human beings, Bodhisattvas living in this tricky Saha world, hopefully doing the best we can. Human beings will make mistakes.
However, what we do with those mistakes ... whether we learn from them, seek not to repeat them, and repair the damage we have created ... makes all the difference in the world.
What's more ... we ARE Buddha too, right now and all along. Thus, even amid all our big and small mistakes ... there is no mistake, nor could there be.
Of course, to live from only one such perspective ... that there are mistakes, or that there is never any mistake ... would be a BIG MISTAKE! Fortunately, we BUDDHA-NOT-BUDDHAS can live by knowing life as each at once ... with no mistake or harm possible, yet repairing what needs to be repaired as best we can.
Thus, we ATONE. Thus, All is At-ONE.
OH, AND JUST A REMINDER! Our Annual Jukai (Undertaking The Precepts) Ceremony will be netcast Sunday at the following times and link. Please come to watch and welcome those who are receiving the Precepts with our Sangha, folks joining together from so many places. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sit-a-long-with-jundo
SUNDAY, JANUARY 16th 2011 at MIDNIGHT (Sunday/Monday) JAPAN TIME (which should be SUNDAY 10AM in NY, 7AM on the West Coast, 3pm in London, 4 pm in Paris).
Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows at this link. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
Visit the Forum for this topic!

Koku 2

Futher comments on Koku based on Uji, Being-time. The broad and big body of Koku contains all actions and times:
Visit the Forum for this topic!

Motion Still

Just Sitting, Thinking-Not Thinking ... is the silence always heard in noise and silence, the stillness that is both movement and standing still ... the peace encountered even as disturbance .... . ... ... ... the full, vibrant life ... ... ...
 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... that is clear, living, empty space ...
. . . . . 
 

Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows at this link. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
Visit the Forum for this topic!