TREELEAF ZENDO PODCAST

The Ten Oxherding Pictures (VI)

Continuing our glimpse at ...
... catching a glimpse, the watcher

(After a lovely year here at Beliefnet.com, our daily "Sit-a-long with Jundo" Zazen netcasts will be moving home on January 1st to SHAMBHALA SUNSPACE, the webpage of the Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma magazines, where we will be a daily featured Buddhist blog ... sitting there just as we do here. )

The Ten Oxherding Pictures (V)

catching a glimpse, the watcher
(After a lovely year here at Beliefnet.com, our daily "Sit-a-long with Jundo" Zazen netcasts will be moving home on January 1st to SHAMBHALA SUNSPACE, the webpage of the Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma magazines, where we will be a daily featured Buddhist blog ... sitting there just as we do here. )

The Ten Oxherding Pictures (IV)

dancing with shadows ...

 
At the waters edge, under the trees - hoofmarks are numerous.
Balmy grasses grow abundantly - can you see them or not?
Even if you go deeper and deeper into the mountains,
How could his nostrils, well compassing the heavens,
    hide him at all?

The Ten Oxherding Pictures (III)

The first picture    ...  The Seeker
On his blog, Mike Dosho Port quotes Andy Ferguson's translation  of a poem by Sensu Tokujo, one of our Chinese ancestors:
Letting down the line ten thousand feet,
A single breaking wave makes ten thousand ripples.
At night in still water, the cold fish won't bite.
An empty boat filled with moonlight returns.

The fish is the golden fish and stands for a metaphor of awakening for even dead its eyes are bright and wide open. Just like the bull or the ox. We fish something we will never get, we won't be allowed on the promised land, we won't be given what we expected. Much more. We end up with the moonlight , a symbol of the oneness of practice and realization. We end up with Shikantaza, being already home as we start our journey, for there is nowhere else to be. Just being is our home. So the seeking never ceases, it is the action through which we turn the Dharma wheel, it is this continous practice. Nowhere to go, nobody who travels, to destination to reach, just the full joy of being and unfolding this being-time now.

The Ten Oxherding Pictures (II)

Whattsa Who'sa Bodhisattva? - The Virtue of Knowledge

The Tenth of the Bodhisattva's Ten Virtues is .... Knowledge (Jñāna)
 ...
In Saving All Sentient Beings ... Knowledge Goes a Long Way ...

The Ten Oxherding Pictures (I)

This is an Enso from the great Zen teacher Nantembo who lived a century ago, his temple in Nishinomiya is very close to where I live.
It says: Everything fundamentally is perfect roundness in this world. As soon as you are born in this world, your mind is fundamentally perfect roundness.

Whattsa Who'sa Bodhisattva? - (MORE) The Virtue of Mystical Powers

More of the Bodhisattva Virtue of Miraculous, Mystical Powers (bala)
In the Tashin tsû (Penetration of Other's Minds) portion of the Shôbôgenzô, the subject is mental telepathy, one of the supernormal powers (abhijñâ) regularly said in Buddhist literature to be accessible to great meditators. Here, Dôgen takes up the famous story of a Zen master's test of the mind-reading powers of an Indian monk claiming such ability. Dogen expresses his doubts about such powers, while seeing the mind of self and the mind of others in a grander way ...
 :
[T]he National Teacher's basic intention in testing the Master [from India by] saying, "Tell me, where's this old monk right now?" is to test whether the [Indian] Master is an eye to see the buddha dharma -- to test whether the [Indian] Master has the penetration of other minds in the buddha dharma. ... The National Teacher's saying, "Where's this old monk right now?" is like his asking, "What is this old monk?" [To say,] "Where's this old monk right now?" is to ask, "What time is right now?" [To ask,] "Where?" is to say, "Where is here?" There is a reason [to ask] what to call this old monk: a national teacher is not always an "old monk"; an "old monk" is always a "fist." ... Do not think that those types who seek to get the penetration of other minds can know the whereabouts of the National Teacher ... If it cannot know the way of the buddhas and ancestors, what good is [such ability]? It is useless to the way of the buddha ...In the buddha dharma, if we are going to say that there is the penetration of other minds, there should be the penetration of other bodies, the penetration of other fists, the penetration of other eyes. If this is so, there should also be the penetration of one's own mind, the penetration of one's own body. And once this is the case, one's own mind taking up itself is at once the penetration of one's own mind. To express such a statement is the penetration of other minds as one's own mind itself. Let me just ask, "Should we take up the penetration of other minds, or should we take up the penetration of one's own mind?  Speak up! Speak up!