Yesterday I sat and realized this: the desires I have that I resist, whether by shaming into temporary silence or preoccupation with something else, are me. The anger and frustration is me. The lust and greed and arrogance are me. The enlightenment, the peace sought by those who wade into the water is that of no-escape.

And with that, I cried and giggled at the same time. I am trapped in the mind of this universe and free to watch it all unfold in peace.

“Regulations for the Auxiliary Cloud Hall at the Kannondori Kosho Gokoku Monastery”

“You should make the present moment your true source, having compassion for later generations by giving emphasis to the present. … No-one knows where and when this dew-like existence will drop from the grass. Not recognizing impermanence is truly regrettable … Do not be concerned with the faults of others … The Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions but did not tell us to despise those who practice unwholesome actions … Be sobered by the fact that the work of the way is not yet mastered. Regret the subtle passage of time, which is eating away this opportunity for practice of the way.”

I have been just here in this season of lent, still, and waiting for my distracted mind to quiet. I continue waiting, watching the world go by and participating when it appears to be my turn. Intermittently I wonder when things will change in my mind … I wonder when things will change … as if they are the same. They are not the same, but my responses repeat, like a skip in the record. Today, not yesterday, and not last week, but today, I have stayed just here and still, waiting my turn. Staying still I am transfixed by how the arrow has hit me, and it seems to be that of course it is not one arrow, but a succession of them; they come and go. This truly is my life.

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The entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl. How do you understand this?

 “Tell them ‘I Am’ sent you.”  “Cleave the tree, and I Am there.  Lift up the rock, and there you will find me.”  I have read that this is problematic for some translators because “This has never been satisactory, for when one usually lifts up a stone all one finds are worms and slugs.”  (www.gospelofthomas.info/essays/stone.html) well, you can lead a horse to water …

The entire world – the sunsets, the acts brave men and the acts of evil – ALL of it is one bright pearl.  How do you understand this?  There is no separation between you and the rest of the universe.  This is emptiness.  No separation between you and the sunset, or you and your parents.  The slugs and the worms under the rock are you too.  This is emptiness.  I heard a pastor once explain the story of the birth of Jesus as this. The point was that you find God wherever you turn, and we are to be reminded that this mystery is even amongst the shit and piss and fleas of the stable. 

But you are not the sunset, nor your parents, nor the mountains and rivers.  This is form.  The stories we tell to grapple with this, be they of the God of Abraham, the Buddha or the boson are also empty. These constructs attempt to answer questions we have and construct a whole we can contain and understand in just the smallest piece of the universe, our minds.  If this was possible, it would be a true miracle.  We do find answers to some questions and those answers may offer something pleasant for the moment.  But they do not last, so we start counting breaths again.  The buddha asked, “what lasts?”  Only this one bright pearl lasts.  how do you understand this?

If I have a soul it is in the flowers and the fish and the sunrise.  Those things will not go away. They will be forever wrapped up in this ball of a universe expanding or doing whatever it is doing that we don’t yet understand. 

The entire world is one bright pearl.

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“Go to where you are now.” 

This is the rehearsal koan.  How do I get there?  Sit.  Breathe.  How will I know I’m there?  You will not realize anything else.

“Here is the place; here the way unfolds. Do not suppose that what you attain becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your intellect.  Its emergence is beyond your knowledge.”

Here is the solitude of existence as a speck of the universe.  Be the butterfly effect. How can you not? Since you cannot help but be thus, practice it carefully. There is lightness in this great effort of practice.

Dont just do something.  Stand there.  There.

There are some things Dogen writes about where I can feel him straining to inhabit with words a place beyond description.  The trouble with words, you see, is they are not real.  They are always a beat behind.  They are a representation of something just past, a painting of an impression of a moment not present now.  What a horrible tool to teach the way, eh?  Words aren’t bad, dont get me wrong; they are great for conveying the approximate truth in everyday life, and most of the time the approximate truth is just fine.  It allows you to cook and clean and get through the day.  Nevertheless, words are imperfect instruments for conveying the dharma.  Poetry comes close.  I think poetry and koans work because they juxtapose words – items the brain ordinarily accepts as a real truth and exposes them for the liars they are, at the same time it is using them to point to the way.  Koans, and poetry, are like tai chi used on language, where the meaning of the words is used against them to the writer’s advantage.  When done right, it is a miracle to behold. 

Go to where you are now.  Once you get there, everything is obvious.

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if you walk long enough, thoughts disappear and you become walking.

Two nights ago I walked home from the train station – about two miles – late at night. I had parked at a train station closer to home, but would have had to wait another 45 minutes in the city for a train to take me the extra two miles, so I chose the farther train station figuring I would take a cab to the car. I was tired before the walk but it was peaceful and a cool night. The universe said walking was the thing to do.
Earlier in the day I was driving my daughters somewhere and asked aloud:
“Is it better to stay straight here or turn?”
Not prying her face from her iPad, my older girl said, “um, I don’t know”.
“Don’t worry darlin. I was asking the universe.”
pause
“okay Dad. you just keep talkin to the universe and let me know how that goes.”

Of course, she was onto something and missing it at the same time. Are you talking to the universe, or listening to it? I think Dogen is recommending listening.
“The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away? And yet, if you miss the mark by a strand of hair, you are as distant as heaven from earth. … If you are wandering about in your head, you may miss the vital path of letting your body leap. … Take the backward step and turn the light inward. … Do not be concerned with who is wise or who is stupid. Do not discriminate the sharp from the dull. Practice realization is not defiled with specialness; it is a matter for every day. … Do not judge right or wrong. Stop conscious endeavor and analytical introspection. Do not try to become a Buddha. How could being a Buddha be limited to sitting or not sitting? To practice wholeheartedly is the true endeavor of the way. … Now sit steadfastly and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Beyond thinking. This is the essential art of zazen. … Know that the true dharma emerges of itself, clearing away hindrances and distractions.”

My favorite part of the Lord’s prayer is: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

You can either listen to the universe, or you can talk to it. I don’t know which is better. But I know that if you walk long enough, your thoughts disappear and you become walking.

“It cannot be reached by intellect – much less can those who lack trust or who lack wisdom know it. …. Know that fundamentally you do not lack unsurpassed enlightenment, and you are replete with it continuously. But you may not realize it, and may be in the habit of arousing discriminatory views, and regard them as real. Without noticing, you miss the great way, and your efforts will be fruitless. Such discriminatory views create flowers of emptiness.”

For a man who espouses direct realization, Dogen sure knows how to use a large number of words. It must have been difficult or him to have spent sooo much time with a topic, completely understand it and have no real way to transmit the knowledge to someone else except to say: “Sit still and pay attention. Pretty soon you will get it.” This is, after all, the heart of the matter. Sit still and pay attention. Eventually you will stumble onto your discriminatory views. Where do you begin? Four and a half billion years ago when some membrane formed creating an inside and an outside of a something – was that the first discriminatory act that has led to our delusion, anger and greed? Or was it some parent child quest for pleasing? This is where I begin to understand the Buddha’s teachings because it doesn’t matter what the answer is. He wasn’t interested in finding that answer because he considered it unknowable. The fact is the discrimination, the sense of separate self, the sense that You are somehow not linked to every other aspect of the universe and that You should have something permanent that IS separate from everything else – this is the root of all suffering, all dissatisfaction.

All the reading and writing about it doesn’t bring realization, I can attest to that. Yesterday was a challenge. This, of course, means I was a challenge, because there is nothing to tolerate but me. I was barely patient. There is such a mess to life, to work, that accomplishing something of substance within the mess often seems an insurmountable task. Perhaps the way, for me at least, is to simply keep an eye on the path and expect us to fall off it and keep acting as sheep dog keeping us all together.

I wonder if the border collie is unhappy with the crazy wandering sheep. Is that what Joshu was asking?

I sit, every day that I can, and follow my breath.  My thoughts come and go – some are pleasant and some are worries that I have collected over the years – but the space between breaths is where I find peace.  The waiting, pure and simple waiting without expecting anything, is where I find peace.  When I first started sitting I became very worried with my leg falling asleep.  I imagined that I would sit right through the pressure on my nerve until it failed to return and I had a permanent foot drop.  I was very afraid of this for awhile, in every way possible.  How would I explain the damage to my colleagues at work?  Or my family?  When I said that I had sat so still without moving even when the leg was going numb that it was permanently damaged I was sure they would consider me crazy.  I considered myself sort of crazy at the idea too.  What part of my super-sized ego was so concerned with getting meditation “right” that I was going to ignore the reality of my leg dying?  This mixture of debate and fear and fear of failure went on for some time, but since I was sitting I have no idea if it took seconds or minutes or the better part of an hour.

Irony:  In my work as a trauma surgeon I often have to amputate limbs to save a person’s life.  Talking with them about this is difficult, but I have often stressed to them that they are the same person after the amputation they were before. You are not your leg.  Nor your hair, nor nose nor eyes nor even your face, though we often define each other by some compilation of those things.  This takes my patients some time to wrestle with, and not everyone gets there.  I don’t always have this conversation with the patient – sometimes it is with a family member who is afraid of the change and they don’t grasp it any easier.  Often I am asked by a concerned family member, in the setting of being able to save a limb:   “Are they going to have a limp?”  I answer “yes”, and then follow pretty quickly with “but so what?”  What is a limp?  What is your right way of walking?

Then it occurred to me:  would I trade my leg for pure peace and happiness?   If my leg died and fell off, but I gained insight and wisdom and peace and happiness, well … that seemed an acceptable trade.  So I let go. 

There is always something to hold onto.  Second after second, another item to grasp arises in the mind.  They can be grasped equally well by sitting still or by running around.  One way of living is to choose your side of the coin, the other is to be the coin as it spins through the air before it falls.  Whatever you choose will be your True Expression.