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Online Newsletter of the Prairie Zen Center - 515 S. Prospect, Champaign, IL 61820 Nov 2006 |
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Online Newsletter of the Prairie Zen Center - 515 S. Prospect, Champaign, IL 61820 Nov 2006 |
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(cleaning/set up)
(sitting and walking meditiation)
There will be no phone hours on Jan. 22nd, Feb. 1st or Feb.
5th
Phone - (217)355-8835
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On Saturday, December 2nd Elihu will visit the Sangamon Zen Group in Springfield, Illinois. The day will be from 9:00am to 4:00pm and will include a dharma talk, zazen, dokusan and lunch. For information contact Ed Russell at 217-528-4834 or pzc@prairiezen.org. This group is an affiliate of the Prairie Zen Center. China Pilgramage The Prairie Zen Center and the Milwaukee Zen Center will jointly sponsor a pilgrimage trip to Northern China departing June 18th. Approximate cost is $2,300 (+/- $200). If you are interested, contact Elihu for information or www.southmountaintours.com (select Bodhidharma/Joshu Tour). As the year end approaches, donations to help support the Prairie Zen Center are greatly appreciated. Send donations to Prairie Zen Center - 515 S. Prospect - Champaign, IL 61720 or donate online at http://www.prairiezen.org/memb_supt.htm Due to a computer problem, the PZC financial records for 2006 are incomplete. If you require a letter from PZC reporting 2006 contributions for tax purposes, contact us by email at acct@prairiezen.org or by mail at the Center before January 15, 2007, detailing your donations for the year. Thank you for your support. |
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An Edited Dharma Talk Elihu Genmyo Smith Sesshin activities are ordinary; sitting still, walking, eating, working. The activities of sesshin and our life are not two, not different. Nevertheless, to support practice, to support us in being who we are, ordinary functioning in sesshin is different from everyday life. We sit more, we maintain non-talking, non-looking around and non-social interaction; we maintain ongoing practice. Our life practice is being ordinary - and yet in intensive practice, especially in sesshin, it is non-ordinary ordinary. Sometimes we think that sesshin is an escape from ordinary life, rather than seeing sesshin as another part of ongoing practice, as a phase of everyday practice. We might believe that life's activities are a problem, a source of suffering; therefore, sesshin is a way to escape these troubles and suffering. Keizan Zenji throws cold water on this in a poem from the Denkoroku, the Transmission of Light. “If you fall because of the ground (ordinary circumstances), You must use the ground (ordinary) to get up; Trying to get up by keeping aloof from the ground (ordinary), would make no sense (be contrary to the Truth).” Of course, falling is just falling, getting up is just getting up. Yet, in falling, are we just falling? If we are not OK falling, is it a problem? Right here is the keeping aloof in the midst of falling that keeps us from this very moment of falling. This keeping aloof, being attached elsewhere, is suffering. Being falling, responding naturally, cushioning the fall, landing and then getting up. While sesshin is refuge, and Zen practice is taking refuge in the Three Treasures, it is important to clarify what the refuge of practice is. It is only our ignorance, our mistaken perspective, that creates and maintains our difficulties where there are no difficulties. So, our practice is being the very “difficulties,” being this bodily moment. This is taking refuge. Dogen Zenji states “conveying self to authenticate myriad things is delusion, myriad things advancing and authenticating self is enlightenment”(Genjokoan). This isn’t something mysterious. It highlights and sets forth life, our functioning. Myriad things is this sound, the floor, listening, seeing - this functioning in the midst of myriad things. How our life of myriad things function is what determines delusion, enlightenment. Of course, delusion is just delusion, enlightenment is just enlightenment – do not miss this! Here, Dogen is also clarifying the suffering and difficulties that arise, the wisdom, joy and compassion that we manifest. Sesshin sitting and ongoing practice support this. It is right here. Always this is our practice, exactly this; just this sitting. Being grounded right here is this being breathed right now, this moment. Even in ordinary activities we can create trouble. For instance, when you eat, notice how you see and hold what you are doing. Chewing! Is there something else? Are “you” taking food and putting it in your mouth, are you chewing, tasting, eating the food? Is the food being taken to you? There are many bacteria, cells and other beings, in this body, in this intestinal tract. Of course, these beings and their relationship to “you” can be described in concepts such as symbiotic and parasitic based on functioning and sustenance, gain and loss. But “who” gains and “who” loses? This interbeing life is interdependent functioning and sustenance, exchanges of light, energy, food and so forth. To ask a different question, is eating to feed you or is it to feed the bacteria and cells in this body? Do we eat without adding and holding ideas? Just eating! The mulberry bush outside the zendo has tasty berries; when they ripen I eat them. The birds do too. The fruit goes through the bird’s digestive system and is excreted, scattered all over. Makes a mess in front of the zendo and on the cars; some seeds do eventually get to the earth. From the bird's viewpoint the bush is producing the fruit for them; from the tree's point of view the fruit is a way to spread the seeds to the soil. Each makes perfect sense. Is what happens to this body in order for all the beings inside the body to get food? Is this body just a way the beings inside the gut get nourishment? Maybe eating is for the beings who will get the nourishment from our excrement? What is our life? Often we act as if circumstances, things, and even others should serve us. Look closely, when chewing food, who is chewing food? Is the food chewing food? Are you chewing the food? Are you being served or are you enabling the server to serve? Being served, what is being served, who is being served? In some forms of the meal verse there is a phrase: “Now we set out Buddha’s bowls, may we with all living beings, realize the emptiness of the Three Wheels, giver, receiver and gift.” Dana paramita, the perfection of giving, similarly clarifies that the one who gives and what is given and the one who receives are all empty. All are empty. Empty is just right here. Being so, giving, receiving. The myriad dharmas as is now is emptiness manifest. In conveying self to authenticate myriad things we do not allow this manifesting; that is delusion. Dogen is pointing out what we do that creates difficulties, suffering and harm in the midst of ordinary functioning. Our life is being, doing. But if in functioning I add “I am” doing, conveying self, that gets me into all sorts of difficulties. Even these wonderful practice opportunities of sitting can become ways of conveying self; all the more so with daily activities. So, as we start sesshin, as we continue ongoing practice, it is valuable to notice if and when we bring various ideas or habits to ordinary activities; seeming natural assumptions and beliefs. “Of course! I am eating the food. The food’s not chewing me, I’m chewing the food.” Who says so? What says so? Allow yourself to be chewed up by the food that you eat. Being chewing - the chewer, what is chewed and chewing are all empty, just this. It is not having a new or special intention or idea; if, in the midst of ordinary activities, there is a holding back of self, if there is a conveying of self, simply notice this. Holding back is conveying, conveying is holding on; conveying self is holding onto ideas and attitudes in thoughts, in body - this is body-mind habits, a self-centeredness in which what we see is based on what we want or don't want, how it looks and feels to me. This is what Dogen is talking about. This is straightforward, not esoteric. When you bow, give yourself away to the Earth, the ground; bowing, just bow. Are you standing on the floor or is the floor standing? Stand! Being this moment is our life practice, “single-minded exertion.” Being so, I bow to the cushion and sit. Myriad things advancing and authenticating self; ordinary functioning. Not anything special. Myriad dharmas is this whole phenomenal life right now, hearing right now, this light. This bodily sensory moment is myriad things, myriad functions. This is it. Our encounters from morning to night is exactly myriad dharmas advancing and authenticating self, our encounter right this moment. Ongoing practice, the zazen of right now, is the manifesting myriad dharmas. Allowing this is being authenticated by this moment advancing. Our life is functioning, being supported and authenticated. The very ground I bow down on lifts me up. The sitting cushion sits me. Giving self away, giving sitting bones away to the ground elongates the spine; the ground holds me up. Be ordinary. Be sat by sitting, be chanted by chanting. Chant not just with the mouth but with the ears; breathe the whole body. Sit the whole zendo. Nothing to figure out, I sit chanting. When self is conveyed, simply notice it and open as this bodily sensory moment, being this functioning here. Thank you. © 2006 Elihu Genmyo Smith |
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