Online Newsletter of the Prairie Zen Center      -      515 S. Prospect, Champaign, IL 61820                July 2007

Zendo Schedule
All sittings are at 515 S. Prospect, Champaign (NW corner of Green and Prospect).

Weekdays: (Mon.-Fri.): 6:00 to 6:50 a.m.
Tuesdays: & Thursdays:
 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.
  Open sitting. Dokusan available as Elihu's
   schedule allows
Saturdays: 8:00 to 9:00 a.m.
  Open sitting, zazen or slow kinhin
Sunday Mornings: (dokusan available)
  8:45. Samu  (cleaning/set up)
  9:00 Service
  9:20 Zazen & Kinhin

  10:00 Introduction for newcomers
  11:00 Dharma talk

You are welcome to join Sundays sittings at the beginning of any sitting period. An introduction to Zen practice is available during the 10:00 a.m. sitting period. This schedule is approximate; please arrive early. Please wait until the beginning of walking meditation and enter the zendo at that time. During sesshin, the regular schedule is suspended.

Phone Schedule (Summer)
Out-of-towners can reach Elihu at these times:
Mondays: 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesdays: 7:20 to 7:55 p.m.
Thursdays: 7:20 to 8:00 p.m.
The Center is closed the day before and the day after sesshin, all phone interviews are also canceled on those days.

There will be no phone hours

Aug. 7th or Aug. 13th thru 20th

Phone - (217)355-8835
 E-Mail -  pzc@prairiezen.org

Elihu on the Radio
On Sunday, July 22nd Elihu will be the guest on “Keepin’ the Faith” on WILL-AM 580 from 5 to 6 PM Central Time. Those outside the area can listen via the Internet at http://will.uiuc.edu/main/listen.htm. Listeners can call in with questions and comments by dialing 800-222-9455 or 217-333-9455. The topic will be "Zen Buddhist Practice Today in China: Notes from a Pilgrimage."

Wind Bell
 (edited Dharma Talk of 5/25/07)
by Elihu Genmyo Smith

Good morning. “Good morning” is a wonderful expression of our life. Always this is so, in the midst of conditions arising, seemingly easy, seemingly hard. Our life is cause and effect conditions, karma, arising right now. In the midst of this, even in the midst of illness, pain - no problem, no suffering, except when believing and being caught up in our understanding: “I like this. I don’t like this. This is good, this shouldn’t be.” Even our way of seeing and understanding is this cause and effect.

Holding to and believing the emotion-thoughts, the body-mind habits, there is upset, difficulty, stress, suffering. We are unable to function as we are, in the midst of health and illness, growth and dying. Instead we live as our ideas, from the beliefs and reactions about the cause and effect, which we are sure are true and valid. The limited vision, limited body-mind habits, keep us from being as we are, so there is stress, suffering.

The words of the Heart Sutra clarify this life of conditions, this cause and effect circumstance of right now. Dogen Zenji's “Maka Hannya Haramitsu” (translated as “accomplishment of great wisdom of Buddha,” “great wisdom beyond discriminatory thought”) further clarifies this matter. Studying the text is studying our life, the conditions and circumstances that nurture us.

“The time that Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva practices profound Prajna Paramita is the total emptiness of the five Skandhas, whole body seeing by illumined vision.” Another translation: “When Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is one” – which is “practices.” Practice is being one, being intimate as this moment. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is each of us - the Bodhisattva who hears and responds compassionately to the cries of suffering. “Prajna” means wisdom but I think it’s best to leave it as Prajna - the wisdom beyond wisdom, the wisdom that is who we are. Being this Prajna wisdom, and not limited by “discriminatory thought,” we see fully that the five conditions/aggregates (Skandhas), whole body-mind – not only this body, but this whole universe – whole being is emptiness, is as space.

What does this mean? What is emptiness? Certainly, we know what is not emptiness. We know when we bump into things, into form, into mind states, have trouble with the way this is, we know this is not emptiness for us. But the problem is not with form, etc. These five conditions, this whole body, are five Prajna. Body-mind, five conditions, are different ways of describing being human. The whole of being human is Prajna wisdom. The whole of each of you, each of us, each being we encounter, is nothing but wisdom. Is that the way we act? Not when we have trouble with what they say or do. Even more so when we believe we know what they should or shouldn’t be. For us, then, it is not wisdom. We know this because we feel the tension, stress and upset about things as is. What does Dogen Zenji say here? When we, when Avalokiteshvara, practices, is one with deep Prajna Paramita then we see - you see, I see - the total emptiness of the whole body-mind, everything that we encounter. We are wisdom, this illumined vision; seeing, functioning, is wisdom, is total emptiness.

“When this primary spirit is realized and manifested, it is expressed in words such as ‘this very form is emptiness, this very emptiness is form’.” This clarifies wisdom that is emptiness, Prajna which is who we are. Not just form is emptiness: emptiness is emptiness, and form is form. Don’t get caught up in some ideas of elsewhere, dualistic “either-or” formulations. Form is form. The unbounded – the emptiness we are – is this manifesting moment by moment, nothing else. “It is hundreds of grasses” – which is the many circumstances that you encounter. Every encounter is emptiness, is form, is the functioning of Prajna. This is hard for us to grasp, to live, because we believe all sorts of body-mind habits and therefore miss this. When she, he, you, I, the time that Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva practices profound Prajna Paramita, sees clearly that all the five Skandhas are Prajna – this is not dependent upon our doing to make this so. From the beginning every aspect of our functioning is nothing but this functioning – is it so for us? Or, in a simple sense, does form seem like form and not at all empty? The boss who you have trouble with comes in and right away this seems like form and not empty. How do you know? Being tense, upset and on the lookout. Right here. You wake up aching and right here, “Oh! I don’t like this, it shouldn’t be this way!” Right here. We hold to the body-mind habits that see “form is form” rather than “form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is form, emptiness is emptiness” - this wisdom being, this flow of cause-effect which is this moment. Not a matter of special “insight” - being this intimacy as we are.

Dogen cites his Master Tiantong Rujing (Tendo Nyojo), “The entire body is like a mouth hanging in air (emptiness), It does not matter from what direction the wind blows, north, south, east, or west. The wind bell evenly expounds wisdom for others. Ring ring ring.” “The entire body” – whole being, body-mind, is a mouth hanging in emptiness. All sorts of karmic winds, circumstances, appear to a bell-mouth that hangs in empty space. If the bell says, “I only take wind from the east,” holding this agenda, belief, it doesn’t work. It would be a strange bell. It does not matter from what direction the wind blows. This is the realized life we are. It also is an encouragement and a guide for how we can practice – our intention to be who we are, to voice the Prajna of our life. We may not notice the ways we ask the wind to blow until we see how we are "ringing" in reaction to conditions. “Impartial to all, it sounds wisdom for the sake of others.” Another translation: “always makes the sound of Prajna.” Not holding to “my agenda,” responding is the expression of the wisdom of this bell of emptiness, this empty body-mind. We are this ability functioning, this Prajna. This is the functioning of hearing, speaking. Practice is allowing, being in the midst of forms, voicing and expounding the Prajna that we are.

In Eihei Koroku, Dogen adds his own version of this poem: “The whole body is just a mouth defining empty space.” Not “like” – is just. “Ever arousing (playing host to) the winds from east, ...” In place of “it does not matter” is “ever arousing” – our ongoing Bodhisattva practice. “Equally crystalline (expressing eloquently) speaking your own words. Ring ring ring.” “Speaking your own words” is ongoing practice in the midst of the realized life you are.

To hear the image the poem is invoking is to sense functioning this way. The whole body is just a mouth. See, it is never anything else. Not only like, our body is just defining empty space. Right now. It is the articulation of emptiness, the defining of emptiness. Emptiness is this manifesting right now, according to circumstances and conditions, according to the wind - in fact, ever arousing the winds. We use the winds to express, speak our words, to express for others, to express the profound Prajna of life. Please hear what Dogen says, because this is how we are, this is a guideline for what it is to sit, to be this sitting here: being open as this form-condition, this body-mind. Not just when we sit, but when we step out of the zendo and meet people, circumstances, all sorts of conditions. What is it to function as this wisdom that we are, that is exactly who we are? Five-fold manifestations of wisdom, can’t be anything else - simply this manifestation of wisdom.

“When Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is one with deepest Prajna” - including whatever belief, thought and feeling arises- this is nothing but the expression of wisdom; and yet our ongoing practice effort is living as this Prajna. Though it is so right now, “when” is our effortless effort. Interesting, when you practice Prajna, you are Prajna. But you are able to practice because you are Prajna. What is this? Often our functioning is out of form as form, out of habits as habits, out of habits that deny Prajna, out of habits which state, “This habit isn’t Prajna, this habit isn’t empty.”

We see form is form, but we do not see form is empty, and so we do not truly see form is form. Only if we see form is empty, empty is form, then, form is exactly form. This depends on us making it so for us, our practice, otherwise it is not so for us. As I have said, we know it is not so when there is stress, suffering. If we feel reactive anger, then we know. This is a practice signal and support. Somewhere I’m missing the Prajna right here. And our human ability is practice, practicing the wisdom we are, being sitting, being this non-doing, being in the midst of the winds of cause and effect constantly blowing from inside, outside, from others, from myself. All are just opportunities for us to speak this profound Prajna that we are. This is what Dogen Zenji is encouraging us. How does Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva respond to this, speak this? How can I articulate Avalokiteshvara’s wisdom, which is my wisdom? When chanting the Heart Sutra, allow yourself to articulate the Heart Sutra, to be speaking for the Heart Sutra that is who you are. As we state in the “Gatha On Opening The Sutra,” “Now I/we see this, hear this, receive and maintain this” – allow this to be your articulation of what is so. You may think, “Well, it’s not the way it is” - No, no, this is not true; believing “it’s not the way it is” is the articulation of usual body-mind habits. All you have to do is speak what is so, from this Prajna that is always so, that is always your life. Being the Bodhisattva you are, responding as the Bodhisattva you are, is a wonderful ongoing practice, a lifetime koan. Right here. This whole body is articulating empty space. Ring ring ring.

© 2007 Elihu Genmyo Smith