When you are completely
absorbed in your breathing, there is no self.
What is your breathing? That breathing is not you, nor air.
What is it? It is not self at all. When there is no self,
you have absolute freedom. Because you have
a silly idea of self, you have
a lot of problems.
To Shine One Corner of the World
Dogen Zen-ji says,
“Even though it is midnight, dawn is here.
Even though dawn comes, it is nighttime.” This kind
of statement conveys the understanding transmitted from
Buddha to the Patriarchs, and from the Patriarchs to Dogen,
and to us. Nighttime and daytime are not different.
The same thing is sometimes called nighttime,
sometimes called daytime. Nighttime
and daytime are one thing.
Zazen practice and
everyday activity are one thing.
We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.
But usually we think, “Now zazen is over, and now we
will go about our everyday activity.” But this is not the
right understanding. They are the same thing. We
have nowhere to escape. So in activity there
should be calmness, and in calmness
there should be activity. So
calmness and activity
are not different.
To achieve
what the zen buddhists
call “beginner’s mind,” you dispense
with all preconceptions and enter
each situation as if seeing it
for the first time.
“In the
beginner’s mind there
are many possibilities,” wrote
Shunryu Suzuki in his book Zen Mind,
Beginner’s Mind, “but in the
expert’s there are few.”
As much
as I love beginner’s
mind, though, I advocate an
additional discipline: cultivating a
beginner’s heart. That means approaching
every encounter imbued with a freshly
invoked wave of love that is as pure
as if you’re feeling it for
the first time.
zen is not something to get excited about
When you are practicing zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. It something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything. It appears as if something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind, and if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer. In five or at most ten minutes, your mind will be completely serene and calm. At that time your breathing will become quite slow, while your pulse will become a little faster.
It will take quite a long time before you find your calm, serene mind in your practice. Many sensations come, many thoughts or images arise, but they are just waves of your own mind. Nothing comes from outside your mind. Usually we think of our mind as receiving impressions and experiences from outside, but that is not a true understanding of our mind. The true understanding is that the mind includes everything; when you think something comes from outside it means only that something appears in your mind. Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.
I had
dokusan with Suzuki Roshi
during sesshin. I felt lost and far from home
at that point in my life, and I asked him
if big mind was lost in the
dark, too.
He said,
“No, not lost in the dark,
working in the dark!” and he moved
his arms about, demonstrating. He said it was like
the many-armed statue of Avaloki-teshvara,
and he made the statue come to life
for a moment.
To Shine One Corner of the World