For the Time-Being

Katagiri Roshi

The Wednesday Night Group has begun a new book titled Each Moment is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time. It is a series of talks given by Katagiri Roshi, the well-known Zen Master who used to inhabit these parts and the source for the Zen Centers in Minnesota. The talks are not in any inherent order, and span the entire time of his teaching here (some too from talks he gave while at San Francisco Zen Center), so please join the group any Wednesday, you won’t feel as if you’ve missed much. In Buddhism, in general, there is the view that there are 72 or so independent moments in a single finger snap.  That makes for approximately 6,400,099,180 (give or take) independent separate moments in a given 24 hour day. According to Buddhism, in each one of these moments the entire universe from end to end—-from the quasars on one side to the quasars on the other, and all quadrillions of galaxies tetra-billions of light years apart—-arises and passes away completely.  This happens so fast that the mind cannot witness it (unless one has spent a lifetime isolated deep in a cave or forest in intensive meditation, which is how they came to this conclusion). Each moment is itself complete—-an entire moment unto itself, not dependent on the moment that came before or the one coming after. The only thing linking one moment to another is karma. It’s the cause and effect of the activity of the universe that strings it all together.  Otherwise one exhalation and inhalation of the cosmos might have been enough. It is the momentum of one’s incomplete activity that stitches the cosmos into the elaborate tapestry we see. If we completed everything we started, resolving all our karma, we would experience the void between cosmic breathes. This is nirvana, which means ‘to be blown out’ like a candle going out after burning up all of its fuel.

Now, the important thing is what does this mean for our actual lives? How does this knowledge help one decide between paper or plastic in the grocery store: either for carrying items home or for maximizing reward points? How can this knowledge help us ‘bring home the bacon (beans for the vegetarians)’? This book will answer these questions, and if not, at least spark discussion for all of us. Their are a number of implications, one being that Time and Being are the same experience. Our existence is not apart from time—-there is no before and after to our existence. My experience, your experience, each experience is complete and whole in itself without a before and after. Enlightenment is this light of awareness infusing our very experience, our very existence, without us thinking about it. The thinking about it is the mistake, the thinking is itself the separation that we feel. Our thinking always goes before and after the experience we are having right now. Without the thinking, there is just the light of awareness filling up all of space-time, expanding as far as you dare.

Regard all Phenomena as Dreams

The slogan for this week is: Regard all dharmas as dreams. The sanskrit word dharma has multiple meanings. Literally it means Truth, the Teachings, or, originally, Natural Law. In Buddhism it takes on a broader meaning as the ‘ten thousand’ things (short for everything) or ‘phenomenon.’ The thinking goes that anything that manifests itself has some truth to it, so any thing is considered a lower case ‘truth’ (as opposed to capital T ‘Truth’). Thus any phenemena of any type–physical forms, sensory experiences, emotions, even elusive thoughts are little lower case truths. All of the changing phenomena about us exist for a brief period and then recede back into the empty state, or shunyata, the void. Shunyata is the pregnant state of emptiness that is wholly singular and complete, without qualities or characteristics of its own, from which all dharmas spring forth. Since the nature of ‘reality’ is impermanent–nothing stays together, remains composite, for that long–everything, all phenomenon, are elusive, illusive, transitory, and ephemeral. So this slogan is just a reminder of that fact. Although some things–such as the massive temple complexes in Egypt, or mountain ranges, or even celestial bodies–seem to last a really long time, and as such appear permanent compared to our vastly shorter spans of existence, they too do not last forever and are themselves in a state of constant flux.  In the grand scheme of eternity, they don’t exist all that long either. All phenomena arise like waves out of the sea of shunyata. Waves of different sizes and shapes all arise for a period and then fall back into their source. The wave is never different than the source. We, you and I, are never different than the source.  Whether currently manifesting as a form, a wave of certain size, strength and duration, or settled into the depths of our formless nature makes no real difference. The magical phenomena we experience everyday are just phantasms on a stage, alike in most every way as the images we encounter in our sleep. The primary difference is that at night we are in a subjective dream, while during the day we are making a collective dream with everyone else. Our perceptions, interpretations, illusions are overlaid on what is really happening. The unchanging source is, ultimately, the only thing that is, capital R, Real.  This doesn’t have to be “woo-woo.” When we recognize that “the changing appearances and ten thousand differences share one pattern” (as the Zen Master Hongzhi puts it) without changing them as they appear to us, we recognize their dream-like nature. Recognizing this dream-like nature we can awaken from our habitual reactions, lighten-up, and face ‘reality’ with playfulness and joy, just like a pleasant lucid night dream. When we are awake to this true nature, the world of the everyday expands and advances in a vivid display of delight.

Start Where You Are

On Wednesday the group randomly chose a card from the Lojong Deck, and (karmically!) it was the very first one which states: “First, train in the preliminaries.” The preliminaries are four reminders to put our awareness in the right attitude. They are:

1. The good fortune of being born human: How rare not to be born an ant or fern but instead with an amazing chance for enlightenment.
2. Reality of Death–it comes swiftly without warning.
3. The Entrapment of karma: that no matter what you do, good or bad, just further entwines you in the web of karma, the law of cause and effect.
4. The inevitably and intensity of suffering for all living beings, including oneself.

A little gloomy maybe for some, but these reminders promote a humble attitude with which to approach such teachings as the Buddhist affirmation of complete freedom. Complete perfect uncontrived enlightenment, say those who have achieved it, is freedom from suffering, karma, and even death.  So it is worth keeping these things in mind, or at least one of them at a time. As an exercise, choose one of these four to reflect on during the week. What an amazing opportunity to be human, better even than being born a god because the gods are having too good of a time, generally, to ponder enlightenment. Keeping death in mind produces an intensity of perception opposite that of our typical autopilot condition.  You don’t want to miss anything! Realization that even altruistic acts produce karma can spur one to practice. (In meditation (ideally), no karma is produced–old karma even gets burned up!) And the awareness of suffering, that no creatures can escape it, produces endless compassion for oneself and others.

Next week we will read Pema Chodron’s first chapter No Escape, No Problem in Start Where You Are.

Lojong Slogans

Over the next weeks the meditation group will be using Lojong slogans to orient our practice.  Lojong slogans are a group of 59 pithy slogans (brief phrases) commonly used in Tibetan Buddhism as reminders to guide practice, especially daily practice.  An example of one is: “Don’t try to be the fastest.”  We will read from Pema Chodron’s book, Start Where You Are and utilize a deck of cards which she created to organize the slogans.  These slogans were utilized by her teacher, the well-known Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in his teachings designed for Westerners.  Trungpa is famous for  founding Shambhala Centers across America and Europe and Naropa University in Boulder, CO. He was one of the original teachers  bringing the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Start Where You Are are Chodron’s commentaries on the slogans, bringing them to life and explaining them to a Western audience. Please join us!

Schedule for the 7pm Wednesday Night Meditation Group

Schedule for the 7pm Wednesday Night Meditation Group:

6:45   Doors Open/Set-Up

-       Arrivals, greetings, and introductions

7:1o   First Bell – “Call to Practice” (Roll down on Hanging Bell)

-       Silence begins

-       Take places for sitting practice

7:15   Sitting Meditation

7:35   Walking Meditation

7:45   Sitting Meditation

8:05   End of Meditation

-       Short  Break (set-up for discussion)

8:10   Announcements/Questions

8:15   Tea, Reading & Discussion

8:45   Dedication of Merit

Social Time

9:00   End

Please come and maintain a mindful attitude prior to the meditation period.  Please limit conversations in the entryway and maintain a modicum of silence in the Great Room.  It is customary to bow before entering the Zendo area.  Help for setting up at 6:45 is appreciated.  If you are new, please arrive a little early for for orientation and instruction.

Steve is Back from Great Vow!

I had many experiences over the last 9 months!  I am back after spending 8 months at Great Vow Zen Monastery and 1 month at Upaya Zen Center.  After leaving Portland, I felt compelled to go to Santa Fe and spent another month, for a practice period at Upaya.    I completed 10 week-long meditation retreats (one of them actually 10 days straight!) over this period.  Great Vow is located outside of Portland, OR.  Great Vow had a grueling schedule (waking before 4am every day) and lots of practice and meditation.  At Great Vow, they have adopted a Rinzai flavor, meaning that they focus on koans (non-intellectual enlightenment stories), breakthrough experiences known as kensho, and practice, practice, practice.  Meetings with the teacher were weekly but brief–maybe two minutes, and covered one aspect of practice at a time.  Many ceremonies, lots of meditation, and work practice.  Working in the kitchen and gardens was wonderful.  We baked our own bread, eating it every night for dinner with soup.  Meals were a meditation.  Work was a meditation.  They have many interesting projects.  One interesting project I was put in charge of was washing rocks!  For 3 days!  (it rains a lot there; they didn’t seem much different after.)  And it was a handful to supervise 20-somethings turning them over.  They are constructing a 25 foot tall granite Peace Pagoda donated by a Southeast Asian businessman.  They also have a beautiful Jizo Garden.  Jizo is the Bodhisattva of vows.  A primary practice there is listening meditation and I learned the incredible value of a silent Zendo.  The silence is like a fragile vellum that produces intense perceptual sensitivity–sounds shatter the envelope!

Upaya Zen Center is nestled in a beautiful mountain valley in Santa Fe, NM.  A much different approach there–a “soto” approach–the kind practiced here in Minnesota, known to be more relaxed.  Upaya means “skillful means” and they certainly emphasize many perspectives, many techniques, many paths–whatever it takes, in line with their founding teacher, Joan Halifax, who has a diverse history.  Meetings with the teacher here were long, a half hour or so, discussing many aspects of practice.  There is also an academic and intellectual approach there, although the practice itself, called “shikantaza” or “just sitting,” emphasizes open presence meditation.  The rinzai approach emphasizes concentration to penetrate the mystery, the soto style encourages merging with the great mystery.  Taking in and accepting whatever comes to mind or to the senses, and gently letting go.  Words like “warmth” and “love” were a gentle reminder that enlightenment is all around us all the time, that we only have the blinders on and just don’t see the whole reality.  Upaya was a respite from my hard work at Great Vow.

Different styles, different techniques, its all a function of the changing appearances of the 10,000 things.

From beginning to end the changing appearances and 10, 000 differences share one pattern,

Yet, receiving a gift of precious jade, some will only see its flaws.

Facing changes has its principles, the great function is without striving

The ruler stays in the kingdom, the general goes beyond the frontiers

The Zen school’s affair hits the mark straight and true

Transmit it in all directions without desiring to gain recognition.”

-a portion of the Guidepost of Silent Illumination, chanted daily at Great Vow.

Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness

Returning with Bliss-Bestowing Hands

. . . The spiritual source shines clear in the light, the branching streams flow on in the dark.  Grasping at things is surely delusion, according with sameness is still not enlightenment . . .

We will be investigating a spiritual poem from the Zen tradition known as the Sandokai or Harmony of Difference and Sameness. This fundamental poem was written by an 8th Century Chinese Zen Master, and is recited daily in many Buddhist Zen temples.  It is written in couplets, comparing and contrasting complementary pairs of opposites (such as light and dark) and seeking to point out their harmonious interaction.  It elucidates essential meditation experiences and offers commentary on the elements of spiritual experiences and basic Zen lore.  As a piece of Mahayana literature, emphasizing the non-duality of the sacred and profane, it dismantles the mistaken belief that just going along with the flow without taking action is enlightened behavior.  This kind of blind activity is often referred to in Zen stories as “living in a ghost cave.”  The infatuation of the void is not a final destination, but rather an embarkation depot–a springboard for diving back into life, penetrating more deeply into Reality.  Once a person experiences the complete interconnection of all phenomenon, tasting the primordial source from which all things spring forth, they are called, required even, to return to the world renewed, assisting in the transformation of each and every thing they touch–with “bliss bestowing hands.”

We will be elucidating the meaning of the Harmony of Difference and Sameness together at the Tuesday Night Group after a meditation period. With the taste of practice still on our tongues, we may be better able to fathom its essential meaning.  For our investigation we will be reading Branching Streams Flow on in the Darkness, by the famous Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki who came to America from Japan in the 1960′s.  This book is a collection of his Talks on the Sandokai. He is the author of the well-known book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, which helped transmit Zen to America.