... Chapter 13 ....... Contents ...
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| 12. To you who is wondering if your zazen has been good for something. |
What's zazen good for?
Absolutely nothing! This 'good for nothing' has got to sink into your flesh and bones until you actually practice what is truly good for nothing. Until then, your zazen is just good for nothing.
To throw yourself completely into doing that which is good for absolutely nothing: isn't that worth a try?
So you say you'd like to try doing zazen in order to become "a better person". Become "a better person" by doing zazen? How ridiculous! How could a person ever become something better?
You say: "I want to become a better human being by doing zazen."
Zazen isn't learning how to be a human. Zazen is to stop being a human.
They say, "Zen means having an empty mind, right?"
You won't have an empty mind until you're dead.
They think that with zazen everything gets better. Foolish! Zazen means forgetting 'better' and 'worse'.
You are not going to earn any tips doing zazen.
The day is as long as a child's day.
The mountain is as quiet as the eternal past.
Zazen is unsatisfying. Unsatisfying for whom? For the ordinary person. People are never satisfied.
In our school, zazen isn't so exciting. Ordinary people are always looking for excitement - as in sports, gambling and horse races. What makes them so popular? It's the suspense of winning or losing.
Isn't it self-evident? How could that which is eternal and infinite ever satisfy human desires?
How could that which fills the whole universe ever fit into an ordinary person's idea of 'satisfaction'?
Unsatisfying: simply practicing zazen.
Unsatisfying: realizing zazen with this body.
Unsatisfying: absorbing zazen into your flesh and blood.
Being watched by zazen, cursed by zazen, blocked by zazen, dragged around by zazen, every day crying tears of blood - isn't that the happiest form of life you can imagine?
Somebody asks, "I can understand that during zazen we're buddhas. But does that mean that we are only ordinary people when we are not doing zazen?"
When a thief steals, he's a thief. If for a moment he isn't stealing anything, does that mean that he isn't a thief anymore?
When you eat in order to steal, and when you eat in order to practice zazen, is it the same thing or is it different?
Somebody who steals once isn't trusted anymore. Somebody who practices zazen once practices eternal zazen.
Zazen is really an amazing thing. When you are sitting, it doesn't seem to you at all as if this zazen were such a good thing. But when you see it from the outside, there's nothing that could be so majestic.
With anything else, it's usually the other way around. Looked at objectively, there's not much to it. You're the only one who thinks what you are doing is so terribly important.
The reason the buddha-dharma fills the whole universe is because it doesn't offer anything you can grasp onto. Making a constant effort isn't difficult if you don't grasp onto anything [jôshôjin mushotoku]
True practice without profit [mushotoku] means practicing as the wooden man and the stone woman [footnote].
Zazen is transparent. It has no flavor. When we give zazen a flavor, it becomes something for ordinary people.
Zazen isn't so fashionable. What's fashionable is what lies in the nature of the ordinary person: competition over winning and losing like in sports.
Zazen isn't fashionable because it's flavorless and ungraspable. It doesn't interest little children.
The immense, transparent sky isn't the same thing as a bonsai tree or a garden dwarf [footnote: lit. "kokeshi", a Japanese wooden doll that Japanese usually put in the tokonoma alcove (originally to remind them of babies that died shortly after birth or that they aborted)]: it is infinitely wide. Nonetheless, people prefer to trim around on their bonsais or to tend to their garden dwarves.
You want seasoning for you consciousness, that's why you aren't impressed by the transparent, tasteless buddha-dharma.
Some say that they have too many disturbing thoughts during zazen. We only become conscious of the disturbing thoughts because the waves calm and the blood congestion sinks.
You say "When I do zazen, I get disturbing thoughts!"
Foolish! The fact is that it's only when you do zazen that you become conscious of your disturbing thoughts. When you dance around with your disturbing thoughts, you don't notice them at all.
When a mosquito bites you during zazen, you notice it right away. But when you're dancing and a flea bites your balls, you don't notice it at all.
A layman asked: "I've been practicing zazen for a long time, but I still have many disturbing thoughts, and I don't know what to do about it. Only once, during an air raid, when bombs were landing nearby, I sat down in zazen and didn't have a single disturbing thought. I'd never had such good zazen. However, afterwards everything was like it was before. Isn't there any way to practice a zazen like that again?"
Sawaki Rôshi answered: "Yes: Kôan Zen. Someone gives you a kôan and yells you into a corner. Then there's no room for disturbing thoughts. But nonetheless, afterwards everything will be like it was before. You've just pushed your disturbing thoughts aside for a moment.
"In Dôgen Zenji's just sitting [shikantaza], on the other hand, it's about the complete manifestation of your true form. Your ugliness is exposed, and you see yourself for who you really are. And you realize that you're constantly producing disturbing thoughts, just like a crab blowing bubbles.
"In reality, it's a merit of zazen to recognize that we you are full of disturbing thoughts. When you're completely preoccupied with something, nothing else comes to mind. With a drink in your hand and your arm around a geisha, you don't feel the flea biting you at all. For that instant all your thoughts are pushed aside. During zazen, though, you're so aware of this flea that you don't know what to do with yourself. Because in zazen, you aren't numb. You've become transparent and clear."
Isn't it natural that in our lives we will experience all kinds of psychological phenomena?
We have all kinds of thoughts during zazen, and we wonder if that's correct. The fact that we can ask ourselves this proves that the nature of zazen is pure, and that this pure nature is looking us in the eyes. When we dance around drunk in our underwear, we don't ask ourselves any questions.
In zazen, this buddha and this ordinary person are united. Because of this, the eyes of buddha can see just how crude we are - in light of the fact that we are all originally buddhas.
It's only the ordinary person in you who is disturbed by disturbing thoughts.
Don't whine. Don't stare into space. Just sit!
"Senshi practiced with Yakuzan for 30 years to clarify this single matter." [Shôbôgenzô Sanbyakusoku] What matter? The fact that zazen alone is enough.
... Chapter 13 ....... Contents ...