Adult practice: Part 12
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Shortly after arriving at Antaiji, one of my later
Dharma brothers wrote in the Antaiji yearbook: "Antaiji is not a school.
Even though people here may be given a task, it is still up to them to
solve it. Each one of us has to search for himself, penetrate it by
himself. Nobody will teach you here. So the questions is: How much, in
what way, will you knock on the door that you want to be opened?"
Three
years later, he writes "before I realize it, I am fast asleep, my sitting
posture has crumbled, and - once I correct my posture and try to return to
zazen - I start thinking again."
So how did he work with that problem
once he discovered it? The next year, 1991, he writes again in the
yearbook:
"When I sit in zazen I want to do work. Or I sleep. When
I am the tenzo (cook), I would rather sit in zazen. And even though I know
that zazen consist of upright sitting, because of the pain in my legs I
start to shift and my posture crumbles, and sooner or later both my body
and mind will give in to deluded thoughts and sleepiness... Why can I
sleep peacefully during zazen!? When I say that I must not sleep during
zazen, am I not saying it comparing myself to the others? And when I say
that I am NOT sleeping because my eyes are wide open, isn't it just that I
am fooling myself, really being lost in delusion? ... I know the answer.
But in reality, I don't know anything. What I know is only my intellectual
understanding, fashioned in a way to please my ego... Unless I really
start to practice and become one with upright sitting, I will only waste
the time of my life in the clouds of my eyes."
I wonder where this
strictness that my Dharma brother had with himself and his practice went
some years later? If someone is so clear about his own problem, why would
he say later that it was all the teachers fault? Was his reflection on his
practice and his self-criticism also only some intellectual affair that
had nothing to do with the actions in everyday life? Many of the more
intellectually inclined people face the problem that practice exists more
in their heads than it is manifested in their bodies. Whatever his problem
was, my Dharma brother took a straight look at it once a year, when he
wrote for the yearbook. Failures in the kitchen, fights with his juniors,
bitching behind the abbot's back and being yelled at later when the abbot
hears it... all of what he wrote is interesting for us who do the same
practice and walk the same path. Although I am critizing my Dharma brother
for what he writes, I can learn from his articles even now, more than ten
years after he wrote them.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time
and space here to quote all that which would be interesting to read.
Still, we are not talking about my Dharma brother's personal problems
here, but about a problem that all of us practing here at Antaiji and
maybe in many other places elsewhere are facing. If this problem isn't
solved, we are wasting our time with infantile practice. This has happened
to too many people before, and that is why I should like to continue to
focus on the problem for a little longer. The problem why it is so
difficult to practice, and what practice is in the first place.
I
want to make some more quotes from the Antaiji yearbook. First from
another of my seniors, who was the head monk at the time, from the same
Antaiji yearbook of 1991:
"When we are busy in our daily lifes, we
want to do zazen. When we do zazen, we start to sleep, or we start to
think, and we would rather cook in the kitchen or work outside, or maybe
we want to return home to our families... Counting the breath or
concentrating on the koan of 'character MU' is disliked here. But without
making any effort people will just fall asleep in a place like here where
we do not use the kyosaku (wake-up stick). How long will we have to wait
until we wake up by our own? And once you wake up, you are all tired from
sleeping in a crumbled posture. You do kinhin (walking meditation),
refresh your mind, and sit again: Only to sleep once more... When you
sleep, you can't do anything. Have you really read Dogen Zenji's
Fukanzazengi (both 'Rufu-bon' and 'Tenpukuji-bon'), Shobogenzo Zazengi,
Shobogenzo Zazenshin? Have you really thought about it yourself? And do
you really sit yourself? ... Have you been trying for a 250 thousand
times. And don't laugh about Keizan Zenji's Zazenyojinki either. Shure,
there are times when the pain in your legs and hips plays tricks on you.
But can you really excuse yourself with the pain? Where does the strength
that transcends your conscious effort, the strength that neither comes nor
goes come from? As long as you haven't clarfied this, don't sleep so
peacefully!
Until you reach this state, your great problem won't allow
you to rest and sleep. Once you reach here, your problem will be solved
and you can sleep peacefully. That is ok as it is. On the other hand, you
will also have to deal directly with a new problem that will arise just
here and now. It is said that zazen is the true form of the self. How
comes that this 'true form of the self' is always fast asleep during
zazen!?"
Reading the articles of these two Antaiji monks, we can
understand what the practioners at that time were discussing in their free
time after evening zazen. There was always some kind of "Dharma combat"
going on over tea or other refreshments at night. Not the kind of ritual
"Dharma combat ceremony" that is practiced in some Zen centers of
course.
"When at work, you want to do zazen. When siting in zazen,
you would rather be at work.." - both monks address this same problem. I
think they are talking about their own problem, but at the same time it
seems as if they were trying to appeal to some invisible other person: "It
is said that zazen is the true form of the self - how comes that I am
sleeping during zazen, although I am doing my best?" If this question is
directed to anyone else but ourselves (but who could that be in the first
place?), we will have to wait forever for an answer. It is our
responsibility to find it. Unfortunately, the head monk himself left
Antaiji the following year, continuing to criticize "Antaiji practice" for
years to come. The point is that there is no such thing as "Antaiji
practice" - it is your practice. When you practice at Antaiji, your
practice consist of "creating Antaiji". So don't blame anyone for the
Antaiji you created. Don't blame anyone for the life you've created for
yourself.
Let me talk more concretely about the practice that is at
the center of our lifes here: Zazen. When the head monk said that
"counting the breath or concentrating on the koan of 'character MU' is
disliked here", what did he really mean? Last month I already wrote that
neither Dogen Zenji nor Sawaki Roshi or anyone else prohibited
concentrating on the breath. Sawaki Roshi even quotes Keizan Zenji's
admonition to count the breath when it is too difficult to concentrate.
And in the "Gakudoyojinshu", Dogen Zenji deals with the koan of character
MU. Of course, Dogen Zenji does not treat it as one out of a thousand of
questions which have to be solved one by one by the student, who meets
with his teacher daily in the "dokusan room" (this form of practice can be
done in a Rinzai Zen monastery). After quoting the koan of character MU,
Dogen Zenji continues in the Gakudoyojinshu:
"Can you think
character Mu? Can you grasp it? Really, there is nothing to get a hold on
there! So I ask you, please, let go for an instant. Let it go and take a
good look: Who are you? What are your daily affairs? What is your life and
death? What is this Buddha-Dharma in the first place?"
From this it
should be clear that working with the koan of character Mu for Dogen Zenji
means to let go and take a straight look at oneself. This of course is
something that isn't disliked at Antaiji, but quite on the opposite
absolutely necessary for each of our's practice. Both working in this way
with a koan as well as concentrating on the breath are necessary parts of
the whole landscape of our zazen practice.
I think it is
interesting when we read both Sawaki Roshi's admonitions for zazen as well
as Dogen Zenji's Fukanzazengi
or Shobogenzo
Zazengi that they devote quite some time to talk about the physical
posture, but then use only a few words to talk about the breath and mind.
In both the Fukanzazengi
and Zazengi
Dogen talks in detail about where to sit, the cloths and food, the posture
of the thumbs and even the tongue in the mouth. In contrast, about the
breath and mind he has only this to say:
"Breathe through your
nose. ...(First) exhale fully and take a breath. Sit stably in samadhi.
Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Beyond-thinking.
This is the way of doing zazen in accord with the dharma." (Zazengi)
"Breathe softly through your nose. Once you have adjusted your
posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left,
and settle into steady, immovable sitting. Think of not thinking. Not
thinking: What kind of thinking is that? Letting thoughts go
(Nonthinking). This is the essential art of zazen." (Fukanzazengi -
Rufubon)
That is all! But how can it possibly be all!?
I think
the reason is as follows: We are usually talking about adjusting the
physical posture, then adjusting the breath, and lastly adjusting the
mind. The problem is that it is a mistake to think about these "three
adjustments" as seperate. The reason why Dogen Zenji can only say "breathe
through your nose and think of not-thinking - how do you think of
not-thinking? ...beyond-thinking" is not that the issue is fundamentally
beyond words. When Dogen Zenji talked about adjusting the physical
posture, he already said everything. Not because the body is more
important than breath or mind, but because it is one with breath and mind.
When we start with adjusting our body, we must not forget that we are
already adjusting our breath and mind at the same time. Adjusting the
breath and mind does not come afterwards, after we have found the right
way to sit in the posture. This shows just how important it is to sit in
the right way - what Dogen Zenji simple calls "upright sitting". In the
Tenpukuji-version of the Fukanzazengi, which came before the
Rufubon-version, young Dogen devoted just a little bit more to the state
of the mind in zazen:
"When you have adjusted your physical posture
and your breath, be conscious of the thoughts that arise in your mind: Let
go off each thought the moment it arises. Don't let yourself be driven
around by your surroundings. Just be yourself - this is the art of zazen."
Put into even simpler words: Sit straight and let thoughts
go!
The reason why the posture is valued so much, using Sawaki Roshi's
expression, is because we manifest Buddha by twisting our raw human flesh
- we won't become buddhas by twisting our brains. As long as we reflect
about our practice only in our heads, it won't mean anything. That is why
Sawaki Roshi says "Zen isn't spiritual, we do it with our body" or "the
point is what you do with your muscles and bones". Only on this basis can
he say that zazen is the "self making the self into the self".
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