In this meditation I guide participants in objectless awareness, or awareness of awareness. This is the practice of “just sitting” in our tradition. We rest our attention in awareness itself, nonabiding in any object. This is the direct experience of freedom in impermanence, nirvana in samsara – the dharma gate of ease and joy.

This talk was given as part of the Zen Buddhist service for my mother (and other sangha members whose mother had recently passed away). My mother passed on the 12/4/19, the day before her 96th birthday. The eulogy takes the form of me speaking directly to my mother, whose photograph was placed on the alter.

This talk is a commentary on the chapter “The Razor’s Edge” by Joko Beck. It distinguishes the activity of the self-centred self, which is the attempt to control and resist impermanence in order to avoid feeling emotional pain from what Joko called embeddedness in life. When we are embedded in life there is no separation and hence no problem. We allow our lives to flow. However, when we feel threatened or hurt, we are thrown out of embeddedness and back into separateness (duality). We need to join together these broken pieces to become whole again. How? By experiencing the pain, we are trying to avoid. This is walking the razor’s edge. Practice is walking this edge. But we don’t want to do this. We want to fix the problem, solve it, get rid of it.

Experiencing is the practice of waking the razors edge. The first step is to become ware of what it is we are feeling. To walk the edge is to experience the pain and realise we can endure and survive it. We have to arrive at the emotion before we can move on. “When we are experiencing nonverbally we are walking the razor’s edge – we are the present moment”. Walking the razor’s edge is what Zen practice is. “In fact the enlightened life is simply being able to walk that edge all the time”. The paradox: only in walking the razor's edge, in experiencing the fear directly, can we know what it is to have no fear”. Walking the razor’s edge is how peace is found. Experiencing the body and breath is being on the razor’s edge. How does the razor’s edge relate to enlightenment? It is enlightenment.

Keep the question with you: Right now, am I walking the razor’s edge?

This talk commences with some words on the act of terrorism that had just occurred in New Zealand on the previous Friday. I then share some of my reflections on the chapter True Suffering and False Suffering from Everyday Zen. It begins with a discussion of the absolute and the relative together as it relates to suffering. I then discuss the basic distinction between true and false suffering as a way of practicing with suffering. I introduce my own interpretation of primary and secondary suffering, with secondary suffering being a form of resistance to primary suffering. And as long as we are caught in a separate self, we will also experience a background feeling of unease or lack. The talk concludes by encouraging us to be this impermanent moment that we are. The way to the ending of suffering, paradoxically, by fully being our suffering.

In this talk I give a commentary on Barry Magid’s dharma poem "I am my body". I think Barry's writing is addressing two basic issues:

1) the tendency in religion/spirituality to seek to transcend the impermanence of our body (our incarnation) and seek permanence somewhere else other than where we are; and

2) to transcend the Cartesian mind/body duality we still tend to get caught in. The expression, I am my body, seeks to transcend this duality.  There is no separation between me and my perceptions of the world. You are the sound. You are the colour. You are the taste. If you like, the world is your body.  We might therefore say I am my bodyworld.

I think the reason why Barry states “I am my body” etc., is to undermine the tendency we have, to relate to the body as if it is something I have or possess like a house or a car.  It is important to distinguish between "having" and "being".  Even the phrase "I am my body" can't completely escape this sense that there is an "I" that owns a vehicle called a body.  However, the lineage I belong to, the Soto Zen lineage of Dogen, is quite explicit - there is no "owner" of the vehicle. Hence, I don't "have" a body - I am my body.  

Now it needs to be made clear that the body we are referring to is the lived experienced body.  Not a body as object but the body as subject.  Hence, my awareness is always embodied. The observer is just another attribute of my body - we might say my body is both aware and orientating us in the world.  The body is also aware of being aware.  Again, be careful not to reify the observer or witness. Awareness is no-thing. The body is both the percept and the awareness of the percept.  The capacity for self-reflection is what enables us to make meaning and tell stories about our experience.  The experience of the body is also the sense of presence. Being here (in a location) and being this now moment.

This talk reflects on the nature of the observing self as described by Joko Beck. The observing self is distinguished from the conceptual or personal self. In a sense it is a knowing or awareness that is embodied. We are aware of being aware. This is the miracle. This body is aware. We can see and describe our body as object, but we cannot describe the body as subject. The body as subject cannot be observed. The observing self is no other than the body as subject. We can describe our experience of the contents of awareness but not that which is the experiencer. Awareness is the light or the lamp that “lights up” these contents. Practice is to illuminate these contents and explore them at greater and greater depth. When we are “lost in thought” we have fallen asleep, and we have lost the observing function. We have identified with the thought. In order to “wake-up” from the dream we return to the observing function. We wake up to the “wonder”. What is this wonder?

“This space of wonder- entering into heaven – opens when we are no longer caught up in ourselves: when it is no longer “I”, but “Thou”. There is no barrier. The gate is really no-gate. The barriers are the veils – the dualistic emotions and constructs that blind us to the wonder that is always here. This very body is Buddha!

I share my reflections on the chapter “What Practice Is” from Joko’s first book Everyday Zen. It discusses the relationship between sitting practice and everyday life practice, focusing on “thought labelling” and “experiencing”. It finishes with a discussion of common thought traps that we all at times fall into.

Do you know your core fears? Fear can alert is to our patterns of attachment to the apparent separate self. In this talk I explore how we practice with our fears on the level of the mind (thoughts/core beliefs) and the body (the memory or residues of past fears that have accumulated over our lives).

Recorded 20.05.18.

If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate

In Buddhism attachment is often seen as the root cause of suffering and non-attachment is seen as the solution. In classical Buddhism this took the form of monastic communities. Obviously, this is not the solution for lay practitioners. So, what is the understanding of non-attachment that is helpful for lay-practitioners? This talk discusses how dwelling in non-abiding awareness is the form of non-attachment that liberates us from attachment and therefore suffering. The core form of attachment is attachment to egoic self. The egoic self doesn’t have to die – only our attachment to the egoic self.

Recorded 15.04.18.

If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate

In inquiry practice we explore the barriers that get in the way of us waking up. In this talk we look at the need to make a descent down into the cellars of our “Guest House”. That which we resist, persists – and that which we lock away tends never to go away. So, we make our descent to recognise and acknowledge the prisoners that have been locked away, often in childhood. We then give them a voice and allow them to share their burden and then with our help release their burden – freeing up the life energy that previously had been frozen in time.

Recorded 14.04.18.

If you found Andrew’s talks or meditations helpful, please consider donating to Ordinary Mind Zen Mid North Coast at https://www.ordinarymind.com.au/donate