DHARMA SPRING

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This episode is of a Zoom Meditation held recently, during which we kept company with a verse from the Tao Te Ching, noticing what arose to meet and accompany it in response. So please get comfy, settle in, join in the meditation yourself and notice what comes to meet and accompany you.

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Zen is a deconstructive practice. It's not about importing something or becoming someone else, but about allowing that which isn't you to fall away, your true being emerging and being revealed more and more fully in the process. This true being is utterly sufficient and infinitely capable, inherently possessing and able to access all that is needed - from the beginning, awakened, a buddha. And perhaps the most significant and startling discovery is that, despite everything that tells you otherwise, this has always been so. 

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This past weekend, my fellow teachers in The Open Source Zen tradition and I, along with a great gathering of members from the communities we serve, shared in a full-day online meditation retreat - a first, coming about in response to these particular times we are in. We kept company with the koan "Which was the true Chien?" (which can be found here), a story about lives unexpectedly being detoured and split and rearranged, parting and becoming whole, along with the questioning of which was, which is the true life. This curiosity and wonder seems a most promising place to be, as it is an open one - much truer than one limited and confined by certainty and knowing - more open to meeting the dynamic unknown of what is, then leaning and journeying more readily into the ambiguity and uncertainty of it all.  

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     Damei asked Ancestor Ma, "What is Buddha?"
     Ancestor Ma said, "This very heart-mind is Buddha."

Awakening. Just as you are. Now. Here. That's it. Whatever your state of being, state of mind, experience being experienced - not dressing it up, not dressing it down; not dismissing it, not thrusting it forth; not minimizing, not exaggerating. Letting it be, and being it fully, just as it is. Awakening. Where else could it be other than here? What else could it be other than this?

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Over the past several weeks, the world we have have known - collectively and individually - has changed and transformed in significant, drastic and irreversible ways. Throughout the course of time, sudden and unexpected changes such as these have come again and again, similar in their shock and devastation while being particular to their times and circumstances. Throughout it all, as the poet Tu Fu states in the poem below concerning a devastation of his own particular time, rivers and mountains continue; that which was before endures, remains, and continues on afterward. Certainly not in the exact same way, and certainly not unchanged, but continuing on nevertheless.

What rivers and mountains of our time, what rivers and mountains of your very life, are still flowing and standing tall now, in the midst of this all, and how will they continue on?

Spring Landscape

The country in ruins, rives and mountains
continue. The city grows lush with spring.

Blossoms scatter tears for us, and all these
separations in a bird's cry startle the heart.

Beacon fires three-months ablaze: by now
a mere letter's worth ten thousand in gold,

and worry's thinned my hear to such white
confusion I can't even keep this hairpin in.

                                             -Tu Fu
                                             taken from Awakened Cosmos by David Hinton

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Clouded waters become transparent, the bottom of the waterway can clearly be seen along with fish swimming about, and a dolphin is spotted for the first time in decades; satellite images show smog in industrial areas that was densely present just weeks ago has nearly disappeared; the steady hum and roar of traffic has faded significantly, bright birdsong and silence now fill the air; all as a result of human activity being curtailed, restricted and altogether stopped, to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. A powerful lesson to be learned here: we humans are just one part of the vast ecology of existence. When we find, honor and settle into our place alongside everything else, inhabiting our role fully and in appropriate measure - not holding back while also not wantonly overstepping our bounds - we deeply support, nourish and sustain that vast ecology, to the benefit of each of the 10,000 things.

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While driving my son to a get together with his friends one day, we were talking about Star Wars - a regular happening in our world. This particular conversation was part of the inspiration for this talk; specifically, Anakin confusing non-attachment and detachment. It's an easy mistake to make, and if we remain unaware of our own doing so, might it lead us to the Dark Side? 

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My colleagues and I visited the Asian Art Museum some years back, and a particular piece in an exhibition called Seduction: Japan's Floating World drew me in, inspiring this talk. At the heart, it's about how the passions of life - those that ignite us, those that confound us, those that plague us - are not inherently hindrances and obstacles, but rather the very medicine needed to fuel and make possible our awakening.

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On the occasion of the Tibetan New Year, a brief talk about the intersection of Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism, followed by a meditation flowing along with words from teachers of the Nyingma tradition, past and present. Happy Year of the Iron Mouse! Losar Tashi Delek!

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In Zen, we take up practices that have come to us from other cultures, other continents, other times, all in order to connect with our inherent, true nature, that way of being that has always been with us and is already ours. Engaging with something that is foreign and unnatural as a way of realizing that which is already here, naturally, intimately - how can that be so?

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