The Daily Zen Teisho

Bodhidharma is considered the founder of Zen, bringing the teaching to China from India in 520 AD. The story of his life and teachings is almost mythological in that most of his teachings were not written down. 

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Occasionally, readers write that they have difficulty understanding some of the journals and seem a bit perplexed about what to do when they hit something they don’t immediately get. What I like about this selection is that Yuan-hsien hands us some very concrete directions about “looking into a saying.”

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Whenever we are reading part of a letter to a practitioner written hundreds of years ago, we are attempting to bridge time and cultural barriers. Because we all share the same sense of adventure and quest for truth, no matter how many years intervene, we share the same spark that drives explorers everywhere.

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While this method of “turning the light around” seems very simple and direct, there is still some room for further translation.  All the various approaches to meditation seem to have a technique that gives us something to hold onto: counting one’s breath, then watching one’s breath;  using mantra, asking “Who am I?”; visualization, all as means to focus one’s attention. 

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Yokoyama was one of the most unusual Soto Zen monks whose life reminds one of another ordained monk, Ryokan, who is best known for his poetry and love of playing with children. Neither one of them served as head of a temple or trained other monks. Their choice to live without ceremony or pretension demonstrated a purity of practice expressed through everyday life

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To say too much about Taoism can interfere with another’s own direct experience of intuitive understanding. Having read this piece many times in the past, I see how often it takes multiple readings to reveal deeper insights.

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Shosan was born into a warrior family in 1579 and lived through one of the most war-torn times of Japanese history. At age 12, he was adopted by a member of a seventy-man horse troop and thus began his life as a samurai.

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Reading this piece reminds me of listening to a piece of classical music. Each movement transitions so skillfully into the next that we are barely aware that we have just entered a new room filled with new tempos and phrasing, all skillfully balanced around the theme of zazen as the bedrock of our lives.

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Some pieces are overwhelming as we try to absorb the depth communicated. Ma-tsu is delivering a sermon to monks who, just like us, have been practicing for various numbers of years.

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There are numerous sutras, teachings of the Masters, and enlightenment stories in the history of Buddhism and Zen. There are times when we read these writings and feel a million miles away from enlightenment, Nirvana, or equanimity.

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