How Dedicated Are You?

An amazing example of dedication to your practice:

Leaving Your Mark

Discovering Your Master

A couple of things to consider as the day, and weekend, winds down.

There are some things that just can not be changed and we must simply learn to accept them.

Do you think you can take over the
universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and
   sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard,
   sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and
   sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes
   down.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes,
excesses, and complacency.

Tao Te Ching

Avoid extremes, including the extreme of complacency. Being complacent with where you are and what you are will bring you no closer to who you really are. Accept that there are extremes, accept that the extremes are self-defining, but then avoid them and walk the middle way.

This doesn't mean, though, that one should always avoid the edges in life, always hiding safely in the middle and amongst the masses. NO! NO! and NO! I believe that the only way to grow, and the best way to find meaning in life, is to spend a great part of that life on the outer edges of our envelope, in whatever area we have dedicated our life. It's at that outer edge that you find Life, it's at that outer edge where numbing and debilitating routine and habit are nowhere to be found. It's at that outer edge where you can glimpse, from time to time, that unknown reality just beyond reach.

Some people look for that edge on their zafu. Others in a sports uniform, others in a lab coat, others in books in libraries. There are countless ways of living on the edge. But, in every case, before you start that search you have to prepare yourself first.

Love yourself and watch -
Today, tomorrow, always.
First establish yourself in the way,
Then teach,
And so defeat sorrow.
To straighten the crooked
You must first do a harder thing -
Straighten yourself.
You are your only master.
Who else?
Subdue yourself,
And discover your master.

...

Mischief is yours.
Sorrow is yours.
But virtue is also yours,
And purity.
You are the source
Of all purity and impurity.
No one purifies another.
Never neglect your work
For another's,
However great his need.
Your work is to discover your work
And then with all your heart
To give yourself to it.

Dhammapada

Some of the work we need to do in this life is internal, that search for our master, that journey towards who we are. No one can do it for you and you can't do it for anyone else. Discovery often entails long, lonely expeditions into the unknown, whether those are physical or mental expeditions, whether it is a trek outside towards the North Pole or a trek inside during a long silent retreat.

Only the strong survive, those who give all of themselves to the search. But that doesn't mean the weak are forbidden from searching, no. Everyone starts out weak at some point in their lives, it's just that the driven ones understand that it all begins with the decision to straighten yourself — to straighten your way of thinking, to straighten your body, to straighten you attitude, to straighten your emotions... to straighten every aspect of who you are.

Once you do that, once you commit with all your heart that you will do whatever is necessary, then discoveries will be yours.

Dancing Dichotomy

Really, really, really crappy weather today (the Fog) so except for one quick excursion to the grocery store for some beans, tofu, and garlic to add to dinner, i locked myself in the house all day to stare it down, wait it out, and dare it to offer its best. While doing so a good portion of my recent posts all tumbled together as i sat and did some reading.


T.S. Eliot offered this a few days ago: "Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

And while i didn't write anything about it (even though i should have), i mentioned that i was reading Geshe Tashi Tsering's book Relative Truth, Ultimate Truth, in which the discussion is about understanding and simultaneously living the dual aspects of who we are: the relative white, male, educated, US citizen (in my case) and the ultimate awareness that is all.

And then, Dōgen offered this: "Determination to see all things as the really are, free of preconceived ideas, results in emergence of true practice."


These may all seem to be unrelated but in hindsight they appear to me to follow a very clear and distinct path. Eliot was right, there is only the dance. On the relative level that means life is dancing with you, all the time, everywhere, non-stop. Your job throughout your life is to figure out how you want to participate in that dance, on what level, with what level of sincerity, in what types of activities, with what level of acceptance and/or denial. At this level, there is a you and there is the dance.

But that's only half of the dichotomy. On the ultimate level there is no you, no me, no others, no life; there is nothing but the dance. There is only the dance and that dance is everything. It is all that every was, all that is, all that every will be, now, then, to come. It is all of that and none of that because in that dance, there is no now, then, or to come. There is no was, is, or will be. There is only the dance, manifesting as me here, you there, and Joe Blow over there. How it manifests is completely beyond our control, it just is. That is the dance — and you can get a ring side seat to watch it perform if you find somewhere to "sit," peak through those cracks between two thoughts, and then simply let yourself die.


But how in the world are we supposed to do that. Life is just too damn messy and it plays too many games with our heads. One day the weather is clear, the next it's drizzling, and then the Fog settles in for a stay. Some people make you happy others piss you off to no end. Some days you're content with what you have others you want the whole world. Some days you could run a marathon others you can barely make yourself crawl out of bed, and if you didn't have to go to the bathroom so bad you wouldn't.

It takes practice, lots and lots and lots and lots of practice. But, as Dōgen said, when you persist, when you take a vow to continue the search, to continue peaking through the cracks, when you swear on your parents grave that you will not give up, that you will persevere and endure until you can see all things as the really are, free of preconceived ideas... then, true practice appears.

And as Czeslaw Milosz said, this is when you are finally able "to see, purely and simply, without name, without expectations, fears, or hopes."

It's this true practice, this pure practice, this simple practice that all this lead me to today. I was reading Ajahn Sumedho's The Four Noble Truths again (for about the two-thousandth time). Being that he was a teacher of Phillip Moffitt, i then switched to Moffitt's book Dancing With Life, which is based on Ajahn Sumedho's teachings on the Four Noble Truths.

In Dancing, Moffitt says:

"Even under the best of circumstances, life is challenging, and much of the time it is difficult. It is always uncertain, constantly changing, and mostly out of your control. Whether it is taking you on a wonderful ride or stepping on your toes, life will move you with the rhythm and in the direction of its own unfolding, irregardless of your best intentions. Life dances and you must dance with it. This is the necessary price and mysterious gift of being incarnate – alive in a body.

"If life is going to dance with you, then what kind of dance partner do you wish to be? Can you have a conscious, peaceful relationship with your own life's dance as characterized by a sense of ease, empowerment, and meaning? Certainly it is possible to affect the course of your life. Hard work, discipline, and self-development enable you to be a better partner when life comes to dance, but finding a way to be at ease with the dance itself is a crucial skill in finding freedom and meaning in life."

Necessary price and mysterious gift? What an interesting phrase. I read the book early last year, but did no more than read it, just to ingest the contents. At the time i didn't try to think about it, to reflect on what was being said, to digest the contents. I didn't try to figure out how to apply what Moffitt was pointing out to my life, to my personal dance.

I think i'm ready to do that now. I think i'm going to spend the next four months working through the book again, slowly this time, one section, one Truth, at a time, taking a full month for each to digest the teachings and then to sit and watch how the "nutrients" pass through my system.

Exposing Yourself In Public

In yesterday's post i said that the life of a henro is simple: get up, walk, Be, go to bed. Not that it should surprise me in any way, but i noticed today that Dōgen explains how a henro should approach life on the henro trail a little better than i ever do. ;-)

In the Yuibutsu Yobutsu (Only A Buddha Can Transmit To A Buddha) chapter of his Shōbōgenzō, he says:

One should have no goal of enlightenment but train for training's sake alone. When we see a man we should just see a man, not a set of discriminative values. When we look at the moon and flowers, it is just the moon and flowers we should see, not some distorted picture created to conform to a preconceived idea.

Experience spring as spring and autumn as autumn. Accept both the beauty and loneliness of both. Even though change in the seasons and within nature itself is inevitable some do not accept this, and try, by all means available, to avoid it. The pure in mind, however, do not isolate these thoughts, but realize them also to be part of themselves. One may falsely believe that it is oneself that hears the birds sing in the spring and sees the leaves fall in autumn. This is not the case.

The state of no mind, or undefiled mind, can neither be self induced nor is it innate. This means that the four elements and five skhandas are neither part of ourselves nor others. Although it is commonly believed among ordinary people that the mind moved by the moon and flowers is the true mind, in actuality this is untrue and contrary to the Dharma. Determination to see all things as the really are, free of preconceived ideas, results in emergence of true practice.

(my underline)

That's it. When i say the job of a henro is to simply walk and Be, i'm not suggesting that a brain dead robot henro is the ideal. No, i'm saying what Dōgen said in that sentence i underlined above. And when done well, meaning intentionally, with a pure heart, and to the best of your ability, the result is true practice, a true pilgrimage, not just a walk around the island so that you can have a blog saying "been there, done that," like that goofball Dave who runs the shikokuhenrotrail website.

Don't avoid anything. Don't specifically search for anything. Just walk for walking's sake alone. Accept Life as it is and as it comes to you. Expose yourself to Life in all it's goodness and badness. Dare to be vulnerable to all experiences that come to you. Don't run towards them and don't run away from them.

The purpose of the walk is no more and no less than walking out of the shell of who you were and into the world of who you are. That only happens if you are willing to be exposed, and willing to accept the resulting experiences for what they truly are and not for what you think they are.

Longing To Be

Sitting quietly
Longing with all that i am
To be and no more


Someone sent me a few pictures of the henro trail on Shikoku this evening (thank you) and it has made the ache in my heart to go back so strong i don't know how i'll sleep tonight. If you haven't been a henro and walked all or part of Shikoku's trail it may be difficult to understand the feeling, but i get endless emails throughout the year, year in and year out, of people who have been there, and write to say nothing more than that they now understand and that they too can't wait until their next chance to go over.

Here's where it all begins, at Temple One.



The trail starts there, at a nondescript little temple on the edge of a residential neighborhood. If you're lucky the cherry trees have started blooming, bringing their beauty to your first day and offering their shared happiness with new beginnings as you set out to discover the person hidden under years and years of routine and habit.

Interestingly, though, the tools you will use to chisel through those layers of routine and habit are just other routines and habits. However, the new routines and habits will be guided by a constant mindfulness, as opposed to the complete blindness that allowed the original layers to obscure your life. Mindfulness of each step you take, each breath you take, each morsel of food you put in your mouth, each swallow, each sunrise, each sunset, each word spoken to you, each word you speak in return. Mindfulness of as many of each of the seconds that will pass through your life during the walk as you are capable of watching. This mindfulness is a powerful tool and will transform your life.

From this small temple you walk morning to evening, day after day, for a month and a half, sun, rain, hot, cold, hungry, starving, thirsty, tired, sore, happy, angry, depressed, ecstatic, with a half dozen other people, with a dog, alone, uphill, downhill, on flat endless roads, in the mountains, by the sea, through the woods, through rice fields, through farmers yards, through residential areas, through small villages, through major cities, morning to evening, day after day for a month and a half.

The life of a henro is simple: get up, walk, Be, go to bed. Every day. This becomes a habit very quickly, more quickly than you realize, and the habit becomes so strong that when you don't walk you feel as if something is wrong.



It can be hard, it can be a struggle. But there are handrails along the way, and as in this picture they are well worn from decades and decades of use. As you walk around the island you don't have to worry about where to go or how to go. Your job as a henro is simply to trust that the handrails take you to the next temple and to follow them as you walk along.

Some handrails are metal, some are sidewalks, some are 4 lane highways, some are guardrails, some are people you meet on the side of the road, some are people serving you coffee or tea, some are people pressing a gift can of juice or a few hundred yen into your hands, some are impromptu maps someone unexpectedly hands you, some are street signs or highway markers, some are silent fingers pointing the way from inside a car that has slowed to a crawl as you, too, crawl slowly along another highway in the heat of the day. Handrails are everywhere on Shikoku.



And after what seems like three weeks, the month and a half nears its end as you approach Temple Eighty-Eight. It is here where you say goodbye to the one companion that has been by your side every step of your journey. Someone who has shared in every adventure you have had, been with you when you were so happy you shouted in joy out over the valley, been with you when you were so tired and sore that you cried on the rock by the sea, been with you when you realized that the person who started the walk is no longer with you, that you have changed, that you have become someone new. And that companion was Kōbō Daishi himself, in the shape of the walking stick that you purchased at Temple One, and which you will surrender here at Temple Eight-Eight so that it can join all the other walking sticks that have made this same journey.

And you sit there and wonder about all those other people that have also made this walk, and you wonder who they were, and why they walked, and what they saw, and who they met, and where they stayed each night, and what they endured, and what made them happy and sad, and about everything they experienced. And if you're lucky you see that while countless millions of henro have started walking at Temple One, with few exceptions, only one makes it to number Eighty-Eight — and that One is you, and her, and me, and him, and us, and everyone else.

While the henro trail is comprised of 88 (or 108) temples, the Henro, the pilgrimage, is singular. And for the lucky ones, while who they were may have consisted of numerous pieces as they set out on day one, as they walk away from Temple Eighty-Eight on their way back to Temple One to close the circle, the realization that they too are singular has become a new habit that can carry them home.

The Truth & Nothing But The Truth

Have spent the past few days working my way through the first half of Geshe Tashi Tsering's book Relative Truth, Ultimate Truth. Most likely i won't get through the whole book until late next week; it's a tough slog through the philosophical differences between the Maibhashika, Sautrantika, Cittamatra, & Madhyamaka schools of Buddhism (from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective).

But there were are few things of note this morning, both on the same page.

First was:

"The Sautrantika scholars cite certain phenomena that can be fully expressed by language, such as space or selflessness. Space is the mere absence of obstruction, nothing more. And because it is neither more nor less that that, language is able to express it. Thus, it is a conventional truth. Selflessness is the lack of an intrinsic or inherent self, nothing more; cessation is the absence of suffering, nothing more. These can all be fully expressed by language; hence they are conventional truths."

This made me stop and think just for the definition of space. I don't see space as "the mere absence of obstruction." In my view, space is everything and everywhere. In one place it is empty (unless you get technical and talk to a physicist), in another it is manifesting as a human body, in another it is manifesting as a building, or a book, or a tree, or a cup, with the space inside that manifesting as tea, and so on.

I don't see space as some inherent "thing" making up the universe into which everything else manifests and functions. Space is simply the label we have given to everything that is "out there," in whatever form, or no form, it is making itself available to our perceptions at any given moment and place. Hmmmm....

It will be interesting to see how this definition changes, if it does, as i work into the Cittamatra and Madhyamaka schools. I'll also have to go back and try to look somewhere (i don't know where yet), but i think Dōgen would agree with my definition. But, that's probably where i got it anyhow. :-)


A few paragraphs later he goes on to make sure the reader has a clear understanding of something that i think is very important:

"Please don't think that this school is saying that concepts are essentially bad; it is saying, however, that concepts by their very nature obscure the truth. We couldn't make sense of the world without concepts. Imagine a world without labels. There would be no language, no communication, no transfer of knowledge such as this; spiritual attainment would be very difficult. ... The most important thing a child can learn is language, which will enable her to make generalities about the world around her. As adults, however, we need to see the uses and traps of the conceptual mind—something so few of us do."

A very difficult lesson to learn, remember, and effectively put to use throughout our days. What percentage of our daily thoughts are nothing but our version of the truth, traps ensnaring us and obscuring the real truth behind them?


And lastly, for those who love that wonderful person who is Pema Chodron, BetterListen! is offering a free hour and a half download of her CD Practicing Peace In Times of War on their web site. Complete the purchase process and they will mail you the download link. Enjoy it.

Visiting The Wild Land

Having mentioned his name yesterday, i couldn't skip the chance to pass on some of Musō Soseki's poetry today. Especially when i admitted to so liking the words of Ryōkan yesterday and don't want Musō to think my preferences are waivering.

I posted one of my many, many Musō favorites in a post some time back. That poem was called Time For A Walk and i think it should be required studying for all monastics everywhere. I think, but won't dig it out, that i posted another one even further back in time, but i'll just post it again below here simply because i like it so much.

The first poem is called Beyond The World and comes from the book Sun At Midnight:

This place of wild land
     has no boundaries
          north south east or west
It is hard to see
     even the tree
          in the middle of it
Turning your head
     you can look beyond
          each direction
For the first time
     you know that yoru eyes
          have been deceiving you

Where is that wild land with no borders? For beginners like most of us it's on our zafu and nowhere else. For those with better eyesight it could be anywhere and everywhere they find themselves.

A land is wild when the laws and customs of other people have not been imposed on it. A land is wild when the "normal" expectations of "civilization" don't function there, when the normal self imposed rules, beliefs of right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and not acceptable, holy and secular, spiritual and mundane, your's and mine, .... don't apply.

This wild land could be anywhere and when you find it there are no borders, no boundaries — there just is. There are no delineations of any type. There are no categories, boxes, or filters. What is, simply is. Or maybe, is not. How can there be a north, south, east, or west when everything is one, when there is only Being. In this land, you look beyond all directions because there are no directions to look at in the first place.

There is no tree in the middle? Where is the middle? What is a tree? Who decided that? In the wild land, there is everything and there is nothing; no more and no less. Outside of the wild land we categorize that object and call it an oak tree, and we say it's half way between there and there so it stands tall in the middle. Clear you mind of all those distinctions and where did the tree go? Let go of you, and tree, and here, and there and then where do you stand?

My lesson is learning to keep these new, improved eyes focused even while talking to someone i would typically hate. Keeping these eyes focused when i'm stuck in rush hour traffic. And as i learn to do that, i come to see that my "regular" eyes have been deceiving me for a good many decades. Sadly. Unfortunately.


The second poem points to the same way of looking at the world as Ryōkan was pointing to in his poem about cherry trees.

The sounds of the stream splash out the Buddha's sermon.
   Don't say that the deepest meaning comes only from one's mouth.
Day and night eighty thousand poems arise one after the other,
      and in fact not a single word has ever been spoken.

Stop and notice the messages found in nature. Stop thinking 'I'm in here and nature is out there.' Notice the message that nature is offering at all times, non-stop, for all to hear. Melt into the stream and understand the world from that perspective.

"[I]n fact not a single word has ever been spoken" — any more than that and too much has been said, even though the streams and the cherry trees talk all day and all night long.