zen: A WORD OF ADVICE IF YOU MEDITATE

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The Six Precepts of Tilopa

No thought, no reflection, no analysis,

No cultivation, no intention;

Let it settle itself.

expand and illuminate the original truth

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The Bright, Boundless Field

The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Utter emptiness has no image, upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly we are told to realize that not a single thing exists. In this field birth and death do not appear. The deep source, transparent down to the bottom, can radiantly shine and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner.

the universe in me

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My Comment:

We focus on the name and form (nama rupa) of what we perceive as being outside of us. The act of seeing the name and form instead of the one substance (the Absolute) obstructs the Absolute and projects instead the selfhood character onto a phantom of our own making. It has no Reality. Withdraw from the name and the form and be with the Absolute that is the inner Reality of all we see as the universe.

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never seeking buddhahood

Pistol River – Photo Tomas

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“…he never has a single thought

of seeking buddhahood.”

My Comment:

If he allows his mind to stray from ‘what is’ right here, right now, he slips back into the dusty world. Once he is in the stream of being ordinary, of simply not striving and of conforming with circumstances from that place of equanimity, he is like a gyroscope: keeping alignment with Big Mind. Any thought of attaining anything or achieving anything causes that gyroscope to wobble. He avoids that.

“After all, you have a father and a mother—

what more do you seek?”

If you have a father and a mother you are in this life and therefore you have all you need to realize who and what you are right now.

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Linji:

“Conforming with circumstances as they are he exhausts his past karma; accepting things as they are he puts on his clothes; when he wants to walk he walks, when he wants to sit he sits; he never has a single thought of seeking buddhahood. Why is this so?

the mountain walks

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Take a step and set your foot down like you are pressing a stamp into the soft wax to make a seal. When that foot is firmly on the ground and your weight is on it, lift the other foot and carry it forward. Then press feel how you set that foot onto the ground like you are pressing a stamp into the soft wax to make a seal. When you lift the foot you breathe in and when you set it down you breathe out. You can also set one foot with the in-breath and then carry the other foot forward and set it with the out-breath. Always keep the back foot on the ground until the front foot takes the weight fully.

the highest form of passion

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My Comment:

Sitting is a term that has a deep meaning in Zen. Krishnamurti calls it ‘complete negation which is the highest form of passion’. Sitting in this sense calls for all of our energy on all levels.When there is any loss of energy through identification with our fears, desires, ambitions, visions, regrets, opinions, etc. etc. then we do not have the energy required for this highest form of passion. 

no time for time

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Sitting is a certain body posture. More than that however, in zen sitting is a universal metaphor that transmits the deep sense letting all things, including oneself, rest. Letting rest means to exercise fine restraint in one’s whole being, releasing the habitual impulse to do anything and to carry anything over to the next moment. 

Whatever action presents itself in the course of how things go, is accepted. One doesn’t resist that natural action that is embedded in the whole. One carefully discerns the shining source in each minute event, and does not overstep this mindfulness at any time.

non-thinking – the koan

 

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Below is Koan 129 from Dogen’s collection of 300 Koans that goes into “non-thinking” in relation to thinking/not-thinking. First you find “The Main Case” which has, at the end of each line a footnote number. After “The Commentary” and “The Capping Verse” there are “The Footnotes” by John Daido Loori, to which the numbers refer.  Below the footnotes I have included John Daido Loori’s Contemporary Commentary on Dogen’s text. Enjoy!

authentic task

If you can read these words without you mind…

The Ancient Ferryboat in Bright Moonlight

A patch-robed monk’s authentic task is to practice the essence, in each minute event carefully discerning the shining source, radiant without discrimination, one color unstained. You must keep turning inwards, then [the source] is apprehended. This is called being able to continue the family business.

Do not wear the changing fashions, transcend the duality of light and shadow. Accordingly the ancestors’ single trail is marvelously embodied. The residual debris of the world departs, its influence ended. This worldly knowledge does not compare to returning to the primary and obtaining confirmation.

from sky to sky

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When the men of the world look for this path amid the clouds

it vanishes, with not a trace where it lay.

The high peaks have many precipices;

on the widest gulleys hardly a gleam falls.

Green walls close behind and before;

white clouds gather east and west.

Do you want to know where the cloud-path lies?

The cloud-path leads from sky to sky.

Han Shan