December 10, 2017

Dae Kwang's Talk

Today, at the Day of zazen in Prague, I was translating a talk given by Dae Kwang, who was my teacher at the Providence Center in the USA in the summer of 1992.  I would like to summarize the basic ideas Dae Kwang spoke about  in his talk. Actually, he talked about the basic things Buddha found out.

Firstly, Buddha realized that everything and all beings have Buddha's nature, nature of awakening.

Secondly, Buddha realized that suffering is caused by misunderstanding ourselves, by not understanding our Buddha nature.

Thirdly, as we do not understand ourselves, we blame others for our own misery. We have enemies, we hate them and they usually hate us.

Here I added my own comment - of course, criminals are causing suffering to others. In Buddhism, however, we do not respond to the fact that someone causes suffering to us by hatred. Instead, we understand that what this person has caused is the result of his misunderstanding of himself or herself. So again, the suffering originates not from outside, but from internal conditions. While we generally claim that someone has caused us suffering, when we really understand the essence of ourselves and the others, rather than suffering, we can see the character of human conflicts. Like that we do not consider ourselves victims, rather an observer of an unfortunate situation.

Fourthly, when we only read and study the beautiful ideas of Buddhism, it does not have any real effect on our lives. Because Buddhism is not about understanding, it is about our own experience we get in practicing Buddhism, practicing zazen. When we practice zazen, we learn not to hold on to any opinions or thoughts, so we are actually returning to our own awakened nature, and experience our own awakening. Therefore, one must clearly see the difference between understanding Buddha's beautiful ideas and their own experience of awakening. These are two completely different things! There is nothing beautiful or ugly in one's own awakening. There is no room for any thoughts, neither stupid nor wise in waking up.

Here's my last comment. Awakening is not the ultimate solution to our lives. Life itself, moment by moment, experienced honestly and directly, is the ultimate solution. Of course there is no finality here, on the other hand every moment is the last. It is not about living clearly and flawlessly, rather about stumbling over obstacles over and over again, without being afraid that we won't get anywhere. Without being proud about how far we have gone.


November 26, 2017

Why We Need Buddhism Devoid of Spirituality

What is spiritual? What is not spiritual? Most people will guess that Buddhism is an extremely spiritual matter.  Not much practical. I would say that it is as practical as spiritual, but at the same time, yes, I am contradicting myself, the essence of Buddha's teaching, is not spiritual at all.

Candles, burning incense, bells, drums, shaved heads, birds chirping, water in a tea kettle boiling, long black garments, more incense, more tea, people are quiet, smiling, balance, yin and yang, dragons and mystery, strange dance at midnight... sutra chanting... Lots of people love this, and they call it spirituality. They go to India, Thailand or Japan to visit temples and experience at least a little bit of that spirituality. Some people practice yoga, study Tao, try to harmonize, meditate, they want their lives to be more spiritual. Some people choose Buddhism, they even go to a retreat, listen to a teacher, and say, wow, beautiful. So all those things are considered spiritual. But is Buddhism really spiritual in its essence?

Several years ago I realized there was something wrong with the way I use my masculine and feminine energy. And a few days ago I realized some people cannot accept the concept of masculine and feminine energy as it is somehow misleading and may push men and women into some kind of categories  they don't really want to accept. So instead of masculine and feminine, I will use yin and yang, and please, do not suppose I consider yin masculine or feminine, just I think there are complementary energies working within our bodies and minds and I agree that we can avoid calling these energies masculine or feminine. Let's just call them yin and yang. I cannot help it but I can feel inside me the dynamics of these energies and how I interact with others based on how these energies in me prevail or withdraw. And how sometimes it makes me feel awful and lost and sometimes balanced, confident and helpful. And I don't think we have to be experienced and well taught Taoists in order to be allowed to use the terms yin and yang. I think it is clear that these complementary energies exist universally and somehow make this universe tick. Anyway, dealing with energies, and feeling upset or balanced, how does it relate to Buddhism or why shouldn't this relate to Buddhism? Isn't Buddhism all about harmony and balance?

I think it is absolutely natural that when we go to a retreat for the first time or seek a teacher, or both, we hope something or someone or both will help us find balance and peace within. Even if there is a lot of talk about the truth in Buddhism, maybe a lot of people consider the truth something that is too sharp, too clear or too one-sided to be bothered by that concept and instead they prefer learning to experience balance, harmony, peace and inner happiness. I was the opposite, as I was practicing at Providence Zen Center in the US in early 90s, I was not interested in balance, harmony or inner happiness at all. At all. I was only interested in that sharp, too clear, Her Majesty Truth. So I couldn't care less if Buddhism was spiritual or not. If I was asked to bow or burn incense, I did it, hoping that it is a necessary part of the journey to the truth. Monks with shaved heads, strange gray clothes, be it, just give me the Truth. And funnily enough, for years, I was allergic to the spiritual aspect of Buddhism. So whenever I told people I was a Buddhist, I felt like I was lying, because I was not that spiritual kind of Buddhist. I was selfish, angry, impatient, greedy, superficial and materialistic. I loved women, cars, good food, going to the beach. As for bells, tea, incense... well I can tolerate those... And I still love women, cars, good food, and I am still quite selfish at times. But I am beginning to see the role of spiritual in one's life and the role of practical and the role of Buddhist teaching as something that is not spiritual at all.

As for yin and yang, or complementary energies that make this universe tick, I am absolutely sure that we cannot ignore those and that it is necessary to learn at least a little bit, how these energies work and how to use them and when. For example, if I asked my students what to do all the time, if I told them how sensitive I am, if I was moody teaching them, they would be confused, upset and angry after all. But when I am with my girlfriend, I can say to her, I am sad, I need you, I am confused, I need your advise. But I cannot do it all the time, she also needs someone who will support her and tell her what to do from time to time. So when we deal with a partner, teacher, student or a child, we can sometimes notice that we are not using the right energy, or the energy that is appropriate at that moment. Sometimes it is necessary to answer. Sometimes it is necessary to ask. Sometimes it is OK to be confused .Sometimes it is nice to be clear and lead others to clarity. Sometimes we ask others to lead us to clarity. That is all well and natural. The pain is when the forces are opposing themselves, when there are two answers competing with one another, two people hating each other or two partners both completely lost and having no idea where to go. Of course, these situations happen and sometimes we can learn from them. I am not saying that it is important to avoid conflicts, fights or misunderstanding. But it is also wonderful, when we learn how to transform darkness into light, confusion into direction, hatred into love and noise into the sound of the woods in the Spring. So we can learn how to work with these complementary energies and that is a kind of area that I am definitely not going to cover here or on my blog. Because although it seems as a necessary or natural part of Buddhism, I think it is as Buddhist to talk about yin and yang as it is to talk about combustion engines or banking accounts. It is just an area that has its own space. It deserves a serious, maybe a professional approach, which I cannot offer.

Well, you could say what about the theory of autonomic nervous system and its balance. I think that is a way to explain how zazen works, if we need to know how zazen changes our mental and physical state. Of course, zazen does change our mental and physical state and we could say, logically, zazen is very spiritual, or absolutely spiritual. It does not change the state of our finances, it does not go to the post office, but it changes our state. Right, but we shouldn't stick to that. In fact we must not stick to that. Zazen is not a tool that should make our life different or better or more spiritual. It is not a tool that should change our personality or opinions. It is just not a tool at all. Of course, as we practice zazen, the situation during the day changes, we may change our attitude to something, because zazen has changed our state recently. And if we practice zazen for twenty years, every day, it will surely change something about our life and personality. But that is not the point, that is only a spin-off.  Because the whole point of Buddha's teaching and practice is not a change. It is not playing with complementary energies, it is not transforming darkness into light and confusion into clarity. Now you might be confused... not transforming confusion into clarity? Not delusion into truth? Not darkness into brightness? Not One Bright Pearl?

Well, you could stubbornly consider Buddha's teaching the most beautiful spiritual path. You could consider Buddha's teaching turning angry people into peaceful and happy beings.  You could consider Buddha's teaching turning garbage into roses. But I am afraid Buddha himself would not be very excited if you interpreted his teaching like that.

When you take a cup of coffee and have a sip of coffee, then nothing matters. Buddha doesn't matter. Spiritual problems are useless. Practical problems are useless. Money is not necessary. Meditation is ridiculous. Sex is nonsense. Life is a joke. Death is a myth. Buddha is a clown. There is only one thing, having a sip of delicious coffee. That is Buddha's teaching. And if you call that Buddha's teaching, you may be misleading yourself and others. So dropping Buddha's teaching right now is absolutely necessary, otherwise all Buddha Gautama's efforts practicing zazen for years and teaching the truth for years were useless. He only did all those things so that one day a person somewhere on the planet Earth could have a cup of coffee, completely.                  


September 7, 2017

It's OK If It Doesn't Show You're a Buddhist

In my last article about my not so brilliant Buddhist life I came across the problem of whether it shows one is a Buddhist, or whether it should show. I know some people may be proud of their Buddhist history and attainments and certificates and what not, but as far as I know, authentic Buddhist teachers want us not to show any trace of our Buddhist experience or history, at least in our everyday actions, unless someone asks us about Buddhism and our experience, of course. But if it is obvious that you are a Buddhist based on the way you talk, walk, drink, eat or sleep, then something is wrong.

I would say there are basically two ways to understand the meaning of Buddhism and I am sure one is wrong and one is right. One way is to understand that our Buddhist practice has to bring results and these results show in the way we act, speak, etc. Typically, a Buddhist, according to this understanding, is never angry, is always compassionate, patient, talks slowly and clearly, no matter what, eats carefully and completely, sleeps perfectly, makes only wise decisions and is very tolerant of people who make mistakes.  These people, ideally, are also enlightened, which is understood as knowing all about the universe, self and others and having absolutely no problems to worry about. This understanding of Buddhism is based on some kind of misinterpretation of original Buddha's teaching. I am aware that in some traditions practitioners are encouraged to act and live like the ideal person above, but I still maintain that such understanding is not actual Buddha's teaching.

The other understanding is very different and it is the understanding that was passed on by modern teachers like Kodo Sawaki, Shunryu Suzuki, Nishijima roshi, and current teachers like Brad Warner or Mike Luetchford. It says something I would sum up, using Brad Warner's words,  as "Don't be a jerk and just do what you're doing now." There are many, many ways to sum up this teaching, but you can never completely define this teaching, because it is essentially perfectly open. It is perfectly open to reality of our lives, be it dark , bright or strange. Don't be a jerk doesn't mean Stop getting angry, stop wanting that vintage car, stop criticizing your sister or stop making mistakes when speaking French. Don't be a jerk means Are you absolutely sure that it is necessary to get angry now? Are you absolutely sure that you absolutely want that Versace coat? Are you absolutely sure that your sister is a threat to the world peace and happiness? And the answer, of a sincere Buddhist, could be: I am not sure, but I just got angry. I am not sure I need that car, but I really like it. So the point is making efforts to act in accord with reality, but that effort includes the truth that we are imperfect human beings and we will never become a perfect human being, or a perfect buddha. The thing is that the so called "Buddha"is not a finished, complete, brilliant person. The thing called Buddha is not as much a person as a state of things. It is a balance of things that may hit us from time to time and that Buddha thing goes through our body and mind, hits it and it shows. But the way it shows is transparent, so nobody can really notice. The only thing we can notice about the moment when Buddha goes through our body and mind, is that we don't feel strange, we don't feel messed up, upset, upside down, on the contrary, everything seems settled. Or nicely open. And we often simply don't notice at all. Anyway, noticing or not, at that moment we and the universe is one thing. This is a situation, not a person. And this situation is called buddhas, it is called masters, it is called awakening, it is called dharma, it is called the truth, it is called brilliant. It has been praised by our ancestors for centuries. This Buddha state was probably first noticed by Gautama or at least clearly analysed and described by Gautama, and it was later called "enlightenment". But this very label absolutely messed up the original meaning of awakening. Instead of situation, the situation was called a finished person. Instead of watching flowers bloom, people followed Buddha Gautama's brilliant words. They followed his words, his actions, his decisions, his understanding, but because people do not always understand their teacher completely and usually misunderstand their teacher from time to time and often misunderstand the teaching completely, the whole of Buddhist teaching that Gautama established changed from teaching a situation to teaching people to become so called buddhas. Since then thousands of people have  tried hard to become buddhas to no avail. Some of them became idols, gurus, famous leaders, but frankly, they have become something they actually did not want to be initially. Or maybe they never wanted to find out what buddha really means and that it is a perfectly open situation.

So in my last article I mentioned all kinds of problems I have in my life. There is basically nothing special people could notice about me and if they do notice something they can say it is my character or my genes, not my Buddhist efforts. If you have practiced zazen for twenty years, have been to dozens of sesshins and your colleagues are absolutely shocked when you tell them you are a Buddhist, that is not something to be alarmed about. That is not something to reflect upon. Because the situation when Buddha goes through your body and mind and the state is open and transparent, is nothing other people can easily notice. On the other hand, Kodo Sawaki said something like if you practice zazen correctly, it will show in your family... This is a very complicated matter. In a way, it is true. If you practice zazen and there is no balance or clarity in your life, I mean if you just see absolutely no balance at all and you are as confused and angry as in the past and you hate the same people with the same vigour, then I would say Kodo Sawaki is right, there must be a loose screw somewhere. But still, if you become a more balanced person and you stop doing certain crazy things, what do you think others will notice? Nothing, to them, you will be a normal person and they will see nothing Buddhist about you. Only you know that you stopped doing that crazy thing you used to do. Only you know that you don't run around at night and don't break things out of desperation any more. Only you know that you have learned to notice the beauty of golden leaves in October. Only you know how you feel in zazen, how the mental burden melts and how you smile again and again despite your problems. Only you know these very intimate things. Many people are not Buddhists and are naturally balanced, wise and see flowers and clouds and hear birds chirping. I am not saying we all have to practice zazen, otherwise we cannot meet the Buddha state. On the contrary, it is the most natural thing to meet buddhas for every being in the universe and every thing in the universe. To meet the Buddha is the first and last thing that happens in the universe. It is the situation that is happening right now everywhere in the universe. So it is so obvious and clear that many people just do not notice. It is natural to have that state many times a day. So becoming a Buddhist you learn what our original state is, not how to become very different. So of course, it is not something that should shine or strike others. If it shines at all, its simplicity shines. If you think a teacher is an old buddha, it is because he or she doesn't add much to what he or she originally is. But many people are this natural and themselves, without having to study and practice Buddhism. We, who practice zazen and study Buddhism, do not do it in order to become great or better than others, we do it because we came across authentic Dharma, were hit by the clarity of its teaching and we cannot go away any more. Because we have experienced the simplicity of zazen, we practice zazen and we don't care if others notice or not. We make efforts not in order to become great people but because we just see no other option. We make efforts because we realized that it is the only way to live our lives. We may be called idiots, silly, crazy, lazy or whatever, still, we cannot stop making efforts. Some people will notice, some people will not notice. That doesn't matter. I like to compare our Buddhist efforts to trees in the woods. They make efforts all the time. Do other trees notice? Do birds notice? Who praises trees? Who certifies a tree? Who asks a tree questions? Yet, a tree will be a tree, making efforts to be a tree no matter what. Floods, wildfires, woodcutters, builders may come...

To be a human being is a very interesting situation. And we are not so different from trees. Trees are naturally different from other trees. They don't try to stand out. Still, you can notice a pine over there or a birch here is very different from the other trees. The difference has happened naturally. So as people we can concentrate on our everyday lives and not worry about others criticizing us, ignoring us or praising us. Being a human itself is a wonderful situation. It is wonderful enough, don't you think?  

    

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September 6, 2017

My Oh So Wonderful Buddhist Life

You may think that the title of this article is not meant seriously, that I am being sarcastic. My wonderful Buddhist life. Do I want to tell you how wonderful my life is and that it is so wonderful because I am a wonderful Buddhist who understands all about Buddhism and knows how to beautifully deal with all kinds of nasty problems? Or do I want to tell you that my life is crap and that the little I know about Buddhism doesn't help much when I get upset about something silly in the middle of a traffic jam? In fact, it is neither and it is both.

It is tricky to say whether one's life is wonderful or not. We could say that everyone's life is wonderful. When we are in a state of peace and calm and see things in a balanced way, we may decide to call anyone's life a wonder. Each moment of our complicated, difficult, even frustrating lives, is wonderful. So we could say that everyone has a wonderful life. Even if the person has to suffer all kinds of suffering. And we could also say that everyone's life is very, very difficult. And to some people it is so difficult that they call it suffering. And they actually do not want to have a life. So anyway, it is very difficult to say whether our life is wonderful, horrible or both. It depends on many viewpoints and situations. But I could easily say that my life is indeed wonderful. When I think back and recollect the most wonderful things I have experienced in my life so far, I could say Wow and wow and wow and I could go on wowing for hours or even days. And then I would stop because I would run out of memory. But I can also remember times when I felt extremely horrible, hopeless, lost, or at times I would shout out of sheer fury. And throw things around. It's interesting, but because right now I feel peaceful and content, I tend to think that my life is amazing. If you ask me in a few days, after having a couple of exhausting days at work, I may tell you that my life is too difficult. So it depends on how we feel at the moment of speaking. Anyway, you can imagine that my life is both wonderful and difficult, but I don't remember when I last felt really desperate. I would dare to claim that regular practice of zazen is extremely helpful when it comes to dealing with the most frustrating situations in our lives. I dare to say that zazen helps me return to a kind of balanced state even if I have experienced some pain or extreme frustration recently. I don't remember when I last had a talk about Buddhism and had to lie and pretend that Buddhism helps me have an OK life. Buddhism, or rather zazen and some Buddhist philosophy does help me have an OK life. But it is sometimes a very difficult life, sometimes my mind is far from balanced and sometimes you would be sure that I am a nutcase. But no matter what,  I do believe that studying Buddhist philosophy and practicing zazen helps me, personally, always return to some kind of balanced state and go back to that terrible little job that I can't seem to be able to finish or go and apologize to my girlfriend or my students or whomever I caused a trouble.  And I do believe that to you, if you sincerely study Buddhist philosophy with a good teacher and learn to practice zazen regularly from a good teacher, I am sure you can also find a way to return to a balanced state over and over again, even if only once a week or once a month, but that would be quite extreme, and find your true self , a moment of awakening - not satori, I mean just simply being at the moment without thinking too much -  in the middle of a gray misty street on the way to work on Monday morning.

But back to the problem of "a Buddhist life". When we begin to practice Buddhism we usually have an idea about an enlightened master or a great, peaceful philosopher, or a super humble, innocent grandma wearing old rags and feeding some orphans and cats. Now those are Buddhists, you may say. I think it is quite natural to be very, very idealistic at the beginning of our Buddhist studies. On the other hand, I am not saying that an experienced Buddhist must be, no matter what, the same old idiot who argues with everyone over and over again, considers himself a master of zillion arts, is not happy with his latest model of Mercedes S class, has a dozen of mistresses that he beats on a regular basis and is going to blow up his neighbor's house because his neighbor's kids touched his Mercedes S class when jumping around in the street. I am not saying that learning about Buddhism and practicing zazen leads nowhere, that we cannot make any progress and cannot become better people. And I am not saying that only a special few ones will attain the secret truth of Buddhas and the ordinary folks have to do without the supreme enlightenment and go home with a confused mind and feeling that there is something missing. No! Sorry I am shouting but I have to. I am saying together with master Dogen that there is something wonderful about dharma, the simple moment of practice-realization, the moment we just sit like a buddha and at the same time become a buddha because we are a buddha. That is wonderful and you don't have to be a special talented or chosen individual to experience the state of buddha. I agree with master Dogen that once we cut through the nets of words, and replace them with practice and experience, no matter if that practice and experience is zazen or cooking pasta, at that moment, when that happens, we are on par with ancient masters. And on par with pebbles, walls and fences. And master Dogen says that just sitting here and now in zazen is cutting through the nets of words and being immediately on par with ancient masters. So I absolutely agree that practicing zazen and forgetting words and just acting here and now is wonderful and I dare to say that I do have some experience practicing zazen, forgetting words and acting here and now.

But at the same time, although reading about Buddhism and reading about zazen may sound like going to a special world, a special temple, where everyone is wonderful and buddha and enlightened, the truth is that it is important to stop making a division between practicing zazen on the one hand and dealing with nasty situations in our everyday life. We must stop making a line between what master Dogen says about enlightenment and our very ordinary lives, our everyday situations. Because essentially, they are the same. So it would be a huge mistake thinking that we can play an enlightened master for a while when we burn incense, sit in zazen and read a few beautiful sentences about how amazing dharma is, as if incense, zazen and reading a few Buddhist sentences were a mere children's game and not our real experience. It would be a huge mistake to imagine that we can play Buddhists but real Buddhists are far away in the mountains, making straw sandals and talking to grass. We may imagine that we are only allowed to have a short glimpse into the wonderful, pure world of enlightenment, when we bow in front of the altar, burn incense, sit quietly in zazen and listen to some wise words of ancient masters. Once we have to leave the dojo and head to the toilet, take a shit, we have been rudely expelled from the Buddhist theater and must admit that we are only pitiful, stinking, useless, hopeless, stupid ordinary people who understand nothing. But true Buddhist teaching and experience couldn't be farther from that notion. In fact, once we stop playing a Buddhist in the dojo and actually go to the toilet, this is where our true Buddhist life begins. That's when we can really and deservedly shake hands with ancient masters. Not when we hope to become Buddhists or pretend we are ones, but when we dodge a lady rushing out of the kitchen with a hot pot in her burning hands. So the task is to realize that whenever we sit down and practice zazen, we are not holier or more special or closer to enlightenment than when we check the oil in our car's engine bay. And to imagine closer or father away from enlightenment would also be a mistake. We are there - in practice and experience of the truth -  just when we do something.

So this is a point I have to stress. The whole idea about what makes a great or true Buddhist is not so much about what you have attained or achieved or what you have become, rather what you have forgotten about yourself and others so you could do something completely now. And now. And now. And tomorrow. And next year. So the whole idea about a Buddhist who has solved all their problems and now smiles and plays with mudballs in the fields or insects in the mountains, it is a nice idea and for some historical and cultural reasons, there were probably many Chinese or Japanese monks who ended up playing with insects in the woods. But that is not the point or the meaning of Buddhism. The point is that you are doing something, be it shopping in Lidl or cleaning your skateboard or teaching your daughter how to make tea, you are in the same situation like those Chinese monks playing with foxes and pushing oxen or kicking their own asses or kicking each other's asses or the oxen's asses. It doesn't matter what it is, you cannot expect a 17th century Chinese monk deal with credit cards and buying air tickets to visit his grandchildren over the sea in Korea. It wouldn't be fair. They had to deal with oxen and mudballs, we deal with air-con and repellents. And no kind of super human Buddhist master may expect a person of  decent education and healthy mind to live in the woods and walk barefoot and chant sutras twelve hours a day.

Anyway, I think I am living my life in a way that is somehow naturally based both on my childhood experience and my genes, but also, on my Buddhist practice and study. I just feel my life has been strongly influenced or even positively diverted by that practice and study. At the same time, someone who doesn't understand the meaning of Buddhism at all, may not see any, I mean any trace of Buddhist practice or study in my everyday life. (Essentially we should not leave any trace of Buddhist practice or study, there is nothing special about a Buddhist that should stand out and be obvious, but I still think that if we have some experience in Buddhism, we can notice that we are not as confused as in the past and we have a bit more clarity about who we are and who we are not).  To them, I am just an ordinary person who gets upset too often. Someone who worries too much too often. Someone who cannot finish a simple daily task. Someone who has funny ideas about funny things. These people, actually, are right! I am that stupid and silly. That is absolutely true. But at the same time, and that is something they just cannot see, I am immensely grateful and strangely happy. I can sit down and practice zazen right now and deep down I know nothing is lacking. I am not seeking something better than this very moment of experience, or in the words of master Dogen practice-experience. To me practice- experience is the most I can get, so I am not hoping to get more than that. Even if I sometimes hope to buy that Lancia Fulvia 1600, deep down I know that practicing zazen or driving my little Panda is better if I do  it now and completely. So I don't know if you can say that I have a wonderful Buddhist life, but you can definitely say that I am a fool.

July 18, 2017

A Glimpse of Beauty

This time it will be easier for me to ask myself questions and answer them, rather than trying to write a usual text where I just explain things.


I hear it is important to practice so that there is nothing to get in the end. Some teachers say that there is nothing to get or that we should not try to get something from practice and study. But that is the very opposite of our human nature, isn't it? I suppose most people come to a dojo in order to get some kind of peaceful mind, at least, some have "higher aspirations", trying to attain enlightenment, some others would like to become teachers one day. It is almost impossible to find a practitioner who has no expectations from practice or from the philosophy or from the teacher. 

Of course, most people or maybe everyone at the beginning wants to get something. Nobody will begin to practice and study Buddhism without any goals on their mind. At least they will want to figure out what Buddhism is about, or what zazen is about.... or who the teacher is really or who they are really. So we can hear, sometimes, practice and study in order to find the truth, or in order to become oneself, or become truly oneself... Most teachers set some kind of goals, of course. And if they don't tell you why you should practice, they sometimes ask you: Why do you practice? They want you to figure out why you practice. Because when we figure out why we practice, we basically know who we are. So after all why and who is the same. If a teacher asks you: "Why do you practice?" You can answer: "Myself". That sounds very selfish. But I don't mean "myself" as only myself and I don't care about others. I mean Here I am right in front of you. This is a fact. So the question why has a simple answer: Reality. It is not why we practice but who practices. That who, when doing something right now, is the question why and the answer at the same time. When a monk asked a master: What is the meaning of Buddha's teaching? The master said that he needed to go to the toilet. In other words: Why do you, master, practice and study Buddhism? Why do you teach Buddhism? The master answers: As for me, I am going to the toilet. This is the purpose of Buddhism. To exist in reality. Not to look for reality or hope to attain some kind of special wisdom or knowledge or enlightenment. If you ask me why I practice zazen, my silly mind may come up with silly answers, like it makes me feel good... or because I can answer questions better after zazen... but those are our mind's rather funny ideas. Our mind, usually, wants something, wants to get something. No matter what the others get. But our original mind is just staring, eyes wide open, wide open, mouth wide open... staring, that means our original mind is just getting what is here and now, no matter what it is. Cold or hot, dark or bright, loud or quiet, the original self is just wide open. It is not getting anything from anyone or anything. It is not practicing zazen and getting original mind. There is no getting in original mind. There is only existence. Are trees or birds getting anything in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evening? They just exist, moment  after moment. We human beings usually forget how wonderful it is just to exist, just to open to whatever is right here and now.


So that original mind, as you put it, that original mind is not something we get thanks to practicing zazen or studying Buddhism? 

Original mind is not something you get, it is something there is. It is not a new understanding or a new state of mind or a new kind of wisdom. It is as new as an old wall that has always been there. It is as wise as a lamp post. It is as yours as it is Donald Trump's or Gautama Buddha's. So we cannot practice in order to get that Original Mind. If we practice in order to get Original Mind, it wouldn't be different from practicing and studying Buddhism in order to get two eyes, one nose and one mouth. Only people who don't have two eyes could try to get two eyes. But we usually have two eyes, one nose and one mouth, so there is no need to practice in order to get Original Mind as it is what we already have.

So the problem seems not that we don't have It, rather we don't realize we have it. But then you could say that the purpose of practicing is realization of the fact that we do have Original Mind already. 

Yes, but that is not something to get. It is not something you add to your life after getting something. It is something you notice as your actual experience, your actual You. Our mind always wants to make reality into something to get or lose.  This is how we become misled by our mind. It creates a concept of "getting Original Mind". But there is no such thing as "getting Original Mind". That which we cannot find, cannot name, cannot get, cannot grasp, is Original Mind. It is really nothing we could find or lose.

So why talk at all, why discuss the goals of Buddhism or say that there is no goal in Buddhist practice, if we cannot seriously or correctly decide what the goal is as everything we say is wrong or only a product of our Deluded Mind? 

Well, of course, it is very difficult or in a way impossible to grasp with words what the meaning of Buddhism is, as the true meaning is just our simple existence in the real world and that real world cannot be found in the news or books, only right here. So what is right here already is completely the meaning of Buddhism. But to most people that means that the situation is somehow static:  If there is only here and now, then there must be no reason why to practice as they see practice as something we do in order to get something. It is popular to say that the goal of practice is enlightenment. If we correct that misleading term and say awakening, it is closer to reality, but what is awakening? If one wakes up, they don't get anything, they just see things, hear things, smell things... so they are just living in reality, right here, right now. They are not in a state of ecstasy or spiritual achievement. Yet they are completely here and now. The problem is that most people imagine that being here and now is not our usual situation. But it is the most usual situation. So we could say awakening is the most usual situation that occurs to us many times a day. Then to practice in order to wake up would be very strange. As soon as we stop trying to get something and just practice zazen, that is the most usual situation we can get and still it is awakening. As soon as we hope to attain a better state, it is falling asleep, or delusion. As soon as we judge ourselves or our zazen instead of just doing it, we go astray and lose our awakening.

But don't you think some people may say that they attain a state of balance thanks to zazen? Plus practicing zazen every day for many years must have some very nice effects. So obviously, there is a cause and effect. 

Cause and effect, that is what most people consider all the time. And it is very important part of our lives, but the other aspect of reality is just what is here right now. And that is what most people cannot appreciate. So they practice so called meditation hoping to attain or get something. Buddha Gautama found out that just sitting here and now is the treasure or the secret he had been looking for so hard. After trying so hard for many years suddenly he found the ultimate value of the present moment, the present situation. So zazen is not going somewhere, but stopping, sit down here, and stop doing anything, stop trying to get anything. Buddha did not know this until he found out, but we already know that he found that so we can practice that present dwelling, dwelling at the present moment, the most usual situation there is. We are always present, so it is the most usual. At the same time, it is the most extraordinary, because we cannot keep it. The present is more special than diamonds or pearls. We can keep a diamond, but we cannot keep a present moment. Yet, most people wave away this experience as profane and look for something spiritual. Just sitting here and now is not spiritual enough to them. But Buddha means just doing something here and now.      

The problem of modern civilization is that it believes in Purpose and forgets the Essence. Because human beings have long forgotten the essence of our activities, we are trapped in trying to get something all the time, always trying to get somewhere, to improve something, while messing up the whole world and ourselves in the process because most people are too busy and too eager to get something. They always want to get something because they have no clue what they are getting at each moment. So being blind to reality which is directly in front of their eyes, they tell others and themselves: Let's try to attain enlightenment. Let's try to build the tallest building in the world. Let's make our country bigger than the next one. So we often do things in order to make something better but in the process we basically very ofter make things much worse. We should be very grateful that we can practice and experience Buddha Gautama, the same thing.  There is the experience of just sitting and it is possible to notice or recognize the quality of just sitting and be grateful. It is possible to completely wake up from time to time, I don't know, even many times a day. And it is possible to realize that such awakening into what is just here and now, in front of us, is the most important aspect of our lives.

So we can replace ideas with our actual experience here and now. This replacing "why" with "open your eyes to what is here", this is just a simple action of opening, getting this what is here, not getting any benefits, anything better, it is not going somewhere, it is the opposite, it is the very stopping, not trying to get something, but getting what is right here.

So you would say that practicing and studying Buddhism is not trying to get something, rather finding what we are getting right at this moment?               

It is very difficult for us, intelligent human beings, to see clearly what is right in front of us. It is difficult to see the value of what is right here. It is difficult to imagine that having breakfast in the morning is the highest purpose of our life. And if right now you are not having breakfast, then of course, the idea of having breakfast as the highest goal is only a strange idea.  But I am not talking about images or ideas about having breakfast. It was only an example. I mean a very ordinary situation right now may be the most important experience in our lives. Why most important? Because each moment is the most important moment. But first it is necessary to find what is here and now. If you are eating a banana, then it is eating a banana, which is the most important thing ever. You are what you are doing right now, you are not Why, you are Doing something. So the same way, zazen is not about why we practice zazen, it is doing zazen. People will always ask you: Why do you practice zazen? Are you trying to attain enlightenment? But you can say, no, I just practice zazen, that's all. They will say: But why? And you can say: This question is the very reason Buddhism exists. People don't know why they are alive. They want to know why they should live. Buddha found out that it is necessary to shift from asking why to the very experience itself. The experience itself is the answer.

So living stupidly, without a purpose, isn't it regressing to the level of animals? 

I didn't say we should have no goals or intentions. No, we are living in  the world of people and it is a very complicated, a very complex network of plans and intentions. We must tiptoe through this complicated world. It is easy to mess up too many things. When I get sick, I go to the doctor and the intention is clear, I want to be  healthy again. But while I am going to the doctor, driving my car, at that moment, that is all that matters. So between getting sick and getting medicine, there are thousands of moments where we are real, living in the real world, each moment matters, each moment is an opportunity to completely realize our Original Mind, to wake up and see clearly. The plans and intentions are just some aspects of our lives but they are not the essence. The "why" is not why we live.  So we could say that the first step is to ask "why". The second step is to practice, rather than discuss our life intellectually. The third step is to see that the practice itself is the answer. So of course, the result is practice that has no end... no expectations... because there is no why, and as there is no why, there is no specific result of practice that we should pursue. So we can practice zazen just like trees grow and the wind blows... no specific reason, no specific results, just amazing actions within the perfectly imperfect universe.


July 2, 2017

So Stupid That You Don't Even Know You're Stupid



I'll say something about Enlightenment for a change. It's funny because I think it is the easiest topic to deal with in Buddhism. You can make it super complicated. Master Dogen wrote very complicated philosophical analysis of enlightenment, or realization of truth. But just because someone wrote complicated things about it, it doesn't mean the thing itself is complicated. And I am not saying master Dogen made a mistake or made something or wrote something unnecessary. There are reasons why Buddhist philosophy becomes very analytical at times. But I don't want to get there now.

Let me just say that enlightenment isn't very complicated. It is nothing. It doesn't exist. I don't mean it is something we should forget as a concept or a goal or something. I am just saying that it doesn't exist. It is not on the right, it is not on the left, it is not under you, not above you, not inside you, not anywhere. And yet it is something Buddhism deals with all the time and Buddha attained, according to the teaching. I am not saying that Buddha didn't attain enlightenment. But I could also say he attained nothing with it. Or it was nothing to attain. It was nowhere, but he attained it. That nowhere was something he attained. We attain in all the time, but we do not think about it, or we think about it in a way, that is not very useful. For example, you may want to attain enlightenment. That is not very useful, to want to attain enlightenment. Because like that you want to attain something. But attaining enlightenment is not attaining enlightenment so it is useless to want to attain "it". It would be more logical to want to attain nothing. But how do you want to attain nothing? You could also say that you want to make Nothing into Something. If enlightenment is nothing, then it is not necessary to attain it. But that is not so. Buddha attained something. But that something was not something. It was not something we can point to. He attained something we cannot point to, yet he attained it. So what did he attain? It wasn't nothing, it wasn't something, it was just himself at this moment. It was his very experience. He experienced himself completely and he noticed. We experience ourselves completely very often, but we don't notice or we are not sure what it is. But Buddha realized that that complete self was what he had been looking for. If you are looking for complete self and then recognize it, the self where you and the external world, your body and mind, you and the universe become one, when everything is just like this, if you recognize what it is, you may call that attaining the truth. But still, it is not something noble or higher or deep or spiritual or something one could boast about. Because it is not something You Attain, rather something that Attains Itself, you cannot say You have or own or know the Truth. It is not something one could possess or boast. It is truly not something. It is a glass of wine or a piece of paper or dishes in the sink waiting to be washed.  So who could boast about something like that. If you can point to dirty dishes in the sink and say, hey, my enlightenment, right in the sink , you see? You can do that but it is silly. Everyone can see the dirty dishes in the sink. If you know what they are, then good for you, but still it is not Yours. It is its. It is itself. You cannot stick to it. And if you do, it is not there any more. So attaining enlightenment and boasting about it would be the same as saying I have never attained enlightenment and have no idea what it is. It is the same thing.

But is there some kind of experience that shows in the way we talk, behave, write or argue with others? If somebody attains the truth, do they know something we don't know, do they know how to act, how to talk, how to teach Buddhism, etc? Well to attain the truth would be to go and wash the dishes. You could say, right, everyone can do that. But there is a little difference.

Let me tell you what I think makes a difference between mature Buddhists and beginners. Let's not make too many silly categories, like five ranks or such. Let's say there are beginners and mature practitioners. Lets' say a beginner goes and washes the dishes, just like a master. The difference is that a beginner, typically, is not sure, if going and washing the dishes is the most important thing. A beginner typically is not sure whether washing dishes means to express the truth. They are not sure if thats' the whole of Buddhist teaching. They typically imagine that masters know more, that masters wash the dishes better, that masters talk better, that masters know a lot of secrets and have some special skills or even magic powers. paradoxically enough, these Buddhist teachers sometimes say that beginners are actually our Buddhist role models. A beginner, not knowing anything about Buddhism, is a complete buddha. Because they don't know much or anything about Buddhism, they just go and wash the dishes, go and sleep, wake up, go to the zendo, bow and practice zazen with others. Nothing else. But such beginners are very very rare. On the other hand, this beginner's quality, this simplicity, is our Buddhist goal. In a way, we want to become perfectly stupid. Rather than washing dishes and saying how wonderful it is and how enlightened we are when we wash the dishes, we should just wash the dishes. Rather than writing about Buddhism I should watch Tour de France, stupidly. Instead I am writing about Buddhism, and I hope it is not too stupid. But it should be. Ideally it should be perfectly stupid. It should be so stupid that I wouldn't even know how stupid it is. It should be absolutely ignorant. Then the writing would be on par with true meaning of Buddhism. Not writing about enlightenment, but watching TV and sip some beer. We cannot stress enough how important complete stupidity is in Buddhism. Maybe the major problem of most people who practice Buddhism is that they are not stupid enough. No matter how hard they try to understand Buddhism, they are not stupid enough, too clever, still too clever. That is my problem, really. Always too clever, never stupid enough.

I will try to explain now why extreme stupidity is something we should cherish in Buddhism. And for the record, master Dogen didn't write Shobogenzo in order to make us clever or spiritual or deeply enlightened. I think he put so much effort into his writing hoping somebody will be able to transform the understanding of his teaching into perfect stupidity. perfect stupidity means we can have a glass of wine. No Buddhism is added, no ideas about enlightenment, no ideas about Dogen, nothing, just  a glass of wine. If you want to have a glass of wine, completely, you must, there is absolutely no other way, no excuse, but you must become perfectly stupid. Then a glass of wine is a glass of wine. A Korean Zen teacher, Gu Ja, said in a talk recently,  I watched that video a few hours ago, she said, we should just eat, sleep and take a shit. See? She is a certified Korean Zen Master. She explains in her talk that if we do not add anything to our lives, if we only eat, sleep and take a shit, it is a great gift for everyone, for the whole universe. She means that whatever we add to our lives, knowledge, wisdom, practice, money, career, children, love, hatred... she means of course, we have zillions of things in our lives, we make something complicated all the time, we study science or languages, we travel, we marry, divorce, have operations, make transactions... so our lives are very complicated, but as a zen master, she says, no, no, just eating, sleeping and taking a shit is enough. That means basically it is not our task to become great or better than others. It is not our task to become enlightened  and then talk about it or tell others how to be enlightened. Our task, according to Buddhism, is to be absolutely simple.

And you can say, of course, thats' perfectly impossible. This is nonsense, what she is saying. Nobody can just eat, sleep and take a shit, only animals, but not human beings. Impossible. But she doesn't mean we shouldn't drink wine, or shouldn't study science or teach philosophy or write novels or fall in love or divorce or play golf or buy a house in Florida. She only means eating, sleeping and taking a shit is more that enough. She means: feel free to do zillions of things. Feel free to get a degree, start a family, get a Nobel prize, make thing super complicated, get imprisoned, go nuts, whatever you please... but don't you ever think that all of those things were important or necessary. She means our civilization is something given, we cannot ignore it, we cannot avoid the modern life, unless we go to the jungle and live in a tribe.  If we live in a tribe, then living simply, eating, sleeping, taking a shit and maybe hunting from time to time, making love, from time to time, would be close to the ideal she mentions. But that's not the point. She says, look, people, don't believe that I, as a zen master, they call her a zen master, so she means, I, as a zen master, haven't contributed anything special, haven't done anything special and whatever I have added to eating, sleeping and taking a shit, was not really necessary.  So teaching Buddhism and being called a zen master doesn't make me a zen master. If I just eat, sleep and take a shit, that would make me a real zen master. She means that we usually forget how silly we are, how we overestimate human intelligence, how we let our clever ideas obstruct who we are in fact: stupid creatures, naked simpletons walking around talking and being clever, almost all the time. Zen does not add anything to our bare life. If it does, it is not zen. My teacher doesn't tell me how to live. He has never told me how to live. But he has suggested many times, that I may have some funny ideas about myself and the others. Weird ideas, unnecessary ideas. Weird ideas about Buddhism or enlightenment. So this Korean zen master comes and says, eating, sleeping and taking a shit should do. It is great that people get Nobel prizes and go to the Moon and take a picture there. We take selfies. Great. But we usually forget what we are. Not so clever, not so great, not so enlightened, and we underestimate the power of a good shit. We hardly ever notice how important it is to take a shit. We are making some progress when it comes to food, we are beginning to understand what our bodies really need. But as for shit, we are not so experienced.

Seriously, the aim of our practice should be going toward stupidity and end up at the toilet. But that doesn't mean we should be obsessed with shit. From now on Shitism is my faith "Holy shit, I bow in front of you." No, no, no. We shouldn't be obsessed with simplicity or stupidity as such obsession would be the very opposite of what I am trying to say. We should be so stupid that we don't even know how stupid we are. We should know so little about Buddhism that we can live freely without being stuck or upset by Buddhism. At  the same time, we should not abandon Buddhism either, because it was Buddha who told us about the importance of our stupid everyday life. We should try to remember that stupidity is important, but even complex Buddhist philosophy may help people find the meaning and importance of total stupidity.          
                         

June 7, 2017

Floating Isolated Concepts

Actually, I don't think I explained the problem of dead language very well last time. But it is always a challenge to explain such things, you can never get it perfectly right, it is always a kind of attempt to get close to what you mean...

I think we could say if there are some isolated floating concepts in your head, like buddha, truth, masters, right, wrong... if these words are isolated concepts without any connection to real life, we may be locked, these floating, isolated concepts are trying to lock our mind so it cannot think freely. Let's forget about Buddhist words for a while and take the word "love". If you get stuck thinking about "love", if you think what love is or what love is not, you cannot express actual love. Love becomes a dead concept in your head, but you firmly believe it is something absolutely real. It must exist somewhere, but you don't think it is happening now. So you are sitting next to a lovely person in a café, but if you are stuck with the idea about love, you either think that it is love going on in front of you or you think it is not love. But either the idea of love or not love is not actually love. When you forget about love, love can happen. Actual love. Love, actually. Not dreams. And it is the same with buddha or awakening. There are words "buddha" or "awakening: and there is actual buddha and actual awakening. The latter doesn't depend on our ideas about such things. When you open your mind, there is buddha, there is awakening. When you ask yourself : "Is this awakening?" You may be trapped. But when a sincere student asks a teacher sincerely and their mind is open, it is also awakening. There is no difference between asking where the salt is and asking what awakening is.  But when you don't believe the salt is in the kitchen, you cannot taste it. When you don't believe you are awakened, you cannot experience yourself completely. Of course, when we act, we naturally forget our sticky concepts and the awakening is there. But when we start to think about it, when we get stuck again, intellectually, we could say, awakening is gone. But even saying awakening is gone is only an idea. Has anyone ever seen a gone awakening? Gone awakening may be a big delusion. Awakening that has just appeared may be a great delusion. So if these are only words, if we only deal with concepts without any connection to our real experience, this article is a big piece of junk. But when we open our minds, if these words help to open our minds and move from concepts to experience, then such words, such teaching may be helpful. But teaching is never helpful if it is only formulas, concepts or ideas.                      

We should not forget that Buddhism doesn't teach ideas, it uses ideas to teach our own experience, to teach our everyday life. So what I think or what you think is not as important as what we experience. So if we have an idea what Buddha is, we should forget it. Then we can act and express what it is freely. When we have an idea what love is, we should forget it, too, and then we can express it everywhere we go. It may seem that because I am angry with some of my students at school, I don't like them. But I don't think "I don't like them". Because I just act, I actually love them. I am angry because I love them.

At the end I would like to quote master Shunryu Suzuki, who said: "We don't practice in order to become buddhas. We practice because we already are buddhas." So when Buddha Gautama attained the truth he realized he had always been a buddha. But that concept of buddha didn't bother him any more. Before he was asking what the truth is, but later the concept of truth was not something to worry about. So because we already are buddhas, we don't have to worry about the truth. And because we are already buddhas, we may have some questions about the truth. When we ask openly, when we learn openly, we attain openly. When we attain openly, there is nothing to stick to, nothing to point to. Nowhere to stop and get stuck. So then it matters whether we have washed our bowl yet or not. Such things matter the most.  



June 6, 2017

Dead or Alive? Will the Language Say?

When we come across various terms in Buddhist philosophy, we may wonder, what does that mean? What does buddha mean? Some people may argue what buddha is, what buddha nature is, what the truth is... Maybe we have noticed that arguments based on smart ass attitude never enlighten anyone. Intellectual arguments about the truth, buddha, awakening etc are useless.  I remember when I began to study and practice Buddhism, I always wondered "What does buddha mean? What am I? What is my true self?" I kept asking and asking, over and over again. It was very frustrating, because I couldn't find any useful answers to my questions. I was practicing within a Korean Zen school which stressed working with such questions, so we were challenged by the teachers, all the time, we had to answer questions like Who are you? What would Buddha do if... ? But I couldn't answer these questions and I was desperate. So they tell you things like: When you wake up, you will be able to answer. Until you wake up, you cannot answer. So that was a kind of relief, right... But then to make things really confusing, the teachers would tell us that we already are buddhas.  As if that helped at all...  So I was looking for answers, and I somehow believed that there are nice, correct answers to such questions, but now I understand there aren't  any nice, fixed answers to any of such questions. The answers are not something intellectual and they never stay the same, the shape of the answer changes according to the context or situation... all the time.

Many years later, this year, I had a kind of misunderstanding with my teacher, about the value of great Buddhist teachers. My teacher pointed out that I may overestimate the value of Buddhist teachers. I was confused... how can you overestimate the value of authentic teachers from the past or present? I think my teacher thought I was a bit too idealistic. And that's true, I was. But I needed to solve this puzzle. For sure the Chinese masters like Nansen, Baso or Joshu were great teachers, right? And I cannot help it but Kodo Sawaki or Shunryu Suzuki to me, based on what I read about them, were great teachers. Even master Dogen praises teachers he never met, for example master Wanshi. And I am not only looking with respect at masters I never met, but also real, living teachers I met. And again, I am sure they are great teachers. But saying so, is that idealistic? I was thinking about this for a few days after the misunderstanding with my teacher and suddenly noticed there is a loose screw in the whole concept of great teachers of the past and present.

The problem whether master So and so was a great teacher or not is not whether he or she was great. The problem is how my mind or your mind processes the linguistic task of dealing with the phrase "great teacher". It is the same with words like buddha, truth or enlightenment. These are loose, freely available linguistic concepts anyone can use and talk about as much as they like. But how we process, how we deal with the meaning of these words is what matters the most. I would say there are a few ways to process a philosophically challenging term. The first mode is something I would call "no idea". If you hear the word nirvana for the first time, you have no idea what it is. The second mode is something I would call "confusion". You already heard the word nirvana a few or many times, but still it makes no sense.  The third mode is something I would call smart ass mode. You think you are familiar with the term and can explain it to others clearly, without having a clue what nirvana really is as you lack real experience, in other words, you have never practiced nirvana or if you practiced nirvana you didn't notice it was nirvana. Another mode is something I would call free language. You are free to use words any way you like as long as it fits the broader context and what you actually want to say. Usually this free language is pretty logical and rational, so it is not free in terms of something like "I can say anything I like and it doesn't have to make sense".  So if you want to speak about buddhas, nirvana and awakening, you need some sound, or at least some kind of philosophical background plus the freedom of your mind to speak or write in a way that is based both on philosophical reasoning within the tradition you follow and your actual experience as a practicing Buddhist.   This sounds very complicated but it is just speaking or writing without being trapped in isolated nests of concepts or acting like a cocky smart ass who has read everything and been everywhere. It is just freely using words in order to point to our experience as such, our experience without words, our original not knowing, something we need to return to regularly, and which is something people in general return to regularly, otherwise they would go nuts. We Buddhists somehow stress this experience of returning to our original self, so not only we don't go nuts, hopefully, but we are aware of the value of the experience when we don't know anything and don't understand anything. Paradoxically, only then we can somehow talk about Buddhism, so some kind of primary stupidity is really necessary.                  

When I pointed to the great masters of past and my teacher reacted somehow critically, considering my remarks idealistic or silly, or whatever he thought, I was being a victim of isolated concepts floating in my head. It  was like asking "What is the great being we call buddha? Where can we find the great being called buddha? I hear there are great beings called buddha but are they here with us? I hear there were great teachers in China, masters Dogen praised, but are there great teachers like that in the 21st century? Should we be like great masters from China or can we just live our life without worrying about those great masters?" So we can notice that I was dealing with some kind of idea about some kind of teachers. But when we carefully look into the teachings of these great or not so great or whatever you call them masters, when we carefully investigate what their teaching actually was, we cannot find any great enlightened masters who impressed heavenly beings and buddhas. All we find, when we look carefully, is a bucket of ice cold water, or a whisk or a bowl of rice. Those people were living in reality and they were teaching reality. If master Dogen called  them great, he wasn't trapped in concepts, he wasn't a victim of idealistic dreams about great masters of the past. Master Dogen was telling us, and is still telling us, through his writings, that we must not get stuck in ideas about greatness or profanity. Just noticing the greatness of these masters, we have to quickly make another step and investigate what kind of water they drank and what kind of rice they ate. We should investigate if their shouting was real or something we only dream about. Today I was cycling along the river and got soaked as the rain got heavier and heavier. In the end I went back to a metro station near the center, completely wet and cold and was looking forward to a hot bath back at home. I had a hot bath. I might not catch a cold. So these are examples of something that is more real than stories about old masters. They did experience reality but we can notice what that reality was, it was everyday life reality, not some kind of great reality. They were great because they denied their greatness. If they hadn't denied their greatness and talked about their own greatness, we would never read about these great masters. Now I am saying "great masters" but what does it mean? If we get stuck, we cannot taste water and cannot have a hot bath. Even if we step into the bath and get soaked, as we are dreaming about Buddhist masters, we miss the experience of Buddhist masters. Just as we have a hot bath, without saying so, master Baso and Nansen come back and shout like crazy.

So it is important to notice how we may be entangled in ideas and concepts when we study Buddhism. I think everyone can boldly move from the original confusion, carefully avoid the stage of smart ass, and use Buddhist terms freely, as necessary. You can help me understand the meaning of life, if you speak sincerely and based on your experience. I may help you understand the meaning of life, if I speak sincerely and based on my experience. What is buddha? There are lots of books, good or bad, clever definitions, confusing explanations, intellectual arguments, but no matter what we say, we cannot miss the point if we really have a hot bath, can we?              

May 24, 2017

Feedback, anyone?

It's been kind of lonely here lately. I got an occasional comment now and then, but recently I got basically no feedback so I wonder if anyone is reading my blog any longer or the readers are just robots from Russia.

If you happen to read my blog more or less regularly, please make a comment and let me know if you practice zazen, if you study with a teacher or something. I have really no idea who reads my blog, why, where, etc. I do get quite a lot of hits, but as I said, no idea who the people are. So it would help a lot if you tell me something so I get a kick and write for someone, not just myself or this computer or robots.

Thank you.      

April 6, 2017

Ca ira!

In the past I was very proud of my ability to explain various aspects of the Buddhist philosophy. I  don't feel that pride any more. Of course I did not say much to anyone, but I thought so - I'm someone who has a great ability to explain Buddhism. And I imagined that in a few years I would publish a book of my essays on Buddhism. (Today I don't want to publish my old essays, except maybe a few. )

I also always wanted to return to mental clarity, brightness. When I fell into a state of confusion or irritation, I felt that I'd failed horribly. I believed that a good Buddhist talks about their own delusions, but basically never has any! I imagined that Buddhist teachers had a sense of reality that I was far away from. So I tried to get rid of my confusion and ignorance whenever there was the opportunity to do so. I always sought a state of calm and clarity. Thanks to zazen I could regularly return to similar states. Then, in a state like that I enjoyed writing articles about Buddhism or giving a talk at the Prague Lotus Center. I didn't realize that I was carrying a big piece of idealism in my head, which prevented me from becoming free and myself. I saw a clear difference between wisdom on the one hand and ignorance on the other, the truth as opposed to delusion, people who are true versus people who are deluded.  I had no idea that there is something not fixed about buddhas, something not clear about the truth, something very, very open about our lives, something completely open and free about each of us, some kind of quality that we cannot clearly notice and fix, a situation of no limits, which is where we act like or express ourselves perfectly as buddhas. Long time ago I realized that the truth cannot be grasped by mind, but for some reason at that time I didn't realize that people are also like that, ineffable, that I am also ineffable, impossible to fix in a category. I could drink tea without calling it tea, I could walk without calling it walk, I could see flowers without calling them flowers, but I could not see myself as a quality without names. I always wanted to know who I am, what my function is, what my rank is, what value I have, what wisdom or silliness I have, what I mean to others, what I know, what I don't know. I had no idea that I could put aside such evaluations and concerns and just enjoy being "unlabeled, beyond ranks or values".   We cannot always clearly decide who is true or false, who is awake and who is not, as most of the time none of us is fixed or stuck in a rigid cage that has a name or label. We can notice that some people are usually confused and some people are often clear. We can notice that some people look for something and some people may naively believe that they have found something fixed. Genuine teachers are able to point to the place which has no name or rank. Then we can find freedom in that place and live our life freely. Master Dogen wrote that he had completed the task of unfinished, never-ending practice. I would say that as he had completed that task, master Dogen's life simply began to mean never-ending chain of momentary tasks. We could call it freedom, or a challenge after challenge.

As for people who are awake, I think it is similar to the situation of a tree. Does a tree show off its awakening? The tree expresses the truth but firstly the tree is not aware of such a situation, secondly,  it never speaks about its own awakening. It doesn't shout: "I radiate awakening. I am an enlightened tree, I am a buddha tree." So good teachers never say about themselves - here, here, can't you see I am a Buddha? That would be so absurd. The Buddhas do not need to fix this situation and show others. When you are in a state of confusion, you don't have to say, oh, I'm not Buddha ... because just as you are going to say what you are or you aren't, the situation has changed and you may be completely free again, so your words come too late. If you attain a state of clarity and want to say it, you have already fallen into a state of cloudiness. So we can only try to point to situations that we cannot experience at the very moment of opening our mouths. The ideas are always only shadows of actual situations. Anyway, speaking or acting, when the Buddhist teachers express the state of Buddha, they express the reality itself, not their abilities or skills or wisdom. When ringing the bell or raising a stick, they show the reality itself, not their personal opinions or personal qualities. These teachers may seem confident, they may be confident, but the kind of confidence that matters is transcending one's personal attitude, so they immediately forget themselves boldly and act - step into sheer reality. They may say things such as: "I do not know who I am, I don't know if I understand Buddhism," and then they hit the bell. Just that.

Master Dogen wrote: "The actual situation is where we feel that we have forgotten what we know and when we achieve that, we have overcome the mind." So it is important to forget what we have learned. That was exactly my weakness. I was proud of what I'd  learned, what experience I had, proud of my understanding of Buddhism. So I was a kind of rabbit with horns. Maybe sincere, maybe honest at times, but definitely a rabbit with horns. And even now I may be a rabbit with horns. In my own essays I wrote: "Forget what you know and just do something." Of course, I did something many times during the day and didn't think about myself. That's why I enjoyed skiing, cycling, golf... swimming in the sea. In those situations I could be free, free from my own silly ideas about who I was and wasn't. Only during such activities, I was really able to forget myself and enter reality - like everyone else who's doing something completely. But once I had time to think about myself, I became a desperate idealist. It devoured and broke me, over and over again. It knocked me down and messed up my original innocence. "You're not good enough!" an idealistic cop shouted at me from a corner of my brain. Well, I would say today, nobody is good enough and everyone is good enough. The efforts we make are important, but our evaluation should be put aside. So good enough or not good enough, the most important is to get up in the morning and follow the tasks each day presents, moment after moment, till we go to sleep. And start again in the morning. At times I tried to push very hard and at times I slowed down so much that I felt almost on the verge of dying. Now, we may believe that we have slowed down or hurried up, but the time and space doesn't care. No matter how little or hard we try, we cannot mislead time and space, we'll be always here and now, in this very body and mind. Reality is pretty sheer. You can change reality, for sure, but you cannot change it by thinking. By thinking you can prepare actions that will change reality, so thinking or understanding Buddhism is important. But only certain kind of understanding or right understanding leads to actions that come from the right attitude. So not trying to hurry things up or slowing things down. Just actions at the present moment.  

When we try hard to get rid of our illusions, or when we try to get rid of our imperfections, mistakes, or whenever we try to be someone other than who we already are... it's all against the meaning of Buddhism. The effort is important in Buddhism, but it must be the right effort. It is not about removing illusions and establishing brightness. It is not getting rid of weaknesses. Although we learn as we practice and study, we do not learn to be stronger. The strength we may get as we practice is our original nature. The weaknesses we still have, are our original nature. A butterfly cannot eat a tiger. A tiger cannot swim across the lake. A human being wants to have sex. So when we see what is natural, we can say, OK, whatever, and just return to our everyday life. A butterfly is too weak to fly across Africa, so it flies only across the meadow. A tiger is too heavy to sit on a flower, so it sits on a boulder. A human being is too intelligent to act like a frog, so a human being studies philosophy. When we practice zazen, we can see our weakness and smile. It is OK. When we want to deny our weakness, we become stiff and break ourselves or someone else sooner or later. We don't have to become some kind of samurais, who never make a wrong step. Rather we should just forget our ideas about ourselves, buddhas, enlightenment and just do something, all day long. Stupidly act, moment after moment, even when we read a wonderful book of philosophy, we can read it stupidly, that means like a child, a very curious child. When we don't' study Buddhism stupidly, we mix the authentic teaching with our intellectual ideas and spoil the whole thing, the whole teaching. So we have to be careful about our ability to think and judge. Of course we have a great goal - to realize the truth of Buddhism - and I'm not saying that we should slack and make no efforts. Just the efforts should be somehow stupid and simple, every day, day after day, over and over, somehow simply doing what is necessary to do and not worry how great we are or how great others are. A teacher is someone who helps, that help is primary, his or her possible greatness is secondary. But many people make the mistake of judging the teacher without seeing his offered help. When you get to know your teacher very well, you may notice that he or she is not that great, but what they point to is more than great. And they, as long as they are authentic, never ever point to themselves as the goal of your efforts. You do not follow the teacher, you follow their directions. They may tell you to go left whereas they go right. After all you will meet them in the real world and there will be no directions, only the north, south, west and east.

Master Dogen also wrote: "Generally speaking, students want to be caught by the truth. Being caught by the truth means to lose all traces of enlightenment." This means that no matter if we think that we are enlightened or not, in both cases, we should ditch the ideas about enlightenment and just do something. This is something that I have written about a zillion times already, but I never realized what it meant. Of course, when I was swimming in the sea, I did realize, but as a whole, my life was broken into pieces of different ideas and attitudes toward myself and reality. Such a situation is impossible to cure if you have no access to a true teacher. Only a true teacher can notice that you haven't realized something important, that something important is missing. We ourselves are too busy following our own ideas about Buddhism that prevent us from seeing what Buddhism truly is. So we must make sure that we are learning from an experienced teacher and let the teacher know about our progress and problems and questions.

People who do not practice zazen, also express the truth of Buddhism. Even people who cheat, in a way, express the truth of Buddhism. But it is our human nature to live honestly and well. No matter how many weaknesses we have, we tend to end up living honestly and well. That is our nature. If you try hard to hammer your nature, you may end up a criminal or a complete fool, but if you look after yourself at least a little bit sincerely, you will allow your nature to shine from time to time. Just the thing is that when we do not practice zazen, this natural disposition of ours may be obscured, or blocked by our ideas about ourselves and the world. So we tend to follow some crazy movements or crowds and ignore the direction from which the truth comes. When we study Buddhism and practice zazen, we tend to live quite well. And if others say that we are good people, we should say, no, I am not so sure about that... We can't just simply declare whether we are good people or not. It doesn't matter. What matters is our everyday practice and everyday efforts in each moment, no matter if we fail or succeed.

I will continue to write this blog, but I hope it will not be driven by my desire to raise above others and become an important person. I do not want to hide away in the mountains, but I don't want to shout at people about Buddhism either... Anyway, the goal of life is life itself. This is very easy to say, but extremely difficult to realize. But, you know what, ca ira!

March 5, 2017

Making Efforts for the Sake of Efforts

Some people may think that in order to become a great person and realize what Buddhism is, they have to attain some kind of wonderful personality. We may think that one day we will become great Buddhists, but first we have to make some extraordinary efforts and learn extraordinary skills. But after all we have to let go of our ideas about Buddhism and great Buddhists of the past, present and future and return to our actual life and deal with our actual problems. In Buddhism it is much more important to make efforts for the sake of efforts than make efforts in order to receive results.

For example, at work I learned after many years of trying hard to be a better teacher that it is better to just make efforts this lesson, this week, this month, without worrying about my past mistakes and how much my students will learn when I try hard to teach them. So now I just make my efforts every day, sometimes it is going on well, sometimes not, sometimes I am exhausted and sometimes I am full of energy. At times I am a bit pessimistic and some other times a bit optimistic, but in general, I just make my efforts to teach English, over and over and over again. That makes me a real English teacher. Even if some people say that I am a very good English teacher, I don't know if I deserve that evaluation. Even if some people criticize me, I think they may not understand what it takes to teach English. But of course, I have never been an ideal, perfect English teacher and never will be.

It is exactly the same in Buddhism. At the beginning you wonder what it takes to become some kind of well respected Buddhist, a great human being. But after many years of practice and study you have to admit that the only thing that really matters is making efforts every day for the sake of efforts. So after all, even if some people say that you are an idiot and don't understand Buddhism, if you are making efforts sincerely to live your life, that's all you can do and the best you can do. If some people say, hey, look at that person, what a wonderful Buddhist!,  you know they may have very little idea what that wonderful Buddhist actually is in real life. They don't know his or her weaknesses and bad hair days.

You make efforts and necessarily notice all the mistakes you have made. I have just vacuumed my bedroom and realized that no matter how hard I try, I can never ever vacuum the carpet perfectly. No matter how hard we may try, we can never ever clean anything perfectly. And it is the same in Buddhism - no matter how many hours of zazen you practice every day, no matter how many enlightenments you experience, no matter how many sesshins you go to, no matter how many times you read  Shobogenzo, you can never ever become a perfectly enlightened person and can never claim that you have finished or completed anything in your life. Even if people think that so and so is a great Buddhist teacher, the teacher knows: "I only make efforts, I have experience but there is always something I can learn. I will never stop making efforts." I am not talking about people I dream about. I can notice how my teacher makes efforts in his everyday life and never stops. I doubt he will tell you that has finished learning what life is.

So only making efforts, day after day, no matter how many times we stumble, is the point. We may have been infected with ideas about wonderful Chinese masters of which we only know great things. But they probably made a mistake after mistake, never becoming perfect, never rigidly completing the tasks of every day life and saying "Now I am a perfect human being". They just kept making efforts. And master Dogen wrote that at one point he completed the task of never-ending practice. So in other words, master Dogen at one point realized that the meaning of Buddhism is never to stop making efforts, never to stop practicing, never to stop learning.

When we realize that making efforts is all we have to do, and  when we realize that while making efforts we necessarily make mistakes and that we can never do anything perfectly, we just let go of the idea that we could become great or special. We realize that we can only be ordinary people who make efforts like my grandma did. Day after day, she worked, never complained, never said she was great. She was happy when she finished her job well, but she started the next day, and did the same thing day after day. She knew that her task, her mission was just to do her duties and enjoy spending time with her grandchildren and scold my grandpa when she found him smoking at the toilet.

Now we should also understand that we make efforts and mistakes within the universe that is perfectly clear and without an error. We are playing in the midst of something great. We can never finish anything or make anything that would be on par  with the universal greatness. On the other hand, we are part of the universal greatness, no matter how hard we may try to mess up things. Even if we never take a shower, never clean our house and yell at people all the time, we can never escape the great clarity of the universe. Now why do Buddhists make efforts if we are part of something perfectly bright? It is the same situation with trees and grass. Why do they grow even if they have to die? Why are there trees and bugs and why do they reproduce if the universe is wonderful even without them? It is their nature to move and change and do something. We are people, we are part of the living world on this planet, so we cannot stop making efforts. Just like birds, cows, bugs, bacteria or the wind and rain, we are very dynamic and active. Now what kind of actions are natural and what kind of actions are sick? When we practice zazen, we reconnect with the source of our life, we reconnect to the universal law and that reconnection sends signals to our body and mind and we act naturally. We make the right kinds of efforts. Yet making the right efforts does not prevent us from making mistakes. Even ants and bees make mistakes, all living beings make mistakes, but having made a mistake, they try again. Have you seen a toddler learning to walk? Do they worry about making mistakes? No. They walk and fall down. They raise and walk again. They fall. They get up and fall again. This is an example of a perfect Buddhist life, this is how we should live. And even when we learn to walk, there are zillions of other things we have to deal with. Do trees ever stop growing? Not until they dry up. Do they ever stop trying? Never as long as they are alive. Do bees ever say:  "Finished, I am now a perfect bee, I am not going to do anything any more!"? No. Never. If we want to live a life of a buddha, all we have to do is making efforts every day, no matter if we make mistakes or not, and never stop. Let's join the efforts of mountains and clouds and do things for the sake of things. Then results will appear, just like a beautiful old pine has appeared on a cliff overlooking the endless sea.

February 24, 2017

Follow the Serpent's Tip

Here's a little disclaimer: All my articles, all my suggestions or explanations of Buddhism are directed towards me as well as towards whoever is interested or might benefit from my articles. So even if an article I have written seems like something I am telling others, in fact, I am the first to receive and hopefully benefit from such instructions. I need them - provided they are useful and true teachings. I don't know if my teaching is authentic but it is definitely some efforts to teach myself what I learned from good teachers, both people I met and teachings of people like master Dogen or Shunryu Suzuki whom I never met but whose teaching is studied in our lineage respectfully.   

When you don't think about it too much, you are IT, just that what you have always wanted to be, a free, simple person who is not overwhelmed by their intellectual questions and doubts.  Maybe you thought you would be as smart as those zen masters who give spiritual advice to others. But the help is not about being smart or knowing some kind of secret. The help is about directions to your simple, original, free self. So when you are doing something right now, you are perfectly on par with that Chinese layman Pang who said: "How wonderful! I draw water, I carry fuel."

So you are that person, that very original and perfectly unfinished, open person you always wanted to be. The thing is you might want to be a finished person, someone who has achieved something fixed, something stable or eternal, but actually, that desire for a fixed person, a fixed buddha is really against the very freedom and openness we practice and quest for in Buddhism. So when you let go of that fixed idea about who you are or who you want to be, then right then you are that, IT, the person, the real thing. There is absolutely nothing you have to add to that person. On the contrary, whenever you add something artificial, something fixed, rigid, and idea, decoration, an aura, wisdom, knowledge, any kind of spiritual experience, you have lost your own Tathagata - the person who has just appeared before thinking and after thinking, a person who is not bound by words or ideas.

We can have all kinds of goals. To graduate from college, to start a family, to make a million dollars, to have a few wonderful kids, to find a good Buddhist teacher, to realize who you really are, these are all wonderful goals and we need to set such goals in our lives, but after all, the most important goal of all goals is to live our life day after day. The utmost purpose of our life is just to live it. It is like a journey you have to continue. Rain or shine, you keep walking. Even if you stop for a drink in a pub, then you continue your journey, you don't give up. It doesn't matter if the weather is nice or not, whether you feel tired or energetic, optimistic or pessimistic, grumpy or excited. The most important thing is to continue. This is how the quality of buddha can shine over and over, every day, and that's how the original quality of the universe meets the original quality of a person.
 
What kind of life would you like to live? I think the best would be to live just the life that is unfolding right in front of you. It is like accepting the shoes you are wearing even if they aren't very comfortable. We only have this life, this person so it is best to make the best out of this life, these genes, this mouth, this nose, this age, this talent, this weakness, this situation, this town, this computer, this keyboard, this moment. It is not necessary to dream about someone else's life or imitate others or try to become somebody that we can never ever be. It is best to accept who we are - basically - and work with that. I am not saying we cannot change, but in Buddhism, the changes are not as important as the essence we have brought to this life from our mother's womb, the very thing we have always been. We learn, we make some progress and sooner or later we can meet ourselves completely. Sooner or later we can shake hands with ourselves. We can accept ourselves, this life, this situation. That's why Kodo Sawaki said that zazen has no goal. When we feel balanced after zazen, that is wonderful, but the less we try to attain something through zazen, the closer we are to our true self, and the true self is something we don't have to look for or attain, it is always here, just when we don't think about it.

Doing something simple, or asking a question or taking a pill or going to bed, without categories, without fixed ideas about ourselves and others, we can taste the freedom of Tathagata. So just let go of ideas and categories and the gate of the mental prison will open and you will be able to follow the serpent's tip - you'll grab the apple, eat it and step in to the Buddha's paradise! We don't know what Buddha's paradise is, as it cannot be found intellectually, but we can experience it when we just act, when we just practice zazen.