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.

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.