From Katagiri Roshi:
“Zazen is not a means
to an end, it does not produce enlightenment. The zazen we do is shikan taza – just sitting. This type of zazen is to just become
present in the process of zazen itself or wholehearted sitting. Enlightenment is not something you
acquire after you have done zazen.
Zazen is not a concept of the process. Zazen is to focus on the process itself.
All we have to do is
what we are doing right now, right here.
Whatever kind of experience we have through zazen is secondary. Whatever happens, all we have to do is
to be constantly present right in the middle of the process of zazen. This is the beginning and also the
end.”
Uchiyama Roshi translates Samadhi as right acceptance.
Right Acceptance is to receive yourself and simultaneously the whole
universe.
There is a great deal of difference between library
understanding of Zen and zendo understanding. Daido Loori called the zendo and sesshin, a bull-shit
detector. All of our concepts and
ideas are stripped away. We begin
to understand zazen nakedly and at its core, we are taught not to hold on to
anything. Not only do we not cling
but we also radically accept or radically include all things that arise. This is non-preference in Zen. We have to suspend the thought-function
of the mind and activate the awareness function. Entering pure awareness or process, subject and object can
drop away. In this functioning, we
can receive ourselves (our historic karmic process) and the whole universal
energies simultaneously.
This simultaneity is sometimes called identification. Not only subject and object identify as
one functioning but the particular phenomenon and the universe identify
together. Identification means
that your daily life (each phenomena that arises) is exactly the same as the
source of human life. Katagiri
Roshi writes, “What is practice? Practice
is to manifest the object of your activity as a being that exists in eternal
time.”
The underlying message of Dogen-Zenji is often similar to
this. He works from the basis of
non-substantiation, which the Prajna Paramita sutras and Nagarjuna so
explicitly demonstrated but he adds the component of practice – how do we live
our ordinary lives from the perspective of the emptiness of all things? Dogen asks how we can take care of
constructed reality with the understanding of negation.
Katagiri Roshi wrote,
If you want to live
with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the
flame of your life force in everything you do. If you think you have lots of time and many choices in your
life, you don’t believe me when I say that you have to pay attention to every
moment. When a moment comes,
whatever happens, just face your life as it really is, giving away any ideas of
good or bad and try your best to carry out what you have to do. You can do this; you can face your life
with a calm mind and burn the flame of your life in whatever you do.
Labels: Dogen Zenji, enlightenment, identification, Katagiri Roshi, practice-realization, pure awareness, Right acceptance, shikan-taza, simultaneity, zazen