From Akrobatik’s “Time” (2004):

Time: the essence of existence,
Everybody’s time comes, no resistance,
Enter into the equation the rate into distance,
Thousand-year period of split-second instants

That last line struck me, making me think of the “in a snap of the fingers” measurement of a moment.

Sometimes it takes walking into a door to remind yourself to slow down.

Shikanataza means “just sitting.”

I find myself often thinking of that phrase more as, “Ah, I’m not doing much… just sitting… how about you?” when the real intention of the phrase is to show that you’re sitting and only sitting, not doing anything else. So when I think “just sitting” I now emphasize the “just”. Just sitting. Nothing else.

Right now, I’m reading How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment (I hate that subtitle). It’s Dogen’s Instructions for the Zen Cook and then a bunch of commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. I like his writing style and came across a particularly good section yesterday (emphasis mine):

With the definition of mind that I have explained above, it is necessary to take another look at the expression, “The dharma should be grasped so that mind and object become one.” This expression means that we must learn to see all phenomena (everything in life) from the foundation of a pure-life experience. All too often we while away our lives, creating general assumptions and ideologies out of the thoughts that arise in our minds, and, after having fabricated those ideas, we finally dissipate our life energy by living in the world we have abstracted from them. “The dharma should be grasped so that mind and object become one,” means that we must see all of the worlds that our lives encmpass from the foundation of our own personal life experience; our life experience is or mind. This means that all things in life function as parts of our bodies. This is also th emeanin of toji, holding all things equally.

Something I’m often guilty of (as are most people, I suspect) is pushing aside feelings or gut responses to things that we feel aren’t “right” or productive in some way.  If we get angry at somebody or something, we’ll see that and compound the anger by getting angry at the fact we’re letting something stupid get to us.  I find myself pushing anger aside, telling myself, “That’s not worth getting angry over.”

But, you know what?  That doesn’t usually help matters.  Instead, the anger just sits there, not actively being used, but bubbling and morphing into tight muscles, stomach discomfort, and headaches.

What seems to be more beneficial is to acknowledge my feelings or my response to an event, recognizing it for what it is: a thought in my head that causes a physical response in my body which may, in turn, cause me to say or do something that I’ll later regret.  It’s kind of a weird thing the first few times it happens.

When I feel myself starting to get worked up, I stop for just a moment and just let it be.  I don’t push it aside… it’s almost like hitting the pause button on a video.  Everything just kind of sits there, waiting to be examined.  And when you do that, it’s like seeing that emotion in the third person.  “Hey, that guy’s angry.”  And just by stating it, recognizing, ”I’m getting worked up,” the feeling then tends to drop away.  I’ve acknowledged it, it’s not fighting for attention, and I’m able to proceed a bit more reasonably.

Of course, this is sometimes hard to put into practice and may not even be what you want to do in particularly intense situations where your gut responses and emotions may be guiding you towards self-defense, but I’ve found that the majority of my own stress-inducing feelings (anger, fear, guilt) are imagined and based on something I expect is or will be true, when generally it’s just my interpretation of that truth that’s provoking those feelings.

Did that make any sense?  This stuff is hard to write about in a way that doesn’t come across as self-helpy or dripping with new agey-ness.

On the way into work this morning, I was listening to the 43rd episode of the Dharma Podcast and was struck by Beate Stolte-Overtheil’s mention of graffiti near a busy road that read, “This is not traffic.  You are the traffic.”  Coincidentally, I was sitting in traffic at the time (er, I was being traffic at the time).

This simple statement really sums up the idea of taking responsibility for the moment, accepting the role that you play in shaping the way the world is.  We might want to blame the traffic on all those other drivers, but that traffic wouldn’t exist without each individual driver being there, just like a world of violence wouldn’t exist if not for the collaboration of those perpetrating the violence, those remaining silent about the violence, and those benefiting from the violence.

Of course, maybe this graffiti was just making a statement about the environmental impact of cars, but hey, we have us to thank for that, too.

Brad Warner directs us to this interview with David Chadwick (Crooked Cucumber):

Brad points out a section that snapped me to attention (emphasis mine):

And in the interview Chadwick answers a question I always hear, which is how do you get motivated to do Zazen practice. The answer, which Chadwick poses a bit more politely than I’m about to, is fuck motivation, just practice. He compares it to writing, which I can relate to. Any writer knows that if you only write when you’re specifically motivated to do so you won’t produce anything worthwhile. You just gotta sit down and do it. Same with Zazen. You set a time each day for Zazen and you do it then, whether you want to do it or not, whether it feels like you think it should or not. You just get down and do it.

See, I’ve been dealing with this exact thing recently. I’m been looking for motivation not only to sit zazen but to work on the book that I’m writing. Looking for this internal motivation to do whatever needs to be done really has nothing to do with motivation, it’s all about finding an excuse not to do something. The weird thing is, that something can be something you really want to do, but may be avoiding for any number of reasons (”I don’t deserve to spend time doing that,” “I have to deal with _____ first,” fear of failure, etc.).

So, there you go. Just practice. Just write. Just avoid quoting Nike slogans (”Just (get underpaid children in Vietnam to) Do It (for you)”).

(One question about the video, though: what’s with the cheesy set?)

From today’s Daily Zen:

People who study Buddhism
Should seek real, true perception
And understanding for now.
If you attain real, true perception
And understanding,
Birth and death don’t affect you;
You are free to go or stay.
You needn’t seek wonders,
For wonders come of themselves.

- Linji (d. 867)

As a side note, I was going to let this domain expire just because I hadn’t been writing here much and I don’t think there’s anyone reading.  But I’m going to give it another year.  Maybe I’ll write some more, maybe I won’t.  Maybe people will read it, maybe they won’t.  I’m not seeking wonders, for wonders come of themselves.

Like how I tied that back in?

When I was in high school, one of my favorite teachers told us during a poetry class that, “There’s only one reality: this one.”  He went on to explain that there is no such thing as an “alternate reality,” just different perceptions of what actually is.  (Isn’t it funny how every Buddhist discourse seems to use the italicized-”is”?)

This statement struck me at the time and stayed with me.  Here I am, almost 15 years after he said it, still thinking about it.

We exert a lot of energy trying to figure out what we’re missing about reality.  We search different spiritual traditions, a variety  of meditation techniques, a library’s worth of books, trying to figure out what we’re not seeing.  But isn’t this it?  What else is there besides where we are right now?  If we just look at things as they are at the moment, wouldn’t that give us a whole lot more insight into the nature of things?  Of course, it’s usually more difficult to quiet the mind and just observe things as they are than it is to constantly be looking for a new angle at which to observe them.  It’s easy to search, it’s hard to accept.

Last week, I listened to the Zen Stories talk by Gil Fronsdal from 2003.  Definitely one of my favorites of his so far.

I really enjoy Fronsdal’s perspective on things because he has a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford and has trained in both the Soto Zen and Insight Meditation lineages.  From my beginner’s eyes, there’s a lot to learn and take from varying lineages of Buddhism, no matter which one you might feel most closely connected with.