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Beginners' Intsruction Aug 11th
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10:30 am. Please arrive a few minutes early. Instruction lasts approximately one hour followed by a question and answer period. Please wear loose, comfortable clothing and footwear that is easy to take on and off. Event is free but a suggested donation of $10 is greatly appreciated. Gassho!
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Forrest Wash (Shinrin-Yoku)
Aug 14
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Join us for a potluck at the Albuquerque Zen Center! All are invited to attend and encouraged to bring something to eat or drink. This is a perfect casual event to which family and friends are invited. Enjoy the great treasure of the Zen Center community.
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Help care for the Zen Center grounds. The Sangha will carry out painting and grounds work after the regular morning zendo.
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Morning Dharma
By Seiju Mammoser
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One of my dharma friends had a regular daily practice of beginning her day with a cup of tea and 15-30 minutes of dharma study. After which she continued her daily routine: mediation, exercise, and work responsibilities. Her point was to begin her day studying the Dharma. Following her example, I incorporated a similar practice into my daily routine, which I maintained for decades. I found it valuable to exchange 30 minutes of sleep for 30 minutes of Dharma study. It was especially helpful to begin my day in this way. The responsibilities of daily life will assert themselves, as they must. If Dharma is to be our refuge, we must take refuge. What I am suggesting is that you make a commitment to your own practice: choose a text that resonates with you, and study it for a month. We must bring energy to practicing with the difficulties in daily living. My teacher often said that objective Buddhism is not Buddhism. We must be able to practice in the midst of daily responsibilities. This is where we will find the truth of the teaching.
Each practitioner has his or her preferred texts, and Buddhism has many texts to choose from. Some material will seem accessible, other material seems beyond understanding. Within each teaching tradition, there are celebrated teachings and teachers. One of these great teachers is Huang Po (Obaku in Japanese). Huang Po was the teacher of Linji (Rinzai, jp.), and there is a wonderful book on his teaching, On Transmission of Mind. The text is very direct, and not easy to understand. It gets straight to the point; there is little allowance for our delusions. We are burdened with years of habit energy, ideas, and emotions. Cutting through this debris is not a simple, one-time activity. Studying such difficult texts means repeatedly encountering our own bias and inertia. Basically, we see the world from a self-centric viewpoint; Huang Po’s standpoint is selfless and imperceptible. He points directly at how our confusion arises. The text is sharp and challenging. It feels new every time I read it.
I once asked my teacher about the meaning of a difficult passage from the Rinzai Roku, the collection of Rinzai’s teaching. His response was, “Read the text 500 times.” Understanding is not “acquired.” It is not a possession or achievement. Our original selfless nature is one with complete understanding. We obscure this original understanding by overlaying it with thoughts, memories, and emotions – our personal assortment of attachments and ignorance. Affirmation and negation are self-centric activities. Understanding is selfless.
Consider the following:
This fundamentally pure mind is always perfectly bright and uniformly radiant. People of the world are not enlightened and only recognize their perceptive faculties as mind. Since their [understanding] is obscured by their perceptive faculties, they therefore do not witness the pure and bright fundamental essence. If one can only right now achieve no-mind, the fundamental essence will appear of itself. It is like the great orb of the sun risen in the sky, which illuminates uniformly throughout the ten directions without being hindered at all.
Therefore, trainees only recognize their perceptive faculties and act [accordingly]. But if they render those perceptive faculties void, so that the pathways of the mind are eliminated, they will be without any way to enter [into enlightenment]. They should simply recognize the fundamental mind within their perceptive faculties. Although the fundamental mind does not belong to those perceptive faculties, neither is it separate from the perceptive faculties. Just do not generate conceptual interpretations on the basis of those perceptive faculties, do not activate thoughts on the basis of those perceptive faculties, do not look for the mind apart from the perceptive faculties, and do not reject the perceptive faculties in order to grasp the dharmas. Neither identical nor separate, neither abiding nor attached, it is universally autonomous, and there is nowhere that is not the place of enlightenment (bodhimandala). People of the world hear it said that the Buddhas all transmit the Dharma of mind, and they take it that there is a Dharma apart from the mind that can be realized and grasped. They search for the Dharma with the mind, not understanding that the mind is the Dharma and the Dharma is the mind. You cannot search for the mind with the mind—you will pass through a thousand and ten thousand eons [trying] and never get it. [Such useless efforts] are not equal to right now achieving no-mind—this is the fundamental Dharma.
Huang Po pushes away any limitations we might imagine. We tend to think of “mind” in terms of subjective mind and self-conscious activity. Such ideas blind us to the much different understanding Huang Po presents. He declares the mind is “always perfectly bright and uniformly radiant.” It pervades everywhere, without limitation or distinction. We look left and see daylight, look right and see shadows. Reds and blues, sounds and silence – our everyday world seems very different from Huang Po’s description. A common simile for mind is space. Space uniformly extends everywhere. Space provides a context for everything and everyone. Our ordinary point of view focuses on the people and items within the space. Huang Po is directing us to attend to space itself.
Huang Po points out that everywhere we look, we are confused by our perceptions. We imagine meaning and value in our distinctions; yet, mind transcends distinction. The tools we use to measure and evaluate our world are not helpful here. By noting distinctions and differences we blind ourselves to the unity of relationship.
If this seems overwhelming, focus on the following sentence from the middle of the text. Huang Po gives explicit directions.
Just do not generate conceptual interpretations on the basis of those perceptive faculties,
do not activate thoughts on the basis of those perceptive faculties,
do not look for the mind apart from the perceptive faculties,
and do not reject the perceptive faculties in order to grasp the dharmas.
These are vital instructions. If we want to study this text, start here. As in the Awakening of Faith, whenever subjective activity arises, immediately let it go. Stop the subjective narrative that runs through our daily events; stop interpreting and explaining. All of this subjective busyness overwhelms our natural awareness. It is similar to listening to music with bass and treble terribly out of balance. If the bass is very strong and the treble weak, we will not experience the natural harmony of the music. Similarly, affirming subjective thoughts and emotions, we distort the natural relationship and unity of our experience. The ever-arising new moment gets buried in our language, concepts, and emotions. We are suffering because we are always affirming our self-interest. Huang Po’s directions are explicit: do not activate thoughts and emotions arising from experience. Realize the arising thought or emotion, but immediately release it. This is the work that only we can do for ourselves. As Huang Po says, “Neither identical nor separate, neither abiding nor attached.” We must respond to each new moment as a new self. This is a practice we will continue throughout our lives.
There is neither an inside nor an outside. Narratives give rise to ideas of self and other, often with a rich inner life. This is all illusion; there is no agent/soul/self/person at the center of all of this. There is no observer apart from the observed; subject and object are co-dependent illusions. There is no outside. There is no True Reality beyond, behind, or transcending this moment. There is only one world; there is only one time.
Rather than speculating about no-mind, for one month, clear away the obvious self-centric busyness that otherwise would assert itself. Meet each new moment just as it arises. As Huang Po says, we cannot search for mind with mind. However, we can stop obscuring our natural mind with self-centric delusions.
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The Albuquerque Zen Center is run completely on the donations of its members and those who, as we do, strive for clarity. Your donations are greatly welcomed.
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