The Easy Way
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- Talk held at Toshoji monastery in Okayama.
• Tosho-ji the Movie
• Introduction of Ango T...
Recorded by Dave from @AngelCityZenCenter
Texts used:
To penetrate the buddha way is to penetrate yourself. To penetrate yourself is to forget yourself. To forget yourself is to be actualized by myriad things. To be actualized by myriad things is the droppimg away of your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace-realization continues endlessly. (Genjokoan)
When you let go of your body and mind and forget them completely and you throw yourself into the Buddha’s abode, then everything is done from the side of Buddha and you just follow along without effort or anxiety - you break free from life’s suffering and are Buddha yourself. How can you then have any hindrance in your mind?
There is a very easy way to be a Buddha: Do not do any evil. Do not try to cling to life and death but, with deep compassion, work for all beings. Respect your elders and sympathize with those younger. When you do neither deny things nor seek them or think and worry about them - then you are called a buddha. Don’t look for anything else. (Shoji)
Since ancient times this office has been held by realized monks who have the mind of the Way or by senior disciples who have roused the Way-seeking mind. This work requires exerting the Way. Those entrusted with this work but who lack the Way-seeking mind will only cause and endure hardship despite all their efforts.
Senior students, from ancient times, always practiced with the mind which finds the Way and so how can we of later generations not do the same? Those of old tell us, "For the tenzo, the mind which finds the Way actualizes itself through working with rolled up sleeves."
When we train in any of the offices of the monastery we should do so with a joyful heart, a motherly heart, a vast heart. A "joyful heart" rejoices and recognizes meaning. You should consider that were you to be born in the realm of the shining beings you would be absorbed in indulgence with the qualities of that realm so that you would not rouse the recognition of uncovering the Way and so have no opportunity to practice. And so how could you use cooking as an offering to the 3 Jewels? Nothing is more excellent than the 3 Jewels of the Buddha, the Teachings, and the Community of those who practice and realize the Way. Neither being the king of gods nor a world ruler can even compare with the 3 Jewels.
We can also reflect on how our lives would be were we to have been born in the realms of hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, or jealous gods. How difficult our lives would be in those four situations or if we had been born in any of the eight adverse conditions. We would not then be able to practice together with the strength of a monastic community even should it occur to us to aspire to it, let alone be able to offer food to the 3 Jewels with our own hands. Instead our bodies and minds would be bound within the limits of those circumstances, merely vessels of contraction.
A "motherly heart" is a heart which maintains the 3 Jewels as a parent cares for a child. A parent raises a child with deep love, regardless of poverty or difficulties. Their hearts cannot be understood by another; only a parent can understand it. A parent protects their child from heat or cold before worrying about whether they themselves are hot or cold. This kind of care can only be understood by those who have given rise to it and realized only by those who practice it. This, brought to its fullest, is how you must care for water and rice, as though they were your own children.
Shakyamuni offered to us the final twenty years of his own lifetime to protect us through these days of decline. What is this other than the exertion of this "parental heart"? The Buddha did not do this hoping to get something out of it but sheerly out of munificence.
"Vast heart" is like a great expanse of ocean or a towering mountain. It views everything from the most inclusive and broadest perspective. This vast heart does not regard a gram as too light or five kilos as too heavy. It does not follow the sounds of spring or try to nest in a spring garden; it does not darken with the colours of autumn. See the changes of the seasons as all one movement, understand light and heavy in relation to each other within a view which includes both. When you write or study the character "vast," this is how you should understand its meaning.
All of these and other great masters through the ages have studied the meaning of "vast" or "great" not only though the word for it but through all of the events and activities of their lives. Thus they lived as a great shout of freedom through presenting the Great Matter, penetrating the Great Question, training great disciples and in this way bringing it all forth to us. (Tenzo Kyokun)
Donations: sendaba.hatena...
#zen #zazen #dharma
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It is absolutely impossible for a Buddha to arise today. There is a second Christ, now. Only one master comes at a time.
dropje voor dropje, goede kwaliteit
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One of the best talks I have heard on Zen, Gassho!
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Lasst Euch nicht verwirren, Ihr seid schon immer und für immer nur ein Lotus!
🙏🏼 Nice talk. Who are the others?
What others? It was a talk at a monastery called Toshoji. Do you mean the 25 assembled monks and nuns with "the others"?
Or do you mean all sentient beings with "the others"? Anyway, I feel the danger in Zen and other spiritual traditions is to take refuge in the notion that "we are all one". In my personal practice I find it important not to forget what is expressed in these quotes by Simone Weil:
“To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love.”
“Let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.”
@@MuhoZenAus welchem Buch von ihr ist das? Du hast sie ja schon öfter zitiert- ich würde gerne mehr von ihr lesen und mit diesem Satz-Buch anfangen.
Ich kann die Quelle nicht finden. In den nächsten Komentar platziere ich einen Link zu vielen Weil-Zitaten zum Thema, die meisten mit Quellenangabe, aber bei diesem steht "Quelle nicht erinnerlich".
www.marschler.at/worte-simone-weil.htm