Crossing Nebraska

  “I have never said to my disciples that I am a true teacher. From the beginning I have said that the zazen each of us practices is the only true teacher.”   Kosho Uchiyama   But what about the Buddha himself? Was he not a true teacher in Uchiyama’s estimation? No doubt some would call it sacrilege to answer in the negative. There exists a story in which the Buddha’s entire sermon consists of him holding up a flower. One of his disciples, Mahakasyapa, is the only one who “gets it” – conveying his understanding with a smile. Many Buddhists believe that something passed from the Buddha to Mahakasyapa in that moment. But might it be that Mahakasyapa merely conveyed to the Buddha that his own zazen (seated meditation) had taught him what the Buddha had already realized? Perhaps the Buddha merely led Mahakasyapa to his own true teacher – his zazen – and Mahakasyapa proved to be a student worthy of its teaching.   Let’s get our heads out of the clouds for just a m...

It is dangerous to engage in mystical practice before having attained adequate ego strength to safely do so. This is an important idea that I attribute to C.G. Jung, although I can’t offer any more detailed attribution at the present time. If we scratch just below the surface of such a statement, it appears to contain a contradiction: Since mystical practice involves dismantling or casting aside our egoic constructs and defenses, it would seem that not having fully formed ego strength would just put us that much further along! Is that dangerous, or is it advantageous? Digging further, however, we can see that, since mystical practice can involve the dismantling of everything the practitioner might have assumed about the world and him or herself, there is the distinct danger of a precipitous descent into nihilism – the darkness of utter meaninglessness. Thus, I must begin this post with a warning: If you are young and without a solid sense of how you fit into this world, if you are str...

The world is broken. From the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, to police and citizens battling in the streets of Ferguson, the world is broken. From the inhumane and exploitative factory farming practices that put cheap food on our tables, to the murderous rampages of the drug cartels down in Mexico, the world is broken. From the actions of those with money and power who use them both to keep them both, to our dependence on cheap fossil fuels that is driving climate change and the likely extinction of numerous species, the world is broken. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful. I think this brokenness can be fixed, as long as we come to understand its nature. The nature of the world’s brokenness is that we all too often think that the brokenness is somewhere else, or in someone else. We rarely grasp the fact that the brokenness is in each and every one of us. Ah, but don’t we all behave like little despots much of the time! It’s just that when we wield whatever power...

Not too long ago, the post that I’ll refer to here as A Defense of Ritual brought to a close a three-part exploration of what I termed ‘the dichotomy between universality and ritual,’ i.e., the dichotomy between the universal practice of zazen (seated meditation) and those idiosyncratic rituals that, directly or indirectly and to varying degrees, support it. Regular readers will recall that I used the chanting of the Three Refuges as an example. I noted then that, while the act of reciting “I take refuge in the Buddha... I take refuge in the Dharma... I take refuge in the Sangha...” might have everything to do with the practice of Buddhism, it simply does not rise to the level of universality. What it does do, however, is provide a philosophical context for the universal practice of zazen – context that many practitioners require in order to feel grounded in their sitting practice. The reason for revisiting this ostensibly closed exploration of the dichotomy between universali...

It was a half hour or so past midnight and those of us gathered in the meditation hall at Sanshin Zen Temple had just completed six days of sitting zazen from 4:10 in the morning until 9:00 in the evening and an even longer seventh day meant to commemorate the Buddha’s enlightenment upon seeing the morning star. An offering to the Buddha had been made; the Bodhisattva Vows and the Heart Sutra had been chanted; rohatsu sesshin thus came to a close. A few of our number retired immediately, more in need of sleep than anything else. The remainder, perhaps feeling more wired than tired, gratefully accepted the Okumura’s offer of a nightcap of warm sake and fellowship upstairs in their private quarters. This had been “sesshin without toys,” after all, sesshin in the very rigorous and austere Antaiji-style instituted by Shohaku Okumura’s teacher, Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. Relaxing in a chair sipping sake and enjoying free-flowing conversation after a week of fourteen or more periods of zazen p...

Stillness, silence, truth – just like the words to that Beatles song: “These are words that go together well, my Michelle.” Stillness, silence, truth – I knew the first two as a child and completely took the third for granted. After all, we need not have a word for air in order to breathe it deeply so that it may become us. Stillness, silence, truth – this was what I spoke of in Returning To The Source . The Buddha innately knew it as a child, and so did I. (And I suspect that you did, too.) No…, it is not so much a matter of knowing it as being it – stillness, silence, truth. It is what the Buddha returned to after a long and arduous search, and it is what I now return to (albeit, with varying degrees of clarity) each time I sit zazen – stillness, silence, truth.     A spider actualizes his understanding of Indra's Net     “Zazen is the most venerable and only true teacher.”   This was the second of seven points of practice laid ou...

Some years ago I had the good fortune to stumble upon a weeklong meditation retreat in the wooded Uplands of Indiana led by a teacher whom I’d never heard of before. With the exception of its duration and the fact that it was in a natural setting and in the Soto Zen tradition, I had no idea what to expect. My job, simply enough, was to show up and remain open to experience. Anyway, after arriving and taking one look at the schedule posted on the door of that little rustic cabin turned zendo – the fourteen daily periods of seated meditation (zazen) separated by brief periods of walking meditation (kinhin) – the first experience that I opened up to was that of fear! Fourteen fifty minute periods of zazen each day! Could I physically take it? Could I mentally take it? I didn’t know!       The schedule struck me as dauntingly unrelenting – nothing but zazen and kinhin interspersed with just enough time to eat and sleep and attend to the barest of personal hygien...