Subway

Hooray for the pristine purity of the true Dharma! The perfection of the true Dharma is unaffected by circumstances, and simply cannot be reached by thought. Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!

Writing about Zen is not an easy thing for me. On one hand I dislike writing. Eloquent expressions about the fundamental nature of reality moving readers to go "ooh" and "ah" can be misleading. I do not care for the phrase "fundamental nature of reality" or "true Dharma", I don't even want to find another phrase that I do feel good about. Like in the koan, "What is Buddha?" "Dried up shit on a stick."

However on the other hand, I do have a burning desire, a real need to make some points.

It is intolerable to me how hopelessly stuck in their thinking selves humans tend to be. I suppose affirming oneself is an unavoidable facet of surviving in the world today, but is that it? Is that the only reason for us to be here? In my opinion, we humans are profoundly misled by our own intelligence. We have the ability to divide time into past, present, and future. We are able to distinguish between life and death and thereby blind our dharma eye. People love to think and think, but who takes the time to actually contemplate about the fundamental nature of this world and of oneself?

Anyway, one morning several years ago, I was grinding through yet another work day, on the subway staring blankly at the concrete whirling by a few feet past the glass window. I had just come back from a sesshin where teisho was on "Hyakujo and a wild fox" (case 2 of the mumonkan). In that koan there is a curious point where the old man having attained an understanding through Hyakujo's help is thereby liberated from having to be a fox and asks Hyakujo to "please bury me as a dead monk." Staring at the concrete that phrase drifted through my head and it occurred to me that I was seeing with the eyes of a dead man. It was quite a liberating experience. Being already dead I was thereby absconded from all my worldly duties (and not being bound by these duties could thereby pursue them more zestfully, hopefully). From that point on all my actions, feelings, and emotions would be those of a ghost.

Is that crazy? Well I do know that this sort of thinking happens in Buddhism. Joshu Roshi has spoken of "incarnation" as an important Buddhist term. I didn't finish his book, but I do know that Bankei referred to his understanding of the Dharma as "Unborn Zen". In the Diamond Sutra, Subhuti asks the Buddha, if good men and women raise the desire for the Supreme Enlightenment, how would they abide in it? How would they keep their thoughts under control? The Buddha answers that although he leads all beings to the Great Emancipation that leaves nothing behind there are in reality no beings that are ever emancipated. Why? If a Bodhisattva retains the thought of an ego, a person, a being, or a soul, he is no more a Bodhisattva.

Practice in this school of Zen means to experience the repetition of completely dissolving into an activity and then returning anew to the thinking self. A result from experiencing this repetition many times is that one comes to a place where when thoughts arise they are not arising. When time divides into past, present, and future, it does so without dividing into past, present, and future. Life is not life and death is not death.