Robert Aitken Roshi

Using the Self  (1981)

In the Ts'ai-ken t'an, a seventeenth-century Chinese book of brief essays and fables, we find this passage:

The wind blows through the bamboo grove, and the trunks clatter together. When it has passed, the grove is silent once more. Geese crossing the sky are reflected in a cold, deep pool. When they are gone, no trace remains. For the sage, when something comes, it is reflected in the mind. When it goes, the mind returns to the void.

We can test our practice with these metaphors. "What is it that does not die down in our mind?" Ask yourself that. It will probably turn out to be something that centers on yourself.

-oOo-

If the bomb goes up at last

I vow with all beings

To relinquish even the Earth

To the unborn there all along

From, The Morning Star, by Robert Aitken. Pages 179, 228

I usually do about half an hour of tai chi each morning in my garden. It’s very private, surrounded by trees. I become completely relaxed there, and quite unselfconscious.

I usually begin with five minutes of standing yoga asanas and a short karate breathing kata I learnt 50 years ago called sanchin.

I find this tai chi time very good for the Zen experience of “The falling away of body and mind,” also translated as, “Functioning as body and mind, but being completely free from body and mind.”

The tai chi seems to help move this from being just conceptual or something academic into an actual experience. Perhaps like in our kinhin.

To see that even though we are born, mature, decline and die, we are at the same time unborn and undying.

Songs of the Soul in Rapture

John of the Cross

Upon a gloomy night,

With all my cares to loving ardours flushed,

(O venture of delight!)

With nobody in sight

I went abroad when all my house was hushed.

In safety, in disguise,

In darkness up the secret stair I crept,

(O happy enterprise)

Concealed from other eyes

When all my house at length in silence slept.

Upon that lucky night

In secrecy, inscrutable to sight,

I went without discerning

And with no other light

Except for that which in my heart was burning.

It lit and led me through

More certain than the light of noonday clear

To where One waited near

Whose presence well I knew,

There where no other presence might appear.

Oh night that was my guide!

Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride,

Oh night that joined the lover

To the beloved bride

Transfiguring them each into the other.

Within my flowering breast

Which only for himself entire I save

He sank into his rest

And all my gifts I gave

Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave.

Over the ramparts fanned

While the fresh wind was fluttering his tresses,

With his serenest hand

My neck he wounded, and

Suspended every sense with its caresses.

Lost to myself I stayed

My face upon my lover having laid

From all endeavour ceasing:

And all my cares releasing

Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade.

Translated by Roy Campbell

Self-Realization as described by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 

The ever-awaited first moment was the moment when

I was convinced that I was not an individual at all. The idea

of my individuality had set me burning so far. The scalding

pain was beyond my capacity to endure; but there is not

even a trace of it now, I am no more an individual. There is

nothing to limit my being now. The ever-present anxiety and

the gloom has vanished and now I am all beatitude, pure

knowledge, pure consciousness.

The tumors of innumerable desires and passion were

simply unbearable, but fortunately for me, I got hold of the

hymn “Hail, Preceptor”, and on its constant recitation, all

the tumors of passions withered away as with a magic spell!

I am ever free now. I am all bliss, sans spite, sans fear.

This beatific conscious form of mine now knows no bounds.

I belong to all, and everyone is mine. The “all” are but my own

individuations, and these together go to make up my beatific

being. There is nothing like good or bad, profit or loss, high

or low, mine or not mine for me. Nobody opposes me and I

oppose none for there is none other than myself. Bliss

reclines on the bed of bliss. The repose itself has turned into

bliss.

There is nothing that I ought or ought not to do, but

my activity goes on everywhere, every minute. Love and

anger are divided equally among all, as are work and

recreation. My characteristics of immensity and majesty, my

pure energy, and my all, having attained to the golden core,

repose in bliss as the atom of atoms. My pure consciousness

shines forth in majestic splendor.

Why and how the consciousness became self-conscious

is obvious now. The experience of the world is no

more of the world as such, but is the blossoming forth of the

selfsame conscious principle, God, and what is it? It is pure,

primal knowledge, conscious form, the primordial “I”

consciousness that is capable of assuming any form it

desires. It is designated as God. The world as the divine

expression is not for any profit or loss; it is the pure, simple,

natural flow of beatific consciousness. There are no

distinctions of God and devotee, nor Brahman and Maya. He

that meditated on the bliss and peace is himself the ocean of

peace and bliss. Glory to the eternal truth, Sad-Guru, the

Supreme Self.

 - From: Self Knowledge And Self Realization by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Edited by Jean Dunn