Shunryu Suzuki

“When we practice zazen (Zen meditation) our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. the inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say ‘inner world’ or ‘outer world,’ but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, ‘I breathe,’ the ‘I’ is extra. There is no you to say ‘I.’ What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no ‘I,’ no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.”

From Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

BODHISATTVA'S VOW

by Torei Enji (1721-1792)

LEADER: I am only a simple disciple, but I offer these respectful words:

ASSEMBLY: When I regard the true nature of the many dharmas, I find them all to be sacred forms of the Tathagata's never- failing essence. Each particle of matter, each moment, is no other than the Tathagata's inexpressible radiance.

With this realization, our virtuous ancestors gave tender care to beasts and birds with compassionate minds and hearts. Among us, in our own daily lives, who is not reverently grateful for the protections of life: food, drink, and clothing! Though they are inanimate things, they are nonetheless the warm flesh and blood, the merciful incarnations of Buddha.

All the more, we can be especially sympathetic and affectionate with foolish people, particularly with someone who becomes a sworn enemy and persecutes us with abusive language. That very abuse conveys the Buddha's boundless loving-kindness. It is a compassionate device to liberate us entirely from the mean-spirited delusions we have built up with our wrongful conduct from the beginningless past.

With our open response to such abuse we completely relinquish ourselves, and the most profound and pure faith arises. At the peak of each thought a lotus flower opens, and on each flower there is revealed a Buddha. Everywhere is the Pure Land in its beauty. We see fully the Tathagata's radiant light right where we are.

May we retain this mind and extend it throughout the world so that we and all beings become mature in Buddha's wisdom.

(Honolulu Diamond Sangha)

Loving-kindness Meditation

- Jack Kornfield

This meditation uses words, images, and feelings to evoke a loving-kindness and friendliness toward oneself and others. With each recitation of the phrases, we are expressing an intention, planting the seeds of loving wishes over and over in our heart. With a loving heart as the background, all that we attempt, all that we encounter will open and flow more easily. You can begin the practice of loving-kindness by meditating for fifteen or twenty minutes in a quiet place.

 Let yourself sit in a comfortable fashion. Let your body rest and be relaxed. Let your heart be soft. Let go of any plans or preoccupations.

Begin with yourself. Breathe gently, and recite inwardly the following traditional phrases directed toward our own well-being. You being with yourself because without loving yourself it is almost impossible to love others:

May I be filled with loving-kindness.

May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May I be well in body and mind.

May I be at ease and happy.

As you repeat these phrases, picture yourself as you are now, and hold that image in a heart of loving-kindness. Or perhaps you will find it easier to picture yourself as a young and beloved child. Adjust the words and images in any way you wish. Create the exact phrases that best open your heart of kindness. Repeat these phrases over and over again, letting the feelings permeate your body and mind. Practice this meditation for a number of weeks, until the sense of loving-kindness for yourself grows.

Be aware that this meditation may at times feel mechanical or awkward. It can also bring up feelings contrary to loving-kindness, feelings of irritation and anger. If this happens, it is especially important to be patient and kind toward yourself, allowing whatever arises to be received in a spirit of friendliness and kind affection. When you feel you have established some stronger sense of loving-kindness for yourself, you can then expand your meditation to include others. After focusing on yourself for five or ten minutes, choose a benefactor, someone in your life who has loved and truly cared for you. Picture this person and carefully recite the same phrases:

May you be filled with loving-kindness.

May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May you be well in body and mind.

May you be at ease and happy.

Let the image and feelings you have for your benefactor support the meditation. Whether the image or feelings are clear or not does not matter. In meditation they will be subject to change. Simply continue to plant the seeds of loving wishes, repeating the phrases gently no matter what arises.

Expressing gratitude to our benefactors is a natural form of love. In fact, some people find loving-kindness for themselves so hard, they begin their practice with a benefactor. This too is fine. The rule in loving-kindness practice is to follow the way that most easily opens your heart.

When loving-kindness for your benefactor has developed, you can gradually begin to include other people in your meditation. Picturing each beloved person, recite inwardly the same phrases, evoking a sense of loving-kindness for each person in turn.

After this you can include others: Spend some time wishing well to a wider circle of friends. Then gradually extend your meditation to picture and include community members, neighbors, people everywhere, animals, all beings, the whole earth. Finally, include the difficult people in your life, even your enemies, wishing that they too may be filled with loving-kindness and peace. This will take practice. But as your heart opens, first to loved ones and friends, you will find that in the end you won’t want to close it anymore. Loving-kindness can be practiced anywhere. You can use this meditation in traffic jams, in buses, and on airplanes. As you silently practice this meditation among people, you will come to feel a wonderful connection with them – the power of loving-kindness. It will calm your mind and keep you connected to your heart.

 Zen master Sixin Wuxin:

"While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyāna.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is." 

Robert Aitken Roshi — A Personal & Biographical Reflection by Alan Senauke

Robert Baker Aitken — Dairyu Chotan/Great Dragon (of the) Clear Pool — died on August 5, 2010 in Honolulu at the age of 93. He was the “dean” of Western Zen teachers, a great light of dharma. Aitken Roshi was a prophetic and inconvenient voice right to the end. I have a picture of him from a year or two back, smiling impishly, holding up a hand-lettered sign that reads: “The System Stinks.”

Over the last twenty years I was privileged to collaborate with Aitken Roshi at Buddhist Peace Fellowship, to study with him at the Honolulu Diamond Sangha, and to help with editorial tasks on one of his books. As thousands of readers found, his books are treasures — deep in dharma, crisp and vivid in voice, and ringing with the sound of justice.

Robert Aitken spent childhood years in Honolulu, not far from the Palolo Zendo he built later in life. When I practiced with him at Palolo in 1996, he took me for a walk through his old neighborhood, pointing out the parks and houses, strolling along the beach at Waikiki and through the grand old parlors of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. He loved the air and sea. The sounds of birds and geckos punctuated his lectures, calling him to attention.

During World War II, as a construction worker on Guam, young Robert Aitken was interned by invading Japanese troops and sent to a camp in Kobe, Japan for the rest of the war. A sympathetic guard gave him a copy of R.H. Blyth’s Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics which he read over and over. In 1944, by chance, Aitken and Blyth, who also been interned in Japan, were transferred to the same camp. They became close friends, and Aitken determined he would study Zen with a true master on his release.

He returned to Hawaii and earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and a master’s degree in Japanese language. A thesis on the great Zen poet Bassho became his first book, A Zen Wave. In the late 1940s he began Zen studies in Los Angeles with the pioneering teacher Nyogen Senzaki. He went to Japan in the early 50s to practice with Nakagawa Soen Roshi, one of the 20th century’s most original Rinzai monks, who invited him to lead a sitting group in 1959, placing Robert Aitken among the very first western Buddhist teachers.

From 1962 on, Aitken organized sesshins for Yasutani Roshi, whose Sanbo Kyodan (Three Treasures) school merged the shikantaza emphasis of Soto with rigorous koan work of the Rinzai school. Studying with Yasutani, and with his successor Yamada Koun Roshi, Robert Aitken was authorized to teach independently, and became known as Aitken Roshi. The Diamond Sangha arose from his travels and teachings. It now has more than twenty affiliates around the world, and a cadre of accomplished and transmitted dharma heirs.

Aitken Roshi, his wife Anne, and Nelson Foster founded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship on the back porch of the Maui Zendo in 1978. The idea was to further the interdependent practice of awakening and social justice. The spark for BPF was struck from Roshi’s in depth study of 19th and 20th century anarchism, and his long experience as an anti-war and anti-military activist. BPF continues to this day with the same mission. In a later book, Encouraging Words, Aitken Roshi wrote that “monastery walls have broken down and the old teaching and practice of wisdom, love and responsibility are freed for the widest applications in the domain of social affairs.”

I was drawn to Aitken Roshi’s books in the 1980s, first reading his classic Taking the Path of Zen (1982), a primer on Zen practice. I have a copy of The Mind of Clover (1984) signed at a reading at Black Oak Books in early 1985. In my reckoning this is still the best book around on practical Buddhist ethics. But among his thirteen published books (with more to come, I hope), I would also point out The Gateless Barrier — Roshi’s translation of the Mumonkan koan collection — and The Practice of Perfection, his commentary on the paramitas or Mahayana “perfections.”

Aitken Roshi was a disciplined writer. That was an essential part of his daily practice, writing for several hours each morning, trying to avoid interruptions and distractions. Several times I found him reading aloud to himself, polishing the language and voice until it sounded right to his ears. You can hear that distinct voice in every page he wrote.

There is an image near the end of the Avatamsaka Sutra, the pinnacle of early Chinese Hua-Yen Buddhism, that Aitken Roshi often cited. Similar to the interdependent reality of Indra’s Net, he delighted in the idea of Maitreya’s tower, extending into and throughout space, encompassing an infinite number of towers, one as brilliant and astonishing as the next. And somehow these towers co-exist in space without conflict or contradiction. I think this dazzling vision is how Roshi saw the world. It is also how we can see his mind and work.

Aitken Roshi never found an inch of separation between his vision of justice and the Zen teachings of complete interdependence. The vast universe, with all its joys and sorrows was his true dwelling place. It still is. Robert Aitken Roshi, presente!

 SONG OF THE GRASS ROOF HERMITAGE 

 by Shih-t'ou, 700-790.

I've built a grass hut where there's nothing of value. After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap. When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been lived in - covered by weeds. The person in the hut lives here calmly, Not stuck to inside, outside, or in between. Places worldly people live, he doesn't live. Realms worldly people love, he doesn't love. Though the hut is small, it includes the whole world. In ten feet square, an old man illumines forms and their nature. A Mahayana bodhisattva trusts without doubt. The middling or lowly can't help wondering, Will this hut perish or not? Perishable or not, the original master is present, Not dwelling south or north, east or west. Firmly based on steadiness, it can't be surpassed. A shining window below the green pines - Jade palaces or vermilion towers can't compare with it. Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest. Thus this mountain monk doesn't understand at all. Living here he no longer works to get free. Who would proudly arrange seats, trying to entice guests? Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. The vast inconceivable source can't be faced or turned away from. Meet the ancestral teachers, be familiar with their instruction, Bind grasses to build a hut, and don't give up. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent. Thousands of words, myriad interpretations, Are only to free you from obstructions. If you want to know the undying person in the hut, Don't separate from this skin bag here and now.  - Translated by Daniel Leighton with Yi Wu

Hui-neng

There was a monk named Chih-ch'ang from the town of Kueihsi in Hsinchou prefecture. He left home when he was seven determined to see his nature. As he came to pay his respects one day, the Master [Hui-neng] asked him, "Where are you from? And what are you here for?"

Chih-ch'ang said, "This student recently went to Paifengshan in Hungchou to pay my respects to Master Ta-t'ung and to receive instruction in how to see my nature and become a buddha. But I still had questions. So I have come all this way to throw myself at the Master's feet in hopes of his compassion and instruction."

The Master said, "What exactly did he tell you? See if you can remember."

Chih-ch'ang said, "After I had been there for three months, I still hadn't received any instruction. Because I was hungry for the Dharma, I went by myself to the abbot's room, and I asked him what my original mind and my original nature were like. He said, 'Do you see the space around us or not?' I answered, 'Yes, I see it.' And he said, 'When you see this space, does it have any distinguishing features?' I answered, 'Space doesn't have any form, much less any distinguishing features.' And he said, 'Your original nature is just like space. When there is nothing at all you can see, this is true seeing. And when there is nothing at all you can know, this is true knowing. It isn't blue or yellow, long or short. Just see that your original source is completely pure and the body of your awareness is perfectly clear. This is to see your nature and become a buddha. This is also what a tathagata sees.' Although I heard this explanation, I still didn't fully understand and have come to beg the Master to instruct me."

The Master said, "What he told you still includes views, which is why you don't understand. Let me give you this gatha:

Not seeing a thing but thinking of not seeing

is like when a cloud blocks the sun's face

not knowing a thing but thinking of not knowing

is just like when lightning appears in the sky

as long a such concepts keep suddenly arising

you won't find the means to escape your confusion

but if in one thought you know you're mistaken

your own wondrous light is there shinning through."

When Chih-ch'ang heard this gatha, his mind became suddenly clear, and he offered one of his own:

"I thoughtlessly gave rise to concepts

seeking Buddhahood still attached to form

harboring the thought of enlightenment

hoping to overcome old delusions

the body of my nature and source of awareness

just went along drifting in vain

if I hadn't entered the patriarch's chamber

I'd still be lost at the fork in the road."

From The Platform Sutra - Translated by Red Pine.

Sabbath Poem XIII

By Wendell Berry

Will-lessly the leaves fall,
are blown, coming at last
to the ground and to their rest.
Among them in their coming down
purposely the birds pass,
of all the unnumbered ways
choosing one, until
they like the leaves will
will-lessly fall. Thus freed
by gravity, every one
enters the soil, conformed
to the craft and wisdom, the behest
of God’s appointed vicar,
our mother and judge, who binds
us each to each, the largest
to the least, in the family of all
the creatures: great Nature
by whom all are changed, none
are wasted, none are lost.
Supreme artist of this
our present world, her works
live and move, love
their places and their lives in them.
And this is praise to the highest
knowledge by the most low.

—From the volume, "This Day: New & Collected Sabbath Poems 1979-2012” (2013)