Wild Fox Zen
We started the introductory class at Dhristi Yoga in White Bear on Thursday. While listening to what brought people to the class and then reflecting on what we offered, what emerged for me freshly is that the most important thing is really not telling people the point of Zen, the posture of sitting, or about developing an open-hearted friendliness for for all of our experience.
Most important (and seemingly rare) is the way-seeking mind expressed by Ikkyu like this:
raging for the now hungry for it
crows rattle the air no dust
And the most important thing for teaching Zen is how to facilitate the process of uncovering and supporting practitioners to passionately following the living vein of dharma inquiry.
Pointing to the moon.
Along these lines, I recently listened to a couple talks from the Rochester Zen Center site (click). Scroll to the January 2011 Sesshin Day 6: Enkan and the Rhinoceros. A couple minutes in, Bodhin shares a wonderful story about a naturalist who taught at Harvard in the 1850’s. The scholar would greet prospective graduate students by handing them a fish and then leaving them to study it for hours or days.
Pointing to the moon.
Follow the link above and you’ll find a Roshi Kapleau (one of the founding teachers of Zen in the West) talk from 1973. I’d never heard the old guy before so it was a true treat. I can hear his way-seeking mind in the quality of his voice. Delightful.
On this point, Roshi Kapleau offers this story from the Fayen:
A monk asked Fayen, “I do not ask about the moon; what is pointing?”
Fayen replied, “The moon.”
The monk continued, “I asked about pointing, why did you speak of the moon?”
The master replied, “Because you asked about pointing.”
So we’re really living the dream after all.
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