Traces Of Insight

The above photo (thanks to Barbara for suggestions and Buddhafrog for fixing this!) just in from one of the good folks at Empty Hand. Clearly, signing books just makes me so happy. Susan Jion Postal is the other priest in the photo. The fruit of her many years of steady Zen work is palpable in her community. She’s a hidden jewel in the rough Zen world.

And speaking of the whirl, I’m back at it today after a weekend sesshin.

Before leaving it all behind, though, a couple reflections for you.

The first is about insight. I posed this issue for my students: When sitting fixedly, sometimes it seems that the objects coming at you (e.g., feelings, memories, sensory input) should be adjusted – avoid this, tamp down that, move the mind this way (e.g., back to the breath) or that (e.g., away from fantasy).

Sometimes it seems that the subject (the one receiving the many objects) should be changed. One student said, “I feel like I need to get back to the way I was when I was sitting a lot more.” This is changing the subject.

What is correct shikantaza? What is freedom?

The subject, by the way, can also seem like the “victim” of the advancing objects or the “thruster” into the objects – these also are ways to adjust the subject.

I’ll leave the issue at that and not give an “answer.” Investigate if you are so moved.

One practitioner had a nice insight revolving around this point. And then noticed how the insight itself became an object of consciousness that he wanted to adjust.

“…Keep yourself where you leave no traces and even where you leave no traces, do not keep yourself,” said Boatman Decheng when entrusting the dharma to his successor whom he had met just a few moments prior and whom he had already attempted to drown. It’s way to long to quote here but CLICK and you’ll get Daido’s version. Another version appears in Dogen’s Extensive Record, p. 513 (it is interesting to compare these, btw).

And here’s the second point (really there was something else when I started this post and said there were a couple reflections but one trace of sesshin is that this aging wet-wear mind is even more forgetful afterwards) is from Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri (when at a loss, I plug my book):

The thorough clarification of birth and death is the Buddha family’s single great matter.” This sentence begins “The Meaning of Practice and Verification” (“Shushogi”), a short essay composed of bits and pieces of Dogen’s Shobogenzo selected by a group of Soto Zen priests about one hundred years ago. These priests were intent on simply and clearly expressing the essence of our school, and did such a fine job that their work continues to be studied, chanted, and sung in Japan and in theWest.

Notice here that the single great matter is not about creating or discovering a meaning or explanation for birth and death. The single great matter is simply clarifying the “What?” That is, what is birth and death in this vividly hopping-along moment?

Traces of Insight