Wild Fox Zen
I stayed up last night reading some excerpts from a priest from San Francisco Zen Center, Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler’s, Two Shores of Zen: An American Monk’s Japan.
Jiryu and I spent a little time at the same monastery in Japan, it turns out and he asked me to review his work. I’ll do that in an upcoming blog and I very much enjoyed reading the excerpts that he sent and even had a good dose of nostalgia.
For now, remembering Japanese Zen training, one thought stands out – we talk an awful lot in American Zen. Perhaps this is so salient because I’m in the last few days of a writing retreat and have some more thoughts to share with you below.
In order to have any semblance of balance, a student needs a lot of zazen. A lot, you hear me? “Oh, it isn’t the quantity but the quality,” you might say.
And I’d say, oh, stop it. Enough eel wriggling psychobabble, avoiding the cushion. If you don’t want to sit, don’t do it but don’t spew vomit on others.
Did I mention that I’m rather crabby right at the end of a writing day? Yes, I am. And particularly today because Dogen has thrown up a barrier that I can’t quite find a door through. Thank goodness.
Anyway, here’s a little bit from yesterday’s work that you might enjoy. It’s about thinking in zazen. I begin with a bit of Dogen commentary and go from there.
Although he is not alone in “thinking fixedly,” Yueshan’s words are singular: “thinking through not thinking.” Thinking is the very skin, flesh, bones and marrow; not thinking is the very skin, flesh, bones and marrow.
The usual understanding of Zen is that we value not thinking more than thinking. For example, when Bodhidharma’s disciples came forward to express their understandings, he said to them in turn. “You have attained my skin.” “You have attained my flesh.” “You have attained my bones.” “You have attained my marrow” for the one-armed guy who did a bow rather than offer words.
An unbalanced view would be that Bodhidharma was ranking the understanding of each of his disciples and placing the nonverbal response as more central than the others. However, the view from mountain-still sitting fully embraces each view as it is, like a mountain accepts all of its visitors, not from picking a choosing. This is not to say that the views or visitors are necessarily equal, just that our practice is to confirm them equally.
As such, Dogen says, “Each one’s attainment and understanding is skin, flesh, bones and marrow leaping from body and mind; or skin, flesh, bones, and marrow dropping off body and mind.”
To enter into Dogen’s Zen is to investigate mountain-still sitting like this. It isn’t about reading words, spinning out in a head trip and then going back to our life, continuing to practice our pathology.
How can we vivify the attainment of each moment? By leaping through body and mind and dropping off body and mind. Every moment of thinking, every moment of not thinking is whole and complete lacking nothing, the vivid hopping along of life and death.
Thus Yueshan’s words are singular. Just this person! Just this person! Even numbskull sitting is vivified as just this person! To vivify is to transform and transmit. To give birds to the air. To give flowers to the mountain. Thinking is what is transmitted. Not thinking is what is transmitted.
For example, Katagiri Roshi once took the first two lines a poem by Ryokan and added his own conclusion, the last line.
Falling maple leaf
Showing front, showing back
Never fails to fall.
This moment gives us the first two lines of a poem to be tucked in our breast pocket. Only each one of us can write the punch line.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In