Expressing Buddha

A little while back, 8/5/08, I posted a zazen three-step: seeking, experiencing, and expressing.

It seemed like it would be fun to kick around and it has been. We took it up for the focus of our last sesshin here at Transforming Through Play and chewed up it good until the steps were all intermingling and collapsing.

Here’s a bit more about it but I’ll be brief because I’d rather not say so much that you, dear reader, don’t explore it some yourself.

“Seeking” refers to those moments in zazen when the heart is racing after some idea as well as those moments of awareness of what we’re chasing after and then turning the light around. Turning the light around is also seeking in the sense that we are giving the mind some direction and movement – even toward just sitting down and shutting up.

Sometimes turning the light around leads to either momentary or stable settling and appreciating the big quiet world. This is “experiencing.” Experiencing is fun (big-mindish, even) but not really all that free because their is still a big split between the experience and the experiencer.

Sooner or later a cold wind will howl through the gap.

When we really take refuge in dharma by practicing insight into the nature of the experience (just fleeting thought) and the experiencer (just fleeting thought) and thinking (just fleeting thought), we just might be expressing Buddha.

And to practice expressing Buddha in our daily zazen and daily nonzazen, is what Soto Zen is all about. But I’d rather hear from others about this last point now that blather on myself.

So what does it mean to you to express Buddha?