Waking Up

How did you wake up in this morning? Like the baby in the picture or grumbling and resistant?

One way of taking responsibility for making zazen alive is to frame some aspects of the day with gatha. For example, here’s a translation of the Verse for Waking Up that I worked on with Katagiri-roshi in about 1982:

Waking up in perfect peace

Vowing with all beings

To realize everything without exception

Embracing the ten directions.

Roshi told me to sit up in bed immediately after waking up, put my hands in gassho, chant the verse, then immediately get up without lingering and go on with the day. I don’t always follow his advice exactly.

The first words, “waking up,” are a translation of go or enlightenment. Go is used here with a double meaning: the everyday opening our sleepy eyes and everyday satori right before our eyes if we are awake to see. We added “in perfect peace” to highlight the second layer of meaning.

“Vowing with all beings” refers to the huge scope of our practice, continuing no matter how long or how difficult the road might be, to carry all beings from the shore of suffering to the other side of the river, nirvana (literally, referring to what happens to a flame when it is blown out – where did it go?).

And our intention is not to avoid anything but to fully realize the emptiness of it all and in so doing embrace the deep importance of everything without exception.

The last line literally is something like, “Not denouncing the ten directions.” I suggested phrasing it positively and Roshi grunted his agreement. “Embracing” is different from “not denouncing,” however, so these days I’m exploring the difference.

What differences do you see between “embracing” and “not denouncing” in actual practice?