What Seeing Would You Express by Bowing? 100 Days Post #1

After a summer of experimenting with the technology and the more difficult challenge of finding how to communicate through the medium of Webex for Zen webinars, we got off to an excellent start this morning.

Unfortunately, the host (yours truly) forgot to click the record button, so this will have to suffice as the report from the session. Those of you who attended are, of course, welcome to chime in with comments.

The Koan in Genjo Koan
Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?”

Many of us have had peak experiences without any spiritual practice, where the utter, inarguable perfection of the this life is utterly palable. Watching a sunset from a fire town in the deep woods of northern Minnesota. Making love with wild abandon. The birth of a child. A sip of coffee in the middle of sesshin.

Here a deeply chilled old master fans himself. He fans himself. He attends to his comfort. A very cool guy in the midst of total cool and yet he fans. The wind is all pervasive and yet he fans.

If this life is perfect without adding or subtracting, then why practice? Because these peak experiences fade and we’re left with the difficulty of human life that now stands out in relief of freedom.

“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Mayu replied,” you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”

The monk understands that the wind blows through everything without exception. Not only in the nice places, the beautiful places, the places that take our breathe away. The horrid places, the dark places, the scary places. The wind of dharma blows through it all.

But there is something that he doesn’t know – what it means that it blows everywhere and what it means to mean something.

“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk again.

A fine monk. He asks. He inquires. He sticks with it.

Mayu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply.

The Genjokoan is all about encouraging the insight that this monk expressed by bowing.

Now it’s our joy to pick it up and see for ourselves.

Zazen
Four points: body, breath, mind, dropping.

Body: Sit upright and relaxed. Maintain your pose without moving. Lotus postures are nice but they aren’t magic.

Breath: Become one with the breath at the hara point (2-3 fingers beneath your navel). Forget counting and all comparison with anything.

Dogen: “…sitting “fixedly” is not the “measure of the buddha”, not the measure of the dharma, not the measure of awakening, not the measure of comprehension.

Mind: Gently and directly return to the hara point.

Dropping: Whatever experience arises, drop it.

Study
Four points: Formations, repetition, depth, free reign.

Dharma practice without study is probably practicing our pathology. We need study to transform our formations, the basic filters in the mind, so that we can see the perfection through and through, no part left out.

Study is not about stuffing our heads with knowledge so that we can be the most know-it-all Zennist on the block. Gag.

Study is about being simple and willing to learn. So we take up the same phrase or verse or sutra, again and again, chewing it thoroughly, digesting through and through.

Going deeply into one thing.

Giving free reign to this incredible capacity for intelligence that we humans possess.

Dharma study is to practice freeing our consciousness.

Genjokoan
Translation: Actualizing the Truth Happening Point

Sen’ne comments:

Gen is being neither concealed nor revealed Jo is not becoming through study Ko is equalizing inequality An is keeping one’s lot

Questions
What is most evocative?
What is most puzzling?
What connections do you see between fanning, zazen, and study?
What name would you give this conversation?
What is one thing that you will do to actualize what you’ve seen from this post?
What seeing would you express by bowing?