wo Shores of Zen: An American Monk\u2019s Japan,<\/a> <\/i>(oh, go ahead, click and buy it right away!) quite heart warming in the midst of this cold Minnesota winter.\u00a0 Jiryu\u2019s last chapters were the most powerful in the book for me and I was riveted to the couch as he worked through multiple conundrums \u2013 seeing the light and shadow of the just-one-doing<\/i> monastery, the urge to go and the urge to stay, finding home here or there, and starting to make some meaning from his pilgrimage.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nHis process helped me to digest something left over from my experience in Japan many years ago so I am very grateful to Jiryu.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nToday I want to take up the issue of breakthroughs, kenshos, satori, the Big E, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nKatagiri Roshi often said, \u201cOf course, enlightenment is important for us.\u201d Why take the Buddh<\/i> (Awake) out of Buddhism?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBut what is enlightenment? First what it isn\u2019t \u2013 a individual personal mental experience, despite the fact that it is often packaged in that way, just because we moderns reduce most things to that. The thirst for such is like wild fox slobber \u2013 once you get it in your mouth it can take twenty years to spit it out.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nJiryu does a nice job of presenting the idealization of breakthroughs \u2013 if <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>only (and only if) <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/i>I could get <\/i>it, then it\u2019d all be okay<\/i> \u2013 especially through the character of Keishi, an American monk that Jiryu encounters who argues that there is no Zen in America and only a few masters have \u201cit\u201d in Japan.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s a sense that the Keishi character is a wild fox, transmigrating without getting anywhere, making the same argument again and again, deluding young monks everywhere with an enticing fantasy that he himself has not yet verified.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nDogen takes this issue up in his Daishugyo, Great Practice<\/i>, fascicle of Shobogenzo<\/i>, a commentary on the Wild Fox koan and I\u2019ll be working it with the community in Anchorage next Sunday. The central question addressed in the koan \u2013 \u201cIs a person of great practice free from karma?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nHere\u2019s the whole Wild Fox story:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
When Baizhang would give teachings to the assembly an old man would often appear and listen to his Dharma<\/a> talks. The old man usually left after the talks, but one day he remained behind. Baizhang asked, \u201cWho are you?\u201d The old man said, \u201cI am not actually a human being. In ancient times, at the time of Kashyapa Buddha, I lived and taught on this mountain. One day a student asked, \u2018Does a person who has cultivated great practice still fall into cause and effect?\u2019 I said to him, \u2018No, such a person does not.\u2019 Because of this I was reborn as a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes. Venerable Master, please say a turning word and free me from this body of a wild fox.\u201d Then he asked Baizhang, \u201cDoes a person who has cultivated great practice still fall into cause and effect?\u201d Baizhang said, \u201cDo not ignore cause and effect.\u201d Immediately the old man had a great realization.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOne thing about shape-shifting folklore foxes that you need to know is that they shift their shape to appeal to their victim\u2019s\u00a0 delusion soft-spot. In folklore they often they appear <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>as alluring women<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> to men prone to flights of grandiosity.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nHere, though, the fox appears to the Zen master right in his area of vulnerability \u2013 \u201cIs the person of great practice free from karma (i.e., suffering)?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nThe first time I heard Katagiri-roshi tell this story he prefaced it by saying, \u201cYou should sit quietly and reflect on this koan again and again for your whole life.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\nToday I just want to make one fox-tail point about this \u2013 Dogen\u2019s title, Daishugyo<\/i>, often translated as Great Practice<\/i>. Looking at the characters themselves we find that Dai <\/i>means great \u2013 so great it can\u2019t be measured.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Shu\u00a0is to \u201cgovern oneself, conduct oneself well.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Gyo\u00a0is a radical that refers to \u201cgoing\u201d or \u201caction,\u201d originally referring to the action of moving on pathways that connected villages. <\/span><\/i><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/p>\nShugyo<\/span><\/span><\/i>, then, is much more than \u201cpractice\u201d \u2013 more like the refined activity of interconnection. Mutual polishing. <\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\nIs a person of great refined activity through interconnection free from suffering?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\nHow could such a person be pulled out of the fabric? <\/span><\/span>
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<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n