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<\/a><\/p>\nStruck by lightening, burned, split apart, holes pecked through and yet this tree keeps growing. Some kinda thing you can never kill.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ve been working on \u201cwhat is the self?\u201d in these parts and that tree sure shows something \u2013 the self forgetting itself in inadvertent enthusiasm.<\/p>\n To study the Buddha Way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally our practice is simple. Studying the self, becoming more and more intimate with the sense of subjectivity itself, suddenly the bottom drops out. The subject falls away. With the subject dropped, there is no object. With a unitive awareness<\/span><\/span> tasted, the work begins to put such \u201c<\/span>into practice in the midst of the revaluated world,\u201d <\/span><\/span>as D-z put it.<\/span><\/p>\n On the cushion, forgetting the self might be no eyes, no ears, no nose. This is negative samadhi. Positive samadhi is forgetting the self in whatever we are doing. Just becoming the doing itself. So in Soto Zen we are rather meticulous about the way of walking, the way of bowing, the way of eating. It seems a bit compulsive at times but the true spirit is to forget the self through giving ourselves completely to whatever we are just doing.<\/p>\n With courage and perseverance, forgetting the self can be actualized. Really, dear reader. And with the dropping of subject and object, the edgy practice of enlightenment is a possibility. I think of the 7th ox herding picture (click here for a bunch of other renditions and various talks on the ox \u2013 thanks for your great work, Barry!<\/span><\/a>):
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Caution: some in the Soto school disparage breakthroughs and emphasize everyday life. This view might lead to the bracketing, denigrating and splitting off spiritual experience. It is the over-emphasis of application (i.e, practice \u2013 but of what? delusion?) and the underemphasis on enlightenment.<\/span><\/p>\n