Zen

Part of the Herd

2013-03-29T01:51:00.001-07:00

How it is safe to be "part of the herd". Because I 'understand' Zen, doesn't mean that I am not subject to conditioning. Because I have glimpsed no-mind, doesn't mean that I am not subject to conditioning. It serves no purpose trying to "get better". Experiencing is not subject to conditioning. The experience itself maybe a piece of conditioning, but the experiencing is the context of all experiences. Just look at all responses and ascertain what is spontaneous and what is a reaction (conditioned response).

Trust
Trust to take the leap of commitment, because once a commitment is taken, it is kept - else it would not be a commitment. Trust the process of experiencing. Respond accordingly and ascertain if such the response is a true authentic response or conditioned response. Just be aware. Do nothing, but watch and witness. Practice zazen. Look at life and see what self is reflected back. Don't believe! Know what you are watching, breathing into it.

Expanding Awareness

2013-02-14T01:07:00.000-08:00

The future isn't formed yet. The past can be remembered, which is the same as saying that it can be imagined. Therefore it is the imagination. In this way the entire story around the experience is an illusion created in the mind and imagination. Whether the events happened or not at this level are irrelevant, but don't seem to be so because the mind is a great convincer!

If there is some negativity, best not suppress or deny. There is always a choice to be aware and look into any sensitivity that is being guarded and protected, any sensitivity that is being clung to as if it was something of great value, as if it was now. But time is relative, not relevant. Now is timeless, for it is now gone… now gone.

Just be aware if the past seems real. Can it be that it is a matter of "I am hanging on to it"? Expanding awareness more and more to this will come to a point of just witnessing, and this will end the clinging to the story, bring an end the conflicting thoughts and ideas entangled in different narratives and beliefs. Next what is left is the raw feelings. And then, without effort... Let it go. Now is now and for the moment, free from karma.

Just an exercise in expanding awareness.

Response - Reaction. Make a Distinction.

2013-01-29T01:18:00.000-08:00

Observe any reaction and notice that it is machine-like.
Observe awareness. Notice it is a responding.
Look at response. Look at reaction.
Note the distinction and be aware - no matter what the subject is..
It doesn't matter!
It is only awareness that enables us to transcend the reaction.

Sometimes I am a machine, so I had better be aware!
But surely the word "better" is no different than the word "should"!
I need to drop it all by being aware of it, not squashing it or resisting it
as that is just another reaction... Programmed as a computer?

When I Am Dreaming

2013-01-26T00:43:00.002-08:00

Whenever I am judging, I am dreaming. The mind is the dream. I am not owning my dream whenever I am judging. I am a player in the dream, totally identified with it. To be aware of the dream is to wake from the dream, but one needs to be fully aware, not just have an idea that it MAY be a dream, not just a belief, but an actual experience.

When I am dreaming I am so convinced that I am in reality that I cannot see that this is a dream. What else can it be if right now is immediately gone and I am not seeing the phenomenon? If I am merely thinking that the moment I began this sentence I am writing is gone and I am not getting it?

So... Shakespeare wrote that "all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death." And that life is a "walking shadow" - shadows are not reality! And that life "is a tale told by an idiot…." And "signifying nothing". Did he use the term "idiot" to shock? Are the unenlightened, idiots?

Yes, the judgements that it is the fault of this and that, him and her.... I do not own these feelings, they own me! I am electing what I believe is outside of me as cause of the way I am! Unless I first of all fully accept them as projections that I am creating and then realize that it is all awareness and awareness is me.

Realizing the dream. In the heart or in the head, it is just more dream-work, but in the reality of existence. In experience that is neither the heart nor the head but within the context of who I really am. This too, whatever it is, is a dream. For it is already gone. So now what?

Zen: No Easy Living Here!

2013-01-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

Zen is a difficult practice that defies belief! Beliefs won't work in Zen anyway.. A lifestyle that is yet so rewarding and liberating at times. But (as Zen practitioners) we have to look at what we want to be liberated from and looking at karma, is well…. looking at karma.

Karma is karma and we do not need to look at the pleasurable karma in our lives as because it wasn't resisted, it's disappeared already. The stuff that sticks is the stuff that we have not resolved and we didn't resolve it because it more than likely, contained pain. What we resist we get attached to. Stuck. Unable to move. Operating mechanically and reactively from conditioned minds.

What we are attached to, we will, sooner or later, Zen practice or no Zen practice, be revisiting to resolve it. Zen offers a tremendous challenge that is certainly not for those who seek bliss or easy living, although bliss and easy living can exist, enhanced in a Zen life. Zen doesn't judge or favour anything.

In Zen, Living here and now with mindfulness, we will bring up much karma to be resolved, in the here and now. But we will not be creating more karma in such mindfulness. But we may have many lifetimes of karma to resolve. But if we could just really get it, that all the past, a few moments ago and past lives, are gone. They are an illusion. Then, if we can really see this, beyond reason, we can transcend karma. Unreasonable, I know.

The Body as a Device.

2013-01-10T04:02:00.002-08:00

The vehicle of experience, yet I can get that I am more than this. But what am I without the body? Simply, I-am. I can experience this providing I do not strive to do so, for to strive to do so takes me out of reality. What reality? The only reality there is. Here and now - is that not all there can ever be? And now the paradox...

Striving takes me into the mind that draws me into the future... out of the here and now, the only reality.

Just let the experiences of the body be right now. Just observe them and see if you can detect where your Self is? In your head, in your arm, your foot.. anywhere? Can you see that you are no-thing - the awareness that is observing? Is it too uncomfortable and does the mind want to get back to something that is more reasonable?

The Dream. The Illusion of Time.

2012-12-30T00:56:00.000-08:00

I am seeing that the universe doesn't rationalise in terms of right or wrong, but in terms of manifest and un-manifest. Storm are destructive, but nature doesn't see this as wrong, but as a storm. Is that not the way it is in life? For if we are not life, what else are we?

To look at life is to look at all of life. If we begin to pick and choose what we want to experience surely we will not be living wholly. Not that we have any choice other than to choose the manifest, as there is only now. How can we master it, if we don't choose to accept and experience it?

So I would need to take care in the habit of thinking positively about the future, for every manifestation manifests wholly with both opposites of good and bad, or it would not be whole.

However, this is the illusion, for the future is now unfolding in every disappearing moment, which immediately becomes the past..That is the dream. That is the illusion of time.

Knowing, Not Knowing

2012-12-23T01:20:00.003-08:00

In zazen today.... We can know the unknowable through awareness, experientially. It is far from making sense because it is far from reasonable. Only the mind is reasonable. The Self simply is.

Stream of Conscious or Just Plain Mind Antics...

2012-12-04T02:02:00.000-08:00

At touch of stream of consciousness here.. Or maybe better to call it the narratives of the mind…

I am aware of the need to focus on the here and now, to be aware of when my mind gets totally absorbed in the daily tasks that I perform. Totally engrossed in the material world and leaving behind the spiritual awareness that I have developed in zazen. I am thinking right now of zazen. But is that the zazen what was, and not zazen of the here and now? The mind being aware of itself? What tricks!

Of the mindfulness that I attain in zazen... I can recognize that I am closer to centred-ness in zazen than I am when the world sucks my attention into itself. Or perhaps truer to say that the world doesn't do anything as it is after all... me!

It's just that when I am sucked into the world, I am a space filled with the physical story of my existence and not giving my attention to... I - the being who is experiencing experience.

However, right now I am aware that there is a fight already beginning within me. A "reasonable" fight where a part of the mind is saying, "I have done my zazen already, therefore it is important that I get on with life and write this."

What a crazy statement! Obviously comes from my mind as if zazen isn't part of my [other] life. So how do I stop this? I don't… It is all me.

For to resist is to desire that I change whatever is so in my existence of any given moment. To try and change is a form of desire to rid myself of desire in the secular world.

Desire [no matter what it is for], is the source of all suffering. So said the Buddha. And I am seeing proof after proof of the truth of it. But enough of so many inadequate words. This is Zen.

How Can This Date "Thing" Get To Be So Real?

2012-12-02T01:21:00.002-08:00

Well, here I am at the 2nd Day of December. That is just a name. Just a label. Is just a story about December. A story I hold in my mind. A unique story, but a story that I share with the rest of humanity - well the majority of humanity that shares the concept of a calendar that is believed to be real. . My narrative that I have learned. That is nothing new or mysterious unless I move into the question about it. What is it really?

Numbers on a piece of paper on a wall. But where else is the actual reality of the calendar. I can look outside and see frost on the grass and that tells me it is December? No… Naturally speaking that tells me it is cold outside. So I say this is the date.. What is? It is not anywhere to be found except for in my concepts. In my mind. A idea created to help us know… what? The date of course! And everybody else who knows about dates will agree with me that it is the 2nd Day of December right now. But we've invented it! A concept. An idea and we call it reality. It doesn't exist anywhere else outside of the mind. How could this date thing get to be so real?

In zazen, if I completely drop the idea of "date" existence continues. If I could possibly throw it right out of my mind and forget that it ever exists, there are some people who would say that whether I know it or not, the days come and go, and that means that the days have dates and they come and go. But to me they have been forgotten. We need to forget out self, so that we can remember who we really are.. How much more "Zen" can one get?

The Illusion of Paradox.. Letting It BE.

2012-11-17T01:30:00.000-08:00

Whatever is happening right now, could be a response to a past situation or indeed a past life. In Zen, it is named makyo, yet it is what is so with or without the name.. It has come to awareness therefore it is of value to see how I got it wired together in the here-now?

In reality, the past is gone, but the reactions may remain. No, it is the concept of the past being gone (or not) as the past is an illusion and an illusion cannot exist, therefore another paradox. Name it and that isn't it. Name it illusion, and drop that thought... Now what!? Sucked right into the paradox there! And further paradox...

Accept what is already being accepted. For nothing can be in awareness without such acceptance! So there is no acceptance when one already accepts!.

How do I work this out? I do not work it out! If past lives are gone - they are illusions, yet illusions are what are preventing me from awakening? If illusions are not resolved, do they not continue to influence our lives? Probably. But that too, is illusion.

If I ignore all this without looking, then that will not work. If I seek then that will not work. So, without seeking and without not-seeking... Living again with paradox.

Roles "I" Play

2012-11-04T03:36:00.000-08:00

I know that I play a role of my own created narrative. I just need to know that I know it. I know that my narrative is created out of my identification of the body-mind. I know that night-time dreams and daily living in my "waking state" generate identical responses in my body mind. So what to do?

No "doing". Listen and watch as Self. Practice zazen. What else?

I am Self taken on human form and this "I" is nothing reasonable or intellectual, it just observes reason, knowledge or any other phenomenon. In fact it is not "it" at all! I am I. Nothing to do with the story that I have created about who I am. So who am I that contains all such narrative? Crushing the narrative won't "work" either! I still remain.

Opening Up

2012-10-30T02:10:00.002-07:00

I would say that we need to open ourselves to all that we experience as we experience it. Not making it happen, but allowing it to unfold for life often teaches us things we prefer not to learn about, and those lessons can be delayed, not lost, but will always come back to us, perhaps in a more intense form that we may pay closer attention. We can choose to be great explorers of life itself, or otherwise prevent ourselves from growing and learning.

Stuff and Business

2012-10-26T04:12:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I did away with busy-ness, but what came up was that there seems to be some-thing every day? Some-thing to do... Some-thing to achieve.. I cannot include zazen in that, because zazen is being, even when it feels like doing... Of more value in Zen... there needs to be nothing. No thing. Drop stuff. Notice...

There may be some resistance to just being in no space experiencing no-thing. But we can be gilling life with a sense of Self, not stuff.

I may feel that I need my stuff, but more correctly the mind wants my stuff and doesn't need it at all. How wily the mind can be in its addiction to stuff! Solid stuff of illusion!

Self: Emptiness

2012-10-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

In zazen, the mind gets tremendously resistant and thoughts will intrude immensely. We cannot fight the mind, it has had a life-time of conditioning, some believe that is also has previous life-times of conditioning. I prefer to look at NOW and see this enormous "mountain" in front of me, that is probably etched into my genetic memory.

We are looking at a universe with the small space of awareness of what is left to us, that is the Self. Perhaps sharing with you may help...

I get the incessant voices in my head, but there is a small space that can look at those voices and by connecting with that space, it will expand. Slowly or sometimes not so slowly. Sometimes profound and sometimes not so profound.

When the mind is overpowering, I give up and go with it. I deliberately "choose" to have it the way it is. Thoughts may racing around and around. What I have to do today, what I wish I had done or not done, yesterday. By choosing it as it is, I am making it happen, rather than having is happen to me. It's a paradox.

We cannot reach that space of Self as conquerors. We have the long and hard lesson of learning to be patient as we wait for it to come to us. Giving space in our awareness to let be whatever is there, whatever is being. It is totally in the present moment. The mind can only operate from past conditioning, even if it has the illusion that it can form the future. The past and future is never present, it is therefore an illusion.

Enlightenment and Self awareness can only come in this way. It is not created in the mind, because it already exists in all of us and encompasses the mind and all it contains - all the racing, random, trivial thoughts. It is IN our Self (awareness) not encompassing our Self. Self IS awareness.

Sometimes when the mind seems to race around, a question like, "who is watching all this racing around?" can be quite revealing. It is important not to look into the memory, or rationality and to keep discounting whatever the (rational) mind will answer. The only answer that is left then is emptiness. There is nothing (no-thing) there! As self is not a thing.

From Self... Challenge to the Mind.

2012-09-30T05:06:00.001-07:00

It is extremely challenging to look at the question, "who am I?" Every answer just comes back to the question. There is no-one there! For how can the awareness of "I" possibly look at itself? It can only BE awareness itself, which is everywhere and everything and words can merely point to what is already so, has always been so and will always be so. Timeless, therefore beyond reason, defying all attempts at analysis. Intelligence more powerful than the mind that creates a form of fear in the mind. That's the challenge Self puts before the mind. . We can know it when we see it, but we cannot wrap it up in a perfect memory to draw on when we need it. It is now.. All the time it is now. We are already there!

This is What We Do..

2012-09-18T03:46:00.001-07:00

So this is what we do...

Although through zazen or meditation it can become obvious that we sabotage ourselves with desiring this thing and that thing, we continue with the sabotage...

The mind seems to make us forget our centre and when we feel the conflict and begin to suffer to a lesser or greater degree, there is nothing we want more than to find our centre again. But that is a desire also. What a neat trap! To observe ourselves getting into this pattern, is to realize the opportunity to end this pattern. But not by doing anything, but by being, whatever there is for us to be.

In such circumstances, how can you just be? Who can just be?

Cycling With Who? or Playing with Essence? Give it up!

2012-09-14T01:33:00.001-07:00

To me today Zen is saying, "for heaven's sake, give it up!" Be ordinary for from the mundane comes the profound knowledge that cannot be talked of, but can be transmitted - well so it is said.

I am asking myself, have I ever transmitted it?

What a pointless question! The question of whether or not I transmitted is past experience.. But experiencing cannot be past at is now! The illusion of past experience is in memory, in the illusory mind! Did I experience it? What a ridiculous question!

I am reminded of the Zen master, Wu Li saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water". So ordinary. So every-day! So simple! So immediately NOW! And in my zazen the silence... And then the disturbance... "For heavens sake, give it up!"

Practice the art of waiting. Letting go, yet staying alert. No ambition. Just being in harmony with what's going on in the universe out there. Out there? In here? Nowhere, no place. Things come and things go.

Rain… snow.. whatever... Just here. And each season has moves on through and out of its cycle - manifest and un-manifest whilst its essence remains. The universe doesn't interfere with itself as the mind of humankind does. There is an exchange. The earth gives, the sky gives. No reason. No worry or judgement about too much, too little, too violent, too weak, too strong. But what of all this? Indeed, what of all this?

So I aspire to wait in patience. Just allowing things to pass by. Times and seasons I don't like, will also pass, as will seasons I like. Who likes? Exactly! No answer, just silence. The eternal self is emptiness. So pure.

Seeing into the truth. Working my way through, and not around the compromising mind. Getting past the politics. They are all illusions. I cannot say who I am. Saying, explaining anything operates in time. So how can I use these words? They are already gone! Please share....

Who gets stuck in time?

Not-hing. Mu. Yu, Shunyata! Pure essence.

Awakening

2012-09-11T01:29:00.001-07:00

Getting a higher state of awareness has its advantages AND its disadvantages.

The disadvantages are that I feel things much more deeply as I am getting more in contact with my conditioned mind that doesn't want to be awakened from its stupour! The problem is that there is no knowing when full awakening will occur. It could be in a moment from now or in a few lifetimes from now. It comes in its own time, when the practitioner has given up seeking for it. The paradox is that without seeking, it cannot happen, but the very seeking can be a barrier.

The advantages are that through zazen one can have many awakenings that words cannot describe. And then there is a spontaneous development of love and compassion. And understanding that cannot be learned, but is a gift from Self.

Acceptance, Awareness, Making Distinctions

2012-09-02T03:52:00.001-07:00

Tension occurs when two forces originating in the mind are pulling in two different directions. Life-force becomes out of balance. Sometimes we appear to get relief and the problem disappears. But a more serious problem could arise if such relief has not come consciously, with awareness - in other words, our tension has merely been suppressed and not resolved, because we have pushed it away.

Zazen is the practice or non-resistance - the art of taking awareness to a condition and willingly penetrate through deeper and deeper levels to the core. The art of total acceptance.

One then develops the ability to make a distinction between imaginary illusions and true intuition, never forget common sense, and especially truths that may come up that one does not want to hear! This way we can learn to know and be responsible for our own truth, our own resolutions.

Analysis: A Koan, or How to Title This Post...

2012-08-26T01:05:00.001-07:00

Unconscious mind. I think I would prefer to call it the super-conscious mind, because of the inexplicable intelligence that works all around the universe.

The old question, "if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a noise?" A koan perhaps?

I am aware that I need to see that I am part of this. Everybody and everything in existence is part of this universe. Not so much subject to its "laws" but ARE those laws. Creators…

Everything and everyone are creators whether or not it is realized. It doesn't depend on being mentally recognized or analysed. I can't see analysis going on in the universe, it doesn't need analysis. But I can see it in my ego-mind. Even right now. I am analysing the non-analysed.. I have only got to write this down to be in a state of analysis. Analysis is the content and the universe is the context.

The universe HOLDS analysis, but is certainly not dependent on it. Analysis came into being a long time after we came out of the primordial soup. It was created out of our awareness. So it didn't exist before?

I get that it always existed. Never started and will never end. It was merely unmanifest and then became manifest.

And the universe works without it. Of that there is no doubt. So what exactly is analysis? Who is the analyser? You, I in our ego minds? What effect does our analysis have? Using our awareness we may see that we know already.. We are already are buddhas…

Analysis has no effect other than to change things around that already existed, after the fact. Things simply continue to exist in a transformed state. A hole in the ground that we dig can be potentially filled again. We have not changed the ground, we've just move a bit of it! Transformed it into concrete, or some piece of pottery or whatever.

And so with a knowing smile or worried mind look, I can carry on analysing. If I am aware of doing it, the mood or state of mind is irrelevant, as an emotional state will always only be a transient state. A (spiritual) springtime will turn to summer, autumn and then winter as it continues within the cycle of birth and death.

Contemplation: Time as Illusion.

2012-08-24T01:39:00.001-07:00

I see time and it is an illusion. So I can observe illusion? How can illusion exist, if it is illusion? So it is an illusion that I observe illusion too! I have examined and written about this time thing so much, but I think such enquiry really has to be tautological.

Approached from different sides of the reality and this promotes closer examination for those as crazy or as sane as me! I don't know which, but such duality needs to be transcended. And really these words are inadequate- they can only point to what I am experiencing as I write, and each of us has to see for ourselves. So I will point on….

How can time exist when now is immediately gone forever? To be free of this we need to see and experience this reality and be willing to live with uncertainty, because that is the way it is. Uncertainty is a mystery. To know life as anything less than a mystery is not what the "I-consciousness" really wants. What can we learn from what we know, because what we know is already gone. We have learned. Past. Illusion.

My zazen (meditation) is the practice of constantly focusing on the here and now and letting it go. It takes many years of daily practice, and it is on-going. In this life, we all have a mind equipped with ego-conditioning after all! But the more reality can be experienced as the now passing away, the greater the ability to see reality. Little by little, inch by inch. We watch ourselves grow. Impatience will never get there, because it exists as need. A need to be somewhere other than the now that is immediately gone.

If we pay attention to what is coming up right now, we can expand from self as individual. Expand from needs and emotions and realize a much higher state of awareness and consciousness outside our dualistic nature of what is I and what is not I.

Become Consciousness: A Question

2012-08-17T02:20:00.002-07:00

Great masters have said time and time again, that we need to transcend our minds, to quit seeing ourselves as separate beings and become the observer: become Consciousness. Such being-ness will manifest when it manifests. There is no agenda, no timetable, no map to find the way. It just comes to the quiet mind, not the warrior who sets out to defeat the relative world. It can happen in an instance. Just like that! Or not.. Be prepared to wait? No, not prepared.. Just wait, maybe a moment, maybe a day, week, month, year, decade, lifetime or more. True non-resistance to what is so right now. How? Live with this question.

Meanwhile, can it be that the more we can contemplate, the more we can read, talk and communicate on the question of how to realize Self as consciousness, the nearer we will get to transcending duality and be one with universe and ultimately hold the universe within our awareness, allowing the realization of self as pure space?

Disappearing Reality

2012-08-15T07:34:00.002-07:00

Are we the same person as we were a decade ago? I can look and have memories and if I focus on those memories, I have an opportunity to realize that that person WAS me, meaning that it is no longer me. Now, what about the person I was yesterday, or an hour ago? That WAS me too, not IS me now. Furthermore, NOW is gone too. Ego wants certainty and seems to be looking for it in the wrong place. Yesterday isn't certain. How can a moment be certain if it doesn't exist!? And what of NOW?...

Ha!. That's just gone and isn't certain. I am moving from moment to moment and ego is calling all moments that instantly are no more, or are not yet, reality. What do I call it? Best not think on that because all I will end up with is a lot more thoughts about what was, or will be and thinking that what is merely apparent, is reality! Thinking does nothing. Experiencing does but disappears constantly.

Zazen Today

2012-08-05T01:19:00.000-07:00

In zazen today. The mind cannot be stilled by force, for is not that a total contradiction? The mind becomes still when it is set free…. Set free to think whatever it wants to think, roam wherever it wants to roam. Just the witnessing self is then manifest, karma continues to manifest in the space of acceptance until eventual completion.