RARO IMADA ITARAZU: Not Being Bothered
KOAN GENJO RARO IMADA ITARAZU. MOSHO KONO I O EBA RYU NO MIZU O URU GA GOTOKU.
KOAN universal law
GENJO realized
RA net (suitable for catching fish or dragons)
RO cage (suitable for trapping tigers)
IMADA yet, never
ITARAZU not arrived.
”The laws of the universe are realized, and nets and cages have not arrived.”
MOSHI if
KONO this
I intention, meaning
O [object particle]
EBA if it is got
RYU dragon
NO [particle]
MIZU water
O [object particle]
URU getting, finding
GA GOTOKU is like
“To get this intention is to be like a dragon finding water.”
It is funny how life seems to test us. Whether we espouse the principles of a God-fearing religion, or the FM Alexander Technique, or the Buddha’s teaching, it seems not only that we are tested but also that the more deeply we are rooted in our practice, the greater the test tends to be.
An autumn evening in 1985, when I had got just three years of daily sitting-zen under my belt, is clearly etched in my memory. I was telling a woman who knew me well how sitting-zen had changed me -- how, for example, I was no longer bothered about her former relationship with a certain rival for her affections. “That’s good,” she said, “because I made dinner for him a couple of weeks ago and we ended up in bed.” I was holding on to a horizontal brass rail at the side of a dance floor at the time. As my knuckles turned white, she put a hand on top of mine and laughed: “I love it when you’re bothered.” She had perceived, as women are apt to do, a gap between how I professed to be and how I really was.
In a similar way, last year and this year I have dared to consider, and have dared -- albeit falteringly -- to insinuate over the internet, that I finally got the point of Fukan-zazen-gi, thereby finally becoming like a dragon that found water. Finally being able to see all things as they really are, just manifestations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I could no longer be bothered by anything. Or could I?
I have been tested and evidently I have failed the test. I have been bothered, very bothered. I have found myself bitterly disappointed by Gudo’s decision -- more disappointed than I was prepared to be. I have alternately stiffened up and collapsed down, put on a brave face and let roll tears of discouragement.
But there again, on some level, I haven’t failed. My practice of sitting in the full lotus posture four times a day hasn’t stopped. Even in our old caravan by the seaside, I carried on. When my son asked me why it was so important to get in the four sessions every day, I told him that if I didn’t it would make me a hypocrite, somebody who didn’t practice what he preached.
Thus, on some level my disappointment and discouragement, tightness and collapse, haven’t bothered me. On some level, my being bothered hasn’t bothered me. When a long and deeply held expectation is not met, there is a process that this temporary thing that is a human body-mind goes through. It is as it is. That I am able to say and really mean that is nothing to do with any virtue inherent in me. That is totally the power of sitting-zen.
Are there any questions?
KOAN universal law
GENJO realized
RA net (suitable for catching fish or dragons)
RO cage (suitable for trapping tigers)
IMADA yet, never
ITARAZU not arrived.
”The laws of the universe are realized, and nets and cages have not arrived.”
MOSHI if
KONO this
I intention, meaning
O [object particle]
EBA if it is got
RYU dragon
NO [particle]
MIZU water
O [object particle]
URU getting, finding
GA GOTOKU is like
“To get this intention is to be like a dragon finding water.”
It is funny how life seems to test us. Whether we espouse the principles of a God-fearing religion, or the FM Alexander Technique, or the Buddha’s teaching, it seems not only that we are tested but also that the more deeply we are rooted in our practice, the greater the test tends to be.
An autumn evening in 1985, when I had got just three years of daily sitting-zen under my belt, is clearly etched in my memory. I was telling a woman who knew me well how sitting-zen had changed me -- how, for example, I was no longer bothered about her former relationship with a certain rival for her affections. “That’s good,” she said, “because I made dinner for him a couple of weeks ago and we ended up in bed.” I was holding on to a horizontal brass rail at the side of a dance floor at the time. As my knuckles turned white, she put a hand on top of mine and laughed: “I love it when you’re bothered.” She had perceived, as women are apt to do, a gap between how I professed to be and how I really was.
In a similar way, last year and this year I have dared to consider, and have dared -- albeit falteringly -- to insinuate over the internet, that I finally got the point of Fukan-zazen-gi, thereby finally becoming like a dragon that found water. Finally being able to see all things as they really are, just manifestations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I could no longer be bothered by anything. Or could I?
I have been tested and evidently I have failed the test. I have been bothered, very bothered. I have found myself bitterly disappointed by Gudo’s decision -- more disappointed than I was prepared to be. I have alternately stiffened up and collapsed down, put on a brave face and let roll tears of discouragement.
But there again, on some level, I haven’t failed. My practice of sitting in the full lotus posture four times a day hasn’t stopped. Even in our old caravan by the seaside, I carried on. When my son asked me why it was so important to get in the four sessions every day, I told him that if I didn’t it would make me a hypocrite, somebody who didn’t practice what he preached.
Thus, on some level my disappointment and discouragement, tightness and collapse, haven’t bothered me. On some level, my being bothered hasn’t bothered me. When a long and deeply held expectation is not met, there is a process that this temporary thing that is a human body-mind goes through. It is as it is. That I am able to say and really mean that is nothing to do with any virtue inherent in me. That is totally the power of sitting-zen.
Are there any questions?
posted by Mike Cross at 5:54 AM
9 Comments:
Mike,
I won't bore you with my reaction to your post, but I did appreciate it.
I do have a few questions for you. In your other blog you mentioned something about head position and how one must choose between "wearing the head and not wearing the head", what is that all about?
Secondly, I believe you wanted me to ask you about a quote from the Shobogenzo which I'll paraphrase, "If a thought arises, instantly wake up". Now when I initially read this I believed it was an instruction for Zazen, to let go of our thoughts and just return to the present moment of our posture, ect. What meaning should I be taking from this quote?
Having followed and variously posted on this blog since its inception I’ve noticed the pattern that whenever you seem to hit bottom, to be discouraged, your posts begin to speak most directly to my practise and experience.
It’s also something I’ve noticed in myself, that trying very hard is important, the discipline of that. But it’s only when that trying is taken away from me or when for a moment I lose consciousness of my trying that something genuine happens and not always something pleasant.
This is true no doubt of becoming ‘somebody.’ We might try to become one who is beyond learning and without intention (spontaneous) and the trying is vital. But it’s only in the unguarded moment when that might be true, the moment when we cease trying, ‘the moment when trying is ceased of we’ the moment of freedom.
I wonder if you could clarify the following sentences. The literal translations are fascinating.
So cease the intellectual work of studying sayings and chasing words.
What is called sitting-zen, sitting-meditation, is not meditation that is learned.
Remember, true reality spontaneously emerges, and darkness and dissipation vanish at a stroke.
If we misplace one step we pass over the moment of the present.
Also, and forgive me for being greedy but I wanted to ask whether you believe that ‘Samadhi’ can or must necessarily contain thinking.
Thank you, Gregor.
What I am going to say to you now is very important. You may not understand it just now. I hardly understand it myself. But if you sense the the truth in what I am endeavoring to convey to you, and follow my lead, then one day we will understand it. It is vitally important. It is the teaching of FM Alexander but it applies equally to the teaching of Dogen, Nagarjuna, and Gautama: So I am going to say it four times.
There is no right position.
There is NO right positiion.
There is no RIGHT position.
There is no right POSITION.
(But there is a right direction. )
"If a thought arises, instantly wake up” is not from Shobogenzo itself but from Fukan-zazengi Shinpitsu-bon, the original version that Master Dogen wrote shortly after coming back from China.
It means, in other words, when the impulse arises to grope for the position that feels right, we should truly wake up.
It is not an instruction feel for the right posture. It is rather an instruction to quit feeling for the right posture, to quit end-gaining, to wake up to the whole problem of feeling and end-gaining.
FM Alexander called this kind of waking up “thinking” -- but not what you and I habitually understand by “thinking.”
Marjory Barlow often said to me, “FM used to say this work is an exercise in finding out what thinking is.”
In general, when we “come back to the present moment of our posture,” as you describe, what happens is we grope, based on our feeling, for what can never exist -- the right position.
Bodily sitting in the full lotus posture, sitting based on feeling, is like this.
What Master Dogen is instructing us here is related not with bodily feeling but with consciousness, with mind, with thinking -- but not what we habitually understand as thinking.
If there were such a thing as a right position, or a right posture, the truth might be something fixed that we could feel out and grasp. But the truth of the present moment is never fixed. Even as I write, mountains are flowing down into the sea, and ancient marine fossils are climbing to the top of mountains. The present moment of which this body-mind is a part, is flowing by instantenously, in the direction of time’s arrow.
There is no right position that we can feel. Feeling alone cannot lead us to the far shore of the Buddha’s enlightenment.
When we feel for the right posture, when we try to wear the head correctly, what happens is that the head fixes on top of the spine; the head is pulled back and down in the wrong direction, into the body. This wrong direction is the cause and the effect of fear and of fixed views. The right direction is the exact opposite of that.
There is no right position that we can feel, but there is a right direction that we can think.
There is no right posture, but there is the possibility, if we stop going in the wrong direction, of dropping off body and mind and being at ease in sitting.
Now it is time to sit, bodily, mentally, and, inshallah, body and mind dropping off.
Thank you, MT, for your observations and questions.
It is said in the Alexander work that trying is only emphasizing the thing we know already -- whereas what we are pursuing lies out there beyond our knowing. So how to keep persisting without trying... it is another one of those challenging ‘A without B’s to add to the list.
By way of confirmation of what you wrote, I have had the experience many times of repeatedly being told by an Alexander teacher: “No, not that. No, not that. No, that was down. No, you are trying to do it. No, you are in the way.” Et cetera. Et cetera. Until a point of true exasperation is reached and you think to yourself, “Oh, fuck this for a game of cards!”, and then the teacher says, “Yes, that’s it!”
Then you try to recapture whatever it was, the exasperation or the true humility or the not trying or whatever it was that was affirmed, and of course it is completely hopeless, more frustrating than ever -- because what she was affirming wasn’t you, it was it. So it is back again to “No, not that!”
I will tackle the sentences you asked about one by one on future posts, but first I want to write a post on the sentence Gregor asked about (admittedly only because I prompted him to ask about it).
I must say, MT, when I read some of the soppy crap that is posted on Dogen Sangha Blog, I am very grateful for your participation on this one -- notwithstanding my perception that you are bloody great fraud. It takes one to know one.
Thanks Mike,
Food for thought (or non-thought).
I'm justing going to do some sitting and not worry about the head deal then.
But, what position do you advocate, not tucking the chin and jutting the neck out?
Your welcome, Gregor.
I advocate sitting in the full lotus posture, with the whole body, with the whole mind, and dropping off body and mind.
Churchill wrote: 'Success is only a matter of proceeding from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.'
He also wrote: 'When passing through hell, keep going.'
There's absolutely no doubt whatsoever of my fraudulence, it would seem to be the human condition, whether we know it or not. The content of that fraudulence is for each of us to drop off, the problem is we have to know what it is first.
It strikes me that the real process of becoming aware of what is fraudulent, of the gap, is a process of failure, defeat, humiliation and a sort of grinding up against the blindingly bloody obvious in oneself all the time, so obvious that I choose to ignore it all the time.
And occasionally, of the sheer unadulterated joy of existence.
Look forward to your Fukan-zazengi clarifications and your answer to my question.
Mike, I admire the fact that you come back with honesty to your trials and tribulations on this path.
I know that we dont exactly share the same views on practice--for I dont even sit zazen--but I recognize the fighter in you.
For myself, acknowledging the pain and fear and bodily tension over and over again, and not running from it--that takes true courage.
You seem to have that courage.
I am heartened by your continual efforts and your persistance.
I hope to be even half as persistant as yourself.
Sincerely,
Aaron
www.gangstazen.blogspot.com
FU universal, for all
KAN recommended
ZAZEN sitting-zen
GI rules
FUKAN-ZAZENGI: "Rules of Sitting-Zen Recommended for All."
You are attracted to this blog for a reason, whoever you are.
Master Dogen wrote these rules for you.
As far as I know, there is no footnote next to the FU saying "No blacks, queers, Irish, or gangsters, thank you."
Master Dogen wrote these rules for you, and I will endeavor to clarify for you what Master Dogen meant. I would like to be able to look you in the eye and with the index finger of my right hand point directly at YOU.
If you have any question on what Master Dogen wrote, please don't hesitate to ask it.
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