TARE KA HOSSHIKI NO SHUDAN O SHINZEN?

"Who could believe in a means of sweeping?"

"The whole body is out by far of dust: who could believe in a means of sweeping?"


Marjory Barlow would sometimes recommend to her pupils the practice of looking in a mirror. The point of this practice was neither to get rid of any dust on the mirror nor to get rid of any postural imperfections or facial asymmetries reflected in the mirror. The aim of this work was simply to look, just to observe. "Simply to look" means to look without endgaining. "Just to observe" means to observe without endgaining. Not endgaining means, in other words, inhibiting concern with specific, superficial, peripheral things, so as to allow the possibility of something more real and whole emerging from deeper within.

Similarly, the vital art of sitting-zen, which Master Dogen described as forgetting peripheral things and naturally becoming one piece and, equally, as non-thinking, has to do with giving up endgaining and thereby allowing our original features to emerge, as they are, in total, warts and all.

About 20 years ago my teacher Gudo Nishijima said to me, very strongly, when I recommended him to get off his high horse: "I have to keep my position, in order to save all people in the world."

Thus I served the pompous little bastard, believing him to be a big strong bloke motivated primarily by the will to the truth. But after I began to understand, and began to tell him the truth about his misguided endgaining method of trying to correct people's posture with his hands, the pompous little bastard showed what a pompous little bastard he truly was. The pompous little bastard could not tolerate his own mistake.

When in a dusty mirror a totally pompous little bastard looks at a totally pompous little bastard, the difficult thing is just to look.