Ordinary Being

In Zen, we can see that on some levels a chair is not at all a chair. We can do that. However, we just say a chair is a chair. It is trivial to us that a chair is a field or just waves or whatever but Zen is about higher realization of the ordinary - which is extraordinary.

Subjective consciousness experiencing a chair – this is cosmic! It is quantum! It is miraculous!

In Silent Temple Zen we as ordinary beings directly encounter the ordinary as something wonderful. We do not need to use our heads to make something wonderful. Chair is wonderful. Seeing chair is wonderful. Realizing chair and self and non-self as one non-thing is wonderful!

Not a thought!

Many people look for miracles. I don’t look for them because emptiness is a twenty-four/seven miracle! My eyes are open as not a thought!

When we experience suchness, cogitating stops. Why does it stop? It stops because there is absolutely no need to think. We are not thinking chair or ambiguous particle/wave or string theory or anything. No need.

If someone sees us lying on the ground and we are suchness or in bliss, and then we get up, and they ask what happened, we just say, “I was lying down.” So, when we say a chair is a chair, our chair is much different from most other peoples’ chairs. This is because it is so ordinary – so miraculous! “I was just lying down” is Buddha-Heart-Mind.

Not a thought!

Zen is not easy because it is so effortless. In Zen, we don’t think, and everything is alright – completely wonderful. No one believes this. It is simply too difficult to grasp because there is no difficulty associated with it whatsoever. This is why I like to say, “Logic has nothing at all to do with it.”

We be. It is absolutely incomprehensible that we be but it is nevertheless effortless. Are you trying to be now? No, I don’t think so … I hope not …

Effortless chair. Effortless emptiness. Effortless suchness. Effortless being. Effortless interbeing. It is all just like that - EFFORTLESS.

Quantum Mechanics is fun but it will not help you to be kind and to be happy. For kindness and happiness, a chair is needed. If you understand this, you are a zen master.

The Realization is ordinary being. Ordinary being is extraordinary. The non-Realization is extraordinary being. Extraordinary being is ordinary. Logic has nothing at all to do with it.

You know, I just write these talks without stopping or worrying about what I convey. It is effortless because non-I has transcended contradiction and egoistic worry. Non-I is not trapped in the “objective world.”

Not thinking,

white snow

comes

then

leaves.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

When has this zendo

smelled

so

sweet?

Looking for logic, your being is dying. Confusing logic with realization, your being is dying.

Stepping into the zendo,

sound of bell;

incense pervading;

not a thought will do.

Ordinary being is not taught or thought, but it can be taken away.

When the last crow flew,

Oh, my soul

stopped

singing!

Seeing the crow, watching the snows come and go – they are one non-thing as “you” as universe.

Being the subjective,

writing poems that are not poems,

just releasing –

I deeply touch you,

and a chair

remains

a

chair.

Tea?

Light?

One lump or two?

Nothing to be gained; nothing to lose. Nothing to do.

Upon your death-bed,

Your life shall flash before you,

all five minutes of it.

Our life at three and our life at 80 are the same length of time ... but maybe the three year old is wiser …

You cannot increase this moment

but awareness

is another

issue

altogether.

It is the fear. It is the fear of being shamed. The fear of not being loved. The fear of failing. The fear of being left to die. All such things keep us from ordinary being and ordinary goodness.

Being shamed,

not being loved,

failing miserably,

and one step from oblivion,

Not thinking,

white snow

comes

then

leaves.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

When has this zendo

smelled

so

sweet?

The above is ordinary being – fully being – being fully human. Get it?

It is not that we eliminate suffering. We just transcend it and take it under our wing.

I cannot remember where but I once read about a Tibetan master who died on the road traveling with his fellow monks. His teacher came to him, and seeing he was indeed dead, told him to wakeup, which he did, both men looking into each others eyes and laughing, and then he died - again.

Within you is such a beautiful force as ordinary being. Please cultivate that.

Don’t worry about being fancy or a success or a this or a that. Just smell the good sweetness. Sit in your favorite chair. Watch the pretty black crows move across the gray sky.

My mother-in-law just came to visit. We are so lucky! Maybe she will stay forever! I think she is about 80 but I am not sure. On the way home from the airport through the snow she said she told the woman next to her on the plane she was going to make a snow angel. That is ordinary being. Making that snow angel, she will have lived for about five good minutes.

The woman who had sat next to her owned an oil company. She was rich. At the luggage pickup, she did ballet moves for me. That is ordinary being.

Don’t worry!

This life, all five minutes of it – it is not going to get longer or shorter. Yes?

Please be kind to yourself. Start throwing out nearly everything you have been forced to think and believe – even the stuff you think you have not been forced to think and believe.

Step into the miracle.

Much happiness to you!

Please practice kindness.

Silent Temple

What We Do?

When we are detached, it is easier to practice kindness consistently. When we are attached, it is harder to practice kindness consistently.

When we say detached, we do not mean disassociated. We mean we are autonomous and fully engaged as selfless kindness.

When we say attached, we do not mean interdependent. We mean we are clingy and needy in a self-oriented way.

Perhaps you have always been a sensitive spiritual being but have experienced life in a society whose center of psychic gravity is disassociation and attachment. It is strange to think that disassociation can go with anything but it goes with nearly anything pathological. And if you are naturally detached, autonomous and fully engaged as selfless kindness, life within such a developmentally arrested society can be absolutely life-taking. What to do?

One reason the spiritual journey has been so difficult for so many sensitive people throughout history is precisely because of ubiquitous social attachment and disassociation. Radically reduce these negative conditions, and many Buddha would arise without much difficulty.

So, how do we manifest the Buddhas within us, the Buddhas we really are naturally, despite our largely unenlightened societies and families?

What we need to do is transform attachment into detachment, as well as clinging into autonomy. It is very difficult.

It is very difficult because we almost always have to do this completely alone, through a process of trail-and-error, and without any role models outside of books and stories by or about the masters. Walking into the zendos, you will see many hungry ghosts. Walking into the churches, you will see many hungry ghosts. Walking into the temples, you will see many hungry ghosts. Walking into the synagogues, you will see many hungry ghosts. It’s ubiquitous.

Disassociation and attachment being ubiquitous, we must first accept the reality of our aloneness on our spiritual journey. Seeing this reality as it is, this is actually our first lesson in detachment. The seed of detachment being watered within us through our awareness of things as it is.

So, at first we say, “I am completely alone except for the spiritual icons within me.” This is a very difficult thing to admit and do because we want tangible icons around us, not insubstantial icons as ideas. Yes? So, we are very alone except for abstract thoughts at this stage of our journey.

Internalizing our aloneness, allowing ourselves to deeply feel it, we unexpectedly start meeting the Buddha within us … the one we buried long ago in our innocence simply because s(he) was so devastatingly alone. Remember?

Seeing our pure nature as the potential it was, it radically starts growing once again but there are still things that interfere. At this point, if we are lucky, we find vehicles of transformation and healing. These vehicles can be such things as … psychological regression, gestalt, meditation, mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and various other practices. Over time, we develop a complex of practices that form a single evolving practice.

The acid test of our level of development is kindness. This entails not only expressing kindness but also deeply feeling it. As we progress, kindness increases. This is another difficult thing to admit and accomplish.

Growing in aloneness, autonomy, and detachment, our loneliness diminishes because of growing autonomy and detachment. And rather than internally and externally seeking a master or teacher, we become the icon itself as something containing what it is pointing to – suchness: emptiness beholding and knowing its non-self.

This entire journey to enlightenment is strange because through most of it we are blind while seeing. Also, we seek and too often grovel to externally acquire what has always been there from the beginning as our self-non-self: sacred heart-Mind.

Slowly removing the barriers around us and the rubble within us, we evolve rather effortlessly, and transformation takes place as a series of mindfully and slowly acquired quantum leaps.

To arrive at kindness, we must also arrive at happiness, deep happiness – happiness that is there regardless of good or bad conditions.

Monk Bob recently wrote about sun-faced Buddha; moon-faced Buddha. We can think of sun-faced Buddha as being long-lived, healthy, and not burdened, and we can think of moon-faced-Buddha as being short-lived, unhealthy, and burdened, but both of them are Buddha and as such can be happy on a depth level independent of conditions. Happy sun-faced Buddha and happy moon-faced Buddha is one non-thing as active detachment and autonomy.

There is much confusion about what a master is. We have been conditioned to think that a good maser acquires many disciples and students. I no longer think this. I feel a good master nurtures many masters. There is a single line entering a door in the master’s room and leaving through another door at the same time.

To produce disciples, to produce followers – how life-taking!

Embracing our aloneness, deeply feeling it – now we are on the Journey! Subtracting, subtracting – taking away the rubble – autonomy and detachment arise. Practicing kindness – happiness is. Happiness is; icon is. Icon is – behold the master!

Much love to all of you!

Silent Temple

No Becomes YES!

Much negation is not negation … when … we are realized.

If someone tells us we are a big nobody, they are correct. We are happily a big nobody.

Authentically nobody, we are not falsely somebody of “importance.”

Not being very good at anything, I am nevertheless authentic. My heart is in the not-being-so-good of non-it.

Something matters to me. “It” is purity.

Without purity, we cannot “bring the withered trees to bloom!”

If someone is king or queen of something-or-other or even everything but they are not pure, should they invite me to lunch, I will be busy. Countless Buddha-flowers need attending.

To be negated as a self – to realized non-self nature is good.

Once we become universe beholding universe – once we become suchness – self becomes radically decentralized as identity. Non-identity becomes true “identity.” No becomes YES!

I cannot control anything. It is a good thing, too! No becomes YES!

I am a loser, a nobody. It is a good thing, too! No becomes YES!

I cannot heal the world. It is a good thing, too! No becomes YES!

Sitting here, I am Buddha.

In Christianity, they say God is Divinely Indifferent. In Buddhism they talk about detachment.

I am detached from control, divinely indifferent. I am detached from being a nobody, divinely indifferent. I am detached from not being able to save anyone, divinely indifferent.

Sitting here, I know Buddha and Jesus. They know me, too.

Are you seeing what I am pointing to?

Everything we have been taught is important is very unimportant.

Everything we have been taught is unimportant is very important.

We are changing no to yes.

It is a yes-to-no illusion. It is a no-to-yes REALITY.

Don’t you see? … We wait and wait but there is nothing to wait for. We are what we have been waiting for all along as non-I, as non-it - as no to YES.

In the Western world, everyone wants to be happy. So, unhappy successful Western people write books for the unhappy unsuccessful Western people to read. They never work.

Poor people in poor countries are the happiest people in the world but no one is looking.

Stop listening to the successful. Start listening to nobody. That would be you - Buddha! You are all over the world.

Who was it that told us we must follow? What a crime! Buddha never said that. He said to find out for ourselves.

Finding out for our selves did not mean finding Buddha’s reality to Buddha. This point needs to be made. Nearly everyone has missed it.   

When I say you are Buddha, I don’t mean the old one; I mean the new one.

The old one is dead. Be the new one.

Finding out for our selves as new Buddhas is the natural way. Listening to some authority, being told what such and such is – that is unnatural because it impedes nature.

If we are temples, even a ruined one like I am ... if we are spacious temples, we offer scared space for others to dance in when they enter into our presences. We offer Buddha to Buddha. Do you see?

When you come to me, I try to offer you you. Maybe I fail but that is OK.

The unenlightened, always they are offering their selves to others – offering their ideas and gods – when all people need is room to breathe, room to weep, room to celebrate, and room to be heard within our spaciousness.

We need to practice spaciousness. We need to practice turning no to yes.

When we were kids, seeing a big empty room – we ran into it delighted. See?

No became yes.

It is not so much what you know or what you have to convey as it is the freedom of your spaciousness as freedom you offer. No becomes yes.

In nothingness, sometimes there is great freedom .. great liberation … great healing ... great somethingness.

Thank you for opening your doors to me. Thank you for letting me GET to dance my crazy dance within you as Silent Temple.

Practice

There is nothing more important than practicing kindness.

To practice kindness, we must go very deep – bottomless deep. It requires everything we have plus selflessness.

Someone can be the most knowledgeable and instrumental person in the world but if they are not kind, they are a conduit for immeasurable suffering.

Many now say that appearance is everything. This saying has become the implicit American motto. But I say appearance is just another veneer that weathers, increasingly revealing what truly has been and is.

Let us scratch our own surfaces and look deeply.

Regarding others, how do we know the good from the bad and the truly spiritual from the phonies? To me, the knowing is a matter of direct experience and intuition. If we experience ongoing kindness from another person independent of any negative conditions they may be experiencing, and we sense100% goodness within them, we are interrelating with a real spiritual being. If not, we just take it from there. However, taking it from there, we must summon kindness.

Starting Silent Temple, I am a rebel. Some will say I am unkind, disrespectful, and presumptuous. However, stripping away the veneer that is now the Zen of appearance, I am kind. Not clinging to ossified ideas and rituals, I am kind. Being willing to “kill the Buddha,” I am kind.  

Please rebel with me in Love as kindness!

I will offend some by saying Jesus was not perfect, Buddha was not perfect, Lao Tzu was not perfect, and Mohammed was not perfect. But to veneer these beautiful people with perfect lives is to be unkind to them and all of humanity. One must subsume failures to transcend them and one must see failures as opportunities to become better to actually become better.

Fully owning our failures, we can practice kindness and humility. Denying them, the clarity of vision and inner being needed for kindness are compromised.   

When I make a mistake, I feel so badly! And by feeling this way, my compassion for others that make mistakes increases. Deeply feeling and acknowledging my failures, I can turn my mistakes into goodness.

Not having been born into wealth or power, impersonal failure was mine on many levels. Nevertheless, having deeply experienced failure was a great benediction. To be forced to dissolve the egoistic self to arrive at true essence, I am completely autonomous, healed, and free. Failing and in poverty, I can subsume self, ego, and lose while ascending to that heaven that is ironically only found within.

Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. So beautiful! So profound! But he forgot to mention the Kingdom of Hell is there, also. Ironically, to not fully engage with the deep suffering and sense of shame within us, we deny heaven. By adhering to the saccharine gospels of the mind, we unwittingly promote the Kingdom of Hell.

Descending within myself, I can then ascend, releasing all the causalities within hell’s gate.

Please, deeply love your selfless self! Spiritually and psychologically autonomous, loved, and healed – you are the divine.

The Stairway of Existence

by Hafiz

from The Gift:

Poems by Haziz the Sufi Master

by Daniel Ladinski

We
Are not
In pursuit of formalities
Or fake religious
Laws,

For through the stairway of existence
We have come to God's
Door.

We are
People who need to love, because
Love is the soul's life,

Love is simply creation's greatest joy.

Through
The stairway of existence,
O, through the stairway of existence, Hafiz

Have
You now come,
Have we all now come to
The Beloved's
Door.

This wonderful spiritual life of ours is not one thing. It is many non-things as one non-thing.

Poem by Nyogen Sensaki

from

Essential Zen

Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi

and

Tensho David Schneider

Some old papers were recently excavated

from the ruins of an ancient city

in Eastern Turkestan.

The scholars say that they contain

the thought of Bodhidharma,

and they have been busy turning out commentaries,

both in the horizontal writing of the West

and the vertical lines of the Orient.

Who knows exactly the thought of the blue-eyed monk?

Some imitate his zazen and gaze at the wall

until the sun goes down.

Hey – you are all wrong.

Please deeply love yourself and others purely and selflessly, and make your practice goodness. Neither striving nor avoiding, simply be Innocence. Realizing it is not one thing, be one non-thing as suchness.

When I was a child of six, I lied in a field and experienced Ecstasy. Recently, Bodhisattva Eveleen Forkin said to me, “That child in the field – not caring about school, institutions, laws, rules, or regulations – that child only being concerned with the divine – that is who you be.” And most of my life was an implicit returning to that which I really was from the beginning – despite my explicit self.

If having had a Peak Experience as a child, please return to it as selfless being.

(Sound bell to begin meditation. All segments of the meditation are best taken and realized very, very slowly.)

Please get into a comfortable but alert position.

Become aware of your body.

What is it telling you?

Now, become aware of your breath.

What is it telling you?

Stay with your breathing. Totally relax.

Thinking back into your childhood and remembering a deeply wonderful solitary experience, what was it telling you?

Who/what were you at that time? Who/what do you really be?

Having established the feeling of what you really be, please calm the mind now and suspend thinking the best you can, and simply be that which you really be with little if any thinking.

Now, look at your present self in your mind’s eye and see it. Approach it with love and kindness.

Become one with your present self.

Silently say, “Breathing in, unending,” with the in-breath.

Silently say, “Breathing out, unending,” with the out-breath.

Please stay with this verbal pattern for some time. Allow yourself to fall into it as your true being.

“Breathing in, unending.”

“Breathing out, unending.”

Throughout the week, please remember to be kind to yourself and others.

(Sound bell to end meditation)

What Is Silent Temple?

I created a new school of Zen Buddhism. It is called Silent Temple. I did this because I wanted to. Also, it needed to be done.

In Silent Temple, we practice mindfulness, kindness, selflessness, and meditation 24/7. We are hardly concerned, if at all, with rituals, rules, roles, status, or lineages. We are free. We are all one non-thing as Mystery.

The Silent Temple practice is really nothing more than the practice basic goodness. Most of it does not even need to be taught. It can be grasped intuitively with the Heart. If we come together to practice, it is just to be happy with one another and to experience support and inspiration. Practicing detachment and happiness while engaging in mutual support and inspiration, as well as realizing our Center of being that cannot be defiled - we are increasingly autonomous, clear minded, and kind.

Each of us is a universe – dynamic, ever changing, inclusive, and ever expanding but nevertheless subject to transience, dissatisfaction, and suffering. So, we need to take good care of ourselves and each other. Like a plant inclining toward wondrous light, we incline our hearts towards kindness and goodness.     

When we practice in the Silent Temple way, we just practice. That is all. We are not being tested. We are not in any final or competition. We need no one’s approval or disapproval, and both “failure” and “success” are welcomed and expected. Our practice is just for the excitement, adventure, and discovery of It. Practicing having no gaining or losing ideas, we are free to live from our beings in open exploration and happiness.

This life of ours, this living practice, it should be an adventure that others support and encourage - not an increasingly ossified tradition, religion, or institution that robs us of our spirit and sense of personal worth and value. In this practice we are just as we are! Perfect! In the Silent Temple School, we embody freedom, realizing that freedom cannot be fully lived until it is fully given. We are free to be, far from the life-taking evaluations of a supposed master or proctor of antiquated criteria. The intrinsic goodness of all is realized, only needing to be nurtured and encouraged. The entire Path is everywhere a beginning Path of not knowing. In this way, true Zen is practiced and false or outdated Zen is dropped. Not projecting or declaring one thing while doing very much another behind closed doors or in the open, Silent Temple is depth-filled, mirroring the Zen realization that form is emptiness/emptiness form. We are a school of the Heart, practicing true kindness and goodness with our entire beings. Come in! Come in!     

Within our Silent Temple practice, we GET to be kind. Kindness is the core of our practice. Getting to be kind, we become progressively happier. Becoming happier, we make others happy. Experiencing their own happiness, they also positively effect and affect other people, beings, plants, and the seeming non-living. No separation. No distinct and discrete anything. Complete interconnectedness as fuzzy but clear emptiness.

Through our practice, an expanding sphere of kindness and happiness Is as one non-thing. This one non-thing-ness we can call emptiness. It just means that nothing has an inherent independent existence of its own and that nothing can be pointed to as a stand alone single thing – everything being essentially other things as non-self parts. Emptiness does mean meaninglessness and nonexistence. It is meaning laden and fully creative as non-static and dynamic Reality. Understanding emptiness as one non-thing and its realization that nothing is one thing in itself but many and usually countless other non-self things, everything is much more everything else than its surface self or seeming discrete identity. Yes? For example, being composed entirely of non-self parts, you are much more non-self than you are a self, much more universe than your individual identity. Having arisen from the universe as an aspect of the universe as the universe, you are It beholding It. The non-living world now bears living witness to Its very Self. So please acknowledge your awareness as Cosmic Witness.      

Witnessing as universe and practicing kindness, we cannot go wrong! Practicing love, however, things can go wrong. In fact, they go wrong too often! The difficulty with “love” is it more often than not carries non-love concepts, motives, and driving forces with it. This is why we practice kindness as Silent Temple monks and nuns. It is difficult to tarnish kindness. It is easy to tarnish love. So, the best thing we can do for any loved one is to practice kindness on them. Besides, kindness is really the highest form of Love. Love as we have been socially and culturally conditioned to think of is not really love. It is too contaminated with self, ego, and magical and mythical ideas. Kindness on the other hand is almost always selfless, happy, and pure. So please practice kindness if you can. In true kindness, there is no egoistic self.

The quickest road to selflessness is meditation if practiced with true Zen spirit and no mind technique. And today, we are here to practice meditation for the first time in a long time. We GET to do it. We GET to be kind, selfless, and good. We GET to meditate!

This GETTING TO DO is an aspect of true Zen spirit. And the GETTING TO DO is essential for kindness cultivation. GETTING TO DO is one of the highest spiritual realizations and forms of spiritual action. All masters GET TO DO. Few people understand this in their own lives. So I will repeat it. All masters GET TO DO. Please don’t forget. OK? You be a master.

I hope we GET to meditate. I hope we never HAVE to meditate. Please approach your meditation practice with the GETTING TO DO enlightened Buddha mind! If you consistently have that, you are a true master, not in need of me or anyone else; not in need of Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed or anyone! I say attain; don’t follow!

Our tradition is true freedom and open possibilities. None of us are followers. All of us are true Buddhas.

Beautiful Zen monk Suzuki-roshi said some wonderful and illuminating things. One of them was how important it is to practice with beginner’s mind. He pointed out that beginner’s mind is also master’s mind. Seeing this, seeing Suzuki’s realization and gift, it is important to have beginners mind at all times, even when we are a great master. Having any other type of mind, we cease to illumine and begin to oppress – even our selves.  

Some may ask why I am obstreperous and presumptuous enough so as to create a new Zen school. Some will also argue that it simply cannot be done – that it is against this or that rule. I will answer. First of all, forming this school is fun and makes me very happy. We need more of that in the world, don’t you think? Also, it is being done independent of any conditions that may be placed on me. My Center cannot be defiled or compromised, and like Buddha, my enlightenment comes from nowhere, not somewhere, not something, and most definitely not some person. And lest we forget, in an infinite or non-apprehend-able past there is no identifiable First Cause, and being further not subject to conditions as my Center, I am Hope just as all of you are Hope, no longer needing to follow traditions formed in times of oppressive slavery and Feudal States, unwittingly reflecting aspects of unenlightened consciousnesses. We are all free to assert our goodness and loving-kindness as illuminated beings.  

Silent Temple may be the first truly American Zen school, the others having clung tenaciously and fearfully to antiquated ideas, rules, roles, and rituals which long ago ossified into wrong practice and wrong thinking. Additionally, looking deeply into the essence of Zen, that essence has been defiled again and again in the modern East and West by supposedly the best of traditions, teachers, and masters. If Zen is the essence of Buddhism than Silent Temple shall indeed be the essence of true Zen. It is with Heart. May all the other Zen traditions be happy, healthy, comfortable, and successful, as well as surpass Silent Temple as a vehicle for enlightenment and liberation.

This having been said, we now get to meditate.

(Sound bell to begin meditation)

Please sit up in a comfortable and alert position. If we cannot sit up, we can lie down. If sitting, we can assume any of the traditional Eastern postures or just sit Western style in a chair. There is no magic in the way we sit contrary to what most espouse and encourage in their practice. Such magical thinking belongs in the time of the tribal religions, and is truly a form of egoistic Fundamentalism we no longer need as a kind and diversified humanity. We want to see things as it is. We are ready for the higher stages of consciousness. Sitting is just sitting. Lying down is just lying down. Meditation is just meditation. No magic is needed.

“Performing no supernatural acts, you bring the withered tress to bloom!”  

Now, please very gently extend your spine while relaxing the body. Try to hold this position without forcing anything. If discomfort occurs, try a new position. We are here to meditate; not to torture ourselves or others.  

Now, begin becoming aware of your breath as you slowly close your eyes or move them to a partly open position. And draw your focus to the sensations of your breathing. What are you feeling? Please stay with this for a while.

How long has it been since you were aware of your breathing? Deeply be your breathing. Please be your breathing for a while.

Now, become aware of your body from the top of your head to bottom of your feet. Please do this for a while.

Now, please take the time to thank your body for selflessly serving you. Please stay with your body for a while in thankfulness.

How long has it been since you were aware of your body?

Returning to your breathing, please say silently to yourself while breathing in, “I am greatly loved.” While breathing out, allow yourself to silently say, “I am safe and secure.” Please repeat this to yourself as you progressively relax, entering deeper and deeper into your being-ness.

“Breathing in, I am greatly loved.”

“Breathing out, I am safe and secure.”

Please stay with this for a time.

By now, after having focused on the body and breath, you may note that your breathing has radically slowed down, as well as your heart rate. You are now in the meditative state. Congratulations. I want you to know I am thankful for you and the gift of meditation you now are. I bow to you.

Fully allowing your self to fully be your self while meditating, please stop all thoughts from time to time if only for a tiny fraction of a second. You can do this. By thoughts I just mean any language in your head. Please stop thinking. Drop the language thoughts. Innocently Be. Stay with this for a time. It is tremendously transforming. More transforming than you can imagine. Only fractions of a second are needed. Please practice this for a short time.

If any distractions occur, thank them. We learn from our distractions as well as our uninterrupted focuses and beautiful times of non-thinking. When distractions occur, after thanking them, simply focus on your breathing again, completely relax, and return to your no mind practice. Don’t give up. You are now a spiritual warrior. You are “a temple amongst the ruins!”

(Remain aware of all of our states of being until meditation time is ended)

(Sound bell to end meditation)

http://www.silenttemple.org/

Faith may be regarded as belief in something for which there is no conclusive proof. In faith, we span a void of doubt as extended trust.

 Within Zen Buddhism, faith is exercised but not often discussed. One reason for this is Zen’s non-attachment to Creator-oriented ideas that summon and demand concerns regarding faith. Within Zen and other Buddhist traditions, a First Cause as Creator is said to be non-apprehend-able with respect to a past that extends infinitely or indeterminately backwards in time. The infinite being unbounded, an identifiable First Cause is excluded by default. Thus, the notion of a determinable Originator is neither affirmed nor negated within Zen’s realization of non-beginning-ness. Another reason faith is not often discussed in Zen is its orientation towards practicality and not knowing. Here, not knowing may be regarded as detachment or non-clinging to ideas as absolutes. Thus, the common spiritual concerns of faith do not find a place of belonging in Zen.

If faith is to be broadly applied to Zen, it is faith in such things as not knowing, detachment, basic goodness, loving-kindness, and pure-mind-nature as instrumental vehicles pointing to the reduction of suffering, individually and universally. And it is precisely here that we witness an extension of trust within doubt and uncertainty.

In Zen, if we are to address faith, extensions of faith must subsume doubt. This orientation subtly departs from most conceptions of faith that regard faith as self-willed certainty within mystery. In other words, direct experience or intellectual validation being absent, mystery itself is pointed to as a type of invitation to unwavering certainty. One is invited to be certain as an affirmation of their faith. Zen on the other hand generally embraces doubt as a non-dual aspect of reality and illumination. Being laden with uncertainty, reality contains faith and doubt as one thing. The Zen practitioner is encouraged to doubt as an extension of faith in the Buddha-nature of all beings.

Buddha invited people to embrace their doubts. He never advocated blind faith. Thus, doubt is regarded as a potential vehicle to achieve enlightenment in the Zen tradition, not as an impediment to realization.

As light casts shadows, both light and shadow are inseparable. Being one thing, “they” mutually affirm and condition each other within mind, within subjective awareness. Ignorance and enlightenment also condition each other. They too are inseparable as one thing to the Zen consciousness. In turn, faith and doubt cannot be separated within the prism of analytical scrutiny beyond artifice.       

Zen lays no claim to objective proofs substantiating what it points to, nor does it demand faith as separate from doubt. Realizations of emptiness, detachment, non-self, non-duality, compassion, and such are never provided for within philosophical undertakings. They are, however, offered as potentialities within direct experience and practices that engender intuitive responses and realizations transcendent over intellectual enterprises.

Rich within the Semitic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are thought provoking positive and negative apologetics regarding the existence of God, the nature of humankind, and the nature of faith. Rich within Hinduism is a cosmology of breathtaking expanse and ornate design – it too not without its God as Creator, Brahma. Zen, on the other hands, offers ordinary existence as mystery itself, and lays down sublime imagination and abstract propensities in favor of the practical and immediate. And although perhaps too often misconstrued as mundane on its surface to the uninitiated, Zen exists within the present moment as deep awareness and clarity of vision.

Being aware, we are conscious of self, and within our self-consciousness we are driven deeper to embrace our non-self nature – self being constructed of non-self parts. Within the synergistic leap from non-self parts to conscious awareness as a self, both self and non-self are non-dual within mystery. Not being able to apprehend or intellectually grasp the quantum leap from a-consciousness to consciousness, within this not knowing-ness, within this improbability rendering doubt and uncertainty, we are nevertheless faith-filled as direct experience. Not being able to deny we exist, we span a void as extended trust, grateful for our non-self nature.

We can approach the objects of faith with certainty or uncertainty, unwavering belief in our knowing or wavering doubt in our not knowing. However, faith in an objectified entity, such as God, generally mandates certainty and knowing within objective reasoning leading to mystery. Zen however is subjective mystery as concrete experience. Not looking for the supernatural, ordinary existence is illuminated. Embracing doubt, doubt and faith become one thing, each illuminating and conditioning the “other.”

A Zen archetype of ordinary existence as mystery is the last of the famous Ten Ox Herding Pictures that originated in China during the Sung Dynasty (1126 – 1279 AD). All ten of these pictures, as conveyed by many Zen artists over the centuries, depict our progressions along the spiritual path, the last being enlightenment. But this final tenth stage is not as typically conceived during the beginning of our spiritual journey. It is devoid of ego, mythical posturing, or displays of supernatural powers. It embraces the ordinary as non-dual being and unconditional positive regard. It is not unusual for the tenth picture to show a balding, overweight individual who has returned home, distributing gifts to small children with much happiness.

Returning, seeking not but the ordinary as ordinary personage, covered with dust and mud, smiling – you bring the withered tress to bloom!

Ironically, it is perhaps Zen’s faith in the ordinary, with all of its uncertainties within transience that proclaims it sibling to those religions exemplifying faith in the supernatural as mystical encounter – for what mystic has not appeared ordinary and humble? Church gatekeepers, Hindu housekeepers seeking their second innocence within primeval forests, Muslims bowing silently to the realizations of a mystical Mohammed, Jews confronting the Western Wall as historical memory – all bring the withered trees to bloom!

Whether on the mountaintops of theological inquiry or in the trenches of ordinary life, we are united in faith, not as a conglomeration of oftentimes conflicting ideas but as mystery itself. Where the mystic embraces humble ordinariness, the ordinary Zen student embraces mystery within an endless landscape of belonging. Certainty and doubt are but the light and shadow of faith. We are many in appearance but one in the mystery of faith.