... Chapter 11 ....... Contents ...
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| 10. To you who wants to begin with zazen. |
In the world you'll find all kinds of rewards. But is their any reward that could make you happier than settling your ass onto your sitting cushion [zafu] and having the privilege to practice zazen?
If you believe in the Tenri sect, follow the Tenri sect. If you believe in the Konkô sect, follow the Konkô sect. Only those who really want to practice zazen should do it.
What is zazen good for? Zazen is good for absolutely nothing!
Dôgen Zenji had something against large numbers of followers. He said they are like 'flies and worms'. They're nothing compared to a single dragon or a single elephant. That's why Zen monks are also called dragons and elephants.
Once there were 500 monkeys in the service of 500 Buddhist saints. One day the monkeys decided to imitate everything the saints did, so they did zazen copying the saints with their eyes, noses, mouths and whole bodies. They say that in this way a thousand saints practiced zazen and realized satori. This is why it's my wish to preserve - even through imitation - the seed of zazen.
When you practice zazen, completely renew yourself.
When you practice Zen, it has to be here and now, it has to be about yourself. Don't let Zen become a rumor that has nothing to do with you.
Right next to Komazawa University's zazen hall is the baseball field. And when you hear during zazen how the cheerleaders practice their cheers before the games, you can truly understand how much we neglect ourselves.
Zazen is the buddha that we form out of our raw flesh.
Just sitting [shikantaza] is the greatest thing that we can make out of the raw flesh of an ordinary person.
The Chinese character for 'hips' is composed of the character for 'flesh' on the left side and 'essential' on the right side. In zazen, from the beginning, it is essential that the hips are firmly anchored on the cushion.
In zazen, the hips are rooted in the Earth, the top of the head pierces the sky.
When you practice zazen in a place where you can hear sounds that arouse pleasure, anger, sorrow or contentment, the waves they create in your mind keep zazen from soaking into your flesh and bones.
If you're looking for stimulation in zazen, you've been hanging out in the wrong crowd. In zazen, you have to eliminate all stimulation and not practice anything special at all.
The body that takes a nap can also practice zazen.
The body that practices zazen can also take a nap.
To practice zazen for an entire day together is an extraordinary opportunity.
To spend the whole day with whores is extraordinary stupidity.
If you eat in the evening in order to break into a house afterwards, you are eating a 'robbery-meal'. If you eat in order to go to the whores, you are eating a 'whore meal'. If you eat to practice zazen, then it is a meal of the buddha way.
The question is why do you eat?
When we change the mattresses at Antaiji, it's not the same thing as when the madam of a brothel changes her mattresses. For the madam, it's about luring customers and making money. For us, it's so the people who come to practice zazen don't catch colds. Whoever comes to practice zazen is a buddha: he sleeps on a buddha's mattress.
Eat in order to do zazen, sleep in order to do zazen. This means that eating and sleeping are also part of zazen.
When you think about earning your living during zazen, you start saying things like, "Working is also Zen, sitting is also Zen," and you stop sitting zazen.
When you say on the other hand that only zazen is important, then you start thinking that only zazen is zazen, and that everything else has nothing to do with zazen.
In our practice, there is no object of worship beyond zazen. For it is zazen that saves us suffering beings by re-forming our raw flesh and making us practice.
Zazen means shifting from the world of life and death [samsara] to the way of buddha. That's why it says in Shôdôka, "Take one step further and arrive directly in the land of Tathagata." And in the Shôbôgenzô Butsudô: "Zazen is not the dharma [law] of the impermanent world. It is the dharma of buddhas and patriarchs."
Only buddha together with buddha can discuss the buddha-dharma, buddha and an ordinary person cannot. That's why it says in the Lotus Sutra, "Only a buddha and buddha can fathom it." In the same way they talk about the mind shared by buddha and buddha, the mind which is realized only through sitting upright facing the wall.
Our zazen is like waking up from hibernation to a completely new world.
Zazen means returning once again to the womb. That's why zazen isn't 'work'.
Everyone is so busy with their calculations that they even forget what they were calculating in the first place. Zazen means to stop calculating.
Zazen means to graduate from all human hallucinations.
Zazen means practicing that which cannot be explained.
Zazen means putting into practice that which cannot be thought with thinking.
Your zazen alone penetrates heaven and earth. It certifies this place of great liberation.
Zazen is the dharma-switch that 'turns on' the whole universe.
Samadhi means practicing that which fills the entire universe, throwing yourself into it completely, in every single instant, in every single activity.
Simply doing something [shikan] means doing it now, on the spot. It means not wasting the little time you have in life.
"Myself and all living beings on Earth realize the way together." (Shakyamuni Buddha)
In the buddha-dharma this isn't enforced with political power. "I, myself" put it into practice. When you sit, you've got to be one with Truman, Stalin and Mao. One person sits for everyone, everyone sits as one.
The phenomenal world isn't something that some god made. It arises through interdependent causation.
Buddha is an immeasurable cause resulting in an immeasurable effect. Thinking from the basis of non-thinking: this is how buddha is actualized [genjô].
It's often said that Zen means non-mind [mushin]. Yet non-mind means immeasurability. And this immeasurablity isn't simply non-measurablity in opposition to measurability.
Apart from zazen, all of your 'good deeds' come out of your ego-conciousness: "I do good".
Only when you stop thinking "I do zazen" are you doing true zazen.
Sit in zazen with the intention to starve. That means that you shouldn't count on 'always having something to eat as long as the wheel of the dharma turns'. On the contrary: as long as you keep the wheel of the dharma turning, it doesn't matter at all whether you have something to eat or not.
What caters to worldly feelings has nothing to do with zazen.
The buddha-dharma doesn't give any special consideration to our human preferences.
"What's this all about? All these people sitting around staring the wall? Could anything be more absurd?"
That's how zazen appears to people stuck in the impermanent world.
"What is zazen good for?" This question itself is really good for nothing. What has the invention of the television been good for? And what have you been good for? Isn't everything actually good for nothing?
When somebody asks me what zazen is good for, I say that zazen isn't good for anything at all. And then some say that in that case they'd rather stop with zazen . . . But what is running around looking for satisfaction good for? What is gambling good for? And dancing? What is it good for to get worked up over winning or losing in baseball? It's all good for absolutely nothing! That's why nothing is as sensible as sitting silently in zazen.
That something is good for nothing means, in worldly terms, only that it doesn't bring in any money.
Often people ask me how many years they have to practice zazen before it shows results.
Zazen has no results. You won't get anything at all out of zazen.
Recently we've been experiencing here a Zen-boom. In every magazine there's something written about Zen, but when you read it, you only find strange ideas. Some write about what they picked up somewhere second-hand, some give an account of a one-week seminar with guaranteed 'kenshô'.
The problem is that people who have never heard anything about Zen let themselves be misled by such nonsense.
If a person doesn't have a clear Buddhist philosophy of life, it would be better to keep away from zazen practice.
Nembutsu [invoking the Buddha's name] practiced with peaceful mind is true nembutsu. Zazen practiced with peaceful mind is real zazen.
Nembutsu practiced to get peace of mind, isn't true nembutsu.
Zazen practiced to get peace of mind isn't true zazen.
When eating as well, buddha's practice is perfecting the meal through a perfected manner of eating.
In our school, there is no object of worship beyond zazen. Non-thinking [hishiryô] is dharmakaya.
"Without practice, it isn't realized. Without certification, it isn't integrated." [Bendôwa] This is sambhogakaya.
"Work is Zen, sitting is Zen. In speech and silence, in motion and at rest you'll find peace." [Shôdôka] This is nirmanakaya.
... Chapter 11 ....... Contents ...