... Chapter 10 ....... Contents ...
 |
| 9. To you who would like to slap your boss with a letter of resignation. |
As a human being, you can walk freely in any direction you choose.
As a human being, whatever you do, you should do it in a way that can't be repeated a second time. What can be repeated is best left to the robots.
Life doesn't run on tracks.
Birds don't sing in major or minor. Bodhidharma's teaching doesn't fit on lined paper.
The buddha-dharma is wide and unlimited. When you try to hold it still, you've missed it. It isn't dried cod, but a live fish. Living fish are always in motion.
In the soldier's handbook it says that in war you must be prepared for a thousand different possibilities. That doesn't just go for war - there's no rule book for life either. When you try to live your life according to a manual, you're sure to fail.
For a court case as well, it goes without saying that you have to be on your guard when everything runs according to the book.
The wild geese leave no traces,
yet no matter where they fly, they never lose their way.
There are no footprints on the way of the bird. It's not the same as a steam engine that runs on tracks or an ox's well-worn path.
Don't we live life from moment to moment? How could we possibly take life, analyze it, systematize it and file it away?
The sad thing about people is that they can't stray even a single step away from their habits.
Those who do things according to the book are failures.
We constantly let ourselves be distracted by details, and in this way we lose sight of the whole.
We buy strange things that we don't want at all in the hope that we just might win something with the lottery ticket the cashier gives us for free.
Actually, 'studying' means gaining insight into life.
Since the Meiji Period, however, it's turned into a matter of getting a qualification for professional life.
However much you accomplish in this life, you can't present any of it at the last judgement. You will die naked.
In the world, isn't what we call good or bad, true or false, more or less the same thing?
When the Hôjô clan stormed Kusunoki Masashige's Chihaya-castle, even on the Hôjô side some soldiers died. They called it a 'glorious death'. That's why there are poems like the following:
When you're ready, even for fame and glory, to throw away your life,
How can you hesitate to sacrifice it for the dharma?
In the end, there will be nothing left for you to do besides let go.
You've got to stand on solid feet, no matter what direction the wind might blow.
Isn't it evident that the greatest happiness consists in doing what you have to do?
Not wasting your time in life means sitting stably at the right place at the right time - not missing the precise moment.
Your life shouldn't be just one defeat after the other. Constantly on the run until your last hideout is found.
"I'm a man of leisure who has made the whole universe his own." [Daichi Zenji]
That's quite another way to live.
"Now I've reached the point where I can finally leave the world behind me!"
This realization is the cause that enables you to become a monk [shukke]. It enables you to do zazen.
You can't depend on anything. The value of things changes. This insight is what motivated Shakyamuni to renounce his King's title, to leave his wife and son and become a monk.
... Chapter 10 ....... Contents ...