Kenzo (Switzerland, 25 yo, waiter)
In spring of this year, the person leading the Dojo where I practice visited Antai-ji.
Just half a year before myself. Of course, I asked him to give me some information about life at Antai-ji. He told me Docho-san was not very present in daily life, so how could he teach and how could the practitioners learn? Still in Switzerland, I agreed, it would be better that a master is always present, for that he can take care of a strong practice.
Now, after living here at Antai-ji for one month, I think being absent sometimes is just a major part of Docho-san’s teaching besides his care for wife and children.
Why could absence possibly be teaching? Isn’t this just laziness or too much caring for his family?
I think it is not upon me to judge. If I am interested in judging Antai-ji or if I am interested in judging in general, I could do this through all my daily life...
I prefer to take the here and now of any phenomenon in its way of appearance as an opportunity to practice. With opportunity to practice, I always connect the possibility to observe myself, my behavior, the option to learn as much as possible, the chance to cook my life on a hot flame.
If I am busy in judging my situation or others, my flame gets low and cold very quickly. Or I forget that I am actually in the middle of boiling like a vegetable or a noodle, constantly serving myself to others, so that they can eat and digest me.
What else can the absence of a person mean and teach us? What else can we learn during this absence?
As far as I can see, Docho-san’s main point of teaching is Adult practice. To me being adult means firstly that one can and want to stand on his own feet and that one practices by not constantly relying on his parents, his master, his co-practitioners and so on…
Secondly, it means that oneself as an adult person doesn’t not pretend to be an adult by having the following attitude: I am an adult, so why should anyone or anything teach me? I already learned everything as a child. In this attitude itself, we act childishly and we close our horizon to a minimum view. To me, the mind of a child is pure curiosity and there is a will of constant learning. In Zen, this is maybe what is called Beginner’s mind. If we loose our beginner’s mind, the flame to cook ourselves I was writing about before, gets very low. Then as human beings we become cold and hard inside as well as outside.
Nothing makes me sadder than realizing I am on low fire or others are on low fire, cold and hard, almost dead…I can see it in my eyes. If they aren’t shiny like diamonds, I am probably on a low fire, lacking of energy in other words. And how could a human being be a support to others when the energy is on a low level?
So to conclude: I am responsible for my inner fire, to keep it burning or to illuminate it when there was no attention towards the fire from my side for too much time.
The easiest way to have a well burning fire all the time and at every place is to be as flexible and take every possible place and situation as an opportunity to practice. No matter if we are at Antai-ji, where the well burning fire is probably the one of the main points we focus on or if we are in our daily life outside the monastery.
These are maybe the hard parts of practicing life: not neglecting any point of here and now, as well as being satisfied with what we have and not searching for something else or sticking to something actually absent in the present moment.
Wannabe-clever texts like this always refer to the author as an opportunity, but while reading, you can also use it for yourself - if you like.
In some books you can read sentences like everything is energy or life is energy. I think what I mentioned with the opportunities is related to such a sentence. There is always an opportunity in form of energy, like waves on the ocean.
