{"id":17058,"date":"2019-01-26T02:11:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T02:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antaiji.org\/?p=17058"},"modified":"2019-01-28T08:39:56","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T08:39:56","slug":"20190126","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/20190126\/","title":{"rendered":"Fabian&#8217;s talk on Sawaki Kodo&#8217;s &#8220;To you&#8230;&#8221;, January 26th 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KsWIs_wi1Ko\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>29. To you who are pleased when someone compliments the depth of your faith<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Many confuse faith with a type of intoxication. There\u2019s a type of intoxication similar to awe that\u2019s nothing but delusion. Faith means, however, just the opposite \u2013 complete sobriety from any form of intoxication.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen most people in the world talk about the mind of faith, they don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything more than kissing Buddha\u2019s ass.<br \/>\n\u201cDo what you like with the others, but at least give me a first-class ticket to paradise!\u201d Prayers like that have got nothing to do with the mind of faith.<br \/>\nFaith means clarity and purity. Mind means the single mind that encompasses the three worlds. So having faith means clarifying and purifying the one mind of the three worlds. The mind of faith means truly becoming clear about your own mind.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nFaith means being clear and pure. It means being at ease. But some people get confused about this as well and think faith is about getting worked up, so they try with all their might to do so. Until they realize that it\u2019s not so easy to get truly worked-up. Then they just act as if they were.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn old times, people were swept up in awe when they heard that Amithaba Buddha would come to them in their last hour to pick them up. That!s the same as being misled by a fox.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEveryone wants to go to paradise, but have you ever really seen it? If you think you have, you must have been mistaken.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThere are people who want to live as long as possible. Any religion that offers this will do. What they have to believe in doesn\u2019t matter at all. That\u2019s how they waste their lives away.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen some new religious group starts picking up huge numbers of followers, suddenly everybody thinks there must be something true about it.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe number of followers doesn\u2019t determine if a religion is good.<br \/>\nIf it were simply a matter of who had the largest numbers, doesn\u2019t the club of ordinary people have the most members? No, it\u2019s the bacteria. There\u2019s even more of them!<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nAren\u2019t a huge pile of crazy ideas dumped on us humans, ideas that go by the names of \u201cfaith\u201d, \u201csatori\u201d and so on?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe ordinary people have to let go of our uptight attitude. Faith means purity and clarity. Wind and waves have to calm down.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nFaith doesn\u2019t mean praying for good health, good business, harmony in the family and well-being for your children.<br \/>\nFaith means pure clarity: the pure clarity in which the mud settles and the excitement calms. It means nothing besides completely coming to your senses.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nFaith isn\u2019t something second-hand. Buddha isn\u2019t something second-hand. If it\u2019s not about your problem here and now, it\u2019s got nothing to do with faith.<br \/>\n\u201cLet\u2019s put it off until later.\u201d You can\u2019t dismiss the problem like this. The question is whether you, here and now, truly can see Buddha\u2019s body and hear his teaching.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe way isn\u2019t about asking others. It\u2019s about returning to your self.<br \/>\nIf you think Amithaba Buddha is hanging out way over there on the other side while you\u2019re here running off your recitations, then sooner or later he\u2019ll be going back to the West at the same time that you\u2019re floating off to the East. You\u2019ll miss each other entirely.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSome call Buddha\u2019s name as if they wanted to flatter him with their faithful hearts. Others believe that they practice zazen in order to get satori. As long as it\u2019s only revolving around you as an individual, it\u2019s got nothing to do with the buddha-dharma.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYour little personal problems aren\u2019t interesting. The universal whole is the problem here. No matter how big your satori is or how important, charitable or good you are, if it doesn\u2019t concern anything besides you as an individual, it\u2019s merely a scene in the play of self-deception.<br \/>\n\u201cNamu\u201d means taking refuge in that which lies beyond the individual.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIf subject and object are separate, it\u2019s not the buddha-dharma.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the buddha-dharma, you don\u2019t even use the word \u201cBuddha\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mLxd5Bskvzk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>7. To you who would like to leave your rivals in the dust<\/b><\/p>\n<p>We often wonder who here is really better? But aren\u2019t we all made out of the same lump of clay?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEveryone should sit firmly anchored in the place where there is no better and worse.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYour whole life long you\u2019re completely out of your mind because you think it\u2019s obvious that there is a \u201cyou\u201d and \u201cthe others\u201d. You put on an act to stand out in a crowd, but in reality there\u2019s neither \u201cyou\u201d nor \u201cthe others\u201d.<br \/>\nWhen you die, you\u2019ll understand.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nBuddha-dharma means seamlessness. What seam runs between you and me? Sooner or later we all end up acting as if a seam separates friend and foe. When we get too used to this, we believe that this seam really exists.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nPoor and rich, important and unimportant \u2013 none of that exists. It\u2019s only glitter on the waves. Still there are some who curse buddha because they\u2019re stuck in unhappiness or because someone else is happier than they are.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nHappiness and unhappiness, important and unimportant, love and hate \u2013 the whole world makes a big deal out of these things. The world where all of this doesn\u2019t exist: that\u2019s the world of hishiry\u014d.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThere\u2019s nothing in the world we need to rack our brains over once it\u2019s clear that our deluded thoughts and discriminations are absolutely useless.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen the department head was sick, a subordinate jumped past him on the career ladder. He had been recovering, but with this news his fever broke out again. You really don\u2019t need to get a fever over something like that.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou say, \u201cI\u2019ll show you!\u201d Yet you don\u2019t even know how long you\u2019ll live. Don\u2019t you have anything else to do?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the West they say, \u201cMan is the wolf of man.\u201d The first step in religion must be that the wolves stop biting each other.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhat we\u2019ve learned since our childhood days is nothing more than how to pretend we\u2019re important. The world calls this education. And what do we try to do later in life? We fight like demons, have sex like animals and feed like the hungry ghosts. That\u2019s it.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe whole world sways on wobbly legs: like pushing others aside just to get ahead. In the buddha-dharma you shouldn\u2019t be so unfair.<br \/>\nThe buddha-dharma means having success in failure. The mind of the buddha-dharma is \u201csitting in zazen for aeons without achieving the way of Buddha.\u201d [Lotus Sutra]<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nPeople make a sleepy face if there isn\u2019t a fight or competition taking place. They\u2019re always wanting to gallop to the finish line. But is this a horse race? Or they swim like otters, wanting to be a nose ahead. In the end, they\u2019ll fight each other, like little kittens over a ball of wool.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen it isn\u2019t about winning or losing, love or hate, wealth or poverty, people put on a sleepy face.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the buddha-dharma it isn\u2019t about winning or losing, love or hate.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSome want to show off with their \u201csatori\u201d. Yet it\u2019s clear that something which you can use to show off has nothing to do with satori.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R7_Kx57Vpfs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>29. To you who are pleased when someone compliments the depth of your faith Many confuse faith with a type of intoxication. There\u2019s a type of intoxication similar to awe that\u2019s nothing but delusion. Faith means, however, just the opposite \u2013 complete sobriety from any form of intoxication. ** When most people in the world talk about the mind of faith, they don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything more than kissing Buddha\u2019s ass. \u201cDo what you like with the others, but at least give me a first-class ticket to paradise!\u201d Prayers like that have got nothing to do with the mind of faith. Faith means clarity and purity. Mind means the single mind that encompasses the three worlds. So having faith means clarifying and purifying the one mind of the three worlds. The mind of faith means truly becoming clear about your own mind. ** Faith means being clear and pure. It means being at ease. But some people get confused about this as well and think faith is about getting worked up, so they try with all their might to do so. Until they realize that it\u2019s not so easy to get truly worked-up. Then they just act as if they were. ** In old times, people were swept up in awe when they heard that Amithaba Buddha would come to them in their last hour to pick them up. That!s the same as being misled by a fox. ** Everyone wants to go to paradise, but have you ever really seen it? If you think you have, you must have been mistaken. ** There are people who want to live as long as possible. Any religion that offers this will do. What they have to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17058"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17093,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17058\/revisions\/17093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}