{"id":17075,"date":"2019-01-28T04:08:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T04:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antaiji.org\/?p=17075"},"modified":"2019-02-23T06:38:58","modified_gmt":"2019-02-23T06:38:58","slug":"20190128","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/20190128\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenkyo&#8217;s talk on Sawaki Kodo&#8217;s &#8220;To you&#8230;&#8221;, January 28th 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/P9DO8BjWOcU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>9. To you who would like to slap your boss with a letter of resignation<\/b><\/p>\n<p>As a human being, you can walk freely in any direction you choose.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nAs a human being, whatever you do, you should do it in a way that can\u2019t be repeated a second time. What can be repeated is best left to the robots.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nLife doesn\u2019t run on tracks.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nBirds don\u2019t sing in major or minor. Bodhidharma\u2019s teaching doesn\u2019t fit on lined paper.<br \/>\nThe buddha-dharma is wide and unlimited. When you try to hold it still, you\u2019ve missed it. It isn\u2019t dried cod, but a live fish. Living fish have no fixed form.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the soldier\u2019s handbook it says that in war you must be prepared for a thousand different possibilities. That doesn\u2019t just go for war \u2013 there\u2019s no rule book for life either. When you try to live your life according to a manual, you\u2019re sure to fail.<br \/>\nFor a court case as well, it goes without saying that you have to be on your guard when everything runs according to the book.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\n<i>The wild geese leave no traces,<br \/>\nyet no matter where they fly, they never lose their way. <\/i><br \/>\nThere are no footprints on the way of the bird. It\u2019s not the same as a steam engine that runs on tracks or an ox\u2019s well-worn path.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nDon\u2019t we live life from moment to moment? How could we possibly take life, analyze it, systematize it and file it away?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe sad thing about people is that they can\u2019t stray even a single step away from their habits.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThose who do things according to the book are failures.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe constantly let ourselves be distracted by details, and in this way we lose sight of the whole.<br \/>\nWe buy strange things that we don\u2019t want at all in the hope that we just might win something with the lottery ticket the cashier gives us for free.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nActually, \u201cstudying\u201d means gaining insight into life.<br \/>\nSince the Meiji Period, however, it\u2019s turned into a matter of getting a qualification for professional life.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nHowever much you accomplish in this life, you can\u2019t present any of it at the last judgement. You will die naked.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the world, isn\u2019t what we call good or bad, true or false, more or less the same thing?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen the H\u014dj\u014d clan stormed Kusunoki Masashige\u2019s Chihaya-castle, even on the H\u014dj\u014d side, some soldiers died. They called it a \u201cglorious death\u201d. That\u2019s why there are poems like the following:<br \/>\n<i>When you\u2019re ready, even for fame and glory, to throw away your life,<br \/>\nHow can you hesitate to sacrifice it for the dharma?<\/i><br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the end, there will be nothing left for you to do besides let go.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou\u2019ve got to stand on solid feet, no matter what direction the wind might blow.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t it evident that the greatest happiness consists in doing what you have to do?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nNot wasting your time in life means sitting stably in the right place at the right time \u2013 not missing the precise moment.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYour life shouldn\u2019t be just one defeat after the other, constantly on the run until your last hideout is found.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m a man of leisure who has made the whole universe his own.\u201d [Daichi Zenji] That\u2019s quite another way to live.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\n\u201cNow I\u2019ve reached the point where I can finally leave the world behind me!\u201d<br \/>\nThis realization is the cause that enables you to leave home and become a monk. It enables you to do zazen.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou can\u2019t depend on anything. The value of things changes. This insight is what motivated Shakyamuni to renounce his King\u2019s title, to leave his wife and son and become a monk.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jmU5gu09lA0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>9. To you who would like to slap your boss with a letter of resignation<\/b><\/p>\n<p>As a human being, you can walk freely in any direction you choose.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nAs a human being, whatever you do, you should do it in a way that can\u2019t be repeated a second time. What can be repeated is best left to the robots.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nLife doesn\u2019t run on tracks.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nBirds don\u2019t sing in major or minor. Bodhidharma\u2019s teaching doesn\u2019t fit on lined paper.<br \/>\nThe buddha-dharma is wide and unlimited. When you try to hold it still, you\u2019ve missed it. It isn\u2019t dried cod, but a live fish. Living fish have no fixed form.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the soldier\u2019s handbook it says that in war you must be prepared for a thousand different possibilities. That doesn\u2019t just go for war \u2013 there\u2019s no rule book for life either. When you try to live your life according to a manual, you\u2019re sure to fail.<br \/>\nFor a court case as well, it goes without saying that you have to be on your guard when everything runs according to the book.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\n<i>The wild geese leave no traces,<br \/>\nyet no matter where they fly, they never lose their way. <\/i><br \/>\nThere are no footprints on the way of the bird. It\u2019s not the same as a steam engine that runs on tracks or an ox\u2019s well-worn path.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nDon\u2019t we live life from moment to moment? How could we possibly take life, analyze it, systematize it and file it away?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe sad thing about people is that they can\u2019t stray even a single step away from their habits.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThose who do things according to the book are failures.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe constantly let ourselves be distracted by details, and in this way we lose sight of the whole.<br \/>\nWe buy strange things that we don\u2019t want at all in the hope that we just might win something with the lottery ticket the cashier gives us for free.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nActually, \u201cstudying\u201d means gaining insight into life.<br \/>\nSince the Meiji Period, however, it\u2019s turned into a matter of getting a qualification for professional life.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nHowever much you accomplish in this life, you can\u2019t present any of it at the last judgement. You will die naked.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the world, isn\u2019t what we call good or bad, true or false, more or less the same thing?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhen the H\u014dj\u014d clan stormed Kusunoki Masashige\u2019s Chihaya-castle, even on the H\u014dj\u014d side, some soldiers died. They called it a \u201cglorious death\u201d. That\u2019s why there are poems like the following:<br \/>\n<i>When you\u2019re ready, even for fame and glory, to throw away your life,<br \/>\nHow can you hesitate to sacrifice it for the dharma?<\/i><br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the end, there will be nothing left for you to do besides let go.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou\u2019ve got to stand on solid feet, no matter what direction the wind might blow.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t it evident that the greatest happiness consists in doing what you have to do?<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nNot wasting your time in life means sitting stably in the right place at the right time \u2013 not missing the precise moment.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYour life shouldn\u2019t be just one defeat after the other, constantly on the run until your last hideout is found.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m a man of leisure who has made the whole universe his own.\u201d [Daichi Zenji] That\u2019s quite another way to live.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\n\u201cNow I\u2019ve reached the point where I can finally leave the world behind me!\u201d<br \/>\nThis realization is the cause that enables you to leave home and become a monk. It enables you to do zazen.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nYou can\u2019t depend on anything. The value of things changes. This insight is what motivated Shakyamuni to renounce his King\u2019s title, to leave his wife and son and become a monk.<\/p>\n<p><b>21. To you who would like more money, love, status and fame<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Heaven and earth give, air gives, water gives, plants give, animals give, humans give. All things give of themselves to each other.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s only within this reciprocal giving that we can survive \u2013 regardless of whether we\u2019re thankful for it or not.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThere\u2019s nothing we need to complain about.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nNobody was granted life due to their personal merit. And no one can live just by using their own strength. But nonetheless, we\u2019re all still only concerned with our own pocketbook.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nStupidity means being preoccupied with your own body.<br \/>\nWisdom says, \u201cI am what I am, no matter how things end up.\u201d<br \/>\nA person outside of the Way is someone who only thinks of gain and loss. A devil is someone who makes a profit off of this.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhat a bore: making a long face and complaining about having no money, nothing to eat, and being stuck in debt. It\u2019s only because you believe that you have the right to revel in life and always feel good that you moan and groan about your poverty.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nOnce during the war, I visited a coal mine. With the same outfit and head-lamp as the miners, I got into the lift and down we went. At one point when we were going down it seemed to me as if suddenly we were going up again. But when I looked with the lamp at the wall of the shaft, I saw that we were still going down. In the beginning when we were accelerating downwards, we could really feel that we were going downwards. Just when the velocity changed it seemed to us as if we were going up again.<br \/>\nIn exactly the same way, when we think about our lives, we always go wrong when we mistake the fluctuating amounts for the sum.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nSaying you\u2019ve had satori is just an interpretation of changing circumstances, as is saying you\u2019re lost in illusion. Saying \u201cgood\u201d is an interpretation of change, saying \u201cbad\u201d is another. \u201cRich\u201d is an interpretation, \u201cpoor\u201d another.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIt\u2019s self-evident that a poor man suffers less from his poverty than someone who was rich until a moment ago.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIllusion means not being able to recognize the seriousness of the situation.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nAlthough you\u2019re really not so hungry, you say you\u2019ve got nothing to eat. And that alone makes you hungry. Words make for nightmares. Everyone makes a big deal over words.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nI taught my parrot to say, \u201cI\u2019m doing fine!\u201d One day the lamp fell and everything caught fire. Flapping his wings furiously, my parrot cried out his last words, \u201cI\u2019m doing fine, I\u2019m doing fine!\u201d \u2013 and died.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWe\u2019re constantly being misled by our own body and mind, and we don\u2019t even realize it.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nIn the impermanent world we try to get forward with our name wherever we can. Yet aren\u2019t we all born naked? Only afterwards did we get our name, our jumpers and our nipple. Once we\u2019re big, we suddenly appeal to our importance, strength, intelligence or wealth just to make a name for ourselves. And all along we\u2019re only naked.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nWhat we construct as \u201cthe world\u201d is nothing more than a mirage in the desert or a palace made out of ice. At another time, in another place, it would all melt away.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nHell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, animals, fighting demons, humans and heavenly beings: the inhabitants of all of these six worlds are where they are according to the measure of their blood congestion. When the blood congestion sinks, that\u2019s buddha.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nGood and bad karma from the past appears in this moment as karmic perception. As we all observe the world through this karmic perception, it seems to us like a demon\u2019s world, like an animal world, like a hellish world. But we\u2019re looking at one and the same thing.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nEverybody sleeps in the bed of buddha nature and only dreams their illusion.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nAmithaba Buddha says, \u201cEverything is good as it is. There isn\u2019t a single lost being. There\u2019s no reason to get excited.\u201d But the lost beings cry out, \u201cNo! That\u2019s not how it is!\u201d<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nHaving the mind of the Way means forgetting yourself for the others. Forgetting the others for yourself means not having the mind of the way.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nLosing is satori.<br \/>\nWinning is illusion.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe difference between yourself and the others disappears only when you completely give yourself up for the others. That\u2019s what it means to save the others before you yourself are saved.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nNot coveting a single thing is the greatest gift you can give to the universe.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe world in which everything is given without having to ask for it offers a perspective which is cool and clear, wide and unlimited \u2013 completely different from the perspective in the world of \u201cevery man for himself\u201d.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nThe reason why buddha takes on so many different forms is because, out of compassion, he cries tears of so many different forms.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nBuddha\u2019s compassion is different from mere \u201cpity\u201d. His compassion provides a perch from which we cannot fall, no matter how we may stumble.<br \/>\n**<br \/>\nBig mind means buddha mind. It means living 24 hours a day without grabbing onto a single thing. It means not hanging onto the conventions of the world.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019t be repeated a second time. What can be repeated is best left to the robots. ** Life doesn\u2019t run on tracks. ** Birds don\u2019t sing in major or minor. Bodhidharma\u2019s teaching doesn\u2019t fit on lined paper. The buddha-dharma is wide and unlimited. When you try to hold it still, you\u2019ve missed it. It isn\u2019t dried cod, but a live fish. Living fish have no fixed form. ** In the soldier\u2019s handbook it says that in war you must be prepared for a thousand different possibilities. That doesn\u2019t just go for war \u2013 there\u2019s no rule book for life either. When you try to live your life according to a manual, you\u2019re 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\u2019s not the same as a steam engine that runs on tracks or an ox\u2019s well-worn path. ** Don\u2019t 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\u2019t stray even a single step away from their habits. ** Those who do things according to the book are failures. ** We constantly [&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-17075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17075","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=17075"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17246,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17075\/revisions\/17246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antaiji.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}