View Fall 2017 the Zen Practitioner's Journal

The Zen Practitioner’s Journal View Fall 2017 MOUNTAIN RECORD (ISSN #0896-8942) is published quarterly by Dharma Communications. Periodicals Postage Paid at Mt. Tremper, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to MOUNTAIN RECORD, P.O. Box 156, Mt. Tremper, NY 12457-0156. All material Copyright © 2017 by Dharma Com mu ni ca tions, Inc., Unless otherWise specified. Printed in the U.S.A. The articles included and the opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors, Who are solely re spon si ble for their contents. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions, positions or teachings of Zen Mountain Mon as tery or the Mountains and Rivers Order. Cover Image: “Shadow Twig” by Rookuzz.. ‘Buddha’ is a temporary name for what cannot be seen when you look, what cannot be heard when you listen, whose place of origin and passing away cannot be found when you search. It covers form and sound, pervades sky and earth, penetrates above and below. There is no second view, no second person, no second thought. – Zen Master Xiatang Vol.36 No.1 Fall 2017 VIEW 4 Ask the One Who Knows, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi What does this fully capable person see, feel, and experience? 15 Look Again, and Again, Suzanne Taikyo Gilman Editorial 16 Right View Comes First; Why Do Beings Live in Hate? The Buddha Two of the Buddha’s early teachings on the first aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path. 20 Taking the Leap, Pema Chodron Open up awareness and let go of fixed positions—and this is just the start. 28 An Open Letter, BETH LOFFREDA What does it mean to see the world from a “white” point of view? 34 Towards a Science of Consciousness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama New understandings of mind and transformation in the Buddha’s early discoveries. 40 Nothing Personal, by James Baldwin When love fills the universe, distant places become your own home. 44 View, by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche The ultimate view is natural, unspectacular, and very close by—and we rarely notice. 48 The Perception of Sages, by Zen Master Xiatang The Reality of Mind, by Zen Master Hsuan-Sha Buddha Flowers, Leaves, Roots and Dusts, by Zen Master Honghzi Early Ch’an teachings point directly with wisdom and compassion. 54 Ma-Tsu’s White and Black, by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei The awakened life is living in your own heart and mind, but how will you know? 62 Mountains and Rivers Order News News and Happenings, Sangha Reflections, Book Reviews, Affiliate Directory 89 Resources and Services Photo Credits —Inside Back Cover Ask The One Who Knows by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi 4 Gateless Gate Case 47 Doushuai’s Three Barriers Main Case Master Doushuai made three barriers to test his students. To inquire after the truth, groping your way through the underbrush, is for the purpose of seeing your nature. Here, now, where is your nature, Venerable Monk? If you realize your own nature, you are certainly free from life and death. When your eyes are closed, how can you be free from life and death? If you are free from life and death, you know where you will go. When the four elements are decomposed, where do you go? Commentary If you can rightly give the three turning words here, you will be the master wherever you may be, and live up to the Dharma no matter how varied the circumstances. If, however, you are unable to give them, I warn you, you will get tired of the food you have bolted, and well-chewed food keeps hunger away. Verse This one instant, as it is, is an infinite number of kalpas An infinite number of kalpas are at the same time this one instant. If you see into this fact, The True Self which is seeing has been seen into. 5 f you’re free from life and death you know where you will go. When the four I elements are decomposed, where do you go? This is the question that human beings have likely been asking since the beginning of our creation. Having a life force, what happens when we die? In death, where do we go? This question contains our desire and our understanding. There is ‘someone’ who wants ‘something,’ and the question is where does this ‘someone’ go? Most people want to continue through and beyond life, to not die. Anyone who has been in the presence of someone in the dying process knows how vivid and dynamic that sense of life is—of life energy, life spirit—within a person even as they’re actively dying, even if they’re not conscious or responsive. When the moment we call ‘death’ occurs, there certainly is something that changes to that felt sense of life in the person. Something that was there a moment ago seems unmistakably absent, seems to have departed. Having life, where does it go? The Buddha said it’s like a candle burning: moment-by-moment there is a flame. Is it the same flame in each moment? There’s a koan that asks, “When the flame on the altar is extinguished, where does the candlelight go?” Shibiyama in his commentary on this koan says, “What is this experience of seeing into one’s nature? It is to see into one’s original nature and to be awakened to the true self. When this is accomplished the student has transcended life and death.” To transcend is to have seen through the nature of life and death. “When your eyes 7 are closed, how can you be free from life To be free of suffering we might think and death?” The concern about death is we simply need to avoid having suffering— never an abstraction but is about someone’s that’s how we liberate ourselves. We avoid, death: mine, yours, or that of someone we or don’t create, or better manage the love. Shibayama says, things in our life that create suffering; “Everyone in this world has to face this just be more in control. Human beings’ fundamental question. Most people give search for everlasting life, our reverence themselves up to the pressure of temporal for youthfulness in our culture, the desire affairs and blindly pass their days and nights. to stay young and not grow old or become On some occasions, however, we may reflect frail or ill, our complaints as we get older, on the ever-changing nature of human life. our disdain for old age; what is all of this We will realize the inevitable limitations and expressing about our understanding of and restrictions of our everyday living. Once we peace with life and death? realize this actual human situation we can no The Buddha said there are five things longer be indifferent but feel an urge to solve that we should remember: this fundamental problem. One has to see into their nature.” “I am of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old. In other words, it is my fundamental I am of the nature to become sick; there is question to see into my nature; your no escape from having ill health. fundamental question is to see into your I am of the nature to die; there is no escape nature. Master Doushuai’s question— from my death. Here, now, where is your nature?—is All that is dear to me and everyone I love thus addressed to each one of us. Yet, we are of the nature of change; there is no way to can make an effort to achieve a kind of escape being separated from them. indifference to the question, or we can seek My deeds are my closest companions; my peace by avoiding the question, ignoring actions and the result of my actions, my karma. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My this inevitable truth of all creatures. deeds are the ground upon which I stand.” I am of the nature of these things. You Where do you go when the body dissolves? are of the same nature, as was the Buddha. Is this even the correct question? The That means it’s built into our nature: it question certainly matches our ordinary comes with life, it cannot be escaped, way of thinking of things: “I am. I have and should be remembered. Remembering life. I am a person. I have a self. It holds doesn’t just mean to obsessively worry or be together from moment to moment, day by anxious about, but rather to contemplate, day. It seems to have a sense of coherence to reflect on, to motivate us to practice, and and continuity and permanence: where will to see in the world around us. it go?” From our ordinary perspective, the When we trace our suffering back to the question makes a lot of sense even if we root, what do we find? This is the importance don’t know the answer. But is this question in our practice of simply sitting in a freely itself actually in accord with the real nature given state of vast wakefulness and stillness. of things? 8 As the Chinese master Chih-i taught, “to In “Here I am all the time,” who or what stop and see.” See what comes before you, is this “I”? When the four elements are one moment after the next and not to try and decomposed where do you go? Is this life escape, realizing that you cannot escape. Try all there is? Master Bankei taught, “When something new: try not escaping but turning the time comes for you to die, just die” does See what comes before you, one moment after the next and not to try and escape.

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