Zazen Notes #11

I’ve written about this before but to re-cap … From 2000 to early 2002, the last year over-lapping with my beginning to attend a Jodo Shinshu temple, I sat zazen once a week with a local Soto group affiliated to a well-known Zen Order and also sat zazen at home everyday. 

Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, including my own arrogance and fear, I did not hear any good teaching during that time and, looking back now, I can see that I was totally caught up in an end-gaining type of practice.  Frustration caused by this attitude led me to run away from Zen but ironically through my subsequent exploration of Jodo Shinshu I have come, over the years, to re-appreciate the tradition I left.

Last year, thanks to a continued fascination with the writings of Eihei Dogen and my encounters with various sincere zazen-sha, I started to sit again more regularly.  I also came upon the teaching of Kosho Uchiyama (and the Antaiji lineage) and Dainen Katagiri (through the website of his disciple Dosho Port).  These have revolutionised my whole experience of and attitude to zazen.  Namuamidabutsu.

I remain however an irregular practitioner of zazen with nothing to share other than my gratitude to those teachers whose words have managed to penetrate my thick skull.

Shinjin Datsuraku? *

In the past I was misled, like so many others, into thinking that “shinjin (body-mind) datsuraku (casting /sloughing off)” was somekind of one-off satori-type experience.  However I’ve recently learnt from teachers and from simply sitting zazen that shinjin datsuraku is actually authentic zazen itself.

Whilst exploring Uchiyama-roshi’s emphasis on posture I have often thought of the act of taking the correct mental and physical zazen posture, without fussing or secondary adjustment, as akin to drawing and aiming a bow.  The paradox though is that the correct drawing and aiming of the bow is not only the act of aiming but also the aimed at (the target).  This paradox is what enables the zazen-sha to escape the poison of intentionality.  Once the form is taken, and everything entrusted to it, the arrow of bright but empty intention can fly forth beyond self and encounter the dynamic of co-dependent origination as-it-is. **

(The analogy is too linear of course and far from perfect.  From the point of view of Dogen-zenji’s Genjokoan (paragraph 2) it is perhaps more that in zazen the arrow of suchness can shoot us.  Sounds kind of Shin Buddhist!  And don’t forget the Sandokai’s “two arrows meeting in mid-air”.)

Zazen is not thinking good; it is not thinking bad. It is not mental activity of any kind; it is not contemplation or reflection. Have no intention to become a Buddha. You must cast off your sitting (so that nothing remains.)”
- Dogen Zenji, (trans. Waddell & Masao Abe)

the zazen in which you open the hand of thought and let go, let go a billion times, is in itself the droppingoff of body and mind. Dropping off body and mind isn’t some special kind of mystical experience either.”
- Kosho Uchiyama 

When we sit in zazen and let go, all these self images [created by karma] are ungrasped.  When we open our hands, all these concepts drop off.  Our body and mind are released from karmic hands.  This is what datsuraku means.”
- Shohaku Okumura

* ‘Shinjin’ (body-mind) in the Zen term ’shinjin datsuraku’ is not the same term as ’shinjin’ (entrusting) in the Jodo Shinshu doctrine.
**I am aware that there is a famous or infamous book called ‘Zen and the Art of Archery’ but I haven’t actually read it.  I did however used to do archery as a hobby so I guess that is why the analogy came to mind. 

Comments very welcome as always!  Back to the cushion …