영성, 몸-마음, 젠더, 생태, 평화 Scapbook: Real Zen for Real Life Course [9][23-24]

2023/03/14

Real Zen for Real Life Course [9][23-24]

Real Zen for Real Life Course Lecture Notes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Professor Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Course scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
LESSON GUIDES
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Lesson 1 What is Zen? recovering the Beginner’s Mind . . . . . . . . . 3

Lesson 2 The Zen Way to Know and forget Thyself . . . . . . . . . . 10

Lesson 3 Zen Meditation: Clearing the heart-Mind . . . . . . . . . . 17

Lesson 4 how to Practice Zen Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Lesson 5 The Middle Way of Knowing What suffices . . . . . . . . . 34

Meditation Checkup: The Middle Way of Meditation . . . . . . . . . . 42

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Lesson 6 embracing the impermanence of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Lesson 7 The True self is egoless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Meditation Checkup: Lead with the Body and Physical stillness . . . . 62

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Lesson 8 Loving others as yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Lesson 9 Taking Turns as the Center of the Universe . . . . . . . . . 71

Meditation Checkup: from Mindless reacting to Mindful responding 77

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Lesson 10 Who or What is the Buddha? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Lesson 11 Mind is Buddha: if you Meet him, Kill him! . . . . . . . . . 87

Meditation Checkup: Dealing with Unavoidable Pain . . . . . . . . . . 95
===[5]
Lesson 12 Dying to Live: Buddhism and Christianity . . . . . . . . . 97
Lesson 13 Zen beyond Mysticism: everyday even Mind . . . . . . . .104

Lesson 14 engaged Zen: from inner to outer Peace . . . . . . . . . 112
Meditation Checkup: Dealing with Distractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

===[6]

Lesson 15 The Dharma of Karma: We reap What We sow . . . . . . 120
Lesson 16 Zen Morality: follow and Then forget rules . . . . . . . . 127

Lesson 17 The Zone of Zen: The freedom of No-Mind . . . . . . . . 133
Lesson 18 Zen Lessons from Nature: The giving Leaves . . . . . . . 138

Meditation Checkup: Three Ways of Breathing in and out . . . . . . .144
===[7]
Lesson 19 Zen art: Cultivating Naturalness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Lesson 20 Zen and Words: Between silence and speech . . . . . . . 154

Meditation Checkup: Chanting as a Meditative Practice . . . . . . . .160
===[8]
Lesson 21 Zen and Philosophy: The Kyoto school . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Lesson 22 Just sitting and Working with Kōans . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Meditation Checkup: Walking Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
===[9]
Lesson 23 Death and rebirth: or, Nirvana here and Now . . . . . . 175

Lesson 24 reviewing the Path of Zen: The oxherding Pictures . . .180

finding a Zen Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

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DEATH AND REBIRTH: OR, NIRVANA HERE AND NOW

LESSON 23

Death is, quite literally, the business of Buddhist temples in

Japan, including Zen temples. Most of their income comes

from conducting funerals and memorial services. Yet

these services do provide real comfort and community to grieving

families. Doctrinally speaking, they are thought to transfer

karmic merit to the departed person so that he or she goes to

a better place.

The Six Realms

• Traditionally in Buddhism, and still in many Buddhist countries, the better place one goes to after death has been thought of as one of the higher of the six realms of rebirth in samsara. The higher three realms are those of human beings, heavenly beings, and fighting spirits. The lower three realms are those of animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings.

Rebirths

• Japanese Buddhists use a term, reikon, that can be translated as the “soul” of the deceased person. however, if pressed, a Japanese Buddhist priest would say that this does not refer to an independent and unchanging entity.

for Buddhists, the rebirth that is thought to happen after death is not totally unlike the constant rebirth people undergo during this life. This moment-to-moment rebirth is going on all the time.

• a person’s personality is constantly developing along with thoughts and emotions, just as the cells of the person’s body are constantly dying off and being replaced. one’s childhood self has to disappear for his or her adult self to come into existence.

• Changes can be looked at from the perspective of discontinuity or from the perspective of continuity. if we focus on the greatest ruptures of discontinuity, we can speak of physical, psychological, or spiritual death. if we turn our attention to their aspects of continuity, we can also speak of rebirth.

• Undergoing a spiritual death and rebirth is at the heart of all the great religious traditions. it is the only way to enter the kingdom of heaven in Christianity, and it is the only way to resolve the one great matter of life and death here on earth for Zen Buddhists.

Transmigration through the Six Realms

• after the demise of the physical form of the body, Buddhists have traditionally thought that the bundle of the other four aggregates—the collection of psychological factors that makes up the mental and emotional aspects of our life-stream—eventually finds an appropriate new physical body in which to be reincarnated.

Usually, this rebirth as reincarnation is determined by karma.

• Karma can be good or bad, but, insofar as karma is at bottom based on ignorance and egoistic craving, it propels one to be reborn in one of the six realms of rebirth in samsara. even a great philanthropist, insofar as he or she gives out of a desire to be recognized as a giver, will at best be reborn as a heavenly being, which is merely the happiest form of life in samsara.

enlightened beings—Buddhas and bodhisattvas—are no longer driven by karma. however, they can voluntarily choose to be reborn in samsara out of the compassionate desire to endlessly work on behalf of liberating all sentient beings from suffering.

Zen Masters and Hell

• “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” according to Dante, those words are written over the gates of hell. Zen masters, by contrast, have high hopes for going to hell. for them, out of bottomless compassion, we should want to go to hell.

• When Zen masters do talk about life after death, they generally talk in parables about being reborn wherever they can be of the most service. The 9th-century Chinese Zen master Zhaozhou said that, when he dies, he “will be the first to fall to hell.” an astonished monk asked, “how can it be that such a great priest as you should fall to hell ahead of us all?” Zhaozhou responded, “Who will save you when you fall to hell unless i arrive there first and wait for you?”

A ZEN MASTER’S

CONFESSION

We need to be reminded of our impermanence, and we need to face up to our mortality, not primarily so that we can prepare for the afterlife but so that we can undergo the great spiritual death that allows us to live fully here and now.

When Confucius was asked about death, he replied: “We do not yet understand life—how could we possibly understand death?” Like the Buddha and Confucius, when asked questions about death, Zen masters are likely to turn the questioner’s attention back to life.

When Zhaozhou’s teacher, Nanquan, was asked by a disciple where he will go after he dies, he responded: “i am going to the foot of the hill to be reborn as an ox,” presumably so that he could work tirelessly in the fields in service of the poor farmers. These stories stress the central message of Mahayana Buddhism:

the vow to work on behalf of liberating all sentient beings from suffering.

SUGGESTED READING

halifax, Being with Dying. hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems.

ray, “rebirth in the Buddhist Tradition.”

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What does Zen teach about death and the afterlife?

2 how does Zen suggest that nirvana is to be found in the here and now?====

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REVIEWING THE PATH OF ZEN:

THE OXHERDING PICTURES

LESSON 24

This lesson comments on a classic and beloved text of the Zen tradition: the ten oxherding Pictures. the text consists of a set of pictures together with a preface and

poem appended to each one. the original pictures and poems were composed by the 12th-century chinese Zen master Kuoan. the prefaces were written by Kuoan’s successor Ziyuan. Kuoan’s original pictures no longer exist, but over the centuries, many artists have recreated them. the most famous rendition is that of the 15th-century Japanese artist shūbun, who established the Japanese tradition of ink painting.

Overview of the Pictures

• in Kuoan’s pictures, the biggest breakthrough comes in picture 8, when everything suddenly disappears, leaving only an empty circle. Before that, in picture 7, the ox suddenly disappears. The ox did not come on the scene until picture 3, which depicts the first breakthrough moment. This means that the ox is actually pictured in only four of the pictures.

• The quest the oxherder embarks on in picture 1 is a search for the true self; it is a journey of self-realization. The oxherder is the seeking self, while the ox is the self that is sought. in other words, the deluded self wants to awaken to its true self, and so sets out in search of it.

• The oxherder finds footprints of the ox in picture 2, and then first catches a glimpse of it in picture 3. in the next three pictures, he catches, tames, and rides the ox home.

Pictures 1 and 2

• The spiritual path in general, and the path of Zen in particular, begins with waking up to the problem that we do not truly know ourselves. in his preface to the first picture, Ziyuan tells us that we have turned our backs on our own true self; we have covered over our own originally enlightened mind.

in the first picture, the oxherder realizes that he has lost the ox; the deluded self realizes that he is deluded. he is still lost, but since now he knows that he is lost, he has become a seeker. Nevertheless, although he has now set out in search of the ox, he does not yet know where to search.

• in Ziyuan’s preface to the second picture, we read: “relying on the sutras, you understand the principles; by studying the teachings, you come to know the traces left behind.” That refers to traces left behind by those who have awakened to the true self. These traces are tracks that tell you which way to go on the path toward self-awakening.

• additionally, Ziyuan says that at this stage, the oxherder is still not able to “distinguish right from wrong” or to “differentiate true and false.” This suggests that an intellectual understanding of the unity of the universe all too easily falls into a one-sided grasp of oneness.

Picture 3

• initial awakening—one’s first experience of kenshō, or seeing into the true nature of the self—takes place in picture 3, which shows the oxherder catching a glimpse of the ox. When the oxherder first lays eyes on his lost ox, he is overjoyed.

still, at this stage, there has been only a glimpse of the true self. having found the ox, the oxherder must now catch and tame it.

Pictures 4–6

• The oxherder catches hold of the ox in picture 4, but now a struggle is taking place. Ziyuan’s preface states: “More stubborn than

ever and still wild, if you wish to tame it you must use your whip.”

• The philosopher Ueda says that although the text attributes stubbornness and wildness to the ox, these are characteristics of the oxherder at this stage. in fact, Ueda says it is the ox that appears to be pulling the oxherder onto the homeward bound path of awakening.

• however, there is another compelling interpretation given by the modern Chinese Zen master sheng-yen. he suggests that “the ox represents the mind and its activities.” as a matter of fact, the ox is referred to in many commentaries as the “ox-mind,” and it is not a stretch to understand this to mean the mind in all its unenlightened as well as enlightened activities.

Kuoan’s version of the Ten oxherding Pictures has the great merit of clearly depicting both the gradual and sudden aspects of training and awakening. accordingly, the ambiguity of the symbolism of the ox in Kuoan’s pictures can be understood as intentional. This intentional ambiguity is especially at play in the middle stages of the path—the stages depicted in pictures 4, 5, and 6—where it appears that the practitioner is both taming and being tamed by the ox.

• in picture 4, we witness an intensely ambivalent struggle. in picture 5, the oxherder is leading the now docile ox. yet in picture 6, he is leisurely riding on the back of the ox, playing a tune and letting the ox take him wherever he wishes. effort is giving way to effortlessness as practice becomes a way of life.

• in the many years it generally takes a Zen practitioner to go from stage 4 to stage 6, the great effort of practicing to become enlightened transforms into the wondrously effortless practice of enlightenment. This enlightened effortlessness is not a matter of lazily zoning out but rather a matter of living fully engaged in the zone of Zen.

Picture 7

• a major—though still not complete—breakthrough happens

in picture 7, which is entitled Ox Forgotten, Self Remains. in this picture, the ox has disappeared, and the oxherder sits alone by a mountain hut, at peace with himself and the world.

Ziyuan’s preface to this picture begins with the words: “The Truth is not two; the ox was just posited as a provisional topic.” The truth—the dharma—

is the ultimate truth about reality that Buddhist teachings are meant to express. for Zen, this is the true self—that is, the self that understands itself to exist as a part of the worldwide web of reality.

• one can imagine the story ending with picture 7. indeed, some spiritual paths do end with a sage at peace with himself on a mountaintop. such solitary sages leave the world behind or, at least, leave it as it is. for Zen, this is to have climbed to the top of a 100-foot pole, and yet to be unable or unwilling to leap off—to leap, that is, back into the world filled with dust as well as flowers.

Picture 8

• Picture 8 is entitled Person and Ox Both Forgotten. it is simply an empty circle, not a picture of anything at all. it is a great negation, an absolute emptying, of all forms.

it is said that there are 100 ways to draw this circle and countless ways to understand it. While the ways to understand the circle may be infinite, one of those ways is to understand it as a symbol of infinity. here, that means infinite possibility, a formlessness pregnant with all possible forms.

• The empty circle is often drawn so as to leave it open, reminding us that it symbolizes a dynamic way that never reaches a static completion. The empty circle can be understood and experienced as the creative source—as well as the peacefully encompassing abode—of all the multifarious things we experience.

Picture 9

•

in picture 7 the seeker found his higher, truer self. in picture 8, even that needed to be let go of. Picture 9, which simply depicts a mountain stream flowing under a tree in bloom—without

an objectified self in sight—shows how it is easiest to do this in nature.

• it is relatively easy to let beautiful flowers and meandering brooks show themselves in all their natural splendor without getting in their way. as the open heart-mind of the empty circle, the true self makes room for the wonders of nature to manifest as they present themselves. alas, it is much harder to be enlightened and to enlighten others amid the hustle and bustle of the human world.

Picture 10

• Picture 10 shows an old sage coming down from the mountain, returning to the marketplace, and greeting a young man. it is a Zen depiction of the bodhisattva returning to the world to work on behalf of liberating and enlightening others.

• The figure with outstretched hands who appears in this last picture is a traditional forerunner not only of the modern proponents of engaged Buddhism but of all those persons, past and present, who bring the peace they have found to others.

• The long journey of the oxherder had reached a premature peak when he, no longer needing the provisional symbol of the ox, become a solitary sage on a mountaintop. in the end, however, his journey leads to a sacrifice of that solitude to bring solace to others.

• The enlightened and enlightening figure in picture 10 is traditionally associated with Budai, a 10th-century Chinese Zen monk who was nicknamed the Laughing Buddha. as legend has it, Budai was a wandering monk who would give away anything that was given to him.

• The Budai-like figure in picture 10 is shown with outstretched hands, offering gifts to the young boy in the scene—including, of course, the greatest gift of pointing the boy down the pathway toward his own enlightening journey. he is, as it were, passing the enlightening torch to the next generation of oxherder.