Enter the Dojo (Zendo)

CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly, Koan Case 41, The Book of Equanimity (PasaDharma.org)

Sangkhlaburi Temple, Thailand (SuperG28/flickr.com)

 

Start. It's easy. Enter the dojo.

What is Zen? It is that serene state of lucid awareness brought on when the heart is temporarily cleared of, or withdrawn from, all worries and defiling influences.

How to begin? Stop.

PREFACE TO THE ASSEMBLY

Heart of Zen group (loyola.edu)

Sometimes out of loyalty, one drives oneself to unspeakable hardship.

Sometimes when disaster befalls, others fail to get the point.

Humbly stooping down at the time of departure, his last moments are utterly kind.

Tears flowing forth from his tender heart are still more difficult to hide.

However, is there someone here with cool eyes?

MAIN CASE

Attention! On his deathbed, Rakuho addressed the assembly: "Now I have one matter to ask you about. If you approve this, you're putting another head on top of your own. If you disapprove this, you're seeking life by cutting off your head."

Thereupon the head monk said, "The green mountain always raises its leg [its tree-leg to the sky?]. In bright daylight, you don't raise a torch."

Rakuho scolded, "What occasion is this that you should say such a thing?"

The monk Genju stepped forward and said, "Leaving aside these two roads, please Master, don't question."

Rakuho replied, "Partly, but say some more."

Genju admitted, "I can't say it all."

Rakuho said, "I don't care if you say it all or not."

Genju said, "Being your attendant, Osho, it's hard for me to reply."

When evening came Rakuho summoned the monk Genju and said, "Your response today makes very good sense. You should experience what my late master said: "Before the eyes, no Dharma. Mind is before the eyes. This -- it's not Dharma before the eyes. It's something that ear and eye cannot reach. Which phrase is guest? Which phrase is host? If you can make the distinction, I'll hand over the bowl [thereby conferring the status of abbot on you as my successor]."

Genju said, "I don't know."

Rakuho said, "You should know."

Genju said, "I really don't know."

Rakuho said cuttingly, "Tough, isn't it? Tough, isn't it?"

The monk said, "Osho, how about you?"

Rakuho answered, "The boat of compassion is not poled over the waves of purity. In the rapids of the steep ravine one toils in vain to release the wooden goose." [A wooden goose was used to safely shoot rapids by following the path the goose took when released.]

APPRECIATORY VERSE

With clouds as bait and moon as hook, he fishes in pure water.

Burdened with years solitary and hard, and no fish yet.

After the tune "Riso" dies away,

On the river Bakira, a lone man awakens.

• CASE 41: Rakuho's Last Moments (The Hazy Moon)

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Zen Garden School (cartoon)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly

Zen rock gardening (bizarrocomics.com)

 

What is Zen? 
"Zen" is a way of saying "fully collected attention, fully absorbed mind," a natural state sometimes referred to beginner's mind.

 

Zen is a Buddhist school, Japan's version of the Chinese Ch'an (absorbed concentration) movement.

  

This Buddhist school came from ancient India, where the practice is known as dhyana, in Pali jhana, in Vietnamese thien, and so on. In America, in modern English, it seems to mean "cool, calm effortlessness."

  

What is the Zen in the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? 
It is confounding the Tao, "going with the flow," the way, the yin and yang of cyclical existence -- in Taoism as if it were Buddhism. Taoism so mixed with Buddhism, each influencing each other and mixing like water and milk, that it is not far from some aspects of the Dharma. But they are not actually the same at the core, just as cultural interpretations.

  

What does it mean to "meditate"? 
It means to cultivate something, to develop something, to bring something into being (bhavana). One brings virtue, concentration, and insight into being with balanced effort.

Like a revolving yin and yang circle, one balances effort and ease, strain and laxity, doing and being done. Many swear that when "it" (meditation) happens, they didn't do it. It did itself. It was done to them. It was effortless -- so long as one does not count all the "effort" of making time to sit and persisting in cultivating serenity and single-pointed attention.

 

This is "thoughtless" awareness, for although one is fully aware of one's surroundings and one's object of meditative attention, it is not "thinking about" or evaluating or judging or revolving in one's mind (its literal English definition, which is more appropriate in the preparatory cultivation of insight translated as contemplation).

What are those "Zen Garden" sandboxes about? 
It is part of Japan's artistic tradition turning the mundane and sparse into reflections of art and order.

• Pronouncing strange word (howjsay.com)

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