With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
Some of us just need to be somewhere. We are not satisfied with where we are. Biting an apple is just not the same unless we bite that apple as an "Awakened" one, yet the moment we do, we clearly are asleep. Practice realization is not good enough. Zen is not good enough. Some of us have to pronounce our enlightenment. As Daniel Ingram and his derivative, Kenneth Folk, says, "I'm an Arahat". Perhaps.
If you are a student of Zen, a member of the Zen tradition, you let these thoughts drop away. Master Seung Sahn says, "put it down!"
Just bite the damned apple and move on.
Our practice, that is to say, Soto Zen practice, is a practice of engagement. This engagement is outlined in our precepts and bodhisattva vows. Enlightenment is not a goal, it is a way of being that requires practice and moment-to-moment renunciation of self-interest. Seeking enlightenment is not the same as having 'the thought of enlightenment" as Dogan suggests in his Shoshogi:
"[18] To arouse the thought of enlightenment is to vow to save all beings before saving ourselves. Whether lay person or monk, whether a deva or a human, whether suffering or at ease, we should quickly form the intent of first saving others before saving ourselves."
Master Dogen points out clearly that our actions are toward the benefit of others, other's enlightenment, not our own. So this way of being, the buddha way, is a practice of enacting this vow.
Let us practice together, and let the need to be enlightened go.
Be well.
2 comments:
I got over my distaste of Ingram calling himself arahat, and red his book.
It's actually really good and down to earth book on how to practice. Even zen practitioner like me gets lots of out of it. He really describes how practice works "in the now". I find it interesting how he can make clear that morality and insight are different practices. Morality encompasses all while insight is just how you see the world/yourself. There is relation between the two (insight can help you to train in morality), but connection is not so tight as our traditions try to make it to seem. You can sit 30 years and have deep insight to the emptiness and still be total jerk and harm people around yourself.
What comes to arahatship, he defines what he means with it precisely. He is critical to Theraveada tradition and how it's incorrectly claims that advancing in wisdom makes you perfect in morality also. He defines arahat as somebody whose "wisdom eye stays open all the times", and that means that one don't experience central operating self anymore at any time (deep attainment indeed). After he reached that point, he says that training in morality (=everything that one does to help others and improve oneself) seems to be only viable option left in life and it's not something that can be perfected like states of deep concentration and wisdom can. Person without insight can be more advanced in morality and selfless action than someone who clearly sees that there is no self.
In our tradition we say morality, meditation and wisdom. In his tradition it's more like: morality, concentration, insight and morality again. Morality is the first and last practice.
If anything, his book inspired me to sit more and inspect present moment more carefully.
Thank you for your comment, understanding, and practice. The whole practice of Zen however is to come to a place where there is no "I" or "enlightenment". And certainly not a place where they are in the same sentence. May you be a blessing.
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