right TRACK!

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Johnny Dangerous
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Re: right TRACK!

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

master of puppets wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 6:21 am If your mind is not ready no teacher can help you.
A teacher can help you get ready if you are not, then they can point out what you cannot see.
teacher for me can only be give dicipline to stay on the right track until your mind become ready.
My understanding: In a practice like Zen part of the function of the teacher is to show you your own face, you have been avoiding looking at your own face since beginningless time, so much that you don't even remember how to see it. The chance of you figuring it out on your own is not good, likely to be nearly impossible. One traditional analogy is the taste of sugar, you can read about it and try to figure out what it tastes like as much you want, but it is never the same as tasting it.
Then everything could easily become a teacher; like a stone hitting a bamboo as to most ordinary events that we read from the story of past masters; and you can hear the teacher,
Once we see it maybe, until then such events are nice, but not the same animal as getting that glimpse, which generally only a teacher can point out, and at least get us on the path to abide there. We can become more independent following this, but in the practice of Zen the teacher serves a very important role.

btw, here's a quote for you about The Disease of Emptiness:
Boshan wrote:The Disease of Emptiness

If you're unable to rouse doubt when practicing Zen, you may come to regard the physical and mental worlds as utterly emptied, with nothing at all to cling to and nothing to hold on to. Unable to discern your own body and mind or the world around you, denying inner and outer, you make everything into one emptiness.

Then you believe this emptying to be Zen, and the one who emptied it all to be a buddha. You imagine that the four postures of going, staying, sitting, and reclining are done within emptiness. This too is simply your wavering mind; it is not Zen.

Continuing in this way you end up in false emptiness, sunk in dark ignorance. Attached to it, you become as if demon-possessed and proclaim that you've attained enlightenment. All because you fail to realize that what you're doing has nothing to do with true Zen inquiry.

If you genuinely inquire, with one koan you'd rouse this doubt and wield it as a razor sharp sword—whoever comes in contact with its blade will be annihilated. Otherwise, even though you may reach a state of emptiness where no thoughts arise, it is still ignorance and far from final.
See these are the kind of distinctions that need a teacher and lineage, it is very easy to think we are doing one thing, and be doing another entirely, we need someone to point out to us exactly what we are doing, because we just cannot see it by ourselves initially. In other words, it's hard to "be on track" without their help.

Anyway, it is not hard to take teachings in this day and age.
Meditate upon Bodhicitta when afflicted by disease

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when sad

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when suffering occurs

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when you are scared

-Khunu Lama
reiun
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Re: right TRACK!

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master of puppets wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 6:21 am If your mind is not ready no teacher can help you.

I don't have a teacher but a road map. (Ox herding)

At no point it says you need a teacher or a guide cause itself is a guide.

Only at the 10 th level you see a buddha (a teacher) giving you the way of food.

A teacher for me can only be give dicipline to stay on the right track until your mind become ready.
This is known as buji zen.
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Re: right TRACK!

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Even 10th are guided by Vairochana according to Mahavairocana Sutra.
It’s eye blinking.
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Re: right TRACK!

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If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both.

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Genjo Conan
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Re: right TRACK!

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 1:04 am
Genjo Conan wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 12:55 am
FiveSkandhas wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 9:59 pm I have a perhaps-unreasonable prejudice against Soto's "all zazen, all the time" approach.
This has not, in fact, been the approach at any of the Soto temples at which I've practiced.
I don't doubt it, but it is definitely a current in Western Zen practice.
I think that's true, and I do get a little bit frustrated with Soto teachers who act like shikantaza is the only thing they do--even when it's clear from their websites that it's not the only thing they do! I get a little tender around the subject because I think Soto Zen gets unfairly dinged as a quiescent sect where all we do is sit a lot. I don't think it's correct to call this "the Soto approach" any more than it's "the Rinzai approach" to just sit with Mu for fifteen years. Yeah, that can happen, but it's about the capacities of the teacher and the student and the temple, rather than "we all do it this way." Maybe I'm just tilting at windmills.
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Re: right TRACK!

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

Genjo Conan wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 5:47 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 1:04 am
Genjo Conan wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 12:55 am

This has not, in fact, been the approach at any of the Soto temples at which I've practiced.
I don't doubt it, but it is definitely a current in Western Zen practice.
I think that's true, and I do get a little bit frustrated with Soto teachers who act like shikantaza is the only thing they do--even when it's clear from their websites that it's not the only thing they do! I get a little tender around the subject because I think Soto Zen gets unfairly dinged as a quiescent sect where all we do is sit a lot. I don't think it's correct to call this "the Soto approach" any more than it's "the Rinzai approach" to just sit with Mu for fifteen years. Yeah, that can happen, but it's about the capacities of the teacher and the student and the temple, rather than "we all do it this way." Maybe I'm just tilting at windmills.
Oh I definitely don't think it's supposed to be the Soto approach. What I am thinking of iss some very distinct...Americanisms (I guess you'd call them that) with regard to Zen that make it a trend, not really anything to do with Soto traditionally at all.
Meditate upon Bodhicitta when afflicted by disease

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when sad

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when suffering occurs

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when you are scared

-Khunu Lama
reiun
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Re: right TRACK!

Post by reiun »

Genjo Conan wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 5:47 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 1:04 am
Genjo Conan wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 12:55 am

This has not, in fact, been the approach at any of the Soto temples at which I've practiced.
I don't doubt it, but it is definitely a current in Western Zen practice.
I think that's true, and I do get a little bit frustrated with Soto teachers who act like shikantaza is the only thing they do--even when it's clear from their websites that it's not the only thing they do!
"In short, shikantaza is the actual practice of buddhahood itself from the very beginning-and, in diligently practicing shikantaza, when the time comes, one will realize that very fact." --Hakuun Yasutani, "Shikantaza"

Not so bad, though!

"Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice . . . To enter by practice refers to four all-inclusive practices: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma." --Bodhidharma, "Outline of Practice"

In Rinzai, we were taught to bring zazen mind into kinhin, and to actualize the fruits of zendo practice in other aspects of life, i.e., work practice, etc. My teacher used to use the following quote, especially prior to dokusan, from a 60's New York Times subway advertisement— "If you're without it, you're not with it." He would say, "Bring the 'With it' with you'".
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Re: right TRACK!

Post by Genjo Conan »

reiun wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 10:30 pm
In Rinzai, we were taught to bring zazen mind into kinhin, and to actualize the fruits of zendo practice in other aspects of life, i.e., work practice, etc.
This is what I've always been taught as well.

Shikantaza is clearly the core of Soto practice, but our practice also includes work practice, chanting, sutra study, sewing, etc. Dogen wrote a fascicle about how to be the temple cook. It's just not accurate to say that Soto is "all Zazen, all the time."

But, I've dragged this thread well off topic at this point.
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Re: right TRACK!

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I go to the market place with my wine bottle and return home with my staff.
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Re: right TRACK!

Post by LastLegend »

master of puppets wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 11:39 am I go to the market place with my wine bottle and return home with my staff.
No.
It’s eye blinking.
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Re: right TRACK!

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"When I am hungry I eat, and when I am thirsty I drink" - Bankei
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