Rod wrote: > Of course this is only an exercise to remind one what it feel like to > remember the moment (or forget all that other BS). With practice I think > it is clear one needn't ASK oneself "how should I start the ceremony" > because there's no one to ask, and you wouldn't want to start the ceremony > with a rhetorical question to an audience of none! Thus, one is more > likely to take the most natural first step. > > All my best, > > > Rod Scholl
Dear Rod, I think that here is another example where written words fail. We read the words "be in the moment" then we begin to think about what those words mean, and we lose the moment..then we blame the words for the failure.. we begin to think the instruction of the master is that we should forever be in the moment. Katargiri Roshi's first book of lectures (published after his death by his oh so worshipful students) was titled "retuning to silence". He in some of his lectures that were caught and killed and edited and nailed down to paper in this book points out the practice is "returing to silence"...this "be in the moment" pointer is just this....begin the practice of returning to silence in order to cultivate the ability to do so at will. This is not the end of the practice of zen though, if one begins the practice of "returning to silence" one soon realizes that the practice is not "being in silence" simply because as you point out this is not only impossible it is not even desireable. The title of Katagiri's second book is "you have to say something". Ok now you can return to silence at will.....fine...there is no end here...now that you can "return to this moment" now we must attend to this moment needs...take care of it..this requires that we "say something"...or do something. We can plan, or reason, or act. Some of this is mandated by being human,..sooner or later we need to eat or pee and this requires some planning..usually.... This zen practice that Katagiri and Shoken-san describe is a process not an end. There is no "getting it" ..there is no "ok now I understand" because it is a process, a never ending process of returning to silence and then saying or doing something and leaving the silence only to return and leave again. This is what Dogen means when he says "practice is enlightenment". Enlightenment is not something we get it is something we do. We engage in this process and enlightenment is made manifest in the world. So do not get stuck on the first teaching as the end. There is no need to overly think "being in the moment". Just do it. Then do what comes next, then do it again. What ever understanding is needed will follow from the practice itself..there is no need for prior understanding. In fact, prior understanding just gets in the way. If you have to understand the instruction and all its implications before you return to silence, then you just might never get around to doing it....the arrow you have been shot with may never be removed...and your understanding of suffering will always be tainted with the pain from the arrow that never gets removed. Your life is short ...please do not waste time. The danger of Zen books is just this. That we can take a single pretty sounding attractive phrase and roll it around in our minds like a miser rolling his latest coins through his fingers..and miss all that gold can buy by trying to make it and end in itself. The reason one finds a master is so that master can give us the appropriate instruction based on our own place in the world in this moment...and then continue the instruction based on our own needs....the needs he becomes aware of as he returns to silence. We can spend a lot of time digging up dead words from dead masters from dead lectures given to dead students who may or may not have touched upon our own needs, or we can take the short way...and get those words alive in our time and in our life and quit wasting time turning over dead word like a miser turns over the potential of what his gold can buy. We will never spend our gold unless we do the practice as intended. We will never understand suffering until we put the practice into practice and then we really have no need to over intellectualize about suffering. I do not often think about the state of my suffering..it just never seems important enough any longer to waste time thinking about it. Here is a question for you all "when does suffering become suffering?"....(hint: when does an emergency become an emergency?...when someone declares it an emergency..before that it is just life happening) Be Well Fudo ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/WwRTUD/SOnJAA/i1hLAA/S27xlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Noble Eightfold Path: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration, Right Livelihood Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZenForum/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
