Peregrine Moon

Encountering Dogen again

I felt very low last night. I retired early to my bedroom where I picked up a volume of Dogen's writings that Thomas Cleary translated.

Dogen was the Japanese monk who brought Chan Buddhism from China; in Japan it's known as Zen Buddhism. He had one of the most philosophically profound minds in Buddhist history and his writings are pellucid examples of Buddhist thought. When I first started sitting zazen twenty years ago I happened on a text Dogen wrote for a lay student in 1233. It's called Genjokoan (The Issue at Hand), and it's part of Dogen's masterwork Shobogenzo (Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching). I revisit this essay when I need my thinking realigned. Last night was another powerful encounter with a most profound teacher.

I finally unpacked a phrase in the essay that had been a sticking point for me:

There is ceasing the traces of enlightenment, which causes one to forever leave the traces of enlightenment which is cessation.

I reflected on this after having heard Huber's discussion on the renunciate life. Dogen puts his finger on the pulse right here. Cessation - renunciation - is the cause of the first traces of enlightenment. As Dogen says, Studying the Buddha Way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself.  I doubt if anyone can make progress on any mystical path without the discipline of cessation. But there is yet more to realize. Cessation - renunciation of the world - is not enough; it cannot be the end of the path. Dogen says that there is ceasing the traces of enlightenment - the focus on cessation - as one steps away from it forever. But what is this realization?

Dogen opens Genjokoan with a masterful analysis of Buddhism. Cleary's introductory essay points out that Dogen introduces Genjokoan with one of the standard presentations of Chan Buddhist thought, the "five ranks" device. The very core is that there is complete interpenetration of the absolute and the relative. There is nothing to seek because all is revealed at once, in each instant. Contrast this opening statement:

When all things are Buddha-teachings, then there is delusion and enlightenment, there is cultivation of practice, there is birth, there is death, there are Buddhas, there are sentient beings.

with the second:

When myriad things are all not self, there is no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no birth, no death.

The first statement unfolds the various relative aspects of reality within the totality of the absolute. All things, both all delusions and all enlightenment, are contained within the absolute: when all things are Buddha-teachings. The second statement reveals the surprising converse: that within each of the myriad things rests the absolute. So realization is that all phases and fragments of the world unfold within the singular nature of the absolute, and simultaneously the complete absolute nature of reality rests in each evanescent thing whose existence depends on a myriad of other factors. Relative in absolute, absolute in relative.

Here, to my untutored mind, is the underlying unity between Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. Both state that true realization occurs simultaneously in the absolute and the relative viewpoints. Neither is true by itself. Only in the equipoise between this vast polarity can realization truly manifest.

 

How is a Zen Buddhist monk like a futurist?

John and I had a wonderful talk on our way to and from the Co-op in Coralville this morning. I plugged in my iPod and we caught a talk by my old Zen teacher Cheri Huber at What Is Enlightenment? John goes for the jugular when listening to talks by spiritual folks (I tend to as well). Huber gave a great introduction to what is significant about renunciation. It's not about giving up something, per se. It's about learning where we're stuck and giving up that stuck place.

When she got to the part about her monks, John said to me that listening to her is a lot like hearing his Marxist philosophy professor many years ago at Iowa State. This guy was self-observant enough to say that being Marxist is easiest when you're curled up in your middle-class home drinking nice Scotch. It's easy to pretend you're detached from things as a monk - but it's a contrived environment that's completely simulated. Far from being 'real' in some fundamental way, it's an invented space where people get to play.

I even think Huber might agree with that. Being in a monastic environment is beneficial only in that one gets to experience the world in a radically different way. The reason I fell out with her as a student over twenty years ago was whether the behavioral precepts that she taught - and that the sangha which hung on her every word obeyed - were true in some absolute sense or not. Of course they weren't, and I didn't understand why she didn't say so. I suspect that hit too close to home for her to do. For me it cut too close to my own Fundamentalist Christian upbringing. I don't let any external authority determine what's true. That Huber believes that real spiritual progress can only happen in a monastic environment serves to support her own position as a leader of such a community and worldview. That's not my belief. But I still treasure the training in mindfulness meditation that I got from her and that I still practice twenty years later.

John and I followed her talk with another podcast with Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil couldn't be more different from Huber in his quest for personal immortality mediated by behavior, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. He's not renouncing anything - at least superficially. But there's a core that's the same. When questioned about what we'd do if we existed for five hundred years, he admitted that our current psychology isn't up to it. We need to change at heart to adjust to what we're evolving into.

John suggested - and I agree - that Huber and Kurzweil at heart are addressing something similar. Only someone with great self-discipline can achieve great things in mystical practice. The same thing's true about great creation. Whether we live five hundred years or five more minutes, the core's the same. We must embody what we are at core, and not behave as we imagine we ought to behave. Nietzsche said much the same thing:

Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will." "Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt." (Also sprach Zaruthustra)

A New Tarot

I've only spoken of it to a few friends before now. I'm creating a brand new Tarot deck using 3D imaging.  I'd toyed with the idea before, but the software I could afford simply wasn't up to the task. Plus I'm more photographer than digital modeler. I can't create richly detailed human figures. But I can pose them...

Everything changed where I found a website (DAZ) that sells models from various digital artists. They also provide software through which I can pose the figures, light them, and bring a scene to life. It's a bit buggy but very productive.

I've built maybe half the Major Arcana so far-plus a few images where I've tested my concepts. I'll start posting a few images along with my explanation for the symbolism I've chosen.

By the way, it's The Dimensional Tarot...

My former teacher in WIE

My former Zen teacher, Cheri Huber, is interviewed in this month's issue of What Is Enlightenment? You can also hear the full interview with her at this address.

I met Cheri in 1984 through a good friend. She had just opened a meditation hall for Soto Zen practice in Mountain View, CA. I worked with Cheri for over a year - in the days before she began to be discovered as a teacher of special skill. She always adhered to a strict Soto Zen practice, and I sense that's become even better defined with time. In Soto Zen practice there is no substitute for direct realization through meditation.

I moved on to a different meditative practice, one focused more on the Western Mystery traditions. As Jung said, I found it important to practice is a way closer to my own birth. That said, my time with Cheri opened my realization through meditation for the first time, and I take that clarity gained at that time and through the ensuing twenty years as a groundwork for all my inner work.

A Little Summer Ritual

I whizzed up a little incense for the season and celebrated yesterday evening in a meditative ritual.

Scott Cunningham's Complete Book of Incense, Oils, and Brews is my standard when I prepare incense. His mix for Lughnasadh, though, called for a couple of things I don't grow in my herb garden - Heather, for instance. His table of correspondences proved invaluable again, and I substituted two things I grow in abundance: mint and thyme. Here was my final blend:

2 parts Copal
1 part mint
1 part thyme

Grind with a mortar and pestle until the mix is finely divided.

I have two friends in need of healing work, so I set out last night on a healing meditation surrounded by the minty smoke of my incense. My usual healing meditation is inspired by the Tibetan tonglen meditation (see The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying for details). In meditative equipoise I focus on breathing in the pain or illness, transforming it inside me, and then breathing out the same energy alchemically transformed for healing. It's a meditation that always leaves me inspired.

Seasons Shift

In my meditation this morning I had the strongest sense of the Goddess changing from the ever-fecund to the Lady of Hearth and Harvest. The God shifts to become the Lord of the Wild Hunt. As I face my garden everything is vibrantly growing. But we've reached a turning point. It is the counterpoise of Imbolc, when light anticipates growth in the bleakness of February. Now the beginnings of darkess emerge, and I begin to look for Yule's silence midst summer's heat.

After morning meditation

We're almost to Lughnasadh! It seems hardly believable.

I took down the screens in the music room so I can look out onto the garden this morning. Some of the hedge roses still bloom; the rose hips are ripening quickly. I plan to make rose hips jelly in a month or two. The Echinacea are coming into a second burst of flower. My Calendula - the old marigold - are a marvelous gold - Mary's Gold. I think them more radiant than sunflowers.

I did a bit of weeding yesterday, but so much remains to do in the side yard. And that's how it should be. Weeding is like meditation - it's part of making things grow properly. It's careful, slow, plodding liberation. Everything's lighter after meditation. The garden's more focused after I weed.