Category Archives: Holy: wholly wholesome: undefiled (vs. sinful: separated: selfish

Hiking Low Austria/Greetings for Rohatsu Sesshin

Dear all, For three days, I had been hiking in Lower Austria with my sisters. The place we hiked was less than 2 hours northwest of Vienna. I was in total awe of the beauty I found – realising, that … Continue reading

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Holy Health, Harmony, Happiness: 聖なる健康・調和・幸福

  Good morning!   We have beautiful flowers at the altar and all around us, inside and out. The first koan is “holding up a flower, smiling at it.” The Buddha held up a flower and Mahakashapa smiled at it. … Continue reading

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Karma Sin or Dharma Holiness: 罪業か聖法か

  Good morning!   Yesterday I experienced two completely opposite experiences. One was while I was on the way here: I saw a driver in the next lane decelerating in front of a red signal, who then just ran away. … Continue reading

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Holy Harmony, Health, and Happiness

  Good morning,   We have a serene sunny Sunday in sesshin. Sesshin (接心、摂心) is embracing and touching the heart/mind – the Buddha heart/mind in wholly wholesome harmony and happiness. Yesterday I watched an NHK special program titled “You, too, … Continue reading

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From Sinful Suffering to Holy Happiness

      Good morning!   We have very good weather with crisp, clear, cool air breezes like autumn today. We have especially holy harmony and happiness after sittings and service. I watched the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Special, “1945-1946, … Continue reading

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From Separated Sick Suffering to Holy Healthy Harmony

  Good morning!   We have a peaceful Sunday morning after sitting and service. On the front path a huge branch, about 50 feet long, has fallen. It is hollow and fell perhaps overreaching or by some sort of storm. … Continue reading

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Attaining Awakening and Avoiding Annihilation

    Good morning!   After sittings and service we are in the quiet, calm, and clear world. This is the time, with events all over the world, that we reflect on the end of WWII with the first A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nukes present the most imminent possibility of global holocaust, with about two thousand war-heads at hair-trigger alert aimed at cities and centers in the US, Russia, and other countries totaling 16,000 bombs. The inevitable global catastrophe includes global warming and mass extinction, if we continue business as usual.   The Buddha foresaw the end of the world due to the Triple Poisons of desire, divisive- ness, and delusion derived from human karmas, and he provided us with the solution for it. This sitting is the exactly the way to still karmas, see the Dharma (Norm/Law) of all dharmas (forms/phenomena), serve all, and save all beings. Dogen said that awakening is not attained with the mind, but with the body. Enlightenment is not ideas or intellectual understanding, but witnessing nirvana, cessation of the karma wind where awakening dawns.   As I mentioned the other day, an NHK special program had featured how animals developed eyes, borrowing plant sensor genes. Another one showed how mammals shifted from egg laying to fetus carrying and baby nursing, which promoted the mother-baby bond . The third, on the mammalian revolution, discussed the evolution of intellect through brain enlargement, sense integration, and especially communica- tion through language development. It is possible that these attributes distinguished homo sapiens from the Neanderthal.   Sight, heart, and mind, however, can be misused by the Triple Poisons, especially by the delusion of the separate Self. The far-sight by eye-sight in standing and sense- extension with tools is unique, but we must have a true insight into karmas with prognosis. The heart-mind must meet this and master holiness (wholesome whole). The head, heart, hara (guts), body, bacteria, bio-spheres, etc. must meet the holy Dharma world, the body stilled and settled in nirvana, seeing from the supra- mundane, karma-less truth, saving all.   8/9/15   Note: The secretion of liquid to prevent laid eggs from bacteria with milk-like … Continue reading

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Acquiring Awakened Eye

    Good morning!   We can enjoy the beautiful spring Sunday scene with lush green leaves and clear blue sky in the shiny sunlight, especially after sittings and service. We may not be able to enjoy it, if we are blind, asleep, and astray. Last night I watched the NHK Special “Great Life Leap – Camera Eye Emergence.”   The rhodopsin gene producing a light sensing protein, developed in plants (as found in Dinophyceae) and acquired by animals (as in jellyfish), was quadrupled five hundred million years ago, as in the case of chloroplasts for photosynthesis by plants being acquired by animals (as in Elysia chlorotica).   Animals must usually feed on plants or other animals, thus becoming predatory. Mankind, with gene multiplication and mutation, has become supreme in karmas with the triple poisons of desire, division, and delusion, endangering the global life system with mass extinction, etc.   Mankind must acquire the third eye of prognosis – unsurpassed awakening in unconditioned peace (nirvana) by sitting, stilling karmas, softening the stiffness of our bodies and minds – freedom from and of them in holy (wholly wholesome) harmony and happiness to enjoy holy truth, goodness, beauty.   6/7/15                               … Continue reading

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Unlimited Views: Unlimited Values

    Good morning!   We can still see the bright round moon high in the clear, cool, wintry sky. We had a clear calm world to drive through. Sitting like great old sequoias, we have the serene, still, single world.   Heavy snow falling and piling makes even going out difficult, and it’s much more difficult and dangerous driving through a snow storm with the windshield not well wiped by frozen wipers.   Limited views and values make all limited. The Four Perverted Views of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity are against impermanence, suffering, no-self, and impurity in Dependent Origination Dharma and karma.   Unlimited views are limitless values with holy truth, beauty, and goodness. This can make us shift the paradigm from ego (bubble) to eco (ocean), Dharma-dhātu, saving the world from destruction and demise.   1/19/14     Note:   1. Perverted Views or Inverted Views (vi-pari-ita, means un-pervaded, dis-integrated, prefix vi: separation, prefix pari: perfection or perimeter, ita: gone or reached, thus pari-ita: surrounded, pervaded, integrated, integral) are listed as Two (sentients and environment), Three (minds, views, and ideas), and Four (as above), seeing them not right or holy (wholly wholesome in wider perspective), but inverted or perverted.     2. Cp. The Four Dharma Marks of impermanence, suffering, no-self, and nirvana (in place of “impurity” in the above list coming from karma, to be replace by Dharma through cultivation in the Awakened Way).     … Continue reading

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Holy Harmony, Health, Happiness

Good morning!   We have another beautiful autumn Sunday morning with crisp clear air and a beautiful blue sky. We could still see the clear calm full moon last night. Our worlds inside are also in holy harmony, health, and happiness. We witness primordial purity, peace, and prognosis after sittings and service.   Yesterday we had the Buddhist Council Mindfulness Day with movie and discussion. The movie was “How to Cook Your Life” based on Dogen’s Tenzo Kyōkun, Lesson to  Chief Cook, to cook and cultivate not only in eating and drinking, but also living through life with the Triple Heart/Minds of Great, Mature, and Joyful Heart/Minds.   During the discussion we talked about life’s meaning and management, life cooking and course, the kinds and kinetics of karma, disaster demise and decrease, heart/mind harmony and management, care and cure cooking and changing, etc. in the Dharma of Dependent Origination and the Karma of Creation and Control.   Life is not limited to individual skin sacks, but limitlessly interconnected and integrated with all throughout space and time –not to limited bursting bubbles, but limitless seamless sea with world-body-mind, intellect-emotion-volition-truth- … Continue reading

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