Good evening!
We now have a very quiet, calm evening especially, with our sitting in zazen, stilling karma.
The Buddha way, the awakened way, is to attain unconditioned peace (nirvana) and unsurpassed awakening (anuttara smbodhi).
Usually we are driven by karma, driven into limited, small selves and small spheres, involved in appropriation (my body as property) and vicissitude (becoming something).
So, essentially, we need to sit, stop, and see our karma to be freed from this process of becoming (bhava). That is to control karma, cultivate (bhavana, cause to become).
Only when we stop our karmas can we witness the unlimited, universal truth, goodness, beauty, and holiness (wholesome whole), with our body-mind-world in harmony in ultimate truth, peace, and freedom.
We are going to read Dogen’s Gyoji. Gyo (行) means going straight forward, actually driven by karma. Ji (持) means holding – we hold habituated actions and put body, mind, breathing, and the world in order, into universal truth, goodness, beauty.
Gyo is usually used to express sankhara (physical, verbal, mental actions: karmas). This must be changed into different directions (the Four Applications). Then, we can cultivate our ordinary minds into harmony, holiness, happiness – good always and for all.
So, we just hold this practice in aspiration, cultivation, awakening, and unconditioned peace, and further the renewed aspiration, etc. – the (awakened) way cycle of praxis, cultivation.
This praxis is different from the ordinary practice of doctors, players, et al., of doing, but non-doing. It is going back to the origin, before human karmas (actions and action results, habits). It allows one to go with the original, ultimate, free, full function with all.
5/26/11
