Good morning!
We have now many morning glories blooming at the front hedge, with a white one again. The many white morning glories I talked about one week ago – I found these are day glories, blooming late with smaller flowers and a different leaf shape. When I was a small child, my mother and I used to count buds to see how many flowers would bloom the next morning. Morning glories bloom only in early morning – that’s why they are so called. Morning glories and hibiscus bloom only in the morning or only for one day, but the plants continue to bloom for many days or all year round (in tropical zone).
Our practice is like this – we renew it each day and moment so that it continues to bloom. Have you read Hashimoto Roshi’s Fukanzazengi-no Hanashi, Talk on the Universal Recommendation for the Right Zazen? He mentioned there that we must keep our aspiration each time on everything – how to arrange our legs, put our hands together, breathe – exhalation and inhalation – with full aspiration or initial mind to achieve the Awakened Way. We recited the Four Universal Vows this morning to save all, to sever all defilements, to learn all dharmas, and to achieve unsurpassed awakening.
This is not megalomania. Dogen said, “If it is not all, it is not the Awakened Way” and “To learn the Awakened Way is to learn the self, to learn the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be verified by all dharmas, …” If we pursue the self, we owe to our parents, ancestors, their families and friends, animals, plants, air, water, the earth, the Sun, etc. – the whole universe. Our life is more like the ocean than a bubble. Saving all is serving all – severing all karmas, seeing all dharmas, sustaining free full function in nirvana and awakening – perfecting prognosis, etc.
You have sustained your initial aspiration and are perfecting prognosis, etc. in peace. That’s why you are here to participate in sesshin. The Mahayana Six Perfections (Pāramitā) are the perfections of giving, morality, fortitude, striving, concentration, and prognosis. Zazen, shikantaza, Samadhi sitting, embrace these virtues and merits in unconditioned peace (nirvana). True and tree came from the same root, enduring. Plants share these virtues and merits, entailing and enduring the universe. Please enjoy morning glories giving us truth, beauty, goodness, holiness – harmony, health, and happiness with all!
8/27/17
