Good morning!
Thank you for gathering together to practice on Saturday as well as to celebrate my birthday. This is the best gift for me, for you and for all, because this practice is the best gift for all with all, perfecting unconditioned peace and unsurpassed awakening in holy (wholly wholesome) way and world. Sawaki Roshi said it is like getting on a train to reach the great destination. Sangha is the train to move on the Awakened Way track enjoying Dharma scenes. While moving, we become locomotives together to reach the destination.
September 9 is especially auspicious for the Double Sun Sekku, which also falls on the day the Sun started to shine forth in the Cosmic Calendar. Nine is the penultimate number to ten, 100%, perfection. On the way here I got another gift. I thought I could manage through a yellow traffic signal, but my karma tail was caught by the mouth trap. A policeman said, “Is everything okay?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “You crossed a red light,” but then said, “Please take care.” He let me go free. He might have given me this gift seeing my robe and shaved head, sympathizing and synthesizing with my practice.
The okesa, robe, is said to have ten superb merits. Because of 25 centuries of tradition of the Sangha, those who wear the robe have been well recognized and highly honored because of its members. Yesterday I happened to pick up a children’s picture book titled Zen Ghost, telling the koan of Seijo’s spirit separated and reunified. Our practice is like a jigsaw piece fitting into its puzzle board perfectly, not straying out like a hungry ghost, fighting devil, hell being, etc., reunifying with the Dharma world in holy harmony, health, and happiness.
I recently forwarded Hashimoto Roshi’s Fukanzazengi-no-hanashi, Talk on the Universal Recommendation for Right Zazen to our listserv. Please read it well to order your practice well. He says that awakening is in the right cultivation – how to assemble our legs and hands, arrange our backbones, etc., for our free and full functioning in breathing, etc. Our body arrangement facilitates the best breathing, the vital function of our life, which in turn fulfills our hearts and minds. Please don’t forget your initial heart, aspiration, and vow to attain the Awakened Way.
9/9/17
Note:
- The five Sekkus (節句) are distinct marks on the calendar, like joints on stalks of bamboo: January 1 (New Year’s Day), March 3 (Peach, now Girls’ Day), May 5 (Iris, now Boys’ Day), July 7 (Tanabata (七夕), Vega, the Weaver Princess, and Altair, the Cow-herder Prince meeting across the Milky Way, Heaven River (天の川), and September 9 (Mum Day, Chōyō (重陽). This last is the Double Positive or Sun, which falls on the Sun shining force that formed the solar system according to the Cosmic Calender with the Big Bang at the start of New Year’s Day and the present moment at the end of December 31st). The formation of the Milky Way falls on May Day. So far our planet Earth is the only one with water and life, going around the sun in a position appropriate for cycling seasons and system flows.
- Dharma Robe’s Ten Superb Merits (in short, actually limitless):
- The field producing merits with perfect humbleness by covering the mundane shame parts.
- Attaining the ultimate with a heart firm heart in the Way, preventing chill, heat, poisonous insects.
- Making one rightly cultivate by eliminating the five wrong views.
- Producing the luck of the Brahma king by regarding and revering the robe as the treasure banner.
- The Buddha’s children wearing it and imagining as towers acquire a human-celestial status by producing luck and eliminating sins.
- All Buddhas praising and calling the true striver in good form and great respect for it, undefiled by any mundane dust as the good field.
- The best thing to benefit and comfort all beings.
- Its miraculous power is wondrous, planting the practice of prognosis.
- The growth from the germination of the Way is like spring seedlings, and the exquisite fruit of prognosis is like the autumn harvest.
- The firm and adamant armor is not damaged by the poisonous arrows of defilements.
Dogen says that once one wears the okesa, robe, one eliminates all evils and attains unsurpassed awakening.
