Good morning!
After the rain, the soil solidifies, giving life to living things. After our sitting, we have a pure, peaceful perspective through the open windows. If the blinds are blocking our view, we can not see outside.
Today is the middle of the one week Rohatsu sesshin (臘八摂心). All over the world zen practitioners sit intently to attain unsurpassed awakening with unconditioned peace. Isn’t this the most important thing for us and for all beings?
Can you think of anyone else superior to the Buddha who attained nirvana and made it available for all. It is to attain true freedom from our karmaic samsara in the Six Ways. He said all living beings are karma-machine, karma-relative or karma-restrained.
We struggle and suffer by our karmas limiting our bodies and minds. Karmas create all kinds of problems in this world. To solve them, we must stop our karmas. We must transcend our sufferings caused by karmas.
Unless we are awakened to this truth, we waste and destroy our whole life and even others’ lives. The Buddha devoted his whole life to solve all problems in the world and gave his whole life for the freedom and saving of all beings.
What is the Buddha? He was awakened to the root cause of our problems and gave all beings the way to solve it. He showed us how to sit, stop our karmas, see, and save all beings by becoming buddhas attaining unsurpassed awakening and unconditioned peace.
His exemplary life shows us all how we can live in holy (wholly wholesome) truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, and happiness. Thus we can become friends of all and attain freedom of and for all, going beyond our karmic delusions, desires, and divisions.
Sitting halls are called “selecting buddha hall” (選仏堂: senbutu-dou). That’s why the Jataka (Buddha’s life) stories tell the long history of the Buddha striving for awakening. By strong and sustained aspiration throughout long hardship, he attained awakening.
The southern Buddhist tradition tells us that becoming buddha requires eons. This along with the Jataka stories shows not only how it is difficult to become buddhas, but also how precious it is to become buddhas even with eons of strenuous striving.
Only when we know the wonderful witnessed value of the buddhahood can we strive for it. Or else we don’t try and soon give up aspiration and striving. Even we can imagine the value, our karmas prevent us from actual action, awakening, and attesting.
So, we need to aspire and renew our effort constantly. And then we can witness and widen its true value, individually, socially, and ecologically. Shoken’s Ryûmonji (龍門寺) means dragon gate temple, where only able fish can jump up and go through to become dragons.
The Buddha was called dragon or elephant, nâga. Dogen says that zazen makes us like dragon obtaining water. There is the way to go beyond human suffering, which is good for all always. The Buddha showed how to live on joy, not on food or anything else.
It is difficult to go beyond our karmas, but it surely gives us the best, priceless, incomparable value. Why can we spend our short life for money, matter, etc., destroying our and all others’ precious lives in time and space.
Let us strive, never giving up, in this way. Dogen said that the single-minded striving is itself attaining it. We hope that we can witness this joy and share it with all through our practice. Let’s hope all can do the same, living limitless life, light, liberation, and love!
11/12/4
