Good evening!
With the change in time we still have a rather bright evening and see the sunset, the beautiful amaryllis, and many flowers.
As we heard the beautiful bell sound rising and falling, appearing and disappearing, I saw a big beautiful mum flower falling on the altar.
Ryokan made this poem:
See and know it:
What is permanent?
Sooner or later,
Flowers fall.
Because of the truth of dependent origination, we see beautiful flowers blooming fully, and also graceful flowers falling, never returning.
This dependent origination is our world with its myriad things. Our evolution process is exactly this, and it depends on karma (action, action result).
We have become partialized, particularized, and personified. Thus, we have distress, dissatisfaction, diseases, disasters, and deaths.
Of course we have natural disasters, but they are multiplied by our human disasters, artificial constructs, even nuclear power plants.
If we want to stop this process and go back to the original purity and unity, we must stop our karma, sit down and stop all the processes of partialization.
Then, we can see the wholesome whole in wholly wholesome truth, goodness, beauty, peace, and harmony. Zazen does this in total purity and unity.
In sharing, our joy becomes limitless and sorrows become nil. This zazen is unconditioning partialization and settling in unconditioned holiness.
Thus, we can see all sides of phenomena. We can see the two truths of conventional and ultimate. We settle in the ultimate truth, and deal with the conventional truth.
3/15/11