Good morning!
When we sit in zazen, we can enjoy penetrating peace, purity, and freedom right here and now.
If, however, there is a radioactive leak, then the whole world becomes contaminated, confused, and condemned.
When there are the four leaks of lust (kâma), becoming (bhava), views (ditthi:drishti), and nescience (a-vijjâ: a-vidyâ: no witness), the whole world becomes defiled.
But, in the second stage of zen (jhâna: dhyâna, samâdhi: concentration), the four leaks (âsava), floods (ogha) or bondage (yoga), are ceased.
We become freed from them, purified. Already in the first stage the five coverings (lust-desire, covetousness-malevolence, sloth-drowsiness, agitation-worry, doubt) are extinct.
We become freed from our karma (conceptions, emotions, and volitions). We have nuclear disasters, pollutions, wars, mass extinction, etc., just because we are not freed.
That is why we must practice zazen, become freed, and taste the ambrosia of immortality (amrita), in unconditioned peace (nirvana) and unsurpassed awakening.
5/18/11
Note: Four Stages of Meditation
Tree Truth
Good evening!
After chilly, rainy weather, now we have a nice warm day today, so some of you might have worked in the yard.
I cut a big honey locust tree. It usually spreads a lot of saplings. If they grow in a lawn, we can just pull them out with our fingers or cut them with a mower. A sapling has grown, higher and higher, hidden in a big bonsai bush and hampered from easy removal.
Because I created a vegetable garden, I needed to cut the tree to provide it with more sun. I wanted to cut it down so that it fell into an open area, but I couldn’t. So I let it fall with its own gravity.
I remember a woodcutter leaning back against a tree to find out the direction it would fall when cut. We need to see things from their positions and perspectives.
Dogen said that we attain awakening with our bodies. So we need to have the best, balanced physical form, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward.
We must keep our postures upright as if we can walk. Please check your posture, with your heads neither drooping nor pushed up. Our heavy heads tend to gravitate, falling down in that direction.
Zazen is to sit upright, leaning no way, moved by nothing. The middle way means an unattached, neutral state. So this posture itself is the middle way, unmoved and awakened.
We sit in our best posture, balanced like old, tall, and balanced trees, for free, full function in a wholly wholesome way with the world in space and time.
5/17/11
