Good morning!
We can now enjoy a cool cloudy quiet Sunday morning after sittings and service.
We will have more rain coming. We have been having a lot of rain creating lush green
around us and overgrown plants and overladen fruit trees. A few days ago, I took my
ladder to pick extra fruit so that selected fruits would grow greater, and to save trees
from not bearing next year. I found a peach tree broken at its trunk with overborne
fruit and a grape vine spreading some 10 feet square drying its fruit. Micro
management is essential for macro management. This is why overstretched empires
collapse with mistaken micro management at remote local levels with wrong
perspective, priority, prognosis, peace, etc.
I shared my paper on Zen and Science with our members through the mzcmitra
listserv several days ago. I mentioned “One Color Buddha Dharma” (Isshiki-no
Buppō: Total or Holy Buddha Dharma) by Dogen. It means that Buddha Dharma
penetrates through all activities – “raising a hand and taking a step” (ikkyoshu
ittōsoku), sitting, standing, going, and lying down, here and now, all 24 hours,
throughout one’s life. Sitting is settling into the Dharma world like a missed or
misplaced jigsaw puzzle piece settled into the proper place or a bubble returning to
the ocean. We can see dharmas (bones, muscles, bodies, brains, breathings,
behaviors, backgrounds, etc.), serve, and save them.
In this way we can shift our secular karmic behaviors (lokiya vohāra, lokya
vyavahāra) to holy Dharmic ones (ariya vohāra, ārya vyavahāra). The Buddha
recommended that we strive in the Fourfold Exertions of decreasing and stopping
all existing bad karmas, increasing all existing good karmas, and starting new good
karmas. We find how every thing and action is interrelated with other ones more and
more – every mickle makes mackle. If we continue the cultivation of sitting, seeing,
serving, and saving, we come to the verification of holy, harmonious, healthy, and
happy life more and more. The cultivation of stilling karmas is itself the verification
of seeing dharmas. Only practice makes perfect.
7/18/15
