MZC HERE-NOW

Final Attainment in First Aspiration

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Rosan Daido

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):
1. The field producing merits with perfect humbleness by covering the mundane shame parts.
2. Attaining the ultimate with a heart firm heart in the Way, preventing chill, heat, poisonous insects.
3. Making one rightly cultivate by eliminating the five wrong views.
4. Producing the luck of the Brahma king by regarding and revering the robe as the treasure banner.
5. The Buddha’s children wearing it and imagining as towers acquire a human-celestial status by producing luck and eliminating sins.
6. 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.
7. The best thing to benefit and comfort all beings.
8. Its miraculous power is wondrous, planting the practice of prognosis.
9. The growth from the germination of the Way is like spring seedlings, and the exquisite fruit of prognosis is like the autumn harvest.
10. 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.

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Sitting Stills Karma, Sees Dharma, Saves All

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

We have a sunny Saturday morning with cool, crisp air, especially after our sittings. We also have, however, our dark world with hot, heated heads. A sphinx asked travelers the riddle of a creature having one voice, becoming two-footed, three-footed, and four-footed. Plato characterized humans as featherless bipeds. Animals, “moving staff (動物)” in the Sino-Japanese character, seeking food, became selfish.

Humans with handy hands and heavy heads have developed tools and languages, weapons and wars against others, and are now threatening to destroy the whole world with nuclear weapons, global warming, mass extinction, etc. Movements of the body and memories of them motivate the sense of a self separated from surroundings. Humans have idola, idols, of self, society, status, species, and symbolism.

The Buddha characterized all living beings as karma-machines and foresaw the destruction of the world by selfish strife and suffering. He lived and let others live by sitting still, stilling karma, seeing Dharma, serving, and saving all. Joshu’s cypress tree tells of our becoming truth and peace, like trees. Hyakujo’s sitting alone (altogether) at the Great Courageous’ Peak illustrates our becoming unmoved, like mountains.

The Buddha was awakened seeing the morning star, which represents all stars – the sun, the moon, the earth, mountains, rivers, and all under them – the whole world. When we settle in serene sitting, separating senses subside, submerged in limitless life like the ocean, unlike bubbling – as if seated in the lotus flower, which embraces fruits already, where we appreciate and use our treasure house which opens by itself.

9/2/17

Note:

Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum, New Organon (for new knowledge), listed four idola, idols, of den, market, theatre, and tribe, to which I added symbolism (as elaborated by Ernst Cassirer’s symbolic man, cf. An Essay on Man, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Myth of the State, etc.).
The sphinx asked all passersby the riddle: “Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?” She strangled and devoured anyone who could not answer. Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age.
When Plato gave Socrates’ definition of man as “featherless bipedes,” Diogenes plucked a chiken and brought it into Plato’s Academy, saying, “Behold! I brought you a man.” After this, Plato added “with broad nails” to the definition.
The Great Courageous (Mahā-vīra, 大勇) means the Buddha.
The last sentence of the Fukanzazengi, Universal Recommendation for the Right Zazen, by Dogen reads “The treasure house opens by itself, and you will appreciate and use it at will.”

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Practice Perfects

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

We have now many morning glories blooming at the front hedge, with a white one again. The many white morning glories I talked about one week ago – I found these are day glories, blooming late with smaller flowers and a different leaf shape. When I was a small child, my mother and I used to count buds to see how many flowers would bloom the next morning. Morning glories bloom only in early morning – that’s why they are so called. Morning glories and hibiscus bloom only in the morning or only for one day, but the plants continue to bloom for many days or all year round (in tropical zone).

Our practice is like this – we renew it each day and moment so that it continues to bloom. Have you read Hashimoto Roshi’s Fukanzazengi-no Hanashi, Talk on the Universal Recommendation for the Right Zazen? He mentioned there that we must keep our aspiration each time on everything – how to arrange our legs, put our hands together, breathe – exhalation and inhalation – with full aspiration or initial mind to achieve the Awakened Way. We recited the Four Universal Vows this morning to save all, to sever all defilements, to learn all dharmas, and to achieve unsurpassed awakening.

This is not megalomania. Dogen said, “If it is not all, it is not the Awakened Way” and “To learn the Awakened Way is to learn the self, to learn the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be verified by all dharmas, …” If we pursue the self, we owe to our parents, ancestors, their families and friends, animals, plants, air, water, the earth, the Sun, etc. – the whole universe. Our life is more like the ocean than a bubble. Saving all is serving all – severing all karmas, seeing all dharmas, sustaining free full function in nirvana and awakening – perfecting prognosis, etc.

You have sustained your initial aspiration and are perfecting prognosis, etc. in peace. That’s why you are here to participate in sesshin. The Mahayana Six Perfections (Pāramitā) are the perfections of giving, morality, fortitude, striving, concentration, and prognosis. Zazen, shikantaza, Samadhi sitting, embrace these virtues and merits in unconditioned peace (nirvana). True and tree came from the same root, enduring. Plants share these virtues and merits, entailing and enduring the universe. Please enjoy morning glories giving us truth, beauty, goodness, holiness – harmony, health, and happiness with all!

8/27/17

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Paradigm Shift

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

A few days ago I found a white morning glory on our hedge, which I’ve never seen. This morning I found abundant white glories on a stony slope on the way to here. We have day glories and night glories, whitish with a small flower variety, which are usually invasive and treated as weeds. Anyway these are all varieties of the same species. Modern genomic sciences have revealed that all living beings share the same genomic patterns with shared DNA, not only among animals, but also plants. Plants produced oxygen and changed the atmosphere for living beings that live on oxygen, sharing the one life system.

We now have a big turmoil over the white supremacists – racial supremacy. We are having the Islamic State – religious supremacy. We are facing nuclear crises – bombs and power plants – national supremacy. Supremacists are ignorant of the interconnected, interdependent, inseparable lives and life system – no supremacy, racial, religious, regional, or whatever. We must change sinful (= separating) self-view to holy (= wholly wholesome) world-view to make all harmonious, healthy, and happy. All systems are in the law of interdependent origination without self-same, self-sovereign, self-substance.

Human history shows the man-made pyramidal system of nationalism, racism, and religionism, causing discrimination, exploitation, and destruction. At the time of globalization, democratization, and an information revolution, we must have a paradigm shift from this artificial unidirectional pyramidal system to a natural cyclical Indra-net system, from sin to holiness, ego to eco, civilization (= urbanization for power/matter with 5 calamities) to culture (cultivation for life/heart with 5 bliss), tribalism to universalism, national system/ethic to global system/ethic, war to peace, etc.

A legend says that Gotama Siddhatta was predicted to become either a universal king or the Awakened One. He became the Awakened One, Buddha. He saw the suffering of living beings and foresaw the destruction of the world, and he strived for the solution and salvation, providing a way for us to become awakened in nirvana (= no wind, of karma), living with all to save all. He said, “Better than conquering thousands upon thousands in the battle field is conquering oneself. This is the true conqueror.” Conquering oneself is conquering sinful, selfish sickness and suffering through awakening in nirvana.

8/19/17

Note: The fivefold calamity of civilization for power/matter is delusion, bondage, discrimination, exploitation, and extermination.

The fivefold bliss of culture for life/heart is awakening, freedom, equality, love, and peace.

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Wholly Wholesome Way World

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

We have fresh fall, clear, crisp air. We have now a clear crisp world after sittings. We have hibiscus flowers at the altar and around our garden. They all started from a small hibiscus bush behind this house that is now making hedges, seeding everywhere. Hibiscus is called Buddha heart, Bodhisattva flower, After-life, as the center of the flower looks like the standing figure of the Buddha. It is offered to him, planted at the grave, and used in Tea Way, wreaths, tea, food, paper, and medicine. Flowers last only one day, but successively all year round. It is the state flower of Haiti, Malaysia, Korea, Hawaii, Okinawa, etc. Flowers make anyone smile anywhere, any time, not only Mahakashapa.

Please transplant it in your garden. You will enjoy your cultivation and verification of it as well as your sitting going along. You can find the truth of life in it. I found a grape vine bearing a hundred and fifty grape clusters. I found all the pears and apples carried away, perhaps by squirrels. It takes time to appreciate flowers and harvest fruits, and sometimes they’re lost before we have the chance to. Sitting and stilling karma to see dharma is instant and never lost. Anyone anywhere, at any time, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, etc., can witness it, beneficial and beautiful for all beyond time and space. This is more and more necessary as human civilization is in a critical condition, approaching annihilation.

Nuclear holocaust and winter is the most imminent, destructive, immoral, inhumane, anti-life, un-ecological crime against the wholly wholesome world and way of life. North Korea and the U.S. are now threatening each other for possible nuclear war by or beyond their intentions. The nuclear weapons ban treaty was signed by 122 countries at the U.N. on 7/7/17. Nuke holding countries and those under its umbrella did not join (except the Netherlands, whose people pushed it). National, industrial, individual egos allow the use of nukes, but the egoless, universal prognosis (perspective/practice) does not allow it. It is clear that we must go beyond a small selfish stance for peace and truth.

Living beings evolved to adapt the life system and advance their advantages. Humans have developed languages and tools, sciences and technologies, to maximize their profits to cause nuclear disasters, climate change, mass extinction, etc. If this trend continues, we can’t continue. The sole solution lies in the clear cognition of its cause, karma, and concrete conduct of its cure, nirvana/awakening. Me-ism, materialism, militarism, money-ism (money:金: pyramid:金字塔); nation-ego, neo-liberalism, nuke-economy, etc., came from the triple poisons of delusion (ego), desire, and divisiveness (from karma), and must change to an egoless life-based heart network (net:網: Indri-net: 帝釈網).

13/8/17

Note:

Bussoge (Buddha-heart as above translated) is interpreted by its writing in Sino-Japanese (仏操華), due to other references to Bodhisattva, After-life, eternal life in incessant change, grave, etc. (as opposed to the usual way, 仏桑華, interpreted as a small berry-like leaf), seems to derive from fuso (扶桑, a legendary land of happiness, where gigantic trees called by this name thrive and are often identified with Japan, are not related to hibiscus).
The Sino-Japanese letter Saku (咲:xiao in Chinese) originally meant to smile/laugh (presently:笑:xiao in Chinese:warau in Japanese), but now it is used mainly for blooming.

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Come Continue Cure-all, Care-all!

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

We have a beautiful Sunday morning with cool crisp air in sitting. We are almost starting autumn with abundant flowers and fruits. We have beautiful flowers here. The first Zen koan of the Shoyoroku is the Buddha holding up a flower and Mahakashapa smiling. This was the transmission of Zen and the Awakened Way. Flowers are beautiful, truthful, and peaceful, shared by all, except those who are in busy-ness, making money for matter and power. Money buys power and vice versa. Powers are now privatizing social and environmental resources, causing climate change, mass extinction – then nuclear winter?

The catastrophic crises caused by a pyramidal power civilization (matter/power) are due to the artificial animal (especially human) karma, fundamentally delusion (egoism), desire, and divisiveness, causing all human problems and sufferings. Flowers are part of the natural plant karma, basically truthful as trees (etymologically cognate with true), creating abundant fauna and flora. The Buddha showed us how to become like flowers and trees (cf. the cypress tree koan) by sitting still and stilling karma in nirvana and awakening – cure-all and care-all, a true panacea of all karma sickness and suffering.

Dogen said, “To learn the Awakened Way is to learn the self. To learn the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all dharmas. To be verified by all dharmas is to drop off the body and mind of the self and the bodies and minds of others. There is cessation and extinction of the trace of awakening. Traceless awakening is furthered on and on.” Selfishness is cured and taken care of by dharmas (forms/norms) through cultivation of bodies and minds into culture (heart/life) with the universal truth. Selfless striving is the Awakened Way for free and full flowering and fruiting in it.

Anyone who seeks to solve one’s problems and sufferings eventually comes to the Awakened Way and settles into nirvana and awakening, living buddha’s (the awakened) life – the original face (nature/home) and the last resort. So Dogen’s Universal Recommendation for the Right Zazen says, “Practice in such a way constantly and you will never fail to realize suchness. The treasure house will open by itself, and you will appreciate and use it at will.” So, please continue your practice living a good day every day. Only practice makes perfect. Dripping water penetrates rocks or turns into an ocean.

8/5/17

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Source of Limitless Life, Light, Liberation, and Love

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

Today is Mother’s Day, when we appreciate mothers’ grace. It’s said that a mother’s grace is deeper than the ocean; a father’s grace is higher than the mountain. Mothers bear, foster, and even sacrifice their lives for their babies. Haeckel’s biogenetical law is a symbolic expression of the billions of year evolutionary history of life in us through genetics.

Development is division, thus evolution is devolution with separation and specialization. Self sense for self-survival is the outcome of karmic sin (=separation), causing stress, sickness, and suffering, not only for oneself, but for all – global warming, mass extinction, and even nuclear holocaust at any moment by mishaps, miscalculation, and even one man’s madness.

Sitting still, stilling karma, seeing dharma, serving and saving all is the way to save us from the destruction of the world as the Buddha, Awakened One, advised us all. This frees us from small self, seeing holy (wholly wholesome) truth, peace, goodness, and beauty. Dogen said that if not with all, it is not the Awakened Way, where great, mature, and joyful hearts live.

Tathagata Garbha, (Womb/Source of Thus-being, Buddha) is in nirvana (no wind of karma), where anyone can become awakened to the Dharma (Norm of form, Law of phenomena) of Dependent Co-origination, i.e, all are interdependently originated (thus no separate, same, sovereign self) – limitless life, light, liberation, and love of mother of life, earth, and cosmos.

5/14/17

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Triple Treasures

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

After successive rainy days with flooding, we have now a clear sunny Sunday sky. After successive sitting, we have now a clear calm world. We have the Triple Treasure, true treasure, anyone can enjoy any place at any time: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, true trinity, anyone should accomplish.

The Awakened One sees the Dharma, serve and settle in Sangha. Sangha is where one attains awakening and activate it. Pratyeka (Individualistic) Buddha misses this and misunderstands the Triple Treasure. Samyak-sambuddha (Right Complete Buddha) Sangha, Society at large.

The Buddha Gotama was always with the world to save it from disease and destruction. We live in the world of imminent nuclear holocaust at one man’s pushing a button or any mishaps. If it happens, neither Buddha nor Dharma would avail and available. Mass extinction, etc. will do the same.

Let’s work together, come together, communicate, contemplate, and construct our Sangha here, clean, cultivate, confer flowers, cook, contribute, cater food among members, friends, and neighbors, opening house and heart for ideas; “Three persons gathered make the wisdom of Manjushri.”

5/7/17

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Practice Makes Perfect

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Rosan Daido

Good morning!

Dogen said, “Even though this Dharma is abundantly endowed, it never develops without cultivation, it can never be attained without verification.” His Recommendation for the Right Zazen recommends that all cultivate and attain this Dharma, Buddha Dharma, Buddha nature. It is perfectly penetrating, free, pure, and here and now.

“If, however, there is even the slightest discrepancy, you become separated as far apart as heaven and earth.” Karma creates a discrepancy from the Dharma of nirvana and awakening. Zazen is stilling karma, seeing the Dharma, serving and saving all in freedom, purity, here and now. It is attained here and now, not anywhere else, any time else.

Freedom from karma frees all problems and sufferings produced by karma and allows anyone attain nirvana and awakening. The right form of Zazen allows anyone to become the true dragon, awakened one. Awakening in nirvana is the wish-fulfilling gem, enabling the treasure house, opened in its nature, to be appreciated and used at will.

In Zazen cultivation is verification, free function is full function, stilling karma is seeing the Dharma, the triple world is the treasure house in peace, purity, and prognosis. Only this practice here and now makes this possible. May all acknowledge the universal recommendation and attain unconditioned peace and unsurpassed awakening!

3/12/17

The following photos were taken and kindly sent by Mr. Noriyuki Otsuka,

Shimoda, Japan