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Current mood:  depressed
Okay... so I've been shocked and saddened at my reactions to situations lately; as well as angered by the lack of taking actions of which I'm perfectly capable. I'm not going to complain about it...just cut to the chase...
The purpose of zazen is to find great satisfaction in every moment, down to the smallest detail of your everyday life.
Simply to be able to abide peacefully in the law of cause and effect can be said to be the end result of zazen. To serenely accept and live with your condition right now as the result of cause and effect means that the need for any kind of apology or excuse on your part disappears. Most people live their lives constantly apologizing or making excuses for the state in which they find themselves. This is because the ego-self is perceived to exist in opposition to the law of cause and effect. Not to make excuses means, for example, that if you feel anxious you don't seek for peace of mind. By becoming anxiety itself, as-it-is, all things are resolved. If we had to find satisfaction in opposition to a condition of dissatisfaction, we couldn't say that it is as-it-is. Satisfaction created in this way will give rise to the next dissatisfaction.
At this point I would like to touch on the subject of believing and not believing, a matter that often creates confusion. I am not referring to the simple faith or belief in Buddha or God by which people come to complacently accept their dissatisfaction, or by which people rationalize their condition in terms of cause and effect. This type of believing is of no use to us in our Zen life and practice.
Things that we can see and hear do not exist because we believe they do. And regardless of whether we believe in things or not, satisfaction does exist. It exists apart from a person's thought. That which exists separately from the thought of the ego-self and with which there is no room for interference on the part of the ego-self is called "the Dharma."
Belief and non-belief are also like this. If something is truly believed in, the object of belief disappears. True belief must go so far that the object of that belief must be discarded, must be released. This also applies to liberation. If something has been truly liberated, then actually there is no object that has been liberated. Neither should there be a distinction between those who are liberated and those who are not, nor between before and after liberation.
In essence, the Buddhist teaching, the object of Zen practice, is that you liberate yourself. It isn't as if we come to Buddha with blind faith and are saved by some efficacious means. Zazen is the practice of liberating yourself. It is nothing other than awakening to the true Self. Since you don't know the true Self, for some reason or another you find something lacking in a part of your daily life. There is some dissatisfaction. When life is the life of the true Self, all dissatisfaction, anxiety, confusion, and irritation disappear.
--Sekkei Harada Roshi
May all beings know peace.
 | Currently listening:
Whirlpool
By Chapterhouse
Release date: 2006-05-01 |
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9:37 AM
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