Sunday 24 October 2010
First of all, for those of you who have asked for T-Shirts: I have decided to try a company called Red Bubble and to watch how it works. Yes, you can now by clicking this link T-shirts and hoodies order ! Juhu!
I've uploaded two designs which you can get as T-shirts, stickers and hoodies. If you order something I write 'ne quick email to askbradwarner@hotmail.com and let me know how it is.
FIRST QUESTION FOR TODAY:
I would like to ask you something for motivation to continue my practice of zazen.
I sit for about 5 years of almost daily zazen and I have the feeling lately that it has become very easy. Ironically, it is true that the easier it was more difficult it could find reasons to continue my practice. I mean in the beginning it was kind of cool if I had managed to sit for 20 minutes staring at the wall, but now I find it hard to have a motive to see continue. I was just wondering if you had to say something clever about this topic.
MY ANSWER:
This is one of the questions I get asked more than any other. How to get started with the Zen practice? How do I stay tuned?
It usually ends with the fact that the questioners are looking for motivation. But I wonder whether the motivation is really what we need.
The declared purpose of Dharmavortrages is usually encouragement. The presentation is designed to provide listeners with the motivation to continue with this often difficult and seemingly fruitless exercise. If these Dharma talks will often - as my do it often - phrases such as Kodo Sawaki notorious "! Zazen is good for nothing" are, then you often get the impression they would be useless. Why should we continue with something if it is good for nothing?
The only way I can answer this question is to try rauszukriegen why I use it to keep going. I guess I'm a good test case for this, because I have this pointless exercise of well and held out like twenty years and have no intention to stop it. However, I wonder of occasions why I do it, even while I there on a rolled-up towel with their faces to the wall of any hotel room in the middle of a foreign country seats, while sirens blare outside or shred prayer calls from the local mosque my eardrums, after early wake up and moving the breakfast to be able to do just that stuff.
But even as I wonder about why I do it, I'll just continue. Even knowing that it is good for nothing, I continued to sit. Am I am an idiot? Maybe. And perhaps that is exactly what it needs.
I once made zazen because I wanted to have an enlightenment experience. Plain and simple. I did not start with this motivation, but pretty soon after I started with zazen, I read Philip Kapleaus Three Pillars of Zen with his stunning descriptions of real enlightenment experience and that's what I wanted. It turned out that this is a miserable motivation because it's not just happened. And so I gave up.
was only when I stopped Zazen I discovered the only form of motivation that worked really ever. Quite simply, I felt crap when I stopped the zazen. The first few times when I stopped the exercise, I could not understand why I felt crappy Sun Then when I started again, everything was a little better. It was not a huge improvement. But it was better than if I had not made it. So I went back to practice.
I've said this more than I can count it and I am sure that in the one form or another in most of my books is. And I know that there was already a few times in this blog. But people still ask me for motivation ...
I can say a few things to help you. That is one thing, it gets better. There are moments of real insight and transcendence have. You can break through some garbage that has up until now held back. Perhaps you have even one of these so-called "enlightenment experiences".
I do not insist that these things do not happen. They do. And they have a certain value. Sure. But as I said, enlightenment is for wimps. It is not the meaning of the practice. It is not the goal.
Ultimately we need to supply all our own motivation. What motivates me might not work for you. Hopefully this will help you find your own.
QUESTION # 2:
you realize that your mind to anything definite fokussierst, you let your Aufmerktsamkeit to where it goes down, but thou mayest observe to that your posture is correct.
It is my experience that every teacher's attitude in zazen slightly different teaches. The back of the hand resting on the thighs, the hands so that the little finger resting on the abdomen just below the navel, an example.
But now comes the real question: If zazen "getting up and walking around" like Kobun Chino Otogawa claims that it does occasionally, as you make sure that the attitude is correct?
ANSWER # 2:
This will I also asked frequently. A popular variation is: How do I store the zazen mind if I do not sit on the pillow? And again I can only answer from my own experience.
I used to work in such things. When I started I had to sit part-time job as a postman. When I went to my routes so I stayed on the emotional feelings that I kept my back straight and my chest while I went and opened to the color of the sky and the sounds around me. Things like that. I read it in a book, I think. Probably no Zen book.
Nowadays I do not really. Or I'm not aware of. Maybe I've internalized it and made a habit. I do not know.
At some point, maybe after a decade or so of practice, I noticed something strange. Colors had become more intense, sounds sharper, clearer my vision somehow extended my senses somehow. It was a black gauze veil was a large [very fine mesh fabric] of my entire body wrapped away and I could now see things and learn direct. The only other time I've felt something similar when I was was on LSD.
had what can happen? I do not know. Over ten years of zazen each morning and evening as well as masses of multi-day Zen retreat certainly had something to do with it. But it was not as I would have driven me to this experience.
Nowadays I do not feel right if I drown myself in a chair or sofa leave. A few years ago I had my sofa in the living room (when I had a living room, what a luxury!) Abolished because I could not bear to sit on. I could not concentrate on anything. I replaced the sofa against a few pillows on the floor.
Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop (Shaika on Sherbrooke in Montreal's NDG district ) and I lean not to the chair because if I do that it feels too lax and unfocused. If I drive the car I ask myself the rest of the seat almost vertically, otherwise I feel like I'm only half awake.
So as you look at the preserved Zengeist while doing something else? Just as if you zazen itself do when you realize that you return drift away at the right attitude. If you find that you drift away again, do it again. After a while, this is a new habit and you will not have to think much about it.
said in his commentary on the Heart Sutra, Dogen: "There are four cases of Prajna occurring daily, walking, standing, sitting and lying down." Prajna is intuitive wisdom. So was Dogen all wisdom, everything was zazen. Whether we realize it or not is not important.
good? Good.
Now I go do something else!
Send your Questions to: askbradwarner@hotmail.com
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