It’s been a busy couple days here. Our new puppy, black lab Bodhi, requires attention reminiscent of a human baby, kids are with me almost full time during the summer, work with the schools keeps expanding, and today the galley copy of Keep Me In Your Heart for Awhile: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri arrived and Wisdom wants any changes in two weeks.
I just came in from sitting on the deck in the cooling evening with dog at my feet, kids on various forms of media, and school work waiting while I took a final look at part of what will be the book.
I’ve been working intermittently on writing a book for six years, I think. This is really my second book. The first one was so bad that I couldn’t find a publisher! And now I’m grateful that I didn’t.
Frankly, I think this is a pretty good book! If one person reads it and gets inspired to really practice Zen, it'll be a success in my view. Wisdom might have other feelings.
The story that came up in my last post that I didn’t share (and has been haunting me ever since) could have made a good introduction to a chapter for Keep Me in Your Heart. I'm not going to write a long commentary (so relax) - at least not tonight. Instead, I’ll give you the story and if anybody in the blog-o-verse would like to write a comment (or the definitive comment), please do:
Once Katagiri-roshi gave a dharma talk about the Avalokiteshvara chapter of the Lotus Sutra during which he repeated many times, like the Sutra, that if we mindfully call upon Avalokiteshvara, s/he would respond.
Here’s an excerpt with my favorite verse about judges:
Unblemished, serene radiance,
Benevolent sun, dispelling all gloom,
Avalokiteshvara can subdue the wind and fire of woes,
Clearly illuminating all the world.
The precepts of compassion roar like thunder,
The kind heart is wondrous as great clouds,
Pouring dharma rain of sweet dew, Quenching all flames of troubling passion.
In disputes before judges,
Or fearful in the midst of battle,
By mindfully invoking Avalokiteshvara’s power
all hostilities will be dispersed.
At the end of his talk, Roshi asked, “Do you have questions?”
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6 comments:
Avalokiteshvara is not a being outside your self or inside your self because there is no self. All there is, is Avalokiteshvara.
Was he urging you to discover this for yourself? As a teacher, would you answer a similiar question?
Where is Avalokiteshvara? Krishna? Jesus? Buddha? Hitler and Stalin? Seems to be they are all inside of us. On second thought....outside of us. Maybe both? or is it neither?
Jonah
I have been working on a piece about American mystic poetry.
I enjoy the mystic poets from all cultures because they have a great deal to teach us. Few of us are aware that we have some fine American mystic poets. E E Cummings is one of them.
This is a scene from Cummings' play HIM. It is some tings to say about inside/outside; being/observing in real time.
HIM: The average "painter" "sculptor" "poet" "playwright" is a person who can not leap through a hoop on the back of a galloping horse or make people laugh with a clown's mouth
ME: Indeed.
HIM: But imagine a human being who balances three chairs, one on top of another, on a wire, eighty feet in the air, with no net underneath, and then climbs into the top chair, sits down, and begins to swing. . .
ME: (shudders) I'm glad I never saw that--it makes me dizzy just to think of it.
HIM: (Quietly) I never saw that either.
ME: Because nobody can do it.
HIM: Because I am that. But in another way, it's all I ever see.
ME: What is?
HIM: This: I feel only one thing, I have only one conviction; it sits on three chairs in Heaven. Sometimes I look at it, with terror; it is such a perfect acrobat! The three chairs are three facts--it will quickly kick them out from under itself and will stand on air; and in that moment (because everyone will be disappointed) everyone will applaud. Meanwhile some thousands of miles over everyone's head, over a billion empty faces, it rocks carefully and smilingly on three things, on three facts, on: I am an Artist, I am a Man, I am a
Failure--it rocks and it swings and it smiles and it does not collapse tumble or die because it pays no attention to anything except itself. (Passionately) I feel, I am aware--every minute every instant, I watch this trick, I am this trick, I am this trick, I sway--selfish and smiling and careful--above all the people. (to himself) And always I am repeating a simple and dark and little formula . . . always myself mutters and remutters a trivial, colorless microscopic idiom--I breathe and I swing and I whisper: "An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED."
ME: (timidly, after a short pause) This thing or person who is you...it will stand on air?
HIM: ...Easily: alone.
ME: How about the chairs?
HIM: The chairs will fall all by themselves down the wire.
. . . . .
ME: Maybe yourself--you, away up ever so high--will hear me applaud?
HIM: (looking straight at her, smiles seriously): I shall see your eyes. I shall hear your heart move.
ME: Because I will not be disappointed like the others.
HIM: damn everything but the circus!
In my corner of the Zen universe we call these flavorless words.
Mindfully invoking Avalokiteshvara’s power.
No room for a second thought...
bows,
Thank you for your comments. This was all circus, wasn't it! What a wonderful line marionstella gives us by the way, "Damn everything but the circus." Don't know what it means ... but here we are. Roshi's other priest and I were playing. Not sure about the old boy. In my present view, Roshi was responding very directly. There's no one answer though. Many ways of mindfully invoking A.'s power. And James is a thief. Without qualification. When I read Jonah asking if I would answer a similar question, what popped up was "How do you do Avalokiteshvara?"
Warm regards,
Dosho
and a bow right back at ya...
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