Worlds

Our minds turn to the world. The problems of the world, as our personal problems are not solved by separation but by coming together. As we bring our hands together to make a wish or to do Zazen.

Practicing Zazen is not turning inward and excluding others or your life. In fact it is widening your world and deepening your insight and bringing others into your presense.

There is a word 'Aisatsu' - written with two Chinese characters meaning 'Awasu' – 'Harmony, Friendship', and 'Satsu' meaning 'Healing, Medicine' read together as a compound word they mean to draw out each other's good qualities through meeting and company.

Aistasu can be in the context of bowing, having tea, doing Zazen together, formal and religious and casual and everyday activity. Compromise and agreement, friendship and community. Being a guest when it is difficult, being a host when it is difficult. In this sense Aisatsu is the expression of the (Bodhisattva) Way.

All over the world we face the paradox of concentrated population, faster communication and yet growing distance between people. Aisatsu can be said to be any endevour that bridges the distance between people and ourselves. In fact in any action which brings us closer to ourselves brings us closer to others.

Placing our hands in Gassho, the prayer attitude, is another formal Aisatsu to ourselves and each other. Zazen is this also as we sit and meet with our true self, our Buddha Mind. The Buddha way is very unique in that it is really about finding ourselves and each other together, rather than clinging to ego. Ego that divides that divides us from our true freedom of potential and the potential of the community to rise upward. Ego makes us blind to ourselves and others.

If you practice just for yourself you are dividing yourself from others. Since practice should be for the universal merit of all beings then how can this be if all your effort is pointed inward to your conceited feeling of selfish gain? In fact no matter how hard you try at anything if you exclude others you will not go forward.

A father can not be a father without a family, a businessman must have clients and be a client and know compromise in order to make his family rich.

To practice Zen or business or live among others we must do this with mind that does not exclude each other. Or no matter how much effort we make in the end it will be empty and disatisfying.

Be a guest in your own Heart. In this way invite others into your Heart also through your own deep efforts. Be a guest in your own heart allow yourself to look inside your own mind, towards your Buddha nature. This does not exclude, while you are doing Zazen you allow everything that you tried to exclude. Invite the world as though it were a guest, when you are in pleasant company invite yourself. Break down the barriers you build within yourself.

We often come to Zen or some spiritual practice with the ideal of the spiritual hermit. A person who lives simply in a hut made of simple things enjoying simple days. We do not often realise that to do that to live on the mountain by ourselves we must be in harmony with our heart, or the seclusion will be a torture. A secluded being does not live with a secluded Heart. Rather their Heart is all inclusive.

Such people who lived by themselves in spiritual seclusion were already giants. Their seclusion was not seclusion from the world at all but deepening. It is not achieved by ordinary people who wish to run away from their problems and responsibilities. It is only the achievement of knowing the heart that is all inclusive already exists within, through deep Zazen and enquiry into your self.

In the scripture of Heart Sutra – Hannya Shingyo – we find the advice that representation of Truth is nothing but that, that Wisdom exists beyond all representation, Wisdom is this very being right here right now beyond all conceptions of here and now. The Bodhisattva of Wisdom is also the Bodhisattva of compassion. Not separate anymore than Truth can be separated from reality by attachment to form. Therefore Wisdom- Truth is in each of our actions moment to moment. This is why the Heart Sutra is called the teaching of the Heart.

It's not hard to understand this intellectually, but it is hard to be a guest in your own Heart. In this way invite others into your Heart also through your own deep efforts.

The Holiness is going into the world and meeting mixing within it. Putting your hands together and facing with an ox-brained determination the ugly and the beautiful.

Practicing with O-Jizo sama

In our Zen school, Zazen is the foundation of practice, but there are other ways as well according to circumstance.

In times of loss or in an effort just to deepen our feeling of connection with the suffering of others we may offer our hands together in front of a Jizo statue .

We might in silence wish protection or protection of another, or chant the Jizo darani in silence 7 or 21 times.

on ka ka kabi san ma ei sowa ka

We may celebrate also with children their good health and future at Jizo matsuri, the rite of passing the knots of rope around representing our karmic connection and chanting Jizo darani.

We might say what should Zen Buddhists need of superstition rites and wishes? Perhaps if we consider being born into a difficult situation of child abuse, Racial warfare, disease, hunger, ignorance, consider how some others on this world live and how you might if you were not free to question and how you might in the future if your wishes do not come true. Then you see the value of offering a wish for another, for a person you will never meet, for your own children, brothers and sisters and your self. Wish on behalf of the person who cannot wish.

In this spirit then go on to practice hard for those who cannot.