2018-02-15

Feb 15 - 22

Winter, week 9
"There are two kinds of desires: demands ("I have to have it") and preferences. Preferences are harmless; we can have as many as we want. Desire that demands to be satisfied is the problem." --Joko Beck
Saturday Zen. Our next Zen service is Sat Feb 17, 10:00 - 11:45am, room 24
Community UU, 468 Rosedale Ave, White Plains, NY.
Practice to be led by Meredith.

Chants for Thu Feb 15 - Wed Feb 21:
  • Days Like Lightning, p. 61
  • Heart Sutra, p. 14
See Boundless Way Zen Sutra Book, 4th ed. and
BoWZ Westchester Chant Schedule

Reading this week: Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: Chap. 7, "The Promise That Is Never Kept," pp. 45-52.

Questions. (1) To what "faucets" have you attached?
(2) Why does practice have to be a process of endless disappointment?
(3) "As for Zen practice, the only promise we can count upon is that when we wake up to our lives, we'll be freer persons." How does that work?
(4) "Our lives give us endless discouragement, the perfect gift." When have you received this gift?

At Boundless Way Temple, 1030 Pleasant St, Worcester, MA:
  • Sat Mar 10, 9:00-17:00. "Buddhism 101." INFO HERE.
  • Thu Mar 15, 19:00 - Sun Mar 18, 12:00. Spring Sesshin. INFO HERE
Raven Tale: Outside History
The way to be a better person: utterly inscrutable.
But stand under the history that is outside you --
The co-arising with which you are interdependent.
And stand under what is outside of history --
The undying, unborn, unconditioned,
about which even these negations mislead.
See what happens
Koan Post: Blue Cliff Record #37: Panshan's Three Worlds, No Dharma.
The mind, being nothing apart from things,
Is found in all the things.
And things?

Wake up and roll out of bed.
Before long, one steps into a desire:
wanting something or wanting it gone.
Pop, pop, pop, desires appear all through the day.
Sometimes, though, a grace:
Craving/aversion peels away leaving the bare form of the thing.
If that, too, departs: only an idea or memory of the thing.

Where, then, is there a thing?
Not in the residual no-form imagined thing.
In the form?
It is without essence, without a part distinct or enduring.
Desire, then, which imputes such a thingy feel?
No: the substance of "I want"
makes a delusion, not a thing.
At every level and angle,
All things are nothing things.

The mind, being a nothing mind,
Is found in all the nothing things.

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