Just Wake Up, Again
In Master Dogen's original instructions for Zazen that he wrote just after coming back from China, he teaches: When something arises in the mind, just wake up; just become conscious.
What does it mean to wake up? What does it mean to become conscious?
It means, in my understanding and my real experience, to allow one's body to liberate itself from unconsciousness.
An unconscious person cannot make themselves more conscious by controlling themselves with their unconsciousness. We cannot cause ourselves to become conscious by adjusting our posture unconsciously this way and that; we become conscious by the indirect means of allowing.
We realize consciousness in Zazen by stopping our unconscious habitual postural activity and allowing something else to happen.
Are there any other teachers in Master Dogen's lineage, other than Pierre Turlur and myself, who are clear in the understanding of the above? If you know of any, please let me know about it. I would like to join forces with them and establish a totally new movement. As a provisional name for this new movement, I tentatively propose: True Buddhism.
What does it mean to wake up? What does it mean to become conscious?
It means, in my understanding and my real experience, to allow one's body to liberate itself from unconsciousness.
An unconscious person cannot make themselves more conscious by controlling themselves with their unconsciousness. We cannot cause ourselves to become conscious by adjusting our posture unconsciously this way and that; we become conscious by the indirect means of allowing.
We realize consciousness in Zazen by stopping our unconscious habitual postural activity and allowing something else to happen.
Are there any other teachers in Master Dogen's lineage, other than Pierre Turlur and myself, who are clear in the understanding of the above? If you know of any, please let me know about it. I would like to join forces with them and establish a totally new movement. As a provisional name for this new movement, I tentatively propose: True Buddhism.
posted by Mike Cross at 8:52 AM
6 Comments:
FW,Thank you.
I am not worthy to receive your prostration. If any right direction has come to you through me, it has been not thanks to Mike Cross but thanks to FM Alexander and in spite of Mike Cross.
What does it mean to wake up?
Great question!
Now... how is it answered?
Addenda,
Now. I pay attention.
I notice that as I sit here on a swivel chair, my legs are in their familiar macho orientation, pushing away from each other. It a pattern that many men tend to cultivate unconsciously; it is a pattern I cultivated strongly in the martial arts and it is my habitual orientation in Zazen. It is the way I sit as the guy who knows. I notice it.
And what do I do about it? Nothing. I decide not to do anything about it, but to accept it and to acknowledge the possibility of another way of being, a less unconscious but more unknowing way of being. A more open condition which cannot be produced, which cannot be realized through adjustment or manipulation, but which can be allowed.
Not to do, but to allow. Now.
And then should one keep on noticing/accepting/allowing whatever stimulus/action presents itself?
Addenda,
Master Dogen's original instruction is: "When something arises in the mind, just wake up. Wake up to it and it will vanish. Forget involvements forever, and naturally become one piece. This is the essential technique of Zazen."
Later he revised this as follows:
"Think the state of not thinking. How can the state of not thinking be thought? It is different from thinking. This is the essential technique of Zazen."
(See my Fukan-zazengi blog)
These are not two instructions, but two attempts to express one essential skill (let us call it "allowing") that can't adequately be expressed in words.
Our intention is to liberate the body from unconsciousness. This is a conscious intention. It is realized not by doing, but by allowing. What can eventually follow from this effort (not an effort of doing but an effort of allowing) is a more open, balanced, integrated condition of being.
Master Dogen calls this condition the samadhi of accepting and using the self. This samadhi itself is something far beyond our conscious intention, or far prior to our conscious intention--it is our innate, original, natural condition.
Samadhi is our natural condition. But it is not our habitual condition. So we need to establish a conscious intention to enjoy it.
In those rare moment when we are just enjoying it, we just keep on enjoying it -- "being caught by the stillness."
My answer is not adequate. But keep on asking the question.
good enough for me
gassho amigo
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