Each Moment Is the Universe by Dainin Katagiri

Author:Dainin Katagiri
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2012-01-28T02:03:45+00:00

PART FOUR

THE PRACTICE OF CREATIVE ACTION

Zen is a practice of action. Sometimes people think that Zen practice is a bridge between suffering and happiness: we practice first and then we will be happy. But practice and happiness are not separate. Practice is not a bridge—practice itself is joy. If you practice Buddha’s Eightfold Noble Path of right seeing, thought, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration completely, there is egolessness within your practice. Practicing egolessness doesn’t mean that you destroy yourself and then something changes in the future. It means that egolessness comes up simultaneously with the activity of practice itself, and that practice is free from suffering.

Entering Buddha’s path is arousing bodhi-mind. Bodhi-mind is translated as the way-mind or way-seeking mind. It means that Buddha’s mind is the way, the right path to be walked, extending in all directions, continuously open to everybody. The word right isn’t based on an idea of right and wrong, good and bad. Right means the complete, perfect harmony of the phenomenal world of time, which we create from moment to moment, and the source of existence, the eternal world of timelessness, where all sentient beings are always interconnected in peace and harmony. Right activity is the actualization of the phenomenal world and the source of existence coming together and working together.

When you fully devote yourself to your activity, the moment and you come together, creating a kind of momentum or energy. You and your activity become one, and this refined activity very naturally leads you to forget yourself. In a moment you go beyond the phenomenal world of time and space to the source of time, where your life is calm and stable and your activity is clear and pure. When there is no self-consciousness it is called bodhi, enlightenment. Bodhi-mind is freedom. It is the function of mind that is beyond dualistic consciousness. But to arouse bodhi-mind we have to use our discriminating, human mind. In other words, Buddha’s mind is beyond human consciousness, but the only way to find out what it is is through conscious activity. That is why we practice.

In Shobogenzo, “Zazenshin” (Lancet of Seated Meditation), Dogen Zenji presents zazen as the practice of realizing bodhi-mind. But Dogen wants us to understand, very clearly, that practice is not a means to an end. Doing meditation, or any spiritual practice, because we want to be something special in the future is not the point of Zen practice. The point is to be free where we are now. Where we are is a problem, but where we are is also the beauty of existence. In Buddhism there are lots of psychological and philosophical analyses of the self because we have to learn where we are, who we are, and what a human being is. But to see the truth directly we have to practice. Through practice we can be free from where we think we are, which lets us return to where we really are and experience what the self really is.

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