Podcasts about Gassho

Exploremos esta quinta Kata que ahora nos llevará a explorar la conexión con la madera, llevaremos la meditación a una conexión con el alma de un árbol para lograr la armonía entre el exterior y el interior. Una meditación para ver los opuestos con apoyo del elemento tierra. Si te gusta esta meditación te invito a que sigas las otras 4 Katas, cada una de las meditaciones se realizan con el apoyo de la energía de Reiki y los elementos. Instrucciones: Para hacer esta meditación ponte en conexión Gassho. Permítete abrir la conexión con la energía de Reiki. Si tienes el nivel de Reiki utiliza el tercer símbolo para abrir el portal. Abre la energía con el símbolo maestro. Terminando la meditación anota tus experiencias. Síguenos en: Holistic Lunar #holisticlunar #reiki #meditaciones #Satori #meditacionesreiki

Combinaremos para este ejercicio la energía de Reiki con una técnica ancestral mesoamericana para el uso de la energía circular. La intención es crear un circuito energético con nuestra respiración a través de los chakras principales, para ello es importante tu intención. Te conectarás en la meditación Gassho con le energía de Reiki y posteriormente cada vez que sea nombrado uno de esos centros, pondrás tus palmas de las manos tocando cada uno de ellos siguiendo el flujo de esa energía. Realiza la respiración hasta donde te sientas cómodo con ella. Un fuerte abrazo, de corazón a corazón. Holisticlunar #holisticlunar #reiki #meditacióngassho #flujoenergetico

Esta es una meditación del método de Reiki Satori. Trabaja con el chakra de tercer ojo y con la memoria del elemento agua, entendiendo en esta meditación el agua como su forma líquida que fluye y refluye. Inicia esta práctica desde la conexión con la energía de Gassho y sigue la visualización, considera el agua como el flujo de tus emociones en tu cuerpo. Holistic lunar. #holisticlunar #meditacion #agua #emociones #reiki #satori #meditacionemociones

La técnica de Gassho es una de las prácticas básicas del Reiki Oriental. Una técnica sencilla en apariencia pero que en realidad nos conecta con la fuerza espiritual de Reiki. Gassho es una técnica del Budismo Esotérico que nos une al flujo de Reiki. Para iniciar esta práctica decreta que te conectas con la energía Reiki con Reji Ho y luego inicia la meditación. Que la disfrutes.

After taking a hiatus this summer, we return to the political fray with an eye toward its implications for our lives and our pursuit of a more perfect union with the teachings of Zen. It is a good thing that we did not try to say anything about the campaign at the beginning of August, in light of the whiplash nature of rapid-fire developments on that front. Anything we had to say regarding predictions or outcomes would have been instantly irrelevant on a day-to-day basis, rendered moot by the exhaustive political melodrama playing out in the media. One of my online dharma dialogs brought up the question of agency, as in how much effect can one person really have on the direction the country is moving as a whole, not to mention the looming consequences of climate change on a global scale. It may help in setting the context, to recall my model of the Four Fundamental Spheres – those arenas of activity and influence that we all encounter on a daily basis. The four spheres, visualized as nesting in a concentric array, start with the Personal at the center; surrounded by the Social, which includes the political; then the Natural sphere, the world of our surrounding planet and its atmosphere; and finally the Universal, extending into outer space. Our sense of agency and influence diminishes as we move outward from the Personal, inversely proportional to the influence of the surrounding spheres on our personal bubble. It is necessarily an asymmetrical relationship, an understatement of cosmic proportions. Politics is the social sphere on steroids, we might say. It is a mixed blessing in that even those who emphasize our worst angels in the struggle to swing a majority, reveal, unintentionally, the dark underbelly of human nature. Which can be clarifying and even healthy, depending on what we do with it. These days , many of my online dharma dialog calls, dokusan in Japanese, reveal the anxiety that comes with the uncertainty of living in “interesting times,” as in the ancient Chinese curse. We might prefer to ignore the political realm altogether, but unless you are willing to become a hermit and remove yourself from society in some extreme manner, you cannot avoid the consequences of the political actions taken by others, in the cultural hothouse of modern civilization, whether urban or rural. The question arises: Is Zen (& zazen) merely a coping strategy? Or is it only reinforcing our personal status-quo? Or, conversely, can it enable us to change and adapt? I solicited suggestions for this reboot episode from my producer and publisher, the former being an American citizen currently living in the Southwest, the latter a Canadian living to the Northeast. Here is a sample of what they suggested: I think there's something in here about a cautionary tale for people looking to religious leaders for signals on how to vote. I've seen some other Zen leaders on social media endorsing candidates - which is fine, but they wield a lot of power, and Zen really is about thinking for yourself on your cushion. Maybe religion is separate from politics, and that's ok. It also might be interesting to discuss how to have compassion for the “other” – be it democrat or republican – as one cannot exist without the other; and neither are really separate.I was gratified to see the reference to my past emphasis in this series on the value of independent thinking, and engaging in interdependent action, which I propose is one of the outputs of Zen training. As opposed to co-dependent thinking and action, another way of characterizing the partisan divide. If we are developing the ability to think independently of the political forces impinging upon us, and the freedom to act interdependently with cohorts on both sides of the divide, then our Zen training can contribute to evolving the more perfect union that is given lip service in the social discourse. Referring back to the previous UnMind series of three segments on aging, sickness and death, the Three Marks of Buddhism's worldview, I want to reiterate that the paranoid style in politics seems most likely to stem from irrational fear of aging, sickness, and dying, the personal dimensions of the universal traits of anicca, dukkha, and anatta, or impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self. When we throw the “Three Poisons” of greed, hatred, and delusion into the mix, the result is a true witch's brew. This is the old “divide and conquer” strategy. The question of how to have compassion for the “other” – be it democrat or republican – goes to a more non-dualistic reading of the seeming divide between irreconcilable opposites. When we look at what conservatives are trying to liberalize, and what liberals are trying to conserve, we see that the labels are not really getting to the essence of the conflict, but merely exacerbating it. The issue of factionalism was raised in the early founding documents of the American experiment as a potential threat to the republic, but since one party cannot exist without the other, and neither is really separate from the body politic, they are mutually defining, and can be complimentary. The real conflict goes to the personal dimension, where we find the question of: “How much is enough?” How much is enough to live happily, and is there enough to go around? Are the global shortages of food, drinking water, clean air, housing, and the hierarchy of physical survival needs real, or are they the consequence of negligence and malfeasance on the part of greedy, profit-driven special interests? Have we as a species been on a decades-long binge of “Hotel-California-everything-all-the-time” wretched excess and the bills are just now finally coming due? Can we all downsize our lifestyle to a level that relieves the burden of the disposable consumption society? When we look to the example of our forebears in the history of Zen, and, indeed, in the early days of democracy in America, going back no further than my grandparents' generation, we can detect vestiges of a much more moderate way of living that recognized reasonable limits to the answer to how much is enough. Of course there were contemporaneous avatars of wealth and power, living out the lifestyles and fantasies of the rich and famous. And the human slaves of earlier periods in history have been replaced by the “energy slaves” of modern technology, as Bucky Fuller pointed out. In that sense, wealth, as the commonwealth, has been redistributed more widely, but there is still an unseemly preoccupation in some quarters with amassing financial resources beyond the scope of what any one person, family, or corporate entity, can possibly need, or spend, within one lifetime. Except, perhaps, as a defensive reserve to defend against future lawsuits. Or, perhaps, to invest in initiatives for future cultural evolution. But do we really need to terraform Mars, for example, when we cannot even make the Earth function as our home planet? Back to the personal sphere of meditation, and its connection to the social sphere of politics. If we accept the suggestion that our Zen practice is indeed a kind of generalized coping mechanism, it begs the question, Coping with what? Master Dogen asks, about two-thirds of the way through Fukanzazengi–Principles of Seated Meditation: Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism how can you be satisfied with the transient world?Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightningVanishing in a moment. By this point in the long tract of instructions on physical method and philosophical attitude he picked up in China, the first piece he published as a manual of meditation for his student followers, he has made perhaps a hundred different points about what is important in Buddhism. So what he means by “the most important thing” is subject to some interpretation. Just as it is in our modern milieu. What is, after all, the most important thing? Not just in meditation, but in all your daily actions, as Dogen emphasizes in the same writing. Media mavens, including pre-digital traditional channels and ever-expanding post-digital modes, are constantly promoting what they want us to pay attention to as “news,” what they consider the most important events and issues of the moment in the 24-7 news cycle. Most of it is designed to capture eyeballs, ears, and clicks, in order to develop ratings that are used to rationalize the cost of ad buys and other kinds of participation in the public arena, or direct sales. Which items are delivered to your doorstep in ever-greater frequency with minimal effort on your part. Except for disposing of the mountain of packaging and shipping materials. Turning our attention back to the cushion and the wall, the most important thing at the moment cannot be the passing pageantry of the political campaign. Unless you are running for office, or working for someone who is. One important thing is to understand or appreciate the importance of the political to the personal, in particular, your personal sphere. While the central personal dimensions of aging, sickness and death can definitely be affected – directly or indirectly, positively or negatively – by the political arena, it is not typically the most proximate cause of any of the three. And the last thing that you are likely to be thinking, on your death bed, is that you wished you had spent more time on politics. Some ancient sage said to “stamp life-and-death on your forehead and never let it out of your mind.” I am sure he was not morbidly obsessed with death, but that his life, and ours, takes a major part of its central meaning, and sense of urgency, from the fact that birth is the leading cause of death. This, to many, would seem to be wrong. But if you think about it – or as Dogen says, “examine thoroughly in practice” – this idea that something is wrong, it appears that it may only be our opinion. We may be wrong. Reality cannot be wrong. Nature cannot be wrong. But we may be wrong. Only we human beings can get this wrong. And then we blame others, turning against our fellow human and other sentient beings. As the Tao te Ching says, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” We can blame our situation, with some justification, on others, including the pols. But the blaming does not solve the basic problem. Perhaps this is getting at the most important thing. Accepting and admitting that the suffering in the world that may be considered wrong, or unnecessary, is caused exclusively by human beings, based on their assessment of their world as somehow “wrong.” This is the kind of suffering that can end, seen in the clear light of emptiness in zazen.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

ADZG 1202 ADZG Sunday Morning Dharma Talk by Hōgetsu Laurie Belzer The post Gassho: Joining palms is dynamic bodhisattva activity first appeared on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate.

Following on the previous UnMind series of three segments on aging, sickness and death, the Three Marks of Buddhism's worldview, we will expand our scope to the broader world of international conflict, characteristic of our modern world, where Buddhism's three conditions of existence are also manifested, if in a more universal form. Traditional definitions of these basic aspects of life are universal in scope: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self (Skt. anicca, dukkha, anatta). We can see clearly that in today's world, these givens of existence are not warmly embraced on the social level in America, let alone on national or global levels, which surely follows from their avoidance on the personal level. Beginning with Buddhism's “compassionate teaching” – the Dharma – we find that along with the three marks of aging, sickness and death, Buddha promulgated the “Three Poisons,” usually rendered as “greed, anger or hatred, and delusion or folly.” What a witch's brew is conjured, when we mix the six ingredients together. In the context of aging, greed becomes the longing for longevity, the overreliance on meds to avoid the ravages of illness, and extravagant, catastrophic efforts at prolonging life at all costs. Anger and hatred arise when we are denied the ability to forestall aging, when we are overcome by a pandemic, and when we blame widespread death and destruction on others. Delusion and folly ensue when we act on our mistaken beliefs, attacking others for the natural consequences of our collective and individual actions. The unexpected consequences threaten us all, whether in our dotage or full-flowering youth, with the Four Horsemen – plagues, famine, and the predations of war, and not necessarily in that order. Just who is to blame for this situation and how can we hold them accountable? In the worldview of Zen, everything, including charity, begins at home. To quote Master Pogo Possum, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” The first embrace of reality is to “study the self.” The second is to “forget the self,” as Master Dogen reminds us in his famous teaching, Genjokoan–Actualizing the Fundamental Point.Actualizing the fundamental point of existence requires that we embrace our own aging, sickness and death – the close-up-and-personal reality of impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality, including our precious self – while recognizing that greed, anger and delusion are fueling the fires of discontent, leading to blaming others for our personal predicament. Sometimes, others are to blame for making things worse, of course, just as we are to blame for making their world more crowded. Stop the world and let me get off. Would it were so simple. The blame game can range from blaming our parents for our birth, on one extreme, to blaming those others most distantly related to us by blood. I read somewhere that the furthest removed any human being can be from any other human, biologically speaking, is something like 26th cousin, if memory serves. One wonders, with the growth in population, whether that tenuous kinship is getting closer, or further apart, as time goes by, with 8 billion people and counting. I also read of a laboratory experiment, some years back, where they used the classic maze of rats to find out what happens when you simply keep adding rats to the maze, without letting any escape. At one point of increasing density, the rats begin attacking each other. They “blame” the others for their own discomfort, apparently. The analogy to human population should not be lost on anyone. The anxiety and outright hostility associated with immigration on a global basis is too obvious a parallel to ignore. Or we can aim all of our blame at the political system, or the candidate du jour. Now that the “debate of the century” has landed with a thud, the rats are having a hard time deciding which of the two leaders of the rat pack is most at fault. Much of the anger and hysteria we witness on ideological and political fronts of the public discourse seems motivated by underlying fears, exacerbated by perceived worsening conditions, including density of population. The identified “foreigners” – bringing unintelligible languages, peculiar cultural customs, and bizarre belief systems – induce anxiety, stereotyping and suspicion amongst native populations, triggering the threat of the privileged being “replaced” by them in the great scheme of things. This probably arises from a tribal, protective social instinct, linked to the survival of “our kind.” Hyped to the max by political opportunists, into the bargain. But on a more personal level, this anxiety, amplified by mob hysteria, surely finds its origin in the triple threat of aging, sickness and death, that is inborn with each individual. Birth is the leading cause of death, after all, like it or not. This perceived threat, however irrational, is tied to what biologists call the survival instinct, or imperative. Reality is not a respecter of persons. But biology is designed to privilege survival of the species over all comers, adapting to ever-changing circumstances. Natural and artificial changes in context often outpace and outmaneuver biology, engendering threats to survival, to cycles of “extinction panic,” or to actual extinction of the species, potentially including humanity. Cultural evolution – our ability to pass on technological advances to the next generation, and their ability to further improve on their cultural inheritance – is ensconced in the social sphere. But it likewise runs into trouble when it is not agile enough to keep up with the rate of change of conditions to which it is adapting, in the natural and universal spheres. Such as climate change. Aye, there's the rub. “Survival of the fittest” is the shorthand catchphrase for dumbing down Darwin's elegant and complex theory on the “Origin of Species.” To find a cogent example of society's collective resistance to this notion that we privilege the fit, we need look no further than the recruiting, drafting and conscription of young men and women – the “fittest” – into the modern military – the main mechanism oriented to societal survival – across the globe. Civilian leaders, and those at higher command levels, manage to keep a safe distance from the front lines, so as to return to fight another day, one assumes. But the survival of the oldest is not Nature's way. It is not natural to put younger members of the species at risk to protect older members. Witness the wolf pack. This biological imperative dictates an age-related triage, protecting those most likely to survive, to survive longer, and to reproduce. Yet humans do the opposite in wartime, and did it again in the face of the pandemic, by sending younger first responders into the fray, while protecting elderly and senior leaders through isolation, quarantine and access to medical care. Notwithstanding how miserable a failure that effort turned out to be, the point is still well-taken. Of course, from a practical perspective, the young provide the necessary numbers, and the vitality, needed on the frontlines. Even if senior members of society were willing to take point in crisis conditions, the question would be whether or not they are able to. Setting aside such considerations of the neurotic societal implications of turning younger generations into cannon and virus fodder, what will it take to finally bring about world peace? Can we beat our swords into plowshares, turn intercontinental ballistic missiles into spaceships, cyberwar into cyberfun? The current national debate is styled as a contest between democratic governance “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” striving toward a “more perfect union” of the republic; versus power elites exerting autocratic control over a hopelessly divided populace. The appeal of the latter is understandable for the “haves,” those who already enjoy a relative elite status of economic and social privilege. They stand to come out on top, liberated from the messy business of compromise with those on the bottom end of income equality. Likewise, the uneasiness of the “have-nots” is easy to understand. They see themselves as already victimized by the unlevel playing field, touted as equal opportunity for all. This, it would seem, is the real wall that is being built, not on the border, but right down the middle of the country. Its building blocks consist of the institutions installed by the founding fathers, rearranged to reassert the original privilege of white, land-owning males. But is all this – the daily fare being served up by the media and opposing forces – really the root of the problem? Whether or not we believe in an eternal soul, or reincarnation, as did the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Hindus, or resurrection, as do modern Christians, we finally come to face our mortality, in person. In Zen, the only mate who will accompany us to the grave is our deeds. Whatever wealth, honor, or powers of reasoning we have accumulated in managing and manipulating the vagaries of behavior and vicissitudes of fortunes encountered in life, they serve us little in the face of death. The same may be said of family, though better to die surrounded by loved ones than alone, or surrounded by hostiles, I suppose. On the cushion we sit “without relying on anything” as Master Dogen reminds us in his version of “Needle for Zazen (Zazenshin),” including all the tricks, trash and trinkets we have assembled in our toolkit. Try as we might to think our way to enlightenment, or to reason ourselves into insight, we find ourselves failing again and again. Finally we must surrender to the chaos of not knowing, and abandon reliance on reason itself, spawn of philosophy and the other kind of Enlightenment. We find verification of our practice in “making effort without aiming at it.” Needless to say, this is a very uncomfortable place to find ourselves, at a pass that is not really negotiable, in any ordinary sense. All the stages of grief prove futile in the face of the relentless process and progress of biology. We need to confront reality when we are young and vigorous, as in “Stamp life and death on your forehead, and never let it out of your mind,” paraphrasing a truth long lost to attribution. Life takes its meaning in the context of death. If you find that too morbid, just imagine what life would be like if we did not die. Its meaning would be entirely different, and not entirely positive. When the grim reaper arrives, we may want to embrace her / his relentless, unsympathetic and unforgiving scythe, as being not at all different from the sword of Manjusri, hopefully cutting through our final delusions. Just as hopefully, the passing pageantry of life, particularly the concurrent social-political dimension, will have little or nothing to do with the circumstances surrounding the last breath we take. Preferable to die on the cushion, of course. * * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Closing out our exploration of the “three marks” of dukkha, in this episode we will take a look, close-up-and-personal, at death. In summary, our confrontation with and embrace of the three marks varies according to their universal natures, as well as to our personal nurturing in their recognition and acceptance. Aging is predictable, but typically sneaks up on us, moving far too gradually to register in our youth, even nowadays with our ubiquitous mirrors, selfies, and TikTok videos – none of which our ancestors had in abundance. Today's living generations may be the most self-conscious in the history of humankind. The famous “polishing a tile to make a mirror” koan anecdote reflected the fact that mirrors were originally of polished metal. Narcissus, remember, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. By contrast, Tung-shan, a 9th century monk, was enlightened upon seeing his face for the first time, reflected in the water. A contemporary stand-up comic, who shall remain nameless, asked, “Did'ja ever look in the mirror in the morning and think, “That can't be accurate!”? Sickness, whether life-threatening or not, can land like a ton of bricks, flattening you for the moment – and often for the foreseeable future – with the rate of recovery dependent upon many factors, including aging. Sickness can often be the death-knell, as a diagnosis of cancer once was. As one ages, the body becomes less immune to the predations of bacteria and viruses, it seems. Today the threat of mental illness, leading to suicide, also looms large. Usually, the threat of death from natural causes may be safely ignored, postponed, or even denied, until it can't. But sudden death is even more unpredictable than sickness, and can come in such a variety of modes today, including natural and man-made disasters, which are popping up with greater and greater frequency, notably side-effects of climate change, such as the ever-increasing statistical rate of death from extreme heat. America seems to be the poster-boy for death by guns, accidental or intentional, now one of the major causes of death for children in the USA. Death from complications in childbirth is still far too common, particularly for non-white women. And then there is always stress, aggravated by habits such as smoking. If one thing doesn't get you, something else will, in the end. Death and taxes, as we say. I must note in passing that much of the hysteria we witness on ideological and political fronts of the public discourse seems motivated by an underlying fear, which appears to stem from the triple threat of aging, sickness and death. Witness the “worship of youth” culture, “self-improvement” programs, and anti-aging products aimed at prolonging vim and vigor and extending life itself as long as possible. This primal, largely subliminal fear is often projected onto the identified “other,” a form of transference that – like the old “I'm rubber, you're glue” trope – deflects self-criticism, in favor of defining each and every conflict in terms of self-preservation, and resorting to blaming others. As the Tao te Ching reminds us, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” Buddha's original analysis of the constructed self's fundamentally dissatisfactory nature of reality, and our place, individually and collectively, writ large. The most dissatisfactory of all affronts and indignities to our ego are the three marks. If, on the other hand, we could all embrace, in all humility, the realities of aging, sickness and death as being perfectly natural and okay, the resulting equanimity of outlook might go a long way to ameliorating the insane intensity of conflict in the world. Aging gracefully includes embracing illness and death as built-in, intrinsic to the natural order of things. How much of our time, energy, attention and resources are dedicated to resistance to this fact – a fundamental denialism that leads naturally to the abdication of truth – in favor of our favorite fantasies as to the nature and central meaning of life? A young Rinzai Zen priest named Hasegawa published a book titled “The Cave of Poison Grass.” He mentioned the fact that most people seem to postpone confronting reality until, finally, they are on their death bed. He declared that this is too late – “like eating soup with a fork” – a memorable phrase. He insisted that we have to confront this “Great Matter” of life-and-death while we are young, and have sufficient strength and energy to overcome it. In the lore of Zen there is a Till-Eulenspiegel-like narrative that captures its sometimes irreverent attitude toward life and death, supposedly a true story. A monk realized that he was to die soon, and began asking other monks what they knew about, or had heard about, others dying. He was curious to know if anyone had ever died standing on their head, but nobody had. So sure enough, when the time came, he stood on his head in the corner and died. His sister happened to be a nun, and when she came to visit for the funeral, the corpse was still standing there in the corner. In disgust, she kicked it over, declaring that he had never had any respect for anything in life, and he still had no respect in death. The story goes that they buried him upside-down. An old saying in Zen says to “stamp life and death on your forehead and never let it out of your mind.” This is not a mark of morbid obsession with death, but simply recognizes that there is no life without death – birth is the leading cause of death.Instead of bemoaning the fact that life inevitably passes back into the great remix that is the universe – the wave returning to the ocean – we embrace the inevitability of “shuffling off this mortal coil” as a kind of relief. As Mark Twain was said to have asked, when in his old age reporters inquired as to whether he wasn't afraid to die, why would he be afraid of returning to where he came from? It is the stuff of science fiction to imagine a future in which medical science has treated the phenomenon of dying as an unnecessary aberration, a kind of illness, and come up with techniques such as cryogenic freezing of human remains, genetic mutation, and cultivating transplant organs and limbs to achieve what is, for all practical purposes, human immortality. The question becomes, would you really want to live forever? Life takes a great deal of its meaning from the inevitability of death, which is often considered in opposition to life. But Master Dogen treats both birth death as another nondual, complementary dyad, from Genjokoan–Actualizing the Fundamental Point: Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash you do not return to birth after deathThis being so it is an established way in buddha-dharma to deny that birth turns into deathAccordingly birth is understood as non-birthIt is an unshakable teaching in Buddha's discourse that death does not turn into birthAccordingly death is understood as non-death Birth is an expression complete this momentDeath is an expression complete this momentThey are like winter and springYou do not call winter the beginning of spring nor summer the end of spring In this wonderful analogy, Master Dogen places birth and death on a continuum, each as an “expression complete this moment,” and yet undeniably entangled. We might ask: An expression of what? and the answer would seem to be “life itself.” So birth, which we celebrate, and death, which we mourn, are seen to be inflection points, rather equal in import, in the continuum of life. When my older brother was dying in hospice, I spent about a week attending on him as he drifted in and out of consciousness. I picked up a pamphlet at the clinic where he was cared for, called “The Eleventh Hour.” It was written by a Christian woman, a clergy member or teacher of some sort, but she never once mentioned Jesus or God. One line I recall said something like, “Birth is the death of whatever precedes birth. Death is the birth of whatever follows death.” Very Zen. I hope this brief foray into the most dispositive and determinative factors defining our life experience helps to allay any unreasoning fear you may have of these time-honored Three Marks. Along with Buddhism's Three Poisons of greed, anger or hatred, and delusion or folly, they form the nexus of all that is wrong with the human universe in the personal sphere. When we move into the next outer layer, the social sphere, we confront them on a more global scale as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. Today we might be coerced to add even more unintended consequences to the deluge, including increasing population pressure and worldwide immigration, as well as advances in technology that tend to frustrate, rather than facilitate, our presumably inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Speaking of which, in the first UnMind episode of the upcoming month, we will look over our shoulder once again to the dread prospect of Election Year Zen, which is gaining on us, assessing whether or not we can see any light of compassion or wisdom at the end of that maddeningly long tunnel. Please add a seatbelt to your zafu and strap in. The haiku poem on the “grim reaper” is from a 2020 series called “Dharma Dreams from Great Cloud.” The text, titled “Swords into Plowshares,” will form the basis of July's UnMind. If you have any remaining questions as to why I feel it important to examine the current political pageantry from the perspective of ancient Buddhist teachings, which may strike you as outdated and irrelevant, please email me about it. * * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Continuing with a consideration of the realities of day-to-day Zen practice in the context of Buddhism's central teaching of dukkha – natural suffering writ large – the second of the “three marks,” or characteristics of existence from a human perspective, is usually named as “sickness” or “illness.” Please note in passing that illness, from the perspective of Chinese medicine – which may be closer to its cultural connotations in ancient India – denotes a lack of centeredness, or balance. Something is out of kilter – the yinyang of it all – when we fall ill. Nowadays, of course, we have much more access to many means of tracing and tracking the origins of our maladies, to environmental and other sources. Quoting from the Tricycle web site again, we find a less personal, less specific definition of the three: ...all phenomena...are marked by three characteristics...: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana. Sickness is not called out specifically as one of the many causes of suffering or dissatisfaction, possibly for reasons of cultural context and medical acumen 2500 years ago. We will get around to that throwaway line exempting so-called “nirvana.” I can personally testify to the dissatisfactory and suffering nature of sickness, from my experience contracting Covid-19 in 2022 and, more recently, a suddenly bloated GI tract blockage that had me hospitalized overnight, and bed-ridden for over a week. The pandemic occasioned such wide medical suffering and social unrest that Shunei Oniuda, the president of Sotoshu Shumucho, Zen administrative headquarters in Japan, addressed it from the Buddhist perspective in a public message: I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences for those who have lost their precious lives from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and offer a prayer that they may rest in peace. For those who have been affected by this illness, I pray that they will recover as soon as possible, and I would like to offer my deepest sympathy to their families and relatives who have also been affected by this illness. Also, my thoughts are with all those experiencing tremendous difficulties whose lives have been affected by the spread of this epidemic and the need to stay home. Then Mr. Oniuda relates some interesting facts providing context for the present: In the Kamakura Period of Japanese history when Dogen Zenji was teaching, there were times when cool summers caused by climate change often brought poor harvests. There were outbreaks of plague, and, during the Great Kanki Famine (1230-31), it is said that about a third of the population of Japan perished. In times such as these, Dogen Zenji emphasized that these were the very times to not neglect the Buddha Way. Who is to know it the changes in climate at that time were as precipitous and global as those we are seeing today. As an island nation, Japan is likely more subject to extremes in weather because it is surrounded by ocean waters. A caveat – in our fraught divisive times, it may be necessary to point out that this recollection of similar disasters from the history of Zen – though on a much smaller-scale – is surely not intended to support either side of the ideological argument. Instead, it reinforces the premise that Zen is a practice fully prepared to meet, head-on, the vagaries of life, whether of natural, man-made, or a combination of those causes and conditions. Note that he offers condolences to those who died first, rather than to the survivors; which is characteristic of Zen funerals. The sermon is actually directed to the deceased. While emphasizing the need for disseminating accurate information, and recommending that all concerned follow the practical recommendations for exercising due diligence in preventing the spread of infection, President Oniuda refers back to the compassionate teachings of Zen's founders, as they apply to this current, international crisis: It is in such a time that the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, Dogen Zenji, and Keizan Zenji are necessary. Shakyamuni Buddha taught right view, right speech, and right practice in the face of the sufferings of sickness and death. Right view, speech and practice – conduct exhibited in crises – do not follow the mob: Even if people are agitated or anxious in the confusion caused by others who are fearful and buy up or hoard food and other goods, let us act calmly. Let us act in accordance with the spirit of Dogen Zenji's teaching of the intention of first saving others before ourselves and in accordance with the Bodhisattva's Four Embracing Actions. This is to naturally practice the way of benefitting others. Compare to the panic mode triggered by the pandemic in most circles of the population. Then the President's message brings it home, uniting both social and personal spheres: Also, Keizan Zenji taught that we should have compassion and love for all things, that we should sympathize with others' sufferings as if they are our own, and that with the mind of compassion we should be diligent in the practice of zazen. I encourage you to endeavor to practice zazen during this time that we must spend quietly at home.[1] So the prescription for practice in Zen remains the same in good times or bad, whether we find ourselves in truly dire straits, or operating under relatively ordinary pressures of meeting the daily needs of ourselves and the community: Hie thee thither – back to the cushion. His message is directed not just to monastics but to householders as well. And by no means is zazen prescribed as an escape from the wolves howling at the gate, but the most direct and efficacious way to meet them where they are coming from. Matsuoka-roshi would sometimes say, “If you get sick, you just get sick; if you die, you just die. But meanwhile, do what the doctor says.” He frequently made the point that his fellow countrymen and women were usually calm in the face of calamity, whether in the form of personal trauma of getting bad news in a clinical or hospital setting, or even a prognosis of eminent death. This equanimity he attributed to their having been raised in a culture that embraces aging, sickness and death as natural and foreordained, rather than in one that approaches them with fear and loathing. Even young children in Japan are, or used to be, exposed to the teachings of Buddhism, and the practice of zazen, as a regular part of their upbringing. We like to think that Buddha's experience under the Bodhi tree that night so long ago represented the absolute apogee of good health and wellness, in all its dimensions – physical, mental, emotional, and even social. Yet it included the robust embrace of the ineradicable marks of biological, sentient existence: impermanence manifested as aging; suffering manifested as illness, both physiological and psychological; and no-self arising as the specter of death, the fear of non-existence on the personal plane. It seems that our modern obsession with youth and longevity lobbies against any wide acceptance of these natural marks, or transitions, of our existence as human beings. But all sentient beings are subject to their inevitability - no exceptions, theistic beliefs notwithstanding. Perhaps this may be seen as the true source of the neurotic aspects of this age of anxiety. We are confronted with these marks on a progressive basis, as we age and become increasingly infirm, or frail. It is best to engage them on the cushion, when we are young and strong, but better later than never. In the next segment of UnMind, we will take up the meaning of death, in the context of Dharma as the compassionate teachings. Until then, do not hesitate to allow your view of aging, sickness and death, your personal take on mortality, to enter into your zazen. It cannot hurt, and cannot be avoided in the long run.[1] Published on Soto Zen Net (www.sotozen-net.or.jp) on April 3rd, 2020Translated by Soto Zen Buddhism International Center * * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Returning from the political fray to the realities of daily life on Earth 2 — as the current popular trope would have it — I would like to delve into one of the teachings of Buddhism and Zen that may contribute to its misperception as being overly pessimistic. The “three marks” of dukkha, the Sanskrit word usually translated as “suffering,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” Usually, “dukkha” is related to specific aspects of life, specifically “aging, sickness and death,” as the three characteristics of all sentient existence. From the Tricycle web site we find: The Buddha taught that all phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, and experiences, are marked by three characteristics, or “three marks of existence”: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana. According to the Buddha, fully understanding and appreciating the three marks of existence is essential to realizing enlightenment. (It is a schema that is accepted in both Theravada and Mahayana schools, but more emphasized in the former.) Here we find a much broader, less personal definition of the three than “aging, sickness and death,” but as human beings, we are naturally more concerned with how they apply to our wellbeing most immediately and intimately, than how they function as universal principles. It seem to me that much of the chaos and uncertainty that we are currently witnessing in the social sphere is animated by the unsuccessful resolution of our personal relationship to these three marks, along with the built-in resistance to embracing them fully, with any measure of equanimity.As an octogenarian, I can personally testify to the inevitability of the first two, and their power taking precedence over all other dimensions of daily life, in due time. All you have to do is live long enough to find out for yourself. However, the Buddha apparently came to this conclusion, or confrontation, relatively early in life, in his mid-thirties, when we would expect him to be in the prime of life, though 2500 years ago, life expectancy was not what it is today. Let us consider each of them one at a time, from a problem-definition and problem-solving perspective. In passing, let me recall that the least emotionally-laden definition of dukkha is, simply, “change.” Nothing personal about it. Buddhists may be said to believe these teachings, rather than “believing in” them, as some of the online commentary would have it. As with all of the “compassionate teachings,” one's own first-person, experiential evidence will drive home the validity and veracity, as well as the long term priority, of these findings and conclusions of the Buddha. The only question becomes how – how do we comport ourselves in the context of these dominant aspects of our existence? The existence of suffering itself Buddha said we are to fully understand. And from the above quote, that understanding must of necessity begin with recognizing and appreciating these three most immediate considerations of life, beginning with aging, or impermanence. It does not help much to place our own impermanence in the context of universal impermanence. Misery may love company, but not that much.It might help to consider the question, When does aging begin? At the moment of birth? At the moment of conception? The current flap over in-vitro fertilization – as part of the larger ethical and ideological debate around all things related to birth control, or the larger category of reproductive health in general – illustrates that aging is actually well under way before conception. The eggs and sperm involved have limited viability, aging out of their own, micro-world shelf lives. Owing to a welcome assist from modern medicine, many of us can expect to live increasingly long lives, with notable exceptions in the form of further life-threatening causes and conditions attributed to the very success, and lack of due diligence, of the human species. In Zen, we hear various expressions such as “every moment reincarnation,” from my teacher, for instance. We read Master Dogen's framing of birth and death as “expression(s) complete this moment.” Buddha himself was said to have mentioned something to the effect that, owing to impermanence, there must be permanence. His monks were said to have been happy to hear this. One of the theories that I have read, attempting to explain the success of Buddhism spreading throughout history in its countries and cultures of origin, is that Buddha's followers were so relentlessly happy. So there is a kind of pervasive optimism in Zen and Buddhism, which is hard to explain in the context of impermanence and aging, let alone sickness and death. But just consider, in your own mind for a moment, the possibility that there were no aging. That we would all remain “forever young,” in the memorable phrase from the Bob Dylan tune. What would be the implications, both long- and short-term, of this reversal of biology? What if we did not age? (We can leave the discussion of illness and dying to upcoming segments.) Buddha rejected such speculation as ultimately futile, if taken seriously, but here, we want to treat it as a mere “thought experiment,” for the sake of shedding light on the actual causes and conditions of our existence, no harm no foul. In design circles this is a recognized process, called “synectics,” engaging in the seemingly irrelevant on the chance that it might turn out to be relevant. It is related to “Hegel's Dialectic,” seeing the existing “thesis,” a present manifestation of reality as impermanent, enabling our recognition and even ability to predict the emergence of the “antithesis” on the event horizon. The model goes on to predict the merging of thesis and antithesis into the new thesis, which arises, abides, changes and ultimately decays and disappears with the next cycle. And so on, and on, forever. Not coincidentally, this terminology of “merging” is used discerningly by Master Dogen in his envisioning the process of Zen realization in Shobogenzo Bendowa, if memory serves (emphasis mine): In stillness, mind and object merge in realizationand go beyond enlightenment If we consider aging in this startling, single-point reflection, how does that look? Buddha says, toward the end of his First Sermon: My heart's deliverance is unassailableThis is the last birthNow there is no more becoming If indeed it is possible to come to the end of “becoming,” is that tantamount to the end of aging? Is the essence of what Buddha and Dogen realized is that everything “else” is obviously aging and becoming something else? And must include the one observing the change. And that it has always been thus, from the very beginning. So what could go wrong? Just consider: If the very conditions that we all naturally worry about – all too often to an excessive, obsessive degree – have always obtained in the universe, long before our birth in this lifetime, and likely to persist and pertain long after our death; how can there be anything fundamentally amiss? Not that it's the best of all possible worlds, thank you Pangloss. But really, as a design-build professional, I can fantasize that I was in charge, and made the primordial decisions that determined that, if there is to be sentient existence, what will that look like? How do I make that work? But most ordinary human beings do not have that kind of hubris. They palm the fundamental questions off to a divine entity, the wizard's intent hidden behind the curtain of appearances. We simply accept the givens, try to understand and embrace them, and go from there. But there must have been a “before” – before the Big Bang, or the alternative Bounce. There must have been something – the “sound of silence,” and maybe nascent thought — preceding the “Word.” But then, all heaven and hell breaks loose, and here we are. In this moment. None of this explains anything, of course. Whatever framework we have been given to comprehend the brute fact of existence was totally made up by others. You learned that. And it can be unlearned. Zazen seems mainly a process of unlearning what we think. The very idea and ideal of longevity has only one value in this context, according to my feeble grasp of Zen's teachings: A better chance to wake up! In witnessing – or better, contemplating – aging, I am oft reminded of the unforgettable couplet from musical Zen master Dylan: Ah but I was so much older thenI'm younger than that now My sense of the relevance of aging and impermanence in the context of meditation and Dharma teachings is that, like the questionable linearity of the so-called “arrow of time” in theoretical quantum mechanics, taking the view that time is passing in a direction may be entirely arbitrary. What we may perceive — and more problematically, what we may interpret — as aging, may indeed be true, but only half the reality, as with all dualistic thinking. Perhaps we are growing younger at the same time, disencumbering ourselves with learned inhibitions, rules and regulations that no longer apply, as we mature to embrace emptiness. My idle conjecture on aging represents yet another variation on the theme of thinking independently and acting interdependently. This bears repetition: Sitting in zazen with the Zen community, we are nonetheless sitting alone. Any time we sit alone in zazen, we are joining the larger community of Zen practitioners. Somewhere in the world – at any time, day or night – someone is sitting in Zen meditation. We need flexibility of mind to approach Zen practice in this nondual sense, outside of time and space. In the next UnMind segment, we will take up the more abrupt, if no more tangible than aging, mark of “sickness,” which for some reason is not called out as such in the early translation. Maybe the prevalence of illnesses of all kinds was so much a part of daily life that it did not emerge as a perceivable isolate in the social awareness of the time. Meanwhile, as Buddha himself suggested, don't take my word for any of this. Check it out for yourself, on the cushion, and off.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Once again, allow me to address the sentiment prevalent amongst many Zen groups that the political realm is, and should remain, outside the pale - when it comes to topics appropriate to the scope of Buddhism and Zen. The “tongue of the Buddha” represented by the short, curled ceremonial stick carried by Zen priests (J. nyoi or katsu) is said to be “long and wide,” encompassing all four spheres of influence and action in my semantic model of real world Zen practice: the personal; the social; the natural; and the universal. In the social sphere, the political climate surely played a huge role – in Buddha's life and his decision to form the original order of Buddhist monastics – as well as in China, Japan, and other countries of origin.In our present situation, the incoming flack from the campaign looks more and more like the damaging hail from the record-setting onslaught of tornadoes and hurricanes being visited upon an ever-wider swath of the United States each year, in an ever-lengthening storm season, leaving major and minor damage in its wake. Unintended karmic consequence on a geologic scale.Looking into the rear-view mirror of history, we find that this — the issue of political leadership — has been a “known issue” throughout the development of Zen. From Taoism's roots in China, in “The Way of Life, According to Lao Tzu” (Capricorn Books, 1962), translated by Witter Bynner:17A leader is bestWhen people barely know that he exists,Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,Worst when they despise him.‘Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you';But of a good leader, who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say, ‘We did this ourselves.'Compare to protestations of wannabe leaders competing in the current campaign.Peering even further back into the fog of time, from “The Teaching of Buddha” we find the Buddha challenging philosophical and astrophysical speculation, as well as questioning the design intent of the optimum social order. In a shorter quote within a quote from last segment:In the search for truth there are certain questions that are unimportant. Of what material is the universe constructed? Is the universe eternal?... In what way is this human society put together? What is the ideal form of organization for human society?He follows with the admonition that:If a man were to postpone his searching and practicing for Enlightenment until such questions were solved, he would die before he found the path.In other words, whatever the political situation in which you may find yourself, get your personal priorities in order. Like everything else in life, the present political realm is impermanent, imperfect and insubstantial, the three marks of dukkha, the universal principle of change. Which change we find, more often than not, not to our liking.Then, after relating the famous metaphor of the man pierced with a poison arrow, he reminds us that: When a fire of passion is endangering the world, the composition of the universe matters little; what is the ideal form for the human community is not so important to deal with.Consider the various “fires of passion” now threatening our world on all fronts, and demanding a majority of our available bandwidth.Later, putting a fine point on it, the sage focuses squarely on personal training, while not ignoring the social, natural, and universal matrix of problems in which a person, then or now, is firmly enmeshed:The Buddha's teaching contains what is important to know and what is unimportant.Therefore, people should first discern what is the most important, what problem should be solved first and what is the most pressing issue for them. To do all this, they must first undertake to train their minds; that is, they must first seek mind-control.We have received our marching orders. “Mind-control” in this context does not carry the modern connotation of “brain-washing,” but the “discipline” side of the Eightfold Path: right effort, mindfulness, and meditation. In discerning the “problem that should be solved first,” we can not simply ignore causality – including proximate causes of political influence upon our lives. Perhaps the best way to deal with the repugnant pettiness of partisan politics is to continue comparing to the prescripts of Buddhism and Zen.The Repentance Verse, as translated by Shohaku Okumura-roshi in the Soto Zen Journal in February of 2004, on the Bodhisattva Precepts, is a good place to begin:All the twisted karma ever created by me, since of oldThrough beginningless greed, anger and ignoranceBorn of my body, speech and thoughtI now make complete repentance of it all“Twisted” may have overwrought undertones of neurosis, unlike the translation we usually chant. We repent our “past and harmful” karma – the litany of unhelpful, self-centered actions, and unintended consequences thereof – that we now “fully avow.” In other words, we are ‘fessing up, admitting that “mistakes were made.” Note that all this, however, comes with the territory of being a human being subject to the “three poisons,” various forms of greed, hatred and delusion that, though “born of this body, mouth, and mind,” comprise the “three actions” that can get us into trouble.How genuinely are our favorite candidates for public office manifesting this kind of self-awareness, accepting responsibility? How well are we, ourselves, doing in this regard?Okumura-roshi highlights the next steps in the traditional Precepts ceremony:The Three RefugesWe then take refuge in the Three Treasures: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The Buddha is the one who awakened to reality. The Dharma is reality itself, the way things truly are. The Sangha are the people who aspire to study and living according to the teaching of the reality of all beings.Taking refuge means, literally, returning to our true origins: our awakened nature; the reality in which we find ourselves; and like-minded folks struggling on the path. In today's political climate, the very notion of a shared reality seems under assault.The Threefold Pure [Precepts]Next, we receive the threefold pure precepts: (1) the precept of embracing moral codes, (2) the precept of embracing good deeds, (3) the precept of embracing all living beings. These three points are the direction we walk on the Bodhisattva path.Morality, as conventionally understood, also seems to be on the chopping block, or at least up for sale, in this election year cycle. Perhaps it was ever so, with one party's “good deeds” being another's social injustice. How do we embrace “all living beings,” when there are so many of them, competing for the same resources? And where, we might ask, have all the bodhisattvas gone?The Ten Major PreceptsThe ten major precepts are: (1) do not kill, (2) do not steal, (3) do not engage in improper sexual conduct, (4) do not lie, (5) do not deal in intoxicants, (6) do not criticize others, (7) do not praise self and slander others, (8) do not be stingy with the dharma or property, (9) do not give way to anger, (10) do not disparage the Three Treasures.We also express these prohibitory precepts with their positive side – “affirm life,” “be giving,” “honor the body,” “manifest truth,” and “proceed clearly” respectively – for the first five above, given to new initiates, for example. The second five are given to those who enter the formal path, with respect to the social consequences of representing Zen to the public, and so bear more scrutiny in the context of our political social servants. How closely are candidates for office at every level adhering to these admonitions, setting aside the Three Treasures, of which they may have little or no awareness.We could go on, with endless examples from the written record of Buddhist principles. For example, if we look at the Four Great Vows of the Bodhisattva path, we find:Beings are numberless; I vow to free themDelusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end themDharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter themThe Buddha way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize itCompare to various positions, platforms and policies proposed by pols and pundits – on immigration; income disparity; education; conventional truth; and the place of religion – in our efforts toward a “more perfect union.” How we doin' on those fronts?Jeffrey Lyons, a political science professor at Boise State University, found that “roughly three-quarters of kids who have two parents of the same party will fall on the same end of the political spectrum as their parents. As kids are growing up, their parents have an enormous amount of power in shaping their views.” (From: “Are Politics Hereditary?” – The Atlantic Jun 1, 2018).If true, this demographic factoid simplifies the picture enormously. We might conclude that the vast majority of voters are going to be biased in favor of their family and social history from childhood – nature and nurture – and not likely to be persuaded by rational or ideological argument, to switch allegiances. So much for independent thinking.So, once again, we return full-circle to the cushion. Do your own research, draw your own conclusions from your findings, and make your own recommendations to yourself for improving your chances of acting compassionately and wisely in the marketplace of politics, as well as within the community of folks who would rather not have to deal with politics at all. The ability to do so is surely more dependent upon our personal approach to meditation, than upon our social skills. Only if we are independent of the influence of ideology and partisan political pressures can we act interdependently for the good of all.We will revisit the political scene in July, when we celebrate Jukai, true independence. Until then, “Don't give up!”* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Continuing with our theme: the importance of independent thought and interdependent action to the future of Zen in America, we must define the design intent of our program in the current context of uncertainty. The accelerating pace of change, including geometrically expanding attractions and distractions in the secular and now digital world, gives our task a certain urgency. As we touched on last time, from Master Dogen's record of live teachings late in his career, Shobogenzo Zuimonki: Even in the secular world, it is said that unity of mind is necessary for the sake of maintaining a household or protecting a castle. If unity is lacking, the house or the castle will eventually fall. Similarly, Honest Abe declared that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The great unifying principle underlying Zen, then, is this “unity of mind.” But it begs the question of what precisely we mean, by “mind.” Usually our mind – the “monkey mind” anyway – is anything but unified. It may indeed be unified against all comers; or unified in its stubborn clinging to its own opinion; but it is not unified in the sense that I think Master Dogen meant. And it is not the mind characterized by dependent thinking and codependent action, as in “we are of the same mind,” or “like-minded people.” As in the past, the future of Zen comes down to the transmission of this unified mind, which cannot be transmitted directly. Transmission of the method of unifying the mind – which is one meaning implied in the Japanese word sesshin, an intensive, extended retreat – is where we can focus our attention, and plan the design intent of our process around it. In a present and future world increasingly transformed by digital technology and virtual engagement, we may need to rethink the traditional parameter of face-to-face transmission, honored as the most efficacious pedagogy in the history of Zen. However, when we can meet in a virtual room from virtually anywhere in the world, the face-to-face connection becomes one of interfacing video screens. This option was not available in the history of Zen, to belabor the obvious. Objections to an argument that this kind of transaction may suffice to transmit the Dharma include that the perceived teacher-student environment may be colored by such tinkering as phony backgrounds and visual enhancements of lighting and filters, along with stage-setting and costuming designed to play to the camera. In the context of direct Dharma transmission, these amount to additional layers of delusion heaped upon the underlying distortions of conscious perception and conception built into the monkey mind. What is missing in the virtual world is the rest of the story, what transpires behind the screen – the day-in and day-out mutual observation of behaviors and attitudes under less-than-ideal or challenging circumstances – wherein transactional exchanges of personalities and communication in the real-world dynamic of the teacher and student relationship enables “coming to accord” with the teacher's worldview, which is hopefully “Right View.” In Dogen's Jijuyu Zammai – Self-fulfilling Samadhi, he points out the importance of this relationship and its hoped-for outcome: From the first time you meet a master, without engaging in bowing, incense offering, chanting Buddha's name, repentance or reading scripture, you should just wholeheartedly sit, and thus drop away body and mind. Along with establishing the secondary supporting role of Zen's protocols, rituals, and the written record, he goes on to declare that this “dropping off” of body and mind is tantamount to Buddha's insight, and that it completely transforms your world: When even for a moment you express the Buddha's seal by sitting upright in samadhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. Later in the same passage he profiles the transition that occurs when the student becomes the master: Those who receive these water-and-fire benefits spread the Buddha's guidance based on original awakening; because of this, all those who live with you and speak with you will obtain endless buddha virtue, and will unroll widely – inside and outside of the entire universe – the endless, unremitting, unthinkable, unnamable buddha-dharma. The telling phrase is “all those who live with you.” A compelling question for lay householder Zen practitioners today is, Do we need to actually “live with” a teacher, or within a residential community, in order to apprehend the true Dharma? And if so, how do we go about implementing that design intent, within the practical constraints of maintaining a household, holding down a job, and raising a family? Or do we all have to become monastics? In which case, Zen is just another program for a privileged few. Dogen's effusive celebration of awakening to the truth of Buddhism as received wisdom includes – and is implicitly dependent upon – your relationship with your teacher. In Dogen's narrative, he must be referencing his lived experience with Rujing in China. But it raises the question of exceptions to the general rule, such as the example of Shakyamuni himself, or Huineng, Sixth Patriarch in China. The case that one absolutely must have a teacher cannot be made – any more than it can be proven that one absolutely must practice zazen – in order to experience the insight of Zen. In research circles, we hear phrases such as “participant observation” to define this kind of intimate, all-embracing investigation of another person's world and approach to coping with it. The adage about walking a mile in someone else's shoes captures the difficulty of getting far enough beyond ourselves, to be able to truly understand the worldview of someone else. In the martial, plastic and performing arts and crafts, as well as trades, guilds, and other apprentice-journeyman-master modes of learning, we see parallels to that of the Zen master and student, where the craft is transmitted mainly through nonverbal observation, closely following the approach of the trainer until it becomes second-nature to the novice. But in the complex society that we encounter today, the possibility and potential payoff of living together, in order to effect a transmission of mind-to-mind seems more and more a pipe dream of a past reality that may no longer apply, and in fact may never have been the norm. Garnered from such collections as “The Transmission of the Lamp” from Song dynasty China, anecdotes from the millennia-long history of Zen begin to look like a mixed bag of long-term and short-term encounters and exchanges between masters and students, and master to master, as well as between students. The resultant impression is that handing down the Dharma from generation to generation was largely a matter of monastics living in large and small communities, but also hermits living in isolation, being visited by other monks and nuns on pilgrimage, and occasional lively set-tos with lay people, women in particular. Notable exceptions to the monastic model include influential lay practitioners such as Vimalakirti in Buddha's time, and Layman Pang and others later in China and Japan. A line in the seminal Ch'an poem Hsinhsinming says, “For the unified mind in accord with the Way, all self-centered striving ceases.” The operative phrase here might be “in accord with the Way.” The “Way” being the Tao of Taoism. Which is a catchall phrase for the natural order of things, with which we want to come into harmony. This unified mind is the Original Mind, capital O – capital M – which we rediscover in our meditation, after sitting still enough and upright enough, for long enough. So the central focus of our practice in the personal sphere has not changed, and our marching – or sitting – orders remain the same: hie thee to the cushion. With or without a teacher. Secure in the assurance that when the time is ripe, your teacher will appear. In due time, you may even find yourself in the unenviable position of being regarded as a teacher of Zen. Further on in the Shobogenzo Zuimonki, the great founding Master talks about what it takes to herd the cats: 5 — 17There is a proverb, “Unless you are deaf and dumb, you cannot become the head of a family.” In other words, if you do not listen to the slander of others and do not speak ill of others, you will succeed in your own work. Only a person like this is qualified to be the head of a family. Although this is a worldly proverb, we must apply it to our way of life as monks. How do we practice the Way without being disturbed by the slandering remarks of others, and without reacting to the resentment of others, or speaking of the right or wrong of others? Only those who thoroughly devote even their bones and marrow to the practice can do it. Thank you, Dogen, for your candor and real-world practicality. It certainly resonates with my experience. If we read between the lines, we can see that Dogen's life, and that of his monks, was apparently not always as ideally serene and transcendent as we may prefer to imagine. People are people, and were the same hot mess in 13th century Japan as they are today. Maybe even worse. In the next segment we will continue with past as prologue to present, and present as perhaps prescient for the future of Zen. Your comments and response are, as always, welcome and encouraged. You know where to find me.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last UnMind segment on “Election Year Zen,” we stressed Zen's emphasis on thinking independently and acting interdependently, as a kind of rule of thumb for approaching the quadrennial campaign and politics in general. Returning to the main theme running through the UnMind podcast, the intersection of design thinking and Zen, the importance of independent thought and interdependent action to the future of Zen in America, and the world at large, takes on an even more central role. Especially in the context of Buddha's teaching of the codependent origination of all things sentient – the comprehensive model of the Twelvefold Chain. Physics might agree that even the insentient universe is co-arisen, despite the singularity of the “Big Bang.” The following thoughts were first shared in my opening remarks for the Silent Thunder Order's annual conference in 2022, themed “Clarifying Interdependence.” The title of my address was “Future Zen: Thinking Independently; Acting Interdependently” Buddha himself was clearly an independent thinker, the original Order of monks and nuns, an example of interdependent action, choosing to relinquish their place in the social order and hierarchy of the time, with its rigid caste system. Buddha was also a problem-solver of the highest order, having defined the problem of existence itself in terms of suffering, and prescribed a solution based on the real-world context, articulated as the Middle Way, and modeled as the Four Noble Truths, including the Eightfold Path as the plan of action. Simply stated, the propagation of genuine Soto Zen practice in America is the logical extension of that plan, but in order to realize that potential, we must adapt the design intent of the Zen mission to the cultural and technological evolution that has taken place over two-and-a-half millennia. Nevertheless, the basic challenge to practice has remained the same. As we chant in the Dharma opening verse: The unsurpassed, profound and wonderous Dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it. May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata's truth. Accepting that the unsurpassed Dharma is rarely realized, even under the best of circumstances, we proceed with the Zen mission with lowered expectations, commensurate with geometrically expanded distractions currently on offer. These days, Buddha would not draw the typical crowd that attends a professional sports venue, nor even smaller concert venues. He might attract a considerable following online, however. Seeing and hearing the Dharma is now often first encountered online, via searching the plethora of web sites devoted to posting the teachings of Buddha and his successors, by following podcasts, or downloading audiobooks. “Doing your research,” as we say. For my generation, television may have been the medium in which one first discovered the hoofprints of the ox, in the form of the “Kung Fu” series of the 1970s. Seeing and hearing the true Dharma – as well as accepting and maintaining it – is still, however, a low-tech enterprise, requiring only the instrument of the human body, sitting upright and still in meditation. Unfolding the meaning of it, however, is another matter altogether, a near-impossible order of difficulty. In effect, it has to reveal itself to us. Meanwhile, we face a variety of conflicting interpretations of Zen, from the cultural milieu and idioms of today. For example, Zen is not really, or merely, a social program, as many of its proponents seem to feel. Interdependent action certainly entails the recognition of suffering in the form of social injustice, and the principle of karmic retribution does not explain or justify ignoring the suffering of others. The teachings of Buddhism are meant, first and foremost, to provide a mirror to ourselves, reflecting the good, bad, and the ugly without discrimination; focusing our attention upon our own follies, foibles, and foolishness; definitely not to be held up to criticize others. Our implementation of the “design of Zen” to-date – including the incorporation of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) in 1977, and the umbrella organization of the Silent Thunder Order (STO) in 2010 – has been intended to establish and maintain a stable training center, along with a service organization as we attracted affiliate centers, to facilitate the process of propagating what is called “Dogen Zen,” with the same intent of its 13thcentury founder, and his successors, especially Keizan Jokin Zenji. I use the term “design,” as this has been an intentional design process. ASZC is the home temple & training center of the STO network of affiliates, resulting from a group process of the individual efforts, financial support, and community service of hundreds of people over the past half-century or so. In carrying out this design intent, we are extending the legacy and lineage of our founding teacher, Matsuoka-roshi, who would frequently remind us that “Zen is always contemporary.” In a book surveying the origins of Zen in America, “Zen Master Who?” (2006), by James Ishmael Ford, we learn: Soyu Matsuoka ranks with Nyogen Sengaki and Sokei-an as one of the first teachers to make his home and life work in North America. He also seems to be the first teacher to clearly and unambiguously give Dharma transmission to Western students. I would add that these pioneers of American Zen also belong in the rarified ranks of those ancestors who traveled great distances and crossed cultural boundaries to bring the genuine practice to another country, a whole other continent, like Bodhidharma, and Dogen Zenji. Sensei, as he modestly asked us to call him, also is credited with opening the first Zen meditation hall, or zendo, for westerners. Needless to say, I was one of those Western students he transmitted, though he did so informally, rather than by the formal standards of Soto Shu, the headquarters in Japan. We inherit his estimable legacy and lineage, as well as those of the Kodo Sawaki-Uchiyama lineage, thanks to Shohaku Okumura-roshi. We also enjoy a link to that of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi through Seirin Barbara Kohn-roshi, who graciously agreed to be my Preceptor for my formal Transmission, or “Shiho” ceremony, after hosting my 90-day training period at Austin Zen Center in 2007. We may be somewhat unique in the American Zen cohort, having received formal recognition from three recognized priests, including pre- and post-WWII generation Japanese patriarchs, as well as an American Zen matriarch. Let us do what we can to honor our predecessors. We honor them most appropriately by thinking independently and acting interdependently. Before considering the future of Zen in America, we could do worse than to take a look at its past. In the Shobogenzo Zuimonki, collected and compiled under the direction of one of his dharma successors, Koun Ejo Zenji, some of Master Dogen's more offhand comments and spontaneous inspirations are recorded, apparently with little editing, much like our publications of “The Kyosaku” and “Mokurai,” the collected talks of O-Sensei. Dogen instructed, 4 — 13It is said in the secular world that a castle falls when people start to whisper words within its walls. It is also said that when there are two opinions in a house, not even a pin can be bought; when there is no conflict of opinions, even gold can be purchased. Even in the secular world, it is said that unity of mind is necessary for the sake of maintaining a household or protecting a castle. If unity is lacking, the house or the castle will eventually fall. Much more, should monks who have left home to study under a single teacher be harmonious like the mixture of water and milk. There is also the precept of the six ways of harmony.* Do not set up individual rooms, nor practice the Way separately either physically or mentally. [Our life in this monastery is] like crossing the ocean on a single ship. We should have unity of mind, conduct ourselves in the same way, give advice to each other to reform each other's faults, follow the good points of others, and practice the Way single-mindedly. This is the Way people have been practicing since the time of the Buddha. Echoes of Honest Abe's house divided against itself… a footnote explains the “six ways” reference: *The unity of the three actions – those of body, mouth, and mind, keeping the same precepts, having the same insight, and carrying on the same practice. This same precepts, insight and practice includes the harmony of sameness and difference, not an absolute identity. The milk-and-water bit reminds me of Sri Ramakrishna's expression that, like the swan, you have to be able to drink only the milk, mixed with water, to grasp the truth of this existence. This is the nonduality of duality. So here is the great unifying principle underlying Zen practice from the time of Buddha and Dogen down to the present. The past is prologue to the present, as is the present to the future, of Zen. This may not be true of our contemporary cultural and political institutions, however, as we are witnessing. Let us turn to Zen for something more substantial to hang our hopes on for the future. We will have to leave it here for now. Be sure to join us for the next three segments of UnMind, which will round out this contemporary take on the design intent of future Zen.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last episode of UnMind, we concluded our review of the design intent of the Three Treasures of Buddhism. In this segment, we return to the current state of the campaign for political leadership of the country. My intent in these essays regarding the practice of Zen in an election year cycle is not to persuade or convince anyone of anything, other than the efficacy of sitting in zazen to straighten this mess out for yourself. I will try to make the case that it ‑ the political discourse ‑ is not at all disconnected from the Three Treasures. After all, the design of the three branches of government, and even partisan politics, are nothing more than manifestations of the community writ large – however subject to manipulation and distortion by special interest groups and individuals who may not honor the harmony of the larger Sangha, as their highest ideal. To be clear, I am not interested in getting out the vote, or influencing your vote. I regard politics as only one of the multifarious – and perhaps nefarious – arenas of civic action available to us in modern times. But because the unremitting and relentless campaign is currently taking all the oxygen out of the air, and threatens to do so for some time, more than ever should we turn to our own council, and tend to our own knitting, on the cushion. Zen meditation provides a safe haven, a dependable redoubt, for refreshing our resolve to take action in the most compassionate way, but informed by the wisdom of the ancestors. The political pageantry of the moment is subject to the cardinal marks of dukkha – impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality – perhaps more than any other dimension of existence. We can regret, or rejoice, at its passing. It is also a given that most of those in positions of power and influence do not have the wisdom and compassion of the Dharma forming their guiding principles, nor even that of the founding documents of the republic. Nor can we claim that the clarity of Buddha's wisdom, or buddha-nature, resides at the heart of the American cult of the individual. In spite of the complexity, confusion, and downright contrariness of human nature, in coming to terms with the polity, I think I speak for all the ancestors of Zen in saying that our recommendation remains the same, regarding the spectrum, or spectacle, of governance across the countries of the globe, and the span of centuries since the advent of Buddhism in India. Physical samadhi is first in priority – more centered and balanced, less off-kilter, in the form of sitting upright and still, in zazen as well as kinhin, walking meditation. Then follows emotional samadhi – manifesting as more calmness, less anxiety. Then mental samadhi – fostering more clarity and less confusion, especially as to the deeper meaning and ramifications of the compassionate teachings. And finally, social samadhi – finding more harmony and less friction, in personal and social relationships. Girding our loins, as it were, with the “sword of Manjusri,” cutting through delusion, and reentering the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands. By starting at the center of things, the personal sphere, eventually we may find our way in the social, natural, and even the universal spheres of influence that surround us, bringing the eyes and ears, and helping hands, of the bodhisattva to bear upon the suffering of the world. A large dollop of humility, and perhaps a healthy sense of humor, may be in order. We have introduced the notion that what we are doing in Zen training is, after all, only developing our penchant for independent thinking, along with its counterpart, a capacity for interdependent action. This is the tightrope we walk, while keeping all the balls in the air, of the many influences surrounding us. The nexus of near-infinite causes and conditions can bring about analysis paralysis if we succumb to the usual approach to defining and solving problems based on self-defense. What is called for is recognition and acceptance of the Japanese proverb cited by Master Dogen: “Fall down seven times; get up eight!” We need to give ourselves permission to fail in the social realm. Partisanship in politics requires that we suspend independent thinking. We are often prevailed upon to subscribe to views and opinions that may not be fully vetted or justified, in order to take advantage of the opportunities of the moment, to win over sufficient numbers of voters to the cause. But when we examine the sources of the ideological divide, it seems that underlying factors, which would fall into the skandha of “mental formations,' or unconscious volition, may play a greater role than we think. Further to the point, a recent article in the New York Times by Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at Colby College, titled “Are You Thinking for Yourself?” approached the problem of ideological division from a demographical perspective: If you're trying to guess whether people are Republicans or Democrats, knowing a few basic facts about them will take you a long way. What's their race and gender? How far did they get in school? What part of the country do they live in and is their community urban, suburban, or rural? He goes on to support the point with examples, which we will not detail here. His basic conclusion is that your demographics often determine what you believe, in regards to your general worldview, as well as political leanings. A seemingly determinative factor is that of the influence of parents and family. A majority of partisans of the new generation reflect the ideology of their parentage, apparently going back for generations. From this we might conclude that the vast majority of voters are going to be biased in favor of their family and social history from childhood – nature and nurture – and not likely to be persuaded by rational or ideological argument to switch allegiances. This suggests that the majority of campaign messages and ads attempting to sway so-called independents and moderates to join one camp or another may be a waste of time and money. It might be more effective to track the generational histories of constituencies, homing in on the genetically captive audience, known colloquially as “the base.” New coalitions may be limited by this unseen dimension, holding steady through generations. Please indulge an exercise involving simple mathematics, something we do not often engage in to make a point about Zen, or the teachings of Buddhism. But we have to admit that a major factor in differentiating our lives and times from those of our Zen ancestors is the burgeoning population and geometrically expanding demographics of the modern age. Pardon me while I “do the math,” with an assist from my onboard calculator, using search results from online sources, both inaccessible to the ancients. The current US population is estimated at about 333 million, of which roughly 240 million, or 72% of the total, are eligible to vote. In 2020, around 66% of those eligible actually registered and voted, a record, but representative of less than 50% of the total population. The Democrat candidate won the election with a little over 51% of the vote, while the Republican candidate lost, with about 47% of the vote. Political spending in the 2020 election totaled $14.4 billion – more than doubling the total cost of the also record-breaking 2016 cycle – according to opensecrets.org. So the last victory came at a cost of about $2000 a vote, if my math is correct. Even though a record 60-plus percent of eligible voters turned out in the 2020 election, the final decision was made by a miniscule fraction – 0.03% -- of the total, assuming the count was accurate, and that my math is close enough for jazz. Throw in the electoral college, with its handful of “swing states,” and the final decision comes down to a cohort less than the population of the metro area of Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas. Yet the winners (and losers) not only endeavor to rewrite history to favor their cause, they also claim to enjoy the mandate of “the American people,” a tiny portion of whom actually put them in office. Or threw them out. The losing side famously claimed the election was stolen through voter fraud, though the electoral college tally came in at 306 to 232, a decisive difference, along with the overage of multiple millions of voters in the popular vote. But, as we hasten to say, that's a story for another day. Who are we to argue the truth of politics? Zen calls upon us to challenge the truth of our very senses! So we have to look at whatever leaders we get as being “the leaders we deserve,” in the context of a system demonstrably incapable of representing the “will of the people,” let alone “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The fact that a large percentage opt out, and others are disenfranchised, belies a foundational tenet of the democratic republic: “one man-one vote.” This remains an ideal, one that may be forever out of reach, even with our vaunted technical connectivity. It may come down to a matter of free will, or the inexorable ignorance of the modern hoi polloi. Nobody is legally required to vote, after all, which may be a good thing. Further into the article, Gross generalizes: Although there are certainly people whose politics defy generalization, the underlying demographic tendencies are powerful predictors of belief – powerful enough that elections have become as much a turnout game as an exercise in persuasion. Do tell. But if it takes $2 grand a pop to get a single person to the polls, one has to question whether it is possible to turn that massive a “push” into a “pull,” to borrow from marketing terminology. Of course, there are those who would question whether it is wise to target people who are disinclined to vote in the first place. How informed would their choices likely be, if they are finally dragged out of their inertia, and into the polls? Gross concludes his essay with a turn to something deeper, the humanity underlying our behavior, including political activism: By all means, let's duke it out in the public sphere and at the ballot box. You'll fight for you interests and I'll fight for mine. That's democracy in a big, diverse, boisterous nation. But if we could bear in mind that we sometimes stumble into our most passionately held beliefs, the tenor of our discourse might be a bit saner and more cordial. The fact that we are all deeply social creatures, in politics and otherwise, underscores our shared humanity – something that we would be wise to never lose sight of. Whether or not you agree with the implicit assumption that making the tenor of our public discourse saner and more cordial would be a good thing – many seem to feel the opposite, that the squeakier the wheel, the more grease it will get – most would probably agree with the appeal to our shared humanity, and recognize the lamentable truism of frequently stumbling into our most passionately held beliefs. Aye, there's the rub – that our actions within the social sphere, including the political arena, are too often based on belief, rather than reality. Here is where Zen comes in. The deeper implicit assumption is that our shared humanity is necessarily a good thing. But I think Buddhism points to something deeper. We do not aspire to human nature in Zen – we aspire to buddha nature. Meaning to wake up to the deeper meaning and implications of our lives – our very existence – beyond the immediate and local causes and conditions impinging upon us, including the political machinations of our fellow travelers. Again, my intent in these essays is to emphasize the necessity of the practice of Zen in an election year cycle, not to persuade you of anything, other than the efficacy of sitting in zazen to straighten this mess out for yourself. That said, or resaid, I do encourage you to vote. You will make the right choice, informed by your meditation, I am sure. In the next episode of UnMind, we will return to considerations of more broadly focused adaptation of design thinking principles of problem definition and potential solutions in everyday life, of which politics is only one, if one of the most noisy and noisome.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last two episodes of UnMind, we continued our review of the design intent of the Three Treasures of Buddhism, first focusing on joining the Sangha, or Zen community; then on studying the Dharma. In this segment, we will analyze practicing what Buddha himself did, the central and indispensable method of Zen's meditation. I have written extensively elsewhere on how zazen differs from other styles of meditation. Herein we will examine its more physical aspects, and how they may help determine its effectiveness. While the other two legs of the Buddhist stool are necessary for a well-balanced Zen life on social and intellectual levels, zazen is the most crucial and pivotal practice on the personal level. According to Soto Zen, upright seated mediation is necessary to open the Dharma gate to genuine insight. It is Dogen's “excellent method,” that he asserted “carries on the Buddha's teaching endlessly.” When we examine in minute detail the sitting posture, the full breathing cycle, and the focus of attention recommended in zazen, we cannot help but feel incredulous at its simplicity, that something so basic and simple as sitting still enough, upright enough, and long enough, could have any substantive effect on consciousness itself. When it comes to design intent, usually we can look for ways to tweak the design of a given product or process, here and there, to see if we can improve it. Zazen is already so simple that those tweaks have been done, and long ago. There is not much to the method that can be further refined, or eliminated. The zafu itself, the sitting cushion, is likewise nearly irreducibly simple, a design presumably first developed in China. In production processes used to implement various design-build systems, we look for what are termed “secondary” operations. They may force changes in the setup of the assembly line; or call for additional equipment; or require multiple phases. We may find that we can eliminate certain of these extra steps, or combine them with other operations, to make the process more efficient, i.e. streamlined. Early examples include the Ford assembly line. It is important to arrange the steps in any production process in the proper sequence, to avoid wasted time and motion. A technical early version of this approach is called “critical path management,” or CPM. One of its terms, the “true antecedent,” a critical piece in getting the sequence right, might apply to Zen. What would be the true antecedent to insight ‑ Buddha's awakening ‑ to take the least obvious, but penultimate example? In Soto Zen, we would lobby for zazen, probably. But, as Bodhidharma is credited with saying, meditation it is not absolutely necessary to insight. He indicated that all one has to do is “grasp the vital principle.” In other words, no causal connection can be dependably established between the act of sitting in zazen, and the triggering of Dharmic insight. It happens that most of us are not ripe and ready enough for that level of grasping, and we are carrying a lot of conceptual weight, so we need to spend some time in our meditation, to jettison the excess baggage. The great Indian sage is also recognized for bringing the direct practice of zazen to China. He created a model during meditation of four levels of observation: the breath; physical sensations; emotional sensations or mood swings; and conceptual constructions. Notably, his four-pointed model is in itself such a construction. One conclusion that he drew from this approach is that, like the breath, we realize that the other three dimensions are impermanent, ever-changing. And so must be the observer. Using Matsuoka-roshi's threefold division into what he termed “dispositions” – posture, breath, and attention – we can examine them one at a time to determine their design intent. A caveat: “design intent” is more tightly focused than intent in general. It is connected to function, as in the old design saw coined by 19th Century architect Louis H. Sullivan, “form follows function.” Of course, our larger or deeper intent in practicing Zen goes to the Buddhist skandha of “mental formations,” sometimes rendered as intention, motive or desire; the multivarious purposes underlying the “three actions” of body, mouth, and mind. That may be a subject for another time. For now, let's begin by looking at the posture. Of the four cardinal postures – standing, sitting, walking, or lying down, as mentioned in the Metta Sutta – why would sitting be the posture of choice for meditation? For one, it is obviously the most efficient in terms of energy consumption, other than lying down, compared to which, sitting is more conducive to alertness, as we are accustomed to sleeping in a horizontal position. The upright aspect of the sitting posture is crucial. Aligning our bilaterally symmetrical skeleton and musculature is the most direct way to achieve equipoise, a state of equilibrium within the forcefield of gravity. When the body is arrayed in this position, the spine and spinal cord become our “zero axis” in spacetime, the center of our being in the matrix of the proximate physical causes and conditions of existence. This is the physical basis of “samadhi” ‑ centeredness and balance ‑ the key to entering stillness. Arching the small of the back, and pulling back on the chin, we establish two pressure-points, one at the base of the spine and one the base of the neck, which pull the spine into its natural s-curve, resulting in what Matsuoka-roshi described as a “sitting-mountain feeling,” one of immense stability. He would comment that when the posture is reaching a state of perfection, it feels as if you are pushing the crown of your head against the ceiling, like a column or post. But with the caveat that we always aim at the perfect posture, never imagining that we have achieved it. Standing shares this upright alignment, but the entire weight of the body is delivered to the roughly square foot of the surface area of the feet and ankles, rather than distributed over the three-pointed base of the cross-legged posture (“full lotus,” J. kekka fuza), or similarly, the kneeling posture (J. seiza). Walking is obviously infinitely more complex, though walking meditation (J. kinhin) is certainly effective, dubbed “zazen in motion.” Minimal supporting gear is the one concession that Zen seems to make to our natural desire for physical comfort, perching on a cushion (J. zafu) on top of a square mat (J. zabuton) or kneeling on the seiza bench. But I think the lift has to do with maintaining the proper disposition of the angle between the upright spine and the body's main hinge at the hip joint. We sit slightly forward on the cushion or chair so that the hips are above the knees, at an angle of about 10 or 15 degrees to the floor. This allows the weight of the trunk and upper body to distribute equally between the knees resting on the mat and the “sitz” bones that form the bottom of the pelvis. These two arching protuberances form a kind of built-in rocking chair, which, when the lower back is properly arched, provides a stable base on the cushion or kneeling bench, as well as on a chair. In the cross-legged postures in particular, when resistance arises in the knees or in the back, it is our body telling us that we are pitched too far forward, in the former case, or leaning too far backward, in the latter. Matsuoka-roshi often noted that we have to keep making small adjustments to the posture over time, “working your way through every bone in your body,” to finally find that “sweet spot” right in the middle. The rocking motion that we are encouraged to engage at the beginning and end of each session of zazen helps us find the center of the upright and balanced posture. Starting with a large, arcing pendulum swing to the left and right, forward and back, and / or around in circle, we gradually decrease the length of the arc to a smaller and smaller swing, or spiral, until it comes to center. In this way we can correct our own posture from time to time, and particularly when first settling into the posture. It also allows for the body's muscles and connective hard tissue to stretch and adapt for the greatest level of comfort. Zazen, as we say, should be the “comfortable way.” Reversing this motion at the end of the sit, starting with a small, then gradually larger pendulum swing, allows the body to loosen up, and relieve any numbness that may have set in during the session. Numbness does not necessarily indicate poor circulation, but the natural adaptation of the body to sitting still for long periods of time. In summary, we are looking to recover, or rediscover, the natural posture. In more primitive times, our ancestors sat around the campfire, sitting upright and still while hunting, in order not to spook the prey. Your body knows this posture. Listen to it. The design intent of the zazen posture is, in one sense, to return to our normal, natural posture, while remaining fully alert. The same may be said of the breath. The natural breath adapts to the pressures of the moment. When walking or running, we palpitate, breathing rapidly, and often, irregularly. When we lie down to sleep, our breath slows down to a more regular rhythm. Sitting in zazen is a bit like falling asleep while staying awake. Our body knows this natural breath, just as it knows the upright, balanced posture. In zazen, we relinquish our usual effort to control the body in terms of resistance to pain, allowing ourselves to go beyond our normal comfort zone. Likewise, we drop our tendency to control the breath, other than occasionally counting it, or some other measure of inducing more strict observation. We begin to see the breath slowing down as the body settles into stillness. If we pay close attention, we can feel our heartbeat slowing as well. We enter into a deeper stillness, our more natural state of being. While adjustments to the posture are primarily physical, we move beyond the purely physical as we turn our attention to the breath and attention itself. Traditional zazen instructions emphasize attitudinal adjustments, observing the natural process of breathing and thinking with scientific detachment, and less controlling impulses. This is especially helpful in dealing with the tendency of discriminating mind (S. citta) to vacillate, from one extreme position to another, just as the breath is continually shifting from inhaling to exhaling. We are all bi-polar to some extent. The analytical function of the mind is skewed toward self-survival, triggering the so-called “monkey mind,” that frantic, chattering creature behind the all-too-familiar internal dialog. The idea of “breath control” is ingrained in the culture, perhaps primarily through the popularization of yoga in the West, but also incorporated in such areas of endeavor as athletics, aerobic exercise, and technical training in singing, or playing wind instruments. The body is actually controlling the breath, in a subliminal context of oxygen deprivation relative to the degree of physical exertion involved in sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, exercising or running, as the case may be. Our degree of control over the breath on a conscious, intentional level is minimal. The main reason Zen meditation asks us to focus our attention on the breath is that, usually, we do not. Raising awareness of the cycle of breathing ‑ which is, after all, our main lifeline ‑ returns our attention to what is most important in life. The heartbeat represents a deeper level, the metronome of life. When we turn our attention to attention itself, we have reached the apogee of attention, having come full circle. Now, we are paying attention to attention itself. Here is where we begin to see the genius of Tozan Ryokai's cryptic: “Although it is not constructed, it is not beyond words; like facing a precious mirror, form and reflection behold each other.” Bodhidharma was not contemplating the wall, as the visiting pundits of China thought; he was contemplating nothing in particular, everything in general. Or we might say he was contemplating contemplation itself. The “self selfing self,” as Uchiyama-roshi termed it, in his unique turn-of-a-phrase, conjuring a “turning phrase” (J. wato) to describe the indescribable, the ineffable essence of objectless meditation (J. shikantaza). Here, once again, we have come to the end of language. As I closed the session on the design intent of Dharma, Buddhism's truth is uniquely experiential. Master Dogen's intent is the same as that of all Zen ancestors past, future, and present: apprising us of the futility of pursuing literal, linear understanding, especially in its manifestation as verbal expression. We are to turn our attention, instead, to the immediate and intimate, dropping away of the self of body and mind, before interpretation can interfere. For more detail on Zen's meditative approach to posture, breath and attention, listen to UnMind podcasts #119, #120 and #121. In the next segment, we will return to examining the passing pageantry of the endless, unremitting quadrennial, election-year campaign, from the unique perspective of Zen Buddhism.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment of UnMind, we took up the most social of the Three Treasures: Sangha, or community. In this segment, we will continue with our analysis of the design of Dharma study; and in the next, that of Buddha practice, Zen's unique meditation, or zazen. These three constitute the highest values and manifestations of Buddhism in the real world, and the simplest model for the comprehensive nature of living a Zen life. They are regarded as three legs, without any one of which the stool of Zen is unstable. Design intent is reflected in their modus operandi, message, and method, respectively. Dharma study consists in reviewing and contemplating the “compassionate teachings,” the message transmitted by Shakyamuni and the ancestors down to the present day. While they were all, in effect, “speaking with one voice,” nonetheless Dharma ranks second in importance and emphasis, as an adjunct to meditation, just as Sangha comes in third, in providing the harmonious community and conducive environment for Zen. As referenced in Dogen's Jijuyu Zammai – Self-fulfilling Samadhi: Grass, trees and walls bring forth the teaching for all beingsCommon people as well as sages The “walls” are the infrastructure that was built around personal and communal practice in the form of our sitting space at home, grass hut hermitages, and meditation halls of temples, centers, or monasteries. This is the millennia-old design-build activity of the ancestors attested to by the stupas of India and the monasteries of China, Tibet, Japan, and the Far East, the legacy inherited by modern proponents of Zen in the West. Dharma likewise has been codified, collected, and contained in tangible documents, originally in the form of rice paper scrolls, now in books distributed worldwide in hardbound and paperback format. My own two current volumes in print ‑ “The Original Frontier” and “The Razorblade of Zen” ‑ were actually printed and bound in India, the home country of Buddhism They are also, or will soon be, available in electronic form, as eBooks and audiobooks accessible to virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is as if Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion – s/he of the innumerable eyes and ears needed to see and hear the sights and sounds of dukkha in the world, with innumerable arms and hands bringing the tools necessary to help ‑ has come to be manifested globally, in the form of the worldwide network of mobile media. By means of which her ongoing witness to the suffering of the world is also recorded for posterity. Thus, the potential for Dharma to have an effect on the world at large has expanded exponentially, as in the vow: “I take refuge in Dharma, the compassionate teachings.” Taking refuge in the Dharma means returning ‑ or “fleeing back” ‑ to the original truths or laws of existence, and our place in it. Consider what the first teachings of Buddha really had to say, and what was their intended effect upon the audience. The First Sermon lays out the essential logic of the Middle Way, and its avoidance of extremes of attitudes and approaches to the fundamental problem of existence as a sentient, human being. The design intent of the Dharma as expounded by Shakyamuni Buddha, was, as far as we can determine from the written record, to correct the conventional wisdom of the time, which I take to have been primarily based on beliefs and doctrines of Hinduism. One well-known example is his teaching of anatta or anatman, a refutation of the Hindu belief in a self-existent soul, or atman. Not being a scholar, I am basing this on my scant study of the canon and the opinion of others more learned than I. Considering how the Dharma was first shared gives us an insight more technically oriented to the intent of its design. In the beginning was the spoken word of Siddhartha Gautama, similar to the Bible's creation story. Buddha never committed a single word to paper, or so we are told. It is also said that he “never spoke a word,” a comment I take to mean that while language can point at the truths of Buddhism, it cannot capture them. Buddhist truth is uniquely experiential. It has to go through a kind of translation into language that is beyond language itself, as in the last stanza of Hsinhsinming‑Trust in Mind: Words! The Way is beyond language for in itthere is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today Later given the honorifics of “Buddha, ‑ fully awakened one” and “Shakyamuni ‑ sage of the Shakya clan,” and others, ten in total, Siddhartha's First Sermon to the five ascetics with whom he had been practicing, begins with: O monks, these two extremes ought not be followed by one going forth from the household life. What are the two?There is devotion to the indulgence of self-gratificationWhich is low, common, the way of ordinary peopleUnworthy and unprofitableThere is devotion to the indulgence of self-mortificationWhich is painful unworthy and unprofitableAvoiding both these extremes the Tathagata has realized the Middle WayIt gives vision it gives knowledge and it leads to calm to insight to awakening to Nirvana The intent of the content was to dissuade these monks from continuing to follow the dictates of their method of asceticism, which Buddha had found to be ineffective, to say the least. And to hold out the hope that if they were able to relinquish their own opinions of the truth they were seeking, and the method for apprehending it, they would be able to accede to the insight that he had experienced directly in meditation, the “middle way.” “Tathagata,” by the way, is also one of the ten honorifics accorded to Buddha later in the course of his teaching career, meaning something like the “thus-come one.” It was most likely appended to this narrative when finally committed to written form, some four centuries after-the-fact. But our point is that the spoken language was the medium in which the teaching was first shared. Buddha was said to have spoken Pali, which is similar to, and perhaps a dialect of, Sanskrit. The theory I have heard explaining why they were not recorded in written form is that they were considered sacred, and writing them down would have made them vulnerable to accidental or intentional change. The oral tradition was more dependable in terms of preserving them with their original intent intact. So the “design intent” of Buddha's use of kind or loving speech was not the usual intent of language in general. It was intended to encourage others to apprehend the “Great Matter” of life-and-death in the most direct way, the only way, possible. Buddha recognized that there was no way of sharing his experience with others in the ordinary sense, so he resorted to parables and analogies, to allow his audience to see themselves in the pictures he painted, and to transcend ordinary understanding in words and phrases, or the pursuit of information, the usual application of language. The later codifying and organization of the original spoken teachings into the Tripitaka or “three baskets” was designed to allow teachers and students to study the voluminous canon in an orderly way, and to prioritize their approach to it in digestible bites. It was most likely understood that the existing literature of the time ‑ which had to be scarce, compared to today's glut of publications – was to be absorbed in concert with practicing the meditation that had led to Buddha's insight to begin with. As Master Dogen reminds: Now all ancestors and all buddhas who uphold buddha-dharma have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright practicing in the midst of self-fulfilling samadhiThose who attained enlightenment in India and China followed this wayIt was done so because teachers and disciples personally transmitted this excellent method as the essence of the teaching In the authentic tradition of our teaching it is said that this directly transmitted straightforward buddha- dharma is the unsurpassable of the unsurpassable The design intent of the teachings has been, from the very beginning, the direct transmission of the buddha-dharma, what Matsuoka-roshi referred to as “living Zen.” In the daily lives of monks and nuns, frequent repetition of chanting selected teachings enabled the monastics to deeply assimilate them. Master Dogen was known for connecting each and every regular daily routine with brief recitations, such as the Meal Verse, in order to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane, the physical and the spiritual. Codification of the koan collections of Rinzai Zen ‑ some 1700 strong according to tradition, later organized into five sets by Hakuin Ekaku Zenji, the 18th Century Rinzai master ‑ represent design efforts to structure the lore and legacy of Zen's anecdotal history of exchanges between masters and students available in progressive levels of difficulty, enabling accessibility of the apparent dichotomies of Dharma. Soto Zen simplifies the approach even further by regarding zazen itself as representing the living koan, requiring nothing further to complement, or complicate, the process of insight. All the various models of buddha-dharma developed by the ancients qualify as efforts in information design ‑ visualizing images and what is called “pattern-thinking” ‑ that allow us to grasp the form of the Dharma beyond what mere words can convey. The Four Noble Truths comprise the first historical example of these descriptive models, including the prescriptive Noble Eightfold Path. Tozan's “Five Ranks” and Rinzai's “Host and Guest” come later, but have the same design intent – to help their students get beyond the limitation of the linear nature of language. My semantic models of the teachings, published in “The Razorblade of Zen,” represent more contemporary cases in point. Nowadays ‑ as testimonial evidence indicates, from one-on-one encounters in online and in-person dharma dialogs with modern students of the Way ‑ people are no longer studying buddha-dharma as they may have throughout history, when documents were rare. More often than not, they are reading more than one book at a time, in a nonlinear process I refer to as “cross-coupling”: simultaneously absorbing commentaries from one author or translator along with others; or perhaps comparing the teachings of more than one ancestor of Zen to those of a different ancestor. This may be an artifact or anomaly of the ubiquitous presence and availability of Zen material in print form, as well as the encyclopedic scope of online resources on offer today. It seems that in every category, and every language, we have at our fingertips a greater textual resource than ever conceivable in history, dwarfing the great libraries of legend. We can “google” virtually anything – no pun - with a few strokes of a keyboard. In addition, Artificial Intelligence threatens to bring together summaries and concoctions of content at the whim of any researcher; documents are readily searchable for those who wish to quantify uses of words and phrases at any point in history, teasing out trends and making judgments as to the hidden patterns in historical evolution of ideas. In this context it is difficult to ascertain the design intent of dharma as articulated today. It is not easy to discern the intent of the publish-or-perish, rush-into-print crowd, or to judge whether a given piece of contemporary writing is worth our effort and time to read. Fortunately, Zen offers a wormhole out of this literary catch-22. Zazen provides recourse to an even greater inventory of databases, built into our immediate sensorium. We can always return to upright sitting, facing the wall. This is where we will find the nonverbal answers we are seeking so feverishly, and somewhat futilely, in “words and letters” as Master Dogen reminds us in his seminal tract on meditation, Fukanzazengi: You should stop pursuing words and lettersand learn to withdraw and turn the light on yourselfwhen you do so your body and mind will naturally fall awayand your original buddha-nature will appear This stanza is sometimes interpreted as a slam on the nature of contemporaneous Rinzai practice predominant in the Japan of Dogen's time. But I think we should take a broader view of the great master's intent. He is merely cluing us in to the fact of the futility of pursuing literal, linear understanding of the Dharma in its manifestation as verbal expression. We are to turn our attention, instead, to the immediate and intimate presence of the self of body-and-mind ‑ beyond, or before, words can interfere. Here is where, and now is when, we will witness the full force of the design intent of the Dharma.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the next three segments of UnMInd we will take up the Three Jewels, Gems, or Treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha - the highest values of Buddhism - from the perspective of their design intent. Buddha practice - time on the cushion dedicated to recovering our original, awakened nature ‑ is the most important dimension in the Zen, or meditation schools. Dharma study – reviewing and contemplating the teachings transmitted by Shakyamuni and the ancestors down to the present day ‑ comes second in importance and emphasis, as an adjunct to meditation. While participation in and service to the Sangha ranks third in the tripartite hierarchy, all three legs of the stool are considered essential to leading a balanced life of Zen. It will be most appropriate to take them in reverse order, beginning with Sangha, or community, the one most fully integrated with the social dimension. The Refuge Verse, usually chanted on a daily basis, and translated variously, reads: I take refuge in Buddha I take refuge in Dharma I take refuge in SanghaI take refuge in Buddha the fully awakened OneI take refuge in Dharma the compassionate teachingsI take refuge in Sangha the harmonious communityI have completely taken refuge in BuddhaI have completely taken refuge in DharmaI have completely taken refuge in Sangha The act of taking refuge may be interpreted in a variety of ways; from the New Oxford American Dictionary: • a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble: he was forced to take refuge in the French embassy | I sought refuge in drink. • something providing shelter: the family came to be seen as a refuge from a harsh world. • an institution providing safe accommodations for women who have suffered violence from a spouse or partner. Its etymological origin is defined as: late Middle English: from Old French, from Latin refugium, from Latin re- ‘back' + fugere ‘flee'. Over the two-and-a-half millennia of the history of Buddhism, the communities of monks and/or nuns originating in India may indeed have comported with all of the above definitions at one time or another, with the possible exception of seeking refuge in drink, which may be more characteristic of lay practice. Certain modern Zen masters have been known for their fondness for sake and beer, as was Matsuoka roshi. The dictionary definitions share a decidedly fraught connotation of seeking “shelter from the storm,” to quote Master Dylan. But when we look at the role of the Zen community in the context of modern-day America, we can see that taking refuge in the sangha has less wary, socially positive functions as well – beginning with that of providing community, itself. True community is an increasingly rare commodity in today's mobile society, where we as householders may or may not know our neighbors; and if we do, we may not for long, as they, or we, may move several times in one lifetime. In ancient India, China and the Far East, people may have been more likely to stay put in their birthplace, unless they were driven to flee danger or trouble. Today, we have displaced persons approaching an estimated 110 million, the largest refugee population in history. When we analyze the design intent of western Zen communities, which manifest a mix of traditional protocols and adaptations to modernity, we have to take into account that the monastic model is no longer the predominant form, outnumbered as it is by the expanding cohort of lay householders. People of all walks of life are taking up the practice of Zen in their daily lives ‑ including participation in programs offered by Zen centers and temples in their neighborhoods, or within a reasonable commute ‑ returning to families and professional livelihoods, partaking of practice opportunities when and where they can fit them in. I call this “guerilla Zen”: we hit it and run; hit it and run; engaging more formal training with a simpatico group, while sustaining daily practice at home, at work, and at play. Everything is eventually subsumed under Zen. Churches and other associations share this paradoxical characteristic, caricatured by the “Sunday saints, Monday sinners” trope. Zen centers do not typically preach morality from the pulpit, but offer some degree of sanctuary in which members can retrench, to reenter the fray of daily life from a more balanced perspective and stance. This is reflected in the Sixteen Precepts of Zen, which we will not detail here, but include such social parameters as not killing, stealing or lying, not indulging in gossip, and so on.The key characteristic by which a Zen sangha is defined is captured in the expression, “harmonious community.” We all belong to, or partake in, various communities and subgroups in our personal, family, and professional lives, but not all of them would meet the high bar of harmony that is associated with a Zen community, or that of a church. We are expected to leave our lesser angels at the doorstep, and aspire to a higher level of behavior, particularly with regard to our fellow seekers of awakened awareness. Compared to other socially-determined groups, such as those found in retirement homes, extended care facilities, private clubs and gated communities, one difference is that a sangha welcomes all comers, however diverse in terms of age, gender, income, background and education, or other social factors by which groups tend to discriminate. “Birds of a feather” and all. Zen groups assume that members are like-minded in their pursuit of the Dharma, and it quickly becomes apparent when newcomers join a sangha for all the wrong reasons. Attendees joining Zen retreats or undertaking residential practice are analogized to stones tumbling in a stream, rubbing all the rough edges off, until we become smooth and polished – harmonious - in our interactions with others. Several dimensions of the Zen environment yield clues to its design intent, and where it may differ from other communities. These will vary from group to group, based on the history and traditions unique to each lineage, the legacy of its founders, and, of course, personalities. Generally, we are encouraged to overlook minor superficial differences in protocols and procedures, focusing on the underlying intent of propagating Buddha practice - meditation; and promulgating Dharma – study of the teachings; the two highest-ranking values in Zen. Let's look at a few characteristic behavioral forms and features to be found in multiple “practice places of buddha-tathagatas everywhere,” to borrow a phrase from Master Dogen: OBSERVING SILENCEAn emphasis on observing long periods of silence is unusual in most public gatherings, noting exceptions such as monastic assemblies devoted to vows of silence, or Quaker congregations. Restraining speech can feel awkward, even artificial; but in time it becomes a welcome source of respite and relief from the usual pressure to engage in small talk in most social and fellowship settings. In Zen, special attention is given to being mindful while others are meditating, taking heed to move quietly, as well as foregoing unnecessary speech. MAINTAINING SIMPLICITYVisual simplicity complements acoustical silence in the form of clutter control, straightforward layout and organization of the space and furnishings, and movement through it. The meditation hall, or zendo, is a particular focus of this principle, but it applies to all the shared public spaces of the facility. The catchphrase is “leave no traces” - which has personal meaning in terms of attachment and aversion - but is manifested in communal environs by putting things back where they belong, fluffing sitting cushions, straightening shoes on the shoe shelf, and so on. Emphasis is on reducing distraction that might intrude upon or interfere with the experience of others. CLEANINGPart of the process of achieving simplicity is the ritualization of temple cleaning, in Japanese, soji. Matsuoka-roshi would often say, “Cleaning is cleaning the mind.” The very act of decluttering the space relieves the mind of mental clutter. He would say “I like to keep it empty around here.” It is understood that “the dust itself is immaculate,” of course, that nothing is really “dirty” in any absolute sense. But attitudes and approaches “providing a space conducive to practice” – a unique definition of generosity, or dana, offered by a senior member of HH the Dalai Lama's inner circle, when giving a talk at ASZC some years ago – are meant to accommodate the relative level of perception, that “cleanliness is next to godliness,” as cited by St. Thomas Aquinas. TRAININGCleaning the environment is a specific activity within the larger category of Zen training in general. We train ourselves to serve the community through these various activities, while at the same time serving our own needs for simplicity, silence, and so on. We train in what has proved necessary to establish and maintain sustainable group practice in the public sphere. Aspects of how we approach this in the context of community may begin to bleed over into our personal lives at home and at work. We may find ourselves growing more attentive to our home or office environment, assuming more ownership and authorship over their functions, and their impact upon mindfulness on a daily basis. Training in Zen manifests this “halo effect,” a natural enhancement of Zen awareness. BOWING AND CHANTINGThe intent of Zen ritual may not be apparent at first blush, and so is widely subject to misinterpretation. It looks, on the surface, much like any other service one might observe, in Protestant or Catholic churches, as well as synagogues. Some are put off by the bowing and chanting, reading in such connotations as worship, public religiosity, and obsequiousness, which are all inappropriate projections. While the various formal protocols that have evolved around Zen practice have practical effects of cohering the community, their intent is largely personal. The Buddhist bow, for example, represents, on one hand, the person we are trying to improve; and on the other, the ideal person we want to emulate, our original buddha-nature. But the palm-to-palm hand position, or mudra in Sanskrit ‑ called gassho in Japanese ‑ symbolizes that just as our two hands are part of the same body, these apparently opposing selves are also just one, or “not-two” as the Ch'an poem “Trust in Mind” reminds us. With repetition, the bow eventually becomes empty of inappropriate connotations. Like emptying a teacup, so that it can be refilled with deeper meaning. Matsuoka-roshi would often remind us to “Chant with the ears, not with the mouth,” and that the concrete chanting, itself, is the true meaning of the chant. In other words, listen deeply to the chant, which is a Dharma teaching - not a prayer or worship - so that the act of chanting in a group becomes deeply meaningful on a personal level. In professional design circles, these seemingly innocuous, everyday conventions of maintaining order in space, and harmonious dynamics in time, cannot be overlooked. They are, indeed, regarded as essential deliverables in retail and other commercial environments, where the adverse effects of clutter and noise can be measured in financial terms as loss of business and customer base. The influence of environmental factors may be less obvious in the personal realm. But in the world of Zen, they can provide powerful aids to finding and sustaining harmony with the Great Way, from Zen's roots in Taoism. For further pursuit of the symbolism and design intent of the Zen space and protocols, I refer you to Matsuoka-roshi's early collected talks, “The Kyosaku,” where you will find a chapter on the various elements to be found in most zendos. Meanwhile, remember Master Dogen's admonition in “Jijuyu Zammai – Self-fulfilling Samadhi”: Without engaging in incense offering, chanting Buddha's name, repentance or reading scripture, you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop off body and mind. Sangha, community service, is important, but only to the extent that it provides the conducive environment for Buddha practice and Dharma study. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In this segment, as promised, we will return to the seemingly zero-sum game being played out in the political arena, under the rubric of “Election Year Zen,” episode #3. As I pointed out in closing the second segment: This, too – “politics” is the Dharma. While the course of action that Buddha and the Ancestors of Zen undertook, within the constraints of their cultural context, may not have had obvious political motivations, the very act of establishing and maintaining Zen practice whether in the form of intentional communities such as a monastery, or less ambitiously, a neighborhood temple or even a hermitage the effect of doing so upon the local society, and by extension upon the powers-that-be of the era, must have had undeniable political ramifications. Variations on this theme are recorded throughout the history of Zen.In our life and times, as of the last UnMind posting we had just passed Super Tuesday in this year's campaign cycle, and now have witnessed the POTUS deliver the annual State of the Union (SOTU) address. Which has, willy-nilly, evolved into a “state-of-the-campaign” address, over the last several 4-year election cycles, as just another blip on the screen of the endless, unremitting campaign, earning its own alphabet-soup acronym S-O-T-U – abbreviation. But before we get into the implications for Zen and its relevance to our lives, let me restate a caveat that not only bears repetition, but apparently, and unfortunately, requires it. That is, that Zen, or Buddhism, is not intrinsically political. Or, as is usually stated, it is apolitical. As I characterize it, using my favorite prefix, Zen is un-political.Nonetheless, I am painfully aware that any message about politics, however well-intentioned, is in danger of being interpreted as political, even partisan, in nature. This is a modern catch-22 that has less to do with content than it has to do with context, owing to the highly partisan cultural and ideological divide that has infected the populace with a social and mental virus more virulent than COVID 19. I had forgotten that the virus had made its debut on my birthday, until I came across this reminder in the news feed:How quickly we forget. I would say “how quickly they forget,” but that would lend to the “us and them” divisiveness plaguing us today. It is just that kneejerk a reaction. I didn't read the promised “update on where things stand,” but we can assume that it claims some upsides, such as that the virus seems to have been relatively tamed, at long last. But one downside is that the political picture has, if anything, gotten worse. Both sides of the chasm that is the partisan campaign seem to be bullish on their chances, but could not be more different in their platforms, or lack thereof. Whichever team you are pulling for, you may be reading, or dreading or reading into the content of this segment, to conform to your political perspective. I ask you to take a moment to evaluate whether or not that is so. It is a subtle, subliminal, and insidious phenomenon. A curse.I sometimes wonder if my birth date is also more of a curse than a blessing. The tsunami and meltdown at Fukushima also occurred on March 11, earlier in 2011. If my birth is a kind of curse, it calls into question all of the Panglossian views of this existence as the best of all possible worlds. Maybe this is, in actuality, “Earth 2.” In the penultimate stanza of the Metta Sutta or “Loving Kindness Sutra” it says:Standing or walking; sitting or lying down; during all one's waking hourslet one cherish the thought that this way of living is the best in the worldEven this most benign paean to hope: “May all beings be happy”; would most likely be twisted to conform to a one-sided view of reality, if it became just another bumper-sticker in today's cavalier campaign.Moving right along: POTUS kicked off the SOTU with a reference to 1941, the year of my birth, citing FDR's New Deal, which, incidentally, kicked off the alphabet-soup metaphor for the multivarious departments Roosevelt created – the FBI, the CIA, and so on and on and on. He also mentioned Harry Truman, claiming the mantle of both past presidents, while highlighting the current threat to the very institutions of government, and the emphasis on defending democracy, that they and Ronald Reagan, the other party's past leading man, ostensibly championed. Which brings us to another point about nonpolitical outcomes of purportedly political decisions: the WWII bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Which, for those of us who have inherited the legacy and lineage of Zen from our Japanese predecessors, constitutes a koan of truly agonizing proportions. Just as we cannot condone the “collateral damage” inflicted upon innocent civilians and children in the case of Russia and Israel relentlessly bombing Ukraine and Gaza, respectively; we cannot justify the nuclear hell released upon the citizens of Japan by the self-same POTUS “Give-‘em-hell-Harry” that we admire for the accomplishments of his administration. We all share that karma. The atrocity was committed “in our name.” I was about five years old.Mass bombing of civilians is mass murder. It cannot be rationalized as an act of politics, but represents the collapse, the total bankruptcy, of the international political system. Resorting to brute force in conflicts that our so-called political leaders fail to settle politically means they should be relieved of duty. They are incompetent. This does not ignore the necessity of military defense, in proportional response to military aggression. But it does suggest that the tactics of nonviolent diplomacy need to arise earlier in the process of negotiating conflict, whether on an international, local, or personal scale. Buddhism's doctrine of the myth of self seems the place to start, in positing a Buddhist take on these destructive horror shows. And why the impulse to understand the “other,” and arrive at a mutually beneficial solution, does not arise earlier in the process, if ever.The recent repurposing of the American military forces to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza may constitute a silver lining in the otherwise gloomy forecast. Let's engage in a common design-thinking exercise, the “What if?” scenario. What if the overwhelming power of the military could be used as a non-partisan policing function, forcing a cease-fire before the conflict reaches a set limit of civilian casualties, say 5,000? What if humanitarian aid stood ready-to-go near the hot spots of the world, inserted into the area early on, before the match lit the tinderbox? To those who would argue that the expense would be unbearable, I simply point to the much more massive cost of the bombing itself, not to mention the daunting scale and scope of the cleanup and rebuilding of the aftermath, which, of course, profits certain interest groups immensely. We have a saying in design circles, that there is never enough time and money to do it right the first time, but there is always time and money to do it over. What if we could flip that formula, on a global basis. The alternative seems to be “Earth 2.” Some seem resigned to its ultimate triumph over reason and compassion, called “Armageddon”; others seem fully devoted to making sure that the apocalypse comes to pass, fulfilling their favorite prophecy. Proving them, finally, “right.”It would be the ultimate irony, would it not, if the end of civilization, and the extinction of the human species, comes about not of necessity but from a failure of will, fueled by misinformation? That a small percentage of the population with their fingers on the buttons not only do nothing to prevent the final catastrophe, but actually help to bring it about, based on their religious beliefs? Which then turn out to be wrong! No rapture, no kingdom of God on earth ruled by a savior. Just the rubble of what was once a great potentiality, laid waste by ignorance. Not a dystopian future, but no future at all. The greatest category mistake and unintended consequence in history, accidentally bringing human history to an end. What if this planet of ours turns out to be Earth 2, after all? This is your, and my, karmic koan-du-jour. Answer quickly, or receive thirty blows of my stick! In the next series of segments, we will return to more prosaic, everyday explorations of Zen and design thinking, while keeping an eye on the ongoing campaign. In May, we will take another look at the developments to date, with a somewhat jaundiced eye to their relationship to the compassionate teachings. Meanwhile, study your ideology thoroughly in practice. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Monday, March 11, was my birthday, as I mentioned in the last segment of UnMind. Wednesday, March 27th, happens to be my late brother's birthday. So in his honor, let us continue exploring the theme of Time — its seeming passage and constant presence. He was a professional jazz pianist and teacher of music, and so was fully immersed in time. Once upon a time, while discussing time signatures in music, such as four-four time, three-four time — the familiar waltz tempo — and so on, he leaned toward me, a mischievous smile on his face, saying that, “You know, there is also ‘one-one' time” – counting off with his forefinger: “One-one-one-one.” He and I had many such dialogs at the intersection of music theory and Zen thinking. He has since passed on, sitting in with that great jazz combo in the sky. I bet he draws a crowd. (Some of the material in what follows originally appeared as my Dharma Byte of the month, titled “Swords into Plowshares,” in 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing.) In that message, and at that time, I made the point that privileging the survival of the oldest is not Nature's way; it is usually the survival of the fittest. It is not natural to put younger members of the species at unreasonable risk, in order to protect the older members. This goes against the natural order, as we witness in survival strategies of wildlife, as well as in social structures of the earliest human tribes. The survival of the species dictates age-related triage, in favor of those most likely to survive, to live longer, and to reproduce. Exceptions always arise to prove the rule; Nature is not simple. Yet humans reverse this natural logic, in wartime as in the example of the military draft, as well as in recruiting methods for police officers and firefighters. People in their late teens and early twenties often enter into dangerous occupations, in service to the larger community. Those who study such things tell us that neurological networks, including the brain, are not yet fully formed at that age, recognition and fear of mortality typically arising about the mid-twenties, when the brain finishes wiring, as we say. We were doing it again in the face of the pandemic, sending younger first responders into the fray, while protecting elderly and senior members by isolating and quarantining them. I have reported on my own encounter with COVID 19, which dragged out for the better part of a year, beginning with a three-month up-and-down sickbed recuperation from congestion and other flu-like symptoms, followed by slow recovery of lost strength, flexibility, balance, energy, and the kind of “brain fog” associated with “long covid,” the lingering effects on the nervous system. As part of that recovery, I developed an aggressive approach to the sitting posture and its relationship to the breathing process of Zen meditation, as well as to walking meditation, with its focus on physical balance. At about the time I began returning to morning meditation sessions, the new era of private billionaire space exploration was heating up, with more frequent launches than ever seen in the history of NASA. Perhaps this was a subliminal prompt to my beginning to count my breaths down to zero, in contrast to the usual counting up from one to four or more, and avoid counting beyond ten, as are common recommendations in Zen. With an initial, deep inhalation, I would hold the breath for a count of eight or so, while doing a full-body crunch, tensing the core muscle groups, as well as my newly stiffened legs, and weakened arms and shoulders. With the exhalation, I would intone “nine,” then “eight” for the next cycle, and so on, down to “one,” and finally, “zero.” After repeating this pattern for a half-dozen times or so, I would settle more quickly and deeply into the period, while the counting and muscular effort naturally subsided. A curious thing began to happen each time I would reach zero in the count. By then, my breath would have slowed to five or so cycles per minute, and I could feel my heartbeat. So I found myself counting my heartbeat, instead of my breath. Or rather, noticing how many heartbeats accompanied each cycle of breath. The heartbeat is clearly the metronome of our instrument, the body. And number, or counting, is clearly fundamental to our worldview, intrinsic to all design thinking and measurement, and basic to Zen's nondualism: “leaping aside from the one and the many,” as Master Dogen reminds us. As my breath slowed to a lower, slower tempo, my pulse also slowed, synchronizing with the breath. This resulted in a profound degree of stillness in both posture and breath, as well as fixed gaze, affecting my overall sphere of attention, reminding me of Matsuoka-roshi's comment that the “real zazen” is manifested when the posture, breath and attention all come together in a “unified way.” And that it feels as if you are “pushing the crown of your head against the ceiling” — “mountain-still” stability. I began to feel that unification viscerally, encompassing the apparent “outside” and “inside” dimensions of awareness. Familiar, but more intense than ever before. I call this “returning to zero.” There are many phrases in the lexicon of Zen that seem to be pointing to this same kind of experiential phenomenon, such as Master Dogen's “backward step”; the ancient phrase “Shi-kan” meaning something like “stopping and seeing”; the “shamatha-vippasana” pairing of insight meditation; et cetera. The process of letting go — primarily of our own preconceptions, interpretations, and opinions of direct, sensory experience; and by extension, of our concepts and constructions of the world, trying to explain this reality to ourselves — seems inherent in all major systems of cultivating realization. That the method is so quintessentially physical, is what is striking about the Zen approach to just sitting still enough, straight enough, for long enough. The idea, or concept, of “zero” has philosophical and psychological implications as well. The common trope of the “zero-sum game” is a case in point. The definition online: A zero-sum game is one in which no wealth is created or destroyed. So, in a two-player zero-sum game, whatever one player wins, the other loses. Therefore, the players share no common interests. There are two general types of zero-sum games: those with perfect information and those without. This amounts to another version of the meme: that if there are winners, there must be losers, so there can be no actual win-win. This ignorant assumption unfortunately informs much of what passes for political discourse, and socially conservative ideology.I refer you to the lectures of R. Buckminster Fuller for a fuller exposition of the limitations of the view that there is not enough to go around, and the survival of the fittest means that we must, above all, ensure that we get ours, to hell with the losers. Such innovations as the guaranteed minimum income are beginning to crack the facade of this fundamental error. The last line, concerning the dual nature of the zero-sum game being dependent upon “perfect information,” may provide a clue as to how the notion of winning and losing connects — or doesn't — to the personal practice-experience of Zen. Beyond a direct “return to zero” — the personal dimension of awareness on the cushion — there is a returning to zero on the social level, as well as within the natural and universal spheres. In his rephrase of a Ch'an poem, Zazenshin, meaning something like “lancet” or “needle” of zazen, Master Dogen wraps up the penultimate stanza with: The intimacy without defilement is dropping off without relying on anything.
The verification beyond distinction between Absolute and Relative is making effort without aiming at it. This experience of “intimacy without defilement” is the zero sum point of zazen: nothing to be gained and nothing lost; nothing excluded and nothing extraneous, nothing to share with others – it is too intimate, too close in time and space. The fact that at this point we cannot rely on anything, is another aspect of Zen's “zero” sum. We sit “without relying on anything” as Master Dogen reminds us, including all the tricks and trinkets we have painstakingly assembled in our toolkit. Our toolkit is exhausted, the tools we usually rely on, relatively or absolutely useless. “Absolute and Relative” constitute one of the last resorts of dualistic thinking; the fundamental bifurcation of “truth” in Buddhism is usually stated as absolute truth versus relative truth. So this “verification” must be of a different order altogether, one that is immeasurable. So far beyond any measurement, is this realization — though there is continuing effort, it is no longer aiming at anything. This means that there is ultimately nothing of significance to gain or lose in relationships in the social sphere, nor do we have to distort our relationship to biology, our connection to the resources of Natural ecology. In terms of resolving the Great Matter of life and death, we can embrace the inevitability of aging, sickness and death as the central koan — one that comes bundled with birth — the illogical riddle of existence itself. We no longer have to rely on life, itself. Here and now, we arrive at the final zero-sum game. Whether or not we believe in an eternal soul, and its resurrection, as do modern Christians; or in reincarnation, as did the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Hindus; or rebirth as taught by Buddha, as a corrective to reincarnation; we finally come to face our mortality close-up and personal. It is natural, and universal, whatever its interpretation by the social milieu in which we find ourselves. According to an old Zen metaphor, the only “mate” who will accompany us to the grave, is our deeds. Whatever wealth, honor, power, or powers of reasoning we may have accumulated in managing and manipulating the vagaries of fate and vicissitudes of fortune encountered in life, they serve us little in the face of death. Try as we might to think our way to enlightenment, or to reason ourselves into insight, we find ourselves failing again and again. Finally, we must surrender to the chaos of not knowing, and abandon our reliance on reason itself — spawn of philosophy and that other kind of Enlightenment, the triumph of reasoning over belief. Instead, we find verification of our Zen practice in “making effort without aiming at it.” Needless to say, this is a very uncomfortable place to find oneself, at a pass that is not really negotiable, in any ordinary sense. Paraphrasing Seikan Hasegawa, a Rinzai master, from The Cave of Poison Grass, he reminds us that putting off confrontation with this particular koan of aging, until we find ourselves on the death-bed, is futile: “like eating soup with a fork.” We need to confront this koan when we are young and vigorous — “Stamp life and death on your forehead, never letting it out of your mind” — another Zen pearl of wisdom long lost to attribution. Life takes its meaning in the context of death. If you find that too morbid, just imagine what life would be like if we did not die: Its meaning would be entirely different, and not entirely positive. When the grim reaper arrives, we may want to embrace her relentless, unforgiving and unsympathetic scythe, as being no different from the sword of Manjusri, cutting through our final delusion. Preferable to die on the cushion, of course. As Kosho Uchiyama reminds us, our whole world is born, and dies, with us. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” In contemplating our inevitable demise as a loss of something, we have to remember that it amounts to returning to where we came from, a kind of null hypothesis that the effect we are dreading is not measurable, or sums to zero: In scientific research, the null hypothesis is the claim that the effect being studied does not exist. Note that the term "effect" here is not meant to imply a causative relationship. That last caveat calls to mind the famous Zen koan concerning Baizhang, or Hyakujo, and the fox. The point goes to the question of whether or not an enlightened person would be subject to, or free from, the law of causality. The ancient master responds: “Free from,” and is condemned to be reborn as a fox for five hundred (fox) lifetimes. Baizhang kindly corrects his confusion with something like: “One with causality” or “We do notignore causality,” which liberates the old man. If we fear death — or, conversely, seek it out; fearing life, instead — we have made an assumption that we know what life is, but do not know what death is; or, conversely, that we prefer death over life; or vice-versa. Either side of this formula ignores the fact that the overall equation inevitably sums to zero. I came across a pamphlet titled “The 11th Hour,” in my brother's hospice care clinic, wherein its Christian, female author clarified: Birth is the death of whatever precedes it; death is the birth of whatever follows” — refreshingly without bothering to define the “whatever.” In the next segment — speaking of zero-sum games — we will return to pick up the monthly thread of “Election Year Zen,” now that we have surpassed Super Tuesday, in this year's endless campaign cycle. This, too, is the Dharma.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

BRINGING ORDER OUT OF CHAOSIt might be said that the function of the discriminating mind (S. citta), in the most general sense, is to render what is perceived as chaos into what may be perceived as order. Of course, this is not an original idea, and has an associated idea that chaos, as we perceive it, may be thought of as a higher level of order, one that is not accessible to our perception. This idea resonates in both the world of Zen and that of art and design thinking. One would have to speak of a relative degree of order versus a notion of absolute order. However chaotic reality may appear, it is following physical laws that suggest an underlying order that is simply not a respecter of persons, or of the sensibilities of humans. We must come into compliance with reality, rather than expect reality to conform to our expectations or preferences. This, I think, is the fundamental basis of the concept of the “Way” in Taoism, and an underpinning of Zen as it developed in China. However, the Way in Buddhism, as I understand it, is not a hypothesis or theory of objectified reality outside the observer, but exists only in complementary balance with the person. Our observation of perceived order also exhibits relative degrees, or a spectrum from one extreme to another. For example, our house may be a mess inside, but look orderly on the outside, unless we get evicted and our possessions are dumped on the street. If you peer into parked cars on any city street, they will tell you a story about the person who drives them, or lives in them. Some definitely have that lived-in look, while others are pristine, even sterile-seeming, as are some homes. If you have ever seen the French movie, “Mon Oncle,” or “my uncle.” you may remember its satirical take on the super-white, stainless steel interior, and the housewife's gloved approach to maintaining its spotless state. My best friend in high school lived in a home where the floors of the living rooms were covered with shag carpet, which was newly popular in the 1950s, but theirs was brilliant white. We had to remove our shoes to enter the house, which was peculiar to me at the time, but later became second nature after being exposed to the Japanese culture, beginning with the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, in the 1960s. Sensei had us stand at the door with a basket of clean socks to hand to the barefoot hippies coming in off of Halsted Street. In his eyes, they must have appeared as complete barbarians. If you are in someone's home as a guest, you might take a peek in the medicine cabinet. There you will see an indication of the sense of order of your host's mind. (I have never done this, of course; it is very rude.) What is on the shelves, and where, and whether the medicines are outdated, may paint a portrait of how obsessive-compulsive — or happy-go-lucky — your friends may be. Bear in mind that for a couple living together, these issues become instantly, and infinitely, more complicated. Who does what and when, and who is responsible for the resulting mess, becomes entangled in the relationship. Master Dogen, who transplanted what is now called Soto Zen to 13th century Japan from his sojourn in China, used the word katto to identify entanglements, using the analogy of twining vines, like wisteria. This applies not just to the tyranny of possessions and environments, but to the subtle entanglements of relationships themselves. Other examples of refined order, from the human perspective, include such storage-and-retrieval systems as fishing tackle totes and sewing boxes, where the necessity for “a place for everything and everything in its place” determines the efficiency and effectiveness of the endeavor of actually fishing or sewing. I inherited an antique sewing box, with its many spools of colored threads and implements of sewing wonderfully arranged in stunning order, formerly in the control of a friend's grandmother. Somehow my son and daughter, under 5 years old at the time, got into it and turned order into chaos, probably in about 5 minutes, when the array of organization had likely developed over five years or more of grandma's life. There was no way I could put it back in order. Workshops are another example, where attention to the organization and design of the environment can begin to overwhelm the prospect of actually getting anything done. The project of organizing the process can distract our attention from doing the project itself. In the course of organizing my various studio and shop environments over time, I have developed what I call the “Island of Sanity” approach. It took me 50 years or so to learn that table tops are not for storage. I strive to keep the tables clear of any clutter, including tools, even during the process of working. “Clear the decks” is the trope. The “work,” the piece under construction, or a painting, is the only item that is allowed to occupy the table top. I have found that laying tools on the table means that when I need to move the work, the tools often get in the way. So I keep a side table as home for the tools. On the tool table, I keep the various tools in play in a neat array, rather than mindlessly piling them on top of each other. In the hurly-burly of executing a project, the tool table often becomes disorderly. I occasionally reorganize it quickly, so that the tools are side-by-side in a scannable row, not overlapping. This way I can quickly recognize and seize the particular tool I need when I need it. Others have refined these approaches. Allowing a relative degree of perceived chaos in the work environment seems to be a necessary evil. Otherwise, we may be driven to distraction by trying to improve the process, and never finishing the project. What is sometimes called “completion anxiety” may set in. As long as we are working on a project, but have not brought it to conclusion, it can remain forever perfect in our mind's eye. When it is finished, it is just what it is, warts and all: imperfect. Everything is somewhat imperfect; or at best, relatively perfect. In my case, maintaining islands of sanity creates the proper balance for getting things done, with minimal stress on the mind and body. What the particular balance amounts to, and what works best for the individual, seems to be a personal trait. Some people can work efficiently in a virtual pile of clutter; others are highly dependent on a visually uncluttered workspace. Einstein's office — which is preserved intact even today, as a memorial, just as he left it — is said to be an exceptional example of “meaningful clutter.” Whether yours is meaningful, or not, is up to you to determine. Clutter control is a recognized discipline, a known issue in interior design of environments, whether working or living spaces, public or private. The “rising tide of clutter” can overwhelm any space. Just tune into one of the current spate of television shows on hoarding, to see some of the worst-case scenarios. Contrast becomes important in being able to see the shape of a tool, to state another obvious point. Vertical walls for storing tools often consist of white pegboard for this reason. I have learned that I lose my eyeglasses less often if I remember not to place them on a dark surface, into which the dark frames blend and disappear. The inverse is true when retrieving a light-colored object. Dark backgrounds are called for. Along with many of my contemporaries, In the 1960s I experimented with so-called psychedelic or psychotropic drugs. One memorable experience found me sitting in my basement shop, trying in vain to sort various items of hardware into appropriate category designations for storage and retrieval. All items share many characteristics in common with others, and it actually was not clear which were the priorities. For example, many fasteners (of which there are many kinds) may be made of metal, and so “go together,” but are designed to fasten many different materials, such as wood, as opposed to metal. In the case of fasteners, we end up with so many leftover screws, nuts and bolts, et cetera, from our projects, that it becomes a more-and-more time-consuming process just to keep what you may never use in some kind of order. I have seen everything from homemade systems utilizing salvaged glass jars, lids attached to the underside of shelves, allowing the jar to be unscrewed with one hand; to endless aisles suffering from over-choice, and designed systems for storing virtually endless categories, sizes and types of fasteners, in hardware and big-box stores. The world is really too much with us, in these categories. An example from retail, that might not be obvious to the customer, but is well known to the insiders, entails the arrays of shoes at your local shoe store. The stock is usually stored in back, where the various sizes of a given style can be efficiently stacked and retrieved in labeled shoe boxes. The storefront, by contrast, displays all the shoes in their best light, putting our best foot forward, literally. Usually the smaller sizes are displayed, not only because they take less room, but because they are usually more aesthetically pleasing than bigger sizes of the same style and color, vestiges of ancient foot-binding in the East. A little-known fact is that the array has the appearance of more styles and colors than are actually in stock, because the merchandisers display them by style, by color and other attributes: the same shoe will appear in two or more displays throughout the store. As a boy, I used to wonder why my father had so many pairs of shoes in his closet, when I had only one or two. Now I have more shoes than he did, accumulated over time, because the size of my feet stopped changing, and I found different needs, or lack of need, for different types and styles of footwear. Imelda Marcus is the poster girl for this category of disorder, with her 3,000 pairs of shoes. Produce in a grocery store is another example. People generally like to pick over produce, selecting the best ones, leaving the fruits or vegetables that are less appealing in looks, apparent freshness, et cetera. For this reason, pre-packaged produce is a harder sell. This is why we see monstrous stacks of open produce in brightly-lighted bins, in most modern food supermarkets. Which, by the way, are destabilized when 10% are removed. To see, a bit more clearly, how fundamental the process of sorting is to the basic function of perceived order — including storing and retrieving things — try to imagine a contrarian approach, such as displaying books by color, say, or clothing grouped by fabric, rather than size or style. I have witnessed the tendency to over-organize — or organize by inappropriate groupings — in my own efforts to achieve order, in striving to make sense of my environment. One example is that I tend to group and store like things together, such as putting any and all writing pens in the same place. Or I may do the same with my collection of eyeglasses, which has accumulated over time through misplacing, replacing, and rediscovering spectacles. Problem is, I need a writing pen at different places at different times, yet I do not want to have endless writing pens scattered all over the place. I know people who collect fine writing pens, and wonder if it amounts to a compulsion, or a stubborn resistance to the decline of handwriting, in favor of the word processor — with which, incidentally, I am writing this essay, from handwritten notes scrabbled on various sheets of notebook paper, noted when I was away from my desktop. We tend to blame linear thinking as the main culprit behind chaos, and all of this need for — and inability to find, or sustain — order. When we begin to consider that everything we regard as belonging to one category actually belongs to many others — perhaps an infinity of categories, if we parse it finely enough — a kind of insanity or cognitive dissonance, a lack of mental order — begins to come into play. This is, in Zen, or Taoism, the point at which we begin to “confront the mystery,” from the Tao te Ching: Caught by desire, we see only the manifestations;Free from desire, we confront the Mystery. “The one and the many” are indeed like the yen and yang of our discriminating mind. That phenomena and noumenon exist in complementary embrace, or the endless dance of becoming, is not immediately evident, when we are just trying to get through the day. This is why, and how, it becomes important to take a break, and to sit on it for a while. Hopefully, when we stop striving, the immanent order of emptiness underlying the alienating appearance of form will become manifest. But as Master Dogen mentions in Genjokoan, don't look for it to appear in your perception: Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge, or is grasped by your consciousness; although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. The inconceivable may appear as chaos; the underlying order may not be apparent. Chaos may be embraced as a higher form of order, or an elevated degree of complexity, in which any discernible pattern is elusive; while perceived patterns of order may be similarly interpreted as artificially lower levels of chaos, or higher degrees of superficial simplicity. Upon closer examination, perceived simplicity devolves into the complexity of chaos, e.g. on the subatomic or quantum level; whereas chaotic complexity gives way to serene simplicity. “All things are like this,” to borrow another vintage Dogen-ism; the vacillation is built-in, from duality to nonduality and back. Enjoy the ride.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Monday, March 11, 2024 is my 83rd birthday, and coincidentally the deadline for this segment of UnMind, in order to drop on Wednesday the 13th. I did an exercise in visualizing my personal timeline this last year, and will share it with you in this installment. You will have to visit the website to see the illustrations (link), but for now, as we say in professional design circles — when a design board presentation got lost in checked baggage — “Picture this, guys!” Been there, done that.I began by laying out my life in decades, starting in 1940 when I was conceived around July, born 9 months later in 1941, and — incidentally, not coincidentally — the year that Matsuoka-roshi arrived in America. Picture a spreadsheet 10 columns across, headed 1940,1950,1960,etc. up to 2030; by 6 rows down, with categories: Geographical, Societal, Marital/Familial, Educational, Formal Zen, and Professional. You get the idea. Then fill in the blanks with locations like Centralia, IL (my home town), Chicago (where I did my advanced schooling), Atlanta, GA (my adopted home town), Europe and Japan, traveling on design and Zen business — my lifetime “ecological sweepout,” as Bucky Fuller calls it. Big events like WWII, Korea and Vietnam; the end of the Cold War; Covid, etc.; and lesser ones such as “Born 3/11/41,” 1st & 2nd Marriages, Father & Mother dying; BS & MS degrees, etc., populate the cells. Plus Zen turning points such as meeting Matsuoka-roshi, Lay Ordination, ASZC & STO Incorporation, publish date of my first major book, “The Original Frontier”; and finally, career benchmarks such as teaching at U of I & the School of the Art Institute, various corporate ventures, and my current art dealer, Kai Lin Art Gallery, complete the exercise to date. I recommend you try something similar, to get an overview of your life. By the way, that expression, “conceived,” is interesting from a professional design perspective. We have what we call “concept design,” the initial stage of ideation, wherein few to none of the details of a design solution to a problem have been worked out. The spit-balling, brainstorming phase. Which seems to apply pretty aptly to that embryo in the womb — an inchoate mass of tissue that will, some nine months hence, come popping out into the world — if not “fully-formed,” as Buddha, in his miraculous birth, was said to have been. Not only that, but he immediately took seven steps in each of the cardinal directions; and, pointing one forefinger to the heavens above, the other to the earth below, declared: “Above the heavens and below the heavens, I alone am the most honored one!” If, indeed, this story is true, then, indeed, he would have had to have been. Or at least one of the most highly-honored ones.But of course, we take this tale with a huge grain of salt, perhaps even a saltlick block, like we used to put out in the pasture for our horses, on the farm where I grew up. My only claim to fame regarding an unusual birth came to light when my mother later confessed that she had tried to abort me by jumping off the back porch, which was what passed for birth control in those days, today referred to as “reproductive health.” Mom and dad already had “a boy for you and a girl for me,” in the persons of my older brother and sister — one darkly handsome, the other blond and beautiful, respectively — and the budget from the newspaper route they ran was already strained. I got my revenge by being born with an enormous head, which, because I was upside-down in the womb, I attribute to all that jumping. For some reason, my life seems to have morphed through the various “times-of-life” cycles — used to sort demographics in social research — in near synchronicity with the decades, as measured by an admittedly arbitrary calendar, called the Gregorian, which, according to the wizards of Wikipedia: The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull Inter gravissimas issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years differently so as to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day 'tropical' or 'solar' year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun. Glad we got that cleared up. Now, we can see clearly the absolute degree of arbitrariness inherent in our concept of measured time. We can't even measure the time of day, the calendar year, or the planet's revolution around the sun, without resorting to infinitely endless decimal places. So much better than that antiquated Julian thing, though. And, “close enough for jazz,” to most intents and purposes.As you can see by looking at the first chart, my geographical sweepout was rather limited to my home state of Illinois in my 20s, other than a couple of junkets to California, until I moved to Atlanta in my 30s, then finally went abroad on business in my 40s, and to the Far East in my 50s, on behalf of Zen. My family did not have the kind of resources that would have financed a “grand tour” of Europe in my formative years. This charting of your life on a single sheet of paper turns out to be an exercise in humility, when you realize how little you have done, and how brief your lifespan really is. We will return to this subject in the context of the “lifespan chapter” of the Lotus Sutra. In the second spreadsheet, I extend the timescale to 80-year spans — extending back to 1460, and forward through 1540, 1620, 1700, etc., and finally my own era of 1940 through 2020 — shrinking my personal timeline down to two columns out of ten, roughly 20% of the larger span of five centuries or so. Visualizing only one row, encompassing the societal level, a distinct pattern emerges: major events, especially in the USA, seem to happen in 80-year cycles, going back to the Revolutionary War and Civil War and including World War II, which was just heating up when I came on the scene. Sure enough, when I Googled it, I found that this pattern of 80-year cycles is a known phenomenon, sometimes referred to as the “Strauss-Howe” theory, derived from critical events in the history of America, as well as the rest of the globe. The Strauss-Howe generation theory describes a recurrent cycle of same-aged groups with specific behavior patterns that change every 20 years. According to this theory, an 80-year cycle is crucial, when every four generations is associated to a crisis that impacts the ongoing social order and creates a new one. A startling personal finding popped out like a sore thumb: at 80 years old, I was 1/3 the age of my native country, the good old USA. A person 80 years old at my birth would have been born around 1860, the Civil War; one 80 years old at that time would have been born around 1780, the time of the Revolution. The reference to Armageddon in the final column, finally coming to pass within 80 years from now, is only partially, and hopefully, tongue-in-cheek. Expanding the timescale even further, the third spreadsheet encompasses twenty-five centuries since the advent of Buddha in 500 BCE, to the current 2000's, again shrinking my personal tenure to a vanishingly small portion, less than ten percent of the total, if I live to be 100. Which is unlikely. Although, as Matsuoka-roshi would often say, “Zen keeps the men younger, and the women more beautiful.” I can't really explain my relatively good health and wellbeing in any other way. To close this segment, let us consider some of the statements attributed to Buddha at the end of his life, in the Lifespan Chapter of the Lotus Sutra, ostensibly uttered as he was about to enter Pari Nirvana: To the deluded and unenlightened I say that I have entered nirvana although in fact I am really here.For the sake of these sentient beings I teach that the lifespan of the Buddha is immeasurable.The light of my wisdom illuminates immeasurably and my lifespan is of innumerable kalpas. This has been achieved through long practice.You wise ones do not give in to doubt! Banish all doubt forever! The Buddha's words are true never false. Here, we find one of the most controversial of all claims in Buddhism, which begs credulity — similar to the resurrection of Jesus — along with that of his virgin birth. Even the idea of Pari Nirvana smacks of “woo-woo,” given our skeptical scientific setting: In Buddhism, parinirvana is commonly used to refer to nirvana-after-death, which occurs upon the death of someone who has attained nirvana during their lifetime. It implies a release from Saṃsāra, karma and rebirth as well as the dissolution of the skandhas. Bows to our fellow travelers at Wikipedia, once again. But while we can readily embrace the dissolution of the skandhas — or aggregated form, sensation, perception, intention and consciousness, upon the onset of death, it seems mere speculation that anyone might find total release from the ocean of Samsara, the cycles of karmic consequence and rebirth, that Buddhism teaches as theories of the laws governing sentient existence. But Buddha seems to be pointing at something else, a kind of permanent existence that is not limited to the form of our present, impermanent body-mind. Like the timeworn analogy of the ocean and the waves, the eternal lifespan of Buddha implies that whatever is here has always been here, and will always be here, if in different form. A wave returns to the ocean, but does not, cannot, drown; being of one and the same substance. I will leave it to you, as usual, to “thoroughly examine this in practice,” as Master Dogen kindly advises. This is not a cop-out. If reality could be explained in words, it would have become commonplace knowledge long before 2500 years ago. The original language of our original mind is still in place. All we have to do is develop “the eyes to hear and the ears to see” it. The method for developing this transcendent, trans-perceptual wisdom is stunningly simple: just sit still enough — and straight enough — for long enough. And listen up — to the “sermon of no words.” * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

As promised, at the beginning of each month in 2024, we return to the topic of “Election Year Zen,” with my “DharmaByte” column (DB) for the Silent Thunder Order monthly newsletter, followed by my first subsequent “UnMind” podcast (UM) of the month. To review the underlying rationale for this approach to a topic most practitioners would prefer to avoid, please refer to last month's DB and UM if you have not already done so. In an earlier DB from June of 2023, I had broached this subject gingerly, and I touch upon it in my second major book, “The Razorblade of Zen.” In the newsletter column, I make the point that partisan politics in general is not a topic we would recommend bringing up in the context of the meditation hall — in Japanese called the “zendo” — a sensitive point which had come up in dialog with one of our affiliated Zen centers (quoting myself again): In a recent meeting with one of our affiliate centers, the focus was on “The Platform Sutra of Huineng,” in which he admonishes all to not find fault with others. One of the members who helps organize these events sent me some questions she wanted me to address, including the dilemma of how we are supposed to not find fault with people who are waging war on others, and committing atrocities such as bombing cities, civilians, and children. She was concerned that raising these issues might be too personal, in the context of a Zen community, where the underlying premise might be to provide some shelter and sanctuary from the insanity of the world. But I assured her that, no, these very events are apt examples of the very ignorance, and resultant unnecessary suffering, that are pointed to in the foundational teachings of Buddha. And that she is right to raise such questions in the context of Zen practice in modern life. It is my understanding that in the monasteries, and perhaps the smaller temples in cities and villages of the countries of origin of Zen Buddhism, the custom is to have little or no speaking in the zendo itself. As I learned in 1989, when visiting Eiheiji, the training monastery established by Master Dogen in the 13th century, ceremonial services are typically conducted in an entirely separate building, as are formal talks and other forms of dharma study. This tradition has carried over into the American Zen community, where we are encouraged to leave the zendo quietly after the meditation and gather in another chamber before engaging in dialog. So the idea that we preserve the sanctity of the zendo, and the sanity of its attendees, has some legs. There are good reasons for the specific designs of the protocols we have inherited from Zen's storied past. However, in most smaller temples and training centers, having multiple rooms, let alone separate buildings, in which to conduct various activities is a luxury that many cannot afford. This is the reason both the main altar (J. butsudan) and the smaller zendo altar dedicated to Manjusri are often in the same room, separated by space, or located on different walls of the meditation hall. So we compromise, and hold competing sessions at different times. The meditation hall becomes the dharma hall, then reverts back, when sitting in zazen. Silent, upright seated meditation is the hallmark of Zen, taking precedence over all other activities, fostered by instruction periods for newcomers. However, Zen is not unconnected from reality outside the temple, and the zendo does function as a kind of social sanctuary, as does zazen itself, in the personal sphere. We can manage to accommodate both personal practice and social service functions in the same space, by scheduling them at different times. This does not mean, however, that everyone has to participate, just as everyone need not attend all newcomer instruction sessions. Which is why instructions are not given with every session in the zendo. Members who do not want to discuss buddhadharma on any other than the personal plane are welcome to avoid attending dharma dialogs that have a social slant. But if we prohibit such discussions, we are sidestepping our civic responsibility, which, if you study the Buddhist canon, from Buddha on down to the present day, you will see that the ancient sages and their modern counterparts have not shied away from the subject. When it comes to indiscriminate bombing of civilians and children, we are no longer in the realm of politics. If we are silent, we become complicit. Buddha, I believe, would have spoken out against this betrayal of compassion and wisdom. As did Matsuoka Roshi, concerning the corrupt regime in Vietnam, and other atrocities of his time. We can look to the teachings and meditation practice of Zen Buddhism to find a degree of solace and sanctuary from these insults to humanity, but we cannot run, and we cannot hide from them, ultimately. But we do not have to join the partisan divide, either. To provide some historical context for this discussion, we refer to the foundational documents of the founding fathers of this nation, the oldest surviving democratic republic. In the prior installment on this matter, we quoted the famous first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Let us continue with the second section: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Aye, there's the rub: if “all men” — which phrase we now define to include all women and all children, of all races, ethnic backgrounds, and countries of origin — are indeed created equal, and endowed with “unalienable rights,” then there is no rationale, no excuse, for waging war in which innocents are slaughtered as “collateral damage.” — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. If the very purpose of government is to secure such rights as to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then the institutions of government — including first and foremost the military — must be prohibited from depriving citizens of any country of these rights, with or without the concept of a “Creator.” They go on to define the remedy: — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. So here is the ostensible rationale for the recent attempts to overthrow the present government, though the events of January sixth clearly appear to have partisan roots. At the time of this writing, of course, this ultimate right was claimed in the context of Great Britain's “crazy” King George, and his autocratic grip on the colonies. The history of protests of the original tea party and privileged Tories — loyalists and royalists, or “King's men” — illustrates that the times were probably as divisive, or even more so, than our present partisan divide. Anticipating that this passage might be construed to lend support to purely partisan motives, the framers optimistically hang the hope of future jurisprudence on the dictates of prudence itself: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Leaving aside for now the determination as to which causes should be eschewed as “light and transient,” this suggests that this call to arms is based on the degree of oppression the hoi polloi are willing to bear. This returns to the theme of the last segments of UnMind, with their emphasis on the intersection of design thinking and Zen, where in both arenas, one of the central questions bearing on happiness and suffering is, How much is enough? If the majority of people are fat and happy, and “kitchen table” issues — the price of eggs, bread and butter — are relatively bearable, little attention will be devoted to overthrowing the government, no matter how corrupt. “Let them eat cake” works, if there is fairly widespread access to cake. The division of the citizens into haves and have-nots, with those at the top of the game, the “one-percenters,” raking in wealth that is unimaginable, and inaccessible, to the rest, may be much more exaggerated today, as well as more obvious and available to scrutiny, owing to the ubiquitous availability of 24/7 real-time news media. A recent newspaper column revealed the staggering increases in incomes of the country's top three or four wealthiest individuals, compared to their more meager incomes of only a few years ago, alongside the minimum wage, which has remained static in the same time period, This disparity of incomes has national and international implications as an impetus to immigration, to make matters more complicated. You may argue that these captains of industry deserve the income they earn, but that stretches the concept of earning to the breaking point. You cannot “earn” this level of income in any rational sense of the word. Corporate income comes from “owning,” not earning. We are not going to solve these problems in this analysis, but we can at least compare and contrast the current cultural norms and memes that attempt to justify them, with the teachings of Buddhism, such as encouraging us to engage compassion in dealing with our fellow travelers in the dusty realm of Samsara, the everyday world of patience. So we have to practice patience with a situation that seems to have no justification whatever, or very little from this perspective. While the case can be made that not all people are created equal, it can be argued that to the degree reasonable, the playing field should be leveled. A child born with a silver spoon in their mouth, whether currently or 2500 years ago, is no more deserving than a child born into a family that doesn't even own a spoon. To argue that those parents should not have children who cannot afford to have children ignores the reproductive drive of the species, which pays little regard to the material circumstances of its sperm donors and receivers. Once a child is born, it has the same potential for realizing its buddha nature as any other child, regardless of the causes and conditions into which it is born. And we cannot misuse the Buddhist take on karma and karmic consequences to dismiss these disparities, nor the social injustices that often accompany them, out of hand. The teachings of Buddhism were never intended to be held up to others as a criticism or justification for inaction, but to be reflected back upon our own follies, foibles and failings. This is the “mirror of Zen,” which reflects the good, bad, and the ugly without discrimination. We come to see ourselves in this mirror, along with all others, in our extended dharma family. Buddha was said to have come to see everyone as his “children,” and not in a condescending way. To close this segment, I will lean on Master Dogen's admonition to “thoroughly examine this in practice.” Let us return to our cushions, but not turn our back on those who have not even been exposed to this excellent method. Our mission is clear. We need to wake up on every possible level. Compassion and wisdom — like charity — begin at home.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In our last segment of UnMind, on the meaning of “less is more” — a central axiom of design thinking coined by the famous architect, Mies van der Rohe — I introduced the notion that this adage may be usefully applied to Zen, as well. The simplicity of lifestyle and paucity of possessions surrounding the history of Zen, in China and Japan in particular, speaks to the general question regarding happiness and satisfaction in life: How much is enough? In this segment we will consider how “more” can often be “less.” When we reach a certain level of stability in the normal stages of life in the “first world” countries of modern times, we may find that we have an overabundance of personal possessions: a complete household, and maybe a summer home as well, with the requisite home furnishings; maybe one or two vehicles, a boat, maybe even a private plane. At a certain point, unless we can manage the upkeep and maintenance of all our many acquisitions, our possessions begin owning us. That is, an increasingly large percentage of our time is devoted to taking care of the many things that we do not actually use very often, and probably don't really need, in any realistic sense. Then comes the de-cluttering and downsizing, just to get back to a normal state of affairs — where we can spend our time on those aspects of life that we find most important and rewarding, such as family, friends — and, in Zen, personal insight into existence itself. In examining our approach to Zen meditation, in the context of “less is more,” we see clearly that excess accumulation of material goods is not of much use, and can readily form yet another barrier to simplification of all the demands on our time and attention. When it comes to meditation, we consciously choose to pay attention to the basics of existence, including the body and its posture, the breath and its pattern, and the mind and its machinations. In doing so, we witness the natural functions of the monkey mind as setting goals, ruminating over the past and worrying about the future, and so on. In order to simplify our task of waking up to reality as it is, we can recognize when we are setting goals, for example, and choose to stop setting goals, at least in terms of our meditation. So I launched into the discussion of subtracting such elements from our practice, as we witness them arising, resulting in the concept of “goalless” meditation, which in itself may be defined as a “goal.” Or “timeless” meditation, where we set aside the burden of timing our sitting period, and allow ourselves to reenter real time, which has nothing to do with measurement. Eventually our meditation can become “effortless” — where we have been doing this for so long that, like driving a car, it really doesn't require any conscious effort; and the physical effort has become second nature, so no big deal. SENSELESS MEDITATIONExtending this idea, the various dimensions we observe in zazen, such as the six senses, yield the possibility of “sightless” meditation; “soundless” meditation; “odorless” and “tasteless” meditation; and even “sensationless” meditation, which would be akin to physical Samadhi, I suppose. It would also entail “weightlessness,” when our BMI and gravity come into perfect balance. MINDLESS MEDITATIONAnd finally, “emotionless,” as well as “thoughtless,” or “mindless,” meditation — which latter would conventionally be interpreted as a pejorative. But in Zen, the “don't-know mind” is valued most highly. Emotional Samadhi: less anxiety, more serenity; mental Samadhi: less confusion, more clarity. Eventually, “social Samadhi”: less friction, more harmony in relationships with others, as well as being comfortable in your own skin. FORMLESS MEDITATIONFrom the perspective of posture, breath, and attention, which and when they all come together in a unified way, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say: “This is the real zazen”; we find ourselves practicing “posture paramita”: aiming at the perfect posture without ever imagining we have achieved it, another of Sensei's Zen “secrets.” Through a process of profound sensory adaptation, we arrive at “formless meditation,” not only in terms of physical posture, or form, the first of the five aggregates, but also “mental formations,” the mysterious fourth skandha, meaning underlying motives, intentions, desires, and so forth, the psychological level of motivation. All gone away. CONSCIOUS-LESS MEDITATIONThe natural evolution of our approach to meditation would then naturally and logically lead to a kind of “conscious-less” meditation, an expression so countercultural that it requires a hyphen. The fifth aggregate comprehends the other four, in that we are, or become, conscious of form, sensation, perception, and mental formations, on deeper and deeper levels. Until we apprehend the “flip-side” of each, as the Heart Sutra indicates: “no form, no sensation, no perception, no mental formations”; “until we come to no consciousness also,” as the original English translation we used at Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago rendered the line. We are conscious of the other four — until we are not; and then we are conscious of consciousness itself — until we are not. This steady progression through — and adaptation to — the aggregates, outlined in the Surangama Sutra, is attributed to Buddha himself. So I am not just making this up as I go along. BREATHLESS MEDITATION That our meditation becomes “breathless” at some point may not be obvious — not in the sense of “breathless anticipation” — but in that we are not doing the breathing to begin with; the body is. So when we relinquish the idea of “control”: of the posture, the breath, and the direction of our attention; the natural posture, the naturalbreath, and the natural, or original, state of mind can come into play. We return to our original mind and body, which as Master Dogen reminds us, will unmistakably “drop off.” In good time. OBJECTLESS MEDITATION When our attention — and intention — come together in a unified or holistic way, then it may be said that our meditation has become “objectless.” Both in the sense of the senses and their objects merging in nonduality, and in the sense that we no longer can articulate any specific intention, underlying our practice. It has become “shikantaza,” the Japanese expression for the inexpressible unified field theory of conscious awareness. But we should not become enthralled with this as a concept, which threatens to morph into an expectation, rather than an aspiration. If we understand that “form and reflection behold[ing] each other” is the necessary and natural inflection point that meditation inexorably leads to — or returns to, to be more precise — we cannot go far astray. CONCEPTLESS MEDITATIONThis suggests yet another “less is more” dimension of meditation: that it can be utterly devoid of concepts, associations, or connotations, of any kind. This we might define as “pure” meditation, in the Zen sense of “purity” as nonduality, rather than conventional connotations of morality. No concept, however broad and deep its scope, can capture the breadth and depth of the effect, meaning, and implications of zazen. This is why the content and intent of Zen is sometimes referred to as “The Great Matter,” capitalized. HEARTBEAT MEDITATIONOn a less transcendent and more practical level, I would like to share with you some of my more recent discoveries in zazen fostered by my contracting COVID 19 in December of 2022, followed by a roughly three-month recovery period, amounting to an enforced “ango,” or traditional practice period, of ninety days. During this time, I lost a lot of strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination; and experienced the “mental fog” associated with the worst aftereffects of the pandemic, though I am not inflicted with “long covid” but only the exacerbated effects of aging in combination with the disease. In taking the posture during this time, crossing my legs was increasingly difficult, and the resultant stiffness in my knees threatened to strain a tendon. So I took to sitting on the edge of the raised bench, with my feet on the floor. Getting up from the floor when manning the timekeeper (Doan) position became an agonizing exercise in finding the leverage to stand up. So I moved to chair-sitting. This adaptation to aging is not unusual, by the way — several veteran adepts have found that, by their mid-sixties, they could no longer sit in lotus posture. In order to recover my ability to sit with stability while cross-legged, I began taking a more aggressive approach to the posture and breath, as well as to walking meditation, to compensate for the loss of my youthful vigor. My long-term engagement with kinhin, I am convinced, explains my relative sense of balance, compared to others my age. In implementing this more active approach to the posture and breath, I discovered that I would begin feeling my heartbeat after holding my inbreath for a count of eight or ten, realizing that the tempo of the counting corresponded to the heartbeat. It is as if your heart is the metronome, counting off the time signature of your instrument, the body. By doing a full-body “crunch” while holding my breath, my spine would pop and pull into its natural s-curve, arching the small of the back forward and down, and pulling back and up on the chin, exaggerating the “cobra-rising” rigor of the upright seated posture. Exhaling, I began counting the heartbeat instead of the breath, noticing how the two are synchronized. Gradually, as the breath slows down, so does the heart, from 2 beats per in-breath and out-breath to four, then longer sequences of pulsation as the outbreath, in particular, slows down to a soothing rhythm. Repeating this cycle of squeezing and letting go, the relaxation response begins to set in, embracing the squeeze-and-release cycle of the heart itself, allowing more relaxation time between pulses. I could go on into more detail about how this rhythmic process smooths itself out until, as Matsuoka Roshi would say, the breath seems to come and go through the whole body, like a frog sitting on a lily pad, breathing by osmosis through the pores of the skin. HEALING MEDITATIONI am convinced that this process of observing the integration of posture and breath has therapeutic, or healing, properties; which have immediate benefits of calming the nervous system, and long-term effects promoting longevity. The main benefit of longevity being that it affords a greater chance to wake up fully, in the Zen sense, during this brief lifetime. You might consider expanding this discussion in your own words — such constructions as “compassionless” meditation — to consider whether the concept of compassion that you may be harboring actually conforms to the true meaning of the word, which is to “suffer with.” If you come up with any confounding notions along these lines, please feel free to share them with me. It may prompt a beneficial exchange as to the “limitless” meditation that is zazen. In the next segment, we will return to consideration of “Election Year Zen” — with all the real-world ethics and civics implications that this focus implies. Please join in the dialog.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment of UnMind, the second installment discussing the sameness and differences I have noted in teaching Zen or design as a profession, I wrapped up the essay by mentioning the concept of “control,” as it might apply to either or both: In meditation circles, we often hear phrases such as “controlling the breath” or “emptying your mind of thoughts.” These represent attitudes 180-degrees from that in Zen meditation, which is not one of exerting control, but rather relinquishing any real or imagined level of control. Using that as a springboard for this segment, let's examine our approach to Zen meditation, in the context of the well-known adage from minimalist design, “Less is more.” According to Google: Minimalism is exemplified by the idea of “less is more” as first coined by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The idea that less may be more, in applying the method of zazen, is implicit in many dimensions of the character of Zen training, from Buddha's Middle Way of moderation to the “chop wood, carry water” practicality of the Chinese history, the seven items a monk was allowed to own, and the sparse serenity of the zendo interiors of Japan, with their starkly minimalist sand and rock gardens. The Institute of Design, during my years there in undergraduate and graduate studies, was housed in the basement of Crown Hall, while the Mies school of architecture was on the upper floor. His contribution to minimalist architecture lay in the combination of glass and steel to construct high-efficiency buildings, of which Crown Hall was an early archetype.Another aphorism from design thinking that I mentioned: ...there are many design ideas that are simple in concept, but difficult in execution. Zen may be the poster boy for this truism. Zazen is irreducibly simple in design, but Zen can be maddeningly difficult in daily execution. This is where I would like to begin this segment. Thinking about meditation, particularly Zen's zazen — as I understand this “excellent method,” as Master Dogen repeatedly referred to it — it occurred to me that during zazen, as a process of “unlearning,” or “subtracting” the preconceptions we harbor as to our conventional take on reality, we might usefully question a variety of such attitudes and concepts, as to whether we are unintentionally, perhaps even unconsciously, striving to attain something as a presumed goal of our practice. Only if we recognize that we are doing so, can we then consciously relinquish that particular problematic attitude or opinion, and see what it is like to sit without it getting in our way. A number of these came up for me, which we can consider one at a time, perhaps extending into the next segment. They are expressed herein with the suffix of “-less,” which implies “the absence of.” Let's begin with the very idea of goals in general, embracing the approach of “letting go” of our predilections. GOALLESS MEDITATIONOf course, we all sit in meditation with some kind of goal, whether simply to calm the mind under stress; to get back to normal; or more deeply, to “wake up” to reality, which might be said to be the principle goal of Buddhism. But Master Dogen cautions us, in “Principles of Seated Meditation—Fukanzazengi,” to avoid taking goal-setting too far: ...think neither good nor evil, right or wrong thus stopping the functions of your mind give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha In other words, resist setting up what seems a more lofty goal, in place of the pedestrian objectives we might associate with meditation. Which begs the question, can we do away with all goals and objectives, at least while we are sitting? We might say that it is not that Zen meditation has no goal, but it is just that the actual goal is too deep and too broad to be expressed in words, especially a priori. We meditate to discover the goal. TIMELESS MEDITATIONMost instructions for meditation include imposing time constraints on it, for example by setting a timer, using an app with a built-in alarm, burning a stick of incense, or following the schedule of timed sessions on retreat, or during daily practice at a Zen center. When we experience the latter, sitting with somebody else tracking the time, we feel somewhat liberated from the necessity of thinking about the time, or paying attention to the clock; someone else is doing that for us. When we take a turn as time-keeper (“doan” in Soto Zen), we experience the discipline of being responsible for others' time on the cushion. Both are highly recommended. But someone once said that in zazen, “the barriers of time and space fall away.” When I see someone restively glancing at their watch in the zendo, I will often ask to borrow it. Then, they are unable to indulge their fidgeting obsession with time, at least while sitting. This goes to the larger question of all the measurables associated with our meditation — such as how long we sit, how often, how regularly, et cetera — which are not as important as the immeasurable aspects: that we simply never give up. We keep returning to zazen, in good times or bad, for whatever time we have available for it. I recommend that occasionally, perhaps the next time you sit in meditation, that you forego your tendency to time the period. Sit without any stopping time in mind. Then you may finally reenter real time, which is not measured; indeed, it is not even measurable. You may find that time is all you really have; that in fact, you have all the time there is. This reality of real time versus measured time is captured in the sardonic expression — “The man who has one watch always knows what time it is; the man who has two never knows for sure” — attributed, as many such wisecracks are, to Chinese origin. EFFORTLESS MEDITATIONIn his paraphrase of a brief Ch'an poem about meditation, titled “Zazenshin,” meaning something like an “acupuncture needle” or “lancet” for zazen — something exceedingly sharp or pointed — Master Dogen points to the true meaning of “right effort” toward the end of the poem: Intimacy without defilement is dropping off without relying on anythingVerification beyond absolute and relative is making effort without aiming at it “Making effort” includes assuming the posture, which is not always easy, especially when we overdo it; and breathing, which can be labored, especially when we catch a cold, or during flu season. I have heard that the posture should feel more like a stretching sensation than physical effort, and that the breath should be more like a sigh than belabored breathing. My root teacher, Matsuoka Roshi, said “the breath should be like a gate swinging in the breeze, first this way, and then the other way,” a rather pleasant, languid, relaxed image. And, he would say, “Zazen is the comfortable way.” This should give us pause, in our pursuit of overweening effort, characterized as “macho Zen,” which we get from our impression of Rinzai's more driven practice of externally-imposed discipline. I suspect that this meme is more a social dimension of the culture, than having anything to do with the reality of Zen practice — other than inculcating a sense of urgency: that we have no time to waste, in getting after this most important and central “great matter.” In the next segment of UnMind we will continue with this exploration of the “less” side of the practice. As a semantic curio, the English meaning of the prefix “un” — which in my dharma name means “cloud” — connotes the “opposite” of something, or something very different, as in the “un-cola” campaign promoting the soft drink Seven Up, which I know dates me. It is similar in effect to the suffix “-less,” which connotes the “absence” of something. If you have any suggestions along these lines for me to entertain in the next segment, let me know. My list is quite long, but there is always room for one more consideration to eliminate, from distracting us from our meditation. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

If you are paying an undue degree of attention to the details of my UnMind podcasts, you may have noted that the last segment was titled “Teaching Zen & Teaching Design,” while this one is “Teaching Design & Teaching Zen.” A trivial difference without a distinction, you might say. The emphasis on design thinking may have been a bit confusing, and Zen will be the major focus of this one. But either is here used as a foil for the other, in the spirit of “Harmony of Sameness and Difference,” the second great Ch'an Poem in Soto Zen liturgy, by Master Sekito Kisen: Hearing the words understand the meaning do not set up standards of your ownNot understanding the Way before your eyes how will you know the path you walk? In design circles we say that communication is not the message sent, but the message received. Thus, in parsing my words, and any potential relevance to you and your practice, I ask that you look past my clumsy use of language, which is itself dualistic in nature, to the nonduality of reality as experienced in your consciousness, especially in your meditation. In the last segment I pointed out one obvious contrast between Zen thinking and design thinking: We do not think that we can think our way to enlightenment, in Zen. Meditation goes beyond thinking. Or perhaps more precisely, Zen's shikantaza, the immediate, long-term effect of zazen, defined as “objectless meditation,” resides in that space that exists before thinking. Thought takes time, and so is always looking back on what has already transpired. When it comes to practicing the method of zazen, as well as adapting Zen's worldview, the common premise going in is that thinking, as such, is not going to prove very useful, though it is our most useful tool in apprehending, and recognizing, what Master Dogen referred to as “non-thinking”: neither thinking nor not thinking; the mental middle way. Both design and Zen's meditation process involve a trans-sensory level of learning, which in Zen may be more aptly defined as “unlearning.” So it is not exactly accurate to say that we can “teach” Zen, though we do our best to share our experience, including some “do's and don'ts,” in an interactive dialog. As Matsuoka Roshi would say, “We teach each other Buddhism.” I often learn more in a given exchange, say in dokusan, more than may the identified student. Shohaku Okumura Roshi once commented, during a dharma talk that he gave at the Atlanta Zen center, that he was only “the teacher” because we were there as “the students.” When at home, or in a different context, he was certainly no longer a teacher, as such. We say that Zen cannot be taught, but that it can be learned. Learning Zen, versus learning anything else — especially something as tangible as product design — also differs in that the proof of the pudding, in Zen, is in a taste so intimate and personal that it cannot be shared with anyone. Whereas if I can sit in the chair you designed and built, I can tell for myself that you either know what you are doing, or not. For example, my wife and I once had the distinct pleasure of an overnight stay in Wisconsin, in a small cabin that had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, called the Seth Peterson Cottage. It was a lovely, compact building, in which neither Seth Peterson nor the great architect had ever set foot, both having died before it was complete. The relevance to our focus here is that while the building, and its lovely arboreal siting, were works of genius, the breakfast nook was very uncomfortable, consisting of flat banquettes with no cushioning. But they matched the walls, also clad with plywood. FLW was known for this emphasis on appearance over comfort, also evident in an exhibit of his higher-end home furnishings mounted at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum during my tenure there. Zen and Design both entail apprentice modes of training. That is, developing a grasp of Zen is rather like the process of learning to build a Steinway grand piano. The master or journeyman and their apprentice exchange few words, instead the apprentice simply observing and imitating what his mentor does. In near total silence, the essential functions and processes are communicated through actions, not words. And eventually — lo and behold — the piano is ready to play. This apprentice-journeyman-master triad is analogous to the initiate-disciple-priest model frequently found in Zen circles. The former wording may be more appropriate to our times than the latter — laden as it is with quasi-religious overtones, which do not quite fit the reality of being a Zen adept in America. Although we have great respect, bordering on reverence, for our teachers in Zen, we do not let it go to our heads when we find ourselves on the other side of the relationship. Or we should not, in any case. We who find ourselves in the awkward position of being expected to lead others in this most personal of all problem-solving arenas tend to think of ourselves as more like coaches. The student is like an athlete, who is endeavoring to reach the elite level of the sport. If they are not willing to do the work, no amount of coaching is going to help. If they are, it does not take much coaching to move the dial. This also applies to design. After all, I cannot know for sure what another person needs to know, in terms of Zen. I can only know what it is that I do not know; and perhaps, how to go deeper; as my root teacher would say. He would often remark that it's not what you say or do — in leading a Zen service, for example — it's how you do it. That is, it is natural, and okay, to mess up: you may miss the gong at the time designated; blow a line in the chant, et cetera. But as long as you do not let that get in your way, or disrupt the focus of the others present, no harm, no foul. It is more in the attitude with which you approach things — a balance of wholehearted sincerity and lighthearted joy — that will convey the essence of Zen, than it is in the precision or accuracy of your performance. Zen requires an agile sense of humor, and a goodly dollop of humility. Another dimension of the training process shared by Zen and design professionals is that of “training the trainers.” Although in both cases we are not really propagating a priesthood, but promoting a practice, the notion that our successors will carry on the tradition of training others is implicit in most professions, as well as in Zen. Zen should be approached professionally, rather than mystically, the latter being an example of unhelpful connotations often associated with Zen in the West. One of my professors at the Institute of Design one day proclaimed that the main thing you pick up from your professors at university consists of their attitudes toward the work. I would add that you also pick up learning habits and a work ethic: learning how to learn, as the standard trope goes. The same goes for Zen. Attitudes need adjustment. But the focus of Zen training is not exclusively in the realm of ideas, but rather in the realm of direct experience. Zen is not about reality, or what we can do to manipulate it, but a direct pointing at reality. This is how we approach it on the cushion, without relying on ideas, words and concepts. In Zen as well as design, the issue of control comes into play. In planning, designing and building something, anything — from a chair to the Brooklyn bridge or Holland tunnel — we have to control the materials and processes that will achieve the end we are attempting to achieve. Otherwise, the chair will be uncomfortable, like Frank Lloyd Wright's plywood benches, or we may build in a future disaster, like some of the dire engineering collapses we have witnessed from time to time. But trying to control everything has its limits. In meditation circles, we often hear phrases such as “controlling the breath” or “emptying your mind of thoughts.” These represent attitudes 180-degrees from that in Zen meditation, which is not one of exerting control, but rather relinquishing any real or imagined level of control. We follow the body in assuming the posture, and we follow the breath, rather than attempting to control it. What's sauce for the body is sauce for the mind. We let thoughts go, until they die down to dull roar, on their own. If you do not agree with this non-control, next time you are meditating, and Mother Nature calls, just tell her to buzz off: You are meditating just now. See how that works out for you. Similarly, in design processes, you have to relinquish your tendency to force materials and processes into a mold that is unnatural for them to perform the way you want them to. The concrete has to be adequately reinforced for the tunnel or building to withstand the stresses of gravity, or hurricane-force winds. The fasteners cannot weaken the wood, or the chair will collapse. I could go on, but will close with one more aphorism from design thinking: there are many design ideas that are simple in concept, but difficult in execution. Zen may be the poster boy for this truism. Zazen is irreducibly simple in design, but Zen can be maddeningly difficult in daily execution. It is not the fault of Zen, but rather of our stubborn monkey mind. But don't give up. Only you can do this. You are the only one who can design your Zen life. Only you can redesign it, as reality intervenes.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

As I mentioned in one of the prior segments of UnMind: In zazen, as well as in Zen writ large, we embrace a directive from the first great Ch'an poem by Master Kanchi Sosan: To move in the One WayDo not reject even the world of senses and ideasIndeed embracing them fully is identical with true enlightenment This is the most direct testament I have come across to refute the charge that Zen is somehow anti-intellectual. Those of us who take up the Zen way do, however, recognize the limitations of the discriminating mind in dealing with nonduality, but we do not dismiss intellectualization outright. Our ability to analyze, dissect, and reconstruct information is one of the most powerful tools we have in confronting the various confounding issues we face in life. But it cannot solve the mystery of existence alone. Something else – call it intuition? — has to come into play on a level beyond thought. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Zen goes deeper.” In this segment, I will attempt to address a subject suggested by one of our members, considering the distinctions I have found in my experience teaching Zen over the years, versus my professional background in design, formally beginning with my BS and MS training at the Institute of Design, Illinois Tech in Chicago — acronym ID+IIT if you want to look it up — followed by my tenure teaching at the U of I, Chicago Circle Campus, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Another complementary influence was my training in end-user research, primarily for new product development, with a Chicago-based firm. It was one of my main sources of income while in university, and the firm with which I moved to Atlanta in 1970. The integration of end-user research with each stage of creative development, from raw concept through refined concept, form, features, and styling, and so on, became the subject of my Master's thesis, and is now the gold standard in the industry, the most obvious example being the end-user-participation approach to debugging initial releases of software apps. As a starting point, one notable difference in design and Zen training may be that those who teach design on a professional level, and those who pursue it for advanced degrees, tend to refer to the overall method and approach as “design thinking,” which stresses analytical training to apply design as a generalist endeavor, rather than as a specialty. The premise is that the method employed in defining and solving any given problem of the applied design profession is thought to be basically applicable to any other problem-solving activity, in general terms. In research circles, the term “methodology” is often used to refer to the method followed in conducting the study; it actually means the study of method itself. Which is one area of intense focus in design itself, one of its more well-known proponents being Victor Papanek. For example, the method employed in designing and building a chair is basically the same as that utilized in writing a book, both of which I have personally done. Of course, since the materials required, and the functions of the end product differ; the details of the process differ accordingly. But the overarching steps in the process are similar in nature, as in all problem-solving initiatives. The steps usually taken are roughly parallel to those for solving quadratic equations, acronym PEMDAS. Indulge my stretching the analogy a bit, but the recommended sequence for doing the mathematical operations is to solve the Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and finally the Subtraction, and in that order; otherwise the answer is not likely to be correct. Metaphorically, solving the “parentheses” and “exponents” of the equation first, I take as roughly equivalent to defining the purpose and function of the end product: Who is the audience for this book, again? What is the point in designing yet another chair? What is the implicit thrust, or “root” of the problem, in other words? Once the project's underlying charge and challenge is clarified, then the ideation can begin; brainstorming and mind-mapping: consideration of all the possible materials available, such as hardwoods and furniture fasteners, in the case of the chair. Or the arc of the narrative of the book: What is in the first chapter; how do we end the last chapter; how many pages or words? Both of which I think we can regard as a kind of “multiplication” process. It may expand into future phases, with issues around getting the book, or the chair, published or manufactured, respectively. Once everything that may prove to be pertinent to the design and production of the new thing has been teased out through free association — and documented so as not to be lost — the exercise shifts to dividing the formless mosaic of the mind-map into relatively distinct groupings, much like Buddhism's five aggregates of sentient awareness. This I take as a form of “division.” Dividing the holistic concept into digestible bites in order to further develop the finer details. What options are there for furniture feet, finishes, and fabrics, if the chair is to be upholstered? What is the most logical sequence of chapters for the table of contents; how detailed do we need to make the footnotes or endnotes? Prioritizing the categories to take them one at a time, we then examine each set individually as to their completeness, and flesh them out, including elements we may not have thought of in the first go-round. This is the role of “addition,” kicking in once we have neatly divided the whole into discrete parts, each of which benefits from individual embellishment. For the chair, this may include line extensions such as choices in fabric, variable sizes and features such as adjustability of an ergonomic model. For the book, it may include illustrations, graphic inserts and, these days, links to online content. Finally, we get to the “subtraction,” the last in the sequence. For the book, this would comprise the familiar editing process, in the form of major block edits, detailed line edits, and excising text that may not earn the space it occupies in terms of contribution to the story line. For a chair, as a one-off and especially for mass production, it might entail identifying and eliminating unnecessary secondary operations in manufacturing, which prove unnecessary to the quality of the finished product. In all creative processes, whether in a group or individual endeavor, these steps flow from first considering, defining, and redefining, the initial problem; then mapping out all the various aspects, dimensions, and components of the problem; sorting elements into relatively discrete groupings; then adding any overlooked components to flesh out the various categories; and, finally, editing: prioritizing, setting aside and/or eliminating any and all areas and items of concern that may be safely postponed for later consideration, focusing on those that are most central to a solution, and demanding immediate attention, before moving on to more peripheral issues. This cycle is not a one-and-done, of course; the evolution of the book or chair often requires recycling through the earlier steps repeatedly, until the final design has moved from concept to execution. Such methods, like everything else these days, have now become ubiquitous online, where we find such apps as “Google docs” listed in 3,400,000,000 search results for “online group methods.” To conclude this segment, let me add that I feel that my training in the Bauhaus method of design thinking at ID+IIT combined with training in research methodology uniquely positioned me to take on the propagation of Zen as an identified problem, and to focus on the definition of that problem, as it evolved over nearly 50 years to date. The research model enabled me to apply group process to the administrative side, studying the requirements of establishing a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation in compliance with the rules and regs of the IRS, and to manage the many dysfunctional aspects of board of directors' governance. That the ASZC has been in virtually continuous operation is, I think, testament to the validity of this approach. In the next segment, we will segue into consideration of these same approaches to the teaching of the unteachable, Zen. Stay tuned and keep practicing.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

After taking a holiday hiatus from my DharmaByte column and UnMind podcast, in collaboration with my publisher and producer, we have determined a new direction for 2024, or a new way of extending our past direction. As this is the quadrennial election year in the American national political cycle, we feel it is time, and timely, to address the relationship of Zen practice in particular, and the teachings of Zen Buddhism in general, to that of governing, and more broadly, our civic duty as citizens of the United States.The differing definitions of “politic” versus “political” give us a clue as to the difference between engaging in the fray from the perspective of the Middle Way, and that of the usual partisan divide. Politic, according to the dictionary, means: “(of an action) seeming sensible and judicious under the circumstances” while “political” is rendered:“mainly derogatory — relating to, affecting, or acting according to the interests of status or authority within an organization rather than matters of principle.” We can see that what Buddha did 2500 years ago was the former, establishing the original Order as an alternative to the prevalent caste system, rather than going head-to-head with it. While many adherents, propagators and proponents of Zen in America, including some members of our community, or sangha, have expressed a reluctance, even a repulsion, toward the political arena, we take the position that “You have to say something,” to quote the title from a book by Katagiri Roshi, as I did in my “War & Karma” segment from November of 2023: I fear that if we in Zen do not try to address these terrible global realities in the context of Buddhism, it may be taken as an indication, or an admission on our part, that Zen, along with its teachings and practice, [may] have finally faded into irrelevance, in the face of such intractable 21st century problems. Setting aside for now the quirkiness of quoting one's own prior writing, let me restate the matter in terms of the political climate in general, and what it means from a Zen point-of-view, or at least from mine, informed by Zen practice and the teachings of Buddhism. If we shy away from the current campaign, with its extreme polarization and obvious threats to the operations of this democratic republic — as envisioned by the founding fathers — it may be tantamount to ignoring a train wreck, but one that is coming right at us. The Buddhist teachings of balancing wisdom with compassion may be uniquely suited to addressing the controversies of our time, the overarching theme of my second book, “The Razorblade of Zen.”As a big-picture aside, consider the fundamental divide in Buddhist thought: We usually live in a dualistic frame of mind, coping with the everyday demands of life — in the 21st century as well as 2500 years ago. This is one of the great commonalities we have with Buddha and all of his descendants throughout Zen's history in India, China, Korea, Japan, and on down to the present. Yet Buddhism teaches that this “normal” worldview is somehow askew; that there is “the rest of the story,” referred to as nonduality. Zen holds that both can be true at the same time. The resolution of this apparent dichotomy is one of the many benefits of Zen meditation, but “it cannot be reached by feelings or consciousness; how could it involve deliberation?” according to Tozan Ryokai, founder of Soto Zen in China, circa 800 CE. So we have to give up our intellectual approach, based on logic, to reach this meta-logical resolution, A.K.A. the ”Middle Way.” This applies to so-called politics as well.A concession to those who may feel their knees impulsively jerking: I do not intend to rehash the debate about the participation of Japanese Zen practitioners in the atrocities of WWII, nor any other historical period or event, but mean to focus laser-like on the application of Zen practice to our current situation only. With some recourse to the foundational documents, and what they might mean in the present circumstances of life in America, some 250 years later.As an aside, for a sort of overriding historical benchmark, let me point out that Buddhism is some 2500 years old. Which is ten times the age of the USA. From which we might conjure an analogy to a 100-year-old elder compared to a 10-year old pre-adolescent. Indeed, the behavior of the American political cohort, as well as that of most of the hoi polloi, along with the values underpinning that behavior, may be seen as rather like that of a ten-year-old, blithely and blindly in hot pursuit of pleasure and short-term self-gratification, embracing one half of a familiar admonition from Buddha's first sermon; paraphrasing: O monks, these two extremes ought not be followed by one going forth from the household life; what are the two? There is devotion to the indulgence of self-gratification, which is low, common; the way of ordinary people; unworthy and unprofitable. There is devotion to the indulgence of self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy and unprofitable.He goes on to claim that he has found a way out of this seeming lesser-of-two-evils choice: Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata has realized the Middle Way. And to promise that the benefits of finding this middle way between the extremes pays off big-time: It gives vision; it gives knowledge; and it leads to calm, to insight, to awakening, to Nirvana.To clear up some of the jargon, “Tathagata” is one of ten honorifics accorded Buddha during his lifetime, meaning something like “the thus-come one.” “Nirvana” is the state of ultimate liberation, sometimes misrepresented as a separate dimension much like the Western concept of heaven or paradise, being a kind of polar opposite of “Samsara,” the everyday world of suffering. The deeper teaching is that there can be no actual separation of samsara and nirvana, as they are interdependent and thus, mutually defining. the fault being, as usual, in the eye and mind of the beholder. I hasten to add that, if this is good advice for monastics, how much more appropriate must it be for us householders, living in the midst of la vida loca?It should be stated from the beginning that we do not view Zen as partisan in its outlook — it isn't right or left wing — though many would argue the point. And that is part of the point here — that while we will be mounting what may technically be defined as a series of “arguments” in future segments, it is not our intent to prove that either side of the ideological divide is indisputably in the right, and the other necessarily in the wrong. It may be possible that, as we hear repeatedly these days, “both things can be true at the same time.” This is not to suggest a false equivalence, but to remember that, according to Zen, as well as modern brain science, different people actually do experience different realities, owing to the fact that our perceived reality is a reconstruction that occurs inside our minds, and cannot possibly reflect all the many aspects of any eventuality — the knowns; the known unknowns; and the unknown unknowns; to quote a former Secretary of Defense — that appear as the causes and conditions of a particular event. Nonetheless, we might hope that by bringing the nondual approach of Zen to bear upon the dualistic thinking informing the political dialog, we may shed some light on the Middle Way as applied to the social sphere, all the while maintaining that any true insight into conflict resolution will necessarily begin in the personal sphere, in meditation.To set the tone for the next segment, which will appear in the weekly UnMind podcast before the next monthly DharmaByte, let's review the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.This seminal paragraph of this seminal document of the inchoate glimmering of the dawn of democracy will prove important, if introductory, to the idea of freedom in general — and its nature in Zen's reality — in our further discussions of what bearing the social sphere of community, or sangha (including political ramifications) may have on our personal sphere of private practice of free will, with implications for the usual goal of happiness, as well as the transcendent goal of liberation in the spiritual sense.Setting aside the “Nature's God” terminology, which smacks intriguingly of traditional Buddhism's “Vairocana Buddha” figure — the so-called “cosmic Buddha” — we might usefully consider conflating the “Laws of Nature” with some of the time-honored expressions of Dharma as law – i.e. the “law of the universe.”A final assurance until next time we meet: To those groaning under the daunting prospect of weekly commentary on the passing political scene, not to worry: I will confine my comments on the campaign to a monthly Dharma Byte, followed by a single podcast expanding the text a bit on UnMind. The interim three weeks of podcasts will return to our overarching, ongoing thread of efforts to translate the liberating teachings of Buddhism and Zen into the contemporary idiom of the English language and the American culture. Please join us in this endeavor. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

This is UnMind, and I am producer Shinjin Larry Little. After restarting the UnMind podcast in April of 20-23 with episode 106, we've met you almost every week for the past 33 weeks with fresh insights and teachings from Great Cloud Michael Elliston Roshi. Due to multiple competing priorities at this time of year, we will take a brief and well-deserved break through the rest of the calendar year. We look forward to meeting you all, and the new year, with more fresh content and insights about the interface of Zen and Design. As always, UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, in Atlanta Georgia, and the Silent Thunder Order. Find us on the web at A-S-Z-C dot O-R-G. We welcome your support of these teachings via paypall or venmo: to donate please visit the giving page on our website. Gassho. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In this segment of UnMind, I would like to return to the basics of Zen, after a foray into some of the darker topics of the times, in particular the horrific conditions of global strife in which we find ourselves immersed these days. It's a bit like being trapped in the middle of a train wreck where we cannot turn our gaze away. Life has always existed on the edge of death, aging and sickness — the three cardinal marks of dukkha, or “suffering” — Buddha's sine qua non of the conditions of existence as a sentient being. But the sheer enormity of wasteful, infuriating carnage being inflicted upon human beings by other human beings in current hotspots around the globe — not to mention the local wildlife, livestock, and pet animals — has exceeded all bounds of dysfunctional perversity. It seems a vestigial throwback to more primitive times, and is beginning to look like proof positive of the apocalyptic vision of some religions: the Prince of Darkness, evil personified, indeed has dominion over the Earth, at least for now. The Great Deceiver is parading around in the guise of political leaders of supposedly enlightened government, celebrating the targeted collapse of civilization everywhere they direct their ire. In this context it may seem irresponsible, and even insane, to turn our attention to examining the fundamentals of Buddhism and Zen, which encourage studying the self, forgetting the self, and hopefully realizing the true meaning and purpose of our existence, when the people actually doing the damage are the least likely to have any such inclination to self-examination, let alone any realization of compassionate insight for others. But, as they say, when the oxygen masks drop because the airplane is losing altitude, put yours on first, or you will not be able to help others. In Zen, zazen is your oxygen mask. ZEN ≠ ZAZEN ≠ MEDITATIONZen is not equal to zazen, and zazen is not equal to “meditation” as commonly understood. Zazen is not the same as other meditations, and the term “Zen” should not be considered interchangeable with “zazen.” It may seem heretical to propose that Zen is not equal to zazen, or that zazen does not fit the Western cultural definition of meditation. But bear with me. There are so many alternative styles of meditation today that it is past time to differentiate Zen's method from the rest. And to clarify that — while Zen and zazen cannot be separated — the terms are not interchangeable. Zen is not synonymous with its meditation method, zazen, simply because there is so much more to Zen as a way of life, a philosophy, and as a formative force throughout history. This has primarily been true of the history of the East, but following its introduction to America in the late 1890s, and especially after WWII, westerners in general, and Americans in particular, have become more and more interested in Zen, along with a parallel engagement with other meditative traditions and styles, such as Yoga, as well as other Buddhist and non-Buddhist variations. Zen is known as the meditation sect of Buddhism, but zazen is not its sole method of teaching. Zen boasts an extensive literature and liturgy on buddha-dharma as experienced and expounded by its adherents, traditionally beginning with Bodhidharma's journey out of India, and tracing its evolution through China, Korea and Japan, to the Far East. However, distribution of the Buddhist canon, in the form of written sutras and commentaries, had preceded the 28th Patriarch by centuries, and his bringing Zen from the West to the East was definitely focused on the direct practice of upright sitting, or what we now refer to as zazen, or more precisely, shikantaza. Likewise, zazen and shikantaza may usefully be parsed as to their relative definitions as method and effect, respectively. More on this later. ZAZEN & MEDITATIONThe Great Sage's meditation practice inside that cave at Shaolin Monastery did not conform to the traditional style known as dhyana, or contemplation, though this is how the local punditry interpreted his “wall-gazing Zen.” But he was not contemplating the wall. Dhyana, in the classic definition, involves a subject, or mind, meditating upon an actual, tangible object — such as a tree, in one famous example (from Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi): If you wish to follow in the ancient tracksPlease observe the sages of the pastOne on the verge of realizing the buddha wayContemplated a tree for ten kalpas “Ten kalpas” is a mighty long time. The entire universe passes through only four kalpas in its cycle, known variously as the empty kalpa, or kalpa of formation; the kalpa of continuance; the kalpa of decline; and the kalpa of disintegration. So ten kalpas embrace two-and-a-half cycles of universal evolution. Long time. But we digress. Generally speaking, dhyana, or contemplation meditation, continues until the observing mind finally runs out of ideas, exhausting all possible thoughts about the object; leaving a direct sensory awareness of the existential reality of what we call a “tree,” but without the overlay of conceptualization, categorization, and endless web of connections. Bodhidharma, by turning abruptly to face the wall of the mountain, was demonstrating not contemplation, but shikantaza, or “objectless meditation,” which amounts to a kind of oxymoron, in conventional terms. Meditation is typically defined as focusing our attention on something, and so inherently implies a division of subject and object. If our direct experience in zazen eventually becomes objectless, then by definition it must also become subject-less (which, tellingly, is not a recognized construction in English; thus the hyphenation). In the most salient sense, then, zazen transcends normal meditation. We might say that we transcend from the personal dimensions of posture, breathing, and paying attention to the senses, as well as the machinations of the mind — the “eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind” of the Heart Sutra — to a subtle awareness of something less definitive: meditating upon the whole, rather than any part. The observer is subsumed into the observed, like a holon in a holarchy. More on this later.“Zen” is phonetic Japanese for “Ch'an,” which is phonetic Chinese for the Sanskrit “dhyana,” one of the traditional Six Paramitas, or “perfections” of Buddhism. Thus, because the origins of Zen meditation are not conflated with dhyana, but as going beyond contemplation, “Zen” is actually a kind of misnomer. Which is a good thing, because what Zen is pointing to cannot be named. In Taoism there is a similar idea, paraphrasing: Naming is the source of all (particular) things That which is eternally real is nameless Zazen and shikantaza, as mentioned, can also usefully be parsed as to their relative functions as “method” and “effect,” respectively. Holarchy & HolonI first came across the term “holarchy” — as opposed to the more familiar “hierarchy” — in the form of a book, “The Essential Ken Wilber,” recommended by a member of the Suzuki lineage for its treatise on “integral spirituality.” The term, holarchy, was not coined by him, according to Google, which, like the old magic oracles, you can ask anything:Arthur Koestler, author of the 1967 Book “The Ghost in the Machine,” coined the term holarchy as the organizational connections between holons (from the Greek word for "whole"), which describes units that act independently but would not exist without the organization they operate within. Is a hierarchy a nested holarchy?Instead of everything being explained in terms of smaller bits and ultimate particles—which was the way science worked in the modern era—we can now think of the universe holistically, organized in a series of levels of organization in a nested hierarchy or holarchy. At each level, things are both wholes and parts.Some of the earliest examples of holarchic models may be found in the early teachings of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, the Twelvefold Chain of interdependent co-arising, the Five Aggregates and Six Senses, and so on. My model of the Four Nested Spheres of Influence, with personal at the center, surrounded by the social sphere, then the natural world, then the universal, is also like this, a holarchy. These sets of components are not meant to be understood as entirely separate and apart from each other, but intricately interrelated, to use one of Matsuoka Roshi's common expressions. In Zen, all seemingly disparate things are also connected, the ultimate expression of the current trope: “Both things can be true at the same time.” We turn to zazen in our daily lives, in order to manifest a Zen life. Zen is the meditation sect of Buddhism, and zazen is the heart of Zen. The method of zazen is the main thing that we actually transmit, from one generation to the next. It is the same in music and other arts and sciences. No one can teach another music, as such, but someone can teach you how to play an instrument. It is up to you to find the music. Similarly, we can teach others this “excellent method” of zazen, as Master Dogen defined it. It is up to them to find the Zen.The instrument we study, and play, in zazen, is the human body and mind, our essential inheritance enabling us to wake up fully, as did Buddha. Other species are not considered to have the level of consciousness necessary and sufficient to the challenge. Dogs may have buddha-nature, but like most humans, they may never realize it. Ironically, it seems that we have to stop “playing” the instrument of body-mind — that is, give up our impulse to control everything — in order to allow it to “drop off” (J. shinjin datsuraku) to reveal our true nature, which is not limited to this body and mind. Body and mind are not separate, and, again, both can be true at the same time. That is, mind and body may seem to be of different categories, yet they are intricately inter-related.So sitting in zazen may be considered a subset of Zen, which is all-encompassing, and thus the holon of zazen is subsumed under the holon of Zen. But the necessity of zazen as central to apprehending the larger sphere of Zen, means that the two not only cannot be separated, but that the method cannot be separated from the larger effects, as in: So minute it enters where there is not gapSo vast it transcends dimensionA hairsbreadth deviation and you are out of tune This stanza from “Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind” by Master Kanchi Sosan, indicates another holarchy, that of the transcendent “IT” of Zen, and your personal relation to it. The slightest deviation on your part, in resisting or missing the point of this all-embracing teaching, is the primary source of your suffering. This basic idea of the asymmetrical nature of the relationship — of the holon of the “I” to that of the “IT” of Buddhism — is more directly captured some 200 years later, in Tozan Ryokai's “Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi: You are not it but in truth it is you In zazen, as well as in Zen writ large, we are embracing the directive from the first poem, in which Master Sosan admonishes us, paraphrasing: To move in the One WayDo not reject even the world of senses and ideasIndeed embracing them fully is identical with true enlightenment Stay tuned. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

I sometimes ask the producer of the UnMind podcast whether there is any subject he would like me to address, that he thinks is timely, and that others might find to be of interest. He sent me the following note: I was re-reading notes I've made in a Brad Warner book (“It Came From Beyond Zen”) and he made two points that are hitting me today. He interpreted Dogen's chapter “Kannon” and then commented on the interpretation: To me the basic idea of this whole essay is that compassion is intuitive. You can assess a given situation and think about how to deal with it compassionately. And you might even come up with the right answer that way. But in actual moment-by-moment interactions, compassion isn't a matter decided by thought. You have to be able to see your instantaneous intuitive response and then do it. This is hard. One of the reasons we practice meditation is to help us see our intuitive responses more clearly. Then: A little further along I have Dogen say, “You give yourself to yourself, and you give everyone else to everyone else.” That's pretty close to the original. This is important. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else. There's no great merit in burning yourself out for the sake of others, since you'll only end up becoming a burden to those who'll have to take care of you after you wreck yourself in the process. Brad is a relatively younger and relatively famous Zen friend who has visited Atlanta from time to time; he and I once led a retreat together in Nashville, if memory serves. I agree with his point that compassion is basically intuitive, rather than entirely analytical. We speak of “practicing” compassion, and it is true that we can train ourselves to respond to individuals and situations more compassionately — that is, by seeing their side of the story, et cetera — but we should probably differentiate between practicing compassion and actually experiencing it. The word literally means “suffer with”: the prefix “com” meaning “with”; while “passion” is interchangeable with “suffering” as in “the passion of Christ.” Passion also means feeling strongly about something, as in “my passion is art” or music. But back to the idea of experiential compassion, of which I have written before. When we realize that we are the recipient of compassion in the sense of suffering as allowing, as in “suffer the little children to come unto me” as attributed to Christ, we recognize that we exist by virtue of the universe allowing us to exist — in that “goldilocks zone” in space and time where our home planet is far enough from, and close enough to, the sun that it can support life as we know it. The determinative parameters apparently do not have to be off by much to eliminate the possibility of sentient life on Earth. So in some sense, the planet is willing to suffer with us, until we become insufferable, which threshold we may have already transgressed, what with climate change and all. Religious belief systems aside, we may be hanging by a thread that is ready to snap. Ergo, we exist by dint of the compassion of the universe in its willingness to support life. Now, when we attribute “willingness” to the unconscious universe, eyebrows will be raised. The root word of willingness is “will,” and if we attribute will to the impersonal world in which we live, the next question will be, “Whose will?” It is counterintuitive to attribute will, unless it is to a “who.” But we can also look at will — the will to survive, the will to exist, and the will to propagate the species, for example — as disembodied will. Associated with will is the notion of intent — on both conscious and unconscious levels. Is it our intent to exist? Did we “will” ourselves into existence? Is there such a thing as “free will?” Or do all willful acts come with a price tag? Are we delusional in imagining that we are exerting free will in coming and going in this universe? As students at the Institute of Design, Illinois Tech, we would occasionally attend a movie series offered at the University of Chicago, in which they screened foreign films that would not be readily available in commercial theaters. After the feature they would show a short film or a series, one of which was entitled “The Lost Planet Ergro” if memory serves. These were in the category of “so bad they are good.” One of the leading characters in the script, when hearing some far-fetched explanation of the latest sci-fi phenomenon shown in the film would solemnly declare, “That's too deep for me.” After so many repetitions following so many scenes, it became unbearably funny. This is the way I feel about the speculations mentioned above. Apparently, Buddha did not exactly suffer fools gladly, and rejected flights of fancy from the practical standpoint of whether of not they addressed the problem at hand, that of the daily suffering in life. His experience in meditation apparently resolved many of the conflicts and conundrums we face in our lives, compounded, as they are by, complications of modern civilization. The story goes that, in the face of irreconcilable differences between the way he wished things might be, and the way that things really were, and still are, he resorted to meditation. He sat down, in all humility, and faced the fact that, with all of his intelligence, education, and privileged position in the caste system of his time, he did not really know what he most desperately needed to know. The story continues that he resolved to sit there and die, if need be, to settle once and for all the dilemma of his estrangement from the world, owing to the seemingly needless suffering he witnessed on a daily basis. He learned — and we should resolve — to “suffer with” the true causes and conditions of our existence, as he articulated them: aging, sickness, and death, to begin with; along with social dimensions of being away from our loved ones, and/or being with people we do not like. The depth and breadth of his insight still resonates today, in the validation of the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path as being as relevant to our times as to his. Although, as I mention in earlier episodes, the complexity of our context has multiplied geometrically. If we take Buddha's example and message to heart, we can see that the compassionate thing to do is to embrace karmic causality, and the causes and conditions within our personal, social, natural and universal spheres of action and influence. The atrocities we witness around the globe, which manifest as the opposite of compassion, and the quintessential nature of ignorance, do not lobby against the veracity of Buddha's insight, but indeed confirm it in the most depressing manner imaginable. We do not have to imagine it because it is real, and has real karmic consequences. The native American tribes had a unique take on this hypothesis, as expressed by one of their chiefs during the genocidal advent of the white European settlers. It went something like this: The tribal members who had been slaughtered in the conquest — men, women and children — would be reborn as future generations of the children of the invaders. The perfect retribution, big-time karmic consequence. Whether or not you choose to honor or even consider this possibility, if those waging war on others, cavalierly bombing and otherwise laying waste to noncombatant civilians, were to believe that, like chopping down weeds after they had gone to seed, their very efforts are simply multiplying the future ranks of the perceived enemy, it might give them pause. If the “final solution” is genocide, wiping out the entire “other,” but it turns out not to work, but in fact simply kicks the can down the road a generation or two, the futility of the warring endeavor might finally come crashing home. This conclusion will never be drawn in the context of theistic beliefs in the eternal soul, of course. Unless they allow for some version of rebirth or reincarnation. Buddhism does not hold out this possibility in order to debate or refute contrary ideas. But what if it is true? Wouldn't the intrinsic irresolution, itself, perhaps contribute to a more moderate, compassionate approach to — if not loving thine enemies — at least recognizing that they may prevail, in spite of, or as a direct result of, our best efforts to eliminate them? As Master Dogen reminds us: Yet in attachment, blossoms fall In aversion, weeds spread And as one of our members reminded us when we were weeding the parking lot of the prior Zen center: “Weeds are flowers we don't want; flowers are weeds we do want.” But the herbicides that we spew over the land, in order to eradicate those flowers we identify as weeds in the patch, ultimately blow back our way, often taking our favorite blossoms with it. We are all, like it or not, forced to experience compassion, “suffering with,” suffering the ignorance of our fellow human beings. Suffering fools, if not gladly, as the saying goes. Karma and its consequences are not individuated; they come bundled with the species.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

I hesitate to add yet another voice to the cacophony of cries of agony, suffering, outrage and acrimony emanating out of Israel, Gaza, and surrounding Arab states, exacerbated by the 24/7 chattering class. Not to mention the ongoing carnage in Ukraine, which seems to have slipped under the global radar. But I fear that if we in Zen do not try to address these terrible global realities in the context of Buddhism, it may be taken as an indication, or an admission on our part, that Zen, along with its teachings and practice, have finally faded into irrelevance, in the face of such intractable 21st century problems. But as Katagiri Roshi reminds us, “You have to say something.” And Matsuoka Roshi did not shy from taking on the atrocities of his day. Check out his collected talks. Actually, just the opposite is true. It is not that the Zen Way is a panacea, or that it offers a silver bullet that will somehow “fix” a situation that has been several millennia in the making. But Buddhism points to the fundamental origin of the problem, traditionally defined as “craving” or “thirst.” The difficulty is that we have to individually “abandon” that craving, in order to enable the cessation of suffering, not only for ourselves but for others. But the individuals directly affected by the war seem to have no power over, or protection from, the influence and actions of the masses. So it would seem that our challenge may be to define the actual source of the conflict in the Middle East as originating in some form of craving, one that has been in force since long before the founding of Israel, just after the end of WWII. We must concede that the abandonment of that craving may or may not be possible, given the volatility of the situation, and the likelihood that cooler heads will not prevail for some time. According to my limited understanding of Buddhism, craving begins before birth, innate in the very desire to exist. This idea amounts to a pre-Enlightenment or proto-scientific hypothesis, an attempt to explain Nature's overwhelming fecundity, the irresistible will to life, manifested as the innumerable cascade of seeds, sperm, spores, and other forms of burgeoning life, populating the natural sphere in all corners of the planet. In sentient beings such as humans, this craving is clearly inchoate, beginning before or at conception and continuing in the womb, arising out of basic ignorance of the causes and conditions of our own origins. Whatever level of awareness can be attributed to the developing embryo, it is of a relatively primitive nature, compared to its later stages of maturation. Buddha made a noble attempt to model the process of growth of sentient beings, arising from primordial ignorance under the influence of mental formations, slowly differentiating the senses, and finally segueing through birth, aging, and death; then beginning another round through rebirth, in the teaching known as the “Twelvefold Chain of Interdependent Co-Arising” (Skt: pratityasamutpada). Find the link to the illustration in the show notes for this segment. Note that “mental formations” (#2) comprises the second link in the chain, arising in the womb out of the first link, the primordial sea of ignorance (#1) from which the universe arises. These formations are the motives, intentions and desires that underly all other dimensions of life, and which underpin our natural consciousness (#3) as a sentient being. The growth of the fetus continues, following its DNA blueprint — as we now know from modern genetics — resulting in a particular form (#4) of the organism; which leads to development of the six senses (#5), and contact (#6) with the outer world; which, in the context of the mother's womb, would arise from subtle sensation (#7) and perhaps a level of subliminal perception (#8), such as hunger experienced as craving (#9); which then develops into clinging (#10); leading to “becoming” (#11) — in the most general sense of the word — in modern terms, ontogeny; and finally to birth (#12), which ultimately reverts to aging and death (#13). Then, according to this theory, the cycle begins all over again. Tradition has it that it takes three full cycles through the chain to complete the process. So what does all this have to do with war, let alone the karmic consequences we might associate with war? Modern biology might find this model overly simplified, but I propose that we apply it to the arising of social awareness in the individual. We may find some linkage as to how a chain of conflicts arising between individuals can spread within a community, and between ethnic groups, eventually fueling international strife. One of the guest speakers at a conference we held in collaboration with the Department of Religion of Emory University in 2000, structured around the scholar-practitioner divide and focused on the teachings of Master Dogen, was asked, during the Q&A following his address, whether Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, could truly engage in a dialog. His answer was “No.” As long as they are Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, no dialog is possible. At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to take this moment to point out the obvious: Buddha was not a Buddhist, any more than Christ was a Christian. These concepts came into the vernacular following their life and death on Earth. They have now become additional labels for identifying and differentiating the constructed self. During his recent peacemaking trip to Israel, president Joe Biden was quoted as saying something like: “Whether you are Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, if you give up who you are, the terrorists have won.” But Buddhism suggests that we should do precisely that. We are to thoroughly examine the reality of this “who you are” — the imputed or constructed “self” — with a judicious skepticism, particularly in meditation. When we do so, we are told, we will see through the outer appearance of the self, penetrating to the emptiness at its core. This “emptiness” is an inadequate translation of the Sanskrit shunyatta, which points to the dynamic, ever-changing reality underlying all phenomena, and not a vacuous, woeful, or frightening void of nothingness, as it is sometimes interpreted. Perhaps we can draw an analogous parallel between the progress of a single person through these stages of life, as articulated by Buddha, to that of the tribe, or community, a group of individuals united by a common gene pool and shared biological and geographical roots, as well as agreed-upon social mores and norms. When two such groups clash, the knee-jerk reaction is to point fingers and blame the other side for starting the current conflict. The response is always to reflect the blame back on the accuser, in a seemingly endless regress into the fog of history. Observers seem compelled to weigh in on one side or the other. If we look at the suffering in an individual's life, we might entertain the same question: Whose fault is this? Who started this? Whose idea was this? Theistic philosophies have a ready answer — that this life, with all its imperfections, is a reflection of God's will — moving in mysterious ways that we cannot hope to comprehend. Applying this same nostrum to international strife seems largely an evasive maneuver, an avoidance of the responsibility of actually resolving the dispute in human terms. In Zen, we embrace the idea that, if anyone is to blame for our individual life, it is us. The repentance verse expresses this notion concisely: All my past and harmful karmaFrom beginningless greed, hate and delusionBorn of body, mouth, and mind,I now fully avow. “Avow” is a rather archaic term, meaning to assert or confess openly. In other words, we are owning it — assuming responsibility for the unintended consequences of our own behavior — we are not blaming others. We might want to blame our parents, and their parents, another endless regress, as the proximate cause of our own existence. Good luck with that. Even if they are at fault, we cannot hold them accountable, at least not for long. After their demise, we are left to face the same reality, without the scapegoat. Similarly, in international conflicts, which often amount to tribal warfare on steroids, it might be helpful for all sides to own up to their own culpability in what has come to pass, as president Biden did in recalling the overwrought reaction to the 911 crisis. This would amount to a simple recognition and acceptance of one of the seminal marks of dukkha: “imperfection.” Admitting that “mistakes were made” — before the situation accelerates to an irresolvable level of mutually-inflicted violence. One of the black marks on US exceptionalism — that of Hiroshima & Nagasaki — has become the mother of all mistakes that have ever been made on the global stage. The country that first dropped the Big Bomb on civilians is hardly in a position to lecture others on the morality of human decency in following the “laws of war,” the mother of all oxymorons. War is precisely the end of law, in any human sense of the term. Where people — or, for that matter, any sentient beings of the same species — are separated, they tend to evolve in different directions. This principle of Darwin's “Origin of Species” theory can explain a lot, such as the development of varying cuisines, dialects and languages, as well as the susceptibility of isolated populations to propaganda. What if the appropriate authority, such as the United Nations, undertook a program of social exchange in all such closed-border situations as that of Israel and the Gaza strip? What that might look like would be providing safe passage from each side of the border to the other for limited groups of families or age groups, who would spend a limited amount of time in the company or homes of their counterparts in the “other” culture, the designated enemy. This is an old idea whose time may have come around again. If people get to know each other on a personal, more intimate basis, and “break bread” together, they are a lot less likely to turn on each other for no reason, and to find common ground. Wasting the opportunity of a lifetime in the service of a questionable, survival-oriented self finds its analog in following political leaders who are similarly self-striving, finding at the end-of-the-day, or at the end of your life, that not only are they, your titular leaders, unappreciative of your loyalty, but that they even regard you with contempt, as part of the problem, or at best a pawn in their geopolitical chess game. In the personal sphere of meditation, you may fight your own war, and hopefully find your individual salvation. Then, and only then, you may be able to share it with others in, and outside of, your social sphere. Good luck with that. Don't give up.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment we ended with the suggestion that you, dear listener, might construct your own Noble N-fold Path based on your vision of the Noble Truths, with the proviso that you may have to articulate what the existence of suffering means to you, and how you might pursue a path to its cessation in modern times. In doing so you may discover that there are more origins of suffering in your life than simple craving, although craving is not simple. You may also find, upon closer examination, that the cessation of suffering is going to require giving up more than your basic biological cravings, and that your personal path to salvation will have more than eight basic dimensions involved. However, most of the more detailed dimensions and distractions in daily life today will probably loosely correlate to those that the Buddha defined. Let me know if, in the interim, you have thought about this, and engaged in the creative exercise I suggested — that you make an attempt to redefine the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path in your own terms. I would be interested to see what you came up with. In this segment, as promised, I will attempt to expand the context further, integrating the original four as defined by Buddha with those surrounding spheres of influence that have impact on our daily lives, as well as on our contemporary practice of Zen, including the personal and social we have discussed so far, as well as the natural and universal spheres. Go to the UnMind webpage to see my diagram of the nesting spheres of influence combined with the Four Noble Truths. The link to the page is in the show notes for this episode. This illustration attempts to paint a picture of the comprehensive context of a modern Zen life and practice of the Eightfold Path, tying together our current, more expansive grasp of the surrounding universe, with Buddha's Four Noble Truths. These are the Four Spheres, those surrounding layers of reality in which we find ourselves enmeshed, and are directly or indirectly influenced by, in the ongoing management of our lives. The most central is the Personal sphere, the next level out being the Social, then the Natural, and finally, the Universal. They are not truly separate, of course, but relatively so.THE UNIVERSAL: EXISTENCE OF SUFFERINGOur meditative practice is centered in the personal experience we find on the cushion, the most intimate dimension, inseparable from the other three. Buddha's teaching of the Existence of suffering — and his charge that we are to fully understand its existence — we might assume to lie within the innermost circle, the Personal. But its true home is in the outermost, the Universal realm. After all, nothing, anywhere in the Universe, is exempt from dukkha, as the principle of change. Galaxies colliding in outer space are an instance of dukkha. That we are, each and all of us, caught up in incessant change, does not reduce dukkha to a merely personal concern, however, from either a positive or negative perspective. We are neither the chosen, most favored, beings in this spectacle; nor are we the sole victims. Dukkha is not a respecter of persons. The universal dimension of zazen includes the physical posture sinking into a profound stillness, which lies at the heart of all motion (captured by the Ch'an expression “mokurai”); and settling into precise alignment with the field of gravity. The term used to name this profound equilibrium is “Samadhi.” Zazen-samadhi transcends the Personal and Social spheres, linking into the Natural and Universal forces of the planet and the solar system, as we hear in the Ch'an poem Hokyo Zammai—Precious mirror Samadhi: Within causes and conditions time and season It is serene and illuminatingSo minute it enters where there is no gapSo vast it transcends dimensionA hairsbreadth's deviation and you are out of tuneAll change, from the most minute in the microcosmos to the outermost reaches of the universe, is a manifestation of dukkha, which is, however, “serene and illuminating.” All forms, including solid, liquid and gaseous states of matter in continual flux, provide examples of the Universal impinging upon the Personal. Our very life depends upon these three basic states of matter, as well as the functioning principles of organic chemistry, or biology, which overlap with the Natural. We cannot personally control, or negate, these influences to any significant degree. But we can come into harmony with them if we tune ourselves to their frequency.THE NATURAL: ORIGIN OF SUFFERINGThe Origin of suffering, usually translated as “craving” or “thirst,” Buddha taught that we are to abandon, again as fully as possible. Craving would most logically find its home in the Natural sphere, as it comes bundled with sentient life. As attributed to the plant kingdom, for example, to claim evidence of craving may seem a bridge too far, but we describe trees and grasses as thirsty, especially under increasingly common conditions of drought as one result of climate change.It is even more difficult to defend craving as manifested in the mineral kingdom, though certain chemical reactions, and even the simple dynamic of osmosis, or wicking, via capillary attraction, appears to mimic a form of thirst, admittedly inchoate, and unconscious. The main point is that while we tend to own our own feelings of craving, struggling with guilt and other obsessions as a consequence, they are clearly and largely a result of being a physical being — an animal — one endowed with painfully intense self-awareness. “Born of body, mouth and mind” is the operative phrase in Buddhism's Repentance verse. Most of our suffering comes with the territory. And therefore we are not responsible for it, only for what we do, or do not do, about it.The Natural sphere is not only the macro environment around us, but also the micro environ within our body, including the biological, chemical and electrical processes of breathing, digesting, and the rest of the inconceivable scope of life functions built into existence as a sentient being. It is all changing constantly, and subliminally to our typical awareness.THE SOCIAL: CESSATION OF SUFFERINGThe Cessation of suffering, which we are to fully realize, I position primarily in the Social sphere, though the most efficacious means for realizing it may reside in the most intimate inner circle of the Personal. A transformational event that Buddha identified as a “turning about in the inmost consciousness,” is tantamount to salvation in Zen. But this is not the salvation of an eternal soul in the afterlife.Personal suffering of aging, sickness and death — including birth as the leading cause of death — is quintessentially Natural. This process follows the “Dharma” as the natural law of sentient life. It is natural, in the psychological sense, that we look for personal salvation in the face of such suffering. And it is understandable that we look to the social level — of advanced medical treatment, for example — for solutions to mitigate personal suffering. However, in the most fully developed and comprehensive of the Mahayana teachings, the Bodhisattva Vow, we find that no one individual can be saved while the rest remain mired in suffering. In Zen, the most central form, and cause, of suffering is our willful ignorance, and resistance.THE PERSONAL: PATH TO CESSATIONThe Eightfold Path, which Buddha challenges us to fully follow, I place primarily in the Personal sphere. It forms a bridge into the Social, most obviously, but has resonance with the Natural and Universal spheres as well. While the usual linear sequence begins with Right View, and ends with Right Meditation, in actual Zen practice, the sequence is reversed. Some sects do not encourage students to meditate until they have some grounding in doctrine. Zen subscribes to the sink-or-swim approach, trusting the practice of upright, seated meditation to have an immediate, positive effect, encouraging followers to do follow-up research to clarify their experience. Engaging fully in Right Meditation, the practice of Right Mindfulness and Right Effort will follow naturally. These three comprise Right Discipline. This necessarily begins in the Personal sphere of practice-experience on the cushion, but mindfulness and effort obviously carry over into the Social realm. Right Speech, Action and Livelihood, taken together as Right Conduct, are most engaged in the Social sphere, though our actions and livelihood clearly affect the Natural realm, as in examples of mismanagement of resources.Finally, Right View, and Right Thought, when combined, comprise Right Wisdom in the threefold Path, complementing Right Discipline and Conduct. Wisdom consists in the evolution of our worldview to approximate that of the Buddha, or Buddhism, through trial-and-error, engaging the other dimensions of the Eightfold Path.THE INSEPARABILITY OF PERSONAL, SOCIAL, NATURAL & UNIVERSALDividing the Path into digestible bites does not imply that such separations are absolute. All diagrams are Venn diagrams, to a degree, whether of Buddhist teachings, or other areas of human endeavor. The personal cannot be separated from the social, the natural, or the universal, in reality, nor can wisdom, conduct, and discipline, whether right or wrong. The natural sphere entails stewardship of the environment, including the survival of the species. Extinction of species in the ecosystem, as a result of insensitivity to long-term consequences, and callous disregard for the sake of short-term profit, becomes very personal in terms of its impact on individuals, social in its effect on whole communities. Exhaustive mining of mineral resources provides another example of the connection between our personal needs and the dictates of Nature writ large. The most direct and obvious solution to the social and natural “tragedy of the commons” is for each individual to reduce craving on a personal level. Zazen, which seems to be Personal, disengaged navel-gazing, is actually the most direct gate to the Social, Natural and Universal dimensions of our existence. When we leave the cushion and re-enter the fray, the benefits of our practice come with us. Please examine this thoroughly in practice — thank you, Dogen.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

To elicit the bigger picture of the place of Zen and zazen in our world of practice, I would like to refer you to a couple of semantic models illustrating the interrelationships, or operative interfaces, of the various components of the Four Noble Truths, along with the dimensions of the Noble Eightfold Path that we all encounter on a daily basis, both on the cushion and off. Turning to Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, we see that they can be modeled as a system, the simplest geometry for which is the four-pointed tetrahedron (a “system” here defined as anything exhibiting an inside and an outside). The model shows their interconnectedness, from one to two to three to four, from two to three and four, et cetera. There are six relationships of the four points, to each other. How does the existence of suffering relate to its origin, craving? And so on and on. Go to the UnMind webpage to see my diagram of the Four Noble Truths as a four-pointed tetrahedron. The link to the page is in the show notes for this episode. The four are usually presented in a linear layout in text, beginning with the first Noble Truth of the Existence of suffering (dukkha), followed by its Origin; its Cessation; finally the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the cessation of suffering in daily life.First, we must challenge the appropriateness of the word “suffering” to translate the meaning of the Sanskrit word, “dukkha.” Unfortunately, suffering is fraught with narrow connotations of human pain, not only physical, but emotional, mental, and even existential in nature. But I do not believe that this is the intended meaning of the original term. Buddha was expounding a universal principle — that of unrelenting, inexorable change — which we naturally interpret from the perspective of our personal angst, as “suffering.” The Noble Eightfold Path extends this description of reality into a prescription for practice in daily life. Visit the webpage in the show notes to see the diagram illustrating the interconnectedness and interdependence of the elements in the Eightfold Path. A common example: “you talk the talk but you do not walk the walk”; a functional disconnect between right speech and right action.As you reflect upon the Noble Eightfold Path, consider how the interdependence of the eight dimensions reinforce each other: How does Right View influence Right Thought, or Right Speech? Where does Right Action connect with Right Livelihood and Right Effort? Is Right Mindfulness dependent upon Right Effort, and does it then lead to Right Meditation, or is it the other way around? Zen tradition claims to transmit the “right meditation” practiced by Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha and progenitor of Buddhism. But we recognize the absolute relevance and modernity of his message, privileging the simplified approach of Zen. Note that the eight dimensions are numbered in reverse order: “right view,” number one, being more a result than a starting point; right meditation, number eight, is where we must begin. As mentioned in UnMind number 131, “The Noble N-Fold Path”, the traditional division of Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path may have to be updated to reflect the complexity of living in modern times. Nowadays we might want to add more dimensions to the original eight prescribed for practice in a simpler time. Perhaps today we would end up with a Noble Thirty-Two-fold Path as the last of the Sixteen Noble Truths. In Un Mind number 131, I mused upon the notion of adding “right balance” to the mix, what with the geometrically expanded choices we face in pursuing right speech, action and livelihood, and the challenges of living a Zen life in the midst of over-choice: the temptations and distractions pulling on us from all directions while we navigate the tightrope and keep all the balls in the air. We hope that we can “have it all,” especially compared to our ancestors in Zen, but “living large” exacts a steep price. To cite just a few of the dimensions of our modern milieu, distinctions with a tangible difference from ancient times, challenging our sense of balance today:TRAVEL: Buddha's “ecological sweepout,” to borrow a Bucky Fullerism, was limited to the radius he could reach on foot, by donkey or elephant, though there were likely significant incoming influences from the Silk Road and other trade routes. One of our senior priests made the point that for the first time in history, every individual on the planet is potentially only one plane ride away from every other person. This has all kinds of implications, some positive, some not so much, such as the boost it gives to viral vectors spreading disease globally with blinding speed.TECHNOLOGY: The interconnectivity of masses of people around the world, with advances in applications that provide automatic translation of languages, live video and audio recording and reporting of events on an unprecedented scale and scope of detail and timeliness, is a double-edged sword, a tool that can be used for good or ill, depending on the intent of senders and receivers of the message. The old-school formulas - that “The Medium is the Message”; communication is not the message sent, but the message received - no longer hold in a world of technology that allows anyone to put any words they wish in the mouths of anyone they want. It is impossible to catch up with even the jargon that attempts to keep up with scams popping up like weeds in the garden. From a Buddhist perspective, the upside is that world-around digital media have established a technical analogy to Avalokiteshvara, who “sees and hears the suffering of the world,” and comes to help, in her mission as the Bodhisattva of Compassion. One can hope. EDUCATION: In Buddha's time, and for the vast majority of the development of human civilization, choices in education were severely limited, primarily to learning the trade or craft of one's ancestral family. Compare to today's nearly unlimited potential for social mobility, promising transcendence of the caste or class system, implicit or explicit, into which we are born. One current downside is the emergence of massive student loan debt, a significant burden for those who have elected to finance higher degrees, which do not guarantee a successful career with the ability to pay off that debt.CORPORATIZATION: An awkward word to label an awkward development. Another significant difference in our world and that of the Buddha is the predominance of the corporate entity, which I suppose first reared its ugly head with the formation of the city-states of Greece, and reached its apogee in the Citizens United decision of SCOTUS. Not that corporations are necessarily bad; there are some that are dedicated to doing good, such as NFP 501c3s incorporated for various charitable missions. But the human beings populating the corporate entities, as members of the board and other controlling positions, are still human, and can do more harm with the collective power and reach of the corporation, than they might be able to do individually. I could go on. For example, with the current spate of international wars, widespread drug addiction, and the senseless gun violence that have become our new, dystopian “normal,” were certainly not the norm 2500 years ago. But suffice it to say that Buddha did not have to cope with this scale and scope of the onslaught of global insanity, though the self-striving nature of humanity underlying the chaos has not fundamentally changed since his times. We would likely find it unlikely to find an apt analogy to Dogen's time, let alone Buddha's. When we comprehend the Four Noble Truths as mutually interacting, but constrained within the limits of the context of early Indian subculture, we can update them to the 21st century by constructing our own menu of actionable items based on today's realities. You could, with some imagination, build your own personal set of Noble Truths, four or more, and suss out the vectors of a modern Path that transcend those outlined by the Buddha. He would appreciate your efforts, I am sure.Let me encourage you to engage in such a creative exercise between now and when we meet again. Contemplate what the “existence of suffering” means to you, how you are to “fully understand it”; what attitude adjustments and actionable items on your particular path may be undertaken to transform that suffering into the right view of wisdom. Remember to consider the relationships between the various path factors that you identify, rather than treat each in isolation. In the next segment, I will attempt to expand the context even further, into those surrounding spheres of influence on our daily lives, as well as on our contemporary practice of Zen, well beyond the personal and social, to include the natural and the universal. Buckle up. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the next two segments: number 132 and 133 in the sequence, we repeat a subject that we took up in number 113 and 114; namely the buddha nature versus human nature; some of the sameness and differences between what we refer to as “human nature” and what we refer to in Zen as our “original nature,” or “buddha-nature,” “buddha” meaning “awakened one.” Please bear with the repetition; there is new material here as well. And much of what is to be said about the place of Zen in America bears repetition. As promised in the last segment of UnMind, we will continue examining the social, or “corporate” expressions of human nature — versus what we call “buddha nature” — with an eye to those corporate entities growing out of Zen practice, such as the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and the Silent Thunder Order, as examples. Master Dogen mentions the constructions of humankind, indicating that they, too, are part and parcel of the nature and manifestation of buddha-dharma: Grass, trees, and lands which are embraced by this Teachingtogether radiate a great light and endlessly expoundthe inconceivable profound dharmaGrass, trees, and walls bring forth this Teaching for all beingscommon people as well as sagesand they in accord extend this dharmafor the sake of grass, trees, and walls In India the original Order of monks and nuns apparently camped out in the woods, and when the monsoons came, retired to caves in the mountains. Eventually, patrons built dwellings for them, the first “walls” to house the followers of Buddha's teachings. Somewhere I came across a saying, something to the effect that, when a precious jewel appears in the world, not to worry, a container will appear to protect it. The “precious jewel” is the buddha-dharma, and the container consists of the various temples, practice centers, and monasteries that have been established to protect and preserve it. The Dharma opening verse that we typically chant at the beginning of a discourse says: The unsurpassed, profound and wondrous Dharma is rarely met withEven in a hundred, thousand, million kalpasNow we can see and hear it, accept and maintain itMay we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata's truth Assuming we can “see and hear” the Dharma, it becomes our charge to “accept and maintain” it. In the context of modern society, this means not only providing the physical plant, the “walls” within which followers are invited to practice, but also providing the corporate structure that will enable others to maintain the program of promulgating Dharma teachings and propagating the direct practice of meditation, through their financial and in-kind donations. For this reason, and other related incentives, it becomes necessary to establish a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation in order to maintain Zen practice interfacing with other, governmental corporate entities. But some caveats are in order when doing so in the furtherance of Zen, in light of its skepticism regarding the constructed self. Where Zen calls into question the reification of even the human entity, or being, and its extension to the concept of a self, the soul of theism, or atman of Hinduism; the reification of a corporate entity is seen as equally, or even more, suspect. ASZC was incorporated in 1977 to facilitate the mission of meeting the public demand for what we refer to as genuine Zen practice, in particular its uniquely simple and direct meditation. What we refer to as “Soto Zen” or “Dogen Zen” is different from all the other alternatives on offer. Just as what Buddhism teaches as its worldview is starkly different from the various religions and ideologies dominant in our culture. STO was incorporated in 2011 because the stress and strain on the board of directors and committees of the ASZC had become too much to handle, with the growth of our network of affiliates, which were meeting the increasing demand for Zen practice; and the growing awareness of ASZC and STO as meeting that demand in a uniquely user-friendly manner, stressing the practicality and best practices of householder Zen. BUT We should not be confused as to the reality or unreality of the corporate entities we have “established.” They are no more real than any other corporate entity, though we may feel that their existence as such is much more necessary and based on real human need. The human beings, or sangha, populating the corporate shell are real and existent dharmas, in its connotation of “dharma-beings.” The corporation is real enough, in that it can interact with other corporate entities, but is essentially a real but non-existent dharma being, a construct. In spite of the “Citizens United” ruling of the Supreme Court, corporations are demonstrably not persons and should not have the “rights” accorded to human beings, in my humble opinion. All beings are capable of doing harm; corporate entities may survive their human components and thus become capable of extending the harm, or good, they do to future generations. Real persons, fortunately or unfortunately — your call — pass away eventually, but the harm they do often lives after them; thank you, Marc Antony. Sometimes through the corporations they formed during their lifetime. There is a rather useful trope to apply to your personal relationship to the corporate entity that represents the community of fellow practitioners of Zen. These are some issues that have come up from time to time, phrased in the format of “IF-THEN”: IF you find yourself obsessing over the wellbeing of the ASZC or STO, or your local affiliate center, including the management and succession of their leadership, THEN you may be getting distracted from your own, personal practice, which may be much more difficult to deal with, and less gratifying than engaging the social fray. IF you feel under-appreciated for your efforts on behalf of the organization, THEN a couple of reminders: One — welcome to the club. Two — remember that we support the organizations because they support the practice of Zen. And in Zen there is “no self, and no other-than-self.” Our actions are neither entirely selfish, nor entirely unselfish, when it comes to Zen. Or you could argue that they are both selfish and unselfish. IF you are engaging in certain activities, and feel that you are making sacrifices, for the sake of someone else in the sangha, including myself, THEN, please stop. A sense of emotional indebtedness will only grow, and can never be recompensed adequately. As Master Dogen reminds us, we should not imagine that we are practicing Zen solely for our own sake, let alone for the sake of others. We should practice Zen for the sake of Buddhism itself. The 13th Century Master cautioned his followers not to call it “Zen,” that Zen is a made-up term. It is only Buddhism, he said. But even his nomenclature reifies “Buddhism,” as if there actually is such a thing that needs our protection. Buddhism, like Zen, is also a made-up term. Shakyamuni was not a Buddhist, any more than Jesus Christ was a Christian. Buddha comes from a root word that means “awake.” Buddha means the “fully awakened one.” What he taught, and what his followers practiced — in a culture replete with Hinduism, where one imagines they encountered considerable resistance — came to be called Buddhism. As such, it is also subject to its own teachings of “impermanence, insubstantiality, and imperfection.” IF you find yourself sharing your personal doubts and frustrations with your fellow travelers as to how the sangha is functioning, including its leadership, THEN you may be fomenting confusion, and resultant disharmony, in the sangha, a big “no-no” in Zen. As the story goes, one of Siddhartha Gautama's cohort of cousins, named Devadatta, was jealous of Shakyamuni's revered status, including the lavish support he received from patrons, and repeatedly attempted to have Buddha assassinated. Yet Buddha predicted that Devadatta would eventually realize buddha-hood. If such transgressions against the cohesion of the corporate Order of monks and nuns in those times could be regarded by Buddha as a kind of trial-and-error, coming of age saga, if over several lifetimes — we may be forgiven for the more minor errors in judgment that we may reasonably be expected to make in our efforts at community practice, and any resultant behaviors that may have unintended consequences. In any case, it does not pay to overthink these considerations, certainly not to make them the focus of our personal practice. A monk complained that when sitting in zazen, the rain was dripping on him from leaks in the roof. The Master told him to “move down.” Why spend a lot of time patching and repairing an old temple building, when you should be about the business of your own awakening to Buddha's insight? It is even more likely today that we will become enamored of the corporate entity and all its trappings, and lose sight of what brought us to Zen in the first place. The only thing that will accompany us when we go to our grave is our deeds. We have to leave the chimera of the corporation, along with the walls of the building, no matter how grandiose, behind — as well as the paperwork, thankfully. This realization should be accompanied by an immense sense of relief. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the next two segments: number 132 and 133 in the sequence, we repeat a subject that we took up in number 113 and 114; namely the buddha nature versus human nature; some of the sameness and differences between what we refer to as “human nature” and what we refer to in Zen as our “original nature,” or “buddha-nature,” “buddha” meaning “awakened one.” Please bear with the repetition; there is new material here as well. And much of what is to be said about the place of Zen in America bears repetition. We often hear our fellow human beings idealizing human nature, implicit in criticisms of the behavior of others as “inhumane.” Which we may take to be well-intentioned, if somewhat self-aggrandizing. It implies that if only other humans around the globe were more “humane” in their treatment of others, we would see less suffering and atrocities stemming from humankind's inhumanity to humankind, let alone the unspeakable miseries visited upon other, so-called “lower” sentient beings. But I am afraid that our teachings from Buddhism cast a rather jaundiced eye on the veracity that idea. While, according to Zen tradition, we human beings are uniquely capable of waking up to buddha-nature, it does not follow that human- and buddha-nature are interchangeable. Far from it. Let us examine a few examples of what is conventionally meant by “human nature,” and some caveats to common attitudes and definitions, each claim followed by a “but”: It is human nature to regard ourselves as independently existent entities. BUT: According to Zen, we human beings are not self-existent entities. Nothing else is, either. Including corporate entities, such as the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, the Silent Thunder Order, even the government. This is the flip-side of the internet of connectivity in which we find ourselves enmeshed. Entities function only by dint of their connections. It is human nature to want to join like-minded groups of people.BUT: The Zen community, or “sangha,” like any group entity, is evanescent, imperfect, impermanent, and intrinsically insubstantial. This is why we refer to and visualize our members as being like the drops of water vapor in a “cloud” (J. un), constantly evaporating and recondensing over time, as people come and go. It is human nature to hope to be appreciated for our contributions to a group, or cause.BUT: It is somewhat inappropriate to express appreciation to anyone for what they do for Zen or Buddhism, as there is no “self,” as such, in it. It is normal to do so in polite society, of course. But Zen, while not antisocial in character, is asocial — conventional norms and memes of society are called into question, and subject to examination under the unrelenting glare of meditation.It is human nature to expect that our social cohorts will fulfill our personal needs.BUT: Our best laid plans often take a dystopian turn. Because a corporate entity is populated by individuals who have their own agendas, one's personal perspective may have to be set aside in deference to the overall, long-term benefit of the group. We are encouraged to practice patience (S. kshanti) with this as a social dimension of the Precepts. It is human nature to hope that our favored institutions will continue in perpetuity.BUT: Nothing continues in perpetuity. Never has, never will. Eiheiji still stands, however, as a testament to what it once represented, which of course has changed over time. It is human nature to feel disappointed when our expectations are not met.BUT: We practice caution against developing unrealistic expectations of Zen, both of our personal practice as well as our social community. We go to Zen with the sangha we have, not with the sangha we may want. I could go on. It is human nature to try to control the uncontrollable. And to blame others when we fail to do so. As the Tao te Ching reminds, paraphrasing, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” Today we dismiss this as the “blame game.” No matter how much harmony we are able to foster within the sangha, there are inevitably going to be periods of disruption and disharmony, triggered by personality issues, as well as external influences. We “do not discuss the faults of others,” but we often find it necessary to discuss their behavior from time to time, especially if it is disruptive. THIS IS WHY WE ASPIRE TO BUDDHA NATUREWhile exhorting others to remember and respect their humanity and encouraging humane behavior may be a natural, if unexamined, response to violations of injustice and offenses to our sensibilities witnessed on a daily basis, it ignores the fact that the great preponderance of the history of humankind consists mainly of these kinds of atrocities, committed under the umbrella of religious, ideological and political rationales. They represent the essence of what it is to be “human,” writ large, just as self-defense or self-preservation explains the great bulk of instinctive behaviors in the animal kingdom. Something is lacking, therein. We think it is our original, or “buddha,” nature. Buddha nature simply means awakened nature. What we awaken to is, largely, the unreality of those things we take to be real, which cause us to react defensively to any perceived threat to our self-identity. As the great Ch'an master Sengcan reminds us, in his poem on trusting the mind: For the unified mind in accord with the way, all self-centered striving ceases HUMAN BEING VS CORPORATE ENTITYThis self-striving extends to corporate entities, prototypes of which were surely present in ancient China, as well as India and Japan. But today they seem to have taken on a life of their own, as an unintended consequence, characteristic of so many of our inventions. One model for taking an overview of this process we owe to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.If you search key words: “Hegel's dialectic; synthesis of form,” the first item out of about 380,000 summarizes his concept as well as I can: Hegel presents the dialectic as a three-part structure consisting of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. In human history, when the status quo (the thesis) is challenged by a new historical development or force (the antithesis), a new form of life emerges out of the synthesis of the two prior stages.We might quibble with certain choices of terms, such as “a new form of life,” as this would be more appropriate when considering biological evolution, rather than social or cultural evolution, the latter of which I take to be what Hegel was talking about. Those entities that appear on the social/cultural horizon as forms of government, commerce, et cetera as the “antithesis” challenging prevalent norms, the “thesis,” which then react in survival mode, often taking on characteristics of the challengers, resulting in “synthesis,” the result of which becomes the new “thesis.” The process is ongoing and continuous. An example of another binary subject to this process, and similar to comparison and contrast of human versus buddha nature, is that of the corporate entity versus the individual, which — while occurring in human history predating and including Buddha's time — was not so prevalent or obvious a contradiction as it is in the era of the relatively recent “Citizens United” decision of the SCOTUS. Today, corporate entities seem to be winning the competition for survival, or dominance, on a global scale. They appear to threaten the very meaning of the “individual,” those mere human entities that they are ostensibly created to serve. In the next segment of UnMind we will continue this examination of the origin of social, or “corporate” expressions of human and buddha nature, with a focus on those growing out of Zen practice. Corporate entities such as the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and the Silent Thunder Order are familiar and salient examples of group dynamics intended to foster the individual pursuit of Zen practice. A real modern Zen koan. Stay tuned. * * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

The Noble Eightfold Path, the fourth of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, amounts to a prescription for practice, an octet of dimensions of daily life to pay strict attention to, in order to bring about Right View and Right Understanding, the dyad which, in combination, comprise Buddha's idea of Right Wisdom. Right, or correct, wisdom in daily life will come about naturally through the daily observation and practice of Right Conduct: right speech, action, and livelihood; along with Right Discipline: right effort, mindfulness and meditation. Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, in Zen, it all starts and ends with right meditation, opposed, we may suppose, to “wrong” meditation. And in truth, there are styles of meditation, and attitudes about it, that would be considered wrong, in the sense that they do not work well, or at least not as well as zazen, with its modus operandi of objectlessness. Such approaches as bompu Zen: meditating for health and happiness, wellbeing, i.e. ordinary goals and objectives of living; or gedo Zen: a practice that disregards the Buddhist underpinnings of Zen meditation, with its emphasis on transcending the self in order to penetrate to the depths of reality, in favor of some other framework such as Taoism or Confucianism from the original context in China, or a religious attitude of spiritual transcendence of ordinary life. So even within the personal practice of meditation itself, there can be competing ideas that lead to confusion. More so when we consider the cultural context in which we are practicing Zen. Nowadays we might want to add more dimensions to the original eight attributed to Buddha's prescription for practice in a simpler time. Perhaps today we would end up with a Noble Thirty-two-fold Path as the last of the Sixteen Noble Truths. One of the more explicit dimensions might be called “right balance,” indicating what I have termed “social samadhi.” Along with physical samadhi in the posture, which fosters emotional samadhi: less anxiety, more calm; mental samadhi: more clarity, less confusion; we begin to find more harmony, less friction, in our relationships. For Americans interested in pursuing a Zen practice, finding the right balance between the demands of household, work and family; and the necessary intensity of zazen practice may seem to be the most pressing and stressing dilemma in actualizing a Zen life in modern times.We imagine that in simpler times, people had more time to spare, and could devote a greater share of their time to meditation and study. With all the touted time-saving devices of current technology, we still seem to have little or no time to ourselves. The current droll expression, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get” captures this syndrome. An ancient version of the same idea, from the Chinese Zen poem Hsinshinming—Faith Mind, says it a bit differently, with specific relevance to Zen practice with a Taoist slant: To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficultBut those with limited views are fearful and irresoluteThe faster they hurry the slower they go This is a critique of those who approach Zen practice with limited views, as well as those who do not practice at all, and an admonition to practitioners to be fearless and resolute in pursuit of buddha-dharma. This general mindset underlies Right Effort, and gives a clue to how we may achieve balance in our practice.Usually when someone brings this issue up, it indicates that they suspect that they may not be practicing with sufficient intensity. They worry that it is not possible to find the time for zazen, both at home and away, without compromising obligations to family and career. For every project or task in which we invest the present moment, there are a dozen others that go wanting.The source of this dilemma is the tendency of the discriminating mind to compartmentalize, dividing life into separate categories. The next step in the process is to set the various pieces in opposition to each other. Then we conceive of them as taking time to plan, engage, and complete. Thus, we are forever caught in the bind of measured time, another compartmentalized conception. Taking this concept of time for the reality of time, we see no way out.Time-and-motion gurus, along with efficiency experts as well as life coaches, apply various techniques to this problem, such as making it visible. One such approach recommends drawing up a pie chart, in which we give a portion of the whole to each of our regular activities, whether based on a 24-hour daily, or weekly, monthly, or annual, cycle. Then we examine the activities to see if they are out of balance in some obvious way, looking to reduce one to make room for another, to arrive at a more desirable allocation of time to our goals and objectives. In other words, we use measured time to re-plan a measured dedication time to tasks.If we closely examine this process, and pay attention to the singular subjects that appear to conflict, it becomes apparent that the boundaries are not so clear. What we sort into categories are aspects of life that are more related than opposed. This is not a simplistic assertion that all is one, just an admission of the not-two nature of life promulgated in Zen teachings, particularly those from China. If, for example, we imagine that time spent in zazen is time neglecting our family, we might remember that when we do not sit in zazen for some period, our relationship to our family begins to deteriorate. We may secretly, subliminally even, resent the fact that we have to give up something for the sake of our spouse, children, or parents — or worst case, in-laws — with any lack of appreciation for our sacrifice on their part, adding insult to injury.We cannot balance our relationships to others, when they are built on such underlying self-centered impulses to begin with. Our complaint that we do not have time to do zazen is a symptom that we do not understand either time, or zazen. When we do zazen, we are using our time to its utmost efficiency and efficacy. When we leave the cushion, this mindset goes with us. We eventually begin to find that we waste less time in futile pursuits, or in resentment and acrimony between ourselves and those making demands on our time.This is especially true at work. A majority of people may report that they are happy with their work. But whether this happiness is genuine — or feigning contentment in fear of losing their job, or resistance to confronting genuine underlying unhappiness — is anyone's guess. This was probably not included in the questionnaire. But most of our discomfort at work stems from relationships.Compensation in terms of salary and benefits is always related to at least one other person, usually the identified “boss,” or management in general, especially where unions are involved. It is difficult to apply principles of compassionate engagement when the deck is stacked against us, with the other person holding all the trump cards. Often, we have no idea how much they themselves make for being our boss, but they know that — and more than we would like — about us. Our subordinates present another set of interpersonal issues, where we find ourselves on the hot seat in terms of supervising their performance, dealing with personalities that can be difficult. We are uncomfortably aware of the interconnectedness of our role in the enterprise, particularly with those in close proximity. We also have to be mindful of the viewpoint of others higher in the chain of command, to whom our boss reports. And then, over time, these roles and relationships are as impermanent as any other elements in the Buddhist universe. As the old adage has it, “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up the ladder; they are the same people you will meet on the way down.” Then there are client and supplier relationships outside the company; or students in the classroom; patients at the hospital. Patterns of relationships repeat, though the nature of the product or service varies. Sometimes disputes come out of left field, and we are blindsided with a conflict that begins to take up all of our time, including agonizing over it after work, over a drink. At the end of the day — so ubiquitous and overused a phrase that it is distasteful to repeat it — we begin to see home as a refuge from work. In some cases, work becomes a refuge from home. And the annual vacation becomes a refuge from both. Thus, our entire annual calendar is sucked into the relentless maw of time-consumption.What if this is all just fantasy, simply the workings of our imagination? The monkey-mind is endlessly capable of playing such games. What about a real vacation, a time-out from this daily merry-go-round?Zazen has been referred to as a mini-vacation, a brief respite from the rat race. One of the great secrets of Zen is that it really takes no time at all. In fact, Zen holds that we do not live in real time, unless we enter into it through zazen. When we think of the entire scope of a project — such as writing the great American novel — we shrink back, in intimidation. The mountain seems insurmountable. But the mountain is climbed one step at a time, though we might prefer a helicopter. If we see a mountain as a series of molehills, it is not so daunting. The only question is, Which molehill is in front of us, at the moment?If we think about all the other things that we do in a day, that take a half-hour or so, are there none that we could easily forego, for the sake of sitting for a half-hour? If not, how about fifteen minutes? Ten? Five? As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Sit five minutes: five-minute Buddha! Sit half-an-hour, Buddha for 30! But wouldn't you rather be Buddha all day?”By this, he did not mean sit zazen all day, needless to say. The effects of zazen are both immediate, and cumulative. They go with us, off the cushion. Our resistance to zazen is the molehill become mountain. I once consulted with a Canadian company named DYLEX. It is an acronym, meaning “Damn your lousy excuses!”This is a compassionate message for us. We don't need no stinking excuses. Zen and zazen is very powerful on a personal level. But its halo-effect on our multifarious activities off the cushion operates on a subtle plane. It is better to assume that it is working to bring about personal samadhi on a subliminal level, rather than look for it to manifest in some obvious way. Often, one's fellow workers and colleagues notice it before we do. This is what Matsuoka Roshi referred to as “confidence in everyday life,” one of the side-effects of Zen practice. Everything is already in balance, if not obviously so. It may not be apparent to our associates, either. After all, they are only human beings, like us. And they may not have the benefit of a practice like Zen meditation. We can afford to be a bit more balanced in practicing patience with them, in the midst of our shared suffering. We have the balancing effect of Zen. Thank Buddha!* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Continuing with our discussion of various turning points in living the Zen life, we will examine the Buddhist tradition of “leaving home” to become a mendicant, with its unexamined but intrinsic root question of what, exactly, we mean by “home.” The monastic ideal of “leaving home” is repeatedly praised by Master Dogen in the ordination ceremony known, in Japanese, as “Shukke Tokudo” — which translates as something like “leaving home, sharing the dharma.” In lay householder practice, we do not literally leave home, of course, other than for the occasional extended retreat, or sesshin. But we interpret the meaning as deeply significant, even to the householder. Our true home turns out to be unrelated to geography, or any of the other relative circumstances of existence.We might also question the reality of home-leaving in the life of monastics, as Master Dogen mentions regarding monks of his time (see Shobogenzo Zuimonki). He suggests that some cannot really relinquish their attachment to family, and all that it entails, for the sake of Zen. But it seems a near-prerequisite in order to “hear the true Dharma,” as he puts it in Dogen's Vow (Eiheikosohotsuganmon).Other monks, who are able to relinquish family and home, are not able to let go of their attachment to their body, and good health. They are not willing to put their life on the line, which is, after all, understandable. In this same poem, he quotes Ch'an Master Lungya: “In this life save the body; it is the fruit of many lives.” I take his point to be that an obsession with living a normal life as the scion of a family lineage, at the expense of Zen practice, is ultimately doomed to failure. As a famous analogy has it, family will not accompany you in death. Like other aspects of your life, including health and wellbeing, they will only go as far as the grave. Aging, sickness and death, the three major marks of existence, according to Buddhism, cannot be avoided in the long run. And Zen takes the long view.But the third and most difficult level of monastic non-attachment pointed out by Dogen Zenji, is clinging to our own ideas and opinions, especially regarding all the above. Even monks who can realize the first two levels have difficulty with this last, unable to relinquish, or even to recognize, their erroneous worldview. The monk who can do this most difficult thing has the best chance of waking up during this lifetime. Highest Level of PracticeThis brings up an interesting point, a seeming contradiction, that Dogen does not go into. Achieving this last bit of letting go — of the “ties that bind” — implies letting go of our viewpoints. Including, most notably, those regarding the prior two levels — forgoing a normal lay life of family and friends, marriage, social status, and so on; and further, forsaking our attachment to our own health and, ultimately, our very life. In other words, if we truly let go of all of our own opinions, this would necessarily include any preconceptions we harbor — such as that the most advanced monk or nun is necessarily detached from family and body. Not necessarily. In Zen, we give up our opinions of all such kinds of attachment. It is, after all, natural to be attached to both the body and our family; the distinction lies in the degree to which we are attached to them. This is the heart of the Middle Way.A clear example of this principle is found in pain. We experience some pain in meditation. But we do not immediately react, doing something to make it stop right now. We sink into it a bit more than we usually would, going beyond our comfort zone. In doing so, we have an opportunity to truly experience the “pain” for what it really is. Thus, we may discover that it is not so bad. Although even if we thought that the more extreme dictates of practice may turn out to be life-threatening, we should not shrink from it, according to Dogen. Nothing ventured, nothing gained on a scalable spectrum. Unless we are ale to set aside our preconception that pain = bad, we cannot learn from the experience. This principle then applies to all of our aversions to testy circumstances in life. Aversion is simply the flip side of attachment. Master Dogen's assessment of the levels of commitment of various monks ends with the rare case of one who is able to sunder ties to family, health and life; and, finally, to one's own worldview. This is the highest and truest form of liberation from the random, but seemingly determinative, causes and conditions of our present human birth. But since the last test entails relinquishment of our personal opinion of “all the above,” this should lead to the conclusion that the life of the lay householder is not all that distinct from that of the mendicant monk or nun, at least in any way that really matters in the context of the Great Matter. It is a case of the well-known “distinction without a difference.” If the circumstances of one's lifestyle are only that — circumstance — then by definition, they are not central to living the Zen life.Following on this reasoning, we might propose that the lay person — who is able to relinquish all such opinions, and “succeed to the wisdom of the buddhas” (see Fukanzazengi) — represents the highest possible level of realization. This may explain why it is, in the history of Buddhism and Zen, that such lay persons as Vimalakirti, Emperor Ashoka, Layman Pang, and countless others, are so admired. In spite of having their plates full, constrained by domestic and even governmental duties, they were able to gain profound insight into the Dharma, without renouncing their ordinary life. Not to mention certain monks who were known to flout the norms of monastic life. Of course, you cannot tell the Zen book by its cover, so it is best to appraise only your own practice, and not to judge others, from outward appearances. Contemporary Lay PracticeContemporary lay practice in America is surely vastly different from what it was, and is, in the countries of origin, today as well as in ancient times. My limited understanding suggests that most lay householders practiced dana — generosity — by supporting the monks and nuns of the local orders with offerings of food and material support, including currency and other forms of fungible goods such as metals and fabrics. The community was apparently engaged in other, interactive ways as well. Young children would be sent to the temples and monasteries for training, which probably amounted to finishing schools, including some study of Buddhism. The early monasteries of the East probably evolved into the institutions of higher learning, universities, as they did in the Middle East and in the West, in Europe, for example. But the actual practice of Zen meditation, specifically, was probably not widespread, even in China and Japan. It was, and is, primarily the purview of the monastics Today, however — I think perhaps especially in North and South America, as well as in Western Europe — lay practitioners generally equate Zen practice with meditation. Particularly in the USA, we tend to be do-it-yourselfers. We are not satisfied with second-hand information, and look to direct experience as having its own value, in most everything we do. Thus, Zen training is closely related to apprentice modes of professional training, as in a craft or guild. A novice becomes an apprentice to a master; and eventually a journeyman; finally certified as a master herself. But we must be careful about this idea of becoming a “Zen Master.” We do not master Zen — Zen master us. But only if we allow it. As Master Dogen reminds us in the Genjokoan excerpt from Bendowa, meaning “a talk about the Way,” the first fascicle from his master compilation, Shobogenzo: When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas. If spiritual awakening is simply awakening to reality, it would not necessarily include taking on a new self-identity as a “buddha.” It might, however, include seeing oneself, as well as others, in a somewhat different light. “Your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drop away” as Dogen assures us in the same teaching. Living the Zen Life TodayWhile we may admire, and hope to emulate, the life of a monk or nun, I believe we in America do not have enough grounding in the reality of that choice, nor in the cultures of the countries of origin, in which Buddhism and Zen originally arose. The choices we have today, in terms of maintaining Zen practice in the midst of life, are surely very different from those of ancient India, for example. Joining the Order meant leaving behind the conventional trappings of society, including family name and caste position, wealth, and so on, though some of Buddha's top disciples seem to have been his blood relatives. The original Order at first included men only, but even during Buddha's lifetime, it expanded to include women. From what I have gathered, any adult from any level of the caste system of the time could join, as long as they were willing to forego the privilege and provenance of their upbringing. This, it seems to me, had to do with renouncing the self, in the conventional sense.This tradition is what Master Dogen, some 1300 years later, referred to as “leaving home,” in laudatory language. Today, we join the community, or Sangha — and can even become ordained as a priest — without literally leaving home in the obvious, outer sense of the phrase. However, when we undergo Shukke Tokudo, lay ordination as a novice priest, the implication is that we leave our ostensible home, in order to find our true home, in universal homelessness.Our True Home: HomelessnessThis homelessness is considered the original, or natural, way of being, and has nothing to do with where we were born, or where we currently dwell, in the geographic sense. Circumstances of our birth, as well as our growing up, our livelihood, and our eventual death, are just that: circumstantial. They are not central to our being, though they may play an inordinate role in shaping our worldview; and, indeed, whether or not we are ever even exposed to the Dharma.This human birth is considered rare in Buddhism, though with nine billion and counting (when I originally wrote this, it was seven billion), it may appear to be so common as to threaten the very survival of the species. By comparison to other life forms, such as insects, we are not even close to predominance on the planet, as measured in biomass. But the disproportionate effect that we as human beings have on the environment amounts to a crisis. We may want to broaden our scope from considerations of our own, personal mortality, to embrace the possibility of extinction of the entire species. There is no greater form of homelessness than to become extinct. ASZC & STO as Collaborative Community Each month, during our Second Sunday Sangha lunch and dialog at ASZC, we discuss issues of how we as individuals can join in the efforts of promoting true community, without compromising our own personal lives as householders and lay Zen people. Matsuoka Roshi predicted, and I concur, that the rebirth of Zen would be seen in America, and that its propagation would be primarily in the form of lay householder practice. He would often remark that “Zen is always contemporary.” That is, we don't have to try too hard to make it contemporary.We have just passed the sixth year anniversary of what might be considered one of the all-time great failures of community, that seen in Charlottesville, Virginia. It recalled to mind the greatest international example of decline of community in Germany, Italy, and later, Japan, which led to WWII. But Charlottesville is only a blip on the screen of the ongoing series of catastrophes, both natural and human, that have plagued the human community since the beginning of recorded history. The latest being the hell on Earth that is Ukraine, courtesy of the Putin regime in Russia. Any serious student of history is not at all surprised by the daily atrocities that we witness on the news. This is human nature in full flower. It is why we aspire to buddha-nature, instead.Now we are in the throes of adolescence, in the growth of the Zen community in America. That there is a lot of confusion wreaked upon this process is to be expected, owing both to quirks of contemporary Western society, and the persistence of myths surrounding the origins of Zen practice in the seminal communities in India, China, Korea, Japan, and the far East. Most of the confusion arises, I think, from the supposed contrasts and apparent contradictions between traditional monastic, and contemporary lay householder, lifestyles. So, as if we need one more thing to worry about, we do not want to become attached to the propagation of Zen as yet another preconceived project in its own right. We are privileged to be exposed to the Dharma, in the most humble sense of the term, and not merely by dint of circumstances of our birth, the source of most social privilege. Let us not miss this opportunity to join with the Zen community, and to serve its members in true collaboration. It is well within our enlightened self-interest to do so.* * * Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Beautiful Alchemists, Today, I'm spilling the Reiki Radio tea, and to thank you all so much for being a part of the Reiki Radio community. On September 4th, we will celebrate TEN YEARS of learning together in this beautiful space. I can't tell you what an honor it has been to receive your emails and work with you in classes. The podcast has been an incredible vehicle of connection and community, beyond anything I could have imagined. Thank you to every guest that has come to share with us! It's always a pleasure learning through the experiences and teachings of others. I can't wait for the conversations that await us in season 11! Follow me at http://instagram.com/reikirado for notifications of upcoming episodes! Now let's celebrate… In a deep bow of gratitude, and in honor of the birthday of Reiki Radio AND The Energetic Alchemist Oracle, I have two gifts for you… If you've activated monthly membership on the app, you'll have access to a FREE, new class, on September 4th, which will only be available on the app. And if you're ready to unlock hidden messages that have been floating all through your consciousness, you can order your copy of The Energetic Alchemist Oracle for 25% off, until September 9th – use coupon code: REIKIRADIO Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the love and inspiration! Go to http://theenergeticalchemist.com to sign up for newsletter, order your deck and join The Alchemy Circle! And don't forget to go to the Apple App Store, or Google Play, to download The Energetic Alchemist app! In the deepest gratitude and Gassho, Yolanda

Your zazen may leadTo a kind of gravitas —But it's only Zen.* * *“Gravity,” the John Mayer song that won a Grammy in 2005, begins with the lines:Gravity is working against me And gravity wants to bring me downTruer words, as we say. One of the four fundamental forces, as defined by Google:There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the weakest but it has an infinite range.Gravity is said to be the constant teacher, for a toddler who is just learning to stand. Every time they finally get their balance — boom! — they fall down again. With repetition, they finally learn how to maintain balance even while walking, which has been described, dynamically, as falling forward and catching yourself with your feet. Some animals, like horses, are born ready to walk, with a little help.With repetition over time, we adapt to gravity and lose awareness of it, until we don't. Zen's walking meditation, kinhin in Japanese, is a bit like learning to walk all over again. We raise our elbows to shoulder-level to act as outriggers for balance. If you find yourself losing your balance from time to time, you are doing kinhin correctly. Like a tightrope walker, we become more aware of the precariousness of our balance. We also become sensitive to the long-term effects of gravity on our body shrinking with age. I have lost about 3 inches so far, my own personal version of the incredible shrinking man.When we feel we are losing our balance, an increasingly common and dangerous issue as we age, we experience a sense of dizziness, or vertigo. If we actually fall down, we experience the acceleration of gravity, with the unpleasant slam of our body mass on the ground. But typically we are unaware of the constant pull of the gravitational field. What we refer to as “weight” is the measure of the mass of an object, such as our body, in thrall to the gravitational mass of the Earth. It is said to be about six times that of the moon. One would assume from this that for every planetary or other celestial body, the mass of the being's body, moving within the orbit or g-force field generated by the mass of the larger body, would determine the relative weight of that being, in that particular context. So what, you say? Consider that in zazen, because we sit still for relatively long periods of time in an upright posture, our relation to gravity is relatively constant. So the ability to once again feel gravity as a constant comes into play. It becomes obvious when we are meditating that we are out of balance, leaning one way or the other, rather than sitting upright, which ordinarily we do not feel, having adapted to our usually crooked posture. This is why we do the rocking motion as we are settling in, to find our center in the field of gravity, like a metal filing lining up on a magnet. Rising for walking meditation, we become acutely aware of moving in gravity, at an excruciatingly slow pace. And when we return to the cushion, we feel the immersive embrace of gravity, as we once again settle into the zazen posture. As we enter into deeper physical samadhi — equipoise or equilibrium — the forces of gravity and their impact on the various parts of the body even out, resulting in a sense of effortlessness, even a sensation of floating. Our sense of time undergoes a similar reorientation to that of our position in space, which will be a subject for a future segment of UnMind.Falling back to gravity for the time being: If you picture yourself sitting on the globe of the earth, like a tetrahedron perched on a sphere, you can see that the peak of the tetrahedron would lie on a radius that runs to and from the center of the planet to the crown of your head. This illustrates what Matsuoka Roshi called “sitting-mountain-feeling,” which he used to indicate how one knows when the posture is perfectly balanced. He also described it as if the top of your skull is pressing against the ceiling. Extremely solid and stable. Of course, the human body is more complex than a geometric figure. But when all the bones of the skeleton are arrayed properly, and the tension or turgor in the musculature membrane is evenly distributed, it feels as if the body is composed of one material throughout — wood, stone, or metal. You have become a statue, so to speak, with gravity pulling down on you from below, atmospheric pressure bearing down from on high.Gravity is a central operating principle of the universe, according to the science of (astro)physics; Dharma & karma may be said to be operating principles of reality, according to the teachings of Buddhism. Note that I said “teachings,” not “beliefs.” Buddhism is not a system of beliefs, but rather what we may call conjectures, concerning the true causes and conditions of our existence. One of which — a big one — is gravity. The most difficult-to-embrace aspect of the definition quoted above is its imputed “infinite range.” That it is the weakest of the fundamental four is a bit slippery as well. It certainly seems that it would have to be stronger than forces operating only at a microscopic level, and only at very close range. But gravity can not overcome these other micro-forces, fortunately for us.It may be appropriate here to interject another parallel I find between science and Zen, according to my poor understanding of both: Even Einstein did not “understand” gravity; even Buddha did not “understand” Dharma, or karma. These principles, or phenomena — again, not beliefs — are beyond understanding, in any ultimate sense. This is not merely a semantic quibble, but goes to the essence of the concepts of gravity, Dharma, and karma. They are real beyond concept, in some sense, but also, in their ubiquity, not really “findable.” Like most fundamental phenomena, they cannot be isolated.Let's entertain a thought experiment regarding gravity, no offense to the great Master physicist. Who, by the way, was known to sit in a chair holding his pen, and drift off into a kind of meditative reverie, which he described as not exactly thinking, but “visceral” in nature. At a certain point he would lose consciousness, dropping the pen, which would wake him up. Then he would retrieve the pen and start over again. This sounds, by the way, similar to Hakuin Zenji's “Naikan Tanden” healing exercise, with which you may be familiar, designed to help you get a good night's sleep, and which we sometimes practice on overnight retreats. When you are lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, picture yourself floating in space, safe and sound on your mattress. Once you can feel your whole body's position, or proprioception, imagine that your bed suddenly disappears. What happens? You instantly fall to the floor with a thud, subject to Newton's second law, the acceleration of gravity, at 9.8 meters or 32 feet per second squared, or “per second per second.” So the thud, accelerating only a couple of feet from the disappearing mattress to the floor, is already considerably more than your body mass. That's going to hurt.Now if you imagine the floor disappearing as well, you fall into the basement or crawl space, at a proportionately greater acceleration, and corresponding thud, or splat. So while we may perceive that we are relatively free of gravity, it is a form of delusion, based on sensory adaptation. Falling off a cliff, we would impact a series of surfaces with greater and greater force, as we approached the bottom. We are constantly in danger of being flattened like Wile E. Coyote, or sucked into a sinkhole or quicksand, if we step off the edge of whatever surface is between us and the slippery slope of the gravity sink.“All things are like this,” again quoting one of Master Dogen's favorite and frequent constructions. What we are actually feeling, at all times, is the pull and drag of gravity, along with our body's resistance and adaptation to it. When we sit in zazen, a kind of reverse-adaptation sets in, where we become sensitized to the fact that we have adapted to sensory input, including most especially gravity, the most constant and unforgiving force acting upon us, but also a panoply of others, such as the effect of light and dark with the daily cycle of revolution of the planet. The latest fad in the meditation and retreat business, made famous by none other than Aaron Rogers, the celebrity professional football quarterback, consists of immersion in total darkness — requiring absolute shielding of the subject from any natural light. Zen instead recognizes that there is no need to go to that extreme, as indicated in the Ch'an poem by Master Sengcan: Sandokai—Harmony of Sameness and Difference:In the light there is darknessBut do not take it as darknessIn the dark there is lightBut do not see it as lightPerhaps the attraction of immersion in darkness can be understood from a Zen perspective, as suggested in a later Ch'an poem, Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi:In darkest night it is perfectly clearIn the light of dawn it is hiddenThese translations always beg the question: What, exactly, is referred to as “it”? It, of course, is the meaning and effect of the practice of Zen, its raison d'etre. It is also our reason for being, from a deeply philosophical perspective. Some great sage lost to my memory said something to the effect that knowing this “it” in the morning, it is okay to die in the evening. Master Dogen wrote, when returning from his sojourn in China, that his life's work was finished. So this “it” is IT – is everything, the only thing in life truly worth pursuing. Which brings up the principle of gravity in another context: what is the most grave aspect, or dimension, of life? Declaring death to be the answer may be true, but a bit glib.In Zen, as in most philosophical, religious schools of thought, and even in professions, such as medicine, we find precepts – fundamental tenets that are expressed as the wisdom and working principles of the field. In Buddhism, there are ten such that are referred to as “grave” precepts, those that determine or define key parameters of the life of a Bodhisattva or Buddha, not to mention that of a lowly follower of Zen. What is grave about them is that they address the most fraught dimensions of life and behavior, such as killing, stealing, lying, and so forth. For which everyone already harbors some kind of precept, though it may not rise to the level of conscious intent and awareness, as in Zen.One final thought on gravitas, which, being a human perception operative mainly on the social level, does not carry the weight of gravity — no pun intended — and so is undeserving of the same degree of consideration. My only comment is that through the practice of meditation — that is, of the real zazen — it may appear that you develop a kind of gravitas, charisma, or magnetic personality, a depth of seriousness that others find intriguing or attractive, even before you have any real insight into the truth of Zen. Don't let it go to your head. It is only a side-effect of zazen. Not sure where the next segment will take us. Down another rabbit-hole in the wonderland of Zen and Design Thinking, for sure. Maybe the space-time thing. And maybe this time we will come out on the other side of the wormhole.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

You can analyzeAnything into nothing —Apt analogy.* * *In this segment of UnMind we continue exploring the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen praxis. That last 10-dollar word we may take up in future under “Praxis & Practice.” They are not exactly synonymous. But for now I want to focus our attention on analogy, its usage in Zen teachings, and its reliance on the faculty or process of analysis, one of the most powerful tools of the human mind. In his seminal teaching, Genjokoan—Actualizing the Fundamental Point, Master Dogen makes a point of pointing out that he is using analogy in a very intentional way, to get his point across. After a long and varied passage — using firewood and ash to illustrate the relativity of time by analogy, then pivoting to the all-too-human experience and perception of birth and death as analogous to firewood and ash, followed by the famous section on the moon reflected in a dewdrop, further citing oceans and mountains as exemplifying the knowns and unknowns of duality versus nonduality, finally pausing to declare that “All things are like this” — he launches into an even longer passage on birds and fishes in their respective elements, ending with:If the bird leaves the air it will die at once If the fish leaves the water it will die at once Know that the water is life and the air is life the bird is life and the fish is life Life must be the bird and life must be the fish After this charming semantic reversal of conventional causality — citing life itself as the primary cause — he affirms that he is purposefully using analogy:It is possible to illustrate this with more analogies Practice-enlightenment and people are like this“All things are like this” narrowed down to the nature of practice-enlightenment and people. He continues, finally arriving at the point of this series of analogies, addressing the “So what?” question: Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place When you find your place where you are practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point When you find your way at this moment practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point So the point of all this analogizing is to bring the person listening to the point of actualizing the fundamental point of Zen practice in their own space — “where you are” — and time — “at this moment.”Note that “practice occurs”: it is not something that we do, not something that we can actually do. The etymology of “praxis” hints at this: late 16th century: via medieval Latin from Greek, literally ‘doing', from prattein ‘do'. Just as Dogen points out, in Zazenshin—Lancet of Zazen, that the clarity of our original mind is “actualized within non-thinking” and “manifested within non-interacting,” here he indicates that the main thing we practice in Zen, in the form of zazen, is ultimately a form of “non-doing.” This idea also finds resonance with the first major Ch'an poem from the 7th Century, Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind: No comparisons or analogies are possible In this causeless, relation-less stateTake motion in stillness and stillness in motionBoth movement and stillness disappearWhen such dualities cease to existOneness itself cannot existTo this ultimate finality no law or description appliesIt is difficult to embrace the idea that any so-called state of awareness would have no cause. It seems obvious that something, some set of circumstances, must be determining, to some degree, the state of mind we are in at all times. We might want to altogether abandon, or at least challenge, usage of the term “state” to identify a level of awareness on this order of comprehension. The apprehension of nonduality — or duality within nonduality and vice-versa — may involve a kind of realization that cannot even be regarded as a form of awareness. Here words fail.Amongst the words that no longer have any real relevance or resonance, when the above kind of conclusion comes about as a result of Zen training, is the term “Zen.” At this point it seems we have come to the end of analysis, in that the utility of analytical thinking has become the futility of relying on a kit of tools that have reached the limit of their usefulness. The spirit of inquiry now returns to a more primitive or primeval level of sheer observation, in which language and labels no longer stick. My teacher described this aspect of Zen as something “round and rolling, slippery and slick.” A well-known female Zen teacher named Toni Packer (1927-2013) was known for turning down the offer to succeed Philip Kapleau Roshi, one of the first generation of formally recognized American Zen priests and author of an early classic, “The Three Pillars of Zen,” one of the first Zen books I remember reading. I became aware of Ms. Packer when a young man who had been practicing with her community visited us in Atlanta back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, if memory serves. He began questioning the way we were doing things, from our style of walking meditation to our exposition of the dharma, based his exposure to Packer's approach to taking the Zen out of Zen, and who had written a book that he mentioned. I asked to read the book, which surprised him; apparently he assumed that I was set in my ways. After reading the book, I suggested he give a guest talk to the group, since he felt so strongly about the matter. During the talk, in which he ran down the litany of all the challenges to our way of practicing, the reaction in the room was, in effect, that he seemed to think he was the only person who had thought of these seeming contradictions, when in truth every one listening had been there, done that, in the history of their practice. Ironically, the whole point of Packer's book was to admonish the reader to avoid falling into comparative thinking.Comparative thinking is fundamental to analysis itself. It is difficult to imagine any kind of analytical process that does not involve some form of comparison. But if you arrogate to yourself the ability to judge the practice of others, and especially to challenge established communities of Zen practitioners, this is to make a fundamental error, a type of category error. It presupposes that the efficacy of Zen and the method of zazen depends upon the particular performative rituals and the environmental setting that surround and hopefully support the central practice of meditation. If the effect of Zen depended upon specific details of group practice protocols, an argument could be made that one approach is probably and provably more effective than another. But this would not explain the enlightenment of some of the outstanding Ancestors, such as Huineng, who experienced profound insight with no history of practice or dharma study. Others had no substantial insight until they had left behind the formal practice altogether, beginning with Buddha himself. As Master Dogen himself instructed:From the first time you meet a masterWithout engaging in incense offering; bowing; chanting Buddha's name;Repentance or reading scripturesYou should just wholeheartedly sitAnd thus drop away body and mindWhile Dogen surely engaged in all of these activities, he recognized that they were peripheral, to the personal experience of insight, and meant to be supportive, to the central practice of zazen, the effect of which does not depend on the peripherals. Nor does the essential process of divesting ourselves of the social, cultural and personal baggage we have accumulated during our short lifetimes depend upon our powers of analytical thinking. You cannot analyze your way to Zen's insight; you cannot think your way to spiritual awakening. But that does not mean that analysis or thinking is the problem. It is our misunderstanding of the functioning, and consequent misuse, of this powerful tool that is likely to be our downfall. One of my mentors from the world of design science, R. Buckminster Fuller, defined human intelligence as our ability to extract general principles from particular case experiences. After so many repeat experiences of witnessing fast- and slow-moving entities — such as rabbits and turtles, or rafts and rocket ships — the child comes to know the meaning of “fast” as opposed to “slow,” as a universal operative principle not limited to any particular example. “All things are like this,” to coopt one of Master Dogen's frequent tropes, which captures the general utility of analogizing. Likewise, the sheer repetition of taking up the posture, breathing, and open awareness of the method of Zen, holds out the possibility that under such intensive observation, the constructed self will implode, revealing the underlying “true self,” the practitioner having successfully extracted the general principle from the many case experiences of engaging unfiltered awareness again and again and again. In the next UnMind we will take up another universally operative principle — gravity — compared and contrasted with its more human aspect — gravitas — and their relation to Zen and Design Thinking. Meanwhile please recognize the relative futility of depending upon analysis in your Zen practice, especially in meditation. You might instead consider how zazen compares and contrasts, by analogy, with the other operative dynamics of your life, such as your profession, or health and wellness initiatives.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Not symmetricalBut then nothing really is —Only in our mind* * *In this segment of UnMind we continue where we left off, discussing the all-important mentoring relationship of teachers to students, and students to teachers, particularly the asymmetrical relationship in Zen training. The success of any mentorship depends almost entirely, 100% plus, on the sincerity and intensity of the student, more so than the teacher, as illustrated by the anecdote about my friend and fellow student at ID+IIT, JJ, who had an unfortunate run-in with one of my key design mentors related in the last segment. As a teacher of design at the U of I, Chicago Circle Campus, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I found myself on the other side of the equation and gained even more respect for my mentors. For those design students who did not seem to benefit greatly from my tutelage, I can fault them as well as myself. My story and sticking to it, anyway.The well-known exchanges between Zen ancestors and their students, particularly those who eventually succeeded them in the lineage, are illustrative of this asymmetry. Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch known to history in China, for example, responded to his Chinese student and dharma heir, Huike, who complained of having a disturbed mind, by asking him to show him this mind. When Huike replied that when he looked for it he could not find it, the sage exclaimed “There I have calmed your mind!” or some such expression. These incidents are variously translated so please forgive my paraphrasing, as well as the spelling of the names. I am not a scholar. My point here is that then Huike, in a similar exchange with his future successor, Sengcan, said something similar. The eventual third patriarch in China likewise complained of being “bound” by something, and Huike asked him what was binding him. When he could not respond, Sengcan suddenly realized there was nothing binding him and was liberated.That Huike responded to his student in essentially the same way that his teacher Bodhidharma had replied to him illustrates that the teacher was not called upon to say or do something extraordinary, but instead had responded with an ordinary, mundane question. We might even conclude that Huike had merely imitated Bodhidharma's approach. I think this makes the case that what triggered the profound event of the student's transformative insight was not the skill or mystical power of the teacher, but was dependent upon the desperation of the student, combined with complete faith in the teacher.Symmetry is a principle of Design Thinking, as can be seen in the design of most modern automobiles as well as vintage wheeled vehicles, such as the chariot Buddha used as an analogy to the skandhas, or the Conestoga wagons that settled the West. The practical reasons for this are pretty obvious when considering the function of the vehicle to move straight forward or backward in as friction-free a way as possible, as well as to navigate turns. But the adherence to symmetry in design goes far beyond the practical functioning of the vehicle, into the aesthetics of its overall form and features. One of the few notable exceptions to the symmetry norm may be seen in the Nissan Cube (see photo) introduced to the American market in 2009 and discontinued in 2014. We may most usefully consider this anomaly in the context of the adage, “form follows function.”Seeing this startling design for the first time may cause whiplash as it surprises your expectations of symmetry. It features a wrap-around window on the rear and one side, which violates the usual bilateral symmetry of vehicle design. I wonder if it also created a hazard in case the vehicle rolls in a wreck, as the roof-support structure would apparently be greatly weakened by the lack of a fourth column in that corner. And that that partially explains its brief time on the market.Of course, the power drive chain and other mechanical systems that make the modern vehicle function are not symmetrical in the simple sense – one only has to look under the hood to see the asymmetrical complexity of the modern combustion engine or that of the newer electric and hybrid vehicles.The apparent bilateral symmetry of the human being and many other animals is similarly deceptive. Once the relatively symmetrical outer appearance is removed, as in surgery or an autopsy, the incredible complexity of the underlying system of nerves, glands, and organs is revealed. The skeleton and musculature largely reflect the symmetrical form of the outer appearance, and much like the drive train and wheels of the automobile, function to support the mobility and balance of the body in motion.So the appearance of bilateral symmetry in both cases is just that – appearance, another word for form.The famous formula coined by Buddha, that form (appearance) is, itself, emptiness — and vice-versa — reflects this greater reality. If we probe even further, down to the molecular and atomic levels, it becomes clear that while the constituent elements making up the appearance of symmetry of the object may themselves exhibit various kinds of internal symmetry, including radial and other three-dimensional geometries that transcend mere bilateral or mirror symmetry; there is no clear, fractal-like relationship of the micro-scale parts to the macro-scale whole. The forming processes of whatever metal, plastic, rubber, textile and other materials undergo in order to achieve the final form of the completed object obviously depend upon the properties of the materials, but their original, internal form has little to do with the final, external form. Like the fabled chariot, the whole exists only in the sum of the parts.If we deconstruct the vehicle, like the chariot, it ceases to function, or to exist, as a vehicle. Likewise, the organism, human or otherwise, does not function or exist outside the particular assembly of its parts. Zen meditation is often referred to as a process of deconstructing consciousness, or the mind itself. Realization, according to Master Dogen in Jijuyu Zammai—Self-Fulfilling Samadhi, is the manifestation of this process (emphasis mine):All this, however, does not appear within perception because it is unconstructedness in stillness; it is immediate realization.Note that the term “unconstructedness” does not even qualify as proper English; the giveaway is the red underline the word processor uses to highlight a mistake. Dogen goes on to point out that “if practice and realization were two things, as it appears to the ordinary person, each could be recognized separately. But what can be met with recognition is not realization itself because realization is not reached by a deluded mind.” This indicates that anything that can be met with recognition is, by definition, a kind of delusion. Our very recognition of something we call “symmetry” is itself delusional. Upon closer examination it falls apart, seen to be, at best, a kind of approximation. The mind continually averages out all the contrary impressions of asymmetry to focus upon and reify the notion of symmetry.The immediacy of realization the Master points to should be understood as immediate in both time and space. That is, in this “realization” what becomes real to us is not something that heretofore was distant from us and somewhere in the future, but always and ever present, and near at hand. So close as to be inaccessible to perception as such, like the water to the fish, or the air to the bird. As Dogen points out later in this same tract, even the idea of “realization” must be regarded with some circumspection:[But] the boundary of realization is not distinct. For the realization itself comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of buddha-dharma. Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge or is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge. That “the inconceivable may not be apparent” — one of my favorite Dogen lines and, I think, indicative of his sense of humor — must be one of the grand understatements of all time. How could the inconceivable in any way be apparent? This is one of the hallmarks of the asymmetrical nature of the relationship, the ability to use language but not be used by it. So to speak. o point at that which is beyond concept, let alone language. Concepts take time to form. Expressing them in language takes even longer. Using words to point at that which is beyond conception, and thus far beyond language, is difficult, but not impossible. Tozan Ryokai, credited with founding Soto Zen in China, reminds us of the inconceivable nature of Zen realization in his Ch'an poem Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi, pointed to as “it” (J. inmo):Although it is not constructed it is not beyond wordsLike facing a precious mirrorForm and reflection behold each otherYou are not it but in truth it is youIt would be hard to find a more succinct and intriguing description of a symmetrical relationship than “Form and reflection behold each other.” Especially as the two elements of the sentence, “form” and “reflection,” indicating object and subject, respectively, are usually considered to be the opposite of symmetrical — comprising the material and spiritual dimensions of existence — or matter versus mind.One more visual example of the apparent symmetry versus the actual asymmetry that we normally perceive is illustrated by an exercise called “Your Original Face” from a creativity workshop we conducted at ASZC, based on Huineng's famous anecdotal koan. In the photos you see the same portrait of my face, divided down the middle axis and reconstructed to reveal the “left-face “ versus the “right-face” version of me. Looks like me, but… Note that the arched-eyebrow side in shadow connotes the evil me while the side in full light looks more like a saint. The “eyes have it” but so do the eyebrows and mouth. Problem-solving is the action-oriented modus operandi of both professional design thinking and the Zen or Buddhist worldview. Designers define problems worthy of solving, often redefining those presented by clients, for financial as well as altruistic reasons. Siddhartha Gautama clearly interpreted the cultural norms, mores and memes of his times and his particular social standing in the caste system as problematic or unsatisfactory, and went on what we might romanticize as a spiritual quest to find a solution. His findings, conclusions, and recommendations constituted the content of the First Sermon, in which he laid out the Four Noble Truths, an extremely concise and complete description of the “problem” of sentient existence, particularly for human beings, including a thoroughgoing prescription for practicing in daily life, the Noble Eightfold Path, which, crucially, emphasizes the central method by which anyone can approach and — at least in theory — solve this problem for themselves, essentially by “doing thou likewise.” Fortunately for us, he succeeded to a greater degree than most of his contemporaries. He and his followers transformed this personal experience into a socially inclusive program for like-minded people, the original Order of monks and nuns, as well as householders and leaders, in India. This is the origin of the legacy we have inherited and celebrate today. As I said in the prior segment, in both design and Zen training, relationships to your mentors become all-important, shaping your views of the profession, and the practice and meaning of meditation, respectively. This is true of Zen in particular, and probably all asymmetrical relationships in general. Where we go from here we shall see, as we say, but wherever the road takes us, it will arrive at the intersection of Zen and Design Thinking. Meanwhile keep practicing.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Hello, Alchemist - Today I'm acknowledging one of my teachers, Raven Keyes. She recently transitioned, but my hope is that her work and all that she inspired will live on. If you haven't had an opportunity to read her books on Medical Reiki, you will be blown away by all she did contribute to the world. You can also watch her interviews with me under the Featured Guests section (free content), on The Energetic Alchemist App. May we all have a deep bow gratitude for our teachers and healers that have paved the way for how Reiki is exapnding, and becoming more recognized, within the collective field. Her books: The Healing Power of Reiki Medical Reiki: A groundbreaking Approach to Using Energy Medicine for Challenging Treatments The Healing Light of Angels: Transforming Your Past, Present and Future with Divine Energies In the deepest gratitude for Raven, and in Gassho... Yolanda

Asymmetrical.Of necessity it is —But need not stay so.* * *Welcome back to UnMind, the podcast in which we tap into Design Thinking to inform our approach to Zen practice and daily life in modern times, especially in America. After the last series posted at midsummer last year — five episodes in which we summarized thirty-two prior segments on the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen — we decided to take a much-needed hiatus to reconsider the overall direction of the podcast itself. The prior three segments on the Three Treasures of Buddhism — Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — were the inaugural series of the reboot, examining what we would refer to as their “design intent.” That is, how “Buddha practice,” interpreted primarily as time in meditation, is designed; what effect it is intended to have; and the same analysis applied to Dharma and Sangha. These ancient concepts are subject to misunderstanding in a culture underpinned by Judaic and Christian memes. I chose to approach them from a “form follows function” perspective, an established meme in Design circles. An evolutionary biologist tells me this is reversed in biology: function follows form, sans Designer.In the next series of segments we will take up various pairs of associated concepts to likewise hopefully shed some light on the connections between them that I glean from both Zen and Design angles. With this week's installment we will examine the most dispositive and determinative — and often fraught — relationships within the professional field of Design as well as that of formal Zen training, those you enjoy with your mentors. AKA the teacher-student/student-teacher relationship.In “Follow the Meander – An Indirect Route to a More Creative Life,” by Keisei Andrew Dietz, a long-time member of Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) who is a creativity and branding consultant as well as an excellent writer, he relates that following a long and feckless interview of my teacher, Matsuoka Roshi, by an FBI interrogator, the Enemy Alien Board of WWII in 1944 concludes by recommending:The Board particularly wants to point out to the Department that in their opinion this subject is a dangerous alien enemy.In the years leading up to the declaration of war with Japan, incoming Zen priests were suspected of being spies, as was eventually the entire Japanese population, which led to their infamous internment. When you read the text of the interview, especially if you knew Sensei, you can see that he was just honestly answering loaded questions by questioning why he would do any such thing as the interrogation suggested, such as going to Mexico, if such an order came from Japan. Why would he? That the interrogator concluded that Sensei posed a threat is truly laughable. His intent in coming to America was entirely altruistic, bringing the compassionate teachings of Zen and its practical method of meditation, zazen, to the people of his adopted country. The FBI agent did not understand that Sensei was, indeed, a “dangerous alien enemy,” but on a whole ‘nother level. His mission to America was indeed dangerous, in that it was intended to inculcate — in those Americans who became his students — an independence of thought, combined with an interdependence of action, that is truly subversive to any governmental effort to propagandize, or brainwash, its citizens. Political or ideological systems require dependent thought and codependent action on the part of their subscribers to be effective. Thus, introducing Zen to any society is the most subversive thing you can do. But no harm no foul. Sensei harbored no ill will. Zen's subversive influence has little to do directly with the social dimension, other than as a side-effect, but instead operates on the personal level. The nesting spheres model puts this in context (see diagram). Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “The Zen person has no trouble following the sidewalks.” In other words, it is not necessary to be nonconformists on the social level, e.g. fomenting a political movement as such, because Zen practitioners constitute such radical anomalies on the personal level. The propagation of Zen in America is taking place on a near-subliminal level, like the innovative selling of Tupperware through invitational parties in peoples' homes, instead of through retail stores. Zen followers do not usually make a public display of their practice, and its values do not provide a basis on which we would mount a campaign to reform society in our image. The real revolution begins at home, remaining virtually undetectable on the surface. True independence is as alien to conventional society as you can get. After all, society itself is subject to the three cardinal marks of Buddhism's dukkha: impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality. Further, any society's intentional evolution is exacerbated by human venality, as we witness on a daily basis here in the USA and all over the globe. Zen's embrace of this kind of humility is illustrated in the closing lines of an ancient Ch'an poem, Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi, by Tozan Ryokai, founder of Soto Zen in 9th century China:Ministers serve their lords; children obey their parentsNot obeying is not filial; failure to serve is no helpWith practice hidden, function secretly like a fool like an idiotJust to continue in this way is called the host within the hostVery Confucian, the take on serving and obeying in the first two lines, but this does not amount to an unthinking endorsement of mindless conformity. “Fool” here is akin to “God's fool,” which does not constitute a pejorative but indicates the highest praise. The term “idiot” in the modern idiom denotes “a person of low intelligence,” an “ignorant person,” or simple, abject stupidity. But the Greek root term stresses the “private person,” the aspect of simply being a layperson. The “host within the host” is the most intimate sphere of conscious awareness, being the person within the person, having little to do with any social interaction. Both can be true at the same time, as in “inner person vs. outer person.”In Andrew's estimable book, which lays out his recommended nonlinear approach to the creative life, he emphasizes the importance of finding and appreciating one's mentors. After noting that he considers himself a “subversive in training,” he quotes my latest online Dharma Byte of that time (https://storder.org/dharma-bytes/), in which I wrote about Zen and revolution:Zen is countercultural. The main social or political issue with Zen practice, fully understood, is that it leads to true independence. Not only of thinking, but even of motive. The personal revolution that zazen can bring about can also knock the supports out from under our unthinking obedience to the dictates of the culture.“Follow the meander.” Highly recommended, both the book and the process. Admittedly it is a bit odd to be quoting another writer quoting myself. But Keisei is here treating me as a mentor, his mentor, one of several he mentions in the book. His sweeping account of the meandering role of mentors includes some interesting factoids about R. Buckminster Fuller, and my encounters with the great man, including one that a fellow Institute of Design student, studying photography under the direction of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind — two of my erstwhile and estimable mentors — captured on film (see photo).Andrew notes the starburst clock apparently emanating from my skull while talking with Bucky, an intentional capture by my photographer friend, Steve Hale. Bucky always had this effect of blowing the minds of his audience, and still does. Search and find his recorded monologs in the cloud to see for yourself. In training, in both Design and Zen, your relationships to your mentors become all-important, shaping your views of the profession, as well as the practice and meaning of Zen and meditation, respectively. Of course, there are many other fields in which this holds true, basically for any apprentice mode of training with a journeyman or master of the trade. But in Zen, mentors are regarded as familial-level relations of some degree of intimacy, such as “dharma-father” or -mother, -sister, -brother, -grandfather, -uncle, et cetera. Shakyamuni himself was said to regard others as his “children,” and not in a condescending way, and would often refer to his followers as “good sons,” if we are to believe the written record. But Buddha was also known for not suffering fools gladly — “fool” being defined as “a person who acts unwisely or imprudently” or “a silly person” — in contrast to the “fool” in the great Zen poem above, where it connotes “a person devoted to a particular activity,” in this case, the secret practice of Zen. This point was illustrated several times in Buddhism's early history, when upon one occasion — ostensibly the last major teaching that Buddha gave, now referred to as the Lotus Sutra — he was told that certain pundits had come to debate. He is said to have said something like, “They are free to go.” Even Buddha realized that he would not reach everyone with his message, and as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Zen is not up for debate.” Buddha also explained — when asked by his devout followers why it was that some people did not show him the respect they thought he deserved — that these recalcitrant seekers had been his students in past lives, and that he had treated them badly, and so they were unwilling to follow him in this lifetime. Master Dogen likewise admonishes senior monks not to treat juniors unfairly, a more modern variation on this same theme, from 13th Century Japan. Perhaps the most neutral comment Buddha is said to have made on the teacher-student relationship arose from a confrontation he had with a young man he met on the road. This wannabe monk pressed the Great Sage to answer the “Ten Cosmic Questions,” as they were known — such as how it all began, how it will all end — et cetera. But Buddha demurred, explaining that these questions were really beside the point, irrelevant as well as hopelessly speculative, and bore no relation to the problem at hand, that of the suffering prevalent in this life. The young man insisted that unless the Buddha answered these questions, he, the young man, could not consider him, the Buddha, to be his teacher. Buddha responded with a clarification that should be the hallmark of all mentoring relationships. He told the earnest but misguided youth that he, the young man, was under no obligation to be his student; and he, Buddha, was under no obligation to be his teacher. This resonates with a contemporary teaching from Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, expressed in the so-called “Gestalt Prayer”: I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine.I witnessed one memorable example of such an exchange in person, while pursuing my undergraduate degree at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. One of my most influential design mentors, the independent thinker, designer and education innovator, Ken Isaacs, had been invited to lead a special class, on the industrial design side of the program. As I was on the graphic design side, I had to jump through some hoops in order to be able to cross over and take his class. But I was determined to do so, knowing some of Ken's history, and having read a cover story in Life Magazine on his work, specifically the “Knowledge Box” that he later installed at ID+IIT (see photo). My persistence had the side effect of opening up the ID curriculum for future students to custom design their curriculum across disciplines and moving away from specialization, and so turned out to be worth the hassle, on both personal and social levels. In the eclectic class, which was held in a small auditorium in the basement of Crown Hall, the famous steel-and-glass architectural innovation by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (see photo), Ken put us through a series of mind-bending exercises he called “set-breakers.” Meaning not only thinking out of the box, but within the box, over and above and beyond the box, redefining and redesigning the box itself, so to speak. The first assignment was to “Translate yourself into terms other than verbal and present them to the class.” The second was to translate someone you knew in the class into terms other than verbal, and present that. As you might imagine, this led to considerable introspection on the personal level, and presenting a fellow student, a serious aspiring artist and my closest friend, led to some upheaval in our student-student relationship. But back to the teacher-student thing.Another student in the class, with whom I had become close, and will refer to as JJ, was the son of a colonel in the army, if memory serves. In that familiar groove of rebellion against strong parental influence, he was a sincere and decent folk-singer and guitar-player who had hitchhiked from the far West to attend ID. With the long, unruly hair to finish the portrait. His attitude was also unruly, leading him to frequently and repeatedly interrupt Ken's penetrating lectures and commentaries, with well-meaning but somewhat snarky comments of a critical nature. This he saw as his duty to truth, and speaking it to power, I assume. Finally one day, about midway through the term, Ken stopped abruptly in mid-sentence with one of JJ's remarks, and walked gracefully over to where he sat, standing in front of him. He leaned down face-to-face with his arms on the back of JJ's front-row auditorium chair and said, very quietly and sympathetically, that he could try to address all of JJ's problems directly, and would probably be able to help him out with them. But in order to do that, it would consume all of his time and — indicating the rest of us with a sweep of his head — he would have to turn his back on all the other students in the room. And that, unfortunately, he could not in good conscience do that. So he said I have no choice but to ask you to leave. Talking with JJ later, it was apparent that he had learned his lesson, a painful one, but too late.In the next segment we will continue this discussion of the all-important mentoring relationship of teachers to students, and that of students to teachers, pivoting to the asymmetrical relationship in Zen training. * * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Designing SanghaSangha is the fruitOf all of our endeavors —If harmonious.* * *angha is also an operative dynamic of our world. Community already exists; it is just not always very harmonious. Why would Buddha have established the original Order of monks and nuns, when he had a perfectly serviceable community in the form of the Shakya clan, and enjoyed a position of high honor and privilege within it? Why do we seek out groups of like-minded folks, often turning away from the family and friends we grew up with? Why do we reject the smorgasbord of ersatz communities on offer in the wider society, and turn instead to groups who insist on sitting quietly for irrationally long periods of time, occasionally inviting someone to hit us with a stick? It is because, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Civilization conquers us!”One could argue the case that Buddha was basically a late-blooming adolescent, a rebel who rejected his father's plans for his future; and potentially a draft-dodger who, as a member of the warrior caste, did not relish the idea of taking orders from the Brahmins, for instance to wage war on the neighboring tribes. One could also reasonably wager that had he been of the lower castes — an untouchable, for example — he would not likely have gotten away with his renegade movement. I submit that we are doing essentially the same thing in America today that Buddha did when faced with the dilemma of introducing a “third way,” in contrast to the probably polarized choices that denizens of proto-Hindu India faced in his day and time. In my recent book, “The Razorblade of Zen,” I delve into the choices we face today between the extremes of theism and religion on one end of the societal spectrum, with rationalism and science at the other end. Zen presents as the Middle Way, positioned between, and inclusive of, the extremes. You don't know where the middle is until and unless you go to the extreme.This vacillation, from high to low, from sensations such as exhaustion or hyper-energetic, or swings in emotions from anxiety to serenity, extreme states from depression to mania, or from one concept to its opposite, seems to be built-in to the very manner in which our mind functions. As Master Dogen reminds us in Fukanzazengi:Think neither good nor evil right or wrongThus stopping the functions of your mindGive up even the idea of becoming a BuddhaSo thinking good or evil, right or wrong is the natural functioning of the mind — monkey mind, that is.Such thoughts, emotions and states can be experienced on a strictly personal level, but they tend to influence our behavior and reactions in the social sphere as well. Which is where Sangha comes into play. One of the prevailing memes about the residential or community practice in vogue today in Zen circles is that the process is akin to stones in a fast-running creek or river — they become smooth by rubbing against each other. This analogy to rubbing off the rough edges simply by being tossed into the same tumbler for some time has its limitations. Most communities are highly intentional in their design. They often include “mindfulness gotchas” built into the day-to-day routine of the practice place.Consider that we all have other choices these days. Whether or not we live in an intentional community, and for how long, is largely dependent upon other factors, such as resources and alternatives, otherwise known as “privilege.” Most Americans practicing Zen today are vastly more affluent and thus more privileged, than was Buddha in his environ. This is one factor explaining the predominantly white and upper-middle-class skew of the leadership of American Zen. My generation is the second, after those members of my father's cohort, the “greatest generation” who went overseas in WWII. They became the first generation of American Zen practitioners and priests, having been exposed to the virus in the Pacific basin. My teacher, like theirs, was Japanese. We are now beginning to see the first generation of younger Zen students who came by it honest — their parents were into Zen.The current influx of 20- and 30-something Zen seekers are a different animal, having grown up in a post-digital and highly interconnected world, with access to most of its intellectual resources. This naturally affects how they engage with the world, and calls into question the place of Zen training, with its emphasis on face-to-face transmission of the Dharma. Why are they coming to Zen? Same reasons you and I did. I was in my mid-20's when I met Sensei; he was in his mid-20's when he came to America, as was Dogen when he travelled to China, all to find the secret of Zen, which was missing from life.Sensei would often say the secret to Zen is “Confidence in everyday life.” I would add balance to that claim, recognizing the many more tugs and pulls that are keeping us off-balance today. But we also now have many more avenues for outreach and engagement. Pre-and post-COVID, I have enjoyed many long-term, robust Dharma dialogs online, with students I have never met in person. We are actively redesigning the interface of the teacher-student relationship in all fields, including Zen.If we are to give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha, what about taking up the role of Bodhisattva?The “idea of becoming a Buddha” is relatively easy to dissect and dismiss, along with the idea of becoming anything we are not already. Or giving up the idea may create a higher likelihood of actually realizing Buddhahood. In any eventuality, it would certainly change our relationship with our community. Or would it?If we are already Buddha — that is, awake but not fully so — what effect would becoming even more awake have on our relationship to our Sangha? And by extension, to the community-at-large? Awake to what? is the question begged. Awake to the community as harmonious, that is, as genuine Sangha? Awake to our personal role in assuring that the community is as harmonious as possible, and maybe improving our performance in playing that role?We have a relatively recent usage in the realm of politics of the adjective, “performative.” This points out what some may regard as the hypocrisy of certain pols who represent positions and policies as if they truly believe in them, as we say in the religion of ideology; but an underlying suspicion suggests that they are only performing for the audience to gain or retain the votes of their constituency. Whatever the utility of this critique, and its potential influence on the future of governance, it seems we might benefit from adapting and applying it to our own role within Sangha, and by extension to society in general. While “performing” in front of others, we might pay attention to the fact that we are performing, and consider whether our actions are merely performative, or genuinely in line with our intention.Sangha is a two-way street. At least. We affect the practice of the community and the community affects our practice. It can go either way. Too much emphasis on fitting into the community, and your zazen may be neglected. Too much emphasis on personal practice, and disharmony may result. It's a balance, like most things. And Sangha is not really necessary on the personal level: see Bodhidharma. On the social level, however, the design of the community becomes crucial to its survival and success, which is measured by its beneficial effect on its members Zen lives, no matter how many or how few. If we can strike a balance between the three legs of the Zen stool — Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — we may have a chance at experiencing the liberation that the Ancestors have assured us hangs in that balance. Zen is about true freedom or liberation: from self-imposed as well as societal constraints; it is innately apolitical. Freedom from cultural memes and mores, yes, but the Zen worldview is not a form of license; the “Zen person has no problem following the sidewalks,” as Sensei would often remind us. We followers of Zen are already the ultimate in non-conformity — no need to make a point of it. Finally, freedom from anxiety, analysis paralysis, weariness and confusion; but not based on a belief system about reality but a direct transformation of our grasp of reality.In the next series we will look at the intersection of certain selected pairs of phenomena that I find to be related to both Zen and Design Thinking. Of course I would be hard-pressed to find anything that does not relate to both of these parallel influences on my life. Meanwhile please practice-practice-practice Buddha-Dharma-Sangha.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Designing DharmaDharma was the pointOf 2500 years —And forever more* * *Matsuoka Roshi would often say that most people go through life with something missing; they don't know what it is, but they definitely know it's missing. Finally, he said, they come to Zen to find it. Zazen is, of course, not the only way to penetrate the truths of existence, but as Sensei claimed, any method that works — yoga, prayer, philosophy, martial arts, chanting, etc. — “will have something of Zen in it.” He would often mention examples of undivided attention in sports, like baseball —e.g. Willie mays — as evidence of the focus factor of Zen. Master Dogen expressed something similar, in a passage with which I am sure Matsuoka Roshi was familiar:When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind you think it already sufficientWhen dharma fills your body and mind you understand that something is missingFollowing this remarkable assertion in Genjokoan—Actualizing the Fundamental Point, he goes into a long analogy of the ocean appearing to be circular from our perspective when no land is in sight, and how all things are like this:Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditionsYou see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.This “eye of practice,” vintage Dogen coinage, comes close to giving us a clue as to what Dharma is, and how we should expect to apprehend it in our own direct experience, rather than as a concept or belief. The implication is that our eye of practice can become more discerning through, well, practice. Nowadays we interpret Zen practice as indicating meditation itself, but of course it is all-inclusive of the various dimensions of life, as outlined in Buddha's original Eightfold Path, a kind of prescription for practice.In another passage, Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon—Dogen's Vow, the great Master and Founder of Soto Zen in Japan indicates that the Dharma is a trans-sensory phenomenon, not limited to an object of perception as such:We vow with all beings from this life on throughout countless livesTo hear the true DharmaThat upon hearing it no doubt will arise in usNor will we lack in faith“Hearing the true Dharma” does not imply hearing someone preaching the Dharma anymore than “seeing” what our eye of practice can reach implies visual perception. This is the “see” of “I see what you mean.” My best friend in high school used to say, with a mischievous grin, “Yes, but do you mean what I see?”You could make the case for “feeling” the true Dharma as well, and go beyond the senses in your embrace of the Dharma as having to do with sensation altogether, as Master Dogen mentions in Jijuyu Zammai—Self-fulfilling Samadhi after a long, effusive description of realization:When for even a moment you express the Buddha's seal By sitting upright in SamadhiThe whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's sealAnd the entire sky turns into enlightenmentAll this however does not appear within perception Because it is unconstructedness in stillnessIt is immediate realizationSo by this we are to understand that expressing or hearing the true Dharma is a transformational experience, not subject to ordinary understanding. But this should not surprise us; what, of all the many phenomena we experience on a daily basis, can we be said to truly understand? That the Dharma is beyond understanding does not mean that it is not real, or that it must be unimportant. We do not “understand” birth, or death, nor most of what happens in-between.At this point you may want to shout, in exasperation, “Please stop talking about Dharma and just tell me what it is!” If Dharma is beyond understanding, yet accessible to awareness, it is certainly beyond concepts, and far beyond words. Which brings up the central stanza from Tozan's Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi:Although it is not constructed it is not beyond wordsLike facing a precious mirror Form and reflection behold each otherYou are not it but in truth it is youSo this unconstructed dimension of reality can be pointed at, if not captured, in words. Which explains the written record of some 84,000 sutras and the vast body of commentary on them from India, China and Japan. When it comes to the instructions for meditation, which Zen claims to transmit the method of Buddha himself, the words are not pointing at a description of reality, but rather offering a prescription for a do-it-yourself approach to entering into the true Dharma directly, through whole body-mind immersion. So as Pogo the Possum famously reminds us, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The Dharma is already present in its multifarious manifestations, from the world of nature as well as the machinations of human kind, and beyond to the unlimited, inconceivable universe. The only thing coming between the true Dharma and ourselves is our own ignorance, both innocent and willful. It may help to consider the contrarian position that we already hear the true Dharma, that in fact we cannot hear anything but the true Dharma. Elsewhere I have argued that anything and everything we hear has to be dukkha, the universal dynamic of change that we human beings interpret as “suffering.” In order to hear any sound, the sound has to emanate from some level of change. No change, no sound. Similarly, we can assume that any sound we hear, including that of human voices, constitutes an instance of Dharma. It cannot be otherwise. Confusion sets in when we understand the language that the human voice is speaking, particularly if they are speaking of the Dharma. Instead of witnessing the concrete event that happens to be producing intentional sounds directed toward illuminating the Dharma, we find ourselves bogged down in the dualistic concepts being expressed in language, which is inherently dualistic in nature. Both things can be true at the same time, as the popular trope has it.The design of Dharma would then relate only to the spoken and written teachings, perhaps extending to the establishment of temples, monasteries and Zen centers as intentionally promulgating and propagating the practice. When we read the record of Buddha's teachings, or sutras, assuming that they capture the events fairly accurately, we can see that the format for their live presentation was similar to the ubiquitous talk show of today. Typically a member of the Order would interview the sage, asking questions for the benefit of the audience. Occasionally Buddha would have a guest or two sharing the couch.Our charge and challenge today is the same. How we present the Dharma to today's audience will be the determining factor in its acceptance, assimilation, and effect upon the denizens of our world. In my opinion, Zen may be one of the few hopes we have for world peace in an increasingly mad world. How we introduce Zen to the madding crowd and whether we can make it accessible to all levels of society will greatly condition the influence that the “compassionate teachings” have on the future. This is why we emphasize householder Zen, rather than the monastic model, in the Silent Thunder Order.If the Dharma were dependent upon a specific lifestyle or mode of living in the world, it would not be the Dharma. Imagine a world in which Zen has not yet been discovered and the method of its transmission is yet to be invented and designed. The bare manifestation of reality is still the Dharma. Or even further, a world on which there are no human beings to “hear” or “meet” the true Dharma, as we are told was the case a mere 250 to 300,000 years ago. The Dharma was already operative in that inchoate world. Dharma has many connotations. A couple that are indicative of its deeper meaning are that of a “being” — from a minute particle to the largest galaxy; and that of “law” — as in natural law, or the way reality works. In this latter definition it is close to a principle of physics, or Taoism's the “Way.” So Dharma as “teachings” in the form of words is merely pointing at the true Dharma that transcends words.But language is one of the most powerful and precise media that we have available to convey meaning But in communications design, the message is the message received, not the message sent. Master Dogen was a master of the language, as was Matsuoka Roshi, doubling down in his non-native tongue of English. That these past masters used language instead of being used by it makes them exemplars of the approach to solving the problem of propagation of Zen today. In literary circles the advisory trope is “Write what you know.” The key to being able to share the Dharma assets is to hear, or meet the true Dharma, oneself. In a “publish or perish” climate, we can expect to find a lot of folks rushing into print at their first inkling into what they think they recognize as the Dharma, or its corollary in their vernacular.That there is a true Dharma implies that there can be a false Dharma, or many such anomalies. Or we may quote one of the ancient but timely Ch'an poems on the subject, Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind:There is one Dharma, not manyDistinctions arise from clinging ignoranceOnce the subject of Dharma is identified and introduced into the vernacular, it becomes subject to the same distortions as any other topic of discourse. Zen offers a refreshing approach to this dilemma. We say with Dogen, in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation:You should stop pursuing words and lettersLearn to withdraw and shine the light on yourselfWhen you do so your body and mind will drop awayAnd your original Buddha nature will appearNote that taking Dogen's “backward step” is the opposite of attempting to understand by pursuing linguistic concepts. It is also, fundamentally, the opposite of “doing.” This is the intersection of Buddha and Dharma. By engaging in an intentional act of non-action, thinking non-thinking, and doing non-doing, the natural process of realization can take place. Do your best to do nothing about this.In the next segment we will take up the third leg of the stool, that of Sangha, the harmonious community. * * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Designing BuddhaBuddha was the firstTo define design intent —It hasn't changed much.* * *In the next three segments of UnMind Podcast we will consider the Three Treasures of Buddhism — Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — from the perspective of design thinking. That is, the method of Zen as consisting of Buddha practice: time on the cushion; Dharma study: researching and interpreting the teachings of the lineage masters; and Sangha service: the place and importance of community. We will devote one podcast to each of these three legs of the stool, as the saying goes, stabilizing the process of living a Zen life in our times. Anyone-anytime-anywhere Zen. One of the premises of Zen practice is that it starts out as a specialized method, upright seated meditation, or zazen in Japanese, consisting of discrete periods of time in “silent illumination,” which is not necessarily silent and often not very illuminating. But over time we develop patience with it, which means patience with ourselves and our own impatience. Over time the halo effect of zazen begins to expand beyond time on the cushion to subsume all of our other activities in daily life until it is virtually 24/7. But don't get ahead of yourself; this usually takes some time. You may be a prodigy or genius of Zen but you may be carrying more baggage than you imagine so better to err on the side of modesty and not develop grandiose expectations, and best to entertain none at all. However, the benefits of zazen will probably blossom in your life in unexpected ways. One of our more recent members who is a poet amongst other skills sent the poem below, which testifies to the remarkable accessibility of Zen meditation under any and all circumstances:Waiting Room Zazen Waiting room zazen— Quiet as a zendo, Almost. Each patient in a chair Staring at a cell phone Or reading. Sitting upright, I lower my gaze. Such stillness In the midst of it all. Too soon they call My name. —Renee WalkerZazen is so simple in design that it is virtually irreducible. It doesn't require a lot of equipment, other than a human body. The upright posture and natural breath can be employed anywhere, and this has an immediate and dramatic effect on attitude and attention. But this is more likely to come true after long practice on the cushion, preferably in a controlled environment such as the zendo. So both things are true at the same time. It is optimal to sit in a setting more conducive to meditation, but it is possible to meditate in environments not designed for that purpose.Soto Zen's worldview and approach is often compared and contrasted to other practices. There are many styles of meditation competing for attention these days, including “mindfulness” meditation, which differs in one key physical aspect from zazen: they recommend sitting with the eyes closed. Which raises a question of how mindful that can be, if it doesn't even include the sense of seeing, our greatest source of sense data. Historically Rinzai and Soto Zen were often positioned at odds with each other, though many exponents of one school or the other, including Matsuoka Roshi, dismissed any difference as superficial or pedagogical in nature. Their historical provenance was probably largely politics. From my perspective as a professional trained in design thinking, Soto Zen appears as simply the simplest. That is, we rely on the method of Zen meditation itself to carry the bulk of the load, less so on the influence of the teacher and other dimensions of the practice. The trappings of ritual, study and other appurtenances are supportive but not critical to the essential process. Again, the design of zazen is ingenious and deceptively simple: just sit still enough, long enough, and observe what happens.Proponents of Soto Zen view Koan practice as somewhat superfluous or extraneous as well, in that in zazen, we are sitting smack dab in the middle of the real koan: the riddle of life itself. This does not mean, however, that the method of penetrating the illogical mysteries presented by koans, under the tutelage of an accomplished master, is not appropriate for some students of Zen. I have heard that some Rinzai teachers consider koan practice to comprise preparation for shikantaza, the experience of just sitting. So there is no real conflict between the two great schools in terms of meaning or objectives. All roads lead to nirvana if pursued with sincerity and diligence.Matsuoka Roshi's appreciation of Rinzai Zen was amplified by his respect for Hakuin, as indicated by his praise of Zazen Wasan, the great Rinzai master's paean to zazen. In such considerations, we should keep in mind the all-inclusive embrace of Zen's worldview, rather than falling into comparative thinking, or indulging in attitudes of exclusion. There is no my way or the highway in Zen; no absolutely right way or wrong way. Even if one wastes an entire lifetime in futile pursuit of a Zen fantasy, rebirth will provide the necessary course correction, just as the planet Earth will eventually recycle all of the waste matter with which the human species has polluted it. Zen takes the long-term view, but there is no time to waste. The underlying impulse to practice Zen is sometimes characterized as “Buddha seeking Buddha.” This means that it is not exactly our personal mission to wake up to realization of the sort promised by Zen. Zazen is already the full expression of enlightenment, not something we “do” to attain enlightenment. We may regard it as “assuming the posture” of enlightenment, just as we assume the posture of surrender when we are arrested by the police. The cross-legged or kneeling postures traditionally associated with meditation, including Zen, are clearly non-defensive. One cannot easily flee or fight from this position. But what we are surrendering to is not an attack from outside, but the internal struggle with existence itself, with all its maddening contradictions.The idea of innate enlightenment does not mean that we do not have to do any work to realize it, but that what realization reveals is, in some sense, already true. That we are already “buddha,” already awake, but not yet cognizant of the fact, is something like the difference between potential and kinetic energy. Matsuoka Roshi described zazen in an analogy that points to this dynamic, saying that it “looks like a mountain, but actually it is a volcano.” The underlying caldera of magma is building to a climax that will one day erupt. But he also described the experience of realization as something more subtle than a volcano erupting, more like the “parting of clouds to reveal the sun” than a sudden lightening bolt from the sky.Which brings us to the subject of Samadhi, a jargon term in Buddhism that is so revered that it is usually capitalized in text. In Hakuin Zenji's Song of Zazen he praises the Samadhi of zazen effusively:Thus one true Samadhi extinguishes evilIt purifies karma dissolving obstructionsThen where are the dark pathsTo lead us astray?The Pure Lotus Land Is not far awayPowerful stuff. If we experience genuine samadhi in our zazen, it apparently has a direct effect upon not only our immediate awareness and appreciation of the determinative causes and conditions of our existence, but also expiates or atones for our karmic actions of the past and mitigates any consequences in the present and future. Samadhi is the secret sauce of Zen meditation. It is our ticket to the Pure Lotus Land of legend. Which raises the question, just what is this samadhi and where can I get some? The answer in Soto Zen is, of course, in zazen. My model of zazen samadhi consists of – surprise – four points, the inevitable, fundamental tetrahedron. I suggest we think of samadhi in four dimensions: physical, emotional, mental, and social.The physical posture of zazen is a model of balance, sitting upright in the midst of gravity, “leaning neither to the left or right, front or back,” as Master Dogen puts it with his usual spareness of expression. Where does that leave us? Exactly in the middle. Without going into his excruciating detail on the proper establishment and maintenance of the posture, we can see that it is essentially centered and balanced, as symmetrical a pose as possible for the human body, as clearly illustrated by the vast body of iconography — imagery and statuary of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas — as well as portraits of the known Ancestors of Zen. The most visible thread running through the entire history of 2500 years and counting is this singular, central posture of the seated buddha. The other aspect of note is the non-binary or androgynous nature of these artistic representations, and their resemblance to the local population, rather than rendering and accurate ethnic representation of Shakyamuni, for instance. I understand that these illustrate the principles of buddha-nature being non-gendered, and as a potential to be realized by all human beings.So once we have begun to experience what it means to enter into this exalted physical state of upright seated samadhi, the inevitable and predictable side-effects begin to set into place. Since the mind (J. shin, C. hsin—“heart-mind”) and body cannot separate, notwithstanding the Western view of mind over matter or the spirit as opposed to the incarnate body, emotional samadhi manifests to ever-greater degree with the normalization of physical samadhi: less anxiety, more natural calmness. Mental samadhi likewise begins to manifest as more clarity, less confusion — particularly in regard to the reality that the Buddhist teachings are pointing to. We begin to experience in a direct, sensory (or better, trans-sensory), and concrete way the actual meaning of such seemingly obscurantist phrases as “form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” Eventually, by becoming more grounded in reality on the cushion, we begin to enjoy what I refer to as a kind of “social samadhi,” — less friction, more harmony in relationships with family and friends, professional associates and even strangers. In developing patience with ourselves on the cushion, we find we naturally have more patience with others. Take my word for this until it becomes true for you.In the next segment we will take up the Treasure of Dharma, usually listed second of the three. Like buddha, dharma, and sangha will be seen to be forces of nature, operative dynamics of the universe. * * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

It's not personal.But it manifests that way —Universally.* * *As promised in the last segment, we will finish this series of five by taking up the remaining pair of combinations — the intersection of the Personal from the Four Spheres, with the Cessation of suffering from the Four Noble Truths, which involves the Eightfold Path previously touched upon. Personal Cessation is the only kind there can be, it seems. Even the Natural Cessation of physical death is not considered the end of suffering in Buddhism, owing to the principle of rebirth. Social Cessation does not seem that germane, other than the relatively decreasing engagement that comes with aging. But ask anyone in assisted living, palliative or hospice care, and you will find most of the issues that arise are social in nature. It must be admitted that if Cessation of suffering can and does actually occur in the midst of life, it must be a Universal phenomenon, as well as Personal. But the only dimension that counts must be the Personal, i.e. how we actually experience and embrace it.The graphic illustrates the correlation of the Four Spheres of reality — the Personal, Social, Natural and Universal — with the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism — the Existence, Origin, Cessation, and Path to Cessation, of suffering, dukkha, a comprehensive model of lay Zen householder practice.The Personal sphere is the bubble in which we sit when we assume the zazen posture. As mentioned, we do not thereby totally leave behind the Social, any more than we can escape the Natural and Universal spheres of influence, notwithstanding ancient claims to the contrary for the powers of meditation. But we can establish some distance between ourselves and others in meditation. Master Dogen hints at this in Fukanzazengi [Principles of Seated Meditation], his early tract on zazen:Now, in doing zazen it is desirable to have a quiet room. You should be temperate in eating and drinking, forsaking all delusive relationships.The operative phrase here is “forsaking all delusive relationships,” which begs the question: Which, if any, of the many relationships we have are not delusive? In another teaching, Genjokoan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point], Dogen lays out four transitions in Zen practice in descriptive, but cryptic, terms:To study the Buddha way is to study the self To study the self is to forget the self To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things When actualized by the myriad things your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away No trace of realization remains and this no-trace continues endlessly Another translation says something like: “to forget the self is to be enlightened by all things; to be enlightened by all things is to remove the barrier between self and other and go on in traceless enlightenment forever.” This can be misinterpreted, I think, to indicate that this realization is a kind of “kumbaya” moment, where we see and embrace the fact that we are all alike, all in the same boat, et cetera, and why “Can't we all just get along?” In other words, a Social interpretation of self and others, plural, and removing any apparent barriers. But I do not think this is what Master Dogen is getting at.If instead we “remove the barrier between self and other,” singular, this identifies the fundamental relationship that we have to resolve, above and before all others. Like Bodhidharma alone in his cave, self-and-other are still present. This basic bifurcation in our apprehension of reality is akin to the Fall from Grace in Buddhism. It amounts to a kind of category error, one that develops in early childhood via the natural process called individuation, i.e. becoming aware of ourselves as individual beings separate from mom, the crib, and everything else. This is further reinforced by parents, teachers and peers, in conventional education. Which, in our culture, does not typically include meditation.Not that this growing awareness of separate individuality is not true; it is just that it is not complete. The rest of the story is that we are intricately interconnected to all of our relationships, including with other human beings, but also sentient beings of other species in the animal kingdom, as well as plant life, and the insentient world. In other words, the Personal cannot be isolated from the Natural and Universal, let alone the Social. Master Dogen goes on to suggest that in zazen, however, we suspend judgment about all of this for the moment, at least for the time we are on the cushion:Setting everything aside, think of neither good nor evil, right or wrong. Thus having stopped the various functions of your mind, give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha.Note that “everything,” here, primarily entailing those judgment calls in the Social sphere, such as identifying “good and evil, right and wrong,” are to be set aside, in zazen. And that this kind of thinking represents the natural functioning of the mind, that is, the thinking or discriminating mind, known as citta in Sanskrit, the complement of bodhi, or wisdom mind. I think we can define these terms simply as analytical versus intuitive aspects of the total mind, or bodhicitta. This basic division of the mind into a dyad, or binary, we may take as the psychology or mind science of the times, as compared to the more complex models of the brain and its functions propounded by science today.The main point here is that the ordinary functions of the mind —which we advisedly tend to label as “monkey mind” — reach a point of diminishing returns, though I don't think we can literally stop them. Like a live monkey, citta will eventually wear itself out, lie down and take a nap. Trying to stop the functions of the mind intentionally only turns out to be more monkey business, as in the Ch'an poem Hshinshinming [Trust in Mind]:Trying to stop activity to achieve passivity, the very effort fills you with activityThis is one of the many catch-22s that we find in Zen practice. And not only on the cushion, as Dogen goes on to remind us:This holds true not only for zazen but for all your daily actions.So the Personal Cessation of suffering may be experienced not as a sudden, irreversible event, like a thunderbolt from the sky, but a series of gradual, incremental cessations of our knee-jerk reactions to events. Both in the Personal sphere, particularly in meditation, as well as interactions with others in the Social and Natural spheres. This attitude adjustment may extend to other forces in the Universal realm, such as the effects of climate change. Or something as simple, but potentially deadly, as a sunburn.One premise that has to be reinforced from time to time in Zen and other meditation circles, is that our practice does not, and cannot, reveal anything that is not already true. Meditation does not and cannot change anything, other than our personal apprehension and appreciation of our own reality. The revered Zen Buddhist saint, Bodhidharma, declared that it is not necessary to do zazen in order to “grasp the vital principle.” Which tells us that we do zazen for some other reason, namely to set aside all delusive relationships, for one example. Which suggests that we must be harboring a lot of delusive relationships, whether we are aware of them or not. Otherwise, why does zazen require so much time?As I mention in The Original Frontier, the first reason most people give as to why they cannot do meditation, is that they do not have time. This is mainly because they look for immediate results, and give up when the novelty wears off, and they cannot detect sufficient positive feedback to encourage them to continue. According to the principles of zazen, and Personal Cessation, meditation does not necessarily take any time at all to take effect. Since we are getting in our own way, all we have to do is stop. Aha, you say — but that's how they get you. Catch-22 déjà vu.If the Cessation of suffering writ large is dependent upon case-by-case Personal Cessation of all those habits of thought and behavior that are getting in the way, how do we recognize and identify them, and relinquish our attachments or aversions to them that keep dragging us down? I think one of the key attitude adjustments is to recognize that we are not only receiving, but interpreting, our experience, even at the near-subliminal level in zazen. If we can set aside any interpretation at all — let alone judgments of good and evil, right and wrong, at least while we are on the cushion — then maybe we can move that dharma gate a little.One last consideration before we leave this perhaps overly convoluted analysis of the intersection of the Four Noble Truths with my model of the Four Spheres of Influence, suggests another connection with the teachings of Buddhism. The spheres of internal and external reality correlate with the Three Treasures of classical Buddhism. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha track to the Personal, Universal and Social spheres. Briefly, Buddha — indicating practice on the cushion as a practical matter, but also our original nature, or birthright as human beings — is obviously a very Personal dimension of Zen practice. Of course, in light of its deeper connotations as “original nature,” it has Universal and Social implications. The study of and propagation of Dharma clearly involves a Social program of education — or “sharing the dharma assets,” expressed as a Precept — but also a Personal endeavor, climbing the Zen mountain. Again with Universal implications as Dharma, capital D, as the Way, or Tao, the law that governs the universe. Sangha is most obviously Social in character, but also Universal, representing the entirety of the human species from its origins hundreds of thousands of years in the misty past, to its current manifestation in facing the looming possibility of the Anthropocene Extinction, the sixth such global catastrophe on record. I could go on. But it is time to shift to another paradigm.Meanwhile, please continue practicing in the holistic context of the Four Spheres and the Four Noble Truths, as well as the Three Treasures. Climbing Zen Mountain, and then descending.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

All are on the Path,Though many do not know it.This Path is no path.* * *The focus of this segment, the intersection of the Social Sphere and the Path to Cessation, sounds dangerously close to “sociopath,” a term that is becoming more and more familiar in the era of extreme divisiveness in the cultural and political landscape, not only in the USA but around the globe. What more appropriate designation for the president living in luxury in Russia, who finds it desirable to be constantly bombing and shelling civilians, women and children, in Ukraine? But then, what name is most fitting for a president who tries to steal an election? “Narcissist” doesn't quite cut it.When we return from our meditation to our family, or sally forth into the public fray — crossing the boundary between the Personal and Social spheres as shown in the graphic model — we enter the Original Frontier™ that Buddha must have encountered the night of his profound enlightenment some 2500 years ago. Perhaps the more accurate term would be “reenter,” as the Social sphere into which he had been born and raised had not changed — he had changed. In the 1960s, the “reentry problem” became a ubiquitous trope, designating that segue back into so-called normality, following a psychedelic-induced “trip” to what appeared to be another world. One of my design students at U of I, Chicago Circle campus, described it as “dumping out all of the drawers in the house in one big pile, and next day, having to put all that stuff back where it belongs.” A psychotropic, rather than alcoholic, hangover.Of course, we never completely leave the Social realm, even when intently focusing on the Personal, in meditation. The influences of our particular social milieu are ever-present, even in the deep isolation of meditation. The Four Spheres are not only outside of us, they are also inside. The body's biology and inherited DNA are obvious examples of the Natural. Subtle movements of chemistry and the neurological verge on the microcosmic Universal. As do such subtle phenomena as circadian rhythms, subliminal responses to sunlight, and the tidal pull of the moon.Not that we are conscious of these influences. The inner Social sphere includes such unconscious elements as self-identity, i.e. association with family ancestry, including persuasions such as identifying with the political party that our parents favored. In receiving the Zen Buddhist lay precepts, we embrace interpretations of others regarding the avoidance of killing, stealing, lying, and so forth, on a conscious level. But we harbor built-in precepts inherited from parents and peers, all unbeknownst to ourselves. Zen's Precepts often belabor the obvious. But they bear repetition.Considering the intersection of the Social sphere with the Path, we call to mind its eight dimensions. Not capitalized here, in order to embrace them as Universal and Natural, as well as Social and Personal, rather than as holy writ. Right view and thought, or understanding, which together comprise right wisdom; right speech, action and livelihood, or right conduct; and right effort, mindfulness and meditation, taken together as right discipline. With our usual caveat that the term “right,” as used here, is more of a verb than an adjective. It indicates taking right action to correct our worldview and understanding, bringing them more into alignment with the worldview of Buddhism, or Buddha himself.One could argue that effort, mindfulness and meditation live entirely within the Personal sphere of action, as exemplified by Bodhidharma, alone in his cave in ancient China. But we point to the halo- or ripple-effect of our personal discipline upon others around us, once we do leave the cushion and reenter the Social realm. Master Dogen is attributed with encouraging us to do one thing, and to do it well enough that we can even do it in front of other people. I have not been able to locate this saying in the written record, but in his famous Genjokoan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point] he declares that “Doing one practice is practicing completely.” This is analogous to the current Zen trope that asks, If you want to drill for water, would you drill a lot of shallow wells, or one deep well? This applies broadly.In the fields of performing arts and athletics, connections of the discipline of Personal effort to Social performance becomes obvious, through repetition of rehearsal and practicing routines. As does the recommendation that “practice makes perfect,” notwithstanding the Buddhist tenet of fundamental imperfection. But the training, while clearly physical, is not only physical. Highly trained athletes are often guilty of making “mental errors.” Gymnasts, musicians, dancers and pole vaulters who persevere and break records, or move audiences to laughter or tears, are examples of this principle. They realize the non-separation of the Personal and Social, following the Path of process and progress through which we integrate inner discipline and outer conduct. In Zen as well as the arts, we arrive at a convergence in which wisdom emerges, on physical as well as mental and emotional planes.Let's take a brief look at each of the eight dimensions and its connection to the Social sphere, beginning where our practice begins, with right meditation. Sometimes rendered traditionally as contemplation or concentration, that there is right meditation suggests that there could be wrong meditation. Again, the usage is not exactly right versus wrong here on the Personal level of meditation practice, but we can agree that there may be wrong attitudes or usages of meditation in the Social context. For example, if we make a divisive or wedge issue of our zazen practice within the dynamics of our household, allowing it to affect our relationships to our family — spouse, children, parents, even in-laws — that might be an example of wrong meditation. An old saying holds that if your spouse and children are happy, your meditation is working. Adding an hour of meditation to our daily routine should not be a cause celebre, but can be inserted at an hour and in a place that does not disrupt or disturb anyone. In fact, practicing zazen should add to the harmony of the household, just as it does to the Zen community, or Sangha.Right mindfulness in the Social realm would suggest extending this Personal caution and humility to the workspace, whether in the office or in the field. Making a display of wearing a wrist mala, for example, calls upon our fellow workers, managers and team members to respond, with questions or comments. While Zen practice has definite benefits in terms of our relationship to colleagues under the stressful conditions of productivity demands, making an issue of it with people who have little or no familiarity with Zen is not advisable. It introduces an irrelevant and even irritating element into a situation already fraught with potential for friction and conflict, e.g. along political or ideological lines. Not that we should be evasive about it, or try to hide the fact that we engage in a practice — meditation — that has its detractors, and does not yet enjoy the kind of mainstream acceptability that it is gaining.A similarly inappropriate, and more common, phenomenon, is the tendency of some to insert their religious views into the business environment, when the business itself has little or nothing to do with religion. I have worked for a relatively large corporation where one of the partners held regular prayer meetings. He was also involved in an illicit affair with one of the employees. Along with being mindful of our practice, we practice mindfulness of context.Right effort plays into the Social context as well, witnessed as our tendency to overdo and overthink all of these relationships, sometimes to the detriment of the relationship. In a comment I came across recently, a mother cogently summed up one example of this syndrome, suggesting that we would be a whole lot less worried about what other people thought of us if we realized how seldom they do. We have all been there, done that, when a colleague or boss makes a comment and we spend the next all-too-long period of time ruminating over it, fretting about what the person really meant, and insulted that they do not appreciate us for the contribution we make to the corporate cause.There are innumerable books published about this, one I heard reviewed on television titled “Neanderthals at Work” by Albert J. Bernstein. He suggests that in the modern office setting you have three distinct types of coping strategies or views of the situation, one he called something like the politician, another the believer, and the third the genius. The “politician,” an example of the bad boss syndrome, schmoozes the people above them, while largely ignoring those lower on the ladder, or worse, criticizing them as a way of improving his position. The “believer” thinks the politician is immoral, feeling that as long as they come to work and do their job, they should not have to play politics. The “genius” comes out of the computer room to solve the problem du jour, but is often culpable in creating the problem. The politician looks down on the other two as naive, simply not understanding how things work in the modern office. Focusing on the boss is the natural approach to the reporting structure. The problem is not that these tendencies exist, but that their adherents do not understand each other, which exacerbates the friction between them.Which brings us to another four-pointed model, my take on the traditional Zen jargon term, “Samadhi,” usually capitalized to stress the high regard in which it is held. I reduce it to the more prosaic “balance.” This concept is simple enough to grasp that no illustration is required. The first of the four is physical samadhi, the centered and balanced form of the zazen posture, leaning neither to the right or left, or front or back, as Master Dogen explains what it is not. From it, or along with it, comes the second samadhi, emotional balance: more calm, less anxiety. Thirdly we begin to experience mental samadhi: more clarity, less confusion. And finally, after some time, social samadhi: more harmony, less friction in our relationships to others. These four comprehend the inner-Personal and outer-Social benefits, or side-effects of Zen meditation practice.Most people want to leap to the Social aspect right away, to handle interpersonal transactions with greater patience and compassion. But Zen goes deeper, of course. When the upright posture becomes more natural and comfortable, the heart-mind (J. shin) becomes calmer and clearer naturally. When one becomes more patient with the monkey mind, and more comfortable in one's own skin through zazen, it becomes easier to have patience with others. But we have to be patient with the time that it takes to get over ourselves, and to divest ourselves of a lot of excess baggage we carry around. This is why Zen takes so long to penetrate to the deeper levels of Samadhi, as a transformational experience, sometimes regarded as the precursor to the fabled spiritual insight (J. satori) of Zen.Summing up so far, we have looked briefly at the Universal Existence of Dukkha, change or suffering, that we are to fully understand; its Natural Origin, or craving, which we are to fully abandon — and which is built-into birth as a human being — which is considered the necessary condition for Buddhist awakening; and the Social Path recommended by Shakyamuni Buddha, which we are to follow to its ultimate conclusion in the Cessation of suffering. A caveat is in order as to this last claim. In the Heart Sutra we chant: “Given Emptiness, no suffering, no end of suffering.” This is not a contradiction, but indicates that the kind of suffering that can come to an end is that self- and mutually-inflicted suffering, intentionally and unintentionally, that we visit upon ourselves and others. The Natural suffering of aging, sickness and death, which come with the territory of sentient existence, do not, cannot, come to an end. But embracing that fact as reality, and perfectly natural, mitigates the suffering as a human meme.Continuing, we will next take up the remaining pair of the combinations of the Four Spheres and the Four Noble Truths, the Personal and the Cessation of suffering, which necessarily involves the Eightfold Path to cessation. Personal Cessation is the only kind there is. Stay tuned one more time.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

Not unnatural,Suffering is only change.It's not personal.* * *Continuing where we left off last time, in this segment we will look at the intersection of the Natural sphere with Buddhism's Origin of suffering. The graphic illustrating correlations between the Four Spheres — Universal, Natural, Social, and Personal; and the Existence, Origin, Cessation, and Eightfold Path to cessation of suffering — is included again for your convenience and reference.In the Repentance verse of Soto Zen liturgy we chant:All my past and harmful karma Born of beginningless greed, hate and delusion Through body mouth and mind I now fully avow“Avow” does not commonly appear in our daily vernacular, but it simply means to admit openly, or to confess. Monastics apparently had a more rigorous routine for confessing and repenting specific transgressions they may have committed, violations of what were known in India as Vinaya, in Japan as Shingi, basically the rules and regulations of conduct in the monastic setting. We have Master Dogen's version, as well as Master Keizan's from a few generations later, the two being known respectively as the “father and mother” of Soto Zen in Japan. One factoid that people like to point out is that there were hundreds more rules for nuns than there were for monks. Interpret that however you like. Or do your research. Usually the Three Treasure Refuges verse follows on the heels of Repentance:I take refuge in BuddhaI take refuge in DharmaI take refute in SanghaI take refuge in Buddha the fully awakened oneI take refuge in Dharma the compassionate teachingsI take refuge in Sangha the harmonious communityI have completely taken refuge in BuddhaI have completely taken refuge in DharmaI have completely taken refuge in SanghaThe condensation of repentance into a catchall phrase represents not just our usual laziness, I think, but a recognition that we may be engaging in karmic actions without knowing it. So just in case, we fess up to whatever we may have done, and “accept all consequence with equanimity,” as another version has it. And then we take refuge in the Three Treasures, just for good measure.The line that indicates the connection between Origin and Natural is that bit about karmic consequences stemming from our very body, mouth and mind, the “Three Actions” of Buddhism. Another version has “born of body, mouth and mind,” which I think captures the meaning more precisely. That is, most of our desires, attachments and aversions, some of which get us into trouble, come with the territory of being born as a human being. As such, they are not exactly our fault. But what we do about it is our fault, or may be to our credit. There is the implication that we can “pay off” our accumulated karma, like a bad debt. The good news is that if we recognize that we did not create, or design, this situation in which we find ourselves, we can perhaps redesign our approach to it, embracing its seeming contradictions. Its “Designer” may not be so “Intelligent” as some would have us believe.When you take an unbiased look at the Natural conditions of our birth and growth as part of a species, certain obvious limitations and undesirable aspects emerge. Does it really have to be so messy? Buddha identified these causes and conditions of circumstance, the matrix of existence, variously, such as: the reification of self emerging through the process of individuation as a child; the conventional wisdom of the social milieu into which we are born; and the predations of aging, sickness and death to which we are all subject. The necessity for survival of the species is not a personal goal, but one of the species itself, as Schopenhauer points out in “The World as Will,” his treatise on how we usually get it all wrong. That we are fulfilling our heart's desire in pursuing the loves of our life is a kind of category error, based on a primordial ignorance of how this existence thing really works. Very Zen.That the Origin of our suffering may thus be regarded as Natural should precipitate a sigh of relief. But these biological facts do not relieve us of the necessity of now dealing with the actual experience of our desires, and the onset of angst, regret, hope, and disappointed expectations, that ensue. The rollercoaster of Social life inserts itself into the mix with little regard to our opinion. Once we have experienced all the highs and lows, however, they average out when we slow to a stop, and step off of the train.One of the unfortunate dimensions of life in modern society, vis-à-vis these known issues of Buddhism, is that they are not widely recognized as such, nor are they ordinarily part of the early curriculum in Western countries. We do not expose our youngsters to practicing meditation. Usually a young person begins hearing about Eastern wisdom when they are in their late teens or early twenties, when the onslaught of hormones has long since had its sometimes deleterious, and even disastrous, effects. Especially with the advent of widespread online accessibility to what we call “pornography.” As one of the Supremes famously intoned, I don't know how to define it, but I recognize it when I see it.It is ironic that the most natural of functions in the Natural sphere — that of reproduction of the species — becomes so distorted in its intersection with the Social realm of human behavior. But that discussion may be better left to the next segment, on the conflation of the Noble Eightfold Path with the Social sphere. For now let us just shake our heads at the willful blindness built into our concept of childhood, and our feckless efforts to control the process of maturation into an adult. It is a compelling example of the Social sphere interfering with the Natural sphere — the biological facts of existence — thereby exacerbating the Origin of suffering, our ignorance-fueled craving. What's the matter with kids today?One could argue that the Origin of our suffering is Universal, as is its existence. The role of Nature in the Universal scheme of things is intricately intertwined with the origin of life on this planet, and the possibility of life on others, in the “Goldilocks Zone” near — in astronomical units — to another star. Speculations as to the arrival of intergalactic spermatozoa in the form of ancient comets or meteors, delivering the foundational chemistry of organisms to our waiting, fertile planet, like sperm to egg, model the entire cosmos as analogous to a kind of organism, giving birth to stars, as in the famous “pillars of creation” image from NASA's Hubble telescope, to the spark of life itself. These analogies are examples of our proclivity to find familiar patterns in the strangest of new information, now flooding in as images from the far reaches of science, thanks to the Hubble, and now the Webb, telescopes. Another is the familiar trope about developing fins at one stage of the fetus in the womb:More than just a catchy phrase, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” is the foundation of recapitulation theory. Recapitulation theory posits that the development of individual organisms (ontogeny) follows (recapitulates) the same phases of the evolution of larger ancestral groups of related organisms (phylogeny).These cultural memes also indicate the comprehensive nature of the Ignorance, capital I, into which we are born, rather than into sin, according to Buddhism. Not the kind of willful ignorance that we have to learn, which can be considered a kind of sin, I suppose, if not against God, then against our original buddha-nature. Willfully ignoring the “compassionate teachings,” for example, as the Buddha's legacy is characterized. They are compassionate in that they consist of descriptions of the suffering innate in existence, as well as our tendency to make it worse; as well as prescriptions for what to do about it, such as the Noble Eightfold Path. Which will be the subject of our next segment, in its relationship to the Social sphere.Meanwhile, wrapping up our meditation on the Natural Origin of suffering, it is, or should be, transparent that there is no Existence without change, and so “change” is interchangeable with “suffering.” Everything that we see, hear, smell, taste, feel — and yes, everything we think — is the effect of change. We are literally hearing the sound of suffering, like Avalokiteshvara. And we are seeing it as well as feeling it at all times, in every moment. If nothing were changing, we could not perceive it. We never breathe the same breath twice, and we can never have the same thought, twice, though it may seem that we do. This is natural, and this inexorable, instantaneous change, is the true source of our suffering. Get used to it.The fact that some forms of change provide welcome relief in our lives, while others seem to deliver more stress, should make it clear that dukkha is neutral. Suffering is not being inflicted upon us as a kind of punishment, though it may be considered a kind of test. Zen recommends embracing what life brings us as a natural consequence of our existence as a sentient being, even though we may not enjoy it at the time. Don't worry, it will change. This does not mean, however, that we should not do anything about it, to improve our circumstances. This and other dimensions of behavior in the Social realm will be one focus of the next segment, reviewing the Path in its eight dimensions. Stay tuned.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell

Yes, universal!Existence unlimitedto our perception* * *In the last session we concluded the introduction to this summary of the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen by linking Buddha's Four Noble Truths to my Four Spheres of Influence and Endeavor as encountered in daily life. The semantic model shown illustrates correlations between the Four Spheres — Universal, Natural, Social, and Personal — and the Existence, Origin, Cessation, and Eightfold Path to cessation, of suffering. We will explore the connections of each in order, in the next four segments. These include: Universal Existence, Natural Origin, Social Path, and Personal Cessation, all linked to dukkha, the Buddhist term usually translated as “suffering.” As we will see, it has a broader meaning.Sometimes overlooked in considering the Four Noble Truths are Buddha's admonitions, charges, or challenges accompanying each. We are to strive to “fully understand” the existence of suffering; to abandon its origin, usually interpreted as craving; to realize its cessation, hopefully in this lifetime; and to fully follow the Noble Eightfold Path to the realization of suffering. That's a tall order.But if we take the Design thinking approach, we can regard the prospect of fully understanding the existence of suffering as just another example of fully defining the problem, albeit the most intractable and elusive of all problems, that of existence itself. The proposition that existence is a problem, or should be regarded as such, is itself subject to challenge. But most religions and philosophies characterize our existence as a human being as a kind of test, from Job's Old Testament lament, to the triumph of reasoning of the Enlightenment, and theism's personal epiphany of being reborn, as well as Zen Buddhism's potential of spiritual awakening — kensho or satori in Japanese. Of course, the usual caveat applies, that the approach to solving this problem in Zen begins and ends with experience on the cushion, or informed by that process of personal introspection. As we often emphasize in interfaith dialog with other clergy and students online, world peace can only come about through the establishment of personal peace. Zen's pop-up exam takes place in zazen, pass or fail.Another way to phrase the first Noble Truth is that Existence is of the nature of suffering. That is, dukkha may be regarded simply as inexorable change. Galaxies colliding in space is an example of Universal Existence of change. It is not personal, but a universal principle. Human beings are necessarily caught up in it, through birth, aging, sickness and death, and tend to take it very personally. This is why it is called “suffering.” But this suffering is too laden with emotional and sentimental connotations to fit the definition of a universal principle. Suffering in the Buddhist sense has a connotation of allowing, as in “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” paraphrasing a comment attributed to Christ. He is also quoted as saying that unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.So in the face of universal change, we are reduced to the state of children. Innocent, perhaps, but still responsible for adapting to reality. We find examples of human suffering in all spheres of our existence, including personal issues of aging, sickness and death, which is also characteristic of the natural sphere, where our relationship to Nature is ever-more challenging, owing partially to our success as a species in dominating the planet and diminishing the resources of life support. But most of us are inclined to identify the sources of our suffering as social in nature.These are all conjoined, as the pressures of living in modern society are certainly linked to the pressures of population. From stress on the commute to family unity at home, and comity at the office, much of our dissatisfaction with life in the fast lane stems from the fact that there are so many others queuing up in that same lane. And, of course, they are not usually as polite or considerate as you or I tend to be. In the modern idiom, they do not, or will not, stay in their lane, and out of ours.Please excuse me if you have heard this before, but I think an experiment I read about is germane. The scientists involved simply took the classic rats-in-the-maze to a new level, adding more and more rats. At a certain point of overpopulation or crowding, the rats began attacking each other. In human terms, each began to blame the others for the situation. If memory serves, it revealed a kind of proportionality between the space available and the degree of occupancy, which may reflect a natural limit to the population of any species. There is a relevant question in Taoism, from the “Tao te Ching” of Lao Tzu if memory serves, which asks the question, something like, Which is more destructive — success or failure? The very success of a species may be akin to the growth of a virus, which finally exceeds the capacity of its host to sustain, leading to the death of the host but also of the parasite.Another Taoist saying reminds us that, When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame, or some such admonition. What we see in politics these days is largely the blame game writ large, usually on a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't basis. Increasingly, decisions regarding spending decreasing resources are taken in this no-win kind of context. Even speaking out on a given issue, no matter what position one takes, is likely to bring down hostilities upon one's head, from the cold waters of the social media. The very anonymity provided by the network fosters the tendency of many disgruntled fellow travelers to fire broadsides at every comment, no matter how reasonable or anodyne. The privacy of the original communication is often compromised, exposing the messenger to the mob, including searchable data such as the identities of their family members, along with contact and location information. Thus, the natural moan of stress and threat of living is amplified to a scream through the feedback process, like a mic and speaker facing each other. Humans are the worst enemy of humans.When we turn from our social world — as restricted to human beings — to the natural sphere, we find other social animals, such as elephants and whales, who have their own networks, and presumably some level of stress emanating from them. Much more certainly they suffer from the dire circumstances in which they live as prey to other species, primarily the encroachment of humans on their turf, and as victims of the harvesting of ivory and other private parts for such human dalliances as trivial trinkets, and supposed aphrodisiacs. Our stewardship of the creatures of the Earth has demonstrated a downward curve for most of our history, but now that we are outnumbering as well as outmaneuvering our distant cousins, many are staring into the abyss of extinction. Which is where the Natural sphere is trumped by the Universal. From the perspective of the victim of extinction, it matters little whether the end comes as the result of a meteor or comet, or the slow erosion of viable food stocks and potable water. So-called “pets” and live exhibits such as zoos are the few remaining concessions to inclusion of lowly beasts in our social circle, now that the age of horsepower has long since passed.When we look at the intersection of the Universal and the Natural, disregarding for the nonce the Social and Personal realms, we see that it is also not a respecter of persons, or dharma beings. The most awe-inspiring example may be the black hole, at least based on our current understanding of cosmic dynamics of change, dukkha on the largest scales we can envision. Whole galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, moons and asteroids and all, provide the daily fare keeping the monster fed. We charmingly describe such processes with familiar tropes, such as that a black hole is “eating” its way through the universe, gobbling celestial bodies as we consume lesser animals and plants of the globe. A recent special on the blue whale identified them as the largest mammals to ever live on the planet — in the ocean, more exactly — as large as a Boeing 737. Yet they live on krill, one of the smallest animals on the planet. But the volume of their dining may be the closest living analogy to a black hole in the animal kingdom. Tens of thousands of tons of water in one gulp! Yet even this behemoth may be threatened with extinction, owing to the activities of the noisome human parasite.In the face of such vast scales of existence, and with the looming threat of universal and natural chickens coming home to roost, through imminent climate change, the very idea that what we call suffering is indeed universal may be disturbing, even overwhelming. And as Master Dogen reminds us in Jijuyu Zammai —Self-fulfilling Samadhi, even if we manage to divest ourselves of our ignorance, and the “whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal, and the entire sky turns into enlightenment,” even then “all this does not appear within perception, because it is unconstructedness in stillness, it is immediate realization.” So the frustration with the ungraspable nature of this truth is baked in. But we mustn't forget the micro, along with the macrocosmos. The microcosmos is also the manifestation of the universal existence of suffering, just on the other end of the scale spectrum. It recalls a line from one of our beloved Ch'an poems, Hokyo Zammai [Precious Mirror Samadhi], by Master Tozan, founder of Soto Zen in China:So minute it enters where there is no gap — so vast it transcends dimensionA hairsbreadth deviation and you are out of tuneI hear an unspoken “but” or “however” before this last bombshell — any deviation, however slight, and we are “out of tune.” Like tuning an old-fashioned analog radio dial, a little to the left or to the right, we get nothing but static. Only when we hit the frequency dead on in the middle, do we receive the transmission with clarity. If we persist in our meditation, we can hopefully penetrate beyond the Personal, Social and Natural barriers, all the way to the Universal, which is not only outside us at the furthest remove, but also inside us, at the most intimate. As Master Hakuin reminds, actually there is no “inner,” nor is there any “outer.” It is all clear, clean through. Spacetime is neither space, nor time.In the next segment we will take a look at Natural Origin, the origin of our suffering through the craving of our body, our mouth, and our mind. Stay tuned.* * *Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell