185. ZEN REMARKS

185. Having trouble accepting that everyday is a good day? Then try this: everyday we can do some good.

184. ZEN REMARKS

184. The five-year-old was out of bed early on Christmas morning. First she had to check to see if Santa had eaten and drunk what she had left for him. Next, she needed to decipher the note Santa had written her in his shaky handwriting. Then it was into the Santa Bag: of all the items (toys, trinkets, lollies) she found, it was a kind of view finder gadget that most took her fancy. Looking into the eyepiece she exclaimed: 'Wow! Jupiter! Wow! a meteorite! Wow! the Milky Way!' She kept this up for several minutes. Joshu would have been spellbound, delighted, and greatly enlightened.   

183. ZEN REMARKS

183. Like Joshu, am I prepared to learn from the child that has something to teach me? Can I go further and learn from a baby sleeping in its mother's arms? Practising shikantaza, let my heart have no lofty ambitions. Let my eyes not look too high. Let me not be concerned with great affairs or with marvels beyond my reach. Let me find (like the Hebrew psalmist) that it is enough for me to keep myself tranquil and quiet, the picture of a baby resting in its mother's arms. Here I am content as a child that has been weaned.

182. ZEMARKS

182. When Master Joshu was about sixty years old he spent some time in mourning for his teacher who had just died. Then he set out on pilgrimage to various temples and monasteries throughout China. His wanderings lasted twenty years. His purpose was to deepen and clarify his own understanding. At the start of his traveling he had declared, 'If I meet an elderly man who needs my teaching, I will instruct him. If I meet a child who has something to teach me, I will become his disciple'. What would he have done had he chanced upon a stable in which there was a newborn infant boy asleep in a manger and overhead a star shining bright?

181. ZEN REMARKS

181. The old Ch'an master Ummon once addressed his disciples thus: 'I do not ask you about the fifteenth of the month. Come, give me a word about after the fifteenth'. None of his disciples could respond and so he answered for them, saying 'everyday is a good day'. No doubt many of us find both question and answer to be equally opaque. It might help if we call to mind those words of a sutra that go something like this: 'Past mind cannot be grasped. Future mind cannot be grasped. Present mind cannot be grasped'.

180. ZEN REMARKS

180. The saying 'everyday is a good day' can sound like a piece of cheap optimism. But in Zen practice it functions as a koan, an opening into and an expression of the True Self. Becoming intimate with this koan in the silence (and struggle) of zazen, the practitioner is drawn into the mystery that embraces tears and laughter, success and failure, health and sickness, virtue and vice, wholeness and brokenness. It is one thing to say 'every day is a good day' but something altogether different to genuinely and deeply realise that this is in fact the case.  

179. ZEN REMARKS

179. Why did Master Ganto laugh out loud? It seems that when he had asked a visiting monk where he had come from, the monk had replied 'from the western capital'. The monk's response suggests that he felt himself to be someone of standing, coming as he did from the city that was the seat of power, (site of the imperial palace, residence of Emperor Kiso). Picking up on this Ganto inquired about a recent rebellion that saw the palace captured and the emperor barely escaping with his life; many of his family were massacred. The rebellion was led by Koso, famed for his possession of a fabled sword. Said to have fallen from heaven, it bore the inscription 'Heaven gives this to Koso'. Within four years Koso had been killed and his followers subjugated. So a hot question following Koso's death concerned the whereabouts of his famous sword. Ganto, noticing how his visitor was full of his own importance, cheekily asked 'did you get the sword?' When the monk replied that he does in fact possess the sword, Ganto stretched out his neck and let out a great cry. With this submissive gesture Ganto was offering the monk an opportunity to demonstrate the great power associated with Koso's sword. But instead of wielding the fabled sword, the monk could only slap Ganto with a wet lettuce leaf with his saying,  'the master's head has fallen'. No wonder Ganto laughed out loud.