Last night, I was looking through the summer issue of Buddhadharma, The Practitioner's Quarterly, when I came across an excerpt of an old (1962) article by Robert Aitken Roshi. The first two short paragraphs were excellent reminders for me of the teachings of Jundo and Taigu, so I will share them here:
"let us not mistake the radical nature of Buddhist method. It is destructive of culture and history, as some creatures die in order to bring forth their young. We cannot put Buddhism on like a new hat.
Buddhism requires forgetting, rather than remembering; tearing down, rather than building; simplifying, rather than complicating. This may sound drastic, dangerous to our conventional way of life, but our conventional way of life has dangers too, it seems."
For me, this is a vivid reminder that even though we call our practice "just sitting," it is really so much more than that. Our practice is vital and dynamic. For me, this is Taigu telling us to "throw it all away."
Gassho,
Juki
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