Hi Guys,

I think that the discussion is really going strong! The book may grow on some folks who did not care for the first pages (or maybe it won't. I used to hate black olives, but now I like them.). Happy with the pace?

I will toss out a seed or two for this week. It may be something to talk about.

Joko wrote:

Moment by moment our practice is like a choice ... between our nice world that we want to set up in our heads and what really is. And what really is ... is often fatique, boredom, and pain in the legs. What we learn from having to sit quietly with that discomfort is so valuable that if it didn't exist, it should ... [The] only people who learn to live comfortably are those who learn not to dream their lives their away, but to be with what's right-here-now, no matter what it is: good, bad, nice, not nice, headache, being ill, being happy. It doesn't make a difference.

Master Dogen wrote:

Do not think of good and bad. Do not care about right and wrong.

Perhaps, in our sitting, we are under the impression that we must seek to see only the clear, blue sky of some pure, harmonious, undivided 'enlightenment', and thus we seek to chase away and conquer the dark, disturbing rainclouds of thought and division and conflict and distraction. We believe that one is enlightenment while the other is ignorance. (And many books on Zen and other like schools of 'enlightenment' will teach that the goal is just that).

However, both clouds and blue are just the sky, and one without the other would be incomplete.

Why would we want to break up the sky?

Peace, Jundo