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Thread: Understanding

  1. #1

    Understanding

    For a long time I would worry about what I said and how it effected people. But there comes a time when you have to put the worry down and just speak. There are these common rules of manners and politeness which make up our daily actions; however, this politeness is not something that we should "worry" about.

    Sometimes we take offense at everything anyone says. Other times we crawl up in a ball. Strange, as there is no one to take offense and nothing to take offense to. That means "speak when spoken to" and speak to speak.

    It's like you have a person who is offended by the word "blue", and every time you say "blue" they get angry or offensive. But you just say "It's only Blue."

    There are conspiracies everywhere. Every one is out to get us. This is just thinking mind, just unbalance, just habit, just being "convinced" instead of "just being".


    Sometimes we might find it hard to understand people. Confusion might come up, but the fact is...there was nothing much to understand in the first place. Come back to balance. Come back to Buddha mind. Come back to whatever it is that you do. Perhaps you wash your car. Then wash the car. I don't have a car, so I don't wash it. Perhaps you play tennis, then play if you like. It is the fact that we don't have to do anything, and.. can "do" what ever we want.

    But...there is a big "But" there. How is your Body/mind?

    To study the way is to study the self. To study the self, is to forget the self, to forget the self, is to be actualized by myriad things.

    I say "Jake" or "Susie" and we automatically think "Jake is so and so, and Susie is so and so. However; Jake and Susie are not their names. Nor are they their shoes, or dress, or their favorite food. They are Just "Jake" and "Susie". Nothing more, nothing less. Just wash the car.

    Gassho

  2. #2

    Re: Understanding

    Quote Originally Posted by will
    For a long time I would worry about what I said and how it effected people. But there comes a time when you have to put the worry down and just speak. There are these common rules of manners and politeness which make up our daily actions; however, this politeness is not something that we should "worry" about.
    Old Dogen, like almost every single Zen monastic teacher throughout history, was a real straight laced stickler and task master for proper decorum and polite behavior, monk to monk, in the monastery (that is why, in most of those old Zen stories, doing something as "rule breaking" as kicking over a water bucket, slapping your teacher once in a long while, or coming early to one's meal was considered so "radical").

    Of course, he would have agreed thoroughly with you on not "worrying" about it, and finding balance, and just doing it naturally ... even as one followed the rules scrupulously.

    Here is a list by Dogen of some of those rules, for how a junior should treat a senior in a monastery. [DOWNLOAD, 4 Page PDF FILE] ...

    http://sites.google.com/site/jundotreel ... ects=0&d=1

    or find page 121 to 126 here

    http://books.google.com/books?id=XJHAOI ... ds&f=false

    Gassho, J

  3. #3

    Re: Understanding

    Hey Will,

    On an intellectual logical basis I am 100% in agreement, but the trap I tend to fall into is that when one doesn't feel accepted by many people it is hard to keep such a mindset. Of course you said nothing about it being easy.

    Gassho,
    Dosho

  4. #4

    Re: Understanding

    Wonderful! I like the deference to "seniors" that Old Dogern writes about, especially since having "crossed the bar" of that age hurdle!

    Really though it seems that both Dogen and Benedict had similar ideas about decoram in the monastery.

    From the Rule of Benedict:

    "Let the Brethren keep their rank in the Monastery in such a way that the time of their conversion and the merit of their lives mark it off.....thus, for instance, let him who came into the monastery at the second hour of the day, know that he is younger than he who came at the first hour of the day, whatever his age or dignity may be....let the younger honor their elders; and let the older love the younger....In calling by name, let no one be permitted to address another by his simple name; but let the older call the younger Brethren; let the younger, however, style the older Fathers, which is an expression of paternal reverence...Whenver the Brethren meet each other let the younger ask the blessing of the older; and when the older passes by, let the younger rise and give him his place to sit; and let not the younger presume to sit down with him, unless his elder bid him" Chapter 63: Of the Rank in the Community

    "The service of obedience must be rendered by all, not to the Abbot only, but the Brethren should thus obey each other also....in other respects let all the Juniors obey their elders with all charity and solicitude....if he but slightly notice that the temper of any of the elders is ruffled or excited against him, however little, let him cast himself down prostrate on the ground at his feet making satisfaction, until the agitation is quieted by the blessing." Chapter 71: That the Brethren be obedient to one another

    Perhaps in the day when these sorts of rules were new, they were practiced and obeyed quite literally; today the egalitarian bent of society has let some of these rules to seem less reasonable. The "get over it" or "whatever" attitude has taken over; but there has been no revision or amendment to these rules that I know of which precludes simple civility and respect to be practiced, especially in a monastic community (or for that matter in a family) where we have to live with other people.

    Bowing to my Elders,

    Kyrill Seishin

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