Investigate

Investigate

What is anger? How does it arise?What are we like when we are angry? What are we Like when we are happy? What are we like when we are clear?

What are we like when we write long passages on Treeleaf about asshats?

Investigate your practice like a private detective because practice is very private, and not private. It's strange that someone should know you better then you.

What is posture? Why is this posture thing so important? Why are healthful habits so important?

Investigate. Don't look to other.

What is mindfulness? It's not only listening to a car passing by or bird out the window. Mindfulness can also be mindfulness of states or thoughts, or anger, or how you are. Mindfulness can be the whole shebang all at once.

What is practice? Investigate

But how to investigate? Do we investigate with mind? Only mind? Only thinking? Or do we also investigate with body as well?

Gassho

W

Excellent stuff Will. Remarkable advice when one is aware of one's endless stupidity.
And it is a very advice of Dogen in one of his most famous chapters of Shobogenzo, Zanmai O zanmai:

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We should realize that there is a vast difference between all realms of sitting and all other realms. Clarifying this principle, we confirm the aspiration, the practice, the bodhi, and the nirv??a of the buddhas and ancestors. We should investigate: at the very moment we are sitting, are all realms vertical? Are they horizontal? At the very moment we are sitting, what about that sitting? Is it a flip? Is it “brisk and lively”? Is it thinking? Is it not thinking? Is it making? Is it without making? Are we sitting within sitting? Are we sitting within body and mind? Are we sitting having sloughed off “within sitting,” “within body and mind,” and so on? We should investigate one thousand points, ten thousand points, such as these. “We should do the sitting with legs crossed of the body; we should do the sitting with legs crossed of the mind; we should do the sitting with legs crossed of the body and mind sloughed off.

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Istead of idle talk or endless blabla, we need to investigate and reflect.

gassho

Taigu

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Originally Posted by Taigu

Istead of idle talk or endless blabla, we need to investigate and reflect.

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Excellent. Thank you.

Gassho

Dokan

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Originally Posted by will

What is anger?

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An emotion

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Originally Posted by will

How does it arise?

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Circumstances by either action or thought cause the emotion.

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Originally Posted by will

What are we like when we are angry?

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Irrational

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Originally Posted by will

What are we Like when we are happy?

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Overactive and full of energy

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Originally Posted by will

What are we like when we are clear?

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Sometimes happy, but usually when I am clear, I am not thinking as much as I often do.

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Originally Posted by will

What are we like when we write long passages on Treeleaf about asshats?

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Thinking too much

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Originally Posted by will

What is posture?

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Simply not slouching

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Originally Posted by will

Why is this posture thing so important?

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Slouching gives way to laziness. Good posture gives way to mindfulness.

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Originally Posted by will

Why are healthful habits so important?

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Simply because they are healthful.

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Originally Posted by will

What is mindfulness?

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I would akin it to concentration, but more light. It can cover more than one thing at a time, gracefully. It is a kind of softness that comes into play when every action or thought is paid attention to, but again, lightness is important. Mindfulness can turn neurotic.

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Originally Posted by will

What is practice?

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Living with mindfulness of the Dharma.

Dear Amelia

The power of questions is not found in quick answers but in the very dynamic and lively nature of a question that you strike your practice-being with.


gassho


Taigu

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Originally Posted by Taigu

Dear Amelia

The power of questions is not found in quick answers but in the very dynamic and lively nature of a question that you strike your practice-being with.


gassho


Taigu

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"Me" wants short answers. However, "Me" must dissolve into the truth you shared.

Amelia,

We all want short answers, shortcuts, quick fixes and the likes> I am not immune to this. Just catch myself every so often.
I also basically wanted to remind both of us of the tremendous energy that lives in a naked question. In schools, we wrongly teach kids to answer, we provide text books, references, data, we learn very early that we must know. And show that we know. In Zen, we are invited to "not now" (dissolve , your word, is very good to my bearish ears). In Zen, questions are not processed to make answers, but taken as is, as they are, sharp, undiluted.
So you may ask the questions with wording and also in deeds, actions, in the market place and the spot wher you sit. Sitting is a living question that doesn't provide any answer,that doesn't worry anymore about "why?" in doing so, the nature of this reality is directly revealed. Answer and we end up with a fine box, beautiful, pretty, but a box.

Thank you for your patience.


gassho

Taigu

Taigu,

I am definitely in a phase that demands the easy road and short, simple to memorize answers and formulas.

I catch myself as well, but I am addicted to order. It's odd that I think so because my life kind of looks a mess. I am scattered on many winds and I don't know how to gather myself up. I have so mush desire to achieve-- money, friends, perfection, enlightenment, health, etc. Buddha I am can see this. Amelia I am doesn't want to stop it because of many fears.

There is a great energy to great questions, but what of the question that tires me out: what do I want in this short life? How do I get everyting done that I want to get done?

Perhaps Buddha's answer is that I can't get everything done, and that's that.

Thank you for further exposing me to the truth of the box I am trying so hard to make pretty.

Amelia,

Skokai recently wrote in another thread: "The smaller the gap between what you think it should be and what it is(definition of a problem), the happier you will be".
I think this is very true. We categorize things, box them up, build up an illusion that the world is well categorized and structured. Temprorarily we may feel OK. But the dukkha is always there and we can't fool ourselves forever. When we continue our habitual categorizing, despite knowing intuitively, deep inside, that the world doesn't work that way at all, we experience the feeling that something is lacking. There is a gap, the problem Shokai is talking about, and we feel unhappiness, dissatisfaction.

I box things up too. I think we all do, all the time. But not everyone is aware of it and not everyone aware of it is open about it.
I'm glad for your spontaneous response. It felt very honest. It gave me something to... Investigate! :D

I believe answering questions is similar to or even the same as passing judgement. We are so used to quickly making judgements regarding questions at hand, deciding, coming up with answers. As Taigu says, we're trained, conditioned to do this. In school, to get a good grade, we needed to decide on a clever answer and raise our hands, before anyone else did. And to function in our everyday lives, we may need to answer some questions, or at least come up with a preliminary answer that works in that moment, a working model. Sometimes we may need an answer, but we shouldn't understand the answer as the truth, the final word, a definitive answer, because nothing is permanent, everything changes. My feeling is that in reality there are few definitive answers, if any. There is always the expectation of a solution to the riddle. Judgements, expectations, dukkha.

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Originally Posted by Will

But how to investigate? Do we investigate with mind? Only mind? Only thinking? Or do we also investigate with body as well?

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I don't know. But my preliminary answer, is that there is no division between body and mind. In everyday life, we think we are investigating things through discursive thinking, without any involvement of the body. But sometimes in Zazen, when our bothersome body and discursive thinking are dropped, there is investigation with body-mind as one, or so it seems. That investigation leads to other questions, like whose body-mind? :shock: :lol:

Even though there may not be an answer, I'll keep on investigating!

Gassho,
Pontus

Amelia - thankyou for your honesty.

Have a heavy head cold so words are fluff today - but going to surf on the waves of Taigu's teaching :)

Pontus - your energy is invigorating - so I'm going to surf on that as well! 8)

Amelia - I hope you can find some peace in the 'gap' that Pontus mentioned - I hope we can all find some peace of mind.

Gassho

Willow

Hi Amelia,
Yes, we can never get everything done. But we can try to do one thing and then another and another. I think the hardest is doing no thing. Being a type A person :) , I probably do too much.

Rich and Pontus-- yes and thanks.

One thing, then another, and then another...

And less of a gap.

And thank you, willow for your kind thoughts.

This thread reminds me of a scroll which I've seen. It has an ink painting of Daruma(By Hirafuku Hyakusui) and this inscription(By Nakamura Fusetsu )

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Pointing directly to the human heart. Examine yourself. Become the Buddha.

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Gassho,
Hoyu

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Originally Posted by Dogen (Genjo Koan)

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 myriad things. When actualized by 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.

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I'm glad that such a lively discussion came from my post.

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Amelia

catch myself as well, but I am addicted to order. It's odd that I think so because my life kind of looks a mess. I am scattered on many winds and I don't know how to gather myself up. I have so mush desire to achieve-- money, friends, perfection, enlightenment, health, etc. Buddha I am can see this. Amelia I am doesn't want to stop it because of many fears.

There is a great energy to great questions, but what of the question that tires me out: what do I want in this short life? How do I get everyting done that I want to get done?

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You can still do that. You can do all of that. But use the energy that practice gives you. Or let the energy just be. Practice is lively. It's moving and waking and starting. Practice can't give you the answers you seek, but you can do what you want.

May I quote another part of Dogen's Shobogenzo: To Study the self, is to Drop the self, and be enlightened by myriad things.

Edit: I just noticed that Omoi Otoshi posted that as well.

Gassho

W