This month of June worldwide is Pride Month. A month that celebrates the work,life and struggles of those of us within the LGBTQAI or Queer Community . In honor of this month I want to offer up my own "Queer" commentary on Fukanzengi that being Dogen's Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen to the Sangha. I am no Zen Master but am a gay man who has found in just sitting more about myself than I ever have in the last two years I have been doing it both at home and in sangha . The word "Queer " used to be taken as a very derogatory word but those of us in the younger LGBTQAI community have taken in many ways it back from the hurtful way it was used before and come to see it as a person or thing that challenges the norms forced upon us by society as we do at times with our sexual orientation or not fitting in with gender norms. This commentary is Queer in the fact it seeks to show what zazen means for at least one person in the Queer community but also that Zaezen itself is a radical act that can benefit all people.
So here is my commentary:
The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.
With these words Dogen challenged I feel the Buddhism of his day in Japan where in which people were seeking to find Buddha-Nature through good actions but Dogen is introducing to us the reader a simple way as some in his time were trying to find the perfect teacher to find enlightenment . Dogen simply asks why do you feel you have to do that? Sometimes I feel in my own life I find the simple things in front of me are enough but I live in a society with expectations around who am I and what I should do but Dogen is saying look there is something you can do to just be.
Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still short of the vital path of emancipation.
Sometimes we think we have life all figured out like it makes sense. I think about this in regards to my own sexuality I was told that the right way to be most of my life was to be with a person of the opposite sex but I was really only playing in the entranceway of who I really am. It took me sitting for a long time to realize that I actually liked someone of the same sex and a lot of self-hate too just to accept myself for who I was as a gay man but no emancipation came in just sitting knowing that those feeling were there and accepting them existing as part of who I was . In accepting them and coming out I have found more freedom just to be.To sit with the joy of my humanity in accepting myself.
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?
I learned this last semester that the word revolutionary originally meant not a total and completely different shift but an actually coming back into what was before . Zazen was nothing new to people in his time and is nothing new to humanity since before the Buddha but Zazen is a simple act we forget about a lot in our life . We do it a lot outside of sangha or formalized practice inadvertently at times without even recognizing it to do Zazen is nothing new but yet it is revolutionary . Radical in the fact in just sitting it enlightens us to who we are even more so or at least that is what I find in my practice.
Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize such, get to work on such right now.
Even though I am engaging in an investigation of words right now and employing intellectual discourse Dogen with all attitude is saying here "Just stop" and "You don't need to do all that" really even though my words here may aid someone in Zazen the real truth lay within just the act itself doing it.Even though we may need labels such as Queer or LGBTQAI,straight,homosexual,transgender,man,woman, non-binary that do provide meaning they are themselves attachments at the same time the prejudice used towards those of us in marginalized groups are themselves attachments but when we sit Zazen are they there?Should they be there?No the Zazen is the great equalizer and destroyer of prejudice but what does Dogen say here practically "Quit dawdling around and just do it"
For practicing Zen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs. Do not think "good" or "bad." Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views. Have no designs on becoming a buddha. How could that be limited to sitting or lying down?
In the Queer community I feel at times we do get hung up on ego a lot. We are fed images what we should be married ,incredibly good-looking, sages . We are also said to be too sensitive when we complain when a prejudice has happened to us we are asked to "Tone it down" at times. Dogen here is saying though drown out the inner mind just sit and be . Hell and heaven happen in life . Peace and chaos themselves are attachments but why not just sit down because there are no images of what you should be or not be in the simple act of Zazen . You don't have to engage in the mental olympics society gives you to do Zazen.
At your sitting place, spread out a thick mat and put a cushion on it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left foot on your right thigh. Tie your robes loosely and arrange them neatly. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left hand on your right palm, thumb-tips lightly touching. Straighten your body and sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Rest the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your mouth, with teeth together and lips shut. Always keep your eyes open, and breathe softly through your nose.
Zazen has form there is a process but during these instructions of how we should have our posture Dogen never says do this as a heterosexual person or the gender assigned to you at birth but put on a simple robe sit upon a cushion and breathe this is all that is required of you . I could only imagine if that was all that was asked on a gay dating site with all the prejudice sometimes that we apply to ourselves like no twink,no bear all which hurt others . Dogen simply is asking me to sit down and breathe with my eyes wide open to that which is.
Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left, and settle into steady, immovable sitting. Think of not thinking, "Not thinking --what kind of thinking is that?" Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.
In this conundrum as we have got our posture fixed Dogen asks us to practice nonthinking by thinking of it. I think what he is trying to say here is "Just Stop you don't need to think" so much of our lives are made up of thinking but we don't need to think but in order to stop thinking we need to realize we are becoming servant to certain thoughts but we don't need to be they can just sit with us. They can be there but they are not the zazen and that is what matters.
The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the koan realized; traps and snares can never reach it. If you grasp the point, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking to the mountains. For you must know that the true dharma appears of itself, so that from the start dullness and distraction are struck aside.
Zazen is not meditation but the dharma gate of ease,the practice realization of culminated enlightenment but what does that mean?Well to me it means it is an easy practice that brings about much good. You don't hurt anyone while doing Zazen neither are you to be focused on anything else but the sitting this is different from meditation because in meditation you might seek through your thoughts to become something more than you or be led into an image of a world that makes you want more for yourself but in zazen you are just sitting you want nothing more than the sit this brings abbout much good because you are not harming yourself because you are doing Zazen. It being a Practice Realization means the act itself is a realization in doing it you need not realize it is a realization in contrast to meditation that asks you realize something through it you might realize something through zazen but zazen itself is realization. This could be much likened to in my own life when I went in a date with an expectation. Meditation could be likened to dating there always seem to be an outcome but Zazen itself is an outcome without expectation.
When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both mundane and sacred, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the power of zazen.
Life is such a rush sometimes but zazen doesn't have to be as we come out of it come out slowly savor just the feeling of being because in doing Zazen we have done a very revolutionary act.
In addition, triggering awakening with a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and effecting realization with a whisk, a fist, a staff, or a shout --these cannot be understood by discriminative thinking; much less can they be known through the practice of supernatural power. They must represent conduct beyond seeing and hearing. Are they not a standard prior to knowledge and views?
This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue; make no distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way.
Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward is, after all, an everyday affair.
As mentioned before you don't have to be gay or straight to do zazen you also don't have to believe in a God or do odd things with sticks or shout . You just have to do zazen but do it every day because well there are people who do all these other things including myself when I could just be sitting zazen.
In general, in our world and others, in both India and China, all equally hold the buddha-seal. While each lineage expresses its own style, they are all simply devoted to sitting, totally blocked in resolute stability. Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen. Why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep, you stumble past what is directly in front of you.
Zazen like my own sexuality is not something that one can get away from other people I believe practice it too that don't know they are practicing it because as Dogen says there are many ways in which people are Buddhists but they still do zazen . I would say in my experience many people who don't identify as Buddhists at all and even disagree with Buddhism still engage in zazen even Anita Bryant who brought much harm to our community with her hurtful views towards us but she still had to sit with the fact she had a gay son.
You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not pass your days and nights in vain. You are taking care of the essential activity of the buddha-way. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from a flintstone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass, the fortunes of life like a dart of lightning --emptied in an instant, vanished in a flash.
Why waste time on hookup apps? You could just sit zazen and experience realization just in doing it. Why not try it? That guy may be cute but is life really about that person?Does life even matter at all? Well yes but desire is fleeting Zazen is sweet.
Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not doubt the true dragon. Devote your energies to the way of direct pointing at the real. Revere the one who has gone beyond learning and is free from effort. Accord with the enlightenment of all the buddhas; succeed to the samadhi of all the ancestors. Continue to live in such a way, and you will be such a person. The treasure store will open of itself, and you may enjoy it freely.
We devote so much of our time into the elephants we forget sometimes what is just in front of us as we sit. I struggle myself right now in not having a relationship because as a gay man I am given the image by my own community I should find someone to "Twin with" but do I really need him? Probably not?Would he bring me much joy?Probably but the greatest treasures I have found in just doing Zazen like to sit with the monkey mind those harmful thoughts from past trauma can in fact be healing, that even though I have this image of who I should be I don't have to be that person but could just sit . In that I have found a treasure. A treasure that is worth sharing with others just telling them sit zazen awhile because it is realization itself.
With Love and Happy Pride to those observing,
Karl,ST
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