Gate Twenty
Read the following, place it in your heart and sleep on it. Then, tomorrow, live it until evening when you can leave a brief comment on what you may have received during the process.
Reflection on there being no self is a gate of Dharma illumination;
for [with it] we do not taintedly attach to self.
By “Dharma Gate”, we mean a teaching or practice we can study to gain insights into the deepening our practice. It's a way to integrate our understanding of approaching reality.
The Koan:
"Kodo Sawaki: "We cannot maintain ourselves by ourselves. Rather, when we give up I, we become simply the self that is connected with the universe."
Uchiyama Roshi: "When we consider facts carefully, we come to understand that our thoughts are neither the masters of our bodies nor the I itself. It would be more pertinent to consider our thoughts secretions of our brain, just as salivary glands secrete saliva, and the stomach secretes gastrics juices. In any case, the sense of I produced by our minds certainly isn't the master of the whole person. What a relief! When we realize our thoughts can't control everything and we let go of them. The heavy meal in our stomach is digested - Whether we think about it or not. Even while I am sleeping, I continue breathing the necessary breaths per minute. This is how the self lives.
What on earth is this self? I can't help but feel this is the self that is connected with the universe. In spring, buds emerge, in autumn, leaves fall. All these things including our self are the expression of nature's great life force."
-The Zen Teachings of Homeless Kodo 61 pg 174-5
Most note worthy replies :
The unity of all that exists, being made of all the same matter as all that ever was, seems so apparent to me in Dharma, and helps me to at least imagine no self. It is all the same at all times, a continuity of existence in sameness.
The mirror emptyBut for mistCast by a warm breath
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