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Vain
and Vanished
Dharma
Talk and Mondo
Presented
by Ven. Shikai Zuiko osho
Dainen-ji,
June 8, 2002
So,
obviously you all made it through the night. Obviously you woke up this
morning. Obviously you saw all of those little thoughts that came up about
why it was impossible for you to come this morning. Or you saw all of
those little thoughts saying what a great day it was going to be, and
you may have believed them, in which case, if you did that, you have an
expectation. Any time you have an expectation you could stand the risk
of being sorely disappointed.
[Laughter]
Practice,
as we know, is practising beyond hope and fear and expectation. Practice
is practising this moment, which is your life. Your life will end. I hope
that doesn't happen during the course of the Dharma Assembly, but I do
hope on the other hand, that you notice birth and death moment-to-moment
during this Dharma Assembly. You can notice a thought that comes up. It
wants to be born, as it were. Attention feeds into it and before you know
it there's a “self” sitting there who is either having a miserable time
or a great time. It doesn't really matter. The sense of a self that has
formed, this knot in space, has been born into a self that has certain
characteristics which, in fact, you are making up. That is what we human
beings seem to do. We find this moment of experience, this moment of our
life, so devoid of interest that we go to great lengths to fabricate stories
about who we are and what's going on. And it takes us as long as it takes
to start to recognize that, that is what we are doing. That's why we practice.
Now,
we have the sense of sudden enlightenment, which is recognizing that maybe
we should do something with our life; perhaps we could look into it, perhaps
we could practise it. And then comes the gradual practice which is a wonderful
opportunity to, moment-to-moment, look into the movement of attention,
to look into how you are so that who you are can be
uncovered before you die.
So
you have birth and death in each moment, the birth and death of dharmas,
moments of experience. You can notice them. The instruction is: at the
moment of noticing anything whatsoever about how you are, no matter how
trivial self-image may think it is, you notice it, feel the breath, sit
up straight, open the peripheral vision. What you are doing by doing nothing
is allowing those knots to unravel, the knots being the patterns that
have been accumulated which we use to define ourselves.
Yesterday
I was at the swimming pool. I went to the pool because about a week ago
I decided I was going to really practice swimming. I thought that would
be fun. And I have on my little agenda that what I would like to do is
learn how to dive so it makes sense to be a good swimmer before you dive,
apparently.
[Laughter]
So
I had sort of dabbled around with this swimming business over the years,
sort of…get the nice suit on and the nice hair and go out like this [Osho
makes sounds reminiscent of someone ineffectively paddling in water] across
the pool, not wanting to get anything wet, get out, sit in the sun. So
this time I thought, well, that looks like a good thing to do. It just
felt right that I wanted to do this swimming business.
So
I'm in the pool and I'm starting out and I am splashing and thrashing
and thinking, “This is so difficult. This is really difficult”.
So I do one length. I have to stop about four times going down that length
to catch a breath and in the course of doing that my mouth fills up with
water and so on and so on. I was thinking, “This is impossible. I will
never be able to do this.” So the next day I went again and I did four
laps, still splashing and thrashing. Then it occurred to me that what
I was doing with the thrashing around was replicating a situation when
I used to swim when I was growing up.
I
swam in a river that was quite narrow, that had rapids at one end and
a waterfall at the other. And what happened was then, in order to get
to the other side and to avoid being swept over the waterfall, you had
to just paddle like crazy. There was no room for any sort of style. It
was survival. So I realized I was doing the same thing in this pool. So
I was bringing all of the energy of survival into this situation and actually
defeating my purpose totally.
So
once we got that sorted out and I then ventured into the flippers, that
you put on the ends of your feet, which actually…work… I was so surprised.
It became more and more smooth; I was going further and further. And I
got the little yellow paddles, the plastic paddles on the hands and taking
a stroke and going even further. Before I know it, I thought I was an
otter and I got all the way down the length of the pool in two breaths.
So yesterday I did 20 laps. It was fabulous. I just had the best time!
So
then I thought about birth and death. I thought about death, I thought
about “vain and vanishing”. How many of our patterns do we allow to play
themselves out? Here we are experiencing. We're sitting in the midst of
the sky; we're breathing it in and out or it is being breathed in and
out through us, through the bodymind; and we are thrashing around, kind
of flailing against all our stories about what's going on. So practice,
sitting down on the zafu and looking at these things, these stories that
come up that cause us to contract and thrash, and learning how to open
them, can open to what has been described as “great ease”, the great ease
of your life. So by practising, moment-to-moment while we are sitting
on the zafu we are, in a way, preparing ourselves for THE great ease,
kind of when we just slide out; when the bodymind ceases to breathe. This
is inevitable.
Yesterday
I also picked up a Yoga journal and in it there was an article entitled
“The Art of Dying” . So I thought I would pick that up. And by
the way, if anyone thinks we are calling this the “Zen of Dying ”,
let me say we are not. So “The Art of Dying” – and that caused
me to think for a moment about how self-image really, really does like
to think that it has a handle on everything. So we are preparing, we get
busy preparing for this death, this physical death as if it is going to
happen sometime in the future, a long time from now, way, way in the future.
So we have lots of time to prepare for it. Well, none of us sitting here
know if we are going to have another breath. So at this point we might
be able to understand the urgency with which people – the Teachers of
the Lineage - have spoken about the effort to put forward in one's practice:
practise as if your hair were on fire.
We
chanted the “Fukanzazengi: How Anyone Can Sit” and you may have
noticed the words “vain for a moment and vanished in an instant ”.
“Vain and Vanished” is the title that I chose for this
Dharma Assembly, for this mondo. So, vanished we understand, but vain,
well, hold on a minute because the first thing that does pop into mind
is looking in a mirror saying, “I am so cool”. And we see in the poster
that Roshi made up, that wonderful graphic where it's a skull for a moment,
whatever attracts your eye first, and then there's a very attractive woman
looking in a mirror, looking at herself in a mirror, which is just great
– “Vain and Vanished” . But why settle there?
So I went through my gigantic dictionary and looked into what “vain” actually
means because I realized that it couldn't be just that. There was certainly
more to it. And would opening the door of meaning shift understanding?
Which, of course, it does.
So
“vain” means worthless, futile; comes from the Latin, “vanus”, empty of
substance, vainness, empty, void, idle, and in the 1300's the word was
used to mean “devoid of real value, worth, or significance, worthless,
of no effect, force or power”; then, “trivial and unimportant”. So if
we used that to look into “vain and vanished”, “vain” then is a very good
description of all of the manifestations of self-image. Basically worthless.
The thoughts coming up about how we can or cannot do something; how we
are having a good time or a bad time. We latch onto them, we feed attention
into them, we construct a personality, we construct an attitude; we construct
a point of view; when we do that we limit the possibility of open experiencing;
that's what we are practising moment-to-moment; seeing how we do that,
feeling the breath, sitting up straight, allowing it to open. Opening
to openness.
Now,
think about thrashing around in the pool again, or think about some point
in time when you have been thrashing around with a problem. If you were
to drop dead in that moment, would that have been how you would have liked
to go if you had a choice? Or would you rather smoothly watch the bodymind
closing down, watch the energies of bodymind as they fall into the heart
area and actually know and experience what's going on? Well, I know what
I opted for a long time ago, so here we are.
Mondo
Does
anyone have any particular aspect of death or dying or this moment that
they would like to talk about right now, or ask a question about? And
bear in mind that this is a relatively new process for us, this mondo.
It's a traditional form of Teaching, it's like a practice interview for
a group. We haven't done it before, so self-image will come up and it
will say…
[Laughter]
…Or
not say, as the case may be, but it will say and impose limitations. “I
can't”…well, none of us can, so let's just relax. Is there anything you
would like to know?
[Student]:
I would like to know, if somebody in the Sangha dies, what is the procedure
at the Centre? What would you do? Would you say certain chants?
[Osho]:
We do have a chant that we do which can be requested. It would be done
automatically, well not actually “automatically”. But we would do this.
The “Komyo Shingon” is what it's called and people who are here at Dainen-ji
will often see up on the board a notice saying that so-and-so has died
and that Roshi and the monastics are doing this particular chant for them.
Also, if a person who was close to a practitioner dies, the “Komyo Shingon”
can be requested for them. And that's it.
[Student]:
I told my husband to email the Zen Centre if I died and let them know
right away.
[Osho]:
Right. And the “Komyo Shingon”, this goes on, I think, for 49 days or
46?
[Chunen
tando]: 49 days.
[Osho]:
49 days, yes.
The
purpose of that is the recognition that this transforming that's going
on all the time and has been going on since the first star burst, the
first star exploded, is occurring again. And that for a practitioner there
is a recognition that what has come from luminosity, the basic nature
of reality, is disbursing into that again.
[Student:
Osho, if there is nothing beyond this life, when you die you are gone,
what difference does it make whether you see your going or you don't?
[Laughter]
[Osho]:
Okay, that's a good question. Each thing affects everything else. That's
one fact. The process of our life is our life. It is not our stories about
our life. When we get caught up on any sort of story about our life, as
a species there is a contraction that occurs. We've all experienced that.
“Oh, I hate this, I hate this, I hate it so much” and what has
happened with that – bang – there is a focusing and what is born is this
being that is hating something and the natural and inevitable and unfortunately
proven over and over again, end result of that, can be mass destruction,
violence of some form or another, something that is basically not useful.
So
the story that this little “me” is going to come back again is simply
not true either. So we can take reincarnation, “back in the meat again”,
as simply another story, the way we usually think about it. So we talk
about – what is talked about now is – “easeful” death as well. We may
as well, in my view, do anything as gracefully as we possibly can and
having as much enjoyment with it as we possibly can and that causes greater
gentleness and ease in the long run.
There
are many aspects to any of these questions that we are dealing with right
now because recognize that since humans first started to talk they've
come up with all kinds of schemes and very creative stories to try to
explain what's going on, to try to make the randomness and chaotic nature
of reality somehow containable. Experience can only be experienced. It's
not any of our words about it.
So
if we want to be useful, I think this is one of the things that brings
everyone here to practice, is that we want to be more useful to maybe
ourself – we think “I'm not having as good a time as is possible” – all
of our reasons for coming to practice are actually suspect…
[Laughter]
But
underneath it there is, I do believe, there is a drive to find out what's
really going on so that things can be kind of fixed. In the world in general,
why are these things going on? We may get this, we start to look at this,
maybe at a very early age, like “what's going on?” And eventually we find
ourselves in a room full of beings talking about what's going on really,
and how can we open more fully to our life while we still can, which is
at this point, while we are alive.
We'll
have an opportunity to discuss things further, so what you can also do
is, if during the course of the day, during a free period, there's something
that you would like to have raised, we can do that. If during a practice
interview there's something you would like to have addressed we can do
that.
Anyone
else have anything they would like to?
[Student]:
Yes, I do.
The
thrashing about that you described is for better or worse what makes it
possible for us to get through a day.
[Osho]:
Oh really?
[Student]:
Well, going out there and getting caught in a traffic jam – is (inaudible)
I'm not going to get here on time.
[Osho]:
So you thrashed. Did you get here faster?
[Student]:
I don't know.
[Laughter]:
“I” couldn't get here at all.
[Osho]:
But you caused yourself a lot of unnecessary depletion of resources, energy
of bodymind, because that's what we do. It's not the thrashing about that
gets us here, it's looking at reality and saying, “Well, really, there's
so much traffic that me sitting in my little vehicle thrashing about is
not going to hurt anybody; but it's not going to change anything, except
that I'm going to get really tired and I might just ram that guy.”
[Laughter]
Intention
and thrashing about are sort of different things. Identifying what we
want to do is great, it helps us because we don't want to just sit here
in this kind of current of “going with the flow, like…” that
doesn't work. The 60's proved it – “peace” and “love and going with the
flow” and “being herein the moment” didn't really stop anything from happening
like the World Trade Centre or the genocides that are occurring in various
countries right now, so I think we can put that aside.
But
looking at reality, looking at what's really going on in this moment,
in your own experience, and then knowing what to do, which is; feel the
breath, sit up straight, open the peripheral vision, and over time, that
is embodied. So no matter what you're doing, whether it's being really
sick or whether it's being terribly frustrated by doing that, you can
ease the way for yourself and for others.
(Student]:
Self-image tends to manipulate, to give negativity, causes us to thrash,
take over the body, maybe make it sick by making it so negative, frustrated
and upset. Why would self-image seek to destroy its “livelihood”?
[Osho]:
Well, self-image is not a “thing” as such. We use that phrase to describe
a tendency that human beings have. A thought comes up and we as the knowing,
we know the thought. But we don't know that before we
actually start to practice because we think we are the thoughts. Thoughts
are us. That's just how it is. So we feed attention, or attention is fed
into that, whatever that thought might be, whatever the subject that self-image
has chosen, and we use it to define ourselves. So when we start to practice
we start to see that we have choice and that we are practising that moment
of choice. So there is a clear seeing, we go “Oh, yeah. This is not
really going on. This thought and the content that is telling me to do
something cannot do it, unless I let it”. So knowing makes a choice
to either follow or not follow. But the only way we can know that is by
practising that.
But
it certainly is a good question. Like, human beings, right, one of the
things that we as a species are doing is destroying the host. No parasite
in its right mind destroys the host. The idea is that we keep the host
alive as long as possible so that the parasites could propagate. But I
am not sure, I am not familiar with all forms of parasite but I think
that we are one of the few that is doing everything we possibly can to
kill the host, the planet. That's self-image in all of its manifestations,
when we get into nation states, when we get into “mine” and “thine”, these
kinds of separations and fighting and squabbling and thrashing about,
which benefits no one, is the same movement from the broader to the narrower.
So,
just sitting there you are making a choice not to follow whatever view
self-image comes up with.
[Student):
Osho, I regularly confuse the “I” that is making the choice – you used
the language “knowing, knowing makes a choice?” and I can take that “I”
as self and potentially self-image, I guess, when I use that language
it means the same thing to me. Can you help me understand that a little
better?
[Osho]:
First of all, what we are talking about is experiencing and no way of
talking about it can be that experiencing so “I”, “you”, these are just
words that we use for convenience of communication. They're kind of a
code. They don't define any thing although we have made it so that we
will say “This is a striker” [Osho picks up gong striker] and that would
be the end of it. But really, first of all it could be called all sorts
of other things, names in different languages and it is a description
of activity rather than an object. So in this sense, there is no such
thing as objects; there's just activities that are occurring; same thing
with “I” and “self”; same way with “knowing”. This happens to be a larger,
a vaster, a more encompassing description of what's going on rather than
there being an “I” in here, which is how we tend to think about it. So
we talk about “knowing”. And any time anything like that comes up, feel
the breath, sit up straight if you are sitting on your cushion, and let
it open. And then we see the pattern. There will be a thrashing about.
Practise at the moment of noticing the thrashing about and other things
will make themselves apparent.
Anyone
else?
[Student]:
I have a question further to what you said about reincarnation, in terms
of that. I've always had a little difficulty understanding what was being
talked about in reincarnation, if there isn't a self.
[Osho]:
Me too.
[Laughter]
[Student]:
Hinduism makes a bit of sense, but when there isn't a self, what is that
talking of?
[Osho]:
Well, with Zen practice what we are talking about is the actual nature
of experiencing. Quite simply, that's it. So even anything I say we'll
get into stories about it. Anything anyone says we'll get into stories
about. But I think about things like this:
DNA,
now, wasn't around in the time of Dogen or in the time of Gautama Siddartha,
so the idea that you could, in fact, identify someone who'd been in a
particular place after they'd long gone would be quite unusual and probably
someone would say “You must be mad to come up with such an idea” ,
but now it's been proven that that can be done. Not only that, that can
be done to the point of identifying DNA from Cheshire Man, who was, I
don't know how many thousands of years walking around, and his mitochondrial
DNA has actually been followed to people who lived in that particular
area of England, so we could say direct descendants of someone who lived
thousands of years ago. Is it not possible that just as we can smell a
molecule of perfume that was left a long time ago in a room, is it not
possible that other information is in fact conveyed, information that
may have been encoded in a molecule that someone of long ago discarded
or had discarded when they were in this room? So what it means to me is
that there is this process, quite simply, there is this process of constant
recycling that goes on with all of nature. And anything else, including
what I say is a story or a way of looking at it or of trying to have some
fun with what's going on. But we human beings do love stories and we will
believe them and we will make cosmologies out of them as quickly as we
possibly can because that gives us the illusion that there is something
that is controllable and understandable.
Does
that help at least open up a little...all we can do is open doors, “Dharma
gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.” So when the thrashing
comes up, and it can be about anything, and it can be looking at why does
so-and-so say this, and why does so-and-so say that, and how come I don't
understand? You have three thrashings there, so at that moment feel the
breath, sit up straight, allow the thrashings to open up and recognize
that there is some very interesting moments of experiencing available
that can lead to more and more interesting moments of experiencing which
will help us at least become more capable of communicating to various
and sundry beings in the process of liberation of those beings.
[Student]:
Yes, a story that I sometimes make up and I think it probably works with
the philosophy of this group.
[Osho]:
There's no philosophy. It's good to be clear - this group, the Zen students
sitting in this room of which you are one, - Zen practitioners practising
the bodymind in this moment. There's no philosophy involved in it. There's
no belief system involved in it. It is not a religion. Okay, so what is
your story?
[Student]:
All right. Something that I practise, I guess, is that if I'm experiencing
something or doing something and it is something, perhaps, that I have
done with someone else or reminds me of someone else, be it good or bad
or whatever, and that in a certain sense is the equivalent of everlasting
life, so to speak, for that person, you know, me sort of bringing that
up.
[Osho]:
I see what you mean. Sure, yes, memory, when we have memory, when we have
patterns that are triggered off, in a sense, yes. And with great works
of art, with great writing and so on, what makes it great, often, is that
it is a universal, it touches the core of human experience so it can live
forever. It's true. Yes, that's very good.
So,
anything else or would we like some kinhin?
[Osho]:
So, since 9:30 this morning, hundreds and thousands of beings have been
liberated; mind moments have come and gone; contractions have been opened
and everybody Woke Up, right?
[Laughter]
So
is there anything that you would like to talk about? Well then, put on
your nose plugs, we're entering into the Ocean of Reality , so face the
wall.
©
2004 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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