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The
Four Great Vows
by
Ven. Shikai Zuiko
osho
a
Series of Four Dharma Talks
Part
2 of 4
Welcome.
Youve come back! And for the same reason you came to practice in
the first place. There was a recognition of the truth of the teachings,
the truth that is made explicit by The Four Great Vows. As you
walked through the nippy October air there may have been thoughts about
what youd rather be doing, perhaps there might have been an occasional
thought about how inconvenient it is to come on a Saturday morning to
practice.
As I mentioned last week, it would be convenient if the only
form of practice was zazen, then, of course, we would only practice when
we are sitting. It would be convenient if we could isolate
practice to something fixed. Anzan Hoshin sensei says that in order for
our practice to be the embodiment of reality, we must release our divisions
between self and other, this and that, formal and informal practice. The
forms of practice are forms for the practice of reality. Chanting is speaking,
kinhin is walking, oryoki is eating, zazen is sitting. The forms are a
means to embody reality. The Four Great Vows speak of how we embody
the open formless space of who we are.
Following three strikes on the gong the Godo chants:
All beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless awakening I vow to unfold.
[one bow, two gong strikes]
As we discovered last week, one way of looking at The Four Great Vows
is to see that each vow speaks of the same thing but in a different
way. After last weeks examination of the first great vow: "All
beings without number I vow to liberate" a student remarked that
perhaps the first vow should be the last because only after releasing
obsessions, penetrating dharma gates and unfolding limitless awakenings
are we able to practice the first great vow to liberate all beings. In
discussing this Zen Master Anzan Hoshin said that another way of looking
at this matter of The Four Great Vows is that the first vow is
the fundamental vow to realize who we and all beings are and the next
three vows speak of how we do this.
Practice is the practice of our life as it arises moment to moment. As
the Sensei says in "Before Thinking: Beyond Convenience":
"Our life is very simple, very direct, very beautiful, very vast
and very terrifying, but it is not at all convenient."
Your
life inconveniently presents itself and practice inconveniently presents
itself when you are walking, working, in the bathroom, talking to someone,
watching television, not just when youre sitting zazen. But zazen
is the form that allows us to look into this moment to moment arising,
that shows us how we are. Because our life is so vast and so terrifying,
one of the things that self image will do to try to make experiencing
controllable, in the mistaken belief that it is possible to control our
life, one thing that self image will do is to occupy itself with obsessions
and obsessions are numberless.
As the vow states, the second of the great vows: " Endless obsessions
I vow to release." Now, obsession is the act of obsessing or
the state of being obsessed. Obsessed is to be preoccupied, haunted, to
fill the mind continually, to take control of, to torment, dominate, grip,
possess, hold, plague. An obsession is a persistent idea or thought dominating
a persons mind. Interestingly, the word obsess, which means beset
or as a besieging force, is from the Latin "obsedare "
which means "to sit down before." So it is as
though we have no choice but to sit down before these thoughts or rather
to have these obsessions sit upon us, making us incapable of doing anything
else. We human beings will obsess about anything; body parts, or illness,
dirt, germs, animal, hoarding, saving, repetition, counting, sexual fantasies,
violence to self or other, horrifying images, a sense of unworthiness,
a sense of poverty, a sense of superiority, doing things right. These
are all thoughts, just as colours, sounds, music, names, titles, numbers,
phrases, memories, unpleasant images, impulses to hurt, to harm, saying
or not saying certain things, obsessing over needing to remember, over
losing things, over the way the person next to us is breathing, are thoughts.
Practice, all the forms of practice, and especially when you are establishing
mindfulness practice, zazen asks you to recognize that the reality of
the presencing of these thoughts and provide you instruction on what to
do. Zazen sits you down in front of what you believe to be uncontrollable,
that which you believe has sat you down or sat down on you and immobilized
you. By following instruction, by paying attention, you start to know
a thought as a thought, a story as a story, an obsession as a thought
with a story and you start to understand because you can know this thought,
this obsession. You start to understand, maybe just a little bit and maybe
not all the time, what Anzan Sensei means when he says "There is
nothing that knowing can be because only knowing is". So you are
not that thought or obsession about who or what you are or what the world
is. You remember to practice from time to time when you notice the presencing
of a favourite obsession because you know you are not that. You feel the
breath moving the body in and out, you see the seeing, hear the hearing,
know other bodily sensation and that obsessions is released into the vast
expanse of knowing. You have embodied the second of The Four Great
Vows : "Endless obsessions I vow to release".
Endless obsession. Endless! Now endless can seem to present
a daunting and a formidable, impossible task. But what it really means
is: Dont try to put an end to them otherwise you have a story about
what you would be, what you would be like, without those obsessions.
As Anzan Sensei says "When obsessions cease we dont even
notice because were not obsessed with defining ourselves in any
way".
Next week the third of the great vows: "Dharma gates without number
I vow to penetrate". Thank you for listening.
Following two strikes on the gong, the Godo chants:
Shi Gu Sei Gan
SHU JO MU HEN SEI GAN DO
BON NO MU JIN SEI GAN DAN
HO MON MU RYO SEI GAN GAKU
BUTSUDO MU JO SEI GAN JO
[Two gong strikes]
©
1999-2004 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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