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It’s Too Easy
Shuso-hossen Dharma Talk By Ven. Shikai Zuiko osho
With Commentary by Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi
Zazen-ji, December 12, 1991
Commentary by Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi
It’s like this: No body, no mind, no time, no space, nothing to be aware of because there is never anything apart from Awareness. And yet it can look like this: bodies and minds and time and space and so here we are.
One way of talking about the timeless presencing of Space, Activity and Knowing exerting itself as this whole moment, always, is to say that in 1979 on this day, my Teacher, Yasuda Joshu Dainen Hakukaze roshi died.
Tonight here we are. Some three years ago, Ven. Joan Shikai Woodward shamini took postulant’s vows. After serving the postulancy and two years of training as novice, during the Rohatsu she was acknowledged as a full monk and part of this transition, part of this growth, part of this unfolding of practice, is a tradition called Shuso Hossen. The Shuso is a novice monk who acts as an exemplar of practice who functions as the presentation of the mind of practice amidst the students and then at the end of that period of training the Shusho-shi presents a Dharma Talk to the Sangha.
The passage of time, the passage of moments, the continuity of Dharma expresses itself in the commitment of each of us, the choice to be interested in your lives, to be committed to the process of living, to unfold for yourselves who and what you truly are.
This evening, the Dharma continues. [Roshi strikes the floor once with the hansaku]
[Roshi strikes the gong 10 times, Shikai osho strikes the hansaku on the floor once and begins to speak]
The heart beats; chest rises and falls with the breath. The sound of the heart beating in the ears, the eyes subtly flickering, focusing in and out in rhythm with the heart beat. We sit and we practise this whole bodymind and then we try. We start to try to practise.
Practice is easy when we attend to our experience, to the flicker of movement in a muscle, the flicker of movement of attention, the current of experience, thoughts and feelings coming and going. That’s easy. We don’t have to do anything.
“Too easy. That’s too easy! I’m doing it wrong. I have to do something.”
And so we start to try to practise and that’s hard. Not only is it hard, trying to practise is impossible. This moment we are sitting; we can feel the knees, feel the hips, feel the breeze on the top of the head and that’s easy.
We came to the environment of practice; we came to the temple through the rain, some of us. We walked in the door. There was the smell of incense and that reminded us why we were here. We came into the environment of practice to ground our practice so that we could unfold our experience more and more fully. It’s warm and dry in here. You came through the weather and it was raining. Winter’s coming. The garden is dormant, it’s resting.
The monks at Zazen-ji are here to provide an environment of practice that can nurture the unfolding of who each and every one of us is. The monks at Zazen-ji at this time of year, plant bulbs in pots and care for them so that during the winter months we will have, in the Zendo, flowers to remind us that this unfolding of potential is possible.
Now, we take a bulb in our hand and it’s a dry thing. Sometimes we can see a little green sprout. There’s a sign of that potential for blossoming. And we place that bulb in earth, we place it in soil and we water it and we give it light. The bulb does what it does. It unfolds its potential in its own time. That’s easy. The bulb doesn’t have to try to become a flower. It’s nourished by the soil; it’s nourished by that environment. It’s nourished by the water and the light provides what it needs so that its full potential can unfold.
The practice environment, in the Zendo, in the whole temple, is like that. We bring a dry bulb to practice, a dry bulb that has in it somewhere, a knowing, an understanding of potential. We bring it to the environment of practice and we sit. That bulb is present in the current of experiencing. Moment after moment it is nourished by that experiencing. The Teachings provide the sunlight that is needed so that the potential can unfold and flower. That’s easy. Just as the bulb does nothing, we need do nothing to practise. We pay attention; we notice that current of experiencing, thoughts and feelings as they come and go provide nourishment for our practice. By paying attention to the Teachings our experience unfolds moment after moment after moment. That’s easy. But we can get caught in trying. When we get caught in trying the muscles can tense; the mind tenses; the chatter starts. Practice is difficult. And this can happen in the flickering of a candle.
Just as we know that we cannot make the bulb flower by squeezing it and trying to force it to bloom, we must know that we cannot squeeze our practice and force it because that is difficult. When we recognize that that is what is going on, we release it and sit openly in that current of experiencing.
Now, in preparing for this Dharma Talk, I thought about a topic. What would I say? Self-image came in and contracted and that was difficult. At last I thought I’d found something I could talk about that was “my own” - self-image, contraction. In talking with the Sensei it became apparent that practice is too intimate to be personal. Any of the thoughts and feelings that happen with practice have happened before and before and before, to every practitioner.
When speaking about the bulb in the soil, watered as we are watered in the current of thoughts of feelings, fed by the sunlight as we are fed by the Teachings, the Sensei told me a story written a long time ago. I’ll read that story:
A rice farmer looked out over the flooded fields where his family had just planted the new crop of rice seedlings. He began to speculate on just how much this crop would bring in. As his fantasies grew he became more and more excited. His rice plants would be tall and heavy with grain. Everyone in the village would whisper with awe that he was the favourite of heaven. He’d go to town and buy a huge barrel of sake, clean white sake, not that home-brewed village stuff, and invite the entire village to a feast to celebrate his fortune. He could barely wait for the harvest. In agitation he raced out into the water, reached down and began to tug at the tops of the seedlings to encourage them to grow. When harvest time came, the rice stalks were small and stunted because they had been so badly pinched and the fields yielded only a few bushels of grain and those came from the seedlings that he had missed in his haste.
The bulb knows that it need do nothing to “try” to grow. It’s potential unfolds. That’s easy. Practice unfolds. That’s easy.
The last line of the “Four Great Vows” is a reminder to us of this unfolding:
“Limitless Awakening I vow to unfold.”
Do nothing.
[Osho strikes the hansaku twice on the floor]
[Roshi]: At this point in the Dharma Talk it is traditional for anyone who might dispute the Teacher’s approval of this stage of that student’s training to stand up and challenge her in Hossen, Dharma combat. If there is anyone who has any questions, please feel free.
[Shikai osho]: Come you elephants and dragons.
[Roshi]: As we have said for many years, elephants walk slowly in their practice, but thoroughly. Some of us are like that. Dragons burn bright. Some of us are like that. Some of us are strange half-breeds, half elephant, half dragon. We get our wings tangled up in our snout.
Thank you very much.
[Roshi strikes the hansaku three times on the floor to end]
©
2007 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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