Zen Buddhist Meditation in Tokyo

Just a note to say our Saturday zazen classes in Tokyo will be starting up again this Saturday, February 25. Click here for more information. Beginners are welcome. 🔰
 
Pete

A Question of Existence and Time

 

  Time and existence are as important for Buddhists as for anyone else. But the Buddhist idea about time and existence is different to most other ways of thinking about them. In general, we tend to think of time and existence as two separate things. I know I do anyway. Time is one thing, and existence or reality or whatever you like to call it is something else. The Buddhist idea isn’t like that though. Buddhism says that time and existence are two ways of talking about the same thing, they’re not separate from each other.

A while back, before he entered hospital, Gudo Nishijima sent me a copy of an email he wrote to someone who asked him about this.

The question was:

I read the chapter Uji (Existence and Time) in Master Dogen’s book Shobogenzo. In the chapter Master Dogen said:

''It is a complete realization that the whole of time is what the whole of existence is, and that there is nothing more than this''.

When he writes that, is he talking about the existence of a human being or about the existence of the Universe? If he’s referring to the whole existence of the Universe in that statement, it means that even the Universe is not limitless and consequently is dependent on time?

Gudo Nishijima’s answer was:

Master Dogen doesn’t say anything about the existence of a human being or the existence of the Universe in that statement. He says that existence and time are absolutely related with each other.

Master Dogen insists that without existence, time can not exist, and without time, existence can not exist at all. In other words, he insists that without existence, time never exists, and without time, existence never exists.

Therefore we should think that existence and time are very much related with each other. So it’s impossible to think about existence without thinking about time, and it’s impossible to think about time without thinking about existence.

Existence and time should be considered together, and it might not make sense to consider the question of existence and time without thinking about them like that.

Master Dogen clearly insists such opinion.

Gudo Wafu Nishijima

It’s only a small point in some ways, but that’s the Buddhist idea about existence and time. That’s why you sometimes hear people talking about “being here and now”. “Here” is the existence side, and “now” is the time side. And even though people use that phrase to describe feeling really present in the moment and focused on what’s happening right now and nothing else, actually the phrase “being here and now” applies to everyone. To you and me and all the folks in the neighborhood. And it’s like that right throughout our lives. There’s no other way. The only place we can ever be is where we are at each moment. So in a way it’s not a big deal. It’s the same for everyone.

What happens to most of us, though, is that our thoughts distract us from where we are and what we’re doing. So instead of focusing on slicing the veggies, we’re thinking about what happened a couple of weeks back when we saw those dancing elephants in Iceland. Or maybe we think about how great things would be if we could manage to get a nice job in London… We all know how it goes. We’re doing something that we’re not too excited about and our mind is drifting off somewhere else.

This is something you’ll notice if you do meditation. You’ll be sitting there on the cushion, and your mind will be going all over the place. That’s what happens to me anyway. When I do meditation, very little is happening outwardly, I’m literally just sitting there. But my mind can get really active imagining all sorts of different scenarios about different things or dreaming about all kinds of experiences that are never going to happen. But if you sit there for a while, gradually your mind starts to settle down all by itself, and during the meditation you can notice that, hey, you’re just sitting on the cushion doing your meditation. That’s basically “being here and now”. It’s not a big deal, and in a way it’s very simple, but it’s kind of a nice thing to notice too.

And when you get up off the cushion, that “being here and now” might stay with you for a while, and you might notice that being here and now isn’t so bad after all. The only thing about it is that even though people can write and talk about it, “being here and now” isn’t really something we can leave to our imagination. It’s something we have to experience for ourselves. That might sound difficult, because sometimes when we hear words like “being here and now”, it sounds like it must be something really intense that’s very faraway from where we are at the particular time. But actually it’s not like that. You’re already experiencing it. It’s just a matter of noticing, or maybe not noticing, it.

When I used to talk to Gudo Nishijima about this kind of thing, he used to say something like “we are enjoying the present moment”. It sounds really simple, and in many ways it is, but a lot of times we get dragged away by our thoughts of somewhere else or some other time and miss out on the things that are happening right in front of us. Doing meditation helps us to notice that.

So if you’re looking for a way to enjoy the present moment a bit more, you know what to do. And figuring out where and when to do it is easy too, right?

 

I Knew You Were Going To Ask That

 

 

Here’s a question someone asked me a while ago:

Do you have a sixth sense?  How do you experience it?

Everybody has a sixth sense, except they don't notice most of the time. In Japan there's an expression "i-shin-den-shin" which means something like "heart-to-heart communication". Without saying anything you can sometimes pick up a vibe from someone else. Or it’s almost like we can communicate with someone even though they’re not anywhere near us. It's like if you stop off at the bakery on the way home from work and see a nice apple strudel and decide to buy it. But when you get home the person you live with has bought the exact same thing!

I watched a TV show recently about research someone did to see if a dog could tell when their owner was on the way home. It wasn’t to check if the dog had figured out the time the owner came home at each day. It was to see if the dog could tell if its owner was on the way home at a random time during a particular day. The dog lived in a house in a country town, and its owner spent most weekdays in a nearby city. The researcher arranged for the owner to come home from the city suddenly one afternoon, and recorded the dog’s behavior from around the time the owner started to make her way home. Sure enough, the dog started to become more alert right around the time the owner began to leave the city. By the time the owner got within a few miles of the house the dog was waiting right next to the door. It was strange to see, but the owner or the dog didn’t seem to care too much. They were just happy to see each other.

I’ve a feeling that if we worked on this we probably wouldn't need mobile phones anymore.

Or maybe it's just a coincidence...

Stopping and Silence Bell

If you practice mediation with a group, more than likely someone there strikes a bell to signal the start and end of each mediation period. I don’t know if there’s any other way people do it, although one time we used an empty wine glass and a fork to signal the start and end because we didn’t have a bell. 

In the Soto Zen style, we hit a bell three times to start zazen and once to end it. If we’re doing a couple of periods of zazen in a row, we do a period of slow walking meditation called “kinhin” in between the two zazen periods. Kinhin is done to give everyone a chance to stretch their legs and shake off any sleepiness between zazen periods. If we’re doing a session like that with zazen, kinhin, and then more zazen, we ring the bell like this:

three rings to start zazen

two rings to end zazen and start kinhin

one ring to end kinhin

three rings to start zazen again

one ring to end zazen

 

Believe it or not, the Soto temples in Japan have a term for each set of rings. The three rings to start zazen is called “shijosho” (止静鐘), the two rings to end zazen and begin kinhin is called “kinhinsho” (経行鐘), the ring to end kinhin is called “chukaisho” (抽解鐘), and the ring to end zazen is called “houzensho” (放禅鐘).  I don’t know if there’s an “official” English translation for those terms, but here’s the way I translate them:

In the first one, shijosho (止静鐘), the three rings at the start, the first character “shi” (止), means “stop” or “cease”, the second character “jo” (静) means “silence” or “calm”, and the third character “sho” (鐘) means “bell” or “chime”. So it means something like the “stopping silence bell”, or the “stop silence bell”, or maybe even the “cease, silence bell”. When I first saw this one I thought it must be the name for the one ring to end zazen, but actually it’s the one to start. (Maybe it’s a koan?)

The translation for the second one, kinhinsho (経行鐘), the two rings to start kinhin, is easy. The first two characters “kin-hin” (経行) mean, you guessed it, kinhin, and the third character “sho” (鐘) means “bell” or “chime”, same as in shijosho. So it means the “kinhin bell” or the “slow walking bell”.

In the third one, chukaisho (抽解鐘),  the single ring to end kinhin, the first character “chu” (抽) means “withdraw” or “pull out”, the second character “kai” (解) means “separate” or “solve”, and the third character is “sho” (鐘) which again means “bell” or “chime”. So you can translate “chukaisho” as the “(let’s all) withdraw and separate bell” or even the “withdraw and solve bell”. 

Houzensho (放禅鐘),  the single ring to end zazen, translates like this: the first character “hou” (放) means “release”, “liberate” or “set free”, the second character “zen” (禅) means “meditation” (bet you knew that), and the third character “sho” (鐘) means “bell” or “chime” like before. So you can translate “houzensho” as the “release from meditation bell” or maybe something a bit more poetic like the “liberating mediation bell” (which might make a good name for the bell to start zazen, but let’s not get into that).

I’m not sure how useful this information will ever be, but at least if someone asks you sometime when the stopping silence bell or the liberation meditation bell is, you’ll know what they’re talking about. Just remember which is first.

Gudo Nishijima Roshi on Buddhism and Reality

I met my Buddhist teacher, Gudo Nishijima, at his apartment in Tokyo yesterday. He’s 90 years old, but is still active for his age. He gives a Buddhist talk in Japanese every month in Tokyo, and travels to Osaka a few times a year to give a talk there. He’s also working on a new book in Japanese and he gets a lot of email from people interested in Buddhism. He told me he’s happy to be busy like that.

Physically, of course, he’s not as mobile as he used to be. This year the Tokyo summer was the hottest for over 100 years. The temperature got up around 35 Celsius everyday for about 6 weeks. Nishijima told me he tried to get out for a walk or to do his shopping each day during the summer. Unfortunately, he fell over one day on his way home with the shopping. When that happened he realized he’d have to be more careful. He said he realized he “was being too brave.” Nowadays he takes more care when he’s out and about. When I met him recently he told me he’s “training to be an old man”. He still feels young inside, but his body won’t always let him do the things he’d like to. 

He was in good spirits yesterday, and always is as far as I can see. It’s a real pleasure to meet him. He’s always willing to discuss Buddhism, and I learn something every time we meet. It's great to meet someone who's cheerful and upbeat all the time. That's another thing I learn when I meet him. I get to see how someone is after studying Buddhism for more than 70 years!

I recorded some of our chat yesterday. It was a discussion about what Buddhism sees as the difference between matter and reality, or what Buddhism calls the "dharma". We also talked a bit about the reason to do zazen and about what Buddhists refer to as the "balanced state". Nishijima’s idea is that when we do zazen our body and mind become more balanced, and that balanced state is the natural state of humans. So when we do zazen we notice what it means to be human. Our talk went something like that anyway. Here's the mp3 file. It lasts about 12 minutes (11 mb). 

Early Morning Meditation

An Indian friend of mine is interested in Zen Buddhism. He knows about meditation and other practices in India and tells me some ideas the Indians have about meditation. The other day we were talking about good times during the day to do zazen (zen meditation). He told me the Indians consider early morning to be the most auspicious time to do meditation. I don’t know if “most auspicious” means “best” in this case, but I think it probably does, or at least it means “very good”. Of course it’s nice to do meditation any time during the day, but the yogis in India seem to have noticed that there’s something particularly good about meditation in the early morning. My friend said they’ve even narrowed the most auspicious time down to between 4 am and 6 am.

That actually made sense to me. I’ve worked some jobs in the past where I used to have to get up around those times to go to work. Even though it was hard to get up that early (and it still is), I noticed there was something about going to work at that time that felt alright in some way. So recently I’ve been getting up earlier than usual to give early morning meditation a try and see if it feels any different. My impression so far is that it's a bit different alright. The zazen itself doesn’t feel too different when I'm doing it, although there’s a lot less noise about. I do notice, though, that I feel more active afterwards than I usually do, and the rest of the morning has a slightly different feel to it too. That’s so far anyway.

One thing I’m not sure about though is whether the “auspicious” time is between 4 am and 6 am for everyone all over the world, or whether it depends on where you live. My guess is that in most countries around daybreak might be an “auspicious” time  for meditation. But I might be wrong about that so I’m going to stick with the “between 4 am and 6 am” meditation for a while and see how it goes.

By the way, when I was back in Ireland during the summer we did a 3-day meditation retreat at a small center that’s right on the coast. We did some early morning meditation there. After the meditation we had time to walk down to the shoreline and look across the bay to the Clare hills. It was all calm and quiet. I grew up in that area, but never really noticed how nice it can be in the early morning there, in summer anyways.

So if you’re one of those people who doesn’t mind getting up a little early in the morning, then try a bit of early morning meditation some time. See if you notice a difference. 

Where Science and Buddhism Meet

A friend sent me links to a couple of videos that look at similarities between what Buddhism and science say about reality. The videos are two parts of a video called "Where Science and Buddhism Meet".

When I first became interested in Buddhism, I used to think that science and Buddhism were far apart in what they say about the world. To me Buddhism was a kind of religion, and I assumed it said things about reality that were different to what science says. After checking it out for a few years I began to see that Buddhism and science weren't that far apart after all. I gradually figured out Buddhism is mainly about understanding reality, and anything about the world that is scientifically proven is okay by Buddhism. In that way, Buddhism doesn't set itself up to conflict with science. The big difference between them though is that Buddhism says there are some things about reality that science hasn't discovered yet, and maybe never will. So in some ways, Buddhism considers itself ahead of science as far as understanding the universe goes.

A big difference between Buddhism and science is the approach they take to studying reality. Buddhism places a big emphasis on understanding the world based on our own experience. So the things Buddhism say about reality are based on what people have experienced for themselves. For example, Buddhism says that the universe is "one" and that everything is "interconnected". This is because after practicing Buddhism for a while, you can start to feel that things are interconnected in a real way. Science takes a different approach. It tries to understand reality by gathering knowledge about the world, and making observations and proving theories based on the knowledge. In that sense, science and Buddhism are looking at reality from different dimensions. Buddhism looks at reality from the dimension of our own experience, while science looks at the world based on the scientific knowledge that's been accumulated so far. It's hard to know if either way is going to give a perfect answer, but I think that the more science finds out about the world, the better Buddhism starts to sound. Because what seems to be happening now is that as scientific knowledge increases, in some areas the scientific viewpoint is approaching the same viewpoint as Buddhism. And that makes the Buddhists think, "See, we were saying that all along, but no-one would listen!"

I was surprised by some of the parallels that came up in the video. One thing it looks at is Einstein's theory about "Spooky Action at a Distance", which is a lot like something that Buddhists notice. The video doesn't get into too much detail about the various similarities, but it's definitely worth a look if you've an interest in this kind of thing.

One idea that comes up that I found a bit hard to agree with, though, is where he seems to be saying that we can somehow control reality by using our mind. This isn't the way I understand Buddhism, but maybe I've misunderstood that part. I was thinking about this the other day, and it reminded me of a part on one of Neil Young's live albums where the rain starts to pour down during an outdoor concert he's doing. Neil tells the audience, "Maybe if we yell real loud, we can stop this rain!" And everybody starts shouting "No rain! No rain! No rain!" Unfortunately, it didn't work so well, and Neil had to play on in the rain. Mind you, if that kind of thing did work, I know we'd have been shouting it almost everyday when I was growing up.

Anyway, here are the videos. They're both about 10 minutes long.










Regards,

Peter

Gudo Nishijima's 90th Birthday

Today is Gudo Nishijima Roshi's 90th birthday. To mark the occasion we asked him to give a talk at our zazen class at the Young Buddhists Association in Tokyo yesterday. He agreed, and asked me what topic I'd like to hear him talk about. Seeing as it was his 90th birthday, I said it’d be nice to hear him talk about his own life.

We arranged to meet at his apartment around noon yesterday, and to take a taxi together to the meeting place. While we were in the taxi, he said he felt very happy to be celebrating his 90th birthday. He said so many things had happened in his life, but now that he had reached 90 he felt really happy.

We reached the Young Buddhists Association with time to spare. Nishijima had time for some tea and rice crackers before his talk. There was a good number of people there, with the room more or less full. During his talk, Nishijima spoke about his family and upbringing and what caused him to become interested in Buddhism. Then we had time for questions. The talk was scheduled to last an hour, but there were plenty of questions, so we ended up running well past the hour.

I made a video recording of Nishijima's talk. In the following clip, he talks about his first teacher, Master Kodo Sawaki.

 

After the talk we presented Nishijima with some gifts and cards from his students in Tokyo and overseas. He seemed very happy to receive them and thanked everybody.

Later on we held a small birthday party at an Indian restaurant. Now that I think of it, we forgot to arrange a birthday cake. But I don't think Nishijima cared. He seemed very happy.

All the best,

Peter

The Heart Sutra

Gudo Nishijima didn't do any chanting at his meetings or retreats. He preferred to just stick to zazen and afterwards give a talk and answer questions. Sometimes someone would ask why there was no chanting. Nishijima usually answered that he liked to follow Master Dogen’s ideas on Buddhism, and he felt Dogen didn’t particularly recommend us to chant as part of Buddhist practice. If he was pressed a bit on the subject, Nishijima would quote something or other Dogen wrote about chanting that indicated his preference for zazen. If you've read the Shobogenzo a bit you might have come across one or two passages on the subject.

But there are always exceptions. In Nishijima’s case, the exception to his chanting policy was the Heart Sutra. He used to chant this once each day after early morning zazen at his dojo. I was a bit surprised the first time I heard him chanting the Heart Sutra, because I'd listened to his opinion about chanting before. So afterwards I asked why he'd started to chant it. He told me that one time some Buddhist nuns stayed at his dojo for a while and they asked him if it would be okay to chant the Heart Sutra in the morning. He agreed, and so they started to chant it together at his dojo each morning after zazen. After the nuns left, Nishijima decided to keep chanting it each morning.

The Heart Sutra is a discussion between Gautama Buddha and his disciple Sariputra about something called “prajna”. Prajna is a Sanskrit word. The first part pra means “before” or “prior to”. The second part jna means “knowledge”. Nishijima usually translates prajna as “intuition”. A lot of people translate it as something like “real wisdom”. Whatever way you want to translate it, prajna is referring to something that’s completely different to what we normally consider to be knowledge or wisdom. We usually assume that we accumulate knowledge by studying or learning. But with prajna it’s a bit different. Buddhism says we develop prajna by practicing zazen. I know that sounds a bit strange, but that’s the Buddhist idea.

Another thing about prajna is that we don’t have any particular control over it. It’s either there or it's not. Sometimes we get a glimpse of it and sometimes we don’t. But if we get a few glimpses of it or experience it a few times we can get a feel for what it is. If we don't get a glimpse of it or notice it at all, it's a bit harder to believe such a thing actually exists.

Like I say, the theme of the Heart Sutra is prajna. Below is one part where the Buddha says that bodhisatvas rely on prajna. It’s a nice idea. To me it suggests that if you practice zazen everyday you can rely on prajna to help guide your actions. Mind you, it's not quite as simple as that, and sometimes we mess up, but the idea at least seems to be like that. Of course, the hard part is trying to rely on something you can't see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or even grasp mentally. But that's Buddhism for ya. Anyway, here's that part where the Buddha says bodhisatvas rely on prajna:

With nothing to attain,

bodhisattvas

rely on prajna-paramita,

and their minds are without hindrance.

They are without hindrance,

and therefore without fear.

Far apart from all confused dreams,

they dwell in nirvana.

All buddhas of the past, present and future

rely on prajna-paramita,

and attain full, complete realization.

Therefore, know that prajna-paramita

is the great transcendent mantra,

the great bright mantra,

the supreme mantra,

the unequalled balanced mantra,

that can eliminate all suffering,

and is real, not false.

Regards,

- peter

Tale of the Two-eyed Monkey

I don't get as much time as I'd like to read books. Like a lot of people, I've plenty of books that I bought ages ago but haven't managed to read yet. Recently though, my older son and I have started reading books together for about 20 or 30 minutes before he goes to bed. He's still in elementary school, and until recently I used to read him children's books at bedtime. But nowadays he prefers to get his own books at the library and read them himself. So we sit beside each other in the evening reading our own books.

A few nights ago, my son asked me about a book I was reading at the time, called “Everyday Zen”. He asked if it was about Buddhism. I told him it was. Then he asked what Buddhism is about. Now, my son knows I teach some kind of zazen class, and he sees me doing zazen at home, and he even does some zazen himself once in a while, but this was the first time he ever asked about Buddhism as such. I was a bit surprised. I wasn't too sure what to tell him, but I figured he might like the story about the two-eyed monkey. It's a fairly well-known story in Zen Buddhism at least. Here it is :

-----------

Once there was a monkey with two-eyes who lived on an island. One day there was a terrible storm and the monkey got washed out to sea on a log. The monkey drifted on the log for weeks until he was washed ashore on another island far away from where he used to live. The monkey was hungry so he ran up to the edge of the jungle to look for food. At the edge of the jungle he saw another monkey. But the other monkey had only one eye, so the two-eyed monkey was very surprised. But when the other monkey saw the two-eyed monkey, the other monkey began laughing and howling. Then more and more monkeys came to see what was going on. All the monkeys who came had only one eye. When those one-eyed monkeys saw the two-eyed monkey they all started laughing and howling. They all pointed at the two-eyed monkey and said “Look, look, he's got two eyes! He's got two-eyes! Ha, ha, ha, ha...”

-------------

I wasn't so sure if my son would enjoy the story, but he seemed to think it was alright. After that, I also told him that what's important in Buddhism is not so much what we say, but what we actually do. I gave him the example of someone saying they're going to do their homework tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes they forget all about their homework and just watch TV instead. That made sense to him too, although I'm not sure he liked the example.

When he's older, if he asks me what Buddhism is about again, I'll probably tell him that in some ways Buddhism isn't really about “Buddhism” at all. It's just about being himself. So he doesn't have to worry about being a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Hindu or things like that. He can just be himself all the time, and that's all he needs to do.

Of course, it's not always easy to be ourselves. Because we think maybe there's something wrong with us, or other people won't like us or we won't fit in and things like that. But one thing we can learn from Buddhism is that just to be ourselves is the best way. That's why we're here.

Regards,

Peter

Gudo Nishijima Doing Zazen

I visited my Zen teacher Gudo Nishijima at his new place in Tokyo yesterday. It was around 2 pm when I arrived, and he was just starting to practice zazen. When he told me he was going to be doing some zazen, I asked if I could video him for part of it. He said okay, so I got out my camera and started recording.

Here's the video. It lasts about 8 minutes.







It was a very hot day, and there was no air conditioner in the room. He opened the window to cool the place down a bit. I think the heat was making him feel a bit sleepy, but he kept sitting anyway. His new apartment is very near one of the train stations on Tokyo's Yamanote line. It's a busy line with lots of trains going back and forth. The trains and station announcements got a bit noisy sometimes, but it was alright.


He kept sitting after I stopped recording. I wanted to do some zazen too, but I couldn't see another zafu there. So I folded up a jacket I had in my bag and did zazen on that until he finished.


After zazen we had a cup of tea and a chat. A few people have asked me if he was okay after his recent house move. He's 89 now, and not as mobile as he used to be. And if you watch the video you'll notice that he hasn't completely recovered from a back injury he suffered a few years ago when he fell at his zazen dojo. When I asked how he was feeling, though, he said he was alright, although he noticed he was getting older day by day. While we were chatting he mentioned he gave a lecture last Saturday to some of his Japanese students in Tokyo. Overall he seemed to be doing pretty well.


I left at about 4:30. He told me the telephone company were due to come to his apartment later on to help set up his computer for email and the internet. He sounded like he was looking forward to getting his blog and email going again.


Hope you enjoy the video.


All the best,
Peter

Beginner's mind retreat

We held a 3-day zazen retreat last week at Tokei-in temple in Shizuoka, Japan. I was leading a retreat for the first time, so I was a bit nervous about how it was going to turn out. Thankfully, things worked out better than I expected. 18 people came, and there was a nice mix of different nationalities.


A lot of people who came were doing a zazen retreat for the first time. One or two people were even trying zazen for the first time. I thought that some of the zazen periods might be a bit hard for some people, but everyone seemed to get through them okay. There was a nice atmosphere at the retreat too. It may have been because a lot of people were doing a retreat for the first time and concentrating on the basics, including me in some ways. One person who was trying zazen for the first time told me she decided to come to the retreat when she heard about it from her friend. She didn't really know anything about zazen or Buddhism, but wanted to check it out anyway. At the end of the retreat she told me she figured having no particular ideas or expectations about what the retreat was going to be like was probably the best way for her. She said she could just accept it all as it was.


I learned a lot by "leading" the retreat. I'd seen Gudo Nishijima hold retreats there before and give talks and so on, but I never really knew how much it involved from his side. He used to put a lot of effort into his talks and into answering people's questions and the other things he did there. Going back on the train to Tokyo with him after some of his retreats I used to notice how exhausted he was. I can understand where he was coming from a bit better now. It was nice to lead the retreat and I enjoyed giving the talks, but I realized it requires plenty of energy too.


On the last day we had a general discussion about the retreat in which everyone gave their impressions or some feedback about the retreat. Most people seemed happy enough with the way it went. One or two people mentioned it might be good to incorporate some stretching exercises into the retreat. That's a fair point, and is something for me to work on for next time. I also got a few emails with some feedback after the retreat. Here's part of an email from someone who was doing a zazen retreat for the first time :

-----
...The discussion on the last day about full and half lotus also reminded me of my tendency to sometimes think "if only..." in regard to my sitting. When I first started sitting at home I used to sit on a pile of sweatshirts. If I was having problems settling I would sometimes think things would be different if only I had a zafu. So I made a zafu. And to be honest, it's a bit more convenient but that's about it. So I started thinking about the fantastic balance I would have if only I could sit full lotus... and so it goes on :-)

So it was good to be reminded that I shouldn't get frustrated chasing some imagined perfect state that only exists in my imagination. Just sit without expectation and accept that my legs are a bit wonky sometimes.
-----

Thanks again to everyone who came to the retreat, and to the people who inquired but didn't make it this time. Hope we can do it again next year.

Regards,

Peter

Golden Week 3-Day Zazen Retreat

“Golden Week” is the name the Japanese give to a week around the beginning of May that’s got three or four national holidays in a row. It’s a nice week as almost everyone’s off work and school, and the weather's usually good. The only problem with golden week is that a lot of places you might want to visit, like Kyoto, are packed with tourists. The airports are real busy as well, as a lot of people use the week to head overseas. Airline prices rocket up around then too, so it’s not such a good time to go anywhere by air. One good place to visit in golden week, though, is Tokyo. The streets and trains aren’t half as busy as normal and you can get to a lot of places without any hassle. Just don’t even think of going to Tokyo Disneyland.


Another nice place to visit around then is Shizuoka, which, incidentally, is where I’ll be holding a 3-day zazen retreat in May. The last time I did a retreat in Shizuoka in May was in 1996. I’d just started going to Gudo Nishijima’s Saturday Zazen meetings a few months earlier, and someone there had told me about a retreat Nishijima was going to be holding sometime in May. I asked Nishijima about the retreat, and he said I could go along as his “guest”. It turned out the May retreat was for employees of the cosmetics company he used to work at. He held four retreats for the company each year, as well as an English retreat for his foreign students and one for his Japanese students.


Most of the people at the company retreat I went to were, you guessed it, folks that worked at the cosmetics company. But Nishijima had an arrangement with the company that meant he could invite up to 6 people as his guests too. Going as a guest was a great deal, as it meant I could attend for free. I’d never been to any kind of Buddhist retreat before that and didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be alright. There were 3 other foreigners there as Nishijima’s guests too, and they filled me on what to do during the retreat. The schedule wasn’t so full of zazen either, which made it good for someone like me who was just starting off.


One of the main things I remember about that retreat was hearing a bird singing outside the zendo while we were all in doing zazen. It was a bird that the Japanese call the “uguisu”. The dictionary I have translates “uguisu” as the (Japanese) nightingale. The uguisu sings a very long and distinctive song that goes on and on and on. And just around May is the season when it’s looking for a mate (or at least the one I heard was), so that guy sang and sang right through zazen. I’d heard the uguisu singing before but never really noticed it, but whatever it was about sitting on my zafu in the zendo there, I could hear it loud and clear. I’m pretty sure everyone else could too. So that’s my little memory of my first ever Buddhist retreat. (Now, wasn’t that nice?)


Another thing I remember about that retreat was sitting on the same platform as Nishijima when I was doing zazen. In the zendo there you sit on kind of wooden platforms (I don’t know if that’s the right word) that are about 50 centimeters off the ground. Each platform is big enough for two or three people to sit on for zazen. Anyway, for some reason or other I was put on the same platform as Nishijima. I’d just started doing zazen regularly about 4 months previously, so I was really nervous about having to sit on the same platform like that. Luckily there was another foreign guy there, called Herve, and he sat in the middle between me and Nishijima so I could kind of hide a bit. Not that Nishijima cared of course, but you know how it is when you’re just starting like that. You feel like you should be doing it exactly “right”. Anyway, after I while I relaxed a bit and realized it wasn’t so bad sitting on the same platform with Nishijima, and it didn’t matter much about my funny posture.


Anyway, one reason I’m telling you all this is that this year I’ll be holding a retreat for the first time at Tokei-in temple in Shizuoka for three days in golden week. Tokei-in is the same temple that Gudo Nishijima used to hold his retreats at. So if you’ll be in Japan around golden week and want to spend a few days at a Buddhist temple, then why not drag yourself along to Tokei-in for our little retreat. Anyone interested is welcome. The dates and times and other details are below. Email me at procca@gol.com if you need more information.


________________________________________
3-Day Zazen Retreat in Shizuoka
- May 3 to 5, 2009 -
________________________________________

We will hold a three-day Zazen Retreat, Zazen practice and lectures on Buddhism, at a temple in Shizuoka City from May 3 to May 5, 2009. Instructions and lectures will be given in English. Anyone interested is invited to attend and participate in the full, but not exhausting, schedule of Zazen practice, lectures, and meals taken in the traditional style. Beginners are welcome. The quiet, tea-covered hills surrounding the temple provide a pleasant setting for a brief taste of Buddhist life.

Dates: From Sunday, May 3 at 1 p.m. to Tuesday, May 5, at 2 p.m.

Place: Tokei-in (a Soto school temple)
Address: 1840 Hatori, Shizuoka City, 421-12. Phone: 0542-78-9724

Lectures: There will be four lectures during the retreat. The lectures will focus on the teachings of Zen Master Dogen, who introduced Buddhism to Japan from China in the 13th century.

Cost: 10,000 yen excluding transportation fare.

Clothes: Comfortable clothing is recommended for practicing Zazen.

Deadline: Registration will be accepted by email (procca@gol.com) up to Thursday April 23rd, 2009.

Transportation and directions to the temple:

Shizuoka is about 180 km west of Tokyo, 1 hour or so from Tokyo by Tokaido Shinkansen (bullet train). A single one-way ticket costs 5,670 yen. The easiest way to reach the temple is by taxi from the north exit of Shizuoka station. Tell the driver "Hatori no Tokei-in." Participants should plan to arrive by 12 o'clock.

Most of the participants will be traveling to Shizuoka together from Tokyo. We will meet at 9.30 am on May 3 outside the outer ticket gate at the Yaesu Central Entrance (Yaesu-Chuo-Guchi) of JR Tokyo station, and then travel by the Tokaido-Shinkansen Hikari No. 467 train, leaving Tokyo station at 10:03 and stopping at Shizuoka at 11:06. You are welcome to join this group.

If you are going directly to Shizuoka, you can meet with the group coming from Tokyo outside the ticket barrier at the North Entrance at Shizuoka station at around 11:10.

Gudo Nishijima Roshi's 89th Birthday Lecture - What I Want To Do

My teacher, Gudo Nishijima, gave a talk in English at Dogen Sangha's Saturday zazen meeting in Tokyo yesterday. He doesn't give talks in English there so often now, but he agreed to give one yesterday as it coincided with his 89th birthday.

The theme of his talk was "What I Want to Do." He covered quite a few topics during the talk. Some of the things he spoke about were how Buddhism is different to idealism and materialism, his ideas about Western civilization and Buddhism, and whether Buddhism is a religion or not. He also talked about how he used to doubt if there really was something called "the truth", and how he thinks people should study the truth if they want to be happy. He also answered questions on Zazen practice and other topics for about 15 minutes at the end.

I recorded the talk on my digital recorder. Click here to download the audio file (about 22 Mb).

Btw, at the start of the lecture we recited "The Verse to Open the Sutras" in Japanese. That lasts about a minute. After that, Gudo Nishijima starts his talk in English.

And here’s a link to Nishijima Roshi's blog.

All the best,

Peter

The Eternal Mirror

A while ago I wrote about the Heart Sutra and something Buddhists refer to as“prajna” or "real wisdom". When I first heard Gudo Nishijima talking about prajna I found it hard to believe what he was saying. I’d never heard anyone talk about that kind of thing before, and I assumed something called “prajna” or "real wisdom" didn’t actually exist. But after a few years of going to Nishijima's talks I began to think that maybe what he was saying was true after all. His idea was that we develop some sort of intuition by practicing Zazen regularly, and that that intuition helps guide our actions and decisions so we don’t commit “wrong” actions or make “wrong” decisions. But Nishijima wasn’t talking about intuition as some kind of extraordinary ability we get from practicing Zazen. The way he described it, it was like a natural function we all have but most of us don’t work on or notice much.


Sometimes you can meet people in Buddhism who have strange ideas about extraordinary abilities they have. I spoke with a man recently who told me about a Buddhist teacher he studied with for 10 years. He described some things that happened at his former teacher's retreats. He said one time his teacher, a Buddhist nun, claimed some special power she had made a hurricane change course so it didn’t come to where they were doing their retreat. At another of her retreats, my friend said that he had been sick for the first few days of the retreat and had to stay in bed. He had some medicine in his bag, but didn't want to use it at the retreat. After a few days though, my friend started to take his medicine and began to feel better and walk around. When his teacher saw that, she declared to her students that her powers had helped cure my friend’s illness. When that happened, my friend finally decided to give up on his teacher because she was claiming things that weren't true. But he said some of her students believed the stories about hurricanes and miraculous cures.


I asked my friend why he joined in the first place. He said someone told him about that teacher's group, so he went along to one of her meetings. He said it was good at the beginning, but things started to change after a while. The teacher began to act differently and didn’t want people questioning her ideas or teachings. Later on money became more and more important to her. He told me that his ex-teacher still holds retreats now, but that it costs a lot to attend them. She also looks for donations of a few hundred dollars from anyone who attends.


Someone else I know told me that his first Zen teacher used to charge him 100 dollars an hour when he visited him to ask about Buddhism. My friend came to his senses after a while and stopped visiting that teacher and handing him the 100 bucks. But he was annoyed about what had happened, so he decided to check out the teacher’s background. His teacher had told him that he trained for several years with a well-known teacher at some temple in Asia, so my friend took the trouble to visit the temple to check out the teacher’s story. When my friend visited the temple he asked the monks if they knew his former teacher. But, you guessed it, no-one there had ever heard of the guy.


If you're interested in Buddhism, sometimes you can be unlucky enough to meet people who aren't what they claim to be or who are different from what they claim to be. In those situations, most people can figure out fairly fast that something isn’t right. But sometimes it can be hard to know. Those "teachers" usually know something about Buddhism, and if they know more than you know they'll use that to take advantage of you. Sometimes, there’ll be stuff on their website or whatever about how they studied with some famous teacher and practiced at some well-known temple in Asia or something like that. And if you meet them in person they’ll tell you the same thing. So it can be hard to know if they're lying, or exactly how much of what they’re saying is true. In my friend’s case, he was unhappy about being ripped off by his teacher so he went to some trouble to check out the teacher’s background. But most people probably wouldn't bother. They'll just accept what’s written on the website or what the teacher tells them as the truth. And even if you try to check out about a particular “teacher,” sometimes it can be hard to find out for sure.


Luckily, most Buddhist teachers aren't like that, and if you look around a bit you can usually come across a decent teacher. It’s harder though if you find a teacher that feels right for you, and then later on you start to see the teacher in a different light. Then you’ve got to decide is it worth sticking with the teacher or should you give up and try going elsewhere. And that might be hard if the teacher is giving you the impression that if you stick around just a bit longer he’ll help you solve the “great mystery”.


There are a lot of reasons people who know something about Buddhism become like that. The obvious one is they want to become rich and/or famous. It’s nothing new. Back in the 13th century, the Japanese Zen Master Dogen wrote about people “who only use Buddhism as a bridge to fame and gain”. So even back in Dogen's time people were using Buddhism to get rich or famous. Another reason is that some people like to have power or control over others. It's nothing new either. But of course those things go against what Buddhism is about. Buddhism is about seeing reality as it is and living the best life we can. It’s not meant to be a business or a way to become famous or control people. But there'll always be people who don't see it that way.


I met Gudo Nishijima after I'd been living in Japan for a few years. I didn’t really know anything about Buddhism, but I’d been doing some Zazen at home and had gone to a one-day Zen retreat at a temple in Kyoto. Back then, the Internet wasn’t really around, and it was hard to find information on Zen groups. But someone I met at that one-day retreat told me about a book called “Zen Guide” that had information about Zen groups in Japan. I bought the book and started to check the places it had listed for Tokyo. I went along to a Zazen sitting at one temple it listed, but there wasn't an awful lot happening there. I checked out some other groups it mentioned too, but they all seemed to have closed down or the person who was teaching had left. One group the Zen Guide did mention was what it called the “Nishijima Group”. It described Nishijima as a “businessman-priest.” When I read that part I decided not to visit Nishijima’s group, because I'd no interest in learning Buddhism from a "businessman-priest". But after I'd called all the other places, the Nishijima group was the only place left I hadn’t tried. So I called up Nishijima and he told me to come to his next Zazen meeting, which I did.


That was about 12 years ago, and I’ve been studying with him since then. One thing about Nishijima is that he’s never asked me for money or donations. As far as I could see he paid for his Buddhist activities out of his own pocket. When he held 3-day retreats for his English students, he used to pay a lot of his own money each time to help cover the cost. His idea was to work a regular job and pay for his Buddhist activity himself. His first job was in the Japanese government. Later on he worked in a securities firm, and after that he worked as an advisor for a cosmetics company. He kept working there until he was 85.


Like I said, when I first heard Nishijima talk about “prajna” I doubted what he was saying. But I did wonder why an elderly Japanese man like Nishijima (he was 76 when I met him) would bother saying something like that if it wasn’t true. That’s one reason I kept going to his talks. I couldn't see any reason why he'd want to lie. Of course Nishijima isn't the only Buddhist teacher who talks about prajna. The Heart Sutra is based on it, and a lot of other Buddhist teachers will tell you about prajna too. Master Dogen wrote about prajna as well. In Shobogenzo, there’s a chapter called “Kokyo”in which he talks about “the eternal mirror”. It's not an easy chapter to understand, but the introduction to it from the Nishijima/Cross translation gives an idea what it's about:


-----
[20] KOKYO

The Eternal Mirror

Ko means "ancient" or "eternal" and kyo means "mirror," so kokyo means "the eternal mirror." And what "the eternal mirror" means is the question. In this chapter Master Dogen quoted Master Seppo Gison's words "When a foreigner comes in front of the mirror, the mirror reflects the foreigner." From these words we can understand the eternal mirror as a symbol of some human mental faculty. The eternal mirror suggests the importance of reflection, so we can suppose that the eternal mirror is a symbol of the intuitional faculty. In Buddhist philosophy, the intuition is called prajna, or real wisdom. Real wisdom in Buddhism means our human intuitional faculty on which all our decisions are based. Buddhism esteems this real wisdom more than reason or sense-perception. Our real wisdom is the basis for our decisions, and our decisions decide our life, so we can say that our real wisdom decides the course of our life. For this reason, it is very natural for Master Dogen to explain the eternal mirror. At the same time, we must find another meaning of the eternal mirror, because Master Dogen also quoted other words of Master Seppo Gison, "Every monkey has the eternal mirror on its back." Therefore we can think that the eternal mirror means not only human real wisdom, but also some intuitional faculty of animals. So we must widen the meaning of the eternal mirror, and understand it as a symbol of the intuitional faculty which both human beings and animals have. Furthermore Master Seppo Gison said, "When the world is ten feet wide, the eternal mirror is ten feet wide. When the world is one foot wide, the eternal mirror is one foot wide." These words suggest the eternal mirror is the world itself. So we can say that the eternal mirror is not only a symbol of an individual faculty but is also something universal. From ancient times Buddhists have discussed the eternal mirror. In this chapter Master Dogen explains the meaning of the eternal mirror in Buddhism, quoting the words of ancient Buddhist masters.
----


Regards,

- Peter

Gudo Nishijima on Buddhism, realism, intuition, and precepts

Below is a link to an audio recording of a talk I had with my teacher Gudo Nishijima yesterday. It's an MP3 file that lasts around 18 minutes (4 megabytes).

In the first part, Nishijima Roshi talks about the difference between Buddhism and Western philosophies.

Then I asked a question about a story in chapter 20 "Kokyo" in Dogen's Shobogenzo (paragraph [139]). The story's about two Zen master's talking about what they call the "Eternal Mirror".

Next Nishijima talks about his theory on how doing Zazen relates to the autonomic nervous system.

After that I asked him where he thinks Buddhist intuition comes from.

In the last part he discusses his ideas on the Buddhist precepts.

Well, our talk went something like that anyway.

Click here to download.

Regards,

peter

What Is The Stars?

I watched a documentary called “Master of the Universe” the other night on Channel 4. It was the second part of a two-part documentary about the British physicist Stephen Hawking, who's famous for the big bang theory (I missed the first part - think we were watching South Park). It described how he’s trying to work out a theory of everything. It also had bits about some ups and downs in his private life since he wrote “A Brief History of Time”. There were also interviews with other really clever-looking physicist types. The physicists basically reckon the universe started out as some sort of single superforce. But the superforce was split into the four known natural forces at the time of the big bang: electromagnetic, strong force, weak force and gravity. Those four forces should all be equal for the theory of everything to work, but for some reason gravity is weaker than the other forces. They’re trying to figure out why.

One reason this show interested me is that Buddhism never goes against anything that science can prove. So if science can prove that there are donuts in space, then Buddhism agrees. But Buddhism does say that even though what science has proved is true, science still hasn’t found the truth about lots of things – that there’s plenty of stuff science just hasn’t stumbled on yet.

One of the things they were talking about is “string theory”. It's considered one of the great breakthroughs. Now I honestly haven’t a clue how it’s meant to work, but the part that caught my attention was when they started talking about different dimensions. They figure the universe may consist of 11 different dimensions, but us humans are only familiar with four of them, up-down, left-right, back-forth, and time. One of the physicists said that basically we’re like fish swimming around in a fish tank. We think that what we notice in the fish tank is all there is, but there's probably much more to it than we’ve managed to figure out.

Anyway, one reason the 11 dimensions caught my attention is that I’ve heard my Zen teacher Gudo Nishijima talk about an extra dimension sometimes. I don't know if it's connected to what the string theory says, but basically Buddhism says that we’re all connected in some way, but we don’t usually notice. Some physicists may someday come up with ideas like that too, although probably best not to hold your breath.

But the part that interested me most was right at the end when Stephen Hawkins was talking about the big picture – who made the universe and all that. I’d always thought that the big bang theory meant that the universe wasn’t here before the big bang. It kind of interested me because Buddhism’s idea is that the universe has always existed – which is a bit of a strange one too. Anyway, it turns out Stephen Hawking thinks the universe always existed too, and that it keeps appearing and disappearing or something like that. I can’t remember what he said exactly, but whatever it was it sounded an awful lot like Buddhism’s idea about the universe.

On the face of it, scientists talking about black holes and parallel universes and things seems completely different to Buddhism. But actually they’re not. Scientists try to explain the universe based on scientific knowledge, while Buddhism tries to explain the universe based on what Buddhists experience in daily life. Buddhist meditation is a big part of that, because it helps you become aware of things you may not notice otherwise. And judging from that documentary on Stephen Hawking, it seemed to me like Buddhism and science aren’t too far away from each other after all.

But Buddhism goes a bit further than science. Buddhism comes out and says the universe is the truth itself. Buddhism says the universe is not just matter, but also has a kind of mystical side to it too. That's something that going to be very hard for science to prove.

When I first heard Gudo Nishijima talk about Buddhism being the "truth", I honestly couldn’t believe him. I didn’t think there was anything we could call the “truth”. Eventually I realized I was wrong. Buddhism does contain the truth. And if you ask Gudo Nishijima he'll tell you that there's only one truth. If you practice zazen for a while you'll start to get glimpses of it. It’s different to anything they teach in science class. But it’s there nonetheless. But don’t just take my word for it.

Doing Your Best

Let me start by wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

Hope you don't mind I'm a few days late. I'm still trying to get back to something like normal after the holidays.

I'll start off the new year with a few encouraging words about studying/practicing Buddhism from Gudo Nishijima. It's in reply to a question at one of his talks in Tokyo.

Q: I want to learn about Buddhism, but my family life and work takes up a lot of time. I also waste time watching TV and so on. The gap between what I want to do and what I do causes me some frustration. Have you any advice about the attitude we should have to learn Buddhism?

Nishijima: I usually think that to do my best is the best I can do. And all human beings can only do their best. It is impossible for us to do something more than our best. So even though you have some dissatisfaction in your daily life, including that dissatisfaction, you are doing your best. So I think you can be very optimistic in your daily life, because you are doing your best. So to do our best is the important matter. And even though our best is not so high, we should be satisfied with that low situation in day-to-day life. Because, even though it is low, the low situation is our best at that time. So, to live our daily lives sincerely is our best. And that is Buddhist life. It is not necessary for us to think about more ideal situations apart from our real life.

Winter Solstice and Buddhism

In Ireland, the place to be on winter solstice morning is an old Megalithic Passage Tomb called Newgrange. It was built about 5,000 years ago and reconstructed in the 1960's. There's a passage and a chamber in the tomb that are illuminated at sunrise by the winter solstice sunlight. The sunlight passes through an opening over the tomb entrance and lights up the chamber. It lasts for 17 minutes and only happens on 2 or 3 days each year. It only happens on a clear day, so some years the chamber and passage aren't lit up at all. This year the weather was good, which was just as well, as they had the first ever winter solstice webcast from inside the tomb. The passage and chamber are very narrow, so only a small number of people can fit inside. So they decided to do the webcast so lots of people could watch. The webcast didn't work on the first day though, as lot more people wanted to watch than expected, so the system just shut itself down. But it was up and running alright on the second day, Saturday.

I didn't manage to catch the live webcast, but I took a look at an archive of it on Saturday. The whole show lasts about an hour. It's got the history of the place and things like that at the beginning, but I was mainly interested in seeing the part where the sunlight comes through the passage, so I skipped on a bit. It was nice to see. Right at the end an Australian professor guy who was inside the chamber comes on and is asked what he felt was so cool about being inside the chamber to see the sunshine coming through. He said it was the fact that people in the 20th century can experience more or less the exact same thing that those ancient people did 5,000 odd years ago.

I thought his answer was spot on. It reminded me of Zen Buddhism in a funny way. In Buddhism we do a sitting meditation called zazen. Most Zen Buddhists practice zazen everyday. It's the same sitting practice that the first Buddha, Gautama, practiced in India 2,500 years ago - long after the tomb at Newgrange was built. And kind of like what the Aussie Professor said about being inside Newgrange for the solstice, the thing about zazen is that when you do it, you can experience the same thing that Gautama and the early Buddhists experienced all those years ago. Which is pretty cool I think.

Buddhism and Death

Most of us have questions about death sometimes. In this video Gudo Nishijima answers questions about Buddhism's ideas on death at one of his talks at Dogen Sangha's old dojo in Japan.