Master Mayu Waves His Fan
O-An Zendo, the small Sōtō Zen temple where I live, practice, and serve the local community, resumed in-person gatherings last week. This change in the temple’s activities, mostly on Sundays, also changes my activities. Notably, I once more serve as the Doshi (Officiant) roughly every other week during our Sunday program and offer the Dharma Talk.Zen temples, Buddhist temples, and Dharma Centers are generally structured in specific ways, both in their presentation and in the forms of conduct prescribed and prohibited. These forms help create and maintain a particular sort of experience. It is not much different from a recovery meeting or your local bookstore and coffee shop; as the young people might put it, it is about the “vibes.” And just as some recovery meetings are pretty formal, rigid, or strict about these things, while others are not, so are some temples quite formal, rigid, or strict about these things, and others are not. In all places where there is Buddhist practice, though, there is a “container” of some sort, and that container is important.Here is how Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi, describes its importance in a Dharma Talk titled “Control” from the now-classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Suzuki Roshi has been speaking about “perfect freedom” and closes with:But perfect freedom is not found without some rules. People, especially young people, think that freedom is just to do what they want, that in Zen there is no need for rules. But it is absolutely necessary for us to have some rules. But this does not mean always to be under control. As long as you have rules, you have a chance for freedom. To try to obtain freedom without being aware of the rules means nothing. It is to acquire this perfect freedom that we practice zazen.Since containers are important and much of the temple’s non-residential sangha has been away for four months, Meidō Barbara Anderson, Roshi—my Guiding Teacher—and I decided to offer a series of “reorientation talks.” This past Sunday, I talked about zazen (seated meditation) and kin hin (walking meditation). My focus was the “essential art of zazen,” the spirit recommended for zazen and kin hin, the latter sometimes described as “walking your zazen around the room.”What follows is an approximate transcript of the Dharma Talk. You can also listen to the live recording. I recommend the recording as it includes “moments of inspiration.” In either case, though, enjoy.A Phoenix’s Hut is a reader-supported publication. Please consider sharing, subscribing, or Buy Me A Coffee.This morning I want to talk about zazen, our sitting practice, and what often follows when we stand up after sitting down for a while, kin hin. I am not inclined, however, to say much about the “physical posture” part of sitting practice. That is, I am not inclined to spend time on how we approach our seats. When we arrive at our seats, bow to the zafu, seiza bench, chair, or stool that is there. Then, we turn and bow in the other direction, where others may be sitting. Both bows are, from one point of view, expressions of gratitude. The first to your seat, the second to others—and since our zendo (meditation hall) has a window wall, the “others” include the trees, deer, squirrels, and everything else “beyond” this room. All of it supports us, and we support all of it, too.I am not inclined to spend time on how we take our seats. Generally, simply “plopping down” on the cushion is discouraged. Sit down gently and with awareness, and once you settle the base of your body, sway the upper half from side to side, front to back, letting your spine find its balance and uprightness. Exhale completely, then breathe naturally as you either dim your gaze or close your eyes, and your hands rest either on your thighs or in the cosmic mudra.Swaying the body in this way also happens at the end of zazen. There is no reason to leap from your seat as soon as the bell rings unless the zendo is on fire—and maybe not even then. During Oryoki—a ceremonial, three-bowl meal—we try to “keep pace” in eating together, neither emptying our bowls too quickly nor too slowly. So, too, when we rise from our seats at the end of zazen. Please stand neither too quickly nor too slowly. I promise kin hin will not begin sooner because you were standing first. More importantly, though, that transition should be done with “utmost care and consideration”—menmistu no kafu, in Japanese—since kin hin is an opportunity to walk our zazen around the room.Again, though, I want to spend my time on something other than these things. I want to spend time on what Dōgen Zenji calls “the essential art of zazen,” the spirit recommended for zazen. And so that we are clear, this spirit and the physical posture we take when we sit down, while (perhaps) different, are not separate from each other.Sometimes, we hear that Zen practice is “beyond words and scriptures” and that “thousands of words, myriad interpretations, are only to free [us] from obstructions.” How can I use language to share with you something that is not easily captured in the familiar form of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and pages? Why do I need to say anything if a particular hindrance—attachment, aversion, boredom, restlessness, or doubt—does not obstruct your way? And might I contribute to the arising of a hindrance because I did say something when I could instead “refrain from”?It is unsurprising, therefore, that questions, poetry, and stories are standard vehicles for Dharma Teachers, especially when the topic is zazen. Thus, Dōgen begins Fukanzazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) in this way:The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available; how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust; why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away?What is the practice of zazen or shikantaza (just sitting)? What is the specific style of practice recommended here at O-An Zendo? There is no goal, no striving, nowhere to go. That is all.When Chinese ancestor Shitou Xiqian was asked about the essential meaning of the Buddhadharma, he responded with “Not to attain. Not to know.” When asked if there was any other pivotal point, he said, “The wide sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting.” I typically offer the latter when I meet with someone for beginner’s instruction to describe the spirit of shikantaza. I am considering, though, using the following lines from a poem by W. H. Auden instead:It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens
Hearing the frogs exhaling from the pond,
Watching traffic of magnificent cloud
Moving without anxiety on open sky—That is pretty good, too. And I am confident that some of you are familiar with this story from the Genjōkōan (Expressing What Is Most Essential):Mayu, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself?”“Although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk.Mayu just kept fanning himself.The monk bowed deeply.The actualization of the buddha dharma, the vital path of its authentic transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind. The nature of wind is permanent; because of that, the wind of the buddha house brings forth the gold of the earth and ripens the cream of the long river.There are many other examples of oblique attempts to express the spirit of our sitting practice, ways of sharing the heart of the matter that skirt along the edges of discriminatory thinking.Some expressions state the spirit … Get full access to A Phoenix’s Hut at hoantaishin.substack.com/subscribe
