Tokusan and his development as told through the stories and koans of Buddhism. This series on Tokusan began with three video clips from a previous class. (Part 1, Parts 2 & 3)
Part 4
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tTVODvJLBg
Part 5
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnvQwonR-3A
Part 6
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppXGYS6hVUI
Mary Jaksch, Roshi, has kindly offered us this post. I know Lost Coin is very receptive to her point of view, in fact we share it. I am grateful she has chosen to post on our site.
– Daniel Doen Silberberg
A guest post by Mary Jaksch, Roshi
Zen has had to adapt over the millennia. After all, medieval culture in Japan had little in common with ancient China, and modern times have very little in common with either. Yet Zen has survived to this day. Why? Well, I think it’s because Zen is about life. Actually, it is life!
But sheer survival isn’t enough. If Zen is to flourish in the West, it needs to truly embed itself into our culture. And for that to happen, it needs to embrace the the virtual dimension that has become a real part of life for many people.
The Net with its particular communication forms, such as blogging and social media, has become a major force to be. That’s something I’ve learned in the last year or so through blogging.
Eighteen months ago, my son Sebastian said to me,
“Mum, I’ll make you a website, but you have to write a blog.”
“A blog?” I said. “What’s that?”
As you can see, I was still an innocent Zen teacher at the time!
Blogging turned out to be a great adventures and a steep learning curve. Soon I was posting a weekly article on my blog. I told my colleagues in the Diamond Sangha about it.
By return of post I got the following email from one of my more conservative colleagues:
“What I read in your blog shocked and horrified me. It has nothing to do with Zen and leads people astray!”
Ouch!
I have a rather impish sense of humor, so I immediately made his comment the focus of my next blog post Zen and the Art of Blogging.
(more…)
The Lost Coin Blog is almost 3 months old. So far we have established our goals and identity by posting talks and videos. We’ve noticed a steady increase in traffic, subscriptions, and video views from all over the world. Thank you to all who have taken time to view posts and subscribe to this blog; we appreciate your support.
It is our hope to establish a broader culture. We will be doing more collaborative posts as well as including other aspects of Lost Coin’s shared interests. To that end we will be presenting things of interest from other sources as well as our own members and hope to utilize the Internet to the fullest of its emerging abilities.
We are interested in collaboration, exchange, we invite your input and participation. In essence you might say we are creating a culture, one that is broad, contemporary, and open. We invite all those interested in the development of spirituality, science, art, and business to be part of our emerging culture.
This week I was reminded of a story that Doen Sensei told me a few years ago. He has repeated it a number of times since then. There was a traveler in Iraq who was traveling through the desert. He found himself stranded one night, about a mile from Baghdad. This was at a time when Baghdad was a great center of civilization; there were wonderful libraries, works of art, and pleasures of many kinds.
As was the custom, any traveler on their way to Baghdad who had not reached it by nightfall and was stranded in the desert would be taken in by the desert people and offered food and drink, and so the visitor was invited into a family’s tent. They talked, and at one point the man asked them what they thought of Baghdad. “Why, we’ve never gone to Baghdad! Why would we?” they responded. “We have everything we need right here. We have the most delicious food, and the finest drink.”
Later, they served food to the traveler. It was desert rat, and it was rancid and salty. The traveler asked for the “wonderful” drink, hoping their “finest” would wash away the taste of the rat. But it was salt water.
The moral of the story is: always see in your life if you are just one mile from Baghdad and living on rats and saltwater.
photo by jamesdale10
Talk on Tokusan continued. Part 1 is here.
Part 2:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHs0Sfv1DsQ
Part 3:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrnO3wi2afQ
Talk on Tokusan continued. Part 1 is here.
Part 2:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHs0Sfv1DsQ
Part 3:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrnO3wi2afQ
Choosing what is leads to happiness. Our usual state is to want things to be different from what they really are, and to think that when only this changes or that changes, then things will be great. When I find the right partner, when I get that new job—then I’ll be happy. I like to tell my students that most people spend their lives thinking “if only, if only, if only – dead.” We spend our lives waiting to be happy, and one day, one moment, it’s all over—and we were never truly happy.
Choosing to be with the moment, to be with what is, that is real happiness. Even if “what is” is not what you want, and you’re also actively choosing to change, staying with the reality of what is can bring happiness. And it’s fun! I know a woman who doesn’t like her tendency to keep going over things in her head, to keep worrying, to be indecisive. Now, what she could do instead is to tell herself: “All this stuff that I turn around in my head, I chose this, this is great. One of the things I really like about myself is that I’m just so indecisive—it’s beautiful. This is where I’ve come to, this is the kind of person I am right now. This is what I chose. Maybe I’ll choose something else, but right now, that’s where I am.”
Try it. This should be a very enjoyable thing, no matter where you are, you should be enjoying choosing what you’ve got. Be alive now, don’t wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow you’re dead. Enjoy your life, appreciate your life, choose to be with your life as it is right now.
So, an important part of our practice is deciding to choose what is. What I am often asked next is: what if I’m in an unhappy marriage? What if I hate my job? Does that mean I need to choose to stay in that situation?
Absolutely not. That view is too simplistic. Choosing what is, choosing to be where you are, is another way to speak of being in the moment. In other words, you’re not choosing a situation, you’re choosing the moment. So you’re sitting there in a crummy marriage, feeling a certain way, you’re choosing to be in the crummy marriage, you’re choosing to be alive to being in the crummy marriage. You’re in the moment. And at the same time, if you want to, you can be choosing to figure out how to leave. Staying in the moment of “what is” and at the same time choosing to change “what is” aren’t contradictory.
You don’t have to choose to be stuck where you are. You choose to be where you are. Where you are might be “in the midst of change.” But then be with the process of being in the midst of change and don’t hold your breath until the change has occurred. If you’re in turmoil, choose to experience that turmoil. You can also choose a plan that you hope will get you out of turmoil, but then you’re also choosing to be with that, in the flow of moving. In other words, you’re with what you’ve got, you’re choosing to be with what is, choosing to be in the moment, even if that moment is “movement” or “chaos” or “change”. Wherever you are in your life, at any given moment, when you accept that completely and choose that, they say that is enlightenment.
Part 1:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3HH5ivXCJU
Part 2:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoVmdgNN0OY
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