EIGHT
Master Baso Do-itsu Kôzei in the district of Ko served jisha (Secretary to the Master Nangaku Ejo intimately and received the seal of the spirit of Gautama Buddha. He lived constantly in the temple sitting in Denpo zazen and was the most notable disciples of Master Nangaku. Baso latter knew that showed exceptional qualities in the study of Buddhism.
Master Nangaku sought out and asked Baso: But then, great monk, what is your for when you practice zazen?
Baso Do-itsu
replied I want to become a Buddha.
Nangaku Ejo picked up a piece of tile and began to polish it on a stone, facing the entrance to the hut Baso.
Baso Do-itsu
said Master, what are you doing?
Ejo Nangaku replied I polished this tile into a mirror.
Baso Do-itsu
said How do you make a mirror by polishing a tile?
Ejo Nangaku replied How do you think you become a Buddha in zazen?
Baso Do-itsu
said What would it do?
Ejo Nangaku replied When a man traveling by car if the car is not moving, what should he do? Hit the car or hit the ox pulls the?
Baso Do-itsu
not know what to say.
Nangaku Ejo taught more: Learn zazen is to learn that you are a Buddha in zazen. When you learn zazen is different from everyday behavior, such as sit or lie down. However, when you know you are a Buddha in zazen, the Buddha is beyond any fixed form.
Ejo Nangaku said In the Universe, do not choose good or evil at the moment. When you practice being Buddha in zazen, you inevitably get rid of the concept of Buddha. Focusing on a seat, it did not understand fully the principle of zazen.
On hearing this teaching of the master Baso felt as if he had drunk a sweet nectar.
Quote:
Commentary Nishijima roshi
are interpreted in general this koan in that it is not possible to become a Buddha just by practicing zazen. But Master Dogen's interpretation is quite different. This is the idea of becoming intentionally attack it. When a person is sitting in zazen, it is outset of a Buddha. She can not re-become a Buddha. Polishing is not making a mirror, it is just polishing action - the action of a Buddha.
What this means is that when a Buddha sits zazen? Sitting in zazen, we directly face the reality. We face our thoughts, emotions and discomfort (physical and mental). We also find that the reality is much more than thoughts or body.
This is hard to watch, especially for beginners. When seated, they usually feel is pain and boredom, which departs much of the idealized image they have of enlightenment or Buddhahood. However, the pain and boredom are their reality.
In our daily lives, we are making great efforts to escape this aspect of reality or to sweep under the carpet. In zazen, we confront it directly. One can not escape, he must live it and experience it. The reality is that pain and boredom, there are many other aspects of reality very different and even deeper. They are also facing their zazen, but they are facing as they naturally arise of themselves.
images that our intellect formed of the awakening will under no circumstances accelerate this process. The intellect itself is nothing but a thin surface layer on the surface of an ocean of the reality of the body / mind that is much deeper.
Master Baso then asked what to do and Master Nangaku uses the parable of the oxcart. If beef is restive, we can advance by beating him, but if the wheel of the car is stuck, we can beat the beef as you want, it will not move the car. We must be attentive to the reality of the situation and does not project our preconceptions above. The
ox represents the mind or mental factors. The chariot represents the body or material factors. The idealist thinks only spur beef. He ignores the chariot, until, perhaps, one day it lost a wheel and overturned in the mud.
The materialist thinks only tank. He may want to be pretty fast, or decorate it with gold and gems, leaving the beef to starve, so that his chariot could not move.
Zazen is the practice of body / mind, the whole being. The Buddhist tends to be both beef and char.
Master Nangaku goes on to explain the difference between zazen and daily behavior. It explains what it means to learn zazen is to say, we learn that a Buddha in zazen. It stresses the difference between regular zazen and behavior that are, for example sit and lie down. How is it different? In our everyday life, we are usually associated with thoughts. We struggle to see reality because of these thoughts. In zazen, we cut through clouds of thoughts that obscure the landscape.
other hand, zazen is also different from our usual state of relaxation, in that it maintains a certain tension and a certain physical attention mental. Master Nangaku wants to make this distinction between zazen and our lives every day because there was, and still there, Buddhists who contend that the conduct of our daily life is no different from zazen. And it is true that they are the same in that they both exist in reality itself, but in our daily life is much more difficult, and for most people, impossible to see clearly the reality.
In zazen, we sit in reality and in doing direct experience in a way that only happens very rarely in our lives every day. It is gradually changed by the experience. When we sit in zazen, we are Buddhas. A Buddha in zazen has no fixed form. He may be tall and blond, small and large, this may be an athlete, an old woman, a teenager. In addition, a Buddha in zazen has several states: peaceful, serene, distracted, bored, happy, etc..
There is no single statement that could point the finger and say, 'This is what you seek. When you have reached this state, you have attained Buddhahood. " Such ideas are only images in our brain. There is no closed form for a Buddha. Every person sitting in zazen has its own form. It thus we can say that Zazen is adorned with infinite forms of Buddha.
Nangaku Master Baso said then not prefer good or evil at the moment. In the instant flash of reality, either good or evil exist. There is neither Buddhas nor non-Buddhas. In actual practice zazen, you will not find any "Buddha" our concepts of Buddha have been left behind and we are free to sit in the reality itself. We are free to be Buddhas.
If we focus on the physical form of seating, for example by focusing on breathing or encouraging attention physical constant, we will not understand that zazen is to sit in the unity of body-and mind-state where it does not focus on the mental or physical.
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