Shinkyū
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dad, Soto Zen residential priest-in-training at Nebraska Zen Center, Dogen stan
Joined December 2010
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Well, I finally did it. For all those escaping Twitter who want to stay in touch. (I’ll be staying here for the time being though.)
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I worked in a factory with no windows for almost 20 years. Now I’m working out of this place. Such a strange life.
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This is the type of shit that Dogen freaked out about near the end of his life: warriors looking to zen to excuse their killing, trying to escape their karma.
“Be cool, without compassion or mercy.”
An Israeli Zen master and meditation teacher, Nissim Amon, gives mental and practical tips to Israeli soldiers who he refers to as “princes and princesses” in an instructional video guide to becoming a “super fighter”
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How does one explain to their not weird family that you suffered a mystical experience that has completely transformed your conception of self and life without sounding like a lunatic? 🤷🏻♂️
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Been painting again for the first time since college. Never could find a subject I cared enough about to put in the amount of work required. But here we are: Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, listening to the cries of the world.
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One thing that might be surprising to people in the West is that everywhere else, Buddhism is not particularly left-coded, and is in fact often quite conservative.
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It’s interesting how our baseline assumption in the West is that we’re these terrible, defective lumps of dreck that need saving from ourselves. The first Buddhist teachers that came to America were shocked by this.
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A huge part of why I gravitated towards Buddhism philosophically was the Western Mind’s inability to cope with the Ship of Theseus (at least to my satisfaction). From a zen perspective there’s not even an issue.
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It’s official. I just put my two weeks notice in at work. So now I can announce that I’ll be the new resident priest-in-training at the Nebraska Zen Center starting June 1st. This is a dream position for me. Almost doesn’t seem real. 🙏
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From Joseph Campbell’s “Myths of Light.” Captures my feeling from a young age on.
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I think we just found one of Maitreya Buddha’s reincarnations
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The end goal of awakening is not the end of your own suffering, but to return to the world and help end other’s suffering, to give selflessly, to sacrifice for the betterment of all.
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If you happen upon a (spiritual) teacher, a good thing to ask them is “tell me about a mistake you’ve made recently and how you fixed it” and/or “tell me how you deal with imperfection.”
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One of the key insights of Buddhism, put into Twitter speak, is finding out that the guy you’ve made up and are arguing with is you.
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It took me a long time til I figured out that these types of descriptions, common in Buddhist scriptures, are not exaggerations. They are (in a sense) metaphorical (I guess), but much less than you’d suppose. 1
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Jhanic meditation is like methodically disassembling and reassembling a car to study how it works. Zazen is like hot-rodding that car off a cliff and hoping for the best.
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Idk if you really want to accelerate your practice try letting your entire life fall apart. Those were the points in my own practice where things just shot off into the stratosphere 🤷🏻♂️
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You can skip the jhanas and just jump directly into flowing as the Dao. Or take the jhana detour. I’m not you. At least not completely.
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He wrote that you cannot escape cause and effect, you cannot escape karma. What you do (acts of body, speech, and mind) are the only thing you own. If you kill (anything really , a thought, an animal, a human), you can’t escape that karma.
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So Frank Herbert was raised Catholic and later became Zen Buddhist? Makes sense.
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What book(s) would you recommend to someone who’s completely new to Buddhism / what books did you find helpful in the beginning of your practice?
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So Dogen went and preached to the samurai. And he was horrified by what he’d seen. Warriors who wanted to use the teachings of no-self and non-duality to excuse their karma and gain a better rebirth.
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In Zen on the other hand, our true nature is seen as empty of all these descriptions. We’re neither good nor bad fundamentally. It’s only our actions (of body, speech, and mind) that determine whether we’re skillful or unskillful in the moment.
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One thing Zen can provide to Christianity is the ability to work outside of the belief / disbelief duality. Belief is dual and conceptual. It’s also something that’s impermanent (anicca). That’s one of the issues that drove me away from religion back in the day. 1
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@nickcammarata
I’m my 20’s I smoked a lot of weed. I’d get as paranoia and anxious as possible and then just stare into it. Not a practice I’d recommend to anyone, but now that I think about it, I think it laid the groundwork for my overcoming anxiety altogether later on.
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I’m getting in on this. “I’m not the Buddha but …” then let autocorrect finish it.
Me: “I’m not the Buddha but I’m just gonna be there for you and me too.” 🥲
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Over and over again the shogunate asked him to come to the capital to preach. He declined each time, until his benefactor (a one eyed samurai himself) told Dogen he really should go.
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When Dogen came back he looked at the Shobogenzo, his main work, and started to reconsider things. The main thrust of the Shobo is non-duality. So Dogen wrote 12 new fascicles (chapters) that focused heavily on karma.
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@Radica00
@derk_souls
@Snowdropbop
Being 40+ myself, old people don’t know what they’re doing anymore than younger people. They’ve just managed to stay alive long enough to retrofit strategies onto a lot of happenstance. (It’s one of the perks of being old, I guess.)
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@lisatomic5
I’ll be that guy, I guess. Tolkien is always like 17 layers deep on his linguistics / world building.
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For Nagarjuna (and Mahayana Buddhism in general) saying “there is no self” is off the mark. Now “to assign neither inherent existence nor inherent nonexistence to anything” is right on the mark.
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If you really want to get into the dharma, I always highly recommend becoming familiar with the Japanese / Chinese / Sanskrit / Pali words that underlie our English translations. 1
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As far as zazen is concerned there are no distractions. Whatever occurs while sitting, investigate it. Your neighbor’s dog starts barking and you get upset? That sound and those feeling? investigate them. 1
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We do not sit to become Buddhas, we sit because we _are_ Buddhas. To sit in silent investigation is simply the acknowledgment of the stilling of the three unwholesome roots: grasping, avoid, and ignoring. 1
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One trick with meditation: it doesn’t have to stop once you stand up.
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People tend to forget that “shin” in Zen Buddhism is not only “mind,” but also “heart” (emotions). And that awakening is both of the mind and the heart. Both are necessary. But you’ll sometimes come across people who are one or the other. 1
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Even if you believe it’s for a good cause, maybe even especially if you believe it’s for a good cause.
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And I come from a family that’s been heavily involved in the military, so I’m not coming at this from pacifist stance necessarily, but once we forget that all these people are human, as messy as that is, man, that’s the dark path.
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The karma we send out into the world is no longer are own, but continues to reverberate throughout space and time.
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There’s a teaching in Zen Buddhism that even insentient beings, like rocks and trees, teach the dharma. And how so? For example, when you pick up a rock, you can see the entire history of the earth written right there. 1
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Some notes on not-self:
In the grand scheme of Buddhism we have nothing called “self” (atman / svabhava). The issue is that “self / ego / soul” are not particularly accurate translations of atman. 1
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There’s a reason we talk about awakening after awakening in zen. It’s easy to fall right back into identity view: “_I_ woke myself up.” When really the causes and conditions are so monumentous, and there’s no one to claim the deed, that truly awakening awakens itself.
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@carriecourogen
@juni_ba
Since only 55.7% of eligible voters actually voted in 2016, it’s probably closers to 26-30% of all white women voted for Trump and 26-30% voted for Clinton. The other 45% just didn’t give a crap apparently 🤷🏻♂️
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Kind of obsessed with how the Sanskrit “alphabet” works (it’s actually a syllabary, since each letter represents a consonant _and_ a vowel). 1
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I used to think that Soto’s insistence that there’s no enlightenment (or conversely that everything’s enlightenment) was stupid, but seeing how everyone’s twisting themselves around to conformto various predetermined scales, I think they’re really onto something. 1
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One of my favorite parts of zen is all of the monks, meditating, studying scriptures, etc. telling us that being a monk, mediating and studying scriptures won’t get us there.
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Koans are not paradoxes. If a guy’s sitting in a jail cell with a locked door in front of him and an open door behind him, and he asks for the key, telling him “the prison’s only in your mind,” is actually 100% true.
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The way questions are asked in zen koans is not much different from shitposting. In the distance a bell is ringing in the wind. A monk asks: “Is that the bell ringing or the wind ringing?” MF knows you can’t slice reality up like that.
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That pain (vedana) and suffering (dukkha) are two different things is very important to understanding what Buddhism’s trying to do. That eliminating suffering doesn’t mean complacency is also quite important.
walking up to all the people dying of malaria and malnutrition, doomed to a life of drinking contaminated water and shitting in a hole on the ground and telling them "just medidate bro"
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I think one of the bigger obstacles for people on the zen path is when it’s sold as not a religion™. The Dao is an incredibly important aspect of zen. Seeing it from a desacralized Western perspective (true of both theism and atheism oddly enough)
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One interesting effect of zen practice is seamlessly functioning in situations where people are just spinning lines of officialese bullshit at you. You can see it coming up over the hill and you’re able to grasp it, spin it around, and judo throw it to the side.
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And it’s not just a religious thing, but it infects everything, politics and psychology as well. It’s as glaring in atheists as in the most religiously devout.
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Skillful meaning that our actions lead to the end of suffering (for ourselves and others), while unskillful means that our actions lead to suffering for ourselves and others.
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Our karma (our past actions) will tend to push us to act in the same ways we’ve acted in the past, but karma is only a suggestion. To realize this is often the first step on the path to freedom from unskillful habits. Total freedom being enlightenment itself.
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A bit of a long, rambling thread on the classical teachings of self / no self in Buddhism. 1
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Something important to remember about dukkha (and one of the reasons I try not to translate it) is that even happy, pleasant sensations are dukkha, because they are also impermanent, conditioned, and prone to be grasped.
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@the_wilderless
Yep. Everyone’s wearing a costume, some people are just more aware of the costume(s).
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@ZackDavisson
Could be like “daddy” in English. Lots of variations in meaning depending on who’s saying it to whom and in what context 👀
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One thing old school dharma teachers are often trying to get across (either skillfully or unskillfully) is that our practice often moves in waves: (great) realization, integration, (slight) return, repeat. 1
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@nonbyronic
When you read the Pali Suttas and listen to how the Buddha describes his own inner awareness, it doesn’t sound like a particularly different experience from people nowadays. And we’re talking about 500 BCE or so.
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The whole “if you’re so enlightened, then see how you are going back home for Thanksgiving” thing began right from the start:
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In Zen we’re not particularly interested in cultivating any particular state of mind, but in creating Buddhas. This has been a long running division since the first Mahayanists aligned their practice more towards the Buddha’s life than towards the path he taught his disciples.
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It’s funny when you see someone online pointing out Buddhists debating as if it’s some kind of dunk. Debate has been an integral part of Buddhism since before the very beginning. 1
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One skillful thing we can practice during zazen is to simply sit with what’s uncomfortable. Is there suddenly an itch on your neck? Sit with it, study the sensations and your urge to seek immediate relief. In time the itch will fade away. 1
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There are guys on the site that shall not be named yelling about how “no zen masters ever taught about Buddhism.” Then we crack open the Platform Sutra page one and read: “Master Hui-neng took his seat … to expound the teaching of the Mahaprajnaparamita … .”
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When you see dukkha arising in your body-mind, when you catch it right in its moment of formation, you suddenly see it arising everywhere, in everyone. Like this negative force driving most of the world. It’s overwhelming. And yet we vow to end it.
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We tend to think of “mind” as “what’s created in the brain,” and so the zen teachings of the One Mind can appear confusing and contradictory, but there are some important points to remember. 1
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I feel most bodhisattva-ish when I’m preparing meals for other people.
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Many interesting terms in Japanese for various types of practitioners
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@LegoRacers2
It would be very difficult for Westerners (and Americans especially) raised in a society awash in ideas of personal (Christian) salvation to simply sit by and be content to just feed the monks. Even atheist Buddhists feel the need to grasp salvation through diligent practice.
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It’s wild how one of the key insights of Western religion (and so too the Western mind) is of the possessor (and the possessed). This duality is seen as fundamental ignorance in Mahayana Buddhism. 1
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The funny thing about “zen can’t be expressed with words,” is that nothing else really can be either. It’s all just fingers pointing at fingers. Zen is just laying that all out on front street.
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So, one cool thing that I’ve been working on for the last few weeks was this article for Tricycle about the influence of zen on Dune.
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The zendo at the Nebraska Zen Center. The sangha has gone onto the rest of their day. All is quiet.
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One thing to be careful of in zen is the idea of letting go. It’s natural for us to think of it in a dualistic way, as if some part of us detaches and drifts away never to be seen again. But right letting go is not dual. 1
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By awakening / enlightenment some people mean that first glimpse of not self, others mean full blown realization of Buddhahood, with all karmic ties dissolved. Much confusion ensues.
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Not to make light of any misdeeds committed by clergy of any sort (god knows we’ve had our fair share in Soto zen), but the following seems to be true. Idk where the original image is from. And if any Tibetans want to correct me, lmk
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Long thread incoming:
A koan that’s elusive without the background of Buddhist doctrine is “Mazu / Baso Polishes a Tile.” It touches specifically on original enlightenment. 1
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As far as Mahayana Buddhism is concerned, and zen specifically, the entire training concerns realizing one’s “self” as the present moment (spatially and temporally). 1
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I feel like there’s a place (in the future or maybe already now?) for a Vajrayana-Christianity fusion, where Jesus functions as Vairocana Buddha, the Father acts as the Dharmakaya, and the Holy Ghost is the Nirmanakaya, 2
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Obligatory, semi-regular enlightenment posting. When we speak about enlightenment it’s often beneficial to ask: “which enlightenment are we talking about?” 1
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There’s been a lot of talk about emptiness again. And I definitely agree that it can be a pretty misleading word, if you don’t already know what it’s describing. And it doesn’t help that it’s had various interpretations over the millennia. 1
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My constant refrain is that when we use English words and concepts to talk about Buddhism, we tend to inadvertently alter the teachings. One thing that’s been causing some confusion lately is the vendana-dukkha / sensation-pain dichotomy in English and Pali. 1
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For zazen being uncomfortable periodically is part of the deal. To sit in discomfort, to study it, to study how we react to it, to learn about ourselves leads to compassion.
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Looks like I might be spending 6 months or so in priest training (running a temple, giving dharma talks, dokusan, etc) this year. It’s not absolutely set yet, so my lips are sealed on any other info.
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One reason there’s a reluctance to speak of attainment outside of a student-teacher relationship, or within a sangha, is that false or prideful claims of insight or attainment are / were grounds for permanent expulsion from the monastic body according to the Patimokkha.
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A zen book about working less, making less money, being a less profit driven worker.
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One of the main experiences of zen is realizing how we impute either/or dualities into everything everywhere all the time. This leads to the practices of ruthlessly interrogating our perception to root out reliance on this type of thinking. It’s also why we’re all so weird 😐
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I’m at quite a stark inflection point in my life. I’m waiting on a pretty sweet job offer, if they say yes, it’s gonna be great. However, if they say no, I’ll be able to spend the three months at a monastery that’s necessary to become a full priest in the Soto zen tradition.
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No one:
2nd century Buddhists: the mind is composed of six sense consciousnesses, including a mental-cons. that takes the first five as objects, an ego-cons. that mistakes the base cons. (that holds and dispenses the resultant karma of all 7 higher consciousnesses) for a self.
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What they’re showing is the view of the world from insight enlightenment, inside samadhi (single pointed concentration). Once the conceptual mind has been dropped and you’re standing face to face with pure experience, the beauty of what surrounds you is staggering. 2
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All it takes is zazen on the cushion, zazen standing up, zazen lying down, zazen walking. Turn the light of consciousness inward, illuminate the skandhas, penetrate to the unborn, see how your mind creates the world (loka), and be free from the confines of your own conceptions. 5
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