When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden 

for everything is murky and unclear. 

And the burdensome practice of judging 

brings annoyance and weariness. 

What benefit can be derived 

from distinctions and separations? 


If you wish to move in the One Way 

do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. 

Indeed, to accept them fully 

is identical with enlightenment.



         Yesterday (6/18) there was a tragic shooting that seems to be racially motivated.  We were listening to news on the shooting and my wife asks me if the shooter is a Bodhisattva and I could only answer yes.  We chant in the zendo Torri Zenji's Bodhisattva Vow with the line, "Though our enemies may revile and persecute us we should consider them bodhisattva manifestations...."  The Dali Lama when asked who his greatest teacher was he responded; "The Chinese."  These types of events test our practice of not judging.  Some people immediately called the shooter evil but "evil" is not in the Buddhist vocabulary.  No one is just plain evil no matter what suffering they cause.  Everything is more complex then a simple label.  We do not know the shooter's motivation, at this point but we can say he was deeply confused.
          So how should we react to a tragedy like this?  In our practice there is no "should" but we can react with sadness or compassion or love or even anger and then we let those feelings go.  We might even be motivated to do something like campaign for gun control but even so our practice is not to be attached to outcomes.
          I do not try to justify these events by calling them part of the Great Non-Dual Perfection and yet this is still how I see things.  The Great Non-Dual Perfection is not about what we want as humans either in the present or future and yet in recognizing this non-dual perfection I become One with all of life and let myself feel it's pain and suffering and give freedom to my emotions.  

          What is it to have our thoughts in bondage?  I am sure most of us think we are relatively clear headed but if we watch our thoughts we will recognize that we also have many patterns of obsessive thinking.  Maybe we obsessively think about making money, or maybe we obsessively think about success in our profession.  Maybe we obsessively think about sex or just obsessively think about a lover.  We can be obsessive about cleanliness or our personal appearance.  There are an uncountable number of possible obsessions.  I worked with a fellow who obsessively thought about car racing and I can obsessively think about a math problem.  And many people are obsessively critical.  In fact if we watch our thinking we will recognize that our thoughts often just go from one obsessive thought to another.  In other words most of our thoughts are just habits.  
          Our thinking is also deeply bound to our emotions.  Emotion is a type of thinking though evolutionarily more primitive then our internal dialogue.  Emotions trigger thoughts and thoughts trigger emotions.  For most of us there is an emotional component to all our thoughts.  And of course there is also obsession and habit with emotion.  This is the bondage of our thoughts and it often doesn't make us very happy
          Let's free our thoughts.  Let's free our emotions. Let's free our actions.  What is this freedom?  If you think it is the freedom to think and do whatever you want that is not quite correct because in this freedom there is no individual you.  We Buddhists are always saying that individuality is an illusion but it is obvious that there are individuals.  The greater truth is is that everything we are as individuals results from causes and conditions that are greater then our own individuality.  Even to say there are causes and conditions is to still to be caught in the snare of duality.  So what can we say?  Maybe it is better if we don't say anything?  But then is this freedom.  We cannot think our way out of this box because the box is our thoughts. 

 If you wish to move in the One Way 

do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. 

Indeed, to accept them fully 

is identical with enlightenment.

         In Zen we try to cultivate not-thinking which is important if we are to see beyond the boundaries of our dualistic thought.  Many practitioners trying to rid themselves of dualistic thought become critical of thought or maybe just some types of thought.  For example I have a friend who as a Zen practitioner is critical of any thought about Zen or the larger philosophic questions that he think objectifies an answer.  He has criticized me for saying that everything is in "process", though I find this a recognition of the obvious and little different then the Buddha's teaching on change.  In an effort not to think dualisticaly they are discriminating and dualistic.
          In an effort to cut themselves off from desire and discriminating thought some practitioners become ascetic.  This is an old tradition in religious practice.  The Buddhist tradition is not usually an extreme asceticism but rather a significant simplification and most serious practitioners find this simplified life an important part of their practice.  This is the life of a monk.  Again some practitioners make the mistake of giving an absolute value to asceticism and scorn sensual pleasure.  Any one who has practiced with a Japanese teacher knows that the Japanese monk though living the simplified life of a monk does not all together avoid sensual pleasure.  In fact the highly refined sensual pleasure of the tea ceremony is considered an exemplar of Zen in action.  Ultimately all our attempts to discriminate ourselves out of discrimination fail.  At some point we just give up discrimination but that means accepting everything including descrimination, dualistic thought ,sensual pleasure, and all the tragic events of the world, the whole ball of wax.  Not only do we accept everything we become everything.  We become Buddha, or maybe a better way to say this is, that we recognize that we are and always have been everything/ Buddha
          As Zen practitioners we may live a simplified life and attempt to quiet our minds but these are not absolute values they are just our practice and as such they lead to certain results.  Eventually we may not even find them a necessary part of practice because even though we partake in dualistic thought we are not caught by dualism and even though we indulge in sensual pleasure we are not attached to desires.  To completely accept everything with a deep insight into the non-dual, this is the hopeful outcome of our practice.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult. 

But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: 

the faster they hurry, the slower they go. 

And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited: 

Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment 

is to go astray. 

Just let things be in their own way 

and there will be neither coming not going. 

Obey the nature of things (your own nature) 

and you will walk freely and undisturbed. 

          I heard that there was a discussion about social activism and Buddhist practice the other night at the local Vipassana Sanga meditation.  There was a strong feeling expressed by some that meditation was not enough and that it was important to get out there and do something to change the world.  This is not an untypical sentiment of Buddhist practitioners.  The practice of meditation can seem selfish. " I practice meditation because it makes me happy."  " Meditation is my therapy." " I meditate so that I can become Enlightened."  We often come to Zen practice with selfish thoughts.  But we also often come to Zen practice with a desire to change the world for the better.
          Buddhist practice and thought can seem to be filled with contradictions,  the Bodhisattva practice of compassion and the teaching of non- attachment. a focus on personal happiness and the idea that there is no self.  How do we ballance these seeming contradictions as we walk through life?
          I heard this story from one of the early members of the San Francisco Zen Center.  After zazen one day one of the participants strongly expressed the opinion that they, the participants of Zen Center, should not be sitting so much but rather should be out protesting the war in Vietnam.  Suzuki Roshi in response chased the fellow out of the zendo with a stick.  On the other hand there is the story where the Buddha knowing that the Kingdom of the Shakyas was to be invaded placed himself and his followers in the path of the invading army.  Confronted with the Buddha and his followers the invading army turned around though later successfully invaded and conquered the Land of the Shakyas.
         When we take precepts as a Zen Buddhist the first and most important precepts, which really summarize all the other precepts are:


Don't do any evil.
Do all that is good.
Keep One's thoughts pure

There is lots of room for social activism here but the most difficult precept is to keep one's thoughts pure in the face of the deep problems society seems to be faced with.  To keep One's thoughts pure is to be without ego.  It is also to be aware of the non-dual nature of things and it is also to be aware of our deep ignorance.   When we are faced with a tragic event we may think how terrible this is and want to do something to help the situation but we must also realize that there is something much larger going on and I don't mean much larger  in the sense that we should try to understand the situation in as many ways as possible.  In every situation what is going on is always so much larger that we can never understand, because each situation contains the functioning of the whole non-dual Universe.  This is our deep ignorance.  This in no way means that we should stop functioning to do good only that our functioning changes with this understanding.
           Some people argue that our Buddhist practice is enough, that the very act of sitting in meditation is changing the world.  It changes the world by changing us the practitioners and also it changes the world through the deep connectedness of all phenomena in ways that are hard to quantify.  
          The world appears impure because our thoughts are impure.  Our thoughts being impure we are bound by the illusion of an individual self and all sorts of delusive ideas and though we might want to do good we often just mess things up.  And yet though our thoughts are impure and our actions just mess things up the paradox is that it is all still part of the great perfection of the non-dual.  On the other hand if we see through the eyes of the non-dual then we may not constantly feel the need to do something to fix the world and in this not doing much we may find that there really are less problems.
          I hope I haven't confused you too much so here is what I really think.  Our first responsibility as Buddhist practitioners is to purify our minds. A purified mind has several qualities.  It is free of the delusion of a limited self. It is not pushed around by emotion and delusion. It also sees the world clearly.  It is present in our functioning, not caught up in thought barely aware of what is going on.  It therefore sees the world clearly.  It sees the suffering and happiness in others and can quickly asses what needs to happen here and now.  It also sees the world with the eye of non-duality.  But the eye of non-duality is not just an abstract understanding but an opening of the heart in our seeing the other as our selves.  The Great Way, Zen action, is nothing more then acting out of this purified mind.  The Great way is not about making distinctions of right or wrong and yet it acts with heart.  Acting with heart we help people and other beings in need of help.  The Great Way is not beyond getting involved in politics yet there is no attachment to outcomes.  Underneath there is the understanding that whatever the outcome of any situation, it is the functioning of the Non-Dual the Great Perfection.  The Great Way is to have a deep trust in the functioning of the Universe.  This is why Zen and all of Buddhism is not just a philosophy and a practice but also a religion because this trust, this understanding, and this heart is deeply religious.

When no discriminating thoughts arise, 

the old mind ceases to exist. 

When thought objects vanish, 

the thinking-subject vanishes: 

As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. 


Things are objects because of the subject (mind): 

the mind (subject) is such because of things (object). 

Understand the relativity of these two 

and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. 

In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable 

and each contains in itself the whole world. 

If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine 

you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion. 



          What we think of as our mind is a specific group of processes that we think of as going on in our heads but not out there in the rest of the world.  We have verbal thought, emotional thought and a realm of imaginative thought for each of the five senses.  There is also consciousness which involves a type of internal reflection in each of the realms of the five senses and then an awareness of the reflection through thought and memory.  And then there is the awareness of our awareness.  And all of this is mixed up with desire. and instincts.  And of course much more that is unconscious.  It is all very complex. It seems to be ungraspably complex and in it's ungraspableness we have come up with all sorts of simplified notions of how our minds work like Free Will.  Some believe our minds are the workings of our divine soul.   Some believe that our minds are functioning in a completely different realm then what we think of as the physical realm.
          The first step in the practice of meditation is to cultivate our inner eye to watch the functioning of our minds.  This is "mindfulness" which has become very important in current psychological therapy.  Through this practice there is no expectation of a complete understanding of the workings of our mind but there are some important broad insights that are possible.  Shakayamuni Buddha's expression of these insights forms the foundation of Buddhism.  His insight into how our mind creates suffering through desire and attachment became the first two of the Four Noble Truths.  As we develop in the practice of meditation and learn to quiet the mind we can experience the happiness that comes from turning off desires and attachments.  I would say this is the third and fourth  Noble Truths accept they express something a bit deeper then just a temporary turning off of desire and attachments.  The third and fourth Noble Truths are about transformation, a transformation that come about through both understanding and experience.  Shakyamuni expressed this understanding with four ideas.  Everything is in constant change,  The outcome of this change results from causes and conditions (cause and effect),  There is nothing like a Soul which resides in our minds.  This is just another way of saying our minds function in the same way as the rest of the World, constant change resulting from causes and effect.  The last idea that forms the foundation of Buddhism is the Twelve Fold Chain of Interdependent Origination in which  Shakyamuni traces out the causal steps which he believed lead to the delusional idea of an individual self.  Put together these ideas create a picture of the World in constant change, but not individual things in interaction but rather an almost infinitely complex web of cause and effect that is more like a fluid. 
           This picture of the world seems to fall short of the vision of non-duality that I constantly write about but it really doesn't.  Not experimentally, as Seng Tsan points out.  The duality that we seem to experience is a  result of the idea of an individual self which creates a notion of "subject" which separates itself from the "object" which are the things of this world.  But if we can stop the type of thinking which divides the world up into individual things then the subject object duality breaks down and the resulting experience Seng Tsan describes as: "the unity of emptiness. 

In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable 
and each contains in itself the whole world. "


          I think that many of us are confused when we encounter the word "emptiness" as it is used in Mahayana Buddhism.  Of course this is a translation of a Sanskrit word  sunyata, which cannot be easily translated but we have settled on using emptiness in English.  This is sort of a puzzling word which might be a good thing, but it's connotations often throw us off.  As I have tried to point out in my blogs and essays, emptiness is an expression of some particular experiences and cannot be properly pieced together Just intellectually from our normal experience.  Here Seng Tsan is emphasizing the non-dual and Oneness aspect of emptiness
          The "discriminating mind" is another phrase that has become important in the English Buddhist lexicon.  This refers to the aspects of our individual minds that divides the world up into likes and dislikes, rights and wrong, this and that.  it is not just one aspect of our intelligence but most of the cluster of processes that we think of as individual thought.  When I talk or write about stopping thought in meditation I am talking about stopping discriminating thought.  For many meditation practitioners their first deep experience is not from the complete stopping of all mental processes, consciousness included which is sometimes called Absolute Samadi but a lesser stopping of discriminating thought which breaks down the subject object duality for a moment and we find ourselves experiencing Oneness with a particular sensation, the call of a bird, the sound of a river, the sight of a mountain and in that moment we become the bird or the river or the mountain and in this experience recognize the Oneness of all things.
          We can become one with a sensation of something out there when we temporarily forget our own separateness and drop any idea of our own individuality.  If we recognize the greater truth of this experience then the implications are profound and far reaching.  We and all things are not just parts of the greater One but in this experience of identity are the greater One.  This makes no sense from a position of dualistic logic.  How can a part be the whole?  I think it makes some sense if we think of the infinite complexity of cause and effect.  Every thing, every individual is not just the result of limited chains of causes and effects but rather everything without exception is involved in the cause of everything else.  The whole Universe comes together in each seemingly individual thing.  The implications are even more far reaching.  Even our notions of time and space breaks down in logic of non-duality. All of time and space are present in each moment and each place.  This is beyond our complete understanding yet it is the nature of our pure experience in each moment, if there is no added discriminating thought.