Seamlessness

John, Yin Ling and I enjoyed some writings I shared from Soto Zen teacher Anzan Hoshin Roshi, who is also Ven Jinmyo Osho's teacher.

Here's an excerpt from his book Intimate Reality which you can purchase from https://wwzc.org/intimate-reality

SEVEN: Seamlessness

“When the ten thousand dharmas move forward and practice and realize the self, this is awakening.”
Just for this moment: be right where you are, be just as you are. Release all of this pushing and pulling, this subject and object. Don’t fall into pushing against the pushing to get rid of it. Simply don’t push. Just sit. Release this pushing and pulling even slightly, for just one moment, and you will find that something begins to happen. The moment begins to exert itself as the sights and sounds, touch and taste, smells and thoughts and feelings.

You will discover that seeing has its own intelligence which presents itself as the green of leaves, the grey and blue and white of the clouds, the vast blue of the sky. Hearing has its own intelligence. All of the senses are open and the body is alive and knowing itself as the world.

Stand up and take a step. Another step. Each step exerts itself completely and then is gone. The moment exerts itself completely and then is gone, without a trace. There is no trace of that step in this step. There is just this step. There is just hearing, just seeing, just knowing. The ten thousand dharmas exert themselves completely and without effort.

You can grasp at whatever you want to, but there is nowhere that anything is separate from you so that you can take hold of it. Everything arises within the seamlessness of experience. If we enter yet further into this moment and enter directly into the exertion of these ten thousand dharmas, enter directly into how Awareness displays itself as what it is aware of, then something else begins to make itself clear. There aren’t “ten thousand” dharmas. There isn’t even “one” dharma either. There’s just this. This is the moment of dropping body and mind.

Well, where are these “bodies” and “minds” now? Someone, please, show me your body. How would you know about the body if not through the mind? The “body” is perceived by the mind. Is there an itch? A colour? A sound? You look at your hands, you move your thumb, wiggle your fingers. These are all just perceptions arising, dwelling and decaying. Your “body” is all in the mind. Now, where is this “mind”? There is this seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, thinking and feeling — but where is the “mind”? Someone, please, show me your mind.

When there is no separation, no distance to be closed between yourself and your experience, then where are you? The sound of a hammer, the sound of your breath. When there is just this there is no room for a body, no mind, no time, no space. There is just Open Luminosity which can sometimes look like a body, a mind. Everything is released, everything is dropped, everything rises up as it is, everything leaps into and out of itself. In this moment is the arising of all world-systems, in this moment is the vanishing of all world-systems.