Showing posts with label Zen Master Madelon Bolling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zen Master Madelon Bolling. Show all posts
Soh

Also see: Three Treasures Sangha in Seattle


From https://three-treasures-sangha.org/observing/

By a Zen teacher from Seattle.
Observing — A Talk By Madelon Bolling — November 10, 2024
Posted by TTSangha on Nov 20, 2024 in Zen Talks | Comments Off
Daowu’s Condolence: Case 55 of the Blue Cliff Record
Daowu and Jianyuan went to a house to pay condolences. Yuan rapped on the coffin and asked, “Living or dead?”
Daowu said, “Living I won’t say. Dead I won’t say.”
Jianyuan said, “Why won’t you say?”
Daowu said, “Won’t say! Won’t say!”
During their return trip, Jianyuan said, “Hoshang, please tell me right away. If you don’t, I’ll hit you.”
Daowu said, “You may hit me if you like, but I won’t say.” Jianyuan hit him.
PSC
We’re all of us facing death from the instant we are born. We can’t face away from it since it is part of life itself. Death is seen as an end, the ending of everything. No more fun and no more hassles, no more pain, restriction, success, failure, love, hate, shame, terror or joy. No more children, dandelions, seawater, forests, owls, cigarette butts, toads, blackberries or traffic jams. No more experiencing; no more anything whatsoever. Or so the story goes.
But death is not a thing. Irises spring up bright and bold, their soft wrinkly petals shimmering in the sun, expanding… and then little by little the petals wilt, shrivel to the stalk that also browns, drying up–“dying,” we say. Fear of this process is woven into the cells of the body-mind and we all experience it one way or other.
Death is a change, a browning of leaves, drying of sap, softening and melting of our solid form. It’s a change of state like mist from the exhalation of trees rising to form clouds, or like the downpour from thunderclouds streaming into pools, torrents, rivers, falling over precipices, forming lakes and seas. We are reluctant to change, to leave what is known. We are reluctant to enter the stream, imagining this morning that we are still the cloud we were yesterday. We identify with concepts, really, thinking we are something without change—though in this world change is the only constant. And then we have a conflict with the natural assumption that there must be some essence of “me” that is, therefore, without change. Knowing the body will die means that the unchanging essence we identify with must be not-body in nature. Many systems of belief and behavior arise from that logic. Thinking by its divisive nature reifies or solidifies identity, to make it something enduring. But Zen looks at things differently.
To be clear and tranquil about the end of “me” I need to be clear and tranquil about what “me” is, and in general there is a lot of confusion on this point. We often hear teachers say, “you are not what you think you are.” But then what? The mind says, “Oh yeah, yeah—all beings without exception have Buddha nature, I’ve heard. Whatever that means—it’s sort of beyond what I can get.” And it pulls attention back into cloud-identified dreaming.
Our natural wish to end the pain of living sometimes shows up as Hamlet’s cry:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
So, we either wish to not experience death or wish we could just get out of this thing we call “life,” so full of beauty and horror, pain, joy, pain, ambivalence, and pain. But there is a way to melt this too solid flesh and resolve it into a dew without killing.
In the Diamond Sutra the Buddha says:
Subhuti, no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self or who creates the perception of a being, a life, or a soul. (Diamond Sutra, Ch. 3)
Whether we care about being called a bodhisattva or not, it is simply a mistake to hold on to the idea of a self, a living being, a life span or a soul. In the Great Vows we recite: The many beings are numberless; I vow to save them. I don’t think any of us are lying, and having the intention to save all beings is the very definition of bodhisattva.
Yet every day we assume and operate on assumptions that I am a self, I am a living being; I have a life span and an enduring essence. Assuming and operating on those assumptions is exactly the act of creating a perception of a self, a being, a life or a soul.
Subhuti, no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self or who creates the perception of a being, a life, or a soul. (Diamond Sutra, Ch. 3)
This Diamond Sutra statement might be taken as an article of faith—but that would be to hold on to an idea, a concept, as distinct from living experience. The sutra is fine as a place to start, but only experience will address and dissolve fears and doubts and show them for what they are—a mistake. This is not a willful or blameworthy mistake, it’s simple error—like swerving to avoid a chuckhole in the road only to discover that it was just a big oil smudge.
What experience could possibly dissolve the deep and ordinary fear of death as well as the deep and ordinary suffering of life? What kind of experience could possibly dissolve the doubt that we can truthfully vow to save all beings? It is not some distant state to be reached only after our knees have given out entirely. It is simply this very experience right now, considered with relentless honesty, neither adding to it nor leaving anything out. How do you know you’re sitting in the zendo? You see cushions, floor, other people sitting, flowers, altar, etc. But how do you know you are here?
Let’s close our eyes for a bit now. What and where is the sense of “me”? Somebody once called this type of exercise “attending to the part of our minds we call a body.” Let’s see—there is the seat pressure, and other various sensations just as they are. Yes, there’s that ache, and the little squiggle around the stomach, maybe? And the changes we call breath, the passing sensations of what we have learned to call hands, face, stomach, shifting clothing; and sounds. But in all honesty can you find “me”? I mean, we have learned to say “my seat, my knees, my whatever,” in referring to these sensations—but don’t the sensations have to be observed from someplace? … and that would be “me” then? Well, that assumption that we have to observe from someplace is a story the thinking mind tells us.
Look again.
Sensations seem to recur with variations and the thinking mind begins to form ideas from these approximate regularities: The thinking mind forms stories, images, projections, assumptions and expectations of a solid body, separated out from its surroundings, located in space and time. But “surroundings” as seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted by “the body” are exactly and completely the experience of “body” itself. In fact, the notion of “body” is extrapolated from those sensations. Extrapolated! Imagined, approximated, and projected. In our very own experience, vivid as can be, right here and right now, surroundings and body come to awareness as one inseparable moment. Sensation is awareness—there is no perceiver, no “me” outside of this moment’s experiencing.
Our usual habit of referring to these experiences as “my hands,” “my feet,” “my back,” “my head,” “my seat,” and assuming their solid ongoing presence even when not in immediate evidence—this is what the Diamond Sutra means by “creating a perception” of a body. What in fact is the reality of it? just this experiencing, the pressure, the warmth, the changes we call ‘movement’ before thinking separates seat from cushion, skin from clothing, air from lungs, me from you and so forth.
It pays to be careful at this juncture. Experiencing, pressure, warmth, discomfort, changes, movement—all of these are tangled with thoughts or mental images too. Without thought, there is just raw sensation—not even “raw sensation” (which is a thought)—just [hit the floor—bam!] without thought-content or meaning. There you go, Hamlet—this too, too solid flesh is resolved [bam!].
If you look now at the floor, that is not really a floor. Floor is the seeing experience of this moment. We can’t experience seeing without seeing something. This goes for all the senses and even the experience called “thinking.” The world of things and objects and thought is the phenomenal world of experiencing. Our “self” is not different from, not separate from this manifest world. We are no other than the 10,000 things appearing as awareness.
There is actually no split between awareness and “the world,” between awareness and stuff-and-things. This live, in-the-moment recognition of non-separation, of no split is what is referred to as “emptiness” in Zen terms. You can see why that is confusing. The felt sense of immediate experiencing is anything but empty in the ordinary sense of nothing-there, like the inside of an empty box. And yet it is literally “no thing there.” Instead there is experiencing: awareness that is a rich, varied and ever-changing closeness or presence in the living moment. There is no split between awareness and stuff-and-things. Some call this “seamless experiencing.”
But how do we get the impression that “things” are “out there” so vividly that we act on that impression? How does the living sensation-kaleidoscope start behaving as though there are 10,000 separate things opposed to “me”? It’s this curious process called thinking. Thinking tells us the story that we live in a world of separate things. “See, there is the flower arrangement, and here is your body; there is the bird call, and here is talking going on.” And we believe what it says. Sensations themselves, which are our actual unvarnished living experience—sensations do not, cannot convey separation. There is still the flower arrangement as seeing, the body as touching, the bird call and talking as hearing. To free ourselves from the story of solid separateness, to free ourselves from the tyranny of thinking, what is needed? This is kind of funny, kind of a punch-line in the cosmic joke. What’s needed is to notice that even thinking is a phenomenon, an appearance. Thinking itself is a shape that awareness takes.
How does this resolve the fear of ending? It is no good to take my word for it, any more than it would help to memorize the Diamond Sutra. Instead, look closely, listen closely, attend to experiencing. Our task here is to return as often as we can throughout the day to this fundamental fact, to be completely honest in sorting out actual experiencing from stories about it, and not mixing those two realms up.
If awareness appears as this moment, as experiencing, what dies?
I’m going to leave you sort of dangling on that question. It can’t be answered with words, though maybe the question itself is no question. Anyway, in closing, here is a poem that talks about a bird as ordinary and as rare as this angle on experiencing.
Bird-watcher’s Notes
They say the Yellowthroat
is hard to spot the first time.
After that, you start to see it everywhere.
Look up through branches and leaves
gazing neither near nor far
in blue light and shadow light…
Without looking directly
open the sides, the back of your eyes.
Let edges disappear.
It may show up behind
where the line between
sleep and waking vanishes.
Grey, green and even darkness
wake in that bright presence
closer than thought.
You are – that doorway and the neighbor’s
chuckle, a plan for painting,
and a dog’s eager bark.
No doubt the far field,
the sprinkling of deer and geese
show up thus as cheek and shoulder blade,
leaving only laughter.
Is that? Yes! Yellowthroat!
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1910 - 24th Ave S.
Seattle, WA 98144
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P.O. Box 12542
Seattle, WA 98111
206-395-5226
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Soh

Also see: Observing — A Talk By Madelon Bolling — November 10, 2024


Good articles on Dogen Zen and anatta and total exertion. 

Three Treasures Sangha in Seattle

https://three-treasures-sangha.org/

 

 

Three Treasures Sangha

Address: P.O. Box 12542   Seattle WA 98111
Tradition: Mahayana, Soto/Rinzai Zen
Affiliation: Diamond Sangha
Phone: (206) 324-5373 (answering machine)
Website: http://three-treasures-sangha.org/
Find on: 
Founder: Robert Aiken Roshi  
Teacher: Jack Duffy Roshi  
Notes and Events:

Mail to : P.O. Box 12542, Seattle, WA 98111      

 

 

 

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Someone from Seattle, USA at the I AM stage asked me how to find a mentor. I did a search and found that a Zen center in Seattle clearly expresses anatta and total exertion insights. Good articles in that website.
A Reality Even Prior . . . A Talk by Madelon Bolling
Posted by Three Treasures Sangha on Dec 1, 2021 in Zen Talks | Comments Off
Blue Cliff Record, case 43
A monk asked Dongshan,
“When cold and heat visit us, how should we avoid them?”
Dongshan said, “Why not go where there is neither cold nor heat?”
The monk asked, “Where is there neither cold nor heat?”
Dongshan said, “When it is cold, the cold kills you. When it is hot, the heat kills you.”
This is the start of a new year, our first zenkai in 2022. It’s so strange that even here, in this gathering dedicated to seeing through delusion, our most casual language casts a magical network of delicately nuanced delusion around us so cleverly, so gently, that we accept the results as reality.
My mind says: Wait a minute – what do you mean by “delusion”? I mean, yada yada yada, delusion is bad, so what? I’ve heard it all before. Bo-ring. It’s a new year – there should be something new to offer. Besides, to me the word delusion means I have screwed up – I’m such a fool: caught in delusion and suffering from it in spite of supposedly knowing better, in spite of having studied with wise teachers for years. Just what do you mean by “delusion,” anyway?
Okay, then. We tend to say, for instance, “This is the start of a new year,” as though there were something called “a year” out there, and that we perceive “a start” to it, as though there were currently existing old years and new years, each with beginning, middle, and end. Even to say “the first zenkai” quietly sets in motion a whole fantastical world where “zenkai” and “years” are stable, known entities with expected occurrences and features. But everything – everything – is subject to change – like the location of today’s retreat. We have surely seen enough startling change in institutions and experiences on a world-wide scale over the last couple years to support such a broad statement. Everything is subject to change.
And, though our experience shows us impermanence at every turn, language leads us to believe in permanence, in the unchanging existence of named phenomena. Just because the name is the same as always, we expect the manifestation, the actual experience, to be the same. Think of your experience of the recent holidays. Of New Year’s. Or of Mom and Dad. America. Sesshin at Indianola. Liberty and justice for all. Everything is changing, and we are likely to become disheartened, annoyed, irritated, disoriented, frightened, and angry when we encounter changes.
Even saying “everything is subject to change” is misleading, because I said “everything,” but ultimately there is no such thing as a thing, an independently existing entity. There is only experience, literally that which we go through. From speaking of it we naturally tend to infer that there are separate, distinct, unchanging realities.
However, we cannot perceive, cannot see, hear, or touch unless there is change – tiny shifts in phenomena. The shifts may seem to occur either on the sensing side or in the object being sensed, but in reality, there are not two sides to experience. There is only this moment of experiencing, of awareness, and the moment of contact is the change. Both subject and object are inferred appearances.
If there is no change, no movement, we lose the capacity to detect sensation and so lose contact with what we call the object. It’s called ‘sensory adaptation’ by physiologists, but for our purposes, we’re attending to the experience – the phenomenological aspects of contact with the world. Because to top it all off, “subject” and “object” themselves are mental constructs – “subject” literally means ‘that which is thrown under’ and object means ‘that which is thrown outward’. Both are abstractions from undivided experiencing rather than distinct free-standing entities.
So subject and object are ways of understanding, sorting and codifying that liveliness, that fact that I’m calling ‘undivided experiencing’. There really are no separate things to be classified as subject and object. These are mental categories, and mental categories only. All right – if there is no such thing as a subject or an object, what in the world does that leave?
There’s a fascinating entry on Change in the International Encyclopaedia of Buddhism. The following quote from that entry sums it up neatly:
In truth there is no doer but a doing, no feeler but a feeling, and no actor but an acting.
(Vol. 4, p. 117)
Though experiencing is indivisible, language leads us to believe in the separation of subject and object. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s simply the human condition, a way of navigating the passing situation we call life. It is in fact totally necessary for the business of navigating our lives! But how can I keep from getting tangled in this web of misleading notions?
We all know first-hand that there is suffering and we’ve been told it is due to delusion. That’s the sticky part. If there is no doer, no feeler, and no actor, wouldn’t suffering just be out of the picture? It won’t do to just say, “there’s no such thing as suffering.” After all, the first Noble Truth is “there is suffering.” Suffering is distinguished from pain in Buddhist literature: it is resistance to pain, to unwanted conditions or situations – resistance that causes suffering.
What do I mean by resistance? Well, just a bit ago, I said, “Everything is changing, and we become disheartened, annoyed, irritated, disoriented, frightened, angry.” We can’t help feeling these unhappy states, but then we glom onto stories about them, and those stories tend to emphasize how we shouldn’t have to feel the way we do. Resistance is like that. It extends our contact with painful experience. And that’s called suffering. What would it be like if we felt disheartened, annoyed, irritated, etc., and just attended to that while it was occurring? “This is the experience called ‘irritated’; what are the sensations that led me to call it ‘irritated’?” Let’s see: scrunching face, pursed lips, tightness in my middle, short, noisy breaths – and racing thoughts. Can we allow ourselves to be fully present with that experience for as long as it lasts without trying to change it? Huh. Interesting.
The classical advice is to stop identifying with perceptions. Unfortunately, this can’t be done just by understanding the principle and saying, “Oh! Well, I just don’t identify with perceptions”! No – this move is a practice: it has to be enacted anew, constantly – and experienced live in the moment each time. Otherwise, language shortcuts will take over, and before you know it, you’re identifying with perceptions again. Let’s explore.
There is experience in the form of sensations. What is that experience before words, before thought? That is, what is there – what is it like before even the crude labels of pleasant or unpleasant, pleasurable or painful?? This exploration can be done playfully. Playfulness allows us to experiment rather than just follow rules. To say, “I see icicles” posits a subject (I) and object (icicles). We report on perceptions (which are a form or view of sensations). This report seems to make two things: I and icicles. But what is this experience really? Look for the sensations, get closer to the feeling, the lived actuality of the sensory experience. What does it feel like in the body? Oh! This is called seeing icicles: moving cautiously past icy front steps, frozen cheeks and fingers, slippery footing, there’s a bright startle of light in the corner – dripping daggers on the eaves. Don’t bother with further associations, memories, comparisons or to-do lists outside of the moment of this experience.
Try observing impersonally, so instead of saying “I am making rhubarb crisp” notice hefting heavy red-green stalks; pot-pot-pot when knife strikes the cutting board; gritty feel of blending brown sugar and butter, light scent of oatmeal flakes; checking the oven temp. Instead of “I am cold,” try “cold is happening,” or “this (shivering, goosebumps, numb fingers) is called cold,” and the like. Deliberately leave the words “I,” “me,” and “mine” out of the statement. What happens when you try it? It may draw attention deeper into the actual moment, the process of micro-events, into experiencing itself. Does this seem less true than the standard way of talking? These personal pronouns are a useful habit – a necessary shortcut for day-to-day communication. But aside from solidifying the notion of a person, an identity, a doer, I think you’ll find that this personal-pronoun quirk of language doesn’t make the experience more real, or vivid. Rather, it draws attention away from experience.
A handy shortcut is this: they say this is called “being cold,” but what is it really, before words? They say this is called “giving a talk” – but what is it really? Hmm, what’s going on here? To the extent that there is attention to experiencing in the moment – before words, before thought – awareness is moving away from mental constructs and resting more fully in living experience. Sometimes we refer to it as bodily or physical experiencing, but even that is based on the inference that there is “a physical body.”
This is what Dongshan was pointing toward when he advised, “kill yourself with cold.”
A monk asked Dongshan,
“When cold and heat visit us, how should we avoid them?”
Dongshan said, “Why not go where there is neither cold nor heat?”
The monk asked, “Where is there neither cold nor heat?”
Dongshan said, “When it is cold, the cold kills you. When it is hot, the heat kills you.”
This complete experiencing of cold doesn’t literally kill your body. Rather, it prevents a “you” from forming, where “you” means, a freestanding, independently existing, solid, unchanging entity. When you become just experiencing, that is the instant totality – everything is gone except cold. And you are integral to the unknown, unimaginable, all-embracing whole.
The experience of touching, or seeing, or hearing is complete in itself – it is the whole thing, the entirety with no future and no past, no self and no object of perception.
The statement, “I see a snowy lawn” creates the verbal illusion that there is a separate I, a separate act called seeing, and a separate perception called a snowy lawn. Really there is only this: momentary awareness in the form of a snowy lawn, chill rash of goosebumps, small gasp of surprise: hey, it snowed! Beyond this there is no I, no snowy lawn, no separate seeing: there is only a complete, vivid, simple form of awareness: singular, inclusive, momentary, replete with change.
Does this mean everything else goes blank? Not at all! That’s why the Heart Sutra says there is no ignorance and also no ending of ignorance; no old age and death and also no ending of old age and death. As this singular, inclusive, momentary awareness, we are connected with and woven into all phenomena of the whole world, the whole universe, moment by moment.
Koan are designed to help us step into a completely different experience of who or what we are, of what life is, of what and how the world is. Attending to moment-by-moment experiencing and giving a rest to the compulsive, fixed “I” reference can be a step into a perspective that cannot be quantified, really, or described, except maybe as jewel-like glimmers of experience like the following, where, you may notice, the location and function of “I” has changed:
Miscellaneous Koans, # 11
With hands of emptiness
I take hold of the plow.
While walking
I ride the water buffalo.
As I pass over the bridge,
the bridge flows,
the water is still.
In closing, here’s an excerpt from a poem by Dr. Belinda Fu, a physician at UW, improv actor, teacher and friend:
There is only one moment to be counted
It is the one in which I find myself
Over and over
The wren flicks to another sudden branch
The spaniel sighs
A drop of water rolls off the icicle’s tip
Now and now and now again
In this new year I strive
To accumulate only this moment
Again and again
Surprise!
This very one.
three-treasures-sangha.org
A Reality Even Prior . . . A Talk by Madelon Bolling | Three Treasures Sangha

 

 

 

    4 Comments

      • Yin Ling
        U r sooo dedicated !


        Soh Wei Yu
        Yin Ling just doing my part
        it's not like i became his teacher haha that'll be too much for me
        just letting him find the right direction... can change his life 🙂


      • Yin Ling
        Soh Wei Yu 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻even searching and reading takes a lot of effort !


      • Soh Wei Yu
        Teach you a trick:
        Let's say someone wants to find a teacher in seattle
        1) go google "buddhanet seattle directory" https://www.google.com/search...
        2) click on first link
        3) on the 'search for keyword' textbox, enter and search 'seattle', this will limit the results further
        4) go to each url and try to scan the articles for anatta realization
        helps if you are anatta bot like me
        buddhanet seattle directory - Google Search
        GOOGLE.COM
        buddhanet seattle directory - Google Search
        buddhanet seattle directory - Google Search

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      • Yin Ling
        Hahahaa wow thanks ! I try n see


      • Soh Wei Yu
        Not many centers have anatta realization. If there is even one center that has anatta realization there in that city, it will be great already.
        Also some centers follow teachers that have anatta realization (like thich nhat hanh centers), but its far from certain the local teachers have realised it. Better to lead them to teachers that reside there and have realization.

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      • Yin Ling
        Soh Wei Yu so this buddhanet is like worldwide directory of Buddhist centres?


      • Soh Wei Yu
        Buddhanet has all sorts of articles and resources, and yes a worldwide directory is part of it.


      • Soh Wei Yu
        The worldwide directory may not be very complete though, sometimes they miss out on some.


      • Yin Ling
        Soh Wei Yu oh I see. Thanks !

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