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Zen & the Way: Observations On the Way from an American Zen Priest

Zen & the Way: Observations On the Way from an American Zen Priest

Last updated on: October 4, 2016 at 7:02 am by James Ford

Zen & the Way: Observations On the Way from an American Zen Priest 2016-10-04T07:02:20-07:00 James Ford

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Josh Bartok, my dharma successor and a teacher of growing reputation edited a book in 2013, Daily Doses of Wisdom: A Year of Buddhist Inspiration. In it he included a number of quotations pulled from two of my books, Zen Master WHO: A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen and If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes from a Zen Life.

What follows are fifteen quotations when taken together I believe represent a fair if not comprehensive presentation of what I’ve found and what I offer in my capacity as a teacher, touching on Zen, awakening, koans, life, and death.

Zen & the Way

James Ishmael Ford

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The way to wisdom is to hold all things, including ourselves, in open hands. In this difficult but necessary way, we discover how we can return to our authentic heritage, our true home. We can learn to use the fire of our minds to good purpose. (Zen Master WHO)

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A real spiritual practice plays rough with the ego. (If You’re Lucky)

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Doubt and faith travel together. It is our relentless presence to doubt and faith that takes us to the gate of nondual insight. Indeed both the path to the gate and the gate itself are discovered within that relentlessness. (Zen Master WHO)

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We appear in the world, quite real, but without finite edges. Turns out we are not complete and autonomous: rather we bleed out into the universe, into openness. Or perhaps it’s better to say we arise out of, are sustained by, and return to that openness, that boundlessness. A traditional Zen word for this aspect of what we are is “empty.” You might think of this Empty as our family name. You and I, and flies and lice, and stars and planets, and heat and cold – those are our personal names. But we also all belong to the great Empty family. (If You’re Lucky)

***

Awakening is not something “out there” or “down the line.” It happens in a mysterious, curious, wondrous moment; completely beyond any planning or hope. This is an important teaching: it tells us the possibility for awakening, for freedom, is always available to us right here, right now. Moreover, we don’t earn it. This awakening arose within the mind of an ordinary woodcutter, not a Buddha or a saint, or even a master meditator. This is wondrous good news – and I really want to underscore this point – for it shows that awakening is something such ordinary folk as you and I can achieve, just as we are. (Zen Master WHO)

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The Way is vast and endlessly forgiving. It is also harsh, demanding everything from us. But this “everything” is not about how much time you choose to put on the pillow. (If You’re Lucky)

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“Just sitting” shouldn’t be understood as mere quietism; nor as a way to dwell in states of bliss, suppress our thoughts, or cultivate any kind of blankness. Shikantaza invites us to intimately be within the spaciousness that includes thought, as well as the space outside the thoughts and the very thoughts themselves. We are invited to simply experience the natural expansiveness of our mind and whatever it may reveal – even if what it reveals is an experience of contraction! (Zen Master WHO)

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Stretch a little beyond what seems comfortable. Sit at least a little most every day. And plod on. Forgive yourself your failures, but resume. Fall down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start over again. One teacher liked to say, “Fall down nine times, get up ten.” Start over. That’s the practice. (If You’re Lucky)

***

As we push through any koan – experiencing great doubt, great faith, and great determination – we find the exact identity between our ordinary consciousness and fundamental openness. Nondual reality includes subject and object, each itself and freely transposing with the other; first this, now that, sometimes one drops away, sometimes the other, sometimes both drop away, sometimes one emerges from the other, sometimes both emerge together – but we rest nowhere. Resting nowhere and moving fluidly among these perspectives is the true practice of koan introspection. (Zen Master WHO)

***

Nondual reality includes subject and object, each itself and freely transposing with the other; first this, now that – sometimes one drops away, sometimes the other, sometimes both drop away, sometimes one emerges from the other, sometimes both emerge together – but we rest nowhere. Resting nowhere and moving fluidly among these perspectives is the true practice of koan introspection – helping us on our way. (If You’re Lucky)

***

Karma is the observation that everything has causes and everything has consequences; rebirth is the observation that I am constantly being created and recreated by each succeeding moment. (If You’re Lucky)

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My own teacher once told me that awakening is always an accident; and I tell my own students this today. There is no obvious causal relationship between nondual insight and anything we might do or not do. But if awakening is an accident, certain practices help us become accident-prone. (Zen Master WHO)

***

Certainly, as I look at myself honestly, relentlessly, in the spirit of not-knowing, frankly I find it impossible to discern any part of me that isn’t formed by conditions ranging from my genetic makeup to my ongoing encounters with events and people. I am this because of that. And the “that” that makes “this” changes in a heartbeat – who I am changes, sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically, with the very next addition of experience.

As I experience it all, it seems we are all part of a great current flowing from some unknown source to some unknown end, lie a river on its way to an ocean. All we know with anything even approaching certainty is this moment itself. And we need to notice what we find here.

To work the image a bit, here is the water, of course, rushing on. But there are many other things, as well. Bits of this and that, sticks and pebbles, whatever. Sometimes a bit of brush gets caught toward the edge of the river, and various things collect together in a swirl. This little eddy of stuff is me. Another is you. Just as real as can be. And just as temporary. For me a swirling eddy of Jamesishness. Then somewhere along the line something will happen and the eddy of stuff that is James will disappear, but the current will continue rushing on, taking new shapes, new forms, each for a moment, before again resuming that great flow from dark to dark. (If You’re Lucky)

***

Really, the deal is pretty simple; all one needs to do is just sit down, shut up, and pay attention. This is the universal solvent of the heart. Become as wide as the sky. Let the whole of what is play across the screen of the mind and heart. Just notice. (If You’re Lucky)

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