The winds of Discrimination

The 40th Zen Ancestor Tongan Daopi had anxiety about obtaining "it" until Yunju told him, “you are already such a thing.”

"If you want to acquire such a thing, you must become such a person. Since you are already such a person, why be anxious about such a thing?" Togan woke up!

It has to be this exact being, here and now. My feet are cold over by the kitchen.

In Keizan’s Teisho he says;

“The winds of discrimination cannot enter this place of knowing.”  The "knowing by being" as Mujo says.

It is being Awareness as it Becomes. 

It’s before even witnessing this Truth. 

I am becoming. Spontaneous, mysterious, bright and lively. Full throated harmonizing with the whole self. Even when using the snowblower.

The most direct way for the fish to get the fly is to fully, wholeheartedly, one hundred percent be that fish - be that whole universe in that moment. 

"It's" Awareness as it becomes, "it" is simultaneous.

Dystonia and all!! (for me)

For me and each of us, "it" has to burst through "this body" in this moment and then the next and the next. Fully becoming excludes nothing, made of the fullness churning us. Full of beauty and light along with pain and anxiety.

Becoming can't be right or wrong, true or false.

Now, my feet are warm by the fire and Kayashapa’s toes wiggle as they did when cold in the kitchen.

“Using eyes, ears and mouth opening your hand and moving your feet — These are all Self. Fundamentally, it is not grasped with hands or seen by eyes.” Master Keizan’s teisho says in the Denkoroku. 

I was contemplating this sense of paradox the other day after the snow storm. I was using the snowblower and shoveling the driveway out. 

It was bright and cold outside. I was feeling joyful lively and singing as I do when I work. 

Then, doing the u-turn at the end of the driveway with the snowblower - hanging-on to the handlebars, letting the powered wheels turn "us" - all of sudden the footsteps in the snow "leaped out," as Dogen says, and hit me hard who was doing the snow blowing. 

“There’s Buddha!” I said out-loud and just started giggling and weeping and kept on working and singing, as Awareness. I just let it sink in or I into it. I felt sort of conscious of it, but didn’t feel bad for that fact. 

All the footsteps and the rows of snow Buddha! I felt like I was embodying awareness fully. It was beautiful and I kept going with it.

That one glimpse at the beginning was "out of time" and the “knowing” that Keizan mentions in his teisho.

Practice lately is arising as just being it, which we can’t know or grasp or keep. It feels more and more like I can know these facts. It’s like a building faith in just being aware. It is not the same as Keizan's “knowing” or?

Now the wood stove creaked as it cools off.

Whether it’s once-and-for-all or just a glimpse it gives a lot of grounding to a lot of anxiety for me and Tongan.

We just have to just keep coming back and rolling in this mysterious, amazing and beautiful and ugly and scary unfolding. 

Love,

Daiklan

The fish leaping! This is the cover of Mujo's book and highly recommended.