the Zen of Shin

My mornings often go like this.
*
I see this old fat man in the mirror and know that smiling glassy face is just this passing moment, the last of many. So many faces have looked back at me. The bloodied face of a youth learning to shave; the face my wife married. Now, they are gone and no matter how hard I look, I just see this face. However impermanent, this face, this sense of self, has been my closest companion, this self I talk to when no one else will listen, this well into which I drop stones of wisdom. How critical this self has become, so unwilling to hear reasons, to listen to my excuses. It hides from me what little it knows and mocks my passing certainty. Worse, it tells me there is no one there. It tells me there is no self, no good, no evil, only this illusionary sense of being. How difficult to live in this moment? Existence is impermanent and I am grasped by it, the irony of it. This now, this fleeting now, conceived in memory, born in reflection, colored by this foolish, this limited, imperfect changing self is all I can ever know.

Which reminds me, I should take the dog for a walk.

I try to spend a few moments each day looking at myself in the mirror. I find the experience somewhat disorienting, indeed, disconcerting, which can be a good thing. For a moment, I think about losing weight. I should do that. The dog needs a walk and I could use the exercise. Thinking about exercise makes me philosophic. Wanting is suffering.

My experience has been that I create reality. I know I give it color. I lean toward casting off rather than attaching, but I doubt if my grasp of reality has greatly improved. In my rush to create reality, I often become drawn to the meaningless, confused by the unimportant. I know I want, and color my wanting with reasons, that's Bonno. The Buddha talked about that a good deal - suffering - not so much about Bonno, being unfamiliar with Japanese.

About wanting: while hatred is wanting to do harm, perhaps more destructive is love. If you love that which does not suit you, that which does not fit you, dear me, what a mess that can be. Few people question why they love and fewer still question why they hate. Half of all marriages fail and yet we don't think we are foolish, limited or ever so slightly imperfect. Each says the fault is in the other. Go figure.

Then there is war. Call it wholesale wanting. Wanting gone badly awry, call it stampeding stupidity, call us lemmings. War remains difficult to understand, harder to explain. Our history is filled with wars, all history is filled with war, peace is the exception. Each war was started by someone who thought they had a good reason. War is the prostitution of reason. And people protest, saying they are not fools, giving no thought to being limited or imperfect. Bonno is called blind passion because it is easier to see in others than in ourselves. It is why we are foolish. It is a good argument for humility.

Speaking of suffering, I should take the dog for a walk. The yard has grown to familiar to him. He's smelled it all before.

First, let me say that a hundred and eight blind passions is an arbitrary number, it is all one, delusion. My bonno is in the present. The past is a memory, the future a matter of conjecture, both are constructs based upon compounded delusion, neither can be trusted. Come New Year's Eve, I ring the bell and think of my foolish, limited, imperfect self. I have no need to keep count, I could never ring it enoug.

We are all blinded by our passions, our Bonno. Bonno or blind passion is off the leash wanting, wanting without knowing who or what we are. All dogs know this. It is why awareness is so elusive, and why the world is full of fools. It begins with wanting, wanting something more, something different, something other than what we have. It doesn't matter what. We want and we have our reasons for wanting. Wanting changes reality, our reality. It makes us fools because we are limited in what we can do, imperfect in how we do it. We all want. What make us foolish is what we want, how badly we want it, how poorly we fit what we want. The key to it all is knowing who we are, what we are. Few of us do. Perhaps none of us do. So we wind up doing less than we could or more that we shouldn't. This is dukkha; the bumpity bump of the out of round wheel.

He stands by the door and gives his tags a shake, looks over at me and shuffles he feet. I know I should take him for a walk. I have no where to go, nothing to do, not when he needs to go. In a minute. He isn't chewing on the door knob yet.

I was a psych major in college, a social psych major, born of the premise that society drives you nuts, which may explain my interest in Buddhism. For a number of years I looked at the various kinds of Buddhism like I was picking out a puppy, looking for one that would wag its tail. I finally picked Jodo Shin Shu because it was the least demanding. Nomo Amida Butsu. How many years of study doesw that take? I was to learn that Buddhism can be pretty demanding, much like Zen haikus. My Buddhism will always be colored in Zen tones.

It took me awhile, but after having given the matter considerable thought - between naps - I have concluded that there is only one form of Buddhism; your kind, my kind, whatever kind that works for you. When all is said and done you have to make your own kind of Buddhism. Which is a lot of work. People talk about following a school of Buddhism. Schools, like where you go to learn stuff. Schools of Buddhism? Well maybe, if they had basketball teams, but no, no thank you very much. The differences in Buddhism are superficial, disappearing as you get it, if you get it. If you don't get it, studying the differences won't get it for you.

I have long held that in Buddhism there is nothing to teach and only fools to teach it, but then we are all fools, so there you go. So what is "it"? "It" is what's behind the shinjin smile. People are born, do the best they can, and then die. It has always been that way. Nothing to do, no where to go, nothing to hang on to. That's the box we all have to work inside of. Of course, we are all fools, none of us has anymore concept of awareness than we do of string theory, less actually. There is what, eleven dimensions in string theory, more? No problem. How very Zen? Of course we are all fools. Still, I see no reason to institutionalize it; foolishness must be free to express itself or there would be no point to it.

There is a cure. It is called Sinjin. Shinjin: anyone who can truly grasp that their understanding is limited, foolish, and imperfect has all the awareness anyone will every attain in this life. That is Shinjin. It isn't about optimism or pessimism, it is reality. It is about playing golf in a cow pasture among the cows and bulls and cow pies. It certainly isn't about knowledge. Knowledge alone does not bring understanding. Awareness is a quantum leap beyond collecting facts and data. It's about being limited, imperfect, and this blind passion thing that makes us foolish.

Chanting. I don't think it cures anything, but it helps. Chanting: Lose yourself in the sound when you chant. Chanting is meditation. When you chant, just chant. Chant like you were a drop of water in a great stream of sound. Women tend to chant from the throat, Men chant from the belly, though some chant through their nose. I don't know why. Chanting is about the experience of chanting, that is what it means.

And then there is all the confusion about Nomo Amida Butsu. Nomo Amida Butsu is what it is and means what it means. Don't worry about it. Let it find you.

Buddhism is, to whatever degree you are prepared to accept it, concerned with the perception of experienced reality. Given that each of us is limited, imperfect and foolish, it could hardly be about developing the intellect. This is the Zen of Shin.

The dog knows who he is. He sits by the door and watches me, waiting.

Indeed, Buddhism is not about finding answers, which is all the answer there is in Buddhism. The question is, how does desiring that your life be different make your life more difficult? It is what it is, isn't it?. You would think so, but what goes on inside confuses your perception of whats going on outside. Knowing this is going on allows for better choices, although I doubt desire can ever be overcome. We are talking means here, not an end, Buddhism is not an answer. Any answer can be found, or created, and then what? Where would you put it? How long would you keep it before it began to bore you or smell bad? All answers are too limited to be of any use. If you can't give them up cold turkey, cut back to two or three a day.

Anyway, I should take the dog for a walk, and along the way, try to take refuge in the Buddha. Namo Amida Butsu

Comments

[Tozan]

With respect to the considerable thought that must have gone into this - how can there be any confusion about Shin? Or Zen?
And when you write, "Buddhism is not about finding answers," do you mean, "Shakyamuni Buddha's Dharma is not about finding answers?" To me the Dharma is One Big Question coupled with One Big Answer (which can be phrased either as "not necessarily" or "yes and no"). Wouldn't you agree?