Numerology/Astrology for 3/11/17
3/11/17 is the number 6. The number 6
reminds us that only by being still can you begin to peel away the layers of
ego and distortion that you have placed upon your soul to protect yourself.
Life builds up defense mechanisms in order to cope with this hurts and upsets
that happen on a daily basis. You believe you have to have a tough skin in
order to survive. But the great teachers speak about transparency and the
ability to know yourself so completely that the defense postures melt away and
your authentic self is enough to move through all situations and circumstances
when you lead with the energy of transparency. This word means to allow things
to move through you. Yes, they will be felt and experienced but when you know
who you are deep down inside and you have learned to love and accept yourself
there is nothing to defend. You know yourself to be a completely flawed person
with a great heart, a ton of love to give, and the compassion to allow yourself
to make many mistakes in order to have a full experience of this world and
these circumstances.
A Virgo Moon all day puts
communications, organizing, and producing in the forefront. The Sun forms a
quincunx with Jupiter today, which can point to some problems finally coming to
satisfying conclusions or decisions. This influence can serve to contrast two
very different drives and goals, and it can be difficult to know your next step
as a result. The desire to experience something new, or for more freedom to
explore, can amount to restlessness if you don't know what it is you want. This
is a time of adjustments, and perhaps of letting go of old habits so that you
can free yourself up for different experiences. A Venus-Mars parallel boosts
your desire to merge and create. Relationships and creating new connections are
the motivators now. This dovetails nicely with Mars in Taurus since earth
element signs like to see the results of their efforts. Virgo likes to clean,
organize, simplify and heal. Because Venus is retrograde until April 15th, this
is a good weekend to go through your stuff and make a pile of things to
release. It is a time to really let go of that which no longer serves who you
are becoming.
~Suzanne Wagner~
Quote
Do you do what it is right for this world or do you do what
you want to do?
Unfortunately, most of us are still operating from not fully
developed brain that choses again and again to do what it wants to do without
regard to others’ feelings, thoughts, or the consequences on a larger scale of
our actions.
Compassion is a tool that is developed over time through experience to become the
more dominant thought and choice.
Each person is born with a huge amount of compassion but disappointment, hurt,
anger, and resentment build up over time and lay a cover over that core
compassion.
For some, that compassion has to be worked at and labored
over to remove the false selves that have suffocated and hidden that natural
core essence of compassion that everyone is born with to a greater or lesser
degree.
It is by focusing on it with intent to develop yourself into a kind and good
person that you learn to lead your thoughts through the lens of compassion
rather than self-interest.
~Suzanne Wagner~
Blog
The leaves of oak trees outside the Hatto window rustle
in the wind. A crow caws, a car passes. Rain falls. As each of these sounds
arise within the space of hearing they interact with the space in which they
arise and point to the space around them. The Sakyamuni Buddha rupa on the
Butsudan points to the space around it. And each of you, sitting on your zafu,
point to the space around you. Everything that you see or hear, every sensation
you experience points to the space around it. In fact, everything you
experience, large or small, points to the space around it. When you feel the
heat of summer or the cold of winter or see the sun rise or set or look at the
night sky, these may seem vast but they are still pointing to the yet vaster
space around them.
Being transparent to experiencing does not mean stepping
back, pretending you're not there. Nor does it mean glazing or spacing out. It
is not the absence of something; it is meeting the Suchness of experiencing as
it actually is, fully and completely. When you meet experiencing as it actually
is there is no separation between you and what you are experiencing. And in
this I, am not just talking about there being no separation between you and the
experiences you like. I am talking about all experiencing. In this realm of
birth and death there is great beauty as well as great ugliness; there is ease
and there is difficulty. There is like and dislike. We want it all to be just
'all alright' for ourselves and for those we care about, all of the time. But
it isn't. Everything is impermanent, everything changes. You can try to stand
solid and unyielding in the midst of impermanence, but it won't work.
As the word 'transparency' is commonly used, it merely
refers to light passing through matter, for example, light passing through a
sheet of transparent glass. In the context of our practice, however, we are not
talking about light as light waves - light that you can see with your eyes.
What is being described is how everything that is known is open to the Knowing
that it arises within - if it is known intimately, with the whole bodymind. The
knowingness of knowing, the capacity to know, is traditionally called
"komyo" or "luminosity", the Luminosity of Knowing. This
quality of luminosity is also spoken of as "sunyata" - emptiness,
openness, transparency. Whatever is known is not actually a thing, no matter
how you might think of it. In the fact of present experiencing, it is a known,
an experience, and is utterly transparent. In reality, everything is already
exposed, we are already exposed, but we like to think that we can hide.
What hides is self-image, the image we have of ourselves
and the world. It doesn't exist as an entity or a thing. It is created through
a process of contraction, but when it is propagated and acted out, it can of
course cause great harm. From your own experience, you know this because there
have been times when you have contracted and have propagated a storyline about
yourself or about someone else and then have acted it out with dire
consequences. The worst of the things that you have done in your lifetime have
been the result of contraction. But even contraction is known and all knowns
point to the space around them. The problem is that when we are deeply
contracted we become stupid-stubborn and don't want to let go of the lies we
tell ourselves about ourselves and about the world.
Now that leads to a question about honesty. Is being transparent
the same thing as being honest? The answer is yes and no. It is the same thing
as being honest if the honesty we are talking about is unconditioned. If it is
conditioned by a feelingtone about being honest, or if what is guiding you is
some sort of state or agenda, some kind of result you are hoping to achieve,
then that is not complete, transparent honesty. Being honest about experiencing
has no agenda. It is also not about being confessional, blurting out all of
your thoughts of feelings to anyone who will listen. Being truly honest
involves a continuous wordless questioning into what we are experiencing, a
questioning with the whole bodymind.
We tend to get stuck on the knowns. We continuously
react to what we notice. When we see or experience something pleasant, we want
more of it. We grasp after it. When we see or experience something unpleasant,
we want to get away from it. We continuously pull and push against experiencing
without understanding what it is that we are reacting to or why we are
reacting.
Recently, a student asked me about seeing a sunset. It
was beautiful and yet, within a few minutes, the perception of beauty changed.
The student recognized a kind of perceptual flattening and there was an
accompanying discomfort about that. It raised a number of questions about what
was being experienced, why there was a sense of detachment and distancing, an
inability to fully experience the beauty of the sunset and maintain that
experience. It was a very good question.
As a monastic, when I see something beautiful, such as a
sunset, or the rippling of water on the stones of the koi pond, or the shadows
cast by ivy leaves through the shoji paper on the Zendo windows, there is
appreciation of this display of color and shadow and light. The visual field is
very rich. But again, everything we experience is pointing to the far vaster
space around it. If you are only paying attention to what is arising within
seeing, without feeling into the sensations of the body, without opening to
hearing, without seeing the details arising all around the thing you are seeing
and the details that arise between you and the thing you are seeing, then you
are only experiencing part of the whole. When you open to the whole of
experiencing, then a sunset is beautiful but there is no grasping after the
experience of it, no trying to freeze it. It changes, you change, and you can
allow change because there is the sunset and there is the KNOWING of the sunset
together with how you are knowing the sunset, and the luminosity of knowing is
all sunsets and sunrises, all days and nights, all moments, all experiences.
When we first start practicing, we think the point of
the practice is to notice knowns. We want to narrow and direct attention so
that we can just notice this breath. Or just notice that sound. We think that
opening attention is noticing a whole bunch of knowns. We even inventory what
we are noticing, sometimes following a kind of mental checklist of details we
think we should be noticing. This noticing is merely the darting of attention
through random impulse, from this to that, from this thing that is known to
that thing that is known. From the sound of someone coughing, to a thought, to
the breath, to a fragment of teisho, to an itch, to a pain in your knee, to makyo
on the wall, to sleepiness. It's really no different from the impulsive darting
of attention that comes up in the rest of your life - a restless drifting and
grasping and glossing over, of being interested and then bored, turning
attention from one thing to another.
This is why there is so much emphasis in our practice on
opening attention to the whole body, not just fragments of it. When you feel
the breath at the diaphragm, you need to feel it together with the tanden and
your hands and your legs crossed and your spine and neck, head, and shoulder.
And you need to open to seeing and hearing. You need to practice this moment
after moment after moment, the whole time you are sitting. No one thing is 'the
point'. All points point to each other and your practice is to open attention
to many details simultaneously. Noticing is not enough. One can sit on a couch
with a beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other and notice all kinds of
stuff. That doesn't mean one is practising.
At first opening attention to many details
simultaneously seems difficult because for most of your life attention has been
allowed to follow impulse. Now it is being trained and that requires effort.
But the effort you need to make does not require straining. The sensations, the
colors and forms and sounds are already present. All you are doing is NOT doing
what you usually do - distracting and abstracting yourself, following impulse.
Instead you are learning to actually pay attention. When we get out of the way
and stop obstructing ourselves, we become transparent to experiencing. There is
no separation between seeing and what is seen; between hearing and what is
heard; between feeling and sensations that are felt.
Refine noticing into mindfulness, into attention, into
attentiveness. When there is a painful sensation in your knees, the best way to
work with it is not to pull away from it or push against it in your frustration
but rather to open attention all around it. When a thought or a feeling tone
comes up, loosen around it. This does not mean to loosen mindfulness but to let
go of the stance of a thinker through questioning into it, by not knowing what
it is, by complete and open questioning. None of our categories about
experiencing mean anything at all. None of our images about experience are what
experiencing is. We must abandon all views and simply see.
This is important because we believe all kinds of things
about ourselves and about our capacities that simply are not true. When
attention congeals and contracts, our intelligence becomes very, very limited.
When we open attention, we are able to see past the limitations we impose on
our experiencing. We see options where previously we thought there were none.
We see ourselves and everything else in a very different light. Instead of the
harsh spotlight of fear and struggle, criticism and anger, we can open to the
Luminosity of knowing, to wisdom, and let it guide us. In the very first
Saturday Morning Dharma Talk I heard the Roshi present, he spoke about the
Luminosity of Knowing. It was entitled "A Jewel in Bright Light Loses its
Edges", which is a quote from the "Zenrin Kushu". The Roshi once
expressed this as "A jewel in bright light loses its edges. Or in other
words, 'Who gives a fuck what you think?'"
You know what? He's right. We shouldn't give a fuck what
we think. Why? Because thoughts are knowns. They don't know anything. We think
the center of our intelligence is the bit that does all of the thinking. If
that were true, then how do you know that you are experiencing a thought? Where
are you knowing that thought from? What are you knowing it with? The Luminosity
of Knowing shines through you, through all of your thoughts, through all of
your feelings, through everything you experience, through all that is.
Luminosity is the capacity of Knowing to know.
It is also
called the Current of Feeling.
Awake Awareness is Knowing as such, primordially awake,
but when "you" wake up to it,
then this distinguishes it from Awareness.
"Awake Awareness" is an intensifier as a phrase.
Luminosity is the capacity to know.
Knowns are the radiance of luminosity.
Awareness is bright right through.
Awake Awareness means you've woken up to it.
To be transparent means that there is absolutely nothing
you can hang on to. It means that none of your thoughts are solid. None of your
feelings are solid. None of your views or attitudes are solid.
In 1991, Zen Master Anzan Hoshin presented a series of
classes on the 8,000 Line
Prajnaparamita sutra. These were recorded
but there was a problem with the recording equipment and some of the classes
were lost. However, I transcribed as much of them as was possible. The
following quote is from Class One.
The Roshi begins by quoting the text as translated by
Edward Conze:
The text: "Then the Venerable Subhuti, by the
Buddha's power, said to the Lord:
The Lord has said, 'Make it clear now,
Subhuti, to the Bodhisattvas, the great beings, starting from perfect wisdom,
how the Bodhisattvas, the great beings go forth into perfect wisdom! When one
speaks of a 'Bodhisattva,' what dharma does that word 'Bodhisattva'
denote?"
The Roshi comments:
So here, saying, okay, so what is this thing about
Teaching the Bodhisattvas, the great beings or the Mahasattvas? Beginning with
perfect wisdom - let's say there is such a thing as perfect wisdom - how does
one actually enter into it? When we are speaking of a Bodhisattva, what does
that word actually mean?
In the text Subhuti says: "I do not, O Lord, see
that dharma 'Bodhisattva' nor a dharma called 'perfect wisdom.' Since I neither
find, nor apprehend, nor see a dharma "Bodhisattva' nor a 'perfect
wisdom,' what Bodhisattva shall I instruct and admonish in what perfect wisdom?
The Roshi comments:
So basically, he is saying - there is nothing which is a
Bodhisattva; there is nothing which is perfect wisdom. Since this is the case,
who could I Teach about perfect wisdom? So, he starts off with basically
cutting down any kind of expectations that Sariputra or the rest of the Sangha
might have. They are used to listening to things, finding the right term, the
right word and memorizing that and holding that in their minds. But Subhuti is
trying to present something else entirely. He is not trying to present a
doctrine. He is not trying to explain anything. He is trying to show people how
to see clearly; he is trying to display perfect wisdom to people so that they
can recognize it, so that they can practice it, so that they can realize it. So,
one of the first ways of doing that, of course, is to cut down and cut through
whatever concepts that people will use to obstruct perfect wisdom. "
Back to the text.
Subhuti says: "And yet, O Lord, if, when this is
pointed out, a Bodhisattva's heart does not become cowed, nor stolid, does not
despair nor despond, if he does not turn away or become dejected, does not
tremble, is not frightened or terrified, it is just this Bodhisattva, this
great being who should be instructed in perfect wisdom. It is precisely this
that should be recognized as the perfect wisdom of that Bodhisattva, as his
instruction in perfect wisdom. "
The Roshi says:
In the recognition that none of one's categories about
experience mean fuck all, in the recognition that none of one's images about
experience are what experience is, in the recognition that one must abandon all
views and simply see - if you can meet this without fear, then you are a Bodhisattva.
If you can do this, this is perfect wisdom. There is nothing else which is
perfect wisdom. Just seeing clearly, just paying attention openly, just being
aware.
In the text, Subhuti then says:
When he thus stands firm, that is his instruction and admonition.
Moreover, when a Bodhisattva courses in perfect wisdom and develops it, he
should so train himself that he does not pride himself on that thought of
enlightenment. That thought is no thought, since in its essential original
nature, thought is transparently luminous.
The Roshi comments:
I don't know if you have any sense of this, but these
opening passages of this sutra are most extraordinary. They contain the most
radical level and orientation of the Teachings. Anything that one finds in the
Shobogenzo, in my own Teachings, in the Mahamudra and Dzog-chen, in any of the
most advanced level of Teachings, is found here. If you can meet your
experience without fear, if you can meet your experience openly, train in this,
practice this, practice attending openly, that is really all the Teaching that
you need. It says,
And the Roshi is now quoting the text and Subhuti is
saying:
It is precisely that which should be recognized as the
perfect wisdom of that Bodhisattva, as his instruction in perfect wisdom.
Moreover, when a Bodhisattva courses in perfect wisdom and develops it, he
should so train himself that he does not pride himself on that thought of
enlightenment.
The Roshi comments:
The thought of enlightenment is the aspiration, the
recognition that there is confusion and that this confusion is suffering, that
this confusion is caused by grasping, that this is unnecessary, that one can be
free. And yet, even if one holds to this as a credential, one is limiting
oneself. If there is any thought whatsoever which is not examined, which is not
looked into, then there is still confusion and there is still the roots of
suffering. We must examine absolutely everything, openly and clearly. We must
take nothing for granted: not who we are, not our memories, not what the body
is, not what the mind is, not what our little compulsions are telling us to do,
not what our tendencies are telling us to do, not what our fear is telling us
to do, not what our anger is telling us to do. Not just those, but any
recognition that we might have, any moment of insight, any state no matter how
coarse or subtle, must be looked into clearly. Looking into it clearly, we see
that the thought, in its essential and primordial nature is transparent
luminosity. Whatever one is aware of is the display of Awareness.
Luminosity, (prabasvara) means the ability to
illuminate, to turn on the lights in a room and see what is in that room. So,
Luminosity means the ability to know. And so, what is necessary is the
recognition that thought is no thought. Thought is not an object; thought does
not exist on its own; there is no one which is doing the thinking; the thought
has no substance whatsoever. The thought is the display of the Luminosity of
Knowing, just as a ripple on water is the display of water. From the point of
view of the water there is no ripple, there is just water.
Returning to the text. Subhuti now says:
That thought is no thought, since in its essential
original nature thought is transparently luminous.
The Roshi says:
That is the whole Teaching, right there in these opening
passages. This is extraordinary. If the Buddha didn't Teach this, then he
should have. If the Buddha didn't Teach this, then he wasn't a quarter of the
Teacher that he should have been.
Perhaps the Prajnaparamita Teachings were Teachings that
originally had been given by the Buddha in some context. This is certainly
possible in that if we look at the fact that the sutras were fragments of
discourses which were compiled together, mainly sets of stock phrases which were
built together to form some kind of storyline and that many of these were not
written down until many hundreds of years after the Buddha's death and that
monks would wander from place to place and sometimes they would meet and they
would share and compare little bits of Teachings that they had heard and in
this way texts would form. Perhaps the Prajnaparamita Teachings do form part of
the authentic body of the Buddha's words, but we really have no way of knowing
what the Buddha actually taught.
The remarkable thing here is that if the Buddha did not
Teach these, he should have; and that the people who did compile and present
these Teachings did not just simply start their own School. They weren't
particularly into any kind of trip. They weren't saying, "Well, look what
I've realized and blah blah blah blah blah." They said, "Well here is
a tradition which is working - the Dharma - but there are certain points at
which people are getting stuck. We don't need to get stuck in that kind of way.
We need to go past that." And so, they realized that the Prajnaparamita
Teachings are the most radical and direct Path and yet they are only really
comprehensible in the context of the Gradual Path, only in the context of
moment-to-moment mindfulness, paying attention to what is going on, being able
to see the process of the five skandhas, so on and so forth. Only when one has
encompassed all levels of Dharma is it really Dharma. The radical Path is not
something which is completely split off from the rest of the Dharma. It is a
way in which the rest of the Dharma can be approached right at the beginning of
the Path, or it can be the fruit of the Path, or it can be what one is
practicing. But it is not really separate from the Abhidharma Teachings or any
of the other things that the Buddha taught. It is not so much a new Teaching as
a new view, a new orientation. It is not a doctrine; it is not a Teaching. It
is a practice and it is a view.
When I was discussing this just the other day with the
Roshi, he pointed out that the line from the Diamond sutra that is on the wall
leading to the Shuryo, "Give rise to the mind which abides nowhere"
is also a summary of all of this.
Sometimes people will think that they understand these
Teachings and think that because they think they understand them, they don't
need to sit zazen and to actually practice and embody the teachings. But as
Eihei Dogen zenji says in the Fukanzazengi, "Just suppose you become
puffed up about your understanding and inflate your little experiences: You
think you have seen the truth, attained the Way, recognized the luminosity of
mind and can grasp at heaven. You might think that these initial jaunts about
the borders are entering the realm of enlightenment but you've lost the Way of
complete liberation." It's like just getting the tip of your toe wet - not
even the whole toe - because you think it's safer to keep your distance from
it. If you really understood the first thing about these Teachings, there is no
way that you could justify not sitting zazen.
So, how do you practice this mind which abides nowhere?
How do you train in this while sitting here right now on your zafu? Begin by
opening attention to what is most true of your experiencing - that you are
sitting here; that you are feeling these sensations, hearing these sounds,
seeing these colors and forms. And with any thought, any feeling, any storyline
that comes up, open past the assumption that it contains what is true.
Questioning into experiencing does not mean following and falling into what is
noticed. It means opening past it. It means questioning into it by not knowing
what it is, by complete and open questioning, with the whole bodymind.
And this will make self-image quake in its boots. But
then self-image is at root fear and withdrawal from the inherent openness of
reality. That is what the gesture of contraction is, which becomes clearer when
attention opens around structures of contraction: fear.
Just see clearly, just pay attention openly, just be
transparent.
~Ven. Jinmyo Renge Osho~
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