What Is Tathagata Zen??
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- Опубликовано: 16 сен 2024
- What the heck did I learn those 13 years at the Zen monastery? Glad you asked! My teacher called it Tathagata Zen, or "giving"/"making relationship" practice. This is a profound and unique teaching that would, IMHO, change the world if adopted and manifested at scale. Barring that, it'll change your life. It changed mine, anyway. I unpack the teachings of "giving practice" or Tathagata Zen here by laying out the metaphysics behind the practice, and then showing you how to do it. PLUS a bonus round where I answer some pretty astute questions about Tathagata Zen that some folks recently asked me on social media.
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One who actually understands Zen? I’m clapping for you with one hand. ❤
I'm clapping back with three hands.
I'm up to my ears with zennies who act zen-like... but this gentleman doesn't! Fresh!
i write haiku & senryu - during my half-assed zazen practice yesterday this senryu popped in my head:
nothing to teach
nothing to learn--
just sitting
😂
i give to... the universe for whatever it's worth
And the universe kindly accepts your beautiful verse! Thank you!
fantastic; I really enjoy these vids a lot!
Glad to hear it!
One of your best videos period. "Serial-killer samadhi": I actually LOLed and that does not happen so often watching a RUclips video. That single punchline makes it abundantly clear why ethics and the teachings are so important; without those you could justify horrible things in the name of Zen.
What you said about giving and receiving on the cushion brought me back to one of your earlier videos where you said you also do Sōtō style Zazen (occasionally?). In this video here I think I understood a little better what the differences are, but maybe you could do a video on that also. Hm, why not do a joint video with Brad Warner on that ("Why my style of Zazen rocks and your style s*cks")? On a friendly level, you know what I mean.
Good idea on a joint video! Ultimately though I don't know if the differences btw soto and rinzai are so pronounced. It all comes out the same in the end, more or less....Anyway thanks for the comments.
The Amazebslls Sutra, a personal favourite.
Mine too! It’s a little known work… ;-)
Great video! Thank you so much!
But there's one thing that I don't get about this suffering stuff. Isn't suffering the great motivator in all this? Why do Zen practice, or anything at all for that matter, if there's no suffering? Isn't suffering just a synonym for change? The permanent movement and friction of all dharmas rubbing against each other, so to speak? It seems to me that there can be no end to this. It's just life. And so suffering has its own beauty and grace and purpose and all that. Why would I want to get rid of that?
Maybe it’s not so much about ending suffering but about learning how to suffer, and appreciating the miracle of the circumstance
I like that. Thank you.
This is brilliant. Totally brilliant. And true. I guess suffering is only a problem when it becomes a problem, if you know what I mean. Otherwise it’s just life, right? Of course even when it’s suffering it’s life, but it can be hard to see that. Anyway, thank you. So much food for contemplation.
@@zenconfidential25 That's the beauty of it, I guess. Even when life seems like a shit sandwich, it's just life. Nothing can really go wrong in a sense. You just play along and marvel at the outcome :D
Yes yes yes. But also, life is half the story. Death the other half. My teacher used to say You have to learn how to do the death activity.
Had a stupid fight with my wife yesterday- all me and my stuff - didn't handle it well - learned from it - my wife my zen teacher - should have just breathed first before speaking from emotion - should have spoke from calm - so hard sometimes in the moment
Your wife will forgive you! Yeah, speaking from emotion, ugh, usually winds up making me feel like I made a huge mess all over the floor or something. Just embarassing and troublesome and not worth it.
The reptile (cerebelllum) demands urgent action, the thinker (neocortex) demands cool reflexion. This seems to be a part of the standard human way.
down with suffering!
Ciao suffering!! See ya wouldn't wanna be ya!!
🙏
Reacting to this last issue: If you're thinking about truly "making relationship" as completely giving and receiving the other, it seems contradictory to hurting or even killing that other. But as you said, even great master make mistakes.. Maybe that's why we have apart from the hard to understand Zazen part, the more basic rules like the precepts and the Bodhisattva vows?
Yes, precepts I think help to keep us from making misakes based on our blind spots. It's like, lots of people have practiced before you, we've all decided it's a bad idea to do (insert bad idea here), so maybe don't do it. It's maybe not always obvious, I guess, even to someone "enlightened", that certain behavior should be avoided.
Well done Steve. Dana worthy.
Thank you George!! And thank you so much for the dana. I just got the email for that from PayPal. It made my morning.
@@zenconfidential25 I especially appreciated, "giving yourself to the exhale," the practice of which in my experience is the completion of embodied gratitude. De nada and chenqui.
Yes. Perfect. Embodied gratitude. As the philosopher said, the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. Actually maybe that was Engelbert Humperdinck.
@@zenconfidential25 Ha! "Release me and let me love again."
Dear Shozan, it's a tendency that Prof. Roth also has in his introduction to Sasaki's teisho book. Academics, strangely enough, insist on the same line that you hear from Buddhist teachers a lot, that sila (rules) - or "text", as I now prefer to call it because it is based on some dogma - have to go hand in hand with wisdom. But they don't. If you can't accept that an awakened being will disappoint you in that respect, you probably are not willing to get there yourself, i.e. to let go completely, even of rules. That does not mean that we or society cannot judge each one by rules that we agree on. It does neither mean that a zen teacher necessarily has to do wrong, drink himself to death or fuck around, to name the most common misbehavior. It just means that there is a state where you - for yourself - are free to break the rules. It is thus possible that an awakened person becomes anything, even a "serial killer" (as long as his/her mind is clear and unattached, so no sexual or attaching motif is involved). And as we all have watched it in one way or the other, there should no longer be doubt about it, unless we are saying no one awakens at all (which would be fine with me). The other question could be: How is it that some don't do the shit (in the eyes of common people) that others do? Why is Shunryu Suzuki's image e.g. in that respect rather "untainted"? Was he wiser, more enlightened or not? I think that's a good koan for those who are in doubt of what I am saying. There are lot of zen Buddhists who bring their ideology into play when they judge others behaviour, e.g. Brian Victoria when he analyzed the war involvement of zen teachers. On that level you are discussing the manifestation of sila, not more and not less. That's pretty simple. But you won't know if someone has gotten any deeper insights by discussing ethics alone, without seeing a bigger picture. Or may I say: You may know the plus but not the minus of someone else.
Interesting questions arise. "It is thus possible that an awakened person becomes anything." Not sure about that.
@@zenconfidential25 It is the old monotheistic dilemma ("How is it possible that God can do/allow this..., that...?"), only in the superman-ish style of Zen.
Cool stuff. Let’s just say: Thus have I heard..
And let me just say, thus have I heard that you have heard…
@@zenconfidential25 Okay, got a good laugh from that one. Now, back to… what was I doing?… shoot… okay… didn’t matter anyway
;) Get back to work!!
Dude you just went daoist. 😁 & maybe dissolve not die. also i thought self motivated activity leads to separation and can only achieve unity through cessation. sorry about not becoming a Patreon but i haven't had a paying job since 2008, so discretionary funds are basically theoretical.
I know it sounds Taoist, but there’s some real distinctions. But maybe that’s for another video!
@@zenconfidential25 I'd be interested in that video!