Mark Foote

wow, good one. Thanks for reading my stuff; those are my notes, talking to myself, trying to guide myself because no one else could teach me the lotus and all the things I needed to know to sit the lotus and not fall down when I stood up. I understand the surrender of things that you practiced, that was how I set out too; vegan and "do no harm" as a mantra, of sorts. And I can relate to experiencing suburban life as totally strange and bizarre and my desires as so much confusion that I had to try to give it all up. When I was 25, living off the panhandle in SF, my body got up from a desk and walked to the door; I had dedicated the day to following the movement of breath all day, and that's what happened. Later I heard Kobun Chino Otogawa admonish folks at the SF Zen Center with "you know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around", but by then I was already having a dickens of a time because I thought zazen should do everything in my life. After a while I saw that whatever I really believed in would cause "the windy element" to move my body, and I wasn't so hard on myself after that. So I am writing to find my way to an ordinary life. I missed something about upright posture when I came into the world and subsequently, and now I have to learn to sit and walk by myself, all over again. The great news is, my writing is working for me in that regard, somehow. I can sit the lotus 40 or 50 minutes in the morning, and I don't fall down when I get up (doesn't sound like great fun, does it, but I wouldn't trade it). check the write in my signature, that more directly concerns the end of suffering and ordinary, everyday life. I love that thing by Shunryu Suzuki too, about the blue jay reading the book; there's a video on youtube and on the SF Zen Center site, and I have an explanation down at the bottom of "the mudra of zen" you might like. The experience of the arupa jhanas, even of the rupa jhanas, is strange and extraordinary, at least to me; the linearity of the approach is appealing, but I am satisfied if I am vaguely aware that ease and absorption have stopped by, maybe a little joy at a particular thought, and whoa-ho! enough equanimity so that I can drop a few things. The bluejay reading the book, that is the cessation of volition in speech, body, and mind to me, and startlingly close at hand. When the bluejay is reading the book, relinquishment of activity of consciousness and feeling follows, I would say. Mark

Hi, Serene, Hi Vajrahradaya, hey Stig, hey MB, how's it goin', I do have a fuller explanation of the basis of my remarks, you can google "zen mudra" and find it, or click here: the mudra of zen As to the paragraph, let me start by saying that the original invocation by which the Gautamid inducted the five ascetics into the order was "come, live the life of purity to make an end of suffering." Regardless of what faith or teaching we ascribe to, I think no one comes to transformative religious experience apart from a deep dissatisfaction with personal suffering. One thing I like about Taoism is an emphasis on ordinary people, on living as an ordinary person, and I think the Chan teachers picked that up because I read it in their teachings too by the 12th century CE; nevertheless, underlying that life as an ordinary person is a life of purity, if making an end of suffering has become the touchstone. By a life of purity I mean the relinquishment of volition in speech, action, and mind. The Gautamid taught that the activities of speech, action, and mind cease gradually as the jhanas unfold. At the same time, as Dogen pointed out in his Fukan zazen gi, everyone experiences an end of suffering all the time, rather they specifically walk the path of purity and realize the cessation of perception and volition (activity of mind) or not (ok, Dogen didn't specifically say an end of suffering, but close enough). A unique aspect of the Gautamid's teaching to me is the description of ignorance as the origin of suffering. To me, the place of occurrence of consciousness is used by the autonomic respiration of the lungs and by the autonomic respiration of the cranial sacral system to coordinate being. When the Chan master Yuanwu said just be aware of where you are 24-7, he was pointing to the sense of location as consciousness takes place. When we ignore the sense of location of consciousness takes place, when mindfulness of that sense of location is called for, we suffer. Because we all snap back into the sense of location as consciousness takes place, the end of suffering presents itself; the beauty of the teaching is that there is nothing that can be done about any of this, yet somehow the witness of the how consciousness is conditioned by pain, pleasure, and ignorance frees the occurrence of consciousness. Not a volitive act. The Gautamid limited the scope of his teaching, I believe to allow consistency in his statements about the life of purity and the end of suffering. When we realize the teaching, we no longer have it, we have (as Shunryu Suzuki described it) each part of the body doing zazen independently. Each of the senses and the mind doing zazen independently. Conditioned origination exploded in pieces, whatdyaknow... I drink beer too, mostly to dance. I do not aim to be a Buddha, just an ordinary guy, what does that make me... ha ha ha! thanks, all; yours, Mark

Hi, all, Well lots of personal and interesting approaches to the journey being spoken here, and I'd like to jump on the raft and sink it purely by the weight of bodies! I liked the toothless Taoist (thanks, Marblehead). I like the dependant origination discussion, and the point about Taoism positing something somewhere as different from Buddhism, although there is a later sermon volume (the fifth Sutta collection) that includes the oft-quoted "if it were not for the unborn, there would be no buddha-nature" or words to that effect. A later attribution, not uttered by the man in India. I agree that the Buddhist analysis does not allow of a something somewhere, but I don't mind a feeling that our existence has relationships that came into being with the universe, as long as I accept that there may come a time when there is no existence. My personal wondering. I think the trick in any religion is how you funnel a living interaction of consciousness, impact, and feeling down to a teaching that can be of use to someone at sometime somewhere as they turn toward a living interaction. Everyone has the first principle. It's my belief that nothing can be communicated oneway, that the real art is finding the mystical communion of the shared symbol set, two arrows meeting in space. Dependent orgination, yes, but there is a happiness associated with the cessation of (volition in) perception and sensation, so said the Gautamid, and he acknowledged that this seemed to contradict the purified equanimity that proceeds the cessation. That's part of dependent origination to me, that we cannot resist the happiness associated with well-being. So we can drop it all. And emptiness explodes into pieces. Cleverly concealed in the high-phalutin' Chinese Taoist and Zen teachings are concrete descriptions of practice, very physical as well as very mental, and how to find a way in. The sacrum is a sacred bone, I think, and the lotus isolates the cranial-sacral rhythm at the sacrum; if you don't like the lotus, then the single-weighted posture of Tai-chi is the source of the movement, not volition, because the cranial-sacral rhythm causes the ligaments and fascia to generate motion as they are stretched. Strength from the ligaments. motion without motion. Three components described over and over. Sit upright, setting mindfulness of breath in front, holding onto nothing in this world. Jing, chi, shen. how'ma doin. Mark

Hey, all, Somebody put a lot of savvy into this site, I'm looking forward to admiring the architecture, along with the tunes of the old knotty deadwoods; how's that poem, "charmingly, the dead knotholes draw a clear breeze"? May it be so! yours, Mark