الثلاثاء، 22 سبتمبر 2009

Blank Slate


What is non-doing? To say it another way, this clean slate is who and what we are. Our practice is, if I use crude words, being bodily present, opening up to being this very moment that we are. So the instruction is to be: not what we think and believe, not cut our life off in holding to believed emotion-thought, but be this that we are. This that we are, is the original face right here coming forth.

Ch'an master Caoshan says, 'The Buddha's true Dharma body resembles empty space, responding to creatures it appears in physical form like the moon reflected in the water'. Moon reflected in water-this is our functioning. So, 'be an empty slate', is not to squash your mind, to force yourself to be something else. That is a misunderstanding-we may be adding mud to the mud that already confuses us. There is nothing lacking. Right this moment, your functioning is the functioning of this non-doing. And that is why each of us can and has to manifest our original face that is our life. Practice is to testify to what is so, not because we have figured it out, or because we know it as some sort of knowledge, but because this is our life. We testify by being who we are. This is what bows, who bows, who sits. Non-doing is not about abstractions, about some added knowledge or even insight. To quote Dogen, 'One's own self is neither existent nor non-existent. It is non-doing'.


By/Elihu Genmyo Smith



Salam,

Cherine

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