Note: The Shushogi is a relatively modern distillation of the teachings of Zen Master Dogen taken from The Shobogenzo: The Eye and Treasury of the True Law. An epic!

In the Shushogi: What is Truly Meant by Training and Enlightenment, in the very first section titled Introduction: The Reason for Training is this:

The most important question for all Buddhists
Is how to understand birth and death completely
For then, should you be able to find the Buddha within birth and death,
They both vanish.

All you have to do is realise that birth and death, as such, should not be avoided

The Shushogi can be found it its entirety here on the Shasta Abbey website. I love it that what you find there is clearly a scan and I have a copy of the original beside me now.

Later on in this section of the Shushogi is this:

The understanding of the above (teaching) breaks
The chains that bind one to birth and death

Birth and death, the cyclic nature of existence is in Buddhist teaching synonymous with suffering, the first of the Four Noble Truths. Suffering exists. So here in the Shushogi is a teaching about suffering and how to bring that to an end. Don’t avoid it, look it straight in the eye. Further, and a few days ago there was a post titled Where is Home on the subject, there is the cause of suffering which has to be addressed. The Second Noble Truth, The cause of suffering is tanha (thirsting) or craving/desire.

It’s all very well to get ones head around the Buddhas teaching, to understand how it works and how it all fits together. There is for example a good article on Dependent Arising on Buddhanet which is worth reading. At the time of the Buddhas Enlightenment, which we are all celebrating at the moment December 8th being the traditional date for doing that, the Buddha taught both the Four Noble Truths and Dependent Arising. Two ways to point to the same thing, cause and effect. The law of cause and effect.

Yes, it is all very well to understand the Buddhas teaching yet something else again to put it into daily practice. I for one was utterly confused for years trying to get a grip on Buddhism. Buddhist doctrine was always there lurking in the background, in the foreground was…life and life had the loudest voice! And there was definitely no avoiding it! I sloshed between the opposites or extremes. Happy – miserable. You’re right – I’m wrong. I’m good – you BAD! I like – I don’t like. I want – I don’t want. This IS suffering.

So what breaks the chain mentioned in the above quote, or what snaps you out of the extremes? Or at least relieves the confusion. Many moments of insight come to mind. The one that comes rushing up the hill to find me is that basic from meditation instruction. Don’t hang on and don’t push away, ANYTHING. That and the discipline of refraining from labeling experience and thus habitually stamp ones personal meaning on the world. There is no need to do that.

The teaching I have pointed to in this post I hope helps a little with understanding. In Zen we are practice oriented 101%, to the point where practice disappears. By that I mean the self consciousness, the sense of practice being an add-on or something carried about, dissolves into the immediacy of responding to what’s there. Yes the sense of being a self arises during the day for all sorts of reasons (not a problem) and that sense passes, given half a chance.

Lots of tofu and veg to contemplate here!

Devout Buddhist are ‘on retreat’. Traditionally December 8th marks the time of the Buddhas Enlightenment and the seven days leading up to that time are spent in intensive meditation or sesshin. In Japanese Buddhism the retreat is called Rohatsu, which translates as the 8th day of the 12th month.

This quote caught my eye as I thumbed through next years diary. Perhaps because I am retreating in another direction. Meaning that this is not a time of formal retreat yet there is a growing sense of turning within as the temperature drops and the light fades.

We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction!

Douglas Macarthur

Advancing in another direction? That suits rather well since while life has a direction, a flow if you like, each advances in a unique fashion. Water doesn’t struggle or strive, nor should we.

Internet connections have been a bit unreliable. Snow on the hills, snow in the valleys. But nothing too serious as yet.

Sometimes the sun is out, and sometimes in goes in. When it is out, we all smile and are happy to see it. When it goes in and stays in for days on end, we are not happy. Then like today when the sun is in with patches of blue sky there is a sense of promise in the air. Of hope the blue will get bigger and those dark grey skies over there – will not come over here and dump their clammy contents. Today grey skies with blue patches. Small ones. No rain to speak of.

Especially at this time of year, and on through the darkening days of December and January/February/March, there is a real tendency to be adversely affected by the low levels of light. I am. I’ve a little box which pumps out light of the right kind and I sit with it each day to bump up my daily light dosage. No, I probably don’t have S.A.D. in a clinical sense however that extra light does help my poor brain to look lively when it would rather lay down and hibernate. Until spring time.

Walking out among the fields and remote farm houses today in the dim light I wonder, now, about the people from long ago. Hard lives, truly grim lives. They made this landscape, huge chunks of it anyway. I’m thinking that perhaps the human response to weather, the ups, the downs hasn’t changed much. Just like the response of plants and vegetation to changing conditions, it’s chemical a lot of it, I presume.

But where am I going with this? Oh, perhaps a thought about the rhythm of the seasons and how our indoor lives, predominately so for most, has us like plants growing under artificial conditions. A life in eternal sunshine! All the same I have the feeling we are still deeply effected by the seasons, the weather, and all manner of more subtle influences known and unknown. Lets face it nothing happens in isolation from anything else.

And I am now going to cut and run before I drown in my own ignorance. I am not carrying a banner of any kind today, just a love of our land and all that makes it.

Many thanks to my friends who walked out under grey skies with me this day and kept a smile in their hearts.