Lotus of the Heart > Path of Spirit > Zen Spirit

 
 

Temples & Commodes

Zen Spirit Life Spirit

Jan 15, 2025


Buddha being Buddha

Buddha Being Buddha

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Zen teacher Bussho Lahn tells of an experience of his teacher -


After one of my teacher Tim’s early breakthrough experiences, Suzuki Roshi said to him, “Now you’ve had so-called enlightenment. Good. Now take care of your shoes.”


*Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law: A Commentary on Hakuin’s “Song of Zazen.”


Zen spirit is that simple. And Zen spirit is life spirit. Simple, taking care. Taking care of your shoes, your dishes, your face, your everything. Exercising, defecating, copulation, grocery shopping, movie watching, spring cleaning, ... Sounds nonspiritual? Mundane? Lesser than a so-called salvation or so-called enlightenment experience? Think again.


Sure, we can have amazing experiences spiritually, religiously. A problem is we can get attached to them. We have one, and we chase another. We have one or a few and judge all else as lesser. “Well, today, in meditation, I felt nothing. My mind was running here and there. Maybe next time will be better.” “God seems to have left me, I don’t sense his presence lately.” Nonsense. Nonsense. And spiritual practice is there to expose the nonsense, not so we will feel dejected, but so we can say goodbye to the nonsense and relax into our life and world.


Issa -


People working rice fields,
from my deepest heart, I bow.
Now a little nap


*Kobayashi Issa; Sam Hamill, Trans. The Spring of My Life: And Selected Haiku.


Workers in rice fields, bowing, and little nap belong together. When we release the preference for so-called spiritual experience, all comes together as holy or unholy – either way works. The light shines everywhere, in the temple and the commode.


Stonehouse -


Try to find what’s real and what’s real becomes more distant
try to end delusions and delusions multiply
followers of the Way have an all-embracing place
the moon in the sky and its reflection in the waves


*Stonehouse; Red Pine, Trans. The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse.


In Zen, “moon” refers to “enlightened nature; Reality,” “reflection in the waves” to its manifestations in and through phenomena.

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© Brian K. Wilcox, 2025

 

Lotus of the Heart > Path of Spirit > Zen Spirit

©Brian Wilcox 2025