Author: genryojones

Yet another of many great reasons to consider joining the Korinji Patreon!

New schedule for the upcoming Spring/Summer ango at Korinji, the training monastery we are affiliated with in Wisconsin.

This is a great talk and Q&A where Meido Moore Roshi makes some very important points about unified breath counting (sussokukan), it’s relation to koan work and other practices, as well as integration into daily life. I’d highly recommend it, especially for anyone who has received instruction with us at ICR as he makes clear many points we’ve touched on as they’ve come up on Sundays.

I’ve been enjoying reading “Sun at Midnight”, poems and letters of Muso Soseki (1275-1351). He was a designer of Zen gardens and founded several temples including Tenryuji where he was the first abbot. Really amazing!

I’m excited about this and wanted to share—I just discovered a great app-based food rescue service in Pittsburgh, “412 Food Rescue”. It basically works like a rideshare app, but you volunteer to go pick up food that would otherwise go to waste, and then drop it off at a service site that can use it. I tried it this morning—picked up what felt like 20 lbs of day old bagels at Bruegger’s and dropped them off at a residential addiction recovery treatment center. It took like 15-20 minutes extra when I was out running errands anyway, super easy! Whoever set it up is a genius.

When I was training at the monastery, almost every meal we ate included produce from a local grocer that was past prime and couldn’t be sold. Their name was Maruko-san. After every meal the tenzo announced each vegetable they had given that was used in that meal.

There’s also the traditional story (though I can’t remember the names) about a monk that was going to visit a master at a training temple. Alongside the road was a stream that flowed away from the temple. He noticed perfectly good whole spinach leaves floating down the stream away from the temple. He turned around and went away, not wanting to visit a place that wasted food.

And there are many many more stories and examples about the inherent value to our training in being intentional and deliberate about the use of food. And I’d add, another aspect I personally find motivating is that the scientists at Project Drawdown have identified reducing food waste as one of the top actions individuals can take to impact Climate Change.

So please check them out if it sounds interesting!

https://412foodrescue.org

Here are the passages from the The Platform Sutra by Dajian Huineng 638-713. (Jp: Daikan Eno) that I mentioned this past Sunday:

“Good friends, since the past this teaching of ours has first taken non-thought as it’s central doctrine, the formless as it’s essence, and non abiding as it’s fundamental. The formless is to transcend characteristics within the context of characteristics. Non thought is to be without thought in the context of thoughts. Non abiding is to consider in one’s fundamental nature that all worldly things are empty, with no consideration of retaliation—whether good or evil, pleasant or ugly, and enemy or friend, etc., during times of words, fights, and disputation.”

…he later goes on to say…

“Good friends, what is negated by the ‘non’ (wu)? What kind of thing is ‘thought’? ‘Non’ means to be without the characteristic of duality, so to be without the mind of enervating defilements. ‘Thought’ is to think of the fundamental nature of suchness. Suchness is the essence of thought, thought is the function of suchness…”

I was saying that this passage is pointing out how to practice—it’s the same thing that Shido Bunan is talking about: “In direct seeing there is no seeing. In direct hearing there is no hearing. This is possible when you naturally become one piece, with no in and no out.” Compare this with Huineng: “non thought is to be without thought in the context of thoughts. […] What is negated by the ‘non’ (wu)? […] ‘Non’ means to be without the characteristic of duality, to be without the mind of the enervating defilements.” In other words, to “naturally become one piece, with no in and no out.”

This is an excellent interview with Meido Moore Roshi giving his impressions of the upcoming documentary ”Carving the Divine”, which is about the traditional Japanese art of carving Buddhist images. He discusses how the student-teacher relationship functions in zen practice in the same way as the master-apprentice relationships shown in the documentary. He also talks about the important role of Buddhist images in encoding and transmitting both physical body usages of practice as well as an energetic quality of being. This important film is currently in crowd-funding for distribution. There is a link to its Indiegogo page in the video description. You can contribute there and be one of the first to see it when it’s released.

The tree outside our practice room was amazing this morning! Thanks to everyone who’s been attending—so great to practice together.

Please note, we won’t be meeting the next two Sundays (10-16 & 10-23) due to family travel plans. Our usual schedule resumes 10-30. Thanks!