Sunrjú Szuzuki: Tisztán ragyogó forrás (Zen tanítások a Szandókairól)

A Szandókait ősi szövegét megvilágító friss beszédeket olvasva újabb lehetőséget kapunk arra, hogy még mélyebbre tekintsünk Szuzuki rósi zen szellemébe. Ki-ki valóban eltöprenghet azon, mit is jelent észrevenni a hétköznapi életünkben folyamatosan jelen lévő nem-kettősséget. A tanítványoknak adott szellemes, meglepő válaszok már önmagukban is váratlan ajándékok, melyeket olvasva ismét rácsodálkozhatunk arra az elbűvölő hangra és meleg bölcsességre, amit a rósi korábbi beszédeiből a híres Zen szellem, a kezdő szellemből és a Nincs mindig úgyból már ismerni véltünk.

A Szandókai — vagyis Az azonosság és a különbözőség harmóniája — a zen buddhizmus fontos alapszövege. Jelentőségét mutatja, hogy a szertartások részévé vált, nap mint nap recitálják a zen kolostorokban szerte a világon. Tanítása az útkeresők számára korunkban éppolyan alapvető, mint amilyen keletkezésekor, majd másfél évezreddel ezelőtt volt. A mű vezérfonala az ellentétek egysége. Egy és sok, fény és sötét, üresség és jelenségek – ezek a létezés aspektusai, amelyek a kettősségek világában érvényesek, ám a végső valóságban feloldódnak, eggyé válnak. A későbbi nemzedékek mesterei ezt a gondolatot bontották ki, fejlesztették tovább, és a zen meghatározó tanítása lett. A vers szerzője, Szekitó Kiszen a hatodik pátriárka személyes tanítványa volt, és később az ő utódjától kapta meg a Dharma-átadást.

Részlet a könyvből:

Tanítvány: Amikor olyasmi történik, amitől szenvedek, egy részem érzi a fájdalmat, egy másik pedig igyekszik azt megérteni. Nem tudom, vajon azért próbálom-e megérteni, mert félek elengedni és csak érezni a fájdalmat, vagy pedig ez egy bölcs megértés.

Szuzuki rósi: Azért jelentkezik számodra ez a nehézség, mert saját magad miatt bonyolódsz bele a problémába. Amíg belegabalyodsz a személyes gondokba, bármit is értesz meg, az csupán a világos oldal. Nincs esélyed felismerni a másik oldalt, a sötétséget, az abszolútumot. Most úgy beszélek, mintha megvilágosodott lennék, te pedig úgy hallgatod, mintha megvilágosodott lennél. Más szavakkal, mindannyian bódhiszattvák vagyunk, és bódhiszattvaként beszélünk erről a kérdésről. De amikor arra használod fel a hallottakat, hogy intellektuális úton értsd meg a problémádat, nincs esélyed felismerni a másik oldalát. Ezért van ez a problémád. Ha valóban gyakorolod a bódhiszattva útját, egyik oldallal sincs gond. Amikor kritizálod magad, rendben van, amikor azt teszed, amit akarsz, az is rendben van. Nem két különböző dolgot csinálsz. Bármit is teszel, az a helyzetnek megfelelően mindig jó, de nem vagy magabiztos a tetteidben vagy az életedben, mert belebonyolódsz az önző, személyes gyakorlásba.

Tanítvány: Amikor teljesen ébren vagyok, talán van egy kis uralmam a vágyaim felett, de reggel…

Szuzuki rósi: Reggel gondjaid vannak. Tudom. Ezért mondom: „Kelj fel!” [Ráüt az asztalra.]

Tanítvány: Ön hogy csinálja?

Szuzuki rósi: Csak tedd meg. Különben jön valaki, és megüt! [Viccesen morog.]

Tanítvány: Előfordult néhányszor, hogy csak úgy felkeltem – kiugrottam az ágyból. De az olyan nagy dolog volt!

Szuzuki rósi: Igen, nagy dolog. Tehát ha már viszonylag gond nélkül fel tudsz kelni reggel, azt hiszem, nincs baj a gyakorlásoddal. Ez egy jó esély, hogy gyakoroljuk az utunkat. Csak felkelni. Rendben? Ez a legfontosabb dolog.

Tanítvány: Rósi, mit ad önnek az, ha tanulmányoz egy könyvet?

Szuzuki rósi: Lehet, hogy számodra ez nem olyan fontos. Nekem azonban kell, hogy legyen valamiféle világos elképzelésem, miről is fogok beszélni, különben semmit nem tudok mondani. Ezért olvasok az előadásaim előtt. A tanítóm mindig azt mondta nekem: „Bár úgysem segít, az előadásaid előtt mindig tanulmányozz valamit!” [Nevetés.]

Zen meditáció Kolozsváron

September 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine

Inside the September 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine

Featuring "Real Peace in Times of Stress," a special section on how to find peace, calm, and sanity in a stressed-out world. Authors include Judy Lief, Michael Carroll, Sister Chan Khong, and more.
Also inside: 50 years of San Francisco Zen Center; Buddhist-inspired novelists Susan Dunlap, Cary Groner, and Kim Stanley Robinson; a never-before-published teaching by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and much more.

this issue's editorial
• The Secret

By Shambhala Sun Deputy Editor Andrea Miller

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special section: real peace in times of stress

• The Middle Way of Stress

Judy Lief on what Buddhist wisdom teaches us about stress—where it really comes from, how it manifests, and why we may need it on the spiritual path.

Plus, leading Buddhist teachers and mindfulness experts show us simple, powerful techniques for real relief from stress—at work, at home, in our relationships, and more:

• Susan Gillis Chapman: Relationships • Michael Carroll: Work • Diana Winston: Parenting  • Sister Chan Khong: Body • Carolyn Rose Gimian: Humor • Jessica Morey: Teens • Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso: The Final Word

Also: Kathleen Dean Moore on nature, Susan Bauer-Wu on health, and Tiny Buddha's Lori Deschene on technology.

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features

• Always Beginner's Mind

It's a lively, practice-oriented and multi-faceted community that's profoundly influenced how Zen is practiced and lived in America. Colleen Morton Busch reports from San Francisco Zen Center on its fiftieth anniversary.

RELATED:

• Mind Waves

An excerpt from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, the seminal work by San Francisco Zen Center founder Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. In this chapter alone he explains: how to practice zazen, the difference between small and big mind, and the true nature of thoughts.

• Pure Fiction

Mystery, suspense, science fiction—Andrea Miller profiles Kim Stanley Robinson, Susan Dunlap, and Cary Groner, three Buddhist-inspired novelists who make up stories to tell deeper truths about life.

• Playing with Buddha

At age seven, Ira Sukrungruang believed that the Buddha was more than just a bronze statue. The Buddha was his best friend.



And we continue our year-long celebration of the Shambhala Sun's founder, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, with a series of never-before-published teachings. In this issue: Mahamudra.

RELATED SHAMBHALA SUN SPOTLIGHT:• The Teachings of Chögyam Trungpa

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other voices

• Booooring...

Like, say, staring into space. Or counting your breaths. Or living life just as it is. Karen Maezen Miller on the virtues of boredom.

• Perfectly Imperfect

In a world of Botox, little blue pills, and "living your best life," we could all use more wabi sabi in our lives. Because imperfection, says Roger Housden, is what makes us human.

• The Tweeting, Yelping, Flickring, Foursquaring, TripAdvising Mentality

Michael A. Stusser on the wildly overstimulated brain.

Also: Bestselling author Diane Ackerman defines nature for a wonderful world in the future.

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reviews

• Tapping the Creative Mind

Christian McEwen reviews Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer.

• Books in Brief

Andrea Miller reviews books by Elana Rosenbaum, Katherine Jenkins, Kay Larson, and several other titles worth your while.

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about a poem

• Henry Shukman on Hakuin Ekaku's "The Monkey Is Reaching"

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Shambhala Sun, September 2012, Volume Twenty One, Number 1.

To order a trial subscription to the Shambhala Sun, click here.

ON THE COVER: Guanyin of the Southern Sea, Liao (907–1125) or Jin Dynasty (1115–1234). Wood with polychrome, 95 x 65 inches. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Chinese. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 34–10. Photo: Jameson Miller.

Shunryu Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Zen mind is one of those enigmatic phrases used by Zen teachers to throw you back upon yourself, to make you go behind the words themselves and begin wondering. "I know what my own mind is," you tell yourself, "but what is Zen mind?" And then: "But do I really know what my own mind is?" Is it what I am doing now? Is it what I am thinking now?" And if you should then try to sit physically still for a while to see if you can locate it—then you have begun the practice of Zen, then you have begun to realize the unrestricted mind.

The innocence of this first inquiry—just asking what you are—is beginner's mind. The mind of the beginner is needed throughout Zen practice. It is the open mind, the attitude that includes both doubt and possibility, the ability to see things always as fresh and new. It is needed in all aspects of life. Beginner's mind is the practice of Zen mind.

This book originated from a series of talks given by Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki to a small group in Los Altos, California. He joined their meditation periods once a week and afterwards answered their questions and tried to encourage them in their practice of Zen and help them solve the problems of life. His approach is informal, and he draws his examples from ordinary events and common sense. Zen is now and here, he is saying; it can be as meaningful for the West as for the East. But his fundamental teaching and practice are drawn from all the centuries of Zen Buddhism and especially from Dogen, one of the most important and creative of all Zen Masters.

A respected Zen master in Japan and founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki has blazed a path in American Buddhism like few others. He is the master who climbs down from the pages of the koan books and answers your questions face to face. If not face to face, you can at least find the answers as recorded in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a transcription of juicy excerpts from his lectures. From diverse topics such as transience of the world, sudden enlightenment, and the nuts and bolts of meditation, Suzuki always returns to the idea of beginner's mind, a recognition that our original nature is our true nature. With beginner's mind, we dedicate ourselves to sincere practice, without the thought of gaining anything special. Day to day life becomes our Zen training, and we discover that "to study Buddhism is to study ourselves." And to know our true selves is to be enlightened.

In one of the best and most succinct introductions to Zen practice, the important teacher Shunryu Suzuki discusses posture and breathing in meditation as well as selflessness, emptiness, and mindfulness.

Shunryu Suzuki: Not Always So

Practicing the true spirit of Zen.

Not Always So is based on Shunryu Suzuki's lectures and is framed in his own inimitable, allusive, paradoxical style, rich with unexpected and off–centre insights. Suzuki knew he was dying at the time of the lectures, which gives his thoughts an urgency and focus even sharper than in the earlier book.

In Not Always So Suzuki once again voices Zen in everyday language with the vigour, sensitivity, and buoyancy of a true friend. Here is support and nourishment. Here is a mother and father lending a hand, but letting you find your own way. Here is guidance which empowers your freedom (or way–seeking mind), rather than pinning you down to directions and techniques. Here is teaching which encourages you to touch and know your true heart and to express yourself fully, teaching which is not teaching from outside, but a voice arising in your own being.

If you can imagine Zen Existentialism, Not Always So is it. Part instruction manual for Zen practice and part philosophical meditation, Shunryu Suzuki's teachings emphasize being-in-the-world. He does not point toward a singular enlightenment-event as a burst into higher consciousness. Rather, he suggests a more experiential enlightenment that finds meaning in a full awareness of the present. For example: "If you go to the rest room, there is a chance for enlightenment. When you cook, there is a chance for enlightenment. When you clean the floor, there is a chance to attain enlightenment."
Shunryu Suzuki was an important emissary of Zen Buddhism to the United States. Establishing a Zen center in San Francisco in the 1960s, he attracted many noted pupils, including this book's editor, Edward Espe Brown. In fact, Not Always So is Brown's collection of Suzuki's teachings during his last years, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

No doubt some readers will want to wrestle with the often paradoxical nature of Zen teachings. And those from the Western philosophical tradition may find vast differences between the Western system that takes its cue from Descartes' cogito and the Eastern one that emphasizes the destruction of the ego. Says Suzuki: "It is just your mind that says you are here and I am there, that's all. Originally we are one with everything." While the book does not wrestle with cultural-philosophical differences, it is nevertheless a good introduction to Zen. Suzuki's teachings tend to flow from simple stories, usually drawn from his own experiences. It's almost entirely free of the jargon that clutters many books on Buddhism, and the teachings are communicated with clarity and brevity.
Contrary to Zen's principle of "nothing special," Brown (The Tassajara Bread Book; Tassajara Cooking) has indeed produced something very special: an edited collection of talks by beloved Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki, who died in 1971. It is impossible to overestimate the sustained impact of Suzuki's 1970 classic, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a world-renowned bestseller. Brown, ordained by Suzuki in 1971 after six years of study under him, has edited transcriptions that both read well on the page and capture the style, humor and solid grasp evident in the first volume. But this is no Zen Mind sequel, and will prove highly valuable to anyone, rank novice or zazen master. These 35 talks, delivered shortly before Suzuki's death from cancer, sparkle with simple freshness and familiarity: "Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well. The Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself but about how it is grown, and how to take care of it." Suzuki's messages are like deceptive pools of water, shimmering with surface possibilities that provoke stronger swimmers to aim for the depths. Suzuki, too, beckons us to the deeper reaches of learning, becoming "a wise, warm-hearted friend, [and] an unseen companion in the dark." Again we are blessed with more of his superb vision. - an unseen companion in the dark." Again we are blessed with more of his superb vision.

Shunryu Suzuki: Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness

When Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness is the first follow-up volume to Suzuki Roshi's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made Suzuki Roshi so influential as a teacher.
The Sandokai--a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian)--is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as Suzuki Roshi expresses it, "things-as-it-is"). Included with the lectures are his students' questions and his direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. Suzuki Roshi's teachings are valuable not only for those with a general interest in Buddhism but also for students of Zen practice wanting an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text today.

This book is billed as a sequel to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki's classic collection of talks on Zen, but it stands on its own considerable merits as an eloquent, humorous series of lectures on the Sandokai, an eighth-century poem central to the Soto Zen tradition. These lectures show Suzuki, head priest of Tassajara monastery in California until his death in 1971, using his line-by-line exposition of the poem to illuminate what it means to practice Zen Buddhism. He stresses the simultaneity of the relative and the absolute, skillfully using words to direct his listeners toward understanding, all the while emphasizing that words are merely fingers pointing at the moon of enlightenment. Suzuki's devaluation of the verbal frees him to embrace humor and paradox as teaching methods; his examples range from ancient Chinese stories to anecdotes about weeding in the Tassajara garden and encountering an earwig. Readers of his previous book will be familiar with his earthy, clear, intense style. This book also conveys the texture of monastery life; it recounts 12 consecutive talks and includes the question-and-answer sessions at the end of each talk. These exchanges offer some of the most fascinating parts of an already excellent book, as they explicate some of the unclear points and illuminate the indirect yet confrontational quality of traditional Japanese Zen teaching.

Suzuki (1904^-1971) came to San Francisco in 1959, established the first Zen Buddhist monastery in the U.S., and wrote the seminal Zen text for Westerners, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1972). Toward the end of his life, Suzuki presented a series of talks based on the Sandokai, an eighth-century poem written by the Chinese Zen master Sekito Kisen. An elegant set of 22 couplets, it addresses a number of dichotomies, such as light and dark and sharp or dull, and it is chanted daily in Zen temples. In his cogent discussions and the question-and-answer sessions that follow--edited for publication by Mel Weitsman of the Berkeley Zen Center and Michael Wenger of the San Francisco Zen Center--Suzuki worked his way through the entire poem, expounding on the meanings of the Sandokai's imagery and its relevance to Buddhist practice and to life. The fact that one text can inspire a book's worth of philosophical thought and practical advice is testimony both to Buddhism's depths and to Suzuki's considerable gifts. 

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi quotes

• "Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity."
• "Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well."
• "So the secret is just to say 'Yes!' and jump off from here. Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself, always yourself, without sticking to an old self."
• "When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself."
• "Zazen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than this way of life."
• "Take care of things, and they will take care of you."
• "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."
• "Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life."
• "As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw."
• "The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation."
• “That bird is free – you owe me a bird.”
• "Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer."