The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans

Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori with commentary and verse by John Daido Loori

Shambhala (2005)

This time of year is special for me, mostly because the extremes placed on the retailer lifestyle during the Christmas season slowly begin to evaporate. For retailers, January & February is the time to settle up, analyzing the previous work and discard baggage. Also, it’s time to formulate the processes to put into place before the next retail season. It may sound crazy, but for the retailer, when a Christmas is over, the work on the next Christmas starts as promptly as it can be perceived.

This time of year, I always look forward to finding new books to read on daily. Ones to live with, not read too much of the time. Reading just enough to relax with, to ponder on and develop a reading friendship.

Near the end of 2011, I finished The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans with commentary by John Daido Loori. In past readings, I have touched on reading kōans, but until I lived with them daily, did I begin to absorb ever so slightly their value.

Kōan literally means “public notice.” In Zen, a kōan is a phrase from a teaching on Zen realization points to the nature of reality. Paradox is essential to a kōan. Kōans transcend the logical or conceptual, thus they cannot be solved by reason, requiring another level of comprehension. Here’s a kōan from The True Dharma Eye:

Kōans are a highly distinctive element of Zen Buddhism, and there is no obvious parallel to them in literature or other religions. They contain a message, but not a message expressed by way of direct instruction. Each of us must arrive at our own direct experience and understanding. Understanding the kōan is difficult or impossible to be transmitted to us by words or by others. Studying kōans is to actualize a medium from which understanding may be reached, however, this is not an intellectual puzzle. A kōan has no single answer. Here is another example of a kōan from The True Dharma Eye:

Over the past year and a half of reading The True Dharma Eye, I became fond of massaging kōans. We are constantly developing our understanding of we are and how we transmit our actions to others. Kōan study helps with the actuality of our lives. Ultimately, kōan study affects our consciousness, which is how it affects our lives and that’s how it makes a difference.

Not that I can put my finger specifically on my kōan study effects personally, but I have experienced new ways to explore the creative process. The effects, I think, have helped me with maturing my work life, my health and my mind. My relationships with people in a more present and realistic way. I hope to be the product of my kōan readings.

With all that being said, the new year brings me to two new daily books to live with in 2012.

Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala, 2011)

Two Zen Classics: The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Records (Shambhala, 2005)

I know since I am starting another book of kōans that I must be hooked. However, if you haven’t tried picking up a book and living with it for a year, now is a good time to consider the journey. This process can lead to a sustain reading experience.

by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung

Harper One (2010)

To savor is defined as “to taste with quality.” This book is not just about what to eat; it also teaches us how to eat. Anyone can become more mindful in nourishing our bodies. Savor is not just about learning to maintain a healthy weight and diet. It’s about appreciating what we eat and drink in a more fulfilling way through a more mindful lifestyle. This helps us to connect more deeply with ourselves. Mindful eating practiced along with a regular exercise program eases stress which can increase our awareness, the choices we have and our happiness. Helping ourselves in a mindful way also instills the awareness that helps us to contribute to our local community constructively.

Mind and body are not separate and mindfulness of this does not happen by itself. You need to have the desire to practice it. A holistic understanding of our feelings, mental formations and our body help us to understand our consciousness. All the observations come together when practiced positively which increases awareness. Over time we developed more skill at enjoying what is pleasant and understanding the unpleasant which help us mediate anxiety. By observing our anxiety levels and understanding the causes, we stop the internal knots from becoming  tight, choking the more present experience.

Savor lays out the guide posts for beauty, eating, moving, and living–simple methods for improving our relationships at work and home, while improving our physical and mental health. I’ve read many Thich Nhat Hanh books with pleasure and received benefit from them. Savor is a very practical and immediately adaptable if you are interested in self-improvement. If you want to see and be with your world more clearly, reading Savor might help you defrost your windshield.

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh will be at Magnolia Village in Batesville September 28 – October 2. Here is the link for more information: http://www.magnoliavillage.org/

Copper Canyon Press (2009)

Last July I blogged about Hinton’s fine translation of Classical Chinese Poetry. While enjoying that book, I stumbled upon a poet I haven’t read much of, Wei Ying-wu. I tried to find a collection of his poems and couldn’t.

Soon after the very fine publisher, Copper Canyon Press, announced a new edition of his work, translated by my favorite translator, the respected Red Pine.

Wei Ying-wu (731-791) was known for his clear, transparent, serene style, a poet’s poet. With plainness he draws the reader into a setting and a mood focusing on seclusion and the ordinary: the feeling of emptiness and enlightenment. Living a life of simplicity, he fashioned his poetic style. By reflecting his sensibility, he achieved desired effects without waste. His clarity of description produces a calming effect on the reader. Being not interested in “the literary world,” his poetry was not written to impress people.

A favorite poem I first read Sept. 6, 2009, sitting on my porch after a day’s work:

Hearing a Flute on the River After Seeing Off Censor Lu

Seeing you off over cups of wine

in the distance I heard a flute on the river

spending the night alone is sad enough

without hearing it again in my quarters

With great pleasure I spent months reading Wei and Pine. It’s transcending each day to spend a little time being touched by great poets.

“Wei Ying-wu is not only one of China’s great poets, he is one of the world’s great poets.” -Red Pine

Bill Porter writes books of poetry under his own name, yet he translates as Red Pine. Many thanks for your fine work, a gift to us all.

Earlier Blogs:

The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China

Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery

by Chögyam Trungpa

edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian

Shambhala (2009)

When the stronghold of the ego is threatened, fear is one of our strongest mechanisms. A lonely ego is constantly defending itself with an aggressive attitude. By trying to understand our fear, we can use it to find ourselves, free ourselves and give up inhibitions.

The idea is simply facing the facts with honesty. By being honest with yourself, you develop a genuine gut level of truth. By discovering what’s there you can begin to see the traps and stop yourself from falling into them. Being aware that you are aware helps to relate to life constantly, directly and very simply. Emotional character and strength comes from connecting to reality.

If we weren’t struggling, we would be lazy and accepting the manufactured reality. Action with discipline, uniformity and gentleness toward ourselves helps separate our experiences from confused to wakeful. By controlling ego produced fear, we are able to see situations more clearly and are then able to deal more effectively.

Putting effort into becoming aware helps to overcome doubt. Fearlessness keeps the mind from being enclosed by the walls of the ego, giving us a more personal connection with reality.

Through genuineness and confidence, you create a psychological base to fall back on when you experience a consciousness gap. A constant process of growth gets us to the other side of fear. Fear becomes our study material casting away depression and doubt. Genuineness is actualized while consuming the jungle of ego.

Reading Trungpa helps me to grow and understand myself better. I have enjoyed all three of his books that Carolyn Rose Gimian has edited.

Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (1984)

Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala (1999)

After writing about Linchpin and while reading reading the Dalai Lama’s new book, The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World, I decided to reflect on this helpful book that I had read years ago.

Happiness is feeling in control over what you do everyday. Happiness is the freedom to do your work your own way and assuming that responsibility personally.

Your work is not your entitlement; it’s about earning through effort. If you are not satisfied with your labor, there is nothing wrong with quitting and finding a more rewarding job.

I especially enjoyed the Dalai Lama’s comments on work overload. When the Dalia Lama was asked about being overloaded with work, he said: “What do you mean?” Conscious employers have the responsibility to judge how much a person can responsibly be expected to do. Too much overload is a lack of respect or concern expressed toward the employee. As does lack of employee effort show lack of respect for one’s job and management. The Dalai Lama suggests training our minds to use human intelligence with reason and outlook, an analytical meditation on personal initiative.

The very purpose of making money is to provide ourselves with a means to accomplish something and not basing wealth on something artificial. The realization of interdependence and interconnectedness in the workplace encourages broader vision and more satisfaction. Avoiding destructive emotions, jealousy for example, encourages teamwork with the understanding that no event yields 100% satisfaction.

Linchpin and The Art of Happiness at Work emphasize the individual’s responsibility through effort to not be bored with your job. It’s our responsibility to decide the level of challenge that provides the greatest degree of growth and satisfaction. The emphasis on the flow of absorption through work as a creative art form results in more happiness.

Accepting the difficult realities of life and dropping our resistance to them is the key to liberation and discovery. Richo, a psychotherapist, states that there are five unavoidable facts, five unchanging facts that come to visit us many times over.

1. Everything changes and ends.

2. Things do not always go according to plan.

3. Life is not always fair.

4. Pain is part of life.

5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

Richo believes our fear and struggle against these givens are the real sources of our troubles. Exploring these facts in separate chapters, Richo provides many helpful ideas on how to break down our automatic neurotic ego controls.

In part two, Richo combines Buddhist insight to give us tools for our daily work of establishing an unconditional yes to our conditional existence. Lessons for using lovingkindness and meditation to understand our feelings. As our awareness and mindfulness improve, we are able to move toward yes to who we are psychologically and spiritually.

Using Richo’s insight of shadow-work psychology, Five Things shows how we can open our lives and decrease the automatic ego controls that narrow our lives.

Readers of James Hollis should enjoy reading David Richo as well.

by Chögyam Trungpa

Edited by Judith L. Lief

Shambhala (2009)

The Truth of Suffering is an ideal introduction and exploration into Buddha’s teaching known as the four noble truths. These four truths are the Buddha’s lessons on suffering, its cause and its cessation. The teachings also include the way to practice in order to overcome anxiety, deception and neurosis. Trungpa explores and explains the four truths masterfully in this text.

The first noble truth is recognizing the reality of suffering and understanding the experience of suffering. Recognition is the first step to being present. After recognition, we begin to dissect the suffering experience by working on our habits and ego.

The second noble truth is understanding the origin of suffering and learning avoidance. We can learn avoidance by examining our flickering thoughts and set patterns of thought and behavior. Understanding these pattern mechanics help us to recognize what is undesirable.

The third truth is cessation of goal attainment. This leads to a gradual transcending into more awareness, a living meditation with a more mindful presence while decreasing fixation.

The fourth noble truth is the path to actualization. It is the realization that the path is yours and the result of your actions alone. Actualizing this awareness with the world leads us towards contentment.

Judith Lief wonderfully edited Trungpa’s helpful and concise presentation. It is easily understood and his teachings are originally laid out as an ideal introduction for the beginner as well as the experienced practitioner in search of deeper understanding.

365 Tao: Daily Meditations

by Deng Ming-Dao

Harper Collins (1992)

As a calendar ends and another starts, I’m thinking about which daily reading book I will take with me through 2010. I enjoy living with a book each day. A small portion of reading from a thought provoking book on an inspiring subject. I’ve been doing this for years, and it is something I look forward to when I begin my nightly reading after my work day. If you haven’t tried this as a part of your reading routine, think about it. I’ve found that this habit helps me to get into a frame of mind to read and absorb more. It helps me to relax within my reading, enhancing this pleasurable time of day.

In 2009, I enjoyed 365 Tao. On each page is a daily reflective commentary on subjects like growth, swimmer, moderation, spine, and nonending are turned down pages to return to in the future.

Buddhist Practice on Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideas and Western Psychology

Harvey B. Aronson

Shambhala (2009)

Trying to just read and understand Buddhist psychological teaching is generally not easy for our Western minds. Applying these concepts to our daily routines, work and family relationships seems even more difficult living our Western lifestyles. Buddhist Practice puts the last 50 years or so of Buddhist influence on our Western culture in this readable, organized and informative text.

Buddhist Practice addresses the differences of the two cultural approaches:

A) The Western belief that anger should not be suppressed versus teachings to counter anger and hatred.

B) Western independence versus Asian interdependence and daily fulfillment with emphasis on no-self or egolessness.

C) Attachment and supportive relationships versus the Buddhist approach of attachment as the cause of suffering.

These ideas springboard into this complete book helping us to merge these concepts into our daily lives.

I remember in the early 70s reading Ram Dass–Richard Alpert’s Be Here Now, trying to make sense of it and being influenced especially by the suggested reading list in the back of the book. I was so influenced that I used this list extensively to inventory Lemuria when I opened the bookstore in 1975. I’m even sure reading many of those suggested titles actually encouraged me, in a sense, to open a bookstore. It was interesting to me that Aronson’s quest began in earnest in 1964 after attending a psychological talk by Alpert-Dass at Brooklyn college.

Buddhist Practice is an enjoyable, insightful read for those who have interest in the Western counter culture and mind study which has taken place in the last 50 years.

Musashi wrote this book circa 1645, and his reason for doing it was to explain the philosophy he lived out that allowed him to become the greatest swordsman in Japan. He divides the content into five books: earth, water, fire, wind and emptiness ( “void” in other translations). Each book deals with a subject that Musashi feels is critical to success. What’s so interesting about this book is Musashi’s advice to “learn 10,000 things from one”. So, it turns out that you’re not just reading a book about samurai life only, you’re actually reading a book that is applicable to any endeavor in life. It’s about the backbreaking work it takes to achieve greatness, remain undefeated, and to face battles as if you are already dead. If someone walks away from this book unchallenged or feeling as if they’ve already “arrived” then they didn’t read it. The Book of Five Rings offers a wonderful and disciplined perspective for anyone who takes the time to not only read it but to start living it. I would recommend it especially to artists who feel that they are “stuck”; it’ll definitely get you unstuck.

I wanted to blog about this book not only because of its personal interest to me, but also because the copy that I got from Lemuria was a translation of it that I had never read before. This translation varies from my previous experiences with The Book of Five Rings in that includes an excellent introduction to Zen, Bushido and Heiho as well as a commentary before each book that gives historical context and defines unfamiliar terms. The translation work was done by Nihon Services Corporation; I had a better sense of understanding the context with this version.

-Hunter