Tuesday, 6. October 2009, 15:02:19
Zen Master Seung Sahn on Bodhisattva action (from the book
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha):
No-attachment thinking means that your mind is clear all the time. When you drive, you aren't thinking; you are just driving. The truth is just like this. Red light: stop. Green light means go. It is intuitive action. Intuitive action means acting without desire or attachment. My mind is clear like a mirror, reflecting everything just as it is. Red comes and the mirror is red. White comes and the mirror is white. This is how a Bodhisattva lives. I have no desires for myself. My actions are for all people.
If you attain enlightenment, you will understand that all people are suffering greatly, so your mind will also be suffering. This is Big Suffering. So you must enter the great Bodhisattva way and save all people from their suffering. I hope you only keep a don't-know-mind always & everywhere. Then you will attain enlightenment and save all beings.
Natural-style living is good. Plastic-style living is good. Business-style living is also good. What is important is WHY you are living this way. If you desire money & objects for yourself or if you desire nature for yourself then this is no good. If you cut off your desires, then business is not business. It is Bodhisattva business. Working and earning money in order to help other people, this is Zen business. Only interested in making money and being successful for myself is "small I". But if I make money to help all people then this is good business. This is "Big Business!"
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Zen Master Wu Kwang on the Bodhisattva Vows:http://www.kwanumzen.org/primarypoint/v03n2-1986-spring-wkzm-carryingsnowinateaspoon.htmlQ: Every morning I get up with everyone else here and take a vow to save all sentient beings from suffering. How can I do that?
ZMWK: Do you want to do it?
Q: Yes.
ZMWK: Then you'll find a way, through getting up every morning and taking that vow. That's an impossible vow. Each one of these is an impossible vow. "The Buddha way is inconceivable - I vow to attain it." How do you attain something that's inconceivable? "Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all." How? It brings up the image of some great social worker in the sky - (laughter) - bigger than the whole universe, going to save all beings from suffering.
Bernard Tetsugen Glassman Sensei, a teacher in Maezumi Roshi's school (he has a group in New York) gave an example of what a bodhisattva is. He said, there's a well that's dry down on the plains, and up on the mountain tops there is snow. So the bodhisattva is like a guy who decides he'll fill the well by bringing the snow down to the plains, but the only thing he has to carry the snow in is a teaspoon. So he goes up the mountain, gets one teaspoon full of snow, comes back down to the plains and puts the snow in the well. Then he goes back up the mountain, gets another teaspoon full of snow, brings it down and puts it in the well, over and over.
That's a ridiculous endeavor. Never in a million years is he going to fill up that well, but what's important is his sincerity of effort - to just do something, whether it's possible or impossible. That effort, that spirit, is a contribution in and of itself that can't be compared to anything else, so it has absolute value. Because it can't be compared to anything else, the spirit of that fills the universe in one second. At each moment that we do that, all sentient beings are saved, because we affirm the absolute value of everything.
We have to do something, even if it's not possible. So the vow points to something like that.
Q: What is absolute value?
ZMWK: Relative value is concerned with, "This is good," or "This is not as good as something else." Value is ascribed to something based on a comparison with something else. "My watch is better than your watch, so it's worth more." That's relative value. Absolute value has no basis like that. We can't compare with anything, so it stands on its own just as it is. Sometimes we say subject and object become one - pfft! At that time, there's no comparison of anything with anything else, so the absolute value of something emerges at that point. It just stands or sits on its own.
Q: Your story about the bodhisattva with the teaspoon reminds me of a similar story of the sparrow who tries to put out a forest fire by carrying water in his beak. I told that story to one of my friends and they said, "That's the dumbest thing! Why didn't he take a bucket?"
ZMWK: He didn't have a bucket. But we're not talking about mountains and snow, we're talking about suffering. You can't use a power tool on suffering.
Q: I get the feeling sometimes that the sparrow was really dumb.
ZMWK: Yes, sure! But dumbness has its place too. Someone might have a really simple kind of faith which is kind of dumb, given what we see all around us, and yet the energy that might come out of that effort might be quite profound. That doesn't mean we shouldn't sometimes look at the instruments we're using. If there's a bucket at hand and you're using a teaspoon, then that's stupidity. But if there's no bucket and you won't choose the teaspoon because there's no bucket, then that's stupidity, too.
We talk about saving all sentient beings, every morning when we get up and bow and say our vows. But to have the idea that this little congregation of people here is doing something so profound that it's going to make a dent in the social fabric of this country is, from one perspective, dumb. Yet this is the instrument we have at hand, so we make use of it.
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Zen Master Seung Sahn's "Action Zen" Consists of 4 elements that have become synonymous with Kwan Um Zen School style:
1) it displays his genius in translating classic Ch'an insights into sound bites: his phrases "only don't know", "put it all down", "don't make anything" and "just do it" have become popular parts of American Zen culture
2) it has shifted the emphasis from striving for liberation to "together action", a more socially engaged format, encapsulated by his phrase "How can I help you?" which he exhorts his students to use as a rallying cry for their "Zen boddhisattva" practice
3) his emphasis on "bodhisattva action" replicates in America the pastor-parishioner relationship in Korean Buddhism
4) his use of either koans or mantras as practice tools for Zen training; while confusing for many of his American students, this is a continuation of the mix of Pure Land and Ch'an practices that have dominated Korean Buddhism for several hundred years
His approach to the boddhisattva path is reflective of the popular Korean Buddhist culture where all middle-aged women working in the monasteries are addressed as "bosal nim" (Korean for bodhisattva), and pays no heed to the doctrinal foundations of the bodhisattva path as articulated in the Mahayana sutras where bodhisattvahood is the culminating experience of a lifetime of rigorous perfection of the paramitas.
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