Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice: Part 2

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(Follow this link to see the May 2021 Priory Newsletter where this was published.)

New fence on a rainy morning

Bodhidharma’s “Outline of Practice” starts by saying that we can either enter the Dharma by “reason” or “practice.” Last time I talked mostly about the entry by reason and what that might mean. Entry by “reason” is more like entry by “just letting go of everything,” by giving oneself wholeheartedly over to the mind of zazen. D.T. Suzuki’s translation concludes this section with:

“He will not then be a slave to words, for he is in silent communion with the Reason itself, free from conceptual discrimination; he is serene and not-acting. This is called Entrance by Reason.”

Before we move on to the next section, I want to point out what “not-acting” means, since it relates to the mind of meditation and not necessarily directly to action in the world. Not-acting, in the sense of meditation, refers to the activity the mind Continue reading →

Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice: Part 1

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(Follow this link to see the April 2021 Priory Newsletter where this was published.)

Meditation and Compassion Are One.

One of my favorite short pieces of Zen Buddhist Teaching is Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice. In his opening comment to his translation of this work, D.T. Suzuki says “As long as Zen appeals to one’s direct experience, abstraction is too inane for the mind of a master.” In the study of the Zen literature, there is an ongoing process of coming to see how what is talked about applies directly to our life of practice and is not just something exotic and mysterious. Of course, there is a pitfall here: the hazard of taking a thing which points to a profound truth that we do not yet fully understand, and trivializing it.

With the effort to both keep from getting mired in abstraction and keep from trivializing (bringing the teaching down to my level), I thought it would be helpful to dig into this work.

I am going to use Red Pine’s North Point Press translation from “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma” (copyright 1987, Red Pine ) for most of this.

Bodhidharma starts with:

“Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and Continue reading →

The Physical World Is Not Answerable To My Personal Will

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(Follow this link to see the March 2021 Priory Newsletter where this was published.)

The rarely seen (at the temple) winter blooming camellia. It made a brief showing just before the recent snow and ice. It looks like there are still more blossoms on the way, despite the cold!

Recently I found myself laughing at the thought that, again, it was just not going to be how I wanted it. I can’t even remember what “it” was that I thought I wanted; maybe it was just for things to go “my way” for a bit, but it was clear that things were not going to break my way.

Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett taught that that line, “The physical world is not answerable to my personal will,” was a law of the universe: wherever we go in the whole of existence, we will not be able to control circumstances. When we hold onto wanting to have “what we want, when we want it, the way we want it,” there is inevitably going to be suffering.

It is true that sometimes we get what we want and sometimes that might even be a good thing. But it is also true that we just can’t expect to control things Continue reading →