Mirror of Zen Blog

Search
Close this search box.

Crouching Tiger

Seung-Sahn-PZC-room

For some reason, this has always been one of my favorite photos of Dae Soen Sa Nim. It might be because, unlike photos taken during public talks and appearances, this really captures in raw form the energy you encountered when you entered the room for a private kong-an interview. (Or when you’d been called to his room to present a personal issue in private, or receive guidance.) A terse, laser-like focus, a crouching ferocity, holding back until some weakness appears (i.e., unclear thinking) on the part of his unsuspecting prey; the eyes baleful like a hungry tiger, but not in anything remotely threatening or dangerous to anything more precious to one than one’s flimsy ego or wish for approval. The appearance “appears” merciless, but only only because he gives no quarter whatsoever on the faintest whiff of bullshit or dissembling or performance, and in that way is truly seeing you, and in that way, then, more merciful at heart in his total-seeing of the “you” behind the social and psychological constructions.

Plentiful are the photos of him smiling or engaging at some public talk, or arriving in some airport — in other words, giving energy to people, inspiring, meeting their expectations and lifting them beyond. Things directed “outward” toward “others” in the trajectory of the charismatic-form bodhisattva.

But this photo is a repose, a totality of reserve impossible to describe: total openness, taking in everything in its view, serene like a vast lake at dawn, lightning (and thunderclap, if you’d badly erred) in the very moment — in the high-resolution blink — just before its sky-filling ion-burst.

I wish one day to somehow be given a high-resolution version of this photo. I would frame it and keep it in my room, always under the pitiless gaze of this sober-making stillness, this compassionate ferocity, this supermarket-checkout-scanner all-knowing clarity, this sphinx-like don’t-know, crouching to strike you into liberation — this Buddha.

People sometimes ask why I do a standing half-bow to his death portrait that hangs in our door room in Regensburg, as I leave at the conclusion of practice every day. (Full disclosure: It must be stated that I seriously consider, at least once or twice a week, taking that portrait down. There is something more than vaguely a little North-Korean-Dear-Leader about the whole thing, especially for people not immersed in the tradition that it flows down from. I get that, and I feel it, too. But it was a donation by a devoted to Korean student who invested much in creating that when he died, to fulfill a traditional obligation in their culture. And it is an honor to have his presence remind the newer students of this over-arching gaze.)

But if you had been diagnosed with a fatal disease which sentenced you to an ocean of suffering leading to an early death, and some person donated the equivalent of their lungs and liver to help you resurrect yourself, you would unfailingly express your gratitude to that person. You would at least wave to them if you passed them on the street every day, twice per day. That is the lowest-common-denominator view of what I am doing with bowing, for he returned to me far, far more than the content of several dump-trucks filled with transplantable lungs and livers and hearts: he gave me back the keys to open my own life, and to help others to unlock their own.).

I love this Buddha for showing me how to wake from that nightmare of fake thought-created “reality” that had me dying from my earliest days. Vowing always to cultivate this affinity to meet you again and again and again, however you choose to manifest for waking sentient beings, and welcoming the drilling-in of this deep bodhisattva glare filled overflowing with love and compassion.

We Are the Robots

03BA8031-EE1B-4B68-8545-D39096F9A7D4

The classic

Я твой слуга
Я твой работник

We’re charging our battery
And now we’re full of energy
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

We’re functioning automatic
And we are dancing mechanic
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

Я твой слуга
Я твой работник
Я твой слуга
Я твой работник

We are programmed just to do
Anything you want us to
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

We’re functioning automatic
And we are dancing mechanic
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

Я твой слуга
Я твой работник
Я твой слуга
Я твой работник

We’re functioning automatic
And we are dancing mechanic
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

We are programmed just to do
Anything you want us to
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots

We are the robots
We are the robots
We are the robots
(We are the robots)

Kraftwerk - The Robots HQ Audio

and live:

Kraftwerk - The Robots (2013 Version - Official Retrospective Video)

Rumi’s “Why Stand at the Edge of the River? Enter the Boundless Sea!”

732BC0C1-E0E5-4920-8D47-C6A9266CED4C

One of our Zen Center Regensburg members in Munich, Frau L., sent me yesterday by WhatsApp this photo of a glorious poem by Rumi which speaks perfectly – – as everything Rumi speaks — to the basic work of Zen, or “waking up”:

Here is my WhatsApp reply:

Thank you so, so much for sending this! What a powerful teaching this is!

“Free yourself from the bondage of six dimensions“ —

The six dimensions are: the seeing-dimension, the hearing-dimension, the smelling-dimension, the tasting-dimension, the bodily-sensation dimension, and the dimension of the thinking-mind. In Rumi, as in Buddhism, there are these six experiences or “dimensions“ that everyone swims around in, believing this to be the only reality. “Free yourself from bondage to them!”

Rumi is clearly pointing to our true self. He’s pointing to our true nature before thinking arises — the no-name “something” that notices seeing, that notices hearing, that notices smelling, that notices tasting, that notices bodily-sensation, and that notices thinking coming and going. Rumi is pointing to don’t-know mind!

So, saying to herself (everything that Rumi talks about is directed to “the Lover“, which means to our self):

“Hey, dearest Frau L., don’t be too burdened with the things that you see, the things that you hear, the things that you smell, the things that you taste, the sensations of the body, and the things that appear back-and-forth in your thinking-mind! If you are looking for that real Love [his word], that real self-understanding, then turn to your true nature (“the sea of the heart/mind”) — why stop at the edge of the river of everyday sensations flowing past, when you can enter this vast, boundless, measureless Sea of your Self? Let other people run around trying to fix things, Frau L. — this whole world is worth nothing by comparison to your True Self!”