It’s always interesting looking up Google statistics on who’s searching what. I thought I’d look up enlightenment, to see just how much people were interested. But it seemed the results might be clouded. The news headlines seemed to have nothing to do with the meaning of enlightenment as I intended.
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I guess if I were to have to make a call I’d say that I am taming the bull. I’m reminded of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approach to body building; everytime the same routine, session in, session out. It’s not about making it interesting, it’s about getting the job done. And I’m reminded of something Gil Fronsdal once said; to paraphrase: that people think my talk was boring is a good thing. After all, what we’re pointing to is interesting not the pointing itself. But it seems we are making finer and finer distinctions until there are no distinctions at all.
So, this taming, seems to be about getting some distance on the mind; the kind of distance where thoughts are seen to be external, which is I guess glimpsing the bull. Perhaps distance should be called spaciousness. Thoughts arise within a much wider space than the thoughts themselves. And because of that distance there is a measure of control, which seems to be no control at all, because when there is control it is really thoughts controlling thoughts. Call this wider space presence. (more…)
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Dogen Zenji who lived betweeen 1200 and 1253, founded the Soto school of Zen. His basic tenet as far as I could tell was the unity of practise and enlightenment. Suzuki Ryoshi who wrote the well known Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind was a soto practitioner.
I like just sitting. I wrote post on Silent Illumination recently, which talks more to this I think, bry this from the back of Dogen’s Beyond Thinking
Spiritual practice is not some kind of striving to produce enlightenment, but an expression of the enlightenment already inherent in all things.
What a very packed sentence. Try these on for size:
I’m sure there are more. Though I do like the sense of non-separation that comes through so loudly and clearly. Or is that just me 
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The Method of No-Method: The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination