At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

Contributed by Gregg Onewein

We are registered in the state of Washington as a non-profit corporation and our name is Entsuji. A Zen calligrapher wrote that this name expresses “not lacking, not superfluous.” Our Zen Master said it is a good name for a Zendo, and might be translated as “free from God, free from human.”

To be ‘free’ in the Zen sense does not entail getting anything or getting rid of anything. It means rather not reifying, not being hung up by anything as a fixed, separate self or object, It means being able to realize oneself as everything or as nothing, being able to move freely within and between the absolute (God, perfect) and relative (human, imperfect) aspects of life.

‘Absolute’ refers to Sunyata, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition it might be likened to The Garden of Eden before Adam & Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, or to the state of things before God created the cosmos, before any desire or intention. Being “free of God” means not making any place, person, thing, book, idea, activity, or what have you, into a final, all-good or holy thing, against which a non-holy, secular, bestial, or evil realm can crop up in opposition. It also means not misunderstanding Sunyata nihilistically as nothing opposed to something, or as nonexistence opposed to existence.

Without the relative aspect of experience we could not become adult human beings. Without it none of the uniquely human refinements of our experience could have developed, like the arts and sciences. But unless we can become “free from human” we remain victims of our own creations, severely limited by our notions of “reality” which we misperceive as imposed on us from the outside. Unless we can become free from the human we are tyrannized by the eternal soap operas of ego politics, pushed and pulled by the incessant polarities of rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, smart or stupid, young or old,, and so forth. Unless we can break out of the human domain our non-comparative faculties of wonder, love, childlike enthusiasm, and intuition dry up. Being free of both God and human then means living freely with both, as both, with neither, as neither.

We tried to come up with an appropriate English translation but could find nothing brief that does not leave out some important aspect of Entsu-ji. So, we are keeping the Japanese pronunciation of the original Chinese Ch’an (Zen) characters which, by the way, are these:

Otherwise we use a logo which derives from the north window of our zendo.

Seeing, breathing and sexual relating: in an informal chat, Roshi once named these as three most difficult activities. That is the order he used, I believe, because it makes particular sense: Breathing is in the middle. Above, there is seeing and all the abstract ‘heady’ or mental functions associated with vision. Below is sexual relating with its associations of ‘primitive passions’, instincts, child-bearing, biological continuity, and so on. We can become obsessed with the extreme of seeing (distancing, comparing, measuring, analyzing, cool controlling), or the extreme of sexual relating (getting close, loving, fighting, heedless hot feeling), experiencing either one as an end-all overwhelming everything else. Not so with breathing. After in-breath, an out-breath must follow; after out-breath, an in-breath must follow. The rhythmic or cyclic nature of breathing reminds us of existential affirmation and negation, appearance and disappearance, and all the vital polarities of existence. Because of this central position, it is not accidental that attention to breathing is emphasized in zazen.

Incidentally, something can be learned from old Greek and Roman statues, and depictions of the human body in European art until a few decades ago. Unlike modern ideals which are top heavy in stressing broad shoulders and thin waists, in older art the mid-body is respected, not slighted. Male figures have the powerful abdomen of a wrestler, and female figures have a glorious abdomen expressing potential motherhood. In our change-denying, mortality-hiding hangup with looking forever young and ‘on the go’, we tend to regard the normal mid-body of ourselves or others as aesthetically unpleasing or even as unhealthily overweight. If you think this is just a matter of preference, look at the normal bellies of small children before fashion-consciousness takes its toll.

Now how does this relate to breathing? In Victorian novels you can read about ladies fainting from slight cause. No wonder! They wore corsets to pinch their waists. Then, to get even smaller waists, operations became fashionable in which lower ribs were removed. Dressed for social affairs, ladies were more or less in a constant state of breathlessness, not far from fainting. So the beginning instruction of Zazen, to let your abdomen ‘protrude’ is not just an idiosyncratic aspect of Zen, it is simply acknowledging what is necessary for deep, relaxed breathing.

Allowing that we can learn from the traditional wisdom residing in language, consider that our word ‘spirit’ derives from a Latin word meaning ‘breath’. In a wide range of related words like ‘aspire’, ‘conspire’, ‘expire’, ‘inspire’, ‘perspire’, ‘respire’ the central importance of breathing is manifested. The equating of breathing with ‘mind’ and ‘life’ in general is evident in another family of words stemming from Latin, namely ‘anima’, ‘animosity’, ‘animate’, ‘animal’, ‘equanimity’, ‘magnanimous’, ‘unanimous’. Consider how the ancient Greek word ‘phrenia’, referring to the diaphragm and breathing, was expanded to mean ‘mind’ in general as in our modern words ‘phrenology’ and ‘schizophrenia’. Or consider that the ancestor of ‘ghost’ is an Old English word meaning breath, spirit, or soul, thus dying or expiring was referred to as ‘giving up the ghost’.

Roshi has said on other occasions “Raise your sternum [chest bone]” and “Breathe through your navel.” The combination of the two makes maximum space for the lungs and fosters deep breathing. The diaphragm is the large transverse muscle between the lungs and the stomach cavity. When the sternum is up, and there is room in the abdomen below, the diaphragm can relax and move down, providing more place for the lungs to expand. Anxiety in general is associated with a high, tense diaphragm. Aside from Zen, the importance of breathing from the abdomen is well-known in the martial arts, in many other sports, in exercises preparing for child birth, and in operatic singing. A manifestation of this is the sutra chanting of Roshi in his younger days which had a power and clarity that no one can come close to without breathing from the belly, sounding from the belly.

“With a powerful exhalation, we exhale all thoughts, no matter how attractive or unattractive.” That’s another beginning instruction from Roshi. In the days before scuba equipment, divers who wanted to go deep exhaled strongly to decrease their buoyancy. No matter how much air is expelled, enough remains in the lungs for immediate use. Making a deep dive and deepening your zazen are analogous. A powerful exhalation at the outset brings you in touch with the center of your solar plexus. (A biologist friend told me this ‘pit’ of the stomach is the oldest part of our bodies, the original father-impregnated mother-cell which exploded trillions of times to become one’s adult body..

Breathing is midway between voluntary and involuntary; between ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’; between human intention, human desire, and the non-intention, non-desire of Dharma functioning. Roshi has emphasized that we must discover how inhaling is simultaneously exhaling, how Buddha Nature encompasses both objective and subjective, both father [outside, future] and mother [inside, past]. Unlike a machine which does not absorb and change with the fuel which runs it, the air you breathe and the food you eat is ‘you’. What you breathed a while ago is reading these lines. Fully expressed, the whole universe is breathing with you, as you. Once, when diving, I came across a baby octopus. It was gently expanding and contracting in perfect rhythm with its surroundings. First I had the impression that the ocean was moving the octopus, then, manifesting as octopus, I realized this little greenish-pink event as the lungs of the entire ocean.

We are usually unaware of breathing until exerting ourselves physically, until we are emotionally agitated, or ill. So, becoming aware of breathing in a calm state is important. Why doesn’t Roshi take it a step further and assign breath-counting or other methods of trying to control breathing? Years ago, while doing zazen in the backyard of a house, I heard a faucet slowly dripping. I tried to ‘become’ the dripping but noticed that my breathing got synchronized to rhythmic patterns I heard in the dripping. There was a sequence like ‘dit dit dah dit dah’ then ‘dah dit dit dah dit’, then other sequences took shape which lengthened or shortened the breathing cycle. I tried to get rid of pattern awareness, to control my not-controlling, but I only got more tied up. A long while later, after fatigue set in, I suddenly realized a brief period had elapsed with no pattern; ‘I’ had manifested as dripping water with no effort. In other words, attending to breathing [or anything else] can be overdone because of our willful, interfering human mentality. Perhaps then, after initially settling your breathing it is best to attend peripherally (like seeing from the corners of your eyes), aware yet unaware of breathing at the same time, while your attention flows and fixates nowhere…

To conclude, everything expressed here consists only of notes to Roshi’s teaching. Hopefully nothing has been added which obscures or conflicts with that teaching. Thank you Roshi! Gassho, fellow Rinzai-ji-ists.

Shozan

With polytheistic societies, tolerance was easier because any remarkable feature of nature or human experience could be regarded as a deity, therefore alien deities were understandable even if odd. (In ancient Rome, for example, alien visitors or residents were allowed to build and observe rites in their own temples in the city of Rome itself as well as other Roman cities.) With monotheistic societies (Judaic, Christian, and Moslem) tolerance was more difficult because each claimed that it alone could properly define the nature of a single, universal God. The very singleness of the endeavor would seem to promote universal accord but ironically it produced intense discord. Differences, even small differences acceptable to polytheistic societies could not be tolerated with a single God. The notions of all other societies must be in error, perhaps satanic error at that, and therefore subject to suppression if not extermination. Cynically stated, the result was this: religion (as idolatry, superstition etc.) is what other people live by; what we live by is religion in the ‘highest’ meaning, or we can even dispense with the word ‘religion’ altogether and say our way is ‘reality.’

Though we imagine we have evolved far beyond that state of affairs, it is actually with us still. Simply put, religion is the pattern of your attitudes and acts which gives meaning to your life. What about deities? Well, a deity does not have to be personified to be a deity. In this basic context, a deity is any entity, pattern, or model which seems to give structure and meaning to one’s life. Usually such a deity is shared with other people, the more the better, and that may be the main difference between what we regard as ‘insanity’ (a deity to one person only), a ‘cult’ (only for a few) and ‘recognized religion’ (for millions). Money, power, fame: are these not deities in our time, deities which can also be personified in the images of successful billionaires, politicians, movie stars or sports heroes?

If you object to regarding such goals as deities you are manifesting the ancient attitude that what others live by is (at best) religion, while what you hold is ‘reality.’ Interestingly enough, the most prevalent religion of our time is not Christianity but what might be called ‘scientism’ to distinguish it from ‘science.’ Science, properly speaking, is a means of investigating nature and its results are admittedly educated guesses which may be altered or overthrown tomorrow. Science modestly makes no claim to final, absolute truth and accepts that there are other, equally valid approaches to truth. Scientism, on the other hand requires that we regard scientific methods as the best way or only way of reaching the truth of existence, and scientific results as ‘reality’ per se, or absolute truths. Scientism conceals its human aspects by claiming it is completely objective, completely free of all philosophy, metaphysics or subjective assumptions. Because of its patent or implied promises of miracle solutions for all human ills (war, poverty, disease, old age, etc.), scientism has great appeal and is therefore a useful tool for governments and large commercial enterprises.

Failure to recognize the religious aspects of all serious human endeavors can result in strange, contradictory behavior like atheists religiously attacking theistic religions in the name of ‘science’ or ‘humanism,’ or pacifists militantly decrying military and police activities, or right-to-life advocates killing abortion clinic personnel, or communists suppressing human rights for the sake of ‘the people.’ In each case, the proponents of this or that movement deny the subjective features in their cause, claiming instead that their cause is justified by external, objective principles, derived from science, God, historic necessity, or some other ‘real,’ nonsubjective source.

Coming back to the original question, if you think that religion is limited to a set of rituals conducted by specially ordained personnel in special locations according to dogmatic principles established in a text derived from a single, all-powerful deity, then Zen is not a religion. Some have said that Zen is just a philosophy. But philosophy in the modern sense can be merely an organized view of existence, a view which is not necessarily lived out. Zen is radically empirical, insisting that tenets and terms used expediently as its teaching devices all derive from immediate personal experience, and have no preexisting reality apart from that experience. Zen cannot be a just a philosophy then because whatever is gleaned in its practice must be thoroughly lived on a day to day basis.

Some have said that Zen should be regarded as a psychology, a science of human nature. What is the relationship of religion, philosophy and science? To its ancient Greek originators, philosophy was a criticism and rectification of traditional religious tenets about the nature of existence. Unless renewed periodically, all established movements tend to become literal, routine, bureaucratic, out of touch with the original intent of their founders, and irrelevant to the needs of their followers. Philosophy was not intended to supplant religion but rather to correct the gap between ancient Greek religious values and current practice.

As time went on however, philosophy became an activity in itself, giving the impression that it was independent of religion. In other words, philosophy as a professional activity suffered the same ossification that beset religion. While it continued to foster freedom from prior notions, willingness to test all notions and accept all results as only partially closed ‘educated guesses,’ it gradually diminished mind or mentality as a legitimate subject of investigation in its own right. By the time of Aristotle, philosophy had a more or less fixed split between the ‘physical’ and the ‘moral,’ or between nature and man, and the latter (if considered at all) was increasingly reduced to terms of the former. Life and consciousness could not be easily measured, formulated and predicted and therefore got reduced to the area of experience which lent itself to such measurement, that is,. the so-called ‘physical.’

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, philosophy was reincorporated in religion and remained so long after the fall of Rome. Philosophy came into its own again through contact with Moslem cultures from the 8th century on. With the European discovery and rapacious colonization of North and South America and then the rest of the world, a remarkable change occurred. ‘Backward’ or ‘heathen’ natives in the conquered territories were forcibly converted to Christianity so religion was nominally the justification for European dominance. However, for governmental control and commercial exploitation it was more practical to regard the conquered lands and peoples in a nonhuman or even nonliving manner. Dead, nonliving, or unconscious things don’t argue back and they can be used or abused any way one wishes without any pangs of conscience.

By the 17th century in Europe, philosophy revived and quickly took up where Greek science had left off. Newton and other great scientists of that era were also dedicated religionists and philosophers. But the prevailing need of the time was for a ‘reality’ that would justify the political and commercial exploitation of the world. Certain notions in the new science initiated by Galileo and Newton were potentially such a justification if they could be reified as a belief system that appeared to have nothing to do with belief. A universe of dead or nonliving matter, running like a great clock according to mechanical principles that are mathematically graspable: What a perfect justification for unlimited exploitation! If there is no human quality in the model of the universe, then, of course, there is no issue of belief, subjectivity, and limiting morality. Everything is permissible.

But first, God had to be eliminated because God represented a lingering human aspect in the machinery, a mental, evaluating, and therefore moral aspect. So, bit by bit the Christian God as The Cosmic Mathematician was retired from the new picture of the cosmos. What use was there of God if human intelligence could discover, formulate, and then exploit without limit the principles of the great machine? Philosophy as a process of questioning the fundamental nature of existence almost disappeared again, swallowed up as it was in the new religion of scientism which denied mentality any legitimate place in the scheme of things. Mathematical formulas and technical devices gained deification in place of the God. Of course, though considerably weakened, Christianity has retained a nominal hold but most people in the ‘developed’ countries look to Scientism not Christianity for miracles like curing all diseases, or colonizing Mars.

Only recently have we begun to appreciate the payments exacted by scientism. It isolates us from nature. Human beings are material aggregates which have accidentally developed life and consciousness. Nature is indifferent to or even antagonistic to that consciousness. There is no point to life other than propagating and then dying. There is no natural limit to human greed. Scientism in the 20th century has provided the means for killing or maiming more human beings than lived on the face of the earth before the 20th century. It has likewise (in its ‘conquering nature’ stance) abetted the irresponsible depletion of natural resources and polluting the environment with waste products. Science is here to stay but scientism has run its course as a belief system. What will replace it? Only the future can tell.

It should be obvious that as we use the words now, Zen is not a religion, a philosophy, or a would-be science like psychology. Modern psychology, for the most part, has been trying for 150 years to prove it is a science like physics, that is, that it can measure, mathematize, control and predict human behaviors like the discrete physical entities of physics. The effort hasn’t worked so far and is not likely to work in the future. Even the more ‘humanistic’ forms of psychology start with a tenet of Scientism, that is the assumption of an irrevocable split between subject and object, and ‘self’ is something only within the envelope of your skin, mainly sustained by your brain. Zen experience challenges this assumption.

So what is Zen then? Only your immediate experience can answer that.

As a consequence we tend to be rather cynical about enterprises that are not frankly commercial. We tend to suspect there’s an “angle,” that someone is “getting away” with something behind an altruistic front. We want proof that an apparently religious figure is beyond worldly concerns, in particular the monetary. But there’s a paradox here. If a religious person lived alone on a mountain, eking out an existence on the barest of means, how many followers would he or she attract nowadays? How many would take up the utterly simple lifestyle of Buddha or Jesus or Socrates? The contradiction is that while we want our heroes and heroines to be free of worldly ambitions, unless they attract a larger following via an appeal to worldly ambitions, we don’t think of them as “successful.” And if they are not successful, what could they possibly teach us?

So, what is Entsuji selling? Nothing! Unlike most religions, Zen Buddhism does not promise anything you can’t get aside from your own endeavors. It doesn’t promise you immortality, to save you from hell, to reserve a seat for you in heaven on the right side of God. Nor, in a lesser vein does it hold out images of a longer life, perfect health, heightened or supernatural mental powers, a stronger or more beautiful body, and so forth.

If it offers nothing it follows that Zen Buddhism probably doesn’t attract as many followers as other religious practices. True! In Japan, Zen is a minor branch of Buddhism and Rinzai is a minor branch of Zen. Yet, despite its minor role, many have acknowledged that over the centuries Zen has had a quiet but major influence on the development of arts and skills in China, Japan, Korea and other north Asiatic countries.

If Zen can offer nothing apart from your own endeavors, what’s the use of it? For people of the caliber of Shakyamuni (Buddha) or Krishnamurti, who with powerful wills and clear intellects can come to a deep realization on their own, Zen, as a group practice, may be superfluous. But most of us are spiritually lazy Someone may say, for example,” I don’t need a church or temple; I can meditate or worship much better on my own while taking a walk in the country.” Ask him or her how often that occurs and you’ll probably find that it’s more of an ideal than an actual practice.

Practicing together with others helps overcome our innate laziness. Additionally from its refinement through many centuries in many cultures, Zen has developed a wonderfully integrated system for helping people overcome distractions and focus on the hard work of examining the apparently separate reality of “self” and “world” (or “things”).

Many people like the idea of Zen, like to talk about the Zen of this or that activity. Along with this goes the contemporary custom of religious window-shopping. “Let’s drop in on the Zennies and see what they offer.” But, genuine Zen must be practiced, not merely looked at though a window. So, when it comes to parking one’s rear end on the cushions, making peace with ones body in a seated but erect position, lowering one’s somatic center and slowing one’s breathing, then beginning to confront without distraction the junk of one’s mind . . . well, goodbye! Some other practice is less demanding, more colorful, more promising, or whatnot. But whatever it is called, ultimately Zen is you, your true nature. Running away from Zen (in the deepest, nameless, doctrine-transcending sense of “Zen”) is actually trying to escape yourself.

at dawn,

solitary, mid-sky,

I knew myself completely:

no part left out.

-Poem by Izumi Shikibu (974-1034) from The Enlightened Heart, Stephen Mitchell (Ed.), Harper & Row ,1989.

Shikibu’s experience is not one of looking at the moon which then triggers some kind of internal enlightenment experience.  Rather, she knows herself completely in the very act of seeing the moon, before reflection. In the first instant of seeing the moon, this happens to everyone, without exception, Zen master or not.  It’s just that for most of us, a cloud of thought, of concepts like inside-outside and here-there, quickly obscures the experience.

Joshu Sasaki Roshi has a koan for his students:  ”How do you realize your true nature when you see the full moon?”.  How does one work on this koan? ……..Zazen,….zazen, zazen, zazen.  With the practice of zazen, we become more comfortable with a mind that is not thinking, that is empty, receptive.  Then just look at the moon.  If you are thinking, ”I’m going to look at the moon now. There it is.  OK, how I am realizing my true self ?”,  you will completely miss it.   If you endeavor to lookatthemoonrealfastbeforethinking!!, you will miss it.

There is an expression with great Zen implications, “catching your eye”.   Just let the moon catch your eye, catch all of you, “no part left out” as the poet says.  Embrace the moon as it grabs you by the ears, and yanks you into union.  …. In that union, you will know your true nature, and also the moon’s true nature, and that they are the same.

Bill Stephens– founder and leader of the Blue Ridge Zen Group: http://www.brzen.org/

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together the mountain and I,

until only the mountain remains.

the poet Li Po

(translated by Sam Hamill)