"A valley filled with thick fog
A bird flies in and can't find her nest.
If you open your eyes, you lose your way;
If you close your eyes you lose your home." - Zen Master Seung Sahn

"In Tibetan Buddhism Hungry Ghosts (Sanskrit: pretas) have their own realm depicted on the Bhavacakra and are represented as teardrop or paisley-shaped with bloated stomachs and necks too thin to pass food such that attempting to eat is also incredibly painful. Some are described as having "mouths the size of a needle's eye and a stomach the size of a mountain". This is a metaphor for people futilely attempting to fulfill their illusory physical desires."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghosts

This idea of ghosts in many religions seems to be always present, and it seems a little over-present to me, in the light that we do not tend to see ghosts very often if at all.

The other day I read, in the Chinese meditation classic'The Secret of the Golden Flower', an interesting sentence which went: "If we do not meditate for a day, then we become a ghost for that day". This stuck with me for the next few days, as I have always had trouble keeping my daily practice consistent.

This idea that if we do not meditate, then we become a ghost, seems to infer that if we do not practice becoming closer to our natural physical bodies, we enter a world of floating bodiless ghosts - and namely 'hungry ghosts', because a lack of meditation will also allow our hungry desires to surface more.

This has illustrated this world of "hungry ghosts" a lot better for me, and it puts the mystical idea in a practical, observable context, which is always good from a Zen point of view.

It does seem that one often encounters such 'hungry ghosts' in society, who can encourage one to leave one's true body behind and drift with them looking for trash to 'eat'.

Have you ever got into a bath with cold feet, and the warm water made them feel like they were literally on fire?

Eventually they warm up and once they become the same temperature as the rest of the body, it seems strange how they could have experienced the feeling of flames.

Maybe this hell we often find ourselves in is also as illusory as the hell our feet experience in such a situation. Maybe we are too cold relative to our natural environment and one another - and once we decide to surrender ourselves to the 'heat' of everyday living - the intensity of empathy and the suffering of transience - at first maybe it feels like we are in hell, but then we acclimatize in the same way our feet warm up in the bath.

Seagulls and stomachs
Shouting in the windy storm.
Just the way it is.



Winter of the heart;
A long time now since new growth.
All things must change.



Sitting on the roof
Clouds let through the scorching sun
Burning eyes but warm skin.


A glimpse of mountain
Through violent swirling rain clouds.
The breath escapes.




Standing in moonlight
Mountain flows down like water.
Restless cicadas.



A stone statue sitting;
The wind and rain come and go.
No face left to see.

We breathe in,
The invisible air,
We breathe out,
The intangible clouds.
We speak,
Our invisible thoughts,
Which are carried,
As invisible sounds.

I am feeling like this blog is now detrimental to my practice to the degree that I must stop posting about technique or focus, and so in future I will only be posting any interesting information I have found elsewhere.

I don't think my current attitude can even by accurately portrayed through words anyway.

I haven't posted for a while because of how words seem to create busy-ness.

Even such a sentence as "allow the body to be still" is completely exasperating.

I am now of the opinion that I get a buzz out of actively moving even my little finger.

Such a movement probably tells me I own something, I have power over it; I can move it when ever I want.

Pathetic! Haha.

But I have heard the ego loves power.

It also loves definitions... so enough of this crap.

Always listen to the precious dantien, and care for it.

Developing a 'Spiritual Foetus' in one's dantien, like in the oldskool Taoist style, does not seem such a strange thing.

Indeed, caring for one's own dantien as if it were a developing baby which requires much love and attention seems to be the right kind of attitude and focus.

Just a thought.

I can watch a plant growing, occaisionally removing a dead leaf, or providing a bit of water, but I do not hold up the leaves for it, or physically stretch it's stem upwards towards the sun.

My teacher once said that he "nudges his children from afar" with regards to their up-bringing, and I believe it is possible to nurture one's Being in the same way.

Through the swirling clouds
I catch a glimpse of mountain.
I can only breathe.

Words words words words words words words words words words words words words..

I stole this from the daily_zen community, but I want to post it on my journal because it is no nicely put:

"Whatever you are doing, twenty-four hours a day, in all your various activities, there is something that transcends the Buddhas and Zen Masters; but as soon as you want to understand it, it’s not there. It’s not really there; as soon as you try to gather your attention on it, you have already turned away from it. That is why I say you see but cannot do anything about it."

- Foyan (1067-1120)

Today I had the following thought during meditation:

"My body is remaining still, soft, relatively well-aligned, and I am allowing it to balance by itself as the breath comes and goes on it's own accord. I am not clinging to thoughts as much as before I became still, but now I am probably half way through and my Being does not seem to be relaxing from busy-ness any more. Why is this?"

- Because my awareness is jumping all over my body. I am constantly scanning to feel if I am still, whether all body parts are aligned correctly, whether my breath is long or short enough, what my thoughts are doing... etc.

One can be very busy while meditating, even when the body is still and the thoughts seem to be rooted in the moment, and so with this new revelation I can allow my awareness to softly descend to rest in my dantien, akin to an egg in a nest. My awareness in my dantien is also symbolically cradled by the position my hands are in, and when ever I catch the awareness beginning to wander out to 'scout the area' so to speak, I can gently nudge it back into position with the aim to be lazy and relax.

The body knows what is good for it, and so if one places the right food in front of it (i.e correct posture), then it will automatically eat and nourish itself akin to a plant sucking up water. There is no need to 'scout the area' in this case, as long as one has correct posture from the beginning.

Around a month ago my meditation practice swung towards a posture geared towards sleepy relaxation after a spate of very rigid, controlled postures which created tension in me. Two days ago, having lost the ability to relax through mis-alignment (due to relaxing into bad postural habits), I have now taken up a more controlled stance.

It seems that practice often swings between relaxation and tension, soft and hard, emptiness and form, akin to a searchlight looking around in the dark; backwards and forwards. Maybe this is my 'Being' looking for the "Middle-road" of Buddhism, or the "Balance of Yin and Yang" of Taoism.

This swinging searchlight I have also thought of as an analogy for the awareness of the breath descending to the dantien. The breath softly explores the dark, mysterious emotional centre-of-gravity of the dantien during practice; finding nowhere to rest, swinging out and in. It is always a journey without a destination.

I have actually stolen the swinging idea from Shunryu Suzuki with his 'swinging door' analogy for the breath. This idea never helped me during practice, and neither does this searchlight idea really when it comes down to it.

I think I am just writing about how this swinging nature towards settling in the middle is manifesting itself.

Anyway, it is done now, so time to let go of it eh...

..."Oops I did it again"...."Got lost in the game".... haha... How profound that song is eh.



I used to have an annoying friend at highschool, who, when arguing used to say this:

"You THINK you know it, you THINK you know it, you THINK you know it, but you DON'T know it!"

Now I know why he was so irritating.



Because HE WAS RIGHT! Grrrrrrrr.



Anyway, my mantra this week, not that I generally care for such a thing, will be:
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I REALLY don't know".

It seems neigh impossible to avoid adding any progress during my practice to my ego. It is like being washed backwards and forwards by waves in a stormy ocean. Soon I feel like I'm gonna be torn apart, worn down to a floppy skeleton, or completely dissolve altogether.

Hmmm... that last one doesn't sound too bad from a Zen perspective does it....

!ALARM BELLS RINGING!: Security Breach, Quote Z394217: "He who speaks of Zen knows nothing of it"...


.....and there was silence.....

My chi-kung teacher once gave a tip about keeping one's straight posture during practice.

When a member of the class said that they found themselves leaning forward, thus causing their spine to bend, and that they found it hard to stop this without using tension, the teacher said that it is not so much a matter of holding the spine straight with force. Instead, the focus should be on being aware of when one is moving forward and one should counteract this urge by allowing the body to be still, and not pulled into unhealthy positions.

This seems like a very subtle difference which possibly plays on words, but there does indeed seem to be a difference between holding oneself straight and resisting the temptation to move un-necessarily.

Many times I find myself wanting to move areas of my body even though there is no physical pain triggering this desire. Of course resisting anything will cause tension, but being aware of these postural distractions I have found allows the mind to settle faster.

Again, what I have mentioned previously about some triggers of physical movement during meditation not having a bodily orgin (in the muscular/skeletal sense) comes to mind. I guess it is the same as when people fidget with their hands, etc. Mental discomfort often seems to be temporarily anesthesitized by physical movement. Maybe it is the momentary distraction of the mind that causes such a phenomenon. Whatever it is, I am finding it very interesting at the moment....

........possibly as a distraction from stillness!

Haha.

Mu time once more eh.

Standing in moonlight
Mountain flows down like water.
Restless cicadas.

It is hard to believe that yesterday I sat drinking tea with a Buddhist Monk, a Taoist priest, and a couple of ageing ladies outside the shrine door of a temple on Kongdong Mountain, Pingliang.

They provided me with fruit and bread taken from the Temple's Taoist shrine and spoke at me in unfathomable chinese.

Smiles, shared food, relaxing in the sun, and appreciation of surroundings are things which transcend communication boundaries of course.

This experience has certainly been one of the highlights of my travels.

I had to literally run away to escape food being forced upon me, and the most settled, warm, and hilarious of them all was a fat old lady who had white lip-scum jumping out of her mouth as she read out prayers while I bowed to Kuan-yin, during which she stopped jabbering to let out the occaisonal belch.

Wonderful!

Many thoughts and distractions come and go during practice.

Is my posture correct? How should I adjust to optimize on my current position?
- Posture will take care of itself once you can relax by stopping worrying about it.

Does a tree worry about whether it will grow upwards?
- No, it is alive and thus grows.

How can I keep my focus on my dantien when my mind is busy distracting my awareness with thoughts?
- Awareness will take care of itself once you can relax by stopping worrying about it.

Does a cat worry about being distracted from pouncing on a mouse?
- No, it is alive and thus efficiently maintains it's life by focussing on eating when hungry.


Worrying about perfect posture or awareness takes one further from one's aim of relaxing into one's Being.

When one relaxes into one's Being by giving up on achieving, only then does one achieve anything.

If only any of this made sense!