Adult practice: Part 1Adult practice

One year has passed since I became the abbot of Antaiji. Until then I had not much to worry about except my own practice, but now my responsibilities changed: Rather than being a training monk under the guidance of a teacher, I now have to offer guidance to the practioners and visitors who participate in our life, apart from thinking about my own practice. This year, I met with about 150 people who came to Antaiji to practice, had to confront their doubts and answer their questions. I guess that I learned more from them then they from me. This year is also the twentieth year of my own zazen practice. I myself encountered many questions during these two decades, and doubts and difficulties would sometimes pile up like walls in front of me. I can not recount how often I got stuck in my practice, but starting from this month I would like to reflect on my own experience and sufferings, trying to make clear to myself and others what practicing the buddha way means in the first place.

When I say this, it might seem as if I was talking about something terribly difficult. That, of course, is not the case. Actually there is nothing as easy as zazen or practicing the buddha way:

"What is zazen, what is practice?""Just sitting, just doing.""What for?""For nothing. Just do it. Practice the dharma for the sake of the dharma. There is no goal to reach, nothing to long for and nothing to attain. Just follow life in this one single instant, right here, right now - the life that you are presently living. Be one with reality, that is all."

The theory is really simple. The only problem is that theory alone will not help us to be content with our practice. Although practice of the buddha way is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world, I think it is a fact that we are never quite content with our practice. Why?

Also, even though we know that we should not long for anything, not try to reach a goal or make an attainment - do we not all start out with our practice exactly because we DO want to reach a goal, make attainments and so forth? If we had nothing to long for, we would never have started to practice in the first place. Or who would cross an ocean and climb a mountain to reach Antaiji to "just sit"? People come because they have a goal, and they hope that their practice will make them reach that goal, so they give their best in their efforts to achieve what they think is the buddha way. This is only natural, but it is mistaken from the start. Therefore, it is also natural that people get stuck in their ptactice and can not reach their goals even after years of whole-hearted practice.

Getting stuck is not the problem - either way, you will get stuck somehow sooner or later. The problem is what you do when you get stuck. This is what I call the problem of "adult practice". We will not get any further with our childish attitudes.

One of my senior dharma brothers says that to try to "just sit" without any method or technique was like "a kindergarten kid trying to study at university."This reminded me of a quote by Yamada Mumon Roshi. The following are not his exact words, I quote from memory:"There are many kinds of religion. Some new cults are like a kindergarten of religion, while those religions that tell us that there will be a good reward for a good deed and a punishment for a bad one are elementary school. Mahayana buddhism is the university of religion, and zen should be

called the graduate school."My late teacher, Miyaura Shinyu Roshi, went even further to say: "Antaiji is no school. This is an adult sangha!"

For children, kindergarten and elementary school are necessary. They have nothing to learn at a university. You have to be mature, an adult, to climb walls of doubts and difficulties that you will encounter in your practice. What is the exact difference between childish practice and adult practice? Simply put, the question is if you are able to wipe your own ass are not. Kids want to be carried around by "big people". An adult has to walk on his own feet, face the difficulties of his own life, solve his own doubts. More about this next month.

Adult practice: Part 2What do you "practice"?

Let me continue with my reflections on "adult practice". It will probably cost me a couple of months or more to complete this series, but I would be honoured if you joined me for a while. I would like to begin this time with the head of the "Guide to Antaiji", a booklet that we give to all the visitors here, and that is also part of this homepage:

"Why do you come here?

Antaiji is a temple devoted to Zen practice as a natural expression of life. Zazen and work are not simply practiced as one part of life, rather all 24 hours of your daily life itself are to be the manifestation of Zen. Antaiji has no other special practices, teachings, meditation techniques, insights or spiritual guidance to offer you. Nor is it a place to get in touch with the mystery of the East, have occult experiences or just have a taste of Japanese culture.

This is a place where you can create your own life as bodhisattva practice. Although you are expected to live harmoniously with the other practioners at Antaiji, the responsibility for your practice lies solely on yourself. There is no one to live your life for you. Nobody will wipe your ass for you.

What is most important is not to use the buddha way for your own purposes, but rather to give up your own ideas and throw yourself completely into the practice of the way. For this, you should be clear about the basis of your practice and the motive that brings you here. If you expect anything other from your stay than what life at this precise moment has to offer you, you will invariably be disappointed. Make sure you know why you want to come here - do not fool yourself or others."

I wrote this ten years ago, as a guide for foreigners who want to practice at Antaiji. At that time I was 25 and an exchange student at Kyoto University, visiting Antaiji to participate at the monthly sesshins. It was before I was ordained as a monk. The abbot, who later was to become my master, asked me to write a little guide book for foreign visitors in English, which I gladly agreed to do. Later, after becoming a monk at Antaiji, I translated it into Japanese, and even now it is used here for both Japanese and foreign visitors.

What I wrote is pretty pretentious for someone who is not even a zen monk himself. I had spent six months in Antaiji at the age of 22, but at that time I was more a like a "spectator" of the zen life, understanding bodhisattva practice intellectually, without really knowing the pain of actually putting that practice into practice in daily life, 365 days a year - on a life time basis. After becoming a monk

at Antaiji, I fortunately had the opportunity to jump over the gap between ideal and reality when I had to put into practice what I only wrote about formerly.

Anyway, what made me write the above passage as an exchange student? The most important reason, I think, was that I realized that during the first ten years of my zazen (to which I was introduced when I was 16), my practice had been directed totally wrong. I had been looking for some kind of Eastern wisdom, or rather a kind of wisdom that transcends east and west and defies ordinary logic. People call it enlightenment or satori or the true self or the meaning of life. Seekers of truth have been looking for it for ages. I, too, thought I was looking for it, but the more I tried to get a grip on it, the further it seemed to move away from me. I had to make my way to the other side of the planet (how could you possibly find the absolute truth in a place like Germany?!), without ever realizing that in each single moment of the present, life was already realizing itself. Truth was manifest all the time, I just never cared to take notice, because I was looking the other way, for things I supposed to be far away: Satori, wisdom, etcetera.

The first time I had a vague idea that my efforts were directed wrongly was during that 6 months stay at Antaiji, when I was 22. I felt that I had found the place where to become a monk, although I still thought that I should finish my university studies before I enter the buddha way. At Antaiji, I found a monastery in a almost perfect location, with a master I could trust and a couple of senior monks whom I could respect too. On the other hand, there were also those monks which made me wonder why they had come to Antaiji in the first place - what were they "practicing" here? They seemed to do nothing but sleep and eat and bully their juniors... Thinking back about it now, this was probably just another projection of my own immature mind.

Adult practice: Part 3Your problem

What is this "adult practice" business all about?First of all, adult practice means to wipe one's own ass. Who wants to practice? Isn't it ourselves who make the decision to come to a place like Antaiji? If that is so, we have to climb by ourselves over all those mountain ranges of doubts and difficulties, which we will run into sooner or later. Of course we need a guide on our journey, especially to warn us against the pitfalls of our own ego, but isn't it strange to expect our teacher to take care of all the aspects of our practice? The student-teacher relationship is different from that of a baby feeding on its mother's breast.What made me start to write this "adult practice" series was an e-mail I received, the subject being "just for your reference". It contained the words of my older dharma brother, whom I quoted two months ago: "A kindergarten kid trying to study at university."What he says about his practice here at Antaiji is very typical of the doubts all of us will experience sooner or later, so I want to take the time to quote him in more detail:

"I received instruction in the tradition of Sawaki Kodo Roshi. What I was told was to just shut up and sit. Things like concentrating on the breath or counting the breath are forbidden there, that is why the demons of sleep overcame me, or I was usurped by random thoughts, and even though I was able to calm down my mind at some times, after the sesshin is over every thing would be the same again. Well, I told my self, maybe that's just how it is ..."

"It is a big difference to understand Dogen Zenji's Fukanzazengi as a practical instruction to be used in one's actual daily life, rather than some lofty theory with no relation to one's practice. If you have no special means to make you realize this point clearly, you will never get a grip on your mind. You

will be like a kindergarten kid trying to study at university."

"In fact all my friends, those who practiced with me at the same time at Antaiji, finally left for places like H Temple or B Temple, some even went as far as America, and in the end no one stayed. That has nothing to do with the people, it is because they could not get a firm faith in practice there. My teacher still lives in Antaiji, so I visit him from time to time, but still, also when I discuss with my older dharma brothers, we are always asking ourselves why we could not get a firm faith in zazen. That is including myself.So I started to worry how many years would pass in this way - how much time is being wasted! This is also true for the whole of the Soto school. If your practice is lacking a firm focus point, it is not possible to "just sit". If you are attached to form without being present in this moment, there is no meaning at all. Well, only now that I have understood myself I can say this. The reason why I could get no firm faith in zazen, and that I was not able to practice for such a long time, is because this was not pointed out clearly to me - there was no guidance!"

"The problem is that we do not know exactly what just sitting (shikantaza) is. I think the most important help to let us know is our master."

"I went to S Dojo for 8 days and received instruction from the Roshi. To sum it all up: in only one week I was able experience clearly what Dogen calls in the Fukanzazengi "the manifestation of the true dharma, the stopping of delusion and drowsiness". Without a doubt I wake up to it! It was so different from anything until then, so fresh and moving! So I asked myself deeply: why is this so diffferent, what makes it different from the practice I have done until now? The answer was simple: I was not one with myself in each single moment until then. The problem was that I had not realized how important the present moment is.Just doing zazen, just eating, what does this "just" mean in the first place? To get a grip on this "just", you have to be clear about each single moment. So I think my basic problem was that nobody taught me a concrete means how to do this. I had never heard about "this one breath". I am really happy that now I know!"Just", in other words, means this single moment, state before your mind sets in. I think it was really good for my practice and my life in general that now I understood this clearly. My problem now is just to continue with this. That is what I have to do now, and that will be the content of my every day zazen from now on. I will be careful that there are no impurities in any of my actions, I will be polishing my mind and "just doing" things.This is all, apart from this there is nothing to practice. I believe that I have reached the end, and will just continue with practice."

Without reflecting on his own responsibilty for his practice, my dharma brother goes on to critize the place where he was taking care of for so many years, and the teacher who went to so many pains trying to open his firmly shut eyes. Still, I am happy to hear that he has found his spiritual kindergarten finally and that his mind is at ease. As I said, he is not the only one who has these doubts - we all have them:"Why is my mind not a ease when I do zazen?""Why do I have to bear this pain? And once the pain subsides, I am either dreaming or sleeping!""After all this time, how come that I still do not understand what shiantaza is? Why doesn't somebody give me firm faith?""Isn't this practice all form and ritual, with no meaning or content?""Why can't I seem to get some piece of clear guidance!?""And this so called teacher here, isn't he sleeping during zazen too?""How many years do I have to spent like this? Isn't it just a waste of time?"As long as we think like this, we are really wasting our time. The fast ones among us feel these

doubts on the first day of sesshin and find themselves sitting on the next bus. Others wake up to the obvious fact that practice does not get us where we want only after seven or eight years. They then blame it on others, get angry and leave. But those who do not leave but stay on will feel these doubts even more intensely - they go on to actually work and live with them. The problem becomes part of their practice, and they learn to deal with it as "their" problem. If you deal with your problem in a mature way, as an adult in the true sense, you will sooner or later become able to hear what your teachers is really teaching you, wake up to the guidance you did not see before. Only an adult can hear the teaching of the patriarchs, not as some lofty theory, but as instruction for everyday life. When you do not see that the problem itself, "your problem", is exactly your practice, you will indeed be like "a kindergarten kid trying to study at university". You are wasting your time. The sutras tell us that "time passes swiftly like an arrow in the air - do not spent your whole life in vain - life and death are a great matter, impermance is swift - etcetera etcetera". Since old times, many of us read these sutras aloud, never even once having the thought that the words might be about our own practice. We end up searching for the solution of our practice somewhere else, we never realize it is in our own practice.

Of course that is true for myself too. Too long were those years of doubts that almost tore my breast into parts. And I don't mean to say that now I finally live in peace and joy, without any problems at all. If I don't take care, I will end up telling myself: "Well, maybe that's just how practice is ..." Needless to say, practice is never "like this" or "like that". We never get a grip on it, because it is our very life in this precise moment. Now, rather than questioning zazen from my own practice, I realize that it is zazen itself that is questioning me in each single moment. When you realize that it is your own practice that puts you into question, and not the other way around, you have to graduate from your spiritual kindergarten. You have become an adult practioner. It is for adults that words like "zazen is the true form of yourself" or "the true teacher is zazen" were spoken.

I want to continue to explore the adult world of practice in this series for another couple of months. The topics I will deal with will include:What is the real meaning of the word "adult" that I so frequently use?How can we deal with sleepiness or random thoughts as our own problem, as part of our own practice? And how about pain, dizziness, boredom, desires and attachments, anger, regret, all kinds of delusions, emotions and ignorance?How to adjust our body, breath and mind?How to practice not only zazen, but also all of the other aspects of life?The pitfalls of practice. Looking upon zazen from the outside. Blaming our lowsy practice on others. Why I came here and how I experienced the difficulties of practice.The teaching of my late master, Miyaura Shinyu Roshi.

To be continued next month.

Adult practice: Part 4"Training" and "practice"

So what exactly do I mean with the expression "adult practice"? Before I reflect about the meaning of the word "adult", I would like to say something about "practice". In Japanese, the word is "shugyo", which can be written in two different ways with different characters (which are also pronounced slightly different), and even many Japanese seem not to know the difference between the two. "Shugyo" in Japanese can both mean religious practice (when it is written with a character meaning "going", "doing", "action") - manifesting faith or truth in the actions of one's daily life, and

at the same time "training", like the training for a profession for example (in this case the word is written with a character meaning "karma" or "technique"). It goes without saying that the two are completely different. The English word "practice" can also mean something like "training", as for example in "baseball practice". But when I use the word as "adult practice", or when I talk about "zen practice", "practice of the buddha way" etc, I mean "putting something into practice", "manifesting something by actually doing it". Unfortunately, many people seem to understand "zen practice" as "zen training" - training to become something, training to become proficient at something.

This is true for the so called "zen training monasteries" in Japan too. There, people learn how to wear their buddhist robes properly, bow and prostrate in the right way, chant the sutras, etc. They are training to become buddhist priests. They are certainly not practicing buddhism. For them, buddhism is a profession, not a vocation, but it should go without saying that learning how to make money by performing funeral services has nothing to do what the Buddha taught 2500 years ago - how to live our lifes! At Antaiji, we do not train to become buddhist priests. We practice buddhism, which means to live our daily lifes as buddhas and bodhisattvas. This does not mean, though, that we practice to become buddhas and bodhisattvas. We try to manifest buddhas and bodhisattvas - our original nature - in all of the actions of our daily lifes, here and now.

Sometimes, buddhist practice is understood differently: We are deluded beings now, but practicing for countless kalpas as bodhisattvas, we will eventually refine ourselves and finally become buddhas. A deluded being trains to become something "better" - a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva trains to become something even "better" - a buddha. In zen, we do not call this kind of training "practice". Training to become something better is in itself delusion. Endless kalpas of this kind of training won't make us better, we will only sink deeper into delusion. What we call practice in zen means to stop trying to become something, but rather allowing ourselves to be what we originally are - buddhas and bodhisattvas. For this, we have to surrender to the force that transcends our small human egos - the egos that continually say "I want to become better, I want to become buddha". Why is it possible to surrender and practice? It is because we already ARE buddhas, not after surrendering, but already now. Then, why is it so difficult to surrender and practice? Because it does not satisfy our human egos.

Practice does not satisfy us. It is not entertaining at all! But then, what did we expect? How could practice of the buddha dharma be entertaining for our small human minds? Nothing could be less satisfactory and entertaining than the practice of something that does not enlargen our egos. Even when we say that we want to become buddhas or live as bodhisattvas, don't we do so from the stand point of our egos - thinking: "I want to become a buddha, I want to have satori!" Thus, buddhas and bodhisattvas only become an extension of our ego mind - and that is why we are disappointed, because buddhas and bodhisattvas will never reveal themselves in that realm of our ego minds. The life's of buddhas and bodhisattvas are our life, only when we transcend our ego. Making a huge "ego effort" will not make us a buddha. That is what makes buddhism difficult for us. But then, buddhism says that we already ARE buddha in the first place. But we are also human beings, deluded by our egos. First, we need to wake up and see clearly that we are deluded by our egos. Seeing this alone is "big satori". That we are able to realize the fact that we are deluded by our ego is already a proof that we actually are buddhas - otherwise we could not have that realization. But it is not enough to just realize that we are deluded. We also have to proceed and put into practice what is most dissatisfying for our egos.We are both deluded and buddha, but if we should stop short at saying "we are just ordinary human beings", we will manifest only half of our being. It is such "half human beings" that surf the internet or watch tv shows, always looking for a site or channel that will satisfy them, give them some entertainment. The latest news about the show buziness, politics, sports, women - so called "adult

entertainment". We think we are being entertained, but in reality we are just escaping from ourselves - escaping from the realities of our lifes. Only when we switch off the tv, switch off the computer, we will realize how empty our lifes are - just as empty as the screen. And we wake up to the dissatisfactoriness of that life. This is an important realization. This is where real practice starts. This practice is different from trying to satisfy our bored minds. It is different from trying to get "satori" or peace of mind or what so ever. That is why it is so difficult for us - as long as we can not stop our childish mind from whining: "I want candy, I want toys, I want to have satori!" That is why I call this practice "adult practice". It means to stop looking around for fun and satisfaction just like a dog searches for a bone. "Adult practice" means to manifest buddha, to live as a bodhisattva. "Practice" means "to live", "to manifest", while an "adult" is a buddha and bodhisattva. More about this next time.

Adult practice: Part 5Too much is not enough?!

"You don't have to behave like a baby too!"My daughter Megumi was born in June, and since then I heard this remark quite a number of times from my wife. When a baby is born, sometimes its older siblings start to behave in a baby-like way to attract their mother's attention, which is directed towards the newborn. This starts to be a problem when the father, who should rather care for the baby himself too, is the one who becomes infantile and pretends to be a baby. It is especially a problem, when the father writes about "adult practice" every month in the shit paper. Does he try to pretend to be an adult, just to hide the fact that he really is just a baby himself? Maybe it is because he himself is still a baby that the infantile people around him bother him so much? Anyway, "adult practice" has to start with reflecting on ourselves, it seems.

Last month I was talking about "training" and "practice" and came to the conclusion that "adult practice" means to live as a buddha and bodhisattva - "practice" meaning "to live" while an "adult" is a "buddha and bodhisattva". In Japanese, the word "adult" is written with two Chinese characters which literally translate as a "great person". Usually they are pronounced "otona" in Japanese, but as a Buddhist technical term they are read "dainin". "Dainin" in fact happens to be a translation of the Sanskrit "mahasattva", which means nothing other than a "buddha and bodhisattva". In most countries, you are considered an adult when you turn 18 or 20 or 21, but how many of us can claim to be true adults, that means mahasattvas, just because we have reached that age? Even though we claim to practice what we call the "buddha way", too often we are only adults by age, while our practice is as childish as ever. So, what does it mean to be a true adult?

In the "Eight awarenesses of true adults" fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen Zenji lists eight characteristics of a true adult. The first two are "small desire" and "knowing that one has enough". When I was practicing as a monk in a Rinzai temple in Kyoto, one day our group could just not seem to get enough money on our daily begging round, so we wound up begging until we realized that we would not make it back to the temple in time for lunch. Being late is not an option in Rinzai Zen, so we had to use our money to hitch a ride in a taxi. The first question the driver asked was:"Have you never heard of the first two characteristics of a true adult?""Of what?!", the leader of our group replied.

"I mean the truth that you will always have enough if you don't desire more than life at this precise moment has to offer to you. The more you try to get, the more you will suffer." - In Kyoto taxidrivers usually know more about Buddhism then Zen monks, who train there to get licences as "full fledged Zen priests"."You talk to much", was all our leader could say. It seems he was no match for that driver.

But really, it is easy to say that "you will always have enough if you don't desire more than life at this precise moment has to offer to you." It is not so easy to realize and mainfest it in one's life, though. We never seem to get the satisfaction we are looking for. We can't never get what we want, and we can't even really get what we need, or at least that is how it seems to us. Or isn't "satisfaction" the absolute minimum that we expect from life? This, again, puts us in line with that big child that still wants "candy, toys and satori", we cry for happiness and satisfaction just like a baby cries for milk.

Zazen at Antaiji is good for nothing. You do not gain spiritually, and you do not get any pocket money either. You end up loosing - loosing ideas and ideologies, and you even end up spending your money buying things for the temple. As an unsui (monk practicing under the guidance of a master), I was not really worried about this. I was convinced that Zen practice is about loosing rather than gaining, and who would ever expect to get paid for Zazen? Begging during the winter break would usually yield enough money to pay for the health insurance (about 150 dollars a year) that covers 70% of hospital bills, although not enough money to pay for social security (about 120 dollars per month) without which you will have no support during old age. But isn't poverty a matter of course for a Zen monk, and how could we worry about our old age, when we should practice as if we had to die today?Now, as the abbot of Antaiji, I still find myself without a personal income, and my perspective has changed: I have to take responisibilty for my wife and baby now. How am I supposed to provide for them? As an unsui, I could take time off during the winter to beg, now someone has to take care of the temple - which leaves almost no time for personal begging. As an unsui, a tooth brush and some underwear would be enough possesions, now a growing child demands more expenditures. What will happen when she starts to go to school? What about college? What happens when I die?If I think about life in this way, it will be impossible for me to realize that I have enough with what life offers to me at this precise moment. Even if someone gave me a million dollars, I would still be worried about the future, about inflation, about thieves... I would never have enough. How childish!I have to remember what I am here for: Adult practice. I made the decision to become a monk and practice at Antaiji, I agreed to become abbot, and I also married and had a baby out of my own will. What could I possibly complain about? Even without money, I and everyone in Antaiji have air to breath, water to drink, and whatever vegetables to eat that grow in the garden. Even though the harvest is poor this year, I never heard of anyone starving to death here. Dogen Zenji says that you have to be poor to practice the way. What better life than this could I be wishing for then?

Poverty of course does not mean only few material possesions. First of all, it means purity of mind. Sawaki Roshi says:"If the glass of water in your mind is completely full, it will flow over when you receive more. You have to empty that glass of water - that means to throw away your personal ideas and ego attachments. Only thus can you develop an attitude that allows you to listen to and accept everything that your true teacher offers to you."Adult practice starts with letting go off our egos. Without this attitude, we will never get what we want, because we can not listen, we can not accept the teaching, we see no instruction, we develop no faith in zazen, and after a couple of years of "practice" we will finally realize that we are just wasting our time - blaming it on others or on zazen, without seeing that it is the "glasses of water" in our own minds that are overflowing with ego-centered ideas. "Too much" is the reason for our never getting enough. To find real adult satisfaction, we do not need more - we have to lose more, let go

off ourselves.

Maybe you have enough already, still I would like to continue to explore the world of an adult for a little bit more next month.

Adult practice: Part 6Still something missing?

Last month I explained about "adult practice" using the first two of the "eight awarenesses of true adults", that is "small desire" and "knowing that one has enough".I said something to the effect that being an adult means to realize that what life offers you in this precise moment is already enough, and that there is no need at all for you to look for something better in some other place. The more you desire, the more you will feel that something is missing, which will cause you to suffer. So an adult just stops desiring more than what life has to offer right here and now.Now, this might sound nice, but don't you think that this is only empty theory, without any relation to the reality in which we actually live in? If in fact it was only empty theory, you should better stop reading this "shit paper" right now, and I should stop wasting my time writing it. But of course I am trying not to talk mere theory, but rather throw some light on what I call "adult practice". "Practice" is daily life, and never "theory", although "theory" can sometimes help us to become more clear about "practice". We have to be careful not to stop short at theorizing about "practice", but actually put the "practice" into practice, realize and manifest it in our lives. Otherwise our "practice" really is no more than empty theory.

So, why is it that concepts like "small desire" and "knowing that one has enough", "realizing that one has enough if one stops desiring more than what life offers to us in this precise moment" sound like empty theory to us? Isn't it because deep inside ourselves we feel that "something is still missing" even though we might understand intellectually that the reality of our lives is fine as it is? I think even after years of practicing Buddhism we still have this feeling of "something missing". We still want something better, a little bit more candy, happiness and enlightenment. So rather than being content with what life has to offer to us right now, if we are honest with ourselves, we might realize that we never have enough with what we have and always desire more, even if we don't even really know what we are missing exactly in the first place. Why is that?

Sawaki Kodo Roshi says:"Something is missing in zazen? What is missing? It is not on the side of zazen that something is missing, it is just the deluded human being sitting in zazen that thinks 'something's missing'!""Something missing - just sit zazen. Something missing - practice zazen with your body. Something missing - manifest zazen with your body."Still, why is there something missing? If "adult practice" really means to stop desiring more than life has to offer to us right now, how could we possibly think that something is still missing? At least during zazen, we should feel that there is really nothing missing, that we are having all we need!?Sawaki Roshi gives the answer when he says that "it is just the deluded human being sitting in zazen that thinks 'something's missing'!" There is nothing wrong with the zazen we practice. It is only our deluded thoughts accompanying this practice which try to convince us

that "something is still missing". So for all of us who are deluded human beings, there is always something missing. It is just natural. On the other hand, we must not forget that at the same time we are human beings, we are also buddha. Being buddha means to be connected to that absolute reality in which their is no way for anything to be missing ever. Even when we think that we are still missing something, a part of us perfectly realizes that we could not possibly desire more than what we have. We are at the same time deluded human beings and buddhas, both infantile and adult. I think that all of us possess this almost schizophrenic double structure in our minds, and I do not think that it is possible to discard of one side of ourselves in favor of the other.The problem then for a true adult is how these two sides of the one self relate to each other. Do you want to live your life letting yourself be led around by that infantile part of you that always claims that something is still missing? A true adult would rather sit stably in this reality where "something is still missing", manifesting zazen with his body even though his thoughts desire "something more".Sawaki Roshi also said: "Zazen means to sit firmly while something is missing."

There is a famous Zen koan, usually referred to in Japan as the "koan of character Mu". It is about a monk asking a master: "How about this dog. Has he buddha nature or not (mu)?" The master answers: "Mu (not)!"The word "koan" literally means a "public case", usually an exchange between a teacher and a student, or some other saying or doing by a zen master that later served as a model expression of truth. In modern years though, the word "koan" started to be used to refer to a single question out of a curriculum for zen students to be "passed" during the training under a koan teacher. The student will enter the "dokusan room" to meet one to one with the teacher. First he will announce his koan, then the teacher will ask him for his answer. The student has already prepared some statement or action to express his understanding. If the teacher approves of his understanding, the student will "proceed" to the "next koan", if the teacher does not approve the student has to "try again" next time. In the case of the "koan of character Mu", the student will usually have a good chance to "pass" if he just bellows "Moooooooh!" in a deep voice from the depth of his hara, to demonstrate that he has "become one with Mu". It is worthwhile to notice that the koan is called the "koan of character Mu" in Japan, not "Mu koan". It is all about becoming the character "Mu", not about becoming somekind of "absolute nothingness" or "far-eastern void" that certain philosophers thought "Mu" was all about. As a modern koan, "Mu" has no other meaning than "Mooooooooh!"Other koans require that the student slaps the teacher or pretends to be pissing at him. Answers to koans can be in fact as innocent and amusing as the play of kids in kindergarten. Not exactly what you would call "adult practice", but then koans are used as a means to an end in certain zen traditions, not as an end in itself. As means to an end, I think that koans serve well to free us out of the prisons of our too many thoughts in our minds. Still, this liberation from thoughts takes place through an artificial infantilization of ourselves, a return to a baby like state - in zen this is called "becoming a complete idiot". In some traditions, "becoming a complete idiot" is considered a necessary first step for zen practice.

But now I do not want to proceed to discuss the strenghts and weaknesses of "koan zen". I would rather like to concentrate on some deeper aspects in the "koan of the character Mu". When the monk asks, "How about this dog. Has he buddha nature or not?", he is not just talking about some random dog. When he says "dog", he is reflecting on that side of himself that can be expressed most accuredly as "dog". Buddhism teaches that we are all buddhas, but can you really call this dog of a self a buddha? The master answer was not "Mooooooh!" but a plain "no!". There is a clear difference between a deluded human being and a buddha. As

deluded human beings, we are far from being "buddhas as we are". The koan continues with the monk's question: "If, as Buddhism teaches, everything has the buddha nature, how come that only this dog, myself, has none?" The master answers: "Because of karmic nature". As buddhas, we have buddha nature, true, but as deluded beings our nature is "karma", and living our lives being spinned around by karma is different from living as a buddha.

It is interesting that at a different time the same master answered the same questions in the opposite way: The monk asks, "How about this dog. Has he buddha nature or not?", the master answers "yes, he has!". Even for a dog like you or myself there is no way to escape out of that absolute reality called "buddha nature". A deluded human being is not the same as a buddha, but they also can not be seperated. A buddha transcends the human being, but at the same time he encloses and embraces the human being. The monk continued: "You say that this dog has buddha nature, but why then does the pure buddha nature manifest in such an ugly state of existence?" When I look at myself honestly, I can see only desires, hate, delusion - how could any "buddha nature" possibly manifest here? The teacher's answer is famous: "It is done deliberately!"A deluded being is not more than a deluded being. A buddha is nothing less than a buddha. A deluded being and a buddha are not the same thing, but when a deluded human being, in the midst of karma and delusion, takes refuge to vows and lives a life of practice, the karmic-nature being turns into a vow-nature being, and a buddha and bodhisattva, a true adult manifests deliberately. A bodhisattva or adult is a deluded being living by vows. Buddha and human being can never be seperated, although they are not one either. To live by vows, to live as a responsible adult, and to live by karma, as a big baby, are two completely different ways to live our lives. An adult "deliberately" chooses to use this karmic human existence to live for the buddha way.

I am deluded, and I am buddha. I am a big baby, and I am a true adult at the same time. The question is how these two "myselves" relate to each other. Just as a loving mother pulls the whining child by the hand, the adult me guides the infantile me by letting it follow the gravity force of zazen. There is no use in getting all neurotic trying to "educate" myself by myself, as some young mother might get when her baby won't stop crying. When the parent naturally loves the child, and the child naturally follows the parent, it becomes obvious how the deluded karmic being, the "dog me", is at the same time connected to the adult buddha and bodhisattva, living by vows.

"Zazen means to sit firmly while something is missing.""Being stared into the eye by zazen, being scolded by zazen, being obstructed by zazen, being dragged around by zazen this way and the other, crying all the time - isn't this the most happy way of life we could think of?"Only with the firm and stable resolution of an adult can we have a taste of this "happiness". Sadly, it does not exist for mentally three year olds. In myself, the firm and stable adult, and the three year old for whom there is always something missing, exist parallely. But this double structure is not just a form of schizophrenia or self-contradiction. If we practice in a mature way, we can get a great force for our practice just because of this inner structure of ourselves. In the Genjokoan, Dogen Zenji says:"When the dharma does not yet fill body-and-mind, you think there is already enough dharma.When the dharma does fill body-and-mind, you will realize that one side is still missing."When it comes to practice of the dharma, to think that we already have enough is childish. Here it is the adult who realizes that "something is still missing". When we are content with our zazen, it is a sure sign that something is wrong with our zazen. Contrariwise, it is when we truely practice zazen that we realize that one side is still missing. Nothing is missing on the side of zazen of course. But as human beings, we still have our defects, our childish sides, and the more mature our practice becomes, the clearer our awareness of this childishness and deludedness of ourself becomes.

Because of this awareness, we continue to practice and commit ourselves to the way, looking at ourselves from different angles. Once we start to become content with our practice though, congratulating ourselves on our attainments, we have actually retarded to the state where we think we have enough of what we could not possibly ever have enough of: Dharma. And it is only a question of time when we will start to whine and complain: "Something is still missing". The only thing missing is a mature, responsible approach to our own practice.

Following "small desire" and "knowing that one has enough", there are six more awarenesses of a true adult: "Enjoying quietude (not busying oneself with irrelevant matters)", "Making an effort to practice (taking responsibilty for one's own life)", "Not forgetting one's resolution (why do I practice?)", "Practicing samadhi (manifesting zazen with the body)", "Practing wisdom (putting "adult practice" into actual practice)", "No superfluous talking (graduating from empty theory)". Rather than explaining about the rest of these awarenesses, I would like to talk about how I myself came to Antaiji for the first time, and what I experienced there. To be continued.

Adult practice: Part 7My Way to Antaiji

When I first came to Antaiji I was 22. I had been practicing zazen in several different dojos for 6 years, and when I did not attend a dojo, I was sitting daily by myself. Still, sitting for an hour or two daily was not enough for me, practicing in a dojo seemed more like a hobby than a way of life.

I was 16 when I encountered zazen, and at age 17 I was pretty sure that this is what I wanted to do for life. It seemed to be the thing that I always had been looking for, without even knowing the dimension of space in which I might find it. Anyway, my original plan was to go to Japan and become a monk right after high school. Why go to university to study what seemed boring anyway? I used to be fascinated with mathematics and physics until then, but how do those subjects really relate to my own life? If anything made sense, it had to be Zen.

Everybody tried to talk me out of it, but nobody could really convince me until the teacher who had originally introduced me to the practice of zazen recommended that I wait a little, study Japanese, and qualify myself for a job to make a living when I come back to Germany. I had never really thought about making a living until then, but I was warned that there were too many cases of people who ended up living in Zen monasteries for life, just because they had no other choice. They could not return to social life, because they would not be able to make a living there. I could not imagine that such a thing could be possible: Weren't those Zen monks some kind of super-human beings, who understood everything? Nothing should be impossible for someone who has mastered Zen - so why worry now about getting a job?

Anyway, I decided to study Japanese before I was going to become a monk in Japan. As it happened to be a fashion at the time to think that elemantary particles as well as galaxies and the universe at a whole obey to the same laws that Shakyamuni or Lao-tse taught, I decided to also take up philosophy and physics at university. Eventually I would not only become a Zen master, but also win the Nobel prize, I thought. After two and a half years though, I realized that studying elemantary particle physics alone is a life-time vocation. So I stopped.In Germany there is no B.A., so you can not graduate from university until you get your Master's degree. When I was 22, I could not wait any longer to get closer to what I thought was "real Zen", and I decided to take one year off to study at Kyoto University. During the first three months, I attend the weekly Zazen meetings at the Soto Zen Center in Kyoto, and the monthly sesshins in

Sonobe, outside Kyoto. University life in Japan proofed to be just as boring as in Germany, and Zen was not a reality in the daily life of Kyoto. It existed for tourists, but there were not even dojos that would function on a daily basis. Zen priests were business men with no interest in practice, and temples would be operated only as cementaries, not dojos for practice. After months at the university, I even learned that my professor was a Soto Zen priest - he certainly did not look like one, and at university he taught Kant. The Soto Zen Center was my only refuge, and during the summer I decided to spend two months in Shorinji, the sesshin temple in Sonobe.

During these two months of Juli and August I got a first taste of "adult practice". I had thought that people at the temple would take me by the hand and teach me everything. It started promising when they put me in the kitchen on my first day, as an assitant to the cook. I was supposed to learn for the first week from the main cook, so that I could do the job on my own and be the cook during the second week. I had never cooked more sophisticated food than scrambled eggs, so I was not quite sure if one week of assisting the cook would be enough time for me to learn the job, especially when the "main cook" told me that he himself had arrived just a week ago from Sweden and that it was the first day for him being responsible alone in the kitchen. Three days later he decided that the climate was much to hot and humid for him and was gone. So I became the "main cook" for the rest of the ten days, after only three days of "training" under a stressed out Swede. I asked the resident priest how he could possibly expect me to be able to cook for the sangha, knowing absolutely nothing about the art. Should not someone competent teach me first? His answer was: "This is what Dogen Zenji calls 'self-realized-samadhi'. You have to read the Shobogenzo!" I had more lessons in "self-realized-samadhi" during August, when Buddhist temples around Japan get very buzy with ceremonies for the ancestors of the parishioners of their temples. The resident priest too was very buzy helping out at a big temple in Kyoto, and for two weeks he would come back late at night to sleep at Shorinji, only to be back on his way to Kyoto early the next morning. Everyone else had taken off for their summer holidays, so I found myself following the schedule all on my own. Running through the temple at 5am with the wake up bell, although their was no one to wake up. Sitting for two hours in zazen, preparing breakfast, cleaning, doing samu, heating the bath and after dinner two hours of zazen by my own. For someone who went to a Zen temple to receive instruction in "Zen", an excellent teaching indeed. "Self-realized-samadhi", or as I call it now: Adult practice.

It was at my begin of my stay at Shorinji that I heard from a practioner called George about Antaiji. George had spent there two weeks during the spring, and although he could not communicate with the all-Japanese monks, he said that the 24 hours of their daily lives there were lived "in deep samadhi". The resident priest in Shorinji also proofed to be a monk originally from Antaiji, and I got exited about the possibility of getting an introduction to Antaiji and see it with my very own eyes. Everything I heard about Antaiji sounded like the "real Zen" I was still dreaming about: Self-sufficiency, cooking without gas, no heat in winter except from a wood stove, two monthly sesshins. And above all, only Japanese monks! I had enough of all these Western fake practioners, I needed to practice with some real Japanese guys. Finally, I would get some real instruction in "Zen"!Thinking about it now, I can not understand how come that I never woke up to all the fake in my own mind?

Anyway, I got my introduction to Antaiji, and I decided to stop my studies at Kyoto University to practice for six months at Antaiji. I arrived on September 30th of 1990, two weeks after a typhoon had washed away the four kilometer long road that led up to the temple. Some of the monks seemed to be still in a kind of shock, but I couldn't see why: Isn't it a matter of course that a "real Zen monastery" lies remotely in the mountains, unaccesible for normal people, even without mail? I was rather surprised that they had electricity and a telephone there - shouldn't real Zen monks be able to do without?You can imagine how much more surprised I was when the sesshin started the following day: I had

heard that Antaiji practiced "pure Zen" in the tradition of Dogen Zenji, shikantaza without any mixtures, sesshins without toys. What did I find? The meditation hall revibrating with monks snoring, some dropping backwards off their cushion, others banging their heads in the wall! (to be continued)

Adult practice: Part 8You create Antaiji!

I still remember my first night at Antaiji: Although the temple is located remotely in the mountains, I heard music constantly playing on the other side of the valley. Even in the city it was never so noisy. I remember that during the first night I listened to gospel music, voices shouting "halleluya!" all night long. Maybe there is a chapel on the top of the mountain, I thought. All the noise during the night might have been one of the reasons why everybody was sleeping during the zazen hours the next day. Or not really everybody was sleeping all of the time, but at least three or four out of the five Japanese monks would always be sleeping. To me this seemed very disappointing, having come all the way from Germany to experience "real Zen" here. How can they possibly be sleeping during zazen? In Europe, it is usual that a sesshin is attended by up to two or three hundred people, but you will rarely find anyone sleeping. So, was it a mistake that I had come to Antaiji? Maybe I should have continued to practice in some dojo in Germany?

Thinking like this, I had already forgotten the teaching that I had received the afternoon before from my teacher to be, the former abbot Miyaura Shinyu Roshi. It turned out to be one of the most important teachings that he would give me during his life time:"You create Antaiji! It is not that Antaiji does already exist and you just join in. Antaiji is not more or less than the place you make it."I guess this is the first thing that he told everyone who came to Antaiji. You create Antaiji. And I was already complaing about what I found. But what I found was just the Antaiji I created - or rather the flip-side of all those lofty ideas I had had in my head: Of an incredibly enlightened teacher and accomplished monks who would help me with my practice and solve all the problems in life for me. It took me quite some time to really see that it is me who creates all those problems, who creates Antaiji when it is good as well as when it is bad, who creates all the love and hate, all the war and peace in the world. The question was not how my neighbor could possibly sleep during zazen, but rather how I could possibly allow myself to be bothered by it. Wasn't it rather time to take care of my own practice first?

After the sesshin was over I found out where all the noise during the nights (it was incredibly quiet during the day) had come from: The rice had just been harvested and was drying at the far side of a former baseball ground, that the monks had build when there were still enough of them to enjoy the game. Wild boars were coming down from the mountain every night to help themselves to the newly harvested rice, and a full-blast radio posted there was supposed to scare them away. The radio did not really scare away the boars, but it helped to keep us awake during the nights anyway.

I realized there were other reasons for the monks being tired during zazen. The two sesshin each month consist of three and five days respectively of zazen starting at four in the morning and continuing all day until nine at night, with no interruptions except for the meals. Naturally, I had thought, these two sesshin are what the practice at Antaiji is centered around. How could anything be more severe than those marathon-sesshins? I was to learn soon after the sesshin was over: Even after the typhoon that had washed the road away had passed, heavy rain continued to fall for about four weeks that year. It washed away not only the road, but also a four acre rice field, unrooted

hundreds of trees and filled the water dam, from which Antaiji gets its drinking water, completely with dirt, rocks and trees. Water from the tap in Kyoto does not taste good - as is the case in most Japanese cities. So I was surprised on arriving in Antaiji, that the water here had an even more distinct taste, and that it was flowing quite thickly out of the tap. Above all, it was brown. When I saw the dam after sesshin, I knew the reason: What I had thought was water had been the mud that had been washed into the dam. Our task during the next three days was to clear all of that mud, dirt, rocks and trees out of the dam. The monks were eager to have clean water flowing out of the tap again, and although it was raining heavy still, samu continued at a high pace until well after dark. Sesshin had been painful on the legs, but this was hell. After three days of samu, we had a "free day". I think they were called "free days" because we had no zazen on those days. Instead we would walk down the four kilometers which before used to be a road, then ride bycicles to the fifteen kilometer away town Hamasaka to fetch the mail, buy soy sauce and oil for the kitchen, and gasoline for the truck and tractor and the sawing machines. All this had to be carried back in 20 liter cans, two of which each of us would carry on our backs. After the "free day", samu would continue: Fallen trees had to be cut and carried into the barn, where they would be chopped to yield fire in the kitchen or heat the bath. A provisiory walk path had to be built down the mountain. The rice had to be threshed. Work in the vegetable garden was regarded a past time. Even on days with heavy rain, work inside was unknown. And the sesshins in fact turned out to be our only holidays.

Adult practice: Part 9Don't care if I die...

The life that I found waiting for me at Antaiji was quite different from the "Zen practice" that I had imagined until then. Last month I wrote about my surprise to find the monks sleeping during Zazen, also about how hard the work was for me, and about a completely new attitude towards practice that I had never thought about before: "You create Antaiji!" I want to reflect a little more about those first impressions I got at Antaiji.

Work at Antaiji is said to be physically demanding, and I actually found it to be that way. This is not because work is one part of practice and should therefore be as hard as possible, to push each one to his limits. No, we just do whatever is necessary to support our lives here, and that happened to be a lot more than I had imagined when I had heard that Antaiji was "self-sufficient". Especially during that fall when I arrived, because of the typhoon that had washed away the road and rice fields and unrooted hundreds of trees. At age 22 I had never lifted up anything heavier than a volume of the "Shobogenzo", and I also could not tell a vegetable from a weed in the garden. Three days of carrying rocks and fallen trees in the heavy autumn rain had already brought me to my limits. The head monk asked me during a break:"Are all of you German 'Zen practioners' so lazy?"

Actually I did not think of myself as being lazy at all. I was trying my best, but it wasn't much - far from being enough! In school I had always been one of the better ones - now I was only a burden on everyone else. That was a difficult experience for me, but I am sure it was even more tiring for the monks who had to put up with the pain in the ass that I must have represented for them.I was not only surprised about the amount of work that was done, but also about the lack of efficiency with which it was done. Of course, no one expects a college student that has just arrived and represents only a burden to give his comments on how things are done or how they might be done more efficiently. My later master, Miyaura Shinyu Roshi also did still take part in most of the work at that time, but trying to give even the less experienced monks a chance to be creative and develop some sense of responsibilty, he would not play the role of the leader even when it was

obvious that time and energy was wasted on unnecessary work. In Zen it is quite common to say things like, "move your body, not your brain!" - which resulted in keeping us busy for days for jobs that could have been done in a few hours. In such cases it was not always easy for me to just follow the other monks silently - as was expected. What we were doing seemed to be just too stupid!Still, thinking back about it now, it is clear that the most "un-efficient" practice imaginable is Zazen itself. I had come to practice Zazen, so how could I complain about the work taking more time than necessary (one part of the reason being myself not carrying my weight)? If you want to practice Zazen, you have to be prepared to waste both your body and brain "for nothing". In this sense, the un-efficient work that I took part in at Antaiji was a good practice, "good for nothing".

Threshing the rice caused a hayfever allergy which kept me caughing until winter. I was caughing throughout the work, during Zazen and even during the night. Again that was hard for myself, but even more disturbing for the monks around me, who probably wouldn't have minded much seeing me leave . My brain wouldn't agree with what I was doing, my body was aching, and my lungs could hardly breath - why wasn't I leaving in the first place. The only time I felt like myself at Antaiji was during the hours of Zazen, but there are other places where you can practice Zazen, and for a 22 year old college student there should be more fun waiting out there in the world than carrying rocks and trees in the rain. I think the reason why I stayed was that I had a quite negative outlook on life. "I don't mind if I die like this", I thought. One day one of the monks told me, "you completely lack any emotions!" At the time, I didn't even understand what he was talking about, but I think he meant my absolute dis-interest in life.

Sometimes people say that Buddhism takes a negative view on life, emphasizing that life itself is suffering. I do not think so. Quite the opposite, I think that I discovered interest in my life through this first experience at Antaiji, that later led me to discover the joy of just being alive right now, in this single moment. But at age 22, this didn't seem possible. Life was such a drag. Each day was just another 24 hours of boredom. How could I escape from this prison? If I hadn't had the idea in my head that if I couldn't endure the hardships of the life at Antaiji "I might as well die", than I am sure that I would have returned to Kyoto University in no time. But ideas like "enjoying life" or "taking care of one's body and mind and live a long and healthy life" were completely alien to me. If Zen won't work for me, let it kill me at least... I was a quite depressed boy at the time, and I am still grateful for the monks who nevertheless shared their lives with me.

Funnily, the monks seemed to regard the times of Zazen, which for me represented the only times where I could be myself, as "sleeping time". Last month I already wrote that one reason for this was the amount of work and the total commitment with which the monks sacrificied themselves to protect the temple. But this was not the only reason. Another, even more important reason seems to me the lack of motivation to do Zazen. When beginners hear that "Zazen is good for nothing", they might be surprised at first, but it also sounds cool somehow. If you practice this "Zazen that is good for nothing" every morning and every evening, with two Sesshin each month, over a strech of say 5 or 6 years though, your perspective changes: "What am I doing here in the first place? They told me it's good for nothing - I'm afraid that's just what it is!"

"Adult practice" starts exactly at this point. Unfortunately, few practioners realize this. Most expect "the teacher" or some other experienced person to help them out. And if they do not get that help, or if it comes in a form other than expected, they lose their initial motivation to practice Zazen. As long as we still have the hope that we might "get somewhere" with our practice, we are willing to give our best, but once we realize that this practice is really not getting us "anywhere", that it is literally good for nothing, we will come to the Zazen hall just because we have to - and fall asleep!

What is most scary about sleeping during Zazen is that once we develop the habit, we stop realizing

that we are actually sleeping. Even though the teacher tries to wake us up saying, "stop sleeping!", we will just think: "Who is he possibly talking about? Me? No, I'm not sleeping... I'm practing Zazen just like everyone else here... Isn't this what 'Zazen that is good for nothing' is all about?"Once we fall so deep, we become unable to take care of our own practice as adults. And when the teacher tries to help us after all, we can't even hear him anymore. We're lost.

Adult practice: Part 10Ideal and Reality

Breath the breath of your whole life, each single breath, each single moment.

For the last three months I have been reflecting about the first impressions I got at Antaiji. I described how the image of "zen" that I had as an university student differed quite a lot from the life that I found in the Zen monastery. And just as I wrote before, I was especially surprised to find the monks mostly sleeping during zazen. This reality drastically contradicted the romantic idea that I had of Zen practice.

I realize that I am pretty good at finding other people's faults. I am not so good though at seeing my own faults. I also have the tendency to look for my ideal somewhere "out there", and when I can not find it in reality, I will blame it on my surroundings and the people I see there. But isn't it myself who has to realize the ideal in reality, rather than wait for the ideal to jump out of reality like a jack-out-of-the-box? I think it was this simple point that Miyaura Roshi wanted me and all of his other disciples to wake up to when he told us that "you create Antaiji". But because we do not understand this simple point, we get disappointed by the reality we find and start to hate our environs, or we go to the other extreme and throw our ideal into the trash box, fooling ourselves into thinking that this is what is called "to accept things as they are". Needless to say, both ways to react to reality have nothing to do with what I call "adult practice".

When we deal with the problem of sleeping during zazen, adult practice has to start with two realizations: First, we have to realize that we are actually sleeping. Second, we have to realize that it is ourselves that are sleeping.Both things seem to be trivial, but actually it is more difficult than we would expect. Last month I already referred to an episode that happened on one day, when the snoring during the morning zazen had been especially loud. During the tea-meeting of that day, our teacher, Miyaura Roshi, remarked: "Zazen and sleep are not the same thing. Don't fool yourselfs!"After the meeting, the monk with the snore said: "Who was he possibly talking about? I didn't see anyone sleeping!" One of his Dharma-brothers replied: "Why, of course not, it was you!" This again led to his remark: "Oh really, well, maybe that's just how it is. Can't be helped..."When we are really fast asleep, it is only natural that we do not realize that we are sleeping. The problem starts when someone opens our eyes to the reality. Do we realize that only we can take responsibility for our zazen, and that if we want to wake up, we have to wake up by ourselves? Later, the monk with the snore left Antaiji, and I was surprised to find his words on the Internet:

"I received instruction in the tradition of Sawaki Kodo Roshi. What I was told was to just shut up and sit. Things like concentrating on the breath or counting the breath are forbidden there, that is why the demons of sleep overcame me, or I was usurped by random thoughts."

"The problem is that we do not know exactly what just sitting (shikantaza) is. I think the most important help to let us know is our master." "It is a big difference to understand Dogen Zenji's Fukanzazengi as a practical instruction to be used in one's actual daily life, rather than some lofty theory with no relation to one's practice. If you have no special means to make you realize this point clearly, you will never get a grip on your mind. You will be like a kindergarten kid trying to study at university."

When we read these quotes, we have to see clearly the difference between a childish attitude and adult practice. Otherwise we will fall into the same pit hole.First, about the remark that concentrating on the breath or counting the breath are forbidden in the tradition of Sawaki: This is certainly not true (and my brother knew that very well). In his "Instructions for Zazen", which unfortunately I haven't translated into English at the present moment, Sawaki Roshi quotes Keizan Zenji's "Zazenyojinki" when discussing the question where to put the mind during zazen.

Sawaki Roshi says: "If your mind is distracted put it on the tip of your nose, or in your lower belly (tanden) area. Or you can also count your breath."

Uchiyama Roshi, Sawaki Roshi's disciple, says in an article (which you find in full here):

"Breathe the breath of your whole life, each single breath, each single moment. To live means to breathe this breath right now, and therefore to live your "raw/fresh" life naturally doesn't mean to think about it in your head. It means to accept life as life - as "raw, fresh and alive" - and to develope an attitude of living. When you do this, that is exactly (what Dogen Zenji calls in the "Bendowa") "the great matter of a life time of study coming to the end". It is also the start of true practice of shikantaza ("just sitting")".

Isn't it pretty obvious that words like these are NOT meant as "some lofty theory with no relation to one's practice"? What could they possibly be if not "a practical instruction to be used in one's actual daily life"? So how can we complain that because nobody taught us what shikantaza really is, "the demons of sleep overcame me, or I was usurped by random thoughts"?! I am repeating myself, but I have to say it again: When we sleep during zazen, WE sleep during zazen. Nobody else is responsible for that. It is a great mistake to blame it on the "demons of sleep" or on the missing instruction of the teacher. First of all, was that instruction really missing, or did we just not hear it, because it did not please our ears?

I am continuing to critize my Dharma-brother, but was he really so stupid that he did not understand such a trivial matter? Actually no, he certainly was not. He understood perfecly well in his head. Unfortunately, he did not practice it with his body. Although the monks at that time slept a lot during zazen, they discussed nothing more enthusiastically than questions like: "What the hell IS shikantaza ("just sitting")" "What does it really mean to practice the Buddha way?"Especially this one Dharma brother of mine never stopped asking these questions to himself and others. All of his articles in the old "Antaiji Yearbooks" for example are dedicated to these questions.

I want to take a look at them next month, before I procede with my own experiences and difficulties. I also hope to offer some concrete suggestions of how to read "Instructions for Zazen" and the like, and how to deal with all kinds of difficulties during zazen and practice on the whole. Until then, I will have to ask for a lot of your patience.