May 2012 — Nová Dedinka

In both talks from the day of zazen in Nová Dedinka, Mike refers to what he says Dogen said about the truth: he recalls, without being sure of the exact words, that Dogen said we should learn the truth from anybody or anything that knows it, and in the second talk he says that Dogen writes that anything which has the truth can be revered. In the first talk he says that truth is not abstract, that it is simply life itself working in a certain way, as a cat, a dog and a tree know it, and that in Buddhism truth is something real, so reality may be a better word for it. In the second talk he explains that in Dogen’s chapter Raihai-tokuzui the marrow means the truth, and that in a simple understanding many Buddhist groups imagine a teacher who knows a special secret truth and treat that person as perfect, whereas Dogen’s meaning, he says, is different because Dogen’s understanding of the truth is different. In both talks he contrasts the truth with the picture we hold in our mind: in the first, a very powerful picture can keep us from seeing the reality in front of us, and in the second, he sets the truth of the mountain against the truth of our mind.

Mike tells how he and a companion walked in the Tatras toward a hut they could not see, and when they looked over the pass the hut was far below and the way down looked very steep, and while going down he wondered whether they would ever get to the hut. In ordinary life, he says, we also make a map in our head of where we are going, and he suggests that instead of saying that we live our life, we can say that our life is living us: we do not know where we are going, but our feet and our actions take us forward. He adds that Dogen, in his writings, says that action is more important than thinking, and that although thinking is important, our life is created by our action. He also says that society needs stability and security, so we make a picture of our life and live in it, which is important, but that Buddhist philosophy speaks of something very simple and bare underneath this picture: our life is only now. Strong pictures can hide what is in front of us, he says: if we hold a prejudice about someone’s nationality or a sexual image of someone, we see the picture and not the person, and seeing reality is simple but difficult to do. He agrees that we learn from experience, for instance not to touch something hot, but he says that reality is not something fixed, and that the thought ‘it is only a picture, and underneath is reality’ is itself only another picture. Near the end he says that the Four Noble Truths only state truths and nowhere say that we should do something, and that reality is good and bad mixed together, unlike the religions in which good has to win a battle against evil.

In the second talk he returns to the mountains: if we walk with a picture from the map, believe that it is true and do not change our attitude to the real situation, we might have to be rescued by helicopter, but if we recognise that the mountain has its own truth, we have to follow it, and for that reason we can revere the mountains, because they can teach us something. A new baby, he says, is not contaminated by society, so it cries when upset and laughs when happy and is truthful and honest, and a dog is always real, unless it has been treated badly, and always in the moment, so we can learn something from both. Yet we cannot always recognise something that has the truth unless we recognise the same thing in ourselves: a bad-tempered person does not recognise the truth in a dog, and someone who has got up in the night because a baby is crying does not recognise it in the baby. He illustrates this with the tea ceremony, in which, he says, treating things with respect is treating yourself with respect, and he concludes that prostrating to someone or something that has the marrow is recognising the marrow in yourself, so that recognition works both ways and we feel oneness. Asked whether the chapter is about recognising true teachers of Buddhism, he answers that it can be, but that recognising a true teacher is recognising the truth in yourself, and he tells how Gautama Buddha, after maybe eight years with yogins, left the forest and sat under a tree, recognising that the truth is in himself and in the whole universe, adding that the story he has just told is too perfect, because people are often unsure one day and sure the next, and that there are no perfect teachers. Asked about his saying that zazen does not change our lives, he says that he does not remember how he put it, but that if we think zazen makes us better, our zazen becomes tainted, that to know ourselves we cannot think that we must be better, and that in zazen we stop trying, so that not trying to change changes us, although he does not know why. Asked whether zazen can also change us for the worse, he says yes: with an idea of zazen as balance or as no emotion, we tend to push emotions down and use zazen as a prison, as he did himself.