Some Notes From Words of Encouragement: 7th night of Samish Island Sesshin, 26 June 2009
Good Evening:
For those of you who do not know me, my name is John Bailes. I am a member of what I call Norman’s Stray Cat Zen Lineage. He took me in a few years ago while travelling in New England, invited me to sit sesshin with him and the various sanghas with which he works. The next thing I knew I was adopted by the Northwest Sangha: Red Cedar and Mountain Rain, retaking the precepts with Norman and having my ordination name re-translated into the English. Kotatsu Roko now translates as Immense Arrival Brilliant Disclosure.
Encouragement: Webster’s says of this word: to give courage, hope or confidence, to embolden, to hearten. Hearten means to cheer up and cheer, from the Middle English, means bearing or demeanor. Bearing and demeanor, posture is everything in Zen. It is how we stand, how we sit, walk, approach, depart, that heartens – our bearing up right and open hearted, direct.
Courage comes from the French corage meaning heart or spirit. It is the attitude of facing or dealing with anything dangerous, difficult or painful – instead of withdrawing from it – a quality of being fearless. Remember our Bodhisattva training in the Heart Sutra: The Bodhisattva is without hindrances, or walls as Red Pine would put it, and therefore fearless…brave valorous.
An obsolete form has courage as mind, purpose, in the sense of intention, and spirit again.
As we know in the Far East heart and mind are one. It is neither intellect, nor emotion but another intelligence; a Being or Presence which is boundless, an Opening which we are and to which we gain access through the practice of zazen and sesshin. The entire intention of this sesshin is to establish ourselves in this courage, to thoroughly apply ourselves to this form – as bearing and demeanor – and through this practice Open to the Boundless Heart of Being.
In this space love arises – love lightens and buoys us – we float together in this viscous, luminous breath of emptiness. Stillness and Silence – our forms are our language. Even in this so cherished silence, in this very stillness we are communicating, we are encouraging one another to let go of that gravity ridden body and mind, to release into that being that arises like a lotus in muddy water.
It is in this space that we learn what listening is. We no longer jump into the gap. Fill that gap with a name, an explanation, a definition. We let things be as they are: birds, dust mites, thoughts, dreams, emotions. We listen, we hear, we let go.
Like a Great Blue Heron waiting for a fish, we stand in beauty. Our speaking becomes a listening. No longer are thoughts and words divisive, but they arise like flowers from emptiness.
The Japanese word IKI can be translated as Grace – in this grace there is no subject object relationship.
IKI is the breath of the stillness of luminous delight.
IKI is the breath of the stillness of luminous delight.
It is what ensnares us and carries us away into stillness. There is in it nothing anywhere of stimulus and impression. The delight is some kind of hint that beckons us on. It is the message of the veils that are opened and opening, peeling back. Presence has its source in grace – in this sense of the pure delight of the stillness which calls to us.
The Japanese word for language is KOTO BA.
BA means leaves, including and especially the leaves of a blossom – petals. Think of cherry and plum blossoms.
KOTO then would be the experience of the occurrence of the lightening message of grace. Lightening here refers to less weight, in a sense less gravity or sense of rising to meet, as well as the lighting of darkness.
So then language is: the leaves/petals/blossoms that issue forth from that delight which is the radiance of the uniquely unrepeatable moment in the fullness of its grace: the fish for heron, the mite in the light sunbeam for Jeff,
the altar flower arrangement for our Ino, John.
Think of your speech, your words issuing forth from this radiant grace.
Where do our words come from?
What does their speaking satisfy?
Thank you and Good Night.
