📔 Book: Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

Author:: Kosho Uchiyama Roshi
zen

Highlights

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• all human beings without exception are in reality homeless. It’s a mistake to think we have a solid home.
• A religion that has nothing to do with our fundamental attitude toward our lives is nonsense. Buddhadharma is a religion that teaches us how to return to a true way of life. “Subduing non-Buddhists,” or converting people, means helping them transform their lives from a half-baked, incomplete way to a genuine way.
• In no other field of endeavor can a person waste time like this; if a pilot fails to operate an airplane, the plane will crash. But if a priest makes a mistake chanting sutras during a funeral, the deceased will not complain. Probably this is why priests can get away with laziness.
• When you steal other people’s belongings, you become a thief. This is very simple and clear. But people today think one becomes a criminal only after being arrested by a policeman, investigated by a prosecutor, sentenced by a judge, and confined in a prison. Therefore, corrupt politicians think they are men of virtue and skill if they can cover up their deeds and escape getting caught
• Sit immovably in the place where being superior or inferior to others doesn’t matter
• Excessive competition is unwholesome for winners as well as losers
• KODO SAWAKI: A home-leaver should be a person who creates a unique way of life.KOSHO UCHIYAMA: Sawaki Roshi was always saying this. His “homeless” life was his original creation. And expounding Dharma in a profound and resonant way using simple colloquial expressions instead of Buddhist technical terms was his distinctive teaching style.However, if I as his disciple merely imitate his way of life or repeat his sayings, I will be acting contrary to my teacher’s spirit. To be a faithful Dharma heir, I need to go beyond Roshi’s way of life to create my own life and expressions of the Dharma
• Sutras originally refers to a category of Buddhist scriptures considered to be the record of Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings. Mahayana sutras began to be produced around the first century BCE, a few hundred years after Buddha’s death. Commonly the word sutras is also used to refer to all Buddhist scriptures, including commentaries and texts about precepts. Here Uchiyama Roshi uses the word in this broad meaning
• A horse and a cat once discussed the question, “What is happiness?” They couldn’t reach any agreement
• When people are alone, they’re not so bad. However, when a group forms, paralysis occurs; people become totally foolish and cannot distinguish good from bad. Their minds are numbed by the group. Because of their desire to belong and even to lose themselves, some pay membership fees. Others work on advertising to attract people and intoxicate them for some political, spiritual, or commercial purpose.I keep some distance from society, not to escape it but to avoid this kind of paralysis. To practice zazen is to become free of this group stupidity
• In Buddhism, the obstacle that causes suffering in our lives is called “delusive desire”: in Sanskrit, klesha, and in Japanese, bonno
• Don’t lose your head in crazy circumstances. Don’t be intoxicated by atmosphere
• Right after World War II, people lined up all night at bookstores to buy a copy of the philosophical work of Professor Kitaro Nishida, as if it were the latest toy. But these books were written in a typically awkward style. People must have opened the books, closed them quickly, and decided they were great because they couldn’t be understood
• When we read something by a well-known academic, we believe it must be good. If we can’t understand it, we think that’s our own fault.
• Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945) was a professor at Kyoto University and an important philosopher of the Kyoto school. A friend of D. T. Suzuki, he combined his Zen Buddhist practice with the logic of Western philosophy. Although his books were difficult, his philosophy was popular after the war. Some critics said that his expression “absolutely contradictory self-identity” was almost worshiped as a religious teaching, without being clearly understood
• Even if we don’t have lofty temple buildings, if we practice, this place can be called a dojo of ancient buddhas. Foolish people in this degenerate age should not be vainly engaged in construction of temple buildings. The buddhas and ancestors never had desires for buildings
• A man lays down his life in vain for the sake of fame.        Why doesn’t he give up clinging to life for the sake of Dharma?
• What is the true self? It’s brilliantly transparent like the deep blue sky, and there’s no gap between it and all living beings
• After all our efforts, racking our brains as intensely as possible, we have come to a deadlock. Human beings are idiots. We set ourselves up as wise and then do foolish things.
• People always talk about “civilization,” but civilization and culture are nothing but the collective elaboration of illusory desires