Breath

The wonderful monk Dosho Port on his blog http://wildfoxzen.blogspot.com/has left a few prints about breathing in sitting Zen. After quoting Dogen's teacher, he writes as a conclusion to his short but insightful text:

Something as ungraspable as snow.

Let me put forward a few clumsy varitions to this already amazing verse:

Snow as ungraspable as anything

Snow as ungraspable as self watching snow

Snow as snow

No Brad, not really...

I kind of disagree with the great Brad... Sitting -Zen would be "A kind of way of looking at reality"? No, because reality is always as is, looking at it in certain way makes it unreal. It could be "Reality watching itself, reality watching you". Brad could have phrased it differently like:"
A way to look at illusion, or self-delusion".

Just a deluded thought, anyway.

No question, no answer

Old Amida in sitting-zen

In my limited experience, zazen exhausts both questions and answers, or if you wish, the need, the urge to be given a map to go and live. When ? and ! are dropped, we are taken back home, which is exactly here and now, a place we never leave. Then our being-time -here-and- now is a living question-answer. Action takes place and arises in this dynamic reality which is not anymore perceived or grasped through fears or hopes. Eating, we eat. Living, we live. Sleeping, we sleep. Or, if I put it another way, zazen is a way to redirect the flow of questions to the very source of our being-time, you actualize the fact that the answers are not anymore over there in books, traditions, teachings but that you are the answer to all the questions you ask. Questions do not beg for an answer but are seen and experienced as a way to wake up to this reality without necessarily putting your paws on any definite answer. A way to wonder, not to wander. It is true that then the whole universe, from toilets to kitchen, work and family and friends and things become the living questions put to us.

Shen Yen's death poem

無事忙中老，

空裡有哭笑，

本來沒有我，

生死皆可拋。

Busy with nothing, growing old.

Within emptiness, weeping, laughing.

Intrinsically, there is no "I."

Life and death, thus cast aside.

Bosatsu and flute

Thanks to Wendy, a very nice picture. Thank you so much.