Another side of the character work is, I think, to trust mystery, to trust the not-knowing within ourselves, not only as a subjective state but as an objective feature of the Way, as something that is really intrinsic to the Way. It is a sense of trusting in what is mysterious, what is not known and not limited by knowing. What we know always in some way shuts out the rest of the world. It is always that ten percent that is dazzlingly clear. There is a story of a fellow who was searching around for his keys in the weeds under a lamppost. Somebody else came along and helped him search for an hour or more. Finally this person said, "We”ve gone over all this ground--are you sure you lost them here
" And he said, "No, I didn”t lose them here actually, I lost them over there, but there”s more light here." That is our knowing; that is what we know. If we are open to the darkness, it is very rich, it is fecund; and that is on the character side of things.
Also it happens that we get into a kind of revolt, particularly in the koan work because it is so fraught with success and failure, and good and bad, and acceptance versus struggle, and all that stuff. We get into a revolt about it, and the koan either seems far away or it seems like an impossibly difficult, tense way of working in zazen. People get sick in the stomach and throw up, or come in and yell at me -- all sorts of things go on. But the task from the point of view of character here is to find a way to do the koan, to unite with the koan, no matter what; not to cling to a particular idea of how to do it. If your particular idea of how you are doing it is not working, then try something else. If you were trying to fix a leaking tap in the sink you would try something else if one way didn”t work. I think to use that kind of common sense in meditation is also important, not to be too literal-minded.
Sometimes technique too is pided into the character and insight sides: the shikan-taza -- which is the great acceptance, the great sky mind, the consciousness that spreads over the whole universe like the rising sun -- and the sharpness of the koan way. However, I think at bottom there is not a lot of difference in the ways we meditate and there need not be a lot. If you emphasise the peacefulness of zazen, sooner or later you will have to take up the sharpness, take that extra step; if you emphasise greatly the insight side and the sharpness, sooner or later you will have to come to an acceptance and a peacefulness. Always, whenever we have a dualism, in the end zazen unites them; even character and insight are this way.
Meditators have many things come up, but one thing that is very characteristic is fear. Fear takes many forms. It can be extraverted and take the form of anger and resistance against things in the outer world, against things in the meditation, which is some fear of going deeper. Or it can be quite clear that we are just plain scared, and fantasies of fear run in our heads and we have nightmares on night two, or we are afraid of pain. I think a large part of the character work is just to become tolerant of this. If it is true that we need to experience our own lives, we need to notice what is happening, we need to notice that we are having a feeling or a thought. Often we don”t: we are just subject to it, for days sometimes. The first thing is to notice it, then the next thing is not to take it too seriously, to have a kind of ease and space around it, an equanimity with what comes up, a generosity of mind; so that if fear comes up we also have the attitude of "Thank you for everything; I have nothing to complain of." And THEN scream! And then after that say, "Thank you for everything; I have nothing to complain of: I just screamed."
I think this equanimity then al…
《Calling the name of Avalokiteshvara》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…