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home / Publicaties / Harada Tangen Roshi / 1992 / Teisho April 4 (en) (pagina 1 van 4)

Teisho April 4 (1992)

by Harada Tangen Roshi, Bukkoku-Ji

Those of you whose legs are hurting may relax them now. We are in the middle of this sitting. We’ve climbed over the mountain in terms of the sesshin period. We passed the middle. We are right to the center. We must dig into the zafu of the seven Buddhas. Dig into and seek what the seven Buddhas of the past themselves sought.
This is the time for you to break your bones. That means no holding back. When it comes time for you to leave this temple, you must be leaving it because you are leaving seeking to polish more and more and more.
This is the time for you to break your bones. Don’t leave the temple because you aren’t into it, into what you are doing. If you aren’t into what you are doing, you might as well head home now. Because if you are not committed to throwing yourself wholly into this one doing, then you are only here disrupting the practice of others. But you are not going to have to leave for that reason. Everyone of you has to dig into your practice. Dig out the notion of self. Become like a blank sheet of paper. Obediently, purely. Obedient to your practice, obedient to your doing. From this purity, this emptiness, this obedience, truth will reveal itself to you. Your understanding will be seen in your every movement. In the shine of your eyes. When you practice strongly, doubt does not arise. When you hear the dharma, you will be unable to doubt it.

Again this year, at the base of the stone which says Fukuozan Bukkoku-ji, outside the gate, the buttercups have come up. Protected by the spring wind, they are now budding. You may wonder if the buttercups have labored and gone through hardships to come up this year.  Breaking through cement might seem to you to be a hardship. But if you ask them, they will answer no. “No hardship, thanks to you.” They broke through the hard asphalt to come up. If you ask them, “Are you butter cups?”, they answer yes, with all their being. There is nothing distorted about their buttercupness. There is no grasping, no trying to hang on to anything, no notion of self. Just, with heart and soul, the buttercup is being a buttercup. No distortion. Pure. Earnest. Single-hearted.
When Shakyamuni Buddha came before the throng of eighty thousand at Vulture Peak, he held up a single flower. He did only this, one single flower. He was not just pleasing himself there. Shakyamuni’s mind, his life, always included everything. All beings. It says in the chant that we chant before the teisho: those in the past who were not enlightened, will now be enlightened. You must attain enlightenment in this very life. For the multitudes who are suffering, for the multitudes who are carrying heavy load, for the many who fear that they are going to lose what they have, Shakyamuni held up a single flower. And Makakasho smiled. Makakasho was one with Shakyamuni’s belly. He wasn’t separated by even a single flower. He smiled. Shakyamuni said, “I have the all prevailing true dharma and comparable nirvana, exquisite teaching of former sworn. It is not reliant letters, and it is transmitted outside scriptures. I now hand it to Makakasho. next page