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Teisho April 5 (1992)
by Harada Tangen Roshi, Bukkoku-Ji
Carve your bones in practice and great white brightness will be yours. Work with all your might on this one tantei. Drive yourself into this doing. Does it still seem to you that one doing, one tantei, one mu, one breath is still rather insignificant? Does it seem to you that one breath does not mean so much? Or are you sincere about each breath, each tantei? Are you doing each tantei attentively? No matter what arises, neither develop it, nor suppress it. Carrying nothing, bringing nothing, you are just earnestly doing what you’ve set out to do. Are you? Ask yourself. Are you practicing honestly? Perhaps you are now, too, wholly involved in your tantei practice to even answer yes. If your practice is shikantaza, shikantaza is your practice. Only this. If you are following your breath, just follow your breath. Nothing else. Mu, just mu. One hand, just one hand. Your original face. Nothing else deserves your attention.
The practice that you have received, the practice that you are doing is the practice of your true self. So it is soft mind or flexible mind, stick with it. You are practicing reverence. You are carving up your bones. Carefully, carefully stick with this. As though you are carving up your bones, cleanly, thoroughly. Step this one step. The tears of struggle, struggle in your practice, sesshin after sesshin, mu after mu, struggling, struggling. The tears of struggle drench your sleeves until they’ve rot it. Where would you be able to put all of your joy? Carving your bones, you will shed a few tears along the way. Plenty of tears, tears enough to drench and rot the sleeves of your kimono. Follow on the path. You practice with the vow “I must have peace of mind.” You want to be peaceful regardless of conditions. You want to know the truth. You want to awaken to the genuine. So you have made the decision not to stop practice, not to cut it short, not to get sidetracked, to practice with deep belief in the original Buddha nature.
Let it shine, let the clouds come over.
A blizzard, fine, let it rain. You’ve made the resolution based on belief in your inherent Buddhahood. So you can’t be budged no matter what. If your resolution is week, you squirm and fear, and you grow weak in the face of hardship. Or you just let yourself get easily distracted. Again, if your aim is clear and strong, no matter what happens, you remain steadfast. Isn’t that tranquility? I am not going to be afraid, I am not going to be timid, I am not going to hold back.
When you see somebody else with something that you would like for yourself, you might find that you praise that person and congratulate them avidly. But inside your heart you are envious or jealous, or you just feel lousy. No more of that. You see, you don’t want to be that way, do you? You want to give up all that garbage. Of course you want to be at peace in your own heart. You want to be at peace for yourself. You still feel that desire. But in the end, you want to be here for all beings. To work for others.
Everybody is suffering, the whole world is suffering. The pain of not having things as you would have them, not getting what you want. The pain of losing, or fear of losing what you think you have, the anxiety of not knowing what’s going to happen. You are told that everything is alive and shiny and bright. But you don’t see the world this way. You don’t see shining brightness everywhere you look. That’s painful, isn’t it? You believe it’s painful. You have the feeling, quite often, what does that have to do with me? It’s the only way you can see things. It’s painful though, isn’t it?
Your legs hurt, and hurt, and hurt. For what reason? You are told not to tense your shoulders, yet you can’t help it, you become tense. You are told not to let yourself be overwhelmed by the pain or whatever. You are told not to fight the pain but just let it be. But you can’t quite do this successfully. You can’t quite manage it, can you? How would you feel if you thought that it was always to be this way. That you go through life alternately getting caught up in things, overwhelmed, and being irritated and squirming in reaction to what you encounter. To go through life and die this way. And then what’s ahead of you when you are about to die? Only darkness and uncertainty. You may not even be aware that you are not OK in the face of death. You may think the problem is resolved. But is it? Everyone who has awakened and became clear and peaceful in the face of death said the same thing, “I used to be just like you.”
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