Vimalakirti

The Teaching of Vimalakirti Sutra (211 pg pdf with commentary) is the text for this practice period. I'm part way into it, and I said to one of the teachers that I found it astonishing, not at all what I expected, and filled with wonder. "It's poetic, isn't it?" I pondered that for a moment. No, or possibly yes, or both at once. It's a work of art. I thought but didn't say. A work of transcendent art. Not meant to be taken literally, with tens of thousands of gods and goddesses arrayed around the householder Vimalakirti to hear his teaching and obtain enlightenment. It's a metaphor. Magical realism, maybe.

Constant drumbeat of contrasting dualities. This not that, not this not that, nor this either. You're doing it wrong. Teaching the Mahabodhisattvas what they're doing wrong and how to do it right. No matter how close they come, how far they are from perfection, even the Lord Buddha himself.

One of the topics and questions I brought up at the initial practice interview was that of Desire, and how should we approach Desire without becoming attached to it, or rather attached to what we desire. As the Buddha found and says, Desire -- or attachment to what we desire -- is the cause of and source of Suffering. 

And I thought the response was fascinating, not at all what I expected, and something I'm continuing to chew over: "Desire is life."

Oh so many levels in that one simple phrase. I won't go through those levels here right now, as I am by no means of the Wisdom of householder Vimalakirti, but... yes. 

And I brought up the Enso, the uncompleted circle, the pattern of my life. Of so many lives.

I confess, I'm not following the discipline of the practice period this time around. I sit when I sit for as long as I sit rather than formally sitting at set times for set lengths of time with the rest of the participants in sangha. This is not an act of deliberate separation from the sangha. Indeed, when I settle among them, which is every day, several times a day, I feel embraced and embracing. The point, however, is that the sangha is of the mind, much more so than of the body, and once embraced and embracing of the sangha, it never goes away. It is part of you, and you are part of it, no matter what you are doing or where you are. Just so with sitting zazen and other forms and rituals of Buddhism and Zen. And, too, the Dharma. 

The forms and rituals of sitting and practice are training aids.

Once you "get it" you don't have to practice in that way, but you certainly can. Once you "get it" ideally your life becomes Practice. Full time.

Which is part of what Vimalakirti is getting at in his teaching of the gods and bodhisattvas and buddhas. 

Your practice is your life.