Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice

by Kosho Uchiyama

“all dharmas are without an independent self”

“Hi, I’m the Entire Universe, nice to meet you.”

The clear depth of the universe is the limitless truth discovered in the East.

understand with your own intellect that Zen concerns the true depth of life that is beyond the reach of that intellect.

politicians took what should have been a natural pride felt by the Japanese people in their own cultural richness and manipulated it.

By studying Western philosophy academically you can pretty much learn what it is all about, but Buddhism is another matter. It’s virtually impossible to make much sense of it if you don’t actually practice it.

May this—the actualization of our universal self—be all our life

work.

most of our life consists of accidental realities: things could be taking place another way.

This point leads to the second undeniable reality, that all things are suffering, or sangai kaiku. Suffering is not

Dwelling here and now in this reality, letting go of all the accidental things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by “opening the hand of thought.”

The past, present, and future are all contained within the present.

Only if we have learned how to drive a car can we effectively use one to go somewhere. Doing exactly that is called genjō kōan, the koan of life becoming life. Genjō is the present becoming the present.

“everything I encounter is my life.”

all sentient beings are suffering.

Where you are living right now is all there is.

All our thoughts and feelings are a kind of secretion.

You shouldn’t use your own calculating mind to evaluate everything.

You begin to realize that there’s nothing more important than just letting go.

you must work and function toward settling everything around you.

It is essential to live with the conviction that you are making history for the next generation.

only God is perfect; His creation is not.

the fourth seal, all things are as they are.

How great a human being can

become is negligible.

as soon as we start thinking and calculating about things, we become, in a sense, suspended from reality.

How do we do this while responsibly “making history for the next generation.” is skillful living.

“The foundation of the self is only the self.”

Thinking means to be grasping or holding on to something with our brain’s conceptual “fist.” But if we open this fist, if we don’t conceive the thought, what is in our mental hand falls away.

“self is what is there before you cook it up with thought.”

Constructive understanding, Easterners use instructive thinking

The life of the self does not come about by being defined.

Buddhism is just East Asia thought packaged in a belief system.

the very power that goes beyond just thinking and creating definitions with words must be the reality of life itself.

Isn’t agonizing over things that don’t work out just the way you want nothing but being dragged around by more fantasies? You have to begin with your present reality.

We end up being dragged around by those fantasies and by our comparisons of ourselves with others. Living like that, how can we not become filled with feelings of utter isolation and loneliness,

enshrine a buddha statue, offer flowers, and burn incense.

full-lotus posture (see figure 4), but it is not possible for most people

buttocks naturally but firmly pushing outward and your pelvis slightly tipped forward.

Your ears should be in line with your shoulders,

the cosmic mudra

slowly swing two or three times to the left and right,

If a thought occurs during zazen and we proceed to chase after it, then we are thinking and not doing zazen.

Buddhists seeking only their own salvation, which he labeled hinayana (a small-minded attitude, literally “small vehicle”).

But isn’t seeking to get rid of pain and to attain the bliss of nirvana itself a desire or craving? Actually, this too is craving, and precisely because of that the practitioner is caught in self-contradiction and can’t escape suffering.

to see all thoughts and desires as resting on the foundation of life, to let them be as they are yet not be dragged around by them.

(Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra) it says, “There is no birth or death, no purity or impurity, no increase or decrease.”

藤井先生と同じ

Universal or all-inclusive self is free of comparisons and includes the personal self.

“This is really strange. Here we’ve been arguing when actually we’re all tied together and living just one life.