We All Fall Down

Last night at the study group we started with capping phrases as usual. I shared this audio clip of Alan Ginsberg singing the Gospel of the Fourth Truths (click here) that Mark had brought for me the week before (about the same day that Barry posted Alan’s tune over at OxHerding).

One practitioner playfully (I think) challenged me for using somebody else’s offering as my own capping phrase. That’s the life of a so-called zen teacher.

Anyway, we finished up the firewood and ash section of the Genjokoan, examining Bokusan’s commentary and especially this passage:

A teacher of old said, “As I have great power, I fall down when the wind blows.” …Great power is to fall down all the way at the time of falling down…. You are all cowards and paralyzed so you are already dead before you die.

I’m fond to his kind of edgy teaching – maybe because I’m the kind of horse that responds bests after the whip has penetrated.

The very important point, though, is the way of being that’s pointed to here is so vulnerable and intimate – living without mask or pretense or struggle – in the midst of so much misdirected striving in this world.

For a recent related talk by my dear old friend, Yvonne Rand, with her observations of Suzuki Roshi’s kindness practice (“Never say too late”), click here.