It happened in the middle of a difficult seven-day sesshin, I didn’t know how I would go on. “No me,” “no oneness.” “Serene intimacy.” “The unspoken call.” Here’s another student’s experience that occurred while they were working with the koan, “Does even a little dog have the buddhanature?” Chinese master Zhaozhou said, “Mu”: Serene intimacy with the unspoken call of “Just this! Just here, NOW!” And my days are no longer filled with inquiries, gnawing questions of existence. No me and an outside world, no oneness-indescribable. All became open, vast, and yet more intimate than my very breath. ![]() Then one day, driving as usual to get groceries, listening as usual to a rather slow and unspectacular aria by Mozart, an unusually brilliant note was heard. But rather than more didactic definitions, let’s instead look at four experiences of awakening by contemporary Zen students, all householders. Awakening, then, is both an empty event and an ongoing full-to-the brim process. What follows, the path of verification in the nitty gritty details of training and in life, is of equal or greater importance. Simply put, awakening begins with an abrupt nondual embodiment. Therefore, in this article, I will offer a Zen view of what awakening is and a little about what it isn’t, offer awakening stories from contemporary practitioners, share a historical interlude that has distracted Soto Zen from its original purpose, point to some of the shadows that come with emphasizing the light, and pray with you for Great Bodhisattvas to appear in the future to illuminate the Great Way for the benefit of all the many beings on this little blue dumpling planet. Following the band Crazy Horse, I call succeeding generations “helpless ones,” because, at least in part, they depend on our awakening today in order to awaken in the midst of a (likely) dystopian future with some unforeseeable degree of ecological and societal collapse. Today, the vital streams, the received traditions, that have kept awakening alive through the eighty-some generations since Shakyamuni Buddha, so that it is still available for us now, are threatened by our (Earth-destroying) consumerist proclivity to settle for the cheap and easy, by our (understandable) cynicism in the possibility of any authentic transformation, and within my root tradition, Soto Zen, by those (nice people) who are hell bent on making the buddhadharma about faith and intellectual understanding, while unintentionally abandoning exactly what could most serve the helpless ones in the future-awakening to their true nature. More about what I mean by “awakening” in a bit, but first a caution. ![]() Further, if awakenings are authentic, they give energy to the altruistic vow to liberate all beings. That is, to deeply accord with the awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha, and through personal experience, directly verify the truth of buddhadharma. Although it provided the basis for faith to continue the Zen Way, I now see it as an intimation of the Great Way, not the Great Awakening in this very life promised by the most vital streams of buddhadharma, including Zen. This experience, almost forty years ago, was a pivotal moment for me, an initial awakening ( kensho or “seeing true nature”). Adapted from Keep Me In Your Heart A While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri Norm, the tender giant Zen monk sitting next to me when I returned to the zendo obeyed-me. The tan shag carpet under my feet obeyed-me. The bell ringing to end the interview obeyed-me. Then he said in a commanding tone, “Turn over a new leaf, NOW!” Figure and ground reversed. ![]() Tenderized and open, I asked again, “How can I go beyond self-consciousness?” Roshi bolted forward, “Already you are stuck!” he shouted. I was in dokusan again with Katagiri Roshi, just half an hour before the end of another sesshin.
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