Questions and Answers: Emergency, Bowing, Incense, Walking

Q: On Monday you said this is emergency case. Would you like to say what you meant by that, please?

KOBUN: To speak to more than two people. One person communicate with more than two people — that is a emergency case. That's what I meant.

A bird send signal to surrounding, announcing this area is my territory. That is an emergency case. What I meant by — all of you remember what was context — come together and sit together is emergency case.

We don't put too much emphasis on emergency. There is a exit, so you can go, run away. That's why I started question. If you don't know why you are here, must be some question. If there is no question, I do not need to talk.

Q: My question is, I'm having difficulty recognizing my basic goodness as it arises. Could you speak to that?

KOBUN: What do you mean by your goodness? Good what — what does it mean, goodness?

Q: A feeling of self-worth. Self-worth, firmness in my being, a sense of trust.

KOBUN: That's pretty serious.

Q: Yes, I guess I'm an emergency case.

KOBUN: Your understanding — unless you do something, goodness don't show up, especially for immediate other people or situation. Even picking up trash from the public street, to that, enormous goodness.

If you share your joy of practice, it goes eternally. After your death it can penetrate into other people and situation, beyond time and space. In the first place that kind of enjoyment of merit, or practice, is luckily given to you as a gift — so it comes from somewhere, and you give it to others, and it is all free. You don't sell it. Good question, thank you.

Q: It's the first time that I'm doing this sort of meditation, and it was a very good feeling for me to just be in myself. What I felt very strange — when the bell just say it's finished, I felt a huge tension in my head coming after. During my daytime and lifetime I can feel this tension and I deal with it all the time, more or less. It was very surprising for me. Then I concentrated, was really very good feeling in me, and just getting out was so rapid, so terribly rapidly. It's the first time I experienced this in and out. Really I can see it, this tension coming out. So it's a question, or maybe it's not.

KOBUN: It is not a question. Thank you. Most of us feel the same way, I think. This sort of meditation, you say — everyone is doing different. It is good. We have a individual body and mind.

You got something to say?

Q: How do I keep my heart open when I continually am having judgments come up about myself, or about a situation?

KOBUN: The problem is you doubt your judgment. Judgments themselves, it's natural phenomena. It just measure — your measuring standard. To be righteous about it is something else.

It come from six consciousness, so to speak. Seventh consciousness is personalized consciousness. Over many years of life experience you develop this according to like, dislike, suitable, unsuitable — very stained mind, stained consciousness, by a dualism, good and bad. It's a result of your life experience over many years. Kliṣṭa-manas it's called;¹ kliṣṭa is stained, habituated. The sixth consciousness gather all information of your sense organs — it's perceptive element, you gather them all and give information to your seventh consciousness, and immediately calculated all information, and seventh consciousness say yes, let's go ahead, or no, I do not take this. Yes or no as decided.

Everyone has this kind of embedded necessary survival balance, so to speak. Some people don't get frightened in dangerous state. Some people are extremely sensitive about situations and immediately react to whatever impulses leads to you — which hopefully bring you to deep spiritual practice.

In matter of fact it goes always no to you. You are no good. Similar question of this — what good nature do I have? How can I make effort to please other people, or serve other people, when you are so judgmental about your own self? Before some sprouting goodness is observed, you stamp on them — you are no good — and withdraw yourself literally from doing good to others. Good friend come along usually at that time and, hey, come on, let's go meet with this person, or something like that, and you start to open up.

The matter is how powerful energy of compassion could be channeled. That is what the question is. Especially when you speak of heart. How to generate concentrated energy, knowledge, and effective to others, or practice in daily life, with nothing but cultivating this area. Accomplish your final judgment, so to speak — whether you can say yes to you. Maybe you can die now and never come back.

Please, if you could pronounce your name, I'm appreciated.

HOWARD: My name is Howard.

KOBUN: Oh, that's nice.

HOWARD: My question is two parts. The first part, I would like you to talk about bowing — I don't really know what happens, and why to do it. The second part is, when I come into a meditation and I offer the incense, and then after the meditation is over and I put out the candles and bow, the mood is much more respectful than when I first light the incense. I leave with that feeling, but I don't enter the hall with that feeling.

KOBUN: In us, in society, it has been quite lost subject, so to speak. To bow — prostration is what you are talking about. The expression of your mind physically appears, nodding, or joint hand, or throwing your body near the feet of somebody. It has a great emotion involved in it.

If I go to observe my own experience, what caused me to bow so many times — first thing I recall is holding my dying father's icy cold towel in my small hand like this. Literally I felt my entire body energies going into him. He was sixty-three years old. I was eight years old.² We all, five, six children, took down to massage his feet when he was passing away.

Many disciple of him, monks, nuns, and whole family are reciting last teaching of the Buddha, Parinirvāṇa Sutra, in Japanese. It took about one hour, one reciting sutra. We repeat three times, and about the end of the third time he passed on, and everybody literally fell on the ground and cried, bursting to cry. That was the first bowing experience I had — fell on the ground and fainted. Getting up from that was some other experience.

As a form of Buddhist religious ritual we are taught how to do it, and from time to time in the ceremony of special kind you do many times of prostration. Doing those, I started to feel bowing is destroying the self consciousness. While you have other existence, you destroy your conscious self of yourself, while you are trying to accept others as whole being. You actually swallow a kind of a sorrow as a being in you, so to speak — receive others as they are, without question. That's how bowing felt to me.

There was a telegram arrived at the Eiheiji monastery one day toward my last stay. It was from my root master. Come back. I went to Tatsugami Roshi — month-long vacation requested. Usually you don't go out of monastery more than half a day without permission. One month is very long, and why you have to go.

When I returned my master's temple, it was prepared that the transmission ceremony take place. Dharma transmission. At that time I didn't know what it is. As soon as I prostrated in front of him three times, and a big smile from myself — he doesn't smile back to me. He ordered: it is time for transmission. Prepare yourself. I didn't know what's going on.

It took whole month to go through proper procedure, and many, many prostrations took place — writing names of your lineage masters through history until Shakyamuni Buddha, and before Shakyamuni Buddha seven, six other past Buddhas. You literally write them on the silk cloth. My finger trembles. Each character you put it on, you get up and prostrate, and another character on, and then get up and prostrate. Many, many times. It's a kind of diving into the pool.

My ego didn't allow to do that for long time. Nobody to bend for — my ego so strong. Why do I have to bow? There is nothing respectful to bow. That kind of very proud mind. While I was feeling such contradiction, very strong ego — and when I meet with somebody like [unclear] Rinpoche, Urgyen Tulku Rinpoche,³ when I go there in front of them, naturally I go crumble down in front of them. There no question. And it is the same feeling when something like sick people is nearby. I touch them, same kind of action, without reason.

I recall Allen Ginsberg was talking about bowing, maybe ten years ago, when we met at Rocky Mountain. He was doing this practice. Will you tell something for us?

ALLEN GINSBERG: When I first — I think the second time I met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, outside a lecture in a church in New York City — I liked him a lot. So after the lecture, when he went into his car, I went out on the sidewalk and, partly kidding and partly serious, in between earnest and joke, bowed down and put my head on the pavement. Mainly because I liked him and respected him and wanted to show him that I did.

So he made fun of me. Said, oh, Allen Ginsberg down on the ground bowing. And I realized that I got a little insulted — not much — but I realized that little bit of difference was my pride. And I enjoyed noticing that I had some pride left.

But before that, I had poet friends. We felt a sacramental relationship with each other. We felt something sacred about each other's presence, mainly that we were on earth together at the same time, and appreciated that. So we used to bow to each other also. So I saw it as a deep salutation, respect, friendship, devotion, sense of humor.

KOBUN: Thank you.

Encouraged to practice in Buddhist manuscript from ancient time. Incense is one of most handy and wonderful offering. One is purifying the space, air. Another is send fragrance to the invisible spirits everywhere — like when you want to offer the incense to somebody far, unreachable, fragrance go. Of course, what you are offering is your own mind, own prayer.

My grandmaster taught me how to offer incense. Only teaching he left to his disciples is to stick incense straight. When you just open the package and light it and stick it, every incense go like this. How do we stand straight? Because when they make and dry them, they are soft still, and all of them are cut like this, not straight horizontal — with knife they cut bunch of them. So how you do it is, when you prepare incense you break the bottom part, a small portion, you break them straight, and then let it stand. Very simple.

I bet you have always problems now. Incense go like this, and ashes go on the table cloth.

Q: Is that the incense become wisdom itself, and you offer your wisdom?

KOBUN: [unclear]

Q: I have a question about the walking posture. More technical question about the breath. Is it one breath for each foot, or one breath for two feet?

KOBUN: Kinhin is Chinese character. This comes toward the end of Song Dynasty. Master of Tendō Mountain, Keitokuji Temple, Rujing — nearly eighty years old he was. People know how to meditate but don't know how to walk. It's strange. What does that mean? And he recommended practices to know: in the meditation hall when you walk, soft calm walk should be kept, and one breath, half step forward. So humble.

So it goes from zajō, sitting samadhi, you move standing samadhi. Upper body kept the same position, and eye position same as you — about forty-five degree focus, but observe whole view. When your head moves horizontally you see almost two-thirds of your back. When you move your head all the way around, another two-thirds of the back. Very convenient. You can see everything by just one move.

Anyway. Head straight forward, down about the height of your body. And so you have to pull your feet up from the ground and move forward half step on the right side. And when you gradually move on the right foot, slowly left the heel up. And then inhalation start. And then exhalation. [unclear] I end up the exhalation, right foot heel start to come up, and the inhalation start. So one breath, half step forward. And the energy — you don't wobble around, energy going is absolutely still.

And then, slow walk, when we call it. From distance people don't notice you are walking or stop. Meditation walk. From that you can increase the speed of walk without changing mind.

We are supposed to speak about how to sit, also, but I wanted to know you without talk, so I'm sorry I didn't give talk of meditation instruction. It's very nice to hear how you meditate.

Most of you close eyes. Why — it's very big subject. Why should eyes closed or open? If you are a passenger in the airplane you can sleep, but if you are pilot you cannot sleep. But now we have one wonderful aircraft system, so maybe most pilot are sleeping.

It is recommended twenty years or so you keep your eyes open and then sit. Exception is, close your eyes temporarily and find your spine straight on the cushion. When you are opening eyes it's hard to find where is gravity point. When you close your eyes you can easily find where is the center. When you become drowsy, increase your amount of breath and keep it going faster — especially inhale a lot and exhale powerfully. Makes your eyes very bright, and conquer the drowsiness in that way.

You don't forget. You are not sitting for yourself, for others. Even for some reason you arrived on the cushion, so you find out what was the reason you came here. It is very hard task to find it.

About the breath and posture, all necessary subject for sitting, we will discuss when time go. Throughout the days, from time to time you bring your conscious back upon your breath, and feel how wonderful it is to breathe freely, and discover a lot of things about breath. It's very mysterious. It relate with balance — balance of your physical condition, spiritual condition, come together. So paying attention on breath is like building a fine bridge between mind and body.

Again, we have a problem of physical element of existence, spiritual element of existence. We tend to separate and get very confused about body and mind. We will talk about those more next time. Just to remind: pay attention on your breath, and try to meditate upon your activity with breath.

Many of you are artists. So I know you know deep amount of knowledge about breath. Thank you.

Notes

1. 1 Kliṣṭa-manas, the defiled or stained mind — the seventh consciousness in Yogācāra. The engine rendered it "Krishna Manas"; Kobun's own gloss in the next breath ("stained, habituated") identifies it.
2. 2 He gives his father as sixty-three and himself as eight. At Karme Chöling in 1994 he said he was "about seven", and his 1992 résumé dates his father's death to about 1945 — which, from a February 1938 birth, is seven. The archive holds 1946. Two of his own accounts disagree by a year; neither is corrected here.
3. 3 Two lama names. The second is legible across independent decodes as Urgyen Tulku — Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, whom Kobun's own 1992 resume records him meeting at Boudhanath in 1988, the year before this talk. The first is not printed because no source in this archive connects Kobun to the man it most likely names. A listener hears Khyentse, independently of any machine reading, and the two engine decodes ("Kinsei", "Kinsley") carry the same shape; Dilgo Khyentse and Tulku Urgyen were the two great Nyingma teachers around Boudhanath in exactly this period, so naming them together would be natural. Against that, the resume names Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, not Khyentse — though here Kobun is listing people whose presence makes him prostrate, not recounting that trip. Left unset pending something firmer than a good fit.