Zen Mysticism

The mystical side of Zen is not something supernatural. The mystical side is a sense of intimacy with life as it is. Intimacy with nature. He intimacy with joy. The intimacy with sorrow. The intimacy of relationships, of being fully human. It brings out that warmth, connection, and closeness to life. One of the things it's important to look at as a Zen practitioner is how we may distort reality. From a Buddhist Dharma point of view we distort our reality grasping onto things, avoiding things, and being ignorant of the way things are.

If our life is based on what is truly there, we are more likely to make wise decisions based on that.

Dogen Mystical Realism: The Ordinary Mind Zen School Sydney podcast: Dharma talks given by Geoff Dawson.

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When we let go of our conceptions, there is no other possible reality then what is right now; In that sense, what is right now and here is absolute, it's undeniable. Not only that, this undeniable reality is at the same time the reality of life that is fundamentally connected to everything in the universe. This is the undeniable reality. The truth to be derived from this is that right now is all important. 

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

When we think of "now" in the ordinary sense, we assume that there was a linear flow of time from the past into the present and forward into the future. Actually, it isn't that way at all. Actually, all that there really is, is now as the scenery of the present, however, there is a past, present, and future. Let me say that again: within the present, there is a past, a present, and a future. The past and the future are real and alive only in the present. This concept of time in the Buddhist thought is very important.

page 12 Opening the Hand of Thought by Zosho Uchiyama

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"When we live from pure awareness, we are not affected by our past, our present, are our future."

"Practice is about developing our uncovering a simple mind. For example, I often hear people complain that they feel overwhelmed by their lives. To be overwhelmed is to be caught by all the objects, the thoughts, the events of life, and to be affected emotionally by them, so that we feel angry and upset. When we feel like that, we may do and say things that hurt ourselves or other people. Unlike the simple mind of pure awareness, we are confused by the multiplicity of the external environment. Then we can't see that everything external is us."

"Within this simplicity, this awareness, we understand past, present, and future, and we begin to be less affected by the barrage of experiences. We can live our life with appreciation and some compassion."

"The longer we sit, the more we have periods -  at first brief, and then longer - when we sense that we don't need to be opposed to others, even when they are difficult. Instead of seeing them as problems, we begin to enjoy their foibles, without having to fix them. For example, we can enjoy the fact that they're too silent, or that they talk too much, or they put on too much makeup. To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like. It takes years and years and years of practice. Even then, I don't mean that every problem can be experienced without reaction; still, a shift occurs, and we move away from a purely reactive life, and which everything that happens can trigger our favorite defense. 

A simple mind is not mysterious. In a simple mind, awareness just is. It's open, transparent. There's nothing complicated about it. For most of us most of the time, however, it is largely unavailable. But the more we have contact with a simple mind, the more we sense that everything is ourselves, and the more we feel responsibility for everything. When we sense our connectedness, we have to act differently."

"When we maintain awareness, whether we know it or not, healing is taking place. If we practice long enough we begin to sense the truth: we come to understand that the now embraces the past and future and the present. When we can sit with a simple mind, not being caught by our own thoughts, something slowly dawns, and a door that has been shut begins to open. For that to occur, we have to work with our anger, our upset, our judgments, our self-pity, our ideas that the past determines the present. As for the door opens, we see that the present is absolute and that, in a sense, the whole universe begins right now, in every second. And the healing of life is in that second of simple awareness."

Simple Mind page 255 - 257 Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck