Zen teaching, the Dharma, passes from teacher to student, person to person, and has done so since the time of the Buddha, roughly 2,500 years ago. What each teacher passes to each student is a way of seeing things differently. The way we see things, with our eyes, with our minds, with our ears, can cause us to suffer and it can cause us not to suffer. The Buddha taught people how to suffer and how not to suffer, hoping that people would embrace the method of not suffering. Buddha was a sort of Methodist. He taught people to sit still, care for each other and be compassionate toward each other. This method promotes less suffering.
Our transient body is an instrument of perception and communication. It is an instrument of discernment and confusion. In Zen practice, bodies, people, practice together, learn how to deal with themselves and how to deal with each other. Teachers, in their teacher bodies, teach methods for suffering and not suffering. We create new habits for our bodies and minds together, that help us see the world differently, more clearly, in a way that cuts through our confusion and eases our suffering.
My Dharma sister, Rebecca Nie, one of the insightful and talented teaching bodies at the Stanford Zen Society, asked me to share my writing, my disembodied teaching, on this site. Someone reading this is not present with my body. I am not present with their body. Yet, as you read this, now, these words, produced by my fingers twitching with great intention on a keyboard, form thoughts in your body through the common miracle of literacy. I, fully embodied as I write this, am elsewhere as you read this. You, elsewhere as I write this, are fully embodied, present, as you read this. So these words carry the Dharma, the mind to mind transmission of Zen. You and I share a presence across time and space. You and I share a wish for you to suffer less in this moment and to create habits, develop methods, skills, that help you suffer less in moments to come.
If you have the opportunity to practice with the embodied teachers and other students at the Stanford Zen Society, you are fortunate. You have skilled, compassionate, caring people sharing their methods for creating harmony, dealing with, and reducing suffering. I hope that my disembodied teaching can help that process along.
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