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| | | Book Name: Zen - The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest | Previous Next | |
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just you have to be very friendly with the tree. The tree supports your silence; it is rooted deep in the earth. It has no mind, it does not chatter with you, but it surrounds ... its aura, its sensitivity helps you, in a synchronicity.
Gautam Buddha became awakened under the bodhi tree. The bodhi tree got its name bodhi because Gautama became Buddha under it. Scientists have been looking into the constituents of a bodhi tree -- is there something special under it? And they have found that the same element that makes a man more intelligent than others, makes the bodhi tree more intelligent than other trees. It has a tremendous amount of intelligence. So it was not a coincidence that Buddha, sitting under the bodhi tree, became enlightened. He owes his gratitude to the bodhi tree also.
And he showed it. Before dying he told his disciples, "There is no need to make a statue of me. You will make temples, but in your temples make a statue of the bodhi tree. My gratitude is tremendous towards the bodhi tree."
For three hundred years after Gautam Buddha the temples carried, in place of Buddha's statue, marble carved as a bodhi tree.
Zazen simply means not to think, not to dream, not to imagine. Become one -- as the tree -- sensitive, alert, dancing with the wind, rejoicing in the sun ... surrounded by the fragrance of the tree, but with no activity on your part.
FOR THIS REASON HE WAS CALLED CHOKA ZENJI, MEANING "BIRD-NEST ZENJI," AND JAKUSO ZENJI, MEANING "MAGPIE NEST," BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES BECAUSE THE BIRDS AND MAGPIES BUILT THEIR NESTS BESIDE HIM.
WHEN THE PREFECT OF THE DISTRICT, CALLED HAKURAKUTEN, CAME TO VISIT DORIN, HE REMARKED, "YOU ARE IN A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE!"
He was sitting high on a tree from where, obviously, one can fall -- and in a deep forest where wild animals roam. The prefect was practically and pragmatically right: YOU ARE IN A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE! But Dorin said,
"YOU ARE IN A MORE DANGEROUS ONE!"
HAKURAKUTEN ASKED, "WHAT IS DANGEROUS ABOUT BEING IN CHARGE OF THIS PROVINCE?"
DORIN REPLIED, "HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE NOT IN DANGER WHEN YOUR PASSIONS ARE BURNING LIKE FIRE
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