During one of those cold twilight moments of December 2024, while I was sitting in my small study room at Manthari, home at Bangalore, received Fr. AMA’s succinct and compassionate welcome note. He wrote in Japanese Zen terms; it is known as. “Shukke Tokkudo”, leaving one’s home to Master’s home to live and study Zen further. And there is no need of any ceremony as such. One of the things I have observed is Fr. AMA as a very radical and revolutionary spiritual leaders, is not attached to any scriptures or rituals per se. Even his eucharist service for Xmas goes like a flash of lightning on the clear blue sky.
Day before yesterday, during our question and answers in between the sesshin, AMA was at pains to explain to couple of meditators that it is very human to be attached to life and spirituality does not mean that we give away all attachments. In Zen way, samsara is nirvana and nirvana is samsara. A long time back, almost 30 years back, in my very first spiritual meeting, I heard Swami Chinmayananda answering to a question from a devotee related to his golden vial (a small cylindrical container) he used to carry with him. Chinamyananda used to take snuff quite often (tobacco in powder form which people inhale through nose) and someone had gifted him that golden vial to carry that powder. The questioner was questioning Chinmayananda on his carrying that golden vial. Chinmayanada and rest of the audience could sense the malice in that barb of question. But in his inimitable humorous style he answered that question. He said, as I remember, that he won’t lose his peace of mind, if someone, even the questioner, steals that golden vial while he sleeps. Detachemnt spiritually means not attached to anything. Not depriving anyone of it.
Zen Master Dogen seems to have high regard for the monastic concept of Shukke Tokudo or Home leaving. (in Shobogenzo, collection of Dogen’s writing). The phrase translates to. “Leaving home, sharing the dharma”.
Before last December 2024, for two years, though I used to spend a couple of weeks every month at the Zendo for extended sesshins and regular Zen practice, it was not “leaving home” literally. And even now, after moving to zendo to live here full time, it is not “leaving home” , literally and figuratively. It is just that, one realizes, our true home is not constrained to any locale or existential circumstances.
As Dogen then and Fr. AMA now tell us, that one cannot relinquish one’s attachment to life and what constitutes life whether it is home, living, working, family or friends, for the sake of anything leave alone Zen. Dogen quotes another Chinese Zen Master, “ In this life save the body, it is the fruit of many lives.”. It suggests being attached to one’s body and good health. The honored one, Sidhartha Gautama, told us the same without telling, when he accepted that bowl of milk and rice pudding from Sujata of Senani village to end his extreme ascetism and seeking of nirvana at the cost of everything including his own health and well being. That grace from an householder woman was a critical moment in Sidhartha’s journey to enlightenment.
When Fr AMA taught me it is important to be not so attached even to the Zen way, and true realization is when we I “empty ourselves of emptiness”, it just means (to me) n that even attachment to extreme detachment is another attachment. It is when we truly are detached to even our own ideas, concepts and opinions, one realizes and what one got to be realized and wakes up from the “dream state”.
The best part/moments in my life, on most days, happen in the twilight zone, when night bids goodbye to the day and hands over the baton as happened for millions of years. Also when we move from one dream state of nightmares and sweet dreams to another “dream state” of “distorted reality”. Ever since i started coming to Kanzeon Zendo regularly since the last 3 odd years, i always looked forward to these moments. After lighting the lamp (Christa does it without fail whenever she is in Zendo and i do in her absence), I open the window and stand there in Wuji stance. One can hear the murmur of the mountains and quivering leaves whispering to the chilly breeze with the melody of chirping birds, one realizes “nothing”.
It is in this moment, when I realize that one true home is absolute homelessness, where the earth is the floor and sky is the roof, and where horizon is where the big French window is, everything there constitutes what one is or what one is makes up one’s world. Those moments, all my pain, worries, anger just vanishes. In that sense, Shukke Tokudo, means moving to Homeless home.
And then the “world” fills up that void for the rest of the day till the next twilight, when the day bids goodbye to the night and handover the baton.
