Yunmen [China, Chan Buddhist teacher, c. 864–949] asked his community, "I don't ask you about before the fifteenth of the month. Tell me something about after the fifteenth." No one spoke, so he said, "Every day is a good day."
* * *
Zen Buddhist teacher James Ishmael Ford, in The Intimate Way of Zen, observes regarding the "fifteenth" -
In East Asian cultures, the fifteenth is the time of the full moon and is a common metaphor for the moment of [spiritual] awakening. And awakening is our stirring from the slumbers of our certainties, the ideas and beliefs that prevent us from seeing what's actually going on, and from there into the real.
* * *
So, Yunmen is asking us, "I don't ask you about before you awaken spiritually. Tell me something about after." What difference does awakening make in your life? How would you know? Others know you are awake?
* * *
Before we look at the meaning of every day being a good day, we could raise an objection. "Well, maybe that is so for you, Mr. Chan Teacher Yunmen, but that is not so for me - or anyone I know?" Ford helps us see into Yunmen's life, clearing away any idea that the teacher is just a lucky guy with a cushioned life -
[I]t probably is helpful to note that Yunmen lived in harsh, politically unstable times. Armies were on the march, and famine and danger were the common currency of the day. The possibility of bad endings was more along the line of probability. Knowing that, it would be very hard to take his phrase "every day is a good day" as meaning "don't worry, be happy."... The phrase is all about the real.
* * *
Now, as for awakening. Different traditions use different words. Suzuki Roshi says, in his Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, there is no awakened person, only persons becoming so. The Christian apostle Paul says a similar thing in the Christian Bible. He speaks to Christians of their being saved as a process (I Corinthians 15.2). Elsewhere, he does speak of salvation as a past event. Here, we can see a start that keeps unfolding timelessly the inherent potential in that initial event in time. A past awakening is like the planting of a seed.
Well, however we speak of awakening, enlightenment, salvation, being born again ... what difference does awakening make? Well, for one thing, every day becomes a good day, for it has always been a good day. Why can this be said? Because you enjoy every day? No. You have no problems? No. You pray, and your God solves all hardships for you? No. You never act totally unawakened? No. You will never grow old, get sick, and die? No, no, no.
* * *
The real, or Real, is beyond the details of our lives, what we might call good or bad, displeasing or pleasing, or I like or I don't like. This moment is good, period. If I am unhappy, I cannot logically say, "Moment, hey! You are making me unhappy, you unhappy moment!" This awareness is liberating, realizing - not just thinking it is so - that life is good, regardless.
Now, our practice is to live with the realities of everyday life. Not use our spiritual path as an avoidance, a bypass. We do not become a rock, as the song says. We are exposed to the world. All the common soup of what we call our lives is where we practice. Yet, awakening means we grow more into intimacy with what those details cannot alter. Then, what we call personal experience - happenings, thoughts, feelings - are seen as what they are: passing clouds in the sky of Truth.
We learn, as I wrote yesterday, again drawing from Ford, to lean more and more into the vastness - call it what you will. Others see how we become more calm, present, patient, and cheerful. We notice the change in ourselves as well.
* * *
So, yes, every day is a good day. But not good in contrast to bad. Just good, purely good. And through walking the Way, you see it, and that changes your life positively. One change is the emergence of spontaneous gratitude regardless of what is happening about or within you.
