I wish I could start this with a book report about Shodo Harada's "The Path to Bodhidharma" but I cant. I haven't finished it yet. Probably won't for at least a few more days. I haven't finished it yet because at least every other page or so I have to stop and gather in my mind, which keeps spurting out of my ears, my nose, my mouth...hell, out of my pores.

It is difficult to remember where my personal boundaries are as I read this book because it keeps dispelling them. I have never read a book that makes it so clear what Buddhist practice is all about. And I'm not even finished with it yet!

Thanks Kobutsu, for sending this gem my way! And thanks for being my friend and teacher.

I learned more about practicing Buddhadharma by hanging out with Kobutsu for the few months that he was here in Japan than I did during all of my monastic training. And we just hung out. Didn't talk 'Buddhism'. Didn't do zazen. Just spent a lot of time in each other's presence. There was always somewhere to go, something to pick up, someone to contact, ( I didn't get the nickname 'the Gopher' for nothing), but mostly we just hung out.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that all those years of Shingon training and practice were a waste of time. If not for that, I wouldn't have been ready to receive what Kobutsu had to 'say' to me. I use the quotes because he never really said anything specific about Buddhism to me. The closest thing was when he said " The next time someone asks you that, tell 'em to go work in a soup kitchen! " when I told him that, as a Buddhist priest sometimes people ask me about reincarnation, and I don't really know what to tell them.

I'll spare you the intellectual koan analysis and just say that that one sentence helped me start to get my mind around the concept of no-self in a way that I never had before.

That was also when I realized he was my teacher. I never formally asked to become his student. Why would I? I had received a Dharma Transmission in the Shingon tradition two years before meeting Kobutsu. Likewise, he never formally told me he would become my teacher. It just happened as we spent time together and it was only later that we started to refer to each other as 'my teacher' or 'my student'.

Kobutsu filled a gap that had developed in my practice; the gap between knowing and embodying the teachings.

Thank you Harada Roshi for your wonderful book. Thank you Kobutsu for giving me a chance to see, in the flesh, what Harada's book is all about. And last, but far from least, thank you Dogo for putting into words that I could finally understand, the concept of no-self. It was your comments on reincarnation and rebirth that allowed me to be at peace with the question that had been troubling me since I started on this path many years ago.

If you haven't read Dogo's entries on rebirth and reincarnation, (though I dont think that could be possible - I'm pretty sure no one would be reading this if they hadn't heard about it from Dogo first^_^) please check them out.
http://barrygraham.livejournal.com/437966.html
http://barrygraham.livejournal.com/455434.html