GOING BEYOND THE BUDDHA

The chinese master Dongshan once taught,
“Concerning realization, through the body, of going beyond Buddha, I would like to talk a little.”
A monk said,
“what is this talk?”
Dongshan said,
“when I talk, you don’t hear it.”
The monk asked,
“can you hear it, master?”
then Dongshan replied,
“wait until I don’t talk, then you will hear it.”

Listening is the fundamental practice of any spiritual path. By definition, “ to listen” means to pay attention in order to hear, to heed, or to attend.
In listening, we perceive things as they are.
To perceive is to become one with our experience.
Becoming one is to manifest in the moment, alive and immediate. If our listening is partial, there is still an I who is listening, and our listening is tainted by this. It is only when listening is complete that the enlightened mind appears.

Listening as a practice can be a very direct way to take spiritual practice into everyday life. Because listening is a part of both the spiritual and the mundane realms, the barrier between “Zen” and life dissolves in listening practice. Zen practice is functional whether listening to the breath or listening to a friend complain, whether sitting in a temple or riding on a bus, while attending the most sacred ceremony or listening to the screech and clatter of a busy hospital emergency room. It takes no particular skill or understanding to listen. It only takes trying. So we say, Try, try, try for ten thousand years. Because we are humans, we are compassionate by nature. But our compassion becomes lost in self interest. Listening is a practice that returns us to our true way. The way of human beings. The way of compassion.

Listening is a difficult practice. It takes enormous effort and intention to listen clearly. We are distracted and absorbed by the mind habit of years of conditioning. This book encourages us to see through this mind habit and grasp the immediacy of experience. We listen with our eyes; we listen with our nose, our tongue. We listen with every cell and every pore of our body.

Zen Master Dae Gak, is a an American who has studied Zen in both the Japanese and Korean traditions. In 1994 he received Transmission from his teacher, the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn. He is a clinical psychologist and the author of " Going Beyond Buddha". He is the guiding teacher for several groups in the US and Europe, and has also led retreats in Australia and Korea.