Kenna's Newsletter

Today I have the honor of interviewing Tonkai Roshi from our sister facility in Denver. Roshi first wore the robes in 1962, and was a founding member of the American Big Heart Asanga. He joins our Sanga for a three-month stay.

Welcome Roshi. We are honored to have you.
Thank you - the pleasure is all mine.

Please talk a little about Big Heart and the Special Precepts
Many years ago, I noticed a clear need for clearer understanding and further expression of bodhichitta in the Zen community. Much of Zazen is focused on the still point within the self, and I wanted to bring awareness toward others. We wrote three precepts to help dedicate ourselves to the recognition that underneath, all sentient beings share the same essential nature. Through direct practice many people have experienced Big Heart themselves, and the connectedness of all beings has been directly felt.

It has been 20 years since your last publicized work, "Big Heart, Open Mind." Several years ago you stopped lecturing. What has changed?
I have never stopped offering the transmission of Big Heart to those who are ready to receive it. The books and lectures... they were really just an old man talking, not really helping.

Why?
By spreading conceptual understanding of Big Heart, we separated the actual emotive imperative from the work, which prevented the true absorption and practice behind the precepts.

Surely spreading the word is better than leaving the world ignorant...
No! Talking merely enables further thought and abstraction, and prevents direct action. I think I know what Big Heart is, so I will not try to live through my Big Heart - instead I will live through my conceptualization of it.

The concept is not the thing?
Language is a by-product of man's need to label everything - to add a layer of metadata on top of the world around him. Augmented reality is not a 21st century invention, it is a product of the evolution of the brain that's been going on millions of years. Producing labels is a by-product of differentiation and comparative analysis. "That is food. This is fire." Language exists to communicate symbols between individuals. Language is a virus which spreads thought among human beings, infecting us with concepts we believe to be real. Your symbolism becomes mine. After we talk, exchange ideas, your augmented reality becomes consensual with mine - but it is no more real than before.

Once we believe abstractions and labels to be actual reality, we get into tautological disagreements. I think Democracy is good, you think Democracy is bad. The problem is there is no "Democracy" out there that has it's own independent existence "Democracy," "good" and "bad" are all just concepts, words with relative meaning. Where is "good"? After ten million years, does the mountain say "ah, the erosion on my south face is good"? The eighty-four thousand things all fall away, if there is no one to see them.

I still don't get the problem with lecturing.
OK, so you are out there arguing with someone about the future of the world, the impact on your family. She thinks it's all going to hell because of the environment, and you think it's all going to hell because of the erosion of moral thought. Nowhere in this conversation is anything tangible, measurable, self-existent. Well we can measure how hot or cold the average temperature is, or how fast species are dying, or how many people are being incarcerated for morally reprehensible crimes, but because we have different values we can't agree if our findings are "good" or "bad." Why? Because those labels have different meanings to different people. I say torture is bad; you say torture is necessary, and your neighbor doesn't think what we do is torture at all. You write a book about torture and it becomes very popular. Meanwhile someone is tortured, and what you wrote in the book doesn't mean anything.


Yes, but certainly there must be absolute good and absolute evil, right?
If you can find it in nature as it exists before language, before thought, show it to me. If it is a sense of good or evil that depends on language or thought to identify it, then it must be a concept. If it is a concept then it was created by man, and is therefore not fundamental to the object's existence - it is a label we attach to the object. After you and I are gone, the object goes on being whatever it is.

OK, but isn't that just pure reductionist thinking?
I guess it is. But it's also the key to transcending our dependence on words and definitions. We need to live, not to talk about living. Imagine: instead of talking about the misery of ten thousand starving children - their causes and various afflictions, their political and social causes - instead of this we walk out of our house, find some way to help, and help. That's all! No precept to tell us what to do, no external authority to instruct us, no political or religious ideology to spread. All that leads to disappointment and failure. Ideas, they pass and change. Right Action is Practice.

Thank you Roshi