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Your life as the lineage

by Jan Chozen Bays Roshi
The most important thing to realize about lineage is that we are the lineage. Who else could it be?

Shakyamuni stripped his life of everything and then took on only those things necessary to be able to dedicate his whole life to the One Great Responsibility. From his seat in emptiness he took on only a simple robe to clothe the body, just enough food to sustain life, medicine to maintain health, and shelter from the wind and rain. The ancestors have passed on these fundamentals to us. We learn to be firmly seated in emptiness. According to our need this emptiness becomes the all-embracing robe of liberation, the wholesome nutrition of the Dharma, the great medicine to relieve all suffering, and the shelter of a continual refuge.
At morning service we chant the ancestral line, beginning with the buddhas before Shakyamuni Buddha, moving through 82 generations to my teacher Maezumi Roshi, and then to us here now. Each name in our ancestral line gives rise to many names, and each of these to many more, becoming a huge tree with tens of thousands of branches.

Many of you have taken the precepts and have made a lineage chart as part of that ceremony. Your name is added to those of the ancestors. Realize that taking refuge in the Three Treasures and the life of the precepts is like climbing into the great lineage tree and making a secure home in its branches.

The lineage is made up of thousands of men and women like us, all imperfect as we are. Through the imperfection of their Buddha bodies, the imperfection of their Dharma words, their combined imperfections assembled as sangha, the Buddha Dharma is given life. The sangha is the group of people who knows they are imperfect. They practice with the faith, reinforced by experience, that through the clarity and spaciousness provided by zazen they will be able to discern and clear away whatever blocks their inner goodness, obscures their sharp intelligence, and inhibits their effective activity to relieve the suffering of the world.

To join the family of the ancestors we have to take what might seem like a backward step. We have to stop trying to make our own self and individual family perfect and make a decision to join the Buddha family. To do that we have to make our bodies upright and our heart/mind pure, warm, and innocent again. Then we have to do what we have not done before in the context of our one small personal family, that is, to surrender to the wise counsel of our Ancestors and follow it wholeheartedly.

When we sit in zazen the entire lineage of seated repose manifests through us. As we chant the sutras the lineage voice can be heard, more powerful and harmonious than the simple sum of all our small voices. When we work together the right and lively lineage body becomes manifest. It makes no difference whether we are aware of it or not. The lineage is nothing but our life. Our gratitude to the ancestors is best expressed by deeply appreciating our life as we live it. Maezumi Roshi passed this teaching to me and now I pass it to you. Please appreciate your life.

©2006 Zen Community of Oregon
Updated: May 11, 2006
Designed by Michelle Bagley

Chozen and Hogen Bays Shodo Harada Roshi