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[Last updated: 29 September 1993]
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                    "SEIJO AND HER SOUL SEPARATED".
[this text was first published in the MIND MOON CIRCLE, Summer 1991 pp 
2-4]

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious 
issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful 
way.

All copyrights to this document belong to Subhana Barzaghi Sensei, Kuan- 
Yin Zen Center, NSW, Australia
Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young 
St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993
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                      SEIJO AND HER SOUL SEPARATED
                        SUBHANA BARZAGHI, SENSEI
                              Spring 1991

The story: During the T'ang dynasty, there lived a man called Chokan. He 
had two daughters. When the elder girl died, he devoted himself to the 
younger, Seijo. As she grew up he turned his attention to the question 
of a suitable husband for her and eventually selected a good and strong 
young man. But Seijo had already taken her cousin Ochu as her lover. She 
had grown up with him in a union blessed since childhood, and she 
considered herself betrothed to him. When Chokan announced that his 
choice of a suitor was to arrive in the village, Seijo became cast down 
and sad. Ochu, unable to bear the prospect of witnessing the betrayal, 
left the village without saying farewell. He took his boat and rowed 
into the night. As he rowed he noticed the outline of a figure running 
along the bank. He put into the shore to see who it was; and there was 
Seijo, tear stained and adamant. Together they travelled to a distant 
land where they lived as man and wife. Five years went by. Seijo gave 
birth to two girls. But though she loved Ochu and the children, she was 
weighed down by the dishonour she'd done to her father. All this she 
told to Ochu. And he admitted that he too longed for his homeland. "Let 
us go back and beg forgiveness," he said.

And so they returned. At the port, Ochu left Seijo and the girls while 
he walked to the village. He went directly to Chokan's house, confessed 
the whole story and bowed his head at their ungrateful behaviour. Chokan 
received him kindly. "Which girl do you mean?" he asked. "Your daughter 
Seijo," Ochu replied. "That is not possible," Chokan said. "Seijo is 
here in the house with me. Since you left the village without bidding 
her farewell she has lain here; she lies here now."

Mystified, Chokan refused Ochu's invitation to go with him to the port. 
Instead he sent a servant to check the boat. When the servant returned, 
reporting that it was indeed Seijo who waited there, Chokan took Ochu 
into the house. "She has not spoken since you left," he said. "It is as 
if she has been absent in mind, or drugged. Now I see that her soul left 
to follow you." So saying, he showed Ochu into Seijo's room. Hearing the 
story, Seijo rose from her bed, still without speaking, and walked out 
into the village just as Seijo and her children stepped from the cart 
that had brought them from the port. The silent Seijo moved forward to 
greet her, and as she did, the two were united.

Chokan spoke to Seijo. "Ever since Ochu left this village, you have not 
uttered a word, and you have always been absent in mind as if you were 
drugged. Now I see that your soul left your body and has been with 
Ochu." To this Seijo replied, "I did not know that I was sick in bed at 
home. When I learned that Ochu had left this village in distress, I 
followed his boat that night, feeling as if it were a dream. I myself am 
not sure which was the real me - the one with you, sick in bed, or the 
one with Ochu as his wife."

This story is a useful metaphor for each of our lives and also 
highlights a process of realisation. How I would like to approach it is 
to go beyond the content of the story and focus on the process. The 
first part of the process being separation, the illusion of duality, the 
second part the sense of longing, being the turning point; and the third 
part, reunion and transformation. Our koan study here requires us to 
take up the point, which is the real Seijo? It's not enough to say they 
were one from the beginning. We must seek the true Seijo here and now.

The first aspect that I want to address is Seijo's spirit separated. If 
we take this story as our own story, how often do we separate ourselves, 
live our lives in a fragmented way, disconnected from the environment 
and unresponsive the the people around us? If we start the day with a 
shower we are no sooner under the shower before we are thinking about 
what we want for breakfast. We start eating our breakfast and after the 
first two mouthfuls we are then off planning the day. So we tend to live 
in this unmindful and disconnected way. We see in this dramatised 
analogy that Seijo was like a ghost, living with her parents at home and 
not knowing she was at home. We often split off from this present 
moment, wanting to be somewhere else, dreaming of the ideal mate, or 
wanting to be something more than we are. We are ghosts to our children 
when we are preoccupied by our careers, mortgages, or even preoccupied 
saving the planet.

This is obvious when we try to engage in this simple act of sitting on 
our cushions, and being aware of our breath, when something from the 
past, some fantasy, some soap opera, will pop up and take over and 
suddenly we are up off our cushion and spend the next twenty minutes 
wandering around in our head.

If we look at our lives, how many roles do we divide ourselves into? 
Parent, partner, career/job, member of a sangha/community, peace 
activist, student - no Hollywood movie director would cast any actor in 
so many roles, yet we taken on these roles daily. Seijo was a wife and 
mother of two children in a far city. Seijo was a sick daughter at home. 
When we split off or divide ourselves from the present moment we drain 
our vital energy and are basically ineffective. In this story Seijo was 
completely laid low.

If our attention is not focused we are no longer congruent. We may be 
thinking one thing, feeling another, saying something else, and doing 
something entirely different. If we look into our own emotional and 
psychological split, what emotions do we encounter that are difficult 
for us to be with? We often avoid or suppress unpleasant feelings and 
sensations. To be with them and include them in our zazen is our growing 
edge. In the very midst of our pain and difficulties lies a great 
freedom.

So our practice of mindfulness is to bring us home to this moment, 
moment after moment, to heal the splits in our psyche and to let go of 
that psychological conflict. The dawning of the heart and the steady 
light of insight will emerge by gently and faithfully returning to the 
practice of being with the way of things just as they are.

If we are worried about the future or preoccupied by anger or fear, 
although our child may be standing in front of us, the child will not 
really exist for us. She or he is like a ghost and we may be living like 
ghosts too. If I want to be with my son, I need to return to the present 
moment, hold him in my arms and connect with our breathing, then I 
naturally awaken that precious playfulness and dance of the love of 
life.

If we look deeper we find (as Yasutani Roshi said), "The fundamental 
delusion of humanity is to suppose that "I" am here and "you" are out 
there." This fundamental delusion of a separate permanent self is the 
root cause of much of our suffering. We get caught by the dualistic 
concepts of subject/object, self/other, oneness/emptiness, true/false, 
body/soul. Seijo is not simply limited to this body and soul and we are 
also not limited, we are this great life that is neither one nor two.

If we see from the Bodhisattva's point of view that the actuality of our 
daily lives and the essential world are intrinsically one and the same, 
one indivisible whole, then our daily actions, driving the car, feeding 
the kids, cleaning the house are all manifestations of the Tao. The 
clouds, colours, sounds, smells, feelings and thoughts are the 
interconnected net of Indra and the very texture and body of the Buddha.

Another major way in which we hold onto our separation is by attachment 
to our fixed opinions, views and beliefs. There is no mistake as to why 
Thich Nhat Hanh made the first precept in the "Order of Interbeing" 
(which means to continue to realise or to be in touch with): Do not be 
idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology - this 
includes Buddhist ones. This encourage us to experience directly for 
ourselves the truth. What often gets in the way is our own self-centred 
preoccupations. It's when we get out of our own way, let go, that the 
great universe opens up. If we return to the story, there is something 
very beautiful in this process, Seijo's longing to return home. 
Essentially we all have this deep longing to return to our true home, 
however often it is masked by the veils of our desires and ignorance. It 
is often pain and discontent that leads us in search of the truth, and 
our longing for inner peace and harmony that turns us around. Our 
suffering and our joy returns us to our practice over and over.

When the Buddha said the first noble truth is ~Life is suffering", what 
did he mean? The statement was not made from a morbid depressing view of 
life. Yet if we are intimate with the moment to moment impermanent 
nature of all things, we recognise that there is an underlying 
dissatisfaction. The question arises: is there something more? What 
emerges is the longing to understand. I know in my own life there welled 
up inside of me a great passion to want to know what I am, what I am. In 
fact, it was that passion and determination that led me to meet Aitken 
Roshi and it's the same passion and determination that the Buddha had 
when he sat down under the Bodhi tree. Our search for peace is, in  
truth, the longing for the empty infinite self, the heart longing to 
discover its own original face. It is this very longing which is the 
manifestation of the Bodhisattva vow to save all beings.

So we do our zazen and we patiently refuse the domination of our 
fantasies, judgmental opinions about ourselves and others and we turn 
around as Seijo did to this moment. We turn the dharma wheel when we 
encounter this moment this is our focus and our samadhi will gradually 
deepen us, the process has its own natural momentum and unfolding .

The story has a beautiful and inspiring ending, symbolic of the process 
of realisation. The Seijo sick at home in bed and the Seijo with the two 
children from the distant city rejoined and became one. Seijo is here 
with us now, she is inviting us to discover our affinity with the stones 
and clouds, not to change from one form into another but rather to 
enable us to experience this ancient truth of no-self.

Another aspect that is reflected in this story, probably relevant more 
to women, is that we have traditionally experienced our lives and 
defined ourselves by who we are with. For example, Seijo was a daughter 
in relationship to her parents, Seijo was a wife in relationship to her 
husband. The person we are partner to can very often define who we think 
we are. We are constantly in relationship, each moment is relationship 
and in truth there is only one relationship. All things are no other 
than one's very self, so we are constantly in relationship with the 
self, with our infinite true self. The split Seijo became one, our 
maturity is not to just define ourselves by the person in our lives but 
to stop and be in communion with our original face without definition. 
The true self knows no separation.

The moon and the clouds are the same
Mountains and valleys are different.
All are blessed, all are blessed.
Is this one? Is this two?

Yes, indeed the blessed outcome. The Bodhisattva way is to nurture our 
longing to return home, to find our unity with all beings. The moon and 
the clouds are the same, essentially all beings by nature are the Buddha 
Tao. If we cannot see into the essential world, and only recognise our 
uniqueness and our differences, (mountains and valleys are different) 
this thinking directly leads to chaos. Such chaos is evident in our 
society and reflected in the way we treat our environment. Dharma/Gaia 
calls us to wake up the light of dawn and remember that the moon and 
clouds are the same, even in our darkest valleys and most difficult 
moments. The garden is watered, Dharma/Gaia is nurtured, all are  
blessed, all are blessed.
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