Tag Archives: zazen

waltzing with the mind-body chatter

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I’ve been contemplating the positive correlation between hiding one’s light under a bushel and wimpiness.  When I was a child, my father said, “Work hard.  Excel.  And you will be chosen.”  So I did.  And it has been a never-ending source of confusion to me that no one has yet anointed me the Chosen One.  I’m sure you are just as surprised.  About your own absence of anointment, I mean; because I’m quite sure you too have worked hard, excelled, and waited to be chosen.

Or perhaps, it’s not so much about being chosen but about being seen.  Perhaps it’s about being valued.  Appreciated? Or is it about being acknowledged, that briefest of nods our way that says: Well done.

Now, I’m not whining.  Truly.  I’m wondering about those moments when I’m caught between stepping out and showing my talents or stepping back and avoiding opportunity denied.  I always thought it would be terribly self-centered to do the former and yet could not bear the thought of the latter.  So I suspect over the years I’ve done this silly awkward dance, hauling that little light of mine out with one hand and having the bushel poised over it in the other.

End result: A wimpish waltz with fate.

What to do?  I’ve started reading a rather captivating book on Zen practice sent along for review* which has a few nuggets about this and that.  What caught me however, though the author himself doesn’t write of this relationship between busheled lights and the wimp factor, is the issue of self-centeredness.  He notes that zazen is the slowing down of this self-centered mind-body chattering we live out.

What?

Yes, you read it right.  It is the chattering that is self-centered.  Not the stepping out or the appropriate proclamation of one’s expertise, goodness, rightness, capability, and power.

The mind is self-centered.  Autogenic: it creates itself in the world it creates.  And, if we lack awareness, of the mind-body link, the body follows close at its heels.

That’s quite the revelation for me.  Now the real problem: what shall I do with all these bushels?

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*The review will be published sometime in June.

groping the elephant

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Eminent students [of the Dharma], long accustomed to groping for the elephant, pray do not doubt the true dragon.*

I like my misconceptions.  Actually, it’s more accurate to say I don’t dislike them enough.  In fact, they are so weakly challenged for their right of passage through my inner world that they tend to leave quite a mess behind.  None of this genteel “guests” in the Guesthouse à la Rumi.  And yet, strangely, I like them for the momentary respite they give me from reality.

Then on Monday, Barry at Ox Herding wrote a lovely post on reality to which I commented that “if reality is not optional, then suffering is inevitable.”  So there you have it.  Grope on that elephant all you want; reality will win out when you sit atop it and the tree trunks start moving.

*Maezumi, Hakuyu Taizan, Commentary on Fukanzazengi.  In Loori, John Daido (ed.), The Art of Just Sitting: Essential writings on the zen practice of shikantaza.

PS: Barry has graciously offered his new book The Path of Zen to everyone.  It’s simply beautiful… and very real!  Please click here to obtain a copy.  A deep bow of gratitude for all your teachings, Barry!

Edit: “if reality is optional, then suffering is inevitable.”  Not surprising I’m always confused!

buddha, ltd

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Do not try to become a buddha.  How could being a buddha be limited to sitting or not sitting?*

It’s difficult not to feel the pressure of time multiplied by dreams of what was to be.  These days I hear a little voice, more frequently than is comfortable, whispering, “It’s too late.”  Too late for this dream to be realized, too late for that wish to be fulfilled.  It’s not the frantic rabbity sense of “too late” but more a slothful, sluggish drag-my-butt sense of a compressed future.  I can be quite rational about this urgency (or lack thereof) when it relates to the to-do list of career or social eddies.  However, in matters of practice, it is a turbo-charged driveness that isn’t always useful.

And then I’m reminded that buddha or buddha-limited, sitting up-straight is the only option.  In fact, not just sitting up-straight but being upright is non-negotiable.

I think I’ll start a new organization: buddha, limited.  Anyone want to join as CEO?

*Dogen, Recommending Zazen to All People.  In Tanahashi, Kazuaki (ed.), Enlightenment Unfolds: The essential teachings of Zen Master Dogen.

an opportunity provided by a finger

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Practice, apparently, is not about recognizing esoteric signs.  Fingers (flipped or no), banners, needles or mallets don’t count.  Nor do Rorschach leavings in the bottom of my ink pots.  Realization of our true nature doesn’t come carefully packaged and delivered by Fed-Ex.  And, listen carefully, it definitely doesn’t arise out of being whacked by a kyosaku, pummelled by a fist, a staff or a shout*.

This is the place we get stuck.  We try to understand enlightenment by our discriminative mind; yet, our discriminative, our discursive thought, is the very thing that binds us.  The question really is how to go beyond, how to transcend that dichotomy.  But we all have to start with that discriminative mind. 

At this point, I am beginning to get the inkling that I’ve wasted precious practice time diving into shallow waters.  But the discriminative mind, the mind that wants to have evidence, steps, and stories, is what we have as the start point.  Perhaps that first tentative step (or sometimes ego-inflated step) is simply to want this because my own suffering is too much and I am willing to take, buy, trade, barter time on the cushion for the promise of relief.

That’s ok.  Unless it stops there.

*Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Commentary on Fukanzazengi.  In Loori, John Daido (ed), The Art of Just Sitting, 2nd Edition

like the dragon gaining water

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Happy New Year!  It’s been a lovely week of connections which reminded me of the value of sinking into time and space intimately.  It’s also been a very reflective period and I’ve been thinking about how the path through 2012 is going to begin for me.    And, without even trying, here it is: a keystroke, a letter, a sequence of symbols that make a word and then a sentence.  I make no claims that 2012 will have any more clarity or less pretense to comprehension than did 2011.  However, I do find myself  exploring what it means to connect with the intimate truth of my life.

Ok, so I’m not even sure what that means but I have been diving deep into conversations about my tendency to speak to the truth of whatever I am connected with – be it a relationship, a situation, a mess unfolding.  And yes, I do understand that “truth” can be relative but “the intimate truth” of our experience is not.  It is that undeniable moment when we are aligned with our values and fired by the passion of our commitment to live fully.  

Well, it should be undeniable, shouldn’t it?  But that moment of knowing who I am often shape-shifts around who I think I am in the minds of others.  It becomes infused with a fog of fear I then need to step through, asking of me a depth of courage and clarity of realization that to stay lost in the projections of others is a dangerous thing in word and deed.

If all of that is too confusing, simply remember this: it is the year of the water dragon.  Nagas (dragons) are intimate with water; it is their truth, what makes them realized.   So too, I hope we will gain the water like a dragon diving deep into its true home.

As Dogen taught in Recommending Zazen to All People*, there is no learning this.

It is simply the dharma gate of enjoyment and ease.  It is the practice-realization of complete enlightenment.  Realize the fundamental point free from the binding of nets and baskets.  Once you experience it, you are like a dragon swimming in the water or a tiger reposing in the mountains.  Know that the true dharma emerges of itself, clearing away hindrances and distractions.

*Tanahashi, Kazuaki (ed.), Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen.