Monthly Archives: October 2012

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entering zen: the wabi-sabi of practice

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GRATITUDE

Whatever it is,
I cannot understand it,
although gratitude
stubbornly overcomes me
until I’m reduced to tears.

Saigyo

Entering Zen by Ben Howard is one of those stealthy books that can overcome you page by quiet page.  And at times, as I read it in a cabin tucked into the misty Catskills, it did reduce me to tears.  There is a simplicity in Howard’s words, something that makes this book and his blog posts (One Time, One Meeting ) a place of exploration that is simultaneously safe and challenging to enter.

These 75 essays offer teachings on Zen that show the practice as basic yet intricate, ordinary yet elegant.  To shine these jewels of practice, Howard draws from his immense knowledge and wisdom of literature, poetry, Buddhist practice, and an intimacy with his own life.  The tone of each chapter is by turn filled with delight at a child’s creativity, nostalgic for ways of living long gone, and delicate in unfolding a complex concept like sabi or wabi sabi.

Weathered Wood, the chapter which does the latter, is likely my favourite because Howard draws us in with a lovely poignant explanation of sabi and extends it to an appreciation of how our lives progress as a “bloom of time.”  He teaches from the wisdom of Tadao Ando, an architect:

Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time.”  It connotes natural progression – tarnish, hoariness, rust – the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled.  It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting…Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough.

Howard goes on to point out that sabi carries a suggestion of imperfection.  This is not the imperfection of wrongness or improper creation;  it is the imperfection that confirms the authenticity of a life being lived.  And this is the heart of Zen practice: the confirmation that an authentic life is one lived intimately with the truth of imperfection.

Throughout the book, Howard writes with an ease that comes from his skill as a teacher of English Literature, a musician, and his long-standing practice with different teachers.  He brings out the wisdom and compassion of Dogen, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Toni Packer with the same precise skill as what he extracts from poets Seamus Heany, Mary Oliver, and Gary Snyder.  It can be intimidating and somehow Howard manages to make the accessibility of the complexities of the dharma seem to be our own wisdom.  And, his consternation at vanity plates that say “ME” notwithstanding, I do feel the urge to whisper at the end of each chapter, “I did it!”

As the current trend in Buddhist writings leans towards snappy phrases and promises of liberation by the last chapter, Howard’s writings are refreshingly honest.  Practice takes effort.  It is worthy of our attention.  It grants us “refuge… more dependable than any bank and more durable than any mountain.”  It is no more or less than this, just this.

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handful of leaves

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Last week, I spent 5 days at the Omega Institute learning about mindful self-compassion.  The potential redundancy of the topic title and the nuances of dharma may chafe a bit but it does point to the current trend in turning Buddhist psychological concepts into therapeutic processes.  That’s not a bad thing because given what interventions actually work and the paradigm shift we need so we can improve as therapists, another approach would be a Godsend… or Buddhasend in this case.  In fact, when done right (read: commitment to training on the part of the therapist), there is no greater accountability than that for a professional who has to test the medicine before administering it.  And what medicine it is!

The Buddha said that what he had taught was a handful of leaves in comparison to the numerous leaves in the simsapa forest.  In the Simsapa Sutta, he explained that what he had not taught was irrelevant because 

… they are not connected with the goal, do not relate to the rudiments of the holy life, and do not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. That is why I have not taught them.

The Buddha went on to say that he taught one and only one thing: suffering and the end of suffering.

A few things about this sutra have bothered me for a long time.  First, why the heck would he avoid teaching something because it did not lead to suffering*?  By inference, it means some of the things he taught opened us to suffering – which, of course, is what he said.  Second, in my pea-brained head what he taught has always been two things: (1) suffering and (2) the end of suffering.

Somewhere in the week of the retreat/training, I had a chance to walk with a dear dharma sibling.  As we discussed the intricacies of what the Buddha taught (and didn’t teach), I wondered out loud why suffering never seemed to cease.  Why was it that each time we drilled down into that deep gut somewhere under the hara, we reliably struck the oily, thick, black smoke of ancient twisted karma?  We talked some more about this “walk of disillusion” we often take as practitioners, this path of disenchantment, grief, and sorrow that we mistake for an obstacle to our progress.  Stopping under a towering tree (close as we can get to a simsapa forest), I chuckled with the realization that perhaps we had become experts in drilling for suffering.  Perhaps we only found suffering each time because that precisely was what we drilled for at every sitting.   Perhaps it was time to hang up that dowsing rod and turn to something more balancing.

I can’t think of a better argument for a practice of love; not just compassion but also lovingkindness, equanimity and joy.    The fourfold practice that warms and opens the heart.  And ends suffering.

So the Buddha did teach one and only one thing.  Our practice is not only about the origins of suffering and the defilements that cause them.  It is equally and likely even simultaneously about the cessation of suffering through the practice of warming the heart so it can open and not fear being broken.

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*The Buddha’s teaching are not simply an exercise in intellectual exploration of suffering.  In order to understanding suffering, we first need to open to it in the body, experiencing the very sensations we struggle against and strive to avoid at all costs.  So paradoxically, his teachings lead us directly to suffering because that is the only route out of this tangled mess born of craving, hatred, and ignorance.