Tag Archives: practice

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mushin & the train of enlightenment

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I often feel I’m not getting anywhere in my practice and that usually coincides with things in my environment going to pieces.  My behaviour gets out of whack or my thoughts spiral out or I just feel a general sense of lack.  Nothing seems to be working or satisfying.  In these periods of agitation, I will do one of two things: let my formal practice lapse or become obsessive about it.  Either way, it’s not fun. When I read the Parable of Mushin in Everyday Zen: Love & Work by Joko Beck, it became my favourite story about practice and the unseen ways in which it works on us.

To preface a bit: I don’t experience love and work as different.  To me, they are both verbs, processes with no start or finish.  Loving and working flow together seamlessly – until I become confused about the intention of loving what I love and how to work with it.  In practice, I feel a process of loving the entirety of the experience: lighting the candles, arranging the cushions, setting the incense stick in the sand, placing the rakusu over my head, approaching the cushion, sitting, and so on.  I feel my body working into each transition effortlessly at times, a struggle at others.  Over time things have shifted, one way then another.  It wasn’t always like this, nor is it always like this.  So when I lose sight of how to keep loving the working of practice, I am grateful for the Parable of Mushin.

This is my compressed version.  The full version is worth the read.

Joe was also known as Mushin because he was really into dharma studies.  He was also very unskillful so he ended up losing his job and his wife.  He decided in the middle of this catastrophe, he was at least going to have enlightenment – whatever it took.  So he got a book called “How to Catch the Train of Enlightenment”, studied it with great care, followed all the directions, and went to the train station to catch the Train of Enlightenment.  Well, you guessed it – the train came and went without Joe being able to get on it.  Not being one to give up, he dove into practice and was relentless at it.  Other people read the book too and came by the station only to suffer the same results.  Over time, people also brought their kids and the station became a little community.  Like all communities, living together created demands like the need for child care, shelter, food, lessons for kids who should be in school.  Joe, looking around, noticed all this and began to set up huts and dining rooms and all the things communities take for granted will appear just because they need it.  Of course, he had little time for meditation or other practices that would get him on that train.  He began to get angry and resentful.  “You know, I’m only interested in enlightenment.  Those other people get to watch the Train and what am I doing really?”  Then one day, he re-discovered zazen and practiced that.  Given the hub-bub of organizing care for this community, it was a quiet way to enter the day.  It allowed him a sense of peace and others, frustrated with not catching the Train,  joined him.  They could hear the Train roar by, but they were too busy taking care of everyone to get on it or worry about missing it.  Over the years, Mushin had the chance to see many people come and go; some stayed to watch for the Train, others gave up and went home, others joined his care-taking community. He found himself able to accept whatever and whoever was present.

But Mushin was tired.  This was hard work, all this loving care.  And there was no Enlightenment Train to give him some reinforcement to keep practicing.

The ending of the parable is probably obvious.  But I like to stop here when I recall the story or read it back to myself.  It leaves me with many questions about the nature, purpose, and epiphenomenon of practice.

What are the things that are being cultivated in the middle of or because of my dissatisfaction?

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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vast spring water

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Finally, you will come to a vastness that is like spring water endlessly coming up out of the earth… From where does this spring water come?  Not from anyone’s small, individual territory.  The water that comes from your territory is limited, not deep.  The original nature of your life, or of your study, or of your personality or character is the spring water that comes up from the vastness of the earth.  This is where you have to sit down.

from Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri

The second time I felt a deep inexplicable connection was during an all-day sitting at a zen center nearby.  It was my first all day sitting and I was very scared about my ability to get through it.  The first rounds of sitting were fine and then we settled in for the dharma talk.  The teacher sat on a raised platform in the middle of the room and his attendants worked around him to set up the microphones, podium and his papers.  He simply sat, letting it all happen without directing the push and pull of wires, tables and tablets.  When it all seemed almost ready, his personal assistant moved in and gently began to arrange the folds in the teacher’s robes.  He straightened the pleats, layered the material around his teacher’s seat and legs, and smoothed the wrinkles of the robe along his back.  The teacher sat unmoving, surrendering with complete trust to the ministrations of his assistant.  I felt a huge swell of emotion rise from the depth of my body, so intense I thought it would emerge as a gasp or a cry and shatter what had become a thick silence.  In dokusan, I tried to explain what I had felt but it was beyond words.  I think I only managed to say something about wanting to be “in service like that” to which the teacher replied that it took a lot of time to become a teacher’s personal assistant.

I wasn’t sad or disappointed that he failed to hear what I was trying to say.  I’ve come to understand that often in trying to verbalize our experiences of connection, we can convey a neediness, an ambition or a greed.  Where before I used to feel offended, now I’ve tried to listen carefully and direct my self-inquiry to clarify my intentions without diminishing the experience itself. The truth is I don’t even think I knew what it was I experienced in these connecting moments.  And, delusions are numberless.

I went on to practice in other centers and with other teachers, watchful for these “spring water” experiences.  It remains as a marker that there is a vastness beneath the concepts and formulations of practice.  Although I’ve not been blessed with the same intensity of connection, in the years of practice which include experiences of deep joy and profound anguish, one thing has remained from both experiences.  There is a connection that transcends the gaze and there is a move into service that is beyond any act, singular or collective.  Experiencing it cannot be forced through any form of practice.  It will not adhere to any rules of engagement.  But its presence is always available and always absolute.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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