A woman is running from a tiger that’s chasing her. She runs through the woods until she gets to the edge of a cliff. The tiger is still behind her, so she climbs down a vine. The tiger reaches the top of the cliff and paces back and forth, licking its chops. Midway down the cliff, hanging onto the vine, she sees another tiger below her, pacing back and forth, licking its chops. As she’s hanging there, two mice come out and start gnawing on the vine. She tries to shoo them away, but they won’t go. 

Just then she sees, growing out of the face of the cliff in front of her, a wild strawberry. She picks it and eats it. It’s delicious.

Some interpretations of the story are simply that, when your life is in danger, life never tastes sweeter. While that’s true, I think that reading entirely misses the point. This story, of course, being a Buddhist story, is about being in the moment.

The tiger at the top may represent the pain of the past, the tiger at the bottom the worries of the future; the precarious vine may symbolize the stresses of the now, and the mice signify the passage of time. In the midst of life, be present enough to notice the strawberry and enjoy its sweetness. I read one interpretation that said the answer lies in hanging on and reaching out, as the woman on the cliff hangs onto the vine and reaches out to the strawberry. I like that. But I don’t know that this story – or any zen story – is supposed to be taken as advice. It’s just an observation of the way things are.

So many of these stories, or the interpretations of them, seem to be about seeking pleasure, though. It’s a part of modern Buddhism that bugs me. So many people apparently interpret the teachings as encouragement to seek the pleasurable, strawberry-enjoying moments, as if that were the goal. It’s not a bad goal, and it’s certainly a better one than religions that teach hatred and intolerance. But one of the things that rings truest for me about Buddhism is that pleasure and pain are both illusions. Sometimes I get the feeling, from reading contemporary Buddhist articles, that people think you’re not really in the moment unless you’re feeling pleasure. I don’t get that.

As a person whose body doesn’t necessarily produce enough chemicals for feelings of happiness even when they’re warranted, I would much prefer if the story were told like this:

A woman is caught on the face of a cliff between two hungry tigers. As she’s hanging there, on the mouse-chewed vine, she notices a fossil embedded in the rock in front of her. She rubs it with her finger and examines it more closely. Hm, interesting, she thinks.

I don’t know if it matters what the thing-in-the-moment is. It would be a different story, though, if the thing noticed were something painful, say a splinter under her fingernail. Or if it were a dead pigeon, or a winning lottery ticket. I think, in order to convey what I believe the story is trying to convey, the object noticed has to be more or less emotionally neutral.

But here’s what makes me love this story: According to Thomas Cleary, D.T. Suzuki changed the ending of the story because he thought it wouldn’t appeal to westerners. In the original version, every element is there, except for one difference – the berry turns out to be deadly poison.

I love that.

What does it mean? Well, grasshopper. Maybe it means that life sucks, and then you eat a poison strawberry and you die. Or that life will kill you, whether you live it or not. Or that, when you’re stressed out, eating for comfort is a bad idea.

Or maybe it means that taking refuge in sensual experience is an illusion.

Or even more simply: don’t get distracted.

It’s hard to explain what I mean by this. I don’t mean the American “keep your eye on the ball” thing. Maybe “don’t be seduced by illusion” comes closer. That’s how it is with a koan, and all these zen stories are koans, stories or questions meant to provoke an awakening. There is no correct response, apart from that.

It saddens and disappoints me that this sangha didn’t work out for me, but once the depression lifted, I realized that of course I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was intimidated in the beginning, and I never got through that. I’m sure my discomfort was evident to anyone who looked at me. It’s not anyone’s job, as far as I know, to help people who seem to be struggling; maybe that’s not the case in other sanghas. I would’ve liked it if someone had at least tried. These are not bad or insincere people by any means. No community is perfect, and I didn’t expect this one to be. We just never reached each other.

Though I could wish I had quit a bit sooner, I am glad I didn’t give up on them right away. Sometimes it’s hard to know how much effort to put into something. You have to trust a teacher, for example, and keep on doing the thing even when it’s hard, even when it doesn’t seem like there’s any point to what you’re doing. I tried really hard to make this group work for me, and to be a part of it, but I couldn’t do it, and that’s okay. It’s not the only one. And it’s not like I gave up quickly. I tend to put up with bad or uncomfortable situations for much longer than I should, but there have been times when I bailed out on something I probably should’ve stuck with. At least this way I know.

I had doubts about writing that post. I took a vow to esteem the Three Treasures, and not defame them, and I take vows seriously. And the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone else from trying a zendo. But I don’t think what I did was defaming, and I’m not splitting hairs here. Part of the reason you need to “kill the Buddha” is because slavish devotion to a guru hurts everyone involved, and the same is true of the community. We’re all just people, and it’s worth remembering that a group of people is not going to be any different from any other group of people, just because they’re engaged in a spiritual effort. This is true whether it’s a zendo, a church, a synagogue, an ashram, a mosque, or whatever. And while I found many articles about people having trouble with gurus, I didn’t find any about people having trouble with their sangha.

Could I have done anything differently? I can’t help being who I am, and part of that is being shy in certain situations, unfortunately. Maybe trying a sangha that is friendlier and more involved is the way to go. I don’t know. I just need to let it go for a while. Any advice is welcome.

And I still feel I need to see Roshi and talk about this with him. This is where it gets unpleasant; I would have no problem continuing to support the monastery and seeing Roshi occasionally, while not sitting zazen with the group, but my finances don’t really permit this since if I find another group, I’ll have to contribute financially to them. But in the zen tradition, the teacher-student relationship is paramount, and I knew that going in. I can’t just ditch him, and I don’t want to. Maybe we can work something out.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get in the habit of sitting zazen at home. More on that as it develops.

This was a big deal to me. Both of these posts were very hard to write. I still believe zen is the right path for me; in fact, even without sitting for a few weeks, the changes are still there, just as strong. I know I’ll figure this out, and all will be well.

The sangha at this zendo were never very warm and welcoming, which I found reassuring at first. I was nervous enough about the whole thing and it was good not to feel like I had 100 or so brand new best friends, like it’s a cult or something. I assumed that we’d get to know one another and I’d eventually find some friends there.

And when that didn’t happen, I thought maybe I needed to keep going for a while before they trusted me. Even in the first few months I saw how many people show up just a few times, then disappear. It’s a tough discipline and doesn’t necessarily show any results right away, maybe not for years.

I tried to be friendly, but something just wasn’t working. Apart from the core group who were almost always there, I found it hard to tell who was brand new and who was a regular. A lot of people there don’t speak English very well, and were even more shy than I am. And I’m never quite sure what I’m allowed to talk about.

We often have these informal teas after doing about two hours of zazen (I go on a regular night every week). I’m thrown into a group of people who really have nothing in common, aside from an interest in zen, but apparently you’re not supposed to talk about zen. Whenever I mention anything at all about zen, people literally turn away from me. I once, in a desperate attempt to start a conversation, asked the head monk about a couple of statues on the altar, having heard someone else do the same once. He gave me some brief answer, but with an expression of such – it seemed to me – hatred and fury, that I took an involuntary step backward. His teeth were literally clenched, and he glared. I am still bewildered by that.

I can do small talk, but only if I feel reasonably comfortable. Once you’ve asked someone what they do for a living, where they live, and if they’re reading any good books, where do you go from there? After three years, I can definitely say that most people do not help me out at all. They might stand and look at me for a moment, but won’t make the effort to keep the conversation going.

It’s hard not to take it personally. I know I’m not that socially retarded. I’m shy, but people generally like me. I can be charming, even. But not there.

I always blame myself in situations like these, though very often after a looong time, I realize it wasn’t me at all. But this, I don’t know.

In the past year, perhaps because of the chronic condition in my feet that leaves me in constant pain, I’ve slid into a pretty bad episode of depression, something I’ve suffered from all of my life. Doing zazen overall, I believe, is helping me; but when I do it with the group at the zendo, I am often left very depressed afterward. All I want to do is go home and sleep, but I have to attend these informal (infernal) teas, because I get “volunteered” to help out every single time. To have to make light conversation, through a minefield of things I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about, is hell at such a time. I’m absolutely sure it shows on my face. This is the only possible reason I can think of for the sangha’s cold and even rude behavior toward me.

But what kind of compassion is that? Some of these people have been sitting for over 20 years. Compassion is a huge thing in Buddhism, and it’s always been a biggie with me. One of the many issues I have with Other People is that I am not often treated with the same compassion I offer others.

If they’re trying to teach me something, I’m missing it. I can now count on being extremely depressed every Thursday, my zendo night. In the last few months, a few times I’ve been so depressed I couldn’t leave my apartment, so I missed a few nights. I also work so much that I can’t often make it to the weekend sesshins (all-day sits). I know they assume it’s because I’m lazy or I don’t care. I know this because the head monk once asked me if I was coming to that weekend’s sesshin, and when I said no, he actually followed me out of the room to say he hadn’t meant to make me feel guilty. Apparently something showed on my face. I didn’t tell him, and maybe I should have, that I wasn’t feeling guilty; I was feeling judged.

You can’t volunteer explanations for things, at least I can’t. It just sounds like you’re making excuses. And I know from having depression all of my life that despite how common it is, few people really understand it. The head monk has mentioned several times in talks he’s given, that you shouldn’t stay away from the zendo “just because” you’re depressed. Well, when I can’t stop crying long enough to get on a bus, or I can’t lift my head from the pillow, I stay home.

I wish there were another word for this kind of depression. It’s not a matter of “feeling a little down.”

I’ve been persistent – I’ve been going there for three years. I’ve tried not to be self-conscious, tried not to think of myself at all. It’s too hard to do that when I’m depressed and people are acting coldly towards me.

It’s not just the head monk I have a problem with, but I don’t want to spend time just bitching about people. He is supposed to be in charge of this zendo, though there is an abbot who lives at the monastery upstate. The abbot is awesome. He knows his shit, and talking to him is wonderful. But I seldom see him, as I can’t afford to go up there very often, and as he’s older he doesn’t come to the city very often.

I’ve been hanging on because of the abbot, actually. But after last Thursday, the only thing that made me stop feeling suicidal was the realization that, duh, I don’t have to go there. I can find another zendo. It’s a serious thing to ditch one’s teacher, and I don’t want to do that, but this situation at the zendo may in fact be a major cause of the depression I’ve fallen into this past year. If that’s the case, I need to fix it or get the fuck out.

I’m going to send an email to the head monk to ask if I’ve done something to offend the sangha. If I can’t work it out with him, I will only go when the abbot is there, several times a year. If people are really rude to me when I do show up, I’ll write to the abbot and tell him I want to look for another teacher for that reason. Maybe I’m not the only person who’s been treated this way. Maybe that’s why so many people stop coming.

I wanted to say a few words about karma, because it is a concept that comes up in Buddhism that is misunderstood by almost everybody. The word “karma” only means action or doing. There’s no connotation of cause and effect or cosmic retribution involved. It exacts no judgment on the choices we make. My being raped was my karma, as it was his to be the rapist, and my father’s to be an asshole about it. There’s no karmic responsibility or punishment, no great bureaucracy of karma meting out rewards for good behavior, in this life or the next. Karma isn’t something to believe in; it’s just a descriptive word for action.

That’s not the way most people understand karma, including people in places like Tibet where Buddhism has hundreds of years of history. Common people there believe that a baby born with a birth defect is being punished for some evil deed in a former life. This is a misunderstanding of the same kind, though on a different scale, as Christians who believe Jesus helps them find a parking space or win the World Series. It’s not about you; good and bad things happen, and though we have a certain measure of control over what happens to us based on the decisions we make, sometimes shit just happens.

Alan Watts talks about the real meaning of karma here.

None of this means that either the rapist or the rape victim escapes the consequences of a rape. It just means, I think, that there’s no point in looking for cosmic meaning or justice. I’m being a little pedantic, because to me it’s important to recognize that the universe doesn’t work that way.

I never hated the man who raped me. I hated what he did, certainly. If it had been up to me, he would’ve gone to jail at the very least. But my life on its worst day kicks the ass of his life on its best day. I’ve never hurt another person on purpose, not since I was a child anyway; he can never say that.

I had some issues and I made some bad decisions, but the responsibility for the rape lies squarely with him. I’ve never been confused about that.

Thanks for the kind words.

Some people think we should be using science and medicine to prolong our lives for thousands of years, even make us immortal. That hunger for more experience, more books, more food, is what the mind does, and when you’ve been taught your whole life that that craving, a big part of the sensation of being alive, is your real self, of course you’re terrified of letting it go. Especially when no one can really promise you that anything better will happen at the end than that you will simply go out like a candle.

I’ve lain awake at night in a cold sweat, heart pounding, overwhelmed with terror at the knowledge that one day I will cease to exist. I will never know anything again. I won’t find out what happens next. No more drinks with friends, no more really good books, no more walks in the park with the smell of flowers in the air. No more new experiences. No more really good arguments, no more passion, no more just knowing that here I am, I am breathing, I am alive. No more “I.” Not even nothingness, because you need awareness to know that there’s nothing. I’ve had to reach over and turn on the light, watch some stupid tv, do anything I can to distract myself, because there was no way to reconcile myself to this fear. This thing is going to happen to me, and it’s going to happen to you, too.

I used to picture it like going over Niagara Falls. We’re all helpless in the current, nothing to hold onto, and we can pitch over the edge into oblivion at any moment. Whether we like it or not, we’ll get there someday.

Here’s a notion you’ll come across in Buddhism if you look into it even a little bit: That there is no Self, and therefore there’s nothing to fear from death because you don’t exist anyway. I find this bald statement pretty inadequate. For sure, the longer you meditate, the better your chance of reaching the kind of insight that might take away the fear of no longer existing. You can’t be told, you have to experience this knowledge yourself. I got a little peek into this a few weeks ago, at jury duty.

Funny place for a metaphysical insight. There I was at the Criminal Courthouse, parked on a bench in the hallway, waiting to be called, or not, to serve on a jury. It’s an odd situation, not only because you don’t know whether you’ll have to serve or not, but because since everyone is called at random, nobody there is acquainted with anybody else. We are all strangers.

So I had two days to sit among strangers, watching the process, and finishing my book, which happened to be Brad Warner’s “Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, & the Truth about Reality.” I don’t like to read about Buddhism, as I think it muddies my expectations, but I love his approach and strongly recommend this book as an introduction. Because he doesn’t care about “sounding like a Buddhist,” he puts things into words that even an ignorant American like me can understand. Or maybe I just get him because he was a punk, too.

I was reading what Brad has to say about the Heart Sutra. This is a piece of writing that is said to encompass the essence of what Buddha had to teach. Basically, it says that with the realization that the five skandhas are shunyata, all suffering ceases. Got that?

It’s so hard to talk about this stuff with words. English is a terrible language for it, which is why we hang on to words in Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, and Pali. Any words fall short – words are also shunyata, by the way – but Sanskrit probably comes closest.

Let me explain what I mean by that. There are five skandhas, which is a Sanskrit word for, it says in Wikipedia, mass or heap, something like that. “Aggregate” is a good translation. The five skandhas are:

• Form (the material world, and our body and senses)
• Feeling (emotion, or our reaction to form)
• Perception (cognition)
• Will (thoughts, ideas, opinions, decisions)
• Consciousness (self-awareness)

The five skandhas are what make You exist. In the west we believe there’s something else underlying all of that, which is your Self, which experiences those things. In Buddhism, those five skandhas are your Self – that’s all there is. Apart from those five skandhas, you do not exist.

(I’m stealing this image from Brad) Say you have a pile of garbage. Take parts of it away one by one – the tin can, the old shoe, the banana peel. Take all the parts away. Where is your pile of garbage? It doesn’t exist. It never really existed in the first place, except as an aggregation of parts. That’s the Self.

What zazen allows to happen is that you come to see the parts for what they are, which is shunyata. Shunyata is usually translated as “empty.” Emptiness is another easily misunderstood Buddhist concept, one I’ve had a lot of trouble with. A better word might be “insubstantial.”  Take emotion, for example. Emotion is insubstantial. That doesn’t mean it’s not real; it’s just not real in the way that we think it is. It’s not a thing unto itself.

I think it was the garbage image that did it. For some reason, that resonated with me. I set the book down in my lap and just breathed.

There was hearing. There was sight. Smells happened. There was awareness of temperature, the air brushing my skin, the feeling of my ass against the bench and my clothes against my body. So, there was form – but it was not the solid world as we normally think of it. And there was nothing else. The other skandhas were not present.

And for a little while, I ceased to exist.

This little experience was totally unscary, and all too brief. There’s no risk, by the way, that the Self won’t come back. It’s a tenacious bugger. The Self comes into being when it’s reacting to something, and there’s always something to react to, even in an isolation tank. When I first started meditating, I realized that I was afraid of letting the constant chatter in my mind cease. I think I was as afraid of recognizing the insubstantiality of the Self as much as I was afraid that the thoughts might not come back. (No problem with that, by the way, as it turned out.)

What I saw on the bench that day was that my sense of being a Self is not real, not in the way I’ve been taught to think of it  That way is, in fact, pretty natural, given what we have to work with, and a very handy thing to have around. If you don’t believe that your Self is real, good luck getting a job and taking care of business. The goal is not to deny or destroy the Self; the goal is to see that there is no Self in that way to begin with, so therefore there’s no problem. The Self is the five skandhas, and they are shunyata. If I think of a good way to say that briefly in English, I’ll let you know.

Which brings me neatly back to where I started. Having begun to understand, I think, the way in which I do not exist, I fear death less. I definitely have a lot more work to do. But once there is understanding of what the Self truly is, and is not, there is understanding that all there is, is this moment. A thousand years is the same as a minute. We are each everything that there is, and therefore we never cease to exist. It’s just this particular set of sensation, emotion, cognition, will, and self-awareness that will cease. No problem.

]]> http://soundofrain.net/the-fear-of-death/feed/ 3 http://soundofrain.net/how-to-do-zazen/ http://soundofrain.net/how-to-do-zazen/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:43:19 +0000 soundofrain http://soundofrain.net/?p=218 There are lots of guides out there on how to do zazen. I check out a few every once in a while, looking for tips or just to remind myself of all the different elements, and remind myself that I’m not an expert. This one isn’t bad, and has clear photos, but it’s best if you have someone in person to show you the basics. A person could write a book on how to do zazen, but it’s really not complicated.

1. Wear comfortable clothes and find a soft place to sit.
2. Set up a timer so you don’t have to watch the clock.
3. Sit up straight, not leaning against anything, and breathe naturally.
4. Watch the breath. When thoughts and feelings occur, let them go and come back to the breath.
5. Be patient with yourself.

A soft place to sit

It’s best to sit on a cushion,  cross-legged or kneeling, with cushioning for your knees. Set up your cushions on the floor, facing a wall. If you have a quiet room to do this in, do it there. I basically live in one room, so I have a space against the wall that I can easily clear when I’m ready to meditate. Do what you need to do to make sure you won’t be interrupted – turn off the phone, etc.

In zen we use a small, round, firm cushion called a zafu, placed on top of a large square cushion called a zabuton. This is the best arrangement, but you can use other pillows and cushions or a folded blanket. I got my zafu at Samadhi Cushions and the zabuton is really just a big pillow from Bed Bath and Beyond.

If you have trouble with your knees or your hips, you can sit in a chair or a stool, but unless you have serious back problems, don’t lean against anything. The object is to sit up straight, with your spine in correct alignment, one vertebra stacked on another and your head centered on top. This is the best way to concentrate and keep yourself from falling asleep.

A timer

You’ll need something with which to time yourself. It’s not a good idea just to keep an eye on your watch, because you’ll get all focused on time instead of the breath. You can use an alarm clock, obviously; the little travel ones are not expensive and usually have alarms that are less obnoxious than the plug-in kind. There are meditation timers you can buy, but I find them too pricey. You can also download MP3 meditation timers online, like these at Audio Dharma, which start and finish with a simple bell.

I strongly suggest starting with a short time, even five minutes, and gradually work up until you can do the standard 45 minute sit.

Sit up straight

When we do zazen, before we begin, we stand in front of our cushion, place our hands in prayer position in front of our hearts (this is called gassho), and we bow to the cushion. There’s a lot of bowing in zazen, because the Japanese have been the custodians of zen for almost a thousand years, and there’s a lot of bowing in their culture, but I’ve grown to like it. Bowing to the cushion sets up a respectful attitude toward the practice. It also exercises the spine a little.

Set up your cushions and your timer. Bow to your cushion. Sit, and make sure you’re comfortable. You might have to experiment for a while to find your ideal position, with regard to the height of the cushion and how you arrange your legs. You want to be comfortably erect, not straining and not slumped. Ideally, your butt and your knees form a tripod that supports your spine. It’s a good idea to sway a few times to find the perfect spinal balance.

Westerners are not used to sitting on the floor, so your hips and knees might complain. Do not force your legs into lotus or half-lotus, especially if you’re over thirty. Once your cartilage has stopped growing, all you’re going to do is stretch it and weaken those joints, which is a very bad idea. I sit Burmese fashion, tops of my feet more or less flat on the floor in front of my hips, or with one ankle crossed over the other. Find what works for you, what makes you feel stable and comfortable and allows you to breathe freely.

You can just clasp your hands in your lap, or lay them on your thighs, or you can do the cosmic mudra (a mudra is a way to hold your hands that’s supposed to focus the mind in a specific way). Place your left hand in your right hand, palms up, the fingers lying on top of each other, and touch the tips of the thumbs together lightly.

In zen we keep the eyelids lowered but not closed, and eyes at rest.

Watch the breath

Don’t think about emptying your mind, or accomplishing something, or getting anywhere. Focus on the breath and just let your thoughts go. Breathe quietly, from the belly, through your nose. When you have a thought, recognize that it’s a thought, and don’t pursue it. In the beginning it helped me a lot to be mindful and present in the room, so instead of focusing on the breath, I would focus on the sensations of the space around me, the little sounds, etc. Not thinking about them, just noticing them.

You can also count the breath. I found this very helpful. At the end of each exhalation, count one, then two, etc. Go up to ten, then start over. You can quickly tell when you’ve been distracted, because either you’ve stopped counting, or you’re up to fourteen or something. I got up to twenty-one once before I realized I wasn’t paying attention. Again, don’t punish yourself for getting distracted, just let it go and come back to the breath. And start over at one.

Be patient with yourself

The Buddha shows us how it's done.

When you first start to do this, your mind will probably be jumping around like a crazy thing. Don’t worry about it. This is how everyone begins; this is just your mind doing what it does. Don’t punish yourself for getting distracted. Don’t tell yourself that you’re no good at zazen. This is zazen: sitting and focusing on the breath, and coming back to it when you get distracted.

Sit as still as possible. Be like a mountain. If you have an itch, just let it be. You will probably find that if you keep breathing and observe the itch, it becomes just sensation, and eventually fades. We don’t have to scratch every itch.

If you have trouble with pain, do the same thing. Just notice it and don’t worry about doing something about it. This gets easier with practice, and also, the more you sit, the less pain there is. Your body gets used to it. It develops the muscles in your back and neck that are needed to keep you upright without a chair to lean against. This can take time. It was over a year from when I started a regular practice until I could sit for the whole 45 minutes without screaming in pain inside my head by the end. Once I understood that shifting around, trying to ease the pain in my shoulders, was actually prolonging it, I made a lot of progress.

The point of zazen is not to achieve enlightenment, or samadhi, a transcendent state of blissful union with the universe. If that happens, great, but that’s not the point, and any zen master worth his or her salt will tell you that. The point of zazen is just to do it. Sit on the cushion. Focus on the breath. Practice letting thoughts and feelings happen without grabbing hold of them. When you find yourself thinking about something, relax and let it go. Come back to the breath.

When your time is up, put your hands in gassho (prayer position, in front of the heart) and bow again to your practice. This also helps limber up the spine, which might be stiff after sitting so still.

That’s it.

You can do this anywhere, at any time. It’s better to do it a little than not at all. And, while the benefits are not the point, there are definitely benefits. Medical research is always proving how beneficial meditation is, for your blood pressure, stress level, concentration, general peace of mind. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to do zazen, or shave your head, or be a vegetarian. You don’t have to be anything.

Just do this one simple thing for yourself, and see what happens.

Adorable. And just waiting for a chance to break your concentration.

A sesshin is usually seven straight days of zazen. We start at 4 am and go till 10 or 11 pm, sitting zazen, doing kinhin, chanting. This is an amazing experience, by the way, one I highly recommend. During a 7-day sesshin, we have dokusan, or one-on-one meetings with Roshi, every day, and Roshi gives a teisho every other day.

Sometimes during teisho, Roshi will refer to something someone said to him during dokusan. He doesn’t identify the person, just mentions that someone said such-and-such, and it made him think of something he wanted to say to all of us. The first time I heard this, instantly my mind started to scheme: What can I say during dokusan that will make him mention it during teisho?

I mean, how egotistical can you get? And how ridiculous, because it’s not like anyone would know it was me. It was just some kind of weird competition my mind came up with that, really, I didn’t want any part of. But there it was. This is what the mind does. Your mind is constantly coming up with things that you yourself don’t approve of.

The over-busy, chattering mind is often called “monkey mind,” the way it jumps around and intrudes on your wonderful calm zazen experience, but I think of it as monkeys, plural. I get one monkey jumping up and saying,” Ooh! Let’s get Roshi’s attention, and stand out from the crowd!” And another monkey says, “Will you shut up? That’s ego talking!” And a third monkey says, “BOTH of you shut up, I’m trying to meditate here!” And yet another monkey is laughing hysterically that this whole circus is even taking place.

And underneath it all is … something else. Something that’s not a monkey. Something that just is.

A long time ago, when I first heard about Zen, I thought that transcending the self was something you only had to do once, and then it was done. That enlightenment happens to you like a bolt of lightning, and you are magically changed into someone who is just naturally serene and unflappable. I think I get it now, that the reason we call it a practice is that you’re never done, not during your lifetime. You have to do it over and over. And part of transcending the self is learning to live with what the self throws up, and I mean that in the most nauseous sense of the word.

Sometimes what my mind comes up with is funny. Sometimes it’s insightful. But often it’s not nice at all, whether it’s just irritating, or egotistical, or mean. I can’t just get rid of what my self does, what my mind produces. What I’m doing in zazen, I think, is training my mind to live with what is, instead of obsessing about what was, or what might be, or what I fear or hope might be.

Here’s one of my favorite Zen stories. No idea where I read/heard this.

There was a prince in India who heard about the Buddha and decided to become his student. Though he wasn’t used to difficulties of any kind, he gamely did his best to do what all the other followers did, putting himself on an equal footing with them.

This prince had been so spoiled, he had never had to do anything for himself – even walk. From lack of use, the soles of his feet grew fine, golden hairs. And even though he was in agony, he still did kinhin (walking meditation) every day.

One day the Buddha walked by and saw him limping back and forth. As the prince walked, he left bloody footprints on the ground from his delicate, unused feet.

“Hey,” Buddha said. “Knock it off. You don’t have to kill yourself over this. Trying too hard is just as bad as not trying hard enough.”

***

Here’s another version that I just found:

A monk named Sona in the Sitavana Monastery at Rajagriha was so zealous in walking that his feet left a bloody trail. The Buddha asked him if his lute could be played well if the strings were too tight or too loose. Just so, excessive zeal may make the mind weary and one’s thoughts irritable and uncertain. He suggested to Sona that gradual progress led to self-mastery and happiness rather than anxiety.

http://www.san.beck.org/EC9-Buddha.html

A mourning dove, taking a break.

Back when I first started going to the zendo, I had a funny experience.

I got to the zendo a bit early, as usual, settled onto a cushion and began zazen. I sat for maybe fifteen minutes before the opening bell rang, and we got up to do the first round of kinhin, or walking meditation. We walk in kind of a long, skinny oval, threading our way through the ground floor of a building that’s about as narrow as a New York building can be.

As I came around the curve on one end, I noticed that Roshi was there, walking at the end of the line, a few people behind me. I hadn’t noticed him, and it sort of shocked me, to see him all of a sudden like that; I knew who he was, but I had never seen him in person before. And then I noticed that, upon seeing him, I felt guilty. Immediately I understood that I felt guilty because I had been thinking about something unrelated to zazen, something having to do with work, probably, thinking very hard about it and not really meditating at all. And then I realized that I had been unconsciously assuming that being a Zen master conferred some kind of psychic power, and that he was reading my mind at that very moment.

I laughed at myself, and reassured myself that practicing Zen doesn’t somehow give you ESP.

But you know, I’m not so sure. I often have the feeling, while listening to Roshi give a talk (called a teisho), that he’s reading my mind and speaking directly to me. This must be a skill developed by long practice at being a teacher, and also that direct mind-to-mind communication that is the heart of Zen. But often, it seems like it’s more than that.

One day last spring, as I walked down to the zendo for a teisho, I was thinking about mourning doves. There’s a pair that lives on my block, and sometimes they sit on my fire escape, to taunt my cats, I think. That week, they were back from wherever they spend their winters. I love mourning doves. They’re the pigeon-shaped birds that are a lovely sort of clay color, much shyer than pigeons, and they have a distinctive call that I remember from earliest childhood. I was seriously giving these birds a lot of thought, as I walked. Then I arrived at the zendo, and got into my robes, and we did zazen, and then kinhin, and then settled down at last for teisho. And the very first thing Roshi mentioned, after he read the text at the beginning, was that they had all noticed, up at the monastery upstate, that the mourning doves were back, and how glad they were, because that meant spring. And one part of me was completely unsurprised, in fact knew that that would be the first thing he talked about. And another part of my mind was just a bit boggled.


(Press play to hear what a mourning dove sounds like.)

I suppose it’s not that remarkable that two people would be thinking about the same species of bird, in the springtime. But this sort of coincidence happens all the time. Someone at the zendo told a story recently, in which Roshi had talked about how even the placement of the stamp on a letter was important, and then the next day someone arrived at the monastery for a long study period, and mentioned that they knew this monastery was the place where they wanted to study because of how carefully the stamp was placed on the letter they’d received in response to their inquiry.

I’m not saying anyone’s psychic. I’m just sayin’.

Often, now, at the bookstore where I work, if I’m not trying to do this, I know what book someone’s looking for before they ask for it. I don’t mean just the obvious ones, the people who just got finished watching Oprah and want whatever book she was featuring that day. I mean more obscure titles. I don’t think I’m reading their minds; I think my mind has stilled enough that I’m more observant now than I’ve ever been before. I’m paying attention even when I don’t realize it. A couple came up to the desk the other day, and I was looking up “Bartleby the Scrivener” for them before they even spoke to me. I swear I hadn’t heard any of their conversation, but I must have been listening to them unconsciously, and remembered what they were talking about. Not only am I more able now to notice what I’m thinking; now I’m noticing what other people are thinking.

I promise to use my powers only for good.

This one’s easy. In the following, understand that I’m talking about Buddhism mainly as seen in the US.

There are two basic kinds of Buddhism: Mahayana and Theravada. Mahayana means “Greater Vehicle” and is meant for everybody, including monastic and regular people. Theravada used to be called Hinayana by the Mahayanists, only the Theravadists didn’t like that, because it means “Smaller Vehicle.” I don’t think they meant it as an insult; they only meant that Theravada Buddhism was a practice meant for monks, for people willing to shut themselves away in a monastery and not engage fully in human life, e.g.,  marriage, family, working, etc. And oh yeah, women couldn’t join.

People who like Theravada Buddhism seem to like it for its traditionalism, and claim that it is superior to other forms of Buddhism because it uses Buddha’s “original” teachings. Since the Buddha made it clear that this is an experiential thing, passed mind-to-mind from teacher to student, this doesn’t make sense to me. The argument (and it seems to me that they’re the only ones who care) about whose sutras are more original turns me off. And, while it’s nice that they’ve changed it in the West to include lay people and women, it seems to me that that should invalidate their claim to traditionalism. I get hung up on all this when I think of Theravada.

Vipassana or insight meditation sounded interesting to me, but when I did a little – a very little – reading about it, it just sounded like zazen with a whole lot more language attached to it.

So much for Theravada. In the Mahayana tradition, there are of course many flavors to choose from, but the ones most familiar to us are Tibetan and Zen. I love the Dalai Lama, but every time I look into Tibetan Buddhism, I come smack up against a whole lot of – stuff. Jeweled trees, mandalas, gods, demons, prayer wheels. They’re big into symbolism and images. It’s gorgeous, but I find it all very distracting. I also can’t get behind reincarnation, which is central to Tibetan Buddhism and many other forms. I don’t know everything; reincarnation may be real, but if it is, it’s not something I can afford to focus on in this lifetime.

Overall, among Buddhists, my impression is that all the schools are cool with each other. There are no bitter disagreements, and as far as I know the Dalai Lama doesn’t think Thich Nhat Hahn is going to hell just because they represent different traditions. If I were from Tibet, I would be a Tibetan Buddhist. But I’m an American, so I can choose.

Zen just feels right to me. It always has. It’s simple. The emphasis is on just this. Zen says, basically, sit down and shut up, and see for yourself. No arguments over doctrine. No visualizations. Just this.

Plus, it has lots of stories, and I like stories.