Readiness, Mindfulness - Part II

"To realize the truth is to live--to exist here and now."--Shunryu Suzuki

I have heard it said that life is what happens to us when we are busy making other plans. We are not aware that we are the experience. When we are not aware of reality, we are sleepwalking through life.

Zen practice is the effort to throw off sleep. When we are wide awake, everything we do will be done with sacred intensity.

Readiness, Mindfulness

"It is not after we practice zazen that we realize the truth; even before we practice zazen, realization is there."--Shunryu Suzuki

In English, the conditional tense is known as the if-then clause. As long as our zazen practice remains in the conditional tense--"If I practice well, then I will attain enlightenment"--we are sacrficing ourselves now for a future idea. We end up with nothing and we just continue in our difficulties.

In zazen, we break the karmic chain of the conditional tense. This is the true purpose of Zen.

Emptiness

"As long as we have some definite idea about or some hope in the future, we cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now."--Shunryu Suzuki

We are born under a delusion. We are born with fear. This is the doctrine of original sin. We must work hard to discover the reality that is our birthright. When we sacrifice this birthright for an idea, we end up with nothing.

The present moment is all we have. When we live fully in the present moment, we have no need to cling to our possessions or to worry about the future. We are free from the prison of self-concern.

That is the purpose of zazen practice: To study how to live in the world without fear.

Naturalness

"If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice."--Shunryu Suzuki

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you and the road home leads back to yourself. To know yourself is to experience a transcendent reality that is not dependent on a social standard of good or evil, better or worse, or fame and profit.

Dante wrote, "I love to doubt as well as know." The purpose of Zen is to learn to doubt everything.

The Quality of Being

"The purpose of zazen is to attain the freedom of our being, physically and mentally."--Shunryu Suzuki

I have heard it said that he who sins is a slave of sin. It is important to understand the difference between true freedom and licentiousness.

Licentious behavior is rooted in the the blind, subconscious desires that we inherited from our ancestors who climbed out of the primordial jungle. It is an almost instinctual drive and it usually has pleasure as its goal. It can lead to a bovine-like contentment, but not to true happiness.

"The freedom of our being" means that when we discover the true reason for our existence we will have no difficulty finding our way under any circumstance. When our motivation changes from a desire for pleasure (or, from the more dangerous desire for power) to a desire oriented toward meaning, we will be fully satisfied with everything we do.

When we know the true reason for our activity, we will not fear anything. This is true freedom--freedom from fear. Without this freedom, we cannot be truly happy.

Transiency

"That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence."--Shunryu Suzuki

This teaching reminds us of the fabled monarch who "once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in his view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.'"

When we learn to direct our will toward a Universe that knows no good or evil, we will not have difficulty accepting the truth that everything is in constant flowing change.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

                     - from Hamlet , Wm. Shakespeare; Act II, scene ii

Traditional Zen Spirit

"The purpose of our practice is to cut off the karmic spinning mind."--Shunryu Suzuki

I believe it was Pascal who said that the imagination is the madwoman in the house. In zazen, we cut off the ego--the imaginary eternal self--and discover our true transitory self. We do not live in the past and we do not live in the future. We settled ourselves on each moment, moment-by-moment.

This is the true way of living!

Sick Call

"Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe....After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life." —Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Christ is quoted as saying, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." When we live under the delusion that we are separate from the Universe we live in fear; we are sick in heart.

Like a good doctor, those who have mastered the healing arts can show us the way back to ourselves.

A Wordless Betrayal

"To understand reality as a direct experience is the reason we practice zazen, and the reason we study Buddhism."--Shunryu Suzuki

The dogmatist and the true believers of the world may not agree, but words alone cannot capture reality. Yet words can act as a charm and conjure up reality in the same way that a painting can express the character and life of an individual or landscape.

It is not technical skill alone that is required. A painting can appear lifeless. Words are dead.

In order to understand the great artist, writer, or teacher, we must learn to communicate without words. We must deepen our awareness of a reality that is always present. We must understand the spirit that flows between the words:

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.--Henry David Thoreau in Walden

What Do I Know?

"It is quite usual for us to gather pieces of information from various sources, thinking in this way to increase our knowledge. Actually, following this way we end up not knowing anything at all."--Shunryu Suzuki

It is a strange truth that we can have a doctorate in psychology and not know ourselves. We can be educated and remain ignorant.

Unfortunately, because of our ignorance and our vanity, much of what we need to know will be learned by the painful process of trial and error.

But by Zen practice, by remaining careful, observant and alert in our daily lives, we can avoid making the same mistake over and over again. Instead of just gathering knowledge, we will study ourselves.

To study yourself is to forget yourself. It is to dare to enter the Unknown. That is the purpose of Zen.

A Constant Problem

When Monk NoDoz becomes Monk NoDoz, Zen becomes Zen.--Dogen-zenji

I admit it--Dogen-zenji never said that. But he said something like it. Put another way, when you are you, "you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings. There is your true self."

Zen Master Suzuki makes this point and also warns that when we start to wander about in some delusion which is something apart from ourselves, then our surroundings are not real anymore, and our minds are not real anymore. "Most people live in delusion, involved in their problem, trying to solve their problem."

We solve, or dissolve, our problems by constancy which is the power to accept things as they are whether they are agreeable or disagreeable. That is why we practice Zen. We must discover for ourselves how to accept our problems and how to work on them. Only in this way can we realize true freedom.

Dwell.

You are the Light.

Rely on yourself.

Do not depend on others.

A Moment of Forgetfulness

"But the purpose of studying Buddhism is to study ourselves and to forget ourselves."--Shunryu Suzuki

This is where most psychologists get it wrong. They study human nature the way a Zoologist studies animals. But man is much more than a psycho-physical organism.

If you truly want to know who you are, dare to enter the unknown. Zen practice is the effort to forget ourselves on purpose. At first we study ourselves and we are soon convinced by our study that it is absolutely necessary to forget ourselves.

When we forget ourselves, when the ego vanishes, we discover the true meaning of our existence.

A Goalless Life

"In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal....You may think that if there is no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do. But there is a way."--Shunryu Suzuki

Usually, before we act, we think. "I have to get up and go to work."

Then the difficulty begins: Why do we have to go to work?

We answer this question. We are satisfied with the answer. We have a reason or purpose or goal--I am going to work to support my children or to earn a paycheck so that I can go shopping tomorrow.

If we have no reason or purpose or goal in our activity, we often become confused. Since we do not know the true reason for our activity, we may be tempted to give up our practice and go back to bed!

But Zen Master Suzuki tells us there is a way. The secret is non-attachment. When we are not attached to any reason or purpose or goal, we can just concentrate on expressing ourselves in the present moment.

That is the purpose of Zen practice: To express our true nature and our sincerity on each moment, moment-by-moment, with a constantly renewed appreciation of the phenomenal world.

Without this practice, we may lose our respect for each other--and even for ourselves.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.  We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.  We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.--Henry David Thoreau

I Was Unaware of That

"Do not think that you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment."--Dogen-zenji

Most of us who practice zazen imagine that enlightenment is something that we will obtain through our own effort. But this is not so. That kind of effort is no different than striving after material goods or reputation.

Dogen-zenji is warning us that if we think we will obtain enlightenment, we are only wandering around with our eyes closed. We may be sleepwalking!

Because we already have enlightenment, we can practice. The purpose of practice is to be aware of our own enlightenment. We must study how to awaken to a reality that is the very essence of our existence.

Step This Way

"Our life can be seen as a crossing of a river. The goal of our life's effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana. Prajna paramita, the true wisdom of life, is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached."--Shunryu Suzuki

This is true. It takes time, however, to realize that no time is required. The purpose of Zen practice is to awaken us to this fact.