March 6th – Winter Retreat – A Single Thread.net

Monastic Obedience

The first step on the way to humility is to obey an order without delaying for a moment. That is a response which comes easily to those who hold nothing dearer than Christ himself.

In this passage from his Rule, Benedict instructs monks to aspire toward humility. Obedience paves the way, and love of Christ is fuel for the journey.

To compare and contrast this Christian message with Zen, we can take a look at an ancient Zen chant

To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.”

Students of Zen aspire to be actualized by myriad things. Forgetting the self paves the way, and studying the self is fuel for the journey.

To be “actualized by myriad things” is to be so free of desire that we can be in the world without doing harm to anything or anyone, wanting nothing for ourselves, needing nothing from others. No pushing, no grasping, no knowing. No suffering. Everything just as it is. Allowing the great unfolding of time and space and myriad things to proceed, unhindered by our tiny, inconsequential minds, Awake to it all.

You might find that as you read, or hear, these words, you have reactions. Perhaps you feel judgment, confusion or disbelief. Maybe it’s inspiration or a disconnect you feel. Whatever your reaction, the path is to recognize these reactions and examine them. More than obedience to the way, Buddhists aspire to study our responses to the Way, and to life as it is, and find out for ourselves.

Turn around the light to shine within…” says another Zen chant,
“then just return.”

Return, that is, back to reading this essay, back to living your life. Then, shine the light again on your actions and reactions, over and over, bringing the light of awareness to body, speech and mind.

At the Art Institute in Chicago is a huge stone Buddha that I visit when I am there. He exudes a dynamic but restful ease as he sits in silent meditation. He concentrates deeply to hold everything he feels and thinks in his awareness. He receives it all within the embrace of his open, allowing presence. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is grasped.

This iconic Buddha, and the one on my altar, remind me to continually recognize that my thoughts and feelings become my suffering. My pain is also my human condition. I practice holding it with an open heart. And so, I study myself, shining the light of my awareness, being Buddha. This Buddha, this awareness of all that is present, is what I most dearly love. It is fuel for my journey toward forgetting the self.

When we shine the light within, we look to see if what Buddha taught is true; that our pride and greed, our emotionality and the constant stream of thoughts are born of an identity. We have cultivated a person who we think is solid, but this person is only in our mind. We come to know Buddha’s rest and ease, the result when we stop believing in the self we thought we were.

It’s no use to seek the truth,
just let false views cease.”

With consistent self-study and the help of a teacher, we grow in our ability to forget this false self. We learn not to construct another identity, not to replace pride with humility, anger with passivity, or greed with indifference.

We learn the Buddha way, to not attach to any fixed views, but to walk through the world with hearts and minds open, responsive, flexible, and authentic, at one with the Buddha in everyone and everything. It includes obedience and goes beyond it.