As I read and reread Ming Zhen’s article on Expectations I thought I’d share both my approach to her work and my great finds in it. My approach is simple….rather than explain the approach I thought I’d show what I do.
The work starts out comparing religious backsliding to prison recidivism. What, you may ask, does this have to do with me?
The first thing to note is to check with yourself if you are skilled at self inquiry. Or do you meet what comes into your life, in this case this article, as something to judge as mere balderdash or brilliant writing. Do you begin to judge it rather than ask how might this apply to me? You might argue that you are not a criminal nor a backslider and dismiss the work altogether. But hold on….why would Ming Zhen write such a piece? Just for your editorial review? Never. Let me tell you she did not care what others thought of her work….she cared about the Dharma and offering the Dharma. Everything comes into your life to awaken….everything.
When I read the first paragraph I took note to realize we are all, each one of us dealing with backsliding and recidivism in our lives, not just one part of our life but all parts of our life.
Let’s see.
The word regression is both a statistical and psychological term which explains the falling back towards the mean, commonly known as the average in mathematics; Freud used the term to describe a return to an earlier stage of development as a defense against something we dislike. Ming Zhen would have been aware of both. The word recidivism in this context refers to a habitual relapse of some criminal behavior. In this first paragraph Ming Zhen shakes us up….if we are willing to study and to take to heart what she says.
We all regress and relapse….we have a tendency to do so. We fall back to some familiar average….some ordinary garden-variety approach to our life and we defend it with regressive behaviors of an earlier psychological stage. In more common terms, we conform to get along and we revert to some juvenile, latent or infantile impulse, e.g., storm out, clam up or kick and scream.
Are you aware of this in your self? That’s the first step. To be aware of you and what you tend to do. If you are not aware of what you do….you need to ask what inhibits your self inquiry? Maybe you think you are set….that your character is fixed and unchangeable.
Let’s go on….
As mentioned, we all regress and relapse….we have a tendency to do so. In Zen Master Hongzhi’s 12th century work, Cultivating the Empty Field we read the injunction to ….purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies (we) have fabricated into apparent habits.
Master Hongzhi admonishes us to stop backsliding and regressing by purifying, curing, grinding down or brushing away the tendency to do so. Huh?
Are you using everything that comes into your life as a way to practice this admonition? To stop going back to old, familiar patterns and to stop defending them. Are you aware how and when you do this backsliding and relapsing?
The consequences of going along as usual is twofold: you remain in prison and give way to some immature defense of not wanting to do the work to get out.
So this is just a little taste of one approach.
As a Dharma heir to Ming Zhen Shakya I feel it is imperative of me to share her work with others. Since she is no longer with us in body and mind making her unavailable to speak with you I thought it might be helpful to offer some comments on how to read and listen and sit under the golden waterfall of her offerings. This essay is a brief, very brief approach on one way to soak in Ming Zhen’s Dharma offering. May the Dharma bless you as it has me and many, many others.
What backsliding is to religious conversion, recidivism is to penal rehabilitation. Both represent failure, and Zen priests who have a prison ministry can be losers on both counts.
Often we are moved to tears when we give Precepts to a man who receives his certificate with such profound gratitude, with such pride that he has been accepted into Buddhist ranks, who vows with such sincerity to try with all his might to conform his conduct to the requirements of the Path, and who does not show up for another meeting. We never see him again. We might learn that he’s espoused another faith, which, frankly, is better than hearing that in the exercise of Buddhist ethics as he understood them he got himself tossed into solitary confinement.
The same inability to predict the future informs our cheery bon voyages when a prisoner is released. Good luck we say to him certain only that he’s going to need it.
And so we wonder if the man will stick with Zen or attach himself to another group, or if he will successfully re-enter civilian life or revert to the kind of behavior that got him incarcerated in the first place. We doubt that we have understood him at all – else we should not be so uncertain. We’re supposed to be spiritual physicians who diagnose illness and recommend whatever nostrums are necessary to effect cure; but often we don’t have a clue.
Not only in prison ministries does this doubt occur. In our civilian sanghas we are frequently surprised by the unwonted actions of a member we thought we thoroughly understood. We miss seeing his face at a meeting and when we inquire about his health or his whereabouts we’re told that he has joined another Buddhist group or even another religion – maybe even one of those that regard Buddhism as devil worship. Or else he sends his regrets that he cannot attend meetings on our scheduled evenings because he’s taking a course in Continuing Education in order to satisfy a curiosity he has always had about Eighteenth Century French literature. What was going on in his mind when he bowed so reverently to Guan Yin and chanted so joyfully? Was there a tip-off that we missed? A signal that we failed to see?
In his essay, What Is Man, Martin Buber, that indispensable thinker, gives us some direction, a hint of where to look. If we read the work for its academic or literary value, we’ll, of course, find it interesting; but without some specific ‘cases’ to which we can relate the information, we’re not likely to find it useful. It is true that Buber mostly speaks of “epochs” of man, periods of complacent belief and periods of penetrating inquiry; but the old alchemical rule nevertheless applies: “As it is in the macrocosm so it is in the microcosm.” The general, after all, sums particulars.
It never hurts to see a problem from a different perspective.
The conduct of two men associated with the prison sangha had puzzled me for a long time. It disturbed me that I couldn’t even begin to predict how they’d react to civilian life when they were released. They had left in their psychological wake a jumble of dots that I just couldn’t connect. Then I happened to remember Buber’s essay; and after re-reading it, the prisoners’ dots lined up to station themselves into a recognizable pattern.
Buber begins his discussion by reciting Immanuel Kant’s four-question formula for the “knowledge of the ultimate aims of human reason.”
“What can I know?” the answer to which Kant intends metaphysics and not epistemology to supply.
“What ought I to do?” which ethics will answer.
“What may I hope?” which religion presumes to solve.
“What is man?” The first three questions are essentially contained in this fourth.
In order to answer these questions, a man has to ask them first. He has to wonder, says Buber, about “his special place in the cosmos, his connection with destiny, his relation to the world of things, his understanding of his fellow men, his existence as a being that knows it must die, his attitude in all the ordinary and extraordinary encounters with which the mystery of his life is shot through.” It is the man who feels himself alone who is most disposed to engage in such self-reflection. This is the man who does not inhabit, who, Buber notes, “lives in the world as in an open field and at times does not even have four pegs with which to set up a tent.”
As we read, we understand that the man who has the security of a protective “philosophical” house appreciates its walls and roof and does not wish to blow them down with gusting questions. If he sees the horizon he is content to fantasize about what lies on the farther side of it. And if his fantasies begin to bore him and thus cease to satisfy, he may investigate that farther place to find new sources of comfortable illusion. He seeks only to gratify his ego’s superficial needs as he stays within the safe boundaries of his religious expectations. If he sees the stars he may regard them as sources of entertainment or, perhaps, as serving of some utilitarian purpose. But he does not marvel as the Psalmist marvels, “Lord, when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
As Buddhists we know that we must ask these questions and feel this overwhelming awe; for without having our lives “shot through” with these perforating inquiries, we inflate, our Buddhist ego-image swelling buoyantly into a complacent stratosphere. We become contented in our habituation, domesticated by the routines and appliances of religion – the wafting incense on our altars, the artful wall hangings and statues placed in the corners of our sanctuaries, the gestures, the vestments, the liturgy. We sit upon cushions in our meditation halls as if we are safely inside Plato’s Cave watching flickering shadows on the walls. We do not allow ourselves to wonder what dramas are unfolding outside that comfortable theatre, what else we might hope for, what more we ought to do, what knowledge of self lies behind the silhouetted images we study.
The man who does ponder the unknown declares his independence and in his own eccentric way becomes a free agent. He is not satisfied with firelight. He wants to see the Sun.
The two prisoners whose temperament I could not gauge both attended meetings of our medium-security prison sangha, but only one had taken Buddhist Precepts.
The one who officially became a Buddhist was intelligent, well groomed, polite, and faithful in attendance. His conduct in and out of chapel was uniformly good and owing to this exemplary behavior he had been granted parole and would be released as soon as a place opened for him at a halfway house. He very much wanted to join a Buddhist sangha when he was released and, because he had much affection for Vietnamese culture and was somewhat familiar with the language, I suggested that he join a Mahayana Vietnamese temple that had recently opened in our town. This news seemed heaven sent to him, and he asked me to inquire whether they would be averse to having an ex-con in their group. I didn’t see why they would be, but I visited them anyway and asked. They did not object and in fact, since they spoke very little English they looked forward to having a bilingual American there in their increasingly American congregation. They gave me a few brochures, a little Vietnamese dictionary, and their meditation schedule – they were open to the public three nights a week. He received this information with great joy. Future possibilities were becoming realities. He was particularly excited to learn that the temple “haven” was located just a few blocks away from a restaurant in which he had been promised a job.
Then, several weeks later, before a meeting someone told me a rumor that he planned to go to Buenos Aires as soon as his probation period was completed. After the meeting I asked him if he did, indeed, plan such a journey. “Yes,” he said, “as soon as my parole’s up, I’m going to Argentina.” I raised my eyebrows. “Why?”
“I know some people who live there.”
“Relatives?”
“No, just some people I met once in Dallas. They send me a Christmas card every year.”
I was speechless. Finally I asked, “How are you planning to get there? You’ll need a passport and visas–”
“–I can get a passport after I complete parole.” He said this as if it were going to be a perfectly simple thing to do. Why would the State Department prevent him from leaving the U.S. and why would another country refuse to put out the welcome mat for a penniless American ex-convict.
“What about money? And how do you plan to get there?”
“My sister has a camper parked in her driveway. It won’t fit in the garage. She said it needed a little work, but if I fix it up I’m sure she’ll let me borrow it.”
Drive? This was bizarre. “Do you know where Argentina is?” The question was rhetorical. I was referring to the immense distance, one quarter of the earth’s surface east and one half of the earth’s surface south from where we were.
“It’s in South America.”
“There are a lot of countries between here and Argentina and every one will require a visa and a hefty fee to bring in a recreational vehicle, not to mention insurance. If you have an accident they won’t just let you leave, trusting you’ll come back for adjudication. They’ll want to see evidence of your ability to pay any debts you incur. You’ll also need money for gas and oil and food and car repairs and bridge tolls and ferry boats and all the rest.” “I’ll have money from my job delivering pizzas.”
Delivering pizzas? This was not quite the same as working in a restaurant. “Do you have a car?”
“No, my sister has a new Escort I’ll use. As soon as I finish at the half-way house, I’m moving in with her.”
“Isn’t your sister married… with kids?”
“Yes. I’ll bunk in the camper until I can afford my own place. I’ll be working six nights a week, maybe seven. It shouldn’t take me long.”
The Vietnamese meditation schedule suddenly became meaningless. To me, his entire life-plan became meaningless.
We walked out of the chapel and I recall standing in the sunlight squinting, stunned. I didn’t know what to make of his previously stated intentions and this new fantastic scheme.
In civilian sanghas we sometimes find the same aborted volition, the instantaneous switch from one goal to another. A plan, enthusiastically conceived, dies of neglect, a pitiable orphan. Projects designed to raise money – publishing a newsletter, selling homemade religious articles, construction of accommodations for guest members – are suddenly abandoned. Those who fathered the plan deny paternity and leave the residual responsibilities to others. Their generative abilities are needed elsewhere.
The other man who puzzled me only occasionally sat with our group. He was an American Indian of the Sioux Nation who had been in prison for more than half his life. Sentenced, at eighteen, to twenty years, he was now thirty-eight. He had applied repeatedly for parole but had always been denied – for while he was manageable enough not to warrant being sent to a maximum security prison, he was still considered sufficiently incorrigible to warrant early release into the civilian population.
To call his appearance “sloppy” would be to ‘condemn it with faint praise,’ to borrow Shakespeare’s line. He was a mess. His coarse long hair pushed the ‘unacceptably unkempt’ envelope that the prison staff itched to open. Several of his front teeth had been knocked out in one or more of his frequent fights; and although the prison dentistry service had given him a partial plate, he preferred not to wear it and risk its destruction. He kept it in a treasure box in his cell. Once, however, he did wear it to show me, and I could see that wild handsomeness that I think Emily Bronte imagined when she created Heathcliff – not as Olivier played him – a passive, effete and pensive gentleman who happened to find himself in unfashionable garments – but a kinetic, electric, brooding man whose thoughts, behind those darting eyes, no outsider could ever apprehend.
At one meeting he gave me an Indian Prisoner’s Rights manifesto he had drafted and asked if I would edit it; but it required no correction that I could see. He had acquired an education in prison; and he used it to lobby for official recognition of Native American religious forms of worship. His ceaseless agitations had paid off and down at the end of the prison yard, near one of the watchtowers, was a little sweat lodge he and other Indian men had finally been permitted to build. I was told that he functioned as a kind of shaman in the sweat rituals and that he “could really zone out” during the proceedings. He kept track of the sky and knew when Venus was the Morning Star and when the Evening. Information like this was the criterion by which he gauged all other data. Compared to this, of what significance could he possibly assign the news that half the buttons on his shirt were missing?
I remember asking the warden as he boarded the exit bus, “How do you think he’ll do on the outside?” And the warden answered, shaking his head, “He’ll get in a fight before he gets off that bus.”
We hope for the best about people who are practically strangers to us. It is the nature of our service. In most Zen congregations there is little social interaction between pastor and congregants. We have few bake sales, hymn-sings, pujas, boy scout troops, or other community activities; and Darshan (dokusan) is limited to a few minutes of discussion about meditation practices. Rarely does a teacher encounter students in those social occasions that reveal most about their personalities. Usually, then, we are left to gauge intelligence by the quality of questions asked in forums; to gauge fidelity by attendance; generosity by contributions to the collection box; cleanliness by the appearance of robes; and so on. In short, in the span of two hours per week, we are required to form opinions about a person’s character – perhaps even to write letters of recommendation – based upon such brief, structured encounters and flimsy evidence. In a prison setting, it is even more difficult to determine character. There are few after-service chats and, aside from snail-mail, no communication between meetings.
As I re-read Buber and thought about that strange jaunt to Argentina, I saw that what I was missing was that a man who is secure doesn’t have to wonder about his place in the universe. He has no anxiety. He is a believer, a creature of habit, a regulated dreamer, an accidental guest – a person who is sanguine about the future that, owing to the largesse of others, always seems rosy. He trusts that everything is going to work out so why worry?
But why is he so secure, so enthusiastic or so casual about unlikely schemes that he presents as realistic goals – schemes which might at first seem reasonable but will later evidence a grandiose or unacceptably presumptuous nature?
How does a man experience the Real? Buber says simply that man has a threefold living relation. “First, his relation to the world and to things; second his relation to men – both to individuals and to the many; and third, his relation to the mystery of being – which is dimly apparent through all this but infinitely transcends it… The Absolute or God.”
The person who is afflicted with worldly fantasy is mired in the first ‘living relation.’ No matter how his behavior seems to conform to society’s standards, he sees the material world through acquisitive eyes. He objectifies even himself as a created image, which he assumes that other people will also accept as substantive and genuine. He identifies with desirable objects; and he objectifies even people who become to him mere ways and means, tools to fulfill his needs and desires. We may see him in a prison or in a commercial workplace. He may go to church or to the Zen center every week. He may sit in meditation or bow his head in prayer, but what is he thinking? It is things – his garments, the incense, his breakfast, the weather.. and how these things affect him, or how he can alter or use these things to his advantage. We find his likeness in all forms of literature. He’s Williams’ Blanche DuBois who affects gentility while plying the skin trade, depending upon “the kindness of strangers” and, ultimately, the coerced hospitality of her sister. The only constant is the need to cling to the self-image of superior bearing. Perhaps he starts out innocently like Thurber’s Walter Mitty who seems outwardly to be quite happy performing such ordinary tasks as driving his wife to the beauty parlor; but what is he thinking? Only his body is behind the wheel of his sedan. The rest of him is at the controls of a dive bomber that is now engaged in desperate combat in the skies over Europe. He’s not a dutiful husband sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for his wife to be beautified, he’s a famous brain surgeon performing an operation that his colleagues lack the skill and courage even to attempt. Thurber let his short story end in one of these imaginative adventures; but if he had written another chapter to the story, Mitty might easily have sought the rewards of fantasy heroism in the real-life adorations of a co-worker or a lunchroom waitress. His wife and children – if he had any – would become strangers, creatures from that “other” world, the one that could not satisfy his fancy.
It is such self-absorption that evicts from consideration those who fulfill laborious obligation in order to give residence to vagrant dreams.
Yet, in a curious way, these fantasies often have a real-world, practical function. They provide leverage and set the stage for contrived conflicts that provide excuse for change. If we look hard enough we can find method in the schemes. Consider the possible manipulations in the proposed trip to Buenos Aires. The ex-prisoner would move in with his sister and it would take about 2.5 hours for her husband to express an intense desire to get him off the property. But there is a problem. No one wants to be known as the kind of person who would turn a brother out, especially one who is “trying to get his life together.” Prodigal Sons and Lost Sheep and Good Samaritans will be marched onto the front lawn like so many pink flamingos or plaster gnomes. Biblical precedents will picket the house. It will be the sister who must deal with categorical imperatives.
The request had been merely for the brother temporarily to occupy the camper- a request that seemed too simple to deny. But he will come into the house to eat; to shower, shave and use the toilet, to watch television, to talk on the phone; to do his laundry, and if it is too hot or too cold, he will come in to sleep on the couch. What will it cost her and her husband to eliminate this expensive invader of their privacy while retaining their reputations as decent people? He says he wants to take the camper on a long trip. Well, that will get rid of him. But wait! Their names are on the title – which means they’re responsible as owners of the vehicle. What if he doesn’t keep up the insurance? He wants to buy the vehicle from them and to pay it off in monthly payments. He offers to commit himself legally to pay; and with a great flourish will sign a promissory note which, as the saying goes, will be like a verbal contract – not worth the paper it’s written on.
But will he pay? It is no more likely that he will honor his debt than it is likely that anyone will ever examine the appropriateness of his need or his proposition. He wanted his sister’s camper and he found a way to get it. He invoked familial sentiment when he made the request; and that sense of security, of entitlement that is inherent in the request will obviate any sense of responsibility to pay. This is not mere cynicism. This is precisely the course that is followed by a person whose living relation is confined to things.
He is unable to empathize – to consider the negative effect his presence or his debt will have upon his sister – for that would be the second stage of “the threefold living relation.” Society will aid him in his self-absorbed goals. Always, the one who is asked to give is reminded more forcefully of the “duty” to be charitable than the one who desires to receive is ever reminded of the obligation to be self-supportive or to lessen his requirements.
In the world of things we find strange participation mystiques, the imbuing of an object with animate qualities with which the person then identifies and associates. Not only does the person believe that the quality of a thing magically adheres to the possessor who becomes unique or important in direct proportion to his evaluation of that symbol or object, but he must also advertise his identified allegiance to that magical element. Especially in prison we find men who have used their own flesh to commemorate an identity with and commitment to such other-worldly power: They are “illustrated men,” tattooed not with the usual salute to Mother, service motto, girl, flag or rose; but with serpents that entwine entire limbs; lightning bolts that discharge from an earlobe and strike the chest; birds of prey that seize a nipple in their talons; blood dripping daggers and swords; and, most incomprehensively, a variety of chains and barbed wires that encircle arms and necks. Allegiance to people can alter. Today’s benefactor is too often tomorrow’s adversary; but the eagle is an emblem of power that will never weaken. The blitzkrieg is forever.
To dismiss this as jailhouse machismo is to overlook those symbols of identity – the designer labels, the expensive cars, the “conspicuous consumption and honorific waste’ which characterize leisure class possessions. To whatever extent an owner invests these showy objects with his own identity, he, too, is an illustrated man.
It is not the goal of penal authorities to manufacture saints in prison. They do strive, however, to deliver men and women to the second stage of living relation: to establish a relationship to the world of men. This requires empathy – an ability to understand and accept The Golden Rule, an ability to put oneself in the shoes of another and feel his joy or sorrow, his comfort or pain, and then to act so as to alleviate his sorrow or to appreciate his joy. Empathy allows a man to see the world through the eyes of other men not merely to see his own reflection in their eyes.
We do find in prisons those who keep The Golden Rule – who treat others as they would have others treat them. Men do strive to better themselves, to become aware of what they do not know – and need to know – and to educate themselves accordingly, to form friendships that are not predicated upon survival but upon common interests, to find, as Buber said, their “special place in the cosmos” and “connection with destiny.” We even find men who attain the third category of “living relation,” who transcend the first two stages and establish “a relation to the mystery of being, to the Absolute or God.”
The Sioux Indian did not get into any fights on the bus. He went home to the northern plains to live. After he was out a month he called me to say that he was doing fine. Yeah… yeah… he had met a nice gal and was getting set to move into her trailer. He also got a job delivering building supplies and was saving up to put a down payment on a used pickup truck. But what was really important – what he was calling to tell me – was that he had gone to Wisconsin to see Miracle, the white buffalo heifer. He had actually seen her with his own eyes. Did I know that she was not an albino, an anomaly or some freakish creature – but was a testament to God’s inexplicable power to affect change, cleansing change, black to white change – a merciful and beautiful purity! – like the white lotus flower rising out of the muck!?
I said I knew and understood.
A few months later I heard from him for the second and last time. We talked a little about spiritual matters and I could still hear the wonder in his voice. “You’re doing well,” I said, “I can tell.” Then he casually stated every enlightened man’s credo. “I’m a king. I’ve got a good woman, a clean house, a steady job” and then, as a concession to the exigencies of commerce, a little pride of ownership crept into his voice and he added, “and a pickup truck that only needs paint.”
Our brother and Reverend Master Yao Xin Shakya are happy to announce a link between A Single Thread and Dharma Wind Zen Sangha. For those interested Reverend Master Yao Xin offers days of practice online, articles and meets in France every year with his Sangha members to celebrate the Dharma.
“If you don’t write of things deep inside your own heart, what’s the use of churning out so many words?” Ryokan, Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf
Yes, I say. What is the use of churning out words if they do not come from deep within….where darkness and the unfamiliar live. Write, write, write….without worry, the worry that there are countless unread words buried in basements, catalogued under dust.
So….don’t worry. Dive into the darkness of your own life and pull up from where the pressure is dozens of times greater than standing along the shore as a bystander. It is there, in the terrifying depth, in the dark where the dragonfish and the frilly shark thrive.
Bring them up!
You’ve lived a lifetime already….can you produce your own light yet? Have you forgotten you are the light of the world?
You’ve learned to swallow whole the vagaries of life….have you made a meal of them yet? Have you forgotten how to cook?
You’ve hunted all your life….have you found the truth yet? Have you forgotten what you were looking for?
We sit here together in the candle light.
How much longer will our prime last?
Our temples are already grey.
I visit my old friends
Half of them have become ghosts.
Fear and sorrow choke me and burn my bowels ….Ryokan
Forget the sentiments of the old ghosts. Stop checking the mirror. Stop visiting the graveyards. Dive into the depths, return to where you came from….your mantra is write, write, write….for your own sake….for god sake, write.
A Study in Desire and Letting Go
By Yao Xiang Shakya
It sounds lovely, doesn’t it….to go for a morning swim. Well, actually it was but not without the possibility of obstacles. As I’ve thought about this the obstacles are akin to the undertows in the ocean, the rip tides, the jellyfish, crabs and even seaweed that floats up and sticks to the skin.The stuff that bugs us. In technical Buddhist language this stuff is called the fabrications in the mind and body. They are the obstacles and they are what we need to relinquish until we relinquish the magical ego.
First, let me explain the obstacles arising in a Sunday morning swim.
I swim at a local Y in a 5 lane lap pool. In many ways a fine, fine place to swim. Sometimes, however, the schedule for the pool is such that we lap swimmers, those who go to simply to do laps, limits the use of 3 of the 5 lanes. Now the pool is small with narrow lap lanes making it crowded with two swimmers per lane. If you do the arithmetic, it becomes clear there are 2 lanes open for lap swimmers which adds up to 4 swimmers. This Y is in a big city….which means it is very good luck if you show up to swim and are able to get into a lane. It borders on miraculous. Immediately there is an opportunity to be grateful on the one hand and irritated on the other. BUT….wait a minute. Both the possibility of good luck and bad luck are in the mind as a mental formation. A mental fabrication that the magic ego uses to cling to the object of desire….does this sound familiar? I hope so.
The swimmer always takes a chance when he goes for a Sunday morning swim. This is true for every moment, for every person, for every situation, for every place. OK? Life, for the ignorant, is a crap shoot. But let’s get a closer look at the crap shoot for the swimmer as an example of what happens.
The undertow and rip tide of anxiety of those who show up to swim is held in check (thanks to our being trained to be civil) but it is on every swimmer’s mind. And it can be felt in the locker room. If there are lots of swimmers, a sense of urgency infects the locker room. If there are only a few swimmers, the pace to the showers is not a race. STOP. Take a look at how the situation seems to be driving the experience. We tend to think it is the situation, rather than the mental fabrications of the magical ego. The situation is not in charge, the mind is.
It is one reason we practice. To clear the mind of silly fabrications that come up over and over again. Let’s jump back into the pool.
If one is lucky enough to get into the pool, jellyfish, crabs and seaweed may sting, bite or stick to you. If one is unlucky, then one deals with the trash in the sand from being beached. Either way, practice occurs. But only if you know where you are and how the magic ego wants to reek havoc. Of course, the way it reeks havoc is to begin to display desire to get what you want or get rid of what you don’t want….which usually comes with a boat load of emotions.
Let me explain.
Say you get lucky and get into the pool….the same lucky and unlucky situation continues, but now in the pool. Since the lanes are narrow, and the pool is full, one is open to getting struck by another swimmer either in the same lane or the next lane over. It happens, I know. A slap from a swimmer’s foot or hand….stings. Less often, but still very much a possibility are bites from a crabby swimmer who thinks he is somehow being shafted in some way or another and that you are the shafter. Each situation becomes sticky in the mind, and tricks for the ego making it impossible to just swim.
These are the conditions of going for a Sunday morning swim. It is always one or more of these conditions. You might wonder why would anyone (including me) put themselves through this misery. Well, my answer is simple….everything and everywhere, no matter what you do is always one or more of lucky and unlucky conditions. They may come in different shapes, with different names but they come nevertheless. It is the nature of this world….to be lucky and unlucky. It is inescapable unless…..and until we practice….and awaken.
Whoa! To know this….to know this well….requires a sober, even mindedness. It is to reject nothing and accept nothing, both at once. This puts you on your toes. Not to pick and choose what comes your way, but to reject nothing and accept nothing. You have to be awake to the situation with an open (empty) mind. In other words, it means you need to be like that duck with a wet back….keep swimming and reject nothing and accept nothing.
HOW?
Let’s go back to the Y as an example. Before you even leave the house you remind yourself lucky and unlucky is right here and everywhere. To be ready to meet lucky and unlucky in every moment and every place all the time. Just meet it without the fabrications of the magic ego. But who is meeting lucky and unlucky? Not me….me wants, craves, hungers to be lucky and only lucky….but there is that which is able to meet what comes without craving. It is the one who rejects nothing and accepts nothing. This is liberation.
There is a tai chi move where you leave your hands hanging against an imaginary mountain and continue on in the movement….the hands are relinquished to the mountain and are not in charge. YES! Your hands are not in charge. You relinquish them to the invisible world beyond the sense doors….to the something greater which is the vast inconceivable source which can’t be faced or turned away from.
And if you are not liberated….
Tell yourself to slow down, to wait, to pull back and attend to whatever you are doing at the time….from making the bed to making a cup of tea.
Get ready. Watch the sense doors….and the desire that comes….spot the desire coming up all the time and shun it. Don’t give voice to it. Shun the attachment to the object of desire over and over again. Begin to notice how your mind begins to crank up a desire for or against some-thing. Shun it. Shun it.
When desire comes up in the form of rights in the name of complaint, of wanting to be right and wishes for others to get out of the way, don’t act on any of it. Slow down. Get ready. See what is going on in the mind and relinquish it.
It is spring. The air is dust free from all the rain. The sky hovers with the mirage of blue light. Every morning I let the dogs out, first old Bear then our sleepy head, Harry. They run into the morning along the sides of the fence. Near the deck I see two doves. “A pair.” I think. I watch them shimmie and waddle through the cedar chips for food. It’s unusual to see doves now. Many birds died off or are so small in number none of them seem to make it to our back yard. Doves and hummingbirds are among those who have dwindled away.
For more than a week I saw the pair on the ground unphased by Bear and Harry’s morning run. But this week I noticed one of them along the top of the fence by the house walking back and forth, back and forth on the fence as if he or she were a guard bird blowing a bugle of cooing. It cooed and cooed and cooed. Marched and marched and turned and marched again.
Relentless in the march, unceasing in the cooing.
I didn’ think too much of it for the first few hours but when it seemed to continue all day and into the next day I realized it was calling for its mate. In fact it was doing a mating dance at the end of each round of the march. It dipped and in a showy display of white fanned its spiky feathers. But soon….the cooing changed from a love song to a lament as it alternated the cooing from the top of the fence to a cry from the top of a tree. Its mate was not coming….the agony was evident.
Today there is no marching, no cooing. The fence is empty. “This is the play of God.” I think. Both ignorance and bondage naturally accompany the misery and attainment of liberation. Salvation comes with anguish, always. To be unattached to the pleasure of the pair of singing doves and the pain of their sorrowful loss is renunciation.
When the world is known as it is, impermanent, when the world is known to always offer pain and pleasure, letting go is known as wisdom. But….you say….what is one to do?
Until you know the world is impermanent, until you know the world always offers pain and pleasure, practice letting go….
Begin with the body. Move to the mind. Let yourself dissolve. To restrain the sense doors is the beginning of wisdom.
In order to be perfect in any practice, seemingly useless experience must be undergone. Any disciple who has entered any kind of practice must begin (and continue) with seemingly unnecessary, futile things. But of course these things are a part of the discipline. Without such seemingly trifling things there can be no perfecting of the practice. -Kaneko
Since the death of my teacher I find my practice is both more devotional and full of what looks like seemingly useless activities. The devotional takes the shape of investigation and study of many different ways of liberation; the seemingly useless activities are tending to and looking after all the things that are cultivated and corruptible. This includes the body and the mind. In order to be able to do this without ambition, I require discipline and an awareness that although the cultivated and corruptible is delusion it is in the water in which the body and mind swims.
Knowing this is the flowering of knowing that…. all things are buddha-dharma, and since all things includes the cultivated and corruptible there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings. (Dogen)
Practice includes all things, the seemingly useless and the seemingly useful and all things are Buddha-dharma.
The word seemingly is an important distinction suggesting there is delusion and realization. But….what makes the distinction? The ego. IT….this fiend of fiends, continues to measure and divide and conclude practice is this and not that, practice is a good feeling and not a bad feeling, practice is sweet and not bitter.
To carry yourself (the fiend of fiends) forward and experience myriad things is delusion. How do we do this….how do we see that we are carrying our self forward? When we notice that we look in and at just one-side. And what does this one-sided way look like….it looks like judgment. It looks at life with a peeler; we peel away what we like and value it and toss away what we don’t like and value it as useless. When we split the cultivated and corruptible things into two piles, one being useless and the other being useful the self is carried forward. It’s the Way of delusion.
Realization meets what comes into life, what is in life which includes the myriad things and sees them as awakening. WOW! That is a miraculous claim. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. It suggests everything is awakening….and everything is delusion all at once….the weeds and the flowers….the ugly and the beautiful….the light and the dark….the useless and the useful. Nothing is peeled away and divided into two piles.
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.
When we realize delusion, we awaken, when we think realization is something, say becoming a Buddha, we are sentient beings trying to become something. This is being a sentient being and not a realized awakened being.
This understanding leaves very little work to be done on one hand and much work on the other. When anyone focuses on the body and mind, on the ego-me-identities they enter the swamp of delusion. It is in this carrying-forward-the-self-swamp where there is much work to be done. When anyone focuses on the deep ocean of water and not on the body and mind of cultivated and corruptible things there is little to be done.
When we are attached or averse to any ego-me-identity we head for the swamp, when we see all things as manifestations of the deep water, when we see the deep water we are in realization. Nothing is divided, measured or left out; birth, old age, sickness and death.
Early on in my work with Venerable Ming Zhen Shakya (Homage to her name) I was fraught with some thing or another and decided to do a seven day retreat….lots of sitting, silence, eating meals in a formal way, chanting, and so forth. I told Venerable Ming I was on retreat and at the end of the retreat I told her I finished it. She said to me. “Good! You’re done with that Nonsense!”
Why did she say that to me? Aren’t we supposed to meditate, chant, be silent and such? Yes, but….it is not leaping clear. Meditation, silence, retreats, and eating carefully are all fine but they are what they are….as my example suggests. They are a plank up, a hand up if you will. Whatever thing I was fraught over no longer bugged me, but had I leaped clear? No.
I had fallen backwards into a swampy place with a me-identity and the retreat was a plank I walked on to get back into the deep end of the water. It wasn’t leaping clear. I needed a different way which I must say is far steeper, includes mountains and requires much more than sitting and silence. It is interior work, more of a killing….as in if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. When you meet the ego, kill it….or if you prefer let it go. The ego does not attain the heights of spiritual practice.
What is left….no thing to attach to….no thing to detach from. This is Zen, the practice of leaping clear of the cultivated and corruptible while tending to it all.
This morning, I am remembering being with each of my parents when they were dying, including the moment that each died.
My mother died in a hospital bed in her living room. I had started to give her morphine orally to treat her pain. She soon closed her eyes and began to breathe quietly, rhythmically. Her limbs grew cold as her system began to shut down….her torso became quite warm as the blood flowed to her primary organs to try to keep her alive. I was on the phone talking to Andrea on New Year’s Eve when my dad called to me from the living room to say he thought Mom had stopped breathing. I hung up the phone and went to her bedside. She was indeed gone. I choose the word “gone” purposely because that was my reaction at the time. I quite clearly remember having no reaction to the body that lay before me. The notion or belief that this thin, worn out old body was my mother never occurred to me. My mother was gone.
Just before Thanksgiving my father got the news that he was filled with cancer. I flew to Florida to be with him. I spent a wonderful few days with him prior to his death on Thanksgiving morning. When I woke up that morning, he lay in a deep sleep breathing quietly, rhythmically as my mother had done. My instinct was to sit next to him with his wife, Pat. We did so for several hours. His breathing became more shallow. I got on the bed next to him and kissed him on the forehead as he took his final breath. I then stood next to the bed and looked at the body. It was not simply still…it was lifeless. He too was gone.
It has been years since each died and I reflect deeply these days on whether I can feel the eternal. Looking back, I realize now that I felt the eternal when each of my parents died. They had left their bodies…vanished…were gone. I could also see or feel without doubt, without thinking, that they were never their bodies …..and that they continued on in a way that my thinking could not understand and that my words could not describe.
The soldier decides not to fight. The dog begins to bark. The body begins to shiver. The dog begins to lick. The woman decides to read. The breath begins and ends. The eyes blink open and closed. The dog begins to pace. The heat blows out and stops.
When you know with sincerity and in truth that you are not the body, you are not the mind, you begin to know who you are and this knowing-shift makes all the difference to how you live in the body, with the mind. You begin to see that change is the Divine, Eternal consciousness….and you see that there is no necessity for the mind and body to grieve for the so-called temporary life in the body with the mind. You accept the inevitable change of sloughing off the body with the mind. And this seeing is seeing through, the fundamental seeing through with the eyes of Buddha.
Knowing this….is knowing God’s design….and further yet, it is knowing the joy of God….the joy that today….you are in the presence of God when Bear is anxious and Harry barks. You are being there when the thunder rumbles across the sky unseen but evident, when the lightning strikes through without a doer, when water runs downhill, when bats hang upside down, when boys run at one another with sticks, when adders slither and beets stain the hands. All of this….is the play of God….all of this is the presence of God….not held in any book, not confined by any dogma….defined by any doctrine.
God occurs….is to be….is met with….is never anywhere else but everywhere all the time. We are in the middle of IT….IT is us.
With these eyes we rest in the worldly winds; the coming and going of pleasure and pain. With these eyes we forfeit ambition for or against. The mind of man craves, the eyes of Buddha accepts. All performances stop. The mind unmoved, the eyes wide open. Picking and choosing cease. Everything is the face of God, God the face of everything hidden in the manifested stuff of skin and bone, wood and shape, name and form everywhere.
Hankering after neither this or that….hankering after falls away revealing the one bright pearl.
Everything that comes into your life is in service of the ego until you see that it all has come into your life in the service of awakening. To see, without disturbance, the wounds, the gains, the losses, the pleasures, the pains, the blame, the praise, the disgrace, the honor….all of it…. the changing flow of the water into the ocean is Buddha vision. Nothing is counted as credit or debt, all blame and shame disappear, the hammer of guilt is dropped, the veil of shame torn off. All of this forgotten, never to be held against or tallied for….the chain of the tallying self is snapped….delusion cleared away….the burden abandoned.
Only a fool returns to this binding nonsense.
by Yao Xiang Shakya,
Contemplative Order of Hsu Yun
