Tag: buddhism

All of us, whether we consciously know it or not, at some level continue to hold the great question of existence (the “Great Matter” according to Zen master Dogen.) These inquiries can vary from occasional spiritual pursuits (checking things out here and there) to perhaps basic Sunday, or even just holiday, Christian church worship and then all the way to being a yogi meditating in a cave.  In between lies the everyday dance of seeking the pleasant and avoiding the unpleasant, seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort — for ourselves, our families and others.  Why would this basic trait, common to all conscious beings, be at all connected to spiritual pursuits?   For humans, we could say that this is because once basic physical needs are met, we venture along the slippery slope of seeking happiness, for ourselves and others.  Happiness is not really a physical thing, rather a state of mind or simply a State, much like love is a state.  True happiness is special.  So, this “seeking happiness” or maybe just seeking peace can lead one toward spiritual pursuits, especially if one sees the basic nature of our realm to be forever changing and impermanent.  Once that sinks in, and unfortunately for most only at the end of their lives, the pursuit of happiness through attachment to the things, people, pursuits, accomplishments and other actions we love, loses some of its sweetness, and becomes a “pointer.” Disenchantment arises and we ironically ask, is there more?

What is the “payoff” of meditation and a disciplined spiritual training program, called “a practice?”   This question applies to many Buddhists and also those pursuing other types of meditation and spiritual work.  If an outsider were to watch what happens during a week-long Buddhist retreat, or sesshin, they might be appalled or very puzzled seeing people gazing motionless toward a wall, doing “nothing” for hours.  They then get up and silently practice walking mediation and later silently eat a communal formal meal (Oryoki) with very prescribed procedures.  The day starts early, 5:00 am.  What would be the payoff for this “self-induced torture?”  Beginners, and even advanced retreat participants will likely experience uncomfortable periods, from physical body pain due to unaccustomed sitting to mental pain of simply doing the discipline and concentration, to mental pain of facing difficult thoughts while sitting.

While Zen Master Dogen describes shikantaza, or just sitting, as the technique of non-thinking and experientially being “enlightenment itself,” a vast majority of those that sit experience a plethora of thoughts and emotions.  Due to our conditioning or karma, it is as if one’s head is a bell experiencing various harmonic levels of mental vibration.  Consider your head to be a cooking pot.  Sitting is all about taking care and being aware just like diligently preparing a savory pot of stew.  A lot of stuff happens while “sitting on the cushion!”  Despite the hardships, after a sesshin most individuals will report to a lesser or greater degree a sense of calmness and an ineffable feeling of being a little closer to the heart of the “Great Matter.”  For some, the whole retreat might be a truly wonderful and peaceful experience.  This might be attributable to their years of training or simply due to fortunate karma, or in other words, the coming together of positive causes and conditions. Below is a description one person’s recent experience at a retreat followed by a story from this mystic.   Sometimes there is unexpected encouragement.

This individual is an advanced practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism.  His dharma talk and experience can be listened to here.   Understandably, this individual was very concentrated and measured and likely his mind was quite calm, like a lake with few ripples.  He describes a certain period of walking meditation, where he was carefully focusing on making a right angle turn at the end of the meditation hall, when seemingly straight out of the floor, he hears the words “I will help you.”  He describes the words as “articulated, enunciated and said with great authority.”  This experience made a big, energetic, impact on this individual, creating a sense of encouragement, wonder, and tranquility.  These feelings had a staying effect.  He said he “felt cared for.”  Weeks later and after talking with his teacher he felt that the experience was a direct result of his concentration efforts and practice.  In the end he concludes that the words were not important at all; what was important was the openness, viability, receptivity and wisdom brought on by the event.   His talk is entitled; the True Dharma Appears of Itself.   

Prior to formally committing to the practice of Buddhist teachings I routinely meditated, primarily using various Samatha or yogic methods involving breathing techniques and mantras.  About 26 years ago, at the time working in Nevada in a State environmental position, helping support the family, I became increasingly discouraged as to what the benefits of meditation were. There seemed little peace or joy in it at the time and worldly stresses seemed to be piling on. Then, during a certain meditation, clear out of the blue the words “I am” reverberated in my head, and really in the whole body.  The experience was very uplifting and encouraging.  Looking back on this experience, the words “articulated, enunciated and said with great authority,” applied exactly.  A definite feeling or acknowledgement of being cared for, not being alone in the Universe, was present.  I still feel this to be true.   Particularly back then my practice included a certain amount of devotion toward a higher being, so the immediate thought was, “is God speaking to me?”  My answer/response to this was simply curiosity.  Buddhism teaches us emptiness, the essential no separate self of all phenomenon.  The flip side of this is interdependence.  To have a mediation experience with clear words is a blessing as well as a trap, that is, if one overthinks it. Internet research suggests a state where the individual realizes they are the pure, formless “I AM,” beyond the ego or mind. This is a non-dual state and a mystery beyond words.  Finally, as Goldstein and Kornfield write in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom “The greatest of our spiritual experiences become only a memory.  When one Western student described to an Asian teacher all of the important experiences of his years of practice, the only response he got was, ‘Oh, something more to let go of.’”

This mystic will add that everyday can be a spiritual experience, if we just stay mindful.  Our cat, Katy just passed away recently. She had advanced kidney failure, stopped her usual routines and then eventually refused to eat.  She had been sleeping under a chair in the closet for about a week, but on the morning of the day when the vet was to arrive to euthanize her, we found her nestled in the bottom tube of the cat tree.  It was a beautiful and sunny fall morning and Katy staggered to the door, wanting out.  I spent the next hour or so with her, while waiting for the vet, watching her slowly move from spot to spot, sunning herself, sniffing the air, and still interacting with me by gently rubbing up against my legs.  Did she know the end was near? Maybe, but that does not matter so much.  Did she feel the warmth of the sun and the gentle breezes? YES!  I sobbed uncontrollably while holding her as the vet administered the injection. 

There’s something to being on the highway for this old mystic that is a gateway for insight.  It’s been that way a long time.  Visual stimulation is probably the biggest trigger for human response and the movement while driving and seeing others around you, going and coming, passing and being passed is certainly fascinating and expanding.  It’s Saturday morning and this mystic is on his way to volunteer at the local Buddhist festival, driving down the freeway.  I wonder about my fellow travelers on the road and what they will do for the day, and perhaps most importantly, their experiences for the day.   This includes myself.  Saturday, especially for those that work weekdays, often is a day of errands or a day with special purpose.  The light entering my retina is translated into pictures and this evokes a response.  In Buddhist philosophy, the mind is considered the sixth sense, with thoughts and mental phenomena considered its objects. Just as the five physical senses perceive external objects, the mind perceives internal mental objects like thoughts, memories, and emotions. So, imagine all those people in all those cars, using their senses, including thought.  Now, as it turns out, on this particular Saturday, one of the Zen teachers is also leading a day of Mindfulness, with check in online.  While this mystic is not participating directly, this was in the back of his mind. 

I see “people” on the highway mostly just as cars.  It is thought and past conditioning that opens up an internal dialogue.  How odd, these carbon-based life forms, essentially life-support vehicles (of what, consciousness?), moving in car vehicles, with both being composed of earth elements and ultimately powered by the fossil energy of the sun.  It can get strange in a hurry.  Now, imagine each individual, or individuals, in those cars involved with their own sensory processes, some just grooving on music, others deep in thought about “problems” or maybe just planning lunch.  Some harbor anger, maybe at the big black truck tailgating them, or perhaps someone is having an argument.  There are a myriad possibilities.  Shift scales and move to the small, down to the quantum scale.  The momentary highway scene loses meaning – poof it is gone.  Same if we expand out, until earth is light years away. Again, a whole different world.  But one thing remains at all three scales and every intermediate one, namely the very sense of Being. It is very subtle and in Buddhist philosophy is called suchness.  As it is beyond thought, it is hard to describe.  Mindfulness is the process of being the observer of all six senses and opening up to this suchness.  It is a way to “see” more than the ordinary and very limited world.   Anther technique, Zen meditation or Shikantaza, just sitting, contains an exercise of letting go of thoughts, or non-thinking.  Anything we can think up, at least in terms of philosophy is not direct insight or Kensho, rather a dualistic mode capable of perpetuating a small separate self, even if the thought is a most excellent one!

Within this suchness many things will occur over the 24 hours of the day, both seen and unseen.   Not all of them will be pleasant. For example, due to natural laws one may have a car accident, or perhaps a heart attack – and your car will kill things. There is the ever-present dance within the world of phenomenon.  But for most of us there will be a series of basic experiences triggered by either the sense objects or thoughts that will have the flavor of either neutral, positive or negative.  While we do live in a mysterious world and universe, so much of our “reality” is wrapped up in our mental processes, namely reacting to the sense objects and thought objects and essentially being jerked around by them feeling very small and separate.  This mystic has talked previously about how we fabricate our world and create a mental model of it.  With mindfulness, seeing around the edges and through the cracks opens our perspective.  Just directly seeing the actual thing…. And all the people I see today, including this old mystic, contain and are influenced by a world of conditioning, namely inherited karma and karma we produce every time we react to a sense or thought object.  While I can never know “you” your actions will influence me! It’s a giant pool table of interacting billiard balls!  So, please be kind and considerate! 😊 Suchness can be kind and loving.

My volunteer assignment at the Buddhist festival was directing various Buddhist groups where to drop off and set up their booths.  Now, these are people who have trained in mindfulness.  Over the course of an hour and a half I interacted with everyone from twinkly-eyed masters, to happy hippy Buddhists, to older attentive and kind lay Buddhist practitioners.  Not everyone seemed mindful, however.    A few just drove right by.  Maybe they were so mindful they already knew where to drop off their stuff.  Others came late or exhibited some level of anxiety.  I loved the relaxed ladies who were followed by their non-Buddhist husbands in vans or trucks.  Good karma!  The point here is that all of us are shaped by conditioning developed through living in this realm and this in turn shapes our interactions with others.  It’s a work in progress.  Oh, and suchness includes thought, but don’t label it as suchness.  Who are we, anyway?

It’s been about a year since the last post.  I’m OK – still mesmerized by phenomenon. And, yes, we live in dark political times.  The subject of this post breaches the topic of people on a spiritual path — why the path — based mostly on observations/interactions within my Zen sangha (community) and also reflections on some relationships with old (and not so old) friends.  Most of my spare writing time over the last year has been spent working on kind of a personal memoir using an online service called StoryWorth. It was actually a gift from one of my daughters as encouragement to write some stories about life experiences.  A little “nudge” from the kids, as well — better ask questions now, rather than wonder about “Pops” when his physical presence is just ashes. Also, my wife and I have also been traveling (she is not a mystic but a pragmatic down-to-earth person that is not particularly attached to the common “glitz” of the world.)  We have seen some amazing animals and scenery in Costa Rica and most recently in the Galapagos and Peru.  And you know, those creatures, be they sea lions, marine iguanas, giant ancient tortoises or the elusive Quetzal bird—they are like you and me, wanting to bask in the sun and feel the breeze. 

Yup, this mystic is aging, now 74 with some sever arthritis and  slowing senses. But like the wounded black knight in a Monty Python skit I and my suffering will keep moving along the spiritual path (which is not really linear nor is it winding)  — absurd as it may seem at times.

The Buddhist practice continues.  After some years of Zen practice, two things are becoming increasingly clear. First, there is something personally positive and reinforcing about continued meditation and mindfulness along with efforts to follow ethical and moral guidelines and study dharma (the teachings) through literature and interaction with teachers and others.  Secondly, it is hard to gage other beings.  They are a mystery.  People that practice a spiritual tradition, and for that matter those,  that on the surface do not, are each unique and in a “different space” as to mental and physical character, spiritual state, abilities, desired goals and life/work/family/relationship/socioeconomic/political status, etc.  We are all products of causes and conditions.  Using the term karma, it is the past actions of an individual and the effects of the collective interactions of that individual with others (who further share karma with still others –ad infinitum)  that determine the individuals present state and “steer” one in a certain direction in future existences.  For those at my Zen center, including this mystic, as we are all unique, we don’t “start” at the same place, do we?  Matter of fact spiritual paths are not linear. But why practice, e.g., Zen and what is the goal?  What is the payoff? 

Toward the end of his life Buddha reportedly said that all he taught was “suffering and the and of suffering.”  There is a certain, mostly unspoken, tension and confusion regarding a spiritual practice that leads to the end of suffering and whether that is the same as “enlightenment” and whether that should be the goal.  Recognizing the diversity of practitioners, probably the main intention, and not necessarily a “goal” of those who practice is to relieve suffering, whether it be for themselves alone or including others.

This mystic will argue that practice will lead to being less disturbed by suffering and the practice involves work with one’s Mind.  The Oxherding Pictures describe the Zen path of finding the Way and eventually taming the Ox, who in part represents our undisciplined and delusional mind. Even when one has tamed the Ox, and is no longer pulled around by craving, one is only half way along the path.  The Oxherding Pictures include the path that leads to no path and non-duality.  So, there is a lot to practice, but clearly the practice leads toward less suffering by taking us away from being affected or disturbed by our suffering and leading us toward a radical acceptance of our condition.  Hint: if we are working with our minds and the process is one of “taming,” perhaps literally getting out of hour head, where do “we” go.  Suggestion: a place known as the heart. 

My teacher tells me that “Zen is not an improvement project.”  However, Meditation and mindfulness practice, study of teachings and the precepts leads, to what might be called personal improvement and less suffering.  It is an intermediate and ongoing stage of practice, kind of where we sometimes calm the ox down.  There is some payoff in this alone, but as the Oxherding pictures imply the ultimate utility of Zen is more complex and includes a journey away from the small self and eventually a journey back to the everyday.  This mystic finds it sobering that even the wisest monks and senior lay members of my Zen center profess that they are likely “lifetimes” away from complete awakening or enlightenment.  However, no matter the starting point, a momentary glimpse, a momentary shift from the head to the heart, a momentary shift to crystal clear reality or “suchness” can happen at any time and is an important, “mini-payoff” for keeping up the effort in practice. 

To end.  There was an individual at our Zen center, whom this mystic really respected.  He excelled in chanting, was a dedicated meditator, taught and helped others. In the end he took his own life due to substance abuse issues and declining health.  Our karma is strong.  It is vicious and it can be cruel. There are no guarantees.  From Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva, he says “When you look at others think that it will be through them that you will come to Buddha hood.  So look at them with frank and loving hearts.”   Not all beings whom we meet, whether they be people, snakes or trees will always be kind or even appear very lovable.  They will invoke feelings.  But the way does lie in acceptance of not being disturbed by ones suffering.   It is the way of the heart, with suffering lessened when your mind is not trying to tame a wild bull that after all is just a concept.