Waking up to zazen

So I was talking with a good friend the other day, and explaining to them that my injury* had prevented me from keeping up a dedicated zazen schedule, but that weirdly, I was beginning to see that zazen could be done outside of sitting on a cushion, to which she replied "How clever of your body to teach you that!" The more I thought about it, the more I realised how right she was. How many injuries can prevent you from sitting meditation? Not many. It has to be something extremely localised, and persistent. So the abscess was a very particular condition, perhaps the only thing that could have prevented me from sitting zazen and therefore granting me a chance to see practice without my normal practice. There is a certain bloody-mindedness to the Way, which goes along the lines of you will wake up no matter what. So then it just becomes an issue of how much you want to resist or go along with that movement. There is something irritating about insisting that the world and the universe is beneficent, something rather of the Californian Optimist about saying that things are meant to be just as they are...but that's what I'm saying. I've always struggled with the reasons for zazen, and Zen practice in general. Recently I had the idea that zazen makes things easier. But now I'm not so sure. Zazen, I now see, is utterly useless, and I  mean really useless in all ways spiritual, emotional, and developmental. It only expresses leaving things exactly as they are. It took not doing it to see that. Which I can't recommend exactly. So now, when I get back to doing zazen, I can do so knowing that it doesn't rely on anything apart from my desire to express that. There's no duty, no "ought to", no club to join or thing to prove. Only sitting. Now if I could just convince my posterior...

* a euphemism for an abscess in my butt....

Zen Heroes: the Marvellous Bankei

Bamkei is one of those Zen masters who you don't really hear about. He had a subversive style, amongst the Zen people of his day, because he seemed to be totally anti-practice. For him, Buddha nature had nothing to do with zazen, koans or even any sort of "mindfulness": he just insisted that whatever situation you are in, or type of person you are, you are Buddha right there and then. His attitude seemed to be that practice of any kind could cloud your understanding of your own Buddha nature. He didn't seem to insist on zazen, but his students did. He had no problem with people sleeping during zazen. He railed against the asceticism that Zen practitioners can fall into. He also left no official disciples.

"Practice" is the buzzword in Buddhist circles today. The familar koan about rubbing the tile having nothing to do with being a Buddha is wheeled out as a nod to the sort of untrammeled Zen that Bankei was spreading, but really everyone ends up still playing the Buddhist game, sitting for all their worth on a regular basis, wearing robes, building centres and so on and so forth. It's not that any of this is bad, but quite simply that the trappings can get in the way. It's easy to confuse sangha building and the "Zen game" with a real enquiry into Self, life and death. This is what Bankei pointed out.

I would recommend both Peter Haskel's and Norman Waddell's books about this one-off Zen great. Hurrah for Bankei!

The Zen Survival Handbook: chapter one

Zen isn't easy. Our practice doesn't always match up to the aspirations we have.We may become slack, or ill, or too busy. We may just struggle with the classic Zen koan, as did Dogen: "Why bother with Zen?"

Often, our Zen comrades might be a little tightlipped when it comes to encouraging words. Maybe they've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner, or maybe they figure that you'll work it out on your own. Which you will. But sometimes you need help from another to be able to figure it out on your own...

"Zen is too hard"

When people say this, they usually mean one of two things: 1) they don't "get" Zen, or 2) they find zazen painful and difficult.

In both cases, you are absolutely right to feel this way. But let's deal with the former concern first.

Let's be clear: there are loads of Zen stories about people hearing a single Zen phrase or the sound of a pebble hitting bamboo or something similar, and "getting it." What these neat tales usually omit is that the person in question has been with a teacher, doing zazen and koans and whatnot, possibly for years and years beforehand. You may have heard of a fellow called Hui Neng, who "got it" after hearing someone recite a Buddhist text, despite never having had any Buddhist training. This may well have happened. Or it may not: the story of Hui Neng is more a myth intended to make certain points, rather than a historical account. Anyway, neither you nor I are Hui neng. He had his way; we each have ours. You are not expected to "get" Zen. In fact, the less getting of it that you do, the better. It is not something to be owned, known, or acquired. If you feel in the dark, unable to explain to your curious friends and family exactly what Zen is, then bravo. You are on your Way.

The latter problem, concerning zazen, is widespread and usually rears its head early on, especially if you attend a sesshin (a Zen retreat) where the zazen can be pretty intense. The most important thing to know is that the pain generally lessens with time, and/or you become accustomed to it, which makes it much less of a hardship. Be kind to yourself. If you are in real pain, then you can move. Yes, we are aiming for stillness, but we're not killing ourselves for it. Moving about with every sign of discomfort is not to be recommended because, as you'll find if you try it, it often make things harder. But everyone moves from time to time. A lot of emphasis is placed on not annoying your neighbour, at least in the Zen gang I hang out with. But don't place undue emphasis on this. In all seriousness, annoyance is good practice, especially for older hands who may be stuck in their ways...

It's not a competition. Yes, you may be the only person weeping with pain and shifting every five minutes. So be it. Zen is not about stoicism or asceticism, though it often is mistaken for both. Just don't add any stories to your pain, you know, like "I'm rubbish at Zen" ,"I'm always so weak" or "Why is everyone else having it so easy and yet I'm suffering?" These sorts of tales told to yourself will make it harder than it is. So don't do it.

In the long run, zazen actually makes things easier, at least that's my opinion. That doesn't mean that practise will always be pretty: in fact, as you begin to see the contents of your mind and life more clearly, it can get decidedly ugly. But as I say, in the long run...

READ THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF THIS FASCINATING GUIDE err.. SOME OTHER TIME!

Zen and the art of becoming cliched

I'm a sucker for Buddhist writings: I own more of Shambhala's books than they do. I trawl websites and blogs and I used to buy the two big magazines before the demise of Borders, the sole stockist in my city. If one immerses oneself in all this print for long enough, you begin to see patterns forming; patterns which quickly become cliches or buzzwords.  I'm guilty of it in my own amateurish scrawlings. Spoken words I believe are less susceptible to becoming stale. But writings start off somewhat stale, and only get worse with repetition and time. So for expediency's sake, I shall engage in a little cliche busting, albeit with the greatest respect for the writers who are bravely putting their stuff out there. Apologies for the lack of slanty thing over the "e" of cliche. I don't know how to do it in Blogger...

In no particular order:

1) Domestic Zen

Yes, yes, Zen isn't all about samadhi, koan and and satori. It's about real stuff like housework and washing your pants. I love that Zen has that practical edge and isn't all crazy metaphysical hooha. But I like the hooha. I like that Zen looks squarely at the Great Matter of Life and Death, and at our small ideas about self, time, and our place in the Universe and busts them right apart. And there's some magic in that. It's not all domestic drudgery hem hem sorry Dharma. 

2) "The present moment"

What can I say? The whole thing behind this teaching it seems is to get a person to see that it's serves no purpose catapulting their mind about like a time-travelling worry machine, that everything you neeed is right at hand. But this phrase gets chucked around so much, when I hear it I have visions of time all sliced up into little bits and marching past my eyes...there is no present moment! There are no "moments"! Time is not divided up into little moment-shaped pieces, okay?

3) The koan about rubbing the tile to make a mirror

Zazen has no point, you can't become Buddha by sitting, blah blah blah...Yeah yeah, but it was his rubbing the tile that made the other dude realise his Buddha nature wasn't it? This koan is in almost every book about Zen that I pick up. That's all really.

4) Babies and their bathwater

This one crops up whenever the state of Western Dharma is up for discussion. Archaeologists of the future may well conclude that Western Buddhists were cruel to children.

5) Zen and the art of...

Okay guilty as charged. "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" was a great book, which no-one seems really to read. They just appropriate the title for their own devious ends...

I hope you've enjoyed my rant. And taken it with a large dosage of salt. 

Zen without zazen

In the Summer I had a minor operation hem hem which has made it difficult to sit zazen. For a time it was improving, but now it's got worse again and I'm left feeling rather distant from zen practice. There's a sesshin coming up in November that I'm hoping to be healed up enough for...

But my question is this: if you can't sit, are you outside the jurisdiction of Zen? Can one really be a Zen student if you can't sit for hours whether on a cushion or in a chair? Most Zen teachers of  both old and current times recommend two things: having a teacher, and sitting zazen. Nought out of two isn't so good.

People may say "It doesn't matter, it's the spirit of the thing, not how many hours you sit." But that isn't backed up by contemporary Zen culture. I'll admit, I haven't asked if I could stand or do a long kinhin. Not being able to sit of course means that all I want to do is sit. I am appreciating  zazen in a way that I haven't before. On the other hand, not being able to do it makes it seem...arbitrary. There. I said it, and various Zen luminaries are revolving madly in their graves...or maybe not. Despite their absolute insistence on zazen, I'm sure if you could ask Kodo Sawaki or Uchiyama Roshi for example, they would agree: there's nothing special about zazen. There's nothing magical about it. If you don't do it, it's not the end of the world. But that's exactly why it should be done (when "shoulds" come up I get nervous but there you have it...). Zazen is not in that karma-world of "I do it because of this result and this expectation". It's fairly unique in being in a realm of "just do." Not that this means I should endanger the health of my posterior and body in general in order to do it. That kind of thinking really is full of traps. When I can't do it, I can't do it. As soon as I can, I do it. Is that the zazen of non-zazen?

Zen and the Art of Being Grindingly Poor

As I have pointed out before, Great Britain is hardly a hotspot for Zen Buddhism. But I think we're going to need it here soon, given the economic predictions of our leaders. The rub is this: we are all going to have to put up with having less, in a material and fiscal sense. Whilst we've got groovy holidays and lovely gadgets, Buddhism, with its gloomy-seeming First Noble Truth "Life is (or inherently contains) suffering" is not the popular choice. Now that the great global Being-Shafted-By-Bankers plan seems to be well underway, a non-materialistic yet non-theistic approach to life looks like a good idea. What is sesshin if not a boot camp for the soon-to-be-poor? I know after a week of sitting on my cushion, even a bowl of plain porridge seeems like some sort of sensory overload. Zazen basically teaches you to be wholly appreciative of anything that's not zazen.

It's encouraging for us to look back and see that there have been many times in the past when Zen practitioners lived very frugally, and yet still enjoyed rich and fulfilling lives. I think in the future things may get a bit communal, and a bit less individualistic. Again sesshin, and indeed the whole Zen approach is a good primer in this kind of getting-along "together-action" as Seung Sahn refers to it. It may seem a bit lazy, a bit fatalistic even, but I am not one inclined to protests and so on, though I daresay some of that might be needed as the purse-strings draw ever tighter. I am more interested in adapting my life circumstances and finding happiness as near at hand as possible. Also, wear and tear on the zafu aside, the running costs of Zen are pretty low. Now, I'm off to pen the best-selling "How to be poor and happy" to see if I can make my fortune before this whole sorry mess blows up...

The Hesitant Bodhisattva

“Make now your mind that of a bodhisattva”: that was a piece of advice I got from a Zen teacher by email. I have been considering for a few years the possibility of going through the Bodhisattva ordination. There are quite a few reasons why I don’t feel it’s a good idea. First and foremost is the feeling that I’m officially “joining” a religious organisation. That doesn’t sit right. Secondly there is the feeling that I’m somehow separating myself from my peers. That may sound strange, but the fact is this: the majority of people I know would regard Zen and Buddhism as being, well, a bit weird. Normally, I’m not one to mind such things, but sometimes I get tired of being stuck out on a limb. The other main reason is, quite simply, I don’t feel I commit myself enough. I often slack-off from attending zazen. I don’t feel like an exemplar of zen practice, not at all. I’m not even all that mad-keen on sesshin if I’m really honest. I should confess that there are loads of things I like that aren’t zen.

But then a thought struck me recently. The whole idea of the Bodhisattva is that he or she is busy practicing in whatever situation they find themselves in, whether that be a temple, a supermarket or an underwater chess championship. Perhaps then, a lazy and unsure Bodhisattva might have his uses, to those who are even more so. Or even just to show that there’s more than one way to skin Nansen’s cat, as it were. I think I’ve built up this crazy picture of what being a Bodhisattva is all about, but as the teacher suggested: you can be a Bodhisattva now. All beings are already deeply in touch with our life, so really we cannot avoid being an examplar of humanity. Think about it. It's kind of scary....