When the going gets tough, the tough get Buddhist...

Zen Buddhism is more about doing what Buddha did, rather than what he said. Zen is about trying to leap into the mind of Budda as he became enlightened. Which is clearly impossible. But Zen folks are not put off by impossible: in fact one of the most important ideas is that of the Four Vows, all four of which are impossible. This kind of cosmic silliness comes in pretty damned handy when life flips upside down, like what is happening now. 

 I did Zen practice for some years, and I was a utter Zen geek. Then I sort of tried to give it up. I never really stopped sitting on my black cushion and being quiet,and that's the main thing in Zen: sitting quietly. I still did that, but I didn't go to the friendly but small group of fellow sitters which had nurtured my patchy Zen career. I thought I had enough to do with a baby daughter arriving. Fast forward a few years and suddenly I'm all like "jeez I'm not sure I would have survived that without Zen practice". Then my Dad gets ill and my stepmum dies and I'm like "hell I couldn't have got through that without Zen practice". And then coronovirus appears on the scene and I'm sitting everyday and thinking "man I'm glad I know this, how do folks manage without some sort of practice?"

So I'm trying to get back to Zen. If you want a lift there, maybe I can help? And it would really help me out with my vow of saving all beings (that's one of the four impossible vows mentioned above). Desperate times mean desperate measures. Anyway there's only so much time a person should spend on Netflix in a day (is it me or do they have an algorithm that ensures that the film you actually want to watch will not be on there?).

I'm not an expert. I'm not a very good Buddhist. But I've sat on a cushion a bit, I've been on retreats; I've even walked a seven -hundred mile Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan. So I know a bit.

What good will Zen do?

Number one: Zen came about through hundreds of years of folks living cheek by jowl in monasteries, in a really intense way, and trying not to get annoyed with one another. Seriously. A fair bit of Zen mindset is about not annoying other folk. Is that a good skill for the family cooped up in a lockdown style? Yes it surely is. And if we are alone in splendid isolation? Well it'll help us in not annoying ourselves...

Number two: If you don't know what to do in the face of COVID 19 then Zen is perfect: sitting in Zen meditation (zazen) is the embodiment of I don't know but I need to do something. Don't imagine for a second that zazen is doing nothing. Sitting will show you that there is whole jungle of activity going on in that silent world that maybe you've just never had time to notice before.

Number three: There's a lot of mortality and impermanence sloshing about. Zen practice is totally geared up for that. The teachers of old didn't duck the matter of life and death: in fact they knew it as The Great Matter. Facing squarely up to it is a grisly task. But I think it's the right thing to do. 

Listen, there's probably more to say. But I'm planning on being back here regularly, to shoot the Zen breeze. Writing this stuff down helps me to go back to that cushion everyday, even when I'm thinking "this is pointless, aren't there a million other things to do?". So you're helping me out by reading this.

Thanks and Buddhist bows in your direction, N.

photo copyright © C Gill 2008 

Just make like a tree...

Sometimes in life you look at other folks and think "Geez, I'm glad I'm not in their shoes". Recently I have been  firmly jammed into those shoes like an unwilling Zen version of Cinderella: tough times have been upon me, and those that I love. A family member has been dying, and finally died a few days ago.

I saw a blog post by a Buddhist recently. He was observing the fall of the leaves in autumn time, and lamenting that we humans can't suffer change with the grace displayed by the leaves.

He was labouring under the notion that we humans add all sorts of extra worries and notions of ego to our problems, and thereby we make a mess of our suffering. I know that this is kind of a paraphrase of what Buddha taught. I think the Zen view here goes one better though: to take the situation as already being whole, and not in need of fixing.


What our blog writing pal seemed unable to see is that the cries, arguments, agendas, vendettas and dramas exactly are our way of twisting prettily in the wind. The leaf goes dry and crackly, falls off and twirls to the forest floor, there to mulch down into the soil and air as cellulose,carbon and whatever else. We writhe about and write wills and shout at care staff and bicker with our husbands from our death bed. Perhaps some of us won't. It's not even so much death itself that takes over, but rather the very interconnectedness of human existence, which may mean that even if Grandpa Joe is going peacefully into the night, Cousin John is determined to make a goddamned scene about it.

If you think that your death and suffering is going to be as detached and poetic as the leaves falling, well maybe it will be, and that's wonderful. And there are things you can do to mitigate some of the potential dramas.

But if you can only bear your end, and the end of others, as long as it presents a certain way, then you might run into difficulties.

There's suffering either way I suppose though. Buddha said that too.

Getting the hang of enlightenment

We may find in the beginning stages of Zen training that it is very hard being enlightened all the time, but unfortunately there's no kind of off-switch. All kinds of things can become bothersome as the difference between what you formerly thought of as "I" and "the rest of the world" becomes perilously narrow. Perhaps there is an unappealing-looking homeless person, or a parent shouting at their children like a slave-trader with a toothache, or else it is the banker spreading his palms as he wonders which of his holiday homes to redecorate. These characters one and all, and this is the sticky bit, they are all you. I can sense the swivelling of cynical eyeballs within incredulous sockets, "what hippyish nonsense" they say. Perhaps if I were to put it another way, and say that between you and they lies not a jot of separation. You can think of time, distance, circumstance or the fact of bone filled bodies as separating us from other folks. But there is no change in facts required, only one of the heart and mind, to see these not as barriers but rather as bridges. Bad news for all you prospective hermits out there: there is no such thing as being alone, not really. It may help, or it may freak you out utterly, to think of all your senses as being analogous to that of touch. I see the bike outside the window because the the light touches between the sun, the bike and my sensory field. Just because of all this though, there's no particular need to go around hugging everything saying "hello bicycle, hello irritated cat, hello pungent street drinker." I mean, you could, and you might, but there really is no need to stick extra ideas of Oneness onto everything. Everything knows this already, and what's more, it acts on it. This is called Life, a grand interpenetrating, multi-centered web of ever-shifting process and relationship. Zen folks long in the tooth may get uncomfortable, irritable even if some character goes about pointing out just how very together it all is, as one wit said:

"These hills and mountains are the very body of Buddha" to which his teacher replied "Oh do be quiet, really I can't take you anywhere."*

*I may have taken some liberty with the translation of the original...

What should my life do with me?

I find that I am really lost in my future at the moment. There are two tendencies which are fighting it out: one is the "do nothing" view, that of being grateful for what is present now and not striving for bigger and better all the time. The other view is that of chasing one's dreams, of fulfilling one's potential in this world. I can spend literally hours planning and scheming, lost in a world of potential. When I have a good idea, a good scheme for a killer novel or a new martial arts training paradigm say, I'm elated: all I want to do is clear my schedule and get to work. But, just as quickly as the super brainwave comes, out it rolls again. The idea loses its lustre, it'll never work, I haven't got the skills, the know-how or whatever. Thus, a whole cycle of creativity,excitement and despondency can take a turn without anything real actually happening. I think I live at least fifty-percent of my life in that world. 
Sometimes though, like this morning, as I wake I know it's not going to be one of those days. It's going to be a day where my relationship with the thoughts in my head, the schemes, the desires, the plans, is like that of the sky to the clouds. Just like that, coming and going. The merest play of light on a brick wall,the sight of a co-worker strolling the corridors, or the hot charms of a cup of tea, is fascinating and satisfying enough for me, without the need to extract anything else from the experience.

I have to say that, on occasion, I feel somewhat guilty for not striving more. I think, even amongst Zen practitioners, there is a tendency to be a little slavish in our work ethic and to imagine that we should be doing good works, especially if we admire the proponents of "Engaged Buddhism" as I do. My mistake is to think that the universe can't be trusted. We have in our tradition great espousers of faith in the world such as Rinzai who said "The principle is: not to try to be anyone special; and to have nothing to do", or Bankei who preached the uselessness of striving with our minds. The famous Zen poem says, "The Spring comes, the grass grows by itself", but that seems pretty subversive in these needful days of eco-plight and humanitarian suffering. As Alan Watts said, sermons on the Bible verse about "having no fear for tomorrow" were thin on the ground even in his hippyish day.
I'm not sure what I can do to help all that. But on these rare days, I can certainly fulfil my job as appreciator-extraordinaire of this life, and perhaps that is the only place to start.

I got me some writin' on the Shambhala Under 35 Project

Want some stuff to read? Here you go, don't ever say I gave you nuthin'...

http://www.under35project.com/submissions/infinite-threads-of-the-vast-universe-garment/

There are several articles on there by me, and also many other worthy writers so take a look! N

I Survived A Sesshin And All I Got Was This Bib-Thing...

An unfinished rakusu like mine 

Sesshins are lovely, uplifting and worthwhile. Sesshins are also awful, heartrending and gruelling. On this sesshin, I took the Bodhisattva Vows. The decision to do this both came out of nowhere, and was something I've been chewing on for a couple of years. I've always felt funny about officially joining the gang, even to the point of not wearing a kimono, which is standard garb whether one is ordained or not. It just always felt extra to me. When I did put one on, my lovely girlfriend said that she felt it put distance between us, which is exactly what I was worried about. Part of the ordination training guided us through the lineage, and it was amazing to trace back through all the Zen people over hundreds of years, and infinitely weird to picture my own name at the bottom of the chart. A cosmic sense of responsibility welled up in me. And again, a sense of separation from others who aren't in the gang, as it were. This is something I need to get  my head and heart around, to remember that yes, taking vows is special and at the same time, totally ordinary and really just an affirmation of what-already-is. To people who know me and may be concerned: I haven't joined a cult. Or maybe I have. But it's a really good one, and it's not expensive and the teachers don't have gold Rolls-Royces or if they do, I haven't seen them. I also will not become a Buddhism-spouting religious geek (apart from on this blog of course). What I have done is to officially welcome the chance to try and live by certain precepts, the most fundamental of which go like this: 1) Don't do harm 2) Do good 3) Do good for others. This just shows how slow I am on the uptake that I even need to be told this stuff...but I do, and need also to be regularly reminded of it.
Despite all the strangeness going on in my head, the experience of the Bodhisattva Ordination was pretty cool, and everyone was very supportive, especially lovely C my girlfriend. Also, because my sewing is slow and bad, I was given a rakusu that had come all the way from Argentina, so thanks to those unknown South American seamsters.  I have to say that I haven't mentioned all this to everyone that I know, because I still feel some strangeness around it. But it feels like I did the right thing, taking the Buddhist plunge. Onto a life of practice then, I guess. Ha! Sounds funny even just saying it!

Kapwing! Saving All Beings! Kapow!

In being Buddhists and particularly Zen ones, part of our modus operandi is about saving all those sentient beings. Or perhaps realising that they are inherently saved anyway. This is quite a weighty proposition for a person whose normal level of responsibility lies in buying in the pastries on Sunday mornings, and ensuring that he wears matching shoes. Well, pretty much. I have tried being an ironic Buddhist, that's to say one who is cool with the idea but doesn't feel the need to do anything about it. It is not an approach that works for me, as I have come to realise that I am a person who likes to be involved, which is quite a shock. The taking of the Bodhisattvas Vows is in some ways a dumb idea: what does it matter to the Universe if you make some sort of promise and get given a mini-robe thing? It doesn't, not one jot. On the other hand, intention is all. Sometimes doing a dumb thing is just what is needed. Sometimes we just have to allow ourselves to be fooled: not all the time, I'm not suggesting we should give up our intelligence, or our reasoning. On the other hand, it's too easy for us to keep our cool-hipster ironic stance on things, whereby we observe and hang back, and comment, but don' t throw ourselves in.Much of our culture is geared towards keeping us at a distance from life. Rituals, oaths, promises: these things confound the normal hands-off approach: "I'm going to do this thing even if I look silly, and turn out to be foolish in my aspirations." This is a leap towards openness. It's my turn to jump, silly rakusu robe and all, into this ridiculous world of vow where I pretend to be Superman, to master teachings and encounter Buddhas and save all beings, and join the ranks of those nonsensical folks from ages past and present who have done the same. Here I come!