Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Category: Zen teachings

living into what cannot be solved
Mindfulness allows us to live into all that cannot be solved. It’s also a gateway to equanimity, the peace of the present moment.
The other day, I listened to a podcast of an interview with Frank Osteseki, who is a pioneer in end-of-life care, founding in 1987 the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in the USA.
He has trained countless caregivers in how to provide compassionate care for those facing life-threatening illness. There was one line Frank used in that interview that struck me.
Reflecting on current events, Frank remarked:
We are developing the capacity to bear witness to that which cannot be solved but can be lived into.
Frank Ostaseski: Lessons to the Living from the Dying
I often get anxious and go round in circles in my head, trying to solve or deal with some question or problem.
Will Bird Flu explode into Pandemic 2.0? Will a certain former USA president be re-elected? (typing this last line, I feel my blood pressure spiking.)
But listening to Frank I’m reminded we can hold our seat in the unknown, live into our deepest fears, and get to a good place. Most of what comes at us day after day cannot be solved, but it can be lived into, as Frank put it.
But just how do I do this? How can I be “equanimous”?
In Buddhism, there is a lot of teaching on “equanimity.” I struggled for years trying to “be equanimous” with my many life struggles. It took me a long time to realize that equanimity is not some fantastic chilled out mental state I might eventually experience in the future.
It’s actually right here, right now.
The some-day-to-be-attained cooled-out space is actually already here; it’s just this r egular, ordinary awarenes s reading this line right now.
That’s cazy good news.
curiosity and openness
Sure, Frank was talking about training healthcare workers how to care for the dying. But he’s also talking about how to meet our own death, and how we can train ourselves to meet any moment in this unrepeatable life of ours, with curiosity and openness.
Even in the throes of the most distressing morning we can relish what the poet and Zen teacher Norman Fischer describes as the
great and beautiful secret of meditation practice: you can experience suffering with equanimity.
Suffering Opens The Real Path
There is a Zen story that talks about being open and curious I love very much (from the collection: The Book Of Equanimity, Case 20):
The monk Fayan was going on pilgrimage.
Master Dizang asked, “Where are you going?”
Fayan said, “On pilgrimage.”
Dizang asked, “What sort of thing is pilgrimage?”
Fayan said: “I don’t know.”
Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”
Fayan suddenly had a great awakening.
So this 13th century Chinese monk goes on a pilgrimage, and when asked why he was doing this by a master he is visiting, suddenly realizes he doesn’t really know why. The teacher gives him a high five, encouraging him to stay open and curious:
Not knowing is most intimate.
This simple quality of not-knowing allows intimacy, goes the teaching. When we fully open to our not-knowing mind, there’s curiosity and openness.
This intimacy is available right here, right now as your ordinary awareness reading this. The peace of the present moment, this cooled out space, is hiding in plain sight!
beginner’s mind
Suzuki Roshi never tired of teaching about what he called beginner’s mind– which is just another way to describe this ordinary awareness of ours:
If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
With the freshness of this not-knowing mind, this beginner’s mind, this always available ordinary awareness of ours, we experience others more intimately.
listening more deeply.
To be with another person in this way we are open to listening more deeply, as the poet Rilke teachers us here:
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys.
For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Be well, dear reader.
06/08/2024
this is why we meditate
In the present moment we discover a spontaneity beyond time, where there is no aging, no measuring, no comparing to what was, and no worry about what will be.
Perhaps I get a little carried away with Buddhist contemplation?
I mean, just the other day I felt compelled to pull over while driving to ponder whether in light of the radical teachings of impermanence, do I continue along as usual, making coffee, going to work and streaming my shows when I get home?
Perhaps I am ruminating on mortality as I recently had a birthday?
Aging. It kind of sneaked up on me.
Am I old? Well, according to John Shoven, a professor at Stanford University, someone age 65 is now considered old. No wonder so many nurses at work ask me when I am retiring.
I guess I am officially old at 68.
Woody Allen once remarked about his own mortality:
I don’t want to live on in the hearts of others. I want to live on in my apartment.
We know we are going to die. It’s only a question of when. Yet we console ourselves we have lots of time, much of which is spent planning on some better version of now.
Christopher Titmus recently gave a talk in which he quipped,
Taking an exam in chemistry is a picnic compared to taking chemotherapy.
Ulla-Carin Lindquist, at the height of a successful career as a newscaster in Sweden, was diagnosed with ALS. She kept of journal of her few years, published as Rowing Without Oars: A Memoir of Living and Dying, in which she wrote:
There is no bright future for me, but there is a bright present.
Reflecting on her line, I suspect life itself let her in on a little secret–that her mortality is not a problem to be solved, but a “brightness” disclosing itself right here, right now, in the present moment.
Even though I started studying Buddhism when I was 22, the depth of the teachings is really hitting me much deeper now. I appreciate aging as at the heart of the Buddha’s message.
Suzuki Roshi, whose talks in the 1960s became the classic book Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, taught that each breath was like a whole life, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
And that each exhale is a kind of dying.
In our practice, we especially get to know our out-breath, fading into a “sheet of white paper” as Suzuki Roshi described it. To which his student Mel Weitsman adds,
When the moment of death comes, our last breath is familiar and comfortable. There is no need to be afraid.
As we journey through the pages of our human story, our practice encourages us to be softer, more vulnerable, more caring, and loving.
And to flow with change.
In the present moment we discover a spontaneity beyond time, where there is no aging, no measuring, no comparing to what was, and no worry about what will be.
Ulla-Carin Lindquist, suffering from a terminal illness, was spot on:
There is no bright future… but there is a bright present.
This is freedom. This is love. This is peace.
This is why we meditate.
06/07/2024
Compassion in Buddhism: Why does Kuan Yin have so many hands?
Kuan Yin is an archetype of compassion in Buddhism. Sometimes portrayed as female, or male, or androgynously, they manifest the impulse to help suffering beings.
In his celebrated Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot observed:
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
Reality is a lot to take sometimes. One teacher says this practice builds our “reality tolerance.”
Ours is a sobering practice
The bare bones of it is to appreciate the “three inconvenient truths”, as the American nun Pema Chodron calls the “three marks of existence” the Buddha taught are intrinsic to reality: impermanence, stress, and interconnectedness.
It’s inconvenient for us that everything changes.
For example, just when I’m feeling settled as I sit to meditate, there’s this pain, or that song going through my head and ricocheting off my inner cranium walls, telling me I have been overdoing it with Spotify.
Deep down we much prefer convenience
From a Buddhist perspective, the habit energies called delusion come along to satisfy our preference for convenience, controlling the internal narrative, spinning reality in a distorted way, supporting our insupportable preferences for stability and constancy.
Mostly, we fall for this over and over, until we grasp that our practice is about seeing these delusive habit energies arise in the mind in their many guises and to work through them.
A milestone in practce …
is seeing how our conditioned patterns distort our perceptions of reality in real time.
This practice is sobering because we get intimate with our personal experience of stress and frustration- one of the three aspects of reality the Buddha called dukkha.
If we don’t clearly see the mechanisms of our own stress and frustration, it’s hard to be happy.
When we see this clearly, there is such a relief.
In the Pali language of early Buddhism, the meditation we practice is called vipassana. “Passana” means to see, and the prefix vi means “in a particular way.”
As we adapt to regular sitting practice, there’s a deepening sense of calm and inner composure, which helps us see things more clearly.
A calmer mind is less inclined to fall for the delusive habit energies of desire, aversion or agitation. We can see our stuff more clearly, our hidden motivation and agendas, for example.
Tranquility allows a healing to happen, a gathering together of all our broken parts, the unfinished business, the parts we have disowned.
But the practice doesn’t end here, it’s just getting started.
Kuan Yin: archetype of compassion in Buddhism
We notice that just as we have work to do, so does everyone else.
We realize we’re all in this mess together. Even when we do not know what to do next, we feel we should at least try to be kind.
The late Zen master Bernie Glassman tells us “I define realization as the depth to which one sees the interconnectedness of life.”
Then he adds a corollary, which emphasizes compassion in Buddhism:
And the degree of your enlightenment can be measured by your actions.
Here is a Zen koan- a kind of teaching story- from ancient Zen lore about compassion in Buddhism as the the fruit of our sobering practice, of living our interconnected-ness.
How Does Kuan Yin Use Those Many Hands & Eyes
Yunyan asks the more realized monk Daowu:
“Why is it that the Bodhisattva Guanyin has so many hands and eyes?”
Daowu responds, “It is like someone sleeping, in the night, reaching behind her head for her pillow.”
To these words Yunyan said, “I understand.”
When asked what precisely was his understanding he answered, “Our bodies are covered with eyes and hands.”
Daowu replied, “Almost. You’re eight tenths of the way.”
Then, when asked what is the more complete response, was told,
“There are only eyes and hands.”
This conversation between two monks is preserved in the twelfth century anthology of Zen stories called the Blue Cliff Record. Both monks, Yunyan and Daowu, were students of the same teacher and would themselves each become famous teachers.
They both deeply realized this interconnectedness. Daowu, it seems, had a deeper understanding than the younger monk Yunyan, who asked why the bodhisattva Kwan Yin has so many hands and eyes.
In my mind, Yunyan was really asking “What’s the deal with this deity we all talk so much about, who has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes? What’s up with that?”
Kwan Yin is an archetype of compassion in Buddhism.
Sometimes portrayed as a man, sometimes as a woman, and sometimes androgynously, Kwan Yin manifests the altruistic impulse to reach out and help suffering beings.
Daowu says this altruistic impulse comes deeply from the heart without a second thought- like someone turning in her sleep and reaching a hand behind her head to adjust her pillow.
He says this natural impulse of compassion in Buddhism is like having eyes and hands all over our body. True, true, says his companion Yunyan. But he adds- that’s only 80% of the answer.
The full answer, he says, is realizing “There are only eyes and hands.” I appreciate the writer James Ishmael Ford take on the full answer here:
Just this. Ends and means, one thing; our interdependence and you and I, one thing.
05/18/2024
the most important thing
This meditation is a self-discovery. We uncover the treasure of our very own being. We lose interest in listening to the voices shouting at us about our deficiencies.
Someone once asked Suzuki Roshi, the pioneering Zen teacher from Japan who founded the Zen Center of San Francisco in 1969:
“Roshi, what’s the most important thing?” and he answered:
To find out what’s the most important thing.
Byron Katie, who teaches a practice called self-inquiry, said that the world’s number one problem is confusion. As we hang in there with meditation practice, week after week, a little clarity starts to emerge.
The most important thing that brought us to the meditation cushion may not seem so important as we progress. We may have signed up to get an edge in academia or our social life, maybe to find a group to hang out with.
After a while, it sinks in: meditation is not self improvement, it’s self-discovery. It’s more about undoing and unlearning conditioned habits rather than getting some special meditation goodies.
We all just want to be happy and feel at home in our own lives
And to feel a connection with the world and other beings.
But, as the song goes, we are looking in all the wrong places. By habitually looking outside of our skin for fulfillment and happiness, we struggle.
So many of the voices we listen to- both in our own head and outside, through the media, lead us on a long walk on the hedonic treadmill Buddhists call samsara.
But one day we have this marvelous insight: We already have what we need.
This meditation is a self-discovery. We uncover the treasure of our very own being. We lose interest in listening to the voices shouting at us about our deficiencies.
As one of my teachers Sharon Salzberg says:
We learn not to get caught in trying to reach out and grasp after things we never really needed to begin with.
The Healing Is In The Return
Along these lines, the poet Rumi asks:
How long will we fill our pockets like children with dirt and stones?
Let the world go.
Holding it, we never know ourselves, never are airborne.
Meditation helps us put down the baggage we carry around so we can be airborne and travel lightly in this world.
This letting go can be subtle, nuanced. We usually associate letting go as letting go of something. But as the teacher Gil Fronsdal points out, there is a complimentary movement here.
With enough practice we appreciate the story doesn’t end with letting go: we discover we are letting go of something but we also are letting go into something else.
Gil Fronsdal offers this metaphor: a diver lets go of the diving board the seconds later dives into the cool water of the pool, much as we let go of impatience then seconds later relaxing into a feeling of ease.
If we find ourselves gripped in panic or fear, we learn to let go into the felt safety of relaxation.
We eventually get how much nicer it is to relax into our natural, free and easy being-ness than it is to struggle with something.
But if we haven’t tasted this free-and-easy being-ness, it’s a hard sell to the psyche.
You’ll know the sweet taste of being-ness by accidentally stumbling upon it in your practice. You can’t make this happen on purpose. You just need to meditate every day and hang in there.
Then, each moment is fine. Each moment is enough. Nothing missing or lacking, as the Zen teachers of old would say.
Every moment is appreciated as profound and meaningful.
07/24/2023
not knowing is most intimate
Relaxing into not-knowing is a key to the present moment. When you don’t know, all possibilities are open.
How do we live our life knowing that it’s temporary? We have this opportunity to live this life, and we don’t know for how long. And we don’t know what will happen next. I am guessing most who read this blog, like myself, would say nothing happens next.
But let’s agree we don’t want to waste this life. We don’t want to sleepwalk through it. Or just endure it.
I recently read a poem by Kay Ryan titled The Niagara River:
As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.
Kay Ryan, The Niagara River
The last line was a kick in the gut. We know this is temporary, but we don’t remember what that means. We don’t know if anything happens after we die (to us) but that doesn’t mean the issue is put to rest.
I think what meditation brings to the table is how to meet our death not with fear, but with curiosity. And to relish this not-knowing of death.
A well-known Zen koan
The monk Fayan was going on pilgrimage.
Master Dizang asked, “Where are you going?”
Fayan said, “On pilgrimage.”
Dizang asked, “What sort of thing is pilgrimage?”
Fayan said: “I don’t know.”
Dizang said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”
Fayan suddenly had a great awakening.
from The Book Of Equanimity, Case 20:
So this monk, Fayan, when asked why he is going on a pilgrimage, realizes he doesn’t really know why.
His directness is fresh. Master Dizang recognized this and encouraged his answer, understanding how not-knowing helps you stay open and curious. It allows you to see life as it is, not as you are.
Not knowing is most intimate.
And it is precisely this not-knowing that allows the most profound intimacy. We can open up because we don’t know. When we fully open to our not-knowing mind, there’s curiosity, and potential.
This “not-knowing” is a big deal in certain Buddhist traditions. You cannot meditate, they would say, if you are stuck in “I know.” To be mindful is to not-know.
Relishing this not-knowing is key to discovering the beauty and the peace of the present moment. When you don’t know, all possibilities are open.
You are clear and unobstructed.
We live in a dynamic world about which we know very little. A virus changes everything. A drought, an entire continent. Science is about wanting to know more. We think we have to know. We can get very OC around knowing, missing the relief not-knowing.
This is from Tao Te Ching, a Chinese Taoist text written around 400 BC.
In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the pursuit of wisdom, every day something is dropped.
Chapter 48, Tao Te Ching
From around 400 BC in China, let’s move to the same time in Greece. Socrates is speaking, let’s listen in:
To fear death .. is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not, for it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may turn out to be the greatest of blessing for a human being. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evils.
Reading the Painting ‘The Death of Socrates’
There it is again, our not-knowing; relishing not-knowing.
Can we let our limited grasp of this life encourage us to not waste this precious opportunity?
Buddhism would even ask if we could live our life in a way that makes it a gift not just for ourselves, but for everyone?
08/25/2022
the universe marinating itself
As we marinate in the present moment, we let go of the urgencies of the self, the agendas of the ego.
Our marvelous mindfulness is a kind of marinating in the present moment.
Seemingly solid things, like squash or zucchini, with fixed boundaries, when placed in a marinade of olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, and garlic, and left alone for a while, the solid shapes slowly lose their fixed outlines.
As we marinate in the juices of the present moment, we let go a little of the urgencies of the self, the agendas of the ego. We dissolve a little around the edges.
Our simple mindfulness similarly permeates the boundaries of who and what we feel we really are, and slowly dissolves the socially consented views of separate identities.
Life is simple and straightforward–hearing the trilling and clucking of the geckos outside my window. Or the hum of the overheard fan and the gentle touch of the current of air it makes on the bald top of my head.
As the Japanese Zen teacher Soen Nakagawa Roshi (1907- 1984) said:
Every pine and bamboo, pure wind blowing.
It is simple enough to hear the birds singing or the sound of the bus going by on our street. Yet, if the sounds we hear are the words of people, we can find ourselves caught in a net of agreeing, disagreeing, correcting, or being troubled by what they are saying.
The Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah once explained:
When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, ‘Oh, that sound is bothering me.’ If we see it like this, we suffer.
But if we investigate a little deeper, we see that the sound is simply sound. If we understand like this, then there’s nothing more to it.
We leave it be. The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.
A Taste of Freedom, Ajahn Chah
Let’s not dismiss the marvelous transformative power of mindfulness just because it is such a simple process.
Let’s review: you bring your awareness to an “anchor” such as sensations in your body, the breath, or sounds. You bring your mind to rest there.
But, pretty soon, you will notice your mind has other plans. Each time you notice your mind stray from the anchor, you see where it goes and ever so gently bring it back to the anchor.
Each time you notice that the mind has wandered, that is the moment of mindfulness—not a moment of failure. As we gracefully return to our anchor, we marinate in the present moment.
Over time, this marinating seeps into deeper layers of this porous thing we call self. Marinating in the present moment, everyday life reveals the possibilities of being. And epiphanies happen spontaneously.
The contemporary Zen teacher Roko Sherry Chayat describes one here:
One of my teachers, Gempo Yamamoto Roshi, once did a pilgrimage in Japan, going from temple to temple. Once he was at the side of the road, pissing into the side of the road, and at the sight-sound of bubbling urine, he awakened to his true nature in this ordinary activity.
Mindfulness is marinating as the universe, as this true nature that we are, opening the boundaries of identity. We can say it is letting go of, or forgetting, the self, as the 13th century master Dogen put it.
Mindfulness allows the universe in. We are penetrated by all that arises, moment by mindful moment. A Mahayana Buddhist might say we are marinating as the Buddha-nature that we are.
Meditation is the universe marinating itself, right here on our cushion. It is only when we refuse to allow this natural marination that trouble arises and we reinforce the limits that we place on ourselves.
Though these boundaries seem real, our mindfulness opens them to reveal what we have always been—ease and joy right here and right now.
read another?
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08/16/2022
eating the blame
If we know how to experience our discomfort gracefully, we suffer much less. We’re no longer afraid of eating the blame when this is called for.
One of my favorite Zen stories goes like this:
One day at a certain monastery in 10th century China, ceremonies delayed preparation of the noon meal, and when they were over, the cook took up his sickle and hurriedly gathered vegetables from the garden. In his haste, he lopped off part of a snake, and, unaware that he had done so, threw it into the soup pot with the vegetables.
At the meal, the monks thought they had never tasted such delicious soup, but the head monk found something remarkable in his bowl. Summoning the cook, he held up the head of the snake, and demanded, “What is this?”
The cook took the morsel, saying, “Oh thank you,” and immediately ate it.
Finding a way to deflect blame is a waste of energy.
We could choose to make excuses for ourselves, explaining to the head monk why we had to make the soup in a rush and how we did it.
Or we could choose to dance graciously and deflate the matter in an instant. Eating the snake’s head…crunch crunch, swallow…the cook owned up to his carelessness, gracefully and without fanfare, without beating around the bush.
This is what the path is about, dancing gracefully with our life, and eating the blame when this is called for. I love the way the late Vietnamese master Thích Nhat Hạnh describes our practice:
Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.
Yes, a serene encounter, but not evasion. And how do we dance on this edge?
Gracefully.
This being graceful gives our life dance fluidity, suppleness, and a kind of precision.
Improvisational dancers and jazz musicians, when they are in the moment of creative play, aren’t thinking about a million things–they’re right in the experience itself.
Flying crane by Kōno Bairei (1844-1895)
Just like we are when we sit and settle on the feeling of the breath sensations flowing through our body. We relax into what’s true here and now, even when there’s difficulty. From Thich Nhat Hanh again:
Handling difficulty is an art.
If we know how to experience our discomfort gracefully, we suffer much less. We’re no longer afraid of being overwhelmed by the suffering. It’s a beautiful understanding of the grace of our path. The novelist Flannery O’Connor wrote:
Give me the courage to stand the pain to get to the grace.
The secret to getting to this grace is mindfully feeling into all the inevitable pains and discomforts of this being human. The teacher Pema Chödrön said it this way:
When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on the brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell.
She elaborates:
To stay with the shakiness, to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with a feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge, that is the path of true awakening.
That really nails it. For me, this is Primo Buddhism.
The poet and novelist James Baldwin said that things cannot be changed until they are faced. But it’s how we face things that matter.
Yes, gracefully.
Meditation allows us to get still enough to see what is arising, and how to dance with it.
And own our stuff, eating the blame gracefully, like the cook did in our story.
Read another?
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08/03/2022
appreciate your life
We savor our life just as it is, messy, littered with abandoned to-do lists and unfulfilled expectations. We appreciate our life now, we’re not just managing it.

When asked about the fruit of meditative life, the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen Zenji replied: “enlightenment is intimacy with all things.” Mindfulness allows us to intimately see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience.
Breath by breath we deepen our connection with life as it is. We are more present for the beauty and the challenges we encounter. We discover a new dimension to life, as described by Emily Dickinson:
Life is so astonishing; it leaves very little time for anything else.
But it’s not this way when we start out.
stuck in overwhelm gear
As our day to day life becomes more complicated, with a ridiculous number of choices facing us, we get stuck in overwhelm mode. Our system is simply bogged down, flooded with sticky, uncomfortable memories or body sensations triggered by the media.
Many of us are are overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy when we compare ourselves to some impossible corporate avatar of a slim, attractive, work and family balancing, confident and together human.
stuck in the judging, evaluating and comparing gear
But when we set aside time on the cushion for a little respite, we often struggle with all this judging, evaluating and comparing. Even our most intimate thoughts seem untrustworthy at times.
We don’t construct the comparisons in our mind. We learn them from the messages we are exposed to 24/7. I mean, we even take our cell phones to bed with us!
This judging mind, that meditators are so familiar with, takes us far away from this intimacy that Dogen mentioned.
Georgia O’keefe; Evening Star #111
tapering
One strategy for working with an overwhelmed mind, following our medical theme, here is tapering. Just by taking the time off to sit quietly, we taper our exposure to the mental toxins we absorb in our day to day life.
In his early teachings, the Buddha spoke a lot about these mental toxins at the root of the struggle in our lives. He called them the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion.
respite from the toxins
This tapering gives our brains a respite from these poisons and a chance to detoxify a little.
As a nurse, I am trained to make quick assessments of patients, starting from the ABCs: Is the Airway clear? Is the Breathing unlabored? Is Circulation robust? If we are clear on the basics, we move on to finer level assessments.
In our meditation practice we work with a different set of ABCs:
the ABCs of meditation
Awareness is simply the capacity to dispassionately observe the present reality, moment by moment. You try not to control your thoughts but just observe and acknowledge them without judgment.
Being with is simply extending this awareness over time. You observe your thoughts and feelings by fully being with your present moment experience.
You redirect the mind back to the awareness of the breath or the body when uncomfortable thoughts come up. And you try not to indulge in the comfortable ones, either
a non-judgmental space
You just allow the present moment’s content to unfurl within a non-judgmental space. Moment by moment.
Awareness and Being With leads to our C-word–conscious Choice. By creating this non-judgemental space, you are no longer compulsively reacting to the culture’s thoughts. You are in a position of power to challenge your conditioning and make your own choices.
titration
Continuing in our medical mode, we also introduce titration. As we get better at settling the awareness on the breath, for example, we broaden the scope of meditation by spreading awareness throughout the whole body.
The toxins are titrated as there is now a bigger pool of awareness for them to splash around in.
a spoon of salt in a freshwater lake
The Buddha used a well-known analogy to describe this. He said a spoon of salt mixed in a glass of pure water makes the whole very salty, whereas the same spoon of salt mixed in a freshwater lake hardly changes the taste of the water.
This bring us to our last set of ABCs.
a bigger container
The late American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, in her book Everyday Zen, called this widening of the scope of awareness, so we can no longer taste the salty toxins in the spacious lake of our own minds,
creating A Bigger Container.
As we practice these ABCs of mindfulness meditation, we relish this “intimacy with all things” Dogen mentioned at the top.
We savor our life just as it is, messy, littered with abandoned to-do lists and unfulfilled expectations.
We appreciate our life now, we’re not just managing it.

04/24/2022
let go of expectations
As we let go of expectations in our mindfulness practice, it generalizes in our life-we are more present and responsive, and less reactive.
Buddhist practice is not so much about answering the so-called big questions of life and death, but rather about dissolving the angst around the questions themselves.
mindfulness is about appreciating the present moment
Sure, when you try out something new, you have some expectations of what it will do for you. But meditation is really about seeing what’s happening in the present moment. When we look through the lens of expectation, it limits our ability to see what is actually happening.
let go of expectations like a boat at rest
All kinds of wonderful things may actually happen in your meditation practice, but we don’t see them because we’re so focused on our small band of expectation, of what’s supposed to happen, or what we want to happen, or what we believe should happen.
recognize expectations in real time
One critical part of this practice is to see expectations in real time: to recognize them and gauge how “sticky” they are when we meditate.
As we let go of expectations in our practice, it generalizes in our life-we are more present and responsive, and less reactive. We can’t live without expectations, but maybe we can re-frame this to expect the unexpected.
I love William Stafford’s poem, where he says:
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
William Stafford from The Way It Is
If you let go of expectations, more ease comes into your mind.
It’s a kind of openness and relaxation, a willingness to receive into your own awareness what is actually happening. Then we can decide what to do about it or how to respond to it.
There is a Zen story I love that teaches us something about this:
Once upon a time, a Zen teacher was returning to his temple in the mountains after a long walk. His assistant asked,
“What have you been up to?”
“I’ve been strolling about in the hills, strolling about in the spring grasses,”replied the teacher.
“How was it?” asked the assistant.
“I went out following the scented grass, and came back chasing falling flowers.”
Ah, simplicity!
This is not a meditation you can do wrong. You can’t stroll the wrong way in the hills.
trust the process
We just trust the process. We show up and be mindful of what is, and simply be with what is happening as it’s happening, rather than expecting anything in particular.
Let your heart make up its own mind about experience, about life.
let go of expectations and remain spacious – Wind Swept Sands by William Merritt Chase
loosening the grip
In letting go of our expectations we loosen our grip. And loosening our grip, as the Buddha never tired of saying, is the way to happiness.
I went out, following the scented grass, and came back chasing falling flowers.
I have another favorite Zen thing. This is from the third Zen ancestor of China. He says,
The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
Now, he’s not saying, “Don’t have opinions,” because opinions come with the territory of being human. We can’t help but have opinions. But we don’t have to cherish them, and we don’t have to believe that our opinions are the truth. Sometimes they are far off the mark.
soften the hold of opinions
Letting go of expectations and softening our hold on our precious opinions allows a spaciousness in our very being. A spaciousness where everything belongs. A spaciousness where curiosity and openness are the coins of the realm.
A spaciousness, by the way, at the heart of coincidentia oppositorum, the neo-platonic term Mircea Eliade called “the mystical pattern”–a revelation of the sameness of things previously believed to be different.
In psychological terms, I love Carl Jung’s phrasing:
Emotional maturity is not about resolving the paradoxes and the conflicts, but growing large enough to contain it all.
I can’t think of a better description of our simple mindfulness practice.

04/17/2022
it’s crooked!

There is a lot of pressure on the whole pandemic New Year’s thing, right? I mean, the pandemic, economic turmoil; not to mention I am behind a few loads of laundry. And all of a sudden I am somehow supposed to start fresh, become a brand new, happy, healthy person, and so on.

Not happening. Sorry, readers.
And sorry to break it to you, self, so impersonally. I am not budging from this spot. After all, wherever we are, however we feel, that’s exactly where we need to be.
Or, as the 18th century Japanese Buddhist poet Issa puts it:
New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
To New Year’s credit, I guess it’s good to have these instances of renewal to remind us that we can begin again.
Or, better yet, to remind us that we are already beginning again.
the crooked tree
I love the story about the 15th century Japanese monk Ikkyu. The governor of the province where he lived selected a particular pine tree, out in a forest, that was exceptionally gnarled and crooked. He posted a large sign in front of the tree that announced–
Anyone who can see this crooked tree as straight will receive a prize from the Governor.
Lots of folks would see the sign, look at the tree, and walk around it. Some would lay down under the tree and look up at it. Some climbed it and would down at the tree from their perch.
But no one could answer the basic question of how to see the crooked tree as straight.
One day, our homeboy Ikkyu walked by, saw the sign, and looked at the tree. And immediately goes to the Governor’s pace announcing:
I have answered the riddle. Where’s my prize?
Now our Governor is startled and a bit suspicious of our homeless Buddhist monk. (Oh, did I not mention he was homeless?) So he asks Ikkyu–
How do you see this crooked tree as straight?
And Ikkyu looked at him squarely and said
It’s crooked!
that’s all he said. it’s crooked!
To truly see a crooked tree as crooked, just as it is, IS to see it as straight.
Let’s not gloss this one over as some quirky Zen thing, OK? After all, I titled this post after Ikkyu’s answer to the Governor.
We go through life seeing this person, or this interaction, or this situation as deficient. As not straight somehow. We respond to these situations the way everyone else did in our story–by looking at the situation from different angles.
But we still are dealing with a situation or circumstance we feel is somehow fundamentally deficient. Crooked.
Because in your heart of hearts you really do feel the election was stolen. Or that we shouldn’t admit so many immigrants. Or abortion is infanticide.
are we still trying to straighten a crooked tree?
But we are not seeing the question the way our homeless Zen monk saw it. We still butt our heads up against–
How do I straighten out this obviously crooked tree.
But if you make that radical drop into-
Yo, it’s crooked.
no problem to be solved
No distress. Ikkyu saw no issue to be solved, no tree that needed to be straightened. My inbox has been rife with self-improvement messages, increasing in fervor as the year draws to a close.
But I can’t help thinking about our homie Ikkyu’s tree. What if we’re not as crooked as we think we are?Sure, we have lots of issues. And the pandemic just made many of them a whole lot worse. But what’s so bad, really?
The tree didn’t seem to have any issues being crooked. Ikkyu saw that and coolness reigned supreme.
The only problem was with folks trying to change what was really not in the province of dramatic change. Like, our lives just as they are, for starters.
Ikkyu was not asserting his will on reality. Not comparing the tree to some ideal tree.Just digging reality as it unfolds, crooked, gnarly, and perfect just as it is.
Can we celebrate our imperfect lives?
My inbox would be relieved!
Wishing you a happy, albeit imperfect, New Year!
01/01/2021
a moment of well-being
Despite all that is wrong, I can still take delight in a moment of well-being.
News stories are not the conversation starters they used to be. In the day, I could fill an awkward gap by saying “Guess what I heard on NPR this morning?”
I don’t use that line anymore.
These are intense times. We need to find our footing in an information age that may be getting the best of us. We need to find some balance here.
Sometimes a poem jumps off the page and invites you to see the world with new eyes, if only for a moment.
a poem can change everything in a moment
I was looking at the world through those Anxiety Eyes before I read this poem by the Irish poet Derek Mahon, who left this earth just a couple of months ago.
Tonight is the final presidential debate in what many are calling the “election of a lifetime” (which is how I felt about Bush-Gore). No sense here going through the litany of everything which is wrong with the world.
Then I read his poem: Everything Is Going to Be All Right
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
Everything is Going to be All Right, Derek Mahon
“There will by dying”, he acknowledges, “but there is no need to go into that.”
Yes! That line averted my Anxiety Eyes, telling them, it’s OK, contemplate impermanence, but don’t hold on to it, you can let go.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
I feel Derek letting me inside his heart as it relaxes, taking a little sip of joy as the lines flow from his pen, from his “watchful heart.”
And in spite of everything–the election of a lifetime in less than 12 days, continuing racial injustice, the economic and environmental pillaging– the sun rises, and the beauty of the “far cities” will be there for us when we can travel again.
delight is all around, help yourself
Yes, this can sound trite, but it doesn’t to me.
For me it means that despite all that is wrong, I can still take delight in a moment of well-being.
Like the anonymous person in this well-known Zen story from the classic 1957 collection published by Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine.
The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
Tigers and a Strawberry
Yes, there are tigers everywhere we look.
But there are also moments so sweet they stop the mind from whining. And they are everywhere, if you just relax those Anxiety Eyes, as Derek shows us, letting us into a most intimate moment of the morning, in bed, lying
in a riot of sunlight.
… watching the day break and the clouds flying.
How sweet those moments of well-being are!
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10/20/2020
an ordinary new year wish
While everyone is wishing their co-workers, friends and family a fantastic new year full of creativity and self-improvement, I would settle for an ordinary new year.
Wishing others an entire year of monumental experiences or events, is curious to me. I am not sure I can handle anything too out of the ordinary.
In fact, I am quite happy with ordinary.
what’s so special about being special?
I’ve been around the “special” block quite a few times, enough to question the entire project of assessing and attributing special-ness stature to things which – on deep analysis – are quite ordinary.
I mean, what makes certain pizza toppings more special than others?
The special-ness project can have a field day with our meditation practice. In the original teachings, the Buddha tried to encourage folks with rather extra-ordinary narratives; to raise their hopes of what is possible in a single lifetime.
But in our ridiculously competitive culture the original teachings, which were intended to motivate ordinary folks back in the sixth century BC, often back-fire in our present day—reinforcing patterns of ego-identification and inflation the original teachings are meant to take apart.
our meditation practice is nothing special
As the Buddhist meditation teacher Ken McLeod recently wrote on his blog:
“When we practice, we think we are doing something special, that we are making something happen. While I fell into this way of thinking myself, I eventually came to understand that it is a completely wrong-headed. Any idea that you are special in some way is an indication of delusion. These are all stories we tell ourselves to explain what is through and through, a mystery.”
The special-ness project secretly encourages us to achieve some feeling or some imagined mental state in our meditation practice. This goal we half-consciously buy into may lead you to judge yourself as failing or succeeding, reinforcing what classical Buddhism calls “grasping and aversion.”
The result? Often a scattered and anxious mind.
then one day …
… with time and patience, you discover an open awareness which is inherently free, peaceful and joyous. And which was not achieved by any effort as it has always been here.
Hiding in the ordinariness of your life.
Ajahn Sumedho, the 84-year-old American-born Buddhist monk, in his clear-eyed book Now is the Knowing, writes:
We tend to overlook the ordinary. We are usually only aware of our breath when it’s abnormal, like if we have asthma. We don’t try to make the breath long or short, or control it in any way, but to simply stay with the normal inhalation and exhalation. We do not even need to be particularly intelligent — all we have to do is to be content with, and aware of, one inhalation and exhalation. Wisdom can arise from observing the ordinary.
Wash your bowls
There is old Zen story that I like very much. A monk comes to the monastery of the master Zhao Zhou and asks for teaching.
The master asks him, “Have you had your breakfast?” The monk says that he has. “Then wash your bowls,” is the teacher’s reply, and the only instruction he offers.
just this moment …
Zhao Zhou wants to bring the monk down to the immediate present moment, as if saying “Don’t look for some profound metaphysical or yogic instructions here. Be present to this moment.”
But we seem to be looking for something other than what’s right here in this moment.
… is the only moment there is
This moment is often seen as a barrier to overcome so that we can at some later moment get whatever it is we thought we were looking for when we got into this meditation stuff.
But at some point it begins to dawn on us that there is no other moment.
Then everything becomes very simple.
We sit with awareness of the body, or the breath. We let thought and feeling come up but we don’t make a big deal out of anything.
We let whatever comes up to come up naturally, without resistance. We appreciate it, and we let it go. We don’t get tangled up in a web of complication.
profound ordinary happiness
As we sit this way, judgments begin to fall away. We allow ourselves to fully be who we are. And we realize we are profoundly happy yet in a most ordinary way.
Wishing you a very ordinary new year!

01/07/2019
reading Suzuki Roshi 43 years later
I remember the first Dharma book I ever bought. It was Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Suzuki Roshi. I still have that dog-eared, multi-highlight layered paperback I bought in San Francisco in 1979.
It’s been a dear friend to me all these years. I pick it up from time to time, open it and read random passages. Like this one:
When you are practicing, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you are bothered by it. Do not be bothered by anything.
It appears as if something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind, and if you are not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer.
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
have I made any progress?
Despite reading passages like these over and over again for decades, I am struck by how little progress I seem to have made in carrying out their simple instructions! I tell myself not be bothered by thinking, but by the time I remember, I am usually quite far down a mental path of self-recrimination or enmeshed in some sort of revenge fantasy.
As I read on, Suzuki Roshi comforts me a little by saying:
It will take quite a long time before you find your calm, serene mind in your practice. Many sensations come, many thoughts or images arise, but they are just waves of your own mind. Nothing comes from outside your mind … You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.
But I just can’t seem to leave my mind as it is!
When it’s bored, I want to stimulate it with some spicy fantasy. Or when it’s melancholic, I try to cheer it up. And when it’s restless or tired, I just want to dive into a bag of Little Caesar’s Crazy Bread.
The iconic Dharma book, Zen Mind,Beginner’s Mind, by Suzuki Roshi
Suzuki Roshi continues:
Even though waves arise, the essence of your mind is pure; it is just like clear water with a few waves. Actually water always has waves. Waves are the practice of the water. Water and waves are one. Big mind and small mind are one. When you understand your mind in this way, you have some security in your feeling. A mind with waves in it is not a disturbed mind, but actually a fulfilled one.
Now this is blowing my mind!
How can I see, feel, and live my disturbed mind as a fulfilled mind? Maybe if I just let that particular thought wave alone, and leave it as it is, then something becomes clear – but what exactly?
let go of the habit to fixing or controlling
We have a hard time doing this, to be sure, this “leaving our mind as it is.” We have acquired habits of fixing, holding and controlling life. We all want to know and have the power we think comes from knowing.
Meditation reveals how many fixed ideas and opinions we have. How much judgment, expectation, and preconception we carry around with us all the time.
allowing intimacy
Over the years I have seen that if I allow myself to be intimate with moment, and am neither seeking some answer or trying to fix something, a gentle and sublime wonderment arises.
As Suzuki Roshi reminded us a few paragraphs ago: “If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm.”
This calm, this settling, encourages an opening revealing an essential innocence. An innocence wherein preconceptions, expectations, judgments and opinions are simply waves—impermanent, evanescent, ephemeral.
letting things be as they are
We sit with awareness of the body, or the breath. We let thoughts and feelings come up, but we don’t make a big deal out of anything. We let whatever comes up to come up naturally, without resistance. We appreciate it, and leave it as it is. We don’t get tangled up in a web of complication
But we still seem to be looking for something. This moment is often seen as a barrier to overcome so that we can at some later moment get whatever it is we thought we were looking for when we got into this meditation stuff.
there is no other moment
But at some point it begins to dawn on us that there is no other moment. Then everything becomes very simple.
As we sit this way, we allow ourselves to fully be who we have always been.
And we realize we are actually already profoundly content.

03/20/2018
intimacy with all things
When asked about the fruit of the spiritual life, the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen Zenji replied: “Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.”
Mindfulness allows us to intimately see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience.
connection with life as it is
Breath by breath we deepen our connection with life as it is. We are more present for the beauty and the challenges we encounter. We long for this connection, this intimacy with our life, as it connects us more authentically with others.
We discover a new dimension to life, as described by Emily Dickenson: “Life is so astonishing; it leaves very little time for anything else.”
the judging mind
But we discover on the cushion that our minds are actively judging, evaluating and comparing our ourselves and our experiences.
The judging mind, that meditators are so familiar with, takes us far away from this intimacy that Dogen highlights as the fruit of our practice. Although we long for this connection, we seem to be powerfully conditioned to judge.
We are “judging machines” as one of my teachers, Michelle Smith, once said.
Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us that “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way – on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment.”
practicing non-judgment
Consciously practicing non-judgment in meditation allows us to open up more to whatever arises, and rest deeply in the mindful presence that judging blocks out. Doing this relieves us of having to do anything in particular in the present.
We just give up grasping for more of the pleasant, resisting the unpleasant, and ignoring our life as it is.
the space of intimacy
As Larry Rosenberg puts it, by practicing non-judgment we come into the space of intimacy where we are “being with life, not just dealing with it.”
Joseph Goldstein is fond of recounting that an interviewer once asked Mother Teresa what she says to God when she prays. “I don’t say anything,” she replied. “I just listen.“ Then the interviewer asked what God says to her. “He doesn’t say anything,” she said. “He just listens. And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.”
Deep listening
Deep listening, in silence, even if no words are spoken, is intimate. Like Mother Teresa we can’t explain this intimacy our mindfulness practice reveals.
We simply live it.
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10/26/2017
beginner’s mind
The prominent mindfulness meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells this story illustrating the freshness of what has been called beginner’s mind in one of his talks about a Western woman who ordained under Ajahn Chah in Thailand in the late 1970s.
She spent 10 years living the simple and austere life of a nun in the jungle, practicing meditation many hours a day. One day she informed her teacher she was done, and returned to the USA.
One year later, she returned to the forest monastery in Northeast Thailand as a recently born-again evangelical, and tried to convert her former acolytes to Christianity. This created quite a stir. People became upset, especially the Thai folks who supported the monastery.
So they went to see the wise abbot, Ajahn Chah, and asked him what they should do about this.
He just looked at them and said “Maybe she’s right.”
That one line took the wind out of their sails. They settled down. People relaxed.
I mean, who knows, really?
Curiously, for me, learning the Buddha’s teachings as a monk for three years helped me let go of Buddhism.
The Buddha encouraged people to find their way between the two fatal extremes of eternalism and nihilism (which plays out in the West today as fundamentalist theism versus radical atheism).
Being radically honest here, I neither believe nor disbelieve in rebirth, karma and enlightenment. I really can’t say whether there’s any such thing as complete freedom from stress in this life.
This is just me, of course. I am not advocating any position here, Just being honest about where I am.
It doesn’t matter that much to me, because for me, that’s not the main point. Opinions like these can consume lots of energy, and for me, don’t really lead anywhere.
Ah! – Beginner’s Mind!
For me the crucial question is — Here we are, what now?
Life is stressful; what can we do about it?
Intelligence and compassion are the two wings of practice. They help us deal with the uncertainty, pain and tragedy of life. They are what the Buddha taught.
Mindfulness brings the momentum of our mental patterns (karma) into focus. Reflecting on life with intelligence and compassion leads us to change those patterns for the better. Beginner’s mind keeps these insights fresh.
Ajahn Chah’s answer to his concerned community – maybe she’s right—is sigh of relief.
We can just get back to what we were going before we were so rudely interrupted: this breath, those sounds, these bills, taking out the garbage, talking to our kids.
The Zen traditions offer some keen insights here. Let’s have a peak into a talk by the contemporary Korean Zen teacher Bon Soeng:
This basic teaching we have is Don’t-Know Mind. We want to know, we think we know, we think we’re supposed to know … But we don’t really know. We have this radical teaching – how about admitting the truth that we don’t know and go from there. If we really live that, it changes everything.
It all comes down to this, (Zen Master hits the floor). Clear it away. Return to zero. What do we see, what do we smell, what do we taste, what do we touch? Everything is truth. What we know blocks the truth. Returning to not knowing opens us up.
Suzuki Roshi wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,
“With beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert mind there are few.”
Beginner’s mind is the essence of this not knowing, this opening to the truth.
When I feel in my heart that I truly don’t know, there is beginner’s mind, and there is an openness and curiosity there. I just feel lighter when I am free of having to know, I am more patient, and less stressed.
How about you?
10/27/2016
Wash your bowls–meditation in daily life
There’s an old Zen story that I like very much. A monk comes to the monastery of the master Zhaozhou and asks for teaching. The master asks him,
“Have you had your breakfast?”
The monk says that he has.
“Then wash your bowls,” is the teacher’s reply, and the only meditation instruction he offers.
Zhaozhou wants to bring the monk down to the immediate present moment, as if saying “Don’t look for some profound metaphysical or yogic instructions here. Be present to this moment.”
Meditation reveals how many fixed ideas and opinions we have. How much judgment, expectation, and how much preconception we carry around with us all the time.
Have you noticed?
I come back to this simple story again and again. “Wash your bowls” for me means just do what you are doing, and that’s enough.
I think it gets even more interesting when we look at why we even bother with meditation in the first place.
When was the last time you asked yourself why you do this stuff–you know, read spiritual books, show up to a meditation group, download–upload, sit attending the breath, walk attending to walking, whatever you do…
Why do you do this? Is there something gnawing at you? Some question you want settled, once and for all?
(OK, if you are honestly in this thing out of curiosity or for stress reduction, that’s fine. But if you are still at it after a few months, well, it’s time to ask a few questions).
I do acknowledge there is something gnawing at me; often below the level of my day to day awareness. Yeah, after 40 years of doing this stuff, I do have an inner gnawing going on.
Some part of me wants to believe in something.
Maybe it’s part of our evolutionary biology; we may be wired to believe in something as a way of insuring our survival. Just look at historical frenzies around nationalism, fundamentalism, and now with the upcoming election.
This is what makes fundamentalism appealing for so many: So and so said it, I believe it, and that’s the end of it.
Our conditioning leads us to believe that there are answers to the questions which gnaw at us. And if we just work hard at it we will find those damned answers and be happy, and everything will be fine, no more gnawing.
I would love to believe in something, sure. But let’s say we did find an answer. Let’s say we did believe in something. Would we then be happy?
I know of many incredibly brilliant people, experts in evolutionary biology, philosophy, and religion who seem to have some major gnawing going on. Just ask their spouses.
OK, maybe we need to re-frame this, and consider the process rather than the imagined destination, of living the question.
Wine bottle, bowl, and plum branch, by Yashima Gakutei
The best answer I can come up with comes from a Jesuit priest whose work was banned by the Vatican. Here is Anthony de Mello, S.J.
“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
So much of what is taught as Buddhism comes across as a little flat: life is all wrapped up in a nice logical package: this is why we suffer, and this how we end suffering.
Once we are given an answer, the questions are supposed to take a back seat. Or if they come up, we are redirected to work hard on the so-called answer.
Consider this well-known passage by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (1903):
…I would like to beg you dear sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
But what if we never “live our way to the answer?” What then?
Wash your bowls.
One of the genius aspects of some radical teachers within Buddhism and other traditions is that they know this very well, that the answer to such questions is not a statement, fact or teaching but rather, is the experience of awareness itself.
What we are doing in meditation is simply developing the capacity to experience awareness itself. And not some fancy, esoteric mystical awareness, just this awareness right here and now.
Let’s take the example of loneliness. I read an article recently claiming that fifteen percent of (North) Americans report experiencing an intense feeling of loneliness once a week.
There is a simple remedy, and this is the heart of the meditation practice for me: just ask yourself:
Is what experiences loneliness, lonely?
Living our ordinary, everyday awareness with greater and greater capacity allows us to savor every instant. Every moment is a treasure, and time is never killed or wasted.
We become, to borrow a line from Kahil Gibran, “a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.”
And we just wash our bowls.
02/03/2015
the church of what's happening now
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only there that we are fully alive, in the church of what’s happening now.
Our son Kupai started Kindergarten last week. When I woke him up for school the other day I asked him how he had slept. He said that it was really frustrating that after we read him his story and kiss him goodnight he thinks about the events of the day.
He explained that he thinks of some apparently very meaningful things to say about his life “but there’s no one to tell” about these insights, as he is all alone with the lights off in his bedroom.
When I heard him relate this complaint, the thought of Ryokan, the 18th century Japanese hermit monk flashed into my mind. (After all these years of meditation I have come to accept that I do indeed have a monkey mind, and there’s no changing this).
There is one poem of his I vaguely remembered as my son mentioned this grievance. Later that day I looked through his poems and found the poem that had partially come into my mind:
Light sleep, the bane of old age:
Dozing off, evening dreams, waking again.
The fire in the hearth flickers; all night a steady rain
Pours off the banana tree.
Now is the time I wish to share my feelings —
But there is no one.
I am struck by the juxtaposition of the pre-sleep ruminations of a five year old boy and those of an elderly hermit Buddhist monk two hundred years before. Both deal with insights, isolation, the need to be with, to connect, the loneliness of awareness, and the awareness of loneliness.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that my true home is my life as it is, not as I want it to be, or as it used to be, or as it should be according to some spiritual notion, but as it is.
I find I need to remind myself of this every day.
Sometimes it is messy, badly in need of repairs, or unpleasant, but whatever it is, it’s my home nonetheless; I can only live this life, even if I don’t particularly like it right now.
Here is another poem, this one is by another Japanese Zen teacher, Gesshu Soko:
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
Like two arrows meeting in flight,
In the midst of nothingness
There is a road that goes directly
to my true home.
Gesshu Soko wrote this poem shortly before he died. It speaks to me more about life than about death. I hear him saying that our true home is right in the middle of what’s happening now, whether it be living or dying, moving forward or moving back, coming or going.
When we are fully with with things as they are, we meet the circumstances of our lives like two arrows shot from different directions coming together point-to-point in mid-air.
Breathing in or breathing out, we live our lives as they are, not as we want them to be or they were.
Farming Village in Spring, Kamisaka Sekka (1909-1910)
This moment, now, is our true home. The road that goes directly to our true home is the road that leads to this moment. That road doesn’t go anywhere.
It doubles back on itself and leads to this moment, as it is.
Walking the road of this moment is challenging. It is a lifelong practice. It can be a breeze when we are on easy street and difficult when we don’t like where it leads, the now that is pain or regret.
Because our life as it is is our true home, we can never really step outside of it (death is another issue, and who really knows what happens then?)
I think about the character created by the comedian Flip Wilson in the 1970s- Reverend Leroy at times, a minister of the “Church of What’s Happening Now.”
I am a very happy parishioner in this church.
Earlier we read Gesshu Soko’s lines
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
This about covers our life. Like two arrows meeting point-to-point in mid-flight, we meet our lives fully in each moment, again and again.
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only place we are fully alive- singing in the church of what’s happening now.
read another?
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02/25/2008