A renown Zen teacher wrote that 'if you haven't danced with the devil, you haven't practiced Zen'. Having just seen Sidney Lumet's 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead', an in your face contemporary tragedy that is shockingly close to home and an archetypal walk through the hell realms, this topic is fresh for me. The film confronts you with the darkest impulses of the unconscious: lust, greed, hate, incest, murder, adultery, self-deceit, self-hate, addiction, neglectful parenting, unethical work behavior, familial destruction. The acting, script, and cinematography are brilliant, and a subtle reference within the movie to a Shakespearean tragedy hints at the playing field of this dark tale. The movie will make you squirm.
It is so easy to glorify the spiritual journey into the light. Yet there is no spiritual journey that isn't a deep wrestling with the dark aspects of our humanness; where we each find life most difficult we will most likely find the devil, the forces that want to rip us apart and tear us asunder, and the unconscious drives that have the power to move us into madness and fear, or more in the Buddhist tradition, the darkness that activates our deepest greed, hate, and delusion. There is much in our lives that we would rather not know about ourselves. Zazen, teachers, sangha, and Buddha are the ship's mast we lash ourselves too when it is time to dance with the devil and clarify our darkness.
Zazen can give us confidence that we can sit still while Mara the temptress enters our life, and that we can see her invitations to self destruction clearly. But I think it is naive to think that Zazen alone will resolve our innermost demons. I have found in my own life that there are many tools available for wrestling with darkness, from therapy to twelve step recovery, from self help to the Enneagram. The koan all Zen students struggle with is just how much vulnerability is possible at the given moment, how much courage can we muster to jump off a hundred foot pole, to free fall into a boundless life that welcomes whatever presents itself, be it darkness or light or the unknown.
Walking with ghosts
into a dark cave
no turning back
The Devil
