Shunyata cuts to the Zen chase: the great Void, emptiness, the absolute. The Zen lineage has a profound reverence for non-attachment to anything, including and especially the void, so much so that in one Zen story an enlightened teacher tells another to throw his enlightenment out. It seems essential in Zen practice to be cautious about deifying anything, especially shunyata. That said...
Phenomena and nuomena dance ceaselessly with each other. The relative and absolute worlds, the matrix of form and emptiness, make up the heart and soul of reality and are the major subject of inquiry into the nature of our life and existence. What are we, where do we come from, how do we manifest, what is it to be, who is it that exists, ad existential nauseum? Classic Zen literature such as the Mumonkan, Blue Cliff Records, and Book of Serenity are filled with dialogues that challenge our conceptualization of reality, and which ask us to view the world with the clarity and the penetrating insight of an open mind. As Zen students can we cultivate the same mind that Buddha had when he saw the morning star and declared 'I am awake!'? What did he see that changed his view of life, that awakened his intimate and compassionate mind? Can we cultivate intuitive wisdom and insight into the dance of form and emptiness, of things that arise, durate, and cease to be? The Prajna Paramita sutra is common to all Zen schools because it is a treatise/pondering on form and emptiness, on the fundamental essence of Reality.
When you look at a flower what do you see? Suzuki Roshi was fond of saying 'form and color'. He reduced the phenomenal world to that, to just form and color. Just seeing the form and color is a daunting task for many of us with distracted minds, but perhaps for the visual artist this is home base, the shape and hue of things, the way the are in form. But to really see them as 'no thing' we must see beyond or through the form and color, beyond the label, name, and familiarity of an object and into the 'no form' or 'emptiness' of it. We need to go beyond objectifying anything, but then what is left? Pure subjectivity, the world before form and color, or you could say the arising of form and color from emptiness, or the void or nothingness or vastness or infinity or the absolute or the dynamic matrix of arising interconnected reality or no-thing. This is seeing the mark of existence 'there is no self nature', nothing exist as a separate entity.
So, let me be the first to encourage you to forget these few paragraphs. You can't figure out form and emptiness any more than you can think your way out of a paper bag, as the saying goes. Zazen is the front gate of Zen, the path to awakening, and as we sharpen and widen the mind, the world awakens. The most welcoming words I know are 'Let's sit!'.
The sky embraces the mountain,
the mountain penetrates the sky,
Endless play of Spring.
No Thing and Nothing
Hara!
Living in your hara is living balanced, vital, centered, and spontaneous. Emil Durkheim wrote a seminal and comprehensive book on the subject (Hara: The Vital Center of Man). Although not much is said about it these days in Zen circles, cultivating hara is part and parcel of zazen as well as the cultivation of equanimity. Having a strong hara is a much valued trait in Japanese culture and many of the arts from Zen archery to playing the shakuhachi.
The physical location of this psycho/spiritual center is a bit below the navel and a couple of finger widths into your belly. When sitting in the full lotus posture (not required nor often recommended in western culture) the hand mudra rests on the heel of one foot and the little finger is placed next to the belly so that the sensation of the hara is brought to awareness. Belly breathing teaches relaxation of the diaphragm and the lower abdomen while allowing the breath to naturally rise. Few people breathe correctly, and fewer still breathe low into their bellies, much like a purring cat. If you place your hand on your belly, your belly should expand on the inhale like a balloon. I could write a diatribe (and did in my master's thesis) about breathing and the cultural injunctions against the naturalness and fullness of breath in an image conscious culture (suck it up, belly in chest out, coke bottle figure, don't look fat, etc.).
The belly is the center of gravity and of the body. When I am centered in my belly I am out of my head and I am focused, calm, present, flowing, vital, responsive, in touch with the bread basket of deep feelings, alert, ready for whatever presents itself, spontaneous, peaceful, joyful, strong, grounded, connected, whole, integrated, and authentic. I am alive. I am natural. I am myself. Not a bad place to live if you ask me. The subtlety of living in the hara is the subtlety of Zen refinement...why mention it?!
Wet in the rain
a bullfrog bellows
at the moon
Sweet Pleasures
Zen teaches the enjoyment of sense pleasure! The taste of a ripe pear, the warmth of a hug, the beauty of autumn leaves, the smell of apple pie in the oven, the sound of a Mozart piano concerto. Zen teaches how to be fully present to delight. In fact, the deeper you go into meditation, the more your senses become finely honed to the exquisite beauty of each moment, to the rhythm and beat of life as it lands on the doorstep of your body and mind.
Perhaps the ancient Buddhas are rolling in their graves at the notion of Zen and pleasure, but on the other hand, maybe they are snapping their fingers and toes. If you want to have the deepest experience of pleasure and not be run by the insanities of desire and greed, which can manifest as driven compulsions in all areas of life from food, sex, relationship, exercise, and money,....'the candy is dandy but liquor is quicker' view of Ogden Nash,...then you need restraint and good judgment and detachment as your internal guidance system in the world of sense desire. Zen and Buddhism are not about the denial of pleasure or of any human experience.
In America, and perhaps the whole Western world if not the world at large, we are caught between the Victorian denial of pleasure plus the guilt and sin model of many religions, and the pornographic and hedonistic impulses of a marketing society bent on reprogramming our brain stems with the 'I deserve to have it now' mantra. Desire sells and pleasure can be a short term balm for suffering. The nature of being human is the same now as it was 2,500 years ago: people are confused about how to deal with their own suffering and desires, the powerful forces of pleasure and pain that are the DNA of human experience.
Zazen creates balance between peace and pleasure. We can see our greed while allowing ourselves complete equanimity and balance. Why chase a mouse when the you are a purring like a cat?!
Drinking tea
I close my eyes
As the sun warms my face
Sila Paramita: Integrity
How do we cultivate integrity and what Don Juan called 'impeccability'? The ideal of complete integrity is like a character MRI or x-ray, if we sit still long enough and plant our feet in the courage of truthful insight, the crevasses in the fabric of our integrity leap out at us with volcanic intensity. You can not grow up without being fractured! Of course you can grow up with a fine moral character, but nobody escapes all the things that split us within, the suffering of family interactions, identity development, disappointments of youth, the struggles of love and care taking, the inherent struggle between internal and society values, and the I-Thou conflicts of establishing intimacy with people who have needs and personalities different than our own. Along the way pieces of our integrity become compromised. This is true for everyone, but how many are willing to put their actions, attitudes, emotions, and character under the microscope of self examination for the entirety of their lives?!
The double bind of moral and integral development for an adult spiritual seeker is the dynamic tension between loving yourself completely as you are, and acknowledging and steadfastly working with gaps in your integrity. I think Suzuki Roshi made a definitive remark when he says that 'you are perfect the way you are, and you can use some improvement'. In my Zen practice, this gap has been the cutting edge of facing the truth of the harm I have caused myself and others through habit, inconsideration, denial, impulsiveness, compulsions, ego inflation,...yikes....starts to read like a list of the seven deadly sins, and of course we can all simply reduce our lists to greed, hate, and delusion, the Buddhist triumvirate of the loss of integrity. When we are sensitive to our 'character defects' or limitations of integrity gaps, we can collapse in shame or guilt, we can become our own worst enemies, which adds insult to injury and itself becomes an integrity hole.
The perfection of integrity, of sila, isn't about striving to be perfect, in fact, it isn't about the attainment of a perfect moral character! It is about the effort you are willing to make to walk the path of truthful self examination. When we walk a path the scenery changes. This is climbing the Zen mountain. It is also falling on your butt and getting up again and again. The lyrics 'there ain't no success like failure, and failure ain't no success at all' comes to mind. As a student of Zen, my effort is to keep practicing and facing myself as I am and things as they are. Integrity is every growing, not a static ideal.
Stepping on toes
Bowing with regret
One step after the next
Dana Paramita: Giving
One Buddhist teacher suggests that giving is the root of all virtue. Dana Paramita epitomizes the Buddhist ideal of selfless living, of organizing your life around the care and nourishment of all beings. This deepest of intentions focuses less on our own satisfaction, which more often that not ends up in misery, than on an attitude of generosity toward the world. To quote a Tibetan teacher, "The way to be happy is to make others happy". When counseling people, I often suggest they give what they want to get, which although simplistic, really creates the context for mutual fulfilment and harmony. If you need attention, give it, if you need comfort, give it, if you need love, give it, if you need peace, give it, if you need touch, give it. This turns self centered compulsions on tilt.
Of course danger lurks within the ideal of selflessness, because many of us have been trained to deny our needs or to think of self care as selfish. Any guilt or shame associated with treasuring yourself is a conditioned piece of identity that harms your well being. Selfless giving is not synonymous with self denial. I have found that as my life and practice have matured, I need less and value simplicity more, and also that there are really very few things in life necessary to my well being. I allow myself to have them, but since they are few, I am available to others. It seems the more I contribute, the more I feel a sense of belonging and the inherent joy associated with generosity.
Zazen and mindfulness practices keep us centered in our body and the present. When we are completely present and available to the world, responding with openness and spontaneity, then giving of ourselves is an unselfconscious activity, it isn't something we try to affect, it is an extension of breath and voice and eyes and ears and heart and mind and naturalness. Including all things into the space of your being is itself the gift bestowing hands of all the Buddhas.
Without thinking
I offered him a ride home.
What's to hold back?!
Humility Lessons
Humility is the essence of being human. Although often thought of as the spiritual antidote of pride, for me humility is the marrow of a selfless person. Ultimately, our spiritual struggles are with the many faces of ingrained self involvement and our self centered ways. We tend to be Copernican in our thinking, acting, and motivation. The obviousness of this reveals itself the longer we travel a spiritual path.
Whether I am in awe over galactic pictures of the dynamic universe or pondering the miracle of the wind singing through the autumn leaves of an aspen, the incredulity of the natural world humbles me to the roots of my existence. Of course the steady stream of my faux paux, the limitations of my empathy for other people, the stepping on toes of those I love, the bumps and bruises of cruising through a world that is poisoning the environment, practicing genocide, dying from viruses, ad infinitum, as well as my own greediness, resentments, and inflation, all add to the karmic mix of an ordinary person attempting to walk a humble path. What can I say...Oy!
In spite of our deeply ingrained self reference points, humility can awaken as a compass. With the passing of years we can ripen, the cliffs of separation can erode with the wind of compassion and the breeze of clarity. We can know the world as ourselves and respond to it as all beings reveal our very heart and mind, we can loosen the bonds that divide us from all manifestations of wonder and glory and grace, which is to say, we can be completely alive by dropping our notions of 'me' and 'I' and 'mine' and by allowing our humble mind to function freely throughout the day. The obstacles we face in life are continual reminders about taking an ordinary and well worn road.
A rusty shovel
beneath a bare maple,
The world sheds it skin
Wholehearted Living
Zen practice has taught me to throw myself into life. Each moment's activity is the whole of my life and worthy of complete attention and participation. Wholehearted living means opening to whatever greets me throughout the day. Of course, as a mortal there are gaps in my ability to participate with all of myself and in my undivided receptivity to others and events. This is the realm of practice, the place where the inconsistencies of my presence can be refined by zazen and tilling the soil of my character.
We often fear and think of death as a finite event, yet with some insight it is clear that death is much greater than that, for there is a living death that far outweighs the demise of our corporeal existence. We die each second that we fail to participate in the vital moment, in the breath of our being, in the presence of all reality as it meets our senses. We die by not being fully alive and responsive to the miracle of our own existence, an existence that is connected to all other existences throughout time and space, and our presence that is of the moment and linked to all other moments of past, present, and future.
Wholehearted living is living with an indiscriminate loving kindness. It is a readiness to receive what life has to offer, regardless of our proclivities toward judgment, preferences, expectations, and emotionality. It is waking up in the morning with a song in your heart and the willingness to say YES! A smidgen of street wisdom: Life is short, don't waste time!
I welcome
morning shadows
with a warm smile
Walking Earth
One of my greatest joys is walking. Not power walking, exercising, or traveling toward a destination, but true walking which is wandering with a heart moved by whatever presents itself. Strolling through forests is equally as satisfying as a busy neighborhood beat. I take heart from Thoreau's essay on walking, a guide to the art of strolling, observing, and living in relationship to the earth and society.
Zen has taught me to walk with my mind in my feet, to feel each step and the ground underneath. We are always in relationship to the ground and the earth, which quietly, consistently and steadily supports our every moment. Gravity is our friend and standard as Lao Tzu reminds us when he says that 'gravity is the root of grace'. There is an elegance to a well balanced flowing body, and walking in grace is swimming in the ocean of being with everyone, it allows the redwood trees and ferns and leaves and faces of humanity to come forward as the essence of the moment.
How we walk is the metaphor of life, it is the rhythm and flow of how we stand and move and think and feel and sense our way through living and dying. Are we willing to stand upright and with profound yet gentle awareness, allowing our feet to meet the earth? Does our stride and pacing arise from some inner depths and with a sense of connection to the places through which we wander? Is our head balanced and our eyes open, do we move through life with some sense of being centered and of the earth, can we allow our legs and feet to relax as they swing forward in a natural gait? How do we pace ourselves on this walk, this day, this moment?
Walking green mountains
Following the river
The forest awakens
Ordinary Mind
Ordinary mind is reality. Zen is relentless if not severe in squashing any notions of a special mind, a special state of mind, or some fantastic final holy sacred blissful penultimate mind blowing enlightenment. This puts all the machinations of spiritual attainment on tilt. Sadly, there are Zen teachers who's attachment to some special state of experience permeates their teachings. In Zen circles this is called 'stinky Zen'. I think Zen is particularly unique (not special) among world religions because of this insistence upon bare bones simplicity of mind. There is no special mind.
The Prajna Paramita sutra states unequivocally that 'there is nothing to attain', and that 'with nothing to attain a bodhisattva relies on Prajna Paramita'. The one thing all schools of Zen share in their rituals is the Prajna Paramit Sutra, this wonderful statement of non attainment. With nothing to attain your ordinary mind is the way of the Buddhas, the way of flowing, being, allowing, non-meddling, non anticipation, no past, no future, no present, only present, the giving up of trying,...of awaking to just the way things are.
So what is awakening? This question is the motivation to zen practice and the practice itself. Carrying this question around in the belly and heart begins to open and clarify reality, center and ground one's being in prajna and intuitive wisdom. I have taken heart from Rilke's most profound teaching which he offers in Letters to an Artist, which I paraphrase here: we are not ready for the answers, it is learning to live the questions that really matters. Can we live the question of Zen, the question of what is always going beyond, what arises in the present, what is the great dynamic matrix of inter-being?
Waking at midnight
Grasshoppers buzz in my head
Oh! Forest music!
No Heads Above Your Own
Plain Zen sayings often cut to the chase of truth. They can stop conventional notions and turn our universe upside down. 'Taking no heads above your own' verifies your Buddha nature. It is a kick in the pants for staying true to your universal nature and not getting lost in the theory and philosophy, heroes and heroines, antics and solemn rituals, the popularity or disfavor of Zen. The world can be a carrot for spiritual donkeys.
It is the equivalent to 'thine own self be true', yet with a far more complex and subtle nuance. Who is it that takes no heads above your own? And does taking no head above your own mean that you understand that everything already belongs to you. As Walt Whitman said, 'For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you'.
We live in times when more and faster and bigger are better. We are trained to long for what we don't have, to compare what we have with what somebody else has, and to feel incomplete the way we are. Culture has become spiritually synonymous with the denial of the sacred. The miracle is you. How can we practice and live in a way that affirms the fullness and wholeness of ourselves as we are, and realizes that everything in the moment is the face of Buddha, whole unto itself as a unique part of the cosmic tapestry, intimately flowing with all other parts of the tapestry. This is the realization of Indra's net, the cosmic fabric of reality with mirrors at every intersection which reflect the whole.
Gazing at the night sky
A mirror without reflection
Who does the looking?
Becoming Samantabhadra
Are you going to meditate and practice Zen today? How? When? Where? What's your motivation? Pay attention to your feet touching the earth? Lend a hand? Accept things as they are? Go to a meeting, study a text, ponder the workings of the universe, tune into your belly button. Going to study yourself and let go of yourself? Yes? No? Maybe?
That is a very short list of the mind of Samantabhadra, the Bodhisattva of Zen Practice and Meditation. Her voice is sometimes a gentle loving nudge, sometimes a loud squawk, as in 'get thee to a Zen Center'. Samantabhadra is the icon and energy and potentiality of practice, which is nothing less in Zen than endless awakening. Dogen clarified this with his life by firmly rooting the Soto Zen tradition in practice, the endless turning of the dharma wheel inspired by the vow to save all beings.
The question of how we pick up our Zen practice is like a mirror that reflects our inner life, character, intention, and relationship with all things. How we practice is how we live, how we live is how we practice. There is no life outside of practice, and practice goes beyond our intentions and choices. Practice and wisdom and compassion are the three dancing maidens of Zen: Samantabhadra, Manjusri, and Avalokiteshvara. Wisdom and Compassion may exist within and throughout, but practice potentializes them, makes them known, presents us with the grit and grime of daily life as the blackboard of mind.
Waking at dawn
I whisk the tea
Then sit still awhile
Becoming Maitreya
Maitreya Buddha is the embodiment of becoming and the potentiality of awakening to the truth of our vast Buddha Nature. The notion that we will become Buddha in the future is misleading because already we are the matrix of inter-being, the web of rocks, trees, sky, earth, animals, light, and dark. Maitreya is the potentiality within each of us for realizing our actual circumstance of intimacy with all beings and things. We all are potential seeds of illumination and awareness, we can wake up from sleep into reality.
Zazen in its broadest sense is becoming. It is the arising of phenomena simultaneously together in the present moment. It also means we are entirely unformed, we are not a quantifiable something. With our senses we can experience sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind, but we are not these things in the sense of them being objects. Our senses are doorways of perceptions, links of connection, filaments of the process of living and dying, of becoming.
Can we live as Maitreya Buddha, as a person who is completely open to becoming? Can we see others as Maitreya and not fix them in our judgmental sights? How do we loosen the bonds of words and concepts, of labeling and prejudice so that what remains is forever unknown? How am I a seed, what waters me, how do I water seeds, how can I revision the potentiality of becoming Buddha into the reality of being Maitreya in the here and now, which of course paradoxically means I am Buddha? Dropping all of these ponderings, can I breathe out and let myself go into the unfathomable sense of my whole body and mind without limiting it?
Scattered clouds over Mt Tamalpais
Autumn dusk arrives early
Crows settle on pine branches
Authenticity Gap
Just be yourself. This has so many nuances and implications, the exploration of our real self is a lifetime path. The gap between our authentic and conditioned self is the loss of our experiential life. Suzuki Roshi said that 'When you are you, zen is zen'.
I like to talk about the gap between our authentic self and our conditioned self. Another favorite Suzuki quote of mine is 'You are perfect just the way you are, but you could use some improvement'. Most of us forget the 'perfect the way we are' part and focus instead on improvement without completely embracing and loving ourselves. This is the danger of self help and improvement programs, we can forget our fundamental wholeness as an already existing experience. Growing your life is a different experience when you accept your authentic nature. Zen isn't about fixing or achieving or attaining. Sitting is a chance to peacefully abide in the present fullness and miracle of authentic reality.
Karen Horney says that our neurotic solution to living is the attempt we make to become our idealized self. We decide who we ought to be and then try to achieve it. As Zen meditation and practice teaches us to allow ourselves just to be exactly as we are, the manner in which we hold on to a picture we have of 'how we should be' or 'how we should have been' or 'how we should become' give us a stark and uncomfortable truth about our confused identity. It is a disease of the 'shoulds', which is short hand for how we and the world conspire to twist our life into a preconceived shape. The joy of Zen is that the shape we are right now is whole and wonderful, and if we accept the shape of our full being we can center in peace.
Eli leaps up
Arms ready to hug
Together we laugh
Welcoming the Unexpected
Life is unexpected. Everything that happens is unexpected, it never conforms to any idea, plan, notion, or sentiment we have about it. The reality that arises in the present moment is never our picture or movie, it is an unknown and immediate surprise. The thought that things are going are way is a veneer of comfort that can impede our direct perception and experience of the vibrant moment. Sometimes things go our way, sometimes they don't, sometimes they are very neutral, and Zen is a constant crash course in meeting things just the way they are without meddling. Are we continually willing to be surprised?
Throughout the day I am caught off guard by life's little surprises: an unplanned tax notice, a call from a distant friend, feedback that hits me in the gut, a touching moment of being loved, a newspaper article about genocide. Zen practice has helped me stop and open to these moments without resistance, to welcome them as life presenting itself to me, as the joy of an unfolding day. These moments are Buddha, they are the matrix of total engaged living. The quip 'Life is what is happening while you are making plans' is a fine teaching.
How do we meet the unexpected? This rich question can sit on our shoulder throughout the day and provide helpful information about where we are stuck in our conditioning, about how we hang onto our concepts of how life should be. A favorite story of mine is about the sage-fool Nasrudin. He watched a hawk for a long time, then cut off its beak and talons with a scissors and proclaimed 'This is what a bird should look like!'. If we can catch ourselves trying to impose on things as they are, we can then open to the wondrous dynamic of the present and let our boat float unimpeded down the river of life. I have found I need to use oars far less often than I believe.
A spider web
suddenly appears
in morning light
Yes to Insecurity
To be alive is to be floating in an ocean of insecurity. The 'secret' of peace is to welcome and embrace the impossibility of being human, of being nothing, of being everything, of not knowing. No box can contain an improbable infinite miraculous reality. We are insecure because underneath the apparent ground of the earth and the workings of gravity is groundlessness. In Zen we say there is no handrail.
Our usual insecure thoughts and feelings about self esteem, finances, work, relationships, health, and the state of the world seem to both pale in meaning and find a truer perspective against the background existential insecurity. As Paul Tillich coined, it takes courage to be. Are we willing to peer down into the well? Can we see the water at the bottom? Can we see beneath and through and beyond the water? A Zen teacher might ask, 'What is it?!".
When I walk beneath the star lit sky, peer at the ocean's horizon, feel the pulsation of my beating heart, or enter any of the other infinite dharma gates that offer a precise awareness of being, I find that I can both shake and breathe easy as I embrace some nameless wonder. Returning again and again to Zazen, it seems that the attitude of 'bring on the insecurity' grows a bit with each passing decade.
Chest tightening
Heart beating
Where am I?
Beneath Narcissism
To call somebody a narcissist these days is to put the hex on them, to give them a derogatory label akin to werewolf or Frankenstein or shrew. What is the inner world of somebody we call a narcissist, and what does this difficult state of being contain that we can learn exceedingly important lessons from?
Narcissism is a manifestation of the absence of perceived love and nurturing, and a deeply held belief that it isn't safe to depend on others. It is a state of profound suffering. When people feel this way they become a universe unto themselves because that is the only street they can walk down to feel okay. What frustrates us about people who suffer like this is that we can't get through to them, and we don't feel that they can perceive us accurately or connect with us deeply. And like all things we find difficult, there are pieces of ourselves floating around in the batter.
Several of the most important teachings of Zen are good medicine for the isolation and deep pain of the wounded narcissist (and all of us). Learning loving kindness for ourselves and letting others love us begins to heal deep wounds. Forgiveness for childhood caretakers awakens a compassionate heart. And most importantly, learning to depend on others opens the path to intimacy and feelings of belonging. Learning to bear witness to others, the act of making others significant, awakens feelings of connection and broadens our emotional repertoire.
Zen is a path of intimacy and inter-dependence. We all need each other. A psychologist summed it up simply by saying that 'love is risk'. One way I often know I'm close to my tender heart is when the face of fear comes to sit on my shoulder. I have learned to welcome the fear and then flow with gentle tenderness.
how many years
have we walked together
listening to footsteps
Corrosive Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a corrosive and insidious form of self hate. If you suffer from perfectionism you are incapable of unconditionally loving yourself. What one can often blithely pass off as a set of standards to measure oneself by is rather a mechanism for denigrating self worth. Perfectionist suffer from internal messages and feelings that their efforts aren't good enough and should be better. They can easily make others suffer from the same relentless judgments they hold when expectations are not achieved. Perfectionism is a rat caught in a maze with a bar always set too high.
I once heard of a writer who claimed that every story he wrote was exceptional. An interviewer questioning him asked how this was possible. He amiably replied, ' I lower my standards'. This writer had a wonderful sense of reality, that the finest of arrows shot at a target will only sometimes hit the mark. What the writer enjoyed was the writing, the results were what they were. Most perfectionist no longer enjoy the process they are involved in because they are invested in particular results that will conform to their inner set of standards.
Healing from perfectionism means loving yourself as you are and appreciating the effort you are making, not the results you are attaining. There is a difference between striving for excellence and being a perfectionist. Somebody who strives for excellence but misses the mark can come away feeling good about themselves. The perfectionist is miserable and the internal dialog will always be one of self criticism.
Zen teaches students to treasure themselves, to recognize themselves as a Buddha, which means shining the lights of loving kindness, patience, spaciousness, and gentleness on themselves as they walk through the dusty world. If you find yourself trapped in perfectionism you might find that cutting yourself some slack and looking more deeply into the well of your motivations will give you some peace of mind. Who knows how you will influence the world when you completely embrace yourself as you are?!
Liberating Egoism
People are self centered by nature and rare is the path that leads to liberation from egoism, and more rare still the person willing to climb this mountain. From a Zen and Buddhist point of view, happiness is a result of wishing for the happiness of others, as well as learning to live for the benefit of all. The Zen path is liberation from the entire paradigm of a separate self, plus an ongoing, deep, and insightful investigation into those habits of mind and body that keep us locked in self-centeredness.
Taking a spiritual path in Zen means committing to healing and to transforming the dynamic and endless interplay between greed, hate, and self-centeredness (delusion), all three of which are at the center of the Buddhist wheel of life. Although it may seem simplistic, I find it a fair generalization and helpful to think of internal and societal ruptures in the fabric of peaceful living from a standpoint of these three root distortions. Greed is an egoistic distortion of generosity, hate a distortion of loving kindness, and self-centeredness a distortion of Buddha nature, our innate interconnected wise and whole being.
How do we shine a light on our egoism? Are we even willing to ask this question?! I find the world is always giving us feedback about it. People tell us they feel misunderstood, comment on our faults, present difficulties in relationships, disappoint us in their behaviors. Until we can listen to the messages coming our way about how stuck we are in our own point of view, we will have a difficult time healing and transforming. How can we learn to take a non-defensive posture in the face of feedback, criticism, upset, requests for change, and challenges? Non-defensive behavior is the face of open mindness and curiosity. It requires humility, courage, and perseverance to let the world inform you of your character weaknesses, and then to act from your Buddha nature rather than react from conditioned egoism.
Healing Hatred
Hatred is distorted love, not its opposite. Indifference is the opposite of love, it is shunning the world. Hatred requires an investment in people and circumstance. What people fail to recognize is that hatred is built on the foundation of disappointment and the frustrations of not being able to reach compromise and harmony. Our collective ineffectiveness at re-establishing harmony keeps stoking the fires of hate.
Hatred is maintained through a self righteous clinging to one's own point of view and a disregard of the dignity and right of others to hold their own point of view, no matter how disagreeable we find it. The bottom line of a humanitarian and spiritual point of view is that all points of view must be acknowledged, for without this witnessing there can be no half-way points or negotiations or resolutions in the effort to return to peace.
Healing hatred requires an attitude of good will and the skills of insight and peace making communication. This is true on the international, societal, and interpersonal stages. Life is both harmony and conflict, and conflict resolution is the business of a bodhisattva, somebody committed to caring for the welfare of all beings, creatures, nations, and the earth. If we value peace we must learn the skill of listening to that which is distasteful, of presenting points of view in palatable ways, and working towards the neutral middle ground where all aggrieved parties perceive mutual benefit and resolution.
An image I like is that we are all in the same boat at all times, and that if there is a hole in the boat we will all drown unless it is fixed. Focusing on who caused the hole and how it was caused often results in blame and finger pointing rather than cooperative problem solving. Living an awakened life for the benefit of all beings means developing the capacity to live in neutrality, objectivity, and balance, and to cultivate skills that will help you and others return to peace.
Healing hatred also means sorting out how you maintain personal attitudes of resentment, ill will, lack of forgiveness, meanness, prejudice, judgment, blame, perfectionism, arrogance, pride,.....many of our conditioned character traits can be seen as faces of hatred. If questions can guide us, perhaps the question 'How do I continually strive for peace and good will?' can go a long way in our self evaluation as well as in our efforts to have a peaceful world.
Letting Greed Go
In Buddhism, greed is one of the three main roots of suffering. Zen practice helps guide the transformation from greed to generosity, from self centered thirsting after things to peaceful contentment with just enough to satisfy and plenty left over to share. Greed is natural desire gone awry. To be human is to embody desire, the hungers for food, shelter, clothing, love, friendship, affirmation, jobs, money, whatever makes our lives work, are as natural as the sun and the moon in their orbits. Desire takes a bad rap. Greed however, is how we go astray, and our materialistic and scientific and technological world has taken consumption to the max.
In the developed worlds we simple want to much, use to much, feel entitled to too much, and leave behind too big a footprint, whether it is nuclear waste disposal, greenhouse gas, polluted top soils and waters, or ugly roadside shopping malls and car dealerships and tract mini-mansions. The earth can not sustain us any longer. This is a fact and a certainty of demographics, ecology, warfare, agriculture, health, and economics. Human greed has created collective trouble.
Healing greed requires a willingness to go against the tides of conditioned materialism, attachments to things we lust after, and the more is better philosophy of the market economy. It takes courage to opt for simplicity and the welfare of all. This is a defining characteristic of Zen and Buddhism as a whole, not harming means finding the true spirit of generosity that requires little for oneself and focuses on bringing benefit to the many. A formal Zen eating ritual makes use of a bowl and utensil set called 'oryoki', which means 'just enough'. How do we live a 'just enough' life that is good for our own spiritual welfare, our relationships, nature, society, humanity, and the earth?!
I think healing greed begins with an honest evaluation of our real needs, our conditioned materialism, our wanting and spending habits, in effect, our whole conceptualization of what it means to inhabit a planet and take care of our life. This is a difficult mountain to climb that takes courage, conviction, community, and a spiritual compass. Rather than seeking pat answers to the difficult personal and societal problems of greed, a Zen approach might be to just open our minds to the observation of our using, buying, discarding, and sharing habits, for these daily routines define our relationship to the earth and all of humanity. Zen is the practice of letting go, and letting go of desire is an ongoing process and struggle for anyone who sincerely contemplates the matrix of dynamic interconnection between all forms of life. What do we really need...not much.