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
Contemplating Zen
Contemplation is the art of subtle mind turning; it is letting your mind gently carousel around what comes into it; it is mind being mind, mind being with mind, mind unattached, mind involved, mind delighting, mind asking and answering, mind seeking and finding; it is like a feathered seed blowing hither and yon in a gentle breeze, alighting for a moment then moving to unseen winds.
Sitting Zen is stepping back enough to allow mind to freely flow; contemplating is engaging at times with that which flows, like following a leaf down a stream, carefully observing as it frolics in ripples, becomes tethered to a branch, releases with the wind, then continues on until out of sight. The contemplative mind has no purpose other than reflection itself; contemplative delight in clear seeing is less of a reward than an act of fully engaged participation in the subtle presence of life.
There is no greater delight for me than leaning against a rock in the warm sun and seeing what is nearby. I am always surprised when the nuances of the moment present themselves, and whatever inner storms may be brewing seem to vanish in the deep stream of appreciation for this mysterious and brief life. Contemplation seems to move between the luminosity of the present and the teachings of dharma; it is a dance between experience and philosophy, reality and thought, poetry and story, fullness and emptiness, living and dreaming. Contemplation is an ocean without a shore, an activity without a goal, a harmonious play between heaven and earth.
the winter sun on my cheek
a feathered seed pod floating in the wind
worlds upon worlds arising and falling away
Hello Kwan Yin
Practicing Zen means walking into the marketplace ready to meet the world. The other day I went to Woodlands market on Christmas day to buy scotch tape for wrapping presents. At the checkout counter a familiar Hispanic woman asked me if I was going to be with my kids. I told her I was, and that I was just doing last minute wrapping. Little did I know she was about to give me Kwan Yin as my favorite gift of the day.
When I asked her about her kids, she said she told her oldest boy she wasn't getting him anything, that her total love was what she had to give him. We chatted for a minute about love as the essence of Christmas, and how kids have learned to expect too many material things. Then she told me that she did all the work in her family and had little money left for gifts. She worked seven days a week to support herself, her husband, and her two kids. She told me her husband had lesions in his back from his job, that he was an invalid who could barely walk, that his workers compensation had run out, and that because they are not citizens he is not eligible for disability payments. He is thirty-one. We looked in each others eyes and touched our hearts, and I told her my thoughts and heart would be with her and her family.
How can our hearts not soften when we hear the angst and pain of the world, when the world presents us with people who make the best of situations that might bury us all. I know all too well my own whining and complaining, my tendencies to run from pain, to seek out ease and comfort, and the idiocy of wishing for different karma. In the solitude of walking home under a warm December sun, my heart went out to my friend and her family, it went out to the world of suffering, and whatever I might have been holding as dust in my eye fell away as the great arms of Kwan Yin held this turning world in gentle embrace.
Rocks on the road,
So what!
Trip over them into love
A Great Silence
There is a great silence. It will find you when you step out of the noise. This silence is a dragon flying through heavens, a carpet of fall leaves, the ocean caressing the shore, a heron in a silver bowl. When this silence sneaks into mind, the world falls away and reveals itself and purifies your heart.
This great silence is an invitation to step out of your house, not through the front door, but through all the windows. Suzuki Roshi called it a letter from emptiness. It is the soil out of which all trees grow, blossom, and whither. It is the peace that we long for and think is over mountains and down rivers far from home, yet the mountains walk through us and the rivers pulse in our veins.
This great silence is mana. Stop wherever you are and listen. Sit on the grass. Close your eyes. Listen with your pores. It is all around you, a golden pearl at the center of the things. Glance out of the corner of your eyes and the shadow of luminous silence will waltz through you. It is your long lost friend, waiting for you, waiting, waiting, waiting....
I sit in the morning sun
as the pond whispers
to the bare trees
Forgetting Others
walking the wide streets of the palisades
i am mesmerized by towering palms
my eyes feast on mansions
while footfalls echo through gilded silence
i come upon a work crew
repairing streets for black limousines
a one armed hispanic sweeping
wakes me from the dream
where one forgets the others
who shit in streets
and eat from garbage bins
or sleep in crowded rooms
-----
Practicing Zen is not leaving anyone out. When you discover how you leave people out, the road of practice is clear.
Perseverance
The secret of Zen practice lies in not giving up, which allows the winds of reality to erode both the obvious and hidden layers of our self centered lives. How long does it take a pine tree to mature, a mountain to rise, a star to be born in a nebulae? Impatience and frustration can bedevil practice if we don't appreciate that spiritual awakening and the maturation of our character do not happen within a chosen time frame. Our aspiring nature itself is a central problem, and practice readily reveals the shortcomings of grabbing at the world as if we know what we are about.
Perseverance means continually returning to your body in the present moment, to the way things are. Although our first association to the idea of perseverance may be one of toughness, staunchness, or fortitude, it can actually be a gentle reminder to follow in the footsteps of the ancients. It is just getting up when the bell rings, an act of setting aside our choice making activity for what life presents at the moment. Perhaps perseverance is to preserve ourselves, to keep ourselves whole and intact, to maintain a daily posture of humility, joy, and vitality. As the I Ching often says, 'Perseverance furthers'.
It is perseverance that keeps our faith and doubt in balance, that allows us to step across the great ocean of being on the stone bridge of time. Sticking with practice is staying close to our breath and body and heart and mind, to the gracious gifts the dawn offers, to the welcoming warm hands of family, teachers, and friends, and to the intimations of a mysterious and beautiful world that beckons us to awaken in this lifetime.
How can I step
through a stone wall?
Touching the surface
is half way through!
Doubt
Doubt is part of the ancient path to spiritual wholeness, for without out it, you will accept the pablum of dharma without the digestion required for insight, integration, and integrity. In other words, serious doubt when combined with spiritual curiosity is like a mariner's compass on a wind swept sea. What can I trust? Who can I trust? What path will lead me to awakening and insight, to compassion and wholeness? What is the best way to wrestle with personal, family, and work problems? How shall I relate to the world, living and dying, existence?
Doubt when turned inward can lead to humility, for it can help us question our motivations as well as our conditioning. Doubting becomes problematic if it leads to nihilism, atheism, agnosticism, or the inability to cultivate faith. So on the path of the middle way, doubt and faith walk hand in hand. With doubt we question things until we truly comprehend them, and with faith we completely trust the unfolding universe.
For those of thus that are doubting Thomas', let us take heart from Shakespeare: "Our doubts are traitors that make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt". You may doubt that zazen is in fact an expression of your Buddha nature, or that you can continue with a lifetime path of insight, or that you have the resources to balance the demands of your life, yet if we find encouragement and support from within and without, we can persevere as we walk around and through the circle of reality.
Leaving the pond
empty handed,
do fish really live here?
Faith
Faith is the surrender of egoism. Whereas hope is the wish for a particular future outcome, faith is an immersion in present reality. Neither is faith a belief in something, for belief is a cognitive attempt at stasis in a flowing universe. Belief in something sets it apart from one's own being; faith transcends separation.
Faith most resembles trust in that it requires immersion in the unknown reality of life, it demands that we set aside personal choice in favor of the unpredictable and ongoing transformation of everything. To be a person of faith requires humility and simplicity in the face of chaos and complexity. It means what we want and desire pales in the face of what we already have and how things actually manifest.
An old Zen saw says it requires faith, doubt, and perseverance to practice Zen. What does it mean to have faith in Buddha? It means to set your small self aside, to let go of the many manifestations of clinging to your ego identity, self image, personal desire, your past, your future, even your present, it means to go beyond, and then beyond beyond, it means to drop stark naked into what you can't fathom and then trust that the universe will reveal the light you already are, it means to die to all definitions of your separate self. Faith is a means of bowing into life and dying into the moment. It is exhaling yourself away.
Beside the creek
on a crisp autumn day,
falling maple leaves transmit faith.
Being at Ease
One of the seven factors of enlightenment is being at ease, a manifestations of Suzuki Roshi's 'calmness in activity and activity in calmness'. How do we let our body and mind flow with the comings and goings of the day, with the vicissitudes of life, the hormones and illnesses and stressors and joys and sorrows of living and dying? Being at ease isn't always easy! In Zen practice it cultivated over time by the continual practice of zazen during which you learn the art of sitting through whatever comes up and whatever life throws at you.
I am lousy at being at ease so I practice it quite a bit. My body and family karma was to learn to live an anxious, intense, emotional, judgmental, competitive, and impulsive life. Of course, we live in a performance and image driven culture, a culture of endemic denial, isolation, and fractured families, so this is just my version of the collective angst. Nobody gets off. The equanimity of Zen is both a helpful antidote and a sane way of living, for when we can approach things with stability and balance our world becomes peaceful and calm.
Breathing naturally and mindfully is the root of being at ease, and this requires an open belly and diaphragm, relaxed body musculature, and a balanced posture, all ingredients of meditation. "Breathe!" is a helpful injunction. In order to cultivate an attitude of ease requires examination of how we worry, or how we dislodge our experience from the present moment with anticipation or memory. The present moment is the pivot point of equanimity and balance. I find the more I am at ease the more I am alive and awake in the present, receiving the gifts of experience and relationship.
So much noise and haste!
Flowing with my breath
I return home
Simplicity
As I mature (read aging and losing my hair), my love of simplicity continues. I am drawn to the simple, plain, old, and well used, and as an artist I am deeply satisfied with the wabi sabi aesthetic of rusted buckets, dilapidated barns, tractors rusting in fields, all that is fading and evocative of unknown past utility. Rikyu's love of beauty and the understanding that one flower is all flowers ended up in his samurai style execution, pity the emperor who didn't understand that the whole universe manifests in each thing.
Simplicity of mind is truly joyful, and for me the source of poetry. A clear single thought! A vivid impression that forms a string of vowels and consonants! The mind is complex, emotions the same. Modern life measures itself in nanoseconds and light years and the geopolitics of interdependent ecosystems. The grind has us tossing and turning at night. How do we find simplicity today, in the moment, right now!
In Zazen there is a brief moment between in and out breathing, a resting place at the very bottom of things, the abode of silence and not-knowing, the simplicity of essential being, presence without a thought, flowing calm mind that is a river of peace, the blissful warm bath of the still center of things. Whitman, in his poem 'When I heard the leaned astronomer', waked out of the science class and all the explanations to stare in silent wonder at the stars. On the path of living and dying, simplicity is a way through the eye of the needle.
A single cherry
left on the bush,
Fall turning to Winter