this I think I have heard

by

How are you?

What are you practising?

What are you noticing?

Who are you becoming? (Or is that “whom” are you becoming?)

How are you now?

I am struggling with regaining practices: those hours of zazen, retreats in seclusion, silent meals and solitary walks. And… and, the inexplicable power of community, sitting, breathing together as a singular whole being.

In the desperate search for familiar ground, I (re)connected with teachers from various traditions. Apparently – and this I think I have heard – time moves on, people change. What a concept. Clearly no one had me in mind when they decided to grow older, wiser, petulant, resentful, joyous, whiny… And sometimes even forget they ever knew me.

How rude!

This too I think I have heard: what we see/feel/believe is not solely through the sensations coming from the outside in. Perhaps, one dear teacher suggested, in her nonchalantly pointed way, perhaps what you perceive arriving is only finding harmony with the tune you are singing in the moment? If that’s the case, I retort, I must be determinedly off tune to have spent so many years disenchanted by the great-ish masters. She smiles and asks if I want to meet again.

I am sad. The sorry state of the world has been laid bare for us in the past 16 or so months. It’s nothing new. The world has been crumbling for millennia; that is the first of the Buddha’s core teachings. But I don’t like this latest in-my-face version.

The Hsin Hsin Ming (this I know I have heard) teaches:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Attributed to Seng-ts’an

Don’t get hooked by the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’. More correctly, are you hooked on them? There’s your practice! Remember, we aren’t Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Perhaps I should suggest, use words to mean only and precisely what YOU choose them to mean. Then notice if the impact is what you would have chosen to occur.

So much becomes disguised between feelings and response. The desire and then striving for absolutes like love and hate are only measures of my delusional nature, of what I thought I wanted or heard. Still, to practice an ease of releasing love and hate as they arise seems risky, like wandering into the wilderness of this new reality without protection. But what choice do we have?

I am unsure. Yet this I have heard through the Hsin Hsin Ming: when we sense “movement in (the) stationary and the stationary in motion”… “dualities cease to exist.” Then the Great Way is simply this:

I am here

When practice runs dry: Returning to respect

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Let’s start with how I’m failing in so many ways. First, pandemic brain mush set in about a month ago. Familiar things lacked names. Everyday acts seemed inaccessible. Words? Well, let’s just say I’ve discovered a joy in speaking as if possessed by a raging 3 year old. And how are you? Please tell me you are doing better than I seem to be at navigating this endless series of rapids and whirlpools.

Practice helped at the outset of this misadventure, as I’m sure it did for you. Time once spent commuting or working late might have been channelled into a sitting or two. Not every day perhaps, but a bit more regularly. Oh, I’m sure also that there are many of you who have maintained steadfastness in your practice. Happily, I’m not one. And I say “happily” because it’s in those times when my thoughts override the intention to sit that I see how a “daily, disciplined conversation”1 with myself is crucial. A wonderful mindful bell to reset, but not a habit to cultivate as a regular practice.

This “go-no go” aspect of sitting daily is familiar to all of us and the bane of most teachers who are asked: How do I sit regularly? What should I do when I just can’t sit? [note bene: Just do it and just do it anyway!] There are articles, books, and tomes about getting butt to cushion regularly. They detail why to sit regularly and what happens when one does/does not sit regularly. Most teachers give these preset reasons why we don’t sit: (1) avoidance, (2) lack of discipline, (3) avoidance of lack of discipline, (4) avoidance, (5) avoidance of avoidance, etc.

And all that is true. Mostly. And it’s only true if we begin with the premise that sitting is simply training a skillful behaviour to overcome an unskillful one.

In reality, that approach only creates a never-ending process of mental whack-a-mole making the mind a battle ground of pounding unskillfulness into extinction. So, let’s take a step back.

Sometimes practices go dry; the mind field freezes over, enters a drought. Pick your weather system.

And a tempered waiting is all we have.

The storehouse where we collect the energy to sit, to cultivate awareness of the breath-body-feelings-creations of mind is the same storehouse of all we enact in our lives. When it is overwhelmed with the demands for intense attention, the fears of sickness and death, learning new patterns of living, transforming patterns that once sustained us, it is highly likely to shutdown. Dry spells in spiritual practice are common, more common than anyone is likely to admit. There was a three year period when I simply could not sit or practice in any way whatsoever. There was actually nothing happening in my life that would explain that absolute absence of presence. (Or so I think.) It was painful, not because it was happening, but because there was no way to describe it to my teacher. One tentative attempt to explain my situation ended in a frustrated injunction by the teacher to stop being afraid of sitting. Well, he was right … and wrong. Another teacher said it was samadhi. Enjoy it! She was likely totally wrong.

I knew it was some of these things and not any of them. There is a moment in our body/mind system where withdrawing is the only option. It has been especially so in this past year where we’ve been confronted with the essence of the First Noble Truth or Reality: we are of the nature to grow ill, die – and not necessarily after growing old. There’s only so much this mind field can tolerate in the imbalance between the heat of suffering and the lack of nourishment. And dryness is the only outcome.

It’s trite to say “just sit with it” because if we could, we would. I’ve found that giving up is a good option. Give up trying to find the cushion. If you do find the cushion, give up trying for insight into what’s happening or worse, transcending it. In fact, give up all mental exertions aimed at fixing, adjusting, accepting, and trying to launch yourself out of this frozen state. Respect yourself as you are in each moment whether it is an easeful one or a struggle.

This frozen state will thaw and

the moisture released in the thawing will soften the earth,

breath by breath.

In the meantime, give up needing to be the one who fixes this. Respect who you are in this moment. Start there. Don’t start with the breath; start with noticing the not-breathing. Those moments when you’re holding back, clenching in the nostrils, throat, abdomen. In that split second of noticing, release the belly, let the diaphragm drop. Sip your tea. Raise your eye to the distance. Let the breath do its work without micromanaging it. Fail at all this. And fail again. Be original in failing, over and over. Persevere until there is nothing left to fail and then fall in surrender to the cushion. And stay there.

Tat Tvam Asi
You are this

1 David Whyte, Crossing the unknown sea: Work as a pilgrimage of identity. Riverhead Books, NY, 2001