An audio version of this essay is also available either HERE or as an episode of our Treeleaf Zendo Podcast HERE
Maybe thirty years ago, on the third or fourth day of a week long Rohatsu Sesshin at Sojiji, the traditional winter Retreat at Soto-shu's head temple, I was feeling bored, homesick, a bit irritated and my back hurt. I was cold and lonely, tired and distracted, while time was dragging like molasses. Woken up at 4am in the dark and cold, followed by hours staring at a wall, shivering and knees complaining, days still to survive, missing my family and the cat, longing for my warm bed at home ... It would not take Freud to figure out the causes. I was pretty miserable.
"So," I thought, "I wonder what might happen if I just try to be the opposite?"
Let me take on the actor's role of being something and somebody else.
Suddenly, I found that I had a kind of inner switch, one with which I could "pretend" that I was totally at home, content, feeling like there is no other place to be, lovin' it. I simply remembered what all of that good stuff feels like from other times in my life, stored as body memory somewhere deep down, summoned up those sensations and then was actually feeling them. I very much just played the part of being thoroughly fulfilled in the moment, comfortable, centered, peaceful and at rest, energized and right at home ...
... AND SUDDENLY I WAS!
No longer pretending, now the reality of the moment!
I had entered into the imagined role of "satisfied sitter" like a Shakespearean thespian entering into the heart of Hamlet, actually embodying Hamlet. I recalled what equanimity, fearlessness and joy feel like, from somewhere in my recesses, and I was flooded with each of those too, as true as true can be.
Then I played with flipping the switch back and forth a bunch of times ... bored ... content ... restless ... comfortable ... distracted ... centered ... sad ... joyous ... resistant ... equanimous ... homesick ... right at home. I even dabbled with bliss and ecstasy, followed by misery and terror. I could go instantly from being one way to the other and back again, like flipping a switch. And in discovering that I had this inner switch, I found that the whole experience was greatly up to me. Suddenly, I was cruising that Sesshin! ... smooth sailing ... 'in the zone.' Oh, it was still cold, and my back still hurt, but even those things were somehow okay.
The lesson here is that sitting Sesshin is like an empty container, some bland ingredient like Tofu, that can be decorated or flavored as our heart decides. The experience is bad if you make it bad ... it is whole, complete, fulfilling and welcoming if our heart makes it so. Such is the power of the mind. In an instant, that Sesshin was the only place in the whole world, the entire universe, where I would want to be, and there was nothing else to wish for. In fact, so much of all life is like a neutral canvas to which we add our judgments and reactions, coloring it by our feelings. I could have died right there without complaint. It was like finding a button to turn hell into heaven and back again.
Now, as a Zen fellow, I made some choices about which buttons to push, and how to adjust the settings: I choose equanimity and contentment over feelings of bliss and ecstasy, knowing that those latter states are not someplace I could or would wish to live for long. I choose acceptance of the situation, and the body's pain, rather than trying to change those, knowing that they could not be escaped short of leaving, either the temple or the ordinary world. Deep deep concentrated meditators can go to such realms where physical pain vanishes, but I would find that no more appealing than diving into morphine and life's dead-end. I will save that for my final cancer bed. Much better is to be content and at home in life's little discomforts and pains, letting them be, paying them no nevermind even though not fun.
There was a "fake it till ya make it" attitude toward some of it, but I really made it. The human mind has such amazing powers when we let it find its wisdom, one reason perhaps that our ancestors were seemingly as happy and content in their short and trying lives as modern folks, and perhaps more so, despite relative physical hardships (dentists but no novocaine!) and material lack that most of us can barely imagine. One aspect of a traditional Zen Sesshin is that we return for a time to living rather like people of the 13th century. That is probably harder for 21st century us to do, given all the media and modern machines, comforts and conveniences that we must leave behind today to enter the monastery gates. 13th century monks did not miss their smart phones and air conditioned homes, not a bit, because nobody had them, or even a dream of them. Studies have shown that we feel more pain today because we expect and demand to be free of pain that much more, and are less tolerant of discomforts than the people of old.
And here's the kicker, a nice little twist:
We Soto Zen folks sit Zazen, like Master Dogen taught, with the hope and expectation that eventually "bodymind will drop off." Then everything will be good, and all this sitting will have its pay-off. Meditators of all kinds engage in practice in search of an inner transformation, in which their "little self" with its demands and frustrations, desires and discontents will finally be tamed, and they will know peace and happiness instead. We expect the dropping away and transformation to come first, an effect of sitting, with the good feelings and liberation to follow. It's something like thinking that we must first head to the gym, do the exercise, grow our muscles, and then health and strength will follow.
But in Zazen, the opposite can also be true.
Namely, by sitting with a heart emulating the peace, contentment and rest of a Buddha, we actually come to embody Buddha. Because we feel contentment, equanimity, a lack of demands and desires, the "little self" is put out of a job, is tamed and tempered. It truly rests in its struggles, pauses in its running and seeking. Suddenly, as the frictions and demands on the world evaporate, the hard borders of "self" and "the rest of the world" soften and evaporate too. Dropped off is bodymind. It is almost as if, by summoning the feeling within that we already have health and strength, the big muscles begin to grow, then push-ups and bench presses follow, after which we head to the gym.
It is for this very reason that there is a vital ingredient to Shikantaza "Just Sitting" Zazen, an aspect that, unfortunately, gets left out of so many descriptions and instructions for Zazen which merely emphasize the "sit in a balanced way, breathe naturally, let thoughts go" parts (although those are all vital too.) Also vital is that we sit in radical equanimity, summoning the feeling and conviction deep in the bones that Zazen is a whole and complete doing, a sacred doing. In fact, we sit with the sense that this is a doing of "non-doing" in which Zazen is so complete that there is nothing left undone, nothing more that can be done, nothing more that need be done, but sitting in the time of sitting. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, by calling up the feeling within our hearts that Zazen and all life are truly goalless and complete, all is rendered goalless and complete. Q.E.D.
Just Sitting, we must believe, is the doing of the Buddha and Ancestors, complete and whole even before it began. If we leave this confidence out (and, unfortunately, many popular Zazen or so-called "Shikantaza" instructions do) we are leaving the fuel out of the rocket. One must sit with the conviction, deep in the bones, that there is not one drop lacking, no other place to be during the time of sitting, no hole in need of filling, just by sitting. In doing so while sitting for a time, even time and measure drop away, all demands drop away, and one truly tastes the rest, satisfaction, wholeness and contentment of a Buddha sitting. The actor playing Buddha becomes Buddha, and realizes that they and all things, people and moments always have so been. Then, getting up from the cushion and back to the complex world, it is time to seek to live accordingly.
So, I recommend that you find this same inner switch within you, if not during a long Sesshin, then even during your next Zazen sitting. Play with it, see if you can get it to work too. Toggle back and forth. Getting off the cushion, it is an inner switch which I have made use of at every subsequent retreat, not to mention the many other not so fun times of life ... in the cancer hospital with fear, when life went wrong and dreams evaporated, when there was loss. I emphasize again that the trick is not to pretend that the scary or sad times are just blissful, fun or happy. That's a short term solution at best, a fool's comedy, a running from life at worst. It is not a switch that cures all that ails this world, even as we know the world quite differently. But we can find the acceptance, allowing, flowing, non-resisting peace of a Buddha within.
For it is within you all along.
Gassho, J
stlah
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