(This essay is a companion to my last, Shikantaza Ipso Facto)
Many folks treat meditation like waiting for a bus: If they cross the legs, guard the breath, engage in focus on their Koan or other practice, sooner or later Enlightenment will arrive like a long distance bus to their stop. Or maybe they just want relaxation, respite, a little fun on a bus tour vacation. Some will treat Zazen as if it were a way of getting somewhere, heading for some distant terminus, whether Buddhahood or simple peace & happiness, still so far away.
Master Dogen's Shikantaza, and his ever renewing road of continuous 'Practice-Enlightenment,' is very much unlike such ways, and that is its brilliance if you ask me, a long-time rider.
In Shikantaza, one 'Just Sits' with conviction that one is already sitting on the Buddha Bus, that the bus has already arrived and, truly, always has arrived. One sits with trust, held deep in the bones, that the journey is complete, nothing lacking, even as life keeps rolling ahead to the next surprise round the bend. What's more, one sits (or stands, or walks or runs, or does cartwheels in the aisles) with the feeling that there is no other place to go, nothing more to get, nothing lacking, for this bus is the destination, the trip is the target, the drive is the destination-in-motion, and each moment is its arrival. Enlightenment is not some bus station over far far hills. Oh, there are good and balanced ways to sit in this place, silent and upright, not tangled in thought, breathing peacefully ... but crucial is an attitude that the road rises up to meet one with every twist and turn. Do not just sit and ride, waiting, twiddling one's thumbs, killing time. Rather, sit as the Ride, no other place to be, the mission done, one's arrival at one's True Home always here and here and here. It is vitally important.
Please don't misunderstand: the trip keeps going, the bus keeps moving, day by day, mile by mile. Sometimes its a painful trip, difficult, sad, confusing, scary. Nor do we just sit around, for our life on this bus is busy, with work to do, meals to make, kids to tend, other endless activities. But now, with proper attitude, we come to see that the whole trip --is-- the point, the destination, and the bus newly arrives again and again with each inch of life's road covered. The purpose of the journey is the journey, right here, not some promised land perhaps many lifetimes away. It all depends on a simple change in our attitude and feeling, for if you think that the place of peace, satisfaction, completion and wholeness is out of reach, somewhere far down the road, then it is. On the other hand, if you can find in your heart feelings of peace, satisfaction, completion and wholeness about this very point and instant in the journey itself, then the journey itself is peace, satisfaction, completion and wholeness. What's more, there is peace, satisfaction, completion and wholeness about even the sometime painful, difficult, sad, confusing, scary places that constitute the adventure itself. The journey is just the journey, and it is up to you what you make of it.
I advise you: Even if you are not convinced at first, sit with an attitude that things are so nonetheless, with simple faith that this trip is peaceful, complete, rolling satisfaction and wholeness, doing so whether you feel so or not right now ... and it will become so by and by.
Master Dogen, our bus conductor and guide, further cautions us to be good passengers on this tour, to avoid excess desires, anger and violence, jealousy toward other passengers, divided thinking and the like. Do not fight with the other riders, nor steal their things, nor make a mess, for doing so can make the trip an ugly one, both for you and for the others on board.
Then an ultimate wonderful thing may happen to you, either known in a snap or sensed delicately over time: One sees that one is not just a passenger on the bus, separate from all the other passengers and the world passing by outside, so fast. Rather, one comes to know that you and all the others, those who rode years ago and those who will get on tomorrow, the bus and its wheels and windows, doors and driver, motor and all motion, stops and starts, left and right, in and out, the road and all the passing sites along the way, beautiful and ugly, the sky and birds, grass and stones, times of sickness, age and death, majestic mountains, burning dumps and rusty tin cans, scenes of violence and scenes of peace, the driving and the driven, the whole thing and then some, are just the bus trip itself, the going, the world spinning like a wheel. It is all the bus, the bus is us, and each part of the bus is the others who are all the bus too ...
... and ultimately there is no bus ... only the driving, driving, driving.
At this point, the anger and frustration, disappointment and fear that one held at the prospect of this trip not taking one where one wants to go, not giving us what we want ... all vanishes. There is nothing more to want, nothing to fear or long for, for one is the trip itself. Where the bus goes is where we go, and where we wish to go is just where the bus goes. When all goes right, we go right; when the way goes left, we go left. Hard roads are just the road, easy miles just easy. This bus can never be lost on its way, for it is always precisely right here. This is so even as, sometimes, we hit the hard potholes, surprise detours and, some days, fear for our very lives as if racing fast down a narrow road clinging to perilous, crumbling cliffs. This pilgrimage sure is rough and scary sometimes!
Oh, it is not so clear from where the road first came, or where it is heading, and we cannot see so clearly who, if anyone, is at the wheel. But here it is, this magic bus, and here we are on it ... riding, riding, riding. Since we are here, ticket in hand, ride it well and don't waste it. The busy bus is Buddha on a roll ...
Mysteriously, the trip seems to have started long before we climbed on. We somehow got on this bus awhile back, and it looks like our time will come to get off soon enough. That's kind of frightening too, for we do not know what happens when we get to our stop. Other riders seem to get off sometimes, then vanish, never heard from again. More get on. Perhaps we get off, then get on again as someone else. Perhaps there's the 'Paradise Cafe' out those doors, with all the ice cream and cake we care to eat. However, it does not matter really. Seeing all with new eyes, we realize that we are the others, the bus, the on and off, the turning tires, the road and trees and mountains and sky. We have never thus truly come aboard, no inside vs. outside, what doorless door can we step through? So long as this travel keeps traveling then we keep traveling too, for we were never anything but the whole trip, and the trip is us, even if this present passenger steps off. We step off no place else, for we are all of it, and it is all our arrival home.
Then, left turn, right turn, back or forward, with all the changing scenery, up and down the twisting road, it is Buddha Bus on Buddha Boulevard, the true 'Free Way,' Buddha mile after Buddha mile, Buddha wheels traveling Buddha lanes, around Buddha turns, Buddha bouncing Buddha bumps by Buddha potholes ... filled with Buddha babies and Buddha grannies and those of us in between, Buddha carrying Buddhas (even if not all realize so), Buddha days and Buddha nights, past Buddha towns and Buddha valleys ...
Gassho, J
stlah
Buddha Bus 2.jpg
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