Why do you practice?

[Hogen]

I am very interested in people's responses to two questions:

1) What was it that first brought you to Zen practice?

And

2) What is it that keeps you practicing?

1. The need for practice.

2. The desire for practice.

[Nenka]

1) I've been attracted to Buddhism since learning about it in high school; it took many years and reading here and there and finally coming to Treeleaf to find that Zen was the path for me.

2) To tell the truth, I've been asking myself this question a lot lately. Why am I doing this Zen stuff? When I neglect my practice, I feel as if I'm letting something very important slide away. And so I come back. I don't know.

Gassho

Jen

[Jinyo]

1 - Jundo often reflects 'many paths up the mountain'. I think I was treading some parallel path but reached a fork in the road. The trigger was a book by Thich Nhat Hanh - 'Peace every step of the Way'. I realised that the one thing I was searching for above all else was equanimity - and the strength to hold this is all situations. The Zen path feels like home for me.

2 - At the same time I read a book 'John Cage - Zen Ox-herding Pictures'. Reflecting on the Ox-herding Pictures ,always brings me back to the original impulse to practice every time I feel myself losing the way (which is often!). It reminds me that this path is not an easy sequential path - every day I'm grappling with the 'Ox' - but every day is an opportunity to sit zazen - to live zazen.

Gassho

Willow

[disastermouse]

Hey all,

1) Some people already know this story, but I'll tell it again anyway. I came to Zen sort of backwards. At the age of 17 I began reading a book that only tangentially touched on meditation - along with a lot of other somewhat unique mind/body states. In it, there was a description by (I believe) a Buddhist meditator who described what she 'did' in meditation. I was very experimental in those days and so I tried doing what she described. On the third time, I had a profound experience of 'emptiness' that pretty much altered my life. I didn't know it as 'Buddhism' or 'Zen'. I meditated spontaneously a few more times after that, but I didn't start sitting regularly until I came back from a failed attempt at art school (I ran out of money). Finding myself with a lot of unexpected free time, for some reason I began to take long walks in the woods that winter - I was living with my father and our house was on 75 acres of forest land. During my walks I would do walking meditation and randomly sit on rocks or trees and practice sitting meditation. Slowly I began to read first about Taoism and then Zen. The Zen teachings about emptiness resonated deeply and I realized that there was an entire tradition that spoke to my original experience and the rather unique experiences I was having in my walking and spontaneous sitting practices up to that point. It was probably a good six months later that I began, tentatively, to regard myself as a 'Buddhist'.

2) After that initial experience, I'm pretty much screwed. That is, there is only so much painful drama that I can experience before the memory of that initial experience reminds me that I am not trapped in this pain or drama - that I can feel it fully, but need not be defined by it. Also, there simply is no lasting situational contentment or satisfaction that I can fool myself into believing in anymore. I can get confused for a while, but I am always reminded that my endeavors are wrong-headed as long as they are based on some delusional idea of a lasting situational happiness.

Gassho

Chet

[Rich]

2) What is it that keeps you practicing?

If I didn't try to stay in the moment I would go crazy. And besides that, a moment is the only thing you think you can have that has even a little bit of reality but even that's gone before you know it.

1) What was it that first brought you to Zen practice?

Craziness

[RichardH]

Pre-Buddhism began pretty hellish because I was (seemingly) an insecure particle lost in a cold alien universe. This was softened up by investigating the meaning of relativity, aided by LSD. That segued into Theosophy/ Hermetic philosophy. ...which eventually lead to Indian sources. Drugs were dropped when I met my future wife and we learned Kriya Yoga together with a Yogi from Bangalore, who filled a Jesus figure need (and who is now an iffy big-time Guru). Finally at age 23-ish we met Ajahn Viradhammo who taught us the practice of the Four Noble Truths, and for the first time there was a taste of fearlessness. ....and that really began a new life. Deep gratitude for meeting this good Bhikkhu.


Why keep practicing? Because , Greed, Anger and Delusion (still not used to using the word Ignorance instead of Delusion) still frequently sabotages going out into the world fearlessly, free of melodrama. So learning to live well is the thing at this point. ... not so much reaching up and finding my own head. though sometimes...

Gassho, kojip.

[YuimaSLC]

I first became interested in Buddhism in about 1972 when I was 19, at college. I'd been studying intellectual traditions of the West in my freshman year. Interesting, but something missing. By accident, I picked up a book of poetry by Zenkei Shibayama, "A Flower Does Not Talk". It made me stop and ponder. Ponder alot. I wanted to know more about "this". The earliest influences were Christmas Humphreys, Alan Watts, and then the voluminous D T Suzuki. The latter I didn't understand at all. And my collection of books on Zen and Buddhism grew and grew. So....obviously I was trying to understand it all conceptually/intellectually. Hinayana/Mahayana, perspectives from the different schools. But why?

As a young man, a fledgling student, I had felt quite disconnected with culture (socialization, dating, marriage, purpose of "a career"), even from high school. I wasn't a drop out, did well in studies; but didn't get "why" or a purpose. I really felt like an outsider to the world...often feeling like I didn't belong anywhere.

Buddhism early on was both insight and a crutch. I say "a crutch" because playing games with zen is what Alan Watts spoke about years ago as "beat zen" and "square zen".

Philosophically, Buddhism made more sense to me than anything I'd ever read. But it stayed in my head. I guess I felt like you needed to be able to argue a position before you could claim it. But, in many ways, like many of us, we eventually suffer from indigestion....by filling our plates at the "spiritual smorgasbord". I think that's one very good argument that good teachers make about choosing a practice wholeheartedly, i.e. don't dabble with this and that thinking you can invent your own concoction of a practice.

So, after about 4 years of this intellectual pursuit; and there were times when it truly felt like my studies were in Buddhism, holed-up in the university library for hours and hours, while I muddled through getting an undergraduate degree in English literature, I found a few works that actually were all 'the practice'. I chose to study Japanese language to fulfill my language requirement and fortunately my teacher was the priest at the local Nichiren-shu. He taught me how to read and chant the Lotus Sutra (which is the key text for that school).

But, the pivitol moment was a book.... Roshi Jiyu Kennett's "Selling Water by the River" which was later re-titled
"Zen is Eternal Life". This book is full of Shobogenzo translation, monastic ceremonies and daily routines.....thus, a primer for actual practice. And that's when I made the choice to put away all the other books,
and focus on sitting, and the liturgy of Soto Zen.

Why do I return to practice each day? A growing sense that THIS IS IT. SUCHNESS. For someone who feels "outside" the world so often, it (dis)integrates me to the real.

[Rich]

Also there is a certain wonder and enjoyment to this. Probably over the years have gotten more tolerant of everything.

[YuimaSLC]

Accepting a certain joy and benevolence within life and experience...even cold, drizzling days carry a warmth of certainty that they are as they are, for that moment.

[Rich]

Accepting a certain joy and benevolence within life and experience...even cold, drizzling days carry a warmth of certainty that they are as they are, for that moment.

Thanks. Can't imagine being any more tolerant than that.

[gilles]

[QUOTE=Stephanie;86435]I am very interested in people's responses to two questions:

1) What was it that first brought you to Zen practice?

a book from thich nhat hanh

2) What is it that keeps you practicing?

safu is home

gassho

gilles