Zen Humor

A Zen student decided to live in a monastery that was known for its particularly tough standards. Among other austerities, a student can only have an interview with the Roshi once per year. On top of that, the student is only allowed to say two words during the interview.

So the end of the first year came, and the student went to see the Roshi. After bowing respectfully, the student said his two words: "Bad food." He then bowed again, and left the room.

After another year, the student went in for his second visit with the Roshi. He bowed, and then said his two words: "Hard bed." After bowing again, he left as before.

Then, at the end of the third year, the student had his next interview. This time he bowed and said simply: "I quit."

The Roshi looked at him in silence for a moment, and then said, "Well, I'm not surprised. You've done nothing but complain since you got here!"

Blessings,
Roger

If

By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

 

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

Blessings,

Roger

Holidays and Friends

For me, one of the nicest dividends about being present is when I am with my friends and family on holidays. I find that I really appreciate the experience of our love and camaraderie while it is happening, and this adds to the sweetness of the moment. 

Yesterday was Independence Day, and after hosting an open house from about 2:00 until fireworks time, Kathy and I were pretty tired today, but neither of us had to go into work. We spent most of the day with our dear friends, Tom and Jill who were visiting from Mill Valley, California, and New York City, respectively.

We took time for a leisurely lunch, that included some leftovers from yesterday's party, and just talked about our lives, our work, and various dimensions of Buddha Dharma, including attachment, aversion, and the Parable of the Second Arrow. I found myself feeling at peace and ease, and it was a lovely afternoon.

Now, of course, I must release attachment to them both as Tom drives back up north and Jill catches a plane back east. The pleasantness, lightness, and contentment continues on, however. And the backyard and the kitchen all got cleaned up without much trouble. What a glorious little holiday.

Blessings,
Roger

Freedom

The practice of vipassana meditation, leading to realization and eventually actualization in daily life, is a path toward freedom. The practice offers us the opportunity over and over again to learn how to release attachment (to thoughts), abandon aversion (toward unwanted experiences), and then move our attention back to a present-moment sensory reality (the breath). This practice/realization process then gives us the training to begin to actualize these strategies in our day-to-day life.

As Jack Kornfield once said:

It is the truth of what is, the Dharma, that sets us free; that lets us loose from our cage of old beliefs and habit patterns. To know what is, and to experience the knowing of it, is truly liberating.

The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Blessings and Happy Independence Day,
Roger

What Is Wrong? vs. What Is This?

A few years ago, a three-panel Jules Feiffer cartoon was published in Wes Nisker's "Inquiring Mind" magazine that seems to sum up what we are up against in the practice of vipassana meditation. As best as I can remember it (and you can never do a Jules Feiffer justice by describing it), the first panel shows a man's face with a look of horror, mouth open as if screaming, and holding his head in his hands. The caption of this panel was something like, "My life was out of control. The stresses of every day living were too much for me to handle." In the second panel, we see the same man's face, only it is now calm and tranquil, with eyes closed. Under this panel it reads, "So I decided to try the ancient art of meditation. Maybe by looking within, I could calm my mind and ease my body." Then in the third drawing, we see a repeat of the expression of horror from the first panel.

Last week, in the sixth session of an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy class, one of the participants asked, quite seriously, "Do you ever have any pleasant experiences in this kind of practice? Because I haven't had one yet." Good question. However, as one of my teachers once said, this kind of practice is not "feel good" meditation. Nor is it always "feel bad" meditation." It is always a practice of knowing what is happening while it is happening, and then, as best we can, just allowing it all to happen in a state of mindful awareness. 

Labels like "good" and "bad" are geat places for inquiry, since these labels are merely objects of mind. If a loud car drives past your window while you are meditating, the mind might consider it a "bad sound," unless you are a NASCAR enthusiast, in which case it may be music to your ears. 

So instead of asking "what is wrong?" perhaps the better question would be "what is this?" Be curious about any experience you have and investigate all of the effects the event has on the body and mind. In this way, we can deepen into things that we consider "bad" or "good," and see that they are just preferences produced by a mind that is attached to some things and aversive toward other things. By dwelling mindfully in all of our experiences with equanimity, we take a big step toward eventually liberating ourselves from the habitual tendencies of the mind, and thus toward reducing our suffering.

Blessings,
Roger 

For The Anniversary of My Death

By W.S. Merwin (America's newest Poet Laureate)

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what 

Blessings,
Roger

Practice, Realization, and Actualization

There is Zen koan (a teaching story or question that cannot be understood by rational thinking) that describes a student who has attained enough power to sit atop a one-hundred foot tall pole. Yet, implies the koan, this ability is not enough. The student must now step forward off of the pole into "the Universe in all directions."

What this koan intends to teach us is that we can cultivate mighty attainments of concentration, mindfulness, and insight while on our cushion, but these attainments are meaningless without the ability to utilize them in the world. In the Zen tradition specifically, there are considered three main pillars of Buddha Dharma (the way of the Buddha): practice, realization (through practice), and actualization (bringing the practice to daily life).

The practice of meditation is merely that: practice. Not practice so that we can get good at being a meditator, but practice that allows us facility and skillfulness to move from the cushion to daily life with less suffering. The realization that arises from such practice is that we are almost constantly in a state of clinging and aversion toward the world. All the insights in the world will not lead us to true liberation from suffering until we can release the tight fist of grasping. The take away insight that must be actualized is that we must release attachment to everything, including our one-hundred foot pole.

In studying ourselves,
we find the harmony
that is our total existence.
We do not make harmony.
We do not achieve it or gain it.
It is there all the time.
Here we are, in the midst of this perfect way,
and our practice is simply to realize it and then
to actualize it
in our everyday life. 

~  Maezumi Roshi

Blessings,
Roger