If you are deluded you are mountains and rivers away from it
Anatta is MINE!!! Just kidding. Well, not really. It would be a funny bumper-sticker though. Because anatta is a Pali word basically meaning "no-self". The Buddha said that his teachings could be boiled down to one thing: "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I', 'me', 'mine'." And yet, there I sit, trying to figure it out, and claim it. "Anatta is mine." Hilarious.
My mind seems to shut down on anatta, and sunnata ("emptiness" or "voidness)". I mean, shutting down in a not-so-skillful way. Or more like putting up walls and / or trying to wrap them in a measurable box or concept. This "self", this idea, this sense of "I, me, mine" is pesky. This self wants to acquire, to attain understanding of anatta, something like a merit badge. *sigh*
Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness
So into the crucible of Sesshin I hurl this l'il self. Again and again, softening its edges and questioning its existence.
Longing for the Ancient Way, a this year's Autumn 10-day Sesshin with Hogen focused on the Dark. The schedule was a bit different, so to enable lots of sitting through the stillness of the night. We awoke at 6:30 a.m. Yes, you read that right: 6:30 a.m. Hogen, after 40 years of Zen practice, says that he still finds the usual 3:50 a.m. monastery waking hours to be "ghastly." We had a schedule that included 8+ hours of meditation, and we sat until midnight, after which Yaza, additional sitting, was encouraged.
The last two sitting periods each night, from 11p.m. - 12a.m. were spent in gradually increased darkness. Each night, more and more lights were extinguished, until the Zendo was as dark as it could be.
Sesshin can be a roller coaster. Especially at first, as the mind often acts like a high-strung thoroughbred being coaxed, flailing and panicked, into a racing gate.
Except this time, my mind didn't act like that.
I noticed a great deal of willingness to be there. A comfort in being in Sesshin with my teacher, and a fair absence of over-reactivity to the mind's habits of unwanted music, conversations, and the like. There was a fast descent into concentration, and a familiarity to the breath practice, using the syllables "Bu" and "Dah" on the respective inhales and exhales. I did this practice in Sesshin last year, and had some amazing insights that time.
Despite Hogen's daily warnings to the contrary in his Teisho (Dharma talks); that we can never return to a previous state, that it's gone, and not to look back. That kensho comes when we are not expecting it. All we can do is tend the ground, and we don't get to choose what, when or if anything grows. Growth or fruits of practice are completely dependent upon our impossibly complex karma, and impossible to predict. Nevertheless, a small part of me, comparing and noticing how "fast" I was able to drop my usual kinds of discursive thought, kept hoping for that same state again. And then trying not to hope. Or hoping for some different but equally fabulous insight. Wondering what insights I would have this time. But attempting to hope and wonder surreptitiously. And occasionally successfully dropping even all that altogether.
I had returned to the small flowerbox of zinnias and cosmos, where previously I had enjoyed the zeppelin-like fat bumblebees in mid-August. The flowers were more sparse, many were brown, and it was a September offering now. Still plenty of bees to observe, as well as some spiders.
Then one sunny afternoon, I saw right on top of a lower petal from a large, tall, pink zinnia, there was a teeny little tree frog, its little hind end sticking right out of the flower. Its little moist skin and teeny little breaths as it sought refuge from the direct sun in this hammock of a flower petal was almost too cute to bear. That is, until later that evening, when it turned around and was facing outward! Cute overload! Its little frog face peeked right out of its flower petal hideout.
Throughout the Sesshin, I returned to that flower dozens of times, wondering if it would be there again, and it never was. So that was a comforting anology for me about trying to get the same insight or experience from one Sesshin to another.
At times, I was writing this blog in my head, deciding that my mind maybe isn't a 2-year-old black lab that eats poop, but an OCD dog trainer who needs to take a chill pill sometimes. Because I was having such a peaceful Sesshin without all that policing in my head! Such willingness, such ability to turn the mind away from this waiting for kensho, as silly as waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Just stopping and returning to the breath. Wonderful!
Then, about halfway through, I was given a koan.
That was when my blissful idyllic Sesshin fell completely apart.
If you do not see the Way, you do not see it, even as you walk on it...
Koans do not respond to our usual, habitual mind's assumptions and strategies. And as such, they reveal in technicolor what they are:
- "I can usually figure things out."
- "I know what I am doing."
- "I am a good student."
- "It is important that others think well of me."
- "I like to have the right answer."
- "I like to be right."
- "I like to know what's going on."
- "I am smart."
- "I tend to catch on pretty quickly."
- "Being right, being a good student, being smart, and fostering others' fond opinions of me will keep me safe."
I started noticing this connection between irritability and not-knowing at previous Sesshin, when I could observe minor moments of irritation during the formal morning service. The formal morning service involves what sounds like four different bells, the ordained and long-term residents marching around with incense, and a mysterious pattern of bowing and not-bowing by the people in the service and the rest of the Sangha. To me, and apparently to many other people, it is completely unclear when to bow, what direction to turn, compounded by the fact that the usual meanings of the bells do not apply during this service.
Generally, when I am not sure what to do in a service at the monastery, I fix my eye on one of the ordained or long-term residents to watch and emulate -- because I like to know what is going on. I like to be doing it right. But because the morning service is formal, most of the ordained and residents are in it, and there's nobody left who knows what is going on! So we're all tentatively stepping on or off our cushions, glancing around, hands in gassho or not, being faked out by what sounds like a bell to bow...totally irritating! Stupid morning service! That bell outside sounds like somebody is hitting a pie pan!
Just as with this koan, it becomes all too clear that I have no idea what I am doing. I don't really know how to work on a koan, what a koan is, and no amount of logic, or smarts, or other people's admiration will be useful in the least.
Back I would return to the cushion after Sanzen, and cry for an entire period. Not because Hogen was harsh. But because I could really see these old, ineffective patterns crumbling underneath me like a pair of ancient and rotting crutches.
It felt like all my life I've truly believed in an imaginary friend that's been collecting accomplishments, good grades, pieces of identity, resume items, relationships, clothes, cool points, opinions and views (oh, the opinions and views), but then suddenly finding out that it's not real at all.
It's like the whole world has related to and played into the imaginary friend thing. Except Hogen does not play. "Where is this I? Show me." And all I can do is feebly thump my chest, but I know this body is not "me." I don't know the answer. And I probably won't anytime soon. Whatever soon is.
It all reminded me of Roland Burris' mausoleum. Roland Burris is a Senator from Illinois. although he is still alive, he has an enormous mausoleum built for himself in a Chicago-area cemetery, upon which he has been carving all of his accomplishments, and has left room to add more.
Are we really that much different than this? My self-making is as much an act of folly, is as irrelevant, and will all disappear, just as sure as this mausoleum eventually will. You can't take anything with you. Not even into the next moment, much less the next life.So back to the cushion to stew in Don't Know. Which is so much more fun and interesting on paper. My experience was that it triggered more old habits of looking around, comparing myself-- favorably, unfavorably, all of the above-- to others to try to get some sense, some toehold on where I am, and the nearly constant question: How am I doing? A koan provides no such toehold.
Do not judge by any standards...
All this judging was exhausting. I am not sure how many days it went on. I found myself more drowsy in the Zendo than when I arrived! Maintaining focus on the breath was slippery and frustrating, like trudging up a cold, muddy hill. I tried breathing into the whole body, to get out of my head. I tried breathing into the hara, which worked before. I tried breathing into the hands. And the judgments kept coming. Of myself, of others. I even got irritated at Chozen, who at one meal said maybe seven or eight words to bring us all back to awareness (which I usually deeply appreciate), "Quiet the mind for three breaths. Quiet. Open mind." My reactive thought was, "Geez, what's with all the talking?!" So touchy. But I could see that this was just an old reaction to feeling insecure, not knowing, to feeling groundlessness under my feet.
Even so, it was enough for me that one morning during breakfast, after four particularly difficult periods of Zazen, in spite of Hogen's regular imploring of us not to judge, I continued to be frustrated and discouraged. I finally appealed to Kwan Yin for aid. I stopped eating, then silently and wholeheartedly asked her, "Please help me. Help me now."
Immediately, I "heard" a clear instruction: "Breathe into your heart."
Which I did. With a clear and enduring focus. Grateful to have "heard" a response, this practice continued through the remainder of the Sesshin. I noticed that my posture changed to accommodate the breath in the chest. In walking I was leading with the heart. In sitting the breath was rhythmic like the ocean. Which I realized, this pulsing of life I could no more voluntarily stop than I could stop ocean waves. I was breathing the Ocean into my heart.
I became acutely aware of water. Without any effort. We often have weekly mindfulness tasks sent via e-mail, one of which some time ago, was awareness of water. And like most of them, I forgot about it in a matter of hours. But this awareness was intense and unbidden. I noticed the dew on the grass, the feeling of hot and cold liquids as they were swallowed and then dispersed until I couldn't feel them as separate anymore. I noticed the last drop of water after cleaning my bowls. The soft watery sense of this body.
I came to my cushion, and met my rakusu case, which I sewed with a fabric depicting ocean waves on the outside, and a solid satin blue on the inside. I recalled the metaphor of the ocean -- that even with swirling turbulence and waves on the surface, there remains a quiet, dark stillness in the depths.
I went to the cafeteria and the giant blue enso by Kaz Tanahashi jumped off the wall. I saw, for what may have been the first time, that it is called "Ocean Within." I have always loved seeing people sitting underneath it, because to me it looks like there is a huge question mark over their heads.
I went to my dorm, and on the shelves overlooking my bed was a painting of Kwan Yin, who had been watching over me the whole time.
I walked in the woods on a break and found a small snail shell, the nautilus shell I associate with the cochlear listening of Kwan Yin.
The four elements return to their nature like a child to its mother...
This calming down, turning away from judgment, and turning towards the soothing watery compassion of Kwan Yin enabled me to approach the theme of the retreat: Darkness.
Watching the element of water "return to its nature" seemed less frightening somehow. Without relying on intellectual scientific knowledge that water is just molecules made up of atoms, instead I can observe that water disappears into air, into nothing. It disappears, evaporates, becomes absorbed.
The dark makes all words one
One of the real senior students said it best at the end. He said that the dark just absorbs everything. Like a drop of ink in an ocean of water. The dark absorbs thoughts. The dark absorbs pain. He also said that as we sit Zazen, we are expressing the dark. Embodying it.
Hogen instructed us on the last night to just look directly in the dark. To experience the dark in our own unique way. Through the week, during the last two periods in darkness, I admit, my posture would slump a little, and I'd be a bit more fidgety with the relief of having no appearance to attend to. This last night, though, I sat on my bench with my feet in front of me, knees bent, and elbows on knees, holding up my head by smushing my cheeks with my hands, looking into the dark with an unintentionally childlike and wondering posture. I enjoyed having no appearance in the Zendo.
I looked into the darkness, and saw that it is quiet. Accommodating (though this word is laughably inadequate. Like saying the entirety of the universe is "nice"). Patient. Timeless. Weightless. Utterly non-judgmental. The backdrop of everything.
Hogen has used the example of holding up his hand, and pointing to the space around the hand, the non-handness, being what makes the hand possible. The silence is what allows us to hear sound, which emerges from and returns to nothing.
One night, I went outside with my sleeping bag, and lay down on the Earth, just looking at the clear sky and the stars, which have even maybe already disappeared, but in this ever-changing sky, the dark accommodates them for their inevitably impermanent duration, and is untouched, even as it fosters their existence--our existence.
After the last two dark periods, the lights came on, and we did the closing chants. During which I wondered "Where did the dark go?"
It does not go anywhere. It is everything else that disappears.
