332 - My Guidelines for Deepening Your Zen Practice

For many years now, people have been asking me how to deepen their Zen practice. They wonder, “What’s next?” Some lay people are perfectly content guiding their own practice, but others long for more structure – some kind of program to which they can apply themselves. I have long desired to meet such requests, but I wasn’t clear how. After teaching Zen for over 15 years, I have developed a clearer sense of what to require of my students if they are asking me to personally guide their practice. I share my practice agreement for formal students here.

Quicklinks to Article Content:
Requests for Guidance in Deepening Zen Practice
The Formal Teacher-Student Relationship
My Practice Agreement for Formal Students
The Ten Fields of Zen
Field One – Bodhicitta: Nurturing Your Way-Seeking Mind
Field Two – Zazen: Your Total Response to Life
Field Three – Mindfulness: Choosing Every Moment
Field Four – Dharma Study: Wrestling with the Teachings
Field Five – Precepts: Transcending Self-Attachment
Field Six – Opening Your Heart: Self-Acceptance and Non-Separation
Field Seven – Karma Work: Taking Care of Your Precious Life
Field Eight – Realization: Awakening to Your True Nature
Field Nine – Bodhisattva Service: Enacting Vows to Benefit All Beings
Field Ten – Connecting with the Ineffable: Aligning with What Is Most True
Conclusion

Requests for Guidance in Deepening Zen Practice

For many years now, people have been asking me how to deepen their Zen practice. They wonder, “What’s next?” Some lay people are perfectly content guiding their own practice, but others long for more structure – some kind of program to which they can apply themselves. I have long desired to meet such requests, but I wasn’t clear how. I knew what has worked for me, but it’s only after teaching Zen for over 15 years that I have a sense of what to require of my students if they are asking me to personally guide their practice.

I have been hesitant to unequivocally state what I think it takes for someone to be transformed by Zen practice because there are many different kinds of people and many different kinds of spiritual paths. If the goal of practice is seen as climbing a mountain, I am well aware that there are many paths to the top. You don’t have to take the path I recommend, or even a Zen path, or a Buddhist path. I firmly believe that all spiritual traditions that involve training and transformation are ultimately aiming at transcending self-attachment, recognizing our connection with all things, and attaining a redemptive understanding of the nature of our existence.

Still, it can be less than helpful if a teacher responds to a student with too many disclaimers and possibilities. Recently, a student of mine suggested that such a situation is like standing on the top of a mountain while someone below asks the way to the summit and responding, “Just take a hike.” Sure, it’s possible that someone can wander around and eventually find a way, but if they’re asking how you got up, it seems appropriate to tell them.

So, what I offer here is my guidance for deepening your Zen practice. I am sharing these guidelines with the people formally asking to be my students in the form of a practice agreement.

The Formal Teacher-Student Relationship

Before getting started on my guidelines, however, I should say something about the assertion implied in them that you need a Zen teacher. Whether you do or not depends on what you want out of your Zen practice. If you haven’t listened to it already, I recommend you pause now and check out Episode 116 – Do You Need a Zen or Buddhist Teacher? In that episode, I describe many constructive ways to relate to and benefit from Zen teachers without necessarily entering into a personal or committed relationship with one. You also may be unable to find a qualified teacher with whom you resonate, who also is willing and able to accept you as a formal student – especially if you live far from the teacher and need to interact with them primarily online. An inability to find a formal Zen teacher definitely should not cause you to give up your Zen practice! Much progress can be made by following those of my guidelines that don’t relate to interacting with a teacher.

That said, the commitment of a formal teacher-student relationship offers three things:

First, mutual accountability on your spiritual path. The teacher vows to continue their practice so they have the capacity to guide and support, while the student vows to continue diligently and consciously on their journey, letting themselves be seen by the teacher.

Second, the student vows to listen to the teacher. This doesn’t mean they have to obey the teacher! But if the student doesn’t want the teacher’s input, there isn’t much point in a formal relationship. A formal commitment provides a safe container for the teacher to offer feedback or guidance that the student may not immediately understand or like. This is absolutely no excuse for unethical or unkind actions on the part of the teacher, and the student always retains their full autonomy, but the student places provisional trust in the teacher in order to explore new territory and to overcome blind spots or obstacles.

Third, the primary purpose of commitment or vow is to hold you to your intention even when the going gets tough, so it’s pretty much inevitable that at some point your sense of faith in your teacher will be tested. In fact, many Zen teachers tell their students, “Inevitably, I will disappoint you.” This is part of the process, and as a formal student you are asked to stay engaged despite discomfort.

My Practice Agreement for Formal Students

Note: The practice agreement for my students includes a request for them to meet with me regularly. I am definitely not suggesting that you should start meeting with me or seek to become my formal student! In fact, I only accept formal students who have practiced closely with my Sangha, Bright Way Zen, for at least three years, and who have made other Sangha-related vows. I hope these guidelines will inspire you to meet with your own teacher if you have one, to seek a teacher if you want one, to seek input and support from Dharma friends, or just think of practice in a new way. Be aware that every Buddhist lineage and teacher is going to have somewhat different expectations for students, so don’t expect a teacher to recognize or accept my guidelines as useful tool for their own students.

The Ten Fields of Zen

Read and become familiar with Domyo’s Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners and use the Ten Fields to frame your practice. (There is a link to my as-yet-unpublished book on the page for this episode. The book includes a full chapter on each of the fields.) Refer to the Ten Fields regularly, particularly before your monthly practice discussions with your teacher. The rest of this practice agreement is organized by the fields.

Field One – Bodhicitta: Nurturing Your Way-Seeking Mind

Try always to keep your Bodhicitta burning bright. It is an art to do this without striving, but this precious life is fleeting. When practice feels ho-hum, don’t beat yourself up about it but take responsibility for nurturing your way-seeking mind. Try to live and practice as if you will die tomorrow. Recognize the Dharma is infinite and precious, and that it is easy to sleepwalk through our lives.

Meet regularly with your teacher. Aim to meet for a 30-minute practice discussion monthly, at least 10 times a year. Attend formal sanzen (one-on-one meeting) in person whenever you can. This kind of accountability helps keep you from getting distracted and losing touch with your practice. Review these guidelines before your practice discussions. Bring the edge of your practice. If you don’t feel like you have anything to bring, work on that with your teacher.

Field Two – Zazen: Your Total Response to Life

Maintain a steady, strong zazen practice. Aim for at least 30 minutes, five days a week. The more zazen you sit, the more it will transform you.

Find alternatives to seated meditation only when necessary and then be diligent about whatever practice you do. Pain and illness can make zazen uncomfortable but be careful not to stop sitting just because you don’t enjoy it or don’t think it’s “good zazen.” If necessary, do reclining, standing, or slow walking meditation (kinhin) with as much focus as you would do seated meditation. When pain or mental distress is acute, practices like chanting, bowing, or copying sutras can serve a similar role in your practice as zazen if you make them a regular, focused practice (the equivalent amount of time recommended for weekly zazen above).

Attend as much sesshin and retreat as you can. Sesshin and silent retreats are central to Zen practice. Attend at least one, preferably two, sesshin each year. Make attendance at shorter retreats a priority in your life. Make every effort to attend sesshin and retreats in person, even if such retreats are not with your primary Sangha or teacher. It doesn’t matter whether you enjoy the retreats or think they are benefiting you, the work they do on you is primarily below the level of the conscious mind.

Field Three – Mindfulness: Choosing Every Moment

Practice at all times and in all places. There should never be a moment of your life when you aren’t practicing – even when you’re relaxing or enjoying a leisure activity. This doesn’t mean you have to carry around an awkward self-consciousness, it means you make an effort to show up for and choose every moment of your life.

Take care with all things. Nothing should be done carelessly or sloppily, as if it doesn’t matter.

See everything as part of your practice. Absolutely nothing and no one is excluded from your practice. It matters how you brush your teeth, the way you greet your spouse, and the way you respond to the greatest difficulties.

Maintain visual and physical reminders of practice in your daily life. Maintain a clean home altar. Ideally maintain a designated place for sitting, with a zabuton and your sitting supplies. Recite the five thoughts (meal verse) before meals:

We reflect on the effort that brought us this food. We reflect on our virtue and practice, and whether we are worthy of this offering. We regard it as essential to keep the mind free from excesses such as greed. We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our lives. For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.[i]

If eating with others who might be made uncomfortable by this, pause for a few moments before eating and silently call the verse to mind.

Field Four – Dharma Study: Wrestling with the Teachings

Attend to your teacher’s Dharma teachings. I ask my students to listen to or read my podcast episodes regularly, especially as they come out, and to attend my Dharma Talks and classes. If your teacher offers these kinds of teachings, pay attention and ask questions. If a topic is something you are already familiar with, pay attention to how the Dharma is shared with others and think about how you might express it.

Watch what your teacher does and emulate the way they manifest the forms of Zen. Zen teachings are not just verbal. Be diligently attentive to how your teacher cares for the practice environment, bows, rings bells, and offers incense. Watch how they look after the Sangha, whether that is by doing administrative tasks thoroughly, cooking a meal, or turning up the heat in the Zendo. Eventually a student should be able to anticipate a teacher and take care of things before the teacher moves to do so.

Accept correction and guidance from your teacher with a bow. Bowing is not about who is right or wrong, it is the way of Zen practice. Hierarchy in Zen can sometimes be abused, but it offers an opportunity to recognize and then surrender all kinds of self-centered responses including a need to be seen as right or good, a desire to compete or perform, and fear of judgment or rejection. You can be honest with your teacher about your thoughts and concerns, but there’s a Zen saying, “Bow first, ask questions later.”

If you are drawn to more Dharma study, explore an original source text in a systematic way. Remember that the point of Dharma teachings is to challenge the ideas you already hold, not accumulate new ones, so prioritize study with your teacher and Sangha, zazen, and sesshin over independent academic pursuits. However, some people find that additional study helps sustain their Bodhicitta. If this is the case for you, try to find a way to study an original source text along with others – original source texts can be challenging at first, and only after spending some uncomfortable time with them will you taste the rewards. If necessary, find a class or form a study group, or use a modern commentary to help unlock the text for you.

Field Five – Precepts: Transcending Self-Attachment

Do your best to keep the moral precepts and use them as a tool for mindfulness and self-study. See Episode 165 – The Buddhist Moral Precepts as a Practice for Studying the Buddha Way.

Refrain from gross breakage of the precepts. Although it’s impossible to perfectly keep the precepts, while a formal student you are at the very least expected to refrain from stealing, cheating and deception in relationships, overindulgence in intoxicants, and the use of illegal drugs.

Field Six – Opening Your Heart: Self-Acceptance and Non-Separation

Take responsibility for your sense of self. Whether your karmic issue is insecurity, arrogance, or both, take responsibility for cultivating a wholesome, strong, and undefended sense of self.

Focus on your own practice in the context of relationships. While there are times to ask other people to change, err on the side of doing your own practice. What can you change, or let go of, in your own body-mind that will lead to a relief of suffering and more harmonious relationships? Ask yourself whether someone’s behavior is abusive or clearly unethical. If it is, address it. If it isn’t, remind yourself that no one owes you anything and no one can make you feel a certain way. This can be very challenging.

Deepen your practice through real, personal relationships with other people. Other people are our best testing ground for whether we have realized our own Buddha-Nature. Do not hide from relationships that test you. Seek them out if your life is too calm.

Engage with Sangha as often as you can, trying to bring as much of yourself to the community as possible. Do not reject any Sangha member, nor dwell on a narrative that you don’t belong; practicing with these social responses can lead to great liberation. Serve the Sangha generously without seeking status or public acknowledgment. When Sangha disappoints you, take responsibility: Patiently care for the Sangha instead of descending into blame and divisiveness. True Zen practice takes place within the context of Sangha.

Generously share the benefits of practice with your family and friends. Do not speak to your loved ones of Zen teachings and practice unless they explicitly ask about these things, but hold the intention of becoming more kind, gentle, patient, generous, forgiving, and authentic with them. Part of your authenticity will be honoring your practice aspirations, but find creative ways to compromise so the people in your life don’t feel threatened by your Zen practice.

Field Seven – Karma Work: Taking Care of Your Precious Life

Devote yourself to lifelong karma work as an act of compassion and as a path to realization. Zen is not a self-improvement project, but it is also your responsibility as a Bodhisattva to unravel as many of your karmic knots as possible in this lifetime. In addition, every karmic knot is connected to a deeper spiritual koan. As you unravel them, you will also find your zazen settling and you will be made more open to insight.

See your karmic difficulties as opportunities and study them diligently. Set about the project of self-study with patience, self-compassion, and determination. Look for your fears, attachments, judgments, and areas of reactivity. Examine inhibitions, blind spots, unhelpful habits, etc. Don’t try to fix these things, just put your attention on them with curiosity until something shifts.

Bring your karma work to your teacher to clarify the spiritual koans beneath your challenges. The teacher isn’t a therapist and you aren’t trying to problem-solve together. Instead, a karmic knot can be viewed as a symptom of an underlying issue of attachment, fear, etc. Lasting and transformative change can happen when the underlying issue is resolved.

Field Eight – Realization: Awakening to Your True Nature

Clearly and explicitly aspire to awaken to your true nature, and to Reality-with-a-Capital-R. Do not think you have already done this. Do not think it is beyond you. Do not think it is irrelevant to you.

Do not give up or get distracted. You may not know exactly what awakening is, or what your true nature is, or why the central point of Zen is awakening to your true nature. That’s fine. At first your Bodhicitta may depend on faith in your teacher and the Zen tradition, or intuition based on peak moments in your own experience. If you keep seeking and do not give up, you will glimpse the truth for yourself, and the reality of awakening will become clear.

Cultivate a sense of spiritual urgency. The truth is like a massive fire; you can’t grasp it, but it also doesn’t help to wander away from it. Although you can’t define awakening or plot a direct path to it, you can stay intimately attuned to the call of the Dharma, drawing you toward what you have not yet experienced or understood.

Cultivate samadhi and attend sesshin. Awakening is not achieved through study or intellectualizing. It happens only in moments of samadhi, or nondual awareness, when you experience directly with no sense of a separate self. In Soto Zen we cultivate samadhi not through disciplining the mind but by a gradual conversion of the heart – simplifying, accepting, letting go, and settling. All of our practice is aimed at this, but it comes to fruition through sesshin.

Walk the path to awakening with your teacher. In our tradition, awakening is sought with the help of a teacher. The teacher encourages you when you need it but challenges you when you are stuck in delusion or attached to your ideas about the Dharma. It is very easy to remain lost in dualistic thinking, satisfied with intellectual understanding, or attached to remarkable experiences. The more you share with your teacher – particularly during formal sanzen and sesshin – the more beneficial the relationship will be.

Field Nine – Bodhisattva Service: Enacting Vows to Benefit All Beings

Devote yourself to some kind of service to other beings. This can include Sangha service, service to family, or service in your greater community. The Bodhisattva Vows are not metaphors but must be enacted with the body. Find what is yours to do, which is at the confluence of capacity and opportunity. Let go of comparing your service to that of others, or to some ideal, and do not insist that your service be pleasurable or admired by others.

Cultivate a practice of bearing witness. Spend some time each day or each week opening your awareness to the suffering in the world, through news or other media, volunteering, or study. Recognize this as a practice, letting go of the need to make sense of things, blame, or problem-solve. Never respond to suffering with the attitude, “Not my problem.”

Work to see all beings as children. No matter their demeanor or behavior, all beings have Buddha-Nature and are subject to suffering. All beings will be touched by kindness and compassion, even if they don’t show it. Don’t suppress your emotions, but take responsibility for the state of your own heart-mind and seek to become big enough to contain the distress and unskillful actions of others like the ocean accepts water from the rivers and the sky.

Field Ten – Connecting with the Ineffable: Aligning with What Is Most True

Do not be satisfied with what you think you know, or what you think you have experienced. Lean into your existential questions and your longing for a “more” that “the world of everyday experience cannot requite.”[ii]

Devote yourself to discovering and deepening your relationship to the Ineffable. Do this for your sake as well as for the sake of others. There is no greater gift you can give than the calm confidence that everything, just as it is, is luminous and precious.

Conclusion

One of the most important benefits of spiritual practice is greater tolerance for ambiguity. We become better able to accept more than one truth at a time, even when they appear to conflict.

My guidelines for deepening your Zen practice are sincere, but I also believe strongly in the merit of a “Dharma rain” approach to teaching and transmitting Buddhism and Zen. In the Lotus Sutra, there is a parable comparing the Dharma to rain falling on all the various plants in a forest – big trees, shrubs, and herbs. Each plant takes up just the water it needs. Similarly, people encountering the Dharma always benefit from it, no matter what they chose to embrace in terms of teachings and practices.

I hope you will take what you need from my guidelines. If you disagree with them, great – maybe they will help you clarify the path you want to take. If you wish you could follow them but feel that you can’t, question that conclusion. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Adaptations may need to be made because of responsibilities, illness, financial limitations, or physical location, but the spirit of the practice can be the same. And if my guidelines light the fire of your Bodhicitta, I encourage you to seek a Sangha, a formal teacher, and the opportunity to do lots of sesshin. Don’t rule out the possibility of rearranging your life to do this, including moving to a place near a teacher or lineage that resonates with you. You will be joining a long lineage of people who have made the Dharma a priority in their lives.