In this episode, my second in a short series on spiritual questions, I talk about various reasons for resistance to coming up with or asking spiritual questions. Then I discuss the relationship between karma work and awakening, because in my next episode or two I’ll explore in depth how to come up with karmic questions, and then how to come up with awakening questions.
Read/listen to Part 1 or Part 3.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
When You Run Out of Questions
Resistance to Spiritual Questions:
~~ Our Relationship to Other People
~~ Trying Not to Think Too Much
~~ Avoiding Self-Absorption
A Note about Karma Work and Samadhi Power (Awakening)
When You Run Out of Questions
For some people it can be tricky, especially once they’ve practiced a while, to come up with questions. After a while, you probably don’t have too many practical practice questions left (i.e. about how to sit zazen, how your Sangha operates, or basic teachings and terminology). Or, even if you know there’s a lot about the practice and teachings you don’t know, you recognize you’re in this for the long haul and just settle in, figuring you’ll pick things up gradually, by osmosis. Why keep asking questions, when you know the answers aren’t going to magically make walking the path of practice any faster or easier?
Beyond moral behavior, there are no “shoulds” when it comes to Buddhist practice, but we are more likely to grow spiritually if we start exploring karmic, awakening, and skillful means questions once we run out of practical practice questions. Again, it’s not so much that we need to come up with neat questions which can be expressed in complete sentences, but rather that we stay connected with our Bodhi-Mind and sense of curiosity. As I mentioned in Episode 230, on Bodhi-Mind, the path of spiritual growth and discovery is endless. Buddhahood is about our human capacity. Fulfilling our potential isn’t about right or wrong, it’s a natural and beautiful process.
Resistance to Spiritual Questions: Our Relationship to Other People
Another reason some people find it difficult to come up with spiritual questions is because they are fiercely independent, and it doesn’t appeal to “ask” someone else a question. Some of us were teacher’s pets throughout our schooling, eagerly raising our hands to ask questions and offer answers in order to get confirmation of whether we’re right or not. Fiercely independent folks, in contrast, may be introverted or private. As long as they are in doubt about something, they want to keep it close to their chest, only revealing a question once long after they have resolved it.
In one sense there’s nothing wrong with the habit of keeping your questions to yourself as long as you’re still asking and investigating questions. Even if you’re inclined to share your questions publicly, the greatest value of the questioning process is internal. Most of the time, it doesn’t really matter what a teacher – or anyone else – says in response, anyway. You almost always have to figure out your own answer.
However, there’s something extremely valuable about learning to clarify your questions and express them to others. You might actually get some valuable feedback, but even more importantly, trying to express your questions can be an essential part of the overall process of inquiry and learning. It’s a common occurrence for people to make an attempt to express a karmic, awakening, or even skillful means question but then feel quite dissatisfied with how it comes out verbally, or with the lack of complete understanding on the part of others. Sometimes this sense of inadequacy in communication is about your limited skill with words, or limited experience talking about spiritual questions, but often it is about the fact that you have not yet fully clarified what your question is. A sense of frustration as you try to express your deepest spiritual concerns can be very useful feedback about where you are in your process.
Expressing spiritual questions out loud is also an opportunity to challenge your trust issues and pride. You may fear negative judgements from others if you share your questions and doubts. In many cultures, talking about our unresolved questions and issues – especially if we are emotional about them – can cause others to pity us, make assumptions about us, conclude we are weak, or offer unsolicited advice. We may also want to appear smart and capable and therefore feel uncomfortable in a setting where a so-called “teacher” might correct us or presume to answer our question (as if they know something we don’t!).
Expressing our questions despite our misgivings can teach us to stay connected with our inner authority – with what really matters to us – even when we’re concerned about the opinions of others. For example, I was quite relentless, emotional, and public about my spiritual questioning throughout the first 10 years or so of my practice. I remember feeling angered and mortified quite often, when people would take a one-up position with me and offer me advice, or solace, or pity. Sometimes a whole group of people would turn and make me and my question or issue the subject of the conversation, as if they were a team assigned to solve my problem for me (because obviously I wasn’t able to resolve it myself). This infuriated me, because all I really wanted was the opportunity to speak about a question I was still in the middle of exploring, and to have a deep conversation with my Dharma friends about it. Despite these occasional negative experiences, however, I refused to stop asking questions or speaking about them in public settings. Finding the answers to my questions was infinitely more important to me than protecting my ego.
Resistance to Spiritual Questions: Trying Not to Think Too Much
Other people find it difficult to come up with spiritual questions because they want to just do the practice and not think about it too much. This isn’t the worst approach; it’s much better than intellectualizing about practice and not actually doing it. However, if we don’t actively seek to arouse and maintain a questioning mind, we can easily fall into complacency. As I said in the last episode, a questioning mind is curious, open, humble, and attentive. We stay aware of our own limits and what we do not yet know. We look critically at life instead of coasting along on assumptions or being satisfied with superficial answers.
If you’re at all worried about over-intellectualizing practice, it may help to know that spiritual questions are not simply intellectual. They certainly involve the intellect to some extent, and they may involve teachings, concepts, or words. But spiritual questions – as opposed to merely intellectual ones – are also very personal. We care about the answers, which are relevant to our experience of life and to the choices we make. Ultimately, spiritual questions are about how we, personally, live a more enlightened life.
Resistance to Spiritual Questions: Avoiding Self-Absorption
Finally, some people may find it difficult to come up with spiritual questions because of their subjective nature. It may seem like questioning focused on ourselves is indulging in self-absorption. Me, me, me! How do I feel? How do I act? What can I change? However, there’s a huge difference between taking responsibility for yourself and mulling constantly over your own preferences or contemplating the injuries others have inflicted upon you. We focus on ourselves because we’re the only ones in the entire world who can, and because we’re taking responsibility not just for our behavior but also for the kind of experience we have of life in general.
I discuss the value of cultivating greater self-awareness at length in Episode 15 – To Study Buddhism Is to Study the Self – and Why That’s Not Selfish. Far from being self-indulgent, it’s actually very advantageous to find yourself fascinating! This doesn’t mean you assume you’re more fascinating than anyone else, just that human beings are fascinating, especially when you can directly observe their every thought, emotion, and impulse. Which, of course, is exactly what we can do with ourselves! This self-study is what Dogen is referring to in Fukanzazengi, when he tells us to “learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward.”[i]
A Note about Karma Work and Samadhi Power (Awakening)
Assuming you’ve overcome your resistance to spiritual questions, how do you go about coming up with meaningful questions?
I’m not going to talk about how to come up with practical practice questions. These are straightforward questions about Buddhism, meditation, texts and teachings, Sangha, and how to apply the practice in your own life. I encourage you to be bold with your questions, because there’s usually at least one other person in the room wondering the same thing.
First, I’m going to discuss karmic questions, and then I’ll talk about awakening questions and skillful means questions. Before I get into that, though, in the next episode or two, I want to say something about the relationship between karma work and our efforts to awaken.
Depending on who you are, it might be tempting see karmic questions – questions meant to result in greater self-understanding – as inferior to awakening questions, which you might also describe as existential questions about the nature of your experience as a human being. As I discuss in Episode 72 – Taking Care of Our Lives: More About the Karma Relationship Side of Practice, karma work can get messy! It’s about untangling our karmic knots, facing difficult things about ourselves, and putting in the work to change our habits of body, speech, and mind. We might imagine that awakening questions, in contrast, are about sitting around contemplating profound spiritual matters like oneness and Buddha-Nature. Who wouldn’t prefer the latter?
Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – we can’t skip karma work in order to concentrate solely on awakening. That’s just not how it works. I discuss this at length in Episode 38 – The Two Sides of Practice: Samadhi Power and Karma Relationship. You could see “samadhi power” as those aspects of practice which are aimed at awakening to Reality-with-a-Capital-R – the truth of emptiness, suchness, and Buddha-Nature. Karma relationship, or karma work, is about understanding and taking responsibility for you particular karmic package – your body, mind, heart, circumstances, conditioning, tendencies, etc. If we neglect awakening work and just work on our karma, we may end up feeling like we’re bogged down in an unending struggle to change, faced with permanent inadequacy. If we neglect karma work and just try to awaken to deep spiritual truths, we tend to go on causing suffering for self and others, and fall into the trap of spiritual materialism (using spiritual practice for more or less self-centered ends).
On the positive side, karma work leads to greater self-acceptance, stability, moral behavior, generosity, trust, and openness. Because of our karma work – as incremental and messy as it can seem sometimes – we can become better able to sit still, face things, calm our mind, and open to insight. So, karma work supports awakening! Awakening work (which I’ve also called samadhi power, or in my Nine Fields of Zen Practice, Cultivating Insight) can lead to foundational insights which realign our whole being and make it easier to see through and resolve our karmic issues. Also, when we awaken to our true nature, we recognize how we are not fundamentally defiled by our karma. This can make karma work more of a joyous activity and less of a duty that may sometimes feel like a penance. So awakening supports karma work!
In the next episode I’ll talk in depth about coming up with karmic questions. I’ll probably have to save a discussion of awakening and skillful means questions for subsequent episodes. I hope you’ll tune in, thanks for listening!
Read/listen to Part 1 or Part 3.
[i] Translation from the Japanese Soto Shu (School) website: https://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/eng/practice/sutra/pdf/03/c01.pdf
