This is the second episode of three comprising the “Zazen” chapter of my book, “The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners.” I finish my discussion of the five efforts of Zazen, covering becoming intimate with Life, seeing the true nature of Life, and being one with Life.
Read/listen to Chapter 3, Part 1 or Chapter 3, Part 3
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Once you have built some tolerance for Life and made some peace with it, if you want to experience deep Zazen it is necessary for you to keep up your effort. Zazen is not about sitting passively like a sack of potatoes, letting time pass. Honestly, even such practice has benefits, but it is not a practice that produces growth or increases your intimacy with Life.
I’ve already talked about Zazen as becoming intimate with Life, but naturally more can be said about this profound effort. In the process of making peace with Life, you have expanded your awareness as much as possible, and then questioned and explored the limits you have placed on your awareness with your own mind. You have invited into your Zazen whatever you are not yet at peace with. What’s next?
When nothing is troubling you – at least at the moment – where do you put your effort? This is very tricky. When you hear that you should seek greater intimacy with Life, you naturally want to know how that’s done. What activity can you undertake, what method can you employ, to reduce the sense of separation between “you” and all that seems to be “not you”? Should you concentrate really hard on your breathing? Should you try to increase the frequency and duration of periods of no thought? Should you press your mind into a state of hyperawareness? If you try such approaches, no matter how hard you try, there will remain a stubborn sense of separation most of the time. Perhaps on a rare occasion you will bring about an unusual state of consciousness that seems very special, that seems to be the intimacy you seek, but then it will pass. Alternatively, periods of concentration, thoughtlessness, or hyperawareness may elude you, causing you to conclude you don’t have the meditative discipline or skill to experience intimacy with Life.
Fortunately, intimacy with Life is easily and immediately available, no matter your meditative skill or discipline. Think about it: You are already surrounded by, permeated by, supported by Life. Your sense of separateness from all that is “not you” is entirely within your own mind, caused by your self-centered grasping and resistance. Therefore, the key to intimacy lies in letting go of that grasping and resistance. In the simplified setting of Zazen, this means letting go of your grasping and resistance with respect to exactly what you are experiencing at this very moment. You are likely to think of this experience as “my Zazen,” and judge – however subtly – whether it is going well or poorly. When you bring your awareness to your direct experience, you either like it, dislike it, feel indifferent about it, or aren’t sure how to feel about it – all self-centered evaluations.
In an instant, you can embrace everything that is happening as Life. You expand your awareness to include what was just happening in your Zazen, including your judgments about it, your preferences about it, your frustration, your hope, your absent-mindedness, your striving, your laziness – everything. In this pure moment of showing up, there is perfect intimacy. In surrendering your agenda, you momentarily transcend self and see Life as it really is. It doesn’t matter if in your previous moments of Zazen you felt you were poised at the brink of a great awakening, or if you were completely caught up in thinking.
What makes Zazen Zazen is opening up to Life just as it is, over and over, without keeping track of how many times you have done this during a Zazen period. You open up as completely and wholeheartedly as you can, free of any agenda. The process can actually feel kind of idiotic, like you’re blindly devoting yourself to a task without caring at all about whether you are being effective or making any progress. Ironically, if you do this, your Zazen will deepen, but not through any willful effort on your part to deepen it. Zazen can’t be deepened willfully, although we can very diligent and deliberate in how we surrender to it.
Think of it this way: If you want to cultivate intimacy with a person, you dedicate time to be with them. You create physical and emotional space for them, setting aside all your other activities in order to focus on them. You listen to them, watch them, appreciate them, and respond to them. Despite the fact that the whole point is to be intimate with the person, it is counterproductive to go into the situation with an agenda to build intimacy, carrying some idea about what intimacy should look like. You simply create space and allow intimacy to manifest and grow. Your only job is to show up with sincerity, openness, and patience.
Similarly, in Zazen we create space for intimacy with Life. This may sound like a passive process, but it most definitely is not. After all, you wouldn’t build much intimacy with a person if you were physically present with them but not interested in them. In Zazen we aim to maintain a lively, expansive, receptive awareness, as if we were an infant born in the wintertime and set out on a blanket in the middle of a spring meadow for the very first time. If we were that infant, we would be absolutely full of wonder. Every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch would be fascinating. Everything we encountered would capture our attention in an open and flowing way. There would be no problem in our mind, “What should I concentrate on?” Open awareness would be our natural state because something new and wonderful could come from anywhere, at any time.
In order to maintain the wide-open awareness for intimate Zazen, we need to question our whole approach to Life. Why aren’t we full of wonder, like an infant encountering a spring meadow for the first time? Because we figure we’ve seen all of this before. We have labels for everything, and the instant we perceive something we categorize it, attach it to a whole assemblage of memories, opionions, and so-called “facts,” and stop paying attention to it. This mode of operation helps us move efficiently through the world, but it does not reflect the Reality of our situation. In fact, we have never experienced this moment before, and never will again. We have never breathed this breath, or felt the warmth of this ray of sunlight, or heard this bird call.
When we are intimate with Life, we allow ourselves to be embraced by the indescribable richness and bounty of this moment. There is no boredom at all, even when, objectively, nothing is happening.
Zazen as Seeing the True Nature of Life
Becoming intimate with Life allows us to see the true nature of Life.
Most of us assume we more or less understand Life. Even if we acknowledge it contains great mysteries, or believe there are many ways Life makes no sense at all, for the most part we assume that our direct perceptions are more or less accurate – that our experience of Life matches, in some sense, how it really is. However, one of the main teachings of Buddhism is that this is not the case. In truth, our minds interact with reality through an incredibly complex mental map we have created over the course of our lives, including countless self-centered assumptions, agendas, beliefs, and narratives. We rarely perceive things directly, and because of the interference of our mental map, some things we don’t perceive at all.
The Dharma, or the deeper truth of Life, I call Reality-with-a-Capital-R. The teachings of Buddhism and Zen point us toward what to look for: Absolutely everything that exists in any sense of the word “exist” is impermanent, and because of this impermanence there nothing we can grasp and hold on to as being “self.” Our greatest mental anguish is caused by our existential resistance to the true nature of Life, especially impermanence and our inability to find a permanent refuge for self. Self and all things exist, but – contrary to our assumptions – they are empty of any inherent, enduring, autonomous self-nature. Amazingly, they don’t need such a nature, and are miraculous and luminous in their own-being. We are also thus, regardless of our limitations, and can participate fully and joyously in the boundlessness.
Zen practice invites you to see beyond your mental map and perceive Life directly. This doesn’t mean you get superpowers and become able to see some absolute, invariable, and objective “Truth” that will look the same to any sentient being, anytime, anywhere. Such a static, singular, one-dimensional truth does not exist. What you do become able to do – at least in certain moments – is to perceive Life as it is unfolding within you and around you, without the filter of your mental map. You perceive with your limited human body and mind, and that is enough to allow you to awaken to Reality-with-a-capital-R, one small insight at a time. The more you see the true nature of Life, the easier it is to live freely, wisely, compassionately, and even happily.
Investigating the True Nature of Life in Zazen Without Adopting an Agenda
In Zazen, you have the opportunity to wake up to Reality-with-a-Capital-R. You may wonder how this happens if you are not willfully directing what happens in your Zazen. How can you push past the limits of your mental map and perceive Life in an entirely new way unless you bring an agenda into your Zazen? Is Zazen about waiting patiently for insights to drop out of the sky? Or is Zazen incompatible with spiritual inquiry and insight?
As you made peace with Life in Zazen, you expanded your awareness as much as possible, and then questioned and explored the limits you had placed on your awareness with your own mind. To investigate the true nature of Life, you simply continue that process. It’s not that you go seeking through transcendent realms for some experience you have not yet had, it’s that you sit in the middle of your mental map and recognize it for what it is: A complex representation of Reality composed of countless beliefs about self, existence, causation, and the nature of time. Even when your mind is relatively free from distracting thoughts, it is usually relaxing comfortably in the middle of your mental map without even realizing it.
When you are intimate with Life, when you feel very close to it, you can lean into it with curiosity. Who is it who sits Zazen? How do you know you are alive? When thoughts arise, do they come from anywhere? Where is the boundary of your awareness? These are points of inquiry you investigate in your own, direct experience, right there in Zazen. There is nothing theoretical, intellectual, or philosophical involved. It’s no different than asking, “Is my hand warm or cool? Am I hungry? Do I remember my tenth birthday party?” Except that you are used to asking and answering those kinds of questions, and as you investigate the true nature of Life, you learn to ask and answer new kinds of questions. Interacting with Dharma teachings and teachers is the best way to discover those questions you have never before thought to ask.
It’s possible to gain insight into the true nature of Life at any time, not just in Zazen, but a Zazen practice prepares the ground for such insight. Within Zazen itself, deep inquiry into Reality-with-a-Capital-R is very challenging to do without spinning off into intellectualizing. Most of us, most of the time, need the prolonged stillness of a silent meditation retreat, or sesshin, to significantly expand our familiarity with the true nature of Life. This is not at all because the true nature of Life is far away from the reality of our everyday lives, or that we can only access it in the special circumstances of retreat. Rather, our habitual attachment to our mental map is so strong, it is difficult for us to let go of it for even a moment unless we step out of our everyday life for an extended period of time.
Although retreat is invaluable for seeing the true nature of Life, you should make this effort whenever you do Zazen. The Dharma – the deepest truth – is infinite. There is always more to see, more to open up to. Ideally, while you are sitting, your Zazen should never come to a stop. There should never be a point at which you conclude your effort is complete or sufficient – that you’re sitting still and letting go of thoughts when they arise and that’s all there is to it. To conclude our Zazen is “good enough” is a delusion, but not because it is flawed and needs to be improved. Instead, Zazen is never “good enough” because the universe is infinite. As Zen master Dogen said in Genjokoan,[i] when you’re out in a boat on the ocean, beyond sight of land, the ocean looks like a circle to you. This is because of your limited perspective. If you view that same ocean from the point of view of a fish, or from space, or through a microscope, you realize the ocean is neither round nor square, but has “inexhaustible characteristics.”[ii] In our Zazen, we open up to other ways of perceiving and question our conclusions. After all, although human beings are born with limited senses, our curiosity has taken us to the depths of the ocean, into outer space, and driven us to create ways to view things at the molecular level.
You may reason that because you’re not supposed to have any agenda in Zazen, because you’re not supposed to control or judge your meditative experience, that so as long you keep up the basic practice, Zazen is more or less passive. To think this is a big mistake, albeit one that it’s essentially impossible not to make at some point as you learn what Zazen really is. It’s challenging to learn what kind of effort you can make in Zazen that does not inflame your self-centeredness.
It may be better to think of your efforts in Zazen as choices you make, moment by moment. When you notice your Zazen has become rather stagnant, when you have been sitting as if you know exactly what’s happening and what’s going to happen next, you try to access some of your Bodhicitta, or Way-Seeking Mind. You do whatever you can to wake yourself up from the stupor of assumptions and labels, to recognize the limitations of your mental map, and to tap into the natural wonder of an infant. Curiosity and openness flow from such humility.
Wholehearted Zazen is energetic, engaged, and full of purpose, but this purpose transcends self-interest and remains unattached to any particular outcome. Our purpose in Zazen is a Total Response to Life. Faced with the wonder and horror and mystery of Life, we want to be free from suffering, to be at peace with Life, and to feel connected to Life.
Part of the process of seeking intimacy with Life is to see it for what it really is. In the meditation of other traditions, practitioners seek insight into the true nature of Life through willful methods and processes. Practitioners of Zazen, on the other hand, cultivate receptivity to the Truth that surrounds us and permeates us each and every moment. If we are not regularly visited by insights and wonder, it is only because we are so attached to our mental map of reality. In Zazen, we investigate the limitations on our awareness imposed by our own mind, thereby discovering more and more about the true nature of Life.
Zazen as Being One with Life
The ultimate goal of Zen is not the acquisition of insight or enlightenment experiences but a life in which you are free, at peace, and fully alive. What does it mean to be “fully alive?” Once we start to talk about it, it becomes difficult to define, but most of us resonate with these words at least to some extent. We are familiar with what it is like to not feel we are fully alive – to be inhibited by fear, troubled by longing, burdened by regrets, compelled by our habits, festering with resentments, or driven by our reactivity. At the very least, we experience a persistent sense that Life is not quite as it should be, that we are not quite as we should be. We may experience great intimacy with Life, but our lingering doubt – born of the miracle of self-consciousness – means a sense of separateness remains.
If “being one with Life” appeals to you, it’s important to understand what this really means. It doesn’t mean the obliteration of self in any way. It’s natural to assume that, in order to be “one” with Life, that which is separate from Life (the self) must disappear – from consciousness, if not literally. We may assume – or fear – that in order to truly be one with Life, we will need to give up everything, including things like our personality, opinions, relationships, and creativity. Or that, once we are one with Life, we will experience no more preferences, problems, or aspirations. Or that, when we are one with Life, we have no separate consciousness, and therefore we won’t even know we’re one with Life – so this ultimate goal is something we will never even realize we have realized.
Your thoughts about what it might be like to be “one with Life” are just that: Thoughts. Such thoughts are based in assumptions which simply don’t apply to Reality-with-a-Capital-R. So, even if you experience such thoughts, there is no need to be troubled by them or figure out whether they are correct.
Being one with Life is simply a natural continuation of our Zazen. The more you see of the true nature of Life, the more you realize there is no “you” over here, realizing something about “Life” over there. The only reason you can awaken to Reality-with-a-Capital-R is because you are inseparable from it. You realize that self-discipline is a crude instrument that only approximates the results of getting in touch with your own Bodhicitta. You realize that everything you do is the universe moving through you. There are ways you can fight, inhibit, or try to control that universal movement, and thereby experience stress and difficulty, but there are also ways you can facilitate, participate in, and guide that movement, resulting in ease, joy, and skillfulness. Instead of struggling against Life, you recognize what’s yours to do and find the whole universe revealed there.
It may sound rather grand to “be one with Life,” and it is a rewarding way to be, but in practice it simply looks like you getting very comfortable in your own skin. It looks like you becoming the best person you can be, affecting others with your spiritual ease but without any artifice, without any self-conscious pride about what an enlightened person you are. In fact, when occasionally you might reflect with satisfaction on your oneness with Life, those are moments when you are not so at-one with Life. However, just because, by definition, you don’t get to walk around blissed out about your oneness with Life in a self-conscious way, this doesn’t mean you are unconscious. You are very much conscious, alive, and participating. Before you understand the true nature of Life, you are likely to assume that when your self-centered consciousness – the running narrative that tracks how well you’re doing at any given moment – is absent, “you” will be absent. Of course this isn’t true at all; “you” are much more than that little self-centered sense of autonomy and separateness.
In Zazen, when you are one with Life, there is still no stopping. You are simply living, simply being, and this is more than enough. No boredom whatsoever can be found. Zazen becomes its own reward, its own fulfillment.
Stay tuned – I’ll be releasing episode 3/3 of my Zazen chapter soon.
Read/listen to Chapter 3, Part 1 or Chapter 3, Part 3
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
Endnotes
[i] Okumura, Shohaku. Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.
[ii] Ibid
