I recently got an email that went like this:
My experience with Buddhism up to this point has left me feeling that, while the teachings are profound and enlightening, there is a lack of concrete instructions as to how to actually end bad behaviors. I understand that meditation helps to clear the mind, that craving comes and goes, that satisfying the craving only embeds it as a behavior to engage in the future, but I’m not sure what I should when the craving arrives and overwhelms me.
I get the feeling that I’m supposed to meditate away cravings and compulsions, but that hasn’t worked for me. Is this an ignorance on my end and I simply haven’t found the right teachings or lessons? Is it that I’m not disciplined enough to employ meditation as a behavior-altering technique? Has your experience with Buddhism left you feeling that it doesn’t generally utilize step-by-step behavior modification techniques? If so, do you think it could aid in the addition of such techniques?
There are certain forms of Buddhism that one might say use step-by-step behavior modification techniques. In Vipassana meditation there are techniques that are supposed to eradicate greed through a systematic contemplation its causes. Since greed is the root of cravings and compulsions, this is probably the kind of thing you’re looking for. I have never practiced Vipassana, so I don’t know much more detail than that.
One of the problems a lot of people encounter is that it’s very scary to learn that the underlying cause of your cravings and compulsions is you.
What many people tend to want is a technique that will allow them to maintain their usual relationship to the notion of “self” while eliminating from that self the things which that self finds unattractive about itself. It’s sort of like trying to make a duck into a bicycle while still keeping it a duck.
We all have compulsions and cravings. Our particular compulsions and cravings are part of what makes us unique and distinctive. I crave bad science fiction movies and have a compulsion for watching them. Most people disdain the films I enjoy – hell, I disdain them too a lot of the time! Anyhow, this craving is part of what makes me who I am.
What happens when I give it up? Do I remain who I am? Should I give up such things in order to be a “good Buddhist?” Some people certainly seem to think so.
When people worry about cravings and compulsions, though, they’re not usually worried about that level of stuff. They’re more concerned with the bad cravings, the darker ones. I have those too. So do you.
Many of us tend to hide those kinds of cravings, sometimes even from ourselves. We can get so good at hiding them that we are unaware such dark cravings and compulsions even exist. Yet we’ll act on these cravings and compulsions even when we’re not consciously aware of them. That’s when they can get really out of control.
It’s so common it’s become a cliché that the most homophobic among us are those most likely to harbor hidden homosexual compulsions. How many gays have been victimized by men who would have been much happier if they could simply own up to their truer desires? That’s probably the easiest and most common example in our culture. There are countless others.
It also points out some of the problems inherent in identifying so-called “negative” compulsions and then using specific techniques designed to eradicate them. When we do so, we are always trying to modify what we are into what we think we ought to be. So a man who fears his own homosexual cravings and compulsions as “negative” tries to eradicate them. This never ends well.
In the Zen Buddhist tradition, we generally don’t work on systematically identifying negative cravings and compulsions and then eradicating them through behavior altering techniques. It’s not because that can’t be done. It can. But it often just leads to a reinforcement of the very ego mechanisms that produced those cravings and compulsions in the first place.
Now of course there are situations in which something like this becomes necessary. If you find you have cravings and compulsions towards activities you know are harmful to yourself and others, you have to take steps to manage those. In more drastic cases more drastic measures become necessary. But that’s not the kind of thing most of us are dealing with.
Most of us just have a more vaguely defined notion of wanting to be “a better person.” Kodo Sawaki, my ordaining teacher’s first teacher, said, “You say you want to become a better person by doing zazen. Zazen isn’t about learning how to be a person. Zazen is to stop being a person.”
Here is where it gets really hard. Zazen threatens our sense of personhood. Nobody likes that. I sure don’t! Are you kidding me? I got off so hard on my uniqueness as a person that when I was on the staff of my high school newspaper I invented a category of “most individualistic” for an issue about outstanding students just because I knew I could win that one.
Yet weirdly enough my two Zen teachers were some of the most unique individuals I have ever met. To call either of them eccentric would be a massive understatement. They were both downright peculiar people! So was Kodo Sawaki.
Dogen said, “Realization does not break the individual any more than the reflection of the moon breaks a dewdrop. The whole moon and the entire sky is reflected in a dewdrop on a blade of grass.”
Our aim is not to identify what will make us a better person and then sheer off the parts of ourselves that do not conform to that ideal. Rather, our aim is to try to honestly look at who we actually are in this moment and learn how to be that completely.
We don’t meditate away our cravings and compulsions. But when we start to see them clearly and honestly it becomes gradually easier to relate to them, to see what we really need to be doing and to start doing that.
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Thanks Brad, you answered a question I was carrying over for quite some time.
Yeah, be a slave to your religious beliefs. The best slave you can be of course.
I find that Pema Chödrön peppers her teachings with suggestions on how to reduce the amount of anxiety and suffering we stir up for ourselves in daily life. I’ve learned a lot, but here’s the catch: a) you need to keep studying (doesn’t have to be a lot, but just be consistent) to keep learning the lessons, and b) you’re going to forget and have to re-learn the lessons over and over again. That’s totally normal. I don’t really find the answers to questions when I meditate, I find them when I go about my daily life. Regular meditation really serves to help sharpen your awareness of when these things all come up the rest of the time.
I generally choose the teachers my gut tells me are legit. That’s why I’m here. I’m very particular and very careful when I hear something that sounds like B.S. That guy up there, just his face tells me he’s a huckster.
Zazen has changed my life for the better…and so has Joel Osteen. There, I said it.
Certainly a sincere inquiry, from your correspondent.
‘I understand… that satisfying the craving only embeds it as a behavior to engage in the future, but I’m not sure what I should when the craving arrives and overwhelms me.’
Well, it’s hopeless, now that the behavior is embedded; only one thing to do, I guess: talk to God directly.
“Rather, our aim is to try to honestly look at who we actually are in this moment and learn how to be that completely.”
The hair’s-breadth between “who we actually are in this moment” and “learn how to be that completely”, that would be the chasm our man wants to talk to God about.
I’m going to Big Bird, to see for myself.
“If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself; I would find a way.” – Johnny Cash, “Hurt”.
What we believe becomes action, not what we embed, and what we believe is subject to change. If I deny myself long enough, I will be dead or I will discover my hand reaching for the branch in the river to pull myself out.
After that, it’s eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired.
“If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself; I would find a way.” — Johnny Cash, “Hurt”.
Johnny Cash did a beautiful version of that song, but Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) wrote it and played the original version.
One of the very, very few musical facts that I do know.
Cheers.
If the self is illusory, how can there be free will? If there’s no free will, how can you become better?
http://youtu.be/0zXajYDnprQ
Alan, thanks for the correction. I was totally unaware of that fact, as you noticed!
“I understand that meditation helps to clear the mind, that craving comes and goes, that satisfying the craving only embeds it as a behavior to engage in the future, but I’m not sure what I should when the craving arrives and overwhelms me.”
Nothing. Simply sit, and let the feeling of craving and dissatisfaction simply wash over you. Feel it completely. Recognize that it isn’t really you at all, that you observe it from a position that isn’t in the least bit affected by either the craving or the dissatisfaction or the negativity associated with any of that. Over time, this may weaken those cravings. Or it may not. It may even intensify them. Whichever is the case, let them be, feel them and let them wash over you without reacting. Simply sit. Even in the midst of daily activities, simply sit in your own mind.
As Brad says, you aren’t even a person, and this approach will make that clear. The person you thought you were is defined by these cravings, but when you stop identifying yourself with the cravings, and simply feel them without doing anything about them, even “you” begin to cease being what you thought you were. You begin to recognize a simple freedom that was always there, and not defined by what you thought yourself to be, and what you thought you needed to have to continue being yourself. And that becomes your new sense of self or identity, even as the cravings wash over you.
That’s how Buddhism works, not by craving a better self, but by simply sitting in all the cravings that your former identity depended upon, and doing nothing with them.
After having the illusion for the past eight years of believing that I had a good ability to recognize my thought patterns and like myself, due to my immersion into this zen lifestyle, I have recently been knocked on my ass and into a deep, deep depression due to craving, so, so badly, a woman who I believe is the love of my life, and not receiving reciprocating feelings.
Goddamned silly! I know this. It doesn’t seem to matter that I recognize the temporal, illusory nature of this.
So I say, “fuck zen.” I hurt in ways that I cannot fathom.
Nevertheless, I continue to sit and be an active part of my sangha. Goddammit.
The Buddha:
“‘Worthless man, haven’t I taught the Dhamma in many ways for the fading of passion, the sobering of intoxication, the subduing of thirst, the destruction of attachment, the severing of the round, the ending of craving, dispassion, cessation, unbinding? Haven’t I in many ways advocated abandoning sensual pleasures, comprehending sensual perceptions, subduing sensual thirst, destroying sensual thoughts, calming sensual fevers?
Worthless man, it would be better that your penis be stuck into the mouth of a poisonous snake than into a woman’s vagina. It would be better that your penis be stuck into the mouth of a black viper than into a woman’s vagina. It would be better that your penis be stuck into a pit of burning embers, blazing and glowing, than into a woman’s vagina.”
Not interested in that wordy bullshit just yet.
No disrespect intended.
Anon, I have been through the same process as you, being shredded on the inside, and ending in a deep depression. I can feel your pain, because I have felt that pain.
That’s not a bad place to be at all. Unless you let it numb you. Dukkha is the great teacher.
Seems to me you’re doing three things here, Brad.
1) You’re making a distinction between harmless cravings and harmful ones. Fair enough.
2) You’re distinguishing ‘step-by-step behavior modification’ meditation techniques from shikantaza/just sitting, suggesting that the former aren’t as effective as the latter. Well maybe.
3) You’re saying something or other about personhood. (No comment.)
But your conclusion:
“We don’t meditate away our cravings and compulsions. But when we start to see them clearly and honestly it becomes gradually easier to relate to them, to see what we really need to be doing and to start doing that” –
1) Includes a pretty good description of vipassana meditation (as I understand it from a practising friend), and
2) Confirms that the aim of meditation – even of the apparently aimless variety – is to become a better* person. (And I agree. Why else, apart from getting off on spacing out, would you bother?)
* better 1. more desirable, satisfactory, or effective [google]
Well, yes and no.
If I had worked upon myself to be a less boring, boorish, and anger-prone, I’d probably have achieved nothing.
I only observe that the practice of zazen has brought me to a point where I can (sometimes) manage to shut up, to be aware of others (not always) and to know that firing up in anger would be pointless (most of the time, but still…)
And, as a plus, if a friend tells me off for being those things, I have acquired the humour to take it as a benefit and not an offence.
But I’m pretty sure that, if I had set off with that as a goal, I would never have achieved it.
Michel – You might not have foreseen the ways in which zazen would make you a (slightly, sometimes) better person, and you may not have practised with the conscious thought “I must get better,” but didn’t you start sitting in the hope that something good – like understanding, insight, peace or contentment – would come to you?
Despite the hackles raised in some quarters by the word, Buddhism is a kind of therapy.* I’m saying that the aim of (even) shikantaza is to become a better – a more effective – person.
*http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/beyondcoping/index.html (Just found it. Haven’t read it. Looks interesting.)
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/beyondcoping/index.html
Cheers, Mark.
It is easy to get into a philosophical discussion about this point, but Zen is not about what we think our what we believe. It is about what we do. If we continue in our practice, we can perceive directly, for ourselves, that “the five skandas are empty.”
This is easy to see, but not so easy to accept. We cling to our feelings, perceptions, and impulses, as if they were ourselves. Zen practice makes it harder and harder to hold on to this delusion. Eventually we have to let go.
Letting go gives us the freedom to choose how to live in this world. This is not “becoming a better person.” This is just learning how to be a human being.
sri b – You say what’s important [I’m leaving “Zen” out of this] is not what we think, but what we do. I agree. You object to the formulation “becoming a better person.” You prefer ‘”learning how to be a human being”. Same difference, I say.
Funny, sri_barence, you start by saying that Zen is not about what we think or what we believe, and then you go on to express your Zen thoughts and beliefs. Well, you’re only human.
Anon 108: The phrase, “Becoming a better person,” carries with it several assumptions.
1. It is possible to “become” something
2. You are different from what you might become
3. There is something “better” or “worse”
From the Zen perspective, these are all problematic. Originally there is nothing, so no becoming, no better or worse, no person (and also no extinction of them).
“Learning how to be a human being” is our daily practice. Just moment to moment, only go straight, don’t know. What is a “human being?” (What am I?) Don’t know. That’s Zen in a nutshell.
Zafu: Expressing our thoughts and beliefs is one means to show our love, respect, and compassion for each other. Not clinging to our thoughts and beliefs is how we practice Zen. That is “only go straight, don’t know.” One human to another. Yeah.
Expressing religious thoughts and beliefs reifies them, and helps to serves the purpose for which they exist. They exist to offer a system of meaning, for those that need a system of meaning.
If you need a meaning system, you will cling to that system. That is the nature of meaning systems. Religious practices, like Zen, bind. They do not unbind.
You’re like someone with a full belly claiming that you’re no longer hungry. You may not be, but everyone better leave your store of Scooby snacks alone or there will be hell to pay.
“An anthropologist once questioned an Eskimo shaman about his tribe’s belief system. After putting up with the anthropologist’s questions for a while, the shaman finally told him: “Look. We don’t believe. We fear.”
In a similar way, Buddhism starts, not with a belief, but with a fear of very present dangers. As the Buddha himself reported, his initial impetus for leaving home and seeking Awakening was his comprehension of the great dangers that inevitably follow on birth: aging, illness, death, and separation. The Awakening he sought was one that would lead him to a happiness not subject to these things. After finding that happiness, and in attempting to show others how to find it for themselves, he frequently referred to the themes of aging, illness, death, and separation as useful objects for contemplation. Because of this, his teaching has often been called pessimistic, but this emphasis is actually like that of a doctor who focuses on the symptoms and causes of disease as part of an effort to bring about a cure. The Buddha is not afraid to dwell on these topics, because the Awakening he teaches brings about a total release from them.”
(from the article anon 108 linked, above)
Stick that in the mouth of a black viper!
I myself see it as the functioning of necessity, most closely associated with the necessity to breathe, but also with the very human necessity to arrive at deliverance from thought without grasping, without which there is suffering.
And where do we experience deliverance from thought without grasping.
I think Blanke and Mohr have the right hypothesis, that what we experience as self is a function of the vestibular, ocular, and proprioceptive/tactile/kinesthetic senses. I believe that, because as I exercise the vestibular and proprioceptive senses while cognizant of the influence of the ocular sense, I am taught how to breathe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvQwsBUW9wM
Expressing religious thoughts and beliefs reifies them, and helps to serves the purpose for which they exist. They exist to offer a system of meaning, for those that need a system of meaning.
If you need a meaning system, you will cling to that system. That is the nature of meaning systems. Religious practices, like Zen, bind. They do not unbind.
You’re like someone with a full belly claiming that you’re no longer hungry. You may not be, but everyone better leave your store of Scooby snacks alone or there will be hell to pay.
“And now that you do not have to be perfect, you can be good.” –From East of Eden, John Steinbeck.
I just ran into this quote and it seemed to fit the subject of Brad’s post pretty well.
Cheers.
Brad Warner:
“Most of us just have a more vaguely defined notion of wanting to be “a better person.” Kodo Sawaki, my ordaining teacher’s first teacher, said, “You say you want to become a better person by doing zazen. Zazen isn’t about learning how to be a person. Zazen is to stop being a person.”
Do you say that too, Brad Warner?
Brad please, write a book with your commentaries on Kodo Sawaki´s sayings.
“Zazen is to stop being a person.”
There’s nothing wrong with cravings and compulsions. There’s nothing wrong with you either. The problem is selfishness.
Does religious practice reduce selfishness? No, obviously not. Religion gives meaning to those who need a structured system of meaning. Meaning is all that is required of it.
Meaning is only relevant to an ego.
This practice is beyond religion. This practice is beyond a structured system of meaning. A no-self has no meaning. Religion is a crutch for an ego.
Kobun:
“It is very important to experience the complete negation of yourself, which brings you to the other side of nothing. People experience that in many ways. You go to the other side of nothing, and you are held by the hand of the absolute. You see yourself as part of the absolute, so you have no more insistence of self as yourself. You can speak of self as no-self upon the absolute. Only real existence is absolute”
All religious practitioners have egos, sure, if that’s what you mean.
To use a Warnerism, this (Zen) practice is ‘supposed to be’ beyond religion. If it actually were beyond religion it would be, but it’s just like any other religion. Have you ever noticed how many religions there are, which have so many conflicting truths? More to the point, have you noticed how the conflicting truths don’t matter? They don’t matter because truth is not essential in religion. Meaning is the only essential thing in religion.
Everything has meaning. Once you realize that maybe you won’t need to be spoon fed the prepackaged meaning religion offers any longer.
Religion offers structured meaning for those who need it, yes, if that’s what you mean.
I don’t think the point of sitting is to become a better person. One sits because one has begun to realize that even becoming a better person won’t change anything. Dukkha will still be dukkha. A better kind of dissatisfaction is not anything worth pursuing. So it’s a sign of failure, of brokenness, of hopelessness, to just sit. It doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s what you do when you don’t want to go anywhere anymore. You sit.
Kodo Sawaki:
“Everybody talks about marrying for love, but isn’t it really just marrying for sex? In the end isn’t it really only about a penis and a vagina? Why doesn’t anybody simply say that he’s fallen in love with a vagina?
Take a look sometime at the face of a dog who’s just had sex. He just stares into space with strangely empty eyes. It’s exactly the same with people — in the beginning they work themselves up into a frenzy, and in the end there’s nothing at all.”
OMG Dad! Leave Joshu alone!!!
I personally believe Sawaki to be wrong about ” in the beginning they work themselves up into a frenzy, and in the end there’s nothing at all”, at least as far as “in the end, there’s nothing at all”.
Anonymous, my strategy is to focus on the friendship, and for the rest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlaoR5m4L80
As well as being a momentarily manifesting no-thing in an empty universe, I am a real person living in a real world. I haven’t got a problem calling the contentment and ease gained through the psycho-physical practice of zazen/meditation – along with any insight gained from understanding the philosophy – ‘better’ than living a life full of of stress and confusion.
I remember that shortly after I started meditating, I had this realization in meditation, that things could be good if I let them be good.
In many ways, I’ve accomplished that through mediation. I still definitely have my faults and baggage that I am dragging through life. And I am far from mr. perfect.
Recently I had this thought. I thought, “If I was on my death bed, what is that I would have wanted to have done in my life.”
ahhh….life is short, and i am wasting it….OIAHDEOUHBOUHFD*(*)(&*(&*(&*&*#!#!#!!!!
I am like a stupid cow that is in the Way.
Anon 108: I started Zen in a most strange fashion. I read and read (starting with Watts and Pirsig) about Zen, about Buddhism, over thirty years, without ever going any further.
From what I read in Watts, I thought that Zen would be some kind of magic cure that would transform the boring geek I was into someone fascinating and attractive to others. Of course, I had no interest into applying any of what I perceived were the necessities of Buddhism, that is celibacy, vegetarianism and so on.
It’s only after a last reading, a manga about the romanced life of Ikkyu, that the obvious presented itself to my eyes: to sit. And so I started sitting, without any other goal than that: fulfilling the obviousness that sitting had become to me.
Thanks for the reply, Michel.
I like this–enjoyed reading it. It made me think. For me, meditation is always about developing awareness, which I kind of stumbled upon before I knew the word. And then of course mindfulness and all that.
My goal has always been about reducing suffering because I’ve been unhappy about a lot of stuff in my life–all my life. I’ve had some hard shit to deal with. So the way it’s worked out for me is to see what’s going on more clearly. And it helps me to come back to compassion, both for others and for myself.
As an example, where I live there’s a dog park, where I like to take my dog. A couple of women with dogs go there, and I’ve enjoyed chatting with them while our dogs play. I don’t have much in common with them, but they’re nice (one is much younger, a student, and the other closer in age but still much younger than me). Anyway, once I got to know them, a lot of negativity and snarkiness started coming up. Uncomfortable for me. Then it got annoying. Then it turns out one is a real know-it-all with, apparently with a lot of anger–I don’t know. Just misery and negativity and constantly correcting anything anyone says (not just me). The other is just wrapped up in her own shit, whatever, and not so nice either, as it turns out. Maybe I’m doing osmehting that gets on their nerves, who knows, though I know one is annoying to others as well, from what I hear.
But my immediate reaction is anger and ego preservation–hey, it must be them, not me. I don’t know who it is but it doesn’t matter. But by sitting with it for awhile (ok a bunch of whiles; I was pretty annoyed), compassion finally came up and I didn’t care any more about the situation but felt more kindly toward them. I realized I was angry at them for not being the kind of people I wanted them to be, so they could be nice companions for me at the park (ego shit). They are who they are and I’m me. So either I need to be more tolerant and compassionate while preserving my boundaries or, if I can’t be that, then I might as well avoid them or just limit interaction (my dog really likes to go to the park and I hate to deprive him)..
Does this make me a better person? Maybe, sure. I’ve only barely let on that I’m annoyed with one though not the other. So it will help me not be annoyed with her (which reduces her suffering at my hand though she probably doesn’t think of it like that). But I see it more as reducing my own suffering because shit like this makes me really anxious or stressed (and potentially impatient and stressed with others). Not huge, but enough that it creates tension and stuff on my mind.
Is this Zen? I don’t know. I haven’t studied anything else and, as some here have read before, I’m no Zen scholar either 🙂 But this is the sort of thing mediation helps me with.
PS I know a “goal” isn’t the thing with Zen meditation. I could also say a “result” of meditation or benefit. Or I could say sitting helps me with a lot of things without really thinking “OK I’m going to do this or that.” It just sort of happens when I have something on my mind when I sit. It helps me get in touch with my more compassionate nature.
Someone’s got to do it –
“Question 30: In your life, how have you noticed that Zazen is actually practically working?
Answer: I have become a little better than before.”
http://hardcorezen.blogspot.co.uk/2006/04/gudos-answers.html
To be fair, there are other Q andAs on the subject of zazen in that interview, and a couple of other answers that I like a lot. Also, I don’t like that I bolded, so –
6. What is our true original nature?
Generally speaking, it is usually impossible for us to know our true original nature, because it is just a simple fact at the present moment, and so it is usually impossible for us to grasp it at the present moment.
9. What is life and death?
When our heart has stopped, and if it doesn’t move again, the state is called death, and when our heart is moving still without stopping is called life.
11. What is better Zazen and worse Zazen?
There is no better Zazen, or worse Zazen. What is different from Zazen is wrong, and what is just Zazen is Zazen.
17. How can we understand ourselves?
I think that it is impossible for us to understand ourselves.
18. What can we understand with words, and what can we not understand with
words?
We can understand everything, but at the same time, our understandings can never touch Reality.
20. Does Zazen have a goal?
Zazen has a goal. The goal of Zazen is to practice Zazen itself.
25. How can Zazen help us be happy?
It is just the happiest condition to practice Zazen itself.
26. How can we practice Zazen in our daily chores?
After moving to my new residence, where I am living now, I have begun cooking by myself, and so I have found the fact clearly that even my cooking in my daily life has also characteristics of acts, therefore it can be also a kind of Buddhist efforts, of course, even though I am practicing Zazen two times a day everyday.
27. What is truth?
Reality is the Truth. Therefore the Universe is also the Truth.
30. In your life, how have you noticed that Zazen is actually practically
working?
I have become a little better than before.
http://hardcorezen.blogspot.co.uk/2006/04/gudos-answers.html
Sound article, Brad. Cheers.
“I crave bad science fiction movies and have a compulsion for watching them.” I recommend the ’80 TV show Sapphire and Steel, if you haven’t already had a peek. A slowly cooked, cheesy, daft, atmospheric, spooky, dodgy, hammed-up brilliance of a show. The complete series really benefits, in my view, from the coarse SD video that the relatively small torrent offers.
@anon 108
I really appreciate your posts above. They read to me at least as gently grounding, pragmatic counterweights to the potential fetishisation of such worthwhile notions as the “momentarily manifesting no-thing in an empty universe,” that you succinctly expressed.
Cunt hex is heavysting, of cuss, said the Jobberwacky to Aliceter.
My attitude to the ‘becoming a better person’ bubble, is – perhaps – similarly aligned.
As I see it, a sense of – which includes notional reminders of – my impermanent, flickery, illusory self, is what helps me identify with my projected story, past and future, with some trust. Ahem. Yes – THEN… Because it allows that trust to be one marked by a provisional, open-hearted commitment to do a little better next time – for that poor inheritant and his cod-dependent-arising chips. (Pass the vinegar, Mark.)
‘Better’ in a next time I’m cut off from and ‘stupid’ in a past that undoes me, I’ve found, finds an attitude of trust to project into certain processes – provisional, inconsistent, and much more ugh, ugh, ugh with the occasional ah, in its daily unfolding (found I finds) than can be scrubbed and suited up in these words.
Processes deflated and bouyed by disciplines, moments, of faith, or the various forms of allowing [ RIP Live Long And Prosper] to practice me. Stupid, meaningless, pointless zazen being one such example (the curtain twitches).
From the point of view of Narcissus, why not be double-bound?
Oh, I almost forgetted: This article by James Ford seems an excellent companion piece to Brad’s:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2015/03/guifengs-five-styles-of-zen-and-mine.html
Andy,
Thanks for the link. It is a good article. I like it because I can understand some of what he is talking about but not all.
Which means I could possibly learn something.
Cheers.
Thanks, Andy.
To the extent that it can be got, I get the “no becoming; no better/worse; no I” perspective. But I think it’s just another way of looking at things. It’s not ‘The Truth’. So yes, I’m just trying to do a bit of counterweighting.
Truth is just a word. The one doing the looking at satori is ” not me, the
person I know ” to paraphrase Brad.
Fred quoted Sawaki on sex: ” in the beginning they work themselves up into a frenzy, and in the end there’s nothing at all.”
Do you know if Sawaki had a lot of sex, Fred? Isn’t he pictured as a sex-less man? So how would he know? Strangely enough, he misses the point, which is neither the beginning nor the end – but the in-between. It’s called orgasm. And a zen master who knows how to simply stay in the present moment could very well acknowledge the beginning as the beginning, the orgasm as the orgasm, the end as the end. Everything has its own state. Didn’t even Dogen say that? Why not apply it to sex?
But maybe you must misunderstand Kodo. He just asked for honesty. Marriage is the easier way to get sex with the disadvantage of the same partner over and over again. But maybe there is an economic advantage.
On the other hand, did Kodo really never experience love to another woman? I personally guess he loved the nun whom he acknowledged although she refused to do zazen and only practised kesa knitting.
All I did was quote him, but you and the other trolls will turn it into your own personal strawman exercise.
Thanks Brad for the nutritious portion of Chicken Soup for Anatman. And thanks all commenters thus far: I’ve enjoyed reading everything that’s been said.
Thinking about the James Ford essay that Andy linked, I suppose on a given day I can end up doing any one of Guifeng’s five styles of Zen, without even knowing it. Isn’t everyone who sits like that (except maybe the real old stalwarts like Kodo or Gudo)?
Sometimes I notice I’m anxious or angry or just got a head full of ideas that’s driving me crazy, so I think, “time for some zazen”. My body-mind has learned to associate sitting up straight with calmness it seems. Guifeng’s Bompu.
Despite long-time study of Buddhism, my unconscious/semi-conscious thinking seems often still to be patterned along the lines of my Christian upbringing. Sometimes I sit on the cushion, I guess with the pious, ritual-observing attitude of an altar boy. That would be Guifeng’s Gedo Zen.
Sometimes it’s ME: my ‘getting it’, my ‘having it’: Shojo. Sometimes there’s a real open striving, that’s less self-oriented, I suppose that’s more like Guifeng’s Godo Zen. Sometimes it seems that just-sitting is just sitting, which I’d equate with what he calls Saijojo Zen. Many times, zazen seems to cycle through all five styles over and over within a 40 minute sitting, along with periods of not-zennish thinking, from sexual fantasies to planning dinner, to resenting other sangha members.
I’m cool with any of those states when I notice (or imagine) them… sometimes. Other times, I judge and blame myself for not sitting right: maybe one day I’ll even sit at peace with my inner persecutor. If not, that’s cool too.
And to complete the trilogy, some tenderness and community:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2015/03/btw-we-have-to-remove-your-feet-being-mortal-waking-up-and-dying-together.html
James Ford:
“And, finally, there’s Saijojo Zen, where striving and realization itself are found to be one. This is the Zen of the Buddha, actually of all the buddhas of past, present and future. It is the Zen of “returning to the world with bliss bestowing hands,” where what we do and who we are becomes the simple manifestation of awakening. This is also the way of pure shikantaza. Its danger is the seduction of just sitting without awakening, where the actual experience of the leap beyond self and other remains an idea rather than one’s life.
Yasutani Roshi comments how these last two forms of Zen are complementary, and properly engaged show two avenues to the same place. Where the way of kensho and koan leads to the subtle wisdom of just sitting, and how just sitting becomes the koan “sit down and become Buddha” and can fully awaken the heart mind.”
This was addressed last week, ie, just sitting is not a koan.
And the leap beyond self and others occurs, it isn’t an idea. This was also addressed last week.
The empty hand grasping the hoe handle and all that stuff.
Fred says, “This was addressed last week, ie, just sitting is not a koan.”
Addressed, maybe. Resolved, hardly.
Just sitting is not a koan: but at the same time “just sitting” can be a koan, if you treat it like one. And no matter how resolutely Soto a student is, if the teacher’s instruction is just “just sit”, the first thing the student is going to do is run through all the possible ramifications and connotations of the words “just” and “sit”, until his brain pops, and he finally just sits. Which is pretty much what you do with a koan anyway.
That link was to Dosho Port’s latest. Not James Ford’s. Brad’s, Ports’ and James’ articles seemed like a good read together.
On the just sitting/ koan wonderments, Shinchan – that’s very much how I’ve framed things for further investigation.
One more thing… I don’t expect this is new information for anybody here, but it may be worth saying in this context anyway: for completeness, or something…
I kind of agree with Zafu (even though I’ve called her/him/it a troll and other nasty names in the past). Zafu says that meaning is the only essential thing in religion: that’s true, I’d concur, as far as it goes. Also, Carl Jung said a thing, that ‘the purpose of religion is to make spiritual experience impossible’ [can’t find the Jung quote online to link it, I read it in a book, remember those?].
What Zafu said, like what Jung said, surely applies to organised religion as practised by most religious people. It applies insofar as religions are belief systems and value systems and systems of ritualised social bonding: which is just about everything they are. Once you’re wedged into a religion’s stereotyped mould of believing and behaving, your chances of experiencing anything directly, or responding directly to any unexpected information, are slim. And most people, even those who hate religion, find some pacifying belief system to substitute for the nipple of faith.
However, there is something else. Something that religion might point at, but can never touch. Anything I might say about it will be accused of being just another attempt at meaning-making… precisely because it doesn’t fit into your system-of-meanings, or into mine. Some attempts to name it have been made: “the experience of pure meaninglessness”; “the ground of being”; “buddha-nature”; “God” … they all miss their mark, of course. You can’t meaning what can’t be meaninged. That’s the tacit shame of every single religion: and you don’t have to scratch the surface much to find it. What appealed to me about Zen, is that it just candidly admits the shame.
The Jews have got the Book of Job. Job gets totally shafted as part of a sick vivisection experiment, jointly funded by Yahweh and Satan. Job hangs onto a shred of dignity by refusing to curse Yahweh. Yahweh tells Job that Yahweh can do what Yahweh bloody well pleases, and Job better just suck it up. Job says, “I abhor my self, and repent in ashes”, then things go back to normal. What Job gets to see here, is the absolute total meaninglessness and pointlessness of human life: there’s not a single thread of security to be had anywhere. Nothing to hold together a sense of self or purpose. He learns to just sit with it.
The Jesus people have got Jesus. His meaning-system gets him nailed to a cross. He cries out “My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me?”, then he says, “It is accomplished”. What was accomplished? The bare-naked realization that to be fully human is to be fully fucked. Nailed through the wrists and ankles to the meaningless presence of every moment. Not a trace of God anywhere in the universe to slake your thirst for meaning. When you see that: you see god with the same eye that god sees you with. Suffering: you’ve just got to hang there with it.
And then there’s Islam: which means total submission to, and acceptance of, the arbitrary whims of the creator. And the Sun Dance, which is pretty much another crucifixion trip. And the Hindus have got loads of pointers to the shameful meaninglessness of it all. So it goes.
And everything I just wrote is a pointless failed attempt to point at pointlessness, and the necessity of failure. And I can’t say anything. And all that can be done is just to sit resolutely with whatever meaningless moment there might be: knowing that the only way out of suffering is straight through. And you will never be a better person, or a worse one: at all times, in every possible world, you’re absolutely worthless and fucked. Yet, somehow it helps to know that you’re fucked.
I like the warm clarity of your pointless prose, Shinchan, and the necessitous failure of that pointing bakes up nicely. So many last suppers.
“And the Sun Dance, which is pretty much another crucifixion trip. ”
Brutally uneducated statement.
how so?
Fred and Shinchan, regarding sitting and koan work, I do not know much about, nor do I have experience with koan work, but I was wondering about a common issue between sitting and what I imagine koan work to be actively engaged in, namely seeking meaning and going in circles.
I once found myself (and in every sitting) really driven round in circles of a tendency of wanting to know and not having any answers that satisfied this tendency. It rose to such a crisis point that it broke out into an emotional rupture with overwhelming feelings, and was followed by, over the course of some hours, by a stillness and a deep letting go (I could describe this but doesn’t seem necessary). Do you think this urge which seeks out mental conceptual control is one function of our mind, and this is an aspect of what both sitting and koans work upon releasing us from?
Maybe I shouldn’t have said sitting is actively engaged in seeking meaning, but that when I sit my mind’s tendency is to continue to actively engage in seeking meaning.
…and this tendency can be let go of, and other qualities experienced more so.
There is no “meaning” for “you” to find. It’s a crutch for the conditioning to continue running the show.
My mentor would call it pushing the ego to one side, and wearing down the ego like you would wear down the bottom of your shoes.
Brad quoting Kodo: “. Zazen isn’t about learning how to be a person. Zazen is to stop being a person”
Yes, that’s is why I noted the letting go of this tendency. I was just wondering if koan practice was intended to help along with this by using phrases which are not easily grasped logically.
Hi david s, I don’t have much personal experience of koan zen either (I did it just for a very short while), but I suspect that “… seeking meaning and going in circles” is not a description that many koan-zen proponents would agree with: particularly if “seeking meaning” implies a lot of philosophical pondering or daydreaming. My understanding is that one applies concentrated meditative attention to the key phrase or question of the koan, and at some point there can be a breakthrough. But somehow koan work is an activity of the whole being in meditation, not just an intense intellectual activity.
Some of the regulars here have done quite a bit of koan work. Maybe minkfoot can answer your question, for example?
National Teacher Brad, the founder of our feast, mentions in one of his books that he had some kind of breaking-through experience (not his actual words). His teacher said it was just “solving the philosophical problems”, rather than an enlightenment experience. This might be similar to what you describe as “wanting to know… emotional rupture… deep letting go…”
As for me, there’s been times when I’ve been doing an intensive Zen retreat, and although I’m trying to practice ‘just-sitting’ without any koans, all my doubts, discomfort and dissatisfaction coalesce around a particular question, for example: “Why the heck am I making myself sit here with aching knees and back, when I could just get up and walk out? Sure, life may be suffering, but what’s the point in trying to be a stupid heroic zen boy scout, or a stupid masochist?” Sometimes, whatever the question is, it just bursts somehow, and the physical pain disappears at the same time, and I feel completely confident in my sitting. I don’t know what that is, but I don’t think it’s deep realization. Maybe my system just gets flooded with endorphins to compensate for the preceding pain?
It helps to know that you’re fucked because being fucked is a conclusion, and every good story has an ending, happy or not. But it is just a story, a fiction.
Emptiness means that everything is, apparently, in flux. That’s it. Big fucking deal. But hey, people have made religions out of less.
Emptiness means you are everything. It’s fucking awesome.
Or. . . big fucking deal.
Your canvas man. 🙂
It means you’re everything. It means you’re nothing. It means everything is dependent and interconnected… It means whatever makes you feel good, or whatever you may find meaningful.
Your canvas indeed.
Big fucking deal
😉
For those too brainwashed by Zen doctrine to realize it, a better person is a less selfish person.
no zazen >> more cravings. from my experience…
I suppose to the extant that sitting is an abandonment of craving, one’s dukkha will also be lessened accordingly. You may or may not see that as an improvement, however. Lots of people really like dukkha. Dukkha is popular and with it. People compete with each other to produce the most dukkha. So it may lessen your social standing. You may even seem to drop out of society and be a loser in the race to dukkha. So it may not be the best thing for you if that’s what you care about.
Alas, a straw man is more alive than the parrot Fred!
This article is kind of old, but I really appreciate the message here. Especially that Sawaki quote. Thanks.