Church of the Churchless

Meditation is useless

I like it when a practitioner says, "There's no point to what I'm doing." Especially when he's talking about a supposedly spiritual practice.

For me, this is the dividing line between fake religiosity and genuine whatever. (I tried to think of a better word than whatever, but couldn't).

You just do it to do it. Meditation. Prayer. Worship. Study. Whatever.

Zen and Taoism appeal to me because they extol uselessness. In "The Tao of Paris Hilton" I said:

And let us also learn to appreciate Paris more by studying this passage from "The Book of Chuang Tzu," where a long-lived, greatly-venerated tree appears to Master Shih in a dream and explains why it has never been cut down like other trees:

Because they are useful, they suffer, and they are unable to live out the years Heaven has given them. They have only their usefulness to blame for this destruction wrought by the people. It is the same with all things. I have spent a long time studying to be useless, though on a couple of occasions I was nearly destroyed. However, now I have perfected the art of uselessness, and this is very useful, to me! If I had been of use, could I have grown so vast?

On the Zen front, Zoketsu Norman Fischer speaks about the uselessness of zazen (Zen meditation) in "A Coin Lost in the River is Found in the River."

Nice essay. This is the sort of non-religious religion the world needs more of.

Zazen is fundamentally a useless and pointless activity. A person is devoted to zazen not because it helps anything or is peaceful or interesting or because Buddha tells him to do it — though we may imagine that it helps or is peaceful or interesting — but simply because one is devoted to it. You can't argue for it or justify it or make it into something good. You just do it because you do it. It's not even a question of wanting to or not wanting to. Zazen for zazen's sake. Birds sing, fish swim, and people who are devoted to zazen do zazen with devotion all the time although there is no need for it.

I've meditated daily for almost forty years. I've read Zen literature for even longer. I've never actually practiced Zen. But maybe I have. Heck, I surely have.

We all have. We're alive. And once in a while, either by accident or on purpose, or with purposeless purpose, we see what life seemingly is all about. A glimpse at least.

It's cold here in Oregon right now. Freezing cold at night, which is fairly rare in the temperate Willamette Valley. This morning I got up and looked at our indoor thermometer, which also shows the outdoor temperature.

"27.2 degrees," I said to myself. At that moment I had a flash of it's so absolutely right. That was the temperature! Absolutely marvelous! In a little while it'd be different. And that too, absolutely right.

It might snow later in the week. Which could make it tough to drive around. Still, absolutely right. There's always only one thing going on: what's going on.

Any attempt to convince oneself of that – completely useless. Yet this is what religion is all about. As is Zen and Taoism.

The only difference, and it's a big one, is that religions take themselves seriously. Zen and Taoism don't. From what I've read, the ultimate Zen experience is throwing a pie in the face of your most revered Master.

Whereupon he laughs uproariously. So do you. What a joke!

In a dharma talk, "Three Ways to See Zazen," Fischer speaks more about how there's nothing to do. But that nothing needs to be done anyway. He says that zazen isn't like waiting for something that we expect is coming.

Zazen is certainly not waiting in this sense. It is waiting in the profound sense of waiting for nothing. Simply waiting. No expectations, nothing that is supposed to happen. No desired result. Just this moment of sheer presence.

Waiting – for what? If "nothing" seems too uninspiring and foreboding perhaps we can say we are waiting for God. This is the title of one of Simone Weil's books, Waiting for God.

That's how God appears- not by summoning God, or by performing sacrifice, prayer, or something like that, so as to manipulate God, causing God to appear on demand, like a vending machine- put in the quarters and you'll hear that satisfying clatter and bump.

No, God comes when we wait. Just sitting, just being present, with a powerful and alert anticipation, a pregnant, focused, poised-at-the-edge-of-the-abyss awakeness. Hoping for, waiting for- exactly nothing. Plunging into the moment of being alive. Just that, and nothing extra.

Wu.

From Sant Mat to Buddhism

I'm not a Buddhist. I don't know what I am, belief-wise. So I suppose that could make me a Buddhist. Buddhism isn't big on beliefs.

Hakuin, an 18^th century Zen master, extolled doubting in a fashion that is worlds apart from faith-based religions like Christianity.

If you keep on doubting continuously, with a bold spirit and a feeling of shame urging you on, your effort will naturally become unified and solid, turning into a single mass of doubt throughout heaven and earth. The spirit will feel suffocated, the mind distressed, like a bird in a cage, like a rat that has gone into a bamboo tube and cannot escape.

Granted, that isn't uplifting. But Buddhists are much more into being real. And reality, as we all know, is filled with suffering. Plus, doubt.

Hans, a long-time friend, and I had one of our never-ending Sunday coffee shop conversations today. We're always on the edge of figuring it all out.

Problem is, our figuring proceeds apace philosophically without knowing what "It" is. So that keeps us on this side of the edge. But we had a good latte-fueled time talking about the view from where we are.

For both of us, that's looking more Buddhist'ish, whether or not we use that term.

Hans still has a fondness for Sant Mat and the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, though he's never been initiated into the RSSB fold. And I was a true believer from 1970 until whenever my doubts started to bubble up out of the mud of blind faith that I'd plastered over them.

Today we talked about the importance of saying it like it is. Not the big capital "I" It. Everyday "it" – our relationships, thoughts, emotions, activities, hopes, fears. In short, life as each of us is living it now.

There may be a there and then after death. Hans and I don't know. Nobody on earth knows, since every person living is still alive.

Hakuin and other Buddhists aren't much concerned with there-and-then's. They're into what's going on here and now, coming to grips what who the heck is trying to figure it all out, which is a whole different thing from tying down "It."

In "Hakuin on Kensho" editor Albert Low comments on Hakuin's Zen teaching.

The boundless light is not a light that we can see, but the light by which we see. In the unawakened state we ignore this light…We overlook the fact that we know this world. We ignore the truth that the world is as it is because we know it to be so.

…Hakuin is saying that deep, deep questioning must pervade our lives. "What is it?" Everything must point to this question: "What is this?"

We use words and expressions such as knowing, intelligence, supreme wisdom, mirror wisdom, bodhisattvas, or Buddha-nature.

We wonder what the words mean and so use other words as definitions, and then wonder in turn what those words mean. What use are all the jangling words? And what is asking the question?

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Oregon (where I live) was part of the Canadian Radha Soami Satsang Beas organizational structure. I was the local RSSB organizer, the secretary. I reported to Jiti Khanna, the RSSB representative, who lived in Vancouver, Canada.

I liked Dr. Khanna a lot. He was wonderfully unassuming. Our Salem group (sangat) frequently would invite him down to give a talk (satsang).

One year I picked him up at the motel where he was staying with his family. I drove them over to the community hall that we'd rented for a Sunday satsang and potluck.

Quite a few people had come for this special occasion, a chance to hear the guru's representative talk about the RSSB teachings.

I went up to the podium and welcomed everybody. Then I introduced Dr. Khanna, who was sitting in the front row, and sat next to him.

After a few seconds I saw that Dr. Khanna was still in his chair. He was calmly looking at the podium. I waited a bit longer. Then I understood what was going on.

Dr. Khanna didn't expect that he was the star attraction. He apparently was totally comfortable with driving all the way from Vancouver, spending the night in a motel, and then being just another attendee at our Salem RSSB get-together.

I thought I'd made it clear that we wanted him to speak, but he was in the moment. Sitting still. Watching the podium. Waiting for the talk to begin.

I nudged him. "Dr. Khanna," I said. "You're the speaker."

He turned to me. "Oh, very good." He stood up and proceeded to give a wonderful extemporaneous satsang for 45 minutes or so. Warm, humble, inspiring.

I can't remember anything about what Dr. Khanna said. Just how he said it.

It didn't surprise me when, in the early 1990s, we heard that he'd resigned as RSSB representative and taken up Buddhist practice.

Since, I haven't heard much about Jiti Khanna. There have been some posts about him on a Radha Soami discussion site, including this mention of a TIME magazine letter mentioning Sant Mat that apparently was written by him.

I hope Dr. Khanna is doing well. I'd like to know how his spiritual trajectory from Sant Mat to Buddhism to whatever has proceeded.

Most likely: quite nicely.

Finding my original face in packing for a weekend trip

My mystical-spiritual aspirations used to be really grandiose.

I was going to grasp the secrets of the universe; soar through higher metaphysical regions of reality; get drenched in divine light and sound; merge with the Ultimate until there was nothing of me left but One.

Yesterday I managed to pack for a weekend trip and keep my calm. That's what counts as spiritual progress for me now. Call it what you will, it's undeniably real. I could feel the difference between the usual flappable-while-packing Brian and who I was twenty-fours ago.

Thank you, Kosho Uchiyama. I've been trying to absorb your message in "Opening the Hand of Thought," the subject of my last post. Today I read:

There is a koan that asks, "What is your original face before your parents were born?" One might naturally assume that there is some special thing called "original face," but that is not the right approach. When we open the hand of thought, letting go, the original self is already there.

It's not some special mystical state. Don't seek it somewhere else. When we open the hand of thought, what is there, in that moment, is our original face.

When we refrain from grasping our thoughts, we realize that the force that animates our lives and the force that moves the wind are the very same force. Our lives and the force that moves the wind are the same. Our breath and the wind blowing are one.

When my wife and I (plus the family dog) go to our cabin on the Metolius River in central Oregon, we pack heavy for what is usually just an extended weekend trip. We've got the routine down, but it's still a mini-ordeal.

Bike rack. Bikes. Food boxes (health-minded vegetarians that we are, we can't survive by foraging on local fare). Dog supplies. Heaps of unread magazines. Clothes for cool, warm, sunny, and wet weather (Oregon is changeable in the spring).

We usually try to leave by late afternoon. Yesterday, our schedule was side-tracked by a hectic day. No opportunity to pack until I rushed home about 6 pm, figuring that since I'd been gone most of the afternoon and Laurel hadn't, she'd have made a good start on the packing.

But all I saw was that two empty food containers had been taken from the garage and put by the front door. "I'm just beginning to pack," Laurel said as I walked in, frazzled and tired.

Usually I'd feel This isn't right. Yesterday I caught myself before that thought had a chance to get rolling down Mount Irritation. "Okay," I told her. "I'll put the bikes on the car. We'll leave whenever we can."

I'm no Kosho Uchiyama. But maybe I am, just a little bit. He says:

The important point here in terms of the truth of universal self is not to run away from the worse way (hell, unhappiness, or bad circumstances) and turn toward some better way (heaven, happiness, or good circumstances) by discriminating between better and worse using our heads.

Rather, what is crucial is magnanimous mind, with which we take the attitude of living straight through whatever reality of life we are presently faced with. In other words, if I fall into hell, then hell itself is my life at that time, so I have to live right through it, and if I find myself in heaven, then heaven is my life and I have to live right through that.

We pulled out of the driveway about 8:00 pm. Laurel got ready to go as quickly as possible. Me too. It was just the right time. Every time is, really.

We had a late take-out Thai food dinner at the cabin. We were hungry by 10:30. Dog was too. It was just the right time. Every time is, really.

Per usual, we stopped about halfway at Detroit Lake for coffee, a bathroom break, and snacks. Most everything but the little market closes down in Detroit after 9:00 pm. The woman ahead of us in the checkout line asked if any gas stations were open.

"No," she was told. "Oh, no," she said. "We're on empty and we've got to get to Bend."

A local guy heard her. "I know the people who own the gas station," he said. "I'll give them a call. I bet they'll be willing to come out and open it up for you."

Small town friendliness. And an advantageous meet-up at the cash register for the woman who was just about out of gas. It was just the right time. Every time is, really.

Religion is part of life for many people. But for all of us, atheist, agnostic, or true believer, it should be recognized for what it is: just a part, not life itself. Uchiyama:

Instead of looking at the fresh and vivid reality of life with their own eyes, people end up stifling that reality in the name of justice, or peace, or some fixed dogma.

All these memories and myths are produced by human life, so we cannot say they are meaningless. However, all these ideas and beliefs have only a conceptual existence that is fixed within our thoughts, they are not raw life-experience that is alive right now.

We tend to plunge our heads too far into memories and fantasies, into religious dogma and rigid doctrines. When we admire them and believe in them blindly, becoming frenzied and fanatical, we become imprisoned by this fixed and conceptual existence.

We would be much better off if our past experience and wisdom were made to live within the raw life-experience of the self here and now.

…The only true enlightenment is awareness of the vivid reality of life, moment by moment. So we practice enlightenment right now, right here, in every moment.

Rocks in the thought-stream are natural too

As so how often happens on this here Church of the Churchless blog, a comment to one of my posts diverts my stream of consciousness in a fresh direction. In this case, one that I'd already been meandering toward.

Edward's response to my "Flowing with waves while sitting on the beach" made me think Oh, yeah, so true. His comment had a delightful Edwardian neo-Zen flavor to it that led me sit up even while I was lying down (on the sand).

Lately, I have been having difficulty seeing some thoughts as unworthy, ("get out of my way,") and others as worthy. I read a NYT interview with Russell Simmons, and he said something to the effect that living in permanent satori was the ideal. Dismissing parts of my internal life is somewhat akin to growing a beard and declaring that my chin has been subdued by spiritual discipline.

Which is a wave and which a rock? I don't want to push the metaphor too far, (water feeling like concrete, etc.); I don't think that there is an imperative to have an opinion on each interior stimulus.

The feelings come unbidden, thoughtlessly, and the thoughts come numbly. I perceive some connections, but they are like the coincidences that happen in a dream.

I have the experiences, and just as importantly, the immediate creation of now wants me to have experiences. The five colors, the five tones, the five tastes can all be taken in. The stomach is not separate from the eye. "Therefore the sage discards this for that," is an expression of arrogance, a Laoism that is part of a dualist canon.

Can you discard the parts that are not your original face? Say it now!!

Yes, which is a wave and which a rock? Which is a worthy thought and which an unworthy thought? What should be discarded from the thought-stream and what embraced?

This morning I was in my usual shade-spot under a palm tree on Napili Beach, trying not to try to want larger waves to enter the bay, frustrated that I was feeling frustrated that my boogie board had been gathering dust sand the past few days.

Two couples walked by. I heard a loud "Shit!" It had come from an overweight man wearing tennis shoes with socks. He'd been trudging along the waterline and was shocked, absolutely shocked, that a wave rolled over his feet.

"Duh," I thought, "what do you expect when you walk on the beach? Dry pavement?"

Apparently, because his New Jersey accent (which sounded remarkably like what I hear on "The Sopranos"—plus the guy looked a lot like Mafia, which is why I was careful to just think what I thought rather than blurt it out aloud) continued to echo over the beach.

"I've got mud in my shoes. I'll meet you at the caaar!" he boomed in a pissed-off voice to his companions, who had left him behind. "Come on, get over it" they yelled back. I had the feeling that they were used to putting up with his nonsense.

So what was I supposed to do? Not be affected by this astounding display of beachy ignorance? When someone wearing socks and tennis shoes is offended by the ocean doing what it does naturally, make waves, "Duh, what do you expect?" is a fitting response.

But a momentary one. For this was just a moment among many moments on the beach today. To linger on it after the moment had passed would have distracted me from what came next. And after that. With more to come.

From Thomas Cleary's Soul of the Samurai.

The basic mind is the mind that does not stay in a particular place but pervades the whole body and whole being. The errant mind is the mind that congeals in one place brooding about something; so when the basic mind congeals, focused on one point, it becomes the so-called errant mind.

…To make an analogy, the basic mind is like water that does not stagnate anywhere, while the errant mind is like ice that cannot be used for washing your hands or your head. When you melt ice into water so that it flows freely, then you can use it to wash your hands or feet or anything else.

…The idea of getting rid of whatever is on your mind also becomes something on your mind. If you don't think about it, it disappears of itself, and you naturally become unminding.

I'm bringing home a print of this marvelous "Wave Sculptures" photograph by Victoria McCormick. It's amazing. And not retouched. It's what a North Shore wave actually looks like, if we could see with the eye of McCormick's camera.

Complex. Edgy. With many surfaces. Not only smooth and flowing. Also sharp.

Rocks and waves do blend.

Dalai Lama is on Maui too. Is compassion contagious?

At the moment the Dalai Lama and I are on opposite sides of Maui. He's on a two day speaking tour in Paia and Wailuku, and we're condo'ing it on Napili Bay.

We're opposites in more ways than that, obviously. Yesterday the Dalai Lama spoke about compassion, saying "Compassion is the universal message of all traditions."

I often come up short in the compassion department. Tuesday morning, a few hours before the Dalai Lama's free talk at Maui's War Memorial Stadium, my wife took me to task for being self-centered and (one of her favorite ex-psychotherapist terms) "having a sense of entitlement."

Which most men are over-stocked with, in Laurel's entirely accurate opinion.

The Napili Kai Beach Club walkway to the beach is a narrow rocky path. There's room for two people to walk abreast, but just barely. Carrying my boogie board in one hand and a beach mat in the other, I saw some people coming the other way.

I moved over to the right against the railing as far as I could go. It was obvious to me that there was room for the other group to pass. And there was.

But I was criticized as soon as they were out of earshot. "You should have gotten completely off the path when you saw them coming. That's what I did. You need to be more considerate."

The last statement of Laurel's was indisputable, in general. However, I defended myself in this particular instance. "They got by just fine. I knew that they could. There wasn't any reason for me to do anything more."

I was right. Yet also wrong. For I readily admit that my viewpoint of the situation was almost entirely from my own perspective.

It was our first full day on Maui. I was eager to get to the beach. I didn't want to delay my arrival by even a few seconds. I calculated that I could keep on walking, with a rightward sidestep, and not interfere with the other people.

Me, me, me. A Honolulu resident, Caroline Odo, came over to Maui to hear the Dalai Lama. She's quoted in the Maui News.

I have my own faith, and he's still affirming the things that I believe in. It's all about having respect for one another and showing love to one another—you don't have to bring religion into it.

Indeed, the newspaper story says:

He told his listeners not to consider negative emotions to be a natural "part of our mind," but to embrace emotions "that are good for (your) mental health." "These are not religious examples, but scientific explanations," he said.

One of the reasons I like Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop" so much, the subject of my two previous posts, is that Hofstadter likewise considers the human condition from a scientific/philosophic rather than spiritual/religious perspective.

Like the Dalai Lama, he challenges the notion that each of us is an isolated "I," separate and distinct from everyone and everything else. Hofstadter's conception of soul is markedly different from most religio-mystical teachings (though not so much from Buddhism).

To him, souls aren't encapsulated in a single body—the "caged bird" metaphor. Each of us is the result of innumerable influences acquired over a lifetime of interactions with countless animate and inanimate entities.

Our "I" is shape-shifting continuously; there's no firm boundary between either us and other people, or between the person we are right now and the "I" we have been in the past and will be in the next moment. Hofstadter says:

What makes all of this so counterintuitive — verging on the incomprehensible, at times — is that your brain (like mine, like everyone's) had told itself a million times a self-reinforcing story whose central player is called "I", and one of the most crucial aspects of this "I", an aspect that is truly a sine qua non for "I"-ness, is that it fluently flits into other brains, at least partially.

Out of intimacy, out of empathy, out of friendship, and out of relatedness (as well as for other reasons), your brain's "I" continually makes darting little forays into other brains, seeing things to some extent from their point of view, and thus convincing itself that it could easily be housed in them…[Indeed] your "I" isn't housed anywhere.

Today, leaving the beach after an enjoyable couple of hours boogie-boarding (me), snorkeling (Laurel), and people-watching (both of us), we decided to exchange our wet and sandy towels.

The towel hut wasn't far away on the Napili Kai grounds. But it took us quite a while to get there. We found ourselves behind an older couple, he getting along with a cane, she arm in arm with him—not looking so spry herself.

The wide curving sidewalk allowed plenty of room to pass. We could also have stepped onto the lawn and moved around them easily. Today, though, I didn't feel any inclination to do anything but stay well behind them.

I paused to read signboards. I stopped to look out to sea. I did my best to not let the couple know that some speedier people were behind them.

I put myself in their place: enjoying their vacation, knowing that there won't be many more times they'll be able to visit Maui, happy that they can still hold onto each other and move, albeit slowly, along a walkway beside beautiful Napili Bay. They didn't need a "young" 58 year old breezing past them, a reminder of healthier years gone by that won't come again.

A small – very small – act of compassion. Maybe a tiny bit of the Dalai Lama had entered my soul, from what I'd read in the Maui News this morning and perhaps even vibes that had soared over the West Maui mountains and landed on Napili Bay.

Regardless, I felt better than I had the day before, when I'd kept on walking rather than stepping aside.

After exchanging our towels, Laurel and I found ourselves behind another slow-moving bunch on the oceanside path. Different people, same reaction. I was happy to stroll at their pace, bringing up the rear, hungry for lunch though I was.

When they turned off toward their building, Laurel said, "Wow. You were so patient. I'm impressed." "Actually," I told her, "this time you were the one guilty of tail-gating—or rather, butt-gating. I think you should have stayed further behind them so they didn't feel pressured."

Now, saying those words really felt good. Hah, beat you this time at the compassion game, lovely wife of mine. Which indicates that I've got a ways to go before egolessness is complete.

But, hey, I'm a man. Give me some slack. Like most of my gender, I've got more of an ego to lose.

Humility is being in touch with reality

I don’t trust displays of humility. This folding of the hands with a bowed head, this uttering of “God (or guru) is everything; I am nothing,” this confession of sins, failings, and weaknesses—it’s all too contrived, too artificial, too calculated.

This morning I re-read the chapter “On Humility” in Hubert Benoit’s The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought As noted in my “The Supreme Doctrine, thirty-six years overdue” post, this is the only library book that I’ve kept permanently. When I first read it back in college, I couldn’t bear to let it out of my hands.

Where it still often is found. Benoit is a marvelously astute observer of the human condition. As noted on a Supreme Doctrine-centered web site, Benoit was severely wounded during World War II and spent years in a hospital bed. Then he went into psychiatry.

So when Benoit talks about reality being the best teacher of humility, he has the credentials to make that statement. He ends his chapter with:

Let us recall that the ‘nature of things’ is for us the best, the most affectionate, and the most humiliating of masters; it surrounds us with its vigilant assistance. The only task incumbent upon us is to understand reality and to let ourselves be transformed by it.

Benoit says that our efforts to rise up spiritually are doomed to failure. As are our efforts to sink down. Any effort at all is counter-productive, though we have no choice but to attempt such futility until the light of satori dawns.

What we should seek is equality, not higher or lower. But that’s too damn scary for an ego that depends upon separateness in order to keep feeling that “I” am something distinct. “I am humble; I am nothing” and “I am proud; I am everything” are both preferable to the equitable obliteration of “I am, along with everything else.”

I believe that I am separated from my own ‘being’ and I am looking for it in order to reunite myself with it. Only knowing myself as a distinct individual, I seek for the Absolute in an individual manner, I wish to affirm myself absolutely as a distinct being. This effort creates and maintains in me my divine fiction, my fundamental pretension that I am all-powerful as an individual, on the plane of phenomena.

…I train myself never to recognise the equality between the outside world and myself; I affirm myself to be different from the outside world, on a different level, above whenever I can, below when I cannot….I see myself as conditioning the outer world, or I see myself as not succeeding in conditioning it, but never can I recognise myself as conditioned by it on a footing of equality.

We’ve got a small pond with a pump that gets clogged with debris from time to time. The pump sits in a plastic enclosure with a gate that lets the pond water flow in when it’s open. To clean the pump, I shut the gate and let the pump run until the enclosure is almost empty of water and I hear the pump sucking air.

That’s the enclosure’s state of humility. I reach down and scoop out the remaining water, making it even humbler. Then I sponge up snail shells, pine needles, and other debris before cleaning the pump itself.

Throughout this process a trickle of water is flowing into the enclosure. The gate, though shut, isn’t completely water tight. Emptiness, like enforced humility, is difficult to maintain.

No matter. When both the pump and enclosure are free of debris, it’s time to open the gate and let the pond water flow back in. I do this gingerly. If the water rushes in too fast it brings with it more pond crud—like the algae that grows despite our best efforts to keep it under control.

Whoosh! The water flows into the enclosure, that plastic representation of our separate egos. Higher and higher rises the water until—I always get a little thrill when this happens—the level inside the enclosure equals the level in the pond.

I’ve been holding onto the gate to keep the water from gurgling in too strongly. Then, the gate relaxes against my hand. Inner and outer are equalized, at peace, on the same level. Nothing needs to be done now. There’s no pressure for the lower to be filled by the higher, nor for the lower to empty itself.

Similarly, Hubert Benoit speaks of what brings about genuine humility:

In our desire to escape from distress at last, we search for doctrines of salvation, we search for ‘gurus.’ But the true guru is not far away, he is before our eyes and unceasingly offers us his teaching; he is reality as it is, he is our daily life.

The evidence of salvation is beneath our eyes, evidence of our non-omnipotence, that our pretension is radically absurd, impossible, and so illusory, inexistent; evidence that there is nothing to fear for hopes that have no reality; that I am and always have been on the ground, so that no kind of fall is possible, so that no vertigo has any reason to exist.

…I feel myself nearer to the ground, to the ‘beneath,’ to real humility (humility which is not acceptance of inferiority, but abandonment of the vertical conception in which I saw myself always above or below).

…From the moment I succeed in no longer moving in my humiliated state, I discover with surprise that there is the ‘asylum of rest,’ the unique harbor of safety, the only place in the world in which I can find perfect security.

Reality. As it is. Not as religions would have us imagine it to be.

Pumps get clogged. So do arteries. And kitchen drains. Minds too. That’s real.

To pretend that something is what it is not—crazy. To see ourselves as higher or lower—unwarranted.

Where is the benchmark against which our humility is considered to rise or fall? How do I gauge the progress of my spiritual ascent or descent when the mountain I’m supposedly climbing isn’t apparent?

Benoit should have the last word. Not because I’m humble; he’s just got better words.

The impossibility in which I find myself today of being in possession of my own nature, of my Buddha-nature, as universal man and not as distinct individual, obliges me unceasingly to invent a representation of my situation in the Universe that is radically untrue.

Instead of seeing myself as equal with the outside world, I see myself either as above it or below, either on high, or beneath. In this perspective, in which the ‘on high’ is Being and the ‘beneath’ is Nullity, I am obliged to urge myself always towards Being. All my efforts necessarily tend, in a direct or a roundabout manner, to raise me up, whether materially, subtly, or, as one says, ‘spiritually.’

…To cure distress is to be freed from all possibility of humiliation. Whence comes my humiliation? From seeing myself powerless. No, that it is not enough. It comes from the fact that I try in vain not to see my real powerlessness.

It is not powerlessness itself that causes humiliation, but the shock experienced by my pretension to omnipotence when it comes up against the reality of things.

…The veritable cause of my distress is never in the outside world, it is only in the claim that I throw out and which is broken against the wall of reality. I deceive myself when I claim that the wall has hurled itself against me and has wounded me; it is I that have injured myself against it, my own action which has caused my suffering.

When I no longer pretend, nothing will injure me ever again.

Open presence meditation

The story in “On Buddhist meditation practice” about meditators not being startled by a tree trunk crashing or heavy hail falling reminded me of a chapter in Matthieu Ricard’s “Happiness.”

Ricard is a long-time Buddhist. He’s participated in scientific studies concerning the neurological correlates of meditation. I suspect that the subject he’s talking about is himself.

He says that the startle response is one of the body’s most primitive reflexes. It responds to activity in the brain stem and is usually not subject to voluntary control. “The stronger a person’s flinch, the more he is inclined to experience negative emotions.”

The researchers hooked up the Buddhist meditator to equipment that would measure his reactions. Ricard says, “The experimenters opted for the maximal threshold of human tolerance—a very powerful detonation, equivalent to a gunshot going off beside the ear.”

The subject was told that within five minutes he’d hear a loud explosion. He was asked to try to neutralize it. Hundreds of other people had taken this test. Nobody had ever been able to stop the startle response. Not even police sharpshooters.

But the meditator could. He’d been practicing two types of meditation: single-pointed concentration and open presence. The best effect, he found, came with open presence meditation. He said:

In that state I was not actively trying to control the startle, but the detonation seemed weaker, as if I were hearing it at a distance. In the distracted state, the explosion suddenly brings you back to the present moment and causes you to jump out of surprise. But while in open presence you are resting in the present moment and the bang simply occurs and causes only a little disturbance, like a bird crossing the sky.

It seems, Ricard concludes, that the meditator’s body registered all the effects of the detonation, but it had no emotional impact on his mind.

The meditator’s performance suggests remarkable emotional equanimity—precisely the same kind of equanimity that the ancient texts describe as one of the fruits of meditative practice.

Well, this is my mind of spirituality. Measurable. Discernable. Practical. Instead of pie-in-the-sky you’ll-be-rewarded-when-you-die religiosity, the best forms of meditative practice deliver results here and now.

Which is where and when, the concluding page of my well-thumbed “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones” tells me, we should be looking for whatever the hell it is we’re all searching for.

What is Zen? Try if you wish. But Zen comes of itself. True Zen shows in everyday living, consciousness in action. More than any limited awareness, it opens every inner door to our infinite nature.

Instantly mind frees. How it frees! False Zen wracks brains as a fiction concocted by priests and salesmen to peddle their own wares.

Look at it this way, inside out and outside in: consciousness everywhere, inclusive, through you. Then you can’t help living humbly, in wonder.

“What is Zen?”

One answer: Inayat Khan tells a Hindu story of a fish who went to a queen fish and asked, “I have always heard about the sea, but what is this sea? Where is it?”

The queen fish explained: “You live, move, and have your being in the sea. The sea is within you and without you, and you are made of sea, and you will end in sea. The sea surrounds you as your own being.”

Another answer:

Suppose I should leave the empty space as that. Or, rather, as That. But there’s always another answer, after another answer.

Today I came across a “Lost” poem by a fellow Salem, Oregon blogger. Burton says that he’s a cynical, sarcastic Presbyterian. Also, a non-traditional know-it-all who questions authority.

I’d say he has some Zen in him too. Nice poem, Burton.

For those who want to diminish the startle in their lives, here’s Ricard’s description of open presence meditation.

Open presence is a clear, open, vast, and alert state of mind, free from mental constructs. It is not actively focused on anything, yet it is not distracted. The mind simply remains at ease, perfectly present in a state of pure awareness. When thoughts intrude, the meditator does not attempt to interfere with them, but allows the thoughts to vanish naturally.

On Buddhist meditation practice

Today I got another email from my “Balancing Sant Mat faith and doubt” correspondent. I enjoyed learning more about how Buddhist meditation practice looks upon supposedly mystical phenomena like inner light and sound. This person’s description of how a group of Buddhist meditators reacted to dramatic outer sound also is interesting.

Read on…

Taoism's Secret of the Golden Flower

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if what we were looking for in life is what we are? After we strip away what we are not, that is. This is the central message of “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” a delightfully simple book that could take a lifetime to grasp.

Thomas Cleary translated this classic Taoist guide to meditation. In his introduction he says:

The golden flower symbolizes the quintessence of the paths of Buddhism and Taoism. Gold stands for light, the light of the mind itself; the flower represents the blossoming, or opening up, of the light of the mind.

…This manual contains a number of helpful meditation techniques, but its central method is deeper than a form of meditation. Using neither idea nor image, it is a process of getting right to the root source of awareness itself. The aim of this exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by habitual fixation on its own contents.

…The essential practice of the golden flower requires no apparatus, no philosophical or religious dogma, no special paraphernalia or ritual. It is practiced in the course of daily life. It is near at hand, being in the mind itself, yet it involves no imagery or thought. It is remote only in the sense that it is a use of attention generally unfamiliar to the mind habituated by imagination and thinking.

Every religion is based on conjectures about the nature of God, soul, morality, salvation, heaven, and such. Yet the nature of the mind that is conjecturing about all this stuff rarely is given much thought.

Not that it is possible to understand that nature by thinking about thoughts. But at least this leads to the humble realization that we don’t really know where the contents of the mind come from, nor how much faith should be placed in them—especially when it comes to abstractions that have no evident connection to material reality.

The Secret of the Golden Flower suggests that before we start making bold pronouncements about God, we should give some attention to the mind that is prone to making bold pronouncements about things it doesn’t have a clue about.

Here are some passages from the book:

Naturalness is called the Way. The Way has no name or form; it is just the essence, just the primal spirit.

Turning the light around is not turning around the light of one body, but turning around the very energy of Creation.

If you can look back again and again into the source of mind, whatever you are doing, not sticking to any image of person or self at all, then this is “turning the light around wherever you are.” This is the finest practice.

Deliberate meditation is the light of consciousness; let go, and it is then the light of essence. A hairsbreadth’s difference is as that of a thousand miles, so discernment is necessary.

The Way is present before our eyes, yet what is before our eyes is hard to understand. People like the unusual and enjoy the new; they miss what is right in front of their eyes and do not know where the Way is. The Way is the immediate presence.

If you read “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” be sure not to skip Cleary’s extensive notes on virtually every passage. His deep knowledge of Zen and Taoism clarifies what would be murky to an average reader like me.

Cleary also offers an Afterword where he speaks about how he has applied golden flower principles in his own spiritual practice and further explicates the meaning of this profound churchless text.

This teaching calls itself a “special transmission outside of doctrine,” free from attachment to dogma and form, based on direct perception of the essence of mind and recovery of its inherent potential.

…For practical purposes, a distinction is made in the golden flower teaching between the “original spirit” and the “conscious spirit.” The original spirit is the formless essence of awareness; it is unconditioned and transcends culture and history. The conscious spirit is the mind-set of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, conditioned by personal and cultural history, bound by habit to specific forms.

…Intuition belongs to the original spirit; intellect belongs to the conscious spirit. The essence of Taoism is to refine the conscious spirit to reunite it with the original spirit.

In doing so, you’ll be saying goodbye to religion, which can’t exist without dogma, theology, concepts, emotions, commandments, and other artificial creations of the human mind.

Trust your intuition. When the original spirit calls, put down your holy book and attend to its wordless message. You’ll never be able to tell anyone else what you heard. But the smile on your face will speak volumes.

To find God, get off the mind road

Churches are big on mind roads. That’s what they want you to travel on. In the church’s theological car, of course. Propelled by faith that you’re eventually going to get to God. Driven by the savior, mediator, master, guru, or prophet who supposedly knows the territory.

Problem is, nothing travel-worthy is apparent apart from the belief that there is. That’s why it is a mind road, not a real road. The pavement is cobbled together from passages found in holy books, words heard from the mouths of holy teachers, images seen by eyes that have gazed upon holy places and icons.

Which are all in the mind of the believer. When the belief is gone, so is the mind road. Real roads aren’t so ephemeral. When I’m driving on I-5 from Salem to Portland, if I take my eyes off the road or allow my mind to daydream about a more pleasant activity, the road is still there.

Not so with a mind road. So the advice of the sincerest spiritual sages throughout the ages is to get off it, if you’re on one. As most people are. If you belong to an organized religion, you’re on a mind road. If you consider that you’re on a defined spiritual path, you’re on a mind road.

And it could be said that if you’re occupied with thinking about how to get off the dead end of an imaginary way to God, you too are on a mind road. “You” likely includes me as I write this, and you as you read this.

But there’s a big difference between some short ruts that lead straight into the wilderness of divine Mystery, and a four-lane freeway of theological speculation that goes on, and on, and on, leading nowhere but to Blind Faith.

Zen Buddhism is small on mind roads. Zen says that they don’t lead past the Gateless Barrier. I don’t know what this barrier is. If I did, I suppose I’d be beyond it. So I’ll stop traveling on my mind road and let Wu-men, a thirteenth century master of the Rinzai school, speak about another way.

“Mu” is Japanese. “Wu” is Chinese. The words roughly mean “without” or “have not.” Roughly is the operative adjective, as Wu-men explains.
-----------------------------

(From “The Gateless Barrier: the Wu-men Kuan,” translated and with a commentary by Robert Aiken)

A monk asked Chao-chou, “Has the dog Buddha nature or not?”
Chao-chou said, “Mu.”

Wu-men’s Comment:

For the practice of Zen it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers. For subtle realization it is of the utmost importance that you cut off the mind road. If you do not pass the barrier of the ancestors, if you do not cut off the mind road, then you are a ghost clinging to bushes and grasses.

What is the barrier of the Ancestral Teachers? It is just this one word “Mu”—the one barrier of our faith. We call it the Gateless Barrier of the Zen tradition. When you pass through this barrier, you will not only interview Chao-chou intimately.

You will walk hand in hand with all the Ancestral Teachers in the successive generations of our lineage—the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs, seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears. Won’t that be fulfilling? Is there anyone who would not want to pass this barrier?

So, then, make your whole body a mass of doubt, and with your three hundred and sixty bones and joints and your eighty-four thousand hair follicles concentrate on this one word “Mu.” Day and night, keep digging into it. Don’t consider it to be nothingness. Don’t think in terms of “has” and “has not.” It is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to vomit it out, but you can’t.

Gradually you purify yourself, eliminating mistaken knowledge and attitudes you have held from the past. Inside and outside become one. You’re like a mute person who has had a dream—you know it for yourself alone.

Suddenly Mu breaks open. The heavens are astonished, the earth is shaken. It is as though you have snatched the great sword of General Kuan. When you meet the Buddha, you kill the Buddha. When you meet Bodhidharma, you kill Bodhidharma. At the very cliff edge of birth and death, you find the Great Freedom. In the Six Worlds and the Four Modes of Birth, you enjoy a samadhi of frolic and play.

How, then, should you work at it? Exhaust all your life energy on this one word “Mu.” If you do not falter, then it’s done! A single spark lights your Dharma candle.

Wu-men’s Verse:

Dog, Buddha nature—
the full presentation of the whole;
with a bit of “has” or “has not”
body is lost, life is lost.

Buddha enlightens Jesus about the self

A meeting between Jesus, the Christ and Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha. I’d love to be able to sit in a corner and listen in. Maybe even throw in a question or two.

Obviously so would Carrin Dunne, who wrote “Buddha & Jesus: Conversations.” Carrin said that she is a Christian with a growing interest in Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism.

I enjoyed this short (112 page) book, which was loaned to me by Warren, my Taoist marital arts teacher. He said that he felt Gotama gets the better of the arguments. I agree.

Dunne’s book was published in 1975. I note that a 2004 book about the I Ching was co-authored by one Carrin Dunne. I like to think that this is the same person, and that after writing about Jesus and Gotama Dunne continued to migrate toward the East.

For me the most interesting dialogue revolved around the subject of the self. To put it bluntly, I’d say that Gotama kicked Jesus’ ass. Spiritually speaking. Christianity just seems way too personal to be an accurate reflection of ultimate truth.

I can’t believe that the Word which supposedly created the cosmos became flesh and walked among us. Give me a break. The power behind the big bang that over 15 billion years has brought into being 100 billion galaxies, how could this force be encapsulated in a finite human being?

Who, according to Gotama, doesn’t even exist as a separate self. Gotama considers the self to be “the absolute source of illusion, the heart of ignorance and bondage.” Jesus, on the other hand, says that the self “is not only valuable but of infinite, irreplaceable value. Far from being the source of illusion, I see it as the source of truth.”

Gotama tries to set Jesus straight:

Infinite value? The source of truth? Indeed our differences are great if you mean what you say. I hope we can understand one another. I was deeply heartened when I heard you say that men must leave self behind to follow along the way, but I was disturbed when you added that to follow the way was to follow you.

Your way of putting it confuses the issue—which is a question of leaving all self behind, myself, yourself, all selves, the whole notion of self. You would do better to distinguish clearly between your person and your teaching.

Great advice, which applies equally to religions and spiritual paths of both the West and East. For it isn’t only Christianity which brings divinity down to a highly personal level and has a human proclaim that “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.”

This also is the teaching of many Eastern guru-based faiths. The guru is considered to be God in human form, just as Jesus is viewed by Christian believers. Thus Indian mystical philosophies such as Sant Mat (“path of the saints”) bear much resemblance to Christianity in their emphasis upon love and devotion directed toward an earthly person.

Jesus feebly tries to claim that when he asks men to follow him, this “is the most radical form of self-renunciation.” Gotama replies:

Forgive me if I still cannot grasp your language. When I speak of leaving self behind, I mean not only this particular self, but all notion of self, whether particular or universal, human or divine. You seem to be asking men to renounce themselves in order to cleave to another self, your own, which becomes a new world, an all-encompassing self for them—your desires in the place of their desires, your thoughts in place of their thoughts.

Jesus admits that “When you put it that way I can see why they say that I am possessed and raving. It sounds like the ambition of a self-obsessed madman.”

Gotama: “I am sorry to say it, but it does.”

It takes two to Tango, though. There is no guru without a disciple. I’ve seen tens of thousands of disciples staring spellbound at a guru, hanging on his every word, drinking in every manifestation of his personality.

Even when I was highly devoted to Sant Mat, in the guise of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch, I couldn’t understand this emphasis upon the person rather than the teaching. Some Western disciples loved to go to talks by the guru where he would speak entirely in an Indian language they couldn’t understand, just to be in his presence.

I found it boring.

I’ve also seen Westerners give their own talks about Sant Mat where they would mimic the gestures and speaking style of the guru. Just as Dunne says, they strove to submerge their own personality in the personality of another. I’d sit there thinking, “This is weird.”

For the person they wanted to become was someone else. They wanted to skip Socrates’ step of “Know thyself.” Buddha advises that this is the first, and likely also the last, step toward enlightenment. Why take on another persona when you are clueless about your own?

So I’m with Gotama in this regard. And most other regards. It makes sense to me to look within for spiritual truth, not without. I can admire another person, but I can never become him or her. My devotion should be to my own higher self, not to someone else’s.

Or, lack of self. Whichever, I’m confident that the self or non-self I discover at the end of my quest won’t belong to some other person.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

How many people are there in Boston? Two hundred thousand. Then there are so many sects. I go for Churches of one…The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.

…The soul gives itself, alone, original and pure, to the Lonely, Original and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads and speaks through it….Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

I get a glimpse of Tango Zen

Monday night at my Tango class the instructor taught us a pretty complicated move. Muy Tangoish, so it was cool. But difficult for our four-month-old Tango brains to grasp. My wife and I gave it a try, though.

From the man’s perspective: Step, step, trap her foot, turn her to left, stop her, cross step, side step, move her around with waist turn, trap her foot, step forward into centering position, step, step, step.

Well, it looks better on the dance floor than on a computer screen. However, at first I struggled to get the moves down. Then we started practicing.

And did OK. Heck, maybe better than OK. Within a few minutes Laurel and I were Tangoing along nicely. Until I started thinking, “Wow, we’re Tangoing along nicely.” That was the kiss of death for the new move.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Laurel complained. “You were doing fine before. Now you’re not.” “I know,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to make X, Y, and Z flow better.”

“Well, go back to how you started,” my non-shrinking-violet wife told me. Which I tried to do by just doing it, not by thinking about how to do it. Eventually I got back to where I had been. And then better than that, after we practiced the move for another half an hour with very little analyzing.

It was a revealing Tango Zen experience. I began by knowing that I didn’t know. Did fine. I progressed to knowing that I knew. Fell apart. I ended up not-knowing that I knew. Best of all.

In his book, Tango Zen, Chan Park talks about this sort of thing in refreshingly brief chapters.

Whatever feelings and thoughts arise while dancing Tango—just let them pass by with no attachment to anything. Zen teaches us to open our minds and see things as they are. Be ready to let feelings and thoughts come and go without engaging them. Resist the impulse of analyzing or judging them. However, don’t push away or avoid them either. Just listen to the music and dance.

…For Tango to be Tango, we need to make each and every movement with confidence. No hesitation. In Zen we strive to celebrate our own nature, our unique gifts and abilities. We are who we are and, likewise, we dance Tango the way we are. For self-confidence, we need to block our self-consciousness by stopping the self-critical monologue, e.g. the mental chatter while dancing Tango. Be easy on yourself, as you are the best you can be Here and Now!

It struck me that the attitude I had during my awkward period at the dance class was akin to feelings I had when I was overtly religious. At one time I thought that I knew a lot about the faith I was committed to, that of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). I knew what was right and what was wrong. I was constantly afraid that I’d make the wrong move.

Eat some meat, fish, or an egg by mistake. Imbibe some alcohol. Fail to meditate for the required period of time each day. Act against the wishes of the guru. I was stumbling all over myself trying to make precisely right moves on the spiritual path. I was self-consciously attempting to be humble and lose my ego.

Didn’t work. Couldn’t work. Would never work.

Here are some quotations from the Tango Zen book.

There is only the one Way—straight, open, and utterly empty of obstructions. –Yuan-Wu

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. –Zen Proverb

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. –Zhuagnzi

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things. –Dogen

Master technique and then forget about it and be natural. –Anna Pavlova

There is Buddha for those who don’t know what he is, really. There is no Buddha for those who know what he is, really. –Zen saying

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around. –Fred Astaire

Going with the flow

My wife and I are in Maui right now. I’m sitting on the balcony of our condo, watching the waves roll into Napili Bay. Seems like a good time to think about going with the flow.

Of course, thinking and flowing are like oil and water. They don’t mix very well. Still, there’s a certain flow to thought when you just let it happen. It’s conscious controlling that messes the flowingness of anything up. That’s the bugaboo of religious concepts—the subject of my previous post.

They’re like rocks in the ocean. As an avid boogie boarder, I know all about those. I’m aware of the location of just about every large rock in Napili Bay. They’re where you don’t want to go when you catch a wave. Big waves aren’t dangerous. They’ll just toss you around. It’s hitting a rock or a reef that will wreck your day.

Rigidity sucks. Stay clear of it.

In “Lectures on Zen Buddhism” (one of the essays in Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis), D.T. Suzuki talks about flowing. Don’t let the book’s title put you off: this is a great essay.

Suzuki urges us to become artists of life. However we earn our living, this should be our real profession. He says that “in point of fact we are all born artists of life and, not knowing it, most of us fail to be so and the result is that we make a mess our lives, asking, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ ‘Are we not facing blank nothingness?’”

The problem is that we’re facing in the wrong direction, where meaning won’t be found: outwardly. Suzuki assures us that “an artist of life has no need of going out of himself. All the material, all the implements, all the technical skill that are ordinarily required are with him from the time of his birth, perhaps even before his parents gave him birth.”

Cool. You don’t need to be saved. You don’t need to get religion. You don’t need a guru. You don’t need to heed the word of God. All you need to do is learn how to unlearn all the crap that you’ve been taught about what you are not.

Don’t copy. Be an original. Art isn’t imitation. Listen to Suzuki.

To such a person his life reflects every image he creates out of his inexhaustible source of the unconscious. To such, his every deed expresses originality, creativity, his living personality. There is in it no conventionality, no conformity, no inhibitory motivation.

He moves just as he pleases. His behavior is like the wind which bloweth as it listeth. He has no self encased in his fragmentary, restrained, egocentric existence. He is gone out of this prison.

One of the great Zen masters of the T’ang says: “With a man who is master of himself wherever he may be found he behaves truly to himself.” This man I call the true artist of life.

Yesterday afternoon I felt an urge to do some Tai Chi forms and a few martial arts kata that I’ve taichized. A sandy outcropping on the edge of Napili Beach beckoned to me. Weddings often are performed there. It’s a beautiful spot, facing Molokai.

When I mentioned my intention to Laurel she said, “Just don’t do it by me. You’re going to look funny. It will seem strange.” I didn’t blame her for having that reaction. I understood how she felt. But I didn’t care what other people on the beach would think. I always do these forms several times a week, and it was time to do them again.

I’m glad I did. How often am I going to be able to do Tai Chi in the soft sand, with waves crashing over rocks and dashing me with foam? I didn’t care if people were watching me. Nor did I care if people weren’t watching me. For the moment (and just for the moment, sadly) I was in a Zen-ish state of mind. Suzuki again:

But let a man once look within in all sincerity, and he will then realize that he is not lonely, forlorn, and deserted; there is within him a certain feeling of a royally magnificent aloneness, standing all by itself and yet not separated from the rest of existence.

…What makes him feel that way comes from his personally experiencing creativity or originality which is his when he transcends the realm of intellection and abstraction. Creativity differs from mere dynamism. It is the hallmark of the self-determining agent called the Self.

[By contrast] Individuality…is liable to become associated with self-asserting power. It is always conscious of others and to that extent controlled by them. Where individualism is emphasized, the mutually restricting feeling of tension prevails. There is no freedom here, no spontaneity, but a deep, heavy atmosphere or inhibition, suppression, and oppression overpowers one and the result is psychological disturbance in all its varieties.

I know a bit about sword techniques. I’ve studied the Japanese katana and have two “live” blades plus several wooden practice bokken. I’m slowly learning a Tai Chi sword form. However, I’ve done very little freeform sword fighting.

Still, from my other marital arts experience I can relate to Suzuki’s Zen wisdom here—which applies equally to all of us fighting the battle of life. He is relating the advice of Takuan to his swordsman disciple Yagyu Tajima-no-kami.

Takuan’s advice is chiefly concerned with keeping the mind always in the state of “flowing,” for he says when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of a swordsman, it means death.

…When the swordsman stands against his opponent, he is not to think of the opponent, nor of himself, nor of his enemy’s sword-movements. He just stands there with his sword which, forgetful of all technique, is really only to follow the dictates of the unconscious.

The man has effaced himself as the wielder of the sword. When he strikes, it is not the man but the sword in the hands of the unconscious that strikes. There are stories in which the man himself has not been aware of the fact that he has struck down the opponent—all unconsciously.

Now, that’s flow. Real artistry. Conscious concepts get in the way. “I need to hold the sword this way.” “If an attack comes from this direction, I will parry in this fashion.” Thoughts like these interrupt the genuine knowledge, prajna, that springs naturally from within.

Religious thoughts are similarly obstructive. “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.” “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” “Without a living guru, god-realization is impossible.”

Ideas like these cut us off from the reality toward which they supposedly point. They interpose dogma between us and direct experience. Does anyone really know any of those statements to be true? No. But the faith of billions rests on theological hypotheses like these.

They’re considered to be rocks on which to stand. Actually, they’ll bust your head. Trust yourself. Flow with the waves of life and stay away from reefs of rigidity. When given a choice between one religious way or the highway, head for the open road.

The joy of uncertainty

Admittedly, uncertainty is in a different league than sex. Yet it is as valid to praise the joy of uncertainty as the joy of sex. They both promise prodigious pleasure to those willing to take some risks and leave the familiar boundaries of the known.

When I speak of uncertainty I’m mainly referring to the spiritual variety: the embrace of mystery and not-knowing, opening yourself to higher truths in any sort of form they may present themselves, casting aside rigid programmed beliefs in favor of surprise me!

But you can’t confine uncertainty. It’s everywhere. It’s part and parcel of life itself. It’s what adds the spice to what otherwise would be bland routinized existence.

Which connects uncertainty with sex. The thrill of the unknown. Someone new. Green pastures. A hint of danger. Losing control. A generous dose of uncertainty is part of the formula for satisfying sex.

The same goes for satisfying spirituality. A few days ago I ran into an old meditation buddy who I hadn’t seen for at least ten years. He asked how I was doing, spiritually speaking.

“I’ve become a heretic,” I said. “I don’t know anymore. I’m not sure of anything. I’ve lost faith in everything except my own experience. It feels good. I’m a lot more relaxed now. The pressure’s off.”

Uncertainty is something you can count on. Indeed, you can be certain of it. Plus, uncertainty is real, honest, natural, humble, energizing, and scientific. I love it. I’d give it a big hug if I could pin it down. But it always pops up when you least expect it, and then dashes off again unexpectedly.

That’s the nature of uncertainty. Can’t change it. Wouldn’t want to. It’s a wild, unpredictable spiritual catalyst that brings passion into a person’s relationship with the cosmos.

Absent uncertainty, life is boringly mechanical and dryly logical. With uncertainty, life crooks its alluring finger and whispers “Step around the corner, honey, and see what surprise I’ve got for you.”

Uncertainty is the death of religion. It’s the lifeblood of mysticism and genuine spirituality. That’s how you can tell when you’re in the presence of deadening fundamentalism: you won’t hear “I don’t know,” “It’s a mystery,” or “Who can say?”

You have to dig deep to reach the uncertain mystical core of most religions. It’s there, but buried under dogma, scripture, theology, organized principles of metaphysics. Only a few spiritual traditions elevate uncertainty to the pinnacle that it deserves. Taoism. Buddhism.

Here’s an excerpt from Ray Grigg’s great book, “The Tao of Zen.” As you can tell from the title, he links authentic Taoism and Buddhism, revealing the common essence of both.

The wisdom, the peace, the grace of Taoism and Zen come from a special uncertainty. The result is a condition of perpetual preparedness, an easy readiness that takes an appropriate shape for every particular circumstance. Every answer becomes “as the situation arises.” Each individual person becomes the balanced and shapeless center of the universe, dancing alone with the unpredictable order that swirls everywhere.

…In a world full of people who are strewn between total confusion and absolute certainty, the Taoist and Zen challenge is the nearly impossible simplicity of reaching a deep insight that is wholly inclusive yet devoid of answers.

And here’s a link to an interesting piece, “Surprised by Joy: Experiments with Uncertainty,” from a fellow uncertainty embracer, Mel Crossley.

I have to add: this post turned out quite different from what I envisioned when I began writing. As it should have, given my subject. Now, it’s time to open the refrigerator and see what there is to eat for dinner. I'm ready to be surprised.

Mantra meditation: what’s in a word?

If I had a penny for every time I’ve repeated a mantra during the thirty-six years I’ve been meditating, I’d have something to show for all the words I’ve spoken in my head. But I don’t.

So, what’s in a word? What’s the point of saying a mantra over and over, whether it be during a designated meditation period or at other times during the day?

Christians use mantras. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” was endlessly repeated by the Russian whose tale is told in “The Way of a Pilgrim.” Buddhists use mantras. “Namu amida butsu” (I take refuge in Amida Buddha) is chanted by the Pure Land school of Buddhism. “Om,” “Ah,” “Hu,” these one-syllable mantras are but a few of the countless other words that are repeated by millions of devotees in every corner of the world.

So what? All of us speak words all of the time, sometimes aloud, sometimes silently. Why is a mantra any better than the stream of verbal consciousness that normally courses through the mind?

Such as, for me right now: “Got to get going finish post later need to exercise hungry take banana remember put dog out maybe no chew stick diarrhea this morning yuck hope this ends up making sense think while driving wait supposed to be about mantra should practice what preach.”

D.T. Suzuki, a noted Zen adept, says that there are two ways of conceiving the purpose of a mantra.

In the first case the name itself is regarded as having a wonderful power, especially over human affairs; it is a magic formula…In the second case, the name is pronounced not necessarily as indicative of things that are therein suggested, but in order to work out a certain psychological process thus set up.

He is speaking here of “namu amida butsu,” but the principle applies to every variety of mantra. When we repeat certain words over and over, is it with an outward or an inward intention? Are we trying to influence someone or something out there that is separate from us, or is it we ourselves in here who is affected by the repetition of the mantra?

In every religion there are outward-directed and inward-directed followers. For example, in Buddhism the Pure Land believers consider that repeating “namu amida butsu” brings all kinds of benefits from various deities:

When we say "Namu-amida-butsu," the countless Buddhas throughout the ten quarters, surrounding us a hundredfold, a thousandfold, rejoice in and protect us.

OK. Maybe. I doubt it, but everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

I find that the Zen approach to mantra meditation makes a lot more sense, for it is psychological rather than theological. D.T. Suzuki says that when “namu amida butsu” is repeated without regard to the meaning of the words, or envisioning that countless Buddhas are hearing the invocation, a profound alteration in consciousness may occur.

Psychologically considered, the aim of the vocal Nembutsu is to do away with the fundamental dualism which is a condition of our empirical consciousness. By achieving this the devotee rides over the theoretical difficulties and contradictions that have troubled him before. With all intensity of thought and will he has thrown himself into the deeps of his own being.

And what is found in those depths, ultimately, is Buddha nature. So the Pure Land devotee and the Zen practitioner seemingly arrive at the same destination via different avenues. Zen, however, takes a more direct path, since the journey doesn’t involve any appeal to beings or entities separate from the devotee’s own consciousness.

I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that Jesus, Buddha, God/Allah, Angels, Soul Guides, Gurus, or whoever, are listening to people doing mantra meditation and doling out grace when the right words are heard. That just seems like rank superstition to me.

When mantra meditation is viewed in that light—as a petition to some higher being—it is no different from traditional religious prayer. Masquerading as a mystical practice, meditation then simply is endlessly repeated prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” “I take refuge in Amida Buddha.”

Words directed outwardly, whether spoken aloud or silently within the mind, have meaning only if someone else is listening. Otherwise we’re just talking to our own self. And since I already know what I’ve said to myself, or I wouldn’t be able to say it, such is an empty circular exercise.

I understand why people like to feel that the Buddha, Jesus, a guru, or some other being is aware of their mantra meditation or prayer. It’s nice to have a companion on the spiritual journey. But I want a real companion, not an imaginary friend. Suzuki directs our attention to what really lies at the root of the words that are repeated in the mind.

Mere naming does not prove to be so efficient, is not so effect-producing, as when there is back of it a corresponding reality. Mere uttering the name “water” does not quench the thirst; when it is visualized and there is a mental picture of a spring it produces a more physiologically realistic effect; but it is only when there is real fresh water before us which is quaffed that the thirst actually ceases.

Words are just words unless they point to a directly experienced reality. When I call “Serena!” our dog comes running (usually). That’s because we have a dog who knows her name. When I’m hungry and feel too lazy to cook anything, I often call “Maria!” That’s the name of our imaginary maid. She never responds because she isn’t real.

I’m all for repeating a mantra. Purposeful mental activity is a lot better than letting the mind ramble around aimlessly. I feel more centered when I don’t allow words to run crazily around the racetrack of my brain like blind greyhounds chasing rabbits on meth.

However, I don’t consider that a mantra is magic. It simply is a pointer toward mystery, the mystery of me, the mystery of what lies at the root of the being uttering the mantra. As Suzuki puts it:

The Nembutsu ceased to mean “meditating on the Buddha” and came to be identified with the name, or rather with “uttering the name.” Meditation, or “coming into the presence of the Buddha,” thus gave way to the constant repetition of the phrase as not always or necessarily referring to any definite objective reality, but merely as a name somehow beyond comprehension, or rather as a symbol standing for something indescribable, unpredictable, altogether transcending the intellect, and therefore suggesting a meaning beyond meaning.

Which means to me, no more words tonight. Time to make a salad. And get wordlessly real.