I got an e-mail from Lynn Thompson who does the radio show Living on Purpose. She said:
"I am airing our talk again on http://www.radioearnetwork.com again this week,
Monday (10th) 3 - 5pm EST
Tuesday 3 - 5 AM (for European listeners)
Friday 10 am - noon
She also said the show's podcast on Rabble was the most popular podcast they've put up yet, with over a thousand hits. Yikes.
On Sunday, I did the first of three classes at Karuna Yoga in L.A.'s Los Feliz district (1939 1/2 Hillhurst, near the corner of Franklin and Hillhurst). It was a good class although three people got turned away cuz they arrived an hour late due to not realizing Daylight Savings Time started that morning. Sorry. You'll have two more opportunites to get it right, though. Sunday March 16th at 8 AM and Sunday March 23rd at 8 AM. And remember our regular classes in Santa Monica (info to your left).
I got one question at Karuna that I get a lot. It went something like, "If I take up this zazen practice what will it do for me?"
There are a million variations and every Zen teacher gets them all the time. My friend Greg Fain up at San Francisco Zen Center said that the more you practice zazen the harder it is to answer that question. Lots of times Zen teachers will give what seem like flippant, dismissive answers. "Nothing!" is a pretty common response. But we're not being flippant, really, just honest.
Most meditation teachers try to sell you on their technique, so they have nice pat answers to that question. They'll tell you about reaching equanimity, establishing peace of mind, even reaching Enlightenment. In the long run zazen has all of these benefits too. But I hate to stress them because if you're looking for those things in your practice, the very activity of looking for them prevents you from ever achieving them. It is precisely because you're always looking for peace of mind outside of your own real state of mind that you're never peaceful. It's because you look for Enlightenment outside of this moment that you're never enlightened. You certainly can achieve weird states of mind that unscrupulous teachers will tell you are the states you're seeking. But I wouldn't listen to any of them. What do they know about your state of mind anyway?
On some level you may indeed be able to say you "get something" out of the daily practice of zazen. I certainly wouldn't have kept it up for 25 years if it was a complete waste of time. But in order to get anything out of it, you need to drop the idea that you'll ever get anything out of it. Just see clearly where you are at this moment. That's enough.
Gotta go do some paying work now. Bye!
ADDENDUM:
Almost immediately after that piece went up, some anonymous poster wrote:
*I certainly wouldn't have kept it up for 25 years if it was a complete waste of time.* That's a pretty dumb statement. Here's the deal on zazen...in Hardcore Zen you said just sit. In Sit Down and Shutup you said you have to sit half-lotus. And Dogen says you can't get to the real zen unless you have a teacher. I'm disappointed as the more I get into it the more it starts to sound like all the other stuff out there.
This question brings up another interesting aspect of the practice, which relates to the initial question. Nobody’s going to try to sell you Zen. Well, some guys (I won't name names) want to sell you something they call Zen. But that’s not Zen.
Why would I try to sell you Zen? I don’t get any money from it. I don’t get any brownie points from the home office in Fukui Prefecture. I don’t get any crowns in Heaven for winning more souls. I have no reason to try and sell you Zen. You think I make money on the retreats and classes? Ha! Those fuckers always end up costing me my shirt. If I didn’t have a day job and a career as an author I couldn’t even consider doing them. I think most Zen teachers have a similar attitude about selling the practice. Want a lucrative career? Don't be a Zen teacher.
Don’t get me wrong here. I am trying to sell you my books. Go buy them! I get money from those. Part of the reason I maintain this blog is to flog those books. But that’s a different animal altogether. The books are about my Zen practice. But the books themselves are not Zen practice.
The reward I would get from more people practicing Zen is a more peaceful, stable world. And I do want that. So, yeah, maybe I am trying to sell you Zen. I take it all back.
