Before we begin, I want to say thanks for the support and stuff regarding my last post. I will set off on February 28th driving Northeast to make a very circuitous journey to Durham, North Carolina via Kansas City, Cedar Rapids and Akron. According to Google Maps I'll be passing through Las Vegas, St. George, Grand Junction and Denver on Interstates 15 and 70 on the way to KC. If anybody on that route wants to save me a night's hotel fees, send me an email to spoozilla@gmail.com. I'm quiet and clean. I'll also be passing through the Chicago area on Interstate 80/90 on my way to Akron. I'm gonna try to get that drive done in a day. But we shall see. So if anyone in Chicagoland wants to offer me space, use the email above.I'll also be speaking at the Cedar Rapids Zen Center on March 5th (my birthday). Info will be forthcoming soon on that. And remember Kansas City on the 4th.
ANYWAY, I was walking to the post office the other day and I saw this funny notice stuck with masking tape to the light post in front of the Starbuck's on the corner of Hill and Main. It said, "The End of Suffering is Possible For You." I took a photo of it and posted it here so you can see. There's a smiling guy on the flier who is identified as Swami something-or-other. He says he has a technique he can teach you in a one-day seminar that will end all your suffering.
Gosh. Packing up my stuff is a real bummer. I probably ought to sign up.
Seeing this flier got me thinking about a lot of things. My instant gut reaction was that it was a lie. No one can possibly show you the way to end all suffering in an afternoon. Just think about it for a second. If this were really possible would the guy be sticking fliers on lamp posts? Nah. He'd be the richest man in the entire world and justifiably so.
But then I got a little kinder. There is some sense in which I might be able to define the practice of zazen as a way to end all suffering, and I could teach it to anyone who was interested in even less than an afternoon. I could show you all you really need to know in about five minutes.
But you're not gonna get to the end of all suffering in five minutes. You'd have to apply what I taught you in those five minutes for at the very minimum an hour a day for a number of years before you're gonna get anywhere near the end of all suffering. You'd have to dedicate your life to it and you have to be unafraid to abide by the truths the practice shows you. This is a very key element and one that even the most dedicated practitioners have a dickens of a time with — even after decades of practice (Brad points to himself here).
So, "OK," I says to myself, "maybe that's what he means." I kind of suspect it isn't. But I don't know for sure. All I know is that if I advertised what I do that way I'd feel incredibly dirty and dishonest.
I feel like the reason people get away with claims like this is because there is still so very little real understanding of what meditation practice actually is. I've used this metaphor more times than I can keep track of, but I'll keep saying it till someone gets it. If an exercise guy told you that you could go from a Homer Simpson body to an Arnold in Terminator body in a couple hours you'd know he was lying. If a yoga teacher said you could bend your leg around the back of your head after a single class you'd know that was bullshit. Yet people understand so very little about meditation that they imagine all sorts of things that are equally as absurd. My old troll pal Gniz makes a similar point with a great analogy to teaching sports on this post on his blog.
Almost anyone can teach the basics of zazen. And those basics are really all you need to start the practice for yourself. But nobody can teach you the discipline needed to turn that basic practice into something that can change your life in a fundamental and profound way.
Now as to this "end of suffering" business, that's really a tricky issue. The end of suffering requires a kind of diligence and attention that very few people are able to muster. I wouldn't even claim I've been able to muster it. But I have gone through the process enough to see where it's possible and to put it into practice to a degree I never would have thought possible when I began doing this stuff. The end of suffering doesn't mean you don't feel pain when you stub your toe on a rock or that you don't feel sad when your mom dies. But there is a means by which we cease to experience these and other such things as suffering. We do so not by finding a way to not experience them, but by seeing a way to experience them completely.
This much is true. But in order to do this you have to face right into whatever life throws at you without flinching. And that's not easy. You've spent your whole life learning how to avoid experience and shield yourself from pain. Zazen practice is one excellent way — I'd even say the most excellent way — to learn how not to do this. But you don't learn this from anyone but yourself. It's not something anyone can teach you. They can help you learn to find it for yourself. But they can't teach you.
Year ago I saw this movie called The Cube. It wasn't the horror film by that name that came out about five years ago. This was something Jim Henson created before he struck it rich with the Muppets. Amazingly Google video has the entire film at this link here. It's weird, weird movie.
The basic plot is that a guy finds himself living in a white cube. People can come in and out, but he can't escape. Very existential stuff. Whenever someone leaves the guy's cube the guy tries to follow. The person leaving the cube invariably says, "Ah, ah, ah! That's my door!" and closes the door on guy's face at which point the door vanishes.
That's kinda the way it is with the stuff a Zen teacher can teach you. She can show you her way to deal with this stuff and maybe you can learn from that. But ultimately that's her door and you can't go out through it. You need to find your own door.
So anyway, I don't want to scream LIAR! at the guy who posted that flier. I don't really know. But what I do know for absolute certain, without even a hint of a doubt, is that there is nothing anyone can show you in an afternoon that's gonna fix all your problems right then and there.
But the hucksters know there are plenty of suckers and "marks" out there who think maybe they can get this end of suffering stuff over quick and move on to the next thrill. You can go ask James Arthur Ray and his close personal friend Genpo Roshi as well as a long list of other similar con-men and crooks and they'll gladly sell you magic snake oil that'll put right whatever's ailin' you. They'll teach you their special technique and then laugh at you all the way to the bank.
It's really the same with them as it was with the snake oil salesmen of days gone by. Once more people are better educated about this stuff, these guys will naturally become marginalized until only the most gullible are taken in by their claims. Until that happens it may be necessary for those who do know what the deal is to keep plugging away and saying "No, it doesn't work like that."
