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TODAY'S FIRST QUESTION:
I'd like to ask you about motivation to continue zazen practice.
I've done zazen for about 5 years or so almost every day and I feel that it had become kind of easy nowadays. Funny thing is that the easier it had become the more difficult it had become to find reasons to continue my practice. I mean, at first it was kind of cool if I managed to sit like 20 minutes staring at the wall, but now I feel that it's hard to find a meaning to go on. I just wondered if you'd have something smart to say on this subject.
MY ANSWER:
This is one of the questions I get more than any other. How do you get started in Zen practice? How do you keep going?
The questioners usually end up asking for motivation. But I wonder if motivation is what we really need.
The stated purpose of a dharma talk is usually "encouragement." The talk is supposed to provide listeners with a motivation to carry on doing this often difficult and seemingly fruitless practice. When those dharma talks often include -- as mine often do -- phrases like Kodo Sawaki's infamous "Zazen is good for nothing" it often feels like they fail if their purpose. Why should we carry on doing something that's good for nothing?
The only way I can answer this question is to try and figure out why I keep on doing it. I suppose in that I am a good test case, because I have kept up this useless practice for well over twenty years now and have no intention of stopping. Yet I often wonder why I do it, even as I'm sitting there on a rolled up towel facing the wall of some hotel room in the middle of a foreign country, with sirens blaring outside or prayer calls from the local mosque tearing up my eardrums, having woken up early and delaying breakfast so I can get this thing done.
Yet even as I wonder why I'm doing it, I still keep going. Even knowing that it is good for nothing, I keep on sitting. Am I an idiot? Maybe. And maybe that's what it takes.
I used to do zazen because I wanted to have an enlightenment experience. Pure and simple. I didn't start off with this motivation. But pretty soon after I'd started doing zazen I read Philip Kapleau's Three Pillars of Zen with its amazing descriptions of real life enlightenment experiences and I wanted one of those. This proved to be lousy motivation because it kept not happening. And so I'd give up.
It was when I gave up on zazen that I discovered the only form of motivation that's ever really worked. Quite simply, I felt like shit when I stopped doing zazen. The first few times I gave up the practice I didn't really understand why I felt so shitty. Then when I'd get back to it, things would get a little better. It wasn't a vast improvement. But it was better than when I didn't do it. So I got back to the practice.
I've said this more times than I can count. I'm sure it's in most of my books in one form or another. And I know it's been on this blog a few times too. Yet people still keep asking for motivation...
I can say a few things that might help. One is that it gets better. There really are moments of insight and transcendence to be had. You can get through a lot of the garbage that's been holding you down. You might even have one of those so-called "enlightenment experiences."
I don't hold that these things don't happen. They do. And they have some value. Sure. Yet, as I've said, enlightenment is for sissies. It's not the point of practice. It's not the goal.
Ultimately we all have to provide our own motivation. What motivates me might not work for you. Hopefully this will help you find yours.
QUESTION #2:
You mention that you don't focus your mind on anything in particular, you just let your awareness go where it goes, but you do keep making sure that your posture is correct.
It's been my experience that every teacher teaches the posture of zazen slightly differently. Back of the hands resting on the thighs, hands so that the little fingers rest on the stomach just below the belly-button would be one example.
But here's the real question: when zazen "gets up and walks around", as Kobun Chino Otogawa averred it sometimes does, how will you make sure your posture is correct?
ANSWER #2:
This is another one I get asked a lot. One popular variation is: How do you keep your zazen mind when you're not sitting on the cushion? And, again, I can only answer from my own experience.
I used to work at this sort of thing. When I first started sitting I had a job as a part-time mail carrier. So when I walked my routes I'd be paying attention to the sensations of my feel, to keeping my back straight and chest open as I walked, to the color of the sky and the sounds around me. That sort of thing. I read about this in a book, I think. Probably not a Zen book.
Nowadays I don't really do that. At least I don't do it consciously. Maybe I've internalized it and made it habit. I don't know.
At some point, maybe a decade or so into my practice I noticed something kind of weird. Colors had become brighter, sounds sharper, my vision somehow clearer, my senses somehow enhanced. It was like a big shroud made of black gauze wrapping my entire body had been taken off and I could now see and experience things directly. The only other time I'd ever felt anything like that was when I was on LSD.
What made that happen? I don't know. Over ten years of zazen every morning and evening plus loads of multi-day zen retreats certainly had something to do with it. But it wasn't something I drove myself to experience.
Nowadays I don't feel right when I'm slumped over in a chair or on a couch. A few years ago I got rid of the couch in my living room (when I had a living room, ah luxury!) because I couldn't stand sitting on it anymore. I couldn't focus on anything. I replaced the couch with some cushions on the floor.
Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop (Shaika, on Sherbrooke in Montreal's NDG district) and I'm not resting my back against the chair because when I do it feels too lax and unfocused. When I drive I put the driver's seat almost straight up or else I feel like I'm only half awake.
So how do you keep that zazen mind while you're doing something else? Just like you do when you're doing zazen itself; when you find yourself drifting, get back to the right posture. When you find yourself drifting again, do it again. After a while this becomes a new habit and you don't even really have to think about it much.
In his commentary on the Heart Sutra, Dogen says, "There are four instances of prajna that are going on daily; walking, standing, sitting and lying down." Prajna is intuitive wisdom. So for Dogen all of life was wisdom, it was all zazen. Whether we notice this or not, doesn't matter all that much.
Good? Good.
Now I'm gonna go do something else!
Send your questions to: askbradwarner@hotmail.com
ADDENDUM (re: Motivation):
The following is from Vince Anilla at Still Point Zen Center in Detroit:
Still Point Dharma Teacher Anatta Brad Wilson is also a black belt in aikido. Years ago, a couple young guys came in to the dojo. They were gung-ho and clearly willing to do just about anything to get black belts of their own as soon as possible.
Anatta said, "If you guys can stay a minute after class, I'll tell you the secret once everyone else has cleared out." They were pretty giddy, and had no problem waiting around afterward.
This is the secret wisdom that he shared after class: "What you do is come in here five days a week whether you feel like it or not. You arrive with a smile on your face and you leave with a smile on your face. Train hard and be cool to the people you train with. If you do that, and if in ten years you still don't have your black belt, I'll give you mine."
(He never saw them again.)
Zen practice is also like this. And so is anything else in life worth doing in the first place.
