Practice

I've been in ango (intensive Zen practice and study period) for the last three four days. It will continue for the next three weeks, seven days a week. It's the first time I've done it, and at first it was very uncomfortable. It's become less so, but it's also difficult to maintain the schedule of sitting and walking meditations, the Dharma talks, study of the Dharma text (A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way, Shantideva) and the many other activities that are part of the ango.

I started Zen practice nearly 60 years ago inspired by Jack Kerouac's descriptions of his own Dharma journey and Zen, and with minimal instruction on how to do it from the San Francisco Zen Center, at that time one of the only Zen Buddhist institutions in the country. I learned sitting meditation (Zazen) with relative ease -- well, at first no -- and continued more or less regular practice for about 10 years when significant life changes meant that Zen practice became very low priority. In some ways, that was a mistake, but there were many other mistakes to come. I've intermittently practiced sitting meditation since then, but I felt something important was missing. At one point, I recalled that one of the Dharma teachers, it may have been old Dogen himself, had said that meditation was good but meditation without study and learning is dangerous. 

Practice untethered is akin to swimming in a void. Not necessarily a bad thing, and yet quite clearly potentially dangerous. And that was what I was doing. Not just swimming in a void but going off in all sorts of directions that were essentially either deadly or dead ends. The void, after all, provides no direction. 

Practice of zazen at best was intermittent during that period, indeed sometimes only once a year if that, and often enough simply automatic. I knew how to do it, so once I sat in the proper position and set about breathing, the broiling boiling mind settled quickly and the "emptiness" returned, pfft, just like that, and I felt, wrongly, that I had accomplished what the zazen practice was meant to do. Ta da! Enlightenment?

No. I was very far from that, and because I had largely neglected study and learning, and my sangha was scattered, I had no real conscious idea what the practice was meant to do or what the point of Buddhahood was. I had an idea but it was not in my conscious mind at all. I was acting on that idea unknowingly and chaotically, scattered as my sangha, devoid of conscious study, devoid of Dharma, just doing and being whatever the moment called for in zazen. Or soI thought. 

And there was always the question in the lower depths of my fragmented mind, "What of the Bodhisattvas?"

In my Catholic incarnation, I was drawn to St. Francis, and would have been a lay Franciscan had I stayed with the Church and followed in the footsteps of the saint. In a virtual sense, I suppose I have done so, retracing his life and works in books and online and immersing myself in his teachings and struggles. In the end though, I was not a Franciscan, and I could not emulate St. Francis for more than a moment or two. He was, however, a Bodhisattva. Who may have become a Buddha.

No, my gravitation has for long been toward Buddhism, not religion; practice, not ritual; relieving suffering, not inflicting or causing it. (Francis inflicted suffering on himself through mortification of the flesh, and he was afflicted with some mysterious condition which put him in great pain and suffering when he wasn't punishing himself.)

I've just attended a meditation instruction session during the ango period. Oh. Well, I suppose I know how to zazen having done it intermittently for nearly 60 years. My ego says I don't need instruction, except that I have found it difficult during this period to sit zen for more than about fifteen minutes at a time, though the zazen sessions are scheduled for 45 minutes or an hour three or more times a day. Maybe I do need instruction? So I sat in on the instruction session, and it was good to have the reminders not so much on how to do it, but on what to do and to an extent why. It's not by any means just form and ritual. Though form and ritual are part of the process of sitting meditation ("zen" doesn't literally mean meditation. It's more in the nature of "calm" or "peaceful.") You do certain things in a certain way when engaging in zazen but you don't have to do it exactly that way, or necessarily do all the things you are supposed to. You don't have to do it in the zendo (the "meditation hall" of a zen center or monastery or temple.) You can do it anywhere and at any time under pretty much any conditions.

But receiving instruction this morning was illuminating regarding the details of what we do, and the underlying elements of why. A zazen sit or session can open body and mind to the reality and illusion of the world, and if we allow it, can help increase our ability to feel and act on compassion for the sentient world which is how we express our Bodhisattva nature, There's more to it,  but that's the essence. 

My own sense of practice was quite different. Not wrong so much as directed inward rather than outward.  And not at all focused on Bodhisattvas or the Bodhisattva Way -- which, of course, is the theme of this practice period, ango.

The next zazen session will be in a few hours. Maybe it will be... easier? Easier to sustain, let's say, for the half hour or forty-five minutes it will last. 

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NOTE: I sat for half an hour -- with many distractions taking place -- but it was a two hour sit with Dharma Talk, kinhin (walking meditation) and liturgy (which I may or may not describe in time). So. Looks like I've got a ways to go yet....😉