Go Beyond without Denying It
Be present in the posture. Let the awareness be broad: posture, breath, sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts; all of these simply arising and passing.
If the thoughts, the emotions, are not fed, then they subside. Sometimes vanishing quickly, Sometimes slowly.
The core insight at the heart of Buddha’s teachings is often expressed in English as the phrase ‘life is suffering’. Suffering isn’t quite the right translation of the word the Buddha used. The word that he used was duhkha.
Literally translated, it originally meant the axle hole of a wheel which doesn’t fit quite properly, so creates a bumpy ride.As opposed to sukha, which means a well formed axle hole.
And this literal meaning became used more broadly, to mean a smooth and comfortable, or bumpy, life situation.
So what the Buddha said was that life will always be bumpy. Life won’t go the way that our ego wants.
Even in small situations, our ego can be dissatisfied. Life is duhkha. The Buddha was interested in how to go beyond this ‘life is duhkha’, without denying it.
There is always both a relative and an absolute aspect to the Buddha’s teaching.
The relative aspect is: always try to reduce dissatisfaction and suffering in self and others by becoming more aware of the patterns one lives in, the patterns one is trapped in, the silly dissatisfactions that can cause us to behave in ways that aren’t helpful. Live more harmoniously.
In other words, be a better person, and encourage those around you to be better people. Not by hectoring them, but by offering gentleness, small acts of kindness and acts of wisdom, and opening the gates to practice for those that choose to do so.
For the Buddha, this wasn’t just about making people a bit less dissatisfied. Rather, it is about sewing seeds in a field where practice can arise. It’s easier to practice sincerely, genuinely, wholeheartedly, when life is not too complicated. In many situations, it’s we ourselves who create those complications. So, from the relative perspective – being aware of our patterns and our self-created suffering allows us to lead a less complicated life, which in turn makes it easier to practice, and to support others in practice.
But this is only the relative aspect. It is important, but isn’t everything.
From an absolute perspective, the Buddha’s teachings were: See that the ego that we have is real, but not that real. It’s something that’s arisen out of causes and conditions coming together at this time to create a sense of independent selfhood. This being that is me, this being that is you, is ever changing but nonetheless dependent on what came before. One day it will once more dissipate, leaving traces, but that sense of ego, of self, will have vanished.
So, if the ego is not that real, nor is the dissatisfaction which it experiences.
We don’t need to overcome the ego. We don’t need to destroy the ego. But we do need to live a life which is not tangled up in the ego, which is open to something vaster, something that’s shared with all beings, with all of existence.
Not Desperately Trying to Stop It
When the mind wanders, come back. Open the awareness. Open to the sensations of the breath, the body. Upright. Letting go.
The human mind is intrinsically restless. Even when it’s given nothing to do, it still finds plenty. Ironically, it probably finds more to do when given nothing to do.
In Zen, it’s referred to as the Monkey Mind. Always grasping, chattering, exploring, running away.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna says to Krishna that ‘the mind is unsteady, like the wind’.
This chattering mind, is driven by Duhkha – dissatisfaction. It is a natural and inevitable part of being human. Not something to feel bad about. No need to feel a sense of failure about the chattering.
But nonetheless, the chattering can keep us trapped in the relative ego and its wants and needs. This distances us from reality as it is; from experiencing how things are now; from being truly present.
Zen calls us to go beyond the chattering. To find the experience of emptiness, of spaciousness, between and beyond and behind that chattering,
This is not by desperately trying to stop it, which is always, in the end, destined to fail. Though you might succeed for a second, a minute, an hour, maybe even longer. But rather to open the awareness, to give space to the chattering, but not letting it fill the mind. Space to allow what is between and beyond to enter into our everyday consciousness. Refreshing us.
In practice, this means bringing the awareness to the present moment, the posture and the breath, but not limiting it to one thing. As master Wanshi says, open to the vast luminous field of awareness, in which the weeds of the chattering mind can grow and fade.
And even when the weeds of chattering mind fill that field, then simply accept that’s how it is today, and once more, come back. Open. Appreciate the simple beauty of being human in this moment.
Just Get Out of the Way
Be present. Let the awareness be open. Thoughts passing. Don’t get tangled up in personal stories.
Zazen practice is not an effort to get rid of thoughts. it’s not an effort to try to achieve some special state of mind. But nonetheless, there is a very gentle effort to be present. An effort to notice and let go of the doings of the ego.
In some ways, it’s the same effort that happens when one plunges into a cold pool. A recognition by the ego, by the self, by the personality, that it needs to just get out of the way. And experience the presence of the moment.
The sensations are helpful as an anchor. Coming back again and again and again. Letting go again and again and again.
Then awakening is actualized; manifest; realized; made real. Naturally, unconsciously and automatically.
Through us, not by us.
Nancy Amphoux
Nancy Amphoux lived for a long time in Strasbourg, working as a translator for the Conseil d'Europe. While there, she began a relationship with Jean Baby, the chief librarian there and also the founder of the Strasbourg Zen Dojo, which would continue to the end of her life. Both of them followed Zen Master Mokudo Taisen Deshimaru - an unconventional Sot…