A Zen Student called me recently to complain about my emphasis on the difficulty of the practice. She said, 'I think you make a mistake in urging your students to take their practice so seriously. Life should be about enjoying ourselves and having a good time'. I asked her, 'Has that approach ever worked for you ?' She said, 'Well, not really...yet. But I have hope'.
I understand her attitude, and I sympathize with anyone who feels that practice is really hard work. It is. But I also feel sad for those who are not yet willing to do this kind of serious work, because they will suffer most.
Still, people have to make their own choices, and some are just not ready for serious practice. I said to the Zen student, 'Just do your practice or not according to your own lights, and I'll support you in doing that'.
Whatever people are doing, I want to support them-because that's where they are, and that's fine. The fact is that for most of us, our lives are not working well. Until we engage in a serious practice, our basic view of life usually remains pretty much untouched. In fact, life continues to aggravate us, and even gets worse. Serious practice is needed if we are to see into the fallacy that is at the bottom of almost all human action, thinking, and emotion.
Our misery stems from the misconception that we are separate. Certainly it looks as though I am separate from other people and from all else in the phenomenal world. This misconception that we're separate creates all the difficulties of human life.
If we feel separate we're going to feel that we have to defend ourselves, that we have to try to be happy, that we have to find something in the world around us that's going to make us happy.
If we don't struggle with life, does this mean that life can't hurt us? Is there anything outside of ourselves that can hurt us ? Being Zen students, we may have learned to say that the answer is no.
When we feel victimized by the world, we look for something outside of ourselves that will take away our hurt. Until we truly see that we're not separate from anything, we're going to struggle with our lives. When we struggle, we have trouble. It's as though life presents us with a series of questions that can't be answered. And as a matter of fact, they can't. Why ? Because they're false questions. They're not based on reality. Feeling that something is wrong and seeking ways to fix it-when we begin to see the error in this pattern, serious practice begins. The young woman who called me hasn't reached this point. She still imagines that something external will make her happy. Maybe a million dollars ?
With practicing we do begin to comprehend that there's another way to live beyond feeling assaulted by life and then trying to find a remedy. From the very beginning, there's nothing wrong. There is no separation : it's all one radiant whole. Yes, we do have to be serious about our practice. If you're not ready to be serious, that's fine. Just go live your life. You need to be kicked around for a while. That's okay. People shouldn't be at a Zen center until they feel there's nothing else they can do : that's the time to show up.
Let's return to our question : can something or someone hurt us ? Practice helps us to see that the answer is no. It's not that the point of practice is to avoid feeling hurt. What we call 'hurt' still happens : I may lose my job ; an earthquake may destroy my house. But practice helps me to handle crises, to take them in stride. So long as as we are immersed in our hurt, we'll be a bundle of woe that is of little use to anybody. If we're not wrapped up in our melodrama of pain, on the other hand, even during a crisis we can be of use.
So what happens if we truly practice ? Why does the feeling that life can hurt us begin to soften over time ? What takes place ? Only a self-centered self, a self that is attached to mind and body, can be hurt. Suppose I feel I have no friends, and I'm very lonely. What happens if I sit with that ? I begin to see that my feelings of loneliness are really just thoughts. As a matter of fact, I'm simply sitting here. Maybe I'm sitting alone in my room, without a date. Nobody has called me, and I feel lonely. In fact, however, I'm simply sitting. The loneliness and the misery are simply my thoughts, my judgments that things should be other than what they are. I haven't seen through them ; I haven't recognized that my misery is manufactured by me. The truth of the matter is, I'm simply sitting in my room. It takes time before we can see that just to sit there is okay, just fine. I cling to the thought that if I don't have pleasant and supportive company, I am miserable. I'm not recommending a life in which we cut ourselves off in order to be free of attachment. Attachment concerns not what we have, but our opinions about what we have. There's nothing wrong with having a fair amount of money, for example. Attachment is when we can't envision life without it. Likewise, I'm not saying to give up being with people. Being with people is immensely enjoyable. Sometimes, however, we're in situations where we have to be alone.
The truth is that nothing can hurt us. But we certainly can think we're being hurt, and we certainly can struggle to remedy the thoughts of hurt in ways that can be quite unfruitful. We try to remedy a false problem with a false solution.
'Nothing Special Living Zen'
By / Charlotte Joko Beck
Salam,
Cherine
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