If we're honest, we have to admit that what we really want from practice - especially at the beginning, but always to some degree - is greater comfort in our lives. We hope that with sufficient practice, what bothers us now will not bother us anymore. There are really two viewpoints from which we can approach practice. The first viewpoint is what most of us think practice is, and the second is what practice actually is. As we practice over time, we gradually shift from one viewpoint toward the other, though we never completely abandon the first.
Operating from the first viewpoint, our basic attitude is that we will undertake this demanding and difficult practice because we hope to get certain personal benefits from it. We enter practice with an expectation or demand that it will somehow take care of our problems. Our basic demands are that we be comfortable and happy, that we be more peaceful and serene. We expect that we won't have those awful feelings of upset, and we will get what we want. We expect that instead of being unfulfilling, our life will become more rewarding. We hope to be healthier, more at ease. We hope to be more in control of our life. We imagine that we will be able to be nice to others without it being inconvenient. From practice we demand that we become secure and increasingly achieve what we want. We demand that someone take care of us and that the people close to us function for our benefit. We expect to be able to create life conditions that are pleasing to us. There is nothing wrong with wanting any of these things, but if we think that achieving them is what practice is about, then we still don't understand practice.
The demands are all about what we want : we want to be enlightened, we want peace, we want help, we want control over things, we want everything to be wonderful.
The second viewpoint is quite different : more and more, we want to be able to create harmony and growth for everyone. We are included in this growth, but we are not the center of it ; we're just part of the picture. As the second viewpoint strengthens in us, we begin to enjoy serving others and are less interested in whether serving others interferes with our own personal welfare. As we increasingly adopt the second viewpoint, we learn to serve everyone, not just people we like. Increasingly, we have an interest in being responsible for life, and we're not so concerned whether others feel responsible for us. In fact we even become willing to be responsible for people who mistreat us.
Practice does not cause us to lose our preferences. But when a preference is in conflict with what is most fruitful, then we are willing to give up the preference. In other words, the center of our life is shifting from a preoccupation with ourselves to life itself.
Practice is about moving from the first to the second viewpoint. The real point of practice is to serve life as fully and fruitfully as we can. True practice is about seeing how we hurt ourselves and others with deluded thinking and actions. It is seeing how we hurt people, perhaps simply because we are so lost in our own concerns that we can't see them. Pratice is always a battle between what we want and what life wants. So long as we are caught in the first viewpoint, governed by wanting to feel good or blissful or enlightened, we need to be disturbed. We need to be upset. A good center and a good teacher assist that. Enlightenment is, after all, simply an absence of any concern for self. Don't come to this center to feel better ; that's not what this place is about. What I want are lives that get bigger so that they can take care of more things, more people.
This morning I had a call from a former student who has lung cancer. In an earlier operation, three-quarters of his lungs were removed, and he's devoting himself to sitting and practice. Some time after the operation, he began to have troubles with his vision and with severe headaches. Tests revealed two brain tumors : the cancer had spread. He's back in the hospital for treatment. We talked about the treatment and how he's doing. I told him, "I'm really very sorry this has happened for you. I just want you to be comfortable. I hope things will go well". He replied, "That's not what I want from you. I want you to rejoice. This is it for me-and it's wonderful. I see what my life is". He went on to say, "It doesn't mean I don't get angry and frightened and climb the walls. All those things are going on, and now I know what my life is. I don't want anything from you except that you share in my rejoicing. I wish everyone could feel the way I do".
He is living from the second viewpoint, the one in which we embrace those life conditions - our job, our health, our partner- that will be most fruitful to all. He's got it. Whether he lives two months, two years, or a long time, in a sense it does not matter.
Zen practice is difficult largely because it creates discomfort and brings us face-to-face with problems in our lives. We don't want to do this, though it helps us to learn, and prods us toward the second viewpoint. To sit quietly when we're upset and would really like to be doing something else is a lesson that sinks in little by little.
We slowly begin to comprehend what my former student meant when he said, "Now I know what my life is". We're mistaken if we feel sorry for him ; perhaps he is one of the lucky ones.
'Nothing Special Living Zen'
By / Charlotte Joko Beck
Salam,
Cherine
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