Don’t be distracted by inner peace. Don’t be distracted by anxiety. Don’t be distracted by anything. What are you doing right now? What is in front of you right now? Pay attention, see clearly and act correctly. It’s simple, but not easy. – Zen Master Bon Hae
Stay Alive and Be Awake
“The Practice.” That’s what we call it. I learned that soon enough, even before I met any other Buddhists that were part of a meditation group. How is your practice going? Has your practice been strong or weak lately? Remember, that important part of our practice is (you guessed it) to just practice. Whether it is for five or thirty minutes a day, find the time to practice.
These are the pieces of advice and the voices in your head you hear over and over again. “The Practice,” insofar as you practice a specific way, is what makes a Buddhist a Buddhist (I suppose). You cannot say you’re Buddhist and not meditate or chant or be mindful in the same way you could probably say you’re Christian, but have not attended church or even read the Bible in years. A Buddhist cannot be “Buddhist” without “Practice.” And what is practice exactly? Well, that depends on where you are mentally, spiritually, and physically. As is often said, “our karma leads us down different paths.” Which I suppose is true. But there is one path you start to see again and again as you become more ingrained in the vagaries of being a Buddhist in your every day life – that path includes Buddha statues (the fat happy dude is NOT Buddha, but Wikipedia could have told you that for me), robes, zen centers, incense, a lot of comfortable cushions, and a ton of tasty vegetarian food.
I’m sorry to say there is a noted lack of bloody crosses, guilt, and rock music that sounds eerily enough like the Dixie Chicks in Buddhism, but if you crave at least two of those three things, boy do I sure have a lot a vaguely similar Christian denominations for you. However, the path I have been going down for a while is different than the path I was raised on for most of my life. It is less about relating to a divine power outside of yourself, memorizing one very specific text, and feeling a sense of repentance and more about relating to the world around you in an optimal manner.
Let me repeat that again: Relating to the world around you in an optimal manner. After ten years of studying and practicing Buddhism, I believe that’s the one sentence that really gives you a taste of what it is all about. Sure, there are the verses and chants in the sutras and in the meditation hall about becoming a buddha, or realizing our buddha-nature, or paying homage to the larger Buddhist community and the ideals we hold, and so on and so forth. If you ask me though, Siddhartha Gautama saw some really terrible things – sickness, old age, and death – and was utterly honest with himself: “I’m not ready to handle this.” Totally unprepared. As I would think most people would be who are raised in a mansion and (as it has been written in the scriptures) are so engrossed in sex with their wife that they supposedly fell off a roof while doing it. Now, as a new home owner, I could get into the pros and and cons of unintentionally having sex on your roof (…I really hope those tiles were rubber…) but that’s not why I am writing this essay. To admit you are unprepared for what life has to throw at you in the way Siddhartha did is not to say, “Oh, I don’t have healthcare and I’m not sure what will happen if I ever break your hip,” but like, make sure you have healthcare and stuff. What it means to admit you are “not ready to handle this” is to admit quite a lot honestly.
I am not ready to grow up and assume responsibilities for my actions.
I am not ready to admit that I have to take better care of myself.
I am not ready to grow old and feel the creaks and aches in my bones.
I am not ready to admit to myself that I actually am old and will one day die.
I am not ready to admit that maybe, just maybe, I have wasted my life.
When Buddhists say the world we see is an illusion we have to wake up from, we are not saying the things you see, hear, and taste are not real, but that they are colored by a certain perception. YOUR perception. That you need to put aside your opinions, grudges, ideas, and experience aside for a second (as much as you possibly can) and just LOOK AT IT ALL. Stop what you are doing for a while, sit down, take a deep breath, and just be a part of the world without the intrusion of your own thoughts and ideas. Find that stillness within you and fully inhabit it. It’s okay not to move a million miles a minute and doing a hundred different things and travel a ton of different places to keep yourself busy or to be a “success.” Doing those things gives us a greater knowledge of the world around us and of ourselves, but it does not always give us a chance to actually be a part of the world. Siddhartha saw this. As a man in his late twenties with a wife and child on the way, he had a lot of roles to fulfill: To be the future leader of the Shakya clan, conquer other lands, and lead his kingdom into a golden age, and be a father and wife on top of all that. Siddhartha felt the same types of responsibilities and pressures we may feel today, and just like we do today, he found a way to distract himself.
Whether it was with women or entertainment, Siddhartha had many avenues open to him to forget his true self. We have similar distractions at our disposal too, whether it be a relationship, a vacation, or a video game. There are so many more distractions today than there were during the time of the historical Buddha – hell, we don’t even have to participate in actual reality if we don’t want to any more, all one has to do is go online. But Siddhartha realized he was empty, that he was running towards the wrong stuff and not towards that one thing that mattered above the rest – our true nature. Our 100% goofy, ridiculous, imperfect person we truly are behind the opinions, distractions, and jokes. The more you run away from it, the more you are steeped in illusion and desire. If you are not relating to the world in an optimal manner, you are not relating to it in a healthy manner. And Buddhist meditation, more than any other spiritual practice I have participated in before or since, has the ability to give you the tools and framework necessary to just be still, or in the words of the Korea Zen Master Seung Sahn, to “put it all down.”
Clear Direction
“Put it all down.” Another phrase I have heard quite a lot over the past seven years. I started practicing with a meditation group when I was eighteen affiliated with the Kwan Um School of Zen, an American school of Zen Buddhism founded by Seung Sahn, a certified Zen master from the Korean school known as the Jogye Order. Seung Sahn made the phrase “put it all down!” famous among his first students, and the members of the Kwan Um School of Zen hearken back to it even forty years later. As to what it means, you will have to find out for yourself because each person relates to it in a different manner than another person does. If anything, it means to put down and put aside all that which is unnecessary in our minds and hearts. Here’s a famous story illustrating what I mean:
A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side. The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman. Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his journey. The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them. Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?” The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”
If you caught on, you realize this is not a debate about monastic precepts, but exactly how we see the reality of the world around us. For the younger monk, the woman he sees before him is exactly that – a woman. No amount of thinking can divorce the fact of what he sees before him from the idea he has of what a woman is supposed to look and sound like. However, the older monk, due to his longer years of practice, isn’t clinging to the idea of the woman. Sure, the person in front of him is indeed a woman, but she’s also a human being. He does not have to be attached to any of the thoughts and feelings that may arise from the idea of a woman a male monk such as himself may have. He may have picked the woman up, but he “put down” any attachment to certain thoughts and feelings he may have about the woman or women in particular. In essence, he was able to relate to his world in a way that was compassionate, wise, and optimal – he didn’t get bogged down in any of the thoughts that may make it impossible for us to handle the world as it is.
“Putting it all down” is a process. It doesn’t happen in a day or a week, especially not in a month. We have to work at it. Siddhartha did. He went through a lot of trial and error, needless asceticism, and just plain dumb diet choices before he found the Middle Path and eventually enlightenment. The thoughts, ideas, opinions, words, and biases we may hold have to be examined and traversed. As long as we practice, we are realizing our true nature, but that does not mean we get to leave behind all the messy stuff that makes us who we are. Hell, I’m not a perfect person. I have made mistakes, and am probably making a mistake right now by writing this and not trimming the weeds in my front yard, and will continue to make mistakes. I will say and do things that are always imperfect and not in accordance with what I want to put out into the world. But that’s okay. The practice is not about being perfect. It’s about saying “I AM ready to handle this.”
I am ready for constant change and all the good and bad that brings.
I am ready for the gray hairs and the aching bones and the awesome senior discounts.
I am ready to do better not only for myself but for my family and for all beings.
I am ready to admit I could have used my time more wisely.
I am ready to admit that I will one day die and that there are definitely a few relatives that I’m scratching out of my will.
Buddhism does not say you need to accept Buddhism (whatever “Buddhism” is). Buddhism says you need to be ready to accept yourself, because who you are and what the world is are the same, and by opening up yourself to that will make you a better person. And don’t forget to add a dash of wisdom and compassion to boot.
Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma
see no Dharma in everyday actions.
They have not yet discovered that
there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma. – Dogen
Zen Millennial 