Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life (15 page)

This is the natural progression of the practice life. We need the discipline to see these layers of judgmental thoughts and mental pictures. And it requires hard effort to stay with the bodily discomfort that comes with these thoughts. Yet we also need to understand how simply breathing into the center of the chest, residing in the quiver of being, and then extending spaciousness and compassion to our struggling, conditioned patterns is the essence of what it means to soften. To soften difficult self-beliefs is to truly understand that these are not the deepest truths about ourselves. As we learn how to make this soft effort around our relentlessly judging mind, as we learn what it means to awaken a sense of heart, we begin to relate in a new, more spacious way to the ancient wound of our seeming separateness. What we’re doing is learning to receive and accept the whole of our being, just as it is, no longer judging, editing, rejecting.

Through the disciplined precision of our efforts, we’ll come again and again to our edge—the difficult places beyond which we’ve previously been unable to move. Through the willingness to soften and surrender to what is, we learn that we can gradually move beyond that edge. It is only through this interplay of hard and soft, of effort and letting be, of will and willingness, that we learn to our amazement that we can emerge from the lifelong tunnel of fear that constitutes our substitute life into the nitty-gritty reality of our genuine one.

14

Letting Be

T
HE POWER OF OUR CULTURAL CONDITIONING
became clear to me recently when I was told about a man and his son who were in an automobile accident. The man died, and the boy was brought to the hospital. The surgeon, upon entering the operating room, said, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.”

The person who told this story asked me, “Who’s the surgeon?” At first I thought the whole thing was a Zen koan. I had no idea how to respond. But the answer was simple: the surgeon was the boy’s mother. This most obvious answer didn’t even occur to me. Although I don’t think I am consciously biased against women, the strength of our cultural conditioning was apparent in my assumption that the surgeon was a man. This drove home the point that many of our actions are based on culturally conditioned perceptions about which we may not be the least bit aware. How much of what we do is the result of this mostly unseen conditioning?

In the practice life, there is one particular cultural attitude that may wreak more havoc than any other: the deeply seated view that we have to
do
. We are culturally conditioned to believe that it is good to be active, to be productive. We have been programmed to assume that the way to happiness is to follow our inner compulsion to change and fix ourselves. The sense that we can
do
something to make things better is a deeply ingrained quality of our substitute life.

The basic theme of sitting practice—no matter what we
bring in the door or how we may be feeling—is simply to sit and let it be. We sit down, become aware of what’s happening in our bodies and minds, experience its texture, and then just let it be.

We can use the practice question “What’s going on right now?” to become aware of the state of our mind, the state of our body, and the sensory input from the environment. To experience this, ask yourself this question right now. What is going on in this very moment? Notice your state of mind. Is it busy? Confused? Calm? Upset? Just notice. Also, notice the state of your body. Is it tired? Relaxed? Achy? Settled? Again, just be aware. Now notice the input from the environment—the temperature in the room, the shades of light, the sounds. You don’t have to do anything—just become aware of it.

As we become aware of the textures of the moment, we’re rarely willing to experience them the way they are. We’re apt to see one aspect or another as a problem to be solved or an obstacle to be overcome. This is because we believe in our judgements and opinions about whatever is going on. For example, if we’re bored or sleepy during sitting, we usually judge it as a bad sitting. If we feel agitated or upset, we think we have to calm down. When we feel confused, we may long for clarity. But our practice is to simply remember that no matter what may be happening, it need not be seen as an obstacle or enemy, nor as something to fix or change or get rid of. From a practice point of view, whatever it is, it’s our path.

We only need to ask the question “What is this?” The answer is not to be found in an intellectual analysis but always in the physical experience of the moment itself. There are no words that can ever capture the “whatness” of the visceral experience of the present moment. Yet in experiencing its unique and ever-changing texture in a non-conceptual way, we can find a satisfaction not available in a life based mainly on getting, on doing, on fixing.

So the practice is to simply let life be. This is not passivity or pseudodetachment. We still need the discipline to stay present,
to remain still. The discipline is to choose in each moment not to spin off, to choose to be precise in our labeling and in our self-observation. We can practice this way both on and off the meditation cushion. The open mind that’s willing to look at whatever arises—that wants simply to know, to be with, to reside in the reality of the moment—is always accessible to us.

Struggling as we do when we try to change or get rid of an experience—whether in our sitting practice or in our life—is always optional. “Suffering” also is optional. This may be hard to accept, especially when we are addicted to our suffering. But we don’t have to suffer our suffering! We can just observe it, experience it for what it is, and let it be.

For example, suppose we have physical pain or discomfort. Usually this pain will be followed by believed thoughts such as “What’s going to happen to me?” or “I can’t believe this is happening.” As soon as we get hooked into believing these thoughts, our suffering begins. The physical experience of discomfort becomes layered with the emotional suffering. In fact, these believed thoughts usually intensify and solidify our physical discomfort. Instead, we can choose to observe and label our thoughts and then let our experience just be. What happens to the pain? Perhaps you can try this and see.

Several years ago during a long period of intense illness, I had to have a blood test weekly. From my own early conditioning, I had developed a strong aversion to blood tests. Often I’d get dizzy, and sometimes I would even faint. My aversion wasn’t rooted in fear of pain; it was simply a particular by-product of my conditioning. The fact that I saw this clearly didn’t matter. I’d still show up for the tests with lots of anxiety. In coping I tried all the Zen practices I had learned through the years. For example, I’d go in for the blood test and focus totally on my breath. But I’d still faint. I’d say little mantras about spaciousness or about sitting there like a mountain, but it made no difference. Practicing like this to counteract what I perceived as weakness in myself may even have made things worse. In judging
myself as “weak,” I gave my conditioned reaction even more power.

But one day while driving to the lab, I remembered the practice I had recently learned: to ask “What
is
this?” to whatever presents itself. From the moment I sat in the chair to have my blood drawn, I kept this practice question before me, intent on experiencing the texture of the moment. When the dizziness began, instead of the anxiety and dread of aversion, I actually felt the excitement of curiosity. I was going to discover what fainting really feels like! However, I didn’t faint. The dizziness passed, and I sat there quite at ease. When I gave up the struggle, not only did the unnecessary suffering disappear, but the physical experience transformed as well. Remember, I wasn’t doing this practice in order to avoid the unpleasantness of fainting, which is how we often skew practice. That’s what I had been doing before. In this case the willingness to just be with my experience disconnected the circuitry of my conditioning.

I’m not talking about calling our conditioning an empty illusion and pretending to let it go. That wouldn’t be real. What I’m talking about is a certain lightness of heart that we can bring to our experience. Without our attempts to be spacious, spaciousness arises. It arises when we stop believing our judgments, especially the hard-hearted ones we make of ourselves. When we stop resisting what is and over time learn the willingness to be with it, we may even come to enjoy our repeating patterns, our little human drama, the whole passing show.

When we feel anxious, the practice is to hear the thoughts, feel the anxiety, and just let it be. When we feel tired or sleepy, the practice is to physically feel the sleepiness and then let it be. When we feel ourselves resisting the present moment, the practice is to truly feel the texture of that resistance and then simply let it be there.

Living from the open heart doesn’t require getting rid of our fears, our unwanted feelings and personality traits, our difficult situations. The only things we have to give up are our opinions
and self-judgments. Everything follows from that, especially the courage to be as we are, however we are. Being who we are, though, is not a license to do whatever we please under the guise of “spiritual freedom.” It’s about being willing to experience within ourselves whatever arises, without
needing
to make it different. When we see our drama and difficulties not as a catastrophe but just as conditioning, we can approach them with less heaviness and more compassion. As we experience our drama within this bigger container of awareness, we can begin to relax into our sitting and relax into our life.

Perhaps we will even get a glimpse of the profound yet simple truth that all we really need to learn is the willingness to be. We don’t have to do or fix or change anything. In fact, as we enter deeply into the willingness to just be, we discover an abiding trust that seems to support us as we are. In our surrender to the moment, we experience the equanimity of the genuine life, free from the filter of our judgments or the need for anything to be different.

This surrender to the moment is the essence of living the practice life. Although it is so simple, it is also difficult to do consistently. Why? Because we’re not willing. We don’t want to be with life as it is. We want to believe our thoughts. But the practice life has to include seeing and working with this resistance—all the endless ways we obstruct our openness. And then we learn to come back, to simply be present, as best we can, with whatever our life is in this moment.

15

Loving-Kindness

A
YEAR OR SO AFTER I BEGAN WORKING
as a hospice volunteer, I was asked to sit with the body of a thirty-year-old man who had just died. He had requested that his body remain untouched for three days. He had specific beliefs about what happened following death, and his wish was for supportive people to sit with him through the process. Although I didn’t know him, I agreed to sit with him for three hours the next morning.

Upon opening the door to his room and seeing the emaciated corpse on the bed, I immediately turned away. This young man had died of AIDS; and at the sight of his skin-and-bones corpse, I felt the fear of death. I spent the next few minutes distracting myself—lighting incense, looking at the many pictures of him on the wall—doing whatever I could not to look at him in the present moment. Then I remembered that I was there not for my own comfort but to honor his request for support. I walked over to the bed, stood next to him, and examined his body. It was still difficult for me to look at him. I knew that my discomfort was a direct reflection of my own fear of dying a painful death.

I made a sitting place on the bed next to his, and for the next three hours, I sat cross-legged, mostly doing a loving-kindness meditation toward his body. I don’t want to romanticize this, because there were moments when I would drift off into daydreams or look at the body beside me and see only the corpse of someone with whom I had no connection. But as time passed, I
gradually stopped seeing just an emaciated corpse and instead started connecting with this human being.

I would breathe the image of him into my heartspace on the inbreath, and on the outbreath I would silently say to him a version of the words of the loving-kindness meditation:

May you dwell in the open heart.

May you be free of your suffering.

May you be healed in this moment, just as it is.

May the awakened heart be extended to all beings.

At first these were just words. I had no feeling of loving-kindness to extend to him. In fact, I had only discomfort and fear. But the practice of loving-kindness is not about trying to feel some special way. It’s about working with whatever is present, whatever blocks our natural kindness. So I stayed with my own discomfort, experiencing the physical reality of my emotional pain as I silently repeated the words of loving-kindness. Breathing into the heartspace, I began breathing in my own pain along with the image of the stranger next to me. Gradually the barriers between us, which were made of my own fear and defenses, began to break down.

As these barriers between us broke down, I was no longer experiencing his pain (as I perceived it) as separate from mine. In fact, what I felt was more like the universal pain that all human beings share. As I repeated the words of loving-kindness, a sense of deep connection began to replace my fear and discomfort. No longer was this just a stranger’s body lying on the bed next to me. For brief moments the apparent barriers between us broke down, and I experienced a sense of the universal heart—the heart that is the essence of who we are, beyond separateness.

When I was in my early twenties, I came across the following lines from Thomas Wolfe: “Which of us has known his brother? . . . Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?” At the time those words struck me to the core, but I didn’t know
the way out of my prison. Now, more than thirty years later, I can see what is required. Doing a loving-kindness practice is not a simple feel-good endeavor. It demands hard work. First we have to open ourselves to uncharted territory, beyond our normal agendas and protections. Then we must allow ourselves to see through the encrusted layers of fear and self-judgment that prevent real loving-kindness from coming forth. The problem, of course, is that for the most part we don’t want to drop our agendas and protections.