Category: Practice

Shikantaza and Mindfulness (or Zen and the Other Mindfulness, Take 2)

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit today. A recording follows the text.

I gave a Thursday evening talk earlier this month about Zen and what I called “the other mindfulness”: the work of Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer, whose research has revealed the surprising power, and many health and other benefits, of simple awareness—of paying attention. You can find that talk on my blog if you didn’t hear it.

Langer describes her work as the study of mindfulness, but she chose that term without knowing about Vipassana meditation, which is more commonly called mindfulness meditation. She sees no connection between the two. In fact, she thinks mindfulness meditation can be mindless. She says mindfulness is what might happen for meditators after they meditate, and that you don’t need to meditate to experience it.

Langer’s disclaimers haven’t stopped people from making connections between mindfulness meditation and Langer’s research about the power of noticing. They’re all wishful thinkers from Langer’s perspective. But all the comparisons are made between her work and Vipassana meditation, which is very different than shikantaza, Zen’s approach to meditation.

I think there are interesting connections between Langer’s take on mindfulness and shikantaza. Those of you who heard my earlier talk will recall that I asked an AI tool, Claude, to help me explore possible connections. Here’s what it said, which I think is quite good:

1. Non-goal orientation: Both Langer’s mindfulness and shikantaza emphasize process over outcome. Langer critiques mindless pursuit of goals, while shikantaza explicitly avoids meditation as a means to an end.

2. Present-centered awareness: Both approaches value immediate experience rather than abstract analysis. Langer emphasizes noticing novelty in the present moment, which aligns with shikantaza’s open, non-discriminating awareness.

3. Rejection of rigid techniques: Langer’s approach doesn’t involve formal meditation techniques, and shikantaza is considered the most technique-free form of meditation.

4. Creative engagement: Langer emphasizes creative engagement with one’s environment, which has some resonance.

So, this morning I want to say just a bit more about what’s going on in Zen’s approach to meditation in my experience, and why I do think it supports “the other mindfulness” (Langer’s version), whatever may or may not be happening in other forms of meditation. 

Here are some of the key functions of Zen meditation and how they help us cultivate the presence of mind and being—presence to experience, to life—that Langer studies:

  • Capacity to cope. When many of us begin to meditate, we fear we won’t be able to sit still for 25 minutes. That we won’t be able to tolerate the discomfort. That the sky really will fall if we don’t respond to that email now. Maybe we fear just being with our thoughts and feelings. One of the first things meditation does is simply increase our confidence that we can bear experiences we’d cast as unbearable. This reduces adventitious suffering: the extra suffering we tend to layer over suffering we can’t avoid, like an injury, or that we choose to endure, like a surgery to repair an injury. Meditation—all or most forms, I imagine—develops our capacity to cope, and this helps us become more at ease with life, with ourselves, and with others we find challenging.
  • Inclination toward noticing. This is Langer’s territory. It’s what she studies. Shikantaza truly is the most technique-free form of meditation. We just sit. There’s nothing more to it. So all that’s left is being. All that’s left is noticing, receptivity. What do we notice? We notice leaves rustling and sirens getting louder, then quieter, then gone; we notice our stomach growl; we notice our noticing come and go. We notice impermanence. Change. The river. 
  • Nonseparation; identification with it all. The river’s water works on the stone that we are, or at least that we’ve imagined ourselves to be. It smooths it, softens it, makes it porous, dissolves it in time. The distinction between stone and water becomes less clear. We feel less separate; more part of it all. More attuned to context, because we experience ourselves as woven into the fabric of our context. Sometimes we forget ourselves—in a good way.
  • Comfort with no-thing. The more we sit and notice, the more we know and don’t know. We know our experience more intimately, but confidence in our capacity to contain it conceptually declines. Our best concepts and constructs remain useful, but we see their limits. We no longer hold them so tightly. We develop comfort with not knowing and not being able to contain or control everything.

These are some of the fruits I feel Zen meditation practice, and Zen practice more broadly, offers over time. They seem very related to and supportive of the qualities in which Langer sees such value, including genuine curiosity and the capacity to get out of our own frame to consider others’ experience. Ultimately, she’s all about creativity: our capacity to respond freely and appropriately to life in the moment; to be creatures that co-create creation. I think Zen’s all about that, too.

Zen and the Other Mindfulness

Jeff

I gave this talk on March 6, 2025. A recording follows the text.

There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained its fruits. Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method. If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
– Dōgen

I recently listened to a long podcast interview of Ellen Langer, a pioneering and iconoclastic social psychologist who I admire immensely. I’ve never met her, but her work has quietly influenced my own—and my view of human folly and potential more broadly—for the past 30 years. She has been studying awareness, attention, and their implications for personal and social wellbeing for nearly half a century. 

Langer initially was interested in what she called mindlessness. Her work on mindlessness quickly piqued her interest in its opposite, which she called mindfulness. Langer’s use of the term mindfulness has led to some confusion between her ideas, on the one hand, and practices and ideas initially associated with Theravada Buddhism in the West, on the other hand. Today, Buddhism writ large—all streams and practices, including Zen—tends to get reduced to the term “mindfulness” in the Western popular imagination. Buddhism and mindfulness have become nearly synonymous.

But Langer didn’t know anything about meditation or the way some people were using the word mindfulness when she began her research. She chose the term mindfulness to describe her own research interest independently decades ago, and she’s still not particularly interested in so-called mindfulness meditation. 

Let me tell you just a bit about Langer’s work and findings. I learned about her as a graduate student as I worked closely with one of her colleagues. I used to spend endless hours in the basement of Williams James Hall, where the Harvard psychology department had its library, photocopying articles and book chapters I needed for my work on conflict resolution. Can you imagine? That was the Stone Age. Who does that anymore?

One of Langer’s early experiments involved copy machines. She observed how people standing in line to use a copier reacted when one of her graduate student collaborators tried to cut the line. Sometimes she would say, “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine?” About 60% of the time the collaborator would be allowed to cut. But, sometimes, when her collaborator cut the line, she would say, “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” In these cases 93% of these poor people mindlessly let Langer’s collaborator go first, even though she had given them a contentless non-reason for cutting the line. Needless to say, everyone else was in line because they also needed to make copies.

Langer became famous after another of her early experiments. She put a group of frail men in their 80s together in a residence that had been set up in every way to resemble the world 60 years earlier. The newspapers were reprints from their youth. Antique radios and TVs played music and shows from their 20s. Before long, these men were playing basketball together. Their mental health improved markedly. Blood draws before and after the experiment showed important biomarkers improved significantly, becoming typical for a young person.

Langer has produced scores of other fascinating, pathbreaking research over the years, much of it focused on improving health and healthy longevity. I’m looking forward to reading her most recent book, The Mindful Body. As the title suggests, she doesn’t accept the notion of mind-body dualism.

So in this interview I mentioned, Langer said something that has led to this talk. Asked whether her work on mindfulness was connected to mediation, Langer said no, then added, “mindfulness is what happens after meditation.” She’s implying that mediation can be mindless, or just unrelated to mindfulness by her definition. She’s more interested in the experience of those of us who meditate when we’re not meditating. Meditation is valuable from her perspective only if it promotes mindfulness as she defines it. And, even when it does, she’s saying it isn’t the only way to become mindful off the cushion. While I do think different forms of meditation can produce benefits other than those Langer cares about most, I agree with her as far as she goes.

But Langer’s conception of mindfulness is mainly contrasted with Vipassana meditation—its techniques, goals, and effects. Vipassana meditation is quite technique heavy and goal oriented. Langer is focused on developing our capacity to notice new things, to be present, and to be sensitive to context and perspective. In Vipassana, the goals are to develop insight into the three marks of existence (impermanence, no-self, and unsatisfactoriness), and eventually to attain nirvana: the end of suffering by exiting the cycle of birth and death. It offers a structured and staged approach to meditation in pursuit of these goals.

Zen’s shikantaza approach to meditation is very different, and very resonant with Langer’s work. All the comparisons of Langer’s work to Buddhism seem to focus on Vipassana, so I asked an AI engine (Claude) if it’s ever been compared to Zen. Here’s what Claude said:

“Most comparative analyses have indeed focused on contrasting Langer’s approach with meditation-based mindfulness derived from Vipassana/Theravada traditions (particularly as adapted by Jon Kabat-Zinn).

However, there are some interesting conceptual parallels between Langer’s approach and shikantaza . . . :

1. Non-goal orientation: Both Langer’s mindfulness and shikantaza emphasize process over outcome. Langer critiques mindless pursuit of goals, while shikantaza explicitly avoids meditation as a means to an end.

2. Present-centered awareness: Both approaches value immediate experience rather than abstract analysis. Langer emphasizes noticing novelty in the present moment, which aligns with shikantaza’s open, non-discriminating awareness.

3. Rejection of rigid techniques: Langer’s approach doesn’t involve formal meditation techniques, and shikantaza is considered the most technique-free form of meditation.

4. Creative engagement: Langer emphasizes creative engagement with one’s environment, which has some resonance with Zen’s emphasis on spontaneous, unfiltered interaction with reality.”

There’s so much more I’d like to say about this, and about what I think is going on when we sit shikantaza, but we’re out of time. Let me end with Langer’s definition of enlightenment, which she was asked about at the end of the interview. She seemed a bit taken off guard because it’s not really her thing, but she was happy to respond anyway. (Langer is a very happy person.) I loved her answer. She said enlightenment is being curious about the reasons someone else is doing what they’re doing. That it’s a shift in disposition so that everything and everyone isn’t judged solely from our present, myopic perspective. She traces all our problems, personally and collectively, to that mode of perception and judgment.

Amen.

The Ten Grave Precepts and the Ten Commandments

Jeff

A Cursory Side-by-Side Comparison

This is a talk I gave at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on February 19, 2025. A recording follows the text, which includes some elaboration on a few of the closing points not included in the recording.

We’re midway through the progression of our Precepts Study Group, in which many of you are participating. We’re currently discussing non-speaking of others’ faults and errors, the sixth of the ten so-called Grave Precepts.

The fact that we have exactly ten grave precepts got me thinking last week about the Ten Commandments and whether there are parallels among them and our Zen Boddhisattva Precepts. Having now examined the commandments and the grave precepts side-by-side, I think the fact that there are ten of each is a coincidence. But what are the similarities and differences between these sets of moral principles that developed independently within two—eventually, three—distinct religious traditions, Judaism (and, later, Christianity), on the one hand, and Zen Buddhism, on the other hand?

There are similarities. Each of the first four precepts—non-killing, non-stealing, non-misusing sex, and non-lying—has an analogue. Five of the ten commandments prohibit killing, stealing, coveting others’ possessions, coveting another’s partner and committing adultery, and bearing false witness. These similarities seem rather predictable. Across cultures and throughout history, to promote social stability, ethical and legal systems have provided slowly evolving norms about killing, stealing, lying, and sex among group members that tell them when these actions are and are not appropriate.

But there also are at least two stark differences between the precepts and the commandments.

The first difference is that we have several precepts that have no analogues among the ten commandments—yet the inverse arguably is not true. Each of the commandments arguably is contemplated by one of our precepts, but not the other way around.

We have a precept for non-misuse of intoxicants; for keeping a clear mind. We have precepts for non-talking about others’ errors and faults and for non-elevating oneself and blaming others. At least on the surface, it’s hard to see commandments that correspond to these precepts.

We also have a precept for non-being angry. We can see anger as an emotion that often fuels behavior prohibited by one of the commandments, like killing, but we have a separate precept about non-killing plus a separate precept about non-being angry. We also have a precept for non-being stingy. That may sound vaguely related to not coveting and not stealing, but I think it’s different. We’re encouraged not only to refrain from wanting and taking what is not ours, but to freely share what we have; to be generous.

The second stark difference between the Ten Commandments and the Ten Grave Precepts is that there are at least three, and maybe four, commandments that seem to be about respect for a god figure who seems rather self-focused, authoritarian, jealous, and obsessed with displays of loyalty. These are the commandments to recognize the lord as thy God, to have no other gods before thy God, and not to make idols of God or take God’s name in vain. Perhaps we can add the commandment to honor the sabbath to this subset. The sabbath is a day of rest but also the day when Jews and Christians gather to worship God.

If we were to make a connection between these commandments and one of our precepts, the leading candidate would be non-abusing the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha). That seems like a fair comparison, but the spirit of our precept and the emphasis of these commandments seems very different.

There are three or four (!) commandments focused on submitting to and honoring a god figure who is somehow above it all. In contrast, we have one precept about not disrespecting the Three Treasures. (Notice we’re not told to exclusively elevate them.) And, as you know, we think of each of the Three Treasures both literally and metaphorically. Buddha is both the founder of our tradition, who is not regarded as a god, and our own innate, awakened, realized nature. Dharma refers to the Buddhist teachings and to all distinct beings and things in the universe as such. Sangha is the community of Buddhist practitioners and the unity, the ultimate oneness, the interconnectedness of all beings and things.

The metaphorical perspective on the Three Treasures also points to another major difference between the Judaic and Christian commandments and our precepts. The former are expressed as literal commands: “thou shall not” or “thou shall” do something. Our precepts are expressed rather curiously in terms of non-doing or non-being something.

As you know, while a literal construction of our precepts is one perspective we take on their meaning, we also consider them from two other perspectives, which we sometimes call the relational perspective and the intrinsic perspective. Whereas the commandments are expressed in literal terms—thou shall not kill—our precepts are expressed in the language of the relative or intrinsic perspective. Dōgen’s statement of this precept is at once relational and intrinsic: “Recognizing that I am not separate from all that is, I vow to take up the Way of Not Killing.” The older formulation attributed to Bodhidharma seems to double-down on the intrinsic perspective: “Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the everlasting dharma, not giving rise to concepts of killing is called the Precept of Not Killing.”

I’ve just made a rather cursory comparison between the Ten Grave Precepts and the Ten Commandments. I know there are Jewish and Christian thinkers throughout the ages who offer less literal, more richly nuanced interpretations of the commandments. (I also should hasten to add that many of the older and much more numerous Theravada Buddhist precepts that partially inspired our Zen precepts also are rather literal prescriptions and proscriptions.) Even so, the differences between the primary expressions of the commandments and of our Zen precepts are striking and significant. Comfort with metaphor, mystery, nuance, and complex, synthetic thought and experience is part of the Zen vibe. It’s there from the start, both on the surface and at the core of our tradition.

Our tradition has a distinctive quality. Zen has a very different psychological, cultural, and spiritual developmental orientation than the mainstream elements of other religious traditions. Maybe we can think of this a bit like swimming pools, which can be shallow or deep or have a shallow end and a deep end. Zen has one depth: deep. Paradoxically, deep envelops, sustains, and partially expresses itself as shallow. We can think of the literal perspective—just don’t kill, for example—that way in the realm of the precepts.

This is evident in the fact that other traditions generally are better at connecting with young children and providing a context in which their development is supported. Many of Zen’s forms, practices, and ideas put relatively more emphasis on the relational and intrinsic perspectives. Seeing from all of these perspectives requires a developmental vantage point young kids (and even some adults) don’t yet occupy. There’s no problem with that, however, because kids are expressing all three perspectives perfectly all the time. And we can respond to them from all three perspectives with our more developed capacity to conceptualize and reflect on this without needing to conceptualize it. In fact, Zen practice ultimately is about un-forgetting and then forgetting again; awakening to oneness and then letting our awareness of it sink back into our bones. Conceptual realization is an important waypoint on the path for some of us, but real realization is about unselfconscious actualization. Simply expressing it. Presence. But elaborating on Zen through the lens of developmental psychology will need to be a topic for a future talk.

Every Day is a Good Day

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit today, the day before Thanksgiving. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 6 in the Blue Cliff Record:

Yunmen gave a teaching, saying, “I’m not asking you about before the fifteenth day of the month. Why not say a word about after the fifteenth day of the month?”

He answered himself, “Every day is a good day.”

The full moon is a metaphor for enlightenment in Zen. In the Chinese lunar calendar, the full moon appears mid-month, so the monks training with Yunmen would have heard him asking them what it’s like to be enlightened. 

They seem confounded, so Yunmen answers his own question, “Every day is a good day.” 

What does he mean? Is he taunting the monks by saying every day is a good day only after the full moon rises; only after one is enlightened? I don’t think so. 

I expect there was a long silence before Yunmen answered himself. He would have known the monks were thinking to themselves, “I have no idea what it’s like after the full moon. Why are you asking me? I can only imagine my life right now, before the full moon.” 

Living in close quarters with Yunmen, the monks also would have seen him getting sick, getting frustrated occasionally, sometimes forgetting things and making mistakes, after the full moon; after enlightenment.

I think Yunmen truly means every day is a good day, including the days before the full moon. These days when the monks think the moon is hidden and they lack enlightenment.

Yunmen’s question simultaneously meets the monks where they believe they’re at and contests their self-understanding. Yunmen is addressing seekers; people seeking enlightenment. They’re sure they don’t have it or haven’t yet found it. More than one of these seekers would have asked Yunmen, “What’s enlightenment like? I want to know. Tell me.”

Yunmen turns this question back at them. “You’re always telling me about your troubled lives before the full moon; before enlightenment,” he seems to be saying. “Tell me something about your life beyond the full moon, right here and now.”

But they’re dumbfounded. 

Yunmen’s question both confirms the monks’ belief that there’s a time before enlightenment and a time after it and challenges that belief. Yunmen implies they can describe the enlightenment experience and invites them to do so.

If Yunmen thinks they can describe life beyond the full moon, then perhaps it’s not the idealized life they imagine. Perhaps it’s still a life with troubles.

If only someone had just groaned about their splitting headache or the lukewarm tea.

Yunmen’s question divides time into before and after, but, as I’ve said, his response doesn’t differentiate between the days before the full moon and the days after it. No before. No after.

Troubled or untroubled. Our awareness attuned to the light that shines within or not. Grateful or not.

Every day is a good day.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit on August 14, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 41 in The Gateless Gate:

Bodhidhama faced the wall. The Second Ancestor stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and said, “Your disciple’s mind has no peace yet. I beg you, Master, please put it to rest.”

Bodhidharma said, “Bring me your mind, and I will put it to rest.”

The Second Ancestor said, “I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it.”

 Bodhidharma said, “I have completely put it to rest for you.”

I want to speak briefly about meditation practice this morning—about the nuts and bolts of it. The nuts and bolts of meditation practice and the struggles to use them early on that most of us experience point to deeper truths we may discover through our practice.

Bodhidharma is regarded as our first Zen ancestor, as you know. He is said to have brought Buddhism from India to China. His student, Huike, is the Second Ancestor—the second in the line of six early teachers from which the Zen tradition developed.

Huike’s state of mind is troubled as he meets Bodhidharma and asks for help. He’s seeking peace of mind. Huike is so troubled he cuts off his arm, or so the story goes.

Many of us come to Zen practice similarly troubled. We may not be so disturbed that we’re ready to sever a limb, but we do aim to cut off certain streams of thought or psychological or emotional experiences that are agitating us.

And many of us imagine that’s the point of meditation practice. Though experienced practitioners tell us otherwise, we think quieting the mind means stopping thought and other mental experience. Certainly it must at least mean developing perfect concertation; stopping the mind from wandering at all during meditation. Right?

So we set our mind to controlling our mind. But this project is doomed to fail. The state of mind, and the understanding of mind, that we bring to practice initially can’t find its way out of the box it creates. 

Our narrow sense of self, our narrow conception of mind, is about achieving seeming safety—perhaps even about achieving certain real and legitimate forms of safety—by seemingly gaining control of our environment and our experience within it.

But the liberation we ultimately seek, the peace of mind we crave, requires giving up the quest for ultimate personal control. We must give up the pretense of being the center of the universe to experience ourselves centered in the universe. We must open the hand of thought, as Uchiyama Rōshi put it.

As we settle into practice, we’re likely to notice our mental activity attempting to direct our mental activity toward reduced mental activity. That type of noticing is very significant, though it’s often followed at first by further mental activity that’s critical of our mental activity that was trying to direct our mental activity toward reduced mental activity.

Another subtle form of noticing is noticing how we try to control the breath during meditation. Noticing that can be a doorway to liberation. We may realize the breath is doing fine on its own, without our efforts to control it. Then we may simply open the hand of thought and experience the breath rising and falling.

If we can do that, perhaps then we begin to notice the breeze rising and falling, the seasons coming and going, now liberated from the pretense that we can and must control our environment and experience. We can participate. Our participation is an influence, but total personal control is a fantasy. 

Meditation teaches us to meditate. Meditation teaches us to live. To participate. To know we’re a part of it all, to accept our part, to take part.

Meditation helps us align our personal state of mind with the active stillness of Great Mind, which is what it means to find peace of mind. We discover we’re not separate, and never were separate, from all that is, no matter what’s arising in and around us.

Our sense of in and around, of me and all else, becomes more permeable. We discover ourselves and all else as mysteriously and matter-of-factly distinct but not separate.

Nothing Twice

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on July 17, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is a translation of “Nothing Twice” by the late Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:

Nothing happens twice,
Nor will it ever. For this reason,
We were born without proficiency,
And will all die without routine.

Though we be the most obtuse
Pupils in the school of this world,
We will never be held back to repeat
A single winter or summer.

No day will be repeated;
There is no such thing as two similar nights,
Two identical kisses,
Two equivalent gazes into someone’s eyes.

Yesterday, when your name
Was said by someone as I chanced to overhear,
I suddenly felt as if a rose
Had fallen in through an open window.

Today, when we are together,
I’ve turned my face toward the wall.
A rose? What does a rose look like?
Is it a flower? Or perhaps a stone?

Why are you, O evil hour,
Thus admixed with needless fear?
You are — and therefore you must pass.
You will pass — and therefore you are beautiful.

Smiling, in a mutual embrace,
We will try to find accord,
Although we are as different from one another
As two drops of pure water.

Our group meets most days. Follows the same routine. Bows. Bells. Chants we chant again and again. Sitting still in the same posture as before. Rehearsing familiar forms. Talks and dialogue on familiar themes.

All this seeming sameness is a call to awaken to the reality of nothing twice.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus tells us no one can step in the same river twice, because it’s not the same river and we’re not the same person. We can take his thought further: no one can step in the same river once.

What is “this river”? What is “once”? Useful constructions, but constructions, nonetheless. All impermanent. Nothing ultimately graspable.

Dōgen equated ungraspable activity with Buddha nature, with emptiness, with realization.

From not one perspective, the perspective of our everyday perspective, ceaseless, ungraspable activity. From not another perspective, absolute stillness. 

Just this not one, not two perspective.

Nothing happens twice,
Nor will it ever. For this reason,
We were born without proficiency,
And will all die without routine.

Though we be the most obtuse
Pupils in the school of this world,
We will never be held back to repeat
A single winter or summer.

No day will be repeated;
There is no such thing as two similar nights,
Two identical kisses,
Two equivalent gazes into someone’s eyes.

Yesterday, when your name
Was said by someone as I chanced to overhear,
I suddenly felt as if a rose
Had fallen in through an open window.

Today, when we are together,
I’ve turned my face toward the wall.
A rose? What does a rose look like?
Is it a flower? Or perhaps a stone?

Why are you, O evil hour,
Thus admixed with needless fear?
You are — and therefore you must pass.
You will pass — and therefore you are beautiful.

Smiling, in a mutual embrace,
We will try to find accord,
Although we are as different from one another
As two drops of pure water.

Enlightenment is Nothing Personal

Jeff

I gave this talk on May 1, 2024, during our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit. A recording follows.

This is part of the Zen teacher Reb Anderson’s guidance to us on shikantaza, which is included in our Sutra Book:

Zazen does not prefer success over failure, or enlightenment over delusion. If we are enlightened, we sit still in the middle of enlightenment, with no preference for it. If we are deluded, we sit still in the middle of delusion, with no aversion to it. This is the Buddha’s zazen.

Zazen practice is selfless. The goal of zazen is the liberation of all living beings from suffering, but the goal is exactly the same as the practice. In realizing this goal, one becomes free of self-concern and person al gain; and becoming free of self-concern and personal gain actualizes the goal. Nevertheless, zazen’s an initiatory awareness: it opens the door to a full understanding of how self and other dependently co-produce each other. This is the samadhi of all Buddhas.

The meaning of zazen, the enlightenment and liberation of all living beings, is not brought forth by the power of personal effort, and is not brought forth by the power of some other. Zazen doesn’t start when we start making effort, doesn’t stop when we stop.

We can’t do it by ourselves, and nobody else can do it for us.

Enlightenment is nothing personal. Many of us come to spiritual practice seeking to attain something personally, but sincere practice will simply help us come to see what’s present everywhere and always.

Yes, this increased clarity of perception may well feel preferable to the experience that preceded it—much like when we’re sitting in the optometrist’s chair and she flips to the lenses that give us 20/20 vision. I’m having a personal experience, but 20/20 vision isn’t especially for me, any more than sunlight or fresh air is especially for me. The signals riding the airwaves to which I tune in when I switch on my radio aren’t especially for me. I’m just tuning into them now. Others also are tuning in, enjoying the music.

If and as I deeply realize that the enlightenment of Buddha, of the universe, of all beings, is nothing personal, then in a certain sense, I realize my life also is nothing personal. My life is the universe’s life, the Buddha’s life. My life is life in and as the universe, in and as Buddha.

From the un-attuned perspective Buddhism calls delusion—which also and equally is a feature of the universe’s enlightenment, the Buddha’s enlightenment—what I’m saying may sound rather scary. The so-called deluded perspective very much wants enlightenment to be something personal; something extra special it can attain, contain, and cling to, even as it professes a desire to release itself into it. What we realize through practice is that each of us is an ordinary sort of special—and equally so. As we realize this, experientially, in our bones, not as an idea, personal experience is transformed into something at once intimately personal and nothing personal.

As I was about to begin preparing this talk I walked into our kitchen, in bare feet, to get something from a cabinet. I stepped into a patch of salt left on the floor, and it felt rather gross. Someone had filled a saltshaker or measured salt for a recipe on the counter beneath this cabinet and spilled some on the floor.

My first impulse was to ask whoever made the mess to clean it up. But I paused and thought, well, perhaps that someone was me and I didn’t notice or had forgotten. And even if it wasn’t me, it was me, because I’m part of it all. It’s nothing personal, I thought, then swept up the salt.

This felt like right conduct for me in the moment. I’m often advocating personal responsibility and accountability in our family, perhaps moralizing a bit too much about that at times. Personal responsibility and accountability are important, but for me the universe’s teaching in the moment was to approach the salt on the floor from a different perspective. Nothing personal.

Fran said something to me about koan practice at sesshin that has stuck with me, and which applies to every element of our practice, I think. She said koan work reduces the distance between subject and object. Notice she didn’t say it eliminates the distance between subject and object. Nonduality encompasses duality. They mysteriously co-create each other; are one and the same. Not one, not two.

We exist in subject-hyphen-object relationship. Subject and object without a hyphen implies existential separation. The opposite of separation is fusion, I suppose, and it would imply the complete merger and disappearance of subject and object. We and all else exist as subject-hyphen-object.

Better yet, we exist as connected subjects. The shift in perception we’re talking about, the attunement to the universe’s enlightenment, is mature, abiding awareness of our existence as a connected subject in an enlivened realm full of subjects.

My life is distinct, but not separate. We’re all jewels in Indra’s Net. Enlightenment is a property inherent in the net, not one some of its elements have and others don’t. Some elements may be relatively more awake, or tuned in, to their enlightened nature; others, less so.

But, truly, enlightenment is nothing personal.

On Anger, War and Famine in Gaza, and Reversing Vicious Cycles

Jeff

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on April 10, 2024. A recording follows the text.

This is an excerpt from a sutra in the Pali Canon:

Monks, there are these three kinds of persons found existing in the world.  What three?  The person who is like a line etched in stone; the person who is like a line etched in the ground; and the person who is like a line etched in water.

And what kind of person is like a line etched in stone?  Here, some person often gets angry, and his anger persists for a long time.  Just as a line etched in stone is not quickly erased by the wind and water but persists for a long time, so too, some person often gets angry, and his anger persists for a long time.  This is called the person who is like a line etched in stone.

And what kind of person is like a line etched in the ground?  Here, some person often gets angry, but his anger does not persist for a long time.  Just as a line etched in the ground is quickly erased by the wind and water and does not persist for a long time, so too, some person often gets angry, but his anger does not persist for a long time. This is called the person who is like a line etched in the ground.

And what kind of person is like a line etched in water? Here, some person, even when spoken to roughly and harshly, in disagreeable ways, remains on friendly terms with his antagonist, mingles with him, and greets him.  Just as a line etched in water quickly disappears and does not persist for a long time, so too, some person, even when spoken to roughly and harshly, in disagreeable ways, remains on friendly terms with his antagonist, mingles with him, and greets him.  This is called the person who is like a line etched in water.

These, monks, are the three kinds of persons found existing in the world.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a very hard time watching the news lately.  I ate dinner alone in front of the TV the other night.  I could barely manage to nourish myself after seeing images of kids in Gaza dying of starvation.

For so many, their spirits, and now their bodies, have been utterly crushed.  Today is the beginning of Eid al Fitr, the feast marking the end of Ramadan.  There traditionally are celebrations after prayers—prayers in which Muslims pray for peace and mercy.  Like us, they also pray for the wellbeing of all beings.  It’s hard to imagine these prayers and these celebrations in the midst of what Muslims in Gaza and Muslims the world over are experiencing.

It’s so sad that we repeatedly enact these cycles of violence.  It so often seems one person’s or group’s spirits get activated and elevated in an angry way to crush another person’s spirits in response to some real or perceived offense.  That prompts those who’ve been harmed to retaliate.  The vicious cycle goes on and on.

It seems Gautama Siddhartha often was asked by monks in his community, and by others he met, how to deal with anger and conflict.  To be honest, some of his guidance seems a bit too demanding and idealistic to me; unlikely to be accepted and practiced by most people.  In one sutra, for example, he admonished his monks to be tranquil even if someone “were to sever you savagely limb by limb with a two-handed saw.”

To be fair, the Buddha was talking to monks in his community when he said this—advanced practitioners, we might say—and he likely was pointing toward what the Zen tradition later came to call the Absolute: the radical emptiness that escapes everyday sensible awareness for most people most of the time.  The perspective from which there is only non-killing.  The perspective from which “my” life isn’t really “mine.”  From which there is no isolated me and mine; only Life (with a capital L) and, whatever I am, I am one with Life in life (with a small l) and in death.  

From the absolute perspective, there is no birth and death, only Life.  If only we could all grasp this, I imagine the Buddha is saying with this provocative example, perhaps nonviolence, nonkilling, would become the norm from a relative, sensible perspective, too. 

Still, the teaching I read a moment ago seems more approachable for most of us, so perhaps better to emphasize.  Perhaps if each of us can progressively shift from being a person who is more like soft ground than stone, and then from one who is more like water than soft ground, we have some hope of reversing the vicious cycles to which we contribute.  To sparking virtuous interpersonal and cultural cycles in which our hearts are less and less inclined toward violence of any form, to any degree.

So, let’s continue to let our practice soften us.

Precariousness or Suffering: Will the Real Noble Truths Please Stand Up?

Jeff


I gave this talk yesterday at our Full Moon Zen Thursday evening sit. A recording follows the text.

This is a passage from the Pali Canon:

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for disbecoming.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is this noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

These, of course, are the Four Noble Truths Shakyamuni Buddha is said to have shared in his first talk after his awakening experience. So very familiar to us, they obviously focus on the fact of suffering, its cause, the possibility of ending it, and a method for ending it.

A few weeks ago I read an article by Jonathan Gold, a scholar of Buddhism, that asks if the Buddha truly said “suffering” in this sermon. He reconsiders what the Buddha meant if he used a different word, “precarious,” instead of “suffering.”

This isn’t Gold’s idea. It was first proposed by the linguist Christopher Beckwith, who noted that a Greek Philosopher called Phyrro of Elis heard the Four Noble Truths and other Buddhist teachings in oral tradition long before the Sanskrit and Pali word “dukkha” was recorded in the early Buddhist scriptures. Dukkha is the word we translate as suffering.

Phyrro traveled to India in the 4th century B.C.E. with Alexander the Great’s army. The first Buddhist scriptures were written about 300 years later. Phyrro’s much earlier writings that were influenced by his encounter with Buddhism use precarious, not suffering.

Gold’s article examines multiple Buddhist texts, substituting “precarious” wherever “suffering” appears. He thinks this resolves many questions generations of scholars have had about the Buddha’s supposed use of the word “suffering.” I won’t try to summarize all his examples, but here’s one:

Scholars wonder why the Buddha would say the whole of life is suffering when so many of our experiences are pleasant: eating ice cream, holding a baby, smelling the roses. We might feel a sense of loss when these experiences end, but does that mean we were suffering during them? Buddhist teachers have been glossing over this and other problems with the word suffering forever or making rather contorted arguments to dispense with them.

But it’s not so hard to accept the notion that the pleasant experience of holding a baby is precarious, in the sense that it won’t last or that this little love ball might puke in my face while I’m holding her. Pleasant experiences sometimes turn unpleasant. Even when they don’t, they end.

If we substitute “precarious” for “suffering” in the Four Noble Truths, I imagine we get something like this:

One:

Life seems precarious.

Two:

Maybe what makes life seem precarious isn’t so much the obvious fact of impermanence, but the way we tend to respond to it: compulsively chasing after or trying to cling to experiences we find pleasant and compulsively avoiding or trying to push away experiences we find uncomfortable.

Three:

We can end, or at least dial way down, this feeling that we’re riding a rollercoaster with our eyes closed, alternately wishing it would end or begging for more.

Four:

We do that, well, by doing. By orienting differently in and to life. The Buddha embraced eight specific perspectives and practices he found helpful. He thought we might find them helpful, too.

Here’s another way to say the same thing, drawn from modern research on how our minds work, rather than the Buddha’s ancient personal experiment. When focusing on a task, like feeding a baby or washing the dishes, you can either have what researchers call a “state orientation” or what they call an “action orientation.”

If you have a state orientation, you’re focusing primarily on yourself: Do I feel prepared? Does the baby like me? The dishwater feels cold. What if I screw this up?

If you have an action orientation, you’re focused on the task itself, without concern for your emotional or physical state. You’d flinch and do something about it if the baby puked or the water were scalding hot, but you’re not obsessing about that possibility.

You won’t be surprised to hear people with an action orientation are more successful at whatever they’re doing. And I also doubt you’ll be surprised to hear this notion generalizes to the whole of life. If we go around chasing states, constantly asking ourselves whether we’re happy, that’s a recipe for unhappiness.

The Buddha apparently spent years chasing a blissful state. Many of us enter this path looking for a state of existence or nonexistence that feels more reliably pleasant; less precarious. The insights and guidance the Buddha ultimately offered seem more about how to set our intentions and act, and about not separating from our experience, whatever our state.

Perhaps ironically, we tend to find the stability we’re seeking by unifying with the shifting ground of experience, being and doing without fuss.

The Thing Speaks for Itself

Jeff

I gave this talk today at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit.

This is Case 3 in The Gateless Gate:

Whenever Chu-Chih (J: Gutei) was asked a question, he simply raised one finger. One day a visitor asked Chu-Chih’s attendant what his master preached. The boy raised a finger. Hearing of this, Chu-Chih cut off the boy’s finger with a knife. As the boy ran from the room, Chu-Chih called to him. When the boy turned his head Chu-Chih raised a finger. The boy was suddenly enlightened.

When Chu-Chih was about to die he said to his assembled monks, “I received this one finger Zen from T’ien-lung. I used it all my life but never used it up.”

Surgeons and those who work with them tend to be a close-knit group.  Like all humans, these people make mistakes, and, like many close-knit groups, they tend to circle the wagons when mistakes happen.

Lawyers representing patients harmed by surgical mistakes or representing loved ones after a patient had died from medical malpractice used to have a hard time getting redress.  One common malpractice scenario was leaving the little surgical sponge used to soak up blood during the procedure inside the patient’s body after she was sewed up.  The sponge would cause an infection.  Often, the patient died.

The rules of legal evidence generally require proof of what happened—of who did what when—to assign responsibility and assess penalties.  Members of surgical teams accused of malpractice would simply stay mum, refusing to respond to questions about how an obvious mistake happened.  They maintained a conspiracy of silence.

For a long time, the legal system didn’t quite know how to deal with this.  Plaintiffs’ lawyers lost cases, and victims or their families, some poor already, went uncompensated.

Then some insightful lawyer stated the obvious, arguing in court that the thing simply speaks for itself.  The judge agreed, and now we have the legal doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur, Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.”

This practice-journey we’re on together is our conspiracy of silence.  But it’s a different sort of conspiracy.  We’re not trying to conceal what can’t be concealed.  We’re allowing ourselves to notice and accord with—and as—that which is constantly revealing itself.

For 25 minutes at a time, we loosen our grip on our stories and yield the floor to silence.  Stories are powerful, especially arresting ones like Chü-chih cutting off the finger of a boy who didn’t yet know this life, his life, speaks for itself.  

We know from archeological sources and other evidence that our capacity for storytelling is ancient.  Our interest in story and capacity to understand it seems to be one of the most fundamental and enduring aspects of brain function.  Brain damaged kids with IQs as low as 20 still comprehend stories, even though they comprehend little else.  Kids organize play around stories. Humans of all ages construct their sense of self in narrative terms.

We’re often completely lost in our stories, as if our personal stories or the stories told by the groups to which we belong encompass and make sense of all there is to perceive and experience.  I don’t think we can completely escape our stories, but I do think we can interrupt stories that are too narrow, too partial, too parochial, or too fixed.  We can widen the aperture of the lens through which we let the light of experience in, and through which we channel the light of the world.  We can discover ourselves situated in a story vaster than we had imagined.  

So vast that simply going mum and being it is an appropriate response.

I’m partial to mysteries.  This story we live is a mystery.  A mystery that speaks for itself.  Everywhere and always.

In our meditation practice, we raise a finger to it, and as it.  Like this.  [Raising finger.]  Shhhhhhh.