Zen's Two Silences

This talk examines the relationship to sounds and silence as well as all inner and outer perceptual experiences from an all-inclusive and non-judgmental Soto Zen Buddhist meditation practice perspective.

Transcript

Zen and two versions of silence.

There are fundamentally two ways of relating to silence by inference to sound.

Both approaches find clear expression and are reflected in these responses to an audio talk I gave on Mushotoku or No Gaining Mind that I gave recently.

One person found the sounds to create disharmony and felt them as a disruption and as a big distraction.

They said,

This is good content,

However the background noise is distracting,

Especially the cell phone,

Email sounds going off and the trucks driving by.

Otherwise lovely.

Thank you for sharing.

We might ask distraction from what?

Shikantaza zazen or just sitting is an all-inclusive practice and just sitting with no gaining mind and no specific object of concentration.

If we sit and remain open to all experience,

What is there to be distracted from?

Distraction comes from judgment,

Which stems from a dualistic perception of the world,

Inner,

Outer,

Good,

Bad.

That is,

Judging one type of sensory experience is desirable and another is undesirable.

In this case we could say silence good,

Sounds bad.

Judgment is fine in everyday life,

For example,

If you're choosing to pick one of two heads of cabbage at the supermarket,

You want to pick the freshest one,

Or whether you're noticing a traffic light,

Whether it's red or green before crossing the street,

That makes sense.

However this dualistic orientation,

Sound bad,

Silence good,

Is not relevant to our sitting practice.

We can parse this down further,

Sound of the bell good,

Sound of the truck bad.

On the other side of the same coin,

Such as when a round of sitting feels intolerable,

Either physically or psychically or both,

We might say no sound of the bell bad,

Sound of the bell good.

In either case we're adding feelings or thoughts to the initial sound and the judgment.

This is only human and only natural.

The other person responded very differently,

Beautiful,

Here and now,

With the trucks and the horns and the email notifications,

So very,

Very real.

Life,

Life just happening,

Thank you.

This individual felt the harmony,

Unity and peace in the rise and fall of all experience,

In choiceless awareness.

No judgment,

No attraction,

No distraction,

Just being as it is.

Life,

No attachment or aversion,

Life.

One person is seemingly looking for something and paradoxically missing it.

The other person stopped looking and paradoxically found it.

That's what Mushotoku no gaining mind practice is all about.

This all points to the question,

A fundamental question.

What is our relationship to any experience,

Whether it be sound or silence or any other perception for that matter?

That is the direct experience without judgment,

Before we add on a story.

We might remind ourselves that the judgment or the story is just the next moment of mental consciousness and nothing special.

Like Ehei Dogen,

The 13th century founder of the Soto Zen school in Japan says of suchness,

You are already a person of suchness,

So why worry?

He adds,

If you are worried,

That's suchness too.

Oh,

Now you're laughing.

That's suchness too.

Whether you are happy with the sounds or not,

That's also suchness.

We could say that the first approach,

Viewing sound as a distraction,

Is dualistic.

We're trying to separate ourselves from what is actually and presently happening,

From what we have judged to be extraneous and a distraction.

At the extreme,

This way of viewing things can lead to alienation because separateness is overvalued and overemphasized.

I suppose that we could lock ourselves in a soundproof room if there's any resistance to practice,

But then we might get distracted by the sound of the heartbeat or the breath.

So you can see it's a state of mind and how we relate to any experience.

The Zen teacher Dainen Katagiri wrote a book,

Returning to Silence.

He also wrote a book,

You Have to Say Something.

So both sound and silence are important.

Have you noticed how everything emerges from silence and returns to silence?

How silence is a kind of a matrix that contains all sound and that connects all sound?

We could say that because consciousness is object-seeking,

That silence is the background and sounds are the foregrounds.

If we let go of judgment,

We can experience a balance between silence and sound and feel a sense of ease in the just noticing,

The just noticing of what is actually happening.

It's the same with thoughts and other internal perceptions such as feelings,

Memories,

Wishes or fantasies.

They all rise out of and fall back into a matrix of silence.

Everything that we encounter rises and dissolves like waves rising out of one great ocean.

Each wave rises individually from one great ocean.

Each is unique.

Some are big and thunderous.

Others are small and barely create much more than a ripple.

They all eventually crash,

Whether violently or gently.

They break up into foam and recede back into the silence of the ocean.

They're gone.

Not unlike thoughts,

New waves either follow close behind or follow after a wider gap.

In any case,

Whatever arises comes into form and dissolves either slowly or quickly.

For example,

Mountains move slowly,

So slowly that we might think they don't move at all.

Rivers move more quickly and their movements are more noticeable.

The Upper Delaware River,

Where I live for example,

Is made up of many quiet pools or eddies that barely move at times and also rapids and waterfalls that move rapidly and with great force.

Even so,

There is great variation depending on causes and conditions such as the rocks and boulders in the river,

The wind,

And the weather,

Such as after a big rainstorm.

When we sit,

The body remains seemingly still.

However,

There is still movement.

The heart beats,

The breath rises and falls,

The blood circulates.

Sometimes we notice and sometimes we don't.

We can be sitting as still and as resolutely as a mountain.

The mind,

However,

Might be jumping all over the place.

As Dogen asks in his writing,

Zanmai o Zanmai,

The absorption,

That is the king of absorptions,

Is it vertical?

Is it horizontal,

Vast,

Small,

Doing a somersault?

Yet the body remains still and contains even our wildest inner experience.

And we continue to just sit and to just take notice of whatever is happening.

And as we continue to sit still and not react to these inner processes,

Over time things continue to slow down and a felt sense of ease and peacefulness emerges.

This is the ever-present ease and peace that is fundamental to our being and is present even before we ever sat down to practice.

And everything seems to fall into place.

And everything seems to fall into its proper place in harmony,

Sounds,

Silences,

Sensations,

Thoughts,

All of it.

This is the all-inclusive,

Non-grasping,

Non-rejecting practice of Shikantaza,

Just sitting with no gaining mind.

And please keep practicing no matter what.

It's very important for the well-being of all.

Thank you.

Reviews

Always so gentle and kind, bringing insights about the simple things that we never thought of. This lesson will help me improve my practice. Thank you!

I have been enjoying all your many talks and meditations
THANK YOU

This struck a chord. I was wondering if getting distracted even by breathing would ever come up. For me, this viewpoint is more “middle way” than sitting for hours and trying to ignore the world around us. Excellent.

Thank you Sensie. I'm finding your teachings & guidance very helpful 🙏

Thank you. I found your talk to be so very helpful to my practice. I'm very grateful to have listened.

An excellent explanation of how to include all experiences while we sit, and a reminder to accept everything that arises. Thank you

Thank you, Sensei. “Mountains move slowly…” brought tears to my eyes. I have never considered it in that way before. Thank you 🙏

Gentle yet prickly. How can pearls have such qualities?

A wonderful talk filled with useful reminders regarding practice! Grateful.

A wonderful summation of shikantaza. Many thanks for this gift.

This is my favorite talk of yours. That is, if I may be dualistic for a moment! Thank you.

I love the simplicity of this talk. It's not always easy to remember the "suchness" of every moment. So yes, 'keep practicing no matter what'"! Thank you! 🙏🏻 ❤️

Thank you! 🙏

A wonderful talk on our dualistic perspective of experience (e.g. silence/sound). Interestingly, I noticed my not so subtle desire for the bell to continue ringing at the end and not be stopped by your hand. I smiled. Everything has its opposite. Music is only possible because of silence. This is the nature of the universe.

Interestingly, long ago I had a dream and a portion of the dream was in the form of three cartoon cells. 1st quiet ocean, 2nd violet scene of shark breaking the surface taking a seal, 3rd back to quiet ocean. Always took it as a riddle, maybe now I understand 🤔

Thank you so very much 🙏

Thank you. I will return to hear it again.

Beautiful wisdom - coming from someone who is sensitive to sounds & often very averse to them, but lives in a busy household. I can see that this aversion can also strengthen my practice when met with compassionate awareness. Thank you :)

great explanations thankyou

Thank you. I really enjoyed your wise message. I make sure to practice and reflect every day. 😀

Thank you for this and your other talks - they are much appreciated 🙏🏽