Zen Mind, Haiku Mind
This talk was given at the North Carolina Zen Center. Starting with a distinction between the self-examination process of Vipassana meditation and Zen meditation, or zazen, the question is then asked: What is it to work with our mind and heart in the context of no-self? The talk itself ends at just under 23 minutes, followed by conversation among those present.
Transcript
A long time ago,
I had a class of students,
You know,
I taught nine to 12 year olds for a long time,
That happened to be really good at soccer.
I mean,
They just played some very skillful and,
But it wasn't a soccer field,
You know,
It was just kind of like a recessed play field,
So there were no drawn boundaries and this sort of thing.
And what was inbounds or out of bounds got a little confused.
And there's this one boy,
Tyler,
He would follow that soccer ball,
No matter where it went and play it from no matter where it was.
And frequently enough,
This meant that Tyler was tramping through flower gardens and playing the ball right from the flower gardens.
And he was very excited and he was a very good player.
And I had talked to him about the difficulty of that,
But it didn't really seem to interest Tyler so much.
Anyway,
Sometime later,
I was having a parent-teacher conference with Tyler's folks and he was a good boy and average student and we were having a nice conversation.
But I mentioned this to Tyler's mother,
Not only that this happening and not only did it trample down the flowers,
But you know,
His feet coming through the flower garden,
It compressed the dirt,
Which made it difficult for water to percolate.
And she looked me right in the eye and she said,
It's not dirt,
Sheldon,
It's soil.
She was a soil scientist,
Turns out.
And I asked her,
I'm like,
So,
I mean,
Really,
What's the difference here?
And she explained it pretty well.
She said,
Soil is something that can perform the duty or the process that it is meant to perform,
That things can live in it,
That things can grow in it.
Dirt can't do that.
Dirt is a pitcher's mound that's so compacted that it just can't really sustain plant life.
Dirt is what's under your fingernails when you dig in the soil.
Dirt,
She told me,
Is what gets on your pants.
And I looked at her and I said,
The only thing I could,
Yes,
Ma'am.
We often hear soil as a metaphor for personal growth.
And sometimes we need to till the soil of our psyche through therapy,
Personal retreat,
Conversations with friends.
We use mindful self-observation to sort of plow through our surface and reveal what's below.
And once we break that surface,
Once we expose our hopes,
Our difficulties,
Our pain,
We can prepare the soil for growth and change.
It's a good metaphor.
We loosen our minds and our hearts and we add nutrients like understanding,
Acceptance,
Change.
But for this to be of use,
You know,
We have to be honest enough with ourselves to know when we're really digging deep,
To be sure that what we're working with is the rich soil of our heart and soul,
You know,
And not just the gritty dirt of our own mind games.
Denial,
Selectivity,
Rejection,
Manipulation.
And there are Buddhist meditation styles which fit this model of emotional exploration and healing.
Vipassana meditation is a good example.
It's a method of transformation through self-observation of our physical sensations of the body,
Which in turn condition our feelings,
Our emotions,
The life of our mind.
And we learn to identify the roots of our suffering,
The ways we perpetuate it,
How we might relieve it.
But our practice of zazen is not this.
Zazen is not a thought-based process.
I mean,
How many of us get carried away from what I'll call zazen mind by thoughts that we have instead about our current sensations and feelings?
Everybody knows this story.
A painful knee,
An interesting memory,
Doubt,
Concern.
How many of us have heard from Teshin in Dokusan?
These are just words.
How can you show me your understanding?
Thoughts create a sense of separation in our practice of zazen and from our practice of zazen.
That's why we speak of non-attachment to thoughts,
Of returning to our practice,
Returning to the breath,
Returning to the count,
Returning to the koan.
Even when we think that our thoughts are useful,
And they might be.
Even when our thoughts are productive,
And they might be.
But in zazen,
Our thoughts separate us from that rich soil of single-pointed concentration,
From the richness of our breath,
From the richness of the count,
From the richness of mu.
And what we're left with is just the dirt of what we cling to,
What we try to avoid,
Our fantasies,
Our self-deprecation.
But are we not trying to work the soil of our being in zazen?
And if zazen isn't like that self-observational practice of vipassana meditation,
Then what is this practice of zazen?
What is it to work with the mind and the heart in the context of impermanence,
In the context of no-self,
Of no permanent identification,
Of no permanent identifiable self,
Where we hear that not knowing is most intimate?
Some of us are doing a breath-counting practice,
Or maybe just a simple awareness of the breath.
Others may be doing shikantaza,
Just sitting,
Or practicing with a koan.
And of course,
The thread of practice is the same among all of these,
To relieve the workings of our discursive mind,
To see what else might be found,
To greet our rising thoughts as though they're just passers-by,
Passers-by,
Here,
Then gone,
And fewer and fewer between over time.
And these thoughts not needing anything from us beyond just the sensation that a thought is there.
Just the sensation that a thought is there,
Not an examination of its content.
This is a real difference.
Just that thoughts rise,
And then pass,
Impermanent,
Flowing,
Flowing,
And giving way to zazen mind,
A clear presence in the moment,
Unhindered by the need to know.
You don't need to know something,
Just simply to be something.
Which takes practice,
And which can be fleeting,
Uncertain,
Hard.
So we sit,
And the more the better.
We sit with the practice that we've chosen,
Or the practice that we've been given.
And of course,
There are things that we can't do.
And of course,
There are things that we can say about posture,
There are things we can say about the breath,
This sort of thing.
But,
You know,
These are simply tools that we use in the development of samadhi,
That single point of concentration.
So how do we use these tools?
How do we practice?
The good news is,
We don't have to think about it.
With kindness,
Wuman tells us what to do in his commentary on the koan Mu,
In the Mumenkan.
He wrote,
Make your whole body a mass of doubt,
And with your 360 bones and joints,
And your 84,
000 hair follicles,
And your 80,
000 hair follicles,
And your 84,
000 hair follicles,
Concentrate on this one word,
Mu,
Or on this one breath.
Day and night,
Keep digging into it.
Gradually,
You purify yourself,
Eliminating mistaken knowledge and attitudes you've held in the past.
Inside and outside become one.
Exhaust all your life energy on this one word.
On this one breath.
If you do not falter,
Then it's done.
Just this breath.
Just this count.
This Mu.
For me,
Practice is learning to carry that with me in my life.
Day and night,
And not just here on the cushion.
Because,
You know,
We're not testing the water about this,
We're taking the plunge.
We keep digging into it.
Angling ourselves into practice,
Rosho Medo-Mora says.
I love that expression,
Angling ourselves into practice.
Waking and sleeping.
Through the day comes Aeon.
Comes Aeon.
Through the night comes Aeon.
It's a simple,
Yogic,
Experiential understanding.
But it's easy to overthink all this.
And Roshi Mora tells us that this practice is easy because we're not trying to attain anything.
We're not trying to create something.
Rather,
To simply uncover what's already there.
To allow it to be in a way that we can experience.
But Roshi Mora also writes that we can practice for years.
Without developing the willingness to embrace this practice wholeheartedly.
To angle ourselves into practice.
Moment by moment,
Task by task.
Throw ourselves into practice with each breath of our lives.
Day and night.
With our 360 bones and our 84,
000 hair follicles to concentrate.
A psycho-physical practice.
Not just the head,
Not just the mind.
Mind and body,
Which brings us to an experiential understanding.
Now is this a tilling of the soil of the psyche?
It can feel like it.
But there's something that also feels to me very light about it.
Direct,
But open.
As though without boundary.
Not separate from anywhere.
Now I have to be careful because I'm throwing around a lot of metaphor here.
We talk about samadhi.
Single-pointed concentration.
We talk about opening experiences.
Here's one most of you know.
Zen monk Kyogen.
One day,
While sweeping the grounds of the monastery.
Remember what happens?
It happens that a small little pebble gets swept up by the broom.
It flies through the air and it strikes a nearby stalk of bamboo.
And the sound awakened Kyogen's mind to a state of enlightenment.
That hasn't happened to me.
Though I keep sweeping.
I mean,
I'm just like a lot of you,
You know.
I'm sitting a lot and and sometimes samadhi is deep.
Sometimes it's not.
And there's always doubt.
But there's wonder too.
There's a wondering which has no fixed answer.
And that's okay.
And that's okay.
I think that's the heart of it.
Because again,
Not knowing is most intimate.
There's a quote from Albert Einstein that I love.
It says,
There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
And miracles can't be explained.
We try to understand but we can't.
And more,
Our thoughts about a miracle scatter its essence.
As thoughts about our experience in zazen keep us from the samadhi of zazen.
Both in its experience and in our showing of it.
Van Morrison told us years ago,
It ain't why,
Why,
Why,
Why,
Why.
It just is.
It just is.
Just an experience within broad openness.
Experience which is all of a piece without separation between an observer and the observed.
An experience without interpretation and shown in the same way.
Somehow still shown the essence of our experience,
Not the why,
Why,
Why.
So,
I was trying to put this into different terms and I was thinking about it.
And I started to think about haiku poetry.
I like to write haiku.
I like to read haiku.
I like to read about haiku.
It's such an interesting form,
This small little verse.
Small little verse.
Now,
The poet Michael Dylan Welsh describes a haiku as a means of expression that communicates from one person to another.
Crafted when a writer experiences a sudden manifestation of the essential nature of existence.
It sounds a little familiar.
A haiku is crafted when a writer experiences a sudden manifestation of the essential nature of existence.
He tells us that a haiku itself is the inspiration of an internal sensation that the writer experiences.
Which as just a sensation isn't burdened with interpretive language.
Either in its creation or its expression.
The poet's felt sense is a cause.
And its effect is the writing by haiku.
And when the haiku is shared,
The reader experiences the sensation that the poet originally experienced.
Not its meaning.
Not its why,
Why,
Why,
Why.
But just its,
Just is-ness.
A subjective experience moved from one mind to another.
Here are these haiku and see if you can see what I mean.
A crow settled on a bare branch,
Autumn evening.
Awake at night,
The sound of the water jar cracking in the cold.
Awake at night,
The sound of the water jar cracking in the cold.
Paper and pen,
The sound of the water jar cracking in the cold.
Awake at night,
The sound of the water jar cracking in the cold.
Paper wipes,
Delicately shining in a shaded glen.
Paper wipes,
Delicately shining in a shaded glen.
Winter rain,
The field stubble has blackened.
Winter rain,
The field stubble has blackened.
Nothing needs to be brought to a haiku's simplicity.
No interpretation is needed in its inception,
In its communication,
Or in its reception.
Paper wipes,
Delicately shining in a shaded glen.
It just is.
Simple,
Like the breath.
Like mu,
Nothing needed,
Nothing special.
All qualities of zazen mind,
All qualities of our samadhi.
I don't know if that all means anything,
But it's what I wanted to say.
Just a short little talk.
So I'm open to reflections,
Comments,
Questions related or otherwise.
But I was struck by how,
In Einstein's quote,
To perceive everything as a miracle,
It includes all the mistakes and all the painful memories.
And that's something that I'm working with now.
I'm working with that one.
Heeded that.
Just enough.
Heeded those errors.
Heeded them.
Yeah.
Still a miracle.
Yeah.
I hear you.
I guess that's a different question though.
You know,
I've heard this.
It's in the Three Pillars of Zen.
Teshun has mentioned it several times.
You know,
We often talk about great faith,
Great doubt,
Great determination.
You know,
I wonder what,
I guess maybe what your thoughts might be on kind of great faith.
Because I think that doubt is so kind of,
That determination is so palpable in the inner practice.
But maybe you could say something about faith as it relates to what it seems.
Well,
So yeah,
I mean,
So it's a loaded word.
There are those of us here in the room who are,
You know,
Escapees from organized religion.
And we don't want to talk about faith.
And Buddhism is a non-theistic,
You know,
Tradition.
So faith in what?
Who can answer that?
What do we have faith in?
I guess the way I've thought about faith over the years is that I'm not a natural meditator.
Meditation is hard for me.
But I've been doing it for almost 30 years.
And something keeps me coming back to the cushion.
And to me,
That's faith.
Yeah.
It's not faith in some deity.
Right.
Faith is the people we surround ourselves with.
I've never not come to this building and asked for help.
I've been turned away.
There are other places where I have been turned away.
Yeah.
So I know that if I come here and I ask for help,
I know that I have faith that I will get help.
Steve,
What were you going to say?
Professor mentioned in the final sequence yesterday,
I'm faithful to the trust that the Buddha wasn't lying.
And the Buddha was correct.
Right.
Wasn't crazy.
I'm in the process of getting you somewhere.
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah.
C.
S.
Lewis said that you have to have faith in Christianity,
That Jesus was neither lying nor a madman.
That,
Yeah,
I think everything that's been said is right.
And the idea that we share this inherent Buddha nature,
We share this interdependence that we so often don't see,
We so often overlook and overwrite with everything else we're thinking about and everything else we're trying to evaluate and judge and interpret.
Not that those things are wrong,
Very handy skills.
But we get lost in it,
You know?
Go ahead.
Also,
I think another word is trust.
That what all of us have said is we have trust in what,
Buddha nature.
Yeah.
I mean,
At the core of this,
The reason,
Like,
It's easy to talk about,
We're not talking about a belief structure that we have faith in.
We're not talking about a god with a giant beard.
But we are saying,
Form is void and void is form.
We are making some statements about the nature of reality at the deepest level that are quite profound and quite confusing and are radical.
There is a radical belief,
A radical idea or conception of this reality at the core of this.
And that's why saying works.
That's why we have to really dig into what Buddha nature is.
Is to say,
Unspeakable beingness fluctuating between the incomprehendible and the everyday.
Oh,
Wow.
But it's just that.
I mean,
It's just that.
It is just that.
It is.
I mean,
It's like trust the process.
In those practices,
The process.
Because just trust in the process,
Whatever that may be.
Because it is ephemeral in many,
Many ways.
You know,
Because language is not enough.
It's inadequate to say the things that we all want you to know about Zen or Zazen or any of this.
Just have to trust the process.
Because those who have come before seem to still be coming.
And they're doing OK.
In fact,
We're doing better.
And if you can say better,
You know,
We're not trying to be better.
We're not trying to.
We already start off OK.
We're just trying to do better.
We're just trying to improve.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Indeed.
I think language is the wrong tool altogether.
You know,
Which is hard.
Because we do language.
It's what we do.
It's how we live.
Hunter.
Yeah.
Paul Hallett for San Francisco Zen Center used to say,
Experience the experience you're experiencing.
So can you say more about doubt,
Sort of great doubt?
Is this sort of equal to beginner's mind,
Openness,
Not knowing?
Are they all kind of the same terms?
Or is this,
Are there some differences?
I would say yes.
And I'm going to say,
You know,
Think about doubt with a capital D and doubt with a lowercase d.
Doubt with a lowercase d.
I can't figure this out.
I'm a lousy meditator.
I've been in the city for 30 years and it still doesn't come naturally.
Ordinary doubt.
As opposed to great doubt.
What is moo?
What is the sound of one hand?
Hmm.
One in every crowd.
I think it's doubt because we know it's something that we have to,
You know,
To use a woman's term,
You know,
We got to dig into.
But without trying to determine anything about it,
To just wait and see what it is that I'm choosing words carefully because I'm trying to not,
You know,
Create this sense of separation.
I want to say what it is that can be revealed.
But of course the question becomes right away revealed to who,
Right?
How do we find that joined sense of union where it's not about the interpretation in its inception,
Its experience or its communication,
It just is.
I don't know if that answers your question.
I'm still working on this myself.
It probably always will be.
That is,
In fact,
I don't know.
Or is it a small d-doubt?
I don't know.
Is that the problem that we think we're working on?
So I'm like,
I'm at 28 years and I've never gotten any better.
Every time I feel like it's the first time I ever did it and I'm wretched at this whole of failing.
Yeah.
Because I'm trying to achieve something.
Right.
And that's what I need to stop.
Yeah.
Teshin always talks about,
Forget about the timeline.
It doesn't matter if you're 30 years in or you come to your first seshin and on the fourth day you're like,
Blown completely open.
Forget about the timeline and forget about what it is that you think you're seeking.
Because that's just a thought that you,
That I,
Have about what might be out there that I can achieve,
That I can find.
What is that way of being that isn't self and other?
See what I'm saying?
What is that?
That's great doubt.
That's a question of great doubt.
