If you are bound by worldly matters,
You will drown in troubles.
Just like an old elephant who is stuck in a swamp and cannot get out.
From S.
Dogen's Shobogenzo Hachi Dainingaku.
Tathagatas do not go anywhere,
Nor do they come from anywhere,
And the true nature of dharmas does not come or go.
The body of an elephant does not come or go.
Likewise,
Tathagatas do not come or go.
From the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000-Line Sutra.
Here is the elephant in the room of Shikantaza Zazen.
What does it mean to think non-thinking?
It sounds impossible,
Like trying not to think of elephants after being told not to think of elephants.
However,
It need not be a mammoth task.
Let's compare our thoughts and emotions passing through our heart and mind to large elephants passing through a tiny room.
Imagine that you're sitting Zazen in the room,
Cross-legged and comfy,
When a huge elephant suddenly wanders in.
Actually,
It proves to be just the first of a great line,
One after another,
Wandering in as the prior tasker wanders out,
Trunk to tail to trunk.
Although sometimes with quiet minutes in between.
This is our parade of wandering thoughts and many emotions.
Now here's the trick.
Pretend for a moment and truly feel what the experience might be like if you really and deeply were not bothered by the elephants passing through the room with you,
Did not care,
Were totally cool with it,
Barely even noticed their presence or not at all.
We do not try to stop the elephants,
But neither do we summon them or play with them.
What would it be like in your mind if you were experiencing sitting like that,
So calm and still that it is unmoved by elephants passing nearby?
In ordinary life,
Our daily minds resemble a mad circus,
Maybe a chaotic jungle.
We react to the elephants passing through our awareness,
Jumping on,
Leaping from one to the next,
Pulling their tails,
Prodding them with a stick,
Often tangled in their trunks.
Sometimes we chase them to catch them,
Sometimes we run away in fear,
Sometimes we end up trampled underfoot.
What is more,
All our meddling seemingly summons even more elephants of thought and emotion into the crowded room.
The jumbled circus of thought jumbos and emotion mastodons never ends,
And we taunt them and stir them up more.
But in Zazen,
The elephants are tamed just by letting them be,
Letting them pass by unmolested,
And without concern.
In Zazen,
Whenever an idea elephant wanders into the center ring of our mind,
We pay it no never mind.
Do not react,
Do not jump on,
Neither prod it,
Nor hug it,
Nor pull its tail.
We observe without judgment.
We sit clear of tusk and trunk as the pachyderms slowly pass.
The elephant's entrance is no more impressive to our heart than our cat's having entered the room,
Or a breeze,
Or shadow,
Or light beam entering the window.
Not even that.
We see,
But really do not notice,
Do not care,
Do not think it worthy of thought.
And if we do happen to notice,
We are allowing,
Even welcoming,
Ready to make room.
Remember this like an elephant that cannot forget.
We are not trying for a room free of elephants,
Even as the quiet space between beasts may sometimes grow long.
Rather,
We truly feel the same stillness and space in a room filled with elephants,
Or in their total absence.
Please imagine that.
What is more,
Our heart stands in equanimity,
Even should the great creatures lurch and rear up,
Start to smash the glassware,
The tables and chairs.
Please,
For a moment,
Try to imagine and feel what such equanimity would feel like.
You are okay with it.
Even if you might be crushed,
Death met under hoof,
Sitting in radical equanimity,
Whatever will be.
You will let our huge friends move through,
Let the glass break and the furniture be turned to splinters.
In Shikantazazazen we just keep sitting,
Not reacting,
Not trying to stop events.
By and by,
Each thought elephant wanders out as naturally as they wandered in.
We neither chase nor run away.
Our non-reaction does cause less elephants to enter,
And the quiet times between trumpeting arrivals becomes even greater,
Even if the procession never truly stops.
But we are not seeking a room free of elephants.
In fact,
There is nothing to seek,
Nothing to chase away.
So quiescent are we in heart that we no longer truly care or notice whether there are elephants present or not,
Whether they are here or not.
In a famous old story,
Kulahamsa Jataka,
The Buddha is said to have tamed an angry and violent elephant with calmness,
Unflinching,
In this way.
Now I don't mean to say that we're not feeling things in Zazen,
For the great beasts are our thoughts and feelings themselves,
Both pleasant and unpleasant.
However,
We are feeling equanimity about those feelings felt.
Some of these elephants are truly scary,
Ugly,
Tragic and or threatening.
And we should not be afraid of being afraid sometimes.
Even should we react,
Not with calm,
But with the tension,
Fear,
Feelings of loss and sadness as is natural when faced with death and destruction charging at us in life,
Roaring in a rampage,
That tension,
Fear,
Loss and sadness is itself but another elephant which we can then proceed to leave alone.
In other words,
Let's feel equanimity about our naturally being scared of the really scary elephants.
Babar was right to cry when his mother died.
And African elephants do grieve.
Life may be ultimately like a dream of elephantacies.
But the scary challenges are real enough.
Let the tragic and terrifying herd of sickness,
Death,
Loss and losing appear.
And let any accompanying herd of fear,
Sadness,
Disappointment and longing appear.
And let them all wander by,
Together.
The heart which is thereby tamed will be your own.
Please do not misunderstand.
What I describe is only for thought elephants of the mind in Zazen.
Once visiting India,
And this is an actual story,
I witnessed a flesh and blood bull briefly start to panic and charge a crowd,
Barely reined in by its handler.
A most frightening sight.
Far from sitting Zazen in the elephant's path,
I ran with the others.
When a worldly danger,
Whether animal or disease,
Fire or flood presents itself,
There is a time to sit quietly and accept,
And a time to flee to safety or take action.
Taking our medicine or seeking shelter,
Sitting afterwards.
Of course,
Even in the time of danger,
A calm and easy heart will help the elephant keeper,
The patient in hospital,
The firefighter facing a blaze.
Ultimately if we practice these elephant tricks,
Letting our mind mammoths pass unmolested through our little room,
The room's walls themselves may come to grow translucent,
Even vanish,
The space proving boundless.
As the sitter,
The sitting,
The open space of the room,
Its light and shadows,
Both the cat and the breeze inside and outside our heart,
And all the elephants themselves start to soften,
Lose separation,
All things,
Animals,
Men,
In moments manifesting both themselves and each other.
Like the blind men who finally realize ears and trunk,
Legs,
Flank and tail as the wholeness,
The open space is the heavy colossus without weight or mass.
The cat is the light purring.
The loudest trumpeting is silence and you are the entire herd sitting,
While each bull,
Cow and calf is the whole of all of it passing through,
Like the air.
The whole parade never came from anywhere,
Never goes anywhere.
The rings of circus prove ensos.
Elephants non-elephants.
Thinking non-thinking.
