“At this moment what is there that you lack?
Nirvana presents itself before you,
Where you stand is the Land of Purity.
Your person, the body of Buddha.”
Hakuin Ekaku
Song of Zazen
It is the nature of the mind that it easily forgets a previous state of ignorance. Once we’ve gained knowledge or experience, we can no longer retain what it was like to not know that thing.
As a young child, I can remember a particular aching loss when I learned to read. Even at that age, it hit me hard that as I gained something, I also lost.
Before I could read, I would spend hours devouring comic books, happily ignoring the meaningless word bubbles above Superman’s, Batman’s or Archie’s heads. Unencumbered with the ability to read, I was free to make up my own stories of the drawings before me. But once I learned to read, I couldn’t turn it off. I found it annoying that I could not not read. The words and their meaning forced their way into my mind, killing something innocent and pure in the process.
Krishnamurti once said, “The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again.” By this he meant, that naming things places a word between ourselves and the perfect beauty of the world around us. It is “another brick in the wall” that permanently obscures our previously pure and clear vision of our essential unity with all that is. Instead of the direct experience of this miraculous, feathered flyer and our connection to it, we step further into the dead world of conceptualizing and fragmenting “the garden” into a million disconnected parts and pieces.
As I got a little older, maybe 8 or so, I remember the last time I played with my small plastic dinosaur figures, and realized it didn’t work anymore. I wanted it to be fun but I couldn’t make it happen. I could not be the child who could lose himself for hours in imaginary play. Instead I was bored. I was still me but was I?
In order to grow and mature, our innocence must die. We find ourselves in a new world with no access to our previous state. As we move forward, the road behind us disappears like particles of dust in the diminishing twilight, leaving us with a strange sense of emptiness we call amnesia. We look back curiously trying to recapture what we used to be and find ourselves forgetting what we’ve forgotten.
Years later, it happened again when I bought my first computer at age 38. Almost immediately, my head felt different. Learning to use a computer literally altered my brain. I could feel the transformation slowly converting me from one state to another and once complete, I could not know what I no longer knew. The un-computerized mind had been erased and replaced with this new mind that I now use to type these words.
So it was with my introduction to Zen Buddhism around the age of 16 when a friend turned me on to Alan Watts. I suddenly found myself in a new world. And once there, I knew immediately I could not go back. That door was locked. I could only go forward or deeper into the mystery, knowing that as I did so, I was erasing my previous way of knowing (or unknowing) so completely, I could not be sure it ever existed. Our experience adds layers of knowledge, like geologic sediment, that forever covers and changes the previous self.
I realized early on that Zen was the pinnacle of where all religions and mysteries of existence ultimately lead. At some point, if there is any truth to be known, we must put down the books, stop identifying with our thoughts and become that which we seek; that which we already are but do not fully know. Our thinking mind is like a canoe that we need to cross the river. Once we reach the other side, we leave the canoe behind. We don’t carry it on our back.
For the Buddhist, she is challenged to experience her Buddha nature, and the Buddha nature in all things. Likewise, a Christian might identify with her Christ consciousness and look for it in others. In either tradition we don’t just visit the Kingdom of Heaven or the Land of Purity. We are challenged to become it or realize we are it. It isn’t enough just to memorize verses or to gain knowledge. What good is that? What good is religion if it does not lead to inner transformation? We are asked to wake up to our true nature. We are that.
Our thoughts are like a finger pointing at the moon. They are not the moon. I can talk about pizza but I’d rather eat it. I can talk about abiding peace and understanding but I prefer to experience it and become it; know it as I know myself. That is what Zen provides: a path past the impediments of thought to the direct experience of reality, transforming us in the process into our deepest, truest self.
There are two schools of Zen. One is Rinzai. The other is the Soto school. If you were a monk in a Rinzai temple, your teacher would likely offer you a koan, a kind of paradoxical riddle that can’t be solved with conventional thought. The koan is a powerful, purposeful arrangement of words designed to frustrate and ultimately defeat the dualistic or logical mind, shocking it into a new awareness or enlightened state of being.
One example of a Zen koan is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping.”
In the Soto school, there is much less emphasis on the use of a formalized riddle that needs to be wrestled with and solved. Instead, life itself is viewed as our koan. Your life and my life offers us plenty of opportunities to wake up and see the truth of our being. How does this work?
Think about something you are struggling with. If there is something painful in your life, it has that koan-like quality. It is a riddle that is not easily solved with conventional thought. Maybe you want something but can’t get it or you have something you don’t want and you can’t get rid of it. The more we struggle to control what can’t be controlled, the more we feel out of control.
Steve Hayes warns that as long as we keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll keep getting what we’re getting. What is the alternative?
In a word, workability. When we step back and mind our minds, we can calmly consider what isn’t working. Usually we will discover that our own thought process is the problem, not anything external. Our way of seeing is not helpful or useful. Clinging to “should” thoughts is especially problematic. Good, bad, right and wrong belong in the courtroom mind not the science lab mind. We can judge or we can learn. Which one works?
When I become annoyed the light turned red, it’s because I wanted it green. I can do this all day long, wanting what I don’t have or resisting what I do have and making myself unhappy in the process. To the degree I am unwilling to have what I have, that becomes my koan. We begin to solve our koans when we stop struggling with them and instead learn to welcome them and learn the lessons they contain.
The depressed clients I work with cling to a sad dream about themselves and it’s my job to find some means of waking them up to the miracle of truth and beauty that shines so bright within them, it blinds me. They trust their thoughts and feelings because, like the rest of us, they were trained to do so. This does not work but our culture reinforces the myths that govern our misery and malaise.
In Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith commits a crime when he writes in his diary, “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.” He had to believe that the lower class, the wretched poor, retained some precious innocence and wisdom that would one day resurrect society. Winston loses hope when he realizes the proles were no wiser than anyone else. “They were like the ant, which can see small objects, but not large ones.”
All of us are living this dream but failing to see who we really are, what this really means, what might occur if we woke up and understood the true meaning of the koans that comprise our daily experience. What is the solution?
When we shed our shoulds, we let reality be what it is without resistance. We can see through our unworkable lenses of judgment and blame or we can replace them with the clarity of acceptance and understanding.
Our lives are koans. What are we to do with them? Notice our thoughts. Sit quietly with our experience. Notice what works and what doesn’t work. Who is it that is reading these words and will be doing other things later and thinking other thoughts? Who is behind all this? Can you turn and see that limitless love and truth that is your essential nature?
What is our relationship with self? Are we judgmental and unkind or are we accepting and understanding? When we do the best we can, we accept and allow reality to be as it is. We can notice the judgmental thoughts without attaching to them.
In the courtroom or dualistic mind, everything and everyone (including ourselves) is on trial. We judge, evaluate and compare. We like this and hate that. We wish for this and dread that. We find ourselves fearing failure or convicting ourselves or others. Words like good, bad, right, wrong, guilt, innocence, blame, defend, crime and punishment make sense in this world or way of seeing.
In the science lab mind, we are free to experiment and get results. There is no good or bad. What works? What doesn’t work? If we think these thoughts, where will it lead us? How does it help to think this way? How does it hurt? There is no fear, no failure, no prison of hatred or shame. We are here to love and learn. That’s it.
We all struggle. This school of life was never meant to be easy. Still, we have choices here. In Illusions, Richard Bach wrote, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.” He also wrote, “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.”
Enjoy your koans. It’s why we’re here.
