In the late summer of 2009, I moved from Phoenix, Arizona, to Atlanta, Georgia. My undergraduate studies were complete, and I was off to graduate school. More significant, however, was saying “Goodbye!” to a group of true friends. It was the first time I had such a group in twenty-two years.
What does it mean to say it was a group of “true” friends? Your guess is just as good as mine, in the same way as your interpretation of a poem is just as good as the poet’s—if not better. They were more than mere acquaintances; they had a place more significant than pleasant company with which to pass the time. Our relationships were shaped in a container filled with newfound freedom and all that comes with it. You cannot stay in such a container, though, no matter how much you try.
I did not try. I left and went far, and I suffered a lot from the loss that I carried with me. Somewhere in that suffering and the stress of navigating my first term of graduate studies, both slow-cooked by southern heat, I saw an image of the Buddha. He sat with legs folded into a pretzel, otherwise called “full lotus,” with his hands resting in his lap. His eyes were closed, and a soft smile appeared on his face.
Something else was present, too, and shown through these physical features, though it was not the same as them. There was peace; the Buddha was peaceful. It all seems so clear and straightforward now. At the time, I doubt it was; I was a mess, and because of this, I spent a lot of time feeling clumsy and behaving awkwardly, which in turn contributed to that messy state, in part by pouring concrete over the soil in which self-confidence might have taken root and grown.
There was something immediate, however: my desire to have what the Buddha had, to be what the Buddha was. I wanted to be free from the suffering I experienced; I wanted to be peaceful. I wanted to be peace.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s Being Peace was one of the first books I read about meditation, Buddhism, and Zen. My friend Everett loaned it to me. I do not recall whether I asked him about it or he offered it to me; I cannot even remember how it came up in conversation or if it came up at all. But I remember Everett walking to a bookshelf in his studio apartment, removing the book without thought—he seemed to know precisely where it was—and handing it to me.
I read Being Peace, then I reread it, and then once more for good measure. I recorded lines that were meaningful to me in a small notebook. I recited some of its gathas (short verses, prayers) whenever it felt appropriate or necessary. I spent time walking through the neighborhood, trying to see the sun and the clouds in flowers and trees. And I sat a little, too, but most of my effort was directed at reading, remembering, and walking.
Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is a wonderful moment.
Elsewhere, I share how I settled into regular zazen (seated meditation) practice only after moving to Santa Barbara, California, in the summer of 2012. You can read a bit about that time here.
It has been twelve years since then, and my practice has taken different forms. I spent several years with various breath practices: counting my breaths on the inhale and exhale, only on the inhale, only on the exhale, and eventually all of these while “bamboo breathing” on every fifth and tenth breath. There followed a period of just following the breath, after which I began working with koans—short stories that often raise a question, such as, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “What was your original face before your mother and father were born?”
Occasionally, I would miss the days of reciting a simple gatha and looking at leaves, trying to see the rain, the soil, and the sunshine in them. And yet, I persisted, driven by that desire to be peace.
That desire, by the way, is why Koan Gary Janka, Sensei, my first teacher and preceptor for Jukai, gave me the Dharma name “Taishin.” In Japanese, one of the ideograms pronounced “Tai” means “peaceful,” and another pronounced “shin” means “heart-mind.” Together, my Dharma name means “Peaceful Heart-Mind.” In my view, it is not so much an indication of who I am but the direction in which I would (and continue to) expend much effort.
Several years ago, I started practicing shikantaza exclusively at the direction of my Guiding Teacher, Meidō Barbara Anderson, Roshi. Shikantaza is a Japanese word that we often translate as “just sitting.” You can read more about the word itself and shikantaza as a meditation practice from a Google search—though you may not find any of what you read helpful in forming an (intellectual) understanding of it. Shikantaza cannot be captured in words and phrases. Words and phrases, however, can suggest its shape and color, at least its shape and color at some one time.
For instance, Dogen Zenji describes the practice of shikantaza in Fukanzazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) as learning to take the backward step and shine the light inward; dropping off body and mind; manifesting your original face; and thinking not-thinking by non-thinking. You can read Fukanzazengi here; an offering of mine on zazen practice can be found here.
Central to any description of the practice of just sitting is that this just sitting is done without any gaining idea. We do not sit to become better versions of ourselves or to help this or that aspect of our lives. All of the transactional or stepladder-oriented reasons for meditating do not apply, though nothing prevents you from bringing them to the cushion.
Dogen writes at the outset of Fukanzazengi
The way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The dharma-vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world’s dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice?
Instead, shikantaza is “simply the dharma-gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment.”
From a different point of view, just sitting is the practice of resuming or returning to shoshin, which means “beginner’s mind.” The expression has become widespread following its use in the title for a collection of Dharma talks by Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and the collection’s well-known and much-loved saying, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
What does it mean to resume or return to a beginner’s mind? It means not being tangled up in dualistic ways of thinking.
So Suzuki Roshi says
If you discriminate too much, you limit yourself. If you are too demanding, too greedy, your mind is not rich and self-sufficient. […] In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, “I have attained something.” All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners.
More accessible in form, perhaps, than Dogen’s “dropping off body and mind” and “manifesting your original face,” but no different in spirit.
When we are “true beginners,” we can turn around freely, unhindered by the constraints of everyday life. We can dance, even, and our dancing lights up our corner of the world with sparks of joy.
I was ordained as a Novice Priest about ten months ago. Recently, I wrote about my current understanding of that transition.
I expect it to look and sound different in five or ten years. At present, though, it looks and sounds like this:
To wear the kesa [an ordained person’s robe] is not to step up but to step down—to step down into service to others. To wear the Tathagata’s teaching is to set aside personal preferences and expectations; it is to understand that, in wearing the robe, it is not about you.
Easy to say, of course. For me, it has been challenging to embody wholeheartedly.
What continues to get in the way is this nagging sense that when I wear the robe, it is about me. It is about my preferences concerning the style of practice at the temple; it is about my expectations for members of the Sangha. It is fine, even important, to have expectations and preferences. How else could we navigate this dusty world? But I clung tightly to mine, unable to see any other way than my way. That tight grip made everything personal, and because of that, I suffered.
I suffered a lot, actually, and felt that suffering with great intensity when sitting on the cushion with my own legs folded into a pretzel. Dogen describes shikantaza as the “dharma-gate of repose and bliss,” but I felt much the same way as I did during 2009 and 2010: a mess, clumsy, awkward, and bereft of confidence in myself—twelve years of practice and no closer to being peace.
All of this changed a few weeks ago when I heard the voice of Patrick Swayze during walking meditation.
That is an interesting turn, is it not? You could construct a Bingo card from my writing over the last ten months. You could play “Taishin’s Writing Bingo” with each week’s post and with some success. I am confident, however, that hearing Patrick Swayze’s voice would not appear as a square on the card.
There is a scene in Roadhouse where Swayze, as the character “Dalton,” addresses the bartenders, barbacks, and bouncers of the Double Deuce. He’s been brought in to turn the club around and begins by stating three simple rules. The third is: Be nice. I want you to remember that it is just a job; it is nothing personal.
I had spent the previous few weeks chanting The Daihi Shin Dharani, The Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, and reciting The Verse Of The Diamond Sutra. The last reads:
A star at dawn A bubble in a stream A flash of lightening in a summer’s cloud A flickering lamp A phantom and a dream So is this fleeting world.
Yet, none of these things were what I heard one warm Sunday morning and, upon hearing, ushered in a significant shift. It was a line from the philosopher turned cooler: It is nothing personal. Instantaneously, I felt a weight fall to the ground as body and mind dropped away. And I will not say that “repose and bliss” followed—they did not—but dwelling in that moment, I knew it was a wonderful moment.
One difficulty with having insights is sharing those insights with others; I have mentioned feeling clumsy and awkward several times now. We could not share our insights, I suppose. But given that our collective aim is liberating all beings from suffering, it seems important to share what we learn when we learn it.
Here is a passage from Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji (Living-Time):
No thing interferes with any other thing, in the same way that no two times clash with one another. Therefore, all living things aspire at the same time and, simultaneously, all life is aspiring time.
We tend to find gaining ideas where we thoughts of interference. That is, where we find thoughts of competition, thoughts of ourselves being in competition with others. “I am in competition with so-and-so because they are interfering with my pursuit of such-and-such and there is only enough such-and-such for me / only I deserve to have such-and-such, not them” is one form of such thoughts and one form of discriminatory, self-centered thinking generally.
Competition over what? Pleasure, desire-satisfaction, praise, and fame are obvious candidates. Anything other than these four things is likely a particular instance of one of them.
Dogen’s view, however, is that no one interferes with anyone, any place, or any thing—period. The groundless ground of this view is called kyoryaku, “the moment-by-moment life of living-time”; all things arising and then instantaneously and spontaneously passing away. You might call this the garden-variety view of impermanence, only happening much faster than most of us appreciate or want to acknowledge. And it is because of the moment-by-moment life of living-time that Taizan Maezumi, Roshi, would say we are born and die six-and-a-half billion times in twenty-four hours.
As a result, nothing lasts long enough for us to grab ahold of, nor do we ourselves last long enough to grab ahold of any thing, either. What, then, can we be in competition over? And who is there, anyway, to compete? The field competition has no prizes or players, and there is, ultimately, no field. So, how can anything interfere with anything?
This does not entail that nothing is happening. Quite the contrary. In fact, “all living things aspire at the same time and, simultaneously, all life is aspiring time.” This is another way of saying that the whole universe manifests thoroughly and completely without anything left out—including you and me.
To see that, to feel that, even if only for an instant, is peaceful. It flashes at the moment this and that, self and other, and other forms of discrimination drop away, where nothing could even be personal because there is nothing outside of what is. Self-doubt is cut off; the craving for achievement vanishes.
All there is is the whole working seamlessly. All there is is peace, with you, in your particular spot, being peace.
If you benefitted from this offering, you might enjoy the following:
whew! ❣️ beautiful, friend~ thank you for honoring the collective aim by sharing these nourishing insights 🌱