Showing Up For Your Life
Step Eleven and Chanting
Three things meet me as I sit down to write this week’s offering. First, there is a continued focus on zazen (seated meditation). Zazen, as I wrote a few weeks ago and from one point of view, is the practice of patience and trust in all things. We sit steadfastly, yet at ease, and let all things be. So Shitou Xiqian writes in Sōan-ka (Song of the Grass-Roofed Hermitage):
Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest.
Second, I feel a connection between the activity of chanting and A.A.’s Step Eleven. Step Eleven reads:
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Prayer is not part of my religious practice—at least, not under a specific description of prayer. Chanting and reciting the sutras, however, is. Sometimes, it is a large part, meaning I spend thirty to forty-five minutes chanting and reciting sutras daily. I did that for much of last year. Other times, it is a small part, meaning I might spend five minutes or less chanting or reciting a single sutra each day. The latter is much of this year, so far anyway.
Which sutra? It depends—it could be the Maka Hannya Haramita Shin Gyo, Sandōkai or Sōan-ka, or Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon; it could be a poem by Emerson, Frost, Whitman, or any other poet for which there is fondness; sometimes, it is the Serenity Prayer. You might not consider the last two instances of sutras or Buddhist texts. That is fine, though I invite you to consider why.
Must a Buddhist text be so many years old? Must a sutra have been written in a particular language? Must it have been composed by someone who considered themselves a “Buddhist,” whatever that means? For all of us, these are questions worth considering eventually.
Third is the topic of generosity, the focus of my previous offering, and the background of the two before that. I am starting to feel in a fresh way the perspective from which Zen practice, beginning with zazen and rippling out from the cushion into everyday life, is nothing other than the practice of generosity. So Shitou once more:
The wide sky does not obstruct the white clouds drifting.
The same feels valid for recovery, too. Sometimes, I say that what “kept me sick” was an inability or unwillingness to “let life in.” More than anything, especially during the worst periods of active abuse, I wanted to shut everything out—so much that I would drink until I blacked out or passed out repeatedly (that is, multiple times in a single day). I made it a point to become insensitive to life whenever possible. It was about me, what I needed, and justified by a continuing and continuously shifting story about how hard my life was. Hence, we often hear in meetings and read in recovery literature the importance of learning to “live life on life’s terms,” which requires putting the “I-me-mine machine” in its proper place coupled with a willingness to open ourselves to life.
Today, I want to weave these three things together with a focus on the practice of chanting. What are we doing when we chant and recite sutras or poetry or repeat the Serenity Prayer as a mantra? How is chanting a practice of patience and trust in everything, including ourselves? How is it an expression of generosity?
Kobun Chino Roshi shared his thoughts on chanting as part of a collection of Dharma talks on the Heart Sutra. (You can find that collection here.) As part of that offering, he observed that
We often try to understand what is the meaning of the sutra, what the sutra is teaching us, to interpret what the sound means, how the sounds are asking us to understand their meaning. When we study the sutra, we often forget the space which holds the characters. So naturally, in communicating with each word, we completely lose ourselves in each character of the sutra and the sutra becomes a dictionary.
We do this with not only seemingly strange sutras—when, in the Heart Sutra, we read, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness,” understandably we ask, “What does that even mean?!”—but novels, poetry, and various visual art forms, too.
Not long ago, I watched The Lobster, starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. I remember focusing intensely on particular scenes, trying to understand what was happening, its place, and its significance in the larger narrative. Why are they dancing in the woods together in the peculiar way they do? That form of directed activity is vital at times.
Yet just as important—the more I practice, the more it feels more important—is refraining from interfering with the unfolding of the narrative. Sometimes, that interference is apparent. You might pause the movie to stop, sit, and think in silence or engage the person next to you in conversation. Other times, it is less disruptive. I might attempt to “split my attention.” That is, I might “half-focus,” as we sometimes say, on the movie and dedicate the other half of my attention to exploring a scene that was present and now absent in my mind.
Somewhere “behind” this activity of dissecting in the service of understanding is the assumption that there is a meaning (or meanings) to be found. We style the meaning as an enduring, stable, and elusive thing that will clear all confusion from the scene if only we could get hold of it with our hands.
But where is it? Can you, in fact, grasp and hold onto it? I do not merely doubt that we cannot; I am confident that we cannot, no matter how dedicated the effort or strong the desire.
I am not suggesting a position as crude as the unreformed Giants of Plato’s Sophist, who drag everything down from the heavens, identify Being exclusively with the material, and say that alone is which can be touched and handled. Rather, I am questioning the supposition of something enduring and stable, independent of its classification as corporeal or incorporeal, and that this supposedly enduring and stable thing is independent of the present encounter, somewhere “out there” waiting for you to discover it.
An alternative is that the film, novel, poem, or sutra has no meaning independent of that particular engagement with it. The meaning comes to be—it co-arises—along with and through you and whatever else is present at that time. It is “exquisitely specific,” lasting only so long (no more than an instant, perhaps) before passing on.
We find Kobun suggesting much the same in his Dharma talk:
The important thing is that chanting is not for showing it to others, it is just the doing and expressing of your momentary life. Each word basically has no meaning but what is expressed is your whole life in each word and sound.
Within this alternative orientation, confusion is no longer something to be dispelled—and it is not about embracing or dispelling, for that matter—but let alone. It is one more voice in the chorus, vibrating at times with great force, and will quiet down in its own time, too. Our invitation is presence with it and every other voice, which is another way of saying being generous—here manifesting as openness and spaciousness, with, perhaps, lively curiosity.
At the same time, there is what Kobun calls the “original meaning” of the sutra. It is not an intellectual thing, though you can describe it intellectually. Just keep reading; I promise you will see it happening. It might feel unsatisfying, by the way—you might want to get at this “original meaning,” and I want you to get it, too. Yet all I can offer are words; they are not much different than a finger pointing elsewhere.
I could describe the “original meaning” using the language of Step Eleven. Specifically, the being in contact with a Power—a something, if you prefer a neutral referent—other than our self and learning its will for us. This might be too anthropomorphic for you, infused too much with the spirit of a personal God. That is all right.
We can also describe it as “just taking care of what is right in front of our eyes” or “focusing on whatever it is we are doing at the moment.” The former is Kōshō Uchiyama Roshi’s expression; the latter is from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.
Then there is Case 52 of the Book of Serenity, which offers yet another angle:
Sōzan asked Elder Toku, “It is said that the Dharma body is like the empty sky. It manifests a myriad of forms—just like the moon is reflected on the surface of the water. How do you explain this principle of taking various forms?”
Toku said, “It is like a donkey looking at his own reflection in the water in a well.”
Sōzan said, “You put it quite well, but you are only able to express eighty percent of it.”
Toku said, “How would you put it, Master?”
Sōzan replied, “It is like a well looking at the donkey reflected in the water.”
It glimmers in Dōgen Zenji’s description of awakening, especially when read alongside the description of delusion from the beginning of Shōbōgenzō Genjōkōan:
To carry the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening.
And we find it at the center of the Heart Sutra as well, that there is
no sensation, no perception, no volition and no consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no shape, sound, smell, taste, touch, no feeling and no thought; no element of perception, from eye to conceptual consciousness; no causal link, from ignorance to old age and death, and no end of causal link, from ignorance to old age and death; no suffering, no source, no relief, no path; no knowledge, no attainment and no non-attainment.
Do you see this “original meaning” yet? Here is how Kobun describes it:
When we chant the sutra, we make a voice from everywhere, from the very center of our body it appears. No one needs to hear our chanting. It is like the wind, everywhere. The very important thing is to listen to it without clinging to the words. Its original message is beyond sound. When we chant, we make the sutra alive, make all the words alive. It
is like comparing a scenario with the actual drama, a musical note with the actual performance. We try to play music depending on the notes, to perform a drama depending on the scenario, to cook food depending on the recipe. These are efforts to approach the original form, where the original experience exists. To share this original experience of pleasure, or joy, is the purpose.
The above are only so many ways of encouraging complete presence in and with this life.
That is easy enough to state—even a small child can mouth the words—but difficult to carry out because of a single yet substantial hindrance. What is it? It is the persistent feeling or sense of separation, constantly manifesting in manifold ways. Many teachings can offer assistance, however.
Sometimes, that assistance is direct—a straightforward message to take good care of what is right in front of you. Sometimes, it is indirect because there is a need to pull you around a corner, coming face-to-face with what obstructs complete presence. Hence, there are different forms of encouragement to step outside of our ego-centered perspective and view what is possible from a broader one. There are reminders that things change when we get out of our own way and “let life in.”
We encounter long lists of things we hold tight, believed fixed and unquestionable, mixed throughout with negations, where even the opposites are negated, too. It can feel as though the proverbial rug has been pulled out from underneath our feet. And sometimes, we are even told that donkeys can look at themselves in well water—nothing surprising about that—and that the well can look at the donkey and the donkey’s reflection, too—a surprising possibility for most of us.
Where is the “original meaning” in all of this? It is right in front of you, inside of you, and all around you, which is to say that there is nothing outside of this experience in which anything at all might be happening elsewhere, independent and without you. Everything that is happening is happening right here.
Thus, Kobun says
When we chant the sutra, we make a voice from everywhere, from the very center of our body it appears.
We worry, however, whether we are chanting the sutra correctly and whether we understand its meaning and significance, as if “propriety” and “understanding” were things we could somehow forget to include in our chanting. But it is not the same as preparing seasoned chickpeas, where you can forget to remove the paprika from the spice rack and add it to the skillet. And it is not about propriety and understanding, anyway.
It is about showing up and being alive—being alive with your life.
When we chant, we make the sutra alive, make all the words alive.
And, I will add, we make ourselves alive, too—and whether we are chanting, cooking, sweeping, or weeding, nothing is missing.
Although Step Eleven says we “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God,” prayer cannot cause this to happen—at least, again, not under a specific description of prayer. Showing up for your life is not something that someone else, even God, can do for you. Only you can do it, necessarily.
The same is true for recovery, too. No one else can get you sober. Why not? In part, the decision to move our lives in a different direction is not made once and forever. It is made repeatedly as that feeling of separation continues to appear in many ways. We commit, then recommit, over and over, and in whatever way is appropriate given the circumstances. Sometimes, it is by chanting, and sometimes, it is through prayer. Other times, we fold our legs into a pretzel and face the wall. Sometimes, we write to a trusted friend and ask for their ear and presence. There is no limit to the forms that recommitment can take, too.
Those moments when recommitting is tough—when it feels as though you must drop to your knees, hang your head, and be still for a moment—are in no way a sign that something is missing. Not one of these moments could ever serve as a counter to the above message. What is appropriate in that instance is dropping to your knees, hanging your head, and being still.
It is a specific instance of the whole of the Buddha’s teachings: showing up for your life through an appropriate response.
If you enjoyed this offering, you might enjoy the following:
Thank you🙏 My “way” includes what you describe. I “found” Buddhism at 16, and became a student of Kobun in Los Altos. Although it was only for a few years, this one was forever changed. I too suffered from alcoholism and other addictions. Today I still sit, an in a Sangha in San Jose as a thread of Kobun, and start each day with gratitudes for all things, reciting the 16 precepts, the Metta Sutra & Heart Sutra. As a note: I sat with Barbara at Jikoji years ago at a Sesshin. I’m thankful for your practice and sharing. Kung Fu and Tai Chi are another practice I spent decades with and still do. Gassho🙏 Don Hopkins - San Jose, CA