Taking the Path of Zen: Reflections

In Zen Buddhism, when you walk, you walk. When you sit, you sit. When you go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom.

Whatever you are doing — whether you’re sweeping the floor, listening to a song on the radio, or biting into a juicy red apple — be aware of what you are doing. Care for each moment as if you’re cradling a newborn in your arms.

When you’re engaged, you’re not separate from what is outside of yourself. You (the subject) and what is out there (the object) melt into one. The only difference is your mind.

When you practice Zen, you’re not only practicing on the meditation cushion. Zen is ordinary life. It is here, right now. Nothing special.

What happens to you is happening, but you are not clinging to what is happening. You are letting go. “Forgetting the self is the act of just doing the task, with no self-consciousness sticking to the action” (Aitken 10).

If you get lost in your ideas, you can return to where you are again. You don’t need to beat yourself up, saying, “I’m such a bad person for thinking like this, for feeling upset, for worrying.” Just note that you have drifted away from the present. Then you can come back, over and again.

It’s natural to feel mad, depressed, bored, restless, and so on. You are a human. You don’t need to shut out your feelings, thoughts, and sensations. You’re not a stone or a block of wood.

Instead of judging, rationalizing, acting out, ignoring, or distracting yourself, watch what is happening. Listen closely. Notice what is arising and passing. Breathe in and then release.

Anger will come, anger will go. Sadness will come, sadness will go. Peace will come, peace will go. Your shoulders may tense up, your heart may beat faster, your insides may hurt, a bird may chirp over on a nearby tree. There is no need to hold on.

You can smile instead. You can smile at your fear, smile at your happiness, smile at your tears, smile at your indifference, smile at everything.

When you look into your fear, you can see the fear of other sentient beings. Your desire for happiness is like so many other people’s desire for happiness. Your joy is their joy. Your suffering is their suffering.

When someone is in pain, their pain usually spills over on those who are closest to them. Instead of judging them, you can love them. You can tend to them with your heart because you have tended to yourself.

In Zen, we practice to realize what has always been true. We wipe away concepts and hang-ups, delusions and attachments, but as Hakuin Zenji says, “Nirvana is right here, before our eyes.” (Aitken 59)

When you can see through your delusions, you will find space. Freedom. You will no longer need to blindly react. When you are aware of the present moment, you will see the phenomena of the past, present, and future — interacting and changing, inside you, around you, inside and around you. Everything is a cause and an effect.

When you sit, you sit. When you stand, you stand. When you walk, you walk.

You are walking on the soil, in the sunlight, in the air, near the sea, under the trees. You’re standing with the bees pollinating the flowers and the birds eating the worms and the caterpillars crawling over the wet leaves. You’re standing with your ancestors and descendants. You are standing because of stars that have burst apart billions of years ago.

You depend on so many things to be. Every moment, you are with your ancestors, your feelings, your thoughts, your perceptions, your dinner, a mountain that formed millions of years ago, the moon over a cold dune, and so on, and so on.

Everything is changing with each other.

You are not separate from the universe. You’re an expression of it , going as far back as the Big Bang.

You’re made up of the interactions of the cosmos. You cannot be without all of spacetime, without the rain, without the carbon dioxide that you exhale, without the roots that cling beneath the ground at your feet. What is out there, and what is inside you, is an interacting, interrelated process.

What you cultivate in yourself is not only for yourself, but for others as well.

As Shunryu Suzuki liked to say to his students, “Each of you is perfect the way you are… and you can use a little improvement.”

Through your lifelong practice, you can let go of what holds you back from seeing yourself as you are. But who are you?