2023-09-D4-DK:Teachings of American Zen teacher Joko Beck #2
1:47AM Oct 10, 2023
Speakers:
Dhara Kowal
Keywords:
joko
practice
zen
attention
experience
teacher
sitting
pain
life
learned
vine
work
hard
tiger
played
find
moment
call
process
feel
This is the fourth day of this September 2023, seven day sesshin. Having arrived at the halfway point, it's helpful to remind ourselves why we're here. Our reason for being here has nothing to do with physical or mental endurance. It's not about how long we're sitting, or how little sleep we're getting. It's not about counting days or hours or rounds.
If you find yourself making those kinds of assessments, maybe comparing how you're doing to how you imagine others are doing. Know that you're fully equipped to make a course correction. All it takes is making the choice, the choice to return your awareness to your practice.
As Zen master Erdogan said, if you cannot find the truth, right where you are, where do you expect to find it?
Today we're going to continue with everyday Zen love and work by Charlotte Joko Beck. This book is tailored to beginners. But whether you're new to practice or an old hand, the the process the process of unraveling the knot of thoughts and habit forces opening up to our true self. That process is unending.
So picking up from where we left off
Joko says
I'd like to talk about the basic problem of sitting. Whether you've been sitting a short time, or for 10 years, or 50 years. The problem is always the same. When I went to my first machine many years ago, I couldn't decide who was crazier. Me, or the people sitting around me. It was terrible. The temperature was almost 105 degrees every day of the week. I was covered with flies. And it was a noisy, bellowing sesshin. I was completely upset and baffled by the whole thing.
But once in a while, I'd go in to see Yasutani Roshi, and there I saw something that kept me sitting. Unfortunately, the first six months or a year of sitting are the hard ones. You have to face confusion, doubts, problems, and you haven't been sitting long enough to feel the real rewards. But the difficulty is natural. Even good. As your mind slowly goes through all of these things, as you sit here confusing and ridiculous as it may seem. You're learning a tremendous amount about yourself. and this can only be of value to you. Please continue to sit with a group as often as you can, and see a good teacher as often as you can. If you do that, in time, this practice will be the best thing in your life
how fortunate we are to do this vital work together as a Sangha. In practicing together, we learned to harmonize with others, no matter the conditions, or circumstances. And we can experience this on a real visceral level during the course of sesshin. We may start off feeling anxious, self conscious, or guarded. But the more Zen we do, things begin to shift. We find ourselves moving about more freely
with less resistance
Joko says it doesn't matter what our practice is called. Following the breath shikantaza. koan practice. Basically, we're all working on the same issues.
Who are we?
What is our life? Where did we come from? Where do we go it's essential to living a whole human life that we have some insight. And you know, by insight, Joko isn't just referring to Kensho, but to sparks glimpses that can happen along the way.
One example is the simple realization that we're missing something when we dwell in our thoughts.
We just can't say what it is we're missing
but we get a sense that there is more to life than how it appears through our ordinary way of thinking.
She then says
so, first, I'd like to talk about the basic task of sitting and in talking about it, realize that talking is not it. Talking is just the finger pointing at the moon
words missed the mark.
And when it comes to words, spoken in the Zendo, including TV shows and encouragement talks. You know, on the on the one hand, you might find them helpful to staying on track with your practice. But the downside is that they can also stimulate thoughts how do you how do you keep your attention on your practice while listening to someone speak.
The key is to not hold on to anything or reflect on anything that is said. Just Just let the words wash over you hearing words is no different than hearing the sounds of the geese flying above
or train passing by.
Passing phenomena
just like thoughts, passing through the mind
Joko then says in sitting, we are uncovering reality. Buddha nature.
God
true nature. Some call it Big mind. words for it that are particularly apt are this very moment the Diamond Sutra says the past is ungraspable. The present is ungraspable. The future, is ungraspable. So all of us in this room, where are we? Are we in the past? No. Are we in the future? No. Are we in the present? No, we can't even say we're in the present. There's nothing we can point to and say, This is the present. No boundary lines that define the present. All we can say is we are this very moment. And because there's no way of measuring it, defining it, pinning it down, even seeing what it is it's immeasurable, boundless, infinite.
It's what we are
now, if it's as simple as that, what are we all doing here? I can say this very moment. That sounds easy, doesn't it? Actually, it's not to really see it is not so easy. Or we wouldn't all be doing this why isn't it easy? Why can't we see it and what is necessary so that we can see it
seeing things as they are
moment by moment
it's not easy because
seeing things as they are isn't easy because our conditioning is to filter what we're experiencing through the lens of
our ideas
about how we think things should be
often in service to the ego
it's like we're wearing a pair of cloudy glasses how do we wipe them clean
single minded attention
Joko then tells a personal story
She says many years ago, I, many years ago, I was a piano major at Oberlin Conservatory. I was a very good student. Not outstanding, but very good. And I very much wanted to study with one teacher who was undoubtedly the best. He take ordinary students and turn them into fabulous pianist. Finally, I got my chance to study with this teacher. When I went in for my lesson, I found that he taught with two pianos. He didn't even say hello, he just sat down at his piano and played five notes. And then he said, You do it. I was supposed to play it. Just the way he played it. I played it. And he said, No. He played it again. And I played it again. And again. He said, No. Well, we had an hour of that. And each time he said no.
In Zen, the feedback that we receive from a teacher can sometimes be difficult. They may call attention to an obstruction, or an attachment of some kind, that you're not fully aware of. The process of going to DocQ sign alone. Without the teacher even giving verbal feedback can reveal our shortcomings. I know from firsthand experience sitting on the Doakes online, trying to drum up something to say or something to do to show that I was working hard. But Doakes ons not a performance. You don't need to say anything or do anything.
Just embody your practice. Come as you are if you're a hot mess, be a hot mess.
Joko then says in the next three months, I played about three measures, perhaps half a minute of music. Now I had thought I was pretty good. I played solo soloist with with little symphony orchestras. Yet we did this for three months, and I cried most of those three months. The teacher had all the marks of a real teacher, that tremendous drive and determination to make the students see that's why he was so good. And at the end of the three months, one day he said,
Good what it happened.
Finally, I had learned to listen. And as he said, if you can hear it, you can play it
what had happened in those three months, I had the same set of ears I started with nothing had happened to my ears when I was playing was not technically difficult. What had happened was that I had learned to listen for the first time and I'd been playing the piano for many years. I learned to pay attention that's why he was such a great teacher. He taught his students to pay attention Tension after working with him really hard. We all listened. When you can hear it, you can play it and finished, beautiful pianists would finally finally come out of his studio
most of us need to do need to hear the same instruction over and over before it sinks in. That's certainly how it was for me years and years of instruction
but Zen is a very basic teaching
this
and yet it can seem so elusive. Like we're trying to hold on to a slippery bar of soap, dropping it.
But it's literally right under our nose. It's the body that we're in the air that we breathe, the ground that we walk on.
If our attention is divided, we don't see what's right under our nose.
Like one in like one in water, crying I thirst.
Joko continues, it's that kind of attention, which is necessary for our practice. We call it Samadhi. This total oneness with our practice. But in my story, that attention was relatively easy. It was with an object that I liked. In other words, a piano. This is the oneness of any great art, the great athlete, the person who passes well on the football field, the person who does well on the basketball court, anybody like that, who has to learn to pay attention. It's that kind of Samadhi. Now, that's one kind of attention and it's valuable. But what we have to do in Zen practice is much harder. We have to pay attention to this very moment. The totality of what is happening right now. And the reason we don't pay we don't want to pay attention is because it's not always pleasant. It doesn't suit us.
There's a there's an old Zen story that brings to life, the kind of bare attention
that Choco is talking about, in which we need to hone.
A man, a man walking across a field encountered a tiger. As he fled, the tiger chased after him. Coming to the edge of a cliff, he managed to catch hold of the root of a wild vine and swung him self down over the edge. The Tiger crouched down and sniffed at him from above. trembling, the man looked down to where far below he spotted another tiger that was also waiting to eat him. The only thing that was saving him was the vine he was dangling from
but then appeared to mice who little by little, started to gnaw away at the vine
Just then, the man spotted a luscious, ripe strawberry growing from the cliff face. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other
How sweet.
And jumping ahead a bit.
Joko says
the crux of Zen is this, all we must do is constantly create a little shift from the spinning world we've got in our heads to the right here now. That's our practice, the intensity. And the ability to be right here now is what we have to do to develop. We have to be able to develop the ability to say, No, I won't spin off here to make that choice. Moment by moment. Our practice is like a choice, a fork in the road. We can go this way, we can go that way. It's always a choice, moment by moment, between our nice world that we want to set up in our heads. And what really is. And what really is at a Zen says Sheen is often fatigue, boredom and pain in our legs. What we learned from having to sit quietly with that discomfort is so valuable that if it didn't exist, it should when you're in pain, you can't spin off.
You have to stay with it. There's no place to go.
So pain is really valuable.
Our ego conditioning tells us to do the opposite. Right? Avoid pain, seek pleasure. But as Joko says, experiencing physical pain, to some degree can be useful. And particularly the kind that isn't going to result in injury or worsening an existing one. In other words, the ordinary pain we experience from doing a lot of sitting stiff joints, dull, nagging aches, tightness. Pain, gets our practice into our body into the realm of experience
our usual strategy is to distract ourselves from limit maybe drift off into some fantasy or find some other way to cover it up but the more we persist the more we can become intimate with that pain we stop putting our energy into resisting it which only makes it worse because in resisting it we tense up in our body and also tense up in in our mind
when we relax into it relax into pain and become one with it.
It's there we feel it but we don't personalize or catastrophize it
it becomes just pain
rather than my name
and then in the process of of working with painless way we're learning to let go of our ego driven desire to be in control to run away from the things we don't like. But it's really, really challenging it's hard
still, it's a unavoidable part of the process of merging with our practice becoming one with things as they are
and then the same goes with working with emotional and mental pain we work with it the same way
so, so feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness grief, loneliness sorrow, it runs the spectrum the way to work with it is to to allow ourselves to feel it without putting a label on it without denying it or pushing it away but at the same time, not dwelling in it not piling on thoughts about it that's the middle way
and then put our trust
in our true nature or or trust in the fact that it will pass
our true nature is not static.
It's not fixed.
And then jumping ahead again.
Joko says
I once said something in the Zendo that upset a lot of people. I said to do this practice We have to give up hope. Not many, were happy about that. But what did I mean? I mean, that we have to give up this idea in our heads that somehow, if we could only figure it out, there's some way to have this perfect life that is just right for us.
Life is the way it is. And only when we begin to give up those maneuvers, does life begin to be more satisfactory? When I say to give up hope, I don't mean to give up effort. As Zen students, we have to work unbelievably hard. But when I say hard, I don't mean straining.
It isn't that what is hard is this choice
that we repeatedly have to make. And if you practice hard, come to a lot of cysteines. Work hard with a teacher. If you're willing to make that choice consistently, over a period of time, then one day, you'll get your first little glimpse, this first little glimpse of what this very moment is. And it might take one year, two years, 10 years or more. Now, that's the beginning. That one little glimpse takes a 10th of a second. But just that isn't enough. The Enlightened life is seeing that all the time. It takes years and years and years of work, to transform ourselves to the point where we can do that
so what does she mean by the Enlightened life
it's simply the capacity to see beyond thoughts. To not be burdened by them. It's not a one time one and done singular experience. Practice is unending. It's not linear either. We can't say that we're making progress any more than we can say that we're not making progress
we just don't know. All we can do is practice the best that we can moment by moment. And that's enough
there's going to be fluctuations in our energy in our concentration. In our feeling of ease, all of that's natural. And and that happens throughout so sheen.
You don't need to be concerned about the ebb and flow
of practice.
And then a little later, Joko says we're all just babies. The extent to which we can grow is boundless. And eventually, if we're patient enough, and work hard enough, we have some possibility of making a real contribution to the world. In this oneness that we finally learn to live in, that's where the love is
not some kind of soupy version, but a love with real strength we want it for our lives. And we want it for other people, other people's lives. We want it for our children, our parents, our friends.
So it's up to us to do the work
remember why you came here
I'm going to end with a poem by Mary Oliver.
It speaks to the nature of this life of practice. And it's called Wild Geese.
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair.
Yours
and I will tell you mine meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again
whoever you are
no matter how lonely The world offers itself to your imagination. calls to you like the wild geese
harsh
and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
