In meditation, we steep ourselves in a stillness that is beyond time. But people often get discouraged because too often it feels like we’re steeping in our constantly churning, constantly chattering mind: our worries, moods, regrets, and heartaches are sometimes all we experience as we sit. In the beginning and often for a long time, our thoughts come so fast they seem to trip over each other. If we do get a moment of quietude, it’s fleeting and tentative; and then we’re back, immersed in the chatter of a busy mind, wondering if it’s even worth our effort. We all feel this way from time to time.
But if we stick to it, we begin to feel the underlying fear below our persistent mental noise. We begin to see how chatter, chatter, chatter covers up what we don’t want to deal with. It is difficult to experience our deepest hurts, longings, and existential pain in a direct and undiluted way. With a sincere meditation practice, however, there is no avoiding these deepest feelings. When we just see our persistent thoughts without engaging or indulging them, this is pretty good. Eventually, the thoughts become transparent to us, and we begin to see the patterns from which they arise. This often begins with an elusive and indistinct sense that something important is happening, but the significance is just out of reach, like vague shapes just beyond the horizon of our awareness. It takes time for our inner eyes to adjust to the dark and to the sensation-based language of our inner teachers. We so quickly get caught up in regretting the past and rehearsing for the future. People often tell me they can’t meditate because their thoughts are too loud, too busy, too out of control. They are convinced that their meditative experience is different from that of others. But everybody says that. So if everyone says it, what is it really saying? Our thoughts spin around and around, binding us to the wheel of reacting, regretting, and rehearsing. The wheel becomes the driving force of our life and it cuts us off from our true interconnected nature. It feels like we are stuck in what Zen teacher Joko Beck called “a substitute life.” When we step back from all our regretting and rehearsing just a little bit, we see that the world is much bigger and much warmer than we ever imagined. If we see the wheel of reactivity without judgment, there’s a chance we can learn to dis-identify with it. But we can’t do it by trying to dis-identify: if you’re trying, then you’re still caught on the wheel of should and shouldn’t. You have just moved to a different spot. Instead of getting distracted by the content of your thought dreams, look instead at the context within which they arise. What is the emotional environment surrounding them? Is it fear? Frustration? Worry? This is when our churning mind becomes our teacher, revealing fixations and patterns, while turning us toward the moment-by-moment cultivation of mental clarity, courage, and inner strength. But you have to steep yourself in the practice of sitting quietly and being aware, again and again and again, to get a sense of what I am talking about. You have to put the teabag in the hot water, over and over. Eventually, the flavor of the water changes; it becomes sweet. And that sweetness bubbles up right in the middle of your churning mind and you find that you aren’t getting so wigged out over things. There’s no need for despair if you only get a fleeting taste of this stillness, because it is not of time—but it completely permeates time. T.S. Eliot called it “the still point of the turning world.” After a while, the still point begins to enter our consciousness when we least expect it. We taste it when we immerse ourselves in nature, when we feel a sense of intimacy with others or the world around us, and when we give ourselves fully to the simple activities of daily life. Regardless of the speed of your churning mind, the still point is there, waiting for you to tap into it.
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Recently I have been thinking about humility. I have noticed in the last couple of years how my memory is getting worse, and it never was that great. This means I find myself wanting to argue with someone who remembers something which I don’t believe happened, then seeing that it’s likely I just forgot it, and then apologizing. When I do this, I feel good and the other person generally feels good, and our relationship is strengthened rather than impaired. In my book, Zen in the Age of Anxiety, which will be available in bookstores in June, I talk about humility. Alan Watts used to say that one of the earth’s activities is, “to people.” Humility comes from the root word humus, which means earth or soil. Human beings came from the saltwater of the oceans and from the richness of the soil. Humus is aerated and moist because it’s not separate from the air and rain. It supports us, but not in the way we’re accustomed to. It’s a result of the the heating up and decomposing process of all manner of plant and animal life. When we allow ourselves to sink into the humus, beautiful wildflowers bloom where we are. There’s no security in being a wildflower. It feels much safer to be a polished stone, to look good to others and stand out in the world. Very little grows on a polished stone. Most of us have been stony for too many years. Try something different, and sink down into the earth. All the nourishment you need is there. With natural humility you to go all the way down into to the humus. You no longer stick up like you’re some big deal because you’ve got something that others don’t have. When you sink all the way into the ground you actually are a big deal—not because you are you, but because you are not you. You’ve touched the ground of all being, which is not a solid ground at all. It is aerated with all life. So instead of trying to be somebody special, natural humility allows you to be something much more. It allows you the freedom to be nobody in particular. Nobody to defend or uphold, nobody to judge good or bad, and no one in need of redemption.
My Japanese Zen meditation teachers emphasized the importance of not looking for results from meditation, but just continuing with it without evaluating its effectiveness. That said, there is a natural progression that takes place which generally has four stages: 1) What do I want to get from meditation? 2) What can I learn about myself? 3) What can I discover about my relationships and how can I deepen them? 4) Living wakefully from my own still center, the center of all life.
I have noticed over many years how often practitioners progress in this manner without even necessarily realizing it. Take Jerome for example, a mid-level manager at a health care organization. He was obsessed with hitting his quarterly targets, so he pushed his staff relentlessly and continually obsessed about everything related to his work. He feared being fired, or having to quit because of burnout from anxiety. His workaholic ethic no longer worked. But after his first year of daily meditation and retreat attendance, he complained that his anxiety had not diminished much. I pointed out how much he had learned about himself through his heightened awareness of his moods and reactivity. For the first time in his life, he was able to see his fear-based thinking, judgments, and beliefs WITHOUT criticizing himself or his staff. He had discovered how his high standards for himself and others limited his effectiveness. This meant that he had moved to the second stage of meditative awareness without even knowing it. During the next year or two of sitting accompanied by frequent meetings with a teacher, he began to see to see each time he wanted to jump in and control everything and everyone, and recognize these impulses so he could let them go without acting them out. As he got better at managing his own anxious induced impulses, his stress plummeted as did that of others in his office. His direct reports trusted him more and did better quality work. He had began to listen attentively rather than just being rigidly directive, ratcheting up his emotional intelligence as he began to experience his supervisees as allies. He had moved into third stage of meditative progress, building trust with those around him. For the first time, he was able to speak to others of his own fears and vulnerabilities openly. He spoke from his heart more, which inspired his team. With his work and home environment vastly improved he drifted away from our Zen Center, so I don’t know what happened after that. Others I have worked with have moved naturally into the fourth stage, however, tapping into, and learning to live wakefully from their own still centers, the still center of all life. This is what is referred to by Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, as getting the dharma into “your skin, flesh, bone, and marrow.” My teacher Katagiri Roshi referred to this as developing “spiritual security.” It’s not that hard. All it requires is practice. In my last blog I mentioned that a meditation practice provides us with an opportunity to notice how dominated we can become by fear, especially when our external culture is so fear based, as ours seems to currently be.
As you deepen and strengthen your sitting practice, fears, which you may not even know were present, may gradually show themselves. I have found over the years that it can be very healthy to bring an attitude of curiosity toward this type of experience. Being alert and curious allows fear to become your teacher. “Curiouser and curiouser,” cried Alice in Wonderland as she saw her body grow larger and larger and larger. “Curiouser and curiouser,” said my student Wendy, who had the courage to see the depth and breadth of the fear within as she persisted in her meditation practice. Wendy’s persistence in this process resulted in her coming to realize that none of her fears were absolutely true and most of them were memories from childhood or adolescence that were deeply buried in her psyche and body. I had another student who I will call Jethro who was about 6’6” and very gangly. He looked very placid during his sitting in the meditation hall day after day, but gradually he let me know that he lived in a frozen, fear-based state. He sat and walked with his shoulders slightly hunched, something he had learned as a kid to continually avoid drawing attention to his size and to help armor himself against verbal blows from other kids’ teasing. My support for him was very simple, helping him bring attention to all of the sensations in his shoulders. Jethro spent two years noticing and being curious about tightness, unease, or numbness in his shoulders and how these sensations manifested themselves in fear-based thought and emotion. Eventually, his shoulders relaxed and opened up. His sense of separation from the world around him diminished, and fear lost its grip. During the time Jethro worked with me he began and ended each sitting with the following loving-kindness practice: “May I find freedom from fear in my life. May I also help others find freedom from fear. May I meet the fear with the courage of the open heart, acting with decisiveness rather than divisiveness.” By doing this practice over and over and over, he not only let go of his fear, he liberated the natural happiness, which is the bedrock of our existence- his so-called Buddha Nature, or T.S. Eliot’s “still point of the turning world.” If Wendy and Jethro can do this, so can you! My root teacher, Suzuki Roshi, had two teachings which, when paired together, sum up the spirit of Buddhist meditation. The first one is “By washing silk many times it becomes white and soft enough to weave.” If we want our meditation practice to bear fruit, we need to have a daily practice that we both commit ourselves to and sustain regardless of how busy or hectic our lives are. Often it seems like we aren’t making progress. We may find ourselves chattering on and on every time we sit. But that’s par for the course. Gradually, all serious meditators become free from their addictive chatter by patiently letting the mind cleanse itself as we breathe… just as silk is cleansed by persistent washing. Then our mind loses its stiffness and becomes soft. Scientists call this tapping into the brain’s “neuroplasticity.”
Suzuki Roshi’s second teaching is, “By hitting iron when its hot, we make it strong and sharp, like a sword.” I stress the importance of retreat practice as my teachers did. Most of our retreats start early in the morning and go until quite late in the evening. We have a rigorous schedule of alternating sitting and walking meditation throughout the day. This can be quite difficult physically and mentally. Our state of mind and emotions may become quite agitated or “hot.” That heat actually helps us break open beyond the small, complaining self from which our addictive chatter arises. Sooner or later we even break through to the state of mind, “in which you do not stick to anything,” to use another quote from Suzuki. When we do this we find we have a strength and confidence that allows us to move through whatever difficulty we may face with a calmness which never leaves us. It’s quite wonderful! |
AuthorTim Burkett, Guiding Teacher Archives
April 2022
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