Today’s lesson is one that we can get excited about. We are going to take some of the knowledge that we have been gathering and put it to work with some potentially life changing practice. Lately I have been quoting Charlotte Joko Beck quite a bit. Many of Beck’s teachings discuss the importance and nuances of Zazen, a particular form of Zen training. However, in addition to this, Beck used the term “everyday Zen,” which is also the title of one of her books. What does Beck mean when she says this?
In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross there is the phrase, “ABC-always be closing.” No matter where they are in their sales pitch, no matter how the customer is responding, salespeople should always keep this endgame of closing in mind. Everyday Zen might be defined as a different sort of ABC. “Awareness Beyond Conditioning.” As we go about the course of our days and nights, can we take care of whatever it is that needs taking care of while still holding and maintaining this personal directive in the background?
Formal, traditional meditation can provide great benefit, but what about all of the other hours in the day? Regardless of whether or not you maintain a formal meditation practice, pursuing and maintaining daily practical mindfulness and simple awareness can revolutionize your life experience. With diligent practice, eventually the grip of a lifetime’s worth of conditioning will begin to loosen. As Beck says, we are not reprogramming ourselves, we are deprograming ourselves. Jumpstart this deprogramming in your life with these five effective tools.
Greet the day
The first thing that we can do when we wake up in the morning is to just stop and take a beat to be grateful, or even to just be. We can recognize the feeling of life flowing through us. Perhaps we can enjoy the comfort and warmth of the bed for just an additional second or two and greet the day with presence.
As we get out of bed, we can take just a moment to recognize whatever it is that we are feeling about the day ahead, good or bad, excited or unenthusiastic, with an acknowledging glance. Then, within a glance that contains all of our collected knowledge of the teachings and training, we can remember what it is that we are really trying to do with that day.
Despite anything else that needs taking care of, we have a plan and a purpose. Any challenges posed by the day are just opportunities for practice and growth. They will only serve to help us realize our true purpose. I’m not suggesting that we sugarcoat things or get positive. I am telling you to prioritize and be on a mission. Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “If you want peace, deserve it.”
Presence through senses
Along these lines, consider the idea of living in the moment. The power of presence is well documented, but, remember, the moment that we strive to get present is likely the same moment that we have lost it. Presence is always sitting there waiting for us. We need to learn how to invite that presence into our lives. There are many ways of doing this that have already been spoken of here and elsewhere. Focused attention to breathing is a common practice. Feeling the warm energy within the body can invite presence as well.
There is, however, a method of inviting presence that you have been using since the day you were born, though you might not have realized it before now. Think of those times when the smell of your favorite meal being cooked suddenly hit you out of nowhere. Perhaps there was a time when you were sitting outside and, say, a hawk screeched in the distance. Maybe, for some unknown reason, everything in these moments just fell into focus. When we get taken in by any one or more of the five senses, presence is invited. It is the experience of being alive and in the moment.
A pure experience of the senses
There is much more that could be said of the hows and whys of this phenomenon. For now, try to consider this idea within the context of what we are discussing today. Experiences of the five senses can invite presence, yet the five senses are always at work of their own accord all of the time. Why, then, don’t they always invite presence?
The answer is twofold. We have not been paying attention. Furthermore, we have not been paying the proper, nuanced sort of attention that the everyday Zen lifestyle can supply. There is a delicate dance between trying and allowing, where paying attention graduates into pure, authentic experience. Back and forth, we constantly refine our methods with curious yet unbiased attentiveness.
Active meditations
Let’s face it, for most of us life is already pretty busy. For a person seeking an increased experience of lasting peace, this is simply just a hard truth. Then some Zen master comes along and tells you to set aside a half hour of your time each day to sit in formal meditation. Let’s be clear. I am not here to tell you that meditation has no benefit. What I am willing to say is that, at the very least, in order to get started, the obligation of some sort of rigid scheduling toward enlightenment is unnecessary, if not completely counterproductive. There is more than one way to peel a potato, and each of us has our own path to walk.
With this in mind, I will recall your attention to some previous lessons regarding what I call, for lack of a better term, active meditations. Active meditations are mindfulness exercises that we can do within the context of other day to day activities. Take, for example, the practice of watching TV or other media as the neutral observer.
Everyday Zen: Making peace a priority
In addition to this, I would like to take a moment to emphasize one point. There are idle moments all throughout life and within each day. In particular, there are moments that you find yourself waiting for something, whether it be waiting in line, waiting for someone to arrive, waiting for something to begin, etc. You must put this idea of waiting out of your mind. There is no longer any such thing as waiting. There are only moments for inviting presence now.
During such times, it is so important that you do not instantly grab your phone. It is so important that you be aware and accepting of any signs of frustration. When you react in these ways then you are avoiding the practice. Anytime you become aware that there is an opportunity for practice, you must choose practice. This is what everyday Zen is all about. Even bad practice is infinitely better than no practice at all.
Active meditations can teach us a lot. They can reveal to us our willingness to practice. They put out the feelers and probe out and discover those places that we are unwilling to allow, to be with and let go of. But we must be willing to choose them instead of our old habits and illusions.
Observing thoughts and emotions
There is an old Zen saying, “Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.” In terms of spiritual growth, what we do is less important than the quality in which we do it. On top of this, the fact is that there are going to be things that we have to do that we would rather not have to be doing. Beck teaches us that our mental narrative can be a major difference maker in how we experience these moments.
Nobody likes, say, cleaning the bathroom. Yet, nonetheless, the bathroom regularly finds itself in need of cleaning. Some days our inner dialogue is going to be more heavy or negative than others. During such times, Beck teaches us that we should observe and acknowledge our stories. Yes, this is a dirty job. Its true, I shouldn’t have to be doing this. Yes, I would rather be doing something more fun or interesting.
Everyday Zen: Acceptance, unbiased awareness and closing the vicious circles
Zen tells us that we must be willing to at least attempt to adopt an attitude of acceptance. With acceptance comes surrender and with surrender comes peace. I have just completed an entire series on the power and importance of accepting life as we find it, so I will not elaborate further on the topic here.
Furthermore, one of the greatest causes of our discomfort arises out of the fact that we identify with our thoughts and emotions. We think they define, and really comprise, who we are. When we can step back and consciously observe them, we begin to create some distance between us and them. Observing thoughts and emotions is another topic that we have discussed at great length.
Perhaps more relevant to this discussion, self-observation of this nature stops the vicious circle of thoughts and emotions in its tracks. Complaining about a dirty job does nothing to ease or aid us in completing the task. It only makes the experience less pleasant, and it can affect the quality of the outcome. Plus, it adds undo stress, so it can even have detrimental effects on our health.
Letting go
The final and, for me, most effective tool that we can turn to in order to jumpstart a practice of everyday Zen is that of letting go. This is a practice that very naturally builds off of the previous tool of observing thoughts and emotions. It is something we will likely need to work our way up to in order for it to be effective. In order to understand why, I encourage you to read this comprehensive letting go collection, if you haven’t done so already
There are one or two helpful asides I can add that will help to inform today’s discussion though. Earlier I suggested that, for us, there is no longer any such thing as waiting. What we used to view as a time in which we were stuck waiting for something has now transformed into an alert to turn to a presence practice. Now I will suggest to you that we can transform our relationship with our mental and emotional activity in a similar way.
Recognize the signals
In short, not feeling right is simply an alert telling us to practice. It serves no other function. (Of course I am not recommending that you throw common sense out the window. If a situation is life or death, you will address it. If a situation requires immediate action, you will act. Once evaluations of this sort have been made then the value of the emotional/imaginative activity has run its course.) That said, if we do not learn to quickly turn to an everyday Zen practice then the vicious circles will kick in, and we will be sucked into and lost in illusion. We must learn to become aware of and recognize these alerts with great deftness and nimbleness. As stated earlier, we must then be willing to just as quickly turn to practice. If you want peace, choose peace.
Everyday Zen practice becomes streamlined
Finally, as with all of the tools discussed here, early on there will be more thinking and convincing involved with these inner actions. In time, if we are persistent, the mental dialogue will decrease. The more quickly, reflexively and instinctively that we can exercise these tools, the less disruptive they will be and the more effective. We will come to be familiar with the fact that everything can happen with a quick, unbiased glance. These practices will transform into our new natural way of being. This is an important aspect of the teachings that we have discussed before. We are learning to recognize the point at which doing becomes not-doing. We will look at this topic again in more detail in the next lesson.
Everyday Zen is a lifestyle. It is a way of being. Cross over the threshold into this new life with these tools of daily practical mindfulness and simple awareness.
Explore more
As I said, there is more than one way to peel a potato. One of those ways is with Zazen. This article on the Barre Center For Buddhist Studies website delves into the differences between Zazen and meditation. This is a beautifully written, interesting and informative article that really digs deeply into Zen philosophy and what makes it unique to other traditions. Take in the eloquence of this excerpt for just a moment. “Dogen (1200-1252) was the founder of the Soto Zen tradition… Dogen uses various terms to describe Zazen, one of which is gotsu-za, which means ‘sitting immovable like a bold mountain.’”
I love the imagery that this conjures. It is simple, stoic, powerful and, yet, at the same time, nothing. In going on to elaborate on the differences between Zazen and meditation, the article digs into and reveals a wealth of additional ideas and information.
Meditation Vs. Zazen
Traditional meditation, it says, “… is structured dualistically, with a sitting body as a container and a meditating mind as the contents. And the emphasis is always on meditation as mental exercise. In such a dualistic structure, the body sits while the mind does something else.
For Dogen, on the other hand, the objective of Zazen is just to sit in kekka-fuza correctly—there is absolutely nothing to add to it. It is kekka-fuza plus zero. Kodo Sawaki Roshi, the great Zen master of early 20th century Japan, said, ‘Just sit Zazen, and that’s the end of it.’ In this understanding, Zazen goes beyond mind/body dualism; both the body and the mind are simultaneously and completely used up just by the act of sitting in kekka-fuza.”
The delicate art of Zen is revealed
We find within this article the importance of non-contention or removing goals from the act of Zazen. Additionally, mind-body oneness, the elimination of duality and the prominent role that the head plays, is also addressed.
I often speak of how Zen practices seem entirely unrelated to the transformations that we are seeking to realize. Here we see this in the most extreme. “In reality s/he is doing only one thing to continuously aim at the correct sitting posture with the whole body.” We do this one thing. We let everything else fall to the wayside. “The human being is freed from being a human being….” Finally, we, “…tune into the universe.”
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