Being the moment
Quiet isn't it?
This is a description of a 'an experience' I had during Zazen in the Autumn.
I had become aware that no matter how focussed I was, there was still a residue of self there - a sense that the phenomena in my awareness were being observed. Right at the end of a half-day zazen session, Rose - the lady who directs our sittings - said a few words about 'being one with the moment'. I 'tried to become one with the moment', wondering what it meant exactly and suddenly it seemed as if there was not the slightest bit of space between 'myself' and 'phenomena'. This lasted for several minutes and then I had a powerful sense that 'me' and 'that moment' were one and the same thing. There was 'only one'. It wasn't an idea, it was a direct experience (without an 'experiencer').
It seems that avoiding clinging to the experience and trying to reproduce it is wise advice but then again it doesn't seem difficult to take myself through the same steps - instead of 'just sitting', actively try to 'become one with' phenomena in the same way only to realise once again in a very direct way that that 'I cannot avoid being one with phenomena'.
Ahh...the temptation to the dark side is strong...
...Back to the washing up.
posted by Shonin @ Friday, April 07, 2006
13 comments
13 Comments:
Don't go into the light, Carol Anne!
tumbleweeds are gathering in the distance . . .
Along those same lines... (and this is extremely difficult to put into words and will probably come out wrong but anyway)
Once and only once while sitting I sort of "became" calm. That is, I felt or became calm, but the instant that I realized "I am calm" the experience vanished. That is, for what might have been an instant or an hour, there was no "I" to BE calm, there was simply calm. I haven't bothered to mention that to anyone because I don't think it really means anything to anyone except me, but it seems to correspond to the same thing you're talking about in this post. It's just one of those tantalizing hints that this silly practice of sitting still might have profound consequences.
mikedoe said "You can of course become a very proficient swimmer who is at home in the deepest ocean but is still not a fish."
What a cool analogy!
The somewhat frustrating thing about zazen/sitting/practice (call it what you will) is that 1) I seem to find it more difficult the longer I do it , longer meaning the span of months/years not the time of each session. And 2) it's more difficult than concentrating ON some activity.
DB
I was walking and driving in Stratford-upon-Avon with Emily and my son yesterday. I haven't been practicing very regularly. A dim comprehension of things that Dogen said about time in the Shobogenzo seemed to resonate. Every moment was clear and fresh, was completely just itself, somehow neither strictly dependent nor strictly independent of other times. The sense of a self travelling through time was not there. I can feel it now if I remind myself.
mikedoe, what you describe sounds very ken wilberish to me - stages of obtainment - carrots at the end of a stick to entice you to acheive ever greater and deeper levels of awareness.
This stands in stark contrast to the writings of Warner and Hagen who dismiss 'levels of obtainment'. There is nothing to obtain (and nobody to obtain it anyway).
I have no idea which, if either, can be said to be more accurate, but I prefer Warner & Hagen's (while at the same time feeling that change does (and must) happen...)
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Reality is beyond the grasp of the intellect but then reality is beyond the grasp of everything - not because it is 'transcendent' or anything but because the very act of grasping *is* the reality it seeks to grasp. My thoughts - just like my socks - are reality already. No grasping is required.
It is whether you believe you are graping reality or not that matters.
link
I read that article by her a week or so ago and loved it. She talks about it being 'lay zen' which seems to be zen divorced from any 'spirituality or mysticism' but I'm not familiar with the term. I suppose it could simply be zen for those who are not monks...
Interesting thoughts, mikedoe.
The thing that attracted me to zen was just what you are saying... Zen agreed with everything that I had intuited from nature (and life) as a kid. I spent a lot of time in the forest, and by water.
I don't go for the "religious" stuff, although I do understand the value of ritual.
However, I do find that reading and discussing things is quite helpful. Often, others can point out common "mental traps" or delusions... and thus save one from falling into them.
I am sure that if I had not read about Zen, I wouldn't have understood it intuitively. I certainly would have understood some of it, since I think we all do.
But Zen is a way of living, that needs to be communicated from person to person, somehow.
That's how I see it, anyway.
I think the only thing I can say about the whole Zen journey is that it leads you towards the point where you become free. Free to be anything that you want and to follow any path in life that you want.
I've struggled with what zen freedom really means. I wouldn't say zen allows one to be 'free to be anything you want' but instead zen allows one to stop controlling and managing their being - so that they become who they are rather than who they want to be.
Wants imply grasping, chasing concepts of oneself. There are so many self-help programs that promise things like 'be the "you" that you want to be!" but this isn't zen. Zen is about forgetting who you "want" to be and simply being. Forgetting about running your life and letting your life run itself.
Or so it seems to me. I wonder if one of the reasons zen monks live such austere lives of such regularity is to simplify things so they don't have to do too much decision-making and thinking all the time. Their life can simply happen by itself because there isn't a constant chaos of choices to deal with, everything is restricted to a regular pattern of behavior...
The 'cost' of this freedom is that there is no 'You' who is free.
This I agree with - but it seems to me to contradict the earlier statement that zen allows one to be "anything one wants." There is really only one thing that you can be - yourself. All deviations from yourself are not zen, they are the chasing of ideas of yourself.
In practice I think a lot of this stuff is in the realm of philosophy - not provable in any direction and therefore of no practical use.
Yes, true, and perhaps such philosophy is best seen as a sort of description of the mind at that time rather than as any sort of ultimate truth.
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