Sunday, September 9, 2007

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Persistence, and other aspects

Mirroring this sensibility, during the 700's, Northern Chinese Ch'an (Zen) schools understood enlightenment as a gradual practice; the southern schools, however, maintained that enlightenment was sudden and immediate. The competing arguments eventually became counterproductive and even distracting to practice.

Consequently, Ch'an master Sekito Kisen eventually wrote the famous Sandokai poem which attempted to bridge the gap between the two schools. (Suzuki Roshi's excellent book Branching Streams Flow In The Darkness discusses the poem, and many other Zen ideas. Highly recommended reading.)

The easy way out for everyone is to contend that both points are true: enlightenment is immediate, and enlightenment is gradual. This, however, is a strictly philosophical solution. It's a bit harder to implement anything on the ground floor of practice.

In this day and age, everyone wants to race to the top. The ground floor isn't interesting to us. We're all in a way big hurry. It's hard to remember we're not in the hedge fund management business, where whole lifetimes of salary get earned in a single week. It takes time to earn anything worthwhile.

In AA meeting rooms one often sees a sign that says :"The elevator to sobriety is broken. Please use the steps."

Yesterday it occurred to me that in my own experience, everything that becomes possible, becomes possible because of persistence. One must be willing to make an effort not once, not ten times, not a hundred times, but ten thousand times. In other words, the foundation of inner practice is indeed gradual, magnificently geologic in its time scale.

Indeed, persistence pays off in something that may appear to happen instantaneously. Earth movements work like this. For a thousand years, perhaps, plates move imperceptibly along a fault line until enough pressure has built up, and suddenly bang! An earthquake occurs. The earthquake alters the landscape immediately, tangibly.

We now know that all of the work that went into creating the energy that ultimately caused that change was hidden from ordinary sight.

And think about this one... exactly what do we seek in our inner landscape... one earthquake after another?

For myself, I am dogged in my persistence, and even actively averse to attempting to storm the gates of heaven. I'm not a warrior but a gardener: not a scaler of walls, but a cultivator of flowers. There is no need to race to heaven.

As Suzuki said in Branching Streams (p.71):

"Just to feel good, we study, and just to feel better we practice Zazen. No one knows what will happen to us after sitting for one, two, or ten years. No one knows, and it is right that no one knows. Just to feel good we sit Zazen, actually. Eventually that kind of purposeless practice will help you."

Well, of course, I must confess my own practice is hardly purposeless. But his insight remains valid: persistence must become the heart of practice. Impatience only serves our dissipation. Within attentive containment, active persistence, we may discover a true connection to the heart.

In the meantime, we need to live this ordinary life, a best we can, with utmost joy. As I said to my wife yesterday:

You gotta live a little, or else you'll never notice it when you're dead.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

Monday, September 10, 2007

persistence, part two

...This kind of synchronicity keeps smacking me in the face. What can I say?

We find ourselves together, for this moment, in Chapter 48 of the Shobogenzo, "Expounding the Mind and Expounding the Nature."

For those who do not believe that intellect is a real and material force, necessary for the full understanding of truth, this chapter is essential reading. However, today we're just going to take a look at what Dogen says in book 3, page 48: (Nishijima and Cross translation, Dogen Sangha Press.)

"...from the time we establish the Bodhi-mind and direct ourselves towards training in the way of the Buddha, we sincerely practice difficult practices; and at that time, though we keep practicing, in a hundred efforts we never hit the target once. Nevertheless, sometimes following good counselors and sometimes following the sutras, we gradually become able to hit the target. One hit of the target now is by virtue of hundreds of misses in the past; it is the maturation of hundreds of misses. Listening to the teachings, training in the truth, and attaining the state of experience are all like this. Even though yesterday's attempts to expound the mind and to expound the nature were a hundred misses, the hundred missed attempts to expound the mind and to expound the nature yesterday are suddenly a hit today."

A little later, Dogen continues: "The Buddha-way, at the time of the first establishment of the will, is the Buddha-way; and at the time the realization of the right state of truth, it is the Buddha-way. The beginning, the middle, and the end are each the Buddha-way. It is like someone walking 1,000 miles: the first step is one in 1,000 miles and the thousandth step is one in 1,000 miles. Though the first step and the thousandth step are different, the 1,000 miles are the same."

These comments reinforce and underline the oneness of everything: every result is composed of all the efforts that went into it, not just the last one. All efforts and all results are part of truth.

Even the "failed" effort cannot be separated from the Truth.

So there are no failed efforts; there are only efforts, and there is only Truth. The first effort is as important as the middle effort, and the last effort.

In "Branching Streams flow in the Darkness," Suzuki Roshi speaks of how his own dullness and stupidity ultimately became a vital asset in his search. They were what supported his own persistence, long after the shining stars around him had burned themselves out.

This means, for me, that when I have a disorganized and seemingly unproductive sitting, like the one that I had this morning, I can accept it in the surety that a good coin, even when bent, is still made of true metal.

And I think that perhaps, in the end, it is not the silver, brass, or gold that we pay with, but rather the willingness to pay that matters.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.