This is the 5th chapter of the story of my life and meditation
practices, which I've been writing in installments on my blog at
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/ In the last episode, I was beginning my first Zen retreat, a week-long
sitting in the Korean tradition. It was led by Zen Master Seung Sahn
(I'll abbreviate as ZMSS), commonly addressed as Dae Soen Sa Nim.
There were a few dozen of us in a single-family residence, with a
connected living room/study area serving as the Dharma room (that's
where the formal group practice takes place; "Dharma" means "truth").
The crowded conditions made for a complete lack of privacy, confusion
in storing and dealing with my personal stuff, lines to the bathroom,
etc. The long hours of a new sitting style, plus the new practice of
108 bows every morning, made my body ache. It was cold, keeping me
awake much of the nights I spent in my sleeping bag on the Dharma room
floor.
I mention all this because it may be a non-trivial part of the
equation: that the first few days had this foundation of physical
discomfort, exhaustion, and frustration. But mostly I'm interested in
trying to articulate the mental experience.
In my earlier years of meditation, I'd spent plenty time obsessing
about proper technique. Should I use a mantra? Which one? Should I
control my breath in a particular way? Should I cultivate a feeling or
hold some belief? Didn't I have to do these things just right in order
to get the enlightenment prize? Different teachers I'd known had
touted particular techniques as the surest, best path to the
absolute... but they were all different.
ZMSS would talk about techniques -- mantra, breath, etc -- but without
the sense that one was better than the other. He did stress, though,
that if you considered the question "What am I?", you'd find yourself
stuck, with nothing in the mind, just "Don't Know." Whatever technique
you like, just do it, but do it with this "Don't-Know Mind."
Keeping a big question appealed to me, because it built on my earlier
practice style, not negating it. Famous Indian teachers, such as
Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj, had spoken on self-inquiry,
looking into the nature of this "I." There's a story in the Zen
tradition that particularly struck me as in harmony with this
practice:
Huai-jang lived in China centuries ago, on a mountain called Sung
Shan. He somehow heard about a Buddhist temple where Hui-neng had a
strange new teaching. This was in the early generations of the
development of Zen in China; Hui-neng is now known as the sixth
patriarch of Zen. Huai-jang was curious enough to make the long trek
to the temple.
Upon encountering Hui-neng, Huai-jang announced his intention, "I've
traveled here from Sung Shan to receive your teaching." The funny
thing about Hui-neng's response is that he didn't actually give a word
of teaching, not in the sense that Huai-jang was expecting or looking
for. Instead he asked, "What is this thing that has traveled from Sung
Shan?"
Huai-jang had no idea what to say. He turned around, went back home,
and continued his simple life on the mountain. Whatever he did now,
every day, he had that question in his mind, "What is this?" After 8
years, one day, boom, it became clear. He went back to the temple to
see Hui-neng again. This time, when the patriarch asked him the same
question, Huai-jang replied, "To say even one word is to miss the
point entirely." Hui-neng accepted his answer, acknowledging his
enlightenment, and Huai-jang became the seventh patriarch of Zen.
I took up this story as my guide, intending to compress Huai-jang's 8
years into my week-long retreat. It was just like the self-inquiry
that I'd read about and tried in India. Except that the Indian
teachers and scriptures tended to speak of this self in such
beautiful, poetic terms. Stuff like: "Prajnanam Brahma: Consciousness
is infinite, the absolute, the highest Truth." On web sites dedicated
to Ramana's teachings, the self we're inquiring into is described with
phrases like "ultimate truth" and "complete immersion in God."
Zen style would have none of that. It was always sparse: What am I?
Don't know. What will all this effort get me? Don't know. So what
should I do next? Just try, try, try.
Everything about it was simple and direct. The chanting had its
appeal, but nothing like the lush melodic beauty of Indian chants. The
Yoga sitting style had been more relaxed, with eyes closed, allowing a
pleasant, dreamy mind-state. Zen posture was tighter, eyes open, just
facing what is.
I sat there, keeping "What am I?", and it was interesting for a short
time. Then it became more and more obvious that any answer I thought
of, no matter how insightful or clever, was by definition thinking. So
then what am I before thinking? ZMSS used to say, "Descarte said, 'I
think, therefore I am.' But if I'm not thinking ... what?"
On top of all the physical discomfort, I now had the profound
frustration of this self-inquiry process. How could I make the
slightest head-way, when whatever idea I came up with was immediately
useless? But I'd made the decision to stay the week, and wanted above
all to not end up with regrets, with "What if I'd just tried a little
harder?"
I'd remember repeatedly the advice I'd read in some classic Zen book.
It said with this type of practice, you'd sometimes feel like a
mosquito trying to bite through a thick steel door. When that happens,
just continue the questioning with still greater effort.
Even if you're trying to empty the ocean with a spoon, at least you've
got a tool that's of some value. But in this task of inquiring into my
true self, it was becoming horribly apparent that the tool I'd always
used before -- thinking, understanding -- wasn't just inadequate, it
was useless. I looked to my will, the center of my being, all around,
trying to find anything at all that I could throw at the question.
Thus passed the first few days of retreat. In the next blog entry,
I'll talk about the other aspect of the retreat, the private
interviews with ZMSS, in which he introduced me to the formal teaching
style of this tradition. Through a combination of that teaching, my
exhaustive efforts, and hell, I dunno, something different appeared.
Stuart
http://home.comcast.net/~sresnick2/socalled.htm
